by T. T. Flynn
Each day now Patricia’s gratitude increased. This morning Roger was riding into Soledad, and she was riding partway with him. When Patricia walked out of the house, carrying her straw sombrero by its braided leather chin ties, her roan gelding and Roger’s horse were saddled and waiting in the yard.
Roger and her father were talking beside the horses. The old look of force and lusty humor was on Matt as he balanced on worn boot heels, sunlight in his shock of graying hair, one hand making chopping gestures. Roger had his reassuring look of bigness and assurance as both men smiled indulgently at her.
“Your father,” Roger said lightly, “wants me to wear a gun.” He gave her a hand up to the sidesaddle and smiled up at her. “And all I want is friends.”
Matt was blunt. “In town the other day, Gid Markham put you in his tally book, son. Gid don’t forget.”
A faint tightness touched Patricia’s throat. Once more Matt could say “son” unconsciously, and feel it when he talked to Roger Travis.
As their horses wheeled away, Patricia looked about the busy yard. Beyond the half-finished bunkhouse, native Mexicans were molding adobe bricks from puddled mud and straw. A freight wagon that had rolled in during a high windstorm last night was being unloaded.
Roger Travis grinned at her. “Be a different ranch when we’re through. Big plans ahead.”
“What plans?” Patricia countered pointedly.
He stared into distance, riding with the straight assurance that was so much a part of him. “It’s a big country. A man can grow big in it if he plans right.”
“And if he has enough money,” said Patricia lightly.
“I’ve got money.” For a moment Roger Travis seemed alone with his thoughts as he looked across the miles of undulating grass to blue mountains against the cloudless sky.
All her life Patricia had known this rugged land, often harsh and always beautiful. She had for an instant now the exciting sensation of viewing it in new promise through the eyes of Roger Travis.
He said: “All my life I’ve been looking for something like this.” His smile sought her. “Even the pretty girls own mines.”
Patricia chuckled. “Last year my mine cleared about three hundred dollars. But I found the outcrop. It’s something that I own myself.”
Roger changed the subject. “What started all this trouble with the Markhams?”
“Amos Markham, Gid’s father, started it. Not even Dad knows why.”
“I’ve heard they were friends in the Army during the Mexican War.”
“They enlisted in Saint Louis on the same day. They were discharged together and were friends until after Amos married the daughter of old Lorenzo Rivera.”
“Sometimes a woman . . .”
“Wrong guess,” Patricia said, smiling. “Dad met Mother during a trip to Santa Fe. They were married in a week. Amos had never seen Mother until he married Consuela Rivera shortly after.”
“Something started the trouble.”
“When Dad started his own ranch, there was trouble with Amos from the first,” Patricia said, trying to keep bitterness out of her tone. “Amos was shrewd. He added to the Rivera holdings. But he became cold and hard. Matt jeered at the change in him and fought him through the years . . . until the boys were gone. Now Gid Markham is carrying it on.”
“We’ll take care of Gid Markham,” Roger said. He was smiling again when Patricia looked at him. He stayed warmly in her mind after she turned off alone, riding a faint trail through the lifting, pine-dotted foothills.
The trail from her small pack mine dropped off Big Jack Mountain through a precipitous little canyon. A narrow stream widened over stony shallows as it broke out of the mouth of the canyon. The trail on the streambank held a fresh sign this morning that said that the long string of pack burros loaded with ore had already passed this point on the way to Soledad. Patricia shook her horse into a lope, and some miles beyond she sighted an approaching rider. She couldn’t believe it. Never had she known Gid Markham’s mother to appear like this on land controlled by the Kilgores.
The woman had been a mystery most of Patricia’s life, little more than a shadowy name from which the fierce, unhappy past had sprung. Since her husband had died, Consuela Markham had been away much of the time, traveling widely, Patricia knew from reading the weekly Soledad Beacon. This woman was not from the little native placitas, with her head covered by a black rebozo, Patricia saw as they neared each other. The black serge riding habit, black gloves of soft leather, small black hat would match any in the territory.
Consuela Markham curbed her spirited dun horse and spoke first. “Your burro man said you might come this way.” She had hardly an accent. Her small-boned face held pride that had been given to Gid Markham. Level brown eyes were direct and curious. “Like your mother,” the woman said.
