Carlotta Wilkerson came out on the back porch of Clara's place and once again looked out over the area of the old fort and to the mass of green up there a half mile away. The sun, slanting into the big bend of what now was named Thompson Canyon in honor of Captain Thompson, caught her eyes and she shaded them with a hand. She went back into the kitchen and smiled at Clara's understanding look.
Judge Eaton finished off the last of a slab of canned peach pie, grunted contentedly and rose with coffee cup in one hand. He was a man of sixty, an even six feet in height, with a face so cadaverous that both his bony cheeks and temples were round, sunken spots. He wiped at his greying mustaches and ran a hand over the faint knot of belly beneath the long black coat of wool broadcloth.
'The Lord gives all of us certain gifts, Clara, and yours is one of the greatest,' he rumbled. 'I wonder if by chance Joe is back from Dalyville yet… Think he went home first?'
'Why don't you go over and see?' Clara suggested. 'If you don't, I'm afraid there won't be any pie left for supper.'
He took that as a compliment, which it wasn't, drained away the rest of the warm coffee and wiped at his mustaches. 'A good suggestion, Clara. He'll want to know the details of Kerrigan's death today at the hands of Indians. Very regrettable that he should come to such an end, but the Lord can be terrible in His vengeance upon such a man. He killed young Havers right in front of your porch, Clara, and for that I should have sentenced him to hang instead of showing mercy. But I listened to the voice of Joe Stovers—and now see what it has brought. One dead man down in the lava beds and two more dead at Kerrigan's hand this very day. I was weak and because of that weakness I have three dead men resting upon my troubled conscience. But the Lord is strong and He showed the black soul of the murderer no such mercy by delivering him into the hands of the Indians.'
Carlotta looked over at Clara after he was gone, her mouth a little white around the corners. 'A woman can stand only so much, Clara, and if that gluttonous old hypocrite had rolled one more sonorous quotation about the Creator I don't think I could have stood it. Clara, couldn't there be
'I guess I'm like you,' Clara said and picked up the empty cup and plate. 'I just can't believe it. And yet I know what must have happened if Loco got him back there this morning. I saw the evidence of it when they brought my husband home one afternoon about this time, Carlotta, and broke the news that tore my own small world apart. In the years since then such butchery has been an almost weekly occurrence in this and New Mexico Territory.'
Carlotta tried to smile understandingly at this proud woman who still lived alone in a wild frontier country where women, certainly such as she, were so few. She wanted to put a woman's thoughts into words and ask the big question in her mind—if Clara loved Lew Kerrigan. Would she have married him if Kitty had not come along? Carlotta Wilkerson thought almost fiercely to herself,
It had been a day with repercussions that would rock Arizona Territory, from the Governor's mansion to the office of the Commanding General of the district in Winslow. Loco's last raid and subsequent butchery of five Mexican sheepherders had exploded three weeks before far to the southeast; and after three terrified men, leading a big red horse, had come spurring in with more bad news Pirtman was a silent, deserted settlement with armed men behind the barred doors of their houses.
Harrow and his men were in town somewhere, a rider on a good horse having been sent north to tell Joe Stovers what had happened. He could withdraw his guard of men from the mining camp now. Lew Kerrigan wouldn't be keeping his promise to burn it. Kitty Anderson was in her room upstairs, weeping hysterically into a pillow over the supposed death of Kerrigan.
She'd tried to explain her effusive greeting to Harrow when he arrived in the coach with Carlotta, and that had been something all of them would remember. Harrow, stony-faced with anger, had pushed the girl away. Clara Thompson had been a witness to it all, and somehow she felt glad it had happened that way.
She liked Carlotta, and the thought of such a woman following Kitty into Harrow's home had strained to the speaking point her natural reticence concerning other people's lives. But from the looks of things now, the calm- eyed beauty from the South had made her own decision before the meeting, and unfortunate Lew Kerrigan would never have to find out the truth about the woman upstairs.
A faint sound came from the dining room and Kitty appeared in the doorway. She'd combed into loose waves the long flow of yellow hair and tied it back with a blue ribbon. Except for her eyes she was as beautiful as ever, with a full, curved figure men couldn't keep their eyes from when she walked into a room.
Small wonder, Clara thought, that a lonely man like Lew Kerrigan would have forgotten his close ties of friendship with her when Kitty, so alone and
'You look much better now, Kitty,' Clara said with a sincerity natural to her.
'Has there been any more news?'
'Nothing.'
'I guess you two must think I'm awful to break this way, but I just couldn't help it. Poor Lew! He killed Buck Havers on account of me and went to prison because of it; and now he's dead.' Kitty's eyes began to mist again and she dabbed at them with a tiny handkerchief. On the return trip from back in the States Kitty had thought much about Kerrigan and convinced herself she'd never loved anybody else. Suffering the pangs of an already badly mauled conscience, the report of his death had hit her hard.
'Have you any immediate plans for the future, Miss Anderson?' Carlotta inquired.
'I don't know now,' Kitty almost sighed. 'Everything is all mussed up. Poor Lew is dead and you and Tom are going to be married. I was so surprised when Joe Stovers wrote me about it. I thought Tom would—I thought I'd come back and see Lew, because it was on account of me he got sent to the pen. Now I just don't know what I'll do.' She dabbed at her eyes with the tiny handkerchief again and went out on the back porch.
'I'm going over to the fort,' she called back. 'I've got to do something to keep my mind off poor Lew.'
'You'd better stay right here in this house, Kitty,' Clara warned sharply. 'There's no telling what might happen with Indians this close.'
'Oh, I don't care what happens to me any more,' Kitty replied, stepping off the porch.
She walked the forty yards to a low wall and a gap knocked in it for Clara to use between the house and her grain supply in a room once occupied by the desk of her husband. Harrow's coach had been backed under a long shed and near it were a number of horses tied to mangers: the six coach horses and four more, including a big red horse.
A handsome man in a low-crowned beaver hat stood talking with Pete, who'd been the driver of the coach down from Dalyville that morning. LeRoy and the two others had abandoned the pack mule back near Kerrigan's camp. He'd lost all of his better clothing; and the mule, of course, would be butchered by Loco's meat-hungry warriors. Roasted and eaten probably while Kerrigan swung by his heels over another slow fire.
To Kitty he'd looked like any other roughly dressed rider over in the dining room, except that he didn't wolf his food and his manners equalled those of Torn Harrow.
'Ah, Miss Anderson.' LeRoy gave her a smile and lifted his hat, a speculative look in his eyes. Small wonder Lew Kerrigan and then Harrow had been attracted to her. This girl was beautiful! It made a man itch to run his fingers through that soft yellow hair. 'You seem to be feeling much better. I'm very happy for you.'
A man on foot slipped around the far end of the shed and froze motionless in the shadows. Hannifer LeRoy and the driver of the stage, their eyes on the girl, didn't notice.
Kitty said, 'I've been crying all day over Lew, just like I did the last time. I guess I'll never really get over it. You work for Tom, don't you?'
'In a manner of speaking,' LeRoy replied gallantly. 'I'm actually his first cousin.' He didn't add that he'd also supplied some of the guns and ammunition now in the hands of bronco Indians, as well as stolen horses Harrow had sold to men in a hurry. Nor that Harrow had sent word to him in California to come to Yuma and help make certain that Kerrigan either complied with the terms of his freedom or was put out of the way.
The man they were talking about waited in the deep shadows of the shed a few moments, his eyes upon Kitty. Something had happened to her during those two long years. She'd matured amazingly and to his hungry eyes
