I had no idea what tomorrow would bring, and that was just as well.
Had I known I was about to ride into hell, I would have had no rest.
Chapter 19
Lila and me rode across a strife-scorched land, keeping to the divide between Deepwater Creek to our east and Cottonwood Creek to the west. Ahead of us lay the vast sweep of the Colorado and, farther south, the craggy barrier of the Blue Mountains.
Around us was rolling country, pinnacles of gray rock jutting here and there on the slopes of the hills, the grass-covered plains good for horses and cattle.
We rode with a long wind that smelled of rain at our backs, but we were getting close to our destination and I would have no need for my slicker. Just a few miles to the south lay the SP Connected, with its familiar big house, white barns and corrals.
I was coming home, but to a suffering land scarred by conflict.
Twice since we’d crossed the Brazos I’d left Lila with the paint to investigate thin plumes of rising smoke, once finding only the charred timbers of a deserted ranch house. The second time I’d almost stumbled over the bodies of two bearded government surveyors who’d been surprised and shot down outside their tent.
There were plenty of hoofprints of unshod ponies scattered around, and that could only mean Apaches.
As much as I enjoyed the closeness of Lila and the sweet smell of her and how the sunlight got all tangled up in her hair, I let her ride and took a position well ahead, my rifle at the ready.
Despite the gusting wind, the day was hot, the sun high in the upturned blue bowl of the sky. Sweat trickled down inside my shirt and I constantly had to remove my hat and wipe off my brow with the sleeve of my shirt.
Fifty yards or so behind me, Lila seemed cool and comfortable, riding easily, and when I turned to look at her, she waved at me and smiled, her bright eyes holding a promise or an invitation, I couldn’t decide which. Anyhow, I only growled and grumbled to myself, knowing full well that girls did that kind of thing just to drive a man crazy.
We were about to fetch up to a low hill crowned with post oak and curly mesquite when I stopped and let Lila catch up to me. My shoulder throbbed unmercifully and waves of tiredness were washing over me, making me feel light-headed and sick.
“The SP is just over the rise,” I told Lila. “When we reach the crest, you’ll be able to see it.”
Lila’s eyes lit up. “Oh, Dusty, do you mean it? Are we almost home?”
“Almost,” I said, “but I reckon your place is a piece farther to the east, maybe another ten miles or so.”
A fleeting sadness crossed Lila’s face. “I only wish Pa was here with us,” she said.
“Me too,” I said, mostly for politeness’ sake, since Ned had no inclination to farm. “But don’t be getting any big ideas. You’re not going to your cabin, where you’ll be out there all alone with the Apaches on the rampage. Best you hunker down at the SP for a spell.”
Lila opened her mouth to argue, but then seemed to appreciate the logic of my decision. “How long before I can see my place?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Lila, as long as it takes for the army to round up ol’ Victorio. A week, a month, a year, with Apaches you never can tell.”
“A year!” Lila exclaimed. “I’m not going to wait a year. I’m not even going to wait a month. Dusty, if I’ve any hope of putting in a crop, I’ll have to do it soon.”
Well, I didn’t see any point in arguing, at least not now when I was so tired. “Suit yourself,” I said. “But in the meantime you’re going home with me. Ma Prather will enjoy having another woman around and she’ll pamper you, trust me.”
Lila saw the logic in that too, because all she said was, with a tinge of wistfulness in her voice: “About now I could sure use some pampering.”
And so it was that we rode over the crest of the rise and down into the wide and fertile valley that had given birth to, and then sustained, the SP Connected.
I was home, and I was bringing with me Simon Prather’s badly needed thirty thousand dollars. It was a good feeling.
The ranch was the usual scattering of barns and corrals, but the bunkhouse was bigger and more spacious than most, though Simon had scrimped on windows, there being only one on each wall of the log building. I knew that only a couple of punchers would be living in the bunkhouse, since Mr. Prather had paid off the hands who’d made the drive to Dodge.
The ranch house had two stories and a tile roof, both levels boasting wide and shady balconies, unusual at that time in Texas, when even rich ranchers like Charles Goodnight and John D. Chisholm were content to live in what were little more than shacks. Rarer still were the house’s three tall chimneys, each made of gray stone, expertly laid by an itinerant German mason.
