For the Brand Page 15

“My eye, you mean. The other one isn’t for looking at.” Laurella’s fingers fluttered to the hat but she did not take it off. “I’m scared.”

  “You’re a Texan. I heard Texans weren’t ever afraid.”

  “I’m afraid of myself. I’m afraid of you. I’m afraid like I have never been afraid of anythin’.”

  “Off,” Willis said.

  Laurella slowly removed the hat and slowly laid it down. She was kneeling so her right side was to him, and she shifted so none of the left half of her face could be seen. “I guess this isn’t so bad.”

  “You’re beautiful.”

  “Half of me, maybe. The other half would spoil your meal. It spoils mine and it’s my face.”

  “Turn so I can see both halves.”

  Laurella’s throat moved. “I can’t. It’s too soon. This is hard enough. Can’t we take small steps before we take big steps?”

  “Small steps then,” Willis said, and helped himself to a piece of chicken. He bit down hungrily; chicken had never tasted so delicious.

  Laurella took a small piece and nibbled.

  “You’re not hungry?”

  “When I take big bites I can feel the other half. The skin is so tight, like leather after a rain, I can feel it stretch. I don’t want to feel the other half right now.”

  “It will take gettin’ used to,” Willis said.

  The sun was bright, the pool was bright, and the leaves of the cottonwoods were bright. They ate and watched some cows and some cows watched them.

  Willis was fit to burst, he ate so much. “So this is what it’s like to live? I’d forgotten.”

  “I’m afraid to live.”

  “You’re afraid of your shadow today,” Willis teased, grinning. “But it makes more sense to be afraid when you’re at the top of the steps, not at the bottom.”

  “It will be a long climb,” Laurella agreed. She forgot herself and looked squarely at him. “Are you sure, Will? Are you absolutely and completely sure?”

  The left half did not have the effect it had the day before. Willis smiled and gazed into her good eye and answered, “I haven’t been sure since that day in the corral but I’m as sure as I’m sittin’ here.”

  Luarella looked away again. “We’re movin’ too fast. Either that or I’m dreamin’. I should pinch myself and wake up.”

  “Pinch both of us,” Willis said.

  “You’ll change your mind. You’ll wake up tomorrow and wonder what in God’s name you were thinkin’, and that will be fine because it’s more than I ever thought could happen and a day or two of illusion is better than none.”

  “I’m not rightly sure I know what an illusion is but I do know one thing.” Willis placed his hand on hers.

  “Oh, Will,” Laurella said, and the right half of her face flushed red.

  “You can slap me if you want.”

  Laurella laughed. “I should beat you.”

  “That would be somethin’ to see.”

  “This is the happiest I’ve been since I was ten. Maybe the happiest I’ve ever been. Thank you.”

  “I should be thankin’ you. You forget. I haven’t exactly been up to my neck in females.”

  “You better not have been.” Laurella flinched as if she had been pricked by a pin, and exclaimed, “Oh my! I felt a twinge. A real twinge.”

  “All we’ve done is hold hands.”

  “I know, I know,” Laurella said. “I’m gettin’ ahead of myself. Or maybe I’m catchin’ up.”

  “If that made sense, I’m a heifer.”

  “I hope not!” Laurella blushed darker. “Goodness. Will you listen to me? Women must be hussies at heart.”

  “You wouldn’t know how to be a hussy if you wanted to,” Willis said.

  “I might surprise you. All women have a naughty streak. Some lock it up and never let it out. Others let it run wild. I suspect I’ll be somewhere in the middle.”

  “I reckon the middle will be wild enough for me. I’m an infant yet.”

  Willis leaned back and glanced about himself in disbelief. He gazed at her and an ache he had long denied would no longer be denied. Suddenly he felt hot. Easing onto his good knee, he moved on his hands and the good knee to the pool and dipped a hand in. The water was cool and welcome.

  Laurella came up beside him and knelt with her right side toward him. She, too, cupped her palm, but to drink, not to cool herself. “The Bar T has a lot more water than my pa’s ranch, and a lot more prime grazin’ ground. I could have twice as many cows as Abe does.”

