Cactus Rose, page 14
He knew what he was going to do.
Ten
Rosie heard the approach of a rider, threw aside the basket she was trying to weave with poor success, and dashed to the door.
The sun was high and blazing. It must’ve been past noon. Heat waves rose off the valley floor. Her feeling of vulnerability flared like a brush fire. She reached for her gun. Who would dare to come so far onto her property?
She couldn’t make out who was riding toward her except it wasn’t Del. Her heart sank. That wasn’t Del’s horse. In all the years she and Abner had lived there, only a few strangers had ever found their way through the rocky passageway into the valley from the road. A warning shout from the doorway, and her gun barrel jutting out, had always been enough to send a curious stranger away.
When the rider was within earshot, Rosie yelled from the doorway in her deepest voice, “You’re on private property! Turn around and don’t come back!”
The rider halted.
With her heart drumming, Rosie waited for the rider to turn his horse, but when he didn’t, she cocked her gun.
“I got your head in my sights!” she yelled as forcefully as she could. “I’m a crack shot!” Her hands were shaking.
The rider kept coming.
Hoping she didn’t have to make good her threat, Rosie sent a warning shot over the rider’s head. The sound of it resounded across the valley and shocked her senses. She couldn’t believe she had actually pulled the trigger.
“This is private property! Get out!” She was shaking all over now. She didn’t want to have to kill a man. If nothing else, it would mean another trip to town with another dead body. “Get the hell off this land!” she yelled. “You’re trespassing!”
“It’s me, Rosie,” she heard a man call. For a desperate moment she so wanted it to be Del’s voice. Her heart leapt with hope.
But then she saw the darkly bearded face and realized it was Bear Brummit. She lowered the hammer of her gun. She didn’t like him taking the liberty of coming all the way out to where she lived. This was just the kind of thing she had wanted to avoid by remarrying.
“What do you want, Mr. Brummit?” she snapped, stepping outside into the hot sunshine. She kept the gun at her side, well within sight, but she had to squint to see Mr. Brummit’s face in the glare. “I might’ve shot you. You know Abner didn’t want anybody coming here. I don’t either.”
Keeping a good ten yards’ distance from her, Mr. Brummit reined and then climbed from his horse. He removed his hat. His slicked-back hair shone with oil. “Afternoon, Rosie. Was you expecting trouble?” He gave a nod toward the gun. He wasn’t smiling.
“What do you want?”
“I come to pay a call is all,” he said, looking peeved. His eyes swept over her. Then he looked around at the place. It looked a sight better than it had when she brought Del there the first time. “I thought you might want to know that hired husband of yours left town yesterday. Headed for Tucson, he said.”
Rosie swallowed hard. “So you’ve told me. Go on back to town. I don’t need anybody’s help here. I’m fine alone, and I will shoot you if you come any closer!”
Rosie couldn’t remember if she had ever seen Mr. Brummit smile before, but he did so now. Did he think she was joking? His smile was really no more a broadening of the space beneath his mustache. He was wearing what looked like a new shirt and suspenders. He reeked of bay rum.
“I ain’t never seen the inside of your place,” Mr. Brummit said in a pleasant tone. “Want to invite me in?”
“You’ve never seen this place at all, as far as I know,” Rosie said. “Have you been out here before?”
“Why, sure, years ago, before you got here. I traded with Abner from the start. Now, don’t act so skittish. I’m not here to harm you. Why would I harm you? It’s a thirsty ride out here. Can’t you be sociable and offer me a drink?”
She didn’t want to reveal even the existence of water on her place, so she didn’t point to the spring where he might fetch himself and his horse some water. She stared into Mr. Brummit’s eyes, sick at the sight of him. His mouth might be attempting a smile, but his eyes were the same shrewd black as always.
“I didn’t invite you here. I don’t have drinking water in the house.” She lifted the gun barrel a few inches. She would wing him first, she decided. Arm or leg?
