Ben Harmony’s plaid sleeves were rolled up, revealing the red underwear beneath. Clay said, “Aren’t you dressed yet?”

  “Do I appear to be dressed?”

  “Well,” Clay said, “aren’t you coming?”

  Ben leaned on his ax handle and looked at him as if Clay were slightly crazy. “Coming where?”

  “To the big party. At my house.”

  Ben Harmony grunted. “Chico, the only way I could get into a party at your house would be on a plate.”

  “All of you, or just your head?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’re a fool. It means you’re too damned sensitive. He let you go, didn’t he? Just because Littlejack’s dim in the head and McAffee’s an old curmudgeon doesn’t mean the whole country’s down on you. You’re making up lines where no lines are drawn.”

  “The lines are drawn,” Ben Harmony said, “and I don’t cross them. That’s the way I stay alive, Chico.”

  “How do you know? Have you ever tried?”

  Ben gave him a dismal look. Clay said, “What’s the matter, Ben? Too good for us?”

  “Don’t taunt me, Chico. I’m in no mood for it. Let’s just say I haven’t got any formal clothes to wear.”

  “We’ll scare up something.”

  “No,” Ben Harmony said. “Listen, if it was anybody else but your old man, I might just come. But not this one.”

  “Why? What’s between you and him?”

  “Nothing that’d interest you. It happened a long, long time ago. Before you were even born.”

  “Before I was born, you weren’t more than five.”

  “Old enough to learn the difference between Rand and Harmony, be that as it may.”

  Clay said, “I’m half a mind to get off this horse and pound a hole in your skull to find out what’s inside.”

  “Don’t, Chico. You’ve got enough trouble in your own life without going around digging up mine or anybody else’s. Now get out of here—go on to your party. Somebody’s got to look after these half-froze cows and build you a house to live in.” He lifted his palm gravely. “Hail and farewell.”

  “Aagh,” Clay said. He reined the horse around more savagely than he needed to and drummed away.

  At six o’clock he drove the family buggy into Williams Street and presented himself at Colonel McAffee’s door.

  Lavender swept the door open with a flourish. Clay said, “Howdy.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No,” he said.

  “I’m afraid I never see anyone without an appointment."

  “I see. Well, what would you say to six o’clock on Saturday night?”

  “That would be fine,” she said. “What time is it?”

  “Six o’clock on Saturday night.”

  “Think of that.” She beckoned with her fingers and stepped back.

  “Where’s the colonel?”

  “Somewhere with that man with the funny eyes."

  “Shoumacher?”

  “I never remember his name,” she said. It amused him, and she said, “That’s a nice laugh.”

  He backed up against the door to push it shut, all the while holding her with a grave look. “Why do you have to look so beautiful?”

  She went away from him, into the small drawing room, into which the colonel had crowded all the furniture of his own and his late son; the room was stuffed with settees and velvet chairs and knickknacks. Clay picked a path through it to the window, pulled a drapery aside and looked out. “That horse isn’t used to hauling a buggy. I wouldn’t want him to bolt for it—we’d better go soon.”

  “Are you frightened of that, really?”

  He grinned, not looking at her. “It’s just that the party’s in our honor, and if I don’t take you out of here pretty quick, we may not get there at all.” He came back to her and slipped his arms around her little waist. He said, “Remember the first time I sparked you?”

  “The box social.”

  “And I bid Bobby Rivers up to four dollars for your box lunch. Outbid him, too.”

  “An outrageous sum.”

  He kissed the tip of her nose. “I have got it bad,” he said. “I put your face on every woman I see.”

  She said very seriously, “I do love you, Clay.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “But I’m worried about you.”

  “I seem to be the kind women worry about.”

  “My grandfather,” she said. “He’s been acting peculiarly.”

  “Never mind,” he said. “He’s like a dog that barks with one end and wags with the other. He—”

  “That’s what I mean, Clay. He’s been too nice to me. He hasn’t said a word against our engagement all week. He even told me he’s going to the party tonight.”

  Clay had to think about that. He said, “Sometimes people scare me. They’re so damned complicated.”

