Once

by Elisabeth Grace Foley et al.

  And why, Rosa Jean wondered, staring at the moonlight lining the faint cracks in the plank walls, was loneliness even something she might think she had a chance of escaping?

  V.

  Rosa Jean was feeding the chickens next morning when Quincy Burnett came over from the direction of the corral and leaned against the rail of the chicken coop enclosure. For a minute he said nothing, and looked off in the direction of the pasture, then he shifted to rest one elbow on the rail and looked at the ground and addressed her. “I guess I spoke a little out of turn yesterday,” he said. “I want to apologize.”

  Rosa Jean looked up at him, slight surprise mingling with another feeling that she understood even less—why, was she glad that he had come to say this to her?—but said nothing yet. Quincy gave a shrug. “I won’t say I think any different than I did,” he said, “but I didn’t have any right to shout at you like that. I hope—you won’t think any less of me for it.”

  Rosa Jean did not realize she was standing lost in thought until a moment or two had gone by. “Cat got your tongue?” said Quincy.

  “No,” she said, bringing the basket from under her arm and turning it up to tap out the last crumbs for the hens. “I was just trying to decide whether I was mad enough at you to give you a cold shoulder or not.”

  Quincy’s grin was one of surprise, caught off-guard by her bluntness. “Well, I like somebody who says what they think,” he said. “What’d you decide? Are you mad enough?”

  Rosa Jean shook her head, smiling for what she felt was the first time in a long while. “No, I’m not. I—I was pretty disagreeable myself yesterday. It wasn’t all your fault.”

  “Why, you’re human after all!” said Quincy with an air of great discovery, an unexpectedly pleased look coming into his eyes above the smile.

  “You wondered?” said Rosa Jean, her eyes on the brown hens poking about at her feet.

  “No,” said Quincy. “I’m just teasing. But I—” He seemed to wrestle a moment with something he wondered whether he ought to say or not, and finally came out, “I just hate to see you letting yourself be made a doormat of. Like waiting on and putting up with a couple of jackasses like Charlie and Wirt. You’re not the sort to get tromped on unless you allow it… I don’t see why you do it.”

  “If it comes to that, what are you doing with them? You don’t seem the sort to suffer jackasses gladly, either,” said Rosa Jean.

  “A man’s got to make a living,” said Quincy, with another indifferent shrug. “I could do worse. At least it’s honest.”

  Rosa Jean gave a considering nod. “Mmm-hmm. But don’t get left with any wooden nickels when the time comes to go shares.”

  Quincy darted her a look of surprise. Then he laughed. Their eyes met for a second and she saw that he understood, though the understanding was mingled with the curiosity she knew would always be in his eyes when he looked at her, so long as she let him know nothing more about her.

  There was a short silence. Both seemed to feel the deliberate omission of reference to the most significant revelation made last night, but neither wanted to touch it. Quincy looked at the chickens, and Rosa Jean, taking advantage of his eyes being diverted away from her, found unexpected interest in studying his profile.

  “Hey,” yelled Charlie from the corral, “come on! The first one up’s yours.”

  Quincy left the chicken coop and went toward the corral, and after a moment Rosa Jean unlatched the door of the enclosure and stepped out, fastened it again, and followed him.

  “How much more work do you have on them?” she asked, from a few steps behind him.

  Quincy glanced over his shoulder, his face lighting as if he was pleased to find her there. “Oh, another couple of weeks. They’re getting used to the saddle. The dun here still bucks a few jumps every time you first get on her, but she’ll go gentle enough after I’ve taken the kinks out of her.”

  He slipped over the corral fence and went over to where Charlie held the saddled and bridled mustang mare close by the bars. Rosa Jean put her basket down and climbed up to sit sidewise on the top rail. A wind coming up off the canyon ruffled her hair as she watched Quincy take the reins, speaking casually toward the swiveling ears and patting the horse’s neck. With the reins held in one hand, he turned the stirrup toward him and inserted his foot, and the dun mare blew through her nostrils warily and shifted a step, ears canted partway back. Quincy waited a second and spoke to her soothingly again, settled his left foot firmly in the stirrup, and in one swift motion pulled himself up and swung his other leg across the horse’s back and was in the saddle before the mare had gathered herself for the first leap.

