Branded in Black

Talmage Powell Branded in Black

The fool heifer had slipped into the mud of the slough and stood sunken almost to her swollen abdomen. She bawled in patient terror as she waited to die.

Astride a steeldust mare, Brad Ledbetter shook his lariat loose and threw a loop over the cow’s head. Her lowing had guided him here from a fence-mending job in the south meadow. As the loop settled, the steeldust, needing no instructions, put her weight against the rope. Instead of pulling free, the heifer bawled anew, laying back against the lariat.

Cussing the contrariness of all cows, Brad swung from the saddle, a tall man in his late twenties. He was heavy through the shoulders and his square-hewn face, creased and burned walnut by wind and sun, carried within it some of the bleakness of his winters; this was relieved in a measure by the crinkles at the corners of his gray eyes and the upturned corners of a wide-lipped, humorous mouth.

He sat down, removed his runover boots, and rolled his faded jeans above the knees.

“And you with first-born calf too,” he chided the heifer as he moved into the mud behind her.

She rolled her eyes and tried to turn her head to follow this new source of fear. Brad reflected that he was going to have to fill the slough. Most of the time the slough was a dried-up paving as hard as adobe brick; but every few years torrential rains turned it into what it was now, treacherous glue. Brad had paid down on the place less than six months ago; he’d found it no bargain, but reckoned that a man had to take troubles as they came, one at a time. He could visualize what might be done with a lot of hard work on the B Bar L. and he was willing to plod toward making the vision a reality.

The heifer made an effort to squirm away as he grasped her tail. With a firm grip, he gave the tail a twist, at the same moment opening his throat in a wild shout.

The steeldust obeyed the command, lunging forward. Outraged at the attack on her rear, the heifer forgot to fight the lariat. Her hoofs sucked free; she stumbled to hardpan, and Brad moved out behind her. He removed the lariat, swiped it across her hindquarters, and watched her bound away, sagging belly swaying in time to her irate movements.

Brad grinned after the heifer, wiped his face with his bandanna, and walked the few yards to the willow-shaded creek, where he washed his feet.

He came out of the brush with his boots on and was remounting the steeldust when a hallo caught his ears. He raised his eyes to the west and saw a. horseman limned against the soaring emptiness of the sky. He waited, and as the figure on horseback came closer it resolved into a girl.

Brad rode forward to meet her with a smile. Laura Simmons was tall, slender, moved with the grace of a willow whip, and possessed a darkly vivid beauty. She was range-bred, the daughter of the owner of the Hammer. She was in love with Brad Ledbetter, frankly, honestly. She didn’t care who knew that she came to his place to clean his weathered cabin and point out the advantages of marriage.

Brad wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything; and that included land and cattle and respectability. But he hadn’t mentioned marriage to her for two reasons. The B Bar L was not yet a fit place for a woman, especially a woman acustomed to the size, wealth, and power of the Hammer. That was the minor reason. The main reason was the fact that she knew nothing about Brad and the thought of telling her drove a hard, quick pang of fear through him.

She was wearing flannel shirt and jeans, her black hair knotted at the nape of her slender neck by a red kerchief.

“I heard you shout and a cow bawling over this way,” she said. “I was looking for you.”

“Anything wrong?”

“A stranger — a girl with honey-blonde hair and baby-blue eyes — over at the house says she wants to see you right away,” Laura said with too much lightness in her voice. “She said to tell you Elena is here — and she chattered in a quite familiar way about you. Brad.”

Her violet eyes, contrasting with her black hair and sun-tanned skin, studied him. He felt the distance growing between them, and the fear of it overrode the shock of Elena Lynn finding him.

Laura came from fiercely proud stock and it was reflected in her manner and tone, “You’ve never told us a thing about yourself, Brad — where you came from, who you are, really. I’ve paid no attention to the talk about you a man of mystery naturally arouses, feeling that you would tell me in good time anything necessary for me to know. Maybe that time has come now. Are you hiding something?”

He had wanted to pick the time and place to tell her; now he realized he’d let opportunities slip away. This was an awkward time, but he must tell her now. If he sent her away without telling her, the wound of it might be a long time in healing-

A line of whiteness grew about his mouth. “Have you ever heard of the Pickenses?”

“Who hasn’t? But surely you never rode with...”

“They’re my people. Ed Pickens my brother, Cos Pickens my father. Tolly, my oldest brother, was killed in a gunfight when I was eighteen years old. I’ve never been the same since, Laura. I knew their way was wrong, that I could never walk in their footsteps. When I was old enough, I drifted from home and went to work. Three times before the Pickens name has caused me to have to move on. This time I dropped it. Ledbetter is my middle name, my mother’s maiden name.”

Laura reined in her mount a little closer. “Does the law want you for anything?”

“No.”

“Then you could have told me all this before. It would have made no difference.”

Looking at her clear face, he thought: I don’t deserve you. Again the old uncertainty swept across his mind. Laura might accept him — but how about the others, the folks in town, her father? He’d tried before and failed to shake the Pickens stigma. Was there any likelihood he would succeed this time?

“And who is the girl. Brad?”

“A girl I knew once. She married Jeffers, who rides with my father.”

Jeffers, the worst cutthroat in a cutthroat crew. The James boys had some justification in their feud with the railroad; the Younger brothers and Daltons were known for their loyalty to each other. The Pickenses had nothing on the ledger except a red record of cruelty, brutality, outlawry.

“You want to ride to the house alone?” Laura asked.

“I think it would be best.”

She turned her horse. He watched her ride out of sight over the ridge before he set spurs to the steeldust.

The house was a log and adobe cabin set in a little cove formed by nature above the creek. The roll of the land protected the house against the northers of winter and a patriarch cottonwood gave shade in summer.

With a passing glance at the lathered, dust-caked sorrel cropping grass above the house, Brad went inside. Here was cool shelter, and the lingering smell of fresh-hewn wood he’d used to repair the cabin and add a third room. He’d wanted a parlor, kitchen, and bedroom, all separate, and maybe some time in the future another room or two with small bunks.

