A Grave for Lassiter (9 page)

After the long hard winter, spring was most welcome. The sun through the side windows was warm and actually, for a change, lifted her spirits. She stood in the doorway, breathing in the crisp mountain air. Putting the broom aside, she slowly unwound the yard of scrap cloth she had used to keep dust off her golden hair.

Sounds of a horse caused her to look around. It was a black saddler such as that man Lassiter used to ride. Then she lifted her eyes to the rider. Her heart gave a thump and her knees turned to jelly, for the man in the saddle looked so much like Lassiter it was uncanny.

As he dismounted and strode toward her she had to grip the edge of the door in order to keep from collapsing. Her eyes were riveted to the face, the dark brows, the piercing blue eyes, the straight nose, and wide mouth, slightly upturned at the corners.

“Melody,” he called to her.

My God, it
sounded
like Lassiter.

“Don't look so scared,” he said, coming to stand in front of her. As she stared, a faint breeze rustled the ends of the black hair showing beneath his flat-crowned hat. “I'm not a ghost.”

He looked over her slender shoulder into the freight company office. “Vance around?” Now there was hardness in his voice.

She told him that Vance had gone to Denver. “Along with his wild dreams,” she added with a shaky laugh.

She stood with her head bowed, a slight tremor at the shoulders. Putting a fist under her chin, he forced her to look up at him. At first he had thought she wept, but her eyes were dry.

“Glad there's no tears,” he said. “I thought you might be shedding a few for him.”

“Tears for him? Never.”

“Glad to hear he didn't overwhelm you. I hear he's got quite a way with the ladies.”

“Oh, he has.” Ragged laughter again. “I married him.”

Lassiter's only reaction was a slight grimace. He asked how it had happened.

“I got panicky,” she replied.

“You seemed a young woman with spunk. I'm surprised you caved in to him.”

Her lips twitched, but fire touched the light gray eyes. “I was alone. Uncle Josh was dead. Uncle Herm down at Rimrock with one leg missing. And only the good Lord knows what else is wrong with him.”

“They took off Herm's leg?”

“Weeks went by and the wound just didn't seem to heal. He's been drinking a lot since. The doctor wrote that he was trying to get him sober enough for travel. But Uncle Herm has never arrived. . . .”

To a point, Lassiter could understand her reaction to grim news, desertion by a husband, the health and alcoholic problems of an uncle. A woman alone, defenseless. But somehow he had thought her less fragile than most.

“I even thought
you
were gone. Dead, buried.” Spoken in almost an accusatory tone, leaning close to peer up into his face, seeing his pale cheeks that had been covered by the beard for so long. There was a look in her eyes that seemed to pin the blame for her misfortune on him.

“Well, I didn't die on you. Thanks to a certain Roma.”

“Whom you charmed, no doubt.”

His laugh was like a chill wind. “Hardly.”

“Well, you needn't be so nasty about it.” Then, hand clamped to her eyes, she suddenly sank to a bench in the office. Tears dripped through her fingers. “Some people said such awful things about you when they thought you were dead. And others . . . Oh, I just don't know what to believe.”

An old kitchen table, on which numerous papers were scattered, was used as a desk. Ink blots darkened the wood next to an inkwell and several pens. Two windows let in sunlight. A third window had a diagonal crack and a fourth was boarded up for lack of glass.

When Melody finished her spate of tears, she wiped her eyes on a lacy handkerchief, then looked at him defiantly. “Well, that's over with, thank goodness. It's been building in me for weeks, I guess.”

“Good to get it out of your system.”

Melody leaned back against the wall, legs outstretched from the bench. Her dress, faded green, had wilted lace at collar and cuffs. She gestured at the sorry furnishings, the walls stained with seepage from winter storms. “As you can see, your investment has gone to the dogs.” A braying started up in the barn nearby. “Or to the mules, I guess is more appropriate,” she added without humor.

“Herm and I put in nearly twenty thousand dollars,” Lassiter reminded. “What happened to that?”

“It just went.” She dragged herself over to the table that served as her desk and plopped into a chair. “There's no record of how it was spent, so far as I can tell.”

She pushed a ledger across the table, but he didn't reach for it.

