Talmage Powell
Branded in Black
The fool heifer had slipped into the mud of the slough and stood sunken almost to her swollen abdomen. She bawled in patient terror as she waited to die.
Astride a steeldust mare, Brad Ledbetter shook his lariat loose and threw a loop over the cow’s head. Her lowing had guided him here from a fence-mending job in the south meadow. As the loop settled, the steeldust, needing no instructions, put her weight against the rope. Instead of pulling free, the heifer bawled anew, laying back against the lariat.
Cussing the contrariness of all cows, Brad swung from the saddle, a tall man in his late twenties. He was heavy through the shoulders and his square-hewn face, creased and burned walnut by wind and sun, carried within it some of the bleakness of his winters; this was relieved in a measure by the crinkles at the corners of his gray eyes and the upturned corners of a wide-lipped, humorous mouth.
He sat down, removed his runover boots, and rolled his faded jeans above the knees.
“And you with first-born calf too,” he chided the heifer as he moved into the mud behind her.
She rolled her eyes and tried to turn her head to follow this new source of fear. Brad reflected that he was going to have to fill the slough. Most of the time the slough was a dried-up paving as hard as adobe brick; but every few years torrential rains turned it into what it was now, treacherous glue. Brad had paid down on the place less than six months ago; he’d found it no bargain, but reckoned that a man had to take troubles as they came, one at a time. He could visualize what might be done with a lot of hard work on the B Bar L. and he was willing to plod toward making the vision a reality.
The heifer made an effort to squirm away as he grasped her tail. With a firm grip, he gave the tail a twist, at the same moment opening his throat in a wild shout.
The steeldust obeyed the command, lunging forward. Outraged at the attack on her rear, the heifer forgot to fight the lariat. Her hoofs sucked free; she stumbled to hardpan, and Brad moved out behind her. He removed the lariat, swiped it across her hindquarters, and watched her bound away, sagging belly swaying in time to her irate movements.
Brad grinned after the heifer, wiped his face with his bandanna, and walked the few yards to the willow-shaded creek, where he washed his feet.
He came out of the brush with his boots on and was remounting the steeldust when a hallo caught his ears. He raised his eyes to the west and saw a. horseman limned against the soaring emptiness of the sky. He waited, and as the figure on horseback came closer it resolved into a girl.
Brad rode forward to meet her with a smile. Laura Simmons was tall, slender, moved with the grace of a willow whip, and possessed a darkly vivid beauty. She was range-bred, the daughter of the owner of the Hammer. She was in love with Brad Ledbetter, frankly, honestly. She didn’t care who knew that she came to his place to clean his weathered cabin and point out the advantages of marriage.
Brad wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything; and that included land and cattle and respectability. But he hadn’t mentioned marriage to her for two reasons. The B Bar L was not yet a fit place for a woman, especially a woman acustomed to the size, wealth, and power of the Hammer. That was the minor reason. The main reason was the fact that she knew nothing about Brad and the thought of telling her drove a hard, quick pang of fear through him.
She was wearing flannel shirt and jeans, her black hair knotted at the nape of her slender neck by a red kerchief.
“I heard you shout and a cow bawling over this way,” she said. “I was looking for you.”
“Anything wrong?”
“A stranger — a girl with honey-blonde hair and baby-blue eyes — over at the house says she wants to see you right away,” Laura said with too much lightness in her voice. “She said to tell you Elena is here — and she chattered in a quite familiar way about you. Brad.”
Her violet eyes, contrasting with her black hair and sun-tanned skin, studied him. He felt the distance growing between them, and the fear of it overrode the shock of Elena Lynn finding him.
Laura came from fiercely proud stock and it was reflected in her manner and tone, “You’ve never told us a thing about yourself, Brad — where you came from, who you are, really. I’ve paid no attention to the talk about you a man of mystery naturally arouses, feeling that you would tell me in good time anything necessary for me to know. Maybe that time has come now. Are you hiding something?”
He had wanted to pick the time and place to tell her; now he realized he’d let opportunities slip away. This was an awkward time, but he must tell her now. If he sent her away without telling her, the wound of it might be a long time in healing-
A line of whiteness grew about his mouth. “Have you ever heard of the Pickenses?”
“Who hasn’t? But surely you never rode with...”
“They’re my people. Ed Pickens my brother, Cos Pickens my father. Tolly, my oldest brother, was killed in a gunfight when I was eighteen years old. I’ve never been the same since, Laura. I knew their way was wrong, that I could never walk in their footsteps. When I was old enough, I drifted from home and went to work. Three times before the Pickens name has caused me to have to move on. This time I dropped it. Ledbetter is my middle name, my mother’s maiden name.”
Laura reined in her mount a little closer. “Does the law want you for anything?”
“No.”
“Then you could have told me all this before. It would have made no difference.”
Looking at her clear face, he thought: I don’t deserve you. Again the old uncertainty swept across his mind. Laura might accept him — but how about the others, the folks in town, her father? He’d tried before and failed to shake the Pickens stigma. Was there any likelihood he would succeed this time?
“And who is the girl. Brad?”
“A girl I knew once. She married Jeffers, who rides with my father.”
Jeffers, the worst cutthroat in a cutthroat crew. The James boys had some justification in their feud with the railroad; the Younger brothers and Daltons were known for their loyalty to each other. The Pickenses had nothing on the ledger except a red record of cruelty, brutality, outlawry.
“You want to ride to the house alone?” Laura asked.
“I think it would be best.”
She turned her horse. He watched her ride out of sight over the ridge before he set spurs to the steeldust.
The house was a log and adobe cabin set in a little cove formed by nature above the creek. The roll of the land protected the house against the northers of winter and a patriarch cottonwood gave shade in summer.
With a passing glance at the lathered, dust-caked sorrel cropping grass above the house, Brad went inside. Here was cool shelter, and the lingering smell of fresh-hewn wood he’d used to repair the cabin and add a third room. He’d wanted a parlor, kitchen, and bedroom, all separate, and maybe some time in the future another room or two with small bunks.
Now he stepped into the front room, near the stone fireplace, and looked at the blonde girl eating beans and jerky in the kitchen.
She stood up, letting a slow smile take birth on her full red lips. Trail dust failed to hide her sinuous beauty, and the air of the cabin had changed. Elena had brought something new into it.
She came forward, put her hand to his cheek, her head to one side. She looked like a gamin doll, with her honey hair and blue eyes.
“Hello, Brad. You don’t act very glad to see me.”
He moved away. The print of her fingers still lay on his cheek. “I heard you married Jeffers.”
She laughed. “You rode off and left me.”
“That was a good long time ago.” Brad walked on through the house. On the back porch he dippered water into a tin basin, splashed it over his face with his hands, and reached for a flour-sack towel. “Where are the others?”