Over on the Dry Side (6 page)

“We've never met, if that's what you mean. But I know them by reputation. Yes, I know them. I'd say the company you choose is not always the best.”

“No? Perhaps I didn't choose them. Perhaps I was put into a situation I never wanted.”

Chantry chuckled softly. “That happens to many of us. I guess the true worth of a man or woman is just how far they can rise above it.” And then he added, the smile disappearing, “And I haven't risen far.”

She turned and stared at him. “Do you know the whole story?”

He shrugged. “Who does? I think I know most of it. I never believed it all.” He smiled wryly. “One hears so many stories.…Lost mines, treasures buried by outlaws.…The country is full of such stories, most of them pure nonsense. Most people who have gold do not bury it. Clive had no interest in gold, I think. But he had a scholar's ways, which took him to Mexico to start with. Were you close to him?”

“No, not close. He didn't confide in me.” The smell of coffee reached them.

Chantry leaned back and looked out through the open door at the way the sunlight fell through the aspen leaves. “Nor me either,” he said. “After he got back from Mexico, he was a silent man.”

She turned around to him. “Yes, he was,” she said. “And also a gentle man.”

“Mac Mowatt has surmised…as others must have…that a treasure of gold was buried here, or somewhere about it.…But that is purely their speculation. Nothing of the kind is certain.”

He smiled again, and the girl was amazed at the way his face became warm and bright. He was a man, she knew suddenly, who rarely smiled.

“Value is a matter of personal attitude,” he said. “What is very valuable to one man may be utterly useless to another. Your outfit thinks it must be gems or gold.”

“You don't?”

“Look,” he said quietly, “none of us can know for sure. My brother was a man of letters, an explorer, a scholar, a man of inquisitive mind. To him, the most valuable thing would be a book, an ancient manuscript, a clue to some historical revelation.”

“A book! Just think of that!” She was amazed. She stared at him. “Why, those men out there would go mad with disgust! They'd never believe it. They'd never accept it. All this effort for something not made of gold?”

“They have a faith,” he said. “They're believers, the men of your family. They live with that one idea in mind—to find a treasure that probably doesn't exist. But you could never convince them of its nonexistence.”

“You truly don't believe there's gold?”

“No.”

“We'll have to drink from the same cup,” she said.

“Charming!” He smiled again. “It will be a privilege.”

She indicated the flowers in one of the pots. “Did you leave those?”

“No. I thought you put them there.” Suddenly he chuckled. “Doby…I'll bet it was Doby.”

“He must be the young man living with his father in Clive's house below. I've seen them from here.”

“That's right. He's Kernohan's son…They've moved in on Clive's place. Doby's the one who whipped one of your boys.”

She made a face. “That was Wiley. I never liked him. Nor Ollie Fenelon, either.”

“Are they kin of yours?”

“Wiley isn't.”

“I think Doby's dreaming about you,” Chantry said. “He found this place, and he wasn't at all happy I was coming up here. He wants you left alone.”

“I believe I like Doby.”

“He's sixteen, and lonesome. I know how he's feeling because I've felt it myself. I used to dream about a golden-haired princess I could rescue from all kinds of danger.”

“But you don't anymore?”

He smiled, looking across the room into her eyes. “A man never stops dreaming. I like Doby. He's a good lad. He's got a father who works hard even when the odds are against him.”

She refilled the cup and handed it to him. “They'll kill you, you know, all those men. There are too many of them.”

“We all must die. Sooner or later. But I don't think I'll make it easy for them. How many are there?”

“Fifteen to twenty. Some of them come and go.”

“Where do you fit in?”

“Mac Mowatt is my stepfather. My mother is dead. I am Marny Fox…I am told our name was Shannach until the English made us change it.”

“They're a bad lot out there, you know.”

“Some of them are bad,” she spoke with heat, “and some of them are not. Some are simply loyal to Mac Mowatt. Oh, there's bad ones among them, but Frank is fine. He's Mac's oldest son. If it hadn't been for Frank…” She hestitated. “Frank is different. He'd prefer to be ranching somewhere. He's a good man, a solid man, but he's loyal to his father.…And he's been like a father to me.”

