“That’s right,” Nolan said. “The boy knocked him down, and Evans went for his gun. He’d have killed the boy if Curtis hadn’t drilled him.”
Runyan swung to face Mark. “What’d you hit him for?”
“He warned us, then he went right past the Jackson place without saying anything to them. There was a girl there. She’d have been killed this morning if that bunch of red devils had hit the Jackson place instead of ours.”
“That’s right,” Bronco said. “It wouldn’t have taken him five minutes to stop and warn Herb Jackson.”
“I wasn’t looking for a gunfight,” Mark said. “I was just going to give him a beating.”
Runyan pulled at his beard, then he muttered: “All right, all right.”
“I told you once, Mark,” Bronco said in a low voice. “If a man gets on the shoot, accommodate him, but do it first.”
Mark nodded, remembering and now fully understanding.
Chapter Twelve
Late in the afternoon Captain Bernard and his four companies arrived at Camp Sherman along with Robbins’s scouts. There was a good deal of talk about Buffalo Horn’s being killed and the Bannock war party’s joining the Paiute malcontents at Shadow Mountain. Old Chief Winnemucca, who hadn’t wanted to fight the whites, had made his escape with the help of his son and his daughter Sarah and the Bannock and Paiute bands had united under the Paiute war chief, Egan.
Dave Nolan talked to Bernard and Robbins, telling of his flight north, and reported that he had eighteen volunteers ready to help out. All agreed that Egan, who knew the country, would strike out across Sherman Valley somewhere west of the fort and head for the mountains. It wouldn’t take more than a day or two to pick up the Indians’ trail and maybe pin them down for a fight. If they could be crushed, the war would be over, and everyone could go home.
Now, watching Bronco, Mark sensed that he was sorry he had promised to go with Nolan. As far as he was concerned, the war was over, and he wanted to get back to the calf branding. But he was committed, and he could not back out. Besides, it was a good thing to have Dave Nolan on his side, for, after the shooting of Monk Evans, it was hard to tell what Bronco’s relationship with John Runyan would be.
In spite of Nolan’s small size, he was a fighting man and the leader of the cowmen. Runyan, sullenly silent, would follow him. So would Matt Ardell. If Bronco had any worry about what would happen between him and Runyan, he gave Mark no indication of it. But Mark had learned long ago that Bronco was not one to talk about his troubles; he was coldly confident he could handle any difficulty when and if it came. If circumstances compelled him to trade Runyan’s friendship for Dave Nolan’s, it might be to his advantage, for Nolan was the strongest man in the country.
At dusk Herb Jackson hunted Mark up and drew him away from the others. He asked: “What was the shooting about?”
Mark told him. Jackson kept pushing his spectacles back on his nose as he stared across the parade ground, plainly not seeing the activity that was going on. Bernard would be leaving at dawn, Company K of the 21st Infantry remaining to guard the post on the off chance that the Indians might make an attack to secure guns and ammunition.
“Curtis shouldn’t have killed the man,” Jackson said finally, as if trying to think this through.
“He’d have killed me if Bronco hadn’t,” Mark said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have hit him.”
“No way to know now,” Jackson said. “If Evans purposely didn’t warn us, hoping the Indians would murder us, then you did right. If he honestly thought we had gone to the fort, I would say you were wrong.”
Angry words were on Mark’s tongue. He had not suspected Evans of being guilty of anything worse than negligence, but it was the kind of negligence that could not be excused, and Evans had deserved a licking because of it. It had not occurred to Mark that it would go beyond a licking, and all afternoon he had felt guilty for inadvertently bringing on the man’s death.
He held the hot words back, staring at Jackson’s face in the thinning light as he considered what the man had said. After a time he said: “I don’t savvy. Why would Evans want the Indians to murder you?”
“I’m only guessing,” Jackson admitted. “Maybe it was Curtis. He won’t rest until I’m dead. Every time he sees me, he is reminded of the fact that I’m the only one who knows for sure he murdered Orry Andrews.”
“You keep saying it but don’t know it,” Mark said angrily. “Looks to me like it’s only natural Bronco would hate you.”
