Ulring kept an orderly county. Not that the law was his creed. He was the creed. The Law. Frank Ulring was The Law in Grafton County.
The lawful majority knew it too—and remembered what the region had been six short years ago, before he had come to Spurlock: a mountainous refuge for half the killers, rustlers, and robbers in the territory. Ulring had sized up the situation and seen it at once for the main chance it was. He'd been a lot of things in his thirty years: shotgun guard, bounty hunter, range war warrior, railroad detective, Army scout. Troubleshooting was his work, his life, but a man had to look to his future. With county elections coming up, Ulring had run for sheriff, told the voters in no uncertain terms exactly what he'd do and how he'd do it, and had beaten the aging cautious incumbent in a walk. In a few months the scum had been cleaned out, dead or moved on for reasons of health. Ulring had kept it that way. The lawful majority might mutter about his methods, they might search their souls at random moments—but when ballot-marking time rolled around, they did a little thinking back and forgot their misgivings.
Ulring left his rawboned sorrel at the tie rail and crossed the yard, his spurs chinking softly, just a little awkward in the tall cowman's boots that took some of the catfooted grace from his walk. Even so, he moved softly and easily for a big man. Inches over six feet, he was whittle-hipped and wedge-shouldered with long arms and large powerful hands. He had the rugged prow-nosed just-short-of-handsome features of his Norwegian ancestors; wind and sun had put a ruddy russet burn on his fair skin.
He stepped onto the porch and halted by the propped-open door, looking down past the rows of crude wooden desks to the front of the room. Bethany was sitting at her desk, head bent over some papers she was marking. A finger of sunlight from the west window made a blazing halo of her hair.
"Come in, Frank," she said without looking up.
Ulring came down the aisle, the desks and benches like toys beside his bulk. Entering the schoolhouse always made him feel —not uncomfortable, he was superior to social unease—but bearlike and out of place. His own learning had been picked up in odd scraps at odd times. He had learned his ciphering by keeping range tallies on a saddle string; he'd gotten glimmerings of how to read by studying labels on cans at chuckwagons. Later on he had borrowed books and, by slow and painful degrees, had mastered the printed word.
Bethany laid her papers aside and smiled up at him. "I never have to look to see you coming. The spurs—I always know. How are you, Frank?"
"Middling."
Ulring settled one hip on the corner of her desk and glanced down at her copy of McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader. He picked it up and let it fall open in his hands. "'The Mariner's Dream'," he read aloud.
" 'In slumbers of midnight the sailor boy lay; His hammock swung loose at the sport of the wind; But watch-worn and weary, his cares flew away, And visions of happiness danced o'er his mind.'"
He shut the book and laid it aside, and recited the next stanza from memory:
" 'He dreamed of his home, of his dear native bowers, And pleasures that waited on life's merry morn; While Memory each scene gayly covered with flowers And restored every rose, but secreted the thorn.'"
Bethany smiled. "You can't surprise me any more, Frank. I wish you wouldn't try. You make the teacher feel inadequate."
"Habit," Ulring chuckled.
It was a bantering custom between them. Ulring enjoyed it—the same way, he supposed, that a highly athletic kid enjoyed showing off for his girl by doing handstands on a board fence. But Ulring had never learned physical prowess; he was born with it. What he enjoyed flexing for Bethany were the painfully developed muscles of his mind—but only for her.
"Met the Cantrell kid coming up the road." He slanted his blond brows at her, mildly questioning. "Thought he 'graduated.'"
"Oh—he brought me the colt. Did you see him? A gift. Will-Joe was taking him to the stable."
Ulring smiled gravely. "Apple for teacher, eh? Surprises me— from that kid. Surly cuss."
"Really, Frank—you don't know him."
"And can't say I care to."
She picked up a pencil and frowned at it. "Frank—" She was choosing her words. "I'd think that you, of all people, would be sympathetic to someone like Will-Joe."
"Look, Beth. I've nothing against the underprivileged—your word. But people like that—"
"Indians—Mexicans?"
