Adam steele 43, p.7
Adam Steele 43, page 7
Now, as he lowered his gear to the ground and leaned gratefully against the side fence of the livery’s corral, breathing deeply and wiping sweat from his bristled face, he took the time to reflect upon the most intriguing factor of his escape. The revelation by Arlene that there was safe refuge at the Providence boarding house. A business run primarily by the domineering Blanche Knight who, he had always considered, had little more regard for him than did Len Fallows.
But Arlene had, of course, specifically said it was Tom Knight who offered the room. A man who invariably came off second best to his wife in any dispute. So this could be a case of the henpecked husband making a stand for entirely selfish personal reasons. Having nothing to do with a belief in Steele’s innocence. Nor out of any liking for the Virginian—Knight had never been noticeably for him since the town became unequally divided in its views about the drifter who chose to remain in the Providence River Valley. But, then again, neither had he been particularly against Steele.
He was a fence-sitter on every issue. So at least Steele could be sure Tom Knight would not be committed enough to be a party to a double-cross.
Something else about Tom Knight, though. Were it not that Blanche kept him on such a tight rein, he would run Harlan Grout a close second for the title of most frequent customer of Harry Krim at the Golden Gate. So maybe Knight had been bolstered by Dutch courage when he made the offer to Arlene. He could now be stone-cold sober, regretting his words. Hell, he might even have forgotten.
There was just one way to find out. And after a pause by the corral fence of no more than a minute, Steele moved to put this into effect. Hefted his gear off the ground and surveyed the rear of the two-story frame house, its six windows all darkened.
The livery stable and the bank were also in total darkness. While just a glimmer of light showed at a draped rear window of the stage depot, in a room of the building’s living quarters shared by Joanne Morrison and her son, Michael.
He was about to fist a hand around the knob when the rear door of the boarding house folded away from him and he tensed to react. The earlier notion about an unlikely double-cross filled his mind. Then Tom Knight’s voice growled out of the darkness:
‘Hell, Steele, I was wonderin’ how long you was gonna hang around out there. Lookin’ at the moon or whatever.’
Steele knew, within a moment of the door swinging open, that Tom Knight was not drunk. Then the round face with its small eyes and blue-veined nose came into view and he decided the man was afraid.
He felt his senses were heightened by the combination of events that had happened so fast since he rode into Providence earlier this evening. Detected something was wrong. Then learned from Lavinia Attwood exactly what was amiss. Let himself be jumped by the curly-haired man. Was knocked unconscious. Came out of it to find himself accused of blasting a man to death. A series of events which, if carried to its end of a trial in a court of law—as Len Fallows had gloated he intended—signaled at best the loss of the dream he had turned into a reality: at worst, death by hanging.
‘You’re as sober as I am, feller,’ Steele said, and had voiced the words before he knew he was speaking aloud the opinion.
Knight showed a grin that was just a little strained as he beckoned for his visitor to enter. Countered: ‘And you never killed the guy whose wife’s laid claim to the old Sanderson place.’
His voice was more strained than his expression. And as soon as Steele was in the house, Knight sagged back against the hallway wall and growled:
‘Hell, I sure could use a snort now! Let’s get to the room I got fixed for you, uh?’
He started along the hallway that ran through the center of the house from the front to the back. There was a lighted room with a part-open door at the front on the right. Across from the dining room where Steele had once eaten supper as a guest of Lavinia Attwood. But it was not this private sitting room of the Knights that was their destination.
He followed the man up a narrow staircase that made a turn, then another and got even narrower. And now Steele felt his senses were numbed in the wake of that strange sharpness of mind which had gripped him a few seconds earlier. He felt more deeply tired than he could ever remember. His back throbbed and the swelling on his jaw seemed, to his mind, to have doubled the size of his lower face.
Twice he stumbled, then heard Tom Knight giving him instructions: warning him of a turn, when a step was unusually high, or a piece of carpet was frayed. It seemed to Steele that Knight was whispering, his voice forced low to guard against being overheard by somebody. And the Virginian visualized the sudden appearance of Blanche Knight, wide as she was tall, the woman’s fleshy face a mask of rage as she roared at her husband for acting against her wishes. Then screamed to the world that there was a murderer in her house.
