“Nothin’, Harry! I...”
He nodded behind him. “Go in and get that doctor out of sight.”
Rhomer frowned, cocked his head like a dog trying to understand its master’s words. “You mean... six feet under, out of sight?”
Gauge touched his chin, thought momentarily. “No. Not yet, anyway. If there’s trouble, we may need that quack.”
“Then... what...?”
The sheriff jerked a thumb toward the office. “Stick the doc in the back cell and keep somebody on guard. When this thing is over, if nobody needs patchin’ up... or, anyway, after they been patched up sufficient... then we’ll dig Miller a new surgery out on Boot Hill. About time this town had a new doctor, anyway.”
Rhomer, liking the sound of that, was just about to head back inside when Lola asked, “Say, Vint, what happened to your ear? Cut yourself shaving?”
The smile in his nest of beard oozed menace, but the deputy was turned away from Gauge, who didn’t tumble to it.
Rhomer said, “Naw, thought you knew, Lola — one of your girls did this to me. I got a little... rambunctious, I guess.”
“Boys will be boys,” she said.
“Well, she better look out. Might get what she deserves.”
He went in.
Then Lola was at Gauge’s side, saying, “So you’ve got the elderly doctor handled. Congratulations. Now, what about Banion? What are you going to do about him?”
Gauge chuckled, stepping away from her. “Banion? Why, I’m not going to do a damn thing about Banion.”
Relishing his secret joke, he got the wire out, reading it to himself yet another time, savoring the words that spoke of Banion’s death two months before. Then he wadded up the slip of paper and tossed it into the street.
After watching this curious conduct with some confusion, Lola reared her head back and smiled at him... but her eyes were hateful, and this he caught.
“Why not go after him, Harry? Or has Banion got you scared?”
He backhanded her and she went down on the porch like a bundle of kindling, the plank flooring groaning though she herself made not a sound. She stayed down there awhile, her back arching like an animal about to strike.
Then she had that derringer in her hand, courtesy of the gambler’s holdout rig up her sleeve.
As she started up, Gauge kicked the little gun out of her gloved fingers, as easy as swatting a fly. The toe of his boot caught her hand enough to make her yowl.
She was still down there, a wounded, cornered animal, breathing hard, looking up at him with eyes showing white all around, nostrils flared, teeth showing, leaning one hand against the planking, the other touching the redness of her cheek.
Her breath regular now, her voice seemed surprisingly soft and almost uninflected — no anger apparent, only hurt, and not the hurt of flesh, but something deeper.
“Why do you keep doing that, Harry? How many times have I told you never to hit me? How can you treat me like this after all we’ve been to each other?”
He grabbed her by an arm and hauled her up, and it took her a while to get her footing, brushing off her split-skirt as she did.
“You’re right, Lola. We have... been... something to each other. ‘Been,’ as in ‘we ain’t anymore.’ ”
She stared at him as if he were a stranger now. “What are you...?”
He took her by both arms and squeezed, not enough to hurt, but to demonstrate control.
“I just don’t need you anymore, kid. Oh, I’m not throwin’ you out — not exactly. You do what I tell you to, and maybe I’ll let you stay on in Trinidad. Misbehave, and maybe I won’t.”
She swallowed hard, her chin quivering, small, trembling fists held waist-high. “I brought you to Trinidad, Harry. Never forget that. I made you. You started with my money.”
“That’s right,” he said. “You made me. But how many times did I make you?” He laughed lightly and shrugged. “It all worked out real nice, didn’t it? Well, it’ll work out even better now.”
She stood very close to him, gazing up at him, and there was something fearless about it that impressed him some.
She said, “You really think that Cullen girl is woman enough for you? Not that she’d ever have you. She’d kill herself before letting you touch her.”
“Maybe I don’t mean to ask,” he said, and he shoved her away and went back into his office, slamming the door on her.
Gauge didn’t see Lola — going out in the street to retrieve the derringer — notice the wad of paper he had tossed there. And bend down in the street to pick it up...
Nor did he see her come back up on the porch, intending to confront him again, but stopping as voices from inside came through the open shutters.
“Vint, that stage stops at the relay station to make its change of horses before comin’ into town.”
“That’s right, Harry, same as always. And the passengers can have a drink or two while they’s waitin’. So what?”
“So we’ll meet those cattle buyers out there, before they even get to town. Old Man Cullen won’t think of that, and even if he does... we’ll be waiting.”
Lola tucked the derringer back in its sleeve rig and the wrinkled slip of paper into a pocket, then walked quickly to the livery stable, where she got her horse and rode off to deliver her own message.
Chapter thirteen
From her saddle atop Daisy, Willa — in red-and-black plaid shirt, red neck-knotted scarf, denims, and stirrup-friendly boots — shielded her eyes from the sun and let them roam over the endless, slightly rolling grassy expanse before her. She and a dozen other riders were paused at a slight rise in their search for dead cattle that didn’t seem to want to be found.
They had been at it since shortly after dawn, and — after meeting up with the stranger and thirty-some other men on horseback whom he’d managed to enlist from Trinidad — they’d put in another two fruitless hours. The volunteers from town, shopkeepers and clerks, looked almost comically out of place on the range in their suits and ties and bowlers. They had split up into three groups, the men from town joining cowhands from the Cullen spread and the other independents, a rancher leading each contingent.
Willa’s group consisted of foreman Whit Murphy, several Cullen hands, half-a-dozen Trinidad men, and herself. And, of course, the stranger, whose tenderfoot-worthy apparel was looking considerably less fancy after the dust, sweat, and riding of the morning.
Right now they were looking at a whole lot of nothing under a sun that was almost directly above them, and growing ever hotter.
Whit, his expression foul, said, “This is loco — we ain’t found any sign of dead cows.”
The foreman sat on horseback on one side of her and the stranger on the other.
The man in black on his dappled gelding said, “They’re around.”
“Really?” Whit snapped. He threw an open hand out. “Where?”
“That’s the question.”
A rider came up quickly — Matt Gerrity, the small, tough owner of another of the few remaining independent spreads. In his forties, with sharp cheekbones, untrimmed reddish brown mustache, and cleft chin, the grizzled Gerrity was otherwise indistinguishable from any of the hard-riding cowhands who worked for him, half a dozen of whom — supplanted by the fish-out-of-water townsmen — arrived moments after their boss.
The rancher pointed and said, “We covered all that end, Miss Cullen, Whit. No sign of nothin’ bein’ buried there.”
The stranger asked, “No sick cattle?”
Gerrity shook his head. “We swung all through that herd Gauge’s got staked out for delivery. Checked all around.” He shrugged, shook his head again. “No sign of the pox.”