AT NOON THE only sound that reached along the entire length of Barclay’s single street to be heard by Adam Steele was the chiming of a number of clocks from inside some of the flanking buildings. The clocks were not all exactly correct and so the variously toned chimes began before the hot sun was at its zenith and rang out more than a dozen strikes in the wake of afternoon getting started.
Nothing moved on the street for as far as he was able to see, either. Not a stray dog nor a fly nor even a grain of dust, for there was not a breath of breeze to disturb the utter stillness of the bright and heated air.
Earlier, he had seen the last of the wedding guests hurry from sight around the curve at the southern end of the street; rushing to get into the church before the marriage ceremony began after they were through fussing and fretting over insignificant details of the feast that was to follow the joining of Tom Rexall with his bride.
The wedding breakfast was to be an open-air affair and from where the Virginian watched for the day to turn sour he could see that a lot of planning and work had gone into making this an occasion for the entire town to enjoy. Midway along the street, centered between the Lone Pine Saloon and the Barclay meeting hall, trestle tables had been set up to form three sides of a rectangle with the shortest length running across the street. There were chairs to just one side of this run of tables, facing toward the north. There were chairs and place settings to both sides and the ends of the other tables sufficient to seat upward of two hundred people in all, he estimated. Freshly laundered and crisply pressed covers of many contrasting colors in addition to white draped the considerable combined length of the tables, and the households that had provided these had also supplied adequate cutlery and condiment sets. There was not, as yet, any food or drink, plates or glasses on the table. But, from what he had seen and heard of the last-minute preparations before women traded aprons for hats and hurried away as they smoothed their skirts and patted their hair, all of this was set up and ready to be served from the saloon on one side and the meeting hall on the other. It had also become clear that the children were going to be corralled in the meeting hall with their own special feast, while the menfolk were forbidden to enter the Lone Pine until the meal was over.
More building facades were decorated with festive bunting than were not, but enough were not hung with streamers and flags for the grocery store of Amos Quinn and Chuck Naylor’s blacksmith forge to appear unexceptional. Most of the decorations were suggestive of Christmas or July Fourth celebrations rather than of a wedding. Lone Star, and Stars and Bars flags and pennants were everywhere. There was not a Union flag to be seen anywhere.
Probably the most decorative building front was that of Matt Wolfe’s dry goods store, a few yards up from the end of one of the longer runs of table. But this was doubtless only significant because the stoop of the store had been transformed for the duration of the celebrations into a bandstand—there was an upright piano and stool on the stoop, along with three chairs on which a fiddle and two guitars rested. These instruments promising a more tuneful program of music than the organ at the church had provided before and during the marriage service.
But now, as the out-of-tune and under-powered pump organ began to give out with the joyous strains of the Wedding March and the peal of bells sounded in exuberant competition, Steele acknowledged with an uncaring grunt that he had quite likely misjudged the selection of hymns and the organist’s manner of playing them. Because his view of everything connected with this marriage was jaundiced by the violent events that had preceded it. And his cooly calculated expectation that there would be more blood spilled before the newly made marriage was much older.
Then he abandoned consideration of unimportant side issues and reflection upon what might happen at the wedding feast, to watch and wait and wonder if he would be able to remain detached from what would take place on this hot and brightly sunlit spring afternoon in a small Texas town.
The women who had been the last to scamper off to the church around the curve at the south end of the then deserted street were now the first to bustle back into sight again, laughing or weeping or both as they retrieved their aprons and hurriedly refastened them around their waists. Steele could put names to the sour-mouthed and beanpole-thin Annie Stone, the plain-faced Dorothy Parsons, the once pretty and now bloated Thelma Cromwell. Older than these and the women he could not name, but arthritically anxious to do her share of the chores was the gray-haired and gray-faced Mrs. Brady.
A bunch of two dozen or so children aged from five to fifteen were next to escape the reverent atmosphere of the church, eager to get to the eating and drinking part of the wedding celebration. Now even the older girls in the group were of an age to be moved to tears by what they had witnessed.
