The Nail and the Oracle (9 page)

The gray-headed man placed all the tips of all his fingers together and stared at them mournfully, and said, “A long and eventful life has taught me that there are after all only three kinds of men. One kind gives his word and that’s enough. One kind, you pay, and that’s enough. And one kind needs a boot in the tail to show that you mean
what you say.” He paused and said, without looking up, “I do hope you are listening, Mr. Brannegan.”

“Oh, every word,” said Brannegan happily.

“Now then,” said the gray-headed man, “I have his word. Sort of. He said he doesn’t complain. Well, I don’t know what kind of man he is, and I don’t really care very much. So we’ll pay him, too. Give him twenty dollars, Mr. Brannegan.”

“Give him
what?”
gasped the big man.

The gray-headed man thumbed a coin out of his watch pocket and flipped it ringing across the desk. “Give it to him.”

“Well all right,” said Brannegan, and took up the coin and handed it to Macleish. Macleish took it and put it away.

“Now,” said the gray-headed man, “take him outside and give him a boot in the tail.”

“I got just the one,” said Brannegan. He came over to Macleish, who stood up. Brannegan eyed him for a moment and said over his shoulder, without looking, “Get your gun out.” Macleish heard the beery man’s gun cocking and then Brannegan got Macleish’s left arm and twisted it behind him, putting the fist tight up between Macleish’s shoulder blades. It hurt. He pulled Macleish off balance and ran him out the door and along the gallery to the top of the stairs. Here he gave him a shove outward and followed it with an accurate boot. Macleish spun floundering down the steps and brought up at the bottom, leaning against the newel post like a fence prop. Brannegan, incredibly, was right beside him, got the left fist between his shoulder blades again, and pulled him upright. Macleish looked up. The gray-headed man was leaning over the gallery rail, smiling slightly. Beside him, the youth stood, his mouth wide, tittering. At the head of the stairs stood the beery man, gun in hand. Brannegan ran Macleish the length of the bar and banged him out through the batwings. Macleish cleared the two low steps without touching, clipped the far edge of the duckwalk, and sprawled in the dust outside.

Behind the batwings, somebody yipped a shrill clear drag-rider’s cattle-drive yip. A number of people helped make a bellow of laughter.

Macleish got to his feet. His face hurt. His hands and elbows
hurt, and his left arm clear back to the shoulder bones hurt a whole lot. His fancy vest was a mess and he had a hole in the knee of his pants. He walked back to the hotel.

By the lamplight that streamed from the hotel, Macleish saw a man standing at the foot of the steps. It was the fat little old man from the livery. He had a white handkerchief pressed to his face. He said, “Oh, there you are. Gosh, son, a feller got to your saddle. I tried to stop him.”

Macleish gently pulled the handkerchief down away from the old man’s face. He had a puffy sort of hole on his cheekbone.

“Feller had a big ring,” said the man from the livery. “I tried to stop him,” he called apologetically as Macleish climbed the porch.

Some woman Macleish hadn’t seen before was in the little lobby. She had a basin of water standing on the hotel desk. Miz Appleton was sitting behind the desk. The woman was dabbing at Miz Appleton’s face with a wet clean cloth, and said to Macleish, “Oh, you must be the one. A man got to your things in your room.”

Macleish stumped up the stairs, and as he reached the landing he heard Miz Appleton say, “I tried to stop him, Mr. Macleish.”

Macleish went on upstairs. The door to his room was open. His saddlebags and spare clothes and blanket, and his Arbuckle coffee and trail bacon and beans were all dumped on the bed. He passed by with a glance and went to the wall peg where his gun-belt hung, and he took it down and strapped it on. He drew the gun, broke and spun it, clicked it straight and holstered it, and went back down the stairs. The women both spoke, but he didn’t hear what they said.

He clumped down the duckwalks to the other hotel, looking straight ahead and not exactly hurrying. When he got there he kicked open the batwings and walked in. This time the piano and the faro games, as well as any talking and drinking and moving around that happened to be going on, really did stop, suddenly and altogether. Macleish paid no mind to anyone, but walked straight back to the stairs and went up them two at a time.

