Showdown at Buffalo Jump (6 page)

“And if you were a lady,” Max growled, “you wouldn't run halfway across the country at the first scent of money. There is a name for women who choose their men by the thickness of their wallet.”

Catherine cocked her fist.

“If you hit me again, I will likely forget you are a woman.”

This time Catherine backed off a step. They stood there glaring at each other, hearts hammering. And then the anger left Max, and he looked away, ashamed of himself: for losing his temper and threatening Catherine, for lying, for asking a woman to share his pitiful existence. When he looked at Catherine she was as pale as he felt. She wouldn't meet his eyes.

“I'm sorry,” Max said, and he was. “I think we need to talk this thing over.”

“We can talk it over on the way back to Prairie Rose.”

“I can't take you back to Prairie Rose tonight. It's too far. You'll spend the night here.” When Catherine bridled, he continued, “Now I didn't mean anything by that. I won't bother you.

“I have to take care of the chickens. If you would fix us dinner, it would be a big help. There's an ice house just up that little side coulee above the dug out. There's some potatoes and some lard and some deer in there.…”

“Mr. Bass, I will fix you dinner. That much. Nothing more.”

Max nodded and climbed toward the wagon on shaky legs. Marriage sure as hell wasn't all it was cut out to be.

There was nothing really that Max could do for the chickens. They were as safe as he could make them in the wagon bed, but he wanted to be alone, away from the lies he had told and the hatred in Catherine's eyes. He jury-rigged a roof over the wagon box, hoping it would keep coyotes and skunks off the chickens until morning when he could build a proper chicken house and pen.

Max climbed into the wagon and sat there waiting for the day to die. The afternoon sun was painting the sky with colors subtle as a young woman's blush. There is a serenity that settles over the land then, drawing animals from the cover that hides them during the day. Deer edge from coulees and browse onto sidehills clothed with sage and juniper. Coyotes, always on the run to fill their bellies with mice and rabbits and chickens, sing to themselves and their prey: Hear me, rabbit. Shake in your hiding place, for I am coming to fill my belly with your quivering flesh.

Max slid off the wagon seat. It was time to deal with Catherine now. He wouldn't tell her everything. She would likely run if he did, but he had best tell her something about his goals, his dreams, if he wanted her to stay in Prairie Rose. He took a deep breath and walked toward the dugout through the deepening darkness.

Catherine had found the icehouse. It had double doors, leading to an interior, rough, but in many ways built better than the dugout. Max had lined the walls with sandstone slabs hauled down from the rimrock. The roof was made of rough lumber, lined with tarpaper. The back of the icehouse was stacked roof high with blocks of ice that had been cut the preceding winter from the creek and covered with dark sawdust. There were sacks of potatoes stacked on the near wall, away from the ice; hanging from a hook in the middle of the ceiling was a hind quarter of venison.

Catherine didn't realize the luxury of having fresh venison in the summer, of having an icehouse in which to store fresh meat. She left the quarter hanging, cutting deeply into the chilled flesh with a knife she found there, ringing the thigh bone for two round steaks. The meat smelled wild, like the sage that painted the prairie silver in the sun, like the sage leaves Max had crushed between his fingers a hundred years ago that afternoon and offered to Catherine so that she might sniff their pungency.

This was not the first time Catherine had prepared venison. The master of the Boston home fancied himself a hunter, and when he downed an animal, he offered the carcass to the staff because he didn't fancy the taste.

Catherine carried the steak and a few potatoes back to the dugout where she coated the meat with flour and salt and pepper and shaved the potatoes into thin slices.

There was a bucket of kindling and a box of coal beside the stove. Catherine tossed the kindling into the stove and threw in a scoop of coal. Next, she spooned lard into a frying pan and set it on top. Within moments, the lard was smoking, and Catherine shoveled steak and potatoes into the pan.

There was a cabinet against the wall that held Max's dishes, four mismatched plates, three coffee mugs, an odd assortment of forks, table knives, and spoons, and worn-out sheets he apparently used for tablecloths.

