Bathsheba Emerson stood at the upstairs window and watched the trail of dust grow larger, closer and closer. So he had heeded her message; he had decided to come. And alone.
He rode tall in the saddle, riding like a man with a purpose but without any unnecessary haste. Bathsheba watched him as he passed the corral and the outbuildings, her green eyes following him all the way to the hitching pole outside the ranch house.
As he got down from his horse, she noted for maybe the hundredth time the set of his shoulders, the slim strength of his hips. The brown moustache curved round his mouth drawing attention to lips that Bathsheba had known only in her dreams of him.
She watched him step towards the door, one hand pressed against her thigh, the other fidgeting with a gold pendant she wore over her yellow blouse, the back of her wrist pushing against the lower curve of her breast.
After several moments she turned and walked to the stairs: he was standing below in the hallway, looking up as if knowing she were about to make her appearance.
‘Marshal. It was so good of you to come.’
Dan Stewart nodded briefly and stood back as Bathsheba came down the stairs. Besides the yellow blouse, she was wearing a black skirt that fitted snugly at the hips and thighs, then flared out round the calves. Shiny black boots showed beneath the hem. Her long, dark hair glistened as she moved.
‘Let’s go in here, marshal.’
She opened the door to the best room and stood aside for him to enter first. As he walked past her she moved slightly so that his arm brushed against the front of her body. Bathsheba’s eyes closed for an instant and a sigh echoed inside her head.
‘In a little while, we’ll have coffee, marshal. I’ll make it for you myself.’
Stewart shifted around uneasily in his chair. ‘I don’t have the time. Miss Emerson, there’s a lot to do back in town.’
She raised an eyebrow quizzically. ‘Don’t you have a deputy?’
‘Sure, but ...’
‘Well, then, I’m positive he can handle things for you.’ She smiled slowly. ‘It’s a long while since we talked, marshal, just the two of us.’ The smile broadened and he could see the tip of her tongue between her red lips. ‘Or may I call you Dan now?’
Stewart stood up suddenly and gazed around the room.
‘Don’t worry, marshal, most of the men are out on the range.’ Bathsheba got up from her chair and began to walk across the carpet towards him. ‘Don’t worry, Dan.’
He stepped past her and stood with his back to the window, the sunlight warming him through his black waistcoat and white shirt. ‘You wanted to see me urgent.’
‘Very well. If we must get straight to business: I’ve been thinking over what you said yesterday about leaving Hastings and the Broken Bar to the law.’
‘And?’
‘And I’ve decided that you’re right.’
‘That’s good, Miss Emerson.’
‘Bathsheba.’
‘Sorry, I ...’
‘Call me Bathsheba, Dan. While we’re alone—and friends. We are friends, aren’t we?’
She was moving towards him again, closing on him slowly, like a hunter towards its prey, body tense and eyes alive.
‘Bathsheba, then. I’m right pleased you’ve decided to leave things to me. That’s the way it’s got to be.’
‘But there is a little proposition I’d like to make to you, Dan.’
She was standing directly in front of him and he could smell the sweetness of her breath and the slightly cloying scent of her perfume. The skin of her neck seemed to shine.
‘Go ahead.’
‘You’re only one man, strong as you might be. And you’ve only one deputy. That’s never enough against Hastings. You deputize my men. Say, a dozen of them. Then you can ride in and finish off the Broken Bar forever.’
‘That’s all you’re interested in, isn’t it? Getting rid of the Broken Bar. You ain’t worried about law an’ order. You ain’t even worried about me, whatever you pretend. You just want to see Hastings an’ his ranch wiped off the map of this territory. That’s it, ain’t it?’
Dan Stewart’s face was red with anger; the birthmark on his cheek showed clearly. Bathsheba’s eyes sparkled, then dimmed. She put out a hand and touched Stewart’s arm lightly with one finger.
‘It isn’t true, Dan. Especially that I don’t care about you.’
