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The Ballad of Cat Ballou

In the old days they used to sing about her, the lonely leathery men, on trail and open range, around campfire and chuck wagon, in line cabin and bunkhouse. They’d sing “The Ballad of Cat Ballou” and sometimes, being natural myth-makers, they’d improvise on the theme, building her legend, retouching her portrait, until it became larger than life, as Belle Starr became, and Calamity Jane.

There were those who bragged they’d known her, had ridden beside her with “stud-proud” Clay and Randy Boone and Kid Shelleen, the killer with the “eyes of icy blue,” and the other outlaws from the mountaintop they called the Roost, and there were some, who, wishing it were true, claimed they’d enjoyed her fabulous favors under the high Wyoming moon.

There were those who hated and feared her and those who loved and respected her. To many she was a folk-heroine, nemesis of the hated Purple Valley Cattlemen’s Association, avenger of the dispossessed; to others she was a legend of evil, a cowardly murderess, a Jezebel, an ogre to frighten children with.

There were romantics who dreamed of her; and there were quietly desperate men, patient, weary, fenced in by life and families and jobs and responsibilities, and quietly desperate women, too, wives worn by drudgery and childbearing, despairing but not quite hopeless spinsters, even painted bawds, to whom she was a symbol of adventure, freedom and escape.

There were other men and women, her natural enemies, men of property and substance, the fencers-in, who hated her while they desired her, women whose loins were dry and knew no joy, who feared her while they envied her.

Of the many things sung and said about her, some were true and some were romance and some were spiteful lies. There were good things about her and there were bad; she had her virtues and her vices, her strengths and her weaknesses; she was a woman.

She heard the story of her birth so many times from the people who loved her, Cathy, her mother, and Frankie Ballou, her father, and Old Doc Morgan, her grandfather, and Kid Shelleen, the killer, that she got so she almost believed she remembered it all.

It was Old Doc who said the thunder cracked like bullwhips and the lightning forked like rattlers, but everybody agreed that there was a mighty storm that night above the Roost, the mountaintop where Frankie Ballou and his Bunch lived safe from the law.

They told her how her mother suffered, sweating cold, biting her lips to hold back the cries of pain, and how the others suffered with her, the four men who loved her, Old Doc and Frankie and the Kid and Young Preach, the preacher, who had courted her so long.

Frankie, then ruler of the Roost, stood outside the cabin door, arms crossed, nails biting into the muscles of his arms, staring into the angry sky, his soft black eyes bleak, while the Kid, who was only nineteen then and who loved Frankie almost as much as he loved Cathy, sat on the steps, tears in his cold blue eyes and a whiskey bottle in his hand.

Inside the cabin Old Doc sweated with his daughter, but he sweated hot, while Young Preach prayed, for Cathy, his lost love, for the child within her, and for himself, trying to purge the jealousy and the bitterness from his heart.

Old Doc was not much of a man for praying and the droning voice of Young Preach was nearly driving him crazy, but he held his tongue until Young Preach got Cathy to following him in reciting the Twenty-third Psalm, words Old Doc hadn’t been able to bear for more than twenty years, since the night when his heart broke to their music.

“Stop it!” Old Doc said sharply, and when they broke off, surprised, “There’s a time for praying and a time for doing. God’s done his part and I’m trying to do mine. It’s time for you to do yours, my girl, so let go of that preacher’s hand and do it, holler like hell if it hurts, but get in and fight!”

Cathy got in then and fought and when it hurt she hollered, and Frankie, hearing her, gripped the muscles of his arms until his fingernails were bloody, while Kid Shelleen sobbed and turned his head and was sick.

There are ancients living today who could hardly have been born who tell how “the heavenly bullwhips” then cracked again, and how, “as a tongue a lightnin’ licked at a tall spruce until it flamed into a torch you could see in Wolf City, far across the Purple Valley,” Cat Ballou was born.

Old Doc often told her, and everybody else who’d listen, how she began to fight with her first breath, squirming and kicking in his big bloody hands, and how, as he smacked her “little red wrinkled bottom” once, she began to squall, “like some of that storm had got into her blood.”

When Frankie heard that sound he knew he was a father, “for the first time, to speak of,” as Old Doc used to say, and he rushed into the cabin. He heard Old Doc say, “It’s a girl,” but he was so happy to see his own girl smiling that he swallowed his disappointment that their baby wasn’t a boy.

As for Cathy, she was content.

Kid Shelleen finished the whiskey in the bottle, saddled three horses, and when Old Doc and Young Preach rode down the steep winding trail towards Wolf City, he rode with them. He spent a week on Crib Row, but he didn’t go upstairs with any of the girls. He never did. He was faithful to a dream.

Before they rode away Young Preach christened the girl-child Catharine, as Old Preach, his father, had christened her mother, but they never called her Cathy, they called her Cat right from the start, Cat Ballou.

No one, including Old Doc, knew just how many little red winkled bottoms first felt the smack of his big bloody hand. Certainly every single baby born anywhere around the Purple Valley for fifty years, barring only one, felt it. The exceptions were those birthed during the year of the Big Drunk.

They said he never lost a baby, but nobody knew but Old Doc how many women died before his eyes in their creative agony. There were just three, a drunken squaw who fell off her horse, a girl from Crib Row who tried to abort herself, and his own lively lovely wife Abigail.

She fought for her baby and he fought for both of them and Old Preach, father of Young Preach, prayed and intoned the Twenty-third Psalm, but Abigail Morgan didn’t come out of the valley of the shadow. Old Doc, who was Young Doc then, didn’t blame the baby or God or even himself.

He said good-by to his Abigail, put the baby in the capable hands of Josie Browne, who took in sewing, and went to Cheyenne. In a few days he was back with young Dr. John Horn, who told how he’d been “persuaded” at the point of a Colt to take over while Young Doc Morgan “got his drinkin’ done.”

He left money with Josie for the baby’s care and started the Big Drunk with a quart of red-eye at the Lucky Seven Saloon. Old Preach found him there and begged him to go back to his baby and his job, and when he was told to go to hell, he began to pray over him.

“Shut your mouth, you meddling, Psalm-singing old son-of-a-bitch!” Young Doc roared, and finishing the quart of red-eye, he walked out.

Nobody ever asked him where he went and he never volunteered to tell, but he was back in a year to the day, still tall and lean and straight, his hair white and his face a well-worn map. From then on he was called Old Doc.

He never took another drink.

Cathy was a redhead like her mother, and Old Doc said he would try to raise her to be a woman like her. He married Josie Browne, who was an ample and loving woman and took good care of the child while she was little and good care of him, too, in bed and out.

When she was old enough Cathy went to the little country school, which was all right with Doc for two of the “R’s,” but he helped out with the other one, the first one, reading to her every evening after supper from Will Shakespeare and, “for the sound, not the sense,” from the Bible. But he always skipped the Twenty-third Psalm.

When Cathy was twelve her stepmother died and the girl took over the cooking and the housekeeping, which were about the only things she’d learned from Josie. She learned about her body and the facts of conception and birth from Old Doc, who told her matter-of-factly and aseptically. Also she midwifed more than one litter of her red setter’s and stood by while her little gray mare was served by her first stud, and later watched her drop her foal.

When she was sixteen she saw a human birthing when she had to be called to pitch in and help Old Doc with a neighbor woman whose no-account husband got too drunk to be of any use. She said the only difference she could see was the pain the woman went through.

“That’s the only difference in the birthing, all right,” Old Doc said.

“Do all women suffer so?”

“More or less,” he said. “They lost something when they stopped being just animals, but they gained something too, they gained love, and that’s the big difference between the mating of man and beast, the difference between blind instinct and a kind of glory.”

Shortly afterwards young Henry Cosgrave, son of Old Preach, came home from divinity school, took over his father’s pulpit and became Young Preach for as long as he lived, for there never was a son to follow him.

Young Preach was surprised to find that the redheaded tomboy brat he’d avoided as a boy was now a young woman “pritty as a little red sled,” and he fell in love with her right away, and within a month he asked her to marry him and help him with “the Lord’s work.”

As she had done all her life she asked Old Doc’s advice.

“You’re either too old to need it or too young for it to do you any good,” he said. “All I’ve got to say is that if you’re woman enough to make a good wife and a good mother, and if you love the boy, why go ahead and marry him.”

“I’m woman enough, even if I am only sixteen,” she said. “I like him and I’m fond of him but how do I know whether I love him enough?”

“When you love a man enough you’ll know it,” he said. “You’ll know it in your body and your innards, in your blood and in your heart.”

“I guess I don’t love him enough yet, then,” she said.

“I guess not,” Old Doc said, and he was glad she didn’t, partly because he doubted that Young Preach would turn out to be the man for her, and partly because he didn’t want to lose her for a while.

But he was to lose her anyhow, for four years, because it turned out that as long as she wasn’t ready to be a wife and a mother, she wanted to go to normal school and be a teacher. Old Doc didn’t think much of that idea. He said she already knew more than any country schoolmarm he’d ever met, hadn’t he taught her himself?

But she was as stubborn as he was, and of course he gave in and sent her to Kansas City, where she studied hard and met many young men, but never one who stirred her “body and her innards, her blood and her heart.”

She came home for the vacations and Young Preach kept courting her, but they didn’t go steady and she wouldn’t promise him anything. In the spring of her last year at normal school Old Preach’s good wife died and he followed her soon after.

As Old Preach lay dying, Old Doc, at his bedside, cleared his throat and said, “Preach, I guess I ought to apologize for what I said to you in the Lucky Seven Saloon twenty years ago.”

He stopped, gulping, for it was hard for him to apologize to any man; he had never done it in his life, but Old Preach, who loved him, shook his head and whispered, “Forget it, Doc, I guess I always was a meddling, Psalm-singing old son-of-a-bitch,” and then he smiled and died.

At the end of the school term the pretty young teacher who’d been there only a year married Ed Harkness, one of the big ranchers, and the school board offered Cathy the job on the condition that she wouldn’t get married for at least two years.

She told them she wanted to sleep on it and that evening when Young Preach proposed again, she told him the same thing. She didn’t sleep for a long time from thinking about it. In two years she’d be twenty-two, “practically an old maid,” but she decided she couldn’t marry Young Preach, not right away anyhow, not until her body and “innards” and blood and heart said she must. She wondered if Young Preach would wait two years. Something told her he would.

It was a long two years, not that she wasn’t a pretty good teacher, for she was, and not that she didn’t love children, for she did; but she had the feeling she was postponing her life. She wanted a husband and a home and children of her own.

By this time she had two suitors, Young Preach and Adam Field. She had never met two men less alike.

Young Preach was thirty-two, slim, boyishly good-looking, innocent, serious, even solemn, a good man, shy, generous, tender, considerate. He’d never even tried to kiss her. He said he loved her and she believed him.

Adam Field was forty, a widower with a four-year-old son, and an important man, a big rancher, head of the Purple Valley Cattlemen’s Association, one of the richest men in the territory. He was much more mature, much more experienced, of course. He was taller, deeper of chest, bigger all over. He was more demanding, much more, even arrogant, like a proud stallion. She knew he wanted her.

Young Preach, she knew, might conceivably wait a lifetime for her, a thought that sometimes made her sigh romantically; but at other times, with that part of her which came from Old Doc, she was more than a little impatient with him for his lack of persistence.

Adam Field had plenty of persistence, and he wasn’t the kind, she well knew, who’d wait much longer for her answer. He’d tried to kiss her and hug her many times, without ever quite succeeding. She was a little bit afraid of him and a little bit awed by him, and when he held her close, dancing, she was half attracted, half repelled.

Young Preach had courted her patiently for six years but Field was getting more and more impatient after only six months. During that time they had taken turns escorting her to the Saturday-night dances in the little red schoolhouse and walking her home afterwards, with the other always having Sunday dinner with her and Old Doc. Adam Field had agreed to this because she’d insisted, but he hadn’t liked it and she knew that the time was near when she’d have to make a choice between him and Young Preach, or maybe spinsterhood!

Not that there weren’t other eligible men. She was very popular at the Saturday-night dances in the little red schoolhouse, but Field and Young Preach were her only real suitors.

Of course there was Kid Shelleen, but she didn’t consider him a suitor. In the first place he hadn’t spoken a dozen words to her, even though he always came to the dances and cut in as often as he could, never dancing with any other girl. In the second place he was only a boy of eighteen, and an outlaw who rode with Frankie Ballou.

Still she liked the Kid. There was something frightening about his eyes, so icy blue, and people said he was a gunfighter and a killer; but he was always gentlemanly and he danced with a reckless grace, and better than any other man she knew.

Dancing in his arms she could feel the wild beating of his heart, and she used to think, He loves me, he knows it’s hopeless, but still he comes every Saturday night and dances only with me.

Not ever really taking it seriously she sometimes invented a “romance” with him, a little fantasy about running away with him to the mountaintop Roost, about reforming him, making a good man of him, maybe by bearing his child, but all the time she took it for granted that she’d marry Adam Field or Young Preach or no one.

On the Friday when the school term ended and with it her obligation to the school board, she knew that the dance the next night, the last one until after roundup, was going to be her last chance to say yes or no to Adam Field.

The trouble was she didn’t want to have to say yes or no either to Adam Field or Young Preach or the school board. She knew she was being silly and told Old Doc she was going to make up her mind that very night whether she was going to marry Adam Field or Young Preach.

“I didn’t know there was any law saying you had to marry anybody,” Old Doc said.

“But I’m twenty-two years old and I can’t face being a wrinkled old-maid schoolmarm the rest of my life, and besides I want to get married!”

“I don’t guess there’s much danger of your being left hanging on the vine,” Old Doc said. “But you’re certainly old enough and if you haven’t got gumption enough or sense enough to know who you want to go to bed with I guess I can’t help you.”

“Do you have to say it like that?”

“Loving a man is wanting to go to bed with him,” Old Doc said. “And it’s wanting to have his babies and be his partner and his companion, and if that mealymouthed preacher has been telling you any different, he’s even less of a man than I think he is.”

“You don’t like Young Preach?”

“I like him all right but I’m not figuring on going to bed with him.”

“He’s kind and gentle and tender. . . .”

“So’s your red setter.”

“What about Adam?”

“Well, he’s the richest rooster in these parts . . . You looking for love or security?”

“Maybe I’d like both.”

“I’ll tell you something about women, girl, and this is straight from the horse’s mouth. A woman gives herself either for love or a price. The price can be security or it can be bird-dog devotion, or it can be the silver dollar the girls charge down on Crib Row.”

“Crib Row!”

“That’s right. There are only two kinds of women, girl, and I don’t mean good and bad; I mean lovers, and if you’ll pardon a plain-speaking old Anglo-Saxon word, whores.”

“I’ll marry only for love,” she said.

“Good,” Old Doc said. “I don’t know what you’re going to do but I’m going to bed,” and blowing his nose loudly, he went up to bed, to dream of Abigail, his lover of long ago.

Cathy went to bed too and lay awake in the darkness for a long time, trying to fit Old Doc’s notions to her own experience, which was simply that of a decent normal young woman who’d spent her childhood with dogs and horses and at the knee of a cleanly plain-spoken doctor of medicine.

She wanted to be a lover, wanted the “kind of glory” Old Doc had spoken about. All of her wanted that, her body and her “innards” and her blood and her heart. They told her she was ready for marriage, but they didn’t pick out the man.

She tried to imagine first Young Preach and then Adam Field as lover, husband, partner, companion and father of her children. Both were lacking, Young Preach in Adam’s proud-stallion arrogance, Adam in Young Preach’s gentle tenderness, and both in the reckless grace of Kid Shelleen.

Then she fell asleep, and like her father, dreamed of a lover, who was not one man but three, a man with the gentle tenderness of Young Preach, the proud-stallion arrogance of Adam Field and the reckless grace of Kid Shelleen.

It was a girlish dream, romantic and innocent, but for better or worse it was to come true, for there was such a man, no dream-lover, but a man who rode upon the earth.

His name was Frankie Ballou.

While Cathy dreamed, Frankie acted. With four of his riders, including Kid Shelleen, he held up the U.P. train as it stopped for water at Lariat, over in Coyote Valley, a ride of twenty-four hours from Wolf City. Frankie thought the U.P. was his rightful prey. It and not the world owed him a living and he was making another collection on account.

It wasn’t only that the railroad stood for a kind of progress he didn’t like, it was also that he had a personal score to settle with it. The U.P. had forced its way through the open range, which was bad enough, but worse, it had violated that part of the range where the Ballou cattle, his father’s and his uncle’s, had roamed so long.

They had fought the railroad the only way they knew how, with guns. They had set up a line with a barbed-wire fence and dared the U.P. men to cross it. The men had taken the dare and cut the wire, and, in the battle which followed, two railroad men and four Ballou riders, including his uncle, had died; but far worse his father had been tried, convicted and hanged for murder.

To Frankie, the U.P. and not his father was the murderer, and he promptly declared war on the railroad by single-handedly holding up a train outside of Smithville. A careless, inexperienced seventeen, this almost cost him his life, for he neglected to search the engineer for weapons, and was shot in the thigh as he rode away.

He slipped into Smithville late that night and took refuge in a sporting house where he was known and liked. The girls dressed his wound and took care of him and while he was convalescing, he met a gunslinger named Luke Stone, an old hand, who took a liking to him.

Recovered, he paid the girls handsomely from his loot and rode off with Luke. They replenished their funds by holding up another train, this time without untoward incident.

It was Luke who told him about the Roost and how to get there should it ever become necessary, as well as the password to use if, as there usually was, there was a man on watch at the halfway mark up the trail.

In due time it did become necessary. Luke was recognized by one of his numerous victims as he and Frankie were refreshing themselves in a bar in Lariat. They managed to escape, but Luke was wounded. They had reached the summit separating the Purple and Coyote valleys when the posse gave up, which was lucky for Frankie, for Luke could ride no further and Frankie had no intention of abandoning him.

He built a fire and did the best he could for Luke, but Luke died that night. Frankie decided he’d better not ride back into the Coyote Valley and, after burying Luke, pressed on into the Purple, heading for the Roost. From Luke’s directions, he found the trail without any trouble.

There was a man on watch at the halfway mark who challenged him. Frankie gave the password and was passed on, the man on watch firing two quick shots, followed by a third, to signal the approach of a friendly rider.

He found a disorganized rabble living in a big cave in the mountainside. They were a sorry crew numbering ten, all on the dodge for crimes ranging from horse stealing to robbery and murder.

A born leader, Frankie soon took over. Under his direction and supervision, a bunkhouse, cookhouse, privies, and three cabins were built on a ledge above the cave and just below the top of the mountain. One of the cabins was for Frankie, self-proclaimed and unchallenged ruler of the Roost; the others were for the two relatively able men he named as his lieutenants, Barney Grey and Joe Fletcher.

Three men who flatly refused to work were driven ignominiously down the trail. Soon Frankie was leading the Bunch, as he called them, on raids against the U.P. over in the Coyote Valley. Gradually, by desertion and expulsion, the worst and most shiftless of the Bunch were weeded out.

Others, bolder, livelier men, attracted by the growing fame of Frankie Ballou’s Bunch, drifted in to take their places. Around the Purple Valley they were tolerated, even secretly admired and sometimes envied, by men reluctantly housebroken.

Frankie was no martinet, but he had two rigorously enforced rules. One was that there be no killing, except in self-defense and as a last resort, the other that there be no lawbreaking whatsoever in the Purple Valley.

So they came and went as they pleased in Wolf City, and when “nice” women, attracted by their youth and easy grace in the saddle, smiled upon them as they passed, they smiled back, but always rode on to the other side of town, to the single street called Crib Row down behind the corrals.

There was no rule about this but there were a number of reasons. Some of the boys, having been once bitten, were twice shy, and wary of entanglements likely to curtail their freedom; some were sentimentalists; some innately respectful of “good women”; and some, including Frankie Ballou, found ladies of pleasure livelier and more agreeable as casual companions than “nice” girls.

Crib Row was a place where they could “howl like curly wolves,” get as boisterous and drunk as they liked, talk as they pleased and were used to talking, fire off their six guns, make love without the exigencies of courtship, and, having paid their dollar, forget their bedfellows promptly, changing them at their whim.

Frankie liked them fine, sampling the wares of one after another, and was in turn a great favorite with them, for he was friendly and generous and his lust vigorous, simple, clean and manly. Until Kid Shelleen joined the Bunch, none of the boys ever passed up the primitive pleasures of Crib Row for the relatively refined atmosphere of the Saturday-night dances at the little red schoolhouse.

Kid Shelleen arrived on the Roost one fall day, a tall, taciturn youth whose reputation had preceded him. Within a week, he was Frankie’s friend and first lieutenant, moving into the cabin next to Frankie’s, displacing without argument Barney Grey, called Stud at his own request by the daughters of joy, and paying double for the privilege, although he boasted that his sexual prowess was so great that they gave him their favors “on the house.”

Kid Shelleen went to Crib Row the first Saturday night with the others, but “jest took a cigar,” and only Frankie, and the crib girl who told him what the boy babbled to her in his drunkenness, knew why.

“He danced so nice till he got drunk,” she said, “an’ then we went to the parlor, but he wouldn’t go upstairs. He just sat there drinkin’ red-eye an’ cryin’ an’ talkin’ about the first man he killed, that he shot you-know-where because of his kid sweetheart the man ruined. He was sweet an’ I liked him, but he wouldn’t go upstairs. He said he just couldn’t, because his once-upon-a-time kid sweetheart was what I am, all on account of that son-of-a-bitch he had a kill.”

After that the Kid went to the schoolhouse dances every Saturday night, once explaining to Frankie, “It’s kind of like it was home in St. Louis, where I used to like to cut up an’ dance an’ have fun with ordinary nice lively girls who could laugh without cryin’.”

He didn’t mention that he danced with only one girl, the pretty red-haired schoolmarm, or that he loved her with the dedicated, hopeless, romantic love of a lonely boy who was still faithful to a dream that was ended. Nor did he mention that every Saturday night he followed Adam Field or the preacher, whichever was walking her home, keeping to the shadows, watching over her.

There was one such night when Adam Field was very close to violent death. As Cathy started to go inside after saying good night, Field grabbed her and pulled her to him.

“Behave yourself, Adam!” she cried.

He let go of her and said, “I’m sorry, Cathy,” and it saved his life, for Kid Shelleen had his six gun in his hand. But the Kid told Frankie none of these things, although Frankie was his friend, his only friend.

Frankie, knowing the Kid’s story as he did, understood his feelings and sympathized with them, without in the least sharing them, for he had never loved and lost.

On the particular night when Cathy dreamed while Frankie and the Bunch held up the U.P. train, there was a little trouble. A railroad detective, a new man named J. P. McCoy, opened fire and shot Kid Shelleen’s hat off and with it his black mask, and the Kid had to shoot him in the shoulder. It was the first time that gunplay had been necessary since Frankie had ruled the Roost. The Kid was sorry he’d had to shoot, because it broke one of Frankie’s rules, but Frankie didn’t blame him for it.

It was mostly because he wanted to show the Kid that he didn’t blame him, that he realized he’d had to do it, that Frankie rode alone with him towards Wolf City while the others headed for Laramie for “a real celebration,” for it had been a good haul, nearly twelve hundred dollars apiece.

The idea of Laramie and new girls appealed to him but he rode with the Kid, to show him there were no hard feelings. As they rode the Kid said he was going to take Frankie to the dance in Wolf City the next night, if he had to hogtie him.

“If you’ll promise to act like a white man, I might even introduce you to the prittiest girl an’ the best dancer in the territory,” the Kid said.

Frankie said he guessed he could act like a white man if he put his mind to it and agreed to pass up Crib Row for the dance, partly to please the Kid and partly because he was curious to find out whether good girls would cotton to him as well as bad. But when they rode into Wolf City the next night at ten o’clock, and Frankie saw the lights of Crib Row and heard the laughter and the music, he almost changed his mind.

“Oh, let’s stay down here,” Frankie said. “You can gamble an’ drink an’ dance, you don’t have to go upstairs. I like to feel free an’ easy.”

“You can feel free an’ easy at the dance, just so you act housebroke an’ don’t holler an’ yell an’ slap the girls on the backside,” the Kid said.

“But damn it, I like to slap the girls on the backside!” Frankie said.

“The hell with you then,” the Kid said and rode on.

Frankie looked after him and somehow it became necessary to show the Kid and those “nice” dull girls that Frankie Ballou knew how to behave in respectable company, no matter how much it tired him. So he rode after the Kid and caught up.

From the schoolhouse as they rode up came the sound of accordion, banjo, fiddle and light shuffling feet. Frankie grinned. It sounded good. They stepped down, hitched their horses and started for the door, Frankie fixing his hat at a jaunty angle.

As he was about to swagger in the Kid said, “Wait a minute, you better know some a the rules.”

“I’ll make mine up as I go along,” Frankie said.

“Oh, don’t be such a maverick!”

“I know enough to take off my hat,” Frankie said.

“That ain’t enough,” the Kid said. “You check your Colt with it.”

“I wasn’t aimin’ to throw down on anybody,” Frankie said.

“You jest don’t dance with a nice girl wearin’ your iron.”

“Oh, all right, what else?”

“Well, don’t hug your partner like you do them girls down at Pete’s Place on the Row an’ don’t hog any girl, no matter how much you cotton to her. You’re supposed to dance jest once around the floor an’ then if a man cuts in, you let him an’ don’t bust him in the snoot. You can cut in agin after he finishes one round or grab yourself another girl.”

“Sounds real democratic, I’ll give it a try.”

“Another thing,” the Kid said. “You ain’t supposed to cut in a-tall when it’s a moonlight. The moonlights are for folks that’s married or goin’ steady an’ the stags are supposed to step out an’ have a smoke.”

“You’re makin’ it all sound mighty depressin’,” Frankie said. “Oh, all right, let’s go on in.”

Inside the schoolhouse, Young Preach dutifully but unhappily cut in on Deacon Arbuthnot’s fat wife, knowing there would probably be half a dozen turns around the floor before somebody took pity on him and took her off his hands.

He felt moody and irritable and yes, jealous. The dance was an hour old and Cathy, who was always there for the grand march, was still missing. This could only mean that she was lingering with Adam Field in the Morgan parlor or on the front porch, or maybe she’d even gone buggy-riding with him!

He felt, he knew, that this was a night of crisis in his life, that, since this was the last dance until after roundup, his rival would surely press for an answer. And he was afraid that the answer would be yes. He told himself that Adam Field had so much more to offer than he and that he ought to be happy if she was, but he wasn’t.

He stiffened as he heard new arrivals entering, turning to look to the door, hoping it would be Cathy, yet dreading that he would see the unmistakable smirk which would signal Adam’s victory. He was relieved but still in suspense to see Kid Shelleen entering with the tall smiling man with the soft black eyes and the full, almost womanish mouth, except when he remembered to tighten his lips. He recognized him as Frankie Ballou. He wondered if Cathy and Adam Field would come at all.

As a matter of fact Adam Field was lingering in the Morgan parlor, but he lingered alone. Old Doc had gone off to the Lucky Seven to play a little stud and Cathy was still in her room. Adam waited patiently, smiling indulgently, picturing Cathy up in there primping for him with extra special care. . . .

Actually Cathy was not primping. She was lying on her stomach on the bed, trying to make up her mind. She was certain Adam would insist upon her definite answer that night.

If I can’t make up my mind, it must mean that I don’t love him, she thought. And if I don’t love him, of course I’ll say no.

But she didn’t want to say no. That would be like burning her bridges.

But so will saying yes, she thought. Marriage is so final! Maybe I don’t want to get married at all. But I do! Maybe I’d better just marry Young Preach and get it over with. He’s a fine man. He loves me. He needs me. I could make him happy. But do I want to spend the rest of my life making somebody besides myself happy? My, but I’m selfish! But I want to be happy, to be a lover, to share that “kind of glory” with one. Young Preach is so sweet and kind, but be honest, he’s sort of dull. Well, Adam isn’t exactly gay. But he’s ardent. He tries to hug and kiss me, which is more than Young Preach does. I know what I’ll do! I’ll let Adam kiss me and then maybe I’ll know the answer. If it’s no, why then I’ll let Young Preach kiss me, if he’s got gumption enough, and if he doesn’t, why I’ll just kiss him.

She stood up quickly and looked at herself in the mirror. Her cheeks were bright, her eyes sparkling.

Maybe I am in love, she thought. I look like it!

And truly she was in love, but not with Adam Field or Young Preach. She was in love with love.

She finished dressing quickly, tingling with plain physical excitement, and in this delightful but dangerous condition she stepped into the parlor where Adam waited. He stood up, smilingly confident.

“I’m sorry I’m late!”

“I can be patient when I put my mind to it,” he said. “God, but you’re pritty tonight!”

In sudden panic she wondered if he’d ask her, that minute, in full lamplight, before he kissed her.

But he opened the front door and stood waiting until she stepped out into the shadows of the porch. He closed the door and took her arm, tightly.

Now, she thought. Now he’ll kiss me!

But he said, “I want a talk to you, Cathy.”

Oh dear, he’s going to ask me first! And how will I know how to answer!

“Yes?” she said, faintly.

“I won’t see you after tonight till roundup’s over,” he said.

“That’s not so very long,” she said.

“Too long to leave unfinished business between us,” he said.

“I . . . I don’t know what to say. . . .”

“Say yes, my dear.”

“I . . . I couldn’t marry except . . . except for love,” she said.

“I love you, Cathy,” he said, hoarsely.

“I . . .”

He turned her face up to him, and asked, “Don’t you love me?”

“I don’t know!”

Then he kissed her very hard and held her tight and her heart began to race and then she was kissing him back, so she knew that she must love him, that she couldn’t be kissing him back if she didn’t.

He took his lips away and said, “I reckon you give me your answer!”

“Yes,” she said, but as he bent to kiss her again, she broke away and said, “Please, Adam, we’re so late!”

He laughed shakily and said, “I’ve waited six months an’ I reckon I can wait till after roundup.”

He took her arm, patted her hand, and then they walked down the steps into the moonlight and started for the schoolhouse.

“Ever’ dance is mine this night!” he said.

“But I always dance with Young Preach . . . and Kid Shelleen!”

“Jest one turn each, then, an’ after that you’re all mine.”

“Yes, Adam,” she said, and all the tingling excitement was gone.

“You’ll tell ’em we’re bespoke,” he said.

“Yes, Adam,” she said, and the words were a farewell to girlhood.

Kid Shelleen was sharing Young Preach’s worry about Cathy. Leaning moodily against the wall his eyes flitted back and forth between the door and Frankie, who’d been dancing with one pretty girl after another, to his own obvious enjoyment and theirs too. The Kid was not enjoying himself.

Neither was Young Preach. He too leaned against the wall, watching the door. He had finally been rescued from Mrs. Arbuthnot, the deacon’s wife, and he wasn’t going to do his Christian duty by any more of his dowdy parishioners until he’d at least had one turn with Cathy.

Then she arrived, on Adam’s arm, and he had the kind of smirk on his face which Young Preach had dreaded seeing. He was sure he had lost her, then, and he only wanted to go right away, but he stood rooted as he watched them cross to the cloakroom. No, he couldn’t run away without knowing. So he waited, miserably, watching Adam take her in his arms as they began to dance. Watching them slowly circle the floor, he loathed the possessive way Adam held her, as if he owned her.

As they approached, he stepped forward to cut in but Kid Shelleen moved quicker and beat him to it. Adam yielded her to the Kid with an indulgent smile which was not lost upon Young Preach and then followed them with his eyes, ignoring the inviting smiles of other girls. Watching his rival, Young Preach’s gorge rose.

Cathy dreaded telling the Kid she was bespoken to Adam, but she was about to when he said, “I brought my best friend tonight. I’d like to have you meet him. He’s the best dancer in Wyomin’.”

“I think you are,” she said.

“I’m second best,” the Kid said. “You’ll see.”

“I’m sorry, Kid, but I can’t dance with your friend or even you again, I . . . I’m promised to Adam Field.”

Looking up, she saw the pain in his eyes and then they were cold and hard. His arms tightened for a moment and then, as Young Preach tapped him on the shoulder, they loosened.

“Good-by, Cathy,” he said, and then he yielded her to Young Preach and made blindly for the cloakroom.

Dancing with Young Preach she watched the Kid take his gun and hat and then heard Young Preach say, “You told him, didn’t you, Cathy?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” he said. “I saw the smirk on Field’s face.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s our last dance,” he said, and held her tighter than he ever had before.

Frankie, waltzing very properly with a pretty brunette whose only drawback was that she never stopped giggling, had spotted the Kid as he claimed the redheaded girl and had silently congratulated his friend on his taste. He liked the way she looked and the way she carried herself. Whirling the giggling girl faster, he set off in pursuit, intent upon claiming the redhead the moment they completed their turn of the floor, but he lost by a length to the preacher.

Yielding the giggler gladly to a strapping cowpoke, he took his place along the wall and followed the redhead with admiring eyes. She was not only the prettiest girl in the room, she was the prettiest he’d ever seen in his life.

He hoped the Kid hadn’t staked his claim. He turned to look for him, to ask him man-to-man, and saw him going out, wearing his hat and gun. He looked to the redhead again, and then reluctantly hurried after the Kid, wondering about his abrupt leaving. As he stepped outside he saw the Kid mount his horse. He called out and hurried to him.

“Where you goin’, Kid? You look mighty proddy.”

“I’m ridin’ down to the Row,” the Kid said. “Comin’?”

“Well, I was aimin’ to cut a few capers with that redhead.”

The Kid laughed shortly, dug in his heels and rode down the hill towards Crib Row. Frankie looked after him. He had half a mind to follow, but he did want to have one dance with the redhead, so he turned back. As he entered a man brushed past him. It was the preacher, looking very glum.

Entering the schoolhouse, Frankie paused, searching the floor for her and spotting her in the arms of a big man he recognized as Adam Field. As he started forward eagerly, he saw a man he didn’t know attempt to cut in, but Field shook his head, said something and started another turn of the floor with her. The other man stared after them for a moment, then shrugged and claimed another girl.

That big galoot either don’t know the rules or thinks they ain’t for the likes of him, Frankie thought. Reckon I’ll have to show ’im his mistake.

He stood on the edge of the floor, waiting to claim her the next round. Field was holding her mighty close, like he owned her. Well, he’d show him he didn’t.

Cathy hadn’t seen him. Adam was holding her too tight. She felt smothered, as if she were in a trap.

She didn’t like it, and murmured, “Adam, please!”

He loosened his arms and smiled down at her possessively.

Then she heard a voice say, “I’m claimin’ this dance.”

Relieved, forgetting that she was supposed to be “all” Adam’s, she stopped dancing and drew her head back. Adam was shaking his head. She saw Frankie then, for the first time, and looked into his soft black smiling eyes, so different from Kid Shelleen’s, yet there was something about him that reminded her of the Kid; he seemed to have the same reckless grace.

She heard Adam say, stiffly, “This lady is my bespoken,” and his arms tightened around her again, but then the tall dark man spun Adam around, and, as she freed herself quickly, she heard him say, “Not for this dance, mister, this un’s mine.”

Then he took her in his arms and whirled her away and it felt good to be in his arms, as if she belonged there.

She didn’t look back, for she was waltzing with the best dancer in the territory, there was no doubt about it. She didn’t even notice as Adam stalked to the cloakroom, and buckling on his Colt, slammed blackly out of the room.

They finished their turn of the floor, but nobody claimed her and she knew no one would ever claim her from the arms of Frankie Ballou.

“The Kid said you were the best,” she said, finally.

He laughed and she could feel it rumbling deep in his chest.

“The best what?”

“Why, dancer.”

“Well, he’s the best shot,” he said. And then he said, “I think your man’s gone out to get hisself good an’ drunk.”

“He’s not my man.”

“He said you was his bespoken.”

“I . . . I guess I am.”

“Since when?”

“Since about a half hour.”

“That was sure a short engagement,” he said. “Say, what’s your name?”

“Cathy.”

“I like it,” he said. “Mine’s Frankie, Frankie Ballou.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Same here. What’s your last name?”

“Morgan.”

“Old Doc’s girl?”

“Yes.”

The music stopped.

“Next dance is a moonlight, choose your partners!” a voice cried.

“I done chose mine,” Frankie said.

“The moonlights are supposed to be for those who’re married . . . or going steady,” she said.

“I know.”

Then all the lights went out, the music started and they were dancing closely, a slow dreamy waltz. It was a long dance but it didn’t seem so to either of them. They danced without speaking, without even thinking, their bodies tuned.

The music stopped and there was a moment of silence in the dark and all around them couples kissed but they didn’t, they just stood quietly together, embraced, and Cathy knew then what Old Doc had meant, knew in her body and her innards, in her blood and in her heart.

Then matches flared and the big lamps were lit and all the couples stood apart and clapped their hands, and then the stags came back into the room and scurried to claim partners, but none claimed Cathy from Frankie Ballou.

The music started again, but he didn’t take her in his arms for another dance, he just folded her arm under his and walked her to the cloakroom. He held her coat for her without saying a word, buckled on his gun, claimed his hat, took her arm again and went out with her into the bright moonlight.

As they walked slowly down the hill towards Main Street, a dozen curious older women came out onto the schoolhouse porch and watched them, some bitterly, some spitefully and a few sympathetically. They saw them go into Jed Kronkhite’s livery stable and after a while saw them drive out in one of Jed’s buggies and down Main Street and out along the Purple Valley Road.

They drove towards the mountains which rimmed the Purple Valley on the south without speaking a word. They didn’t have to talk to communicate, they didn’t even have to touch. . . . She didn’t know where they were going and it didn’t matter, because wherever they went, it would be together.

After a long time Frankie said, “I wanta tell you about myself, the kind a man I am an’ hope to be.”

He told her, truthfully, as much as he knew.

“Now tell me the kind of woman you are.”

And she told him, truthfully, as much as she knew.

Then they came to the edge of the Purple Valley, where the road petered out and became a trail. He reined up and she followed his eyes with hers. The trail wound steeply, disappearing into the trees. Three quarters up, the trees thinned out and the trail appeared again, winding up through craggy purplish terrain to the top of the mountain, where, plain in the brilliant moonlight, she could see cabins lining a sort of plateau just under the summit.

“That’s the Roost,” he said.

“Are you taking me there?”

“Would you go?”

“I’ll go anywhere you say.”

“I’m goin’ a say somethin’ I’ve never said to any woman,” he said. “I love you.”

“I know,” she said. “And I love you.”

Then they kissed and it was as if it were the first time for both.

When Adam Field walked out of the little red schoolhouse, leaving Cathy in Frankie Ballou’s arms, a hatred burned in his vitals, a hatred he was to nurse for many years. As the rejected, the humiliated, the dispossessed so often do, he headed for the nearest saloon.

Old Doc was drawing to a diamond flush when Adam walked into the Lucky Seven. He didn’t make it but the look on Adam’s face made him feel almost as good, because Adam’s was no poker face, it had the look of a loser.

As Adam strode to the bar and ordered a bottle, Old Doc threw in his hand, a secret smile in his heart.

Madder than a centipede with bunions, Old Doc thought, Cathy’s said no!

As if feeling his eyes upon him, Adam turned, glass in hand, and glared at him, but saw only a bland poker face. Old Doc cashed in—he’d won a net three dollars—and went out to his horse.

Knew my girl would never sell out, he was thinking. Knew she’d never saddle me with that son-of-a-bitch for a son-in-law. If I was a drinking man, I’d have me a couple this night. Then he had a sudden disquieting thought. Wonder if this means she’ll marry Young Preach? I hope it’s not that Psalm-singing . . .

And then he was ashamed of the wish. He knew what a good man the preacher was, knew he ought to be happy to have him in the family, but he also knew he wouldn’t be. He decided to go home where his memories were.

As he rode past the church he noticed that a lamp was burning in the little house next door, the preacher’s house, and as he drew abreast of the front porch he saw that Young Preach was sitting there alone, back in the shadows, out of the moonlight, smoking his pipe.

She’s turned him down too!

Immediately he was sorry for this jubilance, and for Young Preach, and reining up he called out a good evening.

“Good evening,” Young Preach said, glumly.

“Why aren’t you up there dancing, boy?”

“I don’t feel much like dancing,” Young Preach said. “Cathy’s marrying Adam Field right after roundup.”

“Why, that makes no sense at all!” Old Doc said. “He’s over in the Lucky Seven, unhappy as a buckeroo with boils on his tail, drinking red-eye like it was sarsaparilla.”

“But she said . . .” Young Preach began.

“Maybe she exercised a woman’s privilege and changed her mind,” Old Doc said, and pressing his heels in, he rode on towards home, half hoping there was still a fighting chance for Young Preach, half hoping she’d draw a better hand.

Young Preach sat on his porch for quite a while. He didn’t quite know what to do. He wanted to hurry up to the schoolhouse to find out what had happened.

But maybe it’s only a lover’s quarrel, he thought, wincing at the word “lover’s.” And maybe Adam’s only celebrating.

He wanted to run up the hill to the schoolhouse, but he was afraid of making a fool of himself. He decided to go to bed and hope for tomorrow. Knocking out his pipe, he went into the little house and started to prepare for bed, and by doing so, barely missed seeing Cathy walk by on the arm of Frankie Ballou, and later drive out with him towards the Purple Valley.

For half an hour Young Preach tried to sleep but he couldn’t, so finally he got up, dressed again, and went up the hill to the schoolhouse. At the door he hesitated.

Suppose he’s back? Suppose they’ve patched it up? Or never quarreled at all? Well, he had to find out.

He stepped inside. Looking for Cathy, he felt the curious stares of dancers and wallflowers alike. There was no sign of Adam, and no sign of Cathy. A group of older women, with Mrs. Arbuthnot in the center, were talking in low voices, which stopped as he approached.

“Where’s Cathy?”

“She ain’t here,” Mrs. Arbuthnot said.

“I can see that. Where is she?”

For a moment they stared at him uneasily, no one answering, then Mrs. Arbuthnot said, “She’s scandalized her name. Danced the moonlight an’ went a-buggy-ridin’ with that outlaw!”

“Kid Shelleen?”

“Frankie Ballou!”

Young Preach left sickly.

In his parlor Old Doc sat reading. He knew he ought to go to bed but he was too curious. He had to know what had happened between Cathy and Adam Field. So, reading, he waited for her to come home.

The dance broke up at three o’clock with “Good Night, Ladies” and the men who had girls walked them home lingeringly, while those who didn’t scattered, a few to go home, some to ride down to Crib Row and some to the Main Street saloons for stirrup cups.

Little Jack Horner, ramrod for Adam Field’s Diamond F, and five of his men went looking for the boss. His blue horse was at the rail in front of the United States Hotel and they found him at the bar, sullen and alone, his face flushed and his eyes bloodshot.

Little Jack tried to get him to go home but Field said he had “a little business with Frankie Ballou.” Little Jack had no stomach for any gunplay with Frankie, even if he should happen to be alone, and he wasn’t sure but what Kid Shelleen would be around too, so he said that Frankie had gone long ago, neglecting to add that he’d driven off in a buggy with Cathy. But a couple of men from Circle R, who didn’t mind a little trouble as long as they weren’t in it, told Field what had happened.

“Let’s take a little ride an’ find ’em,” Field said.

“All right, boss,” Little Jack said, feeling there was a good chance they never would and wanting to get out of town before Frankie got back, but the Circle R riders spoiled this by pointing out that Frankie was bound to come back, since his horse was still hitched up at the schoolhouse rail.

“Reckon we’ll stick around then,” Field said, and ordered another bottle.

There was nothing for his men to do but stick, but they drank little, and only then when the boss insisted. They wanted to be as sober as possible if a showdown came.

At about two thirty Old Doc had fallen asleep in his chair. He didn’t wake up until dawn was breaking.

Cathy didn’t want to wake me up, he thought. Bet she tippy-toed in and sneaked off to bed.

He went to her door and listened. Then he opened the door quietly and peeked in. She wasn’t there. Old Doc buckled on his gun and went out to the barn to saddle up.

The sun was coming up as Kid Shelleen came out of Pete’s Place on Crib Row. He had gone there for forgetfulness in bought arms, only to see two faces on every girl there, his childhood sweetheart’s, and Cathy’s.

And so, like Adam Field, he had turned to the bottle. He had drunk steadily, but when he walked out to the sun’s first rays he was sober enough to walk a straight line, and to wonder what had happened to his friend Frankie. Riding down Main Street, he looked up towards the schoolhouse. The dance was long over but there was still one horse at the rail. It looked like Frankie’s and it was. This was very curious and the Kid wondered about it. Leading Frankie’s horse, he rode down to the United States Hotel, and tying the horses, went inside to inquire about Frankie.

The bar was still open, with a few die-hards still drinking. Adam Field was drunk, at the end of the bar, but there was no sign of Frankie. The die-hards gave him plenty of room and when the bartender came up, with a bottle, and the Kid asked him where Frankie was, the bartender winked and told him.

As Old Doc rode into Main Street, he saw Kid Shelleen come out of the United States Hotel, mount and ride very slowly towards the Purple Valley Road, leading a riderless horse. Old Doc watched him for a moment and then he saw Young Preach hurrying towards the barn in back of his house. He was booted, and carried a double-barreled shotgun. Old Doc turned in, stepped down and entered the barn. Young Preach was throwing a saddle blanket on his old mare.

“Taking a little ride, son?”

“Yes,” Young Preach said.

“Squirrel hunting?”

“Man hunting,” Young Preach said. “Frankie Ballou took Cathy buggy-riding long before midnight.”

“Aiming to kill him, son?”

“I’m aiming to marry them,” Young Preach said.

“Better let the old doc take care of the family honor,” Old Doc said. “Better let me have that scattergun.”

“Think I’m not man enough?”

“You’re man enough,” Old Doc said. “Only this family has gotten along so far without any shotgun weddings and I guess it still can. Give me that gun.”

Young Preach picked up the shotgun and shook his head.

Then Old Doc snapped his six gun out of its holster and said, “Hand it over, son, I’m in kind of a hurry.”

“You couldn’t kill me, Doc.”

“Who said anything about killing?” Old Doc said. “You’ll look mighty funny with one ear though.”

Young Preach handed him the gun and walked out of the barn. Old Doc examined the shotgun. It wasn’t loaded.

Well, he thought, Young Preach is a lot of man, after all, fixing to go up against Frankie Ballou and maybe even Kid Shelleen with an unloaded gun!

He went outside, tied the shotgun to his saddle, mounted, and rode off towards the Purple Valley. Kid Shelleen was out of sight, but Old Doc knew the back country as he knew his own back yard, and unless the Kid rode hard, he thought he could head him off before he reached the beginning of the trail which led to the Roost.

He knew enough about the Kid to know just about what must be in his mind: death. And Frankie Ballou dead wasn’t going to be much good to Cathy. Turning off the dusty road, Old Doc put his horse to the gallop.

Death in his heart, Kid Shelleen rode slowly. Halfway across the Purple Valley, where the road crossed cottonwood-lined Devil’s Creek, he found Old Doc waiting for him with a shotgun.

“Let’s have your Colt, Kid,” Old Doc said.

“I reckon I’ll keep it,” the Kid said.

“Maybe you could make it a tie,” Old Doc said. “I guess you’re fast enough for that. Give me your iron, son.”

“No,” the Kid said.

“Then give me your word you’ll give him a chance. . . .”

“I’ve never killed a man yet without a fair chance,” the Kid said.

“Not a chance to draw, a chance to talk,” Old Doc said.

“A shotgun weddin’ won’t make what he done right,” the Kid said.

“And killing your best friend will?”

“I got to do it, Doc! Feelin’ the way I do about her.”

“Maybe Frankie feels the same way, Kid.”

“If he did, he wouldn’t treat her like a Crib Row woman!”

“Maybe it wasn’t like that at all, Kid. Maybe they love each other.”

For a long moment Kid Shelleen looked at him with hard cold eyes, then he nodded. “All right, my word I’ll give him a chance to talk. You can ride along if you want to.”

“Your word’s good with me, son, but I’ll go along just for the ride.”

Cathy and Frankie, driving towards the creek from the other side, saw Old Doc and Kid Shelleen ride out of the cottonwoods side by side. She clutched at his arm, but he smiled and patted her hand.

“Looks like we just beat the gun, don’t it, Miz Ballou?”

“Doesn’t it, Frankie,” she said.

“Well, one way to learn to talk good is marry a schoolmarm,” he said, and then, yelling, “Hey, don’t shoot, we’re man an’ wife!”

The sun was hardly up an hour but Young Preach shaved carefully and put on his white shirt with a high stiff collar and a black tie and finally his black frock coat, for he wanted to be ready to perform the marriage ceremony as soon as Old Doc brought Cathy and Frankie Ballou back to town. When he was dressed, he took up the worn Bible which had been his father’s and went out to sit and wait upon the porch. There were still horses at the rail in front of the United States Hotel; he counted nine, among them Adam Field’s blue stallion, so he didn’t sit down after all. Instead he went along the board sidewalk to the hotel. Entering the lobby he glanced into the bar, where he saw Field, drunk, surrounded by his men.

To the clerk Young Preach said, “This is the Sabbath, why haven’t you closed up?”

“Been tryin’ to for hours,” the clerk said. “But Mr. Field’s ugly drunk and he just tells me to go to hell. . . . I’m sorry, Young Preach, but that’s what he keeps sayin’. I wish they’d go, there’s goin’ a be trouble when Frankie Ballou gits back.”

“Why don’t you call the sheriff?” Young Preach asked.

“A lot of good that would do. You know he ain’t crossin’ Mr. Field or any other association man if he can he’p it.”

Young Preach hurried out. Going into his house, he took the old forty-four that had been his father’s from the dresser drawer. It wasn’t loaded and never had been since he could remember, but he put it in his hip pocket and then went out to the barn and saddled his old mare.

He had ridden about an hour when he saw the horsemen and the buggy approaching. He pulled up, stepped down and waited until they came up. He looked at Cathy for signs of guilt but found only radiance.

Taking out his Bible he said, “Step down and say your marriage vows.”

“We’ve said them, Young Preach,” Cathy said, gently. “To the justice of the peace over in Hangtown.”

“That’s no marriage in the sight of God,” Young Preach said.

“We don’t want to keep gittin’ married,” Frankie said. “We’re man an’ wife—an’ that’s enough!”

“Cathy, it would please the Lord and me,” Young Preach said.

“It would please me, too, Frankie,” she said.

“All right then,” Frankie said. “Might as well go whole hog.”

“Step down,” Young Preach said.

“Wouldn’t it be more fitting in the church?” Cathy asked.

Young Preach, who wanted to be able to say that he had married them before they encountered Adam Field, said, “This is God’s outdoors.”

So they stepped down from the buggy and were married.

When Young Preach said, “Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder,” his voice broke, but he recovered quickly, and, kissing the bride on the cheek, stepped to the saddle, and rode towards town at the gallop.

Old Doc hugged her hard and kissed her, and then the Kid, seeing that it was expected of him, kissed her too, on the cheek as Young Preach had done, and said, “Take good care a her, Frankie.”

“I’ll take care a her, I’m tradin’ my six gun for a plow,” Frankie said.

Kid Shelleen and Old Doc rode on and Frankie picked up his bride to put her back into the buggy, but first he kissed her again, and said, “I’m glad the preacher come along, I reckon it makes us really married for good.”

“Yes, my darling, for good,” she said.

As they drove along, he said, “You ain’t said where you want a go on our weddin’ trip.”

“Not ain’t, haven’t,” she said. “Wedding trips cost money and we have to think of the future.”

“I got plenty a money,” he said. “I got twelve hunderd dollars; we could go to Kansas City.”

“Where did you get it, Frankie?”

“Why, collected it from the U.P.”

“I thought you said you were through with outlawry?”

“Well, I am, but . . .”

“I’d rather not use stolen money for our honeymoon, Frankie.”

“All right, I’ll give it back,” he said. “I’ll bet Old Doc’ll see it gets back.”

“I’m sure he will.”

“I didn’t aim to marry you with nothin’ but the shirt on my back,” Frankie said. “We should a waited till I got a job.”

“ ‘For richer, for poorer,’ ” she said.

“I ain’t . . . h’aint . . . haven’t even got the price for a room,” he said.

“We have a room, darling,” she said. “Mine. And don’t worry about money, Father will lend us what we need until you get on your feet.”

“I wisht I’d got me a job long ago,” he said.

“I don’t,” she said, “for then we might never have met!”

The sun was high, but sleepy Main Street was still deserted as the two punchers from Circle R came out of the United States Hotel. They were still hopeful of a clash between Frankie Ballou and Adam Field, but had prudently agreed to watch the proceedings from a vantage point that would be safer for spectators. As they looked about for such a spot, their eyes went to the schoolhouse. Frankie’s horse was gone!

“Hell’s bells,” one of them said. “He’s came an’ went!”

“Sure looks like he’s lit a shuck,” the other said. “Guess we might as well do the same. It’s plum’ disappointin’.”

Mounting, they rode out gloomily along the Purple Valley Road. Soon both dozed in the saddle, but after a while they sat up, their eyes snapping open, at the sound of hoofbeats. Young Preach passed them at the gallop, flinging them a curt greeting. They reined up, staring after him, but then they shrugged and rode on dispiritedly. Presently they reined up again. A cloud of dust far down the road indicated somebody else was coming. Pulling into the shelter of trees, they waited to see who it was. Presently Old Doc and Kid Shelleen rode past, followed by Cathy and Frankie Ballou in the buggy.

The two Circle R men exchanged happy grins. They weren’t to be cheated of their Sunday-morning entertainment after all; this was going to be something to talk about around the bunkhouse for years to come, a battle between the Field crowd and Frankie Ballou and Kid Shelleen!

“Makes the odds about even!” one of them cried.

Wheeling, they set off in a great circle, running their horses so as to cut around and beat them into town, with time to pick out a ringside seat.

Sheriff Ed Mace, who batched it in the little room behind his office in the jail, wiped coffee stains from his yellowish-white mustache and went into his office. Hoping, but not really expecting that Adam Field had given up and gone home, he stepped to the window. He sighed, for Field’s blue horse was still out there in front of the United States Hotel, and worse, there were six others.

Frankie won’t have a chance against all them men, he thought.

He wasn’t really worrying about Frankie, however, but about himself. He realized that if Field’s men shot the outlaw down it could mean swift and bloody reprisals by Kid Shelleen and the rest of the Bunch from the Roost, and probably the start of guerilla warfare between the outlaws and the Cattlemen’s Association. And he would be right in the middle. He sighed again, wishing he’d never let the association men persuade him to stand for re-election.

As he stood there unhappily, Young Preach rode up, his black frock coat covered with dust. He stepped down and came up the steps to the sheriff’s office.

Entering, he said, “I’m going to talk turkey to you, Sheriff.”

