Sunset Trail

by Wayne D. Overholser

  Smith shook his head. “There isn’t much that goes on in Denver I don’t know. Now you want me to tell you what I know?”

  “I sure do,” she snapped. “I think you’re bluffing with a pair of deuces.”

  “No, I’m holding a full house,” he said. “There was a man named Pete Moss who got into bed with you one night a few months ago. They found him in an alley the next morning. Somebody shoved a butcher knife into his guts and took his money belt. You did it.”

  She stared at him, breathing hard, her breasts rising and falling like two great cushions, then she burst out: “You goddamned bastard!” She swallowed, and said: “I’ll be double sure I don’t bungle. I hope you do the same.”

  Smith turned and left the soddy, pulling the door shut behind him. Sammy and Hart were in their saddles, waiting. Smith mounted, and the three of them rode downslope toward the lights of Amity.

  IV

  Matt Dugan wiped his face with a hand as he glanced at the clock on the opposite wall. It was not quite midnight. He was impatient and he sensed that the others were impatient. They had waited about as long as they could for Uncle Pete Fisher and Jerry Corrigan; they were all tired and sleepy, and tomorrow was the big day.

  Matt’s office, in the rear of the bank, was hot, even though the windows and the back door were open. The evening had cooled off, but the little room still held the heat of the day. Matt felt the sweat roll down his face again. He couldn’t stand sitting here any longer, and he started to say that they’d go ahead and get the meeting over with regardless of Fisher and Corrigan, when the front door opened.

  He heard a man’s heavy-footed walk and guessed it would be Uncle Pete Fisher. Am oment later he saw he was right. The old man stopped in the doorway, his gaze touching Matt’s face first, then turned to Jim Long, and finally to Cole Talbot and his wife Hannah. He had been drinking, Matt thought, or maybe he was just mad. He was mad most of the time these days, and Matt had wished more than once he had not appointed him a committee chairman of any kind.

  “We almost gave you up,” Matt “I got delayed,” Fisher said.

  “Sit down, Pete.” Matt motioned to a chair. “We’ll wind this up fast. We need sleep right now more than we need planning. I’m tired.”

  “So am I.” Fisher sat down, the chair groaning under his weight. “Sometimes I feel as old as my wife says I am.”

  They laughed, even Cole Talbot who was a dour and silent man. His wife Hannah’s laugh was a high-pitched giggle that made Matt think she was always trying to make up for Cole’s lack of laughter. Only Jim Long’s laugh seemed natural. Matt knew his own was forced. He wished he could relieve his tensions by having a good case of hysterics the way his wife Nora did on occasion. Or maybe he ought to go out in the back yard and kick the dog.

  “We’ll make one quick run-down and go home,” Matt said. “Did you see Jerry?”

  Yeah, I saw him,” Fisher said. “He ain’t coming.

  He told me to tell you he was taking Jean buggy riding.”

  He said it with a kind of controlled fury that made Matt wonder if anything had happened, but he could not read the old man’s expression, so he said: “It’s all right. Jerry isn’t a chairman of any committee. I just asked him to be here so he’d know what was going on.” He picked up a sheet of paper from his desk and glanced at it. “Jim, all you have to do is to decorate the platform.”

  Jim Long nodded. He owned the Mercantile, Amity’s biggest store. He was thirty-five, he had a wife and six children, and was baldheaded except for a fringe of hair around his head that looked like a black band. He had enough worries to lose his hair, Matt knew.

  The panic of the previous year had been harder on Long than anyone else in Amity because he had carried too many people on his books and had borrowed from the bank more than Matt should have loaned him. If new people who were buying the irrigated land didn’t have money to pay for what they bought in the Mercantile, Long would be the first to go down the drain.

  “I had a talk with Pete,” Long said, “and we decided to keep the band on the ground. That way we won’t have to enlarge the platform. Putting up the bunting is the only thing left to do. We’ll have it finished by ten o’clock.”

  “Good.” Matt glanced at the paper. “Hannah, you have your crew picked and instructed, so I guess there’s nothing more you can do tonight. I apologize for asking you to come tonight. . . .”

