by Janet Dailey
He let her go rather briskly, a raw frustration filling his insides. When she knelt down to pick up her scattered packages, he was driven to help her.
“Let me get these for you,” he insisted.
“I can manage,” she returned curtly.
“It’s the least I can do after nearly knocking you over.” Webb gathered up most of the packages and presented them to her. When they were once again standing, he said, “I’d offer to carry them to your wagon, but—”
The door opened and Stefan Reisner stepped outside, carrying a shiny new rifle. Dark suspicion was in his expression when he saw Webb with Lilli. He stepped immediately to her side.
“Is he bothering you, Lillian?” he inquired, at least this time asking before he challenged Webb.
“No,” she asserted quickly and glanced at Webb through the top of her lashes. “I dropped some of my packages and Mr. Calder was kind enough to retrieve them for me.”
Webb noticed the inaccurate description of the incident, but didn’t correct her. Whatever her reason for the white lie, he wasn’t about to expose it.
“That’s a fine-looking rifle, Mr. Reisner.” He observed that the muzzle was absently pointed in his general direction. “It will come in handy this winter for hunting, although there isn’t much game around here anymore. The rabbits might be pretty thick, though.” Webb paused, then asked, “Have you used a rifle much, Mr. Reisner?”
“I know how to shoot it.” He was packing a box of shells under his arm.
“I don’t know what it’s like where you came from, but around here”—he casually reached out and laid a forefinger alongside the muzzle to point it in another direction—“we don’t point a rifle at something unless we aim to shoot it. It’s considered bad manners.”
“I vill remember that.”
They continued to face each other while Lilli stood to one side, uneasily watching them both. The air seemed heavy with the veiled antagonism that drifted between them, carefully undefined.
The sheriff interposed. “What’s the trouble here?”
“No trouble, Sheriff,” Webb replied with an easy look. “I was just admiring Mr. Reisner’s new rifle and wishing him good hunting.” He tipped his hat to Lillian. “Good day to you, ma’am.”
He stepped past both of them to enter the store, and heard the trailing sounds of several pairs of heeled boots belonging to the Triple C riders behind him. A raw and reckless energy was pulsing through his blood. Webb wanted to hit something—anything.
Business was brisk inside the store, wall to wall with customers as entire homesteading families dawdled over purchases of merchandise and supplies. Youngsters in their knickers with a penny to spend were wavering between the candy jar selections, the decision of which to buy nearly as sweet as the stick of candy.
Webb walked to the back of the store, far away from the front windows so he couldn’t see Lilli getting into the wagon with her husband. All of the Triple C riders stayed together in a loose, noisy bunch, browsing through the goods for sale. Nate was the only one with any intention of making a purchase, so he walked up to the counter to buy his tobacco. Webb prowled restlessly along with him.
A new clerk started to inquire how he could help Nate when Ollie Ellis, the proprietor, came over and sent the clerk to another customer. At first, Webb thought nothing of it despite the owner’s stern and businesslike expression. Ollie Ellis had always personally waited on representatives from the Triple C, so it appeared to be no different this time.
“What can I do for you?” The crisp inquiry was not even accompanied by a familiar address.
“I need some tobacco. Better make it a whole can of Prince Albert,” Nate added, figuring it had to last him all winter.
“Is that all?” There was something in the owner’s tone that seemed to resent such a small purchase.
Behind them, Shorty was trying on a lady’s hat, to the hoots and guffaws of the other cowboys. Shorty had always been part clown and part banty rooster, so his hot temper and wild antics were equally well known to the local tradesman.
“Yeah, that’s all,” Nate replied to Ollie’s question and dug into his pocket to pay for the tobacco.
“Then I will thank you to take your tobacco and your friends, and leave the store.” The proprietor’s request was coached in polite phrases, spoken quietly but firmly. “You have been drinking, and I don’t want you creating a disturbance here or offending my other customers.”
