AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Don’t know that either. All I know is what Flo told me.”
“Flo…”
He must have seen my face change, and sensed my instinctive movement of revulsion, for his arms tightened inexorably about me, holding me still.
“You knew damn well I was meeting Flo! An’ I’m sure you guessed she was tellin’ me things.”
“You used her!” Why did he have to mention Flo?
“Yes, I did, an’ I ain’t goin’ to make no excuses for it, Ro. I had a score to settle, and I went about settling it my way. Flo was unfinished business
, an’ when I came back an’ heard she had left her rich husband an’ was staying with her pa again, askin’ questions about me—hell, all I could think of was the way she’d lied that time, sayin’ I tried to rape her, when all the time she… all right, so she was only fifteen—that’s what you were goin’ to say, wasn’t it? But she was a woman to look at, and she knew all of a woman’s cheating, teasing tricks. Sure, I was goin’ to use Flo if I had to. Give her back some of her own medicine, an’ get back at Shannon too. You guessed that, didn’t you? That first night I talked to you, you flung that at me.”
“Why did you come? You were free, you need not have let your promise hold you when you had other things to do.”
I tried to keep my voice even, but it shook traitorously. Oh, God, why did this man have such an effect on me? Even when he admitted how cold-bloodedly and calculatingly he’d taken advantage of Flo’s weak nature, I could not escape my own longing for him.
“If I make a promise, I try to keep it if I can. Although there were times when you made me wish I’d told Bragg to go to hell. Do you realize that ever since I ran into you, you’ve brought me nothin’ but trouble?”
“Oh! Of all the unfair… if you hadn’t come to Silver City to kill Todd—”
“Wrong again. I came to Silver City to bring Ramon, so he could meet you. An’ then all hell broke loose.”
“But you had been with Flo! Oh, God… even now it makes me sick to think of it. After Todd was shot and I came up to find her, the bed was—and then she admitted it. She told me she’d been with you, that in spite of all the danger you couldn’t stand to stay away from her.” I would have pulled away from him then, if he had let me. The memory of Flo, the thought that they must have lain together, just like this were almost too much to bear thinking of.
“Damn you, Ro. You wanted answers from me, didn’t you? I don’t know what kind of story Flo made up—it sounds like the kind of thing she’d say, I guess. But if you’re tryin’ to say I went to bed with Flo, screwed her, and then walked over to the window and shot Shannon, you’re… What kind of idiot do you take me for? Christ, Silver City was crawlin’ with lawmen and Shannon’s gunslingers, and no matter how I’d have liked to get a shot at Shannon, I wasn’t aimin’ to get shot by his men before I got close enough. I talked to Flo, sure, but I wasn’t about to get myself trapped in bed in a hotel room with her. An’ if you want the truth, I didn’t even trust her that much. No, it wasn’t me took that shot at Todd Shannon. I was headed out of town when it happened, an’ I kept goin’ when I heard. I wasn’t the only one hated the bastard. Anyone could have done it, and then, if they knew I was in town, pinned it on me. If I hadn’t have talked to Ramon and decided to get the hell out right then, they’d have had me trapped, an’ no one, not even you, would have taken the time to ask me any questions.”
He said it flatly and unemotionally, stating a fact, and I was suddenly shaken with horror at the thought of what might have happened.
“But then… you knew what everyone was thinking, and when Flo ran away to you, it only made it so much worse! Don’t you see? They were certain then, that you and she…”
“What difference could that make? There was already a warrant sworn out against me, and when Flo turned up, it looked like a good way to get back at Shannon. But I didn’t ask her to run off to me. Hell, I was running then, an’ fast. Why would I want her in the way, slowin’ me down? Only trouble was, I’d told her too much. She used to keep naggin’ at me, asking where I was goin’, what was I goin’ to do about her. An’ finally I told her one day I was planning to leave for Texas, getting in the freighting business again, and that if she wanted to get a message to me, there was a place she could send a letter. ‘Bout a month or two later, a man I knew told me there was a woman lookin’ for me, asking questions. He gave me the name of the hotel she was stayin’ at, an’ I went to see her. I was curious, I guess. And—” I heard a bitter, bleak note come into his voice. “She was there, Ro. Told me how she’d run off, tellin’ everyone she was running away with me. Playin’ right into my hands, the way I thought then. I took her. An’ I think we got to hating each other long before we reached Kansas.
