Gambling Man (18 page)

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.

“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.