  “You aim to be the Cattle Queen of the West?”

  “I take the business end serious,” Laurella said. “But listen to me, will you? Business at a moment like this. You would think I’ve never been by a pool under a cottonwood with a man before.”

  “Have you?”

  “Oh, every day and twice on Sundays.” Laurella grinned at him but was careful not to turn her face too far.

  “Since I’m being so honest today, I might as well tell you I don’t know how to go about this. What I should do and what I shouldn’t. What I should say and what I shouldn’t. It’s a mite more complicated than folks let on.”

  “It’s like learnin’ to ride,” Laurella said. “You make mistakes but you keep ridin’ until you get it right.”

  Willis had a thought that made him hotter. He splashed more water on his face and neck and drank a few handfuls.

  “We’re gettin’ ahead of ourselves, aren’t we? Maybe I should put my hat back on.”

  “It would please me if you didn’t.”

  “I’m not used to being without it, except at home with my ma and pa. I’m afraid there’s so much I’m not used to.”

  “Makes two of us.” Willis placed his wet hand on her wet hand. “If Elfie could see us now, she’d have kittens. This wasn’t what she had in mind when she asked me to be your escort.”

  “She can have all the kittens she wants. You’re a marvelous escort.”

  “I must be comin’ down with something. I’d swear I have a fever.” Willis removed his hat and lowered his whole head into the pool. Goose bumps broke out all over. A fish was so close he could swear he could reach out and touch it. Unfurling, he sat up and shook his head from side to side, shedding drops. He smiled at Laurella, but she was not there. Fear brought him upright but she was only putting on her hat. “So much for pleasin’ me.”

  “We have company comin’,” Laurella said.

  Three cowboys were trotting toward the pool. Willis recognized Charlie Weaver, Bob Ashlon, and a new hand he had seen around but had not met yet. “They’re sure in a hurry.”

  Charlie Weaver motioned as he drew rein. “Will! We just found a couple of dead cows. You’ve got to come see.”

  “Was it the griz or the mountain lion?” Willis asked.

  “Neither. It was the Wilkes gang.”

  Chapter 13

  “This was mean,” Bob Ashlon said.

  The dead cows were in the timber a hundred yards in from the grass. Both their throats had been slit. One was on its side with its tongue lying like a limp washcloth over its lower jaw. The other had collapsed on its belly and its head was twisted so that its wide, glazed eyes seemed to be staring in appeal at the sky.

  “They went this way,” Charlie Weaver mentioned, pointing at where hooves had churned the soil.

  Willis had left the buckboard at the tree line and limped in. Laurella had walked at his side, and every few yards, her arm had brushed his. Now she squatted and touched the cow with its eyes on the heavens.

  “In Texas we shoot people who would do this.”

  The prints revealed there had been two rustlers, not four as Willis expected, and that they had led a half dozen cattle off to the north. He made up his mind so quickly, it half startled him. “Lend me your horse, pard.”

  Charlie Weaver was his best friend but that was asking a lot. “What for? You’re not thinkin’ of goin’ after the buzzards without tellin’ Abe first?”

  “This wa
s done about sunrise,” Willis estimated. The pools of blood had a dry sheen but were not yet completely dry. “They can’t have gotten far with six cows.” Not when the timber thickened considerably ahead.

  “Abe would be happy as can be if we caught them,” Bob Ashlon said.

  Willis was not doing it for Abe. “Lend me your sorrel,” he repeated.

  “If we’ve got this to do,” Charlie said, “then we do it together, like in the old days.” He looked at the new cowboy. “Rafe, lend him your cayuse and stay with the lady until we get back.”

  “Can’t he stay and I go?”

  “Abe put me in charge in the north valley until we’re relieved,” Charlie said, “so it’s your horse and no guff, and I need it a minute ago.”

  “I wasn’t givin’ you guff,” Rafe said, but he was not terrifically happy. Swinging down, he held out the reins to Willis. “Watch my saddlebags. Half the things I own in this world are in them.”

