I said. “If I have to come after him, you will deal with me.”
He laughed, and glanced around for his men, but they had disappeared and there
was an open space around us. He did not like it. He was afraid of no man, but
something had happened here that he could not judge, for he had come with a half
dozen men and now he was alone.
He had white skin, thick lips, and small, cruel eyes almost hidden under thick
flesh. He was even larger than I had at first believed, with great, heavy
shoulders and arms, and hands both broad and thick.
“I will deal with you, will I? I shall like that, me bucko, oh, I shall like
that!” he said.
I did not like the man. There is that in me that bristles at the bully, and this
man was such a one. Yet he was not to be taken lightly. This man was cruel
because he liked being cruel.
“If he’s harmed, Hippo, I’ll let the fish have what’s left of you.”
He laughed again. Oh, he was not worried by me. I always thought a threat an
empty thing, but in this case I had a brother to help, and if a threat might
hold them off even a little, I’d use it.
“What’s one Sackett more or less?” he scoffed.
“Nothing to you, but a lot to the rest of us.”
“Us? I see only one.”
I smiled at him. “Hippo,” I said quietly, “there are as many of us as there need
to be. I’ve never seen more than a dozen at one time except when great-grandpa
and great-grandma had their wedding anniversary. There were more than a hundred
men. I did not count them all.”
He didn’t believe me. Neither did he like the way his men disappeared from
around him, nor the look of some of the dark, strange faces in the crowd.
Perhaps they were the same he had always seen, but suddenly they must have
seemed different.
“I’ll choose my time,” he muttered, “and I’ll break you—like that!” He made a
snapping motion with hands that looked big enough to break anything, and then he
walked away from me, and I went back to the Saint Charles and changed my clothes
for dinner.
My new suit had come, and it fit exceedingly well. All the clothes I’d had since
the time ma wove and stitched them with her own hands I’d either made myself
from buckskin or they were hand-me-downs from the shelves of cattle-town stores.
It seemed to me that I looked very fine, and I looked away from the mirror,
suddenly embarrassed. After all, why get big ideas? I was nothing but a country
boy, a hill boy if you wish, who’d put in a few years and a few calluses on his
hands from work and on his behind from saddles.
What was I doing here in this fine suit? How many times would I wear it? And
what was I doing in this fine hotel? I was a man of campfires, line camps, and
bunkhouses, a drifter with a rope and a saddle and very little else. And I’d
better never forget it.
Yet sometimes things can make a man forget. Orrin had a right to trust women. He
was easy to look at, and he had a foot for the dancing and an ear for the music
and a voice to charm the beaver out of their ponds.
None of that was true of me. I was a big, homely man with wide shoulders, big
hands, and a face like a wedge: hard cheekbones, and a few scars picked up from
places where I shouldn’t have been, maybe. I had scars on my heart, too, from
the few times I’d won, only to lose again.
Soft carpets and white linen and the gleam of expensive glass and silver, they
weren’t for the likes of me. I was a man born to the smell of pine knots
burning, to sleeping under the stars or under a chuck wagon, maybe, or to the
smell of branding fires or powder-smoke.
Yet I polished my boots some, and slicked back my hair as best I could, and,
with a twist at my mustache, I went down the stairs to the dining room.
The traps that life lays for a man are not always of steel, nor is the bait what
he’d expect. When I came through the door she was setting there alone, and when
she looked up at me her eyes seemed to widen and a sort of half-smile trembled
on her lips.
She was beautiful, so beautiful I felt my heart ache with the sight of her.
Suddenly scared, I made a start to turn away, but she got to her feet quickly
but gracefully, and she said, “Mr. Sackett? William Tell Sackett?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I twisted my hat in my hands. “Yes, ma’am. I was just aimin’ to
set for supper. Have you had yours yet?”
“I was waiting for you,” she said, and dropped her eyes. “I am afraid you’ll
think me very bold, but I…”
“No such thing,” I said. I drew back a chair for her.
“I surely dread eatin’ supper alone. Seems to me I’m the only one alone, most of
the time.”
“Have you been alone a lot, Mr. Sackett?” She looked up at me out of those big,
soft eyes and I couldn’t swallow. Not hardly.
“Yes, ma’am. I’ve traveled wild country a sight, and away out in the mountains
and upon the far plains a body sets alone … although there’s camp-robber jays
or sometimes coyotes around.”
“You must be awfully brave.”
“No, ma’am. I just don’t know no better. It comes natural when you’ve
growed—grown-up with it.”
My collar felt tight, but then I never did like them stiff collars. They chafed
my neck. My gun had twisted over on my belly and was gouging me. I could feel
the sweat on my forehead and I desperately wanted to wipe it away.
“Your face looks so—so hard! I mean the skin! Like mahogany.”
“It ain’t much,” I said, “although it cuts less than most. Why, I mind the
time—”
Well, I caught myself in time. That there was no story for a genteel girl like
this here. She suddenly put her hand up to my face.
“Do you mind? I just have to see if it’s as hard as it looks!” Her hand was
soft, like the feathers on a dove. I could feel my heart pounding, and I was
afraid she’d hear it. It had been a long time since any woman made up to me like
that.
Suddenly somebody was beside the table. “Mr. Sackett, suh? A message for you,
suh.” And then in a slightly different tone, he said, and it was Judas talkin’,
“How do you do, Miss Baston?”
CHAPTER V
That name did just what Judas figured it would do and brought me right down out
of the clouds. He shot down my balloon with one word, and it was well he did so,
because it was only filled with hot air, anyway. No girl like this one would set
her cap for a man like me unless there was double-dealing in it.
She smiled just as brightly, but it seemed to me there was a mean kind of anger
in her eyes. Right then she could have shot Judas Priest.
For a moment there I forgot the message I had in my hand, but it was Fanny
Baston who brought my attention back to it.
Judas had disappeared without even getting a reply from her, but I reckon he
wasn’t expecting one. Miss Baston glanced at the note in my hand. “Something
always interrupts whenever I start talkin’ to a good-looking man, Mr. Sackett.
You can attend to that later, if you don’t mind.”
I just smiled at her. I had my good sense back now, or part of it. “It might be
important.”
Unfolding the note, I read: Absinthe House. 11 o’clock tonight. And it was
signed with a profile of the Tinker. One quick, but amazingly lifelike line.
I folded the note and put it in my shirt pocket and buttoned down the flap. I
had a feeling she was itching to put her dainty white hands on it. She’d get it
only over my dead body. I had a feeling she’d thought of that, too.
“I was lookin’ forward to meetin’ you, ma’am,” I said, and then I lied to her.
“Orrin, he said he’d met you and was plannin’ to see you soon.”
Her eyelids flickered with annoyance. She had not expected that, but folks who
deal in crime should recall that folks like to talk, and will tell most
everything, given a chance. She had no way of knowing that I hadn’t seen or
heard from Orrin.
“I am afraid you have gathered the wrong impression,” she said. “I only met your