Ralph Compton - Blood and Gold

Lila was once again sitting in front of me in the saddle, and I heard her sharp little intake of breath as the ranch came in sight.

“Dusty, your ranch is beautiful,” she whispered, “like something you see in a storybook.”

I laughed. “Lila, the SP Connected isn’t mine. I only ride for the brand at forty a month.”

“Maybe so, Dusty, but you’ll have a place of your own like this someday,” Lila said, her earnest little face turned to mine. “I know you will.”

I bent and kissed her then and said, “I hope you’re right.”

Lila nodded, her chin determined. “I know I’m right.”

Ma Prather, her hand shading her eyes from the afternoon sun, saw us coming from a long way off. She had the Texan’s ability to see clearly across vast distances of country, yet without her spectacles she couldn’t read the label on a peach can, and that right close-up.

Ma waited until I reined up in front of the house and let Lila hop down from the saddle. Then, stiff and sore, my shoulder throbbing, I swung off the paint my ownself and Ma ran into my arms. I hugged her close, enjoying the plump, solid feel of her and the remembered scent of lavender water and newly baked apple turnovers.

“Ma,” I said, after I finally disentangled myself and Ma had dabbed at her eyes a time or two with a tiny lace handkerchief, “this here is Lila Tryon. We met on the trail and her pa was killed yesterday”—I hesitated, suddenly tired beyond belief—“or the day before—the days keep running one into the other.”

“Yesterday,” Lila said.

“Oh, you poor little thing!” Ma exclaimed. And such was her caring nature, she grabbed Lila in her strong arms and hugged her close. “Child, you look worn-out,” she said. “A warm bath for you and then some good, solid food to put some meat on those poor bones.”

I stepped to the paint and fetched the saddlebags.

Ma was holding Lila’s hand in hers and her little lace handkerchief was mighty busy again.

“Ma,” I said, trying to find the words, but discovering there was no easy way around it, “this is the money from the sale of the herd, but I have bad news concerning Mr. Prather. He’s—”

Ma surprised me then. “Oh, I know all about it, Dusty,” she said. “The sheriff in Sweetwater sent a rider out here a week ago with a wire from a Dr. Wilson in Dodge. The doctor said Simon is recovering just fine and he expects him to ride the rail cars home no later than the fall.”

Silently, sad, stoop-shouldered Jim Meldrum stepped beside me and stuck out his hand. “Welcome home, Dusty.”

He gave me no smile, as was his way, but I took Meldrum’s hand, and after we shook, the puncher turned to Ma. “Miz Prather, if I’m not mistaken, I’d say this boy has a story to tell. And he’s hurt.”

Alarm flared in Ma’s hazel eyes. “Hurt? Dusty, where?”

Meldrum answered for me. “Left shoulder, high up. He favors it some.”

Before he hired on with the SP ten years before and hung up his Colts, Meldrum had been a Mississippi gambler and a gun handler of no small reputation. His survival had once depended on noticing little things like a man’s stiff shoulder, and his experienced eye had quickly spotted what I’d been so anxious to hide.

“It’s nothing, Ma,” I said. “It’s healing over real good.”

Ma Prather looked me up and down real close, quickly taking in my exhausted appearance and the telltale swell of the bandage under my shirt. “Jim,” she said, “help Dusty into the house.” And to me: “Young man, you’re going to bed.”

Me, I was suddenly too tuckered out to argue. I handed Meldrum the saddlebags and warned him to take care of them real well; then I followed Ma and Lila into the house.

I woke in a soft bed in a room with flowered paper on the walls, an oil lamp burning pale yellow on the table beside me. Outside, beyond the window, it was growing dark and I reckoned I must have been asleep for five or six hours.

When I turned on the pillow, I found myself looking into the whiskered, whiskey-reddened face of Charlie Fullerton, Ma’s personal cook, a trained chef who doubled as the chuck wagon biscuit shooter during spring roundups.

“How you feeling, boy?” Charlie asked. His eyes carefully searched mine as though to find the answer written there.

“Better,” I said. I looked down at the fresh bandage on my shoulder. “Who fixed me up?”

“I did,” Charlie said. “After you told Ma about Lafe Wingo an’ them, I put some stuff on your misery that stung and some that didn’t, but you was already asleep so you didn’t know the difference.” He came closer to me and I could smell the whiskey on him. “You hungry, boy?”

Suddenly I realized I was ravenous.

“Mr. Fullerton,” I said, which was how we punchers addressed cooks back then, since they could serve up some mighty miserable chuck if we didn’t, “I’d like a thick steak, six fried eggs and maybe twice that number of biscuits. And honey if you got it.”

Charlie looked at me suspiciously. “What’s the matter, boy, off your feed?”

“No, in fact—”

“How ’bout a couple of steaks, a dozen eggs and half a loaf of fried sourdough?”

“Sounds perfect, Mr. Fullerton.” I raised myself into a sitting position. “Have Ma and Lila eaten yet?”

“An hour ago. Now they’re drinking tea in the parlor and talking them female pretties. If’n you have a mind to join them, I’ll bring in your grub.”

Charlie turned to go, but I stopped him. “Mr. Fullerton, have you seen anything of Apaches?”

The cook turned, his face suddenly drawn and concerned. “Dusty, Victorio’s main bunch attacked the Jurgunsen place day afore yesstidy. Tom Jurgunsen and his boy, Jacob, was killed, and Miz Jurgunsen took a bullet in the back and ain’t expected to live.”

Charlie took a step closer to me. “Miz Prather is mighty worried. The Jurgunsen spread is only a few miles north of here, and that’s why she has Deke Stockton out scouting around right now. There’s only you, Deke, Jim Meldrum and myself to defend this place if’n the Apaches hit us. Deke is a fair hand with a rifle, but Meldrum now, he hasn’t picked up a gun in a ten year, says he don’t hold with shootin’ and killin’ no more.”

“I think Jim will change his mind right quick if Victorio hits us,” I said.

If Ma was worried, she must’ve figured she’d good cause. She was a woman who didn’t scare easy. Back in the old days, she’d stood shoulder to shoulder with her husband a dozen times and used her Sharps rifle to fight off raiding parties of Kiowa and Comanche, to say nothing of rustlers.

But Apaches were a different proposition entirely. Victorio wasn’t here to hit and run. He had declared war on the United States and was determined to stay. If he chose to attack the SP, few as we were, Ma, Lila and the rest of us were in a heap of trouble.

After Charlie left, I put on my hat, got dressed in the clean shirt and pants Ma had laid out for me and stomped into my boots. Ma didn’t hold with wearing guns in the house, so I slid the Colt out of the holster and stuck it in my waistband at the small of my back.

Stepping quietly, I crept downstairs and saw to my relief that the door to the parlor was closed. I tiptoed past and walked out the front door and into the gathering darkness.

A slight rain pattered around me as I stood quiet and still and listened to the night sounds. High above, the horned moon showed its face only now and again as black clouds scudded past. I was still weak from loss of blood but not near so tired, and whatever concoctions Charlie had put on my wound had helped, because my shoulder wasn’t so stiff and didn’t hurt as bad.

I stood in the shadows for a while, saw and heard nothing, then walked along the front of the house to the corral, a dozen horses turning to look at me as I passed. Twice I stopped and listened, but heard only the soft fall of the rain and the sigh of the free, un-branded wind.