He threw up his arm and knocked her hand away. ‘Damn it, woman, can’t you never do nothin’ but lie? Why the hell d’you think all you have to do is make up to me an’ everythin’ll be just like you want it? You reckon that’s all you got to do, don’t you? Make an offer of that body of yorn an’ men’ll go out an’ get theirselves killed for you!’
She stepped away, eyes blazing now, face flushed; her hands tight in clenched fists, nails digging into her palms.
‘How dare you talk to me like that? How dare you suggest that I would ...’
Stewart came towards her: ‘Bathsheba, you’d do any damned thing you could to get rid of Hastings and what I’d like to know is why? What did he do to you that you can’t forgive?’ He stared at her with scorn. ‘What wouldn’t he do?’
She sprang at him, with her open hand clawing for his face but Stewart ducked his head back and grabbed her wrist and held it firmly.
‘He spurned you, didn’t he, Bathsheba. He turned you down and that’s one thing you can’t stand. So you’ll get round me as a way of gettin’ your own back. An’ you’ll try to get your men deputized so that they can go in and shoot down the Broken Bar, all legal like.’
Both of them were breathing heavily, perspiring freely. Dan felt her arm tense in his grip, then relax.
‘You can let me go now,’ she said quietly.
He did so and they continued to stand there, avoiding looking directly at each other. Then Bathsheba turned away and went to the door; she walked out of the room, leaving him there alone.
Dan Stewart paced the carpet, knowing that he could leave, should leave, yet not going. Something kept him there still, a sense of things unfinished, maybe unsaid. After a short time she returned with a coffee tray.
Her face looked fresh and undisturbed, her eyes moved over his as if nothing had happened between them, no anger, no pent-up violence.
She set down the tray and asked him to come over and sit down; poured out his coffee and passed it to him with a smile.
‘Is that sweet enough for you?’ she said a minute or so later.
‘Sure,’ Stewart nodded, ‘it’s fine.’
He thought she was about to get out of her chair and go over to him, but she didn’t. All she did was set her cup down in its saucer and stare over at him, the expression on her face both serious and innocent. It made her seem a lot younger than her forty-odd years: Stewart wondered how often she practiced it in front of her mirror.
‘What you said about Clifford, Dan, about Clifford Hastings. I guess you’ve heard all the rumors. It’s true we were betrothed to be married at one time. Two weeks before the ceremony—church and fancy party all arranged —it was called off.’
Now she did come to him and knelt beside his chair, looking up into his eyes. A tress of warm, dark hair fell against his arm, but he didn’t move.
‘One thing you must believe, Dan. It wasn’t Clifford who called it off. It was me. I did it myself, Dan, and do you know why? I realized I couldn’t marry him because... because I knew that I didn’t love him.’ She lowered her head and for an instant Stewart thought she was going to cry, but when he saw her eyes again they were clear as before. ‘It would have given us one of the biggest ranches in this part of the country, maybe the biggest. All that wealth, all that power and I turned my back on it, Dan. Out of a lack of one little thing ... a lack of love.’
Bathsheba let her face move nearer to him, a hand rested lightly, warmly on his arm and he could feel the shape of her fingers clearly through the thin material of his white shirt.
‘You can understand that, can’t you, Dan? You can understand about loving?’
‘Sure,’ he answered slowly, ‘I can understand, but...’
She placed a finger against his mouth: ‘No, Dan, no buts. Not now. Not for us. You must see, you and I, Dan, together we can have what we want. We can have each other and ...’
Stewart brushed her finger away. ‘We can have nothing, Bathsheba. Nothing!’
‘Dan!’
‘You talked about love, how things won’t work without it. That’s enough.’
‘But I love you, Dan, You must see that. Know it. Feel it deep within you. It’s deep within me, Dan, I...’
Stewart sprang up from the chair and headed for the door, his face taut and white. Bathsheba ran after him, grabbing at his arm, attempting to stop him, to pull him back.
