Louis L'Amour (16 page)

“Mama will be angry.”

“We’ve got to tell her,” Wat said. “She’s got to know he’s over there.”

Matty came to the door to throw out some wash water just as they came into the yard. She stopped, looking at them.

“So it’s trouble you’ve been makin’?”

“How did you know?” Peg asked.

“Sure it stands out all over the two of you! A blind man could see it. Now come here an’ tell me. What is it you’ve done?”

As she spoke, Ridge Fenton came to the door, a piece of apple pie in his hand. As they explained, he began to grin. “By the Lord Harry, I’d of give a pretty piece to’ve seen that! Ol’ Scant a scramblin’ for his life!” He slapped his leg, his mouth stuffed with pie. When he could talk again, he said, “Too bad one o’ those rocks didn’t bust him on the head!”

Mary, preparing her supply list, listened, half in anger, half relief. Then she got up and came to the door. “Wat, first I want to thank you for getting Peg safely home, but don’t you ever do that again! She is not to leave the yard without telling me. Do you understand? You both might have been killed by that awful man!”

“Yes’m,” Wat said sheepishly. “I’m sorry, ma’am. It was only a little way, and I didn’t reckon anybody was around.”

“He’s gone by now,” Fenton said. “He knows we know, and he don’t know but what Boone is around. Boone would go huntin’ him, sure as shootin’.”

“I don’t want you to go, Ridge,” Mary said. “We want you here.”

“Now don’t you worry yourself about that, ma’am. I just don’t cotton to goin’ off in the hills huntin’ Scant Luther. If’n he brings trouble to us, I’ll speak my piece, an’ it’ll be language he understands.”

“We must all be careful,” Mary said. “We do know he is around, and Wat? I want to thank you for discovering him.”

“He’s a good boy,” Matty said when she came inside. “You cannot blame them, children as they are. It’s only natural they should go pokin’ about, and certainly I did it myself.

“We had no outlaws or Indians about, but we had high cliffs along the shore and the sea and the caves in the cliffs where sometimes we went when the tide was out.

“Lookin’ back, I can see it was fearsome risks we took, climbin’ about in those caves like we done. It was a wonder the sea never trapped us there, and there were times when we scarcely made it out before the caves flooded. But that’s the way with youngsters, mum.”

After they were all inside, she went to the door herself and stepped out in the almost dark and stood in the shadow of the station, looking westward.

That was where the mountains were, higher mountains than she had ever seen, as high as the Alps but more of them, they said. Someday she must go there. She must take Peg and Wat and go to the mountains, yet even here there was something in the air that was different. It was so clear, so different from what she had been used to.

She watched the first stars come out, and suddenly she wished Marshall were there, standing beside her, just to feel with her, to realize with her that she was changing, and she knew what the change portended. She no longer longed to return to the plantation. To rebuild Harlequin Oaks…yes. She must do that. She had promised herself that, promised that to the memory of her father and to Peg.

For herself, she knew now it would never be enough, for she had changed. She had become a western woman.

Chapter 18

J
ASON FLANDRAU’S FIRST instinct was to run, yet he had built too well here, and he had no desire to return to the old days of riding and hiding. Returning to Denver, he studied all aspects of his situation.

After all, it was one woman’s accusation. Admittedly, he must forget any assistance from Preston Collier, for the latter would not risk his position and prestige backing a candidate whose reputation was tainted. All right, then, Collier must be forgotten. Who were Collier’s rivals? Who were his enemies?

Flandrau had already discovered that people were reluctant to think evil of anyone who dressed and talked well and who maintained an outward appearance of respectability. He had a good singing voice, and like almost every boy of his time, he had gone to church regularly, if only to meet the girls, and he knew most of the hymns.

So he would continue on the course he had set for himself, careful to keep himself to respectable circles. He must develop a mine or ranch where he could hire men and so have contact with those he needed without arousing unwelcome curiosity.

Mary Breydon must, of course, be eliminated, but now it must be done by accident or by Indians. Traveling was rough, the horses often only half broken. There were many things that could happen, only he must make sure that one of them happened to her.

Scant Luther? If he acted against her, nobody would be surprised, and it would not be linked to Flandrau.

