Wirt swallowed hard. “We're all right, Marshal. He had me find the Wintworth girl for him, then he sent her to bring you. That's all I know.”
Nathan said angrily, “I wanted to talk to you. Can't you understand a simple thing like that?”
“No, I can't,” Blasingame said harshly. “You know you're wanted in Texas, as well as some other places. You knew I'd put you under arrest. I've never seen the man who'd deliberately ask for twenty years in prison, or maybe even a hangman's noose.”
With fire and danger swimming in those black eyes, Nathan snarled, “Stop being a fat fool, Elec, and put that gun away! If I'd wanted to kill you I'd have shot you from the window as you came up the walk. I'm not an idiot; I know I'm under arrest. But I'll be arrested under my own conditions, Marshal Blasingame, and don't you forget it!”
It had been a long, long time since any man had talked that way to Elec Blasingame. He was more startled than angered. And then, surprisingly, he found himself reholstering his Colt's. In some way it was impossible to explain he knew that this was no trick, no trap. After a long, careful moment of thought, he said, “All right, Nate, what's on your mind?”
“It's the boy,” Nathan said bluntly.
“What about the boy?”
Nathan rubbed a hand over one lean, hard cheek. “I'm not sure. I don't think he's in any big trouble yet, but he's headed there. News like that travels fast in the out-country. Do you know a hardcase by the name of Bill Somerson, heavy-set, red face?”
Elec's eyes narrowed. “What about him?”
“He rode with my outfit in Mexico till they sent him packing. He knows what happened to me up here, about the bank—all of it. I told him, under a load of wine, and it gave him ideas. The story I heard from the other side of the Border was that Somerson was fixing up something with my boy.”
“And you came all the way from Mexico to stop it?” Elec asked.
“Wouldn't you, if he was your boy?”
The marshal let that pass. “I don't believe you, Nate,” he said flatly. “The boy's been heading for trouble ever since you went to work on him five years ago.”
“Damn it!” Nathan exploded, his powerful shoulders twitching. “He's heading for trouble on my account; that's the reason I came back! He knows I'm in Mexican trouble and that I need money to get out of it. So he's going after the money.”
“By throwin' in with this man called Somerson?”
“How many times do I have to tell you?”
Elec could not miss the note of desperation in Nate Blaine's voice. And in his quick, methodical brain he remembered other things that might tie in with what Nate was telling him. He asked suddenly, “You know a man named Milan Fay?”
Nathan blinked. “Sure. He sided Somerson for a while in Chihuahua.”
More facts added up, and Elec felt a vague uneasiness tugging at the ends of his nerves—the ride Jeff had taken on Fay's horse, the fact that Fay and Somerson had arrived in Plainsville on the same train. It could be that the boy was headed for real trouble—trouble that he'd never get out of. Trouble, Elec thought, like his pa is in now.
He studied Nate quietly for a long while, and once more his memory took him back five years. At that time Nate had all the reason in the world to be full of hate, but he hadn't loaded it on his son. He had kept it bottled within himself and had sent the boy back to Beulah and Wirt.
Maybe, Elec thought carefully, he had underestimated Nathan Blaine's love for his son. And maybe at the same time he had overestimated Nate's selfishness.
Still, that line of reasoning went against the grain with him because he liked things clean-cut, black or white, good or bad. The possibility that a man like Nate might have some good in him as well as bad disturbed the marshal.
Nathan broke in on the marshal's thought. “I came to you for help, Elec. Do I get it?”
The marshal shot quick glances around the room, as though he still expected to uncover a trap. Then he heard the hurried tramp of boots on the clay walk outside the house.
Elec turned on Nathan. “Take it easy, Nate, it's my deputy. He doesn't know you're here.” Then he went to the front door where Kirk Logan was waiting.
“What's the trouble, Kirk?”
The deputy shook his head. “Damned if I know, exactly. But I've been keeping my eye on the Blaine kid, like you said, and Milan Fay too. I don't know what kind of trouble you're expectin', Marshal, but it looks like somethin's about to bust. I figured you ought to know.”
“I ought to know what?” Elec said impatiently.
“It's just that things look funny. Maybe I wouldn't have noticed anything if you hadn't told me to keep an eye on them, but— Anyway,” he shrugged, “I spotted young Blaine talking to Fay in front of Surratt's. They broke up when I went by, but met again in front of Baxter's. After that they walked as far as the bank corner together, then split up again.”
“Then what did they do?” Elec asked.
“It's not what they did so much as the way they looked. Blaine went back to Surratt's and got in a seven- up game, but Fay picked him out a fire barrel and sat there like he was starting to keep house, and that's when I began to wonder.”
“About what?”