“It’s natural, all right,” Jackson said. “I haven’t told you, Mark, but in spite of Curtis’s warning, I kept nosing around on Cross Seven range. Well, now I know, but I haven’t decided what I can do about it, the law in the valley being what it is, and Curtis standing in good with men like Runyan and Nolan.”
“What do you mean, now that you know?”
“About a month ago I found the bones of a horse,” Jackson said. “A mile or so north of Ten Mile Valley close to a game trail. It’s my guess that was where Orry left him. Curtis shot him in the back and buried him and the saddle and the rifle. I couldn’t find any of those things. The horse was too big for Curtis to move, and he knew the coyotes would soon eat the carcass. Nothing would be left except the bones, and I can’t take those into court and prove anything with them.”
“You can’t prove anything to me, either,” Mark said, anger still in him. “The bones of a horse are poor evidence to hang a man.”
“To you, perhaps,” Jackson said. “Not to me. I told you Orry was my friend. I know he would have stopped at our place and said good bye, but he didn’t. If he had met with an accident, say the horse had thrown and killed him, his bones would have been there. So would the rifle and some remnants of the saddle and maybe a belt buckle or his boots. Nothing like that was there, Mark, so they must have been hidden.”
Mark could only stand there, staring at Jackson’s troubled face in the near darkness and resenting this accusation against a man who was his friend and had saved his life on more than one occasion. He knew that nothing he could say would change Jackson’s opinion. He said finally: “You’re wrong, Herb.” He paused, then added: “What you’re trying to say is that Bronco told Evans not to stop at your place?”
“It’s possible,” Jackson said. “Perhaps he told Evans that we had gone to the fort. Did he have a chance to talk to Evans alone?”
Thinking about it, Mark remembered that Evans had asked for a fresh horse and Bronco had gone to the corral with him to get the animal. Mark nodded and said: “Yes, he had a chance, but it seems to me it was poor odds, thinking the Paiutes would hit your place.”
“Not so poor when you remember they almost got you, and we’re your closest neighbor. Besides, he probably figured a slim chance was worth trying. From what I heard about the shooting and the way you tell it, Curtis had no reason to fire the second shot that killed Evans unless he wanted to keep him from talking. That’s what convinces me.”
Mark was silent, not believing any of this, but understanding the futility of arguing. All he could think of was that here were two men who were his friends, both hating each other so much that death was inevitable for one of them at the hands of the other.
“I’ve had a talk with Ruth,” Jackson went on. “She was put out with you because you didn’t come to see us all winter.”
“I didn’t think I’d better,” Mark said. “I told Bronco about having Sunday dinner with you, and he said it was all right to see Ruth but not you. I was afraid I’d make trouble for you.”
“I knew it was something like that,” Jackson said.
“When she rode with me a piece that Sunday, I told her I’d come to see her if Bronco didn’t get sore. She said she understood.”
“She’s a woman,” Jackson said gently, “and women forget same as a man. All she remembers is that she wanted you to come and you didn’t. I told her she had to talk to you. Tell her what you told me.” He motioned vaguely toward the end of the line of houses
that made up the officers’ quarters. “You watch for her. She’ll be along.”
Jackson walked off. Mark waited, still not knowing which house belonged to Lieutenant Bolton. If he had known, he would have gone to Ruth instead of her coming to him, and now he wished he’d asked her father. But he hadn’t, and, if he moved away, he might miss her.
Presently it was fully dark; the campfires around which the cowmen and settlers were gathered becoming red eyes in the night. Lamps had been lighted in the officers’ quarters and the barracks and the big commissary storehouse, and lanterns in the cavalry stables.
The children had been put to bed, their tongues silenced for a few hours, but there was still a good deal of coming and going, shouts, and a little forced laughter from men who were drawing their rations and knew they would see action tomorrow or the following day. None wanted the others to know that he was thinking some Indian might have a bullet with his name on it.
Mark heard Ruth’s scream behind him and whirled, drawing his gun. The scream was choked off, and a man cursed as Mark plunged into the darkness. Then he glimpsed them ahead of him, indistinct in the thin light: the man had an arm around Ruth and was holding her in front of him so Mark couldn’t shoot.
