Texas Fever

by Donald Hamilton

  He found the girl watching him with, he thought, a hint of amusement. He felt his ears become warm; and he turned his attention hastily to her companion.

  “Close the door, Mr. McAuliffe,” the man said.

  Chuck reached behind him to close it. He was past the first shock of recognition now; he was remembering clearly who this man was and what he’d done, and he let his hand, returning, come to rest on the hilt of the knife at his belt. The seated man smiled—at least his lips changed contours among the shrouding whiskers—and moved the hand that was not engaged with Amanda Netherton. The blanket on his lap slid aside, to display a large revolving pistol aimed directly at Chuck.

  “Let’s not be hasty, boy,” he said.

  Chuck looked at the weapon, with a coolness that surprised him. “Fine words,” he murmured, “for a man who breaks camp hastily in the middle of the night.”

  The bearded man smiled more widely. “It seemed indicated. Mandy, here—” His hand slid upwards and came to rest cupped affectionately about a breast discreetly indicated by the close-fitting blue silk of the girl’s bodice. “Mandy, here, thought we might have visitors. Her instincts—in such matters, at least—are usually correct.”

  “We did come looking for you, at that,” Chuck admitted.

  “With what purpose in mind, boy?”

  “Why,” Chuck said, “We were going to hang you.” There was a little silence in the room; then the bearded man threw back his head and laughed heartily. “Hear, Mandy? They were going to hang us!”

  Chuck found himself as acutely aware of what the man held in his caressing left hand as of what he held in his threatening right. He saw the girl, annoyed if not actually embarrassed by this public fondling, make a move as if to rise, but the man’s big fingers clamped down hard, causing her to wince with sudden pain. After that, she sat quite still.

  Perhaps, Chuck thought, he was supposed to come charging to her aid, but it was hardly the occasion for misplaced chivalry. He might not be able to help blushing like a fool, but he could damn well keep from getting killed like a fool—although it did seem like no proper way to treat a woman, whoever and whatever she might be.

  “Not both of you,” he said. “Dad said we don’t make war on females, so we just brought one rope.”

  “And the crime for which I was going to hang?” the man asked. “What was it?”

  “Murder,” Chuck said.

  “I don’t call it murder when two men shoot it out face to face. Your brother had as good a chance as I did; he just didn’t shoot as straight.”

  Chuck looked down at the predatory, half-concealed features of the man in the chair. “You’re not denying it, then?”

  “Hell, no. Why should I?”

  “The law calls it murder, I reckon,” Chuck said, “when the man who’s killed is engaged in defending his property, and the man who kills him is engaged in stealing it.” ~ “Ah,” said the bearded man, “but now you’re straying from the subject. What the law says isn’t of much importance between us, is it, boy? That is, unless you’re planning on turning me in to the local sheriff.” He laughed. “I hear you and your pa didn’t have much luck setting the law at Baxter Springs on our trail. Almost wound up in jail yourselves, didn’t you? I shouldn’t think you’d care to repeat the experiment, but you’re welcome to try.”

  Chuck said, “I had the notion Sheriff Kincaid was pretty honest, according to his lights.”

  “Sure. According to his lights. He might even arrest me. But I’d come up before a Yankee judge and a Yankee jury—and I should think you Texans had had enough of Yankee courtrooms for a while. By the time they got through with the trial, boy, you wouldn’t know which of us was up for murder, you or I.”

  “That may be,” Chuck said dryly, “but if you shoot me with that pistol there won’t be any doubt of it.”

  The man chuckled, and lowered the weapon. “Just a precaution, in case you turned out to be a hothead. I’m glad to see you’re a reasonable young fellow, instead.” He sat up abruptly, releasing Amanda and pushing her off the arm of the chair. She would have fallen if she hadn’t managed to catch the foot of the nearby bed to steady herself. To this, the man paid no attention, watching Chuck closely. “What brought you here, anyway?” Chuck said, “The sheriff told me Mr. Paine had been making inquiries about the cattle. He thought maybe I could sell off a couple of hundred head for enough to pay my fine.”

