by Paul Lederer
‘After you’ve formulated a plan for going after Blanchard and his gang, come to me and we’ll talk it over. You’ll doubtless need at least a few good men to ride with you. I can find them.’
For reasons he couldn’t fully explain to himself:, Jake found himself pinning the deputy’s badge on. Perhaps it was the underlying threat – if that was what it was – that Trouffant had made in reminding Jake that he could still be made to stand trial over the death of Blanco, if not of Lemon Jack and River Tremaine. If the men in the saloon didn’t support his story of that shoot out, or if Sarah were to change her testimony concerning the deaths of the other two badmen.… She was capable of that if she didn’t get her way, Jake had no doubt about that now.
‘Does this job pay anything?’ Jake asked, fingering the shield on his shirt. ‘I haven’t had a meal since I hit town.’
‘Jake!’ Sarah said as if speaking to a foolish child. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’ She fished into the tiny reticule she had on her wrist. ‘Here, make sure to get yourself a good meal. We can’t risk having you weaken on us.’
Jake took the small ten-dollar gold coin she slipped from her purse and pocketed it. Sarah continued to gaze at the badge on his shirt front with appreciation which he didn’t understand for a while, until it occurred to him that she no longer had to consider him a partner, since, as had been pointed out, a lawman cannot claim a bounty or reward. And that was what he now was, like it or not: a lawman.
Just like the disabled Sam Trouffant who also could not legally claim any part of the reward money. However, the marshal seemed inordinately proud of himself as well, which made no sense, unless the marshal was now Sarah Worthy’s new partner. If he was, well, God help him. He may have thought he had met the devil when he ran across Kit Blanchard, but Sarah Worthy could teach the world what a hellion was.
FIVE
Jake hadn’t expected to find her there. By the time he managed to return to the rear of the restaurant one hour had stretched to two, but there she stood, patiently waiting for him in the heated shadows of the late desert afternoon.
‘Hello,’ the waitress said. Noticing the badge on his shirt front she commented, ‘It seems you’ve had a busy day already.’
‘Things change quickly, Miss.…’
‘Cathy will do. Cathy Vance.’
They faced each other hesitantly. Jake appreciated the way her plain blue calico dress fitted her slender body, the shy way her eyes drifted toward his and then away again. What she was thinking as she studied the rangy, desert-hardened man before her he could not guess.
‘You offered me a kindness, Jake said. ‘I hadn’t a nickel and you offered to help.’
‘We’re put on earth to help one another,’ Cathy said simply, and there was sincerity in her words.
‘What I am getting at,’ Jake said, removing his hat briefly to scratch at his head, ‘is that I’m now in a position to buy you a meal if you are hungry.’
‘I’m not really starved, are you?’
‘If there’s a stronger word for it, I am,’ Jake laughed. ‘That piece of pie is all I’ve had to eat in a long time.’
‘Well, then, let’s feed you,’ Cathy said. As Jake started toward the restaurant door, she touched his arm. ‘Not in there. I spend every day and sometimes half the night in there. If you’ll trust my cooking, I can make you something at home.’
Jake nodded agreement. That seemed to be what the lady wanted, and he found the suggestion agreeable. So long as he satisfied his stomach, it made no difference just now. He walked with Cathy to the next street where they turned left, away from the town. The sun was hot, there were the bright chirps of cicadas along the dry riverbed. There was a row of dusty salt cedar trees planted as a windbreak along the road, and their shade offered some respite from the glare of the high sun. Cathy told him:
‘It’s not that long a walk. We have a small cabin up ahead. I share it with my two room mates – two other waitresses.’
Not much later they came upon a small white clapboard house, the paint on the sun side of the house sun-blistered and peeling. The picket fence was missing a few slats. Beside the three narrow steps leading up to the green front door someone had planted roses inside rings of white-painted rock. The roses looked wilted and desperate, struggling to survive in the desert heat. A red dog with a broom tail started around the corner at their approach, then turned and slunk away. Cathy laughed.
‘That’s Chaser. He came with the house. He doesn’t seem to like anybody very much.’
