Dotty Things

This is a Western. A little gunplay. A little fast-budding romance. No sex. Unless you count the last few paragraphs.

*

He heard the horse long before it came near. Fine sand spritzed against the brush beside the track. Shod hooves thunked softly on the ground.

He'd expected this. They'd come no less than once a day to peer down at him as if he were a lion in a pit. It didn't particularly disturb him. He'd been told they'd stay away, but he hadn't believed it. It wasn't that he'd thought he'd been lied to, but the fella hadn't said, "Curiosity killed the cat," for nothing. If nobody had come to take a peek - that would've been a wonder.

A hawk eyed, lean bodied man, he sat on his bed with his shoulder turned against the log he'd bucked up near the fire for that purpose. A blanket lay over his long legs, for the little cup of a valley was cool when the autumn sun had passed over it. Beneath the blanket, in his lap, lay a freshly oiled Smith & Wesson Russian and, along his right leg, a Winchester carbine.

His speckled horse raised its ears and looked toward the trail. The mule, half deaf, went on dozing.

The strange horse stopped. The Palouse gave a soft, inquiring whinny and stared into the brush. A mama duck, whose voice he had come to know, quacked fussily. Wings flapped the water. As soon as the ruckus died down, a peculiar, husky voice called out the traditional, "Hello the camp."

"Come–" His voice nearly failed him. "Come ahead."

The rider dismounted. Spurs tinkled with a slow, light, tentative step.

The trail was a cow path and, cows being as they are, led into a thick patch of scrub oak. To pass through it, it was necessary to bend low and proceed with caution. He'd had a time persuading the mule that evil spirits did not lurk in there.

He heard his visitor crunch through the oak. He saw the boots, first. Black. Shiny. Coated with a thin film of dust. Delicate spurs on the heels.

Then he saw the heavy skirt of thick blue wool and a curse crawled up behind his teeth.

The girl moved slowly into the space beneath the wide arms of the oak. She was no great beauty, but she had a pert little face and eyes that were big, wide, and very blue. He noticed that from clear across the camp. Very blue. The jacket she wore was a shapeless brown, made for somebody larger than herself.

Her very blue eyes examined the clearing in quick little jumps - and collided with his steady black gaze. He heard the little tick of dismay her tongue made. She stood stock still, very straight. Then she said softly, "I think I've made a mistake."

Her strange, coarse little voice made him want to clear his throat. He said, "Maybe it ain't too late - to correct it."

She took a breath and let it out slowly.

"You're Brin Dolan." It was not a question.

He nodded.

"Well, then, it's too late," she said simply. She thawed and moved forward to the stump he'd used as a chopping block on his arrival. She sat on it, slowly, her eyes again wandering through his snug camp. Eventually, the prowling blue eyes came to rest on his face.

"Are you going to offer me some coffee?"

She had freckles.

His eyes narrowed slightly. "Hadn't planned to, no."

They exchanged stares like two hostile dogs. Then... she smiled. One cheek dimpled.

"Would it do to say I came to borrow sugar? Or hawking Bibles?"

He didn't feel like joking. He felt sick. He watched in silence until her smile faded. She made a small gesture with one hand.

"I guess you'll have to hear the reason I'm here. Though I was not supposed to tell you."

His eyes were aching, throbbing in time with his rapid pulse. He said nothing and she began again.

"I'm John Freeman's daughter, Cassie. My father owns Crown. This is Crown land you're on. You know that."

That wasn't a question, either, but he slowly nodded an answer.

She reached down between her boots and pulled a dry blade of grass that she proceeded to fold, with delicate looking fingers, into a small basket-like shape. She said, "Last Spring we went to Denver."

He raised an eyebrow, speculating.

"We were walking along the street - my father and some of the Crown riders and me." She studied the brown grass for several seconds, then looked up and across at him. "You know, I read, a year or so ago, that you were out of prison, but I've heard nothing about you since then." She glanced at the fire. "Wouldn't you like a cup of coffee?"

Somebody with a voice something like his said, "Go on."

Immediately, she got up and began moving around the camp, boosting the flames with fresh wood, placing the pot in a hotter part of the fire.

"We were walking along," she continued as she went about the chores gracefully, "and I stopped to look in the window of a shop. At a hat. With feathers.... The next thing I knew, I was by myself. They'd gone on without me.

