Jim Saddler 2

by Gene Curry

  Jessie objected. “That’s not what Mr. Wingate thinks. ‘A short life and a merry one,’ he says. He said it tonight. Didn’t you hear him?”

  “I heard him. But how did he get to be a man in his sixties? People say things. I think John would like to live to be ninety. I can’t speak for Pardee.”

  The thought of living to be ninety did something to Jessie. She said quietly, “I’d hate to live to be old. I can’t think of anything I’d hate more than being old.”

  I said she wouldn’t get any argument from me. “I feel the same way, but you can’t make the choice for others. Anyway, maybe you’ll change your mind when you get older.”

  “The hell I will!”

  Her voice was so loud that I had to shush her. I didn’t want old John running out in his underwear to see what was wrong.

  “You’ll wake the chickens,” I said.

  She said something dirty about me and the chickens and stalked off to her room. One of the surest signs that Jessie was angry—she stalked instead of walked.

  I lit another cigar and went outside. It was cold and I buttoned my coat. Stars glittered in the blue-black desert sky, and the night wind keened in the branches of the windbreak in front of the house. To one side of the house was the plot where John’s wife and daughter were buried. No flowers were on the wife’s grave, but there was a cactus rose on the daughter’s.

  A man in the hayloft of the barn pointed a rifle down at me and told me to stay still. He said, “I know it’s you, mister, but you ought to know I’m doing my job.”

  He was a young cowboy with a high-crowned Texas hat without a crease.

  “How long have you been with Wingate?” I asked.

  “More than a year. Come here with a string of horses and stayed on. This is the best ranch I ever worked on. Mr. Wingate doesn’t treat the men like hogs the way some owners do. And he won’t let us be hogs on our own. If he thinks the bunkhouse is turning into a pigpen he gets Curly Fitch—he’s the ramrod—after us.”

  I knew what he meant. Most bunkhouses were so dirty that no self-respecting louse would live there in the blankets if he had any place else to go. They swept out most bunkhouses every few years—cigarette stubs, torn long Johns, empty tin cans, green-molded meat.

  “How do you feel about this war?” I asked, stepping on the cigar.

  “It’s a shame it had to get started. I was in a range war once, in Texas. Not so much of a range war but a feud between two families. Funny thing is they were all related. You never saw so much blood and thunder—night riding, bushwhacking, the maiming of stock. If you haven’t seen it you don’t know what it’s like.”

  “I’ve seen it,” I said.

  It was time to go to bed.

  Chapter Five

  My room was right next door to Jessie’s, and though she had been in there for more than an hour—when I decided to get some sleep—I could still hear her moving around. The thought of having her so close made me restless and for a long time I lay smoking and thinking about her. I wondered what she would do if I knocked on her door. Tell me to come in or threaten to shoot me? I wondered if she wore any kind of nightshirt and decided she didn’t.

  Jessie traveled light and I think she was as reckless and perhaps as dangerous as the man she claimed as a father. And though I try to take my women as I find them, I knew it wasn’t going to be that simple with this one. Still thinking about her, I fell asleep.

  I dreamt that Jessie was in bed with me. It was a fine dream; in it the bed was the same, a great, big four-poster with a double mattress so soft it was like a cloud. Jessie had come to my room after getting out of a tin tub of hot soapy water; she was still slightly damp and she smelled as fresh as a newly mown meadow. Her small hands were cool as they wandered all over my body. She blew her sweet breath in my ear and I woke up with a start.

  “You were tossing and turning in your sleep,” Jessie whispered.

  I still wasn’t completely awake. “I thought you were in bed with me,” I said.

  “I am,” she said.

  By God, so she was; the lamp was turned down to a glimmer, but I could see her all right. And she did smell of soap and she was slightly damp. The soap had a delicate lilac smell and no doubt it had belonged to Hannah Wingate.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Jessie whispered though there was no need. John Wingate didn’t give a hoot what people did so long as they didn’t do it to him.

