Dorothy Garlock (15 page)

Willa was also watching the play between Smith and Jo Bell. She saw the disappointment on Charlie’s face. Puzzled and troubled by conflicting emotions, she stepped up into the wagon and sat down beside Buddy.

Smith turned abruptly as if Willa’s movements had jarred him back to reality. “Let’s get moving.”

With a pleased smile on her face, Jo Bell jumped up onto the tailgate and sat with her legs hanging down.

“He’s not bad to look at. He’s young, too. But he don’t have no money, leastways he don’t look like he does. He was sure givin’ me the eagle eye. Did ya see it, ma’am? He was
likin’ what he saw. I can tell. Did ya ever have a man look at you like that? Like he just wanted to eat ya up?”

Charlie called out to the mules and the wagon lurched forward. Willa bit back harsh words and instead patted the dog’s head, her throat choked with bitterness. Jo Bell Frank was the most selfish person she’d ever met. She had not offered one word of thanks to her or to Buddy for saving her from being taken by that terrible man. She had not a thought in her head but for herself.

*  *  *

They camped in a grassy field. Charlie unhitched and watered the mules from the barrels tied to the wagon. Willa pulled grass to make a soft bed under the wagon for Buddy, and she and Charlie carried him to it. After pouring water in a shallow pan and placing it beside him, Willa found a place to build a cook fire and started it with dry grass and small sticks while Charlie searched for firewood.

Jo Bell stayed in the wagon until the meal was ready. She climbed down as Willa was filling Charlie’s plate with fried potatoes and scrambled eggs.

“Where’s Smith? Ain’t he comin’ to supper?” Jo Bell went to the front of the wagon and looked around, her hands on her hips. “Why’d you camp here for?” she asked when she came to the fire to fill a plate.

“Because
he
told me to.” Charlie sank cross-legged on the ground and began to eat.

Willa’s heart ached for Charlie. He was sure that Smith was smitten by Jo Bell and would fawn over her like all the other men that met her. Well, it didn’t matter to her if he did. He was a man, and her mother used to say that most men thought with their reproductive organs. Why would Smith be any different?

She served herself from the skillet and sat down beside
Charlie. She had cooked more than she ordinarily would have for the three of them in case Smith did show up for supper. She was thankful that for once the brother and sister did not bicker and that they would eat in peace and quiet.

After the meal Jo Bell walked up and down, pausing ever so often to look up the trail. She was waiting, Willa realized, for Smith to come to the camp. Her heart pounding with anger, she wondered if she should insist on the girl helping with the cleanup. She decided that she was not in the mood to argue with her and went about the work swiftly and efficiently. Afterward she fed bits of the leftover food to Buddy.

As darkness fell, Charlie shoveled dirt on the fire.

“Smith told me to,” he said when Willa looked askance.

“Does he expect trouble?”

“He didn’t say, but if there is we’ll be out in the open and nobody can sneak up on us.”

“We may have a heavy dew tonight. I’m glad Buddy’s under the wagon.” Willa watched the boy cover the dog with a blanket.

“Where did Smith go?” Jo Bell stood at the end of the wagon and peered at Buddy.

“How would I know,” Charlie growled.

“That old dog will die and I don’t care,” Jo Bell said as she straightened up and crawled into the back of the wagon.

“Damn ya! Ya got a mean streak in ya a mile wide. He got shot tryin’ to help ya.”

Willa shook her head at Charlie. “Please. Not tonight. You can’t change her mind.” She wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and walked a distance from the wagon. Soon Charlie was beside her.

“She just makes me so mad.”

“I know she does. She makes me angry too. She knows just what to say to start a fight. You can’t win an argument with her, so why try?”

“I don’t know what’ll become of her.” There was genuine regret in the boy’s voice. “If it warn’t for Ma I’d let her go. But I promised I’d look out for her. Ma knew Pa was spoilin’ her rotten.”

“You can only do so much. I’m sorry to speak of the dead this way, but your father put the wrong ideas in her head. She’s selfish and self-centered.”

“And I can’t help her. Not that she wants me too,” the boy added.

“Smith doesn’t think that Mrs. Eastwood will welcome her, Charlie. He’s so sure that he said he’d bet ten years of his life on it.”

“Yeah. He told me. Aunt Maud must be a bear-cat. Smith’s closed-mouthed. He don’t tell me much about the place.” Charlie was silent for a while, then he said, “He says I can work there. The work will be hard, but it’s a way for me to learn.”

