Over on the Dry Side (15 page)

His voice was choked up.

Finally, he said, “What do you know about Marny?”

“That she's a fine, beautiful young woman who respects and loves you, despises your outfit, and deserves a better chance. In fact, that's the real reason I rode in here tonight. You're her stepfather. I want to ask Marny to marry me. And I want your permission.”

Chapter 14

“
Y
OU
WHAT?
”

“You're her oldest living relative. I suppose that legally you're her guardian. So I came to you.”

“Well, of all the damn gall! You—!” Mowatt stared at Chantry, then began to chuckle. “I'll be a yeller-livered coyote if that don't take first prize! You ridin' in here with my boys huntin' your hide, just to tell me that!”

“She's a lady,” Chantry continued quietly, “and somewhere under that tough old hide of yours there used to be a gentleman. A man who knows how things should be done.”

“You said anything to her 'bout this?”

“No.…She'd be surprised. She might even laugh at me. But I had to do it.”

“Well, I'll be damned,” Mac Mowatt threw his cigar butt onto the ground and rubbed it out with his toe. “You'd think we was back in Richmond or Charleston or somewheres like that.” He shook his head. “No…you're a gunfighting drifter, Chantry.”

“It would take a gunfighter to get her out of this. You've lost your control. I—”

“Lost my control? Like hell, I have! I can—”

“I told you I was settling down. I'm going to ranch, if you'll put your outfit off my back.”

“What do you mean, I've lost control?”

“Well, they went out after her, didn't they? Said she was uppity, that they'd just show her.”

“I hope you killed that man.”

“He took one in the leg that didn't do him any good, and so far as I know he's still out there.”

Then Owen Chantry got to his feet. “Now you know, Mac Mowatt. I want to court Marny, and I've come to you as a gentleman should. You call off your boys, or there's going to be war.”

“How long do you think you'd last?” Mac Mowatt had risen too.

“Jake Strawn is trouble.”

“And Tom Freka?”

“I thought he was leading the chase after Marny. I'm pretty sure he's killed at least one woman. Get him out of the country or I'll kill him.”

Mac Mowatt rubbed his hand over his face. “Damnit, Chantry, I like you! Damned if I don't. You shape up like a man. But I've got these boys. And when you lead an outfit like this you got to
lead
. You got to stay ahead of them. I dunno…I really dunno. Why don't you and Marny light out? There's a preacher in the San Luis valley, and there's always Santa Fe.”

“This is my country, Mowatt. I've come home. If your boys want war, they'll get it. My advice to you is to latch onto Strawn. He and your son Frank are
men
.”

Mowatt shrugged. His mind was made up. “You an' them farmers don't count for much, Chantry. Those boys will cut you down.”

“Then it's war?”

“It is,” Mowatt said. “But I'll say this, Chantry, if you pull through somehow, and Marny wants you for her man, you've got my permission. If it plays that way, Chantry, give her a good life. She's a mighty fine young woman.”

Chantry turned and walked into the trees. He had gained nothing.

He worked his way back toward his horse, moving slowly, taking every precaution. Twice he paused to listen…ready for an instant shot.

He caught the vague glisten of moonlight on the polished leather of his saddle and heard the black shift its hoofs. Something moved in the shade and a low voice said, “I always wanted to kill me a big man, one o' them special fightin' men. I always figgered they was just so much talk. You know who this is, Chantry? This here is Thrasher Baynes, an' I got you dead t' rights!”

Chantry felt suddenly very tired. Almost bored. Would they never learn? He wanted to kill no one. He had never wanted to kill. He had fought in wars, he had fought in the service of the law, but he had never, even as a boy, wanted to be known as a killer of men.

Thrasher Baynes stood in the darkness. Thrasher Baynes had spotted him. He was expecting Chantry to reply, and he needed that reply to know exactly where he was.

Owen Chantry waited, alert to the slightest sound. If Thrasher moved…On his own right Chantry had a tree, on his left an open space some six feet across. And beyond that, his horse.

