CHAPTER 3 - THE VISIT

Man is practiced in disguise;
He cheats the most discerning eyes.

~ John Gay 1738

Green River had grown a great deal over the past several years. It had spread out, with houses and businesses built all along the river for half a mile in both directions. The center of town boasted several saloons and a number of churches to match, which was a positive sign of a thriving community. Johnny noticed that since his last visit there had been changes. The grange hall appeared to be new and to one side the large Moralto Hotel was being freshly painted. Across the street the sheriff's office had apparently undergone expansion and the lumber siding was still fresh; that was the first place the Lancer brothers stopped.

Sheriff Val Crawford wasn't at his desk, and the deputy in charge didn't seem to know where he could he found. Johnny immediately knew which desk was Val's from the mass of periodicals and un-filed papers haphazardly piled on top of it. He picked up a couple of the wanted posters and perused them. "This one's out of date," he said, holding up a flyer that bore the likeness of a bearded man.

Scott raised his eyebrows. "One of your business friends?"

Giving his brother a forced smile. Johnny retorted, "My business friends aren't this ugly. Or dead."

When Scott introduced his brother to the deputy as Johnny Lancer, the man stood up hastily, looking a little alarmed.

Johnny suppressed a grin and just reached out to shake the young man's hand. "John Lancer," he said firmly. "Nice little town. Grown a lot since I last came through here. . .when was that, Scott? A year or more ago."

The deputy, who gave his name as Deputy Bill Payson, shook Johnny's hand as if he thought it was a rattlesnake. Scott watched the exchange with a smirk, but he witnessed the deputy's scrutiny of Johnny's appearance and knew he had noticed the absence of a gun belt.

"I heard of you," Payson said. Then when Johnny regarded him with an unblinking stare, the man stuttered, "I. . .uh. . .I mean to say Sheriff Crawford talks about you a whole lot, Mr. Lancer."

Scott nodded mockingly. "I'll bet he does. We all know this town wouldn't still be on the map without our Johnny here."

Johnny had endured just about enough of Scott's wiseass remarks and turned to give his brother a warning, but at that moment Val walked in.

"You'd think, in a civilized town like this, you could find a fresh peach," Val groused, walking into the sheriff's office, right past Scott. He saw who his visitors were and his eyebrows shot up. Grabbing Johnny's arm in a firm grip, he slapped his old friend heartily on his back. "My God, 'bout time, Johnny! Where in tarnation'd you spring from? Look, I can't stay. I gotta go over to Granger's and settle a bit of trouble. Scott, Johnny, you're comin' over for supper tonight, aren't you?"

Scott replied with a smile, "Now that we're family, how can we say no?"

"Gotta warn you, the little woman's a might peevish." Val dropped the level of his voice and looked at Johnny from under his brows. "One o' them women things, you know. Been hitched for three years now," he said with pride.

"I hear you have another little one on the way, Val." Johnny grinned as he slung an arm around the sheriff's shoulders. "Sounds like you've been taking too much time off and layin' around for a lawman."

It was then that Val seemed to take in Johnny's mode of dress. "What's with this get-up? You look fit to be runnin' Miss Sadie's Sporting House with that mustachio. And where's your hogleg?" Johnny undid his coat to expose his new version of a gun belt and Val stepped back to look him over. After a minute, the sheriff turned to Scott and said out of the side of his mouth, "There somethin' goin' on that I should know about?"

Scott crossed his arms over his chest and casually leaned back on Val's desk, careful not to push any of the papers off it. "Don't ask me, Val. He came packaged like this. He is not my fault. As for the concealed weapon, Johnny, excuse me, I mean Mr. John Lancer, has been tightlipped about the real reason he's wearing it. So far."

Realizing they were going to gang up on him, Johnny stood with his feet apart as if expecting to be tackled. "Just because I'm dressed nice don't mean you have to harass me about it. You two could take notice from my example."

Val looked at Scott again, rolled his eyes, then called to the deputy, "Payson, I'm goin' over to Granger's place." He took a shotgun out of the gun case on the wall and checked it was loaded.

"You want assistance, Sheriff?"

"No, no. But if I don't come back in an hour, send out a posse." Val winked at his friends and made for the door. "You know where my house is, Scott. See you at supper. Try not to let that fancy fellow get too dirty." Johnny swiped at him as he passed, but Val scooted out of the way.