The settings were rough, but no rougher than the table on which they were put, or the two chairs—one new and obviously for Catherine—that were drawn up to it.

By the time she had arranged the table with the kerosene lamp in the middle, the steak and potatoes were done, and then, as though by cue, Max stepped through the dugout's blanket door. He fussed about, washing his face in a panful of cold water carried from the creek, then slicked down his hair and waited for Catherine to call him to the table.

When she did, he sat down and reached for the steak in one single motion.

“Mr. Bass!” Catherine snapped.

Max jerked to a stop. He sat awkwardly, not knowing what he had done wrong, but knowing Catherine wouldn't hesitate to tell him.

“Mr. Bass,” Catherine repeated, her voice taking on a superior air, “it is not proper to attack your food without first giving thanks.”

“Thank you, ma'am,” Max said, reaching again for the steak.

“Mr. Bass, it is not I you thank, but the Lord for His bounty.”

“Thank you, Lord,” Max said, spearing a hunk of steak with his fork, and drawing it back to his plate.

Catherine's face was livid. “I can see now why you choose to live in a hole in the ground. Your manners are not suited for the company of humankind.”

Max mumbled, “Sorry, ma'am” around a mouthful of potatoes. The effect was something less than he might have hoped.

Catherine bowed her head in prayer and crossed herself, then reached for the plate of steak and potatoes.

After he had finished eating, Max settled back in his chair to drink his coffee and pick his teeth with a splinter of wood broken off a piece of kindling. “Bunkhouse, ma'am.”

And when Catherine looked up with a puzzled expression on her face, Max continued. “My manners are suitable for a bunkhouse. You grab in a grub shack or you don't get.”

There was a touch of challenge to Max's voice, and when Catherine finished her dinner, he leaned across the table and looked directly into her eyes.

“I'm glad to see that you're a good Catholic. I was counting on that,” and when Catherine's face took on an even more quizzical expression, he continued. “You were probably thinking that you would go back into town tomorrow and get the priest to annul the marriage and then skedaddle back to Boston?”

Catherine nodded.

“Well, the priest isn't in Prairie Rose, and he won't be back for another three months. There isn't another priest for a hundred miles, and none of them would give you an annulment unless they talked to me first. So you're married to me, Mrs. Catherine O'Dowd Bass, whether you like it or not.”

Catherine drew back her fist to give Max another lesson in Irish ladies' rights, but something in his eyes, his voice, made her hesitate.

“The straight of it,” Max continued, “is that you're not leaving tomorrow, or the day after that, or the next week, either.”

Catherine's anger boiled over. “I will leave this den of yours tomorrow whether you
allow
me to or not!”

“No!” Max's deep voice cut into Catherine's speech like the butcher knife had cut into the deer's hind quarter before dinner. “No! You will leave when
I
see fit, and that will be a long time coming, longer still if you don't shut your mouth and listen.”

Then there was silence, both glowering at each other across the table.

Max began in a low, very controlled voice. “I told you in my letters that I was a rancher and a coal miner. In a sense that is true. I have land and I have coal. The coal you are burning in the stove now was shoveled out of an outcropping on my land just south of here. Sometimes people take a load and give me fifty cents or a dollar. And I've got about thirty head of cattle scattered around the place.”

When Catherine started to protest, Max waved her to silence. “I know! That isn't what I told you. I told you I had a big ranch and a coal mine that was selling coal to the railroad. Well, I haven't got that yet, but I will.”

Max raised an eyebrow, waiting for Catherine to challenge him, but she didn't, so he continued. “You wouldn't have come if I had told you the truth. I wouldn't want a wife who would have. I need a woman who aims higher than I am right now.”

Catherine couldn't hold the bile down anymore. “Finally you make sense. You wouldn't want a wife who could accept you as you are. Well, I can't. So if you will please harness the mare, you and I will be shut of one another.”

Max retorted through gritted teeth. “You made it wonderfully clear what you think of me, but for once it is best that you bite that rattlesnake you call a tongue and listen.”