  She didn’t give any more explanation than that and I didn’t want any. It was enough that she was in bed with me, young and smooth-skinned and very pretty. She had a body made for loving though you wouldn’t always know it when she was striding around in those striped trousers, that deadly little Colt Lightning belted up high around her waist. I had a funny thought. This morning we were killing men, tonight we’re together in bed.

  I reached for her and she came into my arms with a sigh that didn’t go with her idea of what a tough little gal she was. She kissed me fiercely, mashing her lips against mine while her hands, as in the dream, roved all over me. Now it was my turn to groan as her hand reached down and felt my hardness.

  “Oh, Saddler, I want it now!”

  She kept calling me ‘Saddler,’ never ‘Jim.’ I had no objection to that. I didn’t care what she called me as long as she didn’t get out of bed. We rolled over in that great big bed; one minute I was on top of her and then the positions were reversed. She didn’t whisper any endearments to me, and I didn’t want to hear any. We both knew that what we were doing was for the here and now, no strings attached.

  As our lovemaking became more intense her firm young body leaped like a trout. I had to fight to control her; there was so much energy in her five-two frame.

  Now with the bedclothes kicked off our heaving bodies threw shadows on the wall. She turned her head and saw the moving shadows and that excited her; she became even wilder and unrestrained.

  “Oh, Saddler!” she called out; there was no more whispering.

  And then it was over and we lay together with the night breeze from the window playing over our heated bodies. I hate women who begin to talk the minute they have finished making love. Jessie wasn’t like that. She snuggled up close to me and put her head on my shoulder. Her short-cropped hair had dried now and it felt fluffy against my face.

  She remained silent for a long time; I was ready to wait her out. Then out of nowhere she said, “I’d like a drink. Do you want one?”

  “Sure. You want me to get the bottle?”

  That seemed to annoy her. “Saddler,” she said. “I asked you if you wanted a drink. When I asked you that it wasn’t a hint for you to get the bottle instead of me. Why can’t men look at things in a simple way. Why don’t we try it again.”

  I nodded, amused but not showing it.

  “Saddler,” she asked with no smile at all, “do you want a drink?”

  “I do,” I said.

  That was better, I suppose, and she went buck naked to get the bottle and two glasses.

  I lay there until she came back and closed the door. Turning up the lamp, she looked serious as she poured the drinks. She put the bottle on a table beside the bed and climbed back in with me.

  One glass of rum was enough for me and I drank it slowly, not altogether enjoying the sticky taste, but that’s all John ever kept at the ranch. I wanted to ask Jessie about her father but decided it would be exactly the wrong thing to do at that moment.

  “Saddler,” she said abruptly, “I want you to know that what happened here tonight doesn’t mean anything to me. No, that isn’t what I mean to say. What I mean is—there are no ties between us.”

  “You don’t have to talk about it.”

  “But I want to talk about it.”

  “Why? There’s no need.”

  “For me there is. I don’t want you to think that I’m after you or anything like that. We’ll probably do this again, but out of this bed there are no ties. I come and go as I please. I want you to know that.”


  “All right, Jessie, you told me twice.”

  “Just so you don’t forget.”

  I said I wouldn’t. What a woman!

  ~*~

  For the next two days Jessie did her best to keep out of my way. John knew something was going on, but of course he didn’t say anything. I didn’t try to figure out what was in Jessie’s mind. I was too busy getting John’s men ready for the big fight he felt was sure to come.

  I was drawing top wages, but even so I wouldn’t have been disappointed if the trouble with Vince Pardee fizzled out. If the fight did come I’d go through Pardee and his boys ‘like green corn goes through the new maid,’ as they say; but if he decided to call it off, I could always go back to the gaming tables. Poker, after all, is a lot more pleasant than killing, and a lot safer.

  But I was here to do a job, and I did it. I taught John’s riders every dirty trick I’d ever learned. Jessie was around, but all we did was exchange nods. At times, while I was working with the men, she would drift in close and watch what we were doing. Then she would move off as silently as she had come. Some of the boys tried to get neighborly with her, but she wasn’t having any of that. I didn’t try to warn them off; there was no need.

