Novel 1978 - The Proving Trail (v5.0) (6 page)

“Staying in town?” he asked, finally.

“For a while. I been up in the hills so long I’m growin’ grass in my ears. I want to just set and look at the street for a while.”

He didn’t like that, and I had an idea—I don’t really know why—that he wanted me away from there.

“Too bad,” he said, casually, “I thought we might ride down the country together.”

“Ain’t good weather for travelin’,” I said. “It’s too durned cold to suit me.”

I was itching to get away from him, but I had an idea he might just pick up and follow me. Yet I was curious, too, and wanted to know more about him. If he was some kin of pa’s, I might learn something about pa from him, or about pa’s family.

Yet every instinct I had told me this man was dangerous, and more than that, he was evil. He had the look about his eyes and mouth of a man who was short-tempered and cruel. And I trust my instincts.

His manners were those of a gentleman, but fine manners do not make a fine man, and I was alert for any clue as to what he planned, where he was from, or where he planned to go. He was no miner—that much I could see—nor was he a cowhand. A gambler? Well…maybe.

The girl with the freckles was watching me, and she seemed bothered by something. After a bit I finished my coffee and pushed back my chair.

“I’m almighty tired,” I said. “Good night.”

I arose abruptly and, without so much as a glance back, I left the room. I had moved quickly, hoping to catch him kind of off balance, and that was just what I done. It hadn’t seemed like I was fixing to move, but looked like I was going to set for a spell, which was how I’d wanted it to look. I wasted no time in the lobby but went right upstairs to my room. Once inside, I shut the door and put a chair under the knob so’s it couldn’t be opened.

It was in my mind to open the window, get out, and leave, taking out of there just as fast as I could travel, but it was a miserable night and I was bone-tired.

The thought that come to me was almost as good. He didn’t know what horse I’d been riding, because he’d been in town for some time before I arrived and had no reason to be curious about me until I walked into that eating room and spoke to him.

I’d been cold before and could be again, so I opened my window wide and then got into bed.

The wind blew through that window, icy cold, and I done some shivering. Must have been an hour later somebody tried the door, turning the knob real slow and careful. The door didn’t give because I had that chair under the knob, and after a minute or two the knob was released and all was quiet. About that time he seemed to get the message of that cold wind comin’ from under the door, because of a sudden I heard a kind of an exclamation and then quickly retreating footsteps. After a minute I heard the sound of a horse ridden rapidly down the street. Cheerfully, I closed the window and got back into bed.

There were two ways I could have gone if I’d left town by the trail, and he’d have to check them both out. Meanwhile I’d get some sleep.

Lying there in bed, I studied about it. This man, whoever he was, had tried my door—leastwise, I could think of nobody else who might try it. He had seemed suspicious of me, and he resembled pa. Now, what did all that amount to?

Exactly nothing, except that man had apparently ridden out of town trying to overtake me, thinking I’d flown the coop.

Why?

Pa was dead, murdered by somebody. Somebody who was either Judge Blazer or one of his friends, or who was somebody else. If it was somebody else, he hadn’t murdered pa to rob him, because Blazer did that, or tried to.

Suppose Blazer hadn’t murdered pa, but just found him murdered and took advantage of the chance? That sounded more like Blazer.

Then that implied somebody else had done it, somebody who didn’t even know pa had all that money, and from his looks and the state of his clothes, figured he hadn’t anything worth taking.

If that was the case, it had to be somebody who had known pa before, somebody from out of his past.

“That’s storybook stuff,” I said aloud. “You got no reason to think anything of the kind.”

Why would anybody from pa’s past want him dead? Pa hadn’t been east in years (if that was where he come from), and so far as I knew, he’d had no letters from yonder.

All of which left me nowhere but asleep. When I opened my eyes with daybreak, the thought was still in my mind but had gotten nowhere.

After washing up a mite and brushing my clothes as much as I could, I combed my hair slick and went down to the lobby. All was quiet and there was nobody around, so I stepped over to the desk and turned that register around and looked at it.

There was my name, and above it—the only one who had checked in during the last three days—was the name Felix Yant. It was a name that meant nothing to me, and I had an idea it was a name the man had assumed. Yet what was his purpose?

The restaurant was empty, but there was a rustle of sound from the kitchen and an occasional rattle of dishes. I pulled back a chair, rather noisily, and sat down. I wanted to eat and get out.

The girl with the freckles looked in and then came quickly over. “You’re early. Not much is ready, but we can make you some flapjacks.”

“Fine. How about some eggs?”

“I’ll see.” She hesitated. “Did you know that man who sat with you?”

“Never saw him before.” I looked up at her. “Do you know him?”

“No, but he told my aunt he was looking for mining properties. He rides out a good deal.”

“In this weather? Seems a bad time to look for a mine, when the ground’s covered with snow and you can’t even see how it lays or what the formations are.”

“We thought so, too.”

She brought coffee and, after a little while, a stack of hot-cakes and maple syrup. “We’ve got some eggs. My aunt says you can have them.” She hesitated again. “She likes you.”

“Well, that’s a help. Maybe I should stick around.”

“There isn’t much work.” She lingered. “This is mostly mining around here, and some lumbering. Over the mountain and to the south there’s cattle. Are you a cowboy?”

“I’m whatever I need to be to get a job,” I said, “but I’ve put by a little.”

She looked at me thoughtfully, for it was a rare man in those days who thought of tomorrow while punching cows. I didn’t feel it necessary to explain that it wasn’t my saving that had provided the money. Still, come to think of it, it had been my capital. Thinking of that made me feel better, and for the first time it seemed maybe I was entitled to that money.

“I’m Teresa,” she said. “Sometimes they call me Terry.”

