“What about the second time,” she said. “You might just as well tell me. I’m going to keep after you till you do.”
“Henry was the second time.”
“The first time, then?”
“Some prank, I guess. Nobody was there when I opened the door.”
She looked up at him, her jaw set stubbornly. “Neal, we’ve got to talk. You don’t make it easy. You’ve got a little of the flint that was in your dad, enough to make you pretty hard-headed sometimes.”
He was irritated by that, but he was too tired to argue. He said: “I didn’t get a chance to pick my father.”
“Of course not. I’m just trying to say that you always keep me in one part of your heart, the nice, easy part. You let me share your triumphs and jokes and the good things that happen to you, but I never get a chance to share your troubles. I want to, Neal. This way you make me feel like I’m only half a wife to you.”
He stared at her, hurt by what she’d said and wanting to strike back. He had enough trouble now without her adding to it by having her tell him he made her feel like half a wife. Then he saw the tenderness that was so plain to read in her face and the resentment left him.
“I don’t mean to,” he said, “but it’s my job to take care of you.”
She got up and, sitting down beside him, took one of his hands. “And it’s my job to take care of you, too, as much as I can. Now you’ve got to tell me what happened today that’s worrying you.”
He hesitated, still not wanting to tell her and yet finding some justice in what she said. Maybe he did make her feel like half a wife, maybe there was more of Sam Clark in him than he realized. There had been times when he had felt like half a son, times when his father hadn’t taken him into his confidence and he’d resented it just as Jane was resenting it now. Besides, and this was what decided him, he had to tell Jane about the notes so she would be careful with Laurie.
So he told her, beginning with Jud Manion’s visit, told her everything except how he felt when he saw Fay Darley in the company office, and again on the road beside the river, and the real reason for Henry Abel’s visit.
“Well, it looks to me like Joe could do something,” Jane said when he finished. “They must have a criminal record.”
“They probably have,” he agreed, “but chances are they’ve changed their names.”
She was silent for a moment, her leg pressed against his, her hand squeezing his. He had never been a sentimental man, not in the way Jane would have liked for him to be. That again was proof there was a great deal of Sam Clark in him.
He could never remember his father showing any overt sign of affection for him. Right now was the time for sentiment, the time to tell her how much he loved her. There were a lot of things he should tell her, but he didn’t say any of them.
“I guess the part I don’t understand is why men like Jud don’t trust your judgment,” she said. “They would have believed your father.”
“That’s what hurts,” he said. “I’m young, and haven’t been proved, I suppose. Darley’s smart in putting it on a community basis. He’s promised that the men who bought stock will have a chance to work in the ditch, so they’ll have money to spend in O’Hara’s bar and Quinn’s store. The company will buy horses from the livery stable and equipment from Olly Earl. I can’t say anything except that I’m saving them money when I won’t make the loans they want. Darley twists that around by making it look as if I’m sore because I can’t hog the profit.”
“Neal, don’t worry about those notes,” she said. “They’re probably just bluff, but I’ll stay in the house tomorrow and keep Laurie in, just in case.”
“My Thirty-Eight is in the bureau,” Neal said. “Better keep it handy tomorrow.”
She nodded agreement and, putting a hand under his chin, tipped his head back and kissed him, her lips hungry for his and holding them for a long moment. Then she rose. “I’m going to bed. Are you going to sit up?”
He nodded. “Don’t stay awake for me. I couldn’t go to sleep now if I went to bed.”
“You’re tired, Neal.” She hesitated, then murmured: “Good night, darling.”
“Good night,” he said. He watched until she was halfway up the stairs, then he called: “Jane!”
She stopped and looked back over her shoulder. “What is it, Neal?”
“I was just thinking,” he said. “I may go out and take a walk. I feel like a clock that’s been wound too tight. I’ll lock both doors, but maybe you’d better put that Thirty-Eight under your pillow.”
“All right, Neal,” she said, and went on up to their room.
