I said, “You wouldn't be having any ideas about that reward money, would you, Joe?”
“Don't be a damned fool!” he said angrily. “I just want to keep you from getting killed on my doorstep. Like I told you, there's nothing here for you. Why don't you just ride off and let us alone?”
“I'd still like to hear it from Laurin,” I said, “before I do any riding.” I started to turn toward the house again, but an urgency in Joe Bannerman's voice cut off the movement.
“Goddammit, Tall, listen to me! I'm trying to tell you that it's all over between you and Laurin.” Then he sighed wearily. “I guess you've got a lot of catching up to do. I'll try to give it to you as straight as I know how. Ray Novak's in that house, and he has orders from the federal government to get you. Ray was made a deputy United States marshal after the bluebellies were pulled out of Texas. I told you that things changed....”
I think I knew what was coming next. I tried to brace myself for it, but it didn't do any good when Joe Bannerman said, “It's Ray Novak that Laurin is in love with, Tall. Not you. She's afraid of you. You've got to be just a name on wanted posters, like this Pappy Garret that you've been riding with. You've got to be a killer, just like him.” He shook his head. “I don't know, maybe you had a right to kill that policeman on account of your father. But all those others... What is it, Tall, a disease of some kind? Can't you ever turn your back on a fight? Don't you know any way to settle an argument except with guns?”
Then he looked at me for what seemed a long time. “I guess you don't even know what I'm talking about,” he said. “That's the way you always were, never turning your back on a fight. And you never lost one before, did you, Tall? But you're losing one now. It's Ray Novak that Laurin's going to marry. Not you.”
I stood dumbly for a moment before the anger started to work inside me. I still didn't believe the part about Laurin. A thing like ours couldn't just end like that. But Ray Novak—at the very beginning of the trouble it had been Ray Novak, and now at the end it was the same way. I started for the house again, but Joe Bannerman stepped in my path.
“Tall, you can't go in there. Ray has been sworn in to get you.”
I said tightly, “Get out of my way.”
He didn't move.
I said, “This is my problem and I'll settle it my own way. If you try to stop me, Joe, I'll kill you.”
His face paled. Then I thought I saw that look in his eyes that I had seen once before—just before he told me that Pa was dead. For some reason that I didn't understand, he was feeling sorry for me, and I hated him for it.
Slowly, he stepped back out of my way. He said quietly, “I believe you would. Killing me wouldn't mean any more to you than stepping on an ant. It wouldn't mean a thing to you.”
“Don't be a damned fool,” I said. But he had already stepped back, watching me with that curious mixture of awe and fear that I had come to expect from men like him. He didn't try to stop me as I went around the side of the barn and headed for the back steps of the house. Maybe he didn't feel it was necessary, because it was too late to stop anything now. Ray Novak was waiting for me at the back door.
If he had made the slightest move I would have killed him right there. I realized that I had never really hated anybody but him. It would have been a pleasure to kill him, and I knew I could do it, no matter how much training his pa had given him with guns. But he didn't make a move. He didn't give me the excuse, and I'd never killed a man yet who hadn't made the first move.
He said mildly, “I guess you better come in, Tall.”
He was just a blurred figure behind the screen door and I couldn't see what his eyes were saying. Then another figure appeared behind him. It was Laurin.
Woodenly, I went up the steps, opened the screen door, and stepped into the kitchen. Laurin was standing rigidly behind Ray, and I thought: She's grown older, the same as I have. Those large eyes of hers were no longer the eyes of a girl, but of a woman who had known worry and trouble and—at last I placed it—fear. She had changed in her own way almost as much as I had changed. Only Ray Novak seemed the same.
Ray said, “We don't want any trouble, Tall. Not here. Maybe it's best that you came back this way and we can get things settled once and for all.”
Laurin said nothing. She didn't move. She looked at me as if she had never seen me before, and in my mind I heard Joe Bannerman saying: There's nothing for you here in John's City. Nothing at all. But I fought back the sickness inside me. Laurin had loved me once, that was all that mattered. She still loved me. Nothing could change that.
Ray Novak moved his head toward the parlor. “Do you want to come in here, Tall? We've got a lot to say and not much time to say it in. My pa is coming in from town in a few minutes to pick me up in the buckboard. We'll have to get everything settled before then.”
I said, “I can settle with you later. This is just between me and Laurin.”
I looked at her and still she didn't move. I couldn't tell what she was thinking. At last she said, “It's Ray's affair as much as ours, Tall. You see, we're going to be married.”
I guess a part of me must have died then. Joe Bannerman had said it and I hadn't believed it. Now it was Laurin herself, telling me as soberly as she knew how that it was all over between us, and I knew that this time it was the truth. I wasn't sure what I felt, or what I wanted to do about it. I suppose I wanted to go to her, to take hold of her with my hands and shake some sense into her. Or hold her close and make her see that it wasn't over with us, that it never would be. But her eyes stopped me. Perhaps she had expected something like that, and I saw that look of fear come out and look at me. She started backing away. She was afraid of me.
Ray Novak said, “I wanted you to know about me and Laurin before I went out looking for you. I didn't want you to think that I was going around behind your back....”
I shoved him aside with the flat of my hand and took Laurin's arm before she could back away. She tried to twist out of my grasp, but I held on and jerked her toward me. Anger like I've never known before was swelling my throat. I said, “Tell him to get out of here! If he doesn't, so help me God, I'll kill him where he stands!”
Ray Novak started to step forward. Instinctively, his hand started to move toward his gun, and I was praying that he would follow through with the motion. But Laurin said:
“Ray!”
And he stopped. Then something strange happened to Laurin. A moment before her eyes were bright and shiny with fear, but now they showed nothing.
She said, “Ray, do as he says.”
Ray Novak's face darkened. “I'm not leaving you alone with him. He's crazy. There's something wrong and mixed up and rotten in that head of his.”
“Ray, please!”
He hesitated for another moment. Then he relaxed. “All right, Laurin. Whatever you say. But I'll be outside if...”
He left the rest unsaid. He turned and went out the back door, taking up a position a few paces away from the back steps.