Adam Steele 35, page 5
He carried the rifle at waist level, barrel canted slightly to aim at the low pitch roof of the house, finger to the trigger and thumb on the uncocked hammer. In his right hand, while his left was extended to the side and a little in back of him: seeking a first contact with a wall of the stable. He found this and glanced to the side. Saw where the door was positioned and moved with his hand extended toward it while his gaze returned to the house. His exploring hand located the crack between the frame and the edge of the door. In back of it a horse snorted again and bumped against a loose board. Steele ran his gloved hand down the crack and touched the hasp fastening – vented a soft grunt of dissatisfaction when he felt the padlock that was fixed through the U-bracket.
‘Reach, you shithead, or I’ll blast you all to hell!’
Steele had turned his head to glance down at the padlock. Had time to see it was a substantial one, as uncorroded as the hasp and the bracket screwed to stout timber that had been well treated with preservative. Now snapped his head around again, but did not alter the angle of the rifle barrel as he saw where one of the four windows in the front wall of the house had been opened. Slid up just an inch or so in order that a gun barrel could be thrust through. And the order and warning could be drawled without fear of him failing to understand it.
‘Your windows open real quietly, Mr. Boone.’
‘Not like this old Starr carbine fires, shithead! I said reach or die!’
The Virginian started to raise his left hand and heard the voice of a woman in back of the cracked open window – detected her tone of heartfelt relief without discerning the words she spoke.
‘Better!’
Now Steele moved his right hand, but in lifting it from waist to shoulder level he altered the direction in which the rifle barrel was pointed and also thumbed back the hammer – masked the series of metallic clicks by shouting:
‘I was certain you people were asleep.’
‘Older a man gets, the lighter he sleeps, shithead!’
Steele timed the squeezing of the Colt Hartford’s trigger to match the second syllable of the final word the man spoke. Then hurled himself hard to the ground in a sideways move as the crack of the bullet leaving the rifle muzzle was followed without discernible time lapse by the shattering of glass. Next the shrill scream of a terrified woman that almost covered the snarling of a curse. Again there was no interlude of silence that the human ear was capable of comprehending before the Starr belched a bullet amid smoke and a flash and with a harsher crack than the Colt Hartford had sounded. But the larger-caliber slug came to a more subdued end – thudded into the timber of the stable wall almost at the eaves of the roof.
‘Ezra. Ezra!’ the woman shrieked.
‘Shithead!’ Ezra bellowed.
‘Just want to talk to you, Mr. Boone!’ Steele yelled and scrambled to his feet. His rifle cocked again and aimed in a two-handed grip at the cracked open window from which the other rifle had been withdrawn – this window on the other side of the door from the one his shot had shattered.
‘I don’t talk to shitheads!’
‘Ezra, don’t!’
‘Get away from me, woman!’
The heavy drapes had swung together again when the gun was jerked back from between them. But they were not thick enough to mute the angry and the frightened voices, nor distort the unmistakable sounds made by Boone as he extracted the spent cartridge from the breech of the single shot Starr and reloaded the weapon. Steele heard all this clearly as, having spoken when he reached his feet, he took long strides to cross the Abilene trail toward the house. It was impossible to do this silently and he could just hope the Boones’ exchange of shrill words covered his footfalls. The aim of the Colt Hartford remained fixed upon the center of the window, while his gaze was locked to the gap between the lower frame and the sill – his entire being poised to fire a killing shot should the carbine muzzle jut into view.
He had not realized he was holding his breath until he was across the trail – leaning his left shoulder against the shingled wall of the house just two feet to the side of the window: when he felt that his lungs would burst every next moment as he consciously kept the air trapped in them, afraid it might whistle noisily out and betray his position as a sudden silence descended on the cluster of buildings at the meeting of the trails. And for a stretched second nothing seemed to move by a fraction of an inch – even the black stallion stood immobile in the bright moonlight as if frozen by equine fear.
