Paper Sheriff (3 page)

“Callie, your uncle killed a man. You heard how he killed him this morning. And when you kill a man in the way he did, you hang for it.”

“Why did you hunt up this cowboy that said he saw Uncle Orville shoot Will Flowers?” Callie demanded angrily. Then she said, “You and Jen Truro paid him to say that, didn't you?”

“Is that what your family thinks? Is that what you think?”

“We think Uncle Orville shot him in a fair fight, just like he said!”

“That cow puncher was telling the truth, Callie. Nobody paid him anything.”

“Maybe you didn't, but can you prove that damn woman of yours didn't?”

Reese set down his drink. “‘That woman of yours',” he echoed. “Callie, I've got one woman. You.”

“That you wish you didn't have,” Callie said hotly.

Reese said, “That's right.”

“Well, you've got me and I've got you,” Callie said. “I'll keep you too.”

“I reckon you will,” Reese said, as if to himself.

“Do you know how I'll keep you?” Callie asked vengefully. “By doing everything a wife should do. I came home to get your supper tonight, didn't I? Do you want to go to bed with me? Let's go in the bedroom. Do you want to make a baby? Let's make a baby. Is there anything you want from me?”

“No,” Reese said gently. “Nothing, Callie.”

“You see, I'll never give you cause to divorce me,” Callie said angrily. “You can leave me for that damn woman if you want, but I don't think you will. She'll want you married to her, but you're married to me and always will be.”

Reese said quietly, “It's not much of a marriage for you, is it, Callie?”

Callie said, suddenly sober, “It's nothing. You could make it something, but you won't.”

“We made a mistake, Callie.”

“You made the mistake,” Callie said flatly. “You wanted me and I let you have me because I loved you. I could still love you, only you won't let me.”

Reese reached for his drink, lifted it and looked over the glass at his wife. Everything she said was true, he thought, but her saying it didn't change anything. He felt a sudden pity for her that was flawed by contempt. She was acting as she had been taught to act by her family clan—with loyalty, headlong temper and vindictiveness. She could not help herself nor could he help her. He took a sip of his drink and put his glass down very gently, watching it as if he thought it might break. Then he looked up at her. “I'm only being honest, Callie.”

“Then be dishonest!” Callie cried. “Pretend you love me! Pretend we have a good marriage! Pretend you like my family! Pretend you want a dozen kids! Pretend you're alive, because you're only going through the motions of living now?” Then she added in a small, dismal voice, “Like me.”

Reese said tonelessly, “That wouldn't work, Callie, and you're smart enough to know it.”

“It wouldn't work?” Callie asked fiercely. “It's the only thing that
will
work! You're my man, you're married to me and you'll stay married to me. Make the best of it, Reese. If you'll try, I'll try.”

Reese straightened up and said quietly, “It's no use, Callie. Let's have supper.”

“Your supper's in the oven. I don't want any.” Callie moved swiftly into the living room and Reese heard the sound of her heel taps crossing it, followed by the sound of the door to the bedroom shutting.

Now he drained off his drink and poured himself another, wondering what had brought this to a head tonight. He suspected that it was because he and Jen had kept the secret of a witness whose testimony should have hanged Orville Hoad. Had he ever told Callie that he loved Jen Truro? He didn't have to, he supposed wryly. At one time the whole town, the whole county knew it, so why shouldn't Callie have known it?

Jen had known twice and she knew it now, just as she knew the unlovely history of his marriage to Callie Hoad. That marriage had happened two years ago when, like a fool, he had chosen the path of honor that had led to this misery. He could not remember when he had first loved Jen. Perhaps it was when she came back from college to read law in her father's office, determined to become a lawyer. At least that was when he proposed to her the first time. Jen had put him off, saying that while she loved him, she first wanted to study under her father and be admitted to the Bar. He had agreed to wait, watching with both amazement and amusement while she fought and clawed for her right to take the Bar examination, which she passed so brilliantly that she could not be denied admittance to the Bar and the right to practice as the first woman lawyer in the State's history.

