The Man from Yesterday

by Wayne D. Overholser

  Neal threw a silver dollar on the bar. “My money good, O’Hara?”

  “It’s good,” the saloon man said sullenly. “Any you let go of, I mean.”

  As Neal turned away, Rolfe said: “Hang and rattle. This’ll break in a day or so. That’s why you got that note, the way I figure.”

  Neal walked out. He wouldn’t go back to the bank today. Henry Abel could handle anything that came up. He’d go home, saddle his horse, Redman, and take a ride to the Circle C. He had to get out of town, had to think, and somehow find a little peace of mind.

  His fears and hatreds were all knotted up inside him so he couldn’t even eat a meal without having it lie in his stomach like a rock. Maybe he ought to go to Doc Santee. No, it wouldn’t do any good. What ailed him was too much for any pill-roller to cure, even a good one like Santee.

  He walked with his head down, crossing the street and angling through the trees to the river. For a moment he paused, his gaze on the clear, swift-moving stream. Maybe he ought to get Jane and Laurie out of town. If Joe Rolfe was right, it wouldn’t be for more than a week at most. But then he’d have to tell Jane everything that had happened. And Laurie would be upset. No, it was better just to let it rock along.

  He went on, leaving the river and walking rapidly along the dusty street to his house. He went in and closed the door softly, hoping that Jane and Laurie were gone, or that Laurie was at least asleep. He listened for a moment, hearing Jane’s humming from the kitchen. Laurie must be out playing or taking a nap, or he’d hear her, for she was perpetually in motion when she was awake.

  Crossing the parlor as quietly as he could, he climbed the stairs to his and Jane’s bedroom, and, taking off his clothes that had been badly soiled, he put on another pair of pants and a flannel shirt, then buckled his gun belt around him, his bone-handled .44 in the holster.

  He went into the bathroom, the only one in Cascade City. This was something else people talked about. They said he had plenty of money to spend on a zinc tub and a hot water tank, but when it came to helping his neighbors out, he didn’t have a nickel.

  He stared at the mirror, thinking he had been lucky not to have his face cut up more than it was. He had bruises on his chin and under his left eye, but maybe Jane wouldn’t notice.

  The instant he stepped into the kitchen, Jane asked: “What are you doing home this time of day?” She looked at him and frowned. “Who’d you have a fight with?” Then she saw the gun on his hip, and cried out: “Neal, what are you doing with that six-shooter?”

  She stood at the table, a paring knife in her hands. She had been peeling potatoes, but now she just stood looking at him, frightened and worried. He walked to her, thinking how much he loved her and how beautiful she was, even wearing an everyday house dress with a red-and-white checked apron, a dab of flour on one cheek.

  He put his arms around her and kissed her. She dropped the paring knife and hugged him, returning his kiss with sweet, lingering warmth, telling him as she did every day when he came home that she loved him just as much as she had when they were married. Then she drew her head back, saying sternly: “Answer my questions, both of them.”

  “You’re as pretty as a spotted heifer and I love you,” he said, “and the world is full of trouble. We’re going to let Henry Abel run the bank and we’re moving back to the Circle C. Henry can decide who to make loans to and who not to.”

  He said it as if he were joking, but he was serious. The temptation had been a growing one for months. He was sure Jane would not object, but now, seeing how grave her face was, he wondered if he was wrong about her.

  “I know the world is full of trouble,” she said, “but I also know you never ran away from any of it. You’re not going to now. I know you too well. You’ll stay in that bank until your trouble with Darley and Shelton is settled. And you still haven’t answered my questions.”

  “I had a ruckus with Darley.” There was no reason to tell her about the note from Ed Shelly, he thought. “I’m going to take a ride out to the ranch. Redman needs some exercise. So do I.”

  “But the gun . . .”

  “Just a precaution,” he interrupted.

  She sighed as if knowing he would not tell her more until he had to. But she wasn’t ready to let him go. Her arms were still around him, her face close to his, and now he sensed that something was worrying her. She said—“Neal.”—and stopped.

