‘Those cattle should have been bunched,’ Charlie said over the meal that Mrs Stanton – for that was her name – had provided. The wind and rain had settled in and raced on unabated outside the squat, smoky house. ‘Best to keep them together in a storm. Fewer will wander, and it helps them to keep warm.’
‘We’re not cowhands,’ Emil Stanton said loudly but without roughness. ‘And we only own one horse – it’s used for plowing and hauling.’
Charlie and Wayne nodded in understanding sympathy. Both had been doing the meal justice. It was corn soup and fresh, yeasty bread, which Mrs Stanton had delivered to the table with some pride. The room was long and narrow, the ceiling so low that a tall man like Wayne and the Stanton boy, Luke, had to duck his head to move around in it.
Cody sat at the foot of the long plank table, which could seat eight, and ate with caution, listening to the random conversation. He had not tasted his soup until he saw that everyone else was eating. He caught Lonnie’s eye once across the table and she seemed to nod. She did not smile – Cody wondered if she even knew how – but her look seemed to indicate that there was no poison in the food, although Cody was uncomfortable anyway after her earlier warning.
He hadn’t had the chance to tell Wayne and Charlie what Lonnie had said to him. Emil, suddenly the gregarious host, had swept them inside the long house and pointed out things he had done there, what he intended to do once he could come by some cash money from selling some of his cattle.
These, as Wayne, Charlie and Cody had all noticed, were unbranded. The odds were that they were mavericks and probably had once belonged to Triangle, though that would be impossible to prove. There was some grumbling about Triangle around the table from the Stanton family, but this seemed to be based on sheer envy for the most part. People who don’t have what someone else has always seem to have a grudge against them. Even though they would like to be exactly like them. Cursing another man’s luck, Cody guessed you might call it, though it was seldom luck that made a man profit, but some brains and a lot of hard work.
‘Things’ll get better around here when Amos and Daltry arrive,’ the old woman said, leaning away from the table with satisfaction, her hands resting on her aproned lap. Charlie and Wayne glanced at Emil Stanton for illumination.
‘Those are my two older sons,’ Emil said, wiping some of his meal from his shaggy gray beard. ‘Good strong men.…’ He glanced at his youngest son, Luke, but did not continue with whatever it was he was thinking.
‘Where are they?’ Charlie asked. Beyond the house a gust of wind-driven cold rain pelted the house. Automatically they all looked to the flimsy walls.
‘We used to have a young redbud tree right off the front porch,’ the old woman said, her eyes clouded with remembrance. ‘Had a storm like this last winter and it got blown over.’
‘The boys,’ Emil Dalton told them, ‘have been up in the mountains, prospecting for gold. They’ll have to give it up with this weather settling in. It would be fine if they made a strike, wouldn’t it, Mother?’ Emil said to his wife. ‘Even a small one Then we could make some improvements around here.’
‘Maybe get some cloth to make a dress,’ Lonnie said, though no one but Cody seemed to hear her or pay attention to her. The girl was a mystery, like one of those wooden Chinese puzzles that seemed so simple until you tried to put it together.
She had seemed wildcat tough at first. Then she had warned Cody of trouble brewing, seeming deeply concerned for the visitors. She had ranted and shouted out on the range. Inside the house she had hardly made a peep. Cody deliberately let his eyes meet hers from time to time, but there was no way to read her inner thoughts. She ate in silence, her eyes fixed on her bowl.
After Lonnie and her mother had cleared away the dinner dishes, Emil Dalton lit a long-stemmed pipe he had filled with black tobacco. They sat on leather-bottomed chairs near a low-burning fire, Emil rocking back and forth, a distant smile on his lips. ‘Things will be better when Amos and Daltry get back from the mountains. Their little bit of gold will be enough to help us through the hard winter.’ He looked briefly thoughtful, concerned, as he puffed on his pipe.
‘Cash money is always a help, isn’t it?’ he asked, looking directly at Wayne, who had not helped suspicions by insisting on having his saddle-bags under his chair during supper and who now had them resting beside his left hand.
‘I suppose,’ Wayne answered easily, ‘though I’ve never had enough to know.’
‘No, a cowhand seldom gets rich, does he?’ Emil asked.
‘No.’
‘Well, let’s hope your sons have had some luck,’ Charlie said, speaking up, perhaps not liking the turn the conversation was taking. ‘Are you expecting them soon?’
‘I am,’ Emil said, ‘but you never know in weather like this, do you? It’s a long walk back from … the place they were trying to work.’
‘They’re walking?’ Cody asked. Emil’s eyes shifted toward him. In a far corner, Cody saw the shadowy figure of Lonnie moving around.