She didn’t like my mother, Patricia sensed. She made no comment as the woman reined her horse back and they rode on together.
Consuela Markham said: “I have been away this year. Now I hear that a man named Travis is at your ranch. Many things are happening. Plans are being made.”
“One plan didn’t work when your son bought our note at the bank,” said Patricia calmly.
“Gideon is what my husband made him,” Consuela Markham said. When she added, “Amos Markham is dead. Gideon is my son now,” Patricia looked quickly at her. The soft fierceness and sadness in the woman’s words were startling. “There must not be trouble again between the men we have left.”
“Why should there ever have been trouble?” Patricia countered.
“It is ended now.” The woman’s face, hardly lined and showing a measure of beauty she once must have had as a young girl, looked pale against the black hat and riding habit. “Last night,” Consuela Markham said slowly, “Gideon put his hand upon the Bible and promised peace with your family, if not provoked. But this man Travis . . . what will he do?”
“Why should he do anything?” Patricia said. “Roger is like one of the family now. He wants friends.”
“One of the family,” said Consuela Markham under her breath. “Another son.” Her black-gloved hand made a gesture of finality. “Gideon promised. It must not happen.” She wheeled off the trail. The dun’s skimming run descended the long slope, weaving among gnarled piñons and cedars, and passed from sight.
She rides better than I do . . . Gid is her son now . . . what did she possess while Amos Markham was alive?
Disturbed by the meeting, Patricia put her roan into a fast lope. And when she turned into the pounded ruts of the Soledad road, she sighted presently the string of pack burros halted ahead under the heavy leather alforjas of selected ore. José Sanchez and his grown son who worked the little mine in shares must have started long before dawn. A dusty two-horse buggy halted in the road by the burros made Patricia smile. Dorothy Strance talked with everyone, even José Sanchez, seeking news for her paper. Dot Strance was standing beside the buggy now, binoculars to her eyes, looking west.
The widow lowered the glasses when Pat rode up. She sounded uncertain. “A man is walking in the wash out there, leading a horse and trying to keep from sight, I think.”
“An Indian?” Patricia asked quickly.
“No,” Dot Strance said, “but he’s carrying a rifle ready to use. It looks like two bodies are on the horse he’s leading. He could be dangerous.”
VII
Since sunrise Clay Mara had been dangerous in the way of a man who meant to survive. Last night in moonlight he had finally found fresh boot tracks, and had followed the erratic trail to old Ira Bell, sprawled flat, horse collapsed far back somewhere, water and hope run out. Bell stayed on the bare back of the spare sorrel horse where Clay had boosted him. And, in the first gray dawn, a shot had reached at them from the black rocks of an ancient lava dike off to the right. Howie Quist’s horse had dropped.
Clay had wrenched the big blood bay under him directly at the lava. One man riding far and fast from the Red Rock Tanks had found the
m and had tried to stop them. He was back there in the silent distance, near the horse on which he had tried to escape. But, before he had been flushed into flight, he had crippled the blood bay. Only the blaze-faced sorrel under Ira Bell had been left. That horse, taken from the camp at the Red Rocks, had had to carry Howie Quist also. Clay had walked.
Since sunrise the green mountains had loomed ahead, tantalizing a man on foot. Hour by slogging hour Clay had walked toward the foothills, and finally up the dry channel of a wash. His boots crunched softly on the loose sand and gravel. Feet had swelled, blisters had lifted and burst. A man this weary was one sodden ache. The lead rope back to the horse ran over Clay’s left shoulder. He leaned tiredly forward against the rope when the sorrel dragged back.
Howie Quist lay forward on the bareback horse, eyes closed, hands clutching chunks of rough mane. Ira Bell sagged forward against Howie’s back. The sun laid shimmering dazzle and heat in the dry channel. Clay’s eyelids felt abraded and raw inside from the sandstorm as he squinted at grass clumps on the banks, at cactus and brush that offered cover for a gun.
When he heard the earth-muffled run of a horse, Clay dropped the rope, shook his head to clear it, and jacked a shell into the carbine. The bank of the wash was above his head along here. The crown of a straw sombrero raking across the background of blue sky was the first thing he sighted. Clay lined the carbine sights swiftly as the rider burst into full view and pulled up on the bank edge.
