“Well, she’s real happy to see you. I love these family reunions, don’t you? So much affection in the air.”
Fay borrowed his canteen and drank from it, then handed it back. “She’ll come around. It’s not often she doesn’t get her way, that’s all.”
“I’ll bet you take after her too.”
“You could be right.”
By sundown they were near the Rim. Fay had not spoken again. Ellen had fumed in silence, blasting Drew with her mood; he looked forward to getting down from the buckboard and away from her. He was unsure how much blame Ellen would assign him when Lodi began demanding answers.
Levon, on lookout, had alerted Lodi to the presence of a rider behind Drew and Ellen, and Nate rode out to make sure the stranger got no closer if the circumstances demanded it. He had not expected a woman, and after looking her up and down asked Drew, “Who the hell’s this—some whore you brung back? You know you can’t.”
“Better watch your mouth. She’s Ellen’s girl.”
“Hers?” To Ellen he said, “What for?”
“Ask her,” said Ellen, not even looking at him.
“Well?” Nate demanded, his horse alongside Fay’s.
“A woman in trouble, she goes where her mama’s at.”
“How’d you know where, huh?”
“I don’t see that it’s any of your business. Are we close?” she asked Drew. “I’m worn out.”
“Pretty near.”
“And right here’s as close as you get,” said Nate. “Take her back where you got her, Bones. Use my horse.”
“I’ll let Lodi tell me that.”
“You’ll do what you’re goddamn told, is what you’ll do.”
“Not today, not by you.”
He flicked the reins and drove on. Nate could do nothing but ride on ahead. Drew half expected Lodi himself to ride out, but they reached the cabin without additional escort. Lodi was waiting, flanked by Levon and Nate.
“Didn’t tell me you were expecting family, Ellen.”
“Well, I wasn’t. She just came, that’s all. I didn’t tell her to.”
“Peculiar how she knew where to come.”
“I didn’t tell her,” insisted Ellen, climbing down from her seat.
“Must’ve told someone, I’d say.”
“It was Reuben,” said Fay, dismounting.
“Who’s Reuben?”
“Friend of the family. Didn’t my father ever talk about Reuben when he rode with you?”
“Don’t recall the name,” said Lodi, running his eye over her. The sun was behind the jutting sandstone ledge by then; he thought she might be pretty if he could just see her face, but he was prepared to kill her if he smelled a setup. Lodi had been turned in once by a woman he felt genuine affection for, and shot his way out of a trap; he had enjoyed female companionship on a limited basis since then.
“Better come inside and get this talked through. Levon, get that stuff unloaded and take care of the team.”
Inside, Drew quickly told his story while Ellen lit the lamps, then Ellen told how she had tried to dissuade Fay from following them back to the Rim, but Fay had got herself a horse and come along anyway.
“But you told this Reuben where you were headed, before you left Saint Louis, didn’t you?”
“I guess I must have, but I don’t recall.”
“That wasn’t smart, Ellen. You should’ve known better than that, married to a man that rode with Arch Powell. You keep your mouth shut about where you’re going, because the law could be listening. Don’t you know that?”
“Yes,” admitted Ellen. Drew began to feel sorry for her. She looked considerably older than her years, and he guessed she was afraid of being sent away for her carelessness.
“I’m the one that came,” said Fay. “Blame me not her.”
“All right,” agreed Lodi, “I’ll do just that. Tell me why you’re here, and don’t bother telling me lies.”
“No big reason, except my husband died.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” demanded Nate.
Levon was coming in with supplies and going out again, trying to make sense of the snippets of talk he heard.
“Mister,” said Fay, seemingly unafraid, “if you had a mother you loved one time or another, maybe I wouldn’t have to explain it to you. My husband died, I wanted to see my mother, and if that doesn’t make sense to you, well then, it’ll just have to make no sense.”
“Did he die?” Lodi asked Ellen.
“She says he did. How should I know? He always got in fights, I know that. She says he was knifed. I expected he’d end up that way. I told her, don’t pick that one, but she did anyway, and now she’s here.”
