“Now, Avery, now,” a cool woman’s voice said from a door to one side of them.
Cain turned and saw Queenie. She stood slim in a long green velvet dress and green high-laced pointed shoes. Her wonderful bosom looked like jumbo popovers. Her face was so heavily powdered not a wrinkle showed. Her eyes and her diamond earrings glowed a subdued light green in the dusk of the saloon.
Avery looked around at Queenie a moment. Then, eyes half-closing over, wearily, he lowered his head. “Yes, dear.”
“You talk too much, Avery.”
“Yes, dear.”
Queenie looked at Cain. “Hi, Cain. Haven’t seen you around in some time.”
“No.”
“You been lost?”
“Been busy. Rapin’ around.”
“Thought you’d forgotten all about us.”
Cain smiled. The smile cut a wrinkle across his walnut face. Somewhat to his surprise he saw Avery once again become completely absorbed in his letter writing.
Queenie came tripping over and stood beside him. Perfume bloomed from her clothes. “What you doing up this way, Cain?”
“Thought it was time to cut my wolf loose.”
Her eyes narrowed ever so little. Cain could see the animal rise in them, quick, ready. “Well, dearie, you came to the right place then.”
“Got a hunger for one of your steaks, too.”
“Why, Cain, you poor child.”
Cain tried to keep from looking at her bosom. His boot twisted on the brass rail. “Lady, batchin’ can get mighty lonesome, I tell you. Besides, I ain’t et since I got up this morning.”
“Why, Cain, honey, you sound like you really are hungry.”
“I am.”
“Come. I will feed you all the steak you can hold. Come with me.”
Cain threw a look at Avery. But Avery was deep in his battle with Lord Peter. It still made Cain feel queazy inside that Avery could be so casual about his wife’s doings. A shiver moved all through Cain’s body.
Queenie led Cain into the kitchen in back.
While Cain washed up and combed his hair, she put on an apron and rustled up a hot fire in the range and began frying a huge thick steak. She set out chokecherry jam, bread and butter, salt and pepper.
Cleaned up, Cain took a chair at the table. He leaned back on two legs and rolled himself a cigarette. Though he’d just combed his black hair, it tousled down over his forehead some. The lamplight gave his features a dark and whittled look.
Queenie moved around, slim and busy, with quick light steps. Once she brushed against his shoulder. She did things easy, deftly. There was little waste motion to her. Cain couldn’t help but admire the bright mink in her.
—How kin Avery let other men be so free with her, he thought, onless Avery’s a pimp at heart?
The fire roared in the range; the steak began to sizzle.
Queenie placed a hand on his shoulder; leaned on him as she placed a steak knife beside his plate.
He permitted the touch.
She went back to the stove and turned the steak. A wonderful smell of seared meat spread through the kitchen.
After a bit she asked, “Cain, dearie, I got a question to ask you.”
“Fire away.”
“How come you never got married?”
“Oh …” Cain puffed on his cigarette, deep. He blew up a rising boiling smoke ring. “Oh … I guess it was mostly that I was too nosy about what was on the other side of the hill.”
“Come now, Cain.”
“That’s right. I was mostly too much on the go.”
“Somebody else put his brand on your gal first?”
Cain laughed, short. “Wal, that too.”
“Maybe it’s time you put your running-iron on some other gal.”
“Been thinkin’ some on that.”
She smiled at him, special. “Ah, sounds like good news for somebody.”
“Hmm. Don’t know as to that. When a man gets it burnt into him like a brand that way once, it lasts him quite a spell. Next time he’ll feel his way.”
The steak was ready then and with a little show of pride she set it sizzling before him. She’d fried it a deep brown. It had the look of meat that could be cut with the side of a fork.
Cain said, “Now there’s one steer that ain’t gonna get to his feet again. Mmm. That’s just the way I favor it.”
She smiled, green eyes and green diamonds glittering. She poured out two cups of black coffee, one for him and one for herself. Then she took a chair across the corner of the table from him.
