Born Savage Page 8

  Looking at the littered table, Ordway remembered with anger how his mother had placed napkins there which Ethan, scowlingly bent over his plate, ignored.

  There was a two-gallon can of kerosene back of the stove. Ordway removed the raw potato universally used throughout the ranching country in lieu of a screw cap cover. He happened to glance up and saw three pairs of eyes watching him, in Vernell’s a strange wonder.

  “This was my home, he said bitterly. “This was the kitchen from which my mother fled into a snowstorm a few hours before I was born.”

  He picked up the lamp and flung it hard against the wall as a gasp came from the two women. Fire leaped up and began to eat hungrily at peeling wall paper put there by his mother’s own hands. In its light three people, a man and his wife and his niece, saw a face they would never forget An almost swarthy, terrible face.

  In that face was the same terrible thing Vernell had seen as he stood with a hot six-shooter in his hand and fired a third shot into Red Waldo’s toad-shaped body sagging against the porch support in Squaw Valley.

  Ordway thought: I know now that I could never have lived here with Kathy. There would have been too many memories, too many reminders of the yesterdays and— He didn’t realize that he spoke the rest of it aloud. “And for me there are no yesterdays.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Randolph said politely.

  “Thinking out loud. Randolph, I respect the determination that brought you here, I admire it even though a decision born of desperation. But Ethan Ordway is out in the open now as leader of Sonny’s gang of range toughs.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “That your women are no safer than you are. Take them and get out”

  He spoke directly to Mrs. Randolph. If he was aware that her grave eyes were searching his face, searching for what lay back of its grim mask, he gave no sign. “Three times today I’ve displayed weakness. I was grateful to you for kindness. I couldn’t stain your home with a coward’s blood. And I disfigured my uncle’s face into bloody pulp with a gun barrel instead of killing him.”

  “You did that?” she murmured.

  “Get your people out of here fast and to Koonce in town. Stay there until this thing is settled one way or another. We’ve got company coming.”

  He walked from the kitchen and its crackling flames. He went through a parlor and into another room. The ancient flooring creaked. When he sloshed Kerosene and lit it and stepped back, he realized suddenly how big a room could be in childhood, how small it is twenty-seven years later.

  Small and crudely built and so very, very old. Unaware that Vernell had followed him he stood looking at books by the hundreds in floor-to-ceiling shelves. Musty and with gaps in them like broken teeth. Ethan, who had installed his bed in here after Ordway left on his presumed fatal trip to Mexico, had used them for winter fuel in a comer stove.

  “Memories?” came the girl’s gentle voice in sympathy.

  “Too many,” he grunted at her as flames crackled louder. “I was educated in this room while my mother lived. I lived in it for fifteen years after her death, and only the books kept Ethan from turning me into another Sonny Shackleford or Step Eaton.”

  He unscrewed the main cap off the top of the can and she watched with growing sickness of heart as he splashed streams of the incendiary liquid over books and shelves. He soaked the rumpled bed and Ethan’s filthy, odorous blankets.

  The room became an inferno as he backed away, driven by the heat. “Get out of here!” he shouted above the increasing roar.

  “You’d better hurry, too, Mr. Ordway,’’’Mrs. Randolph called. “Eric heard your horse rear and caught it. Riders are coming very fast.”

  A trail of fire followed him from room to room until they came to a final door at the east porch, where outside Randolph held the nervous horses. Poor unfortunate Kathy, he thought bitterly. She had planned so much to paint here and fix there. Now it was all over and done with. He felt nothing except a strange sense of relief.

  Something vile had been drawn out of him like pus out of a festering sore. He felt clean again.

  It was in the past and no man could ever go back and pick up that past.

  Ordway flung the empty can from him and followed the two women. He didn’t look back. His high-strung mare, afraid of a fist blow, tried to rear and he brought her down with an iron hand and went up into leather.

  The Randolph’s broke free and spurred away, expecting that he would follow. Channon Ordway watched them go and rode away as a group of hard running riders, led by an insanely screaming madman, pounded toward the burning ranch house.