While he talked turkey, the two Circle R riders rode up to the United States Hotel and hurried inside. They told Adam Field that Frankie Ballou and Cathy were on their way in, but neglected to mention that Old Doc and Kid Shelleen were escorting them, for fear that Field and his men wouldn’t relish the odds, even though they were seven to three.

At the news Adam Field picked up his bottle, and motioning to his men to follow him, went out onto the porch. Little Jack and the others followed with little enthusiasm, silently wishing they were elsewhere.

As for the two men from Circle R, they had decided that the ideal place to watch the battle would be the window of the sheriff’s office. They were heading for it when the sheriff and Young Preach came out. The Circle R men waited, to see what was up.

Adam Field was standing near the door, with his men spread out on either side when the sheriff and Young Preach came to the foot of the steps. He glared at them.

The sheriff was not happy, but under Young Preach’s commanding eyes, he cleared his throat and said, “Mr. Field, Young Preach says he united Frankie Ballou an’ Cathy in the bonds of Holy Matrimony an’ . . .”

“Go roll your hoop, Ed,” Field said.

“But Mr. Field, Young Preach says the law-abidin’ folks of Wolf City won’t stand for you killin’ him, now that he’s done the right thing an’ married the girl an’ . . .”

“This is between me an’ Frankie Ballou,” Field said. “He’ll have his chance to stand an’ draw. My boys just aim to see fair play.”

“Now Mr. Field, you don’t want to git the Bunch to ridin’ agin you! For the sake a the peace, please take your boys an’ ride on home. Young Preach says . . .”

“Supposin’ you tell the preacher to mind his own business,” Field said.

“It’s my business and the sheriff’s and the Lord’s to prevent bloodshed,” Young Preach said.

“That’s right,” the sheriff said. “In the name a the law, I call upon you men to disperse an’ go home.”

“How would you like to go plum’ to hell?” Field said.

“There’ll be more than one poor soul in hell this Sabbath if you persist in your folly,” Young Preach said.

“He’s right, Mr. Field,” the sheriff said. “Why, Old Doc’s with ’em an’ he’s got a scattergun, and so is Kid Shelleen.”

Little Jack and the other Diamond men looked at one another uneasily, and then to Field, who took a pull from his bottle and then shouted, “Let ’em come, we’re seven to three!”

“Seven to four,” Young Preach said quietly, and, parting his coattails, he produced the ancient and unloaded forty-four from his hip pocket.

Sheriff Mace sighed, but he knew he’d have to stand with the preacher, or never hold up his head before the ordinary, law-abiding people of the town again, so he said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Field, I reckon it’s seven to five.”

Field looked to his men, but their faces told him they’d never stand with him against the Church and the Law, so he turned on his heel and started for the bar again.

“Ain’t you comin’ home, boss?” Little Jack asked.

“Ride on home with your tails between your legs,” Field said. “I still got some drinkin’ to do.”

He went on inside, staggering a little. Little Jack and the others tarried no longer, but mounting quickly, rode off eastward, towards Diamond F’s home ranch, just as Old Doc and the Kid, followed by Cathy and Frankie in the buggy, hit the head of Main Street from the opposite direction.

“Keep your eye on Field,” Young Preach said. “Try to get him to take a room and go to bed.”

“I’ll try,” the sheriff said dubiously.

He found Field standing in the middle of the lobby, swaying. He held the bottle in his left hand and his Colt in his right and he kept looking from one to the other as if trying to make up his befuddled mind which to resort to in this crisis.

“Say, Mr. Field, how about us gettin’ a room and havin’ a few sociable drinks?” the sheriff suggested, hopefully.

The rancher looked at him waveringly, still balancing gun against bottle. The part of his mind which was shrewd and calculating, the part which had made him rich and powerful, told him to choose whiskey, while the part which was proud and reckless and inflamed by alcohol urged him to fight it out no matter what the odds.

The sheriff saw the struggle, but time was short, and he tried to force a decision, so he said, urgently, “They’re comin’ right now, Mr. Field, you wouldn’t have a chance in hell. . . .”

This tipped the scales and pride, recklessness and hurt fused into a consuming hatred which couldn’t be denied. Smashing the bottle against the wall, Adam Field chose the gun. With a roar he plunged through the door, just as Frankie was jumping from the buggy. This saved his life. Adam Field fired once and missed but the shot which echoed from Kid Shelleen’s Colt didn’t, and Field’s gun clattered to the porch as pain seared his right arm.

“That was pretty good shootin’, Kid,” Frankie said, as he put his own gun back into its holster.

“Maybe I was lucky,” the Kid said.

“I know I was,” Frankie said. “Thanks for the weddin’ present.”

The sheriff came out and supported Field, who was staring dazedly at the blood which dripped down over the back of his hand. Old Doc went up the steps briskly. Matter-of-factly he cut away coat and shirt sleeve and began to examine the wound.

“Just a little old flesh wound,” he said, cheerfully. “Come on, Sheriff, let’s take him upstairs and fix him up. Lucky you missed, Adam, or you’d be way past fixing.”

“He was drunk!” the sheriff said.

“I said he was lucky, didn’t I?” Old Doc said.

As they led Field inside, Cathy said, “Thank you, Kid, for saving my husband and for sparing Adam. He didn’t know what he was doing.”

“The Kid did,” Frankie said. “He didn’t want to spoil your weddin’ day.”

The Kid, who had acted from pure reflex, was thinking, Why didn’t I kill the son-of-a-bitch?

Nodding bleakly, he said, “I’ll go with you as far as the house an’ take care a the hosses an’ the rig.”

Riding ahead, leading Frankie’s horse, he answered his own unspoken question. He had shot to wing and not to kill because Frankie had laid down the rule, “No killin’.” For the first time since he’d ridden with Frankie he questioned that rule.

He thought, Field will hate him as long as he lives. When a snake rattles, you ought a kill it.

He reined up in front of the old Morgan place and silently watched Frankie hand Cathy down.

She thinks I done her a favor, he thought, but I didn’t. If I ever get him in my sights again . . .

Frankie interrupted his thoughts.

“We’ll be seein’ you, Kid?”

“Sure,” the Kid said, but he doubted if they ever would.

They watched him ride off towards the livery stable. Then Cathy took Frankie’s arm and said, “We’re home,” and they went into the house.

Belatedly removing his hat, Frankie looked about awkwardly. This warm, lived-in house, with all of its memories for her, made him uncomfortable.

“It’s all right, darling,” she said. “I was born here.”

She went to the door of her bedroom and opened it. Standing in the middle of the parlor, he could see the woman-pinkness of the room and the single oak bed, with its pink spread turned back to reveal the white sheets and the single big pillow.

“You go on, Cathy,” he said. “I . . . I plum’ forgot to give Old Doc the money belt.”

“Can’t it wait, Frankie?”

“Why, I guess so . . .”

“We’re married, dear, this is our wedding day.”

He went to her in the doorway and lifted her face, so full of love, and then she whispered, “Carry me into our bedroom, husband.”

Kid Shelleen paid for the rent of the horse and buggy and stabled his own horse and Frankie’s. He wanted to ride straight to the Roost, get his few things together, and then move on to where there were no memories, but he thought he ought to stick around until Adam Field left for Diamond F.

He found Old Doc having breakfast in the dining room of the United States Hotel and accepted his invitation to join him. He discovered that he was hungry as a wolf and pitched in.

When he had finished and was rolling a cigarette, Old Doc said, “Don’t worry about Adam Field, Kid. He’ll be laid up for a while, and besides, I took a room across the hall and can keep an eye on him.”

Old Doc paid the check and went up to “catch a couple of winks,” but the Kid lingered at the table, rolling and smoking one cigarette after another. He told himself there was no sense in hanging around, that he ought to be riding on. But he just didn’t feel like starting that lonely ride yet.

He decided he’d have a drink and went to the bar, but it was closed. He knew they never closed, even on Sunday, down on Crib Row and decided to go down there and have just one for the road. Just then the day clerk came out of the bar carrying a bottle of whiskey.

“Say, I’ll take one a the same,” the Kid said.

“It’s agin the law to sell on Sunday,” the clerk said.

“I suppose you’re goin’ to give that un away?”

“Well, the sheriff said Mr. Field needed it, for medicine . . .”

“An’ that makes it legal?”

“I guess so.”

“I need some medicine too.”

“Well, if the sheriff says it’s all right . . .”

“Oh, the hell with it,” the Kid said. “So, I’ll just break the law for a change. Gimme that bottle.”

He touched the butt of his gun negligently. The clerk handed him the bottle and the Kid fished out money and flipped it to him.

“Take Field another un, on Kid Shelleen,” he said, and started for the door, carrying the bottle.

Through the door he saw the stage from Lariat pull up in front of the sheriff’s office across the street instead of the stage depot down by the barns. This aroused his curiosity and he halted just inside the door and watched as four men hopped out of the stage and started up the steps to the sheriff’s office.

They wore their guns slung low and one of them carried his right arm in a black sling. The Kid’s sharp eyes recognized him at once. It was the railroad detective he’d had to shoot in the shoulder during the holdup of the U.P. Friday night.

Railroad detectives, an’ a-lookin’ for me, he thought. That un seen me plain enough to know me if he ever sees me agin. Guess I better light a shuck.

Turning, he saw the clerk looking at him. Striding past him, he hurried into the dining room, through it to the kitchen and then out into the alley. He began to walk quickly towards Kronkhite’s livery stable.

The clerk stared after him curiously for a moment, then shrugged and went back for another bottle. As he came back with it, the four men came in, and the one with his arm in the sling asked where they could find the sheriff. The clerk took them to Field’s room.

As Kid Shelleen rode out of Kronkhite’s livery stable, he saw the four newcomers running down the street, followed closely by Adam Field, whose arm was also in a sling. The sheriff was prudently in the rear. The Kid pulled his horse sharply, backing into the barn, then pivoted him and raced out the back way, swinging east along the alley. By the time the men reached the alley he was galloping free and out of range.

“That was the man!” cried McCoy, the man with his arm in the sling.

“It’s Kid Shelleen,” Field said.

As the sheriff came up, McCoy urged immediate formation of a posse to run the Kid down.

“Wouldn’t do no good,” the sheriff said. “He’ll double back to the Roost afore we get a man on hossback an’ you couldn’t force that mountain without an army.”

“That’s right, McCoy,” Field said, “but there’s one of them bandits right here in town, an’ the top dog to boot, Frankie Ballou.”

“Where?” McCoy demanded.

“I’ll show you where,” Field said, grimly.

“Hold on,” the sheriff protested. “McCoy said he only seen the Kid’s face. How you goin’ a prove . . .”

“They rode in together from Lariat way,” Field said.

“There was some hunderd-dollar bills in that haul,” McCoy said. “I got the serial numbers. Supposin’ you show us where Ballou’s at, Mr. Field?”

“Hope you don’t mind draggin’ him out a his marriage bed,” Field said, and chuckling, he led the way towards the old Morgan place.

But he was not to have the satisfaction of seeing Frankie dragged from Cathy’s bed, for Frankie had heard the shots, and fearful that the Kid was in trouble, had jumped into his clothes.

Gun in hand, he ran out of the house just as the railroad men came up with their Colts drawn. His instinct was to fight it out but he heard Cathy come out onto the porch behind him. Knowing she would be squarely in their line of fire, he tossed his gun on the ground and raised his hands.

The three detectives kept Frankie covered as McCoy picked up the gun with his free hand. Frankie, recognizing him, wondered sickly if the Kid had been surprised and taken or killed.

As Field and the sheriff came up, Frankie said, “What’s on your mind, Sheriff?”

“The Kid got away, but Mr. McCoy here says you he’ped him hold up the train over in Lariat Friday night,” the sheriff said.

“Well, don’t stand there, search him!” Adam Field cried.

The sheriff patted Frankie’s middle, found the money belt and unbuckled it. Opening it he took out bills, most of them twenties and fifties, with half a dozen hundreds.

“Read off the serial numbers of the hunderds,” McCoy said, whisking a list from his pocket, and as the sheriff read them off, McCoy said, “Check!” after every one.

“You’re under arrest, Frankie,” the sheriff said.

Cathy had been looking on, stricken, realizing that but for her, Frankie would never have been taken with the evidence on him.

“He was going to send it back!” she cried. “He told me so. He wanted to start our married life clean! Oh, Frankie, Frankie!”

She clung to him, her arms around his neck. After a moment he freed himself gently.

“Good-by, Cathy,” he said.

“I’ll wait, Frankie, I’ll wait if it’s forever!”

The church bell began to ring.

It was ringing again, half an hour later, the last call for the Sunday services, as Old Doc reined up in the alley between the United States Hotel and the Chinese laundry next door and through the narrow space, watched as Frankie, handcuffed now, was led out of the sheriff’s office. There was a good-sized crowd around the waiting stage.

The crowd parted suddenly to let Cathy through. She was dressed in her Sunday best. Old Doc saw her go to Frankie, and as the railroad detectives waited, take his face in her hands and kiss him lingeringly. One of the detectives said something after a moment and she stepped back as Frankie was hustled into the stage. Old Doc heard the crack of the driver’s whip and saw the horses lunge forward and the stage begin to move. Old Doc watched his daughter standing alone, with everybody looking at her. She waved once, bravely and then turned away. As she did so, Old Doc rode on down the alley.

Circling, so as not to be seen by anybody on Main Street, he forded the creek below the bridge and came out upon the Purple Valley Road. The church bell stopped ringing. The faithful were filing inside, Cathy among them, he supposed, to pray for her love. Old Doc hoped it would give her comfort, but he had a more substantial wedding present in mind, her husband, and, spurring his horse, he rode hard towards the Roost.

At a strategic point halfway up the steep rocky trail which wound to the Roost, Barney Grey, whose lookout watch it was, saw a dusty rider toiling towards him. From the pile of rocks which was his cover, Barney poked his Winchester and waited. When the rider was fifty or sixty feet below him, he challenged him sharply.

“It’s Old Doc Morgan,” the begrimed rider called. “Tell the Kid they’ve taken Frankie in Wolf City for robbing the U.P. Found some of the money on him. The serial numbers check. He’s on the stage to Lariat with three men who can throw lead.”

“You better ride up an’ tell him,” Barney said.

“Don’t be foolish, son, time’s a-wasting!” Old Doc yelled, and turning his horse, he started back down the trail.

Reaching the floor of the valley, he rode slowly. Half an hour later, as he jogged along, he saw a dusty cloud rising far off along the foot of the mountain and knew that Kid Shelleen and the Bunch were riding. He knew they’d head the stage off. He only hoped there’d be no bloodshed.

Cathy Ballou lay in the bed in which love, the “kind of glory” which Old Doc had told her about, had come to her and Frankie. It had come sweetly, in the light of day, an ultimate sharing, but now it was dark and she was alone in her marriage bed.

I’ll wait, she thought. I’ll wait here and take care of Old Doc, and keep on waiting, and if there’s a baby, I’ll love and cherish and take care of it, and I’ll never stop waiting until my lover comes back to me.

The church bell began to ring, the first call for the evening services, and then, as it stopped, she heard Old Doc ride up to the barn. She hadn’t seen him since morning and she wanted to see him, but only if he wanted to see her, so she lay there quietly, wondering if he’d come to her door and knock. She wanted him to comfort her, but as a woman and not a child.

She could hear him moving about in the barn. He seemed to be taking a long time to put his horse away. She wondered if he were deliberately killing time because he dreaded talking to her. He had told her she would know when she loved, in her body and her “innards” and her blood and her heart, and she had. She hoped he wasn’t sorry. She’d never be.

At last she heard him come in by the kitchen door, and then heard him come up to her door and stop. She waited. If he didn’t knock, she wouldn’t call out, but after a moment he did knock, and she called out for him to come in.

He opened the door in the dark and said, “Get up, Mrs. Ballou. Put on your riding duds and pack up your things. I’ve saddled your little mare and you’ve got a long hard ride ahead of you this night.”

“Where am I riding?”

“To your true love, Cathy Ballou.”

“Frankie!”

She jumped from the bed.

“Yes,” Old Doc said. “Kid Shelleen and the Bunch took him from the stage at Coyote Pass. It was a complete surprise and they didn’t have to fire a shot. Hurry up, Mrs. Ballou, he’ll be waiting on the Roost.”

It was a Saturday night in March of the following year and Old Doc and Young Preach sat in the parlor of the old Morgan house playing dominoes, a game Old Doc loathed, and played only as a concession to the preacher.

There was dancing in the little red schoolhouse on top of the hill and they could hear the music of fiddle, banjo and accordion, and every now and then, above it, the distant roll of thunder.

“A lot of pretty dresses are liable to get a drenching before this night’s over,” Old Doc said.

“The storm’s over the mountains,” Young Preach said. “It may not reach us.”

Both looked towards the mountains, thinking of redheaded Cathy up there where the thunder was. The rolling sound quieted and they could hear the dance music sweet and clear again.

Old Doc sighed. In his opinion they were both wasting their time playing dominoes. He wished he was down at the Lucky Seven playing stud poker; he felt lucky. And a young fellow like Young Preach ought to be up there dancing; he’d never find another girl hanging around an old man who had better things to do anyhow.

“Preach,” he said, “why don’t you hike up to the schoolhouse and have a little fun? A man, even a preacher, ought to have a little fun once in a while.”

Young Preach didn’t answer.

Of course I haven’t been to a dance myself since Abigail went away, Old Doc thought. But he didn’t lose Cathy the way I lost my Abigail. She’s not dead. Maybe the poor fellow could bear it better if she was. I never will understand how a man can mope about losing a woman he never had anyhow.

Listening to the music, Old Doc remembered how it was in the old days when he danced with his lover until cockcrow.

Cathy’s like her, he thought. She gave herself for love, like her mother, who could have caught any man in the valley.

He wondered if Abigail would have given her blessing; he thought she would have.

The thunder rolled again and Young Preach got up and went to the window. High above the mountaintop he could see the forked lightning.

“It’s a big storm,” he said.

Old Doc joined him at the window, and taking his arm, said, “Stop worrying about her, son, she’s where her heart is.”

“I’m not worrying, she made her bed!”

“That’s preacher-talk,” Old Doc said.

“And that outlaw’s is man-talk? I suppose you think he’s more of a man than I am?”

“No. Just a different kind.”

“An outlaw, a thief, a killer!”

“He hasn’t killed anybody yet.”

“How do you know?”

“Why, he told Cathy so.”

“He could have lied.”

“He wouldn’t, son, not to her.”

“It wouldn’t have been so bad if she’d chosen a decent man, a good citizen. . . .”

“Like Adam Field?”

“At least he’s not a common criminal!”

“You hear of any trains being robbed lately, Young Preach?”

“No, but . . .”

“He promised her he’d never steal again. I don’t think he will . . . unless he has to.”

“Nobody has to steal!”

“They might, son. I would if it was the only way I could take care of my own. And maybe you’d even pray for me, if you understood. I hear praying makes you feel good. Why don’t you pray a little for Frankie Ballou?”

Young Preach clenched his fists and turned to look towards the mountaintop again. It seemed to be bathed in fire.

“Have you heard anything from her, Doc?”

“No, but she said she’d send for me if she ever needed me and I guess she will. I don’t think she’d ever leave there without Frankie for anything in the world.”

“Doc, if she’s ever sick or . . . or dying and she sends for you, please let me ride with you.”

“You’re the gloomiest son—oh, all right. But supposing it was something else she needed Old Doc for? Like a new life, a birthing? Now, son, don’t take it so hard. People who get married do have babies, and soon as possible if they love each other.”

For a moment it was dark and silent above the mountaintop. Then the thunder cracked again and the lightning flashed and Young Preach, staring upward across the Purple Valley, thought of Cathy conceiving in ecstasy and shuddered. In the silence between thunderclaps he heard a loud knocking on the back door.

Old Doc hurried into the dark kitchen, leaving the parlor door open. Opening the back door, he saw a shadowy figure on the steps and behind him a horse. The man slipped in quickly and by the lamplight through the parlor door he saw that it was Kid Shelleen.

“Evening, Kid,” Old Doc said. “Been kind of expecting you or Frankie for a day or two. So Cathy’s time has come?”

“Yes, but how the hell did you . . .?”

“The calendar, son,” Old Doc said.

“Oh,” the Kid said. “Frankie wanted a send her in last week, but she wouldn’t come. He’d have come for you tonight, but I th’owed down on him an’ practically hogtied him. We better hustle, Doc, there’s a hell of a storm.”

“Saddle my horse, I’ll get my little black bag. . . .”

But as he turned to get it Young Preach came in carrying it.

Handing it to him, Young Preach said, “I’ll saddle my mare and join you on the other side of the bridge.”

“She won’t be needin’ no preacher,” the Kid said.

“Maybe she won’t,” Young Preach said, “but she’s a member of my congregation and I’m going to christen her baby, as my father christened her.”

About a month after his granddaughter was born Old Doc took the stage to Lariat and from there the U.P. train to Cheyenne, where he had an appointment with a man named John Halsted, an important official of the Union Pacific.

This was the result of a series of letters of which the following was the first:

U.P. Vice President Halsted was angry, amazed, and amused in turn as he read Old Doc’s letter. He went to see the governor, who said he’d known Old Doc for forty years, and believed he could deliver anything he promised. He also said that if the U.P. dropped charges against Frankie Ballou, the territory had no case.

After consulting his superiors, Halsted wrote to Old Doc:

To which Old Doc replied:

Promptly at the designated hour, Old Doc presented Halsted with a certified check for four thousand eight hundred dollars, and said, “I hope you won’t tell Frankie about this, he’d never stand for it, it’s my own money, you see.”

“I’m afraid you don’t understand, Dr. Morgan,” Halsted said. “The condition was full restitution.”

“Any fool could understand that,” Old Doc said, “and I must say I’m surprised that you don’t. Full restitution of monies looted from the U.P. doesn’t mean restitution of every dollar every outlaw in the West has ever robbed you of. That would be plain silly. It means every dollar you can prove Frankie had a hand in stealing.”

“But even that was six thousand!” Halsted exclaimed.

“You recovered twelve hundred on his person,” Old Doc said. “Which, incidentally, he was about to send back to you, through me, but no matter, the point is you now have the six thousand you’re sure Frankie and his Bunch stole. What the hell more do you want?”

“I’ll have to get in touch with my superiors,” Halsted said.

“Do that, but unless they’re even stupider than I think they are, they’ll see what a good deal they’re getting. Or would they rather set a figure that will force Frankie to go out and steal it from them?”

“You’ll hear from me in a few days. If you’ll give me your Cheyenne address . . .”

“Son, I’m taking the eight-o’clock train,” Old Doc said. “I’ve got two babies coming, one in town and one out at Spade, and I don’t think they’ll wait, even for the Union Pacific Railroad.”

“Very well, Doctor, I’ll take the responsibility and accept your check in full restitution,” Halsted said.

“Shake hands,” Old Doc said. “You’ve just made one hell of a good investment.”

And so it proved to be, for the fifteen years Frankie rode the trains, for none of his old Bunch ever tried to hold up another U.P. train, and most of the few others who did either died trying or lived to regret it.

The old ballad had it that Cat “growed up twic’t as wild” as a mustang, but that was partly poetic license. They lived near Laramie and she went to school, as her mother had, for two of the “R’s,” but like her mother she got most of the “readin’ ” at home, from Cathy, and upon Old Doc’s visits, from him. She looked more like Frankie than Cathy; she had his soft black eyes and his dark hair, although her skin was fair. Old Doc used to say it was a case of “sire prepotency.” She had a lot of Old Doc in her, too, although not on the surface.

Like her mother she was a tomboy when she was little, even more so, in fact, learning to swim and ride and shoot a carbine before she could either read or write; but unlike Cathy she was conscious of her body early. She looked like a boy, with her short hair, shirt, pants and half boots, but underneath she was female.

Boys excited her and before her breasts had budded she knew desire. She seemed like one of them, riding and shooting, but she knew the difference long before they did. And when they became aware of it and hugged and kissed her, she was stirred deeply, but fought them like her nickname when they tried to go further.

She was always in their company except at the swimming hole. They tried to get her to go swimming with them but she never would. Swimming for her was a secret rite. She swam naked, as they did, but always alone, far up the creek, where it flowed deep beside a sunny sand bar.

She would strip off her boy’s clothing and go down to the water and look at her reflection, bending over and smiling at it. In the mirror in her bedroom she was still a child but in the water she was a woman, and she’d hug her childish breasts and dream of a lover, until her body tingled, and then she’d plunge into the cold water and swim up and down until she was tired, when she’d lie on the warm sand and sleep and dream again.

She never dreamed of any of the boys she knew, “just kids,” but of a man, a reckless, laughing, daring lover who was a little like her father, but more like the friend they talked about so often, the outlaw Kid Shelleen. Of course she couldn’t actually remember him, but the stories she heard from Cathy and Frankie and Old Doc, and the legends of the territory, kept the illusion of memory green.

The Kid and all the rest of the Bunch had long since wandered from the Roost, but he was heard about, often, from afar, as he went his violent reckless way through Montana and Arizona and Nevada, robbing banks, stagecoaches and trains, and once in a saloon gun-battle killing three men who’d challenged him.

She sometimes read of knights in shining armor but she dreamed of a man with “eyes of icy blue,” who, somewhere, was waiting for her to grow up, and sometime would ride out of the west and claim her for his mate. She was ripe for love at fourteen, but though her blood clamored, she remained virginal, waiting for the like of Kid Shelleen.

She loved the story of the romance of her father and mother, and of her stormy birth on the Roost, and sometimes she wished that her father hadn’t “gone straight,” that they’d never left that mountaintop for town and school and church; and once, on a Christmas-holiday visit to Old Doc, she had persuaded him to ride with her to the edge of the Purple Valley, where the trail to the Roost began, and her heart had raced as he’d pointed out the high cabin where he and her mother had fought for her life and the black skeleton of the tall spruce that had “flared like a torch.”

After that, whenever time hung heavy upon her restless heart, she’d make up a fantasy in which she ruled the Roost as a queen beside a king who was bold and brave and lawless, like a wild stallion, an untamed, ageless Kid Shelleen.

The happiest day she’d ever known was the day when her father, having quit his job on the U.P. at last, moved his family back to the Purple Valley. At first they stayed in town with Old Doc, while her father looked around for the small spread he’d been saving so long to buy; but at least, on a clear day, she could look across the valley and see high up on the mountain the stark charred spruce that had flamed that stormy night.

Young Preach wanted her father to get a job and live in town, so she could “go to school and be a lady,” and to church every Sunday; but she had gone to school all she intended to, had no desire whatever to be a lady, and didn’t see why if Old Doc didn’t go to church she had to. She didn’t like Young Preach, much anyhow. She was glad her mother had had sense enough to throw him over for her father. Young Preach had never married. With one part of her Cat thought that this was very romantic, but with the other, more realistic part, she thought it was plain silly.

“How can a grown man moon around all his life over a woman who turned him down for a better man?” she asked Old Doc once, adding, to herself, And never even had her!

“I’ve wondered the same thing,” Old Doc said.

“It’d be different if he was waiting for me,” she said.

“Huh?”

But she just smiled mysteriously, thinking of Kid Shelleen, in her fancy waiting for her all those years.

“Young Preach!” she said. “He isn’t young any more and I’ll bet he never was.”

Privately, Old Doc thought that he’d hate to cover that bet, but he said, “None of us is as young as we’d like to be, except you.”

“I’m older than I look,” she said. “Mother told me what you said to her when she was sixteen, about knowing things with your body and your innards and your blood and your heart.”

“Have you known them, Cat?”

“Not yet, but I’ve had the wanting.”

“You’ll know them. Just wait till your heart is sure.”

“I will,” she said.

She was fifteen.

What Frankie was looking for was a good piece of land, within his means, where he could run a few head of cattle, keep a milk cow and some horses, grow his own winter feed, and have gardens, one for the family vegetables and one for flowers for Cathy. Through a combination of circumstances he found it.

Ed Harkness, who had lost his wife, the pretty schoolteacher Cathy had followed at the little red schoolhouse, wanted to sell all his holdings and get away from his memories. He tried to dispose of his big spread all in one piece, but to his surprise, there were no takers at any price near its value.

He was no fool and he soon realized that Adam Field and the other members of the Cattlemen’s Association were just lying back and hoping he’d get tired and sell it for a song. This made him hornet-mad and he decided to sell it piecemeal to any small fry who had the money, and the hell with the association’s tightly held empire.

So, without telling any of his former cronies his intentions, he broke it up into parcels and threw them all on the market at the same time, in Wolf City and Lariat and Laramie and Cheyenne, but he gave Frankie his pick, knowing that nothing could “rile” grudge-nursing old Adam Field worse.

Frankie, at his advice, chose a piece of good bottom land in the heart of the Purple Valley, where, before Harkness had dammed it to change its course, the noisy little Catamount River had flowed. Harkness even shaved the price a little to fit Frankie’s pocketbook.

Adam Field and the others promptly bought what they could of the rest through dummies and managed, by paying premium prices, to pick up all of the parcels which had been sold elsewhere, but Frankie wouldn’t sell at any price. It was the kind of land he’d dreamed of.

Harkness was satisfied. He’d netted more than he’d asked for the whole spread and he’d left a thorn in the association’s side in Frankie, whose land stood directly on the path of the gorge where the river had once coursed, and through which the association ranchers had long driven their cattle to market, a trail which had saved them many miles.

“They monkeyed with a buzz saw,” he told Frankie, chuckling.

Frankie had drained his savings to pay for the land but it was good collateral for a bank loan to build a small ranch house and barn and stock it with a few horses and all the cattle he could run comfortably. The first thing he did was to fence it with barbed wire.

He built the house and barn himself, with the help of a couple of men from town, Cat, and when he could find the time, Old Doc. Cathy wanted to help, but she’d been “delicate” since she’d lost her second child in a buggy accident, and with it her ability to have any more, and Frankie wouldn’t allow her to do any heavy work. So she “supervised,” and as the house grew, she planted the vegetable and flower gardens.

They moved into the new house the day before Cat’s sixteenth birthday.

After supper Frankie said, “You run along to bed. Cat, you’re all tuckered out. Your ma an’ I’ll do the dishes.”

She had never felt less tired in her life, but she had a feeling they wanted to be alone together—it was the first time she’d ever heard him offer to help with the dishes!—so she kissed them good night and went to her room.

It faced westward. She had chosen it because from its window she could look out across the Purple Valley and see the burned spruce on the Roost, the tree that had burned for her. She put the lamp on the dresser and looked around her room. It was done in pink as her mother’s had been in the old Morgan house, the room Old Doc had kept as it was all through the years. In fact it was the same room, moved entire.

The pink spread was turned back and upon it was one of her birthday presents, a sheer white batiste nightgown, from the Bon Ton in Wolf City, the first nightgown she’d ever owned that wasn’t made of flannel. She hated flannel and hadn’t worn any nightgown at all for two years, even on cold nights, slipping out of it after she was under the covers, so it would be wrinkled and her mother wouldn’t know.

Picking it up and stroking it, she thought, I ought to save it for my wedding night.

Holding it to her she turned and looked into the mirror. She could look through it and the faded blue shirt and pants looked funny underneath. She put it back on the bed and stripped quickly, without looking into the mirror again until she’d put it on.

When she did look, she didn’t look funny under it, she looked beautiful, she thought. Staring at her reflection, cupping her small breasts, she exulted, I look like a woman! I’ll call Mother! I want her to see me!

She opened her door a crack to call her. Her father was carrying her mother across the threshold of their new bedroom. She closed the door very quietly.

Like a bride, she thought. Well, she is a bride. I look like one but I’m not.

She was very lonely.

She blew out the lamp. The moonlight seemed to flow in and fill her room with magic and she moved towards it, raising her arms above her head, as if to bathe in it like a waterfall. And then she saw that a campfire flickered on the mountaintop near the tall burned spruce. It was the first time she had ever seen any signs of life on the Roost.

Probably small fry, fly-by-night, two-bit outlaws, she thought, and resented whoever they might be as interlopers, because the Roost, she felt, was hers.

Still, she wondered about them. There were men up there, and probably lawless men, even if they weren’t of the caliber of Frankie Ballou and Kid Shelleen.

Turning to her bed she slipped under the covers and promptly went to sleep. But soon the unfamiliar nightgown rucked up around her and she wriggled out of it without knowing she was doing so, and then, hugging herself, she dreamed a familiar exciting dream.

The rising sun’s rays peeked in and touched her cheek and she woke, yawning, stretching, and threw the covers back. She was surprised but pleased to find that she was naked, the nightgown a crumpled ball.

She stood, admired her reflection in the mirror briefly and then padded to the window. Raising it, she looked towards the Roost. Fresh smoke spiraled up from the campfire and she could make out several horses but no men. But they were there!

She lowered her gaze to look around their own land, at the cattle grazing over by the west fence, at the barn, where she could hear the horses, at the abundant vegetables and the flowers in their neat rows. She stood on tiptoe and stretched again, breathing deep.

What a glorious day to be alive!

Turning from the window, and without bothering with underclothes, she pulled on her pants, and slipping into her shirt carelessly, she hurried out, barefooted, tucking in the shirt as she went.

Her bay gelding stood in the barn with the others, her mother’s mare and the old buggy horse and her father’s shiny black stud, which she was tempted to ride—“Why can’t I have a horse that’s whole?” she’d demanded more than once, but her father had shaken his head—so she put a hackamore on her gelding, and mounting bareback and astride, she rode it, she never called it him, out of the barn.

She had already scouted her swimming hole, but this was the first day there’d been no men around. She rode to it, a sheltered place in the cottonwoods, a bend in the little Catamount which formed a pool. Sliding off the horse, she flung her clothes off. Wading out a few feet, she bent over and looked at her reflection in the shimmering water raptly. It was the first time she’d been swimming since late summer, back near Laramie.

The first time since I’ve been a woman, she thought. Funny, I look more grown-up in my nightgown!

A twig broke sharply and she ducked down into the cold water swiftly, turning to search the trees with her sharp eyes. She could see no one. She remained crouched there, submerged to her chin, for a minute.

Probably a deer, she thought, and turning again, she began to swim.

Screened by the trees, a tall and husky young man stood quite still, watching the flashing of her skin as she swam. It was Abe Field, Adam’s twenty-three-year-old son, who’d come to spy on Frankie and had flushed unexpected game. She swam across the pool and back several times and then in towards the bank.

She lay like a fish in the shallow water for a minute or two, listening, and Abe stood frozen, waiting for her to rise. Finally she stood up and waded out upon the bank, the down on her small mount glistening. He could hardly breathe, and his feet were rooted. She leaned her head back, squeezing the water from her short dark hair and her breasts rose tantalizingly as if she were offering them to him. He moved then, crashing out of the underbrush towards her. Grabbing up her shirt, she held it in front of her.

“You stay right there, you dirty Peeping Tom!”

“What you expec’, runnin’ around nekkid?” he said, but he stopped, a yard or two away.

“This is Ballou land, get off it!”

“I reckon not.”

“What do you want?”

“What do you think?”

“You’re Abe Field, aren’t you?”

“Mebbe I am.”

“Maybe you want to get killed?”

“You goin’ a tattle to your pop?”

“Maybe I won’t have to. Go away!”

“Uh, uh. Give us a kiss.”

She looked at him carefully, calculating her chances, wondering if she could grab the Colt from his holster. She was used to fighting off boys, but he wasn’t a boy, although she didn’t think he was much of a man, big as he was.

“Supposing I do, just one, will you leave me alone?”

“Sure.”

“All right,” she half whispered, as if shyly.

He moved forward, confidently, grabbing for the shirt, but as he tore it away, she grabbed the gun, at the same time jolting her knee upwards, a move which had never failed her yet as a last resort. He gasped and staggered back and saw that she was holding his own Colt on him with both hands.

“Take a good look, you’re not liable to see a naked woman again!”

“Christ, don’t shoot!”

“Run like a rabbit then!”

He backed away, half whimpering in pain and rage and humiliation, and then he ran off into the trees. She stood quite still listening to him crashing through the underbrush. There was silence for a moment and the sound of hoofbeats.

“Rabbit!” she yelled.

She looked at the Colt trembling in her hands and lowered it. Her hands still trembled, all of her trembled, but it was from sheer physical excitement, not fear.

A man wouldn’t run like a rabbit from a naked woman, she thought, if she had forty guns! A man would take ’em away from her! Only I guess a real man wouldn’t have to.

She tossed the gun into the water and pulled on her pants, and buttoning her shirt over her tight-feeling tingling breasts, she didn’t feel angry, but warm and vaguely pleased.

At least somebody that looks like a man wants me, she thought.

When she went into the kitchen her mother and father were fixing breakfast together, like honeymooners, she thought.

They asked her where she’d been.

“Just swimming,” she said.

After breakfast the rest of her presents were brought out and opened, a box from the Bon Ton in which there was a new dress, a grown-up dress, with fancy underthings and stockings and pink slippers to go with it, “for dancing at the schoolhouse,” her mother said. Her other gifts were a Bible from Young Preach, a fine gold chain necklace from Old Doc and a new man-sized carbine from her father, a present she prized, but not anywhere near as much as she would have the “whole” horse she’d faintly hoped for.

In the afternoon came the housewarming. Young Preach was there, to bless the new home, and Old Doc, with a fairing, champagne and sarsaparilla, and new wide glasses to drink to it.

He and Young Preach took the sarsaparilla, but her father poured her a full glass of champagne, along with her mother and himself, and when Old Doc said, “To Frankie and Cathy and Cat, and their lares and penates,” she drank it down, liking it fine.

Then Old Doc smashed his glass against the brick fireplace, and when the others stared at him, he said, “Smash ’em, folks, it’s an old old custom,” and the rest broke the beautiful glasses all to pieces.

“Hey, what’s all the shootin’ for?” a voice cried, and an unexpected guest walked in, limping, a quick slim man, with light blue eyes and dark hair flecked with gray, who wore his gun slung low; and even before her father’s hearty shout of welcome she knew that Kid Shelleen had come at last.

But he’s old! she thought and her heart broke a little, for she had always pictured him as her family had, and her dream of youth incarnate died hard. He’s a cripple and his eyes aren’t even icy blue! He’s crying! Oh, where is my wild free lover!

The Kid’s eyes were soft and warm, as they always were when he looked at those he loved, and there were tears in them because Cathy had kissed him on the lips, for the very first time.

Her father was shaking his hand, and pummeling him on the back and saying, “You old son, you old son!” which, Cat knew, was an affectionate way of saying, “You old son-of-a-bitch!”

Then her mother was pushing her forward, saying, “And this is Cat. Darling, it’s the man you’ve heard about all your life, our friend, our best friend, Kid Shelleen!”

“Pleased to meet you,” she said.

He was staring at her very strangely, she thought. How white he looks! Oh, I hope he doesn’t kiss me! I couldn’t stand it if he kissed me!

He said, “I remember the night you was born.”

“Me too,” she said. “You turned your head when Mother hollered and were sick.”

There was a burst of laughter from everybody but Kid Shelleen, who looked at her bleakly for a moment, and then he laughed too, and said, “I brought you a present, Cat Ballou.”

He made an abrupt gesture for her to follow him and she did. Two horses stood before the door, a brown and a big roan, and when he nodded towards the roan, her heart leaped, for he was whole, a proud magnificent stallion.

“Oh, Kid Shelleen, I love you, I love you, I love you!” she cried, and she did, but not as a wild free lover.

As the others came out of the house, she threw her arms around his neck and laughing and crying at the same time, kissed him again and again on the cheek.

“You old son, you knew the way to her heart!” her father cried.

“I can keep him, you won’t take him away!”

“A course you can keep him,” her father said.

Kid Shelleen touched his cheek gently.

Kid Shelleen ruled the Roost for just one day after Frankie took Cathy and Cat away. Then he turned the job over to Barney Grey and rode away. He didn’t expect ever to return.

The only stories about him that drifted back were those of outlawry and violence. There were none to celebrate his efforts to live without benefit of gun, of the years he spent in one dull and unromantic job after another, for who could, or would want to, imagine the man with “eyes of icy blue” as cow hand, horse wrangler, blacksmith, bartender, bouncer, butcher, clerk, dishwasher, swamper, and lowest of all, sheepherder?

He tried them all, descending in the scale, changing his name, hoping for anonymity, but he couldn’t change his appearance or the look in his eyes, and his reputation always caught up with him; somebody always came along who recognized him, and he would move on, a wanderer trying to escape his destiny.

Sometimes the Law told him to ride on, but more often he went to avoid a showdown battle with some ambitious local badman, eager to try his luck against the famed speed of his draw. He avoided such foolish challenges for the simple reason that he didn’t want ever to kill a man again without what he thought was a good reason.

But the time came, as it was bound to, when he had to resort to the gun again, and when the smoke cleared away, Kid Shelleen was propped against the bar of a Tonopah saloon with two bullets in his right hip and one in his left shoulder while three men sprawled dead on the sawdust floor.

Nobody but the Kid knew the words that goaded him to fight again at last, and he never told. It was agreed that he’d done his best to avoid the gunfight. The three men had been badgering him for hours, following him from saloon to saloon, growing more and more belligerent and abusive. Finally they cornered him in the Golden Nugget. Eyewitnesses said that one of his tormentors leaned close and said something in an undertone which they didn’t catch.

The Kid backed off then and said, “Fill your hand!”

When the man drew, the Kid shot him through the heart. He stopped two slugs before he got the second man and another before he got the third.

The words he never repeated were, “I hear tell Frankie Ballou took his wife from a Wolf City crib. . . .”

It took him a long time to make his way from the bar to his horse but nobody tried to stop him. He finally managed to get on his horse. He rode out of town and holed up like a wounded animal until he could get around again, but when he did he walked with a limp he never got over.

He didn’t try to get another job. For years he was a loner, riding into a town only when he had to lay in provisions and whiskey. He drank regularly because it made his loneliness bearable, but he never got drunk.

The story of the Tonopah gunfight had got around, growing with the telling, and nobody challenged him any more. Sometimes he almost wished they would.

His only contact with other men was at the poker table. He played morosely, speaking only such necessary monosyllables as, “Cards” . . . “Call” . . . “Pass” . . . “Raise.” When he called or was called, he always faced his hand silently, win or lose.

He wasn’t lucky and usually lost and often thought, I guess I’m the only son-of-a-bitch in creation that’s unlucky in love an’ cards both, but he didn’t really care whether he won or lost; it passed the time and it was just as easy to steal money when he needed it as to win it.

He had no contact with women at all.

His life took another direction one day in Ryolite when he walked into a Chinese restaurant and found Barney Grey seated at the counter. He’d never cottoned much to Barney but he was glad to see a familiar face once more and readily accepted Barney’s invitation to join him.

“I hear tell you burned down five men over in Tonopah,” Barney said.

“I hear it was a dozen,” the Kid said, without a smile.

The conversation lagged. The Kid wondered if Barney had heard anything of Frankie and his family, but Barney didn’t mention it if he had and the Kid didn’t ask. They ate in silence for a while. The Kid knew Barney was bound to start talking about himself sooner or later and saw no point in encouraging such usually tiresome reminiscences.

Finally Barney asked, “Ever hear of Clay Boone’s Crowd?”

The Kid merely nodded.

“I been ridin’ with ’em for about a year,” Barney said. “A good bunch, exceptin’ Bud Shore an’ maybe Clay’s wild kid brother, Randy. Kind a like Frankie’s old Bunch. They’re mostly kids like we was. Call me Dad, an’ I’m only thirty-nine. Clay’s maybe twenty-two an’ Randy about twenty.”

The Kid had heard of Clay Boone’s Crowd and once or twice, when he was hungry for the companionship of his own kind, had thought of looking them up. But he hadn’t because he was fundamentally shy and slow to make acquaintances, let alone friends.

Seeing in Barney a possible opening wedge, he said, “Think they could use another gun?”

“I dunno, Kid. Clay’s somethin’ like Frankie was, though he sure looks different. He don’t hold with unnecessary killin’. Matter of fact we had a scatter, account of Bud Shore got trigger-happy over in Carson an’ killed two men an’ a Chink over a floozey. Vigilantes got busy, so we split up.”

Disappointed, the Kid said, “Well, if you split up, there ain’t no point . . .”

“It’s only temporary,” Barney said. “We’re aimin’ to meet up in Spanish Sal’s in Laramie, where folks won’t be agin us. It’s a hell of a fur piece to Laramie an’ I ain’t sayin’ Clay would take you in, but if you’re lookin’ for comp’ny, I’d admire to have yours.”

The Kid looked at him thoughtfully. The word “Laramie,” where Frankie and his family were headed the last time he saw them, made him feel suddenly homesick for them.

“Just thought mebbe you was kind a lonesome,” Barney said.

“I ain’t the lonesome kind,” the Kid said, immediately defensive.

“I been tellin’ Clay about the Roost,” Barney said. “He said he might take a look an’ mebbe hang out there awhile. I’d kind a like somebody to talk to on the way.”

“What the hell, I got nothin’ better to do,” the Kid said.

He didn’t mention Frankie or his family, or that he didn’t care particularly whether Clay Boone’s Crowd would accept him. He knew he had to see Frankie and Cathy once more and find out what kind of girl Cat Ballou had become.

They left that evening, riding at night until they got out of the country where any of Clay Boone’s riders was persona non grata.

The Kid was more company to Barney than Barney was to him. The Kid had never been exactly garrulous and the long years alone had just about stilled his tongue. But Barney talked enough for two, mostly about himself and his extraordinary attraction for ladies of pleasure, who, according to Barney, invariably insisted upon bestowing their favors upon him gratis.

The interminable amatory exploits of this bow-legged Casanova would have bored the Kid if he had listened to them, but he had the faculty of shutting off his mind so completely that words which didn’t interest him became merely mildly soothing sounds, signifying nothing. So each was content.

They took it easy on the trip, staging only one holdup, a roadhouse where they were refused service because it was closing time. They served themselves, as well as all hands present, emptied the cash box, and rode off laughing. It was the first time the Kid had laughed in a long time.

The Kid did steal a horse, near the Wyoming Territory border. This ordinarily would have been against his principles but the circumstances were unique. As they rode into a town one afternoon, the Kid got to thinking about time and all of a sudden it occurred to him that a week would mark the sixteenth anniversary of the birth of Cat Ballou. He decided that he had to take her a suitable gift. He was trying to figure out what to get her when his eyes fell upon a big roan stud hitched in front of the general store. It was a beautiful animal, a sight to gladden the heart of any man, let alone a sixteen-year-old girl. Inquiring within, he found that the owner was a big white-haired man with a yellow mustache. He never did learn his name, owing to the brief nature of their conversation.

It went like this:

“Want a sell that roan?”

“No.”

“Give you two hunderd.”

“Go to hell.”

An hour later when the uncooperative owner rode out of town, Barney and the Kid rode after him. The Kid didn’t want him to have to walk too far, but he didn’t propose to have a posse in close pursuit, so he waited until they were about ten miles out before overtaking him.

Looking into the Kid’s Colt and realizing he was out a horse, the white-haired man suggested an even swap, and when the Kid just shook his head, the man said, “All right, I’ve changed my mind, reckon I’ll let you have him for two hunderd after all.”

The Kid shook his head again, so the man stepped down with a sigh, and as the two men rode off with his big stud, started the long walk back to town.

“What the hell you want with a extra horse?” Barney asked, as they rode along.

“It’s a present for a little girl,” the Kid said.

“A sixteen-hand stud’s a hell of a present for a kid,” Barney said.

“Not for this one,” the Kid said, and explained no further.

The Kid and Barney Grey separated a few miles west of Laramie one afternoon. The Kid told Barney he had a little private business to attend to and said that if he didn’t show up at Spanish Sal’s before morning, he might see him later on the Roost and he might not.

“I ain’t sure Clay’ll welcome you,” Barney said.

“I’ll cross that bridge if I ever come to it,” the Kid said.

After dark he slipped into town. Seeing a light in the baggage room of the depot, he stepped down, went inside and asked where he might find Frankie Ballou, only to learn that the Ballous had moved back to the Purple Valley.

Might as well have comp’ny on the ride over, the Kid thought, and headed for Spanish Sal’s.

He found the place in an uproar, with a crowd milling around outside, and the Law bellowing at the frightened girls inside.

The Kid tapped a big man on the shoulder and asked, “What’s the trouble?”

“A badman named Bud Shore broke a girl’s leg when she asked for her dollar,” the man said. “Seems he expected it free. Clay Boone shot him for it.”

“Kill him?”

“Nope.”

“Too bad,” the Kid said.

“Reckon he’ll be gimpy in the left leg’s long as he lives, though,” the man said. “Clay Boone plugged him there ’cause it was the left leg he broke on the floozey. Sorry, partner, didn’t notice you had a bum leg.”

“What’s the Law so excited about?” the Kid asked. “Who cares if he shot the bastard?”

“It’s illegal to shoot off firearms on a Sunday, or even wear ’em,” the man said, noticing the Kid’s low-slung Colt.

Kid Shelleen, who had killed a few men in his time and robbed innumerable banks, stagecoaches and trains without ever seeing the inside of a jail, didn’t propose seeing one now just for carrying a gun on Sunday, so he pocketed his Colt and rode for the Purple Valley.

He took his time and when he reached the outskirts of Wolf City, it was the evening before Cat’s birthday. Circling into town, he rode up to the rear of the old Morgan place. Stepping down, he went up the kitchen steps and knocked. Old Doc answered, a lamp in his hand.

“Evening, Kid,” Old Doc said, as if he’d seen him only yesterday. “Come in.”

The Kid followed him into the parlor.

“Drink, Kid?”

“I don’t mind, Doc.”

The Kid sat and Old Doc went out, returning with a half-empty bottle of whiskey, a bottle of sarsaparilla and two glasses. He poured whiskey for the Kid and sass for himself, and they touched glasses and drank.

“Looking for the Ballous?”

The Kid nodded.

“I got a little present for the girl.”

“It wouldn’t be that big stud you’re leading?”

The Kid nodded.

“She always wanted a whole horse,” Old Doc said. “You steal him?”

The Kid nodded.

“Had to. The feller wouldn’t sell.”

“Don’t tell her mother,” Old Doc said.

“I won’t.”

“They’ve got a little spread of their own over on the Catamount,” Old Doc said. “Tomorrow’s the housewarming.”

“I’d like to surprise ’em,” the Kid said.

“I won’t let on,” Old Doc said.

“Thanks, guess I’ll mosey,” the Kid said.

“Better not show your face in town,” Old Doc said. “Old Adam Field just about runs it and I don’t think he’ll have forgotten you.”

“I ain’t forgot him either,” the Kid said.

Leading the roan, he rode out the back way, fording the creek and then hitting the Purple Valley Road. High on the Roost he could see the flicker of the campfire which told him that Clay Boone’s Crowd was already there.

As he approached the halfway point on the steep rocky trail, he was challenged by the lookout.

“It’s Kid Shelleen,” he called out.

“Dad Grey said you might be along,” the man said. “Ride on up,” and, raising his rifle, he fired two quick shots, followed after a moment by a third.

The Kid rode on, wondering what kind of reception to expect. From what he’d heard of Clay Boone he knew there was no danger of being bushwhacked, but he had decided to stay awhile, and he hoped he wouldn’t have to kill the man to do it, because he liked everything he’d heard about him.

As he rode up past the charred spruce, he saw the Crowd sitting around the big campfire. He rode up to them, holding his right hand raised high. Barney Grey stood up with two tall men the Kid judged to be the Boone brothers.

The Kid stepped down, looking to the bigger of the two, the one who had to be Clay Boone for he was a man who looked like he had been born to lead. He stood an inch or two over six feet. His shoulders were wide, his chest deep, his hips lean, his legs long and unbowed. He wore his light-brown, almost blond hair long, like a mountain man. His blue eyes were deep and warm.

“Kid Shelleen, Clay Boone,” Barney said.

The Kid put out his hand, expecting Clay to crush it, but he didn’t, although his grip was strong and firm.

“Howdy?” the Kid said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“I’ve heard about you too,” Clay said. “This is my brother, Randy.”

Randy nodded and put out his hand. The Kid was sure he’d try to crush his hand and he did, but the Kid was ready for him and Randy let go, grinning.

A handsome devil, the Kid thought. Too handsome.

He was as tall as Clay but narrower of chest and shoulder, and slimmer. His hair was lighter, really blond, and his blue eyes had something of the same cold sheen as the Kid’s.

“Welcome to the Roost,” Randy said.

“You’re a little bit previous, Ran, as usual,” Clay said. “The Kid and I want to talk awhile. The rest of you take a little walk.”

Randy’s jaw muscles tightened, but then he shrugged and walked away, the others, except for Barney, following.

As Clay looked him over thoughtfully, the Kid said, “When you’re done sizin’ me up, talk away.”

“I hear you’ve killed a man or two,” Clay said.

“One or two.”

“Trigger-happy?”

“Not so’s you could notice it.”

“I don’t like to ride with troublemakers,” Clay said. “I had to shoot a man in the leg over in Laramie the other day for making trouble.”

“I never start it.”

“Just finish it?”

“If I have to.”

“Just how fast are you, Kid?”

“How about a dry run?” the Kid asked, softly.

“All right, fill your hand,” Clay said.

They drew exactly together, and as Barney ducked, they both grinned, and spinning their guns, reholstered them.

“Welcome to the Roost,” Clay said.

The day after the housewarming Brad Evers, lawyer for the Cattlemen’s Association, rode over from Wolf City.

“I want to talk to you, Frankie,” he said.

“If it’s about buyin’ me out, save your breath,” Frankie said. “The answer is still no.”

“I guess you’re about as smart a man as there is in the Purple Valley,” Evers said. “I say a man who can hold up the Cattlemen’s Association the way you’re doing, without even waving a gun, deserves to cash in. That’s exactly what I said to Mr. Field.”

“I don’t aim to hold nobody up,” Frankie said.

“Let’s just call it good business,” Evers said. “You’ve got us over a barrel. We need this land to run our cattle through to the railhead.”

“It wouldn’t save you more ’n three or four mile,” Frankie said.

“Every mile runs that much more beef off our steers,” Evers said. “So I’m going to make you an offer no sensible man would turn down. Our highest offer for just the land, plus a fifteen-per-cent profit on the house and improvements.”

“We built our place with our own hands an’ we like it,” Frankie said.

“Frankie, you oughtn’t to fight the association just because you’re mad at Mr. Field.”

“I ain’t mad at nobody . . . yet,” Frankie said.

On Saturday night the Ballous went to Wolf City, Cat astride Red, as she’d named the roan, and Cathy and Frankie in the buggy. They were going to the dance in the little red schoolhouse, Cat’s first grown-up dance. In the buggy were their party clothes, including Cat’s new dress, and a sober change for church on Sunday.