Scant…Indians…accident.

One or the other should provide an answer, and whatever accusations she made would quickly be forgotten. Now he must think, he must plan—

Of course, there was Denver Cross, but Cross he wished to keep out of sight and out of trouble until he, Flandrau, became governor. Cross was no fool and too valuable a man to be wasted. He would be needed later.

Scant first…Cross could handle that or, better still, Jordy Neff. Jordy, as Flandrau had been quick to recognize, had a mean streak. He liked to prod about until he found something about which a man was sensitive and then work on it. It was a form of sadistic torture at which Neff was adept.

A few days later, pausing on the street near Neff but without seeming to notice him, Flandrau said, “See anything of Scant? I wonder how he likes being made a fool of by that woman?”

Neff chuckled. “He don’t like it much. He’s been muttering in his beard, making threats.”

“He could save us a lot of trouble, Neff. Prod him a little.”

Flandrau walked on up the street. There was that little ranch up the river. Maybe he could make a deal for it, a quiet place, out of sight, easily reached, and with trails heading back into the mountains.

His every instinct warned him that now was the time to leave. There were other places, other times. Yet there was in him a streak of stubbornness, a refusal to be defeated by a woman and the realization that he might never again find such a situation as he had come upon here.

He was not sanctimonious. He was simply quietly respectful. On several occasions, he had been asked to sing solos and had done so. He was not a great singer but had come from a family where there was much singing, and he had grown up around camp meetings and revivals, so all the hymns, the prayers, the quotations, came easily to him.

He was a man who believed in nothing, a man totally selfish, totally self-centered, completely ruthless. To be defeated by a mere woman was absurd. Preston Collier would have been useful, but he was not necessary. He would have Mrs. Breydon eliminated and would press on. So far, his name had not appeared in the newspapers, and he wanted it that way. If he could begin by winning a large number of voters, right at the grass roots, when his name was finally brought forward, he would have easy sailing. Carefully, he began considering his next move.

W
HAT WAS NEEDED was a good rain. Not a piddling few drops but a rain, something to settle the dust, for at Cherokee dust was the enemy and the cause of much of the work that must be done. Every stage and every rider-by started up a cloud of dust, and it settled on everything.

Matty was alone, and she was baking. She loved baking and especially she liked making cookies, pies, and doughnuts. Doughnuts were new to her, for she had never seen one until she came to this land, but she liked making them and liked seeing them eaten. Coming from a large family of healthy boys, she knew what an appetite was. Or she thought she did.

Then there was the day when the Indians came.

Mary Breydon had taken Peg and gone off to Laporte to pick up some things needed about the place. Ridge Fenton had gone hunting.

At breakfast, he had said, “I’m hungerin’ for wild meat. I’m goin’ to fetch some. Antelope, maybe, although I don’t cotton to antelope. Too stringy, gets in my teeth. Buffler, that’s what I want. Come right down to it, I’d rather have a nice fresh lion. Mountain lion. Cougar. Ain’t no better meat anywhere than cougar meat.”

He glanced across the table at Peg. “You got to kill ’em first. They’re too lively to eat right off the hoof.”

“Cougars don’t have hoofs!” Peg said. “They have paws.”

“ ’Course they do! Maws, too. I’m that hungry for wild meat I could eat paw, maw, and the kittens. The whole batch.” He pushed back from the table and wiped his mustache with the back of his hand. “You just set by. I’ll take ol’ Betsy out there an’ run down a buffler, a deer, somethin’ of the kind. Maybe I can back an ol’ grizzly into a corner.”

“A
grizzly
?” Wat stared at him. “Nobody in his right mind wants to corner a
grizzly
!”

“Hate to do it,” Ridge explained. “Really hate to do it! Them grizzlies, they
know
me. Once they see me comin’, they know the end is near. Why some of them back up an’ cry! They just cry like babies because they know when they see ol’ Ridge a-comin’ totin’ ol’ Betsy that their time has come.

“They know their days of free roamin’ is over and they are about to become steaks an’ mince meat. Ever eat a mince meat pie made from fresh grizzly? Ain’t nothin’ better.

