TALBOT’S HORSE ASCENDED a crumbling clay bank, putting its head down and digging its front hooves into the hard ground. Beside Talbot rode Jacy, then Gordon Jenkins, the field-dressed beef lying behind the dry goods in the wagon box.
At the top of the knoll, they halted to give their horses a breather, and Gordon rolled a cigarette. Talbot swept his gaze around, reacquainting himself with the lay of the land—a rolling, sage-pocked prairie creased by ravines and coulees, capped by a low, gray sky. Bromegrass and wheatgrass shone where the wind had swept the snow away. Here and there cattle grazed.
Jacy pointed to a grove of trees marking the line of a distant creek. “That’s the Rinski place. I thought we’d take a little detour and check on Homer and Mattie.”
“I remember Homer,” Talbot said. “A God-fearin’ man, as I recall. Don’t recollect his daughter.”
“You probably never saw her,” Jacy said. “From just about the time she started walking, that girl had to take care of her father. I doubt she ever went to a dance or had a boyfriend.”
“None her father knew about, anyway,” Gordon said, letting cigarette smoke drift out with his words. “Pardon my talk, Miss Jacy, but word has it Jack Thom wasn’t the first of
her daddy’s hired hands she was a mite friendly with, if you get my drift.”
Jacy grunted a laugh and grinned at the old cowboy. “If I had a life like Mattie’s, I’d probably be chasing you around the bunkhouse, Gordon.”
“Shee-it,” Gordon said, blushing and wagging his head.
Jacy clucked to her gelding, and Talbot and Gordon followed her down the knoll and across the prairie. As they rounded another knoll about twenty minutes later, the Rinski ranch appeared, fronting a creek tracing a brushy path below buttes.
Jacy halted her horse about fifty yards from the low, ramshackle cabin. “Mr. Rinski, it’s Jacy,” she called.
A tall gray-haired man appeared in the doorway holding an old-model rifle. He wore a fur coat and a round-brimmed black felt hat. He pulled the door closed behind him. Gazing at the three visitors sitting their horses at his ranchyard’s perimeter, he said nothing. He just stood there, blinking, holding his rifle low across his thighs. Hogs grunted under a thatch-roofed pole barn, giving off their distinctive smell.
Finally Jacy spurred her horse forward. Talbot and Gordon followed suit.
“Who you got with ya?” Rinski asked.
“This is Mark Talbot; remember him?”
Talbot smiled, noting how the man had aged since he’d last seen him, and recognizing the haunted cast in his eyes, due no doubt to what had happened to his daughter and hired man. “How are ya, Mr. Rinski?”
“You’re the one went off to fight the ’Paches,” the old rancher said, remembering. “Your brother bragged ya up some, he did.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Talbot said with a weak smile, feeling guilty all over again for having left his brother to ranch alone.
“The Lord been kind to you, young Talbot?”
“I reckon he was kind enough to keep me alive. Quite a feat when dealing with Victorio’s Mescaleros. I wish he’d been that kind to my brother.”
Rinski’s eyes seemed to focus on something beyond Talbot. He worked his lips a moment before he spoke. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
“I’m sorry about the trouble you’ve had here.”
Jacy inquired about Mattie.
“Nothin’ wrong with my daughter time and the Good Lord can’t heal,” Rinski said automatically. Then his conviction seemed to flounder, and his eyes flickered doubtfully. “Does seem awful … nervous, though.”
The old man’s heavy eyebrows knitted together as he dropped his chin, pondering the ground as though looking for something. It had no doubt been a nightmare for the man to reconcile his faith to what had happened in his hired hand’s shack last week.
Jacy said after an awkward silence, “How you getting along, Mr. Rinski? Do you need anything?”
“I’m fine,” he said, though his ghostly countenance indicated otherwise.
Turning to her hired man, she said, “Gordon, why don’t we leave the beef liver with Mr. Rinski? I know how he likes fresh beef liver.”
Rinski said nothing. The wind poked at his hat and at the gray hair hanging beneath it.
As Gordon dismounted and went around the wagon to retrieve the liver, Jacy said, “Do you mind if I go in and see Mattie, Homer?”
“She’d like that.”
When Jacy had gone inside, Rinski turned to Talbot again. “You come to fight a war closer to home, did ya, young man?”
