The Tall Men (9 page)

Ben awoke slowly, mind groping back from a long, happy way off.

When a man has just put under eight hours of the first solid sleep he’s had in three days, his thoughts don’t jump open quite as fast as his eyes. But the smell of roast meat and a driftwood fire are familiar prods to a plainsman’s memory. He rolled up on one elbow, seeing the empty bed at his side, hearing at the same time the sounds of the girl moving around outside. By the time he got into his clothes and stumbled sleepily through the low entrance, things were coming back to him with a rush.

He was given no chance to put them into grateful words.

“Fetch out my coat, please.” The nod was civil and no more than civil. “And bundle up the bedroll. Your meat’s by the fire, yonder.”

He looked at her a moment, wanting to say a hundred things, not able to think of any one of them.

He went back into the cave, got her coat, rolled the blankets. He was back out at once, determined now to have his say and get it off his mind.

Again, he had no chance.

Nella was throwing the forty-pound saddle on the black, making no more of the effort than would any knowing hand. “You eat, pardner,” she ordered. “I’ll lace on the blankets.”

Ben sat down against the wall, confused, upset,
wondering: beginning, too, to get a little riled. He ate the mulemeat, saying nothing, thinking much.

Well, if she didn’t want to talk about it, a man could allow that figured, somehow. Maybe she was a mite upset for her own part. Maybe she was feeling the same as him, not knowing any better than he did how to put it to words. Let it be for now. It would come out soon enough.

It was a wise idea and a bad guess.

The miles marched along under the gelding’s long stride. Nothing but Smalltalk about the clearing weather and the remaining distance to the fort interrupted their swift passage. With the morning well gone and Bent’s crowded post lying hard around the near bend of the Arkansas, Ben could stand it no longer.

“Nella,” he grunted over his shoulder, “ain’t we got suthin’ better to talk about than what happened to the snowstorm?”

There was silence for the next fifty feet of trail. Then her voice came clearly enough. “Ben,” she said deliberately, “just forget it.”

It was the first time she had used his name. Hearing her say it aroused a whole new flood of thoughts in him, all of them rising around that wonderful hour in the cave. “That’s a outsize order for a ranch boy,” he said doubtfully. “Mebbe you kin answer it better than me.”

“I can,” said Nella.

Her voice wasn’t hard now; still there was no hesitation in it.

“A woman’s lonely and grateful and maybe a little scared and feeling bad-lost into the bargain. There’s a fire and warmth and the first shelter and safety she’s felt in might be a long time. Add a few kind
words from a decent, clean-thinking man and you’ve got what happened last night.”

“That all you got, Nella?” He said it quietly, trying to keep it level and easy. The girl didn’t miss the rough catch of the hurt in it.

“It’s all, Ben,” she answered softly. “A woman like me’s got only one way to pay a man she’s beholden to.”

“You wasn’t beholden to me for nothin’ at all. And you wasn’t
payin’ me
last night. Not no more than you was payin’ yourse’f, you hear?”

“I hear, Ben, but I’m not listening anymore. Forget it like I said. There’s no good in it for either of us. Believe me, boy, I’ve been there before.”

“I ain’t,” frowned Ben. “I ain’t never been there like that before. It don’t make for easy forgettin’, you hear me now?” He paused, reining the black in. He twisted in the saddle. “Nella,” the name slipped out as easily by this time as though he’d been saying it all his life, “I want you to stick by me. I reckon I need you more’n any man ever needed anythin’. How about it, girl?”

He saw the shadow darken the violet eyes. Then saw it as swiftly disappear behind the dazzle of the bright, hard smile.

“Ben, are you proposing to me?”

“I reckon,” he stammered, blushing hard. “Leastways, the best I know how. Will you have me, Nella?”

The smile went the way of the shadow in the eyes, fading swiftly.

“I’ve had you,
Ben,” she said slowly.

“Meanin’ you don’t want no more of me.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Say what you mean, then. Straight talk walks the shortest distance.”

She looked at him, shrugging helplessly. “All right, Ben, move the horse along. It’s cold here in the wind.”

He turned away from her, kneed the gelding, held him down to a chop step as Nella talked. They were only a short distance from the fort now. But it was only a short story she told him. Short, and not quite sweet.

