Dark Trail

by Ed Gorman

  “Evans is going to get killed.”

  “You won’t find me shedding any tears over a gunny, I’m afraid.”

  Guild drained his coffee. “The only thing I can do is convince Evans he’s going to get killed.”

  “Ten thousand dollars will make a man awful foolish and Adair knows it.” He offered Guild a look at his Roman profile. He looked just the way he did on his RE-ELECT SHERIFF CARTER posters out in the front office, hammy as a Chautauqua Shakespearean. “Awful foolish.”

  Guild stood up. Carter wasn’t a bad man or even a lazy one. Just realistic. There was little the law—any sort of law—could do to a man like Tom Adair.

  Carter put out his hand and Guild shook it. “I’d like to see Tom Adair get his ass kicked around the block, Guild. If you can manage to pull it off, there’ll be a special place in heaven for you.”

  Guild smiled. “I’m not sure heaven is the direction I’m headed, Sheriff.”

  Carter laughed. “We’re probably headed in pretty much the same direction, Guild. Good luck with everything.”

  Chapter Ten

  Sarah was sitting in a restaurant, sipping her morning coffee, when she heard the news about the gunfight.

  A feeling of sickness spread from her stomach up to her chest and then down through her arms. The pace of her breathing increased, and she knew that soon she’d have a headache. She had felt this way the morning she’d heard that a plow horse had killed her youngest brother. This was a place beyond words or tears.

  She realized now that she had always believed that Frank would come back to her, just as he’d always done before. He got tired of them, these women; or they got tired of him. He was winsome and darling, but nobody could be winsome or darling for long. They always found some subtle way of ending the relationship that allowed Frank to keep his considerable vanity and pride. And then he’d be back, full of hot promises and iron resolve. For a time she’d give him no solace, but then always, always she’d take him to her—as much his mother as his lover it sometimes seemed—and he would tell her all his fears and would love him all the more for these moments of honesty, the few moments when Frank faced the facts about himself, that he was getting older, that he was losing his skills as a gunfighter, and that much of the time he was frightened that somebody from his past, some punk who’d finally gotten good enough, would reappear and kill him. And they would lie in the darkness then and she would soothe him and then they would make soft, gentle love. He would whisper forgive me, forgive me and she would forgive him and forgive herself, too, for being so foolish where he was concerned, for without him she had no life. No life at all.

  “Little more coffee?” the waitress asked, tilting her tin pot to Sarah’s cup.

  “No, thanks.”

  The waitress watched her carefully. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You look flushed. Like you might be feeling faint.”

  The waitress was gray-haired and maternal; Sarah appreciated her concern. “I’m fine, really.”

  “Whatever it is, I’m sure it’ll work out.”

  Sarah smiled, knowing that tears stood in her eyes. “I sure hope it will, anyway.”

  She had no idea where to go, what to do, who to see. So she just walked, the way she always did in the first days of being left by Frank.

  She went everywhere and nowhere, saw everything and nothing. An image of pink summer flowers and the scent of apple blossoms; a man shoveling fly-buzzed manure out of the livery; a young girl in a fluttery white dress leading a group of smaller children in ring-around-the-rosy; the chug and chuff of a steam engine as it gained purpose and power and headed east down tracks shining with sunlight. A plump priest in black cassock stood on the steps of his stone parish; on impulse—she was, after all, a Presbyterian—she went over and touched the hands he had folded on the rim of his girth. “Pray for me, Father,” she said, but was gone before he could respond.

  When she got back to her hotel, she saw Guild sitting in a leather chair in the lobby. He was smoking a cigarette and reading the newspaper. She hated to think it, but he looked old and sad in the way of the other old men who sat idly in the lobby.

  He saw her over the top of his paper. He folded the paper neatly, put it down, and came over to her.

  “Why don’t we go for a walk?”

  “Leo, I’ve been walking for the last hour. I’m tired of walking.”

  “Go out on the sidewalk, anyway. It’s too quiet in here to talk.”

  As it was. All the old men were straining forward to hear what they were about to say.

  She sighed. When Leo wanted you to do something, you usually did it.

  She went out into the sunlight and stood on the sidewalk. People flowed by and jostled her. The air smelled of sunlight. She’d always thought that peculiar, that sunlight should have a scent.

  Leo studied her with his blue, blue eyes and said, “I’m on my way over to the depot to buy you a ticket.”

  “What?”

  “Just what I said. And I don’t want no goddamned argument about it, do you understand?”

  “But Leo—”

  “You know what he’s gone and done, with the gunfight and all, and you know what the result is going to be. I don’t want you around for it. You’ve had heartbreak enough with that tinhorn son of a bitch.”

  As she was often mother to Frank, so had Leo often been father to her. He was father now. Touched, she reached out a soft hand to his cheek. “I talked with Ben Rittenauer last night,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “He seems like a reasonable man.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning I think I can talk him out of it.”

  “I don’t think you know how much he hates Frank. Rittenauer has his pride like everybody else. And he’s awful happy about that ten-thousand-dollar paycheck.”

