The lawbringers 2, p.13
The Lawbringers 2, page 13
Mrs. Rand cocked her head toward them. “I think I’ve seen all my moonlight. You two go ahead.”
They went out on the front porch. As soon as Clay closed the door, Lavender said, “What’s wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
“You look like the last rose of summer.”
“It’s nothing.” He turned her in the circle of his arms. “Just looking at you brings me all the way back from wherever I was.”
“I’m glad. It didn’t look like a nice place.”
He adored her. He whispered, “Only one way to say I love you—and that’s not enough.” He kissed her gently. She looked lidded and dreamy. He said, “You are all I want.”
She snuggled against him and spoke with the side of her face against his chest. “I always believed in love at first sight, but it took three years for us to decide. Do you remember when I almost left here? When Mama died, I didn’t think the house could hold the grief. I hated my grandfather then—I had to get away.”
“I came with you,” he said. “To the vestibule on the train—to say goodbye. We never got it said, did we? I couldn’t see me walking nobly out of your life. I had to make you stay.”
“I’m glad you did,” she said. “But sometimes I’m afraid of your power over me, Clay. I guess I’m selfish. I just don’t want to be hurt.”
A buggy came rutting down the street. It broke them apart, but Clay held on to her hand. The buggy drew up at the gate, and Philip Shoumacher dismounted, holding up both hands to help a woman down.
“He’s certainly late,” said Lavender. “Is that his wife, I wonder?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never met her.”
“She looks like a shrew.”
The woman was small and bowed. “Don’t be unkind,” Clay murmured. Shoumacher and his wife ascended the porch steps. The editor tilted up one side of his mouth.
“I hope we didn’t interrupt.”
“Come inside,” Clay said with no great show of friendliness. “Mrs. Shoumacher? I’m Clay Rand.”
“Yes. I’m happy to meet you.” She was a strict little woman with a chapped mouth.
“Miss McAffee, Mrs. Shoumacher.”
Shoumacher said, “You got the introduction in the wrong order, you know,” and followed his wife inside.
Lavender whispered in Clay’s ear, “What a sour pair.”
“Maybe he’s got something to be sour about.”
“You mean his wife?” She giggled.
Clay shrugged. He had never been able to decide what he thought of Shoumacher.
Inside, the gathering pulsed with loud talk. The sheriff stood by the gun case and held himself rigidly aloof from the ribaldry. The men had become loose and loud, intruding upon the shell of Farris Rand’s indifference. Dinwiddie had pushed the Occidental’s professor off the piano stool and was playing Garry Owen very fast, with a certain flair. Whether or not it was meant to have any particular significance was known only to Dinwiddie, who had a strange sense of justice: Garry Owen had been Custer’s regimental theme.
The sheriff tried to make his voice sound courteous when he said, “Good evening,” to Philip Shoumacher.
“Pour syrup on waffles, Sheriff, not on me.”
The sheriff put on a little smile, in acknowledgment of the declared truce, but he said, “Your welcome here is fragile at best. Take it easy.”
Shoumacher’s hand fluttered in a conciliatory way. He changed the subject. “My wife, Ethel.”
Farris Rand dipped his head. “Ma’am.”
She said, “My husband promised he would try not to disgrace me this evening.” She gave Shoumacher a thin-lipped smile. He stared at her, but she turned blithely and began to chat with Dinwiddie at the piano.
The sheriff deliberately turned away from Shoumacher, but Shoumacher was not inclined to release him. “If our presence isn’t desired, you’ll have to say it out loud.”
The sheriff said, “You invited yourself to come. You may invite yourself to leave whenever it pleases you.”
Swollen at all times, Shoumacher’s eyes had a gloss on them. He was never far out of reach of a whiskey bottle; he was, as usual, a little high. “I took it as a simple oversight that you neglected to invite us.”
“Take it as you like.”
Shoumacher waved, encompassing McAffee and Littlejack and all the others. “Why wasn’t I included in your temporary armistice?”
“Let’s just put it this way—it’s always seemed prudent to me to drink upstream from your kind.”
Shoumacher’s wife cut in. “Should I resent that insult for you, dear?”