“Stay back!” the man called. “Stay back or I’ll kill her!”
Mark yelled—“Bronco!”—and lunged toward them. Ruth must have bitten the man or scratched his face, because he cursed in pain and flung her aside. Mark fired as he fell against the man, missing him completely.
Ruth screamed a warning. Mark caught a glimpse of the fellow’s arm sweeping at him; he felt the sharp stab of a knife in his side, twisting and tearing, then he was shoved back and around. As he fell, he fired again, aimlessly this time.
Vaguely Mark was aware of men shouting and running toward them, of bobbing lanterns and Ruth struggling with the man again. Mark couldn’t shoot now, with Ruth so close to his target. He reached out and grabbed the man’s leg as he realized Ruth hadn’t fled when she’d had a chance but had actually attacked her assailant. If she’d run, Mark would have been stabbed again.
Somehow Mark clung to the leg as it churned back and forth, the man cursing and Ruth hanging on as she bit and kicked and scratched. Then Bronco was there, others running behind him. Bronco jerked the man around, and Ruth, losing her grip on the fellow, fell to her knees.
“What’s going on?” someone shouted.
Bronco had slammed the man on his back and had taken the knife from him. Now Bronco’s right hand came up and down, and up and down again, the man under him making a strangled, gurgling sound. Someone pulled Bronco off, saying: “You’ve cut him to pieces, Curtis.”
And Runyan: “That’s two for you today.”
Then someone tipped a lantern so the light fell over the dead man’s face. This time it was Nolan who said: “It’s that damned saddle tramp, Gentry. He scared two women to death early this spring. We should have hung him then.”
Ruth was crying, but she managed to say: “I was walking along here when he grabbed me. Mark? What about Mark?”
Bronco jerked a lantern from someone and put it on the ground beside Mark. “He’s bleeding like a stuck hog!” Bronco shouted. “Get the sawbones!”
Ruth’s dress had been torn from her throat to her waist. Suddenly she was conscious of it and tried to hold it together. A man took off his coat and gave it to her. Then she was on her knees beside Mark, saying hysterically: “He can’t die. God, don’t let him die.”
Her father came with some of the officers’ wives. He said: “A doctor rode in with Bernard’s command. Let’s carry Mark to the hospital.”
The last memory Mark had was that of a woman leading Ruth away, and the thought lingered in his mind that he would not be riding in the morning with Nolan’s volunteers. Dave Nolan would have seventeen men instead of the eighteen he had promised Captain Bernard.
Chapter Thirteen
At dawn Mark heard the sounds of Bernard’s troops preparing to leave—shouted commands, the piercing tone of the bugle, the clank of metal on metal, the squeal of leather as the men mounted, and finally the fading sound of hoofs on hard ground as they moved out toward the Agency road.
Mark turned his face to the wall, not wanting to see them and forgetting that the light wasn’t strong enough for him to see anything. Nolan’s volunteers would be with Bernard, Bronco Curtis riding behind Nolan, or maybe beside him, and ahead of John Runyan and Matt Ardell. Not that Matt could see him and not that anyone had told him. He just knew that was where Bronco would be.
Seventeen men instead of eighteen. They’d probably whip the Paiutes without any help from Bernard’s command. They were leaving with Nolan commanding them, but they’d return with Bronco running the show. That was Bronco Curtis for you, born to command, born to be big. Maybe Dave Nolan and John Runyan and Matt Ardell didn’t know it now, but they’d find out.
Mark’s side hurt with steady, infuriating pain. The doctor had dressed his wound hastily the night before, drunk and sullen because he’d been dragged away from a poker game and his bottle. Too, he had known he’d have to ride in the morning with Bernard’s command.
The doctor had had a good deal to say about cowboy brawls. If they wanted to fight, he’d complained, they’d better join the Army and get a bellyful of it. As far as he was concerned, the whole damned country would be better off if the cowboys killed each other and made room for the farmers. Then he’d picked up his black bag and stomped out.