Now he stepped into the front room, near the stone fireplace, and looked at the blonde girl eating beans and jerky in the kitchen.

She stood up, letting a slow smile take birth on her full red lips. Trail dust failed to hide her sinuous beauty, and the air of the cabin had changed. Elena had brought something new into it.

She came forward, put her hand to his cheek, her head to one side. She looked like a gamin doll, with her honey hair and blue eyes.

“Hello, Brad. You don’t act very glad to see me.”

He moved away. The print of her fingers still lay on his cheek. “I heard you married Jeffers.”

She laughed. “You rode off and left me.”

“That was a good long time ago.” Brad walked on through the house. On the back porch he dippered water into a tin basin, splashed it over his face with his hands, and reached for a flour-sack towel. “Where are the others?”

“How should I know?”

He hung up the towel, studying her face. She grinned at him. He couldn’t guess what she was thinking, but he felt a chill inside. Where Elena rode, trouble rode not far behind. He’d seen men fight over her like beasts. He still carried a ridge of scar tissue under his jaw from the fight.

“How’d you find me?”

“We’ve known where you were for three months. Ed passed through San Miguel one day. He sees a man loading supplies on an old, spraddle-wheeled wagon. Who’s that, he asks a bystander, and the fellow says, ‘Name of Ledbetter,’ and Ed says, ‘Ledbetter?’ and rides on.”

Brad went into the kitchen, ladled beans into a dish, added jerky, broke a chunk from a pone of bread, and sat down to eat. Elena sat across the table from him. She watched him eat, smiling every time their eyes met.

“I still like you,” she said, directly.

“And I like you — as long as we keep the distance of the table between us.”

She pouted; then laughed. “Don’t prod me, Brad. I’m one of those women who hankers after anything she can’t have.”

He got up and poured himself a cup of scalding coffee, which Elena had heated and left on the sheetiron stove. “Quit talking around the point,” he said. “What brought you here?”

“Maybe just didn’t have anyplace to go.”

“What about Jeffers?”

Elena curled her arms on the table, rested her face against them for a moment before looking up again. Her eyes and face suddenly looked older — no less beautiful, but tired. “They bit off more than they could chew, Brad. The lot of them. They tried to rob a bank in Three Corners. Jeffers shot the cashier, and when they stepped outside, the town was a hornet’s nest. Your brother Ed got pretty bad shot up. Clem Hathaway killed the man that did it.”

She had omitted mention of old Cos. Brad set his coffee mug down. “And Pa?”

She licked her lips. “He was killed, Brad. I guess the townspeople of Three Corners put him in their boothill.”

He rested his hands on the window sill after he turned from her, and let his head drop. He’d known it was bound to happen somewhere, some time. He was glad his ma didn’t have to live through this day.

He raised his head, saw the sun sinking redly, and a fleeting moment passed during which he felt strange and alien to this earth.

“Brad,” Elena said behind him, “I’m sorry. It’ll be rough when word filters down here about the robbery — folks knowing you’re a Pickens, I mean.”

“Nobody knows.”

“How about that girl, the one who was here?”

“It won’t make any difference to her. She’ll not tell until I’m ready.”

“You trust her a lot.”

“I’d bet my life on her.”

“Not much like me, huh, Brad?” Elena laughed. “Or maybe a lot like me. I’d fight the devil for the man I loved.” She stood up. “I just wanted to be sure, Brad. About your being safe, I mean — and, well, able to go on living your kind of life no matter what your pa and Ed have done.”

He eyed her narrowly. She wrinkled her nose at him. “Maybe I’m just tired. Let me sleep in the barn tonight and help me find some kind of work in town tomorrow — you must know people here. Your word would mean something. I’ll make good, Brad. I won’t bring shame on you so long as I know you’re safe and respectable here.”

“So far, I am.” On sudden impulse he said, “All right, Elena, I’ll see if I can help. You take the house. I’ll bunk in the barn tonight.”

“Thanks, Brad. Now scoot to one side and let me at those dishes.”

As he moved from the kitchen, he turned and looked at her stacking dishes in the tin pan. She looked like a kid playing house. Soft, trusting, innocent. That’s the way she looked.

Jeffers’s woman.

Saffron lamplight etched the lace curtains against the windows of the Hammer ranch house as Brad dismounted and stepped on the porch.

His nostrils caught the odor of rank pipe tobacco, and a shadow down the porch spoke, “Evening, Brad.”

“Hello, Mr. Simmons. Laura around?”

“And where else would she be?” Mike Simmons asked. He shifted his chair; a tinge of lamplight touched his face. He was a gnarled, weathered old man with a square face and iron-gray hair. He had come here forty years ago and built the Hammer with nothing but a good horse and determination. Some said his loop had been long and his branding iron quick in those early days. But times had been different then, and so had practices.

Now he was old, and rheumatism kept him off his horse, and a quick pain bored through his heart sometimes. Brad knew the old man’s major thought nowadays was of Laura and her heritage, the Hammer. It would take a man with a lot of assets to handle the two properly, and so far old man Simmons had given no indication that he felt Brad to be such a man.

Brad was always aware of this feeling when he was in Simmons’s presence. It was almost as if Simmons suspected his inner secret, his uncertainty and hesitation.

Mike Simmons spoke of the recent rains, and then Laura came to the porch.

“I thought I heard familiar voices out here,” she said. “How is the heifer, Brad?”

“All right, I guess.”

Mike Simmons cleared his throat in the silence that descended. He knocked his pipe out and got painfully to his feet. An offer to help him would have been considered an insult.

“Need to go over some figures in my tally books,” he excused himself. “Don’t be too long, Laura.”

“All right, Pa.”

The old man shuffled inside. Laura sat down beside Brad on the porch swing. He thought of Cos, a renegade, blasted by the bullets of decent people, and he felt the quiet security of the Hammer about him and wondered if he would ever feel at home in a world like this.

Laura touched his hand. “What’s troubling you, Brad?”

