She waited a moment watching him. “Is that all, Sheriff?”
“I’m not going to apologize, if that’s what you mean.” He meant it. The fact that he half-felt as though he ought to only made him mean it more.
She smiled. “We haven’t got past that handbill, have we?”
“No, and you haven’t done anything to make me think we will.”
“You mean you don’t think I should have demanded to be searched.”
“The idea sure didn’t bother you much,” he said, feeling his face getting warm again. It should have bothered her, damn it. “You made a joke out of it.”
“Well now you tell me, Sheriff, what should I have done? Taken the blame to save you from getting embarrassed?”
It was a perfectly fair question. It only seemed unfair. “Well,” he said, “you could have—”
“I’d really like to know,” she said. “This isn’t the first time that handbill has come up. I need some advice on what to do about it.”
If she was needling him she was doing it so expertly that he couldn’t detect it. She seemed quite sincere, waiting interestedly for his answer.
“You could quit playing cards and wearing feathers,” he said. “That would help.”
“Oh no,” she said softly, and smiled, the smile he was beginning to know, that had more stubborn trouble in it than humor. “I’m not going to do that, Sheriff. You know why?”
“It seems the simplest answer,” he said. “No, I don’t know why.”
“Because it’s exactly what I would do if I were what you think I am.”
She left him to think that over. He watched her go, then shook his head irritably and went outside where Dude was standing on the porch.
“What was all that about?” Dude asked. “You didn’t look like you needed help, so I stayed out of it.”
Chance told him briefly, leaving out the parts that he thought would have interested Dude the most. Now that it was over he wanted to forget it. The girl would be gone in the morning and it didn’t matter what she was or how she acted. He rolled himself a cigarette and passed the makings on to Dude. The street was quiet, bright under a rising moon. The piano still played in the Rio Bravo Saloon but Chance was so used to that he hardly heard it. The wind had eased down some. Most of the lights were out now and there was hardly anything moving—a couple of Mexicans going home, one of Dude’s recent cronies staggering off to find a hole for the night, a thin black cow wandering across the plaza. Chance did not know why he should suddenly feel uneasy.
“Dude, you seen Wheeler?”
“Not for a while. He’s been rousting his boys out of the cantinas. Nervous about him?”
“Yeah,” Chance said. “A little.” He started down the steps. “Maybe I’ll go look for him.”
“It’s okay,” Dude said. “He’s coming now.”
Wheeler had appeared from a cantina a little distance down the street. He walked briskly along, coming toward the hotel. Chance relaxed. He leaned against the porch post and waited. The street was empty now. The two Mexicans and the drunk had turned off into side lanes. Only the cow was still there, her hoofs making a faint aimless clopping on the plaza stones. The mouths of the straggling lanes that came into the main street were blots of utter darkness.
Wheeler started across one.
Chance opened his mouth to call to him. Before he had formed the word “Pat” there was a sharp crack of sound across the night. Wheeler stumbled forward as though pushed from behind by a giant hand. He tried to recover himself. Chance caught one glimpse of his face, turned toward the hotel, and though at that distance in that lack of light he could not possibly distinguish expression, it jolted him deep and hard under the heart. Then Wheeler’s knees buckled and he went down.
Chance was already in the street and running.
NINE
Dude was yelling to Chance to stay out of the street. Chance was not paying any attention to him. People were starting to come out of the hotel, hanging around the doorway, peering and talking all at once. More people appeared out of the Rio Bravo and other saloons. Dude swore. He drew his gun and ran after Chance, trying to watch everything at once.
He reached the corner of the alley mouth where Wheeler was lying. He stayed behind the wall of the building, watching up the dark alley while Chance went crouching to Wheeler in the open. The alley did not go very far. There was a stable at the end of it, an easy rifle shot away even at night. There was no sound there, no hint of movement. Dude watched it, sweating, while Chance caught Wheeler by one of his wrists and dragged him into the shelter of the building.
