by Dean Owen
Rim had the feeling that Stallart’s ideas had lately undergone a change. It was certain that Stallart and Marcy weren’t getting along. Rim had heard Marcy sobbing of a night.
One day Rim had asked Marcy about this change in her husband. But Marcy gave a hopeless shake of her head and said she didn’t know. But maybe when Ellamae came to stay with them it might cheer up Bert Stallart—
“I feel horrid,” Ellamae said, and groaned. “That stage like to tore me apart it jolted so.”
The road climbed through pines and in the distance could be seen the shimmering green of aspens. Far below the road a stream flashed its silvered frothy way down a canyon.
They came at last within sight of Anchor headquarters, a collection of frame and log buildings on a great knoll of cleared land.
Rim sensed the girl’s growing tension.
“I brought a present,” she said, and from a pocket of her cloak, produced an orange. It was bright in color and she seemed proud of it. She said it had come upriver from New Orleans and before that from Seville.
But Rim doubted the fruit could stay fresh that long. “A real orange,” he said, and tried to sound pleased.
“Will Uncle Bert and Aunt Marcy like it?”
“I shouldn’t wonder.”
He had a feeling. It was like the planned retreat of the war. Strategy, they said. You retreated and your belly turned sour and you shared your dead horse with your men. You found your boots worn through and your feet bleeding. You tried to fight, but how do you fight an avalanche? They were pressing on, the great bayoneted wave of blue. He had the same feeling today, as he saw the wisps of smoke curling from the stone chimneys of the main house.
Disaster pressing in on you.
He slowed the team. When Marcy suggested she and Stallart accompany Rim to town to meet Ellamae, Stallart had shaken his head, grinning. “Leave the young folks have the ride out from town to get acquainted.”
Now Rim could feel perspiration at the edge of his dark hair. It glistened on the high cheekbones, salted the corners of his wide mouth. As he was thinking, a man makes plans and counts on the second half of his life being better than the first. He puts down his roots with a partner he trusts. And then a girl looks too long at the moon one night in Joplin—
CHAPTER TWO
With a steadying hand on her arm Rim Bolden escorted Stallart’s niece along a narrow hallway, past the door to the kitchen where pots steamed on a big stove. Then into the vast parlor with its stone fireplace, the logs flaming. Indian rugs brightened the floor. There were leather sofas and chairs made of hardwood with a latticework of wide leathers for the seat.
The big room was empty, but Rim could hear someone walking around upstairs.
“Company’s here,” he called out, in what he hoped was a strong clear voice.
There were muted exclamations and the sound of hurrying steps. Rim pushed Ellamae down into one of the leather sofas where Marcy’s large sewing basket had been set. Ellamae picked up the basket and held it in her lap and looked frightened as a burly man hurried down.
“Ellamae!” Stallart shouted, big hand outstretched. He laughed. “What you doing with Marcy’s sewing basket? By God, Rim, you teaching her how to keep house already?”
Stallart seized his niece’s hand, pumped it.
From a corner of his eye Rim saw Marcy halt abruptly on the landing. Marcy’s dark head was inclined as she stared at Ellamae sitting on the sofa. And the dark eyes mirrored shock and consternation. And then a swift pity. He saw the handsome face of Stallart’s wife go pale around the full mouth. She wore a bright dress of green silk that Rim knew she had brought with her from Natchez.
“Welcome, Ellamae,” Marcy said in her deeply pleasant voice. As she crossed the room her gaze touched Rim’s. And there was a deepening fear in her eyes, a silent plea for help.
Stallart said, “Marcy, she’s got the Stallart look. She have any younguns and they’ll favor the Stallart side.” He turned to Rim. “Might be you won’t like that.” He gave Rim a broad man-to-man wink.
Rim said nothing. It was a long time since he’d seen his partner in such a jovial mood. This was the old Bert Stallart, the one he had first known and liked. Not the sullen, suspicious whisky drinker he had become lately.
“You’re a mite plump,” Stallart said appraisingly. “But then a gal with meat on her bones is fine for this country.” The man-to-man wink again. “We have some cold winters hereabouts, huh, Rim.”
Rim looked sick.
