SO, ADAM STEELE had found it impossible to remain apart from the trouble that had exploded at the wedding. And could explain his action to himself only as an appeasement of the threat of shame that had crept in around him as he stood on the threshold of the dead Naylor’s place, listening to Mary-Ann start to make her stand and watching old man Quinn advance out into the open.
During the unhurried, near-strolling approach of the Virginian along the deserted length of street, the townspeople backed gingerly away from the gulpingly frightened Jansen to leave him in inarticulate isolation with a widening space on all sides but one—this where the gaunt-faced, hollow-eyed, near toothless old-timer with the fancy handgun in an unwavering two-handed grip closed in on him. And the fat company clerk appeared to have become rooted to the spot as he swung this way and that from his thick waist, big brown eyes entreating somebody to help him. But he never dared to look at Amos Quinn.
This while Tom Rexall and his bride clung more closely together—still gripping their glasses of champagne—and their respective fathers inched closer to them as the other men and women who had once been in the same group eased steadily away, back out of the line of fire from the Colt Hartford.
Then the pale-under-his-tan Duke Rexall took a hold of Tom’s free arm as Buck Sternwood hooked a gnarled hand over the shoulder of his daughter: and the local man glared at Mary-Ann through the barred window while the visitor peered toward the unwelcome stranger who stood on the center of Barclay’s one street. Rexall got his mouth open first, but the father of the bride was first to speak.
‘Story is, son, the man Vincent chased you off Rexall property? All the way back to the widow’s house?’ He gestured with a motion of his hand down at the corpse of Sayers. ‘He, Mr. Jansen and my son-in-law tried to prevent further violence? But were too late? Vincent was shot just as he tossed a bundle of dynamite on the roof of the widow’s house?’
His intonation made each statement into a query while his expression was caught between the brand of impassiveness displayed by Steele and a pained scowl of mounting anguish as he admitted to himself that he already knew the answers. As he spoke, he seemed to age over his sixty-some years, shrivel from his six-foot height and lose enough of his ideal weight to make his formal wedding suit look too large for his frame.
‘It was me that killed that sneaky Ed Vincent!’ Quinn yelled. And Ambrose Jansen, whose head was now just a few inches from the muzzle of the ornate revolver, was spasmed into a fresh bout of trembling by the harsh toned words. ‘At the shack at the entrance to the Rexall quarries, stranger! Plugged him to keep him from using that sneaky hat gun of his on Steele. I knew he had that hat gun, because I sold it to—’
Jansen gulped down deep enough to find his voice, and blurted: ‘But we don’t have guns, Mr. Quinn! Not now! Tom and me! And neither did Dick! We came here to a wedding! You can’t shoot us down like—’
‘I’m not concerned with that kind of blubbering, boy!’ Buck Sternwood snarled, and looked for stretched seconds as imperious as he sounded. But it required a greater reserve of willpower than he possessed to sustain such a commanding attitude—and it was almost as if the massed attention of the audience concentrated upon him acted to drain him further.
‘All right, Dad,’ his daughter said, raising a hand to drape his on her shoulder. Her voice was sadly soft-spoken, but carried clearly to every listening ear aligned along either side of the street and held on its center. ‘I’ll tell you what happened.’
‘Don’t, it can be worked—’ Duke Rexall began, the process of his feelings altering from bewilderment to dread suddenly complete.
‘Chrissy, they’ll kill—’ Tom Rexall cut in on his father, his voice croaky with naked fear as he switched the near crazed stare of his blue eyes between the faces of his wife and the widow at the cell window.
‘I don’t want to start our life together on a foundation of lies and deceit and suspicion, Tom,’ the woman in white said in the same coolly melancholic tone as before. And eased gently away from his hold on her and out from under the grip of her father. To step between Tom and Mary-Ann, facing the woman who was now leveling the rifle at her. ‘And I think you will allow us a life together if the truth is told before so many witnesses?’
‘You can tell the people of this town that Neil Slattery did not kill anybody, lady?’ Mary-Ann demanded icily.
