Latigo 3, page 12
“Is some devilment going on inside that pretty head?” he asked, drawing back so that he could see her better.
She laughed shakily. “Only that you just tore me to shreds and I am slowly mending. But what delicious shredding it was.”
Over the weeks Cole found a market for Hayfork beef, with the army. Indians had to be fed; the buffalo were disappearing fast. Cole felt depressed and guilty because he had not involved himself in Indian affairs.
He went to Scalplock to look at some prize bulls offered for sale. Amanda was with him, her eyes sparkling in the clear mountain air. She seemed younger, more vibrant than when he had first seen her on the tragic night when her husband had been killed.
Cole was studying the bulls in a pen near the livery barn when a tall, rawboned man with a wind-burned face stepped from the rear door of a nearby church. The man saw Cole, stiffened and then came tramping uphill through the snowy grass. Cole turned, said, “Well, howdy, Mr. Lockwood. Been a spell since we’ve seen each other.” He put out his hand. Lockwood deliberately put his hands behind his back, ignoring the hand Cole extended.
“I wondered if I would ever see you again, to tell you what I think of you.”
The sound of the harsh voice caused Amanda to look around in surprise.
“You brought that abomination against God, that ... that whore ... into my household!” Jed Lockwood cried, shaking his fist.
Cole knew what he meant and said coldly, “Helen’s a human being. I don’t give a damn what she was in the past, and neither should you!”
“Ignore such a thing? Never!”
“You a part-time preacher, as I recall. I guess you don’t believe in your own Bible.”
“I do, I do ... every blessed word.”
“What about casting the first stone if you’re without sin!”
“Hah! I am without sin. I have never sinned.”
“Then you’ve never been born, Lockwood. You’re still in your mother’s womb.”
Seizing Amanda by an arm, he hurried her away from the red-faced, indignant man, graying hair jutting from under an old hat. Amanda looked back at him, an avenging prophet.
“He was positively livid,” Amanda gasped when they had slowed beside the steep path near the livery barn. “And who in the world is Helen?” Amanda glanced at Cole’s grim face. “A whore, he called her. Is she?”
“That life is all behind her. She’s got a chance for happiness if people will just let her alone. She’s married to a young fella from Ohio, a tenderfoot named Jeremy Van Horn. Well, I suppose they’re married, they figured to be ...”
“Tell me more. I’m interested in ... fallen women.”
Cole frowned at her arch smile. “It’s not funny, Amanda.”
“I wasn’t making fun, because the label applies to me; I’m fallen.” Her eyes were mischievous. “Until you decide to marry me, that is.” When he said nothing, she looked thoughtful for a few moments. She decided to change the subject back to Helen and the outraged man who had denounced her. “Give me the whole story, Cole. I am interested, honestly.”
Cole didn’t like to talk about it, but Amanda finally got it out of him. How Helen had run away from home to escape the attentions of a stepfather. “She was left for dead by some freighters, and a couple who ran a brothel in Santa Fe took her in until she mended. She just stayed on.”
“I’ve heard such women always have interesting stories to tell about how they became involved in such a degrading occupation.”
“Don’t be so goddamn pious.”
“I certainly hope you’re not classing me with such a person... I was only joking about being a fallen woman.”
Cole’s smile was hard. “Old man Lockwood likely would shout sinner at us as quick as he would at Helen. We’re not exactly married, you know.”
“All right, now that you yourself have brought it up, I say to hell with conformity.” She brushed a lock of hair aside with a trembling hand. “I had no intention of being a mourning widow for a year, and now not even for six months. Let’s get married here ... today!” She had halted, her jaw outthrust, peering up into his face with glowing eyes. “That will certainly quiet any possible talk of us as sinners.” She grinned, waiting.
“We’ve got to be sure, Amanda,” he hedged, and stared up at the lead mine midway up a mountain above Scalplock. “Easy to get into, this marriage business. Damn hard to get out of.”
