The Lawbringers 4

by Brian Garfield

  Elias batted inside and slammed the door behind him. For a moment his face was filled with unconcealed wrath, making the scar livid along his cheek; but in a moment he mastered himself, one by one loosing the buckles of his coat, and walked forward.

  Brand said, “How’s your horse?” in a bland tone of voice.

  “I fed them all,” Elias said. “What happened to the dead one?”

  “I buried him,” Brand said, seeing no point in implicating McCasford.

  “You didn’t happen to prowl around out there, did you, amigo?”

  “Now,” Brand said softly, “what might make you ask a question like that?”

  Elias said nothing, but something about the yellow gleam of his eyes made Brand straighten the back-tilted chair and sit up straight, plainly displaying the hand-held pistol in his lap. Elias watched him unblinkingly for a stretching interval, then went to the stove where the coffee was bubbling and poured a cup and tilted his head back to drink the scalding liquid.

  “You want some coffee?” he asked.

  “No, thanks,” Brand said. He did not want to give Elias an excuse to come near him with a cupful of burning coffee that he could toss in a man’s eyes.

  Elias looked at him over the rim of the uplifted cup, and when he let it down he seemed to know what was in Brand’s mind. “Smart,” he said.

  “Sure,” Brand murmured.

  “McCasford … he all right?”

  “He will be.”

  “Can he talk?”

  “He’s asleep now.”

  “Maybe I’ll wake him up,” Elias said. “I got something to ask of my friend.”

  “Let him be,” Brand said flatly.

  Elias’ flat, lizard-like stare considered his face and his gun, and then the Mexican grinned. “It can wait,” Elias said.

  “That’s fine.”

  Elias turned indolently into the corridor and closed the door. For a considerable time thereafter, Brand kept his attention on that spot, half expecting a bullet or knife to issue at any moment from it. But fifteen minutes passed silently, except for the carom of the wind, and at the end of that period Brand got up and poured the coffee cup full again and took it back to his chair.

  Two hours hence, he felt the strong pull of the need for sleep. The others were stirring; small sounds sped through the house. He drank his fourth cup of coffee and chewed the relic of cold cooked bear-meat he had taken from the kitchen, and sat up when he heard the tramp of feet coming forward through the hall.

  In a moment Wayne Lutz came in, ramming his shirt into his waistband, and taking the gun belt off his shoulder to buckle it around his midriff. He said nothing to Brand; he gave only a cursory look to the bedded-down figure of McCasford. He threw back his thick arms and stretched vastly, uttering a hollow yawn, and went to the stove where he poured a cup of coffee.

  At that moment George Zane entered the room and stood beside the door leaning against the wall; he was probably weak still from the blow to his head. But his flesh seemed more ruddy and his eyes appeared clear. He said, “How’s the, kid?”

  “Coming along all right,” Brand said.

  “Serve him right if he kicked off,” Lutz said. “He’s no better than no-account trash.”

  “I’d trade you for him,” Brand said mildly.

  “You wouldn’t have any better sense,” Lutz retorted in a grouchy tone that still held the cobwebs of sleep.

  Somehow, because of the big man’s willingness to indulge in harmless banter of this kind, Brand found himself regarding Lutz as probably the least dangerous man in the building. With his blustering mammoth ways, Lutz would make a poor sneak. Brand could not fit the man into the framework of knowledge he had constructed about the phantom killer who lurked in the building.

  Who was it, then? Elias—Andrews—old Manning—he ticked them off mentally, having ruled our McCasford and Michaela and Zane. He shook his head; he needed sleep.

  When Zane came forward and knelt to look at McCasford, Brand said, “You sleep all right?”

  “I’m a little woozy, that’s all. I’ll make out. You get any sleep?”

  “No.”

  “Get some, then. I’ll look after McCasford.”

  “Thanks. One thing, first.”

  “What’s that?”

  Brand looked around to make sure Lutz was not in hearing distance. Then he leaned forward and in a low tone explained to Zane the events of last night—the burial of Deputy Kirby and of the stagecoach loot.

