ORVILLE KYLE LACED the sourness of his expression with sneering scorn as he rasped: ‘Jack Cooper can fix your kind up to look either of two ways, Steele. Either grinning at your own last joke. Or looking sick that it backfired on you. Providing, of course, that the way you die left enough of your face for him to work with.’
‘Have him bury me with a smile,’ said the Virginian. ‘Show how happy I was that whoever killed me will be brought to justice. By a lawman who just can’t fail—the way he happened to have been everywhere I was all the time I was in town trying to mind my own business.’
‘Mr. Steele says he heard Avery’s place was up for sale, Orville,’ Earl Webb supplied.
The sheriff sighed and nodded as he showed an expression that was a strange combination of satisfaction that he had got to the bottom of a problem and discontent with how it had turned out. Then he looked rueful and spoke in the same tone as he came to stand beside the Virginian. ‘If you had been as open as that with me, there would have been no need for that trouble down at the saloon.’
Steele gave a slight nod and for a moment it seemed that he was to let this be his only acknowledgement as he looked beyond Kyle—to where the stage driver and the Rosarita blacksmith were taking the travel-wearied team out of the traces and the guard and Fraser Sorrel were carefully unloading the large amount of luggage from the roof of the Concord to the street. Almost all the local citizens had drifted away from this section of the street, some of them clutching letters and packages from the stage’s mail pouch. Then the Virginian vented an almost inaudible sigh before he returned his attention to the livery into which the woman of natural airs and graces and her two foppish escorts had gone, and replied:
‘I’m not usually this difficult to get along with, Sheriff. In normal circumstances, if somebody wants to know my business I might or I might not be willing to talk. Especially if I might just be interested in something that I only heard about. But when somebody threatens me with a gun and tries to scare me into talking. Well, if I’m in a position not to co-operate, that’s what I go ahead and do.’
There was a rise in the volume of background noise as the team of six horses which had hauled the stage to town was led across the street and into the corral beside the forge. And, at the same time, a flatbed wagon with two horses in the traces and a cut-under buggy drawn by a single animal were driven out of the alley on the far side of the livery. The younger man was in control of the wagon and the other dudishly attired newcomer to town had the reins of the buggy, Charlotte Begley seated to his right in the shade of the roof.
‘All right, I’ll allow it was all my fault that we got off on the wrong foot,’ Kyle growled. And as the two rigs rented from the livery rattled slowly down the street toward the front of the stage and telegraph office where the horseless and unloaded Concord was parked, the Virginian saw with a sidelong glance that the lawman was watching them with eyes as hard as his tone.
‘And got a bad hand out of the deal, Sheriff.’
Kyle did not look at Steele and so failed to see the fleeting smile that altered the line of his mouth as he made the response. But he was aware of the black humor while he continued to watch the progress of the wagon and the buggy as he countered through gritted teeth: ‘Even if it didn’t hurt like hell, I’d still find it hard to laugh, Steele. Because there’s too much else that’s wrong about today.’
Because of the clop of hooves and the rattle of the turning wheels, the exchange between the two men out front of the bank would not have been heard by Charlotte Begley and her escorts. And so Steele’s brief smile was misinterpreted by the couple in the buggy after the wagon had driven on by. The woman made an aristocratic inclination of her head to acknowledge the smile she was certain was directed at her. And the man made the same mistake: but he glowered, perhaps in angry jealousy, at the Virginian. Then the woman, her haughty posture on the buggy seat firmly held, shot a sidelong glance past the scowling driver and executed a broad wink that the set of her lips made sultry. Which caused Ellie Webb to gasp and hiss from the threshold of the bank:
‘I knew she’d turn out to be as brazen as they come.’
‘How, Ellie, we don’t know anything about the woman and—’
‘Woman?’ the banker’s wife cut in on her tentatively protesting husband. ‘I’m a woman and you’re insulting me by calling that shameless Jezebel one, too! What she is … What she is … We’ve all had our own notions of the kind she’d turn out to be and it seems to me more were right than weren’t. I’m not about to sully my mouth by calling her what I think she is. But I’ll tell you this, Earl Webb. I know we have an ordinance against her kind in this town!’
She slammed the door closed, cutting off what her husband had begun to say in defense of the newly-arrived woman. And none of what she had said had carried beyond the two men out front of the bank, to reach the buggy which had rolled to a halt alongside the flatbed at the rear of the Concord.
‘Used never to be hardly a cross word heard in this town, Steele,’ Kyle said sourly as two iron-bound trunks and a half dozen matched leather suitcases were loaded aboard the wagon by the young dude and the stage depot manager. ‘Of a serious nature, I mean.’
‘If there has to be a town close to where I do my horse ranching, a dull one will be the best kind, feller.’
