the Quick and the Dead (1983) (2 page)

Chapter
II

Susanna was standing out from the trees, shading her eyes toward the town. When she saw him coming she walked back to the fire. She edged the coffee toward the flames, then turned toward Tom.

"Better bring up the mules, Tom. Water them and bring them up."

Reluctantly, the boy turned away. He had seen his father coming and longed to hear what happened.

Duncan McKaskel rode into the clearing leading the other sorrel. "We must go now."

"Tom's gone for the mules. You had better eat something."

"No ... just coffee."

He accepted the cup, took a swallow, then looked at her, his face gray with shock. "Susanna, they were ready for me. I was thinking of the horses and the men on the porch, and there was a man in the loft behind me with a rifle."

"What happened?"

"That man ... the one who had coffee here. He killed the man in the loft."

"You're alive, Duncan. It's all right."

"A man is dead. He was killed because of me."

"He was killed because he was a thief. When a man takes a gun in his hand against other men he must expect to be killed. He becomes the enemy of all men when he breaks the laws of society."

They were an hour out upon the plains and at least three miles on the road before the subject came up again. "We are not finished with them, Susanna. I believe they will follow us."

"All right." She feigned composure for she did not want him to see her fear. She must show her faith in him. "You know what to expect now."

"Yes ... yes, I do. But I've never killed a man, Susanna, and I don't want to."

"Yet if that man had not been killed, they would have killed you. Tom and I would have been alone."

"Or with that man."

"I'd go home, Duncan. I'd go back and try to get a job teaching school. After all, I have much more education than most women."

"Education." He shook his head. "Susanna, I have always been proud of my education but I am beginning to wonder if we must not begin all over. It is a different time, a different world out here."

The river and the horizon seemed to melt into one. There was no line of demarkation anywhere, only the long grass bending in silver ripples like waves before the wind, and it was empty, like the sky.

The horses were tied behind the wagon and Tom rode at the tail-gate where he could watch them and the trail behind. The mules were in good shape but they seemed to be making harder work of it than they should. Several times he drew up to let them rest, worried at each stop for fear of pursuit. Horsemen could overtake them in no time, and he remembered what that rider had said about his wagon being loaded too heavily.

During one of the stops he walked behind the wagon and was shocked to see how deeply the wheels were cutting into the turf. Itwas a heavy load, and they had far to go.

Susanna's thoughts returned to that man. Ignorant obviously, and a brute ... yet he had saved her husband's life at some risk to his own and with nothing to gain. She thought of it as a chivalrous act, something she found difficulty in associating with ignorance.

Suppose Duncan had been killed? What would she have done?

The thought frightened her. To return meant to go back through that town ... no, not that. She would have to drive up river or down and try to find another crossing. But there might be other people like that back there.

She glanced curiously at her husband. He was staring at the empty plains, frowning slightly. Before they left the wagon train because of the outbreak of cholera she had heard stories of what the vast plains did to people. Men had gone insane from that appalling emptiness, unable to cope with such a change.

Duncan had been shaken by what had happened, finding it hard to believe there could not have been some other way, some better way. She knew how he felt, or thought she did.

Duncan was a gentleman, by breeding as well as education. His family was an old Scottish-English family as was her own. In America they had produced clergymen, physicians, teachers, and statesmen as well as planters. Some branches of the family had wealth, unfortunately, theirs did not.

Too proud to live in genteel poverty they had chosen to go west. They had no desire to seek gold, for to them wealth lay in the ownership of land and in its cultivation. They wished to find a green valley where they could sink roots and live out their lives.

Now they were alone, and until now she had not realized what loneliness meant, nor what it had meant to live in an ordered, law-abiding community. There had been occasional thefts, and she could remember a murder once, some years before, but the law had been there, and public opinion, with its protective shield of what was accepted and what was not.

There had been so many restraints, legal and social, between them and the savagery that lay innate in so many people. Out here the bars were down. There was no such restraint ... not yet.

Duncan drew up again. "Got to rest the mules again. It's hard on them, with no proper trail."

"Do you think that man was right? Are we loaded too heavily?"

Duncan shook his head, but his eyes did not meet hers. "What could we get rid of? Some of those things belonged to your family."

"Yes, yes, I know." The thought stayed with her. Did she really need them? Yet the thought of leaving her things behind gave her a pang. She would need furniture when they made a new home and it would be nice to have them then. If they ever got there.

"I wonder where he is?" she asked suddenly.

"Who?" he asked, but he knew the answer. He was thinking that a blind man could follow their deep-cut tracks, and it was now two hours until noon and they had come nine miles. It was good time ... or would have been had they not been so eager to put distance between them and the river.

His eyes swept the country ... vast, empty, still. Above them a buzzard soared. How like a speck they must seem to him, a speck in this tremendous ocean of grass. He started the team again but he did not ride the wagon. He walked beside it.

Noon came and passed, but nobody mentioned hunger. Nor was there any place to stop. It was all the same, only the grass, the sky, and the soft wind.

At mid-afternoon they came up to a buffalo wallow. There was water in it, collected from the rains. He unharnessed the team and led them to water, then let them graze for an hour before hitching up again.

The sun was down before they reached Black Jack Creek, and he drove the team through and up the other side, then along the creek for a short distance before stopping.

Duncan found a flat place and started to gather wood. When he put the wood down to start a fire, a voice said, "Don't do that. There's a better place down here."