  “Good work,” Zane, said when Brand finished. “I’ll keep my eyes on Elias—he may try to force it out of McCasford, where the bullion’s hidden.”

  “Exactly,” Brand agreed.

  Elias came into the room and grinned at him around the toothpick, and headed straight for the stove and the huge black coffeepot. Lutz was done with the cup, and now handed it grudgingly to the Mexican. Brand turned, noticing the sluggishness of his own movements, and went up the stairs with fatigue scraping in his joints.

  He reached the top in time to see Michaela and her father, probably awakened by the same rangeland mind-clock that had brought the others up, coming ahead together along the dim hallway. He stepped aside to let them pass, spoke a few words of reassurance to the girl, and turned into a vacant room.

  He felt he would be safer up here on the second floor, where boots on the staircase would give him warning of anyone’s approach; he lay down without ceremony, back flat on the floor, using his mackinaw as a cushion under his body. Enough of the fire’s long-aged warmth had reached this second-story cubicle to make it acceptable, if not comfortable.

  He slept immediately, but in fits; now and then he awakened to hear the steady drone of voices from below, and once he sat bolt upright, boosted by a new thought.

  Anyone could obtain a marshal’s badge. There were many ways to secure a star. What proof was there of George Zane’s identify? He had seen Zane’s horse last night in the stable—a high-shouldered dun—but he had not thought to investigate Zane’s saddle or, if there was one, his rifle. Was Zane an imposter, a deputy-killer, an ambusher?

  The blow to Zane’s head might be explained in a multitude of ways. As a random example it occurred to him that possibly Elias had recognized Zane as a fellow outlaw who had once done him a bad turn, and Elias had now sought vengeance.

  A number of other possibilities came to him, hard and fast; but he recalled the strong competent cast of Zane’s features and found himself-doubting that the man was anything other than what he said he was. Still, it was one more face he had to watch, one more gun he could not allow behind him. He drifted back into sleep.

  In scattered snatches he heard their talk coming up to him: Lutz baiting Andrews with insults, and Andrews shouting thickly back, and Zane saying sharply to Andrews, “Don’t touch that gun, friend.”

  The wind bucked and shrieked against the roof and walls, but something about its tone made him think, in his ragged moments of wakefulness, that the storm was diminishing gradually. His eyelids flipped open once or twice and slid slowly, heavily shut, and he slept.

  He came awake abruptly, not moving, not opening his eyes, not showing any other sign of awakening, but nonetheless immediately, wholly alert; he heard a soft scrape and opened his eyes to narrow slits, and saw the girl standing alone in the door; and let his breath out of his chest.

  She came in and said, “I thought you might want some food,” and set a tin tray down beside him on the floor, steaming with smoked bacon and fried potatoes. But the first thing he noticed was that she had changed into the calico dress he had seen yesterday in her room; her awry black hair was combed and plaited with rawhide, hanging down her back in a thick braid.

  The dress hugged her slim waist and fitted smoothly the small compact hills of her breasts; the neckline when she stooped exposed their smooth upper swells. The skirt was full and flared out to each lithe turn of her body, displaying the golden-fleshed smoothness of trim calves and ankles. She sat down cross legged, Indian
fashion, smoothing the skirt over her knees.

  Brand got up on one elbow to eat and said between mouthfuls, “The dress looks pretty on you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But maybe in this kind of weather you ought to have something more practical on.”

  “All right,” she said, with a beginning anger swelling in her voice. “I’ll put the pants back on. I just thought you might—”

  “I do,” he said. “Don’t jump at everything a man says.”

  She looked at him, and slowly he saw her relax once more. “I’m sorry,” she said, and he knew how difficult it had been for her to say it. It was not her way to say that kind of thing. He smiled for her and continued to eat; the girl watched him, not pressingly but steadily. He felt no discomfort under her gaze.

  Downstairs, Lutz’s heavy voice pushed upward into his consciousness, dimmed with distance and intervening wooden partitions: “I ought to bust your face, sodbuster.”

