One Notch to Death

by Matt Chisholm

  Another flurry of movement. A man racing through the grass of the bench, bending low over the neck of his pony.

  Indians!

  The one who had screamed was a woman. She was striking at the man at her horse’s head with her whip, but still the man kept his hold.

  More movement to the left. Mart turned his head. Two more Indians riding hard along the length of the bench. Mart put spurs to Old Stripes and the zebra dun headed hard down onto the bench. They hit the flat at a dead run and kept on going. Mart let fall Darky’s lead line and heaved his belt-gun from leather. The woman was out of the saddle, her horse jumping away to one side. The Indian vaulted nimbly onto its back, brown legs clinging to the barrel. The animal shied, the rider struck at it.

  The second Indian came pelting up on his pinto, leaping from its back and running in on the woman. She rose to her knees striking out at him with her whip. He warded off the blow negligently and caught her by her red hair. It came loose and cascaded down her back. He caught it in his other hand and swung her. She screamed again.

  The two other Indians were the same distance from them as Mart and they hadn’t seen him yet. Mart was torn for a moment between downing the man with the woman and heading these two off. He found himself drawn toward the woman by her immediately desperate situation. He angled to the right and fired one shot. It went wide and he had not intended differently. Shooting from the back of a racing horse wasn’t the surest way of shooting and as yet it was not a killing situation. He possessed a mind that stayed clear in such situations and he knew that one killing could embarrass him in these hills for a long time to come.

  At the sound of the shot, the man holding the woman by the hair went still and stared in Mart’s direction. The woman hit him again with her whip. Mart fired again. The man released the woman, turned and ran for his pinto, leaping into the crude saddle with one agile bound. The Indian on the woman’s horse, struck it hard and headed off along the bench.

  Mart swung the dun to the left and charged straight at the two remaining Indians. The result was magical. There was no time for them to turn back the way they had come, so they split and passed wide to either side of him. One of them banged away at him to no purpose with an old single-shot rifle and the ball passed a couple of yards to his right. Then they were gone, racing up the slope of the bench.

  Mart turned his horse and rode back toward the woman. The other two Indians were heading north.

  The woman was on her feet, pushing the hair back off her face. He had an impression of a white face and large enraged eyes.

  He pounded past her a way, then halted Old Stripes and told him to stand. The horse obeyed and stood still as a rock. Mart slipped the belt-gun away into its holster and pulled his rifle from under his leg. The two Indians to the north had halted. The others raced to them and also pulled their horses in. The four stared in the direction of the white man and woman. Mart levered and fired a shot over their heads. They took the hint. The white man could have hit them at that range. He had chosen to miss. If they rode off now, there would be no more trouble. They debated the problem. Respect for the repeating rifle won. They would clear out now, though, if the whim took them, they would no doubt be back again. They turned and loped away north.

  Mart swung down from the saddle and faced the woman.

  He had no more than glanced at her before, now he took a good look.

  He decided then and there that it was the best look he had ever had in his life.

  To say that she was magnificent was to make a gross understatement. She was ten years younger than Mart and stood tall for a woman. And she was big with it as if she had been made to bring happiness to a race of titans. Yet her lines and her movements were so graceful and so feminine that the bigness was only an asset to the glorious picture she made with the wild hills as her backcloth. Her shining golden-red hair contrasted dramatically with her dark green riding habit. Her normally pale skin was lightly tanned and across the bridge of her nose and on her cheeks was a light rash of freckles that no doubt she hated, but which Mart loved at the first glance.

  Her figure would have appealed to the titans, too, from her long slender throat, her deep breasts, slender waist and well-shaped hips to her small feet. No, Mart had never seen such a woman before in his life and he’d bet every cent he owned in the world that he would never see another like it.

  Her eyes, he saw, were the brightest and most surprising

  violet.

  ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that I have to thank you.’

  He’d never heard a voice like that either. It was as clear and cold as crystal. Some sort of foreigner, he told himself and was intrigued.

