Sheriff Lee Calloway, of Golden Gap, New Mexico, closed the cell door on the last of the gang. It was good to finally have an end to the business, he thought. There were still more trials, but his part was mostly done. When he’d accepted the sheriff’s job, which was offered on the basis of Walter Bingham’s description of what he’d seen and heard of Lee’s actions, he did so mostly because it gave him a convenient way of getting help finishing the job he’d started when he first backed Riley’s gang off Carmen in the desert. He’d hired on three deputies, one of whom was Harold Ford, after he got up and around again. Ford was going to be quite a lawman one day.
But now, having finished the job, for all intents and purposes, he didn’t think he wanted to be sheriff forever and ever in this little town. It was a nice town now, and folks said they liked the way he’d cleaned it up and all that, but what did he have for roots here? He was beginning to feel the need of roots for the first time in his life. He wanted to have some wherever he lived. He was considering going back home to Maine, though the idea didn’t in itself enthuse him very much.
Actually, he supposed he had it pretty good right here. He had a paying, steady job, and he had gotten out from under the business in San Pablo when the witness admitted making a mistake, after seeing the dead body of Riley. He had it made, folks would say. Only, somehow, something seemed missing.
He heard the door of the sheriff’s office open and close. He went back out front to see who it was.
Doc Morris was sitting down across the desk from his chair. Lee sat down and offered the doc a cigar from the box on his desk. He never smoked them himself, but he’d found it made some folks more comfortable and easier talkers to be offered a cigar, so he’d gotten into the habit. The doc waved it aside.
“I’ve got something I want to tell you,” he said. “It’s about the way you found that wagon all loaded up with the golden statues.”
“You’ve heard something?” He’d wondered about the question, but since the gold had all been recovered, he figured it didn’t really matter anymore.
“I did it.”
Lee just looked at the doctor, not exactly sure if he’d heard right.
“I did it, I said. That’s right.” Doc Morris swiped at imaginary dust on his knee and looked at him. “I want to turn myself in. I got greedy. I ought to be locked up. I killed Tracy. He and I discovered the gold in the cave, and I killed him so he wouldn’t talk.”
Lee thought a while. Then he said, “I reckon I’ll have to arrest you, then. I don’t hardly believe it though.” He looked hard at the doctor.
“I’m guilty. I can’t live with it anymore.”
Lee felt depressed. If you couldn’t trust a man like the doc, what was the world coming to?
“Let me tell you somethin’,” he said to Morris. “If that wagon hadn’t been there just then, I wouldn’t be settin’ here talkin’ to you right now. I’d be dead, most likely, and so would Carmen.”
“That doesn’t make what I did right.”
“That’s true,” Lee admitted heavily. “I guess you’ll have to stand trial. I don’t know what the jury will say. But I know that I’ll have to tell them how you saved my life and Carmen’s, even if you didn’t intend it, and then Spike Littleton’s and Harold Ford’s. The way I heard it, after you got back to town that night and they told you about them two that was hurt, you went out to the ranch and stayed up for two days runnin’, seein’ to them, pullin’ them through.”
“Guilt. It’s my job anyway. Once you drove off with the wagon, I got to thinking. I saw that what I had done wasn’t right, but at first I thought I’d just keep quiet and not let on. But the more I thought it over, the more I knew I couldn’t live with it. I want to make up for it. Besides, if I’d been where I was supposed to be,” Morris said sharply, “Spike and Harold wouldn’t have had such a bad time of it.”
“Well, I reckon you got a point there. Though I’ll be locking you up, that won’t be nothing compared to the way you’re already locked up in your own guilt.”
“I know,” Doc Morris said, and Lee took him back to a cell.
Afterwards, Lee went outside into the hot sun and looked up and down the street. Quiet, peaceful. Someone was playing a guitar somewhere. The music drifted through the town like the gentle sound of running water. Lee sat down on the bench in front of his office and took up his whittling.
The doc! It was the last straw. Everything had a sour taste about it now. He didn’t want to stay around. He needed to think what he should do next.
But then he was interrupted again. Here came Carmen. She sat down beside him on the bench.
“Why haven’t you been out today to make sure I’m all right?” she asked. There was a peculiar look in her eye, sort of twinkly. He wasn’t sure he liked it. Dealing with her was getting to be harder than dealing with Riley had ever been. Trouble with a woman was, she was never direct like a man. She had to come at you sideways and make you think she was up to one thing while she was really up to something else. It wasn’t his kind of battle. He was sure to lose every time.
“I reckon I got a few things more to do than check on you every day,” he said.
“Then why have you been out to the ranch every day—until today? I had lunch all ready for you, and you didn’t come.”
She was, he noticed, more prettied up than usual. She had on a hat that looked ridiculous, just like the ladies around town who considered themselves very fashionable wore. Carmen wasn’t normally like that.
He decided that he’d do best to keep his mouth shut. If he opened it, something was likely to come out that would make trouble for him.
“Lee,” Carmen said, looking down at her hands in her lap. He watched her warily. She glanced up at him, and her eyes were watery. It made him as uncomfortable as if he had sat on a beehive.
“Lee, oh, Lee,” she said, and she seemed to be waiting for him to do something, or say something. “Isn’t there ...? Wouldn’t you like ...?” She stared down at her hands. Suddenly she looked different to him, as if she were a small girl who wanted something and was disappointed. It wrenched at him. He wanted to do whatever it was she wanted. If only he could figure out what it was she did want.
“Well,” he said, taking a long drink of air and trying to cheer up the conversation by getting it onto something neutral, “I reckon that I’ve done all I came here for. I expect I’ll be moving on shortly, after the last of the trials. Turn the sheriff’s job over to Harold, if the town’ll have him. I expect they will. He’s a good man.”
She began to cry. Now what he said? Blamed if he knew what went on in these pretty little heads.
“Lee, don’t you want a family?” she said finally. “I thought ...”
So that was it. The realization hit him with near enough force to blow his head clean off. He was cornered, sure enough. Had bought trouble, and now he was going to have to pay for it.
Someday he’d have to learn himself not to buy trouble in the desert.