Shepherds Abiding In Dry Creek, page 13
“Horseback,” Elmer said without hesitation. “A horse is the only animal that can walk down that slope of yours without needing even a flashlight.”
Les nodded. It was certainly worth considering. “We could come in from the Redfern side. That fence between our two places runs fairly close to the draw leading down to my place. I don’t know how many horses they have that would make the ride, though.”
Elmer shrugged. “We could always call over to the Elkton place. The boys there would be happy to join us.”
The Elkton ranch was the only one of the ranches that had a large crew of workers still. The other places might hire summer help, but the men at the Elkton were seasoned year-round ranch hands. They were Montana men to the core. Les knew he could count on them if he found himself in a tight situation.
“I’m going to call them now,” Les said as he headed back toward the kitchen.
Marla stepped out of the kitchen before Les reached the doorway.
“You need to take me with you,” she said.
There wasn’t enough light to see her eyes, but Les felt the despair in them, anyway. He would stake his life on the fact that she was worried about her son. What he didn’t know was whether she was worried about him because he was innocent or because he was guilty.
Les shook his head. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I’ll sign a waiver saying you’re not responsible if I’m hurt.”
Les looked at her. “You think I’m worried about a lawsuit?”
Marla lifted her chin. “If you’re taking guns with you, I’m going.”
Les wondered when his life had become so complicated. Elmer was standing behind him, not even bothering to pretend he wasn’t listening. Mrs. Hargrove was eyeing him through the doorway of the kitchen. Les supposed if his friends hadn’t given him any privacy when they thought he was proposing marriage, he couldn’t expect them to give him any now.
“It’s because of the guns that you can’t go.” Les held up his hand. “And not just the guns we have. It’s the gun we know they have, too.”
“They don’t even have bullets.”
“I keep bullets in one of the drawers in the workshop,” Les said. “I have them on the top shelf in my closet, too. It won’t take them long to find bullets.”
Les didn’t add that Sammy might already have found the bullets when he was working in the workshop on that shepherd figure.
Marla might have come to the same realization, because she bit her lip. “All the more reason for me to go.”
Les shook his head.
“If you don’t take me with you, I’ll go, anyway. I know the way to your place. I’ve already driven there two times.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
Marla stepped back, but her voice was still strong. “You can’t stop me. Not unless you’re going to arrest me or something. Is that what you’re going to do? If you are, you might as well do it now.”
Marla put her hands out as if she was ready for handcuffs.
Les didn’t even carry handcuffs. “You know I don’t have enough to arrest you on.”
Les heard an indignant gasp, and this one wasn’t from Marla.
“Lester Wilkerson, I can’t believe you would seriously consider arresting Marla,” Mrs. Hargrove said as she stepped out of the kitchen. “Not when you’re planning to propose to her.”
“Oh.”
“Oh.”
There was a chorus of surprised female reactions and one startled grunt from Elmer.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said—” Mrs. Hargrove began.
“But he hasn’t asked yet, has he?” Linda interrupted. “No one’s drunk the cider.”
Les just looked at the two women. “When someone makes an unspoken prayer request, that doesn’t mean people can speak out what they think it might mean in some fantasy. Unspoken is unspoken. I wasn’t talking about proposing to anyone.”
“Oh.” That one came from Marla.
She was holding herself too still. Les felt her tension. Whoever she was and whatever her relationship was to that gang, she was so close to tears she could barely keep them in. Les could see her struggle.
“Not that whoever gets your promise to marry him won’t be one very fortunate man,” Les said softly.
Now that Mrs. Hargrove and Linda had done their damage, they slid back into the kitchen like cowards, dragging Elmer with them.
“I’m still going with you,” Marla whispered. Her eyes were black pools of determination. “You can’t keep me away.”
Les nodded. What she asked for was probably against a hundred regulations and the regular sheriff would have Les’s badge when he heard about it, but Les was still going to do it. He had no doubt Marla would head out to his place on her own. If she wasn’t in league with those two strangers, she could end up getting shot. If she was working with them, they’d know he was coming and he could be shot.
“You’ll stay with me, though,” Les said. “And when I say duck, you duck. You’ll be quiet when I say for you to be quiet. There will be others along with us and I’ll not have you jeopardize their safety in any way. Promise?”
“I promise,” Marla said. “And thank you.”
Les grunted. They said a fool was born every day; he knew of at least one who had been born on his birthday. If Sheriff Carl Wall ever got back from that fancy honeymoon trip of his, Les was going to ask him how a lawman handled stubborn women.
His only hope was that once Marla got a good look at the horses they would have to ride she would change her mind about going with him.
Marla reminded herself that Mary had been forced to ride a donkey to get where she needed to go. Then Marla looked at the defiant glint in the eye of the horse looking at her from across the barn and she wondered if a donkey wouldn’t be easier to handle.