“All summer long, that grizzly has been fattenin’ up on nuts, berries, roots, and the like, mixed in with a fresh young buffler, maybe a papoose or two, so he’s
ready
! I mean he’s fat.

“Of course, I never kill a grizzly lest he’s fat. Sometimes, when they are runnin’ to get away, I have to run up beside them and pinch their ribs to see if they’re fat enough. When I pinch ’em, they know why, an’ they screech like banshees because they know what’s comin’, an’ they are sorry for all those berries and nuts they been eatin’. Right then, they wished it was less.”

“Don’t pay any attention, Peg,” Wat said. “He’s just yarnin’.”

Ridge glared. “Yarnin’, is it? You just wait. One o’ these days, I’ll take you a-huntin’ with me, an’ you can pinch ’em for fat your own self! You’ll see what I mean.”

He rested his hands on his knees, staring at them. “Ever eat beaver tail? Now that’s mighty fine eatin’! Next to cougar, there’s nothin’ like beaver tail or buffler tongue. Finest meat anywhere!”

Ridge Fenton had been gone for more than an hour when the Indians came. She caught a movement from the corner of her eye and went to the window. There could have been no less than thirty of them, possibly more. At least eight men, ten or twelve women, and some children. They were mounted and pulling travoises piled with their tepees and goods.

Matty was appalled. Since coming to Cherokee, she had heard a dozen stories of how Indians could eat. Three of them had been known to eat a buffalo at a sitting, and those Indians out there—why there’d be nothing left for the stage! What to do?

They had stopped out by the corral now, and two of them were approaching the station. Matty took up the shotgun and put it beside the door.

“They respect courage,” somebody had said, “and not much else.” Well, maybe. Matty did not know; all she had was courage. Suddenly, before they reached the step, she jerked open the door.

The action was so sudden the Indians stopped, startled. “What do you want?” she demanded. She had the shotgun by the door but a broom in her hands.

“Eat,” one of the Indians said. He was a broad, strong-looking man with his hair in two braids. “We hungry.”

“Go hunt, then,” Matty said. “Go find a fat grizzly. Feel of his ribs to see if he’s fat enough first.”

They stared at her. Straight-faced, hiding the fact that she was frightened, she remembered what Ridge Fenton had been telling the children. “If he’s not fat enough, let him go.”

One of the Indians scowled and muttered something to the other, who began to explain. They both turned to look at Matty, who looked right back at them.

“We hungry,” an Indian repeated.

“Find a fat bear or a buffalo.” She looked beyond the men at the Indian children. Their eyes were wide and dark, their faces round and serious.

“I won’t feed you,” she said, “but I’ll feed the little ones. The papooses,” she said, remembering the word from Ridge Fenton and hoping it was the right one. “Not you or you,” she pointed at them. “You can hunt for meat. Send me the little ones, the papooses.”

The two Indians returned to the cavalcade and there was much talk, and then slowly the children began getting down from the horses and hesitantly approached.

There were nine of them. One larger boy, evidently already a man in his own mind, would not come but stood back, disdainfully proud.

Seating them at an outside table, she filled a bowl of stew for each of them. She would have to cook again, but no matter.

She stood over them while they ate, slowly, solemnly, often looking up at her. The men stayed by their horses, watching. Finally, when they were eating the last of their stew, she told them to wait. Going inside, she covered a tray with cookies and took them outside.

The children stared at her, then at the cookies. She held up one finger, looking very stern. “One!” she said. “No more!”

Then she passed the cookies. Solemnly, still without smiling, each one took a cookie, looking up at her to be sure they were doing the right thing but looking hungrily at the rest of the cookies on the tray.

Suddenly, Matty turned and walked out to the waiting Indians and passed the cookies to the men and then the women. Very carefully, each Indian took just one. When the tray was empty but for one cookie, she looked at it, then at them. Then she took up the last cookie and ate it herself. One of the Indians started to chuckle and muttered something to the others, and they all laughed.

The young ones scrambled back on their ponies or the travoies, and slowly the little cavalcade moved away. As they moved off, she lifted a hand and waved. After a moment, one of the children waved back.

Matty went inside and closed the door. Suddenly, she dropped to a bench, heaving a great sigh. She’d been scared, and she was still scared.