He passed the first shapeless shack. The hoofs
of El Sangre bit into the dust, choking and red in
daylight, and acrid of scent by the night. All
was very quiet except for a stir of voices in the distance
here and there, always kept hushed as though the speaker
felt and acknowledged the influence of the profound
night in the mountains. Someone came down the
street carrying a lantern. It turned his steps
into vast spokes of shadows that rushed back and forth
across the houses with the swing of the light.
The lantern light gleamed on the stained flank of El
Sangre.
“Halloo, Jake, that you?”
The man with the lantern raised it, but its light
merely served to blind him. Terry passed on without
a word and heard the other mutter behind him:
“Some damn stranger!”
Perhaps strangers were not welcome in Craterville.
At least, it seemed so when he reached the hotel after
putting up his horse in the shed behind the old building.
Half a dozen dark forms sat on the veranda talking
in the subdued voices which he had noted before.
Terry stepped through the lighted doorway. There
was no one inside.
“Want something?” called a voice from
the porch. The widow Rickson came in to him.
“A room, please,” said Terry.
But she was gaping at him. “You! Terence—Hollis!”
A thousand things seemed to be in that last word,
which she brought out with a shrill ring of her voice.
Terry noted that the talking on the porch was cut
off as though a hand had been clapped over the mouth
of every man.
He recalled that the widow had been long a friend
of the sheriff and he was suddenly embarrassed.
“If you have a spare room, Mrs. Rickson.
Otherwise, I’ll find—”
Her manner had changed. It became as strangely
ingratiating as it had been horrified, suspicious,
before.
“Sure I got a room. Best in the house,
if you want it. And—you’ll be
hungry, Mr.—Hollis?”
He wondered why she insisted so savagely on that newfound
name? He admitted that he was very hungry from
his ride, and she led him back to the kitchen and
gave him cold ham and coffee and vast slices of bread
and butter.
She did not talk much while he ate, and he noted that
she asked no questions. Afterwards she led him
through the silence of the place up to the second
story and gave him a room at the corner of the building.
He thanked her. She paused at the door with her
hand on the knob, and her eyes fixed him through and
through with a glittering, hostile stare. A wisp
of gray hair had fallen across her cheek, and there
it was plastered to the skin with sweat, for the evening
was, warm.
“No trouble,” she muttered at length.
“None at all. Make yourself to home, Mr.—Hollis!”
When the door closed on her, Terry remained standing
in the middle of the room watching the flame in the
oil lamp she had lighted flare and rise at the corner,
and then steady down to an even line of yellow; but
he was not seeing it; he was listening to that peculiar
silence in the house. It seemed to have spread
over the entire village, and he heard no more of those
casual noises which he had noticed on his coming.