Marla was with Les and Elmer at the Redfern barn and Chrissy was showing them the two horses that could make a ride tonight. It was a little before midnight, but Chrissy had been expecting them because of Les’s call. She looked too young to be the mother of two children, one a three-year-old son. She had on an old sweatshirt and sweatpants, and her blond hair was pulled back and tied with a scarf.
The Redferns’s barn was smaller than the one Les had, and Marla thought it looked more like what she imagined that manger scene with Mary and Joseph would be like. For one thing, there were more kinds of animals around. But that might be only because there were chickens nesting on a tall shelf in one of the horse stalls, and once they had been woken up, they kept squawking until it seemed as if there were a lot of animals besides the cows and horses in the poorly lit barn.
“You can borrow my boots,” Chrissy suggested to Marla. “If they’re too big, I have lots of thick socks.”
“Thank you.” Marla wondered why Montana people had such a fascination with their socks.
Chrissy was still looking at her critically. “And I have a wraparound scarf, too. That will keep your face warm.”
Marla looked over at where Les and Elmer were talking. They were stroking the heads of the two horses while they whispered together about something.
“I don’t want to hold them up.” Marla jerked her head at the men. “I’ll do fine with what I have on.”
“It’ll only take me a minute to get them,” Chrissy said as she started walking to the barn door. “Besides, they have to wait for the guys to get here from the Elkton ranch, anyway.”
Marla nodded. Of course they needed to wait. There were only two horses at the Redfern place and with Les, Elmer and her, they would need three horses. Marla looked at the two disgruntled horses standing beside the men now. She hoped she was the one who got the other horse that would be coming. She would guess that Mary’s donkey had been grateful for the privilege of carrying her around on its back; those two horses looked as if they’d just as soon stay in their warm stalls for the night and not be bothered with doing anything for anyone.
Marla changed her mind about the horses when the Elkton men called to them from outside the barn. She went to the door and looked out. Some of those horses looked fierce. One was stomping his feet impatiently and another was blowing into the air. They looked as if they were ready to go into battle. She wondered why no one rode donkeys anymore.
“Is that all?” Les asked from where he stood just outside the barn door. “Don’t you have another horse?”
Marla was glad Les recognized that none of the horses she’d seen tonight was suitable for her. She’d never been on a horse before; she needed a gentle ride.
There was a yard light that illuminated the area by the barn, and eight men with horses stood there waiting. The men all had heavy coats on their backs and boots on their feet. They all had Stetson hats on their heads, too, and when Marla looked more closely, she saw that they had knit scarves under their hats. It looked as if the hats held the scarves in place.
When the men heard Les’s question, they looked at each other.
“Didn’t Byron say he’d do that?” one of the men finally muttered.
Marla looked again. She did recognize Byron, the man from church on Sunday.
“Weren’t you supposed to bring the other horse?” another man finally said directly to Byron.
Marla saw Byron shrug. “I figured she’d rather ride with someone, since I doubt she even knows how to ride. I thought I’d let her ride with me.”
Les looked at Marla suspiciously. “You never said anything about not being able to ride a horse.”
“Maybe I can ride,” Marla said.
“I should have known.” Les shook his head. “Well, that settles it—you have to stay here. We don’t have a horse for you, anyway.”
“I can ride with someone.”
“She’s welcome to ride with me,” Byron said as he walked his horse closer to the barn door. He smiled down at Marla. “I always have room for a lady to ride with me.”
Les groaned. “She’s riding with me. Let’s get going.”
Marla thought it might be safer to ride with Byron. Les was looking even more disgruntled than the horses did. “I don’t mind riding with Byron.”
Les glared at her. “You’re riding with me.”
Marla followed Les over to the horse he had for the night. Chrissy had already said that one was named Stubby for stubborn. She reached out her hand and lightly touched the horse’s side.
“You don’t need to be frightened,” Les said softly as he came up beside her.
“I’ve never touched a horse before.”
Les smiled briefly. “I figured that.”
Les put one of his feet in the stirrup and swung himself into the saddle.
Then he reached down for Marla’s hand and moved his foot out of the stirrup. “Put your left foot there and swing up when I say.”
Marla took his arm and put her foot in the stirrup.
“Now.”
“Oh.” Just like that, Marla was on the back of a horse.
“You okay?”
“I think so.” Marla squirmed a little. She had not thought the horse’s back would be quite so wide.
“Good. Move in as close as you can and hold on to me.”
Marla didn’t want to get too close, so she settled in with a couple of inches between her back and Les’s. And then the horse took a step forward and she plastered herself to his back. How did anyone ever stay seated on these things? Weren’t they supposed to be as comfortable as rocking chairs?
Les had taken the horse outside the barn to join the other riders. It wasn’t until everyone stood in the security light in the yard that Marla noticed every saddle except the one on Les’s horse also had a long leather pocket. Out of that pocket stood a rifle.
Marla shivered, and it had nothing to do with the cold night air or the fact that she was riding on an animal that could, at any minute, rid himself of her. What chance did the night have with so many rifles around?
“God bless you,” Chrissy called softly as the horsemen all started to file past the barn.
