Glancing at Kit, I said, “Hello, Kit. Where’s your pa?”
She was not the long-legged, freckled girl I had known—she was beautiful.
“Pa’s dead, Otis Tom,” she said. “He died last year.”
“I was figuring on coming back yonder, come spring. I was hoping to see you.”
Priss spoke suddenly. “Kit wouldn’t want to see you, or anyone like you. I’ll have you know she’s going to marry Mr. Brimstead.” I had never liked Priss, and liked her less now.
Kit’s face was white, and she looked stiff and scared. I stared at her. “You don’t mean that,” I said. “Not him.”
“Yes, she is going to marry me,” Brimstead said. “And I’ll thank you to leave my table. At once!”
I looked at him. “Brimstead, when I heard last night that you were in town, I went to bed with one idea. To get up this morning, hunt you down, and kill you. When I woke up this morning I told myself you were carrion. You weren’t worth the trouble. I’d be wasting lead I might use to kill a coyote or a skunk. So don’t you make me change my mind. You just set there quiet, and you can stay. Open your fat mouth again, and you’ll get the back of my hand.”
Coolly, I pulled back a chair and sat down. There were a dozen people in the restaurant, all seeming to ignore us, but I knew they’d heard every word.
“I was coming back for you, Kit. You knew I was coming back, didn’t you?”
“I hoped you were.”
Then, coolly and with sudden defiant glances at her sister, she explained. “Pa owed Mr. Brimstead money quite a lot. At least, Mr. Brimstead had papers that said pa owed him, although I never saw any of the money and I don’t believe that pa did.
“He wanted to marry me after his wife died, and Priss told me it was the only way we could pay him—else he’d take our place. I refused.
“Then there was all this talk about land in Wyoming. We’d had two very dry years, everything was burned up and dried up, and people were planning to move out west. Mr. Brimstead was coming out to buy land. He said we could come with him, and all I could think of was that it was a chance to get away from the valley, and I knew you were somewhere out here. So I came west.”
“It isn’t every day a girl gets a chance to marry a man like Martin Brimstead,” Priss said to me, “and you’ve got no right to come barging in here making trouble.”
“You like him, you marry him,” I told her. “Kit is going to marry me.”
“I’d like that, Otis Tom,” Kit said. “I surely would. I’ve wanted nothing so much since first I saw you.”
Folks around us were grinning. They were liking Kit, and they felt that I was western. Brimstead was from the East, and he had a manner they didn’t take to. They were enjoying the show, and I didn’t blame them in the least.
“Now, see here!” Brimstead began, but I just looked at him.
“You set down, Brimstead … or whatever your name is.”
That one hit the mark. It got him in the wind, and for the first time I really believed that story I’d heard—that Brimstead wasn’t his real name. He sagged back into his chair as if he’d been punched in the belly, and he sat there staring at his hands on the table before him.
“I’m in the cattle business,” I said, “with one herd in the Hole-in-the-Wall country, another herd just outside town. I’ve got a good partner—he’s been a cattle buyer for the eastern market. I’ll be driving north when I’ve finished my business here.”
Seeing Kit had made me forget where I was, and who was in town, but suddenly I remembered, and I glanced toward the door. There was no one there.
Somewhere in town I had enemies, and unless Handy Corbin was so inclined, I had not a friend to help me.
“Get your things, Kit,” I said. “If you’ll have me, we’ll be married tomorrow.”
“I’ll have you, Otis Tom. Oh, I’ll have you, all right, and it would be a happy day for pa if he were here to see it.”
“You talk like a fool!” Priss flared. “After all I’ve done for you, to leave a man like Martin Brimstead and take up with a no-account.”
“Martin who?” I suggested quietly. “Now, look, ma’am. He spoke of me as a horse thief’s son, so it’s only fair to ask who he is. But you ask him, Priss. We don’t care.” I pushed back my chair and stood up. “Coming, Kit?”
She got up, standing fair and tall before me, trim as a clipper ship. Would I dare take her to the Hole-in-the-Wall? Then, looking into those proud, brave eyes, I knew she would never stay behind. Where I had the courage to go, there she would go also.
When she paused at the foot of the stairs that led to the rooms above, I warned her. “There are men out there a-looking for me, Kit. They are men I have to meet. Remember this: if anything should go wrong, Bob Tarlton, at the doctor’s office now, is my partner. He knows about you, and you’re to have all that’s mine.”
“Is it that bad, then?”
“It’s that bad, Kit. They are dangerous men, killing men, but I am a fair hand with this.” I touched my rifle. “And I’ve a lot to live for. I’ll be meeting you, but I’d be a poor man to tie to if I didn’t think of what might come. So stay off the street until I come for you.”
“You’re going to look for them?”
“For Queenie, the girl that’s with them. She’s a bad lot, Kit, but I’d like her to tell the marshal about that killing when I got the ivory-handled gun. She was there, and she saw it. She is the only one who can clear me … there are some in this town right now who believe me guilty.”
It was warm in the street that day, warm and sunny, with the gray, silvery boards of the walk hot under foot. Men leaned against the awning posts, smoking limp cigarettes and squinting their eyes against the Cheyenne sun—men who only the night before had been looking to hang me … at least, some of them.
They looked at me now, and their eyes were cold. Here and there a few might reserve opinion, but they all knew I was free only on condition, and that the matter was not resolved. I also knew, too, that with the coming of night when they got together to talk, and had a few drinks under their belts, they might be out to look for me again.
Pausing briefly before a store window, I glanced at the tall young man reflected there. Yes, I had come a good distance since that day in the village when they had hung pa. My shoulders were broad, and I was strong stronger than most men. Yet the distance I had come was only a fraction of where I had to go to become the man I wished to be.
Suddenly hard boots sounded on the walk, and a loud, bullying voice said, “Hell! There’s that horse thief’s boy! Looks as if they’re weaving a rope for you, boy, just like for your pa.”
He stood there before me, and he was big, even bigger than I had expected—broad and thick and strong. There was a stubble of beard on his face, and his small, cruel eyes were sneering at me, his red lips holding the stub of a cigar. It was Stud Pelly.
There was only one language that Stud understood, but it was a language I knew how to speak. Turning my head, I saw a cowhand lazing against the rail. He had a tough, wedge-like face, and cool, measuring eyes. He looked down-at-heel and dust-covered, but I liked the look of him.
“Amigo,” I said, “I have enemies around town. Would you keep them off my back while I tidy up a bit?”
I handed him my rifle, and unfastened my gunbelt, with its empty holster. He took them from me, not smiling, but his eyes went to Stud. “You’re taking in a wide belt of country, friend,” he said. “Luck to you.”
Pelly stood there, his cigar in his teeth, chuckling.
“You don’t really mean you’re goin’ to try to fight me?” he said, as if he couldn’t believe it. “You’re not somebody to fight, you’re somebody to spank!”
“Spank me, then,” I said, and hit him.
I mean I tried but I missed. I’d forgotten how good he really was, for he’d served his time on the river boats, where it was knuckle-and-skull until who flung the chunk. I swung, but I was too confident, and when I missed he flattened me. I mean something exploded alongside my head—that hamlike fist of Stud’s —and I hit the dust as if I’d been thrown from a sun-fishing bronc.