Gambling Man

Chapter Nine

SHORTLY AFTER SUN-UP Elec Blasingame arrived at his office in the basement of the Masonic Temple, to relive the night deputy.

“Any trouble, Ralph?”

Ralph Striker, Elec's second in command, was dozing on his shotgun at the plank desk. Now he blinked and rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth. “Morning, Elec. No trouble to speak of. Plenty of talk, but that's about as far as it went.”

“Lynching talk?”

The deputy shrugged. “I guess so, but they've cooled off by now.”

“How about Nate Blaine; has he cooled off any?”

The deputy, a tall, gaunt man in his late forties, smiled faintly. “I don't know. I haven't been near him since midnight!”

“Did he talk?”

The smile widened, wearily. “He cusses anybody that comes within yellin' distance of his cage, if you can call that talking.”

“I see,” the marshal said heavily.

The deputy got up from the desk and racked his shotgun on the wall. As Ralph Striker tramped out of the office, the marshal took the chair and scowled. Almost immediately he got up again, took the cell keys from his desk and headed down the corridor toward the single iron cage which was the Plainsville jail.

Nathan Blaine lay stretched out on a board bunk, one arm flung over his eyes. When he heard the rap of boot heels on stone, he snapped to a sitting position, his eyes bitter. The marshal paused at the iron-barred door.

“Nate, you ready to talk?”

Nathan stood up in his cage. “You haven't caught him?”

“Caught who?” the marshal asked.

“The man that robbed the bank and killed old man Harper.” All the bitterness was in his eyes—his voice was only slightly edged with anger.

Elec rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I figured we had the killer in jail,” he said mildly. “However, I'm willing to listen to anything you've got to say, Nate.”

With an iron will, Nathan clamped down on his nerves and anger. He forced himself to remain calm, knowing that his very life depended on how clearly he was able to think this thing out. He made himself look into the marshal's eyes and say, “You've got the wrong man, Elec.”

“I'm listening.”

“All right; this is what happened. I'm not a drinking man, but like a fool I got tanked up yesterday after leaving your office. I got to thinking about something, and the more I thought the more I drank. Around four o'clock I was feeling sick. I needed air. I walked to the end of the block, went around behind the bank building where the grangers hitch their teams, and was heading for the corral when I heard the shooting.”

“Then what did you do?” the marshal asked.

“I couldn't tell where the shot came from. I wasn't thinking very straight. Anyway I started running the other way, toward the public corral. Then I realized I was going the wrong way. I stopped and turned around, and that was when I saw this drifter hightailing it out of the bank's side door.”

“What drifter was that?” Blasingame put in.

“The one that was in Bert Surratt's place just a few minutes before. I saw him; one of those cool-eyed boys that you run across sometimes in the Indian Nations, about fifty years old, with long gray hair and a sharp face. He rode a good-looking dun with an expensive rig, and he had a Model Seven Winchester on his saddle. Surratt saw him; he can tell you.”

The marshal's face had gone bland, showing nothing. “What happened to this drifter after you saw him come out of the bank's side door?”

“Nathan shrugged. “I don't know. He must have lit out across the street. I figure the shooting must have been something he hadn't intended. When it happened, he figured he'd best lie low for a while and see if he could slip out of town in. the confusion. I'd say that's just what he did. Before I could go after him, a lot of damn fools were trying to lynch me.”

Blasingame continued to rub his chin thoughtfully.

“Look here,” Nathan said, “you believe me, don't you?”

A long moment of silence passed. “Maybe I would, Nate, except for one thing. Beulah Sewell swears you're the one that gunwhipped her and shot Jed Harper.”

Nathan had known this would come up, and he tried desperately to hold back his rage. He couldn't do it. He felt a wildness swarming over him and suddenly he grabbed the iron bars and began shaking the door like a madman.

“Damn Beulah Sewell! She wants to get me out of the way! She wants to bring up my boy like a milk-fed house-cat! That's the reason she lied about what she saw in the bank!”

“Now, Nate,” Blasingame said quietly, “taking on like that won't help you.”

“How would you feel about it?” Nathan shouted.

“Stop it!” Elec Blasingame's big voice blasted on the stone walls of Nathan's cage. “Listen to me, Nate. You're in a bad spot. Your own sister-in-law has identified you as the killer; what do you expect me to do about that?”

Nathan felt the life going out of him. Hopelessly, he loosened his grip on the bars.

Finally he said, “This would be almost funny if I didn't know that half the town had lynching on the brain. On the say-so of one woman you lock me up and accuse me of murder and robbery. I didn't have the bank's money on me when they got me, did I? And you can't prove that the bullet that killed Harper came from my gun.”

“You had plenty time to hide that money,” Blasingame said. “You had time to reload, too.”

“Is that the kind of evidence you hang a man on in Plainsville?”

“The strongest evidence in the world. The testimony of a respectable eyewitness to the crime.” This time Elec saw the storm coming, and he added quickly, “But I said I'd listen to you, and I have. I'll go back over the ground and find out what I can about this drifter you claim you saw. Is that fair enough?”

Before Nathan could answer, he saw Ralph Striker's lanky figure heading toward them. The marshal turned. “I thought you were going home, Ralph.”

“I was, but I ran into something—the Blaine boy.”

Nathan grabbed the bars. “Jeff?”

A new kind of worry crossed Elec Blasingame's face. “Hold the boy in my office, Ralph. Tell him he can see his pa as soon as I'm through talking to him.” The marshal turned back to Nathan. “Nate,” he said solemnly, “a few minutes from now you're going to have to make the most important decision of your whole life. Your boy is probably bewildered and hurt and doesn't know exactly what to think. He's come to you for an answer, and likely he'll believe everything you tell him. What are you going to say, Nate?”

Nathan stared at the marshal with hard eyes. “My boy will hear the truth!”

“Do you mean to tell him his aunt is trying to railroad you on a murder charge?”

“That, and plenty more!”

Blasingame rubbed his hand over his gleaming scalp. The bulldog look had gone from his face, and he looked like just another tired old man. He said quietly, “Have you thought what it's going to do to the boy, Nate? The Sew-ells are the only people your son has, besides you. If you're convicted here, it'll be up to Beulah and Wirt to see the boy through the worst time of his life. They may not be the kind of people you like, but they're something, and they haven't done such a bad job with Jeff so far. Are you going to poison him with hate, turn him against the only people who might stand by him?”

Nathan Blaine stood rigid. In his anger he had not imagined that truth could be more deadly than a gun. Blasingame's line of reasoning left a taste of gall in his mouth, made him helpless.

The marshal said, “I'll check your story as far as I can, Nate. That's all I can do. What you tell your boy—I guess that will have to be left to you and your conscience.” He turned abruptly, a thick, squat figure of a man, and walked back to his office.

Jeff did not know what to say when he saw his father standing there behind the thick iron bars. All through the violent and sleepless night he had thought of all the things he was going to say. No matter what happened, he had vowed to stick by his pa.

The vow had been sealed in tears of anger and in fits of rage against his Aunt Beulah. That night he had stopped being a boy and started being a man. He had not spoken to Aunt Beulah this morning; he had not even looked at her, and he would never in his life forgive her for the hateful lies that she had told about his pa.

But. in spite of all the pledges of loyalty that he had meant to voice, the words were stuck in his throat as he gazed up at those cruel, burning eyes on the other side of the bars. The lines of hate in his pa's face were as deep and hard as chiseled stone. Involuntarily, Jeff took a stumbling step backwards as Nathan grasped the bars in his two hands as though he meant to rip them apart.

“You're not in school!” Nathan accused him roughly.

Jeff swallowed. “It ain't time yet. I came here...”

“... to see what a jailbird looks like? his pa shot at him.

Jeff felt sickness working within him; his throat was choked and swollen. He said, “I wanted to tell you I don't believe it, any of it! All the things people are sayin'!”

He was shocked when his pa threw his head back and laughed harshly. The stubble of beard gave Nathan's face a sunken, wolfish look. Sleeplessness had made his eyes bloodshot and mean.

“So you don't believe it, do you?” Nathan laughed again.

The chill of that underground cage breathed a stickiness of death in Jeff's face. His heart hammered. It was impossible to believe that iron bars could make such a change in a man. He saw his pa as he had never seen him before—a cruel, ruthless man, quick and mean in every move he made. Jeff felt himself shaking. He could no longer look up into those slitted, bloodshot eyes, but turned his gaze helplessly to the floor.

Nathan said harshly, “I don't need you to worry about me, boy. Nate Blaine can take care of himself!”

Now Jeff's whirling thoughts formed words and the words came blurting out. “But it isn't true, is it, what they're saying about the bank! You couldn't shoot an old man like Jed Harper!”

The look that Nathan threw at him made Jeff cringe. “Couldn't I? Maybe Harper was a fool, maybe he tried something that wasn't very smart. Anyway, what can a kid understand about such things!”

Abruptly, Nathan threw himself away from the barred door, facing the opposite wall of his cell. “You better get started for the academy,” he said sharply. “I've got important things to think about.”

Elec Blasingame sat like a block of granite as the boy stumbled blindly through his office and up the cement steps to the street. At last he looked at Ralph Striker, his deputy.

“I believe in giving the devil his due. I guess I didn't figure Nate Blaine had the guts for a thing like that.”

Through the office door they could see Nathan stretched stiff as a corpse on his board bunk, facing the wall. It was one of those rare times when Elec Blasingame felt helpless and did not know what to do. At last he got up and said, “Go on home, Ralph. The town is mine for the day.”

Most of the time the Plainsville marshal was a plodding, methodical man, and that was the way he went about his business today. A nagging seed of doubt had been planted in his mind, and he didn't like it. Elec Blasingame wanted things as clean-cut as possible, either black or white.

His first stop that day was Bert Surratt's saloon, where he stated his problem bluntly.

“Think back, Bert, to just before the bank fracas yesterday. Do you remember a hardcase stranger buyin' a drink or so off you?”

The saloonkeeper rubbed a hairy fist across his mouth, thinking. “There was a stranger in, all right, but I wouldn't peg him as a hardcase. Oh, he was heeled, but all travelers go heeled unless they're fools. Gray-haired geezer, as I remember, about fifty. Looked harmless enough to me.”

“Did you get a look at his animal or rig?”

“No,” Bert said slowly. “Guess I didn't pay him much attention, Marshal. Why do you ask?”

“Was Nate Blaine in here the same time the stranger was?”

Surratt thought about it, scowling. “Sure. I remember because Nate was giving the old bird a goin' over. I figured Nate might have known him from somewhere, but they didn't speak. The stranger pulled out maybe fifteen minutes before Nate did.”

Blasingame listened to the sound of hammering in the alley behind the saloon. “What's that noise?” he asked.

The saloonkeeper smiled. “Carpenters. They're buildin' Jed Harper's casket.” He took a swipe at the bar with a dirty towel. “That damn Blaine; they should have strung him up the minute they caught him.”

“But you wouldn't want to try it single-handed, would you, Bert?” Blasingame turned and walked out of the saloon.

He made several stops between the saloon and the bank building. A clerk in Baxter's store claimed he caught a glimpse of the stranger riding up the street away from Bert's place. Old Matt Fuller, in the saddle shop, had seen the drifter watering his horse at the trough in front of the bank building; he had paid strict attention to the rig because of its quality workmanship, but had hardly noticed the man himself. After that, the stranger could have dissolved in thin air, for all anyone, saw of him.

Just a drifter passing through. There was no telling where he was by now.

But the marshal didn't let it go at that. He went to the bank and stared at the bleak two-story brick building with cool, impersonal eyes. Aside from the Masonic Temple, it was the only brick building in town. Now it was locked tight. There was a black-bordered funeral notice on the door.

For the sake of supposing, Elec tried to reconstruct a situation as it might have been. The stranger had been seen watering his horse in front of the bank some time after he had left Surratt's which would put it close to four o'clock. Now, Blasingame reasoned, it's just possible that he was here when Jed let Beulah Sewell in the bank to deposit her money.

Stretching it a bit further, it's just possible that he could have heard Jed Harper telling Beulah that his help had gone and he was alone. Now, if this drifter had been a hardcase type, as Nate swore he was, maybe that was all the invitation he needed. When he saw the banker leave the door unlocked, maybe he just walked in.

That much Elec might be made to swallow. But how this stranger could have shot the town banker and pulled out of town without a person laying eyes on him—that was the bone that caught in the marshal's throat. He went around behind the bank building and studied the lay of the ground. Now, Nate claimed he saw the man hightailing it out of the side door, probably crossing the street. That being the case, where had the stranger kept his horse?

Blasingame crossed the street where the Ludlow Dry Goods sprawled into the tall weeds of the alley. Not a chance of finding any tracks there; Phil Costain's dray wagon had been back there earlier in the morning.

Anyway, the chance that the killer would run across the street and simply sit tight while the whole town looked for him was a very long one. Not many men had the nerves for that kind of waiting.

There was not an ounce of solid evidence to back up Nate Blaine's story. On the other hand, there was the money that hadn't been found, and Nate's gun, which had been fully loaded when they found him. Those things would be explained easily enough—still, the marshal didn't like the smell of it. He didn't like the doubts that were growing in his mind. Elec headed back to the office to see if Kirk Logan, his day deputy, had showed up yet.

Kirk, a towheaded youngster in his middle twenties, was just strapping on his cartridge belt when the marshal came in. He grinned, but it turned uneasy when he saw the glint in Elec's eyes.

“Sorry I'm late, Elec. But the baby had the croup and I had to rout out Doc Shipley—”

“Never mind,” the marshal said shortly. “I want you to round up some men and scour every inch of this town between the bank and the public corral. If that bank money is hidden in Plainsville, I want it. Understand?”

Logan swallowed. “Sure, Elec. I'll get right to work.” He turned to go out of the office, but stopped when he reached the steps. “I just thought of something. What if somebody has already found that money?”

Elec's shaggy eyebrows almost covered his eyes as he frowned. The possibility had already occurred to him. He did not try to fool himself—there were plenty of people in Plainsville who would never say anything about it if they found that money. The whole town knew it. The jury would know it. In the light of this knowledge, Nathan Blaine's main line of defense became purely academic.

Blasingame sat solidly at his plank desk for a full minute after his deputy had mounted the steps to the street. Suddenly he hit the desk with his big right fist.

The chances were a thousand to one that Beulah Sewell was telling the truth and that Nate Blaine was guilty as hell. Still, it was that one chance in a thousand that bothered him.

At last he got up and went back to the cell. “Nate,” he said, “I'm going to ride over to Landow and get the county sheriff to look for this drifter of yours.”

Nathan lay on his bunk, his dark eyes fixed on the ceiling.

“Understand something, Nate,” the marshal said. “I think you're guilty as hell. But before I'm through, I'm going to know it..”

When Blasingame returned from Landow late that night, he learned that his prisoner had escaped. Nathan had flung a cup of scalding coffee in Ralph Striker's face —coffee that the night deputy had paid for and brought to him. During Striker's momentary blindness Nathan had grabbed him through the bars and got his revolver. After forcing the deputy to unlock the cell, Nathan gagged him and locked him in his own cage. Then, at gunpoint, he had taken his horse and rig from the public corral and disappeared in the night.

They formed a posse, of course, but it was a big county and the night was black. They did not find Nathan Blaine.

Chapter Ten

A DARK CLOUD OF ANGER rolled over Plainsville when the lawyers came from Landow to make an accounting for Harper's bank. Twelve thousand dollars had been lost in the robbery.

Realization broke upon the town with the suddenness of a winter storm. This loss came out of their own pockets. Townspeople and grim-faced squatters gathered angrily in front of the bank, demanding their money.

The lawyers came out and told them there was nothing they could do. The money was gone. The bank had not been insured. Then they caught the next stage for Landow.

The citizens cast about for an object toward which to hurl their anger, and saw young Jefferson Blaine.

Jeff would not soon forget these next few days and weeks that followed. No promise nor threat nor supplication could bring him out of the house to face those hundreds of angry eyes. The man of pride and swagger had been crushed with one cruel blow, and Jefferson Blaine became a boy again—a frightened boy.

He found no strength in glossy boots of soft black kid, nor in his strong right hand which could aim and fire a Colt's revolver with deadly accuracy.

He did not go the academy that day, nor the two days following. Still, it was not as bad as it might have been. He had never guessed that his Aunt Beulah could be as gentle and understanding as she was then. Not once did she mention his pa, or did she scold him when he locked the door to his bare lean-to cubicle and would not let her in.

That first night—the hardest one—she brought his supper to him. “It's not as bad as you think,” she said gently. “Of course people get riled up, but they get over it, too. You don't have to mix with them till you feel like it.”

This was the beginning of a new thing. Until now he had thought of his aunt as a tongue full of sting and spite; his uncle an impatient glare and a pointed order. Now, somehow, they had become people.

Once he had heard his uncle saying, “A bit of understanding—that's fine. But don't spoil the boy, Beulah. This thing he'll have to face out himself.”

“Not while I'm alive!” Jeff's aunt had replied.

It was a hard thing to understand, and Jeff did not try to. He accepted their kindness and was grateful.

He did not think about Nathan any more than he had to. At first he was sure that he hated his pa with every fiber of his soul, and he was just as sure that his pa had killed Jed Harper and robbed the bank, and no telling what else. And then he had remembered other things, like the sudden gentleness that sometimes appeared in those dark eyes, and the comforting feel of Nathan's strong, brown hand on Jeff's shoulder. When he thought of these things he became confused and could no longer tell with certainty what was true and what was false.

When at last he did steel himself to leave the house and face the anger of the town, it was not at all the way he had imagined it in his room. Oh, they were angry, all right, but it was something more than that. The boys did not gather in gangs to devil him, as they sometimes did with others who had fallen from favor. When they looked at him, there was more than anger in their eyes.

Their anger was tempered with fear.

It surprised Jeff the first time he saw it. On the third day after Nathan Blaine had disappeared into the prairie night, Jeff faced the world again, wearing a mask of toughness so that the sickness inside him might not show. In the glaring light of day he plodded through the streets of Plainsville, on his way to the academy, as though nothing had happened.

He felt their eyes upon him.

Young Blaine, they were sneering. There goes Nate Blaine's kid.

They could not see the swelling of his throat nor hear the pounding of his heart as he strode before them. It was then that Jeff remembered how his pa had made them cringe, how Nathan had thrown back his head and stared them down with his dark eyes. They had not sneered at his pa. They hadn't dared!

There was something comforting and assuring in this thought. Suddenly Jeff threw back his head in the way he had seen his pa do so many times, and he looked them right in the eye as he passed by on the boardwalk. He walked like a young lion looking for a fight.

The success of his tactics was amazing, even to Jeff. Old Seth Lewellen, whittling in a barrel chair in front of Baxter's store, was the first to break and look in another direction when Jeff passed by. Then Mac Butler, the blacksmith. From some doorway Jeff heard a whispered snarl: “That kid's too damn big for his britches!”

Another voice said, “Maybe you're right. But Nate Blaine's his pa. One thing for sure—I don't want the job of takin' him down. Not while Nate's on the loose!”