“How bad?” he asked, not taking his eyes from the stable.
Chance said in a strange low voice, “He’s dead.”
He swung the carbine suddenly at someone coming from the direction of the hotel. Then he saw it was Colorado. The boy looked down at Wheeler lying in the dust. He repeated Chance’s words, but with a different inflection.
“He’s—dead?”
“Got it in the back,” Chance said. He straightened up. His eyes burned as though they had sand in them. “Because he tried to help me. You were smart, Colorado.”
He turned and looked at the stable. Judging by the spot where Wheeler had fallen that was the only place the shot could have come from. Someone had stalked Wheeler, found that convenient shelter, and waited …
“Nobody’s come out,” Dude said.
The stable door was shut. The windows were dark. Chance looked at the alley, at the scattered houses on either side. He looked up at the moon, shrunken and aging but far too damned bright, lighting empty places’ of beaten earth with the dark windows watching over them.
“We can’t get at it this way,” he said. “Have to get there from the side.”
He started and found Colorado in the way.
“What do you want me to do?” Colorado said.
“Nothing,” Chance said.
In a boy’s shaken voice but with a man’s determination, Colorado said, “He was good to me. I liked him.”
Chance felt a coldness coming over him. It was a feeling he had not had for a long while in this peaceful town, not since older and wilder times. He shivered and drew his belly in tight. His shoulders came forward. The moonlight caught in his eyes and they were like a wolf’s.
“You can’t get the man that killed him and stop there.” He touched Wheeler’s body lightly with his foot. “This is a warning to anyone that sides with me. You come with me now and you’ll have to come with me all the way. You had your chance to do that. You didn’t want it. Now I don’t want you.”
He added in a different tone, “Get him out of the street.” Then he pushed Colorado aside and went away, with Dude at his back.
Colorado bent down over Wheeler’s body. In a minute others came. Wheeler and Colorado together were hidden by the crowd, which presently began to move across the street to the undertaking parlor.
Chance and Dude went alone up a twisting lane to the east of the stable. They went fast but cautiously. There was an adobe wall that Chance was making for. He reached it, keeping low behind it. From around its end he could see the front of the stable no more than twenty feet away. Dude crouched beside him, breathing deep and ragged.
Chance said softly, “Get around behind it.”
“How you going in?” Dude asked. He looked at Chance sidelong, rubbing his hand nervously over his stubbled face.
“Right through the door. If he gets past me you can have him.”
Dude said, “I don’t suppose it’s any use telling you—”
“No it isn’t.”
“I didn’t think so.”
Dude remembered that particular look Chance had about him, although he had not seen it for years. Somebody was going to get killed. He scuttled off under the shadow of the wall. A couple of times his guts squeezed up on him so hard he had to stop and gasp for breath. He was scared. He was stone-cold sober, and he was scared. Last night he had hardly known what he was
doing, between the whisky and the high feelings that were in him. The gun had come easy and natural into his hand and it had done what he told it to without him having to think about it. Now the heavy old Colt he had borrowed from Stumpy weighed his arm down. It seemed impossible to him that he could fire it and hit anything. His body felt hollow and weak and his legs trembled under him. He was horrified. Up until now he had thought he was doing pretty good, barring the whisky shakes. Now he felt like an old stump clean rotted out inside.
He kept moving because he didn’t have nerve enough to stop and face Chance. He reached the end of the wall, some distance past the stable. There were no windows in this end and he did not have to worry. He crouched down beside a mesquite bush and put his hands over his mouth to signal Chance. He had to try three times before the bird call would come off his dry tongue.
Chance heard it. He left the shelter of the wall, running low and fast. He ran straight for the stable door. He hit it full force with his shoulder and it burst open and he kept on going in the sudden flood of moonlight that came with him. There was a pile of grain sacks in front of him, all dusky silver. He dived for it, hugging the floor in its shadow. His heart pounded. He stayed still, waiting, the rifle hungry in his hands.
