Millie was confused. But then she wondered about a lot of things that had happened since. How was Lamont connected with Colbert? She had heard since coming to town that Lamont had taken a whip to Colbert and thrashed him within an inch of his life. Then Colbert had once again tackled Cass in town. Andy Hogan, on whose word she placed very little importance, had said Colbert and her husband had argued heatedly in the backyard of the saloon. Then Lamont had visited them and Cass had gone out to talk to him and had been cut down cold. So somehow Colbert’s demand for the deeds to the place had become Lamont’s demand.

  Then why hadn’t Lamont, when he had the chance, ridden in with his bunch and put an end to her? After all, she was only a woman against seven hellions. But Lamont had drawn his bunch off and had chased a lone man who she had heard one of them say was Jesse Borden, Cass’s brother. Millie had known that Cass had sent for his brother, and it seemed that others knew it, too. Then the next day, Blake Durant rode in and instead of listening to him she’d gone off like a fool, to be ambushed.

  There were other puzzling aspects for Millie Borden. Lamont had fired a couple of shots at her, but considering the reputation he had in the territory, he hadn’t shown himself to be anything but a rash fool in allowing her to find cover and fight from behind it. Then Durant had arrived on the scene and she remembered that all the shooting which had preceded his coming had not frightened her at all. Only when Durant had shown up did those bullets really hammer into the wagon.

  Millie stared at the ceiling and listened to Deputy Luke Wicker pace the room outside. Was Lamont as good as they said he was? Was he the killer they claimed him to be, or was he just a fool, uncertain of how to establish his claim to a place he professed to own?

  Millie went over it again and finally came to a decision. Until the arrival of Blake Durant, Lamont had been content to annoy her and no more. If he had wanted to kill her, he most certainly could have.

  Why had he spared her?

  Luke Wicker came to the cell bars and asked, “You all right, Mrs. Borden? Hell, it’s so damned hot I reckon we should get some air in here, but pa said not to open a door. Can you stand it?”

  “Yes, I can stand it, Deputy,” Millie told him.

  “You’re quite a woman,” he said, limping away.

  When Luke Wicker went on pacing, she returned her thoughts to her own problems. She knew that something strange was happening in this town and out of it, and although her mind continually tacked back to her life with her husband, Cass Borden, she couldn’t feel any sorrow at all for his passing. Cass had never been really in love with her, she knew that now. He had used her, as a man uses a saloon woman—for his own excitement. Even when she was willing to give him everything and do everything for him, he had scorned her regard and her love and had gone his own way. To a degree she blamed herself, feeling she hadn’t been enough woman for Cass. She might even have turned him towards the gambling and drinking which had made a changed man out of him, had made him sullen and bitter and, worst of all, brutal.

  Millie touched her neck. She could still feel the blows he had thrown at her only two days ago. Returning from town, Cass had been more sullen than she had ever known him to be. She had asked him what was wrong and he’d told her to shut up and mind her own business, then he had taken a bottle of whisky to the barn, where he’d drunk himself into a stupor.

  That, she thought, had been his undoing, because when Lamont had appeared with his bunch of evil-minded hellions in the clearing, Cass had rashly gone straight out to confront him and been killed on the spot.

  Millie mopped sweat from her brow. She would have given a hundred dollars for a bath and some clean clothes. Strangely, the only other thing she wanted at that moment was the sight of Blake Durant coming through the doorway and taking her off, protecting her, and perhaps when they were alone ...

  Millie blushed at her own thoughts. What right did she have to hope for consideration from a man like Blake Durant? He had saved her life, brought her to town, fought off a bunch of hellions who’d wanted to kill her and then had stayed in town where he’d been shot at and then had to take abuse from the sheriff. She was happy for him that he’d gone but sorry for herself. In Blake Durant she saw a man unlike any she’d known. There was substance to him, a quietness, a sense of deep strength.

  “You sure you’re all right, Mrs. Borden?” Luke Wicker asked moments later. He stood at the cell doorway, one hand raised, unable to stop his gaze sweeping over her body.

