The Savage Curse (20 page)

John squashed the scorpion with his boot, then knelt beside Ben. He lifted his friend off the dirt and gently tapped both cheeks to revive him.

Ben moaned in pain as his eyes widened in fear.

“I got him,” John said. “The scorpion's dead.”

“Where is it?”

“Right over there.” John pointed to the dead hulk. Ben scooted away from it. He gibbered to himself the rest of the day, and that night he shook out his bedroll and swept the floor of the lab to make sure no scorpions were hiding inside.

“I didn't know you were scared of scorpions, Ben,” John said the next morning.

“Well, I sure as hell am, the little buggers.”

“Think you can hold the fort while I ride into Tucson?”

“What for?”

“I'm going to pick up the ore and get our assay from Abernathy.”

“And leave me here by myself?”

“No need for both of us to go in. Besides, Gale might come by any day now.”

Ben eyed John with suspicion. He glared at the ground for yards around, looking for any sign of movement.

“Well?” John said.

“I reckon. You go on.”

“You keep rubbing that salve on your finger. I don't think you got stung badly.”

Ben screwed up his face like a man about to cry.

“Bad enough,” he grumped.

“See you tonight,” John said, and climbed into the saddle. “Keep your eyes peeled for Gale.”

“I'm keepin' 'em peeled for scorpions and rattlers,” Ben said and walked back into the coolness of the lab.

 

ABERNATHY BROUGHT OUT THE ORE SAMPLE, ALONG WITH A FLOUR sack, and laid them on the counter.

“Got your report,” he said, his fingers fidgety on the counter. He kept looking over John's shoulder as if he were expecting someone to walk in at any moment. “That'll be thirty dollars, sir.”

“Let me see the report.”

“Surely. I have it right here.” Abernathy leaned down and pulled a sheet of paper from a shelf beneath the counter.

John looked at it.

“Are these figures correct, Mr. Abernathy?”

“I don't make mistakes. That ore sample reckons at eight hundred dollars the ton. Mighty rich.”

John paid him the thirty dollars in greenbacks.

“I brought you a sack since you're on horseback. 'Stead of a box.”

“I appreciate that.”

Abernathy slid the rock into the sack, lifted it, and handed it to John.

“You got any more samples you want assayed, you bring 'em in.”

“I will,” John said. “I assume the results of your assay are confidential.”

Abernathy huffed up, expanding his chest like a pouter pigeon.

“Of course,” he said with an air of indignation. “We observe the highest propriety in these matters.”

“I'm sure you do,” John said and touched fingers to the brim of his hat in a farewell salute.

Abernathy had broken out in a sweat when he handed the sack over to John. It glistened on his forehead like a patina of machine oil. The man was nervous as hell, John thought, and he was sure he knew why. He had no doubt that Abernathy was a Judas who had betrayed him to Oliver Hobart. He smiled.

“I should have given him a tip for that,” he said to himself as he packed away the ore in his saddlebags.

26

NOT LONG AFTER JOHN HAD RIDDEN OFF TO TUCSON, BEN HEARD the rumble of a wagon down on the flat. He felt a surge of blood through his veins. He grabbed his rifle, which was leaning against the wall by the front door, and stepped outside into the sunlight.

He crept up to the edge of the tabletop and peered down into the valley. Dust spooled out from behind the wheels of a wagon drawn by a pair of horses. Another horse was tied to the end of the wagon. And the wagon was flanked by six men on horseback. Two people sat on the seat, one driving, the other holding a rifle that glinted in the sun.

Ben stood up and waved.

Gale, who was driving the wagon, waved back. When she came to the road, she turned the team and headed up the slope where Ben was waiting.

She drove the wagon up on the flat, next to the laboratory, and turned it around to face the way back down the road. Ben walked over and saw the sadness on Gale's face. He hooked a thumb over her shoulder and he walked to the side of the wagon and looked inside. There were two bodies in the bed, each wrapped in a gray blanket. When he walked back to help Gale down, there were tears on her face and her eyes were cloudy with mist.

