The scream of a hawk, circling high over the clearing in which he had slept, brought Rae Marsh awake.
It was full daylight and the sun was high. Marsh sat up suddenly, surprised to find it so late—and then he groaned in agony. His whole body was a mass of bruises, as sore as if he’d been thrown and tromped on by a bronc. As the memory of yesterday’s humiliation came back to him with full force, his mouth tightened and his eyes narrowed.
He got slowly to his feet, wincing with the pain of it, but as he moved about and the sun warmed him, some of the pain seemed to abate.
The bay was cropping grass at the edge of the clearing. Near where it grazed there ran a narrow, clear, cold stream, foaming and boiling over sharp rocks.
Rae stripped off his shirt. His torso was gaunt from short rations, but it was layered and plied with plenty of hard muscle. Right now it was mottled black and blue with bruises. He pressed his ribs gently but found no indication of any breakage. Then he went to the stream and washed to the waist in it, snorting and gasping with the shock of the icy water.
When he had dried, he felt much better and far less stiff. He slipped on shirt and brush jacket and realized suddenly that he was ravenously hungry; he hadn’t really eaten since day before yesterday, when he’d stopped over at that trapper’s cabin. The pangs he felt in his belly were so sharp they took his mind off his aches.
He stood there thinking about it a moment. Then he grinned. It was a slow grin that did not really move his lips much, and it was not a pleasant thing to see.
Cleve Anders had taken his six-gun, but Anders had made a mistake and had left the Winchester saddle carbine, which was still in its scabbard. Marsh went to it, stroked its stock absently for a moment, still grinning, then picked up saddle, blanket, and rifle with scabbard and lugged his gear toward the hobbled bay.
The Circle M ran a lot of cattle, and it did not take Rae Marsh long to find what he was seeking— a couple of fat cows in a brushy ravine, one of them with a chunky yearling calf.
Marsh had ridden a long way into the timber last night, but not quite far enough to get off Circle M range. Nevertheless, he figured he’d put enough distance between himself and the main ranch for a rifle shot not to make much difference.
He got off the bay and dropped the plump yearling with a single shot. The cows spooked at the smell of blood and dashed past him out of the ravine.
His face set in a grim smile, Rae took his riata off his saddle. Looping it around the yearling’s forefeet, he dragged the carcass out of the ravine to high ground. There he skinned it and butchered out a huge, choice steak quickly and with dexterity.
There was plenty of dry wood about, and he built a fire that was almost completely smokeless. By that time, the steak had cooled out enough to cook. While he broiled the meat, he let a spare cinch ring heat to a cherry red in the coals. When he judged it hot enough, he picked it up between two sticks and went to the green hide with it. Several heatings were necessary before he had completed what he had set out to do.
By that time, the steak was ready. He wolfed it down, and when he could hold no more, he felt restored and capable.
He went back to the yearling’s carcass and hacked off just about nearly one third of the meat. He cut one third of the green hide off the rest, spoiling it, and wrapped the meat in it and threw the bloody bundle far down into the ravine. The rest of the carcass he left up here on high ground, in plain sight. Soon it would attract vultures, crows and magpies. Also, he guessed, Circle M riders.
All that done, he hung the remaining two-thirds of the hide on a tree above the carcass, mounted up, calculated directions by the sun, and headed toward where he judged the town of Bent’s Crossing to be.
Behind him, a rising wind flapped the raw and bloody hide back and forth. The branded message on its hair side was crudely done, but it stood out plainly:
2/3 FOR U—1/3 FOR ME—RM
Cleve Anders, Rae knew, would understand immediately that it was a declaration of war.
It took him a long time to reach Bent’s Crossing —not that he had trouble finding it, but he rode with an instinctive concern for cover, keeping himself and the bay off the skyline, his eyes searching the terrain warily, his hand never far from the butt of the saddle gun.
While he rode, he tried to make some sense out of everything that had happened.
He had built up a lot of hopes, a lot of daydreams, on the long ride up here to Fletcher’s Hole. There were things that he had never known or had that he had hoped to find here. An end to drifting, a sense of belonging somewhere—and the father he could not remember ever having seen, and now would never see.
The Clintons had been good people, and they had taken the best care of him they could. But they’d had children of their own, too, and somehow Rae had always been just enough of the outsider to feel it keenly. As soon as he was old enough to understand, they’d told him how he had come to be with them, and from that day on he had lived in the constant hope that someday his father would come back for him—his real father. Every rider appearing over the horizon had been an adventure—and a disappointment.
But John Marsh had never come and never written. The Clintons pulled up stakes and moved to New Mexico. The range wars were on, and the Apaches were still out. It was a country where a man had to learn to use a gun to grow up. Rae found that he had a talent for using a gun.
But the Clintons were by nature restless, and once again they moved on, to California this time. When they left, Rae, now fully grown and his own man, stayed behind.
He worked for Chisum for a while, John Chisum, the fabulous cattle baron who branded with a Long Rail and earmarked with a jinglebob. That was when his path first crossed that of a buck-toothed kid named Bonney, who was older than his years and extremely likeable. He and Bonney wound up together again, later on, working for an Englishman named Gerald Tunstall, whom they both greatly admired. When Tunstall was drygulched in cold blood, Bonney swore vengeance; before long he and Rae both were caught up in the swirling crosscurrents of that complex, bloody battle that came to be known as the Lincoln County War.
