Once a Ranger (5 page)

He replaced his hat and nodded to her. Then he remounted and headed home. He was going by to check on his wife. His belly growling at his backbone, he short loped the borrowed horse to their place. Erv had said one of his boys would ride over and get the pony. The sheriff had enough to do.

Skirt in hand, Cally rushed out to hug him as he hitched the horse. “You have any food?”

“No, I waited for you to feed me.” He kissed her and then she shook her head.

“You must be starved to death.”

He slapped his muscle-corded belly and laughed. “I'm starved to see and hold you.”

“Come in, I'll fix you food.” She swung on his arm. Her enthusiasm for him always boosted his deep feeling for her even more.

The smell of cooking soon began to fill his nose as Cally worked over the wood range and he filled her in on the murders while sitting at the table.

She soon brought him a stack of hot pancakes, butter, and her syrup. He thanked her and started to fill his plate.

“I can make some more,” she offered.

“No. I'll take a shower and sleep a few hours.”

“Nice to have you home.” She reached over and squeezed his hand.

“Nice to be here.” He shook his head to try to clear the whole scene away. “Where's Noble?”

“Looking for a horse rustler. A man named Darrel Thayer came by looking for you. Noble and Dan went to see what they could figure out about who took Thayer's horses.”

“Where does this man live?”

“South and east of Stewart's Crossing.”

“Did you think I needed to back them?”

“Not until you take a bath and sleep a few hours. They can handle the matter, I am certain.”

He chewed on his lower lip. “I hope you're right.”

“I am. I'm your wife.” Then she laughed and he reached out, hugged her narrow waist, and shook his head. “Bath comes next.”

“I'll go along so you don't fall asleep taking it.” She tousled his hair.

“Thanks.” With resolve he got up and went with her.

The bath went fine. Cold but at least he felt clean. Then he dropped into bed and slept, but not without some bad dreams about the murder scene. He woke in a cold sweat, sat up in bed in the darkness of night. Both dread and the dead were on his mind.

Cally woke up too. “Are you all right?” Her voice was a soft whisper that brought a smile to his face, realizing how close his bride's warm body was to his.

He settled down and took her in his arms. “I'm fine. Now I have you.”

“Good,” she said and snuggled into him. It was still honeymoon time for both of them in the coolness of the desert night.

FIVE

T
HE SUNRISE OUTLINED
the distant Chiricahua Mountains, which were stretched out like a huge body sleeping on its side. The flavor of smoked bacon and breakfast on his tongue, Guthrey rode for town on a solid roan gelding that Monday morning. His horse's running walk was fast and carried him down the dry road that needed rain to settle the dust, but moisture in this climate was always scarce.

He stopped in Steward's Crossing to see his deputy Ike Sweeney, and he found the man on his porch drinking coffee. He didn't know a thing about any stolen horse deal. The rancher never stopped by to tell him anything. Sweeney knew Thayer, but neither the rancher nor Noble nor Dan had stopped by before going to investigate the crime.

Guthrey made up his mind then to go assist them, or try to.

Sweeney, a big man with a white mustache, offered to join him, but Guthrey told him no, he'd handle it and try to establish some better rules about how to report crimes. He set out for Thayer's and reached another man's place by midmorning. A woman in her thirties came to the door with a broom.

“Morning, sheriff,” she said and under her breath told her children to stay inside. She looked well along to having another one, but she smiled. “I'm Gert Cassidy. My husband, Bob, went to St. David today. He'll be sad he didn't meet you.”

“Tell him I said hi. Have my men been by here?” He'd removed his hat for her, and he took the opportunity to wipe his forehead on his sleeve.

“Yes, sir, I'm sure they're all right. They were going up in the Dragoons to Thayer's place to see if they could find any trace of the rustlers.”

“I understand. I guess I'll have to track them, then.”

“Mark Peters has a place on the west side of the mountains. Go by there; he may know more than I do.”

“Thanks, ma'am.” His Stetson back on his head, Guthrey sent the roan horse northeastward in a lope. He knew about the Peters Ranch and the location she meant.

An hour later, he found Peters in his small shop repairing a buckboard wheel.

The man looked up at his approach and Guthrey swung down.

“Morning, sheriff. What brings you up here?”

“Did two deputies and Darrel Thayer come by here looking for some stolen horses?”

“They came by here yesterday. Must of been noontime, like now. Olive has some lunch ready. Stop and eat with us.”

“I need to—”

“Everyone needs to eat. She's a good hand at cooking, if I may say so myself.”

“Can't refuse that.”

“Come on and wash up.”

They washed their hands on the back porch, dried them on a sack towel, and hung it up. When Peters's wife turned around, Guthrey blinked. He knew her from somewhere else—some place.

“Olive, this is Sheriff Guthrey.”

Hat off, he nodded. “Nice to meet you.”

