STRETCHED OUT ON the cot in a cell of the Rosarita lockup that provided greater comfort than a lot of other places where Steele had spent a great many nights, his physical hurting diminished for as long as he did not move. And since there was no prospect of immediate freedom with an opportunity to salve his emotional hurts, he found it easy not to dwell on what they were and how he might negate them when the proper time came. Thus resigned to his present circumstances it would have been a simple matter to drift off into an untroubled sleep had his mind and body needed such a degree of rest. For outside of his being everything about his immediate surroundings was peacefully conducive to sleep.
The low light combined the glow from the lamp in the sheriff’s office and that of the moon in the southern sky. The temperature was pleasantly regulated between the night air from the windows and the stove warmth that wafted through the doorway. In this gently stirring atmosphere there hovered the fragrances of coffee and cooking meat and woodsmoke that served to emphasize the Virginian’s feeling of being well fed because they reached him as a subtle background to the clean freshness of the night instead of filling it. Just as the sounds that came into the lockup were unobtrusive—the turning of a book’s pages or the creak of a chair seat from the sheriff’s office as the Rev. Michael Masterson tried to stay comfortable and to fill his time as a deputy usefully; the infrequent crying of an infant that was made to be strangely melodic by distance; the footfalls and occasional snatch of low talk from people who moved on the street—and never came close enough to the barred windows to give the Virginian pause for thought; and the general mixture of a hum and a buzz that provides an audible backdrop to any community during its most peaceful periods of the daily round.
Briefly as he indulged himself in this ambience of relative luxury, Steele allowed the forefront of his mind to be occupied by random recollections of what he had seen of Rosarita and the notions that his impressions of the town had triggered. No town was his kind, as he told Duncan Nelson. But a man who ran a horse ranch could not be entirely self-sufficient and this single street community at the end of a trail and a telegraph line to nowhere seemed to be capable of supplying him with everything he would be likely to need.
What he certainly would not need if he were to put down roots on a piece of land outside of this town was trouble with the local lawman and a rich and powerful neighboring rancher. So, if he were able to buy the Begley spread—and he first had to see if it was suitable for his purpose and then talk business with the city-style new owners—it seemed like there were some men to bring around to his way of thinking before he turned his attention to horseflesh. And as for every other citizen of Rosarita … well, he would have so little contact with them he had no need to cultivate their respect or even their goodwill.
‘… boy is just a loud-mouthed braggart!’ Ellie Webb was saying in a contemptuous tone, her voice coming into the lockup from off the street. ‘But James Bate, Earl—I tell you he was holding me against him so that I could feel—’
‘All right, Ellie,’ her husband broke in on her diatribe, sounding weary. And his voice trailed away as the two of them went on by the cell windows without pause. ‘But him and me are both sixty years old. You expect me to challenge him to a …’
Adam Steele discovered that the woman’s righteous anger sparked a mild irritation at himself that he had allowed his mind to probe so far into a future that as yet did not have the faintest trace of a foundation outside of his own wish that it would exist. Then, a few moments later as the sights and sounds and smells of the town reverted to what they had been before the interruption, the Virginian felt himself become as involuntarily calm as his surroundings.
‘Whatever was to be, would be’ seemed like a defeatist philosophy; but it was, he was prepared to allow to himself tonight, one that his life had more often proved valid than not. Today—and for days, weeks, months and perhaps more than one or two years in his recent past—he had been attempting to show to his own benefit that it was reasonable to expect that he could live a paraphrase of the tenet: that something of what a man wanted to be could be. So long as he was single-minded enough to fight for what he wanted without let-up.