Simon had built the house as a palace for Ma to live in and he’d spared no expense, hauling the lumber all the way from the coast, and the durable white English paint from an importer in Austin.
Lila was once again sitting in front of me in the saddle, and I heard her sharp little intake of breath as the ranch came in sight.
“Dusty, your ranch is beautiful,” she whispered, “like something you see in a storybook.”
I laughed. “Lila, the SP Connected isn’t mine. I only ride for the brand at forty a month.”
“Maybe so, Dusty, but you’ll have a place of your own like this someday,” Lila said, her earnest little face turned to mine. “I know you will.”
I bent and kissed her then and said, “I hope you’re right.”
Lila nodded, her chin determined. “I know I’m right.”
Ma Prather, her hand shading her eyes from the afternoon sun, saw us coming from a long way off. She had the Texan’s ability to see clearly across vast distances of country, yet without her spectacles she couldn’t read the label on a peach can, and that right close-up.
Ma waited until I reined up in front of the house and let Lila hop down from the saddle. Then, stiff and sore, my shoulder throbbing, I swung off the paint my ownself and Ma ran into my arms. I hugged her close, enjoying the plump, solid feel of her and the remembered scent of lavender water and newly baked apple turnovers.
“Ma,” I said, after I finally disentangled myself and Ma had dabbed at her eyes a time or two with a tiny lace handkerchief, “this here is Lila Tryon. We met on the trail and her pa was killed yesterday”—I hesitated, suddenly tired beyond belief—“or the day before—the days keep running one into the other.”
“Yesterday,” Lila said.
“Oh, you poor little thing!” Ma exclaimed. And such was her caring nature, she grabbed Lila in her strong arms and hugged her close. “Child, you look worn-out,” she said. “A warm bath for you and then some good, solid food to put some meat on those poor bones.”
I stepped to the paint and fetched the saddlebags.
Ma was holding Lila’s hand in hers and her little lace handkerchief was mighty busy again.
“Ma,” I said, trying to find the words, but discovering there was no easy way around it, “this is the money from the sale of the herd, but I have bad news concerning Mr. Prather. He’s—”
Ma surprised me then. “Oh, I know all about it, Dusty,” she said. “The sheriff in Sweetwater sent a rider out here a week ago with a wire from a Dr. Wilson in Dodge. The doctor said Simon is recovering just fine and he expects him to ride the rail cars home no later than the fall.”
Silently, sad, stoop-shouldered Jim Meldrum stepped beside me and stuck out his hand. “Welcome home, Dusty.”
He gave me no smile, as was his way, but I took Meldrum’s hand, and after we shook, the puncher turned to Ma. “Miz Prather, if I’m not mistaken, I’d say this boy has a story to tell. And he’s hurt.”
Alarm flared in Ma’s hazel eyes. “Hurt? Dusty, where?”
Meldrum answered for me. “Left shoulder, high up. He favors it some.”
Before he hired on with the SP ten years before and hung up his Colts, Meldrum had been a Mississippi gambler and a gun hand
ler of no small reputation. His survival had once depended on noticing little things like a man’s stiff shoulder, and his experienced eye had quickly spotted what I’d been so anxious to hide.
“It’s nothing, Ma,” I said. “It’s healing over real good.”
Ma Prather looked me up and down real close, quickly taking in my exhausted appearance and the telltale swell of the bandage under my shirt. “Jim,” she said, “help Dusty into the house.” And to me: “Young man, you’re going to bed.”
Me, I was suddenly too tuckered out to argue. I handed Meldrum the saddlebags and warned him to take care of them real well; then I followed Ma and Lila into the house.
I woke in a soft bed in a room with flowered paper on the walls, an oil lamp burning pale yellow on the table beside me. Outside, beyond the window, it was growing dark and I reckoned I must have been asleep for five or six hours.
When I turned on the pillow, I found myself looking into the whiskered, whiskey-reddened face of Charlie Fullerton, Ma’s personal cook, a trained chef who doubled as the chuck wagon biscuit shooter during spring roundups.
“How you feeling, boy?” Charlie asked. His eyes carefully searched mine as though to find the answer written there.
