He Rode Alone

by Steve Frazee

  Reed said, “I guess,” and spat upon the floor.

  Cushman said to Rumsey, “Is Lizzie your only girl?”

  “Yep! Boys was mostly what I had. Me and — ”

  “You had a baby girl at Gravelly Crossing on the Humboldt River fifteen years ago,” Cushman said.

  Rumsey stared uneasily at Cushman. “Oh, that one — ” His eyes slid away. “How’d you — ” He nodded. “Sure, Lizzie’s told you about that, huh?” He shook his head sadly. “The baby died on Donner Pass.”

  “Long before that,” Belle said. “At Big Meadows.”

  Reed’s long neck was sticking out of his shirt in a strained position as he looked at Cushman. “Is he one of the fellers that’s been trying to marry you, Lizzie. He acts — ”

  “He’s Eddie Cushman.” Belle looked at her father. “You took his father’s wagon at Gravelly Crossing. You left — ”

  “No! No!” Rumsey’s face turned the color of his hands. “The Indians got that boy and his sister! They was — ”

  Reed lurched up, spilling his chair. “It is him, Pa! I knowed it but it didn’t hit me!” He looked wildly over his shoulder toward the back door. He righted the chair and put it between himself and Cushman.

  Rumsey fell into his seat at the worktable. He raised both hands in a defensive gesture. “The Indians was coming, Eddie boy. A big bunch of them — ”

  “We never saw an Indian until we got to the Truckee,” Belle said.

  “You was gone three, four days, Eddie boy. We waited as long as we dared. God bear me witness, that was the way it was. We — ”

  “We waited less than twenty-four hours,” Belle said.

  Rumsey rubbed his hand across his face. “I can’t remember, I can’t remember nothing clear about it now. All I know is we did everything we could for your poor pa and ma, Eddie boy. We laid ’em out real nice — ”

  “You took Ashley Cushman’s best clothes that Ma wanted to bury him in. You knocked her down when she tried to stop you. You wanted her to take Mrs. Cushman’s clothes, but she wouldn’t touch them. She and I put all those things that belonged to Eddie’s mother and Kathy in a chest. Ma and I begged you to wait for Eddie and Kathy.”

  “No! No!” Rumsey cried. “She don’t remember right, Eddie boy. She was just a kid. There was Indians around! We had to go on before the snow came!”

  “She’s lying on us!” Reed said, and his voice held the same whine as his father’s.

  Cushman stared at the filthy imitations of men. He didn’t know what to do. Rumsey Snelling had ruined his life once and now he had returned to do it a second time. When Cushman didn’t move, he saw a slyness come to Rumsey’s face, the shifty look of something weak and desperate that begins to see a way out of trouble.

  Cushman looked at Belle. She had turned away and was staring out the window.

  If he stayed, Cushman knew, he was going to kill Rumsey Snelling with his hands. He stumbled out into the cold night. He started up the street with the intention of returning to the hut below the mine, and then he realized that that was another part of his life that was finished. After a quarter of a mile he turned and came back to town.

  Dunbar’s cabin was dark. Cushman went inside and sat down on the bunk. All he could remember was the evil of Gravelly Crossing. There seemed no way to be free of it.

  He was sitting there in the darkness when the door was bumped open and Frank Eddy said, “Hang onto him, Andy, while I light the lamp.”

  A match flared and steadied into flame. Eddy jumped when he saw Cushman sitting on the bunk. “Hell’s fire, man, why didn’t you say something?”

  Andy Volgamore ducked through the doorway, carrying Dunbar over his shoulder. Dunbar’s eyes were closed and he was mumbling to himself, as happily and helplessly drunk as Cushman had ever seen any man. They put him on the bunk. Dunbar sighed contentedly and fell asleep.

  “First time I ever saw him like that,” Volgamore said. “I’d say he had a right to it, too.” He looked curiously at Cushman. “A few drinks wouldn’t harm you either right now, Ed.”

