The Plains of Laramie (4 page)

A slight sob echoed in her throat. She raised quickly on the toes of her boots, brushed a quick, soft little kiss over Jack’s mouth, and went out the door, off the porch, and down toward the horse corral. Jack, remembering suddenly, frantically, that Wes Flourney was out there somewhere, dropped his gun and lurched outside to yell a warning. His mouth was still open and wordless when the snarling blast of a single shot rang out. Jessica Tolliver took two faltering little steps, and fell.

Jack Masters ran drunkenly over the ragged earth where the long evening shadows were blotting out the devastation of the spent, blood-drenched day. He went down beside her and lifted her head. There was a raw bruise on her forehead and a welter of rich, vital blood was trickling from the valley between her breasts, high up near the top button of her shirt. “Jessica…”

“You, Jack?” There wasn’t a shred of reproach in the words. Wonder, maybe, but no accusation. He shook his head.

“No, Jessie. My deputy. He couldn’t tell in the dusk. He didn’t know, Jessie.”

“Is it bad, Jack?”

He bit back the acid that erupted in his throat and nodded his head gently. She smiled up at him. There was a peaceful finality on her face and she reached up shakily and dropped one small, dimpled hand over his filthy knuckles. “Jack, if I save a place beside me, up there, will you look for it when you ride over?”

Again he nodded. “Yes, Jessie. Save a place for me. I’ll be along. Wait for me, Jessie, promise?” She sighed a little and nodded, her moist, large eyes on his with a deep abiding faithfulness. They were dimming now and Jack’s soul was wrenched hard when the honey-colored hair fell loosely over his arm with a solemn, final grace.

The ride back to Mendocino was like the return of two wraiths. The darkness hid most of the brush scratches, the ragged, torn clothing, and the sunkeneyed, bone weariness. It hid the little string of rack horses that plodded patiently along behind Jack’s and his deputy’s horses. But all the darkness in the world couldn’t hide the soggy, plumping sounds as the corpses, lashed sideways over the saddles, bumped and lurched against the ropes that held them, taking their last ride on a horse.

The light of a new day made a difference. Yates had his bloodstained money from Link’s saddlebags and Bud Prouty was mending as well as could be expected. Mendocino’s boothill boasted of several new graves, but one grave, at the thin-lipped stubborn insistence of the sheriff, had been put apart. It was a better grave, too. There were flowers and a prayer and a silent renewal of a promise lying over it like an aura.

Mendocino was proud of her sheriff. There were triumphant celebrations and fireworks, and Jack Masters smiled his way through it all, the same old Jack, just a little quieter, perhaps, a little grayer in the face, and a little less willing to laugh, but to the cowmen and the townsmen these things went unnoticed and ignored. To them he was their conquering hero.

To a man from a cesspool, the gutter is heaven. Those were the words. He turned the whiskey glass around and around in its own little sticky pool of clear liquid on the bar top, and thought of them. If a man had said them, he’d have killed him—shot him down with the ferocious fury of a self-made gunman. Called, drawn, and shot, all with the unbelievable speed that had made him feared, hated, and fawned over the width of the raw, rude frontier.

But it hadn’t been a man, it was a girl—a slip of a woman at that. Not over 110 pounds of fragile, violet-eyed, taffy-haired girl. The kind that made heroes out of their men while they themselves lived and died unsung. A real Western woman.

He couldn’t get the words out of his mind; they were sort of poetic.
To a man from a cesspool, the gutter is heaven
. Why, damn her, anyway. Her father was Buff Dodge. Big, wealthy, gruff, and friendly—one of the richest cowmen in the whole wide West, which, of course, meant the whole damned world. To hell with her old man and his money. The Vermilion Kid was pretty famous, too. And he had money—although no one but himself knew it.

He slid the whiskey glass along, making the little pool take on an oblong, roughly heart-shaped outline. He knew what she’d meant, though. He nodded slightly, morosely. There was a difference all right, sure there was. He was an outlaw. That the law had
never caught him didn’t alter the facts one damned bit. She knew it, and he knew it, and, he surmised tartly, so did the whole damned world. Even so, it sure hurt, when he’d tried to scrape up an acquaintanceship to have her drown it with a sentence like that. He downed the whiskey and turned bitterly away from the bar.