  NINE

  Out in the basin Channon Ordway pulled up and sat there for a few moments for a final glimpse of home. Flames were leaping like dragons’ tongues from all windows. Ordway wasn’t certain but he thought he heard some fool begin to fire his pistol.

  The black mare moved on into the night at a fast trot. A half mile south of the burning ranch house a low mound, round like a grassy blister on the face of the basin floor, loomed up. In the night he saw the fence of white picket and the headstones.

  He had come to say good-bye, possibly a final one.

  But he heard horses coming almost at him, loping through the lush spring grass, and he grabbed the Sharps off the saddle. However, his trained ears told him the number. Three. -

  “Over here,” he called piercingly.

  A man couldn’t even say good-bye to his family without the presence of these three.

  They came up the slope and saw the little fenced plot with five graves and then they were silent Eric Randolph finally spoke up. “Really. I’m afraid we’ve intruded again. Please accept our apologies, Mr. Ordway.” “We didn’t know,” Mrs. Randolph added. “We have never before been in the basin, you know.”

  “It’s all right” Ordway replied. “The two big stones belong to my father and mother. He was killed in a shootout, trying to save Ethan’s life, and she never got over it.”

  “How tragic. And the others?”

  “Two stillborns and a small sister who toddled out into a corral full of green bronks one day.”

  He put on his hat and reined over. In the distance the flames made a pillar of fire in the night. Within an hour old Pronghorn Ranch would be but a heaping pile of exploding coals.

  “I can still hardly believe it,” Eric Randolph spoke as the four of them rode in silence across the basin toward Tulac. “A man burning his own home.”

  “Lucky for you,” Ordway said almost shortly. “God only knows what might have happened to you.”

  In the night a bright spot appeared unseen in the girl’s cheeks. Sonny had been pretty blunt and coarse with her during their last minutes on the Rocking R. Had she told Eric he would have shot the tough dead.

  They came at last to where the wagon road climbed up the west side of the basin and into Tulac. Here and there in the night stood little groups of people still watching the fire.

  Impelled by some impulse she wasn’t sure of, Vernell spoke to Ordway. “Well,” she inquired, “on the assumption that you don’t break your word, Mr. Ordway, when will the Rocking R in Bitter Squaw be next?”

  “Come on,” he growled. “We’ve got to find Koonce.” He turned for a final look east. Far out there in the basin was a mass of glowing coals, a cigarette butt in the basin’s night-clenched lips.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Any regrets?”

  “No,” Channon Ordway said. “My only regret was that I was too soft and let my uncle live instead of killing him this afternoon.”

  “Soft?” she repeated and turned wide eyes upon her aunt. Under her breath she whispered. “Soft? God in heaven!”

  They came to Hansen’s deserted place. A curious face stuck itself out over the swing doors and then Mike Adkins came fully into view. His glance took in the four riders sitting in the overflow of light from within.

  “I didn’t think they’d catch that black mare because I know the man who bred her. So
you burned Ethan out, huh? Good!”

  “The admirable fellow did it to pull my family and myself out of what could have been a fatal spot,” the easterner replied.

  “No,” Ordway said. “That’s why I rode out there.”

  “Where you going now?” Mike wanted to know.

  “To put these people under Koonce’s protection if they’ve got sense enough to stay there.”

  Mike stepped off the porch and came closer and looked up. “Henry Cartwright is with him. They’re at Step’s house. Step hurt her-with his fists and her baby came. Prematurely. Stillborn.”

  “Where’s Step now?”

  “He grabbed a horse and went home in a cloud of dust He was out with his rifle and some food by the time Bob got there with the shotgun to kill him. He’s out there somewhere tonight with a long range rifle, he’s shocked sober, and he probably won’t come back again until somebody is dead.”

  “I see. Mike, Doc Cartwright once told me privately that Ethan likely was mildly insane. Chances are that the gun beating and ranch burning has tipped him over the edge. Watch your step… and your bank!”

  He gigged the black mare into motion and the three silent easterners followed.

