That was all… or was it?
Back at the fire the stranger emptied his cup. Susanna’s features were white and strained. “Well,” the stranger said, “you better make your plans. He went in an’ I wouldn’t give a busted trace-chain for his chances. You’re goin’ to be a widow, ma’am. Now I ain’t much, but-”
“You’re going to let him be killed?”
“None of my affair.”
“Help him.”
“You his woman?”
“We are married.”
“Wasn’t what I asked. I wanted to know if you was his woman? It ain’t always the same thing.”
“I am his woman and am proud to be so. He is a fine man. And I am a decent woman.”
Lazily, he got to his feet and moved to his horse. “I’ll just mosey on in an’ see the fun.” He swung into the saddle. “Of course, if he gets himself killed, you got you a choice… me or them.”
“I shall go back home.” Susanna replied. “I am sure Tom and I could get along.”
He grinned at her and swung his horse. As soon as he emerged from the trees he could see McKaskel walking into the street. The stranger turned his horse to use the cover of the trees and came up to the town at an angle from which he could not be seen as he watched McKaskel. Drawing up in the shade of the trees, he drew his rifle from its scabbard. There really was not much he could do. So much would depend on how the game was played.
He could hear McKaskel speaking. “I see you found my horses. Thank you for holding them for me.”
The thin man who answered him seemed amused. “Your horses, you say? Now how would we know that? Those horses come driftin’ in, an’ my boys tied them up. We figure to keep them.”
“They belong to me. I have their papers.”
The man grinned lazily, a taunting grin. “Papers? Now, ain’t that too bad? I cain’t read, Mister. I just cain’t make out them words… neither can my boy.”
McKaskel remembered what the stranger had said. The fat man was lounging in the doorway. McKaskel shifted his feet slightly, and managed to turn the muzzle of his gun, an easy, natural movement, but suddenly it was there, covering the fat man.
“I shall take my horses. I am sure you will thank your son for me, but tell them we reared these horses and we must keep them. We intend to keep them.”
He stepped toward the horses.
The thin man spat lazily. “Mister, was you to untie them horses somebody might get the idea you was tryin’ to steal them. You ready to get yourself shot?”
McKaskel kept his eyes on the fat man as he spoke to the thin one. “Even if I was to get shot I’d still pull this trigger, and I couldn’t miss that man standing in the door.”
The rifle tilted ever so little, and he kept the fat man covered as he pulled the string to untie the knot.
“Don’t nobody do nothin’ foolish!” The fat man shouted the words. “Let ‘im go!”
Holding the rifle ready, Duncan McKaskel put a foot in the stirrup and swung to the saddle. Turning his horse he untied the second horse, keeping his rifle in position as he did so.
He backed the horses into the street, keeping the rifle on the fat man, but as he turned the horses his rifle swung off target and on the instant the fat man disappeared into the saloon and the men on the porch threw themselves right and left, one of them scrambling toward the open door.
There were two shots.
Duncan McKaskel heard them both, and in an instant of stark panic he realized he had been perfectly set up, the horses and the men on the porch drawing his full attention while the real danger lay behind him.
He felt the whiff of the bullet past his cheek at the instant he heard the ugly bark of two shots, the sound of one shot almost lost in the sound of the other.
Turning his horse sharply to face the street, his rifle up, he found the street empty. The men were gone from the porch, but from the loft door of the barn opposite the saloon hung the body of a man, his head and one arm visible.
In the dappled shadow of the trees near the entrance to the street was the stranger, holding a rifle in his hand.
“Just back off easy now, and if anything moves, shoot.”
Rifle on the street, McKaskel rode diagonally away from town, keeping his rifle on target. Turning sharply then, he trotted his horse away under cover of the trees. Suddenly he was shaking all over, and his stomach felt empty and sick.
“I want to get out of here,” he said aloud. “I want to get out right now.”
The stranger was gone. It had been he who shot the man in the loft door.
CHAPTER II
Susanna was standing out from the trees, shading her eyes toward the town. When she saw him coming she walked back to the fire. She edged the coffee toward the flames, then turned toward Tom.
“Better bring up the mules, Tom. Water them and bring them up.”
Reluctantly, the boy turned away. He had seen his father coming and longed to hear what happened.
Duncan McKaskel rode into the clearing leading the other sorrel. “We must go now.”
“Tom’s gone for the mules. You had better eat something.”
“No… just coffee.”
He accepted the cup, took a swallow, then looked at her, his face gray with shock. “Susanna, they were ready for me. I was thinking of the horses and the men on the porch, and there was a man in the loft behind me with a rifle.”
“What happened?”
“That man… the one who had coffee here. He killed the man in the loft.”
“You’re alive, Duncan. It’s all right.”
“A man is dead. He was killed because of me.”
“He was killed because he was a thief. When a man takes a gun in his hand against other men he must expect to be killed. He becomes the enemy of all men when he breaks the laws of society.”
They were an hour out upon the plains and at least three miles on the road before the subject came up again. “We are not finished with them, Susanna. I believe they will follow us.”
“All right.” She feigned composure for she did not want him to see her fear. She must show her faith in him. “You know what to expect now.”
“Yes… yes, I do. But I’ve never killed a man, Susanna, and I don’t want to.”
“Yet if that man had not been killed, they would have killed you. Tom and I would have been alone.”
“Or with that man.”
“I’d go home, Duncan. I’d go back and try to get a job teaching school. After all, I have much more education than most women.”
“Education.” He shook his head. “Susanna, I have always been proud of my education but I am beginning to wonder if we must not begin all over. It is a different time, a different world out here.”
The river and the horizon seemed to melt into one. There was no line of demarkation anywhere, only the long grass bending in silver ripples like waves before the wind, and it was empty, like the sky.
The horses were tied behind the wagon and Tom rode at the tail-gate where he could watch them and the trail behind. The mules were in good shape but they seemed to be making harder work of it than they should. Several times he drew up to let them rest, worried at each stop for fear of pursuit. Horsemen could overtake them in no time, and he remembered what that rider had said about his wagon being loaded too heavily.
During one of the stops he walked behind the wagon and was shocked to see how deeply the wheels were cutting into the turf. It was a heavy load, and they had far to go.
Susanna’s thoughts returned to that man. Ignorant obviously, and a brute… yet he had saved her husband’s life at some risk to his own and with nothing to gain. She thought of it as a chivalrous act, something she found difficulty in associating with ignorance.
Suppose Duncan had been killed? What would she have done?
The thought frightened her. To return meant to go back through that town… no, not that. She would have to drive up river or down and try to find another crossing. But there might be other people like that back there.
She glanced curiously at her husband. He was staring at the empty plains, frowning slightly. Before they left the wagon train because of the outbreak of cholera she had heard stories of what the vast plains did to people. Men had gone insane from that appalling emptiness, unable to cope with such a change.