Early in the morning of the day Cort Lacey planned to leave Cliffordsville, Wassin rode into town. Storekeepers and shopkeepers were busy opening their establishments, but not a single one of them failed to take notice of the unnaturally white-skinned man who rode toward the livery stable.
Tricked in Broken Rock Canyon, Wassin had spent the last two and a half days trying to cut Lacey’s trail. But there had been no trail to cut. It was clearly time to get a new slant on things, so Wassin came into town for a few drinks, and to try and think of another way of flushing Lacey out into the open.
A young Mexican boy was shoveling manure from the stalls when Wassin came through the stable doors.
“You!” Wassin ordered, speaking to the boy. “Take care of my horse.”
Without looking up from the knee-high pile of dung he was building, the boy said, “I clean up in the mornings, señor. You must wait till Bert, the owner, comes from the cafe.”
Wassin, frustrated over his wasting of the last two days, and not very fond of Mexicans anyway, took three quick strides, grabbed the boy by the back of the neck, and smothered the startled boy’s face down into the still warm pile of horse shit. “You’ll take care of my horse now and not give me any lip, you little ... ” Wassin stopped. He saw something very interesting: Four tattered pieces of cloth, half-hidden behind a bale of hay. “Those,” he pointed. “Where did they come from?”
The boy, gasping for air and sobbing his fear, could not answer. Wassin slapped him hard across the face, sending little bits of horse dung flying off in all directions.
“Stop that damned blubbering and tell me where those four pieces of cloth came from,” Wassin once more demanded.
The young Mexican looked to where Wassin was pointing, and then nearly crumpled for fear of what this pale gringo would do to him as he said, “Señor, please, I know nothing of this cloth. I have not seen it before. I know not where it comes from. Please, señor, please. I tell the truth!”
Wassin stood, hand poised to strike the boy’s pleading face. He knew the boy was not lying, but he hit him just the same.
“All right,” Wassin sneered, “You don’t know about the cloth. Answer me this: Are there any horses in here you’ve never seen before?” The big, pinkish-white hand was poised to strike once more.
The boy’s eyes darted down the length of stalls. He was trying to remember. He was also trying to guess what answer would keep him from being smashed in the face again. He hoped the truth would do, but somehow, looking into those terrible black eyes set deep into that deathly white face, the boy knew that the truth would not do. But the truth was all he had to tell, so he told it ...
“Señor.” The word clogged in the boy’s throat. He tried again: “Señor ... I know all of the horses. None are strange to me. They all belong to the valley ... ” The back of Wassin’s hand came down hard against the boy’s already swelling right cheek.
“Do you know who brought each horse in?” Wassin demanded, bringing his maddened white face down low, so he was eyeball to eyeball with the terrified young Mexican.
The boy, his mind paralyzed with fear, felt the back of Wassin’s hand again, this time on the left side of his face.
Wassin spat through his teeth and threatened, “I’ll hit you again, you little pepper belly, now, out with it: Do you know who brought each horse in?”
“No! No, señor, no,” the boy blurted out. “Two of the horses—I know not who rode them in.”
“Where are those two horses from, greaseball?”
Seeing the gringo’s bony white hand rise with his last question, the boy answered as fast as he could roll the words out of his mouth, “One horse from Greenspoon’s Ranch, the other, she comes from the Five Fingers.”
“The Five Fingers,” Wassin hissed savagely. “How long has the Five Fingers’ horse been here?”
Again, the young Mexican answered quickly as he saw Wassin’s right hand begin to move. Speaking, however, came with more difficulty. The boy’s mouth was swelling to twice its normal size. The battered boy whispered nervously through puffed lips. “Was here in morning when I came to stable, day before yesterday.”
“There it is,” Wassin thought. “Lacey left no trail because he put those pieces of cloth on his horse’s hooves. And me, spending the last two days out there in that Goddamned sun. Pretty smart, Lacey, pretty smart.”
Wassin’s ruminating was interrupted by the pleading voice of the Mexican boy whom he still held in a vise-like grip. “I tell you truth, señor. Please, señor, you will let me go?”
“Sure, Mex, I’ll let you go.” So saying he loosened his grip on the boy’s neck. But not enough. The boy struggled for a while to free himself, but soon discovered how hopeless it was.
With big, soulful eyes, the young Mexican looked up at his tormentor and asked, almost in the voice of an old man, too tired and beaten to fight the world, “What more do you want?”
“Not much, Mex,” Wassin sneered. “I just don’t want you runnin’ around loose.” With that, Wassin balled a fist and smashed a vicious blow to the boy’s left temple. The young stable-hand fell to the floor in a heap.
Wassin tied and gagged the boy. Then he picked him up and practically tossed him into an empty stall. After that, he found a little niche where there was a clear sight-line to the stable door. There he settled, waiting for Cort Lacey to retrieve the horse he had left there over two days before.
It was only a matter of time, and, if Wassin knew anything, he knew a man like Cort Lacey would never stay in one place for very long. And now Lacey had spent two full days somewhere in Cliffordsville. Yes, Lacey would come. He could come soon. And Wassin would wait ... and be ready.
“Is there any coffee left, Mrs. Dunbar?” Cort asked cordially.
“No, I’m sorry, Mr. Lacey. You’ve finished it all,” Alice answered in a friendly, although distant tone.
Cort and George Dunbar had easily warmed to each other’s company over the last two days, but Lacey hadn’t quite been able to break the ice with the wife. She remained cool, aloof, and a bit untrusting of this stranger whose name she had often heard associated with death. He seemed nice enough, and he was also a friend of Ella’s, but still, there were all those men he killed. Besides, Ella Frank was, to Alice Dunbar’s mind, a very poor judge of character.