‘Let go!’
‘Dan! Listen to me!’
‘I have listened. Listened till I’m sick of the sound of your voice, your smell, the sight of you.’
‘No!’
She wailed her cry and flung herself in front of him, both arms tight about his neck, legs pressed hard against his body. He struggled with her but she held fast as if she was holding onto the most precious thing in her life, onto life itself.
‘For Christ’s sake, let me go!’
He yanked one of her arms away and she held him all the tighter with the other, lifting her face towards his, her eyes, her mouth filling his vision. Then her lips were pressed onto his and he felt her tongue forcing its way into his mouth like a lizard, a snake.
He tried to shout at her and as his lips parted she was kissing him long and deep.
‘Jesus!’
He grabbed at her hair and pulled her face away from his own, stared at her, then wiped at his mouth with his free hand and spat down onto the carpet.
‘That’s what I think of you, Bathsheba. You and every other blasted woman I ever met.’
‘That’s right!’ she sneered. ‘That’s right. You ain’t a real man at all. No real man would wipe off a woman’s kisses that way. You ain’t natural, Dan Stewart, you just ain’t natural!’
He slapped her face, twice, making her head rock back and forth with ringing blows that brought fresh blood from the side of her mouth.
She banged her bunched fist at his arm and as he went to fend her off, she pulled the Remington .44 free from the holster at his chest.
Stewart stared down at the barrel, inches away from him, her two hands on the butt now, holding it as steady as her nerves and excitement would allow.
‘Now kiss me, Dan Stewart, now kiss me before I blow a hole in you for being the bastard you are!’
He saw her fingers begin to tighten on the trigger and bowed his head towards her own, closing his eyes as her mouth moved over his. He felt the warmth of her lips and smelt her perfume more powerfully than before; her tongue was probing inside him again and this time he could taste her blood from where he had hit her. Salt richness of her blood.
Stewart moved his hands quickly, reaching for her arms, for the gun. She grabbed at his waistcoat with one hand, biting down on his lower lip, clinging to him.
There was an explosion that seemed to fill the room and both bodies rocked apart, then collapsed against each other. For several seconds they performed a strange, slow dance, feet unmoving, bodies swaying in time to some silent rhythm.
Then Bathsheba began to slide towards the floor, the gun still in her hand. Stewart stepped away from her, staring at her face as it looked up at him in wonder. He moved his head and gazed down at his chest.
The front of his waistcoat was singed with the firing of the gun and a dark circle of blood centered round his breastbone. He lifted up his hand and saw that it, too, was thick with blood.
Bathsheba Emerson was on her knees, trying to keep her head inclined upwards so that she could see Stewart. But it was a struggle she was losing with every second; with every second that her life poured from the gaping wound at the top of her blouse, between the V of the gold pendant.
What had been the shiny skin of her neck ...
What had been living flesh ...
The gun tumbled at last from her grasp and hit the carpet with a dull thud. Stewart gazed down at her and her eyes sought him out for a last time.
Found him: flickered: faded: died.
How long Dan Stewart stood there he wasn’t certain. It seemed like far longer than it could have really been. At last he picked up his gun from the floor and replaced it in his holster. There was someone shouting from outside the front door. Stewart walked through and opened it, still slightly dazed.
A man in his sixties stood there with a hammer in one hand and an old rifle in the other.
‘Hitch up a wagon!’
‘I don’t know, marshal. I ...’
‘Hitch up a damned wagon!’
And Stewart turned on his heel and went back into the house. It was going to be a long ride back into town. Long and lonely—with only a dead woman for company.
It was a strange sight: the marshal sitting up in front of the wagon, bolt upright, looking straight ahead and paying no attention to those folk who clamored towards him from both sides.
His face was set, blank, pale with strain.