Thrasher spoke again. This time his voice was a tone higher. “What's the matter, Chantry? You scared? You too scared to talk? I'm a-gonna kill you, Chantry.”

Chantry didn't move. His rifle was on that voice, his finger on the trigger, the slack taken up.…He was only a hair from firing a shot, and he knew when he fired he would fire three times—one right down the middle, one somewhat lower right, and a third to the left.

If his first shot scored and Thrasher started to fall, Chantry'd have a good chance of nailing him a second time.

“Yaller, ain't you?”

They would all be coming now. It was only a matter of time.

Chantry fired into the sound. Fired once, then as fast as he could work the lever, twice more. Then he walked to his horse, pulled the slipknot, and climbed into the saddle.

Behind him something groaned and thrashed about on the ground. Then all was silent.

Owen Chantry knew where the trail was and how it lay. He went down it at a dead run. He had done what had to be done. What happened now would be on their own heads. He had had no hope of talking them out of their battle. That would have been asking too much of human nature. Yet now Mac Mowatt had been told of the growing lack of discipline in his own gang.

He slowed his pace among the trees, but rode steadily onward. The air was cool, the light wind from off the mountains chilly. Bright moonlight bathed the trail.

He had asked for a girl's hand in marriage before he had even asked the girl, or even talked to her of love. Was he a fool? Could she, or any woman, love him?

Was he the kind of man who would make a fit husband for Marny Fox…if he lived?

He had declared war. And although he might have help, it was a one-man war. They had killed his brother. It was his own land over which they were fighting. What his brother had left was his legacy, whether it was wealth or knowledge or a dream.

The ranch house had not burned down. Its timbers were solid, allowing no air holes. Some had just charred. A part of the roof had burned, but a late afternoon shower—usual in these mountains—had put out the fire. Nothing a good man with tools couldn't repair in a few days, and clean up in a week.

However, the place was exposed. They could not return there yet.

They'd come after him, the Mowatt gang. He dismounted and led his horse to water. Some distance away, he stretched out on the grass with his saddle for a pillow and watched the declining moon.

He dozed, awakened to listen, and dozed again. He knew all the sounds of the night and what they meant, and his horse was alert as only a former wild horse is, having lived too long with danger.

The nights when he slept through without awakening were few. He had taught himself to awaken at the slightest change in sound or air.

When the sky was gray and the landscape still black, he got up, sat on a log, and tugged on his boots, stamping his feet to settle them well. He led his horse to water again, saddled up, and considered what lay before him.

To kill every one of the gang might be necessary, but he had no wish for such an end. Yet he was one man alone, and the enemy was many. And victory would mean life for others than himself.

He thought about these things ruefully. The only gallant and dashing thing about him at the moment was the fine black horse he rode.

When he reached the house, he gathered a few half-burned rags and wrapped them up with string, the coarse twine Kernohan used to tie up bundles of corn.

Then Owen Chantry mounted the black horse and rode into battle. There were no banners flying, but the Irish were accustomed to fighting gallantly for causes already lost.

He was riding forth to battle. And his only weapons were wit and the bitter wine of his experience.

Chapter 15

O
N HIS LONG night ride back from the ranch house, Owen Chantry had crossed Turkey Creek Canyon and turned west along the south rim, scouting it all the way to Lost Canyon.

If they followed his trail, they would ride where he had ridden.…And they
would
ride his trail, because otherwise they might lose him.

In a patch of woods overlooking his trail, but several hundred yards off, he dismounted. He caressed the black and talked to it. The horse turned its head and pushed at Chantry with its nose.

The grass along these trails and back in the cul-de-sac was tall and dryer than elsewhere. There was sparse timber. He glanced at the sky. It was scattered with the usual white puffballs of cloud. By midafternoon they would bunch up and there would probably be rain.

He knew a way to box them in.

He saw their dust before he saw them. Just a thin trail rising up from the dry grass. He walked back to his horse, took up the reins, and mounted. They were following his trail, just as he intended.

