by Lauran Paine
Tom would have moved past but only the infirmity of his prolonged siege with a bed was bothering him now—weak legs.
“You are a fool,” Spence said, squinting upward. “A fool and a hero, eh? Not afraid. No, sir, you are not afraid he will return for another try . . . and that’s why you are a fool. Of course he will try again. He didn’t get caught, did he?” The doctor’s squint spread over his entire screwed-up face. “A fool, a hero, a rugged physical specimen, but more than any of those things, you are a fine hater.” Spence swiped at his damp forehead. “Do you know what a hater is, Barker? No? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s a man without reason. No reasoning animal hates as deeply and for as long a time as you have. No reasoning animal . . . but you aren’t a reasoning animal, are you? You’re a cold, merciless, unreasoning hater.”
“You’re drunk,” Tom said coldly.
Spence absorbed this philosophically. “Of course I’m drunk. Why shouldn’t I be? I studied nine years to become a great surgeon and I’ve spent thirty years in this infernal country digging bullets out of people. I’ve wasted an entire human lifetime, digging bullets out of carcasses so damned ignorant . . . most of ’em . . . that they couldn’t even write their own names. Of course I’m drunk.” The doctor looked around for something to lean against or sit upon, found nothing, and faced Tom again, weaving a little from side to side. “You want me to unbosom myself, as they say in the theater?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m going to anyway, my boy. I’m going to anyway.” He drew in a big breath and exhaled it slowly. He squared his shoulders and threw back his head. “I’m going to tell you something you don’t know, big man. I’m going to watch you shrink down to my size.”
Tom’s legs felt better; he started past. Dr. Spence reached out and caught him in a tight grip.
“Just a minute, Barker. I’m going to tell you this if it’s the last damned thing I ever do.”
“Take your hand off my arm, Doctor, or it just might be the last thing you ever do.”
“Ho!” Spence hooted. “You’d shoot me, would you?” But he removed his hand. Then his face smoothed out and his eyes burned with a strange and sardonic light. “You recollect the night your mother left this damned town, Barker?”
Tom made no reply. His mouth turned slowly flat and dangerous-looking.
“I see you remember all right,” Spence said, grinning. “Know what I think? That’s mostly what’s eating at your innards. Well, let me tell you something about that . . .”
“Doc!”
Sheriff Pollard’s voice cracked like a whip. Dr. Spence started, turned his head to watch the lawman come up, then, without another word, he started away from Tom. Just before he turned down an alley, he halted, looked back, drew himself up, and squared his shoulders, then passed from sight between two buildings. Tom’s throat felt as though it was full of ashes.
“He gets kind of windy every once in a while,” Pollard remarked, stopping to face Tom, his voice back to normal. “Too bad. I expect that’s why he hangs on here ’stead of going back East where the money is.”
Tom’s black stare was unwavering and knife-sharp. “Why’d you shut him up like that?” he demanded.
“Pshaw, boy, he was makin’ a spectacle of himself, bein’ drunk an’ disorderly.”
“It was more than that, Sheriff.”
Pollard’s inscrutably squinted eyes remained mild. “Naw,” he protested. “What else could it have been?”
“Whatever he was on the verge of telling me.”
Pollard shook his head without speaking, and Tom, studying his face, came to the slow realization that Tim Pollard would never tell anything he did not want to tell. He turned abruptly away and resumed his way toward the bank.
Elihu Gorman was not in. There was another man waiting to see him; it was Judge Montgomery and he looked annoyed. When he saw Tom enter the building, he snapped at a clerk: “Tell him I want to see him this evening.”
Tom watched the judge depart, then collared the same clerk. “Gorman in?”
“No, sir. He went out into the country. I don’t think he’ll be back until pretty late.”
“Tell him Tom Barker wants to see him.”
“Yes, sir.”
Once more on the plank walk, Tom met Tex. They spoke together briefly, and Tex was starting away, toward the livery stable, when three unkempt men came out of a saddle and boot shop nearby. Tex swung wide to avoid a collision and noticed only that they were freighters. He would normally have forgotten them but one made a grunt at sight of Tom and sang out unpleasantly: “The big man himself.”
