Hard Money

by Short, Luke;

  The questions at the hearing were perfunctory. Seay, a trace of a black beard stubble on his face, admitted to everything, and a high bail was set, which Bonal paid promptly, and they were dismissed. The gun which was returned to him Seay stuck in his belt. His face was haggard, overlaid with a weariness that was not relaxed.

  Bonal took him into a saloon, and they ordered drinks and took seats, but when their drinks came Bonal found he had nothing to say. His fight was won, clinched by an act of violence that awed him. And remaining was only the victory, and Tober’s death, one canceling the other. He felt old and weary and sad, and he pitied the man across from him. For the cold grief in Seay’s eyes was a thing that Bonal did not like to watch.

  “You better sleep,” Bonal said gently.

  “Afterward.”

  Bonal was about to ask “After what,” and then it came to him that he might have understood before this. He paid for the score and rose and said, “I can’t help, can I?”

  When Seay shook his head Bonal left. Seay went out later and tramped into a store and purchased a box of shells. He stood by the counter, a high, straight figure, wearing the same clothes of last night, which had dried in folds and sharp wrinkles. His shirt, torn at the back, was foul with all the dirt of the water. He took five shells from the box he had purchased, loaded his gun, let the hammer fall on the empty chamber and then rammed the gun in the waistband of his trousers.

  “You keep the rest for me,” he told the clerk, leaving the rest of the cartridges.

  And now he started that old hunt which was so familiar to him in the past and which had been interrupted once before. Feldhake was not at the Melodian.

  Swinging out its door, he almost bumped into Vannie Shore, who was on the way to her buggy at the hitch rail. She put out a hand, and Seay stopped, and Vannie said softly, “I heard about it, Phil. It’s grand, and it’s sad, and no fun winning.”

  Seay nodded mutely. Vannie said, “You’ve got to do it, haven’t you, Phil?”

  Again he nodded. “Then bless you, finish it,” Vannie told him and left him.

  Seay was later to remember that, although it slipped from his mind now, like something trivial and almost unheard. It was as if there were no room in his mind for anything but the quiet indictments which he had arranged in an orderly and understandable fashion. First there was the poker game and then Hardiston and then Jimmy Hamp’s murder and then the cave-in and now Tober. Tough, lovable Reed Tober who had died with a slug in his back. A clean way to die, yes, but the wrong way, and thinking of it, the cool merciless fury of memory swept over him.

  Feldhake was not at the Union House bar. Shouldering out its door, he saw Charles and Sharon Bonal on their way from the dining room through the lobby. Sharon was wearing a blue dress that crowned all her fragile loveliness, and she stopped and paid no attention to Bonal’s murmured words for her to come on. She was in front of Seay, and he paused now and took off his hat. His hair was untidy and matted, and she looked first at his haunted face and then at his hair, and small tears glistened in the corners of her eyes.

  “I hope,” Sharon said in a small voice. “I hope—” She did not go on. She laid her hand momentarily on Seay’s arm and then bowed her head and went on.

  He was to remember this afterward, too, and differently. Patience was easy now. At the Full Mile he could tell by the way the bartender told him Feldhake wasn’t here that they knew, that the word was getting around. Soon now, he thought.

  At the head of the street he crossed and came down the other side, and he already had his shoulder against the batwing doors of the Miner’s Rest, when his glance swung down the street, and he stopped.

  A man was coming up the walk, and the way was cleared of people between them now. He swung deliberately on his heel.

  It was the shambling gait of the man that made Seay smile faintly, and he walked past the saloon and a saddle shop toward him. Under the wood awnings here it was almost cool. Or was it that?

  He stopped in front of the saddle shop. Beyond it, by a tiny weed-grown wedge of land that was stacked with empty beer barrels, Feldhake stopped too. His thick legs were a little spread, and both thumbs were looped in his belt.

  Seay’s wicked gaze touched his face and then dropped down to his chest and noted the row of cigars in his breast pocket and noted, too, that Feldhake’s hands had left his belt and were gripped about the butts of the two guns slung low at his hips.

  Seay felt the grip of his own revolver warm and smooth against his palm, and as he raised it he saw Feldhake shoot from one gun and then from the other, savagely, handling them like clubs, with a short chopping stroke.

  Carefully, then, he swung up his own gun, his breath stilled, and when his sight lined with the five cigars in the shirt pocket, he fired. Once.

  He watched, then, gun slack at his side, while Feldhake shot again into the broadwalk almost at his feet and then fell on his knees and then on his face.

  Walking up to him, Seay touched him once with the toe of his boot. The flesh under his boot was soft and relaxed, and then he looked up at the people crowding around him.

  Yates was there now. Men were talking to Yates, pointing to Feldhake and then to Seay. Seay waited, and nothing happened, and he turned away, breaking through the crowd. It was seconds later that he realized he was still holding the gun in his hand. He threw it onto the steps of a store and saw it fall at a woman’s feet, brushing her skirt as it came to rest. And he looked up and saw that the woman was Vannie, who had been watching him.

  He did not seem to know her, and she turned slowly and disappeared in the store. Swinging under the hitch rack, he threaded his way through the wagons blocking the way to the Union House.

  Tramping up the stairs, a bitter weariness dragged at him and smothered his movement to slowness.

  He opened the door to Bonal’s office and stood there, hand on knob. Sharon, at the window, was looking at him, her face still, contained, utterly lovely. Bonal stood before his desk.

  Seay said, “I’ll be drifting, Bonal,” but he watched Sharon, saw the life come into her face.

  “You didn’t go to her,” Sharon said quietly. “I saw it. And you didn’t go to her.”

  “No.”

  Slowly, proudly, Sharon walked over to him and faced him, her face radiant. “I watched it. And I’m not soft if I can do that, am I?”

  Memory did not have to grope for her meaning. She came into his arms, pressing her body to him, and her kisses were warm and dear on his lips and his face.

  Bonal let himself quietly into the other room. The door closed; he stood motionless, trying to know the way love went, and his only memory dim and almost sad.

  About the Author

  Luke Short is the pen name of Frederick Dilley Glidden (1908–1975), the bestselling, award-winning author of over fifty classic western novels and hundreds of short stories. Renowned for their action-packed story lines, multidimensional characters, and vibrant dialogue, Glidden’s novels sold over thirty million copies. Ten of his novels, including Blood on the Moon, Coroner Creek, and Ramrod, were adapted for the screen. Glidden was the winner of a special Western Heritage Trustees Award and the Levi Strauss Golden Saddleman Award from the Western Writers of America.

  Born in Kewanee, Illinois, Glidden graduated in 1930 from the University of Missouri where he studied journalism. After working for several newspapers, he became a trapper in Canada and, later, an archaeologist’s assistant in New Mexico. His first story, “Six-Gun Lawyer,” was published in Cowboy Stories magazine in 1935 under the name F. D. Glidden. At the suggestion of his publisher, he used the pseudonym Luke Short, not realizing it was the name of a real gunman and gambler who was a friend of Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp. In addition to his prolific writing career, Glidden worked for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. He moved to Aspen, Colorado, in 1946, and became an active member of the Aspen Town Council, where he initiated the zoning laws that helped preserve the town.

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p; All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1938, 1940 by Frederick D. Glidden

  Cover design by Andy Ross

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-4085-3

  This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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