by Lauran Paine
He watched her hasten down the pole ladder, heard the solid footfalls as she left the barn. Then he moved, also, but more slowly and ponderously. He found a saddle and a chunky bay mare. While he worked, strength began to return. By the time she was back—with an oversize wool Mackinaw around her—he had the horses ready. She shot him only a brief stare, then grabbed at the mare’s reins and started for the barn’s rear doorway afoot. He followed.
“Stay close!” she called, and he moved faster.
They went like phantoms, he with a great shambling gait that was half walk, half trot, she with the strong power of her fear, darkly, silently enduring, stoically suffering from want of air and with a strange giddiness in her head, but never slowing until they were part way up the land swell, well away from the barn. Then she stopped and gazed backward. He heard the sob catch in her throat. The rain had stopped altogether now. There remained only dismal grayness and a misty drizzle. The day was warm. He, too, looked back. The house of her parents and the rough-hewn barn looked unreal with mist swirling around them. The air revived him fully. His hands grew hot with sweat and the sourness of his agitation made the horses roll their eyes, snort, and bunch up.
“Let’s ride,” she said, and sprang up.
He watched her mount with a hardness in his throat, then he mounted and pushed up beside her. They breasted the hill and he took the lead—westward.
“No,” she said. “The other way. South!”
His face swung toward her in blurred softness. “Ann, I can’t … I can’t run off and leave Zeke and the old man to face things alone.”
Nor would argument sway him. Desperation poured out of her until she caught the acidity of his profile, then she became silent.
After a time he turned toward her. “I want you to understand, Ann. I never knew anybody before that I thought would understand.”
There was a blind allegiance in his look that stilled her. Dammed behind her teeth were words of desperation that rang like flutes in her mind. Why must he be so weak? Why must his paw have such an iron hold on him?
“You understand …?”
“I understand,” she replied, fighting nausea. “I understand a lot better than you do, Lee. I love you … I’m willing to run away with you … unmarried even. And you’re taking me back to that sheep camp.”
“No, Ann, we’ll go.” There grew a softness in his voice. “We’ll have things right … you’ll see.”
Cottonwood Creek came up out of the mist. It was over its banks and rumbling in full throat. He reined up. Her troubled eyes, shades darker than usual, followed its southward twisting a moment before she spoke.
“We’ll have to go to the narrows. Maybe we can cross there.”
They swung south paralleling the twisted and quivering willow breaks, tall and swaying in the murk. Beyond, through the sedge they could see the creek all dark and oily with a pale miasmic cloudiness above it.
Heaven broke up in mottled spots and beyond, farther out, was clean blue sky. The storm had passed; in time the sun would come. Underfoot the ground steamed. Their horses, passing over it, made the only sound excepting the low hissing of the creek. The hours slipped by.
Lee rode ahead in a brooding way, his face sad and wistful-looking. He swayed with the saddle, lost among a tumbling bramble of thoughts. Then the sun came out, a gigantic smoldering disc of it all, pale and swollen. Heat came, too, oppressive heat full of earth scent and humidity.
It was Ann who broke the long silence. She drew up, pointing downward. “There … fresh tracks, Lee.”
He looked. Around each shod-horse imprint dark soil was crumbling. “Can’t be very old,” he said.
“Nor very far ahead. Now will you branch off?”
“I can’t.”
She followed after when he pushed on. They did not stop again until he saw a faint twisting of horsemen far ahead, off to their right near higher ground.
“Riders, Ann.”
“Yes.”
Her voice was toneless and her gaze, like his, was fixed on distant movement. She trembled and he saw it.
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know. Fright I reckon.”
“Could they be the men with your paw?”
“I hope not. I don’t know. It’s too far …”
“Who were they, Ann?”
“Cowmen,” she replied in the same toneless way. “Charley Simpson … Dade … I didn’t pay much attention. There were about eight of them.” Her gaze returned to his face. “Then it didn’t matter … I didn’t care. Lee?”