They changed at Old Doc’s, where they were to spend the night. When Cat bounced into the parlor, Young Preach was there with her parents and she learned without joy that he was to be her escort. She would have preferred Old Doc, but she remembered that he never went to dances. She didn’t know that Young Preach hadn’t been to one since the night her mother ran off and married her father.

But she took his arm and walked sedately beside him behind her mother and father, thinking that her mother looked sweet and pretty and that she herself looked simply beautiful. She hoped lots of men would dance with her mother, and that dozens would cut in and rescue her from the preacher. She was sure he’d dance like a stick.

As they reached the schoolhouse, a number of men rode into Main Street, down the hill, from the direction of the Purple Valley. She wondered if they were from the Roost and for a moment remembered the young Kid Shelleen, who, her mother always said, danced so beautifully, but then she remembered he was old and crippled.

The riders were from the Roost, Clay and Randy Boone and all the others except Kid Shelleen, who’d stayed behind with a deck of cards and a bottle. They were on their way to Crib Row, but when Randy heard the music for the grand march begin, he reined up.

“Say, there’s a dance up there!”

“Yeah, but them women is all respectable,” Barney Grey said.

“They can’t shoot a man for tryin’,” Randy said.

“The hell they can’t,” Clay said. “Come on.”

“You never want me to have any fun,” Randy said.

“You can buy all the fun you want,” Clay said. “I want to keep on the good side of the folks in this town. Come on, I said.”

For a moment Randy glared at him, but then he shrugged and rode on with them, determined to slip out and try his luck at the schoolhouse dance the moment his brother found himself a girl and went upstairs.

When the grand march was over, Cat hoped some good-looking man would claim her from Young Preach, but it was the custom for a girl’s escort to have the first dance. She’d been right about him, he did dance like a stick and didn’t even know how to hold a woman properly. Fortunately, she was claimed by a big fellow who did at the end of the first turn of the floor, and thereafter she was in such demand that her turns with Young Preach were few and well spaced.

Only once during the evening did she fail to leave his arms for another’s gladly. That was when Abe Field tapped him on the shoulder and claimed her.

Laughing in his face, she said, so clearly that nearly everybody in the room heard her, “Thank you, I never dance with rabbits!” and then went back into the surprised Young Preach’s arms.

The private humiliation at their first meeting had been bad enough, but this public one was so much worse that young Field practically ran out of the room, heading like a homing pigeon for Crib Row.

“That wasn’t a nice thing to do,” Young Preach said.

“Well, he is a rabbit, and besides I love to dance with you!” she said, which was, of course, a lie and Young Preach knew it, and began to worry that she knew young Field perhaps too well and that this was a lovers’ quarrel.

“I didn’t know you knew Abraham Field,” he said.

“Who? Oh, you mean the rabbit. I don’t know him and I don’t want to. It’s just that he looks so rabbity.”

“You’ve hurt the boy’s feelings,” Young Preach said.

“Let him find a girl on Crib Row to heal ’em,” Cat said.

“Cat Ballou!” Young Preach said.

“Isn’t that where men go when nice girls turn them down?”

“Nice girls don’t talk about such things!”

“Don’t you think my mother’s nice?”

“I know she is!”

“Well, she told me about Crib Row. And she said there were only two kinds of women, the ones who give themselves for love and the ones that do for a price. She said Old Doc taught her that. Don’t you agree?”

At a complete loss for an answer, Young Preach welcomed the tap on the shoulder which came then as providential, and gladly yielded his partner to a young man who strongly resembled a horse, but who, from the look on Cat’s face, danced like an angel.

Cathy and Frankie, dancing together, heard their daughter’s dismissal of young Field.

“Looks like them Fields don’t never make no headway with my womenfolk,” Frankie said, grinning.

Cathy smiled. She had long since given up trying to make him speak properly. She’d grown used to it, and everything about him, like the way he danced, as gracefully as ever, and made love, as ardently and as sweetly. Close in her true love’s arms, she was as happy as a girl, and hoped and trusted that the child of their love would some day know the “kind of glory” she had known and still knew. Raising her face she kissed him on the lips, and nearby couples, knowing the story of their romance, felt a glow of warmth in their hearts.

Barney Grey found that Pete’s Place on Crib Row was now called Cheyenne Rose’s, but except for that, and the fact that the girls were all strangers, and called him Dad instead of Stud, it seemed about the same.

The boys all had a couple of quick drinks and then paired off and went upstairs, all but Randy, who was bucking the tiger. The moment the others were out of sight, however, he cashed in and left for the schoolhouse. It wasn’t that “nice” girls appealed to him more than strumpets, it was mostly that he resented Clay’s domination more and more, and had to flout it, even if he didn’t quite have the nerve to try it openly.

In the schoolhouse Young Preach claimed Cathy for the first time. At first she was touched, although where once he had danced lightly, he was now awkward and stiff, holding her like a doll instead of a woman. Young Preach had claimed her intending to talk to her about her alarming daughter, but he found himself unaccustomedly tongue-tied. He couldn’t bring himself to mention the things the child had said.

Cathy was glad, although she felt slightly guilty about it, when the music stopped and she heard, “Next one’s a moonlight! Grab the one you love the bestest!”

As Frankie grabbed the one he loved “bestest,” Young Preach turned away, and seeing about a dozen men crowding around Cat begging for the moonlight dance, he pushed through determinedly, and, taking her arm, he ploughed through the crowd to the door to the entrance hall. As they reached it, the big lamps were blown out, leaving the room in almost complete darkness, since it was the amiable custom to lower the window shades lest too much moonlight spoil the fun.

Cat dug in her heels rebelliously but Young Preach marched her through the door and into the lighted hallway just as Randy Boone entered. Too angry to notice even such an obviously attractive young man, Cat wrenched her arm from Young Preach’s grasp, and cried, “Stop treating me like a child!”

“You know the rules for the moonlights!” he said.

Randy liked her spirit and her looks, but since the occasion didn’t seem propitious, stepped past and into the dark big room, pausing just inside to try to get his bearings. Then the door was flung open and she rushed from the hall and squarely into his arms. Quickly he swung her out among the swirling couples, so that when Young Preach burst in after her, he could only see a shadowy mass of languorously waltzing couples, many of them kissing shamelessly.

Cat hadn’t had a glimpse of her partner, but she liked the way he danced. He knew how to hold a woman, even if he didn’t know enough to take off his hat and gun. Suddenly he apparently remembered the hat and took it off, holding it in the strong hand at her back. Looking towards the door she saw Young Preach peering around the room, trying to locate her. From the way her tall partner was holding her, she didn’t think he’d surrender her easily to any joy-killing preacher.

Then he spoke for the first time, low-voiced.

“What are the rules for the moonlights?”

“They’re supposed to be for married folks . . . or lovers,” she said.

“That makes sense,” he said, and held her even tighter.

She snuggled closer. All around them couples were kissing. She wanted to be kissed, too, wondering how they could manage it, since he towered above her so.

Randy solved this problem by guiding her into a corner behind the platform on which the musicians sat, and backing against the wall, pulling her to him hard. He liked the way her small breasts pushed warmly against him and he liked the fine female smell of her. Raising her chin, he kissed her soft parted lips.

Cat liked the pressure of his strong arms and of his lips and kissed him back, finding the experience delightful, but not overwhelmingly exciting, as she had dreamed her first grown-up kiss would be. Then Randy, confident of easy victory, crowded his luck too hard. He slipped his hand down her dress. Instantly she wrenched free, slapped him ringingly, and running along the edge of the floor, disappeared into the darkness.

I made my move too quick, Randy thought. I better try an’ mend my fences!

He began to thread his way through the dancing couples towards the door.

Young Preach was still anxiously searching the floor for her when she ran up and grabbing his arm, said, “Take me out of here!”

“What’s the matter?” he asked, as she dragged him from the darkened room into the lighted hallway.

“I’m the matter! Take me to Old Doc’s!”

“I’ll get my hat . . .”

“Bother your hat!” she cried and ran outside, just as Randy came in from the floor.

He saw only her back and then the hatless preacher running after her. Randy, hurrying to the door, looked out and saw the preacher catch up with her and then walk off with her.

Now why she’d skedaddle with that preacher? Randy thought. She kissed me back. . . . God, she smelt sweet!

He went back inside when the moonlight dance was over and claimed a pretty, lively girl with a freckled nose, but he didn’t think she could “hold a candle” to the one who’d got away.

Soon he was back at Cheyenne Rose’s, but bought arms had lost their savor and he longed for the fresh, young and eager lips of Cat Ballou.

Meanwhile Cat and Young Preach walked at arm’s length and in silence to the old Morgan place. He knew she needed “a good talking-to” and that it was his duty as her pastor to give it to her, but he couldn’t seem to bring the kindly words of wisdom forth.

Suddenly, as they reached Old Doc’s, she said, “And I never even saw his face!”

“Dancing the moonlight with a stranger!” said Young Preach.

“I let an absolutely strange man kiss me!”

“You let him?”

“I couldn’t help myself. I guess you’re right about me, Young Preach. I can’t be a very nice girl or I wouldn’t have kissed him back!”

“My poor child!”

“I’m not yours and I’m not a child! Not any more. I liked it!”

She lay in bed for a long time, still confused and angry, more at herself than the young man.

Why’d I get so mad? she thought. Boys have pawed at me before. Of course I always slapped them, or punched or kicked or kneed ’em. But I never ran. Maybe it was because he’s not a boy but a man. I wonder what he looks like?

She heard her father and mother come in and knew it must be after three o’clock. Her mother opened the door and peered in, but Cat closed her eyes quickly and pretended to be asleep. And, presently, she was.

She dreamed that the mysterious man was no stranger, but Clay Boone, but he didn’t paw her like a clumsy boy, he kissed her like a man and a lover.

When she woke she felt wonderful. She didn’t even mind Young Preach’s long earnest sermon, which was against sin and the flesh, and as a matter of fact, was meant for her. Like Kid Shelleen, she could shut off her mind, and the droning voice and the somber words were drowsily soothing.

They had Sunday dinner with Old Doc. Afterwards Cat changed to her old faded pants and shirt and led the way home on her beloved Red. She let him out the last mile and thus it was she who discovered that the east fence had been cut and the cattle scattered all over the Purple Valley.

It took Cat and Frankie three days of hard riding to round them up and they never did find them all.

Frankie, of course, was boiling mad. His first instinct was to ride to Diamond F and have it out with Adam Field. He was perfectly sure that Field and the Cattlemen’s Association were behind this sneak raid. But he had no proof and the years he’d spent on the side of the law had made him respect it and its processes.

During the long hard hours in the saddle while they rounded up as many of his cattle as they could he thought hard about the matter. He knew how serious their situation was. If they fought the association it would have to be to a finish and against almost insurmountable odds.

A fight meant almost constant watchfulness, at least between nightfall and sunrise, it meant they’d be in what could amount to a state of siege. And if he spent the nights on guard, who was going to work the ranch? The women couldn’t do it without help. And he couldn’t allow Cat to stand guard while he slept.

Also, somebody was going to have to drive the spring wagon to Wolf City every couple of weeks for staples and other supplies. He couldn’t leave the women alone, even in the daytime, and he certainly wasn’t going to let them drive through miles of sage to town.

If I could only afford a hand! he thought.

But he couldn’t, not yet, not at least until late spring, when he’d have calves for the market.

Mebbe I was crazy not to take the association’s best offer, he thought. We don’t have to live in the Purple Valley, even if Cat’s so set on it. I bet we could find a real good place somewheres else.

The next evening after supper he brought up the matter of selling out to the Cattlemen’s Association, if their offer was still good, and of looking for another piece of land, perhaps over in Coyote Valley.

“No!” Cat said.

“What do you think, Cathy?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Frankie! We’ve saved and planned and dreamed for so long.”

“The association’s offer was a good un,” Frankie pointed out. “We could turn a nice profit and buy another place, mebbe free an’ clear.”

“And let Adam Field brag he licked us!” Cat said.

Patiently, Frankie outlined the problems they faced.

“I’ll stand watch with my carbine when you have to go to town,” Cat said. “And anybody who tries anything will get a bellyful of lead!”

“A girl couldn’t hope to stand off a bunch of hard-cased men, Cat.”

“I’m not just any girl, I’m Cat Ballou!”

“I know an’ I’m proud of you,” he said, “but I couldn’t let you do it, honey. . . . Now don’t argy!”

“What about the Kid?” Cat said, suddenly.

“What about him?”

“I’ll bet he’d help us out.”

“The Kid’s the best friend we ever had,” Frankie said, “but he’s outlaw, honey. He’s still wanted in Wolf City an’ Adam Field’s still holdin’ a grudge. Why, if we was to do what he’d call harborin’ a outlaw, he’d more’n likely set the sheriff on us.”

“No sheriff’s going to tangle with Kid Shelleen and Frankie Ballou, let alone Clay Boone’s Crowd,” Cat said.

“Ever hear of a range war?” Frankie asked.

“Who’s starting it?” she demanded.

“There’ll be killin’ an’ no end to it if we ever call on outlaws to fight our battles,” Frankie said. “It’d put the association in the right an’ first thing you know there’d be vigilantes ridin’.”

“Your father’s right, Cat,” Cathy said. “Frankie, you’d better ride to town the first thing in the morning and take their offer.”

“I won’t have it!” Cat stormed.

“I always had the notion I wore the pants in this family,” Frankie said.

They were up at dawn.

“Stay close to the house,” Frankie ordered. “If anybody comes, lock yourselves in, and don’t you use that carbine, young lady, unless you got no other choice.”

“All right, Pa,” she said, meekly.

It was midmorning when Frankie rode into Wolf City. He went directly to the office of the Cattlemen’s Association, where he found the lawyer Brad Evers alone at his desk.

“Good morning, Frankie,” Evers said.

“Adam Field in town?” Frankie asked, wasting no time on the amenities.

“Mr. Field’s at the home ranch,” Evers said. “Anything I can do?”

“Some time last Sat’dy night my east fence was cut an’ all my steers drove out into the valley,” Frankie said.

“That’s bad,” Evers said. “Any idea who did it?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe it was Clay Boone’s Crowd,” the lawyer suggested.

“You know it wasn’t,” Frankie said.

“I don’t know a thing about it.”

“It was association men,” Frankie said.

“That’s a serious charge, Frankie. Can you back it up?”

“Not in court.”

“I wouldn’t make any reckless statements around town, if I were you.”

“Mebbe you’ll sue me if I do?”

“It could cause bad blood, Frankie.”

“Wouldn’t that be too damn bad? All right, Evers, I’ll talk turkey. I’ve got a wife an’ girl to think of or I’d settle my argyment with a gun. However . . . I’ll take your last offer for my spread an’ go somewheres else where a man can make a livin’ without fightin’ hogs who call theirselves men.”

“I’m afraid you’re a little bit late, Frankie.”

“I see,” Frankie said. “You’re crawfishin’.”

“If it was up to me . . . Tell you what I’ll do, on my own responsibility, I’ll make you another offer, but this is final, mind you. I’ll offer . . .”

“If it’s less than your best save your breath,” Frankie said, interrupting.

“I was going to offer you every cent you’ve got in the place, less only the time you put in improving it,” Evers said. “You won’t lose any money.”

“We got more’n money in our place,” Frankie said. “We got our hearts.”

He went out of the office, feeling humiliated and uncertain.

I better ask Old Doc’s advice, he thought.

“Fight the sons-of-bitches!” Old Doc said. Then he sighed and rubbing his head said, “Guess that’s all right for me to say when I don’t have to carry the load. By God, I’d come over and help, but there just doesn’t seem to be any off season for babies around here and I’ve got three due any day and more on the way. Sometimes I wished I’d taken up some less confining business, like robbing trains. Maybe I could talk to Adam Field, son.”

“No,” Frankie said. “I’ll not be beholden to that skunk.”

“Maybe you could find a hand to help you,” Old Doc said.

“Can’t afford it till I sell a few calves,” Frankie said.

“I can afford it, Frankie.”

“I wasn’t hintin’, Doc!”

“I know. Can’t a man offer to loan his own son-in-law a couple of hundred without him getting his pride up?”

“Sorry, Doc. If you’re sure it won’t press you . . .”

“Hell, I won sixty-three dollars at stud Saturday night. See if you can’t find a hand, son. Under the circumstances, I’d offer him double wages. I’ll guarantee ’em.”

“Seein’ it’s for our womenfolk, I’ll take you up, Doc. I won’t fergit it.”

“Of course you won’t,” Old Doc said.

Finding a hand turned out to be hard, even at double wages. Frankie was honest and told every prospect what the situation was. Even men who hated the association and were sympathetic didn’t want to stand against them.

But finally he found one, a young man with a face like a horse named Jed French. Frankie thought the double pay was the attraction, but it wasn’t. The attraction was Cat Ballou.

It had taken so long to find his man that it was after dark when they reached the crude wire gate in the east fence. The moon was clouded over and Frankie had to fumble to unfasten the gate.

As he did so, Cat’s voice called out sharply from a clump of trees which surrounded the natural spring which kept the garden green. “Stay right where you are, mister, or I’ll shoot you where it hurts!”

“It’s me, Cat,” her father said.

“Pa!”

She rode out of the trees, carrying her carbine, and Frankie unfastened the gate.

“Thought I’d better stand watch when it got dark,” she said.

“An’ I thought I told you to stay by the house.”

“Well I . . . Who’s that with you, Pa?”

“This is Jed French. He’s goin’ to stay with us awhile. Jed, my daughter Cat.”

“Howdy?” Jed said.

Peering at him, but unable to see his face, she said, “Pleased to meet you.”

“We met,” Jed said. “Remember, at the dance?”

“Oh.”

Could this be the man she’d kissed . . . and slapped? she wondered. He was tall enough and the name meant nothing to her.

The door of the house opened and Cathy stood in it, peering out in their direction.

“It’s us, honey,” Frankie called, and they rode towards the lamplit rectangle of the door.

As they neared it, Cat was watching the dark figure of the new hand, but he didn’t ride into the light, pulling up just outside it and acknowledging her father’s introduction and her mother’s murmur of welcome. She stepped down from her horse, hoping to get a glimpse of his face, but he remained in the shadows.

“I’ll take care of the hosses,” he said, and taking their reins, rode to the barn.

“Where’s he going to bunk?” Cat asked, looking after him.

“Hayloft tonight,” her father said. “Tomorrer we’ll fix up a room for him in the barn.”

“You’d better take him a blanket, Cat,” her mother said.

“Yes, Ma,” Cat said, glad of the chance to get a good look at him, and hurried to get the blanket.

Entering the barn with it, she saw him attending to the horses by lantern light, but still couldn’t see his face.

“Brought you a blanket . . . Jed,” she said.

Then he turned and she could see his face plainly and recognized him as the horse-faced man who’d danced with her several times and so well that she hadn’t minded his comical appearance. She was both relieved and disappointed that it wasn’t the man who’d been constantly and confusedly in her thoughts for days . . . and nights.

He took the blanket awkwardly and muttered, “Thanks.”

The big hands that clutched the blanket were trembling. He had taken the job solely on impulse, to be near her, vaguely hoping that something might come of it, just what he hadn’t thought about. Now she was near and alone with him and it both excited and worried him. After all, she was Frankie Ballou’s daughter!

“Well, good night,” she said, and walked out, unconsciously swaying her hips a little more than usual.

She had sensed his controlled excitement and her heart beat faster, not because she was really attracted to him—she told herself his horse-face was downright funny—but because he was young and male and so obviously wanted her.

He’s sure homely, but he’s a man and not a rabbit, she thought.

The next day, with Cat helping, they built a room for Jed French by boarding up one end of the hayloft, and installed a bunk, an old stove, a chair, a dresser and a lamp. Cat’s nearness was so unnerving to the man that he hit his thumb with the hammer twice.

It had been Brad Evers’s own idea to try to beat the price down on Frankie, but he got no thanks from Adam Field when he told him about it a couple of days later.

“Evers, you’re a damn fool,” Adam said. “We had him hooked an’ you th’owed him back. I’m plum’ disgusted!”

“I was only trying to save you money,” Evers said.

“A lot a money I’ll save if I have to run beef off my cattle drivin’ ’em around th’ough the basin,” Adam said. “Bein’ sharp ain’t no way to handle a man like Ballou, it jest gits his back up.”

“Want me to ride over there and dicker some more, Mr. Field?”

“Hell, no, you done enough damage,” Adam said. “I’ll send Abe.”

The fact, obvious to everybody else, that his son was a spoiled, truculent fool had never occurred to Adam Field. The boy was the only human being he felt really belonged to him and in his possessive way he loved him so much that he was blind to his weaknesses and his faults. He had taken a second wife when he’d lost Cathy to Frankie Ballou, but she’d proved barren and he’d lavished all of his affection upon the boy, the only child of his loins.

He found Abe in the dining room of the United States Hotel and told him what he wanted him to do, emphasizing that he was to handle Frankie “with kid gloves” and try to undo what the bungling Evers had done.

“Tell him Evers spoke without authority,” he said. “Tell him we want to treat him square, that the highest offer stands.”

“Why waste all that good money?” Abe demanded. “We could force ’em out easy.”

“Depends on what you call easy,” his father said. “Time’s money, too, an’ so’s trouble. For personal reasons I’d like to see him limp off with his tail between his legs, but I’m a businessman first. So mind you handle this in a businesslike way.”

“You’re the boss,” Abe said.

He had never told his father of his double humiliation by Cat.

“One more thing,” his father said. “That half-wit Evers has got Ballou’s back up an’ he’s apt to be proddy as a cowpoke with the piles. So be nice as pie, Son, an’ don’t rile him, no matter what. I wouldn’t have you shot for all the money in the world.”

“I can take care of myself,” Abe said, touching the butt of his gun.

“Yeah? Well, just to make sure you don’t get trigger-happy, I’ll thank you to hand over that gun. The graveyards is full of kids who thought they could take care of theirselves.”

“You expect me to ride out there without no gun?”

“I do. Ballou is a son-of-a-bitch an’ I hate his insides, but he never jumped an unarmed man in his life an’ he ain’t about to start.” He held out his hand and Abe reluctantly unbuckled his gunbelt and handed it to him, as his father said, “Finish your dinner now, Son, and git started, they’re li’ble to take a pot-shot at anybody comin’ along after dark.”

It was midafternoon when Abe reached the east fence of the Ballou place. He could see two riders over by the west fence, cutting out a steer, but it was too far for him to see who they were. He unfastened the wire gate, rode through, refastened it, and walked his horse towards the house.

Cathy saw him coming and came out.

“Good afternoon, Abe.”

“Howdy, Miz Ballou?” he said, taking off his hat.

“Won’t you light and come in?”

Stepping down, he said, importantly, “I wanted to talk to your husband.”

He’s come to dicker, she thought. Maybe I can handle him better than Frankie.

“He’s out in the valley looking for some steers that . . . strayed,” she said.

“Who’s that over yonder?” he asked.

“My daughter Cat and our new hand,” she said. “They’re cutting out a beef for the table. Come in and sit awhile, my husband will be back before sundown.”

“Thanks,” he said, and followed her into the parlor.

She waved him to a rocker, and picking up her sewing, sat facing him, hoping to draw him out. She bent over the sewing to give him a chance to get his breath.

When he sat down Abe had every intention of telling her of his father’s generous offer, and of riding on without having to face Frankie, and worse, Cat; but looking at her bent over her sewing, he couldn’t help wondering about this woman who had thrown over his father for an outlaw.

She don’t look old enough to have a grown daughter, he thought. She’s still pretty.

He was fascinated by the rise and fall of her breasts.

Better’n them skinny dugs a that kid, he thought. Wonder if Pa ever . . . Wouldn’ mind, myself. Wonder how she looks nekkid? I’d like to strip ’er slow.

He did so, mentally, but it wasn’t the image of the mother which came vividly to life, it was the daughter, stepping from the water, her small wet breasts gleaming, the little triangle glistening . . . and he knew, sickly, that it was a vision that would torment him always, unless he wiped it out by possession.

I got a have that little bitch! he thought, if I have to buy her like a whore!

Her mother was saying something.

“Huh?”

“I said is there anything you’d like to talk to me about while we’re waiting?”

Suddenly he had a bold plan. He held a weapon to force Cat’s submission!

“Yes!” he blurted. “Your daughter.”

“Oh?”

“She called me a rabbit!”

“I’m sorry, Abe.”

“I ain’t no rabbit.”

“Of course you aren’t, Abe.”

“I’m a man.”

“I know.”

“It was her own fault, comin’ out of that water nekkid an’ glistenin’!”

“Were you spying on her, Abe?”

“I wasn’t spyin’ on ’er! I just happen a be passin’ an’ I . . . well damn it all I’m a man an’ I . . .”

“Abe, if you so much as touched our girl, Frankie will shoot you like a dog!”

“I didn’t tech ’er!”

Cathy stared at him worriedly, wondering, Was that why Cat called him a rabbit, because he didn’t touch her?

“What happened, Abe?”

“She kneed me an’ grabbed my Colt and said, ‘Run like a rabbit!’ She’d a kilt me if I didn’t!”

Cathy suppressed a smile of relief.

“She was surprised and embarrassed, Abe,” she said.

Abe had a good mind to tell her mother just how “embarrassed” she’d been, standing there bold as brass stark naked, waving that Colt and saying, “Take a good look, you’re not liable to see a naked woman again!”

But then he thought, I got a see her like that agin, only on a bed without no six gun, but there’s only one way I can ’thout Frankie shootin’ me for it, and he said, “I want a marry her, Miz Ballou.”

“Do you love her, Abe?”

“Sure, I love ’er,” he said, picturing in his mind how he’d pay her off, how he’d use her like a crib woman.

“Maybe she doesn’t love you, Abe,” Cathy said.

“I’ll make it worth her w’ile,” he said. “I’ll buy your spread at your price an’ th’ow in a thousand dollars to boot.”

“Women are much cheaper on Crib Row, Abe,” Cathy said, rising.

“It ain’t ever’ day a girl gits the chance to marry a Field!” he said.

“I don’t think she wants to marry you, Abe.”

“You can argy her into it,” he said. “It’s for your good, too.”

“You really are a rabbit, aren’t you?” Cathy said, and as his jaw dropped, “Get out of my house!”

He stood up, his face burning, fingering his hat, but he couldn’t face the look of cold contempt in her eyes. Averting his own, he walked out, hating the mother as much as the daughter, wishing he could destroy them both. He stepped outside just as Cat and Jed French rode up, dragging the protesting steer.

“Why, if it isn’t the rabbit!” Cat sang out.

“Shut your mouth, you dirty little bitch!” Abe yelled.

Jed lighted running and dived for him, bulldogging him like a steer, and then, straddling him in the dust, raised a huge fist to smash his face in, but Cat cried, “Don’t hit him, spank him!”

And Jed, sliding off, pulled him across his knee and literally spanked him until Cathy, coming out, sharply ordered him to stop and Cat to go to her room. Cat, choking with laughter, reluctantly obeyed. Abe scrambled onto his horse and rode off, his cup of rage and bitterness overflowing.

“I’m afraid you’ve made a bitter enemy,” Cathy said, knowing that the Ballous had.

“If I knowed for sure he was carryin’ on with her, I’d a kilt him,” Jed said.

“Why should you think such a thing, Jed?”

“A man don’t call a girl what he did without no reason a-tall,” Jed said.

“He’s not a man, Jed. He’s a dirty boy.”

“Yes, mam,” Jed said.

“Cat’s a good girl, Jed.”

“Yes, mam,” he repeated, but he had his doubts.

Entering the house she could hear Cat still laughing in her room.

I’m sure she’s good, she thought.

But she was worried about her, not only because of Abe Field, but because of Jed French.

I must have been blind not to see that he’s smitten with her, she thought.

She knocked on Cat’s door. The laughter stopped and when she called out for her to come in, Cathy did so. Cat was grinning widely.

“I’ll bet that son eats off the mantel for a week!” she said.

“You know what ‘son’ means, don’t you, Cat?”

“Of course. Isn’t it all right just so I don’t say it?”

Cathy sighed, and said, “I want you to tell me exactly what happened between you and that Field boy.”

“What did that fool want?”

“To marry you.”

She thought, Marry me! He wants to marry me!

She said, “I wouldn’t marry that rabbit if I died an old maid!”

“Small danger! There’ll be men around you like flies around a honey pot.”

I hope so! Cat thought.

“He said he’d buy our spread . . . Cat . . . you don’t have to get married, do you?”

“Have to. Of course not!”

“I notice you didn’t tell me what had happened between you and young Field when I asked you.”

“Nothing happened, the way you mean,” Cat said, and then she told her what had occurred, editing it slightly to exclude certain details, such as how she’d tricked him off guard by pretending she was going to give him “one” kiss, and how she’d told him to “take a good look, you’re not liable to see a naked woman again.”

“Cat, you’re almost a woman. You shouldn’t go swimming naked.”

“Oh, Ma, it feels so good.”

“Well, at least make sure there’s no one around.”

“Yes, Ma.”

“Please don’t tease the men, honey, they’re apt to misunderstand.”

“I won’t, Ma.”

Poor Ma, she thought. She doesn’t understand. She thinks I’m like she was at sixteen. She doesn’t know I’m a woman. I’ll never wait till I’m an old maid of twenty-two to get married. I’ll bet Jed would marry me in a minute, but who wants to look at a horse-face on the pillow?

“Don’t let on about any of this to your father,” Cathy said. “I don’t want him horsewhipping that stupid boy, or maybe even shooting him.”

“I won’t let on, Ma.”

“I wish you’d stop talking to me like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth!” Cathy said. “Do you think I’m a fool?”

“No, Ma . . . no, Mother, I don’t. I’m the one that’s the fool.”

“Keep your heart and your body clean—oh, fiddlesticks! I’m sick of being mealymouthed with you! I want you to stop wiggling your hind end in front of that hired man and if you don’t I’m going to forget that you’re sixteen years old and take a hairbrush to it!”

“Why, Ma, you never spanked me in your life!”

“There’s always a time to begin, as Abe Field found out a while ago!”

“I’ll try to act like a lady, Mother. It’s hard sometimes, but I’ll try.”

“You do that, Cat. And don’t be impatient. The right man will come along, and when he does, you’ll know it, and you’ll be glad you waited. Don’t you think I know what it is to want love and to dream it? Well, dreams can come true. Mine did.”

“I know, Mother,” Cat said gently.

Make mine come true! she thought. Bring me a wild free lover!

“Oh, I do want you to be as happy as I am!” her mother said.

She’s like a bride! Cat thought.

Twisting her wedding band, hers and Frankie’s mother’s, Cathy said, “This will be your wedding ring someday; you’ll wear it when your dreams come true. Don’t forget, if anything happens to me . . .”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you, Ma!”

“We all have to die, Cat.”

“Not you, Ma, not you!”

Or me, she thought, ever!

When Frankie got home at dusk, empty-handed, having found no trace of any of the missing cattle, Cathy told him in her own way about Abe Field’s visit, simply and matter-of-factly saying that he had offered to buy the spread at the highest figure offered, plus a thousand dollars.

“I hope you took him up!” Frankie said.

“He wanted to buy Cat with it,” Cathy said, and when her husband’s jaw tightened, she added, “As his wife.”

“I hope you threw him out!” Frankie said.

“Jed did,” she said, without going into detail.

Cat was milking in the barn when Jed came in with her father’s horse.

“Hello,” she said.

“Evenin’,” he said gruffly, and began attending to the horse, not looking at her.

She finished milking and stood up with the brimming pail. Still he didn’t look at her or say a word.

“What’s the matter, Jed?”

“Nothin’,” he said, and then, blurting, “Why’d he call you what he did?”

“Because he’s a dirty little boy,” she said.

“He said you was a . . . well he said you was a . . .”

“Dirty little bitch,” she said. “If you think I am, why’d you get so mad?”

“Mebbe I was jealous,” he said.

“And what gave you the idea you had any right to be jealous?”

“The way you wiggle your bottom at me!”

“Jed French!”

“Well, damn it to hell, you do!”

“Why Jed, I hadn’t the slightest notion . . .”

“I bet you wiggled it at him!”

“Jed!”

“Mebbe you done more’n that!”

“If you think for one minute that I’ve been carrying on with that rabbit . . . I haven’t, Jed! I wish I could make you believe that!”

“Reckon you can.”

“How?”

He nodded towards his room at the end of the hayloft.

“Up there.”

“Jed!”

“You asked me how an’ I told you.”

“I . . . I couldn’t, Jed.”

“I bet you have.”

“No!”

“Prove it! An’ don’t ask how. You know how to prove it.”

“You want my father to kill you?”

“Frankie won’t kill me if I marry you.”

Now he wants to marry me! I am a honey pot!

“An’ if it turns out I’m the first, by Jesus, I will!” Jed said.

For an instant she was mad enough to throw the bucket of milk all over him and knee him the way she’d kneed Abe Field. She started to raise the bucket, but seeing his horse-face so solemn and serious, she wanted to laugh in it, and almost did, but then, all of a sudden, she felt a warm wave of sympathy for him.

Lowering the bucket to the ground, she said, “I’m sorry, Jed, but I guess I’m like Ma, and when I get married it’ll be for love.”

“I love you, Cat,” he said, humbly. “I’m sorry I suspicioned . . . I guess I been thinkin’ things I shouldn’t, an’ feelin’ things, an’ sayin’ things . . . but God, I do love you, an’ it’s so damn cold an’ lonesome up there nights an’ I dream of your pritty little bottom an’ God damn it, I can’t hardly stand it!”

“I know, Jed,” she said. “I’m lonesome sometimes, too, and oh, I’m sorry I can’t be company for you and warm you and give you pleasure, but I just can’t!”

He looked so woebegone and lonely and unhappy that she wanted to kiss his funny horse-face and let him hold her just for a minute, but she didn’t.

Picking up the bucket of milk she walked carefully out of the barn, trying not to wiggle her bottom, but thinking, I can’t help it! I’m not a boy!

Abe Field found his father impatiently waiting for him in the lobby of the United States Hotel. He had rehearsed his report on the way. It was simply that the Ballous had refused his best offer.

“I hope you didn’t try to beat ’em down,” his father said. “You gave ’em our highest offer?”

“I even went a thousand better,” Abe said.

“You’ll make a good businessman, Son,” his father said. “You done right an’ nobody can say we didn’t try to deal square with them stubborn fools. Well, they asked for trouble and they’re sure as hell goin’ a get it!”

Cat went to bed soon after supper and lay in the dark for a long time, feeling sorry for Jed and sentimental about him and all the lonely unloved men in the world. She wished that she could comfort them all, and in her simple romantic egotism imagined herself a sort of ministering Magdalen, a scarlet angel, sacrificing the flesh to bring a sweet counterfeit of love to the loveless.

In this mood of exalted, selfless eroticism, she went to sleep, but she dreamed not of sacrifice for many, but of desire for one, a nameless featureless man astride a wild stallion who swung her up behind him and bore her off to the Roost.

When the month was up, Jed French quit.

“Guess he just got restless,” Frankie said to his wife.

Cathy knew why but she didn’t tell Frankie. She just said she didn’t think it was necessary to replace him, pointing out that there had been no attempt to molest them or their stock. She knew that any man young enough and with courage enough to stand with them against possible action by association riders was going to feel just as restless around their daughter.

The day after Jed left she saw Cat jump her stallion over the west fence and she had a pretty good idea where she was going, she was going swimming naked in the pool under the cottonwoods. Cathy didn’t have the heart to forbid her. After all, with Jed gone, and Abe Field unlikely ever to return, there was small likelihood of any man spying on her.

The only man who ever came within miles was Kid Shelleen, who had taken to dropping in, but only in the evenings, usually Saturday, when the Crowd was carousing in town.

Weeks passed without any sign of trouble and no one told the Kid there had been any. Cat was tempted to, but she knew her father wouldn’t like it, so she held her tongue. She usually did, unlike her old self, on the evenings when the Kid visited them. She liked to hear him talk.

Curiously enough, the Kid found his tongue when with her, the only woman he’d said a dozen consecutive words to since he was a boy. She still thought of him as old, without the emphasis on the word, but she no longer thought of him as a cripple, accepting his slight limp as simply part of a very old and dear friend.

The Kid, who loved her as devotedly as he’d loved her mother before her, and who never dreamed that he could ever be more than a friend, was drawn out of his old taciturn self by her eager and passionate interest in his tales, some of them simply folklore, remembered from his childhood.

Gradually he began yarning about himself, though never in the first person, always inventing a name for his hero; and so he told her the story of his life, never realizing that she knew this, because these tales fitted with things she had heard about him from her parents. Except that the truth was disillusioning and saddening where the legend had been so gay and exciting. Still, they made her understand this lonely man, and to understand him was to love him, but not as a wild free lover.

One night, running out of autobiographical material, he told her a little about his new friend Clay Boone, and her eyes sparkled so that he told her more and more, things he’d heard from Barney Grey and the others, and things he’d gathered for himself.

These stories fascinated Cat, and Clay Boone became as alive and real in her imagination as the picture once painted of the Kid himself by her mother and father and hearsay; and soon the nameless featureless man of her dreams became a tall wide-shouldered, deep-chested, lean-hipped, long-legged man with warm blue eyes, who wore his light brown hair long like a mountain man and shook it the way a proud free stallion shook his mane.

From the lips of Kid Shelleen she got a picture of a man born like herself, “free as a mustang,” a man they’d tried to fence in and to break to the plow, but who would never wear a yoke.

“There’s outlaw hosses and there’s outlaw men,” the Kid said one night. “Clay’s one, from choice. Your Pa went outlaw for a good an’ fittin’ reason, an’ so did I, though I ain’t tellin’ you why.” (As if he hadn’t!) “But Clay Boone didn’t have no partic’lar reason. His old man owns good land in Oregon, with plenty of room for Clay an’ his brother Randy, but Clay just don’t aim to be no tame mule. He’s a born wild stud an’ ain’t nobody goin’ a fence him in.”

He told her how Clay and his kid brother, Randy, “who ain’t half the man Clay is and won’t ever be,” turned outlaw when they were mere boys, “jumped the fence an’ rode off, just for the hell of it, so they could be free.”

He told these stories, in a low voice, just for her receptive ears, never realizing that he was creating a dream-lover for her to replace the image of himself that had captured her heart in her childhood. Thus, ironically, he chose his own successor in her heart and she was in love with the legend before she ever met the man.

While Kid Shelleen was spinning the yarns that raced the blood of a child-woman, Clay Boone, physically inactive for the first time since he’d “jumped the fence” out in Oregon, was taking stock of himself. Lolling around his cabin on the Roost he had plenty of time to think. He thought of the past and the future; and the prospect, strangely, bored him.

Clay Boone “jumped the fence” at sixteen for a reason he never told anybody. It wasn’t that he just wanted to be free, although that was the reason he always gave for running away, but it wasn’t a fence he ran away from, it was his beautiful young stepmother.

She was a dark, smoldering, voluptuous girl of his own age, of “Spanish descent,” she always said, which meant Mexican, when his father, Jim Joe Boone, married her at forty, after three years of grieving for the boys’ mother. Unlike Randy, Clay didn’t blame him for taking another wife, for he understood both his loneliness and his need for a woman in his bed.

The trouble was that Clay, big, strapping and physically mature, was madly in love with her, or thought he was, and she was madly in love with him, or thought she was. At least they were in love with each other’s bodies, and in love with love. One night, as they lay in each other’s arms under the stars, all passion momentarily spent, she told him matter-of-factly that she was going to get married the next day.

“Married! You can’t get married, Juanita! You love me and I love you!”

“It won’t make no difference, my darlin’,” she said. “We can keep right on till you’ve growed up enough to take care a me an’ then we’ll run away.”

She prudently didn’t mention that it was his father she was going to marry; he’d find that out soon enough.

“I’m grown up now; I’ll marry you!”

“You can’t yet, honey, you’re jest a boy.”

“I’m man enough to pleasure you!”

“I got a eat too, darlin’.”

“You can eat at home!”

“They’s tired a supportin’ me; they say it’s time I got married.”

The boy’s sexual ethics were rudimentary, but they included the belief that a man’s wife should be faithful, like his mother.

“I can’t carry on with a man’s wife!”

“Why not? It’s done all a time. Lots a married folks gits their pleasure on the side.”

“Not decent folks!”

“Mebbe you think I ain’t decent?”

“Of course you are, Juanita! You’re good and sweet!”

“A boy who ain’t old enough to take care a wife ought a be glad to take what he can git.”

“But honey, I love you so! I want you so! I can’t divvy you with another man!”

“Darlin’, a woman’s got enough to go ’round.”

“Don’t talk like that, Juanita! I won’t divvy you!”

“Looks like you got a Clay, or find your fun somewheres else.”

“Fun? Is that all it means to you?”

“Well, I thought a feller jest liked a horse aroun’.”

“It’s . . . it’s the sweetest, most wonderful thing that ever happened to me! Why, it’s like . . . like the stars were exploding in my insides . . . it’s like . . .”

“Oh, darlin’, darlin’! It’s like that to me, too! Sometimes I wish I could jest die, but I don’t really want a die, I want . . . I want . . .”

“What, honey?”

“I want a live an’ feel life in my belly, I want a have younguns, your younguns at suck!”

“We’ll get married and have lots!”

“We can’t git married, we jest can’t, Clay. But we’ll have all the younguns you want!”

“How we going to have ’em when you’re married to somebody else?”

“They’s ways a jest havin’ ’em when you want. A Injun woman showed me. How you think I keep from gettin’ in a family way by you?”

“Juanita, let’s run away right now and get married and have our kids right.”

“An’ how you goin’ a support a fam’ly?”

“I can rob a bank.”

“An’ go to the pen an’ leave me with a bellyful!”

“I’m big and strong and I can work, I can punch cows!”

“Thirty a month!”

“I suppose you’re going to marry somebody stinking rich!”

“Not stinkin’ rich, jest comfor’ble. Now you hush, honey lover, an’ take your pleasure some more like you’re hankerin’ to an’ every’thin’ll be dandy.”

“You . . . you whore!”

She didn’t say anything and he didn’t know she was crying silently until he felt the hot tears on his bare chest.

“Don’t cry, honey! Please don’t cry, my darling, I didn’t mean it!”

“Mebbe it’s true.”

“No! You’re sweet and good and you’re mine and I’ll always love you.”

“Then it’s all right if I git married?”

“Juanita, honey!”

“A woman wants a roof over her head!”

“You said you loved being under the stars with me.”

“Oh I do, I do! We’ll have lots an’ lots a nights unner ’em, darlin’.”

“I . . . I couldn’t.”

“He’ll jest have part a me, honey, but you’ll have all a me.”

“I just couldn’t.”

“I reckon a woman jest grows up quicker,” she said.

“If growing up means letting some other man have your woman, by God, I don’t want to grow up!”

She sighed and said, gently, “Then don’t, honey. Jest put your head on my breast an’ forgit . . .”

“I’ll not either forget!”

“Good-by, sweetheart,” she whispered.

“I won’t say good-by!”

“Don’t say it, honey, jest . . .”

She leaned over and began kissing him wildly and then the stars possessed them and they joined together to say good-by, but neither could.

Afterwards she went away from him a little while as she always did and when she came back he was lying with his head in his arms. He didn’t look up, as he always had before, to marvel at and adore her golden body as she dressed. Finishing, she sat beside him and stroked his hair and murmured words of tenderness and love.

Finally she stood up and said, “I’ll meet you here unner the stars a week from tomorrer night,” and then she ran off into the shadows of the pines.

His head still buried in his arms, Clay thought, I’ll be here waiting. It’s shameful and without pride, but I’ll be here when she comes and always will be, no matter if it’s straight from his bed.

Then he cried like a little boy.

When he got home the lights were out and everybody had gone to bed. He tossed for a long while in his, thinking of her and longing for her there beside him, and crying again, silently, as he thought how she would never share his bed, now, but another’s.

But I’ll have her under the stars!

In the morning he overslept. What woke him was the sound of Randy crying downstairs. Jumping up, he heard his father’s voice, apparently trying to pacify the boy. He dressed quickly and went down.

His father, dressed in his Sunday clothes, had his arm around Randy, who kept crying, and struggling to get away.

“What are you blubbering about?” Clay demanded.

“Pa’s gittin’ married!” Randy howled.

Then Clay knew the bitter truth. A wave of sick jealousy went over him and then for a moment cold helpless hatred, the black unreasoning kind a stag must feel, or a stallion, when he loses a battle for a mate.

“I been so damn lonesome,” his father said.

“Ain’t no durn Mex goin’ a take my Ma’s place!” Randy cried.

“Nobody ever could, Ran,” his father said. “Please don’t call her Mex, she’s Spanish descent. She’s nice, boys, real nice. She’ll be good to both a you.”

“Spanish my foot!” Randy howled. “Durn no-count greaser!”

“You hush!” Clay said sharply. “Aren’t you ashamed to cry-baby when Pa’s going to be a little happy after all this time?”

“I mourned your Ma for three year,” Jim Joe said.

“I know, Pa, and you’ve been wonderful to Randy and me.”

He didn’t hate his father any more.

“Kids need a mother,” Jim Joe said. “Juanita’ll be good to you both an’ good for you.”

“She ain’t goin’ a be my mother!” Randy cried.

“Oh, hush!” Clay said. To his father, he said, “She’ll make you a fine wife, I bet. Now you just run along and get your bride and . . . and . . .” He stopped, almost breaking up, and then went on, “and be happy!”

“Thanks, Son, I . . .”

“I’ll run away!” Randy yelled.

“Hush boy, you want a scare your Pa?” Jim Joe said.

“Don’t say things like that, Ran,” Clay said. “You’ll spoil Pa’s honeymoon.”

“Honeymoon! Ha! I can see them two nekkid an’ slobberin’ all over theirself!”

“Shut up!” Clay cried and boxed his ears.

Randy backed off, rubbing his burning ears.

“You go on now, Pa,” Clay said. “I’ll take good care of Randy.”

“I know you will, Clay. You always have. Well . . . reckon I’ll mosey. Be back in a week.”

Clay followed him to the door and watched him hurry to the barn. He didn’t turn around until Jim Joe had driven out in the buggy. When he did, the boy was looking at him venomously.

“When I’ve growed up so I’m big as you, you watch out for me, Clay Boone!” he said.

“I’ll watch out for you, all right,” Clay said. “I told Ma I would and I will, no matter how ornery you get sometimes.”

“I ain’t no more ornery nor you!”

“I wish you’d stop trying to talk like a hired hand.”

“I talk like Pa an’ ever’body else.”

“Not like Ma, though, and the way she tried to teach us. Pa doesn’t know any better, but you do, or did.”

“Aw, stop treatin’ me like a snot-nosed kid!”

“Then stop acting like one.”

“Ever’body but you talks the same aroun’ here.”

It’s so, Clay thought. Even Juanita . . . Funny I never minded.

Pain clutched at his belly at the thought of her.

“Anyways, like I said, you wait’ll I grow up an’ watch out,” Randy said. “An’ I don’t mean like Ma said to, I jest mean watch out!”

“Oh, come on, Ran, let’s get us some breakfast. Looks like Pa clean forgot.”

Randy snickered.

“He’s like them Sooners that’d Sooner . . .”

“Hush!”

“Don’t you hit me! Don’t you never hit me agin or I’m li’ble to kill you!”

“I don’t aim to hit you any more,” Clay said, “but next time you dirty-mouth Pa and her, I’ll sure as hell wash out your mouth with soap!”

The relationship between the brothers was established in their early childhood—Clay the moving spirit, the leader, the protector, Randy the follower, the protected. Where Clay had been a big healthy baby, Randy was puny and sickly, and because of this, their mother lavished special care upon him. This Clay resented, feeling that Randy was usurping their mother’s love.

On his third birthday, one of Randy’s presents was a shiny little red wagon which Clay promptly appropriated. Randy complained tearfully and their mother made Clay give it back, whereupon Clay ran away. He returned the next day hungry and penitent to find his mother and father nearly frantic.

Expecting punishment, he found love, and belated understanding of his jealous feelings. The mother immediately set about proving that he was not only equally loved, but depended upon, as the elder and stronger, to help her look after the younger.

Clay blossomed under this trust, his resentment and jealousy disappeared, and he thereafter took it as a duty and a privilege to follow their mother’s wishes. When, on her deathbed—he was thirteen and Randy eleven—she asked him to look after his brother, he made a solemn promise that he would.

For the most part, Randy was content to follow Clay’s lead. He grew strong and healthy doing the things Clay did, riding, bulldogging calves, breaking colts, climbing trees, hunting and fishing, swimming. Jim Joe taught Clay to shoot with shotgun and rifle as soon as he could hold one up, and when he was fourteen, how to shoot a Colt. By the time he was sixteen, Clay, thanks to lightning reflexes, was a crack shot with all three. Randy, at fourteen, was good enough with shotgun and rifle, but not, in Clay’s opinion, quite ready for the hand gun.

By this time Randy was beginning to be both envious of Clay’s superior size, strength and skills and resentful of his domination, although not to the point of revolt. He was on the verge of it when Clay boxed his ears, but contented himself with a warning for the future.

Randy sulked all through breakfast but he didn’t “dirty-mouth” his father and Juanita any more. After breakfast he took the shotgun and went quail hunting by himself, leaving Clay to clean up. Presently he flushed a covey and banged away, but missed.

Didn’t lead ’em like Clay said to, he thought. He leads ’em jest right ever’ time. Why’s he got to do ever’thin’ better’n me?

Finally he got tired and sat down against a tree. He felt lonely.

Why’m I lonesome for him when he box my ears and treats me like a baby? I’ll show ’im I ain’t no baby. I’ll git me a woman an’ show him an’ ever’body I’m a man! Wonder if Clay ever had hisself a woman? Bet he has, damn him!

A covey of quail whirred up suddenly and he snapped a shot, but missed, as usual. Then Clay came up.

“You never lead them enough,” he said. “Come on, Ran, I’ll show you how to knock ’em down every time.”

Randy was so glad to see him that he forgot all his kid-brother resentment and willingly surrendered the gun. They trudged along in the sun together until Clay stopped suddenly. Ahead of them, on the ground, Randy saw a covey of quail. He grabbed for the shotgun, but Clay shook his head.

“A man doesn’t shoot sitting birds!” he said.

At his voice the covey took wing. Leading them, he fired and three quail dropped.

“Man, that’s shootin’!” Randy cried and ran to pick up the birds.

“Next covey’s yours,” Clay said, handing him the shotgun.

Presently they flushed another covey.

“Now lead ’em!” Clay cried, and Randy, leading them, dropped two.

“Now you’re shooting!” Clay said, proud of him.

They came to the bank of the river, and stripping quickly, plunged in. They raced across the narrow stream and back, finishing in a dead heat. Swimming was the only thing Clay couldn’t beat him at every time.

“Six months and you’ll leave me like I was standing still,” Clay said.

“I reckon I won’t never beat you that bad, even swimmin’,” Randy said.

He felt fine.

They waded out and threw themselves on their bellies in the sun.

Presently, Randy said, tentatively, “Clay . . .?”

“Yeah?”

“You ever have yourself a woman?”

“Sure.”

“What’s it like?”

“You’ll find out.”

“What’s it like?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Clay said.

“Like a houn’ an’ a bitch?” Randy persisted.

“No.”

“Like a stud an’ a mare?”

“No . . . it’s . . . it’s . . . I can’t tell you.”

“Fun?”

“Yeah, but . . . well it’s . . .” He wanted to say that it was like stars exploding in a man, but that seemed like a silly thing to say to a boy, so he said, “It’s like firecrackers!”

“I can’t hardly wait!” Randy breathed.

“You’ve got plenty of time.”

“Clay . . . you had lots of women?”

“Sure,” Clay lied.

“How many?”

“Plenty.”

“In a sportin’ house?”

“No.”

“Married uns?”

“Oh, no. A man shouldn’t carry on with another man’s wife.”

“Why not?”

“Well, he just shouldn’t.”

“I would.”

“You’d better not!”

“I’d carry on a-plenty with that hot Mex a Pa’s if she’d lemme an’ I bet she would!”

“Ran!”

“Damn it, stop treatin’ me like a kid!”

“Stop swearing!”

“You swear!”

“Not in front of you.”

“The hell you don’t! You said you’d sure as hell wash out my mouth . . .”

“And by God I will if you don’t stop pronto!”

“What’s a matter with you today? Why you so techy all of a sudden?”

“Don’t say ‘techy’; I’m not touchy.”

“You get madder’n a wet hen ever’ time I make a little man-talk about that Mex a Pa’s.”

“Shut up!”

“You ain’t jealous, are you?”

“Shut up, I said!”

“I bet you’re jealous! I bet you wish you had a piece a that!”

Clay jumped him then, manhandling him until he’d forced his mouth into the sand. Randy fought him hard, but had to take a big mouthful of sand.

“That’s for the soap I haven’t got handy,” Clay said.

Then he rolled him into the water and washed his mouth out.

Randy wasn’t really mad about it, in fact he laughed as soon as he could, and said, “Almost had your hands full, didn’t you? Still think I’m jest a baby?”

Catching his breath, Clay shook his head and said, “You gave me a tussle, all right, Ran.”

“A son-of-a-bitchin’ hell of a tussle!” Randy said, and Clay let it pass.

That night Clay did a lot of thinking.

A man’s got no right to say, “Don’t do like I do, do like I say,” to his brother. A man ought a set an example, that’s what Ma used to say. But God damn it, I’m not a man yet or nobody, not even Pa’d have taken my woman away from me!

That was just a lot of words I said about a man shouldn’t carry on with another man’s wife when all the time I would have kept right on with her except it wasn’t just any man she married, but Pa. By God, I’m not going to share her with Pa! I couldn’t!

Then he remembered her promise to meet him there under the stars as soon as she got back and he knew he’d be there waiting, “Pa or no Pa,” unless he was far away, too far to get there.

I just couldn’t stay away, knowing she was there all gold-looking in the moonlight. Ran said he’d run away! If he did that, Pa’d expect me to try and find him and look after him, and never suspect it was I that ran away and why. We’ll do it! We’ll run away tomorrow! No, tonight!

He got up to go to Randy’s room to wake him up, but he couldn’t go.

I’ve got to see her once more, I’ve got to see her face just once more! Won’t be anything wrong in just saying good-by, not like we tried to do there under the stars, but just the words. I don’t have to kiss her or anything, except maybe just her hand.

He knew in his heart, but he wouldn’t let himself think it, that even if he could fight the temptation of her sweet flesh, his brother Randy couldn’t and wouldn’t even try.

He lit the lamp then and wrote a note, dating it the day they were due to come home from their honeymoon:

She’ll understand, he thought, and he’ll think he does. Good-by Pa, and good-by honey, try and be good to him, he was lonesome so damn long.

He hid the note under his mattress for future use.

