Lawless Town Page 5

  He took a step toward her, his expression briefly serious, hesitated, then turned away. He got his hat and jacket from the tree beside the door and put them on. She did not glance up, so he opened the door and went out, closing it softly behind him.

  Only then did Verona raise her head. She listened to the faint sounds Bruce made, getting his horse from the stable at the rear of the house, saddling, and riding away. Verona got up, crossed to the table, and began to gather up the pieces of the broken vase. Her hands trembled and she frowned at them. It had been a trying day. But at least her secret was safe. Not one of the Laceys had guessed her husband had been the killer, not the killed. What do I do now? she asked herself bleakly, and found no immediate answer.

  She carried the broken vase to the kitchen and threw it away. She returned to the living room and picked up the Schofield .45. She held it thoughtfully for a moment, vaguely wishing she had the courage to turn it upon herself. Realizing that she had not, she opened a drawer and slipped it inside.

  She had made such a terrible mess of things. Such a mess and now there was no way out. Walt had suffered terribly because of her, and he must suffer more before this was finished. “Oh, I’m no good. I’m just no damned good,” she whispered violently. Why hadn’t she waited for Walt? Why hadn’t she believed? She shrugged. Had Walt justified her belief? No. She admitted he hadn’t. Where he had been the past two years she had no idea. But he had not changed. He was still a brawler, a killer. He had killed on the stage half a day out of Escalante. He would kill again now. Walt would never take such a beating as he had received tonight. He would bathe the country in blood. Her hatred of him had been a violent thing this afternoon. Tonight her hatred was for herself, not for Walt Street. He had become no better in the two years he had been gone. But Verona had changed for the worse.

  She walked across the room and stared into the leaping flames in the fireplace. She had acquired security, something that seemed inordinately important immediately after she had deserted Walt. He had offered her no security at all. He had not even been able to buy her a trinket for her birthday. An extravagantly beautiful woman was Verona, standing there. Her skin was like milk, flawless and having transparent appearance. Her eyes were green, framed by long, delicate lashes. Her lips were full and red, her body perfect in the green satin dress. But her expression was petulant, showing neither happiness nor contentment.

  Nervously she crossed the room, recrossed it. For a few moments she paced back and forth like a trapped lioness. Perhaps now Bruce would want to marry her. And if he did, what would she tell him? How would she put him off? Bruce believed her husband was dead. She thought, I can put him off for a while. I can say it wouldn’t be decent so soon after Walt’s death. The irony of that did not fail to touch her. Who was she to talk of decency, living openly with Bruce, taking this house he had given her and all the other things? She knew she was accepted in Escalante only because the full power of Gunhammer insisted upon it. She knew what the town really thought of her. She wondered piteously, aloud, “What can I do? Oh, what can I do?” She had a thought then of which she was instantly ashamed. Perhaps they’ll kill Walt …

  She threw herself face downward upon the sofa. Her hands were claws digging at the brocade upholstery. She whispered hoarsely, “Now I’ve reached the bottom. Now I even want Walt dead so that I can get out of this mess I’m in.” But she didn’t really want Walt dead, and she hadn’t reached the bottom. Walt was perhaps the one good thing that had happened to her in her life. The love they shared between them. She’d been too weak to appreciate it, to cling to it. And now she must pay for her weakness.

  VII

  On most nights, young Alf Browder went home immediately after his work at the stage depot was finished. Usually he fixed himself some supper and then lay down on the bed for a nap. At 11:30, he would rise and go out into the night again. At midnight he would be waiting before the hotel for his mother to come out. She protested endlessly at this, but to no avail. “Alf, you don’t have to come for me every night. You need your sleep. You work hard over at the stage depot.”

  But the boy had a certain grown-up self-importance about this and stubbornly refused. He did not like his mother walking home alone at midnight. Some nights, particularly Saturdays and Gunhammer’s payday nights, the streets were loaded with drunks. And Mrs. Browder was a pretty woman despite her thirty-five years and the menial work she did at the hotel. What the boy would have done if a drunken and insistent cowpuncher ever had accosted the pair was problematical. Yet perhaps it was the boy’s very presence that discouraged such advances by making known the fact that here was a respectable woman despite the hour.

