Monument Rock (Ss) (1998) (9 page)

"I'm sorry," Ruth said, "I just thought-" "I always carry a spare," he said. "Yo
u
know, any of us in there could have been killed. Sometimes it's better to reserv
e
judgment . . . when a man's life is on the line, he naturally wants to wait unti
l
the time is right."

He walked to the stable for his horse. It was still a long way to Carson.

*

Cold was the night and bitter the wind and brutal the trail behind. Hunched in th
e
saddle, I growled at the dark and peered through the blinding rain. The agony o
f
my wound was a white-hot flame from the bullet of Korry Gleason.

Dead in the corral at Seaton's he was, and a blessed good thing for the country
,
too, although had I gone down instead, the gain would have been as great and th
e
loss no greater. Wherever he went, in whatever afterlife there may be for the Korr
y
Gleasons of this world, he'll carry the knowledge that he paid his score for th
e
killing of old Bags Robison that night in Animas.

He'd been so sure, Gleason had, that Race Mallin had bucked it out in gun smoke dow
n
Big Band way. He'd heard the rumor all right, so he thought it safe to kill old Bags
,
and he'd nothing on his mind when he walked, sloshing through the mud toward Seaton's-an
d
then he saw me.

He knew right off, no doubt about that. He knew befor
e
he saw my face. He knew even before I spoke. "Goodbye, Korry," I said.

But the lightning flashed as I spoke and he saw me standing there, a big, lean-bodie
d
man wearing no slicker and guns ready to hand. He saw me there with the scar on m
y
jaw, put there by his own spur the night I whipped him in Mobeetie.

He swore and grabbed for his gun and I shot him through the belly, shot him low down
,
where they die hard, because he'd never given old Bags a chance, old Bags who ha
d
been like a father to me . . . who had no father and no mother, nor kith nor ki
n
nor anything. I shot him low down and hard and he grabbed iron and his gun swun
g
up and I cursed him like I've never cursed, then I sank three more shots into him
,
framing the ugly heart of him with lead and taking his bullet in the process.

Oh, he was game, all right! He came of a hard clan, did Korry Gleason, big, bloody
,
brutal men who killed and fought and drank and built ranches and roads and civilizatio
n
and then died because the country they built was too big for them to hold down.

So now I'd trail before me and nothing behind me but the other members of the Gleaso
n
clan, who, even now, would be after me. The trail dipped down and the wind whippe
d
at my face while the pain of my wound gnawed at my side. My thoughts spun and turne
d
smoky and my brain struggled with the heat haze of delirium.

Gigantic thunder bottled itself up in the mighty canyons of cloud and then explode
d
in jagged streaks of lightning, cannon flashes of lightning that stabbed and glance
d
and shimmered among the rock-sided hills. Night and the iron rain and wet rock fo
r
a trail and the thunder of slides and the echoing canyons where they ended, the roarin
g
streams below and the poised boulders, revealed starkly by some momentary flash
,
then concealed but waiting to go crashing down when the moment came. And throug
h
it I rode, more dead than alive, with a good seat in the saddle but a body that lolle
d
and sagged. Under me there was a bronco that was surefooted on a trail that was
a
devil's nightmare.

Then there was a light.

Have you ever seen a lighted window flickering through the rain of a lonely land?

Have you ever known that sudden gush of heart-glowing warmth at such a sight? Ther
e
is no other such feeling, and so when I saw it, the weariness and pain seemed warrante
d
and cheap at the price of that distant, promising window.

What lay beyond that light? Warmth and food? The guns of enemies old or new? It di
d
not matter, for since time began, man has been drawn to the sight of human habitation
,
and I was in an unknown land, and far from anywhere so far as I knew. Then in a lightnin
g
flash I saw a house, a barn, and a corral, all black and wet in the whipping rain.

Inside the barn, there was the roar of rain on the roof and the good, friendly smell
s
of horses and hay, of old leather and sacks, and all the smells that make barns wha
t
they are. So I slid from my horse and led him into the welcome stillness and close
d
the door behind us. There I stripped the saddle from him and wiped the rain fro
m
his body and shook it from his mane, and then I got fresh hay and stuffed the mange
r
full. "Fill your belly," I told him. "Come dawn we'll be out of here."

Under my slicker, then, I slipped the riding thong from the butt of my Colt and sli
d
my rifle from the saddle scabbard. The light in the window was welcoming me, bu
t
whether friend or enemy waited there, I did not know. A moment after I knocked o
n
the door, it jerked open under my hand and I looked into the eyes of a woman.

Her eyes were magnificent and brown, and she was tall and with poise and her hea
d
carried like a princess crowned. She looked at me and she said, "Who are you?" He
r
voice was low, and when she spoke something within me quivered, and then she said
,
"What do you want here?"

