A chill skated over him. “I thought you said he was a cowboy.”
“Oh no! He’s a deputy sheriff. He just happened to be at that ranch and he wanted to make sure we saw a good show and he was wonderful, just wonderful.”
He didn’t go for this. Holly had talked about his health with a doctor. Maybe she wanted to talk about his .45 with a deputy sheriff. He’d better try to break up this little party, if things hadn’t gone too far already. “I think I’d like to meet him,” he said, and walked toward the convertible. Holly didn’t see him coming because she was chatting too happily. He paused beside the car and said, “Sorry to interrupt, but is this one of the nights when we pay for our own dinners?”
Holly gave a guilty jump, turned to him. “Oh, it’s Bill,” she said. “Why . . . why yes, it is. Treasure Trip only pays for meals when we’re staying at American Plan hotels.”
“Thanks,” he said, without making a move to leave.
She waited a moment, then said in an embarrassed way, “Bill, this is Carson Smith. Deputy Sheriff Smith. Carson, this is Bill Wayne.”
The big man behind the wheel flipped a hand casually. “Howdy, Wayne,” he said. He had a drawling voice with guitar tones in it.
That sounded casual enough, Bill thought. Not as if Smith had been told anything about the .45. Smith hadn’t looked at him with special interest, either. “Hi,” he said. Now the idea was to get Holly away from the guy and eliminate any chance that she might talk about the gun.
“Bill is one of our party,” Holly said. “But he had a headache and stayed here to rest this afternoon.”
“I hope you done got over that headache,” Smith said. “Had a headache once myself, account of a bronc kicking me in the head. Warn’t no fun, neither. Sorry you had to miss our show.”
Maybe the guy had talked man-to-man with Mr. Jorgenson, but now he gave the impression that he was talking man-to-boy. It was annoying. It was going to be a pleasure to mess up the guy’s play for Holly. “From what people tell me,” he said, “your show was the most exciting thing that’s happened out west since Custer’s last stand. But I got the impression that if you had been at the Little Big Horn, it would have been Sitting Bull’s last stand.”
Smith gave a pleased chuckle. “Why, thank you, pardner. Glad the folks liked it.”
What did you have to use to get through this character’s hide—spurs? Let’s try again, Wayne. “They said when you rode you were just like a part of the horse. Which part would that have been?”
“Bill!” Holly said. Then she turned to Smith and explained, “He’s just making a joke. Don’t mind him.”
Carson Smith considered that idea as if sizing up a spavined cowpony. “Only thing is,” he said, “a joke had ought to be funny, hadn’t it?”
There was an awkward pause, and Holly said, “Did you have a nice rest this afternoon, Bill?”
“Yes, thanks.”
Another pause. They were waiting for him to go away, but he wasn’t planning to. Holly said rather desperately, “Would you like to know a good place to have dinner? Carson has been telling me about some good places.”
“Fine,” Bill said. “And by the way, I was hoping you might have dinner with me.” He didn’t want to take her to dinner, and it might be awkward to get rid of her afterward, but it was one way to block out Smith.
She looked startled. “I’m afraid I couldn’t,” she said. “You see, I . . .” She paused, looked hopefully at Smith.
Bill frowned. It wasn’t nice to see a girl fish so openly for an invitation. He said smoothly and quickly, before Smith could take the hook, “Of course. I forgot you have to take care of the whole party of us. Selfish of me. She’s a very dutiful girl about her work, Smith. Never lets anything interfere.”
Holly looked at him as if he were coiled in the dust making rattling noises.
Carson Smith blinked his eyes—blue, by the way, as Mrs. Anders had claimed—and rumbled, “Well, I reckon I better say goodby then, ma’am. Been mighty nice.” He got out his side of the car and spent a few seconds rising to his full height. Probably he wasn’t over six feet four, however, if you didn’t count six inches of hat and two inches of high-heeled boots. Everything about the guy was king-size including the revolver in a hand-tooled holster on his hip. He came around the car and helped Holly out and tipped his hat and said goodby and drove away.
“Well!” Holly said furiously. “That was a lovely performance you put on. Like a Russian at a peace conference. Did you have some reason to interfere?”
“I thought you were neglecting your job. Aren’t you supposed to take care of the rest of us?”
“You certainly haven’t wanted me to do anything for you. As for the rest of them, I’m not on call every minute. Carson asked if he could drive me back and I saw no reason why I shouldn’t accept. For a change it was nice to talk to a man with charming manners.”
“I wasn’t very charmed. The moment he heard about my headache, he had to brag that it took a kick from a horse to give him one.”
“You deliberately went out of your way to get rid of him. He was going to ask me to dinner.”
“Probably I saved you from baked beans around a campfire.”
“Oh, I don’t understand you at all!” she cried. “First you don’t want to have anything to do with me, and now you come around interfering. I would have had a wonderful evening with Carson if you hadn’t spoiled things.”
“I must say he stampeded easily. I don’t think he would even have worked up to holding your hand. Well, all this talk about dinner has made me hungry. Believe I’ll run along.”
“You’ll run along?” she said indignantly. “You can’t do that. You just cheated me out of a nice dinner. A gentleman would try to make it up to me.”
He grinned. “If you’re hinting for another dinner invitation from me, no sale. But I will do something for you. If I see a gentleman around, I’ll tell him to look you up.”
He turned and walked away. She was quite a girl. If she didn’t have so many bad qualities, and if he didn’t have some personal business in Cheyenne, it might have been fun to take her to dinner.
He located a quiet restaurant in Cheyenne and ordered dinner and then found that he wasn’t hungry. All he could think of was the fact that he had to move in on Russ in a few hours. He would stand there with the .45 in his hand and tell Russ to come clean and maybe Russ would balk and then he would have to find out if he could put a slug through the guy. Other men in the war had been luckier. They had been taught how to kill. All the Air Corps had taught him was how to take up a transport plane and bring it down in one piece.
After leaving the restaurant he went back to the tourist court and slipped into his room and got out the .45. He removed the clip and shucked out the bullets and wiped them to remove any excess grease. The bullets were big ugly things and he didn’t like the feel of them in his hand. However, he hadn’t liked the feel of the one that had ripped into his back, either.
He stayed in his room with the light off. Sunset flared in the west like the fires of an Indian massacre. He waited until the light faded, then put on a sports jacket, buttoned it, and went out trying to look like a man with a heavy dinner rather than a .45 automatic under his belt. Nobody was around, but just to be on the safe side he walked toward the center of town before cutting away from U. S. 30 and heading for the garage.
As he walked, his imagination started to give him a bad time. The window curtains of houses seemed to quiver as if people were spying on him. A cottonwood tree dangled a dead branch against the sky like a gallows. Odd rustlings trailed him down the street and halted abruptly