by Peter Dawson
“That does it,” finally came George Spires’s words.
Gentry lay there, limp and with eyes closed as that excruciating pain eased slowly away. He felt Sam Grell’s weight leave his arms and chest, the bed sagged, came even again. And then abruptly a cold cloth was gently stroking his cheeks and forehead, wiping away the dampness there. He opened his eyes and found the pale beautiful oval of Faith’s face close above his.
He smiled up at her in thanks. And the tenderness that touched her glance then, the gladness of her answering smile, was so eloquent that suddenly and without the trace of a doubt Gentry knew that he loved the girl.
His eyes must have betrayed this startling awareness. For all at once her look took on a wondering, rapturous quality that made him forget the pain, everything but a powerful longing to share with her this new-found realization.
“Better, Dan?” she asked after that long moment when their eyes had so mutely bared their innermost thoughts.
He tilted his head in a weak affirmative and he watched her straighten self-consciously and step aside. That let him see the others — Mike Clears standing there at the foot of the bed, grinning relievedly, Spires bent over a table beyond, lathering his hands in a basin of steaming water, and Sam Grell shrugging into his tunic and looking down at him apologetically.
“No hard feelings, Dan?” Grell asked in all seriousness.
Here was the old Sam Grell, the friendly, somewhat shy man so unlike the indignant and offended adjutant who had spoken his mind so openly at the ceremony the other morning. And Gentry drawled — “Not a one, Sam.” — meaning it.
The sound of Gentry’s voice brought Spires across from the table to stand alongside Clears. He was wiping his hands with a towel, and his look was one of sober amazement. “You’re tougher than any man has a right to be,” he said. “Feel like talking?”
“What about?” Gentry’s voice was gaining firmness.
The medico’s head tilted to indicate Clears. “Faith sent Mike up after us. On the way down here he told us some things that’re hard to believe. On top of that we find you with a hole through your leg and forking Ash’s horse. What does it all add up to, Dan?”
Gentry lay a moment wondering what to say, where to begin. Then, wincing at the tenderness of his leg, he got his elbows under him and pushed up so that his head and shoulders rested against the iron bars of the bed’s head. He noticed for the first time that he still wore his clothes. The right leg of his waist overalls was slit along the outside seam from ankle to hip; although he hadn’t felt it, Spires had wound a broad bandage above his knee. His upper body was still damp from the punishment he had taken, and he could feel his arm muscles quivering as the nerve strain gradually eased away.
He made an automatic gesture of reaching to his shirt pocket. His tobacco wasn’t there, and he realized he’d probably lost it somewhere up along the meadow where Ewing and the roan lay.
It was Sam Grell who noticed the gesture and quickly took out his own tobacco, passing it across and saying: “Here, smoke mine.”
Gentry began building the smoke, still wondering how to begin telling all there was to tell. And in a few more seconds Grell helped him again. “Maybe we’d better ask our questions and let you give the answers, Dan.” He waited for Gentry’s nod, went on: “Mike says it was Phil Fitzhugh, not you, that took your detail into that cañon. He claims a bullet had grazed you alongside the head, that you were knocked out. I can remember your head was bandaged for several days. Is what he says true?”
Gentry’s glance shuttled quickly around to the saloon man in such an accusing way that Clears blurted out: “I know! I’ve broken my word. But a man can stand so much, Dan. I won’t see you go through with this now that there’s no need to.”
Spires spoke then. “Is that what really happened, Dan?”
Gentry sighed gustily. “Yes, that’s what really happened.”
The medico and Grell looked at each other in surprise, and it was finally Grell who asked: “Then why...? How come McCune didn’t give it away?”
“Because I made him swear to back my story.” Gentry had lit his smoke now and drew deeply on it, fixing a glance on Grell that was angry, uncompromising.
“You did all this for the Old Man, of course,” Spires said gravely.
Gentry shrugged. He was running a hand along his bad thigh as he drawled: “That part of it, yes. Why else, George?”