"So - ouch - this big, red-haired miner came along and started making a nuisance of himself. I couldn't shake him, although I'm pretty good at that. He was very large. Active. Determined, you might say. I began to be worry a little. But, Tiger Boyd - he's a Crown hand and I've known him all my life - he'd come looking for me. He sent that fella off with a flea in his ear. So, I said - you know, the way a person does - 'Thanks, I owe you one.' Tiger said, 'I'll hold you to that,' and that was that."

She sat down on the stump again to wait for the coffee. "This morning, Tiger came to look at you. They've been doing that, you know."

He nodded. The movement made his head float.

"They haven't come down. They could see your animals moved to different graze, wood chopped, and so forth, but they've never seen you move around.... It seems my father told them any man who came down here and bedeviled you would be fired. He doesn't just toss words like that around." She looked at him closely after this declaration, as if asking exactly what John Freeman had to do with Brin Dolan. When he was silent, she went on. "They came along this morning, Tiger and a hand they call 'Hat', and my brother, Kyle. They said - Tiger said - he was calling in the favor I owed."

As if she could wait no longer, she got up and puttered for a few moments, rummaging through his pack for a tin cup, pouring coffee, blowing on it, her spurs chinking cheerfully.

"Sure you don't want some?"

He shook his head carefully.

She shrugged and moved around the fire. He shifted his hand slightly, beneath the blanket, to bring the Russian to bear on her.

She halted, the cup in front of her lips, her blue eyes wide, just above its rim. "You have a gun under there?..." She hesitated, searching his face. "You don't need it. Not for me. For them," she indicated the higher ground around them with a lift of the cup. "Not for me."

She came and sat down on the end of the great log against which he leaned. He turned his head enough to keep an eye on her, wondering, in the cloudy back of his mind, why her presence didn't worry him more.

"I couldn't even remember what favor I owed," she continued, her husky voice quiet beside him, "until Tiger reminded me. I didn't want to do it, at first. But - I did owe him. And - they'd gotten up my curiosity about you, too. I wondered why my father had laid down the law about you that way. I couldn't help wondering who you were and why nobody ever saw you."

She sipped. He watched her, his hand still loosely curled around the Russian. Her hair was auburn, nothing special in color, but curly, clean looking. It was pulled back and caught in something made of tortoise shell, then it gushed down her back in a thick fall. He thought about what it would feel like in his hands.

"We wondered," she said, "if maybe you were hurt. Or sick. So - I said I'd come down and see what I could see." She cleared her throat. "Y'see, the idea was that I'm not a man, I don't work for my father, and I couldn't be fired, so my father couldn't have anything to get upset about." She turned her head and smiled ironically at him. "That was the idea, anyway. Then - when I came down - well, the minute I saw who you were, I knew I'd made a mistake."

"So you said."

She nodded. "Mmm."

"How'd you know me?"

Again, she turned and looked at him. "You're joking. My father has a likeness of himself and your father on the wall of his office. I've only looked at it a thousand or so times. If I had a nickel for every Michael Dolan story my father's told.... You're the image of your father."

He didn't know if that was a compliment. He had never thought of his father as a particularly handsome man.

He had closed his eyes while he thought about that and, suddenly, he realized he didn't know how long they had been closed. His eyelids felt weighted by lead.

The girl was on her knees beside him. She did not look frightened, but she did look concerned. That irritated him. Under the circumstances, she ought to be running for her life.

She said softly, "You are sick, aren't you? Or hurt."

If he said yes, she would fuss. She was the type to fuss. If he said no, he would be lying. He was not inclined to lie to her, so he said nothing, just held her gaze with his.

"What can I do?" she asked gently. "Just tell me."

"Go away." It came out more harshly than he had intended. He tried to soften it. "I'm all right. Just want some peace."

She searched his face thoroughly. At last, she said, "I remember, now. I read that the Cattleman's Association offered a bounty on you because of something you mixed in after you got out of prison. They said you were deep in with the Hole In The Wall bunch. Pa always said it was poppycock. Is there a bounty on you?"

"Twelve hundred."

Her breath hissed in. It was a big bounty and she knew it.

