Sloan had to force himself to eat the steak that Sid brought back, but he worked at it doggedly and was pleasantly surprised at how much better it made him feel. After he had finished, he took two stiff drinks from the bottle Sid had brought with the meal, then lit up a cigar.
A wagonload of furniture arrived as he was finishing the cigar, and he went outside while Sid supervised the placing of it. There were two rolltop desks with swivel chairs, an old couch, several benches, and a cot for each of the cells.
The sun sank rapidly in the western sky, and a breeze came up, blowing hot and dry off the wide, dusty prairie and bringing in the strong, rank smell of the bedded herds. Passersby in the street stared hard and resentfully at Sloan, looked away when he met their eyes. No one spoke to him. It was an unpleasant experience for him. Already they hated him, already they feared him—and this was the way they showed it.
The two men who had brought the furniture finished carrying it in, got up on their wagon, and drove away. Sid brought a bench outside and placed it against the wall, and he and Sloan sat down. Sloan lit another cigar.
No need for patrols tonight. Texas Street was as quiet as a tomb. But Sloan knew, if the town did not, that the quiet was only temporary. The drovers wouldn’t stay away. They’d try this—their boycott ultimatum—but if it didn’t work, they would have to try something else. As though his thoughts had been running in the same channel as Sloan’s, Sid asked, “What do you think the trail hands will do when they find out their boycott didn’t work?”
Sloan shrugged fatalistically. “There’s only one thing they can do. Come in and tree the town. Kill me and you when we try to stop them.”
“Figured out what you’re going to do?”
Sloan grinned. “Stop them without getting killed.”
“And how the hell do you think you’re going to manage that?”
“Haven’t figured that far.”
Sid stared at him helplessly.
Sloan said, “It can’t be done without backing from the town. But maybe they’ll come though.”
“Like hell they will.”
“Maybe we can make them help.”
He hadn’t the slightest idea how he would accomplish that, and yet he had staunch faith, both in himself and in others. When the chips were all on the table, most men displayed characteristics not evident in them when things were going well. He figured the townsmen would come through—enough of them, perhaps, to turn the tide. And he could count on Sid.
The sun went down, and a soft, hot dusk hung over the dusty prairie town. Smoke lifted from the tin chimneys of houses, and Sloan smelled cooking food in the breeze that stirred past him from the upper end of town. Saloonkeepers came from the doors of their saloons at the lower end of Texas Street and stared resentfully at Sloan and Sid, sitting comfortably in front of the marshal’s office.
Something made Sloan turn his head. He saw Sylvia Flint coming toward him from the upper end of town. Sid saw her, too, and got up. “Maybe I can straighten up inside.”
He went in, and a few moments later Sylvia reached Sloan, who stood up as she did. He tried to do so without giving away the fact that he was hurt, but apparently failed because Sylvia said, “For heaven’s sake, sit down. Your leg is hurt.”
He sat down, and she sat on the bench beside him. For several moments there was awkward silence between them. His eyes searched her face, and he tried to recapture some of the old fire that had characterized his feelings for her. He failed, because the fire was dead.
With startling perception, she said, “It’s gone, isn’t it, Sloan?”
He started to protest, but the protest died on his lips. He said slowly, “There was a time when I grieved for you and a time when I cursed you for going away. I loved you, but I never admired you more than I do right now.”
She smiled, and the smile was only partly forced. “Thank you, Sloan.”
He said, “I’m going to get Burle, Sylvia. I’m going to either kill him or run him out of town.”
“I know.”
“What will you do?”
She sat in silence for a long, long time. Then she said softly, “I think I will go back home. I do not think I am very well suited to living out here.”
Her face was soft, softer than he had seen it. He said hesitantly, “It’s an awkward subject, but if you need any money, you’re welcome to whatever I have.”
“No, Sloan. No.”
He said, “Between friends money is only paper.”
She changed the subject. “What will you do, Sloan?”
He stared at her closely in the failing light. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“It’s Merline, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“She won’t hurt you as I did. I wish you luck in all you do.”
“Thank you.”
For a long time there was silence between them, still touched with awkwardness but more comfortable than it had been before. One thing remained between them, one thing—and when that was gone, there would be no more awkwardness ever again. But Sloan wouldn’t bring it up.
Sylvia looked at him at last and smiled. “You’d never ask, would you?”
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “No. I’d never ask.”
“Then I’ll tell you. Debbie wasn’t yours. She could have been, but she wasn’t. If she had been yours, I’d have stayed and married you when you came home.”
Sloan murmured, “I have wondered.”
Now her voice was touched with bitterness and self-blame. “And I let you wonder. I hated this town, Sloan. I wanted it tamed so that what happened to Debbie could never happen to another child.”
“No one could blame you for that.”
“I blame myself. Because it may cost you your life. Don’t underestimate Jeff Burle, Sloan. He’s as ruthless as a man can be. He’ll get what he wants no matter what it costs. He’ll do anything to win.”
“I figured him that way.”
Sylvia stood up. “And now I’ll go. I’ve been noble enough for one day. What I really want to do is scratch that damned girl’s eyes out.”
“I’m not worth that.”
“Don’t be too sure, Sloan. Don’t be too sure.”
