‘We must be well past the town limits,’ Sage said, now looking back himself. He could see two, possibly three men trailing them.
‘Does that mean they’ll give it up?’
‘It should, unless the marshal is the type who just doesn’t like to give up—or unless they’ll be happy enough not to try closing ground until after we’re farther from town.’
‘Why would they do that?’ Gwen asked.
‘It would save them the trouble of bothering with a trial,’ he told her.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Gwen said, turning her eyes back again. ‘I think they’ve turned off or halted,’ she said.
‘Good. Let’s not count on it, though.’
‘Sage—some men spend their whole lives looking over their shoulders, don’t they? How can they do it?’
‘Beats me,’ Sage grumbled, but he knew very well why. They had made crime the most important thing in their lives. And, Sage reflected, that was the way the rest of his life would be—if he was lucky enough to survive. But, retribution could not be withheld simply because of a fear of the consequences. Then Sage fell into a glum silence again, and Gwen felt that she had said the wrong thing once more, though she didn’t know what that was.
They passed through a small oak grove and then out on to the seemingly endless land. Sagebrush and nopal cactus dotted the landscape, but nothing larger flourished there. Glancing at Sage Paxton, Gwen took a slow breath and then decided to ask the question that had been lingering in her mind.
‘Well, Sage, it’s a long trail ahead of us. Won’t you tell me about it now?’
‘Tell you about what?’
‘About what’s made you so angry. I can’t believe you’re normally like this. What has made you so determined to kill?’
‘I can’t see that it’s any concern of yours.’
‘I suppose it’s not. That doesn’t keep me from wondering.’
‘All right.’ Sage looked for a long minute into the distance while his pony rocked under him. Finally he answered her. ‘My parents have been murdered, and my brother is responsible.’
‘Does he have a name?’
‘Of course! I just dislike sullying my tongue with it; it’s Brian. Brian Paxton. He’s now the Marshal of Trinity.’
‘My goodness,’ Gwen said.
‘I know. It’s not clever to make a lawman your target. They’ll hang you sure, to teach people to respect law and order.’ Sage sighed, ‘But that means nothing to me. I wouldn’t care if he was the pope. I know what he did and he has to be punished for it, mortally punished.’
‘How can you be so sure that Brian did it, were you there? What happened exactly?’
‘Mom and Dad were at an age when minding the ranch just wasn’t that appealing any more. They wanted to sell off the property and move into town someplace where things would be easier for them. Apparently they shared this thought with Brian, who was counting on assuming control of the ranch.
‘Then they told him that it would be a year or two in coming, that they weren’t quite ready yet. And there was the possibility of portioning the land with his brother.’
‘You.’
‘Me,’ Sage nodded.
‘It doesn’t seem that should be too unexpected,’ Gwen said. ‘Parents try to be even-handed in seeing that everyone shares in their legacy.’
‘No, it doesn’t seem that unreasonable,’ Sage agreed. ‘I don’t even know if I would have wanted to share the ranch with Brian—we didn’t always get along that well. But Brian couldn’t wait for two years, and he couldn’t stand the thought of having to share with me. I was always away, concerned with various other endeavors like most young men of ambition. And there he was, laboring on the ranch day after day. As I said, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go home again. Things hadn’t worked out especially well for me. It would have been admission of failure.’
Gwen nodded as if she at least partly understood the rather complicated telling.
‘If, to me, to return would have been an admission of my own inability, it was Brian’s burning ambition to have the property for himself, and make some changes Dad was reluctant to make in his advanced years, and improve the land and the way business was done.’
He went on, ‘Brian wanted everything, and he wanted it now. He bridled at laboring day after day, under Dad’s restraints, for a cowhand’s wages. Brian wanted to be a landowner and respected cattleman. And besides, he wanted the house to live in as he was courting Beryl and had virtually promised that it would be her bridal gift.’
‘Who was Beryl?’ Gwen asked, and watched as Sage’s eyes hardened and he turned his face away.
‘No one. Just Brian’s new love.’