Those youngsters charged with the responsibility of riding herd on the rest were given help by the again fussing and fretting women to steer the children into the meeting hall. All this while the organist continued to give full vent to a jubilant blaring of the Wedding March in competition with the incessant clanging of the peal of bells at the church. Then, as the already eating and drinking children were allowed to emerge as far as the porchway to see the scene, and Dorothy Parsons stepped from the saloon bearing a highly polished salver on which stood two tall glasses of champagne, the groom and his bride appeared on the curve of the street. At the head of a press of people who were hurling handfuls of rice at them and at each other. Everyone laughing or grinning as they yelled back and forth. Advice and jokes, rejoinders and counter-jokes flew as thick and fast as the showers of rice. Most of what was said probably unheard even by those it was intended for because of the organ music and the bells and the roars and shrieks of laughter that accompanied the voices.
Thinking fleetingly of his own wedding amid the squalid surroundings of an Apache rancheria, Adam Steele certainly heard no more than an occasional shrilly called word that carried from the wedding party to where he stood in the early afternoon shade of the blacksmith forge doorway. But he had attended as guest at a number of lavishly staged weddings during his youth back in Virginia. And had vague recollections of much the same things being laughingly said at all of them that were doubtless being blurted on this Texas town street.
The new Mrs. Tom Rexall was a fine-looking young woman. A match for her husband’s height, she had raven hair that was emphasized by the stark whiteness of her wedding gown and headdress. And a round, youthful, pretty rather than beautiful face that was probably not so crimson in normal circumstances. Her upper body, at least, encased in the tight-fitting bodice above the exaggerated flare of the gown’s skirts, was firm and full and sexually alluring.
Most of the group around the newlyweds were women, dressed in a manner and at an expense that set them apart from the Barclay women who had made most of the preparations for the feast and now waited anxiously to continue their interrupted chores. Obviously were relations or friends of the bride or groom. But it was not just silk- and lace-gowned and hatted ladies who crowded close to the couple. Attired like the groom in high hats and swallow-tailed coats of pale gray, were the handsome Dick Sayers with an unlit cigar gripped between his grinning teeth, the white-haired and bushy-mustached Duke Rexall who expressed pride on his bronzed and crinkled face, the elderly Bill Davis and John Bluell who looked a lot happier now than when they had been among the group that brought Chuck Naylor’s body to the Slattery shack, and the just as old Buck Sternwood who looked enough like the bride to be her grandfather, even her father.
The other local ladies who either did not volunteer or were not called upon to lend a hand with the catering arrangements, together with the men of Barclay and Ambrose Jansen, formed the largest group to crowd into sight where the single street of the town curved across the front of Amos Quinn’s Grocery and Notions Store and the next-door barber shop. Bart Parsons who ran the Lone Pine, the pompous doctor, the skinny Charlie Cromwell, the ancient Vernon Dexter and his elderly look-alike sons. Miles Stone, Ned and Dean Butler. Some of the men with their wives on their arms. Many of the guests in this largest group looking uncomfortable in tight or loose-fitting best clothing that was infrequently worn. Some appeared discomfited by the small-town grandeur of the unusual occasion. Because of these factors, the Virginian was unsure if—even had he been at a closer vantage point—he would have been able to recognize whether anyone was experiencing a sense of shame at being a part of this celebration for the happiness of two young people when two others were newly buried beside the church which suddenly became silent.
Obviously by design, the organist and the bellringers finished in unison. And in the sudden surrounding silence the laughter and voices of the group centered on the newlyweds had a stridency that soon offended even those who were responsible for the body of noise. Then there was an embarrassed pause that could have lengthened into stretched seconds of high tension had not the fleshy-framed Dorothy Parsons stepped forward, a broad smile on her homely face as she extended the sun-glinting salver toward the bride and groom.
‘Real French champagne from France, with the compliments of your father-in-law, Mr. Rexall. And your father, Ms. Sternwood … oh my, I mean Mrs. Rexall!’ The woman made the announcement in a histrionic tone that revealed she had rehearsed the careful error many times. But it produced the expected burst of tension-relieving laughter as the couple smiled in acknowledgement at the beaming Buck Sternwood and reached for the glasses. And Dorothy Parsons reverted to her natural voice to yell raucously: ‘Don’t you local men worry none! For them that don’t have the taste for the finer things of life, Mr. Sternwood’s springin’ for whiskey!’