The doors swung idly, creaked, and stopped. The peaceful moonlight silvered the dirt floor. Nothing moved. There was not even stock in the place to make a sound.
Chance put out his left hand and felt over the floor until he found a scrap of broken iron. He threw it across the stable. It hit the wall with a loud thunk! and fell. Chance hoped that the man hidden somewhere in the dark would fire at the sound, and he waited ready to shoot at the flash of his gun.
There was no flash, no shot. There was nothing.
Chance began to get impatient and doubtful. Perhaps the killer had managed somehow to get out of there without being seen. The thought that he might now be free and taking himself beyond the reach of punishment enraged Chance. He moved to the corner of the pile of sacks and paused. He could not hear anything, not even a sound of breathing.
He cursed silently and moved forward.
A grain sack exploded in his face with a deafening crack. Grain dust flew in a white cloud. Chance clapped his hand to his face and doubled up on the floor.
Outside Dude heard the shot. He shouted “Chance!” There was no answer. He could not hear anything more from inside the stable. He became panicky. He ran along the side of the building and around to the front, where he flattened himself beside the open door and peered in as best as he could without showing himself.
He saw Chance lying huddled up on the floor behind a pile of sacks. Dude began to shake.
“Chance!” he said. “Chance, you all right?”
Chance said in a hoarse angry voice, “Look out! He’s still in here!”
Relief loosened all Dude’s joints, making him shake even worse. He watched stupidly while inside there was a sudden rush of movement and a side door banged open, letting more moonlight into the stable. A dark shape plunged through the doorway and was gone.
Dude started like a man coming out of a dream. He ran to the corner of the stable. The bent-over shadow of a man running merged confusingly with the still blots of darkness made by buildings, walls, clumps of mesquite. Dude steadied himself against the corner of the stable, fixing his gaze on a stretch of open moonlight beyond where he had last seen the moving shadow. In a second the man appeared. Reflexes moved Dude’s gun hand and pulled the trigger, twice in rapid succession. He was surprised to see the running shadow swerve and stumble before it rushed on into cover and out of range.
Dude remained watching.
Chance came out of the side door walking like an angry bear, pawing at his eyes.
“You all right?” Dude asked.
“Christ,” said Chance viciously. “You already asked me that. Yes I’m all right, and why the hell didn’t you stay where you were supposed to? You could have had him easy.”
He went to the horse trough and began scooping water into his face. He had felt the heat of the bullet going by his head but it hadn’t touched him. All it had done was fill his eyes with grain dust so that he was as blind as a bat and half-crazy with pain. The cold water felt good.
“I winged him,” Dude said. “I think.”
“You think.” Chance jerked off his neckerchief and wiped his face. His eyes still stung but he could see pretty well now. There was no sign of the killer. Dude was standing by the corner of the stable fiddling with his gun. Chance thought he knew what had happened. For three years he had been picking Dude up out of alleys, seeing that he had food and a place to sleep. Dude had become dependent on him. Chance realized that it had been partly his fault the man got away; he had been too impatient and he had let himself make a bad mistake. But in the old days Dude would have stood his ground. He would have taken his man and then done his worrying about Chance. This time when he had thought Chance was hurt and possibly dead he behaved like a frightened child.
Dude said rather loudly, “We haven’t lost him.” He pointed to where the lights of the Rio Bravo Saloon shone at the far end of the street. The saloon was set at an angle to the stable, so that both the front and back doors could be watched. “He went in there. He ain’t come out again.”
“Did you see who it was?”
“No, but he’s got muddy boots. He ran through the puddle there by the horse trough.”
“Good,” said Chance. He studied Dude, his eyes narrowed and his mouth set hard. Chance was capable of pity and patience and understanding. But he could not afford any of them now. There was no time. There was something that had to be settled about Dude and it had better be settled right now. It had nothing to do with Pat Wheeler’s dying.
