At the beginning of the third month, John Daniel called Cherry Creslin to his office. She came at once, slim, beautifully curved and seductive in her strictly professional way.
“You like to ride,” Daniel said, “so put on that gray habit and ride my black. How you do it is your own affair, but get acquainted with Bon Caddo. Make him like you.”
She protested. “Sorry, John. Get one of the other girls. I want no part of these drunken, dirty miners.”
“You’ll do as I tell you, Cherry, and you’ll do it now. This man is neither drunken nor dirty. He is big, and tough, and, I think, dangerous. Also, he cares nothing for gambling or whiskey.”
She got up. “All right, I’ll go. But you’ll wish you’d never sent me. I’m sick of these jobs, John! Why don’t we cash in our chips and pull out? Let’s go to New York, or San Francisco.”
“Get started. I’ll tell you when to go, and where.”
The canyon of the Lonetree was warm in the spring sunshine. The cottonwoods whispered secrets to each other above the stream that chuckled humorously to the stones. There was no other sound but the trilling of birds, and on the bank above the stream the sound of Caddo working.
He wore a six-shooter, and a rifle stood nearby, and just out of sight in the tunnel mouth was a shotgun, a revolving weapon made by Colt.
Standing with his feet wide apart in their heavy miner’s boots, he made a colossal figure. He was freshly shaved, and his shock of rusty hair was combed. His red flannel shirt was open at the neck, and his huge forearms, bulging with raw power, showed below his rolled-up sleeves. Cherry Creslin, impressed by few things, was awed.
At the sound of hooves splashing in the water, he looked around. Then he saw the rider was a woman, and a beautiful woman, at that. He smiled.
Long before he had come to Hattan’s Castle he had heard of John Daniel, and knew his every trick. Moreover, he knew this woman by name and knew she was reputed to be John Daniel’s own woman. He could see, as she drew nearer, that she was genuinely beautiful and despite the hard lines that showed through her lovely skin, there was warmth there, but a restrained, carefully controlled warmth.
“Good morning, Bon Caddo.” Her voice was low and lovely, and deep within him something stirred, and he tried to bring up defenses against it. She was all woman, this one, no matter what else she might be.
“Hello, Cherry.”
“You know me? I don’t remember you.” She looked at him again. “I don’t think I could forget”
“You’ve never seen me, Cherry, and I’ve never seen you, but I’ve been expecting you.”
He gestured to a seat under a tree. “Won’t you get down and stay for a while? It’s quite pleasant here.”
“You — you’ve been expecting me?” She was irritated. She was accustomed to handling men, to controlling situations. This man, she realized, was different. Not only was he a physical giant but he was intelligent, and … she admitted it reluctantly … he was exciting.
“Of course.” He smiled pleasantly. He had, she thought, a truly beautiful smile. “John Daniel has tried everything else, hasn’t he? Everything but you … and murder.”
Her features stiffened and her eyes went hard, but she did not pretend to misunderstand. “So you think he sent me? You think I am the kind of woman a man can send on some dirty business?”
He leaned on his shovel. “Yes,” he said, and she struck him across the face with her quirt.
He did not move nor change expression although the red line of the blow lay vividly across his cheek and lips. “Yes,” he repeated, “but you shouldn’t be. You’ve got heart and you have courage. You’ve just been riding with the tide.”
“You’re very clever, aren’t you?”
“No. But this situation isn’t very hard to understand. Nor are you, Cherry Creslin. It’s a pity,” he continued, “that you’re tied up with such a murdering lot. There’s a lot of woman in you, and you’d make some man a woman worth keeping.”
She stared at him. The situation was out of hand. It would be difficult now to get him back in the right vein. Or was this the right one?
“You may be right,” she said, “maybe I’ve been waiting for you.”
He laughed and stuck his shovel down hard into the pile of muck. Then he walked over to her, and the black horse nuzzled his arm. “Not that way, Cherry. Be honest. I’m not so easy, you know. Actually the only way is to be honest.”
She measured him, searching herself. “Honest? I don’t know whether I could be. It’s been so long.”
“Ah, now you are being honest! I like that, Cherry.” He leaned his big shoulder against the horse’s shoulder. “In fact, Cherry, I like you.”
“Like me?” A strange emotion was rising within her, and she tried to fight it down. “And you know what I am?”
“What are you? A woman. Perhaps no worse and no better than any other. One cannot always measure by what a person seems to be or even has been. Anyway, it is always the future that counts.”
“You believe that? But what of a woman’s past?”
Bon Caddo shrugged. “If a woman loved me I’d start counting the days of her life from the time she told me she loved me. I would judge by what happened after that, although I’d be a hard judge for the after years.”
She was irritated with herself. This was not what she had come for. “How did we start talking like this? I did not intend to get into anything like this.”
“Of course. You came to get me to fall in love with you or at least to lure me down to that sinkhole at Hattan’s Castle. You might manage the first, but not the last.”
“If you were in love with me and I asked you to come, would you?”
“Certainly not. Doing what a woman asks is not proof of love. If a man isn’t his own man he isn’t worthy of love. No, I’d use my own judgment, and my judgment tells me to stay away from Hattan’s Castle and the Palace.”
His eyes seemed to darken with seriousness. “We of Welsh or Irish blood, Cherry, sometimes have a power of prophecy or intuition, call it what you will, and mine tells me that when I come to Hattan’s Castle it will mean blazing hell and death. For me, the town, or both of us.”
Something cold and frightening touched her and suddenly she put her hand on his. “Then, then don’t come, Bon Caddo. Don’t come at all. Stay here, or better still, take your gold and go.”
“You advise me that way? What would John Daniel say?”
“He wouldn’t like it,” she replied simply. “He would not like it at all. But it is my best advice to you.”
“I shall stay until my claim is worked out. I’ll not be driven off.”
“May I come back again?”
“Come soon. Come often.”
Caddo watched her go and then returned to his work. There would be trouble, of course. He doubted that Cherry would tell John Daniel of her failure. Not yet, at least. She would come back, and perhaps again. If she continued to fail, John Daniel would try something else.
Three times she came in the days that followed and each time they talked longer. Inevitably the day came when she returned to Hattan’s Castle to find John Daniel awaiting her. When their eyes met she knew she was in trouble.
“Well?” His question was a challenge. “When is he coming in?”
“He is not coming at all.” There was no use evading the issue. She had probably been spied upon. “He is not coming, but I am leaving. We’re to be married.”
“What!” Of all things, this was the least expected. “Do you think you can trick me that way? Marry him and get it all for yourself?”
“You’d not understand, John, but I love him. He’s a real man and a fine man, so don’t try to stop me.”
“Try? I’ll not just try, I’ll do it I” His eyes were ugly. “Hereafter you will stay in town. I shall find other means of handling it.”
“Sorry.” She got to her feet. “I am going back to him.”
He struck her across the mouth with the back of his hand and she fell to the floor, a trickle of blood running from her mashed lip. She looked up at him. “You shouldn’t have done that, John. I am sorry for you, or I would be if there was a decent bone in your body.”
Furious, he strode from the room and returned to the Palace. The first person he saw was Chito. “All right. You want to kill Caddo. Go do it.”