by Short, Luke;
“Of my kind, unless we’re careful,” she said after some consideration.
“Your kind?”
“Yes, the kind that gives like a man, wants like a man and yet has to play out her life being a woman.”
He half turned to her, roused by something close to passion in her voice, and Vannie knew it and said more. “There are women, Phil, who can be ladies all their lives until once their pride cracks because of a man, and they let him have that human glimpse of them. And there are some men who are so used to that ladylikeness that they are confounded by the glimpse of humanity. That is what they call love.”
A faint anger stirred within him, and curiosity, too, for he read this to mean Sharon Bonal and her actions this morning. If he had thought this same thing, drawing no conclusions from it, then Vannie had supplied those conclusions for him.
“Pin that down, Vannie,” he murmured, walking toward her.
“Do I have to?”
“Yes.”
“I meant Sharon.”
He looked down at her, strangely without anger. “How?” he asked. “How?”
Vannie rose now to face him. “Phil, is your memory so short that—” She paused. “How short is it? So short, is it?”
Seay didn’t answer.
“Do you want me to tell you what she said to you this morning, Phil? She said that you were acting like a boy, that you were playing out a hand that Servel Janeece had dealt you, and the way he wanted you to. She said that you were carrying more than your own life on your shoulders. She said to wait, wait for the time when you were free to square your accounts. Didn’t she? Didn’t she say that?”
Seay said angrily, “You were listening?”
Vannie laughed shortly. “Not listening, Phil. I know, because I said the same thing to you myself not a minute before she came. And which of us did you listen to?” She paused, and he could hear her labored breathing. “You listened to her, Phil. You didn’t even hear me. And you didn’t hear me because you knew that was what I would say. Tober had said it already. You’d already said it to yourself, but you were so stubborn you couldn’t hear. It took Sharon Bonal to make you listen.”
“You hate her, Vannie?” Seay murmured.
“Not hate her. I envy her,” Vannie said bitterly. “She gives so seldom that when she does, it can startle you to life. I give because it’s my way, Phil—a man’s way, Tober’s way, your way—but you can’t hear me. Don’t you call that love?”
Seay gripped her arms tightly. “Don’t say that!”
“I’ll say that and more,” Vannie said quietly. “Wake up, Phil. You’re a grown man, and know yourself. I’ve known it since I first set eyes on you at Maizie’s. You were friendly with me because I was friendly with you, and you were starved for kindness from a woman, a handsome woman. And all the time you were being so grateful to me for liking you, you were thinking of Sharon Bonal and her pride, watching for her, hungering to be tramped on. And when she threw you one bone today, you are so grateful—so pathetically grateful.”
Seay shook her in his anger.
“That’s right,” Vannie said, her voice breaking. “God help me if it isn’t! And I could give you much more than the pitiful little she gave you, Phil. That’s what hurts. I could give you love. I could warm you with it, Phil, so that the sight of her cold little pride would turn you back to me. I could give you so much—if you only wanted it!”
Slowly, Seay let go her arms, and then she was close to him, her arms around him, her head against his shoulder. For a moment she held him so, and then she raised her face to his. The warm softness of her lips was like a drug rioting through him, and he could feel the soft fullness of her body next to him; and then, bringing his hands up, he roughly freed himself of her arms.
Vannie was conquered. She stepped back and turned away, and Seay put a hand on her arm and drew her around.
“It’s no good, Vannie,” he said huskily. “I—it’s no good.”
“I know,” Vannie murmured, watching his face a still moment. “I didn’t think it would be. I—I had to fight, that’s all.”
“It wouldn’t work.”
“Oh, it would, Phil!” she said passionately. “It would!” She ceased talking, and Seay could feel the spirit go out of her. He stepped over and picked up his hat and came back to her.
Vannie said, “If you apologize for kissing me, Phil Seay, I will hate you!” She laughed shortly. “Besides, it was I who kissed you.”
Seay put a hand on her arm. “Believe me, Vannie. It wouldn’t work. If I thought it would …”
“I know. You are full of her, Phil. Well, go on, and God bless you, you poor fool. And when you know her, Phil, and if it isn’t too late, I’ll be here.”
When the tramping of boots in the harness room approached the door, and he could hear the fumbling with the lock, Hardiston groped in the dark for his gun. He found it and sat bolt upright, holding it awkwardly, cringing back against the dusty oat sacks.
