There was another way of getting at her. He remembered that she had told Sammy last night that she wasn’t staying here for a posse to find. She looked as mean as ever, but she hadn’t killed him as she said she would if he tried to get away. She was softer than she let on.
He said in an offhand tone: “If they’ve got the murdering done, I’ll bet those three men are out of the country by now and a posse will be showing up here any time.”
She was drinking coffee when he said that. She gulped and choked and fought for breath for a good part of a minute. When she was able to talk, she said: “You shut up. You’re a purty foxy kid, but it ain’t gonna work.”
“I was thinking that they don’t just arrest the ones who do the killing,” he said. “I mean the ones who do the shooting. They arrest everybody who had anything to do with the murder. They hang all of ’em. Did you ever see anybody hang?”
She glared at him, her big fists doubled, then she whirled to the table and picked up the revolver. “I didn’t kill you a while ago when I had plenty of reason to,” she said, “but I ain’t gonna go easy again. You’d better shut your big, flappin’ mouth.”
For the time being that was all he could do. He had goaded her as much as he could for now, but he’d given her something to think about. She laid the gun down and reached for her coffee cup, her hand trembling so much that she spilled several drops.
He thought: Sooner or later she’s going to break and I’ll get out of here. But he knew it might not be in time.
XIX
The Methodist church was buzzing with activity when Jerry Corrigan arrived. A dozen or more women were making sandwiches, working at tables that had been set up in the slim shadow of the building. In another hour or so the sun would be blasting at them, the shade completely gone.
Hannah Talbot was having the time of her life. She had her hand on the throttle, running in and out of the church or moving from one woman to another to find fault with the work that woman was doing. When a tray of sandwiches was finished, she would send Parson Hess trotting toward the courthouse with it, admonishing him to be sure the sandwiches were covered with a tablecloth because the flies were just terrible.
If the preacher wasn’t on hand, Mrs. Talbot sent one of the women with the sandwiches, but Corrigan noticed that she didn’t send Nora Dugan to the courthouse and she was never critical of the way Nora cut the bread or spread the butter or of the amount of ham or chicken she placed between the slices.
Nora was not aware of his presence until he moved up to stand beside her and asked: “How’s it going?”
Startled, she glanced up. Tiny beads of perspiration made her face glisten. She wiped her face with a wadded-up handkerchief, then said: “All right, Jerry. Hannah’s worried about not having enough sandwiches, and I guess there are an awful lot of people in town.”
“Yeah, there sure are,” he agreed.
He didn’t see Hannah Talbot come up until she said: “I didn’t expect to see you around here today, Sheriff. I thought you’d be out lollygagging’ with Jean.”
He scowled, thinking there wasn’t anyone else in the whole world he disliked as heartily as he did Hannah Talbot. He said: “I wish I was.”
She smirked as if to tell him she knew he couldn’t hit her as he would have a man, then she said with a nasty curl of her lips: “I think you two had better get married before it’s too late.”
She walked off, switching her behind at him. He clenched his fists and stared after her, then he said: “So help me, someday I’ll forget she’s a woman.” He glanced at Nora. She was still pale, but she seemed to feel all right. “How do you keep that old heifer off your back?”
“I don’t know,” Nora said, “but I am the only woman here she hasn’t clawed a few times this morning.” She moistened her lips, glancing at Corrigan, and then turned her gaze back to the loaf of bread she was slicing. “How was Jean when you left the house?”
“I think she was fine,” Corrigan answered, “but she claims Bud’s sick in bed and she’s got a headache and she’s going back to bed and she didn’t feel like coming with me. I don’t believe any of it, Nora.” For a time Nora said nothing. All Corrigan could hear was the chatter of the women and Parson Hess’s heavy voice and the scream of children playing behind the church. Finally Nora said: “You aren’t accusing Jean of lying to you, are you, Jerry?”
“I don’t like to put it that way,” he admitted, “but I’ve got a hunch that something’s wrong. By this time, it’s more’n a hunch. I don’t like the idea of Jean being in the house with those three men even if two of ’em are supposed to be her cousins.”
She continued slicing bread; and Corrigan, his gaze dropping to her hands, noticed that they were trembling. She was slicing the bread too thick and he wondered if Hannah Talbot would tell her so.