Somebody shouted then, but the sound was drowned out by the crash of the door as Macleish shouldered it half off its hinges and stood back.

He could see the desk and the lamp and the gray-headed man, his bright blue eyes all white-rimmed round. The man scooped open a drawer and Macleish drew and shot him through the right forearm and sprang inside.

The gray-headed man shrieked like a woman and curled up like a mealworm bit by a fire ant. Macleish stood in the center of the room, snapped a look to left, to the right. The beery man and the kid stood flat-footed by the end of the desk. Macleish made a motion with his gun and their hands went up as if they had been tied to the same string. Macleish slipped around behind them and got their guns. He threw the guns out through the draped window behind the desk.

He said, “Face the wall,” and they were very brisk about doing it. The gray-headed man had fallen and was writhing on the floor behind the desk, crying. Macleish backed around there and booted him out in the open where he could see him. Then he pulled down a drape and put two straight chairs back to back and threw a couple of half-hitches around the uprights at one side. He said, “Come here,” and the two gunmen turned uncertainly and came sheepishly across to him. “Sit,” he said.

Back to back they sat down. Keeping his gun on them, Macleish circled them twice with the drape, binding them tight to the chairs and to each other. He didn’t bother to tie the free end, but just tucked it into itself; it would hold for as long as he wanted it to. He put his gun down on the desk and placed one hand on the kid’s face and one on the beery man’s face, and whanged the backs of their heads together as hard as he could. When you crack one nut with another nut, practically every time only one of the two will break, and Macleish thought that that gave odds that neither one of these two deserved.

Macleish heard someone running, and he glanced at the door and found it full of frightened faces. He waved his gun at them and they disappeared. He jumped to the door and flattened himself just inside. The running feet ceased and became a deep growl: “Out o’ my way!” and Brannegan exploded into the room just the way he himself had. Macleish hit him alongside the head with his gun and he threw out his arms and went forward to his hands and knees, his head hanging. Macleish bent, hooked out his gun, and sent it sailing through
the window with one motion. Then he got hold of Brannegan’s left wrist, pulled the man kneeling upright, and twisted the arm around and up, meanwhile ramming his gun barrel into Brannegan’s kidney. “Up!” he said, and Brannegan stood up. Macleish walked him through the door. There were people out there but they made way.

Macleish brought Brannegan to the top of the stairs and gave him a push and such a fine kick that everyone in the place gasped, including Brannegan, who went out and down like the front end of a rockslide. Macleish bounded down after him and tried to stand him up with the bent-arm thing, but Brannegan couldn’t cooperate. Macleish waved his gun and said to throw water on him.

“Yes,
sir!”
said the bartender, shuffling fast around the end of the bar, bringing a big pitcher. Macleish, waiting, moved gun and eyes all around. Everybody watched. Nobody moved.

The water made Brannegan twitch and groan. Macleish snatched up Brannegan’s ring hand and caught it between his knees. Looking all around while he did it, he got the ring off Brannegan’s finger and put it on his own. The water helped. Then he wrung Brannegan’s left hand around behind him and told him “Up!”

Macleish walked him the length of the bar to the batwings, and then swung around to look at the people again. He didn’t think any of them looked as if they wanted to stop him. Some followed him and Brannegan up to Miz Appleton’s, but he didn’t mind that.

He shoved Brannegan up the porch steps with his grip on the arm and also with the end of his gun. He hit the door with Brannegan and heard the latch break; he hadn’t meant to do that. Miz Appleton and the other woman screamed.

“Is this the one?” he asked, and they screamed again. He dragged Brannegan to the door and let go of his left arm and pulled his back hair until his face tipped up. Then he hit Brannegan with the ring on the cheekbone, and again on the chin, sending him flying down into the crowd. Down there he saw the little old man from the livery, clasping his hands together over his fat stomach and jumping up and down in glee. He called him.

“Here,” he said when the old man had climbed the porch. He handed him the ring. “Give this back to him.”

“How?” asked the man, taking the ring and loving it.

“It’s your deal,” said Macleish, and went inside. He never did find out how the old man dealt it.