  The third morning after our roll in the hay, and it was a roll I’ll never forget, I woke up listening to gunfire. I knew it wasn’t Pardee and his men; there was no mistaking the sharp crack-crack-crack of the short-barreled Colt Lightning. It stopped and started again.

  While I was going out to have a word with her, John showed up red-eyed in a flannel nightshirt, a gun in his hand.

  “What in blazes is going on?” he wanted to know, rubbing at his sleep-gummed eyes.

  Looking scared, Laughing Woman stuck her head out of John’s room, then closed the door.

  I said it was only Jessie catching up on her marksmanship.

  “Fine time to be doing it,” John grumbled, but I knew he was relieved. It’s one thing to talk a fight, another to do it.

  John went back to his woman, and I went out and dipped my head in the rain barrel. At that hour, just after first light, the water was bone-rattling cold. Across the way in the bunkhouse, feet slapped the floor and a light flared up.

  Out past the corrals I saw her going into a gunman’s crouch; the shooting started again. A log was lined with cans, and while I watched she reloaded and pushed the shiny .38 back in its holster.

  When I spoke the gun came out like a streak, and it pointed at me instead of the targets.

  My gun was already out. I kept it out while I explained a few reasonable rules. One rule was—no shooting in what was practically the middle of the night.

  “You’re scaring the chickens,” I said, “and besides you could get shot.”

  Curly Fitch, the big-boned ramrod, came out of the bunkhouse buttoning his pants. He knew what it was because if he didn’t he would have come out a lot sooner. I told him it was all right.

  “That’s what you say, Saddler. You tell that woman of yours ...”

  My woman! Well, sir, there was a kicker for you, but I didn’t say she wasn’t.

  “I already told her.”

  I guess Jessie heard what he said; she didn’t say anything. By then the .38 was back in its holster.

  “Tell her again,” Fitch said. “Women don’t get things the first time.”

  “This one does,” I said. “You made your point, friend. Was there anything else you wanted to discuss?”

  Fitch grunted and went back to the bunkhouse. Of course he was absolutely right—and to hell with that! What has right got to do with it when the party in the wrong has just the right shape, yellow hair, and pale blue eyes. Hard eyes but lovely eyes when they stopped squinting at danger or with hate, or with whatever made them so hard in the first place.

  Jessie came over to me. She looked at me. “I’m not your woman, Saddler. I’m nobody’s woman, least of all yours. This is the second time you took up for me, and I don’t like it. Men don’t choose me, I choose them. You know what men are to me?”

  I had no ready answer.

  She snapped her fingers. Snap-snap! “No more than that.”

  “Your business,” I said, adding, “but no more target practice so early in the morning.”

  “Don’t you give me orders, mister. I’m not your woman or your wife.”

  “Is that a proposal, little missy?”

  For a moment I thought she was about to draw on me, but all she did was walk away, and for all her cockiness she looked slightly forlorn.

  Funny thing is, we ate breakfast together not long after that. At least we sat at the same table with John, and for a drunkard and a womanizer he never failed to keep a big brass-clasped Bible at his elbow when the grub was brought in. I wondered if he had another Bible, one he kept beside the bed when he jumped up on Laughing Woman.

  John said a very short Grace before he dug in.

  “Much obliged, Lord.”

  A bit red-eyed even after a few extra hours of sleep, he was in a good mood as he heaped his plate with chicken fried steak and eggs, buckwheats, butter biscuits, and soda bread.

  Hangovers affect men in many ways, and on this morning in 1887, John Wingate discoursed on the many and various ways of preparing chicken-fried-steaks for the pan.

  I didn’t have a hangover, but I knew I would have one if he kept on long enough.

