by Paul Lederer
A Mexican woman Tom had never seen before made change for him with painful slowness, mouthing each cent as she paid out Tom’s money. Tom tucked the change away, barely counting it. The amount didn’t concern him just then. He still had the cash he had saved and his last month’s pay, which Joe Adderly had reluctantly forked over. Reaching into his pocket, Tom’s hand brushed against a piece of paper he had nearly forgotten about the wanted poster on the bank robber, Vance Wynn.
The sum offered was $2,500. An incredible amount of money to be offered for the cost of one .44 caliber round which could take Wynn down. Enough for a man to buy land and stock it with sleek cattle – shorthorns, maybe, even enough to build a small house.…
Tom shook his head. What was he thinking of? He was not a man-hunter and would have no idea where to start looking for the elusive Vance Wynn.
As he shuffled back into the restaurant Tom found Jeff Stottlemeyer virtually alone in the room, finishing off a last cup of coffee.
‘Ready?’ Tom asked. Jeff looked at him with subtle pleasure.
‘I’m not going to be going anywhere, Tom. I know you don’t really want me trailing with you, anyway.’ He waved off Tom’s denial and continued. ‘You know that man at the next table, Mr Jefferson? Guess what – he owns the Foothill Saloon. I told him I was looking for a position and he offered me a job swamping out the place. Free room and reasonable pay. All I have to do is sweep and mop out the place, try to clean up any damage from the night before.’
‘I thought you didn’t want any kind of town work,’ Tom said.
‘Oh, well, I didn’t. But you know, Tom, when you’re looking for work, the first offer is the best. Who knows if one of the ranches would even take me on?’
‘Well,’ Tom said doubtfully, ‘I hope it works out for you, Jeff.’
‘Working a broom isn’t going to kill me, son,’ Jeff said, huffing through his mustache. ‘It’ll be the best situation I’ve been in for a long time,’ he winked, ‘and not two blocks away from the best food I’ve ever eaten.’
Tom laughed. He was happy to shed Jeff, not because he didn’t enjoy his company, but because he had no idea what to do with the man. Tom had felt vaguely responsible for Jeff; now he was no longer burdened by that responsibility.
Tom stopped by the kitchen to wave to Carrie and thank her. Against the far wall, one leg drawn up, her arms crossed beneath her breasts, he saw Laura looking out the window as if expecting the stagecoach to take her away from this. She did not glance at Tom. He wished the girl well, but he felt no obligation toward her. She was out in the wild world, let her make the best of it as everyone else did.
For Tom it was time. He would retrieve Fog from the stable and ride home once more, if home it was. He needed to meet with Aurora Tyne and discover which way his world was tilted.
FOUR
The day remained cool, a slight breeze off the north shifting the boughs of the thick stands of pine. The gray horse Tom Dyce rode moved onward at its usual regular pace. Now and then Fog would lift his head and his ears would prick as if it had some vague memory of the trail they traveled, but then the horse would shake its head and continue. That was Fog: he seemed to have no memory, at least not like that which was often associated with other, smarter horses.
Tom was not blessed with such amnesia. He passed the knoll where wood for the winter had been trimmed back along the verge, saw the lupine-studded vale where he and Aurora had gone for a summer picnic. That was her first attempt at frying chicken for them and, in truth, it wasn’t very good, but that hadn’t mattered a bit. Nothing could have spoiled that day. Ahead now, Tom caught a glimpse of the green peaked roof of the Tyne house and his heart constricted a little. He felt like running away, giving it up. As he had on the day he had packed his goods and left when Aurora rejected him.
Why, he did not know. It is probably a mistake to revisit our lives and try to discover where things went wrong, but here he was attempting it, trying to convince himself that he must because he had been told – third-hand – that her foreman, Ray Fox, was rustling her cattle. Yet he had also been told that Rafter T was prospering, that Aurora’s outlook was bright. His concerns seemed vague and flimsily constructed. He rode on, weaving through the pine forest, head hanging as low as Fog’s.
There are few things as pathetic as a jilted lover.
The sky had turned cobalt blue, and there were thunderheads massing over the distant mountains when Tom Dyce guided Fog into the yard of the Tyne ranch where a dozen massive oaks flourished. The big white house Darren Tyne had constructed at vast expense and never lived long enough to enjoy fully stood basking in the rays of late sunlight. A yard dog came out from beneath the house, barking at the strange rider and horse.