“Better,” I said. I looked down at the fresh bandage on my shoulder. “Who fixed me up?”
“I did,” Charlie said. “After you told Ma about Lafe Wingo an’ them, I put some stuff on your misery that stung and some that didn’t, but you was already asleep so you didn’t know the difference.” He came closer to me and I could smell the whiskey on him. “You hungry, boy?”
Suddenly I realized I was ravenous.
“Mr. Fullerton,” I said, which was how we punchers addressed cooks back then, since they could serve up some mighty miserable chuck if we didn’t, “I’d like a thick steak, six fried eggs and maybe twice that number of biscuits. And honey if you got it.”
Charlie looked at me suspiciously. “What’s the matter, boy, off your feed?”
“No, in fact—”
“How ’bout a couple of steaks, a dozen eggs and half a loaf of fried sourdough?”
“Sounds perfect, Mr. Fullerton.” I raised myself into a sitting position. “Have Ma and Lila eaten yet?”
“An hour ago. Now they’re drinking tea in the parlor and talking them female pretties. If’n you have a mind to join them, I’ll bring in your grub.”
Charlie turned to go, but I stopped him. “Mr. Fullerton, have you seen anything of Apaches?”
The cook turned, his face suddenly drawn and concerned. “Dusty, Victorio’s main bunch attacked the Jurgunsen place day afore yesstidy. Tom Jurgunsen and his boy, Jacob, was killed, and Miz Jurgunsen took a bullet in the back and ain’t expected to live.”
Charlie took a step closer to me. “Miz Prather is mighty worried. The Jurgunsen spread is only a few miles north of here, and that’s why she has Deke Stockton out scouting around right now. There’s only you, Deke, Jim Meldrum and myself to defend this place if’n the Apaches hit us. Deke is a fair hand with a rifle, but Meldrum now, he hasn’t picked up a gun in a ten year, says he don’t hold with shootin’ and killin’ no more.”
“I think Jim will change his mind right quick if Victorio hits us,” I said.
If Ma was worried, she must’ve figured she’d good cause. She was a woman who didn’t scare easy. Back in the old days, she’d stood shoulder to shoulder with her husband a dozen times and used her Sharps rifle to fight off raiding parties of Kiowa and Comanche, to say nothing of rustlers.
But Apaches were a different proposition entirely. Victorio wasn’t here to hit and run. He had declared war on the United States and was determined to stay. If he chose to attack the SP, few as we were, Ma, Lila and the rest of us were in a heap of trouble.
After Charlie left, I put on my hat, got dressed in the clean shirt and pants Ma had laid out for me and stomped into my boots. Ma didn’t hold with wearing guns in the house, so I slid the Colt out of the holster and stuck it in my waistband at the small of my back.
Stepping quietly, I crept downstairs and saw to my relief that the door to the parlor was closed. I tiptoed past and walked out the front door and into the gathering darkness.
A slight rain pattered around me as I stood quiet and still and listened to the night sounds. High above, the horned moon showed its face only now and again as black clouds scudded past. I was still weak from loss of blood but not near so tired, and whatever concoctions Charlie had put on my wound had helped, because my shoulder wasn’t so stiff and didn’t hurt as bad.
I stood in the shadows for a while, saw and heard nothing, then walked along the front of the house to the corral, a dozen horses turning to look at me as I passed. Twice I stopped and listened, but heard only the soft fall of the rain and the sigh of the free, un-branded wind.
I stepped over to the bunkhouse but the place was dark, so I turned on my heel and began to make my way back to the house again.
I’d only gone a few yards when I heard a muffled footstep behind me. I turned quickly, drawing the Colt from my waistband.
Jim Meldrum stood there, two well-worn revolvers in shoulder holsters hung on each side of his narrow chest.
The man made no move toward his hardware but gave me one of his rare smiles, his teeth showing white in the darkness under his mustache. “Fast, Dusty. Mighty fast and smooth.”
I lowered the Colt, letting out my pent-up breath in a relieved hiss. “Hell, Jim, you scared me out of a year’s growth,” I said.
Meldrum nodded. “Sorry about that. But Deke Stockton hasn’t come in yet, and that’s a worrisome thing.”
