by Lauran Paine
Like an old Indian squaw, always seemingly indifferent, disinterested, and lazing around, but missing nothing, Tom watched two riders enter town from the west in a tight lope side-by-side, swerve in at the Royal Antler, and swing down.
“He come in with that latest train of wagons, Tom. If I’d’ve known, I’d’ve told you.”
Busybody, Tom thought. Why would he have told me my father had returned to Beatty? What business was it of his? “You trying to soften me up, Sheriff?” he asked finally. “Because if you are, save it.”
Shavings fell, pale and curled and pine-scented. “I reckon you don’t know me so well, after all,” Pollard retorted quietly. “I’m not the blarneyin’ kind. Never have been.” Shavings continued to peel off and tumble to the ground. “And maybe I don’t know you so well, either.”
“Meaning?”
The knife snapped closed, went into a Levi’s pocket, and Tim Pollard stood up. “Care to walk a piece with me?” he asked.
Tom cocked his head back. “To where?”
“Just walk. Not far, boy. Exercise’ll do you good.”
Tom stood and considered the craggy old face, then they moved off together. For a while Sheriff Pollard contented himself with saying nothing. Finally he opened up again. “Doc Spence left town last night.”
Tom felt surprise rise in him. He went back over his last meeting with the medical man. “Why?” he asked.
“Just up and left. Didn’t even come by and tell me s’long.”
“If he’s gone, maybe you won’t mind telling me why you shut him up the other night, Sheriff.”
Pollard evidently had given this much thought, for now he had a ready answer. “Some things a feller knows that don’t come easy to say, boy.”
“Then you did shut him up?”
“We both know that,” the sheriff said simply.
They came to the end of the plank walk. Beyond, stretching inkily to invisible bald hills, lay the northward plains.
“Are you going to tell me, or aren’t you?” Tom demanded.
Pollard teetered on the walkway, gazing outward. “I’d rather not, Tom. It won’t do no good to tell you.” He stepped down off the last plank into the dust and turned westerly. “Come along. It isn’t much farther.”
“What isn’t?”
But Tim Pollard trudged along in total silence, shoulders bowed forward and eyes fixed on something neither of them could see, but which they both knew lay just beyond town within its rusting, sagging iron fence. Beatty’s cemetery.
When the sheriff stopped, put out a hand and closed his fingers around an iron paling, Tom also halted. He had that peculiar taste of ashes in his throat again. Something darkly, instinctively knowing was working in his mind.
“Ever been here before, Tom?”
“When I was a kid, yes.”
“Lots of folks buried here. Lately, when I’ve followed the hearse out here, I’ve had the feelin’ I know more of these folks than the ones back in town.” Pollard twisted to gaze at him. “When a feller gets to feeling that way, I expect he’s about at the end of his rope. He’s gettin’ pretty damned old.”
Tom’s eyes were accustomed to the darkness. Beyond the iron fence he could discern headstones and, occasionally, forlorn little tins with dead flowers in them. “Does this have something to do with what you don’t want to tell me?” he asked.
The lawman nodded. “Yes, and like I said . . . there’s things better left unsaid.” He straightened up a little, gazing at the dry, flinty earth. “You still bent on knowing, Tom?”
“I am.”
Sheriff Pollard’s eyes went to one stone and remained there. He seemed to be selecting words. “That grave yonder, boy, the one with the little pillow-like stone, you see it?”
“I see it.” Tom’s voice had sunk to a whisper. The thing in his mind was taking on form, substance, solidity; it was becoming a premonition with shape and meaning. “I see it, Sheriff.”
“That’s your mother, son. She’s restin’ there.”
“That’s what Spence was going to tell me?”
“That’s part of it, Tom.”
“Then why did you shut him up?”
Sheriff Pollard put both hands out, curled them around cold iron, and leaned a little forward. “What’s the use, Tom? She’s gone. You recollect her one way. That’s the way you should always remember her, son.”
“Tell me the rest of it.”