The front door swung open and Aurora Tyne emerged to stand in the late sunlight, glowing as if her beauty had drawn the golden rays to her for that purpose. Tom was struck dumb, feeling the absolute fool as, at the same time, he thought he had stumbled upon an ancient, hoped-for, but undiscoverable temple.
She smiled. She wore an off-purple sort of dress Tom could not find a name for, a narrow gold necklace and had her dark hair pinned up in an intricate arrangement. It seemed she had been waiting for someone – certainly not the trail-dusty Tom Dyce. Aurora stepped off the porch, her arms extended.
‘Tom!’ she cried as if she were truly happy he had returned. Tom swung down wearily and accepted her hands. She offered him a brief kiss on the cheek. It was odd to find cherished memories having form and substance. Should he have folded in her arms, murmured apologies, explanations…? He hadn’t the skills for that.
‘And Fog! How are you, Foggy? Tom, do you remember the day we were sitting out here on the porch, watching Fog browse his way across the yard, nibbling at the grass. With his head down he walked right into the barn wall! We laughed as he backed off and shook his head in surprise. Poor old Fog,’ she said, stroking the gray’s neck and muzzle. ‘You’ve always been a sweet, confused old creature.’
Which made him a match for his owner, Tom thought.
‘You’re all dressed up this evening,’ Tom said, fumbling his way through small talk.
‘Yes,’ Aurora answered brightly. ‘I like Ray to have a pleasant place to come back to after a hard day’s work.’
‘Ray Fox?’
‘Yes, do you know him?’
‘People in town mentioned his name,’ Tom said.
‘He’s doing wonders out here. Tom, Ray is a good, hard-working man, and I guess you know that I think a lot of him.’
‘I guessed as much,’ Tom admitted.
‘I know that once,’ she said softly, taking his hands again, ‘we thought there might be a future for us. But this is different, Tom. I want Ray for my man.’
Tom Dyce felt his heart sink, but why had he expected anything else? He had been gone long from the ranch. ‘I wonder why sometimes, that’s all,’ he said numbly.
‘Oh, I don’t know, Tom,’ Aurora replied. ‘After Father died I had so much on my mind that I couldn’t think of anything but making a go of the ranch. It was the timing more than anything else,’ she said gently, perhaps trying to soften his obvious pain. ‘And there are times when a woman does not need a man, others when she almost aches for one.’ Her dark eyes were soft and penetrating. ‘There’s no way of telling when the emotions will rise to that level. It was just too soon for me then, Tom.’
‘And now it’s too late for me,’ he said dismally although he smiled faintly. Behind him he heard the arrival of a horse, and Aurora looked over his shoulder.
‘Oh, here’s Ray now.’ The light in her eyes changed, brightened. Looking again at Tom, she said seriously, ‘I want you two to be friends, Tom. Ray is a good man. I want you to get to know him – for my sake.’
While Aurora was cooking supper in the kitchen the two men sat in front of a low fire burning in the huge stone fireplace. Tom and Ray Fox spoke together, Tom uneasily. Tom was taken by the face and form, the affability of the Raf
ter T’s new foreman. He was also struck by Ray Fox’s resemblance to the description on the Wanted poster for Vance Wynn. That was stretching things, he realized. The man could not be Vance Wynn. Or could he? Why not? Fox had appeared in the region at about the time the bank in Ruidoso was held up, and he knew Sheriff Harley Griffin, as was made clear during their conversation.
‘Yes, I knew the old coot when I was working the Ruidoso Basin. I can’t say we exactly got along, though,’ Ray Fox answered when Tom mentioned the name.
Tom was letting jealousy and his imagination run away with him, he knew. Still, he shook his head. The only way he could ever be sure was by way of a concealed clue that Vance Wynn carried. The robber had once been in a shoot-out down in El Paso and bore a spider-shaped scar on the small of his back, according to the poster which Tom had studied many times by now. He could hardly ask Fox to yank up his shirt and prove he was not a criminal.
And what if Fox was that criminal, Vance Wynn? Would Tom be helping Aurora or destroying her hopes for the future by revealing it?
