by Bill Crider
She told herself to stop it. She had done what she had done, and there was no changing it. She had wanted her independence, and she had gotten it the only way she knew how. But she hadn't realized what it would cost her, and what it would cost Ryan.
She looked at his face, trying not to stare at the scar.
She saw the way he held his arm, the stiff way he sat in the chair, and resisted the desire to turn her head.
"I'd like bacon and eggs," Ryan said. "No grits."
"I ... I'll bring them," she said, and turned back toward the kitchen.
As she walked away, Ryan thought of the way she had looked at him. He hadn't given much thought to his appearance in the past few years, but he realized how it must affect people.
He took off his hat and put it on one of the other chairs at the table. No one looked at him directly, but he thought they were assessing his face. Most of them still had their hats on, Eastern ideas of politeness not having much influence on them.
He didn't know how he had gotten the scar. His face had hurt, along with all the rest of him, and the old man who had found him hadn't been carrying any mirrors, so Ryan hadn't done much looking. Probably scraped his face on a rock while the horse was dragging him along, Ryan thought. He really didn't care; his face had been the least of his problems.
Virginia returned with the plate of bacon and eggs, along with a cup of coffee that Ryan hadn't asked for. Coffee came with everything.
She set the plate and cup on the table. "I want to talk to you," she said. She had come to the decision somewhere between the kitchen and his table. She wasn't sure why she had made it. Maybe just seeing him there, seeing that he was really alive, was what had decided her.
"All right," he said. "Talk." He put copious amounts of salt and pepper on his eggs, sprinkling the condiments from shakers that sat on the table. Then he put a fork into the eggs and started eating.
She watched him eat for a second or two. "I don't mean right now," she said. "Later."
Ryan finished chewing the mouthful of eggs. They were scrambled just right, not too soft, not too hard. "How much later?" He wasn't sure that he had any plans for the day, but he didn't want to tie himself down.
"About ten o'clock," she said. "There shouldn't be anyone here then. Could you come back?"
He could. The question was, did he want to? He thought it over, eating another bite of the eggs and taking a taste of the bacon. The bacon was a little limp.
The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he did want to talk to Virginia Burley. His curiosity had not entirely disappeared. He wanted to know why she had not sent the sheriff that night, and this would be his chance to ask her.
It wasn't that he held it against her; it wasn't even that he wanted to do anything about it. In his mild way, he simply wanted to know.
"I'll be here," he said.
The corners of her mouth turned up slightly in what might have been a smile. "Good."
She almost started to say more, but she didn't. She turned and went to pick up another order from the kitchen.
Ryan ate his bacon and eggs, taking an occasional drink from the thick coffee mug. He didn't like to drink coffee until it got almost cool. It had a tendency to burn the roof of his mouth. He had known people who could practically drink it right out of the pot, but he wasn't one of them.
As he ate, he watched Virginia move around the room full of tables, taking orders, carrying plates, occasionally talking to one or another of the men that she knew.
He wondered what she wanted to tell him. That she was sorry? That she had missed him? That the horse had thrown a shoe, or the wagon had thrown a wheel? Maybe she had gotten lost, or maybe the sheriff had been out of town. There were any number of explanations for what had happened, and Ryan had thought of them all at one time or another as he lay there being taken care of by an old Indian whose name he didn't even know, wondering if he would ever be able to ride or even walk again.
Strangely enough, he had never blamed her for what had happened. He was not a man to put the blame on others. It had been his own fault for being careless, and Kane's fault for being greedy. Whatever had happened, none of it could be traced to Virginia.
Maybe she felt guilty now; maybe she wanted to clear her conscience.
Ryan sipped his coffee slowly. It was almost cold now, the way he liked it. It was only a few hours until ten o'clock. He could wait.
He was good at waiting.
Ryan walked around Tularosa, looking at the people, the women in their fancy dresses and bonnets, the children in their Sunday best, all come to see Billy Kane's neck stretched.
Everyone seemed in a fine mood, so Ryan didn't spoil things by going to the jail. He was fairly certain Billy Kane wasn't nearly as happy about his date with the gallows as everyone else seemed to be.
At ten o'clock, he went back to Wilson's. As Virginia had said, there was no one there. The breakfast eaters had long since left, and the lunch crowd would not be there for an hour or so.
Virginia was sitting at a table near the door. She had put up her hair again, and washed her face. She sat calmly, her hands clasped in front of her.
"Hello," she said when Ryan stepped through the door.
"Hello," he replied. This time he took his hat off at once. Then he walked over to the table. "You wanted to talk?"
"Please," she said. "Sit down."
Ryan pulled out the chair opposite her. Its legs scraped across the wooden floor. He eased himself down.
Neither knew how to begin the conversation. Ryan watched her eyes, the way her breasts pushed against the smooth front of the blue dress. She had been wearing an apron earlier, but it was gone now.
Chapter Eight
The curandero had taught him patience, among other things.
While Ryan was healing, the old man squatted on his haunches during the day, his shoulders hunched like a buzzard's. Sometimes he slept. Sometimes Ryan could feel his eyes on him even though the old man appeared to be sleeping.
