by Lauran Paine
John mounted and turned to follow Ethan up the slope. As he did this, he said: “DeFore’s men or Thorne’s?”
“DeFore’s,” Ethan replied, concentrating on helping his horse find the easiest route uphill.
Above, those two saddled men sat like statues, watching, motionless, and totally silent. Behind them stood a cloud castle in the dying day, its edges red-encrusted and its backgrounding expanse of sky a soft pink. Elsewhere, south and north, the land was tilted and sloping, but directly behind those two cowboys, a little more than a mile, lay the deserted flow of the trace through Cheyenne Pass.
When Ethan was close enough to make sure he would be heard and understood, he called ahead to the sentinels. “You boys would make fair Indians,” he said. “’Course, no self-respecting Indian would skyline himself like you fellows are doing now.”
One of those men sang back: “Well, now, Sheriff, I reckon if an Indian wanted to be noticed, he’d skyline himself, wouldn’t he?”
Ethan halted his horse a hundred feet out, twisted to watch John come up the last hundred yards, then straightened forward to study the two DeFore riders. He knew them both, not personally but casually.
“If you wanted to be noticed, son,” he said to one of the men sitting grave-faced and watching apprehensively, “you could’ve sung out when you first commenced trailing us a mile back down near the flat country.”
The second cowboy looked over at his companion and chuckled. To Ethan this one said: “Hell, Deputy, you just dealt his pride a plumb mortal blow. He’s been telling me all the while we been tagging you fellows how good a scout he was.”
Ethan’s eyes twinkled. “Maybe he’ll also tell me where Mr. DeFore is, if he’s in a talkative mood.”
The unsmiling cowboy nodded. “I can do better than that, Sheriff … I’ll take you to him. Sort of figured on doing that anyway. By invitation of course … you understand, wouldn’t neither one of us think of coercing officers of the law.”
The two DeFore riders turned and struck out due east for the stage road, but just before they came to it, they swung north and skirted around several upended granite slopes.
* * * * *
It was a long ride and a slow one. In this eroded, broken upland country, no prudent man pushed a horse, the air being thin and the footing treacherous. But before sunset the two cowboys drew rein at the base of a little plateau and pointed out a sidehill trail that wound upward toward an overhead spot.
“Hit that trail and stay on it, Sheriff. Mr. DeFore is up there.”
Ethan said: “You two aren’t coming?”
“Nope. Our orders are to spot trespassers. You two fellows are different. We figure Mr. DeFore will want to see you. But anyone else … no dice. Our orders are to run ’em off.”
As the cowboys were reining around, John called after them: “What about Thorne … did you see any trace of him?”
One of the DeFore men twisted in the saddle, shook his head, and kept on riding.
The onward trail was a good one. It was wide and not too steep. In considering it now, MacCallister had a sudden idea that this trail was kept brushed off and open for some definite purpose. He led out without a word, and John followed.
They climbed steadily toward the overhead plateau, and Ethan racked his brain to recall whether he’d ever before visited this particular mesa. He was certain, after a while, that he had not, then John made an observation that set Ethan to thinking again.
“Ethan, this trail isn’t visible from the stage road.”
Ethan saw at once that it wasn’t. But he said nothing until they were near the top out.
“You can see the whole blessed countryside from up here, John. I’ll bet you there used to be one of those old Indian watchtowers up here.”
But that wasn’t what Ethan was thinking about at all.
They made the last big turn, climbed a steep hundred feet, and emerged upon the absolutely flat top of a mesa. There were several trees upon this windswept, silent, lost world of soft grass and endless wildflowers. There was also a stone chapel. At least to Ethan it looked like a chapel—the roof was gabled, very peaked, and slate-covered. The walls were made of carefully squared and mortared fieldstone. There were two little glass windows in this unique little building which caught and reflected the setting sun, throwing back a bronze light.
John dropped his rein hand and whispered: “I’ll be damned.”
