by T. T. Flynn
Clay chuckled across the coffee mug he was lifting. “Wrong, fellow. You haven’t got enough to cover turning a horse thief loose so you can duck blame.” Clay’s grin widened as he took another swallow of coffee and watched Travis’s smile cut off in a flare of anger.
Matt Kilgore’s harsh “Enough!” abruptly dominated the big kitchen. Kilgore set his mug on the range, jarring hard and slopping coffee. “Mara! Get jerky off the wall to chew if you’re hungry. I’ll take you back safe to Gid Markham, so’s anything might happen to you won’t be on us. Let’s go!”
Patricia objected apprehensively: “Dad! There’s no way you can reason with Gid Markham!”
Flatly and harshly Kilgore said: “Got to be done. I’m head of the family. My place to do it. No talk now! We’re startin’!”
* * * * *
Kilgore’s black hat was pulled low as he rode with Clay on the ranch road across the wide flats, and to the right, up through thickening brush and cedar scrub. Lines had creased deeper in the man’s face. His silence had a grim, withdrawn quality.
“We’re short-cuttin’,” said Kilgore finally. “Be rough ridin’.”
He was Dick Kilgore’s father—this broad-chested, gray-haired man riding straight-up, the buffetings of the past driven deeply into his leathery face in strength and sadness. A fair man, with inflexible inner strength, Clay knew now. Back at the house, Travis had tried to argue, and Kilgore had cut him off with solid purpose, which still did not hide strong affection for Travis.
The jarring pain in Clay’s head was easing when they blew the horses on the ridge crest. Looking back and down, Clay’s gaze sharpened on a buggy, stringing pale dust along the road ruts they had left.
“Looks like Missus Strance’s buggy,” Clay said. “The widow who owns the newspaper.”
Kilgore looked and nodded. “Dot Strance comes out to see Patricia now ’n’ then.”
Clay gave a last hard look back at the distant buggy as they rode on. The woman’s questions about San Francisco still troubled him. The widow must have left Soledad shortly after he had—and she was driving straight to Travis. She meant, evidently, to make trouble for Clay Mara.
They were crossing a mile-wide valley of open grass toward a high mesa rim when Kilgore said: “Long time ago I busted acrost here with four young Apache bucks quirtin’ behind, sure they had me cornered against that mesa rise ahead.”
Clay scanned the valley. “I’d have been sure of you, too.”
Kilgore smiled faintly. “There’s a washed cut in that wall ahead. I got my hoss up it, bellied on the rim up there, an’ put them young bucks afoot. Couple years later one of their old men told me they was a sheepish bunch after they walked clean back to the wickiups on Big Jack Mountain.”
Dark memories of Wyoming hit Clay. “Might have been your family next time, and those four doing it.”
“’Twould’ve been my family sure enough if I’d kilt ’em,” said Kilgore quietly. “Twicet, anyway, it was my family. One of my boys each time.”
“And you stayed on in the country,” said Clay under his breath.
Quietly Kilgore said: “Two hundred years it’s been happening in this New Mexico country. This was home. Blood in the ground for payment.” Kilgore’s wry smile came. “The old men in the Río Grande settlements say the Indians . . . Utes an’ Navajos, Apaches, Comanches . . . always left enough for a new start. Enough women to raise more women. Sheep, cattle, horses to start over. That way the raiding stayed good.”
“It has a sound,” Clay said, “of the settlements being kept like chickens for plucking.”
“The chickens plucked back. They was always Indian slaves on the haciendas an’ in the settlements. Which is why they’s so many dark skins an’ broad cheekbones roundabout. Lot of mixing has gone on in two hundred years of fightin’ and raidin’ in this country.”
“Did they ever clean you?” Clay inquired curiously.
Kilgore nodded. “I never quite made it back after the last cleanin’. Took Roger Travis to do it. He was my last boy’s partner. We’re makin’ a new start now.”
The cliff loomed above them, as it had to Matt Kilgore long ago in his furious ride for life. This time their horses crunched leisurely over a fan of dry sand and gravel and angled to the right into a narrow cut that gouged back and up. Kilgore led the way, his horse clashing, slipping, haunches bunching, straining as it drove up.
When Clay broke out at the top, Kilgore was adjusting cinches on his sweating horse.
