THE PIONEER WAS the only commercial enterprise at the eastern end of the single street of Rosarita. The rest of the buildings that Steele rode by along more than half its length were houses that ran the gamut of size and style between the simple single-story shack directly across from the saloon and the once elegant two-floored, many-roomed near mansion in which Bascomb had his surgery.
Here and there a house was in an excellent state of repair. Some even stood behind well-tended gardens of lawns and flower borders. He saw just two that were blatantly empty: their windows broken, their doors hanging open and with storm-damaged roof shingles left untended for a year at least.
The schoolhouse in back of a fenced play yard on the south side of the street and a meeting hall across from it marked the point where the business section of Rosarita began. Here the buildings were crowded more closely together and, close up, the alert-eyed Steele could see a few of them were of relatively recent construction. The schoolhouse was one of these. So was the stone-built sheriff’s office and jailhouse. The Arizona House Hotel was still not finished: no one was working on the walled but roofless second story and it looked as if the project had been interrupted more than just a few days ago.
There was a general store and a half dozen other stores that stocked the staples of life but few of the luxuries. The town also had a stage depot and telegraph office with a line that came in only along the east trail. Steele had reason to know why this should be since he had covered a lot of ground to arrive at Rosarita from the west: where the rugged Natanes Plateau was spread far and wide to either side of the arroyo called the Black River. He had seen shadows moving out there as the sun arced across the sky above the cactus and outcrop and sandridge-featured country. And the sign left by snakes and birds and small animals and insects. Once there had been a column of dark smoke at a distance—from the cooking fire of a small band of Apaches or maybe of a lone prospector, he had surmised. But the smoke had dirtied the sky in a direction that was off his route, so he never saw where the fire had been lit.
And he had seen no other evidence of human intrusion on the desolate plateau until he reached the start of the trail that led into town. A trail that had been established by a man, perhaps with a family, who had attempted to farm a piece of land close by a cottonwood grove on the river bank. The attempt was doomed, and since the farmstead had been abandoned, the elements of many changing seasons had ravaged the buildings and the fence lines. To an extent where the traces of somebody’s ill-starred dream were now almost as faint as the trail that showed no sign of having been used since the last rain had fallen on it or the last wind had raised dust devils above it.
Steele had reflected only briefly upon the outcome of another man’s dream as he rode past the melancholy remains of what might have been. And as he rode slowly down the town street he saw with his mind’s eye a fleeting image of the collapsed walls, leaning timbers and rusted pieces of iron. Saw this scene in his memory as his gaze swept his new surroundings and there came unbidden to him the notion that the settlers who had failed out at the end of the west trail might possibly be among the people on the street and in the doorways or behind the curtained windows of the flanking buildings—the citizens of Rosarita who peered back at him with a far deeper interest than he showed in them or their town.
He did not resent their curiosity about him: he could understand it, because after all he was not simply a stranger in a town where these were probably few and far between. Also, he had come to Rosarita from out of the desolate west. Dunc Nelson had spread some intriguing gossip about him and there had been two gunshots from the Pioneer after Sheriff Kyle went into the saloon to check if Nelson had good reason to mistrust the stranger. Nobody from the deputation of men who had gone to find out the reason for the shooting had yet returned to slake the thirst for news. So their curiosity, laced with an undercurrent of fear, was perfectly natural as they watched the man who seemed to be making a survey of their town in a manner that suggested a brand of mild interest just a part of a degree removed from indifference.
‘Like for you to hold it right there, stranger!’ a woman commanded from the open doorway of the Rosarita Bank that was one of the town’s older buildings. It was constructed of stone on the north side of the street, between the more imposing timber-built stage depot and telegraph office and the Hope Livery Stable that was a ramshackle shebang of just about every material that could be used to build with. ‘And I’m hoping you’ll overlook my bad manners if it turns out you’re honest and decent.’
The bank and its neighbors were almost at the extreme eastern end of the street. Beyond them on the north side there was just the town cemetery in which there were a great many untended graves and a few that showed signs of loving care: and one new one. The white-painted timber church was opposite the burial ground. Next to the church was a weed-choked vacant lot and on the other side of this was a corral, a blacksmith’s forge and the premises of a feed and seed merchant.