Talbot shook his head. “I thought by coming home I was getting away from war.”
“Well, you weren’t.” Rinski’s voice was louder now, his gaze more certain. His eyes grew large and dark. “There’s a devil at work here now, and we’re gonna need help in fightin’ him. Verlyn Thornberg is trying to get some of us smaller outfits organized, but he don’t seem to have the leadin’ spirit. No one wants to follow him against this big outfit that’s been moved by Satan to savage our women and swallow up our land.”
Rinski spoke as though he were standing behind a pulpit. His forehead was creased and his lips were pursed, dimpling his chin. “It happened once before. With the Lord’s help we got the demon back in hell, but he’s slipped out again, sure enough. We need you on our side, young Talbot, to fight against the Beast.”
“What you need is the law,” Talbot said.
“The law is without fortitude in this matter,” Rinski said without batting an eye.
Talbot was about to respond when Rinski said, “Follow me,” and started walking east around his barn and corral, where a half-dozen winter-shaggy horses milled, manes ruffling in the wind.
Talbot tried to study him out, puzzled, then spurred his horse in Rinski’s direction. When he caught up with the old man, the rancher was standing in the doorway of an old lean-to cabin, looking in. His back was stiff and his shoulders were slumped forward.
When Talbot had dismounted and dropped his horse’s reins, Rinski turned to him. “Have you a look at the devil’s work, young Talbot,” he said, stepping aside.
Talbot ducked as he stepped through the low door. The room was small and dark. A small stove hunkered in the back right corner. The air smelled coppery.
His eyes swept the room, stopping on the back wall above a cot. The logs of the wall bore a large stain, at least three by five feet wide. Talbot moved forward and saw that the cot was covered, too. The blood had frozen on the green wool blankets, which were twisted and mussed and had turned a crusty, flaky brown. Talbot guessed that the white specks of bone in the substance were what remained of Jack Thom’s skull.
Talbot felt his stomach clench. He winced as he imagined the screams and yells and the two loud booms from the shotguns. The old rancher watched him darkly.
“Thought you should see for yourself the blood that’s been spilled here in the name of the devil,” Rinski explained.
“Do you know who did this, Mr. Rinski?”
“Magnusson’s son and Shelby Green.”
“Has your daughter named them?”
Rinski’s face was stony, his eyes hard. “She won’t talk about it, but when I asked her if it was those two mavericks—they been terrorizin’ folks for years—her eyes grew big as silver dollars.”
Talbot looked at the frozen blood drops on the wall. “What are you going to do?”
Rinski shrugged and stared at the rough wood floor. “Whatever the Good Lord tells me to do, young Talbot.”
Talbot stepped past the man and walked outside. Rinski watched as he mounted his horse and rode back to the cabin.
“Where did you go?” Jacy said. She and Gordon were standing on the porch.
“To the hired hand’s shack.”
“What did you think?”
Talbot shrugged. “Nasty business. You might stop stealing beef.”
“They steal ours—”
“So you steal theirs, I know,” Talbot said, nodding his head. “How’s the girl?”
Jacy shrugged darkly. “She won’t sit still—just keeps scrubbing and straightening, like she can’t get anything clean enough. Doesn’t talk much, either.”
As they were leaving the ranchyard, Rinski appeared, walking around the corral.
“The liver’s in your skillet,” Jacy called.
“Obliged,” Rinski called back, not looking at them.
THEY RODE THE horse trail along Haughton’s Bench to Wolf Creek, and cantered out upon the long, rolling reaches above the Little Missouri. As night came down, the rambling buildings of Jacy’s Bar MK appeared, dark and shapeless below the tip of a grassy, tongue-shaped mesa.
They unloaded the wagon, stabled their horses in the timbered barn, hung the dressed Double X beef high above the floor, and threw hay to the saddle stock. Jacy and Talbot headed for the cabin, and Gordon walked to the bunkhouse.
The cabin was a long, low, solidly built structure of saddle-notched logs and wood shingles. A peeled-log gallery ran the length of the porch, and Talbot remembered his father and Miller Kincaid sitting out here, jawing away a summer evening.
“I’ll have supper ready in half an hour, Gordon,” she called.
“No thanks, Jacy. Think I’ll mosey up to Spernig’s … you know, see about a friendly game of poker.”
