Passin' Through (1985) (2 page)

The sky was overcast when I rode up out of the canyon and took a look-see around the country. Nothing was moving, so I rode on down to the trail and headed east. Where I was going I'd no idea, but what I wanted was distance. Looking back from time to time, I saw nothing, and that worried me more than had I seen a posse coming. You can run from a posse or fight it, but you can't run from what was worryin' me.

Mountains reared up on my left, set back from the trail but not far. The foothills were covered with aspen and scattered ponderosa pine, and a creek came down from the mountains, ran across in front of me, then headed west. The trail looked better. Wagon wheels had gone down this road and what looked like a stage.

Right now I was fetching up to be hungry. Not that missin' a meal or two was new to me, but I'd been hungry when I went for that drink and had planned to eat as soon as I'd washed down the dust from my throat. Now it had been more than two days and nights since I'd eaten and my stomach was beginning to think my throat had been cut.

Then we dipped down alongside the creek and up ahead I could see a big barn, some stacks of hay, and then a couple of other buildings, one of them a good-sized cabin. It was a house, sure enough, with an upstairs to it, and down at the barn there were horses in the corral and a couple of cows in another.

Loosening the Winchester in its scabbard and taking the thong from my six- shooter, I rode up to the house and stepped down from the saddle. Tying my horse in front of the granary or whatever it was, I walked up to the door and knocked.

Nothing happened. The latch string was not out and the door was strongly made. After a moment I rapped again and thought that time I heard movement inside. Then a woman's voice. "Who is it? What do you want?"

Well, what could I tell her? That I was a man escaping from a hanging?

"Sort of driftin', ma'am, and I ain't come by any grub lately. I was wonderin' if you could sort of let me set up an' put my feet under your table."

My eyes went to the gate. It was hanging loose, a top hinge busted. It had been a no-account hinge, anyway. Homemade it was, but made in the wrong home.

"Do you mean you are hungry?"

"That's one way of puttin' it, ma'am. Another would be to say I was starved."

The door opened. "Come in, please."

Taking off my hat, I ran my fingers through my hair. There was something in that voice . . . something I couldn't place.

Suddenly wary, I stepped through the door, pausing on the stoop to whip my hat against my pants to get rid of some of the dust, and taking time to give a quick glance around.

The house, what I could see of it, was spotlessly clean. There were curtains in the windows, and neatly made cushions on the chairs. The copper pots I could see shone like mirrors. Inside, everything was the exact opposite of what I'd seen outside, which looked to be a real rawhide sort of outfit. I'd seen a busted rail in the fence, and a lot that needed doin' outside.

She was at the fire, but at my step she turned to face me. She was taller than most women, with blond hair, quite a lot of it, tied in a neat bun at the back of her head.

"Please, please do come in. I- we do not often have visitors."

We? I looked around and saw nobody.

Awkward, because I suddenly realized I'd not shaved in a week and my hair needed combing. "I was just ridin' through ma'am, and I've come a far piece an' my horse is wearied."

"Won't you be seated?" You must have ridden far, for there are no ranches in some distance."

There was a wooden peg on the wall and I hung my hat, wishing again that I'd shaved.

She was beautiful, and there is something about a really beautiful woman that throws a man off. A pretty girl, now, she just warms a man up, but a really beautiful one is apt to make him tongue-tied and fixin' to run. This was such a woman. A golden blonde with only a slight wave in her hair, and features cut to classical perfection. Looked like one of them Greek statues, only not so full in the face.

There was sunlight in the room but shadows in her eyes, and shadows around them, too. "We do not have many visitors. I am glad you came by."

"I'd think every man in the country would be at your door," I said. "A body likes to look on a beautiful woman even if she belongs to somebody else."

"I belong to no one."

She spoke flat and cold, so I did not know how to respond. It just stopped me right where I was. It was not an invitation but a clear statement of fact, and left me with the impression she did not want anybody, either.

How could such a woman exist in such a place without a man? There was so much man's work to be done on this kind of outfit, and I'd seen enough tying up my horse to know it needed doing.

"Ma'am? I think I'd better tell you. There may be some men lookin' for me. If they come, I'll go out to meet them. No use you gettin' involved."

"A posse?"

"Yes, ma'am. I killed a man."

Her expression did not change. "So did I."

If she was interested in my reaction she offered no sign of it, but went to the stove and began dishing up something that smelled mighty good. It was stew, and she brought a heaping plate to the table. Taking up a fork, I started to eat, then stopped suddenly, looking at my food.

For the first time, she smiled. "I did not poison him."

"It wasn't that. I was waiting for you."

"Don't. I eat very little."

"It was a fair shooting," I said.

She offered no comment but filled two cups with coffee and placed one before me. She seated herself across the table and took her cup in both hands, looking across it at me.

"You said you were a drifter."

"I was working for an outfit in the Nation and decided to move west. I prospected some up around Hite."

"How did you find this place?"

"It wasn't me, it was my horse. You see, they'd taken me out to hang me, and when I got away there was only the horse they hung me from. They just sort of left it standin'. Well, I took out astraddle that horse an' that horse just naturally brung me here."

Her features tightened with shock. She clutched the edge of the table with both hands, her knuckles white. "Not . . . ? Not a blue roan?"

"Yes, ma'am, and a mighty fine -"

"My God!" she whispered. "Oh, my God!"

Chapter
Two

There was silence in the room with only the hiss of steam from the teakettle. A stick dropped in the potbellied stove.

"It was a shock. I thought that horse was gone, gone for good."

"He's a good horse, ma'am, a mighty fine horse, and he seemed to know where he was going."

