I closed my eyes and hugged the earth, sensing rather than seeing the movement of Mr. Riker and Rita around me. Rita’s warm smell was in my nostrils, the musk of her hair falling across my face. It was the tiniest, minutest scrap of sense-memory planted somewhere in the very middle of the big thing that was about to happen.
The Wyoming sky seemed to hang poised for the explosion. It came.
The world came apart with blasting thunder. The earth quaked and rose and then lay down again. Just in time for the detonation of the other dynamite stick in Tubby’s other hand to sound off.
My ears would never be the same again.
15
The next hour was a terrible one.
Filling the air was the sound of frightened horses, the smell of burned nitrate and the stink of blasted flesh. I don’t know how long we stayed planted face-down to the brown earth but it seemed like eons before we reached a point where we felt like getting up and taking a look around.
When I got up on one knee, my ears were ringing like an answering service and one side of my face felt paralyzed. The dynamite explosions and the proximity to their blasts had taken toll. I don’t have to look at the cabin. The Rikers were my first concern. They were pretty badly off. But not as bad as Tubby.
Old Riker had been bombarded with flying fragments from the cabin. A large section of door had caromed off the top of his head after hitting the ground first. Blood matted his red hair but close examination showed it to be superficial. He was a little wobbly but okay. Rita’s thick long hair had padded the concussion for her but her right arm was badly scratched from hurtling bits of rock. We made some minor repairs before we got around to looking at the cabin.
There wasn’t much to see. We had a clearer view of the flatlands now without the cabin in the way. The left side of the place was visible now since all four walls had been leveled. Rafters and beams, splintered and shattered, were angled across each other in a jumbled pile. You could see that part of the land where the trail climbed up toward the horizon and the clapboard sign. Agreeable Wells looked smaller and more pitiful with the scrambled Riker cabin in its midst. Rita stayed with the dazed Mr. Riker while I made a stiff and brief survey of the rear end of the cabin.
It was a tangled heap of wooden wreckage. The debris didn’t warrant too close a look. I didn’t exactly relish the idea of stumbling over bits and pieces which would be all that was left of Mr. Tubbs. Mercifully, the debris was piled high at the doorway where the back wall had collapsed. The blast had gone into the cabin, rather than out. What had been blown sky-high strewed the whole area with wreckage. I caught a glimpse of shining silver metal. Tubby’s badge was winking at me from somewhere among the pile. It gave me the willies.
Circling the cabin didn’t help much either. Las Vegas hadn’t had a chance. He couldn’t have been lying more than ten feet from the center of the blast. But I didn’t feel like digging under the confusion of wood, glass, earth and black soot. Lazy curls of smoke were rising out of the ruins.
The Rikers had come up quietly behind me. Mr. Riker was bearing himself stiffly, one giant arm closed around Rita for support. Neither of them said anything. Their eyes were awed and spellbound by the force that two six-inch sticks of dynamite had unleashed. You never get used to explosions no matter how many of them you ever see or live through. There’s something frightening about every one of them. It’s as if nature were slapping back.
We wandered almost aimlessly around the debris, stumbling over splintered boards, picking our way among the mass of tragic litter. We got past the cabin onto the ground where the scorched earth ended. Rita groaned and fell to her knees and began to pluck at shiny green grass. Mr. Riker was shaking his head.
“I had purchased that dynamite for digging purposes —” He shivered visibly. “Who would have thought —” He caught himself and looked at me. “Do you think Las Vegas —”
I shook my head.
“Can’t see how. Unless he woke after we left and ran off. But in that case, he should have been with Tubby. No, I think he’s buried back there somewhere, Mr. Riker.”
“Terrible, Mr. Noon. A terrible thing.”
“Yeah.”
“The Bible is so right. Money is the root of all evil. The guilty —”
“Stop it,” I said. “That won’t help now.”
He subsided with a profound sigh of agreement.
Rita Riker stirred, her face smudged but still beautiful. “Noon, those shots we heard before the explosion. What about them?”