When she finished, he let the silence grow for a long time. When his answer came at last, it was filled with all the child gentleness he had shown her the night before. Riding with his back to her, he could not see the return of the quick shadow to her eyes.

“I don’t care where you been, Nella. Or what you been. Nor where you was goin’, or aimin’ to keep on bein’ once you’d got there. A woman’s got to live, same as a man. We ain’t no different, you and me, in the ways we’ve went about it.”

Quickly, then, he told her of his own past, softening nothing and concluding abruptly. “We both picked the easy way and found it harder than the hubs of hell. It ain’t no sign we got to keep runnin’ on dry axles. A month ago, up in Montana, I took a new trail. Mebbe it’ll lead me summers, mebbe it won’t. But it’s a chance, girl, the best I’ve been give. I’m askin’ you to take it with me. To leave me split it with you, fifty-fifty. And nobody askin’ no questions about nothin’, from here on out. What you say?”

“I say keep the horse moving,” said Nella Torneau huskily. “You were headed south when we met, me, north.”

“Don’t riddle me none,” pleaded Ben earnestly. “I want a straight answer.”

“You’ve got it, boy.” The quickness and the sharpness were back in the low voice. “I’m still heading north."

The week at the fort passed. On the good, handcut winter hay and eastern rolled oats, there available, the gaunted horses rounded out quickly. With the morning of the eighth day they were ready to travel.

Throughout the preceding days, Nella had not weakened to Ben’s increasingly hesitant persuasions. She insisted she would stay at the fort, continue her original way north with the first arriving of the spring emigrant outfits. She refused to wait for him until he returned with the herd, or to travel on with him and Clint and Stark to Fort Worth. He made his last, fumbling plea the night before the start, came away downcast and carrying a weight of heartsink and loneliness that kept him tossing till daybreak. He had seen Nathan Stark approach the girl shortly after he left her, thought nothing of it except to tell himself, of a sudden, that he didn’t want any man around her but himself. That was a small idea and he knew it. He had it pretty well fought down by first light, too. But the thought of leaving Nella was still hard and heavy inside him when the sun rolled up the long valley of the Arkansas.

Within ten minutes after it did, he knew he was
not
going to leave her. Not then, and not ever.

He walked away from the black, leaving him half saddled and whickering curiously, went straight to the post sutler’s store where she had been staying. He was in time to see her and Stark come out of her quarters, laughing and talking.

Fighting down the black anger that rode up in him, knowing it wasn’t really black, but green, he waited until Stark left to see to his own preparations for departure. He stood awkwardly before her, not answering either her cheery good morning or the familiar, too bright smile that came with it.

“Nella,” he blurted out, “I ain’t leavin’ you.”

“Bad news sure travels fast!” She surprised him with her quick sarcasm. “How’d you know?”

He started to answer, suddenly realized what she had said. He had meant to tell her he was leaving Stark and Clint, giving up his share in the herd. Would go and gladly go, with her, wherever the trail might lead, north or south.

Instead, he stepped back, eying her uncertainly.

“I don’t get you, Nella,” he muttered.

“That’s right, Ben, you don’t.” The smile brightened unbearably. “Mr. Stark does.”

Ben’s jaw set, bad and hard.

“Now don’t get up on your back feet and start waving your paws around like a damn bear,” she laughed. “I’m only agreeing with you, boy. Like you said, you’re not leaving
me.
I’m goin’ with
you.”

“I’m right glad, Nella.” He said it simply. He wanted to shout for joy, but Stark was sticking in his mind, stopping him. “What’s Stark to do with it?” he tailed off bluntly.

“He talked me into it,” shrugged Nella carelessly. “Offered me a job I can get by on, that’s all.”

“What kind of job?”

“Not the kind you’re thinking,” she said easily. “A good job.”

“Sech as?”

“Dealing faro. Some saloon up to Virginia City. Black Nugget or something like that. It won’t be the
first girl that’s tried it, you know. Stark reckons the boys’ll give my table a big play” her tone turned defensive, “and besides, he paid me in advance!”

She faced his growing scowl, concluding defiantly. “I can
deal
cards, too, mister! Open a snap. Pass a buck. Sweat the deck. High, low, jack and game. Ten, king, deuce, or trey. You name the game, I’ll deal it.”

