Gambling Man (21 page)

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.

The marshal shifted uncomfortably. “Why did Nate stop you from killing Somerson?” He rubbed the back of his hand over his jowls and tried not to think of the pain in his shoulder. “Maybe it was because Nate knew how bad it is to kill a man, even a man like Somerson. Maybe your pa came to understand that and wanted you to understand it. Maybe it was his way of letting you know that he didn't want you to take the same trail he took so long ago.

After a moment Elec lifted his good arm and motioned for Doc Shipley to take over. He saw Amy Wintworth's white, stunned face in the crowd beside the bank building.

“Marshal, let me talk to him!”

“Not now, Amy.”

“But he needs me!”

“Maybe.” Elec nodded ponderously. “But what he needs most is to get things straight with himself. Give him time, Amy. Give him time to think.”

The next day turned out cool. Great thunderheads had rolled in off the Gulf during the night and a sprinkle of rain had settled the dust. It was a good day for a funeral, Elec Blasingame thought, if any day was a good one for such a thing.

Perhaps the good weather accounted for the big turnout, but Elec doubted it. His left arm bound tightly to his body, the marshal looked over the crowd gathered on the barren slope to the north of town and vaguely wondered what Nathan would think of this if he could see it. Nathan Blaine, a villain in life, was being buried a hero.

Elec regarded this fact wryly but without bitterness. He accepted it as a brutally truthful comment on the conscience of his neighbors. Many of them, he speculated, must have slept uneasily at times during these past five years when they were reminded of the wrong they had once done Nathan Blaine. Now they were showing a respect to Nathan in death that they could not have brought themselves to express when he was alive.

But that was only a small part of it, the marshal realized. As a matter of cold fact, Nathan had saved the town a great loss in money when he had stopped the robbery.

That was the important thing. Many of these people would have lost their life's savings if the robbery had been carried off. It was a matter of dollars and cents, more than a matter of conscience, that made them look at Nate Blaine in a newer and cleaner light.

And besides, those dark eyes that had blazed in life were now dull in death. They inspired no fear; it wasn't difficult to be charitable to a man when there was no reason to fear him.

Still, Elec was surprised that so many had come to the cemetery that day. Sam Baxter, Bert Surratt, Widow Harper, old Seth Lewellen, all had come to discharge a debt of one sort or another, but they didn't display any sense of loss.

Several cowhands from the big cattle outfits had come out of curiosity, and the new banker and his wife for obvious reasons. Todd Wintworth, now a rising young businessman, seemed uneasy and reluctant as he stood near the edge of the crowd beside his sister.

Amy, Elec noticed, held herself like a proud young queen, ignoring the glances of the curious, her anxious eyes fixed on Jeff Blaine's drawn young face.

“Dust to dust...”
the preacher chanted solemnly, and the marshal shifted his gaze to Wirt and Beulah Sewell, who stood alone on the lower slope, away from the crowd. Wirt looked down at his boots, but Beulah had her small, dull eyes fixed determinedly on the preacher. Elec wondered what thoughts were in her mind.

The marshal finally focused his attention on young Jeff Blaine. There beside the grave, the boy stood rigid and cold. There was the look of brittleness about him, and suppressed violence. His eyes, brilliant and dry, gazed fiercely at some indefinite point in the distance.

Has he learned anything from his pa? Elec wondered. By rights the boy should be in jail right now. Legally, young Blaine was as guilty as Somerson and Fay, and in his tougher days Elec Blasingame would not have argued the fact. But now he had grown soft. An old man stubbornly refusing to face reality.

Tomorrow, he thought bleakly, I'll turn my badge over to Kirk Logan; he's wanted it for a long time. I don't want to be there when young Blaine leaves the track again.

Then a quiet murmur was heard along the slope and Elec realized that the funeral was over. The preacher closed the Bible and walked slowly toward Jeff, but the boy stood like stone, his savage gaze fixed on the distance. The preacher shuffled uncomfortably, started to extend his hand, then changed his mind. At last he murmured something and moved uneasily away.

The crowd milled silently, uncertainly, now that the service was over. A few of them started toward Jeff, but they fell back immediately when they saw the grim cast of his face. They looked at each other uncertainly and finally began drifting away.

Now the congregation began breaking up quickly, as though it had suddenly realized its motive for coming. Cowhands rounded up their horses. Townspeople brought up buggies and hacks. A grim procession quickly formed and moved hurriedly down the slope toward the town.

Only a few were left now. Even the gravediggers, feeling the strange chill hovering over the hillside, quickly completed their work and went away. Marshal Blasingame held his ground, waiting. Amy Wintworth had not moved, despite her brother's urgent pulling at her arm. And near the bottom of the slope stood Wirt and Beulah Sewell, and Elec could not imagine why those two had stayed.

There they stood, the five of them, and the boy whose face was chiseled in grief. Then, with great effort, Jeff Blaine drew his gaze from the distance and glanced at the marshal. He looked down at the. mound of clay, then up at the endless sky.

Jeff looked at the marshal and smiled so slightly that it was hardly discernible. “He said once,” Jeff said, “that hate got to be a heavy load, when you couldn't put it down.”

Elec thought, So that's what he was thinking. He said, “So you learned something, after all. I didn't think you would.”

Elec was the last one to leave, for he had learned some things himself and wanted to think about them carefully. He had believed that man's destiny was a one-way track, immovable as a mountain, unrelenting as steel. He had believed that death was written in the circumstance of birth, and all that happened in between was unimportant, for the end was certain.

Now he wondered, as he watched Amy Wintworth run across the slope, as he saw the look in Jeff Blaine's eyes as he held the girl hard against him. Elec noted Todd Wintworth's helpless anger and was quietly pleased because it was so helpless. And he saw the quick glance exchanged between Beulah Sewell and her husband.

This is the real test, he thought, when Jeff and Amy started down the slope toward them.

It was not an easy thing—that much was clear, even from a distance. But hate got to be a heavy load, when you couldn't put it down. Elec gazed down to where Jeff had paused before his aunt, and the very air seemed to vibrate for a moment. But when the boy made himself speak to Beulah—when he took Wirt's hand, no matter how reluctantly—the marshal knew that Nathan had taught his lesson well.