“In other words,” he said, “I'm betting you never got to see much of it.”

“I'm frankly surprised you'd pass up a chance to accuse me of stealing it. Giving me the benefit of the doubt is contrary to your reputation.”

“My reputation, so-called, has been hammered together over the years by people I stepped on. People who dislike me. The other side of the coin is those that do. Talk to them sometime, Miss . . . Oh, beg your pardon, it's
Mrs.
Vanderson now.”

“Your voice is so cold.” When he looked at her steadily, she gripped the arms of her chair. “It seems I'm always saying the wrong thing to you. But seeing you after all those months when I thought you were dead . . . you'll never know what a shock it was.”

She asked for details of his absence and he told her about Roma nursing him. Then, while Melody was writing up a bill of lading for a customer, he hunted up Dad Hornbeck. He found him in a combination bunkhouse and cookshack adjacent to the barn. The old man was recovering from his wound. Although he couldn't be dead certain, he would bet money that it was Ed Kiley who had shot him. After that incident, most of the crew had quit. Melody was trying to do it alone.

That afternoon Lassiter wrote a long letter to Herm Falconer down at Rimrock, telling him essentially what he had related to Melody. But letting Herm know that the niece needed him desperately.

For two days Lassiter worked on the three freight wagons that were still serviceable. But all were in poor shape. He spent the time tightening bolts and replacing planks in one wagon bed that had worn through from the attrition of heavy loads. At least it was spring and they wouldn't have to cope with passes blocked with twenty-foot drifts.

Each day he talked with Hornbeck. At first the old man seemed steeped in gloom, but Lassiter finally cheered him up and he appeared to take heart. Believing that Northguard had a chance for survival, with Lassiter at the helm, slim though it might be.

On the third night they got to talking about Vanderson. “You think he'll ever come back?” Lassiter wanted to know.

“Hope not.”

“Vance ran out on me,” Lassiter said grimly, and told how it had happened.

“Sounds like him,” the old man said angrily. “For Melody's sake, I hope he busts his goddamn neck somewheres.”

“I agree.”

“I know for a fact that he took almost the last dollar Melody had in the cashbox afore he lit out.”

“Trouble is, Herm spoiled him rotten as a kid.”

“He's a man now.” The brown eyes in Hornbeck's wrinkled face were glittering. “Seems to me he's been outa short britches for quite a spell.”

Lassiter wanted to get off the subject of Vanderson, because the back of his neck got hot every time he thought of what the man had done; panicked at the mine, stolen from Melody. “Fact is,” Lassiter said, “Josh let everything go to hell so there wasn't much to turn over to his brother Herm or the niece. In all his letters to Herm he never let on about the reason for his troubles. We didn't even know he'd gotten married.”

“I can tell you why it all went to hell.”

“Was figuring you'd get around to it,” Lassiter said with a hard smile. He refilled their coffee cups from a dented pot, then sat down again. A lamp, turned low, threw their shadows on the plank wall.

“That new wife Josh had, all curls an' big eyes. Damn handsome.”

“So Melody said.”

“But reckon she didn't tell you the rest of it. Mebby she don't even know.”

“Tell me, Dad.” Lassiter sipped coffee while Hornbeck talked.

“When the lady got herself with child, she turned into a wildcat. She'd cuss the old man out somethin' fierce. Claimin' she never wanted the kid. Don't rightly know how Josh managed to put up with her. But toward the last, she told Josh to quit struttin' around like a rooster because he was gonna be a pa. She told him the kid wasn't his. It was somebody else's kid.”

Lassiter's dark brows lifted. “She told Josh a thing like that?”

“I was right there an' heard it with my own ears.” “Helluva thing to tell a husband. Specially one Josh's age.”

“I never felt so sorry for anybody in my life, 'cause Josh was so proud of the kid that was a-comin'. Tellin' everybody it'd be a boy. . . .”

“She ever say who the father was?”

“Not right out. But she hinted it was Kane Farrell.” Lassiter paled. “I tell you, Josh like to went crazy from then on,” Hornbeck continued. “One night he got in a poker game at Dixie's, it was still Dixie's then. He caught Farrell pullin' an ace outa his boot. Farrell, who'd just come into the game, denied it. Josh wasn't wearin' a gun that night, but I was. He wanted me to loan him mine. But I wouldn't.”