He moved so fast, Rosie was startled from her thoughts. One minute she was looking at Mr. Brummit’s eyes. The next he had her slammed up against the sun-warmed outside wall of her house. His hand gripped her wrist so hard she was sure he meant to break the bones.
“I mean you no harm, Rosie,” he crooned through his teeth, pressing hard against her and looking down into her face.
She could smell his licorice-whip breath. She was taken so by surprise all she could think was that he must have bad teeth to disguise the smell of his breath with candy from his store.
“I’ve considered myself your friend a lot of years, Rosie. I’ve worried about you out here alone. Now, calm down and understand that I’m here to pay a friendly call on you. You were willing to marry a stranger and bring him out here. I say you owe me a little something for all the trading we done. I didn’t have to take your baskets, you know. I helped you out when no one else bothered. Turn loose of your gun now. Drop it down onto the ground like a good girl. I didn’t come out here to get shot at.”
“Turn loose of my wrist,” she hissed defiantly.
The moment he loosened his grip, she jammed the barrel of her gun into his side. She knew she was bruising him. She cocked the hammer.
“Get away from me,” she said as harshly as she could. “You ever come here again, I’ll shoot you on sight. Back off right now. If I pull the trigger, you’re dead, and you know it. I’ll swear out a complaint against you with the sheriff the next time I come to town. I swear I will! Go!”
Mr. Brummit’s lower lip protruded as he frowned down at her in disbelief. His dark eyes glittered with malice. He didn’t care about her, Rosie was certain. Like everyone else, he only wanted her land. Offering to marry her was just his way of trying to get it. She just wished he couldn’t feel her trembling as he pressed so rudely against her. He knew she was afraid.
The instant the pressure of his body against her eased, she twisted away and flung herself into the house. The door was stout pine. She slammed it with all her strength. Dirt sifted down between the logs supporting the roof. The door might withstand a gunshot, but the window was so large Mr. Brummit could easily smash it and step inside.
Rosie couldn’t move fast enough. She felt clumsy with fear as she lifted the pine log into the brackets that barred the door. Through the window, she could see Brummit standing in the yard, fuming.
Leaning against the door, she listened for some parting remark but he said nothing. A minute ticked by. He must be trying to decide what to do. Who would she trade with now, she wondered, feeling heartsick. She would never set foot in his store again.
Was that a sigh of exasperation she heard on the other side of the door? Then footsteps crunching, the creak of saddle leather. Rosie gasped for breath, fighting tears as she heard the first scuff of the horse’s hooves moving away in the gravel.
Had she overreacted? Her hostility had driven Mr. Brummit to press his cause and reveal the kind of man he was. Now she had another enemy.
• • •
Del established a crude camp within a cluster of boulders among the rim rocks on the eastern ridge of Rosie’s valley. It was a place sheltered enough that he could sleep a little without fear of being discovered.
He had spent much of the previous night riding along the ridge where he could see the faint light from her house. At dawn he had watched her emerge from the house and scan the valley before going to the barn and the spring. When she went back inside the house, and he was certain she would spend most of the day inside weaving, he felt safe in exploring near the box canyon.
He found a place where he could view the horse trail they had taken the day they visited the canyon. He supposed he was looking directly down upon the area where the ancient marking identified the opening to the canyon. From there he made his way deep among the boulders and wind-twisted pines on the mesa in hopes of glimpsing the brow of rock sheltering the cliff dwellings.
It was an arduous search done completely on foot. He left Banjo at his camp. He imagined ancient people traveling the same mesa. Perhaps ancient enemies had tried to find the hidden cliff dwellings. He wondered if someone had stumbled upon Abner at his work coming from this direction. But he saw no tracks. There was no indication whatsoever that anyone had passed that way in years.
It was late in the afternoon when Del struggled to find his way back to his camp where Banjo waited in the gloom. He was hungry, tired and frustrated. He felt he was wasting his time, searching, while Rosie lived on at the ranch house by herself. He wanted to be with her. He did not want to be there on the mesa in the heat, looking for something he was afraid he would never find, a second entrance to the ruins and proof Abner had been ambushed.