Ethan sat looking, saying nothing. Finally, when a horseman came around the little stone chapel, heading over toward them, Ethan commented: “Son, I think we’ve just discovered something only DeFore and his men have known about.”
“I agree,” John breathed. “Probably the burial grounds of Richard DeFore. Ethan, how did he ever manage to keep it a secret this long?”
“Easy, son, easy. Think back over the riders you’ve known that he hired. Men like Travis Browne and those two that brought us here. That’s why he hired only men he could trust. Men willing to keep his secret and maintain this place. I told you, Dick DeFore’s a complex man.”
“The rider’s beckoning to us, Ethan.”
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
They rode slowly across toward that solemn little chapel, and a big, rawboned man emerged from it to watch them and await their arrival.
Chapter Fourteen
Richard DeFore’s weathered face was smoothed over and unreadable as Ethan and his son-in-law halted twenty feet away and sat their saddles in long silence. The cowman made a hand motion to the rider sitting off to one side, at which the cowboy reversed his animal, riding on around the little stone building.
DeFore ignored John and spoke directly to Ethan, with all the customary roughness absent from his voice.
“Never been up here before, have you, Ethan?”
“No,” replied MacCallister, “I never have.”
“All right, get down, both of you.”
Ethan swung down. So did John. They stood at their horses’ heads, holding their reins. DeFore kept watching them both, his face expressionless. After a moment he said: “Ethan, you’re an old-timer. You’ll remember things from many years back, things other folks have all but forgotten. Things the newcomers like your son-in-law here never heard at all.”
“Well,” Ethan said evenly, “I told him a few things, Dick.”
“You did?”
“Yeah.”
“Are we talking about the same things, Ethan?”
“I reckon we are, Dick.” Ethan made a gesture roundabout with his left hand. “I’ve never been up here before, never had a reason for looking for any such place. But I knew it’d be somewhere close by.”
DeFore faintly inclined his head. “Yeah. That’s how it is with old-timers,” he said. “They know. They remember. But they don’t go poking and prying like newcomers do.”
DeFore turned from the waist, gestured toward the little fieldstone chapel, and straightened back around. His expression was readable now; it was full of iron determination and stubborn willfulness.
“I’ve seen ’em on the pass, Ethan. They get off the stage when the horses are being rested up. They go walking around, looking in places they have no business looking, leaving their garbage around, smoking their stinking cigars. I know sooner or later, they’d find this place. They’d leave their filth up here, too.”
“Fence it off, Dick.”
“Fence it off,” growled the old cowman bitterly. “What good do fences do? They keep cattle and horses out … sometimes. But they only invite curiosity in people. Anyway, Ethan, this is my land, every square foot of it. When I want to keep snoopers out, I got that right.”
The old cowman was glaring fiercely now, and Ethan stood silently, returning his stare, waiting for that wintry storm to pass, determined to say nothing, to do nothing, which might feed DeFore’s ire.
“That means the sta
ges in particular,” DeFore hissed. “They’ll pay my toll or they won’t come through this way.”
“It’s the only pass, Dick. You know that. The alternative is four miles west of here.”
“Then let ’em use the alternate route. I don’t care. I don’t want ’em stumbling up in here anyway.”
“Even if they didn’t stop, Dick?”
“They do stop, Ethan. I’ve sat up here and watched ’em stop. It’s their custom.”
“It’s not so much their custom, Dick, as it’s a plain necessity. They have to blow the teams. That’s quite a climb from the south slope. You know that.”
“I’m not arguing about what they have to do. I’m stating what they’re going to do.”
“But, hell, Dick, making them pay a toll … making everyone who comes through here pay a toll … isn’t going to change anything. Sure, it may discourage some travelers, but not the stages, and they seem to be your particular gripe.”
“My toll,” ground out the older man, “will let folks know they got no rights in this pass, Ethan. It’ll let ’em know they’d better not loiter around up in here.”