Mark knew he’d be laid up a long time. The doctor had told him that. The wound was a deep one, and he had lost a great deal of blood. Bronco would be sore at him, he thought, with so much work to be done on the Cross Seven this summer. The branding should have been done before now; the building had to be finished before winter, hay cut, wood chopped and hauled, and the big herd that Jacob Smith was sending north to Cross Seven grass would have to be driven onto summer range.
Bronco would be sore at him, all right, and Mark couldn’t blame him. Of all the times to be laid up … with Bronco needing him the way he did now. It would be the end of their partnership, Mark thought. By the time Lieutenant Bolton’s wife brought his breakfast, despair had settled upon him.
Mrs. Bolton was a tall, angular woman who hated the frontier but who hated being separated from her husband even more than she disliked the hardship of living on an isolated Army post. She sat beside Mark trying to get him to eat and to cheer up, but he couldn’t eat and he could think of nothing he had cause to be cheerful about. Finally she left, saying that Ruth was all right beyond having had a bad scare the night before.
Then there was nothing for Mark to do but lie there and think about what had happened in the year since the murder of his parents, of the recurring violence that seemed to be the pattern of life in this country. Of Red Malone in Prineville and how Red would have killed him if it hadn’t been for Bronco. Of Orry Andrews’s disappearance. Of Herb Jackson’s hunt for Andrews’s body and of himself keeping Bronco from killing Herb. Of the Indian attack and the three Paiutes he had killed. Of Monk Evans’s failure to warn the Jacksons and how he had knocked Monk down and Bronco had killed him. Then the attack on Ruth and his attempt to save her and Bronco’s coming in time to kill the man.
Maybe this pattern of violence was not due to the country as much as it was to Bronco Curtis himself. Mark could not forget what Herb Jackson had said, that Bronco was a young man in a hurry, that he was bound to go too far too fast. It was true, Mark knew. Bronco had said he must do in a year what John Runyan and Dave Nolan had done in all the years they had been in this country.
Ruth came later in the day, her face paler than Mark had ever seen it. She sat down beside him and took his hand, trying to smile. She said: “I’m sorry about what happened. I owe you so much. If you hadn’t been there …”
“It was Bronco,” Mark interrupted. “All I did was to get myself stuck with a knife. I’m not much good without Bronco.”
“Oh, Mark, it isn’t true,” s
he assured. “You’re good for an awful lot. Pa says if it wasn’t for Curtis, you’d …” She stopped and drew her hand from Mark’s. “Pa went home this morning. The cow’s got to be milked and the chickens fed. Everybody thinks the trouble’s over with here in the valley. The Indians will head for the mountains now that the soldiers are after them.”
Mark lay there, looking at her and thinking how much he loved her. Maybe she would laugh at him if he told her. She had a right to. He had nothing to offer her. But if he got over this, he would ask her to marry him whether he had anything to offer or not.
He thought how much he had changed in the last year, changed because he had to. As his father used to say, it was root hog or die. He wasn’t twenty yet, but he was a man. At least he felt like one. He wasn’t afraid any more. Not of the country or his future or anything, really.
For a long time Ruth sat there, staring at her hands, which were folded on her lap. Presently she said: “As soon as you get well enough to be moved, we’ll have you brought to our place and I’ll nurse you. You’ll get well, Mark, but you won’t if you go back to the Cross Seven. Curtis will work you to death.”
He didn’t argue with her. There was too much truth in what she had just said. Bronco had little patience with weakness of any kind, regardless of the cause of the weakness. It was all the more wonder that Bronco had ever put up with him in the first place. But that had been different. No, it wouldn’t do for him to go back to Cross Seven and stay in bed, and he couldn’t stay here.
Finally he said: “You’re good, Ruth. Awfully good.”
She bowed her head, refusing to look at him. She said: “I’m sorry about the way I treated you yesterday. I didn’t understand. I’m not trying to excuse myself. It was just that I thought you’d come back to see us, and you never did. I guess I was kind of disappointed.”
“I wanted to come,” he said, “but it might have got your dad into trouble, him feeling the way he does about Bronco.”
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