  “I’ll be back in time for supper,” he said, “but, if you want to buy that new hat in Lizzie Arms’s millinery shop, I guess our credit’s good.”

  “Neal, stop it. I don’t have to have a new hat every week like that Fay Darley.” She bit her lower lip, then plunged on: “Neal, I can’t help hearing gossip. About how folks feel because the bank isn’t loaning money to invest with Darley. They hate you and they’re saying terrible things. I’m afraid of what they’ll do.”

  “I can take care of myself,” he said, “but I’m worried about you and Laurie. You’d better be careful and keep a close watch on her.” He kissed her and walked to the back door.

  “Neal, you don’t think they’d hurt Laurie because of this?”

  He still didn’t want to tell her about Ed Shelly’s note, and he wasn’t sure whether Joe Rolfe was right. The note could well have been a clumsy effort on Darley and Shelton’s part to make him so worried he’d stop fighting them, but there was a chance Ed Shelly was actually here, that he’d hired someone to slip that note into Neal’s pocket.

  Suddenly the terror of the nightmare was in him again, and he remembered how often he had dreamed that Ed Shelly was taking his revenge on Laurie or Jane. He said: “I don’t know what they’ll do. Just keep an eye on Laurie. Don’t take any chances yourself, either.”

  He wheeled and left the house. He saddled his bay gelding and mounted, and, when he reached the edge of town, he put the horse into a run. But it didn’t help. Nothing helped. He just couldn’t shake the eight-year-old fear that Ed Shelly would somehow take a terrible revenge, a fear that now was brought into sharp focus because Ed Shelly was back. He must be. Now that he’d had time to think about it, Neal didn’t believe that note was Ben Darley’s trick.

  Chapter Six

  A mile from town Neal noticed the remains of a campfire between the road and river. He dismounted and examined the ashes carefully, irritated and concerned. This was Circle C range, and both Neal and Curly Taylor, who was ramrodding the ranch now, discouraged saddle bums from camping here. This man was undoubtedly a saddle bum or he would have ridden on into town.

  From the signs, Neal judged the fellow had been here two or three days. Neal walked back to his horse, wondering if there could be a connection between this man and the note from Ed Shelly. Or some connection with Darley and Shelton. Shrugging, he mounted and put his gelding up the slope east of the river, deciding he was jittery and imagining dangers that did not exist.

  He took a switchback course to the top of the ridge, swinging back and forth between the barren outcroppings of lava. The horse’s hoofs stirred the dust and pine cones and dry needles that had been here undisturbed for centuries. Once atop the ridge, he turned south, not stopping until he could look down upon the Circle C buildings.

  Dismounting, he rolled and lighted a cigarette, hunkering down at the base of a pine. He often came here when the petty problems that stemmed from town living became so burdensome he could not stand it.

  From this point Neal could see miles of the river, a band of silver shadowed by the pines that crowded both banks. On the other side were the snow-capped peaks of the Cascades, and to the east the pines gave way to junipers and sagebrush. Mountains, river, and high desert: these, to Neal Clark, were all a man needed to make his world complete.

  Today the problems were far from petty, and Neal was unable to shake off the depressing feeling that trouble had only started for him. As he smoked, looking down at the Circle C, he thought how completely the stone ranch house symbolized his father. Huge and terribly permanent, it was the only
kind of house Sam Clark would ever have thought of building.

  Neal’s father had lived in the big house very little, but apparently he had been happy for the short time he had been there, dreaming the big dreams Joe Rolfe had talked about in O’Hara’s bar. Probably the thought never occurred to him that it was not the kind of house his son or his son’s wife wanted.

  At a time like this, in the silence broken only by the wind sounds as it rushed across the ridge, Neal could think of himself and his future, and Jane and Laurie, and of the many months Jane had lived in the stone house, forbidden to change anything, never allowed to feel it was really her home, and yet somehow managing to change it simply by being there. But if Sam Clark had felt the change, he certainly had never indicated it.

