Ernest Haycox - The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox

"Then why should she come back?" Leverage wanted to know and received a kick on his booted leg under the table.

"I couldn't say," mused Denver. "Probably Lola doesn't know herself. That's the way she does things."

"All wimmen's alike," grunted Leverage and scowled on his daughter. His leg hurt.

Outside was the jangle and clatter of the Ysabel Junction stage making the right-angle turn from Prairie Street to Main. By common consent the people in the dining room adjourned dinner and headed for the door. Denver walked behind Leverage and Eve; the girl, never knowing why she should let herself say such a thing, spoke over her shoulder.

"Old times for you, David. Aren't you glad?"

She was instantly sorry, and a little ashamed when she heard Denver's slow answer come gently forward.

"You've convinced me you're no longer a little girl, Eve. I'm not sure I like the change."

"And why?"

"Little girls are more charitable minded than big ones."

They were on the porch. The stages—there were three of them this trip instead of one—veered up to the hotel porch and stopped. Some courteous citizen opened the door of the front coach and lifted his hat. A woman stepped daintily down, and there was a flash of even teeth as she smiled on the crowd. Eve's small fists tightened; she threw a glance behind her, but Dave Denver had disappeared from the porch and was not to be seen. Eve thought Lola Monterey's eyes went through the ranks of the assembled Sundowners with more than passing interest, but if the woman was disappointed she was too accomplished an actress to reveal it. Old man Leverage muttered, "By Jodey, the girl's pretty, Eve. She's got beyond Sundown."

Eve nodded, a small ache in her heart. The tempestuous, flamboyant dance-hall girl of three years ago had returned from her conquests with the veneer of fine manners and proud self- confidence. Her jet-black hair bobbed in the sun, and the slim, pointed face, showing the satin smoothness of Spanish blood, had the stirring dignity of actual beauty. Moving up the steps with the same lithe grace that had brought her out of poverty and mean surroundings, she paused, swung around, and smiled again on Sundown. Soft and husky words fell into the silence with a queer vitality.

"I am home—and glad."

Then she passed into the hotel, the rest of the opera company following after. A traveling salesman, calling heartily to his friends, swept past. And at the end of the procession strolled an extremely tall man with the jaw and the nose and the eye of England. He seemed weary, bored, puzzled. At the door he paused to ask a plaintive question of a bystander, and those nearest him caught the full fragrance of a broad and richly blurred speech freshly blown from Albion's misty shores.

"I say, my friend, one of my bally braces has burst a stitching. Can you direct me to the local haberdashery?"

The crowd was dissolving. Leverage turned on his daughter. "I reckon you'll be wantin' to see the show tonight, uh?"

"I do," said Eve, "but why in the world did you mention it in front of David? It made me feel as small as—"

"Good grief, why?" demanded the astonished Leverage. "It ain't a crime."

"Do you think I want him to believe I was fishing for an invitation? And you shouldn't have mentioned Lola around him, Dad."

Leverage shook his head. "Wimmen beat me. Danged if they don't. Now a kid like you has got to go and join the ranks. Well, we'll stay over then."

"We'll go right home," said Eve, "so I can get into some clothes. Folks don't go to shows in gingham dresses, and there's Mother."

"Imagine that," grinned Leverage. "Well, don't forget that the most important ceremony you been through so far, which was bein' born, didn't call for no clothes at all. And I have et with three Senators and a governor with nothin' better than overalls on which had a red flannel patch in the seat. But you can go home and come back, though Ma won't want to come. I know better'n to argue. Wait till I get Joe Peake to take you in a rig. I got to stay over for the Association meetin'."

Eve smiled at her father and strolled down the street, leaving the porch deserted except for two lackadaisical gentlemen who somehow had witnessed all the recent excitement from the comfortable vantage point of the porch rockers.

"Buck," said Wango, "whut's that brace business which the Englishman was cryin' over?"

"I heard somewhere that those fellas called suspenders braces," replied Meems.

"Hell, ain't that peculiar? And whut's a habadashery, anyhow?"

"Your turn to guess," drawled Meems. "I done my share."

"Well," growled Wango, "he ain't a-gunta git by with no foreign hooch-a-ma-cooch like that around here."

"Lola sure has got pritty," reflected Meems.

"Yeah. Reckon Denver figgers so."

"Shut up," admonished Meems without heat. "Don't drag in dead cats."

"Ain't you a moral son of a gun? Pardon me for chewin' tobacco in yore presence. But what I'm wonderin' is how the stage got through without excitement today. Yuh know, they's supposed to be money in the Wells-Fargo box this trip."

"Don't be mellerdramatic, Wango. Who'd bring money into a joint like Sundown?"

"I heard," said Meems lazily. "Well, mebbe Lou Redmain was asleep at the switch."

Buck Meems rose from the depths of the rocker and stared at his partner with a penetrating eye and said very coldly, "Was I you, Pete, I'd git me some packthread and sew up that four- cornered thing yuh call a mouth."

"Well—"

"Shut up," stated Meems succinctly. "It's too hard to git partners, an' I don't want yuh shot down until I git back what yuh owe me. As for the gent whose name yuh was so careless as to mention out loud—don't do it no more. You don't know him. You never heard of him, see? Let yore betters worry about that business. You and me is humble folks with an itch to keep on breathin'."

"Trouble's comin', nev'less," maintained Wango.

"Comin' hell a-riot," agreed Meems. "That's what the Association is meetin' for. That's why yuh see Dave Denver stalkin' around the streets lookin' about as hard as I ever saw him. But you and me is out of it, see? Or have I got to spell the words?"

"Oh, well," breathed Wango and cast a sidewise glance at his partner. "How about a drink?"

"Thanks for the invite," said Meems, and rose instantly.

"I never said nothin' about an invite—"

"And it was nice of yuh to offer to pay my way," broke in Meems firmly. "Come on."

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Dave Denver and Al Niland stood at one corner of Grogan's hundred-foot bar and downed an after-dinner whisky neat, as was the custom. The men of Sundown drifted in, took their liquor, and swapped unhurried talk. Denver looked around the room, nodding here and there at ranchers he hadn't seen during the winter. Niland leaned closer.

"Did you see the same fellow I happened to see get off the third stage?"

"Stinger Dann?"

"The same," grunted Niland. "Since when's he taken to payin' fare?"

"Maybe he's run all his good horses to death," suggested Denver.

"Somebody's doin' a lot of night ridin', that's certain," mused Niland. "It's a funny thing how this county reacts to the hint of trouble. All winter we've been quiet. Nothing's happened much. All of a sudden folks get a little skittish and quit talkin' out loud. The underground telegraph starts workin'. Look around the room and see how many men are swappin' conversation real close together and tryin' to appear aboveboard. I never saw the signs fail. Pretty soon something will break loose."

"Which brings us back to Stinger Dann," drawled Denver. "He's enterin' for his liquor. Where's he been the last few weeks?"

Niland spared a short, quick glance at a man with a burly frame and raw-red cheeks cruising toward the bar; Stinger Dann was scowling straight ahead and paying heed to nobody, as was his characteristic way of moving through life.