Tex turned. He could see Tom’s face over the head of the shortest, thickest of the freighters. It was white to the eyes.
“Come ridin’ out o’ nowhere,” the freighter went on. “Come ridin’ into Beatty plumb loaded down with money. Goin’ t’be top lash. Hah!”
The tallest of the three freighters was Clinton Ingersoll. He stood slouched now, one hand hanging free, the other hand hooked in his shell belt. He was smiling with naked hatred in each line of his face. But it was neither Clint nor the other young freighter who spoke; it was the grizzled older man between them. “Top lash o’ Beatty . . .”
Tom started to turn away. Six feet behind the freighters Tex was rooted to the ground. He had never before seen dark Tom Barker walk away from a fight, and it was very clear the freighters were enjoying his discomfort immensely. It was also clear to Tex that their intention was to force a fight.
“Hey, big man,” the grizzled freighter said. “Where you goin’?”
Tom made no answer, but continued to move off.
Clint Ingersoll spoke one word then: “Bastard.”
Tex’s eyes sprang wide. Tom was turning; the whiteness of his face let that one word sink into dead silence.
“Go ahead,” Ingersoll said, his meaning very clear.
Tex flexed his gun hand while the stillness ran on. The freighters in front of him, concentrating their full attention upon Tom, were oblivious to the danger in their rear. Tom was not going to fight. Tex could see that. He was not even going to speak. Tex’s mouth went dry with distaste; anger burned in him. He said very thinly: “Turn around, Ingersoll. I’ll oblige you.”
The grizzled freighter’s shoulders stiffened but he made no move. The other, younger man, licked his lips, the light of battle dying in his eyes. Clint turned slowly.
“Any time,” Tex said, and, when Ingersoll made no move, his lips curled in scorn. “Big talk, Ingersoll. Big talk when you figured it’d be three to one. Go ahead, make your play.”
Ingersoll stood erect, his jaw hard-set and grim. He was not a fast-thinking man and this situation was something he could not cope with—a fast gun behind him, another fast gun in front of him. If he got one, he could not hope to get the other one. He licked his lips, the decision forced upon him. “I got no fight with you,” he said.
“Well, now,” Tex replied sardonically, seeing it plain in Ingersoll’s face that he was not going to go for his gun. “That’s where you’re wrong. I’m a mite partial to that name you called Tom Barker. I just naturally figure to fight whenever I hear it, Ingersoll.”
“I wasn’t talkin’ to you, feller.”
“Don’t mean nothin’, Ingersoll. Like I said, I’m just plain partial to that word.”
“I won’t draw,” Ingersoll said hoarsely.
“Why then I expect I’ll just kill you anyway . . . you yellow swine!”
Tom was moving forward; he stopped close to Clint Ingersoll, his hand moved down and up, and Ingersoll’s gun thudded across the plank walk into the roadway. Tex straightened up very slowly, face reddening. He looked squarely at Tom, saying nothing. Now the other two freighters turned to look at Tex, and Tom disarmed them the same way.
“No fight, Tex. Come on.”
The freighters continued to stare at Tex as though imprinting his features upon their memories. The older man was a vicious and dissolute-looking person. Tex had seen mu
rder in men’s eyes before and he recognized it now.
“Better give ’em back their guns, Tom,” he said past stiff lips. “I ain’t like you. I ain’t goin’ to give ’em a second chance to kill me.”
Tom prodded the freighters. “Go on,” he said. “Move off and don’t stop.”
Ingersoll led out, imminent peril sharpening his perception. The other two men followed him in stony silence. Tom watched them go along the walk as far as the Mexican café on the west side of the road and turn in there, then he finally relaxed.
Tex, round eyes speculative, lingered a moment waiting for the distance between them to be broken. When it was not, when it became hard to bear, he struck out for the Queens & Aces Café without a backward glance. He knew Tom was still standing there by the boot and saddle shop, looking into the glittering daylight.
“Excuse me.”
Tex’s head jerked up. “Ma’am,” he said harshly, avoiding a collision, but still moving.
