The shack was half the size of the Kennedy place or even the Joymans’ cabin, built of rotted and weathered gray planks on a crumbling stone foundation. Quincy reined up his horse just below the ledge on which it stood, near the old man, and dismounted. “Morning,” he said.
The white head swung slowly toward him, and the old man’s blank eyes stared. Quincy nodded to him. “Your name’s Sullivan, isn’t it?”
The old man bent over and began doing something vaguely with a rope and bucket at his feet. He half glanced sideways at Quincy without looking up at his face. “I ain’t got any whisky,” he mumbled. “I tol’ you I ain’t got any.”
“I didn’t come for whisky,” said Quincy good-naturedly. “Just stopped for water. Don’t mind, do you?”
The old man mumbled an unintelligible answer, intent on tying a knot in the rope with gnarled fingers. His too-big trousers hung from wide suspenders twisted over his shoulders; his white hair was a few sparse wisps over a bald head patched and mottled with age. He seemed not to want to look anyone in the eye, though he cast surreptitious glances toward Quincy’s feet.
“Hey, old-timer!” hollered Charlie, approaching from the water trough wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “Still kicking, are you? How many tons you mined since we saw you last?”
The old man stared at him briefly from under white corkscrew eyebrows. “You ain’t the same one,” he said. Then he turned his attention on the knotted rope again, with a fretful frown. “I tol’ you I ain’t got no whisky.”
“Let him be,” said Quincy in an undertone. “He’s harmless enough. You’re only upsetting him.”
Charlie bent over with his hands on his knees so his head was on a level with the old man’s. “You remember your old pals! Why, we was practically swearin’ eternal friendship last time we left.”
“No-o,” said Sullivan, shaking his wavering head a little more fretfully. “I ain’t got time. I got work to do.”
Charlie laughed, but Quincy only smiled briefly and shook his head. “Come on, Charlie, let’s get going. We’ll lose that herd if we don’t.”
“Reckon so,” said Charlie, abandoning his sport as carelessly as he had taken it up. He swung around and went back to the horses, but Quincy lingered a minute to watch the old man, who gathered up his rope with the bucket swinging from it, and a shovel, and inched off down the slope, presumably toward his mine.
The mustangers filled their canteens, tightened their saddle cinches, and mounted up again. One by one they guided their mounts over the edge of the slope and picked their way down the steep trail. Charlie and Wirt rode out without looking back, but Quincy Burnett paused for a second at the bend of the trail that would hide Sullivan’s place from sight, and looked back thoughtfully at the shack against the cliff, and the slow, shambling figure of the little old man moving down away from it.
The next three or four days followed the same pattern. They lost the original herd and spotted another, followed it further and higher into the mountains, trailing behind in hopes of finding a likely place to corner some of the mares and separate them from the stallion.
Quincy, after a few days of camping and riding with them, had become accustomed to his companions. They were not what he would have chosen for congenial company, but by mostly keeping his opinions to himself and allowing them to lead where they liked, he got on with them well enough. Charlie was loud-voiced and talkative, and in an unguarded mood by the fire in the evenings was prone to boast of sundry shady horse deals carried off in the past, with the aid of a running-iron or the midnight removal of bars from fences. Wirt was more dependable when it came to camp chores or caring for the horses, but slow to understand anything asked of him. Any attempt at wit bounced off him unavailing. He seldom contributed to the conversation except when called on to corroborate Charlie with a monosyllable.
So Quincy, lying on his back with his head and shoulders resting comfortably against his blanket-draped saddle and watching the flicker of their campfire’s light play on the cliffs under which they camped, let most of Charlie’s talk bounce over his head, keeping just enough in tune with it to give a nod of agreement every once in a while. What he really thought, he did not say.
He noticed that there was only one subject Charlie never touched. Although once or twice Charlie mentioned Bruce Kennedy, who had apparently been the third man on several of their mustanging trips before, and once even referred briefly to Rosa Jean, he never said how Bruce had died or made any remotely revealing remark about either of the Kennedys. For someone so loose-tongued it seemed a curious omission. Quincy once thought of questioning Wirt, but decided that the effort required would draw too much unnecessary attention to the inquiry.
