by Ed Gorman
Carter nodded at him sternly and then went looking for Guild.
Cletus Baines stood in the dust looking resentful. How the hell could you enjoy a vanilla shake after a sermon like that?
Chapter Thirteen
Guild looked up at the big Ingram clock on the diner wall. In less than half an hour, Evans and Rittenauer would be leaving for the Adair ranch. He wasn’t worried about them; he was worried about Sarah.
Guild was sipping his coffee and smoking a cigarette when he heard the counterman say, “Afternoon, Sheriff,” then felt another person sit down on the adjoining stool.
“We need to talk,” Sheriff Carter said.
Carter’s tone surprised Guild. The Sheriff worked hard at seeming cool and in control. He looked sweaty now, and nervous. “Your woman.”
“My woman?”
“The older one. You know.”
“Sarah?”
“Right. Sarah.”
“What about her?”
“Is she an emotional type?”
“Sometimes. But then, everybody is sometimes. Why?”
Instead of answering, Carter ordered coffee for himself. In the sunlight, you could see where alcohol had broken a few veins in his nose. The broken veins said that Carter probably wasn’t as uncomplicated as he tried to seem.
“She just bought a gun at the general store.”
“You sure it was Sarah?”
“Positive. Store clerk recognized her.”
Guild spooned sugar into his coffee. “Wonder what the hell she wants a gun for?”
“That’s what I’d like you to find out.”
Guild looked over at him. “You sound worried.”
“Is she good with a gun?”
“Not that I know of.”
Now it was Carter’s turn to stare hard at Guild. “You think she’s capable of shooting somebody?”
“I suppose it would depend on who it is.”
“One of them, most likely. Evans or Rittenauer.”
Guild shrugged. A tightness had come into his chest. It was an unpleasant feeling. He was starting to worry more than he wanted to.
“How about you go talk to her, Guild?”
“Why not you?”
“One thing you learn about law enforcement, the first thing when a lawman shows up, people get riled. Sometimes it’s better to send a friend. You’re her friend.”
“Yes, and right now maybe the only one she’s got.” He shook his head. He’d loved her for so many years that her grief became his. He could imagine her panic and anger now, seeing Frank Evans drawn to a gunfight he could never win.
“She’s around here somewhere. How about finding her and talking to her.”
Guild stood up. “You be at your office in half an hour?”
Carter nodded at the coffee. “I’ll take care of your bill, Guild. You just go find her.”
* * *
He went to her hotel and she wasn’t there. He went to Frank Evans’ hotel, but she wasn’t there, either. Finally he tried Ben Rittenauer’s hotel. The desk clerk said, “She was here about twenty minutes ago.”
“Oh?”
“Looking for Mr. Rittenauer.”
“He wasn’t in?”
“No, he’d gone out about five minutes before she came.”
“Any idea where he might have gone?”
The clerk shrugged. “Sorry but I don’t.”
He went up and down the board sidewalks, looking in the windows of restaurants and retail stores and ice cream parlors and general stores; he didn’t see either one of them.
By now, he had decided why she would have bought a gun. No matter how Frank Evans treated her, she’d never shoot him. She was bound to him in some blood way that Guild could understand, because that’s how he was bound to her. Even after she’d left him, he hadn’t been able to hate her, at least not in the proper way shorn lovers usually hated the other person.
No, she would have bought a gun so she could kill Ben Rittenauer. Ben was the real threat to her life. For ten thousand dollars, and because Frank had helped make a fool of him, Ben was going to gun down Frank Evans and walk away—untouched by the law and a rich man.
Ben was the man she was going to kill.
Sarah saw Leo walk up to the barber shop and look in through the window. She sank back into the shadows of the alley. She’d been hiding there so she could have a good view of the barber shop’s front door across the street.
She couldn’t see how this could be a coincidence. Why would Leo just show up this way?
* * *
The barbershop smelled of wet hair and sweet hair tonic and talcum and cigar smoke. There was a wooden Indian just inside the door. He bore a tomahawk and a scowl and seemed to look with vast disapproval on what he saw in here.
