Sins of Summer (29 page)

“I don’t care if the thing blows clear to hell.”

“I do. I don’t want to see a man killed.”

“Shit! I should have taken Dory and got out of here years ago.”

“Dory told Louis that she was going to ask the judge to divide the company property in half, part for you and her and part
for Louis and Milo. Louis got so angry he frothed at the mouth.”

“That would kill him. He lives to best Chip Malone. I’ve never figured out why it’s so important to him. I wish it were possible
to divide the company, but it isn’t. One part can’t make it without the other. The only thing we could do with our half would
be sell to Malone. I don’t give a damn about the company right now. I’m worried about Dory. I never thought either one of
them would go so far as to… hit her.”

Ben stood looking down at James’s bent head. He was a good man. It was hard to believe that he and Dory were kin to Milo and
Louis.

“I’m breaking my promise to Dory when I tell you this. What happened here last night has been coming on for a while. The night
Odette took sick, Milo had been here. Dory fought him to keep him away from Odette. He slapped her. Hard. I was surprised
you didn’t notice her face. He has been hitting her for a year or two. She didn’t want you to know. She was afraid you’d end
up with a bullet in the back.”

The eyes James raised to Ben’s were remarkably like Jeanmarie’s. They were filled with smoldering anger.

“He wanted Odette? The bastard! Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t Dory tell me what had been going on?”

“You were all she had… then. She was scared to death that she would lose you.”

“Are you in love with my sister?”

“I don’t know what being
in
love means. I like her a hell of a lot. Do you have any objections?”

“No.” James stood, went to the window, and looked out. He was far more calm than Ben had expected him to be. “Chip Malone
sent word that Marie had died. The funeral is tomorrow. I think he’s hoping Dory will go and take Jeanmarie.”

“She won’t,” Ben said. “You’ll know why when you see her.”

“Are you going to stay around for a while?”

“I should take my daughter and get the hell away from here, but I’m staying. I have money coming and my tools are still at
the mill.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“No. When I’m dealt a hand, I play it out. If you decide to take Dory and pull out of here, you’ll never get a cent of your
inheritance. If you stay, I’ll stand with you. If you go, I’ll help you as much as I can. I owe your sister a lot for what
she’s done for Odette.”

“I’m obliged to you,” James said quietly.

Ben stood by the window and watched James walk across the yard to the house.

“The boy’s settlin’ down,” Wiley said from behind him. “I seen the time when he’d a gone tearin’ up there and done somethin’
foolhardy. He ain’t never had no fear a nothin’, even when he was a tyke. He’s changed. He’s scared a leavin’ Dory all by
her ownself.”

“Maybe he’s learned to use his head for thinking instead of ramming.”

The cook’s helper took warm water to Milo’s room and cleaned the blood from Milo’s battered face and hands while suffering
the man’s insults. When he finished, Milo demanded a looking glass and the boy took him one. When he saw himself with a missing
front tooth, he threw the glass across the room, and obscenities of every description rolled from his swollen mouth.

Louis paced the room and swore. “Ya dumb head. If ya hadn’t a took Sid down there, this wouldn’t a happened.”

“Ya was the one that hired Waller. Ya was so crazy to get that damn donkey.” Milo’s words were slurred. He kept running his
tongue into the hole where his big front tooth had been.

“And ya was crazy to get in his girl’s bloomers. Now, damn you, Steven’ll go to old Kenton—”

“—Steven ain’t goin’ nowhere. I’ll put the word out. He steps a foot outta this camp, I’ll know it, and I’ll break his scrawny
neck.”

“I can’t be lollygaggin’ ‘round here all day. I got to get up to the cuttin’ range.”

“Go on. I ain’t keepin’ ya.” Milo was sitting on the side of his bunk in a clean union suit. He had shed his soiled clothes
as soon as he had come into the room. The humiliation of wetting and messing his drawers sat harder on him than the beating
he’d taken from Waller. His ears still rang and his stomach was in a constant state of upheaval.

If he never did another thing in his life, he would get even with Ben Waller.
It didn’t take Milo long to figure out how he was going to do it.

Long before Norm Kraus reached the mill, he could hear the singing of the massive steel saw blades as they cut into the logs
on the carriage. As he rode up to the mill, he saw smoke, thick and black against the blue sky, belching from the smokestack
atop the building.

