‘Don’t it.’
Walker eased forward in his chair. ‘You don’t suppose we could do somethin’ ’bout that for him, do you?’
The tall man seemed to give that serious consideration. ‘You mean, we could see to it that things got a mite more exciting?’
‘Well, two years without as much as clappin’ eyes on one of these … what you call ’em?’
‘Desperadoes,’ Waite offered.
Waite shrugged and got to his feet; Walker was a second behind him. ‘Okay, driver,’ said Waite, ‘it must be your birthday.’
Both men pulled their guns faster than either of the watching stage line pair could exactly follow. The arms went down, the hands blurred and next moment they were staring down the barrels of two pistols, one held in the left hand, the other in the right.
‘You ain’t—’ Chester began.
Walker laughed and nodded emphatically. ‘We are.’
The guard began a move from the chair but the quick covering of the Negro’s gun stopped him short. Rose gripped the ends of the table and held her breath. Ransome didn’t know what he was feeling, except that the air in the way station seemed to have become suddenly scarce.
Outside, Weston’s single eye was sighting along the barrel of his Winchester and it was set dead on Zeke Daniel’s back. Then Zeke stood away from the harness and turned and the rifle was pointing at the middle of his chest.
‘What the...!’
‘Stay where you are,’ said Weston, matter-of-fact and calm.
‘What you doin’ with that damned rifle?’
‘How’s it look?’ said Weston along the side of the barrel.
‘There’s...’ Zeke took one pace away from the team and stopped. He thought about Millie inside and his stomach tightened as though someone was twisting it with a fist.
‘You don’t want to go in there,’ said Weston, ‘not now.’
In there, Waite and Walker had stood the three men against the side wall with their noses pressed against it close. Walker went along behind them and relieved driver and guard of pistols. Chester’s shotgun was still on the seat of the stage. The drummer wasn’t carrying a gun.
‘Key to the strong box,’ said Waite.
Bob Crewe sweated and leaned his head against the wall.
‘Come on!’
Crewe closed his eyes and pressed against the rough grain of the wood.
‘How long you been workin’ for this line?’ Waite asked.
Crewe shifted his head back far enough to shake it. ‘A long time.’
The end of Waite’s pistol pushed into the flesh at the back of the driver’s neck. ‘Then think yourself lucky you ain’t met with us before. An’ give over the key.’
‘For God’s sake,’ called Rose from the table, ‘give it to him. Do what they say. What’s the use?’
‘That’s right, girl,’ echoed Walker with a smile that only just concealed his growing impatience.
Waite increased the pressure on the gun, squashing Crewe’s face hard against the wall.
Standing close by the stage, Zeke Daniel couldn’t understand what was going on inside. If they were after the strong box why hadn’t they come and made a move for it? If it wasn’t the box, what then? His mind closed upon the fact that Millie was still in there and that at that time her mind was so far from being clear. He remembered the moments before and after his son had been shot - how he had done nothing, been too scared to make the merest move. He remembered the silent reproach he had suffered from his wife.
And now it was happening again.
The blood seemed to sing in Zeke’s ears and his eyes began to burn.
From inside the way station he heard a blurred and angry shout. His hand closed about the harness and he hurled it towards the one-eyed man with the rifle, ducked and started to run.
There was no chance of the harness reaching Weston, certainly not striking him. What it did was surprise him, distract him, but not as much as Zeke needed. Weston sidestepped and brought the Winchester to his shoulder. He sighted along the barrel, picking up the bobbing head in the sights and following it towards the door.
Zeke Daniels must have thought he was going to make it.
In the midst of the rifle shot he seemed to trip forward, arms pushing out in a futile attempt to reclaim balance; as he fell he became aware of something hot and dull at the back of his head; he never knew for certain what it was, never knew Weston’s slug had broken through the base of the skull, flipping the rest of it up like an old box lid, driving through his brain and splintering free an inch above the eyes.
‘What...?’ Waite turned the top half of his body sideways, began to shout.