Left-handed, Cain fell to. He ate heartily. He cut his meat with neat precision. There was style about the way he broke bread and spread the butter and jam.
Queenie watched him eat, pleasure showing in her eyes.
When he sat back to sip his coffee, she reached across the corner of the table and took up his big right hand with both her hands. She studied the lines in his palm. She played with his stub thumb. Very gently, very delicately, she placed a circlet of fingertips around the knob of the thumb and toyed with it.
He suffered it.
“You should come more often, Cain.”
He looked up at her with a part-amused part-abashed smile. “By the way, I forgot to tell you, I brought you a leppy.”
Again Cain saw the animal in her eyes rise some, far back. This time even her head seemed to move. Idly he wondered if her animal would listen to his animal if it came to a pinch, like Lonesome’s had on Dencil Jager’s yard, like Joey’s had down in Rory’s well. Cain guessed Queenie probably had a real wild one in her and that in an emergency even he would have trouble topping it. He didn’t envy Avery none living with her. A visit, yes. Marriage, no.
Cain said, “I put him in the corral with the others.”
Queenie’s bosom swelled. Though she closed her eyes to gimlets, the rampant one showed more than ever.
Cain couldn’t look at it. He glanced down at his left hand holding the coffee cup. He felt her fingertips still circling the knob of his right thumb. He thickened. “Yeh, one of my cows came down lame. So I decided both would be better off if I made a orphan of the calf.”
Queenie’s eyes opened. “You mean, one of your own? A Mark-of-Cain? Not a Derby calf?”
“The same.”
“Why, Cain, honey, you didn’t have to do that. Not you.”
He smiled, more amused now than abashed. “But the boys do, eh?”
Queenie’s eyes closed to slits again. She placed a gentle, a soft and intimate hand on his thick arm. “Cain, honey.”
“Wal, I don’t much believe in taking neighbors’ beef. Oh, I know it’s a custom in these parts, when a fellow is short on meat, to go out and dab him a rope on a neighbor’s cow. They all do it. But me, I think that’s wrong. It leads to waste. A man is more apt to be saving when he butchers his own beef. But not if he kills his neighbor’s.”
“You sound like quite a God-fearin’ man, Cain.”
“Wal, thank you kindly, but as to that, I’d say I was more a neighbor-fearin’ man.”
“Cain, dearie. You know you don’t need to bring me anything. Nothing.”
Cain laughed. “Not even any of Lord Peter’s, eh?”
“Dearie, with you, it’s any time any day. And all for love. You know that.”
“Wal…”
“And another thing. With you, it’s over at the cabin. Not here. You’re special, Cain, honey, and the latchstring is always out for you there.”
A couple of hours later, as he was riding home in the dark, Cain’s nose suddenly sprang a leak and he had himself a bear of a nosebleed. It gushed. And it kept bleeding, off and on, all the way home. It took an hour of bathing in the cold pink water of the Shaken Grass before he got it stopped.
Part Two
Cain
Cain got up early one crisp October morning, made himself a rough bachelor’s breakfast of beef and beans, washed dishes, and went out to the meadow to get Bucky, his buckskin cow pony.
Cain smiled, and went back and got another rope. He fastened it to a stout cedar post. He let the rest of the rope lie loose on the ground across the point. Again he chased up Bucky from the far side of the meadow and herded him in, careful not to make him go too fast. He knew Bucky’s old trick of going to the far end and then quick turning and roaring back while he was still in the wide part. Cain walked slow, and as luck would have it Bucky chose to walk slow ahead of him too.
