friend in this life which we all must leave.” He looked with that awful, single, bloody eye at Jack’s hand, which by instinct rested on the butt of the pistol.
This was asking too much, but it would be done.
The one eye stayed focused on Jack as he pulled the trigger. Standing slowly, pistol gripped in his hand, Jack looked down at the corpse, trying not to see the remains of what had been a good man.
It was the plaintive whinny of a horse that broke the spell that had formed around him. The sound carried all the pain and fear, all the destruction that lay at his feet. Wherever he looked, there was blood. He could smell nothing but fouled manure and gasses, voided bowels, and emptied bladders. Not even the trail of broken aspen and shattered pine, their hearts exposed to the hot air, could hide the incredible stink.
The whinny reached him again. He twisted his neck, tried to stare uphill into the bright sun. He could not bury Refugio for he had no tools for grave digging, no hope of finding enough rocks in this grassy place to cover him. And his shot might have caught the attention of curious men—ranchers and cowhands—who were now riding to investigate.
Jack knelt again in the ruined earth and, with his knife, shaved two sticks from a dying aspen, twined them in a cross, using rawhide strings cut from Refugio’s own saddle. There he jammed the cross into the bed of moss and leaves at Refugio’s head. A poor marker for one life. Then he pulled his way out, returning on the trail left by their falling bodies.
When he climbed over the lip of the trail, he was surprised to find the paint gelding waiting. Jack used the near stirrup to haul himself to his feet and found, as he looked over the paint’s back, that the yellow mare was huddled behind the bigger horse. There was no sign of the boy.
Jack called out but only birds sang to him. A small animal scurried through the underbrush behind him. He backtracked the mare and found the boy near the base of a sturdy pine. Jack knew nothing would ever wake the child. The head was tilted, the bones in the neck snapped clean. Jack wiped his suddenly wet mouth, glimpsed his hands soiled with Refugio’s blood. There was no blood around the boy.
He shuddered once and grabbed the boy’s boots, dragged him slowly downhill, talking all the time to the horses. The animals were eager to hear his voice. The mare took several steps toward him, reached out her muzzle, and brushed against his back as he labored with his burden. He lifted the body and let it slide onto the mare’s back. The boy was barely fourteen, never had grown much height and never had weighed more than a three-week old calf.
Then he went to the paint. He’d bury that old saddle with the boy, he’d bury all the kid’s meager gear with him, but he’d have to do the burying without Johnny Thackery’s hat. He knew right where he’d take the kid. Wildflower Canon, where the boy’d talked about it being a pretty enough place for a dead man to lie.
Here he considered the harshness of the word “death” but could find none kinder. The more civilized folks used words to deny death’s importance. “Passing” was one, a word Jack hated. It destroyed the death itself. Dying was no passing to anything, it was the end, right here and now, at the time that the last breath fled through clenched teeth.
It was even more difficult to be polite when he recalled Refugio’s single eye watching him at the very second of his own death. There would never be a word to describe the act and its consequence. Making such a death civilized by talking around it was something Jack could not accept.
He finished the letter and took up a bottle of tequila. It was another full day and night before he could stand straight and take the letter to the Gutierrezville post office.
The same smiling man took the folded paper and told Jack the fee for its mailing. They exchanged coin and Jack was finished with his contract.
“
Jack’s boot stuttered on the puncheon floor. A small, squat, dark-haired man with heavy whiskers shadowed Jack’s elbow. “His wife…she is my cousin. We are in your debt,
Jack could not speak.
The killing was known. The thought made him sick. He pushed past the sad-eyed man and hit sunshine, walked to the pens where the paint was stabled. Jack Holden was a thief, not a murderer.
Katherine Donald
Chapter Nineteen
Her fingers trailed over the floral material, a gift from Mr. Meiklejon, sent from England by his fiancee. Her employer would be marrying soon and the question of her continued residence in a bachelor’s house would be resolved.
Katherine let her thoughts run away while she worked on the final seams of her dress with its fine, smooth finish and tender pattern, and she laughed at herself for her mental indulgences.
Men had so many freedoms while women could only taste small ones on the sly. It was a poor exchange, marriage for loneliness, independence for security and obedience. My but she was bitter this morning. Katherine knew the source of her anger. Burn English. There had been no improprieties in a physical sense, yet if her moments with him were known, she would be called terrible names for her tenderness.
Tied to a reprobate father, cooking and caring for him more than fifteen years, refusing the suitors he deemed proper, seeking out men who showed more life, more daring than would make a good husband, she was perceived as less than a middling success, barren and still virginal. And angry at the world pushing her into the mold it preferred.
The needle slipped, her finger bled two drops to stain the lovely pale green lawn with two small, perfect circles of red. She knew all about blood; she would have to wash the stains before they set. She did not move, composed, erect in the straight-backed chair in its corner of the small back room. Where she had held guard over Burn English. The material spread over her lap, she put the pricked finger to her mouth and slowly laved it with her tongue, sucking gently, tenderly, remembering other tastes and different times.
So much had revolved around this room through the spring months, so much pain and doubt, so much anger and distrust. She had known, when she looked into those eyes, that it was the core of Burn English, the heart that beat on despite the wounding, it was the strength of soul that had kept life in the wasted body.
It might be horrible to admit, but she missed her patient, longed for the need he’d had for her. His life and daily comfort had been placed in her hands. It was what she wanted, that terrible need from another human being. Not this soft, endless repetition of cleaning and cooking and smiling and deferring to whatever a man wished.
She shook her head. There was Davey who had changed so in the past weeks. She had continued to conduct herself in a calm and distant manner around him, very much the lady, and Davey was responding as a reflection of her attitude. This was the explanation of his change, his new remoteness, the absence of his obvious affection.
She kept a constant internal dialogue to remind herself about Davey, that he had the ability to read her thoughts and guess her feelings. Sincethe morning it was discovered that English had taken the pacing grullo and
