by Short, Luke;
Connie stopped abruptly, still watching him, and the seed of an idea was in her mind now. As it grew, she smiled faintly, knowing the answer was here and had always been here. Link was hers, body and soul, and always had been. Since the day she had persuaded her father to take him in, a half-starved, dirty thirteen-year-old who had run away from the beatings of a drunken father, he had worshiped her with that unquestioning faith. She had been kind to him, and now she was going to ask payment.
“Sit down, Link,” she said quietly.
He sank into the chair and laid his hat on the table, and he never ceased watching her.
Connie sat on the edge of the table, and looked down at him beside her. “Link, I don’t know how much you know of what’s been going on here. Between me and Walt Shipley and Dad and Frank Ivey. You know some of it, don’t you?”
“A little,” Link said, already embarrassed.
“Did you know that Dad has been trying to force me to marry Frank Ivey when I didn’t want to? Did you know that was why Frank drove Walt away?”
“No, ma’am,” Link said slowly. His tone indicated he was impressed.
“I left home, Link, because I couldn’t stand that bullying. I didn’t want to marry Frank Ivey and I didn’t want Dad’s help. I wanted a life of my own. You can see why, can’t you?”
“Yes’m,” Link said. He felt a faint embarrassment that he was included in a revelation so intimate, and yet he was proud too. He felt a little like a yard dog would feel if invited to lie on the hearth rug—shy, happy, fiercely protective and with a fathomless gratitude.
And Connie knew it. She smiled sweetly, and said sadly, “Dad and Frank have fought me, Link, with every weapon they had. Until Dad finally quit, when Frank’s men killed Curley Fanstock.”
Link only nodded, a welling anger making him inarticulate. Connie was filling out the blanks in the bunkhouse gossip, giving them life and substance and tragedy and bravery.
Connie slipped down now and walked around the table, and Link followed her with his sober gaze. Connie stopped beside him then and put both hands on the table and said, “I’ve got to destroy Frank Ivey, or he’ll destroy me, Link. And if I have to fight as dirty as he fights, I will.”
Link nodded mutely and Connie took her hands off the table and spread them in a simple, innocent gesture. “That’s when you caught me, Link. I was fighting dirty.”
Link was staring at her with sober, breathless concentration, and Connie said unashamedly, “I had Tom and Bailey drive those cattle off into the canyon, Link. They rode in and told Sheriff Crew that Bell did it. Crew will arrest Frank and jail him, I hope, and he’ll never trouble me again.”
Link took that without a murmur, turning it over in his mind.
Connie said softly, “I lied to Crew because I had to lie, because I had to get a man out of the way who was a killer.” She hesitated and then asked gently, “Did I do wrong, Link?”
“No,” Link said slowly. “No. No, you didn’t, Connie. He had it comin’ to him.”
“You’re a good friend,” Connie said quietly. “You know something nobody else must ever know. Nobody, ever. You see,” she added, smiling faintly, “you have my happiness in your hands, Link.”
Link blushed deeply and came to his feet, and at that moment he gladly would have died for her. And, because nothing half so wonderful had ever happened to him in his drab and simple life, he did not know how to pledge his word and his trust and his honor. He said, “Sure, Connie, you’re my friend,” knowing his words were inadequate and wishing miserably that they were not.
Connie knew this instinctively and she put a hand on his and squeezed it and said, “Thank you, Link. I trust you, and I always will.”
Link tramped blindly from the room, and Connie made no move to follow him. A faint, crawling shame touched her for a moment, and was gone, drowned in her quiet exultation. She was safe, she knew; torture by fire would never drag her secret from Link. She thought of him now with liking and pity, and both were touched with contempt. Three of the men who knew this secret were so deeply involved in it that they would never talk of it, and the other, Link, was hers. Someday, she thought wistfully, when all this was over she could tell it to Dave, and he would laugh with her and call her sly. But he would admire her, Connie knew.
18
Rose came out of a deep exhausted sleep to feel Bill Schell shaking her gently, and she opened her eyes.
“He’s awake,” Bill said, “and he’s hungry.” He grinned swiftly, and Rose was somehow encouraged by that. Bill’s grin was the barometer of his mood.