Bonney, it developed, thrived on fighting and killing; Rae saw a new side of him—the boy was cold-blooded and ruthless as a weasel. By that time, Rae was entitled to notches on his own gun if he had chosen to carve them, and his reputation might, in time, have equaled that of the Kid. But the thought of having such a reputation revolted him.
He had already made up his mind to break loose when the rider bearing John Marsh’s letter had sought him out.
Rae could still remember the surge of emotion that had gone through him when he had read the letter. It had not been the prospect of inheriting cattle or range that had sent him riding, pushing the bay hard; it had been something far deeper than that, something he could not put into words.
But he had had to find his father before the old man died and the chance was lost forever.
And now he had been too late. The grief in him at realization of that was deeper than anger or the lust for revenge for what Cleve Anders had done to him.
But at least John Marsh had acknowledged him as his son. John Marsh had wanted Rae to have his fair share of the Circle M. That was what mattered now—that the old man’s wishes be carried out, not thwarted by Anders, who held half and obviously was determined not to see his share whittled down by further division. All right, he could fight Anders —the big man was no blood kin to either him or his father. But what about the boy, what about Will Marsh? There was no doubt that he and Will had the same father, that the same blood ran in their veins. Will had seemed to sense that, too, had even seemed willing to talk about the matter and work out some kind of settlement. Still, when the chips were down, what would Will do? Would he wind up having to fight his own half brother, too, in order to claim his rightful inheritance? That was a prospect he was not looking forward to.
Bent’s Crossing was bigger than he had expected it to be. No river had given it that name; it had received it because it lay at the easiest entrance to Fletcher’s Hole and the Bents had once had a temporary fort here to protect their hired trappers from the Blackfeet and Southern Cheyennes who had considered this their hunting grounds forty or fifty years before. The remains of the old fort could still be seen on the flats outside the town, its log palings tilted and full of gaps, its buildings caved and decaying. Beyond it, the town nestled under the shoulders of the mountains, with a wagon road, a good one, leading outward. It was a good-sized clutter of buildings, as towns went in that country, some log, some board. There were no mine-pockings on the mountains behind it, so it must have been built, Rae guessed, pretty much on cattle.
He didn’t really know now what pulled him toward it—he knew no one here and there was the price, maybe, of one dinner in his pockets, depending on how high things were. But maybe—just maybe—the town boasted a cemetery, and maybe that cemetery was where John Marsh’s body lay. He would find out, anyhow.
By now it was early afternoon, and as he eased the bay onto the hard packed main street of the place, Bent’s Crossing looked deserted; everybody would be eating dinner. He ticked off in his mind the attractions the town had and the facilities it offered: five saloons, a couple of general stores, a butcher shop, a marshal’s office, even a small bank. Then he saw what he wanted—a sign jutting from one false-fronted building: Sam Murney, Gent’s Clothes and, under that legend, another one: Undertaker,
He put the bay to the sidewalk, swung down and tied it. A little bell over the door tinkled when he entered the establishment of the versatile Sam Murney. There was one wooden rack of store clothes and some tables piled with Levis and California pants and flannel shirts. At the rear of the store, a very thin, bald-headed man, coatless, but wearing vest and pants to a suit, sat tilted back in a chair with his feet propped up on a fireless iron stove. Crumb-filled papers spread across his narrow lap showed that he was just finishing lunch.
Without any perceptible hurry, he let the chair come down, got to his feet, and stuffed the papers into the stove. Then he came forward to meet his customer, his eyes running dubiously over Rae’s worn, scuffed, and dirty clothes, which the tussle in the Circle M yard hadn’t helped.
“Howdy,” he said. “Somethin’ for you?”
“No clothes. Just a little information. Sign says you’re an undertaker.”
“That’s right.” Sam Murney’s voice was immediately lower, reverent, as if he had switched to his undertaking tone. “We can lay your dear departed out for his Heavenly Journey so natural you would think he was only sleepin’ if you didn’t know better.”
“Uh-huh,” Rae said. “What I wanted to ask was, did you by any chance handle John Marsh’s funeral?”
Sam Murney looked at Rae with narrowed eyes. Something cautious moved across his face. “You any kin?”
“I’m his son,” Rae said. It sounded odd to be saying it aloud that way.
“Oh, you’re that one,” Murney said, and now his voice had gone definitely hostile. “Yeah, Cleve spread the word about you yesterday afternoon. Mister, maybe you don’t want my advice, but folks around here’ll tell you it’s good. Now, you take my word for it, you’re not buyin’ yourself anything but bad trouble hangin’ around here with that story. Best thing you can do is cut out. The road leads right over the mountains and it ain’t a bad ride at all.”
Rae felt his temper boiling up. So Anders had been here before him. And apparently Murney was afraid of Anders. Maybe everybody else in town was, too.
His temper was in his voice. “Mister, I didn’t ask you about the road. I come in here to find out where you buried John Marsh.”
