‘That’s fine,’ she said, her voice still tinged by the same curl of sourness. ‘You talk about Mrs. Granger’s new curtains and Catherine Barr’s baby. You talk about the chances for rain next week, and the new job that Bob McQueen got at the feed store. You drink tea and smile politely at each other and complain about the weather and the dust, and compliment each other’s clothes. You talk about Chet Six’s audacity and the blizzard last winter when one of Bannerman’s cowboys froze to death. They ask me when you and I are getting married, and I give them an evasive answer, and they smile curiously at each other. Then it all dries up and we run out of little pleasantries, and we just sit fanning ourselves in the heat. Oh, yes, Ben. Why don’t I go out and visit? Wouldn’t it be delightful.’
‘If you want to look at it that way,’ he said, ‘it might look the same way to you no matter where you went, wouldn’t it?’
She grimaced and knotted her hands together, sinking down into the chair and then, absently, picking up her knitting and bowing over it, squinting in the dimness.
McCracken strode across the room, almost upsetting the fragile table—and seeing her sharp glance’—and flinging the curtains wide. Light flooded the room. ‘At least you can see now,’ he said.
‘It would be different,’ she said, paying no attention to him. ‘Don’t you see? There’s nothing to do in this town. It’s dead—dried up and ready to blow away. In the East, now—in the cities—things are always happening. Fine clothes and parties. People talk of important things and happy things—not crops and herds and weather and rustlers. Plays, opera, the adventure of business. Bustling streets, crowds and streetcar bells, hansoms and gaslights, well-dressed men—’ She stopped, seeming to catch herself, and looked up at him, slowly putting her knitting away on the table.
McCracken said, ‘What’s that you’re knitting?’
‘Nothing,’ she said vaguely. ‘A sweater for Catherine Barr’s baby. It doesn’t excite you, does it? Those things I mentioned, they mean nothing to you, do they, Ben?’
He watched her over an extending silent interval, trying to frame his words in such a way that she might understand his feelings. Finally he said, ‘I’ve lived in cities, Ada. St. Louis, New Orleans. I’ve been in Chicago and New York and Philadelphia and San Francisco. When I was managing the Inca Cattle Company in Grant County, I had to handle their business affairs and a good part of the year it kept me traveling. I’m not a wild man who’s never been out of the woods.’
‘If you were,’ she said distantly, ‘I wouldn’t come near you.’
‘I’ve seen everything you’ve mentioned,’ he continued, ‘but I can tell you a few things. I never saw a place I’d rather live than these mountains. I never saw a suit of clothes that impressed me so much I wanted to wear it. I never saw a crowd that looked better than a grove of pine trees—and I never saw a city I couldn’t do without. Does that make sense to you?’
‘In a way,’ she said. He caught a faraway gaze in her eyes. She stood up slowly and went to the window, and stood leaning forward toward the glass, both palms resting against the sill. ‘Look at that out there,’ she said. ‘It blinds you. Miles on empty miles of nothing. Absolute nothingness-just flat earth, sagebrush and creosote and catclaw. Now and then there are fleeting little times when I begin to think I can understand what it is about this country that invigorates you, that makes you feel so big and alive—and when those times come to me, Ben, I wouldn’t take a tiny bit of it away from you for all the cities in the world.’
She turned around, then, putting her back to the window, silhouetting herself against it. ‘But I know myself too well,’ she said in a lower voice. ‘It’s no good for me, Ben. I can’t live that way—I don’t get the same kind of lift out of this land that you do. You see vast stretches of miles to be conquered—but all I see is an endless nothingness. Maybe it’s because you’re more self-sufficient than I am. I need to be around people, bright people who can stimulate me. You’d be happy to live the rest of your life out on a ranch somewhere with the same little group of cowhands to keep you company for all time. I couldn’t—I need more than that, Ben.’
‘What you’re saying,’ he said reluctantly, ‘is that it’s no good, you and me. Those are hard words, Ada.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not saying that, Ben. What I’m saying is that I can’t change myself to suit you. I wish I could—honestly. But I’m not made that way.’
