The Violent Peace by George G. Gilman Page B

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