by E. R. Slade
“So,” Riley said, “what did I tell you, Pirate? Follow the girl, I said, and she’d lead us to the gold.”
“Let’s get a move on,” Pirate said impatiently. “Ain’t no gold settin’ around here.”
They rode as fast as their mounts would go, following the clearly visible wagon tracks. When the tracks passed right on by the Rocking B Ranch buildings without even swerving in course, Riley muttered something to himself about “Bingham’s roof, like the devil.”
Then the track went through the gate to the Lazy L Ranch, and into a thicket. Riley pulled up, and the others bunched around, all watching as Riley dismounted and went to look at the ground.
“Stood around a while here, too, them horses did. Pawed the ground up some.” The others hung on his every word. “Looks like two sets of tracks walk away from the wagon, and one set comes back, the bigger tracks. Calloway, that would be. The girl’s likely been left with these here people at the ranch.”
“Or dead down the gulch somewheres,” Pirate commented. “It don’t matter. Looks to me like them wagon ruts is just as deep from here on as from here back.”
“I reckon I agree with you about the tracks, but where do you suppose he’s goin’? And why is she lettin’ him take off with the gold, if’n she’s still alive? I think she is alive too, because why dry-gulch right here practically in these folks’ yard, when there’s a whole desert out there he’s headin’ into? Somethin’ ain’t right about this. I reckon it’s time to stop in and talk to the girl.”
“She won’t tell you nothin’,” Pirate said impatiently. “You know that. We tried everything. Anyway, why bother with her? She don’t have the gold, Riley. The gold’s in the wagon. We dillydally around here, and Calloway’ll get himself off a pretty fur piece. He probably has a place all ready to hole up in out there, and if’n we let him get to it, we’re just makin’ it harder for ourselves.”
“I reckon we’re goin’ to talk to the girl,” Riley said irritably. “We don’t, we may be sorry. Calloway’s no fool. Takes a smart man to get out of town the way he did. I’ll bet my bottom dollar an’ the ace up my sleeve that he’s gettin’ some kind of trick set up. I ain’t figurin’ to just walk in on it cold.”
“Don’t you reckon we can take him, just one man?” Pirate said. “And I’m talkin’ about catching up with him before he gets himself all set up.”
“It’ll be too late for that already, I reckon. It won’t hurt nothin’ to talk to the girl first.”
“Do you reckon he would tell the girl?”
“Maybe, maybe not. At least she might know somethin’ that could tip us off. I’m through arguing about it. Let’s go.”
“We won’t get nothin’ out of her, I’m telling you,” Pirate grumbled as they rode for the ranch buildings. “We tried everything. She won’t talk.”
“We ain’t actually done torture on her yet. We’ve only threatened it, and let her see us do it to her father. But now ...” Riley didn’t finish the sentence, but there was a glint in his eye.
~*~
Amanda Littleton led her guest into the parlor and bid her sit down. Amanda’s small son was playing in the next room. Carmen could smell all the flowers that Mandy looked after. Carmen liked Mandy very much. They had a lot in common, and one of things they both liked was plants and flowers. Mandy grew many kinds of desert plants, as well as others from back east in New York State, where she had grown up. Outside the window of the parlor were a rose garden, almond and peach trees and a small green truck garden. In the parlor alone there were two tubs, each with an oleander growing in it, and numerous hanging plants, some with long trailing leaves.
“What is happening, Carmen?” Mandy asked. “Here I haven’t seen you in ages and ages, and all kinds of things have been happening to you, and then you show up at the door with a strange man, and both of you dressed in overalls, of all things. What is going on?” Mandy’s wide blue eyes became wider and a more sparkling blue. Carmen saw sympathy there and remembered the many times they’d talked over problems together. It might make her feel better to talk it over with Mandy.
It took twenty minutes to tell Mandy the whole story. Mandy pressed her lips together hard when Carmen told of how her father had been tortured, then shot while trying to escape.