“My name’s McRaven. Kearney McRaven. And sometimes they call me just anything they can think of.” I grinned at her. “I ain’t seen such a pretty girl in a long time.”

She flushed up a mite but she liked it, too. I was no hand at making talk with womenfolks, but pa, he’d always had a friendly way about him. “Say something nice to them,” he told me once, “and particularly waitresses and such people. You’ve got to remember they put in a long, hard day, and many people grumble a lot. It does no harm to speak a friendly word.”

Well, I was willing. Fact is, I could have been more than friendly with that there Teresa if I knowed how to go about it.

“He ever talk much?”

She knew who I meant, all right. “No…scarcely at all. But he watches. Nothing that happens around him happens without his seeing it.” And just at that minute he came in.

“Good morning,” he said cheerfully enough. “You rise early.”

“On a cow ranch you’re up before the sun,” I said. “I was never no hand to lie abed, anyway.”

Felix Yant was what his name was? Should that mean anything to me? I hadn’t heard the name before, so far as I could recall, and my recall was pretty good, yet the man worried me. I felt he knew more about me than he had any use for, and I didn’t like it. Gave me a feeling of being watched.

He seemed friendly enough, and began to talk of the mountains, the trees, then got to comparing these mountains with those back east. I listened mighty sharp, wanting to pick up a clue.

He had hands like a gambler. They were slender and white, beautiful hands, actually. I suspect he was what is called a gentleman, but I had a feeling if he was, it was more by birth than by instinct. Yet he was an interesting talker, and once started he could hold a body spellbound.

“This is all very well,” he said, waving a hand at the surroundings, “but one needs to travel. You need perspective, some basis for comparison.”

Seemed to me he was talking as much for Teresa as for me, and there’s nothing like a smooth-talking man to have a way with womenfolks. This here little one-horse town seemed mighty empty when he began talking of San Francisco, New York, London, Paris, and suchlike. Seemed to me he’d been everywhere and seen everything and remembered most of it. Teresa was looking at him all starry-eyed, and that didn’t set well with me. I began to feel sore. I wished I had a story to match him, but when all you’ve done is play nursemaid to a few cows, it doesn’t leave you much to spend on conversation.

“Me an’ pa traveled some,” I said defensively. “We covered most of the West, time to time. I been to Dodge, and down there in El Paso…that’s right acrosst the river from Mexico!”

“So it is.” Yant was amused and showed it. Then he slipped it in so casually I almost spoke up. He said, “Your father ever talk of taking you home? To his home, I mean?”

That was one thing pa never mentioned, but I felt no need to say so. “Time to time,” I lied. But I wondered why he had never mentioned it. Why had he not talked of home? Told me of his family, the place where he was born? The memories of his childhood?

And then suddenly something did come back. I’d been very young then, a mere child, and there’d been a woman in the room. I remember she was slender and dark-haired with large, lovely black eyes…or almost black. I do not know where she came from, how she came to be there, or where “there” was, except that she was wearing a cloak and she had come in out of the night.

Did I remember anything? Or was it all my imagination? “I’ve only a few minutes. I’m afraid…deathly afraid! He’s coming back, Charles, and you know how he is! I’m afraid! If he ever finds out that I’ve even
talked
to you, he’d kill me. I mean it. Literally.”

“You mustn’t be here. Leave…get away while you can. I only wish I—”

“There’s nothing you can do, Charles. There’s nothing anybody can do! And if you come back, that would be the end of everything. They believe you did it, Charles. They all believe it…except grandfather. I don’t believe he does.”

“Well, I didn’t do it. We had trouble, I’ll admit that, but it was nothing, and I’m not a vengeful person.”

Did I remember all that? Why had I remembered it at all, when I had forgotten so much? Maybe it was her beauty, her sudden arrival out of the night, and the intensity with which she spoke.

How long had it been? Thirteen years? Closer to fourteen, I thought.

It was the only time I remembered a woman coming to our rooms, wherever we lived…that is, the only time when pa was home.

There was that other time, the time I never liked to remember, the time I never told pa about, when the witch-woman came.

I’d been alone in the room, but that was years later, and I was eight years old. I remember that because it was my birthday and pa had promised me something special, a real treat for my birthday.

I never got my treat, and that I remembered most of all because pa always did what he promised, except that time. That was the time he got sick, he almost died…and for months after that he was sick.

Was it because of the witch-woman?

Chapter 5

S
ETTIN’ THERE OVER breakfast he riled me. Talkin’ smooth was one thing, but he looked so
elegant,
always lookin’ like he’d stepped out of a bandbox, as they used to say. Made me look shabby.

Well, I had me a little money, so I made up my mind right then I’d get fixed up. Finally, he got up and left, but he’d been talkin’ smooth and easy-like and it got to me, him making himself big in front of Teresa. So I said, “I’m tired this morning. Some damn fool was ridin’ his horse up an’ down last night, away after midnight. You’d think folks would have the sense to stay inside when it’s that cold.”

It stopped him, and he turned his head to look at me just like a rattler does when he fixes to strike. There was no laughter in his eyes, nor no smoothness in his tongue. “Sometimes, they tell me, when you hear a rider in the night, it’s a sign of death.”

“I never heard that,” Teresa said. “That’s a new one.”

“I heard it,” I lied, “it’s somebody ridin’ a dark horse to his death.”

He looked at me with those flat, cold eyes, and I looked right back, and then I grinned. I don’t know how I done it, but suddenly everything seemed funny. I’m like that. Solemn occasions seem to arouse the humor in me. It wasn’t that way with him, for when I grinned, he got up. I could see the temper in his eyes and knew right then his weakness was his impatience. He was a man who hated to wait, hated to be thwarted or put off, hated anybody that didn’t sidestep for him.