The Tall Men by Will Henry

eight hours of the first solid sleep he’s had in three days, his thoughts don’t jump open quite as fast as his eyes. But the smell of roast meat and a driftwood fire are familiar prods to a plainsman’s memory. He rolled up on one elbow, seeing the empty bed at his side, hearing at the same time the sounds of the girl moving around outside. By the time he got into his clothes and stumbled sleepily through the low entrance, things were coming back to him with a rush.
    He was given no chance to put them into grateful words.
    “Fetch out my coat, please.” The nod was civil and no more than civil. “And bundle up the bedroll. Your meat’s by the fire, yonder.”
    He looked at her a moment, wanting to say a hundred things, not able to think of any one of them.
    He went back into the cave, got her coat, rolled the blankets. He was back out at once, determined now to have his say and get it off his mind.
    Again, he had no chance.
    Nella was throwing the forty-pound saddle on the black, making no more of the effort than would any knowing hand. “You eat, pardner,” she ordered. “I’ll lace on the blankets.”
    Ben sat down against the wall, confused, upset,wondering: beginning, too, to get a little riled. He ate the mulemeat, saying nothing, thinking much.
    Well, if she didn’t want to talk about it, a man could allow that figured, somehow. Maybe she was a mite upset for her own part. Maybe she was feeling the same as him, not knowing any better than he did how to put it to words. Let it be for now. It would come out soon enough.
    It was a wise idea and a bad guess.
    The miles marched along under the gelding’s long stride. Nothing but Smalltalk about the clearing weather and the remaining distance to the fort interrupted their swift passage. With the morning well gone and Bent’s crowded post lying hard around the near bend of the Arkansas, Ben could stand it no longer.
    “Nella,” he grunted over his shoulder, “ain’t we got suthin’ better to talk about than what happened to the snowstorm?”
    There was silence for the next fifty feet of trail. Then her voice came clearly enough. “Ben,” she said deliberately, “just forget it.”
    It was the first time she had used his name. Hearing her say it aroused a whole new flood of thoughts in him, all of them rising around that wonderful hour in the cave. “That’s a outsize order for a ranch boy,” he said doubtfully. “Mebbe you kin answer it better than me.”
    “I can,” said Nella.
    Her voice wasn’t hard now; still there was no hesitation in it.
    “A woman’s lonely and grateful and maybe a little scared and feeling bad-lost into the bargain. There’s a fire and warmth and the first shelter and safety she’s felt in might be a long time. Add a few kindwords from a decent, clean-thinking man and you’ve got what happened last night.”
    “That all you got, Nella?” He said it quietly, trying to keep it level and easy. The girl didn’t miss the rough catch of the hurt in it.
    “It’s all, Ben,” she answered softly. “A woman like me’s got only one way to pay a man she’s beholden to.”
    “You wasn’t beholden to me for nothin’ at all. And you wasn’t payin’ me last night. Not no more than you was payin’ yourse’f, you hear?”
    “I hear, Ben, but I’m not listening anymore. Forget it like I said. There’s no good in it for either of us. Believe me, boy, I’ve been there before.”
    “I ain’t,” frowned Ben. “I ain’t never been there like that before. It don’t make for easy forgettin’, you hear me now?” He paused, reining the black in. He twisted in the saddle. “Nella,” the name slipped out as easily by this time as though he’d been saying it all his life, “I want you to stick by me. I reckon I need you more’n any man ever needed anythin’. How about it, girl?”
    He saw the shadow darken the violet eyes. Then saw it as swiftly disappear behind the dazzle of the bright, hard smile.
    “Ben, are