On the long trip back to the ranch she barely spoke. Finally she said, “Are you in love with this Helen?”
“No. And she isn’t in love with me. Damn it, she needed help. She was half dead, and I took her to the Lockwood ranch. They didn’t know anything about her past life ... until later.”
“How did Lockwood find out?”
“She was tried for a murder she didn’t commit. It all came out at her trial. A vigilante trial, up at El Dorado Gulch.”
“My compassionate lover. Stray cats and dogs and wayward girls ...” Her laughter was brittle.
“You’ve barely been touched by life,” he said coldly. “When it steps on your head, maybe you won’t be so quick to laugh.”
“How do you know she was innocent of murder?”
“Because somebody else did the killing.”
“Why would they suspect her?”
“Damn it, Amanda, she finally married a war vet with a bullet in the lung. A widower with two kids. The old wound finally did him in. Her dead husband’s sister came and took the kids. It hurt Helen, but she kept on working the gold claim she and her husband had. A neighbor tried to get into her bed, and she stuck him with a knife, but he wasn’t dead. The real killer did him in later. Now you satisfied?”
“I suppose you realize I’m jealous of Helen.”
“For Crissake, there’s no need to be. She’s like a sister.”
“Oh, yes, one of the scarlet kind.... Oh, my God!”
Her voice ended in a half scream. They were in a buckboard, Cole driving much too fast along one of the new roads at the base of wooded hills. And directly ahead were men with feathers, and mounted on ponies.
“Indians,” she gasped.
Cole slowed the team and at a walk continued toward the group of braves, who stared curiously and suspiciously. Without taking his eyes from them, Cole reached down and pulled the Henry rifle from the floorboards and put it across his lap. Then he halted the team ten yards from the mounted men and offered the sign of peace, right hand lifted, palm out.
Amanda, in traveling cloak and bonnet, gripped the edge of the seat with both hands as she stared in terror at the stoic dark faces.
Anchoring the reins to the whip socket, Cole explained who he was, in sign language. Then he put it into Crow, in case any of them understood the language. “I am known as Two Rivers, among the Crow. My mother was a princess, daughter of a chief. My father was a mountain man, Badger Cantrell.”
Two of them understood Crow and spoke a few words, then gave a signal, and the party moved on toward the mountains. They did not look back. Amanda breathed easier.
“I ... I was scared to death. All the stories one hears about Indians and ... white women.”
“Out here a handsome lady better be more wary of a white than an Indian.”
“You ... you actually spoke to them in Indian. You are an amazing man, Cole Cantrell. Who were they, and what did they want?”
“A hunting party. They had an eye on our horses.”
“And you frightened them away.”
Cole shook his head, started driving again. “One of them had heard of me by my Indian name. Another remembered my father.”
“What is your Indian name?” And when he told her she said, “I like Cole better than Two Rivers.”
“After this, when you’re along we won’t travel anywhere without some of the men.”
“But I thought you said those Indians were harmless?”
“For now. But when people get hungry, they get desperate.” Cole was thinking of the professional hunters such as Rego Gattling who slaughtered buffalo and thus removed the main source of food for the tribes.
“It’s in the air,” Cole went on, sniffing. “I can smell it. Big trouble.”
Amanda shivered and clung to his arm and stared along the sweated backs of the horses, with their winter coats.
“When I groom you for politics, you will be above such things,” she said lightly, after hooves and wagon wheels had ground back into prairie earth the snow patches along wheel tracks that stretched to infinity.
“Politics,” Cole grunted, sounding as if he had tasted something sour.
Chapter Fifteen
HELEN WAITED OUTSIDE the livery barn while Jeremy was inside, renting a horse and buggy. She was thinking of the ordeal which lay ahead, when she saw the tall, loose-jointed man emerge from the side door of a saloon across a vacant lot from the stable. With him was a swarthy man with a thick black mustache and a low-pulled black hat. He wore a gun with ivory grips, the holster and belt studded with silver.
The taller man said with a shrug, “Any time you’re ready, Chico!”