As Ethan started to speak again, DeFore flung up an arm. He half twisted to see what the rider wanted who came around from behind the little stone chapel. At once DeFore was different. He was no longer argumentative or bitter, but became now coldly calculating and aggressive.
The rider said: “Horsemen comin’ in from the east, Mr. DeFore. From over in the direction of the home place.”
“How many?”
“Five,” replied the cowboy.
Ethan made an inaudible sigh at that one word. The only five riders he knew of who would be scouting through the hills, instead of frontally approaching Cheyenne Pass, would be Ray Thorne and his four riders.
“All right,” the old cowman said briskly. “Go on down, and warn the others, then all of you take positions where you can keep an eye on ’em. Once you determine that this is that two-gun man the stage line hired, let me know at once.”
As the cowboy whirled to ride off, DeFore whipped back around to face Ethan and John.
“All I wanted was to protect what’s sacred to me, Ethan. That’s all. And what do I get for doing that? A damned war pushed on me by the stage company. Well, if that’s what those Denver whelps want, they’ll damned well get it! I sent for more guns.”
“No,” Ethan informed DeFore. “I countermanded that, Dick. I sent a telegram, too. There’ll be no more gunmen come into my county. Not for you, and not for the stage line. As for those big executives down in Denver … John and I stopped the northbound stage this morning and arrested one of them. He’s locked in the jailhouse back in town right this minute.”
These statements seemed to jar the old cowman. At first he seemed to bristle with wrath at Ethan’s interference in his hiring more gunmen, then he stared as Ethan told of locking up Charles Mather. Finally, he shuffled his feet, looked out over the shadowing land, declaring: “Ethan, you had no right to interfere.”
But most of the fire was gone from his voice.
“I had every right,” contradicted MacCallister. “My job’s to keep the peace. I aim to do exactly that. Incidentally, Travis tried to leave town and join you. I locked him up along with Mather.”
This brought DeFore’s hawklike stare sharply around. “Travis? He’s hurt! He couldn’t get up here by himself.”
“He thought he could. At least, he was willing to try it. And if he’s hurt, by golly, he’s tougher than a boiled owl, because he threw down on me with that six-gun you left him, Dick.”
“The hell he did.”
Ethan nodded. “Travis is a good man. Maybe in his boots, I’d have done the same. Anyway, we had to lock him up.”
Old Richard DeFore lapsed into a long silence. When he eventually emerged from it, he said: “I built this little chapel myself. Built the road up here, too … around the back way, so no one could see it from the stage road. My wife and daughter are buried behind the chapel. Everything I’m doing now is in their honor, to protect their memory.” DeFore stopped speaking, looked steadily over at John before continuing.
“Ethan, your girl grew up. I used to see her down in town. I used to figure my girl would be just about like her … same age, same size and coloring. You know, I’ve often thought, if things had been different, my girl would have grown up and maybe married young Travis. He’s like a son to me. I reckon you can understand that, Ethan.”
“I can understand it, Dick.”
“Well, that’s why I never wanted much truck with you. Your girl lived and grew up and married. Someday you’ll have a grandson.”
Ethan sighed before he said with sudden intensity: “Dick, you listen to me. Coming up to this place … spending so much time at this chapel with those two graves … is going to warp you. It’s already upset your judgment to the extent that you’re trying to make the whole world pay for crossing through Cheyenne Pass. I can tell you, Travis will meet the right girl one of these days. He’ll get married and live on the ranch, and someday he’ll even give you a grandson, being that he’s the same as a son to you. Dick, you’ve got to quit this …”
“It’s not the same,” DeFore insisted.
“The hell it’s not the same. You figure blood makes that much difference? It doesn’t, Dick, believe me, it doesn’t.” Ethan looked over at his son-in-law. He swallowed hard, and his face turned pale. “Dick, you say us old-timers are good at keeping secrets. Well, let me tell you that a lot of youngsters are just as good at that. Dick, you look at me!”
