LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

headboards of the cemetery glowed vaguely white under the moonlight. Following the irregular row, Morgan stopped before his wife's grave. Janet's hand gripped his fingers more tightly and she stood quite close to him. There was a child's dread of the unknown in her. He didn't want it to trouble her, so he said casually: "Next time I come to town, we must cut the grass here and paint the board again."

      She said: "Do I look like her, Daddy?"

      "When you are eighteen, Janet, you will look exactly as she looked. That was the year we were married."

      He heard her soft, long sigh. "It would be so nice to have a mother."

      This was the thing that hit him so hard, his daughter's loneliness for a mother. He stood at the foot of the grave, with his hat removed, thinking back to that long-gone night when Lila Durrie, so full of life and laughter and recklessness, had smiled to him across the dance hall's width, putting everything into her round black eyes. At eighteen a man was like the blowing wind; he had gone over, knowing there would be a fight. Ben Herendeen had brought her to the dance and Ben Herendeen stood by, quietly raging. When the music started Lila Durrie looked up at the sullen Herendeen, laughed at him and took Clay Morgan's arm, dancing away. At the doorway they had stepped out; down by the row of buggies, in the bland black night, they had stood a moment, no longer cool and no longer laughing. Even now Morgan remembered the sharpness, the wild intensity of his feelings as he kissed her and heard her whisper in his ears. "Clay—Clay, do you love me?" They had gone immediately to his rig. At daylight in War Pass, forty miles away, they were married.

      Janet's fingers tugged at him. "Didn't you ever have a picture, Daddy?"

      "No," he said. "She never had one taken."

      There hadn't been time for a picture or for much of anything else. At that time he owned a small ranch in the Lost Hills and ran a few cows on it. This was where they set up housekeeping, a long way from town, a long way from dances or from her friends. She had been used to better things and couldn't help remembering it. She was a stormy girl, so rash in anger, so quick to seek laughter, by turns so terribly forlorn and so tempestuously happy. Four months after their marriage Herendeen rode up to the place and stepped from the saddle. From the far corner of the meadow, Clay had seen this. When he reached the house Herendeen was laughing and she was laughing but that laughter stopped soon enough, for Herendeen said: "Why stick so close to the house, Clay? Don't you trust your wife?"

      Morgan drew the cigar from his mouth, feeling some of the fury of that fight. He had rushed against Herendeen, hearing his wife's scream of protest. Herendeen started laughing again, but when they were finished, both exhausted and drained dry and badly beaten, there was no amusement in Herendeen. That hurt still came back to plague Morgan, even now; he remembered how he walked to the corral and hung his elbows against it to keep from falling, and how blindly Herendeen staggered toward his horse. He had whipped Herendeen in that fight and yet he had lost; for, five months later, shortly after Janet's birth, Lila had looked up from her bed, white and strengthless, all her love gone, and whispered: "I should tell you something, Clay. I made a mistake. It was Ben I wanted to marry. You and I are not at all alike." And so she had died.

      He brought himself out of all this with effort and replaced his hat. "I think," he told Janet, "we'd better go."

      Janet reached down and patted the dust of her mother's grave, murmuring, "Everybody says you were very beautiful."

      He had turned away. But he turned back, holding the warm small hand of his daughter within his own big fingers, knowing that in his daughter's head was a wistful and wonderful image of her mother—an image made out of a child's longing. Like a fairy tale, he thought, that had to be bright and always fair. So he said: "Yes, she was, Janet. There never was a mother like her. She had black hair. It was very long and sunlight made it shine. Her eyes were the same color as yours. She was never angry and never afraid and she loved us both. When you were just three days old she sang a song to make you sleep. The song was 'Ben Bolt.' She had a lovely voice. You will be like her and you will always see her when you look in the mirror."

      She remained silent, drinking in his description, storing those words in her retentive memory. She drew a long, pleased sigh; the pressure of her hand grew greater on his fingers, and afterwards they turned through Old Town, walking in silence. He had made her happy.

