Return of the Outlaw (16 page)

Soon, the remainder of the party stre
tched out on the trail behind Tate and started the long ride back out of the mountains, leaving behind them two previously unnamed waterholes that ever after would bear the names Hatcherson Spring and Sundust Spring.

Juana was worried about Lloyd. He had become sullen and uncommunicative and his appearances at their meeting place ha
d become sporadic. She assumed—as did others who had noticed the change in the Sheriff’s personality—that it was due to the local turmoil resulting from the murder of Julio Arroyo and the subsequent, unsuccessful manhunt. In addition to all this, many people were critical of Jennings for not having remained with the posse, while others, not convinced Amado Lopez or his friend Havens were guilty, believed the manhunt was immoral to begin with, and the reasons behind it political.

One evening as Jennings and Juana sat in their accustomed
place, she leaned against him and turned to kiss him on the neck. Feeling his unresponsiveness she said, “Lloyd, when will we ever be happy?”

He shrugged, “P
robably never.”

“But why, when we love each other the way we do?  What
is it that is so terrible, it can keep us from being happy?”

“Life,” he said. “I don
’t think there’s any happiness in life.”

She sighed. “That
’s just you speaking because your life has never been happy. I’ve known many happy people. Even people who don’t have youth and love and the future, like we do, are happy. If they can be, why can’t we?”

He turned to face her
. “It’s all falling apart, Joanne, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“What
’s falling apart?”

“My life,
my future.”

For a moment his
self-pity made her angry, then the anger turned to frustration. “Not your life, Lloyd, not your whole life, just your life as the sheriff. You still have me, and we have our whole future ahead of us. Isn’t that more important than a job?”

“I
’ve told you,” he said in bitter tones. “It’s more than just a job, it’s my future; it’s our future.”

“It was our future,” she corrected. “If that future is not going to happen,
then we’ll have another future, a different one, maybe a better one. We can make a life that’s as good as that one would have been.”

He leaned away from her
. “You don’t understand me. You never have.”

Juana was growing angry too
. “You’re being childish,” she said. “I don’t know why, but for some reason you blame me for what’s happened. All I’m trying to do is help you accept it and see that the world has not ended because you’re having problems. And I can’t believe your life will be destroyed if you lose your job; especially at your age. There are other ways to earn a living.”

“But this is my way.
” He was shouting now.

“Fine, so you have to be a lawman;
then if you lose this job, we’ll go to another town. You can be sheriff somewhere else.”

He pounded
the ground with his fist. “No! It has to be here. It has to be in this place!”

“But Lloyd what if it can
’t be? If you can’t have what you want, life still has to go on. You just can’t stop living.”

He shook his head in disgust. “You don
’t understand me. You don’t even try.” He stood and strode to his horse. Mounting, he spurred hard and rode away from her.

Juana sat alone for a while crying softly. She felt that somehow she had failed him. He was right about one thing; she didn
’t understand him. And she didn’t understand what he wanted from her. But tonight she had learned a little more about what he didn’t want.

A cloud moved across the face of the moon and made the night darker. A soft breeze blew through the spiny branches of the desert trees around her. She sat in the darkness, wishing she knew how to help Lloyd. More than ever, she realized how much he needed her.

It was late afternoon when Fogarty and the others rode into the T.S., haggard and unkempt, with two weeks of beard and trail dust on them. The air of defeat circulating around them as they rode was due wholly to Fogarty’s foul mood. The other men were elated to be out of the mountains, and at this point couldn’t care less what happened to Amado Lopez or Jeff Havens. They were looking forward to a bath, a shave, a good meal, some whiskey, a soft bunk and all the clean, fresh water they could drink.

Stewart received stoically and without comment the news of the deaths of Hatcherson and Sundust and of the posse
’s utter failure. Stroking his jaw, he stood gazing off at the distant mountains that so effectively cloistered the men he wanted dead.

As Fogarty watched, Stewart seemed to
resolve something in his mind. “Have one of the men saddle my horse; I’m going into town.”

“What for?” asked Fogarty

“I’m going to do what we should have done in the beginning. We handled this all wrong.”

By the time St
ewart arrived in town, the night was in full swing. The town had made its daily shift from daytime, when its sober citizens left their homes and filled the streets and businesses with the activity of their comings and goings, to the night, when God-fearing people were in their houses, eating their suppers, smoking their pipes, doing their lessons and conversing. Now the town belonged to the miners, the soldiers, the railroad men, the cowboys, and the drifters.

And it was on them that Stewart had come to call tonight.

Anne was watching from an upstairs window when Fogarty and the other men arrived. She was not pleased to see Fogarty return; it had been so pleasant to have him gone. But in a greater sense she was relieved. She could tell by the gunman’s bearing and by his face that he had been unsuccessful. She observed this even before she saw that there were no horses with bodies tied across the saddles. Jeff and Amado must still be safe. She said a silent prayer of thanks. From the window she observed the short interchange between Stewart and Fogarty and watched as her husband mounted up and rode toward town. She wished he had said something to her; she would have preferred to go with him. There was always an uneasy feeling in the house when Stewart was gone and Fogarty was around. And why did Fogarty have to stay in the house? Why couldn’t he bunk with the rest of the men?  She had never understood her husband’s relationship with this man, and it bothered her a great deal.

