EIGHT

Barstow Whittaker had stopped for a few drinks in the saloon before he purchased a bottle to take back to the boarding-house. He had asked about an undertaker, but the town had none. That meant that there would be some digging for them to do whenever the rain stopped. Ned would likely be angry that it had taken him so long, but that couldn’t be helped. Barstow had not liked sitting in the small room watching Carl die slowly. A little air had been called for, a little whiskey even if it required a long walk in the rain.

Ducking his head into the constant downpour, Barstow trooped toward the little shack where his brothers waited. A shaft of light fell across the rain-pocked alleyway and Barstow halted, frowning It was unlikely that Ned would be coming out into the rain. Peering through the steel mesh of rain, Barstow saw the figure silhouetted in the firelit doorway. It was not Ned. This man was much thinner, a little taller. Who …? Barstow hastened on.

When he was within a dozen paces of the open door, Barstow could see past the stranger, see that Ned lay sprawled on the floor, his eyes open, seeing nothing. Barstow shouted out, ‘Hey, you!’

Whoever it was spun toward him, Colt in his hand. Barstow dropped the bottle of whiskey he had been carrying and pawed at his holstered revolver. Standing in the screen of rain, Barstow deliberately raised his weapon and took aim. Both men touched off at once. Either through skill or blind chance, the man on the porch tagged Barstow with his first shot, while Barstow’s slug flew completely through the cabin, shattering the far window.

Barstow cursed, swatted at his wounded arm, and started away at a staggering run.

Ben Flowers had no doubt who the bearded man was. He lurched toward the edge of the porch and stepped down. Holding his ribs with one hand, he ran – if that word described his stumbling, careering motion – after Barstow Whittaker.

The rain was heavy enough to be blinding, stinging his eyes. As he ran on, taking in sharp short breaths, Ben considered – where would Barstow run to? It had to be toward the stable to catch up his pony to try to escape on the great plains. Ben staggered on, his pace no more rapid than the wounded Barstow’s. As he left the alleyway, the unbroken wind became a thrusting force against his rain-soaked body. He could not see Barstow. The rain continued; dark clouds seemed nearly to touch the earth. Even the lights in the windows of the various buildings were mostly obscured in the night storm.

He found the stable more by memory than sight and eased up beside the open double doors. Inside the lantern still burned. There was no sign of Barstow Whittaker. Perhaps, Ben thought, he had made a mistake. But then a horse whickered uneasily, and Ben just made out a low groan of human complaint.

Grimly he entered the high-roofed barn, his Colt’s barrel held high beside his ear. Halfway along the row of stalls, a man was struggling mightily with a saddle. It was Barstow. Ben cried out one warning, ‘Stand where you are!’ and instantly wished that he hadn’t for Barstow spun clumsily, went to one knee and fired twice, the bullets spinning off into the wall behind Ben. The horses almost in unison reared up or kicked at their stalls in a panicked urge to run away from trouble.

Ben threw himself to one side, sending a spasm of fiery pain through his damaged chest. Barstow fired again, then again, his bullets gouging splinters from the boards of the stall where Ben had taken shelter.

The stable fell silent. Peering up over the stall, Ben found that he could no longer see Barstow. Ben’s hair was in his eyes, his clothing coldly plastered to his body, his ribs fiery with pain. How long could this go on? Even as that thought passed through his mind, Barstow Whittaker popped up from behind a nearer stall and fired again, his face brutally angry, his black eyes wild.

Ben was not quicker this time, but his shot was truer. A .44 slug from his Colt revolver punched through the half-inch thick planks of the stall and tagged Barstow, sending him staggering back across the compartment under the neck of a frightened piebald horse. Ben waited. There was no more movement in the stable.

Thumbing back the hammer of his Colt he eased out of the stall and carefully approached the spot where Barstow Whittaker had vanished. Wide horse eyes followed his passage. Gunsmoke still hung heavily in the air.

Barstow lay dead on his back, his gun flung to one side, his eyes open and somehow venomous even in death. Ben holstered his revolver and leaned back against a wooden post, doubled over with pain.

A lantern, a moving shadow caught his eye and he stiffened. It was the old stableman approaching, lamp in one hand, shotgun in the other. Reaching the scene, he eyed the battered Ben Flowers and then the dead Barstow Whittaker.

