Gambling Man

Gambling Man

Clifton Adams

He played high, loose and recklessly with the most dangerous partner—Death.

Chapter One

PLAINSVILLE HAD BEEN A wonderful place to live in. Jefferson Blaine could remember it very well, although he had been a mere child then—eight or nine years ago. Now he was twelve and practically a man.

He had dreams of those old days sometimes, and in his sleep he could hear the harsh, strident laughter of the cowhands as they raced their horses through the dusty streets of the town, shooting off their guns and scaring the citizens half to death.

But they had never scared Jefferson Blaine, for in his adventurous young soul he had always been one of them, even though he was a town boy and had no horse to ride or Colt's to shoot. When they laughed, Jeff laughed. He would run into the street and wave to them, not at all afraid that the excited horses would trample him to death, as his Aunt Beulah often said they would.

There was one time in particular that he would never forget, and that was when a whooping cowboy had swooped him right off the ground and flung Jeff up behind the saddle. He had never felt so big in his life as he had that day, his arms hugging the big cowhand's waist as they made two complete runs of Main Street.

Aunt Beulah had heard about it, of course, and that night Uncle Wirt had dragged him behind the smokehouse and given him the breaching of his life. But he was never sorry about it. He'd have done it again, any time.

But the good old days were gone forever, Jeff thought sourly, trudging the path to Harkey's pasture, where the Seweli cow was kept. Every morning, even in the winter, he had to take Bessie to the pasture, and every evening he had to bring her back for milking; Aunt Beulah was dead set on having a cow for fresh milk and butter.

Far up the path another barefoot “cowboy” plodded toward the pasture to fetch the family cow, and at the foot of the path others were coming. The way it is now, Jeff thought bitterly, living in Plainsville wasn't like living in town and it wasn't like living on a ranch. It was just somewhere in between, the same as living nowhere.

At the pasture's barbed-wire gate Jeff cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed, “S-o-o-o, Bessie!” He hoped the fool cow would have sense enough to come without his having to look for her. Several cows were right at the gate waiting to be taken home, but not Bessie. The fool critter was probably up to her knees in some bog and he'd have to go pull her out.

He cupped his hands and bellowed again, and after a while he saw Bessie's tan and white spotted hide moving through the stand of willows near the pond. This was his lucky day, he thought. But he did not feel elated.

Todd Wintworth, who was Jeff's age, was hazing his own family cow through the barbed-wire gate. Jeff scrunched down by a fence post to wait for Bessie. Todd came up to him swinging a piece of rope as if it were a lariat.

“You got Bessie trained pretty good,” Todd said. “I had to go in after Blackie. Darn fool ain't got enough sense to know when it's time to eat.”

The two boys sat on the ground, chewing the young grass thoughtfully. Below them lay the town, such as it was. The pasture lay on a gradual slope to the east, and now they had a bird's-eye view of Plainsville's tar-paper roofs and dusty streets. The houses were not much more than frame shacks, and not many of them were painted. Each house had its own little plot of ground for vegetables, and most of them had cowsheds and hen houses as well.

By golly, Jeff thought, it looks more like a ghost town than a place where fifty or sixty families live!

He turned his attention to the sun, now settling behind the western prairie. It was sluggish and red, like some enormous tick that had gorged itself with blood. He studied the pattern of woodsmoke coming from the tin stovepipes sticking through the tar-paper roofs and wondered what Aunt Beulah was fixing for supper.

Todd Wintworth jumped up suddenly and hurled a stone at his cow. “There, Blackie! Get back on the path!” He shrugged with disgust and looked at Jeff. “Guess I better go, else I'll be chasin' that fool clear up to the Territory. By the way, Amy wants to know if you're aimin' to come to her Japanese garden party tomorrow.”

Amy was Todd Wintworth's sister, as pretty as a calendar picture, Aunt Beulah said, and Jeff was inclined to agree. Still, it made him feel kind of foolish having a girl tagging around after him the way Amy Wintworth did. They used to tease him about it at the academy, until he'd lost his temper and bloodied some noses. Lately, he had made a point of ignoring her when he thought somebody might be watching.

But secretly he was pleased that Amy was stuck on him. There were plenty of boys at the academy who wouldn't mind some teasing, if Amy Wintworth would just look in their direction.

He shrugged now, as though Amy Wintworth's party was a lot of fool kid stuff. But he said, “I'll think about it, maybe.”

Todd heaved two more stones at the straying Blackie, then started the trek down the long slope. He was about twenty paces away when he stopped and called: “Say, I almost forgot. Who've the Sewell's got visitin' with them?”

Jeff blinked. “Visiting?”

“Sure. I saw a black horse tied at your cowshed when I came past. There was a man takin' in a saddle roll.”

“I don't know about any visitors,” Jeff said. “I haven't been home since the academy let out.”

Todd called something that Jeff didn't understand, and then started running through the weeds to head Blackie back to the path. Whoever the visitor was, Jeff hoped Aunt Beulah had fixed company rations for supper, because all this traipsing back and forth to the pasture had made him hungry.

By this time Bessie had arrived at the gate. Jeff pushed a rope loop off the gate post and a section of the barbed wire fence fell to the ground. He put the fence up again after the cow was out and followed Bessie's switching tail down the path to Plainsville.

Jeff soon forgot about the visitor that Todd Wintworth had mentioned. He turned his mind to remembering the rowdy, violent nights that had been Plainsville's before the cattlemen started avoiding the town.

Time was when the piano in Bert Surratt's saloon had been pounded half the night and could be heard from one end of town to the other. There had been hardly a night that you didn't hear gunfire. More than once old Abe Roebuck, the carpenter and town handyman, had been called out of bed in the middle of the night to go to work on a new pine burying box.

Oh, there had been excitement, all right, and Jeff didn't think he would ever forgive the squatters for ending it.

No more would the bawling, leather-lunged cowhands come storming into Plainsville, blowing in their pay and putting some life into the place. The big outfits like the Cross 4, the Big Hat, and the Snake, all said they'd be damned if they'd trade in a town where squatters were catered to. And from that time on they had taken their business to Yellow Fork, which was not as handy as Plainsville but at least was a place that understood cattlemen.

That was how Plainsville got to be a squatter town. It was rare to see a man wearing a revolver on Main Street any more, unless he was a traveler, and Jeff could remember when every man in town had a heavy Colt's slapping against his thigh. There were no more flashy cowhands with colorful neckerchiefs and bench-made boots and fancy rigs.

All you saw now were bib overalls and thick-soled boots or brogans, and if a man carried a gun at all, likely it would be a shotgun—which was just about as low as a man could sink.

Jeff trudged down toward the bottom of the slope, powdery red dust squirting up between his toes at every step. What I'm going to have when I grow up, he thought, is a pair of bench-made boots, with fancy stitching on the side. Not that he wasn't grown up now, but he had no money.

That was a detail that he would work out later. Now he thought about the boots. They would have built-up leather heels and soles as thin as paper, so that he would have the feel of the stirrup when he rode. He would have his initials on them, and maybe a butterfly stitched in red and green and yellow thread, although such doings were pretty fancy for a working cowhand. Maybe he'd skip the butterfly—he didn't want the other hands laughing at him.

He thought about those boots for a long while as he followed Bessie's eternally switching tail along the path. He was close enough to town to smell the woodsmoke from all the cookstoves, and it made him hungrier than ever. Just his initials on the boots would be enough. He hoped that Aunt Beulah would have fried chicken and gravy and biscuits, as they usually did when they had important company.

The horse was right where Todd Wintworth had said it was, the reins looped over the makeshift hitching rack by the cowshed. The animal was a real beauty, too; black as charcoal and well cared for. Jeff paid special attention to the tooled leather saddle, and to the well-rubbed boot which held a walnut-stocked Winchester. That was the kind of rig Jeff would have some day. His hands itched to ease that Winchester out of the boot and just feel it.

He kept glancing back at the horse and rig as he put Bessie in the stall and measured out a bucketful of feed. He was curious as to why a man who owned an outfit like that would be visiting with the Sewells.

Aunt Beulah put no store in guns of any kind, nor in men who carried them. Neither did Uncle Wirt, for that matter. He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword, they said. Not that it many any sense; in all Jeff's twelve years he had never once seen a man carry a sword in Plainsville.

But that was the way they were, especially Aunt Beulah. Whenever you did something she didn't like, she always had some scripture quote handy to prove that it was wrong.

Anyway, his chores for the day were over, unless there was some stove wood to be chopped. All that was left was the milking, and Uncle Wirt usually took care of that. Jeff took one last covetous look at the booted rifle and started for the house.

“Jefferson, have you got the cow stalled and the feed put out?”

It was his Aunt Beulah, who had just come to the kitchen door to peer out at him. She was a tight-knitted little woman with thinning gray hair and piercing gray eyes. The only time Jeff had ever seen any color in her face had been several years ago when she came down with the slow fever—all other times her face was as gray as lye-bleached leather.

Aunt Beulah's mouth reminded Jeff of a steel trap that had snapped shut on something, especially when she was mad or upset. And that was exactly the way her mouth looked now, like a steel trap, locked tight.

“Yes, ma'am,” Jeff said, “Bessie's put up in the shed. Who we got visiting?”

“You didn't jog her down that path, did you?” Aunt Beulah asked, ignoring his question.

“No, ma'am,” Jeff said, stamping the dust from his bare feet on the platform porch.

“I've seen some of them cowboys jogging them,” Aunt Beulah said indignantly. “It's a sin and a crime to jog a cow when she's heavy with milk. Come on in. Supper will be on pretty soon.”

Jeff stepped into a kitchen heavy with the rich aroma of frying chicken, and his mouth watered. Nobody in the world could cook like Aunt Beulah. He sure hoped the company, whoever it was, didn't like the gizzard, because that was his favorite part.

Now Jeff's attention was drawn again to his aunt, and he shuffled his feet uneasily on the scrubbed kitchen floor. He didn't like the tightness of her mouth and the sharp jutting of her small chin. He searched his mind for something that he had done wrong, but he could think of nothing—not anything recent.

Her mouth came open for just an instant, and then snapped shut almost immediately. She took his arm and turned him toward the parlor. “Come with me, Jefferson,” she said shortly. “There's somebody you—you'll have to meet.”

This was a pretty strange way for his aunt to act about company, Jeff was thinking, but he had learned long ago net to argue with her when she was like this. He walked willingly into the small, immaculate parlor.

His Uncle Wirt, a small man with drooping mustaches and a glistening bald head, was sitting very stiff and erect in one of the uncomfortable parlor chairs, as though someone were holding him there at the point of a gun. He blinked when Jeff came into the room and tried hard to relax.

“Jeff,” he said, clearing his throat, “come on in. Here's somebody wants to see you.”

To Jeff's way of thinking, Uncle Wirt seemed every bit as upset as Aunt Beulah. But he didn't give it a second thought when he saw the man sitting across the room from his uncle—a tall, dark-complexioned man with eyes as dark as an owl's, with shaggy black brows, and a mouth so full and wide that Jeff was briefly reminded of the catfish he sometimes caught in Garter's pond.

When the man stood up, the entire room seemed to grow in size. He said softly, “So you're Jeff!”

That was all he said, and he stood there with his arms hanging relaxed. Jeff didn't know what to say, so he said nothing.

Jeff could hear the old pendulum clock on the mantle ticking away the seconds, and still no one said a thing.

The instant the stranger stood up from his chair, Jeff vaguely realized that something was wrong. The picture was not quite complete. It was just a feeling he had that something was missing, but he couldn't put his finger on it until he saw the cartridge belt hanging on the hat tree in the hall. Then he knew what it was.

This man wore a gun.

Not in Aunt Beulah's house, he wouldn't, but you could see that he didn't feel quite right about the absence of that Colt's heavy weight on his hip. It was as obvious as a man going to church without his shirt.

There were men like that. Jeff could remember seeing two or three of them before, during the squatter trouble, when the big outfits were putting Territory guns on their payrolls. Not that this dark stranger was a Territory man, or an outlaw, or anything like that. He didn't have that mean, hunted look that men get when they've run too far and too long. Still, Jeff couldn't imagine what this man was doing in his Aunt Beulah's and Uncle Wirt's house.

At last the stranger said, “Miss Beulah, ain't you going to tell the boy who I am?”

Aunt Beulah's face was grayer than Jeff had ever seen it, and her grim mouth was clamped tight. Finally Uncle Wirt stirred uneasily.

“Jeff,” he said, “this here's your pa.”

It made so little sense that Jeff would have thought that his uncle was joking, except that Uncle Wirt never joked about anything. This black-eyed stranger was his pa?

The man said in that same quiet voice, “Don't you have anything to say, Jeff?”

Jeff cleared his throat. He had never been in a situation like this before—he was afraid the stranger was funning him. At last he spoke up, his voice amazingly loud.

“I guess you got the wrong boy, mister. My pa's dead.”

A cloud crossed the man's eyes as he looked at Aunt Beulah. “Did you tell him I was dead, Miss Beulah?”

Jeff's aunt glanced at her husband. “No, I didn't!” she snapped.

“That's funny, ain't it? I wonder where he got the idea?”

“I told Jefferson you was likely dead,” Aunt Beulah replied sternly. “What did you expect us to think, after twelve years?”

The stranger stood for a moment, very still. Then in four giant strides he crossed the room and stood in front of Jeff. “My name,” he said, “is Nathan Blaine. Some call me Nate. A little more than twelve years ago I married the prettiest girl in southwest Texas. She was your Aunt Beulah's baby sister—Lilie Burton her name was before we were married. Lilie was your mother, Jeff. And I'm your pa. Do you want to shake hands?”

Jeff couldn't take his gaze from the stranger's face. He said, “You ain't funnin' me, are you, mister?”

“Ask your uncle, Jeff. Ask your aunt.”

“I never saw you before! How could you be my pa?”

Jeff turned his gaze to his aunt and saw that it was true. He felt strange and kind of choked, and he didn't know exactly what to do. The stranger was holding out his big, lean hand, and Jeff stared at it for maybe two or three long ticks of the mantle clock.

Then they shook hands.

Chapter Two

SUPPER WAS AN UNEASY affair. For the first time since Jeff could remember, Uncle Wirt didn't talk about the tin shop, and Aunt Beulah didn't mention once that she was afraid the skunks were going to get at her chickens. They pitched into the chicken and gravy as if it were a matter of life and death. Nathan Blaine asked Jeff about his studies at the academy, but pretty soon the talk died away, strangled in the tense atmosphere.