“Yes.”

Her name wasn't Olive before—where had he met her back then? His mind like a file searched for the time and place of that first introduction. She was close to thirty by his estimate. Nice-looking face, a medium body size, well distributed, her dark brown hair shoulder length with a slight curl. Dressed more than plain but respectable. He wondered where their paths had crossed.

“Olive and I've been married two years. I lost my first wife five years ago. She lost her mate two years before. We met in Tucson at a church function and I've been so blessed to have her as my wife.”

“Oh, Mark, I'm sure the sheriff has a good wife too.”

Guthrey nodded. “Do you know my wife, Cally?”

“No, but I hope to.”

“She's active with the group that has the potluck suppers and dances at the schoolhouse up there north of Steward's Crossing. You two need to come some Saturday night and join us.”

“We'll try to do that,” Mark said and smiled at his wife. She agreed and put the bowls of food on the table, asking Guthrey if he drank coffee.

“Yes, ma'am.”

The noon meal was fried ham, sweet potatoes and fresh green beans from Olive's garden, and soda biscuits. Her coffee was rich tasting and Guthrey enjoyed the dinner with them. He still did not know where he had first met Olive. Obviously the Peterses were not Mormons. Those folks never drank coffee because of their religion.

Guthrey rode on in the direction that Noble, Dan, and Thayer had taken into the Dragoon Mountains. The mountains rose off the desert floor with a reddish rock surface. Soon juniper clad the slopes, and in places on top, ponderosa pines supplemented them. This was once Apache country, and somewhere on the west end of the Dragoon range the legendary Cochise signed a peace treaty with the one-armed General Howard that disgusted General Crook, the Apache chaser. Of course, later the entire treaty was thrown out and the Chiricahua people were moved to the San Carlos Apache Reservation with tribes they hated, and that eventually caused the Apache war to continue. Cally was his expert on history and she had told him to watch out. Reports of renegades hiding in these mountains were told at various functions like the potluck supper and dance.

Guthrey carried his Colt .45 on his hip and a .44/40 Winchester in his scabbard. The roan horse was sure-footed and scaled the dim mountain road easily, but still in the heat the horse's shoulders were shiny with sweat. At a spring, Guthrey stopped and watered himself and the gelding. He hoped he had taken the main route that led into the mountains and his men had not turned off on a lesser way.

Off a mountaintop he crossed he could see wood smoke, and he dropped into a basin that held a ranch house, sheds, corrals, and some fenced pastures. When he rode up, a woman in a wash-worn dress came out on the porch.

“Good day, ma'am. I'm Sheriff Guthrey.”

She nodded. “I am Darrel Thayer's wife, Nell. They left this morning going east to look for those horses.” She looked like a white woman, but there was something Apache about her speech.

He searched around still in the saddle. “You two live up here alone?”

She nodded. “Five years ago, my family was massacred on the east side of the Chiricahuas. An Apache took me for his wife. When my husband was killed by Mexican soldiers, I did not wish to stay down there any longer and walked out. Darrel did not shun me when I met him and he made me his wife. I am very fortunate.”

Her back straight and ramrod stiff, she dropped her gaze to her apron. Guthrey realized there was still in her some of the Apache woman who once had shared a wickiup with an Apache in the Sierra Madres.

He looked around at the valley. “I see why you live in these lovely mountains.”

Her smile was slight but she appeared pleased that he spoke of their homestead. “I have a very good man in him as well.”

“Nell, I'm a former Texas Ranger. I took this badge to make Crook County a better place to live. My wife, Cally, and I live north of Steward's Crossing. Dan is her brother. I know you've met him.”

She smiled more widely. “He already told us to come to the dance on Saturday night. Darrel says we will. That means we will one day. I will look forward to doing that. Do you need anything to eat?”

“No, I have some jerky. Thanks. I will waltz with you if you come to the dance. You'll like my wife, Cally.”

She almost smiled at his invitation. “I will hold you to that promise. They were headed east.”

“Nice to have met you, Nell. I'll catch up with them.”

She nodded. “I can see what she saw in you, sheriff.”

He laughed. “Thanks, she didn't get much.”

He short loped the roan and felt pleased to have met a woman whose life had sure been one of turmoil. Thayer must be a powerfully confident man to have accepted her. Three different women in a row he'd met on this trip, living on an outlying ranch like his own wife did, efficient and proud.

He spooked up three mule deer in the next mile. They bobbed away through the thin timber and he rode on. By late afternoon he could see the playa lakes in the Sulphur Springs Valley. The water was only inches deep, and he thought about people fooled by real estate scoundrels who sold them ranches on those lakeshores. So shallow a killdeer could wade across most of them.

