Chaparral Range War (9781101619049) by Dusty Richards Page A

pretty melancholy about life without her. She was a foot taller than me, and we’d wrestle like two bear cubs. One time she’d win, the next I would.”
    Guthrey took the biscuits out of the oven and set them on the table, put the skillet of ham-flour gravy on a hot-plate board, and poured them coffee. They ate in quiet, and when they finished, full as pups at a butchering, Noble cradled a tin cup coffee in his hands and continued his story. “Then I met Celia Watson.” He chuckled until he had to set down the coffee cup, then shook his white-bearded face. “Now, that was a funny deal. Sweetest but most scatterbrained female in my life. I found her carrying a suitcase on the road to Mogollon, in the middle of Apache country, and back then they were really bad down in that part of New Mexico.
    â€œI rode up and asked her what she was doing there. She said, ‘I’m damn tired of working in a whorehouse and so I set out to find me a new job. But I guess I plum I forgot how far the rest of the world was away from the Snyder Gold Camp.’
    â€œâ€˜My lands, girl, where are you going?’ I said. ‘Ain’t no town either direction from here less’n twenty miles. And this is Apache country.’
    â€œShe set down on her suitcase and dropped her chin in defeat. ‘How can I do it, then?’
    â€œâ€˜What are you looking for?’ I asked.
    â€œâ€˜A job. It don’t have to pay much, just so I get out of wrestling with unbathed old men every night.’ She shook her head at me, filled with dread.
    â€œâ€˜I’ve got me a small place up at Alma,’ I told her. I did some day work. It suited her and we had a good life together for a long spell.”
    â€œYou ain’t got a wife now?” Guthrey asked him.
    â€œLord, no. She died two years ago. She asked me that morning on the road how I was going to get her suitcase and her up there on the horse with me.
    â€œâ€˜Ride double, I guess, and tie the suitcase on.’
    â€œâ€˜That will beat the hell out of walking.’ She handed me that carpetbag and it was heavy as hell. I wondered what was in it that heavy. But I tied it on my horn.”
    Guthrey laughed at Noble’s yarn and shook his head. “How come it was so heavy?”
    â€œI asked her. How she ever came that far a-packing it I’ll never know.
    â€œâ€˜Never mind. I’ll show you later,’ she said. She put one foot in the stirrup, and I pulled her up behind me and looked all around for some copper-faced Apache to be peeking at us.
    â€œWe finally made it to my place up by Alma. She was a doozy. But sweeter to me than any woman I ever had. I married her a month or so later. She was twenty years younger than me, but that never bothered her.”
    â€œWhat was in the suitcase?” Guthrey asked.
    â€œYou won’t believe me, but she had gold nuggets that those miners paid her inside it. That’s how we moved down here and bought that place I live on now.”
    â€œWhat happened to her?”
    â€œShe took sick one day and I got the doc to come there and check her. After he examined her, he came out and shook his head at me. It was her heart. There wasn’t anything he could do. It just up and quit on her.”
    â€œDid she linger long?”
    â€œMaybe a week of me praying and hoping to God she’d come out of it. But she passed away one night in her sleep. She was so simple and so scatterbrained, I loved her every day we had together. She’d get up and say, ‘We going to church this morning or not?’ Hell, it would be Tuesday. She baked a pie once and forgot the sugar. Sourest dang apples I ever ate, but I ate it all and never let her know it wasn’t good.”
    Guthrey could see the tears in the corners of his eyes. Noble blew his nose and turned away. “Celia was the neatest thing I ever had, despite her scatterbrained ways. I’d come home tired and