  Tonight, however, the boy missed both his supper and his nap. He had experienced a terrific excitement this morning when the stage had come in with the body of Walt Street inside, with Street’s killer calmly riding the box with Jim Perry, the driver, and admiration that amounted to hero worship had been born in the boy. It was not the first time he had formed an attachment like this one. He had formed one for the sheriff at one period in his life. He had felt a short-lived hero worship for Max Bauer, abruptly terminated by Bauer himself when he callously and irritably cuffed Alf out of his way and cursed him.

  Alf had spent practically all of today thinking of the stranger, unconsciously imitating his gestures and his way of walking. Tonight his need to see more of the man was like a thirst. So, instead of going home, Alf headed for the hotel. He slipped inside and timidly queried the clerk regarding the stranger’s presence in the hotel. Informed that the stranger was in his room, the boy took up his vigil in a corner of the long veranda. Later, he saw Street come out. He followed at a discreet distance, his eyes drinking in every detail of the stranger’s dress, his erect and alert bearing. Without realizing that he did so, Alf straightened his own shoulders and threw back his head. He admired tremendously the stranger’s tawny, sweeping mustache, and the lean lines of his face and jaw. He thought, That’s how I want to look when I get big.

  While Street was eating, the boy peered at him through the dirty window. Afterward, his heart stood briefly still when Street spoke to him and tousled his hair. Alf blamed himself for Street’s vicious beating, since it was he over whom Street had fallen as he tried to run. And the shining star of hero worship had dimmed somewhat, for a hero did not run. Not even when so savage a beating was a certainty. Yet in Alf, hero worship went hand-in-hand with loyalty, at least until loyalty was no longer possible. So he told himself emphatically, He must’ve had a reason for runnin’. A good reason. It wasn’t because he was afraid. A man like him ain’t afraid, I can tell you that. So he must’ve had a reason.

  Alf was breathless by the time he returned from fetching the sheriff. He was almost exhausted after being sent for Doc. Excitement held him rooted there as the crowd began to disperse. He listened to the talk, his face flushed. Coe stood in the middle of the street, his lantern casting a weird circle of light. In this light, Alf saw Jim Perry, the stage driver, stoop and pick up a paper from the street. Perry moved over to the sheriff and Alf edged closer to listen.

  Perry said, “Sheriff, look at this. It’s the paper Rawlins was carrying when he tussled with Street last night.”

  “What of it?”

  “Why it’s got an article in it about Street. And a picture.” He unfolded the paper and both he and the sheriff peered at the picture. Coe said, “Hell! Looks about as much like Rawlins as it does Street. Especially with that mustache drawn on it.”

  “Yeah. But look what it says. This Rawlins has got a thousand dollars coming to him for killing Street. Everybody’s heard about that bounty but this proves it. A guy over in New Mexico named Frank Jagger has offered to pay a thousand to whoever kills this Street. Seems Street killed his brother, two or three years ago.”

  Coe said, “The offer’s probably expired by now.” He gave a last, searching glance at the scene around him, then turned and headed t
oward his office, leaving Perry standing alone holding the half-open paper.

  Alf wished he could see that paper, and the picture. Maybe if he stuck with Perry a while, the man would throw it away. Perry hesitated an instant, then folded the paper. Carrying it in his hand, he headed toward the telegraph office down at the lower end of Main. There was a single lamp burning in the telegrapher’s office as there always was. The telegrapher sat at his desk, a green eye-shade banded around his forehead.

  Perry went in and Alf edged close to the partly open door to listen. Perry wasted little time in pleasantries, before he launched into a story of all that had happened. He finished with, “This Rawlins is a nice guy. He got a bad time out of Gunhammer tonight and I thought maybe I could do something to make him feel better. A thousand ought to make a man feel better, hadn’t it?”

  The telegrapher’s dry voice said, “I’d think it would. You want to send a telegram to this Frank Jagger?”

