Blood and Gold

The ranch was the usual scattering of barns and corrals, but the bunkhouse was bigger and more spacious than most, though Simon had scrimped on windows, there being only one on each wall of the log building. I knew that only a couple of punchers would be living in the bunkhouse, since Mr. Prather had paid off the hands who’d made the drive to Dodge.

The ranch house had two stories and a tile roof, both levels boasting wide and shady balconies, unusual at that time in Texas, when even rich ranchers like Charles Goodnight and John D. Chisholm were content to live in what were little more than shacks. Rarer still were the house’s three tall chimneys, each made of gray stone, expertly laid by an itinerant German mason.

Simon had built the house as a palace for Ma to live in and he’d spared no expense, hauling the lumber all the way from the coast, and the durable white English paint from an importer in Austin.

Lila was once again sitting in front of me in the saddle, and I heard her sharp little intake of breath as the ranch came in sight.

“Dusty, your ranch is beautiful,” she whispered, “like something you see in a storybook.”

I laughed. “Lila, the SP Connected isn’t mine. I only ride for the brand at forty a month.”

“Maybe so, Dusty, but you’ll have a place of your own like this someday,” Lila said, her earnest little face turned to mine. “I know you will.”

I bent and kissed her then and said, “I hope you’re right.”

Lila nodded, her chin determined. “I know I’m right.”

Ma Prather, her hand shading her eyes from the afternoon sun, saw us coming from a long way off. She had the Texan’s ability to see clearly across vast distances of country, yet without her spectacles she couldn’t read the label on a peach can, and that right close-up.

Ma waited until I reined up in front of the house and let Lila hop down from the saddle. Then, stiff and sore, my shoulder throbbing, I swung off the paint my ownself and Ma ran into my arms. I hugged her close, enjoying the plump, solid feel of her and the remembered scent of lavender water and newly baked apple turnovers.

“Ma,” I said, after I finally disentangled myself and Ma had dabbed at her eyes a time or two with a tiny lace handkerchief, “this here is Lila Tryon. We met on the trail and her pa was killed yesterday”—I hesitated, suddenly tired beyond belief—“or the day before—the days keep running one into the other.”

“Yesterday,” Lila said.

“Oh, you poor little thing!” Ma exclaimed. And such was her caring nature, she grabbed Lila in her strong arms and hugged her close. “Child, you look worn-out,” she said. “A warm bath for you and then some good, solid food to put some meat on those poor bones.”

I stepped to the paint and fetched the saddlebags.

Ma was holding Lila’s hand in hers and her little lace handkerchief was mighty busy again.

“Ma,” I said, trying to find the words, but discovering there was no easy way around it, “this is the money from the sale of the herd, but I have bad news concerning Mr. Prather. He’s—”

Ma surprised me then. “Oh, I know all about it, Dusty,” she said. “The sheriff in Sweetwater sent a rider out here a week ago with a wire from a Dr. Wilson in Dodge. The doctor said Simon is recovering just fine and he expects him to ride the rail cars home no later than the fall.”

Silently, sad, stoop-shouldered Jim Meldrum stepped beside me and stuck out his hand. “Welcome home, Dusty.”

He gave me no smile, as was his way, but I took Meldrum’s hand, and after we shook, the puncher turned to Ma. “Miz Prather, if I’m not mistaken, I’d say this boy has a story to tell. And he’s hurt.”

Alarm flared in Ma’s hazel eyes. “Hurt? Dusty, where?”

Meldrum answered for me. “Left shoulder, high up. He favors it some.”

Before he hired on with the SP ten years before and hung up his Colts, Meldrum had been a Mississippi gambler and a gun handler of no small reputation. His survival had once depended on noticing little things like a man’s stiff shoulder, and his experienced eye had quickly spotted what I’d been so anxious to hide.

“It’s nothing, Ma,” I said. “It’s healing over real good.”

Ma Prather looked me up and down real close, quickly taking in my exhausted appearance and the telltale swell of the bandage under my shirt. “Jim,” she said, “help Dusty into the house.” And to me: “Young man, you’re going to bed.”

Me, I was suddenly too tuckered out to argue. I handed Meldrum the saddlebags and warned him to take care of them real well; then I followed Ma and Lila into the house.

I woke in a soft bed in a room with flowered paper on the walls, an oil lamp burning pale yellow on the table beside me. Outside, beyond the window, it was growing dark and I reckoned I must have been asleep for five or six hours.

When I turned on the pillow, I found myself looking into the whiskered, whiskey-reddened face of Charlie Fullerton, Ma’s personal cook, a trained chef who doubled as the chuck wagon biscuit shooter during spring roundups.