They glared at each other, and then Max continued. “This is ‘next year' country. Next year, there'll be rain. Next year, we'll have an open winter. Next year, the price of beef will be up. It's always been like that. I came in here with one of the first Texas herds as a kid, and I know that.”

“The problem is that most folks sit around waiting for next year to make things better. I've been working on next year for the past twenty years.”

“I was a cowhand. Most work all month for nothing more than a hangover. I figured out early on that that's not very smart. So I've been putting my money away for more than twenty years—poker winnings, too. Just a little here and a little there. But I've got money for next year.”

“When they opened this land up for home-steading, I said good-bye to the Bar X and rode down here and scouted out this section. It's got water—that's the most precious thing out here—and coal that just pokes out of the ground. Now that ain't worth much yet, but it will be.”

“I'm getting things in place for next year. I've got the money, and I've got the land. But none of that means much if you're alone, if you haven't got a home. So I needed you—and lumber for a picket fence and chickens. I never had a home, so maybe I'm not doing this the way I should, but I'm willing to work at it until I get it right.”

And when Catherine said nothing, Max continued. “Ma'am, I've spent most of my life on this prairie. I know this land. I know it isn't any more fit for farming than I am. If we get about four dry years in a row, this country will be nothing but dust and busted mortgages.”

“I can pick up fifty, sixty sections then. It will be a while before the land heals—they've torn her up so. But she will heal, and then I'll be the rancher I was telling you about in those letters.”

“Those are grand plans, Mr. Bass, but when the others go broke, you will, too. You will be in the parade leaving this place. All I'm doing is beating you to it. I'll be wanting a ride to Prairie Rose tomorrow—early.”

“Two things,” Max said, an edge creeping into his voice. “One, I've got money, a little over five thousand dollars. Never told anybody but you about that. Second thing is that you aren't leaving tomorrow morning. You aren't leaving until the priest comes back in three months, and only then if I say so.

“You ask anybody around here, ma'am. I'm one to soft break a horse, but I break 'em. Never had a horse I couldn't handle.”

“A horse!” Catherine hissed. “You are comparing me to a horse! Mr. Bass, I didn't know the true meaning of son of a bitch until I met you. There is only one way to handle someone of your caliber and that is with something of this caliber.”

The next moment Max was looking down the barrel of his .44-40 Colt. Damn! He had spent months working on every detail of his plan, but he hadn't counted on her looking into his trunk, finding his pistol, and turning it on him. Who the hell would ever think a woman—a woman from Boston—would get the jump on him like that?

The old pistol's bore looked big as a silver dollar, and it was unwaveringly trained on the bridge of Max's nose. Max was working very hard to appear calm. Was it loaded? He had put it away so long ago, he couldn't remember, and held low the way it was in the shadow under the table, Max couldn't look into the cylinder for the glint of lead. Damn!

Max's mind was racing, trying to find some solution to this mess, but it was coming up empty. “Ma'am, I didn't tell you the whole story. If you will just hold on for a minute …” The hammer went back with an ugly click. Damn! That Colt had a hair trigger. Just bumping it against the table would touch it off. Max's back straightened, and he braced himself for the bullet.

“Ma'am,” Max said, the strain poking through his voice. “One of the reasons that I … uh … lied to you is that I wanted a woman with spirit. I wanted a woman who knew what she wanted and wasn't afraid to go after it.…”

“Son of a bitch!”

Max jerked at the sound of Catherine's voice as though it were the tread of the hangman on his gallows.

“What did you think you were doing,” she sneered, “buying a horse? Do you think that you had the right to shop for a wife, looking for just the right pedigree to share your den?”

“Ma'am, it wasn't like that. Now you aren't going to use that pistol. I know you aren't the kind of person to pull the trigger. But somebody could be hurt by accident, and I know you wouldn't like that to happen. So maybe you better give it to me, and I'll put it away for you.”

Max reached for the pistol, and Catherine pulled the trigger.… CLICK!

The click cut off sound and thought and movement, almost as though the pistol had fired, and when Max realized that he wasn't dead, his breath escaped in one long sigh.