‘They’re walking. I told you, we don’t have but one horse. We’re not rich, remember? Oh, they’ve got that jackass for toting their ore and supplies, nothing else.’
Something about this response bothered Cody – perhaps the idea that a man as poor as Emil Stanton was would feel wealthy if he owned three good horses. Did he covet their animals?
Enough to kill for them?
‘It’s tough up in those mountains,’ Wayne said for something to say. His craggy face was intent in the firelight as if he too had been warned by Emil’s remarks. The saddle-bags containing their gold remained within reach of his left hand. His holster remained within reach of his right.
Luke Stanton, who had lounged against the wall near the fireplace, silent until now, said:
‘Those mountains are rough, all right. I went up there once with my Uncle Morris, trapping for furs. I almost died three or four times. I guess he did die.’
All three of the visitors came alert. Charlie asked without indicating his interest, ‘Who was Uncle Morris? What happened?’
‘He was my brother,’ Emil Stanton said, knocking the dottle from his pipe into his palm. ‘He was sure he was going to get rich on furs.’
‘He was a trapper?’ Charlie asked. Emil looked at him as if that was the most stupid question he had ever heard.
‘That’s what I said,’ Emil said stonily. ‘Went off one winter; probably got himself froze to death. Never saw him again. But that’s been years ago.’ The old man got to his feet.
‘If you boys will excuse me, I’m tired. Lonnie will show you where to bunk down. Mother!’ he called. ‘It’s bedtime.’ In a quieter, flatter voice, he said to the visitors, ‘Men, nothing against your company, but I intend to find you’ve gone in the morning, storm or none.’
Then he turned and shuffled off toward the rear of the house, his plump wife rushing after him, still drying her hands on a dish towel. Lonnie followed her mother into the room, her eyes somber, her motions measured as if she were trying to remain calm, in control of her emotions.
‘I’ll show you where you can sleep,’ the girl said. Charlie rose; Wayne shouldered his heavy saddle-bags which gave out an unhoped-for clink. The three men followed her down a dark hall. Opening a door she reached into her skirt pocket, produced a candle stub and lighted it. She led them into the room.
‘This will have to do for two of you,’ Lonnie said, handing the candle to Charlie. There were low, leather-strapped beds on either side of the small room. ‘This is my brothers’ room. Amos and Daltry. They shouldn’t be back tonight – of course if they do make it through the storm we’ll have to figure something else out.’
The storm still banged and thundered around the house. If Amos and Daltry were walking through it, they’d deserve their own dry beds, Cody thought. Lonnie hesitated before turning toward Cody. ‘This way,’ she told him as Charlie placed the fat candle carefully on a plate set on a low puncheon table which was already marked with candle drippings. Lonnie led the way down the dark hall again and opened a narrow door.
‘This is only a storeroom,’ she said. ‘But it’s drier than it is outside.’ She withdrew another candle from her skirt pocket and lit it.
‘It’s fine,’ Cody said in the near darkness. He thought he could hear her breathing, shallow and a little excited. He would make a bed of a pile of burlap sacking stacked in the storeroom. It was better than the open plains by far.
‘Was there something else?’ Lonnie asked Cody.
‘I don’t know. Is there?’
She hesitated. ‘I don’t suppose so. I’ll leave the door open so that you can see what you’re doing.’
Cody nodded and watched as the slender, forlorn girl walked away. He waited until he could no longer hear the sound of her boot-heels clicking down the hall, then slipped out of the storeroom to return to where Charlie and Wayne were making their beds.
With a soft tap he entered to find both men fully dressed and alert. Charlie, perched on the bed, looked especially uneasy. They looked up at him.
‘Well, Cody, what do you think?’ Wayne asked.
‘I think we’ve gotten ourselves into serious trouble,’ Cody answered, and he went on to tell them about Lonnie’s warning.
‘They mean to kill us?’ Charlie said, startled by the idea. He glared at Wayne. ‘I knew you were giving those saddle-bags too much attention!’
‘No one was paying any mind,’ Wayne protested.
‘It was the sound of the bullet striking metal that alerted them,’ Cody believed. ‘The girl, Lonnie, apologized, saying she was a poor shot, that it was an accident. I doubt it – I think it was deliberate.’
‘Who knows?’ Charlie said dismally. ‘Who knows if she was telling the truth? She doesn’t seem to be the most stable person I’ve ever come across. Maybe she was just having fun with you, Cody.’
‘Some fun,’ Cody muttered, glancing into the dark hallway behind him.
