“What’s natural and what isn’t? My ma came from a settling family. They believed a man should make his scratch on the land and leave it a little different. Anyway, thanks for fixing things with the chief.” “Me? I fixed nothing. You put the words in my mouth and I said what you couldn’t say for yourself. That won’t make ‘em come true.” “I said what had to be said to keep the peace. There’s a risk, I know.” “Risk? You pledged your word back there, Rawlings. Not my word. Not Mike King’s word, and not the Army’s. It was your word they’d keep their huntin’ grounds.” “I think they will.”
“You got more trust in your fellow man than I have. Especially when your fellow man is Mike King.” Jethro took out his tobacco, looked at it thoughtfully, and then said, “Look, son, how do you figure they aim to pay for this road? Do you think carryin’ the mail and a few passengers to Californy will do it? If you do, you got another think a-comin’. They need farms and folks and towns. They need men shippin’ cattle and farmers shippin’ grain. Your treaty’s goin’ to be broken, Rawlings, and I don’t want to be around when it happens. Look me up sometime when you’ve got a belly full.”
“Where you going?”
“I’m heading back into the mountains, and it won’t be Arapahoe country where I stop, neither.”
“What about Julie?”
Jethro’s eyes twinkled slightly. “Well, son, you just talked yourself into an Indian treaty. I reckon you will have to talk to Julie. She mightn’t be no harder to convince.”
The ride back was silent, each man busy with his thoughts. Zeb Rawlings did not consider, for the moment at least, the promise he had made to Walks-His-Horses. He was thinking about Julie.
No girl in her right mind would marry an Army lieutenant with plans to resign his commission, when she could marry a man like Mike King. Whatever else could be said about him, King had a future. He was a man on the way, and moving fast. With his ruthlessness and drive, he could scarcely miss having the success he wanted.
Zeb had nothing to offer but life with him, and the chance he must take, with the Army or without it. And now he had staked everything on King’s word—a man whom he did not trust. Yet what else could he have done? For the moment at least, war was averted.
After leaving Jethro, he hastily went to his quarters and bathed. Grimly, he considered the one clean uniform he had. It wasn’t much, but he would wear it tonight.
Jethro Stuart had stopped at the big tent. Rowdy Jim Lowe ran the place, a powerful brute of a man, and by reputation a killer, a man who had made a business of gambling tents at the End of the Track. Leaving his mount at the hitch rail, Jethro walked through the room, weaving among the tables toward the bar.
At this hour the big tent was relatively deserted; not half a dozen tables were occupied, and only three men stood at the bar. One of them was Mike King. Turning, King saw Jethro. “Come have a drink, Jethro,” King said cheerfully. “I want to talk to you.”
“What’s the matter?” Jethro asked dryly. “Did the Central Pacific have a wreck?
Or did you find somebody to take over my job?”
“I heard you went to the Arapahoes with young Rawlings. Well, thanks.” “I sat there and listened, mostly. I wish I believed what you promised as much as Rawlings did.”
The bartender filled two shot glasses and left the bottle. “You mean you don’t trust me?” King grinned knowingly, tauntingly. “You’d have done it different?” “Been me, I’d have told ‘em to raid that car of yours and hang your scalp out to dry. That’d stop your damned railroad.”
Mike King chuckled. He felt good and did not intend to be disturbed. At some future date he would remember all of this, and use it. “You’ve put Rawlings right in the middle, King, and you know it. And that boy has notions.”
“What kind of notions?”
“Fool notions about honor. No use talkin’ to you—you wouldn’t understand.” King chuckled again. “Forget that talk, Jethro. Tonight’s a big night.” He grinned at him. “We should be friends—at least.” “What’s that mean?” Jethro asked suspiciously.
“Julie and I have had a talk,” King replied. “We see things eye to eye. That’s quite a girl you have there, Jethro. A lady … every inch a lady.” “What’s that mean?” Jethro asked once more.
King tossed off his drink. “We’ll both tell you later. I’m seeing her tonight.” Slapping Jethro on the shoulder, he turned and walked from the tent. Jethro glanced down at his drink with sudden distaste and turning abruptly, he left it standing and went out of the tent. Rowdy Jim watched him go, his eyes thoughtful. Jethro Stuart drank little, but it was the first time since he had worked for the railroad that he had not taken an evening drink. Rowdy Jim recalled the expression on Jethro’s face. “Something’s up,” he commented to the bartender, “I never saw Stuart look so mean.” “He’s no gunman, is he?”
Lowe spat. “No, he ain’t, but no gunfighter in his right mind would buy trouble with Jethro Stuart. One thing you learn in this country, talk soft around those old mountain men. You might kill one, but you’ll have lead in you first. They die mighty hard—mighty hard, indeed!”
Stuart had been talking with King and considered that. Maybe he should drop around and see him. On the other hand, what did King ever do for anybody? To hell with him!
Jethro Stuart lifted the flap of his tent and stood there looking at Julie. She was fixing her hair in front of the mirror that used to belong to her ma. God only knew how she’d kept it in one piece all this time. Quietly, he began gathering his things together and putting them into a pack.
She watched him in the mirror without speaking. At last she turned around.
“Well, pa, this is the longest we’ve been together since I was a little girl.
You’re going off again?”
“Uh-huh.”
He always went to the mountains when something went wrong, and she had been expecting it for days.
“Are you leaving me alone in this—this place? You never did that before, pa.” “You ain’t goin’ to be alone for long, I’m thinkin’.” He straightened up and looked at her. “You made your mind up Julie? You decided?” “Why, pa! Whatever was there to decide?” She came up to him and tugged at his mustache. She had done that when she was a little girl, and she knew he liked it.
“Now, don’t you start that again.” He studied her shrewdly. “You sure you’re doin’ the right thing?”
“Of course.” Suddenly her eyes became wistful. “Don’t go, pa. Not this time. I don’t want you to go away again.”
He felt a lump coming into his throat, and it irritated him. “Now, you stop that. I’m goin’. What you do is your own affair.” He paused. “We tried to raise you right, your ma and me. Admittin’ I was gone much of the time, when I was there I tried to do the right thing … and I never knew any way to make a livin’ but with a rifle or a gather of traps. “Now you’re a lady. No use my tryin’ to live your life for you. You’ve got it to do.” He bundled his gear together. “You sure you’re doin’ right?” “Of course!” she repeated.
He went outside and let the flap fall behind him. He walked to his horse and then stopped. It was jaded, needed rest. Maybe he could make a swap with the Army.
He swung into the saddle and started away, then said aloud, “I tried, Linus. I sure enough tried.”
Chapter 17
Spring came late to the western lands. The brown hills still carried dark patches from the dampness left by melting snow, while here and there in a shadowed place could still be found a streak of snow or reluctant ice. Zeb Rawlings rode down the hill toward Willow Springs Station, cold with anger and despair.
The train of five cars standing at Willow Springs chilled him even more. “There’s trouble, Sergeant,” he said, indicating the train—“trouble for us. More settlers, more buffalo hunters, and the railroad not yet out of Arapahoe country.”
“We might have expected it, Lieutenant. Where people can get, there people will go.”
Of course that was true, and down deep within him Zeb had known it very well. Why should he not know it? Had not his own people come west by the Erie Canal and the Ohio?
Why had he allowed himself to be persuaded by King? Yet, in the last analysis, he could blame no one but himself. He should have let King make his own promises to Walks-His-Horses.