It was a fine day to be alive. Since they had left Durango and headed west toward Cortez, the country had undergone a significant change. Now it was lower, more open, and the high mountain evergreens had been replaced by sage and pinyon as well as juniper. The air was warmer, the colors softer, browns and grays instead of dark greens.
“This looks like sheep country to me,” Betty remarked. “Better sheep than cattle country.”
“Do you know something about sheep?”
“I know a lot about sheep.”
Smith was driving the buggy, and now he turned and looked at her with undisguised curiosity. “How?”
“My father was a sheepman. When I was a girl, we used to summer in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and winter on the high New Mexican deserts. We were nomads. We owned no land, only many thousands of sheep.
“Did your father prosper?”
“For a time. But he didn’t realize that greedy cattlemen would fence the lands so that we could not move our flocks between the summer and winter ranges. In time, there was no place to go except to the worst of the desert. For this reason, our sheep began to starve. We had to almost give them away one winter. That was the year that my father got drunk and shot a rancher who had fenced off his last passageway to the high mountains and our last hope for summer range.”
“He shot the rancher?”
“Yes, and killed him.”
“Then what happened?”
“My father and mother fled to Mexico, but they were caught and hanged.”
“Why did they hang your mother?”
“Because,” Betty said, “she and my father put up a fight and killed a couple more gringos just north of El Paso.”
“Where were you when all this was happening?”
“In Taos with my Aunt Monica. She was ill and I loved her very much.”
Smith shook his head. “It sounds like a tragic time for you. Did your aunt at least recover?”
“No. She died that same winter.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen.”
“And what happened then?”
“I went to work in a cantina,” Betty said, her eyes clouding with sadness. “I worked there several years. I … I had many men, some good but most bad. And I lost a baby. I almost died, and then Red found me and took me to the Bar S, where I have lived ever since.”
“Were you really happy living with him?”
“Sometimes yes, sometimes no,” Betty said after a long pause. “You see, Red Skoal was mostly nice to me. He saved my life, but I knew that he was an outlaw and had killed many men. And sometimes, when he drank too much, he was very rough with me, but he was always sorry the next morning.”
“And you don’t blame me for killing him?”
“No, because he was one of the men that killed your family. He told me about that, you know.”
“I don’t want to hear of it,” Smith said, shaking his head back and forth. “Not ever.”
She kissed his pale cheek. “I will never speak of that or of Red again. You have my word of honor.”
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “And I promise I will treat you with kindness.”
“Maybe that is not enough for me now. Eh?”
Smith knew what she wanted to hear, and he said, “All right, I love you, Betty. I will always love you.”
“And be faithful?”
“Yes.”
“And even marry me?”
He glanced sideways at her with a big smile. “Of course. It would make me very proud to have you for my wife.”
Betty radiated happiness. “Maybe I can even give you another fine son.”
Smith opened his mouth to tell her that he did not want another son. That it was all his heart could stand to risk loving another woman. But when he looked very deep into Betty’s eyes, he knew he could not tell her this because she very much wanted a son of her own. So he nodded in agreement and pretended not to notice when she wiped away her tears.
Cortez was a burgeoning livestock center where one was as likely to meet outlaws as cowboys or Indians. The Navajo and Hopi peoples mixed and traded freely with whites and Mexicans, and the architecture of the town was a mix of frontier shanty and old Santa Fe adobe. When Jim Smith and Betty drove up the center of town, they hardly attracted a glance because the townspeople were accustomed to seeing a lot of passing strangers.
“I’m not going to waste any time in asking for their whereabouts,” Smith announced. “My experience is that the news of our arrival will travel fast. The best thing to do is to find the Marble brothers before they even know we’re looking for them.”
“They might be watching us right now,” Betty said nervously. “They know that I was Red’s woman.”
“Well,” Smith replied matter-of-factly, “that can’t be helped. Let’s just hope we see them before they see us.”
Smith left his team at a livery and collected their few traveling bags. After getting directions to a suitable hotel, he said, “We’re old friends of Tom and Dave Marble. Would you happen to know if they’re in town?”
“I saw Dave yesterday,” the liveryman announced. “But not Tom. I heard that they’ve had a little parting of the ways.”
“Oh?”
“You see, Dave got drunk and cut Tom’s cinch almost clean away as a practical joke. When Tom started to gallop out of town, his cinch broke and he took a real bad spill. Nearly broke his neck.”
“Some practical joke.”
“Yeah,” the liveryman agreed with a shake of his head. “Anyway, it knocked Tom out cold and everyone hoped he was dead. But he wasn’t. And when he came around and learned that his own brother had cut his cinch, they had a real donnybrook. Fought up and down the street and tore up the Medallion Saloon. Tom was always the toughest of the pair, and he just beat the living hell out of Dave. Then he took Dave’s good cinch to replace his own and galloped out of town.”
“Where did he go?” Smith asked.
“Out to their place about ten miles west of town, I reckon,” the liveryman said. “I ain’t seen their spread, but I hear it has a cabin and a good spring. He and some Indian are huntin’ wild horses. I’ve bought a few of ‘em myself. Pretty good animals, for mustangs.”
“Where is Dave right now?” Betty asked.
“My guess he’s drinkin’ and playin’ cards back at the Medallion Saloon. That’s his usual hangout.”
Smith pivoted to gaze down the street. “That the one?” he asked, pointing.
“‘Yep. But there’s no ladies allowed inside,” the liveryman said, eyes coming to rest on Betty. “Just whores, ma’am.”
“Thanks,” Betty replied as she took Smith’s arm and they started down the street.
“You’re not going in there,” Smith told her. “We’re getting a room at the hotel and you’ll wait there until this killing business is finally finished.”
“But …”
“Don’t argue with me,” Smith told her in a firm, but quiet voice. “If you were with me when I braced Dave Marble, I’d be thinking about you maybe taking a stray bullet instead of how I needed to drop Dave in his tracks. You could be my fatal distraction.”
“All right then,” she said as they approached the recommended hotel.
They had a room in less than ten minutes, and then Smith said a quick good-bye. “Betty, don’t you worry. I’ll be back before you know it.”
“Dave is very cunning, very dangerous,” she warned, following him out into the hallway. “You don’t give him any chance at all or he will think of some way to kill you.”
“All right,” Smith called back over his shoulder as he hurried down the hall.
The Medallion Saloon was a pigpen with a filthy sawdust floor, cobwebs in the rafters, and a rough-looking crowd of heavy drinkers. Smith supposed he had seen the interior of worse-looking saloons, but they were beyond his immediate recollection.