“So you are worried about him posting your brother out of town,” she said. “He is just a boy, I heard somebody say.” He saw that she looked very tired.
“He is eighteen. No, he’s not a boy.” He was embarrassed that he had let the subject of Billy come up. But it was big in him and there was, it seemed, no one else he could speak to like this. He said, “Have you ever seen a gambler in a game of cards and you can tell he knows just where every card is?”
She nodded, as though immediately she had caught his thought; and he went on. “Well, I guess I am like that right now. Cards have been dealt out and they are face down yet, but I know what they are.”
Kate Dollar continued to regard him with her black eyes, her expression one of expectant interest. But now he was confused and jarred by the thought that she was estimating him, and was not interested in Billy at all. He thrust his chair back and got to his feet.
“Well, I didn’t mean to bother you with all that, Miss Dollar. I just came to ask you some things, and I thank you.”
“You are welcome, Deputy.”
Halfway to the lobby he realized he had forgotten his hat, and he had to return for it, apologizing to her again. She did not speak this time, although she smiled a little; he noticed that her eyes looked pink and swollen in her tired face, and he thought, as he started back to the jail to begin the long night’s wait, that the man Cletus must have been more to her than she wanted to admit.
13. MORGAN HAS CALLERS
I
MORGAN had been waiting for her to come all evening, but still he started at the knock on the alley door, which he knew was her knock. He rose and smoothed his hands back along the sides of his head, pulled down the tabs of his vest, buttoned his coat. He slid back the bar and opened the door; at first he could see nothing, and he didn’t speak, waiting for his eyes to accustom themselves to the dark.
She was standing back and a little to one side, where the light did not touch her.
“I’ve told you tommies to quit bothering me,” he said, and made as though to slam the door.
“Tom,” she said, and moved closer. “It’s Kate.”
He was supposed to blow to pieces at the sight of her. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “Now they are following me out from all over.”
“Yes,” Kate said. She sounded disappointed, which pleased him. He moved aside and she entered, tall, all in black; black hat with black cherries on it, black skirt draped in thick folds over her hips, black sacque jacket — with only the white ruffled front of her shirtwaist to relieve it.
She clutched her hands, in black mesh mitts, to her waist, watching him close the door. Her dead white face was controlled, and stiff, but filled with hate.
“Couldn’t you get along without me, Kate?” he asked, and managed to meet her black eyes and grin. But, when she did not answer, against his will he retreated to his desk and took a cheroot from the silver box there, and lit it. “You should have let me know you were coming.”
“Didn’t you know?”
“I’d’ve had a brass band out.”
“Didn’t you?” she said.
He frowned, as though he’d been struck by a thought. Then he burst out laughing. “I guess you came in on the stage this afternoon,” he said. “Well, you had a little excitement at that, didn’t you?”
“You don’t know who it was that was killed?” Kate said. She was staring at him not quite so intently, and he thought he had got past her. If not, in the end he had only to tell her the truth and she would not believe it, either, from him. She looked very tired, he thought; she looked older than he had remembered, who was not even two years older.
“Somebody said he looked like a high-roller.” He paused, frowned again, grinned again. “Why, was he with you? I thought you had had enough of high-rollers, Kate.”
“It was Bob Cletus’s brother.”
He stared at her as if incredulous. He began to laugh again. He put down his cheroot and laughed and watched her upper lip twitching, with hate of him, or as though she were going to cry. “My God, how you run through those Cletuses!” he said.
She made a humming sound in her throat. She said, in a shaky voice, “You knew I would come, Tom. I told you — I would!”
He turned the laughter off like a tap. He stared back into her black eyes that were glazed with tears now, and said, “If I’d known you were coming out here with some cheap gunman you spaded up somewhere, you’d have never got here either. You damned vulture.”
“Oh, I don’t think you shot him,” Kate said. “I think you hired Clay to do it. The way you did with Bob.”
That was supposed to pin him to the wall. But she could not keep her voice from shaking, and he almost felt sorry for her.
He said, “Or I might’ve just done nothing and let him choose Clay out and commit suicide. The way it was before.”
She turned half away from him, dropping her hands tiredly to her sides. He saw her glance up at the painting over the door. He felt an almost savage relief that she had not got to Fort James with Pat Cletus during the time when he, Morgan, had come on ahead to Warlock, and Clay had remained in Fort James.
“So you went out and hunted up his brother to do Clay down for you. It took you a good while.”
“I couldn’t find him,” Kate said, in a dead voice. “So I gave up. But then I ran onto him.” She stopped, as though there were nothing more to say.
“And all for nothing, too. Well, bad luck, Kate. But maybe there is another brother, or cousins. In Australia or somewhere.”
She shook her head a little. She reminded him of a clock-work figure running down.
“Haven’t you got the fare? Why, there is money I owe you, at that.” He put his hands to his money belt, and saw her face come back to life.
“Would you pay me to go? I hope you would pay a lot, for I won’t go!”
“Come back to me after all?”
He shouldn’t have said it. He saw the revulsion show clearly in her face, and the strain of maintaining the grin that painfully stretched his lips became immense. But he continued. “I have got a nice place out front, and a nice apartment back here. I could set you up in style. You might have to work your trade from time to time if I ran short of cash, but…”
She only stared at him.
“Leaving then?” he asked. He had better not underestimate her, he knew, tired as she was now, and shocked. He felt enormously tired himself. He had thought hate did not affect him. He had thought he was used to it.
“No,” she said. “No, I will stay and watch Clay Blaisedell shot down like he shot Bob down.”
“Do it yourself?”
“Are you afraid I would? No, I won’t do that.”
He sat down in his chair, inhaled on his cheroot, blew smoke. “Maybe you can get somebody to go after him here. Like the one you just lost.” His voice rasped in his throat. “There are some that might be hard up enough to try it for a chance to sleep free with a hydrophoby skunk bitch.”
He felt a lift of pleasure to see her face dissolve. But she quickly regained control of it. She only shook her head.
“Why, you have gone soft, Kate.”
“No,” she said, and again he saw how exhausted she was. “No, not soft. I went all over looking for Pat Cletus,” she said, in the dead voice. “I went more than five thousand miles looking for him — different places I had heard he might be. I couldn’t find him so I thought I would give it up. Then a month ago I met him in Denver, and we came out here and he was killed. I don’t know whether you did it or not — except — except I should’ve known he would be killed. Like I should’ve known Bob would be killed if he went to tell you he was going to marry me.”