‘I see,’ Gwen said, understanding more from Sage’s expression than she could have gleaned from his words.
‘Then Brian made his move,’ Sage continued. ‘There was a fire in the house one night. Mom and Dad were savagely burned. Dad died instantly; Mom clung to life for a few days.’
‘But why was it assumed that Brian was responsible?’
‘It wasn’t, not by the townspeople. But I knew. I knew because he was selfish: he wanted the land for himself and he wanted the house for Beryl so that she would agree to marry him.’ Sage’s voice was low, but far from calm.
‘The fire scorched only one room of the house—my parents’ room. It did not spread. So the damage to the house was not widespread. How could that happen? It was not some murderous passing vagrant. The dogs would have torn him apart. It had to have been Brian.’
‘That’s all you know of it—and that all secondhand?’ Gwen asked. ‘I have told you before that I felt you were subject to hasty judgments—’
‘I have other proof, positive proof,’ Sage answered in a steely tone. ‘There is the letter,’ he said, withdrawing a much-folded piece of paper from his vest. ‘Do you want to read it? It’s from someone who knows what happened!’
Gwen declined the offer. ‘Just tell me how anyone who was not there when the fire started could be sure,’ she said. ‘And tell me who the letter is from.’
‘All right,’ Sage said. ‘It’s from the one person who could know, someone who is sick at heart over it. It’s from Beryl.
‘She says that Brian arrived all smoky one night, burst in and told her that it was done; now they could be married.’
‘Did they marry?’ Gwen asked.
‘No, of course not!’ Sage answered, with a touch of indignation. ‘Beryl is made of finer stuff; she couldn’t wed a man who had murdered his own parents believing that he had done it for her.’
‘And she wrote you all about this?’
‘I was in Socorro, working on a deal to transport copper ore from the mine to the refinery. I’d been there for quite some time and meant to remain there until matters were settled. Beryl had been answering my parents’ correspondence for them. She got my address off the envelope of a letter I had sent to Mom and Dad.’
‘And she wrote to you to accuse your brother?’ Gwen said, somewhat astonished.
‘It was no good telling anyone in Trinity, was it? Brian had hired the judge’s brother as foreman of the ranch while he got himself appointed to the vacant town marshal post. That must have been just to delay any real investigation.’
‘You still have the habit of making too many speculative decisions,’ Gwen commented. ‘Have you given any real thought as to why Beryl would condemn your brother? Why would she write to you?’
‘She knew that above anyone else I would demand retribution,’ Sage said with certainty. ‘Now you’re the one making various assumptions, Gwen. That’s because you don’t know Beryl like I do.’
‘You trust her that much?’
‘I trust Beryl more than anyone on this earth. That’s one of the reasons why I was going to marry her when I came back from making my fortune in the world.’
‘You were engaged to her?’
‘That’s what I said, isn’t it?’
‘But—’
&n
bsp; ‘But I was long out in the world and unsuccessful in my attempts to position myself. I suppose eventually her hopes for me and even her memories of me were bound to fade.’
‘You would have been better off as a ranch owner,’ Gwen told him.
‘I’ve thought so too at times,’ Sage admitted glumly.
‘The need to do the right thing is what prompted her to write, not the promise of the ranch which if Brian were gone would then be entirely yours and the house?’
‘I resent that implication,’ Sage said harshly. ‘It is not possible at all—not with a woman like Beryl.’
Gwen shrugged apologetically. ‘It’s only that I like to remain open to all possibilities. I’m not given to rash judgments.’
‘Like me,’ Sage growled.
Gwen didn’t answer. Her eyes were fixed on the land behind them. She said, ‘They’ve gotten closer again, and this time they appear to be coming with a purpose. The three of them have their rifles unsheathed.’
Chapter Seven
The riders behind them were coming in a rush and, as Gwen had said, there was murderous intent in the way they carried their rifles and spurred their ponies on. Who were they?