“The lieutenant died,” he said.

“Last night, Ben.”

She set the brake and took Ben's hand, then stepped down off the wagon.

“You get down, too, Romero,” she said to the sheepherder who had been on the seat with her.

Romero climbed down the other side. The mounted riders, all sheepherders, lined up along the edge of the mesa, their rifles pointed straight up at the sky as they watched the valley.

“You came with guards?” Ben said. She did not take her hand out of his.

“They will stay with you while Romero drives the wagon to Tucson. I've given him a note to give Sheriff Wilts.”

“You're staying here?” he said.

“Let's go inside. It's too hot to stay out here. Come on, Romero. Will you please carry in those bags of foodstuffs?”

Romero, a stocky man in his forties, with strong hands and flinty black eyes, coal-black hair, high cheekbones, and a wide square jaw, nodded and walked around to the back of the wagon.

Ben and Gale entered the lab where the air was cool.

He noticed that she was wearing a pistol, and her gunbelt was full of .44-caliber ammunition.

When Romero walked in a few minutes later, he carried a large sack of airtights and other foodstuffs. He walked to the back and put the goods on the counter.

“You can untie my horse and tie him up outside,” she said. “Then you'd better get into town. You be sure and give Sheriff Wilts my letter.”

“I will do this, señora,” he said. “Do not worry. I will come back tonight.”

“Good-bye, Romero.
Ten cuidado.
Be careful,” she said and closed the door after he left the lab.

Ben heard the wagon rumble off, leaving a great silence in its wake. He looked at Gale, who seemed ready to sag to the floor.

“You're tired,” he said.

“Yes. Let's sit down for a few minutes, Ben. Maybe I'll make us some tea. I found some in my cupboard and thought to bring it. It's real tea, from China.”

“I never got a taste for it,” he said, leading her to the back of the lab. There, she saw that Ben and John had set two chairs on opposite sides of a table. She felt a tug at her heart, as if an unseen hand had pulled one of her arteries. Clarence had made those chairs and that table. She remembered how proud he had been every time he turned out a piece of furniture on his lathe and workbench. There were so many things inside the lab that reminded her of Clarence. Now there was an emptiness inside her as she thought of him. She sat down and sighed. Ben sat down, too, and looked over at her, a sign of concern on his face.

“You should have stayed home,” he said. “It's just too hot outside for a trip like that. Not a speck of shade on the road, and maybe hostile Injuns about.”

“Ben, I've been in this country so long, I don't mind the heat that much. Sometimes I think I'm part Mexican and maybe part Navajo. This land has a way of getting inside a person. When I'm working with my sheep, with the men who work for me, and knowing what I know about their backgrounds, I feel like one of them. I'm so used to speaking Spanish, I think in Spanish most of the time. I declare, someday, if I live long enough, I'll probably forget how to speak English.”

Ben laughed, and then she laughed with him.

“I think I know what you mean, Gale. Johnny and I haven't been out here that long, but sometimes, of an evenin', I stand outside and look up at the sky and down at the valley and think I might have been here forever. And sometimes, I think I want to be here forever.”

Gale laughed a small laugh.

“The land will get to you, if you stay long enough,” she said. Then she turned serious and Ben's senses perked up. “Ben, do you have a home to go back to?”

“I guess not. Not anymore. I called Missouri home once. Then I got used to Colorado. The mountains. But I got no home, really.”

“Maybe you might think of settling here, here in Arizona.”

“I never thought of it. Not in a while, anyway. Me'n Johnny have been huntin' Hobart so long, I ain't been able to think much beyond it.”

“I think John's a very troubled young man,” she said.

There was a pause.

“Don't you?” she asked, her voice soft.

“I think he's a-wrestlin' with some kind of demon. There's been so much killin' and I think he's gettin' plumb tired of it.”

“And you?” she asked in that same soft voice.

“Yeah, I reckon.” He paused. “I think it's that pistol his pa left him, one he done over and put all that silver on it. Johnny seems to think it's got some kind of curse on it.”