  The dun went off like a firecracker with a couple of long plunges forward, hind hoofs striking up at the air, and then settled into a series of short, stiff bucks, head down and spine twisting with a sharp jerk each time. Rosa Jean held her breath a little out of habit but she could see that Quincy was still in command, sticking tight to the saddle and following the rhythm of the horse’s leaps. The force of the dun’s bucking lessened, its leaps becoming longer and less stiff, and then suddenly at the last minute it gave a sideways twist that threw Quincy off balance and pitched him cleanly over the horse’s left shoulder. He landed with a skidding somersault in the dust, while the dun mare took off on a rapid lap around the corral with her tail waving high in victory.

  Quincy crawled to his feet, stood still for a second to catch his breath, struck some of the dust from his clothes with the flat of his hand, and examined a torn sleeve. “That’s what I get for showing off,” he said. He came over and leaned against the rail fence next to Rosa Jean. “Darned jughead knew I had an audience. Yes, I’m all right, thank you.”

  “I can see that,” said Rosa Jean, unable to keep her smile from twisting into view.

  Quincy pushed his hat at a roguish angle. “If you enjoyed that, maybe you’d like to see me do it again? I’m sure the mare wouldn’t mind, but I haven’t got time. Hey, Wirt!” he shouted across the corral. “Never mind the rope; I’ll catch her myself. She won’t give any more trouble.”

  “Seems to me that’s what you said before,” said Rosa Jean.

  “Give every dog two bites,” said Quincy. He left the fence and approached the dun mare, who tossed her head but let him come. He collected the dragging reins, moving easily, and again put his foot in the stirrup and swung up. The mare started forward quickly, but this time showed no tendency to buck. After a moment at the quick nervous trot, Quincy pushed her forward into a lope and circled the corral, the horse’s stride gradually growing smoother and its response to the reins better. After a few times around he pulled up and dismounted, and Wirt opened the gate for him to lead the horse through. Quincy threw a brief glance back over his shoulder toward Rosa Jean as he went through the gate, and somehow the gesture made her feel like smiling again. The idea that he liked her approval was amusing, and yet also oddly pleasing.

  Yes, she thought, she was glad that she had not been cold with him when he spoke to her this morning. It might mean nothing in the long run, but it made life at the moment a good deal more pleasant.

  At the end of the week the time fell due for someone to go down to Gorham Gulch for supplies, and Charlie Conlan went down. The horse breaking came to a halt, for Quincy Burnett took the opportunity to go up into the mountains alone for a few days to do some hunting. He had been talking about wanting a try at the mountain goats whose tracks they had seen while horse hunting, and so on the same morning that Charlie left he cleaned his rifle, strapped bedroll and saddlebags onto his sorrel gelding, and rode off up the pasture toward the mountain trail.

  When they were gone, the ranch seemed very still and empty after the activity it had seen these mornings past. Wirt had stayed behind, but since he spent most of the day dozing in the shade of the bunkhouse with his hat tipped over his face, his presence made little difference. Rosa Jean found the time hanging heavily on her hands. She spent most of the afternoon working in her vegetable
garden behind the house, and went to bed rather early that night.

  The second day was much the same, and by mid-morning Rosa Jean was very much at loose ends for something to do. She put her hair up, something she seldom took the time to do, and got out her workbasket to fix a frayed hem on one of her dresses. She stared at the faded green gingham fabric between her fingers, and wondered if it was rather drab. Most of her clothes were. But what good would it do to have pretty clothes, away up here?

  Inconsequentially, as she put the pins in the hem she remembered the blue shirt that Quincy Burnett had torn breaking the horse the other day. He had ripped the sleeve almost the length of the forearm, and had not worn the shirt since—she surmised he must have left it behind with the other clothes in his war sack, in the bunkhouse. Mending it would at least give her something to do.