It was one too many for Ben. At the moment his stumbling mind couldn’t get far past the main, happy fact that she was going with them. And mostly it didn’t want to get
too far
past it. To the waiting girl he spoke just what was in his heart, not shadowing it with any of the clouds beginning to build up behind his thoughts.

“Nella,” he said softly, “in my game you could never deal anythin’ but double aces—"

The trusting worship which, as Ben had so clumsily tried to tell her existed in him for Nella Torneau, grew only deeper and more dear with each long mile southward.

The girl was a never ending wonder to have along, never losing her cynical good nature, never tiring on the trail, always quick to see her share of the campwork and to pitch into it without complaining. After a few halfhearted male attempts to dissuade her on the shaky grounds of cow country chivalry, they gladly enough let her alone, and mighty grateful when all was said and done to shut up and enjoy a woman’s cooking for a change. Most especially such a woman’s!

Never did delighted frontier “dancehall girl” endure so much sincere attention, nor get swarmed under by such an eager surplus of flour-sacked centaurs and bow-legged, high-booted fire tenders.
None of them could help her enough, and the competition at dishwashing time was little short of disgraceful. Even the aloof Nathan Stark unbent after the first few camps. Long before they crossed Red River the staid Virginia Citian could manage a batch of baking powder biscuits or a boiling of red Texas beans with the best of them.

Clint, of course, was in his element, playing the dashing knight errant of the plains to the handsome hilt. If he was not rampant on his sorrel mare performing his endless repertoire of south plains horsemanship to the applause of Nella’s breathless glance, he was mooning, couchant, on the starlit turf of the fireside spinning her gargantuan Texas lies of his singlehanded victories over entire Union Army corps, or his never ending, Sir Galahad-pure search for the soft-eyed, virtuous southern belle who would one lucky day be Mrs. Clinton Allison. He mixed his extravagant metaphors and perverted the seamy facts of personal history with such an entire and skillful skipping of the busty blondes and broken bourbon bottles which in truth composed his main claim to fame, that even the taciturn Ben was half wondering if he really knew his sometime small brother. Further, Clint had not had a drink since leaving Virginia City. A man could happily see, Ben allowed, that like himself the kid felt so good to be back in the
illano estacado
he just naturally wore himself out being his rightful, sweet-natured self. Then, too, you couldn’t miss the fact that the nearer they got to home, and as they began passing the outlying ranches with their open range, deep worn cattle trails and their distant, faint-bawling bunches of grazing steers, the more Clint began to take stock in and ask questions about the doubtful scheme he
had so grudgingly allowed himself to be declared partner in.

It was a short, happy time for all four odd-mated travelers. Good feeling and optimism were over the bank and into the willows by the time they forded the Big Wichita River and swung east to bear down on Fort Worth. In fact, the five-hundred-mile stretch from the Arkansas had so dried Clint out that in the last camp out of Fort Worth, on the West Fork of the Trinity, Ben actually caught his brother joking with Nathan Stark—and being joked right back at.

Ben had said no more to the girl, nor been given the chance to. But she had played it so cussed straight the whole of the rough, ten-day ride that a man had to forget his being shrugged-off and discount his worry about what had been said and done between her and Stark. And, forgetting it, just set back and wonder that there was such a girl anywhere in the whole wide West. And to think to himself with no little honest pride that no place but Texas could have bred her kind.

The last day’s sun came booming up out of Louisiana and across the North Sabine River like it couldn’t wait to get them on their way. Ben welcomed its five o’clock prying under the face cover of his black hat by rolling out of his blankets and yelling-up the rest of them like he was heading a two-day schoolboy hike over to Blue Mountain or Weather-ford.

They were long gone down the last miles, south, before the sun got high enough to pull a man’s shadow halfway under his horse. Ahead of Ben Allison, as far as the sun-burned squint of his pale eyes could reach, lay nothing but wide open, easy prairie and a bluebird, east Texas, April morning. That, and the sweet
red dust and spring sweat of the coming herd gathering.

Clint, totting the too slow fall of the southern miles between him and the Big Town, couldn’t see far enough ahead, and not fast enough. Nor get any picture out of the brillant April sky save the glistening mirage of the big sourmash bottle beckoning him over the last rise, yonder.