Texas Fever Page 4

  “Let me give you a cup of coffee,” she said, and when she’d poured it and given it to him: “From the lack of company we’ve had, you’d think Papa was suffering from plague instead of a simple bullet wound.”

  Chuck said uncomfortably, “It’s the Old Man’s orders, ma’am. I reckon he figures all the men would be over here if he’d let them. Probably he’s right.”

  She smiled slowly. “Why, that was a real pretty speech, Mr. McAuliffe. . . . They call you Chuck, don’t they? Does that mean your name is Charles?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Mine is Amanda,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am, I know.”

  “Your father doesn’t seem to think very highly of us,” she said, with a glance at the wagon. “Does he still suspect us of selling whiskey to the Indians?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he doesn’t think that, ma’am,” Chuck said quickly. “It’s just . . . well, he’s got his mind set on getting these steers to market, and anything that threatens to delay . . . Anyway, he hasn’t exactly been sociable towards anybody since Dave died.”

  “Dave?”

  “My brother,” Chuck said. “He was shot by those bushwhackers that hit us at the Arkansas . . . the same ones you ran into. Dave went through the war in the Old Man’s outfit; they were pretty close. . . .”

  He stopped, as the wagon shook with movement, and Jesse McAuliffe appeared. The Old Man went straight to his horse, and Chuck made a move towards his own mount, but his father paused to look at him.

  “Don’t stay too late,” he said. “Nobody’s going to take your guard for you.”

  “No, sir,” Chuck said.

  “Good night, ma’am. I think you need have no more worries about your father’s health, as far as this wound’s concerned.”

  Jesse McAuliffe raised his hat towards Amanda, and rode away towards the light of the other fire. The girl stood looking after him, frowning.

  “Now, whatever did he mean by that?” she murmured, with a glance at Chuck.

  “By what?” Chuck asked, surprised.

  The girl laughed. “Never mind. Let me fill your cup again.”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s better coffee than the cook makes— we call that six-shooter coffee.” He explained diffidently: “Because it’s thick enough to float a pistol, ma’am.”

  Her laugh was delighted and rewarding, and he found himself gaining confidence in her presence. Soon they were sitting near the fire, and he was talking to her as he’d talked to no one in years, not even Dave, whom he had been unable to trust not to make fun of him and call him Sonny if he said something naive. It came as a shock to discover, presently, that the fire had died to coals while he was rattling on about himself. He threw an uneasy glance up at the stars, and started to rise.

  “I didn’t realize . . ." he said, embarrassed. “It’s almost time for me to go on guard.”

  She touched his arm. “No, please. Tell me more about your ranch. It sounds wonderful.”

  He said, “It was a real nice place before the war, but it’s not much now, and it won’t be ours much longer if we can’t sell this herd for enough to pay the taxes.”

  “And you ran it by yourself, all through the war?”

  He grimaced. “I’ve really been blowing my horn, haven’t I, ma’am? It wasn’t so much a question of running it as of keeping things from falling apart completely. And I wasn’t alone; I managed to keep a crew of sorts, kids, and old men, and cripples. . ."

  “I should think your father would be very proud of you.”

  “Well,” Chuck said dryly, “if he is, you sure can’t tell by looking. . . . You haven’t told me a thing about yourself, ma’am. Reckon I haven’t given you much of a chance.”

  She laughed softly. “There’s not much to tell, except that I’m a girl who’s getting mighty fed up, right now, with harnessing horses and chopping wood. Oh, I learned to take care of myself after Mama died; I learned to do things I’d never dreamed I’d have to put my hand to. I was trained to be pretty and decorative and helpless; I can sew and embroider and play the piano. . . .”

  “I’d like to hear you,” Chuck said when she paused.

  “You aren’t likely to,” she said, smiling. “Not out here. I don’t suppose there’s a piano within a hundred miles, and if there is, in Baxter Springs say, it’s probably in a saloon or gambling house.” She still had her hand on his arm. After a moment, she said, “I’d like you to do something for me, Chuck.”