‘Maybe there’s a reason,’ Jake said, and Cathy glanced at him oddly as she fished a key out of her small blue purse and opened the front door.
‘Better leave the door open,’ she said. ‘It’s hotter in here than it was outside. Usually a breeze comes up at this time of day. It will do something to cool us down.’
She was right. The interior of the house was nearly stifling, but after Cathy had crossed to the other side of the cabin and opened the back door as well, a slight breeze shifted the heat out, enough to make it bearable.
‘I hate coming home when the place has been closed up all day,’ Cathy said as she removed her hat, took the pins from her hair and shook her head so that it tumbled down across her shoulders. ‘That’s better already,’ she said with a smile. ‘What I usually do is make a plate for myself and sit outside in the shade of the cottonwoods – if that’s not too informal for you.’
‘Cathy, there’s almost nothing that’s too informal for me,’ Jake said, thinking of the meals – if they could be called that – that he had eaten on the desert, tasteless and filled with blow sand, eaten only to keep himself alive.
‘All right,’ she said, ‘I won’t be long. I’m not going to make anything elaborate. ‘She retrieved an apron from a hook and tied it on. Jake sat at a kitchen chair, enjoying the sight of a woman about her everyday work. It was something he had not experienced much in his wandering life. Beyond the back door he could see three mature cotton-wood trees, now swaying in the breeze. Their seedpods blew like miniature clouds. He spotted Chaser once, lounging in the shade. The dog looked up, appeared to notice Jake Staggs watching him and skulked away. Beyond the yard lay the dry creek clogged with willow brush, then the gray desert began, stretching out forever before meeting the low, craggy foothills in the far distance.
‘I’ve got all you’re going to get,’ Cathy said with a somewhat rueful smile. In her hands was a large platter holding sliced ham, a wedge of cheese, bread and a jar of jam. ‘If you could have waited until it cooled down … I hate to stand cooking over that stove on a summer day.’
‘That looks fine,’ Jake assured her. It couldn’t have looked finer, he thought, as she led the way outside to a small, roughly built table with a bench on either side. It was still diabolically warm, but the shade from the cottonwoods and the rising breeze made it a pleasant spot to picnic, especially for a man who was bordering on ravenous hunger.
She said little as he ate, perhaps not wanting to interrupt him. She smiled faintly as if pleased with herself for having taken care of him. The shadows grew longer, the evening coolness began to settle.
When Jake was nearly finished with his meal Cathy returned to the house, emerging with a glass of milk and a wedge of apple pie. He took a bite of the pie and looked up at her questioningly.
‘Taste familiar?’ she asked with a laugh. ‘It should. It’s the same as the restaurant serves. I make them to earn a little extra money.’
When he was finished, Jake pushed plate and glass away and stretched his arms, thanking the woman with deeply felt gratitude. She waved his thanks away and busied herself cleaning off the table. While she was in the kitchen, Jake amused himself by trying to lure Chaser out of concealment. The dog’s eyes seemed eager and then wary. It would lift itself on its haunches and then slink away again, hiding in the shadows. Cathy caught them at their game.
‘I think someone must have beat him at one time,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. All we do
is put food out for him in the morning. He never comes near any of us.’
‘You’re probably right,’ Jake said, tilting his hat back as he straightened in his chair. ‘It’s a shame what some people will do to animals. And to each other.’ He looked at Cathy who sat on the bench opposite, her hands folded together, eyes turned downward. Her lips trembled as if she were attempting to speak, but she made no sound. ‘What is it, Cathy? Is something troubling you?’
‘It’s just.…’ Jake prompted her with his eyes. ‘They say that you are a killer, Jake.’
‘They say … who? Are you talking about that trouble in the saloon today?’
‘And other things,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Those two men you killed for the bounty on their heads.’
‘How could anyone know about that!’
‘It’s a small town, Jake,’ Cathy said. ‘Does any of this have anything to do with why you’re wearing a badge now?’
‘Yes,’ he said sighing heavily, ‘it does. If you really want to know what happened, I’ll tell you, though it will be long in the telling.’