The sheriff turned away slowly. Someone laughed dispiritedly. Near Clay, Harry Greiff said low in his throat, “See that? I thought Shoumacher was going to cry.”
Susan Rand went to the front door for a breath of air. Udray and Colonel McAffee were talking silver politics in the foyer; they gave her a guilty look, and she said, “Gentlemen, please go ahead and smoke your cigars.”
Someone came to the parlor door and called Udray’s name. The rancher touched McAffee’s arm and went away. Left alone with McAffee, Susan Rand said, “I’ve been hoping to have a chance to talk with you.”
“Of course.” McAffee was a curious man, crisp yet roundabout, besotted yet clever. “Fine lad, your son.”
“Thank you.”
“That doesn’t just happen.”
“Thank you again.”
“You’re as troubled as I am. About this—wedding.”
“Perhaps we shouldn’t pry,” said Susan Rand.
“Our responsibility. Well, she’s a grown woman, eighteen, old enough for marriage by the custom of this country. But I’ve never pushed her into anything—and least of all this.” He moved a step closer and pitched his voice lower.
“Shock to her, her father dying young, and then her mother two years ago. Took her a while to get her bearings. She’s an honest girl, a good girl. Any man who puts his faith in her will have it rewarded. But she’s picked a bad time for this—we all know that.”
“I agree with you, Colonel, but there doesn’t seem to be much for us to do about it now but accept it.”
“I tried not to encourage her seeing your boy. Not because he’s bad, you understand. But Lavender’s still batting around searching for things. Mother’s death uprooted her, don’t you know. I felt, still do feel, until she’s made up her mind about a good many things, she shouldn’t tie herself down.”
“Naturally.”
“Quite right, Mrs. Rand.” His jaw tended to chop up and down when he talked. He looked past her shoulder. When she looked, she found Clay and Lavender coming forward.
Colonel McAffee wheezed, snorted, rearranged his catarrh, and finally said, “Like to have a talk with you two. Seems a good time for it.”
Susan Rand said quickly, “It’s likely to be a fruitless discussion, Colonel. Perhaps we’d better not.”
Clay said, “What kind of talk?”
The colonel chuckled. “Suspicious. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. How old are you?”
“Going on twenty.”
“Nineteen. My granddaughter’s eighteen.”
Lavender said, “I know what you’re going to say, but it won’t change anything.”
“Possibly. But it’s got to be said. You are eighteen years of age and-—”
“My mother,” Clay said, “was eighteen when my parents were married. Isn’t that right, Mother?”
His mother said, “That’s hardly the—”
McAffee said, “And how old was your father? But no matter.” He wiped his mouth. “Forgive me. I’m a little drunker than usual tonight. Listen here, son, I’ve got no grudge against you, except maybe that darky you’ve cursed us with. Just between these four walls it’s one particular curse that may work in my favor—you do get my meaning?—but man to man, Clay, you’ve picked a bad, bad time for all this. It can embarrass your father, embarrass me as well. Might be wise if you’d look into your conscience and tell me if you’ve really thought it out.”
“Before you appeal to my conscience,” said Clay, “maybe you’d better examine your own.”
Lavender said, “Be still, both of you. Grandfather, you promised me.”
“So I did,” McAffee muttered, puffing out his cheeks.
Susan Rand said, “My husband is coming.”
The sheriff arrived, found the four of them arrayed in the foyer, and said without preamble, “Colonel, I’d appreciate it if you’d not make any more speeches tonight.”
McAffee reared back. “I resent arbitrary attempts to muzzle me.”
The sheriff shook his head sadly. “Can it be that our pool of able men is so impoverished that they couldn’t find anyone better than you to run against me?” Without waiting for an answer, he went through the front door and out.
“Why—” McAffee thundered. Lavender took him by the elbow and steered him back inside. Clay chuckled and went with them.
Left alone in the foyer, Susan pressed both palms to her temples. After a moment she went outside after her husband, showing her anger. He stood in the shadows at the end of the veranda, touching the points of his moustache. She approached him; he reached for her arm, but she disengaged it. “Was that necessary, Farris?”
