Sunset Trail

by Wayne D. Overholser

  Nora got up. She didn’t say anything as she turned to the bureau and started brushing her hair. Matt watched her a moment, sensing that she was close to the breaking point. He wasn’t sure she could hold up through these next five or six hours, listening to the excited chatter of a dozen women while they made sandwiches and not be able to do or say anything that would give away their secret. That was up to her. He would have his own problem trying to carry on the bank’s business.

  He left the bedroom, closing the door behind him. Sammy Bean was sitting up on the couch, yawning loudly and rubbing his eyes. Matt said to Smith: “She’ll be along in a minute.”

  He went into the kitchen, found that the water in the teakettle was hot, and decided he had better shave. He’d get out of the house as soon as breakfast was over. Everyone would be safer if that were the case. He realized that his nerves were tightening and that he was about as close to losing his self-control as Nora was.

  His right hand, which held the razor, was shaky and he nicked himself on the cheek. By the time he finished shaving and had washed the lather from his face, the bleeding had stopped. Nora came into the kitchen, glanced at him, and opened her mouth to say something, then closed it and went on into the pantry. Smith stood in the doorway watching, smiling as if he found this an amusing situation.

  “Get the girl up,” Smith said. “I want her dressed and ready to entertain the sheriff if he comes in.”

  Matt nodded and went upstairs. Ross Hart was not in sight. He was probably still in bed in Nora’s sewing room. Matt opened Jean’s door and stepped into her room. She woke at once, startled, and sat up. Seeing who it was, she sighed and rubbed her eyes.

  “Are they still here?” she whispered.

  “They’re still here,” Matt said. “The next four or five hours will be the hard ones. Smith wants you to get dressed and come downstairs. You’ll have to entertain Jerry if he stops, and he probably will.”

  Matt hesitated, thinking about Corrigan’s temper. If he caught on to what was happening, he’d blow everything wide open. He added: “You’ve got to fool Jerry into thinking that nothing’s wrong. It’ll take the best job of acting you ever did.”

  She nodded. “I’ll do the best I can, but you know how Jerry is.”

  “Yes, I know,” Matt said.

  He returned to the kitchen. Nora was frying bacon and eggs, and making toast in the oven. When they were done, she said: “Butter the toast, will you, Matt?”

  He nodded. As soon as he finished, Smith said: “Put Ross Hart’s breakfast on a plate. He’s staying upstairs. Sammy will take it to him.”

  Nora obeyed and Sammy Bean left the kitchen with the plate and a cup of coffee. Nora motioned toward the table. “Sit down,” she said.

  “Aren’t you going to eat with us, Missus Dugan?” Smith asked with feigned solicitude.

  “A cup of coffee is all I want,” Nora said.

  She poured her coffee and stood at the stove, sipping it, her gaze on Smith as if he had hypnotized her. Smith laughed softly as he sat down and filled his plate. He said: “I hope it’s not my company that blunted your appetite, Missus Dugan. You would find me quite charming if you gave me a chance.”

  “I’ve read that in Ceylon they make pets out of cobras,” Nora said, “but I wouldn’t do it.”

  Smith frowned. Matt kept on eating, but he covertly watched the outlaw. He wished Nora would keep her mouth shut. There was nothing to be gained by insulting Smith and for a moment Matt thought the man was going to take Nora’s remark as an insult. Then he shrugged and smiled.

  “I believe she’s complimenting me,” Smith said. “A cobra is dangerous, so I assume Missus Dugan is aware that I am dangerous.” He reached for the toast, glancing at Nora, then he brought his gaze to Matt. “See to it that your sheriff doesn’t hang around here all morning. If he hasn’t showed up by the time you leave, tell your girl.”

  “He won’t stay,” Matt said. “He’ll have plenty to do downtown and around the courthouse.”

  He hesitated, thinking of a question that had been in and out of his mind from the time Jerry Corrigan had got him out of bed during the night. Smith probably wouldn’t answer it, but he decided to ask anyway. “What was bothering Corrigan last night when he asked me about Ross Hart? Does he know anything about Hart?”

