Fiddlefoot (15 page)

“I think his business is good. It's certainly big,” Tess replied. This was an odd conversation, she thought, and she wondered what was behind it. Carrie must have understood her thoughts, for she smiled suddenly.

“I know it's silly, isn't it? Only, I've always wondered what sort of a man Rhino is, and if his old clothes and his shacky old place weren't a pose. I guess I've always accepted him since I was small, just like the scenery, but I've always been curious about him.”

Tess nodded. “I know what you mean. For the same reason, some day I'm going into a barber shop and ask for a shave, just to see what it's like.”

They both laughed then, and moved toward the door. Jonas was waiting outside to claim her, and Tess smiled good-bye to Carrie.

Jonas swung her into a varsoviana, and they hadn't danced long before Tess knew Jonas had been visiting the Pleasant Hour again. She accepted this with an easy tolerance because he seemed to be having a good time. When the dance ended, Jonas came to a halt that was not quite steady.

“Celebrating?” Tess asked.

Jonas grinned, but there was little humor in it. “That's right, Tess. I'm celebratin' goin' back to punchin' O-Bar cows again at thirty a month—just where I left off three years ago.”

“That's only temporary, Jonas,” Tess said comfortingly.

“Maybe,” Jonas said with a sudden gloom. “Maybe it's as permanent as Rhino's bank account, too.”

She was claimed by old Mr. Jackson for a schottische then, before she could comfort Jonas. After that, she danced with old friends she had not seen for months, and chatted with their womenfolk, and danced again and again. As the evening wore on, the children subsided; they sat big-eyed in the chairs along the wall, listening to tireless fiddles and Dick Afton getting more and more hoarse until they finally curled up and slept. She saw Judge Tavister dancing sedately with Mrs. Maas, and once, when she danced past crippled John Colby, the stage driver, he gave a grave nod of approval and winked.

It was a waltz that Hugh Nunnally finally claimed. His blocky, massive chest filled out his clean shirt solidly, and there was a kind of mocking courtliness about him that amused Tess. He danced expertly, offhandedly, the way he did everything, and he regarded her with the same bland good-humor he showed her every day. And, as always, she was faintly distrustful of that blandness, and of the unruffled confidence of the man that she had long since rightly read as an inner arrogance.

When the waltz was finished and he had just touched her arm, she heard a voice from the other side of her say, “Evenin', Tess, Hugh.” She looked up to see Sheriff Hannan, affable and smiling beside her. Hannan said to her, “You're looking beautiful this evening,” and gave her an easy smile that she knew was reserved for every woman in this room tonight.

Hannan glanced at Hugh then and said, “Virg Moore come in from Utah today?”

“He ought to be in tonight, Buck,” Hugh said. “I left word for him.”

Hannan nodded and drifted on, and now Tess said, “But Virg Moore has been in from Utah for a couple of days, Hugh.”

Nunnally smiled faintly and said, “I know. Hannan doesn't, though. Don't worry your head about it.”

In other words, she was to mind her own business, Tess thought. When he delivered her back to a silent and hostile Jonas and thanked her, it was with the same unruffled good-humor.

Dick Afton was forming a quadrille now, and she and Jonas moved out into the center of the floor. She looked up then to see Frank Chess standing in the doorway looking over the crowd. He was in dusty work clothes, and there was a dark smear of beard stubble on his face. He stood there, hands on hips, hat held in one hand, his dark short hair curly and tousled, and Tess saw the quick gay smile come to his face as he saw Carrie. Carrie made her way across the floor to him, hurrying, and not caring who noticed it.

Jonas spotted Frank just as Carrie came up to him.

“There's Frank,” Jonas said. He grabbed Tess's hand and moved toward the door, pulling her behind him, calling “Frank, come on and dance.”

Frank glanced up and saw Jonas and smiled. His glance shifted to Tess then, and Tess saw the quick approval that mounted into his eyes. He said, “How are you, Tess?” in a friendly voice.

Carrie was smiling happily beside him, and now Jonas said, “Come on, Frank. These girls are dancing my legs down.”

Frank shook his head and looked down at his clothes. “In these clothes I couldn't get a partner, Jonas.”

“You can't miss this,” Jonas pleaded, and he glanced at Carrie. “Tell him to get in here, Carrie.”

