The woman shook her head quickly, short sharp movements like the pecking of a bird. ‘Anyone want to help finish up this pie?’
‘Ooh, please,’ said Alice, holding out her plate.
‘My,’ exclaimed the woman, ‘for such a little thing you surely do have a big appetite. Ain’t that so, Jed? Ain’t she got a real good appetite for such a little thing?’ Her voice was nervous, the words rushing into one another.
Her husband didn’t bother to answer, but reached instead for a plug of chewing tobacco from his pants pocket and bit off a chunk with the side of his mouth.
‘One of these fellers,’ said Hart, ‘he would’ve had silver-grey hair an’ a beard, scar on his cheek. One of the others...’
Jed pulled a piece of tobacco from his mouth and pushed it down on to the edge of his plate. ‘Ain’t no use you goin’ on. We ain’t had no three men through here this side of a two week, that’s for sure.’
He pushed his plate across the table. ‘I got things to do out back. You folk take your time.’
He got up from his chair slowly, not a small man, nor light, jaws working away at his tobacco all the time. Hart turned his head and watched him leave the room. Alice was busy finishing off her second portion of treacle tart.
‘I’ll see to those pants, young lady,’ said the woman and stood up, walking along to the far end of the long room, picking up a pair of scissors on the way.
Hart looked over at Alice, who returned his gaze unconcerned, smiled with her eyes and set the final piece of crust into her mouth.
Hart loosed the thong from the hammer of his Colt and eased his chair away from the table. His right hand rested on the table edge, fingers lightly drumming.
‘Ma’am.’
She turned slowly to face him, needle and thread working along the hem of the pants.
‘I don’t know how much they gave you, or what they threatened they might do, but I hope they only wanted you to lie.’ He looked at her through narrowed eyes. ‘I hope they didn’t pay you for nothin’ else.’
‘Heavens, I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. Honey,’ she hurried on, looking at Alice, ‘your pa sure is a strange…’
She broke off abruptly, hearing footsteps moving outside the post. ‘Mister, no, no, don’t … don’t hurt him!’
As the woman began to run down the room, the pants swinging wildly from one hand, the door behind Hart opened wide. Hart sprang to his feet, hurling the chair away, hand blurring from table edge to holster.
Jed stood in the doorway, rifle in his hand, held against his hip and pointing at Hart.
The woman’s scrambled run stopped against the far end of the table and she opened her mouth in a wild scream.
‘Don’t!’ Hart called, Colt steady in front of his crouched body.
The man’s eyes flickered once, he bit down on his plug of tobacco and leaned back as his finger moved inside the guard.
Hart shot him once through the left side of the chest, the impact kicking him backwards, sprawling through the doorway, the rifle being hurled from sight as he staggered five, six paces and then stopped, body rocking.
The woman’s scream rose and rose until Alice jammed her hands against her ears. Eyes wider than ever, she was staring past Hart and out through the doorway to where the man was now sinking to his knees.
A dark stain spread effortlessly over the side of his shirt.
Hart released the hammer of the Colt and slipped it back into his holster. Jed buckled at the knees and his bulky body folded down until his forehead grazed the ground.
The woman’s screaming was broken now with harsh sobs as she gulped in air; her fists pounded the heavy wooden table and her fat body rocked from side to side.
Hart went to her and tried to lift her away but she resisted at first, then sprang round at him with her fingers clawing towards his face. Hart swayed back and slapped her round the face - once, hard.
She caught her breath with a gasp and was suddenly silent.
‘You better get to him,’ Hart said quietly.
The woman wiped the back of her arm across her mouth and nodded, turning slowly away.
Alice was still in her chair, amazed.
‘Get your pants,’ said Hart.
Ten minutes later they were riding on, Alice silent and stubborn beside him. Every now and then she cast him a quick glance but the questions that chased round her mind stayed unspoken. Hart was wondering how much Sternberg had given the man to stop him, what sort of valuation he had put on his life.
