Judgment at Red Creek (9 page)

She thought of the man who had come to help her. He said his name was Clayton. In the darkness she couldn't be sure, but he must have been the one to whom she had served coffee. The possibility worried her. What if he really was one of Oakley's trusted hands? In the next instant she dismissed the notion. If so, why had he risked his neck to save her?

Several minutes at an easy lope brought her to a stand of piñon. Slowing, she peered ahead and breathed a sigh of relief when the silhouettes of three large junipers could be made out against the starlit sky. In less than a minute the mare insisted on turning to the left. She slacked the reins and found herself following just a trace of a trail. Clayton had said that she should reach the trail leading down into Red Canyon around sun up. She glanced at the sky. There was no hint of the new day so she resigned herself to another hour of riding to reach the river.

She heard the water running over a gravel bar before she could see it. She would have expected the mare to have sensed water earlier but she had not been hard ridden.

The air was cool and fresh at the water's edge. She let the mare drink and enjoy the feel of the current against her fetlocks, then urged her up the far bank. The trail was easier to follow now.

Sensing an end to the journey, the mare quickened her pace. In less than a half hour Kate found herself at the head of the Red Creek Canyon trail.

A minute or two of exploring and the trail down to the settlement could be clearly read. Another well-defined trail led off to the northeast toward Las Vegas. She sat looking down for a minute. Lights were showing in two houses and a carried lantern bobbed along the edge of a pond off to her right.

Kate started when the mare suddenly whinneyed and tossed her head.

“What is it, girl?” she said. The words were hardly out when she heard the muffled thud of hooves below her. There was scarcely time to turn the mare when a horse being spurred to a labored uphill gallop burst into view not ten feet away.

Both riders uttered startled exclamations. Oss jerked a rifle free and chambered a shell. When he realized he had heard a female voice he lowered the rifle and rode closer.

“Who are you?” he demanded. “What are you doing here?”

“I'm looking for the Adams house,” Kate managed in a small voice pinched with fright. “A man named Clayton at the Gavilan Ranch told me to come here and find his mother and sister.”

“Clayton? Is Clayt all right?” he blurted.

“I think so—I hope so,” she replied. “He risked his life to get me here.” She broke off uncertainly. “I'm Kate Williams.”

Returning the rifle to its boot, Oss said, “I'm Oscar Deyer—they call me 'Oss.' I'm Clayt's best friend. I'm riding down to Gavilan now—to see if he needs help.”

“He might,” Kate replied. “The comancheros sold me to a man named Oakley. He's the superintendent. I was to be his housegirl, but I couldn't do it. I ran away. Clayton found me hiding and helped me. If they find out about it, he'll be in bad trouble.”

Oss reached into his saddle bag and removed a block of matches. He struck two and held them high. The face he saw would be pretty, but now he was looking into hollow, fear-filled eyes. In the half light he more felt than saw the fatigue-drawn lines, unmistakable signs of an ordeal that matched his own.

“If Clayt sent you, Miss, you are surely welcome here.” Glancing at the sky he saw that sunrise was still minutes away. He had stood the last watch near the top of the trail in order to get an early start. John Bates would still be on guard at the bottom. Briefly, he debated the wisdom of letting the girl ride down the trail by herself, then decided against it.

“Come on,” he said. “I'll take you down. Can you manage without a saddle? It's more than just steep.”

“I'll be all right,” Kate replied. She patted the mare's neck. “She has good sense.”

It took a half hour to negotiate the treacherous trail, still dark in the depths of the canyon. Near the bottom Oss called out and John Bates emerged from a clump of cover.

“Mary's got unexpected company, John,” he said. “This is Kate Williams. She's been through a lot. She'll be with us for a while. Clayt sent her.”

The former Confederate corporal touched his finger to the brim of his hat in an implied salute and said, “Glad to have you here, Miss.”

On the slow ride down Oss had asked Kate discreet questions. Her answers had been brief. Her family had been killed by Comanche raiders who destroyed their modest ranch in the Texas Panhandle. She and her brothers had been kidnapped and later, she was sold to the Comancheros who eventually sold her to T.K. Oakley. She avoided the embarrassing reason for her desperate flight. She preferred to say only that the man had been cruel.