She rose from the sofa and asked quietly, “Has Crew come back from Bell yet?”
“No.”
They looked at each other in silence, each knowing what the other was thinking. As long as Crew was gone, Ivey was loose and Dave was in danger.
Rose went over to the stove and found Bill already had a fire going. Looking out the window she was surprised to see the shadows pulled in under the trees below the noon sun. She washed her face and the cold water drove away the last drowsiness from her all-night vigil. She picked up the hair brush and immediately put it down, too impatient for primping now, and went into the bedroom.
Dave turned his eyes from Bill to her, and his smile was slow and oddly uncertain, so that Rose fought down a swift pity.
Last night she had taken a shirt for him from the dozen she was making Martin Hawthorne at the bank, and its immaculate white broadcloth in contrast made Dave’s beard growth seem a solid black against his pale face.
“66 will pay you rent on this room, Rose,” Dave said.
Rose smiled. “What do you want to eat?”
“A cigarette,” Dave said.
Bill pulled out his sack of tobacco dust and quickly rolled a smoke, and Dave looked at Rose a full and troubled moment. “How bad am I hurt? I feel broke in two.”
“A bullet passed clear through you,” Rose said. “Bad enough, I’d say.”
Bill said, “Whose was it?”
“Red Cates’. He was waitin’ for me at Virg’s camp.”
“We found his bandage. He didn’t give it to you, did he?”
“No, he didn’t give it to me,” Dave said. “Neither did Virg.” He took the lighted cigarette from Bill, who was grinning faintly at this information, and dragged the smoke deep into his lungs. Again he looked at Rose, who was watching him soberly.
“Were you followed?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” Dave said, and he looked at Rose with a humorous quirk to his mouth before he put his cigarette to his lips again.
“The only place Red could have come from is Bell,” Dave said musingly. “I’ll get an answer to that one from Frank, too.”
“And sooner than you expect,” Rose said.
Dave looked at her, puzzlement in his face.
“Bell stampeded Connie’s herd off the rim-rock into Hondo Canyon yesterday. Jim Crew has gone out to get Frank.”
Dave was silent a long while, staring at the ceiling. Then he turned his head and smiled at Rose, and she knew this news held a deep significance for him. It was the first solid move toward eventual victory for 66. Rose had watched him play for this with a care and cunning that came hard to a man of his temperament. He had been cautious when his instinct was to be reckless; he had been iron-hard in the punishment of mistakes, and he was a tolerant man; he had been cool where others would have been angry. He was like a man coming into a high-stake poker game with a few white chips, who must husband them timidly and add craftily to them until he sees the chance for the kill. It had paid out now, Rose knew; Dave had bided his time waiting for Frank’s first misstep which would bring Crew over to 66.
Dave looked at Bill now. “Then I was wrong about you, Bill.”
Bill shrugged. “It’s under the bridge, kid. But you came close to makin’ me mad.”
The two of them smiled at each other, and Rose went out to fix Dave’s breakfast. The nightmare she had lived through last night
was over, but Rose did not deceive herself. Dave was sick and hurt, and the punishment he had taken had exhausted him. Still, in the background of her mind, where it had been since she first saw Dave by lamplight last night in the back yard, was the thought of Frank Ivey. If Frank knew Dave was hurt, he would not be sitting at Bell waiting for Jim Crew to get him; he would be hunting Dave. Jim Crew, with that gray wisdom of his, understood this too, and was doing his best to ensure against it. If Crew missed Ivey, then no place was secure, and Dave could not move to hide.
Rose fixed Dave a breakfast of oatmeal and eggs and biscuits and coffee, and took it in to him on a tray. Bill offered to help him to a sitting position, but Dave refused his aid, and sat up unassisted. His face, Rose noticed, paled a little further with the effort, and beads of sweat stood out damply on his forehead. He wolfed the first half of his breakfast and then gradually seemed to lose interest in it, and as he drank his coffee Rose noticed the brightness of fever coming back into his eyes. Afterwards, she changed the dressing on his shoulder, and before she finished he was asleep in a deep, sick exhaustion.
