“I have a spread outside of the town. Two thousand acres.”

  They were interrupted by the clattering of hooves and they both turned to watch Dan Rendell, a dirty rag bound about his hand, heeling his bay mare out of Harlan Springs. He led his dead partner’s horse on a long rein.

  “Devil’s spawn, that one. I’ve seen him or his kind in every border town from the Rio Grande to Canada. Guess you have, too, Cuchillo. But, you were saying you had a spread. Can we go there?”

  “Perhaps I ask you now.”

  “What?”

  “The question.”

  “Go right ahead, Mr. Cuchillo. Artemus Cordbush is not the man to forget a favor. Or a slight, for that matter. If I can help you in any way whatsoever, then I declare I am your man.”

  “I wish you to marry me,” said Cuchillo.

  To his surprise, the lean priest stared at him for a long moment. And then he began to laugh.

  And laugh.

  Chapter Three

  AND LAUGH.

  Only stopping when he saw the look of bright anger in the eyes of the Apache. Seeing at the same moment how the left hand of the warrior was edging down towards the hilt of the golden knife.

  “Hold on, there, brother,” he spluttered. “Now hold on that rein!”

  “You mock me!” hissed Cuchillo. His temper had always been tinder-dry, though over the last few years he had learned a little of how to control it. Now he felt it rising again, a bloody mist seeping behind his eyes at the way this white man mocked his wishes. Through his rage he realized that a part of his reaction came from his love for Gaye.

  “I don’t mock you, son. Just an old joke. An old joke, that’s all.” He paused and wiped away a trickling tear from his good eye, heaving a great sigh. “I’m sorry. Sure am, and that’s the truth, Cuchillo Oro.”

  “Why did you laugh at me?”

  “Not at you, son. At what you said.”

  “Why is to be laughed at?”

  “Say it again.”

  “What?”

  “What you want.”

  “I want you to marry me.”

  “Can’t son. Against the law for two men to get hitched up together,” and he laughed again. But this time there was a strained note to it.

  “I do not—”

  “In any case, I guess I don’t rightly love you enough.” This time the laughter was more forced and artificial. As though the Rev. Cordbush was embarrassed and was wishing that he’d never started this foolishness in the first place.

  “I do not understand. This is what you call a joke, is it not?”

  “Well … Well, yes, I figured it was when I first started in on laughin’. Now I’m surely not certain at all, son.”

  “But you do not laugh at me for wishing to get married?” Cuchillo pressed the point, genuinely puzzled and seeking enlightenment.

  The priest shaking his head pushed back his top-hat and looked at the Indian. “Seemed a good idea at the time, brother Cuchillo. Now it don’t. Why don’t you and me go on out to this spread of yours and talk some more about it.” He stopped suddenly and stared at the Apache. “You said it was your spread. How come … Pardon me for askin’ this, but how come a Mimbreños warrior with one pair of pants and a pretty knife gets to own two thousand acres of land?”

  “It is the land of my wife.”

  “White woman?” asked Cordbush, his face schooled to remain still. But Cuchillo read the unspoken question.

  “Yes.”

  “Can she cook?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what are we waitin’ for, son. Let’s be goin’ to meet the lady.”

  Faced with an attractive and intelligent woman, the minister changed. He doffed hat and ran fingers hurriedly through his straggly hair. He wiped the back of his sleeve across his mouth to remove the worst of the dirt from around his chin. He apologized profusely for the stink that hung about him from the brothel chamber pot and he asked whether he could go out back to freshen up. Gaye gave him water in a blue china bowl and jug and some soap and a cloth.

  When he came back he looked very little better, but the smell wasn’t so strong.

  Gaye was delighted at his appearance, barely able to believe their good fortune to have a traveling preacher along so soon after they had been discussing it.

  “But you say you are already wed?” asked Cordbush after a meal of fatback and beans with grits, followed by some pie and buttermilk. It was all washed down with some good coffee.

  This was the question that they had both known would come, and Gaye was prepared for it. The wrong answer here and everything that they’d worked for could get washed away in a moment. To acknowledge that she had lived with a full-blooded Indian without even the doubtful excuse of lawful marriage would end things.