“Maybe not. I’m sick of him.” His dry, stained fingers smelled of cigars. He dropped his hand. “I don’t know why you and I have to go on hurting each other.”
“Don’t you?”
“Susan, I don’t think I’ll be able to stay in this house if you’re not in it.”
It made her face him. His jaw was set; he said, “You’re very beautiful tonight.”
“You don’t often look for the right thing to say.”
“Sometimes a man’s got to be careful. When you’re in the woods getting close to a wild animal, you don’t want to talk suddenly or move fast. If you startle it, it may bolt away.”
“Now I’m a wild animal, am I?”
“You know what I meant.”
Her face was soft in the dim light. “I don’t think I’ve ever understood you.”
“I think you understand me very well.”
“You’re part preacher and part gypsy. I can never anticipate your moods.”
He said, “There ought to be some advantage in that.”
“At my age excitement isn’t worth much ” she said.
“Don’t make yourself older than you are.”
“It’s important to a woman to know where she stands. I wanted to stand by you. But you refused me a place to stand. I can’t be secure in my trust, Farris—I can’t trust you any more at all.”
He said, “We haven’t got the happiness we wanted, but I don’t believe we can go back and start again. All we can do is pick up the pieces that are left and make what we can out of them. Maybe that can be enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“Susan, if you took one step toward me, I’d walk a hundred miles to meet you.”
It was a moment that needed something other than a quick answer. It asked for the kind of decision that would have to be honored for a lifetime.
Someone inside the house was playing the piano. She listened intently for a few seconds; it was not Clay’s hand. The cold wind swept across the porch, roughing up the bare branches above the veranda roof. Shadows moved across the lamp lit curtains. The party was noisy and busy.
Susan said, “It’s the wrong time for this. Don’t take advantage of my confusion. There’s too much going on all at once, and I’ve lost my balance.”
“But we’ll talk about it soon.”
“All right, Farris.”
He watched her walk back into the house. She moved with grace and pride, bowing her head and smiling to greet someone in the foyer.
Farris Rand finished his cigar, listening to the wind rush through the dark town. Light shone along the silver mane of his hair. His patrician face was composed; he seemed at ease.
He turned into the house, found his drink, and returned to the gathering of men in the parlor.
Dinwiddie was banging out a saloon rag. The sheriff stopped in the doorway; he watched his son make a path through the crowd, carefully balancing a brim-full glass of champagne. Clay’s face was flushed; he was tipsy and loose. He spoke to Dinwiddie, who nodded and wiped his brow with his sleeve and made way at the piano bench. Clay sat down and flexed his fingers.
Farris Rand put his shoulder against the wall and watched from twenty feet away. He felt weight beside him and glanced that way. His wife had stopped in the doorway; she was watching Clay with such close attention that she seemed to have stopped breathing.
Clay brooded on the keyboard while he drank half an inch of champagne, and then abruptly he made a brief, angry remark and stood up without having touched the piano.
Susan cast her eyes down. The sheriff’s expression underwent a small change. She glanced at him and moved away; he advanced into the crowd, toward a knot of men standing at the bar, attentive to Philip Shoumacher, who was investing his talk with pious unction. Words flowed out of him viscously, like thick, oozing axle grease. The sheriff caught one passage:
“Violence answers no questions. It’s the easiest thing in the world to get into a fight—it takes a better man by far to know when not to fight. Don’t you see, we’ve got to—”
The sheriff didn’t catch the rest of it, but he moved toward the bar with choppy strides and cut in. “I didn’t offer this house as a forum for your asinine opinions, Mr. Shoumacher.”
“Indeed? I say what I think, Sheriff.”
“An overrated virtue,” Farris Rand commented. Two men stepped back, leaving an opening. The sheriff spoke across it.
“You’re dull when you get drunk. I don’t think anyone’s entertained. Yield the floor, will you?” The sheriff grimaced, turned around, and began to walk away.
“Don’t turn your back on me!” cried Shoumacher.
The sheriff turned back. “No?” he asked. “Well, then, I suppose you’re right. A man shouldn’t turn his back on you.”