He watered his horse at a windmill tank and spoke to a Mormon woman who came from a squaw shade to talk to him. Tall and raw-boned with a ruddy complexion, she had hair that looked sun bleached like stiff wheat straw. The small children stayed at a bashful distance. No beauty there, no smile, a suspicious set to her face, and she wore men's old brogan shoes. On his day of meeting wives, her harsh looks made him grateful for his own.

His two deputies and Thayer had passed there a few hours earlier and they had told her they planned to go by Fort Bowie, then to Portal on the east side of the Chiricahua range. He thanked her and rode on. He realized next time he should carry hard candy in his saddle bags for the women and their children—this was a political job he held, and it was important he acted friendly to everyone.

By late in the second day, he caught up with the three men before they reached Apache Pass at the stage station. Two familiar horses were standing hipshot at the hitch rail in front of the building that housed the stage stop. They'd no doubt stopped there for supper.

“There he is, Dan,” Noble said when Guthrey came through the open door. “A man can't hide, can he?”

The three rose and Guthrey shook their hands. The Mexican woman asked if Guthrey wanted to eat. He told her yes in her language and took a seat.

“How long have you been coming?” Noble asked.

He shook his head. “Awhile. I met your fine wife, Nell,” he said to Thayer.

“She feed you?”

“No, I was trying to catch up with you all.”

“She don't get much company at my place. She usually tries to stall folks to hear what's happening outside her small world.”

“She did tell me her story. She's a fine lady. I was impressed.”

Thayer shook his head. “Her father must have been a fool. He tried to come across the Cherrycows in a covered wagon with his wife and two teenage girls. Of course, her father was killed and her mother too in the raid. Nell said her younger sister was more abused than she was, and the girl died in Mexico. I don't know all her story. No one will ever know all the hell that she went through down there. But I think the man she married considered her his and may have protected her from the others' abuse and wanted her for himself. She said she was happy as his wife every day and never considered leaving him. He provided food and must have been tender with her.

“But when he was killed fighting some Mexican soldiers, she had no one to turn to. So one day she put some dried fruit in a cloth and filled an army canteen with water. Then she set out with that and a blanket to find her own people. She was on the way, walking, she thought, for over a month. Someone brought her from the Peralta Springs to Tombstone. I was down there in all the celebration and hell-raising that her return caused. Those people just like to party. But there were lots of suitors wanted her that day—she was nice-looking even when she got there.

“I never felt I'd have a chance to impress her. The Dixie Mine superintendent's wife, Emma Neal, took her in and she did the housework for her board. I was back in Tombstone a month later and asked about her. They told me she was still up there. I asked was anyone courting her and they shook their heads—who wanted something the Apaches had had?”

Thayer picked up his coffee cup in both hands. “She was too pretty a woman. Too nice and polite speaking a woman for my money to not want to know her, at least.

“So I took her a box of candy. Mrs. Neal called her to meet me. She came to the door, accepted the box, thanked me, and bowed out. Mrs. Neal told me she wasn't ready to be courted. I felt lower than a snake's belly. But I guess when I got on my horse she peeked at me from behind a curtain.”

Guthrey looked across at him sipping his coffee. “Did that help you?”

“It sure did. So I kept coming by and taking her candy every week or ten days. Then I started bringing an extra horse to hitch there with mine outside the white picket fence.”

“She came out one day and blushed. ‘You must quit bringing me candy. People are teasing me. I can't eat all of it you have brought so much.'

“But I was not going to give up. ‘Could I take you to supper tonight?' I asked her.

“Her face turned white. ‘What would people say about you? I have been an Apache's squaw.'

“‘No, you are a nice-looking woman who's been through a ton of hell.'

“She straightened her spine. ‘What time will you come for me?'

“‘Six o'clock,' I said.

“Still uncertain, she shook her head. ‘I fear for your future. No one will ever trust you for doing this.'

“I told her, ‘Nell, I am a rancher. I have a pretty place in the Dragoons. I have a house and cattle and horses. My house has a cooking range. Well, it might need a dusting. It is peaceful and quiet up there and cooler than down here as well.'

“She nodded that she'd heard me. I had all day to rent a buckboard to take her out, buy a new starched white shirt, silk scarf, and vest. I drove over and walked up to the door, knocked, and the missus told me to come inside. Standing there was the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. The missus had Nell's hair fixed and had bought her a new dress. We went to supper at Nellie Cashman's famous restaurant, and I figure I was one leg up on convincing her I was damn serious.”

“Tell him about the wedding,” Dan said, grinning at Noble, who agreed. They'd heard the story already.

“I had been bringing the extra horse along for her to ride if she'd go back with me after we were married, of course.”

Guthrey smiled. “You were ready.”

“Damn right. And in six weeks she agreed for us to be married. I asked her if I needed a buckboard to take her home after we were married. She scoffed at the notion. Said she could ride a horse. She had so few things of her own that we didn't need a wagon.”