He heard the bedroom door close, then the silence was tight and oppressive. He smoked one cigarette after another, impatience goading him, but he couldn’t think of anything to do. He felt like a duck sitting on a lake, his enemies in position to shoot at him, but he wasn’t in position to shoot back because he didn’t know who to shoot at.
He thought of the lynch talk Henry Abel had brought to him, and suddenly a crazy fury took hold of him. He’d call every one of those money-hungry bastards into the bank tomorrow and loan them all they wanted. Let them give their money to a couple of thieving con men, and, when the time came, he’d close them out to the last man. By God, there had to be an end to what you did for other people, trying to save them from themselves.
The fury lasted only for a moment. He thought again of his father as he had so many times these last days as the pressure had mounted. Tough, domineering, hard-headed, Sam Clark was a strange mixture, but he’d had some good traits. If he were alive today, he would have said the same thing to Jud Manion that Neal had. No matter how much he would have been threatened or hated, or how much a man like Ed Shelly, appearing from an eight-year-old yesterday, worried him, Sam Clark would have stuck to his guns.
Some of the flint that had been in his father had come down to him, Jane had said. Not all of it, Neal thought, but enough. That thought closed the door to any easy avenue of escape. He’d see it through; the bank would hold to the policy that he and Henry Abel had decided upon.
The clock on the mantel struck midnight. Neal rose and threw more wood on the fire. He had a strange feeling of detachment about all of this, as if he were a sponge that had been completely saturated and could hold no more.
Then, because he had to do something, he decided to get Joe Rolfe out of bed and talk to him. The old sheriff was pretty cantankerous at times and he wouldn’t like it, but Neal had to talk to someone and the only choice he had was between Rolfe and Doc Santee. He didn’t want to bother Doc, who often had too little chance to sleep at best.
He locked the kitchen door, thinking that he and Jane would not attempt to control Laurie’s life as his had been controlled. Laurie! If anything did happen to her . . . He went upstairs, driven by a compulsion he could not control.
Jane had left a lamp burning in the bracket on the hall wall. Laurie’s door was ajar. Gently he pushed it open and stepped into the room. There was no possible way for anyone to get into her room except by coming up the stairs and along the hall just as he had done. No one had gone past him. He had been in the parlor from the time Laurie had gone to bed, or in the hall, or back in the kitchen.
She was all right. She had to be. Nothing could have happened to her. But he could not see her in the thin light that fell through the door from the hall. Suddenly panicky, he ran across the room to the bed, the horrible fear that she was gone taking breath out of his lungs as sharply as if he’d been hit in the stomach.
He stopped at the side of her bed, breathing hard. She lay next to the wall on the far edge, almost hidden under the covers. For a time he stood motionlessly, shocked by what this moment of crazy panic had shown him.
He could barely make out her face and blonde hair against the pillow in the near darkness. Needing reassurance, he struck a match and leaned over her bed. She was all right, her small face sweetened by a half smile. Jane often said that Laurie talked to the angels when
she was asleep. Shaking the match out, Neal told himself that she was not only talking to them; she was one of them.
No one else was as important to him as Laurie. Not even Jane. Certainly not his own life. He had known that all the time, but it took this moment of terror to make him fully realize it. He crumpled the charred remainder of the match between thumb and forefinger, fighting an impulse to reach down and take her into his arms.
If he woke her, she would sense the fear that was in him, and he would only alarm her, doing no good at all. Jane had done a fine job with Laurie, particularly in regard to fear. The child never fussed about going to bed or being left in the dark. Whatever happened, Laurie must not know about this threat against her.
He should go, he knew. Still, he lingered beside the bed, thinking how much Jane wanted other children, but after Laurie’s birth, Doc Santee had said the chances were slim that she would ever have another. For that reason Laurie meant more to both of them than she would under other circumstances. This was the most important thing in life, he thought, having a part of you perpetuated, gaining in that way the immortality that childless people could not have.