  “Anything, ma’am.”

  She laughed softly. “Two things. One, please don’t call me ma’am any more. And the second . . .” She hesitated, and went on: “The second is, I’d like you to kiss me, Chuck.” He stared at her, shocked, and she continued quickly: “It would mean nothing, you understand, except that . . . well, I’m feeling lonely and bedraggled and unattractive, and it would help. It would help very much. You’d have to be a woman to understand how much.”

  He was still staring at her like a fool, feeling the light touch of her hand like fire on his arm, wanting to rise and flee, and not really wanting to, either. Then she leaned forward slightly, and suddenly he was holding her and kissing her clumsily, recalling the time, years ago, as a young boy, he’d kissed the little daughter of some visiting friends, experimentally. . . . it hadn’t been so much, he remembered, nothing to make a fuss over. . . . But this was no little girl in his arms now, and he wasn’t a young boy, either, and it was like suddenly being snatched away by a raging river in flood. Her hands were holding him fiercely, encouraging him, and he was fumbling with her clothing, half expecting lightning to strike him dead, and nothing of the sort happened. She didn’t even protest or draw away, although what was happening no longer bore much relation to the innocent, meaningless kiss she’d asked him for. . . .

  He panicked, losing courage and desire abruptly. What he’d been about to do, he realized, had been a shocking and despicable thing: he must have misunderstood. What he’d taken for encouragement must have been simple passive acceptance of the fate he’d been about to inflict upon her. She was a woman alone in a land of rough men, dependent upon them for protection; she’d simply not dared to resist him.

  He found himself standing above her, guilty and ashamed. He tried to speak, but the words would not pass a sudden obstruction in his throat. He watched her rise and bring order to her garments, and walk forward to poke the fire with a piece of kindling. A flame sprang up. She dropped the kindling to feed it, and lifted her hands to her hair.

  Without looking at him, she said, “You’re very young, aren’t you, Chuck?” He still could not speak, standing there abashed, and she turned deliberately to face him. “Don’t feel badly,” she said. “The fault was mine. As I told you, after Mama died, I learned to . . . to do things I never dreamed. . . . When you find a nice girl to marry, some day, you can tell her how you were almost seduced by a wicked woman out on the prairie, but you had the strength to resist . . . Chuck.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” His voice obeyed him at last, but hoarsely.

  “Tell your father, since he’s so curious, that there will be a railroad to Fort Gibson within the next few years, as soon as the government decides to make the land available. Papa was hired to look over the possible routes for some interested speculators. That’s why he didn’t take a boat up the river. Naturally, we’d appreciate your not talking about it to anyone else. . . . And you can also tell your father. Chuck, that he’ll never get this herd of his past Baxter Springs.”

  “Why not?” Chuck demanded.

  “There have been outbreaks of Spanish fever among cattle all over the state of Kansas, wherever your Texas herds came through last year. The farmers are up in arms. There has been a quarantine law on the books since before the war. You must have heard about it.”

  “Yes, ma’am, but other outfits managed to slip through all right, so we figured—”

  “Nobody’s slipping through this year. The quarantine’s being enforced to the hilt. If you try to drive o
n to Sedalia along this trail, you will be mobbed. Your only hope is to swing to the west and try to drive around the area of heavy settlement. I’ve heard that one or two herds did get through near a town called Jepson, well out along the state line. Remember the name, Jepson. Maybe you can slip across there.” She regarded him for a moment longer. When she spoke again, there was tartness in her voice. “Now you’d better get back to your cows.”

  He hesitated, but there wasn’t really anything left to be said, and he turned and stumbled to his horse. He climbed into the saddle.

  “Chuck.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, looking down at her. He could not help noting that her dress, not fully fastened in front now, showed a hint of the white garments beneath, shaped to the roundness of her breasts. She caught the direction of his glance, smiled, and began to work with the small buttons, without haste.

  “Good-bye, Chuck,” she said. “And good luck.”

  He swung his horse around and fled, feeling depraved, foolish, and young.

