by Short, Luke;
“You alone, Rose?” Frank asked.
“Why no,” Rose said, a feigned puzzlement in her voice. “I’m fitting a dress on Mrs. Parkinson.” Frank looked steadily at her for so long she knew she must speak. “This is mysterious. What’s the matter with you, Frank?”
“I’m looking for Dave Nash,” Frank said grimly. There was a kind of terrible calmness in him that frightened Rose.
Rose’s voice was cold with dislike. “I haven’t seen him, and I wouldn’t tell you if I had.”
“I’ll take a look,” Frank said heavily. “Stand away, Rose.”
Rose stood defiantly just long enough, and then she stepped aside and said bitterly, “I can’t stop you.”
Frank and Jess Moore stepped into the room. They looked around it and Frank said, “What’s back there?”
“My bedroom, a closet, my kitchen.”
Frank drew his gun and said, “Come on, Jess,” and started toward the corridor.
At that moment Mrs. Parkinson started out of the bedroom in her petticoat. When she saw the two men, she shrieked and dived back into the bedroom.
“You’re such a gentleman, Frank,” Rose said quietly, bitterly.
Frank went doggedly into the corridor and Mrs. Parkinson stuck her head through the curtains, holding them tightly around her neck.
“Frank Ivey, what in the name of sin are you doing in this house?” she said angrily.
“Excuse me,” Frank said heavily and tramped back into the kitchen, Jess Moore, his glance on the floor, following him. Rose followed Jess.
Frank looked around the kitchen carefully, and he saw nothing except the homely litter of a place well-lived in.
“Would you mind telling me why you’re doing this?” Rose asked.
“I told you,” Frank said idly. He came back past her and paused in the corridor. Mrs. Parkinson, her hair a little awry, glared at him.
“What’s in there?” Frank said, using his gun to point into the bedroom.
“I am, you fool,” Mrs. Parkinson said tartly. “I am also undressed.”
“I want to look,” Frank said. His face was flushing a dark red with embarrassment.
Mrs. Parkinson said in a voice trembling with rage, “You come in here, young man, and I’ll have Harvey beat you within an inch of your life! There are limits to what even you can do, Frank Ivey. Now get out of here!”
Frank hesitated a long second, and then turned on his heel and threw open the door to the closet. It was a large closet hung with Rose’s clothes.
“Maybe you’d like me to shake out my dresses,” Rose said, from beside him.
Frank walked in, looked around, moved some dresses and then came out in the corridor again.
“All right, Jess. Let’s go.”
He walked out into the front room and paused again, as if reluctant to go before he found some evidence of Dave’s presence. Connie’s dress lay on the table. Frank poked it with his gun, lifted it and looked at it incuriously, and then, without another word, tramped out the door, Jess Moore following him.
19
Back at the Special, Frank tramped moodily up to the bar, and Burch, without being asked, shoved a bottle and a glass toward him. Burch leaned his soft white arms on the bar and said, “You might try the sheriff’s office. He’d pull an Injun trick like that.”
“Don’t talk like a damn fool,” Frank said with an ominous anger. He poured himself a drink and tossed it off, and stood there looking blankly and angrily at the glass a moment. Then he wheeled and regarded his crew scattered about the room, some playing cards, some watching.
“Jess, go over and check Crew’s office,” he ordered.
A soft, pleased smile touched Burch’s pasty face; his advice was valued. He said wisely: “He’ll turn up. He ain’t the kind to run.”
Jess Moore and another man passed on their way to the sheriff’s office.
Somebody from the tables called. “Let’s get some lamps goin’, Burch. We can’t see in the dark,” and Burch moved off to accommodate him.
Twilight was creeping into the saloon, and night would soon be here, and still he was inactive, Frank thought savagely. He had a man watching 66, he had a man watching the Ridge camp, and he sent a man to scout Relief. But most important, he did not want to move until he heard from Bender, who was scouting the Breaks. Maybe—just maybe—Red had done the job. A vast and passionate anger rode Frank. He knew now that just one man stood between him and complete victory over Connie, and that man was Dave Nash. He would hunt him down and kill him if it took every man in his crew a year to do it. Nash had failed on his boldest bid for grass. He had sacrificed Connie’s cattle in one daring risk to pull Jim Crew over to 66. For Frank never doubted that Dave Nash was behind that stampede. And now, because of Nash, Jim Crew lay dead in Bell’s wagon shed.