They reached the top of the stairway and Knight pushed open a door and announced:
‘Your room, sir.’
He executed a bow, grinning to demonstrate it was not meant as a gesture of mockery.
And Steele found himself sharply aware of himself and his circumstances again—how he was responding to them. He was close to exhaustion at the end of a very long day which had taken more out of him than he had realized until now. Tom Knight was not whispering. It just seemed to Steele, whose head felt like it was filled with cotton waste, that the man’s voice came from a long way off.
‘Shit, you look like death, mister,’ the pot-bellied, narrow-chested man said, shocked. ‘I oughta have give you a hand, damn it!’
He took the saddle and gear off Steele who felt relieved of a mental as well as a physical burden. Saw quite clearly the room into which he stepped at a nod from Knight. An attic, illuminated by the moon that shafted in through two dormer windows built into the east-facing slope of the roof. Used as a storeroom, it was stacked with crates and cartons and pieces of old or broken furniture: smelling musty.
‘I’m grateful, feller,’ he said and lowered himself onto a lopsided sofa that was lumpy and spilling its stuffing through a tear. But it felt wonderfully comfortable to him and he recalled what Lavinia Attwood invited. Out front of this very building. When she suggested they go talk in the schoolhouse while he sat on something that was not moving. A lifetime ago, it seemed.
‘… soon as I saw the horse come trottin’ into town,’ Knight was saying. ‘I figured you wouldn’t be far behind. Me and Harry Krim captured him and put him back in Harlan’s stable where he belongs. Don’t know if you planned it as a sign to me, but it’s what I took it for.’
‘I didn’t, feller,’ Steele replied wearily, leaning the back of his head against the high back of the broken-down sofa as he closed his eyes. ‘I wasn’t thinking too clearly. Whatever, I’m grateful.’
‘Recognized it as the horse Harlan rented you.’
‘Sure. Something’s wrong, Knight?’
‘That’s for damn sure. Name of Curly.’
The name came and went through Steele’s mind and he knew it was important he should have got a grip on it, but did not. Because his still unclear thinking was fastened on something else. A whole lot of things, but one flipped out of the confusion to the forefront of his mind.
‘Where’s your wife? That’s what’s wrong, feller.’
‘Gone to Broadwater, ain’t that beautiful?’ Knight answered in a delighted tone. This as he straightened from setting down Steele’s gear on the narrow floor of the attic which was boarded only below the ridge of the roof, for the width of the house but just some fifteen feet across from back to front.
‘Left me in charge, on account of she didn’t figure it mattered. Since the only roomer we got is the schoolteacher and she’s near enough like one of the family. But now we got us a new boarder, uh?’
‘You let me know how much it’ll cost and I’ll—’
‘Blanche handles the cash, Steele!’ he cut in sharply. ‘And she ain’t here. You can be here for as long as that sister of hers takes to drop the latest baby she’s expectin’. The Marlows took Blanche up to Broadwater not so long after you left to go out to your place.
‘She reckoned as how I’d drink myself stupid in Harry’s place soon as she went. Got to allow, I was startin’ in on that, until that Rice female showed up and told what happened out at your place. And Len Fallows and some others hotfooted it out there, Len figurin’ to collar you for the killin’.’
The name Curly came into Steele’s mind again. And went. Then he felt the need to question Knight on the finer details of the account he was giving. But, most powerful of all was the desire, near irresistible despite everything else, for sleep.
Knight pressed on eagerly: ‘Well, soon as I heard the nigger woman planned to get you loose, I figured to lend a hand. Show folks around here—especially Blanche, that’s for sure—I ain’t just the no-account drunk that I’m all the time took for.’
‘Real glad you made that decision,’ Steele heard himself answer. Now even his own voice sounded to him like it was coming from far away.
