‘As you like. This is the Paxton place after all. I got to see if we still haven’t a few stray holdouts farther down along the creek,’ Cable said, tugging his hat down lower again. He was obviously anxious to be away from Sage Paxton, back to his daily routine. Before walking his chestnut horse away, Charlie glanced once more at Gwen and then said, ‘She’s there, Sage. Beryl is down at the house.’
Then touching two fingers to his hat brim in a gesture of farewell to Gwen Mackay, the ranch foreman started his horse away from them. Gwen looked to Sage for an indication of what they were going to do now, but his expression was a glaze—not just his eyes, but his entire face seemed to be glazed over as if it had been dipped in lacquer and left to harden.
After another minute, Gwen prodded, ‘Sage? What are we going to do?’
His answer was nearly a growl. ‘What did I say we were going to do! Let’s make our way down to the house.’
The front door to the house stood open, presumably to air it out. Gwen detected no scent of smoke as they crossed the front yard between four stately old black oak trees and approached it. She thought she could faintly smell lye soap and still more subtly the scent of bleach. Someone had been cleaning up, obviously.
Maybe she had been wrong about Beryl, who, it seemed, must be the one who had volunteered to clean up after the fire. But then, it was Beryl who probably assumed that the house would be hers someday not now far away. Perhaps she was just making ready for ownership—no matter which brother should prevail in their duel. Brian Paxton had already proposed to her, and Sage, still carrying images of her in his mind, could be easily convinced that he was the only man she had ever loved.
‘I wonder is she here,’ he said, as they approached the hitch rail and swung down from their ponies.
‘That’s what Charlie Cable said.’
‘No one’s stirring about. She might have finished for the day and gone away.’
‘Leaving the door open?’ Gwen answered. ‘You’re just afraid to meet her, Sage.’
Sage’s mouth tightened at Gwen’s taunt. ‘I hardly think that,’ Sage said, a little too loudly, and he stepped up on to the porch. ‘You’re a nuisance, Gwen, you know that?’
‘So I’ve been told,’ she replied.
Gwen had been measuring the house from the outside. Of white, sawn wood it had two stories and in front of it a porch supported by four round pillars. Hardly imposing, it was nevertheless quite substantial for this part of the country.
Sage had tramped into the living room and Gwen followed, holding her hat. Sage waved a hand around the comfortably furnished room, at the native stone fireplace. ‘Like it?’ he asked. There was a little evident pride in his voice. ‘It seems smaller than it did when I was a kid growing up here, but folks tell me that’s a general impression kids going home always have. Really it’s quite grand. I can still see my pa in shirtsleeves helping the carpenters with the rough framing, sawdust coating the entire house, Ma smiling as she tried to keep up with the sweeping.
‘Pa kept telling her that the men could saw faster than she could clean up after them, and Ma laughed, admitting it. Before we moved in here, you see, we had an extended log cabin a little nearer to town and Ma was sick of it. She had such pride in her new house being built that she never went back to the cabin after the day she stepped inside here. Just kept on sweeping, spending the nights here. Her and Pa—I don’t know where they slept; they hadn’t gotten the new bed from Santa Fe yet. We kids—Brian and me—stayed back in the cabin where everything was familiar until the job was done.’
Sage’s eyes remained reminiscent for long minutes. Well, after all, this was home to him and held a lot of memories, and no matter what he had said or hadn’t said, Gwen thought that he was fond of this house himself.
‘Sage!’ the voice from the top of the interior stairs exclaimed. It was a woman’s voice and Gwen looked that way to see the famous Beryl herself. Gwen watched her from a woman’s perspective while Sage simply rushed toward the foot of the stairs, whipping his hat from his head.
Beryl wore a pale-blue dress with a little lace around the neck and at the cuffs. She was a very pale blonde with beautiful skin, a full mouth and wide, medium-blue eyes, all of which Gwen took in no less than Sage, who had rushed halfway up the stairs to escort Beryl to the living room.