  Lavender gave him her arm. He took her outside and gave her a hand up; she got into the buggy and drew her coat around her shoulders. Clay settled on the seat beside her—he pulled her toward him, and she said, “Not here,” smiling, looking prim in the shadows. “We’re in a public place.”

  “Giddap.”

  Farris Rand had ordered the coming evening as a field general would plan a campaign. Senora Dominguez had arranged the house; her army of hired girls had dusted and swept, set out the crystal and damask. The full quarter of beef had spent the day slow-roasting in Señora Dominguez’s kitchen, and at six the señora’s two brawny sons had delivered it to Rand’s back door. It stood in the kitchen, ready for carving. Decanters of wine lined the sideboard shelves, and the gentlemen’s bar was arranged on the massive oak table in the parlor. Even the glass eyes of the twelve-point buck had been dusted and polished. Susan Rand’s finest silver was on display. The china was laid out in rows for the buffet. Señora Dominguez had commandeered every respectable chair in the neighborhood for which there was space on the ground floor of the house. Magnums of 1883 White Seal champagne cooled in buckets of ice trimmed from the creeks.

  Shortly after six o’clock Susan Rand came downstairs in a pale blue satin dress. Alone with her for a brief time in the parlor, the sheriff regarded her through the blue haze of his cigar smoke. He offered her a wrapped package and spoke gruffly. “Before the others arrive.”

  She examined it with mild surprise. “Shall I open it?”

  “I’d be pleased if you would.”

  “Under the circumstances I don’t know that I ought to accept a gift from you.”

  “It won’t bite you.” The sheriff’s smile was dry. His moustache was waxed; he wore a burgundy dinner jacket with a shawl collar. Lamplight reflected small golden slivers in his eyes. “I had it shipped from New York.”

  It made her shoot a glance at him. “Then you thought of it quite some time ago.”

  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps you’ve changed your mind since you ordered it.”

  “Nothing’s changed,” he said. “Open it.”

  She undid the wrapping with care, and lifted out the contents—a mahogany music box. He found it hard to make out her expression. She lifted the lid, and a light-spirited tune tinkled from the mechanism, The Londonderry Air. It made her smile involuntarily. Pasted into the lid was a four-color lithograph of a sylvan landscape, farmhouse and fence, a friendly visitor riding through the gate.

  “Thank you, Farris. It’s thoughtful.”

  “But no substitute for Clay’s hand on the piano, is it?”

  She said, “Let’s not talk about that now.”

  And the guests began to arrive. Some came afoot, but most of them pulled up in rigs and buggies. Emmett Smyley and his wife arrived in the doctor’s enclosed hansom, a weather-resistant vehicle that could be driven from the inside with the reins threaded through a slot; it had been one of Smyley’s earliest investments, prompted by the numerous emergency calls that took him out in all kinds of weather.

  One couple, the Dinwiddies, came in an open victoria. Dinwiddie could usually be expected to do the unexpected.

  A liveried Mexican took their rigs and led them away to hitch them along the street. The guests came up to the door smiling tentatively. Beards and sideburns and painstakingly coiffured hairdresses, silk opera hats and the greatest finery of attire that could be mustered in the town of Ocotillo assembled here. (There were occasional incongruities. Mrs. Dinwiddie wore a postilion hat. Mrs. Littlejack, a stout woman, arrived in a Gainsborough sort of gown that swept the floor.)

  There were greetings and “Lay off your things in the pantry, folks.” Powdered and discreetly rouged, corseted in whalebone and carrying fans in their gloved hands, the ladies made a bright swirl of bustled and bustling color. Clay found himself separated from Lavender by the traffic. He stood near the sideboard and caught glimpses of her. She was somewhere in the shuffle, with her red hair tossing; he kept losing track of her. A bombardment of good wishes fell upon him, which he accepted as best he could until Clyde Littlejack loomed up and said, “I want to offer you congratulations and good luck, kid. You ain’t going to need the congratulations, but I got a feeling you might use the luck.”

  “Thank you,” Clay said coolly.

