Читать книгу The Complete Novels of Ernest Haycox - Ernest Haycox - Страница 33

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They came back to the cabin. The horses and wagon stood in the clearing, the preacher sat on a stump trimming himself a switch; and when Lorena saw him her tired, troubled face turned to Tom in a mute appeal. He helped her to the ground, murmuring:

"I know it's been a mighty hard day. Can't blame you for not wanting to be married after all this water's gone under the bridge. If you'd rather postpone it until tomorrow..."

She shook her head slightly and motioned toward the cabin. Once inside she closed the door and faced him. "It's not so much that, Tom. I know I should be sorry for the man, but after all's happened I can't bring myself to feel much sympathy. It had to happen, he was doomed to die; all I regret is that San Saba was so cruel about it—so cruel, Tom!" She stopped a moment, and he saw her fighting for control. He was about to support her; she shook her head again. "I'm strong—nothing can hurt me. It isn't that, but..."

"You've changed your mind?" he asked, the words running together.

"Tom, I can't ever change my mind as far as I'm concerned with you! What's in me will always be there. But why do other people live so securely while with us everything goes wrong? The very moment I saw you, Tom, trouble started for you and everyone near you. I know it. Treachery and bloodshed and bitter feeling—and now you are about to lose all that you own."

"You've had nothing to do with it," he interrupted almost roughly. "What's to be is to be. All this is in the cards. A man's got to fight to live. What you saw to-day is on your mind—it'll die out."

"I'm not sure. Sometimes I think it's a warning for me not to marry you. What can I bring to you, Tom? The other girl, she's more of your kind—she's beautiful and she's educated. She can talk of the things you know, she's been a part of your life. What am I? Oh, Tom, I don't know..."

"I won't hear any more of that," muttered Gillette. "There's more in your little finger than in her whole body. I know who I want, don't I? By George, I reckon I've got to marry you by force before you let these queer notions get the best of you."

She seemed not to hear him. There was a set to her chin and a remote light in her eyes. She had come to a decision. "I'll not marry you here, Tom. I'm going back with you. I'm going to see that girl. Call it queer if you want, but I can't disobey my instincts. I'd—I'd feel almost unclean..."

"Look here, Lorena..."

"It's settled. Now let's go, Tom."

There was nothing more to be said; he saw that nothing on earth would move that stubborn ruling. Lorena Wyatt was no half- heart; every fibre in her was steel true; she owned a courage and a will, and now she used them, no matter how it hurt her. Gillette dropped his head, unable to meet her eyes. She was whispering something to him that he didn't hear, her arm touched him and slid away. Then he swung on his heel and went out.

"Let's go," he told Quagmire. And to the preacher he added a short phrase. "Reckon we won't be needin' your help to-day."

Lorena's effects went into the wagon, she climbed to the seat beside Tom. He turned the team and wound down-hill through the trees. Quagmire followed a-saddle leading Gillette's horse. And the caravan dropped through Deadwood's rutty street and on out into the swelling land that stretched northeast.

It was a long and tedious trip, the blazing sun pouring out of the cloudless sky by day and the sharp winds slicing across the prairie by night. Ahead of them was uncertainty, behind was nothing but the memory of disaster, of a dead man and of a man who deserved to die yet still lived. What none of the three knew was that this man followed them like a stalking beast all across the leagues of sand; and at night he closed up the interval and lay on the crest of a swell or in the shelter of an arroyo, watching their camp fire with his round, unblinking eyes. He might have come within revolver shot, he might have made his attempt at Gillette's life in the darkness, but he never so much as harboured the idea; for San Saba had tried to kill Tom Gillette on four different occasions by stealth, each time failing. He was a hard-headed renegade, yet there was in him a trace of that mysticism known as the gambler's hunch. The hunch told him he never would master Gillette by that method; therefore he would try another—he would wait, and he would face Gillette, and he would match guns openly. Thus he kept to the shadows, and at day waited until the wagon had dropped out of sight before taking up the pursuit.