“Elena told me my father was killed, my brother hurt not long ago.”

“Oh, Brad! I’m sorry!”

“Nothing could have stopped it. It’s the end of the Pickens gang. Maybe in a few years folks will think of the old man less harshly. He just had a devil inside of him that wouldn’t let him be satisfied.” He worried his hat in his hands. “It may be that I’ll have to find Ed, my brother, and give him what help I can. Elena says he hit a long trail with Jeffers and a man named Clem Hathaway. Meantime — well, the girl needs help too, Laura.”

Again he felt her withdrawal. She said, “You were in love with her once, weren’t you?”

“I thought I was,” he said honestly.

“Are you now?”

“No.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Put in a word for her if you hear of work in town. Give her some of your old clothes, maybe. She’s a pretty destitute little animal.”

“With claws.”

Despite the weight on his spirit, Brad grinned. “I’ll see that her claws stay away from me.”

“They’d better.”

Brad stood up. Laura stood with him. He gripped her shoulders, brushed her lips with his. It was like tasting sweet wine. He held her close.

“Brad, let’s tell Pa who you really are. Now. Right now. Then let’s get a license and stand up before a marrying parson.”

Laura was voicing his wish, his deepest hope. He was lost in the thought of her in the cabin on the B Bar L, rising with him each morning with her hair loose about her shoulders, her voice ringing out to him as he came each evening. Then his mind did an about-face, toward reality. “Old Mike would run me off the Hammer if he knew right now.”

“I’d go with you.”

“I wouldn’t want to hurt you like that.”

“Then what are you going to do, Brad? You’ve got to tell folks some time, face up to it.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “But not right now. Give San Miguel a chance to quit talking about the news that’ll hit presently of a bank robbery and shooting in Three Corners. And give me a chance to find out about Ed.”

“All right, Brad. But it won’t keep me from being afraid.”

“Of what?”

“I don’t know. But I have the feeling something terrible is about to happen to us.”

“It’s just because you’ve never acted in secret before. And I’ll not ask you to again.”

She followed him to the edge of the porch. “I’ll come over tomorrow and see if I can make acquaintance with your little wild animal. But if I end up clawing her eyes out, don’t say I didn’t warn you...”

When he got back to his own cabin, it was dark. He unsaddled the steeldust at the pole corral, carried saddle and saddle carbine into the barn. The gun should go on its pegs over the fireplace, but it would rest well enough in its scabbard tonight. Elena might misunderstand if he entered the cabin.

He climbed the ladder into the loft, squirreled his way over the hay, slid off his boots, and lay down, hands behind his head. He thought of Ed and the old man and he knew how it was going to be around here, folks using the name Pickens behind his back like a curse and glancing away when he walked down the street. He slept with unpleasant dreams.

The shrill, hoarse crowing of a bantam rooster awakened Brad. He stirred, sat up, pulled on his boots, scratched his head and rubbed sleep from his eyes. On the way over to the house he rolled a cigarette and scraped a match on the thigh of his pants to light it.

A trickle of smoke curled from the chimney and he smelled sidemeat frying as he stepped into the house. It was still early, with the sun shaking loose its skirts of mist in the east, but Elena was already up.

“Good morning, Brad,” she said from the kitchen doorway.

Before he could answer, he heard a wracking groan in the bedroom. He stared at Elena, and then turned quickly. Jeffers stood in the bedroom doorway, a lean, gaunt man with sunken, stubbled cheeks and eyes of flint in cavernous sockets.

“Hello, Brad,” Jeffers said. “Long time no see.” His voice was thin, unpleasant. He was wearing a brace of bone-handled sixguns, palms resting on them.

Brad crossed a bitter glance from Jeffers to Elena and back again. Then he moved to the bedroom doorway and Jeffers stood aside for him to enter.

In fever, Ed Pickens had torn aside the patchwork quilt and was tossing on the feather ticking of the huge, hand-hewn bed. Brad remembered his brother as a young, yellow-haired giant, but Ed was wasted now, cheeks gray and flat, covered with dirty blond stubble, his blue eyes half mad. Brad looked at the wide, bony shoulders, stripped bare, a bloody bandage over the right shoulder coming down to a point above the heart. He passed his palm over Ed’s ridged brow to wipe away the heavy drops of icy sweat.

He turned, brushed past Jeffers, and stood before Elena. He lifted his hand as if he would hit her, then let it drop. “So it was a job and help you wanted.”

“Leave her alone,” Jeffers said quietly.

Brad gave him a glance over his shoulder. Jeffers’s thin, bony face showed nothing. Brad guessed the man could draw and pull trigger without any change taking place on his face.

“Why be sore, Brad?” Elena invited. “We brought Ed, didn’t we?”

“What’s left of him.”

She gave him a sultry threat with her blue eyes. “Why don’t you just relax and remember we’re your friends?”

“All I can remember is that you came here and made a fool of me. Jeffers sent you ahead to make sure I wasn’t connected with the Pickenses and that no sheriffs would be nosing around to ask if I knew anything about my brother’s whereabouts. You made sure it was safe; then slipped out at night and gave Jeffers the word.”

“She does what I tell her,” Jeffers said.

“Would you beat me if I didn’t?” she laughed.

“Might, at that.”

Brad turned, let his gaze touch the peg where his sixgun hung, and wasn’t surprised to see the peg empty. Jeffers had the gun hidden. They were here and planned to roost here until the heat was off.

Brad turned back toward the bedroom. “Ed needs a doctor.”

“He’s had a doctor. A gent south of Goliad,” Jeffers said. “The doctor got the bullet out. Nothing left now but to see if Ed is strong enough to make the grade.”

Jeffers caught the change in Brad’s eyes and laughed without mirth. “The doctor won’t do any talking about which way we went. Soon’s he finished his job, he had an accident. Gun he was cleaning went off in his face.”

A cold shudder passed along Brad’s spine. He remembered what Laura had said about riding over this morning. Acting on his wish. Intending to help a jobless, homeless girl. A feeling of emptiness hit him like a physical blow.

