by E. R. Slade
“I could kill Snake from a window, but not his reputation. If the cattlemen hear that their fast-draw artist was killed in a fair fight by a storekeeper maybe they’ll do some thinking.”
And maybe Mary Ellen would, too. He wanted to kill her fear as much as he wanted to kill Snake Ed.
She began to walk around in the store, one wrist grasped in the other hand. He wished he could say something that would make the time until Snake Ed’s arrival easier for her.
She whirled and came to him resolutely.
“Mr. Maxwell,” she said, “I want to tell you something. It’s difficult for me to talk about, but I don’t want whatever happens to happen without my having told you.”
“I’ll bring your chair over,” he said.
When she was seated, her hands began to work each other over. She said, “When I was sixteen, and we had been here about a year, there was a young man, a cowboy, who came courting me. His name was Terry.” She paused. “He wanted to marry me.”
Buck decided not to ask if she wanted to marry him.
“He had a pistol just like yours and he liked to practice with it. I remember how impressed I was when he shot a bottle off a fence post from a hundred feet away. People said he was the fastest and most accurate with a pistol of anybody in town—that was before Snake Ed, of course.
“One day we were walking near the livery stable—Papa and Mama and I and Terry—and a man stepped out the door and confronted us. He said Terry owed him money and demanded to be paid. He got very insistent and Terry knocked him down.
“Mr. Maxwell, I was so foolish then. I told Terry that I thought he had given a good account of himself. It was exciting, in a way. I don’t mean I have ever liked fighting, but I knew Terry would pay his debts and I could just feel how insulted he was by this man’s demand. Right out in the street for anybody to hear.
“We went along to the millinery shop because Mama needed a new hat for church. Papa ...” She swallowed. “Papa went next door to see about a new wheel for the buggy because it had gotten caught on the gatepost when Elsie spooked. Terry came with Mama and me into the store and told about how he and the man had worked together, but when Terry caught him putting his own brand on calves belonging to the ranch, the man had lost his job. After that the man had claimed Terry owed him money and threatened to take it from him one way or another.
“Terry was annoyed, and said he was tired of putting up with this man. I told him there was no reason he should put up with him. But that was the wrong thing to say because when the man stepped in and demanded satisfaction Terry thought I expected him to go out and fight.
“And what was so awful was that in a certain way I did expect it of him. It never occurred to me that he could lose, he was so fast.
“I can’t go into that store now without remembering. There was a wind blowing and they wanted me to close the door so dust wouldn’t blow onto the hats. But I didn’t because I was afraid to go out and watch and yet afraid to come back in and not be able to see what happened.
“Terry walked into the street. The other man was waiting for him. People went into buildings out of the way.
“Terry glanced toward me, and at that moment ...” She looked away closing her eyes. “At that moment,” she began again, “the other man fired, and Terry stumbled and fell down. I ran out to him, but he was dead.”
“What happened to the other man?” Buck asked.
“I don’t know. Nothing. He got on his horse and rode away.”
“Sounds to me like Terry did right. And you were right to expect it of him. He made a mistake when he took his eyes off the man he was facing, but not when he went into the street.”
“But you are missing the point of what I’m trying to say. Terry was not invincible. He was killed. You are not invincible, either. There is such a thing as good sense. Snake Ed is the most dangerous gunfighter anywhere in Wyoming. It’s foolish to fight him and die, just because of pride.”
“We had this conversation before—when I had seven empty boxes outside. I got only one, now. I ain’t dead yet.”
Mary Ellen stood. “I’m sorry to have bothered you about this, Mr. Maxwell. I think I had better go home and see how Mama is doing.” She turned and took three of her firm, graceful steps toward the door.
Then she hesitated, looked back at him. “Goodbye, Mr. Maxwell,” she said, firmly.
The door closed quietly behind her.
~*~
He went into his quarters and splashed water on his face, peered at himself in the broken piece of mirror he’d propped against the wall. He looked haggard, even sick. He felt sick.
He could see her walking out, the firm, resolute grace. She was so beautiful it made him ache inside. And now she was gone.
“Really gone, this time,” he said to himself in the mirror.
“Need a bath,” he muttered in disgust.
He could see the door closing again, hear it.
“But ain’t I right?” he asked his image. “Ain’t I?”
She didn’t think so. And wouldn’t whether he won or lost.
“I ought to ride,” he said. “Nothin’ here worth havin’. Let Hastings figure out what to do with Snake Ed.”
He sat down on the edge of his bunk, put his face in his hands.
She’d never been that interested in him anyway. She had known the difference between them right along and had kept her distance. The signs were all there. It had only needed sense enough to read them.
He ground his palms into his eye sockets, then snorted and got up feeling about two hundred pounds heavier. There was no real choice about anything except having a bath, so he went to the barbershop and hired the tub in the back room.
The sallow-faced kid who tended him wanted to know all about the killing of the Texans, and especially how he planned to kill Snake Ed. Buck could hardly talk coherently about it. The relaxing soak he’d looked forward to turned into a hell to be escaped from as soon as possible.