  It is possible this idea would not have occurred to her had matters stood between them the way they had in the first few weeks—which showed that Quincy had made a little progress after all. Rosa Jean had never mended clothes for her regular bunkhouse tenants before unless badgered, and then she usually drove a sharp bargain for her labors. But she was not thinking that way today.

  The bunkhouse was empty and quiet, with the sun streaming in through a cracked window, a little dustier than the house, with the smoke-blackened oil lamp, a checkerboard and checkers, and the parts of a disassembled bridle on the table. Rosa Jean found Quincy’s war sack stowed under the foot of his bunk, lifted it up on top, and loosened the drawstring. The torn blue shirt was easily found, folded loosely near the top. As Rosa Jean pulled it out and turned it over to look at the ripped sleeve, a folded square of paper fell to the floor beside her. She stooped and picked it up. The paper was wrinkled as if it had seen much wear, and she could make out the shapes of bold letters printed on the inside.

  Some vague, instinctive sense of familiarity made her keep it in her hand for a moment—made her do something she otherwise never would have done. She put the blue shirt down on the bunk and unfolded the paper.

  The heavy black ink of the tall, bold letters across the top flashed in her face. It was a reward notice from a bank whose name she knew well, offering five thousand dollars for information leading to the capture of one Ralph Dugan and any members of his gang, who had held up and robbed the bank on November tenth last.

  Rosa Jean stood still for a long moment, looking at the paper. The look on her face had changed once more to that remote, shut-off expressionlessness. Then, with the paper still in one hand, she picked up the blue shirt, pushed it back into Quincy’s war sack, and pulled the drawstring closed. She put the bag back under his bunk and left the empty bunkhouse, taking the wanted poster with her.

  The floor did not particularly need cleaning, but Rosa Jean heated water, tied up her head in an old red kerchief, and spent the rest of the morning on her hands and knees scrubbing every inch of it. She rooted in every corner, scouring every crack of every worn floorboard with the stiff-bristled brush until her fingers were wet and bumped and scraped and her skirt and apron splotched and damp with soapy water. Work was her only vent. Bruce used to laugh at her sometimes—when her temper was fired by something that couldn’t be taken out in arguing, she would direct the energy into cleaning out a chicken coop, beating rugs or weeding the garden, or when that failed, fiercely cleaning a house that never really had time to get dirty.

  As she worked, her lips compressed and then loosened; her knuckles whitened in their grip on the scrubbing brush, the only testaments to the thoughts roiling in her mind. The bristles scratched almost venomously across the floor.

  So that was what he had gone “hunting.” Well, what of it? Quincy Burnett had no obligation to tell her his business. But he knew—he knew what the Dugan gang meant to her, and he had deliberately kept silent.

  Maybe he was only a stray mustanger who had come across the poster and stuck it in his pocket, thinking it would mean good money if he ever stumbled across some of the Dugan gang. No—Rosa Jean knew what her instinct had told her all along: that Quincy was too intelligent to have come all the way up here and to take up with Charlie Conlan and Wirt Timmins just to hunt wild horses. There had been another reason.

  Why hadn’t he told her, that morning by the chicken coop? It would have been so easy to do—just a few words. He must not have wanted her to know. There was a five-thousand-dollar reward at stake, after all, and no doubt he saw the danger of letting someone with a real reason to hate Ralph Dugan know that he was a rival in the chase.

  And she had thought he was different—had almost begun to like him.

  That was what burned like betrayal: that he had smiled at her and put her at ease and almost made her like him, when at any moment of that time he might have taken from under her very nose the bitter prize of revenge for which she had sacrificed so many weary days of her life.

  She gripped the brush with both hands and bent over it, scrubbing hard. Her anger was partly against herself, for having let her guard down. But it burned more bitterly against him, for the double crime of having betrayed her, and having robbed her of what she had thought he was.

  At nearly the same hour that Rosa Jean was in the bunkhouse, Quincy Burnett was lying up on the edge of a red stone ledge with his rifle beside him, looking down into the stony little box canyon that held old Sullivan’s shack. He had been at this post all morning, and so far had seen nothing except for an occasional appearance of the old man pottering about by the house. Quincy had chosen a crevice in the rock that shielded him from view except from directly across the canyon, but which afforded him a clear view of both the cliff-tops and everything beneath.

