by Peter Dawson
He saw the wagons crawling slowly up the cañon long before they reached the foot of the street where the road branched to climb the rim. Then, after the column of troopers swung up from the forks, the wagons continuing on along the street, a cool anger stirred in Gentry at realizing the destination of the Conestogas. It surprised him not at all that they climbed as far as Ash’s sprawling livery yard and turned in through the gates. Try and pry ’em loose from him now, he commented dryly to himself, wondering if anyone was capable of dealing with the situation even though Faith Tipton should be able to prove her claim to the goods.
As his thoughts shuttled back to the impact of yesterday’s stark evidence of the renegades being on the loose again, he was feeling the Army man’s usual scorn for the weak and inept treatment Washington was giving its newest wards. So commonplace had become the breaking of treaties with the Apaches, the use of either weak or openly dishonest agents, the sometimes indiscriminate slaughter of the hostiles when they rebelled, that the best officers in the West had sickened of the spectacle and longed for duty elsewhere. Only the fact of his serving under Robert Fitzhugh, an honest and just man, had kept Gentry from long ago asking for a transfer to some Eastern post.
He was making a conscious effort this morning not to think of Faith Tipton and what had happened last night. Yet, try as he would, his mind inevitably turned to her problem, involved enough by Ash’s claim and now further complicated by Shotwell’s mysterious death. For a time he considered the strangeness of his interest in the girl, wondering at it, puzzled by it having halfway made him forget his own troubles. But then as he looked back on that interval Doc Spires had spent at Headquarters last night, he halfway began to understand it. Until those minutes he and the girl had spent alone, Faith Tipton had been simply a woman, might have been any attractive woman, badly in need of help. But by the time Spires returned from his talk with Fitzhugh, she had become a person in her own right who attracted him indefinably, powerfully.
Gentry had been on the point of leaving Spires’s cabin when the word came that Fitzhugh wanted to see the medico, and Spires had said: “She’d better not be alone, Dan. How about staying with her till I get back?”
Gentry had agreed, and Spires had asked him to sit alongside the bed where the girl lay and hold a hot compress to her gashed forehead. Once the doctor was gone, they had begun talking — or rather Faith had talked, shyly at first, and Gentry had listened. Now and then when she fell silent he had prompted her, sensing that this release might be the one thing to give her a grip on her reason and keep her from breaking down completely in the face of the day’s tragedy.
At first she had told him of her father and mother, particularly of Harry Tipton’s grief two years ago at the loss of his only other child, a son, and of how she had tried to take the boy’s place in her father’s affections. At that point an odd change had come over her, and now he could recall the husky, low tone of her voice as she abruptly told him: “This is something I mustn’t do, Captain, this looking back. Dad once told me that the important time for loving someone, for having kindly thoughts of them, is while they’re still with you. Now I’m realizing that afterward your thoughts of them are your own and can’t be shared with anyone.”
That sentiment had held Gentry gravely silent before a beginning awareness of a quick and searching intelligence in this girl’s make-up, one that was molded by a basically honest and unfettered upbringing. And even now that facet of her nature intrigued him far more than her delicate beauty.
She had talked of other things then, asking about his life on the post and about the town. Her father had hoped to settle here in Elk Bend and start in business. Rather than disturb her by any mention of his own troubles, Gentry hadn’t once talked about himself. She had heard Spires calling him captain. She had called him that and he hadn’t corrected her.
Now, trying to analyze his unsettling feelings toward the girl, he knew only that he deeply respected her, that more than her physical attractiveness lay behind the quickened interest so unlike any he had ever before experienced toward a woman. And he had a queer feeling that he was betraying something in his own make-up in leaving here before she had found someone who could look after her affairs.
Rarely had he experienced such a complete sense of helplessness as now. In a way this circumstance was akin to that of the day on which he had lost his detail in that wild cañon far to the south. Then, as now, he had been powerless to change anything, to ward off the inevitable.