  “I won’t let them come to harm.” Willis gripped the saddle horn with both hands and swung up. He bent and slid his left boot into the stirrup, then glanced at Laurella Hendershot. “I won’t go if you say not to.”

  “If we don’t do it now, they may do this again after I’ve bought the ranch.” Laurella straightened. “No one does this to my cows and lives.”

  Charlie Weaver pushed his hat back on his head. “Are all Texas gals like you, ma’am?”

  “Most, I reckon,” Laurella said from under her veil. “We won’t be imposed on and we don’t take sass and Lord help the man who doesn’t treat us like ladies.”

  “I might just move there if I ever get into a marryin’ mood,” Charlie said. “How do Texas gals feel about Wyomin’ cowboys?”

  “If a cowboy can ride and rope and shoot and takes off his hat when he meets a lady, he has all the qualifications most Texas women look for.”

  “Your social life can wait,” Willis said to his friend, and clucked to the claybank. He assumed the lead, riding at a brisk walk, the tracks easy to follow. When the trees thickened, he threaded through them with skill. He thought he had lost it but it was coming back to him.

  Charlie Weaver cleared his throat. “Mind if I ask you a question?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you get up on the wrong side of the bunk or is it what I think it is?”

  “We won’t talk about my social life, either,” Willis said.

  After a few suitable seconds, Charlie declared, “I would swear I was awake.”

  “I’m out to shoot someone and it could just as well be a blockhead with eyes like a hawk.”

  “It wasn’t my eyes so much as my ears,” Charlie said. “Either you are comin’ down with a cold or you talk different to her than you do to anyone else.”

  “I said we won’t talk about it.”

  “And we won’t. I was just marvelin’ out loud. It ain’t every day the world turns upside down.”

  Despite himself, Willis grinned. “You’re no more puzzled than me. I’m not rightly sure how it came about. It snuck up on me when I wasn’t lookin’.”

  “Are you talkin’ about your social life or is it one of those cows we’re talkin’ about, because I would swear your social life was taboo?”

  “You’re a sorry human being.”

  “I take after a bronc buster I know.”

  Bob Ashlon said from behind Charlie, “Talk a little louder, why don’t you two? That way the rustlers will hear us comin’ that much sooner and shoot us dead that much quicker.”

  “Sorry,” Charlie said, “but it’s not every day a miracle happens.”

  The rustlers had pushed the cattle as hard as they could but cows could not move fast in heavy timber. It did not help that over the first slope were several steep ridges littered with deadfall, for if there was anything that slowed cows down more than heavy timber it was deadfall.

  “They weren’t too bright, these rustlers,” Charlie commented. “They should pick better ground.”

  “What has me stumped,” Willis said, “is why only two?”

  “We can ask them before we shoot the sons of bitches.”

  They were near the crest of the first ridge when they heard thrashing and rustling and the soft moo of a cow in distress. Willis jabbed his right spur into the claybank and came to the top with his hand on his revolver. But it wasn’t the rustlers. It was just one cow. The critter had blundered into deadfall and some of the wind-flattened trees had given way under its weight. Now it lay amid the wreckage, the bone of one of its front legs white against the brown and the green.

  The cow looked at them and lowed.

  Charlie swore, then said, “The polecats just left it. They didn’t put it out of its misery.”

  “They didn’t want the shot heard,” Willis figured. “It’s too close to the valley.”

  “They could have slit its throat like they did to those others,” Charlie said. “But they didn’t want to stop.”

  Bob Ashlon shucked his rifle. “Want me to take care of it?”

  “A shot can carry for a mile in these mountains,” Willis said, “so we’d best do it on the way back.”

  The cow watched them ride north. If it was possible for a cow to look sad, this one looked sad as hell.

  “I hate to see animals mistreated,” Charlie remarked. “People have it comin’ sometimes but animals only do what it’s their nature to do.”

  “Deputy Ivers probably isn’t too fond of animals right about now,” Willis said.

