Blood and Gold

Chapter 22

When I was half a mile from the ranch, I stopped at a small creek, swung out of the saddle, lay flat on my belly and splashed water over my face and neck. I wet my unruly hair and combed it down flat and then remounted the dun.

Thankfully, my brain felt less fuzzy and I’d stopped seeing two of everything.

And that was probably just as well, because as I rode into the SP, Jim Meldrum was standing outside the bunkhouse, the eager, impatient way he watched me come telling me he had news.

When I reined up, Meldrum gave me a grin and a wink and told me pretty Sally Coleman was in the house, talking to Ma.

“She’s got something to say to you, Dusty,” the puncher said.

“What is it?” I asked.

Meldrum shook his head. “Best you hear that for yourself.” He gave me another knowing wink and said, “I’ll put up your horse.”

Right at that moment, I didn’t want to talk to Sally. I didn’t want to talk to anybody, even Meldrum when he stopped on his way to the barn and asked: “Where’s Lila? Did she stay on at her place?”

“Later, Jim,” I said. “After Sally leaves.”

“You going to take the bonnet you bought for her?” Meldrum asked, an odd, amused light in his eyes.

I shook my head. “Later for that too.”

“Maybe it’s just as well,” Meldrum threw over his shoulder at me as he walked away, and I heard him chuckle to himself.

Now what had he meant by that remark?

I had no time to ponder the question. There was a smart-looking surrey, with a bay horse in the traces, standing outside the house and I swallowed hard and stepped toward the door.

I wasn’t in the mood to be a-courting pretty Sally Coleman, but I had to talk to Ma in private. Better to get it over with.

When I reached the porch I took off my hat and smoothed down my hair and then stepped inside. Charlie Fullerton met me in the hallway and nodded to the parlor’s closed door. “In there.”

I saw it again! Exactly the same amused expression in Charlie’s eyes that I’d seen in Jim Meldrum’s.

What was going on? And what did Sally want to tell me?

I hesitated at the door and Charlie smiled and said again: “In there, Dusty.”

I nodded, took a deep breath and stepped inside.

Sally was sitting on the same chair that Lila had sat in and one thing was immediately apparent—she was almighty big in the belly.

Standing, one arm on the fireplace mantel, grinning like a possum, stood tall, lanky Ethan Noon, one of the Coleman hands. I’d never cottoned to Noon much. The man had no chin, a huge, bobbing Adam’s apple and long yellow buckteeth. Noon had a hee-haw laugh that made him sound like a loco mule and he had a habit of stamping a foot and slapping his thigh when something amused him, which was often.

When I walked into the room, Sally smiled and rose to her feet, her hands extended to me. “Dusty,” she said, “how very nice to see you again.”

I took Sally’s hands and kissed her on the cheek, and over by the fireplace, Noon slapped his thigh and gave his hee-haw laugh.

“Sally has brought us some wonderful news, Dusty,” Ma said, her face revealing nothing. “She and Ethan got married three days ago.”

Glancing at Sally’s swelling stomach under her dress, I figured the nuptials had been just in the nick of time.

Sally still held on to my hands and her eyes moistened a little. “Oh, Dusty, I’m so sorry. You see, after you left with the herds, I fell head over heels in love with Ethan. It all happened so sudden that I simply couldn’t help myself.” She looked up at me, her face earnest. “Dusty, can you ever forgive me? I know what a terrible shock and disappointment all this must be to you, but please, please try to understand.”

I caught Ma’s amused smile, as I said, lying just a little: “Disappointed, yes, but I’m happy for you, Sally.” I looked over at Noon. “And you too, Ethan.”

Sally giggled and Noon hee-hawed several times and slapped his thigh. “The best man won, Dusty, an’ no mistake.”

Now normally a challenge like that would have earned Noon my fist to his nonexistent chin, but I was happy to let it go.

Compared to Lila, Sally Coleman looked colorless and washed out, her skin and hair the same shade of white, her eyes more rain cloud gray than blue. In her brown woolen dress she looked dowdy and plain, a corn sack tied in the middle. Gone were the red, blue or green ribbons I’d admired so much and the tightly curled ringlets that bounced on her shoulders. In their place was hair scraped straight back from the face in a severe bun, pinned in place by a long steel spike. She looked like a girl consciously trying to become a mature woman before her time and the only thing that remained of the Sally I’d once known was the giggle, still high-pitched, strident and silly.

Once I’d thought myself madly in love with Sally Coleman. Now I wondered what I’d ever seen in her.

“Well,” Ma said, rising to her feet, “this calls for a celebration. I believe I can find a bottle of champagne for us.”

“Ma,” I said quickly. When she turned to look at me, I shook my head. “We have to talk, urgently.”

Ma Prather was a perceptive woman. She knew something must be terribly wrong, something that required her attention and was far more important than Sally Coleman and her marriage.

“Lordy, Sally and Ethan,” she said, “I guess we’ll have to postpone the champagne. I think Dusty here has pressing range matters to discuss.”

Noon disengaged himself from the fireplace, and stood there grinning, all hands, feet and stoop shoulders. “That don’t make no never mind, Mrs. P,’ he said. “Me and Sally have to be moving along anyhow.” He glanced over at me, a barb glinting in his muddy eyes. “We like to get to bed really early o’ nights.”

Sally giggled and Noon hee-hawed, and Ma, sensing my urgency, hustled the pair to the door.

After farewells that took a lot longer than they should have, Sally and Noon climbed into the surrey and soon its bobbing sidelights were heading down the trail in the direction of the Coleman ranch.

“What’s happened?” Ma asked, her hand on my arm. “Is it Lila?”