The other man took offense. “I am no Chico. I am a man. My name is Armando. Remember it, you bastard!”
“And my name is not bastard. It’s Jud Bowden!”
“Think I don’t know that?” the swarthy Armando said, teeth gleaming below the raven’s-wing mustache. “In Abilene you kill my friend. In the back. I been huntin’ you, bastard.”
Helen felt as if cold hands had squeezed her heart. It was so like Santa Fe, where on a payday the drunks took out their anger over girls or money, with sharp steel or bullets. Flo would lock the doors, and Buck would try and separate the combatants, and failing that, would come inside. And Helen and Flo and the girls would huddle breathless by the shuttered windows. Sometimes there was a slam of guns, and this followed by a groan. Or the cold steel brought no sound at all if the wielder of the knife was expert and did his cutting deep. She’d seen so much of it, the torn flesh, the staring eyes. And for what? An argument over one of the girls, or a raging drunk who said Flo’s prices were higher than Raton Pass. At which time Buck would level his sawed-off shotgun and say, “That’s enough.” Sometimes it wasn’t enough, and the parlor rugs would be deeply stained.
When she saw what was about to happen on a sunny winter’s day in Basin City Helen wanted to cry out, “Oh, no, don’t kill each other ...”
But she was mute, and the two men didn’t even know she stood next to the livery barn, beside a patch of weeds covered with dirty snow.
The man who called himself Jud Bowden made a great show of dangling his right hand over the cedar grips of his holstered gun.
The dark one, who called himself Armando, showed his teeth, and his right hand was swifter than an eye-blink. A grin of triumph on his swarthy face, he thought he had his opponent beaten. But his ivory-butted weapon barely cleared leather. There was a tremendous roar, which reverberated against the stable walls. Armando’s mouth hung open, and he staggered, a stupid look on his face. Then something a dark grape color came shooting out of his mouth, where he stood in the shadows of the saloon.
Men burst from the saloon, some shouting, “I knowed Bowden would beat him!”
A crowd gathered around Bowden, who stood smiling, accepting congratulations.
Jeremy Van Horn came at a rush from the stable, worried that Helen might be in danger. “Jesus, I heard the shooting ...” Up at El Dorado Gulch, where he owned half interest in a store, many people joshed him because of his black suit, beaver hat and wire-rimmed eyeglasses, saying he looked like a young undertaker.
“You all right?” he asked, concerned.
Helen nodded. She was small, shapely, her eyes brown and, these days, usually merry. They had been troubled, though, even before the shooting. This was to be an important day in her life.
“I’m going over and take a look,” Jeremy said. He returned in a minute, looking sick. “That was Armando Hogar he shot down. They got in an argument in the saloon and ordered everybody not to come outside until it was over. I can’t believe it. Everyone said Hogar was invincible and yet that Jud Bowden killed him. Easily, it seems.”
Helen finally got herself under control. “Bowden didn’t even draw his gun.”
“You’re mistaken, honey. Hogar was shot twice, once in the throat and once in the chest.”
“Bowden just stood there and let the other man draw. And Bowden didn’t even touch his gun. I saw it all, Jeremy.”
“Your eyes played tricks is all. I’ll go bring out the buggy.” It was a fine-looking one, with a red stripe across the dash and the same bright color on the wheel spokes. Helen climbed in. By now the sheriff had appeared and was studying the body as if he might be examining a map. “Sure got him dead center, Bowden,” the sheriff said, shaking his head. “Hogar had a purty good gun rep. S’prised you got him.”
“Pretty good gun rep,” a thin man in the crowd of onlookers countered. “Hogar was the best in Missouri, Kansas and about anywheres else you can name.”
Jeremy wanted to get away, but because of people rushing across the street, drawn by the gunshots, he had to bring the buggy to a halt. If was then that Helen received a further shock. Beside the buggy stood an enormously fat figure with steel-blue eyes, burning into hers.