Stallart noticed the silence of his wife and partner, the obvious fright of his niece. He looked perplexed.
There was about Stallart something of the grizzly bear. He had wild, shaggy hair, so thick you’d break the teeth of the ordinary comb just trying to get the tangles out. His face was broad, weathered, red when he was angered. He had a large nose, dipped slightly where the hard heel of a cowman’s boot had struck during a forgotten brawl. He wore a shirt of rough wool, tight across his big shoulders. The shirt was also tight at the belly where he was beginning to show his forty-five years.
“You act like it’s a funeral instead of a welcome,” Stallart said. “Damn it, I’m going to have a drink. A little sherry, Ellamae? Or maybe you ain’t never done anything so sinful as take a drink.” Without giving her a chance to reply he moved ponderously to a sideboard that Marcy kept polished. It had come to New Mexico with her in the wagon. Her parents were buried at Paso where they were taken with the plague.
The muscles in Marcy’s pale throat seemed to stiffen. “Bert, I think I heard one of the men calling you. Jellick, I think.”
“What the hell’s that hoss breaker want with me? Let him stew! By God, this is the same as Christmas and Appomattox Day all rolled into one. Beggin’ your pardon, Rim,” he added quickly. “Reckon it wasn’t much of a holiday for you fellas.”
“I think I’ll go out and look over that new string Jellick is breaking,” Rim said. “Glad to have met you, Miss Stallart.”
“Miss Stallart!” Bert Stallart boomed. “The hell with that. It’s Ellamae.” He came across the room, the floor planks squealing under his weight. He handed a glass of sherry to Ellamae and one to the pale Marcy. “You need more color, Marcy,” he told his wife. “You don’t get outside enough. Now that Ellamae’s here you and her can go to town and—” Stallart looked around at the three solemn faces. “What’s goin’ on!” he demanded, and Rim could see the angry color move slowly up under Stallart’s coarse skin.
Rim said, “I really ought to go, Bert. After all, this is a family reunion—”
“You stay.” Stallart squinted at Ellamae. “I begin to savvy now. You kids had a few words, huh?” He grinned. “Well, you got to remember, Rim, a woman travels a long ways setting on the hard seat of a coach and it shortens her temper. A gentle girl like Ellamae ain’t used to things like that.”
Marcy was twisting her hands together and Rim could see that her knuckles were startlingly white. Ellamae clung to the sewing basket on her lap.
Marcy said, “Bert, you and Rim go out and look—look at those horses Jellick is breaking.”
“Get some food on the table and quit worrying about hosses,” Stallart said, and gave his wife a good-natured slap on the back. Turning, he grabbed Ellamae’s hand. “Stand up, gal, let me look at you.” He jerked Ellamae to her feet in his rough way, and the sewing basket spilled its socks and rolled across the floor to the edge of a thick wool rug. “This is the house for a wedding,” Stallart went on in his booming way. By God, we’ll have everybody for a hundred miles. We’ll send invites clear down to Mesilla—”
Stallart’s voice broke off and the quick amber gaze roved over the length of Ellamae’s swollen body. She stood with one hand helplessly at her side, the other gripped in her uncle’s fist. At first Stallart looked puzzled, then pained. He shot Marcy a glance, as if saying, What does it mean? Doe
s it mean what I think?
Marcy stood with her hands clasped before her green dress, the knuckles pressed against her breasts. Her head was bowed. Rim could see the clean white part in her hair and he felt a surge of pity. He wanted to put out a hand and draw her against him and let her weep and feel her warm wet tears—
The rage in Stallart’s heavy face was marked by a vivid red. There was a hard line of mouth beneath the thick, tobacco-stained downsweeping mustache.
Rim took the orange Ellamae had given him, from his pocket. “This is a present,” he said. “For all we know, it might have come all the way from Spain.”
Marcy’s dark eyes flashed Rim a look of gratitude for this interruption. “Peel it carefully, Rim,” she said, and her voice shook a little. Then, with her shoulders back she stepped up to Ellamae and put a hand on the arm of the girl. “We are glad you came to stay with us, Ellamae—”
A spate of tears gushed suddenly from Ellamae’s eyes. She flung wide her cloak. “Take a good look. Now you know why I wanted to visit with you!”