The fire burned lower and Aurora called them to supper. Tom let his suspicions fade away during the course of the meal. It was painful to watch Aurora’s cheerful face, the way she never got up from the table or returned to it without letting her hand brush across Ray Fox’s shoulder, but she was obviously happy, as was Fox. Was it because Fox had found himself in a lucky position – a lovely orphan woman and a prosperous ranch his for the taking, or was it deeper, more real?
Tom once again felt ashamed of himself. Ray Fox was speaking: ‘If you are meaning to hire on and stay around for a while, Tom, you can start tonight, if you’re up to it after your long ride. We’ve been having a lot of trouble with cut wire up along the boundary with the Circle R. Someone’s been making off with unbranded calves, and we can’t afford to lose those dogies.
‘You probably know that country better than most of the men we have on hand – they’re mostly new-hires. If you’d feel up to making a patrol of the north fence, it would be a help. Me,’ he went on stretching his long arms, ‘I’ve about had it for today. I’ve got to get some sleep.’
Ray Fox rose then, kissed Aurora on the cheek, and headed for the stairs, surprising Tom, who had expected the foreman to head toward the bunkhouse, leaving himself and Aurora alone to continue their interrupted conversation.
Aurora, clearing the table, said with her eyes turned down, ‘Ray has Father’s room now. It made no sense to leave it empty.’
‘How about one more cup of coffee?’ was what Tom replied.
In truth Tom was too tired to be riding fence that night, but his excited thoughts kept him awake and alert. He had found out that Aurora loved another man who, he suspected, was a bank robber as well as a cattle thief. What now? He couldn’t go off half-cocked and accuse Fox base-lessly. Nor could he let Ray get away with it if it was true.
Riding Fog, he made his way to the north fence line, which as Ray had noted, Tom did know better than any recently hired man could. He and Darren Tyne, Loco Steve, Pat and the other old hands had strung the wire over the rocky ground, down into the ravines and up again one grueling-hot summer a few years ago. Aurora used to ride out to bring her father and the hands cool water.…
Again Tom found himself thinking about the past, unwilling to let it go, knowing that it was of no use to continue dwelling on it.
The moon rose early, but it was a pitiful gray moon tinged with only a small arc of gold, casting barely enough light to lessen the silver sparkle of the stars. The night was cool and clear, the woodland creatures stirring. Tom guided Fog along the fence line, at times wondering why he had agreed to the job, had not just turned tail and gone.
He knew the answer to that even if he could not admit it. Why continue to pursue a woman who had found her man? But what if that man was of the criminal sort, meaning only to get his grasping hands on the ranch? Tom’s head swam with the many ramifications. If Ray Fox had a bag full of money stolen in Ruidoso, he did not need the ranch. If he did not have the bag, then he was not Vance Wynn, but a totally innocent man who meant only to help Aurora.
At the hour before midnight Tom came upon a place where the fence wire had been cut. It was on the edge of a shallow valley along a trail which would have been the natural path for cattle to wander were the fence not there. Ahead of him and half-surrounding him, there was a curtain of dark pine trees. The wind was chill now, and Tom hunched his shoulders as he tried to read the sign on the soft dark earth. Cattle, yes. Horses as well, but nothing to place the two together. Some of the cattle had been very young, judging by the sign, and that was what rustlers would be looking for at this time of year – unbranded calves. Tom eased through the fence and made his way northward, trying to distinguish the horses’ hoofprints in the shallow glow of the moon. Someone was up to something, that was for sure. Who, he could not guess from the faint clues.
The first rifle shot was so near that it spanged off the pommel of his saddle, the second tagged Tom in the shoulder and sent him reeling. He hit the grassy earth hard, landing on his injured shoulder as the echoes slowly died away in the dark, forested distance. Tom tried to claw at his Colt, to drag it from his holster for protection. Lying on his injured shoulder, he found it impossible and he could only lie against the cold ground and wait as the pounding hoofs of approaching horses drove down upon him.
‘Well, we got him,’ one of the men on horseback said from out of the darkness.
‘At least one of them,’ another voice agreed.
‘What do you want to do, Cory? Finish him off, string him up?’
A small light in the back of Tom’s mind flickered on and he managed to groan: ‘Cory? Cory Stamps?’