The First Chance saloon was a bedlam of noise, pungent odors of tobacco, liquor, and human sweat. The Vermilion Kid grinned wryly, sourly to himself as he made his way through the press of raucous, writhing bodies to the faro table. He gambled with his usual indifferent luck and the warmth of the room—generated by the hissing, glaring lanterns, the feverish, recklessly hilarious patrons, and the dingy, worn little iron stove in a far corner—made a small wreath of sweaty beads stand out on his upper lip and his forehead. His slate gray eyes were somber, constantly moving over the room with a liquid, smooth movement and a look of sardonic ridicule had settled over his tanned, lean cheeks.

He marshaled his chips and counted them unconsciously, always aware of the toss of that taffy hair and the proud, piquant face, and then the dagger of the words spanked up hard against the back of his forehead.

To a man from a cesspool, the gutter is heaven
. He quit the game, had another drink, and stalked out of the saloon. The night was warm and clear, with little tremors of coolness settling down on the earth after the vicious heat of the day. He went to the Royal House, hiked the stairs to his room, locked the door very carefully, and went to the bed with the same ten words of contempt drenching him with their frigid repugnance.

At breakfast the following morning, the Vermilion Kid’s badly mauled pride had shielded itself behind a mask of indifference, as it always did. In fact, he was pretty well along in the process of forgetting the whole damned episode—or so he told himself, when the hotel clerk came up to his table. He was the only occupant of the dining room and the man clearly showed that he had to talk to someone. The Kid motioned to a chair as the clerk hesitated. “Sit down.” The clerk sat with a slight, self-conscious nod of thanks.

“Sure’s too bad, ain’t it?”

The Kid knew the routine. He was supposed to look up, perplexed, and ask what was too bad? He shrugged instead, deliberately, and pointed to his thick plate of ham and eggs. “You had breakfast?”

The clerk was deflated. “Ain’t hungry.” He tried a more natural approach. “You hear what happened last night?”

“Nope, don’t reckon I did.” He continued to fork the food into his mouth.

“Some cowboys ridin’ back out of town come across ol’ man Dodge’s body, plumb shot all to hell an’ stiffer’n a ramrod, about two miles out o’ town.”

At the name of Dodge, the Kid’s soft, nervous fingers laid aside his eating utensils. His gray eyes came up smoky and he chewed methodically until he swallowed, looking at the clerk. “Well, what’s the rest of it?” There was a sudden earnestness in his voice that the clerk didn’t fail to recognize. He shrugged, anticlimatically.

“Ain’t nothin’ more. Them riders jus’ found the old guy shot to death, that’s all.” The last came tartly,
a little indignantly, as though the clerk resented the Kid’s calm, steady eye and relaxed manner. He excused himself, got up, turned with a slight frown, and walked out of the dining room.

For possibly fifteen seconds the Kid didn’t move, then he got up, pulled his hat absently onto his head, flipped a ragged piece of paper money on the table, and walked out of the hotel into the blast furnace sunlight that was firing its molten wrath down upon Holbrook. Without seeing, he looked up and down the lone, ragged, unkempt street and turned toward the livery barn.

A hostler got his horse and the Kid saddled up, mounted, flipped a piece of change to the whiskeywrecked old sot who had gotten his horse, and rode out of the barn. He turned down the hot roadway with its tiny, whirling dust devils that jerked to life under his big black gelding’s freshly shod hoofs, and out of Holbrook, heading north, toward the vast D-Back-To-Back, the Dodge Ranch. The blearyeyed hostler looked from the coin in his hand to the disappearing rider and his filmy eyes were incredulous. He held a $20 gold piece in his hand—more money than he’d had since he’d been a top rider for the 101, nearly fifteen years before. Twenty golden dollars to hide in his filthy rags until it burned a livid hole in his pocket that’d match the searing ache in his ravished body for whiskey.