  As he had guessed, it was less than half a day’s ride from the Kennedy place to Sullivan’s if one climbed directly. On his previous trip with Charlie and Wirt, they had taken a roundabout route in pursuit of the mustangs. On his first day, however, he had invested some of his time along the way. He stopped at the Joymans’ cabin, on pretense of checking a loose horseshoe, and had a chat with Pa Joyman about the habits of mountain goats and other game. A visitor being an uncommon occurrence, the rest of the family gathered round to listen and Abe, Rube and Zeb offered their solemn, considered opinions when appealed to. The Joymans seemed mild-mannered, simple folk, who found it necessary to all look at each other before anyone answered the simplest question, as if to make sure the answer was unanimous. However, Quincy left the cabin satisfied that they were what they seemed to be and nothing more.

  The sun rose higher as the morning wore on, and pierced unsympathetically into Quincy’s crevice of rock. The barrel of his Winchester burned to the touch. He pulled a bandana from his pocket and mopped his face, and pushed his hat up on his forehead to relieve the sweaty crease left by his hatband. But he made no move to retreat to a more comfortable location. He pushed the bandana back into his hip pocket and settled himself on one elbow to continue his vigil.

  He wondered, for the hundredth time, what Bruce Kennedy had been like and why he had died at Ralph Dugan’s hand. But something in him had shrunk from asking Rosa Jean. She had had enough grief on that score already—and she would probably only retreat further from him into herself if pressed.

  Not yet. And with this new intelligence, he was even less sure how far to trust Charlie Conlan.

  Early in the afternoon he was at last rewarded. A faint rattle of hoofs, diminished by distance and thrown around off the walls of the canyon, sounded from below, and in another moment two horsemen emerged from the rocky trail and rode up to the shack. Quincy, keeping his head down as low as he could, lay with the rifle in his hands and watched them. They dismounted by the shack, spoke briefly to the old man, and watered their horses at the trough. Quincy was too high above for the sound of voices to carry to him. They did not appear to be in any particular hurry, but neither did they linger and lounge like mustangers taking a respite from the chase. They left their horses tied at the fence and went into the shack after Sullivan, and came out again in about t
en minutes. As if they had stopped for a meal or a drink, Quincy thought. He studied the men as well as distance would allow as they mounted their horses. There was nothing to distinguish them about their clothes or their horses and saddles; both wore guns. Neither matched the description of Ralph Dugan.

  Quincy waited until they had disappeared down the trail, and gave them five minutes’ start. Then he slid back from the ledge, got up, and climbed down to where he had left his horse. On his way up yesterday he had marked out a route that would bring him out at a lower point on the trail, and would keep him out of sight most of the way.

  But only bafflement awaited him. When he reached the trail, he was certain the men he had seen at Sullivan’s could not yet have passed that point. He waited more than fifteen minutes, holding his horse in ambush standing in the shade of a boulder, but no one appeared—not one squeak of leather or clink of hoof on rock came from above. His brow creased in puzzlement, he at last swung his horse out into the trail and headed upward. If he met anyone, he would be what in essence he was at this moment: a stray mustanger hunting wild game.

  But he met no one. Where the trail narrowed for the climb to Sullivan’s Quincy drew rein, puzzled, and turned and rode back down, studying the rocks on either side. What particularly baffled him was that on the right hand the rock walls loomed high, with no possible outlet—on the left, the side on which he had descended from the cliff-top, there were breaks where a horse and rider might go up, but Quincy felt sure he must have seen or encountered the two riders if they had doubled back up that way.

  They could not have passed him going down the trail before he reached it. Quincy, no newcomer to the business of tracking, was as sure of that as he could be. He spent an hour working back and forth among the ledges and rocks, but the two men had vanished without a trace—in a way that spoke deliberate disappearance. Finally Quincy gave it up, and, playing a hunch that would not leave him, turned his horse back toward Sullivan’s.