“Yes.”
“The creek’s been turning easterly for the last hour or so. The farther we follow it the closer it’ll take us to Union City. Listen to me. There’s nothing but cattlemen on this side. Please, Lee … let’s swim it and keep going south. Please …”
He continued to gaze where the horsemen had vanished into a thin stand of second-growth pine. “It might be Indians,” he mused, ignoring her plea. It was the first time in his life the notion of Indians was a relief to his mind.
She dashed the hope: “On shod horses?”
He gathered the reins without looking at her. “Ride down in here,” he said, and urged his reluctant mount in among water-lapped willows. “Less chance they’ll see us.”
They wound among the willows with branches stinging their faces until the fetid heat and the difficulty their animals had holding footing drove them back out again.
“Wait here,” said Lee. “I’ll take another look.”
“We’ll both look.” She rode past him out into the open so that he had no chance to argue.
The land sloped gently away from them toward distant lifts and rises. Sparkling sunlight reflected from each south slope with hurting brilliance. He stood in his stirrups, catching movement again. “Looks like they’re cutting down in front of us, Ann.”
“Where? Can you see them?”
“Yonder. Up that timbered side hill to the left.” He dropped down. “I’ll go closer. If they keep on, they’ll cut us off.”
Without speaking, she kept her horse even with his as they moved carefully forward. While he was squinting ahead, she cast a careless glance over her shoulder—and a gust of breath burst from her. He turned quickly, struck by this instinctive sound of alarm.
“What? What is it?”
“Look back there. It’s more riders, Lee. Behind us. Coming along the creek … like they’re tracking …”
He was galvanized to action. While his horse spun away from the creek, he called to her: “Come on … back up the creek, then make for those trees on the bluff!”
As they loped down their back trail, he twisted from time to time for a backward look, and finally there was terror in him. They could not escape. As soon as they broke cover and made for the timber, they would be seen. Fear choked him. His body grew oily under its clothing. The same horror must have touched Ann because suddenly she drew up.
“Come on!” he called, slowing.
“They’ll see us, Lee!”
“No matter now … we can’t stay here.”
“Lee wait. Please wait …”
He yanked back, staring at her. She was watching the distant riders. Her face had gone deathly pale and she was biting her underlip as though in pain.
“Ann,” he cried out desperately, “you want to see me hung? Look how they’re working the willows, riding slow and all. They’re after us.” Impatience made him reach for her reins. “Come on!”
She booted the chunky mare out behind him. For a short distance they rode stirrup-to-stirrup. Over the dull smash of hoofs on sodden earth she cried: “It can’t be a posse, Lee, how could they be here so fast?”
“Right now I don’t care how,” he answered from ashen lips. “If we can make those trees, we stand a chance.”
They whirle
d clear of the willows and struck out in a belly-down run. At that moment someone fired a pistol. Lee swiveled in his saddle. The men who had been tracking them were dismounting where the tracks went into the water. The pistol shot had been a signal for the larger body of riders to come up. They were turning back from their bisecting angle toward the creek when the fugitives broke out of the willows. Instantly Lee saw men flourish carbines and jump out their horses. They had been seen.
“Lee …!”
“I see. Ride for it!”
They rode hard but in that muggy heat a horse could not endure the pace long and they had to slow long before the trees could be reached. They alternated between a slamming gallop and an even more agonized trot. Just as the trees came up close, Lee made a long sweep of the land behind them. The trackers were no longer in sight but the larger party of riders was after them in full throat. Even as he watched, one horse went end over end in the treacherous mud, throwing his rider like a pinwheel through the air. The others did not stop.
They got into the trees only to discover there was no succor there; the sparsest kind of timber grew only atop the ridge. Beyond was open country again, spotted now and then by brush clumps. Lee did not look back again. This was unknown land to him. He concentrated on picking their course, hoping that by bending south he could bypass the large body of posse men.
“Lee!”