Reluctantly he turned and left the room, leaving her door open so Jane could hear her if she cried out. He felt a weakness in himself he had never felt before, a weakness that stemmed from the fact his most important possession was at stake, but the threat came from an enemy that was unknown except by these mysterious notes, an unknown that was vague and shapeless and terrifying.
He crossed the parlor to the hall, feeling a greater need than ever to see Joe Rolfe. The sheriff had an ageless quality, a capacity for giving confidence to those around him. Right now that was what Neal needed.
He put on his hat and sheepskin and went outside, leaving the hall lamp lighted. The thought occurred to him that for a moment he would be silhouetted against the light and he would make a perfect target. Still, the possibility of danger seemed remote until he heard the shot and saw the flash of flame from the far corner of the yard, the bullet slapping into the wall just above his head.
Chapter Nine
Neal dived headlong across the porch and stumbled and fell into the yard as another shot slammed out from that far corner, this one missing by a good five feet. He yanked his gun from holster and fired three times and rolled to a new position. He had nothing to shoot at except the spot where the ambusher had stood. The fellow wouldn’t remain there, of course. A moment later he heard retreating footsteps as the man ran up the street.
For a time Neal did not move, aware there might be other men waiting. He heard someone inside the house, then Jane’s voice: “Neal! You all right, Neal?”
“I’m all right. Blow out the hall lamp.”
The hall went black, and Neal rose and slipped the gun into leather. No one else in the block had been aroused by the shooting. At least he saw no indication of it. Gunfire was not an uncommon thing this time of night, for O’Hara’s bar stayed open until midnight or later, and cowboys often expressed themselves by emptying their guns as they rode out of town.
Neal went back to the house and closed the door. The lamp in the parlor was still lighted. He saw Jane standing in the hall, wearing nothing but her nightgown; the .38 he had left on the bureau in their bedroom was in her hand. Laurie was crying.
Neal said: “Tell her it was just some crazy cowboys riding home.”
Jane nodded and ran up the stairs. A minute or two later Jane returned. “She’s all right. She said she wished those cowboys would go home.” Jane tried to smile, but she couldn’t control her lips and they began to tremble.
Neal went to her and put his arms around her. “It’s all right. I just got a scare. That’s all. Funny thing. Just as I went outside, I thought it would be a good time for someone to take a pot shot at me, and then it happened.”
Jane had buried her face against his chest. “Do you suppose it was that man, Ruggles, you had trouble with today?”
“Could have been. Or it might have been Darley or Shelton.” Neal started to say Jud Manion or Tuttle or some of the townsmen, but didn’t. It would only alarm her more if she knew how they felt, that lynch talk had been going around. Besides, they weren’t the kind to bushwhack a man, so he said: “You go on back to bed. That fellow’s gone for good.”
Jane drew back, a muscle in her cheek twitching with the regularity of a pulse beat. She whispered: “I’m scared, Neal.”
“I’ve got to see Joe,” Neal said. “You’ll be all right. Keep the doors locked. I’ll lock the front one when I leave. Blow out the lamp in the parlor. I don’t want any light showing when I go out this time.”
He waited with his hand on the knob of the front door until the hall was dark, his hand on the butt of his gun. He had told Jane the bushwhacker wouldn’t be back, but he wasn’t as sure as he’d sounded. The man who had shot at him might have returned, or there might be another one waiting.
He eased outside, shut the door, and locked it. Then he stood motionlessly for several minutes, listening for sounds that were not natural for this late hour, eyes probing the night for any hint of movement. There was none, just the darkness relieved slightly by the star shine. He couldn’t stay here all night, he thought, and left the porch. Walking fast, he went down the path to the street and turned toward the east corner of the block. From there he started climbing the hill to Joe Rolfe’s house.
The sheriff lived alone on the crest above the river. This part of the town had never been planned. The houses were scattered haphazardly among the pines and lava outcroppings, and the street, following the lines of least resistance, twisted and squirmed to avoid those same trees and upthrusts of lava.
