Once

by Elisabeth Grace Foley et al.

  “You’ll be sorry one day, Rosa Jean.”

  Sorry one day? How could she be sorrier than she was now, when her heart was being torn out of her and twisted for a second time?

  Oh, why did he have to be so nice to her that first night at supper—why did he have to have such nice eyes, such a pleasant flash of a smile and such a pleasant voice? He was the only person in a long time who had ever seemed concerned about her welfare—but wasn’t it just because she was getting in his way? She was just something he hadn’t accounted for, something that was distracting him from carrying out his plans.

  But she knew what Quincy thought of her now. To him she was a stubborn, foolish child who wouldn’t listen to advice or rebuke. It would be utterly incomprehensible to him that she loved him so terribly, that her love was a wild thing fiercely scrabbling for life against every piece of common sense or cynicism she tried to kill it with. Even if she had been able to believe the best of him, Rosa Jean knew she had ruined her own cause—had thrown away every chance to change his opinion of her. Stubbornness had been a habit for so long; it had been the thing that kept her alive. Harsh words had come to her lips so often in self-defense that they had successfully defended her against the one person whom her heart did not want to keep out.

  She pressed her face into the crook of her arm, the knife of misery twisting inside her.

  All that day Charlie Conlan was fidgety and restless, as if he was waiting for something. More than once he went out and looked down the length of the pasture, and came back more dissatisfied. He was abstracted at supper and left the house without any attempt at teasing Rosa Jean. All that night the storm clouds continued to roll overhead, with only a brief shower or two around midnight as if they were still building their forces.

  In the morning Charlie was much the same. He fidgeted around without giving any clue why; and then just past noon, when the threatening skies were already almost as dark as dusk, he sought out Rosa Jean in the house.

  “Look here, Rosa Jean,” he said, “you know Quincy’s gone down to the Gulch for rope.”

  Rosa Jean made no answer beyond flashing him a glance that was not encouraging, and Charlie fidgeted round the table and tried again. “I guess he’ll prob’ly be back before nightfall.”

  “So?”

  “Well, look, I wanted to ask you,” said Charlie, “seems you might know—you seem like you been kind of thick with him lately, and all.”

  Rosa Jean had to swallow a hard painful lump in her throat, but still managed to come back impatiently, “Ask me what? What might I know?”

  “Well, about him,” said Charlie, “what he thinks, and—what he might be expected to think about a thing.” He paused, wrinkled up his nose in a hesitating squint for a minute, then said, “I met a friend down in the Gulch the other day. He asked me if I had a place he could keep some horses for a night, on his way to someplace. I told him I reckoned he could keep ‘em here a night.”

  “Are they stolen horses?” said Rosa Jean, with the calm of one who is not surprised.

  “Well… he didn’t say.”

  “I suppose you forgot to bring up rope from the Gulch on purpose.”

  “Hob didn’t show yesterday like he said he would,” said Charlie. “If Quincy gets back tonight, an’ then Hob turns up tonight or tomorrow, I reckon I’ll have to explain. But golly Moses, Rosa Jean, I don’t know Burnett all that well, even after breaking horses with him a couple of months. I ain’t sure how he’ll take it.”

  “I don’t know why I bother telling you anything, seeing as you never listen to me,” said Rosa Jean, “but if you take my advice, you won’t try anything fishy so long as Quincy’s around here. I might as well tell you—he didn’t just come up here to hunt horses. He’s a bounty hunter.”

  Charlie assimilated this information with lifted eyebrows, but with somewhat less surprise than Rosa Jean had expected. “Huh,” he said after a minute. “I’ll be dogged. Reckon that kind of explains some things, though.”

  Rosa Jean looked up. “What things?”

  “Oh, this thing an’ that. He asks questions sometimes. Is he after the Dugan gang?”

  Rosa Jean stared at him, momentarily stunned by his matter-of-factness. Charlie knew too? “Why would you say that?”