Then Jeff began to understand. And he knew that he had nothing to worry about because he was the son of Nathan Blaine!

Oh, they had not forgotten Feyor Jorgenson, who had pulled out of Plainsville in the dark of night. These men who watched him from behind store windows, these clod-busters and store clerks, they would do nothing that might bring the wrath of Nathan Blaine down upon them!

As if by magic, Jeff's sickness disappeared. He filled his lungs with clean, exciting air and suddenly felt like laughing.

Strangely, Jeff no longer had the wish to fight the world, now that he knew it was not necessary. In some mysterious way he could feel Nathan's strong hand on his shoulder, protecting him. He knew that he would never be able to explain it to Wirt, or Beulah, or anyone, and he knew instinctively that it would be better not to try.

His father had gone out of his life as abruptly as he had entered it. The dreamlike days of riding proud beside his pa were over, as were the hours spent in learning the violent ways of guns and the magic of cards.

Jeff was old enough to know that Nathan could never again be a part of his life here in Plainsville. His admiration for that dark-eyed man of violence must be kept locked within himself. The Plainsville people would be a long time forgetting the bank and Jed Harper, A quiet voice in the back of Jeff's mind warned him: they are afraid of Nate Blaine—but don't rub it in.

Chapter Eleven

TIME DOES NOT ALWAYS move in the same direction, but sometimes curves back upon itself and strikes with the fury of a cottonmouth. So time played a perverse prank on Plainsville.

The '70's had come to their violent end. Many of the rowdy trail towns were dying. Texas was being fenced in. The new decade was hailed as an era of peace and prosperity; and the end of outlawry and bloodshed was in sight. Then time, on a frivolous whim, reversed itself; peaceful citizens found themselves on a new frontier as violent as any of the '70's had known.

The railroad came to Plainsville.

Jefferson Blaine, now eighteen, watched in amazement as the settlement reverted to the loud and brassy times that he had so longed for as a boy. First came the surveyors, and there was great excitement in the town. The railroad was an unmistakable sign of progress, the storekeepers happily proclaimed.

The railroad meant new markets for the grangers—and there was a flurry of business at the new Farmers Bank as the homesteaders hurried to replace worn-out tools and equipment. New business houses were established. There arose a new eating house—competition to the Paradise— a new barn at the public corral, and another saloon. Sam Baxter and Frank Ludlow talked of putting up a hotel.

Then came the graders, building a raw mound of earth across the prairie; a track bed, they called it. Then came the track layers themselves, the broad-shouldered spike maulers, the Irish gandy dancers. The new depot was not even finished when the twin glistening rails were hammered to the earth directly in front of Mike Bender's feed store.

Before the town had finished celebrating, carpenters had already gone to work building chutes and cattle pens to the south of town.

Now, once again, there was loud laughter in Plainsville, and the cowhands raced their horses in the streets. Gunfire was no longer a rare sound, and tinny piano music clamored in the saloons. Strange women appeared from nowhere and mixed with the cowhands wherever they drank or gambled. Swift and Blackwelder, a pair of undertakers from Dodge, rented space from Doc Shipley and waited for business.

The transformation was shocking to some, pleasing to others. Plainsville had become a shipping center for cattle, and the ranchers soon forgot their oath to stay away.

For Jeff Blaine, the eternal noise of the place was a delight. It was like stepping from the grave into the middle of a Mexican fiesta. From the workbench in his uncle's tin shop he could see the boiling seas of cattle that descended upon Plainsville like flash floods in April. Their bawling and horn clacking and stamping added to the general din and atmosphere of excitement. Cowhands from the big outfits, heavy with guns, fresh from the new bath house and barber shop, prowled the streets, like happy tigers.

This was an August day; the air was furnace-dry and heavy with dust. Jeff lay aside his heavy cutting shears and stood looking out with vague discontent. Since finishing his schooling at the academy he had worked here in Wirt's tin shop. Five years, almost. You'd think a man would get used to his work in that length of time.

Sometimes he thought of his father with sadness. Nathan's name was never mentioned in the Sewell household, but stories had a way of traveling in this country, and Jeff had heard some of the them.

They said his pa was someplace in Mexico, a personal bodyguard for a high man in the Mexican army. They said that Nate Blaine was a big man in Mexico, which was why Texas authorities couldn't try him for killing Jed Harper.

They said a lot of things about Nate Blaine—but not to Jeff's face. Eighteen was a man's age in this country. The name of Blaine kept most of them at a distance.

Jeff watched Elec Blasingame, a bit fatter, a bit thicker, cross the dusty street and head toward the tin shop. It seemed to Jeff that the marshal had grown old fast, since the railroad came to town. That bulldog jaw had gone flabby. It look longer to kindle the fierce fire in those pale eyes.

Now the marshal stood in the tinshop doorway. “Is your Uncle here, Jeff?”

“I think he went over to Baxter's. Anything I can help you with, Marshal?”

“No.” He wiped his face with his sleeve. Both of them remembered too much, and neither was comfortable. “If I don't run on him in the street, tell Wirt to come down to my office, will you?”

“All right.” Jeff put a note of curiosity in the words, but Elec chose to ignore it. He glanced at Jeff for one brief moment—a strange, almost bewildered look.

Elec said abruptly, “You like it here in the tinshop, Jeff?”

“Sure. It's all right, I guess.”

The marshal's fat jowls shook as he nodded. “Good business Wirt's got here. It'll be yours some day, I figure.”

Jeff wondered what he was getting at. In five years he couldn't remember passing more than a dozen words with Blasingame. Why the sudden interest? “I hadn't thought much about it,” he said. “But I guess I'm the only one Uncle Wirt's got to leave anything to—except Aunt Beulah, of course.”

“Of course,” Elec said, cocking his head slightly, as though he were listening for something. Then he looked directly at Jeff, with some of the old fire in his eyes. “They've been good to you,” he said bluntly. “Wirt and Beulah. I hope you don't forget it.”

Now that was a funny thing for him to say, Jeff thought, as Elec shoved away from the door and tramped heavily up the street.

A few minutes later Wirt came in and Jeff told him about the marshal's visit. “I wonder what Elec wants to see me about?” Wirt pondered. “Well, I guess I'll have to go to his office.”

If Wirt Sewell could have seen the look of stark savage-ness in the marshal's eyes at that moment, he would not have been so pleased with himself as he marched primly toward the Masonic Temple building.

But the marshal was a block away, in his office, alone, when he read the letter through for the fourth time. In a fit of helpless rage, he balled the letter in one big fist and hurled it at the wall.

He stood spread-legged, mean as a bear, in the center of his bleak office. He looked as though he would happily kill the first man who dared come down the steps.

But by the time Wirt Sewell reached the Masonic Temple building, Elec had control of himself. He sat heavy and expressionless at his plank desk.

Five years hadn't done much to change Wirt Sewell. He was the same tight-wound little man that he had been since his late twenties. Today he was at peace with the world. Business was good at the tin shop and the town was booming. Of course there was the bawdy element of the town that was a curse to all respectable citizens, but Wirt allowed the town would tame down before long. He had seen it happen before. When all the ruffians were gone, or killed, Plainsville would still be standing, a thriving city.

A faint smile played at the corners of Wirt's mouth as he crossed the street. He'd had quite a surprise today; Sam Baxter and Frank Ludlow had asked him to throw in with them on the new hotel they were planning. And Baxter and Ludlow were just about the most important businessmen in Plainsville.

At first Wirt had been puzzled as to why they had come to him for help. “Why, Wirt,” Frank Ludlow had said, “you're one of the most successful men in this town, that's why we came to you. You started with a little hole-in-the-wall place here and made it into a big payin' tin shop. I guess you just don't realize how successful you really are!”

Wirt could still hear those words, and the flow of well-being warmed him. Maybe Frank hadn't been so wrong, at that, he thought. He and Beulah had put some money aside. They had raised Jeff as well as they knew how, seeing the boy through that hard year after his pa had stirred up so much trouble. No sir, the Sewell's didn't have much to be ashamed of. And the boy was a big help at the shop)—a good, steady worker, once he'd set his mind to it.

Wirt hadn't decided yet about the hotel. He'd have to talk it over with Beulah. But the fact that Frank and Sam had asked him put a new spring in his step, made him feel years younger.

For the first time in Wirt Sewell's plodding, unexciting life, he timidly began laying the shimmering foundation for a dream.

Now he made his way down the stone steps to the Masonic Temple basement. He walked into Elec Blasingame's office, only faintly curious as to why the marshal wanted to see him. He said pleasantly, “Hello, Elec. Jeff said you wanted to talk to me about something.”

The marshal said bluntly, “Sit down, Wirt.”

There was something about his tone that made Wirt blink; there was something in the steely cast of Elec's eyes that hinted trouble. Wirt realized that the marshal had not asked him here for just a friendly gab fest.

Without hesitation, Wirt cut himself away from the pleasantness of his dream. He pulled up a chair and sat down.

Blasingame leaned heavily on his elbows, his thick mouth drawn sharply down at the corners. “I'll come right out with it, Wirt. I've got some news you won't like to hear. I've got a letter here from the county sheriff in Landow —it didn't come from the sheriff, but from a deputy marshal up in the Choctaw Nation...”

Wirt frowned. He thought he knew what Elec was trying to say. “It's about Nate, isn't it?”

“Nate Blaine?” Something curious happened behind the marshal's eyes. “Yes, it has something to do with Nate, but not in the way you think, maybe. This deputy worked out of Fort Smith, but he was on the trail of a killer that had disappeared in the Nations. He found his man, finally, hiding out with the Choctaws, and had to kill him.”

Wirt broke in. “Does this have anything to do with me?”

“This is what it has to do with you, Wirt.” Elec's voice went harsh. “Before this hardcase died, he confessed to killing Jed Harper in that bank robbery five years back.”

The implication left Wirt numb.

“He still had some of the money with him,” Blasingame went on coldly. “A lone rider doesn't have much chance to spend twelve thousand dollars, I guess. Anyway, he had it, in those canvas bags that banks use.”

The chill of dread showed on Wirt's face.

“It's a lie!” he said tightly. “Nate Blaine killed Harper and took the money!”

Elec's voice cut like a winter wind. “It's no lie. A deathbed confession is the strongest evidence there is, and you know it, Wirt. Besides, those canvas bags I mentioned— they were stenciled with the name of Harper's bank.”

Wirt Sewell had ceased to be one of Plainsville's most successful businessmen; the flow of well-being no longer warmed him. He was now an old, bewildered man, his senses skating on the thin edge of panic.

“But Beulah saw him! It had to be Nate!”

“It wasn't Nate.” The marshal's voice was almost a snarl. “And your wife didn't see him. It was all cooked up inside her head. Out of spite, out of meanness... God only knows why a woman would do a thing like that!”

In sudden anger, Blasingame shoved himself away from the desk and paced wildly up and down the office floor. “Five years!” he said bitterly. “That's how long it's been. Five years of hiding, of being afraid to come back to his own country, even to see his boy. How Nathan must hate us, Wirt—all of us, for I was in it, too. I was the one who took Beulah's word for it and locked him up.”

Wirt's face was gray. His mouth moved, but no sound was made. The marshal turned on him and said harshly, “Well, that's what I wanted to tell you, Wirt. That's all there is to it.”

The marshal took his anger in a heavy hand. He breathed deeply, giving himself time to settle down. At last he said, “I shouldn't fly off the handle like that, it's bad for my blood pressure. Just forget what I said, Wirt.”

“Forget?” Wirt looked at him. “What am I going to do, Elec? How can Beulah stand up to a thing like this?”

“I don't figure that's the question. How is the boy going to stand up to it?”

It was well past sundown when Jeff came home to the Sewell house that night. He came in the front door as usual and hung his hat on the tree in the hall. At first he didn't notice the unusual silence.

“I locked the shop,” he called toward the kitchen. “When Uncle Wirt didn't come back—”

That was when he noticed the unnatural quiet of the room—it seemed to be an uneasy hush. Jeff frowned, listening for the familiar sounds that were not there, the rattle of pans, the shaking of the grate in the cookstove. But there was only silence—and still he could feel that the house was not empty.

He walked across the small parlor and into the kitchen, and there was Wirt sitting at the table, seeming even more shrunken and smaller than usual, his face grayer. Beulah was standing beside the cookstove staring dully straight ahead.

Jeff's frown deepened. He shot a quick glance at Beulah, then at Wirt. “What's the matter?”

Wirt cleared his throat, but did not look toward the door where Jeff was standing. “Jeff, you'd better sit down.”

Then the hush came down again, but it was not a passive silence. The very air seemed to crackle. The muteness that had seized his aunt and uncle began to rub on Jeff's nerves. “What's the matter here?” he said again, looking at Wirt. “You didn't come back to the shop. Now I come home and find you and Aunt Beulah looking like you were holding a wake.” When they made no sound, his impatience grew more demanding. “I want to know what's wrong!”

Then, for the first time, Wirt looked up at him. “Jeff, there's something we've got to tell you...”

“No!” The sound was small and thin, almost a wail. Jeff turned quickly to see his aunt cover her face with her hands.

Wirt sighed heavily. “It's no use, Beulah. He'll hear it anyway. Better for it to come from us.”

Jeff was aware of an excited hammering in his chest, and then a sudden silence, as though his heart had stopped its beating. “Is it something about Pa? Is that the trouble?”

Wirt glanced quickly at his wife. “Yes—” he said— “It's something about your pa, Jeff.”

“Then what is it?”

Wirt sat perfectly still, his eyes faded and old. “Do you remember the business about the bank, Jeff? When Jed Harper was killed?”

The hammering began again in Jeff's chest. “I remember.”

“And how your Aunt Beulah identified Nate as the killer?”

For five long years he had trained himself not to think of that day. He had smothered the fire of his anger in the darkest part of his mind, and he had thought until now that the fire was dead. Now he drew himself tall and straight. He said coldly, as though he already knew: “Go on.”

Wirt saw that he could stall no longer. “It appears,” he said quietly, “that Beulah made a mistake that day.”

The working of the mind is a strange thing. Sometimes it accepts only the things it wants to accept and rejects all others—and that is the way it was with Jeff at that moment. He heard the words but could not make himself accept their meaning. He said stiffly, “I don't know what you're talking about.”

But everything about him, from the rigidity of his body to the iron-hard cast of his face, said that he knew. And Wirt saw that telling him was going to be more difficult than he had imagined.

“It was a mistake, Jeff,” Wirt said. “I know it was a terrible thing for Nate, but mistakes sometimes happen. Your aunt simply mistook another man for your pa.”

It was strange that he felt no anger; there was only shock and emptiness as full realization forced its way through the barriers of his mind. It was the wounded man's instant of numbness before the pain begins. He turned slowly away from Wirt and faced his aunt.

“Was it a mistake, Aunt Beulah?”

Beulah could not take her hands from in front of her face. She could not look at him.

“Was it a mistake, Aunt Beulah, or did you do it on purpose?”

She ducked her head quickly, like a child that had been scolded. To Jeff the gesture seemed ridiculous. Then her shoulders began to jerk and he knew that he was seeing his aunt cry for the first time in his life, and that seemed ridiculous too. Suddenly Beulah made that thin little wailing sound again. She threw her apron over her face and ran blindly from the room.

There was a look of worry, almost fear, in Wirt's eyes as he quickly shoved himself up from the table. “Jeff, whatever she did, she did because she loved you. She didn't want anything to hurt you.”

Jeff turned and looked at Wirt without actually seeing him. Then he turned and walked stiffly, out of the kitchen and through the parlor. The front door closed quietly, and Wirt Sewell bent over the table and struck it several times with his fist....

A shocking thing happened later that night. The regular Saturday-night dance on the second floor of the Masonic Temple building was going full swing when Jeff Blaine arrived half drunk and mean, spoiling for a fight. When one of the Cross 4 hands asked Amy Wintworth to dance, Jeff hit him full in the face with his fist. A brawl was started and Elec Blasingame and his night deputy had to break it up, barring all Cross 4 men from the hall and locking Jeff up until he cooled off. “Blood will tell!” the dancers sniffed in disgust.

“Young Blaine—exactly like his pa! They'll both hang at the end of a rope before it's over!”

Elec and Ralph Striker wrestled Jeff out of the hall fighting and kicking, swearing to kill every man in sight. When Amy Wintworth tried to talk to him, he snarled like a tiger.

Striker had his big right fist cocked. “Let me take care of this young tough, Elec!”

“Let him alone!” the marshal snapped. Together, they fought him down the stairway, down to the basement and into the cell.

“What that kid needs,” Striker said angrily, “is a good beating.”

“Ralph,” the marshal answered wearily, feeling the heavy weight of his age, “I figure young Blaine has taken enough beating for one day. Go back to the dance and keep the boys under control. And,” he added, “see if you can find Amy Wintworth—that's Ford Wintworth's girl. Tell her I want to see her.”

A few minutes later Amy and her brother Todd came timidly into the marshal's office. Elec brightened a bit, for he was not so old that he could not appreciate the freshness and beauty of young womanhood. “Thanks for coming,. Amy. And you too, Todd. If young Blaine has any friends in Plainsville, I guess it's you two. And he needs friends now about as much as anybody I ever saw.”

Todd shook his head with a solemn, bitter smile. “Sometimes I wonder if it's possible to be Jeff's friend.” He laughed quietly, without humor. “It's like trying to tame a coyote. No matter how well you think you know him, he's sure to snap at you when you least expect it.”

“And you, Amy?” Elec said quietly. “Long as I can remember, almost, you've been seein' quite a lot of Jeff Blaine. Do you think he's a wild thing that can't be tamed?”

Amy's eyes were wide and hurt by what had happened. A tall, graceful girl with gentle features, she dropped her gaze and murmured, “No, I don't think that.”

“You like him, don't you?” Elec asked bluntly. And when color suddenly came to her cheeks, he said with surprising gentleness, “Never mind an old man's clumsy questions. Sit down, both of you.”

Amy and her brother sat uneasily on the edges of leather-bottom chairs, and Elec Blasingame wondered where all the years had gone. It seemed only yesterday that they had been children—now Todd was a young man, and his sister was old enough to think about getting a husband. Now, with these two youngsters before him, Elec felt vaguely restless and did not know what to say. He wasted a minute lighting a frayed cigar, and then turned to Amy.

“Maybe I'm just an old fool,” he said. “In a way, I'm responsible for the way Jeff Blaine acted tonight. I won't tell you why—more than likely, though, the story will be around town by tomorrow. Anyway, I've got no right to ask you and your brother to help patch up a mistake of mine. If you want to leave, it's all right.”

Amy and Todd looked puzzled, and did not move.

Amy asked quietly, “Is there something I should know, Marshal?”

“Yes, Amy, but it's not my right to tell you. All I can do is ask you to try to understand young Blaine. He's had a hard knock—-he'll need all the help he can get.”

Todd, with a touch of self-righteousness in his voice, said, “There's no excuse for what Jeff did tonight. The Mason's dance is the only place left for decent people in Plainsville, and he did his best to ruin that. If he's going to behave like a dancehall tough, then let him hang out in Bert Surratt's place.”

The marshal sighed. “I was afraid that's the way you'd take it.”

