by E. R. Slade
Buck tried to look at the man, but ended up looking at the girl. She looked back with widening eyes for a second or so and then quickly turned her gaze away.
“You the new owner of this place?” the man asked in a booming voice.
“That’s right,” Buck said, pulling his attention from the girl. “Buck Maxwell. What can I do for you?”
“Allen Parker.” He held out one of his huge, work-worn hands, took Buck’s measure. Apparently satisfied, he tucked down his chin and said bluffly, “Wife needs a new stove.”
Buck noticed considerable color in the girl’s cheeks—maybe it was just from the wind.
“We have a pretty good selection,” Buck said, and pointed the way, aware of Mrs. Parker’s eyebrows going up as she glanced from the girl to him.
Parker said, “You come to terms with the wife, Mr. Maxwell. I’ll be looking over the tools.”
The wife lifted her skirts and swept down the aisle. Buck glanced to see if the girl meant to go also, and when she seemed uncertain he gestured; she nodded an acknowledgment and followed Mrs. Parker. Around twenty, he thought—no sign of a young girl’s giddiness. Reserved, not shy. Something about the way she took every step with careful, erect dignity made him swallow three times before they reached the stoves.
“What I am looking for,” Mrs. Parker began, fixing Buck with a penetrating gaze, “is a cook stove. But not just any cook stove, mind you. Is this all the selection you have?” She made it sound like she’d had a very unpleasant surprise.
The girl made a point of staying out of the way. She stared at the nearest stove as though preoccupied.
“You would have to go to Cheyenne to find more models to select from,” Buck said, thinking his speech sounded odd. “And even there you probably wouldn’t find anything better. Exactly what is it you want in a cook stove?”
“This is a nice one, Mama,” said the girl, in a low voice.
Buck found himself again taking in her very narrow waist and the pleasant shapes of what was above and below it. She had set the slim fingers of one hand tentatively on the nickeled rim of the largest and finest range he had in stock.
The mother regarded it with suspicion, used the shiny new lifter to remove each lid in turn. She opened and closed the dampers, the cleanout door. She peered into the oven, examined the ornate warming shelf.
“I should think it will use far too much wood,” she said. “This is a range for the wealthy.”
“It’s a large stove,” Buck admitted, annoyed that it came out sounding as though he were conceding a fault. “Now this little range here will burn much less wood than the one you’ve been looking at. It has only four burners, but the oven is nearly as large, and the warming shelf is the same size.”
Mrs. Parker looked that one over skeptically, while the girl stepped back from the big stove with an attitude of resolution to stay out of the negotiations. Her eyes shifted briefly to Buck, then to something across the room when she found he was watching her.
“I should possibly consider this one, if only it had a water heating reservoir,” Mrs. Parker said dubiously.
“It has one,” Buck said, and went to show it to her—but she was right, it didn’t. In fact, this model had no provision for such an attachment. Buck shifted his hat, cleared his throat, felt like an idiot.
“I guess I was thinking of this other stove,” he said, aware Mrs. Parker was regarding him with narrowed eyes and pursed lips. He didn’t want to know what the girl’s expression was. “I’ve only owned the store for a short time,” he said, “and I haven’t had a chance to get familiar with all the stock yet.” Just as though she would care about his excuses.
Mrs. Parker was looking at the stove which did have a water heater, giving it her usual treatment.
“Are these nine-inch lids?” Mrs. Parker asked.
Buck spread the fingers of his right hand across one of the lids in question—he could just reach.. “They are,” he said. He sensed the girl watching and it put the dirt under his fingernails in a fresh light. He quickly withdrew the hand, while Mrs. Parker frowned.
“I want eight-inch lids,” she said, and turned to look at yet another stove.
Buck stole a glance at the girl. She was looking across the store at her father.
Well, there was no reason she should feel obligated to look at dirty fingernails.