When he got back to the store he didn’t turn the sign to read open. He hadn’t had any customers anyway. In his quarters he took off his mud-spattered clothes and put on his best and cleanest, doing it slowly and deliberately. He stared blankly at himself in the broken mirror as he carefully adjusted his string tie, his Stetson.
He had wanted this fight, but that seemed long ago, like a boyhood interest he’d somehow outgrown. Now he just felt the weight of responsibility. The temptation to leave Hastings to deal with Snake sometimes seemed impossible to resist. Yet, there were all those faces at the funerals.
His visage turned hard and grim as he took his gun belt off the bedpost, buckled it on, shifted it to suit him. He mechanically checked the load in the Colt, then dropped it back into its holster with a snick.
As he stepped out into the store there was a determined, deadly glint in his eye; yet when he approached the spot near the front door where Mary Ellen had sat this morning watching out the window he stopped, shoulders sagging. It took an effort to turn the sign to read “open.” He felt like going back to bed for the rest of the day.
He sat down behind the counter, not caring to bother watching the street. By now Mary Ellen was probably with her mother. Maybe they were talking about leaving Wyoming, going somewhere more civilized.
It would be the best thing for them.
The bell jangled as the front door opened. In walked Hastings.
“He’s coming,” he said. He looked Buck up and down, doubtfully. “From the north.”
“Alone?”
“It looks that way.” Hastings slipped furtively through the door, hurried off.
Buck stepped outside, watched the rider come on. A big black. A man wearing a creamy white hat. Brace of pistols with white handles.
Snake Ed McFee rode slowly down the middle of the street as though in a parade, his horse snorting, head tossing high, tail switching.
Must have really put the oats to him, Buck thought.
Snake Ed himself looked freshly b
athed and shaved, his shirt starchy and white, his vest a velvety black, complete with gold watch and fob chains.
He rode straight opposite Buck, turned his prancing horse to face him.
Buck lifted his chin slightly at Snake.
They looked at each other for some moments. Buck was aware of people going into doorways hurriedly, the street being left entirely to the two of them in a matter of seconds.
“Been comin’ between you and me,” Snake Ed said.
“So it has.”
Snake Ed swung his horse and rode majestically for one hundred feet, pulled to the hitch rail, dismounted, walked to the middle of the street.
Buck shifted his hat. He picked his way through the stiffening ruts, faced Snake Ed. The sun slanted across from the west, making it an even fight.
I’m going to lose this, and I don’t give a damn, Buck thought.
Down the street, beyond Snake by a good distance, a door opened.
The millinery shop.
Mary Ellen.
Yes, it was.
Standing on the walk. Straight, proud.
Snake Ed’s fingers flexed, limbering up.
“You’re a rustler,” said Snake Ed in a harsh voice.
“No,” Buck said, “I handle hardware. You haul iron against me and you’ll find out I know my business.”
Snake Ed McFee was much faster than Buck had expected. He went for his right-hand gun, had it half drawn before Buck even started to react.
There was only one gunshot. The sound echoed back and forth between the buildings, died away. Both men still stood as though ready to shoot.
Then Snake Ed crumpled forward, landed in the mud, his hat coming off.
For a long moment after this there was only a slight moaning of wind. Buck went on holding his gun up in firing position, trying to realize that the fight was over.
Snake Ed did not move. Buck knew he never would again. Because he’d shot him straight through the heart.
All right.
Having to think how to do it, he holstered his Colt. Then he walked stiffly over to pick up both of Snake’s guns.
As soon as he had them in his hands, people poured into the street and gathered around.
Hastings came strutting through the jostling crowd holding out his hand. “Mr. Maxwell!” he said. “Let me be the first to congratulate you! Let me shake your hand. You have done this town a great favor! My friends, this man is a hero. I’d like to buy you a drink, Mr. Maxwell.”
“And one on me!” exclaimed somebody else, and then everybody was saying it. Had Buck been a drinking man he could have been drunk for a week.
“Couple you boys give me a hand,” he said, reaching down to get hold of the body.
“There’s a pine box all ready and waitin’ fer 'imp,” exulted a bewhiskered farmer.
A cheer went up, and then so did the body, in many hands.
Buck looked for Mary Ellen, trying to see past the crowd. He was afraid of losing the fleeting image of the way she had looked, her dress and a few stray wisps of hair moving in the breeze.
Buck pushed out of the crowd and shifted his hat.
He had not imagined her. She was yonder.
And walking this way.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The next day Wyoming Hardware was a very popular store. Everybody wanted a look at the bodies, and many came inside just to congratulate Buck, or thank him. I was plain that people were relieved. Though a few wondered aloud if there would be retaliation from the cattlemen, virtually everybody signed a petition Hastings had drawn up demanding a special election to replace the Council.
Mary Ellen appeared about midmorning asking if he needed help. He put her to work waiting on customers while he went out to direct the unloading of the new machinery and tried to decide how much he could pay her before she would think he was hoping to buy more from her than just help in the store.
Shortly before noon, Hastings came to see how the petition was doing.
