He felt no disquiet, no misgivings over blood that would soon be spilled in the course of his self-appointed task. The merits of every man within range of his scattergun would determine how well or badly he fared in Keyhoe. Clay genuinely felt the thousand possible outcomes of every evening were determined not by himself and his readiness to kill anyone deserving of it, but by some vast web of fateful influences, a flux of events that could snare a man unaware of its invisible workings. Clay’s job was to pick off those foolish enough to put themselves in harm’s way.
He did not imagine himself to be some custodian of society, a guardian of public morals; Clay didn’t even like people very much. It was something more personal than that, a part Clay had cast himself in without consultation. He chose to be this person, this haggard angel of death, and thought it was kind of funny the way folks believed he did it on their behalf.
He hauled drunks to the jail every night, then became sick of having to clean out the cells the next morning. Far better for these men to vomit in the streets and fall asleep under wagons; Clay wanted nothing to do with them. Only when a drinker became careless with his gun did Clay consider intervention justified. His manner in these arrests was always civil, smilingly calm despite his readiness to turn the simple matter of a request to hand over the offending weapon into a life or death confrontation. He was neither glad nor disappointed when, time after time, the cowhands looked at his face and slowly realized they should do what he said. There would come a time when one would not.
While he waited, Clay became aware of tension in the Stunce household. Grover was an uncommunicative man, at home or at work, and Clay was not about to ask for details concerning a man’s trouble with his wife. Clay knew most men would have liked to side with their companion against a woman, but Grover was no companion of Clay’s, in fact Clay had determined that Sophie, not Grover, was the stronger of the pair, therefore more deserving of his support. He said nothing, did nothing, gave no indication he was aware of enmity between the two. Sometimes it was a relief to leave the house and retire alone to his shack in the yard.
Clay thought more often about marriage than he used to, and supposed this was a result of having lived in proximity to a married couple. So far he hadn’t seen anything to recommend the institution, nor any specific reason to reject it. The Stunces appeared no more or less happy than anyone else, including Clay. It was a fact, he admitted, that he often felt lonely, even if he had just that moment left Grover and Sophie in the middle of another burst of silent warfare. Was he perhaps missing out on some essential human experience?
He often pictured the couple in bed together, not necessarily engaging in sexual intercourse, just lying there. Clay’s understanding of sex was a limited commodity; he remained a virgin, no matter how often the hurdy-gurdy girls and flat-out whores propositioned him on his beat. He knew a lot of them by their first names, and was unfailingly correct in his treatment of them, but Clay could never have assented to intercourse with any such creature.
There was in Keyhoe a well-known character called Captain Switchback, a middle-aged syphilitic whose spinal disks, so Clay was informed, had been eaten away by the disease, thereby allowing the vertebrae to grow together into a single inflexible rod. Captain Switchback couldn’t bend an inch, and had to turn his entire body rather than his trunk or neck alone. His unfortunate condition obliged him to walk with a comical throwing-out of the feet and frequent jumps to correct his path along the sidewalk. When the Captain turned a corner with legs flying and head bobbing, he reduced small boys to fits of howling, which only served to make him spring in circles, trying to identify and kick his audience. Captain Switchback was fast becoming senile as well, the syphilis having affected his spine as far up its stem as the brain. No, Clay would never risk such a possibility for himself. It was bad enough having to endure the stares his scarred cheeks brought him.
Sophie began to think she had done herself and Grover a disservice in encouraging Clay Dugan to remain in town. True, he did an excellent job of maintaining law and order with his ugly face and his shotgun, but the result was an increasing laxness on the part of Grover toward his duties. He often wanted to stay at home when he should have been out patrolling the streets with Clay who, for his part, made not the slightest protest. This indicated to Sophie that Clay considered her husband an untrustworthy partner, useless in a dangerous occupation such as theirs. His lack of complaint was an insult in disguise. She who had originally encouraged Grover to abandon the field of police work now wished he would distinguish himself in the public eye, and not leave most of the daily sidewalk strolling to his deputy.
One morning Grover returned home less than an hour after having left, and suggested to his wife that they go upstairs to engage in the marital act. Sophie had been married to him almost eighteen months, and this was the first time he had ever made so outrageous a suggestion. Had the first Mrs. Stunce consented to intercourse in the hours of daylight? Sophie had no idea how to cope with the situation, and so collapsed onto the kitchen floor she had been engaged in scrubbing when Grover returned home with his contemptible proposal.
Grover immediately rushed for the salts of ammonia to revive her, and when Sophie appeared to recover, he begged her forgiveness. “Forgiveness?” said Sophie, apparently still dazed. “For what, pray tell?” Grover said nothing. The shock of what he had done had driven recollection of his words clear out of Sophie’s mind, and it was as well to leave the moment lost.
He hurried back to work as soon as his wife had regained her feet, and vowed never to insult her virtue in so shameful a fashion again. It was maddening, though, the way she had lately taken to refusing him access to her body. He knew of instances where men had divorced their wives for such acts of selfishness, but Grover loved Sophie too much to do that. He tried to analyze her behavior, track down its beginnings and see if some event at its inception might possibly have caused her to change. It required only a few minutes to realize that Sophie’s impatience with him in general, and her lack of inclination to couple with him in bed, had worsened with the arrival in Keyhoe of Clay Dugan.