“And I don't think it would be good for Amy to see so much of Jeff,” Todd added with a note of male authority.

Elec noticed that Amy's back stiffened, although she did not look in Todd's direction. She came to her feet, smiling faintly. “Todd, perhaps you should take me home.” She added to the marshal: “Thank you for what you tried to do for Jeff. I understand more than you might think.”

Blasingame sat in deep thought after Amy Wintworth and her brother disappeared up the steps to the street. He was disappointed with his efforts to get the Blaine boy straightened out. He could only hope that Amy Wintworth was wiser and more understanding than he had any right to believe a young girl could be.

Chapter Twelve

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE block, on a dusty, nameless cross street, the Wintworth house stood proud and glistening in its new dress of white paint. Ford Wintworth, a lean, sharp-faced man, stood on his front porch smoking an after-dinner pipe. A dazzling sun beat down on the red clay and frame houses—hot, even for August—and Ford wondered vaguely if there would be a dry-up in the hills.

It was time to be getting back to the wagon yard where he worked, but he kept finding excuses to put off the moment of departure. There was worry in Ford's quick brown eyes as he stared out at the haze of dust that hung over Main Street; there was uneasiness in his stance.

The story had made all the rounds by now, about how they had wrongly accused Nate Blaine of murder and robbery. Ford Wintworth had heard it a dozen times—every man had his own version of what had happened. Ford had noted with some interest how, at first, the people had felt the hand of shame upon them, especially the ones who had been so strong for lynching. Then, in some ingenious way, they had converted their shame to anger, which they aimed at Beulah Sewell.

In a completely impersonal way, Ford felt sorry for Beulah, for he knew that she would pay many times over for what she had done. The citizens of Plainsville did not like being shown off as fools, and they would not soon forget.

The Sewells, however, held only a minor place in Ford Wintworth's interests. It was his daughter who worried him. Oh, he had known for a long time that Amy had been casting glances in Jeff Blaine's direction, but he had figured it was a schoolgirl thing and amounted to nothing. Until a day or so ago Ford had thought of his daughter as still a little girl, and it shocked him slightly to realize that she was a young woman with a mind of her own—and old enough to think of marriage.

Todd, who now worked for his father at the corral, came out to the porch. “I'll walk with you as far as the bank, Pa.”

“I'm not going to the yard just yet,” Ford said. “Todd, tell me something, will you?” Then he rubbed the stubble on his face, not knowing exactly how to say it. “What I mean is—”

His son smiled faintly. “I think I know. It's Amy and Jeff Blaine.”

Ford was surprised that his son could read him so clearly. “I didn't know it showed. But you're right. Look here, Todd, is Amy serious about this Blaine boy?”

His son shrugged. “It looks that way. After that affair at the dance, I thought maybe she'd be cured. But I guess I don't know much about women.”

Todd took makings from his shirt pocket and thoughtfully rolled a thin cigarette in his lean, brown fingers. He looked as though he wanted to say something more, then thought better of it and merely nodded. “I guess I'd better get on to the corral, Pa. You going to talk to Amy about this?”

Ford grunted, and didn't answer.

Several minutes later Ford was still on the porch when his daughter came outside. “Pa, I thought you'd gone back to work.”

Ford hesitated, feeling ridiculous. The subtle approach was not a part of the Wintworth make-up, and finally he blurted: “Damn it, Amy, I want to talk to you about this Blaine boy.”

A shade of caution seemed to lower behind his daughter's eyes. But she only said, “All right, Pa.”

“I'll come right out with it,” Ford stated. “I don't think you ought to be seeing young Blaine any more. His reputation was none too good to start with, and it's getting worse every day. That business at the dance was bad enough, but now he's taken to carrying a gun and hanging out in Bert Surratt's place. Amy, I don't believe you ought to see him any more.”

His daughter said quietly, “You aren't ordering me not to see Jeff, are you, Pa?”

Ford Wintworth was far from deaf. He heard the warning tone in Amy's voice with perfect clarity and it brought him up short. He looked at his daughter as though he had never seen her before.

“You know I wouldn't order you to do anything,” Ford said nervously.

Amy smiled. Suddenly she kissed her father on the cheek.

“Don't worry so much about me, Pa. I'm not a young girl who doesn't know what she's doing. I'm a woman.”

For the first time in his life, Ford Wintworth had lost the upper hand with one of his children, but he was smart enough to know it. He murmured something and tried to give the impression that everything was fine and that nothing had changed. As he started back toward town he walked a bit straighter than usual, with great dignity. But within his own mind he knew that his daughter had defeated him.

On the porch of the Wintworth house, Amy also knew that she had won, for the moment. But the victory was not sweet. It is only the beginning, she thought soberly. More lines will be drawn, more battles fought.

Amy loved her father, and her brother, and she had no wish to hurt them or fight with them. But she was also a woman and she knew what she wanted.

Amy still shrank within herself whenever she remembered Jeff Blaine's actions of a week ago. She had been so angry at the time that she swore to herself that she would never speak to him again... but that was before Elec Blasingame had talked to her—before she had heard the story of Beulah Sewell and what she had done to Jeff's father and to Jeff.

Now she could understand the rage that Jeff Blaine had unleashed that night. She could not condone it, but she could live with it for a little while, until the rage had burned itself out.

Mrs. Wintworth, a onetime beauty who had grown heavy and placid, came to the front door. “Amy, there are dinner dishes to be done.”

“All right, Mother.”

“Didn't I hear your father out here?”

“Yes, but he's gone now.” Amy was sure that her mother had heard everything that had been said. But Mrs. Wintworth chose to believe that no problem existed and that Jefferson Blaine was merely a name that came up now and then in quilting gossip. In a vague sort of way Mrs. Wintworth foresaw her daughter marrying one of the acceptable, well-to-do boys of Plainsville and living out her days in a white frame house exactly like the one Ford Wintworth had built for himself and his family—and Amy had learned long ago that it was just as well to let her mother believe what she would.

“All right, Mother,” Amy said again and turned to go in the house.

“Isn't that buggy stopping at our gate, Amy?” Mrs. Wintworth asked.

Amy turned, surprised to see Jeff Blaine draw up at the front gate in a glistening black buggy. Hurriedly, Mrs. Wintworth ducked back into the house, but Amy knew that she would be listening on the other side of the door. Jeff sat for a moment, a tight little smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“Am I welcome?” he asked.

It was the first Amy had seen of him since the night of the dance. “Of course,” she said quietly, betraying none of the excitement that hammered within her.

It had always been so. Jeff Blaine could look at her and her blood would race through her veins. Even as children, when he had elaborately refused to admit that she was alive, it had been so. Amy Wintworth understood it better now than she had then.

Abruptly, with nervous quickness, Jeff vaulted out of the buggy and walked unsmiling to the gate. Amy felt something cry out within herself when she saw the tense, hard lines around his mouth. He was so young—and looked so old! Since the coming of the railroad, armed men were no longer novelties in Plainsville, but the sight of the heavy revolver on Jeff's right thigh frightened her. She hoped the fear did not show in her face when she swung open the gate and asked quietly, “Won't you come in?”

“I'm not sure your folks would like it,” he said Stiffly.

“You didn't come to see my folks, did you?”

He did not smile. He looked as though he had forgotten how. “I guess,” he said grimly, “I ought to apologize for —for what happened at the dance.”

His voice and his face are so hard, Amy thought. But she said in the same quiet voice, “Not unless you want to.”

“Well, I apologize.” As though he were reading it from a book. “I didn't mean for you to get mixed up in it.” They stood for a moment in uneasy silence. Then he added, “I rented this rig for the rest of the day. I thought maybe you'd like to ride over toward Stone Ridge with me.”

Amy's eyes widened in surprise. “Stone Ridge?”

“I won a piece of land over there last night. I thought I might as well see what it looks like.”

So he has won some land, Amy thought slowly. Over a gambling table in Bert Surratt's place, probably. A little chill went over her, and she saw for the first time how much he resembled his father.

“Of course,” he said bluntly, “if you don't want to go...”

But Amy knew that she would go. Never in her life had she turned down one of Jeff Blaine's rare invitations. She said, “I'll have to get a bonnet, and tell Mother.”

Mrs. Wintworth looked at her daughter in dismay. “Stone Ridge! Amy, the whole town will talk!”

“The town will talk anyway,” Amy said. Then she turned to her mother and added gently, “Don't you see? He's hurt and angry and thinks the whole world is his enemy. If I turned against him now, there's no telling what he'd do.”

Her mother blinked in disbelief. “Amy, you can't mean that you actually care what happens to a ruffian like Jeff Blaine!”

Amy's face turned blank as she put on her bonnet. “I'll do the dishes when I get back,” she said quietly.

They rode in silence along Main Street. Heads turned to watch as they passed. Amy could feel their disapproving stares. She could almost hear their clucking tongues as they shook their heads from side to side. The corners of Jeff's mouth lifted slightly in a cold, humorless smile.

They took the old stage road out of town and headed north toward the hills. The parched land lay spread out before them, dazzling yellow and shimmering in the sun. There was a great silence broken only by buggy wheels and hoofs, and now and then a field lark's cry. Some of that big country's lonesomeness fell around Amy as the noisy activity of the town fell behind them.

Amy found herself thinking back to other times, to the years of her childhood. She found herself watching Jeff Blaine's hard young face, wondering what it was about those intense eyes and thin mouth that had always drawn her to him.

Being wise in so many things, it was strange that she understood so little of the man himself. Amy, whose young will could control a headstrong man like Ford Wintworth, learned early that the harder you held to Jeff Blaine the easier he slipped away. He was quicksilver; he was mystery. And within his strong body was locked the secret of his own doom.

Much of this was foolishness, of course, the product of a romantic girl's too-active imagination, and in an objective way Amy knew it. Certainly there was nothing mysterious about a barefoot boy who was too muleheaded and stubborn to come to one of her parties—the kind of boy Jeff had once been, before Nathan Blaine had filled him with his own importance, spoiled him and brought to life an arrogance and violence that most men were content to leave sleeping.

In her quiet way, Amy hated Nathan Blaine. She hated the man's arrogance, and the way he had tossed his big head and stared down at you with those dark eyes. Most of all she hated him for the bragging bully that he had made of his own son, and for this she would not forgive him.

In Amy's cold, woman's logic, she could almost admire Beulah Sewell for the thing she had done! With Nathan out of his life, Jeff had become a boy again with normal feelings and emotions.

Now Amy wished for the impossible. Gladly would she have stood up for Beulah's lie, but she knew that it would only bring Jeff's rage down upon her. And besides, lies were not practical. Despite all good intent, their cut was cruel when they were found out, as Beulah Sewell came to know.

Still, Amy admired Beulah's courage. Beulah had seen what Nathan Blaine was doing to the boy and she had done what she could to stop it.

At the moment it did not occur to Amy that Beulah had self-righteously taken the law into her own hands. The end, it seemed to Amy, was_ worth the means, and that the plan had failed was its only fault.

Now, as the buggy rolled across that wide prairie, Amy gazed out over the shaggy grassland dotted here and there with patches of nester corn. Jeff had not said more than a dozen words since the town had fallen behind them, but now he waved abruptly toward the fields of corn.

“Good grassland. Soon it'll all be plowed up and blown away.”

That was what the cattlemen had been saying since the first nester sank his dugout in Landow County, but the land was still there and the corn thrived. Amy looked at him, but said nothing. Sooner or later he would get around to telling her of other things. She was good at waiting.

“There's Stone Ridge,” he said after a while, pointing to a hogback hump of scrub and sandstone in the distance. “Two sections over there somewhere were deeded to me this morning. Not much to graze beef cattle on, but it's something.”

Amy spoke for the first time. “Two sections is a lot of land to some people. You haven't said how you got it.”

Jeff shot her a quick glance. “I told you I won it. At poker, from a nester.”

Amy felt that small chill go over her again, and she looked away from those intense eyes that reminded her so much of his father. She heard herself saying quietly, “I didn't know you were such a good gambler.”

“Good?” He laughed shortly. “I was lucky. I'm no great shakes as a gambler right now, but I'll learn. My pa said I had a natural talent for it.”

“Oh,” she said softly, but if he heard the note of dismay in her voice, he did not show it. “Is that what you mean to make of yourself, a gambler?”

Now he did look at her, levelly. “Is there anything wrong with that?”

Her voice sounded weak. “I don't know. I've never known any gamblers.”

“Maybe you'd like me to do something else,” he said shortly. “Maybe I could learn to clean your pa's stables.”

The tone of his voice angered her. “You don't have to clean stables,” she replied cuttingly. “Your uncle was good enough to teach you a trade.”

He grew rigid, high color flushing his cheeks. “I don't want to talk about the Sewells! I don't want to hear their name mentioned!”

They rode in stiff, uncomfortable silence for several minutes. At last he said, “Amy, I didn't mean to bark at you. I'm sorry.”

But it was not the same after that. Amy was angry with herself for coming with him; doubly angry because she knew that she would do it all over again if he asked her. She tilted her chin haughtily and refused to speak to him or look in his direction.

“Well, there it is,” Jeff said flatly when they reached the ridge. There was a broad valley on the western side of the scrubby slope. The land was a thick carpet of grass, dotted here and there with cottonwoods and willows that grew along a shallow creek. Jeff was surprised at the lush-ness of his new holdings. Amy saw a boyish excitement in his face as he dismounted from the buggy and stood looking down at the spread of grass. Despite her determination to stay angry, she felt herself thawing.

“Look at that!” he said huskily. “Grass belly-high on a four-year-old steer, and that nester was trying to farm it!”

He handed Amy down from the buggy and both of them stood on the edge of the ridge gazing down in amazement. Amy pointed toward the opposite slope. “Isn't that a house over there?”

“The nester's shack, I guess. Already falling down.”

“It doesn't look as if it had been farmed,” Amy said, puzzled.

“That's why the nester was willing to gamble it. Too lazy to make enough improvements to hold it.”

“And now it's yours?” she asked, as though she was trying to get used to the idea.

It was then that they saw the lone horseman streaking across the flatland to the west. Both of them watched the trail of dust kick up over the prairie and slowly drift away with the wind. The rider's strong gray covered ground fast and soon disappeared in the afternoon sun behind the ridge.

Jeff glanced at Amy and shrugged. “A poor way to treat horseflesh in this kind of heat. Well, I guess we've seen all there is to see.” They returned to the buggy, turned around on the rocky slope and headed slowly back to Plainsville.

Out of curiosity, Amy looked back over her shoulder as they neared the stage road, but there was no sign of the lone rider. She dismissed the incident from her mind and turned her imagination to that valley of grass that now belonged to Jeff. She could close her eyes and almost see a neat, white painted house there on the green slope, and cattle rolling in fat grazing contentedly in the deep grass along the creek. She visualized the beginning of a new brand in Texas—the Blaine brand.

“Jeff, what are you going to do with that land?”

He snapped the lines over the horse's back and clucked his tongue. “I don't know yet. Sell it, maybe. Two sections of land's not good for anything but farming, and I'm not a sodbuster.”

“I didn't expect anything,” she said, but Jeff could see that she had. They rode for a while in silence, and when Jeff tried to take her hand, she pulled away from him. Angrily, Jeff kept his eyes on the road ahead. He wished that he could forget Amy Wintworth. He could never please her. She always wanted the impossible.

But he no longer denied that he liked being with her. She was not easy to get along with, but she was always there when he needed her, which was more than he could say for anybody else. Even his pa.

Oh, she got mad at him sometimes, but she didn't stay mad. Like that affair with the Jorgensons, and the fight at the dance. She could cut like a whip when riled, but he didn't mind that so much because she always got over it.

Only recently had Jeff begun to realize that things between himself and Amy were not the same as they had always been. Not for several years had he thought up elaborate schemes to ignore her; now he found himself thinking up excuses to be with her. For a long while a thought had been growing in his mind. Despite the fact that they often fought and she was almost impossible to please, the feeling that he would never be able to forget her had grown stronger and stronger within him. At last he had admitted it to himself, grudgingly—he guessed that he was in love with Amy Wintworth.

It was not an easy thought to live with. For one thing, Ford Wintworth was against it—and Todd, too, who used to be Jeff's friend.

Sometimes when Jeff thought about it an emptiness grew inside him until he felt that he was nothing but a hollow shell, lost and desperate. Too much of his life had been spent in anger, there had been too many reasons for hate. Today he could walk the streets of Plainsville, up and down and across, and never meet a person he could call a friend.

They feared him because of his pa and because his name was Blaine, despised him for his shield of arrogance; some hated him for what they themselves had done to Nathan. Grizzled cattlemen would make room for him at a gambling table because of his gun and reputation; Bert Surratt would serve him at the bar for the same reason. But not one of them was his friend. Only Amy understood him.

At times he wanted to tell her the things he felt. He wanted to show her what right he had to hate this town and everybody in it; but if spoken, the words would never sound the way he heard them in his mind, so he kept his thoughts to himself.

Some day he would think of a way to settle with Beulah and Wirt Sewell. He would think of a plan to even the score with all the others who sneered at him. Some day his anger would spill over and he would be rid of it, and then perhaps he could tell Amy all the things he wanted her to know.

As the buggy jolted along the deep rutted stage road, Jeff was surprised to see a group of horsemen break out of a stand of brush and head toward them.

Amy looked at him. “Isn't that Elec Blasingame in front?”

“Looks like it,” Jeff said flatly.

“Aren't you going to stop? They're headed in this direction.”

Something in Jeff's face went hard. “If they want to talk to us, they can catch up. I don't figure I'm in debt to any law in Plainsville.”

Amy did not show surprise. In a way she could understand Jeff's hostile attitude, because of what had happened to his father. Looking back she saw the horsemen spur to a gallop as they moved west toward the stage road to cut them off. There were seven of them, all Plainsville citizens, headed by Marshal Blasingame and his day deputy, Kirk Logan.

“Thanks for waiting for us,” Logan said with dry anger as the group reined up alongside the buggy.

“You're welcome,” Jeff said flatly, and color rose in the deputy's face.

Then Blasingame kneed his mount in on the inside, between Jeff and Logan. “None of that!” he said shortly, after touching his hatbrim to Amy. “We're looking for a man, Blaine. Heavy-set, about forty. We followed his trail this way out of town but lost it on the shale bed to the south of here. You happen to see anybody to fit the description?”

Jeff raked the riders with a glance, noting the ropes and rifles. “Was he riding a gray?” he asked mildly.

“By hell, that's the one!” Kirk Logan said. “Where'd you see him?”

“Can't say what the rider looked like; he was too far off. Me and Amy were over toward Stone Ridge. Saw him scooting across the prairie like he had a burr under his tail.”

Blasingame wiped his sweaty face on his sleeve.

“Sounds like the one, all right. Which direction was he headed?”

“East,” Jeff said casually. “Due east.”

As he said it, he shot a glance at Amy, stopping the words that were on her lips.

“Thanks, Blaine,” the marshal said, and the riders began pulling their horses around. “He won't get away from us now.”

“Wait!” Amy called. But she was too late. The marshal and his posse were pounding back to the east and her voice was lost in the thunder of hoofs. She fixed Jeff with her flashing eyes. “The man we saw was headed west! You know he was!”