“Sir . . . ?”
He stopped, focused his eyes with an effort and touched his hat unconsciously. It was the handsome girl he’d seen Tom walk away from the dance with. The girl Tom’d kissed in the shadows of the old cottonwood tree. The judge’s daughter.
“I saw what happened over there,” she said, looking squarely into his face.
“Did you, ma’am?”
“You’re a friend of Tom Barker’s.” She saw the shadow cloud his vision. “I think I know what you’re thinking.”
He was icily polite. “Do you, ma’am?”
“You’re thinking he lost his nerve, that he was afraid to fight them.”
Tex remained silent, looking down into her face with his bleak expression.
“But there is something you don’t know. Something that was happening over there that goes back many years.”
Much of the hostility left him; he slouched; he even smiled slightly at her. His condescension annoyed her; he saw that, too, in the smoky flare of her glance. “Ma’am,” he said quietly, “a feller calls you a name like that, you fight. It don’t matter what else there is, you fight.”
She turned ironic. “Do you indeed? Would you have killed all three of them?”
“The odds don’t mean nothing, ma’am. You fight, that’s all there is to it.”
“Even,” she said slowly, “if one of those men is your father?”
XIII
Tom was lying on his bed staring at the ceiling when Elihu Gorman knocked on the door. He called for him to enter and sat up.
“Good evening,” the banker said.
Tom nodded, ran a hand through his hair, and motioned for the banker to be seated.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Yeah. Where you been all day, Gorman?”
Elihu would have resented Tom’s question and tone if he had dared to, but he did not; he had just come from a bitter visit with Judge Montgomery. “Out in the country,” he replied.
“Looking for hay?”
“What?”
“Looking for hay for the judge?”
“Well,” Gorman said a little breathlessly, “why would I be doing that, Mister Barker?”
Tom leaned back, gazed briefly out at the settling night, then turned a worn and tired expression toward the banker. “Because you need his friendship, Gorman, that’s why.”
“Of course his friendship is valuable,” the banker retorted with some heat. “He’s one of our more substantial citizens, Mister Barker.”
“So you were out looking for hay for him.”
Gorman reddened. “See here, Mister Barker . . .”
Tom made a tired gesture. “Cut it out, Gorman. You got forty thousand dollars from the judge to buy Finnerty’s mortgage from the bank. You engineered Finnerty’s foreclosure. You had it all set up to resell Finnerty’s place to Evan Houston, the biggest cowman in these parts.”
Elihu’s working face was pale; his eyes were round and fearful.
“And you’ve got to get the judge to go along with you because you can’t repay the loan and interest on time.” Tom took out his tobacco sack, considered it a moment, then returned it to his pocket. Although he felt fine, his lung was not yet healed. As he went on speaking, though, the longing for a smoke persisted.
“That’s the secured loan you talked to me about. You figured if you could get forty thousand from me for two years at low interest, the worst that would happen would be that you and Moses could pay it off. On the other hand, if anything happened to Gerald Finnerty in those two years, you could still get his ranch, sell it to Houston, make your big profit, and still come out smelling like roses.” Tom’s expression hardened. His steady stare remained on the banker’s face. “If anything happens to Finnerty, Gorman, you’re not going to be around to make any big deal with Houston.”
“Barker . . .”
“Shut up and listen.”
Gorman subsided. He was sitting very erect in the chair.
“Did you get the hay?”
No answer.
“Did you get the hay?”
“No,” Gorman breathed softly, “no, I did not.”
“Couldn’t scare anyone into selling?”
“I didn’t try to scare them, Barker.”
“Of course you didn’t,” said Tom dourly. “The local banker drives up. Any cowman who has ever borrowed money from you or thinks he might have to someday begins to sweat. You didn’t have to scare them, did you?”
Gorman was thinking. His face gradually resumed its normal expression. He cleared his throat and spread both hands out toward Tom. “Barker, you want to make money and so do I. I’ll tell you how it can be done. Big money, Barker.”
“I’m listening.”
“You have Finnerty’s note.”
“Go on.”
“You can use it as leverage to get his ranch.”