They stepped out into the bright sunlight and Johnny settled his Stetson on his dark hair. "I'm getting hungry, but I have to send a couple of telegrams and mail some letters out. How about we meet back in front of the telegraph office in a bit?" He pulled a gold watch out of his vest pocket. "It's after two. How about three?"

"I guess I'll get my hair cut." Scott wasn't too enthused but he knew he badly needed a trim. He set off in the opposite direction from his brother and was able to get into the barber's chair without any delay. As he was having his mostly-blond hair trimmed, Scott thought about Johnny and wondered if the changes in him were more than surface-deep. He also wondered why those changes annoyed him so much.

Scott did enjoy having Johnny at the ranch, but was willing to lay a bet that he'd leave early, and probably on some flimsy excuse. Johnny seemed to blow in and back out like a desert storm, leaving everyone remaining at the ranch wondering if he'd really been there at all.

Because he was running ahead of schedule, Scott agreed to have a shave as well, and hiding under a wrap of heated towels suited him just fine. It was, he realized, a small luxury in a world that had lost a lot of its appeal. He went through the motions, worked with his father and alongside the ranch hands as enthusiastically as he could, but he knew he wasn't deceiving anyone. There simply was little in life that he loved any more and it showed.

Scott wasn't even sure how or when he had lost his ability to feel happy. It had just. . . faded away. Jenny's death had a lot to do with it, and he'd been despondent for a long time afterwards, but there was something else eating at him. When he thought of his late wife, well that was the only time he felt any real emotion. His reaction to the circumstances of her death always struck him hard with anger. He was slow to boil, but the one and only time he had lost total control was on the one-year anniversary of Jenny's death. The target of his anger had not forgotten it and would probably never forgive him, either.

It was still present, that fury, deep down but still there. It was gnawing at him and he was constantly afraid that it would erupt again. Because Johnny had a way of poking him until he got a rise out of him, Scott was now concerned that this time his own brother would be the recipient of his anger. He sighed deeply. He had to play it low, to close off his emotions and keep an even temper. That was all.

The barber engaged in some small talk with Scott as he shaved him, and asked if it was true that Johnny Lancer was back in town. "We hear he's made it good up in 'Frisco. That so, Mr. Lancer?"

The man seemed eager for news but Scott vowed he wasn't going to get it out of him. "So it seems," was Scott's neutral reply. He paid up and left as soon as he could. There was still a visit to Val's house to get through and he wasn't feeling up to socializing. It wasn't people's fault that Scott could barely tolerate them. He was being anti-social and knew it was alienating most of the people he used to count as his friends. Nowadays he preferred the company of strangers, fellows looking for a no-strings game of poker and a few too many beers, in one of the back-street saloons.

Suddenly, the image of Murdoch came to mind; that first meeting in the great room, the old man looking out the grand window, speaking gruffly to him and Johnny, acting as if he didn't like the world very much and not caring what anyone thought. Scott was afraid he had turned into that man, even as his father had mellowed a great deal over the years.

As Scott walked to the prescribed meeting place, he wondered if men who knew of Johnny's reputation as a gunhawk, and saw him walking around with no weapon in sight, would come gunning for him. Hiding a firearm under your coat might be fine in the city, but out here it was best to honestly display your gun and to be willing to use it.

While Scott waited for Johnny, he looked disinterestedly at the handbills and posters tacked to the exterior paneling of the telegraph office. Items for sale, services being offered, a horse auction held over near Merced. Upon occasion, Scott and his father would ride over to the Merced auction, held quarterly. They broke and trained their own working stock at Lancer, but Murdoch liked to look over the horses up for auction. The appeal of the trip included a chance for him to meet his old cronies at the cattlemen's club, and a one-day stay often extended to two days. It was the only time that Murdoch truly allowed himself to have some fun.

Scott looked up the street, wondering what was holding Johnny up. But as he was about to go in search of him, something struck him as odd. He turned back to peer at the notice for the horse auction and saw it had been held on the previous weekend. Johnny had said that he had bought his new horse at the auction on his way from San Francisco, but Merced was fifty miles to the east, and the railway was to the west of Lancer. He'd also said he'd come through Green River, which also did not lie on the path from San Francisco. He made a mental note to ask Johnny where he had come in from, if not San Francisco.

