“Zeb?”
“What?”
“Do you know anything you haven’t told me?”
“Not to speak of. He left a note with those guns.” Zeb drew it from his pocket.
“I’ve been meaning to show it to you—not that it says much.” She opened the folded bit of coarse wrapping paper. On it was written: Died game. Lamar Valley, Wyoming.
“And nothing else?”
“Porter Clark was up early that morning, and he saw a man riding through town.
He knew the man and thought I ought to know he was around.” Zeb Rawlings stared thoughtfully at the dancing heat waves in the distance. “He was an old outlaw … one of the wild breed who ran with Dutch Henry down in the Panhandle, fought in the Lincoln County war, the Horrell-Higgins feud, most everything.”
“Did you see him? Do you think he was the one who left those guns?”
Zeb shrugged. “Who knows? Might be coincidence.” “Pa!” Prescott shouted from the tracks. “It’s comin’! I can hear the train comin’!”
Zeb listened, and heard the far-off whistle. He got to his feet, then helped Julie up.
“Oh, dear, I do hope your aunt likes us, Zeb.”
He smiled at her. “Julie, how you talk! Was there ever anybody who didn’t like you?”
Zeb took her elbow and together they walked to the platform where a few people were waiting for the incoming train. Zeb responded to little Eve’s reaching arms and lifted her up.
The boys came running up the track, and Julie called to them. “Boys! You stand back here with us. Now, do what I tell you or you can’t come with us again.” Zeb looked down the platform and then very quietly put Eve down.
“Pa!” she begged.
“No, you stay there, Eve. Your pa has things to do.”
Julie glanced at him quickly, but he seemed interested only in the train. A man was talking to the station agent, another stood nearby. Both men wore belt guns, which was not surprising, since almost half the men present wore them, too.
“Do you know what she looks like, Zeb?” Julie asked.
“What?”
“Your Aunt Lilith—can you recognize her?”
Julie looked at him, and glanced around her. She saw nothing to alarm her, yet she was uneasy.
“Zeb, what’s the matter?”
“Here she comes!” Zeb said, and the train pulled into the station, the big driver-wheels churning. It pulled past them, then backed up until the two passenger cars were right at the platform.
From the corner of his eye Zeb could see that the men who had been with the station agent had joined a third man not far away. All glanced his way, then looked toward the train.
The first man he had seen was a known outlaw, so there was at least a possibility the others were too. Neither of the others was familiar to him, but their manner was; and as he followed Prescott and Linus toward the cars he thought of the possibilities brought about by their presence. Prescott and Linus brought up short at the sight of Lilith. Lilith van Valen had always been a beautiful woman, and she had not lost that beauty with the years. Moreover, she possessed that certain distinction which comes to one from being someone … not in the sense of wealth, but of personality and position. Dressed in her finest, and looking still youthful and graceful, she was an elegant figure, unlike anyone either of the boys had seen before. “Gosh!” Linus said.
“Ma’am? Ma’am, are you our Great-aunt Lilith?” Prescott asked, still not quite believing it.
“If you’re Zeb’s children, I am.” She put her hands on their shoulders and looked into their eyes with a mock seriousness that immediately won them both. “But don’t you dare call me your great-aunt in front of any young men!”
“Lilith!”
She looked at Zeb, and put out her hand. “You’ll be Zeb Rawlings. I declare, you favor Linus! I’d have known you anywhere, I think.” She looked at this tall, strongly built man, with warmth and a glint of humor in his eyes. Lilith, in her time, had looked upon many men in the hard world of the frontier and, looking now at Zeb, she felt tears coming to her eyes. How proud Eve would have been to see her son now! And how pleased with her strong sense of family, she would have been to have them all together again. “Zeb … Zeb Rawlings!” She felt the tears coming and fought to hold them back.
“Doggone it, Zeb! I swore up and down that I wasn’t going to cry!” “You’re even prettier than ma said you were. I’d like you to meet my wife Julie.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Julie said.
“And I’m pleased to meet you, Julie. I just can’t tell you how pleased.” “You met the boys, Prescott … Linus. And this is Eve.” Prescott caught her hand. “Come on and meet Sam!”