As Bates returned to his post Oss called back,' ”I'm riding out again in just a little. Kate doesn't think anyone followed her but keep a sharp eye out just the same.”

Minutes later Mary Adams and Nelda were alarmed at the sound of horses crossing the dam. When they stopped in front of the house Nelda came out. When she saw Oss, panic seized her. “What are you doing here? Is something wrong?” Mary came out immediately. Almost afraid to ask, she echoed the question.

“Everything's all right,” he assured them. Turning, he pointed to Kate. “This is Kate Williams. She was working at the Gavilan. Some bad things happened to her. She had to get away. Clayt risked his neck to help her escape. He wants her to stay with you two until he gets back.”

The older woman pushed past her daughter and moved to the buckskin mare. “Of course, Kate! Of course! But tell me, is Clayt all right?”

“Yes, ma'am, I believe so...I hope so....”

“My God, so do we,” Nelda breathed as she rested her hand against Oss' stirrup. “We think it's a foolish thing he's doing. He's frightened us half to death!”

Ignoring Nelda, Mary motioned to the girl.

“Get off the mare, Kate. Come on in. You must be wrung out, child!”

Kate dropped the reins and slipped off easily. In the dim light from the doorway what Mary Adams' perceptive eyes saw made her throat catch. Turning to the door, she said, “Come in, child. You'll be safe here.”

Oss leaned over and gathered the mare's reins. “I'll take her to the barn and keep her out of sight, just in case.”

Nelda took the reins from Oss. “I'll lead her for you. I want to talk.”

When she returned some minutes later, she found her mother seated next to Kate Williams at the long, polished plank table. At the end of her endurance, the girl had slumped over her thin bare arms.

Indicating a bowl of porridge, Mary said, “Force yourself to eat a little, Kate. It will stick to your ribs. We just can't wait to hear about Clayt. And tell us all you care to about your trouble, dear. It's hard sometimes to talk about tearful things. We know!”

When the girl did not answer, the older woman lowered her head to conceal the threat of fresh tears. “My God,” she half whispered, “we know about those murderers at Gavilan. They killed my husband and my older daughter and a dozen others including Oss' young brother....” She broke off, unable to continue for a moment. “My son Clayton hired on there to try to get the proof we'll need to go to the law. The men at Gavilan don't know any of us, but it doesn't make any difference. I can hardly sleep nights from worrying that something will happen to him.”

Nelda brought a pot of fresh coffee and sat down beside her mother. “I worry too, Kate. Oss and I are planning to get married, but without Clayt to take my father's place as head of this settlement, I don't know how we'd get on. We all, young and old alike, look to him. We look to Oss's father too, but he's not young anymore. After Oss's mother died three years ago, and then his young brother Ned died from the wound he got when they tried to drive us out, he's not the same. He's turned into himself.” She slipped an arm around her mother's shoulder. “Clayt's always been the strong one, ever since we were kids down in Texas.”

On the verge of collapse, Kate listened and understood. It would take such a man, she thought, to run the risk Clayton had taken to get her safely out of Oakley's grasp. She closed her eyes and let herself feel again the vast relief and security that she had known for scant minutes when he had carried her to the barn. Cradled in Clayt's arms, his strong fingers pressing through her hair to hold her face against his shoulder, she relived for a fleeting moment now, those times a dozen years earlier when her father had come to her rescue after some childish mishap. For her, tears also threatened again as she tried to blank out, but could not, the nightmarish tragedy of the Comanche raid and the sight of her father's using his rifle as a club when the ammunition was spent, going down, at last, with a huge long-bladed Bowie knife plunged deep into his back. She could not recall her own screams, but the echoes of her small brothers' terrified outcries as they were taken away would haunt her for the rest of her life. She shuddered and Mary pulled her close to comfort her. In a gentle voice, she said, “I know, Kate, I know, but please believe that you are safe and welcome here now. Whatever happened down there is over now. You'll be with us, dear child. You'll not be alone again —ever.”