  Keller looked at him for a moment, and chuckled. The chuckle grew into a laugh that had the bearded man gasping for breath. Abruptly, he stopped laughing and composed his face.

  “The Preacher’s not buying anything tonight, as you can see,” he said, with a gesture towards the bed. The black-clad man had sat down upon it to finish his drink; now he was lying sprawled across it, inert, the empty glass still in his hand. In his black clothes, he had the look, Chuck thought, of a raven, dead and partially decayed. The man in the chair leaned forward. “You young fool!” he said. “Why should we buy a couple of hundred of your steers tonight when we can get the whole damn herd at auction in the morning? Now, you listen to me, boy, and listen close. . . .”

  He paused to shift his leg on the stool, wincing. Chuck said, “I’m listening.”

  The bearded man looked up. “My name’s Jack Keller,” he said harshly. “You may not have heard of me down in Texas, but folks through Kansas and Missouri know me. Some call me an outlaw, but they’re mistaken: there’s never been enough evidence for a warrant to be issued against me, and I’ve still got friends in high places. They’d damn well better stay friendly, too. There was a lot of raiding and fighting through these parts, before the war and during it. It was done in the name of slavery or abolition—take your pick—but the motives weren’t always as pure as they were claimed to be; and a lot of respectable citizens performed acts they wouldn’t care to be reminded of now. They’d shake in their boots at the thought of Jack Keller on the witness stand, on trial for his life; they’d pull any string they could to prevent it. So don’t count on seeing me legally hanged for murder. You’ll just make more trouble for yourself if you try to accomplish that.”

  Chuck said, “We’d already come to that conclusion, the night you left us. That’s why we brought our own rope.”

  Keller frowned. “If you’ve still got revenge in your mind, don’t be a fool. I’ve killed more men than you’ve got years; and if you try to plant that young machete in my back, you’ll be dead before you ever get within striking or throwing distance. As for your cattle, you’ve already lost them, so why not resign yourself to it? The loss is a small one, since you weren’t about to sell them, anyway—not with the local people feeling the way they do. So take my advice, boy, just gather up your crew and head back to Texas. Chalk it up to experience. Even a jackass has more sense than to keep butting his head against a stone wall. Now get out of here!”

  Chuck hesitated. Jack Keller’s hand lifted the pistol again, not threateningly, but warningly. The girl was still standing by the foot of the bed. It occurred to Chuck that she hadn’t spoken a word since he entered the room. Beyond her, the drunken man on the bed breathed noisily through his wide-open mouth. Chuck looked down at the big pistol, and turned deliberately, and walked away from it without haste, the way the Old Man had ridden away from those guns at Baxter Springs. At the door, he looked back.

  “There’s just one thing, Mr. Keller,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  Chuck cleared his throat, feeling a little self-conscious about what he had to say. “You don’t have to worry about your back, sir. Should I decide not to take your advice, you’ll see me coming.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Amanda Netherton waited until the door had shut behind the compact figure of the departing Texan; then she whirled angrily to face Jack Keller, but something in his manner made her withhold the sharp words she’d been about to utter. He was grinning at her in a way that made her uneasy. He rose from the chair, tested his bad leg gingerly before trusting
his weight to it, and came to stand over her.

  She said, but not as strongly as she’d intended, “You didn’t have to maul—”

  “Sure, I did,” he said. “Now the boy knows whose property you are, if he didn’t before. . . . Come on, let’s get the Preacher to his own room.” He turned and limped around the end of the bed. “You take the feet,” he said, and frowned when she did not move. “Well?”

  Anger betrayed her into being unreasonable. “Carry your own drunken companions!”

  He looked at her for a moment, his eyes narrow. “Take the feet, honey,” he said softly.

  She hesitated, but instinct warned her not to make an issue of it, and she approached reluctantly. Together, they half-carried and half-dragged the slack figure of Preacher Paine into the adjoining room and dumped him on the bed there. The unconscious man moaned slightly, and his lips moved.