During the rest of the week he suffered as only a boy who has lost his first lover can, but he suffered inside. On the surface, to Randy, he was at his lively active best, eager to do anything the younger boy wished, always friendly and thoughtful and warm.

On the day before the honeymooners were due to come home, he said, “Randy, I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

“Aw, Clay, I didn’t mean that about killin’ you,” Randy said. “You most always been nice to me an’ lately extra-special nice.”

“I understand how you feel about Pa getting married,” Clay said, “but you’ve got to understand that a man gets lonesome without a woman and just naturally needs one.”

“Hell, I unnerstan’. I need one my own self. I can’t hardly stand thinkin’ ’bout Pa an’ that Mex a-goin’ at it like a couple a mink!”

Clay was on the point of blowing up, but kept his temper.

“Ran,” he said, “let’s run away like you said.”

“Where to?”

“Oh, anywhere.”

“Where there’s sportin’ houses?”

“Ran, you aren’t old enough to go to a sporting house!”

“If I’m old enough to run away, I’m old enough! I’m stayin’ right here an’ try my luck with that Mex ’less you take me to a sportin’ house!”

“Well . . . all right,” Clay said, with the mental reservation, In a couple of years!

“Say, where we goin’ a git the money?” Randy asked.

“I’ll take care of that for awhile, Ran.”

“How?”

“Oh, robbing and things like that.”

“I want a rob a bank!”

“You’ll rob lots of banks before we’re through,” Clay said. “You just wait and see.”

“Let’s run away right now!”

“No. That’d spoil their homecoming. We’ll run away tomorrow night while they’re sleeping.”

“A hell of a lot a sleepin’ them two’ll be doin’, married only a week. Boy, I’d like a peep at ’em horsin’ in that bed!”

“God damn it I told you . . .”

“You jest try washin’ out my mouth an’ I won’t run away a-tall! You better start treatin’ me like a man, or by God I’ll . . .”

“I will, Ran, honest. I’ll treat you like a man.”

“You better!”

Clay was thinking, I ought to tan his hind end but we’ve got to get away from here tomorrow night.

He said, “You think I’d take you with me if I didn’t think you were a man? Come on, we’ll pack our gear and hide it in the hayloft.”

They packed their everyday clothes, except for what they had on, in their blankets and hid them in the hayloft with their boots, their hunting knives, their rifles, and the shotgun.

“How we goin’ a rob banks without no six-shooters?” Randy asked.

“We’ll steal some later,” Clay said.

“Let’s steal Pa’s, he didn’t take it on his honeymoon.”

“We’re not going to steal a thing from Pa!”

The next morning they made sandwiches of fresh beef and packed them in their saddlebags, along with a side of bacon and some dried beef, and hid them with the other things.

“Let’s put on our good clothes now,” Clay said.

After he had dressed, Clay took the note to his father and his wife from under the mattress and pinned it to his pillow, where they’d be sure to see it the next day. Throwing his dirty old clothes on the floor, he went down and joined Randy in the parlor.

They spent a miserable restless day, for the bride and groom didn’t arrive until just before sundown. Jim Joe looked happy but tired. Juanita looked fresh and glowing and so beautiful Clay could hardly stand it.

“Boys, this is the new Miz Boone!” Jim Joe said. “She says you’re to jest call ’er Juanita. Honey, this is your big sons, Randy an’ Clay.”

“Howdy, Randy; howdy, Clay?”

“Howdy?” they murmured.

“Kiss your new stepma, boys,” Jim Joe said, and when neither seemed disposed to accept this invitation, “Well, if you’re so bashful, shake hands anyways.”

Juanita, smiling, held out her hand to Randy, who took it hurriedly and then dropped it.

She held it out to Clay. He took it and it burned in his, and he didn’t let it go until she took it away and said, “I better slip into somethin’ comfor’ble an’ fix you all some supper; I know how boys is!”

She entered the house with springy step. The boys and their father followed.

She was about to open the door to the bedroom when Jim Joe said, “Whoa, there!”

“What’s a matter, Jim Joe?”

“Nothin’s the matter.”

He stepped past her and opened the door and then he picked her up in his arms, and carrying her into the bedroom, kicked the door shut behind them.

“I bet we’re hungrier’n a bitch wolf ’fore them two gits th’ough!” Randy said. “Hey, where the hell . . .?”

Clay went out blindly and when Randy got to the door, he was running towards the barn. Randy tiptoed to the door and put his ear to it. He couldn’t hear a thing. He put his eye to the keyhole then, but the key was in it. He felt the knob turning then and scurried away just in time, as Juanita opened it. She had slipped on a house dress and was tying on an apron. Behind her he saw his father wearily taking off his shoes.

“Where’s Clay at?” she asked.

“Barn.”

“Ran, light the fire for Juanita,” his father called. “I want a take a little nap. I’m tuckered.”

Clay walked up and down in the barn, clenching his fists until the knuckles were white, thinking, I can’t stand it! I just can’t stand it! Why’d I stay till they came home? Why didn’t I light out yesterday the way Ran wanted? Damn, Pa! Why’d he have to show off that way! What the hell’s he think he is, a billy goat!

He began to beat the side of the barn with his fists.

“Clay?”

Her voice!

He ran out of the barn. She was hurrying towards him.

“Jim Joe says you’d show me where the milkin’ things is at,” she said.

“They’re right there in the barn.”

“Ain’t you goin’ a show me?”

He shook his head.

“You aren’t blind.”

Coming close, she said in a half whisper, “What’s a matter, honey?”

“You ought to know!”

“Clay, you think he was . . . Honey, we wasn’t! I jest changed my dress . . . Oh, honey, don’t think about him an’ me. . . .” She leaned close and whispered, “Jest think about us, later, unner the stars!”

He shook his head miserably, wanting her so he could hardly keep his hands off her.

“I’ll slip off the minute I can,” she whispered.

He shook his head again, near tears.

“If you can’t wait, come in the barn,” she whispered.

“No!”

“Don’t you want me no more?”

He tried to shake his head again but couldn’t.

“Darlin’, he won’t fool with me tonight, he’s too tuckered.”

“Hush,” he whispered. “Oh, please hush!”

“Honey lover, I won’t never come to you after him . . . I’ll jest come nights when he don’t . . .”

“Please,” he begged. “Please!”

“I’ll meet you unner the stars an’ love you to death!”

He wanted to turn and run but he couldn’t.

“I’ll love you like I never done before!”

“I can’t. Ran and I are running away.”

“Runnin’ away!”

He nodded.

“Don’t let on. It’ll only hurt Pa.”

She looked at him so sadly that he wanted to cry, I won’t go! I’ll stay forever and he can have you in bed just as long as I have you under the stars! I’ll father your kids and he’ll think they’re his, but we’ll know and love ’em and raise ’em, but he said, “I couldn’t stand it, all the time alone in my bed and you in his! I’ve got to go, Juanita!”

She nodded slowly.

“I guess I unnerstan’, darlin’. I’ll be so lonesome.”

“You see Pa’s not, you hear?”

“I’ll see he ain’t, but oh, lover, don’t go till we say good-by.”

“We’ve said it.”

“Jest one more time,” she whispered.

He stared at her, remembering the sweetness of her body, its warmth and fragrance, its shape and color, its eager lustful femaleness, and he said hoarsely, “I . . . I’ll show you where the milking things are.”

“No, Randy might ketch us,” she whispered. “Tonight, at our place unner the stars. You will come?”

He nodded and hurried to the house.

When supper was on the table, Juanita woke Jim Joe, and kneeling, put on his carpet slippers.

“I’m too damn sleepy to eat anythin’, honey,” he said.

“You ain’t goin’ a miss my first supper,” she said. “I cook good.”

“You do ever’thin’ good,” Jim Joe said, kissing her hair and then helping her to her feet.

Clay thought, She’ll be good to him. I never ate after her and never will again. I’ll bet she does cook good.

She had. The supper was fine, juicy steak and crisp French fries and the best biscuits he’d eaten since his mother’s.

I wish I could eat after her forever, Clay thought.

“You like my cookin’, Jim Joe?” she asked.

“Never et better’n my life,” he said. “Ain’t you proud a my bride, boys?”

“Sure,” Randy said, with his mouth full.

Clay nodded, his heart full.

He saw a look of pain come into her dark eyes and turned his own away, thinking, I can’t say good-by to her under the stars! If I have her again and see her all goldlike in the moonlight, I’ll never get up the gumption or the pride to leave her!

After supper, Jim Joe, warm, well fed and happy, dozed in his big chair, dropping pipe ashes all over the carpet, while Juanita washed the dishes and Clay and Randy carried out the slops and forked down hay for the cow and the horses.

When they came back, she was cleaning up the pipe ashes from the carpet, on her hands and knees, brushing them into a dustpan. She took them to the fireplace.

Taking off her apron, she said, “Me an’ Pa’s tuckered. Reckon we’ll go to sleep. Wake up, Jim Joe, time for bed.”

Jim Joe stood up, yawning, and said, “ ’Scuse us, boys, we ain’t slept much for a week. ’Night, you two.”

“ ’Night, Pa; ’night, Juanita,” Clay said.

“ ’Night,” she murmured.

Clay watched them go into the bedroom, his father stumbling a little, practically asleep on his feet, and Juanita taking his arm, steadying him. The door closed and he stared at it, forgetting Randy, until the light under it went out.

They’re undressing in the dark, he thought, and putting on nightshirts the way married folks do. Bet he never saw her with nothing on her but shadows under the stars, all gold-looking. Oh, Jesus, I want her once more, just once more to say good-by!

“What’s a matter?” Randy half whispered.

“Nothing,” Clay said, but he thought, Everything’s the matter, she’s a woman, a married woman, and I’m a boy. Good-by, Juanita, good-by, honey, I can’t say it under the stars, I can only say it in my heart.

“Let’s go, Ran,” he said.

They went out quietly and crossed to the barn.

“Saddle up,” Clay said. “I’ll keep watch. Keep quiet now.”

As Randy saddled the horses and got the gear down from the hayloft, Clay stood quietly watching the dark window of the bedroom. He wasn’t thinking about anything at all; he’d stopped thinking; he wasn’t even hurting any more.

Presently Randy tugged at his arm.

“Ain’t you ready, Clay?”

“All ready.”

They led the horses out by the back door and didn’t mount until they were well away from the house. They rode through the pines and past the place where Clay’d lain as a lover so many, yet so few times, but Clay didn’t pull up.

By the time Juanita reached the place where she too had first known joy, her first lover was two hours away, riding east with his brother, towards years of outlawry and violence and adventure, and a girl named Cat Ballou.

Juanita Boone sat where they had lain together, and hugging her breasts under her thin wrapper, cried a little, and then she stood up and whispered, “Good-by, Clay, good-by my darlin’,” and then she turned her back on the stars and walked through the pines to her husband’s bed.

She didn’t ever mean to stray from it, but once in a while, being human, all too human, she did, but Jim Joe never knew. She made him a good companion for five years, cooked and sewed and washed for him, warmed his bed and gave him pleasure, and what he didn’t know never hurt him. She bore him three daughters and then she died, at twenty-one, of “the typhord fever,” and had a fine funeral. She was a hired wife, a whore if you like, but let it be said for her epitaph that she gave full dollar value.

It was another year before the Boone brothers heard of her death through a chance meeting with an old Oregon acquaintance in a Virginia City “sportin’ house,” by which time Clay Boone’s Crowd was notorious all over Nevada.

To Clay’s surprise, his sorrow, while sharp, was mostly for his father. Thinking about it, he realized that nothing could ever possibly have come of his boy-love. He could see, at last, that he had been in love with love, with the mystery of woman, and with the joy of the flesh, and seeing that, he took his first big stride towards manhood.

He wrote to his father:

Jim Joe answered:

“You want to go home, Ran?” Clay asked.

“An’ punch cows an’ chew hay? Are you crazy?”

“I guess not,” Clay said.

His impulse had been a fleeting one. He didn’t want to “punch cows and chew hay” any more than Randy did, and at the time, he liked his freedom, or the illusion of it, just fine.

He wrote to his father that they’d drop in on him for a visit “some time or other” and sent his and Randy’s love to the little sisters and himself.

And so, a year later, after seven years of outlawry, Clay Boone, lolling around his cabin on the Roost, thinking of the past and the future, taking stock of himself, thought, Robbing and plundering and whoring can be a lot of fun when you’re a kid. I’ve had a hell of a good time and if I had it to do over, I reckon I wouldn’t do much different, but men like Dad Grey and Kid Shelleen make a man wonder if he’s not kind of stupid to try to kick up his heels all his life.

He thought about Barney Grey, once Stud to half the crib girls on the frontier and now Dad, still pathetically bragging about his adventures in bed; and about Kid Shelleen, silent and bitter and alone, men who’d never known any real life or real love and never would.

They’re not men any more, they’re ghosts, he thought. And they’re not free either, and maybe never were. They’re slaves. Who the hell is ever really free? Am I now or have I ever been free, or is it all just self-fooling?

Every Saturday night he rode to town with the Crowd, but the pleasures of Crib Row were beginning to pall, and he wondered whether, like Dad Grey, he was to live the rest of his life through without ever again knowing the joy of lips willing but unbought.

Years later, looking back at this time of his life, he was to muse, Those were growing pains. I was measuring my mind for long pants. I was just plain tired of being “free,” which meant being a boy and not a man. I felt like I was in a trap, but I wasn’t. I was looking for one and I found it, baited with the sweetest of nature’s gifts, the loving body and heart of a woman, the one called Cat Ballou.

Sitting on his front porch in the twilight, Young Preach saw a good-sized body of men ride in and hitch their horses in front of the United States Hotel. He counted twenty horses. He was sure their riders were association men and wondered what they were doing in town on the night before they were to start to drive the combined association herd to the railhead. Usually they did their celebrating afterwards.

A moment later he saw Old Doc come out of the hotel and run across the street to the sheriff’s office. He wondered if trouble were afoot and decided to find out.

As he entered the sheriff’s office Sprad Young, the new sheriff, was saying, “. . . an’ I think it’s plum’ crazy to try to stand agin all them men, ’specially as they’s all drinkin’.”

“What’s the trouble?” Young Preach asked.

“There are twenty riders from Diamond F and Circle R and Grommet over there bragging how they’re going to chase the Ballous off their spread so they can run their cattle through the gorge in the morning,” Old Doc said.

“What can I do about it, Young Preach, now I ask you?” the sheriff said.

“You can protect decent law-abiding citizens from mob rule,” Young Preach said.

“Exactly my sentiments,” Old Doc said. “Get your scattergun, Sprad, we’ve got some riding ahead of us.”

“What can two men do against twenty?” the sheriff demanded.

“Plenty if they’ve got any gumption,” Old Doc said. “And you’re forgetting a pretty fair gun hand named Frankie Ballou, not to mention a spunky girl who can shoot the buttons off your vest with that carbine of hers.”

“Three men an’ a girl!”

“And a preacher and the Lord,” Young Preach said.

It was well after dark and they were well fortified with Dutch courage when the twenty men from Diamond F, Circle R and Grommet came out of the bar and stepped to their saddles. They were led by the three ramrods, Little Jack Horner, gray and bald now, Zeke Dorn, and hard-cased Blackie Drew. They rode under orders, but not “to speak of” as Adam Field had told them. Each carried a pint, compliments of their employers.

It was late and there was no moon when they spotted the shadowy unlighted house and barn of the Ballou place.

“Abed an’ snoozin’,” Zeke Dorn said.

“Reckon I’d spend all my time there if I had sech a redhead to warm it for me,” Blackie Drew said. “I claim first divvy on that if Frankie talks back an’ we have to ventilate ’im.”

“You ain’t seen the girl,” Zeke said. “I just want a sample that.”

“You damn fools, the boss said no violence, remember?” Little Jack, who was no longer interested in such primitive pleasures as rape, said. “All we do is drag ’em out an’ send ’em on their way.”

“You think Frankie Ballou will take that without a fight?” Zeke demanded.

“He’s slowed up an’ he ain’t no fool,” Little Jack said.

“Well, let’s see,” Blackie said.

Leaning over he unfastened the wire gate and led the way towards the house without bothering to refasten it. They had silently surrounded the house when a lamp was lighted in the parlor, and after a moment the door was opened and Young Preach stood in it, the lamp held high in his left hand, and a forty-four held low in his right.

“It’s the preacher!” Little Jack Horner yelled.

“I want to talk to you men,” Young Preach said. “I don’t know who you are and I don’t particularly want to and probably won’t unless I have to bury a few of you. We are six here and all armed. I’ll call the roll. Frankie Ballou!”

“I’m here,” Frankie said, from inside.

“Old Doc Morgan!”

“Me too,” Old Doc said.

“Mrs. Ballou!”

“Here and with my squirrel gun,” Cathy said.

“Cat Ballou!”

“Present with my carbine in my hand,” Cat said, and then, a shout, “Come and get us, you yellow-livered scum!”

The men stirred and began to mutter, but Young Preach raised his voice and called, “Sheriff Sprad Young!”

“Here,” the sheriff said. “Ride along, you men, I’ve got a scattergun on you from the winder.”

“You heard the sheriff,” Young Preach said. “Ride along in the name of the law and the Lord, or we’ll blow you all to hell!”

Silently they rode along.

Young Preach stood in the doorway with the lamp until the association riders had disappeared into the darkness and then he closed the door and put the lamp and the forty-four on the table. Cat’s eyes shone as she looked at him; and Old Doc, seeing them, picked up the old forty-four and breaking it open, showed her the empty chambers.

Cat felt hot tears in her eyes.

I always knew he was good, she thought but what’s that? He’s brave.

But she didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. All she could do was kiss him, which she did, soundly.

They stayed the rest of the night, Old Doc and the sheriff in what had been Jed French’s room, and Young Preach on the parlor sofa. They left at dawn and when they came to the edge of the basin, they saw that the cattle drive was going that way, bypassing the gorge entirely. Satisfied there would be no more trouble, they rode on to town.

Adam Field, riding in the van with his son and the three ramrods, watched Old Doc, Young Preach and Sheriff Young until they were out of sight. Their going gave him an opportunity which he was quick to seize. Immediately he ordered the drive turned in and back towards the gorge.

The failure of the midnight expedition against the Ballous and their unexpected allies had made him reluctantly decide to concede defeat, at least for the spring drive, since he could not afford an open clash with the law, not to mention the two most popular men in the valley, Young Preach and Old Doc.

But with them out of the way, he was confident that, dickering from obviously unstoppable strength, he could force Frankie Ballou to accept reasonable terms. His anger had cooled and he was disposed to be generous in victory. Calling to Abe and the three ramrods, he led them at a brisk canter towards the Ballou ranch.

The still distant rumble of hoofs woke Cat. Grabbing her carbine and then her wrapper, she ran out into the parlor, just as her father came out of the bedroom, pulling on his shirt.

“It’s Field’s herd!” he said. “Ride to the Roost for help. Put your clothes on!” he shouted as she started to run out. “You want a ride up there half nekkid!”

Grabbing his revolver belt and rifle, he rushed out. Cat skinned into pants and shirt, stepped into her half boots, and picking up her carbine again, hurried out towards the barn. Her father rode his stud out bareback as she ran up, followed closely by her mother, wearing her divided riding skirt, also bareback and astride. She carried her squirrel rifle.

Cat slapped the bridle on Red and went up bareback, too. As she rode out, her mother and father were nearing the east fence. In the distance she could see the heavy dust cloud which the still invisible herd was sending up. She hesitated for an instant and then galloped towards her parents.

Frankie hauled up.

“I told you to ride!” he shouted.

“They’re too close!” Cat said. “Let me help drive ’em off!”

“I’ll hold ’em. Do like I said!”

Cat nodded, and swinging the big roan, jumped the east fence and rode at an angle towards the mountains, cutting it fine to shorten the distance as much as possible.

“Has she got time to get there and back?” Cathy asked.

“I doubt it,” Frankie said. “Honey, please do like I asked an’ ride over beyond the west fence.”

“We built this together and we’ll defend it together,” she said.

He nodded.

“We’ll hold ’em off,” he said.

Cat splashed the big roan across the Catamount and rode him up the steep side of the gorge and onto the flat of the valley. As she angled towards the mountains the great dust cloud lifted by the pounding hoofs darkened the sun. Suddenly, not a hundred yards away, a group of riders appeared, led by Adam Field and Abe. Cat bent low over the roan’s neck and gave him his head.

Kid Shelleen, alone on the Roost, the Crowd having spent the night in town, saw the towering cloud of dust, and saddling quickly, rode down the trail. He reached the floor of the valley as Cat rode up, and, learning the situation, galloped back with her towards the Ballou ranch.

As Adam and Abe Field, Little Jack Horner, Zeke Dorn and Blackie Drew approached the east fence, they saw Frankie and Cathy, sitting their horses inside the barbed wire, raise their rifles, and as Frankie shouted, “Pull up!” they did so, a few yards from the fence.

“I want to talk to you,” Field said.

“Turn around, you men, this is the end a the road,” Frankie said.

“We’ll pay for the right of way,” Field said.

“Don’t argy, turn that herd back,” Frankie said. “I’ll count three!”

“You damn stubborn fool!” Adam shouted. “We aim to go through, by your leave or ’thout it!”

“One,” Frankie said, and looking to Cathy, he nodded.

As she gripped her squirrel gun, feeling for the trigger, Adam shouted, “Cathy, talk sense to him! Ride off w’ile you still got time.”

“When you speak to me, Mr. Field, call me Mrs. Ballou,” she said.

“Two,” Frankie said.

“Them cattle’s gittin’ close!” Field yelled.

“Better ride an’ start turnin’ ’em before I count agin,” Frankie said.

“You’re both crazy!” Field yelled, but as Frankie and Cathy sighted along the barrels of their rifles, he swung his big horse and led the others back towards the great cloud boiling up from the now thundering hoofs.

“They’ll never turn them, Frankie!” Cathy cried.

“Reckon we got a run for it, honey,” Frankie said, and they turned and raced towards the west fence, where their own cattle, excited by the sound of hoofs, were beginning to mill around.

Seeing the surging cattle tunneling through the gorge, almost upon them, Adam Field knew there was no chance to stop them now. He made a show of trying, urging his men on, shouting and firing, but as the closely packed steers bore down upon them, he shouted to the others to ride for their lives and led them up the steep slope of the gorge only yards ahead of the herd.

The vanguard tried to stop at the barbed wire fence but the tremendous pressure of those behind them forced them into the barbs and they began to go down, bellowing with pain, while the rest stampeded. Sweeping over them, trampling them to pieces, they burst through the barbed wire, and roared across the Ballou spread.

As Cathy and Frankie neared the west fence, their own small herd spooked, and they were forced to fight their way through them, hand-riding in a desperate effort to keep their horses on their feet. As they burst at last into the clear and raced for the fence, gathering their horses to jump it, the big herd engulfed the smaller and thundered on.

Cathy’s horse, in the lead, faltered, hung and then crashed into the barbed wire, throwing her clear, but still inside the fence squarely in the path of the stampeding herd. Frankie, pulling his own horse at the wire, swung him, and leaning down, grabbed his wife’s hand and tried to swing her up behind him but she couldn’t make it and fell heavily.

“Jump for it!” she screamed, but Frankie, seeing the maddened steers almost upon her, flung himself from his horse and thrust himself in front of her in a gallantly futile effort to shield her body with his own.

Cat and Kid Shelleen topped the rise above the gorge just in time to see Cathy and Frankie, locked in each other’s arms, go down under the terrible trampling razor hoofs.

Jumping from his horse the Kid ran to Cat, and as she crumpled from the saddle, caught her in his arms.

They buried Cathy and Frankie Ballou in a single pine box at the spot where they fell. There were people there from every spread in the Purple Valley except Diamond F and Circle R and Grommet, and from Wolf City, and Lariat, over in the Coyote Valley, and from Hangtown, and even from as far away as Laramie—former neighbors, officials of the Union Pacific, home-town businessmen, members of Young Preach’s congregation, some of whom had known them and some who’d only heard the sweet story of their love.

The sheriff was there, and of course Old Doc, and just before Young Preach began the services, Kid Shelleen rode up, leading Cat’s big roan stallion, and followed by Randy Boone and Barney Grey and all the rest of the crowd but Clay, who’d sworn at his mother’s funeral that he’d never be seen at another except his own. The outlaws formed a semicircle and took off their hats but none dismounted.

Old Doc bowed his head with all the others, and heard again, as he’d vowed he never would, the somber but affirmative music of the Twenty-third Psalm, as the words dropped from Young Preach’s lips like the clods on the pine box.

“. . . the valley of the shadow of death . . . thou art with me . . . my cup runneth over . . . goodness and mercy . . . the house of the Lord for ever.”

Old Doc listened to the familiar words with stony face and stony heart, tearless, wondering how many times a man’s heart could break in a lifetime.

When the words ended there was bleak silence. Old Doc raised his eyes to his granddaughter, who wore a dress of funeral black and whose own eyes were burning with such bitterness that he thought his heart would break again.

Both Old Doc and Young Preach started for her at the same time, to try to give her what comfort they could, but she turned away and as Kid Shelleen rode out with her horse, she walked stiffly to him. Taking off her black mourning dress, she dropped it to the ground, and stood in her faded blue pants and shirt and half boots, her riding clothes.

Then, stepping to the saddle, she drew her carbine from its boot, and holding it high, she said tonelessly, “I’m riding with my friend Kid Shelleen for Diamond F. Who’s riding with us?”

As a dozen men started to step out to volunteer, Randy Boone nudged his horse forward, followed by the eight other outlaws, and then Young Preach cried sharply, “Wait!”

“You’ve done your job,” Cat said. “And now, with the help of my father’s kind, I’ll do mine.”

“Listen to me, Cat,” Young Preach said, gently.

“I’m done listening,” she said.

“I christened you and saw you come into this world, and I loved your mother, and I think you owe it to me as well as the Lord to hear me out,” he said.

“I’m sorry, Young Preach,” she said, “but if we’re to reach Diamond F by sundown . . .”

“They’re not there, Cat.”

“Not there! You mean they’ve lighted out?”

“No, honey, they’re in jail in Lariat,” Old Doc put in.

“Who put them in jail?”

“The sheriff,” Old Doc said. “With a little help.”

“That’s right,” the sheriff said. “Last night, with Old Doc and Young Preach an’ a dozen citizens who asked to be deputized for the job.”

“We can always take ’em out a jail,” Kid Shelleen said.

“You bet,” Randy Boone said.

“I want to see them die,” Cat said.

“According to the Good Book,” Young Preach said, “ ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ Not yours or Kid Shelleen’s, but the Lord’s.”

“They’ve been indicted,” Old Doc said. “For murder in the first degree.”

“Let the law take its course,” Young Preach said. “Your mother and father would want you to, Cat.”

For the first time her eyes softened and wavered and she looked to Old Doc, who nodded and said, “I think they would, honey.”

“Do you think justice will be done, Doc?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I think you ought to give the law a chance.”

“Then if you think so, I will,” she said, “but if it fails, I’ll know where to turn,” and looking to Kid Shelleen, she said, softly, “Thank you, Kid, maybe you’ll hear from me.”

Kid Shelleen nodded, swung his horse and rode for the mountain, Randy Boone and the other outlaws following closely.

It was the first time Randy had seen her since the night he’d been first kissed and then slapped. He’d gone back every Saturday night looking for her. He would look for her again, when she’d shed her mourning black for good.

Her roan Red pitched his ears forward, as if to follow the outlaws, but she held him, and watched them for a moment, wanting to be riding with them, and then she heard her grandfather say, “Step down, honey, and ride home with Old Doc,” and sliding her carbine back into its boot, she did step down.

Without a word she put her black dress back on over the shirt and pants and got into the buggy with Old Doc, while Young Preach, who’d ridden with them in the rig from Wolf City, rode Red back. She didn’t speak all the way, or cry, even when, at Old Doc’s suggestion, she leaned against his shoulder to rest.

Riding back towards the Roost, Randy Boone was thinking, Sorry she let that preacher talk her out of ridin’ agin that jail. Got a feelin’ she’d feel kind a close an’ friendly to a man who rode beside her to break them murderers out a jail. We should a hung them men that done her folks in. A hangin’s always excitin’ to a woman, makes ’er horsy. I wunner why?

Kid Shelleen was sorry too, but about something else. He was sorry he’d let Cat talk him out of going after the Fields on his own. But she’d been so determined to see them die. Something told him they were bound to beat the law.

If I’d killed the son-of-a-bitch that day in front a the hotel like I ought a had, Adam Field wouldn’t be over in Lariat safe in jail, the Kid thought. He’d be safe in hell and Cathy an’ Frankie’d be alive.

When they got to the old Morgan place Young Preach stabled the horses while Cat and Old Doc went inside. She put on an apron over the black mourning dress and silently prepared supper for the three of them.

Raising his head from saying grace, Young Preach looked into her tortured eyes and said, gently, “Try not to think about it, Cat.”

“I’m not thinking about anything,” she said, and she wasn’t; she was simply feeling.

Eating mechanically, unaware that her appetite was as good as ever, she vaguely heard Young Preach murmuring about the need for her to “purge her soul” of hate, and thought, What is he talking about? I wonder if he knows.

When she had finished cleaning up the dishes, she murmured, “Good night” and went to the room, refurnished now, which had been her mother’s. It evoked no memories; it was simply a room to sleep in while she waited.

She looked at her black-clad figure in the mirror for a moment, and then, for the second and last time, took off the black dress. She lay on the bed in her pants and shirt, her mind numb, until she heard Young Preach leave, and Old Doc go up to bed.

Gathering up the black dress, she slipped out and went out behind the barn where she made a fire of straw and burned it. She was done with mourning the dead.

Returning to the room she stripped and looked at herself in the mirror again. The sight of her body gave her no pleasure. Putting on a flannel nightgown, an unconscious mortification of the flesh, she went to bed, presently drifting off to sleep. When she dreamed it was not of a wild free lover but of bodies slowly twisting as they hung from the gallows tree, the black faces those of Adam and Abe Field and Little Jack Horner and Zeke Dorn and Blackie Drew.

When the five men were bound over, a few days later, for trial at the fall term, starting September the fifth, she felt no emotion. It didn’t even matter to her that they’d been released on bail, after the Cattlemen’s Association had pledged their combined assets as security. It never even occurred to her to anticipate the trial by taking things into her own hands. She had promised her grandfather to give the law a chance. She could wait and see whether or not justice was done by due process.

Brad Evers had beaten the sheriff and his volunteer deputies to Diamond F, and had managed, after considerable argument, to persuade Adam Field to surrender himself, his son, and the ramrods of Diamond F, Circle R and Grommet peaceably.

“They’ll never convict you in a thousand years,” he said. “Everybody in the valley is boiling mad at you, though, and we ought to give ’em a chance to simmer down. Besides, you’ll be safer in jail for a few days, in case that girl should get Kid Shelleen and Clay Boone’s Crowd on the prod.”

So Adam Field had agreed.

He felt no guilt or responsibility whatever for the death of Cathy and Frankie. He was sorry they’d got themselves killed, as he put it, just as he was sorry he’d lost over a hundred head of cattle in the stampede and run half the beef off the others. To him the whole thing was “plum’ foolish,” and the Ballous “stubborn damn fools.” Hadn’t he gone out of his way to be fair and generous? Hadn’t he given them plenty of warning and plenty of time? Hadn’t he given them every chance to act like they had some sense? And hadn’t he done his damndest to turn that herd, even at the risk of his life, and more important, his son’s?

Cat found plenty of things to occupy her. She took care of all the household chores, preparing the three meals, washing dishes, pots and pans, mending, darning, sweeping, dusting, making beds, washing, ironing, chopping wood, building fires, refilling lamps, politely but firmly refusing any help from either Old Doc or Young Preach.

There were two other chores, personal ones. Every night she cleaned and oiled her carbine and every morning, at dawn, she saddled the big roan stallion and rode him full out along the Purple Valley Road. She took no joy from this, she was simply keeping him fit, in case justice should miscarry and she’d need him.

Once away from curious eyes, she performed a grim and secret rite. She pulled up motionless and whipping the carbine from its boot, fired from the hip at any convenient target. She practiced this until she could draw and fire the gun as quickly as she had ever seen her father do it with his Colt.

She supposed Kid Shelleen and Clay Boone were faster, but that didn’t matter; they weren’t the men she was going to kill, in case justice miscarried at the court in Lariat come September.

At first the nights, after supper, were bad, for Young Preach always came over and talked interminably, working on her to “purge her soul.” Then she hit upon a simple ruse which freed her. This was to open the Bible he’d given her for her birthday the moment she saw him coming and to sit reading as long as he stayed. It was no solace to her; it was simply escape.

Thinking that her constant reading of the Good Book indicated that his prayers for her soul had borne fruit, Young Preach was quietly happy; but Old Doc knew that she read for neither the sound nor the sense of the Scriptures, for he understood his granddaughter very well.

The notes came due at the bank and Tom Gibbons, the manager, apologetically spoke to Old Doc about them. Old Doc told her and offered to meet the bank notes, but she wouldn’t allow it. He insisted that it would only be a loan, but she wouldn’t hear of it.

“But honey, they’ll have to take it over,” Old Doc said.

“Let them,” she said, indifferently. “All but the grave.”

“What about the future, Cat?”

“The future is September fifth,” she said.

Old Doc went to the bank and said they could have the Ballou place if they’d build an iron fence around the grave and put a marble stone there with just their names on it, and agree to care for the plot in perpetuity, which the bank agreed to do.

Old Doc knew that sooner or later the bank would make a deal with the Cattlemen’s Association, or somebody else, giving the right of way to drive their cattle through the gorge. But since Cat didn’t want the place, there was nothing he could do short of trying to work it himself, which he wouldn’t do.

It’s tragic, he thought. They fought to the death and they never had a chance. If only I hadn’t told Frankie to fight the sons-of-bitches . . . but he’d have fought ’em anyhow, as his father and his uncle fought the U.P. railroad, as men have always fought for lost causes. Poor wonderful fools! But then, that’s what tragedy is, of course, the fall of valor, the defeat of heroes. By God, I hope I don’t die pitiful, I hope I die fighting, as my girl did, as my lover did.

He remembered his Abigail, fighting with him for Cathy’s life and her own, and he thought, She didn’t die alone, I was with her, and then he thought of Cathy and Frankie, and how they’d not died alone, but together, and for a moment he thought, Can I brave death out alone? And then he thought, But I won’t be alone, my Abigail will be there with me, and I don’t mean in the hereafter, I mean at that moment, in my innards and my heart.

Cat rode only twice to the grave. The first time was before the bank placed the fence around it. She sat the big stud and looked at the barren sunken earth for long minutes, not really thinking of those lying beneath it there, but of five other graves still to be filled.

After a while she rode on slowly, over the twisted wire which had been the west fence, and on to the pool where she’d humiliated Abe Field. She didn’t dismount. Looking down into the pool, she felt no impulse to swim or look at the reflection of her naked body; the reflection she saw was that of a great male animal and a sexless rider.

Randy Boone came upon her there and sweeping off his hat, pulled up beside her. She looked up and saw him, but without any sign of recognition.

“Yes?” she said.

“Don’t you remember me?”

“No.”

“I was with Kid Shelleen . . . at the funeral.”

“Oh, yes. You’re one of the Crowd who offered to ride with me.”

“I’m Randy Boone.”

She looked at him more closely.

Randy Boone, she thought. His brother.

But it didn’t seem to matter. She hadn’t thought about Clay Boone, or any other man, as a man, since the day of the stampede. Looking at Randy, she didn’t see the handsome, virile man who desired her, but merely an instrument she might be called upon to use, another gun should one prove necessary.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll let you know.”

She turned the stallion then and rode away.

Randy watched her out of sight, thinking, She ain’t hardly alive an’ won’t be, I guess, as long as them skunks is. Well, I can wait.

So September the fifth became the future for Randy Boone, too. He didn’t believe for a minute that the five men would be convicted in any court of law, but he had convicted them himself, simply because he was pretty sure that was the surest way to her favor.

The man that helps her wipe ’em out is the man that’ll have ’er, he thought. Kid Shelleen won’t count. He’s old an’ only half a man anyhow. The only thing alive about that son is his trigger hand.

September the fifth was also the future to Kid Shelleen. Like Randy, although they never talked about it, he didn’t think any court was going to avenge the death of the Ballous. He simply waited to do the job himself, or help Cat do it, when the law failed.

Clay Boone waited, too, but for a different reason. He felt restless and bored, but he didn’t know what it was that he wanted to do, then, or in the future. He told himself that all he needed was action, and several times he proposed riding over to the Coyote Valley and holding up the U.P., just to break the monotony. But the Kid said he had a job ahead of him that came first and even Randy showed no enthusiasm.

Something eating Ran too, Clay thought.

He wondered why his brother took long rides alone, and hardly ever went to town with the boys any more. Clay hardly ever did either, and when he did, he seldom went upstairs, contenting himself with long hours of gambling. More often he stayed on the Roost and played hearts with Kid Shelleen.

They seldom talked much but he liked the man, even though he didn’t like to think of himself as a Kid Shelleen of the future, joyless and silent and alone except for other men of his kind. Clay knew why the Kid was waiting and why he wouldn’t even hold up the U.P. It was simply that the Kid would take no risk at all likely to prevent him from evening the score for his old friends, the Ballous.

Clay understood this and respected it. He knew, from the Kid, the whole story, and he was impersonally sympathetic. He had no curiosity about the girl, Cat, whom he’d never seen. The Kid never said much about her and Clay thought of her, when he thought of her at all, as a pigtailed youngster that Kid Shelleen was simply obligated by old ties to look out for.

He had no idea that his brother Randy knew the girl or had any interest in her, much less that Randy was planning to involve him and the whole Crowd in what he would only have considered a crackbrained feud with the powerful Cattlemen’s Association. If he had had a glimmer of suspicion that such was the case, he undoubtedly would have pulled up stakes at once and taken the Crowd elsewhere, and Randy too, whether Randy liked it or not. Meanwhile he waited, for lack of anything better to do. His men still had money in their pockets from their depredations in Nevada. When they were empty, it would be time to ride on and refill them. Meanwhile why not just be lazy and take things easy?

The second time Cat visited the grave she found it fenced, with summer flowers growing around it, and a marble stone with just the names of her mother and father chiseled on it. Stepping down, she picked a few flowers and put them on the stone.

“Good-by,” she said, and then she went out, mounted big Red and rode towards town, knowing she would never ride that way again.

Actual testimony in the trial of Adam and Abraham Field, John Peter Horner, Ezekiel Dorn and Blackstone Drew began before Judge Seton Babcock in Lariat Courthouse on September seventh, after two days spent in selecting the jury.

Judge Babcock was learned, incorruptible, robustly handsome, humane and human, a man Brad Evers, defense attorney, knew could not be influenced even by the powerful Cattlemen’s Association. The same could be said for the prosecutor, Sam Springer, who was young, able and honest.

But Evers was so unworried about the outcome that he insisted upon going to trial on the first-degree-murder indictment, despite the people’s suggestion that the charge might be lowered to second degree. Both sides knew that a conviction on the lower count was far more likely.

Springer, if he hoped for conviction, was thus obliged either to show premeditation or establish that the deaths of Cathy and Frankie Ballou occurred during the commission of a crime, or were the result of conspiracy.

Seeking to lay his foundation by proving acts of trespass, terrorism and molestation prior to the actual stampede, the young prosecutor called Cat as his first witness.

Cat, wearing a simple calico dress homemade by her mother, testified in a flat emotionless voice that Abe Field had trespassed and played the “Peeping Tom” while she was swimming, and that to protect herself, she had been forced to seize his gun and drive him away. She also testified to the cutting of the fence and scattering of the Ballou stock by riders, in her opinion, from Diamond F, led by the Fields, father and son, and to the attempt by “about twenty riders,” among them Little Jack Horner, to drive the family from their spread.

Holding in abeyance her testimony as to the actual stampede, Springer excused her and called, in turn, Old Doc, Young Preach and Sheriff Young. Old Doc testified to hearing a number of association men, including the defendants Horner, Dorn and Drew, “making threats to force the Ballous off their land,” and corroborated Cat’s testimony about the night raid.

Under cross-examination, however, none of these three could positively identify any of the defendants as having been in the raiding party. Cat insisted she was positive that Horner was there, that she had recognized his voice, crying, “It’s the preacher!”

She was forced to admit that she had no positive knowledge that any of the defendants had been responsible for the cutting of the fence and the scattering of the stock.

Abe Field flatly denied ever trespassing on Ballou property, of acting the “Peeping Tom,” or of any encounter with Cat. He also denied being a party either to the fence-cutting, stock-scattering raid or the attempt to force the Ballou family off their land.

Horner, Dorn and Drew denied Old Doc’s testimony that they had made threats against the Ballous, and also denied being present at either raid against them.

Hilda Field, Adam’s sad-faced second wife, then testified that her stepson, husband and Horner were all at the home ranch at the time the second raid took place and that Horner and her husband were both there upon the other occasion mentioned. She acknowledged that she didn’t know where Abe was that night.

Defense Attorney Evers took care of this point and completed his demolition of the people’s attempt to involve the defendants with prior harassment, when he asked the clerk to call the next witness.

The clerk called, “Miss Mazie Green,” and when there was no immediate response, he called the name again, loudly, whereupon a young woman hurried in from the corridor. She was soberly dressed and carried white cotton gloves.

Old Doc, watching her, wondered where he had seen her before. He was pretty sure she’d been a patient, but he couldn’t quite place her. She came down the aisle nervously, her face very pale and tense. Old Doc saw her look timidly to the judge, and then, flushing, drop her eyes.

They know each other, Old Doc thought, and the judge doesn’t look very happy at seeing her, and then he heard Evers ask her occupation, and when she said, “Dancer,” in a strained, low voice, he knew where he had treated her.

“Speak up, Miss Green,” Evers said. “Did you say dancer?”

The witness nodded, biting her lip, and began to pick at the cotton gloves in her lap.

“Where do you dance?”

She looked to the judge again.

“Answer the question, Miss Green,” the judge said.

Dropping her eyes from his, she said, huskily, “Cheyenne Rose’s.”

At an outburst of laughter, the judge rapped sharply. She didn’t raise her eyes until the courtroom had grown quiet.

“Miss Green,” Evers went on, “Did you . . . er . . . dance with the defendant Abraham Field on the Saturday night the Ballou stock was scattered?”

“Yes sir,” she murmured, picking at the gloves.

“Between what hours?”

“ ’Bout midnight to . . . to sunup.”

“Was he out of your sight at any time between those hours?”

“No sir,” she said, faintly.

“Where were you and the defendant between the hours of midnight and sunup, Miss Green?”

“I . . . we . . .” She looked entreatingly to the judge.

“Answer the question,” the judge said.

As if talking to him alone, she said, “In my room . . . now you know,” and dropping her eyes again, she began to cry silently.

“Your witness,” Evers said.

“The people waive,” Springer said, and when she just sat there, dabbing at her eyes with her white gloves, “That is all, Miss Green.”

She seemed unable to move or lift her head until the judge said, gently, “You’re excused, Mazie.”

Then she looked to him again and murmured, “Oh, Seton, you do unnerstan’?”

“Yes, Mazie, I understand.”

Poor souls, both of them, Old Doc thought. It must have been that time when his wife was in the hospital so long after that last miscarriage. He was lonely. Probably the only decent and considerate man poor Mazie ever knew. And she’s lonely, for him, and always will be. By God he took it like a man! I’ll bet nobody ever holds it against him. Except maybe his wife. I hope she doesn’t.

This left the people’s case squarely up to Cat, who, in testimony concerning the events leading up to the death of her parents, said that as she was riding for help she saw all of the defendants “pointing the herd” towards the Ballou property, insisting that they “deliberately stampeded the cattle,” which caused the death of her family.

This was flatly denied by Abe Field, Horner, Dorn and Drew, in turn, each testifying that the cattle had “spooked,” for some unknown reason, that they had ridden to warn the Ballous, and when the Ballous had taken no heed, had attempted to turn the stampede at the risk of their lives.

Brad Evers then played his trump card in Adam Field. He testified that he had offered the Ballous “twice what it was worth,” for their property, or for right of way for the association cattle, but that every offer was refused.

“Would you tell the court what you said to me, when as your attorney, I attempted to bargain for better terms with Mr. Ballou?” Evers asked.

“Exactly what I said?”

“As exactly as you can remember.”

“As I recollect I said you was a damn fool,” the witness said. “I said I was plum’ disgusted with you. I said that bein’ sharp was no way to treat a neighbor. I said I was a businessman an’ that bein’ square was always good business in my book.”

“Did you ever at any time give orders, directly or indirectly, to harass or molest the Ballous in any way?”

“I did not.”

“Did you ever participate in, or have any knowledge of any such actions?”

“Never.”

“What were your orders relative to the drive to the railhead?”

“To bypass the Ballou gorge and go the long way ’round by the basin.”

“You were personally on hand to see that these orders were carried out?”

“I was an’ nothin’ would a happened if them steers hadn’t spooked an’ bolted; it was an act a God.”

“What was your first thought when the cattle became unmanageable?”

“The Ballous. I said, ‘Boys, we got to warn them folks,’ an’ we did, but they was so mad they wouldn’t listen. We done our best to save ’em an’ come awful close to gettin’ kilt ourself.”

“Your witness,” Evers said.

Beginning his cross-examination, the prosecutor said, “Would you care to explain just why it was necessary for five men, all leaders of the drive, to leave a ‘spooked an’ boltin’ herd’ of cattle and ride to warn the Ballous?”

“Well, I thought mebbe if it was just me or Abe, or both, they’d think we was just tryin’ to scare ’em.”

“And five armed men wouldn’t?”

“I guess I didn’t have much time to figger ever’thin’ out.”

“Isn’t it possible that if the other four had stayed to help the other riders, the herd might have been turned before it reached the mouth of the gorge?”

“I object to all this hindsight on the part of the people’s attorney!” Evers said.

“I thought we could make ’em listen to reason,” Adam Field said.

“Meaning to yield under pressure?”

“No! I was tryin’ to give ’em a chance!”

“To accept your terms or die?”

“No! To run for their lives!”

“You didn’t try to dicker with them?”

“With them cattle stampedin’?”

“Did you try to dicker?”

“No! Do I look crazy?”

“No, you don’t look crazy, Mr. Field. But rejection and jealousy sometimes do strange things to a man.”

“Objection!”

“Sustained.”

“Didn’t Cathy Morgan humiliate you by running away with Frankie Ballou not an hour after she’d betrothed herself to you?”

“Object!” Evers cried.

“Overruled,” the judge said.

“Yes, she run away,” Adam Field said.

“And didn’t you hate her and the man who took her from you for the rest of their lives?”

“Objection!”

“Your Honor, hatred and jealousy are strong motives for murder.”

“Objection overruled.”

“Hate Cathy?” Adam Field cried. “My God in heaven man, I loved her from the day I first seen her an’ I’ll love her till the day I die!”

And saying the words, he forgot the bitter pain and humiliation of his rejection, wiping out all of the years of bitterness, remembering only the red-haired sweet-smelling woman he’d held in his arms just once and then lost.

“But you hated Frankie Ballou?”

“That was long ago.”

“You hated him enough to forget the code of the West, the code of honor you’d lived by, and to try to shoot him down without giving him his chance to draw and fight on honorable even terms!”

“Objection!”

“Overruled! But put it in the form of a question, Mr. Springer.”

“Did you or did you not attempt to shoot and kill Frankie Ballou while he stepped from a buggy in front of the United States Hotel to help his bride down?”

“Yes,” Adam Field said hoarsely. “God help me, I did!” And then, with a sob, “I was drunk an’ my heart was broke. . . . Oh, Cathy, Cathy, I loved you so!”

“But then you hated her as much as you hated him!”

“No!”

“You didn’t hate them with all the wild rage and bitterness of a broken heart the day they died in each other’s arms under the trampling hoofs of your cattle?”

“No, no, no! Didn’t I try an’ keep tryin’ to pay ’em twice what the place was worth? Didn’t I forget my own interests, my cattle, an’ leave ’em to try to warn them poor folks? Didn’t I risk my life an’ my only son’s, the only livin’ human bein’ I love, to try to turn them cattle back?”

“I’ll ask the questions. . . .”

But Adam Field went on, passionately, “Why, I wouldn’t a harmed a hair a her pritty red head, a bone in her sweet body! Oh Cathy, Cathy, Cathy! I wish I was dead in your place! I wish it was me them cattle tore to pieces! An’ if hangin’ me by the neck till I’m dead’ll bring you back, I’ll tie the rope an’ spring the trap myself, so help me God!”

Too late then, the prosecutor said, “Witness excused.”

“The defense rests!” Evers cried.

“Court is adjourned until ten o’clock tomorrow morning,” Judge Babcock said, tiredly. “The jury will be locked up at the hotel. Gentlemen, I instruct you not to discuss this case among yourselves until you hear the closing arguments of learned counsel and my charge on the law. Good night.”

Coming out of his chambers Judge Babcock saw Springer, the young prosecutor, sitting dejectedly in the courtroom.

“Go get yourself a drink, son,” the judge said.

“I’ve lost,” Springer said. “They’re guilty as hell and I’ve lost.”

“Maybe not, son. Come on, I’ll buy you a drink. I need one myself.”

Crossing towards the Behind the Deuce Saloon, Springer said, “I could have convicted them of second degree,” and when the judge nodded, “You know they’re guilty, Judge!”

“Of course they’re guilty,” the judge said. “But you had no case, son. You did well, but your case was the girl, and she wasn’t enough. What am I going to say to that jury? That jury of their peers! As blind and stupid and bigoted as the defendants. Am I going to say, don’t just weigh the evidence, you damned fools, look behind it, notice how it dovetails, notice how letter-perfect they all are! Am I going to say, look into that girl’s face and you’ll know she’s telling the truth, and look into their black hearts and you’ll know they’re lying, or twisting the truth?”

“No, sir,” Springer said. “You’re going to instruct them to weigh the evidence and to give the defendants the benefit of any reasonable doubt. . . .”

“And blah and blah and blah,” the judge said. “Well, here we are, son,” and to the bartender, “Two of the usual, make them doubles.” And when the drinks came, he raised his and touched Springer’s and said, “To hope for a miracle, to truth, to honor, to justice,” and when they drained their glasses, the bartender was startled half out of his wits when they crashed them into the wall.

Only Old Doc, sitting alone in a corner, and unobserved, understood.

Martha Babcock, the judge’s wife, sat very still in her rocker, in the twilight, waiting for him to come home. Pretty soon he came in. Leaning over, he kissed her on the cheek and she smelled whiskey on his breath.

Martha thought, Whiskey. Man’s best friend when he’s down in the mouth! Will he try to tell me about Mazie Whatsername? Has he had enough Dutch courage to “confess”? Poor foolish lovable man, his conscience hurts him so!

“Shall I light the lamp, Martha?”

“We could sit awhile,” she said, thinking. He is going to tell all; maybe it’ll be easier for him in the dark.

She’s heard, the judge thought. Some old gossip has told her. It must be all over town. It should have come from me. I was a coward; I was afraid I’d lose her and now I’m afraid I have.

“Martha . . . I . . .”

He groped for and found her hand and held it tight, but he couldn’t go on.

Poor foolish lovable provoking boy-man, Martha thought.

“I know, Seton,” she said, gently. “Deacon Jones told his wife, who told her sister-in-law, who was only too happy to drop in and tell me.”

“I’m sorry, Martha.”

There was a sob in his voice.

“For pity’s sake don’t cry about it!” she said, and snatched her hand away.

She thought, How on earth can a man be as much of a man and as brilliant and smart and still be so stupid!

“You don’t understand, Martha.”

“Seton Babcock, you can’t have shared my bed for all but two of the last fifteen years and still think I’m a schoolgirl; I declare, you can be the most exasperating man!”

“You . . . you do understand?”

“Certainly I do. You’re a man with a man’s usual fancies and notions and appetites and now boylike you’ve been caught with jam on your fingers and you think you’ve got a spanking coming to you, but you’ve come to the wrong party.”

“Then you’re not . . . you’re not mad?”

“Of course I’m mad!”

Silly old gossips, feeling sorry for me! she thought.

“I’m sorry.”

“Of course you are, you got caught.”

“Martha, that’s unjust, I . . .”

“All right, Seton, I’m sorry I said that.”

“My conscience has been bothering me; I wanted to tell you, but I . . . Martha, can you ever forgive me?”

“For acting like most any man would when his wife’s sick in the hospital and no earthly good to him for two whole years?”

“My heart was faithful, Martha.”

Oh, fiddlesticks! she thought, but she said, “I know you love me, Seton.”

“Martha, I know I’ve hurt you.”

“Just my pride, a little. It’ll mend.”

She thought, They don’t know it was when I was sick and he was lonely and needed a woman; they think I’m dry and give no pleasure because that’s the way they are!

“I was so damn lonely!”

“I know. I was too. Was she . . . was she what she is now?”

“I suppose so. I didn’t know. She didn’t seem like . . . She was kind and understanding. . . . I guess you think I’m a fool. I’d never had any experience with a . . . I guess I can’t say it, about her. I never gave her anything but flowers. She was always sewing things and I thought that was how she made her living. She sewed such pretty things. . . . She loved to ride horseback. She rode sidesaddle, like a lady. One day her horse went lame and I happened along in the buggy and drove her home and we got to talking and it just happened, like a sharing, between friends, and after that, when I felt lonely . . . but I never saw her again after you came home.”

“And then she was the lonely one,” Martha said, and rising abruptly. “I’ll fix supper.”

“Afraid I haven’t got much appetite,” he said.

“There’s nothing wrong with your appetite, Seton Babcock,” she said, and went in to fix supper.

After supper the judge nodded in his big chair and pretty soon was snoring gently, only Martha always thought of it as purring. Like a kitten, she thought.

Then, as she always did, she said, “Time for bed, Seton.”

He woke with a start and said, as he always did, “I’m not sleepy.”

She finished sewing a button on one of his shirts and when he nodded again, she said, “You’d better lie down awhile.”

“All right, Martha,” he said and stood up. “Maybe I’d better sleep in the spare room?”

Oh, take off that hair shirt! she thought, but she said, “Suit yourself.”

“If I could just be in the same room . . .?”

“Oh, for pity’s sake go to bed!”

He loomed over her, hesitated, and then kissed her on the cheek.

“Good night, Martha.”

The poor lamb, she thought. He doesn’t want to sully my lips with those that have touched a scarlet woman’s! And all just because he got found out!

“Good night, Seton,” she said.

Finishing her chores presently, she went into the bedroom. She was first touched, then amused, and then furious to discover that he was asleep and purring like a kitten on a pallet he’d made for himself on the floor.

She thought, It’s lucky the fool-killers are all men and no brighter than most, or the world would soon be in poor shape for people!