Three men sat playing pinochle at a small table in the east corner. One of them was just now spitting tobacco into a filthy brass spittoon at his feet. The two players facing Guild looked up when he came in, but neither showed much interest in him.
Four other men, idlers, sat in the chairs rowed against the back wall. They had dumb hick grins on their faces and genuine mendacity in their eyes.
There were two barber chairs, both in use. In one a man was got up like a mummy, the barber sheet all the way up to his neck and a steaming towel wrapped over his face.
In the other chair, a short, bald man was shaving Ben Rittenauer’s sideburns with a wicked-looking straight razor. Straight razors had always scared the hell out of Leo Guild.
Rittenauer saw him, of course. Was in fact staring straight at him with great curiosity.
The barber was saying, “This’ll be some payday for you, Mr. Rittenauer. Ten thousand dollars. You ever had a payday like this before?”
“Not as sweet as this one,” Rittenauer said expansively. He was still eyeing Guild. ‘There’s probably a damn good reason you’re here. I just can’t think of what it could be.”
“We need to talk,” Guild said.
“Seems we’ve had our talk.”
“Something’s come up.”
“This here is a friend of Frank Evans’,” Rittenauer said to the barber.
“You know better than that.”
“Isn’t that why you came here?” Rittenauer was enjoying himself, showing off for the rubes in the shop. “To find some way of calling off the fight so I won’t kill poor Frank.”
Rittenauer had his lady back and the prospect of ten thousand dollars in cash. Guild would probably be expansive, too.
“I’ll just wait,” Guild said.
Guild went over, sat down, and lit a cigarette. He blew smoke idly into the dust motes of the soft late afternoon sunlight coming through the window.
The rubes looked at each other and then at Guild and Rittenauer. Obviously they wished they knew what the hell was going on here. This was going to make some story in the taverns for many nights to come.
Guild smoked and watched the barber shave Ben Rittenauer. He was good, fast and scarey, especially when he moved down to the throat. Rittenauer didn’t look afraid in the least. When a barber got to that part on him, Guild always kept his fingers on the handle of his .44. Just in case.
“You want a shave?” the other barber asked him when his customer got up. The barber started brushing the man off with an almost comically long whisk broom.
“No thanks.”
“Haircut, then?”
“No, thanks.”
“You just going to sit here, then?”
“Looks that way, doesn’t it?”
The barber muttered something under his breath, and then busied himself gussying up his station.
Sarah would reason with him and he’d finally see and agree with her reasoning. How it would be better for everybody if Beth and he would just get on the train and get out of town. No gunfight out at Adair’s ranch, nothing like that at all. Just a nice quick train trip to a new location and a new life.
And after they had left by train, so would Sarah and Frank. There was a
time when that had been their favorite treat, going on train trips. And it would be like that again. Only better. Because Frank was older and more mature, and this time there wouldn’t be that sick-in-the-stomach, twitching-hands anxiety every time he saw a new pretty face. Because now Frank was beyond that. He would see, by the end of this day, how true her love was, how important her love was. Then he would be the Frank she’d always wanted, the safe Frank, the kind Frank, the loving Frank.
This would all come true as soon as Ben Rittenauer left the barber shop and she could talk to him a minute or two.
Rittenauer said, still in the barber chair, “I take it you heard about Beth.”
“I heard.”
“I knew she’d come back. She always does.”
“I’m happy for you.”
Rittenauer grinned. “You don’t think much of her, do you?”
“Not when there are women like Sarah around.”
“Isn’t that the same Sarah who left you for Frank Evans?”
“That still doesn’t make her like Beth.”
Anger showed in Rittenauer’s face. “I’d go real easy on Beth if I was you, friend.”
“I’ll remember that.”
Guild knew not to push it anymore. He’d had his say. You didn’t push a man like Ben Rittenauer about his woman. That was just crazy.
She’d be in a picture hat and Frank would be in a suit. They’d be walking along the bay in San Francisco, and there’d be vast white-sailed schooners in the gentle blue waters and summer green trees against the blue sky in the hills surrounding the bay.
