LITMIR.BIZ

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by the hotel I saw Sally Bidwell lookin' down from a room window. She saw me and waved. She wasn't smilin' at all. Why shouldn't a prospective bride smile, kid?"

      This was the way he fed it to Owen Merritt, stubbornly, slyly, with an irony drying out his words. He kept observing how Owen Merritt worried the glass around the table with his finger tips. There was a wild temper in that long man with the whalebone frame, a temper as unpredictable as dynamite.

      Merritt had the last drink. "Damn bottle's empty again. Maybe we should take a walk."

      "What for?" grunted Bourke Prine. "You're always takin' a walk. Why?"

      "Maybe because I'm sick of listenin' to your speeches." They turned out of the back room, into a full and heavy racket. Everybody on the Piute Desert, it seemed certain, had come to The Wells this Saturday night to celebrate the wedding. Tom Croker's saloon could hold fifty men if the poker tables and the faro rig were pushed against the wall, but there were more than that many in here now, everybody turning and colliding, and pleased to have it that way after a long summer's work and isolation. Lamplight splintered against a long back-bar mirror, and smoke lay low and thick, and the front swing door kept squalling on its hinges, and sweat ran down the points of Tom Croker's mustache as he stood behind the bar and tried to serve this crowd. The whole Skull outfit was here. So were Mike Tague's riders from Wagon Rim way; and all the smaller ranches nestling along the base of the Bunchgrass Hills were represented. Drifters from the Broken Buttes made a show, and four cavalrymen had ridden in from distant Camp McDermitt. Juke Slover, six feet from Owen, yelled to make himself heard. "Hello, pilgrim!" Skull's foreman, Fay Dutcher, worked his way slowly through the jam, using his shoulders, using his elbows. There was a quietness to this Dutcher almost like insolence—a kind of overbearing assurance in the way he pushed others aside. It was a quality, Prine thought idly, that Fay Dutcher had imparted to his men. All Skull's riders were like that. Dutcher was short and broad, with a weather-blackened skin and a heavy cropped mustache half hiding his upper lip and a pair of eyes that showed a slanted, short- tempered shining. He only nodded at Bourke Prine. But he took in Merritt with a full glance, a careful and far more aroused glance, and said, "Hello, Merritt," and moved aside. Other men turned to watch this scene, and then Will Isham came into the saloon and made his way forward.

      Bourke Prine knew that it was a purely accidental meeting, yet Isham used the accident to a good purpose, as he always did. He stopped in front of Merritt. "Owen," he said, "I'm glad to see you. Because I want a word with you."

      This room had no privacy in it, and yet men pressed away a little and gave Isham a space. Bourke Prine considered that with his sharp mind. Will Isham could have elbow room any time he wanted; for he was owner of Skull, and Skull was a quarter million acres lying along the southern base of the Bunchgrass Hills, one of the great ranches in the state. Nevertheless, it was some other prompting which moved the crowd away. Here was Isham marrying Sally Bidwell, not Owen Merritt who had gone with her so long a time. One man was winning and one man was losing, nobody on the Piute knowing the reason, and now they were face to face. This was why the crowd withdrew and let them alone.

      "Owen," said Will Isham, "I want to know how you take this. If there is to be trouble between us, I'd like to know it now."

      So coolly, so softly—and yet with so much willfulness lying behind that easy speech, with so direct and unwavering a determination to have his answer. In a country of physically big riders, Will Isham was small, almost slight; in a land of carelessness and laughter, he remained grave, he held himself under stiff control. He was, Bourke Prine remembered, close to forty—at least ten years older than Owen Merritt and still older than Sally Bidwell whom he was shortly to marry.

      It occurred to Bourke Prine suddenly to look over to Owen Merritt, whereupon he noticed the blond man's wide lips placed in a faint half-smile. That was all. Nothing else got through the consistently smooth expression. Merritt said. "I congratulate you, Will."

      Isham's tone was thoroughly courteous, but it held the same insistence that had been there before. "You're sure?"

