CHAPTER XX

 

THE OLD MAN stood at a shuttered window and peered through the dusty glass, apparently squinting through a slit in the shutters. He said, “Storm’s lettin’ up, praise be.” Michaela looked up; all her sensitivities seemed heightened this day and there was a joy in everything. Her father appeared calm and clear eyed; he came to the table and sat down and said, “I reckon you gents will be movin’ on in a little while.”

Lutz grunted and Andrews tipped the bottle to his lips.

Michaela noticed, but paid no attention to, the look that flashed from George Zane to Elias. Elias was tilted back in his chair near the stove, picking his teeth. She looked at the spot where Billy McCasford had lain; a short while ago they had taken him upstairs and put him on the bed in her room. The room seemed emptier without the one-armed youth and Jim Brand.

Zane stood against the wall, arms folded across his chest, his hat perched atop a thick bandage. Michaela turned from the table and went upstairs, passing Brand’s door and hesitating but not stopping, and going on to her own room.

For a moment she stood outside the door, reflecting. It had not yet been twenty-four hours since the beginning of the blizzard. That seemed impossible, but it was fact. Still, things had happened in those few hours that might change the course of her life—and the courses of many other lives.

She lifted her long, supple hands and considered them, and ran them down over the curves of her body, throwing her head back and drawing in a long breath; she used both palms to smooth back her hair and looked over her shoulder at the silent door to Brand’s room. A slow smile crossed her lips and she comforted herself with thoughts of him until presently she opened the door to her own room and stepped inside, leaving the door ajar.

McCasford slept on the bed, his face turned away from her. She moved softly forward, not wishing to wake him, and knelt by the foot of the bed, lifting the loose floorboard. She drew out one of the heavy gold pokes and opened it, spilling some of the loose gold grains into her palm, turning them in the light. Half of this was hers; and she thought of Jim Brand, and silently laughed at Wayne Lutz’s tarnished offers.

She sifted the gold back into the sack and let it slip to the floor; she rose and walked to the window and slid open the sash, pushing the shutters back. Outside, snowflakes whirled from the sky. There was one tiny spot where the slow gold pallor of the sun was at last beginning to burn through the dense overhang of clouds. She closed the window but left the shutters open, and stood with her arms folded across her breasts looking outward.

That storm was ending; the storm of excitement within her was only beginning. She tasted the bittersweet warmth of that thought and followed her hopes through distant speculative paths.

“Hello.”

It was McCasford’s voice; it shattered her dreams and turned her around. He had not moved on the bed. He was smiling up at her and with some pity she noticed the drawn pale sketch of his broad cheeks. He said, “I guess I’ll pull through now.”

“Sure you will,” she said. “Did you ever doubt it?”

“When that slug spun me around I thought I was done.”

“Did you see who fired it?”

“No,” he said, “No, damn it.”

“They’ll find him,” she murmured. “Sooner or later he’ll be caught, and he’ll pay for it.”

He looked past her at the window. “Storm’s died away, hey?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good,” he said. His voice was weak but steady. “Michaela?”

“What is it?”

He did not speak for a moment and so she went closer to him and knelt down beside the bed, searching his face. He licked his dry lips and looked away with a kind of shyness that pleased her; it came to her that no matter what he had done, he had in him the core of a gentleman. She was glad she had trusted him last night. He rolled his head and stared at the ceiling and spoke slowly: “Last night, when you were dressing the wound, I saw the way you looked at Brand. He’s the one, isn’t he?”

“If he wants me,” she said honestly.

“Well, then,” he said tonelessly, “good luck to you, Michaela.”

She saw then that he was hurt by it. She put a gentle hand on his shoulder; all she could say was, “I’m sorry, Billy.”

“No. You’ve got nothin’ to be sorry for. Neither had he.”

“And neither do you, Billy. You’ve had some bad turns, but don’t feel sorry for yourself.”

“Sure,” he said; she could not tell if there was an edge of dryness on his tone. “I’ll make out all right.”

