Once

by Elisabeth Grace Foley et al.

  The old man was outside the shack, scraping out a pan of ashes from the stove. Quincy nodded to him and dismounted, and led his horse to the trough as if he were well accustomed to stopping here. He was interested to see what effect this produced. The old man stared at him for a moment, and then went back to his work with no sign of recognition or intelligence.

  Quincy wandered casually over toward him. “Hello,” he said. “How’ve you been?”

  The old man lifted his head, eyes squinting in his wrinkled face. “You remember me, don’t you?” said Quincy, watching him with attention.

  “You was here—yesterday,” said Sullivan in a rusty, unused-sounding voice.

  “No, not yesterday—another time.” On impulse Quincy added, “Who was here yesterday? Same fellas that were here today?”

  The old man looked confused, and shook his head, waveringly, as if he was not sure he meant to do that either.

  Quincy let it drop for the moment, and leaned against the wall of the shack. For a minute or two he studied his thumbnail and glanced off across the yard, pretending not to pay any attention to the old man so as not to unsettle him. He felt sure that the shambling little prospector could not be part of the Dugan gang. His blundering, bewildered senility was no sham. But the outlaws made use of him somehow. If only some scrap of information had lodged itself in a corner of the old man’s brain, perhaps he could get it out of him. Quincy felt fairly safe in showing his hand with someone who would not even remember he had been here.

  He said aloud, without seeming to look at Sullivan, “Seen Dugan lately?”

  Sullivan looked blankly at him, and frowned. “Dugan?”

  It was a long, fruitless cross-questioning. Quincy described Ralph Dugan carefully; he suggested times he might have been there, other men who might have been with him, though he was careful not to let on his reasons for wanting to find him. The old man listened and frowned, occasionally repeating a few of Quincy’s words as if trying to process them, but always ended by shaking his head. Quincy, coming to the end of his patience, became even less guarded than he had intended and urged him to try and remember, but Sullivan, reaching fretfulness at last, only reiterated that he had no whisky. Quincy gave up, again.

  He arrived at the Joymans’ that night in time to share their dinner, where they gravely commiserated with him on his failure to bag a mountain goat.

  “Where’d you try for ‘em?” Abe asked, as they were sitting out in the dusk in front of the cabin.

  “Up in the rocks above old man Sullivan’s place.”

  “That ain’t no good,” said Rube after a pause, as if announcing a carefully considered decision. “There’s nothing up there but wolves.”

  VI.

  Quincy returned to the Kennedy place shortly before noon on a hot, dry, generally disagreeable day. A glance at the saddles in the barn told him Charlie was not back yet, and Wirt barely moved an inch from his reclining position by the bunkhouse to acknowledge Quincy’s appearance. Quincy was not in the best of humor. He was hot and dusty and his trip had not been as profitable as he wished, and he was nagged by an additional restless feeling he could not place. He unsaddled and rubbed down his horse, tossed his blanket roll and rifle on his bunk, and went across to the house.

  The door was open. Rosa Jean was sitting on the other side of the table, her dark head bent over some sewing. She did not look up when Quincy entered, but he was not yet in a frame of mind to notice this. He tossed his hat on the sofa-cot, dropped into a chair by the table with a sigh, and stretched his legs out in front of him. “Hullo,” he said. “Hot as blazes today, isn’t it.”

  “Mm,” said Rosa Jean briefly, without lifting her eyes from her work.

  “Charlie not back yet?”

  Rosa Jean shook her head.

  There was a lull in conversation. Then Quincy moved a little restlessly and said, “Anything to drink around here? I’ve been eating dust all the way down from Joyman’s.”

  Without answering Rosa Jean got up and went to the kitchen, and filled a tin cup from an earthenware pitcher. She came back and put the cup on the table and turned away still without a word. Quincy was thinking of other things—he was half conscious of Rosa Jean moving about doing something in the bedroom and coming back, but as he raised the tin cup to his lips for the second time he realized she had come silently round to stand at his elbow. Without speaking she put a single creased sheet of paper, a black-lettered wanted poster, on the table before him.