“That day I come up twicet as fast!” Kilgore called. And, when Clay stepped down beside him, Kilgore held out Clay’s two revolvers and sheath knife he had been carrying. “Couldn’t give ’em to you at the house, the way you looked at Roger,” he said drily.
“How did I look?”
“Your boss, Gid Markham, is hotheaded. You ain’t. Don’t want you around Roger with a gun.” Kilgore’s faint smile considered Clay. “Myself, I kinda fancy you.”
Clay shoved the heavy revolver back into the holster. His own slow smile came. “I was thinking the same thing about you,” Clay said. When he turned to the black gelding to tighten cinches, also, he heard Matt Kilgore’s small chuckle. Moments later Clay reached into his jacket pocket. Then felt in other pockets.
“I had a pipe . . .”
“I mind it,” Kilgore recalled, “on the table with that stuff Patricia took offen you. It went in that drawer I opened to get your guns. I clean forgot it.”
“Leave it at the doctor’s house next trip someone makes to town,” Clay said. He had papers and rolled a smoke before they rode on across the broad, rising mesa flecked with green junipers like fat Christmas trees.
They reached tall, straight pines, and a small wind, cool at this higher altitude, tangy with conifer scent, soughed softly through the branches. A buck deer raced away through the trees in bounding leaps, its white flag bobbing erratically. They crossed a high meadow and, abruptly, they were descending over rough benches, down steep slopes, dropping off limestone ledges, and skirting bald, massive outcroppings.
Kilgore spoke without visible emotion. “We’re on Markham land.”
Clay made no comment. He was wondering what had brought the redhaired, young Mrs. Strance so hastily to the Kilgore Ranch and how much she threatened his plans now.
XVII
When Patricia Kilgore glanced out the kitchen window and saw the dusty old pole buggy rolling into the yard behind the house, she hurried out with mixed emotions, reluctant to come under the scrutiny of Dot Strance’s intelligent hazel eyes. Dot was a friend, but too much had just happened.
Dot was gazing from the buggy seat at empty wagons being moved to the high stacks of new-cut fence posts. Dull thuds of heavy posts being tossed into the wagons echoed through the brilliant sunlight. Cheerfully Dot inquired: “Cord wood?”
“Fence posts,” said Patricia, and saw Roger Travis coming to them with long strides.
Casually Dot said: “I’m driving through to Piedras, and I thought you’d be interested to know that stranger, Clay Mara, came to me this morning asking about his sorrel horse.”
“I played a trick on him,” Patricia said guardedly. “You drove out here to hear why I did?” She was not resentful, but increasingly guarded. “Come in, Dot. Coffee’s hot, and it’s almost time to eat.”
Dot Strance laughed. “I am going on to Piedras, Pat. Well . . . one cup, then I’ll have to get on.”
Roger joined them. Hat in hand, smiling broadly, he helped Dot off the buggy step. Despite her usual plain outfit, Dot Strance looked lovely and young in a ripe, mature way, Patricia realized with vague envy. She felt immature beside the young widow.
Dot was composed and politely friendly to Roger. “Fencing land, Mister Travis?”
“Here and there,” said Roger carelessly. He stepped over and slipped an arm around Patricia. “You’re in time for an announcement.”
Dot Strance surveyed them, smiling. “Not too much of a surprise. Pat, I’m so happ
y for you.”
Laughing, talking, they walked into the house. Patricia served coffee in her best willowware cups, and while she did so, her thoughts shadowed at the memory of Clay Mara’s dark face coldly watching Roger. The grimness of Matt Kilgore’s purpose as he started for the Markham Ranch with Mara made it worse.
Dot stirred sugar into her coffee and spoke good-naturedly to Roger. “Were Patricia and her father amused by that clipping from the San Francisco newspaper?”
Roger shrugged ruefully. “I lost the clipping and forgot to mention it.”
Patricia said: “Clipping from a San Francisco newspaper?”
Dot said lightly: “I thought the story might be about your Roger Travis, and I had intended to print it. Some stranger in San Francisco tried to draw money from the bank account of a man named R. Travis. When they tried to hold the man, he bluffed them with a pipe stem in his coat pocket, and took the cashier with him when he walked out and drove away in a waiting carriage.”
