Sweet Autumn Surrender Page 7

  Then, suddenly, leaping from the last stone to the grassy bank beyond, he found what he was hunting—crushed grass and scattered sand. So the intruder had left tracks after all! He had also been careful to cover them.

  When the grassy bank leveled off, Kale found where a horse had been ground-hitched behind a stand of mesquite. Still no boot print, but his worries eased up a mite as he studied the horse’s prints: a large-footed horse, a puddin’-foot, some folks called it, with a small crack in the right rear shoe. Likely it would be chipped by this time, given the rocky terrain the horse had to cover during the night.

  Yes, Kale decided, his job had suddenly become easier. This was a horse he would recognize without even seeing his tracks again. He’d be large-footed and awkward. And limping, if that shoe hadn’t been changed.

  Kale studied the direction the horse headed out. Toward the Circle R. He cursed. Matt and Holt Rainey called themselves horsemen! No horseman worth his salt would ride an animal with a cracked shoe. Of course, it could have cracked on the ride over.

  Scanning the area, Kale recalled what Ellie had said about a camp on the hilltop. Reluctantly, for walking was definitely against his better instincts, he climbed toward the area she had indicated.

  The hillside was covered with rocks and patches of prickly pear and sage, with a few scrubby cedars and mesquite scattered here and there. By the time he came up on the rock shelter, his shirt was soaked with sweat. He bent over, rested his hands on his knees, and breathed deeply, all the while confirming his contention that climbing was for goats.

  After catching his breath he investigated the small cave. These hollows in the limestone cliffs were common in the hilly regions of Texas. They looked as if somebody had scooped out portions of the rock and soil with a giant shovel, leaving a place where man or beast could find shelter from the elements. Some of the shelters were hardly big enough for one man, while others could house several families.

  Kale stumbled onto a small rock shelter carved out of the hill, with a slight overhang and a ledge in front. The evidence was not hard to read: two men, and the remains of a campfire which had been used more than once, but which was too cold to have been used the night before.

  A trail led alongside the shelter to the top of the hill, where the men had staked their horses beside a live oak thicket. The tracks did not match those of the puddin’-foot, but the horses set out in the same direction, northeast toward the Circle R.

  Kale squatted on his heels at the edge of the hill, plucked a stem of dried mesquite grass, and began to chew on it. Somehow this all made sense, but for the life of him, he couldn’t figure how.

  From where he sat, he looked down on the spring and across it to the house. The leaves were already beginning to show yellow and red, a warning that cooler weather was not far ahead. He noticed the good stand of grass. The creek was running full. No wonder the Raineys wanted this place. Benjamin had chosen well.

  And now Benjamin was dead, and except for a puddin’-footed horse and a man bent on covering his tracks, Kale had no leads to the killers.

  While he watched the valley, Ellie came up the path from the springhouse. The sun illuminated her face and glistened from her tawny hair, reminding him of the photograph on the mantel. No fancy gown today, no grand house in the background. Studying her he thought again of the difference between the luxury she must have known and the cabin she now fought to keep. Had her folks’ death left her so destitute that this was all she could hope for?

  At the back door she stood a moment, looked around, then searched the hills. Kale realized she was probably looking for him. She’d been asleep when he left, and he hadn’t considered her worrying when she awoke and found him gone.

  Standing up, he waved his hat in the air to catch her attention. In answer she waved the towel in her hand above her head a few times, then turned and entered the house. He imagined the squawking of the door. He’d have to fix that for her before he left.

  Before he left…the idea erased the earlier comfortable feeling he had awakened with, calling forth the one image he had tried in vain to banish from his mind during the past twelve years: the picture of himself sitting on his horse atop the hill the day he shot the carpetbagger; the image of himself leaving home for the last time, the most painful leave-taking he had yet encountered. Would it be as hard to leave this place? The idea, coming unbidden as it had, unsettled him.

