Man in the Saddle. Ernest Haycox
living. But his eyes, cool and bright, were still young. He stood above most men in the saloon, being Merritt's exact height. He said, "Owen—I want to see you sometime tonight."
Merritt said, "All right," and moved toward the door. Following Merritt closely, Bourke Prine cast a quick glance across the room and discovered Hugh Clagg shouldered against a far wall. Owen, Bourke knew, hadn't noticed Clagg so far, which was a pretty good lead on Owen's frame of mind.
Out in the faint cool of the street Prine said, "Will Isham had a reason for buyin' you that drink in front of the crowd."
"Peace and good will," said Owen Merritt in a short tone.
"Don't talk like a sucker."
Love Bidwell stood by the saloon's door, talking to Mark Medary, who was the county's sheriff. Love was a thin one with a gray goatee and a windy, irritating voice. His accent was altogether Southern and he always wore a Confederate campaign hat, which now lay far back on his head. Both thumbs were well hooked into his suspenders. "I lose a daughter," he said to Medary. "Sho', I lose a daughter. I reckon that time comes to us all, Medary. But I'll be travelin' that way to see her a lot. We was always close, Sally and me. Whut's eighty miles of distance? If my saddle horse gives out I guess I got a son-in-law to supply me fresh, ain't I?"
Medary listened casually, his eyes traveling elsewhere.
He put out a hand to Owen Merritt. "Wish you'd stop by sometime and talk with me, Owen. Hello, Bourke." Love Bidwell at once checked his voice and looked at Owen Merritt. He pushed his lips together, as though afraid of committing himself to error in his new situation as Will Isham's father-in-law. People were gently moving up in the direction of the hotel. Owen Merritt paced over the street and stopped in the dark arch of Sam Nankervell's blacksmith shop. He turned, leaning against the wall. There was glow enough from all the lights shining across the dust for Bourke Prine to see how stiff the edges of Merritt's lips had become. The smiling ease had gone out of the big man.
He said, "Don't seem only ten years since the Piutes killed Bill Grandgent right where the hotel stands now. Country's beginning to grow up."
The Wells consisted of two rows of pine-boarded buildings separated by a wide street whose dust reflected a pale silver shining where the store lights touched it. The Palace threw off a brilliant glow; the hotel's windows all showed yellow radiance. Elsewhere lay the stores and sheds of a cattle town. Saddle horses and single buggies and wagons lay banked against the street racks, and people moved up and down, the walks, doing a week-end shopping, and children raced in and out of between- buildings alleys, and at those points where the lights of town failed to reach, in velvet-thick shadows, soft-speaking men stood, their cigarettes making firefly glints.
Wind rolled softly and coldly in from the deep distances of the Piutes, with the smell of sage and Indian summer's baked earth in it, and with the faint smell of wildness in it. This dark desert lay all around The Wells; it held the town to its flat breast, it had weathered the town to its own uniform powder- gray and bronze-brown. North and south and west there was no horizon at all, but eastward seven miles the Bunchgrass Hills lifted a long black shadow. This was 1878, and the town was only nine years old. This was cattle land, fenceless and vast and lonely; and tied to a far-away outer world only by dim, dusty trails half lost in the ever-growing sage.
"You were a fool to take Isham's drink," said Bourke Prine. "It ties your hands." Darkness lay wholly around Nankervell's, but he saw Owen Merritt's head turn and lift, which meant his partner would be watching that bright second-story window where Sally Bidwell waited for her wedding. The bitter-pungent smell of singed hoofs and heated metal and of grease and forge-fire ashes drifted from Nankervell's.
Bourke's voice had pushed insistently against Owen Merritt all evening. It did so now. "Listen. Go up the side stairs of the hotel. It takes you straight to her door. You've got time. I'll get a rig and drive around back—and wait there for you both."
"A little late, Bourke," said Owen Merritt. "A little late."
"When I saw her she wasn't smilin'," repeated Bourke. "Her heart ain't in this weddin', or she would be smilin'. God knows why you let Isham make a fool out of you."
"Maybe not her heart, Bourke. But her mind's made up to it. The damage is done."
"You sure? Something mighty odd happened between you two to make it like this. Listen, Owen, this business will eat on both of you for a hell of a lot of years. So you better be sure it can't be changed."
"I guess," murmured Merritt, "I've done my share of talkin'." He threw his cigarette far into the street and drew a long breath. He said, "I'll meet you in the saloon—five minutes. Another drink and we'll leave this damned town behind."
He cut straight across the street, going into the alley near Shannon's store to avoid the crowd gathering up by the hotel porch, and came through the back lots of town to the hotel's side stairway. This was a boarded-in affair marching up the outside wall of the building. Letting himself through the bottom door, he closed it and rose through solid darkness until he came to the top. He pushed that door partially open.
Rooms opened upon a hall running the length of the second floor, and little streaks of light crept beneath an occasional sill, breaking the blackness. At the hall's far end a stairway led to the lobby, from which came the run and murmur of a good many people's voices. Suddenly the door of a near-by room opened, and he saw Helen Tague come quickly out and turn toward the lower lobby.
He came into the hall. "Helen," he said.
She wheeled with a half-startled lift to her shoulders, this tall and calm daughter of Mike Tague. She came up to him, very serious and very pretty in her half-excitement—the full light of the near-by room showing all this to him—and a sense of risk made her push him back into the stair landing, into the shadows. She pulled the door half shut.
"Helen," he said, "tell Sally I'm here."
The shadows obscured her expression, but it seemed both sad and disapproving to him. She spoke in her pleasant voice. "You're sure you want me to, Owen?"
"Tell her I'm here, Helen. I'd like to see her for a moment—if she'll come."
"She'll come. But are you sure you want her to?"
"Why not?" he said. "Why not?"
Her answer was soft and faintly regretful. "Oh, Owen." She went back into the room, not quite closing the door; and he heard her speaking to Sally, the words low and quick and insistent.
He stood on the stair landing, thoroughly motionless, his blond head tipped down. Such light as reached the landing broke vaguely against the blue surfaces of his eyes and made strong shadows beneath his jaw corners and in the exposed hollow at the base of his neck. He was quite a long man, flat and wide at the shoulders, whipped in at the flanks from all the riding he had done. Even now, in this remote corner, he kept his feelings away from his face. His breathing lifted and settled the cotton shirt gently. And so he stood as Sally Bidwell's room door fully opened and she came toward him.
II. GOOD-BY TO A WOMAN
She said, "Owen," and came into the landing, near enough to see him clearly, near enough to touch him. "Owen."
Certain things were in this girl, as he had learned them through long courtship. Pride and a strong will above all. Even in this dismal corner she showed these qualities to him, her head thrown back and her deep-copper hair showing its luster. And because they had been very close to each other for so long a time, he understood that she was near the weakness of tears. It was a feeling that came from her to him.
He said, no break in his voice, no lift and no urgence, "You're sure it's got to be this way, Sally?"
"Is that all you came to say?"
"It's enough to say, isn't it? We'll live a long time. I can do a lot of remembering in the next thirty years and so can you. I can remember I didn't play my