“All right. Neither Sally nor I believed she was a part of it.”
“How many people know?”
“Me and Sally. Judge Garrison. My deputies.”
“When the townspeople find out, I guess I’m through in Barlow, right?”
“I imagine so. You and Victoria, you’re not cut out for this kind of life, Robert. The West is not for people like you. It’s still plenty raw out here. You and Victoria, you both want all the pretty things that are scarce out there. Women wear gingham out here, not lace. Coming up here from train’s end, me and Sally took our baths in creeks. I can’t work up a picture in my mind of you and Victoria doing that. Killings are common out here, Robert. Not as common as they used to be, but people will still travel a hundred miles to see a good hanging.”
The city doctor shook his head at that and grimaced in disgust.
“And then there is the little matter of your brother to take into consideration.”
“Max is my brother. Can’t you understand that?”
“He’s also a thief, a rapist, a murderer, and God only knows what else. And accept this, Doc: I intend to kill him.”
“Judge, jury, and executioner, right, Smoke?”
“Sometimes that’s the way it has to be, Robert. And you’re no better than Max, are you, Robert?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“There was no old rancher that you befriended back in the city, was there, Robert?”
The doctor’s silence gave Smoke his reply.
“I suspected as much. Max killed that rancher and then had the letter forged. The letter you showed your wife.”
“He never said, and I never asked.”
“Didn’t you even care?”
“Yes,” the doctor’s reply was spoken low. “Yes, I cared. I came out here in hopes of changing my brother, making him see that what he was doing was wrong. Evil. Our parents died two years ago, four months apart. They left quiet a sizeable estate; it all came to me. Of course, they had written Max out of the will years before. I even offered Max half of the estate.”
“Sally thought you were a poor struggling doctor.”
Robert laughed, a bitter bark that held no humor. “Hardly. I assure you I have plenty of money.”
“And Max told you he would change his evil ways and become a fine upstanding citizen.” It was not a question.
“Yes, he did, and I believed him.”
“All that crap you told Victoria, that she wrote to Sally, about Lisa and Victoria being lusted after by Max. All that was a lie?”
“No. No, it wasn’t. He told me he wanted my wife. And he told me he would use Lisa to have her.”
“And you still defend the sorry no-good? Jesus Christ, Robert, what have you got between your ears? Mush?”
“I owe him my life, Smoke. Three times, I owe him. And I owe him my family fortune.”
“You want to explain that?”
“A gang of thugs set on me when I was a boy. They had knives. Max whipped them. Every one of them. Later, when I got a—a woman in a family way, her father had me cornered, with a gun. Max killed him.”
Smoke looked at the man, amazement in his eyes. “You’re a real swell fellow, Robert. You know that?”
Robert could not miss the sarcasm in Smoke’s tone. “She was just trash. So was her father.”
“You did see the child through school, I hope?”
“Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. I told you, she was trash. Anyway, she moved away. I have no idea where she and the brat might be.”
Smoke took off his hat and shook his head in disbelief. Robert was as bad, in his own way, as Max. He wondered if Victoria knew about any of it. He didn’t think so. At least, he hoped not, for Sally’s sake. “Go on, Robert.” Smoke put his hat on and leaned back in the chair, rolling a cigarette. “It’s such a heartrending tale.”
“Yes. It really is, isn’t it?”
Smoke looked at him to see if the man was serious. He was. Smoke sighed and waited.
“The third time Max saved my life I was in college. He was on the run from the law—had been for years—but he was back east at the time. I had a rather unpleasant experience with a brother....”
“You have another brother?”
“Oh, no. This was a fraternity brother at school.”
“What the hell is that? Never mind. don’t want to know.”
“I beat the young man quite severely about the head with a brick. It was over a woman, of course. Max finished him off for me.”
Smoke was jarred right down to his boots. The good doctor, Robert Turner, was crazy. Insane. Smoke had read
