"You see," said Dan Slike, as he topped his mount, "I ain't really been
hard on you. I didn't ask you for a nickel. I only took what I
needed. And if you hadn't fought me like you did, I wouldn't have laid
a finger on you. Think of that and be happy."
He whirled the horse and rode away toward the lower ground behind the
house, the coffeepot clacking rhythmically against the barrel of the
Winchester Hazel had vainly hoped he would forget to take with him.
Hazel remained standing beside the corral gate. Suddenly she was
conscious of a great weariness. She was as one who has traveled a
day's journey without food. Her arms and legs were leaden. Her head
ached, her body ached, her spirit ached.
With dragging steps she returned to the house. From the cupboard she
brought forth the bottle of whisky she had lied to save and poured a
stiff four fingers into a teacup. She drank off the liquor in three
gulps. But she was so spent that, other than a fit of coughing, there
was no effect.
The lamp was burning low and fitfully, filling the kitchen with a smell
of burning wicking. She had forgotten to refill it that morning. She
put away the whisky bottle, turned out the lamp and filled it by the
faint light from an opened draft-chink. But in reaching for the
chimney, she knocked it to the floor and broke it.
Apathetically, every movement mechanical, she found another chimney and
adjusted it in the clamps. A smell of burned hair suddenly filled her
nostrils. A lock of hair had fallen against the lamp chimney. She put
her hand to her head. Her hair was in a slovenly tangle over one ear.
She did it up any way and skewered it fast with a few pins.
Crunch! The remains of the lamp chimney crackled under foot. She
brought out the dustpan and brushed and swept up the pieces. She
carried the broken glass out to the trash pile. When she returned to
the kitchen, there was a man standing in the middle of the room.
Nothing had the power to surprise her now. She would not have been
amazed had the devil himself popped into the room. The man turned at
her entry. He was Rafe Tuckleton. He glowered down at her. She shut
the door and put away the dustpan and brush behind the wood-box.
"What do you want?" she asked lifelessly.
"Who's been here?" he demanded, pointing an accusing finger at the
table. "Two plates, two cups, two saucers--who you been entertaining?"
Entertaining! Good Lord! Hazel sat down on the wood-box and laughed
hysterically.
He was around the table and confronting her in three strides. "Who's
been here?" he kept at her.
"Dan Slike," she said with a spasmodic giggle.
"You're a liar," he told her promptly. "Dan Slike didn't come this
way. He--he went another way. There's a posse on his trail now.
You've had Bill Wingo here, that's whatsamatter."
"I haven't," she denied, wagging her head at him. "Dan Slike was here,
I tell you."
"The hell he was. You must think I'm a fool. Bill Wingo's been here,
I tell you. Think I don't know, huh, you deceivin' hussy! Trying to
make small of me, carryin' on with other men, huh?"
She said nothing. It is doubtful if she heard him, for all his roaring
voice and gesturing fists. Billy Wingo! _Her_ Billy--once. He had
loved her too--once. What a queer, queer world it was. Everybody and
everything at cross-purposes. Yet there was a reason for it all. Must
be. Even a reason for Rafe. She looked up at Rafe. He was glaring
down at her with a most villainous expression on his lean features.
"How long has Bill Wingo been gone?" he demanded.
"It wasn't Bill," she insisted doggedly. "It was Dan Slike, and he's
been gone maybe half an hour."
"Say, whatsa use of lyin' to me? You're an odd number, by all
accounts, but you ain't so odd you could sit here and eat and drink and
carry on with your uncle's murderer. You can't tell me _that_."
She was regarding him with curious eyes. "I thought you always said
Dan Slike didn't kill my uncle?"
"Well--uh--you see, everybody else seems to think he did.
And--ah--maybe I was wrong. Anyway, say I was. For all I know to the
contrary, he did kill your uncle. What's fairer than that, I'd like to
know? You think he killed Tom Walton, don't you?"