Jim said coldly: “Looking for someone, Boone?”
Wyatt stopped abruptly, surprised, and Stub, a step behind him, said: “Well, I’ll be damned. Looks like Gramp gave you the right hunch.”
“Get out, Hallet,” Boone said thickly. “Kitsie, it’s been a long time since I took a blacksnake to you.”
“And you’ll be dead a long time if you do now,” Jim said in cold fury. “If you didn’t get me straight a while ago, Boone, you’d better get it this time. You Wyatts figure you run the valley. Maybe so, but you sure as hell don’t run the sheriff’s office, and you don’t run me.”
“He talks tough,” Stub breathed, his hostile intent plain to read.
He was slender like his grandfather with Latigo’s fine handsome features, but he had been pampered by Boone until his sense of reality was completely distorted. Now, just a little drunk, he was bound to push until he had trouble.
Jim stepped through the door, pausing when he was a pace from Stub. He said: “Boone, since we’re facing our cards, we might as well do a finish job. Kitsie and I are in love. We’re asking your permission to get married.”
“Married?” Stub howled. “So that’s it. Well, maybe it’s time.”
There was no mistaking the boy’s insulting meaning. Jim took one quick step, grabbed Stub’s shirt with his left hand, and jerked young Wyatt toward him. “Back up, kid.”
“Back up, nothing!” Stub bawled his defiance. “A two-bit sheriff don’t marry no Wyatt. Kitsie knows that. She’s just playing with you. She’ll marry Zane Biddle.”
“That’s right,” Boone said with biting triumph. “Just on the off chance she ain’t playing with you, you’d both better know that if she marries you, all of Wagon Wheel goes to Stub. She’ll starve on your wages, Hallet.”
Stub laughed in Jim’s face. “She ain’t used to starving, tin star.”
Jim released his grip on Stub and wheeled to face Kitsie. “Tell them. You’re almost twenty-one.”
“Old enough to have some sense,” Boone flung at her. “Better know what you are, Sis. If it’s the wrong thing, Hallet will be dead by night.”
“That wasn’t necessary, Dad.” Moving around Jim, Kitsie came to stand beside Stub. “You were right. I was just playing with him.”
“Oh, Kitsie,” Nell cried. “You fool!”
“Shut up.” Boone wheeled on Nell, triumph working through him like a drink of whiskey. “You tell your mule-headed dad to get out of the county. There’s other ways of working on him if the sheriff don’t want the job.” Boone strode to the front door. “Come on.”
Without a word or a glance at Jim, Kitsie followed her father out of the house. Stub lingered long enough to prod Jim with a grin, his flushed face alive with malice. “Wyatts take their fun where they find it, mister. Even the women.” Still grinning, he followed his father and Kitsie out of the house.
Jim stood motionless, staring at the door Stub had slammed shut. It was as if a light had gone out in the room, as if there were no hope anywhere, for life had tricked him with a gaudy promise that it had never meant to keep.
He moved toward the door, stiff-legged, thinking that the smart thing would be to ride out of town and keep riding. He owed the county nothing. He had been a drifter from the time he’d been a kid until he had stopped to ride for Wagon Wheel, and the only reason he had stopped then was because Kitsie’s red-lipped smile had warmed him with its promise. Yet, now that he faced this decision, he knew he would stay. His stubborn pride would hold him.
He opened the door, and then turned to look at Nell. “Thanks for trying. Tell Ernie not to budge unless he’s scared.
“He’s not scared. He’d rather die there than let the Wyatts run him off. He said he didn’t think there was a man in the county strong enough to stand against the Wyatts like you have.”
Jim grinned thinly. “My hide won’t turn a bullet. When Latigo’s out of the way, Boone will bring his outfit into town and fix me good.”
He moved through the door, pausing when Nell said: “She loves you, Jim. Don’t do anything foolish.”
“She’s sure got a funny way of showing it,” he said, and went on into the hot sunshine.
He moved mechanically to Main Street, trying to tell himself that Kitsie had done what she had to do and what he had expected her to do, and at the same time knowing in his heart that she shouldn’t have done it. He had thought she possessed strength enough to stay with him. She didn’t love Chris Vinton or Zane Biddle or any of the rest who had courted her. She had reason to hate her father, and he knew she had only contempt for her brother. That left Latigo, and, like any drowning man reaching for a wild hope, Jim saw in the elder Wyatt a slim chance of turning Kitsie back to him.