‘Well,’ he said dryly, ‘I see that you found your friends.’

The sorrel was in no mood to leave the warmth of the stable and go out again into the cold, stormy night, but Ben was in no mood to remain in Pawnee and answer questions. What he wanted was his own warmth, his own home, his own fire burning and so he pushed the sorrel onward through the stormy night. Somewhere ahead lay safety and security, a small measure of comfort.

It was over – the men who had come to steal his land, using murder if necessary, were dead, every one of them. That was enough to bring a cold, guilty feeling into Ben’s stomach, but what other choice had there been? The fiery pain in his ribs drove all moral considerations from his mind. They would have had no compunction at all about shooting him down, he knew. Bowing his head to the rain, he pressed the sorrel on toward the home ranch.

‘I didn’t think I’d make it,’ Ben Flowers said from the cot where he lay.

‘You didn’t. Dusty and Hugh found you about a quarter-mile out, lying in the mud.’

‘They brought me home?’

‘We did,’ Kate McCallister said. ‘What kind of fool’s errand were you on anyway?’

‘I needed to protect my home,’ Ben said weakly. He started to tell her what had happened, but Kate gestured for him to be silent. There was a fire burning in the hearth, and some sort of soup or broth boiling. He touched his ribs gingerly. They had been bound very tightly by someone – Kate, he assumed. Now she drew his blankets up and sat beside him in one of the wooden chairs. Dressed in her good white dress with the blue ribbons, she looked angelic to his fevered eyes.

‘How long was I out?’ he asked.

‘Nearly twenty-four hours,’ Kate told him.

‘Can’t have been!’ he objected.

‘You were,’ she assured him. ‘And you talk in your sleep, Ben.’

‘Nothing foolish, I hope,’ he said, looking up at the skinny little dark-haired girl.

‘Mostly foolish,’ she answered, and she seemed to blush faintly. She took his hand in both of hers and said gently, ‘Rest now – or if you’d like there’s some barley soup you can try first.’

‘Soup sounds good,’ he said around a yawn. ‘My horse!’

‘He’s OK He has more sense than you. He made it home. That’s how we knew to go out and look for you on the back trail.’

‘How did anybody … were you waiting here for me all that time, Kate?’

‘What do you think?’ she asked, rising. ‘I’ll fetch the soup.’

He was asleep again before she returned, but this time his dreams were more tranquil and pain and fears did not reach him.

‘The storm’s finally broken,’ Rincon said, as he turned from the window. His once-handsome face was growing haggard. He never smiled. They were now three days behind on paying for their hotel room. The manager had told Elizabeth Cole that he would have thrown them out except for the storm into which he wouldn’t send anybody.

‘I still can’t believe that Flowers got the Whittaker brothers,’ Elizabeth said. She herself was looking tired, she decided, as she brushed her blonde hair in front of the oval mirror.

‘He did! They found the bodies. When I went over to beg the stable hand to shelter our horses for one more day, he told me that he saw a part of it. You and your “greener”!’

‘Ben Flowers never struck me as being very dangerous,’ Elizabeth told Rincon who remained scowling out at the gradually clearing skies, the wind-shifted clouds.

‘Looks can be deceiving,’ Rincon growled. ‘Anyway, he’s cleared out all the underbrush.’

‘I don’t understand you,’ Elizabeth said, turning from the mirror.

‘I mean I don’t have to worry about the Whittaker brothers anymore. There’s just me and the nester.’

‘You’re still going to try it?’ she asked.

‘Of course. What else is there to do? Stick up a bank? There’s still twenty-thousand gold dollars on that ranch, Elizabeth. Twenty-thousand of my gold dollars.’

‘How do you mean to do it?’ she asked with nervous anticipation.

‘I don’t know yet. Not for sure. But Ben Flowers doesn’t know me. I can get close enough to him to figure a way, to find the right moment. And I will, Elizabeth. I promise you that I will.’

Again visions of a life filled with silk and satin and warm comfort crowded together in the back of Elizabeth Cole’s mind and she went to Rincon, tenderly putting her arms around the gunman’s waist resting her cheek against his chest.

