Judgment at Red Creek (20 page)

Clayt pushed back his chair.' 'With or without the't' Buck, you're one of the best men I know. You remember what I said to you. You will always be welcomed at Red Creek—for as long as you want to stay.”

Sir Charles rose, smiling. “I don't want to impose my will on Buck,” he said, “but I'm sure he's going to be needed and equally welcome at the Gavilan—just as you will be, Clayt with a't.'”

The small joke eased the air. Tom Garner came around the table and offered his hand. “Unless Buck has other plans, he's going to have important work at the Gavilan. Very important,” he said, “and that goes for you too, Clayt. We hope to have reason to see you soon.” He turned to Mike Whittaker. “I'm very glad that you could be with us, Mike. We'll answer your questions about our plans—and none of them have anything to do with disturbing the peace here or anywhere else. We hope you'll come to believe that.”

The publisher nodded and smiled. ' 'I find I sort of tend to.”

They had pushed their animals on the return trip. It was well after sundown when they stopped at the top of the trail and “hallooed.” Immediately settlers began emerging from their homes carrying lanterns. By the time the three riders reached the bottom of the trail and crossed the dam, the last of the settlers had entered the big meeting house.

Mary was waiting for them with Nelda and Kate. When she saw Oss leading Harmer's horse with its empty saddle, she breathed a great sigh of relief.

“Oh, Clayt! Thank God you turned that filthy beast over to the law!” Nodding toward the meeting house, she added, “They're all there, full of fidgets and waiting to hear what happened. But I've kept your suppers warm. I want you to wash up and eat first.”

Clayt turned questioning eyes to Henry and Oss.

“We'll eat some later,” he replied, “after we've talked. We'd rather get the telling done first.”

Henry nodded. “Oss and I will put up the horses and wash. We'll meet you over there.” Clayt eased out of the saddle and handed the reins to him. Disappointed, Mary nodded to the girls. “Things will keep for an hour or so.” Turning to Nelda, she said, “Why don't you get some towels for your brother?”

Clayt stripped off his shirt and shook a small cloud of dust from it. While he was plunging his face and most of his head in the small wash trough, Mary brushed it and shook it some more. When he half submerged his upper body one last time and came up blowing, both girls laughed.

Nelda forced a towel into his groping hands and put a second one over his dripping shoulders.

“You sound like an old bull in a buff wallow,” she said. Clayt's response was muffled in the towel.

Refreshed, he gave his shirt one last shake and pulled it on. A few minutes later, followed by his mother and the girls, he entered the meeting house. Somehow, the lanterns hanging from their pegs around the walls, seemed brighter than usual.

Oss had been holding places on the front bench for them. Henry was waiting at the lectern. When they were seated, he looked over the assembled settlers. Finally he spoke in a voice rough with fatigue. “I'm suffering some from a troubled conscience. This afternoon, I had to break our pledge to Asa.” He paused and let his eyes wander over the upturned faces. “I'm not going to apologize.”

“If you killed Harmer you don't have to!” a voice shouted. Ignoring the man, Henry continued, “A lot of things could have changed today. We're not sure yet. But that's for Clayt to tell you“—he paused again and began to move from the platform—“which he is going to do now.”

Moving slowly, Clayt stepped up on the platform and took his place behind the lectern. Since his father's death it had been Henry Deyer's territory. Now some, including Henry himself, were saying that it was his place. It was not a place that he would ever aspire to occupy.

Clutching the edge of the lectern, he looked down at his mother and sister and at Oss and Kate. When Henry took a place beside them, he deliberately studied the anxious faces. For the first time since the tragedy wreaked on them by Harmer, he saw a glimmer of hope in eyes dulled by fear, anger, and sorrow without end.

Speaking matter-of-factly, he recited the events just as they had happened from the time they had ridden into Las Vegas in search of the marshall. As their frustration had mounted with each new obstacle, those who could not yet know the result of the trip murmured in sympathy and shared frustration.

