Adam Steele 35, page 11
‘It was easier to cut my hair this way, wear clothes like this, not use powders and all that stuff and keep my uncle in a good temper than to rub him up the wrong way for no good reason. Just getting called Jo all the time was the only part of it that really got to me. That, and being mistaken for a boy by strangers to town.’
The gelding had dipped his head to crop at the grass again and now the girl resumed her slow advance.
‘Of course, that doesn’t happen too often because very few strangers come to Braddock. It’s on the main trail between Abilene and El Paso and we get the stages through three times a week in each direction. But Braddock’s hardly more than a way station and mail-drop. There!’
She almost sobbed the final word, as she took the final pained step and fastened a grip on the reins of the gelding. But whether she was giving vent to her discomfort, or expressing either relief or despondency, it was impossible to judge. Until, after she was sure the horse was going to remain docile, she turned to look at the Virginian and was in time to see him settle into the saddle on the black stallion. When tears welled into her flecked eyes and she had to swallow hard to hold in an actual sob.
‘You won’t forget the message to give them, Miss Remmick?’ Steele asked and thought that now she looked every inch a young girl.
‘It’s not a lie, Mr. Steele,’ she told him, her tone husky with the strain of holding back from weeping. ‘None of it.’
‘I believe you,’ he allowed, and heeled his mount forward after a glance over his shoulder to check that the two white stallions were ready to move.
‘I don’t expect you to care about what a rotten life I’ve had in Braddock,’ she blurted as he rode toward her, some tears on her pale and freckled cheeks now. But while her moist eyes expressed desperation her voice seemed to be on the brink of anger. ‘It was stupid of me to go through all of that. But you must care about keeping those precious horses?’
‘So you have already forgotten the message?’ he posed evenly as he drew level with her.
‘That won’t stop them! You’re just one man and there’s a whole bunch of them!’
He halted his horses and turned in the saddle to look back and down at her, his face totally impassive. ‘You told me in your uncle’s house where I could get breakfast, Miss Remmick. And then said you wished you could do me a bigger favor.’
She nodded several times as he spoke, and was eager for him to finish so she could exclaim: ‘Yes, yes, and—’
‘I don’t want to have to kill anybody else,’ Steele cut in across her excitement, ‘so I’d consider it a real big favor if you warned the Braddock people to stay away from me and my horses.’
Now she shook her head, as emphatically as she had nodded moments ago. And implored: ‘No, no, Mr. Steele. I came out after you as fast as I could. To warn you. That was the favor. And all I want in return is to be allowed to ride with you.’
He started his animals moving again, while he continued to eye the girl with an utter absence of compassion on his heavily-bristled features. Told her in a tone as ice-cold as the look in his coal-black eyes: ‘Go home, Miss Remmick. And forget I asked you to deliver the message.’
‘You’re a …’ Her tone and expression gave warning of an obscenity, but either she was unable to fasten on one, was not able to think of one that was strong enough for her depth of feeling or even now could not bring herself to voice anything worse than an inappropriately mild curse.
‘Whatever else I am, I have some principles left,’ Steele told her, and just the trace of a smile altered the line of his mouth without getting close to his eyes as he touched the brim of his hat in farewell. ‘Go on home, Miss Remmick. I never accept the favors of women who run after me.’
Chapter Eleven
AFTER HIS WRY parting comment, Adam Steele looked back at the girl just once. This a moment before he rode over a ridge beyond which he knew they would be out of sight of each other. His ears had already told him Josephine Remmick was not yet moving to do as he had told her. And now a backward glance confirmed what he had sensed as he rode slowly toward this new ridge. She stood as he had last seen her, grasping the reins of the gelding that had exhausted good eating on the patch of arid grass. Stood and gazed toward him in a stance that projected – even over some three hundred yards or so – a demeanor of melancholic dejection. From such a distance, he could not see if there were fresh tears on her cheeks.
Because of the kind of terrain they were in, it was pointless to extend the focus of his vision to scan the girl’s backdrop of rearing rock faces and element-ravaged vegetation in search of the men she claimed were coming after him. Since earshot range was still greater than that of eyesight. A fact coincidentally and unnecessarily proved when, less than half a minute after he and Josephine Remmick were lost to each other’s sight, the beat of the gelding’s hooves sounded clearly above the much less frenetic clop of the stallions. Just for a stretched second, Steele thought dispassionately that the girl might be racing to overhaul him again, to attempt once more to persuade him he could not refuse what she wanted. But then it became obvious the horse was galloping away from him. When his sole reaction was a grimace at the fact the unfortunate animal was again being forced to travel at a headlong pace after only a short period of rest.
Then the badlands terrain behind him swallowed the final remnants of every sound except those made by himself and his stallions; and the Virginian was able with ease to put out of his mind all thoughts of Braddock and everyone and everything connected with the town. It was not quite such an effortless exercise to keep his imagination from indulging in flights of fancy about the future. Which he found more than a little disconcerting – until he faced up to the obvious. That for many years he had so seldom had anything but a barren future to contemplate, he was virtually undergoing a previously untried experience almost too attractive to ignore.