  They were thinking of the Illinois, Cushman knew. He had forgotten it. He shook his head when they urged him to go with them to Big John’s to loosen up with whisky.

  They went away. Cushman took off Dunbar’s boots and pulled the blankets up on him.

  • • •

  An hour later Joe Kenton knocked the door open and came lurching in. His voice was thick with whisky and there was malicious triumph in his expression as he faced Cushman. “She’s not so hoity-toity after all, is she, Cushman?”

  The steady burning look in Cushman’s eyes disturbed Kenton. He dragged a pistol from his waistband. “Her pretending to be a great lady, so much better than me! All she is is common dirt like her father and brother!”

  Cushman watched the confused, excited eyes and felt pity for Kenton. It was the natural reaction of a stupid brute like him to tear down whatever he couldn’t have.

  “Sit there with that whipped pup look on your face, Cushman! Try to tell yourself that I didn’t ruin it for you and Big John and every other fool that wants her! I could have lied, or kept my mouth shut, when her old man came around looking for information. I could have been like my brothers. They still think she’s something special.

  “I fixed her up. I showed the whole world what kind of people she came from. I beat you all.”

  Cushman kept staring at Kenton. “And now you’re sorry that you did.”

  “The hell I am!” Kenton shouted, but suddenly he looked sick and defeated. He jammed the pistol back under his waistband. He backed up a couple of steps and then he turned and ran into the night.

  After a time Cushman went over to Stapp’s livery with his war sack and blankets on his shoulder. He paid his bill to a sleepy hostler. “The pack horse is Dunbar’s,” Cushman said. It was a small gift, but a little something in return for what Sam Hildreth had given a surly boy long ago.

  Cushman rode out of Victory, taking the down-river trail through the timber, the way by which Belle had brought in her oxen through the snow only a few months before.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CUSHMAN rode toward the rising sun. He was free again, free of obligations to human beings. He could go where he pleased. Once more he could insulate himself against the hurt of failure and refusal and the risks of friendship. He could go on into loneliness.

  She should have told him who she was before he ran into the stunning shock of it himself. He could have taken the blow much better if she had told him, instead of letting him slam headlong, unexpectedly into the truth. Her not telling him was unlike her. Even long ago at Gravelly Crossing she had been the only one of the Snelling brats with guts and decency.

  The miles ahead seemed to build compression against Cushman that was like a physical barrier. Back through the years every parting with those who had tried to give him friendship and love had taken something from him. This time it was taking too much.

  What if she had told him the truth months ago? She had known who he was, from the first day in Victory. The chances were that during those first weeks when he was developing links to other human beings, if she had told him who she was, he would have scuttled into his shell instantly; and the chances were, also, that she had never thought him strong enough to accept her if he knew the truth.

  Cushman stopped his horse. By brooding over Rumsey Snelling he had given the man a power that did not exist. The first time Rumsey had injured him had been beyond Cushman’s power to stop. This time was different. He turned around and headed back.

  Victory showed no interest in his return. Sluices were working. Miners were going about their business. Smoke was coming as usual from the restaurant stove pipe and the blue wagon was still in the trees behind the building. The sight of it gave Cushman great relief. It seemed that he had been gone a long time.

  He got down in front of the restaurant. Rumsey and Reed were talking inside. “Gawd-amighty, Reed, there’d be a pile of murdering wo
rk to a place like this.”

  “We can hire somebody to run it.”

  “They mought be lazy and no-good. Best thing is to sell it. That’s a good wagon too. The cabin ain’t much, but it’ll bring a little something. You’d figure it would be fixed up a little better, considering how long she was here.”

  Cushman was pale when he stepped inside. “Where is she?”

  Rumsey’s adam’s apple began to work up and down. “Now, Eddie boy — ” He began to back away.

  “Where is she?”

  “I reckon she rode away real early this morning. She’ll be back, though, or else we can find her.”

  Cushman glanced around the room. Rumsey and his son had slept on the floor. Their twisted blankets were still there, showing boot marks where they had tramped across them while moving around the room. He saw Belle’s key chain on a table.

