by Luke Short
Tully stripped out of his coat and said, “Why don’t we make this for something besides fun?”
“You sound like a money fighter, Junior,” Hodes said affably. “Sure. What’ll it be?”
“Got any money in your bank here?” Tully asked.
“I’m the majority stockholder.”
“Okay,” Tully said. “You lose and you go on my note for a ten-thousand, one-hundred-and-twenty-day loan.”
Hodes said swiftly, “That’s a deal—half of it anyway. What are you putting up?”
“Why naturally—the thing you seem to want—I won’t see Sarah again.”
Hodes snorted angrily. “That’s a hell of a bet.”
“That’s what we’re fighting over, isn’t it?”
Hodes scowled, trying to pin down Tully’s glibness. Tully was remembering Sarah’s words, If he ever had a thought, it would injure his brain. Liquor, excitement and his naturally slow process of thought had Hodes confused for a moment and now Tully taunted him, “Make up your mind, I’m getting cold. Besides, you’d probably welsh on the bet.”
Hodes lowered his head. “Junior, we’re talking too much. Let’s make it that bet and get to work.”
“What are we waiting for?” He stepped out toward Hodes, and with a delighted shout Hodes rushed in.
Tully crouched and in a driving block took Ben just above the knees, raising his back as he felt contact. Hodes’s feet, with no grip on the cinders and propelled by Tully’s weight, rose higher than his head as he sailed over Tully’s back. He tried to break his fall, failed and landed heavily on his shoulder and face in the cinders. A great grunt escaped him.
Tully was standing, hands at his side when Hodes came to his feet. Hodes lifted his shoulder and ducked his head to wipe the cinders from his cheek and then, almost as an afterthought, he looked at the shoulder of his white shirt. There was blood on it. Slowly he swiveled his glance to Tully, who said mockingly, “You’re clumsy, chum. No cigar for that try.”
A low animal sound of anger rose in Hodes’s throat and he came in, this time cautiously for the first few steps and then recklessly. Tully landed a blow in his face, rode with it inside his guard and gave him a shoulder in the chest before he stepped nimbly aside and clouted Hodes on his ear with the flat of his palm as Hodes lunged past.
Hodes wheeled and again charged, arms windmilling, his breath coming in labored sighs.
Tully knew that he was outweighed a good thirty pounds and that Hodes had a reach of many inches on him. He knew, too, that if he cut up Hodes’s face, the man’s vanity would push him to murder sooner or later. It was his broad unprotected belly that Tully aimed for then; his left hand was in the crook of Hodes’s elbow, and it checked the swing long enough for him to pivot inside against the bigger man’s body. He lifted a driving right into the middle of Hodes’s white shirt front and at the same time, he felt the jarring impact of Hodes’s face on the point of his shoulder.
He broke away swiftly, ducking Hodes’s reaching bear hug, and Hodes, thinking his man was evading him again, charged stubbornly.
Tully’s halt was too quick for him; Hodes walked face first into Tully’s locked and straightened left arm and it halted him with an abruptness that straightened out his knees. Tully saw his opening again and drove a wild, chancy right with all his might and anger behind it into Hodes’s belly. At the moment of impact, he caught Hodes’s roundhouse swing on his head. It knocked him flat and with head ringing, he rolled over on the cinders and was immediately on his feet.
But Hodes was down flat on his back, arms wrapped around his belly, knees almost touching his chin. He was gagging for air with an ugly sobbing noise. Tully walked over to him and was only then aware of Sarah Moffit standing against the closed corridor door. Tully said harshly, “Get back in there, you fool!”
A startled look came into Sarah’s eyes and she obeyed swiftly, and now Tully put his attention to Hodes. The big man rolled over on his knees and retched and presently came unsteadily to his feet, his back to Tully.
“Turn around, chum!” Tully said sharply.
Hodes wheeled heavily, his feet outspread to brace himself. His cut lip and myriad scratches on his face were bleeding, and now he wiped his cheek on his shirt with that same gesture of raising his shoulder. At sight of Tully standing relaxed and unmarked save for a smear of dirt across the right sleeve and front of his shirt, a sick discouragement was in Hodes’s eyes. His chest was heaving with his continuous effort to breathe.
