Dorothy Garlock (16 page)

“Why the hell didn’t ya do somethin’?” Fuller shouted, attempting to lessen his pain with anger at Coyle. “Ya had yore gun.”

“I’m not about to get myself shot to hell cause yore pecker’s up. Ya stupid son of a bitch. Ya went back there and bothered those women.” Coyle spoke with disbelief in his voice. “Are ya crazy? Ya heard Byers say they were going with Bowman. Ya got what ya had comin’.”

“Damn you. You talked about humpin’ one.”

“Are you sayin’ you did it for me, Fuller? Bullshit. You’ve had a stick in your britches ever since you set eyes on that young gal. When my urge for a woman gets to eatin’ on me, I’ll get one myself. I’ll not send a two-bit, bug-eyed, bunghead like you out to get one for me.”

“Gawddamn that Bowman. I’m goin’ to kill him!”

“I’d not bet on it. He’s one mean sonofabitch when he’s riled. He don’t back off. I saw him take on three of the toughest, meanest drovers that ever came up the trail. They beat the shit out of him, but he fixed two of them so they’d be gumming their grub from now on and the other’n was carryin’ his pecker in a sling when he left town.”

“Oh, Gawd! Oh, Lordy me!” Fuller moaned, stood, unbuttoned his pants and pulled them down. The seat of his longjohns was red with blood, He opened the front and looked at his privates, reached in and touched them gently. “That bastard pert near ruint me.”

“They’re still there, ain’t they? Haw! Haw!” Coyle bellowed with laughter.

“By Gawd! You’d not think it so damn funny if yore balls
felt like they’d been smashed with a hammer. I ain’t forgettin’ this.”

“You shouldn’t’ve messed with his women. What’d you do? Take a quirt to one of ’em?”

“I didn’t hurt her none. I shot the gawddamn dog that was tryin’ to eat me up.”

“Did you think Bowman would let you get away with that?”

“They ain’t his, goddammit!”

“He kicks like a mule, don’t he? Haw! Haw! Haw! If he’d a had on his boots you’d a been walking spraddle-legged till the end of your days.”

“Jesus! It hurts to even touch ’em.”

“Beats me that you’re more worried about them little nuggets than that there gunshot in the ass or how you’re going to stay clear of Bowman.”

“Well? Are ya goin’ to help me or not?” Fuller whined.

“No. Tie a bandage round your ass and one round your balls. Haw! Haw! Haw! You’re lucky you got something left to tie a rag on.”

Smith drifted away grinning.

11

W
illa saw very little of Smith during the three days following Fuller’s visit. He appeared in the morning and once again at night to ask about Buddy. He would speak briefly to Charlie, pointing the way he should go the next morning, then ride away without a word to her or Jo Bell. One night he brought two rabbits, skinned and ready for the frying pan.

“One is for the dog,” he said curtly and dropped them in the grass at Willa’s feet. Before she could even thank him, he wheeled his horse and rode away.

Another night he brought a mess of fish. Willa asked him to stay for the evening meal. He acted as if he hadn’t heard the invitation. Jo Bell hastily climbed out of the wagon when he rode in. He ignored her attempts to talk to him. After he examined Buddy’s wound, he patted the dog’s head and left.

Each day Willa became more and more fascinated with the country through which they traveled. It was a land of splendid green forests and meadows that faded into the purple mountains. If only she could, she would build a little cabin in a
lonely valley where the trail ran up to the sky. She would be perfectly content to live out her days there without ever seeing another town. She felt her stomach drop away when she thought of what she and Papa Igor had endured at the hands of “civilized” people.

She knew what she wanted. She wanted isolation, yet she wanted a home and someone who needed her as much as she needed him. She wanted to love and be loved. She wanted
. . .
roots, something she had never had. But she wasn’t a fool, and a woman was foolish to wish for things she couldn’t have.

Buddy gained strength each day, but he wasn’t yet strong enough to hunt his own food or walk for long stretches beside the wagon. Willa made sure she made enough biscuits and pan gravy each night to furnish a meal for him as well as for Smith if he decided to stay.

Jo Bell was unbearably cross. Part of it was because Smith ignored her. She couldn’t understand why he preferred Charlie’s company to hers. Charlie bore the brunt of her displeasure. When she failed to pick a yelling fight with him, she would turn on Willa, reminding her that she didn’t even own the dress on her back and that she had no cause to act so high and mighty. When she did this, Willa held her head high, her back stiff and refused to give the girl the satisfaction of knowing how she hated being the recipient of charity. She silently vowed never to be beholden to anyone again.

One evening, unable to get a rise out of Charlie or Willa, Jo Bell stalked to the wagon and stumbled over Buddy, who moved too slowly to get out of her way.

“Ya . . . nasty old thin’! Yore tryin’ to trip me.” She drew back her foot and kicked the dog in the side. Buddy yipped, his hind legs collapsing as he dragged himself under the wagon. Long hurtful yipping sounds continued to come from him.

Jo Bell stood defiantly with her hands on her hips when Willa and Charlie ran to the dog and knelt down.

“How could you do that?” Willa stood when the yipping ceased and looked into the girl’s sullen face. Unable to hold back her anger, she stiffened her arm and shoved the girl back. “You’re a hateful, mean girl and I’m sick to death at the sight of you.”

“Don’t ya dare talk to me like that, ya . . . ya ragtag bobtail. Ya ain’t nothin’. Yore pa was a . . . f-freak.” Jo Bell drew back her hand to strike Willa.

“Don’t,” Willa said calmly and grabbed her wrist. “Don’t kick that dog again and don’t hit me or I’ll mop the ground with you. I swear it!”

“Char. . . lie!”