He was an earnest young man; there was a soft fire in his eyes. She was about to speak again when a soft, lyrical voice said casually, “Sure, Billy, you’ll make out fine.”

When she lifted her eyes, she saw Armando Elias in the doorway, one leg crossed over the other, his arms folded and his shoulder against the jamb.

He let his arms drop to his sides, smiling with all his teeth. And said, “I wish to have a few words with you, amigo.”

McCasford’s head turned on the pillow. He seemed to summon his words with some effort: “Go ahead.”

“It concerns a little matter of saddlebags.”

“What saddlebags?” McCasford said quickly—too quickly, she thought.

“Do not fool with me, amigo. I do not wish to lose a good partner, eh?”

“You’ve already lost one,” McCasford said. “I ain’t going anyplace with you, Armando.”

And Michaela said, “He’s in no condition to ride. You can see that.”

“Sure,” Elias breathed. “I can see.” He grinned again and took a pace forward into the room. “Amigo, this girl—she’s been putting words in your ear, eh? She’s been talking to you of sweet things, of flowers and sun. She wants you to take her away, no?”

“No,” Michaela said immediately.

Elias ignored her; he went on speaking to McCasford. “It is a fool thing, amigo. A young man has much pepper in him—the blood races too fast, and he does not think. Do you believe all her talk? There is no love in the world, amigo. It is a dream of poets and priests and similar fools. What she does not say now is that she does not want a one-armed man.”

McCasford’s face turned, shadowed with uncertainty; Michaela shook her head back and forth. McCasford said, “You got it wrong, Armando. I’ve got nothing with her.”

“No? Then you are twice a fool—for wanting her and for letting her discard you.”

“Shut up,” the youth said wearily.

“It is no matter. I have come to speak of other things. I wish to know where the saddlebags are.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No?” Elias showed his easy grin; he stooped and flicked the knife up from his boot top, and turned it so that it reflected light against the kid’s eyes. “You are sure?”

“I’m sure. Go ahead and slice me up—I ain’t going to tell you anything.”

“It will not be necessary to slice you up, as you say. The flesh of this girl is more tender for the knife, I think—”

“You son of a bitch.”

Elias touched his thumb to the blade edge, as if testing its sharpness. He walked forward, coming around the bed toward Michaela.

Shrinking back, she darted her hand toward her own knife in its belt sheath and brought it out, holding it before her warily, eyes flashing angrily and body moving into a crouch.

Elias laughed and McCasford said with a strain on his voice, “All right—all right, you bastard. That’s enough.”

“The saddlebags, amigo.”

“Buried in the stall where my horse is tethered.”

“Bueno,” Elias murmured, and shot a sharp glance at the girl. “If anyone comes into the stable before I am gone, I will shoot. Comprende?”

“You won’t get far,” she told him between her teeth.

“We will see.” Elias turned and, turning, looked down; now he halted, a gleam rising in his eye, and stooped at the foot of the bed. Michaela stood frozen, watching like one in a dream as Elias scooped up the heavy bag she had left there. An involuntary grunt of satisfaction left him as he looked into it, and then he rammed it into his mackinaw pocket, quickly sheathed his knife, drew his gun and waved it toward Michaela. “Señorita, you will please drop the knife and come with me.”

“Come with you? Where?”

“On a little journey,” Elias said, still smiling as he always smiled, with his lips only. “It will perhaps discourage the others from following.”

McCasford lunged forward on the bed, grunting with pain. “Wait a minute, Elias—you can’t …”

Elias cocked the gun and rammed it forward. “Lie back, amigo. You will never get well if you break the wound open.”

McCasford sat glaring at him; Elias said, “I will shoot you if I must, my friend. Do not force it.”

Then, prodding Michaela ahead of him, he went to the door. She felt the hard round muzzle of the gun in her back and, eyes cast down, went ahead of him down the corridor. When she passed Brand’s door she wanted to cry out; the gun prodded her back, and she went on.