“Yes, it was.”
“As long as we will live, won’t any of us forget it. I know how you feel, Ben. I saw friends die, too. I also went hungry and shivered in the mud and prayed for the shelling to stop.”
They rode all the way back, side-by-side, saying no more.
* * * * *
Within sight of the wrecked camp, they saw that little pencil-thin standing fire, which meant Ruben had a meal cooking. Case drew up, dumped his saddle where it fell, and walked ahead.
Owen Wallace was sitting upon the ground, drinking coffee. He put a steady gaze upon Case, watched him go where Atlanta stood waiting, and shrugged. A man did things in the heat of excitement that afterward he was ashamed of. As Owen stared into the fire, he had to admit to himself he’d had that punch coming.
Atlanta slipped her fingers into Case’s hand to lead him around the wagon. There, still holding onto him, she stopped and pointed at the makeshift bed. Bass Templeton was lying there, washed and freshly bandaged. He and Case exchanged a long look.
They could hear men’s voices as Ben Albright and the soldiers and settlers came riding in together to gather at Ruben’s fire.
“Glad to see you came through it all in one piece,” Templeton said to Case.
“Glad you did, too,” responded Case.
“Connelly...?”
“Died in his own yard, Bass.”
Templeton let his gaze wander to Atlanta’s fingers interlocked with those of Case. He licked his lips. “Some time, when we’re alone,” he said with slow difficulty, “I’ll apologize right for making a damned fool of myself, Case.”
“No need, Bass.”
“Well....”
Atlanta smiled, let go of Case’s hand, and dropped down to put her hand on Templeton’s arm. She said gently: “Would you like me to bring you some of that stew Ruben is making?”
Bass looked at her a long time before saying in a fading way: “No thanks, Atlanta. I’d just like to sleep a little.” He watched them walk away. The thing that was there in his heart finally showed upon his face, but he was alone and no one saw it.
Case let Atlanta lead him far out upon the prairie in the inky darkness where a dip and rise materialized. There she sank down, guiding him next to her with a slight tug of his arm.
“Tell me why it all happened this way,” she said.
When he was well launched into an explanation of what had happened since the Albright herd arrived upon the Staked Plains before Lansing’s Ferry, she interrupted him, smiling while she said: “No, not that...us. What made this other thing happen to us, Case?”
He looked at her, wishing he could see her eyes better. It was then that she placed her hand on his cheeks to hold his face, to seek his mouth in the late stillness, and kiss him, and to say, in a wondering tone, afterward: “Would it have happened if we’d met under other circumstances?”
“I have no doubt that no matter where we’d have met,” he answered her, “it would have happened. I’m sure of that, Atlanta, but I’m not certain how I know.”
“Yes,” she said quietly, content with his answer. “I think you are right. No matter where, or how, we’d met, it would have happened this way.” Then she smiled at him. “I think perhaps some other way would have been simpler to forget. This never will be.”
He put out his hands, let them rest upon her waist. He swayed her to him, holding her close without speaking. He was still holding her this way when the sharp rattle of horsemen approaching camp from the south came to him. He quickly released her to spring up.
“What is it?” she asked breathlessly, getting up to stand at his side.
He listened a moment longer, then took her hand and started forward. “Soldiers,” he said. “Lieutenant Forsythe, I imagine. We’d better go back.”
“Yes, of course,” she said, but she did not look pleased at all.
They returned where a dark mob of men had congregated at Ruben’s fire where he was dishing up food and pouring coffee with swift and practiced movements.
Lieutenant Joel Forsythe was standing there, pulling off his gauntlets when Case and Atlanta came up. He put a long, admiring look upon Ben Albright’s very handsome niece, and made a little bow. Then he faced Ben, saying: “I’ll apologize for returning you to this camp.”
Case noticed that he did not say “ordered” you to your camp; his respect for this youthfully deceptive officer went up a notch. Forsythe smiled into Ben’s grim expression. He did not appear to be the least perturbed by the stalwart Texan’s unfriendly look.
Forsythe continued: “It’s always best to apologize after you’ve stepped on folks’ toes, Mister Albright. After one has achieved one’s ends.” He kept right on smiling. “Anyway...it’s all over. I have two signed confessions by eyewitnesses...Connelly’s surviving companions...about how your rider was ambushed.” Forsythe paused to locate Case. When he had, he said: “Have you told Mister Albright about young Connelly?”
Case shook his head.
“Well,” said the officer to Ben, “take a little stroll with me, Mister Albright, and I’ll tell you the most unbelievable story you’ve ever heard...every word of which is the gospel truth.”
Ben wavered. Ruben, Owen Wallace, and Ferd, with his arm wrapped in a sling, were standing still, watching him, waiting to see if he would walk off with the Yankee officer. Ben looked at the three. He also looked over at Atlanta and Case Hyle, standing close to one another. He joined the lieutenant in a quiet stroll away from the wrecked wagon.
As soon as the two were out of earshot, Forsythe’s cavalrymen, having been smelling the rich aromas coming from the large stew pot, crowded up to the fire where Ruben had remained during the previous conversation.
“Reb,” one of the men said, grinning mischievously, “I could sure go for some o’ that slumgullion you’ve got boilin’ there. Always did want to see what you fed your soljers to make ’em fight like that.”
Ruben glared.
On the far side of him, leaning upon the wagon, Owen Wallace made a very slow, slow smile. “Go ahead and feed them, Ruben. It’s probably the onliest he-man cooking this bunch of blue bellies ever got.”