  “We lost the papers.”

  “Who wed you?”

  “Traveling preacher, Mr. Cordbush,” she replied.

  “Name?”

  “Don’t rightly recall.”

  “I see. Where?”

  “On the trail.”

  “Where, Cuchillo?”

  “Between Montclair and Hope Rising. He was a short man, with a face red as clay.”

  “Mmm, could have been Reverend Nolan. Did he have a drooping mustache?”

  Cuchillo replied quickly. “Yes, he did.”

  Cordbush stared him straight in the eyes, and his smile was gone. “Then it wasn’t Nolan. You sure you two are legal joined?”

  “Of course, Mr. Cordbush,” replied Gaye Turner. She stood and forced the minister to also stand, scraping his chair awkwardly back. “I am surprised to find my word doubted, and by a man of God at that. I am used to being insulted by the border scum that drift through Harlan Springs. But by you—”

  “My dear Mrs. … Golden Knife—”

  “When you marry us, Minister, and I say ‘when’ and not ‘if’, we have considered that it would be as well for folks if we take my name of Turner.”

  “It might be easier.” He hesitated. “Did you say between Montclair and Hope Rising?”

  “Yes,” answered the Apache.

  “Where the sheriff was a small man. Most unusually small.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Was.”

  “Mr. Spikes is dead?” exclaimed Gaye, looking worriedly across at Cuchillo.

  “Break from the jail, I heard. Week or so back from now.”

  “Who …” she fought for control. “Who was it who escaped?”

  “I don’t believe I know that, Ma’am.” Cuchillo sat down again and poured himself another mug of strong black coffee. In his heart he knew who it must be. Just as he loved Gaye, so the surviving Oakley brother must have cared. And with his scar-faced ramrod, O’Connor, he was out and free. And it wouldn’t take long before they found their way south towards the border. And they had murdered the diminutive lawman. That was also sad.

  “How many?”

  Cordbush shook his head. His hand went to his face and he rubbed unconsciously at the patch over his missing eye. Cuchillo suddenly guessed that the priest knew more than he was saying. There had been a change in his manner when the towns were mentioned. He’d heard about Gaye and the chase. The fight and the killing.

  “I owe you a debt, brother Cuchillo,” he replied, sucking at his teeth. “Damned bit of bacon stuck there. Yeah I was saying about a debt. I’ll pay it to you, then I’ll be on my way. You want weddin’ then I’ll happily and legally wed you. But soon.”

  “When?” asked Gaye.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “So soon?”

  “Then or not at all. I’m movin’ on. I’m really sorry, little lady.”

  Gaye didn’t even look at Cuchillo. “Very well,” was all she said.

  Chapter Four

  NAZARETH REGAN WAS just about the only grown person in all of Harlan Springs who didn’t come to the wedding. He stayed in the shadowed depths of the Tahoe Driver, leaning moodily on the bar, rubbing at a shot glass with a dirty cloth.

  Even the whores came.

  The scarred girl wore a little white hat with a thick veil and she clutched a prayer book. The Navaho shuffled along in a sack-like dress of gray cotton that might once have been white cotton. And the New Jersey Lily was a dazzling spectacle in violet silk. Unfortunately the dress was badly torn at the back and she hadn’t bothered to try and mend it. So her enormous rear clad in some unsavory underpinnings of green satin, stuck out through the purple. Cyrus Regan tried to tell her about it and received a round-arm dump across the side of the head that knocked him spinning in the dirt.

  Gaye hadn’t allowed Cuchillo to sleep with her that night, insisting that he must spend the evening away from the house.

  “It’s not seemly, my dear,” was all she kept saying, simply repeating that the groom should not see his wife before the ceremony.

  “But we have been together for many months. Each night,” he’d protested.

  “It is what I want, my brave one.”

  “Then I will do it,” he replied.

