I gave Ma my arm and led her into the parlor and when Meldrum and Charlie arrived I told them how I’d been bushwhacked by Lafe Wingo, and Lila taken. I took out the note Wingo had left and passed it to Ma. “This says it all.”
Ma fetched her spectacles and read, her face paling with every word. I think she read the note several times before she finally laid it aside and said: “We have no choice. We must pay this man. Lila’s life is more important than a two-by-twice ranch, so there can be no argument.”
I shook my head at her. “Ma, you love this ranch. If you don’t pay off the bankers they’ll foreclose and you’ll lose everything, including the chair you’re sitting in and maybe even the clothes off your back.”
“He’s right, Miz Prather,” Meldrum said, his long, melancholy face sadder than ever. “You and Mr. Prather built the SP with your own blood and sweat and then you held it against Kiowa and Comanche and white men who were worse than any of them and tried to take it from you.” He rose to his feet and, in an uncharacteristic gesture, crossed the room and placed his hand on Ma’s shoulder. “Dusty is right. You love this place and I can’t stand by and see you throw it all away.”
“Jim,” Ma said, her voice very small, “saving a girl’s life is not throwing it away.”
Meldrum nodded. “I know that, but me and Dusty and Mr. Fullerton will just have to find another way.” He looked over at me. “Any ideas?”
I shook my head. “Haven’t studied on it, at least not yet.”
“I’ll study on it some my ownself,” Meldrum said. He looked down at Ma again. “Now don’t you go fretting none, Miz Prather. We’ll get the girl back, safe and sound. There was a time when I was pretty good with a gun, you know.”
Ma took the lanky puncher’s hand, her eyes tearstained. “Jim, you left all that behind you. You told me you were all through with gunfighting.”
“Times change,” Meldrum said. “And sometimes, for better or worse, a man has to change right along with them.”
Ma’s eyes shifted to me. “Dusty, what will you do?”
“Get Lila back, Ma,” I said. “Right now, that’s all I know.”
As to how that was going to happen, I had no idea. And judging by the tight, unhappy expression on Jim Meldrum’s face, neither did he.
Despite Ma’s final, tearful pleas to take the thirty thousand dollars, Meldrum and me rode out at long before daybreak, the saddlebags draped across the front of my saddle bulging—but with torn-up newspapers, not money.
We rode in silence for an hour; then Meldrum reined up his horse and hooked a long leg over the saddle horn. After he’d lit the cigarette, he eased a crick in his back and said: “Dusty, this is where we part company.”
“What do you have in mind?” I asked.
“I’m going to loop around and injun up to the cabin before it gets light,” he answered. “I’ll stash my horse a ways from the cabin and come up on the place on foot. Maybe, if we’re real lucky, when Wingo comes out to parley, if he does, I’ll get me a chance to nail him.”
I shook my head. “It’s thin, mighty thin.”
“Got a better idea?”
Meldrum’s face under his hat brim was deep in shadow, and only when he drew on his cigarette and the tip glowed brighter did red light touch his beak of a nose and the planes of his high cheekbones.
I sat in silence, thinking things through, then said:
“Jim, I’ve got nothing better. Your plan may not be nickel plated, but right now it’s the only plan we have.”
“Uh-huh, figured that,” the puncher said. He sat his horse and I could feel his eyes on me. “Dusty, you may get lucky and Wingo will leave his rifle behind. He outdrawed you once, and maybe with his gunman’s pride an’ all he’ll figure to do it again.” Then, echoing what Bass Reeves had told me: “Just remember this, don’t fall down the first time you’re hit. Take the hits, stay on your feet and keep shooting back for as long as you’re able.” I heard Meldrum’s low, humorless chuckle. “You may not be fast enough to outdraw ol’ Lafe, but maybe you can outlast him.”
I nodded, but realizing Meldrum couldn’t see my head move in the darkness, said: “I’ll remember.” Right then I was mighty in need of reassurance, but Jim Meldrum, being a practical man, had not offered any, figuring he’d only be speaking weightless words, like so many dry leaves blowing in the wind.
We sat our horses until Meldrum finished his smoke, then built and smoked another.
Finally he shoved his boot back into the stirrup and touched the brim of his hat. “Buena suerte, mi amigo.”
“You too, Jim. Good luck.”
Meldrum swung his horse away and we parted company. I took the dim trail toward Lila’s cabin under a dark, moonless sky with the night crowding around me close and warm as a cloak. The air smelled of grass and wildflowers, and I heard no voices. The night birds had long since ceased to call and even the coyotes had fallen silent.
When I was still a fifteen-minute ride from the cabin, I swung out of the saddle and stepped down in a stand of mixed juniper and mesquite by the side of a dry wash. I unsaddled the dun and watched him roll and then I fetched up to a rock near the wash and set my back to it. It was still shy of daybreak and maybe five hours until noon, so I closed my eyes, determined to catch up on some badly needed sleep.
The breeze whispered through the junipers and set them to rustling and the dun cropped grass, every now and then blowing through his nose. Somewhere an owl hooted, throwing no echo as the human voice does, and then the land closed in on itself again and became quiet.
Drowsily, I thought of Lila and her smile and there was a deep longing in me for her. What was she doing right now, as the clouds peeled back from the moon and the stars began to appear?
She was with Lafe Wingo!
Sleep fled from me, the thought chilling me to the bone. Wingo used and abused women like he did his horses, breaking them to his will with the whip. Was that even now happening to Lila?
I rose to my feet, filled with despair and impotent rage. I looked up and searched the moonlit heavens—and found only the cold, distant and aloof stars.
And no comfort.
Chapter 23
At daybreak I rose and stretched, working the stiffness out of my muscles. Mr. Fullerton had packed me a thick steak sandwich and a bottle of ginger beer and I ate and drank and then built a cigarette.
The scattering of butts around my feet grew in number as the morning progressed, and just before noon I saddled the dun and headed for the cabin.
Around me the wild land was being hammered into submission by the sun. The only living thing I saw was a tiny antelope fawn that limped from the thin shelter of a mesquite bush and hobbled quickly away from me, a wounded, stricken thing destined only for death.
I rode on, strangely disturbed. Maybe the fawn was an animal of ill omen, a warning to turn back. But that was something I could not do, my fate, for good or ill, as preordained and as inevitable as that of the fawn.
When the cabin came in view, Lafe Wingo’s horse was tethered outside, but I saw nothing of him or Lila.
I swung out of the saddle and took up my rifle and the saddlebags, choosing to go the rest of the way on foot, keeping to what little cover I could find.
When I was about a hundred yards from the cabin, I stopped beside a stunted juniper and yelled: “Wingo!”
A few moments of silence passed. Then the cabin door opened a crack and Wingo called out: “Did you bring the money?”
I held the saddlebags high enough so Wingo could see them clear.
“Come on in,” the gunman hollered. “And leave the damn Winchester behind.”
I propped the rifle against the branches of the juniper and walked slowly toward the cabin. Moving my head as little as possible I glanced around, but saw no sign of Jim Meldrum.