The Eye of the Hunter (11 page)

In the wide entrance to Budge Gorman's stable, his dog lay Sphinx-fashion in the shade, snapping at flies; but Budge was not in sight. A horseshoe hung from a hitch rail, a railroad spike dangling from the horseshoe. Henry rang it and it produced a thin chiming in a class with Budge's hee-heeing laugh. In the barn Budge called, “Yo!” and in a moment he emerged leading Henry's horse and carrying his saddle and pad on his shoulder. After looping the lead rope around the rack, he dropped the saddle on the horse's back, set his black hat on his brow, and stared at Henry with a wild expression.

“Hear you're leaving us!” he said.

“For a while, Budge.”

“Don't make any damn sense, Logan! Haul in town one day, leave the next. What's the matter with you?”

Henry tapped the horseshoe again. Listening to it hum, he said thoughtfully, “Funny, isn't it? Maybe I'm restless. I don't know.”

“Well, I don't know, either. I expect you don't like Nogales. Most city people don't. Think they're too damn good for us.”

“Hey!” Henry protested, gripping Budge's shoulder. “I think this place is just right. I like a town you can shoot up and get away with it.”

Budge began his hissing laugh. “What did Ambrose do?”

“Oh, he told me not to do it again. What's the bad news?”

“Two-fifty. Gave him some molasses ‘n' oats.”

No wonder the horse was pawing the dirt, Henry thought—inaction and rich food after three days riding the rods. “Did you check his hoofs?”

Budge dug in his overalls pocket for a hoof pick. “Keep your shirt on. Might I ask where you're off to?”

“Yonder—up the river a piece.”

“Better let me draw you a map, then. Man can get lost up yonder. Feller 1 know ain't been seen for months.” Budge's windy laugh said he knew exactly what Henry was up to.

Henry grinned. “I'm just going out to look at ranch land. I have a friend in K. C. who's interested in acquiring a ranch hereabouts. Thought Spider Ranch might suit him.”

“It's mighty good land,” Budge said. “Fine stands of grama and poverty grass. But that ranch is too far out for a single lady.”

“Are we talking about the same lady? I thought she was married.”

Budge chuckled. “Not so's you could notice it! Not lately. Rip's dead and buried, if I know gamblin' men.”

“Frances will be meeting me here directly,” Henry said.

“I know that! She's picking up some freight at the depot.” Budge glared at him and dropped the hoof pick in his pocket. Then he peered up the street and muttered: “Need some advice, Henry.”

“Gun problem?”

Budge took a breath. “Business problem.”

“Man, you have no idea how little I know about business! I'm just an ignorant gunsmith. If it can't be improved with gun oil, a screwdriver, and a rag, forget it.”

“Well, all's I really need is a feller to write something down for me.”

“Fine, then. I write a pretty good hand.”

Budge went into the barn and emerged in seconds with a ruled letter pad and a pencil. He placed them on the horse's back.

“I've got a mechanical pencil,” Henry said, reaching in his coat.

The stableman grabbed a brush and began grooming the horse, as Henry meticulously adjusted the pencil.

“There's some prices first,” said Budge. “I promised to buy Frances some feed—it's wicked how they rob her. Here's the figures....”

Henry knelt cowboy-fashion, writing tablet on his knee. “Fire at will. This thing does numbers, too.”

Budge recited some figures on feed and salt blocks. “Got that?”

“Now, this goes on another page.” Budge moved quickly to the off side of the horse, where Henry could not see him. As he brushed, in a cloud of dust and dander, he began muttering, so low that Henry had to strain to hear him.

“Little louder,” he called.

“‘Dear Frances,” Budge dictated. “‘You must know I like you. It don't matter a bit to me the lies they tell about you—'”

Anguished, Henry said, “Hold on, cowboy! Wouldn't it be better if you—ah—told her this, instead of my writing it down? You don't want to be like Captain John Smith, do you?”

“The Army has nothing to do with this, idiot! I've been figuring for weeks, but I can't ask none of my friends to write it down.”

“All right.” Henry sighed. “Suit yourself. I'll keep it to myself, too.”