Then there was a sound that for another stretched second the Virginian failed to recognize. Until the Starr’s barrel was thrust out into the night again – parting the drapes to spill a meagre splash of light over the windowsill and down to the ground.
‘You crazy, woman?’ Ezra Boone rasped in the wake of the striking of the match.
‘Don’t shoot, mister!’ his wife begged shrilly, and the narrow wedge of light with the carbine muzzle at its center was abruptly much brighter. And in the high tension of the moment the smell of burning kerosene was pungent.
Then Steele allowed his pent-up breath to rush out between clenched teeth, very fast and in unison with the curse that the farmer behind the window and the drapes vented. At the same moment as the gloved hand streaked away from the barrel of the Colt Hartford to clench a firmer grip around that of the Starr – and jerked hard on it. Boone’s curse became higher pitched and altered in tone from anger with his wife to fear for himself. Before his finger squeezed the trigger to explode a second shot out into the night. But this time his intended target was in command of the carbine’s aim and the big-caliber bullet buried itself in the dirt at the center of the trail.
‘Oh, God! Oh, God!’ the woman screamed in terror.
The man maintained a frantic hold on the now empty carbine for a moment more – until the wrenching action of Steele’s hand slammed him painfully against the window. And his head smashed through the glass, his face protected from the razor-sharp fragments by the thickness of the drapes.
‘Ezra!’ his wife shrieked, her voice cracking as it reached toward an impossible shrillness.
Boone gave vocal release to his pain in a gasp and surrendered his grip on the Starr – that the Virginian dragged outside amid falling shards that bounced off the carbine, his hand and arm. Then he hurled the gun across the trail as part of the same move, before bringing his arm back along the same arc – the fist opening and the fingers splaying. It was quite a small head that his palm and fingers curved around beneath the fabric of the curtain. But he did not take the time to conclude anything from this and so did not make any allowances for the kind of man he was abusing – put as much force as he was able to muster behind the shove.
‘Ezra!’
Boone made the sound like he was winded again, as his wife spoke his name as if there was a pain in her throat. Steele swung to face the window and, with the hand that had countered the farmer’s second attempt to kill him, bunched both sections of drapes and hauled on them. And they fell instantly down, still fixed by rings to the rail that had been torn free of its mountings. The rail hitting the floor at the same time as Ezra Boone’s rump.
‘Oh, God! Don’t shoot him, mister!’
Her voice was little more than a harsh whisper now, as she tore her gaze away from the man who folded violently back from the waist to become spreadeagled on the floor at her feet and fixed it on the rifle barrel that intruded into the room; between the lower frame of the window and the sill.
‘I told you; I just want to talk with him.’
She shifted her gaze again, but not so far this time, as her husband raised himself up into a sitting posture on the floor and shook his head – attempting to focus on the same point at the center of the almost glassless window frame where Steele looked impassively in at both of them, his legs and body bent in an uncomfortable half-squat.
They were both in their late fifties or early sixties, five and a half feet tall and thin but by no means puny. The man gray haired and balding, his wife a redhead just beginning to whiten. Their skin was wrinkled and stained by the elements and the years, and they both had blue eyes that seemed to have been bleached by exposure to the sun. They were both toothless and their lips were barely discernible from the surrounding slack flesh. They were dressed in matching calico nightshirts that were starkly white, fresh on tonight and hardly creased from the short time the couple were in bed before Steele’s arrival disturbed them.
Their small parlor was as neat and clean as could be expected from the exterior of the house and the surrounding farm. Cheerless, though – and not only by comparison with the comfortable disorder of the Tucker home. Even with a fire roaring in the grate and the Boones in a far more amiable frame of mind, it was difficult to imagine the room ringing with laughter. Or to even visualize the couple exchanging kindly words with each other, let alone anybody else. And this atmosphere of wretched despondency clung so strongly to the room, Steele found it impossible to experience the slightest stab of regret for his violent treatment of the helpless couple. In fact, had a strange feeling that Ezra and Annie Boone were deriving a brand of only just concealed satisfaction out of what was happening to them. Like they expected only the worst out of life and were seldom taken by surprise – took pride in their ability to rise above adversity and so welcomed each testing time that came to them.
