IN THE TIME it took Steele to amble from the livery to the forge—on the way seeing that the gray-haired and gray-faced Mrs. Brady was also rubbernecking the early morning visitor to town from her window vantage point—Mary-Ann Slattery had climbed down from the buckboard and been admitted to the funeral parlor by Vernon Dexter. The way the black-clad, tall and slender woman moved, further suggested that she was young.
‘Son of a bitch, it’s hard, mister!’ Naylor rasped as he turned to lead the way into his forge.
‘How’s that, feller?’
‘Figurin’ out if I hate her because she was married to the guy killed Jane. Or if I pity her because I know exactly how she feels. And all the time now at the back of my mind is the idea that maybe there’s some truth in what Thelma Cromwell told me.’
‘He out back in the corral?’
‘Yeah. I know she’s a great one for waggin’ her tongue for the sake of it, but that old busybody has got it into her head the Rexalls are hidin’ somethin’.’
‘How much I owe you, feller?’
‘Oh? Yeah, two bucks okay?’
‘Fine. You know how much Butler will want for a night’s livery service?’
‘Fifty cents plus feed is the usual,’ the young blacksmith said absently, staring out of the open doorway at the front of his forge as Steele went out the rear door.
Then, while the Virginian was attending to saddling up his newly shod stallion, Naylor returned to the front of his place. And he briefly scowled his disgust as he saw that Thelma Cromwell was crisscrossing the curving street in undignified haste: banging on the doors of many houses and not waiting until they were opened—called back over her fleshy shoulder the news that Mary-Ann Slattery was up at Vernon Dexter’s parlor. Then, an expression of sadness on the brink of tears in his dark eyes indicating that he had reached an emotional conclusion about his attitude toward her, the young blacksmith gazed across the street as Mrs. Slattery and the undertaker emerged from the funeral parlor, followed by Bob and Oliver Dexter carrying a completely plain pine casket. All three men were unshaven and dressed in rumpled work pants and old shirts. Vernon Dexter had taken the time to place the high black hat on his near bald head.
‘If I give you three dollars, you’ll see the liveryman gets paid?’ Steele asked as he led his ready-for-riding horse from around the side of the forge.
‘Sure, thanks,’ Naylor said, accepting the proffered bills after a snatched glance at the Virginian.
Then both men watched as, after the coffin was loaded on the buckboard, the Dexter father and sons went back inside the funeral parlor and Mary-Ann Slattery climbed up onto the seat of the wagon with a formal dignity that acted to emphasize her grieving isolation before an audience of almost the whole town, gazing openly at her from on the street or surreptitiously from behind curtained windows. Next, the veil that completely concealed her face adding to the impression, she looked like an automaton as she released the brake and flicked and tugged the reins to direct the white horse into a tight turn.
Steele saw that the gelding was sway-backed and dull-eyed, and that the buckboard was in a poor state of repair. Then, when Mary-Ann Slattery reined the rig to a halt close to where he and Naylor stood, he saw that the woman’s widow’s weeds were old and darned and patched and ill-fitting.
‘Mrs. Slattery,’ the young blacksmith greeted thickly as the buckboard creaked to a stop.
The Virginian tipped his hat, but guessed the gesture was either unseen or was ignored by the woman he could now see was a blonde with a slender but distinctly feminine body: for she seemed to be concerned solely with Naylor.
‘You and the girl who was killed were betrothed to be married Mr. Dexter said?’ There was just the suggestion of a Texas drawl in her voice—an attractive voice even though she spoke now in a strained monotone that told of a powerful emotion being tightly controlled.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Then at this moment I doubt if there is anybody in this town who knows better than I the anguish you are suffering, Mr. Naylor. You have my deepest sympathy in your loss. And you also have my assurance that Neil Slattery had nothing whatever to do with Jane Quinn’s death. But such a mere assurance can count for nothing. Thank you for listening to me.’
She nodded a farewell and again Steele was left with the feeling that the eyes that were unseen behind the thick veil saw only Chuck Naylor. Then the reins were flicked and the rig started to roll again. And Thelma Cromwell, the only person on the street to try to get closer during the exchange out front of the forge, now threw all attempt at artifice aside and broke from a shuffling gait into an ungainly near run as she strove to be the first outsider to learn what Mary-Ann Slattery had said.
