by Jonas Ward
Her eyes bored into his own. “You sound skeptical,” she said. “As if you think Hallett is right.”
“No I don’t,” he said lightly. “The man who put his rope over you wouldn’t rob a bank.”
“Frank stands convicted of embezzlement,” she said stonily.
“Well, look at me,” Buchanan said, trying to banter the girl out of her mood. “I’m in the book, too. Took unfair advantage of Juanita, from the little I heard of it.” He put his hand to his neck. “This should’ve been stretched a little a few hours ago,” he said, “if you believe everything you hear.”
“No,” Ellen said. “There was evidence against Frank. A U.S. Marshal traveled all the way down here from San Francisco. There was—a woman involved.”
“What’d your man say?”
She looked down at the bare floor. “Frank said he didn’t do it. He swore that he was innocent.”
“Well?”
“But the evidence! A marshal. What the woman swore on her deathbed. Frank’s ring.”
Just hearing it, hearing the conviction in her own voice, was enough to convince Buchanan that there had been justice done in this particular case. Now he was doubly sorry for having revived her memories. He was relieved when Juanita walked into the room.
“Tú desperatas!” she cried.
“Sí,” Buchanan said, guardedly. For this was a well-brought up señorita, and she didn’t use the familiar ‘tú’ lightly. In the course of nursing him, taking his clothes to wash, they had apparently entered into a rather friendly relationship—if that was the word for it.
“Tú fuiste asi valiente!” she said, sitting impudently on the bed. “Asi soccorrente!”
“What did she say?” Ellen asked.
“She thinks I have been brave—and now I look very helpless,” Buchanan answered. Then he asked Juanita sternly: “¿Donde está mi ropas?”
“What did you say?” Ellen asked.
“I want to know where my duds are, that’s what.”
“Well you don’t have to be so gruff about it.”
“Better let me handle this,” he said.
“Handle what?”
“The little change in relationships here,” he said with a glance at the nearby Juanita. “She’s starting to forget who she is.”
Ellen’s face turned angry. “Juanita’s every bit as good as anybody I ever met,” she said. “Better than most.”
“Right,” Buchanan agreed. “And I bet her folks are first-class people. Most likely got a fine marriage arranged for her. That’s what she’s got to remember.”
“I’m sorry,” Ellen said, gazing at Buchanan with a curious expression. “I seem to keep making mistakes about you.”
“¿Qué pasa, querido?” Juanita asked. “Are you angry with me?”
“I’m ashamed for you,” he told her. “And I am not querido or anything like that.”
“You don’t like me?”
“We are good friends, you and I,” Buchanan said. “And I would also like to be your father’s good friend. A friend to all your family.”
“Then I shall call you tío,” the girl said, her pretty mouth pouting. “You are my uncle.”
“Fine,” Buchanan said. “And now, sobrina mio, please fetch my clothes in here.”
She flashed the smiling man a hurt look, got up from the bed and left the room.
“Did you get things settled?” Ellen asked.
“I hope so,” he said. “She’s my niece now.”
“And that’s how you want it to be?”
“That’s how it has to be.”
“Juanita isn’t attractive to you at all?”
Buchanan frowned across the room at her. “Don’t keep on making mistakes about me, Mrs. Booth,” he said in a voice she hadn’t heard before. “I’m a natural man. As natural as any man you ever stood in front of.”
Her questions had been put almost flippantly; she had spoken to him from the protection of her status as a married woman. But she realized now that she had crossed over into dangerous ground, passed some invisible line that separated their worlds, for he had demolished her ‘protection’ with just the expression in his eyes. Now she ‘stood in front of him’ as a woman—and not in three manless, love-starved years had she ever felt more like one.
“Don’t you speak like that to me,” she said. “Don’t you dare.” But the words carried no conviction, had a sound of artifice even to her own ears. Ellen had enough frankness with herself—having lived so long alone—to admit that she had spoken what was expected of her, not what she wanted to tell him.