For a moment she toyed with the idea of sleeping in the spare room, but dismissed it quickly, with the thought, No! I’m not going to lock up the cookie jar! But if he wants any sweets from me, he’ll come back to my bed under his own power!

When Hilda didn’t come down to the hotel dining room for dinner, Adam went up to their room. He found her packing her nightgown and the faded wrapper and the shapeless slippers in her Gladstone bag. She didn’t look up.

“The trial ain’t over yet, Hildy,” he said.

“It is for me,” she said.

She closed the bag and picked up her hat.

“You . . . you ain’t leavin’ me, Hildy?”

“I’m leaving your bed.”

“Why, Hildy?”

“You know why.”

“Where you goin’?”

“The ranch. I’ll sleep in the attic room that used to be Abe’s when he was little. I used to pray I could bear you a son like him. I’m glad now I couldn’t. The lies he told! I tried to bring him up decent for you, Adam, and look what he is, a liar and a coward! I’m so ashamed of him!”

“Hildy, the boy was tryin’ to save his neck.”

“Aren’t you ashamed of him, Adam?”

“Mebbe I am, a little.”

“I’m ashamed of you, too.”

“For tryin’ to save my neck?”

“No. I did that too, lying on the Bible! I’m ashamed of you for taking me all these years without love, like your boy taking that crib woman, and all the time loving her.”

“It ain’t so, Hildy. I love you.”

“And I’m ashamed of myself, Adam.”

“You ain’t got no call to be.”

“Yes I have, because I knew, Adam. I knew you were using me, without tenderness, without kindness, even without pleasure; I was just a convenient body.”

“Hildy, please!”

“Two prostitutes you paraded in court.”

“Hildy!”

“Don’t you think everybody knows it, Adam? You told them when you said you’d loved her from the time you saw her and would love her till the day you died. Didn’t that make me a whore?”

“No, Hildy, no. I was fightin’ for my life . . . I . . . I had to put on a show . . . I . . .”

“Was it all just a show, Adam?”

“A course it was.”

“Would you swear that on her grave, Adam Field?”

“I . . . Hildy, I . . . God help me, no.”

“I don’t wish you were dead there in her place, I wish I was,” his wife said and went out.

The jurors filed in slowly. The foreman coughed.

“Have you reached a verdict?” Judge Babcock asked.

“Yes, Your Honor,” the foreman said. “Not guilty.”

In the moment of silence that followed Cat stood up, and facing the defendants said, quietly, “Murderers, we’ll meet again,” and then walked out of the courtroom.

Old Doc and Young Preach met Cat Ballou as she rode out of the hotel stable on her big roan stud. She had changed to pants, shirt and half boots and her carbine was in its boot.

“Where are you going, Cat?” Young Preach asked.

“Mind your own business,” she said.

“It’s my business and the Lord’s if there’s vengeance in your heart,” he said.

“There’s death in my heart,” she said. “Get out of my way.”

“No,” he said, and seized the bridle.

“I said I’d let the law take its course,” she said. “And I have. Let go of that bridle or I’ll ride you down.”

A dozen men had collected.

“I’ll let you go when you promise not to take the law in your own hands or you can trample me to death,” Young Preach said.

Cat stepped from the saddle then and taking the carbine and its boot, went up the dusty street on foot, leaving Young Preach holding her horse. Leading it, he followed, and so did Old Doc and the rapidly growing crowd.

As Adam Field, Abe, Little Jack, Dorn, Drew and Evers rode out of the livery stable barn they saw Cat Ballou coming up the street with the carbine still in its boot. Behind her they saw Young Preach, dragging at the now balky stallion, Old Doc, and the growing crowd.

Reining up briefly, Adam Field said, “Keep your hands off your guns, ever’ one of you, I’ll handle this,” and then he walked his horse slowly towards the advancing girl. The others bunched up and followed closely.

Cat Ballou stopped, planting her feet, waiting, and Young Preach, finally letting go of the stallion’s bridle, cried, “Cat!” and started running towards her.

As Adam Field and his men pulled up, Cat Ballou said, “Adam Field, fill your hand.”

“You can shoot if you’re a mind to, but I’ll draw on no child,” Adam Field said, and then, sharply, “Abe!”

Abe, about to shoot from cover, stayed his hand, and Adam Field thought, Hildy’s right, I’ve raised a coward, and facing Cat Ballou again, he cried, “Go ahead an’ shoot!”

Staring at Adam Field, Cat heard Old Doc say, gently, “Let’s go home, honey.”

Big Red came up and nuzzled her.

“All right, Doc,” she said, and then, to Adam Field and his men, “There’ll be another time.”

As she turned and started back towards the hotel, leading Red, Adam Field and his men spurred their horses and rode past.

Adam’s heart was heavy.

A weaklin’ an’ a coward an’ a whoremonger! he thought. She’s worth a hunderd a him! Brave like her Ma and her Pa. Foolish like ’em both, a-standin’ against six armed men, like they stood agin us an’ all them cattle. Foolish an’ brave like her Ma.

“That was a brave thing you done, Pa,” he heard Abe say.

“Brave? What the hell was brave about it?”

“Why . . . not drawin’ . . . darin’ her to shoot.”

“Son,” Adam said, “if you don’t unnerstan’ that it just ain’t in a girl like that to shoot a man with his gun in its holster, it don’t do me no good to tell you.”

He spurred his horse into a fast canter and rode on ahead of his son and the others, thinking, Not like you, you yellow-livered sneak, and then, remembering the time he’d tried to kill Frankie Ballou with his gun in its holster, he thought, despairingly, like father like son!

A few minutes later Cat, Old Doc and Young Preach rode silently out of Lariat towards the Purple Valley.

From the day Randy Boone told his brother Clay to “watch out” when he grew up, it was more than seven years before he flared up at him again, although he was close to it several times, and Clay’s “bossiness” galled him more and more as the years and his male pride kept building up to an open clash, a showdown test of authority.

This finally came on the day before Adam Field and the others were to go on trial in Lariat for the murder of Cathy and Frankie Ballou.

They had all just finished the noonday meal and were picking their teeth in front of the cookhouse when Barney Grey suggested “a little poker to pass the time.”

Everybody was agreeable but Randy, who said, “I pass,” and headed for the corral.

“Where you going, Ran?” Clay asked.

“If it’s any a your bizness, for a ride,” Randy said.

“Well, don’t get so proddy about it,” Clay said. “I just asked.”

“You think I’m a snot-nosed kid?”

“I’m not quite sure.”

“By Jesus, I’ll tell you where I’m ridin’ to! I’m ridin’ to Lariat where them sons-of-bitches that stampeded the Ballous to death is bein’ tried an’ if you don’t like it . . .”

“Maybe I don’t.”

“You ridin’ with me, Kid?” Randy said, challengingly.

“I reckon not,” said Kid Shelleen.

“I thought you said you’d help ’er?”

“I’ll handle my end, son,” said Kid Shelleen.

“Who the hell are you callin’ son?”

“Shet up,” the Kid said, quietly.

“God damn it, don’t tell me to shet up . . .”

“Shut up,” Clay said, before the Kid could say anything. “Don’t pay the boy any mind, Kid. Don’t get mad at him.”

“I ain’t mad,” said the Kid, and crossing to the cabin where he slept, he went inside.

“You tired of living, Ran, boy?” his brother asked.

“Well why the hell don’t he ride with me to blow them bastards down?”

“I reckon that’s his business, boy.”

“Don’t call me boy all a time!”

“Only when you act like one. You’re not riding anywhere.”

“I’m sick an’ tired a bein’ bossed! I’ll ride anywheres I please an’ be damned to you!”

To the silent men, he demanded, “Who’s ridin’ with me?”

When they all looked to Clay, he shouted, “You offered to ride with her an’ the Kid!”

The men, who had volunteered at the funeral under the spell of both Kid Shelleen and Cat Ballou, again looked to Clay, uneasily.

“Well, you comin’ or ain’t you?” Randy demanded.

“Ran, stop talking and thinking like a baby,” Clay said. “No man in his right mind is going to throw his friends into a battle with the Cattlemen’s Association, let alone the law. It doesn’t make sense.”

“The association men plain murdered one a our own kind an’ his wife an’ made a orphan out a Cat Ballou an’ I say if the law don’t hang ’em for it, by God me an’ the Crowd’s a-goin’ a! Well, boys, you ready?”

Again they looked to Clay.

“I thought I gave the orders around here,” Clay said, mildly.

“Well go ahead an’ give ’em to saddle up!”

“I reckon not.”

“What do you men say?” demanded Randy.

“Clay’s boss,” Barney Grey said.

“All right, you chicken-livered scum, I’m ridin’ alone!”

“No you aren’t, boy,” Clay said.

“Who’s goin’ a stop me?”

“I am,” Clay said. “Go to your cabin.”

“Make me!”

“Go to your cabin, boy, or I’ll take down your pants and tan your rump,” Clay said.

“God damn it to hell, fill your hand!” Randy shouted.

“I reckon not.”

Clay walked slowly towards his brother.

“Give me that hardware, boy.”

“I’ll give it to you!”

Randy drew.

“Butt end first, boy.”

Clay held out his hand. In the door of his cabin, unnoticed by anyone, Kid Shelleen appeared, his six gun in his hand.

“Give it to me, Ran,” Clay said.

For a moment there was death in Randy’s eyes, then he reversed his gun and handed it butt end first to his brother. The Kid holstered his own and quietly stepped down from his doorway.

“Thanks, Ran,” Clay said. “Go to your cabin now.”

Randy went; he didn’t even slam the door. All the rest but Kid Shelleen and Clay filed into the bunkhouse.

“I liked your play,” said Kid Shelleen.

“What the hell’s eating him?” Clay asked.

“Jest feelin’ his oats, I reckon.”

“Cat Ballou!” Clay said.

“No,” said Kid Shelleen.

“Huh?”

“I know Cat Ballou,” the Kid said.

“Oh?”

“If he teches her, I’ll kill him.”

“It’s like that, eh?”

“It’s like that. I’ll kill any man that even looks at ’er wrong.”

Clay thought, He’s in love with her! Wonder if she’s his woman? Maybe I had him wrong all the time. Never thought the Kid was a ladies’ man. So that’s where he’s been nights!

He said, “Look, Kid, if you want the Crowd’s help for your girl, I could maybe change my mind.”

The Kid thought, Let him think she’s my girl, mebbe she’ll be safer if they all do.

He said, “Thanks, I don’t reckon I’ll need no help.”

Hilda Field moved all of her things out of the second-floor bedroom she’d shared with Adam for sixteen years and into the attic room where Abe had slept as a child. Bill Redding, the hand who’d driven her back in the spring wagon, saw her toiling up and down the steps and offered to help her, but she declined his offer with thanks.

He knows I’m not going to sleep with Adam any more, she thought. Everybody will know I’ve left his bed, and I suppose he’ll feel humiliated, and I’m sorry if he is, but I can’t help it.

Just before dusk she heard the men ride in from Lariat. She lighted the lamp and took up her sewing.

Adam went straight up to their bedroom. He had expected to find her gone, but his shoulders sagged when he saw the empty dresser drawers and closets. He went out into the hall and looked up the steep steps to the attic room to the light shining under the door.

In all their married life she had slept in that little room only twice, both times when Abe was little and sick. Adam, looking up those stairs, remembered how he’d missed her those two nights. He had spent many nights away from home, on business in town, or Lariat, or Laramie, and Cheyenne, without missing her especially, but he had been lonely for her the only nights she’d left him alone in their bed.

He went up the steps and knocked on the door and when she called out for him to come in, he did and saw her sitting with her sewing in the glow of the lamplight, as he’d seen her thousands of times, and he thought, But I ain’t really ever seen her a-tall. She was jest there, like the furniture, an’ I forgot she was a woman.

“Hildy, I’m sorry for what I done,” he said.

“I know.”

“I been doin’ a lot a thinkin’.”

“So have I, Adam.”

“Is it too late, Hildy?”

“Yes, it’s too late.”

“You don’t hate me, Hildy?”

“No.”

“But you don’t love me?”

“Not any more.”

“I couldn’t help it, Hildy.”

“I know you couldn’t.”

“Hildy, I want you to know somethin’ . . . I never done like Abe done. I never went to no other woman.”

“You didn’t have to,” she said. “Why buy milk when you can keep a cow?”

“I wish you hadn’t said that, Hildy.”

“I wish I hadn’t either.”

“Hildy, it ain’t true that ever’ time I . . . ever’ time we . . . it ain’t true I wished it was her.”

“Don’t lie to yourself, Adam.”

“Mebbe that’s what I been doin’ for a long time. Mebbe I didn’t really love ’er all that time . . .”

“Yes, you did.”

“Why’d I kill ’er then, Hildy?” he half whispered.

“Did you?”

“You know I did.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Ever’body knowed it all a time, even the jedge an’ the jury, an’ Brad Evers an’ my own men, an’ my own son, ever’body but me, that wouldn’t let hisself.”

“I guess you know what hell is now, Adam.”

“Yes.”

“I do too.”

“Mebbe if we could share it . . .?”

“No, Adam, that’s what hell is, being alone.”

“That’s right. Well, good-by, Hildy.”

“Good-by, Adam.”

She sat for a long time with her sewing untouched in her lap.

Poor Adam, she thought. I ought to try to comfort him. A wife ought to try to share a man’s hell. But I can’t, because I’m not his wife. I never was.

Cat Ballou rose from her bed before sunup. In the dark she put on her riding clothes, and taking her carbine from the rack, she slipped out to the barn. Saddling Red, she led him out the back door, stepped to the saddle and rode towards Diamond F.

Adam Field got up about the same time. He shaved carefully and put on clean underwear, a white shirt, and his black Sunday clothes. Leaving the house without waking anyone, he saddled up and rode out through the main gate.

Reining up, he looked back at the house, and up to the window of the attic room.

Then, looking up the narrow dusty road which cut through the hayfield, he thought, She’ll be comin’ along pritty soon with her carbine. ’Bout sunup, I reckon. She won’t let a hour pass she don’t have to. I could just start slow for Wolf City but she might cut th’ough the field. Reckon I better wait ’bout here.

So that he couldn’t be seen from the house, he rode off the road into the waist-high grass. Stepping down, he pulled the horse down and lay beside him. From there he could see the approach as well as the main house, but he couldn’t be seen.

The rising sun was a pretty sight. Looking towards the house, he saw the men straggling out of the bunkhouse to wash up at the pump. Behind the house, on the knoll where his first wife lay, the sun glinted on her granite tombstone. He tried to remember what she’d looked like, but the only likeness that came to his mind was redheaded Cathy’s.

The men went into the cookhouse for breakfast and then Abe came out of the bunkhouse, dashed a handful of water on his face and went in to join the others.

My son! Big outside an’ little in. If only he’d a been man enough for Cat Ballou! Wish’t I could a lived to grandsire his an’ her sons. Might a made up a little for not sirin’ Cathy’s. I’d give ever’ dollar . . . Oh, what’s the use? Who made him what he is? Me, that’s who. I wunner if it’d a been different if Cathy’d brung him up? I can’t blame Hildy, though. She done the best she could but he was always my boy.

He looked to Hilda’s attic window, wondering if she were up. He pictured her rising and throwing the wrapper over her nightgown and stepping into the shapeless slippers, and then lowering the blind, a ritual he’d seen thousands of times. He saw the blind of the attic window being pulled down and knew she was up.

Funny thing ’bout habit, he thought. Who’s goin’ a see her th’ough that attic winder when she takes off her clo’es? Reckon nobody but God an’ me ever saw her nekkid. I didn’t really ever see her nekkid, myself. All I ever seen when I looked at ’er was another woman, a redheaded woman that broke my heart. I wunner if all women look alike with no clo’es on? I never seen but two an’ I don’t remember what they really looked like. That Jedge Babcock, a-lustin’ after that crib woman! I bet his wife give him hell. Damn old whited sepulcher! I done wrong but I never had no woman I wasn’t wedded to! Wunner what that crib woman was like? Abe knows. He’s no-count. I hope Cat Ballou don’t kill him though. A man don’t like to think a his line jest endin’. I sure hope she’ll be satisfied jest killin’ me. I’m the man’s at fault. Hope I git a chance to tell ’er . . . there she comes!

She rode around the bend in the road and reined up, looking towards the house. Adam spoke softly to his horse and went up into the saddle as the horse struggled to his feet. Riding out into the road, Adam waited until she pulled up at twenty paces.

“Will you draw on a child now, Adam Field?” said Cat Ballou.

“I’ll draw,” he said, “but fust . . .”

“Don’t argue, fill your hand!”

As he clawed for his Colt, Adam saw her unsheathe the carbine with one swift smooth motion. As he fired just over her head, he heard her carbine bark and at the same instant felt the jarring impact of the slug in his belly. The Colt slipped from his hand. He tried to hold himself in the saddle for a moment, to ask her to spare his son, but only a hoarse croak came from his lips and then he went slack and tumbled into the road.

Cat Ballou saw men running from the cookhouse, and then she saw Abe, and brought him into her sights, but before she could pull the trigger, he jumped behind one of the other men and she held her fire. There was no sign of Little Jack Horner. Cat waited, gun ready, for a moment until Abe, using the other man for a shield, had backed into the cookhouse; then she swung big Red and rode around the bend in the road at a gallop.

As the hands hurried towards their fallen boss, Abe and Little Jack Horner, who had jumped back inside the cookhouse when he saw her, came out and followed the others. Hilda, who had heard the shots, looked out of the attic window and saw the men group themselves about Adam’s body.

When she reached the spot, Abe was pointing excitedly at the place where Adam had lain with his horse, and saying, “That’s where she laid a-hidin’! She bushwhacked ’im!”

“Cat Ballou?” she asked.

“Yes!”

“There were two shots,” Hilda said.

“Reckon she missed once,” Abe said. “Keep out a that grass, you men, you want a trample the evidence! I want the sheriff to see how she done it, the murderin’ bitch!”

“Take him into the house,” Hilda said. “Somebody get the undertaker and Young Preach.”

As several men picked up the body, Little Jack Horner saw Adam’s Colt lying where he had fallen, and picking it up, put it in his pocket.

“One a you men ride to town for the unnertaker an’ the preacher an’ the sheriff.” Abe said. “You go, Jode.”

“What’s a matter with you goin’?” Jode, the man Abe had used for a shield, asked.

“An’ give her a chance to bushwhack me! Saddle up, man!”

“I reckon I don’t work here no more,” Jode said.

“You can’t quit till the end a the month!”

“The hell I can’t, I jest did,” Jode said.

“Please, somebody go for the undertaker and the preacher,” Hilda said.

“I’ll go, mam,” said a tall man named Fred Randall, “seein’ it’s you that asks it.”

“You tell the sheriff I said arrest Cat Ballou for murder right away, ’fore she kills me an’ Little Jack,” Abe said.

“I’ll tell him what you said,” Fred Randall said, and went towards the barn.

They put Adam Field on his bed. Hilda raised his head and put a pillow under it and then went up to her attic room. When Abe and Little Jack were alone with the body, Little Jack took Adam’s Colt from his pocket, and breaking it, ejected the empty shell.

“Reckon she did give ’im a chance, Abe.”

Picking up the empty shell, Abe said, “Gimme me that gun.”

“What for?”

“To clean an’ reload, you damn fool!” Abe said.

“She didn’t bushwhack ’im, Abe. He must a been waitin’ there in the grass hisself.”

“You crazy, man?” Abe demanded. “Don’t you know if she ain’t locked up we’re next! You want a git murdered like Pa?”

“You know she didn’t murder nobody.”

“Didn’t she?” Abe said, and pointed his father’s Colt at Little Jack’s middle.

“You won’t have that gun in your hand when the sheriff gits here.”

“Ain’t you got a lick a sense?” Abe demanded. “She’ll kill us both an’ Zeke an’ Blackie too!”

“Not ’thout givin’ us a chance to draw.”

“Well, she give Pa a chance, an’ he’s a hell of a lot faster’n you or me, an’ look what happen to him! What chance you goin’ a have when she th’ows down on you?”

Little Jack sighed.

“Put down your Pa’s gun, Abe, an’ clean an’ reload it.”

“You won’t say nothin’ to the sheriff about it bein’ fired?”

“I reckon not, I reckon I’m a rabbit too.”

“Don’t say you reckon not! Say you’re goin’ a back me up!”

“I’ll back you up, all right,” Little Jack said. “I reckon I never was much of a man anyway.”

When Old Doc got up and found no breakfast ready and no sign of Cat, he feared the worst, and when he discovered that the carbine was gone from the rack and the big roan stud from the barn, he knew where she had gone, but it was too late to do anything but wait.

I couldn’t have stopped her anyhow, he thought.

He saw her when she rode in and waited for her in the parlor.

When she came in, she said, before he could open his mouth, “I killed Adam Field awhile ago; he died game. That’s one down and four to go.”

Fred Randall walked into the sheriff’s office a few minutes later and said, “Cat Ballou’s killed the boss. Abe says it was murder. He says she bushwhacked him.”

“Did she?”

“I dunno. He says you got a arrest ’er.”

“I ain’t arrestin’ ’er till he signs the complaint,” the sheriff said, and he thought, If ever a man deserved killin’, it was Adam Field; I hope she’s lit a shuck ’fore I git back. “You git the preacher an’ I’ll git the unnertaker,” he said.

Fred Randall rode to Young Preach’s house and said, “The boss is dead an’ the widder wants you should bring the Book an’ pray over him a little.”

She’s killed him, Young Preach thought with a heavy heart. May God have mercy on her soul!

Cat Ballou cleaned and oiled her carbine and then she ate a good breakfast.

Adam Field was buried on the knoll beyond the house beside his first wife while Young Preach read the inevitable Twenty-third Psalm, and the widow thought, He wore his black Sunday suit and a clean shirt to be buried in; he wanted to die; rest in peace, Adam, you’ve had your hell.

Afterwards the sheriff questioned everybody, taking careful notes with the stub of a pencil. He examined the crumpled grass, where, Abe and Little Jack Horner insisted, Cat had lain in wait to shoot Adam down, and made a crude map to show its relationship with the road and the house. He also examined, and took for evidence, the fully loaded Colt.

“It’s a plain case a murder in the first degree, Sheriff,” Abe said.

“If you want a sign a complaint, ride back with me,” the sheriff said.

“You ain’t arrested that wil’cat yet?”

“I don’t arrest nobody without no complaint.”

“You’ll pertect me from that . . .”

“I’ll pertect you.”

When they got back to town, the undertaker dropped off at his place, while the others went to the sheriff’s office.

“S’posin’ that unnertaker warns her you’re goin’ a make a arrest?” Abe demanded.

“He wouldn’t do a thing like that, it’s agin the law,” the sheriff said, hoping he would, if she hadn’t already “lit out.”

When Abe had signed the murder complaint, the sheriff asked, “You want a come with me to see I do my dooty?”

“I ought a git back an’ comfort the widder,” Abe said.

Scared a his hide! the sheriff thought.

Young Preach went with the sheriff to the old Morgan place. They found Cat Ballou and Old Doc in the parlor. She was wearing the plain dress she’d worn at the trial.

“I got a arrest you, Cat, Abe Field’s signed a murder complaint,” the sheriff said. “Says you bushwhacked his father.”

“You know I wouldn’t bushwhack any man,” Cat said.

“Mebbe I do, Cat, an’ I hope the jury will. They got a strong hand, though. They say you laid a-waitin’ in the tall grass an’ shot him down without no chance to draw.”

“Who says that?”

“Abe’n Little Jack.”

“They lie because they know they’re next,” Cat said. “He fired first and then I shot him.”

“You want a change your clo’es?” the sheriff asked.

“No, I’m ready,” Cat said.

“Could I speak to her alone?” Young Preach asked.

“I reckon.”

“I guess I’d better look for a good lawyer,” Old Doc said.

“Ain’t no lawyer in this town ’cept Brad Evers,” the sheriff said.

“I was thinking of Lariat, or maybe Laramie,” Old Doc said, reaching for his gun and his hat. “Keep your chin up, honey, like a Morgan and a Ballou.”

He kissed her and went out to saddle his horse.

“Take your time, folks, I’ll wait out on the porch,” the sheriff said.

He stepped out onto the porch and closed the door. He wondered whether Old Doc wasn’t out there saddling her big roan stud to “light out” on. He hoped he was and that Cat would duck.

I couldn’t ketch that big roan in a hunderd years, he thought. Reckon nobody’d ’spect me to. Wunner if Young Preach’ll try an’ stop ’er?

Inside Young Preach looked at the daughter of the only woman he’d ever loved and said, gently, “Get down on your knees, Cat.”

“No,” she said.

“Won’t you ask the good Lord for His mercy, child?”

“I’m not a child any more; I’m a woman but I’ll take what ever has to come on my feet like a man.”

“Father forgive her, for she knew not what she did.”

“I knew what I was doing,” she said. “I was executing a murderer.”

“Thou shalt not kill!”

She didn’t answer.

For a long time Young Preach looked into her steady unrepentant eyes and when he pleaded, “Please let me ask the Lord’s mercy for you,” she dropped them and bowed her head, and out of simple consideration for him, said, “You may ask for the Lord’s mercy if you wish, old friend.”

When Old Doc reached Lariat the next afternoon, it was Saturday and the courthouse was closed, so he rode to Judge Babcock’s house to ask his advice about a lawyer. He found the judge and Martha working in the garden. He told them what had happened.

“I was afraid she’d do it,” the judge said.

“She only did what the law should have done,” Martha said.

“They say she bushwhacked him,” Old Doc said.

“You know better, Doc!” Martha said.

“Of course I do. I wondered if you could recommend a good lawyer, Judge.”

“That I can,” the judge said. “Sam Springer!”

“But Sam’s the prosecutor!”

“Not any more. He quit. Took it mighty hard seeing justice miscarry the way it did. Took me pretty hard too.”

“Seton wanted to quit too,” Martha said. “Boylike! I asked him where he thought they were going to find another judge that could hold a candle to him for knowledge of the law, not to mention honor and incorruptibility.”

“Martha said it was my duty to stay on the bench,” the judge said.

“Duty fiddlesticks!” Martha said. “You never heard me use that mealymouthed word in my life. I said it was just plain common sense, that’s all I said.”

“Anyhow, I didn’t quit,” the judge said, “duty or no duty. Sam agreed with Martha, by the way. He’s gone fishing but he’ll be back Monday and then he’s going to hang out his shingle and go into private practice. You couldn’t ask for a better man, Doc.”

“I’ll wait and talk to Sam,” Old Doc said. “Luckily, there are no babies due in my neck of the woods for at least a week. I wonder what happened nine months ago this week; all the wives must have gone on strike!”

The judge looked shocked but Martha laughed heartily.

“Maybe it was the roosters!” she said.

“Martha!” the judge said.

Poor darling, Martha thought. Poor innocent lamb, even if he did consort with that woman. I had no business getting sick and leaving him to get into mischief. I knew I couldn’t have a healthy baby and I was a fool to try. Oh, I wish he’d stop punishing himself for just being a normal male. Why can’t he realize that fool notion of his to sleep on a pallet is just punishing me!

“Men are such idiots!” she said, and went into the house.

“Now why did she blow up like that?” Judge Babcock asked.

“I don’t know, your Honor,” Old Doc said, “but I herewith plead guilty as charged!”

Barney Grey was the only man who rode into Wolf City from the Roost that Saturday evening. Randy had wanted to go but Clay had put his foot down and everybody else had been locking horns in a whopping poker game.

Barney Grey didn’t get to Crib Row, for the first thing he heard was that the five association men had been acquitted and that Cat Ballou was in the Wolf City jail, awaiting transfer on Monday to Lariat to stand trial for the murder of Adam Field. Barney Grey turned right around and rode back where he’d come from.

The game was going strong when he burst in with the news. Kid Shelleen threw in his hand, a bobtailed flush he was trying to make look like all blue, and stood up.

So did Randy Boone, who said quietly, “I’ll thank you for my gun now, Clay.”

“Just what do you think you’re going to do?” Clay asked, just as quietly.

“Break Cat Ballou out a that jail,” Randy said.

“I’ll leave it to Kid Shelleen,” Clay said. “Want any help, Kid?”

“I reckon I could use a little unner the circumstances,” the Kid said.

“Here’s your gun, Ran,” Clay said. “Saddle up, everybody, we’re all taking a little ride.”

“You don’t have to come,” Randy said.

“I’m still ruling this Roost,” Clay said.

He didn’t relish the job ahead very much, thought it might turn out to be a “fool play,” but he knew he couldn’t hold Randy back this time, short of hog-tying him, and he had to look after him.

A few minutes later Clay and Kid Shelleen led the Crowd down the steep trail and by that time Clay had forgotten his misgivings and felt good about riding again. As always, action stirred his blood.

Cat Ballou stood at the barred window in the jail above the sheriff’s office, looking up to the little red schoolhouse on the hill. They were holding the first Saturday-night dance of the season up there and she could see the lights and, just barely, hear the music.

She remembered her first and only grown-up dance, and the stranger she’d kissed and then slapped, and, for the first time in a long time she began to wonder about him again.

It’s funny he never even tried to see me or find me, she thought. Maybe I shouldn’t have slapped him so hard. Still, a man who’d give up that easy couldn’t have been much of a man! I’ll bet Clay Boone wouldn’t ever give up if he took a fancy to a woman. But then he wouldn’t be so clumsy. Or so sneaky!

Thinking about Clay Boone stirred her blood for the first time since the terrible day she’d seen her mother and father go down under the rending hoofs, and, looking up to the schoolhouse and wondering if he ever went there as Kid Shelleen and her father had gone in the old days, she forgot about vengeance for the moment and thought wistfully of love.

The staccato sound of hoofbeats wrenched her from her revery. A man rode in from Purple Valley way at the gallop, and flinging himself from his horse in front of the United States Hotel, hurried inside. After a moment men came pouring out.

“What’s up?” a man on the sidewalk cried.

“They’re a-comin’, Kid Shelleen an’ a whole passel a riders!” someone shouted.

“A-comin’ for Cat Ballou!” another voice cried.

Light flooded out in the street as the door to the sheriff’s office was opened and then she saw a column of men riding slowly down Main Street, silent shadowy men, two abreast. The people made a path for them and they rode through it and for a moment there was no sound except the pad of hoofs in the dust.

When they were in front of the jail they spread out into a thin semicircle, so that they were just outside the glow from the sheriff’s office, with each man in the dark, facing it.

Then Kid Shelleen rode into the light, and, looking up to her window, called, “Are you there, Cat?”

“I’m here.”

“We come to take you out a there,” said Kid Shelleen.

“I should have known you’d come, Kid.”

“Sheriff, we don’t want no gun play,” said Kid Shelleen. “Jest th’ow down your iron peaceable an’ nobody’ll git hurt.”

She saw the sheriff’s gun arc into the light and fall at the feet of the Kid’s horse.

“I’ll bring her down, Kid,” she heard the sheriff say.

“Wait, please!” she called. “I love you for coming for me, Kid, but I can’t run away as if I’ve done anything wrong. Old Doc’s getting a lawyer in Lariat or Laramie and we’re going to fight.”

“They beat you once in court!” Randy Boone yelled, and rode into the glow of light beside Kid Shelleen.

“He’s right, Cat!” someone shouted from the crowd. “They’ll railroad you! Ride with Kid Shelleen!”

As a chorus of assenting shouts went up, the Kid raised his hand and shouted, “Hush ever’body! I want a hear Cat Ballou.”

“Breaking jail would be like admitting guilt,” Cat said. “I killed him fair and square and I want no man saying I bushwhacked him!”

“We know you didn’t,” said Kid Shelleen.

“I want everybody to know!” she said.

Then a tall man, wide of shoulder, deep of chest, a man who wore his light brown hair long like a mountain man, rode out of the shadows and into the light and squarely into her heart, for before he even spoke she knew him for the wild free lover of the Kid’s stories and of her dreams, and when he spoke his voice was like organ music.

His bright hair gleamed in the lamplight as he swept off his hat, and looking up to the bars, said, “You’ve got sand and sense, Cat Ballou, and I take off my hat to any man or woman that’s got either. We’re riding out now for the Roost, but if you ever need us, just send the word and we’ll come riding,” and then he and Kid Shelleen swung their horses and led the silent men back up the street and out onto the road to the Purple Valley.

She stood speechless in the window, wanting to cry out to him to come back, to take her with him, but it was too late. Standing there, clutching the bars, watching the shadowy riders blend into the night, her heart was purged of hate, as Young Preach had wished, for it was too full of love to hold it.

Then she heard the sheriff’s voice saying, “Cat, you’re plum’ loco. You should a let them outlaws break you out a this jailhouse.”

“I wish I had now, oh, how I wish I had! Did you see him, Sheriff, tall in the lamplight?”

“I seen him all right.”

“But did you ever see the likes of him before!”

“Why, I seen Kid Shelleen lots a times.”

“Not him, but the man with the bright shining hair worn long like a mountain man! You must have seen him, Sheriff! Tell me it was no dream this time! Tell me that was Clay Boone!”

“Sure . . . say, you teched or somethin’?”

Hugging herself, she said, “Touched? Of course I’m touched. Sheriff, touched by the moon! I’m in love!”

Old Doc had a baby to deliver and Young Preach a sermon, so they didn’t get to Lariat until the evening before Cat Ballou’s trial for the murder of Adam Field was to begin. They found the town crowded, with the hotels and the boardinghouses all filled. Everybody seemed to be on hand and most of them, except for the Cattlemen’s Association crowd, seemed to be sympathetic to Cat Ballou.

They found Sam Springer at his office. While not underestimating the power and influence of the association, he was confident of winning an acquittal.

“On the theory that injustice can’t strike twice in the same courtroom?” Old Doc asked.

“On the theory that anybody who looks into that girl’s eyes can see she’d never skulk in the grass and shoot a man down without a chance,” Springer said. “Besides, everybody in this town knows she challenged him right in front of the livery stable, with five armed men at his back.”

He offered to put Old Doc up and said Martha Babcock had said she’d be happy to have Young Preach use her spare room. Old Doc and Young Preach found Martha taking an apple pie from the oven.

“Of course we’ll put you up, Young Preach,” she said. “I’m going to take this pie to Cat Ballou over in the jail. You men want to come with me?”

Both said they did.

When they got to the jail, Sheriff Bascom, who was known as an association man, reluctantly agreed to let Martha and Old Doc go up, “seein’ it’s the jedge’s wife an’ the prisoner’s grandpop, though it’s after visitin’ hours.”

“But you can’t go up, Young Preach,” he said. “She said she don’t want a see no preacher, an’ I don’t want that wil’cat a hollerin’ an’ disturbin’ the peace.”

“You wait, Young Preach, and see me home,” Martha said. “Just give me the keys, Sheriff. No use in you dragging your lumbago up those steps.”

“I reckon it’s all right . . .”

“Seeing I’m the jedge’s wife,” Martha finished for him. “Of course it’s all right.”

She handed Old Doc the still hot pie, took the sheriff’s keys, unlocked the barred door leading to the stairs, and, taking Old Doc’s arm, went up the steps to the second floor where Cat’s cell was located.

They found Cat sitting on her cot.

“Look who’s here, honey,” Martha said.

“Doc, you ought to be home looking after the sick,” Cat said.

“I’ll have you know I’ve got an assistant,” Old Doc said. “A young fellow just out of medical school by the name of Johansen, who, needless to say, is now officially Young Doc, and will be until I cash in my chips, which I hope won’t be until he’s unlearned most of what he’s been taught about bringing kids into the world.”

“It’s time you got somebody to help you,” Martha said.

“He’ll learn in time,” Old Doc said. “Aren’t you hungry, Cat?”

“I’m always hungry,” she said, and began to eat the pie.

“Cat’s a fine cook herself,” Old Doc said. “As some lucky young fellow is going to find out one of these days.”

“I’ll never be able to make apple pie like this,” Cat said. “I’m pretty good with a damson though,” and she thought, I’ll cook damson pie for him and wash and iron his clothes and make his bed and warm it. I’ll be his housekeeper and his lover and his wife.

She said, “Old Doc, what happened to my mother’s and my father’s mother’s wedding ring?”

“I have it, honey. I was saving it for you.”

“Could you bring it to me?”

“I’ve got it right here,” Old Doc said.

He took the ring, wrapped in tissue paper, from his wallet and handed it to her. She took it out of the tissue paper and looked at it.

“I’ll wear it when my dreams come true,” she said.

“Sure you will.”

Unfastening the fine gold chain necklace Old Doc had given her for her birthday, she put the ring on it, and refastening the necklace, let the ring hang between her breasts.

They visited for a while longer, not talking about the case until it was time to go, when Cat said, quietly, “If they convict me . . .”

“They won’t, honey. Sam Springer says . . .”

“If they convict me,” she said, “there’s something I want you to do, Doc, right away, right away. I want you to ride to the mountaintop, the mountaintop where I was born, and . . .”

“And tell Kid Shelleen,” Old Doc said. “They won’t convict you, Cat, but if the worst happens, I’ll tell the Kid and we’ll ride and the hell with doctoring, let Young Doc take over; I always wanted to be an outlaw anyhow.”

“Not Kid Shelleen,” Cat said, and her eyes shone as she said, “Ride to the mountaintop and tell the tall man with the shining hair they call Clay Boone that Cat Ballou is waiting for him to come and take her from the shadow of the gallows tree to the mountaintop, our mountaintop near the stars! Tell him that I love him, love him with all my body and all my heart. Just tell Clay Boone that and he’ll come riding; they’ll never hang me while my wild free lover breathes!”

Staring at her, Old Doc thought, She looks like a bride! I didn’t even know she knew the man!

And Martha thought, Sending for her sweetheart to ride out of the West! And he’ll come, any man worth his salt would!

“I’ll tell him, Cat,” Old Doc said, “if the worst comes.”

“Mind you tell him exactly what I said.”

“I’ll tell him, Cat, but don’t you worry, Sam Springer says . . .”

“Worry? Why, Doc, I was never less worried in my life.”

Ed Carmody, who had succeeded Sam Springer as prosecutor, wasted no time in building the people’s case against Cat Ballou.

Abe Field and Little Jack Horner testified in turn that she had lain in wait in the tall grass beside the road and had bushwhacked Adam Field when he rode out.

Adam’s Colt was produced, fully loaded, and both witnesses swore it was in that condition when found in the road where Field had fallen.

Vigorous cross-examination by Sam Springer failed to shake their testimony in the slightest.

Cat admitted killing, she called it “executing,” Adam Field, but insisted that she had lived up to “the code of the West,” and had not fired, and then only once, until after he had drawn and fired first.

Technically, of course, it was murder whether or not she’d lived up to “the code of the West.” It was obvious, from her own testimony and that of several other witnesses, that the killing was planned and premeditated, but the “code,” while it had no legal sanction, was so much a part of the mores of the frontier that there is little doubt that she would have been acquitted, had not the jury been convinced that she had in fact violated it.

Sam Springer was brilliant and eloquent for the defense. He made much of the fact that Cat had braved Adam Field and five other armed men in front of the livery stable, the day they were acquitted of the murder of her parents, and had held her fire when Adam Field refused to draw against her.

He also made much, both on cross-examination and in his summation, of the fact that Abe Field and Little Jack Horner were “afraid for their lives,” and had had plenty of motive and opportunity to rig the case against her by “tampering” with Adam Field’s gun to back up their story that it had not been fired.

These were telling points and might well have instilled a reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors, but after a dozen witnesses had testified that Adam Field was a crack shot with a Colt, who could puncture a playing card at twenty paces nine times out of ten, they simply couldn’t believe Cat’s story that he’d fired at her first and missed.

Defender Springer attempted to dispose of this point by suggesting that Adam Field had deliberately missed in order to expiate his “crime against this child’s parents,” but this seemed too far fetched to merit serious consideration by men who’d known, or thought they’d known, the kind of man Adam Field was, even after the widow, Hilda Field, a surprise defense witness, gave her support to this theory.

Sam Springer, in the face of vigorous objections by the people’s attorney, was able to get little of her testimony into the record. Her testimony that Adam had admitted, the last time she saw him alive, that he was responsible for the deaths of Cathy and Frankie Ballou, was stricken, as was her statement, “He wore his black suit to be buried in: he wanted to die.” About all that was allowed to stand was her testimony that he had been “sad” and had said good-by to her.

This having failed, Sam Springer took another tack, bringing up the fact that Adam Field had once missed a man at twenty paces, none other than Cat’s father, Frankie Ballou, the day he tried to shoot him down in front of the United States Hotel as he was about to help his bride from a buggy.

But Prosecutor Carmody was ready for this gambit, with old Ex-Sheriff Ed Mace, who testified that Adam Field was “half-crazy drunk” that morning and in no condition for accurate marksmanship, and with testimony of several witnesses that Field had begun to perfect his speed and skill only after that event.

The case went to the jury late in the afternoon of the second day of the trial. Since Judge Babcock had been obliged to charge that if the evidence showed the defendant’s guilt beyond any reasonable doubt, they must, under the law, return a verdict of guilty in the first degree, the jury, although reluctant to send any woman to the gallows, could see no other course but to return such a verdict.

The foreman, Ray Matson, a small local rancher who had no love for the Cattlemen’s Association, in reporting the verdict, did urge a lesser penalty, “if possible under the law,” but since clemency could only come in the form of a commutation by the governor of the territory, there was nothing Judge Babcock could do but sentence her to hang.

“The defendant will stand and face the court,” he said, sorrowfully.

As Cat stood up, expressionless, Martha, hurrying to speak to Old Doc, saw him get up slowly, his hand going to the handle of his gun.

“Doc!” she stage-whispered sharply.

Taking his hand from his gun, he followed her, at her gesture, out into the corridor.

“Thank you, Martha,” he said. “I don’t know what came over me. I just wanted to kill those lying sons-of . . .”

“Bitches,” Martha said. “A lot of good you’d do Cat Ballou on a slab or on the gallows beside her! You expect me to ride sidesaddle to fetch her man!”

“No, Martha, I’ll fetch Clay Boone and Kid Shelleen and all the Crowd and I’ll ride with them and we’ll break her out of that jail or die trying.”

“And die trying!” Martha said. “I declare, Doc, I never thought you were as stupid as some other men I could name, but you haven’t got a lick of sense either. You want to ride straight into a trap? Don’t you realize they’ll be expecting those outlaws after what happened in Wolf City! Why they’ll deputize every association rider and put them in every window in Courthouse Square to shoot you down like ducks!”

“I guess I am stupid, all right,” Old Doc said. “What do you propose, Martha?”

“I’ve got a real cute plan,” Martha said, and told him what it was.

Cat Ballou stood before the bar of justice without a quiver and when she heard Judge Babcock say, “. . . to hang by the neck until you are dead and may God have mercy on your soul,” she just smiled faintly, for her heart was saying, They’ll never hang me while he breathes!

On the Roost they were playing stud, table stakes, and Kid Shelleen was winning for a change, when the shots came that signaled the approach of someone up the steep trail.

Kid Shelleen tossed in his hand, bullets back to back, and, standing, crossed to the bunkhouse door and opened it. Randy joined him there and then Clay, and the rest crowded behind them, all watching the tall burned spruce at the trail’s end. Presently a man rode into sight.

“It’s Old Doc, they’ve convicted ’er!” said Kid Shelleen.

“Wait,” Clay Boone said, grasping the Kid’s arm.

They watched silently then as Old Doc rode into the glow of light slanting from the open door and reined up, saying, “Clay Boone there?”

“Here,” Clay said, stepping down.

“What is it, what’s happened?” Randy demanded. “Did they . . .”

“I want to talk to Clay Boone . . . alone,” Old Doc said.

“The hell with that!” Randy cried, also stepping down.

Still standing in the doorway, Kid Shelleen said, “Say what you got to say, Doc.”

“It’s kind of personal,” Old Doc said.

“Say it, Doc,” Clay said.

“All right. Clay. They convicted her on the first ballot.”

“What the hell are we waitin’ for, let’s go!” Randy cried.

“Be quiet, son,” said Kid Shelleen.

“God damn it, I . . .”

“You heard him, Ran, be quiet,” Clay said. “Go on, Doc.”

“It’s a hanging matter,” Old Doc said.

“They won’t hang ’er,” said Kid Shelleen.

“Damn right they won’t!” said Randy.

“Of course there’ll be an appeal,” Old Doc said. “There’s a chance she’ll get a new trial.”

“You know that wouldn’t do no good,” said Kid Shelleen.

“I know it wouldn’t,” Old Doc said. “There’s also a chance that because of her age and sex, the governor will commute the sentence to life imprisonment.”

“They’ll never fence her in,” said Kid Shelleen. “You got any more to say, Doc?”

“This is the personal part,” Old Doc said.

“Say it,” Clay said.

“All right,” Old Doc said. “I’ll tell you exactly what she said with her eyes shining like a bride’s; I’ll never forget it. She said, ‘Ride to the mountaintop and tell the tall man with the shining hair they call Clay Boone that Cat Ballou is waiting for him to come and take her from the shadow of the gallows tree to the mountaintop, our mountaintop near the stars! Tell him that I love him, love him with all my body and all my heart. Just tell Clay Boone that and he’ll come riding; they’ll never hang me while my wild free lover breathes!’ ”

“You son-of-a-bitch!” Randy cried and Kid Shelleen’s eyes were icy as he said, “Fill your hand, Clay.”

Clay stared at Kid Shelleen, not even seeing him, trying to picture this girl he’d never seen saying the words which had set his blood to racing.

“I said fill your hand,” said Kid Shelleen.

“Two dead men won’t be much help to Cat Ballou,” Clay said.

“I told you I’d kill any man . . .”

“That touched her or even looked at her wrong,” Clay said. “I never have, Kid.”

“Your word?”

“My word.”

Slowly Kid Shelleen’s eyes lost their icy glare.

I done it myself, he thought. Them stories I told. He never seen her in his life, but she seen him, all right, first in them stories and then there in the lamplight in front a the jail, tall like I told her, a proud free stud of a man.

He said, “I talk too much.”

“I’m sorry, Kid,” Clay said.

“She ain’t my girl,” said Kid Shelleen. “Never was an’ never could a bin. I let you think it, hopin’ to pertect ’er.”

“I’ll protect her,” Clay Boone said. “I’m coming, Cat Ballou; they’ll never hang you while I breathe; I swear it.”

“I’ll ride with you,” said Kid Shelleen.

“I’d be proud,” Clay said. “Saddle up, men!”

“No!” Old Doc said. “That’s what they expect,” and he told them of Martha Babcock’s warning and of her “cute” plan.

“She’s the jedge’s wife,” Kid Shelleen said.

“Do you trust her, Doc?” Clay asked.

“With my granddaughter’s life,” Old Doc said.

“That’s good enough for me,” Clay said.

Old Doc and Clay rode first to Wolf City, where they saddled Cat’s big stud, Red, and bundling up her boots, pants and shirt, lashed the bundle behind Clay’s saddle. Then they rode out towards Lariat, at the outskirts of which Old Doc was going to wait with Cat’s horse.

They had been gone from the Roost a couple of hours and the moon was coming up when Kid Shelleen, sitting on the steps of his unlighted cabin, saw Randy Boone ride out of the corral and head for the trail. Stepping out into the moonlight, the Kid waited until he came up.

“Where you headin’ for, Randy?”

“I’ll come an’ go as I please!”

“You want a butt in an’ spile Clay’s play?”

“Who the hell’s buttin’ in? I’m ridin’ for Wolf City to git drunk an’ have me a woman.”

“I wouldn’t mind gittin’ a little lickered myself,” the Kid said. “Reckon I’ll ride with you.”

They rode in silence down the trail and along the Purple Valley Road and into town and on to Cheyenne Rose’s on Crib Row. Two painted girls bore down on them.

“Thanks just the same, I’ll jest take a cigar,” the Kid said.

“Later,” Randy said, and went to the bar.

The Kid took a bottle and sat down at a table, shaking his head as another girl came up.

Randy had a couple of drinks, thinking, They’ll look better soon’s I git a few shots in my innards.

He was surprised to find himself still critical after a couple more. Every one of them looked gray and unhealthy under the paint. Unconsciously, he was comparing them to the fresh and glowing youth of Cat Ballou.

Without consciously bringing her to mind, he remembered her as he’d seen her, arguing with the preacher in the hallway at the schoolhouse, remembered her light grace dancing in his arms, remembered her small firm breasts against him as he got her into the corner, the sweet smell of her, the warmth of her parted lips.

I got off on the wrong foot, he thought. Gave her a feel the way you would a floozey. She’s no floozey. She’s warm an’ willin’, but no trollop. If I’d played my cards right . . .

Wunner when she took such a shine to Clay? Mebbe he lied when he said he’d never even seen her. No, he don’t lie. I jest don’t unnerstan’ it! Damn Clay’s eyes!

To forget her he took another drink, a double, and when one of the girls sidled up to him, she looked better, and he accepted her invitation to go upstairs.

“Gimme a dollar, honey,” she said, and when he gave it to her, she threw herself on the rumpled bed, but he found he didn’t want her at all, didn’t even want to look at her, and hurried out of the room, hearing her say, “What’s a matter, think I got smallpox or somethin’!”

Randy, descending the stairs, thought, Fust time I ever turn down a woman in my life. Mebbe I’m gittin’ old.

But he was very far from getting old, although he was just a little older.

He didn’t quite realize it himself, but he wanted no woman but Cat Ballou, nor ever would again.

He got himself a bottle at the bar and went over and sat down beside Kid Shelleen. They drank until dawn without ever saying a word to each other and then rode back to the Roost the same way.

Cat Ballou stood at the barred window of her cell looking down into quiet Main Street at the long shadow cast by the gallows next to the courthouse.

Hilda Field sat rocking and sewing in the parlor of the little house she’d taken the morning of the day she’d testified in defense of Cat Ballou. She was making a new dress for Martha Babcock and humming as she sewed. There was a little sign in front of the house that read, “Hilda Field, Dressmaker,” and, already, she had all the work she could handle.

Nicest bunch of women in this town I ever met, she thought. Seems like every one of them wants pretty new things, or things refitted, and they seem to like the way I do it. I guess it’s the job I was really cut out for. I love to make nice things for nice people.

She had known she was burning her bridges when she went to Sam Springer and offered to testify, saying, “I know that girl didn’t bushwhack Adam, and if I can help her in any way I want to.”

After court that day, Abe Field had told her to “pack up an’ git,” and she’d had the great satisfaction of saying, “I’ve packed all I want from that house, which is the clothes on my back and the souvenir teaspoons my grandmother left me, and I’ve got, Abe Field, for good!”

Martha Babcock’s chair rocked comfortably as she sat in her parlor, darning the judge’s socks and waiting for Cat’s man to come and help her out with her “cute” plan. Her own was playing checkers across the room with Young Preach, and from the way he was scowling, he was losing.

Waiting patiently for Clay Boone, Martha thought of Cat Ballou, also waiting, behind iron bars, just as patiently, knowing that he’d come and take her to the mountaintop, and Martha thought, Her eyes shone like a bride’s, the way mine did the night Seton . . .

Looking to her husband, she saw not the learned judge, gray at forty, scowling over a checker game, but the bold, dark, smiling lover of her wedding night, relived the pain and the glory of consummation, and remembered countless other nights of joy and tranquil days when their love was young.

If I could have any wish, she thought, I’d only wish to live it again, but as a better animal, fit to have his babies alive and sweet and healthy, but if I couldn’t do that, I’d be glad to live it all over again, even with the poor little things stillborn, even with me nearly dying from my own failure.

They’ll have the joys and the heartbreaks of life, Cat Ballou and her man Clay Boone. I only hope they love each other enough so that the joys outweigh the heartbreaks, as mine have, in spite of that provoking man of mine, still wearing sackcloth over the one little wild oat he ever sowed!

I’ll bet that “proud free stallion of a man” of Cat Ballou’s has had more women than Seton’s got teeth and what will it matter when she slips that hackamore on him! She’ll tame him, but I hope not too much. Heavens to Betsy, maybe I’ve made a buggy horse out of mine!

Seton my darling, don’t regret kicking up your heels a little. A man was never meant to be broke to harness, not too broke! I declare, if you don’t climb out of that pallet pretty soon and back where you belong, I’m going to whinny like a filly till you do!

The inevitable yawn which told her that her husband was ready for his penitent pallet came presently and she said, as she always did, “Time for bed, Seton.” And as he always did, he protested, “I’m not sleepy.”

“Well, I’ll bet Young Preach is,” Martha said.

“Not at all,” Young Preach said, stifling a yawn.

“You run along, Martha,” the judge said, as he’d taken to lately, to give her an opportunity to undress and get into the big bed and turn out the light before he came in to undress in the dark.

No you don’t! Martha said to herself, and then, as she’d taken to lately, she said, “Directly,” so that she was the one who undressed in the dark, hoping that the rustle of her garments would make him forget his “ridiculous” penance.

She waited patiently, knowing that he’d stubbornly wait five minutes; he always did.

Outside, watching the window, Clay Boone waited just as patiently. Presently he saw the preacher yawn, trying to cover it with his hand, and then the judge yawn widely and stand up. Then the preacher stood up too, said something to Mrs. Babcock, and went off sleepily to the spare bedroom. The judge bent over his wife. She raised her face, as if expecting a kiss, but he kissed her on the forehead and not the lips, and, yawning again, went into the bedroom and lighted the lamp.

Martha waited the usual three minutes until the light under the bedroom door went out and then she went into the dark kitchen, and, quietly opening the door, stepped outside. Almost immediately Clay Boone came around the corner of the house, carrying a bundle.

“Saddle my mare,” she whispered. “The sidesaddle, because everybody knows I always ride sidesaddle. I won’t be long. What’s in that bundle?”

“Her riding clothes, mam.”

“Give them to me. I’ll meet you back of the barn.”

She went back into the kitchen, closing the door. Drawing the blind, she lighted the lamp and opened the bundle.

Staring at the faded shirt and pants, she thought, Mercy, I hope I can get into them!

Stepping out of her slippers, she dropped her petticoats to the floor and tried to put the pants on over her underwear but they wouldn’t go. So she simply stripped to the buff, tossing skirt, shirtwaist, underwear, corset and camisole recklessly aside, and putting on the pants and the shirt. They were a tight fit, but she made it and then put her shirtwaist and skirt on over them.

Taking up her bonnet from the broom closet, where she had thoughtfully concealed it, she put it on, slightly askew, and then in stocking feet padded back into the parlor. Slipping to the bedroom door, she put her ear to it, and heard the reassuring kittenlike purring of the good judge.

Looking to the door of the spare bedroom, she thought, Hope the preacher sleeps tight too.

No light shone from under the door. Padding to it, she put her ear against it. The snores she heard were far from kittenlike.

Dead to this world and probably dreaming of the next, she thought.