The cemetery was empty of the living and the church, the forge, the feed and seed place and the livery were all as quiet as the graves, and could have been as securely closed as far as a first glance showed. There had been sound and activity beyond the open doorway of the stage depot and telegraph office—before the order with its implication of menace was rasped out of the bank entrance. As he reined his mount to a halt after making the half-turn to head him for the bank, the Virginian thought that the woman whose command he had obeyed was probably the same one who had been softly and tunelessly singing before she growled at him to halt, and did not take any of the harshness out of her tone as she added the request.
Steele slowly raised a hand from the reins to tip his hat, and saw a movement to one side of the double doorway as he answered: ‘Even if I carried references, ma’am, I might have changed a lot since I got them.’
She stepped onto the threshold so that the Virginian could see she was close to sixty. Short and fleshy of frame and with a square-shaped, strong-featured and homely face. The solid black of her mourning dress and the hat that was a little askew atop her gray-haired head probably made her wrinkled skin look more pallid that it usually appeared. The pudgy hands in which she held a double barrel shotgun aimed in the general direction of Steele from her left hip were ink stained.
‘Now, Ellie, ain’t no call for you to act so heavy-handed with the stranger,’ a man said placatingly as he moved onto the threshold of the stage and telegraph office. He was of an age with the woman. His build was tall and thin and his hair was not quite so gray, except where it grew as a bushy mustache. He wore a brown suit that was either borrowed or had been made for him when he carried more weight. But he had a black band around his left sleeve and his necktie was also black.
‘You attend to your business, Fraser Sorrel, and I’ll take care of what concerns me and my Earl!’ the woman argued. And threw a glance as angry as her tone toward the man. Then took more time to lengthen the focus of her gaze so that she could peer at something which captured her attention out on the timber- and pasture-flanked trail to the east. But suddenly she snapped her head around to concentrate again on Steele. And was momentarily afraid, until she saw he had not taken advantage of her lapse. ‘And some business needs your attention is on its way into town right now!’
‘Which proves I wasn’t making any lame excuse because I was too scared to go with Earl and Dunc and the rest of them to the Pioneer!’ Sorrel countered with a childlike brand of triumph. ‘Telegraph said the afternoon stage was ahead of schedule and so she is.’
Rosarita was sited across the dividing line between two kinds of country—the near-barren terrain over which Steele had been riding for three days, and the land green with grass and brush and timber that spread down off the plateau all the way to the eastern foothills of the Continental Divide on the other side of the Mogollon Mountains. So, the horizons east of town were much closer than those to the west and the approaching stage coach was less than a half mile away when it first came into sight, emerging from the blind side of a dense stand of pines.
‘Earl’s my husband, stranger,’ the woman with the shotgun said as Steele shifted his indifferent gaze from the Concord stage which had a heavy load of roof luggage behind the driver and guard, and a six-horse team in the traces. ‘Guess there wasn’t no time for formal introductions down to the saloon after the shooting. Earl Webb and I’m Ellie Webb. He’ll likely call me a damn fool and that’s surely what I’ll feel I am, stranger. But when a body whose eyes aren’t so clear sighted as they used to be is left in charge of a bank and she thinks she sees a man who might be up to no good make a bee-line for the bank … well, it’s better to be safe than sorry, I always did say. And if I’m making a damn fool of myself, I’ve lived long enough for that to be no new thing.’
‘You can say that again,’ Sorrel muttered, and swung back into the stage and telegraph office as the rattling and clopping sounds of the rig on the east trail reached through the surrounding tranquility of the afternoon to be heard in town.
Steele looked back over the length of the street he had ridden and saw it was getting to be more crowded by the moment: and that almost everyone was starting to move toward this end. Both men and women, some with babies or small children in their arms. But the mass advance, which he thought included many of the men who had gone to investigate the shooting at the Pioneer, faltered and came to a halt when the people had drawn close enough to see that Ellie Webb was holding a gun on Steele.
