Chapter Two

A rig was standing in the yard and Caroline was waiting at the gate. She’d watched him ride and knew it was no ordinary thing that brought him home with such speed.

His face was tight as he passed her. He was tall and straight and grim as he stood in the kitchen telling Ma Thompson.

“He was bushwhacked and I got to go,” finished Whitey.

Ma had her bonnet off but her hands were full of bundles. She dropped them and a can of milk rolled unheeded under the table. “Whitey… Son, there’s things men think they have to do and maybe that’s right. But Mart Connelly’s sheriff here and you’re too young for murder.”

“I knew you’d say that,” said Whitey. “You wouldn’t know. I promised him and he’s dead.”

“Who killed him?” said Ma, scared because she loved Whitey like the boy she’d failed to raise.

“I reckon I’ll have to keep that, Ma. You’d tell.”

“Somebody in the Belleau Basin?”

“A man I never heerd of until now, Ma. But I got to kill him for a snake that’d kill an old man for a few nuggets.”

“Whitey. Sit down. Oh, it’s you, Caroline. Get Whitey a cup of coffee. Now you listen to an old woman, Whitey. That’s mighty dramatic, but it ain’t good sense. You’re young and killin’ is killin’ and it ain’t for you. Mart Connelly’s comin’ here today to see about my boundary feud. You tell him and let him make a deputy of you and trail along. That’s sense now.”

Caroline’s eyes were big and scared. She’d heard it from the porch. The cup and saucer rattled as she tried to obey her mother and give Whitey his cup of coffee. But he never looked at it as she set it down. He just stood and looked at Ma Thompson.

“I got to go,” he said. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Whitey…son. Please listen to an old woman. I know I ain’t got good sense about a lot of things, but there’s a phrase in the Good Book: ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ Don’t go agin the Book, Whitey. They’ll hang you for a killer. Don’t go.”

“I got to go,” said Whitey.

He put his hat back on his head and went to the bunkhouse for his sougan and war sack. He oiled up his gun and carbine very carefully. Then he cut his favorite, Rambler, from the remuda and saddled him.

Caroline was waiting at the gate. She had a sack of bread and meat and coffee and salt. Whitey wasn’t seeing her at all when he took the food. She made the excuse that it wasn’t tied straight on his cantle and fussed with the thongs.

“Don’t…” she began and then stopped. This was a man’s world and she couldn’t break through. She knew what he’d think if she begged him to stay. She knew he might if he was begged hard enough. He had notions of courage and chivalry and vengeance for his kinfolk. She’d have to let him go.

“Don’t what?” Whitey challenged.

“Don’t stay away too long,” said Caroline.

He rode away and didn’t even look back at her. She knew she was wrong, then. He wouldn’t have stayed no matter what she’d promise. There was dull misery in her soul for she knew she would never see Whitey again.

He had not cleared the lane when he encountered Connelly. Connelly was a rawhide frontiersman, a onetime Arizona Ranger, a man of reputation and very little to say.

“Howdy, Whitey,” said Mart, for he couldn’t miss the rider’s preoccupation nor the sougan.

Whitey was suspicious. But he had to give the facts. He told them tonelessly and then tried to force Rambler by.

Mart was quick with a horse. There wasn’t an opening in the trail now. “Who’s the man he named?” demanded Mart.

“That,” said Whitey, looking the sheriff straight through, “is between me and my pa.”

“Where you goin’, Whitey?”

“I’m goin’ to take a trip. The country’s too damned civilized.”

“Who’s the man, Whitey?”

“Go to hell.”

Mart looked at the tall rider. “Whitey, if you go pluggin’ somebody, revenge or no revenge, I’ll have to take you in.”

“That’ll be then,” said Whitey.

“And if you withhold material evidence now, I’m takin’ you anyway.”

Whitey looked dangerous and his gun hand trembled.

“I wouldn’t,” said Mart. “Not that you mightn’t win. But you’re a friend of mine, Whitey. Name the man and then you can go where you please.”

The trail was blocked between the two strings of barbed wire. And no matter the urgency he felt, he couldn’t shoot Mart even if he beat him to the draw. “Let me go.”

“Name him,” said Mart Connelly.

“Jess Stewart,” said Whitey with a snarl. “Now get out of the trail or I’ll ride straight through.”

“Jess Stewart? Jess Stewart?” puzzled Mart. “I don’t seem to recall…”

Being blocked on his way crystallized Whitey’s determination. “Get outa my way, Mart Connelly.”

