Vengeance Valley

1

The chill of the high country spring was in the night, so that when Owen Daybright stepped out of the warm Burke House bar onto Stobie’s main street, he fumbled out of habit for the long-gone buttons of his sheepskin. A lamp still burned in Sambrook’s Mercantile downstreet, and he knew that while he was late, he was not too late.

He was on his second night without sleep, and with the prospect of it hours in the future, his yawn now was prodigious. Contemplating his own muddy bay standing with the other horses at the tie rail, he wondered if the gelding was as weary of him as he was of it Moving to the rail, he yanked his reins loose, and led his horse angling across the rutted, half-dry street. He was a high man, bulky to hugeness in his half-length sheepskin, and he had the heavy-footed dragging gait of a man too long astride a horse.

He rattled the door of Sambrook’s, and peered through the glass at the lamplit balcony over the rear of the store. The two Martin Sambrooks, father and son, lifted their heads in unison to regard the door, but it was young Martin who rose and started down the stairs. Owen turned and put a shoulder against the doorframe, waiting hipshot.

When he heard the door open, he came erect and tiredly turned. Redheaded Martin Sambrook grinned shyly, and then said, with halfhearted censure, Dad says you don’t seem to be in any hurry.

I wasn’t, at that. Owen’s voice was mild, agreeable; he accepted the heavy burlap sack of groceries that Martin lifted from beside the door and hoisted it over his shoulder, afterward asking, What’s it like to sleep, Martin?

No good, if you have to dream about figures, young Martin said.

Owen grinned faintly and waved his thanks and went back to his horse. First he heaved the sack across the pommel, then mounted, and afterward passed the Burke House and moved down the side street toward the railroad tracks. It was a street of high-front frame buildings, all old enough to need their second coat of paint.

Only the night lamps of a few stores were lighted. Owen saw Con Alvis, the marshal, cruising the east-side plankwalk, testing for locked doors. Without knowing why he did it, Owen pulled his horse to the right, and they passed each other in the darkness, neither speaking.

The small depot was in sight when Owen remembered the rest of his errand. Reining his horse in alongside the loading platform, he transferred the sack of groceries to it, and then fumbled inside the sack in the deep darkness. Bringing out a half-filled paper bag, he opened it. Dried apples, he thought, identifying the aroma. That’s as good a place as any to put it. Reaching in his shirt pocket, he brought out a small and heavy buckskin bag. As he dropped it in the sack of apples, it chinked solidly, and he thought wryly, That clears you, Lee. You’ve paid for him, like you pay for a colt.

Twisting the neck of the paper bag, he put it back with the other groceries, remounted the burlap bag and kneed his horse across the tracks.

Here in the poorest section of town, the street gave out, and he cut west toward the riverbed, a scattering of lamplit shanties ahead of him. A gentle wind nudged him, too cool, reminding him that there were still feet of snow on the Trade Peaks.

Passing a small shack, a dog ferociously harried his horse until he cursed it into silence, and he moved past other dark shacks, the land tilting gently toward the riverbed. Crossing a bottle-littered lot, he saw the light in the cabin below him, and he let his horse pick his way down to it, finally reining in among the dead weeds of the yard.

He had his weight forward, and his foot was pulling out of the stirrup when the voice came from the deep shadow of the shack’s side.

I wondered if it wouldn’t be tonight.

There was something in the timbre of the man’s voice, tight, wild, unstable, that made him settle back in his saddle, instantly alert, and then motionless.

I can see you good, and I got a shotgun, the wild voice continued. Get down and walk to the window.

Owen waited a long moment, and then said mildly, playing for time, Whose house is this?

Get down!

The door opened on the heel of his command, and a girl was framed in the doorway. The lamp behind her made a momentary corona around her pale hair, and then she spoke rapidly, Is that Owen?

Yes.

Now the girl’s voice sharpened. Put that gun down, you idiot! He’s Lily’s oldest friend. She added, a residue of anger still in her voice, Come in, Owen.

Owen dismounted stiffly and slung the sack of groceries over his shoulder. Approaching the door, he looked in the deep shadow beside the wall and saw the figure of a man, slight, erect, faceless in the dark, and he passed him silently as he stepped into the room.

He and the girl looked at each other, and, as she shut the door and leaned back against the wall, the afterwash of surprise still remained on Owen’s face. It was a squarish face, weathered past a smooth ruddiness where the chestnut beard stubble did not slur its lean outlines. His eyes, blue to gray, mature and watchful and set deeply back under thick and sunblond eyebrows held a quality of accusation as he asked, Why are you here, Jen?