Afterward, Nathan prowled the tiny parlor, and finally he said, “Think I'll go over to town for a while, and see how the old place has changed.” He looked at Jeff. “How'd you like to come along, Jeff?”

“Too late for a boy to be traipsing about,” Aunt Beulah put in firmly.

“Oh,” Nathan said quickly, drawing himself a little taller. “Yes, I guess it is. Well, maybe tomorrow, boy.”

Then he bolted, as though the house were choking him. He grabbed his revolver from the rack and buckled it as another man would put on a hat. “Don't wait up for me,” he said. “I'll spread my roll in the kitchen.”

After he had left, Jeff said, “Aunt Beulah, why didn't you tell me about—”

“He's your pa,” his aunt snapped. “You might as well call him that. I didn't tell you about him because I didn't know anything to tell. He ran off from you when you were just a baby. It's the Lord's working that you didn't dry up and die, like your mother, and I guess you would have if it hadn't been for me and your Uncle Wirt.”

She turned and went to the kitchen. In a minute she was back with a pan full of green beans to be snapped. “Ain't you gone to bed yet?”

“I was going,” Jeff said wearily.

He went out to the back porch and washed his dusty feet in a bucket of water that had been set out for that purpose. He had to lather them good and scrub hard because Aunt Beulah would inspect them before she let him get between her clean sheets. He heard his Uncle Wirt come in from the front gallery and say:

“Well, he's headed straight for Bert Surratt's.” Aunt Beulah snorted. “Where did you expect he'd head for?”

Jeff could almost see his uncle's shrug of uneasiness. “I was hoping he'd changed, but I guess he hasn't. The way he wears that gun—I don't like it. That's something new since we saw him last.”

“Twelve years,” Aunt Beulah said, “and gone downhill all the way, if you ask me.”

“Now, Beulah, don't be too tough on him. He took it harder'n most when Lilie passed on. We got no way of knowing what things goes on in a man's mind at a time like that.”

Jeff could hear the beans thudding against the side of the tin pan as his aunt snapped them expertly and quickly, the way she did all things.

“Twelve years,” she said again. “Seems to me that's enough time to get over what was bothering him. Lilie was my baby sister, remember, but I got over it.”

“I'm not standing up for him, but—” Then Jeff came into the room and Uncle Wirt was suddenly quiet.

“Let me see your feet,” Aunt Beulah said.

Jeff had a thousand questions to ask, but he knew they would get no answers. He trudged to his room when his aunt had finished her inspection.

He lay in bed straining his ears to hear what his aunt and uncle were saying, but they were being careful and keeping their voices low. He thought, I wish I could have gone to town with him.

He'd never seen the inside of Bert Surratt's saloon, and that would have been something to brag to Todd Wintworth about. He'd heard tell of gambling and drinking and all kinds of carrying on, but you couldn't be sure unless you'd actually seen it.

Aunt Beulah was dead set against Bert Surratt, and so was Uncle Wirt. They were both good church-going people, and they hated drinking about as much as they hated anything. Jeff closed his eyes and tried to imagine what his father could be doing in a place like Surratt's.

He imagined a scene of painted dancing girls and piano music and lots of laughing and maybe a cowhand shooting at the ceiling with his Colt's revolver.

But he knew that it wasn't really that way. He had passed in front of Surratt's place many a time and hardly ever heard a sound, except maybe some casual talk and the click of a roulette ball.

He listened to the night and let vagrant thoughts drift through his mind.

There was that business at the Wintworth's. Lemonade and gingercakes and paper lanterns hanging on clothesline poles in the Wintworth back yard—that was what they called a Japanese garden party in Plainsville. And there were always a lot of girls, too, wanting to play some fool game or other. Certainly he had outgrown kid stuff like that long ago.

He'd be expected to take a present, because it was Amy Wintworth's eleventh birthday. Whatever the present cost, sure as shootin' Uncle Wirt would take it out of the dime he got every two weeks for working at the tin shop and bringing in the cow.

After a while he got to thinking about Amy, and the party didn't seem so bad. He remembered seeing some Indian gewgaws in Baxter's store; bright colored beads and horn knitting needles and all kinds of stuff that Sam Baxter had got off an Indian trader up in the Territory. Indian stuff was pretty scarce in Texas now, and women seemed to take a shine to anything that was scarce. Maybe he'd ask Mr. Baxter how much the gewgaws cost.

Now Jeff became aware of the talk in the other room. Aunt Beulah and Uncle Wirt were still at it and had unconsciously raised their voices.

“It's that pistol that bothers me,” Uncle Wirt was saying. “To look at him you'd think he was afraid of appearin' indecent without he had that gun strapped around his middle. Beulah, do you reckon he's in trouble?”

“Nathan Blaine has always been a trouble and a worry,” Aunt Beulah answered shortly. “The older he gets, the bigger his troubles grow. That's the way it is with his kind.”

Jeff could hear the parlor rocker squeaking, and he could almost see his aunt pushing rapidly back and forth, as she always did when she was upset.

“Maybe we oughtn't jump at conclusions,” Uncle Wirt said thoughtfully. “Maybe he's been down south where a strapped gun is still the normal thing.”

Jeff's aunt snorted. “I can tell by looking at him how much downhill he's gone. If he's robbed or killed somebody, I guess it wouldn't surprise me much.”

“Beulah!”

“I mean it, every word!”

The rocker stopped for a moment, then started again harder than ever.

“But I guess it's too late to do anything for Nathan Blaine,” she added grimly. “It's the boy I'm worrying about. It scares me to think what evil influence he could work on Jeff if he ever got a hold on the boy.”

“I don't think we have to worry about that,” Uncle Wirt said. Jeff could imagine them looking knowingly at each other, thinking each other's thoughts.

It was a tough idea to get used to, Jeff was thinking, as he lay awake in his bed.

The tall man with the dark eyes was his pa, all right. Aunt Beulah had owned to that herself. Still, after twelve years, the idea took some getting used to.

Jeff's room was a small lean-to affair that had been added to the Sewell house long ago, when he got big enough to have a room of his own. Jeff lay staring out his window, listening to the muffled night sounds that hung over Plainsville. He wondered why his aunt didn't like his pa, and why her small eyes glinted every time she looked at Nathan Blaine. And, for the first time since he could remember, Jeff thought about his mother.

Lilie Blaine had died when Jeff was born. There was an old daguerreotype picture of his mother that had stood on the parlor library table ever since he could remember, so he knew pretty well what she had looked like. But practically nothing had been told him of his father. Wirt Sewell was his father—that's the way the Plainsville folks thought of it, and the way Jeff had thought of it too.

Where had Nathan Blaine, his real pa, been?

Nathan must have left Plainsville right after Lilie Blaine had died. And nobody around these parts had seen hide nor hair of him since. Jeff would have heard about it.

Jeff decided that he liked the idea of having a pa of his own. He had never given it much thought before—it was surprising how much pleasure it gave him. He didn't try to explain it, and it didn't make much difference that Nathan had deserted him twelve years ago. He was just glad that his pa had decided to come back to Plainsville.

Jeff was still awake when the whack of built-up heels sounded on the clay walk in front of the Sewell house. Nathan Blaine's spurs made tinkling silver sounds in the night, and for a moment Jeff was reminded of the cow hands that he had once admired so much. He remembered that very afternoon he had wished for boots exactly like the ones his pa was wearing, and he had thought what fun it would be to race through Plainsville on a painted horse and maybe shoot off his Colt's at the ceiling of Surratt's saloon.

A lot had happened since then.

Nathan Blaine was standing on the front gallery now. Jeff could see him through the window. He stood there, a tall, dark man against the night, as though he were trying to make up his mind to go inside where Aunt Beulah and Uncle Wirt were waiting. He made a small sound, almost like a groan, and opened the door.

“You back already, Nathan?” Uncle Wirt asked with false heartiness. Jeff heard the whack of something solid on wood, and he knew that his pa had hung up his revolver.

Nathan said mildly, “Nothing much to the town this time of night.”

“Bert Surratt's still open, though, I guess,” Aunt Beulah said pointedly.

“Yes,” Jeff's pa said, and his voice sounded tired. “Bert's still open. How's the boy?”

“Jefferson is asleep.” It was Uncle Wirt this time, and his voice was not quite so hearty. “Why don't you sit down, Nathan. We can talk a spell before bedtime.”

“About me?”

“Well— Yes, I guess so, Nathan. Beulah and me was wondering, kind of—- Well—”

“You were wondering why I came back to Plainsville, and what I intend to do about my boy?” Nathan Blaine's voice was practically toneless, but there was a sting to it and Jeff could feel it. “I reckon,” he went on, “your answers will have to come from Jeff. Now I think I'll spread my roll, if you don't mind.”

That had been over an hour ago, and Jeff was still awake. His uncle and aunt had gone to bed in their room on the other side of the house, and his pa had spread his roll in the kitchen.

Doggone it! Jeff found himself thinking, why can't they leave him alone?

Chapter Three

THERE WAS STRANGENESS in the air. Jeff couldn't explain it, but Plainsville had changed since Nathan Blaine rode into town. Things were not the way they used, to be.

Not that Jeff let it worry him much. He was just beginning to get used. to the idea of having a pa of his own; and he liked it. Especially when he compared Nathan to the other men in town. Nate had been in town three days now and Jeff's reaction toward his father had changed rapidly through several phases, from disbelief, to acceptance, to what was now a bursting pride.

Nathan was the kind of man a boy could be proud of. Here was no plodding small-town storekeeper like Sam Baxter, no timid businessman like Jed Harper. Nate Blaine was cut to no particular pattern; no set of cut-and-dried rules controlled him.

In a crowd Nate stood out like black against white and all others became shadowy and indistinct. He had a way of throwing back his big head and looking down with vague contempt upon the tallest man. There was a breath of danger about him that was not entirely due to the guns he wore.

It was all too clear that Nathan did not care a tinker's damn whether he was liked, but he demanded respect and he got it, no matter how grudgingly.

It was the morning after Nate's arrival that Jeff first began to experience these new sensations of pride and importance. Aunt Beulah was particularly grim and snappish that morning. “Jefferson,” she said shortly, halfway through breakfast, “it's time you got started to the pasture with Bessie.”

“Gee, I'm. not through with my flapjacks yet!”

“Well, don't dawdle. You'll be late for school.”

It was strange how she could serve up flapjacks and pork sausage to Nathan and still pretend that he wasn't there. Nate sat smiling faintly all through the meal, speaking occasionally to Wirt or Jeff. If he was aware of the chill behind Beulah's eyes, he did not show it. “No need to hurry, son,” he said pleasantly. “I'll get my horse saddled and we can ride to the pasture, if you don't mind doubling up.”

Jeff could hardly believe that Nathan, even though he was his father, would let him ride that fine black animal. “Do you mean it?”

“Sure I do.” Nathan stood up from the table, that quiet smile still touching the corners of his mouth. “That was a fine breakfast, Beulah, and I'm grateful. Now if you'll excuse me...” He nodded to Beulah and Wirt and walked out to the cowshed.

Eagerly, Jeff pushed his plate away and started to follow his father.

“Finish your breakfast,” Aunt Beulah said sternly.

“But you told me to hurry!”

“Never mind. Stay right here and clean your plate.”

Uncle Wirt looked kind of funny, but he said nothing. Reluctantly, Jeff pulled the plate back and finished the flapjacks as quickly as possible, thinking how unpredictable his aunt could be when she took the notion. One minute she was hurrying him, the next minute she was trying to detain him. Out of pure orneriness, he thought bitterly, just to keep me from riding that black horse.

Then a strange thing happened when he finally finished his plate to Aunt Beulah's satisfaction. “Jefferson,” she said, stopping him as he hurried for the back door, “I want to tell you something.” Suddenly she put her thin, hard arms around him and held him hard, something she hadn't done since he was very young. “We love you, Jefferson,” she said tightly. “You're all we've got, me and Wirt.”

It was very strange, and it made Jeff uncomfortable. He was no baby. He didn't like having women paw at him.

“I've got to get started with Bessie,” he said, twisting away.

Nathan had already turned the cow out and was in the saddle. “You ready?” he asked. Then he kicked out a stirrup and swung Jeff up behind. The animal's flanks were sleek and warm, and the saddle leather creaked luxuriously as Jeff settled himself behind his father. “Gee,” he said in awe, “I'll bet this is the best horse in Texas.”

Nate Blaine laughed abruptly. “You might not be far wrong.”

Jeff would not soon forget that morning, especially the looks of envy that other barefoot cowboys shot up at them. And later, as they rode through streets of Plainsville to the academy, it seemed that everybody stopped for a moment to watch them.

There goes Nate Blaine and his boy, they were saying. Suddenly the name of Blaine had become something to be proud of.

Jeff became more aware of this as one moment followed another. Suddenly people looked at him differently. He was “young Blaine,” Nate Blaine's boy.

That afternoon he found his pa waiting for him near the head of Main Street.

“You finished with your studies at the academy, son?” Nathan asked.

“For today I am. You waiting for somebody?”

“That's right. What do you aim to do for the rest of the day?”

Jeff's heart beat a little faster. Maybe his pa was going to let him ride behind the saddle again. “I guess I'll go after Bessie, like always.”

“You mind if I ride along?”

It was then that Jeff saw his pa's black hitched at the watering trough. Beside the black there was a sleek bay mare, her coat recently brushed and gleaming like a new dollar. “I got the mare at the public corral,” Nathan said. “She's yours for the rest of the day, son—if you feel like ridin', that is.”

Jeff found that he could not speak. Of course he had ridden horses, but not very often. Just enough to whet his appetite for it, and he had hardly ever seen a horse, even Phil Costain's old dray nag, that his thighs didn't ache to feel a saddle between them. He looked quickly at his pa to make sure that he wasn't joking.

Nathan smiled. “Climb up, son. We'll ride to the pasture together.”

There was nothing in the world, Jeff thought, like riding a good horse to make a man feel like a man! He felt the saddle, cured by sweat and by a hundred soapings to a rich tobacco brown. He climbed up on the mare and felt nine feet tall as he surveyed the town from his lofty position in the saddle.

