Has he learned anything from his pa? Elec wondered. By rights the boy should be in jail right now. Legally, young Blaine was as guilty as Somerson and Fay, and in his tougher days Elec Blasingame would not have argued the fact. But now he had grown soft. An old man stubbornly refusing to face reality.
Tomorrow, he thought bleakly, I'll turn my badge over to Kirk Logan; he's wanted it for a long time. I don't want to be there when young Blaine leaves the track again.
Then a quiet murmur was heard along the slope and Elec realized that the funeral was over. The preacher closed the Bible and walked slowly toward Jeff, but the boy stood like stone, his savage gaze fixed on the distance. The preacher shuffled uncomfortably, started to extend his hand, then changed his mind. At last he murmured something and moved uneasily away.
The crowd milled silently, uncertainly, now that the service was over. A few of them started toward Jeff, but they fell back immediately when they saw the grim cast of his face. They looked at each other uncertainly and finally began drifting away.
Now the congregation began breaking up quickly, as though it had suddenly realized its motive for coming. Cowhands rounded up their horses. Townspeople brought up buggies and hacks. A grim procession quickly formed and moved hurriedly down the slope toward the town.
Only a few were left now. Even the gravediggers, feeling the strange chill hovering over the hillside, quickly completed their work and went away. Marshal Blasingame held his ground, waiting. Amy Wintworth had not moved, despite her brother's urgent pulling at her arm. And near the bottom of the slope stood Wirt and Beulah Sewell, and Elec could not imagine why those two had stayed.
There they stood, the five of them, and the boy whose face was chiseled in grief. Then, with great effort, Jeff Blaine drew his gaze from the distance and glanced at the marshal. He looked down at the. mound of clay, then up at the endless sky.
Jeff looked at the marshal and smiled so slightly that it was hardly discernible. “He said once,” Jeff said, “that hate got to be a heavy load, when you couldn't put it down.”
Elec thought, So that's what he was thinking. He said, “So you learned something, after all. I didn't think you would.”
Elec was the last one to leave, for he had learned some things himself and wanted to think about them carefully. He had believed that man's destiny was a one-way track, immovable as a mountain, unrelenting as steel. He had believed that death was written in the circumstance of birth, and all that happened in between was unimportant, for the end was certain.
Now he wondered, as he watched Amy Wintworth run across the slope, as he saw the look in Jeff Blaine's eyes as he held the girl hard against him. Elec noted Todd Wintworth's helpless anger and was quietly pleased because it was so helpless. And he saw the quick glance exchanged between Beulah Sewell and her husband.
This is the real test, he thought, when Jeff and Amy started down the slope toward them.
It was not an easy thing—that much was clear, even from a distance. But hate got to be a heavy load, when you couldn't put it down. Elec gazed down to where Jeff had paused before his aunt, and the very air seemed to vibrate for a moment. But when the boy made himself speak to Beulah—when he took Wirt's hand, no matter how reluctantly—the marshal knew that Nathan had taught his lesson well.
THE END
