by Jory Sherman
“I want you, Lew,” she breathed. “I want you real bad.”
“It’s not right. You’d hate me come morning.”
“No. No, I wouldn’t. You’re a good man. And I’m a virgin.”
He let out a breath in a deep sigh. She rubbed against him, kneading her breasts on his back. She scooched her hips into him until he was cupped inside her thighs. It was warm, and his imagination caught fire.
“You should stay that way,” he husked. “You’ll find a husband one day and he’ll want you pure.”
“Don’t talk no more, Lew,” she said softly. “Just love me. Please?”
He turned over, and she held him tight. He felt her lips on his. He began to melt inside, and there was no escaping her, or himself.
The snow continued to drift down, silent as falling feathers. The night claimed them, locked them in its dark and stormy keep until there was no such thing as time and nothing mattered except that they melded together like lost waifs and were consumed by their mutual hunger.
Later, the wind came up and howled through the trees.
But neither of them heard it, nor cared that it blew snow in on them and covered their blankets for a time while the fire sputtered and spit, but blazed on like some beacon in a dark wilderness.
8
THE SNOW STOPPED FALLING SHORTLY AFTER MIDNIGHT, ALTHOUGH Lew didn’t know what time it was. He got up to feed more wood to the fire and stepped into deep darkness with no white flakes fluttering down from the sky. The big log was nearly half burned, and he shoved the burnt end in and added more wood on top until the blaze was chest high. Then he crawled back into his bedroll and snuggled next to Marylynn for warmth.
She was up before dawn, putting water on to boil for coffee, which she dug out of Lew’s saddlebags. She found two tin cups in one of the dead men’s bags. She used the empty bean can to boil the water. Lew awoke to the aroma of steaming coffee and stepped outside the lean-to in the eerie light. The ground was white, but the snow was only a few inches deep, and the wind had blown most of it off the flat places. Lew could see the road below, and it was fairly clear.
The coffee warmed him and so did the fire. Marylynn brushed her hair with her hands, clearing out the tangles, smoothing her auburn locks until she looked less disheveled. There was a glow to her face, too, and Lew didn’t think it was from the fire.
“Breakfast?” she said.
“No. Too cold. Maybe we can get over the pass and into some warmer weather. I can gnaw on hardtack and jerky in the saddle if I get hungry. You?”
“I’m a little hungry, but the coffee’s taking it away.”
They were back in their saddles within the hour and taking it slow down the slope, letting the horses find their way. Ruben slipped a couple of times, but recovered quickly, and Marylynn’s horse followed Ruben’s track without difficulty.
“Thank you, Lew,” she said, as they headed toward the pass.
“For what?”
“For what you gave me last night. You are quite a man.”
“Was it like you expected?” She had been a virgin, just like she said.
“Ummm, I never dreamed anything could be so good, so sweet.”
“You better keep those thoughts to yourself,” he said.
“Why? I’m proud of what I done.”
He had thought of Seneca a time or two during the night, but he had never made love to her. He didn’t know why she crept into his thoughts, but she did, and when Marylynn was in the throes of her passion, he thought of Seneca and how it might have been if they had made love.
“Just don’t make a habit of doing it with every man you meet.”
“I wouldn’t, and you shouldn’t say such things. You shouldn’t even think such things.”
“Well, it was good and sweet, but we’re not married and probably never will be.”
“You needn’t be so blunt about it.”
“I didn’t mean to be.”
“You weren’t a virgin, were you?”
“I don’t think men are called virgins.”
“You know what I mean,” she said.
“No, I’ve done it before, a time or two. But it didn’t mean much to me.”
“Did I?”
He didn’t even have to think about it. “Yes,” he said. “Now, let it be, Marylynn. Let it be.”
She pouted for the next mile, but they spoke no more of what they had done. When the sun came up, he saw how pretty she was. The light in her hair was radiant and her cheeks glowed as if she had rouged them. She looked happy, but he knew she was sad about her father, and she kept looking back as if trying to hold on to his memory.