‘Come to think of it,’ Knight said thoughtfully, and although Steele was unaware of it, the man’s manner was actually distant now as his mind drifted away from the moonlit attic cloyed with the stale air of many hot days. ‘It’s the first damn decision on anything important that I’ve made in so long I can’t recall.’
He looked expectantly at Steele, seeking a response. But thought he had drifted into sleep until, eyes still closed, the Virginian offered:
‘Yeah, feller. It sometimes happens people take more of a hand in running our lives than we realize. Until we take the time to figure it out.’
‘Damn right!’ Knight agreed vehemently. ‘And unless we’re real careful, life can pass us by and … Shit, I’ve only got myself to blame. Most of the time. Hell, I came west to see the elephant, like a whole lot of others. You recall that expression folks used to use? See the elephant? When they started to roll on the wagon trains, way back?’
‘I’ve heard it,’ Steele said, experiencing a comfortable warmth and sleepiness. Something like he had felt often in the past year and a half. Out at Trail’s End. When he sat in his chair, reading or thinking or simply sitting at the end of a long and satisfying day: looking forward to just such another day tomorrow. When it was much easier to drop off into sleep in the chair, than to take the time and trouble to undress and go to bed.
Now, though, the circumstances were entirely different. He was not at Trail’s End. It had not been a good day. And tomorrow, or even tonight, his situation was likely to get worse.
‘Trouble was,’ Tom Knight growled, ‘when I got to see the damn elephant it was pink! And after that I started to see blue mosquitoes and green spiders!’
‘Know the feeling,’ Steele said, briefly recalling the massive orgy of drink he had embarked upon in a Sonora cantina long ago.
‘You do?’ Knight was incredulous for, like everyone else in Providence, he knew the Virginian was not a drinking man. Never took anything stronger than a cup of coffee in the Golden Gate. Then he did a double take at Steele. Decided the man was too groggy to be sure of what he was saying: merely responded with what he thought was an appropriate answer to anything said to him.
‘Well, I’ll leave you to rest up some now,’ Knight said as he went to the door. ‘Like I say, you don’t have to worry about stayin’ here, long as Blanche is with her sister. Except when the schoolteacher’s around the place, of course. You’ll have to be quiet then. Although I don’t guess Ms. Attwood would turn you in, uh?’
‘I wouldn’t like to put her in the position she has to decide,’ Steele said. ‘Thanks again. I’ll try not to be any more trouble to you.’
‘Pleasure for me to take the trouble, Steele,’ came the forceful reply. ‘Hell, I could die tonight and I’ll die happier than before. Knowin’ I’ve done somethin’ I’d made up my own mind to do.’
‘Good.’
Knight scowled. ‘Dammit, I’m a fool! Talkin’ about dyin’ and all, the way things are.’
‘Forget it,’ Steele assured, turned and swung his feet up on the sofa, to stretch out along it, his head at the end beyond the reach of the moonlight which angled in through the skylights. ‘Been times I reckon I’ve been a lot closer to death than now.’
Knight shuddered and answered: ‘Yeah, so let’s not think about it, uh?’
‘Thinking about dying doesn’t bother me,’ Steele was not sure if he replied or simply thought. And perhaps he smiled wryly as he added: ‘But it’s the last thing I want to do.’
Chapter Eight
STEELE CAME AWAKE to brilliant sunlight that smarted his eyes. But they did not hurt so much as his throat, which felt searingly desert dry. Then the worst pain of all jolted along the length of his spine as he tried to get out of bed.
Which was not a bed, he remembered. As the events which led to him waking in the attic of the Providence boarding house flooded into his mind. Tumbling over each other, like they were struggling willfully to be first in line for consideration.
He closed his eyes and lay still for what he thought was several seconds: there was no yardstick against which to measure the passage of time in the darkness. Nor any inclination to try to make the calculation.
His mind was clear, filled with memories in the correct chronology as he concentrated on the present. Listening to what was happening out beyond the darkness of his closed eyelids and the locked-in capsule of his mind crowded with images of the immediate past. Refused to contemplate the possibility that maybe what he thought of as the immediate past was longer ago than a few hours. Spanned much more than a night between when he was shown into a musty attic and the next dawn.