  Smith grinned. “Sure he does. At least the name meant something to him. You see, the real Ross Hart was twenty-one, he was small and red-headed, and he was a killer. I suppose your young sheriff either remembered that much about him or he went through his Reward dodgers and read his description. The man upstairs is not really Ross Hart, but we’ll call him that. Not that it makes any difference, but his first name is Ross.”

  “I don’t savvy,” Matt said. “Why did you pick that name?”

  “The real Ross Hart was killed a few days ago in a gunfight in Nogales,” Smith said, “but it wasn’t in the papers, so I was sure nobody up here would have heard about it. The idea was that you and your family would recognize the name and be properly intimidated.” Smith grinned wryly. “I was wrong. The name didn’t mean a damned thing to any of you, so it wasn’t a good idea, after all.”

  Matt rose as Jean came into the kitchen. He said: “I’d better get along to the bank.”

  “Yes, I think you had,” Smith agreed. “I’ve got one more thing to tell you. I want your daughter to hear it, too. The man upstairs is as much of a killer as the real Ross Hart. Don’t let what I told you change anything.” He nodded at Jean. “He would kill a woman as soon as he would a man.”

  “Damn it,” Matt shouted, “have you got to keep piling it on? We’ll play your game and we’ll go on playing it until we get a chance. . . .”

  He stopped and took a long breath. Smith was baiting him, he thought, and he had let his temper run away with him for a few seconds. All he had done was to give Smith a little satisfaction.

  “You won’t get a chance at anything, Dugan,”Smith said, smiling again. “We do have to keep piling it on. We don’t want you to forget, not for even one small part of a minute.”

  Matt turned to Nora. “You ready to go?”

  Nora was looking at Jean. Smith nodded as if he understood. “She’ll be quite safe, Missus Dugan, as long as you remember what your husband said about playing the game.”

  “I couldn’t forget if I tried,” Nora said, and, snatching an apron off a nail behind the stove, ran out of the room.

  Matt caught up with her in the hall. She stopped to wait for him, her gaze on him as he put his battered Stetson on his head. She asked in a low tone: “Will they rape her and kill her? Will she be alive when we come home at noon? And if she is, will she be a babbling idiot?”

  “We have to believe she’ll be all right,” he said.“It’s the only way we can keep her and Bud alive.”

  White-faced, Nora nodded, and walked out of the house, her head high. Matt followed her, suddenly proud. She’s going to be all right, he thought. This was the front she would show Hannah Talbot and the rest of the women through the morning as they made sandwiches in the Methodist church.

  XVI

  Corrigan met Matt and Nora Dugan half a block from their house. He touched the brim of his hat as he nodded at Nora, and said: “Good morning.”

  They stopped, Nora saying: “Good morning, Jerry.” Matt remained silent, but he gave Corrigan a questioning look as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t decide whether he should or not.

  but couldn’t decide whether he should or not. “Sorry about getting you out of bed last night, ”Corrigan said. “I’d heard about an outlaw named Ross Hart. It’s not a real common name and I started thinking maybe this was the same man, so then I got to worrying about him being in your house.”

  “He’s not the one,” Matt said. “I asked Smith about it and he said the outlaw Ross Hart had been killed in a gunfight in Nogales a few days ago.”

  “I hadn’t heard about that,” Corrigan said, wondering whether it was true and how Smith ha
ppened to know. He thought about saying that Smith struck him as being something he wasn’t, then decided not to. If the man really was a cousin, Nora might be insulted and the last thing he wanted to do was to insult his future mother-in-law. “I guess I’ll go in and see if Jean can find me a cup of coffee. That is, if she’s up.”

  “Oh, she’s up, all right,” Nora said. “Well, I’ve got to run along, Jerry, or Hannah Talbot will be looking for me.”

  Nora walked past him, moving toward the Methodist church in her usual graceful manner. Corrigan, his gaze following her, thought she could have been a queen. She was a mature woman, yet somehow she managed to give an appearance of youth. Then it struck him that she had been unusually pale.

  “Is Nora sick?” Corrigan asked. “She looked a little puny.”

  Matt hesitated, then he said: “She’s just upset. You’d look puny, too, if you had to work with Hannah Talbot all morning.”