  One of the local ranchers, a Quaker named William Bulmer, had been friendly to the couple ever since their arrival in the settlement, and he had agreed, at exceedingly short notice, to give the bride away. Cuchillo had called to Gaye from outside the house early in the morning, where she was locked in with Ruth Bulmer, and had been told off in no uncertain terms to go and get himself cleaned up and ready for the ceremony. Finally, he was allowed in only one room for a half hour to change his clothes.

  He chose a white shirt. It was of cambric, sewn for him by Gaye, with a narrow ruffle along the front of it. A swallow’s eye neckerchief was knotted neatly around his muscular throat. His hair was tied back under a white scarf. His breeches were of pale blue cotton. Ruth Bulmer saw him buckling on the broad gun belt and protested.

  “The ceremony of the Lord, Cuchillo,” she called out. “No weapons in the house of God!”

  “I carry my gun and knife and I fear no evil,” he replied with a rare smile. The woman sniffed her disapproval and slammed the casement closed.

  The minister was there when Cuchillo arrived. Though the Rev. Artemus Cordbush had cleaned himself, his top hat still showed ominous stains and its crumpled state made it look as though a hog had sat on it.

  “Good day to you, Cuchillo Oro,” he said.

  The Apache was sensitive to people’s feelings. Having that kind of awareness was one of the keys to staying alive in a hostile world.

  “Why are you in fear?” he asked, pitching his voice low enough so that nobody else in the meeting hall could hear it.

  “Frightened?”

  “Yes.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “How … What makes you consider that I am in a state of fear, Cuchillo?”

  “I smell you.”

  Cordbush looked at him from his one good eye, head slightly on one side, resembling a world-weary buzzard. “Smell me? I had me a wash at the Regans’ well only an hour ago.”

  “There is the smell of fear on you. I know it. Is it because you know that Oakley is coming after us?”

  “Damn you, Indian,” hissed the priest with a sudden anger. “I didn’t figure on gettin’ myself tangled up in this hornets’ nest.” He pulled out a large and exceedingly dirty rectangle of gray cotton and mopped at his brow with it. “Oakley’s the redheaded one?”

  “Yes.”

  “If’n he’s on his way after you and the lady, then I figure the faster I’m through with this wedding and away the better for me.”

  “He is close, you believe?”

  The minister nodded. “I wouldn’t know for certain sure, Cuchillo … but I’d guess so.”

  “Perhaps we should stop the wedding—”

  He was interrupted by the wheezing sound of the hall’s harmonium, pedaled with an awe-inspiring vigor by a lady well into her eighties, Ellie Maidstone. It signaled the arrival of Gaye Turner.

  Cuchillo turned to the door and saw his woman, and his heart leaped with love for her.

  She looked marvelous. She’d managed to convert an ordinary white dress into something that looked like a real wedding gown. Cuchillo knew that she and Ruth Bulmer had worked long and hard during the previous evening and night. And it had all been worthwhile.

  A bonnet had some window lace draped over it to convert it into a veil and she carried a bouquet of wild flowers. In her other hand Gaye held a small leather-bound prayer book.

  He stood stricken with affection and pride, almost dazed. He was startled when the priest suddenly spoke.

  “Brethren, we are gathered together here to witness the joining in marriage of Gaye Turner and Cuchillo Oro. If anyone knows any reason why we shouldn’t go ahead with this wedding, then let’s hear your piece, otherwise I’m beginning right now.”

  There was the briefest of delays.

  Then he was off again, rattling on like a locomotive on a downgrade making up for lost time.

  Cuchillo held on the hand of his wife-to-be, feeling her slight trembling. He tightened his own fingers to try and reassure her. The news that Oakley was probably closing in on them hadn’t surprised the tall Apache. His people had always been philosophical about the way that the fates manipulated mankind. If it was the day to die, then …

  “You know that marriage is a solemn sacrament, brother and sister,” said the priest, breaking into Cuchillo’s chain of thought. “I’m goin’ to ask you both some questions. Understand?”

  They both nodded. Cuchillo was aware of a rustling of clothes among the congregation, as ladies fanned at themselves in the stifling heat of the hall. It had caused him some anguish to try and decide whether or not to tell Gaye about the vengeful ex-lover, Oakley. A man with hair as red as a prairie-fire. In the end Cuchillo elected to remain silent. There would be time enough to worry her after the ceremony that she desired so much.

