“Shouldn’t of sprung it on her so sudden,” Hank muttered. “It was enough shock me coming up with a towheaded kid that reminded of her own dead one without me asking her first chance to marry me.”
She came in to bring him his dried apricot pie and she turned to go, then she bent over and looked out of the front window.
“What’s Sheriff Rance doing on that porch pole over at the general store?” she said.
Hank took a squint. He said, “Tacking up a poster bill of some kind. Somebody’s wanted. He must have just got them in.” He went back to his apricot pie.
“He’s looking over this way,” she said. She stood, suddenly motionless, looking at Hank Shard. “You don’t suppose—the boy, Wesley. They wouldn’t have followed him—here?”
Hank Shard wiped off his mouth and got up. He hitched his six-guns, slammed his hat on without a word, and headed for the front door.
He was thinking of what Belle had said about the sheriff and how he’d like to get something on her. It was queer, him tacking up a wanted poster right across the street from the Empire House.
* * * *
As Hank crossed the street, he saw a woman and a half grown girl come out of the general store and pause to look at the poster.
“He looks so young,” Hank heard the woman say.
His blood boiled a little in the wave of heat that rushed over him. Maybe the kid was guilty. He didn’t think so. But maybe the kid had known all the time he was rustling cattle. What was burning him was the way the arrogant sheriff went about it.
He glanced up the street. Sheriff Rance had paused up by his office and was looking down the street, watching him. The man with the beard was on the edge of the office doorway. He ducked back as Hank looked up. Maybe he was going to step back anyway, and maybe it was on purpose—a strange move.
Hank walked past the poster without looking at it. He went into the store and bought a sack of smoking tobacco. He turned and waited inside the door. He could see the poster well enough through the dirty store window. It was a poster like the ones he’d seen down south near the Border. It was the same, a picture of Wesley Kane with his name under the picture of the kid and the amount, “ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD. DEAD OR ALIVE.”
“The devil with the sheriff seeing me,” Hank exploded. He stepped out of the store and got a close look at the poster. The sheriff was still up there watching. Hank looked back at the poster and tried to figure what was different about it from the others he’d seen. Something was different, that was sure. Yet, the picture and the printing were the same.
When he turned again, Sheriff Rance was at his elbow.
Hank turned on him. He said, “Where’d you get these posters, Sheriff?”
“If it’s any of your business,” the sheriff said with a trace of a grin, “that bearded man I figured you were planning something illegal with, is a U.S. marshal. Just happened he brought the posters along. Why?”
Hank Shard froze. He turned his head slowly and looked up the dusty street toward the sheriff’s office. The bearded face was gone from the door.
Sheriff Rance was throwing him a tight loop. He said, “You haven’t seen the kid, have you, Shard?”
Hank tried to relax. He tried to pretend he wasn’t much interested. He said, “What you got against Belle Driscoll, Sheriff? She’s a mighty fine woman—always helping people.”
“She helps the wrong ones,” Sheriff Rance said and there was no trace of a grin on his face now. “But you ain’t answered my question. I asked you did you see that kid on the poster. He’s wanted for rustling down along the Border.”
“It don’t seem like a nice looking kid like that could rustle cattle, Sheriff,” Hank said, desperately.
Sheriff Rance turned and walked back up toward his office.
Belle was waiting inside the door of the Empire House when Hank clumped back in. He wiped off the dust of the street on the rope mat and took his time.
She caught him by the arm and closed the door behind him and when she’d made him face her, she said, “What’d the sheriff say?”
Hank shrugged. He wanted time to think, to figure out what was wrong with the poster and perhaps what might not be right with the bearded man with the broad, heavy shoulders and the wide set, piercing black eyes.
“Answer me,” Belle said and she shook Hank.
Hank said, “I believe we’d better get the kid out and on his way.”
“Why?” Her eyes were blazing. “That sheriff isn’t going to try some trick to get that boy away from me. There’s something queer.”
“I feel there is,” Hank said. “I sure do. But I can’t figure it out and—”
“And what?” she demanded, staring up at him, desperately.
“And there ain’t anything we can do, Belle, honey. You can’t mess with a U.S. marshal.”
“What’s that?” She went pale.
Hank slowly nodded. “He asked me first in front of the livery stable,” he said.
“I didn’t see anybody until I saw you and the sheriff talking.”
“He was there when I came out after turning over the horses.”
“What did he say?”
“Asked me about Wes. If Wes rode into town with me and if the sorrel was his horse.”
Belle clasped her hands and wrung them a little. She said, “I hadn’t figured on this.” She walked over to the little hotel desk and back again. “How do you expect the marshal knew about Wesley?”
“Maybe trailed him all the way up,” Hank said. “How do I know? Only thing, we got to get him out.”
They turned toward the stairs and walked up fast. And in the parlor of Belle’s quarters Belle herself shook the kid awake. Her voice was soft and soothing, but vibrant underneath with the fear and anger that she felt.
“Wesley. Got to get up and start moving. Wesley.”
He turned over and opened his eyes. He jumped and Hank laid a hand on the kid’s forehead and he said, “Take it easy. Come to.”
The kid sat up. “What’s the matter?” Belle told him as gently as she could. She said, “We’re going to try and get you out. I think we can slip you out of the back door of the hotel, and you can go across the street and get your horse saddled and light out.”
Hank went out and down the hall. He looked out a rear window and hurried back. His face was long and somber. “We’re going to have to figure something better than that,” he said. “Sheriff’s got a deputy sitting in the doorway of the livery stable with a scatter gun.”
“Oh, God!” Belle breathed. She looked at the kid with as much horror as if he was her own flesh and blood. “But we’ve got to do something,”
“I’m trying to think,” Hank said. “There’s something wrong with those posters. The one I saw wasn’t just like the ones I saw below.”
“It’ll be dark in almost an hour,” Belle said. “Maybe then if—”
Feet clumped below in the entrance to the hotel. Belle Driscoll sat motionless, listening. The heavy feet were coming up the stairs. They were coming down the hall and they stopped at her door. “Open up,” Sheriff Rance’s voice barked. “This is the law.”
Hank Shard groaned. The kid was white. He stood up. He said, “Let him come in,” gently, like he was ready to give up.
Then,