  “I wanted to come,” Hannah said, “because I’ve got something to say. I want all of you to hear it. Everything will be fine if the ladies get to the Methodist church by eight o’clock. What I want you to know is that, if they ain’t there, we won’t have the sandwiches made by one o’clock.”

  “We’ll send the sheriff after them if they don’t show up,” Matt said.

  Hannah sniffed. With one exception she was disdainful of everyone in town including her husband. The exception was Nora Dugan, the only person in Amity she honestly admired. She was thirty-five years old, childless, and difficult to get along with, a fact her husband knew better than anyone else.

  Matt had not wanted to appoint Hannah chairman of the food committee, but he had been pushed into it because Cole, who ran the hotel, could handle the coffee making and bake the beans and furnish cups, plates, and silverware easier than anyone else. He was the one businessman in town who stood to make an immediate profit from the celebration. For the first time in years his hotel was full.

  “I doubt that the sheriff will be on hand,” Hannah said. “He’ll be out somewhere sparking your Jean.”

  “I’ll speak to him and Jean,” Matt said. “Cole, I’ll send Bud over first thing in the morning to help you set up the tables. You said you had the beans soaking, didn’t you?”

  “They’re soaking,” Talbot said in his sour way. “I’ll get up at four and start the fire. I’ll make enough coffee to take a bath in. Now I’m going to bed. I’ve wasted too much time already waiting for Pete to get here.”

  “One more thing,” Matt said quickly, seeing the flare of anger in Pete Fisher’s eyes. “The band assembles at eleven and they’ll start playing at half past eleven. Right, Pete?” Fisher nodded, still staring truculently at Talbot. “Dick Miles has been told to get the governor here right at twelve. The minute you see Dick’s rig, you get up on the platform and start the band playing that march we were talking about.”

  Fisher nodded again, turning his gaze to Matt. “If Fisher nodded again, turning his gaze to Matt. “If any of the band members ain’t on hand at eleven, I will send the sheriff after ’em. Likewise I’ll send him after Parson Hess if he figures on giving the invocation.”

  “Meeting adjourned,” Matt said. “Thanks for coming. You can go to bed now, Cole.”

  Talbot muttered something about the meeting not being necessary in the first place. Hannah sniffed and Pete Fisher grumbled. The four left Matt’s office, Jim Long the only one to say “Good night.”

  Matt remained at his desk for a time, thinking he was too tired to walk home. Besides, he was afraid to face Nora who had told him to be home by ten, that he was going to have a nervous breakdown if he didn’t get some rest.

  Nora was right. In fact, she was nearly always right. But there had been so many little things to settle, like where Jim Long would place the flag and which preacher would give the invocation and which one the benediction. It seemed to Matt that Hannah Talbot had been full of argument on every proposition that came up whether it was in her department or not.

  Matt wiped his face and told himself that he had never been as tired as he was this minute. It was a strange, tense tiredness, not at all like the healthy fatigue he used to have when he’d been in the saddle for eighteen or twenty hours every day working roundup.

  No, this was different, a kind of frantic nervousness that made it difficult to get agreement on even the simplest question. He understood why this was. Amity was trying to get up off the floor after being almost knocked out by the panic. With Matt leading, the businessmen of tow
n, along with some of the ranchers, had borrowed enough money to finish the project. No one, not even Matt, could guarantee it would save the town, but he was positive of one thing. It would be complete disaster if it failed.

  He rose and closed the back door and windows, then blew out the lamp, knowing he had to go home and get what rest he could. He left the office, blew out the bracket lamp near the front door, and, stepping outside, closed and locked the door.

  “Matt,” a man said.

  He wheeled, startled, then saw Uncle Pete Fisher standing a few feet from him, one of his cheap cigars clamped between his teeth. The moon was almost full, lighting Main Street with its yellow glow. None of the business places showed any light except the lobby of the Amity Hotel. The raucous noise that had flowed along Main Street earlier in the evening had died out until now the town actually seemed deserted.