“Jean will be all right,” Nora said finally. “If you’re worried, why don’t you talk to Matt about it?”
He wondered if she were trying to tell him something without coming out and saying it directly. He had always found her a direct and forthright woman, but now he was convinced she was holding back facts she should tell him.
“You’re saying that something’s wrong but you’d rather have Matt tell me,” he said. “Is that it?” She didn’t answer, but he saw that the corners of her mouth were quivering. “Who are those men?” he demanded. “Are they really cousins?”
“Talk to Matt,” she said in a tone so low he hardly heard her above the racket around them. “If he wants to tell you, all right. I can’t, Jerry. I just can’t.”
He saw Hannah Talbot coming toward them under full sail. He didn’t want to be there if Mrs. Talbot was going to chew Nora out for making the slices of bread too thick, so he said: “All right, I will.” He wheeled and strode away.
The crowd was beginning to assemble in front of the courthouse. The job of putting up the bunting on the platform was finished, and, although it was too early for the band to gather, several members were sitting on the chairs that had been placed at the end of the platform for them. They were resplendent in their bright red uniforms with the gold buttons, and some were making strange, discordant noises on their trombones and coronets.
Corrigan hurried past them, toward the business block, refusing to be delayed by a fight that was brewing between two cowboys. As far as he was concerned, they could go ahead and kill each other if that was what they wanted to do. He wasn’t sure that Matt would tell him any more than Nora had, but he was going to put it up to him anyhow.
The main part of the crowd was here on Main Street, the women seeking any shade they could find and most of the men moving in and out of the saloons. Corrigan strode toward the bank as fast as he could, shouldering through the crowd, sometimes not very politely because he was goaded by a sense of urgency. He wanted Jean out of the Dugan house, and, if Matt didn’t get her out, he’d do it himself.
When he stepped into the bank, he saw that a dozen men were lined up in front of the teller’s cage. Fred Follett was waiting on them, but Matt was not in sight. There was a second teller’s cage where Matt usually-worked when there was a crowd, but he wasn’t in it today. The door to his private office in the back was closed. Corrigan hesitated only a moment, glancing at Follett, then he shoved the gate back at the end of the counter and went on toward Matt’s office.
Follett saw him and called: “Wait, Sheriff! I’ll tell Mister Dugan you want to see him. Unless it’s a matter of grave importance, I don’t think. . . .”
“You’re busy,” Corrigan said curtly. “Stay where you are. This is official business.”
He opened the door without knocking, stepped into the room, and closed the door. Matt sat at his desk, his head in his hands. He said without looking up: “What is it, Fred?”
“I’m not Fred.” Corrigan pulled up a chair and sat down. “What’s going on, Matt?”
“Nothing.” Matt rubbed his face with both hands and looked at Corrigan. “The big question is what’s go
ing on out there in the street? Probably about ten fights. Why aren’t you keeping the peace instead of coming in here?”
“What’s going on?” Corrigan asked again, irritated by Matt’s effort to divert him.
“Why, it’s Dam Day,” Matt said heavily. “I don’t know why I have to tell you what’s going on.”
Anger replaced irritation in Corrigan. He leaned forward. “Matt, I want to know what’s going on in your house. Now you’d better quit acting so damned innocent.”
“Did you see Jean?”
“Yes, I saw Jean. I’ve just come from the church where I talked to Nora. She wouldn’t tell me anything, but she said for me to talk to you. Now you’d better tell me what’s happening.”
“Jean didn’t do very well, I guess. I told her she’d have to do a good job of acting.” Matt looked past Corrigan at the opposite wall, refusing to meet his eyes. “Is Smith still there? I thought he might come downtown.”
“All right, Matt.” Corrigan leaned forward. “I had a kind of a hunch last night when I looked Ross Hart up and got you out of bed. I should have hauled Smith off to jail, but I didn’t have enough to go on. Now I do, and I’m as sure as I’m sitting here that something’s wrong. Real wrong. I don’t believe those two so-called cattle buyers are Nora’s cousins at all. I don’t think they’re even cattle buyers.”
“I never heard Nora speak of them before,” Matt admitted uneasily, “but. . . .”
