Andromeda Gun (11 page)

Ian was grateful for his relative solitude. He had problems to consider. The take from the poker tables would give him a highway fund and he could get a sealed bid from the general store to furnish him with wheelbarrows, graders, and shovels, but the road gang was going to be a problem. From the looks of this crowd, there were not enough Gentile lawbreakers in the valley to build a footpath. To Ian, the obvious solution would be to ride south and round up a few Mormons on bigamy charges and hold them in jail until after election day.

As he stood apart, ruminating, that which all but Ian had dreaded came to pass.

Around him the flutter of voices died on the summer air. A silence fell, broken only by the indrawn gasp of a woman standing nearby who cried, “Here come the saints!”

Ian followed her gaze southwestward and saw, on a hillock outlined against the sky, six black horses bearing six riders garbed in black. A chill wind that did not stir the air swept in from the horsemen as, riding abreast in an even rank, they walked their mounts slowly down the slope toward the meadow and the frozen crowd. Implacable, awesome, funereal, they came on.

In the silence Ian’s voice sounded calm, authoritative, almost cheerful as he spoke to the Gentiles, “You folks stay to the left of the tables, away from me. None of you will get hurt if you fall to the ground when the bullets start firing. Some of theirs might not be aimed straight.”

He strode a few yards to the right of the tables and forward to halt, facing the horsemen, his legs spread, his knees bent slightly. Moving as slowly as mourners, the riders came toward him. He could make out their faces now. A lanky man in the center wore a grim smile which bared his teeth. That would be the stake superintendent, Peyton.

Fifteen yards from the lone man, the procession halted, almost as one, and the man with the smile held up his arm.

“Be you Ian McCloud?” he called.

“I’m Ian McCloud, and you’re likely to be Bryce Peyton, recently deceased, if one of your boys makes a sudden move. Any of your saints feel an urge to sneeze, he’d better hold it. You’ll be killed first, the next five won’t be around long enough to grieve.”

Suddenly, from dead behind him, Liza’s voice rang over Ian’s shoulder. “I’m with you, Ian. That something special I brought for you is aimed and loaded for Mormon meat. I’ll take the two undertakers on the right.”

“Get out of the line of fire,” he hissed backwards. “There ain’t but six of them.”

“We come in peace,” Bryce Peyton called. “I come to thank you, Ian McCloud, for shooting some sense into my boy Billy’s head. After you blowed off his trigger finger, he give up the idea of being a gunfighter, and he’s down on the south forty now, bandaged hand and all, plowing for winter wheat. All that boy was ever good for was farming, and now he knows it.”

“You’re welcome,” Ian called, still crouched. He was falling for no Mountain Meadows trick. These men, all six of them, had not ridden this far to thank him for straightening out some wild galoot.

“But mostly I’ve come, with witnesses, to speak to the father of one Gabriella Stewart. My son, Billy, wants to come courting; I want to talk dowry.”

“Her pa’s dead,” Widow Stewart called.

Impelled by a sudden and inexplicable interest, Ian shouted across the intervening yards. “But maybe you can still talk to her pa, Peyton, if he’s in heaven. I hear you can talk to an angel named Moroni.”

“Nope, not Moroni,” the grim but still smiling Mormon called back. “I talk to Namoo. He’s my personal angel. I talked to Moroni once, but he’s hard to get to. And I never heard of no angel called Stewart.”

“I don’t mean Stewart’s an angel,” Ian corrected him. “Talking direct to Stewart ain’t the idea… But you keep calling them angels he. Is angels boys?”

It was the craziest talk Ian had ever held over the barrel of a pistol, but the Mormon seemed interested.

“I wouldn’t know, McCloud. I ain’t never seen an angel with its robes off, but I just don’t feel right calling an angel it like a horse or dog.”

“What do angels look like?”

“Pure light, son. Robed in radiance the likes of which you never saw before.”

Now Ian was less amazed by his own questions than by the alacrity with which Peyton answered them, and on the sidelines Brother Winchester joined in the discussion.

“That’s what I been telling them, Superintendent Peyton. See, brothers and sisters, here’s a man who knows.”

“You wear blinders when you talk to angels?”