“All right,” Tim Pollard said gently. “She come back to Beatty the year after you run off. She was sick, Tom, had lung fever. Doc did everything he could for her . . .”
“Doc Spence?”
“Yes. This is the part it’d’ve been better left unsaid, Tom. Doc was in love with your maw. He kept her at his house for a year an’ your paw never knew . . .”
“Then she died?”
“Then she died, and he buried her here.” The lawman narrowed his eyes. “There’s only her first name on that stone. Doc didn’t want your paw to know, naturally.”
“Why did she come back, Sheriff?”
“To get you and take you away. But you was gone and no one ever heard of you again until the day you come ridin’ in a couple months back, Tom.”
“And . . . the man she ran off with?”
But the sheriff straightened up and dusted off his palms. “Doc never asked and she never said. What’s the difference?”
“There’s no difference, I guess.”
“No. Your mother was a fine woman, Tom. Don’t you ever doubt it or forget it.” The lawman was turning away.
“One more thing,” Tom said to him. “Did you know Doc Spence was hiding her?”
“I knew. Doc and I were sort of close. There’s another thing too, Tom. Your paw made her life hell on earth. That doesn’t give you no call to hunt him down . . . and believe me, boy, she wouldn’t have wanted you to do that. I know.”
“How do you know?”
“She an’ Doc an’ me used to sit on his back porch that last summer, in the evenings, and sort of talk.”
“I see.” Tom also turned away from the iron fence. “Now tell me the end of it. Why did Spence leave Beatty?”
Sheriff Pollard shrugged as they strolled back toward town. “Who knows why folks do things? Maybe it was seein’ you. Maybe you opened an old wound in him. Maybe he just couldn’t stand Beatty any more. All I know for certain is what the stage driver told me. He bought a ticket to Saint Joe, Missouri.”
XIV
Tom did not sleep in his hotel room that night. He took two blankets, got his horse, and rode up into the hills. He spread one blanket on the dry forage grass by the little creek where he and Tex often met, lay down, and draped the upper blanket over his body. The last echoes of movement died around him, the moon-shot blackness and the deep hush of late night closed down, and mystery trembled in the windless night while he breathed an incensed air. Overhead, glittering in their purple setting, an immense diadem of diamonds shone down. To the motionless man whose black eyes were dull but sleepless, they seemed to turn soft, like a woman’s tears.
It was a long night and it held no surcease for him. He did not sleep until shortly before the east was streaked with pale pink, and even then he slept so lightly that the sound of a horse’s shod hoof striking stone brought him fully awake.
“Howdy, Tom,” Tex said, dismounting. “Figured you might be up here.” He flung down saddlebags and began grubbing for twigs. When he had built the tiny, pointed range-man’s cooking fire, he rummaged through the saddlebags for his dented, black coffee pan, filled it with water, then sat back watching flames lick and curl beneath it.
“This isn’t Monday,” Tom said gruffly, sitting upright.
“It ain’t Friday, either,” Tex said imperturbably, pouring ground coffee sparingly into the water and wrinkling his nose. “Nothing on this earth smells as good as cooking coffee. Too bad it doesn’t taste as good as it smells.”
Tex sat back, made a cigarette, smoked a moment with obvi
ous pleasure, then brought forth three cups that he swabbed out carefully with grass switches, and lined up one beside the other. Tom watched this briefly, then got up, went down to the creek, washed, combed his hair, and came stamping back. He dropped down, crossed his legs, and regarded the three tin cups. “You going to drink two at a time?” he asked grumpily.
Tex smoked a moment longer before he replied. “Nope, we got company.”
The dark eyes raised swiftly. “Who?”
“More’n one.”
“Who, damn you?”
“Better mind your language,” Tex said, unruffled, then raised his voice. “Coffee’s on, ladies.”
