"Yes," he said, "we Drumms are a stubborn lot."
Valentine ate the last of the pie and looked toward Mrs. Glore's new kitchen, built with odds and ends from a Phoenix-bound shipment of lumber by the sawmill in the new capital of Prescott.
"The ladies too, I see."
"Eh?"
"Those two indomitable ladies stayed also—the ones who refused to go back to Phoenix when the stage was attacked in Centinela Canyon."
"Yes," Drumm said, "they are stubborn too, I think. At any rate, they decided to stay over awhile and help me get things in shape here. I think, though, they will be leaving soon for Prescott. Miss Larkin has an uncle there, I understand."
Valentine's eyes narrowed. He stroked his beard. "I see two more pies cooling on the table over there. They are covered with cheesecloth against the flies, but I can smell pie a hundred yards off. Do you suppose Mrs. Glore would sell me one?"
"She baked a few extra," Drumm admitted. "They cost a dollar apiece."
"Done." The legislator finished the last of his coffee, and added, "I appreciate the coffee, too, but you ought to charge for it. If you're going to stay here, you can make yourself a mint of money with a good cook." He mounted his big bay and looked thoughtfully at Drumm. "You know, this Territory needs people like you —hard-working savvy folks that'll settle down and make the desert bloom. But Arizona needs people like George Dunaway too. George cusses a lot, never been curried below the knees, but he's actually a prince of a fellow when you get to know him. And if it wasn't for tough nuts like George Dunaway, the rest of us might just as well go home to Indianapolis or Nashville or Atlanta— wherever we came from."
Ike Coogan stopped off, too, driving a Tully and Ochoa freight wagon bound for Prescott with a load of melons, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and peaches. Sitting in the shade of the ramada with Jack Drumm, he sliced open a ripe melon with his jackknife. Handing a dripping half to Drumm, he noted his host's wincing as he reached for the succulent fruit. "Got you through the shoulder, eh?"
Drumm nodded. "It's not healing right. There's pus around the wound, and a suppuration."
Juice dripping from his whiskers, the old man shook his head, grinning. "Rancho Terco, that's what I'd call it. Rancho Terco!"
Drumm knew some Spanish. "Rancho Terco? Let's see—terco means—"
"It means stupid!" Ike cackled. "Idiot—blockhead! Hee hee! That's it, all right! Blockhead Ranch! No one but a blockhead would camp in the middle of an alkali desert and wait for old Agustín to swoop down and cut out his giblets!"
Drumm was annoyed. "I don't think it's so foolish! Anyway, Sam Valentine tells me Agustín probably won't bother us any more. And this is good soil along here—all it needs is water!" He pointed to the river bottom where the gentle Papago, whom they had named Charlie after an ancient London dustman, was hoeing newly sprouted shoots of corn. "With plenty of winter sun, and water, a man could get several crops a year along the Agua Fria!" Not, he thought, as in Hampshire. There it was already cold and dark, blustery and raining.
"You serious?" Coogan demanded.
"I am in dead earnest. I mean to stay here until I am ready to leave—and I do not know when that will be."
Coogan scratched his tobacco-stained beard. "By God, you sure cut a different figger from that silly-ass Englishman that first come here!" He stared at Drumm's ginger beard, the straw sombrero, the jagged scar on the cheek. "You're beginning to look like a real Arizony hardcase!" He got creakingly to his feet, leaning on the old rifle. "If you're actual intending to stay here for a while, I got a proposition for you from Tully and Ochoa in Phoenix."
"What kind of a proposition?"
"Run this spread as a regular stop. They'll leave extra animals here to graze and water, busted wagons that need fixing, whatever. Old man Tully thinks he might even put in a little warehouse. Fifty dollars a month to run the place. Stage line needs a stop, and they'll pay you something too. You can make a few dollars on the side selling grub to people, maybe putting someone up for the night in that shanty over there."
Eggleston's uncle had indeed been a wheelwright, and the valet had once worked at the trade. So long as they stayed, Mrs. Glore could cook meals and Phoebe could help her. Charlie, the Papago, could be the porter when he was not tending his vegetables.
"I'll do it!" Drumm decided.
George Dunaway rode by with B Company. Dusty and sweating, he slid wearily from his mount to stare at the bearded figure in the tall conical hat. "Drumm?"
Jack nodded. "Hello, Dunaway."
Phoebe had been helping Charlie dig weeds from the garden. Flushed and glowing, cheeks pink from effort and the sun, she came to greet the lieutenant. Her feet were bare, the balmoral dress torn and stained. Beulah Glore came too, face sweating from the heat of the kitchen fire, and Eggleston.
"Well, I'll be God damned!" Dunaway stared from one to the other, too astonished even to apologize for his language, while the troops watered their mounts in the small lake beginning to form behind the earthen dam. "I'll be simply God damned!"
"We're still here," Drumm said with some pride.
Dunaway shook his head in disbelief.
"And we intend to stay here—at least, Eggleston and I."
Phoebe Larkin moved a bare toe thoughtfully in the dust. "Mrs. Glore and I are staying, too—for a while. We'll leave for Prescott soon, I guess, but Mr. Drumm has been so good to us we're bound to help out."
The lieutenant eyed her admiringly. Even with her disheveled appearance she was beautiful. The China kerchief attempted to restrain the red hair but much of it escaped in a rich cascade of curls; smudges of dirt on her cheek only accentuated the gentian blue of her eyes; the feet were narrow and well shaped in the Arizona dust. Leaning on the hoe, she looked to Drumm like a goddess of the harvest—Ceres, perhaps. He was annoyed at Dunaway's pleasureful gaze, especially when Phoebe Larkin smiled winningly back.
"Well?" he said, rather sharply.
Dunaway took the crockery cup Mrs. Glore handed him. Still looking at Phoebe Larkin over the rim, he spoke to Drumm. "Heard you captured one of Agustín's Apaches during your last dust-up."
"That's right."
"And let him go!"
Drumm nodded.
"That was a damned fool thing to do!" Dunaway snapped. He wiped his mouth, turned hard eyes on Jack Drumm. "We've been trying to get one of 'em alive for weeks." He pointed toward the slopes of the Mazatzals. "There's no way to flush old Agustín out of there unless we know where he is, how to get in through all those barrancas and rocks and passes. Mr. Drumm, you just set back our campaign about a month—maybe more!"
Drumm's shoulder pained him, and he winced. "I don't see how—"
"Let me tell you how, Englishman! If you'd held on to him till we got here, like any proper citizen of the Territory would do, we'd have sweated it out of him—where the old man was holed up, how to get there, the story we need to know to settle Agustín's hash for once and for all!"
Drumm became indignant. "Torture him, you mean?"
The lieutenant scowled, slapped his dusty hat against a thigh. "We'd have gotten it out of him, one way or another! But you let the bastard go! It was a damned irresponsible act!" Dunaway jammed the shapeless hat on his head and climbed again into the saddle. "I hold you responsible for the wounding of Private Murray, do you know that? Murray was hurt down at Mud Springs. Some of Agustín's rascals slipped down the mountain and bushwhacked my pickets at daybreak yesterday!"
"I'm sorry," Drumm said. "Truly sorry—but—"
Dunaway gave him a withering look, tipped his hat to the ladies, and rode away in a cloud of dust. On their last encounter the lieutenant had bested Jack Drumm conclusively; this time Drumm felt he had again come off second best. But he was learning.