  “Well, I don’t see why he’d be so all-fired cagey about tracking anyone else,” said Charlie. “Now I think of it, he was awful interested in side canyons an’ such when we was up in the mountains. Like he was looking for a place that could be a hideout. It’d explain why he was so interested in old man Sullivan’s place, too, though I coulda told him there was nothin’ in that.”

  A tiny prickle of something—premonition—intuition—stirred down inside Rosa Jean. On the outside, however, nothing was different about her face or voice as she said, “Why? What’d he say about Sullivan’s?”

  “Oh, he never said nothin’ to us. But we stopped twice there for water when we was after the herd, and he was forever hangin’ round talking to the old man, and seemed real interested in his old shack. Wirt said somethin’ the other day about Quincy askin’ him things about the old man, too. But he’s sure on the wrong trail. That old man’s so batty nobody could trust him to keep a secret—I misdoubt he could remember a secret long enough to keep it, the way he gets folks’ faces mixed up. Nobody as smart as Dugan’s gonna trust him with knowing what they’re up to or where they might be hiding out.”

  Rosa Jean nodded slowly, only half knowing she was doing it. An idea had showed itself in her brain, and then danced back out of reach—but the flicker was still there, just outside her reach, and if she concentrated long enough she might see it again. The old man—something Charlie had said—

  Charlie seemed to have talked himself back into a better humor, and saw nothing of her abstraction. “Well, if Hob don’t show by morning I guess I’ll ride out and see if I can find him. Tell him maybe it ain’t such a good idea to come up here—’specially since we ain’t sold our horses yet. Say, Rosa Jean, you making any more pie for supper?”

  “Yes,” said Rosa Jean slowly, “yes, I think so.”

  “Good! Well, I’ll be going.”

  Somehow he and his noisy voice and presence were out of the house, and Rosa Jean hastily closed the door behind him. She wanted to think. She felt she had been given the key to a riddle, if only she could pick it out of everything else jumbled in Charlie’s speech. She went in and sat on the edge of her bed, one hand on either side of her, and stared at the opposite wall.

  No one else had shared her theory of the mountain hideout—until Quincy Burnett. Quincy, who manifestly knew what he was doing, had showed a definite interest in old man Sullivan’s shack. But there was nothing there. Rosa Jean had been in that shack once with Bruce. It was one shabby little room with bare plank walls, built against the cliff and on top of stone—there was no way it could mask the secret entrance to anything. There was nowhere for an outlaw gang to hide their horses in that exposed little canyon, open to the sky and views from the cliff-tops. There was no trustworthy accomplice there, only a muddle-headed little old man who every day shambled down the trail to chip at the stone walls in his played-out old mine—

  The mine.

  Rosa Jean thought her heart stopped beating for a moment. The old silver mine.

  Could it be?

  A mine ten years old, no doubt with half a dozen abandoned shafts and passages—one of which just might have been extended with a little labor by some shrewd outlaws to open on some undiscovered canyon on the other side. A mine whose timbered entrance down by the rock-walled trail could not be seen from the shack, nor, undoubtedly, from the cliffs above it. And an old man who couldn’t keep a secret, who couldn’t remember a secret long enough to keep it—better than a trusted conspirator, for he knew the secret and yet knew nothing at all.

  What better camouflage than a wavering, senile, half-deaf old man who couldn’t remember names or faces? He would never remember who came to his shack or what they did
there, or the times they had come and gone. No sheriff would place any value on his testimony. He had been given a pass because he was harmless and ineffectual, and his very harmlessness made him valuable to Ralph Dugan and his gang.

  The conviction of her theory brought Rosa Jean to her feet—and then she stopped. What had her first impulse been? Tell Quincy? He already held half the key to the riddle in his own hands; he had acknowledged her correct instincts regarding the whereabouts of the gang’s hideout—he would see the whole thing at once.

