Ernest Haycox - The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox

"Perhaps it has already been decided," said she, and then hoped he hadn't understood.

He muttered "yeah," staring out of the window. His mind was on other things. "Jussasame, I'd like to be on a horse. Ain't had a letter from Jim yet, and he said he'd drop a line right off."

"Mack," said she, the words tumbling headlong out of her mouth, "which way did he go, was he hurt, did—did he tell you anything I might like to know?"

Mack reached for his tobacco and answered the last question first. "He ain't a man to spread himself out loud, ma'am. Not even to me, which is his best friend. Way back—shore seems like ten years—when he saw yuh a-passin' on the street he said to me, 'Mack, I've got to meet that girl.' I reckon yuh'd like to know it. An' when Jim said that he meant a whole lot."

"Thank you," murmured Gay, and looked down to her lap. "I—I am glad to hear that."

"As for bein' hurt—you bet. Lee put some buckshot in his shoulder. That's been a-worryin' me ever since. And he was awful tired. Dunno as I ever saw him look more tired. Goin' down the canyon is a year's work piled up into a few blamed excitin' minutes. I ain't anxious to try again. Not me. But we shore made history. And he hated to leave. Felt like he was runnin' away. I had the daggondest time arguin' with him. The fool woulda rammed his head plumb into a loop. But I ain't had a letter—"

"Where did he go?"

"He aimed for the pass. Meant to cross over and into Bannock City. It's snowin' heavy up thataway. I can see it from the winda here. When it's white clear down to Sawyer Rock it means the pass is fifteen feet deep in drifts. Daggone."

"What would happen—what possibly might happen to him, Mack?" asked the girl, anxiety showing through.

"Nothin', as long as he's got two feet an' two hands. That boy can take care uh himself. But some o' that gang might 'a' winged him. And that buckshot could cause an awful lot of trouble. Son- of-a-gun, I wish I was able to ride a horse!"

She got up and went around the bed to look out of the window. "Yes, it's snowing hard up there. But it packs down in the pass, Mack. It always does. He'd have a good firm underfooting. And there's the cabin in case of trouble."

Moran was surprised. "How come you know all about those things? That's old-timer's talk."

She was apparently so engrossed in her own thoughts that she didn't hear Mack's question. "And he was supposed to have written you? Four days ago, from Bannock City? No, two days ago, leaving time for him to cross. Well, if he crossed he would certainly go to Bannock City—no other town in the valley. And the letter, if he wrote one on arriving, ought to be here now. Do you think he might delay writing, Mack?"

"No siree bob. He knows I'm on pins an' needles. He'd drop a line right off. He's punctual thataway."

She turned from the window with a strange and abrupt lift of her sturdy little shoulders. Mack, watching her, got the impression she had made up her mind about something at that instant. "I'm going back to town. Do you mind if I ask for your mail at the post office? If he has written a letter I'll bring it—to-night. If not—"

"Yeah, then what?"

She smiled at him and touched his sunburned fist. "Be good, cowboy. Eat all the chicken and pear preserves you can hold. If I don't see you again, Mack, say a prayer for me once." She was light hearted about it, but a small kink of wistfulness lay around her lips.

"Ma'am, who'm I to be sayin' prayers for you? If an old dawg like me got to mentionin' yore name to the Lord it shore wouldn't he'p yore reputation none in heaven."

"Reputation?" murmured the girl. The smile slowly left her. "I have heard the word before, always unpleasantly. Mack, do you know what I'd do if I were you? I believe I'd propose to the Melotte girl—the one who always brings you chocolate at night. So long." She was gone from the room, leaving Moran somehow dissatisfied with her departure. The touch of her hand had been cool, reassuring, with a brisk friendliness to it. Mack had never known a woman, who without trying to play the part of a good fellow among men, was as little self-conscious of her sex. She made a brave, contained figure; with always a reserve in her eyes that held others away. Only once had that reserve dropped to give another some sight of the wistful and lonely hunger of her heart.

She returned to town and stopped a moment at the stable. A little later she came out of the hotel with her traveling bag and stepped into a waiting rig. The driver whipped away through the graying afternoon. Fifteen miles to the south she got off at a lonely flag stop surrounded by the immensity of the desert night and spoke to the agent drowsing over his keys. Perhaps an hour later the agent built a bonfire of paper in the middle of the track and stopped an east-bound train. The girl got aboard and sat very quietly in one end of a day coach while the wheels made their swift tat-a-tat-tat rhythm along the rails. Presently they were climbing through a gorge with the trucks howling to the curves; and around midnight or a little later she left the train at another junction point, beyond the lowering outline of the Roaring Horse range. A six-horse stage waited beside the tracks with some long-faced gilded lettering hinting at the name of a hostelry. She was the only passenger, and the driver, peering through the gloom, saw nothing but the blur of her face.

"It's Gay Thatcher, John," said she, closing the coach door.

"Howdy, ma'am! Lordamighty, glad to see yuh again! Say, it's cold. You better take my laprobe."

"No, thanks."

The coach rolled off, team stretching to an even gait. She drowsed and woke, and drowsed again while the clumsy vehicle pitched along the uneven road. And always there was in her mind the memory of something fine and pleasant; once she repeated a name very softly to herself. "Jim Chaffee." And added: "Gentleman." Before dawn the coach brought her down the main street of Bannock City. She ate breakfast by the smoky kerosene lamp of an all-night restaurant and went directly to the stable. It was a misty daylight before she left town, bundled up in another rig. In the interval she talked to the clerk of the hotel and to the night marshal, asking only one question of each. And then she was away, leaving behind her the news of her passage. The men who had seen her said nothing at all. But there was one woman in the hotel—the wife of the clerk—who had risen early and who had caught a moment's glimpse of the girl. And this woman spoke with a bitter acid in her words.

"So that Thatcher girl is back again. But she ain't got courage enough to wait until folks can see her brazen face by plain day."

The clerk was sleepy and therefore he made a tactical error. "Oh, she's all right."

"You hush! She always could pull the wool over the eyes of menfolk. Don't start that argument again. It's been dead five years. It's better left that way. She ought to have the decency to keep wide of this valley."

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Thirty-four Pass lay hard locked in the grip of the storm. For almost a week daylight had been little more than a gray and weaving half light. Sight of the distant valley was blotted out; even the timber line was lost somewhere down the driving mists. Twenty feet below the drifts lay the trail, and the wind, booming across these drifts, ripped high sprays of snow upward and sent them sheeting against the summit cabin, like tall waves smashing across a stormy sea. A bitter and bleak world it was, with the peaks obscured and enshrouded, and sending earthward the errie scream of the gale as it sheered the sharp points; a world of torturing cold and uneasy loneliness. Even the cabin, perched on a ledge above the trail, was banked to the eaves. Inside, a fire burned, and the heat formed layers of thawed ice against the panes, adding to the interior darkness. Water dripped through the roof; wind and snow sifted between every minute interstice. Jim Chaffee sat hugging the stove and studied the dwindling pile of wood.