Nathan Blaine said nothing, but laughed quietly. He reined his black into the street, and Jeff put the bay around and rode beside him.

Jim Lodlow, a scholar at the academy with Jeff, was standing in front of Baxter's store as they rode past. Jeff felt a bubbling inside and had a crazy impulse to giggle. Look at Jim Lodlow bugging his eyes!

But Jeff only nodded as they rode past, as though to imply that he was used to riding fine bay mares every day of the week. The fact that his bare feet did not quite reach the stirrups didn't bother him at all.

They reached the pasture in practically no time, and Jeff guessed that they could wait a while before calling Bessie. Besides, he was just getting the feel of the saddle and hated the thought of climbing down and letting down the barbed-wire gate.

His pa had a curious, faraway look in his dark eyes as he looked out at that cleared, fenced land.

“I can remember,” Nathan said slowly, “when there wasn't a foot of barbed wire in this part of Texas. Blackjack corrals and a few rawhide branding pens were all the fences we had.”

Jeff had not thought of his father as an old man, and still didn't. Things just happened fast in Texas. It seemed that the squatters had come overnight, almost, and had hemmed the big outfits in and pushed them back toward the hills to the north.

But Nathan Blaine remembered when Sam Baxter's store was the only one around. The dry run to the east of town had been a flowing stream then, and a man from Kansas had put up a water wheel and ground flour on the shares. Those two buildings and a blacksmith shop had been all there was to Plainsville in those days, before the big outfits began coming here and the town started to grow.

Jeff found himself listening with interest to what his pa had to say. It gave him a funny feeling to remember he was twelve years old and knew practically nothing about his own father.

Jeff said, “That must have been a long time ago.”

“Yes, I guess it was. I was about the age you are now, I guess, when my family started down from Missouri to settle in Texas. Not much more than squatters we were, if the truth were told. My ma was set on getting the family a piece of land and living on it. She never did get the land, though, that she had wanted so much.”

“Why not?” Jeff wanted to know.

Nathan Blaine turned his head slowly and gazed to the north. “Osages,” he said. “White trash had them stirred up and they were raiding settler wagons coming through the Territory.”

“Your ma was killed?”

“And two brothers. Me and my pa were the only ones to get to Texas, finally. Not that it did us much good.”

“Why not?”

Nathan looked at his son. “Never mind. It's not important now.”

Man and boy, they sat their horses proudly and gazed thoughtfully into the distance.

“Would you like to ride a piece down the fence?” Nathan asked.

And Jeff said, “I don't care,” meaning that he was itching to.

They touched their horses and rode along the stretched barbed wire. Beyond was a stand of cottonwood marching green and proud across the prairie, following the banks of the narrow stream called Crowder's Creek.

The sun was still an hour away from the western edge of the world, and they rode all the way to Crowder's Creek before pulling up. “There used to be yellow cats down there,” Nathan said, gazing down at the ripply ribbon of water.

“There aren't any more,” Jeff complained. “The squatters built fish dams upcreek and cleaned them out. Were you in Plainsville when the hands from the big outfits used to come in to trade?”

“Yes. The town was different then.”

“I remember,” Jeff said, nodding, and Nathan Blaine smiled that thin smile of his.

Suddenly Jeff's pa threw himself out of the saddle and walked a little way toward the stream. Staring out past the creek, he said, “I guess I wouldn't be much surprised if you didn't like me. I sure haven't been much of a pa to you, and that's the gospel.”

Jeff was surprised that the talk had taken this kind of turn. He would have preferred to keep it impersonal. Now he felt uncomfortable, as though he had done something wrong, and he didn't know exactly what kind of reaction was expected of him.

“I never said I didn't like you.”

He thought he saw his pa stand just a little straighter. “Well, you've got a right to, and I don't deny it. I guess I can't rightly explain just why I ran off from you when you was just a tyke. I've thought about it at times— but I don't know.”

He was still looking across the creek, as though he spotted something interesting on the other side. But he went on in the same quiet, thoughtful voice.

“Once several years ago I was down south with the Mexicans, and right out of the clear it dawned on me that I'd had enough chasing, and what I really wanted was to come back to Plainsville and see my boy. That very night I got packed and rode clear up from Chihuahua. Then, when I got about an hour's ride from town, I turned around and went back again. I don't know just why I did it.”

Jeff said nothing, for he knew that his father expected no answer. This was the first time a grown person had ever talked to him like an adult. It was flattering in a way, and he was proud to be talked to as an equal; but still it was confusing.

Then Nathan Blaine turned away from the creek and looked at his son. “Well, I'm glad you don't hate me, anyway. That's about all I can rightly expect.” Suddenly he smiled, and walked over and stroked the bay's neck. “That's enough talk about me for a spell. Jeff, why don't you tell me about yourself?”

He didn't ask, “Have you been a good boy?” or “Do you have a girl?” or “Do you like your teacher?” Jeff hated those questions, and they were the ones adults always asked.

Not Nathan Blaine. He had come right out and asked, “Tell me about yourself.” Man to man.

It gave the boy a warm feeling to be taken in and treated as though he had some sense, even though he was only twelve.

“Well,” he said importantly, “I'm pretty good at figures at the academy. Uncle Wirt says I'll be taking over the tin shop books before long, if I keep it up.”

“I see. What else are you good at, Jeff?”

“I'm a pretty good tin worker; Uncle Wirt teaches me a lot of things about it. I made a bucket for Aunt Beulah that she says is the best she ever saw, and I can roll and rivet stovepipe as good as anybody.”

Nathan Blaine continued to stroke the bay's neck, but he no longer looked up at his son. “Your uncle taught you all that?”

“Sure,” Jeff said. “He taught me to braid rawhide lariats, and make slingshots and willow whistles—a lot of things. He's been pretty good to me, I guess.”

There was a sagging to Nathan Blaine's face, and suddenly he stopped stroking the bay and clinched his fist as though he were about to hit someone. “So your uncle taught you a lot of things, did he?”

Jeff didn't like the look on his pa's face. He wasn't smiling now. He looked grim and almost angry.

“Well,” Nathan said, “here's something I'll bet he never taught you. Do you see that glistening stone across the creek, just at the edge of the cottonwood shade?”

Puzzled, Jeff nodded. The stone looked about the size of a buggy hub.

Nathan Blaine's hand moved almost faster than the eye could follow. As if by magic, his Colt's .45 jumped from his holster to his hand. The revolver exploded twice in quick succession, and Jeff stared dumbly as the glistening rock on the other side of the creek leaped into the air like a frightened cottontail.

Nathan's dark eyes were blazing as he wheeled to face his son. “Your Uncle Wirt never taught you to do a thing like that, did he?”

Jeff swallowed hard. He discovered that his voice was missing; he could make no sound. He shook his head.

“I didn't think so,” his pa said proudly. “You don't see shooting like that around Plainsville, do you?”

Still dumb, Jeff shook his head again.

“Well, where I've been you have to learn to shoot that way or you don't stay alive.” His mouth was not so grim now, and some of the fire left his eyes. He laughed shortly. “I didn't scare you, did I?”

At the very bottom of his stomach Jeff found his voice. “No. It didn't scare me a bit!”

“That's good,” his pa said. “I'd hate to think a Blaine let himself be scared by a little noise.”

It seemed to Jeff that he could still hear the sound of those shots rolling through the cottonwoods. It had not sounded like the cowhands shooting off their guns as they raced their horses through Plainsville. This had been sudden. And there had been no laughter to go with it.

“One of these days,” Nathan told his son, “I'll show you how it's done. Let me see your hands.”

Jeff held out his hands, and his pa whistled softly. “Good and big. That's good. You need big hands to squeeze the butt and catch the hammer.” He held the revolver out to the boy, butt first. “Would you like to try it?”

Jeff blinked in disbelief. He had seen guns all his life, of course, but he had never had a chance to hold one.

“You mean I can shoot it?”

“Sure.” His pa laughed. “Go on, take it.”

Eagerly, Jeff reached for the revolver. Then, with the suddenness of lightning, the revolver blurred in Nathan Blaine's hand and the butt smacked into his palm. Hammer cocked, the muzzle snapped into position directly in front of Jeff's startled eyes.

Jeff had never known pure terror before that moment, with the muzzle so close to his nose that he could smell the burned powder, could feel the heat of the smoking barrel. He felt the blood drain from his face.

Nathan Blaine said, “The muzzle of a gun is not a pretty thing to look into, is it?”

His voice was deadly serious as he lowered the revolver. “Well, that's the first lesson a man has to learn, Jeff, if he wants to stay alive. Don't let yourself get in a position like that again.”

Nathan held the revolver as he had before, by the barrel, upside down, butt extended forward. With one finger hooked in the trigger guard, he gave the gun a flip with his other fingers and wrist. The butt snapped into his palm and the hammer came back on the crook of his thumb at the same moment, and the gun was ready to fire.

“That's called the road agents' spin by some,” Nathan said. “It's sudden death in any language. There's only one way to disarm a man, and that's to make him drop his gun to the ground. When a gunshark makes to hand you his gun, even when it's butt first, you're just a split second away from death.”

Jeff cleared his throat. “I'll—I'll remember.”

“I know you will.” Nathan Blaine smiled quietly. “Do you still want to try it?”

Jeff stared at his father as though he had never seen him before. The boy was not afraid of him, but he understood that the dark look of danger was never far behind Nathan Blaine's black eyes.

“Do you mean it?” Jeff asked.

“I mean it. No tricks this time.”

Jeff jumped from the saddle and took the heavy revolver. That thing of glued steel and polished walnut seemed almost alive, and he had never known that such a thrill of power could come from merely holding a cold, inanimate object. He had not guessed, either, that a .45 could be so heavy. He could hardly keep his arm from trembling as he held the revolver out in front of him. “What'll I shoot at?”

Nathan laughed. “It makes no difference; you won't hit it anyway. This is just to show you what it feels like to have a gun go off in your hand.”

Jeff picked out a cottonwood trunk across the creek. He had to wrestle the hammer back with both hands; then he held the revolver in front of him, aimed it and pulled the trigger.

He had not been prepared for the violent reaction in his hand. He almost dropped the gun. He could feel the shock of the explosion all the way to his shoulder. When the hammer fell, his gun hand leaped up almost over his head, and the roar was deafening.

He had no idea where the bullet went, but the cotton-wood was standing solid and unshaken.

“Try it again,” Nathan said mildly.

This time Jeff was better prepared for the violence of the. recoil. He planted his bare feet solid on the ground, raised his arm slowly and sighted along the barrel, but after the explosion there was no sign that he had hit anything on the other bank. There wasn't even a spray of dust to show where the bullet hit the ground.

“Once more,” his pa said quietly. “This time don't pull the trigger with your finger; just squeeze the butt with your whole hand.”

Jeff tried it the way his pa said, and this time he was delighted to see dirt kick up near the base of the cotton-wood.

“Not bad!” his father said, taking the revolver. He punched out the empty cartridge cases and reloaded the chambers with five rounds from his belt. The hammer went down on the empty chamber and the Colt's went into its holster.

“Could I try it again?” Jeff asked eagerly. “I bet I could hit it the next time!”

But Nathan shook his head. “You've had enough for one day. Just think over what I told you—-that'll do you more good than burnin' up a wagonload of ammunition.”

Jeff noticed that his pa was smiling and seemed to be in high spirits. “Yes, sir,” he said, stepping up to the saddle, “Wirt Sewell is all right as a tinsmith, I guess, but I'll bet he can't teach you to shoot the way your pa can!”

“Shucks,” Jeff said, “Uncle Wirt doesn't even own a gun.

Nathan Blaine laughed. And from the sound, it was easy to tell that he was not a man who laughed often. But now he looked upon his boy with a gentleness that was surprising; the tense line of his mouth was relaxed and the fire behind his eyes was almost invisible.

Jeff climbed up on the bay feeling more a man than he had ever felt in his life. He had felt a good horse between his legs, he had felt the buck of a .45 in his hand, and he had heard a savage music more enticing than a siren's song.

He rode erect arid proud beside the tall figure of his pa.

Nathan was still smiling to himself when they reached the pasture gate. Jeff was put out because this was the one day that Bessie had to be waiting at the gate for him, robbing him of his chance to ride after her on his fine bay mare.

“Seems to me that mare's taken a liking to you, son,” Nathan said. “What do you say I make arrangements to keep her for a while?”

Jeff knew that his eyes were bugging. “You really mean it?”

“Sure I mean it. Look, we'll have a fine time together. Why, you'll be the best rider and the best pistol shot in this part of Texas when your pa gets through with you. And I'll teach you other things, too. Things your Uncle Wirt never even heard about!”

Jeff was stupefied with pleasure. A fine horse to ride all the time! A real Colt's revolver to shoot! Who could tell, maybe his pa would even buy him some thin-soled boots. It seemed that all good things had come at once!

They jogged Bessie almost all the way home. Aunt Beulah was going to raise ned when she found out about it, but Jeff didn't care. Within Jeff's chest there was a kind of pleasant swelling he had never known before. And once his pa reached out and punched him very gently on the shoulder, grinning. It was the only time Nathan had touched him, except for that cool handshake when they had first met in Aunt Beulah's parlor.

Chapter Four

AT ONE TIME OR ANOTHER during his span of thirty years Nathan Blaine had tried his hand at many things. He had mauled spikes with a railroad construction gang in Missouri, hired out as a soldier with Mexican revolutionaries, trailed cattle to Wichita and Dodge. He had traveled the whole Southwest trading horses, he had served as special marshal at an end-of-track shantytown in Indian Territory. At times he had been with the law, at times against it, depending on which current he was drifting with.

His profession now was gambling.

He had learned his trade in many schools and from many teachers. He had plied his art in cow camps and on the trail, in the deadfalls of Dodge, around mess fires of the Mexican Army, unconsciously increasing his knowledge of faro, stud, twenty-one and all the other gambling games.

His natural, aptitude for cards was excellent; he had patience, stamina, an alert brain and a long memory. He had never used a holdout harness, and he never wore one of those deadly little derringers tucked away in his vest.

He depended on his skill and knowledge of cards to provide a winning margin in poker, as he depended on his nerve and speed with guns to provide the winning margin in a far more deadly game.