He and Tully watched each other for still seconds and then Tully said, “You can always walk away from it, you know.”
Hodes felt a trickle of blood on his chin and he scraped it off with a slow angry gesture of his palm, but he made no move toward Tully. For ten long seconds Hodes regarded him, a baffled hatred in his eyes. Then, wordlessly he walked over to his coat, lifted it on his arm and walked out of the circle of lamp light into the darkness of the alley.
Wearily Tully tramped over and picked up his own coat and shrugged into it. He heard the corridor door open and Beth Hodes stepped out. She closed the door behind her and looked up and down the alley and finally at Tully. “Where is he?” she asked softly.
Tully inclined his head in the direction Hodes had taken and said nothing.
“Are you hurt?” Beth asked.
Tully said curtly, “Ask him,” wheeled and walked down the alley toward the hotel.
Sarah watched her Sunday School class scatter with subdued whoops down the musty basement corridor of the church, and then she glanced up through the unwashed window at the drizzle of rain outside. She suddenly made up her mind that there would be no sermon for her today. The church would be cold, smelling of wet wool and shoe polish, and she lacked the tranquility of spirit needed for the next hour.
On the church steps she raised her gay umbrella and resignedly breasted the tide of incoming churchgoers who greeted her with mild disapproval in their glances. Turning toward the business district and her apartment, she felt her spirits lift. Black Mountain ahead of her was shrouded in leaden clouds, and great mares’ tails of rain drifted down New York Gulch, but she had escaped the confining hour. Underfoot, the sidewalk was washed clean and the air was heavy with the smell of earth and wet leaves.
A half block ahead of her, Sarah saw her mother approaching. She was erect and in a hurry, lest she will be late for the service, but in her haste she had not forgotten that she was wearing her best hat, Sarah noticed, and her umbrella was low.
She seemed a little surprised to see Sarah, and halted.
“I’m a renegade this morning, Ma,” Sarah announced.
“Well, I put the roast in at quarter to eleven. You can fix the potatoes if you want.”
“How big’s the roast?”
Mrs. Moffit looked at her daughter carefully. Sarah knew her mother had been a beautiful girl once, and some of what made up that beauty—friendliness and understanding—was in her expression now. “Tremendous,” she announced. “Who’s it to be besides Kevin?”
“Sam, maybe, and maybe someone else, not Ben.”
“Well, that’s a comfort,” Mrs. Moffit said, and then added hastily, “Without his appetite, we’re sure to have enough.”
Her mother’s near slip brought a smile to Sarah’s face. She said, “You better hurry, Ma,” and they parted. Mrs. Moffit did not like Ben Hodes; she hadn’t liked him since he was a boy, although wild horses couldn’t have dragged this admission from her, Sarah knew. She also knew that her mother, in spite of all reassurances to the contrary from Sarah, was afraid that Sarah was serious about Ben.
The Moffit apartment was in the heart of the business district over Benbow’s furniture store. Five years ago, a year after her father’s death, Sarah and her mother had decided that the old Hawley house, a relic of the boom days inherited by Mrs. Moffit from her father, was no place for two women. They had exchanged its cavernous rooms, its heavy furniture, its wide lawn—none of which they could afford to keep up—for t
his spacious apartment. Between Sarah’s courthouse job and Mrs. Moffit’s library job, they lived comfortably.
Sarah climbed the stairs swiftly and let herself in, then halted abruptly inside the door. What’s my hurry? she wondered, as she strolled across the living room, slowly drawing off her gloves. Suddenly, she realized she was walking straight toward the phone stand. She sat on its chair, looking at the room. The furniture was new, modern but not daffy, and as bright as the day outside was dark, and suddenly she felt good and assured.
She made three phone calls then, one to Alec Bacchione asking him to pick up Kevin and deliver him here at one. The second call was to Sam Horne, editor and owner of the weekly Azurite Nugget. Before she made the third call, she lit a cigarette and stared thoughtfully across the room at the Picabia print on the far wall, aware suddenly that she might be heading straight for trouble.