The alternative did not bear thinking about: a whole series of forgotten hours mounting into days and nights not registered by his conscious mind. Or temporarily blocked out at this present newly awakened stage.
The town was quiet. Assuming he was still in the Knights’ rooming house—not the condemned cell of a penitentiary. Hell, this was crazy! He snapped open his eyes again. And remembered to raise just his head so the potential for pain latent in his lower spine did not flare. Felt his jaw hurt a little now: as a smile spread across his face to re-awaken the familiar lesser discomfort of the bruise from where Curly slugged him.
Curly: it was a name known to Tom Knight. Or at least there was something lodged in Steele’s mind that made it seem Knight had spoken of Curly with a capital C. Not just of an indefinite curly-haired man who had leapt out of the thicket of brushwood just as Elmer Rice was getting blasted to death …
He was going too fast.
He had seen he was in the attic of the Knight boarding house in Providence. And since the sun that shafted into the room, not directly into his face, came through the two dormers he recalled were in the eastern slope of the pitched roof, it was morning. Early morning, because of the angle the sunlight came in. Early morning, too, because the town was so quiet: the only sounds coming from the timber that was spread on all sides of where he now lay. Birds reaching the end of their dawn chorus.
Then he heard regular creaking sounds from closer at hand than the trees which enclosed the town square. Inside the house. Slow, furtive footfalls on stairs. Somebody who did not want the sounds of his or her approach to be overheard.
Steele, now knowing exactly where the sources of his discomforts were located, was able to rise up from the lumpy, split, stuffing-spilling sofa and to swing his feet to the floor with relative ease. There was a dull ringing in his head, but his back didn’t really hurt so much now he knew to move without haste.
He was able to reach out and slide the Colt Hartford from the scabbard on his saddle without shifting from the sofa. Sure in his own mind he had made little noise, and the steady advance of footfalls on the stairs was proof of this. The man or woman—Tom or Blanche Knight …? Lavinia Attwood or Len Fallows …? Billy or Arlene …? —came closer without hesitation.
There was time to check that the chambers of the Colt Hartford were still fully loaded. Time to aim the rifle toward the door at the end of the boarded area of the attic as he hooked a gloved thumb over the hammer. Time to sit in this muscle-aching attitude for stretched seconds before the knob turned and the door swung inwards. Time to become as tense as he had been last night when the back door of the boarding house was opened: and he failed to smell liquor on a man’s breath.
On this occasion smelled a welcome aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Just before he recognized the familiar broad-shouldered and pot-bellied frame and the round face and red hair of Harry Krim. The saloonkeeper not wearing his usual leather waist apron but otherwise looking as he generally did to Steele. Even to the extent that he carried a tray on which stood a pot of coffee and a large china mug.
Krim froze and caught his breath, his eyes widening in fear as he looked at the aimed rifle.
‘I’m sorry,’ Steele said. And a bone cracked in his arm as his tension eased and he quickly turned, uncaring about the discomfort in his back as he slid the rifle into the scabbard. ‘I didn’t know who you were.’
‘It’s okay, Mr. Steele,’ Krim rasped and vented a whistling sigh of relief. Looked to be on the point of having his legs give way beneath him. But after he took a moment to recover he stepped over the threshold, a hangdog expression on his face. ‘I shoulda knocked on the door, I guess. Waited to find out if you was awake.’ Now he shrugged and almost tipped the pot and mug off the tilting tray. ‘I figured you could use some coffee? Wasn’t sure about eatin’. Maybe Tom’ll see to that when he wakes up?’
‘The coffee smells like it’s all I want in the world right now.’
Krim advanced fully into the attic and did not close the door behind him. Stooped and set the tray on the floor, grimaced as he straightened.
‘Something?’ Steele asked, and found the aches were almost gone now that he had started to move this way and that after a night of apparently total inertia on the sofa. Or maybe it was just the appetizing fragrance of the coffee soon to be coursing down his throat and into his belly: dulling his awareness to everything else as he leaned down to pour the inky black, aromatically steaming liquid into the big mug.