  “Yeah.” Alf could hear the crackle of paper. “Let’s see if the address is here. Yeah. Las Vegas, New Mexico. What’s it going to cost, Russ?”

  But Alf was gone. For he had suddenly remembered that he was supposed to meet his mother at the hotel. It must be midnight, or past. She would be waiting, worrying about him. He’d ask Perry for the newspaper tomorrow. Maybe he wouldn’t get it, but he’d ask. As he ran, he felt a rising exhilaration. A thousand dollars! Lordy, that ought to make the stranger feel good!

  * * * * *

  From Escalante, the road climbed gradually as it followed the winding course of Cougar Creek. Twelve miles out, the road forked. The right fork continued to follow Cougar Creek while the left led to Gunhammer and Chain, along a trickle appropriately called Dry Creek. The land was arid here, a wide flat valley lying between the towering rims and covered with scrub sage and tall greasewood. But after seven or eight miles you rounded a turn in the road and got a genuine surprise. For before you lay the broad acres of Gunhammer, fifteen hundred acres in hay, emerald green at this time of the year and dotted with unused haystacks looking like nothing so much as fat brown loaves of bread. Gunhammer’s buildings were like a small town dominated by the house, an enormous one-story log building that had been added to in haphazard manner through the years as Gunhammer and the Lacey family grew, until now it was a maze of wings, conflicting roof lines, and stone chimneys.

  The road went past the house half a mile from it and continued upcountry, crossing Gunhammer’s hay field and entering a narrower part of the valley that was choked with willows and brush. Now you discovered why Dry Creek was dry. For here was Gunhammer’s dam and head gate and here the bulk of Dry Creek flowed into Gunhammer’s ditches. The brush continued for half a mile and then the road came out into another meadow with a one-room log shack in its middle. This was the Rawlins spread.

  Some freak of rock formation had narrowed the space between the rims to less than a mile here, and they rose a sheer five hundred feet above the valley floor. Except in midsummer, the sun never reached the Rawlins fields until late morning, and it disappeared a couple of hours later behind the rims. A run-down bachelor’s spread, probably as much like a boar’s nest inside as it was out. Worn-out machinery littered the yard. Fences sagged, corrals were a maze of scattered, rotting poles, the door of the house stood open. The road went on, entering another brush thicket, then climbing in a series of switchbacks cut from solid rock until it came out on a bench that seemed to lay level and flat for a hundred miles.

  Actually the distance across this bench was fifteen miles, and actually it was neither level nor flat. But it was lush with grass, belly-deep on a horse. Dry Creek, gathered into a single stream at the cañon’s entrance, made countless narrow streams as it fanned out upcountry toward its many sources in the high country. This was Chain and it was not hard to understand why Gunhammer coveted it so enviously. Less pretentious than Gunhammer, Chain was just as solidly built, just as tidy and well-kept. And it was in this log house at Chain that Street awoke.

  At first he simply stared blankly at the ceiling. But gradually he became aware of his surroundings, and his first thought after that was, I’m in Verona’s house! He sat bolt upright and instantly pain struck through his brain like the blow of a sledge. Faint, he fell over sideways on the bed.

  He had made some small noise, and it brought Rose Healy on a run. She caught him by his shoulders and laid him back in bed.

  Several minutes later he again opened his eyes. This time he saw the girl. She had eyes of a dark, soft brown. Her smooth skin was tanned and her hair, yellow as quaking aspen leaves in early fall, was tied behind her head with a ribbon. Street looked at her for a moment, then made a weak grin and said, “This is the point where I’m supposed to say … where am I?”

  Her smile was friendly, natural as a cloud drifting across the sky. She said, “You’re at Chain, and I’m Rose Healy.”

  Street liked her voice. It was calm and gentle. It had a throaty, vibrant quality he found most attractive. He liked her instantly. “Mind telling me what time it is?”

  “Almost noon.”

  “I’ve been out all night?”

  Her smile faded. “Three nights and two days. We thought you were going to die.”

  Street took a few moments to digest this, finding it hard to believe. Yet neither could he believe this girl would lie. His eyes took on a sudden look of panic. “Did I talk?”