“I thought you’d hung up your guns forever, Jim,” I said. I’d never seen Meldrum wear his Colts before, but he looked like he was born to them, as though they were an essential part of him.
The lanky puncher shrugged. “Like you, like Deke, I ride for the brand. I’ve been thinking things over, and if there’s shooting to be done, and killing, I’ll do it. I may not like it, but I’ll do it.”
Like every puncher I ever knew, Meldrum’s first loyalty was to the ranch, but you don’t buy devotion like that for forty a month. To a man like Meldrum, the ranch was not an area of land, of pastures, rivers and forests, but a principle and a way of life. He believed in that principle and that way of life and held the unshakable opinion that it was worth preserving, worth fighting for and even worth dying for. This was the wellspring of his loyalty and what sustained it through good times and bad. Had Meldrum thought otherwise, he would have been spitting on his own life and mine, rendering them both pointless, useless, without reason or purpose.
“Well, I got to get back to the house,” I said finally. “Mr. Fullerton will be powerful mad if I don’t show up for my grub.”
“One more thing, Dusty,” Meldrum said, taking a step closer to me. “A word of warning: Lafe Wingo, the man you were telling us about, won’t let go of thirty thousand so easily.”
“You know him?”
“I know him. Seen him work one time up in Den ver. He’s good with a gun, maybe the best there is around.”
My fingers strayed to my wounded shoulder. “I can testify to that.”
“Just step carefully and keep your eyes open. Wingo will come here, to the SP, depend on it.”
“Jim, you’ll stand with me if that happens?”
“When it happens.” Meldrum glanced up at the threatening sky, rain falling on the sharp planes of his hard-boned face. Then he lowered his head and looked at me, his eyes bleak. “I’ll stand with the SP Connected, Dusty. But there’s something you ought to know: I’m handy with a gun my ownself, but I’m not near good enough to shade Lafe Wingo.” His cold gray eyes probed mine, searching deep. “Are you?”
I tried to make light of it and grinned. “I wasn’t the last time we met.”
Meldrum didn’t smile in return. “Then best you get in some practice.” His face was drawn, his mouth pinched. “I’ve a feeling you’re going to need it.”
> The rain was falling harder as I walked back to the house, Meldrum’s warning lying heavy on me. I felt tight and strange inside, knowing that the last thing I wanted was to meet Lafe Wingo in another gunfight.
Now that Ma had the thirty thousand and the ranch could get out from under the bankers, I’d thought the entire affair with all its blood and death was over. But if Meldrum was right, it wasn’t over . . . not by a long shot.
It was just beginning.
When I stepped into the parlor, Ma and Lila sat on each side of a burning log fire, each holding a dainty cup and saucer in her hands.
Ma, who had retained much of the frugality of her early, hardscrabble years, had kept every dress she’d ever owned, at least those that weren’t too worn-out. Lila was wearing a gown of pale blue gingham that Ma must have bought when she was younger and a lot slimmer, and the girl’s black hair was pulled back from her face with a bow of darker blue.
The sight of her made my breath catch in my throat and as I sat on the chair that Ma indicated, I heard my heartbeat hammer in my ears.
Lila Tryon wasn’t just pretty like Sally Coleman. She had a dark, flashing beauty that Sally could never match, the kind that made a man look twice . . . and then, all unbelieving, look again.
“Dusty,” Ma said, after I’d finally settled into my chair, “Lila tells me she wants to get to her ranch as soon as possible.”
Before I could answer, Lila said quietly and insistently: “It’s a farm, Mrs. Prather.”
Ma smiled at the girl. “Lila, you must call me Ma—everyone else does.” Then, revealing her natural prejudices as a cattleman’s wife, she added, maybe a little too sweetly: “This is ranching country, my dear.”
Lila opened her mouth to speak, but I jumped in quickly to keep the peace. “Ma, I already told Lila she can’t go to her . . . place until the Apaches are rounded up.”
Ma nodded, brushing a strand of gray hair away from one red apple cheek. “That dreadful Victorio, I’ll be so glad when the army finally catches him.” She looked at me, her brownish-green eyes troubled. “Dusty, did you hear about Tom Jurgunsen?”
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