The Passionate and the Proud (21 page)

“I’d advise you to stay in the saddle,” said Kaiserhalt edgily.

Emmalee tensed. She saw the vile glint of angry determination in the little man’s eyes, saw the ripcord muscles bulge beneath his faded shin.

“You can’t claim this whole area,” she told him. “Nor can you tell me what to do or not to do.”

Emmalee knew now for certain that something was amiss. Alf wore a gun; Randy didn’t. Had something happened? But if Kaiserhalt had harmed Randy in some way, where was the dapple-gray? Kaiserhalt could have driven it off, of course, but…

“You stay on that mule, or I’ll teach you a few things. Warm you up for Otis, so to speak…”

Emmalee studied the ground where Kaiserhalt stood. She saw his marker, half-driven, and the scuffled earth around it. A lot of dirt had been disturbed just for one wooden stake.

“You haven’t seen Randy Clay here, have you?”

“Honey, I haven’t seen
anybody
here. I got here first and this is gonna be
my
land, right along this stream.”

Emmalee understood. Pennington had sent Kaiserhalt to claim land along the creek. The ranchers weren’t missing a trick.

“Then I guess we’ll be neighbors,” said Emmalee, and climbed down from the mule.

Alf Kaiserhalt swung the mallet. “Now you’re gonna get what’s comin’ to you, one way or t’other.”

Emmalee ducked the blow, realized she had no time to get back up on Ned, and ran for the shelter of the pines. Kaiserhalt studied the hills for a moment, saw no riders, and advanced slowly toward her.

Good God, thought Emmalee, shrinking behind one of the pines, I’ve done it now. Maybe if I feint and run for his horse, get away…

“Some of you women just got to learn the hard way.” Kaiserhalt grinned, coming toward her with the mallet poised.

Emmalee was about to scream, for whatever good that might do her, when her foot struck something. She looked down. It was a wooden stake and it bore the name
CLAY
.

Randy
had
been there. He’d driven his corner marker and then ridden off to place another. Alf Kaiserhalt had taken it out of the ground and was in the process of replacing it with his own stake. In the distance, Emmalee saw two riders come over the top of a hill, but they were too far away to help her. Kaiserhalt was right on the other side of the tree, weaving, bobbing, ready to attack her with the mallet.

“You’ll never get away with it,” she told him, trying to buy time.

“Get away with what? You fell off your mule and cracked your skull on a rock. Shouldn’t be out here anyway. Got no business. I came across you an’ got you back into town soon’s I could, but unfortunately, I was a little too late.”

He swung the mallet in a sharp, downward motion. Emmalee ducked down and to one side. The mallet tore away a strip of bark when it glanced off the tree.

Emmalee could tell that the riders had seen her plight, had begun to gallop toward her. But the distance was great, and meanwhile Alf Kaiserhalt came around the tree and lifted the mallet again.

“Like to do you another way”—he grunted—“but this’ll have to fill the bill.”

He struck again. In desperation, Emmalee grabbed Randy’s stake, swung it upward in an arc toward Kaiserhalt. Stake and mallet collided with the ugly, crunching sound of wood on wood. The marker flew from Emmalee’s hands and the handle of the mallet cracked like a stick. The ram-shaped head went flying.

Kaiserhalt laughed. “Hell, I enjoy a piece that puts up a fight.” He leered. “Makes it better, see. You gonna get it, honey.”

Emmalee wanted to run but forced herself to back slowly away from him. If Kaiserhalt overtook her from behind and forced her down, she wouldn’t stand a chance. Once he got her on the ground, his wiry strength would keep her there.

She looked up, seeking deliverance from the approaching horsemen, but to her horror both of the riders had disappeared. How could that be? Down into a slight dip between hills?
Please, God…

“Someone’s coming!” she told Kaiserhalt, pointing toward the horizon anyway. If she could just distract him in some way.

But he wasn’t buying. “That trick’s as old as the river.” He grunted, so close to her now, darting, crouching, that she could smell his breath: onions, bile, and spoiled meat.

Out of the corner of her eye, Emmalee thought she saw the riders again, coming over the nearest hillock, but she couldn’t be sure because Alf Kaiserhalt made his move, springing toward her in a manner that she had seen somewhere before and which her subconscious mind had salted away. She saw him coming and responded without thinking, acting with a series of movements she did not know she possessed, but which she had also observed once before in Denver.

