by Short, Luke;
Red himself ran to the upper corner of the bunkhouse and came in beside Mitch.
“He was goin’ to shoot you!” Mitch said excitedly.
Red said savagely, “Ah, you damn fool!” and peered around the corner. His men had taken to cover at the corral and the barn. The Texan now calmly walked out from the bunkhouse, picked Ike up, and went inside with him. Red cursed bitterly. This was all wrong, but it had gone too far now for him to back out. He might as well go through with it as planned. He went to the other corner of the bunkhouse and shouted orders for three of his men to drive all the cattle out of the pasture. He detailed two more to keep the cook and the Texan inside the bunkhouse and ordered the rest to make their way to the house. As he was calling he felt Mitch’s hand on his arm and he shook it off impatiently. When he was finished, however, Mitch said, “Look,” and pointed to the house.
Red turned to see Celia Evarts, skirts lifted in both hands, running toward the bunkhouse.
Red waited in doubt only a moment, and then he ran out to intercept her. Celia saw him coming and tried to dodge, and Red caught her. Picking her up, arm around her waist, he started back to the house with her. Celia fought furiously, but Red covered his face with his free arm and went on. When he reached the porch he set her down just as two of his men who had ridden in a wide circle out of range of the cook’s six-gun arrived at the house.
Celia looked at them wrathfully and said, “Ike’s shot! I want to see him.”
Red said grimly, “Afterward. You’re goin’ to stay right here now,” and turned to two of his men. “Bring her along.”
Red strode past her and into the doorway of the living room. Celia, still struggling, was escorted into the living room by two of Red’s men, who almost carried her between them.
But when Celia was inside she stopped struggling and only watched Red Courteen. With his gun Red smashed everything breakable that he could see in the room. He overturned chairs, kicking their backs out, put a boot through the back of the sofa, and threw the table through the window. Celia watched first with astonishment and then with furious contempt in her face, while outside the shooting kept up with a maddening regularity. Room by room Celia was forced to watch Red smash everything he could reach. He worked with the vicious concentration of a destructive child, and Celia was almost afraid of what she saw in his tough face. She didn’t know why he was doing it, could not understand the almost fanatical pleasure he was getting out of this destruction. He saved her bedroom until the last, and when that was thoroughly wrecked he went back out onto the veranda.
He stood there, eyes alight with a wicked pleasure, breathing deeply from his exertion. Even his men, Celia noticed, were a little sobered by what they had seen. She kept silent, hoping they would go so she could see Ike. Mel Young in the bunkhouse and the cook in the cookshack were still futilely shooting.
Red glanced down toward the corrals and saw the cattle streaming out of the pasture, and then he turned to Celia.
“Give Will Ballard a look at that,” he said flatly, nodding toward the house. “Next time he wrecks Ten Mile for me he’ll think twice.”
“He’ll finish it next time,” Celia said scornfully. “I think, Mr. Courteen, you’ll leave the country if you’re wise.”
Red smiled thinly. “You can tell Will why Ike was shot too. I had a bill of sale for a hundred cattle I’d bought from Priest. Ike wouldn’t honor it. Tell him that.”
Celia didn’t answer, and her silence seemed to enrage Courteen. He said thickly, “I took a lot off your old man and Will Ballard when Hatchet was top of the heap. I aim to show you and Ballard how it feels.”
He turned and mounted his horse, and his two men followed him down to the corral. On the way he pulled off the two men who had kept Mel Young and the cook in the bunkhouse.
Celia hurried to the bunkhouse through the dusk now, and Mel Young opened the door for her. She went straight to Ike’s bunk and knelt beside him. He was propped up on his elbows, his truculent face pale and twisted with pain, and he said angrily, “Mel said they cornered you up in the house.”
“It doesn’t matter, Ike,” Celia said hastily. “Where are you hit?”
“The leg,” Ike said weakly.
She looked at the wound, which was a clean shot through the thick part of the thigh. While Mel Young lighted the lamp against the deepening dusk and then went for hot water with the cook, Celia set about dressing Ike’s leg.
