hand on the gun, with one bent finger curled around the trigger.
Jud was still sulphurous, so he said: “Lady, point that gun some other way.”
She did not move and neither did the long barrel. “Who are you?” she demanded.
Rufe, glancing back where his horse and outfit lay, spoke slowly when he came back around facing her. “My name is Rufus Miller. His name is Jud Hudson. We were just riding through.”
“Up through that badlands country from the west?” she said, eyeing them skeptically as her father and brothers had always eyed men coming onto Cane’s Mesa from that improbable direction.
“Yeah,” said Rufe, looking steadily at her. “Up through those badlands. Is there another way up here?”
She did not answer that. “What do you want?”
Jud said: “Well, until about fifteen minutes ago, we didn’t want anything, lady, but that was before some son…that was before a feller shot Rufe’s bay horse.”
The gun barrel tipped down a fraction, and the hard blue eyes above it studied both men. “I’ll sell you another horse,” she said. “Sound, well broke, and cheap. Then you had better turn and go back exactly the way you came. There’s an easier way off the mesa, but you’d never make it.”
Jud’s anger never departed quickly. He looked back harshly at the handsome woman. “Is that a fact, ma’am? Why wouldn’t we ever make it?”
“A cowman named Arlen Chase has a camp over there. He has four riders. All five of them…. ”
“Wait a minute,” broke in Rufe. “Is that who those three fellers were…riders for this Arlen Chase?”
“Yes.”
“Do they own this mesa, ma’am?”
“No. I own it. But they control it now because…well, there are five of them, and they are men, and, even when I’ve gone down to Clearwater to hire rid-ers, they never show up, or else they get chased off.” The gun barrel tilted a little more toward the ground. She studied Rufe a moment before saying: “The man who shot that bay horse from under you, mister, is named Charley Fenwick. I know them all by sight, from far out.” Elisabeth turned and pointed with the rifle. “Those are bullet holes fired into the barn by Chase’s men. I’ve got them in every building, even over in the house walls. But they come in very fast, just ahead of sunlight, or right after dark, usually when I’m choring.” She grounded the rifle and leaned on it. “I wear a six-gun, but I can’t work with a rifle in one hand, can I?”
Rufe sighed and slowly turned to look more closely at the buildings. Jud fished out a tobacco sack and went slowly to work making a cigarette, his bronzed features locked down in a clear expression of anger. As he was lighting up, Rufe said: “What’s your name, lady?”
“Elisabeth Cane. This is Cane’s Mesa. My father settled it. He’s buried yonder, inside that little iron fence. So is my mother.”
Rufe glanced at the corral behind Elisabeth where about fifteen old cows with rough-looking, under-nourished runty little calves waited uneasily. The smoke was still rising from a stone ring where three branding irons were heating.
“You do all this yourself?” asked Rufe.
Elisabeth’s answer was almost curt: “Do all what? Brand about a dozen sickly calves, all that’s left of my bunch?”
Rufe accepted the rebuke. “Yeah, I guess you could do it.” He looked at Jud, who looked darkly back, then Rufe said: “Miz Cane, I can’t go far on foot, and Jud’s animal is tired, and we’re both in need of work, so….”
“I don’t want you on the ranch,” Elisabeth said firmly “There’s not enough room inside the fence for two more graves.”
“Now, lady,” stated Jud, “I don’t figure to try and squeeze inside that little fence, but for folks to go around shooting other folks’ horses out from under them…you can hire us on, or we’ll set us up a camp around here somewhere in among the trees, but either way someone’s going to settle up for my part-ner’s horse.” Jud jutted his square jaw. “Is that the bunkhouse?”
Elisabeth did not turn in the direction Jud was looking. She simply said: “They will either run you off, or kill you.”
Jud’s answer was direct: “They haven’t run you off nor killed you, lady.”
