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Another Man's Wife
“When he opened his eyes he knew it was true.”
“Worst thing that can happen to a man.”
“Poor fool.”
“Him in his bedroll, up on Goat Butte.”
Blanchard lay in his sleeping bag, staring at the men whose faces lit up and went dark.
There were three of them, squatting around the low fire.
“The
moon was red,” said the one with the hat like a great black oval. Its brim
swept down in front and back, like an old Spanish helmet.
“What’s going on?” Blanchard said, sitting up, reaching for his holstered revolver
beside the sleeping bag. He started to call, to wake the others.
He hesitated. The faces flickered orange in the firelight. One man poked the fire
with a stick. From 15 feet, in shadow, Blanchard listened, watching as sparks popped
and rose up swirling into the dark.
“He ran the sorrel down the dry creek. Dead branches slapped at him, stung his face.”
“Like
it was her, scratching at him.”
“She was the one.”
“He ducked a heavy limb,” said the man who wore a tall, rounded hat, like an
Indian’s. A white, wedge-shaped sideburn reached down his jaw. “Just in time.
The limb knocked his stetson.”
“The thong jerked tight.”
“Like a noose around his neck.”
Who were they? What were they doing here? Blanchard could feel the leather cord
biting.
“He steered the horse down the sandy bed in the dark,” the third man said. “The
overhanging willows made a tunnel.”
His back was turned, Blanchard could see only the back of his white head and the
upturned fleece collar of his coat.
”The red shadows fell in splotches where the moon came down, just like blood. He
gripped the butt of his gun, hearing the sorrel’s hooves, feeling the shock
shooting up through its leg bones to the saddle.”
“Like his own heart beating in his chest.”
Blanchard held his breath, listening.
“Then the creek angled to the south. He lay forward in the saddle, his head just
above the horse’s ears. They were like the prongs of a rifle sight.”
Who were they talking about?
Blanchard watched the shadowed men, the three strangers at the fire, smoke coming from
their mouths. Suddenly, the story they told seemed important, the key to some
secret.
As
he listened, now Blanchard was the man on the horse.
“He turned the horse and rode up the bank through a wall of tangles,” the
black-hatted one went on. “Briars bit at him and tore his shirt and he lifted
his arm to block his face.”
“‘Bastard!’ he yelled as he swung his hand.” The man with the Indian hat waved an arm.
Blanchard was there, hunched low in the saddle as the frightened horse struggled up the
overgrown bank.
“Then he broke free. He saw the white moon full above the rolling pasture. It left a
wake, like a moon over water.”
“Just like in his dream on Goat Butte.”
Blanchard
saw the shadowed sorrel, an ear, a tuft of mane, in flashes of moonlight.
“The pasture fell down toward two shallow hills, one higher than the other. Beyond
them stood his house and barn, in the narrow valley where he was born. He had
lived there all his life.”
All his life, Blanchard thought with a sudden, personal anger.
“He spurred the horse forward and soon the hills stood up, they were close, big
black shadows under the moon. He rode through the high sticky grass and
blooming night flowers. His nose and eyes itched and a moth batted at his ear.”
Blanchard flinched, raising a hand.
“Then through the border fence, across the cattle guard, through the two poles, under
the crosspiece.”
“‘High Hill Ranch.’ He could read the burned-in letters on the hanging plank.”
“It was his ranch, his house and barn. Now he thought he saw a light, but it was
only a white curtain blowing from a window, like a white flag.”
“Like a woman’s slip.”
“He rode straight toward the house.”
To be sure she was alone, Blanchard
“He pulled at the rein, now he thought he heard something.”
“He left the road, swinging out in a wide arc, watching the house and the blowing
curtain.”
Blanchard heard the cries of love at a distance as he slid quietly from the saddle,
stepping onto his own ground, looking over toward the porch of the darkened
house. In the moonlight the catalpa tree threw a shadow like a black lake
across the yard. Blanchard cocked his head, listening again, then ran halfway,
to the tree.
Under the shadowed, heart-shaped leaves and their long, pendulous pods, Blanchard
dropped his hat in the dirt.
“He watched it float down, saw it sitting there like a dark hole in the ground.”
The voices were back again. He’d thought they were gone. He hadn’t heard them since
he’d left the cattle camp. He felt his collar lift and heard the stirring
leaves, as if he and the sorrel had brought the wind.
“He undid the last two buttons of his shirt. He shrugged, letting it drop.”
Blanchard watched the torn white shirt twirling down. After it was over, no one would
understand how the three of them had told him to do it.
“He put his back against the catalpa’s trunk, lifted one foot, then the other.”
“He pulled off the boots with the star-wheel spurs.”
Barefoot, Blanchard took a step, then stopped. He undid the holster belt and pulled off
his levis and shorts.
“He dropped them right there, under the tree.”
Like a last piece of skin, Blanchard
thought. Like a snake.
He reached down and slipped the cool pistol from the holster. The barrel shone
long and dull silver. He heard the cry again, a woman’s cry. Naked now, he
moved quickly through the catalpa’s shadow toward the porch.
Blanchard stood at the corner of the house. Through the dark screen he saw the clothes
hanging from the cord strung below the bare rafters. He saw a strange man’s
shirt and pants hanging beside two of Evelyn’s dresses.
He bent forward and hurried barefoot through the flowers along the side of the
house, ducking under the kitchen and bathroom windows, until he saw the white
curtain blowing.
There were no voices now, only his loud heart in his ears. He gripped the revolver,
the Colt he had traded the old Winchester lever gun for, to Wes Stark. Now he
knew how Wes must have felt, when Wes found out Blanchard had slept with his
Dora.
His chest was even with the sill. With his thumb, he cocked the hammer of the gun
as the curtain blew against his face. He saw in flashes.
Just like in the dream, before the men had wakened him, he saw his wife’s head
turned, her long hair undone.
He touched the trigger lightly as the man moved, the man heard something, lifting,
turning his face from Evelyn’s.
It wasn’t Floyd Long or Bub Randle or some stranger Evelyn had picked up in
Hubble. It wasn’t Frank Lofton.
It was his own face.
Bastard. The moon was red.
At the window, Lofton’s finger squeezed the warm trigger to kill his wife’s lover.
A stifled scream stuck in his throat. Blanchard lunged to the side, to dive from
the bed and roll across the floor to dodge the blast, his heart roaring in his
ears as frantically he tried to undo it all, to put himself elsewhere—
He hadn’t gone to town, hadn’t picked up Lofton’s wife at the Wagon Wheel, he’d
said, “No, I’ve got to get back to Sutter’s, got calves to brand this week and
next,” hadn’t drunk the string of whiskies. Hadn’t gone out with her to the
yellow car—
The shot didn’t come.
“What’s wrong?” Her voice was blurred.
Blanchard looked up. There was no one at the window. No man, no horse. Just the white full moon.
“Heard something,” he said, staring at the milky glass above the lifting curtain.
“No,” she said, turning. She was warm and sleepy, soft. It was Evelyn, Frank Lofton’s
wife. “He’s gone. Long gone. Cattle camp.”
Poor fool. Him in his bedroll.
Above his own breathing, Blanchard listened to the crickets in the pasture across the
barnyard, to the nearer catalpa leaves shifting dryly in the breeze.
In the morning, early, he’d pull out, get back to Sutter’s place and stay clear.
He lay listening to his breathing and underneath it the quick beating of his
heart, looking out toward the two darkened hills, one slightly taller than the
other.
And past them, toward the mountains, where a campfire burned low inside the ring of
sleeping men.
Nels Hanson
Email: Nels Hanson
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