They sat silently then, listening to the soft rustle of the aspen leaves. Chantry emptied the cup and handed it back and Marny refilled it from the coffee-pot on the hearth. He knelt beside the fire and added a few sticks to the coals. The day was waning and she must leave soon.…There was always danger—the danger of discovery—if she stayed long.

“It's damned foolishness,” he said irritably. “Nobody even knows what's actually here.

“Two men rode north out of Mexico. One Chantry. One Mowatt. They had something with them that Clive considered valuable. The two men wintered here, and then Mowatt…or so one story goes…died here. Some say he was killed.

“And some say that started the bad feeling. Some say it began when Mowatt was accused of deserting Clive. It's all long ago. Over the years the story has grown to include a vast treasure. And men have died for believing it.”

“But you don't believe it?”

He shook his head. “Marny, I just simply don't know. But Clive was akin to us all in his interests, which were intellectual, historical…what you will.

“Some of us have done well with money—damned well in some cases—but more by accident than intention. So I simply believe that Clive found something of historical interest…something immensely valuable to him.”

“Wouldn't Mowatt have known it?”

“Possibly…but possibly not. Possibly he couldn't even read. There are still many who can't. Clive was a linguist.”

“So?”

“He might have been bringing back proof of some fancy of his. From Mexico. And how much could two men carry? They were riding Apache country. How ‘vast' could the treasure have been?”

Chantry stood up. “You'd best be getting back, and so had I.”

She gathered up a few things and went to her horse. “You're going to move in here?”

“Soon.”

“They'll find it, Mr. Chantry. And they'll also find you.”

“Call me Owen.” He smiled easily. “You won't tell them, then?”

“No…I owe them nothing. Perhaps I owe Mac Mowatt a little. And Frank. Frank's looked after me since I was a little girl.”

“Your mother married Mac Mowatt?”

“Yes. He was much older than she, though she already had me. My real father was an army officer. Mac had known him. Mac met my mother when he came by the house to see my father, not knowing he was dead.”

She swung into the saddle. “Be careful, Owen. There's no nonsense about them, and some are a bad, bad lot. In their minds there
is
a treasure, and in their minds they've already split it among them. They'll kill you as quickly as they killed Clive.”

He watched her ride away and then walked back to his own horse. He brought the black in close to the house and then he went inside. It was dark there now, shadowed and still. He took a stick and spread the coals a bit, pouring the last of the coffee on them.

Then he stood up and looked slowly around. Something was hidden here, something he must find.

He believed in no treasure. But find it he must or he would never be free and it was freedom—and this place—that he wanted.

If he could live here, sit outside on that bench with a few books, watch the sun set over Utah and…he would ask for no more.

Well, he might not have to be alone. For the first time, he even considered that.

Chapter 6

A
LL THE DAY long I waited for Chantry to get back. Pa seen I was restless, and a couple of times he stopped to say something but he didn't. It was away after dark before we heard his horse come clip-clopping into the yard. He hallooed the house, then he rode on to the barn to put up his black.

Pa had left some bacon an' side meat on the table, but he only ate a mite. “I had a little something in the hills,” he said.

Now I knew he taken nothin' with him, so's he must have been fed. Was it her he got his food from?

“Did you find the place?” Pa asked.

“I spent most of the afternoon up there,” said Chantry quietly. “And I can see why Doby was impressed. My brother had a love for this country.”

“Wonder how come he got clear up there?” Pa said. “It ain't a likely place.”

“Prob'ly hunting meat,” I said.

“Or searching.…” Chantry said.

Well, then I looked at him, and so did pa. “You mean he might have knowed somethin' was up there?” I asked him.

“My brother was a man who knew much about a lot of things. He had a gift for languages. Let him hear one…or so I was told…and inside a few days he'd be speaking it. I think when he came north he rode to a place he'd been told to find. I don't think it was accidental.”