Though he made no attempt to dramatize the climax of the trip, anticipation mixed with rising anxiety brought the settlers to the edge of their benches. In spite of himself, Clayt's voice tightened as he told of the encounter with Oakley, the burning of the confession, the superintendent's attempt to kill Harmer to keep from being incriminated, and his final end as Henry's rifle slug saved their lives.

Fervent “Thank Gods” mingled with anxious questions as men called, “What happened to Harmer? Did you kill him, too?”

Clayt held up a hand for quiet.

“No, we didn't kill him. We didn't have to. The Good Lord took a hand in that.”

Pressed for details, Clayt decided to spare them nothing. When he finished, the room was dead silent as each one who had suffered at Jake Harmer's hands, or who had comforted others who had, said their own private prayers of gratitude. Clayt straightened on the lectern and seemed about to leave when Jakob Gruen stood up.

“Henry said a lot of things could have changed today but you're not sure yet? Do you mean you don't know about the new owners and whether or not they had a hand in it?”

Clayt turned to Henry. “Am I right when I say that they seemed very upset when they heard what happened?”

“I judged them to be,” he replied.“Also, Buck Tanner's known them since they bought up the place. He figures them for decent people.”

Clayt nodded.“And so does Mike Whittaker apparently.”

“What about you, Clayt?” his mother asked.

Clayt took his own time answering. “I'd like to believe that. It would mean an end to our trouble, but I want to do a little more nosing around.”

Mary's expression changed from hope to grave concern.

“Don't tell me you're going to go riding down there again!”

“I am,” Clayt replied. “They said we could keep their horses. They also said they would pay us for the damage to the dam. I want to listen to them talk some more before I fix them in my mind.”

Thad Jones, whose shoulder had been shattered by a rifle slug, jumped up.

“Don't you be a damned fool, Clayton Adams! Money don't mean a thing to the likes of them. Neither does talk. They hired Oakley to run their spread. They sure knew what kind of a snake he was!”

A scattering of voices called, “Hear! Hear!”

Clayt could have told them what he had been told by both Garner and Sir Charles, that beyond the fact that T.K. Oakley was known as a top cattle man, they knew nothing of him. He did not want to sound as though he was defending them when, in fact, he was unsettled in his own mind.

“I'll take the horses back and listen to them talk some more. That's all I've got to say tonight.”

Ignoring other persistent questions, he joined his mother and the others and left the meeting house.

Henry and Oss thanked Mary for keeping their supper. When they rose to leave, Mary stopped them.

“Henry, I listened to the talk. Nobody blamed you for breaking your pledge to Asa. You didn't take the law into your hands. You killed a killer to save your own life and your son's and mine.” She took both of his hands in hers.

“You are being blessed, Henry, by me, by all of us—and by my Asa, too. Believe that.”

While the women were straightening up the kitchen, Clayt wandered outside. Needing some time alone, he picked his way through the darkness along the familiar trail to the corral. He would take the horses back but he would offer to buy his own chestnut and the little buckskin that Kate loved. He knew that if Garner and his wealthy English backer had been lying there was little or no chance that he would be able to mark die truth. Probably the best he could do would be to let them understand that the secure confession signed by Harmer, implicating Oakley could, by inference, implicate them, too. With thousands of dollars at stake in the Gavilan, it seemed reasonable to assume that they would chose to become good neighbors. In any case he found some comfort in old Buck's assessment of them.

At the corral Clayt climbed up and perched on the top rail. He had been there only scant minutes when he heard a soft whinny and footsteps behind him. He turned just as the little buckskin mare came up to nuzzle his shoulder.

He ran his hand over its velvety nose. “You did a good job, girl,” he said half aloud. As he continued to caress her his mind ran back to that earlier night at the Gavilan corral and to the surprising and dangerous situation that developed when, on impulse, he decided to save an unknown girl from Oakley's abuse. Beyond seeing her at a distance hanging out the wash, and closer up when she served him coffee during his talk with the superintendent, he knew nothing of her. She was young and she had been badly used before she came to the Gavilan, but she had felt like a woman in his arms when he carried her to the barn. His mother and sister had worked wonders with her. Loving care had brought with it a near miraculous change. Now she was every bit as pretty as Nelda, and getting prettier.