“He kept stopping me when I was about to tell Riley where the gold is. He wouldn’t let me do it. I ...” She found tears were suddenly hot on her cheeks.
“You did just as he asked,” Mandy said reassuringly. “It was apparently very important to him. Everyone has the right to decide what to sacrifice for. For him it was the gold.”
“But if I had told Riley, my father would be alive now.” She suddenly realized she’d had the whole thing pent up inside her and needed to let it out. She found her head on Mandy’s shoulder the next thing she knew, and Mandy was talking again.
“Don’t blame yourself,” she said soothingly. “It’s all right.”
Later, Carmen, having dried her tears and gotten her control back, went on to tell of being taken away into the desert when the sheriff tried to interrupt, and of how Lee came out of the desert to her rescue.
“You mean this man Lee just happened to come along at the right time?” Mandy believed strongly in God, and Carmen could easily guess what she was thinking.
“Yes. It was very good fortune. So good that I was sure he had been following, wanting the gold for himself. He looks quite a bit like Riley in some ways, and I thought they might be brothers. They aren’t, and I misjudged Lee. He is a good man, a very good man. He’s not after the gold at all, but just saw them trying to make me talk and drove them off with his gun.”
Mandy looked, with a special twinkle she had, into Carmen’s eyes, the kind of twinkle that meant she thought she saw more than what had been said. She was often right.
“Carmen, why, I believe you are in love!”
“What? Oh, no. For goodness sakes!” Her face grew red as she became embarrassed. She hadn’t thought of it in those terms.
“Oh, yes! It’s plain as day in your eyes when you talk about him. You light up just like Tommy does at Christmas. It’s a sure sign. But what happened next?”
Carmen filled in the rest of the tale as quickly as she could, right through to the present.
“Where has Lee gone, then?” Mandy asked.
“I don’t know. I’m afraid for him. I think he wants to lead Riley and his men out into the desert to ambush them. He put all those rocks in the wagon to make it heavy and look like we put gold in it. But I’m afraid for him. He’s all alone.”
“Well, I should say,” Mandy agreed wholeheartedly. “I will speak to Spike the moment he returns. He said it wouldn’t be long. It’s Tommy’s birthday, you know. He’s five now! Spike promised he’d come right back. He should be here any moment. I’ll have him go help Lee.”
Carmen was torn. She wished on the one hand that she had not told Mandy about all her problems and involved her this way. It didn’t seem fair. On the other hand, however, the offer of Spike’s help was a very welcome one, and was one which made her have higher hopes that she and Lee would come out of this thing alive.
“Mandy,” she said finally, “let’s let Spike decide himself whether he wants to help or not. I couldn’t ask him to go out in the desert and risk getting killed for something that really isn’t his problem.”
Mandy smiled confidently. “Spike won’t get killed, you can be sure of that. He has lived most of his life out in the desert. He’s still not comfortable in houses and eating off plates and drinking from glasses. But I’m civilizing him.”
“Still, let’s not ask him. Let me tell him what happened, and then let him offer to help or not as he wants.”
“Carmen, you need help. I know that Spike will insist on helping anyway. He’s like that. Do you want to get out of those horrible overalls? I have some things you can wear.”
“Thank you, no ...”
“Oh, really, I insist. You look like a carpenter, for
heaven sakes. You can’t be looking like that when Lee comes back, now can you?” There was a merry twinkle in her eye.
To avoid further references to her relationship with Lee (which she did not yet fully understand herself), she acquiesced.
It was while Carmen was in the guest room, changing into a house dress that there came the sound of hoofbeats in the yard. She went to the window, and her breath caught at the sight of Riley and Pirate and the others sitting their horses not fifteen feet from the doorstep. She closed the curtain and pressed her hand to her mouth in thought for a few moments, and then went resolutely out of the room.
When she entered the front hall, she found Mandy standing with a pistol held up awkwardly in her hands, aimed waveringly at the heavy oak door. When Carmen came up beside her, Mandy looked at her with wide, bright eyes.
