“You came for something?” he asked and hated himself for it. It was not the way, he knew, to talk to a woman that he had intended to marry. Not the sharp, hard way to speak to a woman whose memory he had carried through four long and bloody years.
“I came to ask you to take care of yourself…to stay out of trouble.”
“Trouble?” he asked. “What do you mean, trouble?”
She flushed angrily. “You know what I mean, Ned. Trouble with the Anchor. Why don’t you leave, there’s nothing for you here.”
“Nothing but the land that was stolen from me.”
“You’ll be killed. You can’t fight them, all alone.”
“Did Bill Watson send you here to ask me this?”
Her voice rose until it was almost shrill. “You know he didn’t, Ned. You know I wouldn’t do a thing like that. He doesn’t even know I’m here.”
He gave a short, hard laugh.
“You’re a bitter man,” she told him.
“I have a right to be,” he said.
She moved toward him, two hesitant steps, then stopped.
“Ned,” she said softly. “Ned.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t wait.”
“You thought that I was dead,” Benton said, heavily. “There was no use of waiting then.”
“Bill was the one who told me,” she said. “He was the one that started the story. Said he heard it from a man who had been with you.”
“So you married him,” said Benton. “He told you I was dead and then he married you.”
She flared at Benton. “I hate him. Do you hear? I hate him. He’s a beast…a dirty, drunken beast.”
For a moment Benton saw this very room as he remembered it. A shining place with a warm glow to it. A shining room and a laughing girl. But the room was dingy now, dingy with the shafts of sunlight only adding to its dreariness.
A room with a laughing ghost. And the ghost, he knew, didn’t square with the woman who stood before him.
The room was cold and empty…like his heart and brain. Nothing matters, he thought, watching her. Nothing matters now. A cause broken on a bloody battlefield that stretched across four years, a dream shattered by a woman who wouldn’t wait, land that one had thought of as a home stolen by those who stayed at home while he went out to fight.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I’m sorry that I said anything about it.”
“You won’t make trouble then? You will leave?”
A dull rage shook him for a moment and then flickered out, leaving dull gray ash that was bitter on his tongue.
“You shouldn’t have come here at all,” he said.
Standing without moving, he heard her walk toward the door. For a moment she stopped and he thought she was going to speak, but she didn’t. She stood there for a few long seconds and then moved on.
The door creaked open and his father’s voice was speaking.
“Leaving so soon, Jennie?”
“Yes, it’s getting late. They will wonder where I’ve been.”
“Jingo will get your horse for you.”
“No thanks. I can get him myself. He’s in the stall next to the door.”
The door closed and his father’s heavy feet tramped along the porch. Voices sounded for a moment and then he came back in again. Benton walked out into the hall.
“Jingo tells me he got hit in the arm,” his father said.
Benton nodded. “Ran into some trouble. The Anchor gang jumped us at the Forks.”
The old man stood silent for a moment. “Your mother’s feeling lots better today,” he finally said. “Happy about you being back. If anything happened now, Ned, I think that it would kill her.”
“I’ll be careful,” Benton promised.
Out in the kitchen he could hear Jingo rattling pans and poking up the fire.
He tiptoed to the door of his mother’s room and looked in. She was asleep, with a smile upon her face. Quietly he tiptoed back again, out to the kitchen.
“Slow down a bit,” he said to Jingo. “Mother is asleep.”
Jingo looked at him quizzically. “What you aiming to do, kid?”
“That herd the Anchor’s gathering,” said Benton, quietly. “We can’t let them start. Some of them are our cattle they’re figuring to drive north.”
“Ain’t no trick at all to spook a cow,” Jingo told him.
Benton’s father spoke quietly from the doorway. “Some of the others would help.”
“Might need some help,” Jingo admitted. “Probably quite a crowd of Anchor hombres out watching them cows.”
“Madox and his boy would give us a hand,” said Benton’s father. “And the two Lee brothers over at the Quarter Circle D.”
“You’re going, too?” asked Jingo.
The elder Benton nodded. “I’ll get Mrs. Madox to come over and stay with Ma.”
He looked at his son. “Sound all right to you, Ned?”
“You’ll have plenty without me,” said Benton. “I’m going to ride over and have a talk with Old Dan Watson.”
Benton sat his horse on the windy ridge top, staring down at the chuck wagon fire a mile or so away. Vague, ghostly forms were moving about it and at times he caught the snatch of bellowed words, carried by the wind, mauled by the whipping breeze until they made no sense, but were only sounds of human voice.
Out beyond the fire a dark lake was massed on the prairie…a dark lake that was the trail herd gathered for the north. Occasionally Benton heard the click of horns, a subdued moo, but that was all. The herd had settled for the night, was being watched, no doubt, by circling riders.
In the east the sky was lighting, signaling the moon that was about to rise. Starlight glittered in the sky and the wind talked with silken voices in the grass.
Benton whirled his black, headed south.
Half an hour later the Anchor ranch buildings came in sight.
The bunk house, he saw, was dark, but lights blazed in the front room of the big ranch house.
Benton pulled the black to a walk, went in slowly, half prepared for the challenge or the bullet that might come out of the dark.
The plopping of the horse’s hoofs against the earth sounded loud in Benton’s ears, but there was no stir around the buildings, no signs of life at all except the lighted windows.
One horse was tied at the hitching post and before he dismounted, Benton sat there for a moment, watching and listening. The sound of voices came through the window that opened on the porch. But that was all.
He tied his horse, walked softly up the porch steps, crossed to the door.
Then, with knuckles lifted to knock, the sound of a voice stopped him. A loud, arrogant voice that boomed through the window. A voice that he had heard that day.
“…He’s on the prod, Dan. We can’t have him stirring up a fuss. I’d never agreed to the deal if I hadn’t thought you’d take care of things.”
Benton froze. The voice of Coleman Gray, the banker, coming from the window!
Old Dan Watson’s growl came: “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of Ned Benton…and any of the others that start raising hell.”
Slowly, Benton let his hand drop to his side, shuffled softly from the door, pressed his body tight against the house.
“You got me into this,” Gray whined. “You were the ones that figured it all out.”
“You were damn quick to jump at it,” growled Dan Watson’s voice, “when you figured there wasn’t any chance of being caught. But now that young Benton’s come back, you got cold feet.”
“But you said he wouldn’t come back,” Gray yelled. “You said you’d see to it that he never did.”
Quick steps sounded on the porch and Benton whirled, but he was too slow. A hard finger of metal jammed into his back and a mocking voice spoke.