Dark Trail

by Ed Gorman

  She parted her hands, looked at Guild, and smiled. “You really are a fine man, Leo.”

  “And here I keep trying not to get a swelled head.”

  “Would you talk to him for me, Leo?”

  “To Frank?”

  She nodded.

  Guild sighed. “Why do you think he’ll listen to me?”

  “You two may not be the best of friends, but he respects your judgement. Maybe you can make him see that Ben Rittenauer will kill him.”

  “He doesn’t know that?”

  “Maybe he knows it, but he won’t admit it to himself.” She sipped her coffee. “Besides, there isn’t anything to fight over anymore anyway.”

  “No?”

  “No.” Then she told him about Beth going up to Rittenauer’s room. “Obviously, she figures Ben is going to win, so she wants to be there when he gets the ten thousand dollars.”

  “Nice woman.”

  “Ben says none of them are nice, him or Frank or her. He thinks you and I should get back together.”

  “He does, huh?”

  “You’re blushing.”

  “Thanks for pointing that out.”

  “I guess I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “It’s all right. There was a lot of years when I thought that would still be a good idea.”

  “Us getting back together?”

  “Yes.”

  “It wouldn’t work, Leo.”

  “I know. But it’s nice to think about sometimes.”

  She hesitated. “Will you see him, Leo?”

  “If you want me to.”

  “I’d really appreciate it.”

  “He up in his room?”

  “He should be.”

  “Guess I’ll go over there then.”

  She reached out a hand and touched his. There were calluses on her hands, and the flesh was tough from hard work. Which figured. She would have done all the chores, all the hardscrabble tasks. Frank Evans was only interested in glory.

  Guild stood up. “You wait here.”

  At the Adair ranch, two Mexican laborers were putting up the last of the bunting on the bandstand. One thought to himself that even on an ordinary day, a day with no festivities, the Adair ranch was a beautiful spread. The home itself was a vast Victorian, with gaslights out front and stable room for three surreys that were as smart as any you’d see in Juarez. Governors had many times stayed here, as had senators and even a stage star or two, including Miriam Reynolds herself.

  Despite the endless hours it took to get ready for an occasion, the men felt a real pride in dressing the place up. With a hundred fancy guests and a ten-piece band playing Sousa marches in the early part of the evening and Stephen Foster later, the ranch became something more than a mere ranch. From trains, from stagecoaches, from surreys they came, men in top hats and brocaded vests and women in picture hats and sneers for the help. They would be waited on for the next twenty-four hours by black men and yellow men and red men “broken and tamed,” as Tom Adair always put it, by his power and his money.

  Despite the work involved, despite the backbreaking labor, there was, too, the curious exhilaration of standing so close to such festivities—the glowing paper lanterns against the dark prairie sky, the spectacle of so many beautiful women being whirled around the makeshift dance floor. And then there were all the things one could steal, the food and liquor and tinkling coins dropped drunkenly by the swaggering male guests.

  And this year there was one more thing: a gunfight. The men had never sensed such excitement on the ranch before. Two bona fide gunfighters in a bona fide gunfight. Right here on the ranch. Tonight.

  The gringos were a strange and selfish and savage people, the Mexican thought. But one thing you had to say for them. They knew how to put on a party.

  Who but a gringo would think of having two men try to kill each other for the pleasure and amusement of an audience?

  Only a gringo, the Mexican thought, going back to finish off the bunting. Only a gringo.

  Chapter Twelve

  Guild wanted to stand in the hallway sunlight, lazy as a cat. He wished he’d never heard of any of them so his mind could be free as his body lazed in the golden dusty warmth of the sunbeams. But he was getting old, and memory was a burden—all those regrets, all those foolishnesses, the good people seeming to recede more and more, the bad people remaining as vivid as ever. He wished there were some way to take a knife and just cut all memory away, like a cancer of some sort. But only the grave and the darkness beyond could do that. Anyway he’d made Sarah a promise, so now he raised his fist and slammed it against the door. When it finally opened it wasn’t Frank Evans who answered, it was Beth.

  The first thing he noticed, of course, was her black eye. It had swelled the flesh around her right eye and looked to be fresh and painful.

  All his worked-up anger went. Much as he disliked the woman, he didn’t like to see her this way. He hated men who knocked women around.

  “Afternoon,” he said, cordial as he could be.

  “What is it you want, Mr. Guild?”

  “I’d like to see Frank.”

  “He isn’t here.”

  “I see.”

  She stared hard at him. “Don’t you just love big strong men who push women around?”

  “He find out you went over to see Rittenauer?”

  “Yes.”

  She opened the door wider. He could see into the room now. A large traveling bag was sitting on the bed; she had been in the process of packing.

  “Ben never hit me,” she said. “Not once in eight years. No matter how bad things got.” Her lower lip was quivering. She’d be better off to cry and just get it over with. “Ben’ll be very mad when he sees my eye.”

  Guild said, “You could stop it.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The fight. You could stop it. You could pack up and take Rittenauer and leave town.”

  “And why would I do that?”

  Guild said, “I assume you’re going back to Rittenauer because you love him. Seems to me you’d want to protect the man you love.”