  An idle mind, he thought, suddenly recalling another of Benjamin’s adages: an idle mind will lead a man to trouble. Disgusted with himself, he flicked the blade of grass he had been chewing on toward a horned toad sunning itself on a rock not far away. The toad hopped off, and Kale started downhill, scolding himself as he went.

  “Kale Jarrett, you’re plumb loco. You’d best get Benjamin’s business settled and hightail it out of here, before you find yourself in a mess of trouble. That’s not some dancehall floozy down there, it’s your brother’s widow, and she doesn’t set much store by gunfighters.”

  The house smelled sweet, of freshly baked bread. The door squawked when he opened it, and that, combined with the sight of Ellie standing hands on hips, staring at his hips—at his holsters, he corrected wryly—further irritated him.

  “You can’t wear those guns—”

  “I’m taking them off, Ellie…taking them off.” He fumbled with the buckle to his gun belt, conscious of her eyes scrutinizing him.

  “There’s a peg.” She nodded to the door beside him. “Take the lantern down and use that peg for your guns while you’re here…” Her words drifted off and he turned quickly toward the peg, where he removed the lantern and hung his gun belt over it. His hands lingered on the well-oiled leather; his mind lingered on her last statement. While you’re here…before you leave…the disjointed nature of his life suddenly rankled him.

  Ellie watched him, while her emotions tossed and tumbled. She hadn’t intended to speak so harshly, but after all, it was her house and he should have remembered.

  Perhaps he would have, her conscience needled her, if she’d given him time. “Breakfast is ready, if you’re hungry.” She tried for a conciliatory tone. “You can wash up at the well.”

  At the well he considered his good fortune at never having found a good woman to wed. Maybe for someone like Benjamin, who hadn’t so many faults to correct, a wife was a blessing; for himself, a man with considerable ways that needed mending, a loving wife would soon become a shrew, and living with her a curse.

  Drying his face and hands on the towel spread across the top of the well, he happened to glance toward the woodpile. His mind raced back to the night before, to Benjamin’s blood-splattered boot, to the violence Ellie had known.

  His resentment vanished in a flash, to be replaced by remorse. My dear Ellie, he thought, don’t you know we all hate violence?

  She served him a breakfast of fried venison, gravy, and sourdough biscuits with more mustang grape jelly, accompanied by a volley of chatter about how Armando Costello’s men had brought the venison the day before and how she herself had put up the mustang grape jelly in the springtime. He knew she was apologizing in her own way.

  The warmth he had felt earlier returned, and with it his determination to help her through her difficulties. He ate the meal with relish.

  “Woman, you’re going to have to cut this out,” he joked after he finished off a second venison steak. “You’ll have me spoiled so’s I can’t take care of myself.”

  She laughed. “That’s all right. Benjamin worried about you. He thought it was high time you settled down.”

  He sopped the last biscuit in gravy. His eyes found hers and quite without intending to, he asked, “What do you think, Ellie?”

  She held his gaze, willing her brain to steady at the unexpected twist to her innocent observation. Of course he hadn’t meant the question the way it sounded. Nevertheless…

  When she answered, the twinkle in her eyes belied the seriousness of her words. “I’m glad you’re here, and I’m so
rry about—”

  “No need,” he interrupted. “You have reason enough for the way you feel. You’re a strong woman, though, Ellie. You’ll come through this just fine; I’m here to see you do.”

  While she cleared the table he informed her of his plans to go into Summer Valley. “I need to wire the family, and I want to look up this fellow Costello. Make me a list of supplies you need.” Before she could speak, he rushed on, trying to reassure her.

  “I’ve scouted the camp on the hill. It was like you suspected—two men have been camping there, but the camp is deserted now. I don’t think they’ll be back for a while. The tracks—”

  “Kale, don’t worry about me. You’re as bad as Armando. He’s forever trying to convince me to move into town.” She shrugged. “He doesn’t think I should live way out here all alone. I’m not afraid of the Raineys, but of them taking this place away from me. They’ve had plenty of chances to harm me,” she added, “and they haven’t. They won’t start now.”

