Despite Ma’s final, tearful pleas to take the thirty thousand dollars, Meldrum and me rode out at long before daybreak, the saddlebags draped across the front of my saddle bulging—but with torn-up newspapers, not money.
We rode in silence for an hour; then Meldrum reined up his horse and hooked a long leg over the saddle horn. After he’d lit the cigarette, he eased a crick in his back and said: “Dusty, this is where we part company.”
“What do you have in mind?” I asked.
“I’m going to loop around and injun up to the cabin before it gets light,” he answered. “I’ll stash my horse a ways from the cabin and come up on the place on foot. Maybe, if we’re real lucky, when Wingo comes out to parley, if he does, I’ll get me a chance to nail him.”
I shook my head. “It’s thin, mighty thin.”
“Got a better idea?”
Meldrum’s face under his hat brim was deep in shadow, and only when he drew on his cigarette and the tip glowed brighter did red light touch his beak of a nose and the planes of his high cheekbones.
I sat in silence, thinking things through, then said:
“Jim, I’ve got nothing better. Your plan may not be nickel plated, but right now it’s the only plan we have.”
“Uh-huh, figured that,” the puncher said. He sat his horse and I could feel his eyes on me. “Dusty, you may get lucky and Wingo will leave his rifle behind. He outdrawed you once, and maybe with his gunman’s pride an’ all he’ll figure to do it again.” Then, echoing what Bass Reeves had told me: “Just remember this, don’t fall down the first time you’re hit. Take the hits, stay on your feet and keep shooting back for as long as you’re able.” I heard Meldrum’s low, humorless chuckle. “You may not be fast enough to outdraw ol’ Lafe, but maybe you can outlast him.”
I nodded, but realizing Meldrum couldn’t see my head move in the darkness, said: “I’ll remember.” Right then I was mighty in need of reassurance, but Jim Meldrum, being a practical man, had not offered any, figuring he’d only be speaking weightless words, like so many dry leaves blowing in the wind.
We sat our horses until Meldrum finished his smoke, then built and smoked another.
Finally he shoved his boot back into the stirrup and touched the brim of his hat. “Buena suerte, mi amigo.”
“You too, Jim. Good luck.”
Meldrum swung his horse away and we parted company. I took the dim trail toward Lila’s cabin under a dark, moonless sky with the night crowding around me close and warm as a cloak. The air smelled of grass and wildflowers, and I heard no voices. The night birds had long since ceased to call and even the coyotes had fallen silent.
When I was still a fifteen-minute ride from the cabin, I swung out of the saddle and stepped down in a stand of mixed juniper and mesquite by the side of a dry wash. I unsaddled the dun and watched him roll and then I fetched up to a rock near the wash and set my back to it. It was still shy of daybreak and maybe five hours until noon, so I closed my eyes, determined to catch up on some badly needed sleep.
The breeze whispered through the junipers and set them to rustling and the dun cropped grass, every now and then blowing through his nose. Somewhere an owl hooted, throwing no echo as the human voice does, and then the land closed in on itself again and became quiet.
Drowsily, I thought of Lila and her smile and there was a deep longing in me for her. What was she doing right now, as the clouds peeled back from the moon and the stars began to appear?
She was with Lafe Wingo!
Sleep fled from me, the thought chilling me to the bone. Wingo used and abused women like he did his horses, breaking them to his will with the whip. Was that even now happening to Lila?
I rose to my feet, filled with despair and impotent rage. I looked up and searched the moonlit heavens—and found only the cold, distant and aloof stars.
And no comfort.
Chapter 23
At daybreak I rose and stretched, working the stiffness out of my muscles. Mr. Fullerton had packed me a thick steak sandwich and a bottle of ginger beer and I ate and drank and then built a cigarette.
The scattering of butts around my feet grew in number as the morning progressed, and just before noon I saddled the dun and headed for the cabin.
Around me the wild land was being hammered into submission by the sun. The only living thing I saw was a tiny antelope fawn that limped from the thin shelter of a mesquite bush and hobbled quickly away from me, a wounded, stricken thing destined only for death.