“Kate comes from strong stock,” his mother had said. “She had to, to come through what she's suffered.” Clayt thought the same could be said of them all. Only the strong survived in the territory. His thoughts turned to Hazel. She had been pretty, too. Beautiful was a better word, but too finely wrought, too fragile. When he had proposed and held her to kiss her, he had been forced to restrain himself lest she shatter in his arms like fine porcelain.

In the house Mary watched Nelda and Kate finishing the dishes as she folded flat-dried linen. What a blessed addition to the family Kate was, she thought. No one could ever take the place of Fern, whose death had been merciful only in its suddenness. The thought brought the threat of tears, and a second thought sent them brimming. Mary felt again Kate's poor little body cradled in her arms with her head against her own motherly bosom as she had listened to the girl's description of her father's death at the hands of the renegade Indian raiders and her treatment as their human chattel until she was traded to the comancheros and then sold to Oakley. The recollection brought an inward shudder and a wordless prayer of thanks that now, perhaps, there would be an end to fear, a chance to go on, a chance for time to dull the pain and do its healing.

With Clayt as his father's successor, and with Henry as the wise elder, life could be good again—almost as good as Asa and Henry dreamed it would be—because their son would bring the community his father's strength and leadership. Clayt could hold them together. She had seen that confirmed again tonight.

When the kitchen work was finished, Kate stood in the doorway for a few minutes enjoying the cool breeze coming down the canyon, cooler still for having ruffled the surface of the refilled pond. She loved the night sounds. The canyon was filled with them: melodic calls of night birds, the soft rush of the water through the new spillway, the musical babbling as it was freed to run again over the smoothed boulders, the hollow croaking of the bullfrogs in the reeds along the pond, the rhythmic rasping of the courting cicadas, and the hollow, metallic clanking of cowbells in the long, narrow pastures on either side of the creek.

Clayt would be out there in the night, alone with his thoughts, unwinding after a day that must have spelled the future of the entire Red Creek settlement.

Just beyond the lamp glow from the open door a large chopping block offered a seat. She rested on it briefly, enjoying the vagrant fingers of breeze that teased the hair against her cheek. Then, unaccountably, she felt the need to pet the little buckskin mare. She moved across the yard's hard-packed earth and picked her way through the darkness down the trail to the corral and barns. Above her the black rim of the canyon sliced across the luminous, starlit sky.

When she was within a few yards of the corral the mare heard her coming and whinnyed softly. Clayt scratched its ear. “Sounds like company's coming,” he said.

Kate let out a startled little cry and moved several steps closer until she could make out the tall figure perched above her.

“Oh, Clayt,” she said. “I'm sorry. I didn't know you were here.” When she turned to leave Clayt stopped her.

“Seems corrals are where you and I are supposed to meet. Climb up here and scratch your friend's ear.”

Kate climbed up high enough to brace her arms on the top rail. In her eagerness for attention, the mare nudged her and nearly upset her. Recovering, she put an arm around the animal's neck and rested her cheek against it.

“I have a lot to thank you for, little lady,” she said in a soft voice. “More than I can ever say.” Without looking at him she added, “And more to thank you for, Clayt, and your people.”

“It's ours to thank you, too, Kate,” Clayt replied, trying without much success to conceal a recurring emotion that he had been trying to deny ever since he had found himself caring about what happened to the girl. Its persistence annoyed him: Part of it was a sense of guilt. The emotion was so like that he had felt for Hazel from the first, a feeling that had turned to bitterness and pain with her passing. He was through with such feelings, he told himself. Trouble! Never again!

An awkward silence had ensued before Kate climbed down to give the mare a goodbye petting. Clayt eased off the rail and dropped down beside her.

“We hope you'll stay with us, Kate. It means so much to us...to Mom and Nelda....”He cussed himself inwardly for fumbling around with the words. He could not see Kate's wry smile.