Ethan’s agitation as much as his quivering voice made not only Richard DeFore but also John stare at him. Both forgot everything else for the moment. Neither of them had ever seen Ethan MacCallister so worked up, so shaken and troubled as he was now.
“Dick,” exclaimed Ethan in a low, savage tone, “you’re forcing me to this, damn you! You’re forcing me to prove to you I know what I’m talking about. You say it’s not the same as if Travis was your own flesh and blood. Well, Ruth is not my real daughter.”
Ethan stood there, breathing painfully, his normally calm face twisted, his steady eyes misty. Behind him John made a little strangled gasp. DeFore stood dumbly staring, his jaw hanging slack.
“That’s right,” Ethan continued, rushing on, pushing his words all together to make them steady. “Ruth was six months old when I married her mother. Her pa was killed in the war. She’s not my own child … my own flesh and blood. Now, damn you, DeFore, tell me it’s not the same, and I’ll tell you you’re just plain wrong. I raised that girl. She’s been more daughter to me than maybe my own child could have been.”
“Ethan,” John said, his voice almost a whisper. “Does Ruth know this?”
Ethan whipped around. “Of course she knows it. What kind of a man do you think I am, that I’d not tell a girl she had a father who died fighting to preserve his country?”
“She … she never said a thing about it to me, Ethan.”
“Why should she? I raised her. I’m the only father she’s ever known.”
Ethan caught himself, forced himself to stop, to stand a long moment without saying anything more, to bring his tumultuous emotions under control. Then he said: “You think only the old-timers have secrets, Dick? You think you’re the only one with a hurt in his heart? I’d have given a lot if Ruth had been my own flesh and blood … the first ten years of her life … but after that I knew something you’re too blind to see. She was my daughter, and she always will be. The same applies to Travis and you … if you’d just quit living in the past long enough to take a good long look at the present, of which you’re a part, Dick DeFore, whether you like it or not.”
Ethan turned, flung up his reins, and put his foot in the stirrup.
DeFore came out of his shock and said: “Where you going? What are you figuring on doing?”
“Get that damned gunfighter, that’s what I came up here for …” Ethan said, then paused to get his breathing back under control. “Well, that’s part of what I came up here for anyway.”
“Ethan,” DeFore said, “wait a minute. What other thing did you come up here for?”
“To save an old fool from himself, I reckon,” Ethan replied, and turned his horse. “Come along, John. I got to get down off this mesa.”
But DeFore intervened. He stepped up, caught Ethan’s reins at the bit, saying: “Wait, my horse is around back. I’d like to ride along with you.”
Ethan looked down flintily. “Take your hand off those reins. You ride anywhere you want to up here, it’s your land, but I’ll be damned if you ride with me.”
DeFore dropped his hand, shifted back one step, and gazed steadily upward, until Ethan turned his mount and started back across the little plateau toward that downward trail. John rode along behind him.
Neither of them spoke until, a half hour later, they were down again into the broken country west of the stage road. Then Ethan drew rein, got down, went over, and sat upon a big boulder without looking at John. He ran a pained gaze toward the south, where the town of Winchester lay invisible under a blanket of dusk.
For a long while, John left him alone. He had a smoke. He examined both their animals. He walked out where he could see the faintly lighted peaks around them. He sought movement at those places, some sign that DeFore’s riders were scanning the darkening land or that Thorne’s men were stealthily approaching.
He was still standing like this when from behind him, Ethan said: “See anything?” His voice was almost normal again.
“No, nothing,” John answered, and walked back to squat down beside Ethan. “You were dead right up there,” he told his father-in-law. “Dead right. But it hurt to say all that, didn’t it, Ethan?”
“It hurt, son. You’re damned right it hurt. That’s the first time since Ruth’s mother and I came to this country I ever told a living soul that story.”
“Ethan, I got to say something. I just hope to hell I’m half the man you are … someday.”
