Nathan got his saddlebags from the shed. He walked stiffly to the kitchen and got his roll. The saddlebags slung across his shoulders, the roll under his arm, Nathan walked over to his son.
“I'll put up in town someplace,” he said. “Jeff, you stay here and mind your aunt and uncle.”
Jeff's mouth flew open to protest, but his pa said sternly, “This ain't the right time for palaver. You do as I say.” He put one strong hand on the boy's head and shook him gently. “I'll be seein' you.” He swung up to the saddle and rode out of the yard.
Chapter Six
THE NEXT DAY JEFF began to feel the new status that he had achieved in Plainsville. He was heading for the academy that morning and ran across Bud Slater near the public corral.
“Did I catch the dickens when I got home last night!” Bud said proudly. “My old man was mad as hops when he found out I'd gone to the creek without tellin' him anything about the fight.”
Jeff nodded, but said nothing. Although they were nearly the same age, Jeff felt much older than he had a few days ago.
“I'll bet your aunt raised the roof,” Bud said hopefully.
“With me?” Jeff asked coolly, implying that his aunt wouldn't dare.
“Well, Beulah Sewell's got a temper. Anybody in town will tell you that.”
Jeff let it slide, suggesting that he had more important matters on his mind.
“Say,” Bud said, holding the best for the last, “did you hear Alex Jorgenson and his old man lit out of town last night?”
This was news to Jeff, and he didn't try to hide it. “They did? When?”
“In the middle of the night some time; nobody knows for sure. Sam Baxter's raisin' ned, they say. Old Feyor pulled out owin' him thirty-four dollars at the store.”
Jeff felt himself smiling, felt himself growing big inside. It was a strong, good feeling. Big, tough, hard-drinking Feyor Jorgenson pulling up stakes and leaving town in the middle of the night, just because Jeff's pa warned him he'd better! Jeff had known all along that his pa was a powerful man, but he hadn't been sure that he was this powerful.
The excitement of the thought made him want to laugh. Think what it meant having a father who could do things like that! No wonder all the other boys in Plainsville were jealous.
A change came over Bud's face when the two boys turned the corner at the Masonic Temple. “Say, I thought of something,” Bud said. “See you later, maybe.” He wheeled and hurried across the street, hands in pockets, elaborately casual.
That was a strange thing for him to do, Jeff thought, for Bud was heading for the schoolhouse, the same as Jeff was. But the reason for Bud's abrupt action was soon clear. Forrest Slater, Bud's old man, was coming toward him from the other end of the street.
It gave Jeff a queer feeling for a minute when he realized that Bud was afraid to be seen with him. But that hard core of bigness kept him from showing it. He looked old man Slater right in the eye as they passed.
A short way past the temple building Jeff saw Amy Wintworth come out of her house and head toward the academy. He quickened his step along the dirt path, coming up beside her. “Hello,” he said.
She gave him a cool glance. “Todd's gone on ahead,” she said, her chin in the air.
“I'm not lookin' for Todd.”
“Oh,” she said, walking on.
They walked silently. It grated Jeff's nerves that she wouldn't look at him but stared straight ahead. She didn't even notice the bruises that Jorgenson had put on his face.
There seemed no graceful way to fall back or hurry on past her, so he walked forward stiffly, throwing her a glance from the corner of his eye. Surely she had heard about his standing up to Alex Jorgenson, something not many boys his age and size would have done.
At last he felt that the silence had lasted long enough.
“My pa was busy this morning,” he said. “That's why I'm walking instead of riding the bay.”
All he got was a sour look.
“Well, can't you say something?”
“About what?” she demanded.
He shrugged uncomfortably and thought that he never should have caught up with her. She was in a mood, all right, but it did not prepare him for what was to come. She turned on him suddenly, and her eyes glistened with indignation.
“You're right proud of yourself, aren't you?” she snapped. “You think you're something big, don't you, because your father scared a drunken old smithie out of Plainsville?”
Jeff felt the heat anger in his face. “I didn't say a thing about old man Jorgenson, or Alex either!”
“But you were thinking it!” she accused unreasonably. “Oh, I can see the smugness on your face, Jefferson Blaine!”
How could a man defend himself against an assault like that?
“And another thing,” she said. “I heard my father tell Todd not to have anything to do with you or your pa. So don't go running after him.”
If she were a boy, Jeff thought angrily.
But she wasn't. She was a frail girl with pink lips and flashing brown eyes and a yellow ribbon in her hair. Just the same, her words hurt. So Ford Wintworth, her pa, had forbidden Todd to have anything to do with him! And that probably went for Amy too.
Jeff looked at her, then turned suddenly in anger and started to walk away.
He had taken fewer than a dozen paces when his feet began to drag. Darn it, he thought, he'd never understand girls if he lived to be a hundred. She had ruined her birthday party only to take his part—now he couldn't even get her to look at him!
Yet he consciously slowed down until she caught up with him again. “What're you mad about?” he demanded.
