The rest of the small congregation began to break up. Grant turned stiffly and started toward the bottom of the hill when he saw a thick, squat figure coming toward him. It was the marshal.
“I want to talk to you, Grant.”
That familiar sensation of uneasiness sank heavily in Joe Grant's belly. Was Dagget following him? Why else would the marshal make a trip to Tulsa on a day like this?
Dagget rubbed his hands vigorously and then plunged them into the pockets of his canvas windbreaker. “You going back to the Muller lease?” he asked.
Self-consciously, Grant pulled his hat down on his forehead and nodded.
“Keep an eye on young Muller. Don't let him do anything crazy.”
“What makes you think he'll do something crazy?”
Dagget was studying him carefully without appearing to do so. He pulled up his collar and ducked his head into the wind. “I've seen it happen before,” he said shortly, “after the shock wears off.”
Then Grant saw Pat Morphy getting in the buggy with Rhea, and Bud was climbing the hill again heading in their direction. He stopped in front of the marshal and said bluntly, “Have you arrested Farley?”
Dagget narrowed his eyes, then shook his head.
“Are you going to?” There was something in the boy's eyes that Grant didn't like: a wildness straining to be unleashed.
“That depends on how the evidence turns up against him,” the marshal said carefully. “Farley claims he was on one of his leases when the killing took place, and he's got witnesses to back him up.”
“Witnesses can lie,” Bud Muller said flatly. “Or Farley could have hired somebody to do it. It was Farley, all right, one way or the other.”
“If it was, I'll get him.”
The wind howled around them, and a scattering of snow appeared in the flurry of sleet. “You'd better get him, Marshal,” Bud Muller said tightly, almost hissed, “before I do!”
It was near noon when Grant, Lon Calloway, and Bud Muller pulled out of Tulsa with a new team and a hired freighter. The town—a scattering of frame buildings and houses spread out along the banks of the Arkansas—fell behind them. They traveled in hard, bitter silence as the minutes and miles stretched out behind them, and at last Lon Calloway made an abrupt sound as they came in sight of an overturned freighter.
The big wagon was over on its side and heavy derrick timbers and machinery were strewn over the ground. This, Grant thought, was where it happened. This was where Zack Muller died.
Another big freighter loaded with boiler, donkey engine, and drill pipe stood unharmed in some timber. This was the wagon that Bud had been in.
In his mind Grant pictured the action as Bud had related it. The night had been black, and the two wagons had just begun to enter the stand of timber. From the high ground a voice had called out—a rifle spoke. The team of the lead wagon had bolted in panic; the freighter crashed into the deep ruts and overturned. Zack Muller, leaping away from the wagon, grabbed his shotgun and tried to fight the shapeless figures that milled in the darkness. The rifle spoke again.
That's all there was to it, the way Bud Muller told it. There had been four horsemen planted there to block them and destroy the equipment, but probably they hadn't expected a fight. And probably their instructions hadn't called for murder.
But the old man was dead. The fight went out of the attackers; they vanished in the darkness without bothering the other wagon. And that was the way Bud Muller had found his father, with a length of drill pipe across his chest, a bullet in his back.
Joe Grant could see it clearly in his mind's eye as they drew nearer to the overturned freighter. The vague shape of a nightmare snapped into focus and became reality, and he felt for himself some of the grief and rage that stared out of Bud Muller's pale blue eyes.
Three oilmen from Kiefer—friends of Muller—huddled around a small fire, guarding the scattered equipment. They got up and walked stiffly to the rutted road when they saw the wagon coming. Shotguns cradled in their arms, they stood for a moment looking at Bud, but they did not ask about their friend or the funeral which they knew was over. Lon Calloway climbed down from the freighter and stamped some feeling into his feet.
“Well, I guess we might as well get this stuff loaded.”
When they reached Kiefer the next day, they were stiff, red-eyed from want of sleep and half-frozen. Bud Muller pulled the lead wagon up in front of the Wheel House and motioned the other one on toward Sabo.
For several hours Grant had wondered about the bulge of a revolver under the boy's windbreaker, and now he looked at the cold savagery in Bud Midler's eyes and understood why the marshal had issued his warning.
“Since we're this close to the lease,” Grant said, “don't you think we might as well keep going?”
“You can take the wagon if you want to.”
Bud rose stiffly from the wagon seat and climbed over the wheel, leaving the lines in Grant's hands. There was trouble in the air, in the cutting wind; it had the taste of iron. Grant felt his brain numb with fatigue. Where Bud went, trouble was sure to follow. This much Grant knew instinctively, and he was afraid of it. The harder a man tried to steer clear of trouble, the harder it seemed to hound him.
With a weary shrug of defeat, Grant whipped the lines around the brake lever and climbed down to the frozen mud. He caught Bud Muller at the Wheel House door.
“This is my fight, Grant,” young Muller said tightly. “Let me handle it myself.”
Grant had the discomforting feeling that all his future was crumbling under his feet, but he was too exhausted and numb to care. “It may be more fight than one man can handle. Have you thought of that?”
Bud looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “All right, suit yourself.”
They stepped into the hot, steamy interior of the Wheel House lobby and a kind of uneasy silence fell over the crowd of oilmen. Grant raked the room with a cautious glance and noticed Turk Valois sitting against the wall studying the scene thoughtfully. Then one of the oilmen, an old-timer with a full beard and a worried face, shouldered his way up to young Muller.
“We know how you feel, Bud. All of us were friends of your pa, but it won't help to go lookin' for trouble.”
“I'm looking for justice,” Bud Muller said shortly. “Where's Farley?”
The old man's eyes grew cautious. “What do you want with Ben Farley?”
“Is he here?”
Then, as if they had acted with one mind, all eyes turned toward the back of the lobby where a flight of plank stairs led up to the hotel half of the Wheel House. A man stood on the first landing gazing blandly down at the crowd, and somehow Grant knew that this was Ben Farley.
Bud Muller stiffened like a hunting dog catching its first scent of prey. Grant moved a bit to one side and tried to make himself inconspicuous as he loosened his windbreaker. Eyes darted from Bud to the man on the stairs, but for one brief moment there was almost complete silence. Gamblers forgot their cards. Drinkers paused with cups halfway to their mouths.
A strange calm settled over Grant and thoughts of his own safety slipped from his mind as he studied Ben Farley.
Farley was not a man to be liked on first sight, if ever. There was an air of cold superiority about him that Grant found easy to hate; he smiled only with his mouth, his eyes never seemed to focus completely on any single point. For some reason Grant had expected a big man; Farley was short, compact, and bullish. With a show of polished arrogance he selected a thin cigar from his vest pocket and rolled it between his full lips.
“Did I hear someone mention my name?” he asked quietly.