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Piltdown

A little man in eastern clothes topped by a derby hesitantly went through swinging doors of the Western Outpost, a large taproom and dance hall and the only place in this small town of Piltdown to get a bite to eat. So early in the morning the place was empty but for a large man at a table near the window. The little man removed his derby and rubbed his bald head and went up to the closed bar, serving as a breakfast buffet this time of day.

A young lady greeted him. He was taken in by her sweet face but her long cascading red hair was prominently in play. "Can I get you coffee, sir? You have to serve yourself for the eats."

"Yes, thank you,...black."

She came back with a large mug of coffee. "You're a stranger, I gather."

"Yes,...got in on last night's train. I'm a salesman."

She beamed beautifully to soften her words. "Judging from your clothes, I hope you don't sell clothing. Not much use for eastern wear out here."

He laughed. "No, not entirely, occasionally I get an order. I'm in farm equipment mostly."

"Then you got off at the right town. Plenty of homesteaders and ranchers in these parts. The general store doesn't carry much except for shovels and stuff. Most get by on what they brought with them."

"That sounds promising." He picked up a plate and spooned into a warming plate of scrambled eggs. Then he looked around. "This is a strange looking restaurant."

She chuckled. "But the food's good. Actually it's an entertainment center. The girls take turns handling the breakfast bar, and on Sundays we change into respectable dress and serve families after church. The rest of the time we are dance girls for the heavy drinkers."

"My, my, you look...well, I don't mean you aren't beautiful to be one, but...what I mean is that you don't look like a dance girl."

She laughed. "I don't think you'd say that if you saw me in my costume."

He laughed too and stared at her. "Right, I'm sure of that. It's just that...well, gosh, you have such an innocent look about you." She broke into laughter.

The large man overheard. "That's because she is!" he boomed. "In my book, she's the town angel."

The little man overcame a startled look and smiled. "I believe you, sir."

"There aren't many in town who would," she said. "In fact only one besides the marshal here."

"Come on over and join me, stranger," the marshal urged. The stranger complied.

At the table the stranger watched awhile as the marshal wiped his plate clean, then wiped the egg from his gray moustache. The marshal held up his empty coffee mug, and said simply, "Cressie."

 The stranger said, after he forked some egg. "My, these eggs are good."

"That's because Cressie makes them. She's a great little gal─known her since she was knee-high to a toad."

"Yes, she seems very competent─and beautiful to boot," the stranger said as he looked out the window to the waking town.

"No prettier than Cressie, that's for sure." The marshal patted her slim arm as she put the fresh mug before him and reached to remove the plate and empty mug.

"Oh, you're just prejudice, marshal because you've known me so long," she said with a blushing smile. "Don't forget Jennie."

He nodded. "But just the same."

The stranger let out a cry, "My God, who's that?...Is he an Indian?" He gestured to the window through which he saw a crude dark-complexioned hunched figure loping his horse down the street. "A world of contrasts. Here we're talking of beauty and I swear I've never seen anything as ugly as that."

Cressie said, "Be careful that could be a very good prospective customer. Neither the marshal nor I think of Jeff that way. Besides, how could you judge him from a distance and his hat pulled down?"

"The instant configuration of the...man, I suspect....Oh, but forgive me. It was cruel of me. It's just that it...he startled me," he apologized. "I guess, I startled you. After all, look at me. Especially here in the west, I must look like a clownish little fool out of his element."

She chuckled. "I'm glad you said it and not me....It's good you admit to it...." She stared into his eyes flinching from embarrassment and added in defense, "Jeff is not the elephant man, you know,...and no, he's not an Indian;...some kind of aboriginal blood in him, though. Besides, they don't come any nicer than Jeff."

"Yep, Jeff's a kind young man. Ugly, I grant you, but you pay it no mind when you get to know him." The marshal grinned good-naturedly.

"I won't grant you that, marshal," Cressie said with subdued petulance. "I might look good but I can't equal what's inside him."

"Aw, I know, Cressie. I know he ain't so ugly when you get to know him....Still, I don't see you datin' him any."

"That's because I see him as a brother."

"By God, that's right!" The marshal jolted as she went back behind the bar. He reached across the table and pulled the stranger back from straining his neck to follow the huge roundness of the rider's back equaling the haunches of his draft horse that he often rode yoke-free. "Yep, I've known Jeff since he was eye high to wheat's whiskers when his folks first came to settle in these parts. They were simple, hardworking homesteaders. Decent law-abiding they were, and believe it or not it rubbed off on Jeff natural like. All the town folk round here liked him even though he was homelier than a mule. He was always doing nice things for people─like lending out free his great strength at harvest time after he'd put in more than a day's work at his Pappy's. Why, he helped me track down horse thieves. When he caught up with them single handed, he let one of them go because he said he was only a boy who just needed a horse to pull his plowshare for his poor widow mama's fields." The marshal took another drink, then chuckled. "By God, he let him keep the horse, too! Then paid for it!"

The little stranger shook his head. "You sure know how to make a big mouth from the east feel humble."

"Nix, don't feel bad─you're not the first one to rush an opinion. Shucks, folks who know him still look at him as though they were prancin' round a side-show," the marshal comforted. "But I tell you, he's a fine boy─well, man, now. He got that way not only from his folks but a kindness inside I never saw in anyone before. When children would make fun of his looks when he was a mere boy, he never got angry. He'd just quietly go home to his folks who would comfort him─and what's more love him, especially his mama. He worshiped that fine, homely woman....I think she was Eskimo of sorts. The father was a white man, but not much to look at either. But Jeff thought she was beautiful. And, you know, in her kind ways, she was....Her Christian name was Mary; she understood him. Yep, a decent man he is. The whole territory likes him, though, as I said, they all look at him as though he's some kind of freak. Real kindly goodness gets under peoples' hides...especially since he was decorated by old Ulysses himself."

The little man's eyes popped. "You mean the president!"

The marshal looked proud, then spread a smile of tobacco stained teeth. "No, the general."

"My, my," the stranger murmured, looking out the window for the strange hero.

"Yep, young Jeff practically licked the rebs all by himself." An old man with a badge on his hat poked his head over the doors. "Looks as though my deputy, Gabe, is hankerin' for his grits. I got to go back, so Cressie can fix'm up special for him. She gives old Gabe the royal treatment."

"Deputy? Didn't I see him working baggage at the train station last night?" The stranger scratched his head.

"Oh, yea, for years he's been doing both. Neither the railway nor me has the heart to retire him." He rose up. The stranger gazed in awe at the length of the marshal's body. "Say, you don't deal in guns, do you? I don't cotton to that. Hard enough keepin' the peace without the whipper-snappers comin' in with new fancy guns."

"Me?" The stranger laughed heartily. "Never so much as held one in my hand....No, marshal, almost everything but─from the latest design hoe and plowshare to fine carriages of the seventies line."

Going out the doors, the marshal turned and said, "Not likely you'll sell any plushy carriages to these simple folks."

After the Civil War Jeff returned to his family's homestead to find that both had died. He was devastated: through out the war his drive to survive was his parents. Though alone, despondent and wondering what the purpose was, he slowly began to work the farm in deference to their memory. Except for the war years, he was never anywhere else anyway. This would always be his home. Only dimly does he remember early childhood when his father owned a store in a Canadian logging camp. His father was and forced to sell and cross the northern border because the customers continually taunted and ridiculed his wife and boy.

Upon his return, Jeff first worked just a small plot and retired early in the afternoon to sit by their graves into dusk in a mournful void. Cressie out of kindness would some times ride out to the farm and sit at the grave-site with him. Gradually he took on the tilling of another field and by the second growing season he was working the entire acreage from dawn to dusk. In this second year's harvest he once said to a hired hand who helped pitch the hay and pick the late corn and was complaining about the lack of rest: "Taint no mere farm to me. This here's my Ma and Pa's shrine. I'm goin' to make it as beautiful as I know how."

Then and ensuing years at early harvest time he would go up on the knoll overlooking the cornfield and place on their graves the first two ears of early summer's picking. "They'd be proud of this here corn," he once told the marshal who rode out with Cressie to the farm during this annual ceremony.

"Knowing your Ma and Pa," the marshal corrected, "they'd be more proud of their Jeffy."

Jeff vented a heavy snort, but then laughed raucously and said, "Yep, by thunder, you're probably right, marshal, but Pa sure loved Ma's cornbread and Ma loved makin' it for us."

"She sure did make a good bread." The marshal nodded jerkily. "She sure gave me aplenty...kindest woman I ever knowed."

"She certainly couldn't have been kinder to me....She taught me how to cook and bake, " Cressie added, showing a smile of far past.

Now, after five years of incessantly and humbly working the farm, Jeff dimly became aware on the persistence of his hired hand that he should find himself a woman. Added to this was the perception of the hired hand's wife who would cook and take hot lunches and suppers out to the fields to them just as his ma had done for him and his pa. The spiritual pleasure gotten from pleasing the souls of his parents by continuing their work was losing ground to physical gratification lacking in a man of thirty-five. Of course, since childhood he had the occasional companionship of Cressie. But he too looked upon her as a sibling and friend. Yet when subconsciousness reared up in the loneliness of night and he would anguish over her and curse God for making him so ugly he knew he wanted only her─an impossibility, he was certain.

