The Violent Peace (10 page)

FOOTHILLS was not a large town, but the thoroughness with which Lovell and Bishop searched it kept them engaged with the grueling chore until well past dusk. On each occasion when their paths crossed, Lovell's temper
was darker and more explosive. Because of this, which indicated the Washington detective was likely to shoot Steele on sight, Bishop's concern deepened - for it was his intention to take the wanted man alive to stand trial.

It was after seven when the unsuccessful search ended and the two lawmen met in front of Aaron Ross's livery stable. Both were bleary-eyed, with haggard faces and bowed shoulders.

“That's about it,” Bishop said with a deep sigh that was part a sign of weariness, part of relief. “There's no place else to look.”

Lovell eyed the deputy sheriff with disgust. “It was a mistake letting you ride with me,” he snarled. “If I'd been alone, he wouldn't have ducked out so quick. You, he knows.” He spun around and strode into the livery stable.

Bishop glanced up and down the street leading off the plaza and followed the city detective. The place smelled of kerosene, straw and horse droppings. In the light of two lamps, Clancy was adjusting the bridle of a saddled horse. Blake was being helped in readying his own mount by a short, thin man with a bald head and melancholy eyes. He was Ross, and his sad eyes became fixed on Lovell's glowering face as the lawmen halted in the doorway.

“His horse is still in the stall, marshal,” the little man announced with forced enthusiasm. “He ain't been in since you first come.”

“I told you, I'm not a marshal” Lovell hurled at Ross, then loped across the stable to the stall the liveryman had indicated with a nod.

Steele's bay gelding nuzzled the detective's hand eagerly, then snorted when he found no sugar. Ross gave the injured trooper a leg up into his saddle.

“You ready, Clancy?” Blake asked anxiously.

“Sure am,” the older trooper replied, grasping hold of his mount's bridle.

Bishop stepped out of the entrance to allow passage for the troopers. Then a flash of metal caught his eye and he took a step forward, knowing he would be too late.

“Lovell, don't!” he yelled. The gelding started to rear; sensing danger. But Lovell was an expert with the knife, fast and deadly. He plunged it towards the animal's head, allowing for instinctive movement, and angling the blade at the right degree. The deadly point penetrated deep into the horse's staring right eye, the cant of the blade directing it incisively into the brain. There was a thin, high wail, then a massive gout of blood which arched across Lovell's ducked shoulder. The detective retained his grip on the knife handle and the blade came free with a sucking sound as the dead animal collapsed to the floor of the stall.

Clancy and Blake spoke softly to the trembling horses, calming their agitation at the smell of blood. Then they joined Ross and Bishop in treating Lovell to states of revulsion. The detective turned slowly, and swung his mean-eyes glare from Clancy to Blake and back again.

“Law's business, soldiers,” he said, wiping the bloody blade on the bedroll hanging next to Steele's saddle. “Army ought to mind its own.”

“Sure, mister, sure,” Blake blurted. “Don't pay no heed to the uniforms,” Clancy said. “We ain't in the army no more.”

Blake led the way out of the stable, and Clancy was hard on his heels. The beat of galloping hooves was the only sound against the quiet of the town. Soon, even this was swallowed up by distance.

“My God,” Ross gasped, trembling. “What will I tell him if he comes back?”

“That his horse was lucky,” Lovell replied softly, sliding the knife back into its sheath at his armpit. “For him, it won't be fast.”  

He moved to the door and Ross stumbled hurriedly out of his path. He leaned against the doorframe and started to roll a cigarette, looking with meanly angry eyes at a glass-sided hearse which emerged from the side of the undertaker's parlor. It was hauled by a high-stepping pair and driven by somebody in a hooded cloak. Lovell lit the cigarette and stepped, up on to the sidewalk. Bishop followed him, knuckling tired eyes. As the hearse rolled by and turned onto the street heading west out of town, both men could see in through the glass side. The coffin was open and the bloated face of Harry Binns lay on a pillow, darkly purple against the white satin.