“Somebody better have a look at that stew,” Buchanan said.
Ellen nodded distractedly, all but fled from the bedroom. Then Juanita came in, bearing his clothes. She dropped them in a pile at the foot of the bed, left the room and returned almost immediately with a basin of steaming-hot water, a cake of yellow soap and a bone-handled razor.
“It’s been decided, then, that I need a shave?” Buchanan asked.
“Yes, Uncle,” she told him, just as formally.
“Praise God for women,” he said. “What a world this would be without them.”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“You’ll have a man of your own to manage someday soon,” he said to her. “Un hombre muy guapo.”
“Who cares if he is handsome?” she said to that. “I’ll spit on him.”
“What kind of way is that to talk?”
“I have decided to go with the sisters,” she said. “I forsake all men forever.”
“You?” he said. “¿La belleza de Salinas?”
“I am not the beauty of Salinas,” she said scornfully. “You have not looked upon Maria del Torres. I vow you would not be El Tio with Maria del Torres.”
“I would be as a brother to Maria,” Buchanan said. “Now go help Elena with the stew,” he told her. “Not too much salt.”
Then he had the room to himself. After the chore of shaving with a dulled blade he dressed himself and joined them in the huge kitchen.
“Say, that smells good,” he commented cheerfully but his female companions ignored him, kept their backs turned. He said it again in Spanish, but Juanita had suddenly developed deafness. The meal was served in silence, eaten in silence.
“Anything you two ladies want to say to each other?” Buchanan offered. “Be glad to pass it back and forth. ¿Quiere usted hablar a Elena?” he repeated. There were no takers, and he pushed his chair away from the table with a sigh, stood up. “Mind if I take a look around your place?” he asked Ellen. She shook her head slightly and he turned to walk out. Suddenly both girls called to him, anxiously.
“You’re not going away?” Ellen said.
“¿Cuándo volvera ud?” Juanita said.
“I wouldn’t run out on you,” Buchanan said. “But you both might consider going along with me to Sacramento. Ellen, you could go over to San Francisco from there, and I could put Juanita on a direct stage to Salinas.”
“When would we leave?”
“Maybe tomorrow, if this shoulder’s well enough to ride with.”
“¿Qué dice ud?” Juanita asked.
“I said that tomorrow we’ll start you on your way home. How will that be?”
“Good,” she said. “I suppose.”
Buchanan went out of the house, stood under the eaves for several minutes surveying the layout. It had apparently been a very modest spread, unpretentious. The bunkhouse with its sagging roof would sleep no more than a crew of six. There wasn’t a thing his eye lit on that didn’t need either to be repaired or scrapped altogether. But a man wouldn’t have to kill himself putting it back in operation, not if ranching was in his blood. Buchanan couldn’t figure how Ellen’s husband would rather spend his time stealing from a bank when he had this life handed to him on a tray. From that he found himself speculating about Frank Booth in general, wondering what the man looked like, how he talked, what it was about him that had set him heads and shoulders above the other men who
must have been courting the good-looking blonde girl.
He was strolling along with his thoughts when he spied the two horses, unsaddled and grazing in the corral. The area was overgrown, sorry-looking, and he saw one section in particular where the animals were free to escape if they had a mind to. He went to it and replaced the bars that had fallen from their rungs, at the same time running a critical glance over the mustang whose lameness had been the innocent cause of his getting involved in all of Salvation’s troubles. She looked fine to him, rested, and when she moved about there was no trace of a limp.
Little girl, he thought, don’t get used to the soft life. It’s back to work for you tomorrow.
