“I know that.”
“It’ll make me a foul traitor and a turncoat in the eyes o’ me friends.”
“I know that, too.”
Flynn said softly, “If it’s got to be done, it’s got to be done.”
“I’m afraid that’s so, Flynn.”
“Holy Mother o’ God,” Flynn murmured, shaking his head. “What’s a man to do?”
Flynn walked out in a daze, still shaking his head. When he was gone, Destiny stood by the door and said with barely-controlled anger, “He was lying in his teeth. The whole yarn was Irish blarney.”
“How do you know?” Six demanded.
“I know, that’s all.”
“Still pushing that hunch, Jim?”
“It’s more than a hunch.”
“Then what is it?”
“Logic,” Destiny said, feeling the pressure of desperation. “It just doesn’t make any kind of sense that an intelligent man in his right mind would kill his own son. Look, maybe Flynn did see something like what he claims he saw; maybe he just got the wrong man. It’s always hard to see in through a window from outside during daylight, you know that. Flynn couldn’t have had a very good view. Maybe he saw somebody else kill Earle and just thought it was Garrett Mainwaring.”
“I’m sure the defense lawyer will think of that,” Six said. “But you’re not the defense lawyer.”
Destiny said, “I won’t be a party to railroading that man for a crime he didn’t commit.”
“You’ve got no choice,” Six said. “But there’ll be no railroading. The fact remains, we’ve got an eyewitness who says he saw a murder take place and says he can identify the killer. That ties our hands, Jim. We’ve got no choice. I’m going to have to get a warrant for Garrett Mainwaring’s arrest, and you’re going to have to serve it. You’ll have to bring him in.”
“I'd sooner resign.”
“That’s your privilege,” Six said. “But it won’t prevent Main waring from being arrested and held over for trial. Think about that, too: if you don’t go after him, the next man who does go after him may not be inclined to be as fair about it. Look, boy, I know you want to hang this crime on Sid Stratton so bad you can taste it, but you re letting that get in the way of your reason. There’s no shred of evidence to tie Stratton to this. There’s all the evidence in the world against Mainwaring. If you want to spend your free time finding proof that Flynn’s lying or mistaken, that’s your privilege; but you won’t help anybody by quitting just when things are going against the way you want them to go.”
Destiny stood there and stared at Six. He wanted to open his mouth and blurt out the whole truth. In that moment he hung on the balance, almost tipped over, but somehow fell back. He didn’t understand now, and never would wholly understand, what made him keep silent. But something forced him to stay his tongue. Instead, not trusting himself, he clapped his hat on and rammed outside into the broiling sun. He slammed the door and strode up the street, his anger and self-hate even hotter than the desert summer.
Sunlight glanced painful brilliant slivers off the badge on his shirt; they glittered in his eyes and made him acutely aware of the weight of the pinned badge against his skin. He felt the mockery of it and had the insane impulse to break out in hysterical hollow laughter.
He didn’t laugh; there was nothing in the world, right now, that could make him laugh. In his bleak dirge he walked the dismal-hot street, not noticing where his boots took him. Once he banged into a pedestrian and snarled when the pedestrian apologized. Trudging across an intersection, he was all but run down by a careering ore wagon whose driver flung a string of savage oaths after Destiny. He didn’t look back.
Seven
Destiny had two quick drinks in a Cat Town saloon and suddenly left the place, haunted by the ghost of his brother Steve, who had sunk into drunken surrender before dying. Destiny thought, I may be a coward but I’ll go out on my feet. There was no longer any doubt in his mind of his cowardice, and he had nothing but vast contempt for himself. He realized now what the trouble was. He had always been weak, he told himself; only the stronger arms of his brothers had protected him from his own weakness. They had forced him to live up to the family image of courage and toughness; but now they were gone, all of them, and he was the last one left, and he didn’t have the guts to go on alone. Especially after seeing the sordid way Steve had gone out at the end. It made the whole thing—the family legend—a lie; it had left him, in the end, nothing to live up to. And so it should come as no surprise, he told himself, that he should turn out a coward. It was in the cards all along.
