Blood and Gold

Chapter 20

I grabbed my rifle and rushed outside. Jim Meldrum was running from the barn, a Colt in each hand.

“What happened?” he yelled.

But I made no answer, because Deke Stockton was lying facedown on the ground a few yards away, his hat tumbling past the corral, blown by the wind.

I ran to Deke and turned the man over. His eyes were wide-open, but he was beyond seeing anything. A bullet had crashed into his forehead, about where his hatband began. He must have been dead when he hit the ground.

Meldrum stood beside me, looking down at the dead man. “Apaches?”

I shook my head at him. “Jim, Deke was wearing my slicker.”

I rose to my feet in time to see the dawning realization on Meldrum’s face. “Lafe Wingo,” he whispered.

“And he’s still out there,” I said.

Ma and Lila were standing on the porch of the house, looking over at us, their faces pale, bodies stiff with shock.

I turned and stepped quickly toward the barn. “Where are you going?” Meldrum called out after me.

“After Wingo.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“No,” I threw over my shoulder. “You stay close to Lila and Ma.”

I figured the paint was still worn-out, so I threw my saddle on a lineback dun and left the barn at a lope. Tired as I was, weak as I felt, I had to go after Wingo. He’d killed once and he could already be setting up to kill again.

In the first hour, I rode around the ranch, each time widening my loop across that dark, open country. There were a few cottonwoods growing along the streambeds and a scattering of post oak, mesquite, pinon and some juniper on the slopes of the low hills, but little else by way of trees,

I passed a couple of small herds of bunched cows, all of them wearing the SP Connected brand, and they seemed to be in good shape. A few already had calves on the ground and the range grass itself looked fair to middling for this early in the summer.

As the rain lessened, I rode under a solitary mountain mahogany on the slope of a shallow saddleback and rolled a cigarette. I looked around, but all I saw was darkness. The night was very quiet and now the rain had gentled, its small sound lost as it fell on the grass.

Cupping my hands to avoid the flare of the match being seen by watchful eyes, I lit the cigarette and sat the dun, smoking for a while.

Nothing stirred.

After five minutes, I stubbed out the cigarette on the side of my bootheel and tossed the dead butt into the wet grass. Then I spurred the dun and once again took to the flat.

I spent another hour backtracking the way I’d come earlier, and finally I doubled back and rode to the rise where Lila had gotten her first glimpse of the ranch.

Swinging out of the saddle, I eased the girth on the dun and let him graze. Below me, I saw only darkness. Meldrum, being no pilgrim in such matters, must have ordered Ma and Lila to douse the house oil lamps.

Finally, as a weird and lonesome coyote called, cursing his endless hunger and his harsh fate, I tightened the girth again and stepped back into the saddle.

A few minutes later I rode into the ranch, wet, tired and mighty dispirited. If it had been Wingo who’d shot Deke Stockton, he’d gotten away clean.

And now the gunman presented a danger more immediate and more deadly than even that of Victorio and his Apaches. Come daylight, Wingo could lie hidden with his sharpshooter’s rifle and pick us off one by one, then ride in and take the money—and Lila.

I put up the dun, rubbed him down with a piece of sacking and threw him a handful of oats, then returned to the bunkhouse.

Jim Meldrum was waiting up for me, still wearing his guns. “See anything?”

Too tired and too upset to reply, I just shook my head at him.

Meldrum took it in stride. “Miz Lila stopped by, wanted to know if you’d come back. She’s some worried.”

Exhausted and out of sorts as I was, foolish thoughts of Lila crowded into my numb brain and I figured I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I saw her.

I settled my gun belt around my hips and left the bunkhouse and walked over to the house. Lila was sitting on a rocker on the porch when I got there. She was dressed in a blue robe and the bluer shadows of the night.

When I stepped up onto the porch, she stood and fell into my arms. “Dusty, I was so worried about you.”

I held Lila close and kissed her. “I scouted the whole area and saw nothing,” I said, after reluctantly taking my lips from hers. Then, to ease her mind: “If it was Wingo, he’s long gone.”

