Troubled range

by Edson, John Thomas

  "Sure you can, Jaya," Johnny replied. "Come give me a knock when you're changed, then we'll go eat."

  "You not wanting me to cook for you?" she gasped.

  "Not today," Johnny grinned. "Let's say you're on holiday."

  "I never had a holiday before," Jaya sighed, opening the room door and stepping inside. "I like belonging to you, Johnny."

  Sitting on his bed, Mark grinned at Johnny when the young cowhand entered the room.

  "What's amusing you?" Johnny asked. "That's a nice gal there."

  "Sure is," Mark agreed. "What're you fixing to do with her?"

  "Me?"

  "You," Mark agreed. "She reckons you own her."

  Johnny flung his hat on to the small dressing table angrily. You know that isn't possible, Mark."

  "Why sure," Mark agreed. "I know it, you know it. But does she know it?"

  "I'll explain it to her while we're eating," Johnny drawled.

  "It's alius easy to explain things to a gal when she's full fed."

  At that moment the door of the room opened and Jaya entered. She wore a different dress. The sight of it lifted Johnny out of his chair and even Mark, who reckoned to be blase about females, stared.

  From waist to ankles the dress looked normal, no slit through which shapely legs could peek seductively, the sort of thing any good woman in town would wear. Above the waist—well, it would raise a dead Indian, happen one had been close at hand. The material clung so tight that it seemed moulded to her and left her arms and shoulders bare, apart from the two straps. The neckline of the dress had been cut down lower than even a dance-hall girl in a wide-open town would chance wearing, and showed that Jaya wore nothing but the dress.

  "I have changed my dress as you say," Jaya announced unnecessarily.

  "Land-sakes, gal!" Johnny gasped. "Is that the only one you have?"

  "No, I have others, but they are smaller than this one."

  Under different circumstances Johnny would not have cared how scantily a girl dressed. Yet somehow he felt differently about Jaya. She looked so small and helpless, happen a man kept his eyes on her face. He did not feel she should dress in anything so revealing when men could see her.

  "Go put a coat on," he said. "I'll take you to the store and buy you a couple of dresses."

  Left alone in the room, Mark lay back on his bed and grinned-up at the roof. He knew Johnny very well and had been surprised at the cowhand's behaviour towards the girl. With any other girl, or any other girl he had met in a saloon, Johnny would never have thought of handing over his room, or worried about how she dressed. Yet he had taken the little girl in and was spending money to buy her clothes more suited to the ideas people had about how a young woman ought to dress.

  Maybe the chance meeting would have its use, Mark thought. While Johnny was a tophand with cattle, ready to work all hours of the day and night, or give his life blood for

  the brand he hired to, he never accepted responsibility. He would need to if he hoped to make the ranch he inherited pay. What Johnny needed was a steadying influence, a wife—but would that girl make him the right kind of wife?

  When Johnny returned, he presented Jaya clad in a gingham dress of modest, conventional pattern. A parcel he carried contained two more, and various articles of underclothing the storekeeper's wife insisted Jaya would need, for her scanty wardrobe did not contain any such luxuries.

  "Let's go eat and talk things out," Mark suggested.

  Over the meal, with Jaya attracting little attention in her new clothes, the girl told her story.

  Jaya was born in a seaport on the Siam coast, although Mark had only a vague idea, and Johnny none at all, where this might be. Her father had been a German trader, her mother a Javanese dancing girl. Not that her father had been a very successful trader, the girl admitted, in fact he spent so much time drinking that he rarely had any business to support an ever-growing family.

  Four years ago her father needed money and sold her to the man Mark killed, the captain of a small trading ship. From the calm way Jaya spoke of the matter, it did not appear to be an unusual transaction in her home land. The captain kept her on the ship as his cook and servant, strangely he had treated her as nothing worse—probably because he planned to sell her to some brothel keeper when she matured and knew he would gain a higher price that way. Then for some reason not unconnected with piracy, but into which Jaya did not go, the man sailed for the United States. He brought his ship around the tip of Southern America to make for the eastern sea-board rather than chance recognition on the west coast. On arrival at Brownsville, the captain had been in urgent need of money. He brought the girl ashore to try to sell her, however, the card game at the Last Battle Saloon gave Jaya a stay and Mark wrote a finish to the man's plan.