  He was less than pleased by Littlejack’s presence here, but evidently this night was to be a brief time of truce; his father had made temporary peace with his enemies. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement that politics would not be discussed. For a while no one broke it. Nevertheless, the hearty gusto and good cheer were uncomfortably false, and Clay quickly fortified himself with what Harry Greiff told him was half a pint of puma sweat. While he drank, in the midst of loud, forced gaiety, he had an image of Ben Harmony, out there on the ranch, probably cooking his meager supper over an open fire and draping a horse-sweaty saddle blanket around him for warmth in the open lean-to. The sheriff had given Ben Harmony a tongue-lashing after the shooting incident in the Occidental, and since that night Ben Harmony had not come into town at all. It was October sixteenth, and the night winds across the hills were coming bitter cold: this morning Clay had chopped a thin rime of ice from the creek to water his stock. Thinking about that, he only half heard the congratulations that battered him back into the corner by the sideboard. Bobby Rivers came up, gangly and towheaded, with a drink in his hand, and regarded Clay with undisguised envy. Bobby looked awkward in his stiff collar; his smile was sickly. Clay shook off his reverie and greeted Bobby Rivers warmly, savoring a sense of revenge in the generosity with which he forgave Bobby his trespasses.

  Dr. Smyley remarked to Littlejack, “Two fellows your size would make a crowd, Clyde.”

  Mayor Foster, who was very fat, was discoursing on the subject of William Jennings Bryan, the boy orator of the Platte, who by now was at the end of his vigorous campaign; on the third of November the national election would pit him against McKinley. Foster puffed out his enormous belly and said, “Free silver again? We’ll just have to tighten our belts, that’s all.”

  It went on that way—desultory talk and pleasantries. Udray, who had driven in from Rafter Cross, reached the bar with Clay’s father and said, “I don’t come to these things often, Farris. Can’t take too much of saying nice things I don’t paean to people who don’t believe me. But I’ll say this to you, Clay, and mean it. You’re a man to be proud of. I’d be honored to ride the river with you. I wish you all the best things, you and your girl.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Udray.”

  Udray turned back to the sheriff. “Somebody ran off six head of my stock last night.”

  “Did you recognize any of them?”

  Udray shrugged. “Cows all look the same to me.”

  Clay’s father laughed politely at the cattleman’s little joke; the two gray men drifted away with their drinks.

  Clay glimpsed Lavender’s red hair passing the door. The ladies seemed to have gathered in the dining room. Men circulated around Clay’s position; Dr. Smyley came by, putting on his glasses, hooking them over one ear at a time. “Hell of a big night for you, Clay.”

  “Yes, sir, it is.”

  Harry Greiff moved in, looking out of place in his dress suit. The doctor said to him, “Those clothes on you look about like horns on a filly. Hell of a fraud you are.”

  Greiff laughed. He was off duty tonight, already a little drunk. Clay watched him pour a stiff drink. The deputy’s thick brows overhung his eyes, so bushy that his expressions were invisible. “Don’t ever become a lawman, son,” he advised, and lurched away.

  Dr. Smyley looked across the foyer toward the dining room, where guests filed in and out. “How about a bite to eat, son? All this standing around and jawing makes me hungry as all hell.”

  There was a jumble of finding places to sit and eat. Lavender smiled at Clay, but a woman took the seat beside her; Clay elevated his arms and shook his head with a grin and took his supper back into the parlor. A rancher joined him and entertained him with talk of hanging Billy Cordell. Clay tried hard to put some show of interest on his face. Finally he said, “I don’t think there’ll be any hanging, Mr. Mossgrove. Billy didn’t kill anybody. Excuse me?”

  He got up and ate alone by the sideboard. He put his plate away, caught Senora Dominguez’s warm wink, and backed surreptitiously into the kitchen. Feeling drunk, he went outside into the cold open air.

  He threw his head back and breathed deep. He could hear the clatter of dishes; someone laughed. The chilly dark bit into him so that his flesh rippled, but he stood there with his hands in his pockets, frowning. It’s supposed to be our night, he was thinking, but the specters of Ben Harmony and the election confused it all. Not that Ben Harmony had done anything that Clay would not have done in his shoes, or so Clay thought, but Ben had driven a wedge into the town. He was on everybody’s mind, even if no one spoke his name.

