get the hell out!
Charlie Prince was facedown. Kidd was crawling, crawling frantically and coming to his feet when Scallen reached him. He grabbed Kidd by the collar savagely, pushing him on, and dug the pistol into his back. 'Run, damn you!'
Gunfire erupted from the shed and thudded into the wooden caboose as they ran past it. The train was moving slowly. Just in front of them a bullet smashed a window of the mail car. Someone screamed, 'You'll hit Jim!' There was another shot, then it was too late. Scallen and Kidd leapt up on the car platform and were in the mail car as it rumbled past the end of the station platform.
Kidd was on the floor, stretched out along a row of mail sacks. He rubbed his shoulder awkwardly with his manacled hands and watched Scallen, who stood against the wall next to the open door.
Kidd studied the deputy for some minutes. Finally he said, 'You know, you really earn your hundred and a half.'
Scallen heard him, though the iron rhythm of the train wheels and his breathing were loud in his temples. He felt as if all his strength had been sapped, but he couldn't help smiling at Jim Kidd. He was thinking pretty much the same thing.
Long Night
NEAR THE CREST of the hill, where the road climbed into the timber, he raised from the saddle wearily and turned to look back toward the small, flickering pinpoints of light.
The lights were people, and his mind gathered faces. A few he had seen less than a half hour before; but now, to Dave Boland, all of the faces were expressionless and as cold as the lights. They seemed wide-eyed and innocently, stupidly vacant.
He rode on through the timber with what was left of a hot anger, and now it was just a weariness. He had argued all afternoon and into the evening. Argued, reasoned, threatened and finally, pleaded. But it had ended with 'I'm sorry, I've got my supper waiting for me,' and a door slammed as soon as his back was turned.
He felt alone and inadequate, and for a moment a panic swept him, leaving his forehead cold with perspiration. The worst was still ahead, telling Virginia.
Wheelock had been in the hotel dining room and he had approached the big rancher hesitantly and told him he was sorry to bother him....
'Mr. Wheelock, I paid you prompt for that breeding. The calf was too big, that's why it died. I did everything I could. If you'll breed her again--'
'I heard the calf strangled. Son, when you help a delivery, loop your rope around the head then bring it good and tight along the jaws, and a few turns on the forelegs if they're out.' He drew circles in the air with his fork. 'Then you don't strangle them to death.' And he laughed with a mouthful of food when he said, finally, 'The breeding fee generally doesn't include advice on how to deliver.'
E.V. Timmons leaned back from the rolltop and palmed his hands thoughtfully as if he were offering a prayer. He looked at the ceiling for a long time with a tragic cast to his eyes. When he spoke it was hesitantly, as if it pained him, but with conviction....
'Buying trends are erratic these days, Dave. Tomorrow, demand might drop on a big item and I'd have a heavy inventory on my hands and no place to unload. It means you have to maintain a working capital.'
Tom Wylie was sympathetic when he told him about most of his stock dying from rattleweed poisoning.
'That's mean stuff in March, Dave. Got to keep your stock out of it. You know, the best way to get rid of it is to cut the crowns a few inches below the soil surface. It generally won't send up new tops.' He asked Boland if he had seen Timmons. And after that he kept his sympathy.
John Avery was in the hotel business. He was used to walls and space limitations. 'If my cows got into rattleweed I'd put fences up to keep them the hell out. You got to organize, boy!' Avery's supper was waiting for him....
Virginia would understand.
Hell, what else could she do? He saw her pale, small-boned face that now, somehow, seemed sharper and more drawn with their child only a few days or a week away. She would smile a weak smile, twisting the hem of her apron--and it would mean nothing. Virginia smiled from habit. She smiled every time he brought her bad news. But always with the same sad expression in the eyes. Sometime, in the future, perhaps there would be a real reason to smile. He wondered if she would be able to. Now, with the baby coming...
Virginia had waited tables in a restaurant in Sudan because she had to support herself after her folks died suddenly. She was a great kidder and all the riders liked her. Broadminded, they said. He used to pass through Sudan a few times a year when most of the Company herds were grazed near the Canadian. After a while, he went out of his way and even made excuses to go there. She never kidded with him...
When he told the others about it, they said, 'She's a nice girl--but who wants a nice girl? You get bone-tired pushing steers from the Nueces to Dodge; but, son, you can throw off along the way anytime you want--'
It had been raining hard for the past few minutes when finally he led his mare into the long, rickety shed, unsaddled and pitch-forked some hay.
The rain, he thought, shaking his head. The one thing I don't need is rain. He tried to see humor in it, though it was an irritation. Like an annoying, tickling fly lighting on a broken leg.
He walked up the slight grade toward the dim shape of the adobe house, passing the empty chicken coops, then skirted Virginia's vegetable garden, moving around toward the front of the house. He saw a light through a curtained side window. At the front of the house he called, 'It's me,' so as not to startle her, then lifted the latch on the door and pushed in.
Virginia Boland stood next to the oilcloth-covered table. She twisted the hem of her apron--she did it deliberately, her fingers tensed white straining at the material--and her eyes were wide. No smile softened the pale, oval face. Her dark dress was ill-fitting about her narrow shoulders and bosom as if it were sizes too large, then rounded, bulging with her pregnancy to lose any shape it might have had before.
Boland said, taking his hat off, 'I guess I don't have to tell you what happened.'
'Dave--' Her voice was small, and now almost a whisper. Her eyes still wide.
He came out of his coat and brushed it halfheartedly before throwing it to a chair.
'I saw all of them, Ginny.'
'Dave--'
He looked at her curiously now across the few feet that separated them.... There was something in her voice. And suddenly he knew she wasn't saying his name in answer to his words. He moved to her quickly and held her by the shoulders.
'Is it time? Are you ready now?'
She shook her head, looking at him imploringly as if she were saying something with her eyes, but she didn't speak.
She didn't have to.
'Hello, Davie boy.' The voice came from behind Virginia.
He stood in the doorway of the partitioned bedroom with the curtain draped over his shoulder. The white cloth dropped to the floor showing only part of him; damp and grimy, trail dust streaked and smeared over clothes that had not been changed for days. A yellow slicker was draped over his lower arm and his hand would have gone unnoticed if the long pistol barrel were not sticking out from the raincoat.
'Been a long time, hasn't it!' he said, and came into the room carefully, lifting the slicker from his arm to drape it over a straight chair. 'I almost didn't recognize little Ginny with her new shape.' He grinned, winking at Boland. 'You didn't waste any time, did you?'
Boland stared at the man self-consciously, feeling a nervousness that was edged with fear, but he made himself smile.
'Jeffy, I almost didn't recognize you,' he said.
'Wait'll you see Red.' His head turned to the side and he called to the bedroom, 'Red, come on out!'
Boland looked toward the curtained doorway and then to the dirt-caked figure next to him. 'I wouldn't have