Corrigan rose. “I’m done talking, Matt. I’m going to your house and I’m going to haul Jean out of there. It may be too late now, but I can’t stand it any longer.”
“Sit down.” Matt motioned to the chair. “I’ll tell you, but you’ve got to go along with me. Until I’m ready to make a move, you’ve got to stay out of it. Agreed?”
Corrigan hesitated. Matt Dugan was a man whose judgment he had always valued, but he was under some kind of pressure now and his judgment might be wrong. Still, it seemed to Corrigan, he had to trust Matt; he had to believe that no amount of pressure would change his basically sound judgment.
Corrigan sat down. “All right, Matt.”
Leaning back in his chair, Matt took a long breath, his gaze on Corrigan. “Jerry, I’m warning you not to go off half cocked. I’ve had to live with this ever since I went home from the meeting last night and I don’t know yet how to handle it. You’re right. Those men are not Nora’s cousins and they are not cattle buyers.”
Matt took another breath and, leaning forward now, put his hands palm down on his desk. “Jerry, they’re bank robbers. They have Jean as a hostage in the house and Bud somewhere out in the country. They have promised that if we co-operate, neither Jean nor Bud will be hurt. At noon when the governor arrives and there’s a lot of excitement, I’m to take ten thousand dollars home and these men will get out of town and release Jean and Bud.”
Corrigan sat motionlessly, barely breathing. He could think only of Jean, held there in the house with three outlaws. He had no trust in them, no belief whatever that they would keep their word. By this time she might have been attacked by any or all of them, or killed, or both.
“I’ve been over this in my mind a hundred times,” Matt went on. “If we were lucky and went into the house and shot it out with them, we might clean them out and save Jean, but it wouldn’t save Bud. I don’t know where they’re keeping him, but they’ve got him and I can’t take a chance on them killing him if I don’t do what they say.”
“What are you going to do?” Corrigan asked hoarsely.
“The only thing I can do,” Matt said. “I’ll deliver the money and trust them to keep their word. Later, we’ll get a posse together and go after them, but not until Jean and Bud are safe.”
Corrigan took a long breath. Matt was right. They couldn’t sacrifice Bud’s life. Maybe they couldn’t trust these men to keep their word, but the hard fact was they had Jean and they had Bud. A crazy wildness began working through Corrigan. He wanted to go to the house and kill all three of them. When he thought about his future without Jean, he could see no reason to live.
Matt was watching him anxiously. “You won’t do anything to pressure them, will you, Jerry? Ten thousand dollars is cheap enough for their lives.”
Corrigan rose and stood looking down at Matt. “Suppose they take Jean with them for a hostage when they leave? We can’t go after them if they do.”
“No,” Matt said, “we can’t.”
Jerry Corrigan turned to the door and opened it and stumbled out of the office. He crossed to the street door and went out into the crowd. He blindly pushed people aside as he walked toward the courthouse, all the time asking himself why this had happened.
You fall in love and you make plans for the future and you can see nothing but happiness ahead of you, then everything is snatched away and destroyed. Why? Why? Why? There was no answer. Only the question, and an impossible situation about which he could do nothing.
XX
Matt remained at his desk after Corrigan left the bank. He could do nothing except wait until it was time to take the $10,000 to the house. He had already moved it from the safe to his office. After the outlaws were gone and Jean was safe, and after a little more time had passed so Bud would be released, Matt would help Jerry Corrigan gather a posse and they would go after the outlaws.
But now the minutes dragged. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, and found that he couldn’t relax. The pounding of his heart seemed to jar his whole body. His head ached, too. It was the waiting, he thought, more than the blow he had received on his head that caused it, the waiting and the uncertainty about Jean and Bud. If the outlaws did not keep their word, and if his children were killed, he would blame himself the rest of his life for not bringing the whole thing to a head.
Suddenly he was aware that someone was arguing with Fred Follett outside his office. He rose and opened the door. Uncle Pete Fisher was trying to get into his office to see him, and Follett was trying to keep him out.
When Fisher saw him, he bawled: “Get this pup off my neck, Matt! I’ve got to talk to you.”