“Then you should. You wanted to be a cowboy. This is your chance.”

“If Mrs. Eastwood won’t have you and Jo Bell, I won’t stay.” He stopped and put his hand on Willa’s arm, his young face filled with worry. “I wish we could stay there.”

“Stay, Charlie. I’ll go on to Sheridan and find work. I’m a good cook, more than good with a needle and I can fix clocks. I’ll take Jo Bell with me and look out for her the best I can.”

“I ain’t stayin’ if you don’t. I thought that . . . that if Jo Bell found a man who’d marry her, you and I could . . . well, I ain’t never had a friend like you before. It’s . . . just comfortin’ to have someone to talk to. I wish
you
was my sister.”

“Why, thank you, Charlie. That’s the nicest thing anyone ever said to me.” Willa’s voice was husky with emotion.

“But I’m not your sister and Jo Bell is. Even if Mrs. Eastwood takes her in, there’s nothing I could do there to earn my keep. Maybe Smith or one of the other men will take me to Sheridan.”

“I’m not stayin’ if you don’t,” Charlie said firmly. “I already told Smith.”

“And what did he say to that?”

“Said he’d put us on the track to Sheridan and it was pert near a hundred miles.”

In the stillness that enclosed them after Charlie’s words, Willa swallowed her disappointment and her fear. It made her realize just how much she had been hoping to stay at Eastwood Ranch.

*  *  *

Smith had a good idea where Fuller and Coyle would camp. The place was a hollow among the rock and brush, invisible from the road. He rode to within a half-mile and dismounted. From his saddlebag he took a pair of Indian moccasins, slipped them on, tied his boots together, and slung them over his saddle. After poking his hat under the straps that held his pack, he unhooked a cloth bag of biscuits and jerky from his saddlehorn and sat down with his back to a boulder to eat and to wait until it was pitch-dark before he approached the camp.

His stomach was crying for hot food. It beat all how this country could be hot in the daytime and could chill your bones at night. He wished he was back at the wagon where Willa would be cooking supper. He would give his new boots in the bundle tied behind his saddle for a skillet of fried potatoes and a cup of hot coffee.

Six years. It had been a long time since he had returned to Eastwood for what he thought would be a brief visit with Oliver and Billy Whiskers. He had been on the place for only
a week or two when the event happened that would keep him at Eastwood until Oliver’s wife died. She had always hated him, had been jealous of the time Oliver spent with him. When he was nineteen, he had taken off for Texas, thinking it would make life easier for Oliver if he weren’t around. For the next three years he had punched cows, fought Indians, driven a team over the mountains to California, and lived the hand-to-mouth existence of a drifter. It was a hard life, a bitter, lonely life.

When he was a youngster everything had seemed easy. He had settled in at Eastwood, learned from Billy and Oliver, and life had seemed forever. He had dreamed about girls. At first it was Fanny. He dreamed she would grow up and fall in love with him. Only it never happened. She despised him every bit as much as her mother did.

He’d had dealings with other women. There had been a girl in Buffalo, only when he returned, she was married and already had a baby. That was just as well. He realized now that they wouldn’t have hitched together. The longing for a home and a family of his own had never left him, but for now the possibility seemed more remote than ever.

These thoughts went through his mind as he ate the jerky and dry biscuits. The trouble with him, he was thinking, was that the kind of woman he fancied was hard to come by. Willa Hammer was a rare woman. He liked her fragility, her toughness, even her bitchy side. She had courage of a rare kind. She had survived a terrible ordeal and didn’t whine about it. There was iron in her and she was all woman, too.

He was crazy for thinking about a woman when his life was up in the air. He had heard about love and commitment, read about it; it was an elusive thing. Why was he thinking about it now?

Smith crammed the last bite of biscuit in his mouth and got to his feet. Pete nuzzled his shoulder.

“You wouldn’t like that biscuit, boy. It was so hard I could crack a nut with it.” He stroked the horse’s neck. “Stay here, but if I whistle, come on the run.”

Smith checked the gun in his holster, picked up his rifle and took off in a slow lope toward Fuller’s camp. When he arrived five minutes later, he wasn’t even breathing hard. Two horses were picketed back from the camp in a grassy patch. He approached them slowly. They raised their heads and peaked their ears. Unlike Pete, who was a mountain-bred horse with strong survival instincts, they were unafraid. Smith went to the horses with a handful of grass. He waited until they started cropping grass again before he moved closer to the camp and the two men who sat beside the small smokeless fire.