“A friendly Mrs. Sanderson, more like,” Jacy said.
Gordon wagged his head and went into the bunkhouse.
“He’s got a woman who works at Spernig’s Roadhouse,” Jacy explained to Talbot as they mounted the porch steps.
The kitchen in which they gathered was built of big,
square-hewn logs with plastered walls and a four-globed light hanging low over a long cottonwood table. Oval pictures hung on the walls, and several magazines were spread across the table. Coffee cans on the cupboard tops held utensils, and braided rugs fought the cold air seeping up from the floor. It was a big, homey kitchen, the kind of kitchen that took your mind off your problems. Talbot was grateful for such a kitchen just now.
“Sorry about the mess,” Jacy said as she struck a match and lit the lamp on the windowsill. “I’m afraid I’m not much of a housekeeper. Don’t really see the point, I guess … living alone.”
Talbot had picked up several pieces of kindling from the porch. He tossed the wood in the box by the range and sat in a chair by the door. “I’d have thought you’d be married by now.”
“Was,” she said, throwing paper and kindling into the big stove. “For about a week. Met him at a shindig over at Spernig’s—one of those come-one-come-all barn dances. He rode for Verlyn Thornberg. I thought he was the best thing since Winchesters and mustangs. The day after I married him, he turned shiftless and mean.” She laughed without mirth, blowing on the fledgling fire. “Guess I should have realized he was marrying me for my ranch, but I was young and lonesome.”
“What happened?” Talbot asked.
“I called him on it. The next morning he was gone. Took two of my best horses. Haven’t seen him since. Heard he went to Montana, the son of a bitch.”
Talbot said nothing, watching her.
She had her back to him while she worked on the fire. “What about you?”
“Well, I never married, if that’s what you mean. The last seven years have been … crazy, I guess is the word.” He
didn’t want to talk about Pilar. He hadn’t spoken the girl’s name aloud since she’d died.
“So why didn’t you come home sooner?”
He shrugged. “I liked crazy for a while. You don’t get bored when you’re always on the move.”
She had turned to him now with her coat and hat still on. The cabin was cold. “So why did you come home now?”
He thought for a moment, shrugged. “There’s no place like home. Or so I thought.”
She smiled. “I’m glad you’re home.” She flushed slightly. “I … I looked up to you guys—you and Dave.”
He frowned, skeptical. “Really?”
“I didn’t have any brothers, you know.”
“We tormented you.”
“I loved it.”
He laughed. “The scars on my shins tell a different story.”
“I was only really angry when you didn’t take me serious,” she confessed, then flushed even more and turned away to the fire. It was burning well now, and the iron range was ticking as it heated.
She pumped water and heated it on the stove, insisting he wash first since he was company. He did so after he’d hung his coat and hat on pegs by the door. She was slicing potatoes into a skillet in which grease popped.
“Your turn,” he said, drying his arms and face on the towel she had draped over a chair back.
He sat at the table, feeling good to be sitting down to table again in Dakota. He reached into his shirt pocket for his tobacco pouch and started rolling a smoke. He worked on it thoughtfully and deliberately, lifting his eyes to Jacy as she washed.
She was a girl no longer, he saw as she removed her heavy wool coat and hat and swept her hair back from her neck with both hands. She was every inch a woman, with all the right
curves in all the right places, though genes and hard work had streamlined them some, taken some of the female plump and turned it to muscle.
Without a trace of modesty, she unbuttoned her blue workshirt and tossed it onto a chair, then rolled up the sleeves of her faded red long johns and bent over the steaming washtub. From his side view, Talbot couldn’t help noticing that she was not wearing any of the underclothing most females used to nip and tuck here and pull and press there.
Her small, conical breasts pushed invitingly against the thin, wash-worn fabric of the long johns, the pronounced nipples sliding this way and that as she scrubbed her face and behind her ears and neck.
“That feels good,” she said breathily. Strands of wet, tawny hair stuck to her face. “It’s a long ride to town and back.”
Talbot stuck the quirley between his lips and struck a phosphor on the underside of the table, lighting up. “Do it often?”
“’Bout once a month. It’s nice to get away, see something else for a change, and get the pantry stocked, of course.” She glanced at him, did a double take.
“What are you lookin’ at?”