The Crawford house was located a mile out of town, down a quiet side road, settled among a small cluster of trees. Val had done some work around the place since he and his wife had moved in the year before, and Scott had pitched in a couple of times to help get some of the larger carpentry jobs finished. Scott found the sheriff, for all his gruff exterior, to be a sincere, kind man, and their friendship had become all the more solid when Val married Teresa O'Brien.

None of them had seen it coming, much less Val Crawford, who had given Teresa a hard time at first. At the age of twenty-three, fresh out of a back-East women's college, Teresa set her sights on the sheriff, and went about getting a promise out of him. He never knew what hit him. After the nuptials, she had admitted to Scott that she had been the pursuer and, she said with a laugh, that he had eventually become her willing victim. As a couple, they seemed genuinely happy. With two children and another on the way in their third year of marriage, it appeared that Val was indeed a happily married man.

Due to the expansion of Green River and the influx of immigrants in the area, the county had given the sheriff a substantial raise in salary and allowed him to hire two deputies. With other, younger men able to be left on duty, the Val Crawford was often able to sit down to a family supper, despite his addiction to his job.

When Johnny and Scott rode up to the little house, it was mid-afternoon. Val wasn't likely to join them for several hours. The welcoming committee included Teresa, bearing a small child under each arm, her hired woman, and several small dogs. Upon seeing the visitors riding up the drive, Teresa handed one child off to her help and put the other down in a crib on the wrap-around porch. She ran to greet Johnny, jumping off the porch with her skirts flying, just like a teenaged girl.

Johnny had barely dismounted when Teresa ran into his arms and hugged him tightly. "Oh Johnny! Johnny!" She buried her head in his chest and wouldn't let go.

"Hey, hey! What's all this?" Johnny leaned back and tried to look at her face. "You cryin'?" He looked at Scott for help, but his brother slowly got off his horse and made it obvious he wasn't going to interfere.

Finally Teresa gave a watery smile and put a hand to her hair, which she wore up in a bun, and stroked some stray wisps back off her face. "Oh, don't mind me, it's just. . . I'm so glad to see you." She took in Johnny's changed appearance and tried to cover her dismay.

"You don't like my mustache, do you?" He gave a crooked smile.

"You just look. . .different." She frowned. "Maybe it's not the mustache. There's something. . .different about you?"

Johnny wrapped one arm around Teresa's waist and pulled her along with him when he walked his horse up to the hitching post. "Everyone keeps telling me I've changed, but I don't think I have."

"Your outfit is nice and gentlemanly." She wiped at a damp spot her tears had left on his lapel.

"I'll let you in on a secret, honey. It's camouflage. Still the same old Johnny underneath." He kissed her on the side of her face. Arms intertwined, they walked into the house with Scott trailing behind. Teresa made a point of showing Johnny the carpentry work that Scott and Val had done as she gave him the tour. Afterwards, they took seats on the creaky porch and shared a jug of lemonade while they caught up with family news.

Teresa, with her hair up and her figure filled out a bit, looked like a woman, Johnny thought. Her pregnancy barely showed, but when she caught Johnny looking surreptitiously at her belly, Teresa colored a little and let him know that she was due come autumn.

She said, beaming, "Little Mara and baby Johnny need a brother so we can name him after Scott." Although she looked at the older Lancer brother, who sat off to one side on the porch, he avoided her eyes.

Val had been pleased to call their first child after his best friend, Johnny, but the feminine version of his own name, Valdimar, soon became Mara, which was fine by him. Val doted on the children. Johnny took Mara on his knee and allowed her to play with his watch chain. "How old is she now?"

"Two," said Teresa proudly as she picked up the younger child up from his crib. "And Little Johnny is one. He's quite a handful." She kissed the baby and he made noises, said, "Dub," and squirmed.

Scott was amused. "I think he sounds an awful lot like his Uncle Johnny."

Mara had a ride on Johnny's knee until something set her off and she started to wail. As soon as she started to cry, Bettina, Teresa's help, appeared again and the women took the little ones inside for their supper.