Infuriatingly stubborn and self-opinionated was how the banker’s wife and the preacher had combined to give their view of him. And, in all honesty, he could not refute that he was this for most of the time as he rode from one failed prospect of making his dream come true toward the next opportunity where he might get lucky. So, he reflected as he became conscious of every aspect of his surroundings getting even more luxuriously comfortable, maybe he should not take himself to task so much when he found himself giving in to the temptation to woolgather at those times when there was nothing better to do …
If he was so infuriatingly stubborn and self-opinionated to other people, it was perhaps inevitable that his subconscious should be an extension of the character that he projected to strangers …
And there was certainly nothing better to do tonight while he was a prisoner in the lockup of a town that was so serenely peaceful he could hear somebody rhythmically snoring …
That would be the Rev. Michael Masterson in the sheriff’s office through the open doorway: the preacher’s unasked-for duties as a deputy sheriff in charge of a model prisoner not so onerous that he was able to keep awake over the book he had been reading …
The Bible, maybe. Which he must have read often before …
Adam Steele had read it often enough, or had it read to him, as a churchgoing child and young man back in Virginia. Never since then? The last time he had seen one …?
Was it in the hands of the Rev. Saul M Jarvis, the drunken priest who performed his marriage service to Lucy Girard? Surely not. But did it matter …?
‘I reckon not,’ the Virginian murmured aloud, or maybe only thought he voiced the notion. This as he heard a horse leave town at a gallop. Heading east from the eastern end of the street: the thudding of hooves unobtrusive when he first heard the sound and then quickly diminishing as the rider put distance between himself and the Hope Livery Stable from where he had started.
Steele drifted contentedly into a dreamless sleep. And seemed, as he came close to the surface of waking, to have been in that state of effortless limbo for just a few moments before he heard the sound of hooves on hard-packed ground once more. On a rising scale of volume now as the animal galloped in off the east trail and slowed to a stop at the livery. There was a note of distress in the whinny the horse vented at the end of its run. Steele’s half-awake consciousness queried its own interpretation of what had been heard, and cast doubt on the images that were conjured up. Was there a horse in the night, and if there was how could he be sure it started out from the livery and returned there? Because his own black stallion was stabled there. And if anybody wanted to steal him and run him ragged, there was nothing he—Adam Steele—could do to prevent such a thing. When he was let out of the lockup …
But that was getting him back into the realm of seeking to predict the nebulous future without knowing the salient facts about present circumstances …
He began to allow sleep to blot out that area of his mind that he liked to consider capable of logical thought processes. Knew that his subconscious was in control of whatever images would come to him if no other outside influences disturbed him. Realized he was closer to waking than to sleeping as, following the cry of the horse, he heard a clock strike five times. It was the clock in the shack across from the Pioneer at the far western end of the street. Such was the perfect peace of Rosarita, the chimes of the clock sounded over a distance that was close to half a mile.
It could not have been much after ten o’clock last night when he went to sleep and now it was close to dawn. So much for the notion that the dreamless sleep had lasted for just a few moments …
Seven hours was usually more than adequate for the Virginian, even after a long day in the saddle enduring whatever the elements and the terrain combined to range against him. But this morning he felt a strong desire to keep his eyes closed against the first light of a new day. And was sure that the balance would soon be weighted on the side of more sleep.
But then a man yelled something. He was down the street close to where the horse had ended the gallop. What he shouted could not be discerned because the words were muffled by distance. He sounded shocked. The horse gave vent to a whole series of whinnies. Doors were wrenched open and more voices were raised. Men and women. Angry, afraid or curious. Dogs barked and babies cried. Footfalls beat on sidewalks and porches and the street. Again the hooves of a lone horse could be heard. Then much of the noise faltered and faded and the shouting of one man could be heard clearly against the thudding of the hooves. Both the diminishing volume of the extraneous sounds and the fact that the man and the horse were coming closer enabled Steele to gain an initial impression of what was happening. This as he eased himself tentatively up off the cot and to his feet—grimacing at the pains in his belly and legs but able to keep from groaning.