When Ben Flowers next awakened, the door to the cabin stood open. The day outside was bright. The smell of paint pervaded the air. He sat up in bed, wiping the sleep from his eyes.

‘What’s going on around here!’ he called out.

‘Oh good, you’re awake,’ Kate McCallister said cheerfully. She appeared in the doorway in black jeans, red-checked shirt, a bandanna tied over her head. She was holding a paint brush. ‘I’m just about finished with the front room. I wanted to do that area next.’

‘Save it for another day,’ Ben grumbled, lying back. ‘I don’t feel too good.’

‘No more nursing,’ Kate said. ‘Time for you to get up, feed yourself and get some work done.’

‘I’m just not up to it, Kate,’ Ben complained.

‘Sure you are. I’m not telling you to dig a ditch, just get up and move about a little. I’m warning you,’ she said, shaking her paintbrush. ‘I’m going to come in there and start on the walls in about fifteen minutes. You won’t like it much if you’re not up and out of there.’

‘Who are you bossing around?’ Ben growled. ‘Is this your house or mine?’

‘It’s yours,’ Kate answered, ‘and I think it’s high time you got back to trying to fix it up.’

‘You’re a cruel woman,’ Ben muttered, swinging his feet to the floor. Kate laughed and returned to her work.

She was right, of course, but he still didn’t feel up to attempting much. His cracked ribs were shot through with pain. There was a lump on his head and his teeth ached. Nevertheless, he rose, reached for his hat and his jeans, tugged his boots on – with much effort – and rose from the cot. His back hurt as well on this morning. He looked at the sagging cot with its inch-thick mattress.

‘I’ve got to find a way to get a real bed.’ He spoke a little louder. ‘Does anyone sell beds in Pawnee?’

‘They can order you one out of Fargo. Probably take a week.’

Ben stood in the connecting doorway, watching the energetic woman paint. She was standing on a plank laid over two sawhorses, finishing up the section of wall near the ceiling. He was still shirtless; he scratched at the bandages binding his chest.

‘Aren’t you going to finish dressing?’ Kate asked, glancing at him.

‘I don’t think I can maneuver my way into a shirt.’

‘Oh, for …!’ Kate stepped down from the sawhorse platform, brushed past him and went into the tiny sleeping area. She took a shirt from his kit, shook it out and returned. ‘I’m starting to lose patience with you, Ben. Lift up this arm.’

Ben complied. He didn’t like being bossed around, but in some distant way it was pleasant to be fussed over.

‘Any of that barley soup left?’ he asked.

‘Most of it. It’s not hot, though.’

‘I don’t care. It’s food,’ he answered.

‘There’s also some bread I brought over from home,’ she called, as she got back to work.

Ben nodded without replying, walked unsteadily to the pantry and began digging out the few bits of kitchenware he had. A bowl, a spoon, a bread knife. It wasn’t much of a breakfast, but it settled well and by the time he was through he felt better for having been forced from his bed. The general tightness in his battered body was subsiding as he moved around although his ribs continued to complain with each too-sudden movement he made.

‘I’m going out to see to my horse,’ he called to Kate, who had moved her materials into the sleeping area.

‘He’s all right,’ she answered.

‘I said I’m going out to see to my sorrel,’ he repeated. ‘What am I, an invalid?’

He thought he heard a little chirp of laughter in response. Going to the open door he paused to look around. The cabin looked nothing like the dump he had first entered. He had done the flooring, but the rest of it was Kate’s work. Fresh white paint, the kitchen orderly. Now he noticed for the first time that there was an oval-shaped braided rug in tan and deep maroon near the fireplace. He frowned, shook his head and went out into the bright morning.

Ben stretched his arms, was immediately sorry that he had as pain flashed across his chest, and walked toward the lean-to where the two horses stood side by side – the sorrel and Kate’s shaggy buckskin. A group of crows, unhappy with his approach, rose from the branches of the oak tree, flew in a lazy circle and landed again, chasing him with a chorus of raucous cawing. Maybe they had thought they had won a victory

Ben stroked the sorrel’s neck. The horse glanced at him with little interest. It had been curried and there was hay in the rick. Was that girl trying to take the place over! He would have to speak to her again. No, he reconsidered ruefully, he had had little luck trying to keep her within limits. It was best to just accept it – for now. She was bound to find other interests to occupy her sooner or later.