Reaching the corner of the Mercantile, Jim paused, looking at the bank and wondering if Latigo were still there. He decided that the old man had had time to finish his palaver with Zane Biddle and moved on toward the Bonanza. It was then that he noticed the long string of horses racked in front of the saloon. Again, that strange monitor in the back of his mind jangled its warning bell. There were always a few Poverty Flat cowmen in town on Saturday mornings, but this was too many. Without counting the horses, he judged that every rancher on the flat was in the Bonanza.
Jim swung across the street, reaching into his mind for an explanation and finding none. He shouldered through the batwings, and stopped, for the dozen men at the bar swung away from it to stare sourly at him, their hostility a pushing force laid against him.
There was a short moment of silence. Then Chris Vinton said: “We don’t want no Wyatt hands in here, Hallet. You’d better git.”
This was trouble. Jim read it in their faces, in their stiff unnatural postures. To back up now under Vinton’s threat would be a fatal mistake. Striding to the bar, he said: “Whiskey.” Then he turned to Vinton, smoky-gray eyes locking with the other’s green ones.
Vinton was close to thirty, Jim judged, a barren-faced man who courted Kitsie with grim persistence and weekly beat young Stub at poker. He had a ten-cow spread in the poorest part of the flat, was seldom home, and made his brag that he was the fastest man with a gun on the Stillwater. Jim guessed that he might be, for he wore his gun low and tied down as a professional would.
There was always a smoldering bitterness in Vinton’s eyes as if he were looking for a fight. Jim, raw temper making him as proddy as Vinton, said in a flat tone: “Get this through your thick head, Chris. I’m not a Wyatt man. As long as I’m sheriff, I’ll enforce the law, which same won’t be Wyatt law and it won’t be Poverty Flat law.”
Vinton laughed. “You’re a liar, Hallet, and a crook to boot.”
Jim stepped away from the bar. “You want us to think you’re a pretty tough hand, don’t you, Chris? All right, we’ll see how much of your talk is wind.”
They might have set it up to go that far and no farther, hoping to break him under the weight of their bluff. Jim was never sure. In any case, that was as far as it went, for Vinton did not draw, and the rest of them moved along the bar, Buck Deeter saying: “No cause for a ruckus, Jim. Chris, shut your tater-trap.”
Deeter owned the Staircase, the biggest spread on the flat, and was a man Latigo considered important enough to be elected county commissioner, although he had not been in the valley long. He was tall and swarthy with strong white teeth and dark eyes that liked to laugh. A good man, Jim thought, and a level-headed one.
Not trusting Vinton, Jim said: “All right, Buck, but there is a place where a sheriff stops being a sheriff and starts looking after his own end. That time comes when a cheap-talking tinhorn calls him a liar and a crook.” He watched them closely, right hand near gun butt, left hand on the bar beside his drink. “You’re all proddy as hell. What’s biting you?”
Even Lippy Ord, usually grinning and wanting to talk, was sourly sober. He said: “The Wyatts, Jim. You back up,
you bow and kowtow to ’em, and after a while you see you’ve either got to quit calling yourself a man or do something about it. We’re aiming to do it today.”
Old Gramp Tatum lurched along the bar. “That’sh right, Lippy ole shon. Shoot ’em dead.”
Somebody laughed, a high shrill laugh that was more of a release for taut nerves than an expression of humor.
Deeter said: “This ain’t a question of law, Jim. You’d best stay out.”
“Maybe he’s aiming to look out for the Wyatts,” Vinton sneered.
Too much had happened this day. Jim shoved Lippy Ord aside, the last shred of his self-control breaking, and drove a fist against Vinton’s mouth. Men tumbled away. Gramp Tatum sprawled on the floor. Vinton stumbled over him, took another blow on the side of the head, and fell full out.
“Wait...,” Deeter began.
“Let ’em alone,” Lippy Ord cut in. “Chris has been spoiling for a fight. Maybe he’ll get enough.”