“You don’t tell me much about yourself, Lew,” she said, as they neared the top of the pass.
“No, I reckon not.”
“Secrets?”
“Nothing to talk about.”
“Why did you leave Arkansas? You’ve got to be homesick, all alone like you are.”
He wondered how much he should tell her. He was proud of none of it. His past followed him like a cloud, and the cloud cast a shadow. He was always under that cloud, it seemed, no matter how much he tried to ride out into the sun.
“My parents were murdered,” he said, finally. “By two boys I went to school with. On my birthday.”
Marylynn gasped.
“My, Lew, that’s terrible. How awful. No wonder. You must have bad memories.”
“Like you’ll have for yourself, I reckon.”
“Yes, that’s true. So, you just packed up and left your home.”
“Something like that. The law wouldn’t do anything about those boys. They were rich boys. They killed an eyewitness, too.”
“Are you afraid of them? I mean, afraid they’ll kill you, too? If you stayed there?”
“No. They’re both dead.”
“Hanged? I thought the law…”
“No, I killed them. Now the law is after me.”
“You didn’t just…”
“No, I didn’t just shoot them, if that’s what you mean. They tried to kill me. So did the sheriff in the little town near where I lived. I shot him, too.”
“You took the law into your own hands.”
As if she knew, he thought. That was the way with people. They jumped to conclusions. All too quick. They formed opinions and built up prejudices. Like the law back home.
“No, I didn’t intend any of it. I defended myself. The law thinks I’m a kind of vigilante. But I’m not. If the law worked, I’d let it work. It didn’t work for me.”
“You’re on the run, then.”
“Sort of. I reckon. I can’t go back home. There’s a U.S. marshal tailing me. He’d take me back and I’d likely hang. The justice back there wants blood. My blood.”
“You poor man. I just can’t imagine…”
“No, you can’t, Marylynn, so just let it go and leave me be. I’m not proud of what I did, but I did what I had to do. Where there is no law, maybe each man who’s in the right is the law. That’s what I ran into and I don’t carry any guilt in my kit. I stood up for myself and those boys are dead and gone. They dug their own graves.”
“All right. I won’t say anything. I can see you’re still very touchy about it. And I don’t blame you.”
They reached the summit of the pass. The ground was wet from melting snow and there was mud underfoot. The air was thin, but the sun was warm. In the distance, Lew saw a hawk float out over the sloping land that led down to the plain. It looked majestic with the sun burnishing its wings to a faint bronze. He heard its high-pitched cry and then saw it fold its wings and plummet toward the earth.
Four or five quail scurried across the road. Ruben perked his ears, but didn’t shy. Streams of water trickled down the mountainside and the sun headed for its noon zenith. Lew called a halt to rest the horses, let them graze on the grass that grew on the hillsides.
“What will you do in Santa Fe, Marylynn?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Take in laundry,
maybe. I have some money. My daddy made me wear the belt under my dress. He said it would be safer there. I can get by. What about you? Will you look for work there?”
“No. I’m riding on. I’ll only be there a couple of days.”
“Do you know someone there?” she asked.
“Nope. Nary a soul.”
“Then, why…?”
She realized she was prying into his life again and clamped her mouth shut. Just as well, he thought. He couldn’t tell her why he was going to Santa Fe. He just knew he couldn’t stay in Pueblo after Carol’s brutal murder and with her kids dead, too.
“Just going to rest up there, get the lay of the land. I met a sheepherder, and he told me about a town called Socorro. I might go there.”
“To herd sheep?”
Lew laughed.
“No. Just curious, I guess. He said his brother was in some kind of trouble. Piqued my curiosity, I reckon.”
“So you’re just what my daddy called a drifter, I guess. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But you don’t put down roots. You’re like one of those tumbleweeds we saw coming out west.”
He laughed again.
“I guess so. Can’t stay too long in one place. That marshal is dogging my heels.”