Forsythe’s grizzled sergeant cocked a dark eye at Owen. These two rugged men took the measure of each other. Then the sergeant’s white, heavy teeth showed in a broad smile and everyone except Ruben chuckled.
After a pause, Ruben said: “Humph! Slumgullion! I’ll have you know this here is gen-u-wine rabbit stew made from beef. And not just ordinary beef, but real Texas beef!”
One of the soldiers burst out laughing. This was a signal. Everyone laughed, even Case and Atlanta. Over this rollicking sound came a loud call from out on the plain toward the south. Instantly those faces lit by fire light changed to hard sobriety.
The sergeant stepped clear, planted his legs wide, and called back.
He got an immediate answer from out on the prairie. “It’s Marshal Beal and some friends from Lansing’s Ferry!”
Now Case walked away from Atlanta, went on out a little distance, where he stopped. He heard the steady forward pacing of many horses, sighted a bulky silhouette that he thought must be a wagon, and waited as the newcomers made their approach.
On the seat of a groaning wagon sat Marshal Beal and another man. Around them, riding loosely, were nearly two dozen settler men. Beal, sighting Case, hauled back.
“Brought you a wagon to replace the one that got wrecked,” he said. “Got it loaded with salt pork, flour, and dried vegetables.” Beal paused to cast an assessing look over the crowd of faces. “Where’s Mister Albright?” he asked.
“Here!” boomed Ben, striding up with Lieutenant Forsythe. “Marshal, you didn’t have to do that. I’m not exactly a poor man.”
“No, I expect you’re not,” agreed Beal. “But money never was an object in this mess. Anyway, I didn’t do it. The
folks back at Lansing’s Ferry came up with the idea and I just went along.” Beal shifted the lines, looped them, before he started to climb down. When he was upon the ground, he said to Ben in a low voice: “It’s not any attempt at payment for your rider, Mister Albright. There’s no way to undo that. But it is a token of appreciation from the folks of my town to you, for not ridin’ down on us like Texans sometimes do, when they’re roiled up.” Marshal Beal reached out his hand.
Ben looked down at the hand of Conrad Beal. He grasped the man’s hand and pumped it once, then let it go, clearing his throat to bellow for Ruben.
“Don’t just stand there,” he said fiercely. “Get into that there wagon and see what kind of big celebratory meal you can whip up out of it!”
“Yes, sir,” responded Ruben, sidling forward. “Yes sir, Mister Ben.”
Atlanta squeezed Case’s fingers, hard. He turned with her and they went out again, away from that noise of men from whom the last tension had been removed.
A little to one side Lieutenant Forsythe watched them while bringing a cigar forth from a pocket. He did not look down to light this smoke until the night had dimmed out Atlanta’s slowly moving figure. Then he sighed audibly, torched up, and turned to find craggy Ben Albright at his side.
Through a cloud of smoke, he said: “Mister Albright, your niece is an uncommonly beautiful girl.”
Ben, also looking out where those two strollers had gone, said gravely: Lieutenant, I think she’s got uncommonly good taste in men, too...even if he was a Yankee.”
They turned, those two, and went along to where Ruben, perspiring heavily, was trying to cook and defend himself from a myriad of sly jibes from all sides. They stood together in deep silence for a while, then Ben disappeared around the wagon. He was gone only for a short time. When he returned, he carried two battered tin cups, one of which he handed to Lieutenant Forsythe. He had partially filled the cups with whiskey from Ruben’s secret supply. He lifted his cup to the lieutenant.
“To a courageous Union,” he said.
Forsythe did not smile when he returned this toast. “Major Albright...to a gallant Confederacy.”
They drank, and over their shoulders the soft night ran on toward dawn with its sickle moon putting its gentle light over the endlessness of the Staked Plains of Texas.
the end
About the Author
Lauran Paine who, under his own name and various pseudonyms has written over a thousand books, was born in Duluth, Minnesota. His family moved to California when he was at a young age and his apprenticeship as a Western writer came about through the years he spent in the livestock trade, rodeos, and even motion pictures where he served as an extra because of his expert horsemanship in several films starring movie cowboy Johnny Mack Brown. In the late 1930s, Paine trapped wild horses in northern Arizona and even, for a time, worked as a professional farrier. Paine came to know the Old West through the eyes of many who had been born in the 19th Century, and he learned that Western life had been very different from the way it was portrayed on the screen. “I knew men who had killed other men,” he later recalled. “But they were the exceptions. Prior to and during the Depression, people were just too busy eking out an existence to indulge in Saturday-night brawls.” He served in the U.S. Navy in the Second World War and began writing for Western pulp magazines following his discharge. It is interesting to note that his earliest novels (written under his own name and the pseudonym Mark Carrel) were published in the British market and he soon had as strong a following in that country as in the United States. Paine’s Western fiction is characterized by strong plots, authenticity, an apparently effortless ability to construct situation and character, and a preference for building his stories upon a solid foundation of historical fact. ADOBE EMPIRE (1956), one of his best novels, is a fictionalized account of the last twenty years in the life of trader William Bent and, in an off-trail way, has a melancholy, bittersweet texture that is not easily forgotten. In later novels like THE WHITE BIRD (1997) and CACHE CAÑON (1998), he showed that the special magic and power of his stories and characters had only matured along with his basic themes of changing times, changing attitudes, learning from experience, respecting Nature, and the yearning for a simpler, more moderate way of life.
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