“If Josh had tried to pull a gun on Farrell, his brains would've been on the floor.”

“Just what I told Josh.” Hornbeck looked grim. He drank from a tin cup, then wiped his lips on the back of a hand. “I figured that was what Farrell was aimin'for. To git Josh riled enough to make some damned fool move, then kill him.”

“Not the first time Farrell's pulled that trick.”

“Farrell's a real son of a bitch. An' what that female done to Josh was shameful. But she paid for it.”

“How?”

“She an' the kid both died when she was tryin' to give birth.”

A sad story, Lassiter had to admit, one of an older man who had let a good-looking woman scatter his wits.

The next morning he heard a creak of heavy wheels. From the cookshack window he saw a laden freight wagon pulled by a six-mule team just swinging onto the main road. What surprised him was Melody, wrapped in a heavy coat, handling the lines. A wide-brimmed hat was cinched in place by a chin strap. She seemed to be alone.

Lassiter yelled for her to wait, but she kept going. He saddled up and went after her. At first she locked annoyed, but brought the outfit to a halt.

“What do you think you're doing?” he demanded, swinging his horse close to the wagon.

“What I usually do when there's nobody else around to drive for me.”

“Damn it, I'm around!”

“I didn't know whether to ask you or not.”

He swore. That morning he had ridden over to Running Springs to try to hire some men. But no one wanted to work for Northguard.

Without a word, Lassiter tied his black horse to the tailgate and hoisted himself aboard. “Move over,” he ordered brusquely. And before she could reply, the pressure of his hip caused her to shift positions on the seat. “I don't like this, Lassiter,” she said indignantly.

“You shouldn't be out in these mountains alone.”

“I've managed so far.”

“You're forgetting what happened to Dad Hornbeck,” he reminded.

She toed a rifle that lay on the floorboards at her feet. “I'm quite capable of taking care of myself.”

“Anybody who wanted to take over this outfit wouldn't have much trouble.”

“You mean to say I'm not capable of protecting myself?”

“I mean just that.”

“Because I'm a woman, I suppose.” Her gray eyes sizzled.

“No, because a driver has all he can do to keep the outfit moving. You need somebody else along to spot trouble.”

“Yourself, I suppose.”

“No, you. I'm taking over the team.”

Before she could reply, he snatched the lines out of her hands. Once he had the big wagon on the move again, he asked how far up the mountain she intended to go. He had to ask her three times before she answered in a sullen voice.

“The town of Dexter.”

“What's your cargo?”

“Nails and nuts and bolts and iron braces. For new shoring at the big mine up there.”

“Who'd you get to load it?”

She named two men he'd spoken to that morning about working full time for Northguard. They had refused him, but had worked a small job for her. Probably feeling reasonably safe from Farrell while in Aspen City, but vulnerable once they were on the road.

“Everything's been in the barn for two weeks. It should have been delivered long before this. Now will you please give me back the reins? . . .”

“You just set tight. And keep your eyes peeled for trouble.”

“Lassiter, it's an overnight trip to Dexter.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

She looked exasperated. “Just how are we supposed to sleep is what I mean.”

“How'd you manage when Dad Hornbeck was along. Or somebody else you picked up as swamper?” “They've been perfect gentlemen. Every one.”

He flashed a hard smile. “And you don't think I will be, I suppose.”

“I only know what my husband said . . .”

“I'm not surprised at anything he'd say.”

“He said you're quite a hand with the ladies.”

“He must've been looking in a mirror when he said that.”

She colored slightly, knowing he referred to the way she had been taken in by Vanderson.

They were some miles above Aspen Creek when he urged her to take his horse and go home. He'd get the cargo to Dexter. After thinking it over, he had decided there was no reason she should wear herself out on the long trip.

“We've gone this far,” she said stiffly. “I'll continue.” They travelled another six or seven miles in silence, grinding around the narrow curves on a road that ran through a forest of pine and aspen. Towering peaks rose on either side, some still wearing what remained of winter snow. As they climbed, it grew colder. A sharp wind whistled from a high pass ahead.