As Mrs. Parker went on rejecting one stove after another, getting more and more put out with him for not having what she wanted, two up-and-down lines deepened above the girl’s nose. Only when there were no stoves left to reject and Mrs. Parker summoned her husband from poring over the shovels, pitchforks and post-hole diggers, did the lines ease.
Parker stood scratching the back of his neck while his wife said, “One would think that if a merchant was going to have stoves for sale he would keep in stock at least one which was practical for a woman to use. I can’t imagine what we’re going to have to do, Allen, to get a new stove for ourselves. Just look at these! All sorts of nickel and scrimshaw, but every one useless.”
Allen Parker was now scratching the stubble on his chin, screwing his face to the side.
“That one looks all right, Mother,” he said, pointing at the big one—which brought a look of fondness to his daughter’s face.
“My goodness, Allen,” Mrs. Parker said tartly. “I can’t imagine how you have gotten along in the world for so long with no more sense of economy than that. Here we have to buy all our wood and you pick the biggest stove in the store. It will send our hard-earned dollars up the chimney in smoke, every one.”
“Oh, pshaw, Martha,” he said, gesturing with a broad hand. “That ain’t nothing. You always wanted a bigger stove. You been saying it for years. This here’s the only one bigger than what you’re got. I can git wood for you, Mother, don’t worry about that.”
The girl looked hopefully at her mother, but Mrs. Parker gave her husband a sideways glance as though pondering his mental competence. “The only way I would buy such a stove from this man,” she said, “is if he would give us at least a forty percent discount on wood. I’m quite sure we cannot afford it otherwise.”
Parker, now slowly rubbing his belly in a thoughtful manner, turned to Buck inquiringly.
“I could never afford to give you that much of a discount,” Buck said, “because of what it costs to have it cut, split, and delivered here. But perhaps I could consider a ten percent discount—if you will take at least, say, five cords at a time?”
“Don’t you dare agree to that, Allen Parker,” his wife said. “It’s no different from what Skeetland always offered. We need a real reduction on the price if we are going to buy this stove.”
“What’d you say to twenty percent off?” Parker asked.
Buck hesitated. “Perhaps—if you will take ten cords at a time.”
“It’d have to be on credit,” Parker said. “But I always have paid my bills here.”
“At least make him deliver it,” said Mrs. Parker in disgust.
“It’d take all day to move ten cords out to my place,” Parker explained, almost an apology. “Hard work for me to take it all at once, if it ain’t delivered.”
“I would usually charge for delivery,” Buck said, but as Mrs. Parker started to make objection, he continued, “However, in this case I won’t.” He hesitated, distracted by the smile the girl had turned on him. “Will there be anything else?” he asked.
“I could use a new shovel,” Parker said.
It turned out to be easy to trade with Parker without his wife in the negotiations. He picked out the one he wanted in fifteen seconds, and paid the price asked without a murmur—or rather, put it on his tab. Buck found that Parker already owed the store over fifty dollars, and with the wood, the shovel, and the stove the tab was nearing a hundred. Buck wondered if he should be making such a deal without first going to look at Parker’s homestead, but it was done now.
The girl was still smiling. Not necessarily at him, of course. She w
as probably just glad it was time to leave.
He and Parker loaded the stove into the wagon, Buck sweating under the scrutiny of the women. Once it was lashed in place, Mrs. Parker went to the step and held out her elbow to Buck.
“You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Maxwell,” she said.
Not much, Buck thought, as he did the required honors.
She arranged herself on the seat, then made out to be interested in something at the far end of town as her daughter approached.
The girl, plainly embarrassed, avoided Buck’s gaze. Parker was on the other side of the wagon, checking knots, so there was going to be no avoiding the thing, never mind that the young lady looked like she wished she’d stayed home this trip.
“Miss?” Buck said, with formal respect.
She hesitated, then gathered her skirts and gave him her elbow. She rose into the old farm wagon without leaning on him at all.
“Thank you, Mr. Maxwell,” she said, seating herself carefully. She gazed straight ahead.
Mrs. Parker bent forward to look around her daughter. “Mr. Maxwell, we have some hens to cull. Perhaps you’d like to come to supper tonight?”