Marcy closed the cloak. “It’s all right, dear.” She put a hand against Ellamae’s forehead. “I wish you would have explained. I would have met you in town. We should get the doctor—” She looked at her husband, who stood rigid, unspeaking. Then to the girl, Marcy went on, “The wagon must have been agony for you. It’s so near your—time.”
Ellamae’s mouth jerked and a hard bright gleam touched her eyes. “Uncle Bert doesn’t want me here!”
“Yes, he does, dear.”
“My being here will bring you nothing but trouble. In town Rim hit a man who made an insulting remark—”
Stallart said, “Who was it, Rim?” And when Rim told him Eric Ward, Stallart said, “I’ll apologize to Ward for what you done, Rim.”
Rim, peeling the orange, said, “It was my fight, Bert. You better leave it lay.”
“You don’t need to fight for this wanton no more,” Stallart said, jerking a thumb at his niece.
Ellamae squealed as if lashed across the face with a rope end, and Marcy said, “You shouldn’t talk like that, Bert. She’s your kin.”
Stallart made a cutting motion with his hand. “No kin of mine. My brother Paul was her pa and—” Stallart’s voice trailed away. And Rim watched him, remembering that Stallart always got a haunted look whenever he mentioned his brother. The brother was dead and Ellamae’s mother had died at her birth and Rim knew that some woman in Joplin had raised the girl. The woman had recently died.
“Leave the girl alone, Bert,” Rim advised, and put the peelings of the orange on the table. “She’s been through enough already.”
Stallart’s gaze was hot “Rim, I ain’t known a man who was more a brother to me than you. A son almost. But by God you tell me my business and you can ride.”
Marcy looked stunned. “Bert, you didn’t mean that.”
Stallart gave his wife an ugly smile. “What’s the matter? You got a reason for wanting him to stay?”
Marcy, her face white, said, “Rim, I haven’t tasted an orange since I was a little girl.” She held out a hand. Rim could see that it shook slightly.
Rim finished peeling it and some of the precious juice ran over the tips of his fingers and onto the floor. In the stillness of the big room he could hear the murmur of voices from the yard as the crew had their evening smoke. It was getting dark in the house. He halved the orange, then quartered it. He stripped the slices and held them out to Marcy.
She took two of them and handed one to Ellamae. But the girl turned her head. She was biting her lip so hard Rim could see a dot of blood on her chin.
Marcy said, “You best go upstairs and lie down.”
She started to lead Ellamae toward the stairs, but the girl wavered. Rim dropped the orange slices to the table and sprang to catch her before her head struck the floor. He carried her up the stairs, aware that Stallart’s burning gaze was on the back of his head.
In the spare bedroom Rim put the girl down on a serape that covered the bed. Ellamae was moaning, her eyes tightly closed.
A lock of Marcy’s dark hair had fallen across her face. “I only hope Bert doesn’t take to the bottle tonight. He’s done it so much lately.”
“If he does, call me,” Rim said.
She tried to smile. Then she turned quickly to the bed as Ellamae gave a sharp cry. “Rim, could you send one of the men for Doc Snider?”
Rim told her that he’d heard in town the doctor was visiting in Mesilla.
“It means he’ll probably be gone a month,” Marcy said helplessly. “Whisky and that Sanchez woman. But then I guess you can’t blame him too much, living in a place like LaVentana.”
“Is there anything I can do?” Rim asked, looking at Ellamae who was beginning to writhe on the bed.
Marcy said, “If necessary I can do it alone.” Then a bitterness came to her eyes. “I used to watch Tessa, my mammy, when one of the slaves had a child—Oh, yes, Rim. I come from a very proud family. Just like the Stallarts. Without sin. But we did own human beings as you would own a horse or a gun or a pair of boots.” She swallowed and turned her head. “When you go downstairs, try and talk sense to Bert.”
Rim nodded. He went out, closing the door, shutting off the sounds of grinding pain that burst from Ellamae’s lips with increasing frequency.