  “It isn’t Ben who needs protecting. It’s Frank. Anyway, they both want the money. Neither one of them’s ever had a chance for money like this.”

  “To amuse robber barons,” Guild said and shook his head. “Maybe that’s the biggest pity of all. The crowd who’ll be watching.”

  She seemed bored now, hurried. “I need to go back to my packing. You’ll likely find Frank in the saloon downstairs.”

  She closed the door.

  Frank Evans was indeed downstairs. He stood at the far end of the bar, alone. He wore a clean boiled white shirt and dark trousers. His Texas hat was off and sitting on the bar. He looked handsome as ever but faded, too, somehow. Behind him many of the customers whispered and pointed to him. The pending gunfight this afternoon had made him a celebrity again. Given his ego, he should have been happy. He looked miserable.

  Guild walked over to him. “Sarah wants me to talk you out of fighting Rittenauer.”

  In front of Frank was a shell and a shot. He had touched neither one. “She does, huh?”

  “She’s still in love with you.”

  “She tell you to say that?”

  “No. Unfortunately it’s something I figured out all by myself.”

  “Still don’t like me, huh?”

  “Not much.”

  “Then you should be happy I’m fighting Rittenauer. From all that buzzing I get, Rittenauer’s supposed to beat me without much trouble.”

  “She wants you two to get out of here and try it again. This time she wants you to be faithful; she wants you to take up farming or something like that.”

  “Can you ever see me doing that?”

  “Guess not.”

  “Then why talk about it?”

  “Because you owe her.”

  “The hell. She’s free, white, and twenty-one.”

  “She’s also stuck by you all these years.�
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  “I never said it would be easy.”

  “He’ll kill you,” Guild said.

  “So I’m told.”

  “So the ten thousand will be moot. Where you’re going, it won’t matter.”

  For a moment Guild thought he heard tears in Frank Evans’ voice. “That bitch Beth went to see him.”

  “I know.”

  “Behind my goddamn back. Like some whore. And you know why she did it?”

  Guild said nothing.

  “Because of the goddamned money. The goddamned money. Can you believe that?”

  “Rittenauer thinks you three are pretty lousy people. He wants Sarah to get on a train, go far away, and forget she ever knew the three of you. Seems he cares more about her than you do.”

  But Frank Evans wasn’t listening. He was staring off into space, saying, “Can you imagine that bitch’s face when I kill Rittenauer? She’s going to be goddamned sorry she ever went to see him, let me tell you that.”

  He made a fist and brought it down hard on the bar.

  Behind him, a hush had fallen. All the customers—afraid and excited in equal parts now—watched him carefully. Maybe he’d do something here that they could talk about for long years in the future.

  “That bitch is going to be sorry,” Frank Evans said. “Let me tell you that.”

  Guild watched Evans carefully. He felt sorry for the man he’d hated so long. He remembered his own bitterness when Sarah had left him for Frank—it was a form of madness, actually, what you went through when a woman left you like that—and he hated to see even Frank Evans go through it.

  “Why don’t you let me take those from you?” Guild nodded to the shot and the shell.

  Frank Evans smiled. “Don’t worry, pally. I’d never take a drink before a gunfight. I’ve just got these here to have something to look at.” He turned around and glared at the customers watching him. “I sure as hell don’t want to look at all the punks and nellies just waiting to see me get killed.”

  They averted their eyes, bowed their heads, and began muttering through sudden conversations.

  Frank Evans turned back to Guild. “That’s the worst of it, you know.”

  “The onlookers?”

  “Absolutely. Just waiting for you to die.”

  “You didn’t need to hit her,” Guild said.

  “I’d say that’s my business.”

  “Words would have been sufficient.”

  “She’s a bitch.”

  “I’m not denying that. But she’s also a woman. I don’t put much store in men who hit women.”

  “Noble son of a bitch, aren’t you?”

  Frank Evans was getting mean now. Guild was sick of him. “Anything you want me to tell Sarah?”

  “Tell her I think it’s a good idea.”

  “What is?”

  “Ben’s notion that she should get on a train and get away from the three of us as fast as she can.”

  “Anything else I should tell her?”

  They stared at each other. Obviously Guild was hoping for some warm, sentimental words to take back to her.

  Frank Evans said, “Why don’t you get the hell out of here and leave me alone, Leo?”

  “Good afternoon, ma’am.”

  “Afternoon.”

  “Help you with something?”

  “Looking for a gun, I guess.”

  “Got anything particular in mind?”

  “Just thought you could show me some things.”

  “Be glad to.”

  “I don’t want to spend a fortune.”

  “That narrows it down some right there.”

  The clerk, a little bald man in a dusty white apron that rode his paunch, showed Sarah over to two glass display cases filled with guns.

  Sight of all the armaments disgusted her. Even though she’d grown up on a farm with a father and two brothers who’d hunted, she always hated guns: the noise they made, the stink of them just after they were fired, and the destruction they brought—beautiful pheasants tumbling from the sky, or a white-spotted fawn collapsing to stain the green grass with her red blood.

  “What’s that one?”