Not too unlike his own philosophy, Steele realized with a shock that hit him hard enough to vent an involuntary grunt from his throat.
‘Anyone wants to talk to me or her, if we ain’t outside, they knock on the door of the house, shithead!’ Ezra Boone said in the drawling voice that placed his origins a lot further down in the Deep South than Virginia. ‘They don’t go pokin’ around at the stable. Not at night for sure. Natural me and her should figure you for a man up to no good, shithead.’
‘And ain’t nothin’ I seen nor heard that makes it seem you all is not up to no good, mister,’ the woman added, as fast to recover from the shock of moments ago as was her husband. Her accent sounded even more strongly of the south.
‘Two windows you done broke already, shithead,’ the farmer went on, speaking in a dull monotone through lips formed into the line of a grimace of discomfort as he was helped slowly to his feet by Annie. ‘You plan to do any more damage to the place before you rob us?’
Steele looked pointedly at each of them as they spoke. Now, in the stillness, eyed them in turn again. Then asked: ‘You through?’
‘Uh?’ Boone grunted, massaging his injured rump with both hands.
‘The kind of talk I had in mind is for me to ask you questions and you to answer them, feller.’
‘You all can ask, mister,’ the woman invited, with defiance in her voice and her expression and even in the way she stood ramrod-stiff alongside her husband. ‘But whether me or Ezra gives you any answers is a horse of a different color.’
‘Two of them, ma’am. White stallions. Stolen by Martin Cooper and Luke Wellman who’ve been doing some work on your new barn.’
The man’s grimace of pain became a similar expression of dejection. While Annie showed a stronger brand of defiance that was laced with anger.
‘Who told you all that?’
‘Was inside Byron Nolan’s bank when the horses were—’
‘He tell you all?’
‘How’s that, ma’am?’
Impatience was added to the weight of emotion that burdened her features with an ugly glower. ‘That Cooper and Wellman done some work for Ezra and me on the place?’
‘If it matters, Mr. Tucker who has the farm—’
‘I know which place the Tuckers farm, mister!’ she cut in sharply. ‘It’s a cryin’ shame them folks that live about Braddock and in the filthy place can’t just be content with knowin’ where other folks live! But now, all the time they gotta be pushin’ their noses into the private business of other folks! Why, if I had my way—’
During the terse exchange between Steele and his wife, and then as she launched into the opening of her tirade against their distant neighbors, Ezra Boone worked on once more regaining his composure. And he appeared to be as coldly in control of himself as Annie had been earlier when he told her: ‘Enough of that, woman!’
She did not have to glance at him – knew from the tone of his voice that she would be unwise to argue with him. And she sniffed with disdain and compressed her almost colorless lips into a firm, thin line.
‘I got me two white stallions,’ the farmer said. ‘The Arabs that Jeremiah Haskins figured to rent out for breedin’ after he threw in his hand with farmin’.’
‘Grateful to you, feller,’ Steele said and straightened up, relishing the ending of the ache in the small of his back caused by the awkward stance. But he kept the cocked rifle resting on the sill. Raised his voice now that the unbroken pane in the upper section of the sash window was between him and the Boones. ‘You want to hand me out the key to the padlock on the stable door? Or you want to put on some clothes and step outside to open up for me?’
‘Go to hell, shithead!’ Ezra Boone said through a scowl. ‘Them animals was bought in good faith off two men I had no reason not to trust and ... hey, where you goin’?’
Steele had swung away from the window and was making fast time with long strides across the trail. He heard the slap of bare feet on the floor of the too-well-cared-for parlor as the Boones hurried forward to peer out at him.