But then, just when he was reaching for dried jerky, he lifted his head. He smelled something on the wind, a scent that did not belong in the desert. He couldn’t bring to mind what it was. On guard, Del climbed to the nearest high point and, keeping himself low to the rocks, turned his face into the breeze.
There was someone up there. He could hear his own heart thumping in his ears. It was possible someone had happened upon Abner this way. A demented old man might have reacted very badly to an unexpected visitor. It could have been Apaches. A prospector.
Del heard gravel dribbling down a steep trail. It sounded like the scrabble of climbing footsteps on rocks, a slip, a curse, heavy breathing, all on the wind. The sound could have carried from a mile away. Listening hard, Del held his breath.
White man, Del thought finally, his every sense on alert. Indians didn’t smell like that.
He moved stealthily to where he thought the scent and sounds were coming from. He moved and then stopped to listen again. After a few seconds, he saw through the late afternoon haze, a rider disappearing around a jumble of boulders.
Del dashed to follow, but the rider vanished down a gulch. He must’ve been moving at a gallop there. Del heard distant hoof beats. There was no way of knowing which direction he had taken. Without Banjo close at hand there was no hope of following.
Retracing the man’s tracks, he found where a horse had been tied for a time. Picking his way to a dangerous ledge of rock, Del saw not the well-hidden cliff dwellings themselves, but a dark corner of the deep box canyon. Even in the waning light, anyone happening upon a sight like this would be fascinated. One would want to find a way to climb down. Locating a water source in the desert was always a hope, as important as gold. Deep places suggested the possibility of cool retreat, and water.
Whoever had been climbing in this area, Del noted, was clumsy. The intruder left a trail even Del could follow. By the tracks along the top of the ridge, Del saw the first of several natural stone steps. Making his way down to the box canyon floor, he felt certain no casual intruder had happened this way. This was a known entrance to someone coming here regularly. This was what Del had been searching for all day. The second entrance to the ruins.
Had he explored the box canyon more thoroughly when he was there with Rosie, he might have found it. He should have visualized the long ago inhabitants going about their daily lives. He might have guessed there was a way out up this secluded corner. Standing in the shadow of the ridge Del could see across to the clearing where Abner once worked beneath his lean-to. Someone might have easily plundered the ruins without Abner ever noticing.
Del made his way up to the ruins on a precipitous slope of sliding gravel. He watched for any sort of disturbance in the stones or on a hard-packed footpath he reached that might indicate someone had walked there less than an hour before. In another hour the wind would cover any signs of a trespasser. Del hadn’t studied Abner’s journals closely enough to see if diagrams extended this far.
The question was, were these ruins even a secret at all? Torn as to what he should do, Del crept along the footpath skirting the high rock wall. He watched the gravel. He sniffed the air and listened with all his concentration. Then he saw the fallen wall ahead where the ancient rocks had been freshly broken. Their jagged, deeply colored edges revealed this was a recent collapse. It looked as if someone had purposely smashed through to gain entrance.
It was happening already, Del thought with a sinking heart. It was just as Abner Saladay had feared. Destruction of irreplaceable ruins had begun.
Angry over such wanton damage, Del climbed over the rubble, wondering when this harm had been done. It might have been only yesterday or months before. He saw boot prints in the dust, and his breath caught. They went into and out of the stone room on the far side of the fallen wall. The prints clearly showed in dust so old he couldn’t hope to guess when the last ancient dweller had walked there. Whoever was coming there now had come several times. Within the last few days, Del thought.
In the adjoining stone-walled room he found the first signs of digging, a hole two feet wide and almost as deep. In the room beyond he found a shovel and several more hastily dug holes. Ancient pots recently smashed lay all around. Objects Abner Saladay would have meticulously unearthed, examined and recorded with professional reverence had been tossed aside.
Del bent and picked up a tiny blue shape lying in the dust. He was taken aback to realize it was a hand-carved bear, crude but recognizable. He wasn’t sure of the mineral’s name but it was exotically beautiful. Thin traces of brown patterned the blue rock. The hair rose on the back of Del’s neck. What other treasures lay here? How many were missing now?
