“You must be starved,” Tay said.
Conn ate without talking, and Tay stood at the window watching Leggett carry the dead man out to the hill.
“A man isn’t long for this world, but he should come to something better than that. Ever think of the hereafter, Conn?”
“Not much. I figure it’s like the Plains Indians say—a happy hunting ground. Leastways, that’s how I’d like it to be. A place with mountains, springs, running streams, and some green, grassy banks where a man can lie with his hat over his eyes and let the bees buzz.”
Somehow that made him think of the note in his pocket and he took it out and fumbled it open. He was so tired he was ready to sleep right there, half through his meal. He looked at the written words. There was just one line.
I have never been in love.
He stared at it for a long moment, then put it back in his pocket. That was a hard thing for a woman to tell herself, unless she was a youngster. What kind of a woman would write something like that and send it rolling off before the wind?
A lonely one, he told himself, a mighty lonely one.
He knew how she felt. Sometimes a body just had to have somebody to talk to. You saw something and you wanted to turn and say, Isn’t that beautiful? And there was nobody there.
Well, there were a lot of lonely folks out here in the West. Men and women working alone, or feeling alone, their homes far from each other, their minds and hearts reaching out across the distance, plucking at the strings of the air to find some answering call.
Lonely people, who looked at horizons and wondered what, or who, was beyond them, people hemmed in by distance, people locked in space, in the emptiness…prisoners, they were.
In his own way Conagher was a prisoner. He’d never had the education to escape it, if that was an escape. He’d gone to work as soon as he was big enough to wrap his hands around a tool, and he’d been at it ever since. About all he’d ever had out of life was a seat in a saddle and a lot of open country to look at.
He had stifled in the dust of the drag of many a trail drive, stifled in the heat rising from two thousand hot, moving bodies. He’d had his guts churned on the seat of a stage coach bouncing over the prairie, and by many a bronc, breaking horses for the rough string.
He wished it was spring so the wind could blow back the other way. He would like to send a message back to the one who had written these notes, to say that she was not alone, that somebody had read her words. But the wind didn’t blow that way, and the chances were she’d not find it, anyway.
Tay interrupted his thoughts.
“What will they do now?” he asked. “What do you think, Conagher?”
“They won’t leave us alone. Next time they’ll choose a different way…they may just try to drive the cattle off, or take us one by one.”
“Have you ever been shot, Conagher?”
“A couple of times, and it is not a rewarding experience.”
He finished the pie, drank another cup of coffee, and pushed back from the table. “I’m going to sleep,” he said. “Don’t wake me unless there’s trouble, real trouble.”
He was staggering with weariness as he walked back to the bunk house. He pulled off his boots and gunbelt, simply rolled over on the bed and went to sleep. In his sleep he dreamed of whole battalions of tumbleweeds, each with its message, all blowing toward him. He grasped at each one, struggling to get its message before the wind took it out of reach.
*
FOR A WEEK after that, there was quiet. Conagher rode to the Plaza and reported the shootings. The sheriff listened, paring his fingernails with a jackknife, and at the end of Conn’s recital he got up and held out his hand.
“I know Seaborn Tay,” he said. “He’s a good man. A solid man. And I know Leggett. I don’t know you, but I’ve heard about you, and I want to shake your hand. You’ve helped rid the country of some bad men.”
He went on, “You mentioned Curly Scott. Was he hurt, do you know?”
“I doubt it.”
Conagher pushed his hat back. “Sheriff, there’s a boy who’d cut loose from that crowd, given the right chance. He’s stuck by them through some fool sense of loyalty…and they don’t deserve it.”
“Maybe we have what it will take,” the sheriff said. “His sister is in town. If you see him, tell him that. She’s come from the East to see him.”
And then he added, “She has no idea he’s an outlaw.”
When he returned from the Plaza, Conagher resumed, with the occasional help of Leggett, the slow job of moving the cattle back to more easily guarded areas. And then one day Johnny McGivern rode in.
“You didn’t tell me what that country was like,” Johnny said accusingly. “I lost myself two, three times.”
“Did you find him?” Conagher asked.
“He’s comin’. It’ll take him a day or two, with what he had to do.” Johnny glanced around. “From what I hear, you won’t need him.”
“We’ll need him.”
Riding alone, and riding wide over the land, Conagher found himself watching the tumbleweeds. But a week passed before he found another note, and then it was by merest chance. He had come down a draw that opened on the plain and found an old corral, built for trapping wild horses. Made of poles and brush, utilizing what was at hand, the corral had long since been abandoned, and was now breached in several places; but piled against the north wall was a mat of tumbleweeds.
He rode up to them and checked them from force of habit, and found two of the notes.
The first one, almost illegible, must have been written months ago.
When I was a little girl I dreamed of a handsome knight who would come on a white charger and carry me away.
Where, O where are you, White Knight? I have waited so long, so very long!
The second note was written much later, judging by the freshness of the ink and the better condition of the paper.
Last night I walked out to look up at the stars. I wish I knew the names of the stars.