Bob Crewe felt the barrel end shift clear. He drove his elbow back towards Waite’s ribs and swung round, his fist coming up towards the outlaw’s jaw.
Waite staggered a couple of paces back in response to the blow to his ribs and swayed outside the punch. He jabbed the pistol forward till it was at arm’s length and pulled back on the trigger. The explosion was muffled by its closeness to the driver’s body.
Rose jumped to her feet, one hand pulling at the side of her hair, the other failing to stifle a scream.
The guard shifted away from the wall and ran three awkward paces to the door. Walker lifted his pistol and shot him through the back of the left shoulder, the bullet glancing off the bone and scoring a burning line across his skin. Chester stumbled to his knees and somehow kept going; his hand reached the door handle.
Rose screamed again and Waite slapped at her face with the back of his hand, sending her crashing backwards, her chair flying towards the side of the room. She went to the floor in a tumble of skirts and tears and stayed there.
‘Leave it, you old fool!’ shouted Walker to the guard, fumbling to get the door open. ‘Leave it!’
The bent fingers forced the handle down.
Walker sighed and sent a bullet into the center of his spine.
Chester hit the door with his face and the brittle bone in his nose broke against it. He leant there, slumped strangely, the smallest trickle of blood beginning to seep down from the hole at the back of his coat.
‘You killed my son!’
Both outlaws froze; turned. The old woman was standing in the kitchen doorway, the Navy Colt held between both hands in front of her chest. Her voice had been loud and surprisingly clear; the fingers wrapped about the butt of the gun were oddly still and unshaking. Her eyes and her mind were clear: the man who had just shot and killed Bob Crewe was the same man who had shot and killed her son. She knew it. No use Zeke telling her … where was Zeke? … telling her any different. She recognized him for sure. How could any mother forget the face of the man who killed her only boy?
‘Lady, you—’ Walker came a couple of steps towards her, trying a smile. He didn’t feel confident to try another. Crazy old woman like that with an old gun in her hands, you never knew when it was going to go off or in what direction.
‘You killed my son.’
She was staring at Waite, no doubt as to who she meant, little doubt as what she intended to do about it. Waite’s eyes were dark in their deep sockets, not understanding, only seeing the gun that was pointing at his chest from less than fifteen feet away.
From her place on the floor, Rose watched in silence, the tears dry upon the faded rouge of her cheeks.
‘You killed him and I’m—’
Both Waite and Walker brought up their guns simultaneously. One bullet drove into her side, rending the ribs like matchwood; the other tore the center of her face apart. The big Navy Colt fell between her hands to the floor. Millie Daniels went backwards into the kitchen, falling all the time, no consciousness remaining but her limbs continuing to function, taking her into the table, dropping her below it. The table pushed sideways, a bag of flour toppled over spreading its contents across the floor, sprinkling Millie’s gray and blood-strewn hair.
Smear lines of blood tracked her path.
In the main ro
om, the young drummer was vomiting through his hands.
‘Jesus,’ said Walker, shaking his head in wonder. ‘We sure made a bloody meal of this one, we surely did.’
Chapter Three
Wes Hart leaned back in his chair and scratched at the flat of his stomach through the thinning cotton shirt. He’d been sitting in on the game for the better part of an hour and up to now he hadn’t even got five cards that were worth bluffing on, never mind winning. Change three and throw in; change three and throw in.
‘Ain’t your day,’ commented the dealer from around his cigar stub.
Hart grunted agreement and threw in.
‘Happens like that,’ the dealer went on, sliding the player to his left and Hart’s right two fresh cards. ‘Remember a time when I was working the sternwheelers up the Mississippi. Made three trips without winning more than half a dozen games. Near cleared me out.’
He accepted the challenge to be seen, turned over a straight flush and reached out to scoop in the pot.
‘Just have to keep ridin’ it,’ he advised Hart. ‘All a man can do when his luck don’t run - keep ridin’ till she changes.’