‘This is Beryl Courtney,’ Sage said, as if the short run up the stairs had left him breathless. He had his hat in his hands, standing beside Beryl like a bashful schoolboy. Gwen nodded.
‘Beryl, this is Gwen, my—’ He seemed to lose his voice suddenly. What was she?
‘Traveling companion,’ Gwen provided. Sage embraced the offered term.
‘My traveling companion. Gwen has come to Trinity to stay with her aunts.’ Beryl’s mouth which had tightened as she first saw Gwen now softened again. She was watching Sage with appraising eyes, but Gwen saw no love light shining there.
Beryl seated herself on the long leather couch, inviting Sage to sit beside her. She now adopted a lady of the manor expression, which she figured herself for. Beryl had done nothing, said nothing to antagonize Gwen, but Gwen found herself not liking and mistrusting the woman. She continued to stand.
‘I sure am happy to see you again,’ Sage was saying. ‘We should have a good long visit. Maybe after I get cleaned up I can take you out to dinner somewhere.’
‘Why go out?’ Beryl asked. Her smile seemed false to Gwen, but then she was already prejudiced against the beautiful blonde, and for no particular reason. ‘I can make supper right here. I have all the makings. Brian can come over as well and we can all have a nice long conversation.’
Sage started to say something, and Gwen could see the anger rising in him. Settling himself he answered, ‘All right, if it’s not too much trouble. We can just talk things out right here.’ Gwen glanced at his eyes, seeing in their depths that Sage wanted more than talk from his meeting with his brother. He seemed determined to ruin his own life, probably Beryl’s as well and end Brian Paxton’s. Surely Beryl Courtney must have had at least a notion of what Sage was up to, but she said nothing. Her smile was now a fixed expression.
This night might mean the end of all of her problems—one way or the other. Or was that only the way Gwen was reading her? But no matter how things worked out, tonight was set to be a savage one.
‘I want to see where it happened,’ Sage said, rising.
‘Have your look. You know the way.’ Beryl did not rise but sat, hands clasped, studying the floor. Gwen stood by while Sage, his face set, his eyes resolute, started down the hall toward where his father and mother had lived, presumably loved, and died.
He paused before the door, feelings of hatred, love, memory and death dueling within him. Taking a small breath, holding it, he entered the charnel room looking for something he might be able to recover, something that might convict a murderer.
Chapter Eight
Sage stood surveying the room from the doorway for a long time. The window was open a few inches, and a light breeze drifted through the room his parents had shared for those many years. He shook himself mentally; he was not there for the nostalgia. The room had been cleaned, aired and scented, but somehow it still smelled of ash and death, of evil.
His parents’ wide bed with the carved oak headboard was still where it always had been. How had the bed not gone up in flames? There seemed to be a little fire damage on the headboard and, as he looked closer, the footboard too had been scarred by the heat, though someone had polished the worst of the damage away; Beryl no doubt.
The bed was made up covered by a red comforter, trimmed at all edges with white lace. Sage winced. His mother would never have allowed such a coverlet on her bed. His father would have had it tossed out.
Crouching, Sage could see the heavy burn marks across the floor beneath the bed. No amount of polishing could remove these deep scars. Two of the walls had been newly papered, presumably to hide the damage, but had not caught flame. Sage ran a hand a
cross the face of the walls. No, these were sturdy and stable.
The fire had been set only in one spot designed for a particular purpose: to kill the two inhabitants. He glanced at the ceiling, which still showed heavy smoke damage although it had been painted over in white.
This fire had been set with precise calculation to murder two innocent people in their bed and leave the rest of the house intact. That had required a lot of practical planning and time to devise. It had not been executed in the anger or hatred of a single reckless moment.
There had been only one other occupant of the house at that time. One trusted resident: his brother Brian. With renewed anger Sage turned away from the room. There was nothing more to be viewed in there, not after this length of time.
Yes, he and Beryl had to talk, and if Brian was there as well, so much the better. Beryl too must have been seething with bitterness and disappointment, but she said nothing as Sage returned to the living room to find both women in the positions they had held when he left the room. Beryl, on the long leather couch, blue eyes turned down sorrowfully, Gwen, standing near the fireplace, an emotion he could not decipher on her tight lips and in her dark-brown eyes.