  He grunted. “They aren’t fools. The man who harms a woman in this country is in a peck of trouble and he knows it.” He watched her pour water from the bucket she had placed on the hearth, carry it to the kitchen, and begin to wash dishes. The cup towel she had tied around her hips like an apron accented her trim waistline. He imagined how it would feel, resting his hand there at the small of her back. “Their harassment is enough,” he said. “I intend to put a stop to it. I promise you that.”

  She made the list he’d suggested and said nothing when he took his gun belt from the peg; he didn’t buckle it on, however, but carried it in his hand. She followed him to the barn where he saddled the bay and led him into the yard.

  “You stick close to the house,” he told her. “If I’m not back by mid-afternoon, saddle up and ride into town.”

  She started to protest.

  “Don’t argue with me, Ellie.”

  She watched him sling the gun belt around his hips. Her eyes riveted on the ivory butts, the worn ivory butts.

  “Benjamin couldn’t have foreseen this situation when he told you to stay here,” he was saying. “He wouldn’t have wanted you hurt or harassed.” He studied the top of her bowed head. “Neither do I. So do as I say, understand?”

  His gentle tones only heightened her rising sense of panic. Was she to lose everyone to a violent death? Her mother and father? Her husband? And now, her…

  Her eyes darted to Kale’s. Her what? She searched his face for an answer, but her brain remained unable to function. She clasped her hands about her own arms in an effort to keep from throwing herself into his—from clinging to him. She wanted desperately to keep him here where he would be safe. Here, with her.

  She tried to bite back an outburst, but lost the battle nonetheless. “Don’t wear your guns.”

  He stared long at her, looking deep into her soul, causing her to want to plead with him all the more. “Please.”

  Slowly he shook his head. “Don’t ask me that, Ellie. I can’t…”

  He watched her clamp her lips between her teeth, watched her struggle to contain her words, her fears. The impulse to hold her, to comfort her was overwhelming. He fought it the only way he knew how.

  By swinging into the saddle. “I won’t kill anyone,” he retorted. “I won’t even draw the damned things unless—” Jerking the reins around, he cut off his own words.

  When he looked back from the top of the hill, Ellie stood in the yard watching him ride away.

  She washed the dishes and tossed the dishwater on her garden. Weeds had already sprung up around the late-blooming beans, and their runners needed staking. Soon it would be time to prepare the soil for spring planting. Spring…would she be here, come spring?

  Glancing at the sky, she drew herself back to the day ahead. Time enough to finish the chores before Kale returned for supper. She would milk, then begin the wash.

  After the fire was going under the washpot and the water poured into it, she shaved a good measure of lye soap into the water, then went in search of Kale’s clothing. Traveling as he did, he would surely have no more than a change or two…certainly not enough to last the week.

  As she herself, she thought, flinging her petticoats and calico skirt from yesterday across her arm, along with Benjamin’s old shirt, which Kale had caught her wearing when he arrived.

  In the spare room, she found Kale’s breeches and shirt neatly folded inside his bedroll. Shaking them out she studied the hole in the right leg of the breeches and the tear in the shirt. She was miserable at mending, yet she couldn’t very well let him run around the country with torn clothing.

  Suddenly she remembered Benjamin’s things. Kale and Benjamin were very nearly the same size. She had buried Benjamin in his only broadcloth suit, but Kale didn’t strike her as a man who needed a broadcloth suit, anyhow. Only last week she had packed away Benjamin’s other garments—shirts and breeches, and even his heavy coat. She would pull them out and offer them to Kale when he returned.

  Then she recalled the clothing Benjamin had been wearing when she found his body. Unable to throw them away, she had also been unable to make herself wash them.

  Lifting the lid of the trunk, she stared at the blood-splattered boots and beneath them at the equally bloodstained shirt and breeches.

  Clothing was hard to come by, she admonished herself at the queasy feeling that tumbled in her stomach. It was wrong not to put good clothing to use. The shirt, of course, would never do; it had been ripped too badly by the gunshots that took Benjamin’s life. But the breeches would be fine, if she could remove the stains.