Carrie looked up at Frank, and then touched his face with her small hand, rubbing his beard stubble. She said, “Maybe they won't know him with the fur on.”

Jonas said quickly, “Look, Frank. Come on over to my room. Shave and get on a clean shirt, and you'll be back in time for supper.”

Tess watched Frank look down at Carrie inquiringly, and read her silent pleading, and then he glanced up and said, “All right, Jonas. It's on your head.”

Jonas turned and called, “Arch,” and Arch Ison tramped over. Jonas put Tess's hand in Arch's and then poked a long finger solemnly at Arch's chest. “This is a loan, understand?” He grinned at Tess and took Frank by the arm, and they went down the stairway.

Jonas stumbled once on the stairs and caught himself, and Frank, noticing it, looked sharply at him. He'd been drinking, Frank saw; a secret, alcoholic glumness sat strangely in Jonas's face and Frank wondered at it.

The McGarritys' rooms were over Miss Amy Dunn's dressmaking shop down the side street two doors behind the hotel, and access to them was by a rickety flight of wooden stairs along the side of the building.

Jonas preceded Frank through the doorway, turning left toward the front of the building. Frank waited inside until Jonas had struck a match and lighted the lamp, and then he came into the room. It was a small room, holding only an unmade bed littered with clothes, a couple of chairs, a stove in the far corner, and a washstand with mirror above it. These were poor man's quarters, and Jonas made no apology for them.

He said now, “You want to wait for hot water, Frank, or would you rather tear your face off?”

Frank rubbed his beard judiciously, and said he'd take cold water, and stripped out of his shirt. He poured the basin full of water and lathered his face and his upper body. He heard Jonas moving around behind him, then heard a glass set on the washstand, followed by the sound of bedsprings creaking. When he rinsed the soap from his eyes, he saw the glass with whiskey in it that Jonas had poured him, and he glanced at Jonas. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, the bottle between his feet, a drink in his hand, and a kind of brooding anger in his face now.

Frank said, “Where's John?”

“He took our horses to the mountain,” Jonas said gloomily. He looked at his whiskey and said bitterly, “Startin' Monday, I'm back to punchin' cows again, Frank.”

“Give Rhino time.”

Jonas took a long swallow of his drink and shuddered. He said then, “You think Tess has this figured right? Rhino will quit when it begins to hurt?”

“I think mountain freighting in winter will break his heart,” Frank said.

He began to lather his face, and Jonas rose and moved restlessly to the front window and looked out through it.

Frank glanced in the mirror, thinking soberly,
This is the fifth day
. He had stopped off at the dance, while the crew, weary and sleep-starved, went on through to Saber. It was only the memory of Carrie's disappointment that made him do it, and now he wondered if he had been wise. He had seen Hannan and Nunnally at the dance, and Nunnally had seen him, and tonight was Rhino's deadline. Some faint hope that this might be a bluff which must not remain uncalled prevented him from seeking out Rhino—that, and a deep reluctance to make the decision. He supposed Albie had returned with news of the stampede, or perhaps he was still scouting the canyons into the Gunnison for his scattered horses. There had been no sign of him on the way back from Crawford.

The first raw rake of Jonas's straight-edge razor hurt. He took a sip of the whiskey now, waiting for the soap to soften his beard. In the mirror he could see Jonas, still looking out the window into the night, and he noticed that Jonas was a little unsteady on his feet. On Tess's account he wondered how he could tell Jonas he'd had enough to drink for the night, but the thought trailed off as he remembered Tess and how exciting and beautiful she had seemed when he first saw her tonight. It was as if he were looking at her for the first time in her proper setting; she was all pale gold and white, softly proud and feminine, yet with the easy and friendly way about her that made all people want to like her. She was exciting and warm, and he found himself wondering if all men felt like this about her, and he knew they did.

The sound of Jonas turning away from the window now broke into his reverie. He began to shave, and Jonas came back to the bed. “Every time I look out that window at the office, I get mad all over again,” Jonas growled.