Gradually he took to frequenting the town on Saturday evenings and soon found distant enchantment in the opposite sex─particularly the dance girls at the Western Outpost patronized by cowboys with a month's pay in their pockets and miners who struck just enough to drink and gamble away a weekend. Of course, he knew that he would never find a mate there; but Cressie was his lodestone. He thought considerably about a woman through the catalog as the salesman had suggested. But he decided against that because he was certain that any woman who looked upon him would get on the first train back east. When the salesman said he could easily get him an Oriental bride, he thought about it, then concluded, "Even they are too pretty and delicate for me."

Although he consciously made it a point to cover his eyes when Cressie would perform as a solo in her scanty costume, he could not escape the moth-like attraction he had for her.

One Saturday evening of his awakening and quietly drinking volumes of beer in a corner partially blocked by the bar and between a curtained entrance, he heard pleading from a familiar voice. When her voice became shrill and seemingly desperate, he got up from the table, hesitated, then with measured steps headed for the curtain which he drew open. He peered down a long dark hallway: a tall gunman─whom he had observed last week as a heckler of the ladies' performance─was mishandling Jeff's lady of song and dance who was struggling to free herself from his grasp. Suddenly they fell to the floor. She started to scream but the tall man muffled her quickly with one hand as he busily began to tear Cressie's flimsy costume of cotton gauze and silk.

Jeff shook off his numb feeling from too much drink and clumsily rushed down the hallway. With his great apish hands, he clutched the gunman's collar and yanked him clear off Cressie and hurled him six feet down the hall along which he slid on the seat of his pants until his head met up with the heavy vanity where the ladies did their last minute primping before entering the floor of emotionally hungry men. Jeff turned back round and dropped to his knees, stared dumbly at her while wrestling off his coat to cover the sobbing Cressie who nevertheless seemed impervious to her torn garment baring her breast to which Jeff had never before been privy. She looked up with grateful eyes that instantly turned to jerking surprise in purveying his countenance; for in all the years of their relationship she had never been this close up. He helped her up and carefully placed his giant coat onto her bare, narrow shoulders. Even through the thick buckskin his calloused hands felt her sensuous fragility; a shiver accentuated a sensation never before experienced.

She bent back an eye to one of his hands still on her shoulder and she quickly moved out from under as she skirted past the unconscious gunman. She paused, let out a mixed sigh that he was out cold but still breathing. Instinctively she tugged on Jeff's arm, then recoiled. "You had better leave here quickly. Ranker has a terrible temper and won't hesitate to retaliate with his gun. You came to the rescue so quickly that I doubt he has any idea who did this. So please, dear Jeff, leave now."

"Well, I sure hate trouble, Cressie, you know that, but are you sure you'll be all right?" His eyes riveted to her gorgeous shiny hair, which he had always admired, but the feeling was different this time. He was sure it was the drink.

She looked up at him─ashamed of her previous reaction─as though she had been studying his crude features for the first time. "I'll be fine; he's leaving town in the morning."

"That's tomorrow but what about now─when he wakes up?" He felt her eyes on him but he could not look directly at them. He had never been this close to a woman before─yes, for the first time but for his anguishing nights─he saw her as a woman of his passion. He was ashamed. It was unfair to Cressie─why, even the proprietress of the general store would avoid him and have one of her clerks wait on him for his supply order because he was so repulsive looking. He shook his head as though this phantom would escape him.

"That's true; I'll walk you out to your horse and then I'll go to my room till the next performance. Perhaps by then he will have cooled off," she said nervously.

"And if he don't? And why do I hafta leave, anyways?" he asked.

"Oh, but you must! I told you Ranker has an awful mean streak and deadly with the gun! I'd never forgive myself if you got hurt," she pleaded, looking softly up at him─he was only a few inches taller─as though she saw in his soft, curious eyes a denial of his self-conscious ugliness. She knew at this moment that she now could look upon not just a brother but a man.

"Shucks, Cressie, that don't bother me none, you know that."

"Of course, I know that, you big ox that fought in the war. But you said before you don't want any trouble," she reminded him.

"That's right..."

"Oh, don't you think I know that you hate to hurt people? But this man is a killer."

His dark eyes bulged from surprise as much as they could with his large cheekbones and finally he sputtered, "Huh?...Then why are you with him?...Doggone it, Cressie, how many times do I hafta beg you to get out of this hellish place?"

She snarled at him. "Oh, sure, and come live off you for the rest of my life! Even a real brother wouldn't want that. You're entitled to your own life, Jeffy. Now, stop worrying about me."

He shook his head vigorously. "Not till I know you're safe."

She laughed and then tugged on his arm urging him to the exit; she parted the curtain. "Oh, Jeff, a girl can't ever be completely safe in a place like this─anywhere, for that matter." They crossed the floor weaving in and out of tables. Men, drunk or not, pawed her as they went by and tagged her with flirtatious remarks. She simply ignored them and hustled Jeff out the swinging doors onto the slatted deck-walk.

Jeff felt awkward and embarrassed; he scanned the street thinking all eyes were on them. He felt the stars were echoing laughter under the black vault. He thought of those dreadful times in his boyhood when shopping with his mother the town children would scoff at him with apish antics and shrieks. Cressie was the only one who treated him normally─perhaps because she first laid eyes on him when she was only three and he, though nine at the time was but a few inches taller. In a territory of many tall, lanky cowhands, it bothered him that in his adult life he still felt as though he was a fence-post driven into the earth. By the same token being pile-driven to the earth gave him a sense of security and affinity to the soil.

She looked both ways, then up at him. "Well,...where's your horse?"

"I'm not leaving you!"

"Oh, Jeff,...please! He doesn't fight even by the rules of war." He was ashamed again. He didn't seem to be listening, so glued was his eyes again to the shiny red hair. "Please go home."

"If he's that bad," he responded shaking his head, "that's a sure all the more spore for me to plant my big feet right here." His boots thumped the planking. "He sure don't treat you by no rules."

She protruded her full lower lip, then said, "Stop worrying. I know he has a temper, but I can handle him once he's cooled down. Besides, he drank too much. He doesn't usually treat me like this. You're a...man, you must know."

"No, I don't know. No man oughta beat up on no one, a defenseless girl 'specially." To Jeff there was only one way to treat people and particularly women and that was with respect─the way his father taught him indirectly; for his father treated his mother as though she were a goddess and even though Cressie as a child sometimes would hit Jeff, he would never retaliate.

She looked up with surprised admiration at now a man whose face and stature belied gentleness. She had always defended him when there were those who ridiculed him. And when he returned a hero there were rumors hat he had fought like a savage that he was. She would laugh at that but secretly she feared its possibility. She thought there was some truth to the jungle law of war erupting his ancestry. She could now see in him the gentle being as a man that she had always seen. A gentle corner of her mind had always overridden the revulsive instinct for his appearance, and she touched his shoulder. "Jeff, you are very kind to think of me, but please don't be stubborn...why, I'll never see you again if you stay and get yourself killed." His eyes glittered. For the very first time he touched her hand differently, loiteringly, yes, even lovingly. "Of course, I can't say the same thing for you. I see the way you won't look at me when I perform."

"Aw, you know why. In this dinky costume. And all those dirty eyes staring at you...and dirty hands touchin' you. I hate it. Why don't you just come home. So I know you're safe. You know, ma would want it."

"I've already told you why I won't."

"Then be my housekeeper. I'll pay you."

"Oh, Jeff, you're so sweet. But we both have to lead our own lives."

"I'll cover my face; you won't ever have to look at me ever again.... If you never want to lay eyes on the awful likes of me, I'd understand."

"Oh, Jeff, you mustn't think that. And it's an insult to me if you think that!"

"But you're so beautiful...and I'm..."

"Hush." She surprised herself by putting her finger to his drooping mouth. "Promise me you'll leave now and I shall look for you next Saturday. Come early before I have to work and we can supper together,..." she paused for a moment, "in my boarding room."

He grinned and couldn't resist touching her withdrawing fingertip. "Gosh,...Cressie,...I think you mean it." He wished he could embrace her. He brushed back his hemp-like shock and laughed for lack of a better tact.

"Of course, I do. Now run along,...please."

He acquiesced and headed for his horse calmly, though his heart was pounding in expectations.

Next Saturday was a disappointment. When he went to the boarding house and asked for Cressie, the matron laughed. "Whatever for?...Could it be you are a monkey in her act?"

"We're suppose' ta supper here," he said naively, ignoring her comment.

She broke into hysterical laughter, then recovered to say cruelly, "You mean she was going to feed you out back with the horses, don't you!"

"Please, ma'am, I'm used to these jabs, but I'm a heap serious. Where is...the...lovely Cressie?"