“I didn't say I was mad,” she said coolly.
“I've got eyes. What difference does it make, anyway, what happens to Alex Jorgenson and his old man?”
“If you don't know, I can't tell you.”
There seemed to be nothing else to say. Amy could use words like a lash, but they made clean wounds that healed quickly. Whatever's ailing her, Jeff thought, she'll soon get over it. They walked the rest of the way to the academy in silence.
In Elec Blasingame's office, where the county rented space in the basement of the Masonic Temple, Nathan Blaine took a chair and waited. After a minute the marshal came in from another room and said shortly, “You took your time about getting here.”
“I didn't know it was urgent,” Nathan said quickly.
“Old Feyor Jorgenson and his kid pulled out of town in the middle of the night; scared for their lives. That's how urgent it is.”
Nathan's hand moved toward a tobacco sack in his shirt pocket. He said nothing.
Elec Blasingame was a bulldog of a man. He was squat and thick, almost completely bald. He had the enlarged, blue-veined nose of a heavy drinker, but few had ever seen him drunk. He had been marshal of Plainsville for fourteen years, through good times and bad. There were four graves on the wrong side of the town cemetery, four dead men who had thought Blasingame was just another town marshal who would back down when the going got tough.
Elec's jaws bulged as he glared at Nathan. “Nate,” he said, “we've had a quiet town here since the cow outfits shifted away from Plainsville; people have got to like it that way. Now what you've been doing the past twelve years ain't much my business; I'm just the town marshal. But if you ever bear down on your gun again, the way you did with Jorgenson, you're going to have me to contend with. Is that clear?”
Nathan held a sulphur match to his cigarette and shot the stick on the floor. “Did you see me throw down on Jorgenson?”
“You know what I mean,” Blasingame said harshly. “A name followed you to Plainsville when you came back. When you use a hardcase reputation to scare a man, it's the same as pulling a pistol.”
Nothing showed in Nathan's face. “I'll remember. Is that all, Elec?”
“No,” Blasingame said, “it isn't.” He pulled up a tilt-back chair and sat solidly behind an unfinished plank table that served as a des
k. “I've been thinking about that boy of yours, Nate. Doesn't it seem to you he's a little young to be so handy with a forty-five?”
Nathan studied the top of his thin cigarette. “A man can't start too young learning to protect himself.”
“Protect himself? Is that what the boy is doing?” The marshal planted his elbows on the table, shoving his blunt face at Nathan. “The way I got it, your boy challenged young Jorgenson to a pistol duel. Now that's a hell of a thing for a kid to think up all by himself!”
Grayness edged Nathan Blaine's thin lips. “Maybe he had a reason.”
“What kind of reason could a kid like Jeff have to want to shoot another boy?” Blasingame demanded. Suddenly his big fist hit the table. “Damn it, Nate, I'm scared for that boy of yours, and that's God's truth! Can't you see what you've done to him? Teaching a boy like that to use a gun is like giving a baby dynamite caps to play with!”
The fire in Nathan's eyes burned slowly. “Jeff's just a boy, like any other.”
The marshal came half out of his chair. “Wes Hardin was just a boy too, once. But he'd killed a passel of men by the time he was sixteen. They say Will Bonney could cut a notch for every year of his age when he was twenty-one. Bill Longley had a price on his head when he wasn't any older than Jeff is now.”
Angrily, Nathan tramped his cigarette under a boot heel. “Look here, Elec, what are you trying to say?”
Blasingame settled back, his voice suddenly gentle. “I'm just wondering what you've got on your mind, Nate. That boy looks up to you; any fool can see that. You can make out of him just about anything you want. I hope it's not a hardcase gunman.”
Nathan came stiffly to his feet, “Are you through, Marshal?”
Blasingame sighed wearily and said nothing.
There was a small game going in Surratt's place when Nathan got there, but he ignored it and went to the bar. The saloonkeeper gave him a curious look when he asked for a bottle and took it to a vacant table. From the corner of his eye, Surratt watched Blaine pour a tumbler half full and down it in two choking gulps.
The raw whisky set off a blaze in Nathan's stomach but did little to chase the scare that Blasingame had given him. Damn them, why couldn't they mind their own business?
But it wasn't Blasingame so much, nor Beulah—they only helped bring this real trouble home to him. It was what Jeff had done; that was the thing that frightened him. Oh, he hadn't shown it in front of the marshal, but the knowledge that the thirteen-year-old boy had actually intended to fight a pistol duel— I'll have to talk to the boy, Nathan thought. I'll have to make him understand that guns are not to be taken lightly. Guns are meant to be used as a last resort, when everything else fails.
The chill of winter was in his belly when he thought of his son facing up to old Feyor Jorgenson, pulling a revolver on him. It's a thousand wonders, he thought, that Jeff didn't kill him. That was the worst thing that could happen to a man, Nathan knew—except to get killed himself.
Nearly half the whisky was gone now and Nathan felt limp and soured with it.