Ordinarily San Saba was a cautious man; he loved to look upon the world from a place of shelter, to be slightly withdrawn from the light. He had infinite patience, and up to this point in his life he had never let his hatred obscure the cold reason dwelling in his little nutshell head. Sometimes the scales tipped against him, and rather than even the score he had turned and ridden away to other places. With him it was usually a matter of fresher and farther pastures. The very fact that he disobeyed this life-long habit now augured powerful and upsetting change. San Saba had arrived at the point in his checkered career where personal satisfaction outweighed every other consideration. He hated Gillette as he had never hated another man; it was a matter of pride, of instinct, and of a dozen other unfathomable reasons. Whichever way the man turned he saw Gillette standing before him, seeming to mock and threaten him out of those deeply set eyes. Gillette was a challenge. He would never rest until he settled the affair. So the poison spread through San Saba's thin, malarial body and constricted his temper until the red signals spread around his lids, like a cobra raising its hood.

The little party climbed at last the slope beyond which lay the Circle G ranch houses. Quagmire spurred ahead. When Tom Gillette drew the horses in and wrapped the reins around the brake handle, the crew was mustered before him. The eviction notice still clung to the house wall; nothing had been touched, no other move had as yet been made. Quagmire announced it with a tight satisfaction. Gillette studied the horizon a moment, and Lorena saw the muscles snapping up along his cheeks.

"Then we'll push right on to Nelson and battle this through," he decided. His eyes wandered toward the closed house door; he stared at Quagmire. "Is that all the news?"

Quagmire squinted up to the heavens. "Yeah," he mumbled.

Gillette got down and came around to give Lorena a hand. "You're sure you've got to go on with this?"

She nodded her head, and of a sudden her attention rose above him. The house door had opened. Christine Ballard stood there, a splendid picture in the sunlight, as self-contained and enigmatic as he had ever seen her. She was smiling at him, waiting for him to come up; and the familiar cadence of her voice reached him.

"Welcome home. Tom. We have kept the fort."

Lorena dropped to the ground, going directly toward the other girl. Half across the interval she looked around, and it seemed to Tom Gillette he saw a touch of fear in those sombre gray eyes. She nodded and went on. There was a murmur between the women; Christine Ballard threw back her head, then the two of them passed inside and the door was closed. Gillette swept the circle with an irritable glance. "Snake out a couple fresh horses. Hustle it—hustle it. Quagmire, you're riding to Nelson with me."

And five minutes later he and the puncher were heading away on the last leg of their journey. Quagmire raised a skinny arm to the sky. "Ask no favours o' this world an' yo' won't never be disappointed."

"Quagmire, she won't get away from me again."

"Women has got ten times the cold nerve of a man," reflected Quagmire. And he shook his head. "If that girl figgers to go through with a thing, yo' better save yore breath."

Senator William Costaine had a nickname that sometimes was spoken around the corridors and committee rooms of the Capitol. It was bestowed humourously, yet as in most nicknames it contained a measure of significance. They called him the "wrath of God," and many a man who had felt the force of his outthrust jaw, his rapierlike questioning, as well as the devastating sarcasm of his speeches, went away from that ordeal with the firm conviction that the term was nothing less than appropriate. When the Senator got on the trail of corruption he seemed to generate volcanic fumes, he had all the overwhelming energy of a steam roller.

In this humour he struck Nelson a full week before Gillette returned; and within one hour of his arrival his room at the hotel became a chamber of inquisition. He summoned a notary and installed the man beside him and then in turn he sent out a series of brief invitations—to ranchers and surveyors, to the United States Marshal and allied officials, to Grist and to the land-office agent. The Senator asked questions, he listened to statements, and he asked more questions while the heavy boots tramped up the stairway and the room grew clouded with smoke. The depositions thickened to a respectable pile on the notary's table and into the Senator's frigid eyes there came a gleam that anyone back in Washington instantly would have recognized. It was the light of battle, the flickering of an ironic pleasure; the Senator was establishing a case, and presently there would be men scurrying for shelter while the halls of Congress heard his husky lawyer's voice piling up evidence and laying the mark of Judas across the names of certain gentlemen he long had suspected. Costaine was no pettifogger, nor did he ever raise the cry of "turn the rascals out" just to hear himself talk. When he had no evidence he kept silent and went on with his interminable digging. Therein lay his authority and his manifest power.

Presently the room was cleared. He lighted himself another cigar and tilted back his chair, nodding at the secretary.