"Lovely, is she?" she repeated with a raised brow. "My, she's stooped this low, has she?" She squinted at him and said, "Don't waste my time, big─whatever you are─I'm sure she's at the Outpost already entertaining better than you."

When he arrived there she scarcely acknowledged him. Still, for a fleeting moment when she came within inches of his table with song and dance, she pulled down his hands from his eyes, winked and smiled at him. That gesture carried him through the next week's chores, thinking of her constantly. That Cressie had conveniently forgot her promise to sup with him was erased from his mind.

The following Saturday, he finished work early and made a conscious effort to freshen himself more. An immeasurable moment of thrill went up his spine when this evening she had faintly squeezed his hand. It mattered little to him that she had immediately withdrawn her dainty hand as though repulsed from the feeling of hot granite. It bothered her that she had felt this way. After all, she had held his hand countless times without such a thought─that she thought about it is what bothered her. She left him abruptly in this bliss while she moved sinuously to one drunk to the next, professionally unmindful of the pawing, aggressive embraces, obscenities, and stifling proximity to the general uncouthness. To her surprise, admiration for him swelled because he had never been one of the pack.

Other Saturdays in Ranker's absence there were indeed. Her tiny hand remained in his rugged hand longer each time as she by degrees visited his table in the corner for longer periods. No longer was it the feel of granite, rather the security and warmth of a hearth. At the last of these precious moments, she reminded him of Ranker's impending return. His hands were sodden from the thought of losing her even though he was realistic enough to know that he could never have her other than in these fleeting moments.

Nevertheless, the next weekend, two months since there first encounter, while plowing the thawing fields, he looked up a the sun for a sense of time. Though it was a cool day, he was drenched in sweat. It was still early for him, yet he decided to quit work. He unhitched his horse, leaving the new plowshare sent by the salesman to the elements and jumped on the draft horse and aimed toward the barn. Inside, he hitched the horse to the wagon. He thought he might as well get some supplies this Saturday, since he felt going to the Outpost would be a waste of time. Still, he had to get there early to watch out for her in case Ranker had returned. Owing to the anguish of his nights, out of desperation he had another reason for making this a special night. He lumbered about pulling items from drawers and closet, muttering as he did so: "socks, new hat and boots, brush my suit...ah, my bath...the hot water." He gripped the big pot on the stove, pouring its contents into a large wash tub half filled with cold water. Having dropped his sweaty clothes he doused his sweaty body into the tub. He looked down at his hairy body and moaned: "Boarding house woman!...Awful you are, but so right!" He scrubbed himself vigorously as though he could suds away the ugliness. Finally he stepped out with renewed vigor, careful to dry his large feet, lest they again be black from the earthen floor.

An hour later, dressed, his beard combed, he shone like a bumpkin on his way to church. Humbly treading his parents' still undisturbed room, he took from a small box a bronze ring. He had seen gold bands on other women, but thought bronze a truer metal. His mother had once told him that sun rays were the only mine shafts people were entitled to, and by tilling the land the true nuggets would turn up naturally in the soil just as God's fruits.

When he left the house, he tried desperately to straighten his posture, which seemed to bend forward even more from the tightness of his coat around his shoulders─apparently the salesman didn't measure him too well, he thought. The fact is, the tailor back east did not know how to fit an ape. The coat looked as though it had been boiled─his long heavy arms extended way beyond the cuffs, accentuating his immense hands. From starched discomfort he hopped onto the wagon and started for the dusty road leading to the town. He stopped the wagon at the end of the cornfield and walked up the trail to the graves. Head bowed in the solemn air hanging on the knoll, Jeff noticed a gallant crocus peeping out from under his mother's stone. Carefully he stepped over the grave and picked the stem of purple bud, placing it gently in his breast pocket. Suddenly and ominously the bright afternoon sky became bleak, and the thunder rolled from a distance. He shrank in awe as the dark snarling sky shed a gloom upon the graves. He turned back down the trail to the wagon. He looked over at the brown, rolling fields─the gleaming plowshare stood alone, nosed into the softened earth.

Fastening the horse in front of the Outpost, he saw her going into the town lawyer's office. He wished he had the courage to stop and talk to her; instead, he turned to the swinging doors instead of heading for the general store. Supplies were the furthest thing from his mind. He was surprised to see the Outpost half crowded this early. He sat down at his lonely table and one of the dancers came over with a large mug of ale that he had always drunk. He asked her if she would get him a glass of water for his flower as he drew it from his pocket. She chuckled and said, "Jeff, you are the strangest...yet, there's something close about you."

"What do you mean, Jennie?"

"I'm afraid I don't know myself." She turned toward the bar, and came back shortly, placing the flower herself. "There, but too bad Cressie won't get to see it." She fluttered her lashes. "Ranker's back." She disappeared behind the curtained exit to join the other girls preparing for their performance.

Jeff had noticed the tall man at the bar talking and drinking with another gunman, but it did not alarm him in the least but for the exception he felt was ominous for Cressie. However, Ranker finally caught Jeff in his vision and left his drinking partner to amble over to Jeff's table. He stopped short and widened his stance ominously and moved his hand toward his gun. "I hear you've been seeing Cressie? There must be lemming blood in your ape veins, homesteader. I haven't settled the score for you sneaking up behind me; now, I come back and hear you've been after my property."

Jeff stared up at him vacantly. "Nobody's property to nobody, Ranker. And who I see is not your business." Jeff's hands slid off and under the table.

"Cressie is my business." He snarled and laid his hand on the handle of his gun.

"If you mean she's your concern, then you have a dumb way of showing it the last time I saw you with her."

Ranker eyes squinted as his hand gripped the handle of the revolver. "Yeah, the last time...is why I'm here."

"Too long ago to worry about it, Ranker. It wouldn't be a good thing for you to draw that gun here. The marshal wouldn't like it. He's strict about that."

Ranker removed his hand and tipped back his hat. "I don't need it for you." He reached over the table and grabbed Jeff's lapels. Jeff felt his jacket rip up the back. Jeff gripped Ranker's hands and squeezed. Ranker let out a yell and released his hold and backed off. "By God, you are a gorilla!" he said, rubbing his hands, smarting from the powerful crush. Then quickly he grabbed the ledge of the table to tilt it up and over onto Jeff who quickly caught it and reversed its momentum back to Ranker who had to back away to avoid the table crashing down on his toes. He drew his gun, but Jeff jumped over the table on edge and body-slammed Ranker to the floor. He took Ranker's gun and skimmed it along the floor. Suddenly the brass band blared and the girls entered on cue while Jeff scrambled to look for the crocus. The girls laughed as they danced by Ranker flat on his back. Then Cressie came through the curtain and gasped momentarily in seeing him, knowing full well what it meant as her eyes tried to scan for Jeff but she had to fall into the opening dance routine. When the brass subsided and the girls moved in and round the tables to hustle the men to buy them drinks, Cressie saw Jeff emerge from the floor with a flower in his hand and then move to another table a good distance from Ranker. Jeff had put the flower in another glass of water. She vented relief and wanted desperately to go to him, but the pianist banged out her honky-tonk cue and she began to sing. Her delivery was coarse and untrained, but it was suitable for the rugged clientele, and the scanty costume she wore. Jeff was transfixed─he could not get himself to cover his eyes. There was never a sweeter voice, nor a more beautiful vision as she sang and slinked from table to table. Her heavy perfume dispersed the smoke-filled air and defied the thick odor of beer and whisky. She projected a phantasmal beauty as she snaked about and coiled and stretched to every drunken howl and edgy paw, for at this moment she was queen, not just a cheap dance hall girl. To Jeff she was a goddess who was the causation of his sleepless nights and lotus-eating days. He thought, "Such thrills ain't turned up in soil!"

She undulated round but kept her distance from both Jeff and Ranker as she sang:

Along the vineyard trail

The bursting grapes enjoy

While lovers fife and rail,

To the baton and lyre boy.

          Love is all there is 

Withstanding nature's lechery

But even this will fizz

When Bacchus plants his treachery!

But then she soared above this foreboding lyric and looked softly across the spacious hall at Jeff:

Farewell O darkened nature, death!

And on the hardened breast from winter's sting

Sing and dance to the lyre's skip of spring

While sowing in the crust love's regaining breath.

Jeff, so arrested, wrapped his big hand round the glass containing the crocus; the glass shattered; his hand bled─an outlet for his pining heart. The brass band blared again and all the girls gathered including Cressie to the opposite end where long tables were left unoccupied for them to jump on and dance freely. Men by droves stumbled up to the tables for a closer view and within arms-reach. Ranker finally lifted himself from the floor and staggered over to the bar. He uttered to the younger gun-slinger, "That thick bumpkin is one strong son of an ape! It's like he's anchored to the floor." He got the bartender's attention and pointed to a large earthen mug and the a special wine cask behind the bar. The bartender took it down and filled it with the rich red wine.

