them outlaws!”
“He wasn’t an outlaw. He was the town marshal.”
“Wild Bill Hickok? I figured him for an outlaw for sure.”
“Very few outlaws are gunfighters,” Brennan said. “As for Hickok, those of us
who knew him liked him for other reasons than his skill with weapons.”
“What about that there Clay Allison? Wasn’t he an outlaw?”
“He ranches down around Cimarron. He’s no outlaw.”
Fallon finished his coffee and refilled his cup. “One thing it takes to make a
gunfighter,” he commented, “that no amount of practice will give you.”
Al Damon turned belligerently. “What’s that?” It was quite obvious that he had
no liking for Fallon.
“Guts enough to look at a man who is shooting at you, and shoot back. I’ve seen
many a would-be gunfighter act big and brave until suddenly he actually gets
into a gun battle with a grown man who’s cold sober. Then they turn yellow as
saffron.”
Al Damon, at nineteen, had fallen into a familiar pattern. He had decided that
he was unique, something very special. Without having tested it, he decided he
was the material of which gunfighters are made. He had tied down his gun, had
taken to swaggering and talking tough. The one fact that so far had not
impressed itself on his consciousness was that when a man wears a gun he is no
longer playing games. A gun implies that, if need be, he will shoot. It also
implies that if circumstances so develop, he may be shot at.
Macon Fallon was deeply disturbed, but he did not wish it to show. Nobody had a
corner on being foolish, and he had himself had his foolish moments—but not with
a gun. Gunfighters were created by circumstances, not by deliberate choice. Once
they had the reputation, they often worked hard to become better at it, but that
was simply self-preservation. Nobody in his right mind wanted the name of
gunman.
In a country where all men wore guns and where it was the accepted manner of
settling disputes, a few were sure to be gifted with a little more skill, a
little more nerve; and surviving, they became known as gunfighters.
Most of the gun battles he knew of had been over nothing important. Like that
one at Seven Pines. With a shock, Macon Fallon realized he had been so busy
repairing and touching up the town that he had completely forgotten Seven Pines.
By now the posse, sobered up, might have thought better of lynching. On the
other hand, they might have convinced themselves they were right, and might
continue to look for him, or to make inquiries.
With all the rest of his troubles, why did Al Damon have to take the notion that
he was a gunfighter? Fallon knew what would happen next. Damon would swagger
around a bit, but in the back of his mind would be the notion that he had never
shot anybody, and that he would not be a real gunfighter until he had.
Fallon finished his coffee and went outside. He could not forget that silver
dollar on the bar, or Al’s sudden defense of the Bellows outfit. Where had Al
picked up that money? He might have brought it west with him … but had he?
Inside the saloon, Brennan gestured after Fallon. “There goes a man. A dangerous
man.”
“Him?” Al’s voice was filled with incredulous contempt. “I wouldn’t be afraid to
take him on myself. He doesn’t look so tough to me.”
“I’ve helped bury men who used those same words.” Brennan leaned his hands on
the bar. “Kid, you’ve tied on a gun, but did you ever see a man gut-shot?
Bleeding to death with, his innards in the dust? It doesn’t have to be the other
man—it can be you. Keep that in mind.”
Al gulped whiskey and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “What of it?”
he said boldly. “I’ll likely look on it my ownself.”
“And probably they will be your own. I’ve seen them come and go, kid, and let me
tell you something. You aren’t one of them. You aren’t even the beginning of a
gunfighter.”
After Al Damon had gone, Brennan cursed himself for a fool. Nothing he could
have said would make Al Damon more anxious to prove him wrong. Only, after a
time a man became impatient. Each one of these youngsters thought he had
discovered something new, and each one was following a trail that had been worn
down by those who had gone before, making the same mistakes. What they were
seeking was empty and flat, and what they stood to lose was all the warmth and
beauty of life, the things worth having that they might never realize; but the
things they valued—the food, the drink, the girls, and the reputation—all would
be gone like a wisp of smoke … and for what?
Brennan went to the street end of the bar, where there was a window that
permitted him to see some distance down the street. He had said this was his
town, and so he wished it to be. He was tired of moving. He wanted to dig in
somewhere and stay there.
Already he had begun to create the world he wanted to keep, and part of it he
had brought with him. He liked operating a saloon. He enjoyed selling good
whiskey. A quiet man, not talkative himself, he liked conviviality around him,
liked the easy talk, the friendliness of men. Drunks he did not like, but he had
learned to cope with them.
Brennan had really built for himself two worlds: the world of the saloon, where
he worked and earned his keep; and the world of his own rooms when he went
upstairs and closed the door behind him. He would not, he told himself, mix with
the townspeople … that way lay trouble. Like Macon Fallon, he would keep to
himself.
He and Fallon rarely talked together; when they did it was usually over coffee
in the morning. Brennan had never been inside Fallon’s quarters, nor Fallon
inside his.
Brennan and his Negro handyman had carried his things upstairs after dark, and
arranged them in his rooms. He had a few paintings, and they were good ones, an
upright piano, and about fifty books. A customer had given him a copy of
Montaigne, and that had started him reading. Twenty years had passed since then
… he still had that copy of Montaigne. In one room a Turkish rug was on the
floor, and a fine four-poster bed stood against the wall.
Habitually, Brennan kept a Winchester rifle near the window and a shotgun under
the bar in the saloon, and he always carried one of his derringers on his
person. Other weapons he had cached in likely places.
He had rolled into Red Horse with two wagons containing most of what he had been
able to accumulate in all his years up to now, and it was not much. In another
sense, he came to Red Horse with a great deal, for most of what John Brennan had
gathered was in his own mind.
He was a man who loved the flavor of things—to live life slowly, to enjoy his
books, music, paintings, people, and the life around him. He had come to the
frontier almost of necessity, but he had remained because he loved it.
John Brennan welcomed all men, was friend to few. He had not formed a definite
opinion about Macon Fallon as yet, but he liked him anyway. There was strength
in the man, and background too. It showed in so many little things. It showed in
his way of speaking of woman, always with courtesy, never indicating
familiarity, always with respect. It showed in the way he ate, the way he drank,
the manner in which he carried himself. Brennan was not of the gentry, but he
knew gentry when he saw them.
There was one thing in particular about Fallon that Brennan wondered about.
Macon Fallon was seeking residents for his town; he made overtures to those with
trades—except for miners. In a town whose wealth was supposed to be founded on
mining, there were no miners. This was curious, and John Brennan wanted to know
why.
Twenty-nine families now lived in Red Horse. The hotel had been opened, a doctor
had hung out his shingle, Damon had taken in a partner named Crest, with
additional stock. A bakery had opened.
Brennan was at the bar early in the day that marked the beginning of the town’s
fourth week. The door opened and Joshua Teel entered.
“Where’s the meetin’?” he asked.
“Meeting?”
“Macon Fallon said to meet him here. Said there’d be others.”
Brennan jerked his head toward the back room. “Fallon’s back there. There’s
others with him.”
He watched the Missourian go into the back room and close the door after him.
Odd, that Fallon had said nothing to him. He took out a cigar and clipped the