"Nicholas, we've got Invering scorched. He'll wear no more purple, and he'll run for his hole like a scared rabbit. I detest and I suspect a man who continually and publicly wraps the flag around him and bares his breast to the arrows of iniquity. Oh, yes, Ignacius is scorched. The gentleman's dream of royal robes is sadly blasted. Nicholas, we leave for Washington by the next train. Arrange it." And presently, after shuffling through his depositions he raised his iron-gray head. "That fellow Grist didn't come, did he? Nor the land agent. Well, we'll pay 'em a visit. Come on."

Down to the land office he went. The agent knew very well who Costaine was, but he affected ignorance, only asking "What can I do for you?"

The Senator laid his card on the counter. "I want to see the records of this office, sir. Want to see 'em all."

"Not open for inspection," said the agent, inclined to be surly.

Costaine bent over the counter, frigidly polite. "Oh, yes, they are. Don't tell me what the regulations are. And you had better drop that public-be-condemned manner, sir. I want to see every dot and comma in this office."

"You can't come out here and tell me what to do!" snapped the agent. "I take my orders from the department! You senators think you run the government, but you don't run the land office. My books are all in order, and I'll open 'em to the proper authorities."

"So," mused the Senator. "Either I see those books or your head will be chopped off in the next forty-eight hours. And moreover, you will find yourself answering certain distinct charges. Nicholas, find me a chair in this rattletrap of an office."

The land agent capitulated. The Senator put on his steel spectacles and started down the pages in a kind of flat-footed patience; all of his life he had done just exactly this sort of thing, and there was no man in America more experienced in smelling out discrepancies. Better than two hours later he left the office, turned back to the hotel, and from thence went to the station and got aboard the train. But Costaine was no hand for delay, and a long telegram preceded him to Washington.

"It will be interesting to discover," he confided to the everpresent Nicholas, "by what extraordinary circumlocution those fine gentlemen got around the plain intent of the law."

In the course of the Senator's investigation he had failed to interview one man. Christopher Grist was in town all during the day; he had been told that Costaine wanted to see him, and later, from his office, he saw the Senator pass along the street to the land agent's. But Grist avoided a meeting: as quietly as possible he left the back door of his office and as quietly disappeared, not to appear again until night. But when he did return he found the land-office man waiting for him uneasy and uncertain.

"Look here—did you meet the Senator?"

Grist smiled. "I made it a point not to, my dear fellow. I'm doing no explaining. Let the bosses stand inspection."

"I know his reputation, the dam' muckraker," growled the agent. "It's his kind that cause all the trouble in America. Well, he looked at my records, but he never found anything. They've got nothing to pin on me, Grist! I'll face 'em!"

"That's right," assented Grist cheerfully.

The agent pointed angrily at him. "It's your cursed outfit that's got me in trouble! You've got to take some of the blame, I'll not be the goat."

"Thought you said there was nothing to pin on you," replied Grist.

"Oh, well, don't be a fool. That man means to manufacture trouble."

Grist touched a match to his cigar. "Let me tell you something, old fellow. The Senator doesn't need to manufacture anything. If he looks he will find—and from the bird's-eye view I had of the gentleman I'd judge he was one hell of a good bloodhound."

"That's a fine way for you to talk," grumbled the agent.

"It's not my land, not my cattle. I'm only working for folks. If you want to know the truth about it, I've acquired an extraordinary detached point of view about the P.R.N. in the last few hours. What that outfit can't stand is daylight. Public attention will kill 'em quick as a shot. And I forecast much attention in the next few weeks. Watch out for it. Those fellows are the world's best evaders of responsibility. That's why I've got a detached point of view—and stand quite ready to detach myself from their employ."

"Say, you don't figure they'd be so low as to try to hook us small fry, do you?" the agent demanded, more and more disturbed.

"Don't you doubt it. A rich man's hide is no thicker than a poor man's. What on earth's the matter with your face? Got yellow jaundice?"

"Well, I'm clear, anyhow," muttered the agent, ducking out of the office.

"The poor fool," murmured Grist. He smoked alone in the darkness, turning over all his own transactions, examining his career with the P.R.N. for flaws. As far as he could reason the thing out they could pin nothing on his name. He obeyed orders, he didn't give them. If those orders happened to be ill-founded in law, what fault was that of his? He wasn't a lawyer. Of course, he had used his power criminally more than once—as in the effort to rustle Gillette's cattle. But there was no proof of this, and his own crew wouldn't ever testify against him.