She ducked down and to one side, catching his clutching arm as he flew past, twisting his arm and bringing it down across her upraised knee. Alf Kaiserhalt’s howl of agony rose to the sky. He stood there before her, grabbing at his devastated arm. Angry white slivers of rent bone sliced through his shirtsleeve; welling blood matted in the cloth, which stuck to his skin.

The two riders drew near and reined in.

“Not bad, Emmalee,” said Garn Landar. “I guess you learn a lesson well.”

“You all right, Em?” Ebenezer Creel cackled nervously. “What are we gonna do. Garn? What are we gonna do?”

Garn looked at Kaiserhalt and smiled slowly.

“Seems,” he said, “that Emmalee has things well under control. I think we can count on her to do what she wants, as always. You
are
all right, aren’t you?”

Emmalee nodded, biting her lip.

“Then I wouldn’t think of interfering. Get his gun, though.”

Kaiserhalt was suffering too much to care that Emmalee removed his weapon from its holster.

“All right, Ebenezer, we’ve got some ground to cover,” said Garn. He tipped his hat to Emmalee.

“See you, Em,” said Ebenezer, who seemed a little worried about leaving her there.

The two men rode away then. Emmalee noted that Garn was riding his black stallion. Maybe there was something in Lottie Pennington’s moral code that prohibited her from using a man’s horse on the day of a land rush. Emmalee also saw that Garn and Ebenezer were riding toward the rugged foothills of the Sacajawea Range. She almost laughed in spite of herself. If the two men intended to make a fortune out of inhospitable, unproductive mountain land, they had rocks in their heads. Emmalee felt a little sorry for Ebenezer, though. Obviously Garn had sweet-talked him into some fool ploy that tantalized the old man’s imagination.

Well, there wasn’t time now to think about that. She had her own problems. Alf Kaiserhalt had slumped down beneath one of the pines. Pain and hatred had turned his eyes red. Emmalee held the gun on him and tried to decide what to do.

“You are gonna pay for this, lady.”

“If you don’t shut up, I’ll shoot you and put you out of your misery.”

“Hah! You ain’t got the guts.”

Emmalee pulled the trigger. She wasn’t especially familiar with handguns, but she had fired rifles and shotguns in the past. Both types of weaponry required fairly strong pressure on the trigger before they discharged. But she barely touched the trigger of Kaiserhalt’s revolver when it barked and jumped in her hand. The bullet slammed into the ground in front of the wounded man, raising a small cloud of dust.

“Hey!” he yelled, terrified. “That thing’s got a hair-trigger! You’ll kill me.”

“That’s the general idea, if you don’t stay put. After I stake my claim, I’m taking you back into town and having you arrested.”

Where was Randy? She hoped he’d return soon. Kaiserhalt was peering around, judging the lay of the land, looking for some way to escape. Emmalee saw several riders and a wagon on the hill now. If she didn’t get started and place her markers, she’d be out of luck, Randy’s plan ruined, the day lost. She couldn’t waste another minute guarding Kaiserhalt.

“What’re you doin’?” the man asked suspiciously as Emmalee walked toward his horse.

“You’ll see.”

She took the looped lasso from his saddlehorn, carried it back to him, and began tying him to the pine tree.

“Owwwww! Careful of my…God damn it…my arm! You can’t leave me like this.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t be gone long. I have to drive my stakes before those people riding this way take the land I want.”

Kaiserhalt laughed maliciously. “You ain’t gonna beat anybody on that mule.”

“That’s why I’m going to borrow your horse.”

“
What
?”

“Besides, Randy Clay will probably be back soon. I suggest you treat him with respect. He’s not going to like it when he learns that you removed his marker.”

Then Emmalee yanked Kaiserhalt’s stake out of the earth, replaced it with Randy’s, and drove her own into the ground too. Mounting Kaiserhalt’s horse, she galloped southward and managed to place her second marker before the group of pioneers came down from the hill. She saw that they were from Torquist’s party—Leander Rupp, formerly of Elkhart, Indiana, and a whole passel of his pale-eyed southern Indiana hillbilly cousins. She was barely familiar with the Rupps. They’d always had difficulty getting started in the mornings and usually they’d brought up the rear of the wagon train. “Leander Rupp carried a ton of dust across Kansas,” Randy’d joked once. Apparently Rupp had had another late start today.

