King Mabry looked uncertainly around, helpless in the face of a totally unfamiliar situation.
“There’s stew ready.” Dodie’s voice was practical. “Anybody want some?” She dished up food for Maggie, then for the others. Neither Mabry nor Janice would look at the other, but they sat together on a log. King Mabry was embarrassed. He wanted Janice Ryan. He wanted her as he wanted nothing else in this world, but he’d had no hopes of getting her. Nor had he any right to ask her to be his wife. He had been building to just that, yet even as he talked he was sure he would be refused. Once she had refused him, the foolish notion would be out of his mind; it would be all too evident how foolish he had been. When Dodie told him Janice loved him he had not believed it, not even for a minute.
He knew her attitude toward his kind of man.
Nothing in her background had prepared her for him, or for the harsh terms of life on the frontier. She had the strength, the quality… that he recognized. Yet that she might accept either the life or himself he could not believe. Now he groped for words and could find none, for he was a man without words, given to expressing himself in action, and the few words he used were those preliminary to action or associated with it. His philosophy did not come from books or religion, but from the hard facts of a hard life coupled with a strong sense of fair play, always linked with the realization that survival was for the strong.
Nothing in his adult experience prepared him for what he must do now. Afraid to look at Janice, afraid even to believe what had happened, he ate hungrily, as much to render himself incapable of speech as because of hunger. Dodie alone seemed unexcited. He glanced at her, but her face was composed. Remembering the few minutes in the woods, he might have expected some reaction. Yet he knew better. Not from Dodie. Dodie was a soldier. She took things in stride and crossed her bridges when she came to them. “Tom?” Dodie called. “You want to eat now?” “Leave it by the fire.” Dodie put her hands on her hips and stared impudently at Janice and Mabry.
“What is this? Why doesn’t somebody kiss somebody? Are you two going to marry? Or are you scared, King?” He looked up and growled at her. “I’m not scared. You… you talk too much!” Dodie laughed. “But I don’t always talk.
Do I, King?” He looked up at her, remembering the moment in the woods. It was in her eyes that she remembered, too, and was laughing at him. “You go to bed!” he growled. “You’re too smart!” “Well,” Dodie replied, “at least I’d know what to do.” King started fussing with the fire. He was guilty and embarrassed. For a few minutes he had been afraid Dodie would mention his kissing her. And then he realized she would not, she just wasn’t the sort.
In fact, she was pretty regular.
He tried to switch his thoughts to , the problems of tomorrow, yet he was too sharply aware of the presence of Janice and that they were now alone. He looked around at her finally. “Mean it?” “Yes.” “It won’t always be easy.” “Nothing is. At least, I’ll have a home.” The word shook him. A home…
He had not known a home since he was a child. But what kind of home could he offer her? A home where he might be brought in a wagon box any night? He had seen others taken home that way, some of them mighty good men. And he was asking Janice to share that.
King Mabry got to his feet. He felt he should do something, but he did not know what or how. He could not just walls over and take her in his arms. He picked up his rifle.
“Going down to the creek,” he said.
He swore bitterly at himself as he walked away. Behind him, when he glanced back, the fire was tiny and alone. Janice sat where he had left her, staring into the flames.
Snow crunched under his feet, and he glanced at the sky, finding breaks in the clouds. Against the pale night sky the trees etched themselves in sharp silhouette. A star gleamed, then lost itself behind drifting clouds. At the creek bank he stopped and rigged a snare, placing it in a rabbit run he had seen earlier. He needed no light. This he had done often enough to know every move. Out in the darkness a branch cracked in the cold, and some small animal struggled briefly and then was silent. He had been a fool even to think of marriage to Janice. Now she would tie her life to his, and his destiny was tied to a gun. If they got out of this alive, there would be more trouble. And there was no assurance they would get out.
So far they had been fortunate. With the Indians they had been lucky, and only the fact that snow had come in time to blot out their trail had kept them alive. It was not his doing, although he had done his part, as had Healy. The real winner here was the very thing they were fighting now, the weather.
He listened into the night. There were only normal night sounds. On winter nights, if anyone moved within a, great distance, it could often be heard. He shifted his rifle and turned back toward the campfire. The fire had burned low, so he laid a foundation of sev- eral chunks of similar size and length, then shifted the coals to this new base and added fuel.
When the fire was burning well, he cleared the ground where the old fire had been and unrolled his bed on the warm ground. It was an old wilderness trick, used many times.
How many such nights had he spent? How many such things had he learned? Gloomily he walked to the horses and whispered to them, rubbing their shoulders. The black stamped cheerfully.
He tried then to visualize the trail ahead, to plan what could be done, and to put himself in Barker’s place. Of one thing he was positive. Andy Barker would come again. He would not give up while there was still a chance, and now he had three men to help.
After a rest, he took his rifle and scouted away from the fire toward the creek that separated them from the Nowood badlands. At times he was as much as a quarter of a mile out, but he saw nothing, heard nothing. He was not relieved. Barker had to make his move. He dared not let them get to Montana and the settlements with their story. He must kill every one of them. And besides, there was that gold on the paint pony-or that would again be on it in the morning.
Barker had taken a leaf from Plummer’s book on that. The leader of the Innocents always had tipsters to advise him of gold shipments or sales of property. He knew when men left the gold camps with money, and few of them ever survived that knowledge.
Somebody had tipped Barker to the gold that Healy carried.
It could not be far to Coulson, perhaps less far to the Fort. Tomorrow would be clear and they could get in a good day’s travel. And he would push hard, without regard to anyone. It had to be that way. It would be cruel for Maggie, but if Barker overtook them she would die, anyway. He had to gamble with one life to save any of them.
Once they reached the Fort, Janice could leave the company and the two of them could find a place to wait until spring and a trip into the Blues.
It was no life for a young and pretty woman, carefully reared as Janice had obviously been.
Yet she had come from good stock and many such had taken to the pioneer life with ease and skill. And he knew a thousand ways to make such a life easier.
Nor was he broke. His hand touched the money belt at his waist. It was not much, but in this country it was a stake. There were cattle in Oregon. He could buy a few, and there was game around, so they could live off the country if need be. He diswd avoid riding jobs for other outfits and the risk of running into somebody who knew his repu- tation. That reputation had been built from Uvalde to Cimarron, from Durango to Dodge and Abilene. But west of Cheyenne not many would know him. Returning to camp, he built up the fire and awakened Healy. “All quiet. Doesn’t seem to be anybody within miles. Let “em rest until full daylight.” Yet scarcely an hour later he was awakened suddenly by Healy’s hand on his shoulder.