Nathan Blaine could not recall the exact moment when his handling of cards and firearms had acquired the polish of a professional. His school had been a violent one and only the quickest and the toughest had lived—there was a grave in Sonora to mark the success of his first examination, and another in the Indian country, near the end-of-track shantytown, and in New Mexico still another.

There were many places in the Southwest where the name of Nathan Blaine had meaning and was respected and even feared. He had hoped that Plainsville would be different.

This was a town of squatters who never looked beyond their own barbed-wire fences. He had returned to Plainsville just because it was the kind of place it was. To tell the truth, he was tired and needed rest.

Now he sat day after day in Bert Surratt's saloon, stark and bleak as a squatter's barn, turning a dollar now and then with the “grangers,” as the newspapers were beginning to call them. When he fled the town twelve years ago, he hadn't thought he would ever return. When Lilie died he had not imagined that the black despair would ever lift, or that some day he would want to look upon the baby that had killed her.

He had never amounted to much in Plainsville. A livery boy, a part-time rider for the big outfits. Only Lilie had believed in him, had seen anything in him.

And when Lilie died...

He remembered that day all too well; all the grief and helpless rage that had followed him down the years. His wife was dead. The baby—his son—had killed her. In the darkness of his soul he had craved violence, he had longed to lash out and cause hurt, as he had, been hurt. But how could a man hurt a baby; how could a man direct all the hate in his brain against his own new-born son? Yet Nathan could not bear to look at that small, red face; so he had left Plainsville and his son behind, taking his wildness and rage with him.

But now he was back.

He sat at one of Surratt's plank tables riffling a deck of cards over and over in his hands, waiting for someone to come in and start a game. It was a slow way to make a living, being a gambler in a place like Plainsville.

If it wasn't for the boy, he thought, I'd pack up and leave right now!

He'd have to keep clear of the New Mexico country, of course, because he'd heard the marshals were looking for him over there. But there were plenty of other places. If worst came to worst he could always head back for Sonora or Chihuahua—or Indian Territory. The Federal court at Fort Smith wasn't as powerful as it used to be, so the Territory might be a pretty good place.

But Nathan could hardly believe the hold his son had got on him. He had not been prepared to find so much of Lilie in the boy. Even now, after all these years, the sound of her name could squeeze his heart dry, leaving him bloodless and cold, savage with loneliness.

Bert Surratt, the only other person in the place, came over to Nathan's table and took a chair. The saloonkeeper was a beefy man in his late fifties, an early settler.

“Slow today.”

“Every day's slow.”

“Maybe Plainsville will get the railroad,” the saloonkeeper speculated. “There's been talk in that direction.”

“It's just talk,” Nathan said. “Why would a railroad want to lay track out here to the very center of God's nowhere?”

Surratt shrugged. “Well, there's still plenty of cattle around here, if you can get to them through the barbed wire. The town would make a fine shipping center for this part of Texas.”

Nathan gazed without interest at the dirty, flyspecked mirror behind the bar. “Don't you believe it. Plainsville will go on dying until some day they'll have to bury it to keep it from smelling.”

The saloonkeeper looked indignant, although he cursed the town himself for running off the cattle trade. “Now if Plainsville's as bad as all that, why did you come back, Nate?”

Nathan smiled thinly and shrugged. “It's a long story, Bert. Have you got some black coffee over there in that pot?”

The saloonkeeper was annoyed with Nate Blaine. Oh, he'd heard the stories that had been circulating about Nate killing a man in New Mexico—and maybe that wasn't the only one, either. Bert wasn't sure that he liked having a man like that sitting in his saloon day after day taking hard-earned money from the squatter men. Not that he cared for squatters, but they were the only customers he had, just about.

Groaning, Bert lifted himself from his chair and tramped heavily to the end of the bar where he kept the coffee hot over a coal-oil lamp.

And there was another thing he didn't like, Bert thought as he poured the muddy liquid into two thick cups. Plainsville had got over the notion that a man had to have a gun strapped around his middle every time he stepped out of the house. Not many of his customers were heeled these days. He was afraid Nate was going to scare all his trade away.

No doubt about it, Blaine could look plenty dangerous when he wanted to, with that revolver tied down on his right thigh like a Territory gun, and the way he looked at you out of those dark eyes.

If he had his way about it, Bert would just as soon have Nate take his business someplace else.

Surratt put the crock mugs on the table and eased into the chair again. The two men sipped at the scalding coffee, thinking their own thoughts.

It's kind of a funny thing, Bert mulled, that the Sewells would keep a case like Nate Blaine in their house. It was the boy, he guessed. They'd raised the kid like one of their own, and he had heard that kids could get a grip on you if you didn't watch them, like a good horse or a hunting dog. Maybe Wirt and Beulah were afraid Nate would take the boy away if they got his back up.

Well, it was none of his business, Bert decided. As long as Nate behaved himself and didn't start any trouble, he guessed it wouldn't hurt much to have him sitting around the saloon. It wasn't likely that some tanked-up cowhand would come in on the prod, like they used to do.

Nathan Blaine riffled the cards in his strong, lean fingers. Phil Costain, the drayman, came in, and Surratt had to get up again to wait on him.

“Howdy, Blaine,” Phil said from the bar.

Nathan nodded. He did not ask Costain to the table, for the drayman would only be full of questions. Since his arrival in Plainsville, Nathan had had his fill of questions, spoken and unspoken. He knew it would be smart to pack his revolver away in a saddlebag and leave it there, but he'd be damned if he would go about half undressed just because some squatters became uneasy at the sight of a gun.

One thing he had to be proud of, anyway; his son was not afraid of guns. He had been working with the boy just a few days, and already the kid could handle the Colt's as well as a lot of men Nathan could mention.

Jeff had a knack with guns and horses—and with cards, too, for that matter. Nathan smiled quietly to himself, remembering back two days when he had been showing the boy some card tricks in the Sewell parlor. Beulah Sewell had caught him at it, and you'd have thought that Satan himself had put an evil spell on the kid, from the way she had taken on....

“What time is it, Bert?” Nathan called to the saloonkeeper.

Surratt looked at the big key-wound watch that he carried in his vest pocket. “Gettin' on toward four, Nate.” Almost time for the academy to let out, Nathan thought. He blocked the deck of cards that he had been riffling, and slipped them into his shirt pocket. He paid Surratt for the coffee and walked out.

Since coming to Plainsville, Nathan had set a schedule for himself that the citizens could set their watches by. At nine in the morning he rode with Jeff to the academy, then he left the horses in the public corral and took a table in Surratt's place, where he stayed until a few minutes before four. At four o'clock Nathan took his black and Jeff's bay mare out of the corral. He walked the horses up to the head of Main Street, where the boy would meet him.

“Now look here, Nate,” Wirt Sewell had told him a day or so after he had started this schedule. “Jeff's got work to do at the tin shop, and he has to do it after school. A boy can't spend all his free time riding horseback and doing as he pleases.”

Nathan had fixed his dark stare on Wirt and said, “Jeff's my boy. I figure I've got a say in what he can do and what he can't.”

“He's living under my roof!” Wirt said angrily.

“I can take him out from under your roof. Is that what you and Beulah want?”

Wirt Sewell had melted like wax. He had blinked in disbelief and the features of his face seemed to run together. That had been the last Nathan had heard about Jeff's working in the tin shop.

Now Nathan waited with the horses at the watering trough in front of Baxter's store. Pretty soon he saw Jeff coming toward him, up the dusty side street from the clapboard schoolhouse.

This was the moment that Nathan waited for, that first sight of his son coming to meet him. The first day or two there had been other boys with him, excited and green with envy when they saw that glossy bay that Jeff could ride whenever he felt like it. It had given Nathan a warm feeling of pleasure to see his son sitting proud as a prince on that horse while the other boys danced like excited urchins around his feet.

But the other boys had stopped coming. Sometimes the Wintworth boy would come with Jeff as far as Jed Harper's bank, but he would turn off there and head for home without giving the horse or Nathan a second glance.

Nathan Blaine was not blind; he knew what had happened. He did not know how his reputation had reached all the way to Plainsville, but he did know that it had. He could tell by the uneasy way people sidled away from him. He suspected that Beulah Sewell had started the gossip herself without a speck of evidence, but there was no way of proving it. Anyway, he didn't give a damn what these people thought about him. And neither did Jeff.

The boy was a Blaine. He didn't need anybody to lean on.

But as Nathan waited by the watering trough he thought that there was not quite the spring to the boy's step that there had been before. He looked lonesome, plodding barefoot in the deep red dust of the street.

“You look like you had a hard day,” Nathan said, grinning faintly.

“It was all right.”

“Would you like to ride up to Crowder's Creek with me?”

“I don't care,” Jeff said, stroking the bay's glossy neck.

At that moment Nathan could see so much of Lilie in the boy that his arms ached to reach out and hold his son hard against him. But, of course, a twelve-year-old boy would never stand for a thing like that.

At that moment Nathan had a flash of inspiration. He said, “What do you say we let the horses stand a while? I just thought of some business I have to take care of.”

The boy looked completely crestfallen until his pa said gently, “You come along, Jeff. The business has to do with you.”

Nathan stepped up to the plank walk and Jeff followed, puzzled. Side by side they walked along the store fronts, and they could have been the only two people in the world for all the attention they paid the curious eyes that followed them from behind plate-glass windows. Nathan stopped in front of Matt Fuller's saddle shop, which was mostly a harness shop now that squatter trade had taken over the town.

Jeff's eyes widened as his pa turned in and motioned for him to follow. They walked into a rich smell of tanned leather. On the walls of Fuller's shop there hung horse collars of all sizes, and all kinds of leather harnesses and rigging. The floor was littered with scraps of leather and wood shavings; two naked saddletrees stood on a bench, and there were boot lasts and knives and all kinds of tools for the cutting and trimming and dressing and tooling of leather.

When they walked into the shop a bell over the front door jangled and Matt Fuller came up front to see what they wanted.

“I want some boots made,” Nathan said.

Matt squinted over the steel rims of his spectacles. He was a wrinkled, white-haired little man who had been up in years when he first came to Plainsville fifteen years ago. But his hands were still good and strong and he was a fine leather worker when he got hold of a job that pleased him.

“You want 'em made like the ones you're wearin'?” Matt said. When Nathan said yes, the old man took his arm and led him over to where the light was better and studied the boots carefully.

“In front,” Nathan said, “I want them to come about an inch short of the knee, right where the shin bone ends. The back should be cut about an inch lower. The vamps must be made of the thinnest, most pliable leather, and the tops of your best kid.”

“I ain't blind,” the old man snapped. “T can see bow they're made. Well, you'll have to let me measure your foot. And if you want fancy stitchin' or colored insets, that'll cost you extra.”

“I guess the fixin's will be up to the boy,” Nathan said quietly. “The boots are for him.”

The old saddlemaker snapped his head around, peering incredulously at Nathan. “Bench-made boots? For that boy?”

Jeff could hardly believe that he had heard his pa correctly. Boots of that kind were very expensive, and he had never known a boy his age having a pair made just for him. Such extravagance would appall the citizens of Plainsville. Quality boots were made to last for years; all except the thin soles, of course, which had to be replaced from time to time.

Matt Fuller snapped, “I ain't in no mood for foolishness, mister. A boy like him would grow out of his boots in no time. Then what'll you do?”

“Then,” Jeff's pa said mildly, “I'll have you make another pair.” Nathan saw the glow of pleasure in his son's eyes and knew that he was doing the right thing.

Matt Fuller didn't take to this idea of spoiling a sprout of a boy with fancy footgear. It was a criminal waste of money. But, after all, he was in the business, and he went grumbling to his bench and gathered up the tools he needed for measuring and fitting.

“Make those vamps snug,” Nathan said as the old man made a paper cutout to fit the instep of the boy's foot. “And the arch high,” Nathan added.

The saddlemaker snorted. “He won't be able to walk from here to the bank buildin'!”

“Riding boots were never meant to walk in,”' Jeff's father answered.

To Jeff, it was as unreal as a dream, but better than any dream he could remember. The old man didn't slight him just because he was a boy. When Matt Fuller made a pair of boots, he made them right; and besides, Jeff's pa was right there to see that he didn't get shorted.

“Now, how about the fixin's?” Nathan asked, when the measuring was done.

“Could I have my initials stitched in red thread?”

“Absolutely,” Nathan smiled. “You want some do-dad stitchin'? Say a quilted pattern, or maybe a butterfly?”

It was a temptation, but Jeff decided he would rather have them like his pa's. Soft black kid from toe to tops.

At last they got it all settled with old Matt. It would take him two weeks to get them finished, the saddlemaker said, and Jeff didn't think he could possibly stand to wait that long. Already he was impatient to feel the tight fit of soft leather on his feet, but he didn't show it any more than he had to.

But just wait till Todd Wintworth and the others saw him in a pair of real bench-made boots! They'd be sick with envy, the whole bunch!

It was an odd thing, Nathan Blaine was thinking, how the glow in a boy's eyes could melt the winter in a man's soul. He guessed that he hadn't felt so good about a thing since the day he and Lilie were married.

He never should have run off, he thought, the way he had twelve years ago. But all that was in the past. Now he was determined to give the boy the best that was in him, teach him everything he knew.

It was a month to the day since Nathan Blaine had ridden unannounced and unwelcomed into Plainsville. Beulah Sewell had just brought in an armful of wood for the cookstove, and was stacking it neatly in the woodbox when Wirt came in the kitchen door. Beulah peered out the window and saw that the sun was almost an hour high.

“You locked shop early,” she accused her husband.

Wirt walked heavily across the kitchen and sat at the oilcloth-covered table. Only then did Beulah notice the bleakness of Wirt's eyes, the prominence of worry lines around his mouth.

“Oughtn't Jeff be bringing that wood in for you?” Wirt asked.

Beulah snorted. “Jeff Blaine's got too big for chores,” she said bitterly. “All he thinks about is rubbing his new boots and horseback riding.”

“That ain't all he thinks about,” Wirt said.

That was when Beulah Sewell knew that something was wrong. She turned to her husband, brushing stovewood chips from her apron. “What do you mean, Wirt?”

He moved uncomfortably on his chair, and Beulah could see that he was beginning to wish that he had never brought it up. But she waited patiently, and at last he started: “Probably it's nothing at all.” And that was the worst thing he could have said. All bad news, it seemed to Beulah, started with “probably it's nothing at all.”

