He strides, under a tapestry of faintly pulsing stars, through the desolate town, whistling softly for his horse, one hand gripping a lax tender thigh, the other clasped behind her skirted knees. He assumes the church will not long contain the turmoil within, but his hopes of getting out of here quickly are fading. He headed first for the blacksmith’s shed where last he spied the black mare, but the shed was not where he remembered it to be; finding the jailhouse with the gallows out front instead, he made next for the stables but wound up again at the jail. She was getting heavy, so he thought to hide her in her schoolhouse until he could locate the mare or some other horse or pair of horses, but he has come once more to the gallows and the jailhouse, or they have come to him. He stands there by the hanging place in the hushed darkness, whistling softly, frustration welling up in his breast (where is that damned horse?), trying to get his bearings, his cheek pressed against a flexuous hip, his arms hugging her legs as if they were the one sure thing he might still hold on to. Tacked up on the scaffold is one of the posters announcing the schoolmarm’s high-noon hanging on the morrow, though in the dim starlight her portrait’s fierce severity seems to have mellowed, as though surrendering to whatever fate awaits her. He is determined she will not hang — if asked why he has come here, he would now say this was why — and it is as if the portrait recognizes that and so looks out upon him more with hope than outrage; but just how he is to accomplish her rescue is not yet clear to him, which may account for the gentle perplexity he also seems to read upon the portrait’s face, its gaze beseeching, its lips slightly parted as though to ask a question, or receive a kiss. Of farewell? He feels a pricking in the corners of his eyes and water forms there, which he supposes must be tears. He must not fail her. He turns his head away from that dread instrument with its noosed rope hanging high against the night, and this loner, this aloof and restless gunslinger, footloose, free, beholden to no one and no thing, presses his lips reverently against the softness there upon his shoulder, gazing past the sweet black hillock of her haunch at the field of throbbing stars in the moonless sky beyond and thinking: I am wholly lost and am not who I thought I was.
He is about to set off on another search for horse or cover when he hears the church letting out behind him and the men pouring clamorously into the street. There’s no time; they seem to be approaching rapidly from all directions, hollering out their rapturous oaths and maledictions and firing off their weapons. He jogs heavily across the street, feeling pursued now, the schoolmarm’s head bouncing against his back (the beseeching gaze, parted lips: he’s not thinking upon these now, though he knows he surely will again), and ducks into the jailhouse, but, encumbered by the burden of her, he cannot throw the bolt before the men of the town come pounding in and push him back.
Yo, sheriff! Lookit whut yu got thar!
Haw! Aint she a gratifyin sight!
Done hit the jackpot, the sheriff did!
They light the lamps and circle about him, filling up the room, raucously admiring the woman slung over his shoulder, reaching out to try to palpate her lifeless parts or poke at them with their greasy gunbarrels. He fends them off as best he can, backing toward the cell door, considering his choices. Probably he has none.
We wuz afeerd we wuz gonna miss out our neck-stretchin party!
Yu done good, sheriff! Yu done right by the lawr!
Now whynt yu go treat yerself to a easeful potation, podnuh, and rest up fer the big day, says a toothless pop-eyed hunchback tented in a voluminous white linen jacket with a deputy’s badge pinned upside down to its stained lapel. We’ll take keera the prizner fer yu.
No, he says. In former times he would have simply shot his way out of here, tried to; can’t do that now. Yu’ll leave her be. She aint gonna hang.
Whut—?
I’m lettin her go.
Yu caint do thet, sheriff! Yu aint got the right!
We built thet new gallows jest fer her!
Hadta use up the whole back halfa the feed store fer the wood!
Caint hep thet. She aint the one. I stole thet hoss.
Yu whut—?
The men fall back momentarily, their jovial mien turned dark, while under his hand the schoolmarm’s thigh twitches and stiffens as though tweaked awake by his stark confession. Put me down, she demands icily from behind his back, and all the softness seems to go out of her. Immediately, please.
Tarnation, someone mutters, and fires a gob into the cell behind him for exclamatory punctuation. Looks like we’ll hafta change the pitcher on all them fuckin posters.
He drops to his knees to set her feet on the floor, watched closely by the surly men crowding round once more, and she straightens up above him, touching his shoulder briefly to brace herself, a touch, though merely expedient, for which he is grateful. He continues to kneel there for a moment, as if petitioning for mercy, which is perhaps what he’s doing, but without another word she turns on her stolid black heels and, hands clasped at her waist, struts away toward the door, the men removing their hats and backing off to let her pass. It is not his wont to break a silence, but faced with the dreadful and endless one to which he is now condemned (which he will confront, when she is gone, with the quiet stoicism that is his nature and by which he’s known, and has known himself), he cannot help himself: Yu aint never even thanked me, he calls out.
She turns back at the open door, framed by the velvety black night behind her. There is not much of affection in her gaze, but he is encouraged even by the lack of undue choler. Not ain’t, she replies, quietly but firmly. You have never thanked me.
No? He is somewhat bewildered but full aware he owes her much, and he stands up and takes his hat off as the others have done. Sorry, mam. But you aint thanked me neither.
She sighs and shakes her head. For what have I to thank you?
Well. Yu know. Fer whut I jest done. Fer savin yer life.
I did not steal that horse. You did what you had to do.
No. He finds it difficult to meet her hard steady gaze, which he believes now to be the color of cast iron, so stares instead at the dark dimplelike beauty mark on her cheek. Thet warnt the reason I done it.
That was not the reason that you did it.
No, mam.
So what was that reason, pray tell?
I … I caint say it.
Cannot say it.
No, mam. Jest caint.
She sighs, and though she glowers still, there is more of tenderness in that sigh than there has been in her before.
Y’know whut? I think the sheriff’s got a soft spot fer the marm!
Y’reckon?
She pauses there by the door, watching him for a moment in all her straight-backed rectitude, and then that stern righteousness melts away and, haltingly, she comes back into the room, her black skirts whispering, and stands mildly before him in the lamplight, tipping her head to catch his wayward glance, as if beseeching him to look at her, and, with an awful weakness spreading through him, he does.
Well but does the marm have a soft spot fer the sheriff?
Haw! Ifn she does, I reckon I know whar yu kin find it!
Shet yer trap now! I think he’s gonna kiss her!
Whut? I caint believe it!
Nor can he. His eyes are full of this new sight — her softened brow, the searching gaze, her moist parted lips — brand new, even unimaginable until this moment, and yet somehow so familiar he feels he’s seen this face turned to him thus yieldingly all his natural-born life, and he leans toward it, his eyes closing, as if finding at last what had long been lost.