“I don’t like it,” Nate said.
Fay looked at him, then away, as if Nate’s opinion was not worth considering. Drew saw a cloud of anger cross Nate’s face. He had never liked Nate, and Nate had made it clear ever since Drew failed to kill the Pinkerton man that he considered him untrustworthy, even if Drew had dispatched one of the Bentine brothers with a merciful bullet and performed his role in their robberies with a skill that helped assure them of success. If Fay Torrey irritated Nate, it only made Drew like her even more. He was enjoying the situation more than he cared to admit.
“Well, now, Mrs.… what name was he, your husband?” Lodi asked.
“I’m Torrey again, and glad to be.”
“Is that so. Well, Miss Torrey, the boys and I are not what you’d call happy to have you among us, uninvited as you are. Being that you know what your pa did for a living, you’ll appreciate that we choose our company with care. I just don’t see how we’d need two ladies to look after us out here, only being four of us to feed, so I’m going to have to turn you around come morning and send you back where you came from, dead husband or no dead husband—that is, unless you consider yourself a better cook than your mama here.”
Drew could tell Lodi was unnerving Ellen deliberately as a punishment. Fay took off her hat and threw it on the table. “I don’t like to cook,” she said.
“Then tomorrow you’ll go back.”
“I don’t want to, if it’s all the same to you.”
“But you will, because you don’t have a say in things around here.” Lodi smiled.
“Sleep on it,” advised Fay, and Drew saw Levon’s jaw drop at her nerve; no one addressed Lodi in that fashion.
“I’ll certainly do that. You can share your mama’s bed tonight. In the morning you’ll do what I said.”
Lodi was upset with himself; he had just said something he had not wanted to say, and one of the prime tenets of his life had always been to say only those things he truly meant to. He didn’t want Fay Torrey to go anywhere except directly to his bunk. She was not as pretty as he’d hoped, but her sass and boldness made her desirable. He wanted her. Bones wanted her too, he could see that, and Bones was younger and better-looking, but Lodi suspected Fay was the kind of woman who wanted the top dog, the pack leader, not one of the curs running behind, no matter how sleek his fur. Lodi didn’t wish to get into an argument with Bones, whom he also liked. With luck, Fay Torrey would make both their lives easier by leaving in the morning as requested.
Following breakfast, when Fay was not inclined to saddle her horse and go, Lodi did nothing. Levon said to Drew, “She’s an all right kind of woman, don’t you think?”
“I suppose. She keeps herself to herself.”
“That’s on account of Ellen. I heard her say to keep low and not stir nothing up.”
“You like Fay, Levon?”
“Oh, I’d have her for mine, you bet, in spite of that mouth she’s got. That’s a spitfire there, boy, but not mean, not deep down. How’s she strike you, Bones?”
“Hasn’t struck me yet. Haven’t offended her enough, I suppose.”
“You know what I mean. Is she your kind of woman too?”
“Levon, I’m too shy to talk about such things.”
“Nate, he can’t stan
d her. I wonder about Nate sometimes—you know, whether he’s got the same urges you and me have got for the ladies.”
“Well, it’s been rumored that Nate’s especially close to his mare, which is reassuring, considering I once heard about a man who was real close with his stallion.”
Levon doubled himself over and slapped at his boots. When he could speak, he said to Drew, “He’d kill you, he heard you say a thing like that.”
“I know it, and I’d kill him right back.”
“Bones, you know this outfit works just fine like it is. You and Nate start gunning for each other, Lodi and me’ll have to start over with new men that we don’t know. You be nice to him now, you hear?”
On the second day after Fay’s arrival, Lodi still had said nothing, had made no move to enforce his edict that she take herself away, and Fay began walking around more. In the afternoon she walked past Drew and headed for the narrow pathway that led up to the Rim. Drew took this for the beckoning call of opportunity, and followed. When he caught up with her, Fay was admiring the view to be had from the ledge’s upper reaches.
