Trouble Shooter (Musaicum Vintage Western). Ernest Haycox

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СКАЧАТЬ her place, on the edge of tears. "But stay over tomorrow."

      "No," he said.

      She flung her protest at him. "Who's being stubborn now? Do I take second place to the railroad?"

      He said laconically: "That's something you'll have to learn, Eileen. Never make a man choose between his job and his woman. There is a time for each, and the two things don't compare."

      She faced him, resisting him quietly with her will. "I'm not just a woman, Frank. I'm Eileen Oliver. I can't change that."

      He shrugged his shoulders and was about to answer her when somebody tapped on the room door. Eileen said, "Come in," and her hands went up automatically to her hair, arranging it.

      Ben Latimer walked into the room and stopped, and looked across at these two people with a manner that was very cool and very self-contained.

      He said, "Hello, Peace. I heard you were back." And then he bowed at Eileen, and his voice lost its distant ring. "There's four thousand Irishmen abroad and the town's wild—and I got lonely, Eileen."

      Peace said: "A logical and orderly sentiment, Ben," and stared at Latimer without expression. But a hard, violent impulse washed through him and left him inwardly a-smolder. Latimer was young. He was sound and dogged and full of nerve. Yet in the narrows of those pale gray eyes was something wholly unsentimental. It reminded Peace of old Bardee Oliver downstairs who calculated his chances so dryly, so smartly. Latimer was of that same disposition, avoiding enthusiasm, and thereby making his profitable way.

      "Just so," agreed Latimer imperturbably. "Well, I guess we start another year. You'll be interested to know I took contract on ten miles of fill the other side of Laramie. I got twenty teams and fifty men going now."

      "You progress," drawled Peace.

      "I guess I do," agreed Latimer. "One year ago I swung a shovel at two and a half a day. I don't want to be breakin' in here, though."

      "Sit down, Ben," said Eileen. A coolness and a serenity had returned to her. She said to Peace: "When will you be back?"

      Peace took his hat and walked to the doorway. He kicked his unruly temper into its proper place and spoke idly: "Not sure. Good night, Eileen."

      But she followed him and swung the door after her—and the two were in the semidarkness of the landing. Her hand brushed his sleeve softly; her voice was a quiet, urgent whisper. "When will you be back, Frank? How long do I wait now?"

      He said irritably: "Wait for what? Another argument? Go back and entertain Ben by reciting the table of compound interest. It is a safe topic and you'll enjoy it."

      "Frank!" Her hand held him and the faint perfume of her hair was a strong call in these shadows. He reached down abruptly and kissed her again, and hoped for an answer. There was a yielding of her body, yet even then he felt a remote resistance. She was giving him a concession, she was trying to please him—but it was no more than that. She couldn't break through her will; she couldn't be generous in the way of a woman in love. It struck him hard. He left her there and went down the stairs.

      Bardee Oliver sat on his counter, waiting for trade. Bardee said:

      "Got a raise yet, Frank?"

      "Haven't asked."

      Oliver looked at him out of eyes surrounded by a net of shrewd wrinkles. "Never get more if you don't ask. You been doing the company's dirty work. Goin' to do more, according to rumors. Better figure for yourself and lay by—like Ben there. Ben's smart enough to know the bonanza don't last forever. You should be."

      Peace only nodded. He entered the brawling, wind-choked street and tramped toward the depot with his head lowered. Somebody in the western edge of this formless, disorderly town was firing a gun; and the monotonous pumping of the Club's orchestra kept going on and on. By impulse he cut across the mud, ducking past a mired freight wagon, and walked to the saloon's doorway, The spieler there quit his talking—quit it suddenly and stared at Peace. Men rolled in and out of this crowded place and a lamplight went glittering along the bright fifty feet of Campeaux's portable bar. Opposite the bar all the games were going and beyond, on the dance floor, girl after girl in full evening clothes whirled with their partners. The music stopped then and the promenade to the bar began; a monte player kept calling in his tuneless formula:

      "Fifty dollars if you spot it. Gentlemen, my hand against your eye. Who's trying?"

      Somebody came along the outgoing stream of traffic and said: "Hello, Frank." Peace merely nodded. He turned toward the depot, his long arms swinging. A heavy line plowed its way across his forehead; the bite of the wind turned the scar on his temple white.

      A man called, "Wait a minute, Peace," but he kept on, a feeling of frustration boiling up.

      There was one passenger coach hitched to nine flatcars of steel, with a helper engine coupled behind. A jet of steam exploded from that engine and a bell kept ringing. At the steps of the coach he found Overmile and Morgan and Ed Tarrant waiting for him, their big coats turned against the wind. The conductor, Mike Connor, came rapidly along the platform.

      He said: "We'll be on our way, Mr. Peace?"

      "Let her go, Mike."

      But he stood there at the foot of the car steps, thinking of Eileen's definite face turned so stubbornly to him, and he kept thinking of the eagerness he had brought to that room and the sultry irritation he had brought away from it. Back of all this the shape of Ben Latimer lay like a shadow. Leach Overmile's voice reached him as from a distance.

      "Make up your mind, Mister Peace."

      All his partners watched him closely. He shrugged his shoulders then and swung up the steps. The coach threw its sudden warmth into his face and the flicker of lamplights momentarily blurred his sight. He found his stuff piled under a seat and sat down there, the others coming on to join him. The engines were alternately pulling and boosting the train out of Cheyenne with a lack of unison that buckled the coach back and forth; the town lights slid by and the speed picked up. Over on the right-hand prairie he saw the barrack windows of Fort D. A. Russell strongly shining through the pitch black. Afterward the steady steam blast of the engines began to slap harder into the night as the track started to climb the long grade to Sherman Summit. He considered his watch and found it to be ten o'clock, and there was in him once more that deep uneasiness he could not explain—the feeling of leaving something behind him he treasured and would lose.

      A little flash of color in one corner of his vision lifted him out of this long study. He saw Nan Normandy sitting at the far end of the car. She had her eyes on him and she held his attention for a long moment, seriously and proudly, and with a faint show of something that seemed like fear to him.

      She turned her head away. He hadn't noticed until then that Campeaux sat with her and that Campeaux's creature, Mitch Dollarhide, held her luggage in an adjoining seat.

      III

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      They labored up the heavy grade, buried between the high shoulders of the Sherman Summit cuts. Engine smoke filtered in, turning the flickering lamplight a more impotent gray. Wilder wind boiled along the car sides and all the wheels howled on the curves, and the exhaust of the helper directly behind СКАЧАТЬ