Neither of them talked, and Celia worked with a feverish concentration. trying to crowd out of her mind any memory of what had happened. But try as she might, she could not forget one thing. Red Courteen had told her. Ike was shot because he refused to honor Courteen’s bill of sale from Lowell Priest. Celia, thinking of that and of Lottie, thought then of Will and pitied him.
Sam was roused by a racketing knock at his door, and he shouted sleepily, “Who is it?”
Before the answer came he noted irritably that it was daylight, and then someone shouted, “Russ Schultz, Sam.”
“Come in,” Sam said sullenly.
He swung out of bed, wincing against the soreness of his body, pulled on his pants, and then looked over at Schultz in the doorway.
Schultz was excited, but in spite of it he paused, staring at Sam’s face. It was swollen and cut, both eyes purple and scarcely open. Sam flushed under his glance and said angrily through swollen lips, “What do you want?”
Schultz said, “Will got him.”
Sam came slowly off the bed, and Schultz began to tell of what happened. Kneen had left late last evening with Cavanaugh to take him to jail. He’d returned to Bib M after midnight with Cavanaugh’s body. Kneen’s story was that Cavanaugh had tried to escape and he’d shot him. Bide had doubted immediately that Cavanaugh even wanted to escape, and when he’d looked at Cavanaugh and seen where he was shot he was sure. At the crack of daylight this morning Bide had taken his crew and Kneen out to the scene of the shooting. Sure enough, there were the tracks of a third horse, which could only be Will Ballard’s.
Sam listened carefully, his own troubles forgotten. His thick chest was bruised and red, but he made no effort to hide the marks as he became absorbed in Schultz’s story.
Schultz finished, “So Bide wants you as a witness. He’s waitin’ down there with Kneen for you.”
Sam said, “Of course,” and picked up his shirt. He was so excited that he buttoned his shirt crookedly, did not think of breakfast, and did not bother after he was dressed to tidy his room, a chore he had not once neglected since he’d built this place. He felt only a growing elation; Will had gone too far at long last.
He stepped out into a gray morning. The smell of pine pitch and chips was strong in the air as he passed his new bunkhouse of peeled logs and saw that his crew had already scattered for the day’s work.
Catching up his horse quickly, he saddled him and met Schultz in front of the house, and they rode out.
They came on Bide and his crew a half-hour later. Bide, with Kneen, was seated on the shoulder of the wagon road where it rounded the curve of a timbered slope. The horses of Bide’s crew were all being held together down off the slope, the men with them.
Bide rose as Sam approached and called, “Pull off the road on the upside, Sam.”
Sam did so and came up to them and dismounted. He was grateful that nobody seemed to notice his bruised face. Kneen didn’t rise, only nodded in quiet greeting. Bide’s dark face held less anger than impatience, and he said grimly, “I didn’t want you to spoil the tracks. Did Schultz tell you?”
Sam nodded, and Bide beckoned him down to the road. Once there, Bide reconstructed what had happened. He talked crisply, a curious impatience edging his voice, and not once did he look at Kneen or try to hide anything from Kneen’s hearing. He was talking with a purpose, his confidence hard and undoubting.
Finished on the road, he guided Sam down the slope, and they rode over to the small island of timber a quarter of a mile away.
Here again Bide
patiently reconstructed what had happened, finally showing him the brush where Cavanaugh had fallen. A fleeting, unwanted thought passed through Sam’s mind as he listened. Even the cold and factual reconstruction somehow made Will Ballard seem as implacable as death.
When Bide was finished they walked to the edge of the timber, and Bide pulled out tobacco from his old Mackinaw pocket. Nervously he rolled a thin cigarette and lighted it and then turned to Sam. For the first time now Sam was aware that Bide was looking at his bruised face with open curiosity. Sam also rolled a cigarette, offering no information.
Bide said crisply then, “Sam, we’ve been pretty fair neighbors, haven’t we? At least you strike me as a reasonable man.”
Sam grunted assent.
“I called you this mornin’ for two reasons. I wanted a witness to what I’d found, somebody besides my own crew. There was another reason.”
Sam glanced obliquely at him.