He moved on beyond the corral, along the nearest thing that resembled a path from the house, and observed that this was going to be another cloudless, blistering day. The land, as he crossed it in wandering fashion, was becoming more and more wild. Up ahead there was a particularly dense growth of foliage, almost a wall. He came to it and went on through, parting the heavy shrub with his hands. It was marvelously cool in here, shaded, and on beyond the land suddenly dipped down. When Buchanan reached that point he was staring down into the greenest, clearest, most inviting little spring he had ever seen. It was oval in shape, not more than twenty feet at its widest. He let himself down the gently sloping bank to its edge. The water was crystal clean, deliciously cold. He scooped out a brimming hatful and let it cascade over his hair and shoulders. He felt like a kid again, as if he had made a discovery, and with the air of a man staking out a claim he worked his way around to the far side, where the growth was nearly tropical in its thickness and the grass reached to his knees. Obeying an impulse, Buchanan shed his clothes, his boots, slipped into the water and began floating luxuriantly in the wonderful stuff.
Had Frank Booth known about this and forsaken it? That just couldn’t be possible.
He bathed in the natural pool for a good hour, then climbed out and stretched his long body flat in the long grass—one human being who was completely satisfied with life at the moment. Even his multitude of aches and pains seemed to have taken a holiday, and soon he was fast asleep.
Buchanan awoke again to the sound of voices, high-spirited female voices. He turned his head warily to the source of the happiness, peered out through the tightly clustered blades of grass. His two friends were there in the spring, having as grand a time as he had and just as naked. Ellen was standing on a ledge beneath the surface, the water lapping gently at her hips, and a thousand droplets glistened on her fair body like so many tiny diamonds. Juanita was diving beneath the surface, and whenever her head and olive-tinted shoulders reappeared Ellen splashed water at her and they both laughed uproariously. There was no strangeness between them now, no language barrier to keep them from enjoying this interlude.
And poor Buchanan—who had never rhymed two lines, never sketched so much as a cactus bush—how he yearned to be able to set down his thoughts in the grand manner, to commit that idyll to a full-blown canvas in all its golden tones. Even the water looked greener, purer, for their presence in it.
Then he came down from the clouds with a jolt. What in the name of hell was he going to do? He surely couldn’t speak to them, call any attention to his presence at this private scene. Their embarrassment would go deep, wipe out all the lighthearted pleasure of the romp they were having. Steal away then? He looked up the slope of the bank, at the prickly obstacles in his path near the top, the place where the growth was not so thick. A man his size, encumbered by two gunshot wounds plus duds and boots couldn’t count on exiting anyplace unnoticed.
But what you can damn well do is give them their privacy, he told himself severely, promptly rolling over on his back again and gazing at the blue sky overhead. The decision, then, was to stay put right where he was—a fine one, for he could still fill his ears with their happy sounds and not be an intruder.
The girls splashed and cavorted for another thirty minutes, then an exhausted kind of quiet settled over the place.
“He’s probably starved for dinner,” Ellen said, her voice floating across the water to Buchanan’s hearing. “We’d better go feed him.”
“No comprende ud.” Juanita said.
“The man,” Ellen said. “What do you call him—El Tío?”
“Oh, sí. El Tío,” Juanita said, and her voice broke in a burst of laughter that was discomfiting to the eavesdropper on the far bank. Then, to make it worse, Ellen joined in the mirth.
“I know, Juanita,” she said, giggling. “I know what you mean. Whatever he is, he’s no proper uncle. He’s no tío,” she repeated and that sent Juanita into a fresh spasm.
The man suffered their levity with a scowl, wondering what was so funny. Then his own good humor reasserted itself and he smiled at the image he saw of himself as the uncle of a high-born Mexican young lady. He heard them leave the pool then, and when the silence was absolute fifteen minutes later he ventured another peek through the foliage and found them gone. With that he dressed himself, started back toward the ranch house by a circuitous route.
He found them busy as two bees in the kitchen, their faces shining, their still-damp hair piled atop their heads. Despite what he thought was the gallant attitude to take, Buchanan could not help picturing them as they had been.
“Stew again,” Ellen informed him.
“Fine.”
“What did you do with yourself all afternoon?”
