“Next time I see you,” Spanyer said, “you be wearin’ a gun.” “You’re jumping to conclusions,” Considine said quietly. “There was nothing wrong. She came out to be with the horses, and I was afraid there might be Indians around.”
“You heard me.”
Dave Spanyer backed to the door and stepped out, and then there was only darkness and the falling rain.
CHAPTER V
There are no dawns like the dawns that come to desert lands, nor are there colors anywhere like the pastels of the wastelands. There is no atmosphere anywhere with half the sharp clarity of the desert air following a rain—and no land holds death so close, so ready, so waiting. Now the rain was over, the dry washes had carried away the weight of water, their swift torrents running away to leave their sands once more exposed to the relentless heat of the sun. Only the desert plants were greener, and the countless tiny roots that lay just beneath the surface had drunk greedily of the sudden rush of desert water.
Nowhere is survival so sharply geared to the changes of weather. Seeds lie dormant, mixed with the sand; a little rain falls, and nothing happens, for the water that has fallen is not enough for the seed to sprout. Within the seed some delicate mechanism awaits sufficient water; then suddenly, when it comes, the seed sprouts and grows, other plants put out their quick leaves, and for the moment the desert is alive, glowing, beautiful. This morning the tracks of animals and birds were sharp on the unblemished sand, but there were no tracks of horses nor of men. Dave Spanyer’s cold eyes swung to the hills, searching for smokes, the talking smokes of the Indian that might carry word of his passing.
He was a worried man. He had been brusque with Lennie, and he was sorry for it now; but he had a way of forgetting that she was no longer a child, that she was a young lady, and of an age when she would be thinking of a man. Yet ‘lady” was the key word in his thinking. Her mother had been a lady, and he wanted Lennie to be no less.
Lennie was angry with him, and letting him know it. He knew her ways, for she was very much like her mother … she carried her chin high when she was mad about something, and kept her eyes fixed straight ahead. “There’s good men around,” he said. “I don’t want my daughter marrying a gunfighter.”
“My mother married one!”
That silenced him, and she knew it would. Her mother had married him, and it had been the making of him. After his rough and wasted life, she had tamed him down without making him less a man; and the few good years, the few happy years of his life had been with her.
Uneasily, Spanyer’s thoughts returned to Considine. Grudgingly, he admired the man. Any man to whom Dutch would run second was sure to be quite a man. And the Kiowa, too. The Kiowa had always played a lone hand except for once … the one time when he had been in the outfit that tried to rob the Obaro bank … the Kiowa had been the only survivor of that raid.
Considine did not seem like an outlaw. He had the air of a gentleman, and there was something undefined in his manner that set him apart. Dave Spanyer, who knew men, found himself doing some straight thinking about Considine. Just the same, the man was an outlaw. And it was unlikely they would ever meet again. Especially, Spanyer reflected grimly, if they went ahead with what they were undoubtedly planning … a strike at the bank in Obaro. The sun cleared the ridge behind them and lay hot on their backs. On their left, they were approaching a high rocky hogback, its rifts and gullies drifted with fine white sand.
All around them were clumps of bear grass, saltbush, and desert five-spot. Here and there along the washes the ironwood was in bloom, the flowers appearing along with the misty green of the first leaves. If they could get to California, he was thinking, it would still not be too late to put in a crop.
“Pa?”
Spanyer glanced around, surprised.
“There’s a smoke.”
He followed her finger. The smoke was rising straight and tall from somewhere beyond that hogback ridge. He watched it break, then break again, shooting up puffs of smoke.
Turning in the saddle, he looked back, and saw behind them another smoke. It was north of their last night’s camp.
“We’ll eat,” he said suddenly. “We may not get a chance later.” He glanced at the point of rocks ahead. There would be a place up there, with some protection. He slid his Winchester from the boot and they rode on toward the rocks.
They kept wide of the rocks until they were past them, and then he swung sharply around and rode up into them. Only when he was sure there was no one there did he motion for Lennie to join him.
He helped her down, thinking of his wife. Then he took the grub bag down. “Ain’t much,” he said, ashamed of how little there was. A man with a daughter should have more. He had felt that way with his wife, too, and it had been a long time before he realized that it was him she loved, and she did not care whether he had much or little. The discovery had been a real shock, for he had never thought of himself as a lovable man, and it stirred him so deeply that he was never quite the same afterward. From that day on his devotion to her had been the ruling passion of his life. But he had never been at ease with Lennie … maybe it was that school she had gone to. He had never been to school, and he could write only a little, and read scarcely more.
He had known little about women, and now with a daughter who had suddenly become a woman he found himself lacking the knowledge he needed. Being a serious man with a profound sense of duty, this lack troubled and worried him. The idea that a decent woman could actually like being in a man’s arms went against all his upbringing. His wife had … but his wife occupied a place in his consciousness that set her apart from all other women, and he could not even consider her as a sample of womanhood. She was different. She was very special. He found a few sticks of dried-out wood fallen from a dead cedar up on the hill, and a few partly burned sticks left by some previous traveler. In a hollow among the rocks, where they could observe all who approached without themselves being seen, he built a very small fire.
The wood was completely dry and made no smoke, only a faint shimmer of heat in the air. As he worked, his thoughts returned to Considine. No gunfighter, sheriff, or outlaw is ever completely unknown to others of his kind. The grapevine of trail herd, stagecoach, and saloon conversation allowed each to know all the others. Thus Dave Spanyer had known of Considine for a long time, had known how he wore his gun, how many men he had killed, what sort of man he was.
A few gunfighters, such as the Earps, Hickok, Billy the Kid, John Ringo, and Wes Hardin, because of some accident that drew public attention became better known than many others who were their equal or better. Along the cattle trails the names of Johnny Bull, Joe Phy, Luke Short, Longhair Jim Courtright, Jeff Milton, Dallas Stoudenmire, King Fisher, and Ben Thompson were just as well known. Bending over his fire, with occasional glances up and down the trail or at the surrounding country, Dave Spanyer considered all that. He knew of Considine in the way he knew of the others, and Considine had a reputation for being a square man, and one who could stand up and trade bullet for bullet. In Spanyer’s hard, tight little world this made him a man.
Still, there was only one end to such a life. You died gun in hand or went to prison, and Dave Spanyer was determined that no daughter of his would have anything to do with a gunfighter.
Yet even as he said these things to himself he was thinking that Pete Runyon had been both an outlaw and a gunfighter, and now he was an officer of the law and a respected citizen. Western people were notoriously ready to forgive … they could forgive anything but lies or cowardice.
A kangaroo rat moved nearer, sniffing inquisitively at the coffee smell. Lennie broke off a corner of a biscuit and tossed it to him. The tiny animal made a prodigious leap, all of seven feet, then stopped and looked back. Seeing there was no pursuit, the inquisitive little creature scuttled back, hopped around, and finally, after inspecting the piece of biscuit, it picked it up in its forepaws and ate daintily.