Ed Gorman - Showdown

The first place they'd stopped was the deserted farmhouse where Cassie had been kept. They'd found that two horses had headed toward the sun. They also found that the shoes on one of the horses had been put on at an an odd angle, making it reasonably easy to keep track of.

Most of the time they didn't talk much. A few times Prine heard Neville muttering to himself. Probably the rage got to be so much he had to express it. This was a very different Neville than the glad-hander he'd met at the mansion the other night. He felt sorry for this Neville, and ashamed that he hadn't done his duty as a lawman.

The rain started midafternoon. They continued to follow the tracks as far as they could, finally cresting a hill that overlooked a stage station.

"Looks like they might have stopped down there," Prine said. "I wonder why."

"Let's go find out."

Thunder rippled across the sky and a slash of lightning cast everything into a hellish, colorless relief that made the tracks they were following almost grotesquely dark. The devil would leave such tracks.

The stage station wasn't as bad as some. The barns and stables that held fresh animals and supplies looked well-kept and cleaned. The front yard wasn't a field of animal shit. It had been raked, and you could see that grass was trying very hard to pop up here and there. You could almost hear it straining.

They knew what awaited them if they stayed here. The food would run to tainted bacon and hard biscuits and water just starting to go bad. That was the usual repast, anyway.

They were lucky. The rain came smashing down, beads of hail and all, three or four minutes after they entered the sod-roofed stage station.

The layout was typical. Fireplace, three large, picnic-style tables, an open area for males to sleep on at night. Far in the corner was an extra-large bed where the station manager's wife slept, usually with a few of the female guests. The dirt floor didn't look like a barnyard, and the food smells surprised them. Some kind of stew bubbling in a pot.

From the outbuildings came the shouts of the station manager's three kids. They'd been battening everything down, given the ferocity of the rain.

The station man turned out to look like a parson—tall, grave, and disapproving of everything that passed before his eyes. He was probably thirty and looked sixty. His bald and gleaming scalp didn't help. Nor did his severe mouth and pinched eyes. He offered neither a hand nor a greeting.

"You didn't come in on the stage," he said.

"Good guess," Prine said.

"You were standing out there watching us come in."

"We're waiting for a stage now. There won't be any room for extras tonight."

"We're not looking to be put up for the night," Neville said. "We're looking for two men."

A woman came through the doorway. She was soaked. She bent over and wrung her dark hair out with strong but nicely shaped hands. When she looked up, they saw her face. She was everything her husband was not. She actually smiled at them.

Her husband said, "I told them there's no room."

She spoke in a joshing way. "Frank's getting old. He forgets things. There's plenty of room in the barn, if you don't mind the loft."

"We won't be needing a place if the rain lets up," Prine said. 'What we want is some information."

"Well," she said, elbowing old Frank in the ribs, "you came to the wrong place. Frank wouldn't tell you the time of day if you gave him the watch. He don't cotton much to strangers."

"Seems like he's in the right business," Prine said.

She smiled. "I'm Beth, by the way." She glanced impishly at her husband. "That's the way you have to talk to Frank. Make fun of him a little. God knows he deserves it, don't you, Frank?"

And then the damnedest thing happened. The hard face of Ichabod started reluctantly—very reluctantly—breaking into a tiny smile. Tiny, tiny, the way a kid will smile against his will when you start to tickle him.

"Damned women," he said, and then stalked out the front door and angled off, disappearing, presumably, for the barn or one of the other outbuildings.

She said, "He gets jealous. Sees two gents like you—nice-looking and nice manners and you with that badge—he always thinks I'm gonna leave him. That's what happened to his first wife. Up and left him for a traveling salesman. Took their only kid and he's never seen either of them again. I guess I wouldn't trust nobody either, somethin' like that happened to me. I better go talk to him. Settle him down some."

"Guess we may as well wait out the storm," Prine said.

"I hate to lose the time."

"We'll have a hard time finding their tracks in a downpour like this."

Neville's jaw muscles started to work. "Guess you're right."

Kerosene lanterns played chase with the shadows in the large, rectangular room.

They ate a passable supper of fried potatoes and beans. The stage arrived just as they were finishing up. The two men sat in the corner watching the people straggle in. The rain was finally letting up. The stage passengers settled in for the night. The driver was soaked and had to borrow clothes from Frank Barstow. You could hear that he already had a bad head cold. By morning it would probably move down into his chest.

The two gunnies didn't come until the rain was little more than a mist. Prine and Neville were already in their bedroll over in the corner. Most of the passengers were still at the tables, talking, though by now the words had gotten muffled from drowsiness. The majority of them would be asleep within half an hour.

Neville had the back of his hand over his eyes. He wasn't trying to sleep. Just rest.

"Bogstad and Case," Prine whispered to him.

"What?" Neville said.

Prine leaned down on an elbow and spoke softly. "I saw those two in town one day talking to Tolan. I got curious about them. They're gunnies and bounty hunters, it turns out."

"You think they had anything to do with the kidnapping?" Neville started to sit up, but Prine pushed him back down.

"Let's see what they're doing here. I doubt they had anything to do with the killing, or they wouldn't be around this close to town. But let's see why they're here."

Bogstad and Case were loud and insulting. They complained about the coffee, the food, the fire not being built up, and the lack of good-looking women on the stage. One of the male passengers spoke up in defense of his female traveling partners, but Case just told him to shut up or he'd be sorry.

They were wet and cold, they said, otherwise they'd leave this little hellhole. They looked like brothers—short, heavy, grimy, in need of a shave, a bath, and more than a little redemption. Prine had run dozens of men like Bogstad and Case into jail dozens of times. They just couldn't stand to see a peaceful situation, people getting along, enjoying themselves. Their pleasure was other people's misery. And they damned well made people miserable, too, threatening them, insulting them, humiliating them. They were especially good at embarrassing a man in front of his woman.

And that's where they got to around nine o'clock that night.

Frank and Beth sat at one of the tables with the passengers. They were talking about the forthcoming senatorial election. Everybody agreed that both men made pretty bad candidates.

Bogstad came up behind Beth and said, "I'd like the pleasure of this dance, lady."

She stayed sweet. "But there isn't any music."

"Don't need music. Now, stand up."

"I'd prefer to sit here with my husband and our guests."

Bogstad looked back at his partner and said, "She won't dance with me, Case. What should I do?"

"Kill her." He laughed.

"That sounds about right," Bogstad said.

An old woman at the table said, "We were having a nice conversation."