I rode on, strangely disturbed. Maybe the fawn was an animal of ill omen, a warning to turn back. But that was something I could not do, my fate, for good or ill, as preordained and as inevitable as that of the fawn.
When the cabin came in view, Lafe Wingo’s horse was tethered outside, but I saw nothing of him or Lila.
I swung out of the saddle and took up my rifle and the saddlebags, choosing to go the rest of the way on foot, keeping to what little cover I could find.
When I was about a hundred yards from the cabin, I stopped beside a stunted juniper and yelled: “Wingo!”
A few moments of silence passed. Then the cabin door opened a crack and Wingo called out: “Did you bring the money?”
I held the saddlebags high enough so Wingo could see them clear.
“Come on in,” the gunman hollered. “And leave the damn Winchester behind.”
I propped the rifle against the branches of the juniper and walked slowly toward the cabin. Moving my head as little as possible I glanced around, but saw no sign of Jim Meldrum.
Sweat trickled down my back and my insides were knotted up with fear. I was out in the open and Wingo could gun me from the cabin window if he had a mind to.
But that concern was laid to rest when the big gunman, as brutal and arrogant as ever, stepped outside the cabin, holding Lila close to him.
The girl was deathly pale and a huge red bruise swelled angrily on her left cheekbone. Even from where I stood I could see that her eyes were haunted, circled by dark shadows.
I badly wanted to draw down on Wingo right then, but he was partly shielded by Lila and I couldn’t take the chance of hitting her.
Wingo waved me forward. “Boy, get close enough to throw them saddlebags and then step back,” he said.
I did as he told me and threw the saddlebags at his feet. I reckoned this might be my chance to get him in the clear, but he held Lila even closer as he bent and picked them up.
The gunman said something to Lila I couldn’t hear, and the girl undid the rawhide ties of the bags and opened them. Wingo inclined his head and looked inside, and I saw the anger rise scarlet and immediate on his cheeks.
“Boy,” he said, turning his cold eyes in my direction, “this was ill done.” He threw Lila away from him and she sprawled heavily on the grass.
“I told you I’d kill you, boy, and now I will,” Wingo said, his hand close to his gun. “And after you’re dead, I’ll go get the damned money my ownself.”
He smiled, a cruel, vicious sneer. “Want me to tell you what I did to your woman last night, boy? Want me to tell you how much she enjoyed it?”
I knew what Wingo was doing. He was trying to keep me off balance, get me so riled up I couldn’t think or shoot straight.
And he might have succeeded, because I was about to go for my gun—but Jim Meldrum chose that moment to make his play.
Rightly or wrongly, Meldrum lived by the unwritten code of the riverboat gambler and Southern gentleman. As the code dictated, he would not shoot at Wingo before calling him out. And he did that now.
The lanky puncher rose quickly out of the grass, his rifle in his hands, and yelled: “Wingo!”
Drawing as he turned, Wingo’s gun came up with incredible speed. His shot roared a split second later and Meldrum, hit hard, took a step back, his rifle spinning away from him.
I made my draw as Meldrum went for his holstered Colt. Years without practice had taken its toll. He was slow, way too slow. His gun was still cleari
ng the leather when Wingo shot him again.
Wingo didn’t wait to see Meldrum fall. He swung toward me, a triumphant grin stretching his mouth under his sweeping mustache. The Colt in my fist hammered and the gunman jerked as my bullet hit him. Wingo triggered his own gun. A miss. The lead sang past my left ear. I fired again and Wingo, hit a second time, staggered a couple of steps back and slammed against the cabin wall, his eyes wide with shock and disbelief. He had not expected me to be any kind of gunfighter and now I was reading to him from the Book. With growing horror, Wingo must have realized that the error of his ways was being writ loud and clear—in hot lead.
Her face pale and scared, Lila suddenly ran toward me and I yelled: “No, Lila! Go back!”
Wingo fired. Lila took the bullet, cried out, spun around, then fell.
My Colt hammered again. And again. Both bullets found their mark and blood splashed scarlet over the front of Wingo’s buckskin shirt. The gunman shrieked his rage and staggered toward me, trying to raise a Colt that suddenly seemed too heavy for him.