Then she called the hotel and asked for Mr. Gibbs.
She had a moment’s wait while the clerk mounted to the second floor, and during that moment she almost hung up. This was foolish and pushing, she thought, and then she thought sternly, No it isn’t, it’s a peace offering.
“Hello.” Tully’s voice held reserve, almost suspicion.
“This is that damned fool you wouldn’t let into the alley last night,” Sarah said.
“Oh. How are you?” Still reserved.
“You took the very words out of my mouth.”
“Are you checking for your friend? If you are, tell him I had a good night’s sleep and I’m in the pink.”
“He can’t wait to hear,” Sarah said sweetly. She paused. “Are we through being nasty to each other? Because if we are, how would you like to have Sunday dinner with us?”
“Us?”
“Not Ben and me. Mother and Kevin and Sam Horne and me. Can’t you smell the roast?”
“Wonderful,” Tully said. “Thank you very much.”
“Come early—in about half an hour. I’ve got a couple of recipes I want to swap with you.”
She hung up, wondering what had prompted her to ask him to come early. She thought she knew. She wanted to ask him questions that he could not answer in front of the others.
She was busy in the kitchen preparing the potatoes when she heard the doorbell. She wiped her dripping hands on her apron, took a look at the unfinished work, and then knew she couldn’t pretend to be the leisurely hostess.
She did not remove her apron before she opened the door and stepped aside, holding out her hand. “Hi, Tully. Come in.” As he shook hands, she said, “Oh, heavens. How did you find us? I forgot to give you directions.”
Tully grinned faintly and shrugged out of his dripping topcoat. “The town’s not that big, is it?” he observed.
Sarah took his coat and hung it in the closet, and Tully looked around the gay room. “Who’d have thought it?” he murmured. “This is nice.” Then they both looked at each other, and Sarah saw the carefully concealed wariness in his pale eyes. But she liked his face. A little too thin, maybe, and his nose looked as though it might have been broken long ago. Somehow, it communicated a wonderful self-reliance without showing any cockiness or arrogance.
“Still mad?” she asked.
“I never was—at you.”
“Good. Come along and help. Ma’s at church and I’m cook.”
She led him down the corridor between the two bedrooms and out into the kitchen where she pointed to a stool in the corner. “Take the easy chair. Do you like martinis?”
Tully was slow in answering, and she turned to surprise a look of puzzlement on his face. “Sure.”
“Want to make some?”
“I thought you drank cokes—seven, to be exact, last night.”
“That’s just on Saturday night. Everybody drinks on Saturday night by appointment, as if it were a ritual. I just don’t like to be told when I want a drink, when maybe I don’t want it. That’s not the idea of alcohol, is it?”
“I guess not,” Tully said, and he grinned in agreement.
Sarah pointed to the liquor cabinet and Tully busied himself making a shaker of martinis. Sarah was aware that he was watching her as she worked, as if he were a little uncertain about her and this invitation, too. Once she had everything under control, she turned to him and said, “Want to go in the living room?”
“I like it here,” Tully said. They sat down in the spacious dining alcove and Tully poured their drinks.
Sarah raised her glass. “Here’s to crime.”
They both drank to that, and then Tully asked idly, “Have fun last night?”
“As a matter of fact I did. Once Ben went home, I got awfully popular.” She laughed shortly. “Maybe the boys ought to retain you for the Elks dances.”
Tully reached in the breast pocket of his sports jacket and pulled out a big cigar. A red ribbon was tied around it. “I found that in my box this morning. The clerk said Alec Bacchione left it.”
They both laughed at that. Sarah sipped her drink, wondering how to bring the conversation around to where she wanted it, when Tully did it for her.
“Did I hear you say old Kevin was coming for dinner?” At her nod, he asked, “Is that on my account?”
“Partly—except that he comes almost every Sunday. That way, we can be sure he has at least one decent meal a week.”
