Born Savage Page 10

  Little fellows too new born and weak to stay up.

  It was hard to picture this woman as having three impish young sons in an exclusive school several thousand miles away. Yet in the great melting pot of the west you found derby’d road agents who were educated gentlemen and apprehensive lest they frighten the lady passengers. You saw a cowpuncher playing Schubert melodies on the beat up keys of a saloon piano.

  And people had seen Ellen Ordway as a new bride on the ranch in Pronghorn Basin. She had come to a Colorado wilderness with Tim Ordway, as Mary Randolph had gone to India with her aristocratic husband.

  The two women pulled up and waited when they saw Ordway approach. He couldn’t tell whether they still believed he had burned their home that night last week, but they appeared uncertain and yet with a determination characteristic of Randolph himself. Ordway reined in close beside the left front wheel and touched a hand to the brim of his sombrero.

  “I’m taking it for granted that we are not welcome, Mr. Ordway,” Vernell said steadily, “But in some respects we had no choice.”

  There were tired lines around Mrs. Randolph’s eyes where last he had seen a steady flow of quiet grief, but there was nothing antagonistic in the glance she gave him. She seemed beyond hatred. Or most likely, he told himself, she never learned how.

  “You look a bit tired,” he remarked smilingly.

  The older woman removed her hat and smiled back faintly. “Not more so than perhaps Eric is.”

  “With apologies to two courageous women, certainly not as damned stubborn.” Ordway’s own smile faded. He was remembering that faint rifle shot. “Where is he?”

  She waved a vague hand. “Out there someplace, I guess. He followed your trail the day after … the fire, and then hurried home. We were aware by then that all three of us were in equal danger. We’ve been hidden out until he located the herd today and told Vernell and myself to join you.”

  “All right. We’re on our last camp before hitting Pronghorn Basin tomorrow. Camp site is a half mile ahead and a bit south at a spring.”

  He touched his hat brim again and loped away to select a calfless heifer for butchering by the Utes. A new uneasiness he had concealed from the woman now assailed him. Randolph certainly had used his head in getting his wife and niece out of danger.

  Now the damned, lofty-prided fellow had put them right back into danger, not to mention the cattle, and gone off on his own.

  Every yard that the herd now advanced closer to Pronghorn lessened their need for his guidance and brought larger over him the shadow of ambush. He now didn’t dare to ride within five hundred yards of a motte or ravine lip for fear it contained a rifleman like Step. And if Ordway went down out of the saddle and the unarmed Utes scattered in panic, those two women likely would be killed as ruthlessly as Sonny had shot the two young squaws.

  “Damned bullheaded stiff-neck,” Ordway growled darkly. If the man had only locked his superciliousness toward the natives in a closet and made friends … If only he hadn’t been so distant and aloof…

  Ordway’s uneasiness for the man’s safety grew. Harl Griddle was no killer in the sense that he’d shoot it out when the odds were even. But there had been a rifle on his saddle, Ethan wanted Randolph dead, and if he got a shot at the man’s back he’d take it without hesitation.

  “If Randolph just keeps fooling around long enough,” Ordway went on growling to himself, “he’s going to find out that playing hunter is a little different when the game is armed with a good Winchester instead of a pair of claws. The effective range is a little different tool”

  He remembered again the sound of that distant rifle shot, and his uneasiness for the safety of Eric Randolph, of the two women, grew.

  It was shortly after dark that evening when Ordway scratchingly finished whittling off a murderous-looking crop of black bristle and put on the damp shirt he’d hand washed below the spring and hung out to dry. The nights were turning warmer and the stars winked brightly. The herd was bedded down and all bawling ceased as the last mother found the last lost calf.

  The Indian guards were out, but they carried no arms. All they could do in case of attack would be to yell a warning.

  Ordway took a long-bladed sheath knife from his cantle roil and rose. The freshly butchered beef carcass, a night-wandering trouble maker that would butt no more cows awake, hung from a large limb nearby. From the Indian fires a hundred yards away came the smell of raw beef over camp fire coals. He thought of the food Mrs. Randolph had prepared in the kitchen that other day—when he had acted such a boor, and his stomach cried out a protest at such impiety.