  She smiled. “I still think I can talk him out of it, Leo.”

  “C’mon,” he said, and took her by the elbow. He’d never been rough before. He was rough now.

  “No, Leo, I don’t want to go get a train ticket.”

  “Right now I don’t give a damn what you want.”

  “No,” she said.

  He redoubled his grip on her elbow and tried tugging her in the direction of the depot.

  People were gawking at them. How people loved the grief of strangers.

  “No,” she said again.

  And then, with her free hand, she slapped him.

  She knew instantly what she’d done. She had slapped not Leo, but Frank; all the years of loss and fear and shame, all those years boiling up suddenly and erupting as a slap on Leo’s face.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  She saw that he did not understand, that he was hurt and angry now. “Leo, I know you were only trying to help but—”

  And then he was gone, the crowd claiming him. She couldn’t even see his white hair now.

  “Leo,” she said to herself, realizing that she might have lost her last and best friend. “Leo.”

  She went upstairs and laid down, trying to sleep, but it didn’t work. She went over to the window and looked out. She wanted suddenly to be out of this town. Forever. Maybe Leo was right, after all. Maybe the best thing was to get on a train and say goodbye to everything. For a long, bright moment she was filled with ridiculous joy. That was it. She’d leave town and start life afresh, make new friends, be her old happy self again, the self she’d been before Frank, before Leo even. The girl in her was what she’d lost somewhere, and it was the girl in her she wanted to find again.

  But it ended, the hope, and she became aware of her fluttering heartbeat and the sticky anxious sweat on her arms, the dry panic in her throat. Frank. She could never leave him. Suddenly she had purpose again. She had to go see Ben Rittenauer before it was too late.

  She came, as he knew she’d come, just as she had the other times she’d left him.

  There always came the day when her knuckles w
ould rap softly on the door, and she would say, in as sweet and soft a voice as she could possibly summon, “Ben. Ben, it’s me.”

  And being the fool he was, Ben Rittenauer always opened the door to her.

  As he did now.

  “Hello, Ben.”

  “Hello.”

  “You’re surprised to see me.”

  “No, no, I’m not, Beth.”

  She smiled. “Then at least glad to see me?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  She gave him her little girl look. She was a past master at that little girl look. “It’s awfully dark out here in this hallway.”

  “You’ll survive.”

  “You won’t let me in?”

  “They don’t like it when men have ladies in their rooms here.”

  “That never stopped you before.”

  “You never left me for Frank Evans before.”

  “People make mistakes.”

  “You’ve made more than your share.”

  “What if I say I’m sorry?”

  He sighed. “Spare me that, anyway.”

  Her gaze got tougher. She hated it when her wiles didn’t work. That’s what she was all about, her wiles. “It is sort of ungallant for you to leave me out in the hall.”

  “I suppose it is,” he said. And he walked into the room, letting her follow him in and close the door herself.

  He stood for a moment in the middle of a long bar of dusty sunlight, then turned around. “You look good, I’ll say that for you.”

  “You look good, too.”

  He smirked. “Sure I do, Beth.”

  She disregarded his implication that her flattery might be nothing more than another example of her wiles.

  She looked around the room. “Not very festive, is it?”

  “I haven’t been in a festive mood lately.”

  She walked over to the cheap, chipped bureau and ran a white-gloved finger over the top. “They don’t dust very often.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  She turned from the bureau and stared at him. “You need a woman, Ben.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “I don’t think I should have left you, Ben. I think I made a mistake.”

  He laughed. “So you did hear about it. I was wondering.”

  “Hear about what?”

  “The gunfight. And the ten thousand dollars.”

  “That isn’t the reason I’m here.”

  “Oh, no. It couldn’t be. An honorable woman like you.”

  “You can sneer if you want to. But I really have missed you.” She paused. “Haven’t you missed me, Ben?”

  For the first time he let his real anger show. “You know I have. But what the hell does that prove? I missed you the other times you walked out on me, too. That didn’t mean you changed when you came back.”

  “I didn’t know myself, Ben. Didn’t know what I truly wanted.”

  “And now you do?”

  She nodded. “Now I do, Ben. I really do.”

  He walked over to the window and looked down into the dusty street. “I’m going to kill him,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  She said nothing.

  “You know that, don’t you?” he asked again.

  And finally she said it. “Yes, Ben. I know.”

  He came away from the window then, back to where she stood in the middle of the room.

  He took her in his arms and kissed her.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sarah was ten feet from Ben Rittenauer’s door when it opened and Beth came out.

  “I’ll see you later, then,” Beth said. She paused in the doorway long enough to kiss him full on the mouth. She turned around, pulling the door shut behind her, and started down the hall. Then she saw Sarah.

  At first, Beth looked as though she were going to say something harsh, but finally she just pulled herself up tall and pushed past Sarah, as if the woman weren’t worth speaking to. In a rustle of organdy, Beth disappeared down the second-floor steps.

  Sarah hurried to Ben Rittenauer’s door and knocked. Having seen Beth here—and easily surmising what had happened—Sarah felt more certain than ever that she could convince the gunfighter to withdraw from the fight this evening.