Webb turned, not quite believing he’d heard right, but there was little respect or softness in the man’s expression. “The boys are a bit rowdy, Mr. Ellis, but they’re doing no harm.” The irritation that he’d been containing was straining to escape. “We’ve been six weeks in the saddle and come to town to do a little hurrahing. We’re not here to cause any trouble.”
“All I am asking is that you do your ‘hurrahing’ someplace else.” As Ollie Ellis observed the hardness taking over Webb’s features, he added nervously, “I hope you will leave peaceably. I should not like to have to ask the sheriff to remove you from these premises.”
“We’ll go, all right.” There was a deadly quiet in Webb’s voice. “But you’ve got a short memory, Ellis. You and all these townspeople that were here before the drylanders came. It was our trade—the cattlemen trade—that kept your businesses alive.”
“Times have changed,” the owner replied a little defensively.
“But greed hasn’t. You’ve caught the whiff of money in another man’s pocket and that’s all you can think about. Like the dog looking at his reflection in the water and seeing a bigger bone, you’ve just dropped yours, Ellis,” Webb murmured coolly. “Because my memory is longer than yours, I won’t forget this.”
“Now, see here, you’ve got no call to talk to me like that,” Ollie Ellis protested with affronted dignity. “My request was perfectly reasonable and—”
But Webb had already pivoted away from the counter, not listening to a single word. “Let’s go, boys,” he snapped to the others. Their initial, loudly voiced reluctance was silenced by the look on Webb’s hard features. They quickly trailed after him. It was Nate who supplied the explanation for their abrupt departure from the store.
“Doesn’t look like we’re welcome anyplace in this town,” one of them grumbled.
“I ain’t never stayed where I wasn’t welcomed.”
A few minutes later, the band of riders were trotting their horses out of town. They had no good times to remember, only the bad taste in their mouth.
In bed that night, Stefan made his demand on her and Lilli went to him. After he was through, she lay on her side, staring at the silver path the moonlight made into the room. The physical side of her marriage to Stefan had been a very minor part of their relationship. The act of mating was an occasional, perfunctory thing, occurring only at the initiative of Stefan. Lilli had never regarded it as an unpleasant duty as his wife, an activity to be endured. But she certainly didn’t derive the kind of satisfaction that Stefan did from it. As a matter of fact, she never had the impression that she was expected to. It didn’t occur to her that she might find some gratification from physical closeness with a man until she had felt curiously stimulated by Webb’s kiss. All her life, kisses had been mere gestures of affection. Certainly her mother had never indicated they were anything else. But her mother had died when Lilli was only thirteen. Other than her parents’, Stefan’s love was the only kind she’d ever known. She was gradually becoming aware there was another. And it was a man other than her husband who was opening her eyes to it.
So she lay in bed, conscious that her own urge to love was unquenched. It was too deeply repressed, because it was an urge for another man. She could feel her heart beat and the blood flow through her veins; yet the center of her felt dry and empty. There was so much she could give, but all those feelings and desires were going to waste. They were withering. She was suddenly frightened by the thought that they might never be used—that they’d die without ever b
eing given. She felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness.
III
Stands a Calder man,
Lonely now is he,
Turning to the land—
To the Triple C.
14
Large snowflakes drifted out of a pale gray sky that shaded into the bleak, white landscape. The air was bitter cold, nipping at the exposed areas of Webb’s face. A long wool scarf was tied over his hat and wrapped around his neck, partially raised to cover his nose and mouth. Without tipping his head, he peered upward at the December sky, looking for weather signs, while the hoary-coated black gelding buck-plunged through a snowdrift until it reached an area of wind-swept ground with only two or three inches of snow cover.
The sky had been threatening all morning and the air was brittle with the chill of an Arctic air mass. So far, the wind had remained calm, as if frozen by the icy temperature. But Webb was alert to any shift of the wind into the northeast, the lair of what the Sioux Indians called the White Wolf—a howling Arctic storm that preyed on the land. He could almost smell it in the air when he’d ridden out of the line camp that morning.