  He smiled.

  ‘Well,’ he told her, ‘you don’t have to, but if you fancy doin’ that, ma’am, why you go right ahead.’

  She looked a little taken aback at this remark and seemed at a loss.

  ‘You saved my life,’ she said.

  Darky trotted up and surveyed her with something like approval.

  ‘I never,’ he said, with true Texas gallantry, ‘saw a life more worth savin’.’

  ‘They would have murdered me,’ she said, a hand at her throat.

  ‘I doubt it, ma’am,’ he said. ‘They were after your horse.’

  They stood and looked at each other. Mart who was usually at his ease with women and conquered them easily, was suddenly bereft of words. Women were easy when you didn’t care too much. Maybe just after looking for a half-minute at this woman, he cared. The thought shook him somewhat.

  ‘The name’s Martin Storm,’ he said. His mind finished the information about himself—On the run. Killed a man a couple of days back. He wondered what she’d think if she knew.

  ‘I’m Vanessa Hargreaves,’ she told him, head high, the patrician greeting the serf.

  ‘Honored, Miss Hargreaves,’ he said and removed his hat with a small bow. His mother had hammered Texas manners into him.

  ‘My aunt and I,’ she said, ‘are exploring the west of America.’

  ‘Explorin’?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. That is what we do. We explore.’

  ‘You mean—that’s your job?’

  ‘I don’t know about it’s being our job. It is what we do.’

  ‘All the time?’ He was lost. Here was this girl dressed for an excursion from an eastern riding academy and she said she explored. What was she—some kind of a nut?

  ‘We have explored Africa, India and parts of Russia. My aunt is Lady Horatia Hargreaves. You may have heard of her.’

  Not ever. He shook his head and felt ignorant.

  ‘Is that the kinda thing a lady ... I mean ... well, ma’am, I never...’

  ‘Is that the kind of thing ladies do?’ She smiled coldly. ‘We English are not all conventional, you know.’

  English! That accounted for the icy accent. Maybe the smile wasn’t so cold after all. Maybe that was the English way. He’d heard about the English.

  ‘Don’t you have any men along?’ he asked in wonderment.

  ‘The servants, of course.’

  Naturally. He should have known better.

  ‘Where’s your camp?’

  She waved a hand vaguely.

  ‘Over there somewhere.’

  ‘Do you know where exactly?’

  ‘Not exactly. You see I was lost and looking for it.’

  ‘You mean your aunt allowed you to ride alone in this country?’ The old dame must have been out of her head.

  ‘I make my own decisions,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I’m makin’ a decision right now, ma’am. You git up on that dun and we’ll go find your camp,’ he told her. He felt himself getting a little mad and couldn’t find the reason why.

  ‘The idea is a good one, sir,’ she said, ‘but I’m not sure I appreciate your tone.’

  ‘It’s no never mind my tone, girl,’ he said. ‘You git up on that there horse an’ we’ll light a shuck before them Abergoins head back this way again.’
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br />   She cast a look in the direction the Indians had taken and headed for the saddled dun. When she reached him she looked helpless for a moment. She turned and said to Mart: ‘Kindly help me up.’

  He went and made a stirrup with his hands, she placed a hand on his shoulder and a small foot in his hands. She stayed there a moment and he thought she smelled better than ripe corn. In spite of her size, she went up light as a feather. She sat sideways on the saddle and looked down at him. He was sorry to have to let her go.

  ‘How,’ she demanded, ‘am I expected to sit this atrocious saddle? I’m accustomed to side saddle.’

  He pushed his hat back and scratched his head.

  ‘Could you kinda wind your—’ he was about to say ‘leg’, then he remembered that it was indelicate to mention such a thing to a respectable woman. He said: ‘Kinda wind you limb around the saddlehorn.’

  She tried it and nearly fell off.

  ‘You’d best ride astride, ma’am,’ he suggested. ‘It’s rough goin’ yonder an’ you could break your neck.’