Del placed the tiny bear on one of several narrow ledges that protruded from the otherwise smooth adobe wall. Looking up at an opening in the ceiling directly above his head, Del realized the ledges might be used as steps. He had no time to climb up and explore.
It was almost dark now. He might fall. He wanted to cross the canyon and bolt for the rocky passageway that would take him to Rosie’s house, but he couldn’t abandon Banjo. His horse needed water.
Reluctantly, Del made his way back to the rock staircase and found it just as treacherous to climb up as it had sounded when he first heard the intruder climbing out of the canyon. He was panting as he topped the rim and looked back to see only darkness. A horse and rider might plunge to their death, riding too fast along here.
It took an hour to find his way back to his hidden camp and see to Banjo’s needs. Del ate his barely palatable jerky and dry corn pone without tasting it; it was too risky to attempt a campfire. He felt surrounded by unknown dangers.
Although he longed to be on his way back to Rosie to tell her of the second entrance, there was no moon to ride by. He had to stay put. He slept eventually, but it was the troubled sleep of a man in love with a woman he feared would hate him forever.
• • •
The lumber Rosie would’ve used to build an irrigation trough to the garden looked like bed slats now, nailed across the window. Now no one could break through the window, but the inside of the house felt like a tomb. No light could get in. She wasn’t sure she could live like that for long. Even so, she felt a bit more secure than she had when she had awakened that morning.
When she went outside to catch her breath and fetch a fresh bucket of water from the spring, she was startled by a mounted rider standing not ten feet from her door. She nearly dropped her bucket.
Wesley Morris sat on horseback, waiting as if he had been there for hours. She was so surprised, she wanted to cuss. Had she been hammering so loudly she failed to hear his approach? Now there was no time to run inside for the gun.
“Building something?” he asked, attempting to sound friendly.
He seemed so tall, so intimidating, Rosie hated him afresh.
“What are you doing here, Mr. Morris?” she snapped.
He didn’t dismount. He just looked down at her. He appeared rather dusty, sweat-streaked and irritable. Then he clicked the side of his mouth against his teeth. He shook his head disparagingly and cast his gaze over the ugly house. Rosie’s crudely fashioned windchimes clattered in the morning breeze.
With interest he walked his horse fully around the house and then over to the barn. Then he came back to where Rosie stood rooted, feeling stupid with surprise. She didn’t know what to do. Wesley Morris looked very frightening indeed, seated on his tooled leather saddle, his gleaming black knee boots giving him something of a military air.
“I told Milt Brummit, and now I’m telling you, Wesley Morris. Get off my land!” Flapping her skirts, she spooked his horse.
The horse reared. Morris gave a shout of surprise and toppled sideways, nearly getting tangled in his stirrups. He landed hard on his back. Rosie was so surprised at what she had accomplished, she nearly laughed. He lay still several seconds.
Rosie clapped her hands over her mouth. Was he dead? She would not apologize.
Slowly, painfully, Mr. Morris lifted his head and scowled at her. “What the hell damn fool crazy thing did you do that for? My back’s broke.” Teeth gritted with pain, he hoisted himself onto one elbow. His fancy black shirt was covered in dust. His hat had flown off. Wincing, taking a swipe at a rock he had landed on, Mr. Morris struggled to his feet. He stomped his right foot back into his boot. He dusted his shirt.
He took a step toward her, grimaced in pain, and then lowered his head to glare into Rosie’s eyes as if he meant to demolish her. He was wearing his twin pistols, and his arms were akimbo, as if he intended to draw on her. Had she been a man, she was certain she would’ve been gunned down.
Before Morris could think of what more to say, she backed away. She wasn’t going to let another man pin her to the wall.
“Are you going to force yourself on me, too?” she yelled at the top of her voice. She felt crazy reckless. “You big greedy men, taking advantage of a woman alone. I’m not afraid of you! And I am not selling out to you. If you’re thinking of killing me, do it. I’m tired of chasing you men off.”
