Robinson glanced over his shoulder at the North Star. “Guess they didn’t hear the shot in there,” he said. “Probably helling it up a bit.”
“I’m thinking about Kathryn,” said Carson. “Delavan’s daughter. Someone will have to tell her.”
“That’s right,” declared Robinson. He considered it a moment, a square, blocky man, almost squatty in the semi-darkness of the street.
“My old woman will go and stay with her,” he said, “but she can’t break the news to her, not all alone. Someone else will have to help her do it.”
He looked at Carson. “You were going there just now. Kathryn told me when she came in to buy some spuds.”
Carson nodded. “I suppose you’re right, Bill. Let’s get Delavan in someplace.”
Storm and two of the other men lifted the body, started down the street.
“Come down to the store for a minute,” said Robinson. “The old lady will be ready to go in a minute or so.”
Carson followed Robinson. Weaver lagged until he fell in step with the editor. He stepped close to Carson and pitched his voice low.
“I got word to Purvis,” he said. “He sent out riders. Some of the boys will be coming into town.”
“I’ll be back at the office,” Carson told him, “as soon as I can get away.”
Feet pattered on the sidewalk behind them and a woman’s voice cried out: “Daddy! Daddy!”
Weaver and Carson spun around.
It was Kathryn Delavan, running across the street, sobs catching in her throat. She would have rushed by, but Carson reached out and stopped her. “No, Kathryn,” he said. “Stay back here with us.”
She clung to him. “You were so late,” she said, “that I came to see –”
He held her close, awkward in his comforting.
“You don’t know who –”
Carson shook his head. “It was too dark.”
Robinson lumbered through the dusk toward them. “Perhaps,” he said, “she might want to come to the store. My wife is there.”
The girl stepped away from Carson. “No,” she said, “I want to go back home. Martha is there. I’ll be all right there with her.”
She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “You will bring him home, too?”
Robinson’s voice was understanding, almost soft. “Yes, miss, just as soon – In an hour or two.”
She moved closer, took Carson’s arm, and they moved west up the street, toward the house where supper waited for a man who would not eat it.
The clock on the bar said ten when Carson pushed open the door of the North Star.
The place was half-full, and in the crowd Carson singled out a handful of Fennimore’s riders – Clay Duffy, John Nobles, Madden and Farady at the bar; Saunders and Downey at a table in a listless poker game. The rest of the men were in from other ranches or were from the town.
Carson walked to the bar and signaled to the bartender.
The man came over. “What’ll it be?”
“Fennimore around?” asked Carson.
“You don’t give a damn for your life, do you?” snarled the man.
Carson’s voice turned to ice. “Is Fennimore here?”
The man motioned with his head. “In the back.”
For a moment the room had grown silent, but once again it took up its ordinary clatter of tongue and glass and poker chip. One or two men smiled at Carson as he walked by, but others either turned their heads or did not change expression.
Without knocking, Carson pushed open the back door, stepped into the smoke-filled room.
Three men stared at him from a single round table decorated by two whisky bottles, staring with that suddenly vacant, vicious stare that marks an interrupted conversation.
One was Fennimore, a huge man, wisps of black hair hanging out from under his broad-brimmed hat. Quinn and Bean were on either side of him.
For a moment the stare was unbroken and the silence held. Fennimore was the one who broke it. “What do you want?” he asked, and his voice was like a lash, hard and cold and with a sting in every word.
“I came,” said Carson, “to see what was being done about Delavan’s murder.”
“So,” said Fennimore slowly. “So, what do you want to be done about it?”
“I want the man who killed him found.”
“And if we don’t?”
“I’ll say that you don’t want him found. On the front page of the Tribune.”
“Look here, Morgan,” said Quinn, “you’re in no position to say that. When you yourself are wanted for murder.”
“I’m here,” said Carson. “Go ahead and take me.”
The three sat unmoving. Fennimore’s tongue licked his upper lip, briefly. Bean’s whisky-flushed face drained to pasty white.
“No,” said Carson. “All right, then –”
“Quinn,” interrupted Fennimore, “gave you until tomorrow morning to get out of town. That still holds.”
“I’m not getting out,” said Carson. “The day when you can tell a man to get out and make it stick is over, Fennimore. Because in another week we’re electing a new sheriff, one who will uphold the law of the country and not the law of one cow-boss.”
“It’s your damned paper,” snarled Fennimore. “You and your lousy stories that give me all the trouble. Stirring up the people –”
“What Fennimore means,” said Quinn, smiling, “is that you’ll never go to press again …”
“But I will,” said Carson. “Tonight. I’m not waiting until tomorrow. We go to press tonight instead of tomorrow afternoon. And I’m going to tell how Delavan was shot down from ambush and nothing’s being done about it. And I’m going to point out that when I killed a man on fair call this afternoon you wanted to run me in for murder.”
“You can’t blame any of my boys for killing Delavan,” said Fennimore. “Delavan was my friend.”
“He was your friend, you mean,” said Carson, “until he told Quinn this afternoon that he was all through. After that, Fennimore, you couldn’t afford to let him live.”
Fennimore hunched forward in his chair. “If you think you can get me to raise the ten thousand ante,” he declared, “you’re wrong. It was worth that much to get you out of the way, but it’s not worth any more.”
Carson laughed at him, a laugh that came between his teeth.
“You’re still willing to pay that ten thousand?”
Fennimore nodded. “If you leave within the hour. If you get a horse and ride. If you never go back to the office again.”
“I knew I had you scared,” said Carson, “but I didn’t know I could scare you quite so thoroughly.”
Slowly he backed out of the door, closed it and strode across the barroom.
CHAPTER THREE
One Against the Town
Light glowed in the windows of the Tribune and Carson, hurrying across the street, saw the tiny office was filled with men.
Cries of greeting rose as he stepped through the door, and he stopped for a moment to recognize the faces. There was Gordon Purvis, the candidate for sheriff, Jim Owens, Dan Kelton, Humphrey Ross and others. Lee Weaver was there and so was Bill Robinson.
Jake shambled out of the back room, stick of type clutched in one hand, gunbelt joggling on his hip.
“Ain’t you got that damned editorial writ yet?” he demanded. “Holy hoppin’ horntoads –”
“Jake,” snapped Carson, “how soon can you get out a paper? An extra?”