  She looked down her beautiful nose at him.

  ‘I shall do no such thing,’ she said in horrified tones.

  ‘It’s your neck,’ he said and walked over to Darky. He told the gelding to stand, walked around the rear and leap-frogged onto his back. He started along the bench. When he looked back, she hadn’t moved. She also looked enraged.

  ‘You goin’ to sit there all day?’ he asked mildly.

  ‘Look the other way,’ she instructed.

  He faced front and continued. After a while he heard her coming up behind him on the dun horse. He thought: This is a hell of a note. Here I am on the run and I have to take up with an English lady explorer. I find her camp fast or I’m in the hog’s product. He had the Indians on his mind, too. He had never seen the like of them before. He was no authority on the tribes, but they didn’t look anything like the Waco, the Osage and the Cheyenne he had met up with. Maybe, he thought, they were Utes. Any road, the bastards had stolen a horse and now, with the taste of thieving in their mouths, they might be back for more.

  He came to the lip of the bench and looked down into the wild and tangled valley beneath. He ranged his eye over the broken land, seeing the blue wash of brush, the vivid green of the thickly timbered slopes, a gigantic panorama under a dramatic sky. If he could see smoke, it would save him a whole lot of time and trouble. But he could see no trace.

  He turned his head and asked: ‘Did you camp in timber, ma’am?’

  She was sitting astride. She jerked her head up indignantly and said: ‘Kindly face the front.’

  ‘Ma’am,’ he repeated putting his eyes to the front, ‘did you camp in timber?’

  ‘There were trees about, if that’s what you mean,’ she told him. There were also a lot of rocks and a very pretty little stream running through them.’

  That told him something, but not much.

  Now he had to find his way down off this shelf and find her sign below. That is, if she wasn’t mistaken and had come up this way. There was no telling. She looked pretty giddy to him. This aunt must be crazy to allow a girl like this loose on her own.

  He worked his way along the edge of the shelf, going south until he found himself at the head of a narrow trail that looked as if it had been used by horsemen down through the ages.

  He started down. Maybe she had come up this way. He called back: ‘Did you come up this way?’

  ‘I think so. It’s possible. I can’t be sure.’

  He felt like strangling her.

  When they reached the foot of the trail, he looked around and saw that there was so much sign old and new on the trail away from the foot of the shelf that there was little hope of finding her tracks among the mess.

  He said to her: ‘You stay right here. I’m goin’ to look around.’

  ‘Kindly do not look at me,’ she said.

  He looked at her. Hard.

  ‘See here,’ he said, ‘you say that once more and I’ll... I’ll...’

  ‘And what,’ she said, ‘will you do?’

  ‘I’ll just keep on ridin’, I reckon.’

  ‘I thought I was dealing with a gentleman.’

  Mart snorted and started looking around. He worked it out that if she came in from the west, she must have hit the trail at an angle. So he searched in a northwesterly direction, circling so that he would have more chance of cutting her sign. The trouble was, he wasn’t too sure what her sign looked like. That was something he had missed up there on the shelf. He had let the presence of the Indians and this beautiful woman throw him. He swore a little. Somehow, he didn’t feel in command of the situation and that made him mad. He suspected that this girl was using him like a damned servant and he didn’t take to the idea too well.

  After about twenty minutes of searching he had what may have been luck. He found a fresh trail of hoofmarks coming in from the north-west.

  He rode back and called to her. She rode toward him, sitting bolt upright in the saddle with a haughty look on her face.

  ‘You’re looking at me,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ he told her. ‘That’s the charge for my hire. Now, come on over here and take a look at these tracks.’

  She followed him obediently enough and he showed her the tracks and asked: ‘Did your horse make those?’

  ‘Possibly,’ she said in an airy manner. ‘How can I tell?’

  He said something rude under his breath. All they could do was backtrack them and see where they led. They started to work their way through a wilderness of boulders and tangled brush. After a while, he lost the sign on rock. They pressed on for another mile and then came out onto a vast natural meadow and here, after casting around for a while, he came on the sign again.