He knew one other thing. Even the cowardly coyote, if you backed it into a corner and gave it no choice, would come out fighting as fiercely as a wildcat. He had no illusions about his cowardice, but he had no illusions about the courage of desperation, either. He would not let Garrett Mainwaring hang. His cowardice could not go that far, no matter how weak he was. He accepted the fear that had kept him from telling the truth; he could not accept the possibility of remaining silent while Mainwaring went to the rope. If it came to that, he would be in the corner like the coyote, and he would burst out like a wildcat. There was no doubt in him, not on that score.
But he had not been backed into that corner yet. Mainwaring was not on the hangman’s scaffold. There were still alternatives. There were possibilities still open. He could discredit Flynn’s “eyewitness” account, for one thing. For another, he could—
His thought was cut off by sight of a familiar figure emerging from the undertaker’s parlor across the street. It did not enter Destiny’s head to question the strange fate that brought him to this spot at exactly this moment in his aimless wanderings through the town. For it was Lisa Mainwaring, in black dress and veil, who had just stepped out of the mortuary. She was crossing the walk to her buggy when Destiny called out, drew her attention, and hurried across the street to meet her.
Her face was a pale blur behind the veil. He could not make out her expression. He said, “I’ve got to talk to you.”
She waited, not answering, and he said, “I broke my word to you.”
“Your word, Jim?”
“I told you I’d see to it nothing would happen to your father.”
“Why,” she said, “nothing’s happened to him.”
“It’s about to,” he said. “The marshal’s getting a warrant for his arrest, and I’ve got to serve it. There’s no way I can stop it. If I refuse to arrest him, somebody else will do it, that’s all.”
He saw her knuckles whiten where she gripped the buggy rail, ready to climb to the driver’s seat. He still couldn’t see her face, but there was a more distant, more helpless tone in her voice when she spoke again. “I see. My God, Jim, it’s like a nightmare. They’ve all turned against him—even Jeremy Six, now. What could possibly have made him believe my father’s guilty?”
Destiny said in a dreary voice, “There’s a witness who claims he saw your father kill Earle.”
Her hand dropped away from the buggy. “What … did you say?” She seemed faint; he reached out to steady her. She shook her head. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m afraid I am.”
“Who is it?”
“I can’t tell you that,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Basic rule of law enforcement,” he muttered, feeling silly; but he did not want another murder on his hands, and if Garrett or Lisa Mainwaring became desperate enough, they might reach out, in their feverish need, for the only clear salvation—the elimination of the hostile witness.
“Look,” he said, with sudden energy, “I shouldn’t do this, but I’ve got to. It’ll take a little time for the marshal to get that warrant sworn. Who issues them here?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” she said vaguely.
“There’s no judge in town,” he muttered. “It must be the mayor, or maybe the doctor—does he act as coroner?”
“I don’t know,” she said again.
&nb
sp; “Anyhow, it’ll take time. I won’t break my neck to get out there in a hurry to arrest your father. It gives him a little time, Lisa.”
“Time for what?”
“To get away,” he said. It felt lame the moment he said it aloud.
“To run, you mean? You know he won’t do that.”
“At least give him the chance to make up his own mind,” Destiny said. “Tell him what’s happened, Lisa. Give him that chance.”
“Of course I will. But he won’t run, Jim. He won’t run, and he won’t fight the law. You won’t need a gun when you come.”
“I didn’t think I would.”
She clutched his arm. He wished he could see through the veil; he had an abstract impression of the outline of her face. She said, “He’s a good man, Jim. He didn’t kill Earle. He couldn’t.”
Misery made him turn his face away. “I know,” he said. “Believe me, I’ll do every damned thing I can.”
“I believe you, Jim. I’ve got to believe you.” She turned, reached for the buggy rail and began to climb in. He gave her a hand up. In a small voice she said to him, “That’s all we’ve got left, now-believing in you.” And whipped the buggy away. Destiny stood watching while it diminished along the street. Two blocks away she turned to look back. He didn’t stir. In time the buggy disappeared around a farther bend in the street.