  But that was all wrong. Quincy had no part in this—no part in the sleepless nights of aching head and heart and planning for the moment it would all be paid back. Once share the task with him, and the quest for vengeance would no longer belong to her, as it still belonged now. And how could she be sure he would not take the final prize from her as well? He was only a bounty hunter, with a ticket to five thousand dollars in his pocket. Much easier to kill a wanted man on sight—and then Ralph Dugan would never know that it was Bruce Kennedy’s murder which had caught up with him at last.

  Rosa Jean’s teeth clenched. He could have told me. He took me to task for wanting to do it all myself, but he didn’t want anyone interfering with his plans, did he!

  Had Quincy been at the Kennedy place at the hour all this transpired, things might have been different. In the first agitation of her discovery, Rosa Jean might have swallowed her pride and gone to him after all. But he was not there, and she had time to think twice. For a few hours at least she was ahead of him on Dugan’s trail, at least until he got back to the Kennedy place and within reach of Charlie’s careless blabbering. She could wait—or she could use the time herself.

  It didn’t have to be revenge. She didn’t have to kill Dugan herself. She could put him into the hands of the law, and throw Quincy’s accusations back in his teeth. But for that, she had to have proof. The sheriff of Gorham Gulch would never go up and poke about in old man Sullivan’s mine merely on the strength of a girl’s wild theory.

  If she could only have a look at the mine herself—if she could find evidence of horses being taken in there or a passage being extended—those would be physical clues whose existence the sheriff could not overlook. It would be enough to coerce him into making the search.

  The coming storm had darkened the sky outside so that it was almost like night in the house. The oil lamp in the wall bracket burned feebly, looking ill at ease in an atmosphere that was not quite night or day. Rosa Jean walked back and forth across the floor, her head bent and her arms folded. She had to have an excuse—a reason to go. For what she had in mind it was necessary that she come face to face with the old man and anybody else who might be up there with him. She had to carry it off as natural if she expected to come back alive.

  Rosa Jean paused and stood looking for a moment at a basket hanging on its peg beside her apron. She was remembering the assay officer’s wife whom she had seen in Gorham Gulch—old man Sullivan’s daughter—and her little girls in pigtails and calico pinafores—remembered the woman talking ruefully of her father’s obstinate habits, and how he hardly knew her when she took him up provisions, much less knew his grandchildren—

  Rosa Jean turned and went quickly into her bedroom and shut the door behind her. She pulled the hairpins from the knot of hair at the nape of her neck and let its long dark length fall, and began to unfasten the back of her dress. She changed into an old short skirt that came above her ankles, an old print blouse that made her thin chest look even flatter, and brushed her hair out and braided it in two long pigtails on either side of her face. She stared into her small mirror, trying to practice an expression with eyes open in childish unconcern and unawareness. With the severe youthful lines of her face, the pigtails, and the right expression, she thought she could pass for fourteen at least.

  She came out and took the basket from its nail and brought it to the kitchen, where she lined it with a napkin and rapidly added what odds and ends of food she could find—a few glass jars of preserves and vegetables, half a pie left over from supper. As she covered them with the ends of the napkin her mind was still thrumming agitatedly. An independent visit to her grandfather on the mountain was the sort of escapade an adventurous child might undertake. If old Sullivan was muddled by the appearance of a granddaughter he could not remember, that was only natural—it had happened before.

  Rosa Jean put the filled basket on the table and went into her room again. She slid open the top drawer of the bureau—the revolver was there under her folded nightdresses. She put her hand in and her fingers slid around the grip and the cold trigger guard.

  I’m not going up there to kill anybody. I’m not going for revenge. I’m not.

  She jerked the gun out and shut the drawer with a sharp bang, and went back to the front room. She hid the gun deep in her basket, underneath the pie, wadded up in the folds of the checked napkin. It would be foolish to go unarmed—but the gun was only for a last emergency.