Could there be a connection? It seemed unlikely, Dugan being as unattractive as he was, but then, Grover had heard tell that women sometimes overlooked an ugly face if there was something else about a man, some indefinable aspect of personality or character to make up for the lack of physical comeliness. Did Clay have any of that, maybe? Grover couldn’t see where he did, but that didn’t necessarily rule him out as having found favor in Sophie’s eyes. He would have to watch and listen for the clues that would reveal, if anything could, the game going on behind his back, assuming there was such, which he didn’t believe for a moment.
Awareness of a fundamental change in his relations with Grover came slowly to Clay. Whereas the marshal had been content to allow his deputy free rein to patrol the saloons alone at night, when danger was most likely to unfold, he now accompanied Clay everywhere. Clay had assumed until then that Grover recognized his own ineptitude when dealing with the drunken element, which constituted the bulk of their arrests, and was content to let Clay do what Clay did best, without interference. The sudden change of tactic puzzled him for a while, then he reasoned that Sophie had been nagging at Grover to get out and show himself around town, as he used to before Clay came. Clay didn’t like the way Grover stuck to him up one street and down another; it made them both look cowardly, too afraid to enter the bars alone.
“Why don’t you handle this side of the street and I’ll take the other. It’ll be twice as fast that way, then we’ll trade sides later on for another go-round.”
“No.”
Grover offered no explanation for his rejection of a perfectly sensible plan, and Clay didn’t push him for one. The new regimen was clearly of domestic origin, and Clay was still inclined not to mess with whatever anxieties were at work inside the Stunces. It was none of his business, but maintaining order was, and Grover was jeopardizing, with his unwanted presence, the amb
ience of subtle menace Clay had built around himself of late. He was ruining everything, and for no reason.
Grover kept it up night after night, to Clay’s irritation. They never spoke to each other, and Clay managed always to keep one or two steps ahead of the shorter-legged Stunce, just to let the man know he didn’t want or need him along. Grover was undeterred, and their dual footsteps became a recognizable pattern on the wooden sidewalks. “Here comes Boney and Phony again, boys,” was just one of the comments Clay overheard.
At last he had had enough, and steered the marshal down an alley for a whispered confrontation.
“You quit it, this dogging me all over.”
“You work for me, so you do what I say. You don’t give orders.…”
“Like hell I work for you. We both work for the state. Now quit following me around like a lost kid.”
“I go my own way, Dugan.”
“I just wish you would.”
“I bet you do, then you could double back home and I’d never know the difference.”
“What?”
“You can get out tonight, so far as I’m concerned. I want you out of that shack and into a room somewhere else. Don’t fool yourself I haven’t got eyes.…”
“Mind telling me just what it is you’re saying?”
“Out by morning, and you can damn well turn your badge in too, first thing tomorrow.”
“Again? Is this something you do every full moon, Grover? Just tell me, so I’ll know when to expect it next time.” Clay was almost laughing, the conversation was so ridiculous. He really didn’t know what was eating at Grover, but was fairly sure it had something to do with whatever problems the man was having with his wife. Clay was glad at that moment he wasn’t married, not if matrimony turned men into fools on a regular basis.
“You get!” Grover hurled at him, and Clay began walking away, not so amused anymore. He wondered if Grover was working himself up to some kind of brainstorm that would require doctoring and a long spell in bed. That would be fine by Clay, who would then be able to resume his customary progress around the town alone.
He would take Grover’s order seriously for the present, though, in order to avoid any further confrontation when both men arrived back at the Stunce house. Clay planned on being gone by the time Grover came home.
When he entered the house and walked straight through to the backyard, Sophie was puzzled; Clay had never come home in the middle of his evening patrol before. She followed him out to the shack, and found him packing the few things he owned into a leather satchel.
“Why are you doing that?”
“Grover doesn’t want me here anymore.”
“For what reason?”
“When you find out, I’d like to know.”
“He wouldn’t tell you?”
“Not in words that made any sense. Anyway, he wants me gone, and I’m not about to argue.”
Sophie felt unfamiliar panic take hold of her chest. He was going, the ugly young-old man who lived in the yard and ate his silent meals without ever complimenting her cooking unless Grover did so; the man who listened as she talked, but never offered a contrary opinion, although she could see plenty behind his eyes; the man who had single-handedly established respect for the office of marshal. Grover was jealous, she saw it immediately, and could not hide from herself her own part in making much of Clay’s accomplishments to Grover when they were alone. What a fool she’d been, to do that, and now he was leaving!
“Clay!” she barked, and he looked up from his packing, as surprised at the tone of her voice as Sophie was herself.
“Clay … this is not at all sensible.”
“I’m in agreement, but it’s his place.”
“No; as a matter of fact, it isn’t. This house is mine, left to me by my father. You’re my tenant, not Grover’s.”
Clay was struck by the novelty of this, but not for long. “I can’t stay if he wants me out, not if you want peace and quiet in your house, Sophie.”