  Corrigan laughed. “I reckon I would at that. Well, I’ll go see about that cup of coffee.”

  “Jerry.” Matt threw out a hand to stop him, then hesitated again as if not sure whether he should say what he wanted to say. Finally he blurted: “Damn it, I don’t want you to think I’m trying to tell you how to do your job, but I wish you wouldn’t stay with Jean very long. I guess I’m a little boogery with this crowd in town and the money for the dam in the bank and all.”

  Corrigan nodded. “I know what you mean. Uncle Pete Fisher was on my back just a minute ago. He wants to keep the governor out of town, but, hell, I can’t do that. I turned the Owl Creek bunch loose and told ’em to get out of town and stay out. They were making some wild threats last night against the governor. Now I dunno. Maybe I should have kept ’em in the jug.”

  “It’s just that I’ll feel better knowing you’re where the crowd is,” Matt said.

  “I’ll be there,” Corrigan promised, and went on past Matt toward the Dugan place.

  Corrigan knew that he was jumpy, too, and he wasn’t sure why. He thought about it as he walked through the gate and along the path to the front door. It wasn’t Uncle Pete Fisher’s warning or the threats the Owl Creek men had made. Maybe, like Matt, it was just having so many people in town for the celebration and having the money in the bank, and knowing, too, that so much depended on the day’s going right.

  No, he decided, it was more than that. Perhaps it was this business of having a man named Ross Hart in the house, a man he hadn’t seen, and then Smith’s story that the outlaw had been killed in Nogales. And he couldn’t get the haunting notion out of his mind that Smith himself was a phony and Jean was shut up in the house with Ross Hart and a fellow named Sammy Bean who looked like an idiot.

  He opened the front door and called: “Jean!” He’d get her out of here, he told himself. He didn’t know how, but he’d do it.

  “Here, Jerry,” Jean answered. “Back in the kitchen.”

  He went through the house to the kitchen. Bud wasn’t in sight, but John Smith was sitting at the table smoking a cigar, and Sammy Bean was across from him wolfing down his breakfast.

  “Good morning, Sheriff,” Smith said. “Did you get done prowling last night and go to bed?”

  “Yeah, I went back to bed,” Corrigan answered. “How are you, Bean?”

  Sammy Bean looked up from his plate and mumbled something that might have been: “Good morning.” His mouth was too full of eggs and bacon to say anything distinctly. He wasn’t an idiot. Not at all. His eyes were too sharp and cold and cruel. An animal, perhaps a weasel, but not an idiot.

  Bean lowered his gaze again and jammed another bite into his mouth, then rose and hurriedly left the kitchen. He was the kind who instinctively hated law and lawmen. Corrigan wondered if the mere presence of a sheriff in the same room with Bean had been enough to make him uneasy.

  Corrigan glanced at Smith who was puffing away on his cigar as if he were perfectly satisfied with life and didn’t have a worry in the world. Obviously he wasn’t concerned about being in the same room with a sheriff.

  Jean set a cup of hot coffee in front of Corrigan. “What’s this about being on the prowl?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t anything,” Smith said. “I couldn’t sleep last night and I was sitting on the front porch when our young friend showed up and made me get your dad out of bed to answer some silly question about Ross Hart.”

  Corrigan’s temper flared and he opened his mouth, but he closed it before the hot words poured out. To Smith the question might have seemed silly. Besides, maybe Smith really was a cousin, and, if that was true, Corrigan didn’t want to quarrel with him for Jean’s sake. But Smith did have a way with him, a way of making Corrigan look foolish without saying so.

  “If Jerry asked a question in the middle of the night, it wasn’t silly,” Jean said sharply. “Will you have another cup of coffee?”

  “No, thank you, Jean,” Smith said. “At the moment my cigar is all the nourishment I need. How are things downtown, Sheriff? Got a big crowd this early in the morning?”

  “Not yet,” Corrigan said, “but there will be.”

  “I should think you’d need to circulate around,” Smith said in an offhand manner. “You know, just let folks know the law was on the job.”

  “I’ll be there,” Corrigan said shortly, wondering what business it was of Smith’s whether he was there or here. “Where’s Bud, Jean? Looks like he’d be up early on a day like this.”