“I’m out to get Will Ballard, and if I have to wreck Hatchet to do it, I will.” Only as he spoke now did he betray the full measure of his anger. It was bitter, depthless, obsessing him.
Sam felt a hot pleasure at seeing it, and he asked meagerly, “Where do you think I picked up these marks?”
“Will?” When Sam nodded Bide said, “All right. Are you with me?”
“I hope I’m ahead of you,” Sam said quietly.
They rode back to Kneen now, and Sam pulled up beside him. “Is that what happened, Joe?”
Kneen looked at him almost dully and murmured tonelessly, “Ray tried to escape and I shot him.”
Marriner rode up then and said, “Go back to town, Joe. We’re through with you.”
His voice was contemptuous, and a bright anger flared in Kneen’s pale eyes. “Don’t be too sure of that, Bide.”
Bide didn’t smile, didn’t even let on he’d heard him. One of the men led a pack horse down out of the timber, and Sam saw the canvas-wrapped burden on its back. Kneen mounted, took the lead rope of the pack horse, and set off to town.
Sam was suddenly aware that Bide was eyeing him challengingly. “I’m takin’ my men to Hatchet to wait for Will. You comin’?”
Sam nodded, no longer afraid of having to face Celia.
Chapter 14
Ike dropped into a deep sleep in the middle of the morning, and Celia, for the first time since the afternoon before, felt at a loss. She and the Youngs had taken turns nursing Ike through a feverish night, and now she felt tired and somehow useless.
She wandered through the rooms of the house that Red had wrecked yesterday, and they had for her now a nightmare quality about them. She looked at the wreck of the massive old dresser with its shattered glass and tried to feel angry at its destruction. Her father had bribed an Indian freighter to haul it from the East to the agency along with his trade goods. That was long before the railroad was here, and her father and his men had freighted it themselves the last leg of the journey over the Indigos to Hatchet. Her mother had valued it above all her other possessions, and now it lay on its face, the glass shattered, its back kicked in—and Celia felt nothing. Things had come too fast this past week and dwarfed all this in importance. There was nobody to turn to, either, for Sam had not shown his face, and Will had not slept here in ten nights. In that time John Evarts had been killed, and she had come into Hatchet. Her world had changed entirely, except for Will. Yet he had changed, too, slipping into that part of a man’s world where a woman could not follow. It frightened Celia when she thought of how it had come about. She knew now that Will had expected it all along and that she hadn’t, really. She had agreed with Will and listened to him, but it was words they were dealing with, not happenings. Not any more, though. He had fought with Sam and was riding the hills, hunting a man, and she looked out at the gray day and shivered. She suddenly wanted to see Will and talk to him more than anything in the world, and for a moment she pitied herself and hated herself for it immediately.
She went out to the bunkhouse then and got Jim Young and brought him back to the house, and together they set about clearing up the wreckage. She worked furiously, wordlessly, leaving the heaviest jobs for him, but trying to exhaust herself with work.
She had swept up a great pile of broken glass in the office when she heard Jim Young’s steps in the corridor and looked up.
He came in and said cautiously, “A bunch of riders are comin’ in, Miss Evarts. Mr. Danfelser’s with ’em, though. That’s all right, isn’t it?”
“It’s all right, Jim.”
Celia left her work and went back through the corridor out onto the porch. Ten or so men were dismounting under the cottonwoods, among them Sam. And then she saw Bide Marriner, and a quick fear came to her.
Sam came up to her first, and she knew by the arrogance in his heavy stride that he had not forgiven her. She had seen the way Will was marked by the fight at Cavanaugh’s, but Sam’s face shocked her. She sensed immediately that he had made a great concession to his stubborn pride in coming here to face her, and she was sorry for him. Now looking beyond him, she saw Bide start for the porch, too, and she said quickly, distrustfully, “Why are you riding with him, Sam?”
Sam didn’t answer but waited until Bide came up. Marriner touched his hat, and Celia nodded coldly.
Marriner spoke first. “This isn’t Sam’s job, Miss Evarts, so I might as well tell you why we’ve come.” He hesitated and said dryly, “Have you heard that Will Ballard shot Cavanaugh last night?”
