Five minutes later, Guild dismounted, ground-tying his animal and walked quickly to where the crowd had gathered on the side of the house. Torchlight lent the staring faces a certain forlorn quality. Here and there you could hear a woman crying.
Sheriff Carter put a big hand on Guild’s shoulder. “You just stay calm, Guild, and let me handle this.”
But Guild paid no attention. Inside the crowd now, he saw Frank, Beth, and Ben. He no longer had to wonder what had happened.
When he reached the front of the crowd—how pretty they smelled on the cool night air—he found her.
A small bald man in a dusty black suit bent over her. Obviously he was a doctor and obviously he was searching for vital signs, and just as obviously he was finding none.
Adair and Hollister stood on the other side of Sarah’s body. The doctor looked up at them and shook his head. He closed his bag and stood up.
Guild paid the doctor no attention. He just kept staring down at Sarah. The contrast between her sweet, peaceful face and the blood spreading across her chest and stomach startling him.
Ben Rittenauer stepped up. “I’m sorry, Guild.”
Guild continued to stare at her, but he spoke to Rittenauer, “You did it?”
“Yes.”
“Couldn’t you have goddamn shot her in the hand or something.”
“I tried, Guild. I honestly did. She had a gun on me and she moved and—”
Guild shook his head. He wished he were alone with Sarah. Finally he glanced up at Rittenauer and knew the truth. There was genuine grief in the man’s face. He hadn’t wanted to kill Sarah.
Two chunky Mexican men came with a stretcher and a gray woolen blanket. They forced the crowd to stand back and laid the stretcher on the dark grass and they picked Sarah up by the shoulders and the feet and then set her on the stretcher.
As Guild watched them, Frank came up.
“I’m sorry, Leo.”
“I’ll bet you are.”
“Whatever you might think, I cared about her.”
Guild turned and faced him. “You ever think that maybe this is your goddamn fault?”
Frank Evans sighed. “Leo, I didn’t ask her to come out here.”
“She was trying to protect you, you stupid bastard.”
“I didn’t ask her to protect me.”
“Well, she wanted to anyway because she loved you. Doesn’t that make any sense to you?”
Adair stepped into the center of the crowd. He stood on the bloody grass where Sarah had lain. “People, I’m sorry for this. It certainly isn’t how I planned the evening to transpire.”
The guests stood in the flapping light of the torches and the deep shadows of the evening, looking eager to forget about what they’d just seen. A gunfight between two male equals was one thing; the death of a once-pretty, older woman was quite another. She could have been their sister or mother or wife.
Adair smiled. All his arrogance was in that smile. Guild wanted to go up to him and slap him around. “But if the participants are still willing, I’m ready to see a good old-fashioned gunfight. Right, Mr. Hollister?”
And with that, Hollister stepped forward with a small strongbox. Adair flipped back the lid and then held the strongbox up so everybody could see. There was no mistaking what was inside: good Yankee greenbacks.
“Ten thousand dollars,” Adair said. “Ten thousand dollars to the man left standing at the end of the fight.”
Ben Rittenauer looked over at Frank Evans. Between them passed a barely perceptible nod. Frank’s eyes found Guild’s then and dropped.
Guild said to Adair, “There won’t be any gunfight tonight.”
“Oh?” Adair said. “Is that right, Mr. Guild?”
“That’s right. She came out here to stop it and we should at least give her that.”
Beth took a small, elegant step forward and said, “Guild’s right. We owe Sarah that.” She looked at Ben Rittenauer. “I don’t want you to fight tonight.”
Adair said, speaking directly to the crowd, “I say let the invited guests decide. How does that sound, folks?”
At first only a few people applauded. But over the course of the next half minute, many others started clapping and shouting for a gunfight. Within a full minute, virtually the entire crowd was clapping and chanting, being silly in the way drunken adults are silly, eager now for activity that would make them forget the woman who’d just been killed.
“Do you hear that, Mr. Guild?” Adair had to shout above the din. “I’d say they want a gunfight.”
Adair turned to Rittenauer and Evans. Hollister brought over the strongbox.
Frank Evans put out a hand and touched the money.
“Feels nice, doesn’t it, Mr. Evans?”
Guild started for Adair then. If he had his way, there’d be no gunfight tonight. It was the only thing left he could do for Sarah.
But as he stepped forward to grab Adair, he felt the unmistakable shape of a gun barrel pushing into his back.
The sheriff leaned forward and said, “You’re coming with me, Leo. And no goddamn argument, you understand?”
There was no sense arguing. Guild let himself be turned around and pushed back through the crowd.
The lawman took him to the far side of the house where it was quieter. They stood three feet apart. The lawman kept his Colt trained right on Guild’s chest.
The first thing he said was, “Give me your gun, Leo.”
The second was, “Now I want you to find your horse and get the hell out of here as fast as you can. Do you comprehend me, my friend?”
And that was when Leo hit him, a good clean shot to the side of the face, enough to knock the man to his knees, enough that Guild was able to retrieve his own Colt and hurry down to the corral where the crowd was now seating itself and where the two gunfighters were taking their places.
Unless Guild acted very quickly, the gunfight was going ahead as scheduled. He hurried through the shadows and the dewy grass.