As the Kid rode toward the tremendous Dodge holdings, his mind went bitterly, fleetingly to the ten little words that had hurt worse than anything that’d been said to, or about, him since he’d carved his own violent, mysterious arc across the firmament of the frontier. He more than suspected that his intended offer would be bluntly, savagely refused by
Toma Dodge. Still, he wanted to make it—perhaps so she’d hurt him again. He wasn’t sure why, but he fully intended to make the offer anyway.

As the Kid rode leisurely toward his destiny, back in Holbrook there was an explosive and profane council going on in Sheriff Dugan’s office. Emmett Dugan was gray and grizzled, hard and indifferent to everything except his job as sheriff of Concho County. He was a brooding bachelor, fiery of tongue and rough in appearance. The man opposite him was articulate, dark, and handsome in an oily, unprepossessing way.

“I don’t know when he come in, Sheriff. This mornin’, when I got down to the barn, Bob had put him in a stall and doctored him. He’s down there now, if you want to see him.”

Dugan got up slowly. “Well, let’s go look. Don’t see how the dang’ critter can be alive, though, if he’s shot like you say.”

Side-by-side the big forbidding-looking sheriff and his smaller, immaculate-looking companion walked down the protesting plank sidewalk to the livery barn. The dark man led up to a gloomy stall where a powerful bay horse stood forlornly in a shadowy corner, head down, lower lip hanging, breathing with bubbling, rasping sounds. The marks of a recently removed saddle were still outlined on the beast’s back. Dugan opened the stall door and went up to the wounded horse. Les Tallant, the livery barn owner, went in with him and pointed to a ragged, swollen, and purplish hole.

“Right through the chest.” His voice was unconsciously lowered. The horse didn’t look up. Dugan walked around the horse, studying the wounds. The animal had been struck a little forward of
the left front shoulder. Already a bloody scab had formed over the torn, swollen flesh. Dugan walked softly over the straw bedding around to the other side, shaking his head. He looked thoughtfully at the hole in the wounded saddle animal for a second time, then turned and went out of the stall. Tallant followed him out, latching the door behind him.

“It’s Buff Dodge’s big bay, all right. I’d know that horse anywhere. He prob’ly ambled into town an’ come to your barn because he remembered that’s where Buff used to leave him when he come to town. Damn.” The sheriff shook his head wearily, sadly. “Ol’ Buff was one o’ my best friends.” That was as close as Emmett Dugan ever came to showing emotion.

Les Tallant wagged his head back and forth a little and the opaque black eyes were impassive. “’Course, Dodge carried money on him, usually more than was wise…but, dammit all, it’s hard to think of anyone who’d kill him to get it.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Tallant. They’s two kinds of owlhooters. They’s the kind that’ll hold a man up fer his
dinero
, an’ then there’s the kind that’ll kill to rob. Mostly these latter kind know the man they’re robbin’ an’ don’t want no witnesses…or else they’re just plain killers at heart. It was one of these here kind that killed Buff.”

Tallant was soberly quiet for a few seconds before he answered. “Yeah, I reckon you’re right.” He shrugged slightly. “Well, what you want me to do with the critter?”

Dugan was shuffling out of the livery barn as he spoke. “Jus’ leave him there. I don’t allow he’ll make it, anyway, from the looks of them holes, so jus’ leave him where he can die in peace.” He was out of the
barn when he finished speaking and he turned toward his office without a backward look. Les Tallant watched him go thoughtfully, then walked slowly over to the Royal House for his breakfast.

There was a huge old wooden gate that had the D-Back-To-Back burned deeply into its crossbar where the road swung past and the Vermilion Kid rode through it. His big black horse was ambling along sleepily and the Kid appraised the little bunches of cattle he saw here and there as he followed the well-worn ranch road. The beef looked good. Of course, there were a few old cows whose bones showed, but they all had big, fat calves by their sides. Mostly, though, the cattle were fat as ticks and placidly contented.

The buildings were old, weather-beaten, but well kept up. The house alone was painted and its verandah ran completely around it, shading the outer walls. An assortment of old, cane-bottomed chairs and a hammock or two were in the shade. There was the clear, clarion ringing of a man working at an anvil and the sound, musical and strident, rode down the hot summer air to the Kid as he rode up to a log hitch rail before the house, swung down, and tied up.