Ulring scowled faintly, smiling too. "You're putting words in my mouth. All right—them mostly. It's true and you know it. Education is wasted on them. Those people have no future—no sense of future time. Sure they work well—when they work. And blow every cent on payday. Let some shirttail relative's third cousin throw a fiesta and you may not see 'em for a week. A white man, now. Not to puff my own crop, but I did pull myself—"
"Bootstraps. I know." Flecks of greenfire sparked her eyes. "But that's it, Frank. You're a white man. With all the legal and social advantages, the educational and financial opportunities that means. All right, you're a hard worker, so is Will-Joe Cantrell. He's intelligent. Quite as independent as you are. Ambitious too. Yet he can never improve his station a whit—because he's half-Indian."
"Maybe." Ulring kept the disbelief in his tone mild. "Anyway I didn't drop in to discuss the red brethren. What I wanted to ask—you think Dennis might be interested in hiring on with me?"
The abrupt question made her blink. "Hiring on? I don't understand. Do you want him for… ?"
She didn't finish. Didn't have to. The prime specimen she'd chosen as a husband hadn't held a steady job since the day of their arrival in Spurlock. Dennis McAllister's days were spent hanging around the saloons and cajoling an occasional stranger into a card game. He picked up occasional work at swamping stables, sweeping up in stores, running flunky's errands. And spent the rest of his time talking about "getting something better."
"I want him for a regular job." Ulring shifted his hip on the desk and crossed his hands on his knee. "Steady hours, fairly good pay… it'll keep him jumping."
"Oh, I see." She gave a wry, deprecating smile. "Claude is quitting you."
She meant Claude Warhoon, the shiftless grinning fumbler who served as Ulring's jailer, kept his office tidy, fetched his coffee and otherwise attended to the details that Ulring couldn't be bothered with.
"Not Claude. He knows a good thing when he has it." Ulring smiled patiently. "What I'm offering Dennis is a job—as my deputy."
Her eyes were incredulous. "Frank, you're not serious."
"Dead serious. Job's gotten too big for me to handle. I need a man."
"But Dennis… ! Frank, he's not a gunman—not a fighter. He's in no way cut out for that sort of work. You know he isn't!"
"Look." Ulring bent a little, thumping a finger on the desk. "Grafton County's growing up fast, Beth. The outlaws and floaters, all that scum, have been cleaned out—"
"Thanks to you."
"Don't interrupt, teacher. People are flocking in by droves every year. They see this as a good place to settle, to farm and ranch, to raise families. And it's only begun. The country will grow, we'll all grow with it. Even my job is getting civilized— too tame already for my taste. There's all the paperwork piling up. Claude can't handle it and I hate to. Dennis can be a big help there. Dozens of other duties falling to my lot that he could take care of and never touch trouble… like riding miles to serve papers on some harmless squatter."
"It wouldn't be fair." Bethany bit her lip and lowered her eyes. "Not fair to you. He's never held any job for more than a week or so. He'll disappoint you, Frank—and me again. It's happened too often."
"I'll take the chance," Ulring said. "Will you?"
"Yes. You knew I would, didn't you? Thank you." Her eyes came up. "It seems I'm everlastingly thanking you—for one favor or another. How many times in the past three years have you helped us out, Frank?"
"I never keep count," Ulring said idly. "Don't you."
Her hand was at the bosom of her waist finger
ing the gold watch-pin there—a relic of gentility—and his glance touched the gentle curve of breast beneath it. She wasn't a small woman, she was more robust than ethereal, yet dainty was the word for her. She had an inbred delicacy that poverty couldn't erase, a fine-trained strength of bloodline blended with a spring-blossom fragility; it made a fever in him that ranged far beyond any raw sensuality.
Fever. Was that the word? Lust, in any case, was too harsh a term. He had known lust too often to be mistaken about the difference. What he felt for this woman stood alone in all Frank Ulring's experience.
It had been that way from the day the McAllisters had arrived in Spurlock. That evening Ulring had entered the hotel dining room at the usual supper hour, and the two of them were at a table. Bethany's beauty had been a flame against the drab room and the day's gray-rain gloom. Ulring had gone promptly over to introduce himself and offer his services. A few minutes of conversation had made the picture clear: the loyal wife and the weakling husband. A beautiful hopeful woman wedded to a permanent failure.
