THE BLUE-EYED, ash-blonde girl of about twenty-two or three whose name was Jane Quinn added a sack of coffee beans to the heap of other supplies on the counter of the grocery store and brightened her smile when she said:
‘If your horse is gettin’ shod here in Barclay it’ll be Chuck Naylor who’s doin’ it. And you can be sure of gettin’ fine workmanship, stranger. It’s a fact that Chuck’s the best blacksmith within a hundred miles of town; and maybe even further than that. Who knows?’
‘Right enough, who knows,’ Amos Quinn agreed, smiling with the same brand of happiness as his granddaughter. ‘Sure is true about him being the best for a hundred miles all around, though. On account of there ain’t nobody else in that line of work between here and there.’
The tall and thin, gray-haired and almost toothless near seventy-year-old man slapped his thigh and threw back his head to vent a gust of laughter. It was good-natured laughter and infectious enough to broaden the quiet smile that Adam Steele had used to respond to the cheerful friendliness of the girl, who now joined him in looking toward the doorway at the far end of the counter where the old man had emerged. And trilled with laughter herself. Then the more familiar easy smile was back on her pretty, lightly freckled face as she returned her gaze to the Virginian to explain:
‘I got to admit to havin’ a bias, stranger. On account of Chuck and me are gonna be married. Pretty soon now, if our plans all work out.’
‘He told me,’ Steele answered, not failing to see the light of yearning glinting in back of her happiness as the girl spoke of marriage. ‘When I said I’d come up the street to the store for supplies while he was shoeing my horse. He said I should be sure to get the best-looking girl in the state of Texas to take care of my order. Told me her name was Jane Quinn and she was his fiancée. Also told me to look out for her grandfather Amos who’d have his thumb on the scale and add his age to the order total if I didn’t watch him like a hawk.’
Steele kept smiling while he made the response, switching his gaze regularly between the old-timer and the young girl, seeing their pleasure expand as they anticipated the drift of what Naylor would have said about them and then had it confirmed.
‘Sassy young whipper-snapper,’ Amos Quinn growled with mock indignation. ‘That slander’s gonna cost him at least a glass of beer next time I see him in the Lone Pine.’
The old-timer punctuated this with a gleeful laugh and Jane countered with more than a modicum of disapprobation:
‘The more you entice Chuck into that saloon the longer I have to wait to take my marriage vows, old man.’ Then she winked at Steele to ensure that he knew there was just a touch of serious intent in what she had said before she went on: ‘Now will that be all? If Chuck and the old man are anythin’ to go by, men are about as good at writin’ out a grocery supplies list as they are at needlepoint.’
The smile of simple happiness was again firmly set on her clean-cut, pretty face and her clear blue eyes once more gazed with an almost disconcerting fervidness at the Virginian who, not for the first time since he entered Amos Quinn’s Grocery and Notions Store, found himself reflecting upon what degree of ardor this girl displayed when she peered at close quarters into the face of her fiancé.
‘Drifter like I am has to travel light and live simply, Ms. Quinn.’
‘But when he ain’t traveling, I’d say he likes to live high off the hog, stranger?’ the old-timer posed from the threshold of the living quarters at the rear of the store. And there was what could well have been an avaricious glint in his still-smiling eyes as he swept an appraising look over the Virginian.
The man he saw was certainly on the high side of forty, but by how many years it was not easy to tell: not many, though. He was not much over five and a half feet tall and made no attempt to camouflage his lack of inches with oversize-heeled boots. He had a lean build and an unforced manner of carrying himself that suggested at second glance that he was possessed of considerable physical strength within his compact frame. And neither was he lacking in strength of character, if Amos Quinn was as good a judge of such matters as experience had so often proved him to be. He had fine looks, this deceptively strong man who spoke softly and slowly in the drawl of a Virginian with a better than the average education behind him. He had regular features that at certain times when he smiled in a particular way hinted that his lean face might well have been nondescript or even weak looking during younger years. But passing time and exposure to the harsher sides of life as the future became the past had burnished and molded and inscribed a distinctive brand of somehow melancholy handsomeness on the basically unprepossessing foundation. The eyes were black as coal and as hard looking when he was checking to see if he could be at ease in his surroundings. His mouthline was gentle but not all the wrinkles to either side of it had been etched by smiles and laughter. He looked like he could bare his very white, evenly matched teeth in a vicious snarl of high anger if something—or somebody—pushed the needle hard enough into his usual composure. His element-darkened face was clean shaven, but he wore his sideburns long: neatly trimmed, though, like the hair on his head. Just a stray strand here and there was still dark red, for mostly his hair had turned prematurely iron-gray.