  John said, “They can’t be too thick or too thin. Medium tender is what they have to be. Never use a mallet when you pound them flat. For some goldarned reason that spoils the flavor. The bottom of a beer bottle, a Pearl Beer bottle is what I recommend. Then when the batter for the steak is just about ready, you mix in say, two tablespoons of the aforementioned Pearl Beer. Now what do you think of that?”

  I poured a cup of jumping-hot coffee and said the boys were coming along just fine. No trouble along the boundary lines, no trouble of any kind. Not yet.

  Jessie hadn’t said anything.

  John hiccupped. “You ain’t said much this morning, daughter. What’s that you been reading while us fellers have been talking?”

  Jessie had the strange habit of reading while she ate.

  “Mind if I take a look at it?” John said.

  The torn cover of Jessie’s paperbound book was shiny with grease and hard use.

  She gave the book to John. He read, “Title and author. The True Story of Jesse James by William Wallace Simmonds, published by the Manifest Destiny Library, 16 Park Row, New York City, United States of America. Copyright 1886.”

  “That’s the best one ever about my father, Mr. Wingate,” Jessie said. She became angry. “They murdered my father, but they’re not going to throw me down in the mud. They’re not going to murder me.”

  “Who is they?” John wanted to know, then decided it wasn’t worth knowing. “You’d do better to get rid of all that hate in your system. Go on now, eat your breakfast.”

  “I hear you, Mr. Wingate. I’m not hungry.”

  She went out in a rage.

  “What do you think, Saddler?” John asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe she is Jesse’s daughter. Who knows what he was doing all those years on the run.”

  “You don’t like her?”

  “I like her all right, but I think she’s trouble.”

  “You’re a hard man, is all I can say. That girl, it’s like she wants to be somebody important. Think back to when you were a kid. Did you ever want that?”

  “I guess so. It wore off after a while.”

  Early or not, John had put away enough rum to be a wise old man. “It wore off because you went and did what you pleased. That was your way of being important. It worked the same way for me.”

  I got up and said I had work to do.

  John poured rum in his coffee, a glassy look in his eyes. Drunks and fortunetellers get that same look when they are looking into the future. “You know, Saddler, I got everything a man could want except a family.”

  I guess he was thinking of his dead dau
ghter, Hannah.

  “No girl’s all bad,” he said.

  I could have given him odds on that, but I kept my mouth shut. Besides, friend or not, I was still just a hired hand.

  John was weaving back and forth and having trouble focusing his eyes.

  “What’s the big hurry? I was asking you a question, and you’re trying to duck answering it. Now why don’t you answer it, like the obliging feller you are?”

  John was turning sour, as he often did when he thought of his dead daughter.

  “You’re right,” I said. “No girl is all bad.”

  “Now you’re talking.” John slammed the table so hard the dishes rattled.

  “That’s better,” he said. “A straight answer to a straight question. No beating about the bush. The trouble with you, Jim, in a way, is you don’t have enough faith in human nature. Faith is the secret of the whole thing. I say, Go out and meet the other feller half way. Extend the olive branch of peace. Say to the man, let us reason together ...”

  In a few minutes John would drag out his enormous brass-clasped Bible and start reading aloud from it.

  Luckily for me, his head nodded forward on his chest, and he fell asleep.

  Chapter Six

  I went out and found Curly Fitch waiting for me. He said he didn’t like the way I was taking the hands away from their regular chores. The ranch was going to hell in a handcart, he said.

  I knew he hated my guts, and I didn’t want to marry him either. But he was a good man—tough, honest, reliable.

  “Take it up with the boss,” I said. “If he sides with you, then tell him so long for me. Or we could settle this another way. The two of us behind the barn.”

  We both knew it would come to that; when, was the question. He was big and hard so he thought he could take me. Maybe he could. I’m no John L., but I’ve done more than my share of roughhousing.

  “Some other time,” he said.

  That business over with, though far from settled, I rounded up the men. They didn’t like the way I was pushing them, but only one, a hulking young cowboy with red hair and a greasy Stetson, decided to do something about it. I had called them a bunch of slow-witted farmers, and he didn’t like it.