She stood and brushed leaves and dead grass from her skirt. "Well. They'll know," she said, her voice gritty. "Bob Vicker is Kyle's friend. Bob's stepfather is secretary of the Association. And Hat - I don't really know him. He makes noises about having been an express agent on the border, having killed men. Bandits, he says.... They'll know about the blasted reward." She put her hands on her hips and looked into the brown leaves above them. "This is bad, bad, bad. Why did my father hide you here? He put you right in their laps!"

"I'm not hidin'," he said. "He let me camp here because I asked him to. Run along, child. I'll handle it."

At the word "child," her eyes dropped back down to his. They seemed to have caught fire.

"I have not been a child for some time, Mr. Dolan. I'm two years a widow. If you call me 'child' once more, I'll collect that bounty myself."

The involuntary smile that tucked the corner of his mouth quickly cooled her eyes. She said, "I'll tell them you're sick, and need to rest. You're contagious. No. That'd mean I'd been exposed to something. No. I'll say - that-" Her gaze roamed out over his head, out near the pond, where his animals grazed. "That your horse fell with you. He strained a tendon. You wrenched your knee. Both of you are resting, healing. I'll tell them you didn't give me your name and I was too polite to ask. That way, if anyone comes snooping around, you can tell them anything you want. I'll say we were talking about my father and the weather and such, all this time."

"Don't make yourself a liar on my account."

Her lips thinned. "Your father was my father's friend. My father must trust you. He must think you're worth keeping safe. If he does, I do." She turned and walked down to the pond. The ducks paddled away furiously, the mama duck croaking loud protests. The girl crouched at the water's edge and washed the cup. He watched, eyes burning, as she walked back toward him. Her way of moving was easy. Comfortable. She probably did trip over something once in a while, as anybody did, but he couldn't imagine it.

She returned the cup to his pack. "Thanks for the coffee." She came and stood at his feet, her hands in the pockets of that huge jacket. "I don't know what is wrong with you. You don't want to tell me or take my help - fine. I'll come back every day, to the head of the trail. If you need anything - or want to talk to me - sing out."

He said nothing. There was just a moment when his fondest desire was to tell her about the pain and about the way his head swam and his skin burned. The moment passed.

She turned and walked to the scrub oak. There, she paused and looked back. "You don't have to worry," she said sincerely, "I'll do my best to keep your secret."

"I got no secrets."

She looked him over, toes to head. She said skeptically, "Uh-huh.... Don't worry. You can trust me." Then she was gone. There was just the tinkle of her spurs, then the sounds her horse made as it scrambled up the sharp trail.

* * * * * * * * *

He was worse that night. In the morning, he managed to get to his feet and take the horse and mule to water. He staked them out on good, cured grass. He walked with leaden feet back to his camp and meant to build up the fire, fix some coffee, heat water for shaving. He had all of those things in mind.

The next thing he knew, he'd dropped to his knees on the blankets. As he lay face down, he fisted the Russian and thought that, if he died, there would be one very satisfied bunch of folks in the world.

A widow.... How could she be a widow and so young?... But not so young as she looked. Sad thing for her, if she'd loved the man. Maybe sadder if not.

Freckles.

It was the last thing he thought for quite a while.

* * * * * * * * *

He came awake when he felt the rush of cold air against his bare back. His fist tightened around the Russian - only it wasn't there. Bewildered, he tried to roll over to search for it.

"Easy." The voice was husky and he knew it at once.

"What day is it?" His tongue felt like old felt. Her hands were cool on him, against his hot skin, prodding painfully at his back. Again, he tried to turn over, and she said, "Quit wriggling. Honest to Hannah, Brin, did you really think a couple of days' rest was going to fix this? You're shot in the back."

"Bullet's out," he said thickly. "What day is - it? What day?..."

"Saturday." She sounded puzzled.

"Date," he gasped.

"November second."

He let himself relax. Not yet, then. A little while longer. Nothing to be done about it. He drifted away.

Something she did hurt. It brought a groan gusting from his throat and lifted him out of the fog he had floated in. Her voice, murmuring behind him, sounded tight and fussy.

"...must be crazy," she was saying, "and my father ought to have his head examined, as well! Did he know about this? I'm sorry, but this is going to be bad."

She was right. It couldn't have been worse if she'd shoved a hot poker into his back, there below the shoulder blade. He pushed his face into the blankets and clenched his fingers on air. He didn't move while she finished cleaning the wound and bathed it with something that smelled like wintergreen. Her fingers felt warm and steady. They blotted the wound with a cloth, then gently patted him for a moment, as if in apology for the torment. It was oddly comforting.