In almost the same minute he'd known something else. Bethany McAllister was going to be his.
He'd made the decision just that suddenly, not feeling a jot of surprise about it, just a certainty as quietly absolute as the massive roof beam of a barn being settled into place.
Once he'd decided his course, though, Ulring had felt his way into the situation with infinite care. He'd cultivated Dennis as much as he had Bethany; he'd found them a house to live in, established their credit with local merchants, smoothed their way into the community. While piece by piece he was putting together the history of their crumbling relation. It seemed promising. McAllister's vapid ways were steadily running whatever his wife might still feel for him into the ground. Meantime he, Ulring, always managed to be on hand at the times when Bethany needed a friend most—just a good friend to talk with.
The possibility of failure hadn't occurred to him. Why should it? He'd enjoyed plenty of casual success with women: it might take time, but in the end Bethany would turn naturally to him.
Nearly three years. And it hadn't worked out that way.
He hadn't reckoned with the stubborn depth of her loyalty. There couldn't be much, if anything, left of her feeling for McAllister; still Ulring had come to realize that Bethany would cling to her marriage vows till all hell froze over. He knew it without her ever quite saying so. She'd never complained of her lot nor (till he'd mentioned the deputy's job just now) said a word that might be construed as critical of her husband. Instinct had warned Ulring not to press the issue.
Once realization had come, he hadn't hesitated an instant in considering his next step. It had come to him as easily and surely as his decision to take another man's wife.
But he had to go even more carefully. He needed a plan. Foolproof. And he had one.
"Well, I'll be moseying, Beth." He rose, the skirt of his fringed buckskin coat peeling away from the desktop. "You tell Dennis; let him sleep on it. I'll drop by in the morning."
"Thank you again, Frank—for everything."
She stood up, giving him her hand. Ulring took it, bowed slightly, gravely, and then tramped out. He walked to the tie rail, mounted, and rode back toward town.
Jogging down the dappled dust of the road, he grinned. A mere shaping of his broad lips: the effect was as cold as his eyes.
Till death us do part.
Sure as hell, he thought. And let the grin widen till his big teeth showed.
Even at midsummer, the chill of high country dawn reached Bethany bone-deep as she padded in slippered feet to the kitchen and lighted the heap of kindling shavings she had laid in the big range the night before. She folded her arms across the front of her gray wrapper and shivered, pacing the floor while she waited for the blaze to take. She could hear Dennis beginning to stir in their room off the tiny sala; he had come in last night with a load that would stagger a moose and she'd had the devil's time rousing him to half-wakefulness this morning.
The room wasn't much: Frank Ulring had gotten it at a bargain from the son of an ancient saddlemaker, the old man having died a month before the McAllisters arrived in Spurlock. It had been a combination home and shop; a smell of cured leather still clung faintly to the old rooms. The 'dobe walls were two feet thick with a heavy earthen roof. The pieces of hand-carved furniture were smoky-dark with age; Navajo blankets made passable rugs on the cold pack-clay floors.
The fire was building nicely; she stoked it with cedar lengths from the woodbox. Dennis came in; he hadn't troubled to shave, and the pepper-salt stubble on his jaws darkened the cheek hollows she'd once thought ascetic. He was slender, of average height, but looked oddly smaller in rough wool pants and shirt, cheap durable clothing he was forced to wear in lieu of the expensive broadcloth suits he'd once favored.
"Christ, what time is it?" He sat down at the table, groaned, and ran his hands backward through his hair. "I didn't get four hours' sleep, for God's sake."
"Whose fault is that?" Bethany stood sideways to him, not glancing at him as she ladled Triple X into a pot of water.
"Look, I pick up a few dollars hanging late at the tables, it all helps. Not as though you earn it all."
Bethany didn't think it worth commenting that he lost more than he won or that the "few dollars" he added to the household funds were withdrawn twice over by the end of each month to pay for his losings and his liquor.
She merely said: "How much did you win last night?"
No answer.
She looked at him. His head was down, elbows on the table and steepled thumbs grooving his lower lip. How handsome he had seemed when she was a seventeen-year-old Boston Belle!