Destiny skipped lunch; he had no appetite for it. He went back to the office early in the afternoon and found Six pacing slowly back and forth, moving stiffly on account of the restrictions of his bandages. Six said, “Where’ve you been?”
“Trying to find somebody to tell me where Mike Flynn really was yesterday morning. I rode out to the mine but Flynn and his shift are all underground in some shaft or other.”
Six gave him a brief puzzled look and then said, “I’ve got a council warrant here for Mainwaring’s arrest. You’d better get it done.” He handed the document to Destiny.
Destiny glanced at it. “You had to get the whole damned town council to sign this thing?”
“Ordinarily the mayor’s signature is enough, but Mainwaring’s a prominent citizen. I called all the council members in here and told them the story—omitting the identity of the eyewitness, of course. No one’s to know who our witness is until the trial comes up. That’s only—”
“I know,” Destiny said impatiently. “Standard procedure where you’ve got only one key witness in a murder case.”
Six nodded. “You do know your job, boy. But knowing the book and going by it are two different things. I know you don’t want to arrest Mainwaring. I know you don’t believe he’s guilty. But are you ready to put your opinions aside and do your job? Or do you still want to resign?”
“I’ll serve the warrant,” Destiny said. He rammed it inside his shirt and turned to the door. “Anything else?”
“Just bring him in. Then we’ll think about what comes next.”
“I don’t suppose he can get a bail bond?”
“Not in a murder case.”
“He won’t like jail much.”
“You know anybody who does?” Six inquired.
The first ominous sign to strike Destiny, as he rode up the coach road, was the heavy clinging scent of dust in the air over the road. A large number of riders had come this way recently. In itself, it meant nothing; but it soon began to take on importance, as Destiny turned in at the Mainwaring mailbox and walked his horse up the gravel drive. Filtering down through the trees, as he approached the hilltop, came the buzz of many voices, like angry hornets around a threatened nest. When Destiny turned the last bend and came in sight of the house, he saw the crowd—knots of men, all of whom looked like miners and supervisors, clustered around the front of the Georgian house, all of them armed and waiting.
The hum of talk died like an abrupt intake of breath at Destiny’s appearance. The men swung to face him squarely. As Destiny slowly dismounted, several men moved without hurry to form a solid line across the bottom porch step, blocking his way into the house.
Destiny dropped the reins, leaving the horse to stand ground-hitched; he ran his right thumb along the side of the index finger and looked from face to face. His eyes became slits.
“All right,” he said. “What’s this?”
Someone growled something Destiny didn’t catch. He took two paces forward and stopped again, standing within twenty feet of the men grouped around the bottom porch step. He said, “Mind telling me what this is about?”
A giant of a miner with great muscles and an incongruous sixgun in his waistband stepped forward from the crowd and took the role of spokesman. “You come to arrest Mr. Mainwaring?”
“That’s my job.”
“You ain’t arrestin’ nobody today,” said the miner, in a flat tone that indicated the subject was closed.
Destiny’s scrutiny traveled the length of the line of men. He said slowly, “I don’t want trouble with you boys, and you don’t want trouble with me.”
“For a fact,” the miner said, his great voice rumbling out of his chest. “So let’s not have no trouble, Deputy. You just get back on your horse and ride back the way you come.”
“I guess not,” Destiny said in a weary voice. “Now I’d be obliged if you boys would make a path, because I’m coming through.” He put his right foot down, then his left, and slowly walked toward the center of the line.
“Stop right there,” the big miner said, but Destiny kept walking—and the house’s front door slammed open. Garret Mainwaring stepped onto the porch, shaking off the restraining arm of another miner behind him inside the house; Mainwaring said angrily, “All of you get the hell out of here. Get back to work. What the hell do you think I’m paying you for? There’s ore to be dug. Thompson, goddammit, get this gang back where it belongs.”