"Why didn't you gun him down?" his friend asked. "I wouldn't mess around any other way with a powerhouse aborigine like him."

"Oh, that will come; you can bet on it....But right now I got to get the satisfaction of beating the tar out of him." He slid the mug over to him. "Take this to him. Tell him it's my symbol of truce. This stuff would put a lion to sleep."

"I don't know─what if he starts with me? So help me I won't hesitate to gun down the savage."

"No, chance... sure looks savage, but he's not the kind...too dumb." Ranker assured him.

Jeff had reached into his pocket and was staring at the ring when the gunman placed the wine before him. Instinctively he placed the ring on his pinky tip and drank down the wine in one phantom moment. Within an instant another mug was before his drooping eyes and he sucked it dry. He finally looked up but not to see the source of the wine but to look for the source of his new life. He could barely distinguish Cressie from the other dancers on the tables. The wild orchestration rolled over his ears like a thunderous wave. He imagined Cressie a mermaid splashing about on the deck of a submerged ship and he with a trident in hand rode a dolphin above her as she looked up with a bubbly smile. Her beautiful hair turned to seaweed and from buoyancy curled upward, tickling his feet. High above loomed a nervous shark.

He looked over at the bar. There Ranker was staring at him with a mocking smile. Jeff dropped his eyes to the ceramic mug: in soft relief a pastoral scene of a vineyard spangled purple against a clear blue sky; swiveling it round to the other side revealed the same scene with winter's gray sky and lying on barren field was a maiden whose breast was being ravaged by a black clawing paw. Seized by the image and strong wine, he dashed the mug to the floor and shrieked over the noisy band with a jungle cry of a distant past. He rushed over, breaking into her dance; the music locked in the heavy air. He grabbed her arm.

She felt the sweat and tackiness of his bloody hand. "Jeff, what are you doing? Go sit down and behave yourself." She struggled to break loose.

"I ain't never..." he slurred; " 'Cause...the devil's back...and you ain't doin' no more dancin' for him...and the rest of them, too!"

"Oh, Jeff, for your sake, please leave─I'm frightened....No telling what he'll do! Please..."

"No! Me and you both are goin'─pronto." He pulled her along to the swinging doors, midst jeers and cheers. No one, however, dared challenge him; for they had never seen this likable oddity in such a rage.

At the doors she stepped in front of him and held him fast to protest. Looking up at him with apprehension and then glancing quickly over at the bar, she pleaded, "Let me go, Jeff, you poor, darling soul. You're drunk! You never drank too much before! Don't you understand? He'll kill you!"

He squinted through the blur; her endearing concern convinced him all the more that she was not what she seemed to others. Then her face contorted as she looked over his shoulder. The last thing he heard was her cry.

Ranker had come from behind and smashed a bottle over Jeff's head. Jeff slumped to the floor as Cressie, shocked but caring, could not break his heavy fall, hurling her out the doors. She screamed and reentered, dropping to the floor to cuddle him in her arms. She looked up at the wild clientele to intercede, but they were held in check by the drawn gun of Ranker's confederate. Ranker pushed her to the floor and grabbed the unconscious Jeff by his lapels and dragged him through the doors and out onto the deck and kicked him into the muddy street.

Cressie noticed a subdued glitter on the boot-scuffed floor. She picked up the bronze ring. For a moment her eyes followed the continuous trail marks of dispersed sawdust from dragging Jeff; under the lower plane of the swinging doors she saw a flash of light in the street. She struggled to her feet and pushed out the doors into lightning, silhouetting Ranker on the steps looking over the squirming body in the mud; she heard thunder rumbling overhead. Another flash and thirty feet away a tree cracked thrice under the bolt before crashing against the lean-to over the walk. She squeezed the ring in her palm and looked up at Ranker, her eyes burning into his. She slashed his face with her long finger-nails, then skirted round him to head for Jeff. She knelt by his side─Ranker's protests and black silk-stockings muddied, notwithstanding─and tore off feathers from her bodice and wiped his grimy face. From behind came an abrupt tug on her long hair now drenched and she fell back on her haunches. A knife's edge was at her throat; she closed her eyes and thought only of Jeff's safety, lying helpless with this madman loose.

"You so much as squirm and I'll cut your head off. You're not worth the trouble─a bitch that has feelings for that animal─why, you probably slept with him! I wouldn't even let you breathe on me now!" He then relentlessly cut off her hair near the scalp. She winced when in spots she could feel the blade scraping her scalp. The last handful he threw onto Jeff's face. Ranker laughed grotesquely. "That and a little flour paste will help hide that ugly mug for you." He turned and went back into the Outpost; he was disappointed in himself that he lost the will for final vengeance.

Jeff opened his eyes to lightning flashes and could feel the raindrops tickling his flat simian nose. He heard the familiar grinding of his rear wagon wheel. "Won't never get around to fixin' it." he thought absently, and then he groaned from pain in his head. He felt his head; it was bandaged. Struggling to sit up, he turned round painfully and to his surprise saw Cressie up in the driver's seat. "What in blazes happened, Cressie, what am I doin' here...and what's more, what are you doin' here?" he questioned like a wide-eyed lad as he attempted to climb up on the passenger's side.

"Now you just stay put. I promised the marshal I'd look after you. Now lie back down." She reached back and patted his beard.

"But the last thing I remember is you not wantin' to do nothin' with me." He scratched his wet, muddy beard. "And what's the marshal got to with it?"

"He ran Ranker out of town and probably saved our lives, that's what." She check-reined the horse onto the trail of the farm.

He rubbed his head. "Oh, yeah, Ranker─I guess I didn't do you no favors. I sure got caught off guard."

"Well, now that it's over and if Ranker does stay away, I'm glad you forced the issue," she said matter of factly.

He felt dizzy and settled back; the moon was breaking with the clearing sky unraveling the trail to home. He took one more look at Cressie to see that he wasn't dreaming. At first he thought the soft reflection round her head was her silken hair but then realized it was a satiny scarf. He had never seen her beautiful hair covered before; then he realized it was obviously because of the rain. He was about to rest his head when he jumped up again and looked up at her. "Why did the marshal ask you to take me home?"

She reached down at him. His headache jumped from his head when he saw the ring on her finger. "Because I wanted to. Besides, you told me my job at the Outpost was over."

"I did?...Why, yeah, that's for darn sure."

"So that's why I'm here and to see that you will be okay....Well, of course, you're okay at least when the swelling goes down and the wound heals. I'm really here because...well, I like you, Jeff, you're not the like the others."

He said with a slight chuckle, "That's for darn sure."

Ranker's toady rode into town at noon. His hat was tipped to cover his face. The street was fairly empty at lunch hour. He tied up his mount under the sign Sam Hull, attorney at law. A short, heavy set man opened the door eagerly and waved him inside. The confederate looked over both shoulders before entering. The attorney assured him, "Don't worry about the marshal he takes forever to eat his lunch."

"Just the same, I sure don't want to meet up with his guns," he said taking another look up the street before closing the door behind him.

The attorney laughed. "He's the best man."

"You best have something important on your mind, Sam, for me to chance coming here....I don't want to fight my way out of here. That damn marshal's too quick for me," the gunman said with a worried look as he sat down by the desk.

Sam grinned. "Well, now, Tex, that's quite an admission─and with the marshal in his waning years at that!...You shouldn't to be carrying a gun then. You know how the old tiger is about sidearms in town....Anyway, it's important, all right─the sum total of which is five thousand dollars."

The gunman whistled, leaned back on the chair and agreed, "That's a heap important. Start talking."

Hull paced behind his desk. "There's a weird old miner that comes into town every now and then to get drunk and buy himself some time with one of the girls at the Outpost. He really wants Cressie, but between looking over her shoulder for Ranker and the fact she never liked the old man, she wouldn't sleep with him for any price."

Tex's chair slammed back on all fours. "What this got to do with us? Ranker's through with that redheaded bitch. We're doing fine in the next town with our card games. And no marshal with peace-keeping ideas."

"Five thousand in gold would take an awful lot of winnings," the lawyer reminded him. "Hear me out: The codger sometime ago came in here to have me draw up a new will, since his only kin died, and made Cressie beneficiary of his holdings."

The gunman leaned forward with interest. "So now the old man's dead, eh?"

"No, not yet."

"Well, what in tarnation..."

The attorney sat down behind the desk. "That's where you and Ranker come in; but it has to be made to look like an accident."

"What good will that do?"

"Everything. You see, the old man stipulated if she marries, unless it's him, before his death, the will is void."

"Shucks, where's the problem; no one's going to marry that whore. Then all we've got to do is take it from her when the old man kicks off. In fact, how can we track him down?"

"Now you're cooking, but remember, it can't look like murder....There's another matter. She's planning to marry that damnable homesteader. Can you imagine?─she doesn't care about the money."

The gunman let out a horse laugh. "The gorilla! I don't believe it!"

"It's true; she's gotten some king of religion in her bones now," Hull conjectured.