  “Gather around, friends,” he muttered, “gather around while I expound on . . . on the virtues of Professor Pythagoras Paine’s Perfected Pills. . . . Step up, friends . . . are you suffering from . . . suffering. . ." His voice trailed off into an incoherent mumble. Then he said with sudden clarity: “The game was quite honest, gentlemen. You have no grounds for complaint. Go home and learn to play cards. I warn you, if you come any closer, I will shoot to kill!”

  Jack Keller chuckled, looking down at him. “Damned if he didn’t do it, too! Dropped two of those fine welshing gentlemen dead in their tracks with the pair of derringers he wore up his sleeves. It was a fool thing to do, but after a while, I guess, a man gets tired of being stepped on and pushed around by the nice folks who make all the rules and interpret them to their own benefit. I saved his neck from a rope that night. He’s been with me ever since. . . . Help me get his boots off, the poor sot.”

  There was a kind of impatient sympathy in his voice that made her wonder if she had misjudged him; she hadn’t thought him capable of an emotion as soft as sympathy. Strangely, it made him seem more, rather than less, formidable. She assisted him without protest; but after they’d gone back to their room, pride forced her to return to the attack.

  “You didn’t have to humiliate me in front of that boy.” He turned the key in the lock, and straightened up to look at her. “You’re Jack Keller’s woman,” he said. “I wanted him to know it, and not be carrying any romantic notions about with him. There’s nothing as unpredictable as a kid with a head full of romantic ideas. Besides, you’ve been putting on a few too many airs, lately. . . .

  It’s funny how, the minute you give a woman a handsome dress, she’s got to try to live up to it.” He grimaced. “Well, that’s all right for the townspeople, Mandy, but don’t you put on any airs with me.”

  “Airs!” she said hotly. “What . . . what I did for you last night, I suppose that was putting on airs!”

  He laughed. “I don’t think you found it too unpleasant, honey. Our deputy is a fine-looking man; you’ve known worse, I’m sure. You might even be able to do something profitable with him, if there was anything inside him. But there isn’t, which is why I have no worries about your trying to use him against me. You’re smart enough to know there’s no future in a man like that. Now, this young Texas lad, that’s another matter entirely. He’s got some growing up to do, but you’ll note he didn’t feel any need to prove how brave he was, looking into the muzzle of a gun. He didn’t rant or bluster or threaten how he was going to cut me into little pieces and feed me to the coyotes. . . . He’s considering a plan of his own, I think. I wish I knew what it was.”

  She said, “I could find out for you.”

  “You could find out,” he said dryly. “But I’d never be quite sure it was for me, would I, Mandy?”

  She said, “If you question someone’s loyalty long enough, my dear, something’s apt to happen to it.” “Loyalty?” he said, and laughed. “Honey, I’m not an old fool of an army colonel, or a young fool of a lieutenant, either, or any of those others you wound around your fingers with your haughty tricks, all the while laughing at them because you weren’t giving them anything that really mattered. Were you? It was just a game you were playing without committing yourself, letting them have the use of your body occasionally in return for certain practical considerations. . . .” He didn’t continue with the thought, but stood looking down at her appraisingly. “I knew a woman like you once, Mandy,” he said. “It was . . . well, never mind where it was. She was taller than you, and her hair was black, and her name had a Frenchy sound, and she ran a place on the river, but she had the same way of holding her head high and looking at men as if they were dirt.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Oh, yes, you do; my kind of men, at least.” He laughed again. “When we met, you weren’t in any position to be proud, if you’ll recall. You’d just made a big, expensive gesture, throwing everything he’d ever given you back into that fool lieutenant’s face. You were shabby and broke and hungry, but you were still doing me a favor by just deigning to speak to me, like a princess in exile. That’s what I noticed, honey, that look. A princess condescending to mingle with commoners—mingle is a pleasant word for it!—while she awaits the summons to return to her kingdom. The first time a man sees that look, there’s nothing he won’t do to help. The second time, he’s wiser. It’s the second time for me, Mandy.”