Jeffers stood balanced, watching him, waiting. Elena too was waiting. Brad could hear her breathing across the room. He let his shoulders relax. “How about fixing me some breakfast?”

Her smile flashed. “Sure, Brad.”

Jeffers lounged against the wall. “That’s better, Brad. Hell, for a minute there I thought you was going to forget that he’s your brother and we’re your friends.”

Brad moved to the kitchen, keeping his face away from Jeffers. “You can’t stay. Some of the hands from the Hammer have been helping me fill in a slough below my south meadow. They’ll be over by eight o’clock.”

“Now, Brad,” Jeffers chided. “No cause to lie. You ain’t been filling any slough. We watched the place for a day and a half from an up-creek camp before sending Elena in.”

“You cover all the angles, don’t you, Jeffers?”

“I try to. Elena, fry the man an egg.”

Elena brushed against Brad as she went into the kitchen.

The back door opened and Clem Hathaway came in with his arm loaded with wood. He dropped the wood in the box beside the stove, and pushed his floppy hat back on his shaggy head. Clem was in his late fifties, and looked like somebody’s kind old uncle with his dewlapped, indolent face and mild blue eyes buried in Santa Claus puckers of flesh. He had shoulders that expanded into a comfortable paunch, and short, bowed legs. He was usually easy-going, unless liquored up. Then he was as safe to be around as a keg of dynamite with the fuse lighted.

“Howdy, Brad. You’re looking good, boy. Nice place you got here.”

“Yeah,” Brad said.

“Sure would like to have a place like this myself where I could sit of a Sunday afternoon on the front porch and whittle while my neighbors came visiting.”

“You’ve had your chances.”

Clem scratched his curly salt-and-pepper beard. “Reckon I have, at that,” he chuckled. “I’d go crazy on a place like this, tied down to it. How’s the coffee situation?” Clem sat across the table and drank coffee while Brad pecked at the eggs Elena slid onto his plate.

Maybe she’s already on her way over here, Brad thought, coming because I wanted her to, asked her to.

He made a disconsolate study as he gazed out the window. Down the glade, two hundred yards away, stood the barn. Then he remembered the Winchester still in its scabbard in the barn.

Once outside, and given half a minute, he could reach the barn. With the Winchester in his hands, the odds would be cut considerably.

Clem and Elena were watching him. He turned back to his food, eating slowly, his mind racing. The rifle might as well be on the moon, unless he could get to the barn by a trick. Either Clem or Jeffers could cut him down before he’d covered half the distance.

Brad pushed his empty plate back. From the bedroom, Ed began to call for water. Elena picked up a clean dish towel and a glass of water. Brad moved beside her to the bedroom, pushing by Jeffers in the parlor.

Brad sat beside the bed, reaching out to push the sweat-wet hair from Ed’s broad brow. Elena bent over, dipping the white cloth and dropping water on the fever-cracked lips.

Brad was aware of the warmth of her beside him, the honey hair falling about her doll-like face. Ed dropped into heavy slumber and Brad stood up.

Elena made no move away from Brad, but stood looking up at him with a challenge in her eyes, caring nothing for the fact that Jeffers, in the next room, might look in on them and find them standing close together.

“Don’t be sore at me, Brad. I had to do what Jeffers said.”

“Why?”

“He’s my husband — and you walked out on me once, remember?”

He studied her sultry eyes. “And it’s eaten on you all this time.”

She shrugged.

“All right,” he said. “You think we’re even now.”

“I’ve shown you can’t kick me around. Why do you have to be so stiff-necked and righteous?”

“I didn’t know I was.”

She laughed softly. “You wear that shell around yourself. You set yourself apart as a little better than the rest of us.”

“No better — just different, maybe.”

“You don’t sound very sure.”

“I’m not. The past has strong fingers.”

She stood with hands on hips. “So has the present. The right word from me, and Jeffers would kill you.”

He stared at the softly beautiful face and seething eyes. The poison had been a long time distilling in her.

Jeffers came and stood in the doorway. “Is Ed all right?”

“He still doesn’t recognize me,” Brad said in a flat voice. “He’s sleeping.”

“Then no call for you two holding palaver in here,” Jeffers suggested.

With a mirthless smile for Brad, Elena turned and went out of the room.

Brad started out. Jeffers blocked his way, cool and distant. “Don’t he hanging around my wife, Brad.”

Brad felt a metallic taste erupt in his mouth. “The fact that I was first with her once eating you?”

The flush of color in Jeffers’s cheeks admitted the truth of the statement. “I don’t want trouble with you.”

“I don’t want anything from you either, Jeffers, except for you to saddle, and ride.”

“The climate is too hot for that right now. Get one thing straight, Brad. We’re staying until it’s safe for us to move in open country.”

“Then keep your wife away from me. Don’t throw her at my head, like you did last night.”

Jeffers’s hawk face flamed. “I don’t owe you an explanation, but I’ll give you one. I had to send Elena in first, so you’d be unaware of what was going to happen and she could find out the truth of how safe it would be here. But I was watching. If you’d come toward the house last night, thinking she was alone, I’d have cut you down.”

It was a long speech for Jeffers; he turned and went into the parlor, where Clem Hathaway was sitting by a window smoking.

Gem studied Jeffers’s face; then glanced at Brad as if he would say something. But he remained silent.

At that moment, the distant sound of hoofbeats came to them. Brad felt his heart lurch sickeningly. But he forced a mocking laugh. “Riders from the Hammer,” he said. “So I was lying about the slough?”

Clem turned to look out the window, and Jeffers sprang to his side. Brad twisted his body, reached behind him, and grasped the heavy fireplace poker.

He struck quick and hard, smashing Clem across the shoulder, swinging the poker in a quick arc at Jeffers’s head. Jeffers eeled to one side. The poker missed his temple, laying his cheek open, knocking him down.

Brad almost tore the door from its leather hinges. He was outside, aware of quick movement behind him. The flesh of his back puckered in anticipation of the impact of a bullet. But he gave little thought to that. He was thinking only of the rider.