‘You won’t forget to pay the liveryman for me?’ Steele reminded as he swung up astride the heavily ornamented black saddle on the back of the big black stallion. And perhaps curtailed Naylor’s impulse to call something in the wake of the departing buckboard.
‘No, no, I won’t forget,’ the blacksmith said in a vague tone, with a cursory look at the bills in his hand. Then he looked hard up at the mounted man to add with conviction: ‘Son of a bitch, I believe her, mister!’
‘What’s she say, Chuck?’ Thelma Cromwell wanted to know breathlessly, her heavily fleshed face high in color from the exertion of her hurry. ‘She tell you the same as I did? She say—’
‘Mrs. Cromwell,’ Naylor cut in on her as Steele turned his horse and moved slowly off between the tracks left by the wheelrims of the elderly buckboard.
‘Yes, Chuck?’
Wearily, the blacksmith asked: ‘How come you got to be so fat?’
The woman vented an inarticulate sound of indignation, then blurted: ‘Well, really, I don’t—’
‘I’m sorry,’ he interrupted again and there was just a hint of the contrite in his tone. But he added before he went back into his forge and slammed the door behind him: ‘Does seem to me, though, that you hardly stop workin’ your mouth with talk to leave time to eat.’
Steele was too distant from the woman by then to discern if it was another strangled grunt or a curse that Thelma Cromwell hurled toward the closed door. And within moments, as the more curious Barclay citizens converged on her to find out what she had learned, he was out of sight of the town around the curve of the trail beyond the white-faced escarpment: allowing the horse to move at his own walking pace as Mary-Ann Slattery drove the gelding at a fast walk and so steadily increased the distance between the buckboard and the rider on her back trail.
Where the escarpment ceased to border the trail on the right—turned sharply away toward the bright yellow sun—the mixed timber and thick brush closed in on either side. And the trail began to veer to left and right faster than it dipped and climbed through a patch of densely wooded and sharply undulating country. In which the buckboard was lost to both sight and hearing. And it was with a stab of mild irritation with himself that the Virginian discovered he had to make a conscious effort against an impulse to ask for greater speed from his horse. Because, in normal circumstances, he would at worst have expected to feel a sense of relief at the prospect of never seeing the wagon or its driver again: at best to experience indifference to whether he did or did not.
It was that damn veil, he decided as his mouthline tautened and his eyes narrowed to display the self-anger on his face. If she had lifted it herself or he had caught a glimpse behind it when it was stirred by a capricious breeze, he would not now be troubled by this unfamiliar curiosity: whether she was a provocative beauty or as homely as Dorothy Parsons, it would not have mattered to him. Or so he was telling himself as he rode to the top of a curving grade and then felt the need to think about the act of forming his features into their usual impassive set, when Mary-Ann Slattery asked of him:
‘Will you help me, please?’
She was neither a raving beauty nor was she anywhere near as plain as the wife of the saloonkeeper back in Barclay. She had a long, delicately bone structured face with, today, a complexion that was understandably pale because of bereavement, emphasized by the stark contrast with her mourning garb. But she seemed to be a natural blonde and so was naturally fair skinned. There were a few freckles scattered across her slightly concave cheeks under her almond shaped light-blue eyes—the lids of which were temporarily puffed from recent weeping. She had a finely sculptured mouth and a shallow cleft in her chin. There was, to her face as a whole, a stamp of determination, so that even though she was asking him for help, Steele had the impression she expected to be refused and felt confident of managing alone in that event.
And as he reined his horse to a halt alongside the stalled wagon and recognized such an attitude about the woman, he revised his earlier decision about his response to her. He had not been naively intrigued by the innate mystery of a veil. He had subconsciously sensed a kindred spirit and until this moment had been oblivious that it was a feeling of affinity with her that had caused him to be drawn toward Mary-Ann Slattery. Who, he saw as he tipped his hat to her before he swung down from the saddle, was not as young as he had presumed her to be behind the veil. Thirty-five, or perhaps even a year or so older, he guessed from the suggestion of skin crinkling that was beginning to show above the high neckline of her much-worn dress. But the unpainted skin of her face was virtually free of wrinkles so that with the careful application of cosmetics she could appear to be totally without the blemishing of the aging process, he thought. And could maybe look to be somewhere in the twenties, which was what he had guessed from her body and the way she carried herself back in town.