After the crying had been stilled and the children were fed, Teresa returned to the porch. Scott took her hand and tucked it under his arm. "Let's go for a stroll," he suggested. They took a path through the trees and across a field to look at a pond. Johnny followed at a distance, tossing sticks into the long, dry grass for the two barking dogs that accompanied them.

Making sure that Johnny wasn't within earshot, Teresa bent close to Scott and asked, "Is he all right?"

"Who, Johnny?" Scott glanced back to see his brother tugging a large stick from a small dog's mouth. His words had barely been spoken when Teresa stopped to frown at him, so he assured her, "He's fine and he'll be the first to tell you that, after he talks your ear off about his latest business venture." He heard animosity in his tone and was not happy about it.

Teresa started strolling along again, pulling Scott alongside her. "Johnny. . . chatty? I told you there's something going on with him. A woman just senses these thing." They both risked a look back at the subject of their discussion, but they only saw a gentlemanly figure in a city suit stopping to light a cigar.

"He looks ridiculous in that mustache," Scott commented with a snort. "I think he's tried to make himself into a whole other person."

Teresa agreed to some extent. "If he wasn't wearing a cowboy hat and boots, he could very well be someone else," she mused.

"I wouldn't worry, he'll be gone soon enough," Scott said.

"That's positively mean, Scott Lancer. Johnny has a busy life. He has responsibilities, his own family and home to take care of." They continued along the rough path and after a couple of minutes, Teresa said, "It's sad, really. He doesn't belong here any more." She looked into Scott's eyes. "I mean Johnny doesn't belong to us any more."

Scott didn't speak as they walked along a path back towards the house. Teresa was talking to him, but he could barely hear her words. Eventually she asked him if he was all right, and he mumbled he was fine. She went back to keep company with Johnny, and all Scott could think was that his brother was lost to him. She was right. Johnny didn't belong to them any more.

When Johnny had left Lancer, five years earlier, accompanied by his new wife, Scott had been happy for him, but had missed his younger brother greatly. Scott, too, had been newly married, and his wife had helped him overcome the feeling he'd lost his brother. They did visit each other on occasion, but the time between those reunions became spaced further apart over the following years.

When Jenny died, Scott's world collapsed around him and Johnny wasn't there to help him through it. Johnny had attended the funeral, and had offered consolation, but all too soon he and Natalie were gone again. Scott had felt abandoned. Ranching became a chore, and with more work heaped on his shoulders, but with no more responsibility due to Murdoch's tight rein, Scott found he was dissatisfied with every facet of his life. He loved his father, but the old man butted heads with him over everything until Scott came to understand that Murdoch missed wrangling with Johnny. That was when Scott decided not to fight his father any more.

Seeing Johnny again, so much changed in the past year, Scott realized that he'd been wrong to think that his brother owed some sort of responsibility to the ranch. Johnny was his own man, and he had indeed drifted away, but it appeared that was by choice. So, Scott thought, Johnny is free to do what he wants. He had no intention of ever coming back to stay, that was obvious.

Scott vowed, then and there, to alter his attitude towards Johnny. He shouldn't resent his brother for leaving. He should encourage him and put on a bright face, and when Johnny left he would wish him well and he would mean it.

By the time they finished their walk and had settled back in the house, Val was coming down the lane to join them for supper. Scott made his excuses, said he wasn't feeling well, and was going home. That they looked at him with something more than mere disappointment didn't escape his notice. But despite his good intentions he couldn't stand watching the family together, so happy in their unity, when his own heart was dead.

Johnny stomped across the porch and into the kitchen. The screen door slammed behind him. "He won't listen to me." Scott had insisted that Johnny remain at Val and Teresa's for supper, as planned. "He said he was well enough to make it back to Lancer and didn't want company. Serve him right if he falls off his horse on the way home." Teresa looked at him with censure, so he shrugged. "He's a big boy, ma'am."

Teresa said, "I don't know what's got into him lately." Val gave her a sharp glance from his seat at the table, and she stopped, hands on her hips. "And what does that look mean, Valdimar?"

"Nothin'." He picked up his glass of beer and raised it to his mouth without saying another word.

When Teresa moved to the sideboard to get the plates, Johnny winked at his old friend. "Nothing like married life to bring a family closer together."

***–*** TBC