Tom turned. They emerged from the willows south of where he’d washed, side-by-side—Miss Eloise and Toni Montgomery. He felt like swearing, or jumping up and leaving, or even striking Tex. Instead, he sat there watching Toni move toward him. She was wearing a split riding skirt and a very white blouse. Her hair was caught up at the base of her neck and held in place by a small blue ribbon. She looked fresh and cool and lovely. The rising heat of the new day seemed not to affect her and its reflection from her blouse was painful to his eyes. Eloise smiled into his face, her violet gaze dancing, but Toni only nodded and passed him, stopping beside Tex who held up a cup.
“Thank you, Tex.”
The words jarred Tom out of his silence. He took the cup Tex offered and hunkered, not looking in Toni’s direction at all.
Eloise sat down and looked quickly at the others. Of them all she was the least affected by undercurrents. “Any sugar?” she asked sweetly of Tex.
“Never use the stuff,” Tex said, darted a look at Tom, and stubbed out his cigarette. “Sit down, Miss Toni.” She sat. Tex drew in a big breath. “Tom,” he said, speaking clearly and as though he had rehearsed what he was saying, “Finnerty’s back. Came in about dawn on the stage.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. He’s got your loan money, too.”
“All right. I’ll look him up when I go back to town.”
“Something else,” Tex said. “That banker left town last night.”
“Did he now?”
Toni squirmed. Tom sensed rather than saw it. “My father has taken over the bank, Tom,” she informed him. “Temporarily, until someone else can be appointed to Elihu Gorman’s position.”
Tom blew into the steam arising from his cup. “That’s fine. The best man in town for the job.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
“No question about it.”
“Tom . . . ?”
“Yes’m.”
“Dammit, look up when I’m talking to you.”
The profanity startled all of them. Tex looked at her with his lower lip hanging. Eloise was round-eyed, and Tom’s head sprang up.
“That’s better,” said Antoinette, her voice going soft and rich again. “There is a forty thousand dollar note at the bank with your signature on it.”
Tom was crouched like a stone image staring at her. He put aside the cup of coffee very slowly. “What do you mean?”
“The judge found it this morning.”
“I never gave any such note, Toni.”
“Of course you didn’t. That’s what Tex said when I told him. That’s why we three are up here this morning.” Some of her spirit showed in the gray eyes. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be here at all . . . regardless of what Tex or Tim Pollard said.”
“What did they say?” he demanded.
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that your signature is on that note to the bank.”
“Are you telling me I owe the bank in Beatty forty thousand dollars, Toni?”
She nodded.
Tom looked at Tex and spoke a name: “Gorman?” Tex nodded. Tom stood up. “I see. That’s paying me back.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing.”
“Where are you going?”
“After him.”
“Wait.” Tex was on his feet. “You won’t get a mile down the road. Not unless you listen first.”
“Why not?”
Toni and Eloise also got to their feet. “Because my father and Tim Pollard have posses out looking for you, Tom,” Toni said.
This was something he hadn’t considered. Now he said: “Are you saying that Gorman actually took forty thousand dollars of the bank’s money and left that note he’d forged?”
“Yes. And the judge believes you’re fleeing with the money.”
“No, I don’t believe he really thinks that, Toni. I think your father sees his chance for hitting back and he’s doing it this way.”
She flushed scarlet and for a moment he thought her wrath was going to break out. He was bracing into it when she regained control and spoke in an icy voice: “He’d have reason to believe that, the way you’ve acted since you’ve returned, Tom. But Eloise and Tex and I think we can prove to him it was Gorman and not you who took the money.”
“How?” he demanded.
Tex fished a paper and pencil from a pocket and shoved them at Tom. “Write your name on there like you always write it.”
“Why?”
“Consarn it! So’s we can take it back to the judge and make him compare it with the signature on the note. That’s why.”
Tom wrote his name and returned the paper and pencil. He was nodding. “Sure, and here’s something else, too,” He gave them the creased note he and Gerald Finnerty had signed. “Give him that, too. It also has my signature on it and it’s dated over a month back.”