Because she certainly wasn’t going to.…

Besides, she could be a little bit too bossy.

Ben’s head came around at the sound of an approaching horse. Squinting into the low sun he saw a tall white horse with a gray mane and tail. He took a minute to recognize the rider. It was Abel McCallister, probably come looking for his daughter. Ben awaited his arrival, hands on his hips.

McCallister swung down from the saddle. Holding the white horse’s reins, he extended a gloved hand to Ben. ‘Well, I see you’re up again. How is it going over here?’

‘If you’re looking for Kate, she’s inside, painting.’

‘I know. She told me she was going to do that. That’s not what brings me over, Ben,’ McCallister said, tipping his hat back. ‘I have an offer to make you.’

‘Go ahead,’ Ben said warily. The crows had risen in a sudden black cloud at McCallister’s approach. Now they settled into the oak again and resumed their scolding. Both men briefly glanced that way.

‘I’ve got two cows that are near to calving. I wondered if you’d be interested in having them,’ McCallister said. Ben stared at the rancher uncertainly.

‘I don’t think I’ve enough cash on hand to pay you for them,’ he answered at length. ‘I would be willing to trade a few acres of land for them, if—’

‘I’ve got all the land I need or can use,’ McCallister said, brushing away a gnat that had been bothering him. ‘I’m willing to trust you for the money. A man has to start somewhere, Ben, and there are few cattle around the Pawnee area. These would at least give you a beginning.’

‘Mr McCallister,’ Ben said, glancing toward the house and then toward the far skies, ‘your daughter and I aren’t—’

‘This has nothing to do with my daughter,’ McCallister said forcefully. ‘I think you’re a decent young man trying to make a start on a shoestring. I think you will make it; I think we’ll be good neighbors for a lone time.’

All Ben could say was, ‘Sure, I’d like to have them. I’ll pay you back, McCallister.’

‘I know you will.’ Briefly he rested a hand on Ben’s shoulder. ‘You want us to bring them over, or do you want to come and get them?’

‘Won’t they just wander back to your ranch?’

‘Likely,’ McCallister said. ‘I guess I’ll finally have to get around to registering a brand and slapping iron onto my stock. Why don’t you consider doing the same thing?’

‘It’s an idea,’ Ben Flowers agreed. ‘For now, bring them over if you don’t mind. I’m not sure that I can handle the job just yet. And if they wander, well, then they wander.’

‘Fine,’ McCallister said. ‘I’ll have Dusty and Hugh push them over sometime today.’

He started to remount and Ben asked, ‘Don’t you want to talk to Kate before you go?’

‘Son,’ he replied, ‘I’ve been talking to her for twenty-two years. Not that it ever did much good.…’ His voice trailed off He glanced at the house, swung into leather and turned his horse southward toward the home ranch.

Ben alternately grinned and frowned as he looked around the property. The clogged well was a reminder of how much work he still had to do. He knew that he was not up to that on this day. But he could look around at the long grass, the gently flowing rill, the lean-to, knowing that the cabin roof was now sound; the cabin’s interior was getting into shape. Now he had two cows, and calves on the way, the land and water to provide for them. It had been a struggle – he grimly remembered the Whittaker brothers – but in a relatively short time things had come together. He remembered the dream he had started out with and realized that he was now walking through the middle of it.

‘Today?’ Elizabeth Cole asked hesitantly, as she watched Rincon belt on his pistol.

‘We can’t wait any longer, can we? We’re broke, the hotel wants its money and so does the stable. It’s best to tackle it now. Once I get rid of that nester, we’ll have all the time we need to look for that gold. And once we have that, well … then we’ll shake the dust of this hick town from our boots and get on with living again.’

Elizabeth watched with subdued excitement as Rincon adjusted his gunbelt, placed his black hat on his head and strode toward the door, boot-heels clicking. He had absolute confidence in his ability, and Elizabeth had to have absolute confidence in him. Because if he failed.…

She did not even wish to consider that. There was no other option but success. She stood at the window for a while, watching the shabby town come to life. A man would die on this day, but she could dredge up no real sympathy for him.

After all, she barely knew Ben Flowers.