I nodded. “We better go inside and talk and I think Jim Meldrum and Mr. Fullerton should hear this too.”

I gave Ma my arm and led her into the parlor and when Meldrum and Charlie arrived I told them how I’d been bushwhacked by Lafe Wingo, and Lila taken. I took out the note Wingo had left and passed it to Ma. “This says it all.”

Ma fetched her spectacles and read, her face paling with every word. I think she read the note several times before she finally laid it aside and said: “We have no choice. We must pay this man. Lila’s life is more important than a two-by-twice ranch, so there can be no argument.”

I shook my head at her. “Ma, you love this ranch. If you don’t pay off the bankers they’ll foreclose and you’ll lose everything, including the chair you’re sitting in and maybe even the clothes off your back.”

“He’s right, Miz Prather,” Meldrum said, his long, melancholy face sadder than ever. “You and Mr. Prather built the SP with your own blood and sweat and then you held it against Kiowa and Comanche and white men who were worse than any of them and tried to take it from you.” He rose to his feet and, in an uncharacteristic gesture, crossed the room and placed his hand on Ma’s shoulder. “Dusty is right. You love this place and I can’t stand by and see you throw it all away.”

“Jim,” Ma said, her voice very small, “saving a girl’s life is not throwing it away.”

Meldrum nodded. “I know that, but me and Dusty and Mr. Fullerton will just have to find another way.” He looked over at me. “Any ideas?”

I shook my head. “Haven’t studied on it, at least not yet.”

“I’ll study on it some my ownself,” Meldrum said. He looked down at Ma again. “Now don’t you go fretting none, Miz Prather. We’ll get the girl back, safe and sound. There was a time when I was pretty good with a gun, you know.”

Ma took the lanky puncher’s hand, her eyes tearstained. “Jim, you left all that behind you. You told me you were all through with gunfighting.”

“Times change,” Meldrum said. “And sometimes, for better or worse, a man has to change right along with them.”

Ma’s eyes shifted to me. “Dusty, what will you do?”

“Get Lila back, Ma,” I said. “Right now, that’s all I know.”

As to how that was going to happen, I had no idea. And judging by the tight, unhappy expression on Jim Meldrum’s face, neither did he.

Despite Ma’s final, tearful pleas to take the thirty thousand dollars, Meldrum and me rode out at long before daybreak, the saddlebags draped across the front of my saddle bulging—but with torn-up newspapers, not money.

We rode in silence for an hour; then Meldrum reined up his horse and hooked a long leg over the saddle horn. After he’d lit the cigarette, he eased a crick in his back and said: “Dusty, this is where we part company.”

“What do you have in mind?” I asked.

“I’m going to loop around and injun up to the cabin before it gets light,” he answered. “I’ll stash my horse a ways from the cabin and come up on the place on foot. Maybe, if we’re real lucky, when Wingo comes out to parley, if he does, I’ll get me a chance to nail him.”

I shook my head. “It’s thin, mighty thin.”

“Got a better idea?”

Meldrum’s face under his hat brim was deep in shadow, and only when he drew on his cigarette and the tip glowed brighter did red light touch his beak of a nose and the planes of his high cheekbones.

I sat in silence, thinking things through, then said:

“Jim, I’ve got nothing better. Your plan may not be nickel plated, but right now it’s the only plan we have.”

“Uh-huh, figured that,” the puncher said. He sat his horse and I could feel his eyes on me. “Dusty, you may get lucky and Wingo will leave his rifle behind. He outdrawed you once, and maybe with his gunman’s pride an’ all he’ll figure to do it again.” Then, echoing what Bass Reeves had told me: “Just remember this, don’t fall down the first time you’re hit. Take the hits, stay on your feet and keep shooting back for as long as you’re able.” I heard Meldrum’s low, humorless chuckle. “You may not be fast enough to outdraw ol’ Lafe, but maybe you can outlast him.”

I nodded, but realizing Meldrum couldn’t see my head move in the darkness, said: “I’ll remember.” Right then I was mighty in need of reassurance, but Jim Meldrum, being a practical man, had not offered any, figuring he’d only be speaking weightless words, like so many dry leaves blowing in the wind.

We sat our horses until Meldrum finished his smoke, then built and smoked another.

Finally he shoved his boot back into the stirrup and touched the brim of his hat. “Buena suerte, mi amigo.”

“You too, Jim. Good luck.”

Meldrum swung his horse away and we parted company. I took the dim trail toward Lila’s cabin under a dark, moonless sky with the night crowding around me close and warm as a cloak. The air smelled of grass and wildflowers, and I heard no voices. The night birds had long since ceased to call and even the coyotes had fallen silent.

When I was still a fifteen-minute ride from the cabin, I swung out of the saddle and stepped down in a stand of mixed juniper and mesquite by the side of a dry wash. I unsaddled the dun and watched him roll and then I fetched up to a rock near the wash and set my back to it. It was still shy of daybreak and maybe five hours until noon, so I closed my eyes, determined to catch up on some badly needed sleep.

The breeze whispered through the junipers and set them to rustling and the dun cropped grass, every now and then blowing through his nose. Somewhere an owl hooted, throwing no echo as the human voice does, and then the land closed in on itself again and became quiet.

Drowsily, I thought of Lila and her smile and there was a deep longing in me for her. What was she doing right now, as the clouds peeled back from the moon and the stars began to appear?

She was with Lafe Wingo!

Sleep fled from me, the thought chilling me to the bone. Wingo used and abused women like he did his horses, breaking them to his will with the whip. Was that even now happening to Lila?

I rose to my feet, filled with despair and impotent rage. I looked up and searched the moonlit heavens—and found only the cold, distant and aloof stars.

And no comfort.