‘Well, stranger?’ the banker’s wife demanded, vexed by his attitude that seemed to stress that he was ignoring her while events at a distance held his interest.
‘Reckon it’s your move, ma’am,’ the Virginian told her evenly as he shifted his gaze back to her again. ‘Since it’s likely I’ll get my head blown off if I make one.’
She looked on the point of snarling a retort to this, but then they were both drawn to peer toward the arched porchway of the church at the base of the tower. This as the cassock-garbed preacher used a pulpit tone to make himself heard above the rising volume of sound from the stage.
‘A damn fool is what you’re making of yourself, woman!’ His voice rang strongly with the accent of his native Ireland. ‘If you were not such a vain creature—and the good Lord knows you have little enough reason to be—you would be wearing your spectacles and be able to see your husband and the sheriff and the rest are making their way down here without the slightest haste! Just as this gentleman rode his horse away from the saloon in a similar manner after whatever trouble took place there! Do you not think, woman—’
‘Ellie! Ellie! Put that weapon away this instant!’ The demand was shouted breathlessly by a city-suited and derby-hatted man who had broken into a run along the street. His footfalls pounding against the street were not audible against the barrage of sound from the stage as it rolled past the town limits marker: and his voice, distorted by strain and exertion, was a lot less clear than the preacher’s. But his wife’s hearing was better than her sight, for she immediately did as he ordered. To the extent of letting go of the twin barrels of the shotgun with her right hand and allowing the weapon to sag so that its muzzles were aimed at the boardwalk beside the hem of her skirts on the left side. Her lips moved to perhaps mouth a silent oath, but she was looking in no particular direction as this happened and so could have been cursing the world in general or herself for being a fool yet again.
Then, as the Concord rolled into town between the church and the cemetery, the driver hauling on the reins and the brake lever as he yelled at the team, it was as if nothing untoward had happened.
Fraser Sorrel came bustling out of his place of business again, eager to be of service to whoever was riding as paying passengers aboard the stage. The Irish preacher remained on the church porch but watched what was taking place with deep interest. Earl Webb slowed from the run and matched the far from sluggish pace of the recommenced advance of his fellow citizens toward the newly arrived stage. The blacksmith on one side of the street and the liveryman on the other emerged from their places that had previously seemed deserted. And Ellie Webb swung around and went from sight into the bank without another glance at the Virginian who, just for a few seconds as the stage came to a dust-raising halt, was conscious of a ball of ice-cold anger starting to form at the pit of his belly.
During this brief segment of time as he sat the big black stallion on the center of the street that was now filled with activity and sound from which he was totally disassociated, he felt he had a natural right to experience a deep resentment toward these people he had earlier excused. But then as he dismounted, the impulse to anger was involuntarily suppressed and the easy manner in which he completed his advance on the bank was a true reflection of his state of mind.
‘Please, sir, I’d truly appreciate it if you will overlook my wife’s behavior—’ Earl Webb began to implore as he came to an anxious halt on the boardwalk out front of the bank doorway. He was of an age with his wife and matched her short and stout frame. He had thinning black hair atop a round, weak-looking face in which his red-rimmed dark eyes seemed too small and his fleshy-lipped mouth was too large. A combination of nervousness and exertion caused sweat to pump freely from his pores, and he had taken off his hat, which he moved frantically around and around in his hands: this action almost camouflaging the fact that he was trembling.
It was the sound of Ellie Webb breaking into tuneless song rather than anything Steele did that caused the uneasy banker to curtail his plea. This as the Virginian tied his reins to one of three rings on a hitching post at the edge of the boardwalk to one side of the bank entrance.
‘General opinion seems to be that she’s made a fool of herself again, feller,’ Steele said evenly as what seemed to be the majority of Rosarita’s citizenry gathered into a tight-knit group beside the newly arrived stage. ‘And somebody as honest and decent as me just has to make allowances for her.’
Webb did a double take at Steele, to reassure himself that the stranger was not just speaking rhetorically. Then he bobbed his head in grateful acknowledgement and tried to mask his rekindled anxiety when he saw the Colt Hartford slid out of the boot.