“You . . . you . . .” he mumbled, his eyes wild, his lips peeling back from his teeth in a savage snarl.
I felt as cold as ice. I raised my gun to eye level, sighted, and fired.
The bullet crashed into the middle of Wingo’s forehead and blew out the back of his skull, an obscene halo of blood and brain erupting scarlet in the air around him.
The gunman rose up on his toes, his eyes rolled back in his head, and then he crashed to the ground on his face.
I holstered my smoking Colt and ran to Lila, dropping on one knee beside her. She’d been hit in the back, high on her left shoulder and the bullet had gone all the way through, coming out just below her collarbone.
“Lila,” I said, “can you hear me?”
The girl opened her eyes, and to my surprise, she managed a weak smile. “Carry me into my home, Dusty,” she whispered.
I gathered Lila in my arms and carried her inside and laid her gently on the bunk, then sat beside her.
“Lila, I need to get you to the SP,” I said, brushing a strand of hair away from her face. “We have to find you a doctor.”
She nodded. “But take time first, Dusty,” she said. “Take time to bury Jim Meldrum.”
“I can do that later,” I said. “Jim is dead, and you’re still alive. He would understand that your need comes first.”
Lila shook her head. “Bury him, Dusty. Don’t leave him to lie out here.” She looked at me, her eyes pleading. “Jim died trying to save me. Years from now, I want to know that he lies here, that I did right by him.”
“But you’re losing blood, Lila,” I protested. “We don’t have time.”
“I’ll be all right,” the girl said. “Take time, Dusty. Jim was a brave man. Bury him right. Please, Dusty, do it for me.”
I rose slowly to my feet, knowing further argument was useless. “I’ll do it, Lila. I’ll bury him right, the way you say.”
There was a question I had to ask, nagging at me like a bad toothache, yet I feared to ask it. But it was not the question I feared—it was the answer.
“Lila,” I said, picking my words carefully, like a man chooses stepping-stones across a fast-running brook, “last night, did Wingo do anything. I mean, did he . . . ?”
“Dusty,” Lila said, her voice slashing across mine like a knife, “don’t ask me that question. As long as you live, never ask me that question again.”
I looked into her eyes and saw no anger, only a world of pain and hurt. It was plain that the hurt went deep, deep into Lila’s soul, everything that made her a woman scarred and cut about with terrible wounds that would be slow to heal, if they ever did. It was a pain I had never experienced, and thus I could only guess at its intensity, knowing I would always fall far short of the appalling reality.
Me, I looked into Lila’s eyes and saw all the answer to my question I’d ever need.
For a fleeting moment, I thought about getting on my horse and running away from all this, from Lila, from the SP Connected, from Texas, never taking a single glance back.
But I knew I would not.
I believed I was falling in love with this woman, and now I had some fast growing up to do. Lila needed a man, now more than ever, not a boy. Was I yet that man?
I could not find it in me to answer that question.
Gently, with much care, I took Lila in my arms and held her close. We clung to each other, neither of us finding any words to say. If I could, I would have turned back time and made things as they once were, but that was impossible. What was done was done, and now I would have to deal with it. To worry over what had happened would not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It would only empty today of its joy.
Finally, I kissed Lila and rose to my feet.
As I walked to the door, she said: “Do right by him, Dusty.”
I nodded, and stepped outside into the bright day.
Like me, Jim Meldrum bore an ancient name and the old fighting Celtic blood ran strong in him. He was a warrior and he would be laid to rest like one.
I laid his body across the saddle of the dun and led the horse to a quiet spot far enough away from the cabin. Gently, I lifted Jim off the horse and stretched him out on the grass.
That done, I rode back to the cabin and roped Wingo’s feet. Him I dragged back to the place I’d chosen and then I returned again to the cabin. I found Jim Meldrum’s rifle and Wingo’s Colt and these I kept with me.
There was a shovel in a small shed behind the cabin, but before I dug graves I had yet one thing more to do. I stepped inside, with Lila’s troubled eyes following me, and found what I’d hoped to find, a shallow bowl made of brick-colored Indian earthenware.