After driving her second marker, Emmalee turned east. When the official survey occurred, there’d be time to measure exactly, but Emmalee tried as best she could to gauge the distance covered by the horse and calculate accordingly. An acre was a little over forty-three thousand square feet, and she was allowed a hundred and sixty acres by law. Setting her third marker, she turned north and found to her considerable satisfaction that she was only yards away from Randy’s easternmost stake. Then she headed back westward toward the three pines.

Randy was waiting for her.

“Em! We did it! We’ve claimed three hundred and twenty acres of gorgeous land.”

“Where is Alf Kaiserhalt?”

“Who?”

“The man I told you about. The one who grabbed me in the willows. And where’s Ned?”

In his excitement, Randy hadn’t even noticed that Em was riding a horse instead of Myrtle’s mule.

Qaickly she explained what had happened.

“And he tried to kill you with the mallet?” cried Randy. “What did you do?”

“I broke his…I broke his arm. It was…luck, I guess. We struggled…”

“Did anyone witness this? Are you sure he pulled out my marker and replaced it with his?”

She did not want to mention that Garn had been present. It would only be an unnecessary complication. “I don’t think anyone saw it up close. The Rupps were too far away at the time. But Kaiserholt did take your marker.”

“And he also took the mule. Probably back to town. I’ll deal with him when we get there. But meantime, Em, just think! This is all ours. We’ll call it Three Pines. What do you think? And can’t you just see the richness of that loam? One good harvest will be enough to get us on our feet. I’m going to get started and build a house right away. We’ll put up a little cabin or something on your place. That’ll satisfy the domicile requirement Tell told us about. I’ll borrow a little money from Hester—I guess there’s no other way—to buy some seed and a few cows…”

Randy chattered on. He was happy. He was euphoric. Emmalee herself was more than pleased. She already had a hundred dollars. Using her land as security, she would borrow from Hester, borrow enough to pay off Torquist and get some seed and stock of her own. It did not seem, at that moment, as if she could possibly fail. The land was so rich.

They got on the horses and rode back to Arcady, which was already jammed with farmers and ranchers waiting to let Vestor Tell know the location of their claims. Dismounting, they joined the line standing in front of the general store. Arcady was abuzz with the news of the day, and very quickly Emmalee perceived a pattern. True to the fears of Torquist and his farmers, Pennington’s ranchers had taken the best land. A palpable tension filled the air, rife with conflict, the disappointment of some just as intense as the triumphant satisfaction of others. Burt Pennington himself had taken a long swath of territory along the west bank of the river, not far from Torquist’s claim, and his cohorts had managed to commandeer vast, contiguous sections on both sides of the Big Two-Hearted. It was a veritable empire of connecting tracts. The farmers, by contrast, were scattered all over, their holdings patchlike and faintly ludicrous when Tell penciled them in on his big map of Olympia. Some fanners were surrounded on all four sides by ranchland.

But even these farmers were not the most unfortunate. Some people had failed to claim land at all. These hapless men, Festus Bent among them, hung their heads and slouched against the walls of the store, beyond hope. Their women had already retreated, weeping, to the wagons, which seemed at this moment like the only homes they would ever have. There were two choices for those who had failed to make claims: They might go back east from whence they came, the burden of failure dogging their every step, or they could attempt to hire out as Held hands to the newly propertied settlers. Within the space of a day, Olympia had added to its farmers and ranchers a third group, a bitter underclass of penniless men whose last great dream had been shattered. Such a situation did not augur well for tranquility in the Promised Land.

A big crowd of Pennington’s people were celebrating raucously around the beer barrel when Emmalee and Randy entered the general store. There were plenty of farmers inside, too, but the two groups kept their distance as much as possible in the din and press. Emmalee saw Burt Pennington’s ruddy, bullet-shaped head, saw Lottie beside him, beaming in demure, self-satisfied triumph. Lottie spotted Emmalee and her full, lush lips formal a brief, spiritless smile.

“How’d you two make out?” inquired Hester Brine, coming over to say hello to Emmalee and Randy. “Heared you had a spot of trouble.”

“What?” asked Emmalee, puzzled. “Oh, Kaiserhalt. It was nothing…”

“Watch your step,” warned Hester in a low voice.

“Next!” bellowed Tell from behind his desk. “Step along lively there. We haven’t got all day. Well, now look what we have here!”