It worked. Bucky sniffed the rope, once, and stepped across it. The next second Cain had the rope in hand and had snapped it taut, making a small tricornered corral. He secured it to a yellowing sapling cottonwood. He built a loop in his lasso and feinted a throw. Up went Bucky on two legs, high, rampant, pawing the moon. Just as Bucky’s neck was stretched to its furtherest, Cain whirled up an overhead loop and sent it whistling toward Bucky in a wriggling line. It smeared up around Bucky’s head and settled neatly around his neck. Cain dug into the grass with both heels and set himself. Bucky hit the end of the rope and almost threw himself. “Whoa!” Cain roared. His shout was like the single bark of a .45. And Bucky gave up. Cain went up the rope, hand over hand, until he could catch Bucky under the chin. Then, with a pinching hand on his ear, Cain led him to the barn.
Next to his riding horse Lonesome, Cain’s best friend was Bucky. Bucky stood just under fifteen hands high, had speed to overtake the fastest calf, had weight to hold the heaviest steer—about nine hundred pounds—could run all day, and actually enjoyed cutting out cattle. He was barrel-bellied, had thick shoulders and hindquarters, had a head with a slanting Roman nose, and bright clear eyes that were wide apart and stood out like an alert squirrel’s. Bucky was a true buckskin. His coat was the color of deer, an ancient smoke-gray, with a black stripe running down his back, with black ears and mane and tail.
Cain had found Bucky as a colt in a wild bunch on the higher reaches of the Shaken Grass up in the Crimson Wall country. Bucky was tailing a band of mustangs from which the head stallion had just whipped him. The stallion had slashed him with a bite across the back and this slowed him down just enough for Cain to dab a rope on him from Lonesome’s back. Cain treated the sore, which eventually healed over and grew a patch of hair even blacker than the mane. After he’d gelded him Cain spent a lot of time getting him used to humans. He breathed in his nose every morning before he handled him. He fed him oats, which Bucky loved. Eventually he broke him to cow work.
Bucky had been a tough one to tame. After lassoing and hog-tying him, Cain fastened a raw swatch of buckskin to each of his legs and an old pair of pants around his belly and then let him up. Bucky swapped ends for most of an afternoon in the round corral. Around and around and around. Without letup. Viciously; furiously; outraged. Then, just at sundown, suddenly, shudderingly, as if he knew he was leaving freedom behind forever, he gave up. Ever since he’d tolerated just about anything, though there were still times, of course, when he’d be a bit waspy, especially early in the morning after a week of running free.
Bucky’s natural instincts as a studhorse nipping the backs of straying mares were successfully transferred to nipping the backs of cows. He would take after a snaky cow like a feist or a collie. He could turn so short that Cain’s hat would sometimes snap around hindside-fore. He knew the exact moment when the rope would drop over the calf’s head or forefeet and was already set back on his four hooves by the time the calf hit the end of the rope. He would keep the rope tight on the downed calf, no matter how it wiggled or struggled to get free, until the wrestlers came up to take it off the rope, or until Cain himself stepped down to tie up the calf. Worked hard, Bucky was very tame, and stuck close to Cain wherever he went night or day.
Near the barn, Cain got a halter and tied Bucky to the snubbing post in the middle of the round corral. He pronounced a low “Whoa!” and put his hand lightly on Bucky’s rump. “Steady now, boy.” He leaned down and, grabbing the fetlock, picked up Bucky’s forefoot. One look and he knew Bucky had to be reshod. The old shoe was worn down to a rind. Even the caulks were down to nubs. Cain growled, “Where the devil you been playin’ the past summer, you black-eared son of a wild mare you.”