“I figure he's holed up someplace in Foothills,” Lovell said with conviction. “He wouldn't have chanced this country on foot.”

“Maybe,” Bishop allowed.

Lovell stared across at the lighted windows of the hotel. “We look again,” he said at length, after long moments in which he smoked in silence. “You start from here and take the west side. I'll go through to the other end. Reckon I'll try the cat house first. He might have doubled back there.”

“Okay, if that's what you want to do,” Bishop said.

“One thing,” Lovell said curtly, tossing away the half-smoked cigarette and catching hold of Bishop's shirt sleeve.

“Yeah?”

“You get him; you hold him. Or you shoot him in the leg or some other place that won't kill him. I want that bastard alive.”

Bishop jerked out of the other man's grip, and turned to face him squarely. “That's the way I aim to get Adam, too,” he answered, returning Lovell's unwavering stare. “And I aim to keep him alive to stand trial.”

Anger had driven the young deputy into revealing his intention. He waited for the city detective to react violently to the statement. Instead, Lovell merely smiled thinly and stepped down from the sidewalk.

“Man wants something as bad as you do, I reckon he's willing to fight for it,” he called back as he headed towards the Foothills Hotel.

“Whenever you're ready,” Bishop tossed after the retreating figure of the man. He let his hands drop to his sides, then tensed them, fingers curled to snap out his guns.

Lovell halted abruptly, but did not turn around. A girl laughed somewhere in the hotel and to Bishop it sounded like a derisive taunt. But it was from a different world and he did not allow it to disturb his concentration upon the unmoving form of Lovell.

Then the detective exploded a laugh of his own, and started again on his walk to the hotel. “Not now or here, son,” he called without turning around. “Another time and another place.”

Bishop relaxed with a sigh, recalling that these were the precise words used by the man Lovell was hunting. Lovell went through the doorway into the hotel lobby. Bishop stepped down from the sidewalk and dragged his feet wearily across the tracks made by the hearse.

*****

Steele sat up in the rear of the hearse and stretched cramped muscles, then looked over the side of the casket at the dead, waxy features of Harry Binns. A sadness showed in his dark eyes for a moment, then was gone. He reached out of the open rear of the hearse, slid his rifle on the roof, then hauled himself up after it. As he dropped down on to the seat beside the driver, Jennie turned to look at him, her frightened face very white against the black hood.

“What you gonna do with me, mister?” she asked in a trembling voice as he plucked the reins from her hands.

“You turned me into a murderer, you know that?” he said, staring hard along the trail, which began to cant upwards towards a low ridge.  

“You told me often enough,” the girl complained. “I didn't know you were going to kill Binns.”

Steele nodded. “That's why you're still in one piece,” he replied. “And you being on such intimate terms with the undertaker is double insurance.”

Jennie's expression brightened with a hopeful smile. “You're just gonna let me go?”

Steele shrugged, hauling hard on the reins as the hearse crested the ridge and he saw the farmstead nestling in the shallow valley below. “Can't hurt a woman for lying,” he said. “Just comes natural to them. So I'm just going to forget you, I hope.” He looked at her, and saw the relief in her face. “All right, you can leave now.”

Her eyes flared angrily. “You could have let me off sooner,” she accused. “It's a long walk back to Foothills.”

Steele's mouth took a wry twist. “You can use the time to, reflect on the penalties of being a natural born woman.”

Jennie's movements were fast and angry as she climbed down from the hearse she had inveigled from the nervous mortician. “I hope you get yours, mister!” she rasped at Steele.

He touched his hat brim. “I always get what I want, lady,” he said, clucking to the horses.

They moved forward, hauling the hearse over the ridge and down the trail towards the farmstead. Jeannie watched its progress for awhile, then gave a toss of her head and whirled to face the long trek back to Foothills.

Again, there was just the one lighted window in the dilapidated house. But as Steele rolled the hearse to a gentle halt in the yard, the door was flung open and Mona was silhouetted against the lamp light, the shotgun aimed from her shoulder. Steele sat, unmoving, on the seat, and saw the lines of hate etched into the woman's face.