  “I had an aunt bit by a rattlesnake when she was little,” Charlie mentioned. “She lived, but from then on, she killed every snake she came across. Garter snakes, racers, it made no never mind if they were harmless. All they had to be was a snake.”

  “I’m not too fond of stallions, myself.”

  Bob Ashlon muttered something, then said louder, “Am I the only one takin’ this serious? If it’s not females, it’s snakes.”

  “Touchy hombre, ain’t he?” Willis said.

  “He was born in New Jersey and his family didn’t move west until he was ten or eleven.”

  “Say no more.”

  “I hope you both get palsy,” Bob Ashlon said.

  The rustlers had continued to push the cows on over the ridge and the next ridge after that and the ridge after that . . . then down into a narrow valley with barely enough grass to feed a goat and across it and up the next mountain, heading more to the northwest than to the north.

  “We’re gettin’ close,” Charlie Weaver said.

  Willis was thinking of Laurella, of their morning together. That she liked him, genuinely and honestly liked him, was the most incredible thing that had ever happened to him. She liked him and she didn’t care about his knee. That was even more incredible. He had always assumed no woman would want a man who was crippled. What was a cripple good for? he had often asked himself, and answered himself, “Nothin’ at all.”

  But that was not entirely true. He could ride. He could walk, if imperfectly. He could cook. He could chop wood. He could do a lot of things. Maybe not as well as he did them before the stallion shattered his knee. Maybe not as well as he would like. But he could do them and that counted for something. It counted for something for the first time in a very long time. It counted for something, but not because of him.

  It made him dizzy to think of her. To think of how soft and warm her voice could be. To think of the half of her face that had not been stove in, and the warmth of her hand when her hand touched his.

  He imagined how her life must have been. For her it had been far worse than for him. Especially as she was female. Girls relied more on their looks than most men. Jim Palmer had been fond of a mirror but he had been uncommonly handsome, so he had had good cause.

  Willis thought of the hurt she had endured. A pretty girl turned into a monstrosity by a fluke of fate. A monstrosity in her eyes, anyway In his eyes she was anything but. She was kindly and gentle and she liked him, but she could be strong, too. And she was smart. She had
learned a lot from her folks and she was smart enough to run her own ranch.

  Willis envisioned the two of them seated in the rocking chairs the Tylers normally sat in on the porch of the ranch house, smiling and holding hands and as happy as two people had ever been and ever would be. He almost reined up in surprise at his silliness. He was getting ahead of himself. Yes, she liked him, and God yes, he liked her, but it was a long way from holding hands to sitting on the porch of the ranch house as a married couple. Maybe she didn’t have that in mind. Maybe—and the thought jarred him—maybe she was only interested because he was the first man ever to show an interest in her. Maybe when she had more time to think about it, she would realize he was not much of a catch and she could do better.

  What if she does change her mind? Willis thought, and was suddenly more afraid than he had ever been of anything, ever. He was so afraid, he grew as chill as the creek water had been. “Please, no,” he whispered. “Please let her think me worthy.”

  That was when he decided he would catch the two rustlers or die trying. He must not fail. He must not go back without the stolen cattle. He must show her that although he was a cripple he wasn’t worthless. He could do whatever needed doing when he had to.

  “Smoke,” Charlie Weaver said.

  Willis looked up. Beyond the next ridge, tendrils of smoke curled skyward from a campfire.

  “They stopped?” Bob Ashlon said. “How brainless is that?”

  “They were up all night and they’re tired and they think they got away clean,” Willis said.

  “Or maybe they’re waitin’ for the other two,” Charlie said.

  Willis hadn’t thought of that. Four rustlers would be too many unless they were lucky and luck couldn’t always be counted on to stop a bullet. “We have to hit them before the others show up.”

  The rustlers had made their fire right out in the open in a large bowl-shaped area between two slopes and had a coffeepot on to boil.

  “It’s the cousins,” Willis said. “The Nargent brothers, Tote and Thatch.” They were still wearing their red-and-blue bandannas. “Tote is the one on the right.”

  “Do we make wolf meat of them or take them back to swing?” Bob Ashlon wanted to know.