The bride nodded and the groom vented a deep-throated groan—looked as if he might have staggered and even fallen had not his father been by his side to support him. But few of the watchers spared him more than an irritated glance before their eager attention was returned to his wife.
‘As it was told to me, Mrs. Slattery. Tom killed that poor deaf girl. Ambrose Jansen and Dick Sayers were with him, but it was Tom who panicked and pulled the trigger. Unaware Jane Quinn was deaf.’
The company clerk clasped his hands at his broad chest and tilted back his head to stare up at the sun-bright sky when he was named. But if he spoke aloud a plea for spiritual guidance it was drowned by the sudden swell of murmuring among the mass of watchers as the unadorned fact of the tragic killing was boldly and coldly revealed. Then silence came with shocking abruptness when the woman in the bridal gown continued:
‘But it was not a stupid prank that went terribly wrong. Tom genuinely believed Mr. Quinn had a considerable sum of money hidden in his store. And Tom needed money badly, to pay off several gambling debts in the east. In the past when Tom got into such trouble, his father had always sent money. On this occasion, Mr. Rexall wouldn’t help Tom … as we thought, until we found out it was a matter that he could not do so.’
There was another chorus of low-keyed talk, and attention wavered away from Chrissy Rexall to settle briefly on Duke and Tom who, despite their worry about the rifle in Mary-Ann’s steady grip, were also apprehensively aware of the suddenly glowering Buck Sternwood.
But with the speaking of the first word as she took up the story again, the woman in white recaptured all eyes and ears. ‘Duke Rexall has financial troubles of his own. Or rather, he did have until my father bought the Rexall Quarry Company two days ago and …’
‘Shut up and listen to the girl!’ Buck Sternwood thundered across the new wave of shocked talk that rose at this fresh revelation that affected almost every citizen of Barclay to a far greater extent than any killings.
‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ his daughter went on, without shifting her intent gaze from Mary-Ann who had said something to her during the burst of noise. ‘But I didn’t know anything of this until Tom and the other two got back to the house last night.’
‘I said to get to the point about my husband, Mrs. Rexall!’ Mary-Ann urged flatly.
‘Yes, yes, of course. When Tom told his father what happened at the grocery store, Duke Rexall was afraid my father would not allow me to marry Tom and would not put any money into the quarry company. So he had your husband killed and staged the charade you all know of.’
‘Had Neil killed, Mrs. Rexall?’ Mary-Ann paraphrased huskily.
For the first time, Chrissy Rexall’s composure was shaken, as she had to go into details insisted upon by the widow. ‘Your husband was working just beyond the window of the room where Tom was talking with his father. Mr. Rexall saw the passing resemblance. He had Vincent shoot your husband in such a manner it might appear to be suicide. Then the body was placed upon the horse Tom had been riding and—’
‘Thank you, Mrs. Rexall,’ Mary-Ann cut in dully. ‘So the man who was instructed to kill Neil is dead. It only remains—’
‘Ma’am, there’s to be no more killing here!’ Sternwood interrupted emphatically, and glowered at the face behind the bars for several seconds before he raked his gaze briefly over every other face. ‘I figure I’ve been fooled worse than anyone else around here … except for those that had loved ones wantonly slaughtered, that is. You hear this now. Like Chrissy just told you, I’ve bought into the Rexall Quarry Company. Haven’t bought out Duke Rexall, but I’m now in control. And things are going to change around here. For the better, far as law and order are concerned. There’s either going to be a Ranger post here, or we’re going to have a duly elected peace officer to deal with the kind of trouble—’
For the first time since the Colt Hartford exploded its killing shot into the head of Dick Sayers, smiles started to show on some faces. The Cromwells and the Parsons, Mrs. Brady and the Butlers, Miles Stone and even his sour-faced wife Annie. Bill Davis, John Bluell and some of the other wedding guests who were strangers in town also expressed smiling relief in reaction to the easing of tension as the citizens of Barclay welcomed the promised new order in their community. Some light-toned talk got started and rose in volume, to an extent where Buck Sternwood realized he had said enough for the moment.