Marla smiled at Chrissy and waved. She would have felt better if Mrs. Hargrove had been here to pray for everyone. She could only hope that, wherever the older woman was, she was praying.
The night had a scattering of distant stars and she could see the subtle shift in the sky from black to deep gray that signaled there were clouds above them.
“Here,” Les said, and Marla felt him reach back toward her with something. She took it in her hand. It was a soft wool scarf like the ones the other men had around their necks. “Put it on. It’s going to be snowing any minute now.”
Marla wrapped the scarf around her head and rested her cheek against Les’s back. He was wearing a heavy wool jacket, and if she leaned her cheek against the black jacket for a couple of minutes the wool became warm. With the scarf wrapped around her and her face pressed to the warm space on Les’s back, she was almost cozy in all this darkness.
She saw her first snowflake. It settled on Les’s jacket near her face, glistening for a moment before her breath made it melt. The air felt moist and smelled damp. She could feel the pull of Les’s arm muscles through his jacket as he used the reins to guide the horse.
Les was at the head of the line of horsemen. No one spoke. The only sounds were the horse hooves scraping the ground. They rode down a ravine until they reached a barbed-wire fence.
“Go ahead and cut it,” Les said to another man who had stepped down from his horse. “I don’t have cattle in this pasture right now, anyway.”
The horsemen bunched up together as they waited for the fence to be cut.
“You doing okay?” a man leaned in and asked Marla.
With his hat pulled over his face, it took Marla a second to recognize Byron. She smiled at him. “Yes. Thanks for asking.”
“If you need any help, let me know.”
“She’s fine,” Les interrupted with a look over his shoulder at the other man.
When the fence was cut, the horses started to move again. Marla felt the cold on her legs above the line of the boots she had borrowed from Chrissy and on the back of her head where the wool scarf did not reach.
Les shifted in the saddle and Marla shifted with him. She wondered if Mary had ever ridden behind Joseph’s back on that donkey. She hoped for the young girl’s sake that she had. Despite the problems Marla knew would face them all when they reached the barn, she felt safe riding behind Les.
Chapter Thirteen
Les put his hand up and everyone pulled their horses to a stop. They had ridden up to the edge of the ravine surrounding the buildings on his ranch. The sheriff’s department from Miles City should have had time to get themselves in place by now. Not that they would be close enough to do much if everything fell apart. The only place for them to wait, and not be seen, was well back of the last rise before the dip that led down to his buildings.
The night was still dark, but the light layer of snow that had been falling would make them all stand out more as they approached the house and barn. They would need to be especially quiet.
Les leaned back a little so he could feel Marla’s warmth against him. He was going to have to find her a place to stay where she would be out of any trouble that might start. Probably the best thing would be to have her stay with the horses.
Les scanned the buildings. There was a subdued light coming from the window in the back of his barn. It was from the section that was now the workshop. He never kept a light burning when he left the workshop. Sometimes he used a night-light in the barn during calving season, but at this time of year there was no need for a light.
“Someone’s there, all right,” Elmer whispered as he rode up beside Les.
Les nodded. He had already noted that as they rode around the edge of the rise to the place that dipped down behind his buildings, he could see the front windows to the barn and no light was showing through them. Since there was a light in the back window, that meant whoever was inside had covered the windows in front. The road into his place looked squarely at those front windows. Which could only mean that whoever was inside his barn was trying to hide the fact that they were in his workshop. They would not expect anyone to see the window in the back.
Les wondered briefly if they were planning to catch him unaware or if they were hoping he just wouldn’t check the barn when he got back home tonight.
“We’ll leave the horses behind the house,” Les whispered to the other men as he touched the flank of his horse to urge him to keep going down the slight hill. The snow made the ground slippery and the horses had to pick their way down.
Someone listening closely could have heard the sounds of hooves sliding across small rocks. The person would have to be outside, though, and Les was betting that none of the young men in his barn would want to linger outside on a night as cold as this one. And they had no reason to be outside. They were no doubt inside waiting for the sound of his pickup and the glare of his headlights coming from the opposite direction.
It took twenty minutes to ride from the top of the rise to the flat area in back of Les’s house.
Les was relieved they had made it to the house without anyone inside the barn looking out that back window. He hadn’t expected them to look and wasn’t sure that they would see anything, anyway, since their eyes would not be accustomed to the dark. All they might have seen was a shadowy shape. An old mountain man would know to investigate something like that. Young men from the city wouldn’t give it a second thought.
Les dismounted, then lifted his arms up to Marla. She practically fell into his arms, and he held her steady for a minute when her feet touched the ground.
“Cold?” he asked.
Marla nodded. “Sore, too.”
“Maybe you should sit here and rest.” Les had been trying to figure out how to convince Marla she needed to stay somewhere safe, and had concluded that his best plan would be to not tell her it was for her safety. “We need someone to stay with the horses.”
“Stay with the horses! I don’t know anything about horses.”