“We’re going to need a marshal,” he said to Buck. “When the new Council is elected, can I tell them you’re interested?”
Buck was glad Mary Ellen was there to hear him say, “I appreciate your confidence, but I didn’t come to High Plains to be a marshal. Store’s enough to think about.”
“We need somebody the cattlemen will respect. There’s nobody in town they would respect more.”
“I think you should run for the Council,” Mary Ellen said.
Hastings gave Mary Ellen an annoyed look.
“I have been thinking about that,” Buck said, watching dismay spread across Hastings’ face. “But I ain’t decided.”
“This reminds me,” Hastings said, frowning. “Tonight the Church Building Committee will be discussing the question of your trading in cattle. I would suggest you be there. At the last meeting we decided not to change our original agreement, unless you can make us some offer we like better.”
“I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse.”
Hastings searched Buck’s impassive face for clues, then said, “Seven o’clock,” and headed for the door.
“What offer are you going to make them?” Mary Ellen asked.
“I get out of the cattle trading business and pay back the money as promised.”
“But they’ve already refused that.”
“Won’t this time.”
“Why?”
“Because if they don’t take it I’m going to pay them in cows instead of cash.”
~*~
Allen Parker’s funeral was to be at two o’clock. Buck closed at ten of. Most other businesses were closing also. The street was filling with people.
Mary Ellen had gone home about noon and now returned with her mother. The street being so full, she drove around outside town and parked the farm wagon behind the store. Buck unharnessed the mules and put them into the corral. Then he held the rear door for the women and followed them inside.
Martha Parker looked thin and old. She had nothing to say to him—just as she had had nothing to say when he returned to Hastings after the first shoot-out. She wouldn’t even look at him.
She stopped ten feet short of the front door to fumble with her wrap, trying to get it pulled up further over her shoulders. When Buck reached to help her with it, he saw that her hands shook slightly.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice hardly recognizable.
He opened the door.
Crowds of people, but not a gun among them. Buck had an overpowering urge to take off his own gun belt and leave it in the store—trouble was unlikely and he yearned to be done with guns and the need for them.
But he was still unofficial marshal, so he resisted the temptation.
Dunderland drove his own slow but reliable horses, and there were no pigs, dogs, or rock throwers. The procession went slowly up the slight rise and the little graveyard disappeared in the mass of humanity. The minister began his service.
Buck and Mary Ellen stood on either side of her mother, who held herself straight and stiff until the service was over.
Afterwards, Buck thought he ought to say something to her, but couldn’t think what.
A farmer Buck didn’t know came up and thanked him for what he’d done for the town. Mrs. Parker began to weep, and turned desperately one way then another. Buck put his arm around her and she stiffened. She dried her tears.
“When will you be delivering the rest of my wood?” she asked.
~*~
They had not quite gotten back to town when a murmur went through the crowd. People stopped where they were.
Coming up the street was a big, square-jawed man in broadcloth. He halted in front of Buck’s store, looking at the line of bodies. Then he came on again.
Buck stepped out ahead of the crowd, letting his coat swing back to show his Colt. The rider came straight for him, pulled rein six feet away, and squinted down.
“I’m lookin’ for Buck Maxwell,” he said in a voice like distant thunder.
/> “You’re talkin’ to him.”
Sharp, piercing eyes looked Buck up and down.
“There’s a lot of men think you ought to hang.”
“Anybody with that idea shows up here they’ll get a nice new pine box to rot away in.”
“I believe you mean that, Mr. Maxwell.” The piercing eyes dulled and the weather-beaten face sagged as the man looked off over the crowd. “My name’s Nate Hovell. I own the Lazy L.”
“Nice spread, what I saw of it.”
“Yes, it is. Ain’t many cows left on it now, though. I run stock for eleven years and I ain’t never seen nothin’ like the big die-up.”
“I can understand being desperate, but I can’t understand hiring on the likes of Snake Ed McFee.”
Nate Hovell looked tired. He pushed back his hat.
“That was Calpet,” he said. “But it was my responsibility.”
“Glad to hear you say that.”
“You won’t get no more trouble from the Lazy L.”
“That’s good.”
“I come to pass on a message from the Stock Growers’ Association. If you’ll get out of the killing’ business and stick to hardware, they won’t bother you about Markham or the brand inspector. Or that top hand of Jessup’s.”
“I want my brand recognized.”
“All right,” Hovell said, as though it pained him.
“You can count on me not dealing’ in rustled stock. I never did like rustlers.”
Hovell looked doubtfully out over the sea of sodbusters again.
“If you say so. We got a deal?”
“Not yet. There’s ninety-eight hundred thirty dollars owed to the Church Committee—money taken in a holdup by Snake Ed. And you owe me twelve hundred forty dollars for wrecked machinery. I could drop that to, say, nine hundred because I recovered part of the value selling the fixable stuff. Then there’s the two thousand stole from Skeetland. If Skeetland has any relatives they should get that. And there’s guns and ammunition missing.”
Hovell looked like he wanted to get mad, but after an inner struggle he said, “All right. Anything else?”
“When will we see our money?”
“By tomorrow at this time.”