The Palo Duro Trail

by Ralph Compton

  A few times, Indians trailed them, but a show of rifles soon left them in the dust and they encountered none brave enough to sound the war cry.

  Dag felt hollow inside, the emptiness filled with an unutterable sadness that his Laura was dead and that he would be going back to an empty house. His mind was full of memories and they crept into his dreams each night.

  Jo tried her best to comfort Dag without imposing upon his grief or intruding into his private thoughts. But she was grieving too, not only for Laura, but for Dag, who seemed to be trying to avoid being alone with her.

  They crossed into Texas and headed south-east. The two drovers from the Double C said their farewells and took the money Dag gave them and thanked him profusely. They were good men, he knew, and perfectly trustworthy.

  “You say howdy to Gus and Janet, hear?” Dag said, just before they rode off.

  “Y’all come back,” Tom Leeds said, with a tip of his hat.

  “Y’all are always welcome at the Double C,” Sutphen said.

  Dag watched them go and there was a sadness in that parting too.

  Into the warmth of Texas, they rode, and down the Palo Duro Canyon with its striated colors painted brilliant by the sun, and the smell of Texas full in their nostrils with each passing day, long days when their pace quickened. Heading for home, Dag thought, and the emptiness inside him would leave him with that hollow feeling and more memories of Laura.

  “Felix, what are you going to do when you get back?” Jo asked when they were sitting by a stream, eating a basket lunch she had packed for just the two of them.

  “I guess I’ll grieve some more for poor Laura,” he said, “and then get to goin’ on best I can.”

  “I’m so sorry. I know you’re hurting real bad inside.”

  “I can’t really talk about it, Jo.”

  “Someday you’ll have to, Felix.”

  “Just not now,” he said, and they ate their sliced beef sandwiches and drank wine Fingers had bought in Cheyenne.

  “I understand,” she said, “but if you need me or Daddy, you just holler, hear?”

  “I will,” he said, and hated himself for being so distant, so cold.

  And maybe, he thought, he hated himself for flirting with Jo on the drive up to Cheyenne. Maybe he also hated himself for harboring thoughts of infidelity with Jo on those nights when he ached for Laura, when he wanted to hold his wife in his arms and make love to her. Tender, sweet Jo, a beautiful woman in season, but forbidden by his strict moral code.

  And then they were home, and more farewells sounded as Matlee and his men rode to the Box M, and Dag continued on to the D Slash.

  “You be careful, old timer,” Flagg said, as he shook hands with Dag. “Don’t take no wooden nickels.”

  “You too, Jubal. It was quite a ride.”

  Flagg let fly a stream of tobacco juice and shifted the cud in his mouth from one cheek to the other.

  “I never had so much fun since the hogs ate my baby brother,” Flagg joked.

  “You got us through it, Jubal.”

  “I reckon you had a strong hand in it, Dag.”

  It was awkward after that, and Jubal Flagg rode off to his home, where he had no woman waiting for him, just a house and creek and horses.

  Jimmy and Little Jake said goodbye and rode off with the rest of the remuda, which had dwindled to a few head as each hand took his own horses and left for their homes.

  Finally, there were only Dag, Fingers, and Jo.

  “We’ll ride up to home with you, Dag,” Fingers said. “See if you need anything before we head for home.”

  “You don’t have to do that, Fingers.”

  “It’s on our way.”

  Jo got down from the wagon and walked up to the silent house with Dag. She put her arm inside one of his and he crooked it and held it close to his side.

  “Don’t fight me, Felix, please,” she said, as they stood at the porch steps. “I’m not your enemy.”

  He looked at her, patted her hand, then released her arm.

  “I know, Jo. I just ain’t myself is all.”

  “It’s going to be hard walking in there,” she said.

  “I reckon I’m glad to be home. I just feel awful tired all of a sudden. I think I need to sleep for a week.”

  “We all do,” she said, smiling. She patted his hand, and he did not draw it away.

  “You take care, Jo,” he said, and put a boot up on the first step.

  “Don’t be a stranger, Felix. You know I care for you.”

  “I won’t. And I know you do. I care for you too, I reckon.”