There was no sign of human activity among the buildings, and, except for the unseen smithy, the ranch might have been deserted. The Kid’s spurs tinkled softly as he walked across the cool, shadowy verandah and knuckled the door. While he waited, the Kid looked at the gray old pole corrals and the huge log barn, all tight and solid. He felt a glow of
appreciation. Here was a Western ranch where you didn’t have to strain your innards every time you opened a gate. That was as it should be, but all too seldom—it wasn’t the way things were kept, generally speaking. His musings were interrupted and he turned back as the door swung open. The Kid’s hat came off and he was standing face to face with a small, full-bodied, and red-eyed woman. Toma Dodge. For an instant she looked up at him blankly, then recognition swept over her face. He could feel the wall of antagonism building up between them.

“Please, Miss Dodge, I’m sorry about yesterday. It won’t happen again.”

“Is that what you rode all the way out here to say?”

He shook his head. “No, ma’am. I heard about your father an’ I came out to offer my help in any way you want to use it.” He said it exactly as he had rehearsed it. It was better to be diplomatic than to come right out and say he was a lethal killer and would gladly gun down the murderers of her father. This way she might let him help.

There was a flash of anger through the anguish in her face. She tossed her small, taffy-colored head in that mannerism he remembered so well and the words cut deeply. “Thank you, Mister Vermilion Kid, but I think one encounter with renegades, in the past twenty-four hours, has proven disastrous enough for my family. I don’t think I want to chance another accident.” The way she said “accident” made the Kid squirm inwardly. He stood in silent anger for a long moment, just looking down into the wide violet eyes. Then the anger dropped away and he nodded twice, curtly and softly.

“I knew it was foolish to come out here and offer
my services. I knew you’d say something like that.” He put his dusty black Stetson on with an unconscious gesture. “Well, Miss Dodge, I hope someday you learn to judge people better.”

He turned abruptly and started across the verandah toward his horse. He knew she was watching him, because he didn’t hear the door close. A man’s gruff voice came to him as he untied the horse, and, despite his resolve not to look up, he did anyway.

A blunt-jawed individual was standing next to the wisp of a girl in the doorway, glowering down at him. The Kid flipped his reins, turned his horse a little, and had one foot in the stirrup when he heard the man’s spurs ringing across the verandah, coming toward him.

He was about to swing aboard when a surly voice spoke behind him: “Don’t let me catch you trespassin’ on the D-Back-To-Back again, mister.”

The Kid’s foot slid easily out of the stirrup and he turned slowly. His eyes were level with the angry brown eyes when he spoke softly: “I don’t believe I know you,
hombre
.”

“Jeff Beale, foreman of the D-Back-To-Back. I’m the one who gives the orders hereabouts,
hombre
, an’ I’m tellin’ you not to set foot on this here range again.”

Normally the Kid might have overlooked the man’s big talk, but now there were two reasons why he didn’t. One was the girl still standing in the shadowy doorway, and two was the discomfort and hurt of her words. In short, the Vermilion Kid had absorbed about all the unpleasantness a man could accommodate in so short a space of time. He didn’t answer at all, but his gloved fist dropped behind the slope of his shoulder in a flashing fraction of a
quick second, then arose with the mauling, bruising weight of his whipcord body behind it. If the foreman saw it coming, he made no move to get away. The fist chopped and popped like a bullwhip when it connected with his square jaw. Jeff Beale went over backward like a poleaxed steer.

The Kid swung back toward the girl. “I don’t know why, Miss Dodge, but every time I try to talk to you there’s trouble.” His voice was calm and his smokegray eyes were mildly puzzled. “I’m sorry about this”—he jutted his chin toward the inert form of Beale—“but you’re a witness that I didn’t start it.” Seeing that the girl was listening and looking at him in silence, he took another plunge. “I wish you’d let me help you. I’ve been around things like this before an’ maybe I could do some good. At any rate, I’d sure like to try.”

For the first time since he’d known her, her voice wasn’t ringing with pure contempt when she spoke. “And if I agreed, what would your pay be?”