“What I mean—”

Wirt tried again— “I got to talking with Marshal Blasingame, and somehow the subject of Nathan and Jeff came up—”

“I knew it!” Beulah said. “Nathan Blaine's in some kind of terrible trouble! I knew it the minute I laid eyes on him, when he came riding up here that day as big as you please, with that rifle on his saddle. I never saw the revolver at first, may the Lord help me, or I never would have let him in my house.”

“Beulah, Beulah,” her husband said wearily, “it's nothing like that at all. Leastwise, if Nate's in trouble, Elec Blasingame knows nothing about it.”

“Well, he ought to. There's plenty of talk!”

“But it's only talk,” Wirt said patiently. “When the railroad comes, and the telegraph, Elec will be able to track down what talk he hears, but not now. Anyway, what he was telling me is something entirely different.”

“Well, don't keep me in the air!” Beulah said. “Can't you come right out and say whatever it is?”

“I'm trying, Beulah. Well, the talk got around to Nate and Jeff, like I said, and Elec mentioned that he'd been up toward Crowder's Creek and had seen them there.”

“I'm not surprised,” his wife said shortly. “No time for anything but horseback riding, neither of them.”

“And target practice,” Wirt added.

Beulah blinked and looked puzzled.

“I'm putting it just the way Elec said,” Wirt told her. “He said he saw Nate and the boy there on the bank of the creek. They were shooting up just about everything in sight, according to Elec.”

His wife looked indignant at such a thought. “Why, Jefferson is just a child, not much more'n a baby! He can't shoot a gun!”

“What I'm trying to tell you,” Wirt went on, “is that his pa was teaching him how to shoot. They were having a regular drill, Elec said, with Nate showing the boy just how to aim and everything.”

Beulah was struck dumb at such a suggestion. Her mouth worked, but she made no sound. She sank slowly onto a chair across the table from her husband.

Wirt shook his head. “I know. I couldn't believe it, either. But Marshal Blasingame is not a lying man. He swore he saw Jeff firing Nate's revolver, and doing a better job at it than most men.”

Beulah Sewell's small round face was hard as concrete. “Wirt, we've got to do something.”

Only once before could Wirt remember seeing that bitter look of self-righteousness on his wife's face. That memory took him back ten years or more, and in his mind he could still see the stricken face of Widow Stover just before she'd been railroaded out of town. The “widow” had been known in Plainsville as a loose woman, though few, if any, could tell exactly how the epithet had been earned. She had worked a while at the Paradise eating house, where the rougher element congregated. On top of that, the widow's cheeks appeared unnaturally pink to some, and it was rumored that she painted them. Also, the widow had an exceptionally brassy voice and loved to laugh.

Wirt Sewell could not explain just why Widow Stover came to his mind at this moment, but he thought it had something to do with that set hardness in Beulah's face. That time so long ago she had looked at him in just the same way: iron-hard wrinkles around her small, pursed mouth, her pale eyes ablaze. “Wirt,” she had said that time, in just the same voice, “we've got to do something.” And the next day a delegation of Plainsville women had escorted Widow Stover to the stage office, where they purchased for her a one-way ticket out of the county.

What all this had to do with Nathan Blaine, Wirt was not sure, but his wife frightened him when she looked at him this way.

Wirt cleared his throat. “I was thinking,” he said uneasily, “maybe we ought to have a talk with Nate.”

“It's too late for talk,” his wife said stiffly.

“Now, Beulah,” he tried to soothe her. Let's don't look at this thing the wrong way. Nate's the boy's father; we can't forget that. It's only natural for a father to want his son to be proud of him. So we really can't blame Nate for showing off a little in front of the boy.”

“He's teaching his son to kill!”

“Now, Beulah,” Wirt said gently, “it ain't that at all. I guess guns are what Nate is best at. Now Mac Butler, the blacksmith, forges the best carving knives in the whole Southwest—that's what he's proud of, and that's what his son is proud of. It's the same with Nate, except Nate takes to guns instead of knives.”

“It ain't the same,” his wife said flatly.

Inwardly, Wirt knew that he was doing badly and would never get his point across the way he saw it. Still, something made him keep trying.

“I know it ain't the same, exactly,” he said, “but in a way it is. We ought to talk to Nate and make him see it ain't right for a boy Jeff's age to know so much about guns. We ought to get him to teach the boy something else, something he'll be able to use later in life.”

“You'd be wasting your time,” Beulah told him. “I know Nathan Blaine. He's a wild one and always has been. I warned Lilie against him, but she wouldn't listen to me. There's only one thing to do. We've got to separate Jefferson from his pa, and the sooner we get about it, the better!”

Her husband looked worried. “Beulah, what have you got in mind to do?”

“I don't know yet. Maybe we'll just have to wait for something. Meanwhile, we can be giving it some thought.”

She said no more. Her eyes burning a bit brighter, her back a bit stiffer, she went on about her work.

Chapter Five

JEFF BLAINE COULD hardly believe that six months ago he had been a barefoot boy that people never gave a second glance to. Now he was “young Blaine,” well past his thirteenth birthday and in his last year at the academy. When he crossed the street, people looked at him and said, “There goes young Blaine. Nate Blaine's boy.”

It was a strange feeling, waking up after twelve years and having people look at you for the first time. It was almost as though he had been invisible before.

Jeff liked the feeling that went with being visible. It gave * a person a sense of importance to see heads turn when you walked past. He liked to watch mouths moving and know that they were talking about him. It didn't make much difference what they said. The knowledge that they were talking about him was the important thing.

His life had become a bit more complicated than it had been before, but Jeff didn't mind. If the boys at the academy wanted to be jealous of him, let them. He didn't need them. And if parents told their boys to steer clear of Jeff Blaine, that was all right too.

There was just one thing that bothered him. That was Amy Wintworth....

Jeff still remembered that birthday party of hers that should have been such a success, and wasn't. The party had been pretty much like a dozen others that Jeff had attended, with hand-turned ice cream, and cake, and paper napkins. No matter how hard Amy and Mrs. Wintworth tried to mix them up, the boys soon separated from the girls, starting their own strictly male game of one-and-over.

For the first time in his life Jeff felt out of place and uncomfortable. He felt superior to one-and-over, so he stood apart from the others, trying to be cool and aloof.

“This is terrible!” Amy told him. “Jeff, can't you get the boys to mix with the girls?”

And he had thrown back his head, exactly like Nathan Blaine. “I can't stop them from being kids all their lives, if that's what they want.”

“Well, won't you come over and talk to us?”

He had been outraged at this suggestion. “No, I can't,” he said, drawing himself up. And so he had cut himself away from the others and was left standing, one small island, between the two groups. He was lonely and angry in his chosen position of isolation, but he lounged against one of the clothesline posts, yawning with elaborate casual-ness to hide his feelings.

“Stuck up!” he heard Lela Costain hiss acidly.

And several of the girls gathered in a small cluster and Jeff knew they were talking about him. Amy and Mrs. Wintworth had still tried to draw the two groups together, but by then the girls were as interested in their sharp, pointed gossip as the boys were in their one-and-over. Amy pointedly ignored Jeff, and he knew that she was angry.

Well, he thought, she'd get over it. Just the same she had never been prettier than she was that night, and Jeff kept glancing at her when he thought she wasn't looking.

He wished that she would come over and talk to him again, but she was too proud for that.

Probably every party reaches a point where it seems to be falling to pieces, and that was the way it was then, on Amy's eleventh birthday. But you'd never know it to look at Amy. She carried herself straight and proud, and her bright smile seemed as permanent as a steel etching. Nothing could erase it.

And yet the smile vanished when she approached the group of girls. A grimness appeared at the corners of her mouth when she heard what they were saying. Her chin jutted with determination.

“That's enough,” Amy said quietly. There was a brittleness in her voice, an urgency, that made the girls look around.

“I was just saying—” Lela Costain started. “I heard!” Amy replied coldly.

The Wintworth back yard became suddenly quiet. The boys stopped their one-and-over and began moving forward to see what was wrong.

Lela Costain, a stocky, square-built girl, shot glances around the small circle, smiling when she saw that everyone was eagerly awaiting her next word. “Well,” she said primly, smoothing down her blue ruffled dress, “it's the truth. Everybody knows about Nate Blaine.”

“Lela Costain, I don't want to hear another word!” Amy said sharply, and the look of self-satisfaction dropped from Lela's face. She looked flustered and ready to cry, and suddenly she turned and ran from the back yard. That was the last they saw of Lela Costain that night. That was all there was to it, but the entire character of the party was changed. The rowdy boys now shuffled uneasily, the girls were strangely mute. The party was as good as dead.

In Jeff's ears the sound of his father's name was still ringing. Lela had said something bad about his pa—that much was clear. He hated the thought of having a girl take up a fight that was rightly his, and yet he was proud of Amy for doing it. He couldn't very well fight a girl himself.

Within a matter of minutes the Wintworth back yard was empty. Reasons were suddenly thought of for going home early that night, and soon only Jeff and Amy were left.

“I guess,” Amy said, “the party is over.”

“It sure looks like it,” he said awkwardly. “Well, J guess I'd better be going.” But he stopped before reaching the gate. “I'm proud of you, Amy. I guess Lela Costain won't be telling lies about people after this.”

“Proud of me!” He hadn't expected her sudden anger. “What happened was your fault, Jeff Blaine, not Lela's!”

“My fault?”

“How do you think the others felt, with you standing off to yourself, thinking that you were too good to mix with the rest of us? You can't do that and not get talked about!”

Jeff had never seen a girl as hard to make out as Amy. One minute she was on your side, and the next minute she was blaming him for everything. Now the fire of anger was in her eyes; he could almost feel the sparks fly as she glared at him. He felt that he had better leave as quietly as possible.

“Jeff!” He had just reached the gate when she called. Another girl would have cried her eyes out because her party had been ruined, but not Amy Wintworth. She came toward him, walking very straight. “I guess I didn't mean all the things I said, Jeff. It wasn't really your fault.”

He felt awkward, and did not know what to say.

“I'll make it up with Lela tomorrow,” she said. “Everything will be all right.”

He knew that it had been largely his fault and he wanted to tell her so. But the words would not come. He could only stand there looking at her, and the longer he looked the prettier she seemed to get. “Well—” he said, clearing his throat— “I guess I'd better go.”

For a long while that night, after going to bed, he thought over what had happened. Amy had nerve—and he had learned to appreciate nerve from his pa. Remembering how she had stepped in to take his part gave him a warm and pleasant feeling. Perhaps for the first time he actually thought of Amy Wintworth as his girl.

This thought so occupied his mind that it did not occur to him to wonder what Lela Costain had been saying about his pa. Probably he would have passed it off as nothing if it hadn't been for something that happened shortly after, at school.

Alex Jorgenson was fourteen, a straw-haired, red-faced boy who outweighed Jeff by twenty pounds. Jeff never liked him, never had much to do with him until that day when he came into the cluster of boys at the rear of the schoolhouse. Alex was talking, and the others were listening intently.

“It's a fact,” Alex was saying. “My pa told me, and he says it's the gospel truth.”

Jeff stood back a little from the group, assuming an attitude of cool disinterest. He wore new jeans that his pa had bought him, and his fine black boots, and he had a belt with a genuine Mexican silver buckle. A person dressed in such fine clothes could hardly afford to mix with barefoot urchins. He kept his distance.

“What did your old man say?” one of the boys asked Alex Jorgenson.

“Well, he got it straight from the traveler,” Alex said. “This traveler'd been up in New Mexico Territory, so he knew what he was talking about.”

“What was the story?” someone asked impatiently.

“Hold your horses, will you?” Alex said, loving the attention, wanting to draw it out as long as possible. “I'm tellin' you about the traveler so you'll know the story's straight and I'm not making it up. This traveler's horse'd thrown a shoe, and he'd stopped at Butler's to get it fixed up—that's where my pa works.”

“We know your pa works for Mac Butler,” Todd Wintworth said. “But what has it got to do with Blaine?”

Jeff felt his scalp tingle at the mention of his father's name. He was afraid that they were going to look around and see him standing there—but they didn't.

“This is the way it happened,” Alex said confidentially, dropping his voice so that Jeff could barely hear him. “This traveler claimed he'd been in this town, a place called Limerock, up in the New Mexican country. When the name of Nate Blaine turned up in the talk, my pa said this stranger turned green around the gills and said he wouldn't stay overnight in a town where Nathan Blaine lived.”

“Why not?” Todd Wintworth put in again.

“Because Blaine killed a man in Limerock!” Alex said, pausing a moment for dramatic effect. “The traveler swore it was the gospel truth; he was there. Shot this man dead, Nate Blaine did, in a poker game. The stranger said they were still looking for him over New Mexico way.”

For one long moment Jeff stood still as stone.

“I've heard that story before,” one of the boys said.

“But not from a man that was actually there!” another one said.

“That's what I'm telling you!” Alex said importantly. “This is the truth; you've got to believe it.” Then he drew himself up, scowling. “Unless somebody wants to call me a liar.”

Alex was a good deal bigger than the others. “Wait a minute, Alex. Nobody said you was a liar.”

“Well, they better not!”

Jeff spoke. “And what if they do?”

All heads snapped in Jeff's direction. They saw him then for the first time, and some of them looked worried.

Jeff hardly recognized the voice that came from his throat. He stood so stiff and straight that his back began to ache. A cold fury raged within him.

He said, “I call you a liar, Alex. I call you a double damn liar.”

Alex Jorgenson looked startled.

“Do you admit you're a liar?” Jeff demanded.

Alex sneered. He was heavier and older, but he wasn't sure that he liked what he saw in Jeff's eyes.

“Admit it!” Jeff said hoarsely.

“Are you crazy?” Alex tried to laugh.

“You admit it, or you'll be sorry.”

Alex tried to blow himself up. He glanced at the others, drew in a deep breath and swaggered forward. “Just what do you think you're going to do about it? You want to fight, that's fine with me!”

“Gentlemen don't fight with their fists.”

The words surprised Jeff almost as much as they did Alex and the others. Then he remembered that he had heard his father say it several times in describing men like Longley and Hardin.

The shadow of worry vanished from Alex Jorgenson's eyes. He laughed. “You're yellow, Jeff Blaine! You're afraid to fight.”