Wayne rubbed his hand across his head. He wondered, ‘What about these two sons – Amos and Daltry? Do they even exist? Are they lurking around here somewhere, and not gone away as the old man told us?’
‘Prospecting!’ Charlie said in disparagement. His round face was morose in the candlelight. ‘I never heard of no gold up above the Rios Canyon. If there was, there’d be a hundred men up there searching for it.’
‘Maybe that wasn’t the kind of gold they were prospecting for,’ Wayne said. He was silent for a minute, then he suggested quite deliberately, ‘Maybe they have been looking for gold that has already been refined and minted.’
‘The gold that belonged to the trapper?’ Cody asked. ‘Do you think he might have been this mysterious Uncle Morris they mentioned?’
‘Who knows?’ Wayne answered, shifting his eyes as a small sound outside caught his ear.
‘Even if this Morris was the trapper, how could anyone have known that he had come into money in a card game?’ Charlie asked. Wayne shrugged.
‘He could have sent a note with a passer-by,’ Cody suggested.
‘That doesn’t seem likely. I doubt if any of this bunch can read or write anyway. We probably are letting our imaginations run away with us,’ Wayne countered. ‘Maybe they would be willing to kill us for out horses and whatever’s in our pockets – dirt poor as this Stanton family seems to be.’
‘There might not be any brothers,’ Charlie said as if clinging to that idea. ‘Just something they made up to worry us.’
‘It don’t matter. Once we fall asleep that old man can take care of us all with his shotgun,’ Wayne said.
‘There’s three of them who are armed,’ Charlie said miserably. He paused for a minute, listening to the hard-driving rain against the roof. ‘I’d rather not wake up dead tomorrow. What do you think we should do, Wayne?’
‘We could take turns standing watch all night,’ Wayne said with a tight shake of his head, ‘but for myself I’m thinking …’ He looked up. ‘We ought to get away from this place as fast as possible.’
There was no debate. Not a man wished to go out into a fierce winter storm where all sorts of calamities were possible, but the alternative to rough travel was spending the night in a house where they had already been warned that they would be killed before dawn. They had endured rough traveling before – none of them had yet survived his own murder.
They decided to make their break for it now rather than wait until the dead of night. The storm would get no better, and the mysterious brothers, Daltry and Amos, might arrive to aid in the killing of the travelers. Wayne lugged his heavy saddle-bags across his shoulder and all three men carried weapons in their hands as they slunk down the dark corridor toward the front door.
They nearly walked into Lonnie Stanton.
The slender girl’s eyes opened wide, but she did not make a sound, as they feared; she simply backed away deeper into the murky shadows of the smoky house. Wayne jerked his head toward the front door and they went that way in a bunch. The wind was howling, the rain driving down. Once the door to the house was flung open the sound increased to a tumult. They had to fight their way against the wind through the iron mesh of the rain. They were frozen to the bone within minutes as they slogged toward the horses through the inches-deep mud.
There was no visibility except by the light of the brilliantly flashing lightning. This was sporadic and disorienting, More than once Cody stumbled over an unseen object, and twice went to his knees as they slipped and slid onward. No one had lighted a candle or lantern in the house; no one had raised an alarm.
Once aboard their horses, a few minutes’ ride would put them beyond range of visibility in the turmoil of the night. No one would be taking any long shots at them. And with no horses to follow on, the Stantons would be unable to pursue even if they were willing to do so.
All remained quiet inside the house; no shout of warning followed them. The storm raged and the heavy rain fell from out of the inky sky – and all of this being done because of the whispered warning of an unstable girl. Maybe she had simply been ‘having fun’ with Cody.
‘Let’s go,’ Wayne urged them from horseback, ‘before the brothers show up.’
‘What brothers?’ Charlie snarled. ‘We ain’t never seen them,’ he said, still holding to his theory that Daltry and Amos might be imaginary. ‘Besides, if they’re walking home through this weather, they won’t so much as see us, let alone have an idea of what’s going on.’
Cody swung into his saddle leather. Oddly, he agreed with both men. Like Charlie, he did not believe that any men arriving on foot out of the darkness of the wintry night would be willing or able to start a fight with strangers without provocation.
Like Wayne, he thought that the best thing to do was to escape from the Stanton place as rapidly as possible. Thunder rolled across the long plains, lightning struck perilously close as they made their way from the yard of the house. Rain drove violently down. By the time they were out of sight of the house the darkness was so complete that Cody could not make out his fellow travelers in the whirl and thrust of the storm. They were completely obscured in a blackness of the prairie night.
That was why it was such a surprise when the first rifle bullet was fired from out of the darkness, striking flesh.