“Think God made it?” he asked.
“Him or someone bigger.”
When his arm slipped around her waist she made no objection, but asked, “Are you always so slow?”
“I’m bashful,” Drew told her, to cover his embarrassment; no girl had accused him of that before. He covered himself further by kissing her, and found the body bent against his own to be without the least resistance or inhibition. This made him wonder momentarily if Fay was too experienced in matters relating to men, then he decided he didn’t care. He didn’t even care about Lodi, and the looks Lodi had given her.
“What’s the argument between you and Ellen?” he asked when they separated.
“Have you heard me arguing? It takes two to argue.”
“She’s got a bee in her bonnet about something.”
“And you just have to know what it is.”
“I’m curious, I admit it.”
Fay took a few steps away from him. “It’s over a man,” she said, “a man Mama fell in love with, but he was too young for her. He was just stringing her along because she gave him money. Then he started in on me, and she saw him do it and blamed me, not him. He left anyway after that.”
“That’s the whole story?”
“That’s it. She won’t forgive me. She’s stubborn, just like me.”
“Then why’d you come out here to be with her?”
“I’ve been asking myself that. Seems I might have made a mistake, wouldn’t you say?”
“Not from where I’m standing.”
“Do women like the things you say to them, Bones?”
“Some do.”
Fay pointed along the curved edge of the Rim. “Does that lead anywhere? Is there only one way out of here? My papa always said you had to have a back door, even if you’re out under the sky.”
“There’s a way out along there, Lodi says, but you couldn’t call it a trail, just another way to go if you had to leave in a big hurry.”
“Do you worry about dying, doing what you do?”
“Not particularly.”
“That’s what my daddy used to say to Mama. It near drove her crazy. She wanted him to quit, but he never did.”
Drew watched her face while she spoke. He liked the shape of her chin, squared-off like a boy’s.
“I think I’ve had my fill of scenery for now,” she said, and went back to the path. Drew stayed where he was. He couldn’t be sure what kind of bird Fay Torrey was at all.
In the afternoon Ellen came to Drew beside the corral. “You keep away from her,” she told him.
“Why?”
“She’s no good. She’s mine, but she’s no good.”
“I don’t see her that way.”
“You and Lodi both. You can’t come up against a man like that and win, not a boy like you. She’ll play you off against each other, just like she’s done before. Men, they’d be a whole lot smarter if they cut their peckers off. You stay away from her and maybe you won’t get hurt.”
“I’ll bear it in mind.”
“What mind?”
That evening Drew went looking for Fay, and found her wandering near the natural path leading up to the spot he had followed her to earlier.
“Care to see it again?” she asked.
“See what?”
“The scenery up there.”
“All right.”
They went up onto the ledge under a darkening purple sky.
“I put a blanket up here before,” Fay said.
“A blanket?”
“It’s over there,” she said, pointing to a hollow in the sandstone. They both strolled over, and there was the blanket, laid out in a double spread with rocks at its corners to prevent the wind from blowing it away. Fay sat down on it, and Drew sat beside her.
“Take your boots off,” she told him. “Take everything off.”
When Fay returned to Ellen’s cabin, Ellen could tell right off she’d been with a man. There was the look of feline satisfaction on her face Ellen recalled from other incidents, long ago, and the odor of lovemaking that clung to her as she moved with much swishing of her skirts around the place.
“You smell like a polecat. Go fix yourself. Which one was it?”
“You don’t need to know,” Fay said with mild scorn, and went to fetch her douche.