“I didn’t lose her to that tinhorn gambler. She wasn’t mine to stake. There’d been other men by that time. It seemed like she had to keep proving to every man she met how irresistible she was. She was like a leech, all greed: always wantin,’ always graspin’. An’ by then—hell, I didn’t care what she did, or in how many beds she lay! It had gotten so I could hardly stand to touch her, or have her touch me. God knows why she stayed with me that long! An’ then I got in that card game—mostly so I wouldn’t have to spend another evening with her, I guess. An’ I saw the way she looked at the gambler who was runnin’ the game, and the way he looked at her. I guess she really wanted him; he said he was French, and he dressed real well and acted like he had lots of money. Anyhow, I lost a pot, and before I knew it, she was offering herself to him as the payoff. Well, he took her, and I thought I was shut of her until I heard later what had happened and what people were saying.”
The fire crackled in the silence that followed, and I felt as battered and bruised as if I had been beaten. Why, why? A chain of events, all seemingly unrelated, and yet they had brought me here in the end. Who had tried to kill Elmer Bragg—and Todd? Had Flo’s “accidental” death been an accident after all? Why? How? Something I had tried to push away flashed suddenly into my mind, and I moved my head, looking up into Lucas’s flame-shadowed face.
“I’ve just remembered something. Lucas, did you know a man called Pardee?”
“Hmm?” He had been squinting into the flames, and seemed to drag his attention back to me with an effort. I saw his eyes narrow, and then focus on mine, the fire bringing out the strange, greenish lights in their depths. “You talking of Gil Pardee? That Texas gunslick that works for Shannon?”
“Used to work for him.” I had to moisten my lips before I went on. “I killed him, Lucas. It was just before I left the ranch for Fort Selden. I was riding out alone, and he tried to stop me. He seemed to think…” My mind went back to that day, and I seemed to hear Gil Pardee’s sneering insinuating voice in my ears all over again.
“Mebbe you think I don’t know enough to please a lady. But that little Flo gal didn’t think so! Came after me, askin’ for more…”
Pardee had been outside the hotel when I left Flo on the morning Todd was shot. I hadn’t noticed him afterwards. But if he had been Flo’s lover, and he knew that both Mark and I had left and she was likely to be alone…
“Maybe it doesn’t mean anything,” I whispered. “Why should Pardee, of all people, want to kill Todd? But some man had been with Flo, in that room, on that bed! And she looked so guilty, she told so many lies, all contradicting each other.”
Flo, running down the hotel corridor with her flimsy wrapper held carelessly under her breasts—Flo, her eyes shining peculiarly as she cried out to me: “Is he dead? Is Pa dead?” Flo, who knew that Lucas was in Silver City, and would be blamed. But why, why? It all came back to that.
Lucas’s face had taken on a frowning, withdrawn look that seemed to shut me out. “That all of it?”
“I told you it probably doesn’t mean anything!” I cried out defensively. “But if Flo thought I was going to marry Todd and she’d be cut out of his will, and you’d already told her you were going away…”
“Only trouble is, Flo’s dead. And so is Pardee. An’ even if they weren’t, who’d believe that I wasn’t the guilty one?” There was neither anger nor self-pity in his voice, but something in its inflection made me shiver. “Lucas…”
“Let it be, Ro. I didn’t kill Bragg, an’ I didn’t shoot Shannon. But that don’t mean I might not have, if things had been different. I’ve hired my gun out for pay too many times to start feelin’ queasy about some of the things I’ve had to do. And as for Todd Shannon—I made myself that promise a long time ago. I mean to kill him, but not through any damn window, or from behind a clump of mesquite. I’m goin’ to come face to face with him someday, and then…”
