Clifton Adams - Boomer

Dagget sat stolidly, like some squat stone idol, but his eyes were slitted, thoughtful. “There's one more thing I'd like to know. Why did you drag me out of the storm?”

“I wish I knew!”

Dagget surprised him by grinning—that same savage expression, completely devoid of humor, that Grant had come to know so well. “I'll tell you why you did it! You figured you could make a deal, didn't you? You knew your string had run out, and getting me in your debt was the only chance you had!”

To Grant's own surprise he failed to respond to the marshal's prodding. “You always see the bad side of a man, don't you?”

“It's the business I'm in.”

“And in your business a man never saves a life without selfish reason?”

“That's about it.” Dagget still held his grin, but only with his mouth. His eyes were slitted and cautious, and he shifted again, grimacing. He rested against the wall, sweat beading his forehead, but he never took his eyes from Grant's face.

“Tell me about Rhea Muller,” he said at last.

Grant looked at him flatly, not with anger but with quiet hatred, then turned back to the door.

Dagget could not let him alone. In the back of his searching mind all was not exactly as it should have been, the pattern did not fit the material. The marshal was a blunt, calculating man and did not like subtleties. And there were shadings and overtones to this man who called himself Joe Grant that he could not fully understand, and this angered him.

“I guess,” he said harshly, “you must be pretty stuck on the Muller girl. Well, you're not the first one. Turk Valois had himself a bad case up in Bartlesville, but she threw him over, they say, when Turk lost his money.”

He fixed his eyes on Grant's back and saw it go rigid. Dagget grinned again and went on with his probing. “Rhea's got kind of a reputation with the wildcatters; she's got a good head and plenty of gumption. Why did she hire a hard case like you, Grant?”

“She hired Kirk Lloyd, didn't she?”

“That's different. Kirk's a gun shark, but he's not wanted by the law. Not in this country, anyway.” He shook his head. “But why would she hire a wanted man—it was a fool move:, and Rhea Muller's no fool.”

Abruptly Grant wheeled away from the door. “What are you trying to say?”

“I was just thinking maybe you've got the girl figured wrong. Maybe she really liked you from the first; maybe she still does. It's funny, isn't it, you not trusting her, and her with too much pride to do anything about it?”

Dagget's eyes almost flamed with intensity, then suddenly he sank back against the wall, breathing heavily. “That was hitting below the belt, wasn't it? Well, I fight that way when I have to.”

Grant's anger returned, a cold, compressed thing, and his words were as brittle as the ice that crackled in the trees outside the dugout. “You must enjoy your work, Marshal! Catching a man isn't enough for you, is it? You've got to build him up in his mind, show him a picture of everything he's ever wanted, and then grab it away!”

Exhaustion and pain were beginning to show on the marshal's face; the mask of clay was beginning to melt and sag at the corners of his hard mouth. “You won't believe it—but I don't hate you, Grant. But I had to see your face naked, unmasked. I had to see what you looked like after having the ground cut out from under you.” He sighed, and years of fatigue were behind the gesture. “I had to be sure in my own mind that you didn't kill Zack Muller.”

Words would not form in Grant's mouth; he could only stare.

Dagget seemed vaguely amused. “Did you think I'd forgotten how the girl's father was killed?”

“You thought I did it?”

“Had it done, maybe. A hard case arriving from nowhere, going to work for the Mullers, getting mixed up with the old man's daughter. Rhea was the old man's legal heir; she'll get all the money if the well comes in. Your money, if you'd married her.”

“You're crazy!” Grant hissed. “Rhea wouldn't marry me if I was the last man in the Territory!” Dagget shrugged. “Did you ask her?”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

GRANT LAY RIGIDLY on his thin blanket before the fireplace. Outside, a shifting wind slithered over the dugout roof and trees clashed their icy branches. A coyote ventured forth into the night and barked forlornly. But inside the dugout the silence was almost a tangible thing, with only the crackling of a small bark fire to break it.

Dagget, wrapped in his dark shadows against the wall, had not moved for a long time, and Grant listened intently to the marshal's measured breathing. He could not see whether Dagget was asleep; he could only guess at that. And hope.

Grant lifted himself quietly to his elbow, then to his knees, peering steadily into the darkness. Without a horse there was no hope of escape, but there might be a chance of bargaining with the search party when it came—providing he could get the revolvers away from the marshal now.

An inch at a time, hardly breathing, he made his way across the dirt floor until at last he could see Dagget's shapeless hulk slouched forward at the corner, the broken leg stretching straight out. Now he paused, taking one last deep breath before reaching across the marshal's body to where the pistols lay. Then, as he started the movement...

“That's far enough, Grant!”

Out of the darkness the muzzle of a .45 loomed in Grant's face so close that he could smell the oil on the blued steel. “That's far enough!” Dagget said again, harshly. And Grant's hope melted like wax—the last hope he had.

“It's just as well,” Dagget said, faintly amused. “An escape now would only get you killed.”

Grant had no words in him. He rested for a moment on his hands and knees, crouching, but he had no thought of springing into the muzzle of Dagget's revolver. It had been a faint hope at best.

He got to his feet slowly and paced the dugout floor, and the only sound that came from Dagget was the steady, measured breathing of one who is neither fully asleep nor awake.

Grant told himself with some bitterness that he might as well face it. Like a bulldog, Dagget had his teeth in his throat and would hold on to the death.

At last Grant went to the door and peered once more through the crack and saw that daylight was not far off. His stomach was empty and sour, his nerves lay on the top of his skin. Pretty soon the searching party would come, he thought, and Dagget's job would be over.

He held that thought in his mind, concentrating on the trial, the conviction, the prison. He was afraid to let his mind go free, for he knew that it would return to Rhea.

But he could not keep from remembering what Dagget had implied in his own brutal way.

Did you ask her?

And he realized now that he had not asked her anything. He had been ready to believe anything Turk Valois and others had said against her, but he had not bothered to ask what she thought about it herself.

Then Dagget, as though he had been reading his thoughts, said dryly, “Maybe she'll wait for you.” His voice had a knowing quality to it. “They've been known to wait—for the right man.”

But at the moment Grant was more interested in the marshal than in what he was saying. Dagget was a strange one—cold as winter, humorless, tough as whang leather. It was faintly shocking to see behind that exterior some semblance of human emotion, no matter how slight. And Grant knew, in some uncertain way, that Dagget was merely doing his job and did not hate him. But he was wrong about Rhea. Rhea waited for nothing or no one. She had set her ambitions long ago and her course was as inevitable as a bullet's flight.

Then, as they studied each other silently across the gloom of the dugout, they heard a sound that did not blend with the passing storm. Dagget grunted with pleased surprise, his ears turned sharply to the crunch of hoofs on the crusted snow.