But Elizabeth didn't appear convinced, and as Owen held her, he guessed what was in her mind. In the days before their marriage, uncertainty and anxiety had always been with her. In her dreams she had seen them bring Owen home, tied face down across a saddle, as she had seen others return from man hunts.
“Remember when we were married?” he asked. “I promised that I was through being a law-enforcement officer. I meant it then, and I still mean it.”
And he did mean it.
But later, as he walked back to his field of cotton, he warned himself: It's not going to be easy. He knew how much this thing meant to Ben McKeever. The banker wanted the Brunner gang run out of the hills. He wanted the railroad, and he would stop at nothing to get it.
The Stanley boys had worked their way down to the far corner of the field and were now coming back, chopping grass and weeds from between the tender cotton plants. Owen waved and went to work on another row, moving toward them.
He worked with a steady, machine-like swing of the hoe, enjoying the fragrance of fresh-turned dirt. His mind was free to think as it would, and soon he put Ben McKeever out of his thoughts and turned to more pleasant things of the future.
He glanced across the creek at the small patch of corn, and beyond that to the long field of native Johnson grass. The grass made fair hay for the livestock, but still it seemed an extravagant waste of fertile bottomland, and Owen had been working steadily at clearing it out for grain and cotton.
Over to the east, adjoining Owen's fields, was the Stanley place. Clint Stanley had two good boys, but the father himself leaned toward the shiftless. He sent his boys out to work for others while his own cotton grew up in grass. Someday, Owen knew, Clint would get enough of the farm and let it go. And on that day, Owen, in the eye of his mind, saw his own fields stretching out as far as he could see, to the farthest limits of the Stanley place.
Of course, it would take money to swing such a deal, but a man with a good name would have no trouble getting money.
Or would he?
Involuntarily, Owen began thinking again of Ben McKeever. Would the banker stop his credit in Reunion? It was a possibility that had to be faced.
Well, he thought at last, if that's the way Ben wants it, I guess that's the way it'll have to be. I'm not going back on my promise to Elizabeth.
Kneeling in the soft earth to file the hoe, Owen thought it again. I'll not go back on my promise!
Chapter Two
Saturday of that week Owen had to make a trip to Reunion to buy supplies and get the plow sharpened. Usually Elizabeth went with him on these trips, but Giles, the baby, had a sore throat that day, and she was afraid to take him out. Spring was a bad time for children.
“I want to go to town with Pa!” Lonnie complained.
“Your mother and little brother need a man to look after them while I'm away,” Owen said. “That's your job.”
The three-year-old boy was unimpressed with this gift of responsibility, but he was old enough to know by his pa's voice that he would not be going to Reunion.
Elizabeth made out a list of things she needed for the house. “Leave this at De Witt's store first thing,” she said, “or you'll forget it.” She did not look at him, but busied herself with small things as they talked.
Owen was faintly puzzled. Elizabeth had seemed nervous all morning, which wasn't like her. After he got the team hitched, he brought the wagon around to the back door and called, “Is there anything else you want?”
Elizabeth came out to the wagon, and now he knew that something was bothering her. “Owen,” she said carefully, “if Ben McKeever tries to talk to you...”
He did not laugh. When he had been deputy marshal, it had too often been his duty to inform women like Elizabeth that their husbands were dead; had died on some lonely hilltop, or on some crowded street, or in a saloon, in a brush with some kill-crazy outlaw. There was a cause, always. Owen had believed in it, and more than likely the dead man had believed in it, but he never could explain to the widow just what the cause was or why it was more important than her husband's life.
“Don't worry,” Owen said gently. “Ben McKeever can't talk me into anything.”
It was well past noon when Owen tied up in the alley behind Main Street. Reunion was crowded that Saturday, as it was every Saturday. This was the day for farmers and their families to come out of the hills and enjoy the brief excitement of town life. A few blanket Indians moved blandly through the milling people, picking at gawdy bolts of material in the stores. Cow hands over from the old Cherokee Strip were making their rowdy rounds of the blind pigs.
Owen had already dropped his plow off at the blacksmith's, and now he walked leisurely along the packed- clay sidewalk of Main Street, nodding and speaking to old friends and acquaintances, gazing with vague interest at the displays in store windows. When he came to Al De Witt's Boomer Mercantile, he went in and waved Elizabeth's list at the storekeeper.
“Will you get these things together for me, Al? I'll be around to pick them up in an hour or so.”
De Witt, a frail, fluttery man with a glistening bald head, broke away from two Osage squaws and moved up the counter to Owen.
“How are you, Owen?” the little man said, glancing toward the door.
Owen's eyebrows lifted a fraction of an inch. De Witt looked even more nervous and fluttery than usual, and now the storekeeper took a handkerchief and carefully mopped his face and the back of his neck.
“What's the matter, Al?”