He looked down, searching for words. ‘I don’t have to tell you that I’m the same way,’ he said.
‘I know. It would be torture for you to try and squeeze yourself down to the size of a business suit and a desk in an office—even though we both know you’d be very good at it. If you went after it, Ben, you could be a millionaire.’
‘It’s not what I want.’
‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve thought it all out, Ben.’
A stray thought pestered him—that these were tragic times. He shook himself. ‘Maybe we could find a way.’
‘Do you really think so? Do you think I could ever be happy living your kind of life—or you living mine?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I don’t,’ she said, flatly yet humbly. ‘Maybe I don’t love you enough, Ben. Maybe I should be able to unbend more, for your sake.’
He shook his head. He could think of nothing to say; he stared at his knuckles, big rope-toughened knuckles with tufts of red hair growing behind them, hands that owned quick sure response with reins and gun and rope. Ada’s voice came through the air as if it were coming from a far distance, hazing into his consciousness: ‘Do you think either one of us could possibly change, Ben?’
‘If there was a chance,’ he answered, ‘I’d take it.’
‘That’s not an answer.’
‘I don’t have any answer,’ he said.
She nodded. ‘I’m going to ask Dad for some money,’ she said. ‘I’ll take the stage to Tucson and go by train from there.’
‘Back East?’
‘Yes. Maybe if we’re apart for a while, we’ll learn to see things in a new light. Who knows, Ben? One of us might change.’ Her eyes, though, held no hope.
He stepped forward with a tightness in the pit of his belly and the sense of something lost. The fragrance of her hair reached his nostrils. Her dress was dove-gray and high collared; her lips, full and composed, were still, and he saw moisture coming to her eyes.
She cried shamelessly, face turned against his chest; he held her to him silently. Finally it was all cried out of her; her body’s shaking subsided, and she turned away, using a handkerchief on her eyes. When she looked at him again, her face was a sweet and solemn mask. Her lips were set in a gentle way.
Her voice was a whisper. ‘Good-bye, Ben.’
When he left the store, going out into the sunlight, he carried with him the image of her standing before him, holding her body severely upright with pride, that faraway sadness in her eyes and the gentle regret on her lips.
Dust had long ago laid a fine, impervious grit indiscriminately on all the town and now a hot wind swept dismally through the street, making a low-hovering haze. He took up the reins and mounted slowly, stiffly. A block distant he saw a solid shape standing vigilant: Sheriff Tom Mossgrove. Mossgrove’s hat brim rose, indicating his interest in McCracken’s appearance. McCracken put his horse into the street’s dusty ruts and when he rode past the stable an earthy scent, damp and dark, issued from its open doorway. It was a heavy weight in him, a sour taste and a bleak vision—the feeling of loss. She had been right, but the knowledge of it was no assistance to him; it had only been a small surprise to him that, after all, she had been the one to admit what both of them had refused to recognize.
As he rode out, lifting the horse to a trot, he touched his gun butt and thought of the coming night, the promise of danger. None of it excited him. Sadness came down like a black bird and perched on his shoulder.
Nine
With his habitual dour face, old San
Saba dished out supper to the five men and a girl seated around the cook-shack table. San Saba’s voice had a crack in it and the whine of age: ‘Mind what I say—ain’t nothin’ good to come of it.’
‘I don’t see,’ Nate Shattuck drawled, ‘how anything good can come of this grub of yours, either, San Saba.’
‘Maybe next time you’d like to fix your own?’
Shattuck chuckled. Down at the foot of the table, Elena watched all this with half her mind while she ate, troubled by the bleak and silent look that had characterized Ben McCracken ever since his return from town this afternoon. Something had happened to him today to make his mind jump off the straight track of his thoughts—something other than Kramer’s flat refusal to help, or the impending clash between ranchers and toughs. Watching him, she became convinced that something must have occurred between him and Ada Stewart, and the dismal sorrow that was plainly marked on McCracken’s freckled features was enough to make Elena hate the woman.
Nate Shattuck, the segundo, got up. A tight smile drew back his long lips and he said, ‘I reckon I’ll clean up my guns,’ and went out toward the bunkhouse, leaving his supper plate only half empty—a sign of heightened emotions. That feeling, belated until now, came around to touch each one of them; she felt it, a tautening in the air, a thickness in the silence.