But he beat the near compulsion by forcing himself to recall and to keep firmly in his mind some of the claims he had made to the girl. Considered them out of context, without reference to her or the warning she gave that triggered them.
… I’m in between at the moment … wasn’t an out-and-out killer … never enjoyed it … it never bothered me … nine times out of ten people wound up getting killed … kill anybody who tries to stop me doing what I want to …
While he ran these partially and perhaps not always correctly remembered phrases through his mind, as a defense mechanism against uncharacteristic and disquieting daydreaming, he resumed his vigilant survey of his surroundings. Keeping watch on all sides for any brand of trouble. Outwardly nonchalant as he rode toward a horizon of low hills that looked like they could mark the north-east boundary of these badlands. Inside as cold as polar ice, as hard as a diamond and as sharp as a finely-honed blade in his will to better whatever adversities were placed before him this time.
The cloud cover sank lower and its color darkened to threaten rain as the afternoon lengthened toward evening. But the lone rider remained dry as the dusk gathered, the moon as ineffective as the sun against the ominous sky. So that when full night was clamped down on the land that had gotten to be less rugged the closer the man and his horses came to the range of hills, it brought a darkness of almost pitch black. And the Virginian continued along the trail at the same unhurried pace for just another mile or so in the night – until he reached the building he had first seen more than an hour earlier, before the intervening terrain rather than the lessening light had hidden it from him.
It stood to the right of the trail, some way beyond the point where the trail ran off the badlands and into the hill country. Steele had been able to see the place from such a distance because it was sited on the shoulder of a rise at one side of a valley. Then the trail dipped and twisted a tortuous way through one last patch of broken terrain before it straightened and leveled to cross a strip of flatland where the grays and the browns, the subdued reds and yellows of dust and rock and vegetation of only the most tenacious kind gradually gave way to predominantly various shades of green.
The Virginian was midway along the straightaway when full night all but blinded him, but he had firm bearings on his destination as he crossed the ill-defined line where the arid badlands and the well-watered hill country merged. And, soon after this, he heard in the distance the sounds of running water. A few moments later began to move up another grade as the trail swung gently away from north-east toward east, the trickling and rippling of moving water becoming louder, but not loud.
Then the trail crested the rise and ran level and straight again, maybe fifty feet up from the bottom of a valley lushly filled with grass and timber and brush; its low-sided three-mile width and indeterminate length obviously watered by more than the small creek at which Steele allowed his horses to drink their fill after he swung stiffly down from the saddle.
The creek had its source somewhere up in the timber toward the top of the valley slope and wound a downward course that was gradual – so that the water was kept constantly moving and clear but did not torrent as it ran past the building and across the trail. It was some ten feet wide and no deeper than eighteen inches at its center where it was forded by the trail. But now it was only a dry fall after a long, hot summer and whoever had sited this building on the bank of the creek had obviously done so at a time of the year when the ravages of the last heavy rains were no longer apparent – and lacked the good sense to foresee what would inevitably happen when the next ones came.
The mistake was made several years ago and it was remarkable, perhaps, that enough of the place remained standing to give the impression from a distance that there was a building there. Whereas it was just two stone walls still standing and two more that had been reduced to footings, the materials that had formed them carried away down the slope beyond the trail along with the disintegrated roof and whatever had furnished the interior of the place, maybe. Maybe, also, the hapless occupants had been swept to destruction by the creek swollen to the proportions of a rushing river. And some livestock which was inadequately sheltered in an outbuilding of which there were even fewer traces left.
Steele accepted the dereliction of what he guessed had been a stage-line way station with equanimity and made the best of what the place and its surroundings had to offer. First unsaddled the black stallion and hobbled all three horses on a lush, turfed area of the creek bank. Then, as the temperature began to drop sharply, he gathered wood and lit a fire in the angle of the two walls. Cooked a meal of beef and beans and coffee. Ate this while water was heating and then washed up and shaved; stripped to the waist in the heat of the fire to do this. Fully dressed again, except for his hat which he placed over his face and his topcoat which he used as an extra blanket, he bedded down. And was lulled into a shallow sleep by the soporific gurgling of water over smooth rocks counterpointed by the crackling of flames consuming weathered timber. While his right hand was fisted around the frame of the Colt Hartford at his side and the need to rest after a long day suppressed a nagging doubt concerning whether he was as totally alone as he appeared to be.
In the night, the rain continued to hold off and toward dawn the cloud cover thinned and began to break up. The air remained perfectly still and became bitterly cold – did not begin to lose its raw edge until the leading arc of a red sun showed above the ragged horizon in the east.
Steele was in no position to see the sun – just the way it lit the far side of the valley and some of the broken ground to the south from his campsite at the ruined way station on the west-facing slope. He did not miss whatever slight rise in the air temperature the sun produced, though, for he quickly stirred the embers of last night’s fire into roaring flames fueled by more dry timber. To heat water for coffee and washing up. And all the time he was still vaguely troubled by the doubt that had lurked at the back of his mind as he drifted toward sleep last night. But, in this instance, the mysterious and not always totally reliable sense that acts to warn anybody with perception when they have unseen company did not caution the Virginian that whoever might be close at hand meant him harm.