Tex was putting the papers into his pocket when Tom caught his horse and bent to saddling it. As he led the animal forward, he beckoned to Tex. “Fetch your horse. You’re going with me. Give the notes to Miss Toni.”
Tex obeyed. While he was moving toward his horse to secure the saddlebags and check the cinch, Eloise walked toward him, leaving Toni and Tom Barker facing one another across the smoldering fire. She made a fluttery motion with her hands. “The thing that will save you is that you haven’t signed anything back in town.”
“Oh?”
“He couldn’t have known what your signature looked like, Tom.”
He looked grimly at her. “That’s not the only thing that’s going to save me. Gorman’s going to help, too.”
“What if you don’t find him, Tom?”
He mounted and gazed down from the saddle. “I’ll find him. I’ll find him and fetch him back.”
“Tom . . . ?”
“Yes’m.”
“Can I ask a favor of you?”
“I owe you that much, Toni.”
“Let me tell Gerald Finnerty it’s all right to sell twenty tons of hay to my father.”
He lingered a moment to look into her face, then he shook his head negatively, spun his horse, and rode off. Tex, mounted and looking on, stifled a curse and shook a fist at Tom’s retreating back. “Ma’am,” he said to Toni, “this’ll likely take some riding. You just hang and rattle. I’ll have his harness shook out, talked out, or kicked out, by the time we get back. You go ahead and tell Finnerty it’s all right to bring in that hay.”
But Toni was standing as though she hadn’t heard, watching Tom lope northward toward the far lift and fall of a side hill.
Tex caught Tom on the downward side of the hill and slowed beside him. He made no mention of what was uppermost in his mind, but said instead: “He’s got a long start on us.”
Tom made no answer. He jogged along, gazing ahead at the unfolding plains coming up the hill to meet them, the sun-dried floor, the faint gray of banks where winter’s deluges had scored the shifting earth, the faint showings of shadows under brush and rocks, and farther out like a flung-down old snake the roadway leading north.
“Of course, since he’s traveling on coaches, we’ll make faster time.”
“And if he went south instead of north?” Tom asked dryly.
But Tex knew as well as did Tom that the night stage out of Beatty only went one way—north. He looped the reins and began manufacturing a cigar
ette. “You’re sure hep for arguments today, aren’t you?”
No reply. The road shimmered and writhed and the heat increased. There was no depth to the distance, only a pale, bright yellowness.
“If I had your conscience, I’d feel meaner’n poison, too,” Tex opined, inhaling and exhaling. “Funny how some fellers are, Tom. Mean inside and not really very mean-looking on the outside.” He inspected the cigarette, knocked off gray ash with his little finger, and took up the reins again in his left hand. “And when they really got no reason to be, too.”
“Why don’t you shut up?”
Tex became silent.
They rode as hard as they dared in that glaring and waterless expanse, saving their horses when they could, taking time when it was safe to do so, and at sunset the village of Mirage appeared dead ahead. They refilled their canteens, had their horses washed down, grained, and watered, then struck out again, riding through the hot but pleasant night side-by-side.
“Feller at the stage station said it was him, all right,” Tex reported. “Said we’d catch ’em if we stayed with it all night, more’n likely.”
They stayed with it all night, riding more swiftly as the coolness increased, confident in both their hearts they would catch Elihu Gorman, but beyond that thinking differently. Tex thought Tom would probably kill him. He didn’t think he should because the absconding banker was the only one who could clear him before Judge Montgomery. But on the other hand—they were riding the turn-outs in the high north country, and, if he killed the banker, they could just keep on riding, get clear of all this dirt and deceit and discomfort. Tex was a simple, laughing man; his vision extended no farther than the next drive, the next hunt, the next ride into strange country.
“Tom?”
“Yeah.”
“That was a lousy thing you done to that girl.”
Silence.
“You know, she sweated bullets trying to talk her paw into holding off the posses. And you wouldn’t even let her have twenty tons of watery old grass hay.”
“It’s not her, it’s her paw.”
“You didn’t say that, you just shook your head.”
Silence.
“Tom?”