  CHAPTER 6

  Amanda Netherton smiled, watching the boy riding away at a gallop. He rode beautifully, she thought, like all these Texans. Of course, with their great clumsy saddles and ridiculous long stirrups, they had no real style, and if it ever came to jumping, they’d probably be disemboweled by their own saddle horns. But they were horsemen nevertheless; there was no doubt of that Standing there, she found herself remembering her glossy thoroughbred, called Prince, and how the groom would bring him around in the morning, and check the girth of the side-saddle; and there would, of course, always be a gentleman handy to hold the stirrup and help her up—generally, she recalled, a gentleman named Alan, who could be' counted on to make some flattering remark about her appearance as they rode away together.

  Well, Prince had been taken by the cavalry, and Alan had died in the swamp that was often referred to as The Wilderness, and she was standing by a dying fire in the middle of a dusty prairie with calloused hands and stringy hair, in grimy clothes she’d hardly had off for a week. Even Alan would be hard put to find something nice to say about her appearance now, she reflected ruefully. At that, she was better off than she’d been at times in the not too distant past, she reminded herself. She was neither starving nor freezing, and that was important. It had taken her a while, she reflected, but she’d learned her lesson well: the only truly important things in life were food, warmth, and money; and what you had to do to get them was really of very little consequence.

  “Amanda.” It was the voice of the man in the wagon. “Would you come here a moment, my dear?”

  She shivered abruptly, and turned from the fire, slapping the dust from her skirts. He was sitting up when she climbed inside. The candle was out, but she could see the vague shape of him at the end of the limited space.

  “I declare, you don’t have to sound so disgustingly paternal,” she said. “There’s no one around to hear.” “Indeed?” he said. “I thought I heard him ride off, but then I decided my ears must have been deceiving me. You’d certainly never have let him leave so soon, if you’d had the say.” He leaned forward and grasped her wrist. “What’s the matter? Can’t the aristocratic Miss Netherton even seduce a cowherd from Texas these days?”

  “You’re hurting me,” she said evenly.

  “I heard you,” he said. “I heard you pumping the boy about his ranch and his cattle. Are you thinking of moving south, Miss Netherton? Are you thinking of leaving me for this juvenile vaquero, now that I’m flat on my back—like you left that young Army lieutenant for me when he got himself cashiered?”

  “I didn’t leave him!” she protested quickly. “I thought the fool had money of his own, I never dreamed he was stealing it! And I’d have stood by him if he’d wanted me to; if he hadn’t showed so plainly that . . . that he was ashamed of me. Just as I’m standing by you now.” After a moment he released her wrist. “Well, see that you do, Mandy!”

  “You’d be dead now if I hadn’t,” she pointed out.

  He wasn’t in a mood to be reminded of what he owed her. “Never mind that! Just remember, no woman runs out on Jack Keller!”

  She glanced uneasily towards the opening behind her. “Don’t say it so loud, you fool.”

  “I thought you said there was nobody around. Anyway, I don’t flatter myself the name’s known clear to

  Texas—although some day it will be.”

  “Well, if you’re Jack Keller, you can’t very well be my nice Papa Netherton, can you?” she said reasonably. “It would raise questions, to say the least, if you were overheard. And the boy’s gone, but the old man might have sent somebody over to spy on us. He suspects something, I know he does. Did he say anything when he was in here? What did he ask you?”

  “Just medical questions. And he was kind of curious about the man who shot me, and how the shooting took place. . . .”

  “If you’d taken my advice,” she said, “there’d have been no shooting, and you wouldn’t be lying there with a hole in your leg.” She grimaced in the dark. “Silks and satins you promised me, as I recall, but the one nice dress you actually bought me, you’ve made me ruin driving miles through the rain to save you, and cooking beef and beans over a smoky fire to feed you!”

  “Don’t blame me for that!” he said irritably. “You didn’t have to come running with nothing but the clothes on your back. If you’d taken time to make a few sensible preparations. . .”