This was his frame of mind when, shortly after 11:00, he saw Mike Clears come plodding down the puddled mire of the alley, cross the creek by the narrow bridge, and start up this way along the wheel ruts, his stocky frame cloaked in a shapeless poncho. The drizzle was laying a constant rustling whisper across the stillness, and the dampness sharpened the sweet aroma of the hay and the faint ammoniac tang of the stables issuing from the cave.
Clears lost his footing once in his climb and nearly sprawled in the mud, and Gentry plainly caught the man’s ripe oath. It made him smile, and that humor was still showing on his lean face when Clears shortly strode up to him.
Gentry’s amusement was short-lived, however. For Mike Clears’s blocky features were set in stubborn anger as he roughly stomped the mud from his boots and flung the poncho to the dirt just inside the cave mouth.
The saloon man’s first words were an explosive: “Damn ’em! Damn ’em all!”
“Who, Mike?”
For his answer, Clears held out a folded piece of paper. Gentry took it, opened it, and read:
Sir:
Knowing that you had made a business arrangement with Mr. Harry Tipton and undoubtedly owe him freight on goods he was transporting here when he suffered his misfortune, I feel it my duty to advise you of certain facts. There is now some question as to the identity of the woman found alive yesterday in Tipton’s wagon. Two women answering the general description of the survivor were aboard the wagons, one being Tipton’s daughter, the other a young woman known as Laura Reed. In view of the strong possibility that the female found alive may be Laura Reed, and not Miss Tipton, I caution you against making any settlement with her on monies owed Harry Tipton for his services. Should you care to discuss this matter further with me I shall be at your disposal. Meantime, I remain,
Y’rs obediently,
Signed: Robert L. Fitzhugh,
Major, Cavalry, U.S. Army.
Gentry’s glance whipped up to the saloon man, his eyes ablaze with indignation. But before he could speak, Clears was saying hurriedly: “Wait’ll you hear the rest! I’m just back from a talk with Fitzhugh. He showed me a journal Tipton’s wife had kept on their way here. The woman had some questions in her mind about this Reed girl, and Fitzhugh’s making his guesses from that.”
“But can’t the Old Man see this girl’s honest and decent as he is?” Gentry’s voice was unsteady with anger.
“It’s not a question of decency,” Clears told him. “Honesty perhaps, but the Reed girl was apparently decent enough. It’s that Laura Reed was...well, an adventuress, maybe. Hell, all I know is that Ash has raised this stink by turning up with a receipt for payment of his goods. Fitzhugh says you can’t argue against that.”
“If Faith Tipton’s arguing it, then so am I!”
Clears’s glance sharpened. But all he said was: “Here, too.”
Gentry turned, doubled his fist, and hit the dirt wall behind him a solid, savage blow. Then, turning back again, he asked helplessly: “What’s going to happen to her, Mike?”
“It’s already happened. They’ve moved her out of the major’s cabin into one of the huts alongside the washerwomen. Fitzhugh’s daughter took care of that, damn her! Gave her some cock-and-bull story about their needing the room she was in for a visiting officer. She hadn’t heard a word about this question of who she is till I went to call on her. I lost my head and showed her Fitzhugh’s note. It knocked her
flat. The only thing in her favor is that Fitzhugh isn’t letting Ash unload those wagons till everything’s settled.”
Gentry’s lean face had lost color, and his voice had a grating edge to it now as he asked: “Anything else?”
“Yeah. About Shotwell. Fitzhugh had him up there last night asking him about Ash’s claim on having paid for his goods. He must’ve been killed right after he got back down here. Said he knew it for a fact.”
“He didn’t.” Gentry breathed barely audibly. And when Mike Clears only nodded, he drawled: “There goes my hunch. I’d have bet money it was Ash that cut Shotwell down.”
“So I’d thought. But as it turns out, Caleb had every reason to want Shotwell to stay alive. To back his claim.”