It was too late to avert his eyes. He’d been caught. He smiled, flushing and blowing smoke at the ceiling. “You.”
She was drying her arms. “What about me?”
“You’ve … grown up, Miss Jacy.”
“Yes I have, and now I can really give your shins a bruising.” She tossed away the towel and produced a long knife from the counter. Brandishing it, she said, “Why don’t you go out and cut us a couple of nice steaks from that Double X beef—or cut me one and bring yourself a porcupine. You’ll probably find one or two at the trash heap.”
With a flick of her wrist, she flung the knife through the air. It landed point-first in the table, about six inches from
Talbot’s right hand, the handle vibrating for about two seconds after impact.
Impressed, Talbot pushed himself to his feet as though he’d just discovered a diamondback under the table. “Whatever you say,” he said melodramatically. Sticking his cigarette in the corner of his mouth, he reached for his coat, pulled the knife out of the table, and headed out the door.
Jacy turned to the sizzling potatoes, smiling.
Talbot returned several minutes later, hands full of raw, marbled beef, kicking the door closed behind him. “Here’s your grass-fed Double X,” he said dryly.
“Drop it in the pan. I’ve got the potatoes warming in the oven. Where’s your porcupine?”
“Plum got away. I guess I’ll be dining on the Double X this evening. Along with you and the Rinskis. I just hope King Magnusson doesn’t decide to check out your barn. That brand is hanging there, plain as day.”
Jacy poked the meat around in the skillet and grew serious. “You’re making too big a deal out of this, Mark. King Magnusson started putting his brand on our cattle the day after he moved into that big house of his.”
“Then you should have brought in stock inspectors and federal marshals, and hauled him in front of the federal magistrate.”
Jacy shrugged. “Hindsight is twenty-twenty. Besides, you know how these old guys around here feel about the law. Hell, half of ’em are wanted for some penny-ante thing back east, and the other half believe the law belongs to only those who can pay for it. And the only one who can pay for it around here is King Magnusson.”
Talbot sighed and sat down. Jacy had convinced him of the situation’s complexity. Still, two wrongs didn’t make a right. Stealing from King Magnusson only made the water muddier.
Just the same, the smell of cooked, seasoned beef wafting
up from the range made his mouth water, and he decided to enjoy the meal in spite of his philosophical differences with the cook.
“How do you like your steak?” she asked him.
“Bought and paid for, but I’ll settle for well done.”
JACY FILLED THEIR plates, and they wolfed down the meat and fried potatoes like true Dakotans. Afterwards, doing his part, Talbot cleared the table and washed the dishes while Jacy sat at the table, watching him while she rolled and smoked a cigarette.
“Sorry, I know it’s not very lady-like,” she said, indicating the quirley. “Drinkin’ whiskey probably isn’t, either, but would you like a glass to wash down that Double X beef?”
Talbot shrugged. “I reckon it wouldn’t be polite to make a woman drink alone.”
When he had dried and put away the dishes, he and Jacy took their glasses of whiskey and retired to the sitting room, where she had started a fire in the big fieldstone hearth.
Talbot sat in the rocker near the flames, noting the deer and bear heads eyeing him from the walls and remembering that Jacy’s father had been quite the hunter and trapper in his day. Jacy sat on the sofa and removed her moccasins, nudged them near the fire with a stockinged foot.
“Tell me about Dave,” Talbot said after several minutes of contemplative silence.
“What about him?”
Talbot shrugged. “Did he have a girl? Before I left he was taking a shine to Maggie Cross over to Big Draw.”
Jacy took a drag off her cigarette. “Maggie died, you know.”
“She did?”
“You didn’t know that?”
“No.”
“Suppose you wouldn’t. It was the milk fever.”
“Jesus. Had they been close?”
“Rumor was they were going to marry. I asked him about it, but he wouldn’t say. You know how shy he was about women.”
Talbot leaned forward in his chair, taking his whiskey in both hands and resting his elbows on his knees. He sighed heavily.
Jacy continued, “After that he kept himself busy on the ranch. Dug several wells, added another herd he brought up from Kansas City, mixed in some white-faced stock. He had three cowboys workin’ for him when … when he died.”
“Where did they go?”
“I hired one. Thornberg took the others.”
She disappeared into another room and returned with a document, dropping it in his lap on her way back to the sofa. “That’s his will. I found it among his papers. It leaves the ranch to you.”