It was Laura, and she saw him, waved, and spurred forward in a fresh burst of speed.

“Get back!” he shouted. “Ride for help! They’re...”

He heard a rasping curse, whirled and brought the poker around. Clem moved with deceptive speed for a man of his build, coming in under the blow. He caught Brad by the throat and slugged with his gun. They tripped, fell. Brad tried to roll free. He got one short glance of Laura bringing her mount back on its haunches.

The length of the poker hampered him in its use. Gem slugged with the gun again and brief fire exploded across Brad’s vision. He felt his nose spurting blood. It rolled over his lips, the taste and smell of it gagging him.

He jabbed the poker at Clem’s gut like a blunt spear. It glanced from Clem’s belt buckle, and the next blow of the gun knocked the starch from Brad. His spirit yearned to continue the struggle, but his muscles were lax, liquid.

He rolled to a spread-legged, sitting position, sprayed blood with each heave of his breath. Earth and sky made slow circular movements and against the swirling backdrop he saw Laura turning her horse. He heard Jeffers’s shout to halt, and then crashing gunfire.

Three times Jeffers shot. The horse dug its muzzle into the ground, pitching Laura over its head. She rolled and lay still. The horse was screaming, lying on its side with its legs moving in convulsions.

Gem watched Brad as Brad climbed to his feet. Brad left the poker, forgotten, and stumbled toward Laura.

Jeffers ran up beside him, and they reached the fallen horse together Jeffers, without change of expression, put a bullet through the horse’s brain to take it out of its misery. Brad knelt beside Laura He turned her on her hack. There was no blood on her and she was breathing evenly, though her eyes were closed and her face pale.

“I aimed for the mount,” Jeffers said.

Brad looked lip at him and swallowed, saying nothing. He picked Laura up, her head and knees draped across his arms, and moved toward the house.

Elena was standing on the small, sagging porch of the cabin Brad looked straight into her eyes as he mounted the steps one by one Elena paled, touched her tongue to her lips.

“She was coming to help you get some clothes, a job,” Brad said

“Blast you!” Elena’s voice was thick in her throat. “Don’t look at me that way! It makes me wish Jeffers had killed her.”

Clem entered the cabin behind Brad.

“Get a quilt and fold it before the fireplace,” Brad said.

Clem quietly obeyed the order. His heavy, hanging face was clotted with dust and blood from the fight He came out of the bedroom, spread the quilt, and Brad laid Laura down on it. Clem wiped at his beard with his bandanna; then without speaking he went out of the room to return with the wooden water bucket from the back porch, a clean sacking towel draped across his arm.

Jeffers and Elena joined Clem, the three standing over Brad as he bathed Laura’s face with cool water. She stirred, murmured a sighing groan, and opened her eyes. She looked at the blood caking Brad’s nostrils and mouth, lifted her gaze beyond him and saw Clem, Jeffers, and Elena.

“My brother’s in the bedroom, out of his head with fever from infection—” Brad explained. “They came in the night.”

“Then the girl’s arrival was a put-up job.”

“Yes,” Brad said, “I didn’t have a chance to warn you at all before they—”

Behind Brad, Elena laughed softly. Laura lay for a moment without moving, as if she were turning the sound over and over in her mind. Then she looked up at Elena and Brad watched something new being born in Laura’s eyes, something deep and burning. Brad had seen the same blaze in Mike Simmons’s eyes when the old man thought wind, hell, or humanity was going to threaten him.

“Help me up. Brad.”

“Sure you’re all right?”

She nodded, reached for his hands, and got slowly to her feet. Clem picked up the water bucket and disappeared to the back porch, where they heard him snorting and washing away the fight grime. Elena studied Laura and Brad. She seemed to be flaying herself with the sight; a seething light boiled up in her soft blue eyes, and she turned her child-like face away.

Jeffers stood and refilled the cylinder of his righthand gun.

Brad helped Laura to a chair, turned to Jeffers. “Your plans are a little complicated now,” he reminded. “Leave Ed here and hit saddle.”

“I’m not venturing into open country and run the risk of a posse.”

“You can’t hold Laura,” Brad said.

“Why not?” Elena demanded.

Brad gave his head a short shake. “When she doesn’t show up, old man Simmons will get alarmed. He’ll think she’s had an accident. He’ll hunt her. He’ll come here to ask about her. He won’t be long in doing it, either.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Elena said, “I never had anybody feel that way about me. But I guess you’re right.”

“You’ll have the whole strength of the Hammer down on you.”

“We won’t hold her in a way that’ll make that happen,” Elena said. “You’re the strong link binding her to our welfare, Brad. Tonight she’ll eat supper at the Hammer, and tomorrow within an hour of sunrise, she rides back here alone and unarmed unless she wants something to happen to you — something real bad, soon.”

“It sounds like a long chance,” Jeffers said.

“Only because you don’t understand the fool thing called loyalty,” Elena said. She glanced at Laura. “You’ll do it, won’t you, honey?”

“Given no choice, I will. I’ll also find out if that blonde mop is a wig if I get the chance.”

“You’d think somebody had dropped you in with a sackful of wildcats if you try,” Elena said.

“Both of you pipe down,” Jeffers ordered. “We’ll do it that way. You just make yourself at home for the day, Miss Simmons, and when sundown approaches you’ll ride home and act exactly natural — unless you want a bullet in Brad’s brain.”

“Nice deal,” Brad said, “having a woman do your thinking for you.”

Jeffers shrugged without changing expression. “You keep in line, too — or next time I shoot at her instead of a horse.”

Clem entered the room, blood and grime washed from his face. Brad started across the room. Jeffers said, “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To wash my face. Then I’ve got stock that needs watering and feeding.”

“Stick with him. Clem,” Jeffers commanded.

With Clem like a shadow beside him, Brad went to the back porch, poured water in the tin basin, and bathed his tender nose. It started bleeding again, and he continued to douse it with cold water until the drippings paled to light crimson and then became clear.

