Clifton Adams - Gambling Man

“Then,” the marshal said gently, “I guess I'll handle it my own way. Drop the gun, son.”

Jeff was surprised to discover his mind working with the clean, polished precision of a fine watch. Instantly, he remembered the “spin” that Nathan had shown him so long ago, that miraculous trick of reversing a pistol in your hand while seeming to hand it over butt first.

But Elec was not to be caught off guard this time. He increased the pressure slightly, pressing the muzzle a bit harder in Jeff's back.

“Don't bother handing it to me,” he said dryly. “Just slip the buckle.” The marshal took the revolver. “All right —march.”

“I didn't do anything. You can't lock me up.”

“I can. And I will,” Elec said flatly.

There was nothing to do. With a gun in his back, Jeff focused his hate on Chet Blakely, as though to warn him the fight wasn't over. Then he shrugged and walked stiffly out of the saloon.

The marshal put him in the cell with two drunk cowhands and locked the door. Jeff grabbed the bars and glared. “You'll be sorry for this, Elec!”

The marshal sighed heavily and shook his head. “I just don't know what to do with you, Blaine, and that's the gospel truth. Can't you see you're not hurting anybody but yourself?”

“I figure that's my business.”

“Not when you go on the prod. Then it gets to be my business. Do you know what's going to happen if you don't take that chip off your shoulder? You'll end up like your pa; you'll let your hate get you in so-deep that you'll never be able to get out. One of these days some drunk cowhand'll get the notion he's a gunfighter and force you to show your hand.”

“I can take care of myself.”

Blasingame smiled bitterly. “So could Nate, but what did it prove? Your pa's a wanted killer. With telegraph wire strung all over the Southwest, he doesn't dare come back to his own country, to the place where he was born and raised, not even to see his son.”

“My pa will come back when he gets ready.”

The marshal nodded. “Maybe. But it'll be the last trip he'll ever take. The law will be waiting for him.” He turned and walked heavily back to his office....

It was midafternoon when Amy Wintworth came to the office to see him. Elec touched his hatbrim with a forced smile. “Come in, Amy. It's not often we get such pretty visitors down here.”

Amy could offer no smile in return. “I heard that Jeff was—”

“Locked up,” the marshal finished for her. “A little to-do over at Bert's place. Nothing serious.”

“But serious enough to lock him up.”

Blasingame looked at her, saw the urgency behind her eyes. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I guess it was. Have a chair, Amy.” He waited until she was seated.

“May I see him?”' she asked.

“I don't think it would be wise; he's pretty worked up. What did you want to see him about?”

“I want to ask him to make up with his Aunt Beulah,” Amy said tightly.

Elec whistled softly in surprise. “I don't think he'd ever do that, Amy. He hates Beulah Sewell as much as I ever saw one person hate another. That's the seat of all his trouble, I think—he's so full of hate that it spills over onto everybody he crosses. ”

“Marshal, have you seen Beulah Sewell recently?”

He frowned faintly. “No, I don't think so. Not since—”

“Not since the town learned Nathan wasn't the one who killed Jeff Harper and robbed the bank? No one has seen her since then except Wirt, and me. I just came from the Sewell house.”

Amy closed her eyes for a moment, her thoughts flying back to that bleak little house, locked and sealed and quiet as a tomb. She said slowly, “I don't think you'd know her, Marshal. She's as unreal as a corpse; she hates herself more than Jeff ever could.”

Elec rubbed his face thoughtfully. “I guess I haven't thought much about Beulah except to despise her for what she did. Like everybody else.” Gazing up at the ceiling, he smiled thinly. “It's a funny thing. You can fight with a man, or steal from him, or even shoot him, and the chances are pretty good that he'll forgive you if you give him a chance. But prove a man a fool and he'll hate you all his life. That's what Beulah did. We all swallowed that lie of hers, and then looked like fools when the truth came out.”

“But,” Amy asked, “don't you think it would be a better town if people would forgive her?”

“Sure,” Elec shrugged, “but it's a big order. Especially for Jeff.”

“Impossible?”

“Just not very likely, let's say.”

She sat straight, her mouth compressed to a grim, determined line. One moment she had all the poise and steel of a queen, and the next moment she was a frightened young woman, sobbing.

Elec moved uneasily. “Now, now, Amy, there's no use in that.” He tugged at a red handkerchief in his hip pocket and handed it to her across the desk.

“I'm sorry. That was a foolish tiling to do,” she said.

“You like the boy, don't you, Amy?”

She nodded. “But not the way he's going. Not what I see for him in the future. Sometimes I see so much of Nathan in him that it frightens me.”

Elec nodded, knowing what she meant. It wasn't Jeff's blood that made him act the way he did, it was that element of pure tragedy—circumstance. The same kind of circumstance that had made Nate the kind of man he now was.

Few persons ever thought of the marshal as a sensitive man, but now he felt a vague horror growing within him as he considered what violence circumstance could build. How could you fight a thing as irrevocable as fate? How could you change the direction of destiny?

People saw Elec Blasingame as a logical, plodding man whose job it was to hunt down, capture, or kill those who ran off the one-way track of conventional standards. Few guessed that he was often filled with rage and futility, as he was now, because he was helpless to change the inevitable. In his job there were no human switches to be thrown, no means of sidetracking passion, or hate, or anger. His job was to wait patiently and then shoot down those who left the rails.

Elec sat heavily behind his desk, his big fists knotted. He had been in this job long enough; he felt old, he had lost his zest for the work. He knew from experience that it was only a matter of time, and not much of that, before Jeff Blaine left the rails. The job of stopping the boy would be his, and he did not relish it.

Several seconds had passed since she had spoken, and now Amy said quietly, “May I see him, Marshal?”

“Now?”

She nodded, and there was a finality to the gesture that Elec could feel to his bones. “You have the right, if that's what you want. Are you going to ask him to make up with his aunt?”

“It's the only chance he has, isn't it? If there's no forgiveness in him, I might as well know it now.”

“And if he won't listen?” Elec asked.

There was no need of an answer.

It was well past midnight when the cell became so filled with drunk cowhands that Elec let Jeff go.

“Go to bed,” the marshal said. “I have all the trouble I need tonight.”

“I'll take my gun before I go,” Jeff said icily.

Sighing, the marshal took the Colt's from the desk drawer. “I don't suppose you had sense enough to listen to Amy when she tried to talk to you this afternoon.”

Jeff glared and did not answer. He buckled the cartridge belt around his waist, turned stiffly on his heel, and headed up the stairs.

The air outside was clean and sweet, and he dragged deep gulps of it into his lungs when he reached the sidewalk. All around him were the Saturday night sounds of a western town. The clang of the Green House piano, the sound, of bawdy laughter from the Paradise and Surratt's. Above him, fiddles sang in the Masonic hall, and the building trembled with the heavy tramping, of count dancing. Jeff wondered bitterly if Amy was up there she often came with Todd when Jeff was busy or had forgotten to ask her.