Back in the kitchen, Bill was at the window, watching the livery and the street beyond. He was whistling thinly, tunelessly, and Rose knew he was worried. He turned to her suddenly and said in a low, worried voice, “Why ain’t Crew back, Rose?”
She couldn’t answer him, and he started his restless pacing, stopping occasionally at the window. Dave’s deep breathing came to them, now, and Bill stopped to listen and shook his head worriedly.
Rose went out to the shed to look at the horses, for Bill’s was here now, too. They, too, were restive with hunger, and she knew that tonight she would have to contrive some way to get some feed for them without arousing suspicion.
She went back into the house and found Bill at the table staring boredly at some old newspapers. She patted his shoulder as she passed him on her way into the front room. There was Connie’s dress to be done, and she laid it out and began to work on it, thinking then of Connie. Last night, in the sheriff’s office, she had surprised Connie into disclosing something she would never have admitted in words—her reaction to the news of Dave’s injury. Rose kept thinking of that. It was the action, Rose knew, of a woman in love. It was instinctive and naked and utterly without Connie’s cold reason guiding it, and it told Rose volumes. It explained, among other things, the reason for this new dress, and Rose smiled wisely and tolerantly. Women were the same, really. Hadn’t she herself looked forward with a womanly pride to the time she would walk out in front of Dave wearing her new blue dress? Hadn’t she planned a mocking little curtsy that would bring his slow smile and fill his eyes with an admiration of her? She had, just as Connie doubtless had.
Rose sat motionless now, thinking of this, trying to see ahead. She loved Dave, and had, since that evening he had come to her with his present. One moment she was thinking of him as a big, silent man with ugly memories that he could not shake, and a few moments later all that was changed by the simple gesture of his gift. Rose didn’t look beyond that, only she knew he was a man she could live out her life with and make happy and complete. And Connie had seen it, too, only Rose knew they had not seen the same things. Connie had seen strength to make her stronger and further the ambition in her, a man so strong he did not need Frank Ivey’s arrogance, a man she could give in to without humility. And Rose saw shrewdly that Connie’s weapons were potent and undeniable. She had fought bravely against the shabby bullying of her father and Frank Ivey, and her courage was a real thing that any man might admire. But somewhere along the way she had become as cold and heartless as the man she hated, and it was this Rose knew was wrong. It was something a man might not see until it was too late, but it was also something he must find out for himself.
Rose put it out of her mind, and fell to work. She was absorbed in it when she heard Bill Schell’s footsteps and looked up to see him in the doorway.
“Ivey just come in,” Bill announced.
Rose came to her feet and hurried to the window and saw a group of horsemen whom she recognized as the Bell crew dismounting in front of the Special. Their horses were lathered with sweat.
“Was Crew with them?”
“No.”
She and Bill looked at each other wordlessly, and Rose turned again to watch Bell. This time she glanced at the sheriff’s office on the corner. There was no activity there; none of the Bell hands paid it any attention.
Bill said quietly, “Somethin’s happened, Rose.”
“What could?”
“I dunno,” Bill said slowly. “Ivey’s there. Jim could have followed that bunch if he was blind. He’s had time.”
The Bell crew all moved in to the Special, and Rose went back to her work. Bill stayed at the window, waiting with the alert patience of an Indian, and Rose found herself watching him for any sign of Bell’s movement. Frantically, now, she cast back in her mind to last night. She had hidden Dave’s horse, and she had gone to the sheriff’s office unobserved. She had even contrived, she was sure, to keep the exit of all of them from Crew’s office a casual thing that would not arouse curiosity. Peebles swore he was not seen on his way to Doctor Parkinson’s office, and the doctor was also certain his call had gone unnoticed. There was nothing to excite Frank Ivey’s curiosity about this place, except the memory of Rose being a friend of 66 and Curley Fanstock. Only, if Frank Ivey was thorough enough, her name would occur to him sooner or later. Which meant they would have to get Dave out, get him safe where Frank Ivey could not kill him like a cornered animal.
The time ribboned on into late afternoon and the Bell crew still stayed on at the Special. Only, something had happened. There was other movement on the street, and all of it centered in the Special. Once a boy ran, shouting, into the livery barn, and Joe Lilly came out and went into the saloon.