Looking back at it, he supposed the turning point was the paralytic stroke suffered by Sebastian Truro, Jen's father. Her mother was long dead and there was no one to take care of him and his law practice except Jen. When he proposed for the second time, even the tenth time, he received the same answer—her father needed her and she had no right to carry the burden of an invalid father into their marriage.

It was after this tenth refusal that Reese, in rage and frustration, had made up his mind to forget her. He had met Callie Hoad at a Fourth of July dance and thought her refreshingly unlike the other Hoads. She and her father were newly come to the country to join the clan of the less prosperous Hoads. He began half-heartedly courting Callie, more to spite Jen than because of his love for Callie. It was just as Callie said, she loved him and, inevitably, too well. When she became pregnant by him, he had offered marriage and she had accepted. Four months later she miscarried their child.

This, Reese supposed, was the history of half the marriages in the Christian world; it could almost be called the human condition. Women married men they didn't really love in order to protect their good names, and men married women they were only momentarily fond of in order to save them from disgrace. They accepted what fate or nature handed them—a partner for life, children to raise and a companionship of sorts, tempered by quarrels, reconciliations and monotony.

This acceptance, of course, was what Callie expected of him and against which his whole being revolted. Part of his reason for agreeing to run for Sheriff had been to get away from her and from the smothering idiocy of the Hoad clan. Callie, he found, didn't consider herself an individual, only a member of the family that could do no wrong. Originally the Hoads had come from the hill country of Tennessee—a hard-drinking, hard-bargaining, hard-fighting and hard-luck clan who attributed their own survival to the fact they were one united and loyal family. They were as alien to him as a group of Australian bushmen and hardly more understandable.

He finished his drink, then picked up the bottle to pour himself another. He hesitated, bottle in hand, and then with a kind of self-loathing, he put down the bottle and corked it. He couldn't change any of this by crawling into a bottle, he thought wryly.
I'm like a lone man, heading into the desert, leading a horse that's carrying plenty of food and water. I have to go, but I don't know where I'm going.

At that moment he knew the deepest loneliness.

Ty and Orville Hoad sat in rocking chairs on the veranda of Orville's peeled log house, a jug of pale whisky between them, watching the dusk slowly fade into the night. Buddy, after taking his sister Callie home, had returned and he, his cousins, Junior and Emmett and Big John, all Orville's boys, partly sobered up by the supper just finished, had taken off for town to continue their celebration. Min, Orville's wife, had cleaned up and gone immediately to bed so that the two brothers were alone for the first time that day. Orville's chair was on a squeaky board and he hitched it forward, then stretched out his long legs which he crossed at the ankles.

“Ty, I done me some thinking these last couple of weeks. Lordy, I had enough time to do it.”

“About hanging?”

“Some, I reckon, but mostly what I was going to do if I got off.”

“You can't be that lucky twice, Orv,” Ty said dryly.

“You're wrong, Ty, I can,” Orville said flatly. He looked at his brother. “You ain't thought much about what happened today, have you?”

“Only that at one time this morning I thought you were as good as dead. What should I've been thinking about?”

“Why, the reason I got off.”

“That's easy. Like I said, anybody with eyes could see it. Four of them jurymen from over south didn't like being told what to do by a woman.”

“Me, I've been thinking past that,” Orville said proudly. “Way, way past that.”

“Like what?”

“Well, if that lady lawyer couldn't hang me, then who'll she ever get a conviction against so long as there's a jury there?”

Ty grunted in surprise. What Orville said was true and he hadn't thought of it that way. He leaned down now, lifted the jug from beside his yellowed panama on the porch floor and took a drink of the fiery whisky, put back the corn cob cork and offered the jug to Orville, who only shook his head. Ty put the jug back beside his hat, feeling the rich warmth of the whisky churn around his supper. He said, “Supposing that's true?”

Orville laughed silently. “Me, I'm not going to keep scratching so hard. I aim to have me a little cash money coming in. I aim to buy more range that will run more cows.” He looked at Ty. “You got more'n me, Ty, but you got enough? You got all you want? You want to get more?”

