Dorothy Garlock (18 page)

Smith watched her go down the hill, keeping pace with the slow-moving dog. She had clung to his mind like a burr during the last few days, a disturbing presence. It had been a mistake to take her to the spring, a bigger mistake to kiss her. What had possessed him to do it?

Hellfire and damnation! He knew why he had done it. He had liked holding her in his arms. She had seemed fragile, but she was wiry, like a cat that would fight if cornered. It was something about the way she moved that made him think this; a mixture of caution and alertness. She would be a fit mate for a man, that is if he were looking for a mate.

Smith wheeled his horse and rode back toward his camp. He didn’t want to care what happened to her after she left the ranch, but dammit it to hell, he did.

12

M
aud Eastwood opened her eyes and found herself lying flat on her back on the floor. Fearful that she would be plunged into that terrible blackness again, she lay perfectly still. Soon pain in her shoulder and in the back of her head made itself known to her. She tried to focus her eyes on the iron spider that hung on the wall behind the cookstove. It swayed back and forth like the pendulum on a clock.

“Stay still, damn you!”

When her mind cleared enough to know that she had hurt her head when she fell, she lifted a hand to feel the lump. Her arm felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds. She rolled her head to the side and saw that the kitchen door stood wide open.

“Ah . . . dammit!” If that whiskered old busybody came up onto the porch he would see her. Afraid to get to her feet because of the dizziness, she rolled slowly and painfully across the floor until she was close enough to kick the door shut with her foot.

Exhausted, she lay with her forearm over her eyes. What

had she been doing when she blacked out?
Think. Think.
Oh, yes, she had just finished eating her breakfast. What was it? What was it? Oh, God, what was it?
Milk and mush.
Thank heavens, she remembered. Sometimes she couldn’t remember what she had been doing before she had what Fanny had called a “fit.” She would waken with her mind a total blank. Not this time. Maybe she was getting better.

“You have fits, Mamma.” Fanny had said those hateful words long ago—before Oliver died.

“No. They’re sinkin’ spells. Oliver said so.”

“A girl in my school had a fit. She fell down and twitched and slobbered. Oliver is being kind.”

“No! No!”

“Yes, he is. Do you think he wants people to know his wife has fits?”

That very day, Fanny, her little girl, had left for Denver, and she had not come back.

Maud wished she could remember how long it had been since she’d had one of her spells. A week? Two weeks? A month? This was the first one since Smith left. She had marked that date on the calendar. Damn his hide. He owed her that trip to Denver to see Fanny and tell her that her mother needed her to come home. She had sent letters, but they must not have reached Fanny because there had been no answer.

When Fanny got here, she was going to tell Smith once again to get the hell off her ranch. And if he didn’t, she’d have Fanny get the marshal down from Sheridan. She didn’t want him around. She had never wanted him around. The no-good bastard had come here with only the clothes on his back. He’d sucked up to Oliver, wormed his way into Oliver’s good graces, thinking to get the land and the house. He’d not get it. It was hers and Fanny’s.

When Fanny came home, the house would be bright and
shiny again. Fanny’s friends would come up from Denver. They would have a picnic on the veranda, and in the evening they would sit in the glider swing. Oliver had built this grand home for her and Fanny. It was just as Oliver left it, Maud thought drowsily. She had lived right here in the kitchen and had not even gone into the other rooms unless absolutely necessary. She had not been upstairs since Oliver’s funeral. Fanny would be pleased that she had kept it so nice.

Maud pulled herself up and sank down in a chair at the kitchen table. She would rest awhile. She’d clean the kitchen before Fanny got here.

*  *  *

With the sun behind him, Smith rode up the lane to the ranch buildings. Long ago, when he was a kid, he had thought of this place as home. Home had been where Oliver and Billy were. Now Oliver was gone and there was just Billy. The old man was the only family he had, and each time Smith left him he was fearful Billy wouldn’t be here when he returned. Billy was fond of him, too. The cantankerous old man wouldn’t admit it to him, but he showed it in a hundred different ways. Smith grinned a lopsided grin in anticipation of seeing him.

He supposed he could call Plenty Mad sort of family. The Indian had been at the ranch longer than he had. He was another stray Oliver had picked up. Plenty Mad and his mother, who had been used by a member of a wandering tribe and therefore was unfit for marriage, had lived in a lone little tepee at the edge of a Sioux village, hangers-on, dependent upon the meat and hides divided among those without a man to hunt for them. After his mother died, Plenty Mad had roamed, following the herds, until Oliver had found him, sick and half-starved.

Smith chuckled when he thought of the first time he had
seen Plenty Mad. He had been scared to death of him. The Indian delighted in making an Eastern tenderfoot think he was a bloodthirsty savage. He had hopped around on first one foot and then the other, brandishing a stick with a stone tied to the end of it and chanting in gibberish until Billy had come out and put a stop to it.

Now, scanning the area, Smith noted that nothing had changed during the four weeks he had been away. This morning, before dawn, he had rolled out of his blankets in order to reach the ranch before Willa and the Franks arrived. Two of his mares ran along the fence nickering a greeting to Pete. The stallion pranced, his ears peaked and his nostrils flared.

Smith laughed.

“You got a treat coming, boy. I think both of these ladies are waiting to welcome you.”

Smoke came from the cookshack attached to the end of the bunkhouse. No smoke came from the two chimneys on the big house Smith observed as he rode up to the corral gate. After he unsaddled Pete, he turned him into the pasture with the two mares. With his tail in the air the stallion raced to join them. Smith watched as one of the females wheeled and kicked at him playfully. Pete nipped her on the flank and let out a shrill blast to let her know he was not in a courting mood and intended to get right down to the serious business of mating.