Men from the town intent on tracking down the killer of Caleb Hornblower? That seemed a good guess but also an unlikely one. No one there would have known or cared about Hornblower who was down from the Vasquez country looking for Gwen, and no one had shown any interest in their leaving as they rode out of Drovers’ Springs. If the marshal there was the least bit observant, there was ample evidence that Hornblower had done his share of the shooting.
Could it be Austin Szabo? That was possible, Sage knew, but did Szabo have the necessary anger in him to ride this far chasing a runaway woman no matter that he had claimed Gwen as his own? There must be dozens more acquiescent women in the outlaw town of Barlow.
They hadn’t seen Szabo back in Drovers’ Springs, but that was where he would have made his play, it seemed to Sage. Szabo could have abducted Gwen there without even a fight or having to watch his back trail. Sage would not reverse course and ride back toward the Vasquez again pursuing them.
Sage had one other thought that was even less palatable: they were now nearer to Trinity than to Drovers’ Springs. These men could have come from that direction, circled and come up behind them. Suppose Beryl had let something slip, or been angry enough to shout out a threat of Sage’s wish to exact revenge on Brian Paxton. Suppose these men were a group sent out from Trinity to watch the trail for the returning brother of Marshal Paxton? If Brian did not mean to have it out face to face with Sage, the open country would be a good place to end it for good and all with him not even having to take a hand in things.
‘See any badges on them?’ Sage asked Gwen.
‘No I don’t—not at this distance,’ she answered. ‘They’re still closing ground very quickly. What are we going to do, Sage?’
‘Ride like hell,’ Sage answered, yanking his own Winchester from its scabbard, for that was all that he could think of doing as the riflemen closed on them.
He slapped spurs to his big gray, glancing at Gwen to make sure she was doing the same, and then they were riding wild across the rough country. Sage looked around as they drove ahead, looking for some familiar landmark. He had, after all, lived his entire life or that which he could remember, in and around Trinity, at times riding far and wide, but the terrain all seemed unfamiliar. Had the passing of the years erased all memory of the land?
The men behind them had still not opened up with their guns. They seemed content to chase Sage toward Trinity town to encounter Brian wearing his new marshal’s badge surrounded by a group of responsible citizens. There Sage’s accusations would fall on deaf ears—a madman carrying mad tales.
Then any gunplay would certainly bring about Sage’s death, whether under the guns of his brother and the townspeople or, if he were victorious, at the hands of the gentlemen of the jury. Sage’s anger seemed no longer strong enough to support the sort of reckless fury that urged him madly on his way. The town must be avoided for the time being.
There was time to plan his face-off with Brian Paxton more fully later.
Sage dipped his horse into a ravine, and watched as Gwen plunged her bay pony down the sandy bank to join him. His gray horse was now limping under him again after the rigors of the run and the effort of scrambling down to the creek floor. Could it make it up the opposite bank? Sage thought it might not have to. He looked at Gwen, who sat her weary bay, her eyes wide with fear and doubt, looking up at the ravine’s sandy opposite bluff.
‘Are we going up there?’ she asked.
‘No. I don’t think my horse can make it. There’s another way to do this, and we might lose those men altogether if we take it.’
‘What then?’ Gwen asked and it seemed she was close to frustrated, weary tears.
‘We’re riding south,’ Sage said grimly. ‘I’m going home.’
They followed the meandering creek bed southward through sparse willow brush. There was only a trickle of running water; the rain that had fallen must have been diverted in a different direction. That was for the best. The travel on a weary, injured pony was difficult enough without the rush of a creek. Sage paused on two different occasions after they had rounded a bend in the wash, listening, but there was no sound as of onrushing horses. The loudest sound in the wash just then was an unhappy mockingbird scolding them as they passed disturbing his peaceful sunny morning.
They rounded another bend in the sinuous stream bed, passed under the low limb of a close-growing sycamore tree and found the land ahead widened and became flatter grassland. A single white-faced steer stood alone on a distant hillock displaying only bovine indifference to the two approaching humans.
Sage again halted his horse. His face now had a different expression, almost dreamy, Gwen thought. She waited patiently for a minute or two and then asked, ‘What is it, Sage?’