  “Take it slow,” Zane advised. “Don’t get so damned redheaded. I don’t want to wrap this gun around somebody’s head like was done to me.”

  The talk downstairs quieted down. He looked at the girl and remembered once again the questions that had plied between them yesterday, about the value of his life, and he had the feeling that perhaps the real answer had been deflected by circumstance into a temporary purpose.

  He thought about this a while, and his lips began to curl in the old cynical sneer, but it was directed at himself. Then his angular face became gentled by thoughts that had not occurred in years—of duty and friendship, of responsibility and honesty; and of love.

  CHAPTER IX

  THE GIRL LAY beside him; he felt the flutter of her breath against his throat, the weight of her head on his arm. She said, “I should let you sleep now.”

  He knew she was right—an hour or so of sleep had not been enough to restore his energies completely—but he was reluctant to part with her presence. He gripped her shoulder in his hand and felt a gentle resistance to his pressure. She said, “They’ll wonder where I’ve gone.”

  “Let them.”

  “The dishes must be washed.”

  “It will wait.”

  “You must sleep,” she said firmly; she worked her way out of his grasp after a final long kiss and picked up the emptied tray, and smiled gently for him before she left the room, hooking the door shut behind her with a foot in an unladylike manner.

  The blizzard sent its shattering force against the old building throughout the fitfully stretching moments while he lay flat and tried to return to sleep, but speculations and new excitements and old fears kept his mind in a jumble.

  After a time he wearily extracted the worn deck of cards from his pocket and rolled over onto his side to lay out a game of solitaire on the floor. With his hands thus occupied, he found himself alert and almost felt that he could perceive the vague currents of hate and suspicion and darkness that swirled among the men in the saloon below.

  There was a sound of footfalls going somewhere, the soft plunk of a log tossed into the fire, the clang of the stove being opened or closed, the drowsy drone of voices; a door slammed. Footsteps came up the stairs and went along the hall into a room. He played a red jack on a black queen. He thought of Michaela and his eyes grew soft; he remembered the momentary trembling of her like the wariness of a slim wild animal quick to flight. She drugged his senses.

  He knew that without artfulness and without intent, she had slipped into him a consciousness of herself that threw him entirely off balance—and now he lay slapping cards upon cards and trying to ask himself objectively what the odds would be with such a woman. He had known prettier girls; he could shake them down like ripe plums anywhere from the elaborate carpeted salons of New Orleans to the tarnished gilt rooms of San Antonio. But at no time had there ever been this glowing and delicate perceptiveness and warmth.

  But a reasoning corner of his mind told him that perhaps it was too late. He had frittered away the best part of his youth, sinking into a muck of deadly and wasted cynicism that might in the long run brook no change. His life stood against him; how could he share the dreams of this girl and make them real?

  Irritated, he swept the cards together and put them away, lying back and closing his eyes and forcing himself to drowse. Dreams crept into him, plaguing, fitful—he was standing centered in the saloon; in a circle around him were Elias and McCasford and Lutz and Andrews and Zane and the old man, each staring at him, each holding out a long-roweled Californio spur in his palm. “Me,” Elias said with his white grin, and McCasford said hotly, “Me,” and the others spoke the same word, Lutz with booming hearty enthusiasm, Andrews with a thickened slur, Zane in his soft, hard-gutted accent, the old man with a vapid senility.

  As he watched, the spurs grew larger, the rowels swelling to the size of dishpans; they turned molten and oozed into strange shapes, elongating and swaying like seaweed strands on an ocean surface, suddenly becoming enormous buffalo guns; the six men advanced upon him and he found his feet rooted to the floor, he could not move. The men chanted me at him in unison, their eyes red with livid hatred; soundless flame stabbed from the gun muzzles and he was writhing, falling…

  He awakened aggravated by such dreams; he tossed and fell back to sleep listening to the faint, baffled shriek of the wind.

