Friends Page 6

  Well, I rode across the valley and across the stream and went to the top of the far rise, and because of it getting dark, that was as far as I could follow his tracks. He was still headed west, riding the girl's horse by now and trailing his own and making good time once again. Damn but I was tired, all day in the saddle and no sleep the night before. It was near dark 'til I started back toward the soddy, the evening star up pretty, and I fed myself a story about coming in from the fields to my new bride waiting for me. Eating supper with her in our own snug little house. Did no harm, far as I could see, to amuse myself so.

  She had the table pulled up in front of the fireplace when I got back and apologized for being out of lamp oil and candles, but I said it didn't matter. It was a tidy place for a soddy, even with the dirt floor. Whoever'd made it had dug it down far enough so you didn't have to stoop over all the time, like you did in most I've been in. All one room, of course, with the bed to one side and the fireplace dug into the back wall and dry-masoned with cut stone. Whitewash over the sod walls and the back made it cheerful and bright, even in the little light we had. Curtains at the windows, just like in town.

  What was different about it was the roof. Not a shed roof, either. The big timbers was bowed, just the crooked way they growed, I suppose, and they humped up a place there in the middle. From the ladder that went up, I guessed it was a sleeping loft for children. Course, a lot of dirt would fall on them from the sod roof when they slept up there, but it would have anyway if they'd laid on a pallet on the floor, like most sodbusters' young ones did.

  She'd baked a big pile of biscuits in her Dutch oven and got me started on them while she fussed with plates and spoons and the like. In a few minutes she brought a pot of something with beans and carrots and some kind of meat, though it wasn't beef or pork.

  "This is mighty good," I said. "What kind of meat is this in here, anyway?"

  "Rabbit," she said. "I shot it this morning. Is it all right?"

  "It's fine." And it was, too. She had spiced it up a lot, made it nearly as hot as my mother's chili, but it had something else in it that made me think of Cathay or India or some other far away place, though it make me think of the smell of fresh dirt, too, but it was good, bad as that sounds.

  "Would you mind telling me what you can remember about the man who stole your horse, Miss Mandy?" I ask after we started eating. "Did you talk to him?"

  She looked kind of sheepish then. "Yes I did. I was chopping wood when he rode down the hill." She fiddled with her fork.

  "Tall man?" I ask. "Walked with a limp?"

  "Yes," she said after a minute. I could see she was trying to fix him good in her mind. "Almost a head taller than me. 'Tall as an asparagus,' my father would have said, which means that he was also very thin. I didn't notice his limp then, but I believe he had one. He was the first person I've seen in months, and I wasn't being very careful, I'm afraid. Not as careful as I should have been."

  "You live out here all by yourself? All winter?"

  "Since January, I have been alone. My father and my brother died in November. My mother I buried in January."

  She said that so flat, like she could have been talking about making cheese. I didn't know what to say.

  "He was strange looking. Ugly, you know? But I was glad enough to see him. He asked me if I had coffee, and when I came inside to make him some, he took Suzie. I heard the horses and ran out, but he was nearly to the stream by then. I shot at him once, but I knew it was too far. He stopped and looked back, but then he kept going."

  "You're lucky," I told her. "He could have killed you-or worse." It took a minute for her to catch my meaning, but when she did she surprised me. She throwed back her pretty head and laughed. "Or worse, Mr. Goodwin? You think a woman would rather be murdered than raped?" She got up and got a jar of jam out of the cupboard and opened it. "If I had my choice, I would take neither. But if it had to be one or the other, I would not take the death, I can tell you. I watched my mother and my father and my little brother die, and nothing could be as bad as that." She was quiet then for a time, and I thought she might cry, but she didn't. "Besides, it means nothing, the sex, not if you don't want it to. Just a natural thing, like eating a meal. Would you like to taste the jam, Mr. Goodwin?" she ask, sticking her finger into the pot and then offering it to me.

  I guess I looked pretty bewildered, for she laughed again and then sucked it off herself, smacking her lips over it. I had a feeling for a minute there that she was a lot older than I'd figured her for, but her face was smooth like only a young girl's is. "How was he dressed?" I ask.