"I happen to have all their instructions to me neatly filed for reference. And yet those instructions, when you come right down to it, are as innocent as a new-born cat. Ha—it would appear I was in the hole, after all. They'd be just the gentlemen to say I horribly violated their orders to be legal. Now who's foolish?"

He stirred in the chair and threw away his cigar. "I'd be wise if I drifted now. Still, it might blow over. Anyhow, the Senator isn't in Washington yet and won't be for a few days. So, why not wait? I'd hate to duck out of a good job and then find out nothing happened. We'll hang on a week."

Grist, however, was a little short on his time calculation. He overlooked the telegraph wires, and Senator Costaine kept those wires busy all along the route to the capital city. The effect of those messages was to throw a certain clique into high alarm, and forty-eight hours after his departure from Nelson the repercussion of that alarm returned to Nelson and struck both Grist and the land-office agent almost at the same moment. Grist received the following short query:

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE IN VIOLATION OF INSTRUCTIONS?

Grist pondered over this a full day before sending back his answer, which was almost equally terse though a great deal more flippant.

HAVE WASHED SOME DIRTY SHIRTS, AS PER INSTRUCTIONS.

The land agent came down to Grist's office in very much of a hurry. He looked older, and there was a furtive expression on his face. "I told you—I told you! Now the department is on my heels. There's an inspector coming out here. My God, this is what a man gets for trying to pay his debts! Look at me!"

"I see you distinctly. What are you worrying about? You're on solid ground. No proof of a forgery or anything like that, is there? Stand fast and get hold of yourself. This battle isn't lost yet."

"All right for you to say," muttered the agent. "You don't know what kind of a mess I'm in." He turned about the office two or three times before going out. On the threshold he threw a last word back. "I'm taking a little ride to clear my head."

Grist saw him go to the stable and presently come out with a horse and rig. The tail of the rig was filled with luggage; and as the man dipped beyond the street end and struck across the tracks into the open prairie Grist nodded. "That's the last of him. Well, he's wise. I should be doing it right this minute. But we'll wait and see what the next mail brings forth."

He rode back to the P.R.N. home ranch and stayed two days, in the course of which he let off no less than ten of his punchers, among these being the man who had filed on the Gillette water right. His instructions to them were pointed. "This country's getting pretty hot. It's a rotten climate. Were I you I believe I'd travel west until I found the exact spot where the sun went into a hole." With that done he returned to Nelson and found a pair of telegrams waiting for him. He read them in the order of their date.

DISLIKE TENOR OF LAST WIRE. INNUENDO INSULTING. WE HEAR FROM RELIABLE SOURCES YOU HAVE OVERSTEPPED YOUR AUTHORITY. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ANY UNLAWFUL ACT ON YOUR PART IMPLICATES US? IF SUCH IS CASE YOU MUST TAKE CONSEQUENCES.

And the other telegram:

KEEP WITHIN YOUR EXPLICIT INSTRUCTIONS. WHO TOLD YOU TO EXTEND RANGE SOUTH OF RIVER? WITHDRAW ALL CATTLE FROM THAT SECTION, DROP ALL BUSINESS CONNECTED WITH IT. YOUR LACK OF JUDGMENT AND DISCRETION ASTOUNDING. INVOLVES US WITH GOVERNMENT. GET YOUR BOOKS IN ORDER AND RENDER US A FULL ACCOUNT OF YOUR ACTS. LETTER FOLLOWS.

"In other words they're putting themselves on record as disavowing me," mused Grist. "They've tucked tails, the fat yellow scoundrels. Overboard goes the furniture to save a leaky boat. It won't do. They'll lose the beef contract, and they'll lose every inch of land they've had me steal. I'm through."

He saw the handwriting on the wall. Methodically he set about bringing up his account, and during the ensuing four days he brought together all the odds and ends of company business, even leaving a list of instructions for his unknown successor. And then, with all that behind him, he closed down the desk top, locked the office door, and crossed to the hotel. He was through.

"Just so. All it took to knock over an empire was one little puff of air and a single beam of daylight. Grist, my boy, let that be a lesson in high morality for you. There's always one honest man among a hundred fools. Now we shall eat the feast of Nero, salute this town, and depart. One more day and I'm apt to find myself in the lock-up. They're desperate for a victim."