‘What’s the problem, Mrs. Slattery?’ he asked, needing to look up at her now that he had dismounted for she was on the buckboard seat, the reins in her hands like she was ready to do it all herself the moment he turned her down.
‘I was stupid. Not concentrating. My mind on other things. I took the turn too sharply. If you could just …’
‘Your problem’s no problem, ma’am,’ the Virginian said, after making the conscious effort to shift his gaze from the woman to the reason she was stuck. The trail continued to swing to the right after it crested the rise, but not so sharply as she had steered the broken-down gelding. The horse and the front nearside wheel of the rickety buckboard had cut the corner successfully, but the rear wheel had come up against the stump of a long-ago-felled tree. Maybe a stronger horse could have hauled the wheel up and over the foot-high stump. As it was, after Steele had explained to the woman what he intended to do, he needed to add his own strength to help the gelding back the wagon away from the obstacle, since the wheelrim had sunk three inches into the soft ground beside the stump. ‘There you go,’ he told the woman, after she had complied with his signals to maneuver the buckboard out onto the center of the trail.
‘I’m much obliged. Will you accept fifty cents for your trouble?’
Steele swung up astride his horse and started to shake his head. And Mrs. Slattery misconstrued his intention and began to excuse:
‘I’m sorry, but it’s all the money I have left on me after paying the undertaker in Barclay for—’
The crackling fusillade of gunfire and thudding impacts of the spray of bullets was a shattering intrusion into the peace of the forest. That drew a strangled cry of alarm from the woman as she stopped speaking; and from Steele a low groan that matched the scowl which flitted briefly across his features. This as he controlled his mount’s impulse to rear and maybe bolt, and the gelding in the traces of the buckboard collapsed without a sound, a massive amount of bright crimson torrenting from his throat and head.
Steele slid the Colt Hartford out of its boot as part of the same smooth series of actions that took him from his saddle to the ground. Where he landed, sure-footed, with the ready-cocked rifle in a firm, one-handed grip: just as there was an interruption to the firing. Not an end to it, he knew, for in the otherwise utter silence of the encircling timber, he heard the unmistakable sounds of repeater rifle actions being pumped. Within the confines of the surrounding near silence, the dead gelding made small scratching sounds as his failing nervous system caused jerky movements. And Mary-Ann Slattery was less noisy as she scrambled down off the buckboard and threw herself beneath it. Before the Virginian released the reins and cracked the flat of his free hand on the rump of the stallion to set him into a gallop: but across the rear of the wagon and into the timber instead of along the open trail where he would have bolted in panic. Then another volley of gunfire sprayed bullets down from a high point in the trees some one hundred yards up the trail and just off it to the left. And divots of dusty dirt, splintered slivers of wagon timber and a single ricochet off a front wheelrim of the buckboard kicked at or flew by Adam Steele as he dived for the same cover the woman had already achieved.
‘This can’t be happening,’ she said, sounding remarkably calm, and looking just as composed as she toyed with the veiled hat that had been dislodged when she leapt down off the buckboard seat.
But the Virginian gave her only the most passing of glances and paid just scant attention to what she said before he concentrated upon the area among the tree tops through which gunsmoke drifted lazily in the morning sunlight—saw this mist-like effect as he heard again the familiar scraping of metal on metal that signaled fresh bullets being jacked into breeches as expended shell cases were ejected. Then, perhaps more in impulsive anger at allowing himself to be bushwhacked than for simple effect and the wishful thought that he would hit one of the riflemen, he squeezed off a shot of his own. And stayed his gloved finger on the trigger after thumbing back the hammer: heard the woman who was sprawled at his side in a similarly prone position confirm that a scream of pain had been yelled from the direction in which he had fired.
‘You hit one, mister.’
He continued to aim the rifle out from between the front wheels of the buckboard, canted upwards across the inert rump of the dead horse, but now looked longer and harder at Mary-Ann Slattery. Who was almost a ravishing beauty in her present state of high excitement that verged on hysterical triumph. There were patches of color in her cheeks, camouflaging the freckles, and there was a fervid glow in her eyes that in combination with the way her hair had tumbled down at either side of her face gave her a look of wantonness.