"I think it ought to dry a little before I do anything else." Her voice sounded odd. When she took a breath, it was shaky. "I've never doctored a shot before." She took another breath. It seemed to steady her. "I thought you were dead when I came down. Blood all over your back.... I thought one of them had come down and backshot you. Why didn't you tell me about this before? What kind of crazy man are you? Who did this to you? Does my father know about this? I want some answers, Brin. Now."

"Didn't nobody teach you 'bout... not callin' your elders by their given name?"

"Pooh. Elder, my eye. What are you? Thirty? Don't change the subject."

Bossy little thing. He shoved one arm out and levered himself over until he lay partially on his side, with his back to her. Just that little bit of movement took his breath away. He panted, "Don't want - you - to think I ain't - grateful. But - 's none o' your business."

For a moment, the world was silent. Then she said sharply, "Fine." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the fire in hers. She rustled about behind him, gathering things together. She sprinkled a quick dusting of some kind of powder over his back and placed a pad over the wound. She wasn't particularly gentle, now. She thrust one slender hand beneath him and threaded a long strip of cloth around his body, twice. She tied it off. She yanked his undershirt and shirt down over his back and tossed the blanket up over his back. She spread another blanket over him.

She thumped his canteen down in front of his face. "That's full," she said. She placed the Russian beside it gingerly. "So's that." She got to her feet, dusted off her skirt, picked up a small canvas bag, and said, "That's the best I can do. I'll fetch a doctor. You can tell him your troubles."

She walked away.

Somehow, he pushed himself up onto one elbow. "Girl."

She stopped and looked back.

"You tell anybody - 'bout me now - I'm dead. I mean it."

She turned her back on him and ducked into the scrub oak.

As long as he was propped up, he uncorked the canteen and took a long drink of water. It almost came back up. He fell back on the soogan and, shivering, dragged the Russian under the blankets with him.

The last thing he saw was a gray squirrel scampering past over fallen leaves.

* * * * * * * * *

A fire crackled behind him. That seemed all right until he remembered he hadn't been able to gather the strength to build the fire. He rolled over slowly, cautiously, his mind too fouled and befogged to remind him to put his hand on the Russian. His back hurt when he lay on it, but it didn't seem to matter. He knew it ought to, but it didn't seem to.

He turned his head. He could just make out the girl's shadowy form. It was black night and she was back from the fire, down at the end of his log. She had fallen asleep sitting up, with a blanket wrapped around her. Her head was propped on her fist, her hair, catching gleams from the fire, tumbled over her shoulder.

* * * * * * * * *

She was there in the morning, too. She didn't say a word, just fetched him a cup of strong coffee when he woke. She met his questioning gaze with a straight, tight-lipped glare. There was frost on the ground, too.

"What day is it?" he asked, when the coffee had seeped warmth into him.

The look she gave him was curious. "November third."

"One day, then," he muttered. "You shouldn't be here, child. It's dangerous for you to be here."

She sat back on her heels. "You called me that again, Brin. I told you about that." She lay her palm against his forehead. "I don't think you're going to die, but you're still hotter than fire."

He couldn't argue. He couldn't even stay awake.

* * * * * * * * *

With his first thought, he knew she was gone. With his second, he wished she wasn't.

It was mid morning. The ducks were conversing in the reeds near the edge of the pond. The squirrel was checking for missed acorns, above the camp.

A note was propped up against his canteen, weighted with the Russian, in handwriting swift and spiky.

Your fever broke. Your wound looks well. Rest should do you now. Can't make any more excuses to be from home or they'll wonder. I baked bread. Good luck. It is November 4.

She hadn't signed it. It looked as if one corner had been dunked in coffee. The date was exciting.

He sat up. He felt like overcooked greens but, for the first time in 2 days, he wasn't dizzy. The bread was in oil cloth, lying between him and the fire on a folded blanket. He broke in to the flat, crusty loaf and ate slowly, washing it down with fresh water from the canteen. It stayed down. He began to smell and hear again, and notice sounds beyond the contented muttering of the ducks. He could hear the horse and mule cropping grass, though they were out of sight. He sighed on general principles.