He admired her common sense and couldn’t help but smile a little lopsidedly. “Nothin’, ma’am. I don’t want your money. Just agree to let me sleep in the bunkhouse an’ eat with the other D-Back-To-Back men, that’s all.”

Her eyes went to the gently stirring form of Jeff Beale. “Help him up and we’ll talk about it.”

Beale stood on wobbly legs and ran an exploratory hand over his bruised jaw. He was listening to Toma Dodge, but his squinted eyes were thoughtfully on the blank, unsmiling face of the Vermilion Kid. Finally he nodded. “All right, Toma, if that’s what you want, we’ll try it, but…” The brown eyes were perplexed and Beale shook his head. “Hell, I don’t know. I guess we can try him out, anyway.”

The Kid rode back to Holbrook, stuffed his scanty gear into his saddlebags, paid his bill at the Royal House, and returned to the D-Back-To-Back. When he was putting up his horse, three cowboys sauntered over to the corral and watched him in impassive silence. He nodded, and the riders nodded back. The Kid had been a cowboy once and he knew what the men were doing. They were appraising him—evaluating his appearance, his tack and his horse; from these things they would deduce his status among them.

Apparently the silent judgment was favorable because he was gradually included in the men’s jokes and hazing until, after two days on the ranch, the Vermilion Kid was more at home than he had been in many years. Jeff Beale introduced him to the men. At the sound of his name, there was a startled, awkward silence that, strangely enough, Beale himself filled in with casual talk until the riders got over their furtive stares and sudden silence.

For two days the Kid worked the cattle with the men. He saw neither Toma Dodge nor Beale, except in the early morning when the foreman would line out the work. The Kid was anxious to work on the murder, and the evening of the third day he went up to the house. Toma admitted him to a huge old parlor with a roaring fire in a massive, smoked-over old stone fireplace. He recognized the ancient trappings of the old frontier on the walls. Indian trophies hung droopily among old tintype pictures and the comfortable old leather furniture was typical of an earlier day on the frontier. The Kid held his hat selfconsciously in his hand and turned it by the brim in slow, nervous convolutions as he spoke. “Miss
Dodge, it sort of seems to me like we’re wastin’ a lot of good time.”

The girl nodded, her eyes on the colorful Navajo rugs. “I know, it seems like that to me, too, but Jeff is nosing around in Holbrook and doesn’t want you to do anything until he’s chased down some ideas he has about Dad’s murder.”

The Kid frowned. His answer was dryly matter-of-fact. “Well, while Beale’s lookin’ around, a lot of water can pass under the bridge.”

The beautiful eyes came up with a decisive upsweep of the head. “I know it, Kid. You can start out on your own tomorrow, only…”

“Only…what?”

“Only don’t let Jeff know what you’re doing. He’ll be angry if he knows I let you start your investigation.”

The Kid’s eyebrows came together over his steady gray eyes. “Miss Dodge, this here’s likely to be a long drawn-out an’ dangerous little chore. Don’t you think we ought to start out by trustin’ each other?”

“What do you mean?” Her face colored a little.

“Well, if Beale doesn’t know what I’m up to, it’ll make a lot of unnecessary hard feelings, won’t it?”

Toma Dodge stood up and looked at the fireplace. The Kid felt a sudden little tug at his heartstrings as he studied her profile. She was so small and helplesslooking, yet so much a woman, the kind of a woman a man needed. “I don’t know what to say.”

The Kid guessed, correctly, that her father’s sudden demise had projected her into a role of responsibility that was altogether foreign, and a little frightening, to her. He got up and went over beside her, his hat gripped tightly in his hands. There was a half-wistful, half-truculent look on his face.

“All right, Miss Dodge. I’ll keep out of Beale’s way. We’ll do it your way, but frankly I don’t think it’s too good an idea.”

She turned toward him. For a wild second her eyes locked with his and a strong electric current passed between them. The Kid turned away in confusion and, mumbling excuses, left the house. Outside, the stars were clear and brittle. He rolled and smoked a cigarette in the warm, velvety shadows of the corrals. He didn’t think it would ever happen, but it had; he was in love.