He never seemed to hurry, never seemed to have anything else in mind besides helping Ryan. He helped as Ryan struggled to walk. He put the herbal oils on Ryan's wounds. He talked, if Ryan wanted to talk, despite the fact that neither could understand the other.
When Ryan talked about the dream, all he could understand of the old man's Spanish was "tu espiritu," your spirit.
Ryan wasn't even sure he understood that. He understood the words, that is, but not what was behind them, unless it had to do with something mystical. That was all right for Indians, but Ryan didn't believe in any of that himself.
Eventually, with a lot of pain, a lot of effort, and a lot of help from the curandero, Ryan began walking more and more. "I'll never be able to chase jackrabbits again," he said.
The old man said something in reply, and for once Ryan got it. "Chase, yes. Catch, no."
They both laughed, and Ryan walked nearly a mile that day.
By then he was able to help the Indian build a better shelter. There wasn't much wood, but they were able to walk to a fair-sized boulder and put together a sort of lean-to against it. It was a big help in the sun, and even in the occasional rain shower.
Ryan was eating more, too. Somehow the old man managed to provide rabbits and birds, along with an armadillo or two. Ryan was not particularly fond of armadillo, but he ate it.
Now and then he would wonder how far they might be from a town, and how soon he would be able to go to one again, but when he thought about the stiff and hobbling way he walked, the way he had to carry his left arm useless at his side, he put the idea of town away for a while.
The Indian usually hunted late in the afternoon or night. He seldom went anywhere at all during the day. Then once at dusk he disappeared into the gloom and did not return for two days. Ryan worried that he might be dead or that he might have broken a leg and been unable to come back.
He needn't have worried. The old man showed up carrying a roll of clothing, more or less in R
yan's size, and in the middle of the roll was a leather double-loop holster and a Colt's Peacemaker 45 in the short-barreled-model. The gun belt was filled with shiny cartridges.
"How?" Ryan said.
The old man didn't say anything. He just dug into his black shirt and pulled out a small, worn leather pouch tied with a drawstring. He loosened the string and dumped the contents of the pouch into his wrinkled hand, a hand almost as leathery as the pouch.
Ryan saw that he was holding several very small particles of gold. Was the Indian finding that at night, too, along with the small game? It was one more thing about him that Ryan never learned.
The old man poured the gold back into the pouch and drew the string tight by holding one end in his hand and the other in the yellowed stubs of his teeth.
The gun did not look new, and Ryan wondered who the old man had bought it from. He didn't talk. His next question was more complicated than that, though it consisted of only one word.
"Why?"
The Indian merely smiled and shook his head.
It was awhile before Ryan got around to wearing the clothes, and even longer before he strapped on the gun. By then, he'd forgotten how to hurry.
"There are some things I want to tell you," she said after a few silent moments had passed.
"You don't owe me anything," he said.
"This doesn't have anything to do with . . . us," she said. "It's about Billy Kane, and your sister."
Ryan waited to hear what she had to say.
"I hear a lot of things in a place like this," she told him, looking around the room at the empty tables and chairs. "Sooner or later, most of the single men in town come in here to eat, and they aren't always careful about what they say."
That was an interesting fact, Ryan supposed, but he didn't see where it was leading. He remained silent.
"You're not making this easy," she said, twisting her fingers together.
"I didn't know I was supposed to."
"You're not. It's just that . . . never mind. I was going to tell you something. I don't think Billy Kane killed Sally. Most people don't think so."
"The jury did."
"That's what they said. I think they just hate the Kanes. Most of the people who come in here feel the same way. They aren't sorry Billy's going to hang. As far as they're concerned, he deserves it for being a member of his family. But they don't really believe he did it."
Ryan didn't believe it, either, and he didn't think the sheriff did. "What am I supposed to do?"
"I . . . don't know. I thought . . ." She stopped for a minute. "I'm not sure what I thought." She looked at Ryan almost resentfully.
"You want me to tell you what you thought?" he said. "You thought that I'd do something about it. You had some idea that in the interest of justice I'd step in and try to make things right."
Even saying it made him feel tired, but she looked at him directly for the first time, turned her dark eyes fully on his. "Yes, I guess that's pretty much what I thought."
"There was a time I might have," he said. "Things change, though. I've changed."
"I don't believe that."
"That doesn't make it a lie."
Their eyes locked and they sat for several minutes saying nothing. The time seemed to drag by, but neither one was inclined to break the silence.
After a while, Virginia said, "Kane won't let them do it, anyway."
"I'd wondered about that," Ryan said. "He's not the kind to sit by and let his brother die, no matter what else he might do."
"Long and Barson eat in here occasionally. McGee, too," she said.
"And?"
"Something will happen tonight. I'm not sure what.”
“Have you told the sheriff?"
"No."
"And you want me to?"
"If you would."
Ryan didn't want to get involved, but he said he would tell Bass. "That's all you had to say?"
"Yes. That's all."
Ryan stood awkwardly to leave. Moving around didn't hurt him anymore; it just wasn't as easy to do as it had once been.
She watched him rise, and something twisted in her like a knife in her heart. "Wait."
