At that time the news of Ginny’s “death” was still fresh in his mind, and he’d been searching for relief from the haunting images of her that crowded his thoughts. It had been almost a relief to be confronted in the saloon where he’d gone for a drink, but it had turned out to be deadly for Jared Cady.
He had made Elizabeth a widow that day, and his lover a month later.
Striding across the platform, Steve’s boots made a loud hollow sound on the boards, a vibrating echo. The train huffed smoke into the air, belching steam and cinders like tiny red stars. Metallic groans and the heavy scrape of the baggage car door opening were followed by the snorting disapproval of his horse; stiff stalks of straw littered the tracks and ground as he persuaded the skittish horse from the car.
“Hey, mister, don’t I know you?”
Steve barely glanced at the old man. “Maybe. Maybe not…Look out…!”
The horse finally decided to leap free of the car, and would have bolted if Steve hadn’t had a tight grip on the reins. He flipped up the stirrup and tightened the cinch, then led the animal to the side of the station house. Wind whistled around the corners, a keening sound, high-pitched like a woman’s sob. The old man followed him.
“Yeah, I do know you! You’re that gunslinger feller, the one that shot up Jared Cady a few years back, ain’t ya? Yeah, you’re him all right. I niver fergit a face. It’s the eyes. A man’s eyes are what I niver fergit…and I damn sure would niver fergit your eyes, mister. Nope. Like two cold pieces of dark sky.”
He swung the old man a glance again, and the garrulous voice quavered to a halt. For an instant, he saw fear leap like flames into red-rimmed eyes.
“Last time I was here, you recommended a hotel.”
“Uh, yeah, sure…Denver House. All Jack Prendergast’s friends stay there when they come this way.”
“Thanks.” Steve mounted and turned the restless horse in the direction of the town that lay west of the depot. It was all too familiar, playing out just like the last time, with the same old man to greet him. Hell, didn’t the old-timer have anything better to do than hang around the railroad station and talk to strangers?
It was eerie, the way it all came rushing back to him, as if it had happened only yesterday: the saloon with the belligerent men crowded around the bar, Jared Cady’s taunts, even the way he’d felt a weary sense of fatalism, knowing he was going to have to fight his way out or draw his gun. Then the brief, vicious confrontation with Cady before he made it out the door…only to be ambushed from all sides, bullets smacking into him and the thought that he was dying before it all plunged into dark oblivion.
If not for Elizabeth Cady, Jared’s widow, he might have died. But she’d wanted to see him hang for murder, not take the easy way out by dying.
And he’d been obliging enough to live.
Even once it was proven that he’d acted in self-defense against Cady, there were plenty of folks in Prayers End who distrusted him. Beth had ignored them, ignored propriety and her own instincts and allowed him to stay with her. But in the end it hadn’t been what she wanted. He hadn’t been what she wanted. And he’d known it, too.
Now he was back, and the town didn’t look to have changed all that much; still the same huddle of ugly wooden buildings strung haphazardly like a broken necklace. Fading light knit a sullen glow behind the outlines of the town.
It baffled him why people wanted to live here, out in the middle of nowhere in an inhospitable land. Ranchers grazed lean cattle on scrub and rock, fought over land and water rights, formed granges and went to church, made more children and died worn-out and hollow inside. Most of them never left the territory, except maybe to go to El Paso or a neighboring town.
Dust rose, drifted on the wind in stinging gusts that peppered his bare skin in a stinging assault. He reined in and dismounted in front of the livery stable, caught his saddlebags and hefted them over one shoulder.
When he turned, the livery owner was staring at him, his red face gone chalky white in the swiftly darkening dusk that promised a threat of rain.
“Steve Morgan…”
“Yeah. Si Barker, right?”
A terse nod made Barker’s heavy jowls quiver. He rubbed one hand over his face, managed a forced smile that showed tobacco-rusted teeth.
“What brings you back here, Morgan? Gonna help out with the Association again?”
“I didn’t know it needed help. Last time I was here, it was doing fine.” He slid his palm over the black’s dusty neck, gave him a pat. “Give him an extra ration of oats tonight. He deserves it after that train ride.”
Flipping a coin at Barker without bothering to look at him, Steve pivoted on his boot heels and strode toward town. Barker would spread the news like wildfire that the hired gunslinger was back in town, the man who’d killed three men and cleared leather faster than any man here could remember seeing before.
Still shouldering his saddlebags, he checked in at the Casa Loma Hotel; it was smaller, clean and had good food. There was no point in stirring up folks by staying at the town’s best hotel. They’d have a lot to say anyway, and he was damned if he knew why he’d come back here. He should have ridden on, got off the train in El Paso and been at Prendergast’s ranch by this time tomorrow. It was a damn fool idea to come back. A man could never go back. Hell, he didn’t want to go