Faith, standing in the doorway near the head of the bed, said softly: “Dan, Major Fitzhugh’s gone now. You needn’t hold back any longer.”
Looking around at her, Gentry laughed softly, scornfully. “You don’t know the Army, Faith. Let ’em get their teeth into this thing and they’ll smear the name of Fitzhugh till every friend the Old Man ever had will....”
“Doesn’t that depend on me?” Grell cut in quietly. Gentry looked across at the man coolly, speculatively, in a way that made Grell add: “Give me credit for having some feelings, Dan. You and McCune lied under oath to keep from hurting the major. So I can stretch a point or two in my report, can’t I? By just omitting any mention of Phil Fitzhugh knowing anything at all about his father’s orders on avoiding that cañon.”
Some of the severity eased from Gentry’s expression. “That would certainly help.”
“Now about this other,” Mike Clears said, his relief quite obvious. “Your hunch on Ash must have proved out.”
“It did, Mike.”
At the puzzled looks of the others, Clears explained: “Dan was blowing off steam against Caleb last night. He’s had it in his craw all along that Caleb could have tipped off the Apaches about those jugheads being brought up here from Fort Starke. That it was because of him Sour Eye wiped out your men.”
He lifted a hand, cutting short an interruption he saw coming from Sam Grell, hurrying on to say: “And Dan had another hunch I combed him over for. With those outlaws all either dead or corralled down by Starke the other day, he had the idea maybe it was Caleb that ran off your geldings and cashed in Tim McCune.” His glance swung across to Gentry now. “Was that the way it turned out, Dan?”
Gentry shrugged. “All I know is what I found up there today. First, Ewing. Dead. All around him there were tracks. Moccasin prints that had been there as long as he had, at least a day and a night. They were big. They couldn’t have belonged to anyone but Ash. And Ewing was shot in the back.”
It was a long moment before any of them could speak, and it was George Spires who breathed: “Good Lord!”
Sam Grell finally found his voice. “You’re saying the man would murder, kill twice, to turn a few dollars?”
“Not only twice, but he tried to make it three, Sam.” Gentry lifted a hand and, with his thumb, tapped his chest.
Clears asked: “Where is he now?”
“Still up there. Afoot and with a hole through his shoulder.”
Sam Grell was shaking his head with a look of complete bewilderment. “This is almost too much to take in. The man must be insane.”
“Did he...did you get to talk with him, make him admit anything, Dan?”
Gentry smiled thinly. “Not a thing, Mike. All we can do is guess. And so long as we’re doing that, here’s one to think over. If he threw in with the Apaches once, he could haves done it twice.” He looked around at Faith. “We know he lied about the hardware, stuck to his lie even after you’d been found. That looks to me like he’d planned it beforehand.”
Sam Grell asked sharply: “You’re saying he had Tipton’s wagons spotted for Sour Eye, Dan?”
“We were guessing, Sam.”
“How could that be when Tipton’s man backed Caleb’s story on the hardware?” George Spires wanted to know.
It was Clears who answered: “We know for sure that Shotwell took a bribe, lied about that hardware. And now it’s not too hard to believe Ash killed him to keep him from ever talking.
”
“Don’t make it any worse than it is, Mike.” Grell was eyeing Gentry then as he asked: “You’re sure about those tracks being Ash’s, Dan? They couldn’t have been Apache?”
“They could’ve been if you can find one with a foot as big as Caleb’s. Which you can’t.” Gentry looked at Clears, adding: “By the way, Mike, I lost you a good horse.”
Grell put in impatiently: “Tell us where Ash is, Dan. We’ll go up there and bring him in.”
“I can tell you where he was. But that won’t help. Too much like chasing a shadow. If you want him, put some men in his yard here in town and wait for him to show up tonight.”
The adjutant’s glance was puzzled. “You don’t think he’d come back here again with what we know about him now?”
When Gentry nodded, George Spires scoffed. “Not a chance, Dan. He’ll travel as far from here just as fast as he can.”