“That's silly,” she said. “A gun is just a tool, like a hammer or a hatchet.”

“Not that Colt he carries. It's something bigger'n ordinary to his mind.”

“Maybe because his daddy gave it to him.”

“Maybe. He cottoned to his pa all right. They was real close.”

Gale got up from the table and found a teakettle in the cupboard. She filled it with water and put it on the stove.

“This got any coals in it?” she said.

“Yes'm. I'll stick some kindlin' in and fire it up.”

While the stove was getting hot, the two sat down. Gale reached across the table and took Ben's hands in her own.

“You've got good strong hands,” she said.

“Thank you, ma'am.”

“Ben, since meeting you and John, I've been thinking about you both a lot. But especially you. I'm wondering if you'd consider stayin' on my ranch when you and John are finished with this Hobart business.”

“I dunno.”

“Well, I don't have much to offer. But I'm a good cook and I'd pay you good wages to help me tend my sheep. Might even set you up on a spread of your own after a while, if you wanted.”

“It sounds mighty nice right now. I just don't know what Johnny's gonna want to do. He might get Hobart. Hobart might get him. I just can't see into the future.”

“I understand,” she said. “You don't have to make your mind up right away. I just wanted to plant a little seed in your mind, Ben. If something happened to me, I don't have any kin to leave my property to. I'm just about finished writing my book and if I can get it published, why, we might both give up ranching and sail the seven seas.”

There was a twinkle in her eye when she said that and Ben felt a mellow warmth sweep through him. She squeezed his hands, then released them. The teakettle whistled on the stove and both of them jumped as if snakebit.

Gale opened a tin of orange pekoe and pekoe and spooned the leaves into two tin cups. She poured hot water in the cups and then placed them on the table. She sat down.

“Let the tea steep for a few minutes,” she said.

“Yes'm.”

Ben thought about what Gale had said to him. She was a comely woman, and he a lonely man. But he knew nothing about sheep and he wondered if she wanted to hire him or marry him. She might be a hungry woman, and his instincts told him to run from her as fast as he could move his legs and feet. As soon as he thought this, he felt guilty. The woman was being kind to him and he shouldn't harbor such opinions without proof.

They drank their tea without saying anything. The vapors rose like tiny shawls from their cups and the smell was pleasing to both of them.

Sunlight streamed through the windows with slanted columns of light the color of sand. Ben felt drawn to this strong woman with her snowy hair and pretty blue eyes who smelled of rosewater. She might be a woman to ride the river with, he thought. More than that, she almost felt like home. His emotions rose up in him and he had to turn away from her, had to stop the rush of thoughts that were turning his muscles to mush, his mind to persimmon jelly.

“A penny,” she said.

“Huh?”

“I'm offerin' you a penny for those thoughts of yours, Ben.”

He laughed, suddenly self-conscious.

“Oh, I don't know as I could express 'em real well, Gale.”

“Too bad. I was hoping you would confide in me. As if I was your friend.”

“You are my friend,” he said. “And I'm mighty glad to be in your company.”

Despite himself, Ben blushed. His face turned a pale crimson and he flashed her an embarrassed smile.

“I'm glad to hear that,” she said. “I feel the same way. I feel, Ben, as if I've known you for a good long time, longer than we've actually known each other. And I find your company very pleasant.”

“You're a good woman, Gale. And life is mighty short. I—I just ain't handy with the right words.”

“You don't have to say anything, Ben. Just enjoy your tea, while I enjoy you.”

He felt as if he were melting inside. The way she talked, the way she looked at him. He was melting and he hadn't had such feelings in so long he had forgotten the youth that had experienced them. So many years gone by, and nothing much to show for it. How could he explain such things to anyone, much less Gale Gill?

He couldn't, he knew. Feelings were like smoke. You couldn't rope 'em, you couldn't hog-tie 'em. You just felt them. Felt them real deep inside, like the taste of good wine or the scent of a flower early in the morning.