"I can just see it from the way you describe it, Ruth Lillian. You describe it as good as in a book."
"You think?"
"Hoo-birds! It sure sounds like God had it in for the Pair o' Dice, hitting it with lightning twice like that."
"Guess so."
"And they didn't bother to rebuild it?"
"No. Mr. Delanny just installed himself across the street. The boom was already beginning to peter out and most of the prospectors had gone west. Pretty soon there was nothing left but the weekly gang of miners from the Surprise Lode. And anyway," she frowned heavily, and her voice dropped to an ominous note, "it's not wise to try to rebuild something that God has reached down and destroyed."
Matthew nodded slowly. "Yeah, I guess you're- Hey, are you funning me?"
"Of course I'm funning! Jeez!"
He was silent for a moment. Then he spoke energetically to cover his embarrassment. "So your pa was the mayor, was he? Well, look at me, everybody! Here I am, talking to the mayor's daughter."
"Like I said, it wasn't legal or formal or anything. The only mayoring he ever did was to marry folks every once in a while, and he always worried about it because he didn't think he had the authority to marry people. Then when the men at the Pair o' Dice decided the town needed a marshal to keep the Saturday-night mayhem down to size, it was Pa who had to pin the badge on the man they chose. And later on, when…" She stopped and lowered her eyes. "Later on, when this marshal left town, he gave the badge back to Pa. He did it as a sort of slap in the face."
"Slap in the face?"
She looked at him long and levelly, deciding whether or not to share this with him, and he could see miniature candle flames in each of her eyes, like those on the ball points of the badge. "I guess you better be getting to your new home," she said.
"All right. I'll see you tomorrow at dinnertime. Oh, here. You'll be wanting this marshal's star back."
"No, you keep it."
"Well… thanks! Gee. Well, I guess I better be saying good night, Ruth Lillian."
"Good night, Matthew."
BY THE LIGHT OF his new lamp that burned with that nose-tingling new-lamp smell, he began to unpack and arrange things. He had taken almost everything of value from his home-well, there hadn't been all that much, really. He not only had a blanket and his clothes, but also a kettle, a frying pan, a coffee pot, his ma's hand mirror and comb (genuine animal bone), a mixed assortment of mugs and knives and forks, three chipped enamel plates, and a tin wash-up basin and pitcher. These he arranged on a shelf by the stove to make himself a kitchen of sorts.
Think of it! Living in the marshal's office. The Ringo Kid, marshal. Hoo-birds!
From other deserted houses, he had scavenged a bed, a big table and a smaller one, three straight-backed chairs, and a bentwood rocking chair that squeaked like his ma's used to-not the same note, but just about the same place on the back-push. He wasn't sure what he should do with the awkward old shotgun he had carried so far and with such effort. He should get rid of it, really. He'd meant to do that right from the first. Maybe he should bury it. But it was dark out, so he hung it on two square-cut nails over the doorway. And as he was doing this, it occurred to him that the marshal had probably driven those nails in to put his rifle up there, where it would be handy to hand, should there be trouble out on the street. He took from his pack the canvas sack that held twelve handmade, wax-dipped shells for the shotgun along with his other treasures: a small blue glass bottle he had found buried in the back yard of one of their many temporary homes (What used to be in it? Who had owned it? And, most mysterious of alclass="underline" Why had they buried it?), a marble with an American flag suspended in the middle (How did they do that?), a rock with gold flakes in it that his pa said was nothing but fool's gold (but which might be real gold because, after all, Pa didn't know everything). To these treasures he added the six-pointed marshal's star that Ruth Lillian had given him. A badge for the man living in the marshal's office. He looked around for a safe place to stash his treasures and ended up pushing the canvas sack far back under the bed.
After spreading out his blankets (Whew! He'd have to take the straw-filled mattress he'd scavenged and hang it in the sun to get rid of the mildew smell!), he arranged his collection of books on the small table. All but one of them were well-thumbed, cardboard-bound Ringo Kid books; the other was a broken-backed dictionary a teacher had given him. He loved looking up words in his dictionary and saying them over and over to himself until they were his. That night, he looked up chameleon, but it took him a while to find it because he began looking under "k," then under "ca." When he was satisfied that chameleon was forever his, he selected The Ringo Kid Deals Himself In, and settled back into his rocking chair in the middle of his house and began reading by the light of his lamp. It had been a long day, and he was dozing and dipping over the pages when he was jolted awake by a sound out in the street. Somebody was moaning… moaning and sobbing. His first fright-flash was that it might be one of the ghosts Ruth Lillian had mentioned, but the voice cried out in a whiskey-smeared voice that it was a sinner! A fornicator! A slave to the appetites of the flesh! Not worthy-No, Lord, not worthy! — to be a vassal of the Risen Christ and a vessel of His Sacred Word!
Matthew blew out his lamp, took the old shotgun down, and quietly opened his door. A full moon hung over the foothills, filling the street with a slanting slate-blue light. And there, staggering down the street from the direction of the Traveller's Welcome, was a tall, black-clad figure wearing a round "parson's" hat. With each stumbling step, his boots raised a little puff of dust into the moonlight. A drunk! A stinking, slobbering drunk! If there was anything Matthew hated…! His hands tightened on the shotgun, and he forced himself to take slow, calming breaths, like his ma used to make him do when he was in a blind rage. Then he pressed his door closed and hung the gun back up over it. With a convulsive shudder he scrubbed his hands against one another to get the feeling of gun off them. Why had he hung the damned thing up there in the first place? He hated the sight of it!
Without undressing-without even taking off his boots-he lay down on his rustling straw mattress and stared up into the darkness. The smell of mildew blended with the smell of just-blown-out lamp.
From far down the street: Punish him, Lord! Chastise this foul and fallen sinner!
And a little later, in a more distant voice:… but forgive him, Lord! Oh, please, please, forgive him!
Late into the night, long after the drunken voice had gone silent, Matthew watched the door through a small peek-hole in the blankets he had pulled up over his head.
THE NEXT MORNING, MATTHEW sat on the edge of his bed, his head throbbing, his blood thick, his eyes stiff. All night he had been pursued from one nightmare to another by… he couldn't remember exactly what. But it had a slimy texture and it… argh! He didn't want to think about it! He grunted to his feet and poured water into his basin and splashed it up into his face, snorting loudly to drive off the last clinging tendrils of dream.