LITMIR.BIZ

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some eating food right now, Belle.”

      “I’ll tend to it,” she said. “You don’t have to tell me when to feed a person.” She was up and nodding her head toward the door. She said, “Come on. I’ll show you where you can have a room, Hank Shard.” She caught hold of his arm as they went out and she hugged it. “It’s as good as Christmas seeing you come back, Hank. No fooling. Why did you come back?”

      They were out in the hall, walking down between the doors that led to the various hotel rooms. Hank said, “You didn’t believe me, Belle, but I told the truth. I came to see you.”

      “You’re talking like a kid Wesley’s age,” she said.

      “I’m talking like a man that’s sick of living alone.”

      * * * *

      Belle had opened a door and stepped into the room. She fluffed up the thin pillow and turned back the blankets. “You can bunk here, Hank. What did you say?”

      “You heard me,” Hank said.

      She stepped to the door, “I was afraid I did. I’m going down to the kitchen and rustle some food for Wesley.” She stepped into the hall. “A mighty nice boy, seems to be. Can’t imagine him getting into trouble on his own.”

      “He might, drawing too slow,” Hank n said. “That’s about all the trouble I can think of he’d rightly get into by himself.”

      “You’ve seen him draw?”

      Hank grinned. “When he ran into me on the trail. I told him about it.”

      “I wouldn’t want him a gun-fighting kid,” Belle said. She went out. Hank could hear her feet treading the stairs to the lower floor.

      He opened the window to his room and then went down to the horses. He rode his bay and led the sorrel to the livery stable and paid the boy there and told him to treat them good. He slung his saddle roll over his shoulder and started back.

      A lean man with massive shoulders and a thick beard on his face reined close to Hank as he crossed the street. The man had a deep, rumbling voice. He said, “Excuse me, stranger. Didn’t a towheaded, long legged kid ride into town a while ago on that sorrel you just led in?”

      Hank Shard stopped dead in his tracks. He turned with the saddle roll hindering his right arm if he wanted to draw.

      “Maybe he did,” Hank said. “Maybe he didn’t. What business you figure it is of yours?”

      “Just curious,” the man said. He reined his horse around.

      Hank Shard said, “See that you keep it just curious.” He stepped back on the board walk and watched the stranger with the beard ride up the street.

      “Friends of yours?” a voice said behind Hank.

      He turned. A sandy haired man with a full flowing mustache and a big star on his vest was looking at him. The star said, “Sheriff,” real plain and the eyes of the sandy-haired man were narrowed.

      “Never saw him before in my life,” Hank said. “Did you, Sheriff?”

      “No,” the sheriff said, “and if I find you’re lying it won’t be so easy to pull what you three got on your minds.”

      “Pull?” Hank said. He laid back his head suddenly and laughed.

      “You rode in about an hour ago with a towheaded kid,” the sheriff said. “Now you just took your horses here to the livery stable. They’ve had some hard riding. That can mean a lot of things.”

      “It sure can,” Hank said. “It might mean you’re making wrong guesses.”

      “Then again,” the sheriff said. “It might mean something that would need looking into. Like what was this bearded man doing just now, giving you a signal of some kind?”

      “You don’t trust nobody you never saw before in this town, is that it, Sheriff?”

      “About it,” the sheriff said. “You’ll be watched, every move. So you better get out of town, all three of you.”

      A window at the back of the Empire House slammed up and a woman’s voice called down to the two in front of the livery stable.

      “If you’re just visiting with that man, Sheriff, you’ll find him good company. If you’re figuring he’s an owlhoot and a road agent you’re picking the wrong man. That’s Hank Shard and he’s honester than you, Sheriff. Don’t be bothering him.”

      It was Belle Driscoll. She slammed down the window and was gone. The sheriff frowned at Hank. He said, “You know Belle Driscoll?”

      “Known her for over twenty years,” Hank said.

      The sheriff looked disgusted. He said, “You might be all right, then,” and looked disappointed. He turned and walked up the street.

      Hank crossed the street and went around to the front hotel entrance and Belle was waiting for him there. She said, “Nosy lawman. Just because I saved a youngster from hanging once, and proved he didn’t do the horse stealing he was supposed to have, Sheriff Rance watches everybody he hears new that I speak to.”

      Hank Shard opened his mouth to mention the bearded man. He closed it again. Instead, he said, “You got Wesley fed?”

      A soft light came into her eyes. “I never saw anybody so hungry in my life. I had to stop him eating for fear he’d get sick.”

      She walked up the stairs with him and to his room. She took his saddle roll off his shoulder and unrolled it on the bed and put away what things he had.

      Hank watched her and a warm feeling possessed him. He said, “I meant what I told you, Belle, about why I came here.”

      She spread out a special little doily on the top of the old varnish-cracked dresser.

      “I been a wandering ranny most of my life, Belle. But I’ve made my pile—in silver. Got it banked safe and sound and I aim to buy me a ranch some nice place and have you and me settle down.”

      “Hank,” she said, turning. Her eyes glistened with moisture.

      “You can pick out the place and ranch.”

      She turned and stared out of the window.

      “I’ve thought about you a heap since I saw you years ago. I always thought about you as my girl.”

      She turned. “Hank,” she said. “You forget. I’m still married.”

      “After that—after your husband left you like that, in the middle of the fever epidemic? Took everything you had in the house and went out and left you and the boy sick.”

      He said it savagely, for it seemed to be coming out of him, forced into speech against his will.

      “I’m married, just the same,” she said. “Even if I hate the ground he walks on. Even if I might kill him if I could, I’m married to him. I said, ’Till death do us part,’ Hank. Folks from Utah are like that. Strict. I’m funny, I guess. Maybe it’s the way I was brought up. I was brought up awfully strict, Hank, about marriage. I guess that’s partly why I went off the trail when it all happened. Sometimes I see things in my sleep, like I thought I was seeing down at the bar, when you stood there—with the towhead.”

      “Think about it,” Hank said. “You’re going to be pestered with me until you tell me yes, Belle.”

      She shook her head. “I’m proud to have you ask me, Hank,” she said. “But you best forget it.” She went out and he heard her go down the hall and descend to the first floor.

      Hank walked down the hall and tapped at Belle’s door to see the kid. There wasn’t any answer. He tried the door and it opened and he peered around the edge of the door.

      Wes was sleeping like a baby, sprawled out on the couch. Hank closed the door softly.

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