“Any man does. What d'you have in mind?”

Orville leaned forward now. He pointed loosely out into the lowering night. “Forty miles yonder is the National Trail. Those big Texas herds will be coming up all summer. There's enough of us Hoads to make up a bunch, Ty. We could stampede every other herd and we got the men to round up and drive off part of every herd. We move in quick up into the mountains.”

“I know what's coming,” Ty said dryly. “You want my line cabin and corrals in Copper Canyon.”

“Why, surely,” Orville said. “There's room to handle them and grass to hold them. As soon as the brands are healed over we drive them down the other side of the mountain and sell them in Grant County and Jefferson and Moffitt.”

Ty thought a minute and then said, “Yes, but it's risky, Orv. Those Texans are mean and tough.”

“I'm meaner and tougher than any Texan I ever seen,” Orv said placidly. He paused. “It ain't as risky as you think, Ty, because we're safe here.”

“Reese, you mean?”

“Hell, no, I don't mean Reese. He ain't one of us Hoads.”

“Then how are we safe?”

“Callie,” Orville said simply.

It was too dark for Ty to see Orville's face but he looked toward him anyway. “What's she got to do with it?”

“We organize a cattle company with Callie as head. She signs all the bills of sale. She's the buyer and the seller.”

“But why Callie? Why not you or me?”

“You don't see it,” Orville said sadly. “Why, it's as simple as this: Callie's Reese's wife. He'll think a long time before arresting her, but even if he does she's safe enough.”

“How d'you figure that?”

“A woman can't testify against her husband and a husband can't testify against his wife. If he gets one of us, there's that lady lawyer again. Besides, we'd be stealing from Texans and that ain't really stealing to a Sutton County jury. See what we got working for us?”

Ty reviewed Orville's reasoning. “He can't get at Callie, no jury will convict a man Jen Truro is prosecuting and we don't like Texans.”

It was Orville's turn to take a drink now and he did. When he could talk again, he said, “Yep. Find any holes in it?”

“Reese could deputize other men to gather evidence against us.”

“They'll be plumb hard to hire,” Orville said gently. “There's plenty of us Hoads and we ain't soft. Let Reese try to find the Hoad that shoots a deputy or a witness.”

Ty thought carefully now. The time Buster Hoad had been dragged by a horse and killed, they had counted twenty-three Hoads by blood or marriage who attended Buster's funeral. Yes, as Orville said, there were plenty of Hoads to take care of any trouble that came up. All in all, it was a good scheme. It would take nerve and endurance, two qualities the Hoads had a plenty. The only question was, would Callie throw in with them and agree to act as responsible owner? She and Reese, Ty knew, were not getting along. They had fallen out of love or whatever it was that kept a man and his woman together, but how far out of love had Callie fallen? he wondered. Then he said aloud, “All right, Orv. I'll talk with Callie. You talked this over with the boys?”

“No. I was waiting on what you thought of it.”

“Wait a little longer till I see where Callie stands. Without her it's no good.”

“No,” Orville agreed.

It was fully dark but not late when Reese stepped out of the stable and tied his horse to the ring held by a cast iron Negro in livery that stood before the white-painted small house of Sebastian Truro. The house looked as if it had been moved from a New England town, trim, a little stark and handsome. Reese opened the gate in the wrought iron fence, and as he tramped up the brick walk he could see through the wide bay window that Sebastian Truro was still up and in his wheelchair. Jen was standing talking to him and Reese noted with relief that she had changed out of her drab court-room costume into a dress that was near red in color. It was, he supposed, her protest against what she had worn the whole week.

Jen answered his knock and stepped aside as Reese returned her smile.

“It's been a while since I've seen you, Jen,” Reese said dryly.

“Well, where've you been keeping yourself, Reese?” Jen answered and they both laughed. They stepped through the wide door of the parlor together and Reese crossed the room to where Sebastian Truro's wheelchair rested in the bay of the window.