Blood and Gold

Ma cried bitter tears for Jim Meldrum when we arrived at the ranch, then tempered her grief by fussing over Lila like a mother hen.

She had me carry Lila to the best room in the house, a spacious bed chamber on the ground level, the windows shaded by the porch and a huge, spreading oak tree where crows gathered in winter.

Ma insisted I get a doctor, if one could be found, but Charlie Fullerton was outraged by the very idea.

“I’ve treated more bullet wounds than any young whippersnapper of a doctor,” he told Ma. “And I ain’t never lost a shot-up puncher yet.”

“Mr. Fullerton,” Ma said, reasonably, “Lila is no puncher. In case you haven’t noticed, she’s a girl.”

“Well,” Charlie said, “it makes no never mind. I ain’t lost one o’ them either.”

As it happened, even Ma had to admit that a doctor could not have done better than Charlie. He cleaned Lila’s wounds, spread them with one of his mysterious salves and bound them up with a neat bandage.

“It feels better already,” Lila said.

I don’t know if she meant it, but it pleased Charlie enormously. “Told you so,” he said to Ma, grinning.

“Ain’t nobody knows more than Charlie Fullerton about doctoring.”

When Charlie left the room, Ma turned to me and said: “Dusty, go wait in the parlor for a spell. I want to talk to Lila alone.”

Ma Prather was with Lila a long time, and when she reappeared, her face was strained and guarded. “She’s sleeping now, Dusty,” she said.

Charlie brought us coffee and Ma said: “Dusty, I know how you love to smoke. Let’s take our coffee outside.”

We stepped onto the porch, my spurs chiming, and sat in the same rockers that Lila and me had sat in the night Deke Stockton was killed. Ma was very quiet, sipping her coffee as the day slowly died around us and the sky caught fire.

I rolled a smoke and lit the cigarette, knowing Ma would talk when she felt like it.

Finally, she turned to me and said: “Dusty, that girl is going to need a lot of care.” She waved a hand at me. “Oh, I don’t mean her shoulder wound—Charlie Fullerton can fix that—I’m talking about her deeper wounds, the ones that are much harder to heal.”

Me, I searched around for the right words, failed to find them and kept silent.

Ma and Lila had talked, and being a woman, Ma understood the depth of Lila’s pain much more than

I ever could.

Ma waited long to hear if I’d speak, but I busied myself by rolling another cigarette.

“Do you love her, Dusty?” she asked finally.

“I guess I do,” I said. “No, I really do.”

“Then you’ll have to stand by her. She’ll need that from you more than anything else.”

I drew deep on my cigarette, enjoying the harsh, bitter bite of the smoke. “Ma, I was thinking about that very thing earlier. I decided Lila needs a grown man, not a boy.”

“Dusty, you’re all the man you’ll ever be,” Ma said. “And a darned good one if you ask me.”

“Do you really think that, Ma?” I asked.

Ma nodded. “If you were my own son, I’d tell you the same.” She reached out and laid the tips of her fingers on the back of my hand. “Marry her, Dusty. Raise your children and then grow old with her and never, not even once, turn your back on her.” She studied me closely. “Can you do all that?”

“I’d surely like to try.”

“Do more than try.” Ma hunted around for the right words, as I had done earlier. “Cherish her, Dusty. Never let her think for a single moment as long as you both live that you consider her soiled goods.”

I took a deep breath and said: “If I made Lila my wife and any man said such a thing about her, I’d kill him.”

“But you, Dusty, what do you think?”

I smiled, a genuine smile, finding no need to force it. “I think, Ma, I’m beginning to grow up.”

I’ll never know what Ma was going to say next, because Charlie Fullerton stomped onto the porch and said: “Dinner’s ready, an’ if’n you don’t come in and eat, I’ll throw it away.”

Half an hour later, as I was finishing my second piece of pie, big John Coleman and a dozen exhausted riders reined up outside the ranch house. The faces of the Coleman punchers were haggard and unshaven, but they looked a grim and determined bunch, led by a Kiowa I’d seen a time or two, a silent, brooding man who made a living as a horse wrangler but also hired out now and then as a scout.

I didn’t yet know it as I wiped off my mouth and stepped onto the porch, but I’d soon be joining them all on a headlong ride into hell.

Chapter 24

“My Sally’s gone,” Coleman told Ma as he sat with us in the parlor. “And young Ethan Noon with her.”

“John, whatever has happened?” Ma asked, rising alarm edging her voice.

Coleman turned his exhausted red-rimmed eyes on her. “It happened on the trail home after they left here last night.”

“What happened, John?” Ma prompted. Her face had slowly drained of blood. She had guessed at what was to come and I could tell she dreaded every approaching word of it.