“Okay, here we go. ‘I know you're an honest woman, Frances, and I liked your father. I want you to know ...' No, back up. Say this: 'I wish to talk to you when I bring the grain out. Respectfully ...'”

By the time Henry had finished writing, Budge was ready with a small, smudged envelope on which an earlier address had been crossed out. “Give this to her sometime today.”

“Here she comes,” Henry said.

Budge slipped into the barn.

Henry climbed up into the buggy and tried to take the reins, but Frances shook her head. “Not here, thank you. Heavens! In
this
town? After we're on the road you can spell me.”

“I'll ride shotgun, then.” He patted the stock of the carbine beside the seat. “What comes first?”

“Some clothes for you. When I saw you in the cemetery yesterday, I thought you were there to read a service! Do you have money with you?” she asked. “I can't cash a Missouri check.”

“Don't worry about us Missourians. We all carry bank holdup money.”

Erect on the seat, Frances drove south into the business district. A skinny mouse-colored dog wandered before the buggy, and the gray horse snorted and shied. Exasperated, Frances shook the reins. “You old fool, Granite!” Henry smiled. The horse was responding to the anxiety he felt coming down the leathers.

At a drugstore, Frances bought some powders she said might make him look less like a heathen Chinese. At a meat market she bought a ham, and then they started for a clothing store. He noticed that as they walked, not a single woman looked at her; nor did she acknowledge a single one of them. The women gave him quick, avid glances, eager to have a look at Frances's gunman friend. She wore a dark, full skirt that looked to him like a Spanish dancer's, with a white waist with lacy inserts. My Lord, she has class! he thought. She'd look like a dancer if she were dressed for spring cleaning.

The men tipped their hats to Frances, except those with their wives; and all the men grinned at Henry. Several said, “Howdy, Henry!”

An older man blocked his way and offered his hand. “Knew your father, Logan! He was a fire-eating Irishman if! ever saw one! You've got a good start, yourself.”

I hope not
, thought Henry.

A woman whom Frances called Mrs. Murfree showed them a double-breasted shirt Henry liked, but it was a dollar-fifty, and Frances shuddered. Without expression, Mrs. Murfree showed them a denim jacket he fancied, but it was three dollars, a price Frances rejected by rolling her eyes heavenward. Mrs. Murfree's lips tightened like a purse; she looked like almost any unhappy woman Henry had seen at home, thin-lipped, powdery, and flaccid in a sacklike dress. She wore rimless glasses.

They went to another store, and a small, precise little man named Woolley showed Henry some hats. He was taken by the first one he set on his head, a Pine Ridge sombrero the color of nutria belly. The price was five dollars. In Kansas City this would have been high, but he didn't know about Nogales.

“Mr. Woolley,” Frances exclaimed, “that is purely awful! A John B. Stetson wouldn't cost more than four dollars!”

“Really, Mrs. Parrish? Why don't you try the Bazaar? They have some ... cheaper goods.”

Henry studied the man and his smirk. Then he removed the hat and suddenly, with a yell, pulled it down on Woolley's head; it came below his ears, blinding him, and Frances began to giggle. Sputtering, Woolley tried to lift it, but Henry pulled it down to his nose.

“No, don't take it off, Woolley—model it for me. What do you think, Frances? Is that's real rabbit-fur felt?”

Frances crossed her arms, put her finger over her lips, and considered. “Heavens, I don't know what it is—I never heard of the brand.”

“Well, Woolley seems to be a real rabbit, so it's possible.”

Frances laughed. She said: “You mustn't be angry, Mr. Woolley—he's just funning you. I'll tell you what, Henry. Save your money. My husband has a dozen hats. In fact, you can choose a whole outfit from his closet. You're about his size. It'll be like having a husband again.”

She took his arm as they left the store.

She let him hand her up into the buggy seat, smiling and a bit flushed. Henry climbed beside her and looked her full in the face. But she touched his nose with her fingertip and said, “Not to draw conclusions, Mr. Logan. That was just to start a new rumor and drive everyone wild.”

She turned the buggy around for the trip north. Then she exclaimed: “Pshaw! I almost forgot—a mandolin pick.”

“What for?”

“Well, I don't pick my teeth with them—I play the mandolin. Why don't you wait here while I run into the music store?”

