Sarasen holstered his gun and followed the marshal into his room. A lamp burned on the commode. He pulled forward the straight-backed chair and reversed it in front of him, sitting with his knees spread past the chair back and his left arm across the top of it, his boot heels hooked into the rungs. His right hand gently pushed the door away; it clicked shut. He looked at the marshal, seated on the bed, and he said, “I gave you a chance to talk to me before.”
“I know,” Six said.
“This was a test?”
“I wanted to see if you were smart enough to know I was in here,” Six told him, “and level-headed enough not to come in shooting.”
Sarasen smiled gently. There was no warmth in his smile. “And what if I had?”
“Come in shooting?” The marshal’s shoulders moved. “I was flat behind the bed. You wouldn’t have hit me before I’d had time to take aim on you.”
“I’ll remember that,” Sarasen said quietly. “A man never stops learning.” There was a strange edge on his voice; it passed.
“A smart man,” Six agreed.
Sarasen dipped his head slowly. He said, “You didn’t come up here to find out how smart I am. There’s something On your mind, I suppose.”
“I like to know the men I may have to fight.”
“Fight?”
Six smiled. “You’re no stranger to that word, are you?”
“I didn’t come here to pick a fight, Six.”
Six waved his hand. “You don’t have to pick one. It’ll pick you.”
“Perhaps,” Sarasen said. Again there was that hollow ring in his tone. “At any rate I didn’t come here to fight the law.”
“And I am the law,” Six said, as if to emphasize a fact already obvious. Suddenly he frowned and leaned forward. “What are you afraid of?”
It made Sarasen laugh. Soft, mirthless laughter; that was his only reply. Marshal Six shrugged. “Of course I didn’t expect an answer, but if I can see it in your face, others can too. You haven’t got much time left, Sarasen.”
“Time doesn’t matter,” Sarasen said.
“Did somebody hire your gun? Somebody here?”
“Does somebody here need a gun?” Sarasen countered.
“Maybe ... maybe. One time or another, every man’s tempted to make a deal with the devil.”
Sarasen’s thin smile returned. “Quite a cracker-barrel philosopher, aren’t you, Six?”
“I notice,” Six returned pointedly, “that didn’t prevent my reputation from traveling far enough down the trail for you to get wind of it. You knew my name.”
“I know a lot of names.”
“It’s useless for you and me to sit here trying to frighten one another,” Six said.
“Just so,” Sarasen agreed. “You believe somebody bought me to come in and fight for him?”
“It’s possible.”
“So you came up here to lay down the law to me.”
“No,” Six said, “I just came for a look.”
“All right,” Sarasen said mildly. “You’ve had your look.”
It made Six smile. “You’re not giving away a thing, are you?”
“Not a thing,” Sarasen agreed. “Not until I get a better smell of the wind here. I want to find out how it blows.”
“Crosswise,” was Six’s answer. He stood up and looked inquiringly at his gunbelt, on the bed, and Sarasen nodded. Six picked up the belt by its buckle and hung it over his shoulder, and walked the three paces to the door. With his hand on the latch, he turned and measured Sarasen, and said softly, “It’s a shame and a waste for a man like you to fight a man like me.”
“Don’t make up your mind about that too fast,” Sarasen advised.
“No,” Six assented. “I’ll let you call the first tune.”
Sarasen elevated his shoulders and let them drop. “In the long run,” he said, “none of it will make any difference at all.”
“Hasta luego,” was the marshal’s only answer. He turned and went out.
“Ain’t a single clue, is there?” Gutierrez said.
“Not yet,” Six said. He was not impatient; there was time. He stood at the window looking out at the late morning sunlight making the street glow, the dust glisten, the tied-up horses sweat, the wood crack. He said, “In good time he’ll show us why he came here. Meantime there’s no point in fretting.”
“Maybe there is,” Gutierrez argued. “Ever since he showed up, the town’s been on edge. Two days ago I had to stop a free-for-all in the Red Ace. Yesterday the Holliday boys shot up the sky down in Cat Town. I ain’t sure what to expect tonight, but I got an inkling. Oakley Madden’s due in with his crew tonight.”