Frank thought of that with a feeling of thankfulness. Crew, he could admit to himself now, had been a bogyman. He hadn’t been afraid of Crew, or of his reputation with a gun, but he had been willing to sacrifice much for Crew’s help just as Connie had. All that seemed foolish now, and only increased his impatience of the moment. Crew had gone down with the fearless stupidity of his kind, and he had gone down in the wrong. It was this that gave Frank a wicked satisfaction. It had given him the right to walk into the Special and announce calmly he had shot Crew when Crew, trying to frame him, had pulled a gun first. It gave him the right to invite any man to investigate his guilt in the killing of Connie’s herd; but, most important of all, it gave him the right to smash Connie, and no man alive could blame him. Only Dave Nash and, incidentally, Bill Schell remained to be taken care of. After that, he was the power on the Bench. Connie was finished and Ben Dickason was fading. He, Frank Ivey, was the Bench.
He poured another drink and downed it and looked outside to find it dark. He shoved the bottle away from him in disgust. The liquor wasn’t touching him. He fired up a cigar and saw in the bar mirror the entrance of Martin Bondurant.
Bondurant came up to the bar and Burch moved over to him and took his order. Bondurant, as a man always does, should have looked around to greet his friends, but he did not. He studied his hands, folded on the bar. Slowly, it came to Ivey that Bondurant was avoiding speaking to him, and it touched off an angry malice in him.
“Evenin’, Martin,” he said.
Bondurant looked at him and nodded coolly, and looked away and Frank moved over to him.
“Remember me, Martin?” he asked with a heavy attempt at humor. “I’m Frank Ivey.”
Bondurant looked coolly at him and said, “Yes, I remember you. Don’t come in my store again, Frank.”
Frank stared at him, bewilderment and wrath mounting in his eyes. Bondurant took his drink and downed it, and then turned to Frank and said quietly, “He was too good a man to go that way, Frank. A lot of us think so.”
He turned and walked out, and Frank looked blankly at Burch. “Did you hear that?”
Burch smiled softly. “Give ’em time to get used to it.”
Frank went back to his bottle and had another drink, but a new kind of anger was prodding him, and behind this was a complete bewilderment. Didn’t they believe his story about Crew? Did they think he had really killed Connie’s cattle, and then cut down on Crew when he came to make the arrest? Slowly, a feeling of outrage took hold of him, and just as slowly passed, leaving a hatred now fed by his arrogance. Let them think what they wanted. He was in the right, his conscience was clear. He despised them all, the whole town, and always had.
He went over to one of the tables and said, “I’m goin’ to eat,” and wheeled and went out.
The dining room at the hotel held only a few diners, and Frank noticed they all seemed occupied with talk or with their food as he passed on the way to his table. Alice, the girl who usually served him, did not come near him tonight. A new girl served him, and Frank ate in angry silence.
When he was finished, he was alone in the room. Nobody, not even a waitress, remained. He drew out
a cigar and studied it. His arrogance would not let him hurry, and yet he felt this deep within him, and his whole being was outraged. He did not expect affection from people, but he did demand respect. He had defended himself as any free man has a right to, and nobody believed him. Dave Nash, Frank thought wickedly, would pay this score in full. The whole west was not big enough to hide Nash from him after tonight.
He paid his score and rose and went out through the lobby and took a chair at the corner of the veranda, and the soft darkness of it somehow helped his patience. His cigar was smoked half down when Rose Leland crossed the side street and mounted the steps of the hotel, a package under her arm. Frank looked at her and she looked at him, and neither of them spoke, and she went inside. Frank heard her in low conversation with Bice, the clerk, and presently she came out without the package. She did not look at him, but went on down the street toward her place.