“I see,” she said, and turned pensive. She got off, walked away to heed nature’s call. When she returned, she was holding a small flower she had picked. She had her nose amid its petals, sniffing it.
Lew watched her walk to her horse. She looked like a little girl, not a woman grown. He felt a tug at his loins when he thought about lying with her the night before, but he drew in a deep breath and turned away. Such thoughts, he believed, could lead to trouble. She would go her way; he would go his. And that was that.
They rode into Las Vegas late at night. They were both tired. Marylynn had been falling asleep in the saddle, and he’d had to jar her awake several times to keep her from falling. The town was dark, except for a few lanterns burning in cantinas and a small, dreary-looking hotel.
“I’ll find a stable and maybe get us a room at that hotel,” he said.
“It doesn’t look like any hotel I ever saw,” she said.
It was made of adobe and had a sign out that read BEDS, 50 CENTS.
“It’ll have to do, I reckon.”
“Do we each get a room?”
“No, I’ll pay for one room. Unless you want to sleep by yourself.”
“I just want to sleep.”
“That’s fine.”
They found a stable. Nobody was there, but they unsaddled the horses, put them in empty stalls, and dipped grain from a bin, which they poured into troughs. There was water in the stalls. Only a few horses were there, whickering in the dark, clumping against the wooden sides of their stalls. The smell was heady with hay and horse apples.
They walked to the hotel, carrying their rifles. Lew draped the gunbelts over his shoulders, along with his saddlebags.
The Mexican inside the hotel woke up behind a crude desk that appeared to have been made out of a door sitting on stone blocks.
“Two dollars,” he said.
“Sign outside says fifty cents,” Lew said.
“That is for the dormitory. You want that?”
“No, a room.”
“One room?”
“Yes, one room.”
“Where you come from?” the clerk asked.
“North,” Lew said.
“It is a long way to Santa Fe. You will rest here a few days?”
“No. We put our horses in the stables. I suppose we can pay the man in the morning. There was nobody there.”
“Yes, there will be someone there in the morning.”
Lew gave him two dollars and signed the register. He put down “Mr. and Mrs. Jones,” smiling as he wrote.
“Here is a key, Mr. Jones.”
Marylynn’s eyebrows arched as she looked at him.
“Thank you.”
“In the back. Third door on the left,” the clerk said.
Lew and Marylynn walked down the dark corridor and found the door. The key worked and they went in. Marylynn lit a lamp. The bed was old and the mattress lumpy, the coverlet drab and worn. There was a table, two chairs, and a religious statue on the chest of drawers. A painting of Jesus hung in a cheap frame on one wall. The window looked out onto an adobe building next door. They heard a cat yowl down the street. Moonlight lit dust motes that rose from the dirty rug on the floor.
“Ugly, isn’t it?” Lew said.
“I could sleep on bare rock,” she said, and he could hear the tiredness in her voice. She set down the rifles and sat on the edge of the bed, taking off her shoes.
There was a small divan against one wall.
“You can have the bed, Marylynn. I’ll sleep over there.”
He set down the saddlebags, pistols, and rifles.
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “You can sleep in the bed with me.”
“You need the rest,” he said, aware of the lameness in his tone.
“Who are you to tell me what I need? I want you next to me. This is a frightful place. Did you lock the door? What if robbers come busting in on us?”
He chuckled.
“All right. Pick your spot. I’ll climb in next to you.”
He sat on the divan and took off his boots. The tiredness seeped through him. When he walked to the bed and looked down, Marylynn was already asleep. He turned down the lamp wick, lifted the chimney, and snuffed out the flame, pitching the room into total darkness. He slipped his pistol under the pillow on his side of the bed, within easy reach.
The bed groaned when he lay down on it and he could hear music, guitars playing, a man singing some mournful Mexican song down the street. He listened to Marylynn breathing for a few minutes and found that he was worried about what would happen to her after he left her alone in Santa Fe. It was a disturbing thought. He closed his eyes and the night closed in on him, locking him deep in sleep.