Vinton rolled and came to his feet, cursing and spitting blood and teeth. He drove at Jim, fists swinging in round aimless blows. Jim moved in close and hit him in the stomach. Vinton snapped a fist into Jim’s face; he felt the shock of it and tasted his own blood. Vinton got his arms around him, hung there, and tried to knee him. Turning, Jim took the blow on his hip, battered Vinton in the ribs, but still Vinton clung to him.
For a moment, they danced away from the bar toward the poker tables, Vinton’s arms around him, chin hooked over his shoulder, squeezing and trying to bring Jim to the floor. They slammed into a poker table and overturned it, cards and chips cascading to the floor. They stumbled on to the opposite wall and fell against it, Vinton releasing his grip.
Jim’s knees slid out from under him and he went down. Vinton tried to fall on him, knees aimed at his ribs, but Jim rolled clear and came to his feet. Vinton struggled up, crazy with frustration, and lunged at Jim. It was a wild reckless attack without a thought of defense, the kind of attack that only a furious man driven by a goading sense of futility would make. Jim swung aside and chopped him down with a single sharp-cracking fist to his jaw. Vinton fell, belly down, and lay still.
IV
Jim stepped away, rubbing his knuckles and opening and fisting his right hand, a sense of having done a foolish thing rushing through him. This was a poor time to risk a broken hand. He looked at them, Lippy Ord and Buck Deeter and the rest of them, gauging their temper and letting them feel the weight of his anger.
He said: “Let’s have it. What got you boys on the prod?”
All of them stirred uneasily, eyes dropping, and he saw that they were changing their estimate of him. Deeter, turning his back to the bar, poured a drink as he said: “You’re the law, Jim. Stay out of it until a crime has been committed.”
Jim stooped, and jerking Vinton’s gun from holster, slid it into his waistband. He straightened, gaze again running along the line of men. He said with blunt directness: “Bill Riley was a Wyatt man. We all know that. But, likewise, you know that none of you have been in trouble with the law since I took the star.”
“No reason we should be!” Lippy Ord cried. “It’s the Wyatts who ought to be in trouble. If our cows get on their side of the deadline, they raise hell. If their cows work up on the flat, we ain’t supposed to do nothing but sit and watch ’em eat our grass, which we ain’t got enough of for our own beef.”
“Just what are you fixing to do?” Jim pressed.
Again he felt that sullen uneasiness grip them. He knew that someone had worked them into a killing temper, but at the same time he sensed that they wouldn’t tell him who it was or what their plan was.
“All right,” Jim said coldly. “If there’s murder done, some of you will hang.” He jerked a thumb at the motionless Vinton. “If you’re loco enough to let a loud-mouth like Chris talk you into something you’ll kick yourself for later, there’ll be some widows on the flat afore morning.”
Jim wheeled to the batwings and immediately turned back when Buck Deeter said: “What are you fixing to do, Jim?”
“I’ll have a palaver with Latigo. You boys have got plenty to holler about and it’s time somebody was giving it straight to the Wyatts.”
Lippy Ord nodded. “Fetch Latigo over if he wants to palaver, but we’ll shoot Boone if he opens his mug.”
“I’ll get Latigo,” Jim said, and, pushing the batwings open, stepped into the street.
The bank was empty, except for the teller who stared at Jim through the grillwork of his window.
Jim asked: “Where’s Latigo?”
“Mister Wyatt is in conference with Mister Biddle,” the teller said with distaste as if Jim’s familiarity in calling the elder Wyatt by his first name was sacrilege.
Jim pushed back the swinging gate next to the wall and stepped through. The teller called sharply: “I said they were in conference!”
“I aim to join the conference.” Jim winked at the fuming teller and drummed his knuckles against the door marked Private.
“Who is it?” Zane Biddle called.
Without answering, Jim opened the door and stepped through. Biddle rose from his desk, pink-cheeked face showing the surge of anger. He was a round-bellied little man with blue eyes and a nose that twitched when emotions pressed him. He was Santa Claus without the whiskers, Jim thought, and probably a fake one, despite his protestation that his bank existed to serve all of Stillwater country fairly and impartially.
“I didn’t tell you to come in,” Biddle said sharply. “Get out. We’re busy.”
“This is official business.” Jim shut the door and winked at Latigo. “Want the money-grabber to stay, Latigo?”