The rain had stopped and I looked up at a tattered sky, where the moon was rounding up the last straggling clouds. “It’s getting late, Lila,” I said. “Best you get to bed.”

Lila nodded, but her eyes were guarded.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

The girl put her arms around my waist and turned up her face to mine. “Ma and Mr. Fullerton have Deke Stockton laid out in the kitchen. They’re washing his body because Ma says a man should be clean when he goes to meet his Maker.”

Lila held me closer as though I might push her away. “Dusty, please don’t ask me to go in there. Not yet.”

I smiled at her, trying to calm her fears with whatever small wisdom I possessed. “Lila, just remember that the body in there isn’t Deke Stockton, and it never was. What was Deke Stockton can’t die. It still lives, and it will go on living forever.” I shrugged. “At least, that’s what I believe.”

“Maybe so,” Lila said, “but I still don’t want to see a dead man lying like that, looking like a column of white-and-blue marble, all covered with soap and water.”

I realized further argument was useless. And so it was that Lila and me sat side by side on rockers, holding hands, dozing off and on as the long night gathered around us. Then morning came at last and chased away the shadows and over to the chicken coop Ma’s gaudy rooster paused in his proud strutting to get up on his tiptoes and crow a welcome to the reborn day.

Before breakfast we buried Deke Stockton, and Ma said the words, reading from Simon Prather’s well-worn Bible.

Deke was laid to rest like many a puncher before him, with little talk and a minimum of ceremony in a six-by-three grave well away from the house.

But back at the corral the restless horses reared and snorted and tossed their heads and kicked up clods of mud and the ranch dogs howled like wolves, their lips pulled back from their teeth. And even the big orange tomcat, a cold and callous rat killer, glided from the underbrush and sat for long minutes, looking over at Deke’s grave with unblinking eyes that burned like amber fire.

I felt no grief for Deke Stockton because I hardly knew the man, but the animals mourned his passing and that was something I have no way of explaining.

After breakfast, Lila insisted that she wanted to visit her farm that very day. At first Ma and me tried to talk her out of it, but since there was no sign of Apaches in the area, we finally relented.

Lafe Wingo was very much on my mind, but Jim Meldrum figured if I rode real careful and paid attention to what was going on around me, the gunman would not attempt a play by daylight in open country.

It was a small enough reassurance, but I was determined that no tinhorn killer like Wingo was going to dictate how I led my life.

Lila had a penciled map of her place over by Cottonwood Creek, drawn by her pa’s brother, and it would be easy to find.

“Two hours’ ride, Lila,” I said. “No more than that.”

I saddled the lineback for Lila and then the paint. Ma told us we should make a picnic of it, and gave me a basket that I tied behind the dun’s saddle.

We headed out under a clear blue sky, all sign of last night’s rain gone. The land between the SP Connected and Lila’s spread was flat, open grass country, here and there shallow rises crowned with mesquite and juniper breaking up the monotony. The recent rains had turned the prairie green and we rode through masses of bluebonnets and long streaks of yellow mustard that stretched for miles in every direction.

The sun had still not reached the highest point in the sky when we found Lila’s place, a stone cabin built beside a narrow stream, which I took to be an offshoot of the Cottonwood itself.

In front of the cabin spread out forty or fifty acres of open meadow with plenty of prime grass and beyond that sandier soil, dotted with mesquite and juniper.

I sat the paint and looked around. If Lila raised a herd here, the cattle could go as far as the creek to drink, then head back to the meadow to graze.

With good management of the available grass and some luck, I figured Lila’s acres and the open range around them could easily support a hundred head and maybe more, enough for her to get by year to year if she was careful with her money.

As for Lila, she was turning her head this way and that, her eyes alive with wonder and excitement.

“Dusty, I can’t believe I’m actually here,” she said. “I’m really on my own place.”

I nodded. “You could build a good ranch here, Lila. The grass is good, there’s water right close and, from what I can see, the cabin was built to last by someone who knew how.”