Yeah, thought Hart, or till he’s lost everything he had.
‘You ain’t quittin’?’ said the dealer as Hart scraped back his chair.
‘That’s right.’
‘But this deck’s still warm.’
‘Too warm for me.’
The dealer chewed at the cigar and shook his head. ‘Mistake,’ he said. ‘Turn your back when your luck’s bad an’ it don’t ever change back. You got to play it out or it ain’t never goin’ to let you up again.’
‘Yeah,’ said Hart, looking round the table. ‘You men do what you want. I’m pullin’ out while I still got folding money. As for you,’ he went on, pointing at the dealer, ‘seems to me you take them cards too serious. Ain’t no more than a game.’
The dealer took the cigar butt from his mouth, spat a little tobacco sideways to the floor, shook his head and held his tongue. Some men were born so stubborn they never did listen to reason. It just weren’t worth wasting your breath. Besides, he’d heard about this man, Hart. All of Caldwell had. He wasn’t the sort of man you argued with for long — not if you wanted to keep alive and healthy. There were quite a few folk around who could have testified to that. That is, if they’d still been breathing and possessed of the power of speech.
The dealer watched Hart walk away between the mostly empty tables and set the remains of the cigar back in his mouth; he flicked the deck and began to deal.
Hart pushed back one of the doors and stepped out on to the boardwalk. The light was bright, turning towards afternoon; the sky pale, clear blue. He leaned forward to reach the ends of thin leather attached to the bottom of his holster and tie them at the inside of his leg, holding the holster tight in place.
He was finished in Caldwell. He’d done what they’d paid him to do and he should have already moved on. The armed opposition to the railroad company bringing a spur line down from the north had ended when Hart had sent the crippled rancher Clancy Shire through the plate glass window of his own ranch house; the robberies and the double-dealing had finished when Hart took Caleb Deignton to the jailhouse at gunpoint and paid off the three outlaws Deignton had been using and sent them on their way. Hart had half-thought they might not quit that easy, he’d part expected them to come riding back into Caldwell looking for him but they hadn’t. Why should they? It wasn’t anything personal to them. Why risk getting shot when someone was giving you the money for nothing?
No, Hart should have done what he always did when a job was over; he should have packed his bags, paid his bills, saddled up and rode on.
He knew what was nagging away at him. It was the time Emily Escort had come to him and told him that her husband, Frank, had ridden off with Shire’s men. That he was going out with a bunch of them to visit those local farmers who supported the railroad. Visit was a polite term for what they would do.
She had come to Hart because she was worried for her husband’s safety. Not because he was under any obligation to either of them, but because there was no one else she could ask. Hart hadn’t done an awful lot. He hadn’t prevented Frank Escort being shot from the saddle of his horse with an anxious, frightened kid’s rifle. No reason why he should - no way he could. Hart moved from the boardwalk into the street, walking diagonally across the packed earth, the heels of his boots kicking up small clouds of dust behind him. He was a tall man, a little over six foot and weighing close to a hundred and seventy pounds. He had a worn leather vest over his shirt, a flat-brimmed black hat set on his head so that it angled down from left to right. The gun that sat in the holster was a .45 caliber Colt Peacemaker with an embossed mother-of-pearl grip. He walked easily, his body leaning forward slightly, as if ready to spring sideways or drop into a crouch at the first suggestion of danger.
Knowing nothing about him, simply seeing him then, walking away across that wide main street of that Kansan cow-town, anyone could tell that he was a gunfighter. A shootist. Wes Hart liked to call himself a regulator.
An hour later he was on the trail south out of Caldwell, his belongings in the pair of saddle bags or rolled up behind in the Indian blanket he always carried. From the right-hand bag protruded the butt of a Remington ten-gauge shotgun, its twenty-eight-inch barrels sawn down to make it easier to use in tight situations where its blast pattern would be wider. His saddle gun was a .44 Henry with an extra rear sight; a double-bladed knife hung from the saddle pommel in its Apache sheath.