She hardly recognized the man beside her as the Jeff Blaine she had ridden with from Plainsville. “There are a lot of gray horses in Texas,” he said coldly. “Maybe he was the wrong man.”

“But what if he was the right man? What if he's a killer?”

Jeff took her arm and tried to make his voice gentle. “Amy, I'm not the law; that's Elec's job. But remember that I saw them catch the wrong man once and try to bang him. I'm not going to help them catch another one.”

Amy felt futility well up inside her, knowing that nothing she could say would erase his bitterness. An uneasy wall built up between them as the buggy rolled again toward Plainsville. “Jeff,” she said at last, “my father talked to me today. He asked me not to see you again.”

Jeff shot her a glance, waiting for her to go on.

“Maybe he was right,” she said, and he held his silence.

Chapter Thirteen

THE NAME THE STRANGER gave was Bill Somerson; he had arrived in Plainsville on the noon mail train the day before. Very little was know about him except that he had come well heeled, and was looking for action at Bert Surratt's poker tables. With the wisdom of hindsight, Surratt confessed later that Somerson had a mean look to him and he wasn't surprised when Phil Costain caught him with a holdout up his sleeve. After the holdout discovery, the stranger shot Costain in the groin, stole the gray from the hitch rack outside the saloon and fogged it out of town. The most surprising thing, the saloonkeeper claimed, was that Costain was still alive to tell it.

Jeff heard the story when he returned from Stone Ridge shortly before sundown. The loafers around the livery barn were full of it when he turned in his hired rig.

To Jeff, it was just another shooting. They were not rare in Plainsville these days. He was still mad at himself for not patching up the fight with Amy before letting her out at her house. But like mules, both of them had refused to give, and they had parted in anger.

If she can't understand the reasons I have for hating this town, he told himself, maybe it's just as well I find it out now.

But he didn't believe it. As he walked toward town from the livery barn, he felt his anger leaving him, the ache of loneliness pulling at his nerves. He tramped the plank walk to the Paradise eating house and made his supper on stew and sourdough bread. He had the thought to go back to the Wintworth house and make it up with her, but he didn't know what to say. Anyway, Ford would probably want to put in his own word and make him madder than he already was.

Well, he told himself, she'll get over it.

But this time he wondered. He had not liked the look of hurt in her eyes, the coldness with which she had drawn away from him. He dropped some silver on the counter and walked out of the restaurant.

The sun had died behind the lip of the prairie; lamps and lanterns were being lighted, and there was the familiar smell of woodsmoke in the air. Jeff's lonesomeness and discontent thrived in the gathering dusk.

He stood in front of the Paradise for a while, watching a group of Snake hands ride whooping in from the north. Jeff envied them their gaiety, the sense of freedom that was always with them. When he first left the Sewell house he had thought to get on as a cowhand with one of the big outfits, as Nathan had done so long ago. But the common hand's pay of six bits a day and chuck did not appeal to him—he had learned quickly that he could do much better at Surratt's gambling tables,.

But his boyhood notion of the cowhand's life was strong within him, and he could still smile at their loud talk, their vanity and swagger. He noted that some of the hands were no older than himself, eighteen or nineteen at the most. In this country they were not looked upon as boys.

The cowhands disappeared into the new Green House saloon, and Jeff lingered for a few minutes longer in front of the Paradise. The pungent smell of woodsmoke brought back memories. On the slope to the east of town he could see the straggling barefoot “cowboys” bringing in the family cows. Not long ago he had been one of them, a tow-headed kid with hardly a care in the world. “The sight of Wirt Sewell on the other side of the street brought his bitterness into sharp focus. Coming out of Baxter's store, Wirt looked old and somehow shrunken, but he wrung no pity from Jeff Blaine. The very sight of Wirt could send him into a rage, and now Jeff turned stiffly and faced in the other direction so he wouldn't have to look at him.

Jeff had heard with bitter pleasure how Wirt's tin shop was going to ruin. That was the town's way of punishing Beulah for making a fool of it. Even the grangers were canceling their orders, sending all the way to Landow for their windmills and water tanks and tin piping. They said it was only a matter of time before he went broke and would be forced to leave Plainsville; they said he spent his days piddling with buckets and tubs which nobody would buy.

Not until it was too late to escape did Jeff realize that Wirt had crossed the street and was coming toward him. He felt something inside him go cold and hard as Wirt said, “Jeff, won't you talk to me?”

Jeff turned angrily and faced a sagging, defeated shadow of a man. He said tightly, “We have nothing to talk about.”

“Jeff, can't you ever forgive us?”

He said shortly, “No!”

Wirt's face was flabby and blank. “I didn't think you would. But I had to ask. I'm not standing up for what Beulah did—it was a terrible thing. It was wrong—she knows it now—but at the time she thought it was the best thing for you. That's why she did it, Jeff.”

Jeff laughed harshly. “Is that what she's telling people?”

Wirt shrugged wearily. “She tells them nothing. She hasn't seen anybody since you left us. She won't talk—not even to me.” Nervously, he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Your Aunt Beulah's sick, Jeff. She's shut herself up as if she was dead and that house was her tomb. If you'd just go over and see her—”

“But I won't,” Jeff said cruelly. “One day my pa will come back to Plainsville, and if he wants to forgive her, that's his business. But I never will!”

Wirt shrunk before the hate in Jeff's eyes. His head dropped, and after a moment he shuffled back across the street.

Jeff felt his nerves quiver. He turned on his heel and walked stiffly toward Bert Surratt's.

It was a quiet night in Surratt's saloon, everything considered. The saloonkeeper leaned on the bar, idly watching two Cross 4 hands have a fling at the wheel of fortune. The excitement over the shooting that afternoon had died down. Every hour or so someone came in to report on Phil Costain, who was still in Doc Shipley's sick room. There was nothing much to do except wait for the marshal to come back with Somerson. Bert Surratt smiled faintly; that's when the excitement would begin.

Old Seth Lewellen, leaning heavily on an oak root cane, shouldered through the swinging doors. “You hear about Costain?” he asked Surratt. “Doc Shipley says he'll pull through. Takes more'n bullets to kill a drayman, it looks like.”

Bert nodded. “Phil's a tough one,” he agreed.

The old man waited expectantly, hoping the news would bring a round on the house. When Bert made no move, Lewellen went out again, mumbling to himself.

Surratt yawned. Mac Butler, the blacksmith, and Forrest Slater were playing low-stake stud with a pair of grangers. Two men from Big Hat nursed their drinks at the far end of the bar. A slow night.

The new saloon down the street, the Green House, had taken part of the cowhand business, but Bert wasn't worried. When things were lively there was plenty of business to go around. Then the batwings swung open and Jeff Blaine came in.

Blaine nodded at a whisky bottle and the saloonkeeper slid it up the bar, a glass after it. Jeff poured one and could not control the shudder that went through him as he downed it.

Pretending to watch the wheel of fortune, Surratt studied Jeff from the corner of his eye. He didn't like the boy any better than he had liked his pa—they both carried the smell of trouble about them. Anyway, Bert had little use for fuzz-faced kids who toted guns and tried to act like men. He didn't like selling them whisky, either, but what could you do when that was your business? One of these strutting kids could give you more trouble than the whole Cross 4 after roundup.

But there was something about that tense face and those angry eyes that made a man think before he started something with Jeff Blaine, even if he was just a kid. That second-hand Colt's could kill you just as dead as a man's gun....

Now Surratt turned his gaze frankly on the kid. “Hear about Costain?” he asked tentatively.

Jeff nodded shortly, but said nothing.

Bert slid a new bottle down to the Big Hat men at the other end of the bar. For a moment he focused his attention on the stud game, but there was little there to interest him. He mopped the bar and continued his silent study of the Blaine boy.

At the moment Jeff turned his attention to the stud game. It was about his size; he was smart enough not to get in with professionals. But the anger that came with talking to Wirt was still in him, and he knew that he was in no condition to study cards.

Then they heard the horses enter the far end of the street. Surratt cocked his head with interest.

“Maybe that is Elec's posse coming back with Somerson,” he commented.

Jeff didn't care who it was. His nerves were taut; he felt at loose ends and all alone. He poured another glass of fiery whisky, hating the green taste of it but swallowing it in the hope that it would relax him.

Now they heard the tramp of boots on the plank walk outside the saloon. Jeff turned and saw Elec Blasingame and his deputy standing in the doorway, the other members of the posse behind them. Kirk Logan's face was drawn with anger, but the marshal himself was the picture of rage.

All eyes in the saloon were focused on the dirty, sweat-stained men in the doorway. The saloonkeeper cleared his throat uneasily. “You find Somerson, Marshal?”

Blasingame made no show of hearing. He came into the room, his anger directed at Jeff. The marshal was no longer young; he had grown fat and he was not as quick as he had once been, but he was still regarded as the most dangerous man in Plainsville. And he had never looked more dangerous than he did at this moment.

Instinctively, Bert Surratt backed away from the bar. The Big Hat men downed their drinks and drifted toward the far wall. Jeff stayed where he was, watching Elec and the deputy, prepared for whatever was to come. He abandoned all caution. His nervous tension and frustration suddenly became an urge for violence.

He set his whisky glass on the bar. “You looking for me, Marshal?”

Kirk Logan made an ugly sound and started to move in. The marshal stopped him with an outstretched arm. “Stay out of it, Kirk!” He turned to Jeff, his voice hoarse. “Are you proud of yourself, Blaine? Thanks to you, a killer got away free!”

Jeff was surprised, exhilarated at the confidence that had taken control of him. He said coolly, “I don't know what you're talking about, Elec.”

“You know, all right!” the marshal snarled. “That rider you saw—you knew he was headin' west, not east.”

Jeff shot a glance around the room, but said nothing.

“Don't waste your breath on him,” Kirk Logan growled.

Jeff wheeled on the deputy. “Maybe you've got some ideas of your own you'd like to try!”

“That's enough!” Elec snapped, holding his deputy at bay with angry eyes. His fat jowls shook as he wheeled on Jeff. “Son, you better take that chip off your shoulder,” he said with forced calm. “You keep looking for trouble hard enough and you're bound to find it—more than you can handle, maybe.”

“I'll take my chances,” Jeff said coldly.

Elec's anger got away from him. A big clawlike hand shot out and grabbed the front of Jeff's shirt. Before the action was half completed, Jeff grabbed his Colt's and rammed the muzzle hard into Blasingame's soft belly.

Jeff felt every muscle in his body quiver, every nerve taut and singing. He watched grayness replace the flush of anger in the marshal's face. Jeff Blaine had never known an excitement so intense; he had never dreamed of such power as he held in his own right hand at that moment.

If there was ever a doubt as to whether Jeff Blaine could handle a gun, it had now vanished. Even Kirk Logan, in his amazement, lost the keen edge of his anger. Bert Surratt's breath whistled between his teeth as he waited tensely.

Slowly, very slowly, the tension began to relax.

Jeff heard his own voice saying, “Turn loose of me, Elec. Don't ever touch me again.”

Very carefully the marshal withdrew his hand. He stood perfectly still, recovering from his first shock, as Jeff shot the revolver back into its holster. The silence in the room was as hard as steel.

At last Elec Blasingame shook his head. “I shouldn't have grabbed you like that. But if you ever take another notion to throw down on me, be sure you pull the trigger. Next time I'll know what to expect.” He nodded stiffly to Logan and the two of them turned toward the door.

Chapter Fourteen

IT WAS A BUSY DAY, AS all Saturdays were in Plainsville. Wirt Sewell stood outside his tin shop, a forlorn, faded figure of a man, gazing vacantly at the mill of farm wagons and saddle animals in the street. Solemn farmers, their faces raw from recent shaves, gathered in the stores and on the streets to talk crops; farm women gossiped in the stores or near the wagons in the wide alley behind Main Street.

Impatient cowhands lined up for haircuts and shaves and baths at the barber shops, looking forward to whisky at the Green House or Bert Surratt's, and gambling, and maybe a woman. Some of them, the ones sober enough to pass inspection, would stay over for the Masonic dance. By noon the street became so clotted with wagons and hacks and horses and oxen as to become impassable.

On that day Plainsville took on the aspect of a farming town, grangers outnumbering cowhands three to one. All the stores were busy, clerks run ragged; tempers flared, but it was all a part of the day and no one would have missed it. Cowhands prowled the sidewalks and haunted the saloons, arrogant as always, staying aloof and to themselves. Elec Blasingame and his deputies were kept busy settling arguments, stopping fights, trying to clear the street for traffic.

Not long ago Wirt Sewell had enjoyed these days of excitement and clamor; he had felt a part of it. Once he had had more orders than he and Jeff could fill—now there was not enough business to keep only himself busy. Only the tin shop, of all the stores in Plainsville, was empty of customers.

But Wirt no longer worried about the shop. He could think only of his wife, and of Jeff.

He told himself that he was still a young man with many good years left before him, but he felt old and empty. He listened for a moment to the bawling from the cattle pens, and then realized that people were watching him. An old man warming himself in the sun, he thought. He went back into his empty shop.

From his window he saw Amy Wintworth and her mother going into Baxter's store. He smiled faintly, unable to understand how everything had gone so wrong so fast. He had thought about it until his head swam, but there seemed to be no answer. All Beulah's regrets couldn't undo the damage she had caused.

Things will never be the same again, he thought hopelessly. Beulah and I might as well get used to it.

Then he saw Amy come out of Baxter's. The beginning of a new idea began working in Wirt's mind as he watched her pick her way across the dusty street. On impulse, he hurried back to the sidewalk and called to her.

“Amy! Can I talk to you a minute?”

Surprise was in her eyes, but not the disgust that he had seen so often in others. Wirt took her hand and helped her up to the walk.

They found privacy inside the shop. “Amy,” he said awkwardly, “how long has it been since you saw Jeff?”

She dropped her glance. “Yesterday, Mr. Sewell. We went out to Stone Ridge.”

“Yes,” Wirt said heavily. “I heard he had some land out there. Did he—say anything about his aunt?” Sudden color appeared in her cheeks, and Wirt murmured, “Yes, I guess he did.” Then he steeled himself and asked bluntly, “Amy, do you love him?”

She looked up quickly, startled. But when she saw the gray weariness in his face, she felt more at ease.

“I don't know, Mr. Sewell. I used to be so sure of every-thing, but now— My father has forbidden me to see him again.”

Wirt said quietly, “I guess I can't blame Ford for that.” He moved a hand aimlessly over his face, forcing a smile. “Well, thank you for stopping, Amy.”

Wirt turned slightly, gazing emptily at the dust clouds that rose over the cattle pens. “It's a funny thing,” he said, “but I guess Beulah and I didn't know how much the boy meant to us until he went away. Or maybe Beulah did know—because she did that thing for what she thought was his own good. Amy, does he hate us as much as he thinks he does?”

Her silence was her answer.

Wirt sighed. “Well, I guess he has the right to hate. But so did Nathan, long ago, when he was Jeff's age. Jeff's pa wasn't a bad boy at all. Oh, Nathan was a little wild, maybe, but a hard worker and not really bad. He worked in the stables before your own pa came to Plainsville; made his own living and took some hard knocks while doing it. So Nate was bitter on this town, like Jeff is now. He married Beulah's baby sister, but his wife died that first winter. Pneumonia, right after the boy was born. Nate blamed it on the town, because it wouldn't trust him for money to buy medicine and rations.”

Now Wirt turned from the window and faced Amy. “I guess I'm scared,” he said evenly. “I watched Nate's anger grow to a thing of destruction, just the way Jeff's is growing now. I saw the violence mount in Nate until there was no holding him, until he was bound to kill somebody before he was through.” Slowly he shook his head. “Amy, I am scared. I can see it happening all over again in Jeff, and there's nothing I can do to stop it. I think Nate saw it in his son, too, and was scared by it.”

Amy stood as straight as a lance, her face pale. “Mr. Sewell, is there anything I can do?”

“No—not if you don't love him.”.

“I didn't say that.”

Wirt smiled faintly and nodded. “I know. But Ford Wintworth can be a strong-willed man when he's riled. I guess he's heard that Jeff threw down on the marshal last night.”

“I can handle my father,” Amy said firmly.

Heat had driven Jeff from his hot, boxlike room above Frank Ludlow's store. For a moment he stood on the plank walk at the foot of the stairs, amazed how alone a person could feel with people swarming all around him. His anger from the night before had subsided, and there was nothing to replace it.

He was sluggish from a sleepless night, and that unreal feeling of hollowness was growing again within him.

As he stood there he caught the sidelong glances thrown in his direction. There was new respect, even fear, in those glances. Here was the man who had made Flee Blasingame back down. Here was a dangerous man, even though he looked like a kid. With elaborate unconcern, grangers, cowhands, and townspeople sidestepped when they approached him, careful not to jostle him.

Jeff smiled faintly and without humor. Without firing a shot he had suddenly acquired a reputation as a dangerous gunman. The name of Blaine had made it so, at one quick impulsive draw on the marshal.

For a long time they had wondered. For a long time they had considered his arrogance, quietly pondering the question of whether Nate Blaine's violent blood actually flowed in his son's veins. Now they knew, or they thought they did.

Only Jeff and Elec Blasingame knew that the show of deadliness had been mostly luck, because Elec had not been prepared for the draw. Ignoring such an obvious truth would be suicide, and Jeff instinctively knew it. What would happen another time, with Elec ready for him, he could not say; he hoped he'd never have to find out.

Only after it was over, in the thoughtful hours of a restless night, had he realized how close he had come to killing a man. This was something that he had not considered until now, and the thought was terrifying.

Ralph Striker was in the Paradise when Jeff came in for breakfast. The lawman threw him a quick, hard glance. Then, with faked good humor, Striker walked down to Jeff's end of the counter. “Morning, Blaine,” he said casually, helping himself to several toothpicks.

Jeff nodded.

“Do me a favor, will you?” the deputy asked, his thin smile a bit forced. “Try to stay out of trouble. I'd like to get in a full day's sleep for a change.”

Jeff frowned as Striker got his hat and went out. Not until later did he learn the meaning behind the deputy's quiet warning.

Out of the Paradise, Jeff fingered the few bills and loose silver in his pocket. Because of that piece of land, he had almost tricked himself into thinking that he was a successful gambler, but those few dollars that made up his bankroll proved otherwise. He did not have the experience to sit in on high stake games, and dollars came slow and hard from the cautious store clerks and farmers. He had been able to hold off the urge to plunge, but now he felt impatience gnawing at him.

If he only had a stake, he thought, he could stock his land and have the beginning of a brand of iris own. One thing he had learned—gambling as seen from a felted table in Bert Surratt's wasn't as exciting as he had imagined. Also, he remembered the way Amy's eyes had lighted up when she had looked down on that valley of grass.

But you need more than land to make a place pay. He could not go to Amy and say, “Come with me, Amy, and we'll live in the squatter's broken-down shack, and maybe the bank will loan us enough to get started on.”

The bank hadn't helped Nathan Blaine when he had needed it, and it wouldn't help his son. A man needed a stake before he could go to a girl like Amy, before he could face the fierce rejection in Ford Wintworth's eyes.