‘I want to know, Jake,’ she said, glancing toward the corner of the yard where Chaser was again stirring uncertainly. And so Jake settled in and told her about it all from back to front, leaving nothing out. By the time he was finished the western sky was purpling with dusk and it was almost cool beneath the trees where they sat.
‘Then she really is mad,’ Cathy said at last.
‘So it seems.’
‘Do they know what caused it?’
‘Worthy told me that he thought that it was the desert that did it.’
‘I can almost believe that,’ Cathy said, her voice subdued, her eyes now fixed on a faraway point on the horizon. ‘It gets to me sometimes,’ she admitted, ‘living here.’ She brightened as if sharing a long-held dream, ‘No one has to stay here, you know. Not far to the north is Flagstaff. It’s higher up – pine trees grow thickly there. You could go there.…’ She stumbled over the last word which was formed on her lips as ‘too.’ Jake Staggs shook his head.
‘No, I can’t. Not the way things are now.’ He told her, ‘If Sarah changes her mind about her testimony I could be tried for murder. Guilty or not, it’s not an ordeal I wish to go through. If Marshal Trouffant were to decide that I was crossing him, he could bring charges against me for shooting Blanco. Then there’s the matter of that Broken T horse I’m riding. Horse stealing is not kindly looked upon. They’ve got me in a trap, Cathy. If I made a run for Flagstaff or anywhere else, they’d have fliers out on me with a description of me and the buckskin before I could get out of Arizona.
‘Cathy,’ he told the small girl who watched him steadily with her soft brown eyes, ‘I more or less have the choice between going along with whatever they have in mind or getting myself hanged.’
After that they found little to talk about. Jake did ask for a few bits of ham fat, and as darkness began to settle he continued to urge Chaser to emerge from his hiding spot. At length the red dog came forward, crawling on its belly to sniff Jake’s proffered hand. Then with a sudden lunge and snap of strong jaws, the dog took the ham, narrowly missing Jake’s fingers, and raced back to the shelter of the bushes. The dog eventually started forward again, but there was a sudden bustle and commotion in the house. Jake glanced that way to see two other young women, Cathy’s house mates, entering the house, unpinning their hats, and laughing and complaining at once. Chaser darted away at the burst of activity, and Jake rose to his feet himself. It was time to make his way back to town and see what devilry Sarah had devised.
He went to the back porch and waited, not in the mood to be introduced to two chattery females, and eventually Cathy came out, looking faintly apologetic.
‘I’m sorry, Jake,’ she said, standing near to him in the shadowed yard.
‘What for? It’s their home. Besides, all you promised me was a meal, and that was much appreciated. That and having someone to talk to for just a little while.’
‘It does make a difference, doesn’t it?’ Cathy said, looking away. ‘Just having someone to talk to?’
Then, before Jake could react she went on tiptoes, kissed his cheek and turned to scurry back into the house, softly closing the door behind her.
‘I’ll be damned,’ he said, lightly touching his cheek with his fingertips. Grinning, he made his way around the house back to the road as sundown colors flourished against the long skies. He was a hundred feet or so along the road when he had the feeling that he was being followed. He turned hopefully – maybe Cathy had decided to catch up with him, but there was no one there. Nothing to be seen. Except some movement in the shadows which took substance in the form of Chaser.
The red dog looked at him, turned and hid, then returned. ‘Well, make up your mind! Come along if you want to!’ Jake said, slapping his thigh, but Chaser turned and dashed toward home. Jake smiled, shook his head and walked on toward Lewiston and its devils.
The hotel room was small, square and badly painted. But it came with the use of a bath downstairs in the back of the hotel, and Jake didn’t begrudge the money whittled from his total fortune of ten dollars courtesy of Sarah Worthy. And where, he wondered, as he soaked the trail dirt from his body and eased the pain of a dozen heavy bruises with the hot water, had Sarah gotten to? There was no telling. Maybe, he thought, she had just given into her madness and was now out in the desert tearing her hair from her scalp, rending her garments, spinning in circles as she raved at the moon.
He knew it was not so, but it was a comforting, if fantastic vision.
