Free Moment Of Vengeance and Other Stories (1956) by Elmore Leonard Page A

Those are Mescaleros!"
    "I'm through arguing with him. Sellers is reservation supervisor. He can run things how he likes and hire who he likes. I should have quit long ago."
    "Who's taking your place?"
    "A man named Verbiest."
    "Somebody looking for some extra change."
    "He might be all right."
    Billy Teachout shook his head wearily. To him it was another example of cheap politics, knowing the right people. Agency posts were being handed out to men who cared nothing for the Indians. There was profit to be made by short-rationing their charges and selling the government beef and grain to homesteaders, or back to the Army. Even that had been done.
    "Sellers has been trying to get rid of you for a long time. Finally he made it," Billy Teachout said. He shook his head again. "Your Mescaleros aren't going to take kindly to this."
    "Verbiest might know what he's doing," Corsen said. Then, "But if he doesn't, you better keep your windows shut till he hangs a few of them and they calm down again."
    "Where you going? I might just close up and go with you."
    "What about the stage line?"
    "The hell with it. I'm getting too old for this kind of thing."
    Corsen smiled. "I'm going up to Whipple to see about a guide contract."
    "So if you can't nurse them, you fight them."
    "Either one's a living."
    "Ross--"
    He turned to see Katie standing in the doorway that led to the kitchen. His gaze rested on her face--tanned, freckled, clear-eyed, a face that smiled often, but now held on his earnestly.
    "Ross, I heard what you were telling Billy."
    "I can't work for that man anymore."
    "Can't you find something else around here?"
    "There isn't anything."
    "Fort Thomas. Why can't you guide out of there?"
    Corsen shrugged. "There's a chance, but I'd still have to go through the department commander's office at Whipple." "Ross . . ." Her voice was a whisper.
    It showed on her face that was not eager now and seemed even pale beneath the sun coloring. The face of a girl, sensitive nose and mouth, but in her clear, blue, serious eyes the awareness of a woman. Katie was nineteen. She had known Ross Corsen for almost three years, meeting him the day after she had arrived to live with her uncle. And she expected to marry him, even though he never mentioned it. She knew how he felt. Ross didn't have to say a word. It was in the way he looked at her, in the way he had kissed her for the first time only a few weeks ago--a small, soft, lingering, inexperienced kiss. She loved Corsen; very simply she loved him, because he was a man, respected as a man, and because he was a boy at the same time. Perhaps just as she was girl and woman in one.
    "Are you coming back?"
    "Of course I am."
    "What if you're stationed somewhere far away?"
    "I'll come and get you," he answered.
    Billy Teachout looked at them, from one to the other. "Maybe I've been inside too much." To the girl he said, "Has he behaved himself?"
    "Billy," Corsen said, "I was going to ask you.
    This is all of a sudden--" Then, to Katie, "I'm taking the stage." He smiled faintly. "If I leave my horse here, I've got to come back."
    "The stage!" Delgado was in the doorway momentarily. The screen door banged and he was gone. It came in from the east, a thin sand trail, a shadow leading the dust that rose furiously into a billowing tail.
    Delgado was swinging out with the grayed wooden gate. Then the stage, rumbling in an arc toward the opening, and the hoarse-throated voice of Ernie Ball, the driver.
    "Delgadooo!"
    The little Mexican was in front of the lead horses now, reaching for reins close to the bit rings.
    "Delgado, you half-a-man! Hold 'em, chico!"
    Ernie Ball was off the box, grinning, wiping the back of a gnarled hand over his mouth, smoothing the waxed tips of his full mustache. His palm slapped the thin wood of the coach door, then swung it open to bang on its hinges.
    "Rindo's Station!"
    Billy Teachout came out carrying a paintbrush and a bucket half full of axle grease. Ross and Katie were already