So, he looked to the practiced eye of Amos Quinn to be well fed, in good health and a good deal harder than he might appear at first impression—maybe dangerously hard. What, in the main, triggered a first impression of the Virginian as a less than dynamic individual who relished the better things in life was his mode of dress. For he was a dude and his outfit, like his accent, was incongruously Eastern in the unsophisticated Western setting of this Texas grocery. A dark, between blue and black, suit of expensive cut over a cream-colored vest and a white shirt. In the open neck of the shirt between the wide lapels of the jacket, a white cravat. His hat, which he had removed as he entered the store and saw Jane, was a broad, low-crowned Stetson, gray with a black band. His low-heeled, spurless riding boots were black. So were the skin-tight buckskin gloves that encased his hands.
Even the rifle he had carried into the store and which now rested against the front of the counter was a somewhat fancy weapon for this part of the country—a .44 caliber Colt Hartford sporting rifle with a revolving action with some sort of inscribed gold plate screwed to the right side of the stock. Fire had scorched an area of this rosewood stock and there were less obvious signs that the gun was a great deal older than the man’s clothing. But the way in which he handled the rifle suggested he took as much care about it as he did of everything else he possessed.
‘When the mood takes me and my finances allow,’ Steele answered as Quinn completed his overt scrutiny and executed a curt nod of satisfaction, that was quite obviously a sign he was about to say something his granddaughter knew she would disapprove of.
‘All right then,’ the girl put in hurriedly as she swung her gaze from Quinn to Steele and began to stack the supplies into a neater pile as she named the items. ‘That’s three pounds of roasted coffee beans, a dozen of my home-made corn dodgers …’ she showed a glint of pride in her smiling eyes as she mentioned and moved this paper package ‘… four pounds of flour, beef jerky, beans—’
‘I see you don’t pack no six-shooter, young feller,’ Amos Quinn cut in.
Jane continued to itemize the stock of supplies but spoke only to herself after she lost the attention of the customer.
‘Been few times that I ever did, Mr. Quinn.’
‘Call me old man, young feller,’ the owner of the well-stocked grocery invited as he came out of the doorway. ‘Everyone does. Except for them that don’t know me so well and they call me old man Quinn. The missus, God rest her soul, was the last person to call me Amos. You try to get by with just the rifle, uh?’
In a sheath strapped to the outside of the Virginian’s right calf was a wooden-handled knife balanced for throwing. Access to this was through a slit in the seam of his pants leg, which people who had no cause to know any different thought due to faulty stitching. People seldom found out about the concealed knife unless it was drawn and used in a time of trouble. Likewise kept secret until such a time, was the fact that the cravat he wore had weights sewn into diagonally opposite corners which made it an Oriental weapon of strangulation. And, friendly as the town of Barclay appeared to be—the Quinns and the young man presently shoeing the black stallion were not exceptional in the way they treated the stranger—Adam Steele was not lulled into any false sense of security. For during his life violence had exploded out of seemingly peaceful circumstances too many times to be counted, and he had quickly learned not to trust any situation—or anybody.
‘These days. Carried a revolver when I had to in the war. Then a little derringer for a time after the war. But handguns aren’t my style.’
Quinn dry-washed his hands as the light of cupidity came and went several times in his deep-set, dark eyes while he drew close to where his granddaughter was starting to pack all the Virginian’s purchases into a gunnysack. ‘I reckon I got a piece that is just your style, young feller,’ he countered, and touched Jane on the shoulder to bring her out of the apparent reverie in which she had been engaged. Then asked her: ‘Honey, you mind bringing me down that fancy foreign revolver? The one with all that fine engraving on it?’
The girl smiled and nodded, put the final paper-wrapped package in the gunnysack and stooped to reach beneath the counter. Steele was about to tell her not to bother, since he had no intention of buying a handgun, but Amos Quinn spoke first, against the clop of hooves on the street: ‘Made in Belgium, Europe. In the year of eighteen sixty-nine. So she’s a pin-fire model. 9mm. Shoots real good, young feller. But it’s the look of the Lefaucheux—this particular Lefaucheux with all the fancy engraving on her—that’ll appeal to a man like you, young feller. Smartest damn thing you ever will have seen in this line, I’ll bet. That’s it, honey. It’s in that there box.’
While the old man was making his sales pitch, his granddaughter had taken a set of six-rung stepladders from beneath the counter, set them up and climbed to the fourth rung so that she could reach to the top display shelf. At the same time as the unhurried riders halted their mounts and swung down from their saddles immediately out front of the store.
‘Mr. Quinn, I really don’t need—’ Steele started. And broke off and whirled around as the front door of the store was kicked open with a force that sent it crashing back against the wall.