Cain dug up the set of new horseshoes he’d bought the previous week in Antelope. The shoes gleamed a bright iron-black in the sun, with the steel caulks showing up a hard gray. He got out the shoeing tools, some new square nails, hung his cartridge belt and gun on the top rail of the corral, and set to work. He caught Bucky’s upper lip in a twitch—a short loop of rope threaded through a hole in the end of a stout stick—and turned up the lip until the horse leaned up off the ground on three legs. Next he fastened the twitch to the snubbing post, holding Bucky to it stock-still. The twitch on his lip kept Bucky from flicking even so much as an eyelid at a fly. Again Cain picked up a hoof by the forelock and caught it between his knees. With a pair of pincers he cracked off the old shoe. When one of the nails broke off at the head, he dug for it, going in deep enough to stir up Bucky in his absorbed contemplation of the lip twist. The nail came away with a squeaky greasy sound. Next he pared down the hoof edges for the new fit. He dug out some of the frog that had worted up in the soft middle of the hoof, careful not to cut down to the quick. Grabbing a rough rasp file, he ground the whole hoof smooth and then tried on the new black shoe. It fit to perfection. Carefully he set the nails to catch through the outer edge of the hard black hoof, and with steady sure strokes of the hammer drove them through and clinched them on the outside. The clinched-over points formed a neat row around the hoof, almost like ornamental work.
He worked steadily, surely. Wet circles grew in the armpits of his old faded black shirt.
When he got to the last hoof, a rear leg, Bucky got tired of it and slyly leaned on Cain, putting most of his weight on the raised leg. It made Cain smile and he cursed Bucky in a low pleasant voice.
He had one more nail to go, when he heard galloping up the valley, coming toward him from Crimson Wall. Bucky heard it too, despite the terrible pinch on his lip, and tried to lift his head. From his bent squat, still holding the horse’s rear leg between his knees, Cain craned a look up the creek.
A horsebacker. Dang it. And here he was with his gun over on the top rail of the corral. Then, even as he thought of dropping the leg, he recognized brother Harry’s pink shirt and bright red sash. Harry came on in a swift lope.
What now? With a sigh and a grunt, Cain quick drove in the last nail, clinched it, and let go the leg. He walked bent some dozen steps, the distance to his gun, before he could get the stoop out of his back.
Harry came off his bay and dropped the reins to the ground all in one sliding motion. With a quick hoist of elbows, Harry drew up his cartridge belt and then the belt of his hairy chaps. Harry had let his beard grow some and it shone in the morning like a light frost of silver.
“Howdy.”
“Hi.”
Harry’s eyes hooded over. “Cain, where’s your beef?” Harry held his head slightly to one side.
“Why, up the valley toward Crimson Wall, where I pushed them yesterday to get ready for our bitty roundup with you boys next week.”
“Guess again. Jesse’s boys have got the whole bunch.”
“Great grandad! Where?”
“With a herd they’re holding just inside the Crimson Wall. North of Dencil’s place there. Up on that high bench.”
“You sure?” A cold shiver ran all over the skin of Cain’s body.
“What was your last count?”
“Wal, with the spring crop of calves, about a hundred head.”
“Timberline counte
d over seventy Mark-of-Cains in that herd Jesse’s boys are holding. Let alone two hundred of our Rocking Hells.”
Cain swore. “The thievin’ cowards.” A hot throbbing bulb of hate suddenly bobbed up behind his eyes. It almost blinded him for a second. He began to shake; felt thick all the way down to his thumb tips.
“Yeh.”
“But I thought Jesse wasn’t gonna start his big roundup until late next week?”
“He jumped the gun. On purpose. So he’d clean up our cattle as he went along.”
“The thievin’ sonsa—”
“An old trick we used to help him pull on the nesters.”
“Is Jesse himself holding them?” Cain asked.
“No. Mitch Slaughter and his boys.”
“Where’s Jesse?”
“He’s out holding Lord Peter’s hand.”
“What! Ride over that trail again.”
“Yeh, Lord Peter’s come over from England again on a visit. Servants and all.” Harry smiled some. “To check into the rumor that Jesse has been shorting him. You know. Jesse’s about to buy back the Derby outfit.”
“Oho! No wonder they’re gathering up all our little herds as they go. To fill out the tally some.”
“Yeh.” Harry smiled again. “Somebody writ His Bullship a letter.”
“You?”
“No. Timberline.”
Cain snorted. “That I believe.”
“Well, what are you going to do about it?”
Cain tipped back his folded black hat. “Do? Why, get’em back of course.”
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