Frowning, he walked into Bert Surratt's, raked the crowded bar with a practiced glance, and studied the tables and the men playing at them. To get what he wants, a man has to take a chance, he told himself.

He moved back to where a crowd of idlers stood watching the play at one table. Jeff studied the litter of silver, gold, and a few greenbacks on the table and thought, With a little luck a man could stock a good-sized range out of a game like this. He moved forward, noting how the idlers split away from him. “Room for one more?”

Chet Blakely, Snake range boss, looked up coldly. “This is no game for boys.”

It was a cold, seasoned bunch at the table. Blakely, who had won and lost outfits of his own in his time; Bus Cheetham, who could gamble for a living with the best of them if he didn't own a piece of the Cross 4 where he worked as foreman. Besides the two cattlemen, there was a railroad man from Landow; Brad Littlefield, the stage agent; and two hands from Big Hat who were pushing strings of luck. All of them looked up, smiling thinly at Blakely's small joke.

Jeff felt his face grow warm. “Do you want another player, or don't you?” he asked.

“He's old enough to tote a gun,” Bus Cheetham drawled; “he's old enough to lose his money. Sit in, Blaine; we'll see how much Nate taught you about the game.”

It did not take Jeff long to learn that it had not been enough.

With appalling efficiency they took his cash and then began taking great bites at the two sections that he had won less than two days before. And soon it was gone—all gone.

Jeff felt shaken and weak. He had planned so boldly, and now he had nothing. He owned less than he had the day he had hurled curses at Wirt and Beulah Sewell and turned his back on their house. A few pieces of clothing, he thought angrily, a second-hand Colt's—that's what I've got. Not even a horse and rig!

Chet Blakely grinned as Jeff signed over the deed to the land. “Here, kid,” he said harshly, “don't say we tried to clean you.” He flipped a gold double eagle at him.

Only then did anger come. Jeff kicked his chair back, grabbed the edge of the table and shoved. The amazed range boss caught the table in his lap and fell back. He sprawled on the floor, showered with money and cards.

“You can keep your money!” Jeff said tightly.

“God damn you!” Blakely snarled. With a savage swipe of his arm he brushed money from his chest and sprang to his feet. He rushed blindly but Jeff kicked the table in his way and Blakely sprawled again.

Once more he got up, raging, big and ugly as a bull buffalo. Within the range boss's two big arms was enough strength to break a man in half, and that was his intent as he rushed again.

But this time something stopped him. The fire in Jeff Blaine's eyes, the pale gray line of his tightly compressed mouth. Blakely saw that right hand cupped at the hip, ready to grab, and he sensed the violence that was ready to burst. He stopped. He had the good sense to realize that size and strength were no advantages. Colonel Colt's deadly two pounds of steel had equalized all that—victory went to the quick and eager.

Chet Blakely was quick enough for a man his size, but he was not eager. He had laughed about Elec Blasingame letting a punk kid throw down on him, but he wasn't laughing now. He made no move toward his own revolver. Instead, he held his hand well away from his side.

It was clear to all in the room that Chet was buffaloed. The range boss was not going to be the first to test the untried speed of a wild kid's draw; he gambled only with money. Nor did any other man in the saloon seem anxious to try his hand.

At last Blakely forced an uneasy laugh. “Relax, kid. I'm not going to hurt you.”

“I know,” Jeff said coldly.

Chet swallowed. “You lost that land fair and square.”

“I'm not saying I didn't.”

Then something happened in Blakely's eyes. It was the quick but cautious look of a wolf, and Jeff studied it. Too late did he realize that someone had got behind him.

He jumped as a cold, hard muzzle jammed into the small of his back, and at the same time a voice said: “Hold your hands in front of you.”

It was Elec Blasingame.

The suddenness of the action left Jeff stunned. Elec said mildly, “You've got a lot to learn, boy; Nate never would have let a man get behind him by the back door. Now drop your gun.”

The gray shade of death had slipped from Chet Blakely's face, and now he gloated. “Marshal, that kill-crazy kid ought to be run out of town!”

Elec glanced at him. “Has he killed somebody?”

“No, but—”

“Then,” the marshal said gently, “I guess I'll handle it my own way. Drop the gun, son.”

Jeff was surprised to discover his mind working with the clean, polished precision of a fine watch. Instantly, he remembered the “spin” that Nathan had shown him so long ago, that miraculous trick of reversing a pistol in your hand while seeming to hand it over butt first.

But Elec was not to be caught off guard this time. He increased the pressure slightly, pressing the muzzle a bit harder in Jeff's back.

“Don't bother handing it to me,” he said dryly. “Just slip the buckle.” The marshal took the revolver. “All right —march.”

“I didn't do anything. You can't lock me up.”

“I can. And I will,” Elec said flatly.

There was nothing to do. With a gun in his back, Jeff focused his hate on Chet Blakely, as though to warn him the fight wasn't over. Then he shrugged and walked stiffly out of the saloon.

The marshal put him in the cell with two drunk cowhands and locked the door. Jeff grabbed the bars and glared. “You'll be sorry for this, Elec!”

The marshal sighed heavily and shook his head. “I just don't know what to do with you, Blaine, and that's the gospel truth. Can't you see you're not hurting anybody but yourself?”

“I figure that's my business.”

“Not when you go on the prod. Then it gets to be my business. Do you know what's going to happen if you don't take that chip off your shoulder? You'll end up like your pa; you'll let your hate get you in so-deep that you'll never be able to get out. One of these days some drunk cowhand'll get the notion he's a gunfighter and force you to show your hand.”

“I can take care of myself.”

Blasingame smiled bitterly. “So could Nate, but what did it prove? Your pa's a wanted killer. With telegraph wire strung all over the Southwest, he doesn't dare come back to his own country, to the place where he was born and raised, not even to see his son.”

“My pa will come back when he gets ready.”

The marshal nodded. “Maybe. But it'll be the last trip he'll ever take. The law will be waiting for him.” He turned and walked heavily back to his office....

It was midafternoon when Amy Wintworth came to the office to see him. Elec touched his hatbrim with a forced smile. “Come in, Amy. It's not often we get such pretty visitors down here.”

Amy could offer no smile in return. “I heard that Jeff was—”

“Locked up,” the marshal finished for her. “A little to-do over at Bert's place. Nothing serious.”

“But serious enough to lock him up.”

Blasingame looked at her, saw the urgency behind her eyes. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I guess it was. Have a chair, Amy.” He waited until she was seated.

“May I see him?”' she asked.

“I don't think it would be wise; he's pretty worked up. What did you want to see him about?”

“I want to ask him to make up with his Aunt Beulah,” Amy said tightly.

Elec whistled softly in surprise. “I don't think he'd ever do that, Amy. He hates Beulah Sewell as much as I ever saw one person hate another. That's the seat of all his trouble, I think—he's so full of hate that it spills over onto everybody he crosses. ”

“Marshal, have you seen Beulah Sewell recently?”

He frowned faintly. “No, I don't think so. Not since—”

“Not since the town learned Nathan wasn't the one who killed Jeff Harper and robbed the bank? No one has seen her since then except Wirt, and me. I just came from the Sewell house.”

Amy closed her eyes for a moment, her thoughts flying back to that bleak little house, locked and sealed and quiet as a tomb. She said slowly, “I don't think you'd know her, Marshal. She's as unreal as a corpse; she hates herself more than Jeff ever could.”

Elec rubbed his face thoughtfully. “I guess I haven't thought much about Beulah except to despise her for what she did. Like everybody else.” Gazing up at the ceiling, he smiled thinly. “It's a funny thing. You can fight with a man, or steal from him, or even shoot him, and the chances are pretty good that he'll forgive you if you give him a chance. But prove a man a fool and he'll hate you all his life. That's what Beulah did. We all swallowed that lie of hers, and then looked like fools when the truth came out.”

“But,” Amy asked, “don't you think it would be a better town if people would forgive her?”

“Sure,” Elec shrugged, “but it's a big order. Especially for Jeff.”

“Impossible?”

“Just not very likely, let's say.”

She sat straight, her mouth compressed to a grim, determined line. One moment she had all the poise and steel of a queen, and the next moment she was a frightened young woman, sobbing.

Elec moved uneasily. “Now, now, Amy, there's no use in that.” He tugged at a red handkerchief in his hip pocket and handed it to her across the desk.

“I'm sorry. That was a foolish tiling to do,” she said.

“You like the boy, don't you, Amy?”

She nodded. “But not the way he's going. Not what I see for him in the future. Sometimes I see so much of Nathan in him that it frightens me.”

Elec nodded, knowing what she meant. It wasn't Jeff's blood that made him act the way he did, it was that element of pure tragedy—circumstance. The same kind of circumstance that had made Nate the kind of man he now was.

Few persons ever thought of the marshal as a sensitive man, but now he felt a vague horror growing within him as he considered what violence circumstance could build. How could you fight a thing as irrevocable as fate? How could you change the direction of destiny?

People saw Elec Blasingame as a logical, plodding man whose job it was to hunt down, capture, or kill those who ran off the one-way track of conventional standards. Few guessed that he was often filled with rage and futility, as he was now, because he was helpless to change the inevitable. In his job there were no human switches to be thrown, no means of sidetracking passion, or hate, or anger. His job was to wait patiently and then shoot down those who left the rails.

Elec sat heavily behind his desk, his big fists knotted. He had been in this job long enough; he felt old, he had lost his zest for the work. He knew from experience that it was only a matter of time, and not much of that, before Jeff Blaine left the rails. The job of stopping the boy would be his, and he did not relish it.

Several seconds had passed since she had spoken, and now Amy said quietly, “May I see him, Marshal?”

“Now?”

She nodded, and there was a finality to the gesture that Elec could feel to his bones. “You have the right, if that's what you want. Are you going to ask him to make up with his aunt?”

“It's the only chance he has, isn't it? If there's no forgiveness in him, I might as well know it now.”

“And if he won't listen?” Elec asked.

There was no need of an answer.

It was well past midnight when the cell became so filled with drunk cowhands that Elec let Jeff go.

“Go to bed,” the marshal said. “I have all the trouble I need tonight.”

“I'll take my gun before I go,” Jeff said icily.

Sighing, the marshal took the Colt's from the desk drawer. “I don't suppose you had sense enough to listen to Amy when she tried to talk to you this afternoon.”

Jeff glared and did not answer. He buckled the cartridge belt around his waist, turned stiffly on his heel, and headed up the stairs.

The air outside was clean and sweet, and he dragged deep gulps of it into his lungs when he reached the sidewalk. All around him were the Saturday night sounds of a western town. The clang of the Green House piano, the sound, of bawdy laughter from the Paradise and Surratt's. Above him, fiddles sang in the Masonic hall, and the building trembled with the heavy tramping, of count dancing. Jeff wondered bitterly if Amy was up there she often came with Todd when Jeff was busy or had forgotten to ask her.

He headed toward the outside stairs and gazed angrily up at the splash of lamplight on the landing. His pockets were empty; he did not have the door price, even if he had wanted to go. He turned and walked quickly away.

He hated the thought of going back to the blistering heat of his room, but there was nowhere else to go. And he had to think, he had to plan. The stench of the jail cell was still in his nostrils and his anger was a hard knot in the pit of his stomach.

Crossing the street, he gazed into the night and ached to break away from this place that he hated, and which hated him. He longed to escape, as his pa had done, and yet he knew that he couldn't leave.

More than a lack of money kept him here. His craving for vengeance was strong—but even more important, there was Amy. This was the second time that she had seen him behind bars, and that knowledge angered him. As always, she had asked the impossible of him, wanting him to make up with Beulah. He would have taken a thing so unthinkable as a joke if he had not glimpsed that blank look of finality in her face. He tried to put it from his mind, telling himself she would get over it. But this time he could not be sure. Uncertainty gnawed at his nerves. He had never seen her look at him the way she had looked today. It was as though shutters had been drawn behind her eyes; that she had erected an invisible, impenetrable wall between them.

She had said quietly, “I'm sorry, Jeff,” and turned away from him and left. It had never been that way before, no matter how angry she got, and the memory of how she had looked and sounded set his nerves to jumping.

He did not see the stranger until he had almost reached the outside stairs at the side of Ludlow's store. A tall, big-boned man in his late thirties, he loafed quietly in the darkness under the wooden awning. Jeff gave him only a brief glance, took him for a drifter, and turned toward the stairs.

“Blaine?” the man asked quietly.

Surprised, Jeff turned toward him. “Yes?” '

“Then you're Nate Blaine's kid. I'm a friend of your pa's.”

Chapter Fifteen

THE STRANGER LEFT THE shadows, and Jeff noted the big sunburst rowels of his Mexican spurs. He was trail-dirty and shabby, his stubbled face partly hidden under the dark overhang of his shapeless hat. “So you're Nate Blaine's kid,” he said again, and laughed shortly. “I saw the to-do in the saloon today. I take it that fat marshal ain't a special friend of yours.”

“What about my pa?” Jeff said bluntly. “You said you knew him.”

“Sure, we hired out to the same bunch in Mexico for a while.”

“Is he still down there?”

The stranger shrugged. “Far as I know. My friend can tell you all about it; he just came from Mexico.”

Jeff frowned. “Who's your friend?”

A match suddenly blazed in the stranger's hand. He held the flame to the end of a thin cigarette and shot the matchstick into the street. “He's your friend, too, kid,” he said. “You saved his neck yesterday when you turned that posse off his trail.”

Amazement was in Jeff's voice. “Bill Somerson? The one that shot Costain?”

Smiling thinly, the tall stranger nodded. “He's got a message for you—from your pa.”

Jeff shot quick glances up and down the street. “Maybe we'd better go somewhere else to talk.”

The man shook his head. “I've got nothin' else to say. Somerson does his own talkin'. If you want that message from your pa, you'd better hightail it down south. Do you know where Rifle Creek forks with Little River, across the county line? About a mile north of the fork there's a shack, and that's where Somerson's waitin' for you.”

Jeff shook his head, not in rejection of the proposition, but because it was hard to believe. “Can't you give me an idea what the message is about?”

“Just that it's important; that's all Somerson would tell me. Straight from Nate Blaine to his kid, he said. Bill's kind of taken a personal interest in the matter, I guess, after the way you steered the posse off him. Have you got a horse?”

When Jeff shook his head, the stranger laughed. “I guessed as much, seein' the way they cleaned you in that stud game. Take that claybank at the rack; it's mine. If I have any ridin' to do, I can hire one at the stables.”

Jeff looked closely at the stranger, seeing hardness in the bony face, a kind of brutal humor in the pale eyes. As the man talked, Jeff instinctively tensed up, not liking what he saw. He didn't trust the stranger's words any more than he trusted his smile.

Jeff said bluntly, “It seems like you're going pretty far out of your way to do me a favor. Why?”

The smile disappeared; blankness took its place. “I told you Somerson wants to talk to you, kid. If you don't want to know what your pa has to say, then I'll go back to where I come from.”

“Wait a minute,” Jeff said quickly, knowing that he had to go. He had to know what message Nathan had sent that was so important. “A mile north of the fork. All right, I'll go.”

The stranger nodded shortly. “Be careful nobody trails you. I'll take the claybank around to the alley and you can take it from there.” Jeff stood in the shadows as the man went to the horse and rode lazily around the corner of the bank building. Jeff felt that hand of caution firmly upon his shoulder; a vague uncertainty nagged at him as rider and horse disappeared into the darkness of the alley.

Common sense told him that a wanted man like Somerson would not expose himself simply to relay a message for a friend. And this tall stranger was branded a hard-case in every move he made. Still, five long years had passed since he had had direct word from Nathan. He was sick of the town and would be glad enough to put it behind him for a while. He headed for the alley.

“Remember to cover your trail,” the stranger reminded him, as Jeff stepped up to the saddle. “The name's Milan Fay,” the tall man added as Jeff was riding away. “Somerson will want to be sure who sent you.”

As he rode to the south, the lights of the town grew small, the singing of fiddles became threadlike whispers of sound, the laughter of drunken cowhands dissolved in the night. Soon the town and its sounds had disappeared and a blanket of silence enveloped the prairie.

A vague uneasiness mounted within him as he rode deeper into the darkness.

But in the bigness of the night, details did not seem important, and he soon put uncertainty behind him and rode at ease. Nathan had not forgotten him—that was the important thing. Nathan's strong hand could still reach him and comfort him, even from Mexico.

Jeff could almost imagine that Nate himself was waiting for him somewhere to the south, in the darkness, and he urged the claybank to a quicker gait. He let himself smile as he remembered Nathan throwing back his head, holding the world at bay with the violence in his eyes— and for a little while he forgot to be angry and loosened the band of hate that squeezed his brain.

It was almost sunup when Jeff approached the forks. The lip of the eastern prairie seemed etched in blood and the sky became a skillful blend of brilliant blues and subtle grays. Suddenly a great orange sun appeared and the prairie blazed as though with fire.

In this new light Jeff paused for a moment and studied his backtrail; then he nudged the claybank through a thicket of salt cedar, crossed the dry bed of Little River and headed north.

This was a raw, red country of eroded clay and dwarfed trees and sage, as barren as the floor of a dried ocean. Not many men would pass this way, not even drifters.

Soon Jeff saw the weathered outline of an abandoned shack, a sorry affair of sod and scrub oak logs with the roof half gone, the chimney crumbling. Cautiously now, he eased the claybank forward. Suddenly the doorway of the shack was filled with the thick-set form of a man.

“Somerson?” Jeff called.

“Who wants to know?”

“Jefferson Blaine. Nate Blaine's my father.”

Somerson stepped through the doorway, a snub-nosed carbine on his hip at the ready. “Who sent you?”

“A man called Fay. Milan Fay.”

Somerson laughed and slung the carbine in the crook of his arm. “I would of knowed you anyway, kid; you've got the Blaine mark stamped all over you. Tie your animal to a brush and climb down.”

Somerson waited by the corner of the shack as Jeff left the claybank in a thicket of blackjack. He held out a big hand as Jeff came up to him. “By hell, you're Nate all over again. I'm proud to shake hands with you, son; that business of turnin' the posse just about saved this dirty neck of mine!”

Jeff studied the man quietly, his hand smothered in Somerson's bearlike fist. “I didn't know who they were after,” he said.

Somerson laughed again. “No matter. It showed clear enough whose side you're on, and that's good enough for Bill Somerson. Yes sir, you're Nate Blaine all over again. Come on in and we'll have breakfast.”

Somerson turned abruptly and lunged back through the doorway. Jeff followed him inside and was hit by the pungent smell of frying salt pork. The shack itself had the powdery smell of bleached bones about it; the dirt floor had grown up in weeds which had been tramped down. A small smokeless fire of carefully selected hardwood was going in the fireplace, where fat pork sizzled in an iron skillet.

Jeff turned his attention on Somerson, who was turning the meat with the point of his pocket knife. He saw a florid man in his early forties, bulging and heavy with hard fat; his long, pale hair was as fine as silk, flowing and drifting about his head with every slight breeze within the shack.