His eyes were full on Murney, and the skinny man saw something in them that made him step back a pace.
“All right,” he said, flustered. “All right, don’t git your back up. Ain’t no skin off my nose if I tell you. We got a graveyard out there behind the old fort. Planted John there, next to his dear, departed loving wife.”
Rae let out a long breath. “Thanks,” he said tautly. “That was what I wanted to know.” He whirled and strode out of the store, unlatched the reins of the bay, mounted and rode back out of town.
Maybe, he thought, he wasn’t about to take on just Circle M. Maybe he was about to take on Bent’s Crossing, too, maybe even all of Fletcher’s Hole. Maybe Anders drew enough water to line them all up behind him.
He was so caught up in his grim thoughts that he didn’t notice the rider who had moved out of Bent’s Crossing on the same road, far behind him.
Like most frontier graveyards, this one had a forlorn, untended look. Some of the graves had wooden headstones, some tombstones carved out of granite, some no marker at all. But there was no missing the raw, red fresh pile of dirt in the middle of the cemetery.
He ground hitched the bay and went into the cemetery.
The two granite stones were identical. The first one marked the resting place of Virginia Anders Marsh, who had died two years before. The second one, at the head of the fresh grave, said tersely: John F. Marsh, and besides the name bore only the dates of birth and death.
Rae Marsh took off his hat and looked down at the raw earth, and he was full of grief for all that might have been and yet had never come to pass. As he stood there, the shadows from the high-palinged walls of the old fort fell across him, for he was there a long time, how many minutes he did not know, caught up in a skein of grieving, bitter thoughts.
Then his reverie was broken as the bay raised its head and nickered greeting to another animal and, instinctively, Rae Marsh sprang into action, whirling toward his mount.
But he was too late. Foolishly, he had left his saddle gun on the bay, and now a rider had pulled up between him and the horse and was looking down on him. Rae froze, but the desperation in him subsided as he saw that the rider was a woman.
She sat her mount sidesaddle. Her figure from the waist down was obscured by the flowing riding skirt. But from the waist up, under her tight bodice, it was something to make a man catch his breath.
She was about his own age, maybe a little younger. She had jet-black hair pulled smoothly back behind her ears, a saucy riding hat perched atop its shining coils. Her eyes, in a face untanned by sun, a face pale and smooth and flawless as a lily petal, were black as her hair and very large; now they held an odd expression that was a mixture of amusement and sympathy. Her nose was straight, perfectly chiseled, her mouth full and red-lipped, her chin firm. As she looked down at Rae, her lips curved slightly in a strange smile.
“I’d hoped you were smarter than that,” she said. “You let me ride right between you and your horse.” Her eyes flicked downward to his hips. “And you’re not even packing a handgun.”
“There was something else on my mind,” Rae said.
“That?” She motioned toward the grave.
“Yes,” he said. “That.”
“I’m sorry about him,” she said. “He was your father, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Rae said. “He was.”
“It’s too bad he went before you got here,” she said. “The doctor told me he was surprised it happened so quickly.” Her dark eyes roved up and down him boldly. After a moment, she said, “Cleve claims he took your gun away by himself. But I think he must have had help.”
“He had help,” said Rae.
She nodded again. “Well,” she said, “aren’t you going to give me a hand down?”
“Excuse me,” Rae said. He came forward quickly. She slid down off the horse with the lithe grace of a panther. She was not as tall as he had thought; her head came just to the level of his eyes.
“Thanks,” she said, when she was solidly on the ground. “My name is Gwenn Crystal. Nobody ever calls me Gwenn. Everybody calls me Crystal.”
“All right,” Rae said. “I’ll call you Crystal, too. My name’s Rae Marsh.”
“I know who you are,” she said.
“Everybody does,” he said with a touch of bitterness. “Anders has spread the word, huh?”
“You might say he’s posted you,” she said. “He’s made Bent’s Crossing off-limits to you.”
“He draws some water here, huh?”
“He’s been running things since John Marsh got sick. Circle M’s the biggest ranch in the Hole. Bent’s Crossing was John Marsh’s town. But when John came down with what killed him, Cleve stepped in to fill his boots. Now Bent’s Crossing is Cleve’s town. Everybody was sorry when John died. He was the only one could hold Cleve Anders in check.”
“He’s a hardcase, huh?”
“You ought to know his style,” she said. “You got a dose of it yesterday.”
Marsh nodded. “All right,” he said. “You know all about me. But I don’t know anything about you.”
“I told you my name,” she said. “I own a place in town.” Then her eyes narrowed, her lips thinned. “And nothing would make me happier than to see you take Cleve Anders down and rub his nose in the dirt. In fact, if you want to kill him, I’ll buy the bullets!”
Rae Marsh stared at her for a long moment. Then he said quietly, “Lady, I think this is something you and me ought to talk about.”
Crystal met his eyes. “I think so, too,” she said, and her voice was crisp. “Give me a hand up and we’ll ride back to Bent’s Crossing.”
“You’re not afraid to be seen with me?” “I’m not afraid of anything,” she said, and the way she said it made him sure of its truth. “Come on. We’ll ride in and talk at my place.”