Steel by Richard Matheson Page B

smile.
    â€œI’d feel silly about it,” he said.
    â€œFor me,” she insisted. “I’m entitled to one superstition.”
    He smiled then. “Yes,” he admitted and bent to pick her up.
    They never made it. She was awfully chubby.
    â€œHeart failure,” said the doctor.
    â€œ Satan ,” breathed Fulvia, remaining in a mottled funk the ensuing ten years.

THE CONQUEROR
    That afternoon in 1871, the stage to Grantville had only the two of us as passengers, rocking and swaying in its dusty, hot confines under the fiery Texas sun. The young man sat across from me, one palm braced against the hard, dry leather of the seat, the other holding on his lap a small black bag.
    He was somewhere near nineteen or twenty. His build was almost delicate. He was dressed in checkered flannel and wore a dark tie with a stickpin in its center. You could tell he was a city boy.
    From the time we’d left Austin two hours before, I had been wondering about the bag he carried so carefully in his lap. I noticed that his light-blue eyes kept gazing down at it. Every time they did, his thin-lipped mouth would twitch—whether toward a smile or a grimace I couldn’t tell. Another black bag, slightly larger, was on the seat beside him, but to this he paid little attention.
    I’m an old man, and while not usually garrulous, I guess I do like to seek out conversation. Just the same, I hadn’t offered to speak in the time we’d been fellow passengers, and neither had he. For about an hour and a half I’d been trying to read the Austin paper, but now I laid it down beside me on the dusty seat. I glanced down again at the small bag and noted how tightly his slender fingers were clenched around the bone handle.
    Frankly, I was curious. And maybe there was something in the young man’s face that reminded me of Lew or Tylan—my sons. Anyhow, I picked up the newspaper and held it out to him.
    â€œCare to read it?” I asked him above the din of the 24 pounding hoofs and the rattle and creak of the stage.
    There was no smile on his face as he shook his head once. If anything, his mouth grew tighter until it was a line of almost bitter resolve. It is not often you see such an expression in the face of so young a man. It is too hard at that age to hold on to either bitterness or resolution, too easy to smile and laugh and soon forget the worst of evils. Maybe that was why the young man seemed so unusual to me.
    â€œI’m through with it if you’d like,” I said.
    â€œNo, thank you,” he answered curtly.
    â€œInteresting story here,” I went on, unable to rein in a runaway tongue. “Some Mexican claims to have shot young Wesley Hardin.”
    The young man’s eyes raised up a moment from his bag and looked at me intently. Then they lowered to the bag again.
    â€œâ€™Course I don’t believe a word of it,” I said. “The man’s not born yet who’ll put John Wesley away.”
    The young man did not choose to talk, I saw. I leaned back against the jolting seat and watched him as he studiously avoided my eyes.
    Still I would not stop. What is this strange compulsion of old men to share themselves? Perhaps they fear to lose their last years in emptiness. “You must have gold in that bag,” I said to him, “to guard it so zealously.”
    It was a smile he gave me now, though a mirthless one.
    â€œNo, not gold,” the young man said, and as he finished saying so, I saw his lean throat move once nervously.
    I smiled and struck in deeper the wedge of conversation.
    â€œGoing to Grantville?” I asked.
    â€œYes, I am,” he said—and I suddenly knew from his voice that he was no Southern man.
    I did not speak then. I turned my head away and looked out stiffly across the endless flat, watching through the choking haze of alkali dust, the bleached scrub which dotted the barren stretches. For a moment, I felt myself