Gambling Man (10 page)

His first stop that day was Bert Surratt's saloon, where he stated his problem bluntly.

“Think back, Bert, to just before the bank fracas yesterday. Do you remember a hardcase stranger buyin' a drink or so off you?”

The saloonkeeper rubbed a hairy fist across his mouth, thinking. “There was a stranger in, all right, but I wouldn't peg him as a hardcase. Oh, he was heeled, but all travelers go heeled unless they're fools. Gray-haired geezer, as I remember, about fifty. Looked harmless enough to me.”

“Did you get a look at his animal or rig?”

“No,” Bert said slowly. “Guess I didn't pay him much attention, Marshal. Why do you ask?”

“Was Nate Blaine in here the same time the stranger was?”

Surratt thought about it, scowling. “Sure. I remember because Nate was giving the old bird a goin' over. I figured Nate might have known him from somewhere, but they didn't speak. The stranger pulled out maybe fifteen minutes before Nate did.”

Blasingame listened to the sound of hammering in the alley behind the saloon. “What's that noise?” he asked.

The saloonkeeper smiled. “Carpenters. They're buildin' Jed Harper's casket.” He took a swipe at the bar with a dirty towel. “That damn Blaine; they should have strung him up the minute they caught him.”

“But you wouldn't want to try it single-handed, would you, Bert?” Blasingame turned and walked out of the saloon.

He made several stops between the saloon and the bank building. A clerk in Baxter's store claimed he caught a glimpse of the stranger riding up the street away from Bert's place. Old Matt Fuller, in the saddle shop, had seen the drifter watering his horse at the trough in front of the bank building; he had paid strict attention to the rig because of its quality workmanship, but had hardly noticed the man himself. After that, the stranger could have dissolved in thin air, for all anyone, saw of him.

Just a drifter passing through. There was no telling where he was by now.

But the marshal didn't let it go at that. He went to the bank and stared at the bleak two-story brick building with cool, impersonal eyes. Aside from the Masonic Temple, it was the only brick building in town. Now it was locked tight. There was a black-bordered funeral notice on the door.

For the sake of supposing, Elec tried to reconstruct a situation as it might have been. The stranger had been seen watering his horse in front of the bank some time after he had left Surratt's which would put it close to four o'clock. Now, Blasingame reasoned, it's just possible that he was here when Jed let Beulah Sewell in the bank to deposit her money.

Stretching it a bit further, it's just possible that he could have heard Jed Harper telling Beulah that his help had gone and he was alone. Now, if this drifter had been a hardcase type, as Nate swore he was, maybe that was all the invitation he needed. When he saw the banker leave the door unlocked, maybe he just walked in.

That much Elec might be made to swallow. But how this stranger could have shot the town banker and pulled out of town without a person laying eyes on him—that was the bone that caught in the marshal's throat. He went around behind the bank building and studied the lay of the ground. Now, Nate claimed he saw the man hightailing it out of the side door, probably crossing the street. That being the case, where had the stranger kept his horse?

Blasingame crossed the street where the Ludlow Dry Goods sprawled into the tall weeds of the alley. Not a chance of finding any tracks there; Phil Costain's dray wagon had been back there earlier in the morning.

Anyway, the chance that the killer would run across the street and simply sit tight while the whole town looked for him was a very long one. Not many men had the nerves for that kind of waiting.

There was not an ounce of solid evidence to back up Nate Blaine's story. On the other hand, there was the money that hadn't been found, and Nate's gun, which had been fully loaded when they found him. Those things would be explained easily enough—still, the marshal didn't like the smell of it. He didn't like the doubts that were growing in his mind. Elec headed back to the office to see if Kirk Logan, his day deputy, had showed up yet.

Kirk, a towheaded youngster in his middle twenties, was just strapping on his cartridge belt when the marshal came in. He grinned, but it turned uneasy when he saw the glint in Elec's eyes.

“Sorry I'm late, Elec. But the baby had the croup and I had to rout out Doc Shipley—”

“Never mind,” the marshal said shortly. “I want you to round up some men and scour every inch of this town between the bank and the public corral. If that bank money is hidden in Plainsville, I want it. Understand?”

Logan swallowed. “Sure, Elec. I'll get right to work.” He turned to go out of the office, but stopped when he reached the steps. “I just thought of something. What if somebody has already found that money?”

Elec's shaggy eyebrows almost covered his eyes as he frowned. The possibility had already occurred to him. He did not try to fool himself—there were plenty of people in Plainsville who would never say anything about it if they found that money. The whole town knew it. The jury would know it. In the light of this knowledge, Nathan Blaine's main line of defense became purely academic.

Blasingame sat solidly at his plank desk for a full minute after his deputy had mounted the steps to the street. Suddenly he hit the desk with his big right fist.

The chances were a thousand to one that Beulah Sewell was telling the truth and that Nate Blaine was guilty as hell. Still, it was that one chance in a thousand that bothered him.

At last he got up and went back to the cell. “Nate,” he said, “I'm going to ride over to Landow and get the county sheriff to look for this drifter of yours.”

Nathan lay on his bunk, his dark eyes fixed on the ceiling.

“Understand something, Nate,” the marshal said. “I think you're guilty as hell. But before I'm through, I'm going to
know
it..”