Unable to control herself, Kate gave in to an irrepressible sob, then collapsed with her head on the table and surrendered to a flood of long-denied tears.

In the Gavilan ranch house, filled with a rage reborn of frustration, T.K. Oakley's obsidian eyes glittered as he stretched out bootless and down to his underwear on the rumpled bed where he had tried to take her, his first in-house woman, the first one since he left behind El Paso and his wife of seven years, the attractive, arrogant Roberta Preston, the only daughter of Hobwell Preston.

A New Yorker, “Hobby” Preston had gone to Alabama as a commissioner in the Federal Freedmen's Bureau. Within months, seeing the possibility to fatten himself at the Reconstruction pork barrel, he had become a ruthless carpetbagger by allying himself with like-minded Southern scalawags.

In 1869 he left Alabama accompanied by two Northern deserters who acted as his well-paid bodyguards. In his wagon were six capacious carpetbags and four heavy leather Spanish trunks filled with gold, silverware and plate, and fine jewelry swindled from destitute plantation owners' widows for two pennies on the dollar.

Seated beside the bodyguard handling the wagon team, was eighteen-year-old, shabbily dressed Roberta playing the convincing role of the tender young daughter coming West to Texas to forget the horrors of war.

T.K. Oakley groaned inwardly as he stared at the ceiling shadows cast by the guttering oil lamp. For six years he had not been able to rid his mind of that first meeting with Roberta, by then one of the best-dressed and most glamorous young ladies in El Paso's small but blossoming society. It had not bothered him—on the contrary he was pleased—that despite their twenty-year age difference, she seemed to favor him far more than any of the younger, overeager swains.

They were engaged in three months and married in six. Mutual friends said confidently that each had married the “catch of the year.” He tossed restlessly as he remembered their wedding night and the honeymoon days and nights that had followed. Again, he damned her to hell and back, and damned himself too, for being so slow to understand that she had married him to prove that she could trap an eligible older bachelor who could give her everything she wanted, that all of the implied promises in her alluring coquetry had been the hollowest of pretenses.

Within six more months, puzzlement had turned to disbelief and then to loathing. When he had spoken to her father, in search of an answer, the older man had patted his arm and said, “Well now, T.K., you just keep on taking care of her and making allowances. After all, you're the first man she's ever had. Life's not been a bed of roses for the child since my wife died. You keep her in the pretty things she loves so much and she'll come around. Women always do.”

T.K. remembered now that by the end of the first year, he was beyond caring. The night after their first-anniversary dinner, in a fury of frustration, he had gone to one of the public houses along the river road, and later had crossed the Rio Grande bridge into Mexico and visited one of
las casas publicas
. No pretense there! The welcome was genuine. Pesos were exchanged for favors, and the bargain was honest.

He laughed bitterly and thought of the girl he had bought from the comancheros. There was no pretense in her either! Her terror was as real as his own need for her.

He shook his head violently and swung his legs off the bed. For a moment he sat undecided, then he got up and crossed the hall to the girl's room. One of the two new gingham dresses he'd sent Buck Tanner to buy for her hung on a peg. Beneath her couch was an indian basket holding her pitifully few personal belongings. Beside the basket was a pair of worn Mexican
huaraches
, the primitive sandals she wore around the house.

For a time he stood visualizing the girl as she must look when she was getting ready to sleep, thin and worn from her captivity. Rope burns were still visible on her ankles and wrists where the comancheros had trussed her at night. There were no garrisoned forts nearby, otherwise he knew she would have been forced into prostitution. She was not sick or she would not have survived those weeks on the trail with that half-breed gang. Thin she was, he thought, but with the promise of good breasts and provocative hips. A few more months of decent food and safe shelter, and the promise would be fulfilled.

In his room again he removed his long cotton underwear and black socks, stretched out, and pulled a light cotton army blanket over his lower body. She was out there somewhere, hiding. Let her go through a night on the mesa. She'd be more than willing to come back. He'd handle her fear of him by threatening to turn her out. She'd get over it once she understood that the security he would give her would be worth the price that one day she would be willing to pay. He would ask no more of her than that—that and total obedience.