“You’re wrong, George. He’s made money, a lot of money. He’s cached it somewhere on his layout and he won’t leave without it. He killed for money, didn’t he? Killed more than once, even turned against his own people. So he’ll be back for the stake he took all the pains to collect. Tonight probably.”
Grell shook his head. “I don’t agree. George is right. If Ash is guilty of half the things we think, we’ll never see hide nor hair of him around here again. I’m going to send Peebles up there where you last saw him and track him down. It’ll be a duty Peebles will relish, by the way.” He glanced at Faith, adding: “Our green new lieutenant is already regretting his part in helping Ash convince the major you were Laura Reed, Miss Tipton. He mentioned it to me today. Said you were too nice-looking ever to be trying to rob anyone.”
“Even supposing Ash doesn’t come back,” Gentry insisted impatiently, “you’ll never find him, Sam. If he’s heading straight out, he’s probably already caught up one of those geldings he ran off the other night. So your only bet is to wait for him down here.”
“Just where did you leave him, Dan?”
Gentry sighed his exasperation, then grudgingly described the location of the malpais bed. But he finished by insisting: “I tell you, it’s a waste of time to look up there.”
“We’ll see.” Grell’s tone made it plain he wasn’t convinced. Gentry was about to protest further when the adjutant all at once came to the side of the bed and thrust out a hand, saying gravely: “Can you let an old friend say he’s sorry he didn’t keep his faith in you, Captain?”
Gentry’s angry look softened. He took the hand, answered its firm grasp, and a smile came to his face. “Not Captain any longer, Sam.”
“It may take only a day, or it may take a week. Or even a month,” Grell said. “But I’ll stake my commission on it being captain again. And soon.”
“And I’ll stake mine.” George Spires was shrugging into his coat and now he took his black bag from the table and came across to stand alongside Grell. “You’d like to be back with us, wouldn’t you, Dan?”
Gentry thought about that deliberately. At length he looked up at Grell. “It’s up to you, Sam. Keep Phil Fitzhugh strictly out of it and everything’ll be all right. But if you don’t, I wouldn’t....”
“But I will, Dan. That’s a promise. I’m getting busy on the wire the minute I get back up there.”
Gentry was feeling a vast relief, not even minding the pain in his leg now. With a brief glance in Faith’s direction, he asked: “Do I stay here?”
“You do,” Spires told him. “I’ll be down to see you again around seven. We can try some hot compresses on your leg then. Meantime, shed your clothes and catch some sleep.”
Gentry was still looking at Faith, and now she nodded, telling him: “Everything’s arranged, Dan. Sarah’s up the street right now telling Ralph he’s to stay in the hotel tonight. She and I are sharing the front room.”
“But....”
“No buts about it, Dan,” the medico interrupted severely. “The important thing is for you to get yourself mended. You can move out and into the room over Mike’s office three or four days from now. But, meantime, you’re to keep off that leg and give it a chance to heal.”
Spires and Grell went to the door now, Grell lifting a hand to Gentry and smiling as he led the way out with Faith. And after Gentry had listened to the doctor giving Faith several parting instructions in the kitchen, then to the closing of the outside door, he eyed Clears to ask: “Can’t you do anything about this, Mike?”
“Not a thing,” Clears replied in mock soberness.
Gentry sighed and gave a slow shake of the head. Then he thought of something that made him ask abruptly: “What time is it?”
The saloon man took a watch from his vest pocket and glanced at it. “Five-forty. Why?”
“No reason.” Gentry was looking toward the window beyond Clears, noticing that the shadows along the alley were lengthening. Then his glance shuttled about the room until finally he found what he was looking for — his gun belt hanging from a nail almost out of sight on the wall behind the open kitchen door. The cedar handle of the .44 showed above the top of the holster.
Clears, watching him, asked: “What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing,” Gentry drawled, covering that untruth by asking, querulously: “Why couldn’t they let you haul me up to your place instead of stranding me here with two women?”