  For a moment he sensed that Jean was terrified, For a moment he sensed that Jean was terrified, her gaze whipping to Smith and back to him as if this question was one she couldn’t handle. Smith said: “He’s under the weather, Corrigan. Nora said for him to stay in bed until he felt better. You know how it is with kids on the Fourth of July and Christmas and big days like that. They get worked up.”

  “I’ve got a headache myself, Jerry,” Jean said. “I’m going to stay home.”

  This was too much. Corrigan said irritably: “You never had a headache in your life.”

  “I didn’t until this morning,” Jean said. “Maybe Bud and I are coming down with something. I just don’t feel like doing anything.”

  “She couldn’t eat any breakfast,” Smith said. “If she hadn’t felt she had to wait on us, she probably would have stayed in bed like Bud did.”

  “I suppose you’ll be out buying cattle this morning,” Corrigan said.

  Smith rose and, going to the stove, tossed his cigar stub into it. “To tell the truth, Sheriff, I’m a little undecided. Like I told you last night, I had hoped to get a loan from Matt’s bank, but he’s not at all favorable. I couldn’t bring myself to come right out and ask him, but I hinted and he sure hinted right back. Maybe we’ll have to ride home to Grand Junction without any cattle.”

  “Why don’t you run along, Jerry?” Jean asked. “My head is splitting and I know I’m not good company.”

  Corrigan rose. Matt and then Smith and now Jean had all suggested that he get back to his business downtown. Bud might be sick in bed, but Corrigan didn’t believe for a minute that Jean had a headache.

  “All right,” Corrigan said, “I’ll take a sashay around town. I’ll drop in later, Jean. I want to keep tabs on your headache.”

  “I’ll be in bed,” she warned.

  He nodded at Smith who was fishing in his coat pocket for another cigar. Smith nodded back absently as if his mind was on the loan he wasn’t getting from the bank. Corrigan walked into the front room thinking that this might be on the level, that maybe Smith had come here to take advantage of his relationship with Nora to borrow money from the bank. Now it was embarrassing all around.

  Sammy Bean was sitting on the couch, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He didn’t say anything as Corrigan crossed the room to the hall door, but his eyes were pinned on Corrigan all the way to the door.

  Suddenly Corrigan had a feeling that sent a chill raveling down his spine. All it would take to start the guns roaring would be a fast, threatening motion on his part. He
didn’t know why this hunch had come to him unless it was the cold, animal-like stare that Sammy Bean had given him, but the hunch was there and he had learned a long time ago to pay attention when a hunch like this came. If it reached the shooting stage, Jean might be killed. For the moment at least, he had to act as if he didn’t suspect anything was wrong.

  He left the house, knowing this wasn’t on the level at all, but how did you find out what was going on when all you had was a hunch? Sure, it added up with Bud staying in bed on a morning when too much was going on for a boy to miss and Jean having a headache when she had never had a headache in her life as far as he knew and Nora who was usually the picture of health looking as pale as if she were deathly sick.

  He paused when he reached the boardwalk. Maybe Nora could and would tell him what was going on. At least, he could talk to her without John Smith’s hearing every word and Sam Bean’s watching him with those cold, weasel eyes of his.

  Corrigan turned toward the Methodist church and began to run, sure now that it wasn’t just the prospect of working with Hannah Talbot all morning that had made Nora look the way she had.

  XVII

  Governor Wyatt and Tom Henry ate breakfast by lamplight with Dick Miles in the hotel dining room at Burlington. None felt like talking at this hour. The waitress yawned and rubbed her eyes as she went back to the kitchen with their order.

  Wyatt smiled, knowing exactly how the girl felt. He hadn’t had a night’s sleep for weeks and more weeks would pass before he did. He wondered as he had so many times why he or any man sought a political office only to be criticized and threatened and poorly paid.

  Of course, he had better reasons than most politicians had. As a matter of fact he wasn’t a politician at all. He was a Populist and that made him a crusader of sorts with new ideas and a new program. This made him suspect to most people who were opposed to new ideas because they were afraid of what the future would bring, so afraid that some of them actually were plotting to murder him.