“Sam?” Lilith was startled.
“He’s our horse. He could pull two wagons if he wanted. You haven’t come home until you know Sam.”
Lilith took their hands. “Sorry,” she said to Zeb. “I’ve got to meet Sam. I want to be sure I’m at home.”
“I think this means a lot to her,” Zeb said to Julie. “More than I’d have thought.”
Then he glanced toward the three men, who had walked out to the cars. All three shook hands with a man who had just stepped from the train. Zeb Rawlings felt the skin tighten around his ears. Charlie Gant… At the same instant Gant, evidently warned by one of the three men, turned to look at him. Almost at once he started toward them. A tall man with a swagger and a challenging way, Charlie Gant was a flamboyant figure even on the frontier, where flamboyance was not uncommon. Gant had always favored good clothes, and he wore them now. That he was armed went without question.
“Marshal! Don’t tell me you came all the way over here just to meet me? I hardly expected it.” He tipped his hat. “And the beautiful Mrs. Rawlings. What a pleasure this is!”
“Let’s go, Zeb,” Julie said.
“I envy you, Marshal. A well-favored, bright-eyed wife … as dazzling as that sun up there.”
“Zeb …”
Zeb Rawlings smiled. “Why, Charlie! This is a surprise! I had no idea you were still in the Territory. The last time I saw you—well, I got the impression you were leaving the country.”
Charlie Gant’s smile remained, but his eyes turned ugly. “Having a fine family like this, Rawlings, it must make a man want to live.” Zeb Rawlings’ eyes were cold. “You wanted to live, didn’t you, Charlie?”
Abruptly, Gant turned and walked away; and Julie, frightened, looked after him. She caught Zeb’s arm. “That was Charlie Gant, wasn’t it? I thought you said he was in Montana?”
“Now stop your worrying. I’ll get the luggage.” When he returned with the hand luggage, Gant and his friends were no longer there. Zeb looked around carefully before he decided they were indeed gone. With a man like Gant, you could never afford to gamble. The one certainty was that he never would—not consciously, at least.
To be a criminal, as Gant was, required certain peculiar attitudes of mind, attitudes that invariably led to failure and capture. One was contempt for people and for law; another was optimism. The criminal was invariably optimistic. He had to believe that everything was going to turn out right for him; and in addition to this he had to be enormously conceited, believing in his ability to outwit the law.
Many a time Zeb had heard a criminal sneer, “I’m smarter than any sheriff.
Nobody but a fool would work for the money they get.” What they did not realize was that they were not smarter than a dozen sheriffs, or a hundred. Law was organized now. Descriptions were mailed around from office to office, and there was cooperation between sheriffs and marshals. The very attributes that led them to become criminals were the attributes that betrayed them. Contempt, optimism, and conceit led to carelessness, and carelessness led to imprisonment or death.
Zeb shouldered the trunk and started back to the buckboard. Right now, he thought, youngsters around the country were playing they were Jesse James and his gang; and men who ought to have known better were telling about the treasure Jesse had buried.
In their sixteen years as outlaws, few of the James gang even made a decent living, and most of that time they were on the dodge, hiding out in caves, barns, and shacks, poorly fed, poorly clothed, suspicious of each other and everyone else.
Folks made a lot of the fact that Jesse had been killed by one of his own men. What most of them didn’t know was that he had already murdered two of his own gang and was planning to kill others.
As for how tough they were—that bunch of farmers and businessmen up at Northfield had shot them to doll rags, killing two of them in the gun battle. The only men the James gang killed in Northfield were an unarmed man crossing the street, unaware a holdup was in progress, and the banker, beaten unconscious inside the bank, whom Jesse shot as he fled from the building. Several of the Jesse James outfit had been wounded, and later, when the Youngers—Cole, Bob, and Jim—were captured. Jim had five wounds, Bob two, and Cole Younger had been shot eleven times. Charlie Pitts was dead. Zeb turned his back to the buckboard and lowered the trunk into place, then pushed it deeper along the bed and lashed it in place with rope. With Julie and Lilith crowded into the seat beside him, he drove into town and up the crowded street to the old clapboarded hotel.