‘Do you like the way I redid our bed?’ Beryl asked. Sage tried to smile as he shrugged. Whose bed was it? Who was intended to sleep there?
‘We mustn’t keep you any longer,’ Beryl said, looking at Gwen as she rose. ‘I’m sure you’re anxious to get over to your aunts’ house.’
‘I’ll take her along,’ Sage said. ‘I’ve got to find a place to clean up, maybe buy a new shirt.’
‘But ... ’ Beryl looked just a little bit miffed. ‘You can as easily take a bath here, Sage. As for shirts—I’m sure Brian has many if you didn’t leave some of your own behind.’
‘No, I’d better leave. You have a lot to do. Besides,’ he said, positioning his hat, ‘I want to talk to that lawyer—what was his name, Winston?—and the banker as well, see if there’s anything about the legacy that they need me to sign to finalize matters.’
‘There could be, I suppose,’ Beryl said. ‘Best to make sure everything is legal and above board.’
‘I think so. What time are we going to eat?’
‘Anytime around sundown,’ Beryl replied. ‘If you happen to run into Brian you might remind him,’ she added with no intent evident in her eyes. She then raised up on tiptoe and kissed Sage lightly on his cheek. Gwen, watching Sage’s face, could see that he had taken that kiss as a promise. Possibly that was Beryl’s intent; who knew?
Swinging aboard their horses, they trailed slowly from the yard, Beryl on the porch watching after them. Sage kept his eyes turned that way, started to wave, decided not to, and rode on.
After half a mile, Gwen asked him, ‘Do you think this is wise—coming out here just before dark for supper?’
‘It’s probably safer for me than meeting Brian in town where there are so many eyes and ears. Trinity is his stronghold now that he wears a badge.’
Sage’s attention seemed to drift and they dipped into a shallow little valley surrounded by pine trees, the grass there lush and green. Gwen noticed his demeanor and asked quietly, ‘What are you thinking about now, Sage, or do I even have to ask?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I mean it comes wrapped in lace.’
‘Shut up,’ he growled.
‘Nice way to talk. All I meant was—’
The rifle shot cracked out from the forest verge above them, the thunder of its echo rolling across the valley. Gwen had time to think, ‘I thought we were through with all of that,’ before she was heeling her pony to follow the racing Sage toward the treeline.
She had time to mumble something similar to Sage as he swung down from his gray, snatching for his Winchester.
‘Why would you think that? This is only the beginning of it. Haven’t you been paying attention?’
They remained unmoving, silent for long minutes as the breeze whispered past, swaying the tips of the tall trees. Finally Gwen felt compelled to ask, ‘Are you going after him?’
‘In the timber when he knows where we are and we haven’t glimpsed him? That would be just a little reckless, don’t you think?’
‘I suppose, but who... ?’
‘I don’t know who. I ... we ... have made a few enemies lately, but this doesn’t seem to match their patterns.’
‘Can she shoot? Beryl, I mean.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Just because you don’t like her.’
‘Who said I didn’t like her?’
‘You were practically shouting it with your eyes.’
‘I’ll have to keep them more quiet,’ Gwen answered. ‘Where are we going to go? We have to get away, don’t we?’
‘We can make it the old cabin—it’s not far from here. Just keep to the timber, off the valley floor.’
‘All right. Whatever you say; I don’t wish to be pinned down here as we are.’
Neither did Sage. Swinging into the gray’s saddle, he led Gwen northward toward where his old family home stood in splendid isolation among the pines. No passing stranger would be likely to stumble across it.
There was a good part of the day remaining yet, but Sage doubted he would have time to accomplish all he had meant to that afternoon. He needed to get Gwen to her aunts’ home first. He wanted her out of the way before more serious shooting began. The lawyer, Winston, and the banker could wait. All of that might be irrelevant by sundown.