Carefully Patricia said: “A straight-stemmed pipe?” Her hand clenched under the table edge and she said the first thing that came to mind. “He wouldn’t have had much chance if shooting had started.”
“I think that man would have had a chance,” said Dot with smiling conviction. “The bank cashier discovered it was a pipe and leaped from the carriage. The coachman whipped up the horses and made a reckless escape through the city streets.” Dot’s smile lingered. “Unfortunately it wasn’t our Mister Travis’s account. He’s never been in San Francisco, or California, either.”
Roger chuckled. “I still hope to get to California.”
Dot Strance finished her coffee and suggested as she stood up: “A trip to California would be a nice honeymoon.”
“One day Pat and I will get there,” Roger said. “Just now we don’t have the time.”
Patricia stood up, thinking with shock of the straight-stemmed pipe she had taken from the pocket of Mara’s dusty canvas jacket. And, as she walked outside with Dot Strance and Roger, Patricia’s glance went in almost frightened fascination to the drawer where she had dropped the pipe. The front wheel of Dot’s buggy cramped around, scraping briefly on the sharp turn. From the sagging seat, Dot waved as she drove away.
Roger stared after the buggy, his smile gone now. “I don’t like her,” he said shortly. “After we’re married, we won’t see much of her.”
“That,” Patricia said as she turned back into the house, “will take care of itself.”
She knew Roger was staring at her back. She could visualize his long, strong face, stiff and uncompromising, as he walked back to the working men. And, blindly now, not looking at the drawer, Patricia walked through the kitchen to her bedroom, and closed the door. Tucked away in the bottom of her small leather trunk studded with brass was a packet of mementoes she would always cherish. One, in particular, was the last letter her brother Dick had written her from Central America.
Patricia’s hand was unsteady as she brought out the packet, sat on the edge of her bed, and, slowly, with sick foreboding, untied the faded pink ribbon around the packet. She found the letter with its odd-looking foreign stamp, and forced herself to read the contents and make certain her memory was correct about what Dick had written her. If her memory should be right . . . ? Patricia shivered.
* * * * *
Clay Mara was thinking with foreboding of the young Widow Strance as Matt Kilgore led the way down into lower country, through draws filled with tall grass and scattered cattle. As they emerged from the maze of twisting finger draws into a small valley, Kilgore said: “Nigh there.” The Markham headquarters was up the valley, an oasis marked by immense gray-green cottonwoods. “Mostly new since I seen it last,” Kilgore commented.
Kilgore was riding at a steady, jolting trot, back straight, no expression at all on his creased face. One could only guess at the emotions roiling in the gray-haired, impassive man.
The main house, Clay saw, was long and low, of tawny mud-plastered adobe. There was a small stream a horse could leap. Thread-like acequia channels carried water to garden and orchard. Corrals were of gnarled cedar trunks upright in the ground. Outbuildings behind the house were constructed in the form of a square, with high, thick adobe walls between them, so that the square formed by house, outbuildings, and connecting walls enclosed a large yard. A gate of logs, open now, made house, yard, and outbuildings a fort when closed.
Men were outside and inside the walled yard, with bread and meat and tin cups of coffee. A few moved about stiffly. Others, cross-legged on the ground as they ate, were taking their first rest, Clay judged, in a punishing day and night.
“Markham rode to the Red Rocks,” Clay said. “Just back, by the looks.”
Kilgore said: “You didn’t let on.” His impassiveness did not change.
Man after man stared incredulously as Kilgore’s straight figure was recognized. One man swung around and bolted through the open gate into the yard in a half run, coffee visibly slopping from the tin cup in his hand. Others stood up.
Kilgore showed no emotion over the stir his arrival was causing. Reins held casually in one hand, he pointed the steady trot of his horse to the waiting men.
The wiry figure of Gid Markham, still wearing the sober black suit, gray with dust now, bolted out of the back of the house. Unshaven, as exhausted-looking as his crew, Markham stalked out of the gate. Kilgore reined down to a walk, then a halt, and Clay did the same as Markham met them.
Dust and grime were ground into the rough black stubble on Markham’s thin face. His eyes were bloodshot, dull from weariness. His voice was hoarse. “Bringing him here, Mara, saves the trouble of going after him.”