“You admit you're a liar,” Jeff repeated grimly.

“And what if I don't?”

“I'll kill you.”

Alex did not hear the danger in the words. He laughed once more. “You're yellow!” he said again, and then he lunged at Jeff, hitting him solidly in the face with his big right fist.

Jeff reeled back under the impact, stumbled and fell to the ground. Anger was hot within him. He lost sight of Alex's advantage in age and weight. He was ready to shove himself up and fly into the grinning red face that leered down at him. Then, in his mind, he heard his father saying: “Gentlemen don't fight with their fists.” He stayed down.

Alex Jorgenson was pleased and surprised with his easy victory. He looked at the others, grinning.

“What did I tell you? He's yellow!”

Todd Wintworth was the only one among them to see the danger. He stepped forward, shoving at Alex. “Get away from here, fast! Before somebody gets hurt!”

Alex pushed him away. He strutted now, savoring the situation. “Nobody's going to get hurt,” he bragged. “Jeff Blaine's too yellow to get up and take his beating.”

Jeff spoke hoarsely from the ground. “We'll see who's yellow, Alex! I'll meet you at the cottonwood grove on Crowder's Creek when school gets out. And you'd better bring a gun!”

Jeff would not soon forget the look on Alex Jorgenson's face as the blood drained from it.

Jeff picked himself off the ground and carefully brushed the dust from his new jeans. “I know your pa's got a forty-five,” he said coldly. “It won't be any trouble to snitch it.” He allowed himself a thin smile, not realizing how much he resembled his father at that moment. “I'll see you at the creek,” he said. “Unless you're yellow, Alex.” Then he turned and walked away.

That day, sitting there at his plank bench in the crowded schoolhouse, Jeff could feel the shocked and frightened stares of the pupils upon him. But he didn't care what they thought of him.

He was young Blaine, the son of Nate Blaine. From time to time he would look around to see how Alex Jorgenson was taking it. The boy was still pale. Alex was scared half to death and everybody in the room knew it.

He'll never meet me at the creek, Jeff thought with a sneer. He's yellow clear through.

But Jeff was wrong. At the end of the day Alex and several other boys came up to him in the schoolyard.

Jeff said, “You backing down?”

Alex swallowed. “No. It'll take a little time to get my pa's gun. But I'll be there.”

Jeff would have sworn that Alex never would have gone through with it. But there was a saying that cornered rats would fight, and maybe that accounted for it. Jeff tried not to show his surprise. “Well, just see you don't take too long. I can't wait all day.”

He turned and walked off from the others. Todd Wintworth ran across the yard to catch up with him.

“You're not really going through with it, are you, Jeff?”

Jeff almost laughed. Todd's eyes were popping. “I'm going through with it, all right. I'll teach him to go around telling lies about the Blaines.”

“Are you sure it's lies?”

Jeff stopped in his tracks. “What do you mean by that?”

Todd Wintworth was no coward. He had fought plenty of boys bigger than himself and usually came out on top. But there was something about the set of Jeff's mouth that made him back water.

“I didn't mean anything.”

Jeff stepped out again, walking on hard ground when he could, to keep the red dust from settling on his boots.

“Jeff,” Todd said, “will you tell me something?”

“Sure.”

“Are we friends, or not? You've been acting so funny lately—”

Jeff looked at him. “Sure we're friends. We've always been friends, haven't we?”

“Will you do something for me?” Todd asked.

“What?”

“Go after Alex and tell him not to get the gun.”

Jeff turned on him. “Are you crazy?”

“Go after him, Jeff, before it's too late!” His voice had a curious twang to it, like a fiddle string about to snap. “Fight him with your fists. I know you're not afraid of him.. He's mostly blubber and you can whip him easy.”

“I don't want to whip him with my fists,” Jeff said grimly. He started walking again, and this time Todd stood where he was, letting Jeff go on alone.

Well, to hell with him! Jeff told himself. I don't need Todd Wintworth or anybody else!

Today he did not take the street that went past Jed Harper's bank building, because he knew his pa would be waiting there for him. He cut up the wide alley behind Baxter's store, circled in front of the public corral and headed toward the Sewell house. He was careful not to go past the tin shop and not to let Aunt Beulah see him when he got home.

When he was sure that nobody was watching, Jeff headed for the cowshed where Nathan had hung his saddlebags from a rafter. He knew that his pa kept an extra .45 and several boxes of cartridges in one of the bags.

Sure enough, when he got the leather pouches down he found a heavy Colt's Cavalry carefully wrapped in oiled rags. He loaded it with five rounds from the ammunition carton, easing the hammer down on the empty chamber. He carefully wiped the oil from the revolver and then hid it away inside his shirt.

He felt his heart hammering with excitement, but he was not nervous or scared. His hands were perfectly steady. He peered around the shed wall to make sure Aunt Beulah hadn't seen him, and then he darted around the front of the house and headed toward Harkey's pasture. If anybody wanted to know, he was just heading to the pasture to fetch Bessie.

But nobody wanted to know.

When he reached the barbed-wire gate, he turned north and followed the fence toward Crowder's Creek. When he was sure no one could see him, he took out the revolver and tried to hold it the way his pa did.

His hands were large for a boy of thirteen, but not large enough to handle a gun as big and heavy as a Colt's .45. He could cock it with his thumb, but it was a strain and took some time. It would be better, he decided, to cock with the left hand and trigger with the right, a technique known as fanning.

Nathan Blaine did not like fanning as a technique for rapid shooting. There were only two excuses for using it: one was when you were standing belly to belly with the man you were shooting at, and the other was when your hand wasn't big enough to cock with the thumb on recoil, in the accepted fashion.

Jeff's hand simply wasn't big enough, so he would have to fan.

Not that it bothered him. His pa had taught him more about guns than most people learn in a lifetime.

As he neared the creek, Jeff practiced rolling the gun in his right hand. But two and a quarter pounds, plus the added weight of the ammunition, was a lot of weight to spin on one finger, even for a man. Jeff stopped it and was carrying the revolver at his side when he arrived at the grove of cottonwoods.

Bud Slater and Rob Lustrum, two boys from the academy, were already there. Jeff scowled as he saw them.

“Did anybody see you coming this way?”

“No,” Bud Slater said. “We come up the path as if we was goin' to the pasture. Gee, is that a real Colt's?”

“Sure. What did you think it was?” He enjoyed watching their eyes grow wider.

“Do you think Alex'll show up?” Rob Lustrum wanted to know.

“Maybe. If he doesn't lose his guts,” Jeff said. He spun the revolver once for their benefit. Then his trigger finger began to weaken from the weight and he shoved the revolver into his waistband.

“Is that your pa's gun?” Bud asked in awe.

But Jeff was here on serious business; he had no time for talking. He walked off to the crest of the rise, and looked down toward the town. He could see no one.

Alex wasn't going to show up. He had known it all along. Well, he'd wait a while longer. He didn't much care whether Alex showed up or not. He wanted to feel the Colt's in his hand but he was afraid his arm would get tired, and that was a chance he couldn't take. A person couldn't hit anything if his arm was weak and shaking.

After fifteen minutes had passed, Rob Lustrum said, “Looks like nobody else is coming.”

“I'm not surprised,” Jeff said coolly. “I didn't think Alex Jorgenson had all the guts he brags about.”

“Wait a minute,” Rob said, jogging up the ridge. “I think I see somebody. Yes sir, he's headin' this way, all right. But it ain't Alex.”

Jeff walked back down to the cottonwoods. He would wait another fifteen minutes, he thought, and then to hell with Alex Jorgenson.

“It looks like a man,” Rob said from the ridge.

“Come on down from there,” Jeff said shortly. “We don't want to cause a commotion. If it ain't Alex, then it makes no difference who it is.”

Rob came down from the ridge and the three boys squatted under the trees. A few minutes passed and the silence became uneasy. “Maybe I'd better go up and have another look,” Bud Slater said.

Jeff just looked at him and Bud made no move toward the ridge. Then they heard somebody crashing through the undergrowth along the creek bank.

“Where are you?” a voice yelled hoarsely. “Damn it, where are you?”

Bud and Rob looked at each other and then at Jeff. It was a man's voice, and it sounded mean. Then a tall, angry figure broke into the clear and stood on the ridge for a moment in an angry crouch. It was Feyor Jorgenson, Alex's old man.

Bud Slater and Rob Lustrum jumped to their feet as if to run, and then they stood frozen as old Feyor came tramping savagely down the slope in their direction.

Jeff saw at a glance what had happened. Either Alex had gone yellow and blurted the whole story to his pa, or old Feyor had caught him sneaking his pistol and had beat the truth out of him. It didn't matter which. Jeff saw that he was in a spot.

Old man Jorgenson's temper was legend in Plainsville, but Jeff had never seen him quite as mad as he was now. His small bloodshot eyes seemed to be spurting fire from beneath his shaggy brows. His heavy blacksmith's shoulders were hunched like some big cat ready to spring, the hard muscles standing out like knotted rope beneath his sweat-stained hickory shirt. Feyor raked Bud and Rob with one savage look and then ignored them. To Jeff he snarled, “You're that damn outlaw's kid, ain't you?”

Jeff felt something go hard inside him. He stood slowly, wondering if he could draw and trigger the Colt's before old Feyor could spring.

“My name is Jefferson Blaine,” Jeff said clearly.

He did not think it strange that a mere boy should stand there coolly, facing up to an ox of a man like Feyor Jorgenson. Jeff carried the difference in his waistband. Let old Feyor start something, if he wanted to. Just let him start it.

“You no-account young whelp!” Jorgenson shouted. “You want to fight, do you? You want to fight with guns, do you? Well, by hell, I'm goin' to teach you there's somethin' more dangerous than guns! I aim to give you the whallopin' of your life!”

Within Jeff's rigid frame a fuse was burning. Not yet, he thought coldly. Not yet... Wait for him to come at me. He's almost ready. The fuse is burning short. Now!

Old Feyor sprang at him.

Jeff grabbed the Colt's from his waistband, cocked it hard with the heel of his left hand and triggered with his right. The explosion was like thunder, but the shot was wild, and Jorgenson did not stop. The bulk of him loomed like a thunderhead and he came down on Jeff like a mountain.

An enormous fist lashed out, and Jeff's pistol flew from his hand. Feyor cuffed with his other hand, like a grizzly ripping out a deer's belly, and the world spun.

Jeff struck the ground with the side of his face. His head rang. He fell head over heels and couldn't seem to stop rolling. There was no breath in his lungs.

Old Feyor stood over him, cursing like a madman. He grabbed the front of Jeff's shirt and jerked him to his feet. Jeff saw the huge openhanded fist loom in his face and explode again. He went spinning, tumbling, falling in the other direction.

He was helpless. There was thundering pain in his head and a razor in his side. And every time he hit the ground, old Feyor would grab him to his feet, the open fist looming up again.

Through it all he could hear Feyor cursing. “You try to kill my boy! You are evil! You are like your pa, an outlaw! A killer! I teach you! Pull a gun on Feyor Jorgenson, will you!”

How long it lasted Jeff could not say. The awful shocks of Feyor's powerful slapping became unbearable. He tried to run but Feyor caught him. He tried to scramble down the creek bank, but Feyor jerked him up and slapped him again. Shamelessly, Jeff wanted to cry, but there was no breath in his lungs for crying. He wanted to beg for mercy but could not speak. Suddenly it stopped.

Jeff lay on the ground, his head throbbing, his mouth salty with blood. A pair of strong hands took his shoulders and turned him over.

“You all right, son?”

It was Nathan Blaine, his pa.

Jeff opened his eyes and saw others coming down the slope to the cottonwoods. Phil Costain, Mac Butler, old Seth Lewellen, Elec Blasingame, and several others. Marshal Blasingame and Mac Butler were holding Feyor by his arms and Feyor was still cursing.

“Jeff, are you all right?” Nathan asked again, anxiously.

Jeff nodded. He tried moving his legs and arms and they seemed to be all right. His pa took a red handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped some of the blood and dirt from Jeff's face. Nathan helped his son to sit up and he said, “You'll be all right when you get your breath.”

The voice was gentle, but Jeff had never seen a fire so bright as the one that showed in his pa's eyes. Nathan said, “Just sit where you are. I'll take you down to the Sewells' in a minute.”

Nathan Blaine rose to his feet, taller by inches than any man present. His head thrown back, he glared his hate at Feyor Jorgenson. The other men seemed uneasy, not knowing exactly what to do.

“Jorgenson,” Nathan said, his voice as cold and brittle as winter ice, “I never want to see your face again. Do you understand?”

Marshal Blasingame said, “Just a minute, Nate.”

“I mean it, Jorgenson,” Nathan added. “If I ever see your face in Plainsville again...” He left the words hanging, the frosty silence more expressive than anything he could say.

Elec Blasingame's face was flushed. “You hold your tongue, Nate!” he said sharply. “And for you, Jorgenson, I'm not standing for what you did to this boy, no matter what cause you might have had. You'll likely get your day in court for this, but it'll be square and legal.”

Nathan said nothing, but twin seas of rage were in his eyes, a silent warning to Jorgenson. Elec said shortly, “Nate, you'd better take the boy home.”

Nathan stood like stone, making his warning absolutely clear. Jorgenson squirmed as these fierce eyes fixed themselves upon him. He looked down at the ground, his face slightly gray.

Blasingame shot an angry glance at Nathan, then turned to Feyor. “Get this straight, Jorgenson; you don't have to be afraid of anybody but the law.”

But Jorgenson did not look up or indicate in any way that he had heard. Nathan Blaine's deadly warning had reached him, sapping his anger and his strength. Feyor was a strong, proud man, and he had no wish to die. He said emptily, “I guess I better get back to my work.” Restraining hands fell from his arms, and he turned and tramped heavily up the grade.

The marshal glared his anger at Nathan, but he knew there was nothing he could do unless a more tangible form of violence arose from this. He threw a hard glance around at the other men and said, “All right, it's all over. Get on back to town.”

After the others had gone, Blasingame stood looking down at Jeff. “Are you all right, boy?”

Jeff nodded and rose stiffly to his feet. The marshal said abruptly, “Take him home, Nate. Then I want to see you in my office.”

Nathan gave him a short nod as if to say maybe he'd come and maybe he wouldn't. Red in the face, Blasingame left them.