Then a single shot cracked out of the trees, sounding anti-climactic in the wake of the earlier barrages of gunfire. So that it seemed right and proper when the bullet thudded harmlessly into a tree trunk far wide of the target. Somebody whimpered in pain and more than a single voice was raised in rasping complaint, but the sense of what was said did not reach the rifle-aiming man and the hat-mangling woman beneath the wagon.
The sounds of men climbing astride horses quickly followed by the clatter of hooves as the mounts were urged to an immediate gallop were not preceded by those that would have been made by the ambushers dropping to the ground. But Steele had never, after his initial thoughts when the gunshots were first exploded, considered that the riflemen had climbed trees to gain a height advantage over the route of their intended victims.
‘Are you all right, Mrs. Slattery?’ he asked, after he had wriggled out from under the wagon and come erect: and just as the thudding of hooves diminished into nothing in the distance.
‘It could be a trick, couldn’t it?’ she asked, remaining where she was, and eyeing him with healthy apprehension rather than debilitating fear as he extended a hand toward her.
‘Reckon there were four of them, ma’am. With one hurt real bad, left three. They had us cold, so there’s no need for trickery.’
She did some more toying with her hat—he guessed to wipe sweat off her flesh—before she held out her hand so that he could help her up from under the buckboard. She did not shake and there was a mundane style to the way in which she brushed the dust of the trail off her black dress. But her mind was not on the simple chore and she curtailed it suddenly to look up and eye the Virginian levelly.
‘I’m sorry, Mr. …?’
‘Adam Steele.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr. Steele. Of course I knew it was happening. I’m not usually inclined to get hysterical. But my nerves have been shot to … you must know that it is the body of my husband that is—’
‘Yes, ma’am. I know. There’s no need to apologize to me. I’ll go find my horse and harness him to the wagon.’
He glanced once more along the trail and up at the sun-bright tops of the trees from where the gunfire had been aimed. There was not a wisp of smoke to be seen there now, and the only sounds from this and other areas of the encircling timber were made by birds as they tentatively made their presence heard again.
‘When I started to say I only had but fifty cents on me,’ the woman called after him as he turned and moved off the trail to enter the trees in the wake of his horse.
But she did not continue when he made a dismissive gesture with a hand above the shoulder to which the Colt Hartford was not sloped. Then they were lost to each other’s sight because of the intervening tree trunks and high brush. Because of the denseness of this brush, and the quick ending of the gunfire, the black stallion had not gone too far into the timber and had left plenty of easy-to-follow signs. So that Steele was able to locate him in just a few minutes: found him cropping contentedly on an area of lush grass in a sunlit clearing.
There was just a trace of the crusted foam of dried sweat on his coat behind the bedroll but he was otherwise none the worse for his experience with fear of the unknown. The Virginian reckoned that the vaguely resentful look the horse gave him when he started to lead him back was due more to leaving the good grass than the prospect of returning to the trail.
While he was gone to retrieve the stallion, the woman had not been idle—she had freed the traces from the gelding with the three bloodied gunshot wounds in his head and throat.
‘I’d have taken care of that, Mrs. Slattery,’ Steele told the woman who had also brushed every speck of dust from her mourning dress and reset the hat on her head—most of her hair pushed up inside the crown again but with the veil still held off her face.
‘Just as I shudder to think I may have become hysterical, Mr. Steele, so I’d hate to be the helpless-in-troubled-times kind of female. I only wish I had the money to—’
‘I already told you, Mrs. Slattery,’ he cut in as he began to take the saddle and bedroll off his horse.
‘But not only are you helping me,’ she insisted, adamantly determined to put her point of view without interruption. ‘You have seemingly placed yourself in considerable danger by doing so.’
She looked pointedly at the dead horse as Steele loaded his gear on the back of the buckboard, alongside the plain pine box.
‘Only one thing is sure about that shooting, ma’am,’ the Virginian answered as he led the stallion past where she stood at the side of the rig and began to harness him.
‘Oh?’
‘It’s not the first time somebody took a shot at me.’
‘I gathered that, from the way you responded, Mr. Steele. Shall I get on?’