“Are those the men?” she whispered.
“Yes,” Carmen replied.
“Do you know how to use one of these things?”
“I can hit something up close, I think.”
“Then here, you take it. I’ve barred the door, as you can see. The windows are always kept locked, but I haven’t checked the back door yet. I’ll go do it now.”
“Where is Tommy?”
“Still in the playroom. I’ll bring him when I come back from checking the rear door.”
She went off through the house quickly, her slippered feet padding softly away through the quiet, sunny, flower-fragrant rooms.
There was a thumping on the door. Carmen held the gun out in front of her as steadily as she could. She wondered if Mandy had checked to see if it was loaded, and promptly did so herself. It wasn’t.
“Open up in there,” she heard Riley’s impatient voice say. There was more thumping. Carmen didn’t answer. Instead she started hunting frantically, as quietly as she could, through the drawers of a desk which stood against the left wall of the entry hall. She could not find any bullets anywhere in the desk, and next hurried out of the entry hall into the living room and began hunting through the drawers of the china cabinet, the roll top desk, the shelves of the bookcase. There were no bullets.
“Open the door, or we’ll bust it down,” Riley shouted irritably, banging again on it, more loudly than before. Carmen went hurrying into the parlor and began looking there. She heard footsteps, Mandy returning from the other end of the ranch house. Carmen went back into the living room to intercept her.
“Where are the bullets?” Carmen whispered urgently. At the same moment there was a crashing of someone’s weight against the outside of the front door. It was a heavy door, and did not give.
“Oh my goodness,” Mandy said, just above a whisper. “I never thought. Come on.” She led the way across the living room and through an open doorway into her husband’s den. The room had a completely different aspect from the rest of the house. The floor had a Navajo Indian blanket for a rug, the walls were lined with antlers, rattlesnake skins, Indian bead necklaces, knives, and at one end of the room was a large gun rack, in which were over a dozen rifles and shotguns. Several pistols hung on nails driven into an exposed beam. It was a primitive, practical sort of place, full of Spike Littleton’s memories and presence. Carmen recalled Mandy explaining once that she had talked Spike into the idea of having a room like this in his house so that when he felt an urge to put his boots on the furniture, or clean his guns or eat with his hands instead of with a knife and fork, he could come here instead of dirtying the rest of the house.
Mandy led the way to a cabinet below the gun case and opened the door.
“Do you know what kind goes in it?” she asked.
Carmen viewed the array of ammunition with dismay. She could see that the bullets in the different trays were not all the same, but since not a single round was in the cylinder of her weapon, she had no idea how to choose the right size.
They looked at each other as there came the sound of gunfire from the front door.
“Tommy,” Mandy said, and went running off. Carmen looked frantically over the array of ammunition and tried different sized rounds in the cylinder of the heavy pistol. At last a round fitted. Could it be right? Were these powerful enough, or too powerful? She knew nothing at all about such things. She decided that there was little choice but to use the rounds she’d found.
She heard Mandy scream just as she finished loading the last round into the cylinder.
~*~
They had left just after daybreak for the section of fence across the river which had been broken through by a stampede of cattle. It was along the part of the border with the Rocking B Ranch which Littleton was responsible for. So he and two of his hands went out to see about it. The other hands scattered over the ranch to see to other chores.
Littleton usually did not think much about leaving Mandy and Tommy at home alone, since it had been quite a few years since the Apaches had been bothersome. Until the town had grown suddenly, because of all the mining, it had been fairly peaceful. Now, with Riley running loose, he wondered if it was wise to go off and leave them alone that way. Supposing Riley came out to the ranch for some reason?
What reason? Riley had no reason. Littleton decided he was just getting jumpy. Still, he thought to get done as quickly as possible and return. It was Tommy’s birthday, and he’d promised to spend as much of the day with him as he could. He’d spent little enough time with his son. Mandy complained of it all the time. She was probably right. But there always seemed to be so much work that needed doing. He looked forward to the day when Tommy could come along with him.