  She stood on tiptoe and pecked his lips with a brief kiss. Then she turned and walked away. Dag watched her climb back up on the wagon. Fingers waved to him and he waved back. Jo turned and raised a hand. She moved it in a disconsolate wave and then bowed her head and turned it away from him.

  Dag knew she was starting to cry and that was a sadness he carried with him as he walked up onto the porch and opened the front door. He heard the wagon rumble away and turned to look at it one more time. Firefly stood at the hitchrail, its tail switching, swatting at flies, muscles quivering in its shoulders, which were streaked with fresh blood from insect bites.

  Dag entered his house and breathed in the perfume of flowers. He adjusted his eyes to the dim light and saw the vases all around the living room, all of them with morning glories, peonies, black-eyed Susans, honeysuckle, and wisteria.

  He walked back to the kitchen and looked at how clean it was, the utensils hanging from the wall near the woodstove, the counters clean, the cupboards washed. Carmelita, he thought. Then he forced himself to walk to the bedroom. The empty bed was neatly made and there were cut flowers lying gracefully on the pillows. Laura’s dresses hung in the wardrobe and her baubles were on the highboy dresser as if she would return at any moment and slip on a bracelet or a necklace and turn to him for his approval. He looked into the smoky mirror and saw his shadow there, a ghostly visage of a man he hardly knew anymore. His face was gaunt and peppered with tiny bristles, eyes without expression, hat caked with dust and sweat.

  He sat down on the bed, hung his head, and lifted his hands to cover his face.

  “Oh, Laura,” he whispered and then began to weep.

  Dag paid off Deutsch a month later and took possession of his mortgage papers, much to Deutsch’s displeasure.

  “I am sorry about your wife, Dagstaff,” Deuce said when Dag got up to leave.

  “Deuce, if you ever mention my wife again, I’ll kill you, hear?”

  “I hear. It was not my fault.”

  “You’re going to prison at Huntsville, Deuce, damn your hide.”

  “What is this you say?”

  “I’ve got proof that you hired Don Horton to murder me and I’m taking the evidence to the Texas Rangers up in San Antonio.”

  “You lie, Dagstaff.”

  “Just watch me, Deuce,” Dag said and left.

  He found out later that Deutsch lost most of his herd trying to cross the Red at flood stage and he didn’t get top dollar for what was left of his herd when he got to Sedalia, Missouri.

  Three months later, two Texas Rangers rode up to the Rocking D and arrested Deutsch. He was taken to San Antonio and tried before a magistrate.

  Dag testified against him and the prosecuting attorney produced the letter of agreement between Horton and Deuce. Cavins and Flagg testified too as corroborating witnesses in the matter of Horton trying to kill Dagstaff and the killer’s subsequent death.

  Adolph Deutsch was found guilty of attempted murder and sentenced to twenty years in Huntsville Prison. He would never get out alive.

  Dag knelt at his wife’s grave. She was buried on a little hill in a grave surrounded by a copse of crepe myrtles. There was a small headstone that Carmelita’s husband, Jorge Delgado, had made of hard clay with her name engraved before the clay was fired. The legend read: LAURA DAGSTAFF, and underneath, REST IN PEACE.

  Simple, Dag thoug
ht, and eloquent.

  He placed some irises on the little mound of dirt, flowers grown from bulbs Laura had planted shortly after they had married. Fitting. Appropriate.

  “Laura,” he said, “I was faithful to you, darling. I never strayed none all the time I was gone.”

  He started to choke up and rose to his feet. He turned to walk back to the house, overcome with grief.

  He saw Jo riding up, her hair glistening in the sunlight like the back of a crow’s wing.

  She lifted a hand and waved to him.

  Then he turned back to look at Laura’s grave. He drew a deep breath and turned to meet Jo.

  He smiled. Jo’s coming, he thought. Now. At this time. Here.

  And then aloud: “I take that as a sign from Laura.”

  He heard a meadowlark trilling close by, and up on the hill, in the crepe myrtle, a mourning dove cooed a melodious, throaty curdle of deep-throated notes.

  He took that as a sign too.