Obregon, with his belly beginning to spill over his britches, put his hands flat on the table and pushed to his feet, touching a sleeve to his lips and looking at McCracken with bright eyes. McCracken continued to eat methodically, as though it were a chore and he could not taste the food. ‘I’ll saddle us up,’ Obregon said, and left.
Even young Will Garrison seemed to have been touched by an edge of that fast-traveling feeling; he stood up and wandered uncertainly to the door. When he got there, his head turned and Elena felt his glance on her. She looked up at him and saw a troubled darkness in his gaze; she gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile and, boosted by that, young Will stepped out into the gathering dusk. His thumb was hooked over the hammer of his holstered revolver—it was the first time she had seen Will wear a gun, and it was sight of that weapon belted around his young body that touched her like the first fingers of genuine fear and made a chill run down her back.
Abruptly, she left the table and went through the door, noticing her father’s questioning look but ignoring it. Darkness was coming in a rush of shifting layers of violet and cobalt. Crossing the yard with determined stride, she tossed her head and wheeled into the house to her own room, and stopped, kneeling by her chest. Its rounded top was carved in ornate figures. She lifted the top back and fumbled through the pile of clothing and cameos and jewelry and baby things until finally, wrapped in a shell belt at the bottom of the chest, she found what she sought: a .38-40 Colt revolver, holstered and loaded. Taking it out of leather, she flicked the loading-gate open and dropped a cartridge into her hand. It was old and green with corroded mold. She poked the bullets out of the gun, deftly removed the center pin and cylinder, and squinted down the barrel.
Pressing her lips together, she took the dismantled pistol out into the big parlor. Going to her father’s gun cabinet, she took down patches and oil and a ramrod, and set to work cleaning the revolver. That done, she took out a fresh box of .38-40 cartridges from the cabinet, replaced the cleaning equipment where she had found it, and took the gun and ammunition back into her room. Then, remembering what she had learned one time from McCracken, she loaded the cylinder full with six bullets, and carefully let the hammer down so that the firing pin rested between two shell rims.
Putting the gun into its holster, she belted it around her slim hips and, on her way out the door, glanced at herself in the mirror. A real hard-case, she thought glumly—unruly long black hair falling about her shoulders; hat suspended on her back by the rawhide throat-string; breasts lifting proudly under the flannel shirt; olive skin caked with a day’s portion of dust; eyes brittle with silent anger against a tawny-haired, thin-waisted town girl.
Her father was coming into the parlor with McCracken. The big redhead’s eyes were still bleak and hollow. Her father went immediately to the gun rack, took down his revolver and belted it on, and grabbed a Winchester rifle, jacking it open and checking the load.
McCracken turned, closing the door, and his eyes fell on her in the bedroom doorway. His brows lowered and he said, ‘What’s that for?’
‘What’s what for?’
‘That gun.’
She thought of many things she might say—but all of them fell flat in her mind and she only said, ‘I’m riding with you.’
He grimaced. She could see, with stinging regret, that only a part of his mind was on her. He said absently, ‘Put that damned thing away. You’re not going anywhere. Nor you, either, Felix.’
Her father turned, scowling. ‘Since when do you give me orders, Ben?’
‘Tonight I do. This is a young man’s party—I’m sorry, Felix. It’s that way. You’re no gunman.’
‘Neither is Shattuck,’ her father said. ‘Or Obregon or Will Garrison. Neither are Bannerman or any of the others.’
‘You’re not going,’ McCracken said flatly. ‘Somebody’s got to stay here, in case Six comes through this way.’
‘San Saba will stay. Elena will stay.’
‘And you with them.’ McCracken’s eyes lifted and lamplight was reflected on them in little pinpoints. The finality of his glance lay solidly against the old man and presently her father nodded wearily, turning, putting the rifle away. ‘You are right,’ he said. ‘An old man is a burden. But old men have pride, too, Ben.’