She was so right. In the confusion, I’d forgotten them.
“You two wait here,” I said. “I think I know what that might have been.” I left them sitting there and walked down the trail toward where the guy I hit had ducked behind a big rock.
He was still there. I didn’t have to turn him over to find out what had happened to him. I had to bat a few horse flies out of the way when I stepped over him. His partner was no more than a few yards away. Same condition. Both ways. A rifle bullet had caught him in the chest too. The top of his head was the same gory mess. I got out of there before my stomach started to rearrange itself by coming up into my mouth. I tasted bile and spat into the dry earth.
When I got back to the Rikers, they must have seen my green face. Mr. Riker looked puzzled. But not Rita. Her smile was so much like her. Soft, and very shrewd.
“Brandy?” she murmured.
I nodded. “Brandy.” I flopped down on the ground and started tracing patterns with my forefinger in the brown earth. Rita suddenly put her face in her hands. You could tell she was crying because her shoulders twitched. But she cried soundlessly.
Mr. Riker looked from her to me, puzzle etched in his broad face. His coffee-spout nose was dirty with caked mud.
“Mr. Noon — what about Brandy? You and my wife seem to know something I don’t.
“It’s not worth knowing,” I said, still staring at my finger patterns. It was a relaxing thing to do in the middle of all that madness. “Brandy took care of two of Vegas’ men back there. She must have been hiding in the hills until she saw her chance. Caught them flat-footed from behind. Shot them where they stood.”
Mr. Riker’s eyes got big and round and foolish when I looked back at him.
“That’s bad enough,” I admitted. “But she also seems to be going Indian all over again. I know how she feels about her father’s murder but this isn’t nice either.”
He still didn’t understand. “What isn’t nice?”
I stopped making finger pictures and groped for the cigarettes which I should have known I didn’t have.
“They’re scalped, Mr. Riker. Neat as you please. Which means that our Brandy is running around loose, collecting souvenirs. Now — what were you saying about the Bible —?”
I’d started him off again. His eyes rolled and his thick tongue cleared. “Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord. An eye for an eye and a tooth —”
“I wish I had a cigarette” was all I felt like saying. But Rita Riker got up from where she was sitting and dusted off her levis.
“On your feet, Noon,” she said cheerfully enough. “There’s a lady coming.”
Now I was confused. I flung her a glance, then looked in the direction she was looking. I cursed and got to my feet.
Walking slowly toward us, her brown body a sinewy dark shadow in the blazing sunlight, was Brandy. She still had the Winchester. But something new had been added.
She’d found some clothes somehow. Her hips were tightly held in a loincloth and her breasts were covered with a leather garment that was more bra than jacket. But that wasn’t all that was new.
Dangling from a rawhide belt at her waist were two red-black terrible objects. They were still dripping. Sunlight gleamed off the drying blood in the tangled hair locks.
Two scalps for Charley Redwine.
16
For all her raw, natural beauty, Brandy wasn’t exactly a pretty valentine. She’d managed to make some kind of tights out of my su
it jacket, holding the material around her firm waist with the rawhide belt. Her long black hair hung in two heavy strands down her face. She looked as friendly as a shooting war. There was a savage kill-look in her dark eyes and you might imagine what she looked like in the steaming Wyoming daylight. The knife she’d used to garner her souvenirs still showed red from her belt.
“How do you tell her we’re friendly?” I asked Rita as Brandy moved slowly toward us.
“She knows we’re okay,” Rita murmured. “Otherwise she’d never have come this close. The poor kid must be half out of her head to do what she’s done. Look at her.”
I already had. So had Mr. Riker. His great sad eyes had never stopped examining the weird nature girl who had come upon his home in the wilderness.
“You know her better than I do, Rita. Have you ever been able to communicate with her?”
Rita was way ahead of me. Brandy had already embraced her. Then they pushed apart and started at each other like a pair of schoolgirls giving each other the onceover. Suddenly Rita started going through some hand signals that would have looked funny if you didn’t know Brandy couldn’t speak English. She started pawing the air, making odd movements and then Brandy fanned out her hands in reply. Mr. Riker wagged his big head. He obviously understood the sign language too.