“And?”
“I’ve got Evan Houston all ready to buy the Finnerty place at seventy-five thousand dollars cash.” Gorman leaned back, watching Tom’s face. He could tell nothing from the blank expression, nor from the unwavering dark eyes. The silence ran on; Gorman began to squirm on his chair. “Well?”
“I’ll tell you a better way to get out from under your trouble, Gorman. Get a bill of sale to Moses Beach’s store and use it as collateral for borrowing more money.”
“How would that help?”
“It wouldn’t help you, Gorman, but it’d sure help me.” Tom straightened up on the bed. “I want Beach’s scalp, Gorman. I also want Judge Montgomery’s scalp. The only thing I’ve got against you is that you’re on their side of the fence. You can break Beach with a note on his store.”
“But . . .”
“Listen, Gorman, you keep on crossing me for those two and you’re going to wind up pretty badly used up.” The banker started to arise. Tom stopped him with a gesture. “I spotted you for a worse crook than a stage robber the first time we met. What you just suggested I do to Gerald Finnerty clinches it for me. Now, I’m going to give you a choice of leaving Beatty on the next stage or of getting called out the next time we meet.”
Gorman sprang to his feet, eyes blazing. “You’re a fool and an idiot, Barker. Moses Beach told me all about you.”
“That shouldn’t have taken him long,” Tom replied dryly, also arising. “All that he remembers was that he wouldn’t help a little kid because it might’ve interfered with his storekeeping.” Tom reached out and tapped Gorman on the chest with his finger. The banker backed quickly away, not from the finger but from the strange, black light in the big man’s eyes. “Gorman, you’re a pretty good shot for a banker. I owe you something for that and I believe in paying my debts.”
“What are you talking about?”
Tom’s hand dropped to his side. “This bandage I got under my shirt.”
“You’re crazy, Barker.”
“Gorman, the judge wouldn’t have done it. Moses Beach couldn’t have done it. Sheriff Pollard came up from the south of town a minute after I we
nt down, but the bullet that hit me came from around a building to the north. That leaves you.”
“It does not. It leaves Clint Ingersoll.”
Tom shook his head. “I’ve met Ingersoll twice. Both times he could’ve bushwhacked me easy. He didn’t. He isn’t the bushwhacking kind. You are, Gorman. Now tell me why you tried it?”
The banker retreated as far as the door and put a hand behind him. Tom crossed the room swiftly toward him. Gorman ducked away, breathing heavily. Tom stopped suddenly, his right arm swinging, hovering above the gun he wore. Gorman bleated: “I’m unarmed, Barker!”
“You won’t be when the sheriff finds you.”
“Barker, hell . . .”
“Why, Gorman?”
“It was Moses’s idea.”
“I’ll bet.”
“I swear it, Barker. He said you’d ruined us by backing Finnerty, that you wouldn’t stop there, and that you had to be put out of the way.”
Tom walked to the chair Gorman had vacated and sank down. He did not look at the banker. “Get out, Gorman. Get out and remember what I told you. Be on the evening stage out of Beatty or I’m going to kill you.”
The banker left.
Tom got up finally, crossed to the window, and looked out at the night. It was hot out; there was not the slightest hint of a breeze. His room was like a furnace. Below the window two men were talking. One he recognized as Tim Pollard; the other man was deep in shadow and murkily silhouetted. The longing for a smoke came back stronger than ever. He reached for his coat, shrugged into it, and left the room. He went out into the night, moved along the walk, sniffing the air and reaching with his eyes for movement. Pollard was still across the road, sitting now, on a bench outside the jailhouse, whittling a stick that shone dimly white in the gloom. He looked up when Tom approached, his knife hanging in the air, then he resumed his whittling. Tom sat, pushed his legs out, and sighed.
“Hot,” Pollard opined.
Tom ignored it. Around him Beatty lay in soft shadow, gentled by it.
“Your pardner’s over at the Royal Antler.”
Fishing, Tom thought. The old devil’s heard about Tex and me and now he’s curious.
“Guess he gave you a bad start today. Him an’ your paw.”