Presently, Bill turned his head and said, “Mrs. Parkinson is headed this way.”
Rose moved to the window and watched the doctor’s wife approach. Mrs. Parkinson, in her black dress and dowdy hat, spoke to the men in front of the Special. It was she who did the only nursing Signal knew, turning her home into a hospital, when necessary, and everyone knew and liked her. Her walk was leisurely, and she stopped to talk to a boy who was cutting across the vacant lot. She broke away from him finally, and came on, and then they lost sight of her. Rose and Bill both looked at the door, listening intently, and they heard her footsteps pause. Then the bell jangled with a loudness that made Rose jump.
She moved swiftly to the door and opened it, and Mrs. Parkinson stepped in. Her round, florid face was grave as she nodded to them and then closed the door herself.
“Frank Ivey killed Jim Crew this morning,” she announced.
Rose glanced at Bill and saw the stunned look in his eyes. “Killed?” Bill echoed. Crew, somehow, had seemed immortal to them all.
“Crew tried to arrest him for that cattle killing, and Frank wouldn’t go. Jim pulled on him, Ivey says, and he shot him.”
A fleeting pain crossed Bill Schell’s face, and he made an involuntary gesture of protest that died immediately.
Mrs. Parkinson said in a businesslike voice, “Harvey sent me over, because he didn’t dare come himself. Ivey doesn’t know Dave Nash was shot, but he’ll tear the country wide open to find him.” She paused. “He says you’ll have to move Dave, Bill, before Ivey thinks of this place.”
“With that crew campin’ on our doorstep?” Bill said miserably.
“After dark.”
“If he’ll wait that long,” Bill observed bitterly, moving to the window.
Rose and Mrs. Parkinson looked soberly at each other and Mrs. Parkinson said in a low, passionate voice, “Frank Ivey is a dog. He isn’t fit to kiss Jim Crew’s boots.”
Rose said, “I must tell Dave,” and went into the bedroom.
Dave was awake, and his eyes were still bright with fever as he looked at Rose. “I heard,” he said. “Hand me my gun.”
Rose lifted out his gun from
the belt hanging on the wall and gave it to him, and he said grimly, “Rose, if they come here, I want you to promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“That you’ll get out.”
“I won’t promise it,” Rose said shortly, and she moved toward the curtain to go out.
Then Bill Schell’s voice came to them. “Oh-oh. Here he comes.”
Rose went out swiftly and saw Bill Schell’s head turned toward her, and his face was hard and sullen. Beyond, she saw Frank Ivey and Jess Moore, dwarfed by Frank’s solid bulk, passing the livery.
“Rose, go out the back way. Now,” Bill said.
“Wait,” Rose said flatly. “There’s another way, Bill. It’s a chance.” She turned to Mrs. Parkinson. “Will you help?”
“Certainly, girl,” the doctor’s wife said calmly.
“Then go in Dave’s room and take off your dress and don’t let them in there.… Bill, you go in too and hide. Now go!”
Mrs. Parkinson rose and went into the room, and Rose pulled Bill away from the window. He was hesitant, not liking this, and she shook him impatiently. “Hurry, Bill. It’s Dave’s only chance.”
Bill’s gun was hanging from his hand at his side as he walked into the bedroom too, pulling the curtain closed behind him.
In the tiny bedroom, Mrs. Parkinson took a look at the two men and said, “I’m too old to be very modest, young men.” She peeled her black dress off over her head, and stood there defiantly in her petticoat.
Bill Schell’s smile was quick and gentle and he said, “You’re a lady, ma’am.”
In the other room, Rose looked around frantically for any trace of Bill’s presence, and saw a cold cigarette butt lying on the window. She picked it up and stuffed it in her pocket as the bell jangled imperiously. Scooping up some pins and putting them in her mouth, Rose picked up her shears and went to the door and opened it.
Frank Ivey and Jess Moore stood there, hats off, and nodded. Rose’s surprise seemed genuine as she took the pins from her mouth before she spoke. “Hello, Frank. Hello, Jess.”