She signaled her intention to climb aboard and he nodded for her to do so, while he was still busy with the traces and could not help her; nor could he keep his gaze averted from the slender length of her body as its unmistakably feminine shape was emphasized by the fabric of the dress being pulled tight during the moves she made. She did not look back at him until she was seated, suitably prim again, on the center of the seat; but he could almost suspect she had been aware of the erotic impression she had created for him. Then he dismissed the notion from his mind, displacing it with a much more reasonable explanation—given the circumstances. That Mary-Ann Slattery was determined to do for herself all that she could without help—was not even prepared to accept a courteous offer of assistance to get aboard her dilapidated buckboard. And as he climbed up to sit down beside her, she gave strength to this reasoning by claiming the driver’s position on the seat and taking up the reins.
‘I’ll drive. Perhaps you’d best be on watch for further attacks?’
It had started out to sound something like a command, but she moderated her tone and also altered the set of her features so that it finished up as a suggestion.
‘Provided you can stay on the trail, ma’am,’ Steele answered and experimented with a slightly mocking smile as he turned to shift his saddle a little to one side—so that the stock of the rifle jutting from the boot was more easily to hand.
She looked sharply at him and he thought she was ready to flare with anger. But she elected to consider, rightly, that he was not patronizing her and a softness that came close to hinting at a gentle smile appeared in her tear-puffed blue eyes when she replied: ‘I promise.’
She was now driving a strong stallion that was a saddle horse unused to hauling a rig. And as she cautiously but firmly set the buckboard rolling and steered it around the carcass of the gelding with the fly-infested wounds, the Virginian found yet more common ground with this woman. For she obviously knew horses. Level with the place in the timber from where the ambushers had opened fire he asked her to halt the rig. And took his rifle with him merely out of habit when he moved off to check out the area.
In amongst the trees he had to clamber up a steep but conveniently rugged rocky rise to locate the riflemen’s vantage point some forty feet above the trail. Where, from the brush covered ridge he was not able to see the buckboard in its new position, but through the foliage of the intervening trees he had a partially obscured view of the dead horse and its immediate surroundings. He merely glanced in this direction before he gave his attention to the sign on the ridge. And from the number of spent shell cases ejected by the repeater rifles, combined with the more difficult to read sign of foot and hoof prints, confirmed he had been correct in his estimate of four ambushers. The one who was shot had not lost a serious amount of blood here on the ridge, before they all mounted up and rode away northwards—the ground falling away from the high point more gradually in this direction. At least one of the riflemen smoked cigars and one cigarettes.
When he was almost back at the trail after his brief survey of the ambush site, Steele saw the woman a second or so before she glimpsed him among the trees. Which was just long enough for him to recognize anxiety close to anguish on her pale face under the battered hat—before she got her emotions under firm control as she called:
‘Did you learn anything of importance, Mr. Steele?’
He got back on the seat at her side and slid the Colt Hartford into the boot before he answered: ‘There were four of them. The one who was hit either died fast, was only scratched or they were able to stop the bleeding quickly.’
‘I hope he dies slow,’ she said as she started the rig rolling. And Steele directed a surprised glance at her, as the rasping tone totally robbed her voice of its attractiveness. But if she had expressed on her face the extent of bitter hatred that had sounded in her tone, he was too late to see it in her profile. And the emotion he had heard was not so all-consuming that she was unaware of him surveying her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she offered. ‘I have no wish to burden you with …’ She shook her head vigorously and for stretched seconds was lost for words to express her feelings. Then, as the Virginian was about to speak, went on in a tone that was melancholic but a long way from self-pitying: ‘What makes helplessness the harder to take is not having the money to repay the kindness of those who go out of their way to—’
‘There’s just me, Mrs. Slattery,’ he told her. ‘And since I’m not headed anywhere in particular I can’t be going out of my way. Add to this that I was in the line of fire when those fellers started shooting back there and so I’ve got some business to do now and—’
‘But it was my fault,’ she insisted.
‘—one more addition, ma’am,’ Steele continued as if there had been no interruption. ‘You’re a new widow. I’m an orphan from long ago.’ He patted the hip pocket of his suit pants and experimented with another quiet smile when she eyed him quizzically as he explained: ‘And right now my funds are in better shape than yours.’