Rim saw that Stallart was staring at the orange slices on the table. Stallart looked around, stricken. “Sorry I blowed the powder at you, Rim, but—”
“She was going to get married, Bert. Her intended was killed—”
Rim was instantly sorry he had spoken, for it touched the raw nerve that rekindled Stallart’s rage. “Ain’t no excuse,” Stallart cried, “for a woman laying with a man ’less she’s got a ring on her finger!”
“Might be a good thing,” Rim said, looking Stallart in the eye, “if everybody remembered that the next time the fancy women come up from Paso.”
A quick shame touched Stallart’s eyes, then turned to belligerence. “With a man it’s different.”
Rim felt his anger slowly rising and he wanted to fight it. He wanted to forget the humiliation in town today when one minute he had been joshed about his possible marriage to the new visitor from Joplin. And the next minute seeing her obviously pregnant.
“Goddam it, Bert,” Rim said with cold emphasis, “we’ve got the cow business to worry about. Forget about Ellamae. She’s your dead brother’s girl, no matter what she’s done.”
Rim snatched two of the precious orange slices from the table and went out into the darkness. He crossed the yard. Lights bloomed yellowly in the bunkhouse windows. There was in the air the smell of manure and horse sweat and the odors of men who worked hard and long. The cherry red ends of their cigarettes glowed in the evening shadows.
The men were strangely silent tonight, Rim noticed, as he angled for his quarters built on one end of the bunkhouse. Nobody said, “Hi, Rim,” or “I feel lucky tonight. How about gettin ’even with you?” Rim was a partner-foreman and he believed while working that there should be a gulf of sorts between himself and his men. But when evening came it was different.
He knew their silence tonight stemmed from the presence of Stallart’s niece. The word would have been swiftly passed by those who saw her arrive in the wagon.
And at that moment came a tight scream from the second floor of the house. Rim halted, looked back at the house. Then he started on again.
By the bunkhouse wall Meade Jellick, the big horse breaker, was sitting on his heels, casting a giant shadow.
When the scream was repeated, Jellick said, “Somebody step on a cat’s tail?” One of the men snickered.
Rim kept on walking toward his quarters. But he slanted a glance at Jellick that warned the man to keep his mouth shut. He didn’t care much for Jellick.
“She’s a good-looker,” Jellick said, and
Rim halted, seeing the shine of Jellick’s big teeth in the darkness. In a country of big men Jellick bragged that he was the biggest. And he was, so far as Rim had seen.
Jellick laughed quietly, “Wish I’d been the one to make her big around the middle.”
“Pack your gear, Jellick,” Rim said crisply. “Then step into my office for your time.”
Jellick got up. “You ain’t got the brains of a jack-legged hoss, Bolden. You steaming up a storm on account of I said I’d like to have been the one to pester that good-lookin’ yallow-haired gal—”
“Jellick, get off this property!”
“—when everybody knows you been usin’ the boss’ wife for a saddle.”
Rim froze. He heard a collective gasp from the men. Saw some of them move quickly away from Jellick.
“You was lucky with Ward in town today. You won’t be so lucky with me.” Jellick clenched his fists.
“How do you know what happened in town today?”
There was amusement in Jellick’s tone when he said, “Ain’t all of us here drawing only Anchor pay.” He hitched up his pants. “I ain’t wearing a gun, Bolden. It’ll be fists, huh?” He laughed. “Right here and now!”
CHAPTER THREE
Rim started for Jellick. But a voice from the cookhouse doorway across the yard, said sharply, “Hold it, Jellick!”
Ed Rule, the Anchor cook, gray tufts of hair jutting from his skull, was holding a shotgun. “You heard the boss, Jellick. Get out!” And then the old man swung his gaze to Rim. “I’m sorry, Rim. But dammit in the dark like this you wouldn’t have no chance with him.”
“I think maybe I would,” Rim said coldly.
“No, Rim. Damn it. He’d put his bootheels through your face before you’d know which end of the bottle to pour from.”
Without taking his eyes from the giant Jellick, Rim said, “Put down the shotgun, Ed. I mean it!”
“You’ll have to take it away from me, Rim.”
Jellick went into the bunkhouse and after a minute came out with his warsack. He walked on down to the nearest rail where a big Morgan was tied. He swung lightly into the saddle.