  Suddenly Millie took fuller stock of him. Young he might be, but if what had been said in Dr. Wordy’s cottage had any truth in it, Luke Wicker had proved himself to be a man. Even with his hand almost shot away, he hadn’t sat down and whined about it. And he could still worry about her welfare and comfort.

  She said, “Yes, Deputy, I’m all right. Don’t worry about me, please. Later, when I can get up, I’ll fix your hand for you. It needs bathing and dressing.”

  Luke scowled, not at her, but at the window above her. “That don’t matter, I reckon. Durant, damn him, proved that my hand is finished. I ain’t ever gonna be able to hold a gun in it again.”

  “Why should that matter to you so much, Deputy?” Millie asked. “There are other things a good man can do besides use a gun.”

  Luke smiled thinly. “Not me, ma’am. All my life I’ve been with pa, growin’ up the way he wanted me to. I spent hours a day since I was twelve, handlin’ a gun, getting so a gun was near part of my hand. Pa said only a few days ago that I was the best he ever saw, the fastest and the straightest.”

  He looked down at the bloodied bandage and swore under his breath. But he was quick to frown an apology the woman’s way.

  Turning his back, he added tersely, “Now I’m through. Now I ain’t but half a man.”

  Concern for him dug into Millie. Deep sympathy followed that concern and she watched him, trying to guess what he was like with womenfolk, wondering if he had ever been alone with a woman in his life. She told herself that despite the difference in their ages, he was the kind of man she should have set her bonnet at. A man like Luke Wicker would be grateful to have her affection and her love and to be cared for by her. She would be able to twist him around her little finger, but she’d also make him happy.

  But could she find happiness for herself? She turned her head to the side and stared blankly at the wall. She knew she was fooling herself. She had always been a little wayward, unable to keep from being attracted to men. Cass had often, in his drunken fits, accused her of affairs with neighbors, although the closest neighbor was fifty miles away. But she had had her thoughts.

  Suddenly she knew that no man like Luke Wicker could make her happy. She needed somebody to dominate her, to make her obey, to make her willing to be a slave. Blake Durant? Yes, she told herself, that kind of man would be right. Now, as she lay there, she promised herself that she’d do all she could to gain Blake Durant’s interest. She was still pretty and her figure was still firm and attractive. Her hair, long and silky, would be as lustrous as it had been in the past when she cared for it. She looked at her hands and her arms and refused to admit that her skin had gone coarse, that lines were showing which would never go away. She closed her eyes and slept in the heat, her body soaked with sweat and the staleness of the jailhouse air enveloping her.

  Josh Tonkin was on edge. He had been that way from the moment Sheriff Jud Wicker took his posse from town. He served his customers, but his usual good-natured manner was missing. Any man could get a curse from him by knocking over a glass or kicking the counter or scraping a chair back too noisily. Watching him, Andy Hogan was aware of all this and he took himself down to the end of the counter and stood alone, drinking and waiting for Tonkin to get close enough to talk.

  When Tonkin did approach him, scowling at the rye stains on the counter, Hogan asked, “Somethin’ wrong, Josh?”

  Tonkin looked at Hogan angrily. “Who said there was?”

  “Ain’t nobody said anythin’ least of all you, Josh. Maybe that’s what it is—nobody sayin’ anythin’. You worried about Wicker?”

  “To hell I am! Wicker gets paid for what he’s doin’.”

  “Is it because of Durant leaving then?”

  Tonkin’s deepening frown betrayed him in this regard. But he said, “To hell with Durant! What do I want with Durant? I don’t need him. Good damn riddance.”

  “He struck me as a fine man, Josh, and an honest one. Where do you reckon he came from?”

  “How the hell should I know, damn you! Why don’t you drink and shut down?”

  “Been doing that for the last two hours and I got sick of my own company, Josh. Hell, neither of us has got anythin’ to worry about now, have we? Colbert is gone, Cass Borden’s gone, and Lamont’s on the run. We could wake up in the mornin’ and find ourselves with a quiet, peaceful town for the first time in months.”