He gave the office key to the hotel man with instructions to transfer it when his successor came; he started for the dining room, hungry and moved to a kind of flippant amusement. Half in his chair he heard the hotel man say:

"That's Tom Gillette ridin' in, ain't it? Sure. Somebody told me he went to Deadwood. Well, he'll be on somebody's trail."

A startled expression skittered over Grist's face. He did not touch the chair's bottom; pivoting he went out the back door and on down the back alley.

Gillette's first visit, once in Nelson, was to the United States Marshal. "Well, you invited me to come get a warrant, Hannery. Here I am."

The marshal tilted back his chair. "I wasn't in any hurry about that, Gillette. Why in thunder are you?"

"Because I don't want it hanging over me," said Gillette soberly. "That's some of friend Grist's work, isn't it?"

"That's right. So is the eviction proceedings, if you want the opinion of a private citizen."

"All right, serve your warrant. If there's twelve men in Dakota who'll convict me on that charge then they're a new brand of settlers to me. I'll go that one better—if there's six men, outside of the P.R.N. crew, who'll convict me I'll pay for my own funeral."

"I know that as well as you do," drawled Hannery. "Don't you figure I'm familiar with public opinion in this district? Hell, it's so flat a case the U. S. Attorney won't clutter up his docket with it. He told me so."

"Well, I don't want it hanging over," said Gillette. "Let's clear the matter up. Let's go through with it."

Hannery shook his head. He was a florid man, and he owned a rough sense of humour that now and then snapped to his eyes. It appeared now. "Reckon I've got to disappoint you, Gillette. Fact is, I filed that warrant somewhere and I've lost it. All my papers get throwed around so dog-gone carelessly. If you want to be served you'll have to wait till I find it. Meanwhile you go about your business. My opinion is it got into the waste basket by mistake. Come to think of it, I'm almost sure somebody cleared my desk the other day."

Gillette rolled a cigarette, frowning over the operation. Presently he looked up. "Hannery, you're a white man."

"The country used to be nothing but white men," was the marshal's gruff answer.

"Grist'll bring it up again, though."

"Like hell he will. Haven't you heard any of the news? Grist resigned his job three days ago. He's still around town, but he's got nothing to do with the P.R.N. any more. What are you worrying about?"

"A fact?" murmured Gillette, plainly surprised. "What jarred him loose?"

"I don't know for sure. But Senator Billy Costaine stormed into town some ten days back and took enough depositions to fill a wagon. Right after that the land-office fellow skipped. Next, Grist filled in his ticket. You can guess for yourself."

He leaned forward, a stubby finger tapping the table. "Speakin' privately, that Eastern bunch was ridin' awful high, and they stood to make a million out of this land-grabbin' deal. They'd of made it, too. Nobody around here could shout loud enough to make Washington hear anything. Most of us didn't know enough to register a kick, and some of us knew but weren't in any position to make any very big noise. How Costaine came into the wind I don't know. But he did, and when that fellow gets on the trail something drops. I'm bettin' you solid silver against a hackamore there won't be any P.R.N. Land Company in these parts when the year rolls around."

"That's why I didn't see any cattle south of the river, then?"

"Grist told me he was ordered to draw everything back from that side and quit bothering with it."

Gillette got up and tilted his hat. He was smiling. "Any time you want to evict me, Hannery, just go ahead. I'm going to move anyhow. To-morrow morning I'll be squatting where Wyatt used to be. I'd like to see anybody take that from me."

"I was going to drop that bug down your collar myself," replied Hannery. "P.R.N. can't hold it—they won't dare to go through with the schedule. And nobody else's got wind of the situation. You bet it's going to be a white man's country yet. Say, you look kind of peaked. Deadwood trouble you some?"

"I went after a party and he saw me first," was Gillette's sombre answer.

Hannery's eyes swept down Gillette's loose frame. "You don't carry that gun low enough by two inches."

"I'm no killer, Hannery. I've had enough to last me. All I want is to be let alone. Well, thanks."