Almost without realizing it, Conn had begun to build an image of the girl who wrote those strange notes. She was young, slender, and blonde, and she was somebody he could talk to, somebody as lonely as he was himself.
“Don’t fool yourself,” he said aloud. “She ain’t writing those notes for any leather-skinned cowpuncher like you.”
*
THE WORK WENT on. Johnny helped with the cattle, and they gained ground. They saw nothing of the Parnell outfit, although Tile Coker had been to the Plaza. A stage had been held up over in Black Canyon, some distance to the west. None of the outlaws had been recognized, but there had been four of them, with a fifth holding the horses.
For a week, then, Conagher stayed around the ranch. He repaired the corral gate, broke two horses for the rough string, dehorned a quarrelsome steer, and cut wood against the coming of colder weather.
Snow fell at the end of the week, just a light skimming over that was gone with the first sun; but during the next week more snow fell and the ground was covered. The weather settled down to still, cold days and nights, and Johnny and Conn were busy breaking the ice in water holes and checking on the stock.
It was hard, bitterly cold work, and many a day Conn got down from the saddle five or six times to walk some warmth back into his feet.
Chip Euston was in the bunk house when Conagher rode back one day. The hunter looked up. “Trouble all over?”
“It’ll come any day now,” Conagher replied. “Keep yourself armed and ready.”
Little by little Conn had taken over the ramrodding of the ranch, and nobody objected. Seaborn Tay stayed quiet, resting a lot, and Conn had a hunch the boss suffered from a bad heart.
The following morning when Conagher saddled up he planned only a short ride. However, he tied a blanket-roll behind his saddle, for a man might get caught out somewhere in this weather and he’d better be ready for a long night in the cold.
He had not gone more than four miles from
headquarters when he came on the tracks of a bunch of cattle. They were bunched tightly, perhaps twenty head, and were driven by three riders on big, free-striding horses.
Making a little cairn of stones to indicate the direction taken, Conagher started north.
The trail of the cattle led straight in that direction, and the riders apparently had no worry about being discovered.
It might be a trap—it probably was. And as he thought that, a cool finger touched his cheek, another his forehead. Conn looked up…it was snowing. The thieves must have expected it; within an hour all trail would be wiped out.
Nevertheless, Conagher held to it. He had a couple of frozen biscuits with him, a chunk of bacon, some jerky, and coffee. He would take his chances.
All through the morning and into the afternoon he followed the trail, which held straight north, but by midafternoon the trail was gone, wiped out by the snow.
He rode over into a patch of scrub oak mixed with pine, and made camp.
Chapter 11
*
EVIE TEALE TIED the scarf over her head as she looked out the window. The slowly falling flakes were beautiful, but they brought to her a chill of fear. The winter would be long, and it would take a good deal of fuel to heat the cabin. The pile of wood behind the cabin had grown, but judging by the past few weeks since it had grown colder, Evie knew the pile would never last through the winter.
Laban had been working steadily part of each day to build up the supply. Ruthie and Evie herself had gone far into the hills, gathering scattered fallen small branches into a pile to be dragged back to the ranch.
Charlie McCloud had come by, riding over on his own time, to help them. It was Charlie, with Laban’s help, who built the stone-boat, a sort of sledge to haul wood. The place needed plenty of work, and Evie could see that McCloud was worried about them.
Using the stone-boat and one of the horses, they could haul good-sized logs, although they had snaked a few down before this, using simply a clove hitch near one end of a log. Over the years a lot of trees had fallen and limbs had been blown down, and there had been few campers to use it.
The stage now stopped at its own station, several miles away, so that source of income was finished. Now it was only themselves they could depend on, and what they could obtain from the country around. Evie carefully hoarded the few dollars saved from feeding the passengers, holding the money against a trip to the Plaza and a chance to buy warm clothing.
As Evie went outside she saw that the snow was falling faster, and a cold wind was blowing. Ruthie was gathering chips around the log where Laban chopped wood, and Evie took up the shovel and went back to the work of banking the cabin.
She was piling dirt around the foundation to keep the wind out and to make the house warmer. This was something they had done each year when she lived in the East, though there it was her father who had done it.
When she straightened up to rest her back, she looked off across the grassland toward the south. The far hills were no longer visible…the falling snow was drawing a curtain around them.
She went back to the work. She rarely thought of Jacob now, her life was too filled with planning, and doing. Sometimes she talked with the children about him, but his image had grown faint with the passing of time. He had been a stiff, unbending man who had loved his children, but he had never known how to show it to them, and Evie doubted if he ever felt the need to show them that he cared.
Their small herd had grown by two. Her cow had calved, and they had acquired another, a stray that wandered up to the water hole one day for a drink, and had just stayed with them. It wore no brand.
Suddenly she heard a long halloo and the pistol-like crack of a whip, and then she saw the racing stage team and the stage. It came plunging around the bend and down the little slope. Ben Logan was driving today, and he shouted at her. Somebody riding beside him waved, too, and then the stage was gone, disappearing in the falling snow.
She went back inside for a moment to add to the fire, putting on a few heavy sticks to keep the room warm while they were outside.