  Now the old question that had plagued him long before his father died crowded back into Neal’s mind. How far could a son go in letting his father dictate to him, either dead or alive? If Neal had had his choice, he’d have stayed right there on the Circle C, but, no, Sam Clark had decided Curly Taylor could run the outfit, and Neal and Jane must move to town.

  Perhaps he had no reason to regret what he had done, for certainly Jane’s life was easier in town than it had been on the ranch. But he didn’t think that was important, for Jane was not a woman to choose an easy life. He knew that she would accept his choice without question. He had done pretty well with the bank, he thought, largely because Henry Abel had taught him what he had to know. The bank was in good shape, again largely because of Abel’s conservative influence. Neal, according to Abel, was inclined to be soft.

  This reminded Neal of what people thought about him. It was that, he knew, which had brought his feelings to a head and made him want to leave the bank. He took criticism far too hard, Abel told him. So had Joe Rolfe and Doc Santee.

  But there was one vital point that never occurred to them. If Sam Clark were alive and running the bank, the men who hated Neal today would not have hated his father. Chances were the older Clark would have succeeded in chasing Darley and Shelton out of the country.

  Neal could not fill Sam Clark’s shoes. That was the rub. On the other hand, he didn’t really want to. He had to be his own man. He had resisted his father on occasion and sometimes he had won his point, but he invariably had the feeling these were only temporary victories. In the long run, Sam Clark’s will overpowered everything else. It was small comfort to realize he was not alone in this, that Joe Rolfe or Doc Santee or Henry Abel would have said the same thing.

  Then, because his restlessness would not permit him to return to the confines of the town, he mounted and put Redman down the slope toward the ranch. He often felt this way, even before the Darley-Shelton business had come into sharp focus, and it convinced him that sooner or later he had to return to the ranch, that he could not and would not spend a lifetime in town. In that regard he had much of his father in him. Perhaps it was this very restlessness that had kept Sam Clark on the move and prevented him from being satisfied with anything he attained.

  It was noon when he reached the ranch buildings, set in a clearing in the pines on the east side of the road. A log barn, outbuildings, innumerable corrals, all shadowed by the sprawling stone house that was now empty. Actually it was an ugly structure, for Sam Clark had built with an idea of permanence rather than beauty.

  Neal put his horse into the corral and stood for a time, looking at the house. He remembered Jane saying that it sort of fitted the lava rock and the pines and the river across the road. If they returned, there were things she could do that would entirely change the appearance of the place. Curtains at the windows. Grass in front of the house. A few flowers that would grow in this climate. Lilacs, for instance, and some decorative trees such as weeping willows. It would be entirely different than when Sam Clark was alive.

  Neal went into the cook shack and talked to the cook. Later, he had dinner with him and asked him to tell Curly Taylor about the saddle bum who had camped on the river above town. After that he went into the house. It was cold, for it had been shut up for weeks. Occasionally he brought Jane and Laurie out here for Sunday, but it had been quite a while since he had even done that.

  For a time Neal stood in front of the fireplace that made up most of one wall. Pictures of his father and mother in gaudy, gilt frames hung above the mantel. His mother had been young and pretty. She’d died when he was small, and he could barely remember her. She’d had a hard life, he thought, and that may have been the reason she’d died when she had. Sam Clark had been a poor man then, and that, Neal knew, might have been the cause of his father’s driving ambition and restlessness.

  He glanced around the big room at the massive black leather couch and chair, the enormous oak table in the middle of the room, the walnut bookcase, the floor bare of rugs. If they did come back, he thought, Jane could furnish the room as she saw fit. Certainly everything that was here now would go.

  He walked into the small room that had served as his father’s office. Now it was Curly Taylor’s. Neal smiled at the tally books, the box of .45 shells, and a bridle that lay on the spur-scarred desk. He glanced around at the saddle and guns and odds and ends of leather and the rest of the stuff Taylor had succeeded in gathering. The room was a boar’s nest, totally different from the orderly office Sam Clark had kept, but now it seemed a friendly room. Neal was shocked by the implications of that thought and, swinging around, walked out of the room and the house.