“Let’s go take a look inside,” Lila said, spurring the lineback just as vehemently as she’d ignored my remark about ranching.

I followed her to the cabin and we stepped inside. The interior was thick with dust and a pack rat had made a nest in one corner, but Ned Tryon’s brother had known a thing or three about building and he hadn’t stinted on cost.

The floor was covered in smooth gray flagstones, all of them laid level, and the roof was solid, constructed of thick, weathered beams and good timber. A P.D. Beckwith iron stove, which must have cost all of thirty dollars, stood against one wall, and the table, chairs and bunk were store bought, as were the blue china plates, cups and saucers stacked on a shelf near a side window of the cabin.

All the wood, including a wide gun rack, had matured to a deep honey color, and the floor was covered by a pair of colorful wool rugs.

The cabin had a warm, welcoming look. It was a down-homey place where a man could kick off his boots of an evening and stretch out his legs by the stone fireplace, knowing his own cows were grazing outside and that all was well with his world.

“Isn’t it wonderful, Dusty?” Lila asked. I saw tears begin to start in her eyes and I knew she was thinking of her pa.

“Your pa’s brother,” I said, “what did he intend to do with the spread?”

“Do with it?” Lila looked puzzled. “Why he was going to live on it. Only, he died before he ever got a chance to enjoy it.”

“Did he plan to farm?”

Lila shook her head. “No, he wrote Pa that he was going to raise cattle.”

“Then he knew well that this wasn’t farmland,” I said.

Lila stepped to the window. “Look out there, Dusty. Can you see what I see?”

“Grass,” I said.

“I see corn and fruit trees and maybe even pecans,” Lila said, her eyes sparkling. “This will be a real farm one day.”

“Lila,” I said, trying to reason with her, “look at the soil out there. It’s thin and it’s dry and sandy. It will grow grass, at least most of the year, and maybe post oak, but it won’t grow corn and . . . and . . . apples.”

Lila looked at me, her face stiff, eyes blazing. “Then I surely must beg to differ, Mr. Hannah.”

Well, I knew that every time she called me Mr. Hannah my biscuits were burning, so I backed off a step or two. “I guess time will tell, Lila,” I said, backing down even more. I attempted a smile and tried to inject some heartiness into my voice. “Hey, isn’t it time we ate?”

Lila’s anger disappeared as quickly as it had come. “Yes, and let’s eat in here—in my own home, Dusty.”

“I’ll bring in the basket,” I said, and stepped outside.

As I untied the picnic basket from the back of the paint, I glanced around at the surrounding country—in time to see a single flash of light among the juniper and curly mesquite at the crest of a low rise to the south.

The flash was brief, just an instant of sunlight glinting on something reflective, a drop of rain on a leaf maybe . . . or on metal.

Pretending to be unconcerned, I strolled back to the cabin with the basket, whistling through my teeth. I opened the door and stepped inside.

I dropped the basket on the table and smiled at Lila: “While you’re getting the picnic things laid out, I’m going to ride out toward the creek a short ways,” I said.

“Whatever for?” Lila asked. She opened the basket. “Ma, or Mr. Fullerton more likely, has done us proud. Fried chicken, fresh bread, a whole apple pie and . . . oh look, Dusty, a bottle of wine.”

There’s a time for explanations, but now wasn’t that time. “It all looks mighty good,” I said, “and I’m as hungry as a coyote with a toothache.” Then, without any further explanation I opened the door. “Be right back.”

“But . . . but . . .”

“Be right back,” I said again. I stepped to the paint, swung into the saddle and turned south, in the direction where I’d seen the flash of light.

I was becoming more and more convinced the glare, brief as it was, had been no accident of nature. I believed I’d caught the glint of a gun barrel or a concho, and that could mean Apaches . . . or Lafe Wingo.

Whatever happened next, I knew I must draw the danger away from the cabin and Lila.

But as it happened, that was a hasty, ill-conceived notion, and it turned out to be one of the biggest mistakes I ever made in my life.