When she emerged, the sun was nearly overhead and she had said it was twelve miles to Spider Ranch. As they neared Gorman's stable, he remembered something and dug out the stableman's love letter.

“You've got some mail.”

“I have?” Frances took the smudged envelope. “Where'd you find this?”

“Read it.”

Frances tied the reins and withdrew the neatly written page. As soon as she began to read, she moaned and gave him a glance of distress. She pretended to weep. Then, biting her lip, she finished the letter. For a few moments she stared down the road.

“Did you read this?” she asked.

“Read it? I wrote it. Budge's words, though. I'm sorry, but he insisted.”

Rubbing her brow, she gazed at the stable. In the shade of a sidewall, wearing a leather apron, the big hairy creature called Budge was shoeing another hairy animal.

“Do you mind riding ahead a little way?” she asked. “I'll catch up with you.”

Looking like Atlas in overalls, Budge Gorman charged from the barn as Frances stopped the buggy in the yard. His furred arms were raised to steady a sack of grain he carried on each shoulder. He wore a wild grin and was shouting, “Git moving there, Frances! Shove them boxes out of my way!”

“Budge—please!” Frances raised one hand to block the man's rush to the bed of the wagon. “Listen to me!
Stop it!
”

Budge dumped one sack atop a box of town purchases, and the buggy rocked; she managed to save a hamper in which she had packed a lunch, just as the other landed and the buggy lurched again.

Unburdened now, both his arms were reaching for her. She moaned, realizing she was suddenly in a hopeless situation only a madman could have created.

“Git down here, woman!” he roared. “We're gonna dance!”

“I
can't
! I don't—I—”

“Sure you can.” He grabbed at her.

“I don't know how!”

“I'll teach you! Come on. ‘And swing that darling little maid,/She's only ninety in the shade.'”

She tried to elude him, but the wild stableman caught her wrists and swung her to the ground. Clutching her about the waist, he whirled her around and around, laughing.

“‘Honor your partner!'” He bowed. Feeling ridiculous, Frances curtsied to him.

“Budge, you don't understand! I'm a married woman! If my husband saw us—”

“You just think you're married, Frances! But okay, we'll dance in the barn—dance all day and dance all night!”

He dragged her into the barn and commenced a step that made her think of a Greek folk dance, his arms raised for balance, his boots rhythmically kicking to this side and that. When she attempted to run back to the buggy, he seized her, tipping his face up to howl like a wolf, and spun her into a new pattern.

“‘Old maids to the right! Young bucks to—'”

Frances tried to follow his steps, but they bumped and tangled and Budge guffawed and whirled her like a doll. He stamped, raising dust, and shouted the calls.

“Budge,
please
!”

“‘Now, ladies swing in, and gents swing out—'”

Frances tried another move, going limp and pretending to faint, and Budge had his hands full keeping her from collapsing on the floor. He propped her against a wall of hay bales and peered into her face. “What's wrong, here, Frances?”

Frances waved her hand weakly. “I'm a little faint—if I could have a drink of water ...”

“Wait here.”

As soon as he turned away, she started for the door but tripped over her skirts. Budge turned back, saw what she was up to, and caught her again.

“What'samatter with you, woman? Didn't you read my letter?”

“Yes, I did. I certainly did. But, if Richard—I'm married, Budge, I'm
married
! And I don't need any more gossip.”

The stableman admonished her with a finger under her nose. “Don't you realize yet that he ain't a-coming back? He's dead! Prob'ly laying under the dirt somewheres in Mexico. So you better grab another man whilst you can.”

Frances shrank back. “I really couldn't marry you, anyway. I like you, very much, but I don't think we'd get along....”

Budge frowned, trying to understand it, tugging at her sleeve while he pondered. “How come?”

“Because I don't love you. That's how come.” She tried to smile. Curtsied. “Forgive me?”

Budge scratched his chest, his mood taking a swing, and he shook her by the arms. “Nobody else gonna marry you, Frances. You best understand that right now!”

She looked past him. In the sunlight, Granite was sleepily watching the action in the barn. In no way was he going to be part of her rescue or escape. If she got out of this, it would be her mouth that saved her.