  "A tall, soft hat–black. His rifle had a tube on it, but I didn't see his pistol. He wore one of those long riding coats, only it was dark. Brown, I think. A lean, scrawny man. His teeth were bad and he stunk, but I had already decided to ride away from here with him if he would take me. As soon as I saw him riding down the hill I knew I would ask him."

  I spread some jam on a biscuit and ate it, but I don't remember what it tasted like.

  I'd mostly gotten over the way she looked and her boldness, I guess, while we sat having our dinner together and talking, but afterwards I couldn't help myself from staring at her. She was dressed more like a man than a girl, but it didn't do her appearance no harm. The firelight twinkling off her black hair and shining in her eyes. I looked at her young body when she bent and moved the pot of coffee closer to the flames, and I cursed myself for doing it.

  We each had a cup and then I stood. "I'll be going now," I said. "Thank you for my dinner and for what you've told me about the man I'm chasing. I've never seen him, but now, thanks to you, I have a pretty good idea of what he looks like."

  "You knew about his limp just from following him?" she ask, doubt in her dark eyes.

  "I'll stop back in the morning, if you like," I told her.

  "I would feel better if you would stay here tonight, Mr. Goodwin. You can sleep in Mother's and Daddy's bed there, and I could sleep up in the loft, where I used to." She read the look on my face. "It would be all right. Who is to know but us, eh?"

  I didn't see how she could say that right out that way. I'd rather spend a night in a regular bed any time, I told myself, but even as I thought that I knowed it wasn't just comfort on my mind.

  Anyway, I unsaddled my horse and brought my trap inside and barred the door. She'd cleared the table and put things away by the time I went back in. The fire was burned low.

  "I'm up here, Mr. Goodwin," she said after I'd looked around and not seen her. "Goodnight."

  "Goodnight," I told her. I pulled her rocker up close to the embers of the fire, lit my pipe, and helped myself to the last of the coffee. It wouldn't keep me awake tonight. Nothing would, tired as I was.

  I'd just got into bed when I heard her stirring in the loft. "Are you awake, Mr. Goodwin?"

  "Just about."

  "Can I come down with you? I'm awfully cold up here."

  Well, I didn't say nothing and a minute later I heard her climb down the ladder. Then she slipped under the quilts beside me. After a while she put her hand on my shoulder, and I could feel her loose breasts against my back.

  "You wear your clothes to bed?" she asked.

  "Just my longjohns," I said.

  She laughed then, that warm throaty laugh. "That is a strange way to sleep." She slid one of her long legs over against mine and I could tell she wasn't wearing nothing at all.

  I determined I would just wait and see what happened next. I don't know how long I laid and waited there in that big old featherbed, but after a while her breathing got slow and regular. I rolled over and put my hand on her hair. My, it was smooth and soft! But she was asleep. Fast asleep. I rolled back over and called myself a fool. My baby-fetcher was as hard and as long as a rake handle, and I don't think I slept at all that night.

  Chapter Eight

  I woke with a start, not knowing where I was for the longest minute, 'til it come to me. A fire burned in the fireplace and you could smell coffee
brewing. The front door stood wide open and my bedfellow was gone.

  I dressed quick and from the doorway I seen her working at my horse. It was warm and sunny, later than I wisht I had slept. She had made a pile of her things in the dooryard, and from that I knowed what she was up to.

  I walked out and leaned over the top rail, just watching her for a minute, a beautiful sight of a spring morning. But then she saw me, though she didn't say nothing at first. You could tell she knowed what she was doing-with the curry comb. "Did you sleep well, Mr. Goodwin?"

  "Not as good as I would have on the ground out by the stream there," I told her.

  She had a good laugh on me then. "I think perhaps you are not used to having a woman in your bed."

  "What are you doing?" I asked.

  "Making ready your horse, can't you see?" She went back to combing for a minute and then begun to whistle a tune. Well, she could whistle a whole lot better than me, but that didn't take much. "You do plan to leave today, no? And if the horse must carry two riders, he should at least be as comfortable as we can make him, don't you think?"