  After a while the cold got to him. He went back inside, passed Senora Dominguez’s broad rump, and palmed the knob of the dining room door to pull it open. But it already stood a few inches ajar, and he did not open it farther just then, for a woman was talking beyond the door, confiding in a low voice to someone with her.

  “Look at him, handsome as you please. He’s standing over there thinking of the time when he didn’t seduce Cavendish’s wife. Heaven only knows what would have come of that poor woman if they hadn’t decided to move to San Francisco. And it’s easy to see it won’t be long before young Clay turns into the spitting image of him.”

  The woman’s voice was horsey. It wasn’t hard to identify Mrs. Dinwiddie by the bluntness of her tongue. She went on. “Farris was always hard to swallow, but he’s turning into a real liability.”

  The second woman said, “It’s a wonder Susan puts up with it.”

  “There’s no knowing those two. It’s not a family—it’s a tactical alliance.”

  Clay pressed his lips together. He swung the door open and tramped into the dining room, never glancing at Mrs. Dinwiddie by the door. He walked right past, across the room and into the parlor.

  Harry Greiff grasped his arm at the door. “Here you are. Where you been hiding? Come on, everybody’s waiting for you.”

  In his father’s parlor the champagne had been opened and poured. Clay’s father stood by the table with one arm across Lavender’s shoulders; when Clay came forward, the sheriff lifted his glass.

  “Ladies and gentlemen. To these two fine young people. To Lavender—” he bowed toward her—“and to my son.”

  The guests gestured and drank and came crowding around, pounding Clay’s back, congratulating them both. He felt half smothered. Lavender squeezed in beside him, and he held her around the waist, seeing her smile but unable to hear what she said. Past the top of her head he saw his father, beaming, drinking champagne. Clay listened vaguely to the people pay lip service, but his attention was on his father’s face. He couldn’t shake loose Mrs. Dinwiddie’s talk.

  Colonel McAffee arrived. It was easy to tell, because the volume of talk diminished like a quick intake of breath. The crowd parted to let him through. McAffee was all dressed up in wing collar and cravat. His nose looked like a vein-and-artery chart in a textbook. He lurched slightly. “Not too late to toast the bride and groom to be, am I?”

  Someone pressed a drink into the colonel’s hand. He lifted his face. “Libation now and then’s supposed to be good for the health. Prevents—what do you call it?—cirrhosis. Mighty fine champagne, Farris. My, my, I’m delighted to see all these wonderful people gathered together in peace. Farris, treasure it. It may blow all to bits tomorrow. But we’ll observe our uneasy truce for the nonce, hmm? Here’s to you, my lovely granddaughter, and here’s to my prospective grandson-in-law. Youth is a priceless thing, and it’s my profound hope you’ll never regret exchanging it for premature matrimonial middle-age, be that as it may.”

  The colonel drank his toast and lifted his glass once more. “And here’s to your father, young man. May he have the grace to retire with honor from the field come the third of next month.”

  McAffee almost choked, laughing, on a mouthful of champagne.

  Dinwiddie adjusted his pince-nez and remarked softly, dryly, “Colonel, you’d give a speech anywhere you could gather an audience.”

  There was a jittery run of laughter. Through a hole in the crowd, Clay fixed his eyes on his father’s feet. The sheriff had forsaken his polished boots tonight; he wore a pair of black pumps that Clay had never seen before. Beneath the fabric of her dress he could feel the soft warmth of Lavender’s skin. She was looking up into his face. Her eyes shone.

  Harry Greiff, getting progressively drunker, yelled out boisterously: “Hot beef and cold booze. What more do we need?” The men were perspiring. McAffee was absorbed by a knot of people.

  Dinwiddie launched into an impersonation of William Jennings Bryan, with gestures, impudently accurate. “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!” Nobody laughed much—Bryan was the Westerners’ candidate—-but the town had learned to tolerate Dinwiddie’s waywardness and no one took offense.

  Clay guided Lavender toward the door; she submitted with an agreeable smile. Clay’s mother met them in the doorway. Lavender said, “We thought we’d go out and see the moonlight. Will you join us?”

 

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