  She nodded, sober and unsmiling. “What did I say?”

  “You talked of your wife. You talked of Verona Ormsby.” There was both disapproval and disappointment in her. Street rose to his elbow, savagely ignoring the pain in his head. “Then you know who I am?”

  She nodded. She stooped and pushed him firmly back onto the pillow. She said, “Sleep some more. When you wake, I’ll give you something to eat.” Street’s eyes weighed her, and she said woodenly, “You needn’t worry. You are safe here.” And, turning, she left the room.

  Street stared at the door through which she had passed. Then his head moved, and he looked around him. He was in a small room, furnished only with a dresser, chair, and the bed upon which he lay. A washstand stood beside the window holding a basin, pitcher, and an assortment of bandages and antiseptic. A bright, handmade rag rug was upon the floor. The wallpaper had some striped pattern to it that was cheerful and attractive. Street’s eyes saw these things, but his brain was busy elsewhere. His brain was bleakly contemplating the ruin that had come to his plans ever since the stage had left Montezuma. It was as though fate were stubbornly determined to defeat him. The muscles along his lean jaw played briefly. His eyes narrowed and turned hard. Fate be hanged! Nothing was going to defeat him. He had spent two years of his life working and staying out of trouble so that he could return to Verona. Now he was here. He had done nothing to spoil his two-year record. Whatever had happened had been forced upon him. Surely Verona would see that. Yet somehow, all he could remember was the hate in Verona’s eyes. Frowning, he closed his eyes and slept again.

  VIII

  Street awoke the second time to the smell of chicken broth and toast. He sat up, and this time the pain in his head was less. The girl, Rose Healy, propped pillows behind him, then brought basin and water and firmly and wordlessly washed his face and hands.

  Her face was somber, her lips unsoftened by any smile. Street spoke with some embarrassment, “I think I owe you a great deal for taking care of me. I hope I’ll have a chance to repay it.”

  Rose frowned. She said stiffly, “It was not done with the thought of repayment.” She sat down beside the bed, picked up a bowl, and put a spoonful of scalding broth in his mouth.

  Street said, “You don’t like me, do you?”

  Her eyes met his briefly. “How could I know whether I like you or not? You have been unconscious.” She was withdrawn, cool. Street, having known but one woman, could not know that her coolness was a defense. Not knowing this, aware that all she kn
ew of him was what he might have babbled in his delirium, he said, “Then it is possible that you don’t like what I am … what I stand for.”

  “What do you stand for?” Her gaze, so steady and still, was disconcerting. He had a suddenly overwhelming desire to make this girl understand.

  He said, “When I was sixteen, I caught a man stealing a horse from my father’s pasture. I was hunting at the time. I was carrying a rifle. I yelled at him to stop, and when he didn’t, I fired.”

  “Was that the first man you killed?” Her voice completely lacked expression.

  “Yes. And I didn’t mean to kill him. I think it must have been almost automatic, my shooting at him.”

  The girl said, “You needn’t have made a career of it.”

  “No, I guess not.” He was angered by her calm hostility. He shrugged. “I won’t bore you with the rest.”

  “No. I’d like to hear it. I’d like to know how a gunfighter is made.”

  Street scowled at her. On the point of refusing, he changed his mind. Perhaps his need for understanding was greater than he had realized. In brief, uncolored narrative, he told her the rest of it. He told her of the past two years, of his putting aside the gun. He told her of Rawlins’ attack on the stage out of Montezuma. As he talked, he stared beyond her, out the window at the rolling grassland of Chain. When he had finished, he looked at her face.

  Her eyes were wide. Her lower lip was full and trembling. She blinked and looked away. She murmured, “I think you must love Verona very much. Are you quite sure she deserves it?”

  Street failed to answer that.

  Rose said, “Yes. You’re very sure, aren’t you?”

  Street nodded.

  There was a silence in the room for a long while. At last Rose said, looking down at the floor, “And if you discover you have been wrong, what will you do then? Will you slip back into your old ways? Will you take out your anger and disillusion on the world in general?”