The question was hurled from the far side of the tables by Hendricks, the horse breeder, and Ian waved to the gallery for silence, calling over to Peyton, “What I mean, Mr. Peyton, is that you can ask Namoo to ask Moroni to ask Gabriel to go over and talk to Mr. Stewart…”

As Ian commenced to explain to Bryce Peyton a logical solution to the Mormon’s problem, commenting to himself how easy it was to solve other people’s problems, Liza screamed behind him, “I’m the girl’s mother, and I handle the dowries in this family. Billy can take potluck with the other boys when he comes calling, but Gabe’s taking nothing with her when she leaves my bed and board but her pa’s books, and that’s all Billy Peyton’s worth.”

“Agreed, ma’am,” Bryce Peyton said. “I thank you, and I’ll tell Billy.”

Bryce Peyton held up his hand in a gesture of farewell. Remembering that this man was a stake superintendent, Ian yelled “Why don’t you light and have a bite with us, super. I’d like to talk more about them angels.”

“I’m mighty obliged, son, but I can’t accept. I got twenty-three mouths to feed, and they keep me right busy. Maybe with Billy farming I’ll have more time when crops are laid by.”

Still smiling, Peyton wheeled his horse and with his five lesser saints rode back up the hill. He had smiled all through Liza’s speech, and she had been downright unpleasant. Bryce Peyton had a facial affliction of some sort, Ian decided.

“All right, folks, you can go back to your socializing,” Ian said. “It’s all over.”

He turned to Liza. “I thank you for backing me up, ma’am, but you’ve got to be more careful. You ought not to go risking a woman like you in Wyoming.”

“No trouble at all, Ian,” she said. “But me and Gabe ain’t had the chance to visit with you. Why don’t you ride back with us as far as the ranch on your way to town?”

“I’d be right happy to, Liza,” Ian managed to answer before a tide of young middle-aged males and a sprinkling of middling young males swept between them, a few eddying around Ian to congratulate him on his stand against the Mormons.

Ian acknowledged the compliments as graciously as his preoccupation permitted, but his one remaining task, the acquisition of a road gang, oppressed his mind and led him to a sympathetic appreciation of the problems of lawmen. He had to jail enough men to build the road and he had to do it legally, without knowing the law, and he could not arrest drunks in the saloon or Mormons. By the time the town’s government got through putting hedges around its law enforcer, he thought ruefully, he’d be able to arrest only bushwhackers who shot people in the back in broad daylight in the presence of at least three witnesses.

One good thing had happened today, the picnic. After riding home from a whole afternoon of eating, Liza would be in no mood to fix a chicken supper, for it was getting late. He could look forward to some uninterrupted courting time with Gabriella as long as he pastured Midnight out of hearing distance.

The horse was getting to be a mite jealous of him, and, to make it worse, the beast was a stallion.

Sunset had faded to purple when the trio drew up to the widow’s ranch. By the time Ian got the mare unhitched and Midnight tethered in the front pasture, Liza had lighted the lamp in the parlor and turned the wick down low.

“It’s rather warmish tonight,” she said. “I’ll go open a few windows to cool the house. You young folks can set in the parlor, Ian, if Gabe can’t bulldog you out to the porch swing. Either, you won’t disturb me. I sleep in the back bedroom. I go to roost with the chickens since I get up with them, and after all that eating and excitement, I ought to sleep like a log.”

“I’d like to set out on the front steps for a while,” Ian began, “if Gabe’s willing…”

“She’s willing.”

“… and learn something about the stars from a teacher. It beats me how I been studying about the stars and angels lately.”

“Some nice things up there.” Liza nodded. “Some nice things lower down, too. Well, good night, you ’uns. Don’t do anything I’d do.”

“Don’t mind mama’s language,” Gabriella said, after her mother left, “because she’s got a little Eve in her. Maybe more of Eve than Eve had. My mother would have never tempted Adam with an apple; she would have baked him an apple pie.”

“That was brave of her, standing behind me like she did,” Ian commented. “If the Mormons had drilled me, the bullet could have hit her.”

“She’s bold, all right… Let’s go sit in the swing, Ian. It’s stuffy in here.”

“To tell the truth, Gabe, I’d rather set on the steps and have you name some of the stars for me.”

“Come then. I’ll show you the stars first.”

Going onto the porch, he closed the parlor door behind him to keep from outlining himself against the light and said, “We can see the stars better in the dark.”