“But why?” I insisted.

He shrugged. “Sometimes a man just wants to know what happened and how.” He paused. “You know, Doby, this is Ute country, with Navajos west and south of here. But even they never saw this country until about the year one thousand, when they came down from the north.

“They were migrants then, as we are now. They came, they conquered whoever was here, and they settled down. Just a few miles east of here the Utes will tell you there are ghost houses along the sides of the mesas.
^*
No white man has seen them, but I believe the Indians.

“Who built those houses? Where did they come from? How long have they been there? Who was here first? Did the builders invent the structures they built? Or were they drawing on memories of other houses somewhere else?”

“You got a awful lot of questions,” I grumbled, “but no answers.”

He smiled. “That's the charm of such questions, Doby. Sometimes it's a joy just to try to find the answers. Whether you ever do, or not.”

Pa taken the coffee to the table and I set there just itching to ask Chantry if he seen her, for he surely wasn't going to tell 'less I did ask. Made me mad, the way he set there eatin' and talking about nothin' that mattered. Finally, I couldn't wait no longer.

“Did you
see her
? That girl?”

“I did. I did even more.”

“You mean you
talked
to her?”

“For an hour or so. Had a bite of lunch with her. Like a picnic.”

Chantry looked up at me, his eyes calm: Maybe there was just a mite of laughter in 'em, too. “Her name is Marny.”

“Is she kin to
them?
”

“No blood-kin. She's old Mac Mowatt's step-daughter.”

Well, you should have seen Pa's head come up then. He turned straight round on Chantry. “You mean…you mean them were Mac Mowatt's men?”

“They were.”

Pa looked like a ghost stepped on his grave. “Mac Mowatt.…That's a bloody outfit, Chantry. I'd no notion they were even in the country.”

“Do you know them?”

“I know 'em. I knowed 'em years back, 'fore the war. They were a tough bunch then, but ever since the war they been a mean, man-killing crew. Ever since Strawn and Freka tied up with 'em.”

“The big man was Ollie Fenelon. The fellow you whipped, Doby, is named Wiley.”

“What's she like?” I asked him of a sudden. I wasn't payin' no mind to what he said about Mowatt and them. Or what Pa said. I was thinkin' of that girl.

“She isn't blonde…no golden hair and blue eyes, Doby. I'm afraid that part didn't pan out.”

“She…
ugly?
” I asked, desperately.

“No. She's very beautiful.…Very. She's about five foot four, with auburn hair and greenish eyes. Good complexion. Her name is Marny Fox, and she's Irish.”

“How…how old is she?”

“She's an old woman, Doby. Why, she must be every bit of twenty!”

Twenty…four years older 'n me.

Four years!
That was a lot, a whole lot. But I had to protest. “That ain't no old woman!” I said.

There was more talk. And finally I went to my room and turned in, but I lay there quite a while. The outlines of my dream had already grown kind of misty like. Twenty years old.…Lots of married women weren't that old. Still, she was pretty. Maybe even beautiful.

Right then I made up my mind. I was going to see for myself. I hadn't seen no woman in more'n a year.

Looked like I'd have to be mighty careful. From the way Pa acted, Mac Mowatt must be something fierce. And I'd heard talk of Strawn, myself. An' he was a killer sure enough.

When he was in Kansas there was talk of him. He'd killed a man around Abilene, and another on a cattle drive. You heard a lotta stories of such men in them days. Talk went up and down the trails. There wasn't no newspapers, but where a man stopped there was always somebody with a story to tell. There was talk of trails, gunfighters, Indians and the like, along with talk of wild horses like the famous white pacing stallion. That was a story ever'body heard, in sev'ral different accounts. And stories of mean steers, even the length of their horns, and of horseback rides men had taken.

Them western horses, mustang stock, were tough and wild. When they run the rough country on their own they'd travel days to water, graze far out from the holes they knew best, and range back to 'em ever' now and then for a drink.