Canyon of the Dead by Andrew McBride

Author:Andrew McBride
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780719823794
Publisher: Robert Hale Fiction

THIRTEEN

Most mornings, Arvella Shields went riding. Riding was one of the few social graces she’d (earned in the East that she could employ here, even though eastern saddles were different and horses different too, another breed entirely from the small, tough, half-wild riding stock of this country. Ben had found her a fairly docile grey horse, but finding a seat for a lady to ride side-saddle was another matter; Arvella had learned to ride astride a horse.

Ben always provided an escort for her on these rides as, he told her, this was still dangerous country. This morning, her escort was the Mexican boy, Jorge. He was a handsome youth of about fifteen, so shy he was almost mute. He didn’t say a word as she mounted her grey horse. Other hands idled nearby. At first she’d been flattered by the extra attentions the workmen on the ranch seemed to pay her, but then she realized why: she was a rare item, the only young Anglo woman in miles. Men came from far and wide to admire her, in the same way they might come to see a particularly notable horse or a bull of freakish colour. Not that they stood around leering – their own code of manners and fear of Ben Shields prevented that – but they watched her when they thought she wasn’t looking. Only Print Henry had been easy and natural in her company, from the beginning; he hadn’t looked at her that way … nor had the prisoner, Taylor.

Taylor. Why was she thinking about him? He was a man women would find attractive, if you cleaned him up … but he’d lain with squaws, wasn’t ashamed of the fact … why should a man like Taylor have to sink down to that level?

She didn’t doubt, were not Shields due to return today, that some of the hands would have taken care of Taylor themselves; left him in the brush decorating an alamo tree. Feeling about the shooting of the two boys was running high. She’d looked in on Ike herself this morning. The bloody figure under a blanket, in the squalid oven of the adobe, was somehow symbolic of this ugly world she’d chosen to inhabit. An army doctor was on his way from a nearby fort; they had to hope the boy was still alive when the medic arrived.

Arvella and the boy rode out of the ranch compound. She pointed the grey south-west today, a direction she didn’t normally travel, because south-west was bad country, the beginning of a particularly mean stretch of desert. But on each of her rides recently she’d gone deeper into the back country, swung closer to the border … and at times the urge to keep riding, the need to escape, had been almost irresistible.

They found a small tank in the hills and dismounted, resting themselves and their horses. They hadn’t come so far before. She could tell Jorge was worried about this, he glanced about him nervously, kept putting his hand to his gun … but Arvella could have reassured him.

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