Brad pushed his empty plate back. From the bedroom, Ed began to call for water. Elena picked up a clean dish towel and a glass of water. Brad moved beside her to the bedroom, pushing by Jeffers in the parlor.
Brad sat beside the bed, reaching out to push the sweat-wet hair from Ed’s broad brow. Elena bent over, dipping the white cloth and dropping water on the fever-cracked lips.
Brad was aware of the warmth of her beside him, the honey hair falling about her doll-like face. Ed dropped into heavy slumber and Brad stood up.
Elena made no move away from Brad, but stood looking up at him with a challenge in her eyes, caring nothing for the fact that Jeffers, in the next room, might look in on them and find them standing close together.
“Don’t be sore at me, Brad. I had to do what Jeffers said.”
“Why?”
“He’s my husband — and you walked out on me once, remember?”
He studied her sultry eyes. “And it’s eaten on you all this time.”
She shrugged.
“All right,” he said. “You think we’re even now.”
“I’ve shown you can’t kick me around. Why do you have to be so stiff-necked and righteous?”
“I didn’t know I was.”
She laughed softly. “You wear that shell around yourself. You set yourself apart as a little better than the rest of us.”
“No better — just different, maybe.”
“You don’t sound very sure.”
“I’m not. The past has strong fingers.”
She stood with hands on hips. “So has the present. The right word from me, and Jeffers would kill you.”
He stared at the softly beautiful face and seething eyes. The poison had been a long time distilling in her.
Jeffers came and stood in the doorway. “Is Ed all right?”
“He still doesn’t recognize me,” Brad said in a flat voice. “He’s sleeping.”
“Then no call for you two holding palaver in here,” Jeffers suggested.
With a mirthless smile for Brad, Elena turned and went out of the room.
Brad started out. Jeffers blocked his way, cool and distant. “Don’t he hanging around my wife, Brad.”
Brad felt a metallic taste erupt in his mouth. “The fact that I was first with her once eating you?”
The flush of color in Jeffers’s cheeks admitted the truth of the statement. “I don’t want trouble with you.”
“I don’t want anything from you either, Jeffers, except for you to saddle, and ride.”
“The climate is too hot for that right now. Get one thing straight, Brad. We’re staying until it’s safe for us to move in open country.”
“Then keep your wife away from me. Don’t throw her at my head, like you did last night.”
Jeffers’s hawk face flamed. “I don’t owe you an explanation, but I’ll give you one. I had to send Elena in first, so you’d be unaware of what was going to happen and she could find out the truth of how safe it would be here. But I was watching. If you’d come toward the house last night, thinking she was alone, I’d have cut you down.”
It was a long speech for Jeffers; he turned and went into the parlor, where Clem Hathaway was sitting by a window smoking.
Gem studied Jeffers’s face; then glanced at Brad as if he would say something. But he remained silent.
At that moment, the distant sound of hoofbeats came to them. Brad felt his heart lurch sickeningly. But he forced a mocking laugh. “Riders from the Hammer,” he said. “So I was lying about the slough?”
Clem turned to look out the window, and Jeffers sprang to his side. Brad twisted his body, reached behind him, and grasped the heavy fireplace poker.
He struck quick and hard, smashing Clem across the shoulder, swinging the poker in a quick arc at Jeffers’s head. Jeffers eeled to one side. The poker missed his temple, laying his cheek open, knocking him down.
Brad almost tore the door from its leather hinges. He was outside, aware of quick movement behind him. The flesh of his back puckered in anticipation of the impact of a bullet. But he gave little thought to that. He was thinking only of the rider.
It was Laura, and she saw him, waved, and spurred forward in a fresh burst of speed.
“Get back!” he shouted. “Ride for help! They’re...”
He heard a rasping curse, whirled and brought the poker around. Clem moved with deceptive speed for a man of his build, coming in under the blow. He caught Brad by the throat and slugged with his gun. They tripped, fell. Brad tried to roll free. He got one short glance of Laura bringing her mount back on its haunches.
The length of the poker hampered him in its use. Gem slugged with the gun again and brief fire exploded across Brad’s vision. He felt his nose spurting blood. It rolled over his lips, the taste and smell of it gagging him.
He jabbed the poker at Clem’s gut like a blunt spear. It glanced from Clem’s belt buckle, and the next blow of the gun knocked the starch from Brad. His spirit yearned to continue the struggle, but his muscles were lax, liquid.
He rolled to a spread-legged, sitting position, sprayed blood with each heave of his breath. Earth and sky made slow circular movements and against the swirling backdrop he saw Laura turning her horse. He heard Jeffers’s shout to halt, and then crashing gunfire.
Three times Jeffers shot. The horse dug its muzzle into the ground, pitching Laura over its head. She rolled and lay still. The horse was screaming, lying on its side with its legs moving in convulsions.
Gem watched Brad as Brad climbed to his feet. Brad left the poker, forgotten, and stumbled toward Laura.
Jeffers ran up beside him, and they reached the fallen horse together Jeffers, without change of expression, put a bullet through the horse’s brain to take it out of its misery. Brad knelt beside Laura He turned her on her hack. There was no blood on her and she was breathing evenly, though her eyes were closed and her face pale.
“I aimed for the mount,” Jeffers said.
Brad looked lip at him and swallowed, saying nothing. He picked Laura up, her head and knees draped across his arms, and moved toward the house.
Elena was standing on the small, sagging porch of the cabin Brad looked straight into her eyes as he mounted the steps one by one Elena paled, touched her tongue to her lips.
“She was coming to help you get some clothes, a job,” Brad said
“Blast you!” Elena’s voice was thick in her throat. “Don’t look at me that way! It makes me wish Jeffers had killed her.”
Clem entered the cabin behind Brad.
“Get a quilt and fold it before the fireplace,” Brad said.
Clem quietly obeyed the order. His heavy, hanging face was clotted with dust and blood from the fight He came out of the bedroom, spread the quilt, and Brad laid Laura down on it. Clem wiped at his beard with his bandanna; then without speaking he went out of the room to return with the wooden water bucket from the back porch, a clean sacking towel draped across his arm.
Jeffers and Elena joined Clem, the three standing over Brad as he bathed Laura’s face with cool water. She stirred, murmured a sighing groan, and opened her eyes. She looked at the blood caking Brad’s nostrils and mouth, lifted her gaze beyond him and saw Clem, Jeffers, and Elena.
“My brother’s in the bedroom, out of his head with fever from infection—” Brad explained. “They came in the night.”
“Then the girl’s arrival was a put-up job.”
“Yes,” Brad said, “I didn’t have a chance to warn you at all before they—”
Behind Brad, Elena laughed softly. Laura lay for a moment without moving, as if she were turning the sound over and over in her mind. Then she looked up at Elena and Brad watched something new being born in Laura’s eyes, something deep and burning. Brad had seen the same blaze in Mike Simmons’s eyes when the old man thought wind, hell, or humanity was going to threaten him.