“I've heard all that,” Grant said. “It's funny, you didn't strike me as the kind of man to take bullying.”
But in some quiet way they had come to understand each other, and Valois refused to be ruffled. “Call me a businessman. Going against Farley is bad business.”
“I think it's more than that,” Grant said gently. “I think it has something to do with Rhea Muller.”
They looked at each other, quietly meshing their thoughts, judging each other's potential. At last Valois shook his head. “I'm sorry for you, Grant. I'm sorry for any man unlucky enough to fall in love with Rhea—I did it once myself.”
Grant made a small sound of surprise and came erect in his chair.
“That was in Bartlesville,” Valois went on calmly, “not so long ago. I was a land man then with a string of leases. Everybody thought I was going to be a millionaire, and Rhea was sweeter than clover honey—until all my wells came in dusters.” He laughed, and the sound was not pleasant. “We were going to be married. We were going to move to Oklahoma City, and when statehood came we'd be one of the first families in Oklahoma.” He pulled his hat down on his forehead. “But a few dry holes changed all that.”
Grant did not move. He wanted to be angry but he could see that Turk Valois was telling the truth. The truth as he knew it.
“What does she want from you, Grant? Money? You don't look like you have enough money for Rhea, so it must be something else.”
Mentally, Grant closed his ears, for he didn't want to hear any more. But he could not forget the day before when Rhea had come so willingly into his arms. What had she wanted? His protection? The use of his strength and his gun? Was that the way she got the things she wanted?
He got up and walked out of the Wheel House.
Hunching his shoulders into the bite of that December wind, he tramped numbly up the crowded boardwalk, past the noisy gambling houses and dance halls, past the shacks where the painted 49er girls lived and plied their calling, past clusters of tents and sheet-iron shanties. He cursed himself, and thanked Valois for showing him the truth.
He had known the truth all along, of course, but because of a pretty face and a softly rounded feminine form he had chosen to ignore it. He could ignore it no longer. He was an outlaw. What would a girl like Rhea Muller want from an outlaw?
Abruptly he stopped his pacing, turned, and headed in the opposite direction. He left the sidewalk and tramped through the mud toward the shunted boxcar that served as a depot. “When's the next train to Vinita?” he called up to the ticket agent.
The agent pointed to a chalked schedule on the side of the boxcar. “Nine o'clock tomorrow mornin'.”
Tomorrow morning. Well, he could wait. Let Dagget think what he would about his leaving—there were worse things than jail, and being made a fool of was one of them.
It was Dagget who shook him awake that night, or early morning. Grant, sleeping at one of the Wheel House's corner tables, felt the hard hands on his shoulders shaking him steadily. He heard the toneless voice chanting as monotonously as a machine:
“Come out of it, Grant. Come out of it.”
Grant opened his eyes and slowly unfolded himself from his cramped position. The lobby was as bright as day with gasoline lanterns, and somewhere in the town a voice yelled and a piano sounded harshly against the noisy background of the Kiefer night. The glare of the lanterns made him blink.
“Who is it?”
“Jim Dagget. Come out of it, I say.”
It was the marshal. Vaguely, Grant wondered if he had somehow learned the truth and had come with gun and handcuffs to take him back to Joplin.
“You want some black coffee?” the marshal asked.
“I'm not drunk, I was just sleeping.”
Dagget fixed a steady gaze on his face. “Seems to me you ought to be back at the Muller lease, if that's where you're workin'.”
Grant started to tell him that he wasn't working for the Mullers any more, but then decided there was no sense making things worse. He licked his dry lips, wondering how much longer he had to wait till nine o'clock. How much longer before he could put Kiefer and its brief memories behind him. Providing, of course, that Dagget didn't take him away first.
“What is it?” he asked, staring up at the marshal's expressionless face.
“You work for Zack Muller. Is that right?”
Frowning, Grant nodded.
“The old man's dead,” Dagget said bluntly. “He was killed tonight while bringing some drilling equipment back from Tulsa.”
CHAPTER SIX
GRANT WOULD NOT soon forget the day they buried old Zack Muller in the lonely hillside plot to the north of “Tulsy Town,” as some still called it. There was the bite of steel in the wind and flurries of sleet slashed intermittently at the small group of mourners. The Methodist preacher was a small, thin man, thin-blooded and blue-lipped, and Grant could hear the chattering of his teeth as he rushed headlong through the final graveside service.
The sky that day was as dark as oil smoke, boiling in the north, and the ground was as hard as iron. All morning long Grant and Morphy and Calloway had hacked and gouged at the frozen ground, building Zack Muller's final resting place in a hard land. Now it was almost over. The wind howled along the hillside, whipping the tall grasses, snatching the words from the preacher's mouth.
Grant, hat in hand, ducked his head a little deeper into the collar of his windbreaker and let his gaze sweep over the hard blue faces that surrounded the grave. Morphy and Calloway had been Muller's friends, and their loss showed starkly in their eyes. There were several men whose names were unknown to Grant; they were strong, square-built men in ill-fitting blue serge suits and sheep-lined coats with the smell of black oil and wild gas about them. They were foreign men, the wildcatters; they were men of Zack Muller's own creed.
These were the wanderers, the restless ones, the gamblers and the dreamers. Muller had been one of them, had faced the same dangers, had wandered with them from Pennsylvania to Ohio to Indian Territory, had tasted with them oil scum from many unnamed creeks and ponds, had followed the doodle bugger's bewitched hickory switch from one strange place to the other. And now...
Grant set his jaw and gazed hard at the boiling sky. The old man was dead. Grant hadn't known Muller long, but he could feel the loss.
The preacher closed his book. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” And like two huge, awkward puppets, Morphy and Calloway took up their shovels and began filling the grave. So, Grant thought bitterly, this is where Zack Muller's wandering ends. With a bullet in his back he died. In foreign ground he is buried....
Carefully—very carefully—Grant had guided his thoughts around Ben Farley. He warned himself that he must be sensible and stay out of it. No matter what he had thought of Zack Muller, this fight was between the Mullers and Farley.
He would go back to Kiefer with them. He would see that the drilling equipment got to the lease, but there his obligation ended. With Dagget watching, he couldn't afford to stay in Indian Territory any longer than he had to.
But when he looked at Rhea Muller all his sensible resolutions grew soft and spineless. She stood there at the graveside, her eyes as bleak as the day itself, as cold and passionless as some beautiful piece of ice statuary. And, as Grant looked at her, he forgot all the things that Turk Valois had said, and he wished only that there was something that he could do or say that might erase some of the chiseled bitterness from her face.
Grant watched as Bud Muller took his sister's arm and led her away toward the spring buggy that would take them back to Kiefer. Her expressionless face did not change. She shed no tear.