Cheers and catcalls and whistling were set to drown out the swelling volume of laughter as Tom Rexall and his new wife interlocked their arms so that their faces were drawn close together as they took a first sip at the champagne.
One of the instigators of the fresh outburst of noise was Dick Sayers, who stood on one leg so that he could scrape a match into flame on the sole of his shoe. Then he touched the fire to the cigar as he started for the Lone Pine entrance. And came to an abrupt halt after taking just one pace. This simultaneously with the crack of a rifle report. It required perhaps two full seconds for everyone else at the wedding celebrations to be shocked into curtailing what they were doing or saying when the shot rang out. And not all of them got their bearings quickly enough to see the green-eyed and blond-haired Dick Sayers fall flat out on his back at the feet of the newlyweds, his corpse held rigid until he made a dust-raising impact with the street surface, when his dying nervous system convulsed him and blood gushed from the ragged exit wound at the back of his head: just trickled from the small hole in the center of his forehead. His smoking cigar went in one direction and his high hat rolled in the other.
The dead man lay still. The hat came to rest. The cigar continued to wisp blue smoke. One woman screamed and a man shouted, which signaled like responses from many other throats. This as eyes raked shocked glances to every sun shadowed place on the street in search of the killing rifle and the killer behind it. Until a second shot exploded across the chorus of voices. And, while those closest could not fail to see that the bullet had hit the discarded cigar and blasted it to shreds, almost everyone peered at the spot from which the shot was fired. Then, without exception, all eyes saw the dark metal of the gun barrel as it was slowly pushed out between the bars of the tiny window of the small stone jailhouse next to the Lone Pine Saloon. Next, those who knew her and were in a position to see her bar-shadowed face, rasped the name of Mary-Ann Slattery as she rested her cheek against the stock of the Colt Hartford.
Her voice cutting across and then silencing the buzz of whispering, the grim-faced woman called: ‘I’m where I belong if that’s what people want! But you can only hang me once—and I’ve got four more bullets in this rifle!’
She drew a bead on the suddenly sweat beaded, square-faced Tom Rexall, aligning the rifle sights on the bridge of his nose between his rapidly blinking blue eyes.
‘Atta girl, Mary-Ann!’ Amos Quinn bellowed, and checked another surge of vocal sound just as it began to rise in reaction to the woman’s threat. ‘And I got six shots in here I’ll be happy to trade for a noose if that’s what these folks who used to be my friends want!’
The doorway through which he had come out of his store unnoticed was still open. He was many strides away from it now, carrying his tall and thin frame in a very upright attitude as he advanced on the largest group of wedding guests, the ornately engraved European revolver thrust far out in front of him: held in a two-handed grip at shoulder level, so he was able to peer along the top of its barrel and aim the rock steady gun at the head of the trembling Ambrose Jansen.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ Buck Sternwood demanded to shatter the new silence, ignoring Quinn to share his angry bewilderment between the resolute face at the barred window of the jailhouse and the sweating-with-fear Tom Rexall. ‘I was given to understand …’
‘Me, too!’ Duke Rexall cut in, and then did a double take along the northern stretch of the street beyond the carefully set up tables. And the intensity of his squint-eyed stare through the bright sunlight caused many others to track the direction of his gaze. To where the unwashed and unshaved Virginian in the rumpled, slept-in city suit had stepped off the threshold of the forge and was advancing slowly toward them. ‘The gunslinger as well, Tom?’
There was no doubt that the elder Rexall was as perplexed as Sternwood, his son and his company clerk. But whereas the two younger men were seemingly faced by the inexplicable, the older ones demanded an explanation. And for long moments no more questions could be asked or answers attempted by men with throats constricted by shock or terror.
‘For once, no lies were told, gentlemen!’ Mary-Ann Slattery said bitterly, and spat out the courtesy title like it was an obscenity.
‘I knew for sure it was a lie when they said Ed Vincent threw dynamite at your place and got himself shot before it went off!’ Amos Quinn yelled in mounting excitement.
‘I was told you and the stranger was dead sure enough,’ Thelma Cromwell rasped in a disgruntled tone—the town gossip affronted to have been informed of what was now patently a false rumor.
Steele drawled as he moved across the line where a fourth run of trestle tables would have completed the rectangle: ‘You can see the living proof, ma’am. The report of our deaths was blown up out of proportion.’