  “The Preacher wasn’t waiting for me to make any preparations,” she said angrily. “He was shaking like a leaf; the ride must have dried up all the whiskey inside him. He was in a fearful hurry to get back with the wagon; it was just an afterthought, his stopping for me. He wouldn’t even let me buy bandages and medicines in town because somebody might ask questions. Actually, he just brought me along so he wouldn’t have to stay with you himself, or try to make one of the others stay— not that there was much hope of that.”

  “They’d have stayed, if they were ordered to, if they knew what was good for them!”

  “With you sick and out of your head? That riffraff?” she said. “Not likely! Their own skin comes first, with them.”

  “You’re very clever at changing the subject six times a minute, Mandy,” Keller said harshly. “But just remember this: if I ever catch you with a man, I’ll kill him. So stay away from that young Texan, if you want him to live!”

  She saw that he was really angry, really jealous, and it pleased her. When you could no longer make a man jealous, you’d lost your hold on him. But it was time to calm him, down, before he started shouting at her loudly enough to be heard at the other camp, and she moved along the wagon bed until she was beside him.

  “The boy is nothing to me,” she said indifferently. “Kill him if you like.” She ran her fingers down his bearded cheek, lightly, wondering why nature had given whiskers to man. Even if it was currently fashionable, she couldn’t help thinking it was really rather repulsive, all that hair on the face. “And after you’ve shot him to death,” she asked him softly, “what will you do to me?”

  “Well,” he said sullenly, “if I really thought there’d been something between you, I’d break you in two.”

  “It sounds downright thrilling,” she murmured, lying close to him in the dark. Her mind was far away, as always under such circumstances. As a matter of fact, she was thinking of her first ball dress, pure and shining white, with hoops almost too wide to go through a door. “Break me, honey,” she heard herself whispering, in the low throaty way that men seemed to find exciting. “Break me in two. . .

  He moved towards her awkwardly, hampered by his wounded leg. It had been such a pretty dress, she thought, caressing him with a practiced simulation of passion. It had been such a pretty life, full of graciousness and beauty. Where had it gone? Where had it all gone?

  CHAPTER 7

  When Chuck reached camp, Joe Paris was waiting for him. He thought this meant he was going to catch hell for being late, and he was certain of it when J
oe led him around the wagon to where the Old Man was sitting against a wheel, making notes in his journal by the light of the coal-oil lantern. But the Old Man merely glanced up, made a gesture to indicate that they were to sit, and continued writing. Presently he closed the journal, wrapped it carefully in oilskin and laid it aside.

  “Chuck,” he said, looking up after a moment, “I owe you an apology.”

  “An apology, sir?”

  “I brought you to the Netherton wagon this evening with ulterior motives. We’ll be in Kansas shortly, maybe tomorrow, and I have a decision to make. Perhaps you can help me. Naturally, I will not ask you to reveal anything of a private nature that passed between you and the young lady—if anything did—but if she told you something you feel at liberty to repeat, I’d be obliged if you’d let me hear it.”

  Chuck was staring at his father incredulously. “You took me over there to . . . to spy on them?”

  The Old Man shrugged his shoulders, showing more embarrassment than was his habit. “I have made it fairly clear that I do not trust those people. I have reasons, I might add. Perhaps I should have been more subtle. At any rate, knowing my attitude, they weren’t likely to speak freely to me. I thought they might to you .. . one of them, at least.” He drew a long breath. “Please believe me, Chuck, I am trying to be fair. I do not wish to act hastily. If Miss Netherton had something important to say, something in her own behalf, you’ll be doing her a favor if you tell me.”

  Chuck struggled between bewilderment and anger. “You make it sound like . . . like a trial, sir!”

  “You might call it that,” the Old Man agreed.

  Chuck glanced at Joe Paris, whose face was grim, and looked back at his father, and cried: “But I don’t understand! What accusation . . . They’ve committed no crime!”

  “I believe they have,” Jesse McAuliffe said. “I believe that one of them is guilty of murder.”