He walked out and joined Quagmire who crouched in a patch of shade. The sun went westering, and at the moment Nelson was aflame under its slanting beams. The tide of life ran along the street in a sluggish trickle; down at the station a train stood ready to pull eastward, smoke pouring out of the engine's funnel stack. A bell clanged resonantly and Quagmire stirred, rubbing his knee joints with a slow, uneasy motion.

"Come on, Quagmire, let's get something to eat. It's a long ride home."

"Ain't hungry," murmured the puncher. "I don't feel right. I don't fer a fact. They's somethin' wrong. You go ahead."

Gillette went on and into the hotel dining room. Only a matter of habit put him there—habit and the need for something to occupy his mind. He was tired, supremely tired, and his muscles served him none too well. The long trip from Deadwood had been a pretty hard strain, even though he rode the wagon seat. It seemed to him that he was growing old; here a month was gone since the night San Saba and Hazel's gang had ambushed him, and still he was weak. Where was his vitality? There was no snap to him, no resiliency, and he observed with a detached and critical disapproval that even for so simple an operation as reaching for the salt shaker it took a distinct order from his brain and a conscious pull of will to extend and withdraw his arm. He was dull, dead on his feet.

"Wherever she goes," he told himself, "I'll follow. Clear to the jump-off."

It seemed mighty queer to him he didn't feel elated at the sudden change in his affairs. As far as his range and his water right were concerned there wasn't even a struggle to be made. Lorena was to be thanked for that. Lorena! Her name echoed like a pleasant melody in his head. He remembered when he saw her spurring over the swelling land, a pert and boyish figure mounted on a horse she called Mister Jefferson Davis. And she had swept around him like an Indian to reach out of her saddle for a prairie blossom. He had never forgotten the picture she made with that crimson flower stuck in her black hair and her white teeth set into her lower lip.

Well, water had flowed under the bridge since. That sturdy slip of a girl on the vague border of girlhood had risen to be a woman.

"By Godfrey this man's world has bruised her! And after all that does she think I'll let her go? It's got to be the other way!"

Nothing mattered with a man. He was supposed to stand up and be licked and stand up again. Else he wasn't a man. No crying for the breaks of luck. But it did matter with a woman—and Lorena, at the very worst of it, still had smiled at him out of her dark eyes while she kept telling him nothing could hurt her. He never observed that his fists were clenched about his plate, nor that the food on it grew cold. Somebody was beside him, muttering. He looked up to find Quagmire.

"Say—well, Judas, what's happened to you, Tom?"

"Nothing."

"Say, I haven't ever horned in on yore business now, have I?" demanded Quagmire. "No, you bet not. Only yo' got a chore to do yet, an' I figgered mebbe you'd ease yo'se'f an' lemme take care of it while yo' et. That all right?"

"What chore?"

"Jus' a fragment of unfinished business," said Quagmire evasively. "That's all right, ain't it? Yeh. See yo' later, then."

"No, come back here. Come back here, you confounded fool! I'm not delegating anything I don't know about. Spread it."

Quagmire swung around, his pale eyes squinting. There was a hot personal anger in them—Quagmire was roused against his own boss. "Listen, Gillette, if yo' don't know enough to come in outen the rain I'll take my spurs and go!"

"You've got that privilege any day," snapped Gillette, and thereupon cursed himself for the tag-end collection of nerves he had become. "Oh, swallow it. What's on your mind?"

Quagmire moved his arm sheepishly. "If yo' got to know—San Saba's in town. He's down by the stable, standin' in the middle o' the street."

"Then I reckon he wants to see me." Tom got up from the table, laid down his half dollar, and walked through the lobby. At the door he stopped and turned again to Quagmire. "Old-timer, let that last remark wash down the creek."

"It goes twice," muttered Quagmire. "I'm a galoot for tryin' to butt my mug in another gent's personal affairs."

"Well, here's the end of the train ride," said Tom. There was something the matter with his ears, for he heard himself as from a distance; and his arms were heavy.

"I know the gent's habits." Quagmire broke in. "In a pinch he don't use that belt gun. It's another under his arm yo' got to watch."

Gillette nodded, not hearing the words. The street was half shade and half sunlight. Over in the shade he observed men standing near to the walls and moving not at all. A spotted dog padded across his vision leaving a trail of dust behind. "I wish I knew her answer now," murmured Gillette and walked out into the sunlight. San Saba's lank frame was in the shade, fifty yards along. There were a great many men against the building walls; Gillette saw the blur of their faces, and he heard some faint voice calling his name. And then all this died out of his attention; he swung and walked to meet the renegade ex- foreman.