His route had taken him nearly full circle around the section of range he patrolled. All the cattle along the outlying areas Webb had drifted closer to camp and the hay stacks that would feed them when the snow became too deep for foraging. The gelding snorted, its warm breath rolling out in thick, vaporous clouds. Without turning his head, Webb glanced in the direction indicated by the pricked ears.
A cow was floundering in the snow, but her ungainly actions weren’t warranted by the depth of the snow cover in that area. The animal was obviously injured, a broken leg by the looks of it. Webb reined the black gelding toward the cow. There was an awkward attempt by the animal to elude his approach, but the white-faced cow finally halted in the snow and turned a wild and pain-filled eye on the horse and rider.
Webb stopped the gelding a few yards from the animal, not wanting to increase its panic. The left foreleg was twisted at a crazy angle, unquestionably broken. It was an older stock cow, which was some consolation. In another couple of years, she’d probably be culled from the herd anyway. The injury must have happened in the last few hours; otherwise the wolves would have gotten her by now.
“If the wolves don’t get you, the storm will.” The thick wool scarf muffled his murmured words and spilled the warmth of his breath over his face. “So I might as well end your suffering, Bossie.”
Cold-stiffened leather creaked loudly under his shifting weight as Webb swung a numbed leg out of the saddle and stepped to the snow-packed ground. His gloved fingers had trouble with the leather flap of the rifle scabbard, but he finally managed to grab the butt and pull out the rifle. He stepped in front of the gelding to face the wide-eyed cow and levered a bullet into the chamber.
Snowflakes whirled aimlessly through the silence. He hooked an arm through the tied reins before lifting the rifle butt to his shoulder. He didn’t want the gelding to spook at the explosion of a rifle shot and leave him afoot this far from camp. The gelding chanked on the metal bit as Webb sighted on the cow and squeezed the trigger.
The deafening report of the rifle shattered the stillness of the gray morning, drowning out the crunching thud of the cow crumpling to the snow. He ejected the empty shell from the chamber and walked back to the saddle to shove the rifle into the scabbard. With the flap secured over the butt, he put a boot in the stirrup and started to heft his cold-numbed body into the saddle, but the sight of the dead cow and the crimson-spattered snow stopped him.
It was a shame to leave that carcass for the wolves and coyotes to quarrel over. The age of the cow would make the meat tough and stringy, but it still seemed a waste of beef. He could cut himself off a quarter, except he had an ample supply of meat back at the line camp.
Webb knew where his mind was turning, but try as he might, he couldn’t stop from thinking of Lilli. Unless a homesteader had a calf of his own to butcher, beef wasn’t exactly a mainstay of his diet. Fresh meat came mostly from wild game. And here was a whole carcass of meat.
He turned his head, looking to the east. With the cattle all drifted toward the camp, there was nothing left for him to do but sit in the line shack and wait out the storm. His work was done and it didn’t look like the storm was going to break any time soon. There’d be a few hours to ride over to the Reisner homestead and take them the beef, maybe even time to get back before the weather got too bad.
After that, his decision was a foregone conclusion. He slipped the toe of his boot out of the stirrup and reached into the saddlebag for his hunting knife. It was a simple matter to slit the jugular vein to let the cow bleed. It took considerably more time to rig up a travois out of two saplings and lash the carcass onto it with his rope. The snow had stopped when Webb swung into the saddle and pointed the black gelding east.
During all her years in the city, cramped in a small, two-room tenement apartment with three other people, Lilli had never felt so cooped up as she did in the one-room shack. She was restless and irritable, rebelling against all the little tasks that would pass the time. The gray world outside seemed to press in and make the shack even smaller.
The breakfast dishes were still staring at her, a glaring reminder that she was neglecting her chores. Lilli glared back and continued flipping through the well-worn pages of a catalogue, but she wasn’t looking at the pages either. Finally she plopped the book on the table and stalked over to the cookstove to heat water for the dishes.