He narrowed his eyes and nodded to himself. There wasn’t, couldn’t be any doubt now. Not about the way it would have to end. Now there wouldn’t be any stopping it. Maybe he’d known that all along. He thought likely he had.
He looked at Alice and caught her glancing in his direction. Immediately her face swung back, cheeks slightly flushed.
‘Alice...’
She gave a quick shake of the head: she didn’t want to talk. Hart didn’t push her, wanting to let her come round in her own time. She had seen him kill two men in front of her eyes.
He doubted if the last few days were ones the girl would ever forget, however much she tried.
Chapter Thirteen
Romero wasn’t much of a town. Its buildings sprawled uneasily in the Texas heat, walls casting flat shadows in the harshness of the light. Small and squat, they seemed to have been built with little concern for one another, so that no street or square quickly showed itself. Riding through Romero was like riding through a bundle of child’s bricks thrown down in careless anger.
You rode down to the town along a narrow trail that followed the meandering path of a creek whose water filtered northwards in to the Punta de Agua. Right now those waters were mostly dried up and the bottom of the creek was sand and cracked, whitened mud.
‘Will they be here, the men?’ asked Alice.
Hart glanced at her but didn’t answer.
They were both tired, too hot - the girl especially.
He didn’t know if they would be in Romero; but he did know that Rancho Nuevo was not more than a couple of miles to the west, just across the border into New Mexico. The way they’d picked up signs, the attempt to get them stopped at Jed Hubbard’s trading post - it all pointed to them heading there.
‘Maybe,’ Hart said eventually, but by then Alice was no longer listening.
A pair of dogs stopped their sniffing and looked round at Hart and Alice as they passed, growling in their throats. A tall man with one wooden leg and a wide-brimmed Mexican sombrero stepped awkwardly around the corner of a building and stared at them openly, dark eyes watching them with care.
Hart slowed the grey and turned in his saddle to return the stare and after several moments the man tipped his sombrero forward over his forehead and hopped back into shadow.
The dogs went back to doing what dogs do.
‘I’m hot,’ said Alice. ‘Can we get a drink?’
‘Sure. Soon as we find where.’
They went past a well with children sitting on the edge, a woman with a scarf drawn over the center of her long dark hair drawing water in an oaken bucket. There didn’t seem to be anyone else about. The only sound other than the chatter of the children and the hoofs of their own horses was that of a hammer somewhere out of sight, a hammer nailing wood.
They came to a halt outside an adobe with a wooden sign attached to the wall that read Saloon and Store.
Hart helped Alice down from the saddle and tied up both animals to a warped hitching post.
The owner was sitting on a broken-backed chair just inside the open doorway, the shadow slanting across his legs. A grey and white cat lay on his lap, head and forepaws in the edge of sunlight. The paws were wrapped about the head.
‘Can we get somethin’ to drink?’
The man shifted his head, a leather patch covering his left eye. He surveyed Hart through the other one, Alice too. The cat lifted one paw and did the same; after a few seconds it had seen enough an
d returned to sleep.
‘Hot, ain’t it?’ The man’s voice was high-pitched and squeaky, like a hinge that lacked oil.
‘Sure. You got anythin’ to drink?’
‘Damn-blasted weather! Get’s so a man can’t move about at all.’
Hart nodded, sweat running freely down both sides of his face.
‘Do you have any soda pop?’ asked Alice.
‘Come far?’ asked the man as if he hadn’t heard her and still looking at Hart with his one good eye. ‘You ride far in this damned heat?’
Hart shifted his feet impatiently. ‘Far enough to want a drink pretty bad. Only you seem to be in the way.’
‘I’d really love a soda pop,’ said Alice. ‘I really would.’
The man stretched and yawned and casually knocked the cat from his legs. Only the cat didn’t go - not quite. Its claws dug into his pants and through them into his skin.
‘Damnation!’
He grabbed at the animal and lifted it clear, one claw hanging on long enough to rip a small hole in his pants leg.
‘Blasted thing!’
He turned in the chair and hurled the cat into the far corner of the saloon, where it bumped and skidded and hissed surprise and displeasure.