A gentleman born too: well-dressed, fine-spoken, beautifully mannered. Neither she nor her parents had guessed—nor bothered to check, worse luck—on what was common knowledge among Tidewater Virginia gentry: that the McAllisters' aristocratic blood had run thin a generation back. Dennis's father's lack of financial acumen had dissolved most of the McAllister fortune; Dennis and his wastrel brothers had finished the job. To Bethany's parents, the thirty-year-old Southerner had seemed a prime catch for a marriageable daughter; her bluestocking soul had shivered deliciously to his soft southern voice and flamboyant elegance. All parties willing, the wedding had been quickly arranged and swiftly consummated. It would take only a painful week or so for Bethany to learn that Dennis McAllister was only a pale copy of what he'd seemed: a man who caricatured genuine qualities with perfect aplomb because they did not come naturally to him.
Well, she told herself with dreary self-mockery, you were just young, my dear.
The years since had been one pattern of one cloth. Indifference, incompetence, his temper that flared and died, would cause Dennis to leave whatever halfway decent jobs he could obtain. There was always a new will-o'-the-wisp for him to chase: one time it might be a mine in Colorado; another time, cotton lands in the Mississippi basin. Whatever his current enthusiasm, he would always rub her nerves with his sulky petulance till she'd give up and accede to his wishes. Then they'd move on again, each time a little poorer in goods and pride.
Finally, though, it had been Bethany who, after hearing of Spurlock's need for a teacher, had insisted on coming here. And in the small log school here she'd found her anchor and her cause: something she could believe in, cherish, fight for. When Dennis, restless once more, had found her immovable against all his sulkings and blusterings, he'd surlily resigned himself to living in her shadow. And subjecting her to an occasional spate of malice.
He said suddenly, irritably: "When did Ulring say he'd come by?"
"He didn't. But it'll be early, knowing Frank."
"And you do know him, don't you, my dear?"
Oh God, she thought wearily. She finished breaking an egg into the spitting bacon grease, then turned to face him. "I won't ask you what that's suppose to mean. I know. And you know exactly how false it is."
His eyes fell. "Sure," he muttered. "Does he?"
"That's too deep for me, I'm afraid."
"I doubt it. I doubt it would be even for a stupid woman. And you're far from stupid, Beth."
"Sometimes I've wondered."
He laughed. "You know as well as I why Ulring's done all he has… this house, all the favors. Hell, the whole town knows. And now a tailor-made job for old Dennis. Well, well."
It took an effort to keep her voice steady. "Perhaps you'd tell me what all you people know—if anything."
"Why, there's always talk, my dear. You know that. Oh, everyone's sure you're a tower of rectitude, no less. But the sheriff, now. Folks aren't the least shy about speculating as to why Ulring's favored the McAllisters so much. It's all on your account, of course."
"That's rubbish."
Dennis gave a sober nod, somehow managing, without twitching a muscle of his face, to convey the effect of a dirty-mouthed leer. She set his food before him, clattering the dishes down in her anger. She was used to this sort of thing from him, but usually it came as a veiled form of innuendo. And he hadn't made a reference this direct to Ulring before.
Maybe he hadn't cared before. Now he'd be working under Ulring—in a job that Ulring had offered through Bethany, not to him directly. Though Dennis couldn't afford to turn down the offer, it must rankle him deeply. For he still had pride of a sort. God knew why, but he did.
Bethany felt rankled herself, quite upset in fact, and she knew why. There was a good deal more than simple pique behind Dennis's words. Of course there was. Other people than Ulring had given Dennis work merely to oblige her. But she'd be a fool to suppose for a moment that it was the same as with Frank Ulring, who never did favors out of compassion or even obligation. His reason, apparently, was so transparent that—if you could believe Dennis—people were talking.
Not that Ulring had ever taken any kind of liberty with her in either his speech or his manner. In the many times they had visited, he had kept his words and glances strictly and pleasantly impersonal, never a trace of boldness. And still his force and his boldness were just under the surface, a raw flame. When he looked at her, it was as a man looked at a woman. A more-than-attractive woman, a special woman. And that was how she always felt under even his casual glance: womanly.
Eye of the Wolf Page 2