From the far darkness of the front pasture, Midnight nickered a greeting as the horse saw its master emerge.

“That’s the darnedest horse I ever did see, ” Ian commented. “One day it tries to kill me, the next it follows me around like a dog.”

“It loves you Ian, because it knows you’re a very masterful person.”

Seating her on his left to keep his holster free, he looked up toward the road but couldn’t see the horse in the darkness. With a horse the color of midnight, a man wouldn’t be able to make a quick getaway in the dark because he’d have to spend some time looking for his horse. He wouldn’t be having that trouble when he took over Colonel Blicket’s Kentucky-bred gray. Only fog could hide Traveler II, and there were far fewer fogs than there were dark nights.

He felt slightly zany thinking about the gray while he sat with a girl beside him under the light of the Western stars with a faint scent of purple sage wafting in from the wastelands.

“Funny thing,” he said, “I’ve rode under the stars all my life and never paid them no mind. Course, if I rode out some cloudless night and didn’t see none up there, I’d be tolerably surprised. But ever since I met you I been thinking different. You may think me bold in telling you this, Gabriella, but maybe it’s you that set me thinking about stars and angels.”

“I know you’re bold, Ian,” she murmured, “and women love a brave man. But how in the world could I set you to thinking about things so unworldly. Is it because I’m a schoolteacher?”

“No’m,” he said, thinking that she couldn’t do anything more than slap his jaws if he told her the truth. “The other night, after I met you, I was looking up at the stars, and I’ll be a wart-headed horned toad if the Milky Way up yonder didn’t remind me of the freckles under your eyes.”

“Why, Ian! That’s a pretty thing to tell me. It may not be grammatical, but it sure is poetical. Now, tell me, why do I remind you of angels?”

“I reckon it’s the way you walk, Gabriella, like an angel flies. I’m not saying there ain’t some hefty parts to you, but even the hefty parts are heavenly.”

“These steps are a little hard, Ian. The swing has pads.”

Although he liked the idea of sitting in the swing with her, years of being hunted had honed his instincts, and now he sensed that something besides the horse lurked in the darkness, some other unseen listener. If he had to draw quickly, the swing would give him an unstable platform.

“First, I’d like to find out about the stars,” he insisted. “Course, I guide on the North Star, but that’s the only one I know by name.”

“Very well, Ian. Close your right eye, lean your head over, and sight along my arm with your left eye so you can see exactly where I’m pointing.”

To balance himself, he flattened his palm against the boards on the other side of her which placed his arm around her. She understood he was merely balancing himself, because she had to hang onto his left thigh with her left hand to keep her own balance as she pointed.

“The one yonder is Betelgeuse,” she said, “and the big bright one is Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus. ‘Taurus’ means ‘the bull,’ and it’s chasing the Seven Sisters. Looks like the bull’s about to catch Merope; she’s the veiled one of the Seven Sisters and apt to be unveiled in a hurry. Now, Betelgeuse is in Orion, and Orion’s a hunter. Perhaps he intends to shoot the bull and take the Seven Sisters for himself.”

Listening raptly, Ian figured the Seven Sisters were in for it, one way or the other, for Gabriella’s words made the stars come alive. With her as a teacher, he might have become an astrologer.

“That group near the polestar is the constellation called Andromeda, named after a woman who consorted with some strange creatures. If the whole truth were known about her, no gentleman would be caught taking that woman to church…”

Gabriella hadn’t seemed too interested in the stars at the outset, but she was warming up to the subject now. He couldn’t remember the names of most of them—couldn’t even see them since the down of her arm blocked his view—but he would not have changed places for anything in the sky. Her shoulder fit the hollow of his cheek, and her perfume was sweeter than that of the honeysuckle vine.

He had never known there were so many stars. Some names he could remember, such as Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee, but he knew, after she named Andromeda, that he’d never be able to match all these stars with their names.

When, finally, she grew tired, she leaned her head against his and dropped her pointing hand into his hand. “Now, tell me, Ian. What do you want most out of life?”

At the moment, he wanted about fourteen men for a road gang, but he didn’t think it proper to talk about lawbreakers to a schoolteacher.

“You tell me first,” he stalled.

“I’d like a good stone schoolhouse built close to the Mormon’s stake boundary with lots of students paying two dollars head tax. I’d like for about ten of my students to be by my own brave, strong husband.”