  Quincy looked up at her, and from the poster back to her again. Rosa Jean’s face was unreadable.

  “I found it in your things,” she said. “I was going to mend one of your shirts, and—that fell out.”

  Still Quincy did not answer. He could not tell what her attitude was; there was something almost accusing in it that he did not understand.

  “You’re no mustanger, and you’re not a lawman either,” she said. “If you were you wouldn’t be after the reward. You’re a bounty hunter.”

  Quincy’s glance drifted across the bold figures of $5,000 on the poster, and lifted again to her face. “Should that bother you?”

  Rosa Jean disregarded the question. “That’s why you came up here, isn’t it? Why you joined up with Wirt and Charlie in the first place?”

  Quincy leaned back and ran his fingers through his curly hair in an impatient gesture. “Look, if you’re worrying about those two, though I still don’t know why, I’m not—”

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with them! It’s Ralph Dugan you’re after.”

  Quincy was half irritated and more puzzled than ever. “Of course it is. But what difference does it make to you if—”

  He broke off, as the sudden shock of an idea assailed him—a horribly plausible idea. It would account for everything: Rosa Jean’s staying out in this lonely place—why her brother’s death was never spoken of—Ralph Dugan—and Rosa Jean—?

  He got up, and stood staring down at her. “Rosa Jean,” he said unbelievingly, a little hoarse, “you’re—you’re shielding Dugan, aren’t you! Is that why you—are you—”

  Rosa Jean’s dark eyes flamed; a whip of passion flashed into her voice, the passion he had always known must be hiding somewhere. “I’d see him dead first! You—you’d dare to suggest I’d protect the man who murdered my brother?”

  Quincy passed his hand through his hair again, this time in relief that rather amazed him. “I don’t get it,” he said. “I should think you’d be glad enough to have me catch Dugan, then. Why the fuss?”

  “Because I’ve stayed here too long, and put in too much planning and too much waiting for you to come waltzing in under my nose and try to pot him for a miserable bank reward!” said Rosa Jean hotly. She put her hand on the back of a chair and eyed Quincy with bitterness. “You’ve been full of questions about me ever since you came up here, haven’t you. Well, now you know. I’m not going to leave this place until I find Ralph Dugan and make him pay for what he did. And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t interfere.”

  Quincy sat down on the edge of the table. “Till you find him!” he said. “Rosa Jean, do you—do you even know what you’re trying to ask of yourself? How many miles of mountains there are? And if anyone should get wind of what you were after—do you even know what Dugan’s like?”

  “I know,” she said through hollowly clenched teeth. “I saw him shoot my brother—outside that door.”

  “Did he see you?” Quincy’s voice sharpened suddenly.

  “No. I don’t think he would have left me here alive if he had.”

  So she was not as much of a fool as he had thought. And she had seen her brother murdered. Quincy felt a sudden ache of pity for all the pain that must be locked behind that silence of hers. But one look told him that she was holding herself stiff and cold again, and any attempt at compassion would be the last thing she wanted from him right now.

  He said, after a short silence, “I’d never heard of Dugan being wanted for murder up this way.
”

  Rosa Jean said in a tight flat voice, “The sheriff in Gorham Gulch wouldn’t swear out a warrant, because he didn’t want any part of trying to catch him. Wirt and Charlie wouldn’t swear the man Bruce met was Dugan, because they were only concerned about their own hides. And after that, I knew I couldn’t count on anyone else.”

  “Oh, now, listen,” said Quincy more gently, “that’s not so. Why—there’s men all up and down the territory who want to see Dugan caught just as bad as you do.”

  “No,” said Rosa Jean, “not like I do. I don’t just want to see him shot in the back for a bank reward. I want him to hang, but I want it to be for my brother’s murder and for him to know it’s for my brother’s murder. He—” she choked a little—”it didn’t mean the least thing to him. He shot Bruce and it was just like stepping on an insect that got in his way.”

  “Listen, I’ve never shot a man in the back in my life!” said Quincy, both nettled by the implication and made uneasy by the tremor in Rosa Jean’s voice.