  The top of the stove was littered with bark and wood splinters from the fuel they had shoved into the firebox. There was tobacco juice on the floor, dirty dishes scattered on the table. Cushman picked up the long key chain and pocketed it.

  He kept staring at the two. His anger began to die and he was no longer seeing men who had injured him, but symbols that had festered in his mind for fifteen years. His silence terrified the two. Reed stood by the back door, ready to leap away. Words came twisting from Rumsey’s purplish lips. “Now Eddie boy, no call to get excited. No call to lose — ”

  “Never go near her again,” Cushman said. “Never even think of her as related to you, because she ain’t.” He did not tell them that he would kill them; they read that in his eyes, although it was not true.

  “Get your stuff and get out.”

  “We ain’t got no way,” Rumsey whined. “We come here on the freight wagons. We ain’t got no — ” He gave Cushman another furtive look and said no more.

  Cushman drove them down the street. Miners stopped their work to watch. In silence Cushman paced behind the Snellings and they kept glancing back at him, walking a little faster after each look. Reed trotted away and Rumsey hurried to follow him. They disappeared into the trees.

  Cushman’s anger was not even disgust now; it was pity and with the coming of that his bitterness began to die.

  He turned and bumped into Jake Dunbar, who showed the effects of his fearful drunk. Big John was there beside him.

  “Where’d she go?” Cushman asked.

  “Up-river. We just found out and were getting ready to trail along to make sure she got where she was going without any trouble.” Dunbar’s blue eyes smiled. “She left after she found out you’d run away.”

  Big John gave Cushman a heavy look. “So the lout at last got off his backside.”

  “I don’t think she’ll want to come back here even long enough to sell her property,” Dunbar said. “Big John and me will do that much for her. Where’ll you two be?”

  “I’ll let you know,” Cushman said. It occurred to him that the three of them were assuming something that was not yet settled.

  Big John put out his hand and he and Cushman stood with a hard grip between them for a moment. Big John was half serious when he said, “I’d rather break your jaw for you, Cushman, you lucky bastard.” He spun around and walked back toward his saloon.

  Dunbar slapped a poke into Cushman’s hand. It had to be, Cushman knew, about the last of his gold; and he knew, also, how much it would offend Dunbar if he refused the present.

  “Get out of here,” Dunbar said. “She bought one of Stapp’s crowbaits, so she won’t be too far off.”

  • • •

  She was riding across the high valley, going toward Weston Pass. Cushman kept pushing his horse, and then all at once there was no hurry, for he felt guilt about his behavior last night and doubts over whether he could say the right thing now.

  She heard Cushman when his horse was close enough or the sounds to carry into the light wind running down he valley. She turned and saw him. She looked ahead and except riding. Cushman came up beside her, and still she lid not stop.

  He saw behind her pride and courage, to the misery inside her. He said, “Stapp could have given you a better rig than that.”

  “I didn’t try to bargain.”

  They rode side by side toward the river crossing where the wind was making pale shadows in the moving grass.

  “I told them not to bother you any more,” Cushman said. After a time he added, “They won’t.”

  They were at the river when he reached out to the cheek strap of her bridle and stopped her horse. He took the chain with the keys on it and gave it to her. It lay in her hand for a few moments with the fine links piled and shining, and then she turned her palm and dropped it into the tall grass.

  “Lizzie.”

  It was the right word. Watching her face Cushman knew that it carried everything he felt — and could not say: she was Lizzie Snelling, the woman he loved, and her family no longer mattered or could come between hem.

  He saw her lips tremble and her eyes come alive as she understood everything his use of her right name meant.

  THE END

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  Copyright © 1956 by Fawcett Publications, Inc. Copyright © renewed 1984 by Steve Frazee. Published by arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency. All rights reserved.

  Cover image(s) © Time Tunnel/The Wild West

  This is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-5835-3

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-5835-1

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