of his good manners and brilliance and polish, he had not been one tenth as attentive to her in all his courtship as the robber had been with his eyes in the few minutes allotted him.
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
Luke reined up and the buggy rolled to a stop. His hands drew Bonnie to him. Turning his best face upon her, complimenting her with longing glances, he said: “Think about it now. It means a lot to me, Bonnie.”
“Sunday week? No, Luke. I need more time.”
A little later the buggy stopped in her own front yard. She was thinking it odd that, though she had returned with three men in mind, only Luke was eligible. Perhaps she was actually closer to marriage with Luke than ever before.
Luke was opening the door for her when she saw her father and a group of A-T riders approaching. Sack was with them. She waited, thinking it was a weak-looking posse. After her father held her at arm’s length and told her how much he had missed her, she remarked on the size of his posse.
McQueen grinned. He was a large genial man in his late forties with sharp blue eyes and graying hair. He looked the part of the big businessman of the Valley since he of the few who had made fortunes here dressed the part. Coat, vest, and string tie were as essential to his dress as boots were to a cowboy. He was saying:
“Joe Sack can handle this thing, Bonnie. He’s of the opinion we won’t catch the bandit. Better to wait and let him show, which he’ll do sooner or later.”
Bonnie looked steadily at Sack. Smiling accusingly, she said: “So we’re all crazy. Is that it, Mr. Sack?”
“It’s a hunch, Miss Bonnie,” Sack said defensively. “He may and may not visit these parts. But if he does, we’ll spread out to catch him.”
“And if he were to return the payroll sack, wouldn’t he be square with us?”
Her father chuckled deep. “If the robber is that kind of a fool he ought to hang high.”
Bonnie looked fram Sack to her father. “You’re both wrong. If the Sacaton Kid shows up, there shouldn’t be a man out to stop him from turning honest. And about a banging—I won’t listen to it.”
She walked into the house.
McQueen’s heavy brows lifted. He tied his horse and said to Mason, “Seem’s we got a problem.”
“And it ain’t Injun trouble,” Sack laughed. “Which reminds me of the Gutache Mesa murders. Victorio, I reckon.”
“Obviously,” Mason replied. “Five years on a reservation, five arrows in a man. It adds up.”
“Yeah,” Sack said. “I didn’t know about that. But it adds up, all right.”
McQueen said, “That’s not the problem, Luke.”
Mason nodded and lit a cigar. As quiet as he was amiable, he seldom gave advice unless it was solicited; and then he hedged about with soft-spoken replies that might vindicate his judgment if he happened to be wrong. After seven years with McQueen, he remained as well respected as upon his arrival. Reserve and patience had made him rich and admired, though he remained unsatisfied in himself, a man with a prodigious ambition at work inside him.
Sack said: “Miss Bonnie may be right about not gettin’ in the Kid’s way if he wants to go straight. But I’d be a damn poor deputy not to try and get him.”
“Bonnie’s high-spirited,” McQueen said. “But I don’t like to hear her talk in favor of an outlaw.”
Mason’s eyes narrowed for an instant as he felt a twinge of jealousy and uneasiness. Bonnie had shown an odd streak of independence on the way to the house. She might be putting another man alongside him. A part of him boiled, another part of him laughed it off. He felt secure.
McQueen said, “What would you do, Luke?”
“Don’t know.” He forced McQueen to place the question again before saying with becoming wisdom, “I might try it both ways, A. T.”
“Both ways? What do you mean?”
“You know I’m not good at this sort of thing. Women baffle me. So I humor them. I’d go at it in a way to suit Mr. Sack and Bonnie. Let the outlaw through, if you think he’s coming. I don’t, and I’ll lay odds that he won’t. But in case he does, let him come on. Then you’ve got him trapped. Mr. Sack and a dozen cowboys can ring him in.”
This made sense to Sack. He said: “Bein’ a deputy I can’t gamble on my better judgment, which says he won’t come. I’ve got to think he might do it. And at the same time I’ve got to give him a chance to hand over the sack if he does come—like Miss Bonnie says. So I like your idea, Luke.”
McQueen said: “I’ve found Luke’s judgment pretty reliable. In fact,” he added, with a chuckle, “I didn’t know I was going to own a mine until Luke told me the Queeny Lode was my property if I wanted it.”
Sack looked up, a hand pawing at his mustache. “That’s the bonanza a fellow named West discovered, ain’t it?”
“The same,” Luke replied lazily. “Though there’s no record of West’s claim on file. When he was found with an arrow in his back, I staked it for A. T. He had the operating capital. I didn’t.”
“Luke just put up the mining brains in the partnership,” McQueen laughed. “But you seem to know a lot about this country, Sack. Ever been here before?”
“Nope. Just poked through the records at the courthouse and asked a lot of questions here’n there.” He looked at Mason and said: “But about this outlaw. Seems you hit on the right idea in this matter. Much obliged.”
Luke Mason pretended surprise at having solved the problem. He said, with the air of a man under jest by smarter men, “You two had that figured out ahead of me, and you know it.”
He took the few steps to his buggy and said: “I’m due back at the mine. Turrentine is within eighty feet of our side of the hill and he’s angling in on the Blind Monk Canyon side.”
McQueen knit his brows and rubbed his chin. “This Turrentine business—if trouble is smokin’ up there, I’d better talk to Big Dan. Maybe we can settle this thing.”
“Not yet, A. T. He’s on his claim now. But if he crosses his line by so much as one inch, we’ll tie him up in court.”
Luke climbed into the buggy and, seeing McQueen’s look of satisfaction, glanced at Sack.
“Don’t hang the outlaw before you catch him, Mr. Sack.”
Sack nodded and watched Mason drive off. He was wondering how it happened to be Luke who traveled all the way to Socorro for a deputy; and just what made Luke Mason tick, actually.
And Mason was driving toward Queeny and Beulah Orbon who operated the Green Palace Hotel, asking just what kind of deputy sheriff Sack would turn out to be. A man he could dominate, or the stubborn kind?
He shrugged it off and called up an image of Beulah’s dark eyes and soft red lips. She was more interesting in that he knew her intimately and yet really knew