Because I was visiting with Mrs. Stark when he—she tilted her head toward the door—came in after Doctor Stark. That was early this morning and Doc had left for some camp in the Trades. She lifted her shoulders. Who else was there?

Owen didn’t answer her, only lowered his sack of groceries to the floor and removed his hat. She watched him, her eyes violet-black, oddly incurious, and the faintest of affectionate smiles touched her full mouth and vanished. She had neither patience nor sweetness in her face, only a kind of reserve that hinted of sadness, yet she was beautiful and clearly indifferent to the fact. She rolled a sleeve of her dark dress down; and then, as if remembering a task undone, rolled it up again. Her rounded arm was out-thrust in the movement, and she extended a finger and it was pointing to the sack. She asked, What’s in there, Owen?

Owen didn’t answer her. He said, Who’s he?

Lily’s brother—Dick. A thin wail started in the next room, and Owen’s slow glance touched the door in the back sidewall and returned. Jen Canafax went on, He’s been working for some drover in Kansas, and her letter just caught up with him. He’s spent the whole day prowling the town looking for the man.

Lily all right?

Go see.

Owen tramped around the rickety table and halted in front of the door into the adjoining room. It too, like the walls of this mean room, had been pasted with old newspapers against the drafts of gone winter.

Owen raised his hand to knock and then glanced at Jen and she nodded. He knocked and opened the door and stepped into the tiny bedroom. The bed on which the girl lay took up almost the whole bedroom. Her hair, black and thick and newly brushed, trailed across the pillow and beyond, and when she glanced up at Owen, the smile that came to her face was slow and wholly open.

Owen, without speaking, came over to the side of the bed, and Lily Fasken wordlessly folded down the cover to show the bundled baby beside her. Owen looked at it a full ten seconds, then said gravely, Pan size. He looked full at Lily now, and smiled.

Lily said, Isn’t he beautiful, Owen?

Especially his color.

Lily Fasken laughed aloud, then, and oddly Owen knew a strange and fleeting anger. She was a merry girl, pretty, with a hundred times the courage of the man who had sired the child beside her.

He turned now and toed the single chair to the bedside and wearily sat down.

Lily, watching him, said, You know what I want to name him—only I won’t? She paused. Owen.

Go ahead, and be damned to everybody.

No, Lily said, thoughtfully, just so you understand. I’m going to name him Tom. That was old Mr. Canafax’s name, wasn’t it?

Owen nodded.

Jen came back with Dick this morning, Lily said. No doctor could have done more—no sister, even.

Owen said nothing, and Lily looked searchingly at him, and then she murmured, It sounds queer to say it, here and now, Owen—but I have a good life.

You do, Owen agreed soberly. He crossed his legs and said, I talked the other day with Mrs. Burke. Your job is ready for you again when you’re ready for it.

How can I watt table with young Tom here?

That hotel hasn’t been full since it was built. Mrs. Burke has a room ready, her mind made up and a crib bought. Either you fill it with young Tom, or we buy her a doll.

Lily giggled and was suddenly sober. I’ll have to do something, and quick.

Owen shook his head. Not quick, no. Sambrook sent some grub. Jen says your brother’s here. Make him cook it and you lie there a while and watch some flowers come up.

Lily only nodded, and Owen, seeing her lower lip quiver, had a panicky moment of thinking she would cry. Rising, he lifted the chair back against the wall, saying, Any special color pony Tom would like?

I’ll ask him in the morning, Lily said, trying to keep the quaver out of her voice.

Owen laughed soundlessly and moved toward the door. His hand on the latch, he turned, regarded Lily a moment, and then said, Good night, Ma.

She was grinning at him when he stepped out and closed the door behind him.

Jen was at the stove, pouring coffee into two handleless cups when he moved across the small room toward her, and she said over her shoulder, Like some coffee?

He nodded, holding out his hand, and she gave him a cup. They faced each other, each looking gingerly at the hot cup each was holding.

Did I hear her laugh, Owen? Jen asked, then.

Yeah, he said idly. It’s worth a night’s sleep to hear it.

Jen looked at him speculatively, It’s queer, but when you rode up I didn’t know it was you, but I knew it would be. She went over to a chair by the table and sat down, turning so she could see him.

He swigged a mouthful of scalding coffee and then, over the rim of the cup, said, How’s that?

Women talk, even when they’re waiting for babies. I would have known it, anyway, because I can’t think of anyone else here who would bother about a husbandless girl in hard luck. Or who could talk old Mrs. Burke into a nurse job.