She opened the door slightly and slipped inside. When she came out she carried Young Preach’s black frock coat and square black hat. Closing the door quietly, she crept back to the kitchen, straightened her bonnet in the small mirror over the sink, took a damson pie from the back of the still warm stove, and, putting on Cat’s half boots, went out the back door to meet Clay Boone.

She felt as excited as a bride.

At nine o’clock Abe Field, followed by two colored waiters from the Lariat Hotel with sandwiches and coffee, made the rounds, checking up on his force of specially deputized association men who were strategically located in windows around Courthouse Square, armed with Sharps and Winchester rifles.

His last stop was at Little Jack Horner’s post.

“You might a brung me a bottle,” Little Jack grumbled.

“Ever’body wants a bottle,” Abe said. “An’ you like ever’body else gits coffee. If them outlaws is comin’, it’ll prob’ly be tonight. I don’t aim to be caught nappin’.”

“I bet you got a bottle over there in the hotel,” Little Jack said.

“No, I ain’t. Ever’ man’ll git a whole quart to hisself when we’ve blowed them outlaws down. Mind you keep your eyes sharp.”

“Maybe they ain’t comin’ a-tall,” Little Jack said.

“You seen Old Doc ridin’ out in a hurry,” Abe said. “You think he went a-courtin’ some widder? They’ll come ridin’ all right, right into a bellyful a lead!”

“You got anybody sidin’ the sheriff, Abe?”

“I’ll thank you to call me Mr. Field.”

“All right Mister High-an’-Mighty Field!”

“No, I ain’t got nobody sidin’ the sheriff. I want ’em to think they goin’ a have it easy. Now, I’m tellin’ you, like I told ever’body else, hold your fire until they’s all in the square an’ then blast ’em all to hell. Mind you give me first crack at Kid Shelleen, though.”

Sheriff Jem Bascom sat at his desk, his old Sharps rifle handy, gloomily playing solitaire. He hadn’t won a game all evening without cheating and when he cheated at solitaire it hurt his conscience. The sheriff didn’t consider it ethical to cheat when there was no money involved.

Damn Cat Ballou an’ them outlaw friends a hers! he thought. If it wasn’t for them I’d be over in China Kate’s right this minute a-snugglin’ up to that pritty little slant-eyed heathen.

He looked hatefully at the queen of hearts safely under the jack of spades, and thought, I wish them rascals’d hurry up an’ ride in an’ git theirselves kilt so I could git my feet warm.

He was about to slip the red queen out from under the black jack when he heard slow hoofbeats, and, his back hair bristling, grabbed his Sharps and stood up, thinking, They’s comin’!

But rising had brought the riders into his line of vision and he recognized Judge Babcock’s wife riding her mare sidesaddle alongside a tall man in black. Putting the rifle down he went to the door. The tall man, who looked like a preacher, but certainly wasn’t either Young Preach or the local reverend, helped her down and they came up the steps.

I never seen that preacher aroun’, the sheriff thought. Wunner who he is?

“Evening, Mr. Bascom,” Martha said, stepping past him into the office, followed by the man. “We’d like to call on Miss Ballou. I brought her a damson pie, still hot, and I’m going to cut you a nice big slice. Oh, I know it’s after visiting hours, Sheriff, but . . .”

“I reckon it’s all right, seein’ it’s you, Miz Babcock,” he said, as she set the pie down on his desk, “but Cat Ballou’s dead set agin preachers . . .”

“She’ll want to see this one,” Martha said. “Loan me your knife, Mr. Bascom.” Taking the knife and cutting him a good quarter of the pie, she went on, “The Reverend Boone is her old pastor from Laramie. Shake hands with Sheriff Bascom, Reverend.”

“Howdy, Reverend,” the sheriff said.

“Right pleased to make your acquaintance, Sheriff,” Clay said, as they shook hands.

“Make your mouth water, Mr. Bascom?” she asked.

“Yes’m,” the sheriff said.

“If you’ll be kind enough to give me the keys?”

“All right, Miz Babcock, but mind you don’t stay long. There might be a little trouble . . .”

Taking the keys quickly, Martha crossed to the barred stair door, opened it and went up the steps on Clay Boone’s arm. The sheriff licked his lips and picked up the piece of pie as Abe Field came in from the street.

“You ain’t got no call to let visitors up this time a night,” Abe said.

“It’s the jedge’s wife, Mr. Field, she brung Cat Ballou some damson pie. Want a slivver?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Abe said. “Who was that tall feller with ’er?”

“Some preacher,” the sheriff said, reluctantly cutting Abe a small slice of the pie.

“That wasn’t Young Preach.”

“No. This un’s her old pastor from Laramie way.”

“Good damson pie,” Abe said, with his mouth full. “Keep your eyes peeled, Sheriff. There’s a bottle comin’ to ever’body when this is all over,” and he went out, munching on the pie.

Cat Ballou was lying on her cell cot under a blanket, wearing her plain calico dress, waiting for Clay Boone, when she heard footsteps on the stairs. She sat up, holding the blanket so as to hide the fact that she was dressed, in case it was the sheriff.

She heard the rattle of keys and dimly made out two figures in the darkness.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s Martha, honey. I brought you some hot damson pie. You said you were partial to it.”

“Who’s that with you?”

“Why, it’s your old friend, the Reverend Boone,” Martha said, as they entered the cell, and then a voice like organ music said, “It’s Clay.”

Throwing the blanket from her, Cat Ballou jumped to her feet, half whispering, “Clay, oh, Clay, I knew you’d come!”

They met in the middle of the cell and she took his face in her trembling hands and pulled it down, and then he took her in his arms and held the girl whose face he’d never seen and couldn’t now, in the darkness, and felt her warm sweet mouth on his, and for the first time since he was a boy knew the joy of lips willing but unbought.

The sweet darlings, they love each other so! Martha thought, and her heart swelled for them and all the lovers in the world, but her practical mind dictated as she said, “You’ll have forever for kissing and hugging, but right now there’s no time to lose. Quick honey, we’ve got to change clothes. You look the other way, young man.”

As Cat pulled off her dress, Martha kicked off Cat’s half boots, dropped her skirt, took off her shirtwaist, and skinning out of the tight shirt and pants, stood naked but for stockings for an instant before she felt Cat’s dress in her hands.

Pulling it on quickly, Martha thought, I wonder if he peeked? Bet I would if I were a man. You’ve seen worse, my boy!

She could see the white of Cat’s undergarments as Cat pulled on the pants, and said, “Take off your chemise, honey, Clay’ll need it to tie me up.”

Then she saw the white of the girl’s flesh as Cat took off the chemise, and thought, Oh, to be a girl again and not have to bother with a corset!

As Cat skinned into the faded shirt, Martha said, “Quick, Clay, tie me up!” and hurrying to the cot, she threw herself on it.

As Clay leaned over to tie her up, she said, “Tear it, Clay, you’d better gag me too!”

She heard the rip of the fabric as he tore the chemise into three pieces. He tied her wrists and ankles loosely, but she said, “Tighter! Make it look good!”

Clay tied her more tightly.

“Now the gag!” she said, but before he put it on, she said, “Cat, you take his handkerchief to cry into as you leave,” and then, softly, “Bless you, children.”

“Bless you, mam,” Clay said, just as softly, and then he gagged her, but loosely.

Sheriff Bascom tried to suppress a belch as they came back from upstairs, the “preacher,” supporting “Miz Babcock,” who was crying into his big handkerchief.

“Parm me,” he said. “That was good damson pie.”

“She’s too upset to talk, Sheriff,” the “preacher” said, handing him the keys. “Thank you and good night.”

“ ’Night, Reverend, ’night Miz Babcock,” the sheriff said. “Hope you come ever’ night till the hangin’ with some a that pie.”

“She will,” the “preacher” said.

The sheriff held open the door for them and watched them go down the steps. He belched contentedly. When they reached the horses, the “preacher” picked “Miz Babcock” up to put her into the sidesaddle.

Cat Ballou, forgetting everything but that she was in Clay Boone’s strong arms, threw hers around his neck and kissed him, and Clay, forgetting possible sharp and prying eyes, kissed her back.

The sheriff, Abe Field, Little Jack Horner, and every other hidden man, saw this with astonishment, not to mention shocked moral indignation.

The jedge’s wife, a-kissin’ that preacher! Abe thought.

Miz Babcock’s a-carryin’ on with that preacher! the sheriff thought. An’ she seemed like sech a nice woman!

Then “the preacher” seated her on the mare and stepped to the saddle and they started slowly across Courthouse Square.

Why the strumpet! Abe thought.

I can’t hardly believe it! the sheriff thought, and then, all of a sudden, he didn’t believe it. But he had to make sure, so he ran to the stair door, which was still unlocked, and slamming through it, raced up the steps.

Just as the “preacher” and “Miz Babcock” rode out of the moonlit square, the crouching riflemen were startled to hear a frenzied shout from the barred window of Cat’s cell. “Stop ’em! That’s Cat Ballou with that preacher!”

There was a wild volley then and the sound of staccato hoofbeats, and, as the association men poured into the square, racing towards the livery stable, Cat Ballou and Clay Boone roared out of town.

The sidesaddle so handicapped Cat, that in spite of their running start, the pursuing riders were gaining steadily as Clay and Cat rounded a bend in the road and she saw Old Doc in the moonlight, astride his own horse and holding the reins of hers.

Sliding to her feet, she stepped to big Red’s saddle.

“Thanks, Old Doc, come see us!”

“And bring Young Preach!” Clay said, and they were off together at the gallop.

Old Doc watched them until they were out of sight, thinking of her mother, and of her mother’s mother, and hoping she would draw better cards than they had for the long long pull.

Then he heard the pounding of many hoofs, and, pulling back into the shadow of a clump of trees, watched Abe Field and his riders gallop past, and he thought, They’ll never catch them now. May you have joy and peace all the days of your life, Martha Babcock!

The commotion half woke Judge Babcock, but didn’t even seep into Young Preach’s consciousness.

Judge Babcock stirred, stopped his purring for a moment or two, turned over on his hard pallet and went back to sleep.

Young Preach snored on.

Martha Babcock let herself into the kitchen quietly, blew out the lamp and went into the parlor. Blowing out the lamp there, she went to the bedroom door and opened it. The blind was drawn, shutting out the moonlight except for a faint glow, and the judge was still purring gently. Closing the door softly, Martha stood for a moment, looking down at the dark figure of her husband on his penitent pallet. He stirred slightly and stopped purring.

“That you, Martha?” he whispered from the darkness.

“It’s not your grandma,” she said.

“I had a dream,” he whispered. “I dreamed you came back to me.”

“I never left,” she whispered.

He heard a rustle, caught a glimpse of her whiteness, and then she pulled the pallet covers back, and was fragrantly beside him.

He said, hoarsely, “Martha, you do forgive . . .”

“Hush,” she whispered, and then her warm parted lips were on his, and together they knew the joy that Old Doc had wished for her, and afterwards, snug in the big bed, the peace.

When Martha woke with the sun, she turned her head to look at her husband beside her, and thought, He looks like the cat that swallowed the canary and I feel like it. Slipping out of bed so as not to wake him, she went to the window, raised the blind, and as the warm sun caressed her body, thought, What a wonderful day to wake up to, what a lovely world to live in. Turning to look at her sleeping man, she thought, Oh, Seton, look at me, glowing in the sun; I feel so beautiful!

The judge began to purr again.

I’ll fix breakfast, I could eat a horse medium rare myself, but I’ll settle for bacon and eggs and pancakes with butter and honey and coffee with thick cream and sugar and I don’t care if it makes Seton fatter; it’ll only make more of him to love; I’m glad I’m not fat. She looked at herself in the mirror and thought, I got into a sixteen-year-old girl’s clothes, even if I am thirty . . . well, thirty-one. . . . I wasn’t quite seventeen when we were married.

Looking at her firm full breasts a cloud came over her happiness for a moment as she thought of the babes she’d never suckled, nor ever would, but the warm sun dissolved the cloud, and then she thought, the joy outweighs the heartbreak; we’ve got each other to love; oh, thank heaven my man’s come back to me!

The good smell of bacon cooking woke the learned judge. He sat up, bewildered for a moment to find himself in the fine big comfortable bed, and then he looked to the pillow beside him, and kissed the small round cavity made by her head.

Climbing out of bed, he looked to the floor and saw that the “damned pallet” was gone, and then, whistling, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he said, half aloud, “What the hell am I doing without a nightshirt?”

But he put on the union suit Martha had left for him over the back of the chair, the socks she’d darned, the shirt she’d washed and ironed, the pants she’d pressed, and buttoning his fly, he looked out into the sunshine and said half to himself and half to the sun, “Damn fine morning!”

When he stepped into the dining room, Martha was entering, carrying a big tray loaded with bacon and eggs and hotcakes swimming in butter.

“Allow me,” he said, and took the tray from her and put it on the table.

She smiled at him indulgently, but affectionately, and he would have gone to her and taken her in his arms, but Young Preach came in, in shirt sleeves, muttering something about his coat.

“Well where is it?” the judge demanded.

“I can’t seem to find it . . .”

“Sit right down, Young Preach,” Martha said. “Seton, take off your coat so he’ll feel easy.”

The judge, a stickler for form, looked dubious.

“Martha, you find Young Preach’s coat; you can find anything,” he said.

“Oh fiddlesticks! You want my good breakfast to get cold! I declare men are so stupid. . . . Sit down!”

“All right, Martha.”

The judge took off his coat and they all sat down, and after Young Preach had said grace, they all pitched in and ate heartily.

As Martha poured more coffee all around, Young Preach said, “I don’t understand it; I’d have sworn I hung that coat right over my pants on the chair.”

“Well, you’ve got your pants on anyhow,” the judge said, and chuckled. “I’ll bet you’re getting as absent-minded as I am, Young Preach. You know what I deduce? I deduce you hung it in the hall closet. I find more things there I thought I’d lost forever.”

After drinking his third cup of coffee Young Preach went to look in the hall closet, but he came back saying, “It’s not in the hall closet. . . . Come to think of it, my hat’s missing too!”

“Now who’d want to rustle a hat and coat, especially a preacher’s?” the judge said, chuckling. “Don’t you worry, Young Preach, Martha’ll find ’em directly.”

How am I going to explain? Martha was thinking, as they went into the parlor. I can’t just say, Young Preach, I’m a hat and coat rustler, I stole them to give to an outlaw so he could save his sweetheart from the gallows.

I meant to tell Seton first, to have benefit of counsel . . . Well, heaven knows we were better occupied!

Somebody rode up in a hurry then and ran up onto the porch.

“I’ll answer the door. . . .” she began, but it was flung open unceremoniously and Sam Springer burst into the room, and grabbing her, he hugged her very hard.

“What’s going on here?” the judge demanded.

“I just heard the news!” Sam Springer cried, and began to dance Martha around the room.

“Have you gone loco?” the judge demanded.

“Certainly, haven’t you?” Stopping, he said, “Hasn’t Martha told you?”

“Told me what?”

Martha said quietly, “Cat Ballou escaped last night.”

“Escaped! How on earth . . .”

“Clay Boone took her to the mountaintop.”

“Well, if you knew, why in thunder . . .?”

“The time didn’t seem propitious, dear,” she said.

The judge gulped and Young Preach said, bitterly, “She too has run off with an outlaw!”

“Martha, how’d you know about this?” the judge demanded.

“Well, I was sort of . . . well . . . involved, Seton. I’m sorry about your hat and coat, Young Preach; but, well, I’m afraid I stole them.”

“What in the hell . . . I beg your pardon, but what in the dickens . . .?” the judge said.

“Cat’s man made such a fine-looking preacher,” Martha said. “Nobody could blame the sheriff . . .”

“Martha, I love you!” Sam Springer said.

“You . . . you, my own wife, by trickery and device . . .” the judge said.

“Guilty, your Honor,” his wife said. “But oh, Seton, aren’t you really glad?”

“I’m a judge . . . I’m sworn to uphold the law . . .”

“Fiddlesticks!”

“You’ve sent her off to live in sin with a criminal!” Young Preach said.

“Fiddlesticks to you, too, Young Preach! They love each other!”

“Love!” Young Preach said.

“You may know a lot about the soul, Young Preach, but what you don’t know about the body and its sweetness and its glory would fill a book twice as big as the Good One!”

“Glory!”

“Yes, glory! I happen to know a thing or two about love. And so does Cat Ballou, like her mother before her, who followed her heart to an outlaw’s bed!”

“At least Cathy and Frankie were married!”

“Did you ever hear of a marriage in the sight of God? Well, that’s where they’ll marry because there’s love in their hearts and where there’s love, God is and He always will be!”

Bravo! Sam Springer thought.

“Amen,” the judge said. “Bless your heart, Martha.”

“Thank you, Seton,” she said. “Don’t you worry, Young Preach, Clay Boone will do right by Cat Ballou. He’s a fine young man, and, incidentally, the best-looking I ever saw in my life, bar Seton, of course.”

“Thank you, Martha,” the judge said. “And you’re the prettiest woman in the whole wide world!”

“Even with my clothes on?”

“Martha!” the judge said.

Young Preach looked shocked but Sam Springer was grinning.

Then Martha said, “I’ve got the most wonderful idea. Young Preach! You just ride to that mountaintop and marry those wonderful children in the sight of God and man to boot!”

“I’ll not force myself on Cat Ballou again until she seeks me out,” Young Preach said.

“You ninny, she’s a fugitive from the hangman’s rope!”

Wishing he had a gavel handy, the judge put in, “Now Martha, don’t badger the witness . . .”

“How’s she going to seek him out when there’s more than likely a price on her head?”

“There is,” Sam Springer said. “Authorized by Brad Evers on behalf of the Cattlemen’s Association. Five thousand dollars.”

“Young Preach, are you going to let those children live in sin just because your pride’s so stiff you won’t go without being sought out?”

“I thought you said it wasn’t living in sin if they loved . . .” the judge began.

“Oh, don’t be so logical, Seton,” she said. “You’d better get on my side, because if Young Preach won’t ride up there and marry them, you will, if I have to lead you all the way by the ear.”

“Now wait a minute, Martha!”

“I guess I am a ninny, Martha,” Young Preach said. “I’ll ride to the Roost and marry them when I get home.”

“Now you’re talking sense,” Martha said. “Seton Babcock, you might say you’re glad I helped to get that girl out of jail,” she said.

“I do say it, I am glad,” the judge said. “I’ll have to resign from the bench, of course, but I’m still glad.”

“Resign fiddlesticks! Why everybody knows how I was victimized by that masquerading rascal and bound and gagged and left helpless, everybody but us four, and I’m certainly not going to blab.”

“Nor I,” Sam Springer said.

“Nor I,” Judge Babcock said.

“Nor I,” said Young Preach. “Can you lend me a coat, Judge?”

When the Diamond F riders reached the foot of the long wooded slope which led to the summit between the Coyote and Purple valleys, Little Jack Horner reined up, raising his hand for the others to do likewise.

“No use killin’ our hosses,” he said, when Abe Field protested. “Ain’t a critter in the territory can keep up with them two. I don’t know what the rest a you’s goin’ a do, but me, I’m ridin’ for the home ranch.”

Little Jack swung and rode for Diamond F, the others, except for Abe, promptly following. Abe stared up the dark slope for a long moment, loath to give up the chase, but then he too swung his horse and headed for home.

In the darkness preceding the dawn Cat Ballou and Clay Boone pulled up in the shadows of the trees lining the summit and looked back down the slope, listening. They could hear nothing but the heavy breathing of their horses and the myriad sounds of the night.

“They’ve given up,” Cat said.

“Don’t blame ’em,” Clay said. “That’s a lot of horse you’re riding. First one I ever saw that could outrun and outlast mine.”

“Red could run all night,” she said.

“They deserve a rest and so do we,” Clay said, and, stepping down, held up his arms for her.

She slid into them and he held her, tilting her face, but he could see only its shadowy outline.

“I’ve never seen your face plain,” he said, and, striking a match, he looked at her, her eyes shining, her lips parted. “Yes, I have, in my dreams.”

“And I yours,” she said, and, as the match flickered out, “Aren’t you going to kiss me?”

“The next time I do, we’ll be man and wife.”

“Man and wife,” she murmured. “Strike another match, Clay.” He did so and she took the ring from between her breasts, removed it from the necklace, and said, “Take it, Clay Boone,” and when he took it, “It was my mother’s wedding ring and my father’s mother’s. Will you say, ‘With this ring I thee wed,’ and put it on my third finger left hand?”

He said, “With this ring I thee wed . . . for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health . . . until death do us part,” and put the ring on her finger.

“Now we’re man and wife,” she said.

The sun came up with a lovely gift for Clay Boone, one of the sweetest a man can know, the sight of its first rays warming the cheeks of a beloved sleeping woman. He adored her silently for a moment, giving thanks in his heart for this intimate miracle of the dawning and for the shared mystery of the night. Then she opened her eyes and smiled into his.

“Good morning, my husband.”

“Good morning, my wife. Oh, my Kitten, how beautiful you are all rosy in the sun!”

“No one ever called me Kitten until you whispered it so sweetly in the dark. No one else ever will, but darling, always save it for our most precious moments together.”

“Yes,” he said.

“My mother told me what love is like. She said it was a kind of glory. My mother was right. Oh, my darling, I’ll always remember how the stars looked down.”

“I saw them in your eyes.”

“Now look into them and see the sun,” she said.

“I hope the first one’s a boy just like his daddy,” she said. “Darling, take me home now!”

As they neared the Roost she saw the tall burned spruce standing out sharply in the moonlight, and cried, “Home!”

They rode over the rim and reined up. Lights glowed from all of the windows but those of Clay’s cabin.

Cupping his hands. Clay gave a mighty “Halllloooo!”

The men piled out of the bunkhouse and Randy and Kid Shelleen stepped to the doors of their cabins, Randy swaying, a bottle in his hand.

“Welcome to the Roost, Cat Ballou!” Barney Grey cried.

“It’s Cat Ballou Boone!” Clay shouted. “Boys, meet my wife!”

As the men crowded around, babbling congratulations, Randy hurled the bottle back into his cabin and Kid Shelleen’s eyes went hard and cold.

Clay stepped down and Cat slid into his arms.

“Thank you, all of you!” she cried. “Oh, I’m so happy to be home!”

Barney Grey came up eagerly and Clay said, “This is Dad Grey, who rode with your father and was here the night you were born.”

“I’ve heard about you,” she said, “but they didn’t call you Dad in the old days. Howdy, Stud!” She held out her hand, and as he took it, beaming, she said, “Did the tall spruce flame like a torch the night I was born?”

“You could a seen it in Wolf City,” he said. “You was birthed right there in that cabin that’s Clay’s now.”

“Ours,” she said.

Randy shouldered through the crowd and Clay said, “This is my brother Randy . . .”

Interrupting, Randy said, “We met. At the schoolhouse dance.” He enveloped her suddenly in his arms and kissed her hard, and then, removing his lips from hers, said, “ ’Member?”

Grabbing him by the shoulders, Clay cried, “Ran, you’re drunk!”

“Celebratin’,” Randy said. “Ain’t it a brother’s priv’ledge to kiss the bride?”

“You don’t need to break her in two!”

“Sorry I was sech a bear,” Randy said, and bowing exaggeratedly, “Welcome to the Roost.”

Joe Fletcher, whose turn it was to cook supper, began to bang on the triangle in front of the cookhouse, shouting, “Come an’ git it!”

“Run along to supper, boys, we’ll be there directly,” Clay said, and, as the others rushed for the cookhouse, “Will you see to our horses, Ran?”

Randy grabbed the reins and started to lead the horses towards the corral. Picking Cat up in his arms, Clay turned to his cabin, to find Kid Shelleen standing ominously between them and the door.

“When did you have time to git married?” he asked.

“We took time,” Clay said, and then Cat held out her left hand and Kid Shelleen saw the ring gleaming in the moonlight.

“Forgimme,” said Kid Shelleen. “I might a knowed it, knowin’ the both a you like I do.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” she said.

Near the corral, Randy stood with the horses, watching his brother carry the woman he desired above all others into his cabin. When the door closed he began to cry like a little boy.

Upon that dawning, it was Cat who woke to the sun, and for the first time saw a lover’s head upon a pillow. For a moment she watched the sun gleam on his bright hair and then she slipped out of their bed. Putting on Martha’s skirt and waist, she found a towel, soap and comb, and picking up her half boots, stole out without waking him.

Randy woke, his eyes red, his mouth dry, for he had killed most of a quart of whiskey in a vain effort to wipe from his mind the picture of them in bed together. He reached for the bottle, drank the little that remained, and got up, fully dressed except for his boots, for he’d been too drunk to take anything else off. Through the window he saw Cat crossing towards the cookhouse, swinging a towel.

Goin’ to the spring to wash up, he thought. Mebbe to stand nekkid unner the shower . . .

He looked around the Roost. No one else was stirring. Putting on his boots, he grabbed soap, comb and towel, and stepping out of his cabin, walked slowly towards the spring behind the cookhouse.

Cat stood by the spring, taking in all the details so vivid in her mind from her mother’s telling, the clear cold bubbling water, the bench with wash basins upside down, the crude shower made from a beer keg with holes in it and suspended by a frayed rope over a tree limb.

In the old days an enclosure had been built around it so that her mother could bathe in privacy, but it had long since collapsed and been dispensed with.

Cat looked longingly to it, but shook her head, thinking, I’ll have Clay enclose it for me, the way my father did for my mother. Meanwhile, I’ll make do.

She filled one of the basins with water from the spring, rolled up her sleeves and began to soap her face. Washing it off, she groped blindly for the towel, and began to rub her face vigorously. Then, lowering the towel, she saw Randy standing against the back wall of the cookhouse, watching her.

“What’s a matter with the shower?” he asked.

Undressing me with his eyes! she thought.

“You, for instance, and the likes of you,” she said. “Don’t stand there looking at me like that. I don’t like it!”

“You liked me kissin’ you all right,” he said. “You kissed me back and you liked it.”

“I was just a silly girl but I’m a woman now and your brother’s wife.”

“I don’t b’lieve you’re his wife a-tall. You didn’t have no time to git married.”

“We’re man and wife!”

“I seen you fust an’ kissed you fust an’ in my book, you b’long to me.”

“I belong to Clay. Don’t touch me! He’ll kill you!”

“Mebbe it’ll be the other way ’round.”

He came around the end of the bench slowly and she couldn’t move.

“You ain’t bin out a my mind, awake or asleep since I held you close an’ kissed you an’ smelt your breath like new-mowed hay.”

“I’ll scream for Clay!”

“You don’t need to scream, Cat,” said Kid Shelleen, stepping around the corner of the cookhouse. “Git, you sneakin’ coyote!”

“You meddlin’ son-of-a-bitch!” Randy cried.

“Mind your tongue in front of a lady!”

“Some day I’ll blow you down!”

“You won’t live to see the day,” said Kid Shelleen. “You’d not be livin’ this minute if I didn’t think too much a Clay to shoot his brother like a dog. Git now!”

For a moment Randy met Kid Shelleen’s icy blue eyes, then his own fell, and he flung himself around the corner of the cookhouse.

“His own brother!” Cat said.

“Don’t never tell Clay,” said Kid Shelleen. “It’d break his heart.”

“I know,” she said. “Of course I’ll never tell him. But there’s something I have to tell you. It’s partly my fault. I let him kiss me once, at the dance, and I even kissed him back and I liked it and sometimes dreamed about it.”

“That don’t give him no right . . .”

“No, but . . . I said I’d scream, but I wouldn’t have! If you hadn’t come . . . I don’t know . . . I . . . that frightens me!”

“You just hold tight to your weddin’ ring,” said Kid Shelleen. “It’ll see you th’ough.”

“Yes,” she said, “I’ll hold it tight in my hand and in my heart. Thank you, Kid Shelleen.”

Randy Boone rode into Wolf City in the early afternoon. He wanted more whiskey and he wanted a woman, a hired body to break the spell of Cat Ballou’s.

I got a git her out a my mind, he thought. She’s no diffrunt from them trollops at Cheyenne Rose’s. Women is all the same. What’s she but a trollop givin’ it away free? Damn Kid Shelleen! I’d a had her if he hadn’t come meddlin’. I could tell by the way she was breathin’, her nose a-flarin’ like a horsin’ filly! She’s no-count. She’s trash. If she only wasn’t so God damn pritty! I’ll have me a woman that’ll make me forget her. I’ll make out like it’s her I’m buyin’ an’ when I th’ow that dollar on the bed, I’ll be shet a that bitch for good!

He reined up at a shout, and turning, saw Young Preach come off his front porch.

“I’d like to ride back with you when you go,” Young Preach said. “Old Doc was going to take me, but he had to attend to a patient out at Sulphur Springs.”

“What you want a ride to the Roost for?” Randy demanded.

“To marry your brother and Cat Ballou.”

“You’re too late, Preacher,” Randy said. “They done got married already.”

He spurred his horse and rode on to Crib Row.

Thirsty and hungry, thirsty for whiskey and hungry for a woman, he walked through the swinging doors of Cheyenne Rose’s. There were only a couple of men, lounging at the bar, but there were plenty of women; he had his pick.

Looking them over, he thought, She ain’t like them whores. She’s sweet an’ pritty even if she lusts with Clay. Damn him! He might a knowed I wanted her! He never let me have anythin’ I wanted!

He went to the bar and ordered a bottle.

Mebbe whiskey’ll he’p me to forget her, he thought. A couple drinks an’ them whores won’t look so washed out. A couple or three drinks and they’ll all look like Cat Ballou an’ havin’ one a them’ll be the same’s havin’ her an’ once I have her an’ th’ow her a dirty dollar, I’ll forget her like any other whore an’ then I’ll be free.

He had two drinks and looked the girls over again, thinking how Cat Ballou’s cheeks had glowed in the sunshine from the toweling, and how sallow and dull these cheeks were under the paint.

A couple of hours later, drunk, but still hungry for a woman, Randy rode out of Wolf City again, tortured by visions of fulfillment in the arms of Cat Ballou, arms eager and willing, not for his brother, but for him.

It was just after sundown when he rode over the rim and saw the lighted window of Clay’s cabin, and he thought, Gone to bed! How’m I goin’ a stand it w’ile he lives!

But when he started into the cookhouse he met Cat and Clay coming out.

“Still celebrating?” Clay asked.

Randy grunted and went inside.

“It’s plain to be seen you were never cut out to be a mother,” Cat said. “You’ve spoiled that boy.”

“Spoiled him? Why, I’ve begun to think I’ve been a little too strict with him. After all, he’s a grown man.”

“Physically,” she said, and she thought, I know who he’s like, he’s a little bit like Abe Field!

“Be nice to him. Cat,” Clay said. “I mean . . .”

“Mother him?”

“Well, he’s never known a loving woman since Ma died.”

“I’ll mother our babies and nobody else’s,” she said.

“I don’t want him ever to know we weren’t legally married.”

“I won’t tell him we beat the gun,” she said. “But what’s he going to think when Young Preach comes to marry us?”

“I’ll simply tell him and the others that you wanted a religious ceremony by the man who performed the one for your mother and father. I wonder what’s keeping Young Preach, anyhow?”

“Don’t worry, wild horses couldn’t keep him away from what he considers his duty!”

Later in the tranquil dark, they talked of the future for the first time. Clay told her about his father in Oregon and of the standing offer to come home.

“I’ve always thought of this mountaintop and this cabin as home,” she said.

“Pa’s got plenty of room,” he said.

“I don’t want to live with your father,” she said.

“I didn’t mean that. He’s got plenty of land and we can build our home and till the soil, run a few cattle . . .”

“And a few kids,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “You said you’d bear me strong sons and lovely daughters.”

“I will, my darling. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’d started the first one already.”

“We’ll have a good life, Cat.”

“You’ll be fenced in, darling. You, who always wanted to be free.”

“We’ll be as free as mortals can be,” he said.

“You won’t miss the adventure and the fun and the danger?”

“Not with you beside me.”

“I’ll be beside you always, no matter where it is.”

“You want to go, don’t you?”

“I want to go where you go,” she said. “I want to be where you are. ‘Whither thou goest . . .’ That’s in the Bible. Old Doc used to read it to me, for ‘the sound, not the sense.’ I’ll miss Old Doc.”

“I like him,” Clay said.

“Next to you, I love him more than anybody in this world,” she said. “It would be nice to have him deliver our babies, Clay. If we lived up here . . .”

“Do you want them to be outlaws, Cat?”

“I guess not,” she said, with a sigh. “I mean, of course not. I do want to go to Oregon with you, darling. What does it matter who delivers our children? I have a feeling I’ll have ’em easily.”

“We’ll go as soon as we’re married,” he said.

“Couldn’t we stay here a week or two? I’m so happy here.”

“Of course we can stay a week or two. Oh, we will have a grand life in Oregon! We’ll take Ran with us and . . .”

“I don’t want Randy or anybody else to live with us, Clay.”

“He doesn’t have to live with us; he can live with Pa till he finds a nice girl to marry. That’s all Ran needs to straighten him out.”

“Maybe he won’t want to go,” she said, and she thought, Oh, I hope he won’t!

“He’ll do what I think’s best for him till he proves himself a man,” Clay said.

He’ll never grow up, Cat thought.

Days and nights passed, peaceful Indian-summer days, ecstatic nights, and still Young Preach didn’t arrive, not that it mattered to Cat.

One morning she said to Clay, “I’m two days past my period; I guess I’m pregnant. Isn’t it grand!”

“We’d better send for Young Preach,” he said.

“Oh, what does it matter? We can be married in Oregon.”

“No, I want to take you home as my wife.”

“Darling, I am your wife. Don’t you feel that I am?”

“Of course I do, but just the same I want the preacher to marry us. I’d better go get him myself.”

“You’d be arrested on sight for snatching me out of jail!”

“Maybe the Kid . . . No, he’s still wanted on that old train-robbery charge. I’ll send Randy.”

After the noonday meal Clay took his brother aside.

“Ran . . . Cat and I’ve been talking and we’ve decided that we’re going home to Oregon and build us a house, and . . .”

“Thought you didn’t want a punch cows an’ chew hay?”

“A man changes, Ran. We want you to come with us.”

“We?”

“Both of us.”

“I’d like to hear her say it.”

“She will, Ran. There’s another thing: Young Preach performed a religious ceremony for Cat’s parents after they were married by the justice of the peace and out of sentiment she’d like him to do the same for us. He was supposed to ride up here, but . . .”

“I told him you was already married,” Randy said.

“That explains why he hasn’t shown up. Will you ride and get him?”

“I reckon I will, but I’d like to hear Cat say she wants me to go to Oregon. Well, I better saddle up.”

While he was saddling up Clay told Cat what he had said and when Randy rode out of the corral, she was waiting for him alone. He reined up.

“Randy, Clay said . . .”

“I know what Clay said, I want a hear what you say.”

“Will you come to Oregon with us?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“You know what.”

“I asked you because Clay wanted me to,” she said. “He loves you. If you won’t come for your own sake and his, you can stay for all of me.”

“I’ll come if you’ll be nice to me once in a w’ile.”

“I belong to Clay, Randy. All of me. I’m going to have his baby.”

“Damn his eyes!” he cried, and spurring his horse, rode for the trail.

With him rode a bitterness beyond his experience or comprehension, a profound hurt which possessed his vitals, a bowel-jealousy. He had been bitterly jealous of his brother before, for possessing Cat Ballou, but that had been a simple, animal, sexual thing; and now he was possessed by a far deeper jealousy, a bone-envy of the man who had shared with her what he dimly felt was the one thing which gave life its meaning, not sexual satisfaction, not even love, but creation.

I don’t unnerstan’, he thought. What the hell’s the difference! What the hell do I care who fathers her brats!

But he did care.

Damn Clay’s eyes! He stole my girl!

He had never consciously thought of her as “his girl” before. He had thought of her and dreamed of her erotically, of temporary possession of her body, but never of permanence.

My sweetheart!

He had never thought the word before in his life.

She was! She kissed me! She wanted me! He stole her! He even stole my baby! It ought a been mine! I’ll kill him! I’ll burn him down!

And he rode not for Young Preach, but for whiskey, knowing that only Dutch courage could make him stand on even terms with Clay and tell him to fill his hand.

But, standing at the bar in Cheyenne Rose’s, curtly refusing the overtures of the girls, nursing his drinks, he admitted to himself the shameful truth: he couldn’t stand against his brother on even terms, no matter how much whiskey he drank.

He’d shame me! He wouldn’t even kill me, but he’d shame me before Cat Ballou. Even if I th’owed down on him, he’d jest shoot the gun out a my hand, or wing me. But I wish he was dead! I can’t kill him. I ain’t man enough. But I can’t go back up there ever w’ile they’s together, I got a light out, I got a run away!

Staggering, he went out to his horse, wondering where he could go.

Mebbe Laramie? Mebbe I kin find me a woman that’s sweet an’ pritty like her!

His foot missed the stirrup and he almost fell down. He had a hard time getting into the saddle, and when he finally made it, swaying, almost tumbling off, grabbing leather to steady himself, he heard mocking laughter. Clearing the fog from his eyes, he saw four men riding up.

He recognized one of them as Abe Field, and he thought, I’ll kill the son-of-a-bitch for Cat Ballou! and he shouted, “Fill your hand, Field!”

He clawed for his Colt but as he drew he felt the impact of Abe Field’s slug in his side. He managed to fire once, blindly, hitting not Abe but Blackie Drew. Then his horse bolted. Hanging on grimly, he heard bullets sing around him and the sound of pursuing hoofbeats.

The sheriff ran out of his office and men came pouring from the Lucky Seven and the Wild Deuce and the Chinese restaurant and the United States Hotel. As the sheriff drew his gun, Randy tumbled off his horse at his feet, while the runaway horse pounded on up the street.

Abe Field, Little Jack Horner and Zeke Dorn rode up and Abe took deliberate aim at the unconscious man on the ground but the sheriff barked, “Put up that gun!”

“He jest murdered Blackie Drew!” Abe cried.

“If you shoot, I’ll shoot,” the sheriff said.

As Abe put away his gun reluctantly, Little Jack said, “Reckon he’s dead anyhow,” and then Old Doc pushed through and knelt over and examined him.

“Is he dead, Doc?” the sheriff asked.

“No, but close to it,” Old Doc lied. “Some of you carry him to my house.”

“You can ’tend to him in the jail,” Abe Field said. “If he ain’t dead, arrest him, Sheriff; by God I want a see him hang for murder!”

“All right, consider him arrested,” the sheriff said, “but you got a sign the complaint.”

“Quit arguing,” Old Doc said. “Take him to my house, some of you. I may have to operate.”

As Randy was being carried to the old Morgan place, Abe, Little Jack and Zeke all went into the sheriff’s office and all signed the murder complaint.

“You’re wastin’ your time,” the sheriff said. “If Old Doc says he’s close to dyin’, he might as well be dead.”

“I ain’t so sure,” Abe said. “How the hell do I know Old Doc ain’t aimin’ to let him git away? You better post a guard over that house, Sheriff.”

“Stand your own guard,” the sheriff said. “I’m goin’ to bed.”

When Abe, Little Jack and Zeke got to the old Morgan place, there was a good-sized crowd around it, which parted to let Young Preach through. They tried to squeeze in after him but Jed French, who stood at the door, held them back.

“Old Doc says nobody’s to come in,” he said.

“Young Preach went in,” Abe said.

“He said to let him in,” Jed said. “I reckon the man’s dyin’.”

When Randy came to, briefly, Young Preach was praying over him.

“You don’t need to pray, I ain’t dead,” Randy said, and then lost consciousness again as Old Doc probed for the bullet in his side.

Joe Fletcher, the man on watch at the halfway mark, heard a horse coming up the trail, and, snatching up his rifle, sang out, “Who’s there?”

Receiving no answer he swung the rifle up as the horse came into sight, but then he could see that it bore no rider. Scrambling to his feet, he tried to catch it, but the horse got past him and went on up the trail.

Randy’s hoss! he thought, and fired into the air, but he remained at his post.

Cat and Clay woke at the sound of the signal shots.

“Must be Ran and the preacher!” Clay said.

“You’d better make tracks,” Cat said giggling.

Clay jumped out of bed and began to dress hurriedly in the dark.

“How about you, Cat? You expect to get married in bed?”

“I wouldn’t mind, but I guess Young Preach would,” she said, and slipping out of bed, she too began to dress.

As Clay hurried out of the cabin, Kid Shelleen was emerging from his and the men were coming out of the bunkhouse. Then the riderless horse came over the rim.

“Ran’s horse!” Clay cried. “Something’s happened!”

Barney Grey intercepted the horse and led him into the circle of light formed as Cat opened the cabin door.

“Blood on the saddle,” said Kid Shelleen.

“Somebody saddle my horse,” Clay said.

“An’ mine,” said Kid Shelleen.

“And mine!” Cat cried.

“Reckon we’ll all ride along,” Barney Grey said.

“No,” Clay said. “I want to find out what’s happened. For all we know, this could be a trap. If we ride in force, it may be into a lot of hot lead.”

“Please let me ride with you!” Cat said.

“Maybe that’s what they’re hoping for,” Clay said. “They’d do anything to get you.”

“I want to go!” she cried.

“Come inside a minute,” he said, and when they were inside, “Cat, we’ve got our baby to think about.”

“It’s you I’m thinking about,” she said, “and to be honest, myself. I don’t want to live if you don’t come back!”

“I’ll come back. I swear it.”

“Darling, please take me!”

“No.”

“Suppose it is a trap?”

“If it is, they’ll never spring it on me. Kiss me now, Cat, and tell me that you love me.”

She threw her arms around his neck and said, “I love you, love you, love you with all my body and all my heart and I’ll love you till the day I die!”

Then she kissed him and clung to him until he gently took her arms from around his neck.

“That goes double,” he said, and then he went out.

Kid Shelleen and Barney Grey rode up, leading Clay’s horse, and the Kid said, “Me an’ Dad’d like to ride along, Clay.”

“You ought a have somebody that knows the lay a the land,” Barney Grey said.

Clay nodded.

“All right, Dad, that makes sense, but Kid, I want you to stay and look after my wife. She’s going to have a baby.”

When Randy came to again he saw Old Doc sitting under the lamp reading a book.

“What happened?” Randy asked.

“How you feeling, son?” Old Doc asked, marking his place and laying the book aside.

“Don’t call me son! What happened?”

“I got the bullet,” Old Doc said. “You’re in fair shape, better than I let on.”

“Did I kill the son-of-a-bitch?”

“Which one?”

“Abe Field.”

“No, you killed one named Blackie Drew. Too bad you missed Abe, as long as you’re going to hang anyhow.”

“Hang?”

“Unless your brother and the Kid and the Crowd come and get you.”

“How’re they goin’ a know I’m in trouble?”

“Reckon that horse of yours will tell ’em, if he’s the kind that heads for home.”

“He’ll never stop till he gets to the Roost.”

“Then I reckon we’ll be having a hell of a ruckus around here before sunup,” Old Doc said.

At about this time the same thought occurred to Abe Field.

“That hoss!” he said. “If he gits to the Roost, the Crowd’s goin’ a ride!”

“If they do, we better be somewheres else,” Little Jack said.

“Mebbe it’s jest as well,” Abe said, thoughtfully. “You go to ever’ saloon an’ cathouse in town an’ round up ever’ association man you can find. I’ll see the sheriff deputizes ’em. Mebbe we can bag the whole damn Crowd!”

An hour later seventeen association riders, specially deputized, lay in wait on either side of the narrow ravine through which the Purple Valley Road passed a couple of miles west of town, and, just in case anybody got through, Abe, Little Jack and Zeke Dorn waited outside the old Morgan place.

As they rode towards Wolf City, Barney Grey said, “Best way’s to cut across the plain cattycornered an’ hit the river back a town. If anybody knows what happened they’ll know at Cheyenne Rose’s.”

“That’s a good idea, Dad,” Clay said, and they wheeled off the road and cut across through the sage brush.

Riding close, Barney Grey said, “Clay . . . could you call me somethin’ besides Dad? I’m only forty. Could you call me Stud?”

“You’re damn right, Stud.”

“In front a the men, too?”

“I’ll never call you anything but Stud.”

In the old Morgan house Randy said, “Could you lend me a gun, Doc?”

“If you think I’m going to break the law you’re crazy,” Old Doc said. “I’m a law-abiding citizen. Of course if you were to steal it . . .” Bending over him, Old Doc took his left wrist and said, “Hmmm, pulse is about normal . . . Look out for that gun, boy, it might possibly be loaded.”

Randy grinned and spun the gun.

“Reckon there’s nothing I can do, you’ve got the drop on me,” Old Doc said. “Your big brother better hurry, it’s getting late.”

“He’ll come,” Randy said, and he thought, Clay’ll come an’ git me, he swore he’d take care a me. My brother won’t never let nobody hang me.

Clay Boone and Stud Grey reined up in back of Cheyenne Rose’s.

“Stud, you slip in and ask either Rose or Mazie Green the situation, but duck if you see Abe Field or any of his men. I’ll wait.”

Stud nodded, stepped down, and went to the back door. Clay saw him slip inside. He came out again in a few minutes.

“I got Mazie alone. She says Randy’s alive but wounded over at Old Doc’s. He kilt Blackie Drew an’ they aim to hang him for it. Abe Field an’ Little Jack an’ Zeke Dorn’s standin’ guard at Doc’s. Mazie says wait a minute, she’s got a idee. She’ll be right out.”

Clay stepped down and they waited in the shadows. Presently Mazie Green came out, carrying a bottle.

“What’s on your mind, Mazie?” Clay asked.

“Them pore fellers a-guardin’ your brother,” she said. “I bet they’s colder’n a Eskimo’s butt an’ needs a drink or two a whiskey to warm ’em up.”

“What’s in the whiskey?”

“Just a little sleepy juice,” she said.

“Why are you doing this for Randy?”

“I ain’t doin’ nothin’ for Randy Boone,” she said. “He’s a animal an’ treats me like a sow, like all the rest do, ’cept you an’ a man whose name I ain’t fit to speak, I shamed him so. In my whole life two men treated me decent, acted the gennelman, even with a pleasure girl.”

She found Abe Field and Little Jack Horner in the shadows near the old Morgan place, and said, “Abie honey, I heared you was staked out here and I brung you a drink.”

“We got a keep our eyes open; we don’t want no drink,” Abe said.

“Speak for yourself, Mister Field,” Little Jack said, grabbing the bottle, and tilting it high.

“Hey, go easy on that!”

Little Jack backed off, gurgling the whiskey, but finally lowering it to say, “My, my! That tastes good enough to drink. Fust time I ever got anythin’ free from a whore. Take a drink, Abe, it’ll warm the cockles a your flaxseed heart.”

“You shet up!”

“Aw, go on, take a drink, Mister Field, afore I make a hog a myseff.”

Mazie took the bottle from him and held it out to Abe.

“It’s prime whiskey, Abie.”

“After you,” he said, watching her closely and thinking, Damn whore, she’s up to somethin’; she’s trying to git us drunk.

“Well, it’s a shame to waste good whiskey on the likes of me,” she said, “but here’s lead in your pencil.”

She put the bottle to her lips and made a fine show of drinking deep but Abe, watching suspiciously, was pretty sure she wasn’t swallowing enough “to drown a gnat.”

Wants a be sure we git plenty, he thought. Damn whore, I wouldn’t trust her as far’s I could th’ow a heifer by the tail.

Mazie lowered the bottle, smacking her lips, and handed it to Abe, who raised it to his lips, but didn’t swallow a thimbleful, thinking, By God, I’m goin’ a stay sober till that misbegotten Randy Boone’s safe in jail!

As he lowered the bottle Little Jack grabbed it again.

“Damn it, go easy!” Abe said.

“How’d you like to go plum’ to hell, Mister Field?” said Little Jack, and took another big slug before Abe could grab the bottle out of his hand.

“Where’s old Zeke at, Abie?” Mazie asked.

“Barn.”

“I’ll take him a little drink,” she said.

“I’ll jest go along to see you don’t give him nothin’ else,” Abe said.

“Whiskey’s the only merchandise I’m givin’ away this ev’nin.”

“Stay here, Little Jack, an’ try to keep your eyes open,” Abe said.

“I want another drink!” Little Jack said.

“You ain’t gettin’ another drap,” Abe said, and went to the barn with Mazie.

To Zeke she said, “Got a little drink for you, Zekie, honey.”

“Jest one, an’ mind you don’t make a hog a yourseff the way Little Jack done,” Abe said.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Zeke said, raising the bottle, but before he could drink half as deep as he’d have liked to, Abe took it away from him.

As they left the barn, Mazie took his arm and said, “Let’s you an’ me kill the rest a it, Abie, honey.”

“I ain’t drinkin’ no more. You take your bottle an’ git.”

“Aw, Abie, I’m colder’n a old maid’s feet. Let’s go somewheres an’ rest aw’ile and git warm,” adding in a whisper, “On the house, I mean.”

“Thought you didn’t give nothin’ away but whiskey.”

“I don’t, ’ceptin’ to a honest-to-goodness pleasure man like you,” she whispered, thinking, The son-of-a-bitch didn’t hardly tech that whiskey!

Pulling his head down she kissed him on the lips.

“I never heard of no whore kissin’ a man,” he said, startled.

“It’s extra special,” she whispered. “Abie, honey, don’t you think a pleasure girl’s got feelin’s like anybody else? Honey, you ain’t seen nor heard a the kind a lovin’ a pleasure girl gives her extra special pleasure man.”

Just then Little Jack Horner staggered around the corner of the house and fell flat on his face.

“You bitch!” Abe Field said, and grabbing the bottle from her hands, slugged her over the head, and, grabbing her under the arms, dragged her into the barn. “You all right, Zeke?”

“Feel kind a funny,” Zeke answered.

“She doped that whiskey!” Abe said. “You stick your finger down your th’oat, you hear!”

As they approached the Morgan place from the side, Stud Grey whispered, “It’s blacker’n Joe Blue’s heel.”

“Sunup soon,” Clay whispered, as they approached the back door. “Stay here, Stud. I’ll get Ran.”

Stud Grey waited, Colt in hand. Presently Clay came out, helping Randy.

“He can ride, he says,” Clay said. “Old Doc says take his sorrel.”

They went slowly towards the barn.

Inside, Zeke Dorn and Abe Field crouched, waiting with drawn guns. Little Jack was still dead to the world in the corner where they’d flung him, but Mazie stirred, and Abe quickly covered her mouth with the palm of his left hand, while keeping the gun ready in his right. As the door opened, both saw three shadowy figures and both opened fire simultaneously.

In the parlor, Old Doc heard shots, half a dozen or more of them, and grabbing his black bag and a lamp, rushed out. In the barn he found everybody down but Randy, who was leaning against the wall, the Colt in his hand.

Mazie held Clay’s head in her lap and was crying over him.

“He suspicioned an’ knocked me out!” she sobbed.

“I’m all right, I just stopped one slug,” Clay said. “You hit again, Ran?”

“I . . . I don’t think so.”

“Well, get along with you, then. My horse is back of the barn. Ford the river back of Crib Row and keep off the road.”

“I ain’t leavin’ you, Clay.”

“Don’t talk like a fool! You want all this to be for nothing!”

“Can’t you ride, Clay?” Randy asked.

“Not for a while,” Clay said. “But I’ll be all right, Ran. Now you get out of here and ride before you’re cut off.”

“Clay’s right,” Old Doc said. “No use in you both being taken. I’ll take care of him.”

“I’ll git the Crowd an’ come back for you, Clay.”

“Don’t talk like a boy, for God’s sake! Ran, you’ve got to be a man now, you’ve got to take care of my girl for me until I can get back to her.”

“I’ll come back with the Crowd and Cat Ballou too.”

“You damned fool! They’ll kill the lot of you! Ran, promise me you won’t do anything so reckless and foolish! It’s for her sake I’m asking.”

“You always was the boss,” Randy said, and limping out the back way to where the horses were, he climbed painfully into the saddle of his brother’s and rode for the Roost.

Bending over Clay, Old Doc said, “Bad, son?”

“Pretty bad, Doc, but I’ll make it; I’ve got to make it, to hold my son in my arms.”

“You’ll make it. Just take it easy for a moment while I look at the others.”

“Don’t waste no time on me, Doc,” Barney Grey said, hoarsely. “I’m headin’ for hell.”

“Dad, oh Dad!” Mazie cried, stretching out her hand to stroke his head.

“His name’s Stud,” Clay said.

“You’ll make it, Stud, boy!” she said.

“Thanks,” Stud Grey whispered. “How ’bout a lil kiss, Mazie, jest one for the road . . .”

Easing Clay’s head from her lap gently, she knelt over the dying man and kissed him on the lips.

I’ll bet that’s the first unbought caress he’s had since his mother’s, in spite of all his bragging, Clay thought.

Aloud he said, “Good-by, Stud. Tell the man at the big gate Clay Boone said you died game.”

Mazie felt the lips grow slack and stood up slowly.

“Thanks, Mazie,” Clay said. “For everything.”

Old Doc was bending over Zeke Dorn.

“He’s dead,” Old Doc said, and turned to Little Jack.

“Don’t bother with him, he’s full of sleepy juice,” Mazie said.

Old Doc bent over Abe Field, touching the bloody streak across the temple, feeling for his pulse.

“Is he dead?” Clay asked.

“No such luck,” Old Doc said. “It’s just a crease.”

Randy forded the river behind Crib Row and angled through the sagebrush, keeping off the road as Clay had told him. His side was bandaged tightly but it soon began to hurt.

I wish I had a drink, he thought. A man needs whiskey when he hurts, whiskey or a woman. Ma useta kiss the place that hurt an’ make it well. Ma, my side hurts me so. Oh, Ma, why’d you ever go an’ leave me!

The pain was searing now, and he thought, How’m I goin’ a stand it all the way to the Roost? How’m I goin’ a stay in the saddle? I wish I could lay down aw’ile. Christ that bullet hurts me so! But it ain’t the bullet. Old Doc got the bullet. I got a lay down an’ rest aw’ile. . . . Only I can’t. I got a git to the Roost an’ git the Crowd. I got a lead ’em to my brother that took care a me like he promised Ma. . . .

After awhile he went clear out of his head and in his delirium he called upon his mother: “Ma, come he’p me! Come he’p your little boy. Oh, Ma, Ma, I wished my brother dead! Forgimme Ma, forgimme for wishin’ him dead an’ a lustin’ after his woman. He’p me, Ma, like you useta. I wished him dead an’ he come an’ saved me, he took care a me like he promised you. He’p me, Ma, he’p me he’p my brother who’s brave like you! Who’s goin’ a take care a me if Clay don’t make it! You got a, Ma, if he don’t make it!”