  A light step sounded behind him. It gave off a crisp sound in the spring night. He didn’t whirl with a gun out. He knew the sound and it made his heart leap. He had heard it the first time when Eric Randolph covered him with a sporting gun and Vernell stepped into view. Even then sight of her had made his hungry blood pound. Now he was unashamedly glad.

  He knew at that moment that he loved this strange girl very, very much.

  Not as he had loved Kathy Perry. That had been different. She had been an ex-outlaw’s child, one of his own kind. She’d received a modicum of education in the crude facilities Tulac’s little group of people had afforded, and much of her life had been occupied carrying a new baby brother or sister on an out-thrust hip. About the time she was eleven or twelve Ordway had come upon her just as Sonny had her down in a weed patch with most of her clothing tom off, and Sonny had taken a terrible beating from a bigger and older Channon. When she was about fifteen, and Step, a big lout and drinking now at eighteen, also got roughly amorous one night, Step, too, took a terrible beating.

  After that everybody understood that it was just a question of time until Kathy Perry grew up and Channon Ordway made up his mind to settle down. The town drunkard’s daughter was going to come out all right!

  That was the way it had been. That was the way it was not anymore, and never could be again. That was what he was remembering as he saw this girl, Vernell Randolph As this same day earlier, she stood a bit uncertain. She knew he had made good his threat to burn their ranch, just as the next moment she knew it couldn’t be so. She knew that he must resent their presence here like homeless neighbors seeking shelter and charity. Events of the past eight days had burned harshly into her, had drained away the usual spirited asperity. Had he been right that first day? Eric turning desperate man hunter; Mary over there on her knees beside a cook fire; and herself … Had the fiber begun to coarsen?

  She hesitated as though seeking a way to break the barrier that ever had been between them from the first moment they met He spotted the hesitation and did it for her. “You just made a picture for a moment I’ll be a long time forgetting, Vernell” using her name for the first time. “Well-I come to the camp of the enemy.”

  The bright spots appeared in her cheeks again and a strange kind of pain appeared in the unusual onyx eyes. “Please,” she said in a low voice. “My aunt Mary invites you to share our food. The beggars offering to share their little with those who have more.”

  He sheathed the big knife and walked over to her. She knew what was going to happen and was powerless to protest, to prevent it. His mouth came down upon hers and she was amazed to find it warm, gentle’ tender. She stood woodenly, but a quiver ran through her lithe body and when she stepped back she knew there was a near panic in her eyes.

  She looked at him like some wild thing that was cornered, trapped; paralyzed and unable to flee. “Don’t,” she got out huskily. “Please, you mustn’t ever do that again… Channon Ordway.”

  “If the time ever comes I feel you mean it, I won’t,“he said gently.

  They walked to where the canvas-topped wagon was dimly outlined in the light of the fire. Mrs. Randolph, spoon in hand, stood staring off into the night toward the west Now she turned with a smile of welcome.

  “I was simply hoping that I might hear the sound of Eric’s mount Mr. Ordway, what we have hardly will be on par
with the last food I had the pleasure of serving you. But we’ll do our best.”

  He grinned with new feeling.

  “My name is Channon, Mrs. Randolph, and after the manners I displayed that day to spite Vernell, you should have thrown me out of the house ” His face sobered. “It might sound a little strange to you, Mrs. Randolph, but I’ve been considerably concerned about the picture.”

  She looked puzzled. He added: ‘The one of the three boys. In the kitchen. Did you save it?”

  She shook her head. “No, Mr.—Channon. It was on Eric’s secretary in the big room.”

  “If I had burned your home like I foolishly threatened,” he said slowly, “I would have given you back that picture tonight”

  She looked embarrassed and a flush appeared in her rounded cheeks. A new light had come into Vernell’s own face. “You never burned our home, did you, Channon?” she cried out.

  He shook his head.

  The food was like manna from heaven after the Mexican camp fare he’d been used to for months, plus a week of his own and Indian cooking. He stopped eating only because good manners dictated it.

