Gambling Man (9 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What kind of an accident?”

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

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

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

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

“I guess so.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Will you remember that, Jefferson?”

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

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

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

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

“Wirt, what happened?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.”