‘… the Nelson boy’s geldin’! Took him outta the stable late last night! Bad mouthed me for askin’ questions! Now look at him! I ain’t never seen so much blood! I don’t know what this town’s a comin’ to when this kinda …’
Steele was at the window, gripping the bars as he flexed his muscles and tested the joints in those areas of his body that had taken the brunt of Kyle’s viciousness. While he ran this check on himself and concluded that he did not need very much healing time, he surveyed the scene on the street that was lit by the murky gray light of the false dawn. Saw a scrawny old man dressed only in dirty long johns and unlaced boots as he led a sweat-foamed gray gelding by the reins: the horse looking near to exhausted while the disheveled and unshaven old-timer appeared more vexed than perturbed that his sleep had been interrupted at such an early hour. There were two men and one woman, all three wearing more clothes than the old-timer, hurrying to keep up with him. And perhaps a dozen other Rosarita citizens, mostly men, came into the Virginian’s field of vision from the western stretch of the street. The old man allowed his complaint to hang unfinished in the chill air of early morning and everyone shuffled to a halt when the door of the sheriff’s office was wrenched open and the town preacher demanded to know:
‘Now, Matt, what’s all this noise about—and just why are you running around on the open street in such a state of undress?’
‘Shit, ain’t Orville Kyle back yet?’ the liveryman growled.
‘There’s no cause for that language when you’re addressin’ the Rev. Masterson!’ a woman rebuked. ‘Especially so when there are ladies present!’
Matt Hope scowled and looked set to snarl a whole stream of obscenities at his fellow citizens, who mostly made sounds of agreement with what had been said. But the preacher hurried to speak ahead of the liveryman. And stepped out of the sheriff’s office doorway to move toward the winded horse as he announced:
‘The sheriff expects to be back this morning. Until then, I am his deputy. Now, precisely what … Oh, dear God in heaven what could have happened?’
As the gathering of curious bystanders in various stages of undress grew larger, the cassock-garbed man came close enough to the dejected horse to see that Hope had not been exaggerating.
‘It’s like I was sayin’,’ the liveryman replied, and over-emphasized his calm and collected manner now as he swept his sunken-eyed gaze back and forth over the expectantly frowning faces of his quietly enlarging audience. ‘This here is Pierce Nelson’s mount. The boy came to my place late last night, just when I was about to bed myself down. When I asked him, interested like, where he planned on goin’ that time of night he told me to … Well, since there’s ladies and the minister here, I won’t tell you what he says to me.’
‘Get on with it, Matt!’ somebody urged.
‘Duncan Nelson ain’t there. He oughta hear this!’
‘Go bring him, Leroy,’ a man ordered and Steele recognized the voice of James Bate.
‘You bet!’ his tall, broad and good-looking son offered eagerly. And began to run toward the Pioneer.
‘And best bring Doc Bascomb!’ Fraser Sorrel from the stage and telegraph office called after the loping youngster. Then explained to a curious neighbor: ‘Ought to be able to tell from the amount and kind of blood how bad the boy’s been hurt.’
‘Can I get finished and be done with this business; do you mind?’ Matt Hope asked sourly. He accepted the silence of his audience for an answer and went on: ‘Heard a horse out front of my place just now and knew from the sound of him he wasn’t in such good shape. Stepped outside and found Pierce Nelson’s geldin’. Almost the way you see him now. Sweat wasn’t dried and he was breathin’ a lot worse. Blood on the saddle and his right flank was just as dried up. About it. Brought him down here to show Orville Kyle. Since he ain’t in town, I guess it’s right that the boy’s pa should have a look-see and decide what’s to be done about his son. Me, I want to tend to the animal’s needs soon as I’m allowed.’
Steele had been standing on one leg at a time as he raised and lowered the foot of the other one to exercise his knees. Now he let go of the supporting window bars and turned to walk back and forth along the cell: and was able to show a quiet smile of satisfaction that the degree of his various pains had diminished to nothing more than mild discomforts. While he was discovering this there was an eruption of competing voices on the street as the light of the new day brightened: people asking questions, others offering opinions and still more disagreeing.