Frank rose then and went up to the desk and asked flatly of old Bice, “What did she want?”
Bice knew, too. Frank could see it in his face, weak, disapproving, and it only made him the more stubborn. When Bice did not answer, Frank put both hands on the desk and said quietly, “I asked you a question,” and his eyes, baleful and bright, held a flat warning.
“She wanted to know if anybody was takin’ the stage. She’s got a dress for the agent’s wife she wanted dropped off.”
Frank considered that a moment, and could read nothing suspicious into it. He wheeled and went out to his chair on the porch again, and sat down to wait for Bender and news of Red and Nash.
Dave heard the front door open and close, and he looked toward the curtain in the doorway of his dark room. Bill Schell’s cigarette glowed in the dark beside him, and Dave listened again. The ringing in his head from the fever might have deceived him, and he listened for Rose’s footsteps. Suddenly the curtain parted and Rose stepped into the room, which had been kept dark against the prowling of any curious Bell hand.
“Sitting up?” Rose asked. “How do you feel?”
“Good,” Dave said. “What did you find?”
“Nobody’s taking the stage from here.” She hesitated, and when she spoke her voice was grave. “Frank Ivey was on the veranda. I don’t know about this, Bill.”
“We got to, Rose,” Bill Schell answered in a discouraged voice. “Dave couldn’t last a mile on a horse.”
“Suppose Frank looks.”
“Then that’s that,” Dave said. He was glad for the darkness, because it hid the sweat on his forehead and the shaking which he could not stop.
“It’s close to time,” Bill remarked. “Try your legs, kid.”
Dave came unsteadily to his feet. The pain in his shoulder and all down his side was hot and searing as he moved, and he held his breath, steadying himself against the bed, until it died. His left arm was dead, useless.
“It’s all right,” he said, and was immediately sorry he had spoken. There was a quaver in his voice that he could not control.
The sound of Bill’s cigarette being tossed into the saucer came to him, and then Bill moved up beside him and put a hand under his arm. Three cool drops of sweat channeled down his back, and the ringing in his ears was loud and steady, and he was suddenly so cold he shook.
He moved slowly out into the corridor and Rose went past him and into the kitchen. She knelt by the cabinet and pulled out his hat where she had hidden it, and she came back to him, holding it out. Dave took it and put it on, and looked at her, and the image of her was not quite steady. He beat his mind for something to say to her, some way to express his gratitude, and he could not find it in this fever. His brain seemed sick, slowed to a pace where it could only register his dogged determination to keep his knees from buckling.
He only said, “So long, Rose,” and she did not answer him, and he turned into the front room and was guided across it by Bill Schell. Bill left him then and went outside and presently came back and said, “All right, kid.”
He felt Rose’s hand on his arm, and then he was out on the walk. Immediately, Bill guided him across the dark stretch of the vacant lot, and Dave breathed deeply of the cool night air. He began to shake again, and he wanted more than anything in the world to lie down, but Bill’s insistent hand guided him on until they were against the wall of the livery.
“Lean against that,” Bill whispered.
Dave did, his head hung on his chest, breathing deeply and steadily against a nausea that was rising within him. If he only weren’t so weak, he thought angrily. His side and shoulder throbbed savagely with every beat of his heart, and he concentrated now on keeping his knees from folding. He turned his head and saw Bill standing at the corner of the building, looking upstreet.
He closed his eyes and waited for what seemed hours. Bright points of light came and faded behind his lids, and he speculated with a terrible concentration on this. He could hold his mind to nothing, however. There were absurd, heartbreaking memories of Ruth and the baby that came to him, and before he could feel sad they had vanished and he was thinking of Ivey. And then of Connie and Rose, and he remembered stupidly he wanted to say something to Rose. But his mind would not hold that either, and he stood there and shook with a rising delirium. He was roused by Bill shaking him so roughly that his side came awake with pain.
“This is it, kid. You understand it, don’t you?”
“What?” Dave whispered stupidly, and Bill’s soft, despairing cursing came to him as in a dream.
