and then.”
They reached the top out, passed silently through the abandoned cow camp of the defunct Arlen Chase, and hardly a word more passed among the three of them until, with the sun angling away westerly, they had the rooftop of the old log barn in sight, and this reminded Jud of something.
“Ma’am, how come you to unchain those fellers we left in your barn?”
“I was going to take them down to Clearwater and sign a warrant against them at the jailhouse.” She looked sharply at Jud, when he sighed loudly over this statement, then waggled his head. “What’s wrong with that, Jud?”
“Nothing much, ma’am, except that one of the fellers who was involved in stealing and selling your livestock was the town marshal of Clearwater.”
Elisabeth looked at Rufe, who gravely nodded his head, then she said: “I didn’t have any idea Homer Bradshaw was involved. No idea at all.”
Jud was able to be charitable in the face of her ignorance, because he was more interested in something else. “He was, and that’s a plumb fact. Now tell me, ma’am, how did those fellers manage to turn on you?”
“We were going down the trail. It didn’t seem de-cent Tome Tomake them ride chained like that. They couldn’t control their horses, or even.…”
“So you took off the chains,” muttered Jud, and rolled up his eyes. “I reckon it’s true, what we heard about handsome females, Rufe. If they got looks, they don’t have much in the way of brains.”
Elisabeth reddened and her eyes sparked, but she simply rode along, watching Jud roll a smoke, and kept all her quick, biting comments in check.
Rufe leaned, touched her hand atop the saddle horn, and said: “That was a compliment.”
If this ameliorated Elisabeth’s annoyance, it did not show until they reached the barn and off-saddled out front, then, as she turned to head for the main house to prepare supper, she smiled very sweetly at Jud.
“There is something I’ve always heard, too, Jud…that, if a cowboy is worth his salt, he’ll never quit, once he’s hired on, just because an outfit is in trouble. When will you be riding on?”
They both leaned on the tie rack, watching her walk toward the house. Jud removed his hat, scratched his head, replaced the hat with indifferent aim, and screwed up his face toward Rufe. “What in hell did she mean by that? It sounded like she figured me to be one of those rolling stones, or some-thing.”
Rufe side-stepped a direct answer as he led his horse and Elisabeth’s sorrel over to a corral and put them inside. Jud came along later, and did the same thing, then the pair of them met inside where they forked some hay to the horses, and Jud was still puzzled.
“She don’t like me,” he told Rufe. “She don’t want me around. I think that’s what she meant.”
Rufe said: “Naw, she was just answering back for what you said about beautiful women being dumb, in the way womenfolk get back at men.”
Jud still did not understand, but he eventually gave up even trying when they caught the smell of cooking food in the evening air. Jud stood in the barn doorway, looking in the direction of the house, faintly scowling. “Well, hell,” he said plaintively, “no woman that handsome has to have brains, too, does she?”
Rufe agreed. “She sure don’t.” He looked out across the night-shadowed mesa. “We’d ought to stay up here, Jud. Get the ranch back on its feet, anyway.”
Jud put a wryly wise look upon his partner. “Sure. And that’s the only reason you’d want to stay here for a few years. Couldn’t have anything to do with the look in her eyes when she smiles at you, or that sick-calf look you get when you smile back.” Jud snorted and hauled up. “I got to go wash at the creek and slick down my hair. Don’t seem decent, a friend of yours lookin’ like the backend of a bear when he’s set-tin’ at the same supper table with you and her…whilst you’re exchanging those calf-eyed looks.”
Jud struck out in the direction of the creek, leaving Rufe where he was, in front of the barn, softly gazing in the direction of the lighted main house windows.
For a fact she was a beautiful woman. A man could ride two-thirds of his entire lifetime and never see another woman that handsome. And this mesa was one hell of a long way from the Gila Valley, too.
About the Author
Lauran Paine who, under his own name and various pseudonyms has written over 1,000 books, was born in Duluth, Minnesota, a distant descendant of the Revolutionary War patriot and author, Thomas Paine. His family moved to California when he was at a young age and his apprenticeship as a Western writer came about through the years he spent in the livestock trade, rodeos, and even motion pictures where he served as an extra because of his expert horsemanship in several films starring movie cow-boy Johnny Mack Brown. In the late 1930s, Paine trapped wild horses in northern Arizona and even, for a time, worked as a professional farrier. Paine came to know the Old West through the eyes of many who had been born in the previous century, and he learned that Western life had been very different from the way it was portrayed on the screen. “I knew men who had killed other men,” he later re-called. “But they were the exceptions. Prior to and during the Depression, people were just too busy eking out an existence to indulge in Saturday-night brawls.” He served in the U.S. Navy in the Second World War and began writing for Western pulp magazines following his discharge. It is interesting to note that all of his earliest novels (written under his own name and the pseudonym Mark Carrel) were published in the British market and he soon had as strong a following in that country as in the United States. Paine’s Western fiction is characterized by strong plots, authenticity, an apparently effortless ability to construct situation and character, and a preference for building his stories upon a solid foundation of historical fact.
Other books by Lauran Paine:
HOLDING THE ACE CARD
THE DARK TRAIL
BORDER TOWN
OPEN RANGE
GUNS IN THE DESERT
GATHERING STORM
NIGHT OF THE COMANCHEROS
GUNS IN OREGON
RAIN VALLEY