When Blasingame returned from Landow late that night, he learned that his prisoner had escaped. Nathan had flung a cup of scalding coffee in Ralph Striker's face —coffee that the night deputy had paid for and brought to him. During Striker's momentary blindness Nathan had grabbed him through the bars and got his revolver. After forcing the deputy to unlock the cell, Nathan gagged him and locked him in his own cage. Then, at gunpoint, he had taken his horse and rig from the public corral and disappeared in the night.

They formed a posse, of course, but it was a big county and the night was black. They did not find Nathan Blaine.

The lawyers came out and told them there was nothing they could do. The money was gone. The bank had not been insured. Then they caught the next stage for Landow.

The citizens cast about for an object toward which to hurl their anger, and saw young Jefferson Blaine.

Jeff would not soon forget these next few days and weeks that followed. No promise nor threat nor supplication could bring him out of the house to face those hundreds of angry eyes. The man of pride and swagger had been crushed with one cruel blow, and Jefferson Blaine became a boy again—a frightened boy.

He found no strength in glossy boots of soft black kid, nor in his strong right hand which could aim and fire a Colt's revolver with deadly accuracy.

He did not go the academy that day, nor the two days following. Still, it was not as bad as it might have been. He had never guessed that his Aunt Beulah could be as gentle and understanding as she was then. Not once did she mention his pa, or did she scold him when he locked the door to his bare lean-to cubicle and would not let her in.

That first night—the hardest one—she brought his supper to him. “It's not as bad as you think,” she said gently. “Of course people get riled up, but they get over it, too. You don't have to mix with them till you feel like it.”

This was the beginning of a new thing. Until now he had thought of his aunt as a tongue full of sting and spite; his uncle an impatient glare and a pointed order. Now, somehow, they had become people.

Once he had heard his uncle saying, “A bit of understanding—that's fine. But don't spoil the boy, Beulah. This thing he'll have to face out himself.”

“Not while I'm alive!” Jeff's aunt had replied.

It was a hard thing to understand, and Jeff did not try to. He accepted their kindness and was grateful.

He did not think about Nathan any more than he had to. At first he was sure that he hated his pa with every fiber of his soul, and he was just as sure that his pa had killed Jed Harper and robbed the bank, and no telling what else. And then he had remembered other things, like the sudden gentleness that sometimes appeared in those dark eyes, and the comforting feel of Nathan's strong, brown hand on Jeff's shoulder. When he thought of these things he became confused and could no longer tell with certainty what was true and what was false.

When at last he did steel himself to leave the house and face the anger of the town, it was not at all the way he had imagined it in his room. Oh, they were angry, all right, but it was something more than that. The boys did not gather in gangs to devil him, as they sometimes did with others who had fallen from favor. When they looked at him, there was more than anger in their eyes.

Their anger was tempered with fear.

It surprised Jeff the first time he saw it. On the third day after Nathan Blaine had disappeared into the prairie night, Jeff faced the world again, wearing a mask of toughness so that the sickness inside him might not show. In the glaring light of day he plodded through the streets of Plainsville, on his way to the academy, as though nothing had happened.

He felt their eyes upon him.

Young Blaine, they were sneering. There goes Nate Blaine's kid.

They could not see the swelling of his throat nor hear the pounding of his heart as he strode before them. It was then that Jeff remembered how his pa had made them cringe, how Nathan had thrown back his head and stared them down with his dark eyes. They had not sneered at his pa. They hadn't dared!

There was something comforting and assuring in this thought. Suddenly Jeff threw back his head in the way he had seen his pa do so many times, and he looked them right in the eye as he passed by on the boardwalk. He walked like a young lion looking for a fight.

The success of his tactics was amazing, even to Jeff. Old Seth Lewellen, whittling in a barrel chair in front of Baxter's store, was the first to break and look in another direction when Jeff passed by. Then Mac Butler, the blacksmith. From some doorway Jeff heard a whispered snarl: “That kid's too damn big for his britches!”

Another voice said, “Maybe you're right. But Nate Blaine's his pa. One thing for sure—I don't want the job of takin' him down. Not while Nate's on the loose!”

Then Jeff began to understand. And he knew that he had nothing to worry about because he was the son of Nathan Blaine!

Oh, they had not forgotten Feyor Jorgenson, who had pulled out of Plainsville in the dark of night. These men who watched him from behind store windows, these clod-busters and store clerks, they would do nothing that might bring the wrath of Nathan Blaine down upon them!

As if by magic, Jeff's sickness disappeared. He filled his lungs with clean, exciting air and suddenly felt like laughing.

Strangely, Jeff no longer had the wish to fight the world, now that he knew it was not necessary. In some mysterious way he could feel Nathan's strong hand on his shoulder, protecting him. He knew that he would never be able to explain it to Wirt, or Beulah, or anyone, and he knew instinctively that it would be better not to try.

His father had gone out of his life as abruptly as he had entered it. The dreamlike days of riding proud beside his pa were over, as were the hours spent in learning the violent ways of guns and the magic of cards.

Jeff was old enough to know that Nathan could never again be a part of his life here in Plainsville. His admiration for that dark-eyed man of violence must be kept locked within himself. The Plainsville people would be a long time forgetting the bank and Jed Harper, A quiet voice in the back of Jeff's mind warned him: they are afraid of Nate Blaine—but don't rub it in.