Clifton Adams - Boomer

Was he dead? Was he going to die?

There were a thousand questions without answers. He sat with his back against the walls of the boxcar as the slow chill of winter settled in his bones. And he thought again of Rhea and wondered what he was going to say to her if her brother died. First her father, now Bud. There was a limit to the punishment a girl could take—even a girl like Rhea.

It was then that Grant began to learn a strange thing about himself. He didn't want Rhea to change. More than once he had cursed her brazen show of superiority, and her greed, and her consuming ambition—still, it was her storm and fire that had drawn him to her and he didn't want those things changed. He didn't want her spirit broken and gelded—and this was a strange realization and difficult to accept.

He thought about this for a long while, and in the darkness he wondered what Turk Valois was thinking about. The runner had kept his distance as far as Rhea was concerned, that strange combination of love and hate showing only occasionally in his dark eyes. He was a proud man and knew how to keep aloof—and Grant wished sometimes that he had the knack himself.

With another kind of man it would have seemed strange, returning to the source of his hurt, the way Turk had. But with Valois it all seemed natural enough; perhaps he was trying to prove to the world, or to himself, that he wasn't hurt at all. Maybe he figured that if he could face Rhea Muller every day without flinching, that was all the proof he needed.

At last Grant tried to get comfortable on the hard plank floor of the boxcar, but he knew that there would be little sleep for them that night. The money belt about his waist caused a bulge against his ribs and he sat up again, frowning, the seed of an idea growing slowly in his mind. He had almost forgotten about the money. All of it was still there. Not a penny of it had he spent.

Until this moment the money had been almost an abstraction, symbolic of his independence and manhood. He had taken it because he had believed that it was rightfully his, but now he began to think of it in a more realistic light. Twenty-five hundred dollars in real money! Legal tender for goods in any shop, store, or saloon in any state or territory in the nation.

Strangely, this surprised him. Why, he could have stopped all this trouble at the beginning simply by paying Battle for the timbers!

But after a moment's thought he saw that it was not so simple as that. He was forgetting Dagget again. The suspicious-minded marshal would be very interested to know where an ordinary saddle tramp had laid his hands on five hundred dollars.

Still, if somebody else should give the money to Battle...

Working in the darkness, he unbuttoned his windbreaker and shirt and shifted the money belt around, knowing from the feel which pouch to open. He counted out twenty-five twenty-dollar bills, then carefully shifted the money belt back to its original position.

“Turk.”

It was the first word either of them had spoken since Dagget had slammed the boxcar door. “I thought you were asleep,” the runner said, and Grant was faintly startled to hear the voice so close to him.

“I'm not asleep; I've been thinking.”

“So have I, but I can't think of a way to get out of this boxcar.”

“That isn't what I've been thinking about. Sooner or later Dagget will take us out of here and to a federal jail, if Farley makes his charges stick. I want you to take this.”

They fumbled in the darkness and the runner made a small sound of surprise. “What is it?”

“Five hundred dollars, the amount the Mullers owe on the derrick timbers. I want you to give it to Battle when we get out of here. Or give it to Dagget, and he can pay Battle.”

Valois whistled softly. “Five hundred dollars I Where did you get that much money?”

“Never mind. Will you do as I ask?”

“Sure.” But his voice said that he was still puzzled. “There's one thing I'd like to know, though. Why are you so anxious to give away five hundred dollars?”

Grant could feel the color rising to his face and was glad that he was hidden in darkness. “I guess you know the answer as well as I do, Valois.”

The runner laughed explosively, and the sound was surprisingly loud in the close confines of the boxcar. “So it's Rhea!” And his tone said that he was no longer laughing.

“It's my own idea,” Grant said tightly. “Rhea didn't ask for it.”

“She doesn't have to ask. All she has to do is look at a man and he starts shelling out, and he keeps shelling out until he's...”

The suddenness of Grant's anger caught him off guard. “That's enough!” he almost shouted. And for a moment there was only silence and darkness, and when Grant spoke it was almost as though he were talking to himself. “I mean, Farley started this thing and I don't want to see him finish it, that's all.”

There was another period of silence, and Grant could almost feel the runner's bleak, humorless smile. “All right,” Valois said at last. “I have my own reasons for what I'm doing, and you have yours. We'll let it go at that. But there's one more thing I'm curious about. Why don't you give this money to Dagget yourself?”

Grant had the uncomfortable feeling that Valois was guessing part of the answer. As Dagget would have done, the runner was wondering where the money had come from. “I saved it,” he said at last.

And Valois sighed. “Well, I guess it was a foolish question anyway. Do you think we'll get any sleep in this damn thing?”

Dagget rolled back the heavy door as soon as it was light, and said, “All right, you two can come out.”

It was blustery and cold outside and the pewter-colored sky lay heavy and sullen over the colorless hills of the Creek Nation. Grant got stiffly to his feet, chilled to the bone, his in-sides soured with sleeplessness. Before moving into the light he pulled his hat down hard on his head, always acutely conscious of his hair when. Dagget turned those calculating eyes in his direction.

“Have you heard anything about the boy?” Grant asked.

“Young Muller? He'll have a sore side for a spell, but he'll be all right. His sister is with him now, in Doc Lewellen's sickroom.”

Turk Valois swore hoarsely and coughed as he climbed painfully to his feet. “Goddamnit, Dagget, you've got to get a better jail or I'm going to take off somewhere else.”

The marshal was amused. He stood to one side, his eyes slanted and watchful as the two prisoners eased themselves through the doorway and down to the graveled track bed.

Grant said, “Did you get the truth out of Battle? Did you get our side of the story?”

“I didn't have to,” Dagget said flatly. “Battle had it down in writing.”

Grant and Valois glanced at each other, frowning. But all Dagget said was, “March. We're going over to Battle's supply shack.”

“You going to take us down to Muskogee?” Valois wanted to know.

“I guess,” Dagget said with a savage grin, “that decision will be up to Farley. Now march!”

They marched—rather they stumbled on stiff legs and numb feet with the marshal right behind herding them like reluctant cattle. What had Dagget meant when he had said the decision was up to Farley? The oilman might run Kiefer and Sabo, but the marshal was a man who ran his business in his own way.

The marshal kept them marching, prodding them from behind with the muzzle of his .45. They stumbled into Kiefer's main street and made their way clumsily across the iron-hard ruts toward Battle's supply tent. Dagget grunted for them to go around the tent, and they swung wide and came up at the supplier's shack of an office.

“Inside,” the marshal said, almost snarling. He knocked the latch open and shoved the two through the doorway.