“What’s she saying?” I asked.
“She is avenging the death of her father.” His voice caressed the words he was saying. This kind of talk was his meat. “The old man was happy until we came here. Now death is all around their beautiful country. The one who flies like a bird is responsible. Gold is pretty. You cannot blame the shining dust for the bad it brings on men’s heads —”
I frowned. “She said all that with those few hand passes?”
Rita was still busy watching Brandy but she explained for my benefit.
“It’s just as good as deaf-and-dumb signs with Brandy. Her meaning is always very clear. Father is elaborating but he understands the message the kid is trying to put across.”
Brandy stopped making with the hands and sat down on the ground. Not Indian pow-wow style, either. She just slumped like a rag doll. We ringed around her, giving her plenty of room to breathe.
“Too bad she can’t speak English,” I said. “I’d like to have heard her say it.”
It was quiet now. The frightened horses in the corral had long since bolted in panic, tearing themselves from the hitching post. A badger, brown and curious, suddenly popped out of his hole and darted rapidly across a stretch of ground until he disappeared behind a rock. The movement made me jump. Disgustedly, I picked up a mound of earth and splattered his new hiding place. But he had more sense than I did. He didn’t budge.
“Well,” I said. “After we get our wind, I suggest we head for the cabin. We don’t want to keep P.J. waiting.”
Rita sniffed. “Maybe we ought to stay away from there. No telling what that boy might do.”
“I’m sort of anxious to meet him myself.” I stared evenly at Mr. Riker. “Aren’t you, Mr. Riker?”
His eyes shone. “I am. And if Mary Lou has gone for help, I will be the first one to turn him over to the proper authorities.”
I smiled. “And if he is sitting on a pile of gold dust you won’t change your mind?”
He drew himself up fiercely. “I will not. Nothing will change my decision. He ceased to be my son when he did his first cruel act —”
“He’s done enough of those,” Rita said dryly, still watching the tired savage at our feet.
“You know something?” I said.
She shrugged. “Do I?”
“Come on. It looks like we’re stuck with each other until this is finished. So let’s have it. It can’t make much difference now.”
Rita Riker bit her lip and flung a glance at her husband. She looked irritated, bothered and just a little at a loss for words for the first time.
“That depends on a lot of things, Noon. You can’t always tell how some people will behave when they get a piece of news —”
“Suit yourself. I’ll change the subject.” I tried to read the answer in her eyes, couldn’t and gave up. “Will you tell Brandy we’re going to the cabin? Her cabin. Tell her we want her to come along. But if she doesn’t want to come, we’re going anyway. She can wait for us right here.”
Rita sneered. “Are you kidding? Wild horses wouldn’t keep her away. Watch.” She knelt in front of Brandy and went through the hand motions again. Brandy stirred. With each loop and flourish of Rita’s hands, she seemed to gain strength. I could see it flowing back into her brown, lithe hide. She gathered herself together and rose to her naked feet. She held the Winchester out and pumped it jubilantly over her head. I’d seen that gesture before. Warpath and let-me-at-them-Chief.
Mr. Riker was a good foot taller than Brandy. Standing next to him, for all her savagery, she looked like a small child. He gazed down at her with sorrowful eyes.
“If we find the gold, I will build her a home out here on the flatlands. I think Charley would like that.” He was clutching a small, leather book with gilt-edged pages in one big hand, holding it to his heart. Mr. Riker was beginning to bother me. Since all the trouble had started, he’d been growing away from us steadily. He was getting as detached as those religious kooks who stand off and watch death closing in on them without doing a thing to save themselves. I didn’t like the way he was acting. He could stand watching. Rita and I exchanged looks. She felt it, too.
I shrugged, unsaddled my .45 and checked the clip. There were four slugs left. I’d used three on the vultures yesterday and one on Tubby. The rest of my ammo had been locked up in the glove compartment of the Buick. But Las Vegas had taken care of that with his arson job.