  I tried to come up with some gentle way to tell her, but the only way I could think of was to say it straight out. "Miss Mandy, I can't take you along, much as I'd like to oblige you."

  She stopped brushing and turned them big dark eyes on me in the most mournful way. Two tears commenced to roll down her cheeks.

  "Now, I wish you'd stop that," I said, feeling lower than a lizard's belly. 'Td take you along if I could, I truly would. It's just that I'm following a killer and I have got to-" I seen her shoulders start to shake, but she was doing all she could to keep from crying. "Riding double would slow me way down, Mandy, and I might lose him. Hell, be probably gained a couple hours on me already this morning."

  She come over to the rail and stood on the other side, just looking at me. Tears dripped off the sides of her chin and I felt awful.

  "Besides, you might get killed. He's going to lay in ambush somewheres and watch his backtrail. That rifle of his-"

  "I can't remain here, Mr. Goodwin," she said, lifting her arms out wide and then letting them drop to her sides. Two new rivers poured down her cheeks. "I will take my risks with you, for I will surely die if I stay by myself any longer."

  Well, I didn't see bow that could be, since she'd already come through the winter out here, but then maybe that entered into it. I'd heard of women dying of loneliness by themselves out on the prairie, nothing wrong with them. Just shrunk up and died from being all alone, so I beard tell. Still, she didn't appear in no danger of being shriveled to death, fresh as she looked standing there with the wind blowing the black rings of her hair across that pretty face.

  "You can leave me wherever you find some people, and I will ask them to take me further. Please, Mr. Goodwin, do not leave me here!" She reached over that top rail and squeezed me so tight my hat fell off.

  That was the fix I was in, and I argued it both ways with myself standing there awkward as the devil, bent partly over the rail and with her arms still around me. After a while I nodded my head.

  She laughed through her tears then, and I could feel her jumping up and down like a youngster will do.

  I took her shoulders and moved her off so I could see her good. "Now, if we're going down the trail a piece together, you must do just as I tell you, no two ways about it."

  She kissed me. I didn't even see it coming. Oh, nothing big, you understand, but it was on the lips. She had such a funny look on her face then it puzzled me. "Of course, Mr. Goodwin. I will do just as you require."

  In a minute I seen what she thought I meant. Well, she had got me all wrong there. "It's not like that, Miss Mandy," I said. "I didn't mean-"

  But she just smiled like she knowed some secret and went to sorting her things.

  It was a fight getting her to pare down that pile of goods she wanted to take along–some of her mamma's silver, her brother's cradle, and a big old Spanish guitar. Instead, I let her take just a quilt, some heavy clothes, a frying pan, and her Remington. Which I stuffed in the saddle boot along with Clete's Henry. Sure, we could of left her rifle, but I preferred she have it if we had to gun for that old boy. Truth is, she could probly shoot better than me.

  After we ate, I got a piece of paper from her and tacked Clete a message on the door telling him the day and the time we'd left and which direction. When she come back from the little cemetery on the hill by the stream, she stood by the low corral and looked at the house. Though she didn't cry none, I knowed she was saying goodbye to her home.

  Of course she talked me into letting her take the guitar, which she strapped across her back before she climbed up behind me. We had fixed my canvas and her quilt into a kind of seat for her. It softened the bumps some, but it wasn't much good for staying on. So she clung to me with her arms and tighter still with her knees and thighs.

  My buckskin took the extra weight well. Better than I took her legs around me so. I lost his tracks twice before midmorning and it was clear I wasn't gaining on him, like I done yesterday. By noon the horse needed rest if we was to go on much further and so did Mandy. She would probly have been all right in a saddle, but riding the rump of a walking horse is a different thing entirely.

  Beside a river I guessed was the Cheyenne, she slid off and unpacked some food she'd brought. Then she unrolled her quilt and we had us a picnic on the bank.

  She chewed a bite of jerked antelope and laid out biscuits and jam. "How far will we follow this man, do you suppose, Willie?" she ask.