Clem leaned against the wall, thumbs hooked in his gunbelt. “No hard feelings about the fight, Brad?”

Brad shrugged.

“I was in favor of pushing on. I reckon you’ve worked hard here. Seems tough to have your play messed up.” He tore off a piece of plug tobacco and worked it between his bruised lips.

Brad hung up the towel. “What do you hope to get out of this, Clem?”

Clem screwed up his lips and spat brown juice. “A little more living, I reckon. Another hour, day, maybe a year. Just be peaceable with us, Brad. We don’t mean you no real harm.”

Brad wondered if Clem were fool enough to include Elena in the statement.

Brad went back in the house, entered the kitchen, shook up the fire, and put on some beef to make broth.

“For Ed?” Clem asked.

Brad nodded. “The stock can wait that much longer.”

He moved about the stove. Then Clem brushed behind him, reached to the slotted rack on the wall, and drew out the butcher knife. With his puckish eyes on Brad, he snapped the blade of the knife and threw the broken pieces behind the wood box.

“You think I’m a fool, Clem?”

“I sure as hell do. A smart, tough, dogged, determined fool. Now go on fixing that broth.”

When the broth was ready, Brad carried it into the bedroom. Laura joined him, her eyes troubled as she looked at the wasted young giant on the bed.

Brad forced a few spoonfuls of broth past the parched lips. Ed began talking in disjoined, incoherent phrases about a darkened room and the smell of camphor.

“He’s back in Mom’s room, the night she died,” Brad said, a thickness in his voice. “Maybe the beef broth touched off the memory. We were feeding it to her that night.”

“He needs a doctor.”

Brad nodded. He heard Clem shift from one foot to the other in the doorway. “Jeffers would start shooting first.”

Laura reached for the small bowl. “It’s going to take time to get all this into his stomach, and he needs it. Let me do it.” He handed her the bowl, bent and kissed her ear, whispering, “Saddlegun in the barn.”

The pressure of her fingers as she took the bowl showed him she understood.

“See to your stock, Brad. I’ll take care of Ed.”

Brad walked from the room, Clem turning to dog his heels. Elena lazily watched them pass through the parlor. Her loss of sleep was showing in the pallor beneath the tan of her skin. Jeffers stood by the window, looking out every now and then, impassive, immovable. His cheek was turning purple where the poker had struck it.

Brad went out in the cool air of morning. Clem fell in beside him. In silence they moved toward the barn. Brad felt his nerves beginning to crawl tight, a bead of sweat going icy on his forehead. The thought of the gun filled Brad’s mind so thoroughly it was hard to think that Clem didn’t know or suspect something of it.

Closer and closer the barn loomed; then they were in the shadow of its doorway.

“Wait a minute.” Clem laid a hand on his arm.

Brad glanced at him.

“What you got in here needs feeding?”

“Just the milk cow.”

“I’ll bring her out. We’ll graze her by the creek.”

Brad forced himself to laugh. “You needn’t bother with my chore, Clem. It’ll take just a...”

“I’ll bring her out,” Clem repeated. “You’re a damn fool, Brad. You proved it when you jumped the two of us with the poker.”

“No pokers in here,” Brad kidded.

“True,” Clem said, “but I don’t hanker to take chances on a singletree, coupling iron, or pitchfork being handy. Wouldn’t give me any pleasure to shoot you to death, Brad. Now just stand easy and we’ll fetch bossy to some crick grass and milk her down there.”

Brad felt his muscles go slack and loose. Nothing was going to happen, and the letdown made him go faintly sick.

He stood framed in the barn doorway. The cow was in the first stall, beginning to low with the pain of her heavy udder. Clem sidled into the barn, not turning his back completely to Brad.

Brad forced his body into an attitude of careless nonchalance, trying to keep his gaze from riveting to the Winchester leaning against the rear wall in the shadows. A black sense of failure flooded over him. Clem would surely see the gun.

Then Clem was leading the cow from the barn. Keeping his attention on Brad, he had missed the gun. He handed Brad the halter rope, jerked his head toward the creek. Brad led the cow, Clem beside him.

I don’t think I can do it again, Brad thought. I don’t believe I can screw my nerve up a second time to make a break for the gun...

The sun dragged its interminable way across the heavens. Clem sat before the fireplace, whittling and nursing his tobacco in his cheek. Elena slept in the old Morris chair Brad had repaired when he put his few dollars down on the place. Jeffers had cut squares from the pasteboard of a hardtack box and made himself a deck of cards. He sat at the kitchen table playing solitaire.

Laura stood leaning against the jamb, staring through the open doorway. Brad sat near Clem, looking at her, waiting for what he didn’t know. He thought of the way she’d questioned with her troubled eyes when he and Clem had returned to the house. Warned of the gun’s existence in the barn, she, too, had been ready for a desperate try of her own, a plunge through a window, a break toward the sheltering brush of the creek when the first burst of gunfire should attract the attention of Jeffers and Elena.

But no gunfire had sounded. And that had been worse than wild, crazy action would have been.

She understood, Brad knew. She realized that something had happened at the barn to make a try for the gun impossible. She didn’t blame Brad. But that didn’t help his feelings much, or dispel his sense of failure.

Ed began talking about a pinto horse and a Mexican girl and a jug of mescal.

Brad rose, moved to the bedroom. Ed was sitting up in bed. “Hello, Tolly,” he said, looking at Brad with glazed blue eyes. “The Jimsons are laying for you down by the livery. They’re figuring to jump you when you go after your horse, Tolly. Better borrow a horse and get out of town when you leave the saloon. There’s four of the Jimsons, Tolly...”

Laura entered the bedroom with Brad. “He’s talking about the brother who was killed in the gunfight?”

“Yes,” Brad said, “he thinks I’m Tolly.”

Ed grabbed Brad’s hand in both of his. “Tolly, me and the old man rode, but they was gone. You chased them off, Tolly! Perrywinkle at the store said they’d killed you.”