Ryan put a hand on the back of the chair to steady himself.
"Don't go yet," she said. "There's something else I have to tell you."
He sat back down in the chair then, and she told him the whole thing, about her husband and her brother, her fears of being dependent and how Kane had played on them, how she had not sent the sheriff to Shatter's Grove because of what Kane had promised her.
When she had finished, tears were running down her cheeks, but she was not sobbing. Her voice was steady. "You deserved to know," she said. "Whatever changed you, whatever has happened to you, is my fault. I don't think Billy Kane should die for something I did."
It was not her fault, but there was no way Ryan could explain that to her, no way he could tell her that he was not letting Billy hang because of revenge, but simply because he didn't care.
Besides, something was beginning to move in him because of what she had said. The flickers of interest were beginning to coalesce into a fire, a fire that was starting to burn because of Kane.
It wasn't even that Kane had taken his land and hounded his sister, though that was part of it.
It was the way that Kane had used a weakness within Virginia Burley to get at Ryan. One part of Ryan even resented the fact that Kane had been able to see the weakness that Ryan had never seen.
As Ryan thought about it, he realized that was typical of Kane's methods. Everyone had a weakness, if you could only find it. And if you could exploit that weakness, you could beat them.
He felt a twinge of guilt then, for the first time, about Sally. Maybe he had done too much for her, let her depend on him for too many things. In that way, he might have been unfair to her just as Virginia's husband and brother were. They had left her, through no fault of their own, just as he had left his sister. Virginia had managed to succeed where Sally had failed, but only by a form of treachery.
Ryan, who had lost all taste for personal vengeance, now felt that he wanted to get revenge for someone else: for Virginia Burley and for Sally Ryan. That revenge would not be served if Billy Kane died unjustly.
"You shouldn't worry about what you did," Ryan said. "It was what you had to do."
"No, I didn't. I know that now. You could have handled Kane, and you could have taken care of me."
"Don't say that." Ryan's voice was hard. "I never wanted to `take care' of you or anybody, man or woman. You take care of yourself just fine."
Then Ryan smiled. "I have to admit, I wish you could have found some other way of taking care of yourself, but I don't blame you. Not a bit."
Virginia took a napkin from the table and dried her face. "I think you actually mean that."
"I do, but I don't like the way Kane used you. Or my sister. I may do something about it."
"You said you'd changed. But you haven't."
"Maybe not. I thought I had. I could have been wrong."
Virginia smiled, too. "I hope you were. I liked the Ryan I knew." The smile vanished. "But not enough to . . ."
"Don't say it," Ryan told her. "You don't have to say anything. Whatever happened is over and done with. It was Kane. Not you."
Virginia wanted to agree with him, but she couldn't. She knew, she would always know, that it wasn't Kane's fault, as much as she might want it to be and wish it was. "It was me, too," she said.
Ryan reached across the table and touched her hand. "If it was, it doesn't matter," he said, and her tears started again.
Ryan pretended not to see. "If you hear so many things in here, who do people say killed Sally? They must have some idea."
He knew Tularosa. Everyone would have an idea, and most of them would want to talk about it sooner or later.
Virginia used the napkin again. "Some of them have mentioned Pat Congrady. They don't say his name loudly, though."
Ryan
had already had the same thought. "Who else?”
“You know that nearly everyone knew about Billy and your sister?"
"Yes, and I've heard the rumors Kane started. I don't believe them."
"Neither does anyone else in town, but they're nasty rumors anyway. Billy was trying to keep his visits to Sally a secret from his brother. You know that Kane would never have permitted them if he had known."
Ryan nodded. "He wouldn't want any of us Ryans getting that close to the Kanes. There would always be a chance of us getting the land back."
"That's true. And maybe he didn't know. He hardly ever leaves that house of his except for—" She stopped thinking about the last time she knew of Kane having left his house, three years before.
"I know why he leaves," Ryan said. "To take things."
"Yes." Her lips compressed into a thin line. "Anyway, he might not have known. But I'm sure that Barson and Long knew. I heard them talking about it one day in here."
"You think they might have done something about it on their own?"
"It's possible. I don't really know."
Ryan thought about it. "Why wouldn't they have told Kane about Billy and Sally?"
"They're just as afraid of him as everyone else in this town. They wouldn't have wanted to be the ones bringing the bad news to him. You know what happens to people who bring news like that."
"So they might have decided to take care of the problem without telling Kane. And afterward, when Billy got caught with the body, they couldn't say anything. He would have killed them."
Virginia nodded in agreement. "Or at least he would have turned them in, and they wouldn't have lasted as long as Billy. They would have been lynched. People here hate them as much as they hate Kane."
Ryan knew that was the truth. Barson, Long, and even McGee had pretty much had their way in Tularosa for years. They could get drunk and beat up farmers and cowhands, even shoot up the town, and no one would ever complain. Complaints would have brought retaliation much worse than whatever had happened at first. The only way they ever spent time in the local jail was if they were caught in the act, something that had only happened once or twice. And then no one was ever willing to come forward and make a real complaint, so they were out in a day or two.