There was a confused silence then, followed by a man’s grunt as he swung down from the saddle and walked to where Tom lay. The man bent down and whistled. ‘It’s Tom Dyce,’ he told the others.
‘Dyce? What the hell…?’ A second man swung down from leather and approached Tom.
‘Tom, it’s Wade Block. What in the world are you doing out here!’
Block and Cory Stamps were both Circle R riders; Tom had known them as neighbors for years. They pulled him to his feet and let him lean against Fog for support. ‘Tom,’ Wade Block, a man built like his name, apologized, ‘we would never have fired had we known it was you. It’s just that there’s been so much trouble going on out here – calves being poached and some found with suspicious brands. We—’
‘It’s all right,’ Tom said shakily. The fall from his horse had started his ribs aching again, and the bullet through his shoulder caused it to burn fiercely. ‘I just am in need of some help right now.’ ‘Mr Royal’s house is closer,’ Block said to Cory Stamps. ‘Besides, it ain’t safe for us to ride onto Rafter T just now.’
Cory Stamps agreed and the three of them lifted Tom onto Fog’s patient back. Then they assisted him to make his way to the Circle R, half a mile across the long valley, as the moon rose higher.
Tom had no real memory of the evening. He was prodded and bandaged and given hot drinks and shuffled off into a bed with clean sheets inside the large Circle R log ranch house. In the morning bright sunlight brought him awake. The silhouette of a man in a chair slowly took on form and Tom recognized the old man with the silver mustache, his hair parted in the middle and slicked back.
‘Art,’ Tom managed to say around an encrusted tongue.
‘It’s me, son,’ Art Royal replied. ‘Want a little water?’ Tom nodded. ‘What in the world were you doing out on Circle R range last night – I know you weren’t rustling. Not you.’
‘They sent me out, Art,’ Tom said, accepting a sip of water from the glass in Art Royal’s gnarled hands. He laid his head back. ‘Or, at least, Ray Fox did. He said that the wire had been cut and the Rafter T was losing cattle.’
‘That’s oppositely true,’ Art said. ‘The wire has been cut, but I’m the one losing cattle, not the Rafter T. Fox should know that, and he definitely knows that I ha
ve given my hands permission to shoot if any Rafter T men are seen on my side of the wire. He gave you a dangerous job, Tom, and he has to have known it.’
‘I suppose so,’ Tom said quietly, taking another drink of well water.
‘Why, then, would you do it? Being a man of at least normal intelligence?’ Art frowned. ‘Oh. I know – Aurora could ask you to leap through fire in a camp full of Paiutes and you’d probably do it.’
‘Aurora didn’t ask me to do it,’ Tom said defensively.
‘All right – I’m sorry I said that. What happened between you two, Tom? And why are you back?’
‘What happened? She didn’t love me, Art. Now she thinks she loves Ray Fox.’
‘Does she?’
‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m back – a part of it. I wanted to know if she was doing all right.
‘Without you?’ the older man asked.
‘Yes. I thought she might have changed her mind after a year. I thought maybe this Ray Fox was not the sort of man she needed … oh, hell Art, I don’t know what I thought!’
Art stood up and smiled. ‘Just take it easy for now. Want me to send a rider over there to tell her what happened? It’s daylight now and it should be safe enough. Aurora will be worried.’
‘Let her worry!’ Tom said with unexpected force. ‘No, don’t send a man, Art. I wouldn’t want someone else to risk his life for me. I didn’t know that this had become a shooting war. What happened to the way it used to be?’
‘I don’t know exactly,’ Art Royal said. ‘Darren Tyne and I were always good neighbors. Aurora was everyone’s little darling. You were always a man I could deal with over petty squabbles – like the time Pat and Loco Steve.…’ Art shook his head. ‘I don’t know what happened, Tom. You said you thought that Ray Fox was not the sort of man Aurora needed around her. Did you mean anything by that? Or is it just personal?’
‘I don’t know, Art. I truly don’t. If you don’t mind, I think I could use a little more sleep just now.’ He found his mind shutting itself down; it was an effort to form words. His lips felt numb. ‘How’s Fog?’ were the last words he remembered speaking before disappearing again into the toofamiliar world of pink clouds.