The machinery suddenly ground to a screeching halt and the quiet was absolute. The marshal removed his duster and flung it
across his saddle. Then he tied his horse to a sapling at the edge of the clearing and walked to the sprawling sheds that
were the mill.

A crew of men with pikes were working a log down the chute toward the carriage that would carry it to the blades. A short
man with a heavy black beard, using a wrench, was turning a pipe on the steam engine that drove the spinning steel disks.

All eyes turned to the marshal. The big shiny star on his chest never failed to catch a man’s attention. The men with the
pikes stopped working. The black-bearded man straightened and wiped his hands on a greasy rag. He called a greeting.

“Howdy.”

“Howdy.” The marshal walked toward him. “You Milo Callahan?”

“No. Tinker Buck, head sawyer. You lookin’ for Milo?’

“Him or the other Callahan.”

“Louis went up to the high country this mornin’. I ain’t seen Milo about. Must be back in his room.”

“Where’s that?”

“Ya can go through that shed to get to it”—he flung an arm to his right—“or there’s an outside door on the north.”

“Much obliged.”

Norm Kraus retraced his steps to the outside, rounded the sheds and knocked on the only door that faced the north. He heard
no answer and rapped again. After a decent time had elapsed, he opened the door.

His eyes swept the room. The first thing he noticed, after discovering that the room was vacant, was the stench. The room
smelled like someone had used the chamberpot and left the lid off. One side of the room was fairly neat, clothes were hung
on a peg above the bunk, the bedcovers were on the bed. The other side of the room looked like a boar’s nest. Empty liquor
bottles, spit cans and foul-smelling clothes littered the bed and the floor around it. On the wall facing the foot of the
bed was a picture of a naked woman lying on a couch in a lewd position.

Kraus backed out of the room, closed the door and went back to the main building. As soon as he stepped through the door,
the sawyer came to him.

“Wasn’t Milo in any shape to talk?”

“There was no one there.”

“The hell ya say.” Tinker scratched his beard with a greasy finger. “I’d swear he was there. I’d swear he’d not move from
that bunk of his for a day or two after the beatin’ he took this mornin’.”

“You’d a lost if you’d a bet on it. He probably went off somewhere to lick his wounds. Where’ll I find Marz?”

“Steve’s usually in that little cubbyhole yonder where he keeps his ledger books. I noticed them gone this morning. I suspect
he’s working on them down at his place. He does that sometimes.”

“Where’s that?”

Tinker went to the door and pointed to the far side of the clearing. “That’s Steve’s place.”

Kraus nodded his thanks, stepped out the door and walked toward the neat log cabin that was set back against a thick grove
of Ponderosa pine. He rapped on the door, and rapped again when there was no answer. He waited a minute more, then looked
into one of the two glass windows.

The room was well furnished, with heavy tables, a desk, a bookcase, and lamps with fancy painted shades. He went to the other
window, shaded his eyes with his hand and looked in. This was the bedroom. The furnishings were equally fine. The poster bed
was high off the floor: the wardrobe was rich walnut. A handsome dark-emerald-green carpet was on the floor.

“Verdammen!”
Kraus muttered to himself. “You can tell a lot about a man by seeing the way he lives. This one’s lived high on the hog for
most of his life.”

The marshal went back and tried the door. It was locked. He paused for a few minutes, carefully removed the pleased smile
from his face, and went back to the mill. Tinker Buck was waiting for him outside the door.

“Wasn’t Steven there?”

“No. His place is locked up tighter than a drum.”

Tinker cocked his head to one side. “That’s funny. Steven seldom leaves the mill; and if he does, he lets me or cook know
it. I’ll go ask cook.”

“I’ll go along.” On the way to the cookshack, he asked, “How long has Marz been here?”

“He was here when I hired on ten, twelve years ago.”

“He’s got a nice place down there.”

“Yeah, he’s a quiet one. Keeps to hisself, but that don’t mean he ain’t friendly.”

“Big man, is he?”

“Naw. Doubt he could lick a pussycat.”

Neither the cook nor his helper had seen Milo or Steven since shortly after sunrise. After the fight Milo had been helped
to his room and Steven had gone back to his cabin. At the barn the wrangler said one of Milo’s friends, a man named Rink,
had come for Milo’s horse, saddled it and led it around the corrals to the back of the mill.