There was a strange gray look around the edges of his pa's lips, Jeff noticed, as Nathan picked his spare Colt's out of the grass and put it into his back pocket. He did not mention the gun at all, nor the fact that Jeff had taken it from the saddlebag. All he said was: “I left my black down the creek a piece. We can ride double to town.”

They had hardly more than reached the cowshed when Beulah flew into them. Jeff had never heard such carrying on. She was red in the face and her eyes popped, and that tight little mouth of hers spewed the meanest things Jeff had ever heard—even for Aunt Beulah.

The way she pitched into them, you'd get the idea that Jeff had been at fault all the way and Feyor Jorgenson was as white as snow. And it beat Jeff why his pa took everything she had to say and didn't come back with a word of his own. Aunt Beulah was going at it so hard that Jeff didn't have time to wonder how the news had got around so fast. It seemed as if the whole town knew about it.

When his aunt started accusing Nathan of being a murderer and of teaching his son to kill, Jeff started to pitch in with a piece of his own. But his pa squeezed his shoulder with a hard, lean hand, and Jeff shut his mouth without saying a word.

The same thing happened when Aunt Beulah told his pa that he was a disgrace to the family and she didn't want him in her house any more.

Jeff was going to tell her that he wasn't going to stay either if his pa couldn't. But that strong hand on his shoulder silenced him.

Then Nathan said, “All right, Beulah, that's enough.” There was something in the quiet way he said it that made Aunt Beulah pull up short. She scowled, her round little mouth as hard as a knothole in an oaken plank.

Nathan said, “I'll get out of your house, Beulah. You don't have to say any more.”

Jeff pulled himself up as tall as possible, filled with anger. “I'll go, too!”

“No,” Nathan said quietly. “Not now. I'll tell you when.” Beulah looked as though she had been slapped, but Nathan did not look at her again. Jeff wanted to argue, but he watched his pa turn and walk ramrod-straight to the cowshed, and decided against it.

Nathan got his saddlebags from the shed. He walked stiffly to the kitchen and got his roll. The saddlebags slung across his shoulders, the roll under his arm, Nathan walked over to his son.

“I'll put up in town someplace,” he said. “Jeff, you stay here and mind your aunt and uncle.”

Jeff's mouth flew open to protest, but his pa said sternly, “This ain't the right time for palaver. You do as I say.” He put one strong hand on the boy's head and shook him gently. “I'll be seein' you.” He swung up to the saddle and rode out of the yard.

Chapter Six

THE NEXT DAY JEFF began to feel the new status that he had achieved in Plainsville. He was heading for the academy that morning and ran across Bud Slater near the public corral.

“Did I catch the dickens when I got home last night!” Bud said proudly. “My old man was mad as hops when he found out I'd gone to the creek without tellin' him anything about the fight.”

Jeff nodded, but said nothing. Although they were nearly the same age, Jeff felt much older than he had a few days ago.

“I'll bet your aunt raised the roof,” Bud said hopefully.

“With me?” Jeff asked coolly, implying that his aunt wouldn't dare.

“Well, Beulah Sewell's got a temper. Anybody in town will tell you that.”

Jeff let it slide, suggesting that he had more important matters on his mind.

“Say,” Bud said, holding the best for the last, “did you hear Alex Jorgenson and his old man lit out of town last night?”

This was news to Jeff, and he didn't try to hide it. “They did? When?”

“In the middle of the night some time; nobody knows for sure. Sam Baxter's raisin' ned, they say. Old Feyor pulled out owin' him thirty-four dollars at the store.”

Jeff felt himself smiling, felt himself growing big inside. It was a strong, good feeling. Big, tough, hard-drinking Feyor Jorgenson pulling up stakes and leaving town in the middle of the night, just because Jeff's pa warned him he'd better! Jeff had known all along that his pa was a powerful man, but he hadn't been sure that he was this powerful.

The excitement of the thought made him want to laugh. Think what it meant having a father who could do things like that! No wonder all the other boys in Plainsville were jealous.

A change came over Bud's face when the two boys turned the corner at the Masonic Temple. “Say, I thought of something,” Bud said. “See you later, maybe.” He wheeled and hurried across the street, hands in pockets, elaborately casual.

That was a strange thing for him to do, Jeff thought, for Bud was heading for the schoolhouse, the same as Jeff was. But the reason for Bud's abrupt action was soon clear. Forrest Slater, Bud's old man, was coming toward him from the other end of the street.

It gave Jeff a queer feeling for a minute when he realized that Bud was afraid to be seen with him. But that hard core of bigness kept him from showing it. He looked old man Slater right in the eye as they passed.

A short way past the temple building Jeff saw Amy Wintworth come out of her house and head toward the academy. He quickened his step along the dirt path, coming up beside her. “Hello,” he said.

She gave him a cool glance. “Todd's gone on ahead,” she said, her chin in the air.

“I'm not lookin' for Todd.”

“Oh,” she said, walking on.

They walked silently. It grated Jeff's nerves that she wouldn't look at him but stared straight ahead. She didn't even notice the bruises that Jorgenson had put on his face.

There seemed no graceful way to fall back or hurry on past her, so he walked forward stiffly, throwing her a glance from the corner of his eye. Surely she had heard about his standing up to Alex Jorgenson, something not many boys his age and size would have done.

At last he felt that the silence had lasted long enough.

“My pa was busy this morning,” he said. “That's why I'm walking instead of riding the bay.”

All he got was a sour look.

“Well, can't you say something?”

“About what?” she demanded.

He shrugged uncomfortably and thought that he never should have caught up with her. She was in a mood, all right, but it did not prepare him for what was to come. She turned on him suddenly, and her eyes glistened with indignation.

“You're right proud of yourself, aren't you?” she snapped. “You think you're something big, don't you, because your father scared a drunken old smithie out of Plainsville?”

Jeff felt the heat anger in his face. “I didn't say a thing about old man Jorgenson, or Alex either!”

“But you were thinking it!” she accused unreasonably. “Oh, I can see the smugness on your face, Jefferson Blaine!”

How could a man defend himself against an assault like that?

“And another thing,” she said. “I heard my father tell Todd not to have anything to do with you or your pa. So don't go running after him.”

If she were a boy, Jeff thought angrily.

But she wasn't. She was a frail girl with pink lips and flashing brown eyes and a yellow ribbon in her hair. Just the same, her words hurt. So Ford Wintworth, her pa, had forbidden Todd to have anything to do with him! And that probably went for Amy too.

Jeff looked at her, then turned suddenly in anger and started to walk away.

He had taken fewer than a dozen paces when his feet began to drag. Darn it, he thought, he'd never understand girls if he lived to be a hundred. She had ruined her birthday party only to take his part—now he couldn't even get her to look at him!

Yet he consciously slowed down until she caught up with him again. “What're you mad about?” he demanded.

“I didn't say I was mad,” she said coolly.

“I've got eyes. What difference does it make, anyway, what happens to Alex Jorgenson and his old man?”

“If you don't know, I can't tell you.”

There seemed to be nothing else to say. Amy could use words like a lash, but they made clean wounds that healed quickly. Whatever's ailing her, Jeff thought, she'll soon get over it. They walked the rest of the way to the academy in silence.

In Elec Blasingame's office, where the county rented space in the basement of the Masonic Temple, Nathan Blaine took a chair and waited. After a minute the marshal came in from another room and said shortly, “You took your time about getting here.”

“I didn't know it was urgent,” Nathan said quickly.

“Old Feyor Jorgenson and his kid pulled out of town in the middle of the night; scared for their lives. That's how urgent it is.”

Nathan's hand moved toward a tobacco sack in his shirt pocket. He said nothing.

Elec Blasingame was a bulldog of a man. He was squat and thick, almost completely bald. He had the enlarged, blue-veined nose of a heavy drinker, but few had ever seen him drunk. He had been marshal of Plainsville for fourteen years, through good times and bad. There were four graves on the wrong side of the town cemetery, four dead men who had thought Blasingame was just another town marshal who would back down when the going got tough.

Elec's jaws bulged as he glared at Nathan. “Nate,” he said, “we've had a quiet town here since the cow outfits shifted away from Plainsville; people have got to like it that way. Now what you've been doing the past twelve years ain't much my business; I'm just the town marshal. But if you ever bear down on your gun again, the way you did with Jorgenson, you're going to have me to contend with. Is that clear?”

Nathan held a sulphur match to his cigarette and shot the stick on the floor. “Did you see me throw down on Jorgenson?”

“You know what I mean,” Blasingame said harshly. “A name followed you to Plainsville when you came back. When you use a hardcase reputation to scare a man, it's the same as pulling a pistol.”

Nothing showed in Nathan's face. “I'll remember. Is that all, Elec?”

“No,” Blasingame said, “it isn't.” He pulled up a tilt-back chair and sat solidly behind an unfinished plank table that served as a desk. “I've been thinking about that boy of yours, Nate. Doesn't it seem to you he's a little young to be so handy with a forty-five?”

Nathan studied the top of his thin cigarette. “A man can't start too young learning to protect himself.”

“Protect himself? Is that what the boy is doing?” The marshal planted his elbows on the table, shoving his blunt face at Nathan. “The way I got it, your boy challenged young Jorgenson to a pistol duel. Now that's a hell of a thing for a kid to think up all by himself!”

Grayness edged Nathan Blaine's thin lips. “Maybe he had a reason.”

“What kind of reason could a kid like Jeff have to want to shoot another boy?” Blasingame demanded. Suddenly his big fist hit the table. “Damn it, Nate, I'm scared for that boy of yours, and that's God's truth! Can't you see what you've done to him? Teaching a boy like that to use a gun is like giving a baby dynamite caps to play with!”

The fire in Nathan's eyes burned slowly. “Jeff's just a boy, like any other.”

The marshal came half out of his chair. “Wes Hardin was just a boy too, once. But he'd killed a passel of men by the time he was sixteen. They say Will Bonney could cut a notch for every year of his age when he was twenty-one. Bill Longley had a price on his head when he wasn't any older than Jeff is now.”

Angrily, Nathan tramped his cigarette under a boot heel. “Look here, Elec, what are you trying to say?”

Blasingame settled back, his voice suddenly gentle. “I'm just wondering what you've got on your mind, Nate. That boy looks up to you; any fool can see that. You can make out of him just about anything you want. I hope it's not a hardcase gunman.”

Nathan came stiffly to his feet, “Are you through, Marshal?”

Blasingame sighed wearily and said nothing.

There was a small game going in Surratt's place when Nathan got there, but he ignored it and went to the bar. The saloonkeeper gave him a curious look when he asked for a bottle and took it to a vacant table. From the corner of his eye, Surratt watched Blaine pour a tumbler half full and down it in two choking gulps.

The raw whisky set off a blaze in Nathan's stomach but did little to chase the scare that Blasingame had given him. Damn them, why couldn't they mind their own business?

But it wasn't Blasingame so much, nor Beulah—they only helped bring this real trouble home to him. It was what Jeff had done; that was the thing that frightened him. Oh, he hadn't shown it in front of the marshal, but the knowledge that the thirteen-year-old boy had actually intended to fight a pistol duel— I'll have to talk to the boy, Nathan thought. I'll have to make him understand that guns are not to be taken lightly. Guns are meant to be used as a last resort, when everything else fails.

The chill of winter was in his belly when he thought of his son facing up to old Feyor Jorgenson, pulling a revolver on him. It's a thousand wonders, he thought, that Jeff didn't kill him. That was the worst thing that could happen to a man, Nathan knew—except to get killed himself.

Nearly half the whisky was gone now and Nathan felt limp and soured with it.

Nathan had been sitting at the table for about an hour when the drifter came into Surratt's place and had several drinks at the end of the bar. For a moment Nathan thought that he had seen the stranger before someone he had seen in New Mexico, maybe, or down below the Big River.

Then he realized that he had never seen the man in his life. The drifters ran to type, and Nathan had seen plenty of his kind at various times, riding the high ground, living away from the law up in the Indian Nations. That was the thing that confused him. It was the type he knew, not the man.

From habit, Nathan scanned the hitch rack outside the saloon, spotted a trail-weary dun with an expensive rig, a Winchester Model 7 snug in a soft leather boot. Nathan smiled thinly, knowing that he had pegged the man right.

The stranger was about fifty, his leathery face as sharp as a hatchet, his dirty gray hair long and shaggy. He was covered with trail grime, and was many days past needing a shave. Nathan did not know him, but he could feel that this drifter was a good man not to pick trouble with. A red handkerchief had been tamped loosely into his holster to protect his converted Frontier from dust—a precaution taken only by specialists.

After several silent minutes at the bar, the stranger counted out what he owed and walked out.

A vague uneasiness settled around Nathan after the drifter had gone.

Chapter Seven

SHORTLY BEFORE FOUR o'clock that afternoon Beulah Sewell gathered up her sunbonnet and wicker basket and headed for Sam Baxter's store to buy rations for the rest of the week. On her way to the store she stopped at her husband's tin shop.

Wirt was working on a windmill, a rush order for one of the grangers, and the back of the shop was cluttered with other work that had to be put off. Beulah sniffed.

“If you ask me, it's time you put Jefferson back to work.”

Her husband's mouth was a grim, thin line. “Mr. Jeff Blaine,” he said sourly, “has decided he's above tin working.”

“What that boy needs is a sound thrashing,” Beulah snapped.

Her husband looked at her. “You're not forgetting Feyor Jorgenson so soon, are you, Beulah?”

His wife's small eyes sparked. Wirt had not dared mention Nathan Blaine's name since the affair on the creek, and now he wished that he hadn't mentioned Jorgenson's either. He changed the subject quickly.

“I've been so busy here,” he said, “I haven't had a chance to get to the bank.” From a cigar can he took a small packet of money and handed it to his wife. “Will you stop in at Jed Harper's and deposit that? You'll have to do it before going to Baxter's; Jed'll be locking his doors any minute now.”

Beulah took the money and hid it under the napkin she had in the basket. She nodded stiffly, her jaws tight.

Wirt Sewell shook his head slowly as he watched his wife's small, prim figure move up the plank walk. He had never seen Beulah so worked up before. But maybe things would be better, now that Nathan had moved out of their house.

Jed Harper was just locking the bank's front door when Beulah reached for the big brass latch. Jed was a large, well-fed man with pink cheeks and white hair. He smiled a quick, professional smile.