Rita had a big Colt and a couple of boxes of cartridges, I remembered. Brandy had the Winchester. A scattered arsenal but not too bad. We ought to be ready if we ran into trouble at the cabin.
My watch had stopped running. The hands were anchored at a quarter to one. Just about the time of the explosions. I shook it. The second hand crawled. I looked at the sun, still almost directly overhead. I figured it was close to three o’clock. Time enough. We could be at the cabin long before four, P.J.’s hour of rendezvous.
Almost by mutual consent, we began the long trek down the trail. The prairie lay flat and even and cool-looking in the distance. A big butte stuck up on the horizon like a carbuncle. The sun splashed off shining sides of rock, leaping back into the blue sky. Clouds that looked like ships of snow chased each other for miles. It was an uncompromisingly lovely day. A prairie dog howled in the open air just to show how good he felt about the whole thing. To the north, a flock of unidentified birds played hookey on the wing.
Brandy led the way, her brown, bare feet kicking up small sprays of sand and earth as she trudged, head down, toward the home her father had built. The one she had burned down. The lean sinew of her thighs and the jog-jog-jog of her shiny black hair was a picture I might always remember.
Mr. Riker stalked along behind her, still clutching his out-dated Bible. His massive figure seeming capable of walking forever, or walking right into Tomorrow. I wouldn’t want to be P.J. when I ran into him.
Rita fell in step with me, a discreet five yards behind the van. I just slogged along, squinting against the sun, missing my fedora more and more by the yard. My head felt damp and spongy from the pounding the sun was handing out.
I didn’t say anything because I knew Rita had something on her mind. I also knew she was going to tell me when she felt like it. And in her own way.
Brandy and Mr. Riker had moved out well ahead of us when Rita suddenly opened up without preamble.
“I didn’t want to say anything in front of the old man, Noon. You might have figured. I didn’t want to wonder how he might take the news.”
I batted a fly away from my face. “What news?”
Rita laughed. A bitter laugh. “Nature sure takes care of us little laddies. Brandy’s pregnant. Honest to God pregnant.
Makes it real nice all around, doesn’t it?”
“George,” I said. “Real George.”
“Can you imagine Father with a half-breed for a grandchild?” Rita couldn’t stop shaking her head. “That P.J. sure knows how to foul up a bivouac.”
Now I had to laugh.
“What makes you so sure P.J. is the father? There were an awful lot of live men around Agreeable Wells up until today.”
Rita looked angry with me. “You wouldn’t make a crack like that if you really knew Brandy. Nobody had her, except what I told you about P.J. jumping her that once. I guess that once was enough. The poor kid.”
“Yes,” I said. “Once is always enough.”
“Brandy says she can feel it in her stomach. Course she’s exaggerating. Can’t be more than a month gone as it is. But a woman knows about those things. Oh, Ed. What are we going to do?”
The depths of Rita’s compassion was expressed by her using my first name.
There was nothing more to say after that. Except to long for a cigarette and mourn for a vacation that had been shot to hell. But I certainly was getting a Hollywood suntan. My nose was starting to peel. The high points of my cheeks were all red and inflamed. I would have traded all the gold dust in the world for a good swig of H2O.
When we cleared the rise, we were within sight of the ruins of the cabin. They stood dark and charred in the golden sunlight. The green grass massed all around seemed to surround the ugly black blemish on its beautiful body.
Suddenly, I saw the plane.
It was so tiny I missed it on my first look. But there it was, poised quietly on the flat land about three hundred yards from the cabin, still looking as light as a corn flake, copper-colored and sleek.
Somebody was standing off from the nose of the ship, doing something with the propellor. Even from that distance I could tell the figure was no larger than a boy. His head barely reached the nose and the propellor blades were enormous by contrast.
We halted on the rise, confused and hesitant. I shot a look at Rita Riker. “P.J.?” I asked, just moving my lips silently.
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