  “Aw, Pete,” Matt said wearily. “I thought you’d be in bed by now.”

  “I want to talk a minute,” Fisher said. “I’m a tired, bitter old man who had money most of his life and now don’t have a dime. I live off what my wife inherited and wouldn’t give me when it could have saved the bank, so I’ve got reason to be bitter. Even those damn’ cigars I smoke would kill a horse. I dunno why they ain’t killed me.”

  Matt knew all this except that Fisher was bitter. He had been angry ever since Matt invited Governor Wyatt to speak at the Dam Day celebration, but aside from that he had managed to hide his bitterness. He never refused to do anything he was asked, even to entertaining a bunch of kids with his tales about crossing the plains to California in 1849, or fighting in the Civil War, or battling Indians when he’d first settled out here on the plains and Amity had been nothing more than a store and a couple of sod houses.

  “I never figured you for a bitter man, Pete,” Matt said.

  “Well, I am,” Fisher said. “I know what it is to wind up your life a failure and not have it your fault. The man who’s to blame is your god-damned Benjamin Wyatt. You and Jim and some of the others invited him before I knew anything about it. Now he’s going to be here if you don’t stop him, and he’ll get himself shot. What will that do to Amity and all of our fine plans for auctioning off the land tomorrow?”

  “Shot?” Matt couldn’t get a breath for a moment, and, when he did, he asked hoarsely: “Pete, what the ding-dong hell ever gave you an idea like that?”

  “It’s all around if you wasn’t deaf, dumb, and blind,” Fisher said. “Your sheriff is in the same boat. I was talking to the Owl Creek boys in the Palace about Wyatt when Corrigan tried to make me shut up, then he tried to pull me out of the saloon and Yarnell jumped him. Corrigan clipped him on the chin and knocked him cold. He pulled a gun on Mason and Lupton and threw all three of ’em into the jug.”

  “Maybe if you’d kept your mouth shut . . .,” Matt began.

  “Why should I?” Fisher demanded. “Wyatt broke me, him and his Populist friends. But what I’m trying to tell you is that the Owl Creekers drove a jag of steers to Burlington and sold ’em for a song. They know Wyatt’s responsible. They’re the kind who’ll rub him out tomorrow. The thing for you to do is to keep him out of town.”

  “I can’t do that, Pete,” Matt said. “By this time he’s in Burlington. What’s more, a lot of people who are in town came to hear the governor. Not because he’s a Populist but because he’s the governor. They’d be sore if he didn’t show up.”

  “All right,” Fisher said in a tight voice. “I guess you’re running this show, but don’t forget I warned you.”

  “Go home and go to bed,” Matt said, and walked away.

  He was so tired that he felt like laughing. Maybe he’d wind up having hysterics the way Nora did. You work and you scheme and you plan every little detail, you gamble your last dollar on your idea and you have every hope it will work, and then an old man who went broke trying to run a bank in your town starts talking about the governor’s being murdered.

  Ridiculous, he told himself, just plain ridiculous. Still, he wished Pete Fisher had kept his mouth shut.

  V

  Nora Dugan put her sewing down when she heard the wall clock strike midnight. She was irritated, and she was going to let Matt know it when he came home. After a couple had been married twenty years, a man should know something about a wife’s feelings, but it was evident Matt didn’t know much about hers. If he did, he’d have come home an hour or more ago.

  The truth was she was scared. Matt would laugh if she told him. He’d say that nothing bad ever happened in Amity, but tonight was different. A crowd of strangers was in town for the doings tomorrow, the governor coming and all. Earlier in the evening she had heard a lot of yelling and some shooting from Main Street that was less than two blocks away. You were bound to have a few toughs among so many strangers. Matt ought to know that.

  She rose and walked to the front door and stood there, staring across the street at the park that was hidden from her sight by the darkness. She could lock both doors, but the heat was stifling even at midnight. The last few days had been inordinately hot for the Colorado plains, and, worse yet, the nights weren’t cooling off. No, she had to leave both the front and back doors open to catch whatever breeze there was.