‘Come on in,’ he said, standing and lifting the chair clear. ‘Come on in out of that heat, why don’t you?’
Hart and Alice followed him inside. Pieces of sacking hung over the windows, keeping the interior dark and cool. A trestle table stood to the right of the single room; barrels and boxes were piled high along two walls, back and side. Four tables took up most of the center, a few chairs pushed into each. Another cat was apparently asleep on one of them, this one a lean fawn-colored animal whose tail twitched as if in a dream.
‘What did you want?’
‘I’d like a soda pop.’
The man reached underneath the table and came up with a stone bottle that he held up in front of his face and squinted at through his eye and then blew dust from.
‘Two bits,’ he squeaked, handing the bottle to Alice.
Hart dipped into his pocket.
‘You want soda pop?’ the man asked him.
Hart paid him the two bits and ignored the question. ‘Beer,’ he said.
The beer came from a small wooden barrel and frothed over the glass and the man’s hand and by the time he’d succeeded in filling a glass there was a puddle on the floor.
Hart and Alice took their drinks over to one of the tables, glad to be out of the sun for a time. Alice’s soda was pale pink and bubbly and tasted a little of soap. Hart’s beer was warm and goldy-brown in color and tasted of soap too.
‘Are we going to stay here for a while, d’you think?’ Alice asked.
Hart set down his glass and wiped a trail of froth away from one side of his mouth. ‘Maybe. It depends.’
‘You mean on...’
He leaned forward and set a hand on her arm. ‘It just depends.’
He turned to where the one-eyed man had repositioned his chair in the doorway, angled so that he could watch his customers and the street at the same time.
‘Place don’t seem too busy,’ said Hart evenly.
‘Time of day most folk sleep. Them as can. Too blasted hot for anythin’ else.’
The sound of hammering continued to drift into the room.
‘Someone don’t seem bothered,’ said Hart.
‘Huh! That’s that fool preacher. He’s stubborn as a mule’s ass an’ twice as stupid!’
The grey cat had found its way on to Alice’s lap and she was stroking the side of its head; when the ends of her fingers rubbed behind one of its ears it began to purr deep in its throat and press its claws rhythmically into her leg.
‘You get many folk passin’ through?’
‘No.’
‘How ’bout them as hangs out at Rancho Nuevo?’
The head turned slowly, a hand adjusting the strap of the leather patch. ‘Huh?’
‘That’s close by here, ain’t it? This must be the nearest town.’
The man looked at Hart for some time, taking in the pearl-handled gun at his hip as if for the first time. ‘Man asks ’bout that place,’ he said slowly, ‘he’s usually got a good reason.’
‘I ain’t one to waste breath on passin’ the time of day.’
‘Guess not. Me neither.’
‘What’s that to mean?’
‘Means I ain’t lettin’ my tongue run where some mean old bastard’s goin’ to cut if off.’
Hart swallowed down the remainder of his beer and made a face. ‘I might make it worth your while for a little information.’
The man shrugged and smiled an off-key smile. ‘I don’t know who you are mister, an’ I don’t want to know. But I’ll tell you a story. Not much over a year since, hotter’n hell like today, feller walked in here out o’ the light an’ bought a bottle of whiskey, paid for it an’ then asked if I’d seen someone he reckoned was stayin’ out at Rancho Nuevo. Man with a scar on his cheek an’ silver-grey hair.’
Hart felt Alice go tense at the far side of the table; her fingers pressed hard into the cat’s neck and it growled and clawed at her leg.
‘Well, I’d seen him in town couple of days before an’ there didn’t seem to be no harm in sayin’ so.’ He stopped and fidgeted with the strap of his patch. ‘I said so.’
He paused again and cleared his throat. ‘Three days later this old boy come in, tall and sort of hollow-lookin’. Sat right at that table where the two of you are now. Drank a little beer and stroked the cat like the girl’s doin’ and jawed so much I thought his head’d fall off. Well, I listened on account of there weren’t anythin’ else to do nor nowhere else to go. After he’d been tellin’ me this tale ‘bout Indians for a coon’s age he got up real smart and come towards me with a grin on his face an’ the skin round his neck wobblin’ an’ from nowhere he’s got this knife in his hand. He holds it in front of me an’ tells me next time I talk out of turn I’m goin’ to get it in the belly...’ The hand returned to the patch.