Wordlessly, I went back outside again and carried all the things I’d found to the spot where I’d left the bodies.
I dug Jim’s grave as deep as I could. Because of the thin, rocky soil, the task took me the best part of two hours. Then I dug Wingo’s, shallower, placed next to Jim’s to form the base of an inverted T.
Sweating, I took off my shirt, then kneeled beside Wingo’s body. Piece by piece, ending with the emerald ring on his finger, I stripped him of his gaudy silver finery, his necklace, the silver bracelets around his wrists. I laid all of it in the earthenware bowl and set it aside.
That done, I took my knife and cut the fancy buck-skins off Wingo, leaving him stark naked, his staring eyes looking up at a blue sky he could not see. Then I threw him into his grave.
Jim Meldrum I buried in the ancient way, as befitted a fallen Celtic warrior. I laid him out with his arms—his Colt revolvers, rifle and knife—and I placed the bowl of his enemy’s silver on his chest, the better to pay his way as he made his long journey to the netherworld.
Then I covered both graves with the good Texas earth, caught up my horse and returned to the cabin.
Lila, looking very pale, sat up on the bunk as I came in. “Did you do right by him, Dusty?” she asked.
I nodded. “I buried Jim Meldrum as befits a warrior, with his weapons. And I laid a dog at his feet.”
“Then I’m satisfied,” Lila said, sinking back into her pillow.
I stepped to the bunk, took up Lila in my arms and carried her out to my horse.
All the way back to the SP, she lay like a child in my arms, sleeping, her head on my chest. And as we proceeded on our journey, I kissed her hair, not once but many times.
Ma cried bitter tears for Jim Meldrum when we arrived at the ranch, then tempered her grief by fussing over Lila like a mother hen.
She had me carry Lila to the best room in the house, a spacious bed chamber on the ground level, the windows shaded by the porch and a huge, spreading oak tree where crows gathered in winter.
Ma insisted I get a doctor, if one could be found, but Charlie Fullerton was outraged by the very idea.
“I’ve treated more bullet wounds than any young whippersnapper of a doctor,” he told Ma. “And I ain’t never lost a shot-up puncher yet.”
“Mr. Fullerton,” Ma said, reasonably, “Lila is no puncher. In case you haven’t noticed, she’s a girl.”
“Well,” Charlie said, “it makes no never mind. I ain’t lost one o’ them either.”
As it happened, even Ma had to admit that a doctor could not have done better than Charlie. He cleaned Lila’s wounds, spread them with one of his mysterious salves and bound them up with a neat bandage.
“It feels better already,” Lila said.
I don’t know if she meant it, but it pleased Charlie enormously. “Told you so,” he said to Ma, grinning.
“Ain’t nobody knows more than Charlie Fullerton about doctoring.”
When Charlie left the room, Ma turned to me and said: “Dusty, go wait in the parlor for a spell. I want to talk to Lila alone.”
Ma Prather was with Lila a long time, and when she reappeared, her face was strained and guarded. “She’s sleeping now, Dusty,” she said.
Charlie brought us coffee and Ma said: “Dusty, I know how you love to smoke. Let’s take our coffee outside.”
We stepped onto the porch, my spurs chiming, and sat in the same rockers that Lila and me had sat in the night Deke Stockton was killed. Ma was very quiet, sipping her coffee as the day slowly died around us and the sky caught fire.
I rolled a smoke and lit the cigarette, knowing Ma would talk when she felt like it.
Finally, she turned to me and said: “Dusty, that girl is going to need a lot of care.” She waved a hand at me. “Oh, I don’t mean her shoulder wound—Charlie Fullerton can fix that—I’m talking about her deeper wounds, the ones that are much harder to heal.”
Me, I searched around for the right words, failed to find them and kept silent.
Ma and Lila had talked, and being a woman, Ma understood the depth of Lila’s pain much more than
I ever could.
Ma waited long to hear if I’d speak, but I busied myself by rolling another cigarette.
“Do you love her, Dusty?” she asked finally.
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