end, staring down the street at nothing at all.
Teel, Riordan, and Shelley … all fighting men … The door opened, and Devol
came in with Zeno Yearly. Brennan again jerked his head to indicate the rear
room. He struck a match. He lifted it to light his cigar.
Teel was a veteran of Indian and border fighting, Riordan and Shelley had both
been with the Fifth Cavalry. He was not sure about Devol, but Yearly was a trail
driver and a Texan.
After the men had gone, Fallon came into the room and ordered coffee, which
Brennan kept ready. “Felt no need to talk to you,” Fallon said suddenly. “You
told me this was your town, and you stood ready to fight if need be.”
“You are expecting trouble soon?”
“Any day.” He tasted his coffee and put the cup down. “Blane, Damon, Crest, and
some of that lot, they’d talk too much trying to make up their minds, and by
that time the town would be burning over their heads, and their women raped or
murdered. I want a few men I can count on. I want to know where they are, and
how ready they are.”
He sipped the coffee again, and then went on. “I think I can handle whatever
comes, and they will start with me. What I want is half a dozen men at least who
won’t get so interested in what I’m doing that they forget to keep watch.”
“What about me?” Brennan demanded. “You leaving me out?”
“You stay right where you are. You’ll know what to do without me telling you. It
seems likely some of them will come in here, and if they do, I’d like them out
of action.”
Brennan put his cigar on the edge of the bar, carefully, so as not to disturb
the ash. “I should like to open a bottle of wine,” he said.
” ‘Of the first grape only,’ ” Fallon quoted.
Brennan glanced up from the bottle he had taken from under the bar. ” ‘A vine
bears three grapes,’ ” he said, ” ‘the first of pleasure, the second of
drunkenness, and the third of repentance.'” He filled two glasses two-thirds
full. “I believe it was Anacharsis who said that.” He pushed one glass across
the bar to Fallon, then lifted his own. “To Red Horse!” he said.
“Ah? … yes … yes, of course. To Red Horse!”
But he had hesitated. Brennan, lying that night between white sheets, considered
that. He had hesitated … why?
Chapter III
Four men were seated about the fire when Al Damon rode up. The place was a
hollow among the rocks and brush not over half a mile from the lower end of the
flat. The trail young Damon had followed from the flat to the hollow was
invisible from the town itself, and the town was invisible from the hollow.
Bellows was there, as they had said he would be, and Tandy Herren.
“Got any news for us, kid?”
Al swung down from the saddle and sauntered up to the fire, supremely conscious
of the heavy pistol on his leg. He squatted on his heels and started to roll a
cigarette.
“Nobody expects any trouble, if that’s what you mean.”
“And there won’t be any trouble.” Bellows winked at the men across the fire. “We
just want to have a talk with that man Fallon. The one who runs everything down
there.”
Al spat. “He doesn’t run me. And he ain’t about to!”
Luther Semple, who sat beside Bellows, had been a sidehill farmer in the Ozarks
when the War Between the States broke out. He had no particular interest in the
war, but the prospect of loot interested him very much indeed. He joined
Quantrill first, then Bloody Bill Anderson, and finally Bellows. He was a lean,
sour-faced man who had moved west with Bellows, raiding lonely buffalo hunters’
camps or murdering travelers.
“Whyn’t you take him on, Al?” Lute said. “Be a feather in your bonnet to kill
him.”
“He leaves me alone.”
“Scairt, that’s what he is, he’s scairt of you.”
Al Damon did not quite believe that, but it sounded good and he wanted them to
believe it. “He leaves me alone,” he repeated.
“He had no business shootin’ up my man like he done,” Bellows said. “That man’s
still laid up.”
Tandy Herren said nothing. Al stole a quick glance at him through the smoke of
his cigarette. Herren was a lean, wolfish young man only two or three years
older than Al himself. He wore two pearl-handled pistols.
Al felt a thrill of excitement go through him as he looked at those guns. Lute
had told him Tandy had killed sixteen men.
“Seems to be a lot of comin’ and goin’ down there,” Bellows commented. “Your pa
must be doin’ a nice business.”
“It’s that Brennan up at the saloon … he rakes it in with both hands.”
“Whyn’t you promote a dance down there? All those pretty women. You had you a
dance, we’d all come a-callin’. Only trouble with outlawin’, womenfolks are
scarce. Different when you go to town, for they sure fling themselves at you.
Fair sets a woman a-sweatin’ to get nigh a real honest-to-Charley outlaw.”
Tandy Herren glanced at Lute skeptically. “You tell me. When was the last time
you had a woman worked up over you—outlaw or no?”
“It’s a fact!” Lute insisted. “An outlaw’s reckless an’ darin’ … womenfolks
set up an’ look at men like that.”
Al Damon was uncomfortable. The talk always got around to women, and all he
wanted to do was hold up a stage or run off some cows.
“That there Blane filly. Vince, when he was down there to town, he seen her.
Said she was really somethin’. ”
“She’s pretty,” Al admitted, “but uppity.”
He took up the pot and added coffee to his cup. He ought to be getting back. Pa
had come down on the flat the other day when he was not there and had raised
pure-dee hell about it.
“Here”—Bellows took up a canteen—”try some of this in your coffee. Put hair on
your chest.”
Bellows dumped a slug of whiskey in Al’s cup, and Al choked off his protest. To
tell the truth, he didn’t really care for whiskey. He drank it because it seemed
the thing to do.
“Who’s the law down there? Have they got themselves a marshal yet? Or is it
vigilantes?”
“Aw!” Al scoffed. “They’re a bunch of farmers. Ain’t nerve enough for
vigilantes. More’n likely Fallon considers himself the law, but he doesn’t wear
a badge.”
Bellows dumped a liberal dose of whiskey into his own coffee. “Seems to me,” he
said shrewdly, “what you need is an election. You could call yourselves an
election and vote Fallon right out. Then you folks could run the town as you
please.”
Al gulped his coffee and whiskey and felt it burn all the way down. “I dunno.
Fallon owns the town. I can’t see how we could run him out.”
“Who says he owns the town? You ever hear of a man who owned a town?”
Al took another swallow of coffee and tried to recall, but failed to recollect
anything of the kind. Not that he knew much about towns or their governments.
His dislike of Fallon was now given a sense of grievance. After all, why should
pa and the rest of them give him all that money? All he had done was know the
town was there and take them to it.
Just wait until he saw pa! And they all thought they knew so all-fired much! And
old man Blane … But he would talk to Jim first. Jim Bkne did not like Fallon
the least bit, nor did Ginia. If he could throw Fallon out of town, Al was
thinking, that would make him a big man.
“If you could get rid of Fallon,” Bellows suggested, “you might take over your
ownself. You could run the town.”
He had not considered that … yet, why not? Then his sudden elation vanished.
They knew him too well. Blane would laugh at him, and so would pa. “They seen me
grow up,” he told himself; “they’d never believe I could do it.”
Still, if he got rid of Fallon by himself … ?
Bellows seemed to divine what he was thinking. “What if you shot Fallon right
out of his job? They wouldn’t give you any argument then. Why, you’d be chief!
You’d be top man!”
There was a distant rumble of thunder, but Al did not notice it. And he had
forgotten the cattle. Bellows got to his feet and kicked dirt on the fire.
“Here,”—he handed the half-empty bottle to Al—”you finish this. See you next
week. One of the boys will drop by and tell you where.”
Bellows mounted and then glanced sharply at Al. “Fallon shot one of my men.