There was an antagonism in her eyes that he could not account for. He was accustomed to the attention of women but not antagonistic attention.
The marshal glanced thoughtfully at Johnny Haven. The young cowboy was staring sourly at his plate or devoting his attention to his coffee. Over his right temple was a swelling and a cut. This, coupled with a hangover, had left Johnny in a disgruntled mood. Last night had been the end of his monthly spree, and the swelling and the cut were evidences of the marshal’s attention.
Johnny caught the marshal’s glance and scowled. “You sure leave a man with a headache, Marshal. Did you have to slug me with a gun barrel?”
Fitz Moore dusted the ash from his cigar. “I didn’t have an ax handle and nothing else would have been suitable for the job.” He added casually, “Of course, I could have shot you.”
Johnny was perfectly aware of the fact and some marshals would have done exactly that. Coming from Fitz Moore it was almost an apology.
“Is it so easy to kill men?” It was the girl with the gray eyes who spoke, her tone low and modulated but shaded with contempt.
“That depends,” Fitz Moore replied with dignity, “on who is doing the shooting and the circumstances.”
“I think” — and there was a flash of anger in her eyes — “that you would find it easy to kill. You might even enjoy killing. If you were capable of feeling anything at all.”
The depth of feeling in her words was so obvious that, surprised, Johnny turned to look at her. Her face had gone pale, her eyes large.
The marshal’s expression did not change. He knew Johnny understood, as any westerner would. Johnny Haven had himself given cause for shooting on more than one occasion. He also knew that what Marshal Fitz Moore had just said to him was more of an explanation than he had given any man. Fitz Moore had arrested Johnny Haven six times in as many months, for after every payday Johnny came to town hunting trouble. Yet Fitz Moore knew that Johnny Haven was simply a wild youngster with a lot of good stuff in him, one who simply needed taming and a sense of responsibility.
The girl’s tone carried an animosity for which none of them could account, and it left them uneasy.
Barney Gard got to his feet and dropped a dollar on the table. Johnny Haven followed him out, and then the milliner. Jack Thomas loitered over his coffee.
“That Henry outfit has me worried, Marshal,” he said. “You want me to get down the old scatter-gun, just in case?”
Fitz Moore watched Barney Gard through the window. The saloon keeper had paused on the walk to talk to Johnny Haven. Under the stubble of beard Johnny’s face looked clean and strong, reminding the marshal, as it had before, of the face of another young man, scarcely older.
“It won’t be necessary,” Fitz Moore replied. “Ill handle them in my own way, in my own time. It’s my job, you know.”
“Isn’t that a bit foolish? To refuse help?”
The contempt in her voice stirred him, but he revealed nothing. He nodded gravely. “I suppose it might be, ma’am, but I was hired to do the job and take the risks.”
“Figured I’d offer,” Thomas said, unwilling to let the matter drop. “You tell me what you figure to do, and I’ll be glad to help.”
“Another time.” The marshal tasted his coffee again and looked directly at the girl. “You are new in Sentinel. Will you be staying long?”
“No.”
“Do you have relatives here?”
“No.”
He waited, but no explanation was offered. Fitz Moore was puzzled and he studied her from the corners of his eyes. There was no sound in the room but the ticking of the big, old-fashioned clock.
The girl sat very still, the delicate line of her profile bringing to him a faint, lost feeling, a nostalgia from his boyhood when such women as she rode to hounds, when there was perfume on the air, blue grass, picket fences …
And then he remembered.
Thomas got to his feet. He was a big, swarthy man, always untidy, a bulge of fat pushing his wide belt. “You need any help, Marshal, you just call on me.”
Fitz Moore permitted himself one of his rare smiles. “If there is any trouble, Jack,” he said gently, “you will be the first to know.”
The clock ticked off the seconds after the door closed, and then the marshal broke the silence.
“Why have you come here? What can you do in this place?”
“All I have is here. Just a little west of here. I left the stage to hire a rig, and then I heard your name and I wanted to see what manner of man it would be who would kill his best friend.”
He got to his feet. At that moment he knew better than ever what loneliness could mean.
“You judge too quickly. Each man must be judged against the canvas of his own time, his own world.”
“There is only one way to judge a killer.”
“Wait. Wait just a little while and you will see what I mean. And please … stay off the street today. If you need a rig I will see you get a responsible man.” He walked to the door and paused with his hand on the knob. “He used to tell me about you. We talked often of you, and I came to feel I knew you. I had hoped, before it happened, that someday we would meet. But in a different world than this.
“What will happen today I want you to see. I do not believe you lack the courage to watch what happens nor to revise your opinion if you feel you have been mistaken. Your brother, as you were advised in my letter, was killed by accident.”
“But you shot him I You were in a great hurry to kill.”
“I was in the midst of a gun battle. He ran up behind me.”
“To help you.”
“I believed him to be a hundred miles away, and in the town where we were I had no friends. It was quick. At such a time, one acts.”
“Kill first,” she said bitterly, “look afterward.”
His features were stiff. “I am afraid that is what often happens. I am sorry.”
He lifted the latch. “When you see what happens today, try to imagine how else it might be handled. If you cannot see this as I do, then before night comes you will think me even more cruel man you do now. But you may understand, and where there is understanding there is no hate.”
Outside the door he paused and surveyed the street with care. Not much longer now.
Across from him was Gard’s Saloon. One block down was his office and across the street from it his small home. Just a little beyond was an abandoned barn. He studied it thoughtfully, glancing again at Gard’s with the bank diagonally across the street from the saloon, right past the milliner’s shop.
It would happen here, upon this dusty street, between these buildings. Here men would die, and it was has mission to see that good men lived and had their peace, and the bad were kept from crime. As for himself, he was expendable … but which was he, the good or the bad?
Fitz Moore knew every alley, every door, every corner in this heat-baked, alkali-stamped cluster of life that would soon become an arena. His eyes turned again to the barn. It projected several feet beyond the otherwise carefully lined buildings. The big door through which hay had once been hoisted gaped wide.
So little time!
He knew what they said about him. “Ain’t got a friend in town,” he had overheard Mrs. Jameson say. “Lives to hisself in that old house. Got it full of books, folks say. But kill you quick as a wink, he would. He’s cold … mighty cold.”
Was he?
When first he came to the town he found it a shambles, wrecked by a passing trail-herd crew. It had been terrorized by two dozen gamblers and gunmen, citizens robbed by cardsharps and thieves. Robbery had been the order of the day and murder all too frequent. Now it had been six months since the last murder. Did that count for nothing?
He took out a fresh cigar and bit off the end. What was the matter with him today? He had not felt like this in years. Was it what they say happens to a drowning man and his whole life was passing before his eyes, just before the end? Or was it simply that he had seen Julia Heath, the sum and total of all he had ever wanted in a girl? And realizing who she was, realized also how impossible it had become?