‘I’m sorry,’ McCracken said again, and swung abruptly to the door. Pausing with his hand on the latch, he looked at Elena. ‘Stay put, kid,’ he said, and wheeled out into the night. Elena turned her angry gaze on her father and found him gently shaking his head. He said, ‘He is right, my daughter. If you rode with them, he would have trouble to look out for you. And he has enough troubles tonight without that.’
‘All right,’ she said disgustedly, and batted back into her room, unbuckling the shell belt and flinging it on the bed. Outside she heard the clip-clop of a single set of advancing hoof beats; she blew out the lamp and went to the window to look out, sliding the pane open so that she could hear.
The horseman was Sheriff Mossgrove. He rode into the yard, both hands in plain sight, and only then did McCracken step out of the shadows. She saw his hand drop away from his gun butt. It was that kind of night.
Mossgrove’s voice drifted across the still air: ‘All set, Ben?’
‘All set. Mount up, boys.’
Shortly thereafter, the five men gathered in the center of the yard. Mossgrove’s hand went up and dropped and there was a quick drumming of hoofs that quickly died away as they swept out of the yard on the road toward Box B. She watched their mounted silhouettes reach the top of the hill and spill down out of sight over the far side. Silence came down to blanket the ranch. San Saba came out of the cook-shack to spill a trough of dirty dishwater on the ground. Elena’s eyes were wide and blank; she sat down slowly on a corner of the bed and dropped her face in her hands.
Without talk, they thundered across the mountains, five tall men outlined against the night sky, rising and falling with the rough undulations of the land. There was the creak of saddle leather, the jingle of bit chains, and the pound of hoof beats. The road carried them down through a slice in a long stand of pine timber, then lifted them over a bald hogback, threaded them over the pass of a saddle and dropped them down the main road toward Bannerman’s mailbox. There they turned in and galloped past the creek and up the slope of the meadow into the Box B yard.
Armed and mounted, Bannerman’s crew waited and the six men from S-Bar and Rafter-H. Bannerman rode out a few, yards to meet the newcomers. There was a swirl of dust that died in their wake.
McCracken said, ‘Post two men here at the ranch to guard the buildings and Mrs. Bannerman. Give your wife a gun, Bannerman.’
‘I did.’
‘Good enough. Sweeney, Idaho, Ballinger—you three cut across to Peacock Springs and fort yourselves up there, in case Six doubles past us. Fire three shots the minute you spot them—and we’ll come on the run. Get going, now.’
The three men he had picked—all Rafter-H men—peeled away from the massed crowd of ponies and cantered away into the night. ‘The rest of us will hide out in the trees above Seven Springs. It’s my feeling that if Six comes at all, he’ll try to drive the steers through that gap. We’ll wait for him there. Anything else, Tom?’
‘Just one thing,’ Mossgrove said, touching the points of his mustache with a forefinger. ‘No shooting unless I give the order. Is that understood? I want these men to have a chance to surrender. If they don’t take it, that’s their grief—but they’ve got to have the chance.’
‘I wouldn’t have it any other way, Tom,’ Bannerman said.
‘All right,’ McCracken said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
In a tight-packed bunch, then, the even dozen riders wheeled around the end of the corrals and strung out in a column of twos, running silently across the grassland. On a distant peak McCracken caught sight of the three men he had sent to Peacock Springs; those figures dropped off the high ground and merged into the night shadows. Dark spots on the hillsides were Box B cattle grazing.
They wheeled through a narrow limestone draw and for a quarter hour threaded timber, thereafter coming out into the bed of a dry creek, which they followed at a canter. Iron horseshoes struck off sparks against rocks in the streambed, and there was the clatter of dislodged pebbles. McCracken led them out of the creek, up through the trees and across a blackened area of deadfalls where lightning had started a fire two years ago; from this barren place they rode straight down the line of a long rock-studded ridge, climbed a switch-back trail across a series of mountain faces and presently emerged at the tree-lined edge of a vast bowl-shaped meadow: Seven Springs. A good number of grazing cattle were scattered around the meadow, several of them in bunches clustered around the various bubbling springs. This many cattle would be certain to draw the attention of any moonlight raider.
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