acres, all of it good pastureland cut through by creeks.”
“I suppose you could keep enough cows on it to get by,” I said, “though it will take a strong back and some mighty hard work.”
Lila shook her head. “Oh, no, not cattle. Pa plans to farm the place.”
“That’s cow country, ma’am,” I said, my patience fraying fast, unable to believe what I was hearing.
“The soil is too thin and rocky for farming. Besides,” I added, then instantly regretted it, “we don’t take kindly to sodbusters down there.”
“Then you’ll just have to get used to us, won’t you, Mr. Hannah?” Lila snapped, annoyance flaring in her eyes.
That little gal had spirit and I let it go. “You go ahead and do what you must, ma’am,” I said. “But you’ll fare no better at farming in Texas than you did in Missouri and maybe a lot worse.”
Ned Tryon lurched toward us. “Ah,” he said, “the lovers’ first quarrel and all because of the poor, downtrodden farmer.” Tryon tilted back his head and yelled at the uncaring sky:
Tryon spat between his feet, then blinked his bleary eyes at me. “You’re so right, you know, gallant young Lochinvar. Farming is a life for a hog. It’s not for me, a poet, an artist . . . a philosopher.”
Lila rushed to her pa and took him by his thin shoulders. “Pa, you promised. You told me this time we’ll make it. Back in Missouri you said this was the fresh start we needed.”
The man pushed his daughter away roughly. “As a farmer, never!” His eyes wild, Ned Tryon clutched the jug to his chest. “That was your ma’s dream, Lila, never mine and in the end it killed her. Remember the endless poverty and me trying to wrest a living from land that grew only rock and weeds? Remember your ma looking at the catalogs, her eyes bright, wishful for all the nice things I could never buy her? Remember how she just faded away, worn down by hard work and harder disappointments?” He lurched back toward the wagon. “For God’s sake, leave me be, child, and let me drink myself into blessed release.”
Lila bent her head and I heard her sob. I was of a mind to say something hard to her father, but he had put a thief in his mouth to steal his tongue and I might as well stand in a storm and chastise the wind.
I stood there, awkward and lost, looking at Lila, trying to find the right words. They didn’t come to me, so in the end I said: “I guess I better get to fixing that wagon tongue.”
The girl nodded, her tearstained eyes made wetter by the rain. “I’ll find you the wood and a hammer.”
Lila stepped to the back of the wagon and I followed. She rummaged under the canvas tarp and I got a chance to see what they were hauling. All of it—an organ, a dresser, a rocking chair, china cups and plates and a tarnished silver tea service—was suited to a lace-and-lilac parlor in Missouri but not the rawboned cow country south of the Red.
A plow was tied to the side of the wagon, its steel blade bright, the handles not honed to a honey color by sweat and toil, but still raw and pine yellow. This plow had not seen much work and had rested in a barn more often than it had dug furrows in the soil.
Lila handed me wood, nails and a hammer and I unhitched the oxen from the yoke and brought the broken end of the tongue back to the wagon.
Thunder rolled across the sky and the lashing rain grew heavier as I set about making the repair. I’m no great shakes as a carpenter, but after I splinted the tongue with the wood Lila had given me, I straightened up and figured I had done a fair to middling job.
My work wasn’t pretty, but the tongue held when I hitched up the team again, and that was what mattered.
Ned Tryon had found the oblivion he’d sought, lying unconscious under the meager shelter of a mesquite bush. Lila took the jug from his hands and asked me to help her father into the back of the wagon.
The man was barely capable of walking and I had to carry him most of the way. I laid him in the wagon and Lila covered him up with the tarp.
“Dusty,” she said when the job was done, “Pa didn’t mean all those things he said. Since Ma died he . . . he just hasn’t been himself.”
Well me, I let that go. I was in wild country with a girl, a drunk and a slow-moving ox wagon and there were Apaches in the hills. Right about then I didn’t feel much like talking, so all I said was: “Let’s get this wagon rolling.”
For all her fragile beauty, Lila was no blushing prairie flower. When I whipped the team into motion and set to pushing on a wheel, she got on another and pushed right along with me, her shoes and the bottom of her dress deep in the mud.
The straining oxen pulled the wagon free and I let them rest for a spell and gathered up my horse. I handed the reins to Lila. “You ride him,” I said. “I’ll guide the team.”
I didn’t want the wagon to get bogged down again and the girl must have understood, because she made no objection. Lila hiked up her dress, showing a powerful amount of pretty leg, and swung into the saddle.
She touched the straw bonnet tied to the saddle horn. “Is this for your best girl?”
I nodded. “Uh-huh. Her name’s Sally Coleman and her pa owns a spread right close to the SP Connected.”
Lila flashed her white smile. “Is she pretty?”
Again I nodded. “As a field of bluebonnets in spring.”
The girl frowned, then sniffed. “I never thought bluebonnets were particularly pretty flowers.”
I saw where this conversation was headed and changed the subject. “Lila,” I said quickly, “come dark we’ll have to find a place where we can hole up for the night. The Apaches are out and we could be in a hell of a fix.”
The girl kneed the black alongside me as I walked beside the plodding oxen. She glanced down at me and said: “They told us all that at Doan’s Crossing. But the Apaches won’t bother us. We mean them no harm.”
I shook my head at her. “Lila, to the Apache, everyone is an enemy. That’s why they’ve survived so long. There’s no word for
I flicked the bullwhip over the backs of the oxen. “You may mean the Apaches no harm, but they mean you plenty.”
I wanted to tell her they’d go out of their way to capture a pretty woman, but I didn’t because for the first time I saw uncertainty in Lila’s eyes.
“Dusty,” she said, “do you think we’re in danger?”
“I do,” I replied, deciding not to spare her the truth. “In a heap of danger, and with this wagon and your pa, we’re fast running out of room on the dance floor.”
Lila opened her mouth to say something, changed her mind and looked around at the rain-shrouded landscape. “Are they out there?” she asked finally, waving her hand at the surrounding hills.
“Could be,” I said.
And a few moments later, as thunder crashed above us, I smelled the smoke.
Chapter 10
The smoke smell was fleeting and uncertain, scattered by the rain and the gusting wind.
It could mean that there was a farm or ranch nearby—but it could mean something else entirely and much less to my liking.