“Took a siesta.”
“Juanita and I had some real fun. We went swimming.”
“That’s nice.”
She grinned up at him, her eyes dancing with harmless flirtation. “I know something you don’t,” she said teasingly.
“What’s that?”
“Your pretty niece is not a little girl.”
Buchanan almost nodded his agreement with that, was saved by Juanita’s own voice that made him turn his head.
“What does Elena say to you?” she asked.
“That you are a fine swimmer. And that you are a fine cook if you will not put too much salt in the stew,” he said in Spanish.
“That is what she says?”
“The salt is what I say.”
Their second meal together was more of a social success, with both girls keeping Buchanan very active translating. They wanted to know more about each other, and Juanita’s particular interest was in Ellen’s husband. What did he look like, how old was he, and where was he?
Ellen, so candid about him previously, hedged on Frank Booth’s whereabouts. She asked Buchanan to explain that he was away on a business trip, that she was going to meet him in San Francisco. As for his physical appearance, she described a man of medium height, slender, with curly black hair and a smiling face. He was twenty-seven years old.
Then Ellen wanted to hear about Juanita’s home in Salinas, what she was taught at the mission school, and was properly sympathetic to learn that the other girl’s father was ill.
Buchanan finally called a halt, protesting good-naturedly that he’d had to talk more in the past hour than in all his previous lifetime.
“And your shoulder hurts, too, doesn’t it?” Ellen asked.
“Some,” he admitted.
“Let me change the bandage,” she said but he shook his head, rose from the table.
“It’ll be all right,” he assured her, but he was holding his left side stiffly, and when he turned and left the room a small frown appeared between his eyes. It was not that the wound was any more painful than it had been, but now there was a burning sensation beneath the bandage. He wondered if the damn thing hadn’t become infected.
If that were the case, a helluva lot of help he’d be to old Jack Maguire and his railroad.
He took his trouble on out of the house, walking in a different direction than before, hoping to see enough things of interest to make him forget the shoulder. But the open range has little variety—and this was open country with not another sign of human habitation for as far as the eye could see. Th
e sun was setting as he started back, the air became muggy, and the dampness made him feel still more uncomfortable.
When he came back into the house again it was dark outside. The girls were sitting placidly in the parlor, a lamp shedding its comfortable light on their faces.
“It’s worse, isn’t it?” Ellen asked knowingly.
“They act up in the night,” Buchanan told her. “It’ll be all right by morning.”
“You’re sure you don’t want the bandage changed?”
“I’m sure, thanks.”
“What time did you want to get started tomorrow?”
“Sunup, if possible. Can’t push my bronc too hard for a while yet, so it’ll be an all-day trip.”
She nodded and stood up. “In that case I think I’ll go to bed now. How do you say good night in Spanish?”
“Buenos noches.”
She repeated it to Juanita with a kind of proud little smile.
“Dice usted ‘good night’,” Buchanan told the Mexican and when she said the words she also smiled.
“There you go,” he said. “Pretty soon you’ll be chattering away like magpies.” He waved to them, walked off down the hallway to the bedroom he was using.
Sleep came hard and slow. For the next two hours he lay on his back, dozing occasionally, coming sharply awake with the continuous throbbing ache. About midnight he found himself sitting up in bed and staring feverishly at Ellen Booth. She stood beside him in a cotton chemise, a candle in her hand, its flame revealing the deep concern in her face.
“What’s the matter?” Buchanan asked.
“You groaned terribly,” she said. “Don’t you remember?”
He shook his head. “Sorry I woke you.”
“Wait a minute,” she said suddenly. “I think I remember the place.” With that she left the room, and when she came back she held a bottle of 100-proof whisky in her hand. “I would have poured this on last night,” she explained, “but I couldn’t think where my father kept it.”
Buchanan eyed the bottle dubiously as he peeled off his shirt.
“Seems pretty wasteful …”