Dust hung in the still air. It was hot for early November. Sam Heller hazed the last of the steers into the shipping corral and swiped the sweat from his face with his shirt sleeve.
‘Bath’s gonna feel good tonight,’ he muttered to himself.
Instantly he wished he hadn’t said that – or thought it. Once again, as for countless other times, he fought down the thought of the shrinking bar of soap he had carefully hoarded. In his mind he could smell it already. Smelling it, he smelled Kate as well. The familiar ache knotted his stomach and twisted barbed wire around his heart.
He gritted his teeth and shook his head, feeling the sand grate between his teeth as he did so. As hard as he fought not to, he heard again the plaintive cry, borne on the breeze, ‘Please come back, Sam! Please?’
He jerked his horse’s head around sharply and rammed his spurs into the startled animal’s sides. The horse lunged forward, even as the spurs sent sharp pains stabbing into Sam’s conscience. ‘He didn’t deserve that,’ his conscience nagged him.
‘You OK, Sam?’ Oz Maquire asked, loping up alongside him.
‘I’m fine!’ Sam fired back at his friend. ‘Let’s go home.’
He slowed his horse to a walk as Oz fell in beside him. ‘Thinkin’ about her again, huh?’
Several angry retorts fought against each other to be first released. Stifling them all, Sam sighed heavily. Instead of the first half dozen things that came to mind, he said, ‘You’d think I’d stop moonin’ about her and get on with things, wouldn’t you? It’s been over a month.’
‘You thought about goin’ back?’
Silence hung between the two close friends for a quarter of a mile. When Oz had nearly forgotten the question, Sam said, ‘It wouldn’t work. She’s the one that told me to hit the trail.’
Oz shook his head. ‘Yeah, but do you think she meant it?’
‘Why would she say it, if she didn’t mean it?’
‘She’s a woman.’
‘I was well aware of that. What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Everything. Women are like that. They say all sorts of stuff they don’t mean when they get mad. Then they get done bein’ mad, they act like they never said it, and then they expect a fella to forget they said it too.’
Sam shook his head. ‘I ain’t built like that. Things like that ain’t that easy to forget.’
‘She ain’t either, I notice.’
Sam shot Oz a look that indicated his friend was treading dangerously close to forbidden ground, but he didn’t answer.
They were within a mile of the Rafter J headquarters when both of their heads jerked up. As one, they spotted a small cloud of dust. ‘Somethin’s up,’ Oz warned.
‘One rider,’ Sam responded.
‘Hurryin’ some.’
‘Wearin’ out a horse for sure.’
‘Your trouble or mine, you reckon?’
Sam shrugged. ‘Hard to tell. Hope it ain’t nothin’ big. I’m tired.’
‘Me too. That last bunch of steers were plumb ringy.’
The distant cloud of dust grew steadily closer. Both men studied it. ‘Anyone you know?’ Oz asked.
Sam frowned. ‘Looks like a guy I know, but it couldn’t be him. He’s up in Wyoming.’
‘If it’s him, I hope he ain’t run his horse like that the whole way.’
‘If he had, he’d have a dead horse. He’s a big man.’
‘Well, it’s a big man all right.’
Sam’s frown deepened. He swore. ‘It sure looks like him. C’mon.’
He touched his spurs to his horse and lifted to a canter, speeding their meeting with the mystery rider heading their way. Oz kept pace, glancing sideways at his friend with growing concern as he saw the question give way to certainty in Sam’s face.
It was only minutes later when Bartholomew Spalding reined in his spent and panting horse beside them. His words tumbled out as fast as he could force them. ‘Sam, you gotta get back there. Kate needs you. Russell’s finally figured out you ain’t there protectin’ her no more. He’s up to somethin’ and he’s hirin’ on gun hands an’ everything. He acts like he’s gettin’ ready to take on the whole country if he has to, to get that place o’ hers. Pa an’ Eddie’ll do all they can to keep him from it, but they can’t hold ’em off for long. Some of our hands are willin’ to jump in too, but not all of ’em. Some of ’em are just plumb scared, ’specially when Russell’s bringin’ in all them hardcases. You just gotta come back, Sam.’