Behind him, lying in the bottom of the wagon, was the mistress of the Double C ranch. Bathsheba Emerson, her long dark hair combed out on either side of her face; eyes closed, refusing the sun.
A white sheet had been used to cover her body, lain over her with the hem touching her neck.
As the people of Liberation realized the grisly contents of Stewart’s wagon, they stepped back for a moment, stunned and silent. Then curiosity grew and they pushed forward again, anxious for a glimpse of the dead woman’s body, eager to ask the Marshal for information.
Herne was down at the far end of the street when Stewart arrived. He walked steadily up towards the office, seeing the crowd gather and uncertain in his mind what the reason might be.
Then he saw Dan Stewart and the wagon and thought he knew.
Hoped that he was wrong, but inwardly knew that he was right. Two ranch owners, two of the most powerful people in the territory, and both dead in so short a space of time.
Without them, the trouble could just blow over—but Herne didn’t feel it that way.
He stepped up onto the boardwalk and almost knocked over a small boy who was scuttling through the outside of the mob to get a better view.
‘Hey, sonny!’ Herne caught hold of him by the shoulder. ‘Why don’t you watch where you’re goin’?’
The boy struggled, then realized who had hold of him. His eyes popped and he stared up at Herne in a mixture of fear and wonder. ‘Gosh, marshal, I didn’t mean nothin’. I just wanted to see who Marshal Stewart had killed now. My pa, he says that you an’ Marshal Stewart are goin’ to kill half the town before you’re done.’
His blue eyes flickered over Herne’s face. ‘Is that right, marshal? Are you and Marshal Stewart really goin’ to kill half the town?’
Herne’s fingers gripped the boy’s shoulder until he cried out with surprise and pain. Then he let him go and stood and watched him as he scrabbled his way through the crowd of adults that had thickened even further.
Damn! said Herne to himself. Sweet damn!
And he made a path for himself to the wagon.
Stewart was instructing a group of the townsfolk to lift Bathsheba from the back of the wagon and take her over the street to the undertaker’s. His face was still taut and pale; Herne thought it was he first time he had seen any sign of real worry and caught a sudden glimpse of how Stewart would look if he lived to get old.
Old as he was himself.
Old as his pa, Long John Stewart, stone blind in Omaha: waiting for the coming of the rainbow whose colors he’d never be able to see again.
‘Come on, folks, it’s over now. There ain’t nothin’ left t’ see. Get on about your business.’
Herne stood sternly by the head of the wagon, staring down into the crowd, waiting while it broke up into little groups of twos or threes.
At the back of the throng he saw the portly figure of Wilbur Merz and beyond him, standing in the doorway of The Cattlemen’s House, Quentin Faulkner.
He wondered just how the town council would greet this latest death. Whether they would be relieved or angry. He guessed that before very long he and Stewart would get to know.
He glanced round at Dan, still standing by the door to the office, his eyes unusually dull and revealing nothing. At that moment maybe seeing as little as his old man.
Herne turned and went over to him, put his hand to Stewart’s arm: ‘Come on, Dan, let’s get inside.’
They sat and drank coffee laced with whisky for the best part of an hour, saying little all the while. After that hour had gone there was a knocking on the door and Herne opened it to let in the banker, Merz, and some of the town council. Faulkner was not amongst them.
They stood round looking important and disapproving while Stewart recounted the basic events that had taken place at the Emerson ranch. When he had finished, they waited, expecting more by way of explanation. Realizing there was to be none, Wilbur Merz patted his belly and took a step forward. Like he was about to address a meeting.
‘I think you should, er, understand our position, marshal. We hired you to keep the peace in this territory. Now being responsible with your deputy here for the deaths of two such important folk as Clifford Hastings and Bathsheba Emerson rings strangely when seen in terms of maintaining the peace. The Double C and the Broken Bar are responsible for a goodly share of the prosperity of Liberation ...’
‘An’ a hell of a lot of its trouble,’ put in Herne, but the banker ignored him, addressing his remarks to Stewart.
