“Take a real personal interest,” he said.
Her father asked, “In what way?”
“By talking to a few people in town. I already know a few to approach. Sir, can you give me the names of citizens who you consider allies?”
Her father did so, beginning with the members of the Citizens Committee.
“Thanks,” he said, rising. He hadn’t written them down. “I’ll start there.”
Half-rising herself, Willa said, “Would you like to catch a few hours of sleep first? We have plenty of room in our bunkhouse now, I’m afraid.”
He gave her a smile. “No. Sleep is a luxury none of us can afford right now. Whit... I’m hoping to join you on the range with some volunteers. Can you give me directions to somewhere we might meet around... eleven, say?”
“I can do that,” Whit said, just a touch grudging.
A few minutes later, Willa walked their guest out. The sun was climbing and the morning promised to be as beautiful as the problems they faced weren’t. Still chilly, though. The sun would be working on that.
At the bottom of the porch steps, she stopped him with a hand on a sleeve and said with concern, “If this cowpox is a reality...”
“It is.”
“... and we don’t make it to market, that means... well, it means the Bar-O will be wiped out, doesn’t it?”
They were facing each other, perhaps two feet away. Morning sun was at his back and he was bathed in cool blue shadow.
“Possibly,” he said. “Not for me to say, really. I don’t know how exactly your business affairs stand.”
She gave him a sharp look. “Well, that ten thousand dollars my father promised to pay you—”
He cut her off with a raised hand, then said, “It had a catch in it, as I recall. I had to kill Harry Gauge first, right?”
“Right.” She let him see a smirk that stopped just short of insulting. “Of course, you got half that much just by showing up.”
He smiled wearily, then said, “Miss Cullen, something you should know about me...”
“Yes?”
“I don’t take money for killing people.”
She shaded her eyes with a hand. “Then... who are you, anyway?”
“Not some hired killer. Did it never occur to you that I might really just be somebody passing through, who got caught up in things?”
“No, it didn’t. It still hasn’t.”
He sighed through his nose, a hint of disgust in it. “Well, your father can keep his money.”
She kissed him.
It was sudden, and sweet, then grew forceful on both their parts, as he held her to him, her arms going around him as she stood on tiptoes to meet the big man. Then, looking at each other, noses almost touching, he brushed the side of her face and her hair, and gazed at her with a tenderness that did not fit a man who had gunned down four men yesterday.
She asked, “Why... why do you kill, then?”
“Not for pleasure.”
He touched her face again, unhitched the gelding, and rode off toward town.
Chapter twelve
Stripes of mid-morning sun cut through barred windows, as Sheriff Harry Gauge entertained a guest in his office — Dr. Albert Miller, who right now looked like he could use a sawbones himself.
In the open area between Gauge’s desk and an old, small deputy’s table sat the lawman’s distinguished guest. The doc’s eyes were swollen, his nose trailing blood from its nostrils, skin along cheekbones ragged and red, lips puffy, discolored and bleeding. The plump little physician’s brown suit was rumpled and torn in front from where it had been grabbed repeatedly to shake him or to hold him for a slap, his white shirt splotched with crimson. Thin white hair mussed, he looked dazed, barely awake.
But he was.
Painfully so.
At that small table, two deputies were seated in hardback chairs, grinning, watching, smoking rolled cigarettes, sharing some morning whiskey, and playing two-handed poker for matchsticks. To their one side was a wood-burning stove, unlit, and looming over them was the wall of wanted posters from which stared faces almost as unpleasant as theirs. The presence of these deputies was not really necessary to this interrogation — the sheriff was plenty good enough at this sort of thing on his own steam.
Brown-haired and shaggy-mustached, bug-eyed Clovis Maxwell was the bigger of the two watchers, a cowboy who’d been among those who shoveled dirt over cattle carcasses last night, his filthy low-crowned plainsman hat and heavy leather chaps attesting his profession.
Across the small, scarred table was towheaded Cole Colton, small, even skinny, with close-set brown eyes, a trimmed gambler’s mustache and a sugar-loaf sombrero that seemed to dwarf him. He was no cowboy, just another former outlaw turned deputy in jeans and dark blue twill military shirt. He drank too much and was rattlesnake mean, but as a conscienceless killer, he had value to the sheriff.
These were the two men who had handled the dispatching of Old Man Swenson out near the stage relay station — Colton swinging the gun butt. They’d been invited to this questioning less to back up their boss than because they had a stake in what their guest had to say.
Both men carried .44’s, the weapons on the table as if serving as ante, though really to avoid falling out of their tied-down holsters.
They seemed to be enjoying the show.
Gauge slapped the doctor viciously on his right cheek and, when the man’s face turned to one side with the blow, bloody spittle flying, the sheriff slapped him again on the other cheek, just as hard, returning it to the other side.
“You’re a damn good Christian, Doc,” the sheriff said with a grin. “Turnin’ the other cheek like that.”
Maxwell guffawed at that; Colton didn’t get it.
Dr. Miller, breathing hard, did not seem to find any humor in the remark, either. How much he was seeing out of those swollen eyes was up for conjecture. His reddened ears had been cuffed enough to be ringing, so how well he was hearing was questionable, too.
“Maybe you’ll notice, Doc,” the sheriff said, eyes half-lidded, smile easygoing, “that I got a real touch for this kind of thing. Touch a medic like you might covet. See, I know just how far I can go without gettin’ to where there ain’t no comin’ back.”
He swung a sudden fist deep into the older man’s stomach. Wind whooshed out, accompanied by an anguished cry that was a mix of pain and exhaustion.
And the sheriff had only been at this twenty or so minutes.
Gauge placed both hands on the round man’s shoulders and leaned in, his seeming good humor gone.
“No more lies, Doc... and don’t hold out on me, no, sir. Good as I am at this, I can only hold back so long... and you’re too damn old and weak to take much more.”
His breath heavy and ragged, the doc said, “This... this is one thing... you won’t... won’t live down... Sheriff.”
That last word was uttered with unmistakable contempt.
Gauge let out some air, backed away, then began walking slowly around the seated man, like a stubborn loser at musical chairs.
“Touches my heart, Doc,” Gauge said gently. “That you’re so concerned about me, and my standin’ in the community. But, hell — you don’t need to worry yourself about Harry Gauge.”
Right behind him now, Gauge looped an arm around the doctor’s neck and pulled back, hard, as if flexing a muscle for an admiring female, forcing him back with the front chair feet off the floor, choking off the prisoner’s air, summoning a terrible gargling sound.
Then Gauge let go, chair legs finding the wooden floor with a jostle, and the sheriff again began walking slowly around the seated man.
“Just worry about yourself, Doc,” he advised.