law enforcement....'
'You have the room key?'
'In the door. All I'm responsible for is the stage run between here and Tucson--'
Scallen shoved the Winchester at him. 'If you'll take care of this and the horses till I get back, I'll be obliged to you...and I know I don't have to ask you not to mention we're at the hotel.'
He waved the shotgun and nodded and Jim Kidd went ahead of him through the side door into the hotel lobby. Scallen was a stride behind him, holding the stubby shotgun close to his leg. 'Up the stairs on the right, Jim.'
Kidd started up, but Scallen paused to glance at the figure in the armchair near the front. He was sitting on his spine with limp hands folded on his stomach and, as Timpey had described, his hat low over the upper part of his face. You've seen people sleeping in hotel lobbies before, Scallen told himself, and followed Kidd up the stairs. He couldn't stand and wonder about it.
Room 207 was narrow and high-ceilinged, with a single window looking down on Commercial Street. An iron bed was placed the long way against one wall and extended to the right side of the window, and along the opposite wall was a dresser with washbasin and pitcher and next to it a rough-board wardrobe. An unpainted table and two straight chairs took up most of the remaining space.
'Lay down on the bed if you want to,' Scallen said.
'Why don't you sleep?' Kidd asked. 'I'll hold the shotgun.'
The deputy moved one of the straight chairs near to the door and the other to the side of the table opposite the bed. Then he sat down, resting the shotgun on the table so that it pointed directly at Jim Kidd sitting on the edge of the bed near the window.
He gazed vacantly outside. A patch of dismal sky showed above the frame buildings across the way, but he was not sitting close enough to look directly down onto the street. He said, indifferently, 'I think it's going to rain.'
There was a silence, and then Scallen said, 'Jim, I don't have anything against you personally...this is what I get paid for, but I just want it understood that if you start across the seven feet between us, I'm going to pull both triggers at once--without first asking you to stop. That clear?'
Kidd looked at the deputy marshal, then his eyes drifted out the window again. 'It's kinda cold too.' He rubbed his hands together and the three chain links rattled against each other. 'The window's open a crack. Can I close it?'
Scallen's grip tightened on the shotgun and he brought the barrel up, though he wasn't aware of it. 'If you can reach it from where you're sitting.'
Kidd looked at the windowsill and said without reaching toward it, 'Too far.'
'All right,' Scallen said, rising. 'Lay back on the bed.' He worked his gun belt around so that now the Colt was on his left hip.
Kidd went back slowly, smiling. 'You don't take any chances, do you? Where's your sporting blood?'
'Down in Bisbee with my wife and three youngsters,' Scallen told him without smiling, and moved around the table.
There were no grips on the window frame. Standing with his side to the window, facing the man on the bed, he put the heel of his hand on the bottom ledge of the frame and shoved down hard. The window banged shut and with the slam he saw Jim Kidd kicking up off of his back, his body straining to rise without his hands to help. Momentarily, Scallen hesitated and his finger tensed on the trigger. Kidd's feet were on the floor, his body swinging up and his head down to lunge from the bed. Scallen took one step and brought his knee up hard against Kidd's face.
The outlaw went back across the bed, his head striking the wall. He lay there with his eyes open looking at Scallen.
'Feel better now, Jim?'
Kidd brought his hands up to his mouth, working the jaw around. 'Well, I had to try you out,' he said. 'I didn't think you'd shoot.'
'But you know I will the next time.'
For a few minutes Kidd remained motionless. Then he began to pull himself straight. 'I just want to sit up.'
Behind the table Scallen said, 'Help yourself.' He watched Kidd stare out the window.
Then, 'How much do you make, Marshal?' Kidd asked the question abruptly.
'I don't think it's any of your business.'
'What difference does it make?'
Scallen hesitated. 'A hundred and fifty a month,' he said, finally, 'some expenses, and a dollar bounty for every arrest against a Bisbee ordinance in the town limits.'
Kidd shook his head sympathetically. 'And you got a wife and three kids.'
'Well, it's more than a cowhand makes.'
'But you're not a cowhand.'
'I've worked my share of beef.'
'Forty a month and keep, huh?' Kidd laughed.
'That's right, forty a month,' Scallen said. He felt awkward. 'How much do you make?'
Kidd grinned. When he smiled he looked very young, hardly out of his teens. 'Name a month,' he said. 'It varies.'
'But you've made a lot of money.'
'Enough. I can buy what I want.'
'What are you going to be wanting the next five years?'
'You're pretty sure we're going to Yuma.'
'And you're pretty sure we're not,' Scallen said. 'Well, I've got two train passes and a shotgun that says we are. What've you got?'
Kidd smiled. 'You'll see.' Then he said right after it, his tone changing, 'What made you join the law?'
'The money,' Scallen answered, and felt foolish as he said it. But he went on, 'I was working for a spread over by the Pantano Wash when Old Nana broke loose and raised hell up the Santa Rosa Valley. The army was going around in circles, so the Pima County marshal got up a bunch to help out and we tracked Apaches almost all spring. The marshal and I got along fine, so he offered me a deputy job if I wanted it.' He wanted to say that he started for seventy-five and worked up to the one hundred and fifty, but he didn't.
'And then someday you'll get to be marshal and make two hundred.'
'Maybe.'
'And then one night a drunk cowhand you've never seen will be tearing up somebody's saloon and you'll go in to arrest him and he'll drill you with a lucky shot before you get your gun out.'
'So you're telling me I'm crazy.'
'If you don't already know it.'
Scallen took his hand off the shotgun and pulled tobacco and paper from his shirt pocket and began rolling a cigarette. 'Have you figured out yet what my price is?'
Kidd looked startled, momentarily, but the grin returned. 'No, I haven't. Maybe you come higher than I thought.'
Scallen scratched a match across the table, lighted the cigarette, then threw it to the floor, between Kidd's boots. 'You don't have enough money, Jim.'
Kidd shrugged, then reached down for the cigarette. 'You've treated me pretty good. I just wanted to make it easy on you.'
The sun came into the room after a while. Weakly at first, cold and hazy. Then it warmed and brightened and cast an oblong patch of light between the bed and the table. The morning wore on slowly because there was nothing to do and each man sat restlessly thinking about somewhere else, though it was a restlessness within and it showed on neither of them.
The deputy rolled cigarettes for the outlaw and himself and most of the time they smoked in silence. Once Kidd asked him what time the train left. He told him shortly after three, but Kidd made no comment.
Scallen went to the window and looked out at the narrow rutted road that was Commercial Street. He pulled
