CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Nora Andrews shivered in her blankets and longed for first light and the warming heat of the rising sun. She was sick, feverish, and in considerable pain. The trek across the grassland had tired her much more than she’d imagined it would, and her feet were so badly swollen that she hadn’t removed her boots, worried that she’d never get them back on again.
The night sky was full of stars, and a gibbous moon cast a pale light that kept total darkness at bay and silvered the coats of the coyotes hunting among the wild oaks. A rising wind tugged at the girl, tossed strands of hair across her face, and whispered secrets to the buffalo grass.
Nora reached out and dragged her rifle closer, still shaken by the encounter with the cougar. She didn’t know if coyotes that smelled blood in the wind attacked humans, but she was taking no chances.
She closed her eyes and willed sleep to come and relieve her of pain for a few hours.
The moon rose higher in the sky, and the coyotes kept their distance.
Nora dreamed that she was back in her native London in the fog, listening to the hauntingly lonely horns of the great iron ships docked on the Thames.
* * *
The coming of morning woke Nora, and for a while she lay in her blankets, unwilling to move. More tired than she’d ever been in her life, she knew that the slightest movement would start the pain in her broken ribs again and set her head throbbing.
After a few minutes she struggled to her feet and put together her bedroll. On all sides of her the high prairie stretched into distance, silent, motionless. To the east where her destination lay, she saw only an endless, vast sea of grass until it met the lemon-colored sky of the dawn.
Nora did not feel like eating, but she forced herself to eat a crumbling piece of yellow cake and swallow a few sips of wine. Then she picked up her rifle and bedroll and began to walk, her feet dragging as though they were wrapped in sheets of lead.
As the sun rose, she struggled on . . . Happily there was no fog . . . and the iron ships had all gone to sea with their bold sailormen . . . Wait . . . what was the song about sailormen her mother used to sing to her when she was a child? Oh yes, she remembered. She turned her face to the sky and sang:
“What do you do with the drunken sailor,
What do you do with the drunken sailor,
What do you do with the drunken sailor,
Ear-lye in the morning?”
Nora’s song stopped abruptly. Was that all she remembered? No, not all. There was more. Her voice rose, singing as she marched:
“Way hay and up she rises,
Way hay and up she rises,
Way hay and up she rises,
Ear-lye in the morning.
“Put him in the hold with the captain’s daughter,
Put him in the hold with the captain’s daughter,
Put him in the hold with the captain’s daughter,
Ear-lye in the morning.”
Nora stopped singing. It was a stupid song, and she didn’t want to sing it any longer. Better save her breath for walking. Her feet hurt. Very swollen. And her ribs hurt. At least two broken, she guessed. Maybe three. She stopped and took a drink of water from her canteen. It was getting low. She’d need to find water soon. Ahead of her was an ocean of grass, but not a drop to drink. She thought that funny and she giggled, but it hurt her ribs and she stopped. Better to think sad thoughts. How far was Hiram Clay’s ranch? A thousand miles probably. Now that was a sad thought, very, very melancholy indeed.
Nora walked on, first plodding, then dragging her feet. The sun was hot, fatiguing her, and the air was thick and hard to breathe. She staggered forward . . .
Then, three hours into her day’s journey, she stumbled and fell . . . and would later have no recollection of hitting the ground.
* * *
At the same moment Nora Andrews began her walk eastward in the dawn light, Archie Lane finally freed himself of the ropes that bound him hand and foot. He considered bloody, shredded wrists a small price to pay for his freedom.
Thrown into the Kerrigan barn with little regard for his comfort, he’d worked patiently for at least twelve hours, picking away at the hemp on the tine of a carelessly discarded pitchfork, its point fragmenting the rope, strand by agonizing strand. Lane untied his feet and stood, but only for a moment. His cramped legs gave out on him, and he collapsed heavily onto the wood floor. Cursing under his breath, he tried standing again, slowly, bit by bit, allowing circulation to come back to his legs. Finally, he could stand, then walk, and he stepped to the barn door and looked outside into the dawn. All was quiet, no lamps were lit, and nothing moved.
Quickly, he looked around for a weapon of some kind and took a ball-peen hammer from the wall and shoved its handle into his pants. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it sure beat a cross word. The only horse in the barn that morning was a bay mare, her saddle thrown over the timber partition between stalls.
Lane saddled the mare and put his boot into the stirrup . . . than stiffened in place as a voice came from the barn door.
“Going somewhere, señor?”
Lane slowly turned his head. A tall man with a patch over one eye, a vaquero by the cut of his jib, stood in the doorway, smiling. Something about the Mexican’s presence was worth a second glance, and Lane gave him another look. The man was relaxed, hand near his holstered Colt, slim, confident, waiting for Lane to make a move. In a certain breed of men, the words professional shootist stand out like writing on a wall, and Lane read the words easily. Anyone who had the wits to understand knew the man was a gun.
The realization made Archie Lane wary. Even if he’d been wearing his revolver he’d have been wary. He took his foot from the stirrup and turned slowly. “We can talk about this.”
“You and Señora Kerrigan can talk about this,” Rodolfo Aragon said. “You and I have nothing to say to one another. We are strangers.”
Lane smiled, trying to defuse the situation. “For a Mex you speak good English.”
Aragon nodded. “And Spanish, French, and some Navajo.”
“Let me ride out of here. I mean nothing to you.”