There were an endless variety of things that needed to be done. There was mending to do, bread to be baked, scraps of cloth to be sewn into a quilt, more coal to be brought in for the stove, not to mention the breakfast dishes to be washed and lunch not far off. But Lilli wasn’t in the mood to do any of them. She just didn’t understand how Stefan could idle away the time without showing any sign of boredom. She would never have believed his quietness could be so irritating, and sent a glaring look in his direction.
He was putting on his wraps, layering clothes to combat the cold outside. She supposed he was going out to check on the horses, but it seemed like desertion to her. It was bad enough trying to talk to her taciturn husband and keep a conversation going, but it was worse having no one to talk to at all.
“Where are you going?” she demanded, ready to take the kettle off the stove and accompany him to the horse shed, rather than stay in this four-walled prison alone.
“Hunting.” The one word was the only answer that he felt was required as he reached up to take the rifle from its rack above the door.
She should have guessed, Lilli realized. He’d mentioned they needed fresh meat this morning when he’d gone out to water the horses.
“I’ll come with you,” she said.
“It is too cold.” That was the end of it as far as Stefan was concerned. Once he made up his mind about something, he rarely budged. Lilli half-suspected that since Franz Kreuger didn’t allow his wife to go hunting with him, Stefan wouldn’t permit it, either. Stefan seemed to be acquiring more and more of their neighbor’s characteristics.
When he came over to kiss her good-bye, she coolly offered him her cheek. She felt the whiskery brush of his beard and the brief warmth of his mouth against her skin, then he was straightening. The affectionate caress meant nothing, its very blandness taking meaning from the gesture.
“I vill be back for supper.” He turned and walked to the door.
She didn’t offer to send any food along with him or even wish him success in his hunting. As she heard the pull of the latchstring, Lilli suddenly examined her heartless attitude.
The cause went deeper than mere resentment at being deprived of company and left in this small place alone. This inner dissatisfaction had been growing for some time. She could trace it all the way back to that first meeting with Webb Calder.
Plagued by this guilt that always came with any thought of Webb Calder, Lilli hurried to the door that had swung shut. A flurry of snowflakes
swirled in when she opened it, letting in another bitter blast of frigid air. Stefan was tramping through the snow several yards from the house, the rifle on his shoulder.
“Stefan!” She hunched her shoulders together, shivering in the opening. When he turned, she felt the old affection and friendship for him flowing through her again. She realized she was being ungrateful and unappreciative of his kindness and goodness toward her. “It looks like it could storm. Don’t go too far!” she called after him in concern.
He lifted a hand, acknowledging he’d heard, then turned and began traipsing across the snow, a dark, hunched figure in a gray-white world. Lilli closed the door and hurried over to the stove to warm herself. She looked about their home. When he returned, she vowed to have everything done and a hot supper waiting for him. The kettle was simmering to heat the snow-water in the basin. She poured it in. Working was always the quickest way to get warm, she remembered her mother saying that.
The clouds were flattening themselves close to the barren snowscape, making land indiscernible from sky. The dark plot in the gray picture grew steadily larger as Webb approached it. The smoke rising from the chimney pipe blended into sky. He could smell it in the air, but he couldn’t distinguish its wispy trail from the gray-spun clouds.
The snow-covered wagon sat next to the bleached poles of the corral. The wind shelter for the draft team had been closed to create a shed where they could seek protection from inclement weather. At the moment, Webb could see the two mares nosing at the straw scattered in clumps next to the shed, offering them browse. There was a glimmer of light showing from inside the shanty, mostly blocked by the covering over the window.
The black gelding stopped of its own accord near the door, as if sensing this was their destination. Webb’s legs were numb and stiff with the cold. They felt like two dead sticks when he tried to dismount, and didn’t seem inclined to support him when he did step down. He stamped them to bring back the feeling, with jarring results as pain shot through his body.