The door opened, and light washed the room. The lantern moved into the room, and above it Hardiston could see the thick, high shoulders of Chris Feldhake. Feldhake swung the lantern high to look around him, and he grunted at sight of Hardiston atop the oat sacks stacked almost ceiling high. Then he set the lantern on the floor in the middle of the cleared space among the sacked feed and turned and watched while four other men followed him into the room. The last one closed the door.
Hardiston knew three of them, not by name, but by sight. They were the three who always came in with Feldhake, who had come in this room a dozen times in the last four days—hard, quiet men who let Feldhake talk and ask questions. The fourth man was always someone new, and the questions Feldhake asked of this fourth man were always the same. Hardiston lay back on the feed sacks, waiting for the questioning to begin. His face was stubbled with a gray-black beard, and his black suit was powdered with dust. He scratched continually at the oat husks that had worked into his clothes, his hair. He listened now.
“Kirk, you was drivin’ a carriage that night out at Comber’s party, wasn’t you?” Feldhake began. Hardiston turned his head to look down at the men below. Feldhake half sat on a feed sack. The stranger stood by the lantern. The other three lounged against the door and squatted against feed sacks.
“Sure. The Widowses were out there that night.”
“You boys were out in the carriage house eatin’ what Ben brought out to you, weren’t you?” Feldhake went on in a casual voice.
“Not in it. We was talkin’ there by the wall,” Kirk said.
“You see anybody ride up on a saddle horse durin’ the evenin’?” Feldhake asked. Hardiston looked over at him. He had a straw stuck in his mouth, his hat cuffed back off his forehead. His face was sleepy, brutal, almost smiling, but he contrived to give an unobservant man the impression of wholly friendly curiosity.
“Yeah, I seen a man ride up,” Kirk said slowly, trying to recall. “Why?”
“Remember who it was?”
“I never paid no attention,” Kirk said.
Feldhake shifted his thick shoulders faintly and went on. “He was ridin’ a buckskin, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Hear him say anything?”
Kirk scowled now and took off his hat and scratched his head. He was a middle-aged man with an amiably plain face.
“Yeah, he asked us to send Ben over.”
“You wouldn’t remember the voice?” Feldhake persisted gently. “Think you ever heard it before?”
There was a long pause before Kirk answered. “Maybe. I dunno. I never paid no attention, Chris.”
“Think,” Feldhake insisted. “You can’t recollect anything more about the man, except he was riding a buckskin? Was he fat or thin? Did his voice sound excited or not?”
Kirk shook his head immediately. “I dunno, Chris. He was out in the dark, there. There was a light in the carriage house, and I seen the color of his horse when it shied back into the light. I ju
st figgered it was somebody from town with a message for Ben. I never paid no attention.”
A shadow of suspicion crossed Kirk’s face. “Why you so anxious to know, Chris?”
Feldhake laughed and reached in his pocket and drew out a gold piece, which he flipped to the man leaning against the door. “You win, Bob,” he said easily. To Kirk, he said, “Bob’s sparkin’ the help out there at Comber’s. He claimed he wasn’t out there the night of that party, and I claimed he was. But this man wasn’t Bob, I reckon—not unless Bob stole a buckskin.”
“Hell, why didn’t you say so?” Kirk said, grinning. “No, it wasn’t Bob. I know that.” He turned, and Bob opened the door, and Chris waved lazily as Kirk went out into the saddle room. Bob closed the door behind him. The three of them looked at Feldhake, who was plucking absently at his thick lower lip.
“That’s four that said buckskin,” Feldhake said presently.
“It was Jimmy Hamp, all right,” one of the men said.
Feldhake nodded imperceptibly. “Yes. I reckon so.”
Immediately the two men squatting against the grain sacks rose and went out. Bob waited while Feldhake lounged off the sacks to follow them.
“Feldhake,” Hardiston said, and Feldhake stopped while he scrambled down the oat sacks and crossed over to face him.
“I’ve been waiting four days now,” Hardiston said. “When do I get the rest of the money?”
Feldhake regarded the little man thoughtfully, frowning. He smiled faintly, shook his head, wheeled and went out past Bob. Hardiston made a sudden gesture to stop him, but checked it and simply stood there while Bob came over and picked up the lantern and headed for the door. Suddenly, Bob paused, turned and came back to Hardiston.