“You are an enemy and therefore a threat to my patron, Doña Maria Ana de la Villa de Villar del Aguilla.” Aragon shrugged. “In that regard, you mean much to me, hombre.”
“I am unarmed.”
“Armed or unarmed, I will shoot you if I have to. It will make little difference.”
Lane took the ball-peen hammer from his waistband. “I have this.”
“Sí. Perhaps you want to hammer a nail?”
“I don’t want to surrender to a Mex. I have my pride.”
“And it comes before a fall, does it not?”
“Yeah, so they say. Now go call a white man and I’ll give myself up.”
“No. You will come with me and you will speak with Señora Kerrigan.”
“I told you, I have my pride.”
“And it’s foolish pride. Now come.”
“The hell with you, greaser!”
As late as the 1950s, a historian claimed that as a boy growing up in Arkansas, Archie Lane was well known for his ability to chuck a rock and hit a glass canning jar at twenty paces. Perhaps Lane figured he had a chance of a successful hit and that’s why he threw the ball-peen hammer at Rodolfo Aragon’s head. But, more likely, he was motivated by a gunman’s touchy pride and the anti-Mexican prejudice then rampant on the frontier.
As it happened, Aragon moved his head a little, the hammer flew past his left ear, and he fired. One shot, chest, dead center, and Archie Lane died standing. When his body hit the stable floor, he was already riding Aragon’s bullet into hell.
The shot brought the alarmed Kerrigan ranch to its feet.
Frank Cobb was the first to run into the barn. Gun in hand, his eyes took in Rodolfo Aragon standing, Archie Lane sprawled on the floor, and a drift of gun smoke hanging in the air.
Behind Frank, Gabe Dancer asked the inevitable question. “What the hell happened?”
“Your prisoner tried to escape,” Aragon said.
“And you plugged him?” Frank said.
“Sí. He threw a hammer at my head.”
“A hammer? This hammer?” Dancer held up the ball-peen so Aragon could see it.
“That hammer,” the Mexican said.
“How did he get untied?” Frank said.
“I didn’t ask him,” Aragon said.
Gabe Dancer tossed the hammer away, stepped to the door, and said over his shoulder, “I’m never coming into this goddamned barn again. The dead bodies keep piling up in here.”
* * *
Nora Andrews woke to sunlight filtering through drawn lace curtains and the muffled sound of a gathering of excited men yelling. She lay in a soft bed with a patchwork quilt and above her was a high, plastered ceiling. From somewhere, she smelled bacon frying and coffee on the boil. Slowly it dawned on her that she wore a nightdress, some other woman’s nightdress, and that her chest under her breasts was tightly bound. She touched her forehead where the cougar had wounded her, and that was also bandaged. Where was she?
Then a woman’s voice. “Ah, you’re awake at last, my dear.” The concerned face of a middle-aged woman with beautiful gray eyes swam into Nora’s line of vision.
“Where am I?” she said.
“At the ranch of the honorable Hiram Clay, Esquire. My name is Angie Docherty. My husband is Mr. Clay’s foreman.”
“How did I get here?”
“One of our hands found you this morning. He was hunting a cougar that’s been playing hob around here for weeks.”
“I think I met that cougar,” Nora said. Then she remembered. “Oh my God. I must see Mr. Clay at once. The Kerrigan ranch is in danger.”
Angie Docherty smiled. “We know, my dear. You were delirious but managed to tell us that Kate Kerrigan is in peril. Listen. Those horses you hear are Mr. Clay and his hands riding to the rescue.”
A man’s voice came from the bedside. “Hiram issued a call to arms and mounted everybody who can ride a horse, including the cook.” Dr. Zebulon Farrell shrugged. “No great loss, that cook. How are you feeling, Miss Nora?”
The girl listened to the departing hoofbeats and then said. “I do hope Mr. Clay gets there in time. And I’m feeling a lot better than I was a while ago, Dr. Farrell.”
“Hiram believes God is on the side of big ranchers in general and him in particular. If anyone can ride to the rescue in the nick of time, it’s him.” He scooted Mrs. Docherty over and sat on the bed. “You already look much better, Nora. Are you in pain?”
“It hurts to breathe,” Nora said.
“I’m sure it does. You have three broken ribs, and I sutured the gash on your forehead. I’ll give you something for the pain and then you’ll need to rest in bed for at least a week.”
Tears welled in Nora’s eyes. “I should be with my mistress, not lying in bed.”
“I’m sure Kate will manage just fine without you for a while.” He smiled, a rare event. “Let Hiram have his chance to be her knight in shining armor.”
Then, because she was young and concerned about such things, Nora said, “Doctor, will I have a scar—”
“On your forehead? Yes, a small one, but it will fade with time. Don’t worry. You’ll be just as pretty.” Dr. Farrell was not a demonstrative man, but he took Nora’s hand and said, “You did well. You were very brave. When the puncher brought you in, you were delirious, still battling the cougar. Kate will be very proud of you.”
“After it was over, I felt sorry for the cougar. He was very thin.”
“Even a thin cougar is a handful in a fight, I imagine.”
“He was. For a while I thought I was dead.”
“Are you hungry? I’m sure Mrs. Docherty can fix you something.”
“No, I’m not hungry.”
Dr. Farrell squeezed the girl’s hand. “We’re all proud of you. Well done.”
“Thank you,” Nora said. Suddenly she was very tired. She closed her eyes and slept.