  He saddled his horse, but he didn’t mount for a time. He stood beside his gelding, a hand on the horn, his eyes on the house. The restlessness had died in him. He was ready to go back to town, to face whatever must be faced. He couldn’t run away from either the ranch or the bank, or the problems that faced him.

  It wasn’t important what his father would have done or how people would have responded to his father. It wasn’t even important whether he filled his father’s shoes; it was important that he fill his own. He had charted his course and he could not change, even if it meant danger to Jane or Laurie.

  He mounted and rode away, relieved and still vaguely uneasy when his thoughts fastened again upon Ed Shelly and the note he’d found in his pocket. He was so lost in his thoughts that he did not see Fay Darley standing between the road and the river until she called: “Good afternoon, Mister Clark!”

  He reined up, startled. She stood holding the reins of a livery-stable mare, smiling in the provocative way she had. She was wearing a black riding skirt and a leather jacket and a flat-topped Stetson that was tilted rakishly on one side of her head. She stood with her legs spread so that Neal could see her ankles, the skirt molded against her thighs, and again that titillating sense of excitement flooded him as it had every time he had seen her.

  He touched his hat. “Good afternoon, Missus Darley.”

  He would have ridden on if she had not said: “Will you get down for a moment, Mister Clark? I realize this seems bold, and I suppose it is, but the truth is I’ve been waiting for you. I knew you had left town and that you’d come along the road sooner or later, so I waited.”

  She must have been waiting for a long time, he thought. Nothing but trouble could come from having anything to do with this woman, but he stepped down, rationalizing that any other man would have done the same.

  “I’m glad you waited,” he said. “I’ve got a question to ask you.”

  She looked at him warily, then said: “I’ll be happy if the question is what I hope it is. A man is supposed to do the pursuing, but I learned long ago that there are times when a woman must let her heart speak or she will always regret it.”

  She was a beautiful and experienced woman, and he was both attracted and repelled by her. He didn’t understand the latter unless he was afraid of her. He glanced at her, then looked down, scraping a toe through the dust of the road.

  “You’re wrong, ma’am,” he said. “About the question.”

  “Am I?” she asked softly, paused, and then said: “Did you have trouble with Ben?” She dropped the
reins and, walking to Neal, gently touched the bruise on the side of his face. “I warned you. He’d kill me if he knew I had spoken to you.”

  “I reckon he wouldn’t go that far.” He glanced at her and lowered his gaze again. “Anyhow, he got the worst of it.”

  “I’m glad,” she said spitefully. “I hope you busted him good. He’s bad. So’s Shelton. I wish you’d leave for a while. They’re arousing people against you. If you stay, they’ll hang you.”

  So that was the game! He should have known. Darley had sent her out here to wait for him in the hopes he could be scared out of town, then they’d be free of the man who had partially blocked them. He met her gaze, thinking that now he knew her for exactly what she was.

  “I’d say you were trying to get me out of town for some reason you haven’t told me,” he said.

  “That’s right. It’s the reason your life is in danger and why you’ve got to leave tonight. A man named Stacey is coming in on the stage from Portland in the morning. That’s why Ben has stayed here as long as he has. He believes he can persuade Stacey to invest ten thousand dollars in the project. He realizes he’s gambling against time, but, with you out of town, he’s convinced he’s got a sure thing.”

  “It’s safer to get me to leave town than to kill me,” Neal said. “That it?”

  “That’s right,” she said with honesty he didn’t expect, “but what you don’t know is that I’ll be saving your life. I’m leaving Ben no matter what happens to you.” She licked her lips with the tip of her tongue, her eyes not leaving his face, then she added: “A woman has to dream, Neal, or she’d go crazy. I’ve done my share of dreaming since I came to Cascade City. About you.”

  She stood with her hands at her sides, her breasts rising and falling with her breathing. The calm cloak of efficiency that she wore in Ben Darley’s office was not on her now. To him she seemed a young, wistful girl, hoping for something from life that she did not actually believe she would ever have. That made him a fool for even thinking it, he told himself, for she was anything but young and wistful.