  One of the prices Step Eaton had been willing to pay in order to get Kathy Perry was a neat home of white and yellow native stone on the west side of town. At the front fence were several horses and a couple of vehicles. Neighbors came in time of need. They stood about in hushed little groups.

  Near Doc Cartwright’s buggy Ordway dismounted from the black mare, careful to avoid the square of light splashing out through the front door into Kathy’s carefully prepared spring flower beds. Step might just be lurking around with his Winchester.

  Ordway made no effort to help the two women dismount. They rode horses like they handled a sporting rifle: capably. As Ordway once had heard the story, Eric Randolph had spent years in India as a top governmental administrator.

  “It’s a lovely little place,” Mrs. Randolph remarked, removing her riding gloves as the four of them went up the walk between the flower beds. Ordway kept in the dark as much as possible.

  “You always seem to say the right thing,” Ordway said with a wintry smile. “That makes it a bit more difficult to dislike the other members of the family.”

  Koonce came to the front door, Greener in one hand. Apparently he also thought Step might be around. Beyond his outlined figure, in the kitchen, an elderly woman was almost up to her elbows in a pan of dough. Tobe Whitehouse’s widow, Koonce’s stepmother.

  When tragedy struck at a small town family, no members cooked. By an unwritten law, that was a duty of neighbors and friends. By this time tomorrow night there would be cakes and pies from as far as ten miles away.

  “How’s Kathy, Bob?” Ordway inquired of the now ex-deputy.

  “Doc Cartwright thinks she might make it, poor kid. I hear there was quite a bonfire out in the basin tonight.”

  “I’m going to pay a visit to our county commissioners in the very near future. If they give you Tobe’s badge, you can investigate, amigo.”

  Koonce shook hands with the others, as Ordway went deeper into the neat, little home to find Cartwright, Randolph told in detail of the burning of Pronghorn. When he finished Vernell asked a question.

  ‘Was he always like this before he came home from Mexico?”

  “Like what, ma’am?”

  “Bitter. Hard. Merciless.”

  “He burned the house where his mother died and where they brought the body of his father in a wagon. Nobody else would have, ma’m.”

  “Do you think that possible subsequent extenuating circumstances might make him change his mind about burning our place?”

  ‘I doubt it,” he answered in his quiet way.

  She felt like stomping her booted foot in exasperation. Anger flared in her. “But if you’re appointed sheriff what will you do to prevent it?”

  “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, ma’am.”

  Presently Ordway returned with a string-wrapped package of food beneath one arm. Mrs. Whitehouse had prepared it while he spent a few short minutes with Kathy. He could still see the pitifully thin body, the fear-filled, pleading eyes staring up at him from the dark circles.

  “How is she, Mr. Ordway?” Vernell asked.

  “I told her Mike was putting her back to work in the bank, and I think that helped.”

  “And her husband?”

  “Lon Perry is sober and will stay on guard. Well get him.”

  “Could I see her?” the girl asked.

  “I’m sure of it. Six months from now she’ll be a new person and prettier in a more mature way.” He voiced the words simply because he believed. There was no other thought back of them, no desire to start all over again. Kathy was locked out of his mind in that way and always would be because the man who had loved her was a man of no yesterdays.

  A sharp pang of jealousy knifed through Vernell. She felt guilty, feeling this way toward a sick, tragedy-stricken girl. But she was a woman and couldn’t help it. She was falling in love with Channon Ordway, one of the terrible, gunfighting, black Ordway’s.

  She told herself that it was gratitude toward him for having pulled them out of a desperation-motivated situation at Pronghorn. His visit to the little family plot had uncovered one of many probable facets of his complex character.

  Then she heard him speaking and all illusion vanished.

  “Bob,” he told the ex-deputy, “this tenderfoot outfit paid off my trail crew double to pull out on me. They cat-footed me with guns, and then turned my herd over to Sonny, working under Ethan’s orders.”

  “So, Chann?”

  “If I was capable of cooking up a little pity for them for being so foolish it’s wiped out because they Rocking R-stamped some of my cattle today while I was a prisoner.”