      He was thinking of this, pleased by her pleasure, when he saw a low-bent and shadowy shape run from the alley adjoining the Mountain House hotel and whip across the street toward Mike Boylan's blacksmith shop. This was in the corner building of Old Town, and Mike Boylan, late-working, had hung a lantern above the shop's wide double-door. A saddle horse stood loose before Boylan's rack, toward which the running man aimed. Farther up the street somebody shouted a warning and a Three Pines rider rushed forward from McGarrah's store. Slowly pacing forward toward Mike Boylan's shop, Morgan identified the runner as soon as the latter entered the yellow arc of the lantern's light. It was Ollie Jacks.

      Ollie Jacks's breath was a lunging, painful sound in the night as he rushed against the horse, threw himself into the saddle and clawed at the reins. For a brief moment his face came around and Morgan saw the constricted desperation on it; then Ollie Jacks slashed the horse away from the blacksmith shop, turned into the gap between Old Town and McGarrah's store, and raced downslope into the desert.

      Janet's hand gripped Clay Morgan's fingers. "What's the matter, Daddy?"

      "Nothing," he said, "nothing but Ollie Jacks having some fun." He quickened his step, coming into the gap and halting there as a pair of Three Pines men reached it. Herendeen arrived, saying: "Get your horses," and then these men were facing Clay Morgan. One of them had drawn his gun to take a shot at the retreating Ollie Jacks. He held the gun half out of the holster, staring at Morgan, but Ollie Jacks was gone and it was too late and he let the gun drop back, shrugging his shoulders. Three Pines men were riding up behind Herendeen and Herendeen's face was red and round.

      The echo of Ollie Jacks's horse made a dying tattoo in the blackness, out in the desert. Other Three Pines riders were rushing from town by the stage road. Morgan said, courteous and quiet: "Maybe Janet and I are in your way. We'll step aside."

      "No," said Herendeen, rage running behind his false-cool tone. "There is nothing to hurry about. There's a time for everything, Clay. Good evening, Janet."

      Janet said in her precise, little-woman's voice: "Good evening." Morgan pulled her gently on to McGarrah's porch, Ann McGarrah waited there. Part of the Three Pines crew galloped toward the desert, after Ollie Jacks. Herendeen walked up the street, his boots lifting dust.

      Morgan said, "I'll ride along, honey. Be back in a few days. You have a good time." He reached down and kissed her, feeling the warmth of her hands as she held them at the back of his neck. He was smiling as he straightened, smiling at Janet, and then at Ann McGarrah's attentive eyes. Out on the desert a gun sounded, quick and faint, and was echoed by two other shots. That was all. Ann McGarrah saw the smile die and saw the flame of temper in his eyes. They both knew Ollie Jacks was dead. Herendeen had respected Morgan's challenge; that and nothing more. Morgan lifted his hat, noting how Ann McGarrah's arm rested on Janet's shoulder. He said, "Good night," and turned into the street.

      Mrs. White was on the porch of the Mountain House, and called to him in her even-calm voice: "If you see Lige at the Long Grade, Clay, tell him I'm ready to go home."

      "I'll see if I can find him," said Morgan. Walking slowly up the street, he passed Rusey at the corner of the bank and noticed Pete Borders in the post office shadows. He stepped into the Long Grade, seeing most of the men of the town here, but not Lige White, Charley Hillhouse slouched at a corner of the bar. Charley looked at him, not moving. Afterwards Morgan went to his horse at Gentry's and spoke to the hostler in the runway. "Take Janet's horse, Parr. She's staying in town."

      He wanted a word with Hack Breathitt, but Hack wasn't around, and so he followed the upper road from War Pass, passing into a brief stand of pine. Two or three houses lay back in these trees. When he came by one of them—Mrs. Benson's house—he saw the glint of a cigarette on the shadow-blackened porch and heard Lige White quietly laughing. Mrs. Benson was there, suddenly suppressing her voice. The road bent away from the pines and dropped into the Powder Desert

Скачать книгу