  CHAPTER XX

  THE OLD MAN stood at a shuttered window and peered through the dusty glass, apparently squinting through a slit in the shutters. He said, “Storm’s lettin’ up, praise be.” Michaela looked up; all her sensitivities seemed heightened this day and there was a joy in everything. Her father appeared calm and clear eyed; he came to the table and sat down and said, “I reckon you gents will be movin’ on in a little while.”

  Lutz grunted and Andrews tipped the bottle to his lips.

  Michaela noticed, but paid no attention to, the look that flashed from George Zane to Elias. Elias was tilted back in his chair near the stove, picking his teeth. She looked at the spot where Billy McCasford had lain; a short while ago they had taken him upstairs and put him on the bed in her room. The room seemed emptier without the one-armed youth and Jim Brand.

  Zane stood against the wall, arms folded across his chest, his hat perched atop a thick bandage. Michaela turned from the table and went upstairs, passing Brand’s door and hesitating but not stopping, and going on to her own room.

  For a moment she stood outside the door, reflecting. It had not yet been twenty-four hours since the beginning of the blizzard. That seemed impossible, but it was fact. Still, things had happened in those few hours that might change the course of her life—and the courses of many other lives.

  She lifted her long, supple hands and considered them, and ran them down over the curves of her body, throwing her head back and drawing in a long breath; she used both palms to smooth back her hair and looked over her shoulder at the silent door to Brand’s room. A slow smile crossed her lips and she comforted herself with thoughts of him until presently she opened the door to her own room and stepped inside, leaving the door ajar.

  McCasford slept on the bed, his face turned away from her. She moved softly forward, not wishing to wake him, and knelt by the foot of the bed, lifting the loose floorboard. She drew out one of the heavy gold pokes and opened it, spilling some of the loose gold grains into her palm, turning them in the light. Half of this was hers; and she thought of Jim Brand, and silently laughed at Wayne Lutz’s tarnished offers.

  She sifted the gold back into the sack and let it slip to the floor; she rose and walked to the window and slid open the sash, pushing the shutters back. Outside, snowflakes whirled from the sky. There was one tiny spot where the slow gold pallor of the sun was at last beginning to burn through the dense overhang of clouds. She closed the window but left the shutters open, and stood with her arms folded across her breasts looking outward.

  That storm was ending; the storm of excitement within her was only beginning. She tasted the bittersweet warmth of tha
t thought and followed her hopes through distant speculative paths.

  “Hello.”

  It was McCasford’s voice; it shattered her dreams and turned her around. He had not moved on the bed. He was smiling up at her and with some pity she noticed the drawn pale sketch of his broad cheeks. He said, “I guess I’ll pull through now.”

  “Sure you will,” she said. “Did you ever doubt it?”

  “When that slug spun me around I thought I was done.”

  “Did you see who fired it?”

  “No,” he said, “No, damn it.”

  “They’ll find him,” she murmured. “Sooner or later he’ll be caught, and he’ll pay for it.”

  He looked past her at the window. “Storm’s died away, hey?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s good,” he said. His voice was weak but steady. “Michaela?”

  “What is it?”

  He did not speak for a moment and so she went closer to him and knelt down beside the bed, searching his face. He licked his dry lips and looked away with a kind of shyness that pleased her; it came to her that no matter what he had done, he had in him the core of a gentleman. She was glad she had trusted him last night. He rolled his head and stared at the ceiling and spoke slowly: “Last night, when you were dressing the wound, I saw the way you looked at Brand. He’s the one, isn’t he?”

  “If he wants me,” she said honestly.

  “Well, then,” he said tonelessly, “good luck to you, Michaela.”

  She saw then that he was hurt by it. She put a gentle hand on his shoulder; all she could say was, “I’m sorry, Billy.”

  “No. You’ve got nothin’ to be sorry for. Neither had he.”

  “And neither do you, Billy. You’ve had some bad turns, but don’t feel sorry for yourself.”

  “Sure,” he said; she could not tell if there was an edge of dryness on his tone. “I’ll make out all right.”