  The boots, too, she decided, taking them out one by one before lifting the gray flannel shirt and coarse breeches from the trunk. Perhaps Kale’s feet were the same size.

  She jumped when something fell from the pocket of the breeches and landed with a clunk on the floor. A rock. So like Benjamin Jarrett.

  He rarely rode the ranch without bringing home strange pieces of wood or interesting rocks. She turned this latest acquisition over in her hand. The memories it evoked were not of specimens found here on the ranch, however, but of a place far away.

  The piece of limestone was about the size of a hen egg, but flat…a porous white on one side, smooth and weathered to a mottled grayish brown on the other. And it was streaked with paint. Angled lines drawn in red and black hinted at a shape she recognized from trips to the painted cliffs.

  Confused, she hurried to her own bedchamber, where she took out the box in which Benjamin had kept his treasures. On their two trips to the painted cliffs, he had collected several loose specimens of limestone which had been painted by Indians long forgotten. This piece certainly matched those in the box.

  But why had he carried it with him that fateful day? Or had he? Could he have found another area of Indian pictographs closer to home…here on the ranch?

  The bloodstains in his breeches came out with a good soak in the creek. Afterward she finished the wash and hung Kale’s and Benjamin’s clothing side by side with her own on the corral fence to dry.

  Although from time to time she glanced at the hillside from where the Raineys had watched the valley, she saw no movement. Kale had said he didn’t expect them to return anytime soon…

  Suddenly she laughed out loud, feeling safer and more alive than she had since Benjamin’s disappearance. Last night she’d actually slept through the night.

  It had taken her a while after marrying Benjamin to grow accustomed to sleeping in a place so far removed from other people. Her life had been spent at the Lady Bug, in the company of a houseful of women. Benjamin’s presence had provided security, but in the months since his abduction, she had slept lightly, awakening often and arising weary.

  Not so the night just past. What a difference a man in the house made!

  A specific man, she corrected, then winced. A gunfighter. She was lucky she hadn’t awakened to flying bullets.

  While she weeded and watered her garden, her thoughts returned to the
piece of limestone in Benjamin’s pocket. What did it mean? Where had it come from? She had at first considered the possibility of his finding it here on the ranch. The more she thought about it, however, the more certain she was that the stone couldn’t have come from anywhere around here.

  She had ridden over practically every inch of this ranch herself, even before her trips to search for Benjamin’s body. Pictographs would most likely be found in rock shelters either along the creek or in the surrounding hills, and she had seen none.

  The gardening finished, she turned her attention to supper, kneading a loaf of bread she had prepared that morning; greasing it again liberally with bacon drippings, she set it on the hearth to finish rising. While she worked she thought of Kale Jarrett the gunfighter, once more, and of the contradiction he turned out to be. Certainly he was nothing like what she had imagined. Although even gunfighters were human, she supposed.

  “Ellie Jarrett!” she swore aloud. “Get this man off your mind. He’ll be out of your hair soon enough.”

  Disgruntled with her inability to keep Kale off her mind, she headed for the creek, where she washed her hair and bathed in a pool sheltered on one side by the barn and the house and on the other by a high cliff. A bend in the creek upstream and a stand of reeds downstream lent the spot the privacy of a bathhouse. To Benjamin’s amazement, she actually enjoyed the frigid spring water.

  Today it invigorated her. By the time she finished bathing and dressed in fresh underclothing and the same calico skirt and next-best waist she had worn all day, it was mid-afternoon.

  Carrying a bucket of water to the rosebush beside the front step, then another to the cutting she had planted on Benjamin’s grave, she was suddenly struck by the lightness of her step. The realization of what this meant hit her like a splash of the cold spring water she had just bathed in, and she arrived at the grave filled with guilt.

  Contritely she replaced some of the stones which had become dislodged. “Oh, Benjamin, I did love you. I still do. It’s just that…”