Elec nodded, knowing what she meant. It wasn't Jeff's blood that made him act the way he did, it was that element of pure tragedy—circumstance. The same kind of circumstance that had made Nate the kind of man he now was.
Few persons ever thought of the marshal as a sensitive man, but now he felt a vague horror growing within him as he considered what violence circumstance could build. How could you fight a thing as irrevocable as fate? How could you change the direction of destiny?
People saw Elec Blasingame as a logical, plodding man whose job it was to hunt down, capture, or kill those who ran off the one-way track of conventional standards. Few guessed that he was often filled with rage and futility, as he was now, because he was helpless to change the inevitable. In his job there were no human switches to be thrown, no means of sidetracking passion, or hate, or anger. His job was to wait patiently and then shoot down those who left the rails.
Elec sat heavily behind his desk, his big fists knotted. He had been in this job long enough; he felt old, he had lost his zest for the work. He knew from experience that it was only a matter of time, and not much of that, before Jeff Blaine left the rails. The job of stopping the boy would be his, and he did not relish it.
Several seconds had passed since she had spoken, and now Amy said quietly, “May I see him, Marshal?”
“Now?”
She nodded, and there was a finality to the gesture that Elec could feel to his bones. “You have the right, if that's what you want. Are you going to ask him to make up with his aunt?”
“It's the only chance he has, isn't it? If there's no forgiveness in him, I might as well know it now.”
“And if he won't listen?” Elec asked.
There was no need of an answer.
It was well past midnight when the cell became so filled with drunk cowhands that Elec let Jeff go.
“Go to bed,” the marshal said. “I have all the trouble I need tonight.”
“I'll take my gun before I go,” Jeff said icily.
Sighing, the marshal took the Colt's from the desk drawer. “I don't suppose you had sense enough to listen to Amy when she tried to talk to you this afternoon.”
Jeff glared and did not answer. He buckled the cartridge belt around his waist, turned stiffly on his heel, and headed up the stairs.
The air outside was clean and sweet, and he dragged deep gulps of it into his lungs when he reached the sidewalk. All around him were the Saturday night sounds of a western town. The clang of the Green House piano, the sound, of bawdy laughter from the Paradise and Surratt's. Above him, fiddles sang in the Masonic hall, and the building trembled with the heavy tramping, of count dancing. Jeff wondered bitterly if Amy was up there she often came with Todd when Jeff was busy or had forgotten to ask her.
He headed toward the outside stairs and gazed angrily up at the splash of lamplight on the landing. His pockets were empty; he did not have the door price, even if he had wanted to go. He turned and walked quickly away.
He hated the thought of going back to the blistering heat of his room, but there was nowhere else to go. And he had to think, he had to plan. The stench of the jail cell was still in his nostrils and his anger was a hard knot in the pit of his stomach.
Crossing the street, he gazed into the night and ached to break away from this place that he hated, and which hated him. He longed to escape, as his pa had done, and yet he knew that he couldn't leave.
More than a lack of money kept him here. His craving for vengeance was strong—but even more important, there was Amy. This was the second time that she had seen him behind bars, and that knowledge angered him. As always, she had asked the impossible of him, wanting him to make up with Beulah. He would have taken a thing so unthinkable as a joke if he had not glimpsed that blank look of finality in her face. He tried to put it from his mind, telling himself she would get over it. But this time he could not be sure. Uncertainty gnawed at his nerves. He had never seen her look at him the way she had looked today. It was as though shutters had been drawn behind her eyes; that she had erected an invisible, impenetrable wall between them.
She had said quietly, “I'm sorry, Jeff,” and turned away from him and left. It had never been that way before, no matter how angry she got, and the memory of how she had looked and sounded set his nerves to jumping.
He did not see the stranger until he had almost reached the outside stairs at the side of Ludlow's store. A tall, big-boned man in his late thirties, he loafed quietly in the darkness under the wooden awning. Jeff gave him only a brief glance, took him for a drifter, and turned toward the stairs.
“Blaine?” the man asked quietly.
Surprised, Jeff turned toward him. “Yes?” '
“Then you're Nate Blaine's kid. I'm a friend of your pa's.”
THE STRANGER LEFT THE shadows, and Jeff noted the big sunburst rowels of his Mexican spurs. He was trail-dirty and shabby, his stubbled face partly hidden under the dark overhang of his shapeless hat. “So you're Nate Blaine's kid,” he said again, and laughed shortly. “I saw the to-do in the saloon today. I take it that fat marshal ain't a special friend of yours.”
“What about my pa?” Jeff said bluntly. “You said you knew him.”
“Sure, we hired out to the same bunch in Mexico for a while.”
“Is he still down there?”
The stranger shrugged. “Far as I know. My friend can tell you all about it; he just came from Mexico.”