He turned sharply, realizing he had left his gun in the wagon, and cursing himself for a fool.

The stranger was standing under the edge of the trees, watching him.

"Where'd you come from?" he demanded.

"Been waitin' for you all. I got no coffee, and after that shootin' I didn't figure to ride into town and buy none."

There was a fold in the ground where a trickle of a spring ran down to the creek. On a flat bench beside the spring he had built a small fire. "Can't see it until you're close up," he explained. "No use showin' 'em where you are."

"Do you think they'll come?"

"Uh-huh ... couple, maybe three hours from now. They'll ride out, scout around, locate your wagon. Maybe they'll run off your stock."

"You don't seem very worried about it."

"Ain't my stock."

"We haven't thanked you." Susanna had come up behind them. "You saved my husband's life."

"It wasn't nothing. I never liked that Ike Mantle, no way."

She was shocked. "Youknew him?"

"Oh, sure! He was meaner'n all get-out. His brother Purdy ... now he's a different kind. He'll shoot you face to face."

He glanced at her. "If you're figurin' on eatin', you better get at it. Cook what you got to, then dowse the fire an' set back."

She glanced at him, irritated by his manner. "Don't take no offense at me, ma'am. I can chew on some jerky an' make out, but that man of yours and the boy, they'll need some cookin', an' you, too, for that matter."

He looked her up and down. "Although you surely do shape up, ma'am. You shape up mighty purty."

"Sir," McKaskel spoke coolly, "you saved my life and you have been very helpful, but I do not like your comments to my wife."

"Well, now." He looked astonished. "You mean you don't think she's got a nice shape? Look at her agin that light. Now--"

"The lady is my wife. I do think her beautiful, but I do not think it is the proper thing to--"

"Think she'll get big headed? Well, maybe so. But she is surely purty. I always did figure it was the right thing to tell either a horse or a woman when they shape up fine. And atop of that she makes good coffee."

Duncan was exasperated, and Susanna had to turn her back so that he could not see her smiling. It was amusing. After all, in his own way he was being complimentary.

When they had eaten, the fire was put out by pulling back the unburned ends of the sticks and thrusting them into the earth to smother the few sparks. The coals that remained would soon die down.

"Take those horses over there behind that fallen tree," he suggested, "an' bed down back yonder. You'll have to keep watch, because sure as shootin', they'll find you."

When Duncan McKaskel led the mules toward the hollow behind the tree, Susanna took the stranger's cup and filled it again. "There's no use throwing the coffee out," she said.

She stopped, holding the pot and looking down at him as he sat on a chunk of wood near the dying fire. "I want to thank you for what you did," she said quietly. "It was a fine thing to do."

He looked at her, then shrugged. "He done all right. I mean he'd have got himself killed because he was all eyes on that porch an' he forgot about what was behind him. In this country you've always got to look behind.

"For a tenderfoot he handled himself mighty well, an' I'd say you got a fair chance." He grinned at her. "Maybe I won't get to pick up the pieces after all."

She filled her own cup. "You might at least tell us your name."

"Names don't count for much out here. Mine's Vallian, Con Vallian. What was your name in the States?"

"Our name in the States?" she was puzzled.

"Sure. Most folks change their names to get away from whoever they are runnin' from."

"Mr. Vallian, we are notrunning . My husband is an honorable man, a man of education, but he wished to be independent of relatives and friends. He wanted to go west where he could make his own way."

"He come to the right place. There ain't no other way out here ... if he lasts." He sipped his coffee, then glanced up at Susanna. "You know what they say out here? The educated ones, they find the life and the work too rough and most of them start to drink, and that's the end of them."

"You need not worry, Mr. Vallian. My husband drinks very little, and he is not afraid of hard work."

Con Vallian got to his feet and threw the dregs of his coffee on the coals. "Maybe. We'll have to see how much sand he's got when the going gets rough. Of course," he added, "lots of times it's the womenfolks. Ain't much that's pretty out here, except the country. An' when a man tries farmin' an' gets hailed out, flooded, or froze out, it ain't much fun. If'n he misses those things there's always drouth an' grasshoppers."

"Grasshoppers?"

"They come in clouds to darken the sun, an' they eat everything in sight. Mostly they like cultivated crops." Vallian turned his back on her and crossed to his horse. Mounting, he rode away toward the new camp and she stared after him, angry and frustrated.

"He doesn't think much of our chances, does he, Ma?" Tom said. "But we'll show him! You just wait!"

"Of course, Tom. Mr. Vallian does not know us, but he has a right to be skeptical. This is a new life for us, and a hard one. We will have to adjust to many changes, I am afraid."

"I hope he stays with us."

"What? What ever put that idea into your head? Why should he stay with us? Mr. Vallian is a drifter, son, so far as we know he just moves from place to place, and from his appearance I would say he doesn't do very well."

"He's been here a long time, I think. And he's alive."

She put her hand on Tom's shoulder. "Yes ... yes, you are right, Tom. Whatever one might say about him he is alive, and he's able."

Tom kicked dirt into the coals. One after another the coals died out until only a little smoke arose from where the fire had been.

"Come, Tom. We'd better go." Somewhere an owl hooted, a mournful, lonely sound in the dark trees.

Chapter
III

Susanna sat in the darkness near the horses. Tom was beside her, and despite his determination to stay awake, he had fallen asleep at last.

Vallian came to them and spoke softly. "I figure to sleep some. Ma'am, you'd better do the same, like the boy here.