"He was coming home."

"Yes, ma'am. Horses like their home. There's a few of them won't come home if given a chance, even if they've been treated bad."

She put down her cup. Her face was strained and her eyes had a haunted look. "You see, the man I killed was riding that horse."

"Sorry to bring bad memories. Ma'am, I'll ride him right out of here, if you want. Ride him so far you'll not see him again."

"He isn't my horse. He belongs to the lady who owns this place. To Mrs. Holly rood."

"You're not the owner?"

For a moment there was bitterness in her expression. "I own nothing, I have nothing." She looked straight at me. "I was a drifter, too. She took me in, and I've tried to help."

"How many hands you got?"

"We're alone here. There was nobody on the ranch when we came, and Mrs. Hollyrood hired a cowboy. He used to be a soldier, a very hardworking man."

"He quit you?"

"He rode into town on Robin. That's the horse you are riding, and he was killed, shot down in a gunfight by a man named Houston Burrows." She looked straight into my eyes. "I believe he was deliberately tricked into a fight and killed. Mrs. Hollyrood does not believe it." She paused and then added, "For a woman who has been around as much as she has, she is quite naive. She believes the best of everybody. That's her trouble."

"She hasn't had the ranch long, then?"

"Mrs. Holly rood is an actress, and she has been an actress since she was a baby. Her parents were in a traveling company before the War and she with them. Mostly they played the South, and then the War came on. She married Mr. Hollyrood, and he enlisted in the Confederate cavalry. He rode with Jeb Stuart for a time and was killed at Gettysburg."

It was pleasant sitting there in the quiet kitchen, with sunlight coming through the windows. The kitchen was spotless.

"You'll need a couple of riders," I said, "and one should be handy with tools. I noticed a lot of fixin' up that needed doin'."

"I suppose you're right." She refilled our cups. "We've only been here a few weeks. You see, Mrs. Hollyrood inherited the ranch from an admirer, a Mr. Phillips."

"She was married to him?"

"No, they were just friends." She looked at me quickly. "And I don't mean lovers. Mr. Phillips was a lonely man and he saw something in her that appealed to him. They had dinner one night after a show and talked. After that he followed the show and they would meet and talk, go for long walks, and just spend time together. He told her if anything happened to him she would have the ranch.

"You know how those things are. Men, even the nicest of them, make promises simply because they want to be friendly, with no intention of deceiving, just making conversation. So she did not take him seriously. She was not a rancher and was not interested in ranching.

"They exchanged letters. It was company for her, too, and it can be lonely on the road. Then he was killed, gored by a steer, we heard. And he had done what he promised, left his ranch to her.

"The time was right. The company had fallen on bad times. There had been crop failures in some of the northern states and of course the South after the War was poverty-stricken. Our manager absconded with the money and we were all left with nothing.

"Well, almost nothing. Mrs. Hollyrood had saved a little and I'd managed to put by a few dollars, so we came out here."

She puzzled me, this young, lovely woman did. She looked fragile, yet I had an idea she was anything but that. She was almost too beautiful, the sort of beauty that can make a man uncomfortable.

"Did you say you were an actress, also?"

"Not a very good one. I'd been with the company only a few weeks when it closed, but Mrs. Hollyrood had been helpful and I had nowhere to go, so she suggested I come west with her."

The house was better built than most western houses which ranchers threw together hastily for shelter, and with little thought for comfort or convenience. That sort of thing came later, when they were established, and this country was new. The first settlers had just begun coming into the area ten years before, and the Utes weren't happy about it.

A door opened suddenly and a pretty, gray-haired woman came into the room. She had quick, intelligent eyes that took me in at a glance.

"I heard voices."

"Sorry, ma'am. Didn't mean to disturb you. I'm just passin' through." I'd gotten up in a hurry, my napkin in my left hand.

"Sit down, please. It isn't often we have visitors."

She seated herself at the head of the table and I sat down. The younger woman went to the stove for the coffeepot. "You're Passin' Through? What an interesting name!"

That made me smile, something I hadn't done much lately.

"It ain't exactly a name, ma'am. It's a condition. Now I find the horse I'm ridin' belongs to you."

"He's riding Robin," the girl said.

"Oh, no!" Shocked, she turned to me. "You mustn't, you know. He's a Death Horse. Even the Indians know it. Wherever he goes, somebody is killed."

"If folks want to get themselves killed there's no use blamin' the horse. That's a mighty fine animal, ma'am."

"Mr. Phillips told me about him before I ever came west. It started when they first threw him to brand. Two men disputed the ownership and fought over it. Both of them were killed, so one of the cowboys took a running iron and branded the colt with a death's-head, skull and crossbones.

"Almost a year later some Utes tried to steal him, and two of them were killed as well as a hand who tried to fight them off."

"Any other horses stolen?"

"A dozen, I believe."

"No death's-heads on them? They were there, too, ma'am. No use givin' the horse a bad name."

"Mr. Phillips said the Utes didn't like the brand and turned the horse loose. He came back, or started to. There was a man in town caught him up and rode him out here. I think he was sent to try to frighten us away. He was drinking heavily and he ordered us out of the house. We did not go, of course, and he threatened to burn us out.

"We ordered him off the place, but he swore at us, lit a torch, and started for the house, riding Robin. Matty shot him."

"I did not want to, but he was drunk and crazy. I was frightened."

"You did the right thing," I sipped coffee. "Any trouble with the law?"

"The sheriff came out, and that man was still lying there, the burned-out torch close to his hand. He was within six feet of the house."