The boy looked at his sister and shook his head. “I’m just so ashamed of ya I could die. Why’d ya go and kick that dog? He got shot tryin’ to help ya.”

“I didn’t ask him for no help. I could’a took care of myself. Ya don’t care ’bout me. Ya care ’bout her! Smith won’t come to the wagon cause of her, but ya don’t care.”

“Yore sick in the head, Jo Bell. There ain’t a decent bone in ya.”

“She’s cozyin’ up to ya and yore wantin’ to diddle with her, ain’t ya?” she screeched. “She’s too old for ya. Papa said so.”

“Hush yore filthy mouth! I won’t have ya talkin’ about Willa like that. Hear?”

“I’ll talk ’bout her any way I please. Ya ain’t the boss of me, Charlie Frank.”

“I’m sick a hearin’ ya say that!” he shouted.

“I ain’t stayin’ out here either. I’m leavin’. I’ll get Smith to take me to a town. Ya can have yore . . . old maid. She’s ugly, anyhow.”

“Ya got bad blood, Jo Bell. And it didn’t come from Mama.”

“Don’t you say anythin’ bad about Papa. Oh, I hate ya, Charlie Frank. I hate, hate, hate ya.”

Willa turned to kneel beside Buddy. Tears flooded her eyes when she saw blood oozing from his wound. He whimpered and tried to lick her hand. She was tired and wanted desperately to go off somewhere and cry. It was as if her heart and her emotions had been pounded to a pulp.

“Can you get up, old friend? Come on, let’s you and me get away from here for a while.”

Buddy got slowly and painfully to his feet. Willa threw a shawl over her shoulders and they headed for a grassy knoll above the campsite where there was a clear view of the valley below.

The night was beginning to lower. It was the time of day that Longfellow wrote about. Willa sat down and leaned against a giant oak that had stood watch over the valley for a hundred years. Buddy lay down beside her and rested his head on her thigh. She stroked his shaggy head.

Alone except for the dog, Willa let the tears she had been holding at bay for weeks slowly fill her eyes and slide down her cheeks. She deserved it, she told herself. She deserved to cry. It wasn’t a luxury, Papa Igor had said. It was necessary to wash misery from the soul. He had always been there for her. Now she was alone. She felt sick and empty and frightened and tired of pretending she wasn’t.

“What are we going to do, Buddy? I don’t think I can stand being saddled with that awful girl, and I promised Charlie I’d take her with me if Mrs. Eastwood won’t let her stay at the ranch. How can I take care of her when I don’t even know how I’m going to take care of myself?”

“I would suggest that if you must talk to your dog, you be
sure his are the only ears present.” The cool masculine voice came from behind her.

Buddy’s ears peaked and his tail scooted back and forth on the grass. Willa recognized the voice instantly, straightened her shoulders quickly and made a hasty swipe at her cheeks with the back of her hand.

“How was I to know you’d come sneaking up on me?”

“Does the dog answer you?”

“
He knows what I say. He’s smarter than some people I know.”

“I’ll agree with that.” Smith came around the tree and knelt down beside Buddy. The dog’s tail continued to wag halfheartedly. “What happened to you, boy? I heard you yipping.”

“He . . . got in Jo Bell’s way. She stumbled over him.”

“She kicked him.”

“If you saw what happened, why did you ask?”

Smith sat down cross-legged on the grass and Buddy crawled to him. “I brought you a tough old jackrabbit leg. The old boy must have been a hundred years old.” He unwrapped the meat from a large maple leaf. Buddy sniffed it but didn’t eat until Smith said, “Go ahead. It’s yours.”

Willa realized that she was seeing a glimpse of the real Smith Bowman. There was no way she could completely dislike a man who had such love for animals, even if he was a fall-down drunk.

He placed his hat on the ground beside him. In the growing darkness, she could see that his hair was damp and she could smell strong lye soap.

“Are we near a river?”

“No. But we’re near several creeks.”

“Did you bathe in the creek?”

“You noticed, huh? I must have smelled like a goat before.”

“I noticed your hair is wet.”

“There’s a warm spring a few miles from here.”

“A warm spring,” she repeated. “I’ve heard of springs that were warm year around, but I’ve never seen one.”

“This is the only one I know in these parts. There’s several more on west of here.”

“It seems a lifetime ago that I had a warm bath.”

“That long, huh? You’ll be at Eastwood before noon tomorrow. Maybe Maud will let you bathe before she runs you off.”

“That would be good of her,” she replied drily.

Unaware of the forlorn look on her face, she listened to the sounds Buddy made cracking the rabbit bone with his powerful jaws and kept her eyes on the sky that seemed to go on forever. Far down the valley an owl hooted a lonely cry and was answered by another owl farther away. Birds getting settled for the night fluttered in the branches overhead. The silence between them stretched into frozen moments in time—two people sitting on a grassy hill with a dog lying on the grass between them.

“I’ll take you to the spring,” Smith said suddenly, breaking the silence.

“It’s nice of you to offer, but I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t leave Charlie and Jo Bell. Fuller or some other varmint might try to sneak up on them.”

“And you’d protect them?”

“I’d try.”

“Christamighty! You’d get yourself killed over that feather-brained kid.”

“Charlie is a good boy.”

“I’m not talking about Charlie.”

“I know, but like I said, I owe it to their father to try and get them to Mrs. Eastwood.” The silence dragged on for
several minutes before she spoke again. “Will Fuller come back?”

“Not likely. If he’s smart, he’s in Sheridan by now. I’ve kept a close watch on our back trail. No one’s following.”

“He said he’d be back.”

“His kind has to brag.”

“He should be turned over to the law.”

“There’s not much law out here, lady. Be satisfied if he leaves you alone.” He stood. “If you don’t want to go to the spring I’ll get on back to my camp.”