  "Well, you'll be following him 'til we get someplace I can leave you," I told her. "And don't forget that's part of our deal. I'll trail him 'til I find him, or lose his tracks, which is what will happen if it rains. Don't rain up here much, but springtime is still the wettest."

  "Did he hurt you, too?"

  "No," I said. "Killed some people I cared about, though. And he shot my friend, the sheriff of Two Scalp. You'll meet him. He should be along in about a day." I drank some water, though I wisht it was whiskey.

  "But this man, le meurtrier, if he did not try to kill you, why do you search for him?"

  It was plain she didn't understand the responsibilities of the peace-keeping trade nor the way of things between men. And if she didn't know that, I figgered she was mighty poorly equipped to understand how your friend's trouble is yours too, and how his fights are your fights. How, at the same time, you could fight with your pardner over how to fight his fights. And I could also see no way to explain to her how being the sheriff or the deputy of some damn little town was just something you did because you couldn't see nothing better to do, or how else to sit out a Northern winter. But, still, if someone raised hell in your town, or killed someone, why, he must pay for it, and you are the one hired on to make sure that he does. You must see that the laws are obeyed and the rules of people living together are followed to the letter.

  I decided against even trying to explain all that to her. "He'll be laying for us up here somewheres, and he'll be shootin' to kill, you as well as me, since you're along."

  She lost the smile her teasing me had put on her pretty face, and it begun to cloud over. "How do you know that?" she ask.

  "Because he's done this before and so have I," I told her. "Been chased like him, I mean. And I've chased others as well. Comes a time when you got to be sure no one's after you. It wears on you, running does, bears down on you like a heavy stone, crushing the wind out of you so's you can't hardly draw a full breath. He'll stay put soon, wait for whoever's following to come along behind him. He almost done it yesterday, before he reached your place, but then he changed his mind for some reason. I seen the tracks where he waited an hour or more, and he'll do it again. Only next time he'll wait 'til he's sure."

  When the scrawny man saw the eroded pile of clay in the distance rising above the rolling plain, he knew he had found what he had been looking for all day. He was careful to take his horses in close to the base and then some distance around t
he rilled and fluted butte before he circled and came back from the other side. He hobbled the horses in a bare gully which had cut itself into the clay, where the heat stuck his shirt fast to his narrow, sweaty back, and he scrabbled up the side with his gear.

  Down from the top he found a notch. It was not as level as he would have liked, but it was level enough. He could stay there all night if he had to, and tomorrow too if need be. He could see miles through his glass; miles and miles back across the dusty green flatland toward the distant river, a ribbon of blue and luster. He spread his oiled canvas on the ground and sucked a mouthful of cold coffee from his bottle, then checked the primer on his Sharps and lay down. Someone was still after him. He knew it. He didn't know who it was or how he knew it, but he did. Sure as the South had lost the war. Sure as he knew that he had finally killed the murderer who had gunned down his brother.

  We took a little longer with our picnic lunch beside the river there than I was happy about, but I could tell from the fresh look of his tracks after we started again that we weren't slipping no further behind. He stayed on the southern bank of the river, moving upstream at a good, regular pace, and easy as anything to follow in both sand and gravel. He was still riding the girl's horse and leading his own, but he wouldn't be much longer, lame as it was getting.

  My, it was a pretty day, getting warm unto summer almost, no Janger of rain and losing the trail.

  Mandy, she was happy as sunshine. Pointing out wildflowers and getting me to name them, after she knowed I could. Singing songs most all afternoon, she was. French words to most of them, so I had no idea what they was about. Someone'd taught her to sing like a songbird and you could tell she liked doing it. One, she got me to learn and sing with her while we rode, but I made her teach me in English. Something about some young pullet waiting for her rooster in the moonlight, I don't know what else. Young girl takes twenty years off a man's age, maybe more.

  Midafternoon rolls around, she pesters me to stop for a while where a little stream tumbling in from the left formed a good-size pool in the river, a low bluff on the other side. I'd already noticed that his tracks cut away from the bank here and headed more south, along the stream, and I wanted to fill our canteens anyway before heading in that direction.