Before Frank could say anything, there was the sound of footsteps on the outside stairs. Jonas rose, just as the outside door opened. Hugh Nunnally came slowly in, Morg Lister and Virg Moore trailing him. Moore was a slight puncher, with a determined, oversized jaw that badly needed shaving, and which, in his case, reflected only the determination to drink more than he could hold. He was sober enough now, though, and he stank of horses. He smiled uneasily at Frank, as if he had been forbidden to, but couldn't find a way around it.

Nunnally put a shoulder against the wall and said unsmilingly, “Going to the dance, Frank?”

Jonas stepped out into the middle of the room and halted on unsteady legs. He raised a hand and pointed a finger at Nunnally, and said, in a voice thick with both whiskey and outrage, “I don't like you, and especially I don't like you in my room. You can take those other two dogs and get out.”

Hugh regarded him a calm moment, then pushed away from the wall, took an easy step toward him, and hit him. It was a solid-blow, swung with all the corded strength of Hugh's thick shoulder, and Jonas hadn't expected it. He went down against the bed, and his head rapped sharply against the bedframe. He lay there loosely, eyes closed.

Frank's weight was on his toes when he heard Lister say sharply from the doorway, “All right, Frank!”

He saw the gun pointed at him now, and he settled back on his heels, looking wrathfully at Nunnally.

“Frank's all right,” Hugh said mildly. “Now lug McGarrity into the back room, you two.”

Hugh moved back against the wall, and Lister and Moore picked up Jonas and carried him back into the other bedroom. Hugh watched Frank now with a level, hard aggressiveness in his eyes that canceled the pleasant half-smile on his straight mouth.

“Albie brought your saddle in,” Hugh observed then, and he shook his head in wonderment. “The only trouble with you Frank, is that you killed Pete in front of the wrong witnesses.”

“He tried for me.”

Hugh said boredly, “I know. You can tell all that to a United States Marshal and a federal jury.”

Moore and Lister came back now, but Frank did not look at them. He was watching Hugh, trying to reach for the meaning behind Hugh's words. Hugh saw his puzzlement and he smiled now. “You see, Rhino's got the letter from Lieutenant Ehret requesting the mounts. Pete was on Army business, you might say, when he was killed on reservation land. The Army can't let its contractors be terrorized.” He shrugged. “Once Rhino complains, it's the Army's affair, and they'll work through a United States Marshal.”

Frank looked down at the razor in his hand; he had forgotten it. He turned now and resumed his shaving, thinking over what Hugh had said, and he saw with a bitter clarity that Hugh was right. He did not even have to ask the price of Rhino's silence, for he already knew it. Like a fly caught in a web, the more he struggled the deeper he became enmeshed, and his small triumph over Rhino had been turned into yet another weapon against him.

He heard Hugh say to Moore and Lister, “Wait down on the street for me, will you?”

The two of them tramped outside and down the stairs. Frank went on shaving, knowing Hugh was watching him, knowing what was coming. He hadn't pictured it as happening like this; he had imagined a bitter argument, and a long process of bargaining before he acknowledged defeat. The possibility of that was gone, now, and at last he was solidly up against the choice. He thought of Carrie, the only decent thing in his life, and he knew now as he had known five days ago that he would do everything in this world to keep her.

Hugh said in a casual voice, “I'm taking Virg to see Hannan now, Frank. What'll it be?”

“I'll sign,” Frank said calmly.

Hugh only grunted, and Frank looked at him, surprising a look of contempt in his pale eyes. Frank finished shaving then. Hugh tramped over to the bed, picked up the bottle of whiskey from the floor, recovered Jonas's glass, and poured himself a drink of whiskey. He made no conversation, and idly watched while Frank, searching for a clean shirt, finally found Jonas's valise under the bed, and from it unearthed a clean blue shirt.

Frank combed his hair then, and picked up his hat, ready to move. Hugh, starting for the stairs, said, “Better tell the Judge tonight that you and Rhino will be at his office Monday morning to draw the papers.”

At the foot of the steps Frank said, “How do you know I won't change my mind, once Virg has cleared me?”

“Why,” Hugh said mildly, “nobody's cleared you of killing Pete, have they?”

The rest of it went off quietly, too, so that it seemed as if nothing were happening.

At the Masonic Hall Frank and Virg Moore waited at the top of the stairs while Nunnally went into the hall and, after a moment, returned with Hannan. The sheriff nodded to Frank and looked from him to Moore.