‘…then he done this. Cut me right across the eye.’
The cat jumped from Alice’s lap with a splutter and hiss.
The man pulled the patch away from his eye. A white line, three inches long and straight, cut diagonally across the empty, wrinkled skin of the socket.
Alice screamed.
The fawn-colored cat whisked the air with its tail and lifted its head for the first time.
Hart whistled.
The man let the leather patch fall back over his eye.
‘See, I ain’t talkin’ ’bout no one from out there no more.’
Hart glanced round at Alice, whose face was white in the shadow of the room. ‘C’mon,’ he said. ‘We’ll take a walk.’
They stepped round the man’s legs and out into the sunlight, squinting up their eyes. Hart pulled his hat brim lower down as Alice tugged at his sleeve.
‘Those men that he...’
‘Sshh.’
‘But...’
‘Let’s take a walk.’
They set off in the direction of the hammering, Alice looking back at the doorway of the saloon and then up at Hart’s impassive face.
‘It was them, wasn’t it? The men we’re looking for.’
‘We’re lookin’ for?’ he queried.
‘You’re looking for.’
‘Sounded like it.’
‘And that old man - the one who cut his eye out - was that the same one that pulled a knife on you?’
Hart touched his throat lightly, quickly. ‘I guess so.’
‘And are we really going out to this place, this Rancho whatever it is, to find them?’
Hart looked down at her but didn’t say anything.
They walked past the last of the adobes and found the source of the hammering. The beginnings of a wooden building were going up on a flat of cleared land with a slope behind. The planks were a mixture of newly hewn and old and scarred. It would be the only wood buildi
ng in town if it got finished: it would also be the only church.
The cross had been fashioned first and now lay on the ground, four foot high and two foot wide.
A figure bent over and wielded the hammer a little uncertainly. The pants of his blue suit were torn on one leg, stained on the other; his shirt was dark with sweat; the handkerchief that was knotted about his head was grey instead of white.
Virgil Edwards straightened when he heard Hart and Alice approach, one hand going round to the small of his back for support.
He blinked towards the stronger light and set his head to one side, staring at Hart as though somehow he recognized him.
‘You’re still a long way from Sterling City.’
Edwards came closer, hammer by his side. ‘Is it? Surely, it can’t be...?’
Hart offered him his hand; Edwards shifted the hammer across and shook it. Hart could feel the calluses forming on the already hardening skin.
‘Sure, Wes Hart. An’ this here’s Alice.’
‘I see, how do you do, Alice.’ He shook hands with the girl.
‘Mr Edwards here’s a preacher. We met a while back. When he was on his way to Sterling City.’ He looked into the preacher’s face. ‘What happened?’
Virgil Edwards dropped the hammer to the ground and took the grubby handkerchief from his head, wiping the sweat clear. ‘Let’s sit down.’
He and Alice sat on a pile of wood; Hart stood and listened.
‘When I reached the river north of here my horse went lame. Badly. There was nothing I could do about it. He … he had to be put down. I didn’t have the money to buy another. Hardly any money for food even. I...’ His voice broke and he held his head in his hands for several moments.
‘I’m sorry.’ He wiped his face again, sitting then with his hands clenched between his knees. ‘If I could have gone back I should have done so. I know it’s a cowardly thing to think of, but I was on the edge of despair.’ Edwards ground the heels of his boots into the earth. ‘I slept here, in the open. When I woke I knew what to do, what I was meant to do. It was to stay here and build a church.’
He looked at Alice quickly and his grey-blue eyes smiled. ‘It doesn’t matter you see. It doesn’t matter where you preach the Lord’s word. As long as it is preached. As long as there are people there to hear it.’
Hart the Regulator 4 Page 12