  The girl explained: ‘I remember this. I am absolutely certain I came across here.’ She seemed delighted. She smiled. He liked the smile; it seemed to go with the freckles. But when he smiled back at her, her face and her eyes went cold again.

  To hell with her, he thought, and started across the grassland along the line of the tracks. Mart didn’t like being out in the open like this. Every pair of eyes for miles around could see them, but he dared not leave the sign for it meandered and there was no knowing what line of march the girl had taken. He could not leave it and bank on picking it up further on. So they stayed in the open and the dark fingers of night began to feel their way across the sky.

  ‘You won’t be back with aunty before nightfall,’ he told her.

  ‘Oh,’ she declared, ‘but I must be. I can’t possibly spend the night out here with ... you. It would compromise me disastrously.’

  He looked at her soberly.

  ‘An’ my daddy’ll be pretty mad at me, too,’ he said.

  She didn’t think that was funny.

  They went on and entered timber. Now Mart started to feel a little better. Just as night came down, they reached water. Mart halted and slipped down from Darky’s bare back.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ she demanded.

  ‘We’ll camp here.’

  ‘We shall do no such thing. We’ll push on.’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘I insist.’

  ‘Where to? I can’t read sign in this light.’

  ‘I refuse to stay here along with you, sir, at night.’ She wheeled the dun around and set off through the trees. Mart put his fingers to his mouth and let out a piercing whistle. The dun turned and headed back toward him. The girl got red in the face, screamed at the animal angrily and wrenched its head around again. Mart whistled again. The dun turned.

  The girl yelled: ‘Will you stop doing that?’

  She sawed on the lines again.

  Old Stripes reluctantly obeyed her.

  Mart whistled.

  The dun turned. This time he jumped determinedly in Mart’s direction and the man ran forward to meet him. Mart got a long strong arm around the girl and pulled her from the saddle. As he set her on her feet, he came t
o the conclusion that he had never lifted a more delicious burden in his life.

  She tried to slap his face. He stepped back from the blow and she nearly measured her length on the ground. She straightened up and glared at him in rage.

  ‘If you’re a good girl,’ he said, ‘the prize is hot coffee, bacon and beans. I will also give you the loan of a warm blanket to sleep under.’

  That gave her pause for thought.

  ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that you are an ignorant, brutal and utterly contemptible creature.’

  ‘Now you’re bein’ sentimental,’ he said. ‘You’ll find the chow on my saddle. I’ll build a fire.’

  Did the glimmer of a smile appear on her generous mouth or was it his imagination? He couldn’t be sure, the light was too poor. He unsaddled the dun and the animal started to roll. Then he drew his knife and went hunting for kindling and firewood. Pretty soon he had a fire going so that the blaze was hidden among the rocks. Not long after, the smell of frying bacon filled the night air. His stomach juices went crazy. The girl wasn’t much help, she just sat around watching him. But she ate her share of the meal he cooked. In fact he had never seen a female eat heartier. He looked at her in the firelight, took in the curving and inviting mouth, the luscious lines of her magnificent body and wondered how he was going to behave like a Texas gentleman until he took her safely to her camp. This little lady was in a heap of danger—from Indians and from him.

  After the meal, he started to kill the fire.

  ‘Leave it,’ she ordered. ‘I’m cold.’

  ‘It could give our location away,’ he told her and finished killing it. He regretted the loss of light because that meant that he could no longer see her.

  They sat on, sipping coffee, he not wanting to retire to his sleep. He could see the pale orb of her face in the dimness across the dead fire from him. What his sight lacked, his imagination filled it for him. It ran riot. God, he thought, this damned woman had gotten under his skin. Not a few hours in her company and...

  ‘Tell me about yourself, ‘ she said. Her tone was so friendly that it startled him. He had become accustomed to her strange accent by this time and found he was intrigued by it. It added a strangeness to her that fascinated him.