“Listen, old man,” he said quietly. “You’re a little too old to play out a hand like this. If you got sense you’ll clear out of here, clear out now, right plumb now.”
“Why?” Hardiston demanded irritably. “Why? I’ve got money owing me and I intend to collect it.”
“You won’t collect any money from him,” Bob said patiently. “Don’t you see, old man? I’m tryin’ to help you. Get out of here before you get him riled.”
“But—”
“Sure,” Bob said. “Sure, only you get out. I’ve seen him shoot a horse for pitchin’ with him.”
Hardiston stood utterly still a moment, considering this. “Oh,” he said then. “You don’t think he ever intended to pay the rest of it?”
Bob laughed and went out, and Hardiston stood there in the dark. Suddenly, in that hot room, in that unbearably hot room, he shivered.
Minutes after he left Vannie, Seay was aware that he was riding down this same street, but near the edge of town. He turned up the side street and was immediately in sight of the town with its whirl of people. He felt weary and used up and empty, save for a quiet pity for Vannie Shore. Now that he was away from her, he recalled with grim understanding the passion of her, and the bitterness, too. She was a woman who would love a man as she had promised, warmly, and with a quiet depth that would make a man humble beholding it. But not himself. It was all there—the liking for her and the understanding and even the wanting, but it wouldn’t work. He tried to back his intuition by reason, and he found himself puzzled and wordless.
In the stream of the main street’s traffic he gave his horse its head and watched the ceaseless milling of this throng with a new wonder. Here, even now, were the honest flatbed wagons of the immigrants attracted too late by the wild stories of wealth to this camp where every foot of ore-bearing land was at a premium. Sheep among wolves, he thought, as he noticed the bewilderment on the faces of these wagon drivers. For the quick rough heartiness of the town which was more than confidence, even arrogance, must have been puzzling to these strangers. The long line of freight wagons was as slow and never ending as it had been for two years now. All this wealth had been taken over, and its division settled long since. A substantial part of its men carried the money by hard work, and all the others fed on them, pandered to their vices, and everyone seemed to have fun and money out of it.
There was a tangle of traffic at a four corners that stopped Seay, and while he was waiting impatiently for the stream to move forward he stood erect in his saddle, trying to see over the crowd.
A man in the street said from beside him, “Jimmy Hamp got it, Phil.”
Seay looked down. He didn’t know the man, but he had a friendly, work-grimed face.
“He did? Where?”
“In his office.”
Seay nodded his thanks and pushed his horse over to the hitch rail and dismounted. The crowd had clotted around the entrance to Jimmy Hamp’s Keno Parlor, but Seay shoved his way through. He was remembering Jimmy’s last words to him that night at Combers’, and a slow steady anger was whipped alive in him. Jimmy had got it. Because he had been discovered warning Seay of the trouble at the tunnel?
Activity in the saloon was at a standstill. Sober men, their girls on their arms, crowded around the office door. A deputy marshal was keeping them out.
Seay slipped past the deputy and entered the office. Jimmy Hamp, his sagging head just under the circle of light thrown off from the table lamp, sat slacked in his swivel chair, his shirt front blotted red.
Ferd Yates and Hugh Mathias, called from a poker game at the Union House, were standing near him, listening to the story of a bartender.
Yates glanced carelessly at Seay as he entered, and then his gaze steadied, while Seay observed Jimmy Hamp with quiet attentiveness. Then Seay shifted his glance to the smoky window in the side wall. Its pane was broken, shards of glass on the rug below it. Ferd Yates saw that glance, and his eyes changed expression a little, flooding a hard alertness into them.
Then Seay nodded to Yates and Hugh.
“How’d it happen?” Seay asked.
Yates said quietly, “You seem to know already, Seay.”
Seay raised his careful glance to Yates. “Through the window?”
“That what you think, isn’t it?” Yates said evenly.
“Ferd,” Hugh murmured.
Yates said stubbornly, “It took me more than five seconds to figure it out when I come in. It didn’t take you that long.”
“Maybe that’s why you’re marshal instead of sheriff,” Seay replied quietly.
“Ferd,” Hugh repeated.
“You was on one wide woolly prod today,” Yates said doggedly to Seay. “Maybe you can tell us who shot him.”
