Beyond the Broken Road, page 20
Sam smiled at him, the darkness masking both of their faces. "I wouldn't count too much on that."
“We going out next week?”
“I haven’t decided.”
"If you don't lead us south, we’ll go without you."
“You will, huh?”
"I've been talking to the boys. They're restless. We got that contract, and they want to fill it. We didn't get nothing off the last one."
"You don't have to remind me." Sam rolled and lit a cigarette, his mind on anything but returning to Mexico. He didn't want to go, had lost his taste for it. Was it Abby or had it happened before her? But what did he owe the men working for him? If he tried to run the ranch, from what he’d get from it, he'd be lucky to pay two of them salaries to begin. If he backed out of this last deal, they'd be left with nothing. Had he gotten soft?
"I'll scout out the herds," Rock offered from behind Snake. "If we do this right, we shouldn't be gone long."
Sam nodded, not wanting this. Did he have a choice? He began to consider the possibility of not going. Let the men go without him.
"I'm going this time," Sandy said quietly.
Sam swung around to face him. "You are not.”
“It’s only fair. You said I could when I was a man. I am a man, Sam. You know it’s true.”
“You don't need this, don't need to start down a road that'll leave you with a stain you can never get out. You start down this road, won’t ever be a girl like Cindy at the end of it."
"I want my chance,” Sandy insisted.
“Chance for what? To die?”
Nothing he was going to say was going to change the boy’s mind. Sam could see that even before he heard the youth continue his argument. "I want to ride with the gang like you promised I could when I was ready. I am a man now. I am ready.”
“And when the herds down there run out, when the buyers quit wanting that, when the Rurales close in, and you have to give that up. Where else will you follow Snake? Robbing stages and banks?”
“It’s not the same.”
"I don't want you finding out that it is."
"You can't stop me, Sam. They said I can go, and I will. You can't protect me forever."
"I'll go instead, and you can have my share when we sell the herd. You can use it for a start." Sam saw no other choice. This was his fault. He had to fix it.
"I can't let you do that." Sandy's voice cracked. "Either I'm a man, or I'm not. This is the proving of it for me."
"You don't have to steal to become a man."
"That woman's made you weak," Snake growled. "You're trying to make the rest of us weak too."
Sam wasn’t sure he was wrong. Maybe she had. He didn’t have a good feel for going south this time, but he saw no way out. He was ensnared in a web that he’d spun for himself. He had thought he could stop Sandy when the time came, but he saw he couldn’t.
"Sandy," he said, trying one more time, "I haven't done much that matters in this life, but you... I've thought maybe you'd be that one thing. You go with them, and it's all for nothing."
"What a crock," Snake said. "You think he's yellow, think he's too weak to make it, and this is your way of keeping him safe."
Sam turned on him. “He’s a kid. He should be riding and laughing with young men like Rafe, not with the likes of you or me.”
Sandy shook his head. "You can't stop me, Sam. I got to go. I got to know I can do it."
"You're a fool then," Sam said, glaring at Snake, who he knew had planted this in the youth’s thinking. "All right," he said, taking a long drag on the cigarette. He wouldn’t think further on this. "We'll send out Rock tomorrow morning to find the herds."
Sandy left with Snake, bubbling with excitement. Ollie stood at Sam's shoulder. "You tried.”
“Too late.”
Sam looked up at the house, thought of Abby waiting. He knew what she wanted, what she had been promising him all day. He wanted it too, but he couldn’t take her now and go off. What if she got pregnant? What if he didn’t return from this? He could feel black clouds gathering.
He wanted that woman with an ache in his gut. He knew she would feel rejected when he put her off, that she would hate him for going south again, but he had no choice. He couldn’t let Sandy go alone, and he wouldn’t take the chance of leaving another child to be reared without a father.
But maybe he was wrong. Maybe he’d come back. Maybe she would wait for him. Maybe they would have a future, could start a new life. He wished he could believe it was possible, but he didn’t.
The parlor was lit with several lamps, and Abby sat on the sofa, her feet curled under her after dinner. He had seen the looks she had given him all evening, not missed her mood of anticipation. He had no idea how he was going to tell her that he was heading south.
"I thought before dinner tonight we could read some poetry," she suggested.
"Poetry huh? Isn't that for sissies?" He knew that would get her dander up.
She gave him a mock scowl. "I know you said that deliberately. There's poetry, and there's poetry.”
“All seems the same to me.” He knew it wasn’t, but he liked arguing with her, getting her to convince him he was wrong.
“What kind of poetry would you like?” She smiled seductively, and he sucked in a breath.
“Bound to read me one of those dead poets, huh?” he teased, sitting on the chair across from her. He didn't trust himself to sit next to her.
“If some are dead, their ideas are not.”
“I’ll take your word for that.” He thought of how much he’d like to be sitting next to her, taking her into his arms, dropping that book of poetry onto the sofa beside her and teaching her about live emotions, about her own body, but he wouldn’t. Not tonight. Maybe never.
“I would like to read you something by Alfred Lord Tennyson."