  "I did not want to be what he would sell me for," she finished, looking at Johnny with her luminous black eyes and pleading that he believed her. "I am good girl. I cook good,

  mend clothes or make them. I am strong, work very hard for you all the time, Johnny."

  "But I don't own you," Johnny groaned.

  "You do. You have the papers."

  "Dang the papers!" Johnny yelled, then dropped his voice. "They don't mean a thing. You can go any time you want."

  "I not want to go," she said. "You good man, you own me. 1 not leave you."

  Nor would any amount of arguing shake the girl. Mark tried to help out by explaining the impossibility of Johnny owning her, but she brushed aside every suggestion that she was free.

  "Blast it, Mark!" Johnny growled as they followed the girl upstairs after the meal. "How do—say, I've an idea. Let's me and you go out and have us a time. That way she'll see that 1 don't care."

  "I'll go along with you," Mark replied. "It may work."

  Not until they had reached the saloon nearest to the hotel did Johnny remember he had left his saddle, bedroll and war bag in the hotel room that he loaned to Jaya. Yet he did not worry for his every instinct told him his belongings would be safe.

  It had been Johnny's intention to get drunk, which he did, then pick a gal as unlike Jaya as he could find and take her back to the hotel with him. That ought to show Jaya he wanted no part of her. He even had the right girl picked out, a large, buxom blonde beauty who would make two of Jaya in size and heft. The girl would have agreed to Johnny's proposal, but did not get a chance.

  Just as Johnny started to walk towards the girl and suggest they made a night of it, he seemed to see another face before him. One with a mass of long black hair, dainty, pretty features and luminous, yet sad, black eyes. Suddenly Johnny wanted no part of the big blonde.

  Instead he drank more than he meant to. Whisky never made Johnny aggressive. The only effect it had on him was to make him sleepy. After a time Mark steered Johnny back to the hotel. In their room Johnny gravely thanked Mark, shaking his hand and telling him that he was the best damned

  amigo a man ever had. Then Johnny undressed and headed for his blankets which lay on the floor at the side of the room. Mark had done some drinking himself, though not as much as Johnny, and certainly not enough to make him lose his memory. Yet he could not remember Johnny bringing the bedroll into the room and spreading it out ready for use.

  Mark was still thinking about the matter of Johnny's bedroll when he went to sleep. Light sleeper though Mark usually was, he did not hear the door open. A dark shape entered, spent a few minutes in the room and left as silently as it came.

  "Where in hell's my clothes?"

  Daylight streamed in through tbe room's window as Mark woke to Johnny's wail of anger. Sitting up in bed, Mark looked across the room to where Johnny sat on his blankets and stared around the room.

  "Is this your fool idea of a joke?" Johnny growled, seeing Mark sit watching him. "Come on, Mark, where in h—"

  His words died off as the room's door opened to admit Jaya carrying a cloth covered tray. Johnny let out a startled yelp and ducked under his blankets, drawing them around his naked torso.<
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  "I have brought you coffee," the girl said, setting the tray on a chair. "Shall I bring your breakfast to you?"

  "Huh?" Johnny gasped. "Hey—No! And you shouldn't come in here like this, Jaya. I'm not dressed."

  "I will fetch your clothes," she replied and left the room.

  An amazed looking face stared at Mark as the door closed behind the girl. Mark could not hold down his grin, for he had never seen Johnny so completely at a loss for words.

  "D—did she—?" Johnny croaked.

  "Not that I know of," Mark grinned. "I never saw her when we got back here. You undressed yourself and went to sleep, like a baby when its mother sings a lullaby."

  "How'd you like me to sing you a lul—"

  Once more Johnny's words died off as he stared at Jaya. The girl came into the room carrying a neat pile of clothes. Johnny's Stetson, freshly brushed and with the silver conchas of its band gleaming, lay on top of the pile. His spare shirt, undershirt and underpants, all clean and pressed, his levis,

  tidied up after their wear, and boots showing an unaccustomed shine, completed the girl's load. Placing the clothes down, Jaya reached into one of the boots and took out a clean, darned pair of socks which certainly had not been clean or darned when Johnny last saw them.