  Ben Rittenauer did not look happy to see her. “I was trying to take a nap.”

  “I won’t take much of your time.”

  The brief friendliness they’d enjoyed the other night was gone. This was the hard, cold Ben Rittenauer of gunfighter legend.

  He sighed. “C’mon in. But I really want you to make it short.”

  Once she was inside, Sarah said, “I saw her leaving your room. Beth, I mean. You’re going back with her, aren’t you?”

  He glared at her. “Seems like that would be my business, wouldn’t it?”

  “I didn’t mean anything by that. I just—”

  “Why’d you come up here, anyway?”

  Sarah started chewing on the inside of her lip. She did this so fervently sometimes that she drew blood. “So I could talk you out of fighting Frank. But now I don’t have to.”

  “Oh? And how would that be?”

  She was almost exultant. “You’ve got her back. Now there’s no reason to fight him.”

  “That’s how it works, huh? I’ve got her back and that’s all I care about?”

  “Why, yes. What else would you want?”

  She could see how angry he was. “What about my pride?” He hesitated. “And what about the money?”

  “Is money really all that important to you? Enough to risk—”

  He shook his head. “You know something?” He sounded warmer suddenly, more the way he’d been the other night, and she was surprised by this.

  “What?”

  “You’re a good woman.”

  “Oh.” She blushed. “Thanks.”

  “You think I’m just saying that but I’m not. You really are good. True and honest and loyal.”

  She shook her head. “I left my first husband a long time ago. I’m not the saint you seem to be saying.”

  “But after that you changed. You became a good woman.” He sighed. He looked sad now instead of angry, and there seemed to be a weariness behind his words. “Frank and Beth and me—we’re riffraff, Sarah. You don’t seem to understand that. We don’t have a good or true bone in our bodies.” He came over and took her hand. “You deserve better than Frank, Sarah.” He looked at her and smiled. “You ever thought of going back to Guild?”

  “Not after what I did to him. It could never be the same.”

  “He’s a good man, Sarah.”

  “I know he is.”

  “Sarah, I want that money.”

  She started crying. “Oh, God, Mr. Rittenauer. Does it really have to be that way?”

  “I’m afraid it does.”

  “But you’ll kill him.”

  “If I’m lucky, I will. If he’s lucky, he’ll kill me.”

  “You’re willing to take that chance?”

  “For ten thousand dollars I am.”

  “Oh, God, Mr. Rittenauer,” she said again and started crying all the harder.

  He came over to her and took her in his arms, holding her with great, almost reverent delicacy. He sort of started rocking her then, a barely perceptible movement, the kind of subtle thing you do instinctively when you hold a small child.

  “You know what you should do, Sarah,” he said softly. “You should go over to that depot and buy yourself a ticket to the farthest place you can go on this continent, and then get on that train and never think about any one of us again.”

  Crying into his shoulder, she said, “That’s what Leo says I should do.”

  “Leo’s a smart man.”

  “Oh, God, Mr. Rittenauer, do you really have to fight him?”

  “Yes,” he said, in that strange soft voice again, “yes, Sarah, I’m afraid I do.”

  “And I can’t change your mind?”

  He took her by the shoulders and held
her out from him so he could see her face. “You do what I tell you.”

  “About the train?”

  “Yes. About the train. As far and as fast as you can get away from the three of us. Somewhere out there is a good man who’ll appreciate you.”

  “But, Mr. Rittenauer, won’t you—”

  He shook his head. “You won’t change my mind, Sarah, no matter what you say. I want and I need that money, and I plan to get it. Or at least I plan to try. I’m sorry. That’s just how it is.”

  Finally, feeling exhausted, she realized that Ben Rittenauer was not in fact going to change his mind. He was going to go through with the gunfight.

  “All right, then,” she said. “All right.”

  In a moment, she was just faint footsteps down the hall.

  Guild saw her leaving Rittenauer’s hotel. He’d been looking for her the past hour.

  He fell into step with her. “How’re you doing?”

  “I didn’t mean to slap you.”

  “I know. You just kind of startled me is all.”

  “Ben Rittenauer thinks you’re a fine man.”

  “He must be running for office and wanting my vote.”

  “You always did have a crazy sense of humor.”

  But he noticed that she didn’t laugh. She was scarcely hearing anything he said.

  “I really am sorry about slapping you, Leo,” she said.

  “I know. It’s all right.” There was a restaurant on their left. “How about some coffee?”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do about Frank, Leo.”

  Now, she wasn’t listening at all. He steered her into the restaurant. She went along like a docile child.

  It was after the lunch rush, and the place was empty except for an old-timer in the back reading a magazine and chewing on a cigar stub that looked to be near as old as he was.

  Guild went up to the counter and got them two cups of coffee and brought them back.

  She had her face in her hands and was shaking her head as if demons were whispering filthy words to her. The Greek café owner was watching her with lurid fascination. She was offering him a little something to break up the otherwise dull day.