Emerging from the trees before Gwen had expected it, they came upon a long low log building. It had been built in two sections, the smaller, square structure first, the longer addition later when the one-room cabin had gotten too small for more than two people.
Eventually this, too, seemed not large enough for the new family, Gwen guessed, and they had begun the white house.
She could read nothing in Sage’s eyes but he must have had long memories of this place.
They approached the front of the house and Sage swung down, entering the cabin with his hand close to his Colt. He leaned back out and beckoned to Gwen. She walked in, expecting to find the place musty, cobwebbed, long deserted, but the floors had all been swept and the furniture, old as it was, was clean.
‘Someone’s staying here,’ she said in a whisper.
‘Probably Brian when he’s not in town overnight. He wouldn’t have wanted to go back to the big house until it was polished up. Or,’ Sage said, scratching his head, ‘it could have been given over to Charlie Cable now that he’s foreman of the ranch. His father’s place is quite a way away. He might not have wished to stay with his father anyway.’
‘Possibly not,’ Gwen, who knew nothing of Cable’s relationship with his father, the judge, replied. ‘The question now is, how long do we stay here and where are we going next?’
‘Straight to your aunts’ house. I’m hoping you know where it is.’
‘Someone will tell us,’ Gwen answered.
‘You don’t know, then?’
‘I’ve never been to Trinity, Sage! And as you know, this wasn’t exactly planned.’
‘We’ll find it. All I want to do in the meantime is wait here until we’re sure no one’s following us. If they are, this is a better place to stand them off than being out in open country.’
‘You’re thinking about those three men who were following us.’
‘I’m thinking of those three men, whoever they were. I’m thinking of the marshal from Drovers’ Springs. I’m thinking of Austin Szabo and his Barlow crowd. I’m thinking of my brother and whatever loyal friends and deputies he might have assembled,’ he said irritably. ‘Have I forgotten anyone?’
‘Just Charlie Cable and ... her.’
‘Neither one of them makes any sense,’ Sage snapped.
Gwen turned her back and answered, ‘Then I guess you haven’t forgotten anyone, and it’s quite a large enough crowd for me.’
‘For me too,’ Sage said in a voice that was slightly apologetic. He wal
ked to the front window and stood peering out. ‘We’ll give it a half-hour and then be on our way. The sooner we get you to Trinity, the happier I’ll be. You’ll be safer there.’
‘You think my aged aunts are a match for Austin Szabo?’ she asked in a tone Sage didn’t care for.
‘It’s not him,’ Sage barked, half turning from the window. ‘No one’s chasing you now. You’ll be perfectly safe in Trinity, and I’m more than a little tired of being responsible for you. The facilities are around back if you need them,’ he said. He then returned to his watching.
No one, nothing stirred near the cabin or among the concealing pines for a good half an hour, and so Sage decided it was time to move if they were to get anywhere with what was left of the day.
‘We can go now,’ he said to Gwen.
‘Is it safe?’
‘Who can ever tell, but yes, I think it is.’
‘Well,’ Gwen said with a sigh, rising from the couch with some reluctance. ‘Let’s be going.’
‘What’s the matter with you? You want to get to Trinity, don’t you? To your aunts’ house.’
‘I suppose so,’ Gwen said.
‘You suppose so. Woman, I’ve put quite a bit of time and effort into getting you here,’ Sage said in a low voice.
‘I know it, but Sage ... that’s not my home either, is it?’
‘Well, you had a home and you left it.’
‘You know why,’ Gwen said a little sharply. Her dark eyes flashed. ‘By now I’d be living in Barlow with Austin Szabo if I hadn’t found a way out.’
‘You’ll be all right now, much better off.’
‘I suppose so ... if they’ll even take me in.’
‘They’re your mother’s sisters. They’ll take you in,’ Sage told her.
‘Maybe so. Sometimes old people are a little protective about their privacy, rigid in their habits.’
‘That’s why a good guest follows the rules of the house. You can abide by that for a while—you don’t have to remain there forever.’
The Trail to Trinity (A Piccadilly Publishing Western Page 7
