One day Eager Briggs rode in on a scrawny palomino gelding. His broken leg was still wrapped in a hard cover and stuck out to one sideof the horse. Briggs, as usual, had some gossip. Said that Edward Donald was pushing a warrant on Burn English for horse theft. The old man stared at Davey while giving out the information, as if Davey would naturally have something to say. Briggs would make his rounds and soon enough the whole territory would know about Donald’s greed.
Briggs had more news: two corpses had been found near Jewitt. A man and a horse. The man was a Mex, buried in a shallow grave with a rude cross near his head. Powder burns said the killing was done close and after the injuries. Only one eye remained in the skull. That last bit of information upset most folks, Briggs told his audience.
Other riders came through after Briggs’s first visit, passing on more information, looking for late strays. Briggs came by often toward the summer’s end. It seemed like the whole southwest corner of New Mexico was fired up about Jack Holden and his thieving and Burn English and his damned horses.
Summer turned quickly to fall in the mountains. The San Agustin plains became muddy and dangerous with late rains. Three cows got bogged down, two were saved, one was shot before it choked to death. Red Pierson got thrown from a rank mustang and broke his wrist, but was out hunting L Slash strays two days later.
Stan Brewitt learned his buckskin gift was a better mount than the old dun, and bragged on the horse, mostly about its speed, until a course was set up and bets made, all on Sunday. Stan was more than $50 ahead, a real high roller, until a passing Mex beat the buckskin racer on a flea-bitten gray.
New trouble started, so the ranchers held a meeting at the Morely place. The rains had come late, but soon enough for the grass to green up before winter. Patches of the best graze were being eaten; hoof prints of a small band of horses could be read in the damp earth. Attempts to follow the horses led up narrow cañons and impossible trails where no sane man would ride. The ranchers were angry. This was their grass, their feed, and they depended on it for the wintering. Horses were stealing their grass. But there was no solution, and the meeting ended in anger.
English’s name wasn’t spoken around the L Slash Ranch. Miss Katherine got thinner and quieter, and Meiklejon was caught in his barbed-wire hell. Then he got called back to England. His parting orders to Gayle Souter were to pursue any leads that might finish the reign of theft perpetuated by Jack Holden.
Katherine was able to lose herself in ironing, a task she rarely enjoyed. Today it used her energies and calmed her thoughts. Until a noise outside the window distracted her. She blinked, looked out, and saw Davey Hildahl riding in.
She watched Davey dismount, groaning softly with him as he took those first steps in the awkward walk achieved from being in the saddle too long. Katherine knew Davey was searching for Burn English as well as Jack Holden. She blamed her father’s unconscionable act for Davey’s exhaustion. Davey still harbored a burden of guilt, believing himself responsible for any trouble chasing the mesteñero.
Katherine stopped reflecting as another horse raced into the yard. She opened the kitchen door and went outside. No man who rode for Gayle Souter treated a horse in such a manner unless something terrible had happened.
Red Pierson’s face was flushed, his voice high. “They’ve cornered Jack Holden on Slaughter Mesa, near Indio Cañon. He ain’t been in Arizona…he’s holed up with a lot of cattle got changed brands.” He spat, took a drink from an offered canteen. “They sent for Lawman Stradley. Word come down English is with Holden. He’s thrown in with the rustlers and been stealing cattle all summer.”
Katherine’s hands shook and she held them together.
Then Stan Brewitt appeared on a spent horse. Behind him came the new man, Spot, on an equally tired mount.
In less than ten minutes the men had roped and saddled fresh mounts while Katherine prepared food. Now she sat at the kitchen table, cradling her hands around a cup of warmed coffee, taking an occasional small sip to keep herself occupied. These men, who had talked shyly to her of their dreams and their distant families, their small hopes, would ride out and kill two men she loved.
She buried her face in her hands, tipping the coffee. She was close to crying, something Katherine Donald did not ever do. The sack of supplies waited on the table, a plain, matter-of-fact token of what was about to happen.
It took her several moments to realize Davey Hildahl stood next to her, dusty hat clenched to his belly, fingers turning the brim endlessly.
“Miss Katherine, I don’t believe it’s English neither. I know the man…not like you maybe…but he ain’t that kind. Holden and him, they couldn’t get along. Ain’t nothing in English that’d let him steal another man’s cows. You take heart, ma’am, I’ll make sure they don’t hang English…if they even find him to the mesa, and I don’t think they will. Don’t you worry, it won’t come to hanging the man.”
She smiled to thank him. He’d promised nothing about Jack Holden. No one could stop that massacre once he was caught. Jack lived the life, now he would die the death.
Davey half opened the door, held it, and found the courage to say the rest that had been on his mind. “You know, Miss Katherine …you heard ’bout some horses loose-herded on good grass…kind of stealing graze from all the ranchers. Me, I think that’s the only kind of stealing Burn’d ever do. Getting his mares fat on other folks’ graze now that we got good rains . . . stealing something that’ll grow back.”
The men left in a tight bunch at a long trot, and Katherine felt the edge of despair again. She would like to ride with these men to Slaughter Mesa and the craggy, rugged depths of Indio Cañon. She would like to hold off the rustlers and chase the bandits, herd the bawling cattle. Any work a man could do, she wished to try. But she had been hired as a housekeeper, a civilizing woman on a ranch full of men, and she must do what was expected.
Katherine returned to the table and stared at the coffee stains, studied the shape they took as they soaked into the scoured wood. She rested her head in her cupped hands and watched the sun’s reflection on the glass window disappear, saw the light day air turn to dark.
The rebellion was growing, and she reveled in its bitter freedom.
Chapter Twenty-one
The new man called Spot rode in two days later. Katherine warmed him a plate of stew and poured out fresh coffee. Spot ate fast, then packed a lot of ammunition in two saddlebags and caught out a fresh horse for the return ride to the mesa. He offered no new words on what was happening.
Spot’s quick departure left Katherine alone and more aware of the ranch’s isolation. Few visitors came by on their way to another place. She tried to concentrate on cutting up the old hens and setting them to stew, then she attacked the few vegetables she’d grown in the poor summer garden.
Next she set bread to rising, covered with a heavy cloth, and placed it near the stove, as out of drafts as she could manage. The hens were well seasoned and started in their broth, simmering more slowly now, cooking into a semblance of tenderness. The knowledge weighed on Katherine. The men on Slaughter Mesa would shoot or hang a man, and return to her kitchen hungry and tired, expecting her to feed them even though they had become killers. She would fulfill her duties, knowing these ranch hands turned killers were children under the guidance of older but not wiser men. She would not think about the consequences, she would make her pies and cakes to please them, she could not envision murder. It was a hard land, a hard way of life. Survival here was insured by measures that were strict, sudden, and of necessity without mercy.