“Listen,” Bill said fiercely. “Harry will duck into the Special for a drink. Joe will unhook and take the teams back and bring the fresh ones out. In between, you get in the stage. Don’t talk, just sit there.”
Dave nodded stupidly, unhearing, and came erect with a lurch, and Bill guided him toward the corner of the building. He heard the stage now making its turn and pulling up in front of the livery archway.
He heard Joe Lilly’s murmured greeting and he heard Harry say distinctly, “Take a look at that off wheel horse, Joe. He’s lamin’ up.”
Bill paused at the corner and peered off at the stage, and through the wait Dave could hear the jangle of harness chain and the soft swearing of Joe Lilly, and then the clatter of the horses’ feet on the plank runway. Each sound was loud, and somehow seemed important, though he did not know why.
Bill said, “Now,” and pushed gently, and Dave began to walk and he stumbled. Bill caught him, and he was swearing softly, bitterly. He guided Dave around the rear of the stage and opened the door and then said, “Step up, step up,” in a whisper filled with despair.
Dave gathered all his strength and felt Bill place his foot on the step and he lunged up and lost his balance and grabbed weakly for the door brace. He missed it and fell and remembered to fall on his right side, and he hit the floor of the stage with a crash that sent the pain racking through him, rousing him to its bitter message. The door was shut.
This won’t work, he remembered thinking, and he fumbled at his hip and got his gun. He lay there, his face in the dirt of the floor boards, and presently he twisted his head and looked to see if there was anyone with him. There wasn’t, and he lay there sweating, not trying to move, waiting for the pain to subside.
He heard the fresh horses hooked up and presently Harry came out of the Special. He and Joe Lilly discussed the shooting of Crew in grave undertones, and then the stage creaked and gently tilted as Harry stepped up. It started with a lurch that drowned out Harry’s solemn swearing and it trundled along and then halted again, and Dave wondered why.
“What you got, Bice?” Harry called then, and Dave knew they were at the hotel.
A voice said, “Drop this off for Mrs. Gentry, Harry.”
Then Harry’s voice came again, and Dave, through the pain, caught the subtle change in tone. “Oh, hello, Frank.”
“Meet anybody comin’ through the Breaks, Harry?”
“Old man Wharton, is all. Why?”
“Never mind.”
There was a pause, and then the cra
ck of Harry’s whip, and the stage lumbered off.
Somewhere on the grade all sound ribboned off, and Dave slept. Sometime later he roused and tried to remember where he was and he could not even hold the memory in his fevered brain. He was awake a long time, then, and the pain now was something alive and close and overwhelming. His face was ground into the floor boards and each lurch of the stage on the road across the flats sent a fresh flood of the pain. He knew he could not stand this, then, and in the strength of desperation he shoved himself to his knees, and groped drunkenly for the seat and found it.
For a while he let his head rest on its thin cushions, and the immediate pain ebbed slowly, and the relief was so blessed he slept. He was awakened only moments later by a shock of agony that made him cry out. The swing of the stage had thrown his slack weight against the side of the stage. He buried his face in the cushion, then, biting its rough duck cover until the wave of agony had passed. His shoulder was freshly wet, and he knew the wound had reopened. Now, a panic was driving him. He must get onto the seat and lie down. Nothing had ever seemed so important as getting onto the seat, and he knelt there, wet with sweat, summoning the stubborn courage to accomplish it. He tried once and the lurch of the stage flung him back. On the second attempt he rode with the swing of the stage and his head crashed into the back of the seat. But he turned his body and felt the seat under him, and then he let himself down on his back with his free hand, and was asleep then in seconds.
He dozed fitfully, but it was never real sleep. The fever in his brain made a bitter nonsense of his waking moments, so that he could call back none of what had passed, nor where he was going and how he had got here. Once, from the slow steady pull of the stage, he knew they were climbing, and he suddenly remembered the grade out of Signal and knew despair, then. He could not live this out if he stayed here much longer.
Sometime, hours later, he came out of a dream to hear voices, and he was aware the stage had stopped.
He lay there, and heard the door opened, and somebody come in.