Seay didn’t even bother to shake his head.
Yates continued mildly, “It occurs to me that there was some mention of Jimmy Hamp doin’ you a bad turn, and if my memory ain’t played out, you claimed Jimmy was in with Chris Feldhake. Wasn’t it Chris you was huntin’ this morning?”
“Stop it, Ferd,” Hugh said quickly. He was cool, immaculate, disinterested, but there was a keyed awareness behind his quick eyes.
“It was,” Seay murmured. “I also said something about Jimmy Hamp. What of it?”
In the slaty attention of his eyes, Ferd Yates saw something coming to a head and, stubborn man that he was, did not heed it.
“Then where was you tonight?”
Seay said softly, “Maybe outside that window with a gun in my hand, a knife in my teeth, dynamite in my pocket, blood smeared on my hands, a crippled horse waiting for me in the alley and seven witnesses with lanterns to watch me.”
With an effort of will, Yates repeated, “Where was you?”
Hugh Mathias said reasonably, “That’s a fair question, Seay, considering it’s asked by a professionally suspicious man.” A faint smile raised the corner of his mouth.
“At Vannie Shore’s,” Seay said.
Yates wheeled, his mouth open to call a deputy, when Hugh put a quick hand on his arm.
“Be quiet now,” Hugh rapped out. “If he says he was there, he was. It’s easy enough to check on him without calling him a liar.”
Yates’ mouth closed slowly, but when it was closed, it wa
s closed firmly, grimly. Then he said carefully to Seay, “You’ve made pretty big tracks here for a while, Seay. Just watch out.”
Hugh said quickly, “Nonsense, Ferd.” He put on his hat and skirted Yates and took Seay by the arm. “Have a drink with me, Seay.”
Seay went out with him. Once on the sidewalk, Hugh said, “I meant that. I’d be pleased if you’d have a drink with me.”
Seay shook his head. “Some other time. I’m due back at the tunnel.”
Hugh nodded, watching the taller man with a kind of ironic curiosity. “You have a gift for bull headedness,” Hugh mused. “Maybe it’s what makes you what you are. I wouldn’t know, but I think I like it.” He jerked his head toward Jimmy Hamp’s. “They don’t like you here, Seay. That business with Feldhake didn’t set well with Ferd. The more he thinks of it, the more he wonders just who was right that night. He doesn’t dare ask Feldhake, because he’s Janeece’s marshal. His conscience absolved you that night, but he’s foolish enough to argue with it. I might risk not minding my own business long enough to repeat what he said to you. ‘Watch out.’”
“Thanks,” Seay murmured.
Hugh looked as if he wanted to say more, and Seay waited for him to speak again. Suddenly, each saw what the other was thinking, and Hugh chuckled.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll say it. You weren’t by any chance unwise enough to misinform Yates as to your whereabouts tonight, were you? Because he’ll check up.”
“No. I was at Vannie Shore’s.”
Hugh nodded, said good night and left him. Seay watched him lose himself in that crowd, and immediately his mind leaped to Sharon. Hugh would tell her of Jimmy Hamp’s murder and what followed. He would also mention that Phil Seay, whom Ferd Yates was inclined to suspect, established an alibi with Vannie Shore to help him.
Abruptly Seay wheeled and swung under the hitch rack and gathered in the reins of his horse, his irritation making his movements quick and troubled.
Chapter Eleven
Sharon had made three trips to San Francisco, each time bearing the hard discomforts of stage travel with a resignation that surprised even herself. She had in her bag the last letter from Hugh, which she had got yesterday morning at one of the stage stations. A driver with the coast mail in the boot recognized her and had delayed the stage long enough to hunt it out and give it to her. Among other things, which she skipped, Hugh had written in his good-humored, ironic vein that the tunnel was progressing with surprising dispatch. At the tunnel head they struck diabase (“which for the benfit of your charming ignorance, I will call a softer rock than hornblende andesite,” he had written), and it seemed that Charles Bonal was at last in luck. At least, he was stretching his tunnel funds further, and the wise and unprejudiced minds in the camp said that, with this progress to show, he stood a chance of obtaining more loans. As it was now, he couldn’t hope to finish the tunnel—all he could hope for was hope. There was no mention of Phil Seay in it.