Why had a man as smart as Abel Coyle teamed up with a second-rate crook like Fuller? Not that he had any liking for Coyle, but he’d not heard of him going outside the law. Smith backed away from the camp and circled until he could approach without having to look across the fire. Fuller sat on a bedroll nursing a cup of coffee and Coyle lounged against his saddle. Smith made sure of his cover before he spoke.

“Howdy, gents.”

When the voice came out of the darkness, both men grabbed for their guns and sprang to their feet.

Smith moved ten feet to the right, then laughed. “Kind of spooked, aren’t you?”

“Who are you? Where are you?” Fuller demanded, turning his head in a half circle to scan the bushes.

Smith moved again. “I’m the feller who’s come to beat your brains out, Fuller. But first I need to know where Coyle stands in this.”

“Who are you?” Coyle asked.

“Smith Bowman.”

“I fight for no man unless there’s money in it.”

“That don’t tell me a damn thing.”

“Count me out of your fight with Fuller. He ain’t no special friend of mine.”

“I hear you’re a man of your word, Coyle. Holster your gun. Throw yours to the left, Fuller.” When he hesitated, Smith snapped impatiently, “Now, or I’ll blow your damn hand off.”

Fuller tossed his gun and Smith came out of the brush behind them.

“Here I am.” Both men spun around to face the end of the rifle Smith held waist-high against his side.

Coyle sat back down. With his hands in plain sight, he lifted and stacked them behind his head. “I’ll just watch the show.” He leaned casually against his saddle.

“What the hell’s eatin’ you, Bowman?” Fuller’s eyes darted toward the gun he had tossed to the ground.

Quick as a striking snake, Smith’s hand moved and the end of a narrow leather quirt bit into Fuller’s cheek.

“Ye . . . ow! What the hell—”

“Does that tell you what’s eating me? How does it feel? Hurts like hell, don’t it? It would hurt a woman twice as much. Am I right, Fuller? Maybe another will help you decide if I’m right or not.” The quirt struck Fuller across the face again.

“Ya gawddammed shit-eatin’—”

“Watch your mouth.” Smith spoke calmly. Then suddenly and viciously he swung his foot and kicked Fuller in the crotch. Stunned, the man staggered back, his mouth opened as breath left him; his eyes crossed as the pain became excruciating. He screamed in agony, grabbed his injured parts with both hands and fell to his knees.

“It seems to me that’s where you carry your brains—right there between your legs. I want you to remember how that
hurts. The next time you try to drag a young girl off a wagon seat, I’m going to cut off your . . . brains.”

Smith glanced at Coyle. He was still sitting with his hands behind his head, a lopsided grin on his face.

“Ya . . . b-bastard! I’ll k-kill . . . ya—” Fuller gasped as he swayed back and forth on his knees.

Smith stuffed the quirt inside his shirt and drew his six gun. “Be still, damn you. I owe you a bullet for what you did to the dog. Move again and you’ll get it in the belly instead of the butt.”

“Gawd! Coyle, do s-somethin’. I’m not a-armed.”

“Neither was the dog,” Smith said quietly and fired.

The bullet tore a path through the fleshy part of Fuller’s bottom and on out into the brush. He bellowed with rage and pain, fell flat on his stomach, one hand between his legs protecting his privates, the other frantically searching to find where the blood poured from the wound on his backside.

“You won’t die, you horny sonofabitch, but you’ll be standing in the stirrups all the way to Sheridan. If you get within a mile of those women again, I’ll strip the hide off you inch by inch.”

“Comanche fashion?” Coyle asked in a conversational tone.

Smith nodded. “A warrior down in Indian Territory showed me how to do it so a man would stay alive until he was nothing but a piece of raw meat.”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“You got anything more to say, Coyle?” Smith started backing out of the clearing.

“Can’t think of a thing, Bowman. Nice cool evenin’, ain’t it?”

“Sure is. Makes a body glad to be alive.”

“See ya sometime, Bowman.”

“Yeah. Evenin’ to you.”

Smith went into the brush surrounding the camp as silent as a shadow, then moved quickly in a half circle. He could see Fuller writhing on his blankets.