III.
Rosa Jean heard the thunder of hooves and dropped her rolling pin to run for the door, only to falter to a stop halfway. It was queer the way that sound still made her heart give a little jump of excitement, and then just as quickly the thud of sickening remembrance. She could not get used to it. Every time the noise of hooves took her unawares it took her back a year and a half and told her that once again Bruce and Charlie and Wirt were running a batch of mustangs down from the mountains and into the corrals.
She opened the door, unable to resist looking. It was very much like old times—three outriders and a dozen darting, plunging mustangs of all colors with wild manes and tails, being swept through a haze of sun-shot dust into the corral. The men’s whistles and shouts came faintly through the chaotic thunder of hooves; the coiled ropes in their hands rose and fell. She saw Quincy Burnett through the dust on the near side of the herd as he pulled his sorrel down from a long lope to a trot, shepherding the mustangs through the corral gate.
The spell was broken, but still Rosa Jean went across the yard and looped her arm around one of the corral’s upright poles and watched the horses milling about inside. Her eyes followed a copper-colored mare, then a speckled blue-roan yearling with an attractive head that reminded her of Pheasant. It was the biggest herd these corrals had seen in a while, the fruit of two weeks’ hunting in the mountains.
“What d’you think of them?” said Quincy Burnett’s voice, and Rosa Jean turned with her hand still linked around the pole to see him sitting his horse just behind her, coiling up his lariat.
“There’s some beauties,” said Rosa Jean, a little reluctant to speak but unable to hold back praise with the horses in front of her. She took her hand from the post and pointed toward the blue colt. “That’s one of that iron-gray stallion’s colts, isn’t it.”
Quincy glanced up from securing the rope to his saddle horn, his blue eyes squinting a little under the shading brim of his hat. “How’d you know that?”
“I’ve seen four years of his colts; I ought to know them by now.”
“The gray gelding in the stable—he’s one, isn’t he?”
Rosa Jean had just folded her arms on the top bar of the corral fence, but she turned back toward him in some surprise. “Yes… how did you know?”
It seemed to her that Quincy’s eyes were serious, but he smiled good-naturedly as he said, “Oh, I notice things too. It pays to notice things sometimes.”
Rosa Jean said nothing. She watched him knot the rawhide string securing the lariat, then stand up in the stirrups and twist to look over his shoulder and across the milling herd in the corral. She did not know what she ought to think of him. He seemed so clean and honest and unconcerned—but he was much too sharp, in ways she wished he was not.
She left the fence and walked back to the house, and went back to the pie crust she had left half rolled on the table. The quiet of the ranch was effectively broken for the day. From the corral came an occasional whinny or clatter of hoofs as the mustangs dodged about inside, and as she worked Rosa Jean caught the drift of voices, and then a little later someone whistling a tune.
She wondered whether the men were planning to break the horses themselves, or whether they meant to drive them on down to Gorham Gulch and sell them unbroke
n. And she wondered whether it made any difference to her.
Charlie had at first been all for selling the mustangs unbroken, but it did not take much to bring him around to Quincy Burnett’s opinion that rough-broke horses would fetch a better price. They started in the next morning: roping a horse out of the main corral, getting a saddle on it, and letting it tear around the breaking-corral for a while until it began to be accustomed to the object on its back, until half a dozen had received the treatment. On the second day the real work began: the sweat and dust and occasional falls; the struggle between untamed horse and determined rider.
It had been a while since Quincy had ridden a bucking horse, but he felt reasonably certain of making a decent job of it. It was good enough work to satisfy his partners in the venture, anyway. Their own work was a little slipshod—Quincy found himself after awhile almost filling the role of foreman, keeping them focused in a way they probably would not have been without a third person to direct their efforts. He suspected that this was the role Bruce Kennedy must have played in the past.