He laughed again. "That ain't religion, man! There's a word for that kind of animal worship, ain't there?"

"Regardless, it means the end of a small fortune for all of us, if Ranker doesn't do something."

"Why don't I just rob this old miner?"

"Can't....He's a wise old owl. He's been shipping the gold to a bank in St. Louis where his kin lived. He wouldn't even trust our bank."

The gunman removed his hat and scratched his head. "Why you tellin' this now. Why not sooner when we was here?"

The lawyer flushed and became uneasy. "Well, I thought...that is,..."

The gunman grimaced. "So you wanted it for yourself and got cold feet."

"Maybe, but I'm not a violent man," he admitted, wringing his hands. Actually Hull had earlier visions of Cressie accepting him after the old miner died. Hoping to be in a position eventually to embezzle her fortune.

"Well, no doubt about us."

The lawyer got up and went to the window. He was astonished by the strange procession outside. "Speaking of violence, you better lay low. There's more than the marshal you have to worry about." Hull directed him to the window.

The gunman bolted from the chair and joined him at the window. The new couple rode by in a fancy new carriage that Jeff had ordered through the little salesman. Cressida in a new, modest dress sat straight, serene and delicately held the reins. Some tresses now were easing out from under her bonnet. Jeff, in spite of his bowed spine, strained his short, thick neck to be on a plane with his source of exultancy. His narrow eyes glanced at her marvelous profile as though in disbelief that after six weeks from her ordeal she was still with him.

The gunman guffawed and patted his holster. "Yeah, I know he is one strong son of an ape, but no match for this."

"Just the same don't get involved," Hull warned, "or you'll mess up our plan. You better go when there out of sight and tell Ranker to get a move on."

"When is this fantastic event taking place, anyway?" The gunman asked. "Not that I believe it's really going to happen."

"In a month."

"Hell, Cressie, will long be gone before that," the gunman snorted.

"No, according to the marshal, who's going to be best man, it's serious.

The gunman snorted again. "That's a laugh─best man to an ape!" He beat his chest and jumped up and down.

"Cut the antics! I tell you it's happening. We can't chance that Cressie will change her mind."

"Maybe the ape will change his mind─if he had one," Tex scoffed.

"Will you be serious, if she marries we lose."

Welcome

Index 2

Joan's Page

Frame

Part II

The coming wedding raised brows in town: Some thought it was a hoax and that Cressie was up to something; others out of a cultist whim hoped it were in fact true because they looked upon Jeff as a freak of nature and they would love to see the actual event of Beauty and the Beast materialize. On the other hand, there were a few who perceived in Jeff a harmless, affable man who was the savior of Cressie's soul. Regardless of her adult behavior, most liked Cressie since her childhood until she joined the rowdy and infamous Western Outpost. For the most part, however, she was still the personable little Cressie on Sundays when the Outpost was transformed.

She had been an abandoned guttersnipe and most took her to heart in the early years─particularly Jeff's mother who wanted to adopt her, but the town officials would not allow such a pretty child to become a member of the ugliest family the west had ever seen. To them it was worse than white parents adopting a half breed or Indian child. Nonetheless, the mother often cared for her, seeing to it that she did not go hungry and reserved a corner of the barn for her to sleep. Cressie was appreciative, but because she was left to the tumbleweed by her widowed mother she was determined never to be dependent. When the attorney, Hull, informed her of the old miner's will, she saw this as an opportunity to become truly independent, knowing that the old man's lungs would soon put him in the grave.

Her attitude changed, however, when Ranker dealt her the final blow of humiliation. She realized that her livelihood directly or indirectly was dependent upon the worst kind of men; and when she did come into modest wealth, she would still be their target─even more so. She was now convinced that there was no escaping women's dependence on men in the hard environment.

Jennie one day rode out to the farm and told Cressie she was looking forward to being the "maid" of honor. Jennie, unlike Cressie had no inner thoughts that the relationship with Jeff was unnatural. She observed how kind and gentle Jeff was and believed it was the best thing for Cressie. In fact, Jennie herself was intrigued by Jeff. She had long ago rid herself of the "sideshow" syndrome of this man whom she could now look upon and readily respond to the good in him. She said to Cressie that had she not known that Jeff adored her, she herself would want a life with him. "After all," she said, "mothers have ugly children but they don't drown them." She reasoned that the natural attraction of their own flesh and blood precludes such action. And why not carry that to another level─why just kin─and love people for the good in them? And Jeff is certainly good." Belatedly Cressie began to understand.

It was this frame of mind that gradually led to her acceptance of Jeff as a man and lover, rather than simply her lasting friend. The simple but noble perception she had of his exterior since childhood seeped into her psyche which leaned to deducing that if she could love him as a brother because he was always good to her, then why not as a husband? Is it not preferable to love someone who truly loves than to pay the price of appearances? Besides, she reasoned that it was more than gratitude─and certainly not pity─that she retained her relationship with him all these years. She had always sensed that the gentleness about him sprung from a truly loving spirit that contradicted his craggy appearance. And now alone with him these two months, the cragginess dissolved, leading her to believe that in her weak moments her perception of him belonged to the town's perception, not hers.

Cressida's early childhood memory of Jeff's mother awakened. In living with him on the farm, each morning she cut fresh flowers and arrange a lovely bouquet for the mother's grave. She was not as elaborate with the father's grave but she did not forget him. One morning when she was fixing flowers at the grave site, Jeff walked up the hill while admiring her bob glistening in dawn's jealous light. But he could never look upon her new hair without a feeling of rage. The dark image of Ranker loomed and he stopped in his tracks to clench his fists and pound his chest. He continued up the trodden path and in her glorious presence he became tranquil in forgetting, if not forgiving.

"You know, Jeff, I've often wondered if I could fuss over my own mother's grave. I hate her so that I doubt it."

"You mustn't feel that way, Cressie," he said softly kneeling beside her. "She loved you, I'm sure. Things happen we don't understand. I know she had a good reason. She could've been very sick─maybe even contagious and felt it best to free you."

She chuckled. "Oh, Jeff, you're just too darling. Only you would think of that." She hugged him. "Let us pray that our marriage will be as loving as theirs." In silence they prayed. A warm breeze whistled in and out of young applauding foliage in the fields; low in the sky cawed a crow as it darted across the pink sun. They went back down the path hand in hand. It was now so natural to Cressida to hold his massive sweaty hand and to look up at his leathery adoring face.

Inside the house, Cressida─just days before the wedding─was opening gifts from neighboring well-wishers. She was like a child on Christmas morning, which she had never experienced. She held up a flimsy nightgown from Jennie. Jeff smiled sheepishly, then looked the other way. She laughed. "After all this time, you're still shy! I love it!" She thrust her jaw and pecked him on his craggy beard. "Ooh, I must trim that for you." She went back to the packages on the table and stood a long one on edge. "This is just what we need, Jeff. I want you to hang it for me, so you can keep your beard trim all the time."

"What is it?" he asked scratching his beard now that she made him conscious of it.

"Why, it's a mirror, silly."

He lowered his head. "I don't want it for me....I know, you should have one....I'm sorry, I didn't think of one all this time. I was being selfish."

"I've done just fine with my hand mirror....Really, now, you must get over this, Jeff. I just wish there were a mirror that could reflect your heart, then you would see how handsome you are."

"You are the one with the heart, Cressie."

She began to strip the paper from the mirror, then carried it to the wash stand. "There, now you won't leave soap suds in your beard."

"Gosh, Cressie,...I don't know if I'm ready to look at myself every morning." He scratched his beard again.

"Oh? But it's all right for me to look at you each morning, eh?"

They both had a hearty laugh, then he went for a hammer and nail.

Their camp on the other side, Ranker and his companion from a hillside high above the cornfield, looked down at the farmhouse in Jeff's vale. "What are we waiting for? Let's go get her," young Tex said.

"I can handle it myself, Tex. I want the smelly animal to get his hopes up a while longer. Then I want to see him pant in pain when I take her away before he had a chance to lay a hand on her."

Tex snickered, "Reckon you got new strings in your banjo, Ranker. Before you were sure he was into her....And now, hell, they've been living together alone for two months!"

"Living off him, you mean," Ranker corrected him.

"Anyway, keep your head; you've got a train to St. Louis to catch," said Tex. "This is supposed to be business only."

"Who's running this?...I know, and you have an appointment with the miner and see that you do it right and soon. If the old man gets wind of Cressie leaving town, he'll change the will in a hurry. So saddle up while I take care of my end."

While he hung the mirror, Cressie noticed he never once ventured looking at himself. He quickly turned to put the hammer away. She stepped in front of him; grasped his shoulders and turned back around. "Now, look at yourself, Jeff, and see what I see─never mind what others see. It is what I see that counts."

"Aw, Cressie, I know what you see."

"No, you don't....Now look." His eyes slowly turned askant and focused on the reflection of her beautiful smile. "See, it's not so bad now is it?"

"No, you're smile is beautiful."