  "I have packed your old clothes away to be washed when I have time," she said. "Can I—"

  "No!" Johnny yelped as if the words had been stung out of him by a bee. He held the blankets tighter to him. "I can dress myself."

  A gentle smile played on the girl's lips.

  "1 only wanted to know if 1 could pour out the coffee for you."

  Mark grinned and spoke up. "I'll take a cup, if I can, ma'am."

  Whisking the cloth from the tray, Jaya poured out two cups of coffee and looked at Johnny.

  "How do you like it?" she asked.

  "Black and sweet," he replied, sounding dazed.

  "I will remember in the future," she promised.

  Although Johnny thought up some comment about her having no need to remember, he did not use it. The aroma of the cup of coffee Jaya handed to him made him forget the speech.

  "No hotel cook ever threw up Arbuckle's like this," Mark drawled, accepting the cup Jaya carried to him after serving Johnny.

  "I made it myself," the girl answered. "Please get dressed now so you can go and eat the breakfast I have cooked for you."

  "Sure, Jaya gal," Johnny replied. "Just you go and let us dress."

  Not until he was dressing did Johnny realise his wallet and money-belt had been among his clothes. Before he could mention this to Mark, he found them under his pillow. Johnny, who had known enough saloon-girls to have few illusions left, never even thought of checking that the money be intact.

  "Where in hell did the bed come from?" he asked.

  Mark rose, and began to dress before he answered.

  "Jaya must have brought it in for you. What're you going to do about her?"

  "I don't know," Johnny admitted. "I can't just turn the gal loose down here. She'd never get by. I reckon I'll take her up to the ranch until she knows her way around."

  "Why not marry her?" Mark replied.

  Johnny was climbing into his pants as Mark spoke. He stopped with one leg in the air, twisted around and almost fell.

  " Marry !" he howled. "Mark, you-all been falling on your lil pumpkin head too many times. Why in hell should I get married?"

  "Why not?" Mark countered. "You're all set to settle down and be a rancher. Which same, you're going to need a woman to run the house."

  "Nan!" Johnny snorted. "A gal'd just be a drag to me. I'll take her up to the spread, happen she wants to come. But when she knows her way around, waal, I'll stake her to wherever she wants to go."

  There the matter rested for the time being. The two men washed and shaved, finished dressing and went downstairs to eat a good breakfast served to them by Jaya. She seemed to be surprised when Johnny insisted she join them, and sat watching him with smiling lips and happy eyes.

  Before they left the hotel Mark saw its owner, a friend from his Army days. He learned that Jaya had worked until long after he and Johnny went to bed, at washing Johnny's clothes, sewing tears and replacing missing buttons, darning his socks and cleaning his boots and hat.

  Mark did not tell Johnny of his findings. He paid the hotel bill and they took Jaya to collect the hired wagon, then drive to the store and load the ranch's supplies.

  "You stack and I'll load," Mark told Johnny on reaching the store.

  "Any way you want, amigo" Johnny replied.

  Neither of the men noticed Jaya, who had ridden alongside Johnny on the wagon box, climb down and walk on to the sidewalk. The girl followed Mark into the store and watched him pick up a sack of potatoes, sling it on his

  shoulder and stroll out of the door with no more apparent effort than a kid toting a bag of candy.

  "I thought I'd tote all the heavy, stuff out first," he told Johnny who took the sack from him.

  "Any way you—" Johnny began, than glanced at the store's door. He came erect fast, his eyes bulging wide open. "Great blistering horned-toad! Will you take a look at that?"

  Swinging around, Mark saw what had startled Johnny. Came to a point the sight rocked him back on his heels too.

  Jaya came through the door and across the sidewalk, toting a heavy sack of sugar on her back. She walked forward, bowing under the weight, but keeping moving with it.

  To his credit, Johnny reached the sidewalk even before Mark. He sprang over the side of the wagon and took the sack from the girl's back.