“Go to it, Pete. You’ve had a long trip and deserve some fun.” Smith shouldered his saddle and headed for the barn.

“How-do, Smith. You back, damn you.” Plenty Mad came from the side of the barn with a pitchfork in his hand.

The Sioux had a permanent grin on his face due to the deformity of his upper lip. The wide space between his two front teeth and his small pug nose added to his unusual appearance. Smith was used to his ugly features and didn’t even notice them anymore, but he never doubted that Plenty Mad’s
mother had been
plenty mad
when she had seen her son for the first time.

“Howdy, Plenty. How’s things here?” Smith went into the barn and flung his saddle over a rail.

“Bad. Plenty damn bad here. Plenty glad you back, Smith.”

Everything with Plenty Mad was
plenty.
He picked up every cuss word he heard and was the most pessimistic person Smith had ever known. Plenty Mad was happiest when he was utterly miserable.

“How’s Billy?”

“Mean. Plenty damn mean.”

“What’s he done now?”

“What’s he done now?” he repeated. “He done all things. He done plenty bad things.”

“Couldn’t’ve been too bad. You two haven’t killed each other.” Smith’s hand came down heavy on the Indian’s shoulder.

“You laugh, Smith. You see. Hell damn kiss my ass.” He continued to grumble as he followed Smith out of the barn. “Things is plenty damn bad. Bad grass. No water. No game. Big fire come like big herd a buffer. Take all away. Big smoke cover sun. You see plenty damn quick.”

Smith looked up. There wasn’t a cloud or a wisp of smoke in the sky. “I’m glad to know things are going good.”

“Good, my bare damn you ass.” Plenty hopped around on his short, permanently bowed legs. His shoulder-length hair danced on his shoulders. “You ask. You don’t hear. I say plenty bad smoke come. I tell Billy. Damn Billy tell Plenty Mad go pitch horse shit. Billy don’t pitch horse shit. Plenty Mad pitch horse shit. All day rake and pitch horse shit. Plenty Mad tired rakin’ and pitchin’ horse shit.”

“Don’t get in a sweat. Stop raking the horse shit and oil my saddle. Where’s Billy?”

“How I know where Billy is? God the hell damn. He don’t tell me. You hear?”

Carrying his bedroll, Smith chuckled as he went through the bunkhouse to reach the cookshack. The long narrow room was neat as bunkhouses go. Before it became a habit for Smith to keep both himself and his sleeping place clean, Billy had insisted upon it. Even with a full crew of men living here, there had been no spitting on the floor in this bunkhouse. Cigarette butts were in a can, bunks were spread with a blanket, floors were swept every Saturday.

A familiar, worn, sheep-lined duck coat hung from a peg on the wall. Sant was back.

Smith’s lips spread into a broad smile. Sant Rudy was the man who had taught him how to defend himself when he had been just a stripling. He was the only man beside Billy that Smith would trust with his life.

As far as Smith was concerned, Sant Rudy had done about all a man could do. He had scouted for the army, ridden shotgun on the stage, led wagon trains to California, mined for gold and lived with the Indians. It was said he had killed a dozen men. Smith never doubted that every one of them needed killing.

The only thing in the world that Sant loved was wild horses. He shared that love with Smith. The two of them had spent weeks trailing a wild herd and driving them into a blind canyon where there was plenty of grass and water. It will be damn good to see Sant, Smith thought, as he dropped his bedroll and his hat on the floor beside the door and entered the cooking and eating room of the bunkhouse.

“Saw ya ride in.” Billy was standing at the iron cookstove raking ashes and cinders out of the firebox into a tin bucket. He kept his head bowed to hide the welcoming grin. It would have been impossible to see, however, because his face was covered with a white beard that extended to his chest.

“Howdy to you too, Billy.”

“Coffee’s hot. I baked ya a couple apples.”

“How did you know I was coming today?”

“Bird told me.”

“Humpt!” Smith snorted. “Probably a buzzard.”

There was no hiding the pride in Billy’s eyes when he straightened and looked at the tall, lean man still standing in the doorway. Love was there too. The boy who had stumbled into his and Oliver’s camp that morning had grown to be a man any father would be proud of—not that he would admit it to Smith.

He had baked the apples, Smith’s favorite, every morning for the past week. Course, he wasn’t going to tell him that or how much he had missed him.

“You made good time. Denver’s a fer piece.”

“Yeah, it is.” Smith rubbed his hand over the stubble on his cheeks. “How long has Sant been here?”

“ ’Bout a week. He’s out south with a couple fellers he rode in with. Said they’d drive Eastwood cattle cross Crazy Woman Creek then go on down to Horseshoe Canyon. He wanted to show them fellers those wild horses ya got bottled up.”

“Were they horse buyers for the army?”

“Don’t rightly know. One might a’been. The other’n was a know-it-all kid with a itchy finger.” Billy snorted. “He won’t last long.”

“Sant going to stay awhile?”

“Didn’t say. Ya know how close-mouthed he is. He rode in and went to work like it ain’t been half a year since he left.” Billy looped his thumbs in the wide suspenders that held up his britches. “Boomy came in for supplies. They’re pushing a couple hundred head onto Bison Flats. Said they’d be in in three, four days if’n they don’t have to go on down towards Little Fork. Says it’s mighty dry up that away.”