It was the first time he had ever used her first name, and he had only done so now because he was leaving. It was a last-minute intimacy that made her quite faint. She actually felt a little sick at this sudden development. She could have kicked Grover for his insensibility and childishness. Clay mustn’t go from her, not now, not because of Grover.
“No,” she said, and felt herself step up to the edge of a cliff.
Clay looked at her, unsure what to do or say. Did the look of resolution on her face mean she had a plan of some kind? He wasn’t all that interested if she did; after what Grover had said, it would be impossible to share a meal again, no matter what Sophie did. He closed the satchel, turned around to pick up his gun, and on turning back to leave found himself chest to chin with Sophie Stunce. He was so alarmed at her abrupt proximity he took a step back, but Sophie followed. “No,” she said again, her voice lower, softer this time.
She was so close he could smell her. Clay couldn’t have said if it was a good smell or bad; to him she smelled simply of woman. It began at his nose and traveled clear down to his boots, filled him like smoke in a jar, and he knew he was in trouble now, because this was what Grover had been talking about—Clay and his wife: it was clear as day, only he’d been too stupid to see, and within a half hour of his hearing the unfounded suspicions, they were coming true.
He couldn’t breathe for the woman smell of her invading him, flooding him with a kind of slow quaking. He could even feel the push of her heavily corseted breasts against him. No female had been this close to Clay since Nettie bathed his cuts and bruises. He heard the heavy satchel fall, and had the presence of mind to toss his shotgun onto the bed. With both hands free, his arms seemed to curl of their own accord around the woman pressed against him, and as soon as they had her fully encircled she softened and sagged, obliging him to hold her even tighter or drop her to the rug. Her entire body appeared to have become limp. He could tell which parts of her were flesh, and which parts whalebone, and the small bulges of woman where they met in conflict were under his fingers no more than a moment before those same fingers began clutching and tearing at the back of her dress.
Grover worried that he hadn’t been firm enough with Clay. He hadn’t been fooled by Clay’s pretense at not understanding the hints Grover threw down like cards. It was perfectly obvious there was something between his lodger and his wife, at least it was perfectly obvious to Grover. He stopped walking, realizing he’d gone and sent Clay home to pack up and get out, and home was where Sophie was. Grover didn’t doubt that there had been many clandestine visits during working hours, before he started accompanying Clay everywhere, but it was intolerable that there should be one more meeting of the two betrayers, especially at Grover’s request. He’d slipped up there, because of his anger. It had been a mistake, but he could go home himself and make sure the farewells that took place were no fonder than they needed to be.
Or maybe he wouldn’t. It was unlikely they would do anything, now that they knew Grover was onto their game. Clay would just breeze in and breeze out again, most likely. Grover didn’t really want to be there with the both of them allied against him. This was the second time he’d told Clay to go elsewhere, and if Clay refused, right there in front of Sophie, Grover would look a perfect fool. No, he’d stay away and let events sort themselves out. He was on duty in any case, and the town would go to hell without at least one peace officer in evidence to hold back the ungodly.
When Grover entered a saloon called Minnie’s Place he did so with a worried mind. He knew as soon as he set foot inside that he should never have come. A silence laden with contempt descended as the drinkers saw who he was. Someone at the back of the room, a coward hidden by tobacco smoke, bleated like a sheep, and the sound produced guffawing that swept across Grover like a cold wind.
He couldn’t understand why they hated him. Before Clay came to Keyhoe he had managed to keep the place pretty much on the rails, even been complimented occasionally by ladies on the street
for the way he kept things quiet, or as quiet as a Kansas cow town had a right to expect. What had he done wrong? It was Clay’s doing, somehow. Clay had shot a man, and by so doing had made Grover look weak, despite the fact that Grover himself had killed a man in the line of duty not so very long ago. By what convoluted logic did these cattle punchers and whores assume he was inferior to his own deputy. It was an insult, personal and direct! He couldn’t let the moment pass, or the last scraps of his dignity and professional standing in the community would be torn away. Having no other choice, Grover went to the rear of the bar where the bleating had come from. There were at least eight men there who might have been responsible, all of them staring at him with faces like stone.
“Which one of you made that sheep sound?”
There were no volunteers. The men were together, had driven a herd of beeves from Texas up to the railhead at Hays City, and now were returning home to do the same thing over again. None among them had made the sound. They all knew it was a skinny drinker a short distance from them who had done it, but they were disinclined to turn him in, especially to a lawman as foolish as this one. They would say nothing and hope he went away again, so they could resume their drinking and plan further entertainment. Any town in which the locals openly made fun of their own marshal would likely turn out to be a wild place where they could really let rip over the next day or so. The Texans awaited the next development with interest.
“Well?” demanded Grover.
“Tolerable,” said a cowboy, and Minnie’s Place erupted with laughter again.
This time Grover knew his man. “You,” he said, pointing to the joker. “You’re under arrest.”
“Me?”
“Come here, and put your hands inside your belt.”
“Haven’t finished my drink. You go along without me and I’ll follow on later.”