Vince Stoddard entered the big room. Koler followed like a fat shadow. Heads turned from the table.
Marve Styree stood up. He was a man strung taut. Half the trouble he had gotten himself into during his life had been because of those hair-trigger nerves of his. He was proud of his ferocity and his maleness. He confused the two. He was a thin pale man who reddened and peeled in the sun. He strove to play the part of the gentleman gunfighter, but he would never be able to conceal the fact that he was a lethal gutter-rat who had made himself a poor copy of his betters. None of which detracted from his deadliness and his cultivation of treachery as a fine art.
In this, he was different from most of the men gathered there, the majority of them cowhands who had gone wrong, farm-boys who thought a gun earned more than a plough and quicker, store-clerks who fancied themselves as badmen. There was among them some sort of code. It varied from man to man, but mostly it covered the fact that a man needed a partner and he gave his loyalty and trust to that partner.
Styree was feared by those who sided him, there were men there who had ridden with him on bank raids and stage hoists, but most of them were repelled by the man. He was a killer and the taint was on him. Yet the man also possessed some magnetism that drew them to him.
He stood now at the head of the table, leaning on it, his pale gray eyes shadowed by his gingery brows.
Koler tucked his thumbs into the armholes of his vest and said: “Aragon says she can handle this.”
Dale Brophy spoke. He had broken Yuma jail the year before and had killed two men in that time. He was young. He had a weak chin and buckteeth, but the others offered him a lot of respect. He was considered to be a good friend and a bad enemy. He liked life at Aragon’s. He’d slept sound for the first time in two years. But he was broke and he had a hankering to see a piece of life. And the way Aragon ran this place, he didn’t see much of that. Life to him meant strong drink and strong women. He didn’t like walking around without a gun on his hip. It made him feel indecently naked.
“For what my opinion’s worth,” he said, “Aragon can’t handle this one. I know that Mart Storm. I know the hull Storm crew. Tangled with ’em when I toted a gun for old man Brack. We all know Mart rode the owl-hoot. Now this other Storm’s here.”
Styree said in his cold voice: “You sound like this is makin’ a kinda pattern for you, Dale.”
“Sure, it’s a pattern, but I can’t tell what. Either Mart’s here lookin’ for somebody or he’s the law.”
There were shocked looks on the faces around the table.
One boy, still in his “teens said: “You mean Mart Storm sold out?”
“Didn’t you never hear of a badman turnin’ lawman? You see any difference atween the two? Christ, I never met a lawman didn’t double his wages one way or another.”
Styree sat down. He was thinking and it showed.
Finally, he looked up.
“Boys,” he said, “we thought we was real safe here. There ain’t never been a man on the run took on Aragon since Linda started here. But maybe we’re sittin’ plumb in the middle of a trap. Look at it this way—the Storms belong in Colorado. This is New Mexico. No Colorado lawman is comin’ in here for us.”
“Extradition,” somebody suggested.
“Extradition, Hell. Which of us is wanted in Colorado?”
“Me,” said an oldster who had winged a constable in Denver.
“Just one of us,” said Styree. “But nigh on every man jack here is wanted by the federal law. That sonovabitch has a federal warrant on him.”
That started the talk. Every man there wanted to say his piece.
Styree held up a hand for silence and after a while he got it.
“Boys,” he said, “Mart has this young feller planted here. That makes two of ’em. How do we know there ain’t a whole damned bunch of ’em hid out there in the hills? Aragon can’t save us from them.”
Koler said: “Styree’s right. It’s time we rid.”
“Ride?” said the oldster. “Jesus, I don’t have the price of a meal.”
“Nor me.”
Stoddard said, lighting a stogie so the flame of the match lit up his saturnine face: “Styree, I’m sure reading you, man.”
Styree turned and looked at him.
Stoddard nodded.
“There’s enough gold here for all of us.”
A young ex-cowhand said: “What you fellers gettin’ to?”
Koler chuckled. His fat shook.
“You ain’t never heard tell of old man Aragon’s fortune? How do you think the gal started this place. Why, I bet you don’t even savvy who old man Aragon was.”
“Do tell.”
“Claud Maxwell.”
That brought a hush. They stared at the fat man incredulously. There wasn’t a man there who hadn’t heard of the great Claud Maxwell. He’d robbed the dons, he’d robbed Wells Fargo, he’d robbed every bank worth robbing west of the Kansas-Missouri line. Or so the tales went. It was even said that on one occasion he’d held a Pinkerton office up and walked out with a pay roll. He worked mostly on his lonesome. The few men who ever worked with him had died after raids in unexplained circumstances.
After one raid, Maxwell himself had been shot. The story was muddled, but it seemed that a lawman who had been in cahoots with him had shot him in the back. Maxwell had survived for a month after the shooting, crawling from hiding place to hiding place like a wounded wolf. He had lived long enough to hand over his hidden cache of gold to his daughter.
Men said that the girl had sworn to honor her father’s memory by offering sanctuary to hunted men. It was as simple as that.
Styree coldly inspected the faces of the other men as if measuring their iron.
“Well,” he said, “who’s with me on this?”
The boy demanded in a scared voice: “What you aim to do, Styree?”
“Christ,” said the ginger man, “do I have to spell it out to you?”
The boy was on his feet, dismay showing on his face.
“Now, wait a minute, Styree. You don’t mean ...”
The oldster, who was inclined to defend the boy, said quickly: “Sit down an’ be still, kid. This ain’t the time.”
The boy looked wildly about him.
“I reckon I don’t aim to allow this to happen,” he said.
Koler told him: “Boy, you mind your manners or you’re sure liable to git yourself hurt. You know that?”
Styree smiled.
“By hurt the man means killed.”
The boy went still. He changed his tone. The knowledge of possible death cooled his hot mind.
“Lookee here, Styree, I didn’t mean ... Hell, I know we have to look out for ourselves, but there’s ways of doin’ this. I wouldn’t want the lady to come to no harm.”
Stoddard said: “Nothing has to happen to her, boy. She’s a mighty intelligent woman. She’ll know when the cards’re stacked against her.”
“First things first,” said Styree. “We settle this Mannin Lee’s hash and go ahead from there. Sit down, boys, an’ I’ll tell you the way we play this.”
They sat down. Styree talked and they listened.