  “Colt. Colt Peacemaker.”

  “May I see it?”

  “Of course.”

  For a moment, she closed her eyes and gave herself over to the smells of the general store, the scent of mustard seeds and sweet hair tonic, the smells of baking soda and winesap apples, the odor of tobacco and coffee beans. She remembered these smells from her girlhood days, when her father had brought the kids to town in the clattery wagon. How easy things had been when she was a girl. How easy.

  “You know how to shoot?”

  “A little bit.”

  “Well, here, then, why don’t you hold it.”

  So she took it and held it. Sighted along it the way her father had always taught her. Pulled back the trigger. Pretended she was firing.

  “How do you like it?”

  “Seems all right.”

  “Nice price on it.” He told her the price.

  “Isn’t that expensive?”

  “No, ma’am. No, ma’am, not at all.”

  She sighted along it again. “Well, she said.

  “Got some bullets I’ll throw in, too. Half box of them.”

  He was selling her. She hated to be sold.

  “All right, then. Oh, wait a second.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “I just want to see if this will fit in my purse.”

  “Oh.”

  She smiled. “I don’t want to go walking around with a gun in my hand.”

  “No, I guess not.” For the first time, the man looked at her care­fully. He seemed somewhat disturbed by what he saw in her eyes.

  She slipped the Colt in her purse. ‘There,” she said. “Fits perfectly.”

  “Kinda thought it might.” He sounded relaxed, but he was still watching her eyes carefully.

  They went to the front of the store. The smells were even stronger up here. They were like heady perfume, and she almost swooned. She could hear her father’s clattery wagon and feel her brother Tom’s bony elbow as they pushed and jostled each other on the way into town. She wondered what Tom was doing this very second. She’d like to talk to him. Perhaps he could talk her out of what she had in mind.

  “You said the bullets were free?”

  He picked up a small greasy box and rattled the bullets inside. “These leftovers are free. If you want a whole box, I’ll have to charge you.”

  “I’m sure those will be fine.”

  He wrote her up a ticket. “You’ve got the gun in your purse?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want me to wipe it down for you or anything?”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  He stared at her again. “You feeling all right, ma’am?”

  “I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

  “You look a little peaked is all.”

  “No, I’m fine. Really.”

  He nodded to her purse. “You know I could always hold on to that for you.”

  “Sir?”

  “In case today isn’t a good day to buy a gun, I mean. Maybe it’s something you’d want to think over a little longer and come back tomorrow or the next day.”

  She stared right back at him. “No, today’s a fine day to buy a gun.”

  “Whatever you say, ma’am,” he said, and finished writing her ticket.

  Just as she was going out the door, she paused on the threshold to breathe in one last smell of the place. She could hear her mother exclaiming over the fresh coffee beans and lifting blue taffeta to press gently to her cheek. Her mother had been so pretty.

  Then she went out into the dust and heat and horseshit of the street.

  Sheriff Carter was finishing his third cup of coffee of the afternoon when Cletus Baines, the clerk at the general store came rushing into his office.

  Cletus was way overweight these days—his wife baked a good cherry pie. Plus Cletus, sorry to
say, was one lazy son of a bitch.

  “Got one for you,” he panted.

  “Got ‘one’ what, Cletus?”

  “You know. Suspicious person buying a firearm.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  They’d made their pact so long ago—years ago—that Carter had forgotten about it. “First off, Cletus, why don’t you catch your breath?”

  The little fat man stood there sweaty and red-faced, virtually gasping for air. He had to lose some weight. Had to.

  “Woman,” he said when his breathing was less ragged.

  “Woman?”

  “Woman bought the Colt.”

  “I see. Know who she was?”

  “Think she’s got something to do with Ben Rittenauer.”

  “She’s quite a looker, isn’t she.”

  “Not that one. The other one.”

  Cletus Baines described his customer. Carter recognized her immediately.

  “Funny,” he said.

  “Huh?” Cletus said, at last getting his breath under control again.

  “Why she’d buy a gun.”

  “She acted funny, too.”

  “How so?”

  “Nervous and kind of—I don’t know how to describe it—agitated, I guess.”

  Carter was up on his feet and reaching for the big white hat that flattered his Roman profile. He hated trouble in town. Trouble always had a way of making the sheriff look bad—as if he could not keep it in check, as if chaos squatted like an invading army on the edge of town—so he was grateful that Cletus had come over.

  “I owe you a couple of schooners, Cletus,” he said as he escorted the man out. To a deputy showing an Indian prisoner how he wanted the floor scrubbed, Carter said, “I’m going to go hunt up Leo Guild. You hold down the fort for me, all right?”

  The deputy nodded.

  Carter and Cletus went out into the sunlight. Cletus didn’t have a hat, and he blinked against the hot yellow rays.

  “Maybe I’ll stop by the pharmacy and have Biner fix me one of his vanilla shakes,” he said.

  He was asking Carter’s permission, wanting the big, trim man to say it was okay to go on indulging himself.

  Carter cracked him hard across the rim of his paunch. “Not right for a man to carry that much weight, Cletus. I worry about you and that’s a fact.”