“Did you ever try to talk to a youngster who has just seen the girl he thinks he can’t live without?”
“Aaron McDonald is a stiff-necked, bigoted old Puritan.” Bannion spoke softly, and that very fact conveyed something to me. “He owns the Emporium, he owns a piece of the bank, he owns the livery stable. He also has the finest house in town, with grass growing in the yard and a picket fence around it.
“He came to town eight months ago, and he passes me on the walk two or three times a day. He has never spoken to me, he has never so much as acknowledged my existence.”
Bannion paused. “I want you to understand something, Conn. I know how he feels, and do not hold it against him.
“He’s eastern. Since he came into town he hasn’t once driven any further out of town than the cemetery. When he came west he brought his New England village mind right along with him. He’s a hard man, Conn, and, meaning no offense, he thinks cattlemen are a wild, lawless crowd.”
In spite of myself, I had to smile. Sure, some of us were wild and lawless … this had been, and still was to a great extent, a lawless country.
“Tom’s a good boy,” I said. “One of the best.”
“Not to Aaron McDonald, he isn’t. You put chaps and spurs on a man, and as far as McDonald is concerned, he’s a savage.
“He says the cattle are a passing phase, and the sooner we’re rid of them, the better. And believe it or not, there are plenty who think just as he does.”
“Out here? They’re crazy!”
“They are looking to farmers, Conn. They want to be rid of the cattle business, and of my kind, too, when it comes to that.”
“They’re jumping the gun, if you ask me. It will be years before there’s farmers enough in this country to support a town.”
“Not to hear them tell it.”
Kate Lundy was coming out of the hotel, so I excused myself and went to meet her.
Kate was a handsome woman. Not all the hardship of pioneering on the Texas border had taken one bit of it from her. She was tall, slender, and graceful. She had a beautifully boned face and large, lovely eyes … yet there was a kind of special steel in Kate Lundy, a steel tempered and honed by the need to survive under the harshest land of conditions. Only two people knew what Kate had been through … only one, really, for Tom had been too young to appreciate most of it. And that left me.
“Good morning, Conn,” Kate said. “How are the cattle?”
“Fine. I left Priest and Naylor out there with D’Artaguette.”
“Have you had breakfast?”
“Coffee … I thought I’d better come in and talk to them first. Hardeman’s down at the yards. He can handle five hundred head today, but we’ll have to graze most of the herd until he gets more cars.”
“The grass is good.”
“Yes… it is.”
“You’re worried, Conn. What is it?”
“Tom. He’s laid his eyes on Aaron McDonald’s daughter, and he’s cleaning up to go courting.”
“You mean she isn’t a nice girl? Is that it?”
“She lives north of the street.”
She didn’t reply for a minute or two, and we stood there together in the bright sunlight. Finally, she said simply, “Conn, let’s have breakfast.”
We turned toward the restaurant, but John Blake was coming up the walk, and we stopped to greet him.
He had a square, strong face and blue eyes, cool eyes that measured a man with care. He wore a neat black suit with a black tie.
“How do you do?” he said to Kate. “Mrs. Lundy, is it?”
“Yes, and you’ll be John Blake.”
His eyes flickered to me. “And you are Conn Dury.” Oh, he knew the name, all right! There were not many in the cattle country who didn’t, and there were both good and bad things he could have heard of me. Being John Blake, he had heard it all, I think. He would make it his business to do so.
“You’ve the name of a good cattleman, Dury, and your steers look it.” He glanced along the street, and then he came to the point. “Your men aren’t drinking.”
“No.”
“Tod Mulloy,” he said, “and Red Mike…”
“And a dozen more like them. They’re good men, John Blake.”
“You came for trouble, Dury.”
“The Comanches are riding the war trail, and the Kiowas. A man would be a fool not to expect trouble.”
“No more?”
“Man,” I said irritably, “think of it. Why would we want trouble? Mrs. Lundy has a good crew, a solid crew, and a crew that has been with her for some time. Our hands are her family.”
“It is true, Mr. Blake,” Kate said. He was not through. He knew as well as we did that when hands do not drink something is in the wind, and he wanted to know what to expect.
We were scarcely seated in the restaurant before she came in – a beautiful girl, cool, composed, and a bit older than I had first thought. She was perhaps nineteen, or even twenty, and few girls reached that age without being married. Kate glanced at her, then looked again, but before she could say anything to me the door burst open and Tom came in.
He did not see us. He saw nothing but the girl before him, seated alone at a table. He approached her, sweeping his hat fom his head.
“I saw you when I rode into town,” he said. “I am a poor hand for courting, knowing little but horses, cattle, and grass. I only know that when I saw you standing there, I knew that my life began and ended with you, and I would have no happiness until I knew you.”
She looked up at him and said, “My father is Aaron McDonald, and a hard man. He looks with no favor on Texas men.”
“If you will allow it, I shall call this evening.”
“The house stands among the cottonwoods at the street’s far end,” she said, and then she added, “and it is north of the street.”
“You can expect me,” he said.
He turned and walked out of the restaurant, and he did not see us, nor look our way.
She sat very still after he had gone, and there was no change of color in her face, although I noticed a brightness in her eyes that I did not like.
The girl who brought us our food was young, a pretty girl with a pert, attractive face. She paused in passing by the other girl’s table.
“That was no nice thing to do, Linda,” she said, “and well you know it. He is a Texas man, and John Blake will allow no Texas man north of the street.”
“What’s the matter, Moira? Jealous?”
The waitress turned away sharply and brought our food to us.
Linda got up and, with a brief smile in our direction, walked out. Immediately, Moira stepped up to our table again. “If he is a friend of yours, that Texas cowboy,” she said, “tell him not to go north of the street tonight.”
“Thank you,” Kate said. “He is my brother.”
“Oh -” She flushed. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have interfered, but it’s awful, what she does! Why, if she really cared for anybody – I mean, if a girl really cared, she’d come south of the street to see him.”
“Would you?” Kate asked.
Her chin lifted. “Yes, ma’am, I would! If a man wanted so much to see me – I mean if he talked to me like that – I’d go south of the street to see him! Any street!”
“I wish it were you he was going to see,” Kate said.
We went on sitting there, and Kate looked across the table at me. “Conn … what can we do?”
“I will see John Blake.”
I saw the flicker of worry in her eyes. “Conn, be careful. I want no trouble.”
“With Blake? Each of us knows too much about the other. We can talk without guns.”
“All right.”
“He’s a good man, Kate,” I said. “Tom, I mean. You’ve done a fine job.”
“I have? You mean, you have, Conn. Whatever he is, you made him. He worshipped you, and he still does.”
“It was you.”
She put down her cup. “Conn? Do you remember that day? You saved us all then. It was like a miracle.”
The only miracle was what happened to me, for I was running then, running wild and loose with nothing behind me but trouble, and nothing before me but the expectation of more.
Behind me lay the Rio Grande. My horse was scarcely dry from the crossing when I heard the hollow boom of the guns, and knew what it was, for I’d cut the Apache trail south of the border twice in the past few days, and each time had come upon the sort of hell that only an Apache could leave behind.