When he reached the foot of the mountain he was raving: “Damn Cat Ballou! Damn that whore a Babylon! Damn her eyes! Damn her honey-drippin’ mouth! Damn her round places an’ her secret places an’ her sweet smell an’ her hot tantalizin’ breath an’ her warm lips that kissed me! Damn the way she walks, her hips a-swayin’ to drive a man crazy! Damn her settin’ her big stud so proud! Damn her for bein’ so sweet a man could eat her with a spoon!”

And then again he called upon his mother: “He’p me Ma, he’p me be my brother’s keeper, as he’s bin mine! He’p me to honor my brother, an’ yes, his wife. He’p me not to lust after Cat Ballou, Ma. He’p me to git shet aher that’s breakin’ my heart!”

Crying piteously, he started up the mountain.

Kid Shelleen sat on the steps of the cabin where Cat Ballou had first known life, rolling and smoking one cigarette after another. He could hear her pacing up and down inside.

She’s goin’ a have his youngun, he thought. It’s a story that never ends. Life’s a hell of a funny proposition. Some gits an’ loses an’ some never gits a-tall. Some is always drawin’ to a inside straight. Some fills it an’ some don’t. Still, I wunner if ever’body don’t git dealt one good hand? Mebbe it ain’t what you’re dealt, maybe it’s all in how you play your cards.

Thus ruminating on matters that have long bemused other philosophers, Kid Shelleen, the killer, watched the dawn break once more, and then he heard two quick shots followed by a third, and as he stood, he heard the door flung open behind him, and Cat Ballou say, “He’s come home; he said he would!”

The men came out of the cookhouse where they’d been drinking coffee for hours, and came over and stood by Cat and Kid Shelleen, but nobody said a word until Joe Fletcher rode over the rim leading Clay’s horse, with Randy limp and belly down over the saddle, lashed to it with a rope, when Cat moaned, “Clay, oh Clay!”

“He’s alive, Cat,” Joe Fletcher said. “Randy says they took him in Old Doc’s barn, but he’s alive. Barney Grey’s dead an’ Randy jest made it to the halfway mark. Couldn’t set in the saddle no more.”

“Saddle up, everybody!” said Cat Ballou.

As all but Kid Shelleen ran for the corral, Joe Fletcher and the Kid cut Randy from the saddle and took him down, and as they carried him to his cabin, Joe Fletcher said, “Randy said his brother took care a him like he’d promised their Ma, an’ then he began a cry like a baby for his Ma.”

“Somebody’s got a look after the boy,” Kid Shelleen said, as they laid him on the bed.

“Don’t look at me,” Cat said. “I’m no nurse. I’m riding with you to get my man.”

“We’ll need ever’ gun,” said the Kid.

“I can shoot better with my carbine than any man in the Crowd with a Colt, except maybe you,” she said. “You look after Randy, Joe.”

“Well, if the Kid says to . . .” Joe began.

“Pay the Kid no mind,” she said. “I’m ruling this Roost until my man comes home.”

They were halfway down the mountain when Cat saw a lone rider coming fast along the road. As they neared the floor of the valley, the rider pulled up and in the daylight she saw that it was Old Doc. Fear stabbing at her heart, she dug in her spurs, and pulling away from the others, raced to him.

Reining up, she cried, “Clay? He isn’t . . .”

She couldn’t say the word.

“He’s alive,” Old Doc said, “charged with the murder of Zeke Dorn and the wounding of Abe Field. They carried him to the jail in your bed.”

“He won’t be there long!” she cried, as the others came up.

“I have a message from him,” Old Doc said. “He says you’re not under any circumstances to try to break him out, and that’s an order.”

“I’ll take no such order, even from him,” she said. “I’m in charge until he’s back in the saddle.”

“In the first place, it would be a miracle if you got to him alive, Diamond F’s backing up the sheriff with twenty guns.”

“We’re nine,” she said. “I’ve seen worse odds.”

“In the second place,” Old Doc said, “he’ll surely die if you try to move him. It’ll be nip and tuck anyhow.”

“But they’ll hang him!” she cried.

“No they won’t, for Mazie Green and I will swear Stud Grey killed Zeke Dorn.”

“I want to nurse him and take care of him!”

“Old Doc’ll take care of him, honey,” he said. “I’ll fight that old Black Rider by his side. He said for you to take care of yourself and his son within you and his brother and one day you’ll be together again. He swore it, Cat. Let me ride and tell him you’re a woman and not a reckless child.”

She looked at her grandfather for a moment and then she said, “You ride back and tell Clay Boone that his woman’s waiting for him and that his son in her belly’s waiting for him, and will until there’s ice skating in hell, if need be!” and then the tears came, and she cried, “Oh, Doc, don’t let them fence him in!”

“I’ll do my best,” he said.

Old Doc sat his horse and watched her lead the Crowd back up the mountain until they passed the halfway mark, where one of them dropped off to stand watch, and then he turned his horse towards Wolf City to fight his old antagonist, the old Black Rider called Death.

Joe Fletcher was awkwardly trying to fix Randy’s bandage when Cat entered the cabin.

She said, “Get me some hot water and some clean dish towels.”

As Joe went out Randy opened his eyes and demanded, “Where’s my brother?”

“Badly wounded and in jail for murder, thanks to you.”

“Joe said you’d gone to break him out!”

“Old Doc headed us off. He said Clay can’t be moved.”

“Well, by God if you won’t break him out, I will!” Randy said, and tried to sit up, but she held his shoulders, and then, as gently as she could, eased him back.

“He sent word to take care of you and the son in my belly, and that’s what I’m going to do,” she said.

When Joe Fletcher returned with the hot water and the clean dish towels, she cut away Randy’s bloody bandage, bathed the wound and then rebandaged it.

“So gentle,” Randy murmured. “Like Ma was. She useta kiss the place that hurt an’ make it well. . . .”

“Go to sleep, Randy, close your eyes and go to sleep.”

“That’s jest what she useta say. I asked her to forgimme, an’ she did. For wishin’ him dead. I wished him dead an’ he saved my life. He took care a me like he promised Ma. I’m sorry I wished him dead, Cat, but I wanted you so!”

“Hush,” she said. “Don’t say things like that, don’t think things like that.”

“Ma forgimme for wishin’ him dead an’ lustin’ after his wife. . . .”

“Hush, you hear!”

“If you’ll forgimme, I won’t lust after you no more. Please forgimme, Kitten.”

“Don’t you ever call me Kitten! Don’t you ever call me Kitten again!”

“I won’t if you’ll forgimme.”

“I’ll never forgive you if he dies. If he dies, I die, and our baby . . . and you, Randy Boone!”

“He won’t die, Cat. They’ll never hang Clay Boone.”

“Never while I breathe,” she said. “Go to sleep now. Close your eyes and go to sleep.”

As he dozed off, Randy thought, I’ll never lust after her agin, she’s like Ma now, gentle an’ good. I’ll think a her like Ma. . . .

But in his dreams she wasn’t his mother; in his dreams there was no censor and no tabu; in his wild erotic dreams he possessed his brother’s woman again and again and again.

Old Doc fought his old antagonist with all his skill and all his heart. There was one moment just before dawn, when the enemy looked up at him from Clay Boone’s eyes, one moment when death was there, but the next one he was beaten once more, and biding his time, withdrew.

“I won that round, you old son-of-a-bitch,” Old Doc whispered. “But be patient, my old enemy, his time will come and so will mine, the time when we’ll call you friend,” and then he went to sleep sitting up.

Mazie Green lost her job that same day.

“I hate a do it, honey,” Cheyenne Rose said. “But Abe Field says you got a go an’ I’m a business woman an’ know which side my bread’s buttered on, the association side.”

“I was goin’ a quit anyways,” Mazie said.

“I bet China Kate’d take you back,” said Cheyenne Rose.

“I’ll make out,” Mazie said. “I’m good at my trade.”

“Sure you are, honey, you’s the second best girl here.”

“You bein’ the best?”

“Yep. Know why?”

“Course I know why. You like it. With me, it’s a livin’.”

“Seein’ you’re leavin’, an’ seein’ I kind a like you, I’ll let you in on a trade secret: jest close your eyes an’ pertend it’s that one man you can’t forget.”

“I wouldn’t shame his mem’ry,” said Mazie Green, but she thought, I shamed his name!

The news reached Lariat by the first stagecoach, from the lips of the driver and the pen of Old Doc, who wrote to Sam Springer, retaining him as attorney for the defense.

Mazie Green arrived on the same stage and an hour later called on Sam.

“Clay Boone’s in jail in Wolf City for killin’ Zeke Dorn, but he didn’t, Stud Grey did,” she said.

“I know,” Sam said.

“I got a little stake an’ I want you should defend him,” Mazie said.

“Why, Mazie?”

“Mebbe because I like him an’ mebbe to make up for somethin’ hateful I done.”

“Nobody holds it against the judge, Mazie.”

“How ’bout his wife?”

“She has an understanding heart.”

“Then he’s a lucky man.”

“He is. Thank you for the offer, Mazie, but Old Doc’s already retained me.”

“Well, I want a he’p if I can, an’ if you think my testimony’s wuth anythin’, jest call on me.”

“I will if I need you, Mazie.”

“I’ll be at China Kate’s.”

“Mazie . . . maybe I could fix it for you to wait on table . . .”

“Thanks, Mr. Springer, thanks just the same.”

On the morning when Old Doc won another round with his old antagonist and Mazie Green lost her job at Cheyenne Rose’s, Randy Boone woke to the good smell of bacon and eggs and coffee and the sight of Cat Ballou with his breakfast tray.

“How you feeling?” she asked.

“You fixed me up good,” he said. “It’s kind a stiff but it don’t hurt much. You’re good to me, Cat.”

“It’s for Clay,” she said. “He said to look after you.”

“I ain’t goin’ a bother you no more,” he said, trying not to look at the rise and fall of her shirt, and thinking, I’ll try an’ put you out a my mind. If only I didn’t dream a you like I do!

In two weeks Clay was well enough to be moved to the hospital in Laramie. They moved him secretly, by special stage, in the middle of the night, and under heavy armed guard, changing to the U.P. train at Lariat. Old Doc, leaving Young Doc to look after the sick and the babies, went along and stayed until he was completely out of danger.

On a snowy day in mid-December Clay was taken to Lariat and lodged in jail to wait trial. Old Doc accompanied him, and that afternoon Sam Springer outlined the case for and against Clay for them in Clay’s cell, the same one in the front from which he and Martha Babcock had taken Cat Ballou.

“The people have a technical first-degree murder case all right,” Sam said. “And Abe Field and the other big guns of the association are after Prosecutor Carmody to go whole hog. They want to hang you, Clay.”

“What are the odds?” Clay asked.

“About the same as drawing to a full house,” Sam said. “Zeke Dorn was killed while you were, to put it in legal jargon, ‘feloniously obstructing justice by aiding and abetting a murder suspect to escape.’ ”

“I didn’t kill Dorn,” Clay said. “Stud Grey did.”

“Since you were ‘acting in concert,’ that doesn’t make any difference in the eyes of the law,” Sam said.

“Abe and Zeke ambushed them and opened fire first,” Old Doc said. “They had to shoot in self-defense.”

“Still it was during the ‘commission of a crime,’ ” Sam said. “I don’t say we have a hopeless case, mind you. Ed Carmody’s no fool and knows it won’t be easy to get a jury to hang a man on a technicality, especially as the ‘crime’ was the sympathetic one of helping his kid brother, who, after all, hadn’t been convicted. Maybe if we could prove Field and Dorn ambushed them . . .”

“I’ll swear to it,” Old Doc said.

“Were you an eye witness?”

“Son, I won’t put you in the position of suborning perjury,” Old Doc said. “You’re damned right I was an eye witness! And I’ll bet Mazie Green will back me up.”

“She’s volunteered to testify,” Sam said.

“Well, you won’t have to coach her,” Old Doc said. “I will. When you’re dealing with liars, you fight fire with fire.”

“Well, Abe and his friends won’t worry about a little perjury of their own,” Sam said. “Ten to one Little Jack Horner will swear he was playing ’possum all the time, and they’ll both swear the Boones jumped them. It will be the word of a professional prostitute and you, an interested party, against theirs.”

“I’ve filled a full house or two in my time,” Clay said.

“It’s your life,” Sam said.

“What’s the alternative, if any?” Old Doc asked.

“Well, Ed Carmody knows there’s a possibility of us beating the first-degree charge, and, unofficially, he’s told me he’ll ignore association pressure and accept a plea of guilty to second degree. He said he’d do that to save the taxpayers the expense of a trial.”

“What would I get?” Clay asked.

“The pen.”

“How long?”

“Twenty years.”

“Twenty years! I’ll take my chances!”

“Well, you’d be eligible for parole for good behavior in five,” Sam said. “And, also unofficially, Judge Babcock has assured me that if you’re a model prisoner, he’ll join Old Doc in a petition to the governor for a parole in five years.”

“Five years. That’s a long time to be away from Cat and the son she’s expecting.”

“A man’s a long time dead,” Old Doc said. “You’d still have a lifetime with them, Clay. You’re both young. But it’s up to you. We’ll fight like hell for you, boy, that’s all I can say.”

“Sam, I’d like to speak to Old Doc for a minute,” Clay said.

“Certainly,” Sam said, and left them alone.

“Doc, we’re not legally married,” Clay said. “We are in our hearts, but . . .”

“That’s where marriages are made,” Old Doc said.

“We expected Young Preach.”

“Your brother told him you were already married.”

“I know that now. He thought we were. We said we were; we pledged each other on her mother’s wedding ring. We felt we were married until death do us part.”

“As far as I’m concerned you are,” Old Doc said.

“Thanks, Doc. I’m going to miss her so I don’t know how I’m going to bear it!”

“You’ve decided to plead guilty to second degree?”

“I guess I’ve changed, Doc. Once I’d have gambled, but, well, I’ve got Cat and our son and the future to think of.”

“You’ve grown up a lot, Clay,” Old Doc said.

Bad weather, plus a growing shortage of money, whiskey and tempers, had created a morale problem on the Roost which was to put Cat’s self-proclaimed leadership to the test. Even the poker game, usually a safety valve against restlessness, boredom and cabin fever, had languished. Everybody who had any money was hoarding it for whiskey and women during the holidays.

“Mebbe I ought a ride over to Coyote Valley with ’em soon’s it stops snowin’, an’ knock over the U.P.,” Kid Shelleen said one day.

“When the Crowd rides I ride with them,” Cat said. “And I’m not riding forty-eight hours through snowdrifts unless it’s a matter of life and death.”

“The men’s gettin’ mighty proddy,” the Kid said.

“I know,” Cat said. “What they need is to blow off steam. They need a little recreation and relaxation. To be blunt about it, they need whiskey and women.”

“An’ money to buy same,” the Kid pointed out.

“I’ll talk to them after supper,” she said.

After supper, as chairs were scraping and the men were sullenly rising, Cat rapped her cup with her spoon and said, “Sit back a minute, boys. I want to talk to you.”

They resumed their seats without enthusiasm.

“Boys, I know how you feel about being cooped up here and short of money and whiskey. You need a little action. The first day the storm lets up, I wish you’d ride to town and kick up your heels a little.”

“Most of us is broke,” Joe Fletcher said, unhappily.

“We could knock over the Wolf City Bank,” suggested Billy James, than whom there was none broker.

As the men started to bubble with excitement, Cat said, quietly, “And lose the goodwill of every decent citizen in the Purple Valley? Frankie Ballou made it a rule never to ride against friendly folks, Clay Boone followed that rule and so will I.”

“Where we goin’ a get money then?” Billy demanded.

“I’m going to treat the lot of you to a night on the town,” Cat Ballou said.

“We don’t want a use your money, Cat,” Joe Fletcher said.

“It’s not really mine,” she said. “It’s some Clay had left. As far as I’m concerned, it belongs to the Crowd, to all of us, and I’m going to divvy it up. I’ve got a plan to replenish it right after the holidays, but meanwhile, take it and have yourselves a time.”

“I can’t go, but I’ll pitch a few dollars into the kitty,” said Kid Shelleen, and he thought, She’s smart as her daddy and Clay Boone!

Even Randy, mostly to impress her, contributed to the kitty, asking only that they bring him back a bottle or two for Christmas. Cat was impressed, both by this unexpected generosity and by his exemplary behaviour of late.

He’s trying to act like a human being, she thought.

It stopped snowing that very night, which was a Friday, and the next morning dawned clear and cold. In the afternoon all hands but Cat, Randy and the Kid broke a path down the steep trail and by the time they hit Crib Row they were “howlin’ like curly wolves,” to quote Joe Fletcher.

They returned hung over and flat broke to a man, but they swore by Cat Ballou, for she had met the test and won their confidence, their loyalty and their hearts.

It was Christmas Eve and in that silent, holy night the snow swirled down in big soft wet flakes upon the mountaintop near the stars and clothed it in a timeless beauty. Through this a man led a horse heavy-laden with a Christmas tree of spruce over the rim and into the light from the buildings; it was Kid Shelleen, the killer.

He led the horse to the cabin where Cat Ballou was born, took the snow-covered tree from the back of his horse, and, holding it erect, knocked on the door.

“Come in,” Cat called.

Opening the door, Kid Shelleen saw Cat and Randy Boone beside another freshly cut tree which they were decorating with shiny tin-can tops and small pine cones.

For an instant she saw the naked pain and hurt disappointment in his eyes and then they were hard and cold again, and he said, “Sorry to innerupt, I . . .”

“You’re not interrupting; come in; Merry Christmas!” she said.

“Well, I cut this here tree for the bunkhouse,” he lied, “an’ I reckon I ought a . . .”

“Come in out of the snow,” she said. “I’ll help you decorate it just as soon as we’re finished here. Please come in, Kid.”

He propped the spruce against the cabin and stepped inside, slapping the snow from his clothing, as she came to the door.

“You’re standing under the mistletoe,” she said softly and then she kissed him warmly on the lips.

“Close the door!” Randy shouted. “It’s cold!”

Cat closed the door and said to Kid Shelleen, “Warm yourself by the fire,” and went back to her tree decorating.

Kid Shelleen went to the roaring potbellied stove but he didn’t need its cheerful heat to warm him; the kiss, the first one he’d had since her mother’s, the day of Cat’s sixteenth birthday, had warmed him to the bottom of his heart.

As for Cat, it had been a spontaneous gesture of friendship and understanding and gratitude, but his reaction had told her something she hadn’t ever quite realized.

He loves me! she thought. He’s in love with me! He wants me! I shouldn’t have kissed him like that. . . .

But being a woman, she too felt warm inside, and a little less lonely.

“Come help us, Kid,” she said. “We’re just about through.”

Randy thought, She kissed him. I’ll bet she opened her mouth like the time . . . Whyn’t I kiss her when I he’ped her put up that mistletoe! I wunner if her an’ the Kid . . .?

He said, “You clumsy ox, you’re standin’ on the package!”

“I’m sorry, I . . .”

Kid Shelleen lifted his foot. There was a very small package under it, a little box wrapped in red ribbon, with a fragment of a card on it. He picked it up.

“Didn’t hurt it a bit,” Cat said, thinking, Randy’s jealous of the Kid, and for a moment she felt the pleasant female excitement of being desired by two males.

The Kid was staring at the fragment of card.

It was a piece of a king of hearts and on it was written, “Merry Christmas Cat, from Clay.”

“He send it to you?”

“I just pretended.”

Randy too was staring at it.

“It’s pritty,” the Kid said, and put it back under the tree; it was the only present there, and he blamed himself bitterly for not chancing the ride to Wolf City, and even arrest on the old train-robbery charge, to get her something besides “a old spruce tree,” for Christmas.

“Tree’s pritty, too,” he said.

“I cut it myself,” Cat said.

At least he didn’t beat me to it, the Kid thought.

“I’ve hid a big five-gallon can of eggnog over in the cookhouse,” Cat said. “Randy donated his last two quarts of whiskey for it.”

By God, I give her somethin’, Randy thought.

“It’s for a surprise for the boys at midnight,” Cat said.

For a moment her eyes shone and then they clouded and the tears came out in big drops and she went to Kid Shelleen and put her head on his shoulder.

Holding her, awkwardly, but desperately tender, Kid Shelleen said, “He’ll come home, Cat. Nothin’ in this world will keep Clay Boone from Cat Ballou.”

Randy was looking at them bleakly, his heart black with jealousy of Kid Shelleen, and of his brother. Then he walked past them and out of the cabin, slamming the door behind him. He hadn’t donated quite all his whiskey; he still had one quart in his cabin.

As the door slammed, Cat stepped back from Kid Shelleen, who said, “Damn pup, somebody ought a teach him manners!”

“He’s jealous,” she said.

“Jealous? What call has he . . .”

“None,” she said. “But he can’t help it. He loves me.”

And what about me! Kid Shelleen thought.

“Oh, he didn’t say it. But a woman can tell, you know.”

You don’t know I’m all et up inside for love a you, he thought, and then he heard her say, gently, “A woman can always tell,” and he thought, She does know, an’ I’m glad I could never say it.

“Bless you, Kid Shelleen,” she said, and then, “I’m all right now. Thanks for the shoulder, partner.”

The Kid nodded numbly.

“Help me light the candles!” she said.

They lit the big kitchen candles and stood back to look at the tree. It was the first lighted tree Kid Shelleen had seen since he’d left home.

“It’s homelike,” he said.

“Let’s go decorate your tree for the boys in the bunkhouse!” she said.

At midnight they got the big can of eggnog from its hiding place in the cookhouse and took it to the bunkhouse. The boys were duly and enthusiastically “surprised,” although they’d snooped and found the can hours ago and had heroically resisted the temptation to sample it.

The cups were filled and then Cat, looking around the room, asked, “Why, where’s Randy?”

Nobody knew, or for that matter cared. Cat opened the door and looked towards his cabin. It was dark.

Poor boy, he’s sulking, she thought, and then, moved by the spirit of the occasion, she called, “Randy!”

But there was no answer. She closed the door.

Kid Shelleen raised his cup and said, “To the boss, to the whitest man alive, Clay Boone!”

There were loud shouts and everyone drank, Cat barely touching hers with her lips.

“And to the finest friend he or I ever had,” Cat said. “To Kid Shelleen!”

Again she barely touched the drink with her lips, but everybody else but Kid Shelleen drank deeply.

“Somebody get the man on watch,” Cat said. “Nobody’s going to try to ride up that trail in this storm.”

“I’ll get him,” said Kid Shelleen.

“God rest ye merry, gentlemen,” Cat said, and went out.

Passing Randy’s dark cabin, she had an impulse to knock and urge him to join the men in the bunkhouse, but she didn’t. When she opened the door of her own cabin, he was seated on her bed, a bottle in his hand.

Closing the door quickly, she said, “If you want to get drunk, do it in your own cabin.”

“I’m not drunk,” he said.

“Why’d you lie about the whiskey?”

“I jest happened to find another bottle.”

“Trying to butter me up,” she said. “Do you think I care whether you drink yourself silly or not?”

“You better,” he said. “If I git a lil drunk I’m li’ble to forget I said I wouldn’t lust after you no more.”

“You hush and go to your cabin, you hear!”

“It’s Christmas an’ so damn lonesome there. Have jest one drink with me an’ I’ll go.”

“You know I don’t drink whiskey.”

“I bet you was drinkin’ eggnog with them over in the bunkhouse.”

“Just a sip.”

“Drink jest a sip with me then.”

“No.”

“Butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth! ‘I don’t drink whiskey,’ she says, like only trollops did an’ all a time playin’ the trollop with Kid Shelleen!”

“That’s a lie!”

“You kissed him!”

“Out of affection for an old and loyal friend.”

“He’s lustin’ for you as much as I am!”

“You hush! I thought you were going to forget that foolishness!”

“I bin tryin’, Cat. It was you kissin’ him an’ me picturin’ you an’ him in bed . . .”

“Stop it!”

“You swear you never been?”

“I swear it.”

“Cat, darlin’, Cat honey . . .”

“Go to your cabin, Randy. Please go to your cabin.”

“Come with me, Cat,” he pleaded in a whisper.

“No, no! Please go, Randy! Please!” she pleaded, panicky, as she felt in her breasts and her loins unreasoning, impersonal, blind desire.

“Make it like the way I dream a you,” he whispered. “In the dark I dream a you comin’ into my bed all nekkid an’ warm . . .”

She ran towards the tree, shaking him off as he grabbed for her, and picking up the single small package under the tree, thrust it into his hands as he reached for her. He stared at it.

“Open it!” she said.

“What’s in it?”

“My heart!” she said. “Open it!”

He untied the red ribbon and opened the little box. In it was the wedding ring.

Flinging it away, he said, “Damn it, he ain’t here!”

“Yes he is, Randy, in my heart and in your conscience!”

“A man that wants a woman like I want you ain’t got no conscience,” he said. “I’m goin’ a take off all your clo’es. . . .”

“He’ll kill you, Randy!”

“He ain’t a goin’ a kill nobody; he’s goin’ a hang.”

“Don’t say that, Randy!”

“I can’t he’p it! I seen you fust! I kissed you fust an’ you kissed me back an’ you smelled so sweet I can’t ever go with no other woman for love a you!”

“That isn’t love, Randy, and I don’t love you, I love Clay, only Clay and I’ll love him till I die. I belong to him, Randy. I told you that. I’m his woman and he’s my man.”

“Jest because you’re carryin’ his damn brat! By God I’ll tear it out a you and put my own in your belly! I’ll have you if I die for it!”

Oh Clay, Clay, help me! her heart cried, as she said, “You could never have my heart!”

“Well, by God I’ll have the rest a you!”

“No!”

“Who’s goin’ a stop me!”

“Kid Shelleen,” a voice said from the doorway.

Randy wheeled, drawing, and looked into the muzzle of a Colt.

“Drop it,” said Kid Shelleen, kicking the door shut with his heel.

“Don’t kill him, Kid,” Cat said. “Please don’t kill him.”

“I won’t if he drops that Colt.”

“How do I know you won’t?” Randy demanded, and both men stood very close to death.

“You know I ain’t shot a unarmed man yet,” said Kid Shelleen.

“Drop it, Randy,” Cat said.

“Th’ow it on the bed,” said Kid Shelleen.

Randy threw it on the bed.

“Now let’s git ever’thin’ straight,” said Kid Shelleen. “For all a me, you’ll live jest as long as you behave. Bein’ Clay Boone’s brother’s your life insurance for all a me, jest as long as you treat Cat Ballou like a lady an’ your brother’s wife, jest that long an’ no longer. Git to your cabin now.”

Randy left and Kid Shelleen went to the corner where Randy had flung the ring, picked it up, and handing it to Cat, said, “Put it on your finger, Cat, an’ don’t never take it off.”

Nodding, she put the ring back on her finger.

The first rays of the sun were dancing on the still snow when Old Doc rode over the rim. A ghostly quiet lay over the Roost. Old Doc stepped down in front of Cat’s cabin and took two big beribboned packages from behind the saddle. He went up the steps quietly, pausing to listen at the door. All was quiet within.

He started to open the door just enough to push the packages inside, when Cat called out sharply, “Who’s there?”

“Santy Claus,” Old Doc said and opened the door.

She was sitting up in the bed, her carbine in her hands, her small firm breasts bare.

“Merry Christmas,” Old Doc said.

Pulling up the blanket quickly, she put down the carbine and cried, “Oh Doc, Doc, I’m so glad to see you!”

“Likewise,” Old Doc said. “I’d think you’d freeze sleeping raw.”

“I must have wriggled out of my nightgown during the night,” she said. “Tell me about Clay!”

“He’s fine. How are you?”

“Fine, but what about him?”

“Any morning sickness yet?”

“You know I was never sick a day in my life. What about my man?”

“You were never pregnant before as far as I can recollect.”

“I’m healthy as a horse, as a mare. I’ll foal like one. Tell me . . .”

“He sent you his love and a Merry Christmas to you and Randy. How is Randy, anyhow?”

“He’s all right. What else did Clay say?”

“He wrote it, honey.”

“Give it to me!”

“I will, but you’ve got to open your other presents first. Don’t you remember when you were a little girl you always saved the best for the last?”

“Yes,” she murmured. “I’ll save it for last but give it to me!”

He took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to her, and as he turned to pick up one of the packages, she kissed the letter and thrust it under the blanket between her breasts.

Old Doc handed her the package and as she tore the wrappings from it, he put wood on the embers in the potbellied stove, and thought, Why’s she so edgy? Why’d she have that carbine so handy?

He said, “Anything you want to tell me, Cat?”

Inside the package were several other smaller ones, in Christmas wrappings. Not answering his question, she opened the top one. In it was a red dress, embroidered in yellow.

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

“And it will grow as your belly grows,” he said. “It’s the prettiest maternity dress I ever saw. Martha Babcock bought the material and Hilda Field made it for you.”

“I love it!” she said.

The next package was a stocking filled with nuts and candy, from the judge, the next a fruit cake, baked by Martha Babcock, the next a bottle of perfume from Sam Springer and the last a gold locket. Opening it, she saw a lock of light brown hair.

“Had to bribe the jail barber to get it,” Old Doc said.

“What a lovely idea!” Cat said, pressing the locket to her.

“It wasn’t mine, it was a lady’s,” Old Doc said.

“A lady?”

“A lady of pleasure,” Old Doc said. “Mazie Green.”

“A lady of pleasure,” Cat murmured.

“This is from me,” Old Doc said, handing her the other package.

Tearing the wrappings off, she saw that it was a cradle.

Rocking it across her lap, she said, “Merry Christmas, Clay Boone Junior,” and then, “Now, the last and the best of all,” and taking the envelope from between her breasts she kissed it again and opened it.

She looked up, eyes brimming, and said, “How long, Doc?”

“Five years.”

“Five years!”

“He got twenty, but Judge Babcock . . .”

“Five years! I’ll die, Doc!”

“No, you won’t. You’ll be brave and take care of yourself and your baby . . .”

“I’ll be an old hag!”

“You won’t even be as old as your mother was when she married.”

“You don’t understand, Doc, she hadn’t known a man’s love; you just don’t understand!”

“Yes, I do,” he said.

“He awakened me, taught me the joy, the glory. . . . He fulfilled me! Oh, Doc, you don’t know how my body hungers for him!”

“I know, honey,” he said gently. “Another kind of fulfillment is growing within you, something creative and immortal, and holy. Life. A child of love. You’ll know another joy, another glory, when you take him to your breasts.”

“Yes,” she said, “but meanwhile . . . Doc, there is something I want to tell you. It’s about Randy . . . he keeps after me.”

“Just keep that carbine handy,” Old Doc said.

“I do, but I’m afraid, not of Randy, of myself!”

I’ve got to get her out of here, Old Doc thought.

“Cat,” he said, “you shouldn’t be cooped up here with all these men. You ought to get Kid Shelleen to take you to Clay’s father in Oregon where you can have your baby in peace.”

“No!”

“Randy needn’t go. You can trust the Kid. . . .”

“I won’t budge from this mountaintop until Clay comes home!”

“What about Randy, Cat?”

“I’ll think of Clay and our baby, our child of love, and it will make me strong!”

“It would make Clay feel a lot more comfortable knowing you and the baby were safe and comfortable. . . .”

“I won’t budge!”

“All right, Cat, let me leave you a little money. . . .”

“Thank you but no.”

“You can’t live off Randy.”

“I won’t.”

“You can’t live off outlaws, Cat.”

“I’m an outlaw, remember? I’ll take what I need from Abe Field and the association.”

“Clay wouldn’t want you to, Cat.”

“Then let him break jail and take care of me!”

“What about your baby?”

“You can help me birth him as you helped my mother.”

“I will, of course, but . . .”

“It won’t come hard for me, Doc. I told you I’m healthy as a mare.”

“I’ll be here when your baby comes, Cat.”

“I’ll send word, Doc.”

“You won’t have to,” Old Doc said. “I can count.”

During the night Randy Boone, tossing on his bed, thought wild brave thoughts of standing against Kid Shelleen, of beating him to the draw, of shooting him down before Cat Ballou’s eyes, of claiming her as his own by right of conquest.

But in the light of day he knew these for the fantasies they were, knew that Kid Shelleen was simply too much man for him to handle, that the Kid would either kill him or shame him before her, as his brother would have done.

Having faced this truth, he faced another: He wanted Cat Ballou as much as ever, more than ever, but the character of the wanting had changed and he felt in himself the stirrings of the kind of pride his brother possessed. He wanted Cat Ballou’s heart as well as her body.

I want her to do more’n pleasure me, he thought. I want she should love me, more’n Clay, more’n anybody, jest me. I want a be her man. I want a father her younguns and I want she should want me to.

He was well aware that but for the intervention of Kid Shelleen, he would have surely possessed her body the night before, but he knew too that she had spoken the truth when she’d said he could never have her heart . . . unless she gave it freely. And he knew that only a man could win her completely.

I got a prove I’m a man, he thought. As much man as Clay. More man. And I jest ain’t, not yet. Clay ain’t afraid a Kid Shelleen, nor any man a-livin’. I got a be like that an’ w’en I am, she’ll come to me willin’ and lovin’. W’en I’m man enough to stand against any man an’ take her, she’ll come a-runnin’, but not before.

He decided to work on his draw, perfecting it until he was smoother and faster than Kid Shelleen or any man.

I’ll have to kill Kid Shelleen to win her, he thought, an’ the day’ll come w’en I can do it. W’en the day comes that Clay comes out a the pen, he’ll come for her an’ I’ll have to kill him too. If I ain’t man enough to, I ain’t man enough for Cat Ballou. But I aim to be!

This brought him to a consideration of the qualities which made his brother a leader, a lover and a man.

It ain’t only that he’s brave as a lion. It ain’t only the speed a his draw. It ain’t only that he can look down any man he ever saw, or that men will follow him to hell an’ gone. Them ain’t the only things she sees in Clay Boone. He may be a stallion in the bed, but that ain’t all a it, neither. He’s sweet to her. He treats her like a kitten an’ he treats her like a woman an’ a lady. He loves her an’ he respects her as a yuman. He does little things for her, thoughtful things. He makes over her an’ talks funny an’ gentle to her. They got little jokes together. He’d bring her a monkey on a string or the moon if she wanted it. He’d tackle a catamount with his b’ar hands for her an’ she knows it. He’d hammer down the gates a hell for her an’ by God, so will I! What he can do, I can do, an’ better!

Thus, with Christmas morn, a new Randy Boone was born, one determined to prove himself, to himself, to the world, and to Cat Ballou.

That afternoon he told her, “I been a dog but now I’m goin’ a act the man, a diffrunt man, you’ll see. I deserved killin’ last night. It was the whiskey, Cat. Here’s what’s left a the bottle. Give it to the boys or th’ow it in the outhouse. I don’t want no more whiskey that makes a feller act like a animal an’ not a man. I want you should know you can trust me. I want you should know I’m goin’ a look after you and do things for you like Clay asked me.”

Cat, suspicious of these sudden protestations, said, “That sounds like a hangover talking. New Year’s is the time for resolutions and it’s a week off.”

“I got no hangover,” he said. “You can see the bottle’s most full. I won’t tech a drap a whiskey, even on New Year’s Eve. You got a b’lieve me, Cat, you got a b’lieve I’m goin’ a be a diffrunt man.”

She thought, He’s just a boy!

She said, “All right, just you be a good boy and we’ll get along.”

“I want you should do somethin’ for me,” he said. “I got over a hundred dollars hid and I want you should divvy it with the boys, so’s they can have theirself some fun New Year’s Eve. But I don’t want you should tell ’em it’s from me. You tell ’em it’s some more you found in a old sock or somethin’.”

“Such virtue shouldn’t go unrewarded,” she said drily. “If you’re trying to butter me up again . . .”

“I’m jest tryin’ to square myself a lil bit,” he said, earnestly. “If it’s butterin’ you up to try an’ make you like me like a yuman, then I reckon you could say I’m tryin’ a butter you up.”

“There, there,” she said, thinking, He’s a naughty little boy trying to make amends. She said, “I’ll give the money to the boys, but I’m not going to take credit for it. I’ll tell them where it came from.”

She did, and while astonished at this almost incredible manifestation of Christmas spirit, the boys were sensible enough not to look a gift horse in the face and spent the money wisely on women and whiskey as the old year died and the new was born.

On New Year’s night, hung over but content, they were assembled by Cat in the bunkhouse and told her plan for refinancing all hands.

“Tomorrow’s payday on all the big spreads,” she said. “We’ll ride against Diamond F, while everybody’s full of grub and goodwill, not to mention more hung over than you are, and we’ll take the payroll. If there’s any gunplay, save Abe Field for me.”

“An’ Little Jack Horner for me!” Randy said.

“You better let us handle this, Cat,” said Kid Shelleen.

“As I mentioned before, I’m ruling this Roost until Clay Boone comes home,” she said. “We ride at midnight and hit ’em at dawn.”

Randy Boone rode on Cat Ballou’s right hand and Kid Shelleen on her left as they bore down on Diamond F just before dawn.

Pulling up, Cat said, “Put on your masks, everybody.”

“They’ll know who we is,” Randy said.

“But can’t prove a thing,” Cat said. “Put on your mask!”

Randy did so, quickly, as did the others.

They hit Diamond F, taking it completely by surprise, as the men, caught with their guns off, were washing up. At the first ominous sound of hoofbeats, Abe Field and Little Jack Horner ducked into the barn, where, unarmed, they hid in the hayloft.

Randy, eager to shine in Cat’s eyes as a bold and reckless man, was bitterly disappointed when the Diamond F men stood by and let them take the as yet undistributed payroll without opposition.

“Where’s Abe Field an’ Little Jack Horner at?” he demanded.

“They lit out,” one of the hands said.

“Let’s search the house an’ barn,” Randy said.

“Don’t act like a born idjit, come on,” said Kid Shelleen.

Randy looked to Cat, who merely nodded, and, turning her horse, led them up the road.

As soon as it was safe, Abe Field and Little Jack rode to town, and reporting the robbery to the sheriff, Abe demanded a posse to ride to the Roost.

“You figurin’ on leadin’ it?” the sheriff asked.

“Damn it, you’re the sheriff!”

“I don’t aim to be a dead un,” the sheriff said.

“Well, by God, I want you should arrest the fust man from the Crowd that shows his face in this town!” Abe said.

“Jest three of ’em’s wanted by the law,” the sheriff said. “Cat Ballou an’ Kid Shelleen an’ Randy Boone, an’ I aim to arrest any or all a them, if they’s stoopid enough to ride in here.” He added, “If I’m able.”

“They was eleven riders an’ you know damn well it was the whole Crowd!” Abe said.

“Mebbe it was an’ mebbe it wasn’t,” the sheriff said. “I’m a officer a the law and I ain’t arrestin’ nobody without proof an’ you said yourself they was all masked.”

So the Crowd, except for the ones with prices on their heads, caroused cheerfully on Crib Row the next few Saturday nights. They were all in fine spirits, spirits that even the cold ride through snowdrifts couldn’t dampen.

On February first, the next payday, the sheriff, upon demand of Abe Field, did deploy half a dozen deputies, plus the Diamond F riders he’d also sworn in, at strategic spots around the home ranch, but Cat Ballou and her masked riders didn’t strike there, they struck at Circle R.

Here Randy had better luck and Joe Raines, owner of the outfit, worse. Against the possibility of just such a sortie, he had seen to it that the men wore their guns, even to the privy; and when the raiders appeared, he was standing on the front porch, Colt in hand, with his six men at his back, including Ace Lamarr, who had succeeded Blackie Drew as ramrod.

While the Crowd was still out of six-gun range, Joe Raines shouted, “We’re waitin’ for you an’ if you want my payroll, come an’ git it!”

Cat and Kid Shelleen pulled up, to consider their strategy, but Randy, shouting, “We’re a-comin’!” charged straight at the house, swung low over his horse’s neck like an Indian, and firing like one, and just as wildly.

Cat and the others spurred after him and a bloody battle was averted only because Randy, mostly by sheer luck, brought the boss down, badly but not fatally wounded, his Colt bouncing on the porch. His men promptly threw their guns down and their hands up and meekly surrendered the payroll.

When they slowed down after galloping a mile, Kid Shelleen said to Randy, “That was a plum’ foolish gran’stan’ play a yours, boy, you might a got Cat killed.”

“The lead ain’t bin molded that’s got Cat Ballou’s name on it!” Randy said, thinking, Or mine!

“I don’t want a read them words on no tombstone,” said Kid Shelleen. “You better give this boy a talkin’ to, Cat, or he’s li’ble to make a lot a business for the unnertaker.”

“Randy,” she said. “The Kid’s right. You wait for orders after this. You were reckless and foolish awhile ago, not that you weren’t brave.”

“It’s what Clay’d a done,” Randy said.

“The hell he would!” said Kid Shelleen.

“Don’t you swear in front of a lady!” Randy said.

“An’ don’t you tell me how to act!” Kid Shelleen said.

“Oh, stop arguing,” Cat said. “You’ve got to admit it, Kid, he’s got plenty of sand.”

Kid Shelleen shrugged and rode on, thinking, The showoff son-of-a-bitch! Playin’ tin hero! How in hell could the same woman birth him and Clay Boone!

“I’m sorry, Cat,” Randy said.

“No, you’re not sorry,” Cat said. “If a man could strut in the saddle, you’d be doing it this minute,” but she thought, He’s reckless but he’s really got plenty of sand.

“I meant I was sorry I didn’t kill Joe Raines for you, Cat,” Randy said. “I aim to kill ever’ one of them men that done your folks in ’fore I’m th’ough.”

Cat Ballou, heavy with child, sat on the steps of her cabin in the warm sun, dreamily contemplating the now bulging red dress, thinking, as Clay Boone’s rambunctious unborn child thrashed in her loins, You’ll come out of the dark and into the sun soon, man-child. You’re going to be a whopper, I’ll bet, and you’ll grow tall like your daddy, you’ll sit tall in the saddle like your daddy and your Uncle Randy. . . .

He is as tall as Clay, she thought, and his shoulders are broadening more like Clay’s and his hair’s getting a little darker—or do I just think so? Oh, I don’t know what I think—I only know what I feel. I feel so happy I’m carrying Clay’s son! So glad our son possesses my body so completely. When he’s born I’ll be really complete, really Clay’s forever.

She felt her strong son kick again and exulted, You’ll have shining light brown hair and wear it like your daddy, Clay Boone, Junior! You’ll have a voice like organ music. You’ll be a leader and a lover, as you’ll find out, and the girls will find out one of these days!

She saw Randy Boone crossing towards her cabin from the corral, his long unbowed legs striding, his shoulders square and she thought, He’s getting more like his big brother every day, in every way, it’s not just my imagination!

Coming up and taking off his hat, the way Clay always did, Randy asked, “How’s my nephew?”

“Getting impatient,” she said, and she thought, His hair is getting almost as dark as Clay’s. . . .

“Want to send one of the boys for Old Doc?” Randy asked.

“Don’t you worry, he’ll be here,” she said. “I’ve kind of lost count, but he won’t. That’s right, Clay Junior, kick, kick to your heart’s content you proud little stallion of a man!”

Randy thought, By God I’ll be glad when she’s shet of that brat!

He said, “I’m hunter tomorrer. Lend me your carbine and I’ll bag you a birthin’ present.”

“What’s the matter with your rifle?”

“This is a extra-special present,” he said, “an’ I want a git it with your carbine.”

“All right, if that’s the way you feel about it,” she said. “What is this present, anyhow?”

“I want it should be a supprise,” he said.

Led by Abe Field, Joe Raines and Steve Grommet and their respective ramrods, Little Jack Horner, Ace Lamarr and Bert Grommet, Steve’s son, lately back from college in the East, the big association herd entered the gorge shortly after dawn. Randy and Billy James, with three other men, waited under cover just beyond the rim near the end of the gorge, while Joe Fletcher and the others were deployed near the mouth.

As soon as the herd was well into the gorge, jamming it closely, Joe and his men swooped down from the rear, firing their guns and yelling like Indians, and Randy and his group opened fire. Bert Grommet and Ace Lamarr went down with the first volley, and then the cattle stampeded.

Abe Field swung his horse for the steep slope of the opposite bank, while the others, seeing that to reach either of the fallen men ahead of the stampeding cattle was hopeless, fled at the gallop, trying to reach the foot of the gorge where they could swing out of the way.

As the vanguard of the rampaging steers swept over Bert Grommet and Ace Lamarr, Abe Field managed to gain the slope. As he struggled to reach the top Randy jumped from his horse and took a careful bead on him with Cat’s carbine.

Abe had almost reached the rim when Randy’s shot tumbled him from the saddle. As he rolled over and over down the slope, Randy snapped another shot at him and then he was swallowed up by the dust from the hoofs.

I got him! Randy thought, exulting. I got Abe Field for Cat Ballou! He died under them hoofs like her folks! May he roast in hell!

Steve Grommet, sobbing and cursing as he rode, managed, with Little Jack Horner and Joe Raines, to outrace the stampede to the end of the gorge, and swinging, to gain safety as it roared past. Looking towards the rim, they saw the raiders riding away, heading across the Purple Valley towards the Roost.

As for Abe Field, he lay a few feet above the tossing horns, obscured by the dust, his shoulders wedged into a mesquite bush, unconscious, and painfully but not seriously hurt. Joe Raines, Little Jack Horner and grieving, raging Steve Grommet found him there and took him to town.

Cat Ballou and Kid Shelleen were waiting in the sun when the Crowd, led by Randy Boone, rode over the rim of the Roost.

Stepping down, Randy handed Cat her carbine and said, “I got him for you, Cat, I an’ your carbine an’ the cattle got Abe Field for your birthin’ present.”

For a moment she stared at him, not touching the carbine, feeling no elation, as she thought, He’s killed for me; he brings me death like a posy; and then, as life stirred violently within her, she said, “I’m so sick of death!” and as the labor pains clutched at her, she turned to Kid Shelleen and said, “Help me to my bed, Kid, my son wants out.”

Cat Ballou lay on the bed where she’d been born, suffering the sharp creative pain gladly; and to Kid Shelleen, who sat close beside her bed, suffering with her as he’d suffered with her mother, she said, “It’s nothing, Kid; I was born for this, this is the real consummation.”

And she thought, I am a good animal. Clay Boone would be proud of his woman. Old Doc’s right, it’s another kind of fulfillment, another kind of glory. Be proud, Clay Boone, as your Cat is proud!

The door, against which Kid Shelleen had moved her dresser at her request, rattled and then there was a sharp knock.

“Go away, Randy Boone, you’ll not bring death into this room!” she cried, and then she heard Old Doc’s voice saying, “Open up, Cat, it’s me.”

The Kid shoved the dresser aside and Old Doc entered with his black bag. Outside the Crowd was standing in a semicircle, all but Randy Boone.

“Get me a bucket of warm water, Kid,” Old Doc said. “Take it easy, everything’s under control.”

Nevertheless, the Kid rushed, spilling half the water on the way.

But by the time he got back Old Doc was holding a whopping, squalling man-child by the heels, and as he gave the small red wrinkled bottom a hearty smack, he said, “Shake hands with Clay Boone, Junior. Young fellow, meet Kid Shelleen, the fastest draw in old Wyoming,” and then, as he put the child to Cat’s breast, he said, “Supper time!”

With an awed tenderness, Kid Shelleen looked upon the first woman’s breast since his mother’s until tears blurred the lovely sight.

“Don’t cry about it, Kid,” Old Doc said. “This is a time for rejoicing!”

“Isn’t he beautiful!” Cat cried. “Hey, you hungry little stud, you don’t have to eat me up!”

Meanwhile, hurt and bewildered, Randy borrowed a quart of whiskey from Joe Fletcher and went to his cabin.

I killed for her an’ she don’t say thanks or kiss my foot! I killed them men that done her folks in like she swore she’d do herself an’ w’at thanks do it git? Kid Shelleen’s he’pin’ her youngun git borned instead a me! The youngun that ought a bin mine. I’m goin’ a git stinkin’ drunk an’ forget all about her!

He looked at the bottle in his hand.

Clay drinks whiskey w’en he wants to!

He uncorked the bottle.

But he don’t never run away to it!

Recorking the bottle, he put it on the table.

I ain’t goin’ a run away no more. Not from nothin’. She’s techy ’cause she’s havin’ the youngun. She’ll git over it. I got a give her time. Reckon she won’t think about no man long’s the youngun’s at suck. I’ll bide my time.

Young Preach arrived an hour later with his black book.

“You said you’d wait,” he said reproachfully to Old Doc.

“You were kind of busy burying Bert Grommet and Ace Lamarr,” Old Doc said.

“I thought it was Abe Field!” Cat cried.

“He was lucky again,” Old Doc said. “A shoulder wound and a broken leg.”

“Thank God you weren’t mixed up in that stampede,” Young Preach said. “Neither young Grommet or Lamarr had a thing to do with your parents’ death.”

“I’m sorry about it all,” she said, “but life’s for the living. Christen my son, Young Preach, christen him Clay Boone Junior and you have my word I won’t bring him up in the ways of death.”

“Amen,” Young Preach said, and then he christened the son of Clay Boone and Cat Ballou, after which she again put his eager seeking mouth to her breast.

As he sucked noisily, she said, “No table manners at all, but oh, isn’t he grand!”

“That he is,” Old Doc said.

“Cat,” Young Preach said, “Steve Grommet tried to organize a big posse to force the Roost. He couldn’t raise one big enough, but there’s talk the association’s going to pressure the governor for enough men to wipe you out.”

“It would take an army,” she said.

“A small army,” Old Doc put in. “Of course they’d lose a lot of men, but if they’re committed, you’ll never stop them.”

“We’ll defend ourselves,” she said.

“I thought you were through with the ways of death,” Young Preach said.

“I am,” she said. “It’s like a big snowball. Adam Field started it rolling, but I kept it rolling, and because of me Randy killed Blackie Drew, and because of that Clay’s in the pen. I’ll stop it if they will. I’m sorry Randy killed Blackie Drew and the Raines’s ramrod and Steve Grommet’s son. The innocent have suffered with the guilty.”

“They always do,” Old Doc said.

“Adam Field was guilty, but I’m even sorry I killed him,” she said. “It did no good. Oh, if I’d only met Clay Boone sooner! He’d never have let me do it!”

“The old Clay Boone would have done it for you,” Old Doc said, “but the new one wouldn’t have, or let you do it; he’s growing up, Cat, and so are you. You’ve done that for each other, the both of you and love and the child you created together.”

“Tell Steve Grommet I had nothing to do with his son’s death,” she said, “but that I’m sorry from the bottom of my heart, and tell them all that I’ll see that none of the Crowd ever molests them again.”

“I will,” Old Doc said, “but I’m afraid that will be small consolation to Steve Grommet; he’s like a crazy man. I think there’s a fair chance he’ll force the governor’s hand, Cat. Please get out while you’ve got the chance.”

She shook her head.

“He’s right, Cat,” Young Preach said. “Go before there’s more bloodshed. Go just as soon as you can ride.”

“I could ride tomorrow,” she said, “but I’ll not without Clay.”

“He’d be the first to tell you to if he were here,” Old Doc said.

“Until he does, with his own lips, here I stay,” she said.

It was dusk when Joe Fletcher, on lookout at the halfway point, heard riders laboring up the steep trail. Crouching behind the rock, ready to challenge, he peered into the gathering darkness, until, to his astonishment, Clay Boone appeared, followed by Old Doc and Young Preach.

“No signal, Joe,” Clay said. “This is a surprise,” and the three rode on up the trail.

It was dark when they rode over the rim and pulled up. There were lights in all the buildings except Randy’s cabin, for Randy, having slept little the night before, was taking a nap before supper.

“Not quite supper time,” Clay said. “Wait here until I’m inside the cabin and then go on to the bunkhouse. Give me a few minutes with my wife and son and then come over.”

Stepping down he crossed to the cabin. Opening the door quietly, he looked upon a sight he’d dreamed of through long and lonely nights, his son at Cat’s breast.

“Come in, Clay,” she said. “I knew you’d come.”

Closing the door without ever taking his eyes from them, he went to her, and kneeling beside them, adored the mother and the child.

“This is my sweetest moment,” he said.

“Isn’t he fine?” she said.

Kissing the suckling babe on the back of the neck and then her breast above where the eager lips were, he said, “You’re the finest in the land, the both of you.”

“He’s got the most wonderful appetite,” she said. “Like yours. Like mine. Oh, he’ll be a grand man like his daddy.”

“Old Doc and Young Preach came with me,” Clay said. “He’s going to marry us as he married your mother and father.” Touching the ring on her finger, he said, “Take it off, Cat Ballou, and when you put it on again, never take it off.”

She took off the ring and handed it to him. As she did so, Clay Boone Junior, replete, took his lips from the rosy nipple, burped, and looked into his father’s eyes.

“Hold your son, Clay,” she said.

Clay took his son and as he held him in his arms, knew another moment he would never forget.

“Hold him while we’re married,” Cat said, and, smiling, “It isn’t every mother’s son that gets to be a witness at her wedding!”

When Old Doc and Young Preach came, Cat and Clay pledged themselves with the ring again, and as they heard Young Preach say, “Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder,” their hearts were overflowing.

Randy, coming out of his cabin, saw the men standing around the cabin in a semicircle and when he asked what was going on, he was told. Blindly returning to his cabin, Randy grabbed the bottle and drank deep.

He’s broke out an’ come home! He come too soon! She’ll never leave him now! They’s gittin’ married by the preacher an’ they’ll take the youngun an’ traipse off to Oregon and I’ll never never git my chance! It ain’t fair! Ma, you know it ain’t fair! ’Member when he took my little red wagon an’ you made him give it back? He’s took my girl. Ma, make him give her back!

He jumped up and went to the window and saw Old Doc and Young Preach and the others crossing from the cabin to the bunkhouse. His eyes went to the closed door of the cabin and then the lamp went out inside their cabin.

Clenching his fists, he thought, Married an’ together in the dark! Now he’s undressin’ her . . . an’ now she’s warm and nekkid in his arms . . . Christ Jesus!

He smashed his fist into the wall, and although his knuckles bled, he felt no pain in them for the pain in his vitals and in his heart.

In their cabin Clay was holding his wife close, searching for the words to tell her what he had to tell her, when in his cradle the baby gurgled.

Alarmed, Clay demanded, “Anything wrong with him?”

“Of course not,” Cat said. “He’s just making happy sounds because his daddy’s broken out of the pen to take care of his own.”

“But I didn’t break out, Cat. Old Doc got the governor to parole me just long enough for us to get married and for me to explain how you must break up the Crowd and ride to Oregon.”

“Not without you!”

“I’ve got to go back, Cat. Old Doc gave his word and so did I.”

“Your word! Does it mean more to you than your wife and baby?”

“A man without honor’s not much of a man, Cat.”

“Oh, darling, darling, I can’t ride without you!”