Owen said dryly, You’re here, aren’t you?

That was chance—like I was sitting by the edge of a stream with a bucket in my hand when somebody comes along yelling ‘Fire.’ There was only one thing to do.

Same thing here, Owen murmured.

Jen smiled and sipped at her coffee, and now Owen regarded her closely. These last six months had altered her, yet he couldn’t tell in what way. At fourteen, he remembered, she had been a long-legged, grave-faced girl, slow to merriment, impossible to tease. At twenty, she had been lovely, and he had schemed his schemes and fought his fights in the back alley of the Masonic lodge for the bloody privilege of driving her back to Seven Cross after a dance.

Later, when she had made her choice of a man and it was Lee Stobie, everyone said, Well, old Arch Stobie has a town named after him, he owns Acorn—and now he’ll have the prettiest daughter-in-law in the country. It was then that Owen knew when Lee brought Jen home to Acorn as its mistress, he would have to go. Arch would have to find a new foreman.

That had been last fall, when everybody was speculating on the wedding date. But when Lee Stobie brought home a wife to Acorn, it hadn’t been Jen. It had been a new girl from Kansas City, a stranger, a surprise. And before the country had time to speculate on that, the winter struck.

It had been a winter of howling blizzard upon tearing gale and sleet, a winter of cringing, in which all men fought first to keep their cattle alive, and then to keep themselves alive—in which they would realize on some bitter night while listening to the wind heave at the roof and watching the snow sift inches high through a pinhole crack in the chinking, that they had not seen their nearest neighbor in five weeks.

But when the winter broke and the country could visit again, when gossip was an easy thing once more, a new bit had been added to the tale of the luckless romance of Jen Canafax. The terrible winter had brought together Jen and Mead Calhan, her nearest neighbor. And now, so Owen had heard, Jen and Mead would marry. Where once only his shyness had separated them, now a whole winter and two men were between them—and he and Jen might have been strangers.

Looking at her, he felt a curious sadness, and he could find no reason for it, except that the old days with her were lived through and gone forever. He moved to the stove and lifted the pot from it and went over to refill Jen’s cup.

I never see you any more, Owen, she said.

I’ve got a bed at Acorn that could say the same thing, Owen growled.

You’ve been checking Acorn’s winterdrift?

Owen nodded. For a month. From a hundred miles down the Snare over to Bonnykate headwaters.

So has Mead’s crew, for us both. She leaned back in her chair and looked directly at him now. How is Arch and Acorn? How is Lee’s wife?

When once she had been as familiar with Acorn as he was, she now was a stranger to it, too, and Owen said in a neutral voice, The only thing I know for sure is that they’re glad the winter is over.

And Lee? Jen asked levelly.

Good girl, Owen thought, and he said, Same. He came in with me. Watching her, he saw no change in her expression and he thought, She’d be too proud to show it, anyway.

I’m sorry for Edith, she said quietly. It was no winter to begin a marriage.

It was no winter to begin anything—unless you were a bear, Owen said. He looked over the rim of his cup. How’d the winter treat you?

Jen shrugged, and smiled a little. It would have finished us if it hadn’t been for Mead. We saw so much of his Ladder crew and they of us that the crews forgot who they were working for.

Owen drank his coffee; setting the cup down, he said mildly, I’ve heard it said this spring that you might make a permanent arrangement out of that, Jen. Anything to it?

Jen smiled, and he was surprised to see her cheeks flush. You can hear anything, Owen, but there might be some truth in it. First, though, Mead and I will have to see if we have any ranches left to merge.

Owen grinned. If I were Mead, I’d steal a ranch, then.

Jen laughed. You say such nice things, Owen. Someday, some girl will believe them, and then where’ll you be?

Owen only smiled for answer, and Jen rose.

What about tonight? Owen asked.

I’ll stay here tonight. Mrs. Corby will come in the morning. With her brother here, Lily will make out all right.

Owen moved to his coat on the table, and only then saw the sack of groceries on the floor. Remembering then, what was in the sack of apples, he thought, No Jen. That’s not for you to find. But the image of Lily in the next room came to his mind, and a kind of reckless anger welled up in him. I did what he asked me, he thought. The hell with what happens. Shrugging into his coat, he toed the burlap bag and let it lie, saying to Jen who had risen and come across the room, That’s grub from Sambrook.

From Sambrook’s store, but charged to Owen, Jen corrected gently.

Owen picked up his hat and murmured, "I never argue with