  Of course she could latch the screens, but that wouldn’t do any good if a man was determined to get into the house. It was easy enough to cut a hole in the wire netting and lift the latch. Bud was upstairs asleep, but he was only fourteen. Besides, he slept too soundly to be of any help if she needed it.

  Maybe she was more worried about Jean than she thought. Funny thing, she reflected. You have children and you raise them to be independent and to look out for themselves. You try to prepare them to leave the family nest and build their own, but, when the time comes, you aren’t ready for it and you think you can’t give them up, not even your eighteen-year old daughter who will be marrying the sheriff in a month.

  Nora liked Jerry Corrigan. If she’d had her pick of all the eligible young bachelors in Amity or up and down Buffalo Creek, she would have chosen Jerry, red hair, freckles, and all. One thing was sure. He would take care of Jean. To Nora-and she guessed to all mothers-this was important.

  Jerry wasn’t what she considered handsome, but he was intelligent, strong, healthy; he was all she could ask for in a son-in-law, but the trouble was Jerry and Jean were so much in love they simply didn’t have very good judgment right now.

  Nora sighed and wished the month was up and they were getting married tomorrow. But they had set their date, so the only sensible wish for her to make at this moment was for Jerry to bring Jean home. He had not come for her until it was late and they hadn’t been gone very long, but she wished Jean was home in bed. She was still just a girl.

  Nora smiled, thinking this was silly. She wouldn’t be like some women who kept on calling their daughters love names like “Doll” and “Baby” after they were grown and married and had their own children. Jean was eighteen. Nora had been only sixteen when she was married and Matt had been nineteen. Actually they were still young. She was thirty-five and Matt was thirty-eight.

  If this dam project failed and he lost the bank, they could go back to ranching. In some ways she thought they would be better off ranching than living in town with Matt worrying about hard times and the interest people weren’t paying on their mortgages and Uncle Pete Fisher who kept trying to tell Matt how to run the bank.

  She stiffened. She heard a sound back of the house. She wasn’t sure what it was, but she thought it was the shed door being closed. Matt had probably come down the alley and was checking the horses. He kept two in town, Big Red, a sorrel saddle horse, and Dolly, the mare he used for driving.

  There were times when Nora thought she had a right to be jealous. Matt was a little insane when it came to horses. She smiled as she thought about it. You could take a rancher off the ranch and put him in a bank, but you didn’t take the ranch out of the rancher. Matt Dugan was still a cowman at heart, and she guessed that was the way
she wanted it.

  She heard the back screen open and turned toward the kitchen. It was all fine and dandy for Matt to get involved in the big celebration tomorrow. In fact, she was involved, too, because she had promised to help Mrs. Talbot with the sandwiches in the morning, but Matt had gone too far.

  He was the general chairman, the hub of the wheel. This whole thing would never have gotten off the ground if he hadn’t spent hour after hour attending meetings, if he hadn’t threatened and begged and twisted arms. But to be this late on the last night. . . .

  She stopped, her mouth open, her heart jumping into her throat. Two strange men were coming toward her. She leaned against the wall, her knees threatening to buckle under her. Now that it was too late, she told herself, she had known something like this would happen, but she had insisted on ignoring the warning.

  “You’re Missus Dugan?” the man in front asked. She tried to speak, to tell them to get out of the house, but her lips could not form the words. The man who had spoken was about forty, she judged, small and dark with eyes as bright as a chipmunk’s. Apparently he was a city man, well dressed in a brown broadcloth suit, a white shirt, and a black string tie. He carried a revolver in a holster on his right hip. It seemed to her that the gun was not in keeping with his manner or his clothes.

  The other man was a cowboy. At least he wore range clothes. He carried a rifle in his right hand and had a revolver in a holster that was exactly in keeping with his manner and clothes. He was big, taller and broader of shoulder even than Matt. He was rough-featured, with a week-old stubble on his face, and was younger than the small one, probably in his late twenties.

  She didn’t know much about things like this, but Matt had served one term as sheriff several years ago, and she remembered his saying that a professional gunman carried his pistol low on his hip and tied it to his thigh. That was the way the big man carried his.