When asked about Steven, the wrangler, a gray-haired man of undetermined age, refused to talk.

“I ain’t seen him.” The old man’s eyes went to Tinker and away.

“You sure, Billy?”

Billy stuck his hand into his pocket and felt the silver dollar Steven had given him. Even without the dollar he would have
turned a blind eye to Steve’s leaving just because the man asked him to. Hell, there wasn’t a man in this camp that had been
more decent to him than Steven Marz.

“Is his horse here?” Kraus asked.

“Hell, I don’t know. Go look.”

“Verdammen!
How’d I know which horse was his?”

“Dang-bustit, Billy, tell the marshal what he wants ta know,” Tinker said impatiently. “That sonofabitchin’ Milo has left
camp. You know that he hates Steve’s guts an’ there ain’t no tellin’ what’s on the bastard’s mind.”

“Ya think Milo’d lay fer him? Hell an’ damnation, Tinker, Steve’d not have a chance, even with Milo all busted up like he
is.”

“Every man in this here camp knows Milo’s been actin’ crazy. He started up the donkey and pert nigh blowed it up. He messed
with the engine in the mill an’ buggered it. There ain’t no tellin’ what he’ll do next.”

“Well—” Billy stalled for a minute or two. Then his fear for Steven overcame his promise not to tell that Steven had left
the mill site. “He came ‘round through the woods an’ in the back. He asked me to saddle his horse and not say nothin’ to nobody
‘bout his leavin’ camp. He tied a satchel on his saddle and left.”

“When was this?”

“Maybe half an hour ago. Everybody was in the cookhouse, but me. I was aiming ta go after I went to the privy.”

“Which way did he go?”

“Trail that goes west a ways, then branches up toward the cuttin’ camp or down the mountain toward Spencer.”

“That the only way to Spencer?”

“There’s a way along the upper shelf, but Steven wouldn’t go thataway. He’d have to cut back to cross the river.”

“He’ll be back in a day or two,” Tinker said. “He never stays away long durin’ the season.”

“Was he on good terms with the Callahans?”

“It’s accordin’ to what ya mean by good terms. He puts up with ’em. Steve’s a good man. There’s not a man here, less’n it’s
Milo an’ Louis, that don’t like him even if he is a prissy, city-type feller,” Tinker said. “He stays out of any trouble beween
the Callahans. Got good business sense, an’ Louis listens—sometimes. If not for him the mill would’a shut down a year after
the old man died.”

“Why don’t the Callahans like him?”

“They don’t like anybody that I know of. Not even each other.”

“You can’t tell about these quiet types. He might be running off with the money.”

“Hell,” Tinker snorted. “There ain’t no money here. The mill just squeaks by.”

“How are the men paid?”

“By the season. Season’s just started.”

“Guess that leaves you to tell me about the killing last night.”

“I can do that an’ tell ya ‘bout the fight this mornin’ too.”

“I don’t need to know about that. Ain’t no law against fighting; just killing. Was it fair, or was it not?”

“It was fair.”

“Good enough for me.” Kraus turned to the wrangler. “One more thing. Did the man come for Milo Callahan’s horse before Steven
Marz left or afterwards?”

“After. Right after.”

Deep in thought, the marshal went back to where he had tethered his horse and mounted deftly.
He
walked the horse a distance down the trail, then kicked him into a gallop.

Steven had been called on to read a scripture over Sid Hanes before he was put in the ground. Out of respect for the dead,
even a man as disliked as Sid, the crew with the exception of Milo and Louis had gathered at the gravesite.

Louis had left the camp shortly after Milo had been taken to his room. When Steven had seen him ride out, he had gone to his
office and carried a couple of ledgers back to his cabin lest anyone wonder about his absence from the mill.

Now, Steven was reasonably sure he hadn’t been seen leaving the camp by anyone other than Billy. After eighteen years it was
hard to believe that he was finally leaving this place. He had become fond of Dory and James, and he was proud of the fact
that he had not allowed that fondness to shade his judgment.

He wondered what had prompted him to sew the important documents into the lining of his coat. Was it a gut feeling that something
could happen to him on the way to Coeur d’Alene? The company ledger sheets, his personal papers and a few treasures he couldn’t
part with, along with a change of clothing, were in the satchel tied to his saddle.