“You accusing them, too, are you, Lenihan?” Cain’s smug manner only infuriated Lenihan all the more. “Pretty soon you’ll start accusing everybody who passes you on the street.”
“Easy, Tom. There’s no solid evidence against him. There’s just a lot of suspicion.” Rule’s voice was sympathetic and obviously irritated the lawman.
“You throwing in with him, are you, Pete? Seems to me you need to be a little more objective when it comes to suspects.”
“How about you, Cain?” Lenihan said. “How objective are you? You’ve hated me ever since you started chasing Amy around. You couldn’t stand the thought that she turned you down. You’ve been waiting for a chance to bring me down ever since.”
“If I wanted to bring you down, Lenihan, it wouldn’t take much. I’m older than you and not in the peak of condition but I’ll be happy to fight you with fists or guns anytime you name it.”
Lenihan’s mind blanked. Some unconscious force took over him. He found himself diving through the air straight across Cain’s desk, smashing into the startled lawman and knocking him out of his chair. He didn’t stop there. Before Rule could reach him, Lenihan struck Cain in the face twice. Despite the small size of his fists, he managed to bloody the lawman’s mouth and to give him a small cut above the left eye.
Rule shouted, “You’re just making it worse, Ned!” He got his arms around Ned’s shoulders and jerked the small man to his feet. Then he shoved him back several feet.
By now Cain was struggling to his feet. Shouting curses, touching the blood on his lips in disbelief. His eyes showed the insanity they often did when he was in any kind of altercation. As his hand dropped to his six-shooter, Rule shouted, “No, Tom!”
And to make sure Cain didn’t draw and fire, Rule lodged himself in front of his boss. “You need to simmer down and so does Ned.”
“Who’re you working for, Pete?” Cain shouted. “Me or Lenihan?”
“For you, Tom. But I sure as hell don’t want to see anybody get killed over this.”
“And what if he’s the one who killed those boys? Do you want to see him die then, do you?”
“I don’t believe he’s the one, Tom. But if he is, then I’ll have to see what I think then.”
“You get out of here, Lenihan,” Cain bellered. “Right now you’re hiding behind Pete. But if he wasn’t here you’d be dead, you understand?”
Rule faced Lenihan. Seeing that Lenihan was about to say something—still looking belligerent—he pushed him toward the door and said, “Out and out now, Ned. Right now!”
Lenihan, shaking his head, staring down at his bruised knuckles, looked up and scowled at Cain. And then, still shaking his head, left the sheriff’s office.
“What the hell’s that for?” Sam Raines said.
“I’d say that isn’t any of your business.”
“Well, since I’m the one that cleaned up all your puke a little while ago, I’d say it sure is my business.”
“Well, I’ve been known to clean up your puke when I need to.” Which was true. Sam did his own share of alcohol vomiting, too.
The shack behind the stage line had once been used for drivers to sleep in. It contained two cots, a potbelly stove, wooden flooring and no windows. One driver had remarked that it was one step up from a prison cell. No meals were made or eaten here. The Raines brothers had taken it over after the stage line got a reduced room rate from the worst hotel in Cawthorne for its drivers. At least the hotel rooms had windows and didn’t have the suffocating smell of men to whom bathing was often considered an offense.
After the confrontation with Fargo earlier, Sam had guided his brother back to the cabin where he had promptly sprayed chunky vomit all over the floor. Sam had stashed Kenny against a tree and then proceeded to swamp up the disgusting awful puke. He’d dragged Kenny inside and pitched him on his cot. And then he’d taken some sleep himself.
When he woke up he saw Kenny sitting on the edge of his cot holding his Winchester. Couple of things wrong here. Kenny wasn’t exactly a master with a rifle. Even when they’d been little boys hunting, Sam had been the one with the eye and the trigger finger. The second thing wrong was that Kenny’s shooting hand was wrapped in a bandage. And Sam could tell that it still hurt him because just in the past minute or two Kenny had winced three times. So what the hell was he doing with the Winchester?
“I’m gonna take care of Fargo.”
“You mean Fargo’s gonna take care of you.”
“You hate him, too.”
“I hate him, too, but that don’t mean I want to tangle with him. And anyway, he’ll be gone soon enough. I heard he’s leavin’ tomorrow.”
“Look at this, you son of a bitch.” Kenny held up his wrapped hand dramatically. “I won’t never be able to shoot right again.”
“Well, truth be told, Kenny, you know what the old man said. He said neither of us was worth a whit as fast draws.”
“I killed two men, didn’t I?”
“I just want to relax. I drank a lot myself and I’m sick as hell.”
“I said I killed two men, didn’t I?”
“You killed them from behind. That ain’t the same thing.”
“But I killed them. There’re a lot of men who wouldn’t kill another man no matter what.”
“So you’re going to kill Fargo from the back?”
“No, brother,
Sam spat on the floor. “The hell I am.”
“The hell you ain’t. Unless you want me to tell people what that whore said about you that night in Denver.”
“She was just pissed because I cheated her out of her money.”
“She said you didn’t measure up.”
“Yeah, well you can’t find any other whore I ever been with who said that. I do all right for myself and you can bet on it.”
“So you don’t mind if I talk that around?”
A long, hurt silence. Sometimes it seemed to Sam that Kenny wasn’t his real brother at all. He could get as snake-mean with his own blood as he could a stranger. Many was the time Sam thought of leaving Cawthorne and Kenny behind. But when he started to think it through he always decided against it because where would he go? He wasn’t the sort who made friends fast. He didn’t have any money, he didn’t have Kenny’s way of intimidating people and he had to face it—he got lonesome pretty easy.
“I never shot nobody in the back.”
“You never shot nobody period.”
“Well, that’s a hell of a way to start, isn’t it? Shootin’ somebody in the back?”
“Look at this, Sam. Look at what he done to my hand.” Kenny waved his hand around as if it was on display. “Don’t you have no family pride? You know what our pa would say if he was alive?”
Sam sighed. “Yeah, I know what he’d say. He’d say to kill him any way you had to.”
“That’s right. And you know it.”
“You started it though, Kenny—you rushed him and—”
“You’re just makin’ excuses and you know it.”
Sam sighed again. It was hard to deny his brother when the old man was brought into the argument. Sam had always felt that he’d let the old man down most of the time. And Kenny was sure right about this one. The old man would have raised holy hell if he’d known that Sam wouldn’t avenge the family honor and kill Fargo.
“All right, Kenny,” Sam said, “I don’t want to do it but I guess I will.”
10
Karen Byrnes had been right about Rex Connor’s wolfhound. It was an older version of Helen Hardesty’s