‘Dull it was, I guess. The stage there—comes in from Santa Fe just once every ten days. Its getting here was just about the only event of any consequence that used to happen around here on a regular basis. Outside of Christmas and July Fourth. But they have a whole year between them.’
The luggage was all loaded onto the wagon and the young driver waited until the buggy had started out ahead of him for the open trail before he urged his two-horse team forward—so that he, rather, than Charlotte Begley and her driver, was destined to suffer the dust raised by hooves and wheelrims. The sheriff took out a plug of tobacco and bit off a small wad as he watched the departure of the two rigs. Then, as a fresh team of stage horses was led by the blacksmith from the stable out back of his forge, Kyle leaned away from the bank wall and invited:
‘I can’t say I’ve got no hard feelings, Steele, but I’ll stand you a drink at the Pioneer.’
‘Took one shot of hard liquor after my wife died, a long time ago,’ the Virginian replied. ‘It was a mistake. Before that I hadn’t taken a drink since I near drank a cantina dry—and decided that a crack on the head works just as well as a bellyful of hooch if a man wants to forget his troubles. Maybe it’s better, because the hangover isn’t always so painful.’
‘Sometimes liquor is all that can make pain go away,’ the lawman countered and raised his bandaged hand, in an ushering gesture that also served to point out that he was referring to physical pain. ‘You don’t want to drink, okay. Not a man better placed than me to know that it’s not easy to have you do something you don’t want to. But either you take a walk with me down toward the Pioneer and listen to what I have to say. Or you get on your horse and ride out of Rosarita right now.’
At no time did he raise his voice, but as he neared the climax of the ultimatum the force of his words increased. To the extent that some tobacco juice sprayed out of the corner of his mouth and damp stained his shirt. He cursed and was grim faced as he rubbed the brown saliva into the fabric. And held the expression as he warned the Virginian who eyed him quizzically:
‘I know I can’t force the issue right here and now, mister.’ He allowed his bandaged hand to touch the palm to the butt of his holstered Remington, then lowered it. ‘But I’m not against using any tactic I have to so long as I do my duty of maintaining law and order in this town.’
‘I believe you, Sheriff,’ Steele acknowledged, and his coal-black eyes were hard with emotion as dark as their color as he fixed the lawman with an unblinking gaze and added: ‘So you’ll understand why I don’t intend to walk ahead of you.’
Orville Kyle’s sun-burnished and finely lined face expressed a brand of anger that seemed to be in danger of going out of control. And perhaps the neatly dressed man with the polished star on his juice-stained shirt might have plunged into a vicious temper if Adam Steele had held the gaze of contempt for a half second longer. But the sheriff’s fury was effectively defused by the way in which the Virginian was suddenly eyeing him with equanimity.
‘I never backshot a man in my life, mister.’
‘I believe that, too. But I reckon you’ve never been so frustrated in your life, either?’
Kyle spat on purpose now: directing the stream of dark saliva at the street beyond the edge of the boardwalk as he swung around in front of Steele. Then muttered: ‘Gunslingers are never smart or they’d be in some other line of work. Guess you’re the exception that proves the rule, Steele.’ He halted at the hitching post and untied the reins of the stallion from the ring. Then, as he extended them toward the Virginian, he said in an even tone: ‘I’m not claiming to be as smart as you, mister. But from what I’ve picked up, it seems you plan on getting into some other line of work. You know the choice on offer: you can ride on out of town and go about your business in whatever way you’ve a mind to, or you can listen to me tell you why you should move on a long way from here before you either hire out your fancy rifle or look for a place to hang it over a mantelshelf.’
Steele moved forward and accepted the reins. ‘Reckon I’ve got nothing to lose but time.’
‘Nobody ever lost anything else from listening to advice, young man,’ the homely-featured Mrs. Webb said sagaciously as she swung open the door of the bank and stepped out into the sunlight, a shopping basket hung over one forearm. ‘And if you don’t want to lose any more, just light out and keep going until you come to some place where the name Lucas Hart’s never been heard.’
‘Get on down to the store, woman!’ her husband urged from within the bank.
‘Yeah, Ellie,’ the lawman augmented as the banker’s wife scowled at the wall that hid her from Earl Webb, but quickened her pace to move along the street ahead of Kyle and Steele. ‘You attend to what concerns you and I’ll take care of the keeping of the peace.’
‘He came to the bank asking for advice and he got given it, Orville Kyle!’ the bustling woman threw over her fleshy shoulder. ‘And he got given it plain and simple in a nutshell.’
A combination of a widening distance and a lowering of her voice to an irate muttering acted to render Ellie Webb’s ramblings incomprehensible to the two men trailing her at a more sedate pace. This after they had indifferently caught her drift—that she was berating the male of the species in particular because of the way her husband had bawled her out in private and then public.
