Ralph Compton - Blood and Gold

A plow was tied to the side of the wagon, its steel blade bright, the handles not honed to a honey color by sweat and toil, but still raw and pine yellow. This plow had not seen much work and had rested in a barn more often than it had dug furrows in the soil.

Lila handed me wood, nails and a hammer and I unhitched the oxen from the yoke and brought the broken end of the tongue back to the wagon.

Thunder rolled across the sky and the lashing rain grew heavier as I set about making the repair. I’m no great shakes as a carpenter, but after I splinted the tongue with the wood Lila had given me, I straightened up and figured I had done a fair to middling job.

My work wasn’t pretty, but the tongue held when I hitched up the team again, and that was what mattered.

Ned Tryon had found the oblivion he’d sought, lying unconscious under the meager shelter of a mesquite bush. Lila took the jug from his hands and asked me to help her father into the back of the wagon.

The man was barely capable of walking and I had to carry him most of the way. I laid him in the wagon and Lila covered him up with the tarp.

“Dusty,” she said when the job was done, “Pa didn’t mean all those things he said. Since Ma died he . . . he just hasn’t been himself.”

Well me, I let that go. I was in wild country with a girl, a drunk and a slow-moving ox wagon and there were Apaches in the hills. Right about then I didn’t feel much like talking, so all I said was: “Let’s get this wagon rolling.”

For all her fragile beauty, Lila was no blushing prairie flower. When I whipped the team into motion and set to pushing on a wheel, she got on another and pushed right along with me, her shoes and the bottom of her dress deep in the mud.

The straining oxen pulled the wagon free and I let them rest for a spell and gathered up my horse. I handed the reins to Lila. “You ride him,” I said. “I’ll guide the team.”

I didn’t want the wagon to get bogged down again and the girl must have understood, because she made no objection. Lila hiked up her dress, showing a powerful amount of pretty leg, and swung into the saddle.

She touched the straw bonnet tied to the saddle horn. “Is this for your best girl?”

I nodded. “Uh-huh. Her name’s Sally Coleman and her pa owns a spread right close to the SP Connected.”

Lila flashed her white smile. “Is she pretty?”

Again I nodded. “As a field of bluebonnets in spring.”

The girl frowned, then sniffed. “I never thought bluebonnets were particularly pretty flowers.”

I saw where this conversation was headed and changed the subject. “Lila,” I said quickly, “come dark we’ll have to find a place where we can hole up for the night. The Apaches are out and we could be in a hell of a fix.”

The girl kneed the black alongside me as I walked beside the plodding oxen. She glanced down at me and said: “They told us all that at Doan’s Crossing. But the Apaches won’t bother us. We mean them no harm.”

I shook my head at her. “Lila, to the Apache, everyone is an enemy. That’s why they’ve survived so long. There’s no word for friend in the Apache language. If they want to call somebody friend , and that’s a mighty rare occurrence, they use the Spanish word amigo . To them, you’re either an Apache or you ain’t, and if you ain’t, then you’re an enemy.”

I flicked the bullwhip over the backs of the oxen. “You may mean the Apaches no harm, but they mean you plenty.”

I wanted to tell her they’d go out of their way to capture a pretty woman, but I didn’t because for the first time I saw uncertainty in Lila’s eyes.

“Dusty,” she said, “do you think we’re in danger?”

“I do,” I replied, deciding not to spare her the truth. “In a heap of danger, and with this wagon and your pa, we’re fast running out of room on the dance floor.”

Lila opened her mouth to say something, changed her mind and looked around at the rain-shrouded landscape. “Are they out there?” she asked finally, waving her hand at the surrounding hills.

“Could be,” I said.

And a few moments later, as thunder crashed above us, I smelled the smoke.

Chapter 10

The smoke smell was fleeting and uncertain, scattered by the rain and the gusting wind.

It could mean that there was a farm or ranch nearby—but it could mean something else entirely and much less to my liking.

Ahead of us the trail curved around a low, rocky hogback, its narrow rifts and gullies choked with mesquite and scrub oak. Wildflowers, goldenrod and primroses mostly, peeped shyly from the wet grass between the hill and us, and off to the left cottonwoods spread their branches beside a fast-running wash.

I halted the oxen and studied the ridge of the hogback.

There, I saw it, a thin smear of smoke rising into the air, very faint and soon shredded apart by the breeze.

Lila kneed the black alongside me. “Dusty, what do you see?”

“Smoke,” I replied, “over yonder beyond the ridge of the hill.”

“Is it a town?” the girl asked, something akin to hope in her eyes.

I shook my head. “No, there’s no town there.” I didn’t want to scare her, so I said: “But there are small ranches scattered among these hills. It could be smoke from a cabin.” I looked up at her. “Climb down, Lila. I’m going to take me a look-see.”

The girl swung gracefully out of the saddle and handed me the reins. I glanced at the rocks crowning the ridge of the hogback. Even if the smoke turned out to be a wildfire sparked by the lightning that now and then forked from the sky, there could be a sheltered place up there to spend the night out of the wind and rain and away from the prying eyes of any passing Apache.

I swung into the saddle and slid the Winchester from the boot. Only then did I ride toward the ridge, my eyes restlessly scanning the land around me. The slope of the hogback was less steep than it had seemed from a distance and I was soon among the rocks, here and there stunted cedar and post oak writhing like the tormented damned between them.

Riding even more warily now, the Winchester across the saddle horn, I cleared the rocks and rode to the top of the grassy slope on the other side.

Now I saw what had caused the smoke and it brought me no comfort.

Below, too narrow to be called a valley, a gulch divided the hogback from another low hill beyond. A stream ran along the bottom of the gulch, rocks scattered along its sandy banks and on the slope opposite grew mesquite and a scattering of post oak and cottonwood.

A dugout cabin had been carved into the hill and to its right lay a ramshackle pole corral and small sod barn.

All this I saw in an instant, but what riveted my attention was the man who was suspended by his feet from the low branch of one of the cottonwoods growing by the creek.

A fire still glowed a dull crimson under his head, and a thin tendril of smoke rose from the dying coals. The body swayed slightly in the wind, the branch creaking, and whoever the man was, he had died hard and painfully slow.

I studied the land around me and only when I decided no one was there did I ride down the hill. The Apaches had been here until very recently, too recently for my liking, and I sensed danger, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.

Lila was still with the wagon, and vulnerable, but I had to take a chance on her not being seen. Later we could bring the wagon here, going on the assumption that lightning never strikes twice in the same place and that the Apaches would have moved on.

It was a gamble, but since the cards were stacked against me, it was a gamble I knew I had to take. It was better to spend the night here than out in the open.