“But why partly on my account?”
“Well, you came here to see him, didn’t you?”
Tully nodded.
“Then, too,” Sarah went on, “I want to be around when you talk mining to him.”
Tully scowled. “Last night, you didn’t want me to.”
“I still don’t—but I know you will.”
Tully slowly turned the martini glass on the table top, and he regarded her with quiet belligerence. “Look here. What’s the matter with me? What have I done wrong?”
“Nothing. Only you don’t add up,” Sarah said quietly. “For instance, how well did you know Jimmy Russel?”
“As well as a pilot knows his radarman. As well as you’d know anyone you were in trouble with.”
“Did you like him?”
She saw a swift calculation rise in Tully’s pale eyes. “No,” he said.
“Yet you got a Silver Star for pulling him out of a flaming plane when both your legs were broken.”
Tully scowled. “Who told you that?”
“The honor guard at Jimmy’s funeral.”
Tully shrugged, and Sarah watched him begin to light a cigarette with care, then remembered her and offered her one. She took one, and he lighted both his and hers, then leaned back against the wall.
“Whether I liked him had nothing to do with that. You’d pull a mad dog out of a burning plane before you’d let that happen to him.”
“I can see that,” Sarah agreed. “Still, I can’t see you coming to this remote spot and looking up Jimmy’s father. You’d do it for a friend, but would you do it for someone you didn’t like?”
“I have,” Tully said shortly.
“That’s what I mean. Why?”
Tully shrugged, and glanced thoughtfully out the window at the slow drizzle. When his glance returned to hers, Sarah saw an added sharpness to it.
“How well did you know Jimmy?” he asked.
“Very well. He was the most detestable brat, the worst son and most contemptible creature I’ve ever known. His mother died when he was born. Kevin had to work and still try and raise him. The neighbors took turns, and one by one they gave up. He stole, he lied, and he bullied. By the time he was fourteen Kevin couldn’t lick him anymore. After that, he ran about as wild as a kid can and still stay out of jail. Don’t tell me Marines aren’t like that because he was, and he was a Marine, too.”
“I won’t try to. But what would you say if I told you that Jimmy asked me to come?”
“Favor to a dying man?”
“Put it that way if you want.”
Sarah smiled. “I’d say what Jimmy said: You’re a pretty good guy.”
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nbsp; She wasn’t prepared for the furious flush of embarrassment that colored Tully’s face, and she watched him with a kind of pity.
He gulped his drink and then asked bluntly, “Does that help me add up?”
Sarah nodded. “Only in one column, though.”
“Go head.”
“Last night, you acted so coy, so surprised when I asked you if you were going to mine Kevin’s claims. But the second thing you did when you hit town was to go have a look at them.”
“You’re wrong,” Tully said dryly. “The second thing I did when I hit town was turn down your invitation to fight Ben Hodes.”
It was Sarah’s turn to blush, but she said stubbornly, “All right, the third thing, then. Why pretend this elaborate lack of interest in the Vicksburg Claims when you were in such a lather to look at them?”
“Look,” Tully said earnestly. “If I’d been a hat designer before the war, I wouldn’t have given these claims a second thought. But I’m a miner. So was Jimmy. We talked a lot about those claims. I used to kid him about being a millionaire. All right, when I come into his country and I’m close to the claims, what am I supposed to do? Sit in my hotel room with a good book?”
Sarah laughed in spite of herself. “Then you aren’t interested in them?”
“If you mean, am I out to steal them or buy them or lease them, the answer is no.”
“Okay. The second column adds up, too,” Sarah said. She sipped at her drink; they were regarding each other almost warily, and Sarah, feeling a sudden guilt at cross-examining him, rose and made an unnecessary trip to look at the roast.
When she returned to her seat, Tully said, “Mind if I hold the pistol now? I want to ask you some questions.”
“Go ahead.”
“Alec told me Hodes had made an offer—a low offer on those claims. He said Kevin turned it down.” He paused. “Could it be you’re fighting off the rabble until your favorite character can starve Kevin into accepting his offer?”