He looked around. Ann was gasping; her face was beaded with sweat and her eyes were closed so tightly that water had been squeezed out around them. He slowed.
“What is it?”
“I’m sick.”
“Oh, God, you can’t be.”
“You keep going,” she said with her eyes closed, clinging to the saddle horn, and going lower with each slamming jar of her racing horse.
He drew back and closed in, put out a hand to steady her. They rode down the steaming land that way with the lemon-yellow sun overhead. It slowed them considerably and coming on behind them, larger now, were the men from the creek. Horses fresher and running hard. She began to slip sideways. He could not right her until they stopped. A fierce push set her back astraddle.
Still with her eyes pinched closed she said: “Keep going, Lee.” The words were nearly throttled by locked jaws. “Just keep going. Please, Lee …”
“I don’t want to leave you, Ann.”
“They don’t want … me. Go on, Lee. Hurry!” Her eyes flew open, swimming in agony and half rational.
“No,” he said sharply, and led her horse in the gradual descent back toward the creek, senseless to the fact that he was making straight for the larger band of riders.
Far ahead he saw something shimmering and thought it might be some form of hope. Then the shimmering turned to a many-spiked gleam of sunlight off metal, and consciousness warned him it was armed men riding with their guns naked and upraised. He was trying to clear his mind of cloudiness when the chunky mare stumbled. He looked around just in time to see Ann fall, to hear her body strike hard with a soggy thump.
He leaped down, holding both their reins. “Ann! Ann! For God’s sake get up.” He slapped her face. Sweat fell from his chin onto her blouse, staining it with darkness. “Ann …!”
A distant strident yell came softly.
He struggled upright and faced them. They were coming from both directions and the sharp glitter of guns was like silver. The long cry was repeated. They were slowing now, coming toward him steadily, and although they did not know why he was standing there above the crumpled form in the mud, you could see in the way they rode, straight up and wire tight, that they were savoring grim victory.
“Lee … please go on.”
She was gazing straight up into his face from the shade of his big right leg, wide-planted. Her underlip was bleeding where she’d bitten through it.
“No!”
“You must. You’ve got to.”
He kneeled swiftly with his back to the line of horsemen fanning out. “I’ll carry you.”
He got his arms under her, heaved upright, and although she was strangely light against the massive bunching of his muscles, his heart beat nigh to bursting. She stared into his face and a great welter of tears broke and ran down her cheeks.
Some way he got back into the saddle and kicked the beast forward in a shambling trot. The chunky mare tagged along, reins dragging in the mud. There was complete futility to it and even in her semiconscious condition Ann knew it, even if he refused to accept it.
He was well within carbine range now and the flatness of a gunshot brought him back to reason. The riders were coming up fast in front and behind, and his horse was laboring heavily. He stumbled, too, frequently, and sucked in air like wind whistling through a too-small hole. The man looked at the burden in his arms. He saw the heroic staunchness of her in his dimming heart and choked over words that rasped in his throat. The horse fell heavily almost with a sigh and it was over.
He sat in the mud, cradling her head in his lap. There was blood running from his left ear; its stickiness ran under his collar and mingled with sweat.
The first rider to come up yanked back with one hand and leveled a Dragoon pistol with the other. His face was burned red-brown around a graceful sweep of curling moustache.
“Get up, damn you! Stand up!”
“I can’t.”
The big pistol wavered. Other riders came plodding up, staring downward.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.” He touched Ann’s face with muddy fingers. “She is.”
“Leave her be and stand up!”
They swung down and scattered out around him, their faces flushed and hard. He recognized several of them. He put her head down gently and stood upright.
The other riders were now approaching. A man said: “Plenty of trees back up the ridge.” Others echoed approval and a heated discussion ensued during which the second band of horsemen came up and dismounted. Lee saw Charley Simpson’s granite face among them. Near him was his moon-faced son Dade Simpson. Farther back was Lew Foster, Ann’s father. He was pushing through the bunched-up mob.