  “I see,” she said, since she had to say something. Never before had he spoken of his past, though he’d made a point of inquiring into hers, and she wasn’t sure she liked him in this reminiscent and analytical mood —not that she was overly fond of him in any mood. “What happened,” she asked, “with the Creole girl? I suppose she was Creole.”

  Keller laughed grimly. “Why, she took me for three thousand dollars and a diamond ring, honey. It wasn’t hard. I was young; I thought I was tough and clever, but I was like biscuit dough in her hands. Hell, she had me reading books to improve myself. I was going to quit what I was doing, never mind what it was, and become a good citizen, and take her away from that evil place. . . . I didn’t even have a gun or a knife on me, the day she laughed in my face and had me knocked on the head and thrown out—I guess, when I saw what a fool I’d been, I tried to kill her with my bare hands. It was never very clear in my mind, afterwards. When I was able to return, the place was closed and she was gone. I never did find her. I expect she’d made her pile; she probably went east with it, representing herself as a wealthy young heiress or widow woman. She’s probably got a big house now, and a respectable husband in a stiff collar and hard hat, who doesn’t know she’s laughing at him every day of his life. That was what she wanted, respectability. She’d lost it somewhere along the way; and she was fighting to get it back. Just like you, Mandy.”

  She threw a glance around the hotel room, with its stained wallpaper and rumpled bed. “If respectability’s what I want, I’m surely looking for it in strange places.”

  He said, “You don’t fool Jack Keller. You came with me only because you smelled quick money; and if you ever get your hands on enough of it, you’ll leave me— leave me dead, if necessary.”

  She said indignantly, “I’ve just proved that, haven’t I? If I’d wanted you dead, I could have left you down in Indian Territory, raving in delirium.”

  He smiled through his beard. “Ah, but I haven’t made you the money yet—or stolen it for you—the money that’s going to buy your way back to your kingdom, your place in society. . . . You’ll never get it from me, Mandy. I think you’re beginning to catch onto the fact that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. There isn’t a woman smart enough or tough enough to take Jack Keller a second time. That’s why you’re looking around for another way, like this young Texan, with his big ranch way down where nobody ever heard of the South Carolina Nethertons and the poor unfortunate daughter whose name is not to be spoken, the one who sold herself to Yankee officers instead of starving honorably like a lady should—”

  She hit him then. Her own violent reaction took her by surprise. She hadn’t reali
zed how deeply his sly voice had cut and probed, searching out the weaknesses in the defense she’d built around herself. . . . A princess in exile, indeed! She felt the harshness of his bearded jaw against her palm, and took pleasure from the rough contact. An instant later she was on the floor, and the whole side of her face was oddly numb except for a burning, stinging sensation. Half-dazed, she didn’t quite understand what had happened; then she heard his voice: “You women! Use your hand on a man and expect him not to strike back? Get up!”

  She put her hand to her bruised cheek, incredulously. It was the one thing that hadn’t happened to her; despite the life she’d led since the war, she’d never before encountered deliberate physical brutality—a man who got a little rough when he was drunk wasn’t the same thing at all. Usually he’d be shamed and apologetic and very generous in the morning. But there was no hint of regret or apology in Jack Keller’s face; and she realized that the capacity for violence was what she’d sensed in this man, what she’d feared, and now that she’d made the error of calling it forth, she had no idea of how to cope with it He took a step forward. She saw, aghast, that he was about to kick her, and she scrambled to her feet without dignity, aware that her hair was coming down and her clothing was awry, and that some hope or illusion to which she’d clung for years was broken inside her.

  “That’s better,” he said harshly. “When Jack Keller says jump, you jump.” He looked at her with a kind of possessive contempt, and flicked his fingers, backhand, across her face. “Princess,” he said.

  CHAPTER 19

  At the bank, Chuck McAuliffe met laughter again. The banker, a portly man with a heavy gold chain decorating the expanse of his fine waistcoat, thought it a great joke that a boy hardly old enough to shave should be asking his respectable and conservative institution to hazard its money on a bunch of scrawny, disease-bearing longhorns.