Ralph Compton - Blood and Gold

That I recalled, but the why or wherefore of it escaped me. For a brief spell I’d been more animal than human, possessed by a blind, killing rage that had transformed me into something savage, something primitive and dangerous. I fervently wished that as long as I lived I’d never feel the like again.

All the soft thoughts, the lace-and-lavender thoughts I’d once had of pretty Sally Coleman were fast receding from me, being replaced by something darker, harder, more violent. As I stood there in the newborn morning, I felt my carefree youth slip-slide away, the sappy love songs I’d once sung forever stilled on my lips, circumstances thrusting a bleak maturity on me I’d never sought.

I glanced up at the lowering sky and saw only its uniform grayness, the clouds heavy with rain, without light.

Now I must get back to the cabin, yet there remained one last thing to do.

Quickly I walked to the wagon and searched under the tarp. Within moments I found what I was seeking, a half-full jug of whiskey and two more full ones.

One by one, a vague anger building in me, I smashed the jugs on the iron tire of a wagon wheel, smelling the sharp, smoky tang of the whiskey, and tossed away the broken shards.

Only then did I step into the cabin and put coffee on the stove to boil.

Ned Tryon was the first to wake.

The man rolled out of his bunk and fell on the floor, staying there for several minutes on his hands and knees, his head hanging between his arms. The thump woke Lila and she stirred, looking with shocked eyes at her pa. She made to rise, but I held up my hand, stopping her.

“Let him be,” I said.

Warned by the tone of my voice, Lila stayed where she was, gathering her blanket around her against the morning chill, eyes moving from me to her pa and back again.

Ned finally rose to his feet and stumbled toward me, trying to form words through the thick cotton lining his mouth.

“Whiskey,” he gasped finally.

I shook my head at him and held up the coffeepot. “There’s no whiskey. Have some of this.”

“Damn you, I don’t want coffee. I need whiskey.”

He staggered to the door and lurched outside and I followed him.

It didn’t take Ned long to figure out what had happened. He stood by the wagon, looked down unbelievingly at the broken jugs around his feet, then turned his shocked, bloodshot eyes to me.

“All of them?” he asked.

“All of them,” I answered, not a shred of pity in me.

“Damn you, Hannah,” the man whispered, his eyes ugly. “Damn you to hell.”

After the harrowing events of the night, I decided right there and then that I’d had just about all I could take. I stepped quickly to Ned, grabbed him by the front of his shirt and dragged him behind the wagon away from the door. I slammed him hard against the side so the whole rig shook and, anger flaring in me, said: “Mister, when you get to where you’re going, you can get as drunk as a pig as often as you want. It won’t bother me none. But until we’re clear of this country and the Apaches, you’ll stay sober as a watched preacher.”

Ned swore and tried to struggle out of my grasp, but I slammed him against the wagon again. “Listen to me,” I said, my face just inches from his own. “The only way we’re going to make it out of here alive, the only way Lila will make it out alive, is for you to stay the hell away from whiskey.”

I pulled him closer to me, anger scorching my insides like scalding coffee. “Now, personally I don’t give a tinker’s damn about you, but I do care a whole lot about Lila. You risk her life by getting drunk again and I swear to God I’ll gun you.”

Ned Tryon’s smile was thin. “Yet from this earth, and grave, and dust, the Lord shall raise me up, I trust.”

I nodded. “My friend, that’s between you and your Maker. But get this straight. One more drunk and I’ll put a bullet into you, Lila’s pa or no.”

“Hard talk in one so young,” Ned said.

“Mister,” I said, “I’ve had to grow up fast and recently it seems the hard talk has come natural to me.”

Ned stood there blinking like an owl, thinking things through as much as his muddled brain would allow. Finally he nodded. “So be it. I’ll have that coffee now.”

I didn’t give the man any credit for his decision, since he wasn’t in much of a position to do otherwise.

I left Ned and stepped back into the cabin. Lila was already up and dressed, and when her pa came inside, she kept looking from one of us to the other. I guess she felt the tension stretching between us because she made no attempt at conversation as we sat at the table and drank coffee.

Only when I refilled my cup and rolled a smoke did Lila speak to me.

“What happened last night?” she asked. Some of the horror that had showed in her eyes when I came off the ridge was still there, a reminder that this girl was unused to the West and the sudden violence that came along with it.

“I was jumped by an Apache,” I said. I motioned with my head to the ridge. “Up there.”

“Is he . . . is he . . . ?”

“He’s dead. I’m alive,” I said, ending it. I rose. “I’ll go hitch the oxen. Better get ready.”

I stepped outside and hitched up the oxen, a task that was easier than I’d expected. A horse or mule team offered a lot more trouble, being much less placid animals and by times difficult to handle.

So far the rain was holding off, and when I saddled the black I tied my slicker over the blanket roll. Sally Coleman’s bonnet was in a sorry state and getting sor rier. It had already lost a flower from the brim and the straw was starting to shred here and there.

Shaking my head at yet another unfolding tragedy, I led the black out of the barn and back to the cabin.

Last night I’d thought to ride on and leave Lila and her pa behind. But now I knew I couldn’t do it. I was well and truly trapped. Me, I was all that stood between Lila and the Apaches and what they did to a woman, and to haul my freight now would be a lowdown thing.

I made the decision but didn’t feel particularly brave or honorable, like that Lochinvar knight Ned kept wagging his chin about. All I knew was I had it to do and there could be no stepping away from it . . . not if I wanted to live with myself after.

When I went into the cabin, Lila handed me a plate of bacon, salt pork and pan bread; suddenly hungry, I wolfed it down.

Ned didn’t eat, but sat at the table, his head in trembling hands, battling whatever demons were tormenting him.

Despite myself, I felt a sudden pang of sympathy for the man. Sometimes the best remedy for wrongs is just to forget them, and I tried to do that now.

“Ned,” I said, “we got to get moving.”

The man looked up at me with faraway eyes and nodded. He rose to his feet and stumbled outside.

Lila watched him go, then asked: “What happened between you two out there?”

I shrugged. “I got rid of your pa’s whiskey.”

The girl studied me, judging my motives. “He’ll be better off without it,” she said finally. Then, after a heartbeat’s pause: “Thank you, Dusty.”

I smiled at her. “I’m starting to think that recently every person I meet is a problem in search of a solution. I found the solution, is all. At least for now.”

Ten minutes later we crested the rise and were once more among the rocks. Lila riding the black while me and her pa walked beside the oxen.

At the top we paused and I looked down at the long miles stretching away before us, the Staked Plains to the west lost behind a gray morning haze.

Without saying a word to Lila I left the wagon and went back to the place where I’d fought the Apache. The man’s body was gone but written in charcoal on a flat rock near where he’d fallen were the crudely scratched Spanish words: