“What about when Matthew took up with Emma?” Hank said suddenly, evading the subject yet again—or so it seemed.  “I bet Michaela was fit to be tied over that.”  His expression was curiously intense, in contrast to the cutting tone of his remark.

     Sully stared at him in astonishment.  Was the man deaf?  He’d just given Hank an ultimatum, but he may as well have been speaking Cheyenne for all the heed the man had apparently paid to his words.

     “What’s the matter with you?” he accused the barkeep.  “I just got finished sayin’ that I wasn’t gonna stand for you puttin’ me off no more.  I’m fed up with you avoidin’ my questions.”

     “I ain’t avoidin’ nothin’.”

     “That so?” Sully said coolly.  “Well one thing I’m sure of is that Matthew’s past with Emma can’t possibly have anythin’ to do with you and Zack.  So what would you call it?”

     Hank regarded him mulishly.

     “Why are you makin’ this so hard?” Sully demanded when it seemed that Hank wasn’t going to answer.  “Over and over I asked you to tell me about Zack, and instead you been goin’ on about everythin’ else but.  I told you about Colleen, like you asked—though for the life of me I can’t figure out why.  Even so, I kept my part of the bargain. But here you are, still tryin’ to stonewall me.

    “You were there, Hank—you know what went on with Matthew and Emma same as I do,” he asserted, recalling the unlikely courtship between his stepson and the beautiful but feisty saloon girl.  “You started the whole thing to begin with, when you sent Emma to Matthew at the old homestead!  ‘Sides, Emma left town to work for Gilda St. Clair a long time ago.  Her and Matthew have moved on.  So I ain’t gonna waste my breath dredgin’ up any more of the past.  ‘Specially when it’s got nothin’ to do with the here and now.”

     Hank mumbled something he couldn’t make out.

     “What?”

     “I said, it does have somethin’ to do with it,” Hank repeated a little louder.

     Sully shook his head, entirely at a loss.  “You wanna tell me how?”

     “First, you tell me ‘bout Michaela,” Hank demanded in his turn.  “She didn’t want Matthew havin’ nothin’ to do with one o’ my girls—ain’t that the truth?”

    “Didn’t appear to make no difference to you at the time, when you sent Emma around to seduce him.”

     “I was tryin’ to do him a favor,” Hank said hotly.  “After them two ninnies Loren and Horace tried to set him up with, I figured he needed a real woman.”

     “Well you figured wrong.”

     “Just ‘cause Matthew weren’t man enough . . .”

     “That ain’t the way it was, and you know it,” Sully contradicted.  “Matthew was still grievin’ over Ingrid.  The kind of—comfort—you were offerin’ him ain’t what he needed.”

     “He musta needed somethin’—else why would he take up with her?” Hank argued, a sly glint in his eyes.

     “Emma gave Matthew friendship.  She was somebody his own age he could talk to.  Spendin’ time with her helped him forget his troubles.”

     Hank lit another cigar, expelling smoke in Sully’s direction.  “You see it your way, I see it mine.  But more to the point, how did Michaela see it?  I’m guessin’ it drove her plumb crazy thinkin’ of the two of ‘em together.”

     “If Michaela was frettin’ at first, it was only ‘cause she couldn’t stand to see Matthew hurt any more, after Ingrid,” Sully told him.  “’Sides, she came around.”

     “Yeah—after Emma quit me, thanks to Matthew’s interferin’!  I reckon it woulda been a different story if Emma’d stayed with me, like she wanted.”

     “What Emma wanted was to own a dress shop, and be in business for herself,” Sully corrected him.  “She thought workin’ for you was the only way she could earn enough to do that.”

     “So why’d she leave?”

     “Maybe ‘cause she realized she cared about somethin’ else even more—like her self-respect!”  The saloon owner’s face darkened at the slur.  “Whether you wanna admit it or not, Hank, Emma had a mind of her own—she left you of her own free will.  And Michaela was fond of Emma ‘fore she quit, when Emma got attacked in the saloon and Michaela had to give her that operation to save her life.

     “Matthew and Michaela were lookin’ out for Emma’s best interests, which is way more than I can say for you,” he belittled the other man.  “If you’d had your way, Emma’d be dead now.”

     “How could I know somethin’ was wrong with her inside?” Hank lashed out.  “I ain’t no doctor!  That’s Michaela’s job.  ‘Sides, I was damned if I was gonna see another woman stolen from me like—“  He broke off abruptly.

     “Like Myra?” Sully finished.

     “I ain’t talkin’ ‘bout Myra with you,” Hank muttered.

     “Why?” Sully spoke quickly, sensing Hank’s Achilles heel and pressing his advantage.

     Hank gave him a murderous glare.  “’Cause it ain’t none of your business!”

     “You made it my business when you started askin’ all these questions,” Sully reminded him coldly.  “Ain’t my fault if you don’t like the answers.

     “Truth hurts, don’t it?” he continued, unable to resist the impulse to twist the knife a little deeper.  “You just can’t stand the thought of Emma and Myra wantin’ somethin’ better than they had with you.”

     “It was Horace and Matthew—they poisoned Myra’s and Emma’s minds against me,” Hank alleged.  His eyes were hollow pits.

     “If you really believe that, then I pity you,” Sully said with thinly disguised scorn.  “Admit it, Hank.  Truth is, you drove them away.  They needed independence—control over their own lives—but you refused to accept that.  You coulda respected their choice and wished them well—but you wouldn’t.

     “Whadda you know ‘bout what they needed?” Hank sneered.  “Since when are you such an expert on women?  ‘Specially—that kind o’ woman?  Then again . . . maybe you know a lot more than you’re lettin’ on.”  His words hung provocatively in the air between them.

 Again Sully had the sensation of dangerous undercurrents and things left unspoken.  But he also knew that whatever Hank was trying to suggest, he wasn’t ready to pursue it.

     “I ain’t no expert,” he echoed.  “But I know more than you.  Leastways I take the time to listen.  When you did ever listen to anybody ‘cept yourself?”

     “I been listenin’ to you all this time—and all I got for my trouble was a lotta holier-than-thou claptrap!” Hank retaliated.

     “And I been wastin’ my time!” Sully hurled back, matching insult for insult.  “It’s pointless tryin’ to get through to you.  I might as well be talkin’ to a fence post.”  As the words left his lips he realized that once again, he’d broken his resolution not to fight with Hank—but he didn’t care.  A body would have to be a saint to hold onto his temper with this man—and he was no saint.

     But on the heels of his vexation came the realization that if he let matters continue as they were, he’d never learn what the trouble was between Zack and his father . . . but even more importantly, why Hank kept dragging the past into their so-called “discussion”.  It was becoming increasingly obvious that Hank believed he had something on him.  There’d been no outright accusations, nothing clear . . . but he was convinced that Hank’s pointed insinuations had been carefully calculated to unnerve him, get under his skin—like a burr beneath a horse’s saddle.  And sooner or later, he knew that he would have to confront the saloon owner, head-on, and have it out.  But before that, there was still the matter of Zack.

     Sully closed his eyes and took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly.  Simultaneously he became aware that at some point, his hands had clenched into fists, and consciously he relaxed them, uncurling and flexing his fingers, which ached from the strain of containing his anger.  He glanced down at his palms, each imprinted with a sweep of tiny half-moons, visible testaments to how hard he’d been trying to hold himself in check.

     “I’m gonna pretend that the last five minutes never happened,” he said deliberately, the intense blue of his eyes fastened on Hank’s.  “I ain’t interested in fightin’ with you about Emma, or Myra, or anythin’ else about the past.  I just wanna hear about Zack.  You been dancin’ around the point for better than a hour, and I ain’t no closer to understandin’ now, than I was when this trip started.”

     “I already told ya,” Hank enunciated softly.

     Sully gaped at him.  “You ain’t told me nothin’!  Nothin’ that makes sense, anyway.”

     “I told ya,” Hank repeated, his eyes taking on the dark, hollow cast they’d worn previously.  “You was just too busy playin’ ‘little Mary Sunshine’ to notice.”

     Mentally Sully reached back to the origins of their conversation.  “You mean, when you said Zack was ashamed of you . . .?”

     “That, and more,” the barkeep reminded him grimly.  “I said he hated me.”

     “Hank, I just can’t accept that—“

     The saloon keeper snorted in disgust.  “Yer doin’ it again!”  His spent cigar joined its predecessor on the floor as he leaned forward.  Though the whiskey fumes had dissipated somewhat, Sully was still conscious of their ghosts lingering in the air.  “You hard o’ hearin’?  Ya must be—or else yer just as addled as I always suspected!”

     Hank slowly straightened.  His eyes were bayonets, stabbing into Sully with deadly intensity.

     “Ya wanna know what’s goin’ on with Zack?  Ya want me to satisfy yer curiosity?  Fine.”  Hank’s voice cleaved the air, each word like a knife plunging into its target.  What target, Sully dared not speculate.

     “He’s ashamed of me.  He HATES me.  HE WISHES I WAS DEAD!  Is THAT clear enough for ya?!”

* * * * * * * * * *

     Both men sat rigidly.  Seconds crawled past.  The air had the sinister feel of cracking ice, leaving Sully with the absurd but relentless notion that if they moved, it would shatter.  Finally, he risked breaking the silence.

    “Start at the beginnin’,” he instructed, reiterating the request he’d made what seemed like ages ago.  “Help me to understand this.”  He stared earnestly at the saloon owner.  Hank sank back against the cushions, his rage apparently exhausted by his outburst.  Buoyed by this unexpected sign of pliancy, Sully took another gamble.

    “You said it was about a woman,” he went on carefully.  “But not a saloon girl.  Fact is, you said it was nothin’ like that.  So who is this woman?  How does she figure into this?”  Hank looked at him blearily, lids at half-mast over eyes reddened by too much whiskey . . . too much pain.  When he abruptly started speaking, his tone strangely indifferent, Sully was almost taken unawares.

    “I asked Miss Wellman if we could have some time alone,” Hank resumed matter-of-factly, as if their entire exchange of the last hour had never occurred.  “Zack started makin’ excuses again, but she wouldn’t hear of it.  ‘Mr. Lawson has come all this way, Zack,’ she said.  ‘You at least owe him the courtesy of seeing him.’  And then she was gone, and he was stuck with me.

    “He didn’t like it one bit, that was clear.  Gave me a look that could cut me to ribbons.  So I gave it right back to him.  And I said that neither one o’ us was leavin’ that room till he told me what was wrong.”

     Hank paused, and after a moment Sully prompted quietly, “What did he say?”

    “He said, forget you got a son,” Hank answered, eyes stricken, and buried his face in his hands.

* * * * * * * * * *

    Impulsively Sully reached out toward him, but then he drew his hand back, sensing the gesture would be unwelcome.  Instead he cleared his throat.

    “You, uh, you didn’t let it go at that.”

    Hank raised his head.  “No—I didn’t.”  His voice was husky, and there was a suspicious glimmer at the corners of his eyes.  Fleetingly he scrubbed his hand across them as Sully tactfully looked away.  After a pause, his voice harder, he resumed, “I told him, ‘For twelve years I made sure you had a roof over yer head, clothes on yer back and food in yer mouth.  For the last six, I been payin’ your—tuition—to this fancy school.  If ya wanna get shut o’ me now, yer gonna tell me the reason . . .”

    “Why did you have to come here?” Zack lashed out.  “Why couldn’t you stay away?  Everything was fine until you—“  He broke off and stared down at the floor, his fingers clenched rigidly around the arms of his chair.

    Hank, his nerves thrumming like a telegraph wire, paced the length of Miss Wellman’s office, finally coming to rest in front of his son.

    “Sorry ta ruin your day.  But you can’t just drop somethin’ like that in my lap and then leave me twistin’.  I wanna know why yer mind is so set against me all of a sudden.”

    “It isn’t all of a sudden,” Zack echoed, barely audible, fancying that he spoke too low for his father to hear.  But he did hear.

    Hank swallowed, trying to ignore the coldness stealing over every part of him, turning his extremities to ice.  “What did you say?” he inquired in a low voice, daring Zack to repeat it.

    “I . . . I said I don’t have to tell you anything,” Zack answered petulantly, betraying that his father still had the power to intimidate him.

     Hank scrutinized the boy, taking in his elegant suit and the sleek dark hair fashionably cut and combed off his forehead.  His tone sharpened.  “Ya do if ya expect me to keep footin’ the bill for this place and all yer other expenses.”

     “I don’t need your help any more,” Zack informed him insolently.  “I’m graduating in a few months, and I’ll be of age soon after that.  I can make my own way.”

     “Yeah?” Hank spoke acidly.  “Doin’ what?  You don’t know how to do nothin’ but draw pictures.”

     “There are people who recognize my talent,” Zack spoke in an imperious manner.  “Important people.  I have prospects.  Or at least I will, unless—“  Again he broke off mysteriously.

     “Unless what?” Hank was fed up with the clumsy, painful dance they were doing around the truth.  Anything Zack had to say, regardless of how bad, would be better than this.  “Go on—spit it out!”

    Zack stared up at him.  His eyes blazed.  “Don’t you get it?  She doesn’t know about you!  Nobody knows!  And I can’t let them find out!”