‘Like I told you, Earl, it’s just his way,’ the town’s lawman growled as he ambled on by the bank as part of a group that included most of the men who had gone to the Pioneer. The two injured fingers of his right hand were bound together in a still spotlessly white bandage. It was impossible to tell whether his soured expression was caused by the pain of his wounds or the bitterness of his thoughts.
‘All right, Ellie,’ the banker said wearily as he turned to lead Steele into the bank. ‘We have ourselves a customer and I’d say he has to be real desperate to do business if he still wants to do it after the way you got off on the wrong foot with him.’
The public room of the bank was small and spartanly furnished, divided equally into a front and rear section by a counter with two chairs on the customer side and two in back of it. The air was pleasantly cool and this effect was probably emphasized by the whiteness of the ceiling and the walls. There were clean looking rugs on the floor, and the counter and chairs shone from regular polishing. Sitting on one of the chairs behind the counter, Ellie Webb looked as cool and clean and businesslike as her surroundings while she made entries in a ledger and abandoned the musical accompaniment to her work. The shotgun was nowhere to be seen.
‘Heard what you said to my Earl out there just now, young man,’ the woman said, blotting dry the ink of her last entries as her husband moved to one end of the counter, where he raised a flapped section of the top and kneed open a hinged part of the front to go through. ‘A fool I know I can be. And I can’t do nothing else but take you on trust until you prove yourself one way or another. Fair enough?’
The thickness of the stone walls that served to keep out much of the heat of the afternoon also acted to muffle the sounds of the town that were mostly centered out front of the stage and telegraph office. But these had diminished anyway after the stage had rattled to a halt and the initial calling back and forth of greetings had ended.
‘I’ll go along with that, ma’am,’ the Virginian agreed as he took off his hat and sat on the chair across the counter from the vacant one. But a moment later this was occupied by Earl Webb after the banker had hung his derby on a hat and coat stand beside a closed door in the rear wall.
‘I’m deposits and Earl’s withdrawals,’ the woman said. ‘And since this bank doesn’t have any connection with any other where you might have an account, it seems your business is likely to be with me.’
‘I’m in need of advice,’ Steele said.
‘In that case, you’re exactly where you should be, young man,’ Ellie Webb allowed with an emphatic nod. Then she retrieved her pen, dipped it in the inkwell and commenced again to copy details from a sheaf of papers into the ledger.
‘Financial advice?’ her husband asked doubtfully. And he may have been lacking in self-confidence or merely apprehensive that a man with a rifle across his knees was pretending to be something he was not.
‘Maybe. It’s my intention to get into the horse-ranching business, Mr. Webb. Either by staking a claim to a piece of suitable lands that nobody has title to and starting from scratch; or buying a going concern if I can find what I’m looking for.’
The woman suddenly ceased writing, but did not lift the pen from the page: her mind obviously not on her work.
‘Around here?’
‘Of course around here, Earl!’ Ellie Webb snapped scornfully. ‘This isn’t no greenhorn just got off the latest wagon train to reach the frontier! Think a young man of the world like him would stop by a one-street town bank to talk business that didn’t have—’
Webb cut in, his tone and his expression grim: ‘Let me tell you, Mr. Steele. There’s not an acre of good grazing land for fifty miles to the east of Rosarita that isn’t solidly owned. To the west, as I’m sure you’ve seen for yourself, there isn’t even an acre of good grazing land.’
The Virginian nodded. ‘So if I decided to settle in this piece of country, that’s one of my options gone.’
‘Nothing’s for sale, either,’ the banker said quickly, and just as grimly. ‘In terms of land suitable for ranching, that is. There are two empty houses here in town and it’s possible Matt Hope may be thinking of selling up and leaving Rosarita … that’s the liveryman.’
‘We can’t be sure of that, Earl.’
‘I said it was possible he was thinking of—’
‘I mean the Begley place is as likely to be up for sale as not now that Avery’s dead.’
Webb started a glowering look at his wife, then snapped his attention back at Steele when the Virginian said:
‘I heard it was up for sale already. That’s the reason I came to Rosarita.’