She slapped his shoulder and pouted at the mirror. "I can't be in the reflection all the time. You must learn to see only you in it. You're a big boy now."

"It would be a lot easier for me if you were in it always."

She laughed. "Oh, Jeff, I take it back it. You're still a little boy. She sighed and propositioned, "Okay, I promise for a week I shall always be in the reflection but no longer than that....Now, you stay put while I get the scissors. And I want you to follow what I do in the mirror so that next week you can trim it yourself."

As he indeed watched her every move in the mirror, he couldn't believe how slim and narrow she was compared to the immensity of his torso. He flinched, thinking about what they would do on the wedding night. He was fearful of crushing her. He prayed to his god that he would be gentle.

"There! See how good you look!" she said as she stepped back to admire her work.

"Yes, Cressie, maybe I do look good─all because of you and I just don't mean the beard."

Outside the cows and sheep seemed restive. "I'd better go see what that's about out front," he said. He hesitated for a moment─still unable to rid himself completely of his public figure even with her-then kissed her on the cheek.

"Hurry back,...my husband to-be," she said softly. He closed the door behind him and she added, "yes, my darling, come back."

 Ranker stole into the house from the back. She checked a scream. "How dare you!"

"Speaking of daring, you're putting on some act here," he snarled.

"It's not an act. I demand to know what you are doing here."

"Maybe it's time for the barber again," he snickered.

"You're a riot."

"Indeed, if you don't pack up now and come with me."

She fell back against a table while gasping. "You can't be serious!"

He grinned diabolically, "More so than you are with that animal you're keeping on leash." He stepped toward her.

"Don't speak of him that way!" she chided...."Take one more step and I'll scream for Jeff."

"He's a dead man if you do." He adjusted the gun in his holster.

She hid her fear. "You're forgetting the marshal. He'll see that you hang."

"We'll be long gone from his territory. A posse can't chase a train."

"Train?" She stroked her cheek. "So that's it. Sam Hull opened his big mouth." Then she chuckled nervously. "But that won't do you any good. When the old man finds out, there's no beneficiary, you buffoon."

"He won't find out. Tex is seeing to that now." He laughed with a vicious twang.

Her face contorted. "Oh, my God, you're worse than I ever dreamed!"

"Then you'd better come now or you'll see worse."

Her eyes filled up; she lowered them to the floor where Jeff spent hours laying it over with polished planks to protect her dainty feet. "I...I just can't leave him; it would break his heart. Oh, Ranker, just go, I'll sign anything. I never wanted the money. And you just can't kill that poor old mixed up man."

"That wouldn't do any good if he lives and you marry this tailless primate."

"I promise I won't marry him. Just go!" she pleaded.

"Gotten kind of religious in your pasture days, eh?...No, Cressie, I can't, don't and won't trust you, nor the old man. So get packed now or come as you are─but don't forget the will. Besides, I know you're scheming something. I know you can't love anybody but me." He reached out and pulled her into his arms. He spit wet kisses on her neck. "Oh, how I miss your hair. I was a damn fool to cut it, I know."

She squirmed and struggled midst sighs of weakness. "Don't do this!...Oh, Rank,...dear,...how could you?" She drew up her hands and urged his lips to hers as she hungrily opened her mouth and he wedged in his tongue. Suddenly deep from her heart a spirit cried and she pulled away her sucking lips while reaching for his gun.

His hand quickly circled her wrist. "Bitch!" He pushed her and she went sprawling over the table. "If you don't want a double killing here right now, you best move pronto! I'd like nothing better─the hell with the marshal and the money─than to kill both of you!"

She struggled to her feet and closed her eyes. Momentarily she uttered inaudibly to her inner self, "It's over; I knew it couldn't be true." He eye-lids parted and she stared coldly at him. "We'd better go now before he returns." She removed the ring and gently placed it on the table.

Jeff flung open the front door just as Cressie was putting on her cape. Seeing Ranker struck him dumb even though he saw his horse out back. Then he turned his eyes quizzically to her. Cressie concealed her anxiety with a cold front. "I can't go on deceiving you like this. I'm deeply sorry, Jeff, it was cruel of me. But you know what I am."

"It's not true!" he cried desperately. "I know what you are now─with me. You are no longer the other one."

"No, Jeff, people don't change. I still love him─in spite of what he did." His eyes drooped to the floor.

"Sure, gorilla, she just needed a place to hide out till her hair grew back," Ranker broke in with a laugh.

Jeff raised his head, clenched his fists and started toward Ranker who quickly drew his gun. Cressie gasped and stepped in Jeff's path, clinging to him. "No, Jeff, you mustn't! It's not worth it. I am not worth it....Please, Jeff, again I'm so sorry, but the minute he walked in here I knew I still loved him, strange as it may seem to you. Do you understand, Jeff? All these weeks with you and I missed him. Yes, Jeff, I still love Ranker, not you!" She beat her fist into his barrel chest. "Do you understand what I'm saying? I missed him," she became hysterical, "Ranker I missed, Ranker I love!"

Jeff's rage limped; he bowed his head and turned away from them. "I'm just an old fool. I guess, I always knew....Shoulda tried for the mail bride." He said tremulously, "Go! Go now,...please!"

Through tears Cressie saw his big hands, her fleeting comfort, flexing, then move up trembling to cover his face. She heard like a distant moan from beneath his hands. She held a sheer scarf to her breast, then let it fall at his feet. She turned to Ranker. "Put that gun away." With a scowl, he complied. She took nothing but the will, and they left.

Pounding hooves dissolved as the crushing pounding of his heart increased. Left in the terrifying emptiness, Jeff reached down to pick up the scarf. He sat down at the hearth and peered through the thin material at the faint embers from the fire the night before. Her image garbed in her wedding dress rose from the smoky embers. She was rustling through his cornfield, long beautiful red hair emulating the wind swept veil. Then a whirlwind touched down leaving in its wake bent stalks. Wrapped in wet corn silk was a corpse invaded by kernels of maggots. He pulled himself up and staggered to the table. He fondled the ring for a moment, then flung it at the mirror, cracking it. He went out the door to visit the grave site.

Jeff returned to the hard-working, lonely reality without Cressida. He never gave up hope, however. Every evening after his supper he would drive into town in her carriage to meet the train, unrealistically looking for her to be on it. Although he had to pass by the Western Outpost, he would never stop in. Jennie soon learned of this ritual and would stand outside and wave to him; he would tip his hat but never stop to talk. Weeks flowed into fall. In spite of the long hours of harvest, he nonetheless would continue to meet the train and Jennie would still be there waving to him. Occasionally, though, he would drop in on the marshal and have a chat.

Months flowed into winter. This evening he had to stop at the marshal's. The marshal told him of the old miner's death. "Seems he fell into one of his old mine shafts and cracked his head," the marshal said, echoing his report. Gabe who's known him a long time discovered him."

"I've seen him at the Outpost; he was always there. It seemed to bother Cressie. Yet all he ever did was ogle her. Harmless though...poor old man."

"I'm not so sure about that. I never liked the old buzzard. There was somethin' strange about him─somethin' in his eyes that could draw a snake out of its nest. You shoulda seen the mean look on his face, though cold dead. And when Gabe lifted his body onto the pack horse, he said he didn't weigh an ounce─like pure air, he said. But I don't believe he fell. I think Ranker had something to with it. You know, he left his young gun-slinger behind."

Jeff leaned forward on the chair. "Uh, when did you see him?"

"Oh, the deputy located him last week when he dropped off some supplies for him. Gabe and he go way back."

"Uh, no, I meant the gunman."

"Oh,...not for a good while. I lost track of him. But I know he was still in the hills," the marshal said confidently. "But why...did you see him?"

"Uh,...I...but why would Ranker want to do that?" Jeff asked.

"Reason enough...same as why he took off with Cressie."

"Cressie!...I don't understand," Jeff heaved.

"The will...seems the old man had her in her will. That is, if she didn't marry." The marshal had been hesitant about informing him, thinking it would confuse him even more.

Jeff tipped back his hat and rubbed his low forehead. "Then that means she didn't go with him because she loved him; she went because of the money!" His eyes brightened. "Maybe now she'll come back."

"Hold on now, Jeff; even if you're right, it doesn't make a whole lot of difference putting the money before her love for you. Besides, if she did feel that way, she didn't need Ranker."

"Maybe she thought I'd get mad and hurt her," he deduced simply.

"You hurt someone, much less Cressie?" The marshal laughed. "There'd be diamonds in the old man's hill too before that ever happened. No, Jeff, you couldn't be violent with anybody."

Jeff slowly nodded, then his eyes distended and he shook his head. "No, marshal,...the kid you mentioned─Ranker's second gun. I caught him in my house, digging under my new floor where I hide my money. I hit him over the head with a poker. When he came to, I asked him how he come to know where my money is. He told me Cressie told him. I went mad, not believin', and shook the devil out of him; then he drew his gun and I had to knock him out again─but not hard enough, I'm afraid. I went to the barn to fetch the load-wagon to take him here for you to lock him up, but he high-tailed it. So you see, marshal, I'm not so peaceable─because I went after him and killed him with my shot-gun. You can put me in jail now. I got his body on the rig."