Three times a day they repaired to the house for the meals Rosa Jean cooked and served for them. Quincy was puzzled by the nature of Wirt and Charlie’s relationship with Rosa Jean—they treated her with a kind of careless familiarity as toward a sister, yet with basic indifference as toward a hired girl. Her own attitude to them seemed something more than indifference—like a tolerance that just overlaid contempt. Over the dinner table, on days when the horse breaking went well enough for good spirits, Charlie would attempt what he fancied jovial banter with Rosa Jean, and she snubbed him crisply, coolly, and often with an acid wit that made Quincy Burnett grin behind his coffee cup. Once or twice Rosa Jean caught him at it, and for a second he thought he saw again that very slight warming or softening of expression that was not quite a smile, almost as if she wanted to respond to the fun in his eyes but could not—or would not.
For despite sundry small tries, Quincy got no closer to even the most casual kind of friendship with her, though he could not tell why—nor did he know just why he tried. Rosa Jean was civil to him; she did not appear to dislike or fear him—yet there was a quiet wall up around her, one that hid whatever her true character might be. There was a wall up in her dark eyes, which veiled the reason for that far-away pain that had first pricked his attention.
What was the use of trying, anyway? Quincy did not know, yet he was human enough to be put out by his failure.
On a few occasions, their party at the supper table was enlarged by a passing prospector who stopped for a meal—an old man with a bushy gray beard and rabbitty teeth who never looked up from his plate; a big heavy man who boasted all through the meal of improbable ore strikes he had witnessed. They usually arrived about midday, and Quincy, from the top rail of the fence where he waited his turn in the breaking corral, watched them from the corner of his eye with bent brows that denoted no very pleased attention as they tied horse or mule, loosened straps on a pack-saddle, wiped a sweaty face with a kerchief, and then crossed the yard to go up the steps and disappear into the house.
The second time, Charlie Conlan came and leaned on the inside of the fence near him and spoke with a snicker. “What’s the matter—you jealous?”
Quincy turned abruptly and looked down at him, and somehow the sharp blue slice of his glance robbed Charlie of any further desire to be facetious. “Mind your own business,” he said.
Wirt had the next horse snubbed up to a post for mounting, and Quincy swung his other leg over the fence and dropped into the corral, only too glad of something to do to divert attention. He was vexed with himself for being so easily provoked, for his departure from the usual careless manner he preserved around Charlie. That was not the way to be inconspicuous.
Matters came to a head a day later.
It was near suppertime, and Quincy left the corral ahead of the others and crossed to the house. He noticed a horse and mule in the pen by the barn and a pack-saddle deposited against the side of it, and concluded that a traveler had arrived while they were too busy to notice. He went on to the house and mounted the steps.
The table was set for supper but there was no one in the front room, and as Quincy stepped in he heard sharp voices coming from the kitchen.
“I can’t work with you underfoot. Clear out of here, will you?”
The man’s voice stretched out in a would-be ingratiating drawl. “You could keep still for two seconds together.”
“Not if you want supper I can’t.”
“Well, what’s your hurry?”
“Your hurry, more like. I thought you wanted to eat.”
The man laughed. Quincy arrived in the kitchen doorway to take in the scene at a glance. Rosa Jean was at the stove. A shortish, red-bearded man was leaning one hand against the wall as near to her as he could get, so that in order to properly reach everything on the stove she had to stand with her back to him, nearly touching him. As she moved closer to him of necessity his other hand came out and he tried to get it round her waist. Rosa Jean elbowed it sharply away and put a step between them. “Will you go on out of here and leave me be? I’m busy.”
“A whole lot busier’n you need to be,” said the man. His hand came forward again and his fingers hooked under her elbow. Rosa Jean twisted away and swung to face him and reached for something on the stove as he made a move toward her—but both broke off in mid-motion and looked toward the door as Quincy Burnett stepped into the kitchen.
“Get away from her,” he said.
“Who in blazes are you?” demanded the prospector.
“That doesn’t make any difference,” said Quincy. “Get out of here.”
The red-bearded man hung fire for a second, obviously smoldering at the interruption, but an appraisal of the size of Quincy’s hands and his uncompromising attitude swayed the balance. With a disgusted glance at Rosa Jean, he obeyed. He half pushed against Quincy in passing him, the sort of gesture meant to express resentment without being enough to call out retaliation. Quincy, at any rate, was too deadly calm to regard it. “Let me catch you in here again and you’ll go out on your nose,” was all he said.