‘Home—I’m home again,’ he told her.
To him that obviously meant a lot, but was it the healthy, natural pleasure of returning to home after long traveling, or the unbalanced pleasure of a half-crazed man nearing his desire: a killing ground?
‘I think I can just see the house,’ Gwen said, pointing in that direction.
‘Yes, that’s it.’
‘A lovely setting,’ Gwen said, admiring the view, the rolling land, the far mountains.
‘Lovely setting for a murder,’ Sage muttered. He had obviously done very little thinking about the points she had raised earlier—the possibility that Beryl had something to do with things, playing one brother against the other. Maybe he just refused to consider that.
He had described Beryl in almost saintly terms, as being loyal, fine, above perfidy. It was obvious that he was still in love with Beryl or her memory. It was equally obvious, to Gwen, that there was a very good chance that Beryl had gently prodded him into becoming a murderer for her sake. It seemed Beryl did not care which brother won, which was killed, so long as she got what she wanted. There was no point in bringing any of this up with Sage Paxton. He had painted his own image of Beryl based on his own wishes and desires. It was a portrait he would not allow to be criticized. He needed it to endure in his hall of memory for his own sake. Sage continued to show a tendency to cling to hastily made decisions. No, she thought, looking at his face as he leaned forward intently studying the land, there was no point in trying to get him to reconsider the few facts he had assembled into his jigsaw of reality.
To Sage there was only one way that the pieces fit. There was only the good: Beryl, who had cut her ties with Sage when he had not returned rich from his wandering merchant days, and the bad: Brian, who had murdered his own parents, stolen his woman and now must die for his crimes.
It was a brutal landscape Sage Paxton had assembled in his mind.
‘Let’s ride on down,’ Sage said, having satisfied himself that there were no pursuing men behind them. On the next rise he paused again and
commented, ‘I don’t see many cattle. Wonder if Brian has been doing some selling-off.’
‘There’s someone you could ask,’ Gwen said, lifting a finger to point out an approaching horseman.
Coming nearer to them, Sage squinted at the man on the chestnut horse, trying to make him out.
‘He doesn’t seem to be carrying menace,’ Gwen commented.
‘He’s not showing it at least,’ said Sage, who now had recognized the rider.
‘Do you know him?’ Gwen asked.
‘It’s Charlie Cable, Judge Warren Cable’s son.’
‘The man Brian hired as ranch foreman?’
‘The same. Charlie’s all right—just a little frosty around the edges. He spent his growing-up years where crime and criminals were a constant topic. It seems to have given him an untrusting view of his fellow man.’
Charlie Cable’s expression was dry as he drew up facing them. His eyes shifted from Sage to Gwen and back again without changing expression. His eyes were a lawman’s eyes, skeptical, alert for shadows of trouble. Gwen wondered if the judge’s son wasn’t cut out for that sort of work, more so than Brian Paxton, who, by all accounts, was a rancher to the core. But perhaps Charlie, tired of the talks of lawlessness he heard daily at home, shunned the very thought. Perhaps Judge Cable had wanted to avoid the appearance of favoritism. Perhaps Brian had simply shouldered his way into the job, giving Charlie Cable the ranch foremanship as a sop.
‘I don’t see many cattle grazing,’ Sage said directly.
‘Not up this way,’ the sharp-featured judge’s son agreed, tilting his hat back a little from his forehead. ‘We’ve been slowly gathering the longhorns. We’re keeping them separate these days. Brian has it in mind to cull them and bring on more shorthorns to replace them. He says the day of the longhorn is gone, and I have to agree with him.’
Gwen watched Sage’s face, his eyes. She could see no reaction there, either of approval or disapproval.
‘Is Brian down to town?’ Sage asked.
‘He was, the last I knew,’ Charlie answered, his expression clouding.
‘I guess I’ll stop by the house before riding in there,’ Sage said. Now Gwen could read his expression, and it was not a nice expression at all.
The Trail to Trinity (A Piccadilly Publishing Western Page 6