But then the awesome crack of the Colt Hartford discharging a bullet from its muzzle once more ended happiness with fresh death. The shot taking the dismayed Duke Rexall in the heart with a force of impact that jerked him into a half turn away from his shocked son, and sent him pitching face down to the street, hiding the crimson stain that was starting to blossom across his previously well attired chest.
‘Remained for me to do that,’ Mary-Ann said dully, and released her hold on the rifle. Which she had thrust far enough through the bars so that the Colt Hartford fell to the ground outside.
Just as it came to rest at the base of the stone wall and the totally satisfied woman fisted her hands around two of the bars at the window, the vocal responses of the again stunned witnesses were trapped in their throats by the third killing shot to be fired this sunlit afternoon, as the decorative revolver bucked in the two-handed grip of Amos Quinn. To drive a bullet into the side of Ambrose Jansen’s head. Ending the life of the fat young man where he stood, so that he collapsed at the feet of his killer, who allowed the gun to slip from his still outstretched hands to fall onto the inert form of its latest victim and lodged there. Then the old man dropped his arms to his sides and began to move like a robot up the street. And announced flatly:
‘All right, you people. Ready as the Widow Slattery to face up to what the law says should happen to me. Which can’t be any worse than should happen to the Rexall boy. Unless this new rich man’s law allows his daughter’s husband to get away with—’
Amos Quinn was angling toward the one-cell jailhouse, his gaze fixed upon the building with the same degree of concentration as Mary-Ann stared out of the window into a middle distance only she could see. While two other participants in the drama were just as resolutely single-minded about one aspect of the scene, that became raucously noisy again as reaction to the third killing was vented.
Tom Rexall, white-lipped with anguish, was unable to tear his stare away from the discarded rifle on the ground—and seemed for stretched seconds to be helplessly rooted to the same dust-powdered street where his father lay dead. And Adam Steele, slowly moving between the side run of tables and the cross ones as he gazed unwavering at Rexall—having guessed at the idea that possessed the younger man and just as certain he would soon overcome the block that was holding him back from unleashing the compulsive fury swelling inside him.
The Virginian was right.
Tom Rexall lunged forward, an animalistic roar ripping from his throat in a spray of sun-glinting saliva. Adam Steele halted in mid-stride and dropped into a half crouch.
Yet again the entire town was in the fierce grip of a nerve stretching silence as the howl of rage that curtailed all other sound was itself ended. And even breath was trapped in lungs as Rexall and Steele, Sternwood and his daughter, Mary-Ann and Amos Quinn came close enough together for the actions of all of them to be seen by every witness as the component parts of a fascinatingly horrific tableau.
Rexall dived for the rifle and got both hands on it. His new bride gaped her mouth wide to shriek at him to stop. Sternwood and Amos Quinn hurled themselves at the young man as he straightened up. The woman in the cell continued to grip the bars and peer between them, either serenely resigned to the muzzle of the Colt Hartford that was aimed at her or blindly ignorant of the danger.
Fear constricted the throat of Chrissy Rexall and trapped the sound deep inside her. Age slowed the reflexes of her father and Quinn. Steele had time to delve a gloved hand into the gaping seam of his right pants leg, draw the knife from the boot sheath and bring his arm high above his head while Rexall was snatching up the rifle and drawing a bead on the unconcerned face of Mary-Ann. The Virginian knowing he needed the extra power of an overarm throw if he was to be sure of stopping Rexall dead.
The knife left his hand at full arm’s reach, spinning end over end across the angle where two runs of table met. Some witnesses were sure they heard the hiss of displaced air. Few did not hear the clicks as the hammer of the rifle was thumbed back. The blade struck home at Tom Rexall’s back, left of center. It sank in at an angle, but nonetheless sank in. Through suit jacket and vest and shirt and undershirt and flesh. Going in to the hilt, that was deep enough for the point to puncture the heart as a dark stain began to spread around the protruding handle.