  She pulled her faded red calico kerchief from its peg and put it over her head, tying it at the back of her neck. Then she reached up and turned down the lamp. As the flame went slowly down, leaving her standing in the gray storm-dark, for the first time Rosa Jean quailed at what lay ahead of her. The mountains loomed large; the climb to the isolated shack under threatening, darkening clouds looked lonely and alarming. If only Quincy was there—

  Rosa Jean’s lips trembled, but once again her native stubbornness lifted her chin and straightened her shoulders. She had made her choice. She was going through with it.

  A glance from the window showed no sign of Charlie or Wirt. They were probably in the bunkhouse. With her basket on her arm Rosa Jean slipped out of the house, closed the door, and ran for the barn, her heart beating erratically as she went and the jars in the basket clinking against each other. Inside the barn she put the basket down, pulled the door most of the way closed, and saddled Pheasant with chilly fingers in the gloom. The only thing she had to worry about was being spotted as she slipped away, for she had no desire to make explanations to those two in the bunkhouse. Even they might think this exploit was too outrageous and try to stop her going. But there was no window on the side of the bunkhouse facing the mountain, so if she circled around behind the barn and slipped through that way she might get past unobserved.

  She managed it. She led Pheasant partway down the pasture, far enough so that the sound of hoofs would not carry back, and then mounted. She held the basket on her arm close against her, trying to balance it so the jars would not be jolted so much by the horse’s gait, and nudged Pheasant with her heels.

  In five minutes they were climbing from the pasture onto the mountain trail. Rosa Jean looked up—the gray clouds, layered thickly in different shades, boiled swiftly behind the darkened red peaks. But the trail was well marked, and if she kept to it she would reach her destination sooner or later. And then—?

  Rosa Jean pushed the question out of sight. She had no room left for anything but the burning ache in her heart and mind that was driving her upwards, leading her into the heart of the storm.

  VIII.

  Quincy arrived home in the gray afternoon, in a calmer frame of mind than he had departed the day before. The long solitary ride from Gorham Gulch had given him plenty of time to think and reflect. He had not entirely sorted out his thoughts as regarded his feelings toward Rosa Jean, but he knew that it was somehow important to him to mend the breach between them. Whatever came next—as yet he was not sure—that was important.

  Quincy unsaddled his horse and turned it into the corral, stowed his saddle and the coils of new rope in the barn, and then looked toward the house. He was of two minds whether to go up there right away. Rosa Jean might think he was making a pest of himself, coming back as soon as he returned, or if he went straight off to the bunkhouse she might think he was deliberately ignoring her. Quincy chose being regarded as a pest as the lesser of two evils, and started for the house.

  The door was shut and the window
dark. Quincy knocked at the door, a deferential knock. He waited—there was no answer.

  After a minute he knocked again, even more deferentially, if possible. Had Rosa Jean seen the abashed humility of his expression then, as he stood with his head bent slightly and one ear tilted toward the door to listen, she could hardly have resisted him. But after a moment a slight frown stole over Quincy’s face, and he lifted his head and looked at the door. There did not seem to be any sound at all inside. He leaned to one side and tried to look through the front window, but the dark within and the grayness of clouds reflected on the glass obscured his view.

  He knocked again, a little louder. “Rosa Jean?” he said.

  There was no answer. Quincy put his hand on the doorknob—a premonition, much like the one that had made Rosa Jean unfold the wanted poster, made him turn it. He opened the door and stepped in. The house was dark—there was no fire in the kitchen stove. The door to Rosa Jean’s bedroom was open, and a glance showed Quincy she was not there. Some clothes lay tumbled on the bed as if she had changed them in a hurry.

  With premonition ticking quickly in his mind like an alarm clock, Quincy left the house, banging the door behind him, and walked quickly to the barn. Rosa Jean’s gray gelding was gone, and a saddle. After the one glance around that told him this, Quincy left the barn door to swing closed and headed for the bunkhouse.

  Charlie and Wirt were sitting on either side of the table with a game of checkers between them. Quincy closed the bunkhouse door behind him as thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance, and stood for a moment looking from one to the other. They were bent over the game and did not look as though they had noticed anything wrong.