‘It is only fair to tell you that the council will have to call an official meeting of all its members to reconsider your appointment.’
Merz harrumphed and hemmed and hawed and made a whole lot more strange sounds, but still Stewart made no obvious reaction. Finally, Merz stood back and looked at the other men in his party. All were decidedly uncomfortable. Herne got up and pushed open the door.
‘Okay, you said your piece. Now get your asses out of here.’
‘Really, that is no way to ...’
Herne’s hand moved towards his gun. ‘I told you to get!’
Merz nodded quickly and waddled through the door, the rest following close behind. Herne slammed the door so hard and fast that the last member of the council was almost knocked off his feet.
He poured two more shots of whisky into their mugs and swilled water round the coffee grounds. Much as he would have liked to avoid it, there were questions he himself wanted to ask of Dan Stewart.
‘Dan, I guess you don’t want to talk about this business, but...’
Stewart looked over at him with tired eyes: ‘Go ahead, Jed. I owe you answers. More than them parasites.’ He stared at the door in disgust.
‘This thing with the Emerson woman, how she got shot. You said she grabbed for your gun and in the struggle it went off—what was goin’ on before that, Dan? What was it she wanted to see you about so all-fired sudden?’
‘She wanted me to deputize her men. Go in and shoot Hastings out. She didn’t know what you just now told me about him bein’ dead.’
Herne nodded, stood with one foot on the seat of the chair, not wanting to sit down. ‘That’s all, Dan? Nothin’ personal?’
Stewart blinked, then looked at the floor. After a while he said quietly: ‘What difference does it make, Jed?’
‘Damn! It sure makes a difference to me. If’n you fought with her ‘cause she was tryin’ to put a bullet through you that’s one thing. If’n it was over somethin’ between you an’ her, that might be somethin’ else.’
Stewart stood up fast, knocking his chair back. ‘Say what you mean, Jed. Stop stallin’.’
‘All right. There’s bin a lot of rumors flyin’ round. Remarks folk’ve made. Things you’ve said yourself about women that just don’t seem right. Don’t seem ...’
The words slid off his tongue into silence.
Stewart came closer to him, blood back in his cheeks. ‘Normal, Jed, that the word you’re lookin’ for. Don’t seem normal. Say it, Jed. Say it!’
Herne stood to his full height. ‘I asked you before what happened back in Ogden to make you quit. You wouldn’t say. If’n it was over some shootin’ I reckon you’d have come out with it. First, I thought it was somethin’ over a woman. But, no, it weren’t that. Not a woman, Dan. Trouble all right. But over a man.’
The atmosphere inside the room was like the silent, still moment before the storm breaks. The two men stood facing one another, hands never far from their guns, eyes locked across the short distance between them.
Finally, Stewart relaxed and looked away. ‘Yes, that’s right. A man. Young feller who worked behind the bar in the saloon. Folk got to know how I... how I felt about him. Took my badge an’ run me out of town.’
The last few words were almost too soft to be heard. Herne stood there, looking at the man he had thought of as his friend, finding it impossible to stop the waves of disgust that were running through him.
Stewart walked over to the jail door then turned around. Tm glad I said it, Jed. Not many folks I could have come out with it to. Not like that. But I’m glad I did.’ He spread his hands wide for a moment, then let them fall back by his sides. ‘If’n you want to quit, that’s okay by me. I’ll understand. My job here’s on the line anyhow. An’ with Hastings and the Emerson woman gone, I don’t reckon there’ll be too much trouble. No more than I can handle.’
Herne stood there, looking at him and listening, scarcely taking it in.
Stewart came towards him: ‘Thanks for your help, Jed. Maybe we’ll run into one another again sometime.’
He held out his hand: Herne looked down at it for a second, then spun round on his heel and walked out, leaving Stewart standing there, fingers outstretched, seeking friendship.