Then, against the clapping of hands to gain attention, the preacher employed his pulpit tone of voice to implore: ‘Please, please, gentlemen, ladies! I think it best if everyone returns home—to get properly attired if for no other purpose. Meanwhile, I will make preparations to leave—’
‘Holy Moses, Michael Masterson!’ Ellie Webb cut in. ‘Orville Kyle never meant for you to take that deputy nonsense so serious as this!’
‘That’s right, Mr. Masterson!’
‘I should think so! Imagine, the Rev. Masterson thinkin’ he has to go out the Lord knows where to look for that fool kid!’
‘What kinda town is this? We surely have enough men more fitted to—’
‘Hey, here comes Dunc Nelson!’
This last was shouted by Earl Webb, who needed to add raucousness to his tone so that his voice commanded attention against the barrage of others. Then, after a few moments of tense silence as everyone peered to the west—along stretched shadows cast by the leading arc of the rising sun—a woman rasped in a hush whisper:
‘He looks real sick. I reckon Leroy Bate must’ve—’
‘He looks sick the same way Henry Bascomb looks sick, Lucy,’ a man broke in, his tone reproachful. ‘Like they both have trouble seein’ straight and puttin’ one foot in front of the other—and keepin’ in their bellies the liquor they put away last night!’
The man who recognized the visible symptoms of a hangover gradually lowered his voice as the saloonkeeper and the doctor drew closer. This as the main body of bystanders opened up a corridor through which the men who were so unsteady on their feet, and the arrogantly strutting Leroy Bate, could pass. Masterson made to offer an explanation of what he had heard had taken place, but the short and fat, late middle-aged Duncan Nelson gestured with an emphatic wave of his hand that the preacher should hold his tongue. Then, as the young Bate was forced to a chagrined halt by his father’s hand hooked over a shoulder, the saloonkeeper and Bascomb advanced on the horse. Both the obviously hungover men were dressed in the way Steele had last seen them when they brought him to the sheriff’s office and thence to the lockup. But their clothes were creased and wrinkled in a way that provided a match with their faces under unkempt thinning hair. So it seemed a fair assumption that they had fallen into drunken stupors when their liquor-sodden minds demanded rest—not so long ago.
‘Leroy Bate told us,’ Nelson said, enunciating his words with the same degree of slow caution that now guided his steps.
‘Hell of a thing,’ the town doctor muttered, his voice slurred and his purple-veined nose looking even uglier in the glitteringly bright sunlight of a fresh new morning.
The gelding, almost run into the ground, stood utterly still in pathetic dejection as Matt Hope sidled away to the left and the preacher backed off to the right. And Henry Bascomb moved in close, apparently having some difficulty in focusing his eyes; while the saloonkeeper merely treated the hapless horse to a baleful look before he turned carefully around to face the largest concentration of his fellow citizens. Rocked from side to side and scowled with irritation until he had regained his balance on legs that were splayed some three feet apart. Only then admitted:
‘If Pierce is dead, like all that spilled blood seems to show he is, I killed him!’
‘All this blood, dead is what the guy who lost it is likely to be,’ the town doctor announced.
This caused the tears that had welled into Nelson’s eyes to erupt over the lower lids and cascade down his flabby cheeks. Then the saloonkeeper brought his pudgy hands up to his face as another burst of talk from many throats started to fill the sunlit morning air: conflicting tones suggesting that half the people were trying to console Duncan Nelson while the other half were bawling out Doc Bascomb for his lack of tact. Movements accompanied the vocal noise, as the bystanders closed in on the weeping saloonkeeper and the abruptly shamefaced doctor. And the scrawny old man who ran the town livery led the weary horse off down the street in the kind of surreptitious manner that indicated he was expecting to hear a snarled order that he should stop what he was doing. The Rev. Masterson also turned his back on the center of attention. And looked as if he were intent upon gazing up at the clear morning sky with a plea for divine guidance. But perhaps because he had lived long enough in the material world to have been denied such an easy solution too often before, he agreed willingly to be drawn by a crooked finger to the window of the Virginian’s cell.