“Well,” Cort sighed contentedly, “if there’s no more coffee, I must’ve finished my breakfast.” He got up, stretched his legs, and took note that his left leg felt pretty good. All things considered, his wound had healed quickly and well. He was ready to head on out.
Tipping his hat to Mrs. Dunbar, Cort turned to leave the kitchen only to find Ella Frank blocking his way. She had his nearly empty saddle bag in her hands.
“You expect to ride outta here with practically no jerked beef, no coffee, no flour, and no beans in your pack?” Ella barked. “It’s downright foolhardy,” she went on hardly stopping to take a breath, “for a man to set out without decent provisions. Now you just sit tight, Cort Lacey, and Alice, here, will go down to Clay’s General Store and get all the fixin’s you’ll need.”
Cort wasn’t one to argue with a woman like Ella, so he just sat himself down and listened as she gave a list of goods and a handful of money to Alice Dunbar. A moment later, Alice was out the door.
Business was slow at Clay’s General Store that morning. A copper-haired woman who worked at the Mustang Saloon was trying on hats. Jim Clay, behind the counter, pretended to be counting tins of beans and canned peaches, but was really figuring how much money he’d need for a full hour with that girl. He was also counting how many bullets they’d have to dig out of him if his wife ever got wise. That’s when Alice Dunbar walked in.
“Good morning, Mrs. Dunbar. How are you today?” Jim Clay asked cheerfully.
“Very well, thank you, Mr. Clay. And how are you?”
Clay glanced briefly over at the copper-haired saloon girl. She had on a hat made of turkey feathers that seemed to please her. “I could be a whole lot better, Mrs. Dunbar,” he answered out of the side of his mouth. “Anyway, what can I do for you?”
Alice recited: “I’d like one pound of bacon, two pounds of coffee, two pounds of jerked beef, half a pound of flour, four tins of beans, and four tins of canned peaches.”
“That’s an awfully strange order for you, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so,” Clay said casually as he began to take her requests off the shelves and put them in a box.
Flustered by the storekeeper’s remark, Alice said defensively, “It’s for George. I don’t know what he wants with that stuff. He sent me to get it.”
Clay took little notice of Alice’s agitation because all of his attention was focused on the saloon girl as she took the turkey feather hat off and sashayed out of the store.
Picking up his thoughts where he left them, the storekeeper went on to say, “Your order seems like the kind I’d be fillin’ for a man who planned to be in the saddle for a while. In fact, I’ve been kinda expectin’ a strange lookin’ gent that rode into town earlier this mornin’ to come in and ask for the fixin’s that you did.”
A strange looking gent. Alice Dunbar remembered how Cort had described Wassin. Her face started to lose its color.
Jim Clay was startled when Alice asked, “What did he look like, this stranger?”
“He was a pretty big man,” the storekeeper began, watching his customer’s face with a great deal of curiosity, “but what was most strikin’ about him was how white his face looked ... ” Clay went on to describe, Wassin more fully, but “white face” was all Alice really heard or needed to hear. A terrible fear flew across her now ashen gray features. She was terrified.
Clay, amused with Alice’s sudden consternation over a fearsome-looking saddle-tramp, wondered what strange ideas she was conjuring up in her mind about the terrible, violent west.
Alice was agitated enough to almost run out of the store, which she was about to do, when Clay said sternly, “That’ll be two dollars and forty cents, Mrs. Dunbar.”
Alice dug the money Ella had given her out of her skirt pocket, gave it to the storekeeper, grabbed the box of food, and took off for home as fast as her old legs could carry her.
A few minutes later, the box of provisions frozen in her hands, Alice Dunbar burst through the front door and into the safe harbor of her startled husband’s arms.
George Dunbar was not the only one surprised by his wife’s dramatic return. Ella and Cort were also anxious to discover the reason for Alice’s terror-stricken flight from Clay’s General Store. It was only after minutes of incoherent sobbing that one word finally hissed through Mrs. Dunbar’s teeth ... “Wassin.”
There was no telling where in town Wassin might be, or what he knew. It could be the hired killer knew nothing of Cort’s hideout here in Cliffordsville, and, having temporarily given up the chase, had come into town for a rest. Or it could be that Wassin was on to him. One way or the other, Cort had to get out of town. His fight was not with Wassin, it was with Cliffords. But if Cort was to get out of town and take the fight to the Double C, he would need his horse.
George and Ella were still huddled around the drooping figure of Alice Dunbar when Cort said evenly, “You’d better bring her into the bedroom and lie her down. A little brandy wouldn’t hurt, either.” A few minutes later, with Alice tucked safely into bed, Cort said, “I’ll be gettin’ on my way. The longer I’m here, the more danger you’re in—especially with Wassin on the prowl. As it is, I’ve overstayed my welcome. Thank you, George, for givin’ me the shelter of your roof. Right nice of you. And thank Alice for me, too.”
Ella stopped him at the door. “You be damned careful!” she commanded. “That Wassin feller could be anywhere, and you’ve got to get across most of the town to get to the stable. You be damned careful,” she repeated.
“I’m always careful, except in matters of business,” he answered with almost a straight face.
“It’s me that ought to have my head examined. Throwin’ in with a feller that doesn’t know enough to be seated when he has a devil like Wassin on his tail.”
“I’m plenty scared, Ella, and I’ll be plenty careful too. And as for you, you old scoundrel, I’ll see you at the house raisin’ when we put up an honest to goodness house for you.” Then he was gone.
No sooner was he out the door, than he became part of the early morning shadows. It would take hours, perhaps, but slowly, ever so slowly, Cort would make his way to the stable.