Thus, he did not take the trouble to check on the validity of his instinct until he needed just to douse the dying fire and saddle the black stallion before he was ready to leave the night camp. And then he merely peered out through a glassless and frameless window in the most complete of the standing walls; raked his unblinking gaze over the slope beyond the creek and paid more careful attention to the countless places of concealment on the area of the badlands within his range of vision. Saw nothing that moved under the now cloud-free sky. And neither did he hear anything against the familiar sounds of the flowing creek water.
Until somebody smacked their lips, and vented a noise that was somewhere between a snore and a snort. When, about to abandon his study of the distant vista anyway, he suddenly leaned out through the window and snapped his attention to the grassy bank of the creek at the base of the wall to the right. And saw Josephine Remmick lying there, curled and huddled into a tight ball with her back pressed against the wall directly opposite the point on the other side where the fire was almost burnt out. She had her knees pushed up against her chest and held them there with her interlocked hands. If she had been frightened and confused when she woke herself up, she had recovered by the time his coal-black eyes locked on her gray-flecked-with-black ones; each getting an upside-down view of the other as she turned her head so the back of it was to the ground.
Steele vented a soft sigh through his nose, then drew back his lips to bare his clenched teeth. And rasped: ‘Oh, boy!’
‘We already both know I’m a girl, Mr. Steele,’ she countered. She sounded like her teeth were on the point of chattering with the cold, but she managed to work an expression of mild rebuke into her eyes.
‘So you won’t take it personally if I say sonofabitch, Miss Remmick?’ he growled.
She eased herself out of the ball, no longer returning his steady gaze. And, as when she picked herself up after being thrown from the horse yesterday, she moved with great care in getting unsteadily to her feet. It was apparent her left knee still caused her pain, but it was the cold that was her major discomfort as she leaned her back to the wall and by turns blew into her cupped hands and vigorously massaged her upper arms. Her cheeks were ashen under the freckles and her nose was somewhere between red and purple. The more vivid red rims around her eyes were probably the result of crying rather than exposure, Steele guessed. And discovered with a simultaneous stirring of irritation with himself that he could not remain indifferent to the girl’s plight as she stared into infinity while she continued to fight the cold by working at getting her circulation flowing again.
But she spoke before he was able to think of some way to counteract the harshness of his sardonic retort. Said miserably as she now hugged herself while she stared into the middle distance:
‘Since I intend to go my own way just as soon as I can get myself unfrozen and we are unlikely to meet up with each other again, whatever you say to me, Mr. Steele, is of no consequence at all to me.’
‘Sure, Miss Remmick,’ he replied to the girl who was making a valiant effort to sound at least the age she claimed to be. ‘Just bound to leave you cold.’
Chapter Twelve
SHE MADE A face, did not reply and continued with her attempts to get warm while still staring out across the badlands. And Steele withdrew his head and shoulders from the hole in the wall that had once been a window. Then, while he rekindled heat from the fire and took the ingredients and utensils needed to cook breakfast from his bedroll and saddlebags, he could hear her beating her arms against her body; until the smell of bubbling coffee began to permeate the clear air for the second time that morning, when she became silent.
But he knew, as he leaned forward from where he sat on his saddle to pour coffee from the pot into a cup, that she was standing at the window. And, as he dropped some strips of salt bacon into the skillet and they started to sizzle, he reached back with his arm to offer her the coffee and said:
‘This will help to warm you, Miss Remmick.’
She caught her breath, surprised he knew she was watching him. Exclaimed: ‘But what about you?’
‘Had mine first thing. You won’t get to have all the bacon, though.’
‘Gosh, thanks,’ she said, and came through the window rather than swinging around the end of the wall. ‘But you really didn’t have to do this.’ She took the cup and held it in both hands, using it to warm them before she took a drink. Shuddered in enjoyment as the coffee warmed her insides.
He stayed on his saddle, his back to her as he pushed the bacon around in the skillet, relishing the aroma given off by the frying meat. Asked: ‘You fall off again?’
‘What?’
‘Your horse?’
She did not answer immediately, and he wondered for the duration of the pause if she was contemplating a lie. But then she gave a gulping choke, and he knew the query had caught her while she took a swallow of the coffee.
‘No, Mr. Steele,’ she replied in a contrite tone. ‘I have an admission to make. I set him off in a bolt again. Not in a temper, though. I was real mad at first when you told me to go home. But I got over it. While I stood there watching you ride away. Soon as you went over the ridge, I set him to running again. To fool you into thinking I’d gone home. Then I set off walking.’
He continued to prod at the bacon with a fork after he had turned it, then glanced over his shoulder. Saw that now she was within a few feet of the fire she no longer looked so cold-pinched. But he caught her wiping saliva off her lips while her eyes tasted the food and he said as he emptied a can of beans into the skillet:
‘Got over being mad at me, then went crazy?’
