From the comer of his eye he saw Dagget leave the Wheel House, and Grant sat quietly for another hour before another man shoved through the crowd toward the table.
“I'm Turk Valois. The clerk said you want to talk.”
He was a big man but most of his weight was in his shoulders and chest; his face was weathered and clean- shaven; he wore a gaudy mackinaw and the usual laced boots. “You want workers?” he said, kicking out a chair and sitting across the table from Grant. “Well, I'm the man to come to. You got your outfit spudded in?”
“No, we need rig builders.”
Valois whistled softly. “Rig men are hard to come by these days. What lease you working for?”
“The Mullers,” Grant said carefully.
For a moment Valois said nothing, showed nothing. It seemed almost that blinds had been drawn behind his eyes to shut out what he was thinking. “The Mullers,” he said thoughtfully. “Well, the old man's a fine old Dutchman and a pretty good wildcatter. The boy's all right, too. But Rhea...” He grinned thinly, showing a row of amazingly white teeth. “I'm sorry...”
“Grant. Joe Grant.”
“I'm sorry, Grant, I'm afraid I can't help you.” He started to get up and Grant reached out a hand and stopped him.
“Look, Valois, the Mullers need those rig builders pretty bad. Rhea says you're the only man that can help us—I want to know why you won't do it.”
Small circles of color appeared high on the runner's cheeks. “It's none of your business, Grant.”
“I'm making it my business.”
Latent violence lay over the table like an electrical storm. Grant felt the rippling of thick muscles as he held Valois' forearm above the wrist, and he knew instinctively that the runner was not the kind to run from a fight. Strangely, he found himself liking the big man, even as he prepared to block the blow that he could see coming.
But in an instant something subtle happened, the electricity disappeared, and with calm deliberateness Valois took Grant's hand in his and removed it from his arm. “Maybe I was wrong,” the runner said. “Maybe it is your business.”
He settled back in his chair, his shaded eyes flicking about at Grant's face. “All right, I'll tell you why I won't help you. The Mullers are poison in Kiefer; Ben Farley's got his mind set to take the Muller lease, and that's the way it's going to be. If I tried to help, my business would be ruined overnight. Anyway, the word is out that Muller's on Farley's black list-do you think rig builders are going to take a job that'll pay off in cracked skulls? You might as well forget it, Grant; you can't fight Farley on his home grounds.”
“I've heard all that,” Grant said. “It's funny, you didn't strike me as the kind of man to take bullying.”
But in some quiet way they had come to understand each other, and Valois refused to be ruffled. “Call me a businessman. Going against Farley is bad business.”
“I think it's more than that,” Grant said gently. “I think it has something to do with Rhea Muller.”
They looked at each other, quietly meshing their thoughts, judging each other's potential. At last Valois shook his head. “I'm sorry for you, Grant. I'm sorry for any man unlucky enough to fall in love with Rhea—I did it once myself.”
Grant made a small sound of surprise and came erect in his chair.
“That was in Bartlesville,” Valois went on calmly, “not so long ago. I was a land man then with a string of leases. Everybody thought I was going to be a millionaire, and Rhea was sweeter than clover honey—until all my wells came in dusters.” He laughed, and the sound was not pleasant. “We were going to be married. We were going to move to Oklahoma City, and when statehood came we'd be one of the first families in Oklahoma.” He pulled his hat down on his forehead. “But a few dry holes changed all that.”
Grant did not move. He wanted to be angry but he could see that Turk Valois was telling the truth. The truth as he knew it.
“What does she want from you, Grant? Money? You don't look like you have enough money for Rhea, so it must be something else.”
Mentally, Grant closed his ears, for he didn't want to hear any more. But he could not forget the day before when Rhea had come so willingly into his arms. What had she wanted? His protection? The use of his strength and his gun? Was that the way she got the things she wanted?
He got up and walked out of the Wheel House.
Hunching his shoulders into the bite of that December wind, he tramped numbly up the crowded boardwalk, past the noisy gambling houses and dance halls, past the shacks where the painted 49er girls lived and plied their calling, past clusters of tents and sheet-iron shanties. He cursed himself, and thanked Valois for showing him the truth.
He had known the truth all along, of course, but because of a pretty face and a softly rounded feminine form he had chosen to ignore it. He could ignore it no longer. He was an outlaw. What would a girl like Rhea Muller want from an outlaw?
Abruptly he stopped his pacing, turned, and headed in the opposite direction. He left the sidewalk and tramped through the mud toward the shunted boxcar that served as a depot. “When's the next train to Vinita?” he called up to the ticket agent.
The agent pointed to a chalked schedule on the side of the boxcar. “Nine o'clock tomorrow mornin'.”
Tomorrow morning. Well, he could wait. Let Dagget think what he would about his leaving—there were worse things than jail, and being made a fool of was one of them.
It was Dagget who shook him awake that night, or early morning. Grant, sleeping at one of the Wheel House's corner tables, felt the hard hands on his shoulders shaking him steadily. He heard the toneless voice chanting as monotonously as a machine:
“Come out of it, Grant. Come out of it.”
Grant opened his eyes and slowly unfolded himself from his cramped position. The lobby was as bright as day with gasoline lanterns, and somewhere in the town a voice yelled and a piano sounded harshly against the noisy background of the Kiefer night. The glare of the lanterns made him blink.
“Who is it?”
“Jim Dagget. Come out of it, I say.”
It was the marshal. Vaguely, Grant wondered if he had somehow learned the truth and had come with gun and handcuffs to take him back to Joplin.
“You want some black coffee?” the marshal asked.
“I'm not drunk, I was just sleeping.”
Dagget fixed a steady gaze on his face. “Seems to me you ought to be back at the Muller lease, if that's where you're workin'.”
Grant started to tell him that he wasn't working for the Mullers any more, but then decided there was no sense making things worse. He licked his dry lips, wondering how much longer he had to wait till nine o'clock. How much longer before he could put Kiefer and its brief memories behind him. Providing, of course, that Dagget didn't take him away first.
“What is it?” he asked, staring up at the marshal's expressionless face.
“You work for Zack Muller. Is that right?”
Frowning, Grant nodded.
“The old man's dead,” Dagget said bluntly. “He was killed tonight while bringing some drilling equipment back from Tulsa.”
CHAPTER SIX
GRANT WOULD NOT soon forget the day they buried old Zack Muller in the lonely hillside plot to the north of “Tulsy Town,” as some still called it. There was the bite of steel in the wind and flurries of sleet slashed intermittently at the small group of mourners. The Methodist preacher was a small, thin man, thin-blooded and blue-lipped, and Grant could hear the chattering of his teeth as he rushed headlong through the final graveside service.
The sky that day was as dark as oil smoke, boiling in the north, and the ground was as hard as iron. All