  “There’s quite a legend among many about old Kit Carson, one of our fabulous mountain men who once wintered where Tulac now stands,” he sighed, leaning back against a wagon wheel. “After months in the wilderness he went into a dining room in San Francisco, ordered five meals, and ate them all. Now I know how he felt.”

  A strange, brief contentment came over him as he leaned back and built a cigarette. Now he realized more than ever what marriage had done for Tim Ordway, what too much loneliness had done to Ethan Ordway. A man needed a woman and a goal in life. Without it he was nothing.

  A couple of hundred yards away some of the younger Ute bucks, still overflowing with restive energy, had built themselves a separate, larger fire. They’d brought out a couple of drums and now were hammering away while they pranced around the fire and kyoodled by way of the usual evening amusement. Mrs. Randolph, dish drying towel in hand, listened for a few moments and then turned her worried face to the west again and the darkness out there.

  Ordway said, “Did he say when he’d be back?”

  “He is so precise, Channon,” she nodded. “It’s his way of life, the same manner in which people out here consider him cold and aloof. If we could only have remained here long enough as peaceful cattle raisers. With no murder of his wayward brother, no theft of our cattle, people would have seen a warm and friendly man, eager to be of service to the community.”

  Ordway got to his feet and pinched out the cigarette butt “What time did he expect to return, Mrs. Randolph,” he asked slowly.

  “About dusk, Channon. He was planning to make the ride to Tulac and return. He wanted to slip into town and have a talk with Mr. Koonce.”

  Ordway thought of Harl. Ten to one Randolph had cut his trail within a mile or two after meeting Ordway. Or, vice versa, that rifle shot. Chances were that one of those two men was dead. He should have investigated.

  Ordway controlled his feelings. “I wish I had known that”

  “You think something serious may have happened?” Vernell asked anxiously from on her knees beside the dishpan.

  “The last thing I told Koonce the night I left Tulac,” he explained, “was that I was coming east eighty miles to old White Buffalo’s little village on the edge of the reservation. Ethan hadn’t sold any cattle of yours in either Denver or Cheyenne. Mike Adkins would have known about it So chances were that he was holding over there, waiting for the calves to be weaned before selling the cows to the agency for fall beef. It turned out to be a good guess.

  “Figuring six or eight miles a day on the return trip, Bob was supposed either to be here tonight or let me’ know what was going on, or leave a message on a ledge above the spring, where we built our campfires. There was no message and so far he hasn’t shown up.

  “I’ve been trying to tell myself for the past three hours that nothing is wrong. Now I know better. If Eric Randolph doesn’t show up by midnight, I’m going to Tulac and I can’t leave you here without protection. We’ll leave about midnight.”

  He strode into the night. Had he not been too preoccupied he would have noticed that the beat of the drums had changed. So had the kyoodling of the young bucks. There was something no longer carefree in the sound. It had become ominous, and now it suddenly ceased.

  At the fire two women looked at each other, no words necessary to express the sickening fear that Randolph might no longer be alive. Then the girl’s eyes took in the tall gunbelted figure in vaquero clothing who had kissed her. It did something to her face. Unknown to her, Mary Randolph saw and guessed.

  “You’re in love with Channon, aren’t you kitten?” she asked, using her and Eric’s pet name for the girl they considered more of a daughter than niece.

  “Yes,” Vernell nodded. “But when he kissed me tonight I don’t think it was love. I just happened to be the first available woman within reach to help drown his disappointment over the loss of Kathy Eaton.”

  TWELVE

  At midnight Ordway saddled two good horses and the black mare. She was no longer in fear of a fist smash in the face from Step when he was drunk, or after she lost a sprint race. But there were a number of knothead Indian pony scrub studs in the Ute remuda, and Ordway had taken no chances. He kept her on picket and curried her, hoping that some day in the future he could use her as the nucleus of a fine band of racers.

  Old White Buffalo, a sixty-year, moth-eaten white robe from an albino buffalo around his skinny shoulders, stood nearby. Leading the mare, Channon went over and stuck out his hand.