  Josh Tonkin refused to be relaxed even by this kind of talk. He served more customers and wiped at his bar counter, in general keeping himself so busy that none of his customers could find an excuse to engage him in conversation. The morning drifted by, then noon passed. There was an increase in business as the sultry afternoon began to tick away. By evening Josh Tonkin was clearly so much on edge that he put a relief barkeep on and went upstairs to cool down and relax.

  He was sitting on the back verandah taking in the breeze and drinking heavily when Andy Hogan found him again. Hogan had just drawn up a chair and filled his glass from Tonkin’s bottle when Tonkin growled:

  “Leave me be, Andy. Go.”

  “No, Josh. I can see somethin’s worryin’ the stuffin’ outa you and I don’t aim to see a friend of mine so disturbed. You just sit and tell me about it. If it’s money, which I can’t see it is, then I can help out. I’ve dodged every cheatin’ cardsharp who’s been through in the last year.”

  “It ain’t money, damn you, Hogan. It ain’t anythin’. Just beat it. Git!”

  Andy Hogan had his glass to his lips but Tonkin’s angry outburst made him lose his grip on it. The glass fell to the verandah, rolled but didn’t break. Tonkin reached out with his foot and sent the glass crashing against the verandah rail. Hogan stepped back in alarm, his face going white.

  “By hell, Josh, it is somethin’! It sure is. You’re about to fall apart. I don’t care what you say, I’m stayin’ here until I learn all about it. So you just put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

  Josh Tonkin jumped to his feet and grabbed Andy Hogan by the coat front. Hogan let out a cry of alarm, but Tonkin drove him back against the wall and began beating at his face with both hands. Hogan looked at him with horror as the heavy punches slammed home, punches far heavier than he’d thought Josh Tonkin capable of throwing. Slowly his legs began to buckle and his sight dimmed. His head was driven back against the wall and a last flurry of blows ripped open his mouth and cut his eyebrow. He felt blood run down his face.

  “Josh, what the hell!” he called out and Josh Tonkin pulled him free of the wall and hurled him down to the floor.

  “You wouldn’t listen, would you, Hogan? You had to keep at it, annoyin’ the hell outa me. Well, too bad!”

  Josh Tonkin drove his boot into Hogan’s jaw and stood back as Hogan rolled his head from side to side and the blood from his mouth dripped onto the floorboards.

  They came in a tight bunch into town, one man with a pad on his shoulder and a bloody piece of bandage on his forehead. He rode tail to the other three, who were Pete and Al Cody, strangers to the town but not strangers to Blake Durant or to Millie Borden, who had both come under the blast of their guns. The fourth man rode in front, a tall, wide-shouldered man with a face blackened by hate and weather, a man who had no mouth to speak of and whose dark eyes were filled with hostility as he took in the shadows. He called a halt and waited. None of the others spoke.

  Ten minutes went by before a match flared on the top verandah of the saloon and then he said, “It’s all set. You know what to do, don’t you?”

  The three answered his dark look with terse nods. “Remember, we don’t have to worry about who we kill. This is the showdown. The running and the foolin’ about are all over. Now we collect.”

  The other three still made no comment and their expressions didn’t betray their thoughts. They were grim-faced men with killing on their minds and they gave no thought to anybody but the man in front, Harvey Lamont.

  Lamont steered his horse from the back street. Then, keeping to the darkness deepened by the fence, he made his way through the livery stable laneway. He paused in the deep darkness to listen for sounds. But he heard only the night’s silence.

  He smiled like a wolf and let his horse go forward, but when he reached the front street he stopped his horse. He was taking no chances. He sat still on his horse, a sinister silhouette in the dark that didn’t move even when two townsmen walked past. The townsmen looked his way and went on with longer strides, as if they sensed that big trouble loomed.

  “It’s time,” he said, and the Cody brothers broke away from him to the right. The fourth man, the bandaged one, went to the left. The three converged on the bank and disappeared behind it. Harvey Lamont, still holding his sinister smile, walked his horse straight across the street. He looked to the right and left, more from habit than from fear of being discovered. He halted his horse outside the bank, then turned it to face the lights of the saloon. He noted that lights shone in the jailhouse at the other end of the street; and lights in cottage windows told him that most people were home at dinner.