The marshal almost fell back off his chair behind the desk. "Jeff, he broke into your home! You had every right to take the law in your own hands."

"But I didn't kill him because of that but 'cause of what he said about Cressie!"

"And did Cressie know where you hid the money?"

"She was the only one who knew."

"So?"

"I feel bad because he must a told me the truth; yet I killed him."

"But then again why didn't she take it herself when she had plenty of chances to when she was with you? No, Jeff, I don't think she would've told where the money was unless made to."

"Oh, no, you think Ranker is still being cruel to her?"

"Ranker is Ranker."

"Then that's why you think she went with him?...No choice?" His heart pounded. God, I wish I knew where she was!" he cried, shaking his head and staring at the floor. The marshal looked away. Then Jeff asked, "But how does the old miner fit in?"

"Ranker gets him killed; Cressie gets the money and he gets it from her."

"Takes it, you mean!" Jeff buried his face in his hands and moaned. The marshal went outside, checked the body, then sent a young lad riding by on his pony to fetch the undertaker. He returned to Jeff.

He put his hand on Jeff's back, still hunched over as Jeff absently stared at the floor. "You blew one big hole in him, Jeff."

Jeff jerked his head. "I didn't want to, marshal; but when I caught up with him; he drew his gun again."

"I know. That kind live by the gun, but think they ain't ever gonna die by it...especially the young ones like Tex," the marshal said, lifting him up by the arm. "Why don't you have a stiff drink at the Outpost while I tend to the body? Forget about all this and then go home."

"Not just yet. Got the train to meet," Jeff said, moving to the door. "I reckon you ain't gonna arrest me, eh?"

The marshal smiled, shaking his head, and sat down and rocked back on the chair. "You know, Jeff, you got to forget Cressie. She ain't ever coming back. She's a rich woman now─that is, if Ranker lets her live."

"Marshall, don't say that, please. He must care somethin' for her. And if she does...love him, he'd just hafta let her live. If I knew where she was, I'd see to it that he respects her."

"And that's why I ain't tellin' ya....Look, Jeff, why don't you take up with little Jennie? I tell you, she really likes you. She'd fill your loneliness."

"Yeah? An old ugly ape like me?"

"Now, don't you start believing this mean old taunt'n town. Cressie didn't think so. Why shouldn't Jennie see you for what you really are?"

Jeff pulled on the brim of his hat. "Yep, maybe so. She waves to me every night, you know." The marshal nodded. Jeff added, "Maybe some day I'll give up on hopin' she's a-comin' back." He eased the door open. "I'll just walk over to meet the train and come back for the wagon."

Jeff headed out the door. He glanced briefly at the gunman's boot dangling off the edge. He headed up the covered walk. Jennie was standing there. He tipped his hat.

"You're not in the carriage now, Jeff. You have no excuse not to stop and chat with me," her eye-lashes fluttered while she spoke. But he observed with curiosity that they didn't flutter like they did during her routine at the Outpost─there was a little girl innocence there. He gazed longingly at her silky hair─not unlike Cressie's─though jet black it was tinged a burnt red in the sunset. The rage swelled up within when he thought of Cressie reduced to mutilated tassels. "Why don't you visit us anymore, Jeff?"

"I'm not much for drinkin', you know that, ma'am...uh, Jennie," he uttered, awkwardly, tugging on his belt.

She pouted. "I know that, but still, why can't you come in and see me once in a while. Are you still that crazy about Cressie that you don't know I exist?"

"No, Jennie,...Shucks, you're a...won'ful...a real sweet girl. You was always nice to me─not like most of the others in there. But you're so nice I hate to think 'a ya goin' out with a clumsy ox like me. Gosh, I could break you you're so darn little and soft like."

She laughed. "I don't think so, Jeff. You didn't ever harm Cressie. She always said you were the most gentle of all the men she knew. I can see that because of the way you act. You're so darn nice and polite. Despite your size, you could never be rough. Why, except for that bully Ranker, I never saw you get mean with anybody─not even those who were mean to you. No, Jeff, I'd feel safe in your hands, just as Cressie did."

"Gosh, Jennie, you're kinda like my ma. I don't mean...well, you know, you're so much prettier...I guess what I mean is that you sound like her─so nice and soft, like a little bird. I mean like ma who showed a nice feeling, you know, she was like, like, you know, real love-like."

"Jeff, maybe you take after her more than I do. She brought out the love in you....Just as you're doing to me right now."

"Yeah? Really?...Oh, but what about Cressie? She'll be on this train....I gotta feelin'."

She reached up and touched his face lightly and gazed in to his brightening eyes. "Jeff, you're so darling in your simpleness that it pains me. She's not coming back. And even if she wanted to, she couldn't."

"No, Jennie, she's gonna be on it!"

She lowered her eyes and said grimly, but softly, "Then I'll always be alone."

"No, Jennie, you can come live with us. I don't want you working here anymore, either."

"So I'm like a little sister to you, huh?"

"Yeah! Right, just like a kid sister! And we'll both be good to you, Jennie,...me and Cressie, you know that."

"Yes," she said sadly and turned to the swinging doors.

"You get ready. We' re gonna stop by and take you home with us. Don't you forget now." She turned and smiled with a quizzical eye.

He headed for the station─his usual heavy stride became sprightly. The image of Jennie's smile lingered even though Cressie's stepping down from the train was in the forefront of his mind. Turning the corner, he heard the train whistle and could feel the rumble under his feet. His heart skipped as the train thundered in.

Before it came to a halt and exhaled its steam, Ranker standing in the well saw Jeff and quickly ascended back up the steps and jumped off the other side of the train. Jeff looked into every window. The train of fewer than six cars was virtually empty. The train screeched to a stop; only a young couple got off and went directly to an awaiting carriage. Only one old lady climbed aboard. Jeff moaned disappointment but continued along, staring up at the dusty windows until he reached the caboose. He bowed his head, sighed and turned on his boot heels. Down the line behind the engine the door to a freight car creaked open and a fresh pine box was slid to the edge. The old deputy rolled a flat cart up to the car. A trainman dropped down from the freight car and helped the old station worker ease the long box onto the cart, then he climbed back up and closed the door. The train started up again. He trotted along side it, checking the windows again. He bumped into the baggage cart. "Watch out, idiot!" Gabe cried, then looked up. "Oh, it's you, Jeff....Mighty sorry about this."

Jeff looked at him perplexedly. "No, my friend, don't...I walked right into it."

The old deputy-station worker shook his head and smiled a little "At a time like this you apologize?...No, big fella." Gabe pointed to the box. "The body...I'm really sorry. I heard she meant something to you."

Jeff's square jaw dropped. "What are you talkin' about, Gabe?"

"The body,...what else?" He handed him the shipping papers. "Look, it's for you....That's why you're here...and been every night for as long as I can remember."

Jeff glanced at the papers. "Gabe, you know, I can't read. What's this got to do with me?"

"Jesus, Jeff, you can't be that stupid!...This is Cressie!"

Jeff stepped back in shock. "No! No! It can't be!"

"Gosh, Jeff, I thought you knew."

"It's gotta be a mistake!" Jeff cried out. "Open it!"

"Now, don't go crazy on me. It's against the law─I'm a deputy too, you know."

Jeff felt the edges of the coffin and tried futilely to pry it open with his hands. "Get me a pinch-bar!"

"Jesus, you don't want to that! Get the undertaker," old Gabe pleaded.

"Get it, Gabe!" Jeff said menacingly.

The old man reached under the flat bed and pulled the crow-bar from a rack. "You shouldn't do this, Jeff...You don't know how long it's..."

"I tell you it can't be, but I gotta know." He quickly pried it open and slid the lid down from the head end. Gabe gagged, covered his nose and swiveled round and bent over. Jeff howled as he stared down at what was once Cressie. His nose sensed no stench. Cressie could only smell like flowers. He touched the cold folded skeletal hands. He put his stubby finger in her open breast wound and sobbed. He withdrew his hand and dropped his head on the lid and cried.

The old man overrode his revulsion and ventured toward him to put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Gee, Jeff, I'm really sorry that you had to find out this way." He muffled under his hand. Then he braved the decomposition by removing his hand from his nose and added, glancing obliquely into the coffin, "She was a sweet kid─no matter what others thought─that's how I always remembered her. Just a nice kid who had a hard life."

 Jeff backed off from the lid; and gently pawed the old man's cap. "It didn't have to be." He reached into his pocket and drew out the ring. Carefully he freed her finger and slipped it on. He touched her hair; he was grateful that the curly ends were at least to her shoulders. He put the lid back on and with his bare fist drove the nails back in. He put his hand on the old man's shoulder. "I've gotta go back for my wagon at the marshal's. You won't leave her alone."