“You’ve got to, sweetheart. The governor’s giving you just two days to clear out. If you don’t a hundred men will ride against the Roost.”

“I’ll stand here and die with my son unless you come with us!”

“And have me hate your memory?”

She was silent in the darkness for a long moment and then she said, “I’ll go, Clay, but oh God, I’ll miss you so!”

“Don’t you think I’ll miss you?”

“Oh, Clay, I’m so afraid!”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, Cat.”

Yes there is, she thought, my body.

She said, “You don’t know how I hunger for you in the night!”

“I know how I hunger for you,” he said. “If I can stand it you can. We’ve got to.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “If it must be, it must be. Light the lamp, my darling, and we’ll look upon each other and know each other, and remember.”

At his window, Randy saw the lamp go on, and thought, in an agony of bitterness and jealousy, He’s had her in the dark an’ now they look at each other an’ smile slow an’ if I had any gumption, I’d cut my th’oat!

But he didn’t cut his throat, he soothed it with an old anodyne, the one they call whiskey, and, after a long time, he slept the sleep of stupor, but still he dreamed, he dreamed the dream of Cain.

The lovers woke to the music of the puling of their cradled child and Clay Boone watched with tender amusement as she changed and bathed him and then with tender awe as she repeated the ritual of putting him to her breast.

Closing her eyes, Cat thought, as their son sucked greedily, This night and this moment will sustain me. I’ll keep this memory bright.

When she opened her eyes again, finally, her husband was dressed and standing looking at them as if to fix this sight forever in his memory and his heart.

“You’d better go now, Clay,” she said.

He kissed the suckling on the back of the neck again, and the breast above his lips again, and then her lips, and said, “Good-by, my son, good-by, my wife, till we meet again.”

Clay found all of the men assembled in the bunkhouse to hear what he had to say, all but Randy. Learning that he hadn’t come out of his cabin yet, Clay went to it. He found his brother sitting red-eyed and fully dressed on the bed.

“What’s the matter, Ran?”

“I got drunk.”

“What for?”

“You went straight to her ’thout even sayin’ hello or kiss my foot to me.”

“I know. I had to, Ran. One of these days you’ll know what it is to love a woman so much you forget everything else. I’m sorry I didn’t say hello to you, though. Hello, Ran.”

“Couldn’t wait to slobber over an’ paw . . .”

“Hush, Ran!”

“I s’pose you think you’re man enough to wash my mouth with soap!”

“Ran, Ran, don’t be jealous of your brother’s wife!”

“Jealous!”

The stoopid ox thinks I’m jealous a her! Randy thought.

“Aren’t you going to say hello, Ran?”

“Hello,” Randy said, sullenly.

Clay put his arm around his brother’s shoulders and said, “You’ll find yourself a fine girl someday and then you’ll understand. Come on, show me you’re as glad to see me as I’m glad to see you. Get up on your feet, man, and shake hands with your brother.”

Randy stood, swaying a little and put out his hand, which Clay shook warmly, saying, “Don’t you ever worry a bit, I won’t let her come between us.”

“So you broke out a the pen,” Randy said. “I might a knowed you would.”

“Come over to the bunkhouse,” Clay said. “I’ve got something to say to everybody.”

In the bunkhouse Clay said what he had to say.

Kid Shelleen thought, There’s the most man, barrin’ mebbe Frankie Ballou, I ever had the luck to see.

Randy thought, The stoopid damn fool!

Joe Fletcher said, “You mean to say you’re a-goin’ back to the pen!”

“Yes,” Clay said. “And I want all of you to promise me you’ll ride out of here tonight, out of here and clear out of the territory, as I swore you would. Everybody that will, raise his right hand.”

Everybody did.

“Any of you that wants to go to my father’s place will be welcome,” Clay said, “but you’ll have to give up the old ways for good. It’s my feeling that grown men ought to put aside the ways of boys, but that’ll be strictly up to you. Kid, I want you to do me a big favor.”

“Name it,” said Kid Shelleen.

“I want you, at least, to ride with my wife and my baby and my brother all the way.”

“I will,” said Kid Shelleen.

“Ain’t no sense in the Kid ridin’ with us,” Randy protested.

“I’ll ride all the way,” said Kid Shelleen.

“As soon as you’re out of the territory take it easy because of Cat and the baby,” Clay said. “It’s a long ride.”

“We’ll take it easy,” said Kid Shelleen.

Clay said good-by to the Crowd then with a silent handshake for each, and to his brother with a clasp of the shoulders.

They filed out of the bunkhouse and watched him step to the saddle, and, with Old Doc and Young Preach, ride over the rim and down the trail without looking back.

Cat, hearing them go, didn’t go to the window.

Holding their son tight, she said, “We’ll not look upon his back, Clay Junior. We’ll not look upon him until we see his face again, when, tall in the saddle, he comes for us.”

When darkness fell, Cat Ballou Boone, her son strapped on her back like a papoose, rode down the steep trail, with Kid Shelleen, Randy and the Crowd following closely.

At the foot of the trail she looked back and saw the tall burned spruce starkly limned against the starry sky. Then she turned her face resolutely towards Oregon.

As he had gone, in the dead of night, so Clay Boone walked back through the main gate of the pen, and at the very hour he’d promised.

The warden, who was waiting, extended his hand and said, “I bet the governor ten dollars you’d come, Clay. It’s a bet I’m almost sorry to collect!”

The only rider of the Crowd who didn’t keep his promise to ride clear out of the territory was Billy James, the none-too-bright youth who had urged the holding up of the Wolf City Bank. Still in the money as a result of a lucky streak at poker following the payroll robberies of Diamond F and Circle R, Billy yearned for the fleshpots of Laramie, and, slipping away one night, he rode towards them.

He found them entertaining but expensive and soon exhausted his bankroll. This presented a familiar problem, how to eat, drink and be merry without working up an honest sweat. He was hanging around a disreputable saloon called the Nugget, cadging drinks and unhappily contemplating washing dishes for a square meal, when he ran into an old sidekick, Bud Shore, still limping from the bullet Clay Boone had put in his leg.

Bud, who had taken up with a bushy-browed ruffian named Branch Murchison and three men of similar kidney, was happy to provide hospitality in return for the news that Clay was in the pen. Bud and his new friends were still in funds from a roadhouse robbery, but they were dwindling, and Billy knew it was up to him to help replenish them.

Accordingly he informed them that the Wolf City Bank would be a soft touch and suggested that they ride to the now abandoned Roost, from where they could look over the job, and when the time was ripe, strike.

The idea met with general approval, and, laying in a supply of grub and whiskey, the six men rode to the Purple Valley. Since Billy was known as one of the now unpopular Crowd, they bypassed Wolf City and proceeded directly to the Roost, with the idea that the others would size up the lay of the land at their leisure.

Meanwhile the rest of the Crowd kept to their word and rode out of Wyoming and into Idaho with Cat and the baby and Kid Shelleen and Randy Boone. There was some talk of their pressing on to Oregon with them, but this came to nothing and they dropped off one by one, until only the Kid and Randy rode with Cat and the baby towards Snake River.

The last to go was Joe Fletcher, who said he reckoned he’d “have a little fun” before settling down. So he rode off, to wind up on the end of a rope over a cottonwood branch, without ever quite having as much fun as he’d hoped for.

Although, having once started, Cat was for getting on to Oregon as quickly as possible, Kid Shelleen insisted upon proceeding at a reasonable pace, with frequent periods of rest, and riding only in full daylight.

They made camp every day before sundown and the Kid saw to it that Cat had privacy, never closing his eyes while Randy was awake, and keeping him busy during the times when Cat nursed the baby.

On the third morning after Joe Fletcher’s departure, Old Doc’s antagonist struck, through a tick from a bighorn sheep, and when Cat awoke, Clay Boone Junior was burning with the dreaded Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

The nearest known settlement was a day behind them. They saddled and rode, racing death, but although big Red nearly ran himself to a skeleton, leading the others by miles, the race was lost, and when the Kid and Randy got there, Cat Ballou stood beside the grave of her son.

Old Doc sat in his parlor, reading, “for the sound and not the sense,” from the Bible, but after a time he closed the book, for even the music of its words no longer solaced him from his human loneliness. He blew out the lamp and turned to his Abigail for comfort.

She came at the bidding of his memory, quick and glowing with sympathy, and he talked with her silently in his heart, saying, You understand, my love, that while you never fail me and never will as long as I draw breath, a man needs the warmth of Life about him to endure.

She understood and said to his heart, You are lonely for Cat Ballou and your blood and mine which is in her. You are lonely for the living power, the creative power in her that makes us immortal. She is the tie which binds you to Life.

Old Doc went to the window and looked towards the mountaintop far across the Purple Valley, and he thought, When she was there, she was company. Every time she put my great-grandson to her breast, I stood beside her, for I put him there first.

A man rode up in front of the house and stepped down.

Old Doc went to the door and opened it, and Young Preach said from the darkness, “I saw your lamp go out and I know your ways too well to think you had gone to bed at this hour. Would you like to play dominoes?”

“I would like to get drunk,” Old Doc said, “but I guess I’ll settle for dominoes. Come in, Young Preach, but don’t try to comfort me; I’m in no mood for preacher-talk.”

As he lighted the lamp again and got out the table and the dominoes, Young Preach said, “I wonder where they are tonight.”

“On the Oregon Trail,” Old Doc said, “where I should be.”

“Your work is here.”

“My work is anywhere where my old antagonist rides,” Old Doc said. “People bear young and get sick in Oregon. A man can help life and fight death one place as well as another. And fight the devil, too, for that matter. Let’s go to Oregon, Young Preach!”

“The word ‘devil’ comes strangely from you, physician,” Young Preach said. “As strangely as the Name of his Antagonist.”

“The devil is death and God is life,” Old Doc said, “and that is all we know or ever shall know, preacher.”

“Perhaps we are allies after all,” Young Preach said.

“Did you come here to discuss life and death and God and the devil, or did you come to play this insipid game called dominoes?” Old Doc demanded.

“Put them away,” Young Preach said. “I came because I was lonely and wanted to talk with a man I love and respect.”

“Talk away, but don’t preach at me,” Old Doc said.

“What were you thinking of in the dark, Old Doc?”

“Of the quick and the dead,” Old Doc said.

“Your memories are rich and mine are barren,” Young Preach said. “You planted your garden; you sowed, and having reaped, replenished the earth. It is the lot of Man . . .”

“I know nothing of Man,” Old Doc said. “I’m concerned with men.”

“I know,” Young Preach said. “I can’t help talking like a preacher, but I’ll try now, Old Doc; I’ll try to talk like a man. Tell me, were Cat and Clay Boone married when they conceived their son?”

“In their bodies and in their hearts,” Old Doc said. “They loved each other and pledged themselves on Cathy’s wedding ring. I think that constitutes a marriage. What do you think, as a man and not a preacher?”

“Martha Babcock said, ‘Where love is, God is and He always will be,’ ” Young Preach said, “and now I’m going to say something Judge Babcock said, and that I should have said; I’m going to say, ‘Amen.’ Well, I guess I can sleep now, Old Doc; good night.”

“Good night,” Old Doc said.

He watched Young Preach ride off and was putting the dominoes away when someone knocked on the back door. Taking the lamp, he went through the kitchen and opened the door. Cat stood there and behind her, in the shadow of the barn, he could see her horse and two riders.

“I waited for Young Preach to leave,” she said, stepping inside and closing the door behind her.

Her eyes told him before her lips that her son was dead.

“We’re returning to the Roost,” she said, “Kid Shelleen and Randy and I. I should never have left.”

“Don’t blame Clay,” Old Doc said.

“I’m not blaming anybody,” she said. “I’m just stating a plain fact; if I’d stayed my baby would be alive. You offered to help me with money once. We still have some, but we’ll need supplies and none of us can ride into town by daylight.”

“I’ll give you what I have on hand and bring you more,” Old Doc said. “What happened to the rest of the Crowd?”

“All scattered,” she said.

“You’d better lie low, Cat,” he said. “If the association learns you’re back up there they’re going to go after you.”

“I know. We won’t leave the Roost until Clay comes back. Will you get word to him about the baby? I’d write, but I know they read the prisoners’ mail and I don’t want the warden reporting that I’m back.”

“I’ll get word to him.”

“Say not to worry about me. Say I’ll be all right, that there’ll be no more outlawry, that I’ll keep myself safe for him.”

“I will,” Old Doc said.

Billy James, alone in Cat’s cabin, was playing solitaire when he heard the sound of hoofbeats. Assuming that Bud Shore and the others were returning from town where they’d gone to look the situation over, he stepped out to see with astonishment that the riders were Cat Ballou, Randy Boone and Kid Shelleen.

As they stepped down, Kid Shelleen said, “Git your gear out a Cat’s cabin an’ to the bunkhouse an’ do it pronto.”

“Me an’ Bud Shore’s sharin’ it,” Billy said.

“Where’d you pick Bud up?” Randy asked.

“Laramie, me an’ him an’ four other men’s took over these here cabins.”

“Move all their truck to the bunkhouse,” said Kid Shelleen.

“I hope there ain’t no trouble when they gits back,” said Billy James.

“There’s goin’ a be some now if you don’t git a move on,” said Kid Shelleen.

When Bud Shore, Branch Murchison and the others returned they found Billy James waiting at the halfway mark with the news that Cat Ballou, Randy Boone and Kid Shelleen had come back and taken over.

“We’re six agin three an’ one a them a woman,” said Branch Murchison. “Let’s roust ’em out.”

“Cat Ballou don’t shoot like no woman you ever seen,” said Billy James, “an’ anybody that goes agin her an’ Randy Boone and Kid Shelleen to boot is plum’ out a his mind.”

“He’s right, Branch,” Bud Shore said. “Randy’s the fastest draw I ever see ’cept Clay, and I heared Kid Shelleen’s faster. What the hell, it’s only a couple days. You was right about the bank, Billy. We aim to hold it up Sat’dy night when half the town’s drunk. Come on, we’ll ride up.”

“I’m the watch,” Billy James said. “The Kid says we got a take turns like the Crowd useta.”

“I ain’t standin’ no watch,” Branch Murchison said.

“Want a bet?” Billy James said.

Branch Murchison drew the midnight watch. He offered no protest, for he had seen Cat Ballou at supper and had decided that the midnight watch would be fine for his purpose, which was to share her bed.

He rode down the trail and relieved the man on watch and an hour later came back up, silently and on foot. All of the buildings were dark.

Cat woke from a disturbing dream. It was a dream of love, but for the first time lately, the lover had a face. The frightening, disturbing thing was that it wasn’t the face of Clay Boone, but of Randy.

Deliberately she erased it and thought of her true love, trying to will him by her side, thinking, desperately, Clay, oh Clay, help me, keep me faithful, be with me in my lonely bed!

Then she saw the door opening slowly and thought, It’s Randy!

Noiselessly she found the carbine and as the door was shut very slowly and quietly, she swung the piece to cover the tall dark figure which now moved silently, in sock feet, towards her bed.

Her hand trembled and she knew she couldn’t shoot, and then, as the figure leaned over, she dropped the carbine and pleaded, “Don’t, please, please don’t!”

“Keep still,” a hoarse voice rasped, and, as she realized it wasn’t Randy’s voice, she felt the cold steel of a gun against her flesh. “Quiet. I don’t aim to harm you . . .”

Knocking the gun away, she grabbed its barrel and began to scream. As she struggled wildly, she heard shouts and running footsteps. Then the man wrested the Colt free and backed against the wall.

“Look out, Kid!” Cat shouted in warning, but the door burst open, and as Kid Shelleen stood limned there for a split second, Branch Murchison fired.

As the Kid fell, Murchison rushed for the doorway and into Randy Boone’s first shot. As he swayed, Randy shot him again. Murchison went to his knees and Randy fired again, point-blank.

Feeling enormous exultation and power. Randy seized the man and flung him into the path of Bud Shore and the rest of the men who were running up from the bunkhouse in various stages of undress.

Waving his gun, Randy shouted, “Anybody else?”

Behind him Cat, lighting the lamp, cried, “Somebody put him on my bed!”

“You, James an’ Coulter!” Randy snapped.

Kid Shelleen lay where he had fallen, shot in the groin. As the men put him on the bed, Cat said, “Randy, send somebody for Old Doc and I’ll need hot water and dish towels from the cookhouse.”

“You, McIvers, git water an’ towels,” Randy ordered. “Bud, you ride for Old Doc. Take Cat’s stud, he’s the fastest.”

As McIvers ran for water and towels, Bud Shore said, “I’m useta givin’ orders nowadays. . . .”

“Git useta takin’ ’em an’ you’ll live longer,” Randy said. “Don’t stand there! Move!”

As Bud Shore moved, Randy went into the cabin. Billy James was holding the lamp while Cat cut away the Kid’s clothing about the wound. The Kid, unconscious, was breathing stertorously.

Too bad Murchison didn’t finish him, Randy thought, but he didn’t care, for he was no longer afraid of Kid Shelleen or any man; he felt like a man at last, stud-proud, a leader.

McIvers returned with hot water and towels and Randy curtly ordered him and the others to “git an’ close the door.” He held the lamp while Cat bathed and bandaged the wound.

“Help me undress him,” Cat said.

“I’ll undress him,” Randy said. “You done your job an’ you done it good.”

“All right, but go easy,” Cat said, and as Randy undressed the Kid, she got one of her flannel nightgowns from the dresser drawer and helped put it over his head.

Flinging back the covers, they eased the Kid under them and then stood erect, looking at each other. Cat’s eyes dropped under his confident conquering gaze.

“Thank you, Randy,” she said.

He took hold of her shoulders then and raised her face.

“No, please,” she said.

“You’re mine now,” he said.

Her blood was racing, but she wrenched free, and said, “If you ever touch me again in this room I’ll kill you!”

Kid Shelleen stirred and she turned to him quickly, kneeling beside the bed, stroking his forehead, and said, “You’ll be all right, Kid. I’ll take good care of you.”

For a moment Randy looked at her kneeling there, bending over the wounded man, and then he turned and went out, content to bide his time, for her trembling body and her eyes and the phrase “in this room” had been a promise for the future.

She’s mine! he thought, but I don’t want her there where Clay’s had her, I want her in my own bed where she belongs. She’ll come to it and when she does, she’ll never leave it while I’m alive!

Kid Shelleen woke in a cold sweat from a terrible dream, Cat Ballou’s screams still echoing in his ears. In the dream he had failed her and Randy Boone had taken her like a wild animal while he stood by unable to lift his anvil-heavy Colt.

He was in pitch darkness in a strange bed in a strange room and pain seared his groin like a branding iron. He suppressed a groan and listened craftily and then he heard the sound of someone breathing in the darkness. He clawed for his gun but there was no gun, only a blanket.

“What is it, Kid?” Cat asked, from the darkness.

“Cat! You all right? Did that coyote . . .”

“I’m all right, Kid, Randy killed him. Lie quiet, I’ll light the lamp.”

He heard the rustle of bed clothing and then she lighted the lamp and he saw her standing in her nightgown beside a pallet on the floor.

“I dreamed Randy . . .” the Kid said, bewilderedly.

Coming to him, she said, “It was Branch Murchison. He shot you from the dark and then Randy . . .”

“I couldn’t git my Colt up,” the Kid said. “It was so heavy. . . .”

“Don’t try to move,” she said. “Old Doc’s on the way,” and then she was bending over him, and he felt her cool hand on his head, and her fragrance was all around him.

“You smell so sweet,” he murmured.

She took hold of the blanket and said, “Let’s have a look at that bandage,” but he clutched at the blanket until she said, gently, “I put it on, Kid, I’m your nurse.”

He let go of the blanket and she pulled it back and pulled up the flannel nightgown and looked at the bandage, but she saw that he was staring not at the bandage but at the nightgown.

“It’s mine,” she said. “To keep you warm. I’d better change the bandage. Does it hurt much?”

“It don’t hurt,” the Kid said. “Your own nightgown . . .”

“Don’t try to talk,” she said. “I’ve got to cut the bandage away. I’ll be as gentle as I can.”

Kid Shelleen, who had known no woman’s hands since his mother’s, felt Cat’s cool skillful gentle hands against his flesh, murmured, “Gentle . . . like an angel . . .”

“A pretty earthy angel,” Cat said. “Don’t move. There. I won’t be a minute.”

As she replaced the blood-soaked bandage, Kid Shelleen thought, Her own nightgown an’ her own bed an’ her sleepin’ beside me on the floor.

It was the most intimate thing that had ever happened to him.

“You’re so good to me, Cat,” he murmured.

“Haven’t you been good to me?”

When she had finished, he asked, drowsily, “Where’s my gun?”

“On the chair, with your clothes.”

“Gimme my Colt, Cat.”

“I’ll put it under your pillow,” she said, and putting the Colt under his pillow, she kissed him on the forehead and said, “Close your eyes and go to sleep.”

Dozing off to sleep, Kid Shelleen dreamed of her hands cool on his flesh and of her lips, soft on his forehead, and in his sleep he whispered her name, “Cat Ballou . . . Cat Ballou . . . Cat Ballou . . .” over and over like a litany.

In his cabin, Randy Boone too dreamed of Cat Ballou and in his dream she came to him radiant and glowing and willing and virginal and he knew her gently and lovingly and it was as if it were the first time for him as well as for her. In his dream they loved each other and were man and wife and the shadow of no man stood between them.

But when he woke with empty arms and knew she was sleeping on her pallet and watching over Kid Shelleen, he jumped up, and dressing hurriedly, started for her cabin.

I won’t have her sleepin’ in the same room with no man but me! She’s mine, by God, an’ I’ll have her comfortin’ no man but me! I’ll . . .

But he stopped his hand as he was about to fling open the door.

No, he thought. She’s got a come willin’ an’ she will. She’s almost willin’. I want her sweet an’ wantin’ me in her heart.

It was near dawn and he went to the cookhouse and made himself coffee, and thought, She’s mine but she don’t quite know it yet. I killed for her an’ I saved her, not the Kid. I burned that man down for her an’ she belongs to me, and by God I’ll burn any man down that ever touches her again, an’ that goes for Clay Boone too!

It was past sunup when Old Doc arrived with Bud Shore. He found Cat seated on the bed, stroking Kid Shelleen’s hand. The Kid was out of his head and kept calling for Clay Boone to come and help him take care of Cat Ballou.

Old Doc gave him drugs and quieted him and then he cut away the bandage, complimenting Cat for her good care of him, and probed until he found the bullet.

“Will he make it, Doc?” Cat asked.

“Sure, thanks to a constitution like a horse and a nurse called Cat Ballou,” Old Doc said. “But you stay close, Cat, for his sake and your own. Keep your carbine handy and don’t ever leave this cabin without it.”

“I’ll take care of him and of myself,” she said. “Did you get word to Clay about the baby?”

“I’m going over there myself tomorrow,” Old Doc said. “I hate to leave you and the Kid, but I’ll be back.”

“I’ll be all right. Doc . . . you’d better not say anything to Clay about all this. He’d only worry and I don’t want him trying to break out of the pen, and maybe get killed.”

“What about Randy?”

“I can handle Randy,” she said, and she thought, I can if I never let him get near me alone and I won’t ever let him get near me alone!

The sun came up again and for the first time in his life Kid Shelleen saw it work its magic upon the face of a sleeping girl, and, as her cheeks bloomed, so did his heart.

He thought, I want a remember this, how she looked so rosy when the sun come up an’ kissed her. This an’ the way she breathed all night in the dark an’ the tech a her hand an’ the way her lips swelled like fresh warm milk with honey in it.

She stirred in her sleep and flung one arm up and back and the covers slipped to reveal one pink breast, which, rebellious of flannel and darkness, sought the soft caress of the sun. Then she stretched luxuriously, like her namesake, and the other breast joined its pretty playmate in joyous freedom.

Then she opened her eyes and saw Kid Shelleen’s upon her and there was such awed adoration in them that for a moment, innocent and proud, she let him look upon her. Then, smiling gently, she pulled the blanket up to her chin.

This smile, this gesture, Kid Shelleen stored with his other memories of her like a moss rose. It never faded.

When he got to the warden’s office, Old Doc said he had bad news from Clay’s wife about their baby, and asked if he could break it to him alone.

“Of course you can, Doc, I’m sorry,” the warden said. “I’ll send for him. He’s over at my house outside the walls. He’s a trusty now and takes care of my horses, mighty good care.”

Old Doc had been doing a lot of thinking. He knew if he told Clay about the attempted rape and the incapacitating of Kid Shelleen that Clay would break out of the pen or die trying and had weighed the odds, without being quite able to make up his mind. The fact that Clay was a trusty, allowed outside the walls, swung the odds so sharply that Old Doc decided to tell him.

When Clay appeared, the warden excused himself and left them alone. Old Doc told Clay then about the death of his son.

“I killed him,” Clay said. “If I’d left them on the Roost as Cat wanted me to, this never would have happened.”

“Don’t blame yourself, son,” Old Doc said. “You know as well as I do that if you’d left them on the Roost, they’d all be dead now, along with quite a few men. Cat could blame me as much as you, but she doesn’t. She and Randy and Kid Shelleen will wait for you on the Roost. She said to tell you they’d lie low, that there’d be no more outlawry, that she’d keep herself safe for you.”

“How safe is she, Doc?”

“She isn’t, Clay. She asked me not to tell you this, for fear of worrying you, and maybe influencing you to break out of the pen, but I’m going to tell you just the same. They found six men on the Roost when they got back, hard cases, led by Bud Shore . . .”

“That son-of-a-bitch!”

“One of them tried to rape her. Randy killed him, but Kid Shelleen was shot and seriously wounded. He’ll be out of action for some time and . . .”

“You don’t have to say any more, Doc,” Clay Boone said.

Clay Boone’s escape wasn’t at all spectacular; the next day when he rode outside the walls to take care of the warden’s horses, he simply kept riding.

At the appointed place, a clump of cottonwoods on a bank of the Powder, he found the fresh horse and the Colt Old Doc had volunteered to leave for him.

To the warden, he wrote:

He placed the note in one of the saddlebags, slapped the rump of the warden’s horse and watched him head back for home, knowing he’d go all the way. Then he stepped to the saddle again and rode to join Cat Ballou.

Cat Ballou lay upon her pallet, listening to the sound of Kid Shelleen’s even unlaboured breathing in his sleep, and thought, He’s wounded and almost helpless, but he’s a man, and it’s comforting to hear a man breathing in the dark. But it’s strange to hear a man breathing and sleeping near me and to know it’s not my own.

She wondered if Clay, alone behind dark walls, remembered the sound of her breathing beside him as she remembered the sound of his. She wondered if he turned with every dawn to look for her as she turned to look for him.

Oh, it was sweet to wake beside him! Sweet when we looked upon and knew each other in the sun!

Oh, Clay my darling, my breasts are empty and my arms are empty! Come fill them! Replenish me!

She heard Kid Shelleen stir, and after a moment his whispered, “Cat?”

“Yes?”

“You was so quiet, I knew you wasn’t sleepin’. There’s a way you breathe . . .”

“Do you want anything. Kid?”

He thought, I want a girl like you for my own, but he said, “I hate to bother you, Cat. . . .”

“It’s no bother,” she said, and throwing the covers back, she stood up, groping for the matches.

“I’m awful thirsty,” said the Kid.

“I’ll get you a drink of water,” she said, lighting the lamp. “The jug’s empty. I’ll get some from the spring.”

“Oh, let it go till mornin’.”

“I’m thirsty myself,” she said. “It won’t take a minute.”

“I wisht I wasn’t so much trouble.”

“Hush, you’re no trouble.”

“Cat . . . take your carbine.”

She nodded, threw her wrapper over her nightgown, and taking the carbine and the water jug, went out. Crossing the compound in the moonlight, she went along the edge of the cookhouse, behind which the spring was. She filled the jug and then bent over the spring and drank. When she stood up a man was standing in the shadow of the cookhouse.

She swung her carbine to cover him and said, “Who’s there?”

“Me,” Randy said. “I couldn’t sleep an’ I seen you an’ I thought . . .”

“Go back to your cabin,” she said.

“I want a talk to you, Cat.”

“This is no time for talking.”

“I’m lonesome, Cat. Ain’t you?”

“Of course not, I’ve got the Kid to tend to and . . .”

“You baby him. Can’t you baby me a little?”

“The Kid’s sick!”

“I’m sick too, Cat. Sick with love a you.”

“Stay where you are!”

“Go ahead an’ shoot me. I might as well be dead as dyin’ of the yearnin’ for you. I’m starved for you, Cat, jest plain starved.”

“Go to bed!”

“I can’t stand it, Cat. I jest lay there wantin’ you close an’ missin’ you. How long you goin’ a punish me? I can’t he’p lovin’ you. Last night I had a dream . . .”

“I don’t want to hear about it!”

“It wasn’t a bad dream, Cat. It was a sweet kind a dream an’ we was together, man an’ wife, an’ no shadder stood between us, an’ you was mine an’ willin’ to be. . . .”

“Don’t you come another step!”

“I said go ahead an’ shoot! If I can’t have you I want a be dead anyways.”

He walked up to her slowly until the muzzle of her carbine was against his chest and then he took hold of the muzzle and placed it against his heart.

She began to tremble all over and he said, “You’re tremblin’, Cat, I can feel it th’ough the gun, you’re tremblin’ for love a me.”

“No!”

“Go ahead an’ shoot then. If you don’t love me, jest pull that trigger, an’ I won’t bother you no more. Why don’t you shoot, Cat? I know why an’ you know why, too. Because you’re mine, you b’long to me and nobody else is ever goin’ a have you but me. Put the gun down, Cat.”

“The Kid’s waiting for me . . . he’s expecting me . . .”

“I ain’t afraid a the Kid no more. I ain’t afraid a nobody. Who saved you from Branch Murchison? Who burned him down for techin’ you? Me, that’s who, and not Kid Shelleen. He ain’t goin’ a stand in my way no more or I’ll kill him; I’ll kill any man that tries to stand between us. Put the gun down, Cat.”

She lowered the carbine. He took it from her and tossed it into the bushes and then he took hold of both of her arms.

“Randy, please! Please don’t force me against my will!”

“I won’t, Cat,” he said. “I don’t have to. You know that. Don’t you?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“I’m goin’ a kiss you, jest once,” he said, “an’ you’re goin’ a kiss me back, like you done that night in the schoolhouse, an’ then you’re goin’ a walk with me slow to my cabin, an’ go inside with me a your own free will. . . ain’t you, Cat?”

“Yes.”

“Or mebbe I’ll carry you inside, like a bride. Shall I do that, Cat?”

“Yes.”

He held her tightly then kissed her and she responded blindly with hunger in her body and despair in her heart.

Taking his lips from hers at last, he said, gently, “You’ll never be sorry . . .” and then he used the name, the special, intimate name that Clay had whispered to her only in their most precious moments of communion, the name that meant all of the tenderness and joy and beauty they’d shared, he called her “Kitten,” whispering it.

Hearing it from the lips of another man, she knew it for what it was, her talisman and her shield, and began to claw him wildly, the unexpected fury of her attack causing him to back up, and stumbling over the water jug, to fall heavily.

Cat ran for the cabin, forgetting water jug and carbine, forgetting everything but escape, from Randy, from herself. Randy got up slowly, rubbing his scratched face. For a moment he thought of pursuit and conquest by force.

No, he thought. She’ll come ’round. She’s a little wil’cat, but I’ll tame her. She’ll come ’round, if not tonight, tomorrer night, anyways sooner or later. I can wait.

He didn’t know that he had lost her, that the whispered name had clothed her in an armor that not he nor any man, nor her own warm blood, would ever penetrate; that he, in the gentlest and most loving moment of his life, had said the word, the one word, to make her faithful unto death.

Reaching the cabin, Cat looked back. There was no sign of Randy. As she stood there, trying to catch her breath, wondering how she was going to explain the loss of water jug and carbine to Kid Shelleen, the door opened and he stood there, in her nightgown, his Colt in his hand, swaying.

“You took so long . . . what’s a matter?”

“Nothing!”

She hurried up the steps and took his arm.

“Where’s your carbine?”

“I . . . I forgot it. Let me help you to bed!”

“Was it Randy?”

“No, no. It wasn’t anybody. Please, let me help you. . . .”

“Where’s the water jug?”

“I . . . I dropped it. I’ll get it right away. Let me have your gun.”

“I reckon I can still use it,” said Kid Shelleen, and freeing himself from her, he took one step, swayed and fell.

She picked up the Colt and looked towards the cookhouse. There was no sign of Randy. She knelt beside Kid Shelleen. He was unconscious. Dragging him inside desperately, she managed to get him on the bed. Blood was seeping through the bandage.

Cutting it away, she replaced it. As she stood up the door opened slightly. Snatching up the Kid’s gun, she waited, ready to kill when the door was open wide enough. A hand pushed first her carbine and then the water jug into the room. The door closed quietly.

After a moment she picked up the carbine and looked out the window. Randy was crossing to his cabin. She watched him until he went inside, then she picked up the water jug and put it by the bed. She hesitated, then slid the Colt under the Kid’s pillow. Blowing out the lamp, she went back to bed.

It had grown cold in the cabin, but Cat wasn’t cold, she had the name to keep her warm.

Oh, Clay my darling, oh, Clay my true lover, your sweet and gentle nickname, the name you whispered when our arms and hearts were full, has saved me for you! Touching her wedding ring, she whispered to her heart, I’d have shamed it, but now I never will. When my body’s weak and my loins are hungry, I’ll remember the way he whispered “Kitten,” and the memory will make me proud and strong and faithful.

Kid Shelleen woke from a state that was half dream, half delirium and saw again the dance of sunbeams on the face of the sleeping Cat Ballou.

I must a dreamed the trouble, he thought. She’s sleepin’ like a baby. Nothin’ bad’s happened or she couldn’t sleep like that. In a minute or two she’ll half wake up an’ th’ow her arm up an’ stretch like a kitten an’ I hadn’t ought a look. . . .

She stirred and he tried to take his eyes from her but couldn’t, and then she sighed faintly and turned on her side, facing him, closing her fingers tightly on the blanket and he saw the gleam of her wedding ring.

Then she opened her eyes, widening them as she looked into his, as if surprised to see him there, and then she smiled and said, “I had the most wonderful dream. I dreamed that Clay was free and riding a big black horse at the gallop and I could see the gleam of his bright hair in the moonlight.”

Then, remembering his exertions of the night, she sat up, holding the blanket about her with one hand, while she tucked her rebellious breasts inside the flannel with the other, and said, “You fell. . . . Are you all right?”

“I thought it was a kind of nightmare. . . . Sure, I’m all right. What happened?”

“Nothing. I almost shamed the ring, but I didn’t.”

“I know.”

“How?”

“You’re still wearin’ it. I knowed it’d see you th’ough.”

“It wasn’t the ring, Kid. It was something else, something so secret, so precious, I can’t even tell you.”

“You couldn’t do a bad thing, Cat.”

“Yes I could, but I won’t.”

He looked at her strangely.

“Are you disappointed in me?”

“No, Cat, I ain’t disappointed in you, I’m proud a you.”

She got up then and put on her slippers and wrapper and attended to him, and then she went to the cookhouse and fixed breakfast for both of them, and brought it back on a tray.

She saw no sign of Randy, who was asleep, having lain long awake, waiting for her. He had been disappointed, but he was sure she would come sooner or later. When he woke, the sun was well up.

She’ll come tonight, he told himself. She’ll be comin’ soon’s the Kid’s asleep. She can’t he’p herself. She knows she b’longs to me.

Shortly after dark, Bud Shore gathered his gang in the bunkhouse and outlined his plans. They would ride out quietly, to avoid argument with Cat and Randy. They’d “have a little fun, but no heavy drinkin’,” on Crib Row, and break into the Wolf City Bank at midnight, after which they’d ride back to the Roost, lie low until things cooled off, and then head for Laramie to celebrate.

The sound of hoofbeats brought Randy to his door and Cat to hers just in time to see the gang ride out.

“What is it?” Kid Shelleen called.

“Bud Shore and his gang riding out,” she said.

“Good riddance,” the Kid said.

She looked towards Randy’s cabin and saw him looking at her. He turned abruptly and went back into the cabin and put the lighted lamp in his window. For a moment she felt sorry for him, as once she’d felt sorry for Jed French and all the lonely loveless men in the world, but there was no impulse to comfort him.

When Bud Shore and his gang arrived at Cheyenne Rose’s on Crib Row, everybody was talking about the escape of Clay Boone from the pen. This caused Bud to change his plans, for he felt sure that Clay would head straight for the Roost and he had no desire to run afoul of him. Accordingly, it was decided that after the holdup they’d ride straight across the Purple Valley and leave it forever by way of Hangtown, to the west.

Old Doc packed to travel light. His good suit, socks, linen. His best boots. Three books, Harvey, Shakespeare, the Bible. He hesitated about including the Bible. It was bulky and dog-eared and another would be easy to come by in Oregon. Still, it was an old friend, so he put it with the others.

From his pocket he took a plain Manila envelope. It contained a cashier’s draft for five thousand and seventeen dollars and ninety-one cents, his total balance, including the thousand Young Doc had insisted upon paying him for the practice and the house. He placed the envelope in the Bible.

Then he went to his desk, and pressing one of the panels, opened the secret drawer which contained all of his concessions to sentiment, a parchment scroll of the Oath of Hippocrates, Cathy’s normal-school diploma, a pink baby shoe that had been Cat’s, and a faded letter.

He unrolled the scroll and read aloud, “I swear by Apollo the physician . . .” and then he rolled it up again and put it back in the drawer. He touched the diploma and the baby shoe but let them lie.

Finally he picked up the letter. No need to read it, he knew it by heart. It was a letter from his Abigail, the only one she’d ever written him, the one time between their marriage and her death he had ever been away from her. As he picked up the Bible, it fell open by itself at a familiar place, the Song of Songs. Old Doc put the letter there and closed the Bible.

He murmured, “ ‘Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thine eyes are as doves,’ ” and then, briskly, he rolled up his blankets and tied them neatly, closed the drawer, buckled on his gun, and picked up the blanket roll and his black bag.

For a moment he looked around, saying good-by to the familiar room which Abigail and Cathy and Cat and he himself had warmed. Then, leaving the lamp burning for Young Doc, who was out delivering a baby on the other side of town, Old Doc went out to the barn, where Young Preach, having saddled his horse for him, was waiting to say good-by.

They shook hands, Young Preach saying, “Good-by and God bless you, old friend,” and Old Doc saying, “Good-by, Young Preach, and good luck,” and then he stepped to the saddle and started for the Roost.

At this moment, Bud Shore and his gang, drunk to a man despite their intentions to the contrary, battered in the door of the Wolf City Bank. Bud Shore and Billy James rode straight inside and into a double-barreled blast from the shotgun of Uncle Ben Clemson, the old night watchman. Billy James fell to ride no more, but Bud Shore, although badly wounded, killed Uncle Ben before he backed his horse out. By this time men were pouring out of every building on Main Street. All hell broke loose as they exchanged shots, curses and shouts with the gang, which raced towards the bridge.

Old Doc pulled back into the shadows as they roared past, and then he rode back to see if he could be of any help. Besides Uncle Ben and Billy James, two other men were dead and two wounded, all local citizens.

As Old Doc attended to the wounded men, an ominous crowd was gathering, not hired association riders, but townsmen, outraged by the murder of their friends.

“That’s Billy James, one a Clay Boone’s old Crowd,” he heard the undertaker say, and some one else said, “More’n likely Clay Boone was leadin’ ’em, they say he’s escaped from the pen,” and there were shouts, “It’s Clay Boone an’ his Crowd!” and “Let’s go after ’em!” and “Hangin’s too good for them varmints!”

By the time Young Doc arrived, and Old Doc turned the patients over to him, a huge posse of vigilantes was being formed to storm the Roost and to wipe it out for good.

As soon as he could, unobserved, Old Doc slipped away to his horse, and riding out of town the back way, through Crib Row, he forded the river and rode for the Roost again, to try to get Cat and Clay and the Kid away from there before the vigilantes struck.

Randy Boone saw the lamp in Cat’s cabin go out at last and thought, the Kid’s finely asleep an’ she’ll be tippytoein’ out a there any minute now in her nightgown an’ I’ll be waitin’ to carry her th’ough my door like a bride.

A few minutes later. Randy heard the sound of a horseman approaching up the trail, and Cat, not yet asleep, heard it too. He went to his window and she to hers and they stared towards the tall charred spruce which marked the head of the trail.

Then Cat’s heart soared and Randy’s sank, as Clay Boone rode over the rim and into the bright moonlight on a big black horse. Randy heard her joyous, “Clay!” and standing on legs of wood, saw his brother spur forward, sweeping off his hat, saw the gleam of his bright hair, saw the door flung open and Cat rush out.

Grabbing his gunbelt, Randy buckled it on and ran out of his cabin in time to see his brother step down and take Cat Ballou in his arms, saw Cat kissing him wildly, and as they clung together, walked slowly towards them.

He was a man possessed by a strange and heady exaltation that was beyond jealousy and hate, that was compounded of courage and pride and utter belief in himself as a man; it was as if an enormous pressure had been lifted from him, as if a dark shadow had been dispelled and he felt powerful and free.

Then they seemed to hear him, to become aware of him for the first time, for they took their lips from each other’s, and, although still clinging together, looked at him as he strode up to them.

“Take your hands off my woman,” Randy said quietly.

“Ran, you’re drunk!” his brother said.

“No, I ain’t drunk, I’m sober an’ free an’ Cat Ballou’s mine an’ I aim to take her to my bed now.”

As Cat clung to him, trembling, Clay said, “You’d better go to your cabin, Ran.”

Kid Shelleen fumbled in darkness for the Colt under the pillow, and, finding it, climbed slowly and painfully out of the bed.

“When I go to my cabin, I’ll be carryin’ her like a bride,” Randy said. “Take your hands off her now, Clay.”

“I’ll take my hands off my wife the moment she asks me to and not before,” Clay said.

“She ain’t your wife no more, she’s my bespoken,” Randy said.

“That’s a lie!” Cat cried.

Trying for the door, Kid Shelleen swayed, stumbled and fell, his Colt spinning from his hand, to gleam in the moonlight. Grimly he crawled towards it.

“You know it ain’t no lie, Cat Ballou,” Randy said. “You kissed me by the spring an’ promised I’d carry you th’ough my door and to my bed like a bride.”

Clay let go of her then, and asked, “Did you promise, Cat?”

“I didn’t promise, but my body was so hungry, and I said . . . oh, Clay, I was so lonely!”

“But you didn’t go to him, did you, Cat?”

“I . . . I couldn’t . . . it was something he said . . . something precious between you and me. When he said it, I clawed and fought him off and then I ran.”

Looking at his brother, Clay saw his hand go to his cheek, saw the livid sign of fingernails there in the moonlight, and said quietly, “Go to your cabin, I’ll deal with you later.”

“You’ll deal with me now,” Randy said. “I ain’t takin’ orders no more. All my life I stood in your shadder. You stole my lil red wagon an’ then you stole my girl, the only one I ever really wanted. Ma made you give my wagon back, but I don’t need Ma to fight my battles no more; I’ll take my girl back myself.”

“The man’s not born who can take Cat Ballou away from me unless she wants to go,” Clay said. “I don’t think she does, but that’s for her to say. Which of us do you want, Cat?”

“You,” she said. “You, always.”

“There’s your answer, Ran. We’ll go to our cabin now, Cat.”

“You got a kill me fust,” Randy said, “an’ I don’t think you’re fast enough on the draw no more.”

“You’re wrong, Ran. A man doesn’t forget how to shoot or swim or make love.”

“You’ll not make love to Cat Ballou agin,” Randy said.

“I don’t want to have to shoot, Ran.”

“Stop argyin’ an’ fill your hand!”

“All right then,” Clay said.

“No, no!” Cat cried and flung her arms around his neck.

“Let go, please, Cat,” Clay said. “This is between men.”

“He’ll always stand between us!” she cried.

“No one will ever stand between us,” he said.

Holding herself close, she whispered, “Say that and whisper the name.”

He whispered, “No one will ever stand between us, Kitten,” and then she let go of him and stood back, watching only her lover, as he stood loose and waiting.

“Whenever you’re ready, Ran,” he said.

Then she saw Clay’s hand streak to his Colt, saw him draw with the smooth rhythm no man she’d ever seen could match but Kid Shelleen, saw flame spurt, heard simultaneous shots, and incredulously, saw him fall, for Clay, as he’d always planned to do should it ever come to a showdown between them, had tried for his brother’s shooting arm and had barely grazed the skin.

As Cat knelt beside her husband, Randy stared at the red welt just above his wrist, and then, warned by a sound, swung the gun to cover Kid Shelleen, who was trying to pull himself to his feet in the doorway, his Colt dangling in his hand.

“You’re next, you son-of-a-bitch,” Randy said, “but I’m givin’ you a chance, so holster your gun an’ I’ll holster mine an’ we’ll see who’s the better man.”

Kid Shelleen, finally standing erect, holstered his gun, as Randy holstered his.

“Whenever you’re ready, Kid Shelleen,” Randy said, feeling proud, stud-proud and free.

“I’m ready,” said Kid Shelleen and, as Randy clawed his gun out, Kid Shelleen shot him through the chest.

The last thing Randy Boone ever saw was Cat Ballou cradling his brother’s bloody head in her arms, and the last thing he ever said was, “Good-by, Ma, I’ll never see you now, I killed my brother.”

And Kid Shelleen, who alone heard him, whispered, “Good-by, Ran, you died game.”

Then he holstered his Colt and turned to the living.

When Old Doc arrived, he found Cat bathing Clay’s head, while Kid Shelleen, barely able to stand, held the lamp for her.

Taking over, Old Doc said, “Vigilantes coming and they mean business. Either of you know where to find the cave the gang used when Frankie first came?”

“Jest over the rim,” said Kid Shelleen, “all covered up with bresh now. Git the hosses, Cat, an’ I’ll help Doc with Clay.”

But Old Doc needed no help. He put Clay belly down across the saddle of the big black horse and Kid Shelleen, holding onto his own horse for support, led them over the rim and through the heavy brush to the old cave, Cat following with the other horses, bedding for the wounded men, and the lamp.

They were barely inside when they heard the sound of many riders laboring up the steep trail. Bending over Clay, Old Doc warned them to hold the horses’ heads, lest they whinny and give their whereabouts away.

The vigilantes, led by Tom Gibbons, manager of the bank, and Bill Groves, owner of the United States Hotel, filed over the rim, to find the Roost deserted except for a dead man, Randy Boone.

“At least we’ll wipe this plague spot out,” Tom Gibbons said. “Burn it to the ground!”

Then they put all of the buildings to the torch and the flames soared high into the air until they could be plainly seen in Wolf City and all over the Purple Valley.

The crackling flames frightened the horses in the cave and they began to rear and whinny.

“They’ll find us!” Cat cried. “I’ve got to draw ’em off!”

And before Old Doc or the Kid could stop her she was in big Red’s saddle and crashing through the brush to the trail. Shouts and the pounding of hoofs told her the vigilantes were following. She gave sure-footed Red his head, confident that he could outrun and outlast any horse in the territory; and perhaps he could have, but Sheriff Young with four hastily deputized aids, including Young Preach, were just starting up the trail, hoping to prevent wholesale lynching, and Cat rode straight into them and was taken.

Sheriff Young took her carbine and led her horse onto the floor of the valley, the vigilantes following ominously and surrounding the small group, and when Cat Ballou was recognized, someone shouted, “It’s Cat Ballou, string ’er up!”

Others took up the cry, but Sheriff Young shouted, “Nobody’s lynchin’ my prisoner while I’m still in the saddle,” and Young Preach cried, “Nor I in mine!”

There were many threatening shouts, but Tom Gibbons shouted, “Hold it, everybody,” and, with Bill Groves, rode in close to Cat, and said, “I’ll personally guarantee you get safe to jail if you’ll tell where Clay Boone and Kid Shelleen are.”

“On their way to Oregon,” Cat said.

“She’s lyin’!” someone shouted, and someone else cried, “Mebbe she’ll talk better with a rope aroun’ her neck!”

“You better tell us where they are or we won’t be able to hold ’em off you,” Bill Groves said.

“I told you where they are, on the Oregon Trail,” she said.

“Why didn’t they take you with ’em?” Tom Gibbons demanded.

“Would you take your wife anywhere if she’d been faithless with your brother?”

“I reckon I wouldn’t, you whore!”

“Clay kill Randy?” Groves asked.

“No,” she said. “I killed him.”

As soon as Cat Ballou was lodged in the Lariat jail, Sam Springer appealed her conviction for the murder of Adam Field, but the appeal was denied, and she was accordingly brought before Judge Babcock for resentencing.

Sam Springer appealed directly to the governor for executive clemency. He was backed up by Hilda Field, who made her widow’s plea for mercy, saying she was sure that her husband had deliberately chosen to die to expiate his crimes. The governor reserved decision, but although his own wife added her plea that he commute Cat’s sentence to life imprisonment, his final decision was to deny such clemency.

In the darkness before the dawn of the day when Cat Ballou was to hang by the neck until dead, a host of women on sidesaddled horses kept a rendezvous with Hilda Field and Martha Babcock in the old graveyard on the outskirts of Lariat. Almost every able-bodied woman of the town, including China Kate and Mazie Green, was there and one from out of town as well, the governor’s lady.

As dawn broke, this cavalcade, armed only with hope and gallant resolution, rode out of the graveyard slowly, and slowly made its way towards Courthouse Square, for success or failure of their plan depended upon split-second timing.

At the same time Judge Babcock woke in a cold sweat, alone in the big bed for the first time in a long time, and wondered “why the Sam Hill” he hadn’t put his foot down on Martha’s and Hilda’s “crackbrained scheme.” Of course he knew why; he wanted it to succeed.

Sam Springer also woke, dreading the last sun for Cat Ballou.

Abe Field, Steve Grommet and Joe Raines placed their twenty-odd armed men in every window around the square against the possibility of a desperate last-minute attempt to rescue the condemned Cat, and then Abe climbed to the top of the jail, from which, the highest point around except for the courthouse, he could look down upon the gallows. He carried a Winchester rifle.

In his office, Sheriff Bascom took a little drink, while Hiram Bell, the hangman, who had never hanged a woman, took two.

Jesse Brown, the undertaker, put the last nail in the plain pine box.

Young Preach went up the steps to the jail with the Bible in his hand and desolation in his heart.

Old Doc, carrying an old Sharps rifle, climbed to the roof of the courthouse, from which he could look down upon all of the people and all of the proceedings.

As Courthouse Square slowly filled with men who had come miles to witness the death by hanging of Cat Ballou, she stood in the window of her cell, quite unaware of the crackbrained but gallant plan to save her, and as she saw the shadow of the hangman’s rope upon the crowd, she looked to the west.

Presently, there was a stir in the crowd of men and Cat Ballou walked out of the office of the jail with Young Preach, the sheriff, and the hangman, and as the crowd parted, to the gallows, and, unassisted, up the thirteen steps, until she stood beneath the dangling noose.

The hangman produced a white blindfold but she waved it aside.

As the hangman produced the cords to tie her hands and feet there was a commotion in the crowd below and then the women of Lariat and the governor’s lady rode out of every side street empyting into Courthouse Square, and as the astonished spectators scattered out of their way, rode to the gallows and surrounded it.

“What you women doin’ here!” Sheriff Bascom yelled.

“We’ve come to see justice done,” said Hilda Field.

“A hangin’s no place for a woman!” Abe Field shouted.

“Then it’s no place for Cat Ballou,” said Martha Babcock.

“I order you women to disperse in the name a the law!” the sheriff roared.

“Don’t tell us about the law, you banty-legged scarecrow,” said the governor’s lady. “We’re sovereign voting citizens of the great Territory of Wyoming, the only place in all creation where a woman stands equal before the law with any man, and we don’t intend dispersing until we have a mind to.”

Then into Courthouse Square, through Main Street from the west, two tall men came riding slowly, loose in the saddle, leading a big roan stallion, and Hilda Field breathed to Martha Babcock, “Here they come!”

Slowly the church bell began to toll.

As they rode on slowly, Abe Field shouted to his waiting riflemen, “Hold your fire till I git the first shot!” and then, as he started to raise his Winchester, he heard Old Doc call out, “Look up here to the courthouse chimney!” Looking, he saw the long barrel of a Sharps rifle and then he heard Old Doc say, “With the first shot you die, son, and with the second the sheriff joins you in hell.”

“Drop that gun, Abe!” the sheriff shouted, and Abe, lowering it, called out to his men again to hold their fire, and then, as Clay Boone and Kid Shelleen rode up, the women of Lariat and the governor’s lady pulled their horses aside to let them through and then closed in, forming a living shield with their bodies.

Cat, breaking loose from the hangman’s grasp, raced down the thirteen steps of the gallows and into Clay’s arms as he stepped down, and then he boosted her aboard big Red and stepped to the saddle of the big black.

Abe Field, the only man with a clear shot at them, then lost his head, and grabbing up his Winchester from the roof, tried to bring into his sights the woman he hated and desired, Cat Ballou; but Old Doc, who had never let Abe out of the sights of his old Sharps, squeezed the trigger and Abe Field tumbled from the roof.

Old Doc raced down from the courthouse roof to his waiting horse, and stepping to him, joined Cat Ballou and Clay Boone and Kid Shelleen as they rode out of town between the closed ranks of the women of Lariat and the governor’s lady, and not another shot was fired.

Coming down the steps from the gallows, Sheriff Bascom spied Judge Babcock among the delighted spectators and demanded, “What you goin’ a do about them lawless womenfolks, Jedge?”

“Me? I’m the judiciary, not the constabulary,” Judge Babcock said.

“Well, what the hell am I goin’ a do?” the sheriff asked.

“Looks like you have the alternative of arresting every woman in the town, not to mention the governor’s lady, and throwing them into jail for obstructing justice, if that’s what the hell you call it, or of just simply going and soaking your fat head, which latter course I strongly recommend,” Judge Babcock said.

Young Preach stood alone upon the gallows, his head bowed. He was praying for the soul of Abe Field.

Then, having finished this duty, Young Preach raised his head to heaven and said, and his voice was humble but strong, “Lord, don’t judge my old friend too harshly on Judgment Day.”

As the four dusty riders crossed the border into Idaho, Old Doc and Kid Shelleen reined up and looked back for a moment at the high violet mountains of Wyoming, but Clay Boone and Cat Ballou, exuberantly putting their horses to the gallop towards Oregon and the future, never looked back nor ever would.

So they sang in the old days, the lonely leathery men, around campfire and chuck wagon, in line cabin and bunkhouse, on the trail and upon the open range, sang with hoarse and melancholy voices, “The Ballad of Cat Ballou.”

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

[The end of The Ballad of Cat Ballou, by Roy Chanslor]