"Sissy sounding name." He smiled at her look of annoyance with narrowed eyes.
“He wrote about a lot of masculine subjects--like war, fighting for a heroic cause, dying but yes, also about love."
“Can’t believe any real man writes poems.”
“Poetry is about ideas, Sam.”
“The kind a man never experienced but likes to talk about what someone else lived?” he asked with a smile.
She gave him another look. "Tennyson wrote one about a true event during the Crimean war, and it's called 'The Charge of the Light Brigade.'"
He was not going to like that subject, but he couldn’t afford to have her reading love words. He’d never resist what came next. Hell, even watching her milk a cow had had him hard and wanting. Likely so would listening to her read about war or whatever went with the charge of the whatever. He managed a smile and sat back, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, a pose as relaxed as he could force and listened to her melodic voice as she put feeling into her reading.
“Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. 'Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns,' he said: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. 'Forward, the Light Brigade!' Was there a man dismay'd? Not tho' the soldier knew Someone had blunder'd: Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why. Theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred."
Hell, Sam thought, it was worse than he had expected. He listened as the story went on. Cannons to the left, cannons to the right. He had been there. The words struck him like bullets. Was this a warning? If so, he couldn’t yield to it. He was committed as surely as had been that foolish Light Brigade.
"What did you think?" she asked when she had finished the poem and closed the book.
He rose from his chair and walked to the window, staring into the night. He wondered what she hoped to hear from him. Did she want to hear that he saw them as words of heroism? Or what he really thought as he saw the story about a willingness to die for a foolish cause. He knew nothing of noble causes, only of survival.
"Nice poem," he said when he saw she was determined to wait for his opinion.
"That’s it?” Her tone was exasperated.
“What do you want me to say? That I think like that. I don’t.” He turned to look at her. “I’m a simple man, Abby. I do what needs doing; don’t think more than the day ahead most of the time.”
“Is that true?”
“Did you want more? Want a man who could write poetry like that? A man who thinks in terms of honor?”
“It’s about men. I thought you'd relate to it."
“Through a pointless, stupid death?”
“It was hardly stupid. They did what they had to do.”
"Men do that usually when they got themselves in a spot never should have been in to begin." Certainly, fit the situation he was facing. He had to go with Sandy. Couldn't let the youth go alone to Mexico, maybe have the others abandon him if the going got tough. He would go, but he saw no honor in it for him or anyone. He'd go because the alternative to going was worse.
It was how he’d lived his whole life. Looking at two choices, neither of which did he want, but he had to take one. He had, and he’d lived. He was responsible for Sandy, for the boy’s choices. If not for Sam, Sandy could be living a normal life of a boy somewhere. No, that wasn't true either. Sandy's chance for a normal life had been ended when he was too young to understand the whys or wherefores of it.
She had moved to the window and put her hand on his shoulder. "It seems to have put you in a bad mood. I only wanted to show you that poets can write of men’s events, of more than romance. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” None of it was her fault. She had given him good things. He wished he was better at words to tell her what she had brought into his life. No poems would be coming from him.
“Shall I read you something else? Something that might put you in a better mood?”
“You think a poem can do that?” he asked, trying to lighten his own darkness. Her poem had been prophetic. He felt it. Mexico would be a disaster this time. Even knowing, he couldn’t change it. He ran his hand over his face, wishing he could erase the pictures that were always there.
“Some can.” She picked up a different book. He heard her soft, sweet voice as she read again. These words he knew, had heard before, long ago. God was supposed to be a man’s shepherd. Even in the valley of the shadow of death, he wouldn’t be alone. Those words weren’t meant for the likes of him.
He didn't need to hear them to know them; so instead, he watched Abby, the fire reflected in her hair, the thick hair falling in tendrils that brushed against her cheek as he wanted to do. He watched her mouth, imagining it moist and wet with love for him, thinking of those lips forming other words, ones he wanted to hear. He closed his eyes to stop the thoughts. He couldn't let himself dream that way. Not now. Now he had to harden himself. When she had finished, the room fell silent with only the crackling of the fire as a sound.
"I have heard that one," he said finally opening his eyes and looking at her, seeing the questions in those beautiful brown eyes.
“Where had you heard it, Sam?”
He ignored her question. “It’d be good to have faith, I suppose. In something."
"God is there for everyone, Sam."
"You believe that?"
“Of course.”
“I know the stories, Abby. Doesn’t mean I buy them.”
“Where did you hear them?”
He had not meant to tell her. Never meant to tell her, but he heard himself starting. “When you're a kid running around with nobody much caring, there are some who use what they see as your weakness for their own ends."
"What are you saying?"
"Where I heard the stories. There was a preacher in a church in Abilene. He pretended he cared about the boys who were castaways. He did it because... of what he wanted. I was young and stupid when I first heard his stories, didn't know what he really wanted until one day. I fought his hands and him off and ran for it. I learned then the value of those stories."
He saw the moment she realized what he was telling her. “What a monster. How old were you?"
"Maybe eight."
"Did you bring charges against him?"
He laughed with no humor. “You think anybody would believe a street scruff against a man of the cloth. No, I felt lucky I got away.”