Calmly Clay said: “He brought me.”
The man hardly heard it. Markham’s tired, bitter rage broke at Matt Kilgore. “You damned horse thief!”
Clay swung his horse, watching Markham and the men beyond Markham. They had Markham’s anger, a dull, exhausted, unreasoning anger, as explosive as powder ready to blow. Kilgore sat his horse, straight and unmoved.
“It’s a trip I’d rather not have made,” said Kilgore without emotion. “You’ve got right to call me a thief until I speak my side. I rode over to tell it, an’ talk reason . . .”
“Reason?” Gid Markham broke in disdainfully, as his hand dropped to his gun holster.
“Easy,” Clay said. Markham’s bloodshot eyes swung to him. Clay’s revolver barrel rested across a leg. “You heard him,” he said mildly. “He wants to talk reason, whatever that is.”
Kilgore looked around in visible surprise. Markham’s stare jumped to Clay’s face. “So you chose up sides?”
Clay said: “I never had sides. I helped old Ira Bell for a few days, but my side is all I’m interested in.”
“Then get off the ranch!”
“No reason in that,” Clay said, “because I’m holding this gun on you. And the first one of those tired, touchy men of yours . . . or you, either . . . who pulls a gun gets blown off the ranch first.” Clay added: “That’s reason.”
Markham’s hand left his holster and his gaze swung to Matt Kilgore. His bitterness had the rage of a man who had brooded and made his decisions. “Eighty-two horses, Kilgore, stolen at the Red Rocks. And a trail of dead horses for thirty miles the other side of the Red Rocks. They were changing horses as they rode, killing horses, traveling too fast for us. But on the way back we found one of them that this man Mara had shot at the lava dikes. And his horse. And the horse had your neck brand, Kilgore! Pins all of it straight on you.”
Calmly, Clay asked: “Get our saddles?”
“Yes. And buried the man.”
Slowly Matt Kilgore said: “Some of that I know. The rest I can guess. Which is why I rode over to talk.”
“My father,” Gid Markham flung back in bitter animosity, “never talked to horse thieves. I never did. We hung ’em, we shot ’em. A thief is a thief.”
“That I’ve never denied,” Kilgore said. “I’ve felt the same. But th
ere’s more to this . . .”
Kilgore broke off, glancing at the wide side portal of the house. And Clay had the queer thought that Gid Markham had passed completely out of Kilgore’s mind. A woman was coming through the portal, one hand holding her skirt away from hasty, free steps of small feet. She looked younger than Matt Kilgore. She was slender, straight, proud-looking in the black dress that appeared to be fine China silk, and probably was. A narrow white collar formed a small V around the slender column of her neck.
Matt Kilgore’s hand swept off his hat. Gid Markham turned impatiently to the woman, but his words were courteous. “Mother, this isn’t a woman’s business.”
She came on to the head of Kilgore’s horse, and Matt Kilgore spoke slowly, looking down at her, hat in his hand.
“A long time, Consuela.”
She was a native, Clay saw, and his years in Central America had given him further insight. Her features were delicate, with born pride, self-possession, and more than a hint even now of the real beauty she must have had in younger years.
Looking up, she said quietly: “A long time, Matthew. Have you come to see me?”
“Not exactly, Connie. There’s big trouble to be settled. I rode over to try.”
“The horses?”
“That’s part of it.”
“Mother,” said Gid Markham, “I’ll . . .”
Not taking her eyes off Matt Kilgore, she said: “Gideon, be quiet.” And he was quiet in dark frustration.
Clay pushed his revolver back into the holster, folded hands on the saddle horn, and watched with interest. Here ran currents deeper than his knowledge.
Slowly Kilgore said: “A man in my crew named Doyle sneaked off with some men who’d heard Ira Bell was bringing horses south by the Red Rocks. This man Mara was helpin’ Ira. They lost the herd to Doyle’s bunch. Today Mara spotted Doyle at our place and tangled with him. It was the first thing I knew about it.”
No mention of Travis, Clay noted. Kilgore took the blame, shielded the fellow.
Consuela’s glance went to Clay’s face where raw scratches and bruises still showed. “A very big tangle, I think,” she said with faint amusement.