He slept well, and departed in the morning before Miz Appleton was up and about. He left her the gold twenty dollars he had been given the night before. In the livery, he liked the looks of his horse. Somebody had bothered to curry him. Macleish saddled up and went to buckling the bags and fixing the blanket roll, and by the time he was finished there was a bug-eyed stable boy yawning down from a little cubby in the mow, who said “Gosh.”

“Gosh what?” asked Macleish.

“You’re the fellow cleaned out the saloon last night, gosh.”

“You tell the old feller,” Macleish said, embarrassed, “my horse is happy anyhow. Got it?”

“Your horse is happy anyhow,” nodded the boy. Macleish gave him money and mounted, and rode downstreet.

When he passed the other hotel, a woman called. “Mister.”

He reined in. The girl with all the hair came running out into the middle of the street. She was all dun-colored in a cape and hood thrown over what was probably night clothes, and no makeup. She said, “I didn’t know. I—I had to do what he said.”

Macleish asked her, “Did you?” and rode on. He saw her lift her hand slowly and bite it.

A little way on, down where he hadn’t been yet, a man called out to him and he stopped again. The man had a star pinned to his shirt. He said, “Look, I got two men bedded up back of the doctor’s office, one with a broken arm and one with a cracked head. I got two more locked up in the jail.”

Younger Macleish asked him, “Why?”

“Look, I can’t hold them ’less you make a complaint.”

“I don’t complain.” He lifted his hand to snap the lines and go, but the man said: “Look, were you thinkin’ of maybe settlin’ in hereabouts?”

“No,” said Younger Macleish.

He rode out.

Trembling in the bed, Little Sister cried aloud: “They
want
him to!” ‘They,’ of course, meant the police … the newspapers … oh, everybody. ‘To’ meant the—the horror she must go through—again! That’s the word, Little Sister:
Again!
—if he came back.
When
he came back. “Oh-h-h …” she moaned. But nobody answered. Nobody was there with her.

Nobody was there
yet
.

What was that?

She lay in the dark little room staring at the moon-dappled window, and held her breath. Surely something moved out in the hall? Something was
breathing
out there?

Call out, then. It—could be Peter Poteen, Detective Poteen guarding her after all. He—he could have thought it over, and—

But then, it could be
him
. It could be—the terribly feared one.

Or even, she thought—and her flesh crept cold, crept needly with speckles of cold—a new one. The papers were full of them and word got around, and some men found the victims especially attractive.

Pain banded her chest with the held breath, but still she held it, listening to nothing-at-all out there. But she knew that someone could be out there, holding his breath too, also listening. A roaring began in her ears and listening was useless. She breathed again, gasping open-throated to be silent. When she could, she sat up. She could pant more quietly that way.

And now she could see out and down through the single panel of gauze which covered the lower half of her window. Dim in the moonlight, the not-quite adjoining roof shone in the summer night like an acre of ice. Last summer it had shone too, aching, baking around
him
, hotly holding his flesh, flat as it was, as if it would cup up around him.

She shuddered and rose, and padded on bare feet to the window. The roof outside, a warehouse, was not completely flat, nor altogether unobstructed. The edges rose slightly all around, not by bulwarks, but banked. And not far from Little Sister’s window, to the right, jutted a small angular housing or kiosk, to shelter the stairs to the roof.

From inside her room it might seem that the roof was a larger, slightly lower extension of her own floor, but from the window itself she could look down—she seldom did—a dizzy sixty feet to the alley below. Due to the overhang of the warehouse roof, its edge was no more than four and a half feet from her building. Yet the sheer drop between had always been, for her, a magic barrier, an invisible wall between herself and the city and all that near part of the sky which combed itself through the city’s stumpy teeth. There was such a lot of it out there, and none of it could see her. Behind her alley-chasm, and her panel of gauze, none of it could see her!

Seen by moonlight, it was as detailed as it had been last summer in the blaze of afternoon. But only to the eye of memory. In actuality, when something moved in the shadows of the kiosk, she couldn’t be sure what it was, or even
if
it was. She knew every pebble and crease of the roofing, but pebbles and creases were only what should be there. What should
not
be there, movement or memory, was something she could not be sure of, and memory or movement, it filled her with terror.