All of the houses in this part of town were dark, there were no street lamps, and more than once Neal came close to bumping into a clothesline or stumbling over a ledge of lava. He walked more cautiously, taking a good ten minutes to reach Rolfe’s house. It seemed to him, with his sense of time completely distorted, that another ten minutes passed before his pounding brought Rolfe’s sleepy yell: “I’m a-coming! Leave the damned door on its hinges, will you?”
A moment later Rolfe opened the door, a lamp in one hand. He was bare-footed, his pants hastily pulled over his drawers, and held up by one suspender, the other dangling below his waist. He squinted at Neal, hair disheveled, his mind not entirely freed of the cobwebs of sleep.
“Hell, I might’ve knowed it’d be you,” he grumbled. “If there’s another man in the county who can get into trouble up to his neck like you, I don’t know who it is. Come on in.”
As Neal stepped through the door, Rolfe said: “Trouble is you woke me out of the best dream I’ve had in twenty year. Purty girls swarming all over the place, and me reaching for ’em and never quite getting hold of one of ’em.” Suddenly he sensed from the grim expression on Neal’s face that something serious had happened. “Let’s have it, son. Getting so I rattle on like a buggy that ain’t been greased since Noah set the ark down on Mount Ararat.”
“Somebody took a couple of shots at me when I left the house a while ago,” Neal said.
“The hell.” Rolfe sat down and stared at Neal. “I didn’t think it would go that far. I sure didn’t.”
“That’s not even a beginning.” Neal handed him the note Ruggles had given him, told him what had happened, then gave him the last note that had been shoved under the door. Rolfe read it, shook his head as if he didn’t believe it, and began to curse.
“What kind of a damn’ fool proposition is this?” Rolfe shouted. “No sane man would lay a hand on a child. . . .” He stopped and gestured as if to thrust those words into oblivion. “I know what you’re fixing to say. We ain’t dealing with a sane man, and, by God, I think you’re right.”
“That makes it worse,” Neal said. “I’m beginning to think Ed Shelly isn’t dead like you’ve been claiming.”
Rolfe pulled at his mustache thoughtfully, then he asked: “How old a man was this Ruggles?”
“Thirty-five maybe.
”
“If Ed Shelly was alive, he’d be just about your age. Not more’n twenty-seven at the most. Shelton and Darley are both older’n that. Besides, Ed was small. You’ll remember you thought he was a half-grown kid. Well, he was about nineteen, and a boy ain’t gonna grow much after he’s that old. Darley and Shelton are too tall, and you claim this Ruggles gent is likewise tall.”
Neal nodded. “A regular splinter.”
“There you are. It ain’t none of them three, and the chances of another stranger hanging around and nobody seeing him is mighty slim.”
“You heard of Ruggles?”
“Yep. I seen him in O’Hara’s bar. Reckon it was him, the way you describe him, but I didn’t know he was camped on your range. I figured he was just a drifter riding through.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Do! Maybe you can tell me.” Rolfe looked at the note that threatened Laurie. “Your girl’s safe enough tonight, I reckon. Jane’s got a gun?” Neal nodded, and Rolfe went on: “It’ll be different tomorrow when she’s out playing. If this bastard that calls himself Ed Shelly is half-cracked, there’s no way to tell what he’ll do.”
“Darley wants me out of town on account of the man they’ve got coming in on the stage from Portland,” Neal said. “I’ve got my doubts that anybody’s half-cracked. I think it’s all hooked together. They’re smart, Joe, sneaky smart.”
“Could be the shooting was done to scare you,” Rolfe said. “A real good shot . . . and I figure Shelton is . . . could lay that first bullet in close, aiming to miss. He was just waiting for you, chances are, knowing that, when you got the last note, you’d come after me sooner or later.”
“Ruggles,” Neal said thoughtfully, the name jogging his memory. “You know, Missus Darley knew him. What does that prove?”
“Nothing that I know of,” Rolfe said blankly. “What are you getting at?”
The Man from Yesterday Page 7