Tom Rexall made a sound like a sigh and leaned against the wall to one side of the cell window. The scowl of fury was displaced by a frown of disappointment as he felt the rifle slide out of his hands. Then he died, and slid down the wall, was balanced on his haunches for a moment before he fell onto his side, high hat rolling away.
Before the hat came to rest and massed pent up breath was released, the Virginian had placed a hand on a table top and sprang across the crisp white covering with the neatly laid out cutlery. And then, before anyone else could do much more than bat an eyelid or shake a head, he was beside the jailhouse. Where he stooped to pick up his rifle, then used the Colt Hartford to hold the corpse still as he eased the knife from the lethal wound. The blade came free with a muted sucking sound, and he wiped the blood off the honed metal before he pushed the weapon back into its sheath.
It was the sight of him cleaning the blade on the shoulder of Rexall’s jacket that triggered the scream free from the throat of the widow still in her bridal gown. She took a step forward and her husband’s discarded champagne glass crunched under her foot. This made her aware that she was still clutching the stem of her own. She hurled it viciously at Steele, but it missed him and shattered on the stone wall of the jailhouse. Then she looked ready to lunge at the Virginian with her hands clawed into talons. But her father swung around and fastened an unbreakable embrace on her.
‘No, girl!’ he barked, and silenced the subdued outbreak of whispering talk that had begun as the glass broke against the wall. ‘It has to stop some time! Best that’s before decent and law-abiding folks get invo—’
‘I was one of that kind before he killed my granddaughter,’ Amos Quinn said dully. And everyone watched him go from sight around the side of the jailhouse. Then heard him out when he appeared behind Mary-Ann Slattery at the barred window. ‘Same as this young woman was, before the Rexalls had her man murdered. But if you meant what you said about bringing law and order to this town, mister, the both of us are ready and willing to face the consequences of what we done: with the truth of why we done it. That right, lady?’
The woman gripping the bars remained locked in the private world where all that mattered to her was contentment that the brutal and wanton killing of her husband had been fully avenged.
‘I meant it,’ Buck Sternwood answered adamantly. And looked pointedly at Adam Steele.
‘And do you mean to run the quarry company same as always, sir?’ an unidentified man called from out of the crowd.
‘Mean to run it better,’ the distinguished looking old man retorted, and perhaps was unaware of the easing of relief this simple statement triggered around him while he continued to watch Steele.
‘And I mean to leave this town a free man, feller,’ the Virginian told him. ‘Without waiting to see if a court of law upholds my right to do so.’
‘And if anyone tries to stop you, the killing won’t have stopped?’
‘That’s right.’
There was among the fragmented audience a sudden return of high tension as the people of Barclay experienced a willingness to do as Sternwood wanted—and a hope that it would not entail further violence.
‘I believe you,’ the old man supporting the near-to-collapse young woman allowed. Then jerked his head to indicate the deserted stretch of street down which Steele had come. ‘Ask you to believe all I knew of any of this was what Rexall told me?’
‘It matter what I believe?’ Steele countered as he started away from the front of the jailhouse.
‘To me, son.’
‘You want me out of town, feller. What else you want is nothing to me.’
‘Then all the rotten luck in the world to you!’ Sternwood snarled.
The Virginian glanced back at the scene that should have been a joyous one, but over which gloom and despair continued to hang like an invisible but nonetheless tangible dark cloud on this sun-bright day.
‘Men like me didn’t have that kind of luck, we wouldn’t have any luck at all,’ he drawled.
Vernon Dexter, his two look-alike sons and Dr. Preston were moving forward to attend to the corpses. Steele thought he heard somebody in the jailhouse call something, but could not even tell if it was Amos Quinn or Mary-Ann Slattery who spoke. For the pompous doctor had looked up from where he was crouched beside the body of Tom Rexall to yell in the wake of the departing man: ‘And one last thing: don’t you ever … COME BACK!’*
* It is unlikely he will ever return to Barclay, Texas, but Adam Steele will reappear in the next book of the series
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