And Sarah would know peace again—she would sleep nights through, and have her old appetite back. She would not lie in the darkness and sob so uselessly for hours—she would know peace again. And Frank—Frank would know peace for the first time in his life.
“Don’t make me smell like a whore.”
“No, sir, Mr. Rittenauer.”
“A little bit of that stuff does just fine.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Rittenauer.”
Guild had to agree with Rittenauer about that. Barbers always put so much bay rum on you, you smelled like a walking cathouse.
The barber was careful—some might say scared careful—with the bay rum and even more careful with the whisk broom.
Rittenauer walked over to the mirror and had a look at himself. “Handsome son of a bitch, aren’t I?” he said to Guild’s reflection.
“Downright beautiful.”
Rittenauer turned back to the barber. “Here you go,” he said. He gave the man a decent tip, too.
“Good luck, Mr. Rittenauer,” the barber said.
Rittenauer put on his white hat. “You should be telling that to Frank Evans.”
“Reckon I should be,” the barber said.
Rittenauer nodded to the idlers. They looked as thrilled as young girls that a famous gunfighter would take any kind of note of them at all.
“You boys be good,” Rittenauer said.
They all grinned their hateful hick grins and nodded their heads.
Outside on the walk, Rittenauer said, “Why the hell are you getting involved in this, Guild?”
Guild said, “She bought a gun.”
“Who bought a gun?”
“Sarah.”
“Goddamn. You’re kidding.”
“Nope. And you know damn well who she’ll try and use it on.”
Sounding hurt, Rittenauer said, “Guild, what the hell did I ever do to her?”
“You’re about to shoot the man she loves.”
Rittenauer shook his head. “You ever considered the possibility that she’s crazy?”
“I’ve considered it.”
They were forty steps down the block from the barber’s shop when a voice behind them called, “Mr. Rittenauer. Could you hold on a minute, please?”
Rittenauer said, just before he turned around, “Shit. It’s her.”
As Guild turned, seeing her now, he thought of what Rittenauer had just said about Sarah being crazy. She sure looked that way at the moment—drawn, fatigued, her gaze unfocused somehow, as if she were seeing ghosts and not people.
Guild’s gaze dropped to her purse. She had her hand stuffed inside. He didn’t have to wonder what she was holding in there.
“Afternoon, Sarah,” Rittenauer said, somewhat grandly, given the situation.
“You smell wonderful,” Sarah said. Her voice was flutey and girlish and sad.
“Sarah—” Guild started to say.
“I wondered if we could talk, Mr. Rittenauer.”
Rittenauer glanced at Guild then back to Sarah. “I don’t see why not, Sarah. As long as you quit calling me Mr. Rittenauer. Ben’ll do fine.”
Sarah went right on. “Ben, I want you to have a happy life.”
“I appreciate that, Sarah.”
“You and Beth will be able to start all over again.”
“I certainly hope so.”
“So, you shouldn’t risk the gunfight this afternoon. You should leave town before it starts, forget all about it.”
Rittenauer frowned in Guild’s direction, then said to Sarah, “I appreciate your advice and your concern, Sarah.”
She smiled. “I knew you’d see the right way, Ben.”
Guild started circling, tiny steps that brought him closer to Sarah.
“But I’m afraid I can’t do that, Sarah,” Rittenauer was saying.
“But why not?”
“Because I need the money. I’m not any different from Frank. I’m just another broken-down gunfighter. I don’t have a hundred dollars to my name.”
Guild took a few more steps. Sarah was pulling again on the object inside her purse.
“Don’t you love Beth?” Sarah said.
“Of course I do.”
“Then why put her through this?”
“She wants the money, too.”
“It’s not fair,” Sarah said.
“I’m sorry,” Rittenauer said.
Just then Guild grabbed her.
He got her shooting arm good and tight and pulled her to him. “Give it to me, Sarah.”
She tried to fight him. “No, Leo, you leave me alone.”
“Come on, Sarah. You know how you hate people to stare.”