  “We are going now, my father. Put the herd in Pronghorn Basin tomorrow and then return home. If I do not come to you with money in two weeks, there will be no pay.”

  “There was blood on the clouds at sundown, and a coyote ran up a tree that had no limbs.”

  The old man withdrew his limp brown claw from Ordway’s hand and looked up at the sky. Likely he was sending out his thought spirits and asking them for a safe journey for the three whites, Ordway guessed.

  Ordway leathered aboard the satiny mare and rode over to where Vernell and Mary Randolph waited. He set a course due west beneath the Big Dipper. One of the horses slobbered and to his tautened nerves it sounded louder than that rifle shot. He kept thinking about Harl Griddle and why Ethan hadn’t sent Step or Sonny or a good long-gun expert. Why had he sent a harmless middle-aged man who’d let himself fall into Ordway’s trap.

  Ethan had wanted to impart some information to Ordway. He had used Griddle to do it He had wanted Ordway to know about the tax auction and that Sonny was sheriff.

  The whole thing had been too easy. To kill him out here, Ordway surmised, might scare the Randolph’s away again.

  He had wanted to make certain that Channon would arrive in town at the precise day of Ethan’s choosing, on a day when he would obtain legal control of Squaw Valley for a probable one dollar bid, and kill him ruthlessly.

  Kill him and clean the town of any other person who stood in his way. Information about the tax sale had been the bait.

  “You’ve been quiet for too long,” Vernell’s voice finally came from beside him. “Is there something worrying you?”

  He told the two women riding on either side of him about Harl Griddle. “Ethan figured that you folks were either with the herd or in touch with me, after you disappeared. He wanted Randolph to know about the sheriffs tax sale. He’s been sitting in town like a big black spider, drawing us both into the trap.”

  He made no mention of the rifle shot, but his course was directed to where he had met the middle-aged cow thief. They came to the spot, the motte a dark blob in the night. Ordway guided a little farther to the northwest, and pulled down to a walk. Another half mile. And then a mile. It should be somewhere in this vicinity, the place where he had heard the shot …

  The black mare’s nose didn’t let him down. He heard the nervous slobber and then she shied over ag
ainst Mrs. Randolph’s horse. “Stay here,” he said in a low voice.

  “You think …” ,

  “I don’t know. I’m just hoping.”

  He got down and led the nervous mare forward. Within a hundred yards he found the body. He lit a match and looked down. Griddle, the lifetime cow thief and oldest member of Sonny’s outfit, lay on his back with one arm outspread. His hat was off and his face lay in flabby repose. His rifle was nearby. He’d been shot through the chest.

  The two women had seen the flare of the match and now rode up as Ordway picked up the dead man’s old repeater. ‘It’s all right,” he called. ‘It’s Harl Griddle.” “Thank God,” came a murmured reply from Mary. “Harl. Yes, I remember the name now. But, Channon, what could have become of my husband?”

  He examined the gun, a six-shot with four in the magazine. There was another in the chamber. Five. One shot probably fired. Had it killed Eric Randolph?

  “It’s too dark for tracking and we’ve got to get into town before daybreak. All you can do is hope … and maybe a little praying.”

  They reached Pronghorn and descended the east side of the basin. They picked their way across the floor, through the lush grass, at a horse-saving jog. They passed a mile away and to the left of a distant pile of ashes and some ancient corrals and sheds and other crude buildings, and rode on. They came again to the grassy mound and the white picket fence, but did not stop.

  Again Vernell spoke through the night. “Tell me something, Channon. When we first came here, Eric, trying to be friendly then, asked Ethan Ordway why Squaw Valley had been so named. Ethan almost struck him. If it’s not too personal—”

  “It’s been a long time ago now to everybody except Ethan. It must have eaten into him like cancer all these years. My mother chose Tim instead of him because Tim was a gentleman sucked into outlawry out of loyalty to his brother. On the night I was due to be born Tim fought through the snow storm to get Doc Cartwright rather than ask his brother to go. He was that kind of man. He couldn’t get back and my mother fled the house and went to the little Indian’ camp where your home was.