Over on the Dry Side by Louis L’Amour Page B

likely place.”
    â€œProb’ly hunting meat,” I said.
    â€œOr searching.…” Chantry said.
    Well, then I looked at him, and so did pa. “You mean he might have knowed somethin’ was up there?” I asked him.
    â€œMy brother was a man who knew much about a lot of things. He had a gift for languages. Let him hear one…or so I was told…and inside a few days he’d be speaking it. I think when he came north he rode to a place he’d been told to find. I don’t think it was accidental.”
    â€œBut why?” I insisted.
    He shrugged. “Sometimes a man just wants to know what happened and how.” He paused. “You know, Doby, this is Ute country, with Navajos west and south of here. But even they never saw this country until about the year one thousand, when they came down from the north.
    â€œThey were migrants then, as we are now. They came, they conquered whoever was here, and they settled down. Just a few miles east of here the Utes will tell you there are ghost houses along the sides of the mesas. * No white man has seen them, but I believe the Indians.
    â€œWho built those houses? Where did they come from? How long have they been there? Who was here first? Did the builders invent the structures they built? Or were they drawing on memories of other houses somewhere else?”
    â€œYou got a awful lot of questions,” I grumbled, “but no answers.”
    He smiled. “That’s the charm of such questions, Doby. Sometimes it’s a joy just to try to find the answers. Whether you ever do, or not.”
    Pa taken the coffee to the table and I set there just itching to ask Chantry if he seen her, for he surely wasn’t going to tell ’less I did ask. Made me mad, the way he set there eatin’ and talking about nothin’ that mattered. Finally, I couldn’t wait no longer.
    â€œDid you
see her
? That girl?”
    â€œI did. I did even more.”
    â€œYou mean you
talked
to her?”
    â€œFor an hour or so. Had a bite of lunch with her. Like a picnic.”
    Chantry looked up at me, his eyes calm: Maybe there was just a mite of laughter in ’em, too. “Her name is Marny.”
    â€œIs she kin to
them?
”
    â€œNo blood-kin. She’s old Mac Mowatt’s step-daughter.”
    Well, you should have seen Pa’s head come up then. He turned straight round on Chantry. “You mean…you mean them were Mac Mowatt’s men?”
    â€œThey were.”
    Pa looked like a ghost stepped on his grave. “Mac Mowatt.…That’s a bloody outfit, Chantry. I’d no notion they were even in the country.”
    â€œDo you know them?”
    â€œI know ’em. I knowed ’em years back, ’fore the war. They were a tough bunch then, but ever since the war they been a mean, man-killing crew. Ever since Strawn and Freka tied up with ’em.”
    â€œThe big man was Ollie Fenelon. The fellow you whipped, Doby, is named Wiley.”
    â€œWhat’s she like?” I asked him of a sudden. I wasn’t payin’ no mind to what he said about Mowatt and them. Or what Pa said. I was thinkin’ of that girl.
    â€œShe isn’t blonde…no golden hair and blue eyes, Doby. I’m afraid that part didn’t pan out.”
    â€œShe…
ugly?
” I asked, desperately.
    â€œNo. She’s very beautiful.…Very. She’s about five foot four, with auburn hair and greenish eyes. Good complexion. Her name is Marny Fox, and she’s Irish.”
    â€œHow…how old is she?”
    â€œShe’s an old woman, Doby. Why, she must be every bit of twenty!”
    Twenty…four years older ’n me.
    Four years!
That was a lot, a whole lot. But I had to protest. “That ain’t no old woman!” I said.
    There was more talk. And finally I went to my room and turned in, but I lay there quite a while. The outlines of my dream had already grown kind