Footfalls sounded on the boardwalk at the front of the bank, and somebody caught their breath. These sounds clearly heard against the near silence that had descended upon the town a few moments earlier. Then a woman drew the gazes of the Webbs to her and caused Steele to turn in his chair and peer at the crowded doorway when she said:
‘Then you heard wrong, my friend. And you’ve had a wasted journey.’
Steele rose from the chair, rifle in one hand and hat in the other. Earl Webb also got to his feet. The fine-looking, elegantly-dressed woman of forty plus who stood on the threshold of the bank accepted this double show of good manners as nothing more than what was her due. And acknowledged the protocol with an almost queenly inclination of her head. Since she was a female her hat and jacket and skirt and boots looked only slightly odd in her present surroundings because the outfit was of such high quality and fine style. Any woman of Rosarita would have given her eye teeth to look so fine on the way to church come Sunday morning. Whereas the two men who escorted her were the kind of jack-a-dandy clotheshorses who would always appear misplaced unless they were affecting their foppish styles and attitudes in the swank setting of a city house or country mansion drawing room. One of them was perhaps ten years older than the woman and the other was perhaps half her age. Both looked ready to spring in front of their charge and protect her if Steele should try to use his rifle aggressively.
‘If I heard wrong, it wasn’t my mistake, ma’am,’ the Virginian answered. ‘And I didn’t have anywhere else to go.’
She gave another regal inclination of her head as the men who flanked her became less tense. Then she said, with a fleeting smile that came within a hairsbreadth of being salacious: ‘I’m most glad to hear it, friend. I do so hate to be a source of disappointment to a man.’ She turned and moved on along the boardwalk, having to swing around the younger of her escorts as she instructed: ‘Come boys, let’s see about the carriage.’
‘By the way,’ the man in his early twenties hurried to say as he held back for a moment. ‘That was my mother, Charlotte Begley. The new owner of the Begley place. She therefore knows of what she speaks.’
‘Concerning the property, that is,’ the older man added as the other went in the wake of the woman. ‘Sometimes the lady does not always think before she speaks on other matters. Without wishing to cause offense, I would suggest that you country people do not set too much store by her sophisticated city ways. Good afternoon.’
Ellie Webb vented a snort of scorn and growled: ‘City or country style, when a woman simpers like that and says that kind of remark to a man that’s a total stranger to her, it’s my belief it’s only a matter of dollars and cents that keeps her from being a—’
‘Ellie!’ the banker chided, shocked. Then asked quickly of Steele as he headed for the door, jerking his hat back on: ‘Nothing else we can do for you, Mr. Steele?’
‘If I like what I see and can swing a deal, I’ll need a loan,’ the Virginian replied from the threshold.
‘I figure you’ve already seen what you like, young man,’ the woman behind the counter said sourly and started in with her work on the ledger again, head bent to show the crown of her black hat as she added in a harsher tone: ‘And since you said you came here for some advice, I’ll give it you—stay out of the Begley-Hart trouble.’
‘Nothing foolish about what Ellie’s just told you,’ the banker added earnestly as Steele continued to stand in the doorway, surveying the single street that was less crowded and a lot quieter at the eastern end now. ‘All we loan is cash money. If you run out of living time, only one who can help you in this town is Jack Cooper.’
‘That’s the Rosarita undertaker, young man,’ Ellie Webb explained.
Steele was aware of Sheriff Kyle standing on the boardwalk before the bank where it ended at the alley across from the stage and telegraph office. This as the Virginian nodded absently as he watched Charlotte Begley sweep disdainfully into Hope’s Livery Stable after the elder of her escorts had pushed open the door.
‘Looks to me like Steele don’t give much of a damn about what you’re telling him, Earl, Ellie,’ the lawman drawled as he came along the boardwalk.
‘I wouldn’t say that, feller,’ the Virginian countered evenly, with the flicker of a wry smile for the lawman who looked more soured than ever now he had seen who got off the stage. ‘Never heard any talk about a loan that didn’t have some interest.’