  "Land-sakes, gal!" he grunted. "What're you trying to do, kill yourself?"

  "It was not heavy," she replied.

  Johnny could have given her an argument about that. The sack was heavy, far heavier than he would have believed the girl's small figure capable of bearing.

  Coming from the store, the owner looked worriedly to* where Johnny stood heaving the sack on to the wagon.

  "I'm sorry, friend," he said. "The lady came in and asked me which was your gear. I showed her, and next thing I knowed she'd picked that sack up and toted it outside. I never even thought she could heft it from the floor."

  "And she'd best not heft any more," Johnny replied grimly.

  "I do not please you, Johnny?" Jaya gasped, looking worried.

  "Sure you do," he replied with a grin and gently laid a hand on her head to ruffle her hair. "Only there's no call for you to go hefting the heavy stuff around. You lend a hand with the lighter gear if you like."

  By the time the wagon was loaded, Jaya had proved she knew how to stack a load, spread a tarpaulin over it and lash the tarp home securely. She showed embarrassment when

  Johnny pressed some money into her hand and told her to go buy a present.

  "Man'd be a fool to let a gal like her slip through his fingers," Mark drawled as he and Johnny watched Jaya skip lightly into the store.

  "Likely," Johnny agreed. "Only I'm not the marrying kind."

  Normally Mark would have accepted, probably applauded his friend's decision to avoid the bonds of matrimony. However, on this occasion he figured he should break his rule. Johnny needed a good wife, and Jaya showed signs of being a better girl for the job than the sort Johnny would pick given first and free choice of the remuda. Jaya needed a husband, there were too few ways a woman could earn a decent living in the west; and Johnny would make a good husband once he settled in to the idea. Only if Mark knew Johnny, and he reckoned he did, he didn't figure the cowhand would want him handing out advice on the subject of matrimony. More so when thinking of Mark's views on the subject as it affected him personally.

  There was one way to make Johnny see the light though; and Mark reckoned he was just the boy to do it.

  Jaya used the money Johnny gave her to buy a Stetson hat. When she sat by his side on the wagon box, her eagerness to have pleased him by the purchase started Johnny worrying. The last thing he wanted was for her to get too attached to him.
Sure, she was a great little gal, but it was just that Johnny did not think he could make a marrying man.

  "Pass it down this way, Jaya," Mark said, riding his bloodbay stallion at the side of the wagon. "I'll shape it Texas style for you."

  Glancing hopefully at Johnny, who pretended to be too busy handling the reins and make sure his big dun horse followed the wagon, to the tail of which its reins were fastened, Jaya handed Mark the hat.

  "See you bought a good hat," Mark went on, altering the Stetson's crown to meet the dictates of Texas fashion. "It's always worth the money."

  Johnny looked towards the girl, now facing Mark and

  engrossed in his words of wisdom on the subject of hats. Having seen Mark in action around the ladies before, Johnny felt a hint of relief. He did not forget how Mark cut the ground from under his feet one time with the best looking girl in a Newton saloon. From the way things looked, Johnny reckoned Mark to be using the same technique with Jaya.

  "Good ole Mark," he thought. "You're sure taking that lil gal off my back."

  Then another thought struck him. In a way he was responsible for Jaya. If he had not brought her out here there would be no need for Mark to take her off his back. What about after Mark got the gal interested? Johnny knew Mark too well to reckon anything more serious than a flirtation could come with Jaya. So what would she do after Mark rode on?

  For the first time Johnny began to think of Java's many good points. He also decided he had best try to stop her becoming too involved with Mark. Not that he cared one way or the other, of course, but he did not want to see that innocent little gal get hurt.

  So Johnny tried to regain Jaya's attention. Woman-like, Java's feelings had been hurt by Johnny's apparent indifference to her choice of hats—when she made the choice because she felt it would please him and instead of buying some cheap, rather gaudy jewellery which attracted her. So she intended to make Johnny suffer a little for his indifference.

  For the rest of the day, while they travelled across the range heading towards the San Vegas hill country, Johnny tried to get into the conversation which went on between Mark and the girl. He met with little success.