Elisabeth had no answer, apparently, because she offered none as Jud stepped back to scoop up the reins of his horse and turn in the direction of the barn’s big rear opening. To Rufe, who still stood there, she said: “You see those cattle? That’s all I have left, and they shot my bull a week back, which means that next year even those old cows won’t be coming in with calves at their sides…I can no longer pay riders, Mister Miller. There’s just no money.”
Rufe said: “Shot your bull?”
Elisabeth pointed. “Up there, about four miles to-ward the mountains, there is a deep arroyo. He’s down in there, shot between the eyes.”
Rufe stood a while gazing out and around, then he finally said: “Well, I might as well go back and fetch in my outfit. And if you’ve got some tools, I’d like to bury my horse. He sure was a good friend Tome, ma’am.”
She took him to the barn where Jud had already off-saddled and was standing up front, leaning in the opening, smoking thoughtfully and gazing out over the great sweep of grass country. Jud strolled back to watch Elisabeth take down two shovels and hand one to Rufe. Jud watched her standing there, holding the other shovel, eyes widening.
He said: “You figure to go help Rufe bury his horse?”
She turned on Jud. “I figured to, because I didn’t figure
Jud stepped on his smoke and ground it out, then raised his eyes to her handsome face, and held out a hand, trying to smile. “I guess I did something wrong. I’m sorry. I don’t want you for an enemy. By the way, where did you leave that old buffalo rifle?”
She handed him the shovel without giving any indication that she knew she was being subtly teased. “Put your nose where it shouldn’t be, Mister Hudson, and you’ll find where I leave that buffalo gun…I’ll feed the critters, go make something for us to eat, and afterward we can work those calves. But you’re wasting your time. I have no money, and Arlen Chase will either hire you away or run you out of the country.” She turned and walked out of the barn toward the golden-lit yard, leaving two stalwart, faded men looking after her.
They went out and began digging. Rufe’s little bay horse had been pigeon-toed, and mule-nosed, and slanty- eyed, and as dependable as springtime grass, but he also weighed just a shade over 1,000 pounds and was built like a stone wall, and, if the ground hadn’t been warmly moldy, digging his grave would have been impossible without a stout team, a good set of chain harness, and a Fresno scraper. In fact, they did not finish it until that night, because they had to go eat when Elisabeth rang the bell, and, after eating, they had to rope and snub and overhaul those little shaggy calves.
They finished the grave by moonlight, rolled the bay horse in, and bleakly went to work putting all that earth back into the hole. They were almost finished when Elisabeth came out with two huge old crockery cups of black coffee, and, when they leaned on their shovels to express gratitude and drink, the coffee turned out to be laced strongly with whiskey.
Jud smiled for the first time all day, but he kept his thoughts to himself. So did Rufe. He thanked her, and considered her in the ghostly moonlight and star shine as something a man might conjure up in a dream sometime, as a sort of ideal woman, but he said nothing until she looked down at their work, and said: “My father told me one time that a man who would shoot an honest horse was not one bit better than a murderer.”
Jud finished the coffee, passed back the cup, wiped his mouth on the back of a soiled shirt sleeve, and turned back to work. “Your father was absolutely right, ma’am. What did you say that man’s name was?”
“The one who shot the horse? Charley Fenwick. He rode for me last year, for about three weeks, then he disappeared, and the next I knew, he was riding for Arlen Chase.”
“And shooting folks’ horses,” added Jud, leaning into his work. “Tell us about this Mister Chase, ma’am.”
She told them all she knew, which actually was not very much, because excepting that first time Chase had ridden into the yard to announce that he was moving in, and she had drawn on him, they had not met again face to face more than three or four times, and those other times he had taunted her but had not lingered after doing it. She told them how her cattle had dwindled from 300 head down to what was in the corral, and how the best of her horses had just simply disappeared. She said: “I mentioned this to a pair of cowmen down near Clearwater…older men who had known my father, and they said likely some Indians passing through up along the north-ward
