trail. We came onto the John's City range from the north, and I made for the Bannerman ranch first because it was closer than our own place, and I wanted to see if Laurin was all right. I remember riding across the flat in the brilliant afternoon, wondering what I would do if the cavalry or police happened to be waiting for me there at the Bannermans'. I had been around Ray Novak and his pa enough to be familiar with the law man's saying: “If you want to catch a fugitive, watch his woman.”
But I didn't see anything. I raised the chimney of the Bannerman ranch house first, sticking clear-cut against the ice-blue sky. And pretty soon I could make out the whole house and the corrals and outbuildings, and that feeling in my stomach came back again and told me that something was wrong.
It was too quiet, for one thing. There are sounds peculiar to cattle outfits—the sound of blacksmith hammers, the rattle of wagons, or clop of horses—sounds you don't notice particularly until they are missing. There were none of those sounds as I rode into the ranch yard.
And there were other things. There were no horses in the holding corrals, and the barn doors flapped forlornly in the prairie wind, and the bunkhouse, where the ranch hands were supposed to be, was empty. The well-tended outfit I had seen a few days before looked like a ghost ranch now. And, somehow, I knew it all tied up with that feeling I had been carrying.
I rode Red right up to the back door and yelled in.
“Laurin! Joe! Is anybody home?”
It was like shouting into a well just to hear your voice go round and round the naked walls, knowing that nobody was going to answer.
“Laurin, are you in there?”
Joe, the old man, the ranch hands, they didn't mean a damn to me. But Laurin...
I didn't dare think any further than that. She was all right. She had gone away somewhere, visiting maybe. She
I dropped down from the saddle, took the back steps in one jump, and rattled the back door.
“Laurin!”
I hadn't expected anything to happen. It was just that I didn't know what else to do. I was about to turn away and ride as fast as I could to some place where somebody would tell me what was going on here. Something was crazy. Something was all wrong. I could sense it the way a horse senses that he's about to step on a snake, and I wanted to shy away, just the way a horse would do. I took the first step back from the door, when I heard something inside the house.
It moved slowly, whatever it was. Not with stealth, not as if it was trying to creep up on something. More as if it was being dragged, or as if it was dragging itself. Whatever it was, it was coming into the kitchen, toward the back door where I still stood. Then I saw what it was.
“Joe,” I heard myself saying, “my God, what happened to you?”
He was hardly recognizable as a man. His face had been beaten in, his eyes were purplish blue and swollen almost shut. His mouth was split open and dried blood clung to his chin. Blood was caked on his face and in his hair and smeared all over the front of his shirt.
“What are you doing here?” he asked dully. I noticed then that his front teeth were missing. But I only noted it in passing. In the back of my mind. I could think of only one thing then—Laurin.
I jerked the screen door open and went inside. “Joe, where's Laurin? Is she all right?”
He looked at me stupidly and I grabbed the front of his shirt and shook him.
“Answer me, goddamn you! Where's Laurin?”
He shook his head dumbly and began to sag. I held him up and pulled a kitchen chair over with my foot and let him sit down.
“So help me God,” I said, “if you don't tell me what happened to Laurin I'll finish what somebody else started.”
He worked his mouth. I couldn't tell if he understood me or not. It took him a long time to get a sound out. He worked his mouth, rubbed his bloody face, licked his split lips.
Then, “Laurin...” he said finally. “She's ... all right.”
I realized that I had been holding my breath all the time it had taken him to get those words out. Now I let it out. It whistled between my teeth, and my heart began to beat and blood began to flow. Relief washed over me like cool water on a hot day.
“Where is she, Joe? Tell me that.”
He started to get up, then sat down again. He made meaningless motions with his hands. Whoever had worked on him had done a hell of a good job. I wondered if maybe there wasn't a hole in the back of his head where all his brains had leaked out.
“Answer me, Joe! Where is she? Where is Laurin?”
“Your place,” he managed at last. “Your place... with your ma.”
I didn't stop to wonder what Laurin would be doing at our ranch. I was too relieved to wonder about anything then. Joe started to stand up again and I pushed him down.
“Stay where you are,” I said. “I'll get you some water.”
I found a bucket of water and a dipper and a crock bowl on the kitchen washstand. Then I got some dish towels out of the cupboard and brought the whole business over and put it on the kitchen table. I wet the towel and wiped some of the blood off his face. I squeezed some water over his head and cleaned a deep scalp wound behind his ear. That was about all I could do for him. He didn't look much better after I had finished, but he seemed to feel better.
I gave him a drink out of the dipper and said, “Can you talk now?”