Talbot sighed and stared at Dave’s boyish signature at the bottom of the sheet, beside the official seal. “What if I don’t want it?”
“It’s your home. And it’s some of the best graze on the Bench. No wonder Magnusson went after it first. What I wouldn’t give for one or two of your creeks.”
“They’re yours.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Why not?”
“We can be partners. I’ll help you get started again.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Old time’s sake.”
Jacy finished her whiskey and set the empty glass on the lamp table beside the sofa. She went into the kitchen and returned with the bottle, then refilled Talbot’s glass. She
straightened, holding the bottle by its neck. “I had a crush on you once. Did you know that?”
He looked up at her.
“But you never paid attention to me after you started taking Rona Paski to dances.”
He shook his head, surprised. “I didn’t know that.”
She smiled. “Then you went away.”
Jacy took the bottle and sat down. She refilled her glass and set the bottle on the table. “I was just a kid to you, I reckon.”
“Well, you were a kid,” he said defensively.
There was a long silence. They each sat drinking and thinking, listening to the fire crack and the wind howl under the eaves. Talbot had the feeling again of having been left behind. The plan had been simple: Go home and help Dave on the ranch. Get hitched, build his own place, raise a few kids …
He worked his mind back around to the moment, toying with the idea of taking over the ranch. He had the money; he could feel it in the homemade pockets around his waist.
“How many head are you running?” he asked Jacy.
She was lounging with her head about a foot below the top of the sofa’s back. She looked tired and her hair fell carelessly to her shoulders. She’d crossed her ankles on the stool before her.
“Close to a thousand,” she said. “I had a good increase last year. I’m hopin’ for an even better one this year. I only keep Gordon on during the winter, but I have about four men on my rolls during the spring and summer. Want another drink?”
They each had another. He tossed his back and looked up. She was still sitting there in the same way, but now tears were rolling down her cheeks.
“Jacy, you’re crying,” he said.
She smiled through her tears. “I’m just drunk.”
“What are you crying about?”
“I don’t know. I just get to feeling loco in the winter with nothing to do but feed cows and stare at the clouds.” She sniffed. Her voice sounded far away. “And I don’t know if I can keep this place … if I can stand against old Magnusson.”
“You will,” he assured her.
“Oh, I know—I’m just drunk.”
“Why don’t you go to bed?”
“I think I will.”
Deliberately, she uncrossed her ankles and set her feet on the floor. She tried to push herself up but fell back down. “Or … maybe I won’t.”
“I’ll help,” Talbot said.
Smiling, she threw up a hand. He clutched it and pulled her to her feet. Feeling how unsteady she was, he bent down, picked her up in his arms, and carried her down a short, dark hall. She was light, and she felt good in his arms, her loose hair brushing his forearm and wrist. She smelled musky but feminine.
“Which is your room?” he asked her.
“That one.”
He pushed the door open with his boot and laid her on the iron bed. She pulled the quilt back and crawled clumsily beneath it. Talbot walked to the door.
“Good night, Jacy.”
“You can sleep here … . This is the only bed in the house.”
“What about your father’s?”
“It’s buried under tack; you’ll never find it.” She patted the quilt beside her. “Come on. I won’t bite.”
He stood in the doorway, watching her. His breath came short, and he couldn’t help feeling aroused. It had been a long time since he’d slept with a woman, with or without sex. His last lover had been Pilar, three years ago. He knew he
should grab a quilt and lie on the couch, but he couldn’t make himself do it. He wanted to lie next to Jacy.
So he removed his shirt, money belt, and jeans and lay on the bed.
She turned to face him, snuggled up against his chest.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve had a man to keep me warm,” she said drowsily, getting comfortable against him.
He kissed her ear, ran his hand down her thigh.
She looked up suddenly. “What’s that?”
“Sorry … I, uh … seem—”
“I’m not a loose woman, Mr. Talbot,” she said haughtily. “Here, I’ll take care of it.”
She thrust her hand through the front opening in his long johns, grabbed his member, and squeezed, slowly pressing it down.
“There—how’s that?” she asked.
He gave his head a quick shake and smiled against the pain. “Yeah … yeah, that should … do it,” he said with a sigh.
“Good.”
Then she wedged her head against his chest and went to sleep.