There was a long moment’s silence between them that ended as Gentry said: “This morning you told me Tipton had been up here several months ago, Mike. If Shotwell was with him that trip, couldn’t he have worked up a grudge with someone here back then? Whoever had it in for him must’ve got to him last night when he got back down here from the post.”
“That could be. I’ll have Ralph Blake check on it.”
Gentry was eyeing the saloon man closely and now abruptly asked: “Do you believe it, Mike? After seeing that girl and talking to her? Do you believe any part of it?”
“Hell, no!”
Mike Clears surprised himself by the readiness of his answer. He had been so pressed for time this morning, so confounded by these unexpected developments, that he hadn’t had time to ask himself the questions Gentry had just put. Now, sure that his answer would have been the same had he deliberated upon it at length, he felt a strange and indefinable relief, adding: “In case you think I’m talking through my hat, friend, come back and help me hitch up the buggy. I’m going back up there.”
“What for?”
“To get Faith Tipton and bring her down here. I’m putting her in my room above the office. I can hole up here in the cave as long as she wants to use my place. She’ll probably be taking the stage out as soon as it’s running again. My hang-out’s not much, but there’s no other fit place for a girl like her in this town.”
Gentry was momentarily struck by the incongruity of the statement, by Clears’s assuming that a room over the back of a saloon was what he claimed it to be, a fit place for a decent woman to stay. But then Gentry knew that the room above the Lucky Find’s office was exactly that; it was isolated from the rest of the building and Clears, regardless of his profession, was a gentleman in every sense of the word. Furthermore, as he had said, there wasn’t so much as a boarding house in this mushrooming, raw camp where a woman would want to stay.
The saloon man misread Gentry’s preoccupation now and stated dryly: “I’ll even give her a key so she can lock herself in.”
“Wasn’t thinking of that, Mike.” The sober set of Gentry’s lean face didn’t change an iota as he added: “You spoke of bedding down up here. Do you snore?”
Clears frowned. “Don’t know. But what if I do?”
“It’ll bother me. I’m a light sleeper.”
“But you were headed out....” A dawning look of understanding thinned Clears’s puzzlement, to be replaced immediately by a worried look. “You mean you’re staying on?”
“Right.”
Clears swallowed with difficulty before he said haltingly: “Aren’t you forgetting, Dan? You might run into trouble with the first man that lays eyes on you. Not everybody’s looking at this the way I....”
“Save your wind, Mike,” Gentry interrupted mildly. “I’m staying. There were a couple of things I wanted to find out anyway. Now I can look around and maybe help the girl at the same time.”
Over a moment’s deliberate silence Clears spoke one word. “Ash?”
“He’s tied in with it,” Gentry admitted. Then he drawled pointedly: “I don’t have a thing to lose in this, Mike. You do. You’re sure you want to help the girl and buy into this with me?”
“Good God, how strong do I have to make it?” Clears flared.
Those words laid a smile across Gentry’s face. “Then, while you’re up above after Faith, hunt up Tim McCune and tell him something for me.”
“Tell him what?”
It took Gentry a good quarter minute to answer that. At first Clears was puzzled. He interrupted twice with questions. Then shortly they were arguing. Gentry speaking quietly; Clears’s face finally going slack in amazement at something Gentry had said.
Some minutes later they turned in from the cave mouth and strode on back past the stalls toward the buggy. It was then that the saloon man said dryly, awkwardly, nevertheless meaning it: “I’ve been thinking some pretty ornery things about you, Dan. Can I take ’em back?”
Gentry looked around with a grin. “My hide’s thick, friend.”
“I know. But I’ve been wrong to believe everything they said about you.”
“Nothing’s changed. I’m the same man I was yesterday.”
“But I’m not. I’ll eat my crow and like it.”
Chapter Eight
Mike Clears’s buggy left the post shortly after noon, and Mary Fitzhugh, happening to be looking out across the rain-fogged parade, saw it as it pulled out from the end hutment along Laundry Row. At the last possible moment she recognized Faith Tipton sitting beside the driver, who was someone she didn’t know.