Sam said in an outraged voice, “Kneen let him.”
“I’m glad,” Celia said quietly.
Marriner looked almost shocked. “That’s an odd sentiment to come from a lady.”
“Not when you stop to think about it, Bide,” Celia said levelly. “What do you want?”
“We’re going to wait here for Will.”
Celia looked instantly at Sam. “Are they, Sam?”
Sam’s face flushed, and he said angrily, “Will’s got to be caught, Celia. This is the way.”
“You mean you’re helping Bide against us now?”
Sam said with stubborn anger, “I’m out to get Will Ballard, Celia. That’s helping you more than Bide, if you only knew it.”
Celia looked steadily at him, a strange hardness in her eyes. She said quietly, “You’re the man I’m going to marry, Sam. Is it right to ask you to clear these men out of here?”
There was a long, awkward pause, and Sam did not answer. Celia turned to the door behind her where Jim Young, his eyes grave and alert, was standing.
“Come along, Jim,” she said quietly. “They want the house.”
She blushed by Marriner and walked rapidly toward the bunkhouse. She heard Jim Young’s step behind her, and she did not look back, and her thoughts were bitter and angry. Mel Young stood questioningly in the doorway, and she slipped past him and went over to Ike. He was still sleeping, and she sat in the chair beside him and stared wretchedly at the wall. She could hear the cook asleep in a far bunk, could hear Jim Young murmuring something to his brother, and an overwhelming feeling of despair was in her. She had tried to shame Sam into defending her and she had failed. It was Sam’s stubborn pride that held him, and she knew every word he would use to her in justifying himself. He had always hated Will, and now that Will was proven a murderer in his eyes he would treat him as he would any killer. It was that simple to Sam, and he would not alter his opinion.
She heard the talk outside cease now, and surprisingly, then, Sam spoke, although she couldn’t hear what he said. Presently Jim Young stepped into the room and clumsily started to tiptoe across to her.
She nodded, knowing that Sam had asked for her, and rose. For a moment there was an impulse in her to refuse, but she was afraid to. This meant so much to her, for she realized now the truth of the words she had used to shame Sam. She was going to marry him. She had promised him, and she would not make any man a wife if she didn’t try to understand him.
Clinging to this, she went to the door and stepped outs
ide and closed it behind her. The Young boys waited politely and stubbornly beside her, distrust of Sam in both their faces.
Sam said to the Youngs, “Go up to the house, you two.”
Celia said, “It’s all right,” to them and then she started toward the cookshack. Sam fell in beside her, and when they were out of earshot of the brothers he said, “We’ve got to talk, Celia. Alone.”
Celia said, “All right,” and went over to the cookshack and stepped inside. The rough tables and benches, token of the old Hatchet, were still in their places. She sat on the closet bench and looked at Sam.
He nodded toward the house. “What happened up there?”
“Red Courteen.”
“The Youngs said Ike was shot.”
Celia said with sudden malice, “Odd—isn’t it?—that a man would fight for his own people.”
Sam said heavily, warningly, “Look, Celia. We’ve got to get this settled.”
“It’s all settled in my mind,” Celia said levelly. “I’ll listen to you, though.”
Sam made an angry, savage gesture with his fist. “Good God, you’d think I was in the wrong, instead of Will Ballard!” His breathing was heavy, quick. “You’re proud of Will—a damned killer!”
Celia said patiently, “Nobody’s proud of killing, Sam. But I’m proud that Will wouldn’t let John’s killer go unpunished. I’m proud that Joe Kneen wouldn’t too.”
“Look at it!” Sam said angrily. “A sheriff, sworn on oath to uphold the law, turning over a prisoner to be butchered!”
“Will gave him a chance,” Celia said quickly.
“How do you know?”
“I know Will.”
Sam’s face was ugly now as he regarded Celia. He stood in front of her, legs widespread, his big hands fisted at his sides. He took a deep breath and exhaled it shudderingly, as if in some way he knew the act could restrain his temper. But he could not hide it, and it was in his voice, making it rough and impatient and harsh.
He said slowly, “A year ago, Celia, I asked you to marry me and you said you would.”
