level in the ten-gallon keg of bourbon Kirby had ordered for them lowered.
The noon meal, prepared by a perspiring but happy Maria, was quickly reduced to dirty plates and well- gnawed bones. The guests and crew gathered in the yard to see Kirby's Christmas present to Jen… a beautiful little sorrel filly whose clean lines showed her thoroughbred background. Long before Christmas, Kirby and his foreman had ridden to town and ordered a saddle and rig to match the sorrel and Jen's measurements. Her face was flushed with excitement when they returned to the house, where Maria's gift was ready. Her nimble fingers had fashioned a buckskin skirt and blouse that were an exact match of the saddle and bridle. Women-like, they wept in each other's arms as Jen tried to thank her.
When the last guest had departed, the women bundled in fur robes and the men in sheepskin-lined coats, Jen could contain herself no longer.
'Kirby, there's still time enough for a ride before dark. Can I please try out the new mare?'
Kirby laughed at her beseeching face. 'She's been saddled for hours,' he told her. 'Get into your new riding outfit while I find something to ride that won't make a poor showing with your new rig.' He left the house while Jen ran to change.
An hour later they were far out on the range, riding through the hills above the Clear. As they topped a ridge after a steep climb from the river bottom, Kirby pulled in the big black gelding and got down. He stretched out his arms for Jen to slide off, and held her for a long moment before he released her, breathless. Leaving the horses ground-tied, they climbed to the top of the windswept slope and found a comfortable shelter out of the wind beneath a huge boulder.
Far below, the Clear reflected the brilliant blue of the sky, dark stretches of the shimmering water showing the shadows of occasional clouds. Cattle were stretched out as far as they could see, grazing bare places in the snow. To the north they could see smoke rising from Lazy B headquarters and a few tiny dots that were Lazy B hands moving about the corrals. At their backs, the buildings of Wagon looked like a doll village.
'It's a wonder we can't hear the crew clear up here,' he told Jen, laughing. 'There are going to be some heads down there tomorrow that will give their owners trouble steering through the bunkhouse door.' Jen smiled, her eyes dreamy, her thoughts far away.
He took a coin from his pocket. Holding it out, he grinned at her inquiring look.
'Penny for your thoughts.'
'Doubt if you'd think they were worth so much,' she answered. 'I was just thinking I've got to get back to town. My pupils will be wild as mavericks.'
'Sure… some day real soon. Let's decide after the first of the year.'
'Not some day… tomorrow. I want you to take me to town tomorrow, before the weather breaks again. You know I'm completely well, and I want to have everything ready for the new school year. It'll take some time to get word around that the teacher is back.' She stopped at his crestfallen expression.
'I had started to hope you wouldn't go back at all,' he said slowly. 'Remember, when you first came I…'
She stopped him. 'I remember.'
'Well, then, why? You're happy at Wagon. You told me that yourself. You know how I feel about you. Jen, let's close up the house in town until they find a new schoolmarm. We can get married tomorrow. I've got to see the winter through out here, but come spring we can honeymoon in Chicago… New York… What's the matter?'
Her eyes were filled with tears. 'Please don't say any more. It sounds too wonderful, and I might let myself say something I know I don't mean. I can't marry you, Kirby. Not now, maybe never.' She stopped and searched his amazed face.
'There's too much between us. It's no good. We can't.'
'There's nothing between us, Jen. Of course if you don't love me—'
She stopped him by pulling his lips down to her own. 'That will tell you just a little of how much I love you.' Breathlessly she thrust away his hungry arms and patted her rumpled curls.
'Well, then, what's to stop two people who love each other from getting married?' He tried a somewhat feeble smile. 'It's a custom I've heard is real successful.'
She tried to match his light tone, but again her eyes filled with tears and she turned away, her words almost lost in the wind whipping around their shelter.
'Kirby, your Dad and Mother were not only the finest but the happiest people I have ever known. It seemed that each was a part of the other. What one thought, the other thought; if you hurt one the other would know it. I want us to be like that. Ever since I can remember, I've wanted to be to Wagon what Ma Street was, to fill your life the way Ma brought completion to Muddy's. But I can't do that now, not the way things are.' She was crying openly and unashamedly.
'It isn't your fault, Kirby. I suppose, in a way, it isn't Bill's either, because he's doing what he thinks is right. But when I marry, I'll give myself to my man forever and ever. If we got married tomorrow, the next day you might be lying stretched in the mud of Streeter, without ever beginning the thing that Ma and Muddy built for years.'
'If this trouble is ever over, then we'll talk about it again. But for now, I think I'd better get back to town, to the kids that need to learn their A B C's. It won't be what I want, but it will have to do. I don't ever want just a part of you, and if I married you now, with this trouble hanging over your head, I'd be getting what was left…'
Her words were interrupted by the crash of a rifle. Her horse gave a scream of pain and fright and would have bolted had not the trailing reins caught on a rock and brought her around so quickly that she nearly stumbled and fell. Kirby raced to her, his feet slipping in the soft shale underfoot. In a moment Jen was at his side, her hair loosened and flying in the wind.
For a moment they stared at the filly. High up on her foreleg, the saddle blanket almost covering it, an ugly round hole was beginning to ooze blood. Speaking soothingly, Kirby managed to reach the reins. Jen held her while he made a more careful examination. 'The bullet didn't go clean through,' he said. 'It went deep enough, but it must have glanced off the bone and come out here.' He lifted the saddle blanket to show her. 'We'll have to get her home quick. Maybe, with luck, we can pull her through.' He stared in the direction from which the single shot had come. 'It's bad enough to shoot at an armed man from ambush,' he said between clenched teeth, 'but when they start shooting defenseless animals out of sheer spite, it's time they were stopped, once and for all.'
Jen watched his face, her eyes troubled as she stroked the trembling mare.
'We've put off riding to Lazy B about that gather snatched across the river. I reckon the time has come to start asking some questions.'
Jen was puzzled. 'But why would anyone want to shoot my horse? Maybe it was an accident… maybe they were aiming at one of us.'
Kirby shook his head. 'Whoever fired that rifle was a good shot. He missed hitting a vital spot only because the filly moved at the right time.'
'But why, Kirby, why?'
Kirby's eyes were grim, a tiny red spark beginning to glow in their depths.
'Because she was my Christmas present to you. Because she stood for something that no one else could ever hope to have. Because you love me.'
Jen's words were so low he could hardly hear them. 'Now do you see what I mean; why we can't get married now? What if it had been you that bullet had hit? What if it had been me? Don't you see what's between us? It's a shadow, Kirby, a black shadow. And there's smoke around its edges… gunsmoke.'
Wordlessly Kirby went for his black. Still without speaking, he held his hands for Jen's foot and, once she was mounted, took the reins of the mare and climbed up behind her. Silently they started slowly toward the Wagon, the filly limping behind. In Jen's eyes tears still glistened, but Kirby's had become hard as agate… the eyes of a man with a deadly purpose.
Curly came to the bunkhouse door just as Kirby and Jen rode into the yard, leading the limping bay. The hole in her shoulder had stopped bleeding, but she was hobbling on three legs and stood trembling in every muscle, her head drooping.
Curly stared for a moment, pop-eyed, then said something to the men in the bunkhouse. In a moment they were surrounded by curious hands, whose curiosity turned to anger when they found out what had happened.
'Another drygulch job?' Josh asked, his eyes hard.
'I don't know whether the bullet was meant for one of us or for the horse. Look her over, Josh, and see what