Shoumacher’s face brightened to crimson. His rigid smile cracked. His bravado mounted. “When a man becomes too powerful, he forgets the basic courtesies. You’re a crude case in point.”
The sheriff refused to be baited, and Shoumacher said, “We’ve had enough of you, do you hear me? We want your resignation.” It was an intolerant whine.
“Who,” the sheriff snapped, “is ‘we’? Identify yourselves.” His eyes prowled from face to face. “No? Gentlemen, we weren’t going to talk politics tonight, and so all I’ll say is this. On every ship one man has to be on the bridge, and I happen to be that man here. If it doesn’t suit you, you’ll have your opportunity to express yourself on Election Day.”
He thrust a cigar in his mouth. “You’re smug, Shoumacher, and you’re stupid. I didn’t make the laws here. If you don’t like them, change them—but don’t fling your tantrums at me. You’ve made it clear how you feel about this town—and I can only observe that if it’s as rotten as you claim it is, then it’s the good citizens like you who’ve rotted it up.”
Harry Greiff said thickly, “Hear, hear.”
Showing his disgust, the sheriff said, “Shoumacher, look in the mirror sometime.”
“What’ll I see, Sheriff?”
“Excrement.” The sheriff’s reply was businesslike.
Shoumacher’s answer to it was voluminous. His voice trembled, roared, and toppled. At the end of it he howled, “Murderers are the most conceited people on earth, Rand, and you are chief among them. You’re a bloodthirsty pig!” When Shoumacher ran out of things to say, Farris Rand removed the cigar from his tight-lipped mouth and grunted. He said, “Your assumption of infallibility only proves that your mind is closed.”
Clyde Littlejack reached the near edge of the group, head cocked over on one side. “What? Huh?”
The sheriff glanced at him. “I’ll translate. Only fools are dead-sure, Clyde. Does that answer you?”
“I agree with what Shoumacher said there,” Littlejack said.
“The hell you do. You didn’t understand half of it.” Dinwiddie said mildly, “Even Clyde has the right to an opinion, Farris.”
“Even Clyde,” the sheriff agreed. “Now I will tell you all this. When you get a tough steak, you need a sharp knife. If you people think Stanton McAffee can cut anything harder than butter, then you’ll deserve what happens to you.”
McAffee had been sitting half-asleep in the corner. He bounced to his feet. “Hold on—hold on. Ladies and gentlemen, honored citizens—”
Harry Greiff, beside him, pushed him down into his chair. The colonel’s eyes rolled up, and he subsided, mumbling.
The sheriff said, “Shoumacher, say good night.”
Dinwiddie said, “Here’s your head, Phil, don’t hurry out.” He laughed softly.
The sheriff added, “Set foot in my house again and I’ll set the dogs on you.”
Dinwiddie, still laughing, said, “I didn’t know you had any dogs, Farris.”
“I’ll buy a pack of them if I have to.”
Harry Greiff stumbled forward and grasped Shoumacher by the shoulder. “Goodbye, friend.” With a stiffened forefinger against Shoumacher’s chest, he pushed the man backward through the door.
Somehow Mrs. Shoumacher appeared, carrying topcoats. She looked as though she had no lips. She draped the editor’s coat over his shoulders without speaking, clapped the hat on his head, and steered him away. His rising protests rolled back through the hall.
It broke the party apart. The Dinwiddies gathered Colonel McAffee and took him home. Simmering anger brooded in the colonel’s flaccid, half-conscious face. The guests left by ones and twos, Clay escorting Lavender to the buggy, Littlejack muttering to himself as he left, Harry Greiff holding his head painfully. “Sleep well,” Harry Greiff said.
Farris Rand replied, “I always do.”
Chapter Fifteen
Ben Harmony had declined to come into town with him, so Clay had to load the wagon himself. After he lashed down the heavy load of planks, he laid his hat on the wagon seat and let the cold wind rough up his hair. Sweat logged his shirt, and the chill made him drag down his coat and shoulder into it. A few cotton ball clouds scudded across the horizon, but the blazing sky made the October cold all the more brutal.