Buck blinked, stared at her. A faint hint of amusement played around her firm lips; the girl’s folded hands turned white at the knuckles.
“I would,” Buck managed to get out. “I mean, like to come to supper. When? I mean, what time?”
“Promptly at sundown,” she said. “Just follow the creek south and we are the next to last set of ranch buildings on the eastern bank.”
The wagon shifted as Parker climbed in from the other side, took up the reins. “When’ll you be deliverin’ my wood?” he asked.
“I’ll bring a couple of cords tonight, the rest as soon as I can.”
A gust of wind caused both women to reach to hold down their skirts, the girl her hat also.
“I declare, Mary Ellen,” said Mrs. Parker, “this is a hard country for a woman to keep her decency in, let alone her dignity.”
So that’s her name, Buck thought to himself as he watched the wagon roll away behind the team of mules skinny from a bad winter, the hat ribbon fluttering as though to mock the reserve of its owner.
“Mary Ellen,” he said softly. “Mary Ellen.”
He turned slowly to go back inside, glad of the wind cooling him, too dazed to attach any significance to the young man watching him cautiously from the alley beside the store, a big pistol slung ostentatiously low on his hip.
Chapter Seven
A man in a buggy pulled to the hitch rail and climbed down, but the boy made him get back in at gunpoint.
Buck saw this through the window but he was still so distracted that he didn’t immediately grasp what it meant. Then he let out a curse honed to a fine, venomous edge and yanked open the door.
The boy spun on his heel and Buck shot the nickeled .45 out of his hand.
With the hand tucked under his arm the boy started to run. Buck took five long steps and got him by the coat.
“What’re you up to?” he said.
“Nothin’.”
“What’s this about?” Buck asked the man in the buggy.
“I dunno. Just pulled a pistol on me and told me to stay away from this store.”
Buck turned to the boy.
“Who hired you to keep people out of my store?”
“Nobody.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
The boy grew sullen, said nothing.
“You want me to cuff it out of you?”
“You hurt my hand,” the boy said, and held it up. There wasn’t a scratch on it.
Buck drew back his arm.
The boy whimpered. “Wait,” he said.
“Well?”
“It wasn’t nobody hired me, exactly. But Uncle Ed said ...”
“Said what?”
“Said we don’t need no rustler-lovin’ storekeepers in town.”
“Uncle Ed who?”
“Ed McFee.”
“Snake Ed McFee?” Buck’s eyes went glimmery hard.
“Yeah.”
Across the street Snake Ed leaned against an awning pole with his arms folded, watching.
“Him?” Buck asked, aiming a thumb.
“Yeah.”
Buck’s jaw muscles worked. The man in the buggy backed his horse, drove away hurriedly.
“You’re a McFee?”
Buck’s tone frightened the boy—as well it might considering what Buck was tempted to do to him.
“No,” he said shakily. “It’s Smithly, Fred Smithly.”
Buck’s mouth tightened. He gave a shove and a kick and Fred Smithly landed on his butt in the mud seven or eight feet from the sidewalk.
“I see your face again I’ll shoot it off,” Buck said.
Across the street Snake Ed shouldered clear of the awning pole.
Buck waited.
But Snake Ed only spat in the mud and sauntered away.
~*~
Twenty minutes later the door burst open and in waddled Marshal Olinger, his belly swaying from side to side, his dull little eyes worked up to an inflamed sort of meanness.
“Maxwell,” Olinger said, “I don’t take to gunplay in my town.”
“That so,” said Buck.
“That’s so. So I’m warning you.”
“Snake Ed seems to like gunplay pretty well. Ain’t noticed you doing nothing about that.”
“I ought to plug you for sassin’ me.” Olinger fingered the handle of his gun, but he didn’t haul it out. “Now you listen, Maxwell. In my town if you got a problem with some rowdy young pup you tell me and I take care of it. That clear? There’s no call to be shootin’ off firearms inside city limits. I don’t allow it. I guess this once I’ll let it go. But goddamnit, folks don’t like all this here shootin’. You mighta kilt somebody.”