“But then he kept on doing it.”
"For a while."
"For a while?"
"Years later, he was shot. The law could never prove who did it, but the little kid he had that time, he was the last one."
She frowned. “Sandy was in Abilene...” She stopped.
"I shouldn't have told you about any of this. Just you asked where I’d heard the stories."
"In the worst possible way and probably distorted versions."
He shrugged. "Maybe so. Maybe there's no good way when the promises are all about fire and brimstone, about everlasting punishment if you don't do what God and the minister say. And somewhere down the road, I figured it out. Hell is just a word and more likely here on earth than somewhere else.”
Abby was not sure she believed in some kind of eternal damnation herself. She managed a smile. “Well, maybe the man who tried to hurt you ended up finding out.”
“Could be. In the moment he died, I saw his face, saw he was scared he was about to find out.”
She knew she should not have been shocked, but she was. "You killed him?"
"Murdered. You asked before how many men I'd killed. He was the only one that wasn't self-defense. I could have gotten his last victim away from him without killing him, but I didn't."
“The boy was Sandy, wasn’t he?”
Sam stopped resisting the temptation to sit beside her on the sofa. He ran his finger over her cheek, the touch so light it was like breath of a butterfly against her skin. “Does it matter? The skunk wouldn’t fight me. There was only one way to stop him. That night I became judge, jury, even God, and I took him out."
She touched his hand, turned it against her lips and kissed the fingers. "That was not murder.” She knew legally perhaps it had been, but not where it counted. “What you did was defense of another but moreover of future boys. You are most likely right. I wish you weren’t, but probably you were. It’s sad to say that our legal system would fail that way but.” She stopped and shook her head. “Without that, he likely would have kept right on."
“Maybe and maybe I just wanted and exacted revenge.”
She had no answer for that. Perhaps he had. It would have been only human. “And now Sam, what do you want now?” He saw she was ready for him, for whatever he wanted with her. Making love would solve nothing for them, but he saw she was past caring about that.
“I don’t know.”
It wasn’t the answer she had wanted to hear. He had no choice. She’d think it was about her, but it wasn’t. He couldn’t tell her that now—maybe never. He’d have to stay away from her—for both their sakes.
The day Rock returned with his report on the lay of the land, Sam knew he could delay telling Abby no longer. He and she had skirted around a lot of issues. He wanted to make love to her, had seen her hurt that he hadn’t already done it. He knew from her soft yielding in his arms that she wanted him. He couldn’t take her. Not as it was. He forced himself not to touch her and struggled with the temptation to take the release he was sure awaited within her lovely body.
Walking into the house, he could hear Abby in the parlor humming, the sound of her soft, earthy voice cutting into his heart.
"Good afternoon," she said when he walked into the room. She put down the feather duster and walked to him. "You're in early. Is something wrong?"
Her intuitive ability to read his thoughts never ceased to amaze him. Sometimes it scared him, sometimes he cherished it, but today he dreaded it. "The boys and I are heading south tomorrow. I'm leaving Joe here to look after you and the place."
"South? You don't mean to get cattle, do you?" She dropped into a chair and looked up at him, disappointment in her big eyes.
He nodded. "We made an agreement for one more herd before I ever met you. The boys lost out on the payment for the last herd. They need this stake."
"You can't continue rustling. It's wrong."
"I can't not go." He wouldn't burden her with the knowledge that Sandy would go no matter what he did. He had tried several times to change the boy’s mind and been unsuccessful. It didn’t matter. The truth was simple. He was going, and he knew what that would say to her.
He could try to justify his actions as he had done for himself before. Tell her how the longhorns in the area from which they'd be rounding up were unbranded, that they belonged to dons who lived hundreds of miles to the south, who didn't even know their cattle were there, but none of that mattered because the cattle still didn't belong to him.
"You can't do this."
"I don't have a choice."
"There is always a choice."
"Sometimes it's already been made."
"It's not only wrong, it's dangerous. How can you take such risks?" Her dark eyes grew even darker. “If you’re leaving Joe, what does that mean about Sandy?”
"He’s going."
"I can’t believe you would take that boy on such a dangerous venture.”
“He’s a man now. He makes his own choices.”
“He could be killed.”
He nodded. "Rock saw a large herd only sixty miles or so south of the border. Nobody was around. I don't think we'll have any trouble." He knew that wasn't the truth. No one could ever know if there would be trouble. Sometimes it was simple. Round up the cattle, drive them north and collect the money. Other times they had to fight their way north, every mile marked with blood.
"Don't go.” She reached up, putting her arms around his neck. “You can have more now. You know you can.”
"I know you will not understand this. But I have to go. The men are counting on me. I can’t let them down." He would not promise there'd never be another trip, even though he believed it. He had no right to try to soften her heart with such a promise. Once he'd met her, he'd begun to think differently, to want to make the ranch into a home, to have all the things she said she wanted, except he hadn't dared plan for that even to himself because things had a way of not working out. He'd seen so many of his dreams smashed that he wouldn't promise her something he didn't know he could deliver.