  “Cuchillo Oro, will you take this fine woman to be thy wedded wife, to live with her in the blessed state of matrimony? Will you love, comfort, honor and keep her in sickness and health, setting aside all other women, as long as you both live?”

  “I will.”

  Cordbush turned his eye towards Gaye Turner, repeating the same questions. He received the same answer. Cuchillo felt the fingers tighten for a moment as she answered the minister.

  “Who gives her away?”

  The Quaker stepped forward a pace, and then back again. Cordbush motioned to the couple that they should let go of each other’s hand and that Gaye should allow the Apache to hold her right hand in his right hand. But the mutilations to thumb and fingers made it clumsy. In the end they stayed as they were.

  Somewhere outside everyone heard the sound of a horse, moving fast, galloping along the main street of Harlan Springs. The Rev. Artemus Cordbush stopped and looked out past the couple, towards the main door of the hall. Cuchillo saw that the man was sweating profusely, dark patches appeared around the armpits of his soiled vest.

  The horsemen kept on moving without checking stride, the thunder of the hooves faded away until it was quite gone.

  “Go on, Reverend,” said Gaye, quietly. She sensed the fear that hung in the air around them like an almost palpable presence.

  “Yes. Of course. In the midst of life we are in death and of—” He stopped.

  “That’s the funeral service,” said Bulmer, shaking his head in disapproval.

  “I’m sorry. Real sorry. Don’t know what—”

  “Just carry on,” urged Gaye.

  Perspiration was running freely down the old man’s wrinkled cheeks and under his stained collar. The tension began to communicate itself to Cuchillo and he reached down with his left hand to ease the retaining thong off the hammer of his pistol.

  “Mixin’ up a marryin’ and a buryin’,” Cordbush muttered, adjusting the patch over his ruined eye.

  “Get on,” said Cuchillo, quietly.

  “Sure, sure, son. Sure. Where’d we get to?”

  “The vows,” whispered Gaye.

  “Yeah. Repeat after me that I take Gaye Turner to be my lawfully wedded wife and I’ll do all the other things and keep my word and all.”

  Cuchillo stumbled after the priest, trying to follow the stammered, hasty words. Knowing that this wasn’t the real ceremony that Gaye had wished, but that it would at least give them the stamp of legality.

  “That’s fine. And I now pronounce that—”

  “Not yet.”

  “What’s that, sister?”

  Gaye was becoming extremely angry, taking a step towards the priest. Who moved away as though he feared that she was about to hit him.

  “I haven’t taken my vows. And you let me do that right and properly, or I’ll slice off your miserable balls.”

  It was all said in a gentle, low voice, that carried only to Cuchillo and the startled minister.

  “I don’t—”

  “Yes, you do. And so do you, Cuchillo. If that flame-headed bastard Richard Oakley is out and runnin’, he is not goin’ to stop me bein’ truly wed. Go on.”

  Cuchillo and the minister looked at each other, both surprised at the woman’s words.

  “I’m sorry,” said Cordbush. “Unless … No, I shall go on. Repeat that you, Gaye Turner, take Cuchillo Oro, of the Mimbreños tribe, to be your wedded husband, to hold to from this day onwards, for better or for worse.”

  “I, Gaye Turner, take Cuchillo Oro to be my wedded husband. To hold to from this day onwards, for better or for worse.”

  “For rich, for poor, in illness or in health.”

  “For rich, for poor, in illness or in health,” she repeated.

  “To love and cherish until death do part us, according to the Lord’s holy ordinance, and thereto I do plight thee my troth.”

  He was no longer rattling through it as if he had a scorpion in his combinations. The voice deepened and slowed, lifting and filling the small hall, drowning out any sounds from outside.

  Gaye held onto Cuchillo’s hand with hers, her face turned towards him. The words brimmed with her emotion at the moment.

  “To love and cherish, my dearest heart of hearts, until death do part us, according to the Lord’s holy ordinance, and thereto I do plight thee my troth.”

 

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