The big miner, red-faced with confusion, was looking awkwardly over his shoulder at Mainwaring on the porch. “We was only tryin’ to help out,” he said.
“When I want help I’ll damn well ask for it,” Mainwaring snapped. “And the next time you decide to kidnap me in my own house, you can take it from me you’ll have no more work at Silverbelle.”
The big miner said, “But this jasper’s come to arrest you.”
“He’s just doing his job, Thompson. Which is more than I can say for you. Now quit brandishing those damned guns. You look like sheep in wolves’ clothing. I never saw a sillier bunch—any of you men ever fire a shot in your lives? I thought not. Thompson, round ’em up and move ’em out. Look sharp!”
Thompson grumbled and returned his malevolent glance to Jim Destiny, who had reached a point not five feet in front of him. Destiny said mildly, “You heard the man, Thompson.” He held the miner’s baleful eyes until Thompson growled and swung his burly frame away. Thompson yelled at his men and all of them began to drift reluctantly toward their horses.
Destiny climbed the porch, nodded to Mainwaring with uncertain courtesy, and turned to watch the miners climb awkwardly into their unfamiliar saddles. Presently they were lined up and ready to go. Mainwaring stepped forward to the edge of the porch.
“Thompson.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Thank you. It was a mistaken effort, but thank you all from the bottom of my heart.”
Thompson’s face, and most of the other faces in the crowd, flushed deep red. The big miner nodded quickly, looked away, and roared at his men: “All right, all right, let’s get back to the diggin’, you lazy worthless fools.” And the miners swept off the hill at a drumming lope.
When the hoofbeats died away, Destiny said, “What was that all about?”
“Ever hear of loyalty, Mr. Destiny?” Mainwaring said testily.
“I know. But how’d they find out I was coming to arrest you? I can’t believe you set that up.”
“No, I didn’t. It was their own idea. I tried to—”
“I’m afraid it was my fault,” said Lisa. She was just coming out of the house. She still wore the black dress; the veil was go
ne. She looked embarrassed. “I’m afraid I burst in and told Dad about the warrant before I realized he wasn’t alone.”
Mainwaring nodded. “Thompson was here, on mine business. When he heard what Lisa told me, he excused himself and hurried back to the mine. The next thing I knew, the place was swarming with miners, determined to protect the hell out of me no matter what I said. They wouldn’t let me out of the house when you rode in. For a minute I thought they were going to ambush you.”
Destiny said, “So did I.”
Mainwaring shook his head. “Only a passing thought. They’re good men. It was a bluff.”
“It wouldn’t have been if I’d started shooting.”
Mainwaring looked at him. “Yes. But you didn’t.”
“The odds didn’t look very good.”
“That didn’t stop you from calling their bluff. You were ready to walk right over Thompson.”
Destiny grinned crookedly. “I was ready to try. From the size of him I doubt he’d have had much trouble stopping me.”
“Then why’d you bother to try?”
Destiny shook his head; he had no answer for that. He said, in a different tone, “Anyhow, you know why I’m here.”
“Yes.”
“You ought to know that I hate this as much as you do,” Destiny said, and found difficulty meeting Mainwaring’s eyes.
“You’ve got to do your duty,” Mainwaring said. “I can’t hold it against you.”
Lisa was watching Destiny unblinkingly. He met her glance. He said lamely, “Well, if there’s nothing to hold you, I guess we might as well be going.” He reached into his shirt and took out the warrant. He said, with unnecessary formality, “Garrett Mainwaring, I hereby serve this warrant for your arrest.”
“I guess I don’t have to ask the charge,” Mainwaring said dryly. “Lisa, bring my hat.”
Within less than an hour the news was all over town. In spite of the intense heat, little knots of curious people formed, eddied, drifted away, and re-formed in front of the jail. They couldn’t see anything—the cells were in back of the Marshal’s Office—but that didn’t keep them from coming. Jeremy Six watched with a sour face while people jostled and milled outside the place. “Hot enough in here,” he grunted, “without them blocking off the breeze.”
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