by Will Keen
‘Hallelujah,’ McClain said softly; and suddenly he knew exactly what had happened.
‘I walked away, headed home, because I’d been relieved by Frank Norris. Norris dropped that handkerchief, it was Frank Norris who murdered my wife—’
‘Now hold on,’ Dexter said.
‘No, there’s more.’ McClain shook his head, climbed out of the chair, and paced. He looked at Don Carter.
‘Remember wondering what Norris was doing in Red Creek? Remember Ma Thom, how she died? How Norris took a bullet back there in her backyard? He thought he was a goner, gasped out a dying man’s confession when I was only half-listening. I should have paid more attention. What Norris said was, “It all went wrong.” He had the opportunity, he said, said he had it all planned but it went wrong.’ McClain grimaced. ‘I thought he was talking about the plan we’d cooked up to get those Skeltons. What Norris was saying was he’d intended using that raid on Ma Thom’s place as a way to kill me and make it look like one of the Skeltons had gunned me down.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Dexter said, ‘but why?’
‘He killed my wife because she spurned him, turned him down. He wanted me dead because I was the man she’d loved, and married.’
‘She was dead, you were on the run. Wasn’t that enough?’
‘No. He was a man obsessed.’
‘Well, I hate admitting I’m wrong, but I’m inclined to believe you,’ Dexter said. ‘Trouble is, we’ll never know for sure.’
‘We ask him,’ McClain said, then laughed harshly. ‘I ask him – then finish him off.’
‘To do that, you need to know where he is.’
‘Back in Red Creek he told them he was heading this way.’
Dexter shook his head. ‘I haven’t seen Frank Norris since the day he let you walk out of that cell, then took off across the mountains.’
For McClain, there was only a moment’s hesitation, a moment’s thought.
‘Then if Norris is not here, I know exactly where to find him.’
Nineteen
Riding the five miles or so to the home he had shared for such a short time with Emma took McClain’s mind back a whole two months. He was once again heading out of Macedo’s Flat to try to persuade his young wife to stay with him, only this time it was with the benefit – no, with the hell, the pure purgatory – of hindsight. He’d arrived at the house to discover that her life had been destroyed, and in many ways his along with it, because of one man’s desire and his refusal to accept rejection.
Yet on McClain’s approach now it was as if nothing had changed. Despite the slight dust haze in the air, the stands of desert willow and blue palo verde flanking the trail brought the same feeling of warm familiarity, and when he rounded the bend and the house became visible through the trees he knew he was coming home. But of course, he didn’t know anything of the sort; that knowledge was his mind playing cruel tricks. In that instant when reality hit home, all warmth was banished by the harsher memories that came flooding back. So strong were those images that for a moment McClain thought that he would never gather the strength or the will to climb the steps, cross the gallery and enter the house where his wife had died in a pool of blood.
Then he saw the horse at the hitch rail.
Emma used to use French words for the feeling that hit him at the sight. A couple of months ago it was this same horse at a different hitch rail that warned him that Frank Norris was in town. But in Red Creek, hitching his horse outside the saloon had for Norris been a familiar action done every day without the need for thought. Now, McClain saw it as a deliberate affront, a man mocking, gloating, figuratively driving a post into the land with words scrawled on a board proclaiming, ‘Hey, look, feller. I won, you lost.’
The rage that flooded McClain with all the heat and the fury of a prairie fire took his breath away. He came down off his horse in a rush, and tied it alongside Norris’s. His jaw was clenched so tight it was aching. Somehow his six-gun was already in his hand.
He went up the steps at a run, pounded across the gallery, banged the door open with the heel of his left hand and burst into the shady room.
At once the dark was split, the shadows lit by a dazzling muzzle flash.
The crack of the shot came as McClain, out of pure instinct, flung himself to one side. The bullet hummed through the air where he’d been standing and snicked a splinter from the doorjamb. He rolled away and came up hard against a chair that should have been elsewhere. Confused, expecting the second shot, he took an instant to look around. Chairs, tables – everything had been cleared from the centre of the room. On the other side of that now open space, up against the tall dresser standing against the rear log wall, Frank Norris was lounging. His six-gun hung loose in his hand.
‘You took your time,’ he said.
‘Are you saying you’ve been waiting here for me to show up? Ever since leaving Red Creek?’
Norris laughed. ‘No. I’ve been living in town. In my old rooms—’
‘Dexter’s not seen you.’
‘Why would he? He’s got his job, I keep my head down.’
McClain nodded, climbed cautiously to his feet and tried to make his six-gun invisible.
‘There was dust when I rode in here,’ he said, talking to keep the man’s eyes on his face. ‘Your horse’ – he shook his head, angry with himself – ‘I should have looked closer. You knew I’d head this way, rode in ahead of me.’
‘And here we are,’ Norris said, grinning.
‘This is where you finish what you had planned before it all went wrong in Red Creek.’
‘It went wrong when Dexter accused you of killing Emma. You were no use to me in jail.’
‘I would have died at the end of a rope.’
‘But not by my hand; I wanted you both.’
‘Well, you got halfway there,’ McClain said casually. Then he lifted his six-gun and shot Frank Norris in the thigh.
Once again McClain was down on one knee alongside a body lying in a pool of blood. But this time he was holding a six-gun, not a knife, and that gun’s muzzle was thrust hard under Frank Norris’s chin.
‘You were too busy patting your own back,’ McClain said. ‘Didn’t you think to take my gun? Tell me to drop it?’
Norris’s face was white and strained. Both his hands were clamped to his thigh. The blood was flowing through the cloth, between his fingers, but no artery had been severed. He’d live, McClain thought; pull through again the way he’d pulled through with the help of Doc Sol Levin in Red Creek. But he needed that kind of help. If he didn’t get it. . . .
‘In the lap of the gods,’ McClain said.
‘What?’ Norris said tightly.
‘Talking to myself,’ McClain said. ‘Remembering things Emma used to say. Déjà vu was one; I remember that now. Lap of the gods? Well, another way of saying it is the throw of the dice. Or something.’
He took the six-gun’s muzzle from under Norris’s chin, sat back on his heels and stood up.
‘You’re not going to finish me?’
‘I was. Sure I was; but I keep hearing voices. My own, mostly, talking about guilt. I shot a man dead down on the Texas Gulf because I thought he’d cut Emma’s throat. I was wrong. You’re that killer. But if I kill you, that doesn’t bring her back. Besides,’ McClain said, turning away, ‘this six-gun was borrowed, and I’d hate to return it to a fine woman with another notch cut into the butt.’
He walked away, heard Norris gasp behind him, say, desperately, ‘For Christ’s sake, McClain—’
And McClain walked out of his house for the last time. He pouched his six-gun and went down the steps, mounted up and rode away.
He’d see Carter in town; he’d be waiting in Dexter’s jail office. Then, with the Red Creek marshal, he’d ride away from Macedo’s Flat, peel away from Carter when they came down from the high ground and head out to the homestead where. . . . Well, who could say what would happen. For sure, that woman needed help. Sarah Crane. McC
lain savoured the name. Sarah, and the boy, Jamie. And, hell, he could always sleep in one of the barns. . . .
And Norris. Well, about Norris, McClain would say nothing. Lane Dexter would ask, would want to know. McClain would meet the questions with a blank look, a shake of the head. But Dexter wouldn’t leave it. As the town’s lawman, he would need it settled, so when he had the time he’d ride out to McClain’s home.
When he had time, McClain thought.
Would Dexter get there in time to save Frank Norris?
The throw of the dice, McClain reflected, and as he rode into Macedo’s Flat there was a thin smile on his lips and the realization that all feelings of guilt had gone.
