He opened his big right hand. “I can bend sixty-penny spikes like you fold a newspaper.” He indicated Flint. “I’d break him like he was a dry stick.”
Lottie regarded him coolly. “Don’t ever try it, Port. I have a feeling that we had better leave him alone. He’s poison for us. Bad luck.”
“Not if he’s dead.”
Lottie glanced down the room at Flint. He did not look like a man who was dying. But what if he did die? What if he died now, where everybody would know he was dead? A good lawyer — and then all those millions, in Paris, Vienna, London.
“I must talk to him. That is why I came out here, you know.”
Coolly, as she listened with half her attention to Port Baldwin, her thoughts sorted out the situation. It might require several long fights in court, but no matter what sort of a will he had left, she was sure she would win in the end.
To get that money Jim had to be dead. There was no sense in letting her head be turned by the fact that he was attractive. Men were attractive to her only in so far as they could supply her with what she wanted. She wanted money, she wanted the attention of men, and she wanted to control men.
“You’re a fool if you think you can get anywhere by talking,” Baldwin said, “because he will not listen, and it will not matter whether he does or not.”
She drew back her chair and got to her feet. “Nevertheless, I shall talk to him.”
She went down the room to his table with every eye upon her, and when she reached him he got to his feet and drew back a chair for her. “Will you sit down, Lottie? I am sure you will understand if I do not say I am glad to see you.”
When she was seated she said quickly, “Jim you should have stayed in New York. You can have better care.”
“So he told you, did he? I fancied he was an old gossip. I was a fool to have gone to him.”
“He is the best doctor in New York!”
“The most fashionable, you mean. It does not follow that he is also the best.”
“Are you coming back?”
“Of course not.”
“Jim … what about me? You spoiled me, Jim. I can’t live on a hundred dollars a month.”
He looked up at her, coldly amused. “I am sure you can if you must. But I did not expect you to. I expected you would find someone else, marry him, and that someone would, of course, be able to support you in the style you believe you deserve.”
“What makes you think I want to marry again?”
“Lottie, you never wanted to marry. It was merely a device. You will marry again, but you will not want to. It is simply the easiest way for you to get the things you want.”
“There’s another girl?”
“When I may have only a few weeks — perhaps a few days? I have already gone past the time I was expected to live, I believe. No, there is no other girl.”
There was Nancy Kerrigan. His thoughts returned to her, and the way she had looked at him. Her cool, steady gaze had reached some longing deep within him, secret even from himself.
Too many things were secret even from himself, for, once he examined them in the cold light of day, he would know they were not for him. Nothing in his life had geared him for love, for a home, for the life other men led. His was a lonely way, and instinctively he had avoided all thought along such lines, living and dealing on the surface and with surface values.
With such a girl as Nancy … but why think of that? He had been ordered to leave, despised by her and by the others.
Pete Gaddis he had liked. Looking at that, he realized he still liked the man. There was something there … of course it was that old affair at The Crossing.
But The Crossing was years ago and far away. The dead had long been buried. The old feelings were gone. Flint was dust, but he had been avenged before he died. In the old Viking way, enemies had been buried to go with him to whatever hunting grounds remained for one like Flint.
Lottie was irritated. For the first time in her life she was sitting with a man and his attention was wandering. With a kind of desperation she realized that Jim Kettleman, or Flint, or whatever his name was, had slipped away from her and she simply was not going to get him back.
“I wasn’t much of a wife to you, was I, Jim?”
“No, you weren’t.” He looked across the table at her gravely. Beautiful? Yes, she was beautiful, but with no sense of good or evil except as it was good or evil for her.
“I am riding out of town in a little while, and I am not coming back.”
She fought down her anger and frustration, knowing it would defeat her purpose now. “Where will you go?”
“I think you know where I am going, and I have to go alone.”
“But until then? Jim, you can’t leave me like this! Why — why, I have scarcely money enough to get home!”
He looked at her and felt no compassion. They were less than strangers. She had tried to have him killed and, he was sure, would try again. And blame him for the necessity.
“I went away because I wanted to die alone, as I have lived, and that is what I shall do.”
He pushed back from the table and her anger destroyed her judgment. “It’s that Kerrigan girl! That was why you interfered with Port! That cheap little ranch girl!”
He smiled at her. “Lottie, she is neither cheap, nor exactly little, and she is something you will never be— a lady. You have the appearance, she has the quality and the heart. Yes, if things were different, if I had a few years to live and she would have me — but why talk foolishness?”
He got to his feet and took up his hat. Lottie started to speak, but suddenly she was empty of words. With what could you threaten a man who was dying and prepared to die?
They were alone in the room now.
‘”I’m glad you’re dying.” She looked up at him and he thought he had never seen such concentrated hatred in the eyes of anyone. “I’m really glad. And when you die, I hope you think of me, because I’ll be alive!”
Her lovely mouth was twisted with fury, but all he felt was relief. “Lottie, you’re your own worst enemy. The quiet, simple little girls will end up with all the things you want, and you’ll be conniving, cheating, and baiting hooks until you’re old and broke and empty. Believe me, you have my sympathy.”
He walked out into the night.
On the walk he paused. A rider was coming along the quiet street, a tall man on a horse that walked steadily forward. The legs of the horse showed, then the splash of white on his chest, and then both animal and rider came into the light at once.
Buckdun.
If the gunman saw Flint standing on the boardwalk, he gave no indication, but walked his horse on past, holding the reins in his left hand, eyes straight before him.
There was no nonsense about Buckdun. He used a gun because he was good with a gun, and he avoided trouble because trouble led to more trouble and there was no money in it.
Once in Silver City, Flint had heard, a man called Buckdun a liar. Buckdun looked at him coolly and said, “You may think what you like,” and turned his back.
Frustrated, the would-be gunman stood looking around angrily, helplessly.
Furious, he shouted, “I can beat you to the draw! I am faster than you!”
Bored, Buckdun looked at him in the mirror and said, “All right, you’re faster than I am.”
Somebody laughed and the gunman turned sharply, but saw only sober faces. Buckdun lifted his beer and took a swallow and, after a few minutes, the would-be gunman walked out.
Port Baldwin was sitting on his bed in the dark bedroom when Buckdun came in. Baldwin took the cigar from his mouth and poked several bills toward Buck-dun. Buckdun picked them up and, after a glance, pocketed them.
“Flint,” Baldwin said, “and I will double the ante.”
“No.”
“May I ask why?”
“He’s too smart, and he has no pattern.”
“Pattern?”
“Of living,” Buckdun replied impatiently. “He isn’t fixed anywhere, he doesn’t belong anywhere, you can’t count on his being any particular place. A man who works somewhere, lives somewhere, has friends he visits or who owns something — they are the easy ones. But Flint is without a pattern. Such men are difficult and they are dangerous.”