“He’s drunk,” Follett said in disgust. “He’s drunk as a lord. Jerry ought to lock him up. I don’t know of anything that’s worse than an old man who’s drunk.”
“Let him come in,” Matt said.
Follett threw up his hands and wheeled back into his cage. The men who were waiting in front of the cage laughed. One of them said: “Nothing’s worse than an old has-been, is there, Fred?”
“Unless it’s a drunk one,” Follett said angrily. “Matt should have had me throw the old fool out.”
Matt shut the door, thinking that Follett might be right. Uncle Pete had been a problem for quite a while and he would probably get worse as he grew older. Matt noticed that his beard and mustache were white, he was filthy, and he stunk with the secondhand smell of cheap whiskey. Matt felt his stomach begin to churn, but he sat down, thinking Fisher wouldn’t be here long.
“What’s wrong, Uncle Pete?” Matt asked.
Fisher sat in the chair Corrigan had occupied a short time before, his head tipped forward, his gaze on the floor. Suddenly he began to cry, sobs shaking his gnarled old body.
For a time Fisher couldn’t answer Matt’s question. Matt, as disgusted as Follett had been, decided he’d throw the old man out himself, then Fisher swiped a dirty sleeve across his eyes. He looked up and swallowed, he opened his mouth to say something and closed it and swallowed.
Finally Fisher was able to talk. He said: “Matt, do you know what it’s like to be a big man in a community like this, and then drop to nothing?” Fisher wiped his face with both hands, then he went on: “I’ve sat right there at the same desk and in that same chair you’re sitting in, and I’ve said to men who were in this chair that I’d save their hides by giving ’em the loan they were asking for, or I’d say they couldn’t have it even if I knew I was going to break ’em. I was playing God, Matt. You savvy that?”
Matt frowned. The old man was d
runk, all right, but something had made him get drunk because he usually limited himself to two drinks a day. Matt thought: Whatever made him keep drinking brought him here. I’d better keep him talking and find out what it is. “I savvy,” Matt said. “Go on.”
“I’m still playing God,” Fisher went on. “Now you’ve got to help me ’cause it’s more’n I can handle. I hate the governor and the Populists. It was Benjamin Wyatt who took me out of that chair where you’re sitting. I hate him and I want to see him dead, but I just never knew how it was going to be, having him killed here in Amity on Dam Day.”
Matt froze. He stared at Fisher, unable to believe what he had heard, but the agony of hell that was twisting the old man’s face told him he’d better believe it.
“Go on,” Matt said. “Tell me all about it.”
“I’m fixing to,” Fisher said. “It’s been eating on me and I kept drinking till now I guess I’ve got myself drunk enough to tell you. I’m ashamed, Matt. I’m ashamed because I didn’t think that killing Ben Wyatt here in Amity on a day like this would ruin the land sale and give us a black eye all over the state. I don’t want my friends hurt, you and everybody else that’s worked hard on this whole business and put everything you had into it.” Fisher stopped.
Matt said: “Go on, Pete. Tell me exactly what’s going to happen.”
“There’s some men in Denver who want Wyatt killed,” Fisher said, staring at the floor. “Rich men. They want him out of the way so bad they’ll pay for getting him killed. They know that, if he stays governor, and it kind ’o looks like he’ll get re-elected, Colorado will go broke and everybody’s gonna lose anything they’ve got left. The only way to save the state and for these men to save what they’ve got is to see that Wyatt is rubbed out. I sent ’em information about you and your family and your house. They picked three men to come here and move into your place and shoot Wyatt when he gets up to talk. All I done is to tell ’em how it was here. The Denver men did everything else.”
Fisher’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he struggled to swallow again. He went on: “The three men are supposed to tell you they’re here to rob the bank, but that’s just an excuse they’re gonna give you. We figured you’d stand still for that if it was a proposition of saving the lives of your kids, but you wouldn’t stand still for murdering the governor. I know they’re in your house ’cause I looked in your barn this morning and I seen three strange horses. I ain’t seen Bud around the courthouse and he was supposed to help Cole with the tables. I ain’t seen Jean, neither, and she’s not one to stay home on a day like this. And Nora, she looks like a walking corpse.”
Sunset Trail Page 16