And people were staring, crowding on the sidewalk now to see the gunny Ben Rittenauer watch a man and woman fight each other.
She jerked away from Guild and got the Colt out before he could stop her.
The crowd was excited; almost grateful to the woman for providing such a show. They fanned out even wider now. Stray bullets killed as many people as carefully aimed ones.
In the sunlight, the barrel of the Colt looked long and all business. She held it with a steady hand. I’m giving you a choice, Ben.”
“Put it away, Sarah. I’m warning you.” Ben’s face had gone quickly from concern and kindness to hard anger. Nobody should ever pull a gun on Ben Rittenauer. When that happened, he was all reflex, a man with only one thought: kill the other person.
Rittenauer’s hand dropped to the walnut handle of his gun.
“He isn’t fooling, Sarah,” Guild said.
“I want you to promise me that you won’t fight Frank,” Sarah said.
Obviously she had the impression that because she held a gun on Rittenauer, he could do nothing. But Guild knew that a man like Rittenauer could draw and fire in the time it would take Sarah to get one shot off.
“Sarah,” Guild said softly. He stood at her side. He had only one chance to stop her. He got himself ready.
“She mustn’t love you if she’d let you fight, Ben,” Sarah said.
“I don’t talk to anybody who’s holding a gun on me,” Rittenauer said.
He glanced at Guild. He could see what Guild was about to do. He still kept his hand on the handle of his .44.
Guild moved. In two steps, he was knocking into her and slapping her wrist hard; the gun fell from her hand. It discharged, the bullet ripping into a piece of the overhang
ing roof to Sarah’s right. The single shot was loud and ringing in Guild’s ears, and the smell of gunsmoke was tart in his nostrils.
Ben Rittenauer came right up to her and pushed his face into hers. “That was a goddamn foolish thing to do, Sarah. Don’t ever point a gun at a man like me, do you understand?” He was so angry, he was trembling.
But if Sarah heard or understood, she didn’t let on. She stood dazed, staring at something distant that only she seemed able to see.
Rittenauer took his face from hers and said to Guild, “Get her out of here, Leo. She was lucky she didn’t get killed.”
Guild nodded and said gently to Sarah, “Come on. I’ll buy you some coffee.”
She was crying. “I don’t want any coffee, Leo. I just want you to leave me alone. He’s going to kill Frank this afternoon and you don’t give one good damn.”
She fell gently into Guild’s chest, still crying. Above her head, Guild looked at Rittenauer. The man seemed to be losing his anger. He once more looked sorry for Sarah. He shook his head then walked off. Most of the onlookers watched him. Not even a crying woman was as big a draw as a gunfighter.
“You shouldn’t’ve stopped me,” Sarah said into Guild’s chest.
“I’m glad I did.”
“But he’s going to kill Frank.”
“That’s their business, Sarah.”
She started sobbing again. The crowd seemed to love sobbing almost as much as it did gunplay.
“But I love him so much,” Sarah said into Guild’s chest. “You can’t know how much, Leo. You can’t know.”
Chapter Fourteen
Frank Evans was out behind the livery stable. The black man who worked there had set up bottles and cans on the top railing of the small corral for Evans to shoot off. At the sound of the first shot a small crowd of kids had gathered and now watched Evans put round after round into the targets.
“My pop says Ben Rittenauer’ll kill him easy,” one kid said.
Another kid said, “My old man’s betting three dollars on Rittenauer. My ma said she’s never seen him bet that much before.”
Evans, who heard all this, kept shooting, of course. You couldn’t let some goddamn kids get to you.
The dusty sunlight was richer now as late afternoon turned to dusk. An old roan, sad-eyed as only a dying horse can be, watched Evans from inside the corral; a sweet-natured collie sat a few feet from him. Every once in awhile, when the chatter of the children and the bright, vivid loss of Beth got to him again, Evans would lean down and pet the collie. Back on the farm, he’d had an animal this sweet and loyal and true, and every time he petted this animal he thought of Sarah, because she was also sweet and loyal and true.