No, he thought as he rose from the tub and took the towel from the pudgy man who worked there, Sarah would be around. Whatever her madness had once been it had transmuted into an obsession over money. Jake toweled himself roughly, losing a few layers of skin, dressed again and walked slowly toward the staircase leading to his room, still thinking about Sarah.
How could he not?
The woman was determined that Jake was the man to return to Smuggler’s Gulch, capture or ambush Kit Blanchard’s gang and claim the bounty on their heads for her. The only problem was, there was no way in the world that Jake intended to attempt any such thing. No matter how many deputies Trouffant thought he could gather – and from the size of the town he doubted that many men could be found who were willing to volunteer to shed their blood in that godforsaken canyon – it was a hazardous proposition.
When he returned from Mexico, Kit Blanchard would be furious. There had been two guards posted on the high bluffs at the entrance to the gulch when Jake had made his way out. Kit would double or triple the number of sentries hiding among those boulders now. All practiced marksmen, outlaws used to killing, and at the first sign of trouble, other men would rush to join them.
It would take an army, and a competent one, to fight its way into Smuggler’s Gulch.
Jake lay on his bed, hands behind his head staring at the ceiling of his room as the Arizona skies went from deep purple to star-pierced black. He wondered at the differences between Sarah Worthy and Cathy Vance. All Cathy wanted was to live decently, preferably somewhere where the harsh desert winds did not blow away her expectations. All Sarah Worthy wanted was … everything.
Given the chance, and possessing the means, Jake would have packed Cathy up and taken her to Flagstaff or somewhere else – it did not matter where, and helped her find her place in the world. He expected nothing from the girl; he really knew her not at all, but it would make him feel proud that for once in his miserable life he had helped someone. But he could not do that. As he had explained to Cathy, Marshal Trouffant and Sarah would have posters out on him the minute he breached what they saw as a contract to bring Kit Blanchard down.
Jake closed his eyes, dozed for a few minutes during which he suffered through a dream of himself rushing out madly into the desert and tearing out his hair in frustration.
A few minutes rest was all he needed. It was too early for true sleep, and there was too much clogging hi
s mind. Try again to have a beer at the saloon? He rose, yawned, stood in front of the bluish, tilted mirror, studying his distorted image. He rubbed his jaw. He still had not shaved.
All right then – a barber shop, maybe visit an emporium to buy a new shirt. Then a beer or even two and try to get a decent night’s sleep, perhaps waking in the morning with an idea of how to get himself out of this mess which didn’t involve simply spurring the buckskin away as quickly as possible. Thinking of the buckskin took him first to the shabby stable where he and Sarah had left their horses. The buckskin was there, and in an adjacent stall stood Sarah’s roan. The buckskin eyed him hopefully but with that mingled bit of distrust its eyes usually held. What now? the look seemed to convey, and it was true that Jake had not used the animal easily.
Seeing that hay remained in its rick and that there was a bucket of fresh water, Jake stroked the sturdy horse’s neck, pondering. He had not entirely abandoned the idea of simply fleeing. But by the time he could reach Yuma they likely would already have a description of him and the stolen horse. Nor could he flee to Mexico, being a well-known yanqui burro-killer. It seemed there was nothing that could be done except to try to follow through with the mad plan to capture Kit Blanchard. Maybe Sarah would come to realize that her idea could not work, but Jake doubted she could be made to recognize any reality.
Uptown he let himself be shaved and dusted with talcum powder from the barber’s brush. He found an open store and bought a light blue- and white-checked shirt, disposing of his torn old one in the store’s trash. Then, bathed and barbered, his marshal’s badge pinned to his crisp new shirt he went out into the desert night, wondering what new torments it might be concealing.
He thought of returning to the restaurant, but he knew full well that Cathy’s shift had ended. He even thought of walking out to her house once more. But arriving unannounced, with two other girls there probably in various states of undress, seemed a poor idea.
He returned to his first thought, and walked along the boardwalk toward one of the side-by-side saloons across the street from where the earlier dispute had occurred. He was superstitiously uneasy about returning to the establishment where he had killed Blanco.