“You want to cut down on the hazard to citizens, corral Snake Ed.”
“I ain’t discussin’ him, I’m, discussin’ you. I’m givin’ you fair warnin’. Happens again, it’ll be your ass, Maxwell. You hear me?”
“I hear you talking, but you ain’t saying much worth listening to. When do you figure to arrest Snake Ed for holding up this store?”
“What holdup?” Olinger was suddenly defensive.
“The one done in broad daylight in front of witnesses. Two witnesses have been shot. And somebody shot Skeetland, took the two thousand I paid him. Snake Ed come riding back from that direction about the right length of time afterward if he hauled the money to Casper.”
“That’s all nothin’ but a buncha guesswork,” Olinger said. “Snake Ed never done none of those things.”
“What about the dead farmer I showed you in the street?”
Olinger waved a hand impatiently. “That was just a rustlin’ granger and we got too many of them around these parts interferin’ with everything, plowing the ground, makin’ trouble. Don’t you fret over him. He warn’t worth nothin’.”
“Except to his wife. But I’ll tell you what is worth something to me. That church money Snake Ed got in the holdup. Because I’m responsible for it. Now, you can do something about getting it back, or I will.”
“What do you mean, you will?” demanded Olinger hotly. “You ain’t the law in this town. You ain’t got no ’thority to ’vestigate no holdup nor nothin’ like that. You warn’t even here when it happened. You just stay out of official business, you got that?”
“You don’t like me mixing in, do your job, Olinger.”
“I don’t like you, I’ll kick your butt out of town.”
“Snake Ed’s is the butt to kick.” Buck felt tired. “You want me to lend you a hand, I will.”
“I don’t need your help for nothin’,” Olinger said. “I’m goin’ to tell you this just oncet more. I ain’t some dog for you to wipe your boots on. You don’t tell me how to run my town, or how to ’vestigate anything. I decide what needs ’vestigatin’, when it needs ’vestigatin’, and who I’m going to ’vestigate. Tha
t’s it. Now, you mind what I told you about drawin’ your hogleg in my town. I’ll be goin’ now.”
And he waddled like an overweight bulldog to the door, went out slamming it.
Buck just stood there shaking his head.
~*~
He managed to hire, at exorbitant expense, a team of poorly mules from the livery, and got two cord of firewood onto the wagon parked in the shed. Then he went in to clean himself up as best he could before setting off for the Parkers’ ranch.
He shaved for the second time that day, with infinite care, then looked over Skeetland’s entire stock of suits before settling on one. He combed his coarse, unruly hair twice, using some patent slickening, and sized himself up doubtfully in the mirror. The last time he’d been this damp in the palms was years ago down in Texas riding outlaw steers on a dare.
He had hardly gotten clear of town when it occurred to him that Mrs. Parker’s invitation probably had more to do with getting his help unloading the stove than with reeling in a suitor for Mary Ellen. Well, wouldn’t he look ridiculous showing up dressed like a courting pheasant.
The sun dropped through some clouds over the mountains west and cast a splendor of glory up the sky and across the land, but Buck hardly noticed. The white knuckles of Mary Ellen’s clasped hands were casting too many mysteries and shadows across his soul.
About an hour’s drive out, as the sun was sinking behind a saddleback and the colors in the sky and creek were deepening, Buck pulled into the yard. Mary Ellen, water bucket in hand, turned to look at him, set the bucket down as he pulled the mules to a halt near her.
She was hatless this time; he thought she wore the same dress. She looked up as though the sun were behind him, yet the last ray of it was actually behind her making a golden halo of her stray hair.
He touched his hat. “Evening, Miss Parker,” he said.
“Good evening, Mr. Maxwell.” Her voice was low but it had power to tug at some part inside him he hadn’t known existed. “Papa said you should drive around to the shed next to the kitchen door. That’s where we put our wood. He said he will help you unload.”