“I’d go with you.”
“I wouldn’t want to hurt you like that.”
“Then what are you going to do, Brad? You’ve got to tell folks some time, face up to it.”
“I know,” he said quietly. “But not right now. Give San Miguel a chance to quit talking about the news that’ll hit presently of a bank robbery and shooting in Three Corners. And give me a chance to find out about Ed.”
“All right, Brad. But it won’t keep me from being afraid.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know. But I have the feeling something terrible is about to happen to us.”
“It’s just because you’ve never acted in secret before. And I’ll not ask you to again.”
She followed him to the edge of the porch. “I’ll come over tomorrow and see if I can make acquaintance with your little wild animal. But if I end up clawing her eyes out, don’t say I didn’t warn you...”
When he got back to his own cabin, it was dark. He unsaddled the steeldust at the pole corral, carried saddle and saddle carbine into the barn. The gun should go on its pegs over the fireplace, but it would rest well enough in its scabbard tonight. Elena might misunderstand if he entered the cabin.
He climbed the ladder into the loft, squirreled his way over the hay, slid off his boots, and lay down, hands behind his head. He thought of Ed and the old man and he knew how it was going to be around here, folks using the name Pickens behind his back like a curse and glancing away when he walked down the street. He slept with unpleasant dreams.
The shrill, hoarse crowing of a bantam rooster awakened Brad. He stirred, sat up, pulled on his boots, scratched his head and rubbed sleep from his eyes. On the way over to the house he rolled a cigarette and scraped a match on the thigh of his pants to light it.
A trickle of smoke curled from the chimney and he smelled sidemeat frying as he stepped into the house. It was still early, with the sun shaking loose its skirts of mist in the east, but Elena was already up.
“Good morning, Brad,” she said from the kitchen doorway.
Before he could answer, he heard a wracking groan in the bedroom. He stared at Elena, and then turned quickly. Jeffers stood in the bedroom doorway, a lean, gaunt man with sunken, stubbled cheeks and eyes of flint in cavernous sockets.
“Hello, Brad,” Jeffers said. “Long time no see.” His voice was thin, unpleasant. He was wearing a brace of bone-handled sixguns, palms resting on them.
Brad crossed a bitter glance from Jeffers to Elena and back again. Then he moved to the bedroom doorway and Jeffers stood aside for him to enter.
In fever, Ed Pickens had torn aside the patchwork quilt and was tossing on the feather ticking of the huge, hand-hewn bed. Brad remembered his brother as a young, yellow-haired giant, but Ed was wasted now, cheeks gray and flat, covered with dirty blond stubble, his blue eyes half mad. Brad looked at the wide, bony shoulders, stripped bare, a bloody bandage over the right shoulder coming down to a point above the heart. He passed his palm over Ed’s ridged brow to wipe away the heavy drops of icy sweat.
He turned, brushed past Jeffers, and stood before Elena. He lifted his hand as if he would hit her, then let it drop. “So it was a job and help you wanted.”
“Leave her alone,” Jeffers said quietly.
Brad gave him a glance over his shoulder. Jeffers’s thin, bony face showed nothing. Brad guessed the man could draw and pull trigger without any change taking place on his face.
“Why be sore, Brad?” Elena invited. “We brought Ed, didn’t we?”
“What’s left of him.”
She gave him a sultry threat with her blue eyes. “Why don’t you just relax and remember we’re your friends?”
“All I can remember is that you came here and made a fool of me. Jeffers sent you ahead to make sure I wasn’t connected with the Pickenses and that no sheriffs would be nosing around to ask if I knew anything about my brother’s whereabouts. You made sure it was safe; then slipped out at night and gave Jeffers the word.”
“She does what I tell her,” Jeffers said.
“Would you beat me if I didn’t?” she laughed.
“Might, at that.”
Brad turned, let his gaze touch the peg where his sixgun hung, and wasn’t surprised to see the peg empty. Jeffers had the gun hidden. They were here and planned to roost here until the heat was off.
Brad turned back toward the bedroom. “Ed needs a doctor.”
“He’s had a doctor. A gent south of Goliad,” Jeffers said. “The doctor got the bullet out. Nothing left now but to see if Ed is strong enough to make the grade.”
Jeffers caught the change in Brad’s eyes and laughed without mirth. “The doctor won’t do any talking about which way we went. Soon’s he finished his job, he had an accident. Gun he was cleaning went off in his face.”
A cold shudder passed along Brad’s spine. He remembered what Laura had said about riding over this morning. Acting on his wish. Intending to help a jobless, homeless girl. A feeling of emptiness hit him like a physical blow.
Jeffers stood balanced, watching him, waiting. Elena too was waiting. Brad could hear her breathing across the room. He let his shoulders relax. “How about fixing me some breakfast?”
Her smile flashed. “Sure, Brad.”
Jeffers lounged against the wall. “That’s better, Brad. Hell, for a minute there I thought you was going to forget that he’s your brother and we’re your friends.”
Brad moved to the kitchen, keeping his face away from Jeffers. “You can’t stay. Some of the hands from the Hammer have been helping me fill in a slough below my south meadow. They’ll be over by eight o’clock.”
“Now, Brad,” Jeffers chided. “No cause to lie. You ain’t been filling any slough. We watched the place for a day and a half from an up-creek camp before sending Elena in.”
“You cover all the angles, don’t you, Jeffers?”
“I try to. Elena, fry the man an egg.”
Elena brushed against Brad as she went into the kitchen.
The back door opened and Clem Hathaway came in with his arm loaded with wood. He dropped the wood in the box beside the stove, and pushed his floppy hat back on his shaggy head. Clem was in his late fifties, and looked like somebody’s kind old uncle with his dewlapped, indolent face and mild blue eyes buried in Santa Claus puckers of flesh. He had shoulders that expanded into a comfortable paunch, and short, bowed legs. He was usually easy-going, unless liquored up. Then he was as safe to be around as a keg of dynamite with the fuse lighted.
“Howdy, Brad. You’re looking good, boy. Nice place you got here.”
“Yeah,” Brad said.
“Sure would like to have a place like this myself where I could sit of a Sunday afternoon on the front porch and whittle while my neighbors came visiting.”
“You’ve had your chances.”
Clem scratched his curly salt-and-pepper beard. “Reckon I have, at that,” he chuckled. “I’d go crazy on a place like this, tied down to it. How’s the coffee situation?” Clem sat across the table and drank coffee while Brad pecked at the eggs Elena slid onto his plate.
Maybe she’s already on her way over here, Brad thought, coming because I wanted her to, asked her to.
He made a disconsolate study as he gazed out the window. Down the glade, two hundred yards away, stood the barn. Then he remembered the Winchester still in its scabbard in the barn.
Once outside, and given half a minute, he could reach the barn. With the Winchester in his hands, the odds would be cut considerably.
Clem and Elena were watching him. He turned back to his food, eating slowly, his mind racing. The rifle might as well be on the moon, unless he could get to the barn by a trick. Either Clem or Jeffers could cut him down before he’d covered half the distance.