The afternoon was half gone before Mary’s curiosity got the best of her and she contrived to meet Tim McCune on his way to the stables. As a result of their meeting, the sergeant generously offered to drive her down to town on some errands. He’d been headed down there anyway, he said. And on their way along the bench road in the major’s buggy, Mary expertly guided the conversation. McCune at first hedged in giving any definite answers to her seemingly innocent questions. But then, succumbing to her charm and a casual reminder of how she had managed to deliver the clothes to Gentry yesterday morning, he told her of his reason for visiting town. Gentry had sent for him. The result was that her errands were forgotten and he took her to the Lucky Find’s rear entrance.
Swinging down out of the buggy before the tie rail there, he told her: “You won’t want to come in. I’ll bring Mike out here.”
“What kind of a man is he, Sergeant?”
“You’ll like him.”
While Mary sat there alone in the buggy, her hands under the buffalo robe because of the damp chill, she was trembling with anticipation. She had supposed that Dan Gentry was by now well out through the foothills on his way to Santa Fe. She was delighted at the prospect of seeing him once more. She hoped this saloon owner wouldn’t be difficult and refuse to take her to Gentry. She would treat the man aloofly and in her customary manner when dealing with tradesmen.
Presently she heard the door open and looked up across the platform. It was Dan Gentry and not a stranger who stood there looking down at her. And in her surprise and delight she smiled radiantly, not caring that he should see how pleased she was.
He was hatless, wearing the same outfit she had yesterday given him, the jutting of the holstered gun at his thigh somehow accenting his erect carriage. Though his sober look was slightly disconcerting it was what she had almost come to expect of him.
She laughed now as she saw the rain pelting his head and shoulders, calling: “Dan, you’ll be soaked! Come sit here.” And she lifted the buffalo robe from her lap, holding a corner of it over the far side of the seat.
He came on down the steps then, and she noticed as she had countless other times how effortlessly his big frame seemed to move. The buggy lurched against his weight, and as she laid the robe across his knees she said: “I hadn’t expected this. You should have sent me word you were staying.”
“Didn’t know it myself till a few hours ago.” He was regarding her now with no break whatsoever in his gravity. Bluntly and unexpectedly he asked: “How could you turn her out like
that, Mary?”
She stiffened, knowing now what lay behind his seriousness. “Turn her out? Why shouldn’t I? The major wanted it. So did I.”
“You should have told her why you were doing it.”
“Should I be called upon to make explanations to a person like that?” she asked indignantly.
He smiled, very faintly. “You and the Old Man both believe she’s this Reed girl?”
“I certainly do.”
“And he hasn’t made up his mind about her?” When she didn’t reply, he drawled: “I thought so.”
Anger brightened the look in her eyes. “It’s there for everyone to see, Dan. First her lying about the hardware, then the things Missus Tipton wrote about her. Have you...aren’t you letting the fact that you carried her up here in your arms, that she may be pretty in a calculating way, warp your judgment?”
His face took on color. “What are you trying to say, Mary?”
“I believe Missus Tipton said it in her diary. Laura Reed has a way with men.”
His eyes were blazing with a strong indignation, and, seeing that, she tried to look contrite as she slipped her hand through the bend of his arm, murmuring: “Dan, we mustn’t let a thing like this come between us. I only...only hope you won’t let her make a fool of you. Sergeant McCune says you’re trying to help her, you and this Clears person.”
“We are.” His tone was clipped, hard.
“How, Dan?” she asked meekly.
His glance swung away from her and he said tonelessly: “One way would be to keep Ash from selling those goods till she proves they’re hers.”
“But isn’t he holding the wagons in his yard?”
“Just now he is.”
She sensed some obscure meaning behind his words and said urgently: “You must be careful of that man. I heard about your fighting him last night. You can’t hope to be that lucky again.”