It had to do with his own living.
Chance said, “Go in there and get him.”
Dude flinched. He looked at the Rio Bravo Saloon and then at the ground. “There’ll be eight to ten of Burdette’s men in there, Chance.”
“Maybe more.”
Anger sharpened Dude’s voice. “Goddamn it, that ain’t—”
“You let him go. This time I’ll back you, and we’ll see what happens.”
Dude straightened up. Chance could not see his face under the hatbrim but he knew it would be dead-white with the dark beard showing on it like charcoal. He waited for Dude to make a move or say something. Even in the old days Dude’s temper had been a wild and uncertain thing. But all Dude said was, “All right, John T. And if I get killed you’ll be better off without me.”
“That’s for sure,” Chance said. He started off toward the saloon. Dude hesitated one minute and the skin between Chance’s shoulders crawled. Then he came. From the way his bootheels hit the dust Chance could tell he was in a fury. Besides, Dude never called him by his first name unless he was in some kind of a state.
“You take the front door,” Chance said.
“That’ll be a change,” said Dude almost pleasantly. “Charlie’s been making me come in the back for a long time.”
“Now it’s my turn,” Chance said.
“Thank you,” said Dude and left him, walking faster and faster toward the front door of the Rio Bravo Saloon.
Chance frowned. But he did not call Dude back. He went around to the rear of the Rio Bravo. He did not give any birdcall. He did not think Dude would wait for it.
Dude was mad clear through, so mad that he did not care for the moment whether he lived or died, and he let it carry him. He told himself he was mad at John T. Chance. Underneath he knew that Chance was right and he was mad at himself. He went up the front steps and across the porch of the saloon and through the swinging doors without once stopping.
TEN
There were eight of Burdette’s riders in the place and Charlie the bartender, and Raton making his patient music. Charlie looked around as Dude came in. He lifted his eyebrows and said, “Well! If it ain’t the Dude.” The men were now all looking at Dude and grinning. Charlie laughed. He was a tall t
hin man with high shoulders and a bony face, and in spite of his laughter there was no kindness about him.
“Been a long dry spell, hasn’t it?” he asked, dragging out the word ‘long.’ “Bet you’ve got a real thirst.”
Dude stood inside the door, to one side of it. His gun was holstered. He did not touch it. He looked all over the room, at the men leaning on the bar and the others sitting at the tables, grinning at him. None of them appeared to be wounded. He saw Chance come in from the back, moving so quietly that they almost did not hear him. One man did, and touched the man next to him, and in a second they had all turned their heads to look at Chance. He stood there, holding his rifle in his hands, not saying anything, but he glanced once at Raton and Raton stopped playing.
Charlie said, “Sheriff—”
“We’ll start with you, Charlie,” Dude said. His voice startled him, it came out so calm and assured. Charlie swung around. He had stopped laughing but the contemptuous smile was still there. Dude looked at his long yellow teeth and said, “That shotgun you keep under the bar. Pick it up by the barrels.”
Charlie hesitated. His smile changed shape and the fingers of Dude’s right hand twitched. They continued to twitch while Charlie reached underneath the bar.
“Real easy,” said Dude almost dreamily. All the time he was watching Charlie he could see every other man in the room. They thought this was all very funny. Dude felt hot all over, a kind of ringing pulsing heat like a certain stage of drunkenness except that his head was clear.
Charlie’s hands came into sight holding the shotgun.
Dude said, “Put it down.”
Charlie put it down. “Hell,” he said, “I thought you were going to ask for a drink.”
One of the men said gravely, “Why now, Charlie, can’t you see that star on his chest? You know a deputy sheriff don’t never drink when he’s on duty.”
Dude turned toward the man, who was sitting at one of the tables. “Get up, Jim,” he said.
Jim said he was always glad to oblige the law. He got up. Dude motioned to the two others who sat near him.
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