  He turned to Randolph. “Whatever you paid my trail crew in wages,” he said coolly, “take it out of my branded cattle at twenty dollars a head. Beyond a pair of chafed wrists I owe you nothing.”

  “I believe I apologized for that,” Randolph replied stiffly.

  “I burned one ranch tonight,” Ordway said as Doc Cartwright came up. “I’ll burn another one if necessary.”

  “Here, here,” Cartwright snorted. “What’s all this talk?”

  Ordway, however, accompanied by Koonce, was already moving through the night toward the black mare. Cartwright directed his shrewd gaze upon Mrs. Randolph.

  She said in quiet resignation: “Two stubborn men who should be friends instead of this way. We made a mistake. a terrible mistake. We wronged Mr. Ordway in a manner that leaves me ashamed.”

  “He’s a hard son-of-a-gun Doc admitted. “But he’ll soften up come time. His father did.”

  “Regardless of any mistakes,” Randolph cut in with edged determination that Doc secretly knew was stubbornness, “I still conduct the affairs of the valley according to my own best judgment”

  “And in the meantime,” Vernell asked, “Just what are two mere women supposed to do, Doctor?”

  Over the cigar clamped in a comer of his mouth he gave her a look that was positively wicked. “Why don’t you try marrying the son-of-a-gun? His mother didn’t do so bad with Tim,” he added a little softly.

  She almost fled up the walk between the new flower beds, her face aflame, vowing that she would never understand these people and didn’t ever again wish to try.

  At the black mare Ordway was busy fastening the food inside Step’s saddle bags. He and Koonce talked in low tones. Doc strolled up, cigar glowing, and Mike Adkins appeared hurriedly. Mike carried his old rifle in hand.

  “They’ve just hit town, Chann,” he said hurriedly in a low voice. “They’re in Hanse’s place and Ethan is a raving madman. God, he’s gone crazy!”

  “Not used to being bucked,” Ordway grunted, busy with rawhide thongs.

  “What’re you going to do?” Mike asked. His white hair shone like silver under the Milky Way. />
  “Bob will tell you. Get word to the county commissioners and tell them it’s either me or Ethan, and to take their choice about an acting sheriff. Do the best you can about protecting those women. In addition to being a block of ice, that damned Randolph is the most bullheaded man I ever ran into.”

  “Look who’s saying it!” jeered Doc Cartwright. Ordway made no reply. He swung into the saddle. It was time to go, time to run for it.

  No fox yet had ever turned on the hounds and emerged alive.

  TEN

  Ordway swung into Step Eaton’s saddle. He caught a glimpse of Randolph and his wife standing together alone. The aloof man wanted it that way. In the dim doorway glow, he saw also upon Mrs. Randolph’s heartshaped face the love and loyalty and yet the pain, the unhappiness that love and that loyalty were exacting.

  He rode into the night and both Mike and Doc came over. “I don’t trust that man insofar as my ranch is concerned,” Randolph stated distinctly. “Very few of you people have given me reason to. He’s a wes—”

  “What do you plan to do about it?” Mike wanted to know, edgedly.

  “Protect it,” came the crisp reply.

  “Dammit, Eric,” Mike said exasperatedly. “People in this country were just beginning to like you. They’re just now beginning to forgive you for being the Hermit’s brother. Don’t ruin it by making Chann’s job harder.”

  “I’m still master of my own affairs,” Mike was reminded stonily.

  “And what does that mean?” the banker asked sarcastically.

  “I’ll take my wife and niece to Rocking R and protect what is mine.”

  “Oh Lord!” groaned Mike Adkins and threw up both hands, one of them rifle-weighted. “For two cents, I’d have you roped and hog-tied. Hey, Bob. “

  But Koonce had vanished in the night on foot, stalking the saloon to see what was going on in Hanse’s place.

  As for Ordway, Step’s saddle didn’t fit his seat nor his legs, and his Mexican boots felt strange not being shoved into bull-snout taps. He wanted his own equipment and was swinging around to Ethan’s livery to see if it was there.