‘I asked, feller,’ the Virginian called to them as he reached the front of the stable and took a double handed grip on the rifle, turning so he could push the muzzle to within an inch of the clasp of the padlock. ‘Pretty damn politely in the circumstances, I reckon. Same as I did at the Tucker farm, but—’
He squeezed the trigger of the Colt Hartford and vented a low grunt of satisfaction as the clasp was blasted apart and the padlock fell heavily to the ground. He waited until the snorts and kicks of the unsettled horses within the stable had been almost silenced before he completed:
‘—it seems a gun is the only key to getting you people around here to open up.’
Chapter Five
‘YOU’RE SOME KIND of man, ain’t you, shithead?’ Ezra Boone posed rhetorically, he and his wife directing contemptuous sneers of equal intensity at Adam Steele as the Virginian led the pair of white stallions out of the stable.
He had been inside for just a minute or so, needing to strike two matches so that he could see to find the bridles and a coil of rope from which he cut two lengths of lead line. He worked in the darkness relieved by some weak moonlight from the open doorway to fit the bridles and attach the lines. All the while listening for sounds from beyond the walls of the well-kept, clean-smelling stable in which there were two heavy draught horses and a saddle-broken gelding in addition to his Arabs. He heard just some rasping whispers, then the shuffling of bare feet; finally, the opening of the front door of the house across the trail. And it was on the threshold of the house doorway that the Boones stood, each with an arm around the waist of the other, when Steele reappeared, and the farmer spoke.
‘Reckon I am,’ the Virginian countered as he led the still slightly nervous animals toward his mount. ‘Sure was the last time I looked.’
‘Got to talk dirty in front of the woman? To be expected in somebody like you, and that’s a fact. The kind that’ll bust up the home of an old couple who ain’t in no shape to defend themselves. Knock an old man down. Steal his property that he paid hard-worked-for cash to buy.’
Ezra Boone had dropped the scowl in favor of an expression that in the weak moonlight might have succeeded in portraying a brand of pathetic dejection – at first glance. But on closer examination it was apparent that the glittering light in his bleached blue eyes did not come from salt wetness. Rather was generated by a powerful mixture of cunning and enmity as they followed Steele’s progress from the stable doorway to his mount, then watched his every move as he hitched the lead lines to the horn of his saddle.
This while his wife made no secret on her face of her hostility toward the Virginian – and spared a glance for the man at her side of which he failed to be aware. And so knew nothing of the contempt she had for his ploy until, as Steele swung into the saddle, she rasped:
‘You’re wastin’ your breath, husband! This cold-hearted horse-stealin’ excuse for a man has no more feelin’ than a prowlin’ wolf! I’m just sorry I spoke against you all puttin’ a bullet in him right off!’
‘Why would you want to do that, feller?’ Steele asked as he slid the Colt Hartford into the boot.
‘What?’ Boone muttered morosely.
‘Shoot me right off?’
It was as if his mind had wandered off in search of another way to reach Steele after the first stratagem had failed. And he only now realized what Annie had said.
‘Damn you, woman!’ he snarled, and snatched his arm from around her waist. Stepped out of the doorway unconcerned about his bare feet; probably feeling no colder in the nightshirt outside of the unheated house than inside. He glowered fleetingly at Annie and, as had happened a few minutes earlier, she acknowledged with a firm pressing together of the lips that he was now speaking for both of them. ‘All right, shithead!’ he growled at the mounted man, when he had halted midway between Steele and the darkened doorway flanked by two smashed windows, one of them spilling lamplight. ‘Ain’t no witnesses, so ain’t no point in pretendin’ what ain’t is! I knowed them two Arab stallions that was all Haskins had of any value to leave behind him was gonna be in the sale at his dump of a place today! And I coveted them! Made no secret of it to Marty and Luke. But there wasn’t no secret, either, in the way Nat Curtis was gonna ante up money that wasn’t all his for the horses. That him and the Tuckers and Manning and Harper was figurin’ to go shares in buyin’ them stallions and shares in the money they got from stud. If Harv Devlin didn’t put up more than they could muster, that is.’
Annie Boone sniffed loud and long, and released the air through her nose, too – with a sound designed to direct disdain toward every person named by her husband.