  Easy, he told himself, take it real easy. He hadn’t cared much for the plan in the beginning, but he was willing to admit now that it was a good one. Nobody would ever know. Nobody could chase him and charge him with this robbery. And, although it didn’t worry him one way or another, if all went right, then nobody would be killed and there wouldn’t be a lynching party out after him.

  Harvey Lamont heard the back door crashing in. He tensed. But there was no other sound, only the sweet quiet of the town.

  Five minutes went by. No noise at all. He stared at the front door of the bank, wondering when it would open and he could be on his way. He wanted no complications. Earlier in the month he was ready to ride in and lay waste to this town, to take the easy pickings, but then he’d listened to a plan and now he was carrying it out. It was as easy as he’d been told.

  The door remained closed. Harvey Lamont became impatient. He edged his horse closer to the front of the bank and put his head under the overhang.

  The front door finally opened and Al Cody poked his head out. Cody looked right and left, making a careful check of the street.

  “What is it?” growled Harvey Lamont.

  “Safe won’t give. We tried the bar and it don’t work. Pete says we got to blow it.”

  Harvey Lamont thought for only a brief moment. He drew his gun and placed it against the saddle pommel.

  “Then blow it.”

  “Got to get some powder from Holmes’ place. Pete says he knows where it’s stacked.”

  “Tell him to get it quick. And he’s not to be seen.”

  Al Cody withdrew his head and Harvey Lamont came out of the saddle and spent time checking the saddle straps. Nobody came down to this quarter of the town because most of the activity was farther up in the two saloons. On any other night he would have had to keep an eye out for a lawman coming from the jailhouse. But not tonight. Jud Wicker was out searching the hills for him. Harvey Lamont’s twisted smile came back and he relaxed against the overhang post, picking his pouch from his pocket and making himself a cigarette.

  Ten more minutes went by. Then Al Cody’s head appeared again.

  “Got it.”

  “Then get on with it. Have Muller hold the horses. You and Pete get the money and run. Come this way. We’ll go straight through town and out of it.”

  “Sure, Harvey.”

  Al Cody disappeared again. Harvey Lamont pinched out his cigarette and ground it into the dust under his heel before he went back into the saddle. He turned the horse, keeping it under tight rein, then he sucked in a deep breath and held it while his evil glance slashed up and down the street.

  When the explosion came, he thought the whole town had been blown up. His horse reared at the sound, and he yanked the bit around in its mouth brutally. When the horse still kicked out furiously, he jerked its head right down until it could hardly breathe against its own chest. Then he waited.

  There was a stirring of activity up the street, but Lamont figured that they still had time. Then he heard the thunder of hoofbeats and gave a grunt of satisfaction.

  The three riders came out of the laneway and swept past him. Harvey Lamont, as casual as they came, watched men streaming out of both saloons, but they didn’t bother to leave the light-washed boardwalks. They stood there, closely bunched, a mob of fools watching the best-planned robbery the frontier had ever known. He wheeled his horse around and kicked hard at it. The horse bounded forward at the bite of spurs and was in full gallop when the gun barked from the jailhouse boardwalk.

  Chapter Eight – No Trail for Deputies

  LUKE WICKER COULD feel that something was about to happen. The town was too quiet. He stood at the cell window getting what fresh air he could, while sweat ran down his body. Slowly his gaze went up and down the town until he picked out the lone shape against the bank’s overhang. Something about the rider’s immobility made him straighten. His gaze continued to sweep the town as his ears picked out the rumble of noise from Tonkin’s saloon. The other saloon was quieter, which didn’t surprise him because most of the steady clientele of that place were on the cattle runs and wouldn’t be back for months.

  Luke Wicker crossed to the wall cabinet, opened it and pulled down his favorite rifle. He laid it on his father’s desk and clumsily opened a box of cartridges. It took him a minute to get two shells into the breech and close it. He shucked the gun under his left armpit and, grim-faced, walked towards the window again.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11