Drumm scratched his chin. The beard itched. "Detective Meech gave me only the barest details. But your version puts a different light on things."
"What can we do? The Buckners are big bugs in Philadelphia, and Beulah and I are just little people. No one will believe us!"
"I have a plan," Drumm said.
They listened.
"With Meech about, as he may well be, we have to be very careful. I told him you two had gone on to Prescott, to visit your uncle Buell, but I do not think he believed me."
"You never!" Mrs. Glore cried.
Phoebe was surprised, also. "But why did you do that? That puts you in as much trouble as us!"
"Never mind that! At any rate, here is what you must do. I want you and Mrs. Glore to remain here, in the hut, night and day. Do not venture out. There will be people passing by, more and more now that Agustín is barricaded in the Mazatzals—stages, freight wagons, travelers and settlers, miners. Even Alonzo Meech may unexpectedly return, hoping to catch you unawares. But you are not to show yourselves. In a few days, I expect a friend of mine—a Mr. Ike Coogan—to come by in the Tully and Ochoa wagons with a contract for me to sign. Coogan is a good sort. I think I can arrange to smuggle you and Mrs. Glore to Prescott in one of his wagons. There your uncle can take over your protection; perhaps help you to get to the Sandwich Islands or Australia, where you will be safe."
A tinge of color returned to Phoebe Larkin's cheeks. The freckles paled. She touched her lips with a wispy handkerchief. Phoebe looked dainty and very feminine; Jack marveled that this was the female who swung a mattock like a man, drove off Agustín's braves with a pistol in each hand—and shot a brutal husband.
"Why, I must ask you again," she said, "are you doing all this for us?"
"Because you have been badly used. We Britons believe in fair play."
She rose, looking him in the eye with that strange gaze he had once before observed. "Mr. Drumm," she said, "I thought you were cold as Mose's toe. But I'm bound to admit I'm a poor judge of men! All anyone has to do is remember I married Mr. Buckner. So I apologize for what I said. Maybe there is a little milk of human kindness in you."
"Me too," Mrs. Glore agreed. "That's the God's truth! We both got a little different slant on you now."
Jack Drumm had a different slant, as she put it, on himself, also; it bothered him. Belatedly he realized he must soon find time to write a few lines to Cornelia Newton-Barrett. For some time he had neglected her.
Behind the new dam the water level grew. Now there was a pond containing small fish, deep enough to bathe in. Charlie and Eggleston finished the adobe building and roofed it with thatch. Jack Drumm blistered his hands cutting brush to build a corral. The beans and corn that the Papago had planted began to burgeon, show miniature fruits. Too, a semblance of peace came to the valley of the Agua Fria. Traffic increased along the road to the new capital. Now there were frequent freight wagons and a twice-weekly coach service. A man named Sloat from Emporia, Kansas, tied up his mules two miles down the road from Rancho Terco and settled there with his wife and six children. The winter sun was good for Mrs. Sloat's rheumatism, and Sloat was impressed by the rampant growth of Charlie's corn and beans. "In Kansas, in November," Sloat enthused, "everything's snowed over, but out here a farmer can work the soil right through the winter! That's for me!"
George Dunaway rode by, also. Jack was currying old Bonyparts, the mule, when the lieutenant and two men tied their horses to the new hitching post before the adobe and dismounted. Dunaway looked spruce. The ragged black beard was neatly trimmed, his blue shirt ironed till the creases stood out like knife blades, and his boots gleamed in the noonday sun. Jack looked at the flowers clutched in the lieutenant's fist.
"You're welcome," he said, "but surely you're not bringing me a bouquet."
One of the troopers snickered but Dunaway fixed him with a malevolent eye.
"They're for Phoebe," Dunaway explained. "I picked 'em from Mrs. Major Trimble's front yard. Where is she?"
Jack was startled. "Miss Larkin?"
"Of course. Where is she?"
He brushed Bonyparts carefully, not looking at Dunaway. "Oh, I thought you knew! She and Mrs. Glore left. They—they went into Prescott several days ago on the stage."
Dunaway watched his men lead the mounts to the pool.
"I'm sorry," Jack said. Though he and Dunaway were hardly friends, there was something almost touching in the way the lieutenant stood disappointed, bouquet still clutched in his hand. Too, Jack Drumm was now the patron, as the Mexicans would say, of Rancho Terco, a host to desert travelers. "Sit down, here, in the shade," he invited, and handed Dunaway a gourd of water from the butt.
"Thanks." With a sigh Dunaway slumped on an upturned box. "Got quite a spread here."
"We manage," Jack admitted, not without pride.
"I'm sorry I missed the ladies. They went to Prescott, you say?"
"That's where they were bound for."
"Funny! I've been in and out of Prescott lately, but I didn't run across 'em. Of course, it's the capital now, and growing. There are a lot of people there."
"I suppose so."
Dunaway put down the gourd and patted water from his black whiskers with the back of his hand. "It's a hard life, a soldier's," he said. "I never married, maybe on account of that. Wouldn't be fair to ask a woman to follow you to a place like this." He stared into the purple distances.
"I suppose not."
"She was real pretty," Dunaway said. "Miss Larkin, I mean. There was a—well, a kind of a substance to her. I mean—she seemed like a real person."
Phoebe Larkin was real enough; that was true, Jack thought. He glanced toward the reed hut, hoping the reality of Phoebe's person could not be seen. The two women, quickly bored with forced inactivity, were probably watching him and Dunaway, straining ears to hear the conversation.
"I'm not young anymore," Dunaway admitted. "God, I'm thirty-six already, and I don't know how it happened I got old so quick! But it gets you to thinking, Drumm, thinking how a good woman might make a difference in your life. Well—" He got up, sighed again, put on what was obviously a new hat of the Stetson variety Jack Drumm had often seen in the Territory. Dropping the flowers into the dust, he looked at them for a moment, then ground them with his heel. "Got pickets out all along the wagon road. Just riding out to check on them."
Jack followed him to where his trooper escort waited. "How's the campaign against Agustín going?"
Dunaway shook his head. "We keep him penned up pretty well in the Mazatzals, but till we find some way to get infantry up there and flush him out, he's going to be a problem. He can always swoop down and bloody a few noses. Keep an eye out, Mr. Drumm, and don't be fooled. Just when you least expect it that bastard is going to strike!"
"I know," Jack said. "I surely know."
The women had been watching, listening. After the soldiers left, Phoebe called from the hut. "Who was that, Mr. Drumm? Was it Lieutenant Dunaway?"
He stood near the doorway, pretending to sharpen his knife on a chunk of granite. "I am sure you know it was."
Phoebe peered around the edge of the doorframe. The slatted light filtered through the reeds onto her hair, lighting it in random glints.
"He—he brought you flowers," Jack added, not wanting to tell her but feeling obligated to be fair to George Dunaway.
"Me? Flowers? But why?"
"Dunaway is a lonely man. He said a soldier's life was hard out here, and I suppose it is. Anyway, I gather he—well, he thought you beautiful, and wanted to bring about a—a closer acquaintance."