“Why, hello, Beulah. I was just locking up.”

“Me and Wirt managed to put by a little,” Beulah said confidentially. “We wanted to bank it today, if we could.”

Jed Harper's smile became a bit strained, 'but he stepped aside and swung the door open. “Of course, Beulah. My teller has knocked off for the day, but I can take your money and give you a receipt. Please come in.”

“Thank you, Jed,” Beulah said primly. She followed the banker to a railed partition where Jed eased wearily into a leather chair.

He got out pen and paper and said, “Now how much is it, Beulah? I'll just add it to your and Wirt's account.”

Beulah felt the breath of the street on the back of her thin neck. She thought, Jed left the door open. Now that's a careless thing to do, with people's money in his care. But she was busy counting the money in the bottom of the wicker basket and didn't turn around. Then she heard the latch click and knew that someone had stepped through the door and closed it.

A voice said, “Stand like you are, lady. Don't turn around.”

Jed Harper's eyes were bugging as though he had just caught a glimpse of the Great Beyond. “Do as he says, Beulah,” the banker said hoarsely. “He's got a gun!”

Beulah stiffened. A gun meant robbery. She thought of Wirt's hard-earned money, and her small eyes glinted. No hoodlum was going to take this money, she vowed to herself; she didn't care how many guns he had.

Beulah started to wheel about. She would fight for what was hers with her own two hands, if necessary! The man behind her made a small, angry sound of surprise when he saw what she was going to do. He moved quickly, before Beulah's thought had grown to action, Beulah felt blinding pain as something hard struck the back of her head through her sunbonnet....

Beulah awoke in a sea of pain. Her head ached as if it would burst, and she had never known that a person could be as sick as she was that moment. The smell of oiled oak told her that she was lying on the floor of the bank. She tried to move and could not. She tried to call out, but the effort of drawing up a bare whisper brought the blaze of pain to her head.

Her money! Had the thief taken her money? She saw the blurred shape of her shopping basket turned upside down on the floor, but she couldn't reach it. She had the shameful, disgusting feeling that she was going to be sick there on the bank floor.

For a moment she slipped into a dense mist of pain. What was the matter with that Jed Harper? Why didn't he help her? Why did he leave her lying on the floor like this, helpless?

She didn't dare move her head. Every move she made caused the floor to lurch sickeningly and increased the agony in her head.

Through the mist she heard a voice snarling angrily, “I said open that vault! And be quick about it!”

Beulah heard Jed Harper's voice, sputtering and scared. A fine man he is, Beulah thought, for people to leave money with! She'd tell Wirt about this! They'd take their money out of this bank and put it somewhere else!

Still, she was afraid to move. When she opened her eyes the lurching of the room made her violently sick, and she decided to lie quietly. Sooner or later someone would come to help her. But she wouldn't depend on Jed Harper!

Then she heard boot heels running away from the vault. Beulah made herself open her eyes again, and saw a hazy, distorted form that hardly looked like a man at all. A voice shouted, “Don't try it, mister!”

A revolver exploded. The crashing sound made Beulah cringe, her eyes tightly closed. The side door of the bank opened and closed j then there was complete silence in the building.

Several seconds must have passed before realization drifted through the pain. The thief was gone. But it was so quiet....

Finally she realized that Jed Harper must be dead. Beulah lay like stone, her mind racing. She discovered that she could move now and the pain was not so bad. But she lay there thinking....

Her small, pale eyes took on the cast of steel. Every nerve in her tight-wound body twanged like a fiddle string. She made herself sit up. Her heart hammered, her head throbbed, but she forced herself not to think so much of the pain. Slowly, inch by inch, she gained her feet and stumbled to the bank's front door. She fell almost into the arms of Phil Costain.

“Miz Beulah!” the big drayman said, startled. “You better stay inside; there's shootin' goin' on somewhere!”

Beulah's throat felt raw. “Get Elec Blasingame,” she said. “Get him here quick!”

Other men were gathering around. Some were running up the street trying to find out where the shot had come from. “Miz Beulah,” Phil said, “you better sit down; you don't look so good to me.”

“You fool!” she told him angrily, “get me the marshal! I think Jed Harper's just been killed!”

It didn't take Blasingame long to get there. His face was redder than usual, and the smell of whisky on his breath was enough to make Beulah reel. She said, “Did you get him?”

“Not yet, but we will. Did you see him, ma'am?”

Beulah locked her jaws for a moment. Then she snapped, “Aren't you going to take a look at Mr. Harper?”

The marshal turned on Bert Surratt, who had just come up. “Bert, see if you can locate Doc Shipley. Mrs. Sewell, you'd better come back into the bank and sit down.”

Beulah followed Elec Blasingame into the building and sank weakly into a chair by the rail partition. Elec went to the other side of the partition, stayed a moment and came back. “Jed caught it just over the heart: never knew what hit him.”

The throbbing in Beulah's head got worse. She tried to think. The most important thoughts she'd ever had were now swimming in her brain, but it was hard to keep them straight in all that pain.

“Mrs. Sewell,” the marshal said, “did you get a look at this killer, the one that shot Harper?”

Beulah's thin lips compressed, her small mouth almost disappeared. She looked hard at Elec Blasingame. “Marshal,” she snapped, “don't you think you ought to be out looking for the killer instead of pestering a poor hurt woman like me?”

“I just want to know if you saw the killer, ma'am.” He waited a moment, then added, “There are plenty of men scouring the town, but it would help if we knew who to look for.” Beulah Sewell's jaws locked again. It gave Elec Blasingame a chill to see her sitting there as cold as a block of stone. “Please, Mrs. Sewell,” he said with great patience, “this is important. You are the only one alive who could have seen him.”

Still, Beulah said nothing. A glassiness appeared in her pale eyes. She sat staring... staring... Elec had the chilly feeling that she was looking right through him at something on the other side of the world. Anger and impatience swelled within him.

“Look,” he said shortly. “Every minute counts, ma'am. Surely you can understand that. Now please, as quick as you can, tell me exactly what happened.”

Wirt Sewell burst through the front door at that moment, pale and frightened. “Beulah, you're all right!”

“My head hurts,” his wife said peevishly.

Elec Blasingame, outwardly, remained calm. “Wirt, Doc Shipley'll be here directly to look her over. Now it's important that she tell us what she saw.”

“Even if she's hurt?” Wirt demanded.

“Even if she's hurt!” Elec said.

After a tense moment, Beulah said, “All right, I guess I'd have to tell sooner or later, anyway.”

“You don't have to talk if you don't feel like it,” her husband told her.

“Damn it, Wirt!” the marshal exploded. “You stay out of this!”

By this time a good-sized crowd had gathered in the bank building, tensely waiting for what Beulah Sewell had to say. “My head hurts,” she said weakly. “It must have been a gun he hit me with.”

“Who hit you?” Elec put in quickly.

“I'll have to tell it my own way, Marshal. You see, Jed was locking up when I got to the bank. He let me in and was about to make me a receipt when the door opened again and in came this—”

“What did he look like?”

“He told me not to turn around,” Beulah went on, as though she hadn't heard the question. “But I did. He didn't want me to look at his face; that's why he hit me. It didn't do him any good,” she added grimly. “I got a good look at him. I stared right to the bottom of his mean eyes before he hit me. I guess he thought he'd killed me. He wouldn't have run off the way he did if he'd known I was alive to tell about him.”

The marshal sensed that she had reached the end. “Mrs. Sewell,” he said gently, “who was it?”

“May the good Lord help him,” Beulah said grimly. “It was my own brother-in-law, Nathan Blaine.”

Chapter Eight

A SOUND OF AMAZEMENT rose inside the building. Elec Blasingame had been prepared for almost anything—but not this. When he spoke, his voice held the rasp of urgency. “Mrs. Sewell, are you absolutely certain?”

“Of course I'm certain. I looked right at him.”

“You also told me that it must have been a gun that he hit you with,” Blasingame shot at her. “Seems to me that you'd have known it was a gun if you were looking at him.”

Beulah's small eyes bored into the marshal's face. “You're not calling me a liar, are you, Elec Blasingame?”

“You know better than that, ma'am. I just wonder if you actually turned and looked at this man, or if you merely thought you did. Put a person's mind under a strain and it sometimes plays funny tricks.”

The look she gave him chilled the marshal like a cutting rain. “My mind wasn't playing tricks!” she bit out. “I turned and looked at Nathan Blaine, and that's why he tried to kill me.” She raked the crowd with her anger. “You think I wouldn't recognize my own brother-in-law? You think I like dragging my family's name in the mud? And the boy Wirt and I raised like our own—do you think I'd hurt him like this if I didn't have to?”

“All right, ma'am,” Elec said heavily. “I just wanted to make sure.” He turned to Bert Surratt, who was standing at his elbow. “Nate Blaine couldn't have been in your place while the bank was being robbed, could he?”

Bert shook his head. “Funny thing. Blaine started drinkin' the minute he come in from your office. He left the saloon before the shootin'. Said he needed some air.”

Elec watched Beulah's face carefully, but it was set like iron and told him nothing. He turned shortly and headed for the door. “It looks like Nate Blaine's our man.”

As soon as school let out Jeff headed for the bank corner where Nathan usually waited for him. His pa wasn't there today. Instead, there was a scattering crowd of angry-eyed men, most of them carrying shotguns or rifles. There was a hoarse yell from the far end of the street, near the public corral, and old Seth Lewellen came hobbling out of the bank building and said, “By golly, it sounds like they found him!”

Not since the cattle trade had quit Plainsville had Jeff seen so much excitement in the town. He pushed up to the door of the bank, trying to see what was going on. He almost ran into his Uncle Wirt and Aunt Beulah, who were just coming out.

“Jeff,” Wirt said roughly, “what are you doing here?”

“The academy just let out,” Jeff said, puzzled. “I always come this way. What's all the excitement about?”

“Never mind that,” Wirt said. “Help me get your Aunt Beulah home; she's had an accident.”

“What kind of an accident?”

Wirt looked at him, and Jeff had never seen such fire in those usually mild eyes. “Stop asking questions,” he said shortly, “and take your aunt's arm.”

Aunt Beulah looked kind of funny too, Jeff was thinking. She was leaning on her husband, her eyes almost closed, her face as pale and bloodless as bone china. She hardly even looked at Jeff as he got on her left side and took her arm.

“I want to go home,” she almost whimpered.

“It's all right, Beulah,” Wirt said gently. “Do you feel like walkin'?”

“I guess so.”

“I can hustle down to the corral and rent a hack of some kind.”

“No,” Beulah said weakly, “I can walk all right. Don't joggle me like that, Jefferson; it hurts my head.”

Jeff held her steady by the elbow. “What happened, Uncle Wirt?” he asked again, bursting with curiosity.

His uncle's voice turned harsh. “Never you mind!”

Together, they helped Beulah down the steps and began moving slowly along the walk. Jeff kept looking back at the gathering crowd at the far end of the street. It was growing larger and had a mean, rough sound to it. There was something in that sound that started a chill at the base of Jeff's spine.

They crossed the street, took short cuts toward home, and finally got Beulah to the house. Wirt made his wife he down on the couch in the small parlor and sent Jeff to draw a bucket of cold water from the well. Wirt dipped a towel in the water and wrapped it around Beulah's head.

“How does that feel?” Wirt wanted to know.

There was a strange emptiness in her eyes. “I'm all right,” she said lifelessly.

“I think I ought to see what's happened,” Wirt said. “Jeff will be here if you want anything.”

Jeff wanted to cry out in protest. He was crawling with curiosity and nobody would tell him anything. But he couldn't miss the urgency in his uncle's voice when Wirt turned to him and said, “You watch after her, Jeff. I won't be long. If anything comes up, you hightail it after Doc Shipley, understand?”

Reluctantly, Jeff nodded. But how could he be expected to do anything when he didn't even know what was wrong with his aunt? After Wirt was gone Jeff took a chair on the other side of the room and began his uneasy vigil. Aunt Beulah didn't do a thing but stare up at the ceiling.

This wasn't at all like his aunt; there was something about the way she lay there, motionless as a corpse, that gave him a spooky feeling. Soon he looked away and tried to fix his mind on something else.

After a long while Beulah turned her head to look at him. “Jefferson,” she said weakly, “no matter what happens, I want you to remember something. I love you like you was my own son. I love you more than anything in the world, I guess.”

Jeff squirmed uncomfortably. He didn't like this kind of talk, and it didn't sound like his aunt at all.

“Will you remember that, Jefferson?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said self-consciously.

She smiled then—the strangest, saddest smile that Jeff had ever seen. “That's good,” she said. “Just so you remember.” And then she went back to staring at the ceiling....

Almost an hour passed before his uncle returned. “Well,” Wirt said heavily, “they got him.”

He did not look at Beulah. He cast his gaze all about the room, everywhere but the couch on which his wife was lying. Slowly she brushed the wet towel from her head and sat up..

“Wirt, what happened?”

Her husband glanced sharply at Jeff and said, “Not now, Beulah.”

Some of the old fire returned to Beulah's eyes. And when she jutted out her small chin and stared her husband down, Jeff knew that she couldn't be hurt very bad. She said, “The boy has to know some time. It might as well be now.”

Wirt Sewell looked as though he had gained ten years in age. He dropped heavily to a cane-bottom chair. “It was not a pretty thing,” he said flatly. “They were going after Nate with ropes. They would have strung him up if it hadn't been for Elec Blasingame.”

The mention of his father's name set Jeff's heart to hammering. He wanted to leap up and demand to know what they were talking about, but he was unable to move or make a sound. It was almost as if he were frozen in one position, his throat paralyzed and dry.

His uncle turned to him and said with gentleness, “You'll have to know it, Jeff; your pa's in bad trouble. He robbed the bank and killed Jed Harper. Now they've caught him and got him locked up.”

Jeff stared at his uncle through a sudden haze of anger. He heard himself shouting, “It's not. true! You're lying!” Wirt stared at the floor, his face gray. “You're lying!” Jeff shouted again. “Jefferson, you hush up!” Beulah said. Unsteadily, she stood up and took Jeff's shoulders in her hands. “It's true,” she said shortly. “I tried to warn you that your pa was worthless and no good, but you wouldn't listen to your Aunt Beulah. Well, maybe now you'll listen!”