Nathan had been sitting at the table for about an hour when the drifter came into Surratt's place and had several drinks at the end of the bar. For a moment Nathan thought that he had seen the stranger before someone he had seen in New Mexico, maybe, or down below the Big River.
Then he realized that he had never seen the man in his life. The drifters ran to type, and Nathan had seen plenty of his kind at various times, riding the high ground, living away from the law up in the Indian Nations. That was the thing that confused him. It was the type he knew, not the man.
From habit, Nathan scanned the hitch rack outside the saloon, spotted a trail-weary dun with an expensive rig, a Winchester Model 7 snug in a soft leather boot. Nathan smiled thinly, knowing that he had pegged the man right.
The stranger was about fifty, his leathery face as sharp as a hatchet, his dirty gray hair long and shaggy. He was covered with trail grime, and was many days past needing a shave. Nathan did not know him, but he could feel that this drifter was a good man not to pick trouble with. A red handkerchief had been tamped loosely into his holster to protect his converted Frontier from dust—a precaution taken only by specialists.
After several silent minutes at the bar, the stranger counted out what he owed and walked out.
A vague uneasiness settled around Nathan after the drifter had gone.
Chapter Seven
SHORTLY BEFORE FOUR o'clock that afternoon Beulah Sewell gathered up her sunbonnet and wicker basket and headed for Sam Baxter's store to buy rations for the rest of the week. On her way to the store she stopped at her husband's tin shop.
Wirt was working on a windmill, a rush order for one of the grangers, and the back of the shop was cluttered with other work that had to be put off. Beulah sniffed.
“If you ask me, it's time you put Jefferson back to work.”
Her husband's mouth was a grim, thin line. “Mr. Jeff Blaine,” he said sourly, “has decided he's above tin working.”
“What that boy needs is a sound thrashing,” Beulah snapped.
Her husband looked at her. “You're not forgetting Feyor Jorgenson so soon, are you, Beulah?”
His wife's small eyes sparked. Wirt had not dared mention Nathan Blaine's name since the affair on the creek, and now he wished that he hadn't mentioned Jorgenson's either. He changed the subject quickly.
“I've been so busy here,” he said, “I haven't had a chance to get to the bank.” From a cigar can he took a small packet of money and handed it to his wife. “Will you stop in at Jed Harper's and deposit that? You'll have to do it before going to Baxter's; Jed'll be locking his doors any minute now.”
Beulah took the money and hid it under the napkin she had in the basket. She nodded stiffly, her jaws tight.
Wirt Sewell shook his head slowly as he watched his wife's small, prim figure move up the plank walk. He had never seen Beulah so worked up before. But maybe things would be better, now that Nathan had moved out of their house.
Jed Harper was just locking the bank's front door when Beulah reached for the big brass latch. Jed was a large, well-fed man with pink cheeks and white hair. He smiled a quick, professional smile.
“Why, hello, Beulah. I was just locking up.”
“Me and Wirt managed to put by a little,” Beulah said confidentially. “We wanted to bank it today, if we could.”
Jed Harper's smile became a bit strained, 'but he stepped aside and swung the door open. “Of course, Beulah. My teller has knocked off for the day, but I can take your money and give you a receipt. Please come in.”
“Thank you, Jed,” Beulah said primly. She followed the banker to a railed partition where Jed eased wearily into a leather chair.
He got out pen and paper and said, “Now how much is it, Beulah? I'll just add it to your and Wirt's account.”
Beulah felt the breath of the street on the back of her thin neck. She thought, Jed left the door open. Now that's a careless thing to do, with people's money in his care. But she was busy counting the money in the bottom of the wicker basket and didn't turn around. Then she heard the latch click and knew that someone had stepped through the door and closed it.
A voice said, “Stand like you are, lady. Don't turn around.”
Jed Harper's eyes were bugging as though he had just caught a glimpse of the Great Beyond. “Do as he says, Beulah,” the banker said hoarsely. “He's got a gun!”
Beulah stiffened. A gun meant robbery. She thought of Wirt's hard-earned money, and her small eyes glinted. No hoodlum was going to take this money, she vowed to herself; she didn't care how many guns he had.
Beulah started to wheel about. She would fight for what was hers with her own two hands, if necessary! The man behind her made a small, angry sound of surprise when he saw what she was going to do. He moved quickly, before Beulah's thought had grown to action, Beulah felt blinding pain as something hard struck the back of her head through her sunbonnet....
&
nbsp; Beulah awoke in a sea of pain. Her head ached as if it would burst, and she had never known that a person could be as sick as she was that moment. The smell of oiled oak told her that she was lying on the floor of the bank. She tried to move and could not. She tried to call out, but the effort of drawing up a bare whisper brought the blaze of pain to her head.
Her money! Had the thief taken her money? She saw the blurred shape of her shopping basket turned upside down on the floor, but she couldn't reach it. She had the shameful, disgusting feeling that she was going to be sick there on the bank floor.
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