He thought at first the man meant to wait for him; but a moment later San Saba stepped sidewise into the sun and came forward. Gillette marked how the man's long legs buckled at each step and how the dragging spurs fluffed the dust San Saba's arms swung with his tread, in a short arc, and the palm of his gun hand seemed to brush holster leather at each passing. He was marked by hard travel, his clothes were an alkali gray, his butternut shirt was open at the neck, and Gillette saw the two front cords of his neck taut against the sunburned skin.

Nothing was said between them; that time had come when there were no words to carry any meaning either would understand. They were, the both of them, thrown back on instinct, back to the stark and ancient promptings. So they closed the interval, and for all the emotion they displayed they were as men coming up to shake hands. San Saba's body swayed a little forward of his feet, and his little nut-round head nodded. Gillette advanced erect, watching bow the ex-foreman's eyes grew narrower at each pace. Time dissolved into space and, save for the sound of his own boots striking, he would never have known himself to be moving. Somewhere a spectator coughed, the sunlight grew dim, the spotted dog ran between them. And then all his range of vision was cut off and he saw only San Saba. San Saba had stopped. His arm rose slowly away from his belt; a bull whip snapped twice, sounding to Gillette strangely like guns exploding. The spotted dog raced back, barking, and men ran out into the street and made a circle around a San Saba who had disappeared. Gillette stood alone, wondering. His arm felt unusually heavy, and he looked down to find a gun swinging from his fist; the taste of powder smoke was in his throat.

"Yo' got him. Come away an' let Nelson bury its own carrion."

Quagmire stood at his elbow, face seamed with great wrinkles. Gillette drew a breath and bolstered his gun. He said something to Quagmire, whereat the puncher stared queerly. The marshal came along at an unhurried gait, still smoking; and the marshal threw out a warning as he walked. "Better lower your belt two inches, Gillette. It's too high."

Gillette headed for the hotel. The last idea in his head was that he hadn't finished his meal and that he'd better go back and drink the coffee even if he wasn't hungry. Directly at that point the whole significance of the scene broke across his mind. "Then it wasn't a bull whip after all, but the guns. The man's dead. Another chore done. I can see the end of the trail."

He was at the hotel door, facing Lorena Wyatt. Where she came from he didn't know. But she was there, supporting herself against the wall, eyes aflood with strange mists.

"Settled?" he asked. The memory of the gun play was wiped out; all else for the moment ceased to matter. He drove directly at the thing he wanted to know. "Settled? I'll follow, no matter where you go. It can't be any other way."

"She's gone, Tom. One of the men brought us to town in the buckboard. I'm going back with you."

His head dropped. "Well—"

"Never ask me any questions about it. There is the one thing I'll hide from you. The rest of me is yours."

He took her by the arm, throwing a swift glance at Quagmire. "Go get a preacher."

A half hour later they were travelling away from Nelson and back to the ranch, while from a second-story window of the hotel Christine Ballard watched them fade into the dusk of the prairie; she was dry-eyed, her training wouldn't let her cry now. But when the last vague outline of Gillette drooped into the swirling shadows and was lost it was to her as if the light of the world had been extinguished. She crouched down, her head resting on the window ledge. And long after Nelson had sunk to rest she was still in that same position.

Quagmire rode through the night with the silhouette of the buckboard ahead of him. The stars were scattered in the sky, shimmering like diamond dust; the wind bore up the cry of a coyote on some distant ridge. The loneliness of the ages was in that solitary chant, and Quagmire, hearing it, drooped a little lower in the saddle, cigarette tip making a criss-cross pattern in the velvet shadows. "Yestiday I was a kid an' my mammy sung songs to me soundin' like that. To-morrow I'm dead. It's jes' a day between sleeps. There's a couple which neither asked nothin' from the universe an' accidental they busted through the crooked game for a win—temporary. Well, somebody's got to win temporary. A minute to smile and an hour to cry—then we sleeps, an' them stars keep on shinin' like that an' some other ki-ote howls out on the same old ridge. Man is mortal. Go along, pony. Wish I had as little to think about as yo' did. Yeah, man is mortal."