Jeff squatted beside the fireplace, putting his back against the sod wall. “The man called Fay said you had a message for me.”

“That's right.” Somerson opened a can of hardtack and dumped the rocklike biscuits onto a saddle blanket. From a scant store of provisions in the comer of the shack, he found some coffee. “Me and Nate rode for the same bunch down in Chihuahua. When he heard I was headed back this way, he wanted me to look you up.” He poured coffee into the hardtack can and added water from a canteen. “This ain't much of a way to live,” he said blandly, putting the can on the fire to boil. “But I figure to do better before long. Is that fat marshal still lookin' for me?”

“Elec Blasingame doesn't give up easily.”

The outlaw laughed. “He'll never find me here. Wouldn't do him any good if he did; I'm out of his county.”

“I wouldn't count too much on that,” Jeff said. “Elec's just a town marshal; doesn't have any legal authority outside the limits of Plainsville. But that didn't stop him from bringing a posse after you before.”

Somerson frowned. “I thought you didn't like lawdogs.”

“I don't, but it would be a mistake not to give Elec his due. Once he gets his teeth into something, he's hard to break loose.”

Somerson rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “That might be a good thing to know. But I was talkin' about your pa, not the marshal.” He busied himself with the pork, not looking at Jeff. “I guess you know Nate had a little trouble over in the New Mexico country. He's got an idea the government marshal would like to get his hands on him; that's why he's stickin' below the Border. Your pa'd like to see you, son.”

Jeff felt his heart hammering. “When?”

“Pretty soon, I guess. I can take you south when the time comes—but first Nate wants you to do him a favor— a big one.” Somerson set the skillet off the fire, and now he turned his eyes directly on Jeff. “I'll tell you the truth, kid. Your pa's pretty hot about the way they tried to railroad him in this town. He said he wants you to settle the score for him. Nate Blaine wants that town of yours turned upside down and shook till its teeth rattles. You understand?”

Jeff heard his own breath whistle between his teeth. It didn't sound like Nate, putting his work on somebody else. “He said that?”

Somerson stared at him. “Would I have a reason to he to you?”

“No. I guess not.”

“And hasn't Nate got plenty of right to his hate?”

“Yes. Both of us have.”

“Now you sound like your pa!” the outlaw grinned. He speared a piece of fat pork with his knife, clamped it between two pieces of hardtack and began eating. “Help yourself,” he said, nodding. “You know, I rode a long piece out of my way just to see you, kid. But I told Nate I'd look you up, and I don't go back on my word.”

“You still haven't given me the message.”

“Don't be in such a hurry; I'm just gettin' to it. We'll have to go back a way to get at the beginning. Me and Nate were ridin' together for this reb general on the other side of the Border, and that's how I came to find out how they railroaded him up here.”

“He told you?”

“That, and plenty more. The more he thought about it the madder he got, I guess, and a man like Nate can get pretty mad in five years' time. Now, it was a bank job they tried to stick him with, wasn't it?”

“And murder.”

“The banker—I almost forgot about him. Anyway, down there in Mexico, Nate stews about it, and after a while he gets to thinkin' what a hell of a thing it would be if he could come back here and really rob that bank. Of course, what with telegraph wires strung all over Texas these days, he couldn't show his face up here. That's where you come in kid. Are you beginnin' to see the way Nate figured it out?”

Jeff stared. “He wants me to rob the bank?”

Somerson's laughter was a sudden outburst that was over almost as soon as it started. “You're gettin' the idea, kid, but it's not as risky as you make it sound. I'm here to help you.”

Jeff glared at the outlaw in disbelief. His memory went back five years, and again he saw the way Nathan had looked at him from behind the bars of Blasingame's jail. At a time like that, when he could have drenched his son with his own hate, Nathan had chosen to tell him nothing. Nathan had let him walk away hating him, because he had thought it would be better for the boy that way.

It didn't stand to reason for that kind of man to ask the things that Somerson claimed for him. Slowly, stiffly, Jeff got to his feet.

“What's the matter?” The outlaw frowned.

“I guess I'll head back for Plainsville.”

Somerson folded his pocket knife, and Jeff could almost see the thoughts racing behind his eyes. At last he slipped the knife into his pocket and rose to his feet, surprising Jeff with a mild grin.

“I didn't fool you, did I? Well, I should have known better than to try to fool a kid of Nate Blaine's.”

“He never said anything about that bank, did he?” Jeff asked tightly.

Somerson shook his head, as though in wonder. “You're just like Nate, all right. Want to see all the cards on the table, don't you? I'll give it to you straight, kid. Nate never sent me up here to look you up, and he never said he wanted you to rob a bank for him. I made that up out of my head, but the rest is the truth. The way he hates this town of yours, especially. Sometimes I thought he was goin' to come back and settle the score himself, government marshal be damned.” He was not grinning now. His face was hard and sober. “You believe that much, don't you?”

“If I did, what difference would it make? I've got no business with you, Somerson.”

“Just a minute; you haven't heard it all yet. Remember, this is the truth—your pa's in trouble, kid. The rebel army we rode for in Mexico got whipped; the ringleaders are bein' shot where they find 'em. That's why I came north. But your pa's not so lucky; he's got no place to run.”

Jeff felt an icy finger move up his spine. “How do I know this ain't another lie?”

“You don't,” Somerson said bluntly. “You could find out if you wanted to write the authorities on the Border. But you won't. Because you can see I'm tellin' the truth, can't you?”

Jeff tried to tell himself differently, but he instinctively knew that this was the truth, just as the other had been a lie. His legs felt suddenly weak. “Let's hear the rest of it,” he said quietly.

“It's the simplest thing in the world. Your Pa needs money. It wouldn't help him much in Texas, but in Mexico he can buy himself onto the right side of the law.” Now he grinned again, but this time the expression did not reach as far as his eyes. “With plenty of luck, I'd say your pa has about a month to go before they catch him. Do you know how they execute rebels in Mexico, kid? First, they make you dig your own grave, then they tie your hands and feet and bring in the firing squad. Mexicans are lousy shots, especially the ones they put in firing squads. They shoot you in the gut, if they can, and while you're still yellin' they start shovelin' dirt in—”

“That's enough!” Jeff snarled.

“Makes you squeamish, doesn't it? But that's the way they do it. That's the way it'll happen to Nate, if he doesn't get help. Five thousand dollars, kid. Is it worth that much to save your pa from a Mexican firing squad?”

Jeff felt his insides shrinking. He didn't even have enough to pay for his sleeping room.

Somerson saw that he was winning, and pushed hard. “Plainsville's a lively town these days,” he said. “Farmers bringin' their crops in, a lot of cattle money changin' hands. There's plenty of cash in that bank for a man smart enough to get it—enough to save your pa, kid, and then some.”

Jeff could not think. His brain felt as cold and immovable as stone. “What could I do?” he asked numbly. “Why did you pick me?”

“That's easy, kid.” Somerson picked up the coffee can, poured in a little cool water from his canteen to settle the grounds, then drank from the tin lip. “First, you're Nate Blaine's boy, so I figure you've got the guts for this kind of thing. Next, I'm not afraid you'll do any dangerous talkin'. Finally, and most important, you know the town and everybody there knows you. That's goin' to be important, as you'll see later.”

“What about your friend Fay. Why don't you get him to help you?”

“He will. Here, you'd better have some of this coffee, kid. You look like your nerves could use it.”

It was almost noon when Jeff headed back toward Plainsville. Somerson walked across the weed-grown yard with him to get the claybank. “It has to be on the first of the month,” the outlaw was saying. “Everybody does his bankin' around then, so there should be plenty of cash in the vault. How do you feel?”

“How am I supposed to feel?” Jeff asked bitterly.

Somerson's voice was suddenly a snarl. “You listen to me, kid, and listen good! If you want your pa dead, you just go back to town and forget all about this. But if you want to save Nate's neck, you do as I say!”

When Jeff said nothing, the outlaw grabbed his arm. “You write the Border rangers, if you don't believe what I'm tellin' you about Nate!”

“Get your hand off me.”

Somerson blinked in surprise, then dropped his hand. He could almost believe that Nate himself had spoken. “Sure, kid, I didn't mean to grab. Well, you go back to town and think over what I told you. I'll have Milan Fay contact you when the time is right.”

Jeff swung stiffly to the saddle and said nothing.

Chapter Sixteen

JEFF LEFT THE CLAYBANK in the alley behind Ludlow's store. It had been twenty-four hours since he had slept, his nerves were jumpy, and there was sickness in the pit of his stomach. Through the long ride back he had pondered Somerson's proposition and still had no answer.

Now it was night again, Sunday night and gravely quiet. No pianos, no fiddles, no dancing. Main Street was almost deserted; the cowhands had slept off their drunks, and the dancers had gone home. He could hear the whispered rattle of the wheel of fortune in Bert Surratt's place, and that seemed to be the only sound in the whole town.

Wearily, Jeff loosened the cinch on the claybank, unbitted the animal and tied it to graze behind the store. Where Milan Fay was, he did not know.

He tramped heavily toward the outside stairs that led to the rooms above Ludlow's store. He climbed the stairway and stood for a moment on the landing, looking down at the sleeping town. This, he thought, is where my pa was raised, and where I was born. It's the only place I know.

The thought hung, suspended in his mind. How would it feel to cut yourself away from the only world you knew? Nathan had done it. Somerson was going to do it, and Milan Fay. How did they get along, those men?

Then he thought angrily that all he needed was some sleep. He'd be damned if he'd get sentimental about a town that had done its best to break him.

His spurs rang softly as he walked down the hot hallway; the boards squeaked under the thud of his boot heels. His door was partly open. He shoved it open the rest of the way and saw the tall, lean-faced man lying across his bunk.

“What are you doing here?” he said to Milan Fay.

Obviously Fay had been asleep, but he came awake instantly, flipping over the edge of the bed with the quickness of a cat. In the white starlight, Jeff could see the revolver pointed at his middle. Fay had been sleeping with it in his hand. He recognized Jeff and said, “That's a dangerous thing to do, comin' on a man sudden that way!”

“What are you doing in my room?”

“Can you think of a better place to wait?” Fay said calmly, dropping his Colt's into its holster. “I don't think people know me in this town, but there's no sense takin' chances.” He kept his voice quiet, for the sound of snoring drifted through the thin walls like the drone of bees.

“How long have you been a friend of Somerson's?” Jeff asked curiously.

The man laughed softly. “Didn't he tell you?” Then he sat on the edge of the bed, flipped makings from his shirt pocket and skillfully built a brown-paper cigarette, Mexican style. He looked at Jeff and shrugged, as though he had been by himself for a long time and wanted to talk to someone.

“I've known Somerson off and on for a good spell,” he said easily. “He's a lousy gambler and too fast to get his bile up, but he's as good as the next to team with. I warned him he'd get in trouble usin' a holdout in a town like this.”

“You were here when he shot Costain?” Jeff asked, surprised.

Fay laughed silently. “Sure, but not in Surratt's place. That holdout contraption he had up his sleeve; I told him he'd never get away with it.”

It was a brilliant night, white with the light from moon and stars. Jeff could see the touch of dry amusement on the man's face. Somerson's getting caught at cheating and Costain's getting shot was all a kind of bitter joke to him. Fay held a match to his cigarette and said, “What did you and Somerson decide on, kid?”

“Why did you and Somerson come to Plainsville?” Jeff asked, as though he hadn't heard the question.

“What did Somerson tell you?”

“That my pa was in trouble and had to have money to square himself with the Mexican authorities.”

Fay looked faintly surprised. “It's the truth,” he nodded. “You can check it with the Border rangers, if you want to. I'm kind of surprised that Somerson told you, though. He's against the truth, as a matter of principle.”

“How much do you know about Somerson's plans?”

“First,” Fay said softly, “you tell me what kind of a deal you two struck up. Are you throwin' with us?”

Jeff turned to the single dirty window and stared again at the town. “I don't know,” he said at last. “I'll have to think about it.”

Fay smoked his cigarette in silence. Then he got up. “Sure,” he said, starting for the door, and this time there was no amusement in his voice. It was flat and deadly. “You think about it, kid. In the meantime Nate may be dyin'.”

The door opened and closed, and Fay's big rowels made silver music in the dark hallway. Jeff stood rigidly at the window. Suddenly he turned, his fists clenched. He knew that Fay and Somerson had him. They could make him do anything they pleased. He had no choice.

The next morning he awoke to find the huge, bulldog figure of Elec Blasingame standing in the doorway. Jeff sat up in his underwear, reaching for his pants. “I'm going to have to see Frank Ludlow about puttin' a lock on my door.”

“You took a trip yesterday,” the marshal said bluntly. “Where?”

The aggressiveness in the marshal's tone set fire to Jeff's anger. “I figure that's none of your business, Elec,” he said shortly.

“And you had a caller last night, too. Who was it?”

Jeff blinked in surprise, but soon recovered. “I figure that's none of your business, either.”

“You listen to me,” Blasingame said, and obviously he was angry. He came into the room and slammed the door. “I don't talk just to hear my head rattle; I want answers. Was it your pa you went to see last night when I let you out of jail? Is Nate hidin' out in this part of Texas?”

This time Jeff was truly surprised. He forgot his anger for a moment and gazed at the marshal with blank curiosity. “What makes you ask that? You know Nathan's in Mexico.”

“Is he?” Elec flashed a yellow paper in Jeff's face. “This is a telegram from the marshal at Fort Smith. They say Nate's up to his neck in Mexican trouble, and may try to get back across the Border. He's wanted for killin' in New Mexico, and I'll get him, son. If he comes back to Plainsville, I'll get him.”

Something inside Jeff's chest went hard. So Somerson and Fay had been telling the truth. It was no surprise, for men like them were as brazen with truth as with lies. But coming from Elec Blasingame it sounded more real and deadly.

Jeff pulled on his pants, then buttoned his shirt to keep his hands busy. Not looking at the marshal, he said, “I didn't see Nathan last night, if that's what you're wondering.”

“Then who?”

Jeff clamped his jaws and buckled on his gun. “Where'd you get that claybank that you rode last night?”

Didn't he ever sleep? Jeff wondered. Did he see everything that happened in this town?

“How long have you known Milan Fay?” Elec went on doggedly.

Jeff felt a hard band tighten around his heart. He glanced quickly at Elec, then began pulling on his boots. “I never heard of Milan Fay.”

“He's the man who was in your room last night when you got back from your ride,” the marshal said dryly. “He's the man who owns the claybank. Now what do you know about him?”

Jeff kept his grim silence.

“Is he a friend of your pa's? He looks the type. He's been south, too, from the look of his spurs.” Elec strode angrily to the bed and made Jeff look at him. “If Fay and Nate have teamed up, I'll find out about it.”

“That's your job,” Jeff said bitterly. “If you want to make a fool of yourself, I won't try to stop you.”

“Then what have you got to do with Milan Fay, if he's not tied, up with Nate? The man's a hardcase, maybe a killer. I knew it the minute I saw him get off the train.”

Blasingame frowned, his small eyes brilliant with concentration. “By hell, Fay got off with that gambler that shot Phil Costain! I hadn't thought of that!” Thoughtfully, Elec rubbed his chin with the back of his hand. “The gambler, and Fay, and the son of Nate Blaine,” he chanted quietly, almost to himself. “Now that may be something to think about.”

Jeff laughed, but the sound rang false and unconvincing.

The marshal looked at him for a long moment. “We'll see,” he said, turning abruptly and tramping out of the room.

For a long while Jeff sat unmoving, his mind racing. He knew that he'd go through with the robbery, for Nathan's sake. But he didn't like the way Elec was tying things together.

Walk gently, he told himself. He was a long way from shore and the ice was thin. He could almost hear it cracking....

Outside, the sun was already blasting away at the prairie, and the airless room became uninhabitable. For a moment, before leaving, Jeff Blaine regarded this room of his, this home that he had made for himself. The sagging bunk with its straw mattress, the scaling bureau, the crockery pitcher and bowl and the oil lamp. Once, not long ago, he had owned two sections of land and had had money in his pocket. Now he had nothing. Not even enough to pay the rent on this room at the end of the week.

Then he remembered that it wouldn't matter about the rent. The first of the month was only three days off—and then he'd put Plainsville behind him, for good.

Strangely, the thought did not please him. He had clung to this place because it was the only one he had. He told himself that he'd be better off for leaving the town, but agreement did not come easily. At last he pulled his hat on and strode angrily out of the room.

He had only one possession which he could trade for money. He pawned his Colt's with Sam Baxter for twelve dollars and came out of the store feeling strangely naked and ashamed. He told himself that it was a temporary thing, that he could pick up enough money at seven-up or twenty-one to reclaim the gun.

In the eating house, he took a booth in the back. As he was cutting into his eggs and side meat, Jeff saw Milan Fay's tall figure in the doorway. The man raked the house with his dark eyes, spotted Jeff quickly, and headed toward the booth.

Jeff looked up angrily. “Are you crazy, coming in here like this?”

Fay folded his lanky frame into the booth. “What's the matter, kid? You look jumpy.”

“I've got a right to look jumpy,” Jeff said tightly. “Elec Blasingame paid me a visit this morning. He's beginning to tie us together—me, you, and Somerson.”

Fay's eyes narrowed. “How does he figure that?”

“He saw you get off the train with Somerson. And he knows I borrowed your claybank.”

Unexpectedly, the tall man laughed. “He's just throwin' out some wild guesses. I'll get out of town and stay clear, if that'll make you feel easier. But I've got to take word back to Somerson about the bank job. What do you say, Blaine?”

“I'm ready. I've got no choice.”

Milan Fay allowed himself a small smile. “Somerson will be glad to hear it. So will your pa. Did Somerson tell you exactly what he wanted you to do?”

“Yes.”

“Then that settles it, I guess.” Fay worked himself out of the booth. “We'll be seein' you, kid.”

Jeff sat for a moment after Fay had disappeared on the street, his appetite gone. He wondered how a person went about the business of forgetting. How many days and nights would the vision of Amy Wintworth cling to his mind before he finally caught on to this business of forgetting her?

Far to the south that night a gaunt, big-boned man rode by starlight, hugging the high ground. He traveled as the cavalry travels in forced march, now riding, now leading, now resting. His big head thrown back with a savage pride, he kept his face to the north. He avoided the valleys and the lowlands scrupulously, keeping always to the ridges and crests of the prairie, his dark eyes intense and watchful.

He did not build fires. Once every twelve hours he would pause for a while to chew on tasteless jerked beef. He would feed his animal a few handfuls of corn that he carried in a sack behind the saddle, and he would unsaddle and unbit and let the horse graze in the scant grass of the hills. His own comfort and well-being seemed not to concern him, but with the horse he was attentive and gentle.

They had come a long way together, the man and the animal; they had as far yet to travel, and the time was short. The man knew his own weariness by the ache of his bones, by the cotton in his mouth and by the sourness of his stomach. He could scratch at the crust of filth which covered him as a second skin and feel the crawling of ticks from the brush and lice from the desert.

He did not wash, for water was rare in the hills and must be saved for the animal. The saddle sores on the animal's back must be attended to, lice must be brushed from flanks and chest and legs, and hoofs must be cared for and kept clean.