"No, Jeff, I'll be right here when you get back." Gabe fondled the coffin. "Many a time she used to hang around here. Many a night the poor thing slept here at the station. Yep, Cressie's like family. I won't leave her for a second."

An hour later Jeff and Jennie were driving out of town with Cressie's coffin. Sam Hull from the shadows beheld the broken driver and heard the coffin vibrating from the wobbly wheel, whirling an eerie cry:

Bury your love so it'll rise;

Hurry your love to the awaiting skies.

His face writhing from sweeping inner pain, the lawyer ran back up the street, muttering penitence, "My God, my God, what have I done!" He pushed his way through a group of cowhands coming out of the Outpost. One of them tripped him and Hull fell against one of the studs supporting the overhang. The cowboy laughed, whipping out his gun and firing dangerously close, splintering the stud.

    Sam Hull scrambled under the swinging doors, and wormed along the grimy floor, crying: "Judas! Judas!" He picked up a dirty piece of bread and stuffed it in his mouth. He snaked toward the bar, lifted his palsied body, and shrilled to the bartender, "Well? What are you waiting for?" The bartender looked at him curiously. "The wine...the wine, you fool!"

 Jeff was leaning on the shovel that tossed the last of the burial. Jennie clung to him. "This is a beautiful setting, Jeff. Cressie never had a home before. She has now,...and is at sweet peace...as sweet as the corn that will grow below next summer." She looked at the bottom of the trail where the marshal was dismounting and began walking up the path.

The marshal squeezed Jennie's hand, then put his arm round Jeff. "If it's any comfort to you, Jeff, at least you know now that she's not alone. Cressie's with two of the nicest people I ever met."

"Thanks, marshal. I'm sure ma and pa will take care of her."

"No doubt. You're ma finally has her daughter now."

"Gosh, that's right!" Then Jeff looked down at Jennie. "And another." He managed a smile. She clung to him even more. "It was nice of you, marshal, to pay Cressida a visit."

"I have two reasons for being here tonight. Rumors have it that Ranker was seen in town. I wanted to make sure he wasn't lurking here somewhere."

Jeff tossed the shovel and pushed Jennie away. His jaw and fists clenched. Jennie cried out, "No, Jeff, please let it alone!"

"Jennie's right, Jeff; I'll handle him," the marshal agreed.

"No, marshal, this is my job....I just have to."

"Marshal, no, don't let him!" Jennie beseeched, hugging the marshal.

"I can't, Jennie; I know how Jeff feels. I owe it to him for my dumbness in not killing the bastard before." The marshal glanced over at Jeff. "You be mighty careful; he's quick."

"Oh, marshal, how could you?" Jennie cried and ran down the path. The marshal's eyes followed her.

"Maybe you should leave it to me, Jeff. She's a good girl. I'd hate to see more sadness."

"No fear of that." Jeff assured him. "Yep, Jennie's sweet, all right. And I sure don't want anything to happen to her. I gotta make sure of it myself."

"One thousand and a closed mouth─that was the deal," said the tall man dressed in his usual black, head to boots, except for a red vest. He dug into a saddle bag slung over his shoulder and removed a bundle of cash on the lawyer's desk, which shook a small figurine of blind justice.

The bedraggled lawyer reached to steady it. With insomniac stare, Sam said ponderously, "No, Ranker, take it back; I don't want any part of the blood money.

Ranker grinned down at him. "And I thought lawyers were a realistic lot." Ranker without hesitation stuffed the cash back in the bag.

"Not when it comes to murder."

"Hell, Tex killing the old man didn't bother you."

"That was different. He was a worthless piece of trash."

"Oh?...And Cressie wasn't?" Ranker grinned. "What do you call a woman that lies down with animals?"

"Regardless, she was a work of art. Beauty shouldn't be destroyed. You had no right. She would've gladly given you the money if you let her go."

He suddenly thundered. "I did her a favor: she would've returned to him." His face writhed and his body shook.

"So? She meant nothing to you obviously."

"The idea of them together did mean something,...disgusting!" he groaned, still ruffled. Then he snapped out of it: "I thought we were clear about this. Here I am being honest by returning. I could've stayed and kept it all."

"You came back to see about Tex, thinking the old miner had more stashed away─I wasn't born yesterday─otherwise, I'd never see that cash." Then he laughed. "You'll never see Tex again."

"I'll find him."

Sam chuckled, then burrowed his forehead in the heels of his hands and whined compunction, "Why did you have to kill her?─it was totally unnecessary. She would have kept quiet─she never really wanted the old man's money, anyway. The lawyer looked up at Ranker. "She had a conscience, you know."

"Dangerous thing─conscience," Ranker countered curtly, looking down at the nervous hand of the lawyer softly tapping a large book on the desk. Ranker leaned over the desk and grabbed him by the throat. "I have a little conscience myself for your good deed; so you better leave town for good and keep your mouth shut. I don't want the marshal haunting me."

"No!" the lawyer stressed, "this town is my life and here I die." He got up and turned to the filmy window, gray in the dawn.

"Then you have your wish." From his holster he drew out his long-barrel Colt. He flipped it the air and caught it at the barrel end and stepped round behind the desk.

The lawyer winced when he felt Ranker grip the back of his collar. He knew─his lips quivering, then stretching to a smile as his eyes rolled up, "Cressie! Forgive..." He slumped forward from the crushing blow on the head. Ranker held on to him, and another blow splattered blood from out the skull. He let him fall to the floor. Ranker squatted and turned him over. The lawyer's lifeless eyes stared up.

Ranker left the office and swaggered calmly across the frozen waking, wheel-rutted street. Suddenly his hand moved to the bloody butt of his gun when he noticed in the morning's gray shadows, a wide-shoulder figure slumped in a wagon and cradling a shot-gun. Ranker quickened his pace when he recognized the homesteader who tipped back his rumply hat and stood up in the driver's deck. Ranker gripped the handle of his gun tighter and stopped several steps from the hitching post by his horse and stared suspiciously at the man, who bit off the end of a straw and spat it out of his heavy lips. "That's right, Ape man, spit it out. You got a reason for being here in town this early?" Ranker growled.

Jeff slowly gripped the gun-stock in his large hairy hand. "You know why," he said gruffly.

Ranker moved behind his horse and slowly drew out his gun as he focused on the shot-gun drifting in his direction. "Look here, oaf, you got it all wrong. Maybe a little prank, but that's about it─I didn't have to send her back to you, you know."

Jeff nodded in grimness. "I know I'm dumb, but not when it comes to you!" Jeff shot back with fire in his eyes. "A cruel joke to you....You had to stab my heart, too; but I'm glad you did."

Ranker smiled and chuckled. "My, my, you actually opened your package, eh?...Well, you see?...You got what you want, and I got what I wanted out of this town." He patted his saddle bag, then flung it over his steed's flanks. "You can breathe easy, ape man; I'm riding out of here." Ranker glanced over at the marshal's office.

With the shot-gun still hanging loose, Jeff responded angrily, "The only thing that counts in this world, you ain't got."

The tall man laughed. "Say, that's right. You got her now─forever." Ranker laughed again. "Dust finer than gold's─yep, human dust and a woman's at that!" He laughed hideously while reaching up for the saddle horn. The shot-gun jerked toward him; Ranker stepped into the stirrup and pulled himself up drawing his gun and firing in fluid motion. From the roar of the gun, the big draft jerked its head but Jeff had the rein secured to the brake handle. But Ranker's mount reared up, snaked and, sidled the trough . Ranker's second round went wild. Jeff twisted round momentarily as the first round nicked his arm. Unfazed, he steadied his bulky frame and fired both barrels to Ranker's head. Ranker was literally jolted from the saddle─his hat and gun flying; his right stirrup flew up; his foot slipped out and he soared five feet from the flank of his horse, his back landing up against the trough. His body quivered, his half-torn head rolled along the edge; his glassy eyes drawn to the slimy water glazed over with a sheet of ice. The homesteader calmly wrapped a kerchief round his bleeding arm, then gently wiggled the reins and the wagon headed out of town.

Having heard the shots, several townspeople ran to the scene and gathered round the body sitting in the frozen mud. The marshal with gun in hand, who had been observing from the swinging doors of the pub, started up the street. Nonchalantly he moved through the small gathering and kneeled beside the body. He signaled to old Gabe, now wearing his deputy hat. Gabe emerged from the crowd, hopped onto the slatted walk and stopped a few stores away under the undertaker's sign. The Marshall stood up and watched the wagon edging out of town. He knew Jeff would seldom be seen again. Jeff’s work here was finished: the sun shone golden on the homesteader's broad, round shoulders, but soon shadows would be behind him──only the sunny memories of her would lie ahead.

The marshal picked up the saddle bag and whistled to himself when he saw all the cash. He knew Jeff wouldn't want any part of it; he thought to himself, "I'll put it in the bank for Jennie. They deserve it. They got a long life together."

The marshal waved away the gathering and headed back to the Western Outpost, wondering, now that Jennie was gone too, who would serve breakfast.

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Index 2

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