She recalled a time when she was a little girl, when some men had caught a wolf in
a trap and brought him to town tied to the bed of a wagon. Anne was in town that day with her father. She recalled how she felt sorry for the wolf, stolen from its habitat, tied up and made an object of amusement. She stood alone, watching the animal while her father was conversing with some men. She wanted to touch it; to stroke it and comfort it and set it free. Then it turned its eyes on her. Eyes that were gray like the clouds and cold like the mountains in winter, and she was terribly afraid and glad the wolf was tied up. She hoped they would never release it, afraid it would come to her home, and remembering her as one of its captors, take its revenge. She was six years old at the time, and for weeks afterward was bothered with nightmares about the wolf. Eventually she had lost her fear of the animal, but she never forgot the eyes and the way they looked at her.

Fogart
y looked at her the same way: with wolf eyes; eyes that mocked her and threatened her and promised to do her harm someday. And though she had never told Stewart, Fogarty’s presence in this house was one of the reasons she spent so much time away. It was bad enough having Fogarty around when her husband was present but on the occasions when Stewart was gone from the ranch, she found the gunman’s presence unbearable.

Fortunately she had been able to
avoid being alone with the man. Maria, the Mexican housekeeper and cook and her daughter, Lupe, were always there, but Anne still felt unprotected, and when Stewart was away, she usually stayed in her room until he returned.

As she watched him ride away now, she considered changing her clothes and following him, but she realized he was traveling too fast; she would probably be unable to overtake him. Moreover, she knew he would resent her coming along uninvited. He was ve
ry secretive about his business and Anne made it a point never to pry.

She heard a sound coming from the hall and opened the door a crack to peer out. Fogarty was standing a few feet away, looking directly at her bedroom door with his sneering wolf eyes. She quickly closed the
door and shot the bolt, and she heard his soft, mocking laugh and the sounds of his boots as he walked away. The fact that he had made no such sounds while approaching her door sent a chill through her.

A
t times like this Anne realized how truly alone she was. She and Tom were not close; they were not really even friends. Before their marriage, she had believed they would become close, but there was something about him that made it impossible for her to love him. She could not define that something, could not even articulate it in her mind, but it put her in mind of her mother. 

During their brief courtship, Tom had been kind, considerate
, and likeable. He had seemed to be a good man, and she had firmly believed, or perhaps had merely convinced herself he and she would be good for each other and would have a good life together. She was sure their relationship would progress as they came to know each other better, but now . . .

Sometimes
in the past she had wondered if the part of Tom that he let her see was real. Now after their quarrel, she felt she didn’t really know him at all. And she felt very much alone. Nor did the presence of the housekeeper and her daughter serve to lessen her sense of aloneness. The two women had worked for Stewart since before he married Anne, and from the time Anne had come to live in this house, they had always been polite and accommodating, but aloof and unresponsive to her attempts at friendship, never approaching her, never speaking unless spoken to. Anne suspected this behavior was based on orders from Stewart, and she had long ago ceased trying to befriend the only other women on the ranch.

She felt very unfortunate in this respect. Most large western ranches were small communities, with wives and families of ranch hands living on the ranch. She did not
understand why Stewart employed the kind of men he did: hard men, single men, who had come here alone and showed no inclinations of domesticity. 

Perhaps it was her loneliness that compelled her
more and more often to seek the solace of the grove of cottonwoods. She felt comfort there, and a sense of ownership, as though the trees and the privacy belonged to her alone. It was a feeling she felt in no other place.

She stoo
d at the window for a long time, looking out at the jagged forms of the mountains, and considered her dilemma. There was no escaping the fact that sooner or later her mother and husband must know she was expecting a child, but until that time it would be her own precious secret. Once they knew about it, they would both try to use it somehow to control her. They were very much alike in that way, and she thought it ironic she had married someone so much like her mother. She had never intended to do that.

Jeff gnawed the last traces of meat from a bone of the cottontail rabbit Amado had shot and cooked. “What
’s your plan now?” he asked.

It had b
een two days since the posse left the mountains, and the food Amado and Jeff had inherited from Hatcherson and Sundust was gone. Amado, who was also working on a final morsel of the tough little rodent, raised his head to meet Jeff’s gaze and Jeff saw in his eyes the indomitable will and stubborn determination that so characterized the man.

“I
’ll be staying around,” Amado said.

Jeff threw away the bone, wiped his hands on his pants
, and stood up. “You can’t stay, Amado. Just because they left the mountains doesn’t mean they won’t still shoot either one of us on sight. You can’t stick around these parts. Neither one of us can.”

Amado shook his head. “You
’re the one who can’t stay. My situation is better than it was before.”

“How
’s that?”

“Before, they knew I was around. They were always watching for me. Now, they
’ll expect me to leave. They won’t be watching. All I have to do is stay out of sight.”

“How will you live?”

“The same way I have since those ladrones stole the ranch.

“You mean by stealing horses and cattle?”

“It’s not stealing; Stewart and Fogarty are the thieves.”

“Alright,” said Jeff, “I understand, but at least come with me. Let
’s go somewhere and hide out until things cool down.” He knew as he spoke, it was useless; there would be no argument that could persuade Amado.

Amado smiled an odd smile. There was
a sadness in his eyes that Jeff had seen before. A deep cumulative sorrow built up over a lifetime of living; a composite of memories of loved ones long dead and dreams long buried; of grief and loss and of happy times, and of joys that, even themselves were now sources of sorrow because they were past. Suddenly, Jeff realized he was wrong in asking Amado to leave. “I’m sorry old friend,” he said softly. “You’re right.”