The man had no time for himself. He must move always to the north and the horse must carry him. With mounting impatience, he paced the rocky ground while the animal grazed, he grabbed snatches of sleep at odd moments, and he kept his Colt's and Winchester clean. Soon he would be off again.

Chapter Seventeen

WIRT SEWELL AWOKE TO heavy, monotonous pounding. He lay in groggy drowsiness, listening. Beulah stirred restlessly beside him.

“It's the door,” Beulah said peevishly. “Wirt, what time is it?”

“I don't know. Too dark to see my watch.”

“Well, get up and light the lamp, and see who's pounding on our door this time of night.”

Wirt climbed out of bed. “All right!” he said thickly, and the monotonous pounding continued while he fumbled for a match and got the lamp wick burning evenly. In his long cotton nightshirt he made his way stiffly into the parlor and opened the door.

He didn't recognize the face at first. It was stiff and ugly with a filth-matted beard, the thin lips cracked and gray with dust. But the eyes were the same.

“Wirt,” Beulah called from the bedroom, “who it is?” Wirt's dread was like a nightmare come to life. He felt himself shrink inside until his heart was a small, cold knot. In the back of his mind he could still hear Elec Blasingame saying: some day Nate Blaine will come back to Plainsville. When he does, I wouldn't want to be in your place, or your wife's.

“You look surprised, Wirt,” Nathan said coldly, pushing his way into the room.

Clutching the lighted lamp in both hands, Wirt began backing away, his eyes wide.

“Wirt!” Beulah called impatiently. “Tell me who it is!” Nathan hooked the front door with a spur and slammed it. Without raising his voice he said, “It's your brother-in-law, Beulah—the one you saw kill Jed Harper.”

To Wirt, the voice was as cold and deadly as the .45 on Nathan's thigh. He tried to speak, but the words stuck in his throat and were cracked and warped when they finally came out. “Nate, for God's sake, what are you going to do!”

“Why, nothing, Wirt. Not just yet, anyway.” Now Wirt realized that Nathan's voice was flat and emotionless, and that all the hate was in his eyes. Although he had made no show of violence, Wirt knew that violence was in the room, ready to explode.

When Beulah appeared in the doorway, clutching a white wrapper that covered her frail body from her chin to the floor, Nathan merely inclined his head in a hint of a nod. “Hello, Beulah. How have you been sleeping these past five years?”

Beulah Sewell's face was whiter than the wrapper. The old aggressive thrust of her small chin was missing now, and her eyes were strangely vacant.

Nathan laughed suddenly, harshly. “I guess you haven't been sleeping so well, at that. I never would have thought you'd be bothered by your conscience, Beulah.”

He came deeper into the room and dropped slowly into a parlor chair. He sighed softly, stretching his long legs in front of him. Wirt felt that he could almost see eddies of fatigue swirling around Nathan's lean, tough figure, like heat eddies rising over a desert. Until now Beulah had not made a sound, but now she moved slowly into the room, her eyes as blank as a sleepwalker's.

“Why did you come back?” she asked softly.

“Didn't you think I would?” His voice was toneless.

Wirt shot his wife a quick glance of warning, but she didn't see it. Nathan sat like a dead man, his arms hanging limp at his sides. Only his eyes were alive as he stared at Beulah.

“I came back to see my boy,” he said at last.

“Haven't you done enough to him?” Beulah asked flatly, ignoring her husband's look of panic. “Aren't you satisfied?”

Hard lines of anger appeared for the first time at the corners of Nathan's mouth. “Haven't I done enough to him! How about you, Beulah? What have you done to him?” With an unexpected burst of energy, he shoved himself out of the chair. “Haven't I done enough to him!” he demanded again, angrily.

As suddenly as the outburst was born, it died. He dropped back to the chair and said wearily, “Heat some wash water for me, Beulah. And I could do with some coffee, too, and some grub.”

Beulah acted as though she hadn't heard. Her husband said quickly, “Do as he says, Beulah!”

Reluctantly, she turned for the kitchen.

After a moment Nathan turned to Wirt. “Where's the boy?”

“He's still here, Nate. Here in Plainsville.”

“I know that; where's he staying?”

“In a room over Frank Ludlow's store, I think.”

“Go rout him out and tell him his pa's come home.”

“Now, Nate?” Wirt said uneasily. “This time of night?”

“Right now! And don't let Elec Blasingame see you, either. Or anybody else.”

Wirt swallowed. “I'll be careful, Nate.”

“You'd better! And if you've got any ideas about turnin' me in to the law, you better think about it a long time. Remember, I'll be waitin' here with Beulah, and I haven't got much cause to like her.”

Wirt's voice cracked. “Nate, you know I wouldn't do a thing like that.”

Nathan looked at him, then he closed his eyes and rested his head back against the chair. “Get going,” he said quietly, and Wirt stumbled over his own feet on the way for his clothes.

Jeff was in his bunk, but not asleep; he heard the loose boards creek as Wirt made his way up the outside stairs. He lay for a moment, tensely alert, as the footsteps came nearer. There was a timid rap at the door.

Jeff reached for his revolver. “Who is it?”

“It's Wirt. I've got to talk to you, Jeff!”

“Get away from me!”

“Jeff, it's important!”

Jeff lay on one elbow, listening to his own breathing. What could be important enough to bring Wirt Sewell here at this time of night? At last he got up and slipped the inside latch. “What do you want?”

“Jeff, your pa's back. He's at the house right now!”

For several seconds Jeff did not move. Nathan was back! Didn't he know that the law was looking for him?

His calmness surprised him. “Wait,” he said, then he got into his pants and shirt, and pulled on his boots. Buckling his cartridge belt, he turned back to Wirt. “How is he? Is he all right?”

“I—I guess so.”

“You guess so? Don't you know? He's not hurt, is he?”

“No, Jeff, he's not hurt. Not in body.” Jeff gave him a hard, savage look, but said nothing. Why had Nathan come back?

He said, “We'll go out the back way. Follow me.”

At the far end of the hall there was a window, with a plank ladder outside that served as a fire escape. It was late, and the town was quiet. Jeff stepped through the open window, grabbed the ladder and swung out. When he reached the ground he didn't look back to see if Wirt had made it—he didn't care.

The pounding of his heart was the only sound he heard as he slipped behind the building and up the alley. At the end of Main Street he cut across town, heading toward the Sewell house, vaguely aware of Wirt stumbling behind.

The Sewell house was the only place in that part of town that still had a light burning. Jeff came in behind the cowshed, noted the trail-shaggy calico standing hipshot and weary beside the Sewell cow. When he reached the back door he went through without knocking.

Nathan had just finished washing and shaving. His face looked sunken, raw and red, and he stood motionless for a moment, a towel over his shoulder, looking steadily at his son. Then, with that old gesture that Jeff remembered so well, he threw back his head and searched Jeff's face. And he was the same Nathan Blaine that Jeff remembered, big and proud and dark with danger.

“You're a man,” Nathan said at last. “I don't think I'd figured on that.”

“Almost nineteen,” Jeff said evenly.

“Plenty old enough for a man in these parts.”

“Pa,” Jeff said, suddenly uncomfortable, “you're all right, aren't you? I mean—

“I'm fine! A little trail dirty, maybe, but fine.”

And then, as though a wall between them had been scaled, Nathan came forward and took his son's hand, and all the fierce love that was in them expressed itself in that one hard clasp.

They heard Wirt stumbling across the back yard, and suddenly both men, father and son, let go and made an elaborate show of being casual. Nathan turned to the table, where greens and cornbread had been set out by Beulah. “I hear the government boys are looking for me,” he said mildly, beginning to eat.

“They've contacted the marshal here,” Jeff said. “Now he's looking for you, too.”

“Elec Blasingame? He couldn't find his nose with both hands.”

Both of them laughed, but it had a false ring. Nathan's danger increased with every minute he stayed here, and Jeff knew it.

They looked hard at Wirt as he came in the back door and said nothing more until he had passed through to the parlor. Jeff said, “I guess you heard what happened'”

“About them finding the man that killed Jed Harper? Yes, I heard.” His voice was mild enough, but Jeff noticed that Nathan kept his eyes on the plate before him and did not look up. “How did the town take it?”

“I guess Beulah Sewell will never be able to look the people of this town in the eye again,” Jeff answered with sudden bitterness.

Now Nathan did look up, faintly surprised. “Is that so? And what did you do, Jeff, when you found out?”

“I did what anybody would have done. I got out of the Sewell house! I never wanted to see them again.”

A fine network of lines appeared around Nathan's eyes. “You hate them, don't you?”

“Sure I hate them! Don't you?”

The question seemed to surprise Nathan. He put his fork down slowly and seemed to study the question in all its aspects, and only then did he answer. “Yes. I hate them.” Abruptly, he stood up and shouted, “Beulah, bring some coffee to the parlor!”

With cool authority, Nathan ordered Wirt and his wife to another part of the house when he and Jeff came to the parlor. Not until then did Jeff see how much older his father looked, how tired his eyes were, how deep in his face were the lines of anger. “Yes,” Nate said again, sinking heavily into a chair, “I hate them. There's no sense denying it.”

“Why should you, “after what Beulah did?”

Nathan smiled thinly, almost to himself. “Hate, as you'll learn, gets to be a heavy load when you can't put it down.” Then he asked bluntly, “How well do you know Bill Somerson?”

Jeff blinked in surprise. How could Nathan know about Somerson?

Again Nathan smiled his thin smile. “Among Indians and outlaws, word has a way of traveling fast. What you and Somerson are cooking together, I don't know, but I know it's something.”

Jeff felt the breath of warning in Nathan's smile. “I turned a posse off Somerson's trail once,” he said carefully. “That's about all I know about him.”

Surprisingly, his father let it drop. He sat in silence for a moment, his eyes closed. Then he said, “I know how you feel about this town, but there's something I want to know. Is there anything about it that you like and would hate to leave?”

As though a door in his mind had been opened, the vision of Amy was suddenly there. Too late did Jeff realize that Nathan's eyes were not completely closed and that he was watching his face intently from under his black lashes. And then Nathan did close his eyes, and for a moment the deep lines around his mouth did not seem so harsh.

“I remember,” he said, “when I wasn't much older than you are now and I had a reason for staying in Plainsville. But when your mother died—” Then he discarded the thought as suddenly as he had dropped Somerson.

Jeff shook his head, bewildered. “Why did you take the chance of coming back here? Was it because of me?”

Nathan only looked at him.

“Are things so bad in Mexico that you couldn't stay there?”

His father seemed surprised. “You know about that?”

“Everybody does, I guess. Elec Blasingame does; that's why he expects you to head back for Texas.”

Unexpectedly, Nathan laughed. “Nothing ever gets so bad in Mexico that you can't put it right with money.”

“And you have the money?”

“Of course.”

But Jeff could see that it was a brazen lie. That stunted calico in the cowshed, the clothes that Nathan wore— those things did not suggest money. And perhaps Nathan could see what was in his son's mind, for the worry lines around his eyes seemed to deepen.

“Don't you start worrying about your pa,” he said sternly. “Nathan Blaine can take care of himself. It's you I'm worried about.”

“Why should you worry about me?”

For a moment he thought he would get no answer. Nathan shoved himself forward in his chair and studied his lean, strong hands. “Will you make me a promise?” he finally asked. “Don't act the fool, the way I did at your age, and get yourself into trouble that you can't get out of. Don't listen to stories about Nate Blaine being in bad with the Mexicans, either.”

He laughed shortly, but not with his eyes. “I can't imagine how that story got started. Why I'm heading back for the Border tomorrow as soon my horse gets rested up. Would I be doing a thing like that if there was trouble?”

Jeff cleared his throat, but said nothing.

“What I'm trying to say,” Nathan continued, “is that I don't need your help. Nate Blaine needs help from nobody. Is that clear?

Jeff nodded.

“If you hate this town, that's all right with me. But think it over before you kick it for the last time and put it behind you.”

Puzzled, Jeff didn't know what the talk was getting around to.

“All I want is your promise,” Nathan said.

“You oughtn't worry about me,” Jeff said evasively. “You said yourself I was a man.”

“But I still want the promise that you're not headed for trouble on my account. I rode a long way just to hear it.”

Jeff thought, When it comes to lying, I can do it just as brazenly as he can. “Sure,” he said, “I promise.” He did not realize how tense Nathan had been until he watched him now slowly relaxing, unwinding painfully, like a taut steel spring.

“Good,” Nathan said. “Now you'd better go back to your room—we can't attract attention by keeping these lights on.”

“When will I see you again?”

“I don't know. Maybe you'll come to Mexico Some time and look me up.”

“You're leaving so soon?”

His anxiety was all too obvious in his voice, and Nathan smiled faintly. “Don't look as though you'll never see me again. It's just Mexico—not so far.”

Nathan had said it,' and the dead coldness in the pit of his stomach told Jeff that it was true. If his pa went back to Mexico without the money to pay for his life, he would never see him again. They shook hands silently.

At the door, Nathan said, “There's just one more thing...” Jeff thought that Nathan had forgotten it, but what he said, “Somerson's bad medicine. Have nothing to do with him.”

Chapter Eighteen

IT WAS THE FIRST OF THE month. Milan Fay was on time.

“Somerson's got everything set, kid. You ready?”

“Yes.”

“You know how it's going? Exactly?”

“Yes.”

Fay shook his head in faint surprise. “Damn if you don't look ready, at that. I guess you're Nate Blaine's boy, all right.”

“Don't worry. I'll be in place at four o'clock.”

The tall outlaw grinned. “That's the kind of talk I like to hear. But don't make a move until I get the wagon in place.”

“I know my part of it,” Jeff said shortly. “Just make sure you and the horses are where they're supposed to be.”

“It's not me or Somerson or the horses that I'll be thinkin' about, kid; you're the one. Just remember your pa's life depends on whether or not we bring this off without a hitch.”

Jeff watched Fay's broad, arrogant back as he turned and sauntered up the plank walk toward the public corral. No one had to tell him to be careful, or how dangerous this thing was going to be. Plainsville was no longer a one-horse cowtown. It was a railroad town and farm town as well, and the bank was no longer the flimsy unprotected affair that it had once been.

But it was set. There was no backing out. And he wouldn't have done it if he could....

In his basement office of the Masonic Temple, Elec Blasingame heard the click of heels on the stone steps and knew that they were not boot heels. Breathlessly, Amy Wintworth came into the room, and the marshal looked up in surprise.

“What's the matter, child? You look as if somebody's chasing you.”

“Marshal, I've got to talk to you! Alone.” Kirk Logan, who was nailing a calendar to the far wall of the office, looked around at the last word. The marshal frowned slightly, but then nodded to his deputy, and Logan put his hammer down and walked out. During those few seconds Elec made a close study of the girl before him. He noted her tenseness, the look of urgency in her eyes.

“Now,” he said, “what is it, Amy?”

“Nathan Blaine is in Plainsville.”

Blasingame was startled. “Nate Blaine! How do you know?”

“I saw him. I talked to him.”

“Here in Plainsville?” His voice was incredulous. But before Amy could answer one question he asked another. “Where's he hiding?”

“He was at the Sewell house—” Amy started, and the marshal lunged up from his desk and bellowed, “Kirk, get in here on the run!”

But there was something about the quick, hard look that the girl threw at him that made him look at her again. “Marshal,” she said tightly, “you don't understand. Nathan Blaine isn't hiding. He asked me to come here and tell you he wants to see you.”

Elec didn't believe it. “Nate Blaine wants to see me?”

“Please believe me!” she said anxiously. “He wants to talk to you about Jeff.”

Then a frowning Kirk Logan came back in the office. “What's the trouble, Marshal?” For a moment Elec was undecided. It didn't make sense that Nate Blaine would walk into a sure arrest—an arrest that could possibly end with a hangman's noose around his neck. Still, there was something about the urgency in Amy's face that made him pause. At last, against his better judgment, he waved the puzzled deputy away again.

“If Nate's here in Plainsville,” he said, “I guess a few minutes one way or the other won't make too much difference. Now, Amy, start at the beginning and tell me all you know.”

Amy looked nervously at her hands, wondering how she could explain it to the marshal when she was unable to explain it to herself. “I was shopping this morning,” she began slowly. “I was in Baxter's when Mr. Sewell found me and said Jeff's father was at their house and wanted to see me.”

Elec scowled. “Why did he want to see you?”

“I'm not sure.”

“But you did talk to Nate? What about?”

He realized too late that this was no cowhand that he could shout at and bully into telling him what he wanted to know. He saw the spark of resentment in those clear eyes, and the haughty tilt of her chin.

“I'm sorry, Amy,” he said lamely. “Tell it your own way.”

She didn't know how or where to start. She could still feel the shock of Nathan's fierce gaze upon her. The depression that came from staring too deeply into the bitterness of those dark eyes was still within her.

“So you're the girl my boy loves,” he had said, and the gentleness of his-voice had startled her. She had hated Nathan Blaine for so long, and she could not believe that such contradictions as gentleness and violence could live together within one body.

But when Nathan Blaine had spoken of his son, he was gentle. And then he had asked with crude bluntness: “Do you love my boy, Amy?” She had never been talked to like that before. She had tried to wither him with her anger, but he stood like a statue hacked from steel.

“Do you love him?” he had asked again, coldly. His question demanded the truth, and left no way for a middle ground of indecision. Wirt and Beulah had stood looking on, frightened.

She had answered, “Yes.”

“I don't believe it!” he replied brutally. “When Jeff needed you most, you deserted him. When he wanted understanding, you wrapped yourself in pride.”

Deep within her conscience she knew he was right, and it had made her furious. “And what about you?” she'd flared. “You, his own father—what have you done for him?”

In dismay she had watched the power seep out of him as he smiled thinly and sank into one of the uncomfortable parlor chairs. “Yes,” he had said, almost absently. “I guess I ought to stop blaming others and do something myself. Do you know where Elec Blasingame's office is? Would you tell the marshal I'd like to see him? In private.”

She had stood woodenly, with pity in her eyes. Nathan had seen it and was furious. “What are you waitin' on?” he had demanded harshly. “I thought you'd jump at the chance to turn me in!”

Wirt had started to go with her, but Nathan had barked “Stay here, Wirt.” Then, to Amy: “Remember, tell the marshal I want to see him in private. If you tell anybody else, or if he brings a posse with him—” He had smiled. “Remember I've got Wirt and Beulah right here with me.”

Amy had run blindly from the house, both hate and pity churning within her. Not until she had reached the marshal's office did she fully realize that Nathan had planned it so. He was used to being hated, feared—but Nathan Blaine was not the kind of man to accept pity.

So she tried to tell Elec Blasingame what had happened, but there was no way she could communicate to another what she had seen and felt instinctively. She ended lamely, “I think Jeff's in trouble, and that's what Nathan wants to talk to you about.”

“That boy's been getting deeper in trouble for a long time,” Elec scowled. “I think this is a trick of Nate's.”

But he wasn't sure. And if he had been sure, there was very little he could do about it, with Wirt and Beulah Sewell being held as hostages.