“You pay Perrywinkle no mind,” Brad said. “Just relax and rest now. It’s been a long, hard ride.”

“Sure has, Tolly. Raining part of the time. Cold rain with sleet mixed in it.”

Brad eased Ed back in bed. Ed’s eyes dropped closed; his breathing slowed, became regular.

There was a pan of water and a cloth on a table beside the bed. Laura dipped the cloth, wiped Ed’s sweating face.

Brad passed the back of his hand over his forehead. He left the room and went into the kitchen.

Jeffers looked up from his game.

“You’ve got to let us get a doctor,” Brad said. And for the first time he heard his voice break, a pleading note creeping into it.

“Sorry,” Jeffers shook his head.

“You brought him here. You wanted him to live that much.”

“I want him to live,” Jeffers said. “I hope he’s man enough to make it.”

“But no doctor?”

“No.”

Brad stood breathing shallowly, breath passing no deeper than his throat. “You can’t hide here indefinitely.”

“Don’t intend to. Just three or four days, until the posses run out of grub and head back home.” Jeffers turned a pasteboard over. “Meantime it’s useless to talk.”

Brad looked at Jeffers’s impassive face a moment longer; then he walked out to the porch and sat down on the railing.

Clem followed him, sat down near him. “Hot out here.”

“Then go in the house.”

“Now, Brad, I can’t do that.”

Insects hummed and the sinking sun made a lake of heat in the distance. Inside the house, Laura cried out Brad’s name. He swung his legs across the sapling rail, and rushed into the parlor in time to see Laura loose her grip on Ed, who was going out the back door.

Mad with fever, Ed jumped from the porch and moved toward the creek. He was telling his brother Tolly to hang on, the Jimsons weren’t big enough to stop the Pickens clan.

Laura leaped after Ed. Jeffers upset the kitchen table, vaulted the back porch rail, and ran down the slope. Like a giant oak shuddering out the last of its strength before falling, Ed plunged on toward the creek.

Clem grabbed Brad’s shirt. Fabric ripped as they stumbled from the back porch together. Beyond Clem, Brad saw Elena standing in the back doorway.

“Hold it!” Clem said. “Jeffers’ll bring him back.”

Jeffers reached Ed, caught his arm, and Ed slugged him. Jeffers fell. Ed picked up a heavy, weather-hardened limb and struck. Jeffers moved from side to side to avoid the blows. The limb struck his shoulder. Jeffers stumbled to his knees. Ed raised the limb high to brain Jeffers. Brad heard Clem draw in his breath. Clem pulled his gun, swinging it toward Ed. Brad grabbed the gun wrist and hit Clem with all his strength. Clem stumbled; his spurs tangled and tripped him, and Brad got the gun. Brad put his knee hard against Clem’s chin, broke away, leaving Clem addled on hands and knees.

Brad whirled just in time to see Jeffers draw and shoot Ed. He saw the bullet bite into Ed’s massive chest, the chest fold as if under a giant blow.

Ed pitched forward, and Brad knew there was only one Pickens left alive. Choked with rage, sweat seeping in and scorching his narrowed eyes, Brad snapped a shot at Jeffers with Clem’s gun.

Jeffers snapped off two quick shots. Brad felt the wind burn of them. Behind him, he heard Elena scream, and he knew she had been in line of fire. Jeffers’s bullet had hit her.

Jeffers dropped behind a stump. Brad was in the open, between Jeffers and Clem. Laura was almost to the barn, running in a crouch, lightly as a doe. Brad dove around the corner of the house, keeping Jeffers down with two more shots. He cut for the barn, using a fourth and fifth shot as he ran.

He dove through the barn door as Jeffers’s bullet put a hot welt across his back. Laura grabbed him, pulled him forward, and he scrambled to his feet. He was trembling in every muscle, heavy drops of sweat rolling down his face. His lips were flat, his eyes hot. “The swine, the dirty, worthless, merciless pigs.”

He felt light-headed, a little off-balance, but he didn’t care. For years he’d carried a knot inside of him; now it had burst, and he could taste the poison of it. He moved to the rear of the barn, snatched the Winchester from its scabbard, levered a cartridge into the chamber.

He thrust Clem’s sixgun into Laura’s hand. “There’s one bullet left. No matter what happens, Jeffers must never leave here. The bullet has got Jeffers’s name on it.”

Her dark hair was sweat-tangled about her face. Her cheeks looked glazed and some of the light in Brad’s eyes was reflected in her own.

She caught his wrist. “Brad...” And then she released him, looking into his face. “I understand,” she said. “Jeffers is all the running, the hatefulness, the meanness, the whole past.”

A shout came from the house. Brad turned in that direction. Clem had got to his feet, drawn his second gun. Jeffers was leaning over Elena, who sat on the back porch propped against the house. Brad could catch her moans, and saw that she was holding her stomach as if trying to tear away pain.

Jeffers turned, dropped from the back porch like a cat.

“Elena needs help,” he shouted. “You’ve only got one bullet left. Come out, Brad, and you and the girl will live.”

“You come and get me and the girl,” Brad shouted back.

“Don’t be a fool,” Clem advised with a wave of his gun. “If you make the cards fall that way, we’ll have to kill you.”

“That would trouble you, wouldn’t it, Clem?”

“Sure would, but what has to be has to be. Look, boy, you only got one bullet. You can’t shoot us both.”

Brad, in the shadows of the barn doorway, stroked the stock of the Winchester. “I wonder which it’ll be?”

Jeffers moved to Clem and they hunkered in the shadows of the porch; the angle made a shot hard.

While they palavered, Brad drew Laura over to him! His gaze took in every detail of her face. “I figured they’d come quick. Now you’ve got a chance. Slide out that back window, make for the corral. You’ll have a long stretch of open field to cross, but I’ll cover you. I’ll see that you make it.”

“It would empty the Winchester.”

“You’d be on your way by then. You could bring some of the boys back from the Hammer.”

He felt a quivering in her shoulders. Then tears came abruptly. No weeping; no sobbing; just bright diamonds of moisture on her lids.