“The cross a man carries,” Six answered good-humoredly, and turned back from the window to take a seat behind his desk. Gutierrez was sitting on a corner of the desk, cleaning a shotgun. Six said, “It might be a good idea for us to de-horn Madden and his outfit before they get too plowed under on red-eye.”
“Trying to get Madden to give up his gun,” Gutierrez answered, “is like trying to get Jesse James to step up voluntarily to the gallows plank.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Six said deprecatingly. “I’ve seen tougher lambs than Madden shorn without a fight. You’d be surprised how calm the drop can make a man.”
Gutierrez gave him a look of surprise. “You’d pull the drop on him? He ain’t broke no laws. What excuse we got?”
“Keeping the peace. What else?”
Gutierrez’s lips curled up in a slow smile of grudging admiration. “You got the damnedest way of bending the law of any lawman I ever did see.”
“Hell, it’s for Madden’s own good,” Six said, on his way to the door. “What do you think would happen if he got juiced up and took a notion to try himself out on Ben Sarasen?” Leaving that remark hanging behind him, he went outside and cruised over to the hotel. Ben Sarasen was sitting in a chair on the hotel veranda, whittling. There was a sizable pile of chips by his chair; Sarasen had been whittling for four days. He looked up politely when Six approached. Six said, “Waiting for a rainy day?”
“Or a sunny one.”
“You wouldn’t by any chance be planning to rob the bank,” Six said.
“That’s a little out of my line.”
“Just thought I’d ask,” Six said lamely, and turned, and went on up the walk. Sarasen’s easy voice followed him:
“Don’t waste too much energy trying to make sense out of things, Marshal.”
Six waved a hand at hip-level, tipped his hat to Mrs. Archer who went by twirling her parasol, stepping high under the long yellow dress. He turned into the mercantile and said, “Mornin’, Henry,” and took an apple out of the barrel. He examined it for color, polished it against the sleeve of his blue shirt, and bit down. Henry Zimmer ambled forward among the counters, accepted Six’s penny, and made his usual remark, “Sure is hot today.”
“Hot yesterday,” Six said, “hot tomorrow. I’m thirty-five years old, Henry. A little old for playing games wouldn’t you think?”
“Why,” Henry said, “I suppose so, yes. Something wrong?”
“Nothing I can do anything about,” Six answered. He went outside and squinted against the sun. The stagecoach from Arrowhead came bucking into town, swaying on its leather springs, raising an alarming pall of dust and careened to a stop at the railroad station just as the first whistle of the incoming Express was heard across the desert. The stage had, for once, made its connection with time to spare. Dust-choked passengers alighted and went crowding toward the sign that read: DRINKING WATER, BOX LUNCHES, WAITING ROOM. Six turned back along a side-street until he came to the telegraph office. Here he stopped a moment, staring absorbedly at the wires stretching into the hazy distance, sag by sag between creosote-soaked poles. After a moment he went inside, took a moment to accustom his eyes to the dimness, and picked up a message blank. He wrote out the name and address of the U.S. Marshal in Tucson, and below that put in his crabbed hand, “Is Ben Sarasen wanted for anything. Love to Molly. Jeremy,” and handed it to the clerk. “Don’t know why I didn’t think to do that four days ago,” Six murmured apologetically, half to himself. “Put it on the town’s bill, Sammy.” He went out again, proud of maintaining his record of efficiency: he had never been known to send a telegram of more than ten words, except once, and that had been when three hundred Chiricahua Apaches had wiped out the Jardeen ranch and gone like a scythe through the lower part of the valley; even then Six’s wired request for army assistance had run only to fourteen words.
He went back to the main street. Sarasen was still propped on the hotel porch, whittling as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Gutierrez had come outside and was standing in front of the office with the shotgun he had just cleaned. Sarasen was looking across at him, at the shotgun. Gutierrez was giving Sarasen an utterly blank look. When Six watched Sarasen’s pale eyes and crease-etched face he could tell, even at this distance, that something powerful was troubling the gunfighter. And the problem was, whatever was spooking Sarasen was likely to be bad for Spanish Flat.