He would have to play it Nate's way, whether he liked it or not. “All right,” he said finally. “I'll go. But you stay here, Amy, until I get back.” Before heading for the stairs, he called to Kirk Logan. “Get on the street, Kirk, and see if you can find young Blaine. Keep your eye on him, but don't let him see you watching him. Understand?”

The deputy nodded, puzzled. “Sure, but why?”

“Never mind; just do as I say.” Then, halfway up the steps, Elec thought of something else. He wasn't sure that it meant anything, but this was no time to take chances. “By the way, Kirk, that gambler in town that goes under the name of Milan Fay—the one that hangs out at the Green House. Keep an eye on him too, if you can. Let me know what they're doing—I'll be at the Sewell place.”

It was a quiet day for Plainsville. The homesteaders were out working the land; the cattle shipping was about over till the next season. A merciless sun blazed down on the town and on Elec Blasingame as he tramped up the plank walk to the bank corner, then cut across town toward the Sewell place. The marshal had no choice in the matter. Nate was calling the tune this time, and Elec had to dance to it.

But that didn't mean that Elec was helpless, trick or no trick. As he went up the path to the Sewell house he loosened his revolver in its holster. His duty was to arrest Nate Blaine, and he was going to do it if he could.

The front door stood open because of the heat, but the front parlor was as dark as a cave to the marshal's sun-blinded eyes. Now he unholstered his .45 and held it at his side as he stepped up to the front porch. Suddenly the doorway was filled with Nate Blaine's big figure, and Elec immediately snapped his gunhand to the ready and said, “Don't move, Nate! You're under arrest.”

Now, if it was a trick, he would soon know it.

Nathan glared at him for a moment, angrily. “I'm not armed, Elec. You can put your gun away.”

But Elec made no move to holster the gun. He hooked the screen door with the toe of his boot and kicked it open. “Back in the room, Nate,” he said sharply, “and don't try anything.”

He came to Nathan like a hull, shoving him back in the room with the muzzle of his .45. From the corner of his eye he saw Wirt and Beulah standing pale and frightened against the far wall. He saw Nate's revolver hanging harmlessly on the hatrack in the hall. Quickly but methodically, the marshal added up every fact within the range of his senses.

It didn't seem like a trick, which made him believe all the more that it was one. “Wirt,” he said, without shifting his gaze from Nathan, “what's he up to? Are you and your wife all right?”

Wirt swallowed hard. “We're all right, Marshal. He had me find the Wintworth girl for him, then he sent her to bring you. That's all I know.”

Nathan said angrily, “I wanted to talk to you. Can't you understand a simple thing like that?”

“No, I can't,” Blasingame said harshly. “You know you're wanted in Texas, as well as some other places. You knew I'd put you under arrest. I've never seen the man who'd deliberately ask for twenty years in prison, or maybe even a hangman's noose.”

With fire and danger swimming in those black eyes, Nathan snarled, “Stop being a fat fool, Elec, and put that gun away! If I'd wanted to kill you I'd have shot you from the window as you came up the walk. I'm not an idiot; I know I'm under arrest. But I'll be arrested under my own conditions, Marshal Blasingame, and don't you forget it!”

It had been a long, long time since any man had talked that way to Elec Blasingame. He was more startled than angered. And then, surprisingly, he found himself reholstering his Colt's. In some way it was impossible to explain he knew that this was no trick, no trap. After a long, careful moment of thought, he said, “All right, Nate, what's on your mind?”

“It's the boy,” Nathan said bluntly.

“What about the boy?”

Nathan rubbed a hand over one lean, hard cheek. “I'm not sure. I don't think he's in any big trouble yet, but he's headed there. News like that travels fast in the out-country. Do you know a hardcase by the name of Bill Somerson, heavy-set, red face?”

Elec's eyes narrowed. “What about him?”

“He rode with my outfit in Mexico till they sent him packing. He knows what happened to me up here, about the bank—all of it. I told him, under a load of wine, and it gave him ideas. The story I heard from the other side of the Border was that Somerson was fixing up something with my boy.”

“And you came all the way from Mexico to stop it?” Elec asked.

“Wouldn't you, if he was your boy?”

The marshal let that pass. “I don't believe you, Nate,” he said flatly. “The boy's been heading for trouble ever since you went to work on him five years ago.”

“Damn it!” Nathan exploded, his powerful shoulders twitching. “He's heading for trouble on my account; that's the reason I came back! He knows I'm in Mexican trouble and that I need money to get out of it. So he's going after the money.”

“By throwin' in with this man called Somerson?”

“How many times do I have to tell you?”

Elec could not miss the note of desperation in Nate Blaine's voice. And in his quick, methodical brain he remembered other things that might tie in with what Nate was telling him. He asked suddenly, “You know a man named Milan Fay?”

Nathan blinked. “Sure. He sided Somerson for a while in Chihuahua.”

More facts added up, and Elec felt a vague uneasiness tugging at the ends of his nerves—the ride Jeff had taken on Fay's horse, the fact that Fay and Somerson had arrived in Plainsville on the same train. It could be that the boy was headed for real trouble—trouble that he'd never get out of. Trouble, Elec thought, like his pa is in now.

He studied Nate quietly for a long while, and once more his memory took him back five years. At that time Nate had all the reason in the world to be full of hate, but he hadn't loaded it on his son. He had kept it bottled within himself and had sent the boy back to Beulah and Wirt.

Maybe, Elec thought carefully, he had underestimated Nathan Blaine's love for his son. And maybe at the same time he had overestimated Nate's selfishness.

Still, that line of reasoning went against the grain with him because he liked things clean-cut, black or white, good or bad. The possibility that a man like Nate might have some good in him as well as bad disturbed the marshal.

Nathan broke in on the marshal's thought. “I came to you for help, Elec. Do I get it?”

The marshal shot quick glances around the room, as though he still expected to uncover a trap. Then he heard the hurried tramp of boots on the clay walk outside the house.

Elec turned on Nathan. “Take it easy, Nate, it's my deputy. He doesn't know you're here.” Then he went to the front door where Kirk Logan was waiting.

“What's the trouble, Kirk?”

The deputy shook his head. “Damned if I know, exactly. But I've been keeping my eye on the Blaine kid, like you said, and Milan Fay too. I don't know what kind of trouble you're expectin', Marshal, but it looks like somethin's about to bust. I figured you ought to know.”

“I ought to know what?” Elec said impatiently.

“It's just that things look funny. Maybe I wouldn't have noticed anything if you hadn't told me to keep an eye on them, but— Anyway,” he shrugged, “I spotted young Blaine talking to Fay in front of Surratt's. They broke up when I went by, but met again in front of Baxter's. After that they walked as far as the bank corner together, then split up again.”

“Then what did they do?” Elec asked.

“It's not what they did so much as the way they looked. Blaine went back to Surratt's and got in a seven-up game, but Fay picked him out a fire barrel and sat there like he was starting to keep house, and that's when I began to wonder.”

“About what?”

“Just wonder. You said report to you, and I am.”

“Where is Fay now?”

“In front of Ludlow's store, just across the street from the bank.”

Elec's eyes narrowed. He said, “It's probably nothing, but you'd better get back, anyway. I'll be along pretty soon.”

The deputy headed back down the path. As Elec turned, he saw Nathan reaching for his revolver on the hatrack. “Hold it, Nate!” Elec said sharply, his own revolver already in his hand.

“I heard what your deputy said,” Nathan said tightly. “This is it, Marshal. It's that bank they're after. Somerson talked the boy into it; probably told him I had to have the money.”

Elec's gun did not waver. “I doubt it. And even if it's true, you're playing no part in it, Nate. You're under arrest, and you're going to jail.”

“You're right about just one thing,” Nathan said with dangerous calm. “I'm under arrest. I knew that the minute I sent the Wintworth girl after you. But I'm not going to jail until this thing's over—not unless you want to kill me right here.”

Elec squeezed the Colt's butt so hard that his arm ached. Nathan ignored it, and he ignored the grim flash of warning in the marshal's eyes.

“If you're going to shoot, you'd better do it now, Elec, before I strap on my gun.”

Probably the marshal would never know why he didn't pull the trigger and kill Nate Blaine where he stood. He had not managed to live to an old age by taking chances. Yet, when the time came, he found that he could not make himself add that extra ounce of pressure with his trigger finger. He could not believe that Nate would ignore the certainty of death. He was sure that at the last moment he would back down.

But he did not. Nathan walked steadily, arrogantly even, to the hall hatrack, took down the holster and slung the cartridge belt around his waist. And from the depths of his bitter eyes he poured his quiet disdain upon the marshal.

It was then that Elec realized that he had grown too old for his job. The steel of his resolution had lost its temper, the fine cutting edge of his purpose had dulled. When he discovered that he could not coldly, calmly pull the trigger on this man who defied him, Elec Blasingame knew he was through as a lawman.

In many ways he was not sorry.

Chapter Nineteen

FROM HIS PLACE AT SURRATT'S bar, Jeff saw Amy hurrying across the street toward the Masonic Temple. Impulsively, he went outside, hoping she would notice him, but she didn't look in his direction.

It was just as well he thought. It was nearly four o'clock, and soon his life in Plainsville would be over. Now he was a man called upon to do a man's work. But he felt less a man at that moment than at any time since he had stormed angrily from under the Sewell roof. For the first time in his life he was beginning to know the meaning of fear. It wasn't because of the bank, and what he would have to do there, or the dangerous prospect of violence. This was a different thing.

As he saw Amy disappear down the steps to the marshal's office, he felt his bravery flying with her. His valor, tied to a piece of bright ribbon, went with her down the stone steps and disappeared, and he felt suddenly hollow and afraid.

Angrily, he told himself that he was acting like a boy, and it was time to put boyish things behind him. He knew that Milan Fay had already set the wheels to rolling. By now Fay would have left his place in front of Ludlow's store to meet Somerson's wagon at the edge of town.

Still, Jeff waited. He saw Elec Blasingame come out of the Masonic Temple basement and head across town to the east. He seemed in a hurry, but he wasn't going toward the bank, and Jeff was glad of that.

He stood for a moment wondering what could bring Elec out in such a hurry, in this heat. Why would Amy be visiting the marshal, and why hadn't she come out when Elec had?

He waited as long as he dared, hoping for another glimpse of Amy, hoping that his bravery would fly back to him.

None of those things happened. He was still a hollow man. But the bank would be robbed, and he would help do it because Nathan's life depended on it. He turned and walked up the plank walk toward the bank.

The timing was perfect.

Fay had already brought the wagon up and was tying the team beside Ludlow's when Jeff reached the corner. It was a heavy farm wagon with a tarp stretched over the sideboards. Under the tarp there might be a load of wheat or corn, but Jeff knew there was nothing at all under it but Bill Somerson, covering the street in both directions with his carbine.

A kind of numbness that passed for calm passed over Jeff, and he was suddenly eager to get it over with. Walking slowly, he noted the horses waiting in the alley behind Ludlow's. He could feel Milan Fay watching from beneath the brim of his shabby hat. Jeff turned the corner and Fay lifted his hand slightly.

Everything was ready.

Jeff forced himself to think of the bank, and put everything else out of his mind. Main Street was normally busy, but the side street was practically deserted. A single buck-board was coming in from the west, and when it turned the corner Fay nodded and Jeff started for the side door of the bank.

Fay sauntered across the street at the same time, walking aimlessly, his quick eyes alert in all directions. Everything was clear. Jeff pounded on the door.

He pounded twice before he got an answer.

“It's Jeff Blaine,” he called quietly. “My uncle's Wirt Sewell.” Then came a moment of panic and he couldn't think of the new banker's name. Then, as he hesitated, he caught a glimpse of Milan Fay's suspicious scowl, and the name came to him. “Mr. Forney, I'd like to talk to you about some land deeds.”

A sharp answer came through the heavy door. “Sorry, the bank's closed for the day. See me at ten tomorrow morn-mg.

Jeff felt sudden sweat on his forehead. This was the reason Somerson had selected him. It was Jeff's job to get in the bank after it had closed, but before the vault had been locked for the night. Attacking the bank during the day with the place full of gun-carrying customers would have been foolish. Waiting until the vault was closed would be hopeless. This was the time it had to be.

Now Jeff could see the deadly purpose in Fay's eyes as the tall man glared at him. He could almost feel the cold steel of Somerson's carbine muzzle, and knew that it was pointed at his back—just in case. “Mr. Forney,” he called again, “it's important. There's a good deal of money involved, and it can't wait till tomorrow.”

“Who did you say you were?”

“Jefferson Blaine, Wirt Sewell's nephew.” Wirt might not be a popular man, but he was known as a “good businessman. Then the banker looked out through the barred window beside the door.

“Well, just a minute.”

Milan Fay suddenly grinned and moved up beside Jeff, waiting for the door to open. “Good work, kid,” he said under his breath. “Nate'll be proud of you for this.”

They heard heavy bolts being thrown back and suddenly the door was open. Nathan Blaine stood there with fire in his eyes.

“Hello, Fay,” he said coldly.

“Nate!” the tall outlaw said, startled. Jeff could not move. He could not believe that Nathan was actually there. “Nate,” what are you doing here?” the tall outlaw asked quickly.

But Milan Fay knew what he was doing there. The fierce fire in Nate Blaine's eyes as he raked his son with a savage glance was enough to tell Fay all he needed to know. Milan Fay was quicker than most to understand such things. And now he understood that Nate knew everything about the way they had tricked the kid into helping them with the bank.

“Where's Somerson?” Nathan demanded coldly.

With the quick instinct of a wolf, Fay understood exactly what he was up against. Nate had learned what he and Somerson were up to and he had come to stop it. As long as Nate stood there, the bank was completely safe. As long as Nate, was allowed to bar the way, there would be no robbery.

And Milan Fay had dreamed for a long time about the money they would take from this bank. He and Somerson had made a lot of plans. They had waited patiently for just the right time. And now that the time had come, Fay was determined that no one was going to stop them; not even Nate Blaine...

“Now look here, Nate,” Fay started with deceptive mildness. “Of course I don't know what you're thinkin', Nate, but I give you my word—”

It was the oldest trick in the world and the deadliest, talking fast in order to draw attention away from what the gun hand was doing.

But Milan Fay forgot that Nate Blaine had seen all the tricks. The muzzle of Blaine's Colt's had cleared the top of his holster while Fay was still gabbing. Perhaps Fay did not see it. Perhaps he was acting in desperation. He followed through with the snakelike strike of his right hand, and Nathan had no alternative.

The single explosion of Nathan's revolver rocked and bellowed in the empty street, and Milan Fay jackknifed as though some enormous fist had caught him below the heart. The shock of the sound jarred Jeff into action, and in some fragmentary way he realized what Nathan was trying to do for him.

“Look out for Somerson!” he yelled. But Nate only looked at him. The street was empty. Then Elec Blasingame came pounding heavily around the corner of the bank building.

The ear-splitting crack of Somerson's carbine added its deadly punctuation to the bright afternoon, and the marshal stumbled clumsily, fell against the side of the building, and went to his knees.

Kirk Logan, the deputy, appeared at the other end of the street, but neither Logan nor Nate saw where the shot came from.

“The wagon!” Jeff shouted, but before the words were out, Somerson's carbine spoke again and Nathan went reeling back against the bricks of the building. In a blind rage, Jeff grabbed his Colt's and blasted one, two, three bullets through the sideboards. Nathan was on his knees, shouting something that Jeff could not hear. Anger swept over him like a boiling flood.

Swearing, Nathan got to his feet, then fell again. On his hands and knees he gathered his strength like some maddened bear and threw himself at Jeff's legs. Both of them went crashing down in the dust of the street, and once more Somerson's carbine spoke and the hot slug of lead nailed Nathan to the ground.

Logan was running toward them, but was still too far away to be much help. Then Jeff saw the tarp being ripped back from the wagon's sideboards. He saw Somerson vault with amazing lightness over the side and start running toward the horses.

In one quick second Jeff glanced at Nathan as he lay sprawled in the dust. Only his eyes seemed to live. The gray color of death was already in his face.

In the heart of a hurricane they say there is a great, fantastic calm, where the silence is deafening and all feeling of life and movement is absent. That is the kind of calm that seized Jeff Blaine when he saw Nathan lying at his feet. Slowly, he turned his attention on Somerson's bulky, fleeing figure, and he raised his revolver and aimed carefully, as though it were a target practice and not the deadliest game of all, and he slowly began squeezing the trigger when the sights set steadily in the middle of Somerson's back.

Behind Jeff, Elec Blasingame was pushing himself laboriously to his feet. He was only vaguely aware of the great numbness in his left shoulder and the warm flow of blood down his side. He saw Somerson break out of the wagon and run toward the horses behind Ludlow's store, and he saw Nate Blaine lying as still as death on the ground at his son's feet. Instinctively, the marshal fumbled for his gun, then realized that he had dropped it somewhere when he had taken the carbine slug in his shoulder.

Before he could find his own revolver, Elec saw young Blaine turn his .45 on Somerson's broad, fleeing back. Then something happened that stunned the marshal, for Nathan Blaine was once again lifting himself to his knees, like some mortally wounded animal maddened with pain, pushing, shoving upward. Then, a split second before Jeff's revolver roared, before the heavy bullet ripped its way into Somerson's back, Nathan hurled himself against his son, knocking the boy off balance. The Colt's exploded but the shot went wild, the slug screaming off in the endless sky.

Somerson had reached the horses now. Discarding the carbine, he grabbed his revolver and fired twice across the street. Nate Blaine fell back but stopped himself with an outstretched hand. Then, quickly, as Somerson was climbing hurriedly to the saddle, Nathan fired once, twice, with his own Colt's.

For an instant the impact of the bullets seemed to lift Somerson out of the saddle and hold him there. Then his great hulk fell like stone across the cantle, the frightened horse shied to one side, and Somerson slipped slowly, like poured concrete, to the ground.

Elec put Somerson from his mind. The outlaw would never bother anyone again.

Kirk Logan came running up to Nathan. He glanced quickly at that gray face, those dull eyes, and came on to Elec.

“Are you hurt, Marshal?”

“Nothing I can't get over. But see if you can find Doc Shipley; Nate's going to need some help.”

The deputy shook his head. “Nothing Doc Shipley can do, Marshal.”

After its moment of flame and violence, the town came under the weight of sudden silence. Then, almost immediately, the marshal heard the pound of boots coming toward them, and the sound of excited voices. Elec turned to Logan and said hoarsely, “Keep the crowd away. Nate has earned the right to die in peace.”

The marshal leaned heavily against the building as his deputy headed toward Main Street to hold back the morbid and the curious. He watched the boy kneeling in the dust, holding Nathan's heavy body in his arms. Where numbness had been in Elec's shoulder, now pain burned like a bright flame.

Elec's left arm hung limp and his shirt was plastered to his body with his own blood. Logan led Doc Shipley through, but the marshal pushed him away impatiently. Heavily, he walked into the open street where Nathan lay dead. The marshal was strangely fascinated by the red, wet spots on Nathan's gray face, where the boy's tears had mingled there with the red dust of Plainsville.

Jeff looked up at last and saw the marshal standing there. “Why did he do it?” he asked, his voice hard.