“And what would we find when we got back? My life, lying in the dust.”

“Quit that kind of talk! You’ve got to go.”

“You’re not married to me yet, Brad Pickens. I refuse to take the order.”

He put his arm about her and brushed her cheek with his lips. Then he released her.

Clem and Jeffers had started their play. They’d overturned the massive oaken rain barrel behind the house and moved toward the creek, pushing the rain barrel before them.

Clem broke, dove into the brush before Brad could fire. He started moving down creek and Jeffers began working the barrel at an angle up the long slope away from the creek.

“I know what’s in his mind,” Brad said. “He figures I’ll go mighty slow about wasting what he thinks is the last bullet. He reckons one of them will get close enough to fire the brush or grass. When the flames reach the barn and this loft of hay, we’ll come out in a hurry or be cooked alive.”

Jeffers was moving slowly, staying out of sixgun range. Clem was making more speed. Brad could mark his progress by the shaking of a bush or sapling now and then.

“Last warning, Clem!”

“Now, Brad, you wouldn’t use that final bullet in my direction.”

“I’ve got plenty of bullets.”

“Don’t let him bluff you, Clem,” Jeffers shouted. “Close in.”

Clem obeyed the order. Brad raised the rifle to his shoulder. His face congealed, as if turning to hewn, hard maple. He saw a bush shake, and he fired.

Clem made a cry like a bull moose. He stood up, fell backward, and Brad heard the echo of the splash. In a few moments, Clem’s body washed down the creek, lodging face-down where the creek raced over stony shallows.

The barrel had stopped its slow journey. Jeffers endured stunned silence before saying, “That was no sixgun.”

“You’re mighty right it wasn’t. It was the crack of a rifle. The oak in that barrel might scotch a sixgun slug from long range, but it won’t stop a steel-jacketed rifle bullet, Jeffers. I’m coming after you.”

Brad dropped low and ran a few steps, then dropped behind the watering trough. He raised, pumped a bullet, and saw splinters jump from the barrel.

He slid around the end of the trough. The barrel was still a great impediment. He might empty the rifle into it without doing more than scratching Jeffers.

Jeffers heard his movement and couldn’t fail to realize that in short seconds the rifle would be barking at him from a new angle where the barrel wouldn’t help.

Jeffers shot one glance around the end of the barrel, shifted it to correct aim, and gave it a shove.

The barrel came booming and bouncing at Brad, heavy enough to smash him. Brad almost gave way to the surprise Jeffers had counted on. He glimpsed Jeffers on one knee, fanning his sixgun.

He swiveled the rifle on his hip, ignoring everything but the man before him. He fired, and with that sixth sense of the marksman he knew his aim had been true. Jeffers dropped his gun, sat a moment on one knee. Then he pitched to his side. Brad plunged to one side as the barrel, with a bounce, loomed over him. The barrel missed him by inches, crashing against the barn, as Brad staggered to his feet.

And with the crash, like an echo, came the bark of a six-gun. He turned, and he saw Elena lying on her face near the house, a gun near her hand. Then he saw Laura, holding herself stiff and straight, coming from the barn toward him. Clem’s smoking sixgun dangling at her side.

Laura lifted the gun, stared at it, and with a cry in her throat threw it from her. Brad gathered her into his arms. She shuddered with reaction.

“She crawled from the porch, Brad. Then I saw the gun in her hand. She raised it. She was going to shoot you in the back. I... I fired the final bullet, Brad.”

He held her close, and looked at Elena down the slope. She had the gamin face of an innocent doll, but what she couldn’t have she would kill.

It was late that night before Brad got back to the Hammer ranch house. He threw reins over the hitch-rail, mounted the porch, and Mike Simmons’s voice came to him out of the darkness down the porch: “Been waiting. Figured you’d ride this way.”

Mike rose, hobbled down the porch. “Come in. Few things I’ve got to say to you.”

Brad was haggard, but there was a calm light in his eyes. The last hours had been crowded, sheriff and deputies going out to clean up the carnage and bring back the bodies in wagons. He recalled the hush that had fallen on San Miguel, and the way men had stared at Brad Ledbetter Pickens, who’d walked with his head high and a friendly smile on his lips. The first handshake, from the sheriff himself; started the thawing out of these strangers.

Brad followed Mike into the cavernous front room, with its bearskin rug and heavy chairs before a fireplace large enough to take logs.

Mike rubbed his rheumatically-gnarled knuckles against his cheek. “You know you got one hell of a nerve, keeping the truth about yourself from folks, I always had the feeling there was something you was hiding.”

Brad colored a little at the prodding tone. “I don’t mean to speak disrespectful to a man crippled with rheumatism—”

“Who says I’m crippled!”

Brad held up his hand. “—but I’m going to tell you something anyway. I discovered something today. Running is no good. If I’d never hidden, Jeffers, Clem, and the girl couldn’t have used my place and showed me — and Laura — the face of death. I’ve let the Pickens name run me for the last time, Simmons. I came here with honest, hard-earned money, saved a dollar at a time. And here I’m staying. To earn the respect of my neighbors and live like a man, to put down roots, build my herds, marry a good woman, and raise a family. And when I’m old and plagued with rheumatism I’ll sit on my front porch and snort and cuss a little and take nothing from any man, because I’ll look out over the land and know I’ve earned my right to it.”

Mike’s eyes began to twinkle. “You sound pretty sure of yourself.”

“I am. I’m going to marry your daughter, Mike, if she’ll have me.”

“She’ll have you,” Laura’s voice came quietly.

Both men turned. Laura was standing across the room, limned in yellow lamplight. Her hair was loose about her shoulders and she was clad in a long, white nightgown that draped to her ankles.

She came forward smiling, slipped her left arm about Mike’s neck, her right about Brad’s.

Mike cleared his throat. “Thought you was in bed. Confound it, don’t know what this younger generation is coming to. You traipsing in here in your nightgown when you ain’t even married to this hard-headed galoot—” Mike grinned — “yet.”