Beside him rode Harold Ford, the kid who had ridden in from parts unknown a few weeks earlier and only last night had been in a gunfight with another boy of about the same age, packing him off to hell on a shutter. Ford was silent and moody. He seemed to want to say something, but couldn’t quite bring himself to it.
Littleton had been wondering what, if anything, he should do about the boy. Should he try to find out who was at fault and get rid of Ford, if he’d shot the other boy in an unfair fight or had been cheating at cards or been making free with the other’s girl? It had usually been his policy not to dictate morals to his men, except when on the ranch and engaged in carrying out their work. But now he wondered if he shouldn’t make an example of Ford by firing him, so as to discourage his men from contributing to the general havoc in town, now that no law was planned.
The trouble with this course of action was that he had come to like Ford, in spite of his usually devil-may-care attitude about things in general. Perhaps it was because he had spent long years of his own life behaving the same way and he found it difficult to condemn in others something he’d done himself. He’d fought his first gunfight when about the same age as Ford (and nearly lost his life).
As the morning wore on, the sun got hotter and Ford got gloomier. Finally, Littleton took an opportunity when they were alone together to see what he could find out.
“First man I shot,” he said conversationally, “turned out not to even have a gun. That was down in Mexico years ago. There was no law around those parts, just strong men. One ’em was a friend of the man I shot, and he sent his boys after me. I headed north as fast as I could. The first town I hit, all I heard was about this feller named Littleton who’d gunned down a whole passel of top guns down south, and the word was I was headed north. I still can’t figure out how word got there ahead of me, but there it was. Turned out I had a reputation—about ten times as tall as the truth. And all on account of shootin’ an unarmed man who I thought was armed and trying to kill me.”
Ford didn’t say anything. He looked interested, though.
“Kid, now you’ll have a reputation, just like I had. It’s just the way it works. The boys in the saloons talk mighty big, tryin’ to outdo the next feller’s story, and pretty soon a man with one shooting behind him is a top gunslinger in everybody’s eyes. Then all the young kids that want to be top guns—not many of them ever live that long because they go looking for trouble—anyway,
as I was sayin’, all the young kids start callin’ you out, and you got to do a whole passel of killin’ you didn’t figure on and wouldn’t have done, if you could have avoided it. Kind of a curse it is. That’s how come most really fast guns stay in shape, and the smart ones keep quiet about it, backing out of gunfights they don’t have to fight, and doing the others when there ain’t no witnesses. Hard life.”
Ford nodded glumly. Finally, he spoke. “Can’t you get out of it any way at all? I didn’t really mean to kill him. It was just about a woman. He was trying to cut in where he wasn’t wanted, and I got mad and called him out. After I done that, I got plenty scared. But he was ornery, and he was wanting a gunfight awful bad, I think. I hit him in the chest, and he hit me light off the shoulder. I almost wish now it had been the other way around, cause there’s talk that some of his friends want to tackle me. I don’t want nothing to do with them. I want to forget it. What did you do?”
“I run until I got tired of it, and then I did what I shoulda done in the first place: I let them come to me one by one, and I gave them an out. Some of ’em took it, others didn’t. I lived through all the fights—though barely through the first one—and now I don’t have much trouble. Most all the men that cared one way or the other are dead or in other parts. Someday, one of them might come out of nowhere and kill me, but that’s a chance I have to take.”
Ford absorbed this while he swung a sledge hammer, driving a stake. Then he heaved a sigh.
“I reckon I ain’t as much man as you,” he said.
“A man’s as much of a man as he thinks he is.”
The other hand came up then, and the conversation ended.
In another half hour or so, they finished the job and headed back for ranch.
As they rode up the slight slope to the south of the ranch buildings, Littleton noticed the horses in the yard and then the open front door.
He dug in his spurs and drew his Colt, a very evil image forming in his mind of what could be happening inside the house.