      It seemed then to Bourke that a break hovered over these two. They were both calm, they were both softly and deceivingly gentle with their words. Prine felt the weight of Isham's will; definitely he could feel it. And he knew enough about his partner to guess at the wildness lying behind Merritt's half-smile. Owen said, in his summer-soft tone, "What are you worried about, Will?"

      Fay Dutcher, on the edge of this scene, hauled his shoulders about and placed his agate-black eyes against Merritt. Isham kept still a moment, but Bourke Prine witnessed the minute break in the gravity of Skull's owner and identified the faint heat of a touched pride. Isham said, "I want no war of words, Owen. We'll be living in this country a long while, you and me. I should like to continue to regard you as a friend. If that is not to be, I want it made clear."

      Bourke Prine, who disliked Will Isham and Skull and all that Skull stood for, had his moment of admiration for the man. Here Isham stood, asking for his showdown, sidestepping nothing, doggedly insisting on a clear answer. He wore a black broadcloth suit and a white shirt. An elk-tooth charm swayed in the sag of his watch chain, and a diamond showed a flicker of light on his right index finger. He was sparing in his gestures and mild in his talk—and somehow very formidable to Bourke Prine at the moment. A quality set him apart from every other man in the room.

      "The luck," said Owen Merritt, "is yours. I will not complain."

      "Owen," counseled Will Isham, "it isn't like you to dodge. I want the truth—and I want everybody in this room to hear it. I will not have rumors going around."

      "I have said I wish you luck," stated Owen Merritt. "Better let it go like that."

      Isham hesitated at the answer, and Bourke Prine saw the man's steady glance search Merritt's face as though to find a direct and visible hostility. He was balancing the issue in his mind. Behind Owen's answer lay so much that was unsaid, as Isham knew, and as all the crowd knew. But in the end some caution or sense of propriety made an answer for Isham. He said, "Let's drink on that," and led the way to the bar, adding a word for the crowd. "Gentlemen, this is on Skull." Afterward, when the drinks had been put before them, he took up his glass. "To the future Mrs. Isham."

      Bourke Prine felt a chill ride down his back. Isham had turned; his eyes suddenly struck Owen Merritt. There was an expression on his face more personal than before, touched with a triumph and yet showing the bright thin edge of bitterness. The man wasn't sure. Merritt said, "Her health and yours, Will," and drank down.

      Isham placed his untouched glass on the bar, and gave his apology. "I would not care to appear before the bishop with a drink on me. Croker, I'm buyin' the house for the rest of the night." He turned then and went down the alley at once made for him, a small, grave, and thoroughly cool man.

      Men began to talk again. Juke Slover came over to stand with Prine and Merritt—these three making an accustomed familiar group. Lee Repp, an obscure rider of the Broken Buttes, came out of the night, using his hands to clear a trail. He was drunk, and his lips moved loosely across a white skin. He stared at Merritt. "I guess the Broken Buttes crowd ought to feel pretty happy, huh? Sally's old man is out there braggin' about his son-in-law already."

      Owen Merritt looked at him without interest. Lee Repp described a circle in the air with his hands. "Yeah, so. Sally's old man sure has got a pretty easy thing now. Maybe—"

      Merritt said, "Shut up, Repp."

      Fay Dutcher plowed over from another corner of the house. "Repp," he said, "get out of here." But Repp was watching Owen Merritt and his mouth closed slowly, without further sound. Merritt's shoulders lifted. The smooth surface of the man was beginning to wear thin. Small, sudden flashes of wildness got through his eyes, the ruddiness of his cheeks glistened with an overlay of sweat, as though from strain, and the cut of his jaws showed a straight, solid line. He looked at the glass in his hand, caught in some odd debate, and put it down, and nodded at Bourke. "Let's have a look at the joyous night, Bourke." Somewhere on the street a gun banged twice, but nobody in the Palace considered the sound of any import.

      Pay Lankershim shoved his way through the crowd. He tapped Owen's shoulder with a hand blackened and bony and crippled from seventy

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