In the brilliant light, her long blue skirt swept down from the sidesaddle. She was young like Vicky, buried back in Wyoming. She had black hair like Vicky. Clay closed his eyes against the shimmering light that could play such tricks. And her strained voice reached at him: “Do you shoot women?”
“Not today,” Clay said hoarsely as he lowered the carbine and opened his eyes.
She reined the horse half around and beckoned. Clay was instantly suspicious. “Who are you signaling?”
“A buggy that seems to be needed here.” She poised on the sidesaddle, slim and lithe as a boy, looking down at him with alert judgment. Her cooling voice demanded: “What are you afraid of?”
“Just careful,” Clay said, harshly again because his throat brought it out that way.
“Wait there,” she said, wheeled the roan horse, and was gone.
Ira Bell slowly pushed himself up off Howie’s back and mumbled: “Heerd somethin’ like a woman.”
Clay wiped a coat sleeve over his forehead. Memory of the slim, cool figure judging him suspiciously from the bank edge loosed a bit of garrulous nonsense back at Bell. “Another wildcat crossed our path and we can’t turn back,” Clay said, grinning stiffly.
Ira Bell slid off, staggered, and braced himself against the horse’s rump. Howie Quist lay limply forward on the sorrel’s neck, eyes closed, hands locked in the mane.
Moments later Clay sighted the black buggy top. Paced by the girl on the roan horse, the buggy careened down into the wash. Steel-tired wheels clashed over gravel and small rocks toward them.
Ira Bell, still braced against the horse with an unsteady hand, peered toward the buggy. His voice was a weak croak: “Widder Strance drivin’. That ’n’ on the hoss is the Kilgore gal.”
“Matt Kilgore’s daughter?” Clay blurted.
“Uhn-huh.”
In the dulled corridors of Clay’s mind, danger gathered. Today he could not face Travis.
“Old man,” Clay reminded harshly, “last night I hunted for you. I brought you this far. You owe me.” Ira Bell’s cloudy eyes stared at him from dusty, red-rimmed sockets, and Clay continued urgently: “Forget anything I ever said about this part of the country. When we came by your horse camp that first day, Howie and I were riding for Santa Fe. You hired us. Nothing else was said. Understand?”
Ira Bell’s weak nod was uncertain.
Clay surveyed the old man without much hope. Bell’s exhausted mind would probably ramble and say that this Clay Mara had inquired about the Kilgore Ranch, about the man named Travis. That would do it if Travis heard.
Danger brought strength as Clay turned warily and watched this sister of Dick Kilgore ride to him. Dick had called her Pat in the fond way of an older brother. Her hand braced lightly on his callused palm and she dropped off the sidesaddle with a boy’s litheness.
Greenish-blue eyes gave Clay a direct look and reached past him. “Mister Bell! I didn’t recognize you! What happened?”
Ira Bell’s exhausted, gnome-like figure braced against the horse while his mouth opened in the bristle of gray beard stubble and then slowly closed.
“Had a little trouble,” Clay said.
Pat Kilgore looked at his gaunt, dust-grimed figure with open suspicion now. “That’s plain enough, isn’t it? What sort of trouble?”
“Sandstorm for one thing. Anyone could guess.” It came out, harsh and curt, from his raw throat to shut off her questions, and Pat Kilgore reddened as she turned away to meet the arriving buggy.
The two men who clambered quickly out were roughly dressed natives of the country, their dark brown faces broad in the cheekbones from admixture of Indian blood. Candle drippings on patched denim jackets and worn brogan shoes suggested they were hard-rock miners. And the woman leaving the buggy on the other side would be Widow Strance. Clay squinted at her plain cotton wash suit and flat-brimmed straw hat pinned on red hair pulled severely back. He was not too exhausted to have the wry thought that this young widow deserved clothes less plain.
If the woman guessed his thought, she gave no sign. Her question was business-like: “What’s wrong with that one on the horse?”
“Bullet wound. Old Bell’s played out.”
Her glance dropped to the carbine in his hand. Her order to the older Mexican was brisk. “Sanchez, you and your son put that one on the horse into the buggy. Patricia, you hold the team while they’re loading him in.”