Down the street the other way he could see Hal Craycroft standing in the doorway of the Drover’s Rest. Craycroft looked pointedly at Sarasen and then looked at Six, with an inquisitive lift of the eyebrows. That gesture decided Six. Craycroft was as good a weathervane as there was, when it came to indicating the town’s climate of temper. If Craycroft was edgy, then the town was ready to jump sideways. Six had the responsibility to see that didn’t happen, and so with common-sense reluctance he turned his steps toward the hotel.
Sarasen said, “Fed up, are you?”
“Not exactly,” Six said. He propped his hips on the porch rail and folded his arms, tipping his hat back, giving the impression of a very quiet, very mild man with nothing much on his mind. He said, “You know what you’re doing to this town, don’t you?”
“I’m used to it.”
“Uh-huh,” Six said. “Well, the town’s not.”
“I heard this was a pretty lively town.”
“Sometimes,” Six admitted. “But that’s not the same. It doesn’t hurt much to have somebody blow off steam now and then. Clears the air. But it’s something else to sit by a powder keg wondering if the fuse is lit.”
Sarasen said very drily, “Have you got a match?”
“I don’t see that’s too funny,” Six told him.
“I didn’t come here to light any fuses, Marshal.”
“Just the same you’ve got a good reason to be here, I reckon?”
“I do.”
“Normally,” Six said, “I’m inclined to let everybody mind his own business. But I’m afraid I’ll have to ask yours.”
“Ask away,” Sarasen said. “I’m not obliged to answer.”
“Afraid you’ll have to.”
“What if I don’t?”
“Then maybe I’ll have to post you out of town.”
“When you think about that,” Sarasen replied, “it’s kind of funny, don’t you think? I haven’t done a thing to this town except maybe mess up this porch with a heap of shavings.”
Six smiled gently. “I reckon you get my point so I won’t have to spell it out, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Sarasen said. “I’d oblige you if I could, Marshal.”
“But you won’t?”
“No.”
“Then I’m afraid tomorrow dawn’s your limit.”
Sarasen nodded, saying nothing. There was no particular reaction discernible in his pale weary eyes. Six said, “You accept that? You’ll be on your way before sunup?”
“Maybe,” Sarasen said. “Then again, maybe not. It all depends.”
“On what?”
“Not on you,” Sarasen answered, looking up at him with a slight smile.
“On somebody else, then. You’ve got an appointment to meet somebody in Spanish Flat. Is that it?”
“I guess I can give you that much,” Sarasen admitted.
Six frowned. “Why did you have to pick my town for a gunfight?”
“There won’t be a fight, Marshal. I can promise you that,” Sarasen said. His voice was very quiet.
After puzzling over that remark, Six said, “Sunup tomorrow,” and went away, feeling as though he was prowling through a fog.
He ate his lunch in the Dutch Kitchen and afterward went under the high sun and blazing heat down the back streets of Cat Town, past Madam Lisa’s and Fat Annie’s, where the girls sat sunning themselves on the verandas—although making sure no ray of sun ever struck the pale skin of their cheeks—and laughing raucously at one another’s jokes; it was open laughter, altogether different from the calculated smiles they exhibited at night for the benefit of the clientele. At the Glad Hand—GAMES, SALOON, DANCE HALL—Six latched open the door, faded, warped and splitting. Going through that doorway always made him feel as though he was entering a tunnel, for the building was old, one of the oldest in town, and the adobe walls were three feet thick.
Inside it was cooler, damp, very dimly lighted. Nimble-Finger Buchler was perched at the piano, hanging gauntly over the keyboard, practicing. The piano was out of tune but not much, and Buchler was good at his trade; now when there were no miners and no dancers in the place, he was allowing himself to play the Vienna waltzes and the etudes and chansons that his training had prepared him for before the blood had started spurting from his lungs and sent him west into the dry desert.