‘Sir?’
‘It’s morning feller.’
‘I’m afraid I fail—’
‘You heard the sheriff. He planned to be back this morning and to turn me loose.’
Not every curious watcher had moved to form a tight-knit group around Nelson and Bascomb. Ellie Webb was one of those who did not and she came to stand alongside Masterson out front of the lockup. Confirmed:
‘That’s what Orville Kyle said sure enough.’
‘But he also said that if something cropped up that I felt I could not take care of then I should—’
‘Said help wouldn’t be slow in coming, as I recall,’ the banker’s wife cut in, her tone and manner grimly resolute in contrast with the way the preacher’s voice trembled and he tried desperately not to look anybody in the eye. ‘So I’m here to help, Michael Masterson and I say you should let Mr. Steele out of the lockup.’
For a stretched second the pale, hollow-cheeked face of the preacher looked to be hardening into an expression of determination to assert his authority. But then, abruptly, there was an ominous silence as the voice of Duncan Nelson commanded:
‘Hold it.’
High tension had an almost palpable presence in the warming, brightening air of the morning as the preacher and the woman turned to look with the Virginian toward the press of people. Nobody in the crowd looked back at the face between the bars and the man and woman flanking the lockup window.
‘Leroy is right!’ the saloonkeeper went on and didn’t seem to have to work at keeping the confusing effects of too much liquor out of his voice now. ‘If Orville ain’t here to take care of this business, we got to do it ourselves. Any man wants to join us, be at the livery and ready to ride at six!’
There was a roar of approval and a less vociferous burst of talk against the call to action as the gathering suddenly broke up. And some Rosarita citizens hurried with a will to be ready in good time for the appointed hour while others moved off with dragging feet and shaking heads. Few cast more than an indifferent glance in the direction of the lockup. And it was with an air of being rebuffed that the preacher brought his head around to announce:
‘Very well, I think you are correct, Mrs. Webb. I had charge solely of Mr. Steele. The sheriff did, I know, say he was to be released this morning. Once that is done, my duties as a deputy have been discharged.’
Masterson strode purposefully toward the sheriff’s office doorway and Ellie Webb trailed him, pointedly ignoring an enquiring gaze that her husband directed at her. The rotund little banker with the weak-looking face was by then the only figure who remained on the center of the street between the sheriff’s office and the unfinished hotel as the crowd that once had been there dispersed. For several moments he gazed at the doorway through which his wife had gone, his expression apprehensive: like he doubted the wisdom of her prominent involvement in the town’s trouble. Then he sensed the Virginian eyeing him impassively and at once was guiltily embarrassed—as if he felt Steele had been able to read what was in his mind. He said hurriedly:
‘You shouldn’t judge Rosarita folks on what you’ve seen of them during this time of trouble, Mr. Steele.’
‘I shouldn’t?’ Steele countered as he heard footfalls behind him and glanced over his shoulder to see the banker’s wife pushing a key into the lock of the cell door.
‘Well, you’ve seen only one side of them,’ Earl Webb insisted as Steele picked his hat off the cot and donned it.
‘Yeah, feller,’ the Virginian agreed evenly as he glanced out through the bars again. ‘Backsides I reckon.’
‘Yes, the black side is one way of putting—’
‘He said backsides, Earl!’ Ellie Webb growled disdainfully through the window at her husband as Steele turned away from it to go out of the cell.
‘Grateful to you people for helping me out,’ the Virginian said as he paused on the threshold between the lockup and the sheriff’s office and showed a less than warm smile to both the woman and the preacher. ‘It’s lucky for me everyone in town isn’t an asshole.’