Papa said nothing.
Prescott asked, “Would you like to know what that offer amounts to, sir? Or would you prefer to discuss it out of the earshot of others?”
Again, Papa said nothing.
But he did provide a response of sorts: he turned and headed out, with a confidence that a blind man ought not have, but his daughter was there to guide him when he slightly misjudged the door.
Outside, big Lem was loading up one last sack of flour, with O’Malley supervising, as Papa came down those steps with Willa on his arm, frightened her father might lose his step, driven by temper as he was, his face as red as the stubborn streaks of the dying sunlight.
Rattling down the stairs came their frustrated host, while the other committee members followed, pausing on various steps behind him. Grover Prescott was not among them — he’d disappeared like the ghost he’d first seemed to be.
Harris caught up with Papa and spun him around, shouting, spittle flying. “You muleheaded old fool! You’re going to ruin it for the rest of us! Now, come back inside and talk this out reasonable like!”
If any blind man ever threw a better punch, history had not recorded it — at least not that his shocked, and rather proud, daughter knew of.
While she was for her own reasons in agreement with these town fathers, their attempt to manipulate and pressure Papa, and even, in the case of Prescott, buy him off, enraged her.
The old man’s blow having landed right on the chin, Harris stumbled backward, only to get caught by Perkins, who had followed him down the steps.
And, of course, being in an undertaker’s arms could only be disconcerting, so the merchant got his footing back and was starting to form words with a bloodied mouth when a hulking form came between him and his blind attacker.
Lem bashed Papa in the face a good one, and Papa went down hard.
Willa knelt at her startled father’s fallen side and looked up at the lummox and snarled, “Get away from him, you blooming idiot!”
But the blooming idiot just stood there with his fists balled, looming over his sightless elderly opponent like he was ready to continue the fight, and he got his wish when big Burt O’Malley came out of somewhere to send a swift fist into the dolt’s breadbasket and another into his face.
Lem stumbled back, even as his father and the other committee members were scrambling out of the way, some almost scampering back up the steps to the boardwalk, as if seeking a better viewing position.
Like his father, the big kid in overalls had a bloodied face; but he was as tough a nut as O’Malley, which meant the fight was on.
Lem came at his father’s attacker fast, long arms windmilling, displaying no skill but plenty of power, forward movement that sent the older man backpedaling out into Main Street. Here a dust-reducing layer of sand from the nearby Purgatory River had been spread, which effectively slowed both men down. This was not good news for O’Malley, who might have benefited from fancy footwork and who, for all his size, was smaller than the younger man and now had to stay more or less in one place while trying to keep under those long, lashing arms with the rocklike fists on the ends of them. O’Malley did fine for a while, but finally one of those wild swings clipped him on the forehead and he went down on one knee.
Somebody must have taught Lem it wasn’t fair to keep hitting a man when he was down. Maybe Mr. Harris, knowing his boy’s power, had advised him of such in childhood to keep his son from killing somebody.
So Lem paused just long enough for O’Malley to scoop up a handful of sand and toss it in the big lug’s face. This sent Lem stumbling back, blinking, brushing his eyes with fingers too busy to be fists right now, and O’Malley came forward with a flurry of punches that were anything but windmilling, that were directed with precision, kidney punches alternating with a barrage of belly blows.
Clearly, the older man knew more about fisticuffs, so somehow the dim boy got bright enough just to tackle his opponent, and they rolled and wrestled and got in blows here and there, some glancing, some damaging, and it might have gone on a good deal longer if the gunshot hadn’t rung out.
All eyes, including the combatants’, flew down the street to the Victory on its corner perch, where standing just outside the batwing doors was the sheriff, all in black, his .44 aimed skyward and gun smoke trailing in that same direction. Just behind him, looking on with concern, a hand on his shoulder, was the dance-hall queen, Rita Filley, looking so lovely in that green satin gown that Willa couldn’t have hated her more.
“That’s enough!” Caleb York yelled toward them.
Then he strode their way, spurs jingling, and the older man and the younger one got off each other, as ashamed as a girl and a boy caught in a hayloft with their clothes askew.
O’Malley was brushing sand off his clothes, while Lem just stood there bleeding, as Caleb came up, then holstered his weapon when he saw the battle was over, at least for now.
“Is this about anything?” the sheriff demanded.
Nobody said it was. Willa had long since helped her father up, though he still looked dazed, even for a blind man.
“Find someplace else to be,” Caleb told them.
The merchants and the mayor all walked in their various directions, while O’Malley and Willa got her papa up into the buckboard.
Then she came over to Caleb and said, “Thanks for breaking that up.”
“What they pay me for.”
She gestured toward the committee members, who were fleeing toward their respective homes. “They were trying to pressure Papa into selling that right-of-way.”
“I gathered.”
Very quietly, after a glance back at her father, she whispered, “They’re makin’ it hard for me to agree with them.”
He grunted a laugh. “I know the feeling. But people can go about something the wrong way and still be right.”
He walked her to the buckboard, helped her up.
“You all right, sir?” Caleb asked, looking across Willa at her father.
The old man sat slump shouldered, as if he’d been defeated, even though she’d watched him spurn such heated attempts to make him knuckle under. All Caleb got out of her papa was a nod.
Then Caleb gave her a nod and said, “Willa.”
She nodded back, reins in hand. “Caleb.”
The sheriff touched his hat to O’Malley, already on horseback, and O’Malley did the same, wearing that easy smile. He didn’t look much the worse for wear. Just a bruise forming on his forehead, where Lem had clipped him.
Caleb said, “I take it you waded in to help Mr. Cullen.”
“Somethin’ like that.”
“Obliged.”
“Glad to help out. Nice to know I can still handle a jackass kid if need be.”
“Comes in handy,” Caleb said, though, of course, it had taken the sheriff’s gunshot to end the fight.
As they rolled out of town, with Willa at the reins and Uncle Burt riding alongside, she glanced back at Caleb, who was walking toward the Victory again.
Where Rita Filley waited on her doorstep.
Chapter Six
Alver Hollis had never really been a preacher of any kind. His father had back in Ohio, and it was from that very real Baptist minister that Hollis had learned the Bible inside out, and been frequently beaten with the Good Book, as well. Also with various belts and a razor strop, as evidenced by the scars Hollis’s flesh still bore.
Not that his righteous daddy had needed anything but the two massive fists God had given him. From his pulpit, Hollis’s old man — a tall, broad-shouldered figure with blazing eyes in a black-and-white-bearded face — promised his flock fire and brimstone. He scared the hell into and out of them, but only his boy knew how much terror this man of God could deliver when words weren’t his only weapon.