Putting a finger in his mouth he wetted it well and held it up. The wind was from the east, toward Lost Canyon. They'd have a little trouble at the canyon's rim because there was a shelf of rock there, bare rock, and the trail would be lost for a little way.

When they had gone on by he rode down toward them. He would have to be quick, for the ride into and out of the cul-de-sac would be no more than a mile.

He drew up when he'd cut their trail and glanced along a line toward a smaller canyon. Then he struck a light and lighted a bundle he'd made of dry cloth and grass. The bundle was big, and took longer than he liked to flame up. Then he got into the saddle and took a turn around the pommel with the other end of the twine. He walked his horse west, dragging the burning bundle. Behind him the grass caught fire and began to burn toward the rim. The wind was not strong enough, but it was there, and the fire would generate wind of its own.

He walked the black along, and first the grass began to burn, then the brush. He started to trot his horse and rode up to the other canyon rim. Then he loosed the twine and turned away, riding swiftly. A half mile off, he glanced back. Smoke was billowing up, and he saw a sudden arrow of fire as a tree loaded with sap exploded into flame.

He knew he wasn't going to burn them. They were too smart for that. They would find a gap in the line where the fire had not taken hold, or they would ride into the small lake near the rim. What he wanted to do was worry them, make them wonder what was coming next. He wanted them to know it wasn't going to be easy for them. He wanted them to think about losing, about coming up with nothing for all their trouble, about dying. He wanted them to sweat. He wanted them to get so disgusted they'd quit.

He trotted the black, watching for the home trail. He had no fear of the fire burning over into Lost Canyon because of that strip of bare rock.

I
WAS PUTTIN' sticks on the fire when I seen him coming down from the rim. Seems like no matter how long he'd been ridin' or where, he always sat his saddle like he was on parade. It bothered me some, but at the same time I envied him. He surely was a fine-looking man, even if he was wore out a little around the edges.

“You smell that smoke?” I asked him.

“Nothing to worry about, Doby. It'll burn out in a few more minutes.”

Marny came up from the stream, brushing her hair as she walked. The gladness in her eyes worried me more than Chantry. What did she see in him, old as he was?

“How's Kernohan?” Chantry asked.

“He's better. He's had some soup and he drank some more coffee. I think he's gaining a little.” She looked at him, his face haggard in the morning light. “Have you slept at all, Owen?”

Calling him by his first name like that!

“Enough. But if there's anything to eat…”

“It's ready.”

“Where's the old man?”

“He's disappeared into the timber.”

Trees shaded the ground, but there were spots of sunlight. Chantry ate a bit, then sat down under a tree, his rifle across his lap. He weren't never far from that rifle. And sleepy he might be, but when he woke up he was ready.

Marny came up with a refill for his coffee, but he had his head back, plumb asleep. “He looks beat,” I commented. “Ridin' all night, likely. I'd give a coon to know what he's been up to.”

“I am glad he's back with us,” Marny said. “Between the two of you and the old man—”

“I don't cotton to that old man. Says he's been around since Noah's ark, but I never seen him before. I don't know what he's up to, but I don't like it no how…or him either.”

“Has he told you his name?”

“He's mentioned a couple, but I don't believe either one of 'em is right. He sorta smiled when he told me.

Likely he don't even remember. I don't believe he's been here long. We woulda seen him.”

“Doby? How many bears have you seen in these mountains?”

“Ain't seen any. Nor cougars, neither, but they're around here.”

“That's right.”

Well, I taken another look at her. “I see what you mean,” I admitted, “you figger he's like them. If I ain't seen a bear or a cougar, that don't mean they ain't here.”

She went over to where Pa lay. His eyes opened and he looked up at her. His mind wasn't wanderin' this morning and he seemed better, like she'd said. I was never no hand with sick folks and was uncomfortable bein' around 'em, because I never known what to do. Ever' once in a while I figgered to ask Pa what a body did at them times, and I kept telling myself to listen and watch other folks. Womenfolks, they just seemed to know. But how, I never could figger out. Just come natural to 'em, I reckon.