He started to get up, but she put a hand on his shoulder and held him down. She bent and kissed him softly on the mouth. She would be hurt again, he thought. Life would hurt her until she died. Because there was a rarely found softness in her, and a generosity that was just as rare. Now she was alone, or would be soon. But Sylvia would not be alone for long. Sloan realized that to think such a thing about any other woman would be a condemnation, but with Sylvia it was not. Sylvia’s relations with the men in her life would never be cheap or sordid. Her motives were too unselfish for that. He watched her hurry up the street. She did not look back, and he had the uneasy feeling that the reason she didn’t was because she was crying and didn’t want him to see. She turned the corner and disappeared.
Sloan stared thoughtfully at nothing for a long, long time. He was remembering the war years, his brief leaves. He was remembering Sylvia and wondering if he were not a fool. Then he thought of Merline Morris and remembered the clear, straightforward eyes that could be so soft. There was fire in Merline as well as in Sylvia, but it would never spill over to include more than a single man.
He became aware that the activity in the street was not normal, and pulled his thoughts reluctantly from Sylvia and Merline to concentrate on the undercurrents flowing along the street. The saloonkeepers no longer stood before their saloons. The storekeepers, closing, did not walk past him toward their homes at the upper end of town, but rather turned downstreet to disappear into the Cowman’s Pride.
Sloan’s face was touched with a wry smile. A meeting was shaping up. The respectable and the disreputable were joining forces down there with a common purpose—that of ousting the marshal from their town. Each group had tried, in its own way, to rid itself of him. Burle and the saloonkeepers had tried ridicule, ambush, a smear. Dryden and his group had asked Sloan to resign and in their own conservative way had tried to buy him off. He wondered what they’d come up with next. A deal with the cowmen, perhaps, and this approach was certainly going to strain the consciences of the so-called respectable group. Because a deal with the cowmen’s group could only be consent to murder, the price on that consent being the cowmen’s agreement not to harm the town. Sloan was very close, in this instant, to getting up and walking down there to burst in on their meeting. He was close to giving them his resignation before they shucked their consciences and bought his death. A strain of growing stubbornness prevented it. The reasons he had taken this job were still valid ones. If anything, they were stronger than before. Sylvia had strengthened his resolve, whether she had realized it or not. And there had always been something about pressure that made Sloan stand like a rock in the face of it.
Dusk deepened into night, and stars winked out in the limitless black void overhead. The breeze died, leaving the town even more still than it had been before. Sid came out and sat down on the bench again. In the utter quiet lying along the street, Sloan could hear raised voices drifting from the batwing doors of the Cowman’s Pride. Grinning, he said, “Argument. That’s healthy.” Then he thought, It makes me nervous. It’s not flattering when the whole town wants you dead.
Down at the Cowman’s Pride, the meeting broke up. First the town’s businessmen filed out, to separate almost furtively before the door and go their separate ways, avoiding looking directly toward Sloan, detouring so that they would not have to pass close to him in the street. This, more than anything else, told him the things he wanted to know, and with the knowledge that the town’s respectable citizens had made a deal with the lawless element came an intangible feeling of dread, a menace that flowed along the street like water. He couldn’t fight them all, saloonkeepers and hangers-on, the respectable element, the cowmen, too. And if they didn’t want him, then why cram himself down their unwilling throats?
He got up and walked slowly and carefully past the bank, then down Fourth toward the Morris house. And, walking, he saw still another segment of the town that he had not considered a few moments before. The women, who might not approve of his methods but who would certainly approve of the result. The children, whose lives would be safe if he succeeded in taming the lawless town. They yelled in the early darkness, and played along the dusty streets and through the grassy yards. They played the games that Sloan himself had played as a boy back home, and he smiled faintly to himself as he heard the old, familiar arguments between them. A wild prairie town, but one that would be here long after cattle, drovers, saloon men, and gamblers had gone. If he was lucky and lived through the next few days, he would be here, too, watching his own kids play in the soft summer night.
He reached Merline’s house, limping more noticeably from his walk and sweating faintly from pain. She was sitting on the porch steps, her feet on the step below, her arms around her knees. She called softly, “Watch that broken board in the walk.”
He avoided the broken board and stopped just short of the steps.
Her voice was a trifle nervous, as though she sensed what he had come to say. “The town’s awfully quiet tonight.”
“No drovers in town.” He cleared his throat. “I’ve not got much to offer a woman. But I want to marry you. I think I’ve wanted that since I first set eyes on you.”
Merline stood up, and doing so put herself only inches away from him. She said simply, “And I’ve wanted you to ask me almost that long.”
“Is that yes or no?”
He could see her smile, even though the light was poor. “It’s yes, you fool. What else could it be?”
He had been nervous and scared all the way here. Now he relaxed. He wanted to laugh with pure relief. He put out his arms and caught her to him with a hunger that flared like a fire but that was also strong and solid and good. It had been so long since he’d held a woman in his arms. He had never held a woman quite like this one before. She was less composed than he had ever seen her. She was like a girl, confused, eager, uncertain. He bent his head and kissed her on the mouth.
Now he had something to fight them for that he hadn’t had before. He could feel strength flowing through his body, resoluteness through his mind. He had almost quit this afternoon, but there would be no thought of quitting again. This town was his, and before he was through it would be a decent place in which to live.