‘Couple of questions before I open up the can of worms, mister?’ the lawman asked in a tone of voice and with an expression that suggested he would not be made angry again if Steele responded negatively.
‘I don’t have too many raw nerves,’ the Virginian answered as he slid the Colt Hartford into the saddle boot.
‘Where’d you hear the Begley spread was up for sale?’
‘Prescott. From a man in a saloon there who’d heard it from somebody else who heard it in a saloon down in Silver City. My man was a down on his luck drummer who needed the price of a drink. He’d heard the rumor I was looking for a piece of land to set up a stud ranch. I told him he’d be welcome to drop by and collect the price of a drink if something solid came out of what he’d told me.’
Orville Kyle allowed his wafer-thin veneer of easygoing amiability to slip a little when he rasped through clenched teeth: ‘You don’t have to keep telling me how tough and mean you are, mister. I know it already!’
‘Just pointing out, Sheriff, that I don’t take anything a stranger tells me on trust. Especially when he’s telling me what he knows I want to hear. If I’m steered to something that pans out, though, then I’m always ready to return a favor. If that drummer stops by—’
‘I guess he figured he was giving you good information, Steele,’ the lawman broke in as he led the way further out toward the center of the street. This as they neared the end of a line of stores with a raised, roofed sidewalk along their fronts. The sidewalk was no good for the Virginian who was leading the big stallion. ‘It’s the first time I heard it, but I can believe Lucas Hart fixed for the rumor to be spread around the territory. It would be one more way to get on Avery Begley’s nerves: have a stream of misguided callers come by his place with offers to buy him out when the place wasn’t up for sale. Crazy things like that started to happen to Avery ever since Hart made him a final offer and got turned down. Nothing out and out illegal, if you get my drift …’
Steele had sensed an undercurrent of tension in the sun-heated atmosphere of the street from the moment he and Kyle started to amble along it in the wake of the scurrying Ellie Webb. And the feeling that all was not as it seemed on the mundane surface had been intensified when the lawman had flared up with short-lived anger. But all seemed well now and the Virginian was able to rationalize about the false alarm sounded by his sixth sense for impending menace. For was it not natural that a man so recently shot at by another should find it less than easy to sustain a charade of amiability toward the one responsible for his pain and humiliation? And surely it was just as reasonable that Kyle’s fellow citizens should be wary of the seemingly friendly relationship that now existed between the sheriff and the stranger?
‘There was a whole mess of fence posts shipped in to him,’ Orville Kyle was saying. ‘Enough to close off a couple of hundred acres. And Avery hadn’t ordered them—’
‘Hold it, dude!’ a young man snarled.
‘He’s covered, Orville!’ Duncan Nelson promised.
‘And knows it!’ Doc Bascomb confirmed.
Ellie Webb snapped; her voice pitched high: ‘You men are crazy to mess with one of his kind!’ Then, with more force in her tone: ‘You let me go this instant, you hear!’
The youngster in a white waist apron had been the first to step out of the open doorway of Bate’s Grocery Store. And Steele had obeyed his command before the saloonkeeper and the doctor moved off the threshold and onto the sidewalk to flank the youngster, who had a rifle aimed at the Virginian from his right shoulder. The still-suited Nelson and Bascomb leveled revolvers from their hips. The hammers on all three weapons were thumbed back and the face of each man behind the gun expressed a grim resolve to shoot at the slightest provocation.
‘I’d have warned you, young man!’ the banker’s wife assured from within the grocery. ‘Except that James Bate was part of the sneaky ambush, and he’s been holding me back here like only a husband has a right to lay hands on his—’
‘Quieten down that old biddy, Pa!’ snarled the tall, broad and handsome twenty-year-old with the Winchester in his rock-steady grip.
This as Steele shifted his cold-eyed gaze from the trio of men on the sidewalk to fix it on the Rosarita sheriff: who had taken two further steps forward and then swung smoothly into an about face that placed him immediately in front of the Virginian at arm’s reach.
‘I gave you fair warning, mister,’ Kyle reminded, rasping the words out through teeth that were gritted in a sneer between drawn back lips. His narrowed, blue-green eyes filled with a dull sheen that revealed the extent of his anticipation of imminent pleasure as he completed: ‘Any tactic to do my duty.’
He started to clench and unclench his uninjured left hand. And Steele released his grip on the stallion’s reins as he acknowledged:
‘I recall you said that, Sheriff. And so I reckon …’ A man squealed in pain and a woman bellowed in triumph from deep inside the grocery. Then Orville Kyle launched a punch at Steele as the Virginian concluded: ‘… it’s my own fault I didn’t watch out for trouble in store.’