‘Kate doesn’t want me,’ Sam responded, his voice much harsher than he intended.
Bart shook his head emphatically. ‘That there just ain’t so, Sam. Kate, she can’t hardly even talk to nobody without bawlin’ no more. I ain’t seen her since you left without her eyes bein’ all red an’ swelled up, like she’s been bawlin’ most o’ the time. Billy, he just sits around all the time, lookin’ like he lost his best friend. They ain’t sayin’ nothin’, on account o’ they get all weepy when they try to, but they’re both a-wantin’ you there somethin’ awful. And not just to protect ’em, neither. That there woman, she’s just plumb head over heels in love with you, Sam. That’s what my Ma says, an’ she’s a Mexican, you know. Mexicans, they understand stuff like that.’
‘You rode all the way down here just to tell me that?’
‘No, I rode all the way down here to find you and haul you back up there where you belong.’
‘How’d you find me?’
‘You told me where the ranch was, after we whupped up on them boys o’ Grede’s, remember?’
Sam sighed heavily. ‘Sometimes I talk too much.’
‘Well, you’re talkin’ too much now,’ Bart agreed. ‘You need to be grabbin’ your stuff so we can hit the road back to Wyoming.’
‘How long did it take you to get here?’
‘Two days.’
‘Two days? Didn’t you stop to eat or sleep?’
‘Nope. We ain’t got that much time. I’d ride a horse till he was pertneart ready to drop, then I’d stop at a ranch and swap horses and keep headin’ south. I ’spect we can swap horses at the same places on the way back, an’ we can be there day after tomorrow.’
‘That’d put you four days in the saddle without sleep.’
‘That don’t matter none. What matters is that we get back there afore it’s too late.
‘You forgot to stutter. What happened to your stutter?’
Bart grinned. ‘I d-d-don’t hardly stutter no more, ’cept when I’m thinkin’ about it.’
Oz spoke up for the first time. ‘I’ll go collect your time from Hap while you’re gettin’ your stuff together,’ he offered.
Sam jerked his attention to his friend. ‘I ain’t even said I was gonna go.’
‘You don’t need to. You’re goin’. You know it. I know it. You’re headin’ to Wyoming, and you ain’t never comin’ back to the Indian Nation. That’s just how it is.’
Sam glared at him a long moment before his look softened. ‘You comin’ with me?’
Oz pursed his lips thoughfully. ‘I just might do that,’ he said.
‘We could sure use you,’ Sam said, surprised at the gratitude and relief he heard in his own voice.
Bart’s face lit up as if the sun had just come out from under a cloud. ‘You mean you’re comin’? You’re really gonna come back with me? Eeeeehah!’
Bart threw his hat as high up in the air as he could throw it, causing his horse to shy and sidestep nervously. ‘You’re gonna spook your horse,’ Sam scolded. Bart grinned. ‘Aw, he’s too tired to spook much. He’s just about at the end of his rope. He needs a good rubdown an’ a bait of oats before he’d have energy enough to shy very hard.’
Sam returned the infectious grin of the youngster. ‘Oh, by the way, Oz, this here’s Bart Spalding. His family runs the H Bar V up in Wyoming. Bart, this is Oz Maguire. We been friends a while.’
Oz maneuvered his horse over where he could reach Bart, and held out a hand. ‘Bart, glad to meet you. Sam told me about you playin’ nine-pins with them fellas in the saloon.’
Bart frowned. ‘What’s nine-pins?’
‘Oh, that’s a game where you take a heavy ball and roll it into wooden pins standin’ up a ways off, and see how many you can knock over.’
‘Oh.’ Bart’s frown turned into another grin. ‘Yeah, I guess I did sorta do that, didn’t I?’
Sam lifted his reins impatiently. ‘If gettin’ back there is all that important, we’d best stop sittin’ here chinnin’ and get ready to hit the trail.’
As one they turned their horses toward the Rafter J, each lost in his own thoughts of what lay ahead.