The grimy corners of Clay’s mouth moved in humor. This widow talked briskly, competently, but she didn’t look that way at all beneath her severely pinned hair and plain dress. She looked young, warm, friendly. Taller than Pat Kilgore, she stepped beside Clay as he put a hand to Howie Quist’s shoulder.
“Howie!” Clay said sharply.
Howie merely muttered as he lay forward on the horse’s neck, fists still full of mane. Clay’s cuff knocked Howie’s head sagging over. Widow Strance drew breath audibly.
Behind them Pat Kilgore’s indignant protest came: “Do you have to abuse a helpless man?”
Brown hair was a tangled, gritty shock above Howie’s broad, unshaven, dusty face as it rolled back into the horse’s mane and slowly lifted. Gray-faced with weakness, Howie gazed at the woman beside Clay. Howie’s face contorted in the ghost of a dazed grin.
“Out here’n a dry wash . . . red-headed an’ purty!”
“He’ll do,” said Clay with relief. “Load him in.” He had been afraid that Howie was slipping away past help, and had shocked Howie alive with a brutal cuff to the face. Now Howie would make it.
Pat Kilgore, holding the bits of the buggy horses, looked at Clay with angry aversion while the two Mexicans took charge of Howie. Clay eyed her curiously. It made a man feel queer, knowing a vivid, pretty girl like this was friendly with a stranger who was using his own identity.
“Do you have to stare?” she demanded shortly.
Clay’s brief grin considered her. “Worth it,” he said, and when her oval face flushed he turned, satisfied, to the two Mexicans getting Howie’s muscular bulk into the buggy. Widow Strance was supervising. Amusement had glinted in her eyes at Howie’s dazed amazement. Clay told her: “I’d like to see Howie to the doctor.”
“I’ll need you anyway to watch him,” Mrs. Strance said briskly. “Get in.”
“And I want this horse brought in.”
“Sanchez will bring him in.”
Ira Bell was helped in and had to hunch on the floor of the buggy. Even with that, Mrs. Strance was crowded close against Clay as she drove the buggy slowly out of
the wash. Without turning her head, she asked: “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“Not now.”
“Your name then?”
“Clay Mara.”
The lurching buggy threw them together. “I own the newspaper in Soledad,” she said calmly. “And I usually learn everything that happens in this part of the territory and print it.”
Clay’s chuckle had a flat hardness short of humor as he realized how dangerous this woman could be to his plans. “I’ll read it in your newspaper then, ma’am.”
Another lurch threw them together again. Her body had a pliant, lithe feel against him. Her cheek was a smooth, soft sweep. Subdued fire lurked in her hair under the plain straw hat. And, as they rode pressed closely together, the glint in Widow Strance’s hazel eyes was a challenge.
“You will read it in my paper, Mister Mara. Who you are, and why you’ve come in on foot with a wounded man.”
Clay was fighting the sleep of complete exhaustion now as the comfortable buggy seat rocked him. He wondered what Widow Strance would do if his head sagged over on her shoulder.
“I’ve got to talk to Gid Markham,” Clay remembered. “You know him?”
He felt the quick tension of her slim figure. Her question sharpened. “What does Gid have to do with this?”
Clay fought an overpowering yawn, and a growing sense of the warm figure pressed closely against him. “Might be he’ll tell you, ma’am. Get word to him anyway.”
“Gid,” she said after a moment, “may be in town. If not, I’ll see that he hears.”
This competent, warm, pretty young widow was even more of a threat to his plans than Patricia Kilgore, Clay was realizing. She probably knew Travis. She certainly would try to make old Ira Bell talk. The widow’s shoulder close against him drew his thoughts in drowsy fascination. It would be a soft, comfortable shoulder to doze on, Clay caught himself thinking. After a time, he knew he was going to try it.
VIII
After Pat Kilgore had left him, Roger Travis had turned off the ranch road, also. Pressing his horse through winding draws where yellow-topped rabbit weed and orchid flowers of skunkweed dotted color across the grama grass, Travis had thought once more that to the farthest horizons this was a fair country waiting for the bold man who could stand astride it. His blowing horse finally quartered down a brushy slope and swung up a wide draw. Presently, a quarter mile ahead, a small slab-rock cabin and cedar-pole corral huddled against a low limestone cliff. This was the outer line camp on the Kilgore Ranch, nearest Soledad.