Amos Quinn swung his gaze from the inquiring look on the face of Jane to stare in dread at the doorway, after the girl on the ladder returned her attention to the box he had said was the right one. The old man groaned: ‘Oh, no.’
‘Nobody move!’ one of the three men who had burst into the store ordered. ‘Unless you’re tired of living!’
All three were dressed in dark colored, Western style clothing. All with a gun belt slung around their waists, holsters empty as they waved revolvers from side to side to cover every part of the small, overcrowded-with-stock grocery. All tall and slim, loose limbed and agile and youthful looking, but virtually faceless to the Quinns and the Virginian who could see just their eyes between the pulled down brims of their Stetsons and the tops of the kerchief masks they wore.
There was a varying degree of fear in each pair of eyes, and Steele recognized this as a dangerous emotion in this situation—so complied with the tacit order of the trio’s leader who made an emphatic gesture with the gun. The Virginian side-stepped away from where his Colt Hartford leaned against the front of the counter. And, as he did so, witnessed once again how fear could impel a man to commit an impulsive act.
Jane Quinn had remained oddly detached from what was happening and only now did Steele realize the reason for this—the same reason she had appeared to be paying him such a flattering amount of attention while she had filled his grocery order. Her disability made plain when she half turned on the ladder, the familiar bright smile on her pretty face as she held out the ornately engraved revolver for her grandfather and Steele to see. And started to say: ‘This is the one you mean, old—’
‘I told you!’ the leader and centrally placed man of the trio on the threshold snarled.
‘No, it’s not loaded!’ Amos Quinn roared, and flailed his arms.
‘She can’t—’ the masked gunman on the right yelled.
‘She’s—’ was all the one to the left managed to utter.
Everyone speaking in unison and thus in competition. And then all struck dumb by shock as one of the three waving Colts became rock steady for part of a second before it exploded a shot and kicked with the recoil.
Steele had vented just a grunt of exertion as, in the wake of his realization about the girl, he hurled himself across the counter. Knocked aside the gunnysack but was able just to make fingertip contact with the stepladder as the shot was fired. And was staring up at the face of Jane Quinn—saw the smile become surprise, then alarm, finally horror. Before the bullet drilled into her throat on an upward trajectory that carried it through her brain and out of the back of her head. So that she died instantly, as a great gush of blood flooded from her gaping mouth and another torrented from the exit wound to obscenely stain her ash-blonde tresses. And she fell heavily off the steps, to crack her bloodied head unfeelingly on the countertop before she crumpled to the floor at the feet of her grandfather.
‘She can’t hear,’ one of the gunmen repeated and finished.
‘She was deaf as a post,’ the other one paraphrased what he had started to say before the killing shot cut him short.
‘Son of a bitch, I didn’t …’ the killer groaned. Then gulped, whirled and raced out of the grocery, yelling: ‘Let’s get out of here!’
‘You bastards!’ Amos Quinn shrieked, enraged grief driving his voice to a high pitch of shrillness. ‘The lousy rotten piece wasn’t even—’
‘Hold it right there, mister!’ the gunman on the left snarled, and leveled his Colt in a rock steady aim at Steele as the Virginian made to slide off the countertop where he had remained in a frozen attitude since he saw the pretty young girl die.
‘You, too, old man!’ the other gunman still in the store warned; and this halted Quinn’s move to reach across the counter in the general direction of where he knew the Colt Hartford was leaning.
‘Ready, you guys!’ the killer yelled, and both Steele and Quinn glanced out through the open doorway to where the man was astride his horse, and was leaning down to aim his revolver into the store.
Then the two men gripping unfired Colts backed out of the grocery. And the killer continued to keep his revolver pointed through the doorway as his partners swung up astride their saddles.
‘Soon as they ride, duck out of sight,’ Steele rasped at Quinn.
‘Old don’t mean helpless!’ the gaunt—and now wan-faced owner of the grocery countered. ‘And she was my flesh and blood.’
There had been a furor of shouting out on the street in the wake of the single gunshot. Which had been curtailed as the killer ran from the store. But now it restarted, more raucous than before, to counterpoint the thud of hooves as the three horses were galloped away from the hitching rail at the front of Amos Quinn’s Grocery and Notions Store. Two all-black animals and one—that ridden by the girl’s killer—black with a perfectly circular patch of stark white on each rump. Clearly seen through the swirling dust by both the grocery owner as he sought to snatch up the Colt Hartford and the Virginian who got his gloved hands on the rifle first.
‘I said—’ the dungaree clad, moist-eyed, trembling old-timer started as he unfolded from reaching across the countertop.
‘And I reckon,’ the impassive-faced Steele cut in as he straightened up and began to turn away from the counter, ‘that you’re used to having what you say fall on deaf ears.’