"Shelter," I said, "a meal if you've got the food to spare. There's trouble followin
g
me, but I'll try to be gone before the storm clears. Will you help? Say the word
,
yes or no."

What she thought I'd no idea, for what could she think of me, big, unshaven, an
d
scarred? And what could she think when my slicker was shed and she saw the two tied-dow
n
guns and the mark of blood on the side and the spot where my shirt was torn by th
e
bullet.

"You've been shot," she said.

And then the room seemed to spin slowly in a most sickening fashion and I fell agains
t
the wall and grabbed a hook and clung to it, gripping hard, afraid to go down fo
r
fear I'd not again get to my feet.

She stepped in close and got her arm about my waist and helped me walk toward th
e
chair, as I refused the bed. I sat while she brought hot water and stripped my shir
t
from me and looked down at the place where the bullet had come through, and a frightenin
g
mess it was, with blood caked to my hide and the wound an ugly sight.

She bathed the wound and she probed for the bullet and somehow she got it out. Thi
s
was something she had done before, that I could see. She treated my side with something
,
or maybe it was only her lovely hands and their gentle touch, and as I watched he
r
I knew that here was my woman, if such there was in the world, th
e
woman to walk beside a man, and not behind him. Not one of those who try always t
o
be pushing ahead and who are worth nothing at all as a woman and little as anythin
g
else.

She started coffee then and put broth on the fire to warm, and over her shoulde
r
she looked at me. "Who are you, then? And where is it you come from?"

Who was I? Nobody. What was I? Less than nothing. "I'm a drifting man," I said simpl
y
enough, "and one too handy with a gun for the good of himself or anyone. I'm ridin
g
through. I've always been riding through."

"There's been a killing?"

"Of a man who deserved it. So now I'm running, for though he was a bad lot, there'
s
good men in his line and they'll be after me."

She looked at me coolly, and she said, "You've run out of one fight and into another
,
unless you move quickly."

"Here?"

"Yes. We have moved in and planted crops and now a cattleman would be driving u
s
out. There are eleven of us-eleven that can fight, and fourteen women, who can help.

Some have been killed, my father for one. There are more than thirty tough hand
s
riding with the cattleman, and one of them is Sad Priest."

There was no good in Priest. Him I knew well and nothing about him I liked. "Wh
o
is the cattleman?"

"Yanel Webb. It's a big outfit."

"I know them." By now I was eating the broth and drinking coffee and the chill wa
s
leaving my bones, but my lids were heavy and there was a weight of sleep on my eyes.

She showed me to the bed where her father had slept and helped me off with my boot
s
and guns, and then what happened I never knew, for sleep folded me away into sof
t
darkness.

Though I remembered but fragments, there was a fever that took me and I tossed an
d
turned on the bed for hours. A drink of water from a cup in her gentle hand exhauste
d
me and the medicine in the dressings for my wound stained the sheets. At last I fade
d
off into a dreamless sleep that seemed to go on forever. When next my eyes opene
d
to awareness, there was daylight at the window and a clear sky beyond it and th
e
girl was standing in the door. I had a vague memory of someone knocking on the door
,
voices, and the pound of hooves receding into the distance.

"You'd best get up. They're coming."

"The Gleasons?"

"Webb and Priest, and his lot. And we're not ready for them. We're all scattered."

She dried her palms on her apron. "You'd best slip out. I've saddled your horse."

"And run?"

"It's no fight of yours."

"I'm not a running sort of man. And as to whether it's a fight of mine or not, tim
e
will be saying, for you've done me a turn and I pay my debts when I can ... hav
e
you coffee on?"

"My father said there must always be hot coffee in a house."

"Your father was a knowing man."

When I had my boots on and my guns I felt better, favoring my side a bit. When the
y
rode into the yard I was standing in the door with a cup of
hot
, black coffee i
n
my left hand.

There were at least twenty of them, and armed for business. Tough men, these. Toug
h
men and hard in the belly and eyes. The first of them was Webb, of whom I'd hear
d
talk, and on his left, that lean rail of poison, Sad Priest.

"Morning," I said. "You're riding early."

"We've no talk with you, whoever you are. Where's Maggie Ryan?"

"This morning I'm speaking for her. Is it trouble you're after? If it is"-I smile
d
at them, feeling good inside and liking the look of them-"you've called at the righ
t
door. However, I'll be forgivin'.

"If you turn about now and ride off, I'll be letting you go without risk."

"Let ms go?" Yanel Webb stared at me as if I was fair daft, and not a bad guess he'
d
made, for daft I am and always have been, for when there's a fight in the offing
,
something starts rolling around in me, something that's full of gladness and eagernes
s
that will not go down until there's fists or clubs or guns and somebody's won o
r
lost or got themselves a broken skull. "You'll let us go? Get out of here, man! Ge
t
out while we see fit to let you!"