“I picked up a rumor of the way it was between you and your brother-in-law, ma'am,” he said gently, implying no criticism. “Least I could do was return him to his loved one.”

Mona squeezed both triggers at once, sending a double load of buckshot towards the hearse. The recoil flung her back into the house and she broke into sobs as she dropped the gun and slammed the door.

Steele ducked and snapped his head around as the glass side of the hearse was shattered into a million fragments. Shards of glass, buckshot and wood splinters tore into the dead flesh of the cadaver's face, erasing it completely. A single unmarked eye looked back at Steele from an unmoving sea of cold blood.

Up on the ridge trail, Jennie muttered: “I hope you got yours,” and started to run in the direction of Foothills.

Steele leapt down from the shattered hearse, then his movements became casual as he strolled towards the closed door of the house. He tried the handle, but the lock had been turned. He raised the Colt Hartford and pumped two shells into the lock. Then he kicked the door wide and stepped across the threshold.

He was in a meagerly furnished living room, singularly lacking in the luxuries of life. There was a roughly made table surrounded by four odd chairs, sacking nailed up at the windows and a lop-sided dresser with chipped and cracked crockery on its shelves. On the crude mantel above the ash-littered fireplace there were two matching vases and a pile of three books. Three pictures decorated the walls - one a woodcut of Jefferson Davis clipped from a magazine, a second done in pen and ink and showing Mona and Edward Binns at their wedding, and a third a photograph of Harry Binns outside his store. Two doors led off to other rooms in the house and behind one
  
of these, Mona was giving vent to her grief in the form of body wrenching sobs. Steele back-heeled the front door closed and leaned against it, looking towards the source of the only noise in the house.

“I need some information, Mrs. Binns,” he called.

The woman's sobbing became more intense, interlaced with wails. Steele glanced around the room, then his blank eyes settled on one of the vases. He reached the mantel in three long strides and picked up the vase. It was either new, or had been lovingly cared for. It's finely-cut facets reflected the light from the kerosene lamp.

“The vases look like crystal, ma'am,” he said. “You want to keep them?”

The woman did not interrupt her sobs for Harry Binns.

Steele sighed. “Guess you don't.” He hurled the vase across the room. It hit the opposite wall and shattered. The sound silenced the woman. Steele listened for a few moments, then rested the rifle barrel on the mantel. “One of a pair's no use keeping,” he said, and jerked the rifle.

The second vase toppled over the edge and was smashed to smithereens in the hearth. Mona began to wail again.

“Now for the books,” Steele called, picking them up and glancing at the titles. “Hard to come by out here. Well-thumbed. You must enjoy reading them.”

“Do whatever you like, you…”  Mona could think of no epithet strong enough to describe her feelings towards the man who killed her lover.

Steele shrugged and crouched down in the hearth. He opened the books so that the pages flicked loosely in a chimney draught. Then he struck a match and set light to them. He watched them blaze, the firelight reflected in his eyes as in blank mirrors. After a few moments, he turned around on his haunches, decided on the picture of the former president of the Confederate States and crossed to rip it from the wall. He fed it to the fire and the flames consumed it eagerly.

“That was Davis just went up in smoke,” he explained. “I guess it belonged to your husband. Your wedding picture goes next.” He took the picture down and looked hard at it, familiarizing himself with the lines of Ed Binns' unintelligent features. He decided Ed looked most unlike his brother, even when Harry was alive.

“All you have to do is come out here and talk to me,” he called, holding the picture above the flames, watching the stiff paper curl in the heat, listening for a reaction from the far side of the door.

There was only silence now, for the woman had cried herself dry of tears. The picture fell from Steele's gloved hand and was turned brown, then black. It disappeared and Steele crossed the room once more, to take down the sepia-toned photograph of Harry Binns. He looked at it sadly, then turned to look at the door.