  “Go away,” said Rosa Jean, in a voice wrenched back steady by main force, “please, Quincy—just go.”

  She turned and took two blind steps to the open door and stood there. Quincy could see her sharply-etched profile and the curve of dark hair that flowed into the long braid down her back. Why did the mere sight of her have so strong a hold on him? He had never thought of her as pretty, but that look in her eyes would not leave him. Those eyes! Those haunted, weary eyes that looked as though they longed for someone to break the curse of grief and bitterness that held her in captivity. He found himself thinking what it would be like to kiss that small serious mouth, what expression that might bring into her eyes, what response or show of feeling it might finally wring from her—

  Quincy caught himself up with a shock. What—?

  He felt a sudden surge of anger at himself, anger and alarm. What in the heck was he doing? How was he any better than the leering prospector he had loudly insisted had no right to be in the house? He got up and took a turn about the room until his thoughts steadied, and then unhappily vented the anger at himself against the only other person present.

  “I think you’re being a darn fool,” he said. “Even if you could pick up a clue to Dugan’s hideout, do you think you could follow it up without being caught? A girl, all by yourself—you think Dugan’s gang are likely to show you any consideration?—oh, show some sense!”

  “That would suit you just fine, wouldn’t it,” said Rosa Jean, turning a dark look on him. “Well, I don’t need your help or your advice, and I could do without your insults too!”

  “No, you don’t want my advice or anybody else’s, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need it! Of all the mule-headed girls I ever—”

  “You’ve certainly outdone yourself giving advice where it wasn’t wanted. You can say you’ve done your part and call it quits now—and stay out of my way.” She turned swiftly, snatched up the poster from the table and holding it out to him. “I wouldn’t bother trying to claim that reward. I know these mountains better than you do, and I swear I’ll find him first.”

  Quincy clipped it out of her hand with equally little ceremony, folded it, and shoved it in his vest pocket. He was more calmly furious now, though the incongruity of wanting to wring Rosa Jean’s fool neck because she was risking her fool neck did not occur to him.

  “So,” he said, “you think Dugan’s hideout is up here, too. I guess you would know. Well, I’ve been right so far anyway. But don’t think I’m about to quit just to please you. I only hope I do find him first—because if you should happen to, it’ll be the last fool thing you ever do.”

  And with that, he picked up his hat, shouldered his way past her through the door and down the steps and strode away across the yard toward the bunkhouse.

  VII.

  The day began with another quarrel. It was a gray day that had an air of being disgusted with itself, with heavy, angry gray clouds shrouding the mountaintops. It was not a promising atmosphere for already disgruntled people to work well together, and when Charlie Conlan came and told Quincy Burnett they were several coils short of the rope needed to make halters for the mustangs, Quincy, who for several days had spoken less than Wirt but still more than Rosa Jean, promptly relieved himself of an excess supply of words.

  “You mush-headed, pie-faced son of a jackrabbit!” he blurted. “You were down in Gorham Gulch three days ago and you didn’t lay in a supply of rope? You ought to have known we needed it!”

  “I forgot!” said Charlie, the first and last line of his defense.

  “Too busy flapping your jaw in the saloon to think about it, that’s why. Who else takes four days to buy supplies? I tell you, I don’t know how you ever made a living at anything, let alone mustanging. What have you got between your ears, cotton wool?”

  “What are we gonna do about the rope?” said Charlie, who at least knew he was not equipped to compete in a battle of words at this level.

  “Get saddled up and go down to the Gulch after it, that’s all we can do.”

  “Me? But I just got back! I ain’t going all the way down there again. It’s your turn to go down next—”

  Quincy nearly exploded again, but bit it off in exasperation. “All right. All right. I’ll go. I’ll be back sooner than you would. You’d probably forget what you came for time you got there, anyway.”

  “Well, somebody sure rolled off’n the wrong side o’ the bunk this morning,” said Charlie disgustedly, and departed.