Latigo Wyatt had never held Biddle in high regard, and it amused him now to see Jim prodding the man who other folks held in almost as much awe as they held the Wyatts themselves.
He chuckled and nodded. “Let him stay, Jim, unless you aim to burn his ears off.”
Without invitation, Jim pulled up a chair and, sitting down, began rolling a smoke. He said: “You’ve got trouble, Latigo.”
Wyatt reached into his pocket for his stinking black briar and filled it. His cream-colored Stetson was pushed back on his head; his white hair reached almost to his shoulders. Anyone who didn’t know would have guessed him far short of his seventy years, for his blue eyes were bright and sharp, his face weather-stained but less lined by age than most men of middle life.
When Latigo had his pipe going, he pinned his eyes on Jim, and said with characteristic confidence: “My troubles are all over, son. It’s the other gents that have troubles now.”
“I’m one of them other gents,” Jim said. “I want to marry Kitsie, only Boone’s got other notions.”
Biddle pulled in a sharp breath, but Latigo laughed. “What does Kitsie say?”
“I thought she loved me,” Jim said, his misery momentarily breaking through his mask of self-control. He told Latigo what had happened at Nell Craft’s house. With sudden distaste, he jerked the cigarette from his lips and threw it into the spittoon. “Damn it, Latigo, I don’t have no million dollars or a million cows, but I’d make her a better husband than some of these gents who do.”
Latigo turned his gaze to Biddle and laughed. “You sure said something that time, son. You and Kitsie didn’t fool me much. I seen you making calf eyes at each other ever since you started riding for us.”
“That was why Boone gave you the sheriff’s job,” Biddle blurted, the tip of his nose working like a rabbit’s. “She’s young and romantic, and it’d be easy to make her lose her head, but if you really loved her, you’d want her future arranged for.”
“I’ll arrange for it,” Jim flung at him. “She’ll have a lot more fun with me than she would with a fat banker with soft hands.”
Biddle had been standing behind his desk. Now he jerked a drawer open, wounded dignity whipping him into an action he
would never have taken at another time.
Jim came out of his chair to face Biddle. “Zane, if you touch that gun, I’ll kill you.”
“Sit down, both of you,” Latigo said testily. “You love Kitsie, Jim. I ain’t saying she don’t love you, but I do say she ain’t likely to marry you. She’s Boone’s girl, not mine. If it was me, I’d favor you.” Taking his cold pipe out of his mouth, he reached for a match. “What was this trouble you think I’ve got?”
“That’s for you to hear and not that cottontail. Let’s go somewhere.”
Latigo laughed again, eyes turning to the silent, raging Biddle. “He’s sure got you pegged, Zane. Cottontail. Yes, sir, cottontail with pink cheeks and a wiggly nose.” He sobered, nodding at the door. “Suppose you go find something to do out front while me and the sheriff palaver. Trouble.” He snorted. “Maybe some trouble would spice things up. Been damned dull lately.”
Holding his shattered dignity around him like a worn garment, Biddle rose. “You are welcome to use my office, Mister Wyatt,” he said, and, going out on tiptoe in his cat-like walk, he closed the door softly behind him.
I’m gonna hand it out straight, Latigo,” Jim said bluntly. “A lot of folks don’t like you, but they know you’ll keep your word. That’s a notion you never got across to Boone and Stub. They think they’re little gods and they try to make everybody else think the same. That’s why you’ve got trouble.”
“Now hold on...,” Latigo began, quick anger sparking in him.
“Nope. I’m not holding on. I told you I was gonna hand it out straight. Nobody’s supposed to talk to the Wyatts like this, but I’m doing it. I saw how it was when I rode for Wagon Wheel. I saw more of it when I started toting the star. Trouble is you’re blind ’cause you’re on top.”
Anger and puzzlement struggled in Latigo for a moment. “What’n hell are you talking about?”
Jim leaned forward. “You bully and you shove and you kick any man in the pants who doesn’t agree with what you Wyatts say. Like Gramp Tatum. Or Buck Deeter. Or any of the rest. It goes for a while. They get madder and madder and scareder and scareder, but all the time their pride’s working on them.”
High Desert Page 18
