Denver, Colo., Jan. 22—This morning Claude Hilder, aged nineteen, shot Emma Douglas and Harry R. Haley, and then killed himself. The woman will probably recover. Haley is dangerously wounded in the lungs. Jealousy caused the tragedy. Hilder's brother, a returned Philippines soldier, killed himself recently, his mother also dying as the result of self-inflicted wounds. The family is said to be tainted with insanity.
Books put down the El Paso Daily Herald. He thought: This is where I am. A room in a rooming house on Overland Street in El Paso, Texas. I will be here until March, maybe, or April. It is the last place I will be. I had better have a close look at it.
The room was commodious, perhaps eighteen by twenty-two. The floor was wood, oak possibly, which would be dear in these parts, and the Wilton carpet was patterned with red and purple roses. Beside the bed and before the washbowl hooked oval rugs of orange and black had been laid to protect the carpet. The furnishings were quality, too: the leather armchair in which he sat; a library table between it and the bed, which was brass; under the bed a china slop-jar, along its rim a row of cherubs playing harps and providing musical accompaniment while you pissed; a straight chair; and the massive chiffonier, with five drawers. On the table, on a large doily, stood a lamp with two bulbs and pull-chains and an ornate shade. The material resembled isinglass, but it was frosted, and under this crystal coating blue, brown, and green birds of paradise were painted, so that when the lights were on the effect was vivid, almost magical. The birds seemed to take wing. On the table, under the shade, sat a glass candy compote, its cover in the shape of a stem of grapes. The compote was empty. He valued the washbowl, mirror, and towel rack. Shaving might be difficult later on, but at least he would not have to leave the room to manage it. The wallpaper featured sprays of blue and golden lilies against a white background, and there were two pictures, framed and under glass. In one, the smaller, a noble Indian sat astride his pony on a rocky promontory, surveying a wilderness with sorrowful mien. In the other, the setting was a woodland glade, and a tranquil pool about which, gazing at their reflections in the pool, knelt several nymphs, clad just diaphanously enough to reveal their rather buxom charms. They were not alone. Spying upon them from the foliage was a gang of half-men, half-goats, with horns and hoofs and hairy tails and legs, who appeared to him to be working up a lust to leap and lay hell out of the nymphs. The ceiling fixture was two bulbs suspended in glass domes. The closet curtain, on a rod, was green muslin. There were two windows with lace curtains, and the one to the south being raised, the lace was stirred by a breeze. He saw a shadow on the wall.
He eased himself off his pillow, edged along and around the bed and down the other side to the wall.
He hunched and, bending his left arm, thrust it swiftly through the open window and along the wall of the house like a hook. When his fingers met something, he seized it. He pulled.
Gillom was hauled along the wall by a suspender until his face was less than six inches from J. B. Books's face. Then another hand reached through the window and took him around the throat.
"You little bastard! You spy on me again and I'll nail your slats to a tree!"
The man had his throat in both hands now. "Recognized me, huh? Told your ma, didn't you? Who else did you blab to?"
"Mose," Gillom choked.
"Speak up!"
"Tarrant. At the stable."
He was lifted off his feet, shaken the way a terrier shakes a rat. "God damn you, boy! If you were mine I'd whip your setter so raw you'd stand the rest of your miserable life!"
Gillom did not resist. And as suddenly as he had been seized, he was let go. Books's face seemed to deform into ridges and furrows. He groaned. He went down on his knees inside the room, heavily. He turned his head sideways and rested, cheek down, on the windowsill.
Gillom withdrew a step and waited, rubbing his throat. Presently he asked, "Are you O.K., Mister Books?"
"O.K."
"Are you ailing?"
"Not as well as I might be."
Gillom chewed a lip. It was an unpleasant habit, chewing a lip and looking sour, as though he were eating himself and disliked the taste.
"Can you draw as fast, though?"
That brought up Books's head. He was prepared to let the boy have it again, both barrels, but the look on the face so near his was one of such unabashed awe, such flop-ear, wagtail admiration, that his anger was cooled, his pain assuaged.
"How did you know me, son?"
"Your guns."
"I had my coat on."
"I watched you. Through the window."
"I can't abide a skulker. If you want to see me, knock on my door like a man."
"Yes, sir."
"What about my guns?"
"Everybody's heard of 'em. Gosh. And you. You're the most famous person ever came to El Paso."
"It doesn't please your ma."
"She don't understand. Hell, she don't have the least idea who we've got living with us."
"But you do. And you can't keep your mouth shut. If you don't henceforth, I will come down hard on you."
"I will."
"Why aren't you in school?"
"Well, I quit."
"I can't tolerate a quitter, either. When you start something, finish it. Or don't start."
The boy was silent. Books grunted, got slowly off his knees. "Whatever you do, don't lollygag. Go do something useful."
Gillom grinned. "What do you do useful?"
Books was silent now. Divided by brick, they could not see each other.
"Can I fetch you anything, Mr. Books?"
"No."
"Can I shine your boots?"
"No."
"I must clean the room."
"Go ahead."
Aproned, her hair done up in a kerchief, Bond Rogers entered, carrying as subterfuge a dustcloth, a cake of Bon Ami, and a carpet sweeper. The room needed less than a lick and a promise, but she had schemed to have housework an excuse for him and a distraction for herself. She simply couldn't walk in and stand, back to the door again, or sit opposite him and have it out, she hadn't the courage. But by moving about, by keeping busy, half her mind on what she was doing, half on what she was saying, she might not only survive the ordeal, she might achieve what she wanted. She planned first to dust, and while doing so to remind him of the lie he had used to cheat his way into her house, and then, as he writhed with guilt, and as she ran the carpet sweeper, she could persuade him to betake himself elsewhere, perhaps to a den of iniquity more suitable to his appetites.
It went wrong from the start. In order to evade his eyes, to put the menace of the man in the armchair behind her, rather than dusting she began to scrub the washbowl. But that placed her next to the closet, in which hung his vest, and the proximity to his firearms gave her the shudders. She knew, too, that he was considering her, and probably her backside. She held the cake of Bon Ami to her nostrils as though it were smelling salts, but what she sniffed was vice, gunpowder, foul language, and the stench of death. And just as she opened her mouth to indict him again for taking criminal advantage of an alias, he spoke:
"I apologize, Mrs. Rogers."
"Apologize."
"For taking Hickok's name in vain."
"You should. But I will not accept it. The only way you can show repentance is to leave."
She scrubbed righteously, waiting.
"What is the sound I hear every half hour or so? Down by the corner. Like wheel rims on a wagon."
"Oh. Probably the streetcar. It passes our corner every half hour."
"The streetcar?"
"Yes. Mule-drawn. We've had them in El Paso for some time. They cross the river, too, and run back and forth from Ciudad Juárez. Mr. Books, I was asking you to leave."