He dreamed of barbed wire ropes and lawmen wearing badges as big as pie plates. And somewhere at the bottom of his mind, he heard the singing and the plaintive chords of a guitar. The voice he heard was his mother’s, and none of it made any sense to him.
9
LEW AWOKE TO A LOUD POUNDING ON HIS DOOR. HE REACHED under the pillow and grabbed his pistol, his senses suddenly sizzling as if they had been electrified. Marylynn sat up, her eyes wide with fright, her hands over her mouth to suppress a scream.
“Shh. Wait here,” he said softly, then strode to the door. He cocked the Colt in his hand. “Who is it?”
“You got horses in the stable?”
“Yes. What of it?”
“Somebody’s claiming they’re stolen. Another man wants to buy a couple of ’em.”
“Who are you?”
“Jasper Pettigrew. I’m the day clerk here. Better get up and talk to those men out here.”
“Be right out,” Lew said.
“What is it?” Marylynn asked.
“Trouble, maybe. Somebody must have recognized the brands on those outlaws’ horses. You stay here. Sit tight, and keep one of those rifles across your lap. When I get back, I’ll bring us some breakfast.”
“When will you be back?”
Lew sat on the divan, pulling on his boots. He strapped on his gunbelt and spun the cylinder of his Colt. All six rounds were there. Some men kept the hammer down on an empty cylinder, but he did not. He wanted all six when it came to a shoot-out. He hammered back to half cock and strode to the door.
“Soon, I hope,” he said, and tossed her the key. “Lock this behind me.”
Then he was gone, striding down the corridor, his right hand floating near the butt of his pistol. The desk clerk looked up.
“You Pettigrew?” Lew said.
“Yes. You’re Mr. Jones.”
Lew had to think for a minute. He nodded.
“Them two men over yonder by the front door. One wants to buy some horses, t’other’n says you bet
ter have a bill of sale.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Lew said, and strode up to the two men.
“You Jones?” one of the men asked in a belligerent tone.
“Yeah,” Lew said, looking the man up and down. He was burly and grizzled, with two days’ worth of wiry bristle on his florid face. His corpulent neck pushed his collar tight. He had a scar across his jawline that was a livid white. The other man was short, thin, with a pencil moustache. He wore a battered Stetson and his hands were calloused, his skin the color of burnt cedar, as if he had been out in the wind and the sun every day of his life. “Who are you?”
The thin man nodded to the other.
“I’m Grimes,” the heavy man said. “Charley Grimes, and I saw three of them horses you brung in last night. They’re wearin’ Circle C brands. Them horses belonged to friends of mine. Friends I been expectin’ to ride down here from Pueblo.”
“And you?” Lew asked the thin man.
“My name is Hiram Fogarty and I’m in need of a couple of horses. Benny Rodriguez, at the stables, told me you and a lady rode in last night and had yourselves four horses. So I thought if you didn’t need all of ’em, I’d pay top dollar for the extry two.”
“Meet me at the stables, Mr. Fogarty. I’ll take this up with you there. Charley, let’s go someplace where we can talk.”
Fogarty left the hotel. Grimes stood there, glaring at Lew.
“We can talk right here, mister. I want to know about them Circle C horses you brung in.”
“Outside,” Lew said. “I don’t want everyone to know my business.”
Grimes stepped outside. Lew followed him. They both watched Fogarty walking toward the stables. People were out in the street, in front of stores, sweeping the dirt to make it smooth. A dog lazed in front of a building and a Mexican, wearing a large sombrero, squatted on a wooden pallet, fast asleep in front of a cantina.
Lew reached into his pocket and pulled out the folded piece of paper still there. He handed it to Grimes.
“You know Wayne?” Grimes asked.
“I do. I’m meeting up with him in Santa Fe, like the note says.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so? Me, too. But what are you doing with them horses?”