  The first faint mutterings of thunder came from the west as Quincy saddled his horse in the open door of the barn. He glanced out at the gray-cloaked sky. The clouds were wispy, drifting; the storm did not look likely to break before evening, and with any luck he would be down at the Gulch by then. Quincy flipped the reins back over his horse’s neck, then hesitated and looked out through the open door again. He left his horse and walked out and over behind the house, where Rosa Jean was bent over working with the wind whipping her hair, picking beans from a tangle of half-dried vines.

  “I’m going down to the Gulch,” he said. “Charlie forgot the rope the other day, and he says we haven’t got enough for halters.”

  “You have my permission to go, if that’s what you’re after,” said Rosa Jean, tossing her long braid over her shoulder with one dusty hand.

  “No, I want you to listen to me for a minute,” said Quincy, who looked agitated but determined. “There’s one thing I’m going to say to you. I don’t think I got it across very well the other day, and I want to say it before I go. I’m not just trying to make trouble for you, Rosa Jean, or to get in your way just to be contrary. I maybe think you’re making some fool choices, but that’s another thing altogether. All I’m trying to do is be a friend to you, whether you want it or think you need it or not, and that’s what I’m going to keep on doing.”

  Rosa Jean looked up at him quickly and a brief, dark look of anger flitted across her face. “Do you call it being a friend to try and keep me from getting justice for my brother?”

  “I don’t think you want justice,” said Quincy, coming a step closer. “Not really. If you wanted justice, you’d give your blessing to me or anyone who was after Ralph Dugan. You want your own revenge. If you had a gun in your hand and a chance at him, you’d take that over a chance at bringing him in to the law. I can see it in your face every time you say his name. But it’s not going to work, Rosa Jean. If that’s why you want him dead, it won’t make you feel any better afterward than you did before.”

  Rosa Jean was on her feet by this time, very pale. A gust of wind swept past them, raising dust at their feet and rattling the bean vines, and he saw her slim figure tremble as if at a chill. “You think you know me very well,” she said.

  “Am I far wrong?” said Quincy. He shook his head. “It’s no good either way, Rosa Jean. Even if you don’t get yourself killed, what kind of life will you have left? Or suppose you just go on like this—telling yourself all the time that yo
u’ll get at Dugan one day, and never letting yourself live for anything else?”

  “Why should you care?” said Rosa Jean. “You never saw me in your life before you came up here. You don’t owe me anything but the price of your meals and a place to sleep at night. If I’m ruining my life or risking it, if I’m happy or unhappy or nothing at all, what does it matter to you?”

  “Maybe it just does matter to me,” Quincy blurted out. He stopped—half startled by his own words. For one dismayed second he stared at her, not sure what he had done or what he ought to do next.

  For a few seconds Rosa Jean seemed not to breathe. Then she lifted her chin and her mouth set straight again. “Maybe it doesn’t,” she said. “You tried to pull the wool over my eyes. If you cared anything about me, you would have told me why you were up here. I’ll bet you just want to make sure I don’t claim your reward money.”

  Quincy lost his temper. Even the best of intentions cannot always prevent it.

  “You’ve got the feelings of a sour mule!” he said angrily. “You don’t want to do anything but kick anyone who comes near you! More fool me for trying.”

  “So you’ve finally realized that, have you?” said Rosa Jean with a strange tremor in her voice.

  “That makes us a pair of blockheads,” said Quincy. “Well, I wish you joy of it. But you’ll be sorry one day, Rosa Jean. I’m going now.”

  He turned and strode away. He went to the barn and brought out his horse, mounted, and kicked the sorrel into a quick trot down the trail. The wind swept along in the same direction, blowing the horse’s mane and tail awry and half hiding them both in a cloud of dust. Thunder rumbled again as if it was the voice of the cloud, and when the sound had settled he was gone.

  Leaving her basket of bean pods where it was, Rosa Jean stumbled toward the barn. She had to get inside—into the dark, like a hurt thing seeking its den. She pushed the flimsy crack-seamed door shut behind her; the wind pushed back against it and banged it a few times. Pheasant was there—Pheasant turned a speckled gray face toward her: quiet, sympathetic, and able to offer her nothing. Rosa Jean put her arm on the horse’s back and rested her head against her forearm.