He turned back to find, unexpectedly, that Rosa Jean was also simmering with aggravation, her mouth set straight and her eyes showing more of a spark than he had seen in them thus far. As soon as the bearded man was out of hearing she lashed out tartly at Quincy. “You didn’t have to interfere!”
“It’s a good thing I did,” said Quincy, rather nettled.
Rosa Jean tossed down a potholder and shoved the coffeepot away across the stove with a shriek of metal on metal. “There wasn’t any need. I’d have dumped boiling coffee over him in another second.”
“Like that would have done any good! You ever see anything madder than a wet hornet? He’d likely have knocked your teeth out—for starters.”
“What business is it of yours anyway?” demanded Rosa Jean.
“I didn’t say it was my business. Any man’s got a right to give a kick to a cockroach he finds pestering a woman.”
“Well, you’ve done it, so now you can go.” She slammed the lid on a skillet, jerked the damper of the stove, and moved the coffeepot again, her back to him.
Quincy’s impatience and bewilderment finally boiled to the surface. “Rosa Jean, you know better. You know it’s a fool thing to try and stick it out up here alone, and you’ll pay for it one day. You’ve just been darn lucky so far.”
She would not look at him. “Wirt and Charlie are around most of the time. They may not be worth much, but they wouldn’t let anyone hurt me.”
“And when they’re not around? Rosa Jean, that’s nonsense! We were gone a good two weeks after those horses—how many dirty old philanderers did you have to fight off with a coffeepot all that time?”
“Will you get out of my kitchen before I have to throw you out?” she cried, turning toward him with red staining her cheeks and something edging her voice that was almost a loss of control.
Q
uincy dropped his hand from the doorframe and went, but wheeled and came back to say, “I just don’t understand why you’re so stubborn about it. What’s this place to you? It’s not worth anything without livestock and men to run it. You could make a living the way you are now down in Gorham Gulch, or a better place than that. Why are you so set on staying here?”
Again he saw it—her expression shut up like a door being closed, her mouth set straight and her eyes offering no clue to her thoughts. It must hurt, he thought involuntarily, to do that—he did not know where the unsettling idea sprung from.
Her voice again was straight, controlled, revealing nothing. “I stay here because I want to,” she said, and turned away to the stove.
“I don’t believe it,” said Quincy bluntly. Irritation at last overrode tact, and out came the question that had been nagging at him for weeks. “What happened to your brother, anyway? How did he die?”
Something clattered sharply on the stove. Rosa Jean turned around, and Quincy instantly regretted what he had done. The white, drawn look of her face was almost one of physical pain.
“Ralph Dugan shot him,” she said.
The thud and trample of footsteps filled his ears, and the other men were filing in to dinner. Amid the screech of chairs being pulled out and the meaningless clamor of voices Quincy sat down, his mind spinning.
IV.
That night, Rosa Jean lay awake, staring into the darkness. The moonlight was blue around the edges of the calico curtain that covered the small window above her bed. It cast a small, ghostly gleam on the barrel of the revolver that lay on the bureau within reach of her hand every night.
Nights alone here had been frightening at first. The months that had passed without incident, and the gun near at hand, had mostly worn that away. But no weapon could keep off the memories, restless and painful, that tonight’s quarrel had stirred up in her mind.
It was four years ago that she had first come up here with her older brother Bruce. He had bought the mountainside ranch cheap from someone departing Gorham Gulch, and sometime during the second year had forged an unofficial partnership with Charlie Conlan and Wirt Timmins, footloose wanderers who were agreeable to a try at mustanging. The venture was successful, intermittently; they found plenty of horses in the mountains and ran them down to the ranch for breaking, and then sold them in the Gulch or somewhere else further below. Bruce did most of the breaking—Wirt and Charlie were wont to drift off occasionally, on expeditions Rosa Jean tacitly understood to be on the shady side of the law. Bruce seemed to know it well enough, but made no objection. Once or twice he had even gone with them, without telling Rosa Jean much about it afterwards.
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