Mike Clears grinned broadly. “From what I can make out, that won’t be too hard for you to take.” He came around from the foot of the bed now, chuckling at Gentry’s embarrassed look. “Want some help getting out of your clothes?”
“No. I’ll pull up a blanket and stay the way I am.”
“The sawbones said to shed ’em.”
Gentry shook his head. “That can wait till after he’s been back tonight.”
Clears shrugged and came over to unfold a blanket at the foot of the bed and spread it over Gentry. He went to the door then and paused there, looking around to say soberly: “I take it you’re damned lucky to be here, friend. Sometime you’ll have to tell me about it.”
“I will, Mike.”
The saloon man nodded and went out, closing the door softly. And afterward, for some minutes, Gentry lay there staring up at the new raw boards of the roof sheathing, his thoughts on something that kept him wide awake even though he was tired and his eyes heavy-lidded. He kept glancing impatiently toward the window, each time wondering why the light was fading so slowly against the oncoming dusk.
Abruptly he was startled at hearing a light tapping on his door. He called — “Come in, Faith.” — his soberness thawing as she opened the door and her slender shape stood there silhouetted by the stronger west light coming from the room beyond.
She came over to the bed and smiled at him. “You must be hungry, Dan. Can I bring you anything?”
“Later, maybe.” A thought made him match her smile. “Now don’t you wish you hadn’t dragged me in here?”
A strange seriousness was in her then. “There’s so little I’ve been able to do in all this, Dan,” she murmured. “Don’t try and take it away from me.”
He was noticing the way the light from the doorway outlined her head with a bright aura of spun gold and put her face in shadow so that it bore an even subtler delicacy than usual. Her beauty stirred him deeply. He knew his look must have betrayed the emotion in him when she said hurriedly: “I’ve been thinking of what you were trying to tell the captain about Ash, Dan.”
“What about it?”
“You really do believe he’ll be back, don’t you?”
“I did. Now I’m not so sure,” he lied.
“Why?”
Gentry ignored the question as she watched him closely.
All at once she sank down onto the bed beside him. “If he took all those chances, he might still take another, mightn’t he?” she asked.
She wanted an answer a
nd he saw that he had to give her one. So he drawled: “As long as Caleb lives he’ll take chances. But never foolish ones, Faith. He’s too wise an owl for that.”
“Would it be a foolish chance if he came back here tonight?”
Her glance was full on him, questioning, probing. That was his reason for saying very deliberately: “Look what he’d be up against. The town warned against him, maybe a trap laid for him. No, he won’t be back. I was wrong. Sam knew I was.”
Her expression lost some of its gravity and he saw that he had almost convinced her. But then she surprised him by saying: “He must hate you, hate you bitterly. You’re the one person who’s stood in his way. He would kill you if he could.” She turned and glanced toward the window, then faced him again to ask haltingly: “Would you mind if...could I just pull the blind down over the window?”
Gentry laughed softly. “Sure, pull it down.”
The look she gave him then was humble, asking him to understand. And, seeing that his words might have offended, he put a hand on hers and said soberly: “Try to forget Ash, Faith. He’s too busy saving his own hide to be thinking of making another try for mine.”
She smiled relievedly, and her fingers closed about his briefly. Then she rose from the bed, went to the window, and drew the shade down all the way to the sill. Back beside the bed again, she told him: “You can get a good hour’s rest before the doctor comes. And don’t worry about using this room. The Blakes understand. They’re both nice as can be.”
He nodded, easing further down onto the pillow. She went to the door, pausing there to say: “That must have hurt terribly, his getting the bullet out. Is it better now?”
“Much.”
“You’ll call if you need anything?”
“Sure will.”
She closed the door softly, and he listened to her steps fading out across the kitchen. For perhaps a minute he lay there wondering if he had really convinced her that her fear of Ash’s coming down here tonight was groundless. He wasn’t letting himself dwell upon the implication her worry had for him; something remained to be done before he could let himself weigh his feelings toward this girl or try and understand what she thought of him.