Claudius Max didn’t speak aloud, but his lips formed a word. “You!”
Stunned, she sank back in the buggy seat as Jeremy finally got them moving along the street. He noticed her paleness and said, “Don’t get upset. Not when you need your wits about you.” He tried to smile. “Hogar was nothing but a killer. Downed by another of his breed.”
She almost said, “I just saw Claudius Max, and he looked as if he accused me of still being alive.” But she remained silent; she didn’t want to upset Jeremy. Witnessing the death of a man she didn’t even know was bad enough. But coming face to face with Max terrified her. How many times had he tried to have her killed? Seeing Max brought back all the horror of her trial. All she could think about at the moment was to protect Jeremy from that monster. It was the first time she had seen that loathsome fat man since Cole Cantrell had saved her from the gallows.
Now she had to get herself under control to face Martha Bascom. Soon after John had died, Martha had appeared in El Dorado Gulch and taken her dead brother’s children, claiming that an unmarried woman in a gold camp was no suitable mother. If Helen ever got married, then she’d see about returning the children. All this took place before Helen’s past was revealed.
And just two weeks ago a letter had come from Martha Bascom to El Dorado Gulch, suggesting Helen visit her in Basin City and naming a date. A matter of great importance, Martha had stressed in her letter. To Helen it meant one thing: Martha had relented, and she was to have the children back.
“Are you going to tell Mrs. Bascom that we’re married?” Jeremy asked as he headed the buggy toward the outskirts of Basin City.
“I won’t lie to her, Jeremy ...”
“Tell her we’ll be married as soon as my mother’s things come from Ohio ...”
“If she’ll let us have the children, we’ll be married immediately. You can buy me a ten-cent ring.” Helen smiled. “I’ll wear your mother’s ring later.”
She scanned her sister-in-law’s letter to make sure of the address and description of the house. It was small and painted a faded green, with a pine tree in the yard and the remains of geraniums under a sprinkling of snow.
Helen scooted out of the buggy, her knees weak. “If everything goes well—and I’m sure it will—I’ll ask you to come in.”
Jeremy squinted through the eyeglasses with brass frames. “Good luck,” he said nervously and settled back to wait.
She tried to walk sedately up the path to the house instead of rushing. She so desperately wanted a glimpse of the children. It had been so long. Terry would be over four now, and Ruth a year older.
On the small veranda she crossed both fingers and looked back at Jeremy, in the buggy. Renting the buggy to make them look prosperous had been a good idea, she was sure. And they were prosperous, in a moderate way. Jeremy owned half interest in the general store up at El Dorado Gulch. Jeremy had been doubtful about trying to continue their life at the gold camp, because of all that had happened. Helen was certain they could. People have short memories, she had assured Jeremy time and again.
Just as Helen lifted a fist to knock on the varnished door it was jerked open. Martha Bascom, in a faded green coat, stormed out to the porch. Just before she slammed the door, Helen glimpsed two small faces. She waved, but the children did not respond, and in that one glance she felt they considered her almost a stranger. Everything drained out of her. “How ... how are you, Martha?” Helen managed.
Martha waved her to one of two straight-backed chairs evidently placed on the narrow veranda just for the meeting. Helen sat in one chair, Martha plopping herself into the other with fleshy arms folded. She stared at the figure in the buggy. “Who’s that?”
“My intended ...”
“Hmmmmmph.” The cold gaze settled on distant mountains, snowy peaks already lanced with gold in. the late afternoon. “It’s cold out here, so we’ll dispense with all preliminaries and I can get back inside, where it’s warm ...”
“How are Terry and Ruth?” Helen asked. Her brown eyes were unwavering as she stared at Martha Bascom’s grim profile.
“I suggested this meeting so there would be no misunderstanding,” Martha snapped. Her hair was center-parted, drawn over the ears and into a tight bun. A sprinkling of hairs darkened her upper lip. “If I tried to put it into a letter I might not get it right, and you’d read between the lines and think there was hope.”