Fay had been assisting Ellen with the meals, but she did so with bad grace. Ellen made her wait till the men were done before dishing up food for herself. Ellen disliked eating with her daughter, but she would not serve her at the same time she served the men. It was bad enough that Fay had already opened herself to either Bones or Lodi (Ellen suspected it was Bones, judging by his face at supper), but if she began sitting down at the same table as them she’d drop enough hints over what had happened, without ever speaking a word, to get the men fighting, and Ellen would have hated to see a young man like Bones lying dead. She sometimes wondered if Fay had some kind of demon inside her from the fact that Ellen’s husband had not been the actual father. Maybe she was stuck with a daughter like Fay as punishment for her own sins, but she wouldn’t assist Fay in any of her scheming over men. Lodi hadn’t followed through with his threat to send the girl away, so he was already beguiled, like Bones. Soon there would be blood between them; it was inevitable.
On the third morning, Fay announced she was leaving. Drew felt his heart shrink, and stared at her for some sign that she was joking.
“Fine by me,” was all Lodi said, but he was watching Drew as he said it.
“I want someone to take me back to Cortez in the buckboard.”
“You got yourself a horse,” Nate reminded her.
“I don’t like riding. You can keep the horse, just take me back to town in the buckboard. I’m already packed.”
“That’ll be a job for you, Bones,” Lodi said. “You awake there, Bones? Get the team set up.”
Ellen watched as Drew put the mules into harness and placed Fay’s bag under the seat. Drew wanted to ask her why Fay was doing this, but Ellen’s expression told him she knew what had happened between them, so he said nothing.
Drew didn’t trust himself to speak until they were on the flats. “Going to tell me why you’re leaving?”
“I wasn’t welcome there.”
“That’s strange, because I recall very clearly doing my damnedest to make you feel welcome. I kind of thought you knew that.”
“It wasn’t anything you did or didn’t do. It couldn’t have worked out, not with Mama there, and Lodi.”
“What’s he got to do with it?”
“He would’ve called you out sooner or later, and killed you.”
“He wouldn’t.”
“He would, and you know it. That’s why I wanted you to bring me back to town. You can keep going with me if you want. You don’t have to go back.”
“Everything I own is back there. Go where?”
&n
bsp; “You don’t own a thing that can’t be replaced in a general store. Anywhere, that’s where I’d go. Do you want to?”
Drew thought about it. Once again, it was Fay directing the course of events; she was the pushingest woman he’d come across since Vanda Gentles back in Galveston. Her offer was a tempting one, but he felt he couldn’t simply leave the outfit that way, without any kind of explanation. Of course, everyone would figure out what had happened in any case, if he did what Fay wanted. He could picture their faces, imagine their comments. Nate would say, “She opened it, he sniffed it, he followed her.” Lodi would say nothing, but would be scornful of a man who abandoned his partners for a piece of tail. Levon would agree with Nate, but think to himself what a cute piece of tail Fay had been. Ellen, he imagined, would be furious, but at the same time hardly surprised.
“Well?”
“I’m thinking.”
“Don’t think too long or you’ll bust a vein in your head. What do you need to think about? Either you want to come with me and live like a regular man does, or you stay with that bunch and get shot out of the saddle somewhere.”
“Let me alone for two minutes, will you?”
“Two minutes, sure, I’ll give you two minutes.”
When those minutes had elapsed, she said again, “Well?”
“I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, you’re sorry, all right. You’re the sorriest man I ever met. Couldn’t even make up his own mind for once. Now I know what kind of man I almost got tied up with. You’re a real disappointment to me.”
Drew was glad she had become angry rather than tearful; it made his refusal easier to stand by. They drove on in rigid silence, and dust rose in a low cloud behind the turning wheels as Drew followed his own wagon ruts of three days ago.
He set down her bag outside the stage-line office. Fay picked it up and said, “One last time. Do you want to come with me or not?”
If she had given him time to consider another chance he might have succumbed, but the way she presented it to him, with contempt ready to flood her eyes, made him refuse again, this time without hesitation. Fay went inside. Drew turned the buckboard and drove slowly out of town, feeling miserable and used. He hadn’t understood what went on in Fay’s mind, and now he never would. It was all over, and he supposed he should have felt grateful not to have ended up a traitor to his partners. He most likely would have ended up firmly beneath her thumb anyway, a strong-willed woman like that.