“Now look, Whitey, the law…”

“To hell with the law! You’ll dodder and fumble and spend months on a trial and then you’ll let him go. To hell with the law, I say. What I got to do, I got to do, and you ain’t got guns enough nor men enough to stop me. Get out of my way!”

Whitey stabbed spur and Rambler struck at the air with his front feet. Mart ducked and hurriedly pulled aside as Whitey at a dead run went away from there. Mart looked soberly at the wind devils of dust that marked Whitey’s swift flight and then, shoulders sagged, went on up to the ranch from whence he could send word into town while he rode on to the claim.

Startled birds and rabbits flushed from Whitey’s onward rush. Los Pinos grew laggardly large in the distance and the stretch of Rambler was all too short. He came plunging up to the Don’t Care Hotel and Saloon and flung himself down.

Two of his friends were on the porch but he didn’t speak to them. He went up to the dozing clerk and lifted him erect and staring from his tilted chair. The chair banged down.

“You know anybody stopping here name of Jess Stewart?”

It was hard for Tim, the clerk, to talk because his collar was so tight. He twisted away. “What the hell’s got into you, Whitey?”

“Answer up.”

“Who?”

“Jess Stewart. Him or any strangers in the past week?”

Tim scowled at Whitey and shrugged his coat on straight but he looked at the ledger and thought about it for a while. “Just a whiskey drummer and two women they wouldn’t let stay. Nobody else for a month, Whitey. Them stages don’t stop….”

But Whitey was gone. Out in the street he saw Burt Landon and nodded briefly. Burt hauled water for people and got around.

“You know any strangers in the country named Jess Stewart—or named anything else?”

Burt was caught by the strained look in Whitey’s eyes and the stiffness in his manner. He stopped his water wagon. “What’s up, Whitey?”

“Just got to know, that’s all. You get around. It’s kind of important.”

Burt gnawed at his mustache and shifted his reins. He thought for a long time, now and then eyeing the impatient Whitey. “Nope,” he decided at last. “Ain’t nobody but that widder woman and the two kids that come in to take over for Old Mrs. Greenbury on the Sixty-Six. What’s up, Whitey?”

Whitey went on. He went on for two hours. He went on until he was heavy with exhaustion and nerves. But no one had heard the name that they could recall but said maybe if Jim, who was an old-timer and drove the stage…

Whitey put Rambler in the livery stable and was just pulling off his saddle when Holt, an old man whose body had survived the Indian days but who’d somewhere lost a part of his mind, came up to take a hand.

Holt was a peculiar man, not talking for days and then gabbing for an entire night without stopping. He talked to people who were not there and had been dead a very long time. The town tolerated him but walked a little wide and the young boys sometimes threw sticks and mud clods at him when he came out of his barn.

“I heerd you askin’,” said Holt.

Whitey put the saddle on a rail and then suddenly recalled that Holt’s memory was good for all his craziness and that people came to a livery stable….

“I’m lookin’ for Jess Stewart.”

Holt started to rub down Rambler. “I heerd you askin’, Jake.”

“I’m Whitey, not Jake. I got to find a man.”

“He ain’t here,” said Holt.

Whitey started to leave. But Holt added. “Not for fifteen year.”

“You knew him?” Tensely.

“You’re Whitey Bates.”

“Yes.”

“I knew him. He was a friend of your old man’s. But they’d a fight and such. That was when yore ma and you was back East. He wan’t here long and tain’t likely he’ll come back because that’s the way with renegades. Leastwise squaw men. Know how I knowed his real name? Had it on his saddlebag, inside.”

Whitey felt dizzy. He steadied himself on a post. “What other name did he go by? What did he look like?”

“Quiet sort of feller. Bought a stud off’n me for twenty-one dollars cash. Sure saw him comin’, I did. But the country was young. Warn’t nobody around but miners and Injuns. Then she begin to settle and you and yore ma come up when Old Hundred struck it. Then these other people come. Had a squaw myself but they kilt her. Tribes was death on mixin’ after the bad whites come. My old sidekick Happy Days says to me…Hello, Happy! I was jus’ tellin’ the boy here how ’twas ’fore she settled up. How you been?”

Whitey waited but the old loon rambled on to an unseen audience and no question would bring him back. Whitey finally shook him.

Holt stumbled to one knee and looked up, turned ugly. “You won’t git no more off’n me. Everybody wants somethin’ from me. They stole my land, the whites and the Injuns kilt her. Go on over to Rosarita and ask yore questions. Yore man ain’t yere.”