Buchler looked up when Six came in, nodded a greeting, and said, “Still hot out there?” all without losing a note or a beat.
“Hotter,” Six answered. At the bar the apron was polishing dust-coated glasses. Three house gamblers sat bemusedly playing cards among themselves for matchsticks.
Though it was noontime and there was not a cloud in the sky, lamps were lit all along the plaster-straw walls, for the place had only two windows and they were very small and placed high in the walls. The air was stale. The room was long and narrow, divided in half by a rope-fence that defined the edge of the dance floor; beyond was the small filthy stage where the orchestra played at night when the singers came on. The bartender said lazily, “She ain’t come in yet,” to Six, and Six nodded absently. He took a beer and stood for a while listening to the melancholy melodies that Buchler was playing; when he finished the beer he went back through a small door into the saloon’s office and sat down in a wooden armchair, and propped his boots up on the edge of the roll-top desk.
He was still in that position, chewing the point of a toothpick, when the door opened inward and Clarissa Vane came into his view. A wry smile crossed her features and she kicked the door shut with a gentle backward thrust of her foot, and said to him, “Make yourself at home.”
“Thanks,” Six drawled.
“I wondered when you’d be coming around,” she said. “I’m surprised it took you this long.”
“You haven’t showed up around the Antlers Hotel,” Six said. “I kind of wondered what’s been keeping you.”
“If he wants to see me,” Clarissa replied, “he can come to me. He knows where I am.”
“I thought maybe that’s the way it is.” Six didn’t take his boots down off the desk, nor did he removed his hat. He had developed a code for dealing with people, and displayed to each individual only the degree of courtesy he thought that person required. Clarissa, despite her cool beauty and aristocratic stance, was only the owner of a cheap dancehall on the wrong side of the tracks; Six treated her accordingly.
Her green silky dress rustled past him and she carried herself unbendingly around the desk to sit down. The cascades of her black hair reflected streaks of blue light; her head was poised above her long graceful neck and her hands, moving forward to rest on the desk, were long-fingered and supple. She said, “If you had it all figured out, why did you come?”
“I need a little help,” he said, making the confession without embarrassment.
It caused a rueful smile to pass over her lips. “That’s funny,” she said. “Since when does the toughest man in Spanish Flat need a woman’s help?”
Six said, “Maybe I’m not the toughest man in Spanish Flat just now.”
“Ben won’t pick on you,” she said. “He’s got no quarrel with you.” There was no contempt in her tone; she was only speaking matter-of-factly.
“That’s not the point,” he said.
“I see.” For the first time she put her large dark eyes on him and studied him with care. “You’d go up against him if you had to. Is that it?”
“I guess I would,” he conceded. “I’d prefer not to. If it came to a fight between Sarasen and me, no good could come of it, either way; it would just be a waste.”
“And so you come to me. What for, Jeremy?”
“I’ve told him to ride on.”
“Ah,” she said, a long sigh of understanding. “How long?”
“Tomorrow sunup.”
“And you want me to persuade him.”
“It would help all of us if you did.”
She waved a hand, dismissing it. “It doesn’t hurt this town to get scared once in a while. Makes them think about their sins. What do I care about them?”
“If people get riled enough, you can’t tell what they might do. For instance, they might decide to clean up this side of town.”
“I can handle myself,” she said.
“No argument there,” he admitted. “But it might be more pleasant for all of us, you included, if he went on his way peacefully.”
She shook her head; her hair swayed gently. “I’ve got no reason to want to see him leave, Jeremy.”
“All right,” he said mildly. He put his feet down, tilted his hat forward and stood.
“Jeremy?”
“What?”
“I owe you a few favors. You didn’t mention that.”
“I don’t play it that way,” he said. “You owe me nothing. Do as you see fit, Clarissa.” He went out and pulled the door shut. Buchler was playing a slow melody, very pretty, very sad. Six walked outside into the broil of sunlight and heat.