Whatever Hart rode into, he was prepared for it, ready to fight his way out if necessary.
What he was riding into now didn’t hold that kind of danger, but he felt uneasy about it just the same. The place had been made from split timber, the windows glazed and curtained; a white fence ran the perimeter of a vegetable garden; stones had been heaped into a rough Circular wall around the well. Washing hung from a clothes line, limp now that the earlier wind had dropped. A dress, blouses, an apron, things that would only fit small children. Hens pecked at the dirt below them.
In the corner of the yard there were flowers set against a newly humped patch of earth.
Hart reined in on the slope above the farm and let his eyes run over the hard winter wheat, its tops shining back the sun.
That’s where the future is for this state, Frank Escort had said, not in cattle but in wheat.
Somebody’s future, maybe; not his.
Hart flicked at the reins and touched his boots to the gray’s sides.
As Hart neared the front of the farm, a little girl ran out through the open door, saw him, stopped, her mouth an open dark space, turned and ran back inside.
A few moments later Emily appeared, the girl, Teresa, peeping out from behind her skirt. The woman’s hair, cut short like a boy’s still caught the sun with its reddish-brown sheen, but her eyes were dull and there were narrow lines beside her eyes that Hart hadn’t noticed before.
She looked at Hart, saying nothing, a hammer gripped in her left hand. The little girl slipped one of her hands inside her mother’s right and continued to look up at Hart with her big eyes.
Hart touched, just, the underside of his hat brim and swung down from the saddle. He left the gray untethered.
‘I was passin’—’ he began.
Emily turned away and ushered Teresa back inside.
Hart hesitated, thinking should he follow, knowing it was so easy to remount and ride on. He glanced at the grave in the corner beyond the well, its few flowers set in a jar that leaned with the uneven set of the earth.
He followed the woman and child into the house.
The little boy, Henry, was asleep on a blanket, cuddled up to a rag doll.
Things were piled on top of one another, or pushed into groups, here and there across the floor. The table was loaded with kitchen utensils and plates and cups.
‘You’re selling up,’ said Hart.
Emily looked over her
shoulder, no answer necessary.
‘You didn’t think of staying on?’ he asked.
‘And watch the place Frank built up fall down around me?’ She shook her head, a bitterness in her voice that Hart could understand yet which still surprised him.
‘How ’bout hiring someone to help?’
‘What with?’ She turned to face him.
Hart shrugged. ‘The crop looks pretty good.’
‘And the mortgage looks better.’
Hart nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Perhaps.’
She lifted up a sheet and began to fold it.
‘My daddy’s dead,’ the little girl said to Hart, peering from the table leg. ‘He’s gone to Heaven.’
The eyes were round and earnest.
Tm sorry I can’t make coffee,’ Emily said. ‘Offer you anything. You can see—’ She pointed vaguely round the room and the sentence faded.
‘We put out flowers for him,’ explained Teresa. ‘Mummy and me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Hart said, looking at Emily’s back.
‘You said.’
‘Well—’
‘Sorry isn’t any use,’ Emily faced him again, the white sheet folded over her arms. ‘It doesn’t help sell this place, it doesn’t pay off the debts, it doesn’t get us out of this country.’
Her cheeks sucked in air and for a moment Hart thought she was going to break. But he realized that had already happened and that she was likely cried out.
‘You ain’t just selling up then’ said Hart, ‘you’re movin’ out altogether?’
Emily nodded. ‘My mother’s sister, my aunt, she lives in St Louis. She always said there’d be a home for us if … if we ever needed … it’s the only thing that makes sense. This land out here, nothing but space and men riding over it with guns.’
Hart moved towards her. ‘Frank wasn’t that kind of a man.’
‘I know. You think I don’t know that?’ Her hand pulled at the side of her dress, fingers plucking at a non-existent thread. ‘That’s why he got sent home to us in the back of a wagon.’
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