A second man shouldering past, Lee recognized at once. He was the Union City town marshal, Bob Ander. He wore a rusty black hat and his little eyes were hidden behind folds of perpetually puckered flesh.
“Where are the others?” he demanded of Lee.
“What others?”
“Your paw … your brother … the others who raided XIH this morning. Where are they?”
“I don’t know. I guess maybe they …”
“Yes, you do. You know all right. You wasn’t trying to escape by yourself. Where are they?”
Someone cried out: “Hang the murderin’ devil!” Another voice said: “Better’n that … shoot him right here.”
“Shut up!” Ander ordered in a lashing tone. “Boy, you’d better tell. You split off from ’em, didn’t you? Where did they go?”
“No, I didn’t split off from them. I don’t know where they are. I’m not lying.”
Lew Foster broke through the last rank of posse men, saw his daughter lying at Lee Gorman’s feet, and gave a sharp cry and a forward lurch. He dropped down and gathered the girl against him. Marshal Ander and the others, temporarily averted, looked down.
“What’s wrong with her, Lew?” someone asked quietly. An older man, unfamiliar to Lee, edged up and hunkered down, squinting at Ann’s face in her father’s arms.
Lee lowered his head, also. “She said she was sick.”
The quiet elderly man got back upright stiffly and looked closely at Lee.
Behind Bob Ander a rough voice spoke out: “Let’s take him back to the oaks. Catching one’s better’n catching none.”
Bob Ander swore at them again, but it was the quiet stranger’s voice and words that finally brought silence. It was the dead-calm tone that made his tidings all the heavier. He spoke
like a man who had abandoned ferocity in the face of something too massive to be overcome with anger.
“Yeah, hang him … and what’ll you do with her … leave her and her young ’un? Leave her to watch him kick his life away and mark the child?”
There was a sucked-back silence. From the mud beside Lee Gorman, Lew Foster raised his head slowly. He was as white as death; his eyes were twisted in bulging disbelief.
“Matt,” he croaked, “what the hell are you talking about?”
“Your girl,” the elderly man said gently. “Remember I raised five daughters, Lew. I seen ’em all married, too. You think I don’t know what ails ’em at a time like this? She’s with child, Lew.”
Chapter Six
They took Lee to Union City and jailed him. He did not know what had become of Ann, and when he asked, instead of answers, he got back bleak stares and threatening silence. There was much talk of lynching him. Town Marshal Ander wired the US marshal’s office down in Denver for help. He had his reply. Burt Garner was on his way back to Wyoming Territory.
Lee was locked in a stone room with an iron door and two padlocks. There was a twenty-four-hour guard outside and only Bob Ander could visit him. But Ander did not come, so Lee languished, desperately afraid and lonely, until the night of June 3, a hot, still night without a moon and overcast, oppressively hushed and humid. Then Uriah came.
Zeke was with them. It was Zeke who clubbed down the guard. Shadowy in the middle distance were others—Kant U’Ren, Pete Amaya, Joseph Fawcett, Gaspar Pompa—thirteen of them bristling with knives and guns.
It was a well-planned raid. It was carried off in absolute silence and with split-second timing. Uriah knew how such things were done. He had made no move toward Union City for six long days. It had been necessary for much of the excitement to die away first. Then he had come, leading the others, wraithlike and vengeful, his strange eyes bright with danger and his bloodless slit of a mouth curled in hard triumph.
Nothing went wrong. They had Lee out and on a horse within fifteen minutes of the time they had followed a failing moon into Union City. They left town, not in a run but in a slow and silent walk. The villagers slumbered peacefully around them. They rode far out before Uriah flapped his arms and kicked his mount into a long lope, then they made haste back to the mountains. There, Lee discovered, they had a secret camp cached in the furry crotch of two sentinel hills. There, he got down and watched the others care for their animals, then head for an iron stew pot that was suspended above a smoldering pit between two logs. Zeke came up beside him; he looked older than when last they’d talked. Older and dirtier and tired.