Just when she was growing worried about Laban, she saw the horse coming through the snow, and then the stone-boat, piled high with fire wood, and Laban walking beside it. When he came up to the cabin he tied the horse and came right over to her.
“Ma, we better watch out,” he said. “I heard something back there. It sounded like a lot of riders or a lot of cattle.”
“Did they see you?”
“I don’t think so. I was down behind a tree digging a chunk out of the snow and frozen dirt, and the outfit was a few yards back of me in a grove where there was shelter from the wind.
“I didn’t see but one rider, and I couldn’t tell whether he was an Indian or a white man, but it looked as if he was riding a saddle. I just saw him shadow-like through the snow, and it sounded as if there might be a lot of them…or maybe not so many riders, but a lot of cattle. So I came on home.”
“I’m glad you did.” She turned. “Ruthie? Come on in. After Laban puts the horse up we will have a story and some doughnuts.”
Who could the riders have been? It was not like Indians to ride in cold weather unless they were driven to it. Wisely, they preferred their lodges.
Outlaws? It seemed probable, for the route they were taking led to nothing but wilderness. Unless…
Two months ago, before the first snow had fallen, she had ridden back into the mountains, making a kind of sweep in a half-circle back of their place to see what fuel lay on the ground.
Drawn on by the silence as well as by the beauty of the hills, she had ridden six or seven miles into the mountains and had come upon a small park in the hills. It was a deep, grassy basin with forest around the edges and a few trees scattered across it. There was a stream there, and she noticed a dugout cabin in the side of the hill across the park. No smoke came from the chimney, and she saw no signs of occupation.
She went no nearer, but she did make a sweep around the end of the park and came on a dim trail. There were no fresh tracks, but there were old droppings of horses as well as of cattle, and some old tracks.
Whoever was driving these cattle that Laban had heard might know of that place.
She sat with the children around the fire, eating doughnuts, and Evie told them a story about her girlhood in Ohio and western Pennsylvania. When she looked out again she could barely make out the corrals. All was white and still, and cold.
When the story was finished and the children were working at the lessons she had laid out for them, she sat by the fire trying to plan for the coming weeks. There must be a path kept open to the shed and the corrals, the fuel must be used sparingly, and above all there must be enough work and amusement to keep the children busy.
Both of them would help in clearing the snow from the path, and both would help in bringing in the fuel. Laban would feed the stock. The worst of it was they did not have sufficient hay for a long hard winter. Part of the winter the animals must graze outside, pawing their way through the snow. This the horses could do, but the calves must be fed.
For three days the snow continued to fall, steadily and without letup. Every morning Laban went out at daybreak and shoveled snow to keep a path open to the shed.
The stock was in good shape. The snow banked the flimsy building and covered the roof with snow, so that inside it was warm and snug. Evie milked and carried the milk to the house, while Laban cleaned out from under the animals and put hay in their mangers.
The snow was more than two feet deep on the level, and was piled high on both sides of the path. The skies were now gray and overcast. The temperature was ten above zero on the thermometer beside the door.
“Ma!” Ruthie at the door tugged at Evie’s arm. “Look!”
It was a wolf, a large gray wolf, almost white, on the side of the hill behind the cabin, watching them. He was not over fifty yards away, and was seemingly unafraid. Evie shouted at him, but he did not move. She turned back into the ca
bin. When she came out with the rifle the wolf was gone.
She thought about the men driving the cattle that Laban had seen or heard back there when the snow had started. They could not be honest men, driving where there was no trail, and in a direction where there was no town or ranch. It worried her that they should be so near.
*
FAR TO THE south, Conn Conagher’s horse floundered and fell. Stiff as he was, Conagher kicked loose from the stirrups and landed on his feet, then fell to his knees. He got up slowly, in time to help the gelding to its feet. Holding the reins, Conagher brushed the snow from his clothing.
The wind was on his cheek. It had been blowing right out of the north into his face. He turned the reluctant horse to face it, and then, holding the reins, he led off, struggling against the wind and deepening snow.
He didn’t need anyone to tell him he was in trouble. So far as he knew, there was nothing ahead of him until he reached the stage road, which would be invisible in all this snow. Beyond it there was nothing but plains, mountains, and wilderness.
There was a cabin, though…shelter if he could reach it. That woman…what was her name? She ran a stage station that should lie almost due north of him. But Conagher recalled that somebody had said the stage had moved their station further west; in that case the woman was probably gone and the buildings abandoned.
Still, it would be shelter of a kind. But how far had he to go? And how far could he go?
Going back was out of the question. His horse was already played out, the snow was getting deeper, and there was, in this bare plain, no place to stop. There was no shelter from the wind, and the snow was too dry to build up a bank or to dig into it.
To go on until he could go no farther was dangerous, for with his body’s resources drained, he would have no strength to resist the cold. He knew that most of those who freeze to death do so because they struggle too long. He could stop, huddle in a bundle, and try to wait out the storm, but although he might and probably would survive it, his horse would not. Their only hope was to go on, to try to reach some shelter where a fire could be built, and they could have protection from the wind and cold.
Novel 1969 - Conagher (v5.0) Page 9