Blood and Gold

I caught Ma’s amused smile, as I said, lying just a little: “Disappointed, yes, but I’m happy for you, Sally.” I looked over at Noon. “And you too, Ethan.”

Sally giggled and Noon hee-hawed several times and slapped his thigh. “The best man won, Dusty, an’ no mistake.”

Now normally a challenge like that would have earned Noon my fist to his nonexistent chin, but I was happy to let it go.

Compared to Lila, Sally Coleman looked colorless and washed out, her skin and hair the same shade of white, her eyes more rain cloud gray than blue. In her brown woolen dress she looked dowdy and plain, a corn sack tied in the middle. Gone were the red, blue or green ribbons I’d admired so much and the tightly curled ringlets that bounced on her shoulders. In their place was hair scraped straight back from the face in a severe bun, pinned in place by a long steel spike. She looked like a girl consciously trying to become a mature woman before her time and the only thing that remained of the Sally I’d once known was the giggle, still high-pitched, strident and silly.

Once I’d thought myself madly in love with Sally Coleman. Now I wondered what I’d ever seen in her.

“Well,” Ma said, rising to her feet, “this calls for a celebration. I believe I can find a bottle of champagne for us.”

“Ma,” I said quickly. When she turned to look at me, I shook my head. “We have to talk, urgently.”

Ma Prather was a perceptive woman. She knew something must be terribly wrong, something that required her attention and was far more important than Sally Coleman and her marriage.

“Lordy, Sally and Ethan,” she said, “I guess we’ll have to postpone the champagne. I think Dusty here has pressing range matters to discuss.”

Noon disengaged himself from the fireplace, and stood there grinning, all hands, feet and stoop shoulders. “That don’t make no never mind, Mrs. P,’ he said. “Me and Sally have to be moving along anyhow.” He glanced over at me, a barb glinting in his muddy eyes. “We like to get to bed really early o’ nights.”

Sally giggled and Noon hee-hawed, and Ma, sensing my urgency, hustled the pair to the door.

After farewells that took a lot longer than they should have, Sally and Noon climbed into the surrey and soon its bobbing sidelights were heading down the trail in the direction of the Coleman ranch.

“What’s happened?” Ma asked, her hand on my arm. “Is it Lila?”

I nodded. “We better go inside and talk and I think Jim Meldrum and Mr. Fullerton should hear this too.”

I gave Ma my arm and led her into the parlor and when Meldrum and Charlie arrived I told them how I’d been bushwhacked by Lafe Wingo, and Lila taken. I took out the note Wingo had left and passed it to Ma. “This says it all.”

Ma fetched her spectacles and read, her face paling with every word. I think she read the note several times before she finally laid it aside and said: “We have no choice. We must pay this man. Lila’s life is more important than a two-by-twice ranch, so there can be no argument.”

I shook my head at her. “Ma, you love this ranch. If you don’t pay off the bankers they’ll foreclose and you’ll lose everything, including the chair you’re sitting in and maybe even the clothes off your back.”

“He’s right, Miz Prather,” Meldrum said, his long, melancholy face sadder than ever. “You and Mr. Prather built the SP with your own blood and sweat and then you held it against Kiowa and Comanche and white men who were worse than any of them and tried to take it from you.” He rose to his feet and, in an uncharacteristic gesture, crossed the room and placed his hand on Ma’s shoulder. “Dusty is right. You love this place and I can’t stand by and see you throw it all away.”

“Jim,” Ma said, her voice very small, “saving a girl’s life is not throwing it away.”

Meldrum nodded. “I know that, but me and Dusty and Mr. Fullerton will just have to find another way.” He looked over at me. “Any ideas?”

I shook my head. “Haven’t studied on it, at least not yet.”

“I’ll study on it some my ownself,” Meldrum said. He looked down at Ma again. “Now don’t you go fretting none, Miz Prather. We’ll get the girl back, safe and sound. There was a time when I was pretty good with a gun, you know.”

Ma took the lanky puncher’s hand, her eyes tearstained. “Jim, you left all that behind you. You told me you were all through with gunfighting.”

“Times change,” Meldrum said. “And sometimes, for better or worse, a man has to change right along with them.”

Ma’s eyes shifted to me. “Dusty, what will you do?”

“Get Lila back, Ma,” I said. “Right now, that’s all I know.”

As to how that was going to happen, I had no idea. And judging by the tight, unhappy expression on Jim Meldrum’s face, neither did he.

Despite Ma’s final, tearful pleas to take the thirty thousand dollars, Meldrum and me rode out at long before daybreak, the saddlebags draped across the front of my saddle bulging—but with torn-up newspapers, not money.