“I don’t know why everybody is so anxious to be rid of him,” Ginia interrupted.
“What has he done? He’s worked harder and done more than anybody else in town.”
“I’ve worked as hard as anybody!” Blane protested.
“You worked very hard,” Ginia agreed, “in your own shop and for your own profit.
Fallon built the dam. Fallon weeded the street, trimmed the trees, repaired the
boardwalks, and did a hundred little things to make the town a good place to
live.”
“Well, he’s gettin’ paid for it, too!” Damon said resentfully.
“And why not?” Ginia broke her thread, and held up the blouse she was making and
studied it critically. “And when I think of what you almost did, I feel
positively ill. That Gleason! Every time he looked at me I felt like taking a
bath. And you all wanted a change—thank heavens, you didn’t get it!”
They were silent, but unconvinced.
The Yankee Saloon was cool and still. The only sound was that made by Macon
Fallon, idly shuffling a deck of cards. He built his bottom stock with care,
dealt four hands, and glanced at his own.
Brennan picked up the hand nearest him as he passed the table. Four nines. He
picked up the. second, it was four sixes. “Not bad,” he said dryly. “Are they
all that good?”
“Mine is better,” Fallon said, and spread four kings on the table.
Brennan put his cloth upon the end of the bar and sat down. He lighted a fresh
cigar. Macon Fallon watched him, smiling a little. Brennan had something on his
mind.
“Al Damon,” Brennan said, taking the cigar from his lips, “was the first one I
heard who talked of an election.”
Macon Fallon swept the cards together, cut them, shifted the cut, and built a
center stock, cut to the center and had his stock on the bottom, ready for
dealing.
“You know, and I know,” Brennan continued, “that it is not likely he thought of
that himself. His pa may have, but Al was talking it up before I ever heard a
word of it from Blane or Damon.”
Macon Fallon dealt himself two aces face up, then second-dealt a third ace.
“Those silver dollars, now.” Brennan drew deep on his cigar. “Damon never spends
any silver money that I’ve seen, but that’s all Al ever spends.
“I’ve been keeping track … nobody spends silver dollars but him. Silver money
is scarce in camp … fact of the matter is, any kind of money is scarce.”
“So?”
“That Bellows man … Lute Semple. He was in here the other night… he paid for
his drinks with a silver dollar—mint new.”
Fallon made a neat stack of the deck and put it down on the table. “Do you think
Al is meeting some of the Bellows outfit?”
“He didn’t get whiskey from me. He had whiskey. There’s no silver money in town
except half dollars, and he has new silver dollars.”
Brennan looked at the lengthening ash on his cigar. “About three months ago an
Army pay wagon bound from Carson to Fort Churchill was robbed. Four men killed
… it was laid to Indians.”
Brennan looked up at Fallon. “That Army payroll was mostly in brand-new silver
dollars.”
Fallon looked out the doorway, watching the sunlight fall across the walk. It
all tied in with the fire where somebody had been meeting—nobody would purposely
camp in such a spot—and with the empty whiskey bottle he had found.
“You could be right,” he said. Then he told Brennan about the fire he had found.
“What’s next?” Brennan asked.
Fallon shrugged. “Wait. Look, John, Al’s a kid. Sure, he’s nineteen, and you and
me, we were men making our way long before that, but he’s nineteen like we were
fourteen. Maybe he’ll come to his senses.”
“You know he won’t,” Brennan replied. “Fallon, how many times have you seen an
Al Damon strap on a gun like that? First he wants to be a gunfighter; he admires
outlaws and gunfighters. He straps on a gun and convinces himself he’s a big
man. He practices in secret. If it stopped there, that would be fine; but he’s
got to kill somebody.
“A man who’s a gunfighter, he’s killed men, and unless a fellow has, he can’t
have the name. He’s not thinking about the fact that the other man will be
shooting too. In your dreams you never draw too slow, never get killed … not
in daydreams, anyway. So sooner or later he’s going to have to use that gun.”
Fallon drew the cards to him again. Idly, he ran them through his fingers.
“John, what would you have me do? Go to his father? I don’t believe Al would
give up the gun because his father told him to—in fact, I know he wouldn’t.
“Maybe I should go to Al? You know what would happen then. He’d try to face me,
and I might have to kill him. I don’t want to draw a gun on that boy, John.”
Brennan was silent. Of course, what Fallon said was true. When they went as far
as Al Damon had gone, mighty few of them stopped before they killed or were
killed. Perhaps fortunately, most of them were killed.
Fallon stacked the cards again and got up. “Going up to the claim,” he said, and
went out. Irritation was riding him. He had remained too long in Red Horse. He
had a few dollars now, little enough, it was true, but he would be smart to
saddle up and ride out. He could get on the stage route and follow it through to
Carson. He was playing the fool, staying here. His every instinct told him the
top was about to blow off and he was standing right in the middle of it.
He walked up to the mine, peeled off his coat and shirt, and puttered around. In
the drift he worked for a good two hours, working away with his pick at the face
of the drift, working to rid himself of his worry rather than for any hope of
finding anything. In fact, he had no such hope.
He could drive his pick into a crack and wedge off a good-sized chunk. It fell
around his feet, and he let it fall. Finally, he put down the pick and went to
the mouth of the tunnel.
Red Horse lay below him, and he looked at it with surprise. There were a dozen
people on the street, two wagons, and several saddle horses. Lines of wash hung
outside nearly every cabin. Three tents had gone up in a neat row back of the
Damon store. Beyond the town he could see rows of bright green where corn was up
and starting to leaf out … the weeks had gone by too fast.
Two small boys came out of the Damon store and started down the street. There
ought to be a school. That was one thing the town needed … a school.
Well, it was none of his affair. He had made his decision as he looked down over
the town. Whether or not he sold his claims, he would pull out at the end of
another month. He would give it that long.
Yet even as he decided, he felt an odd sinking in his stomach. He was a fool to
wait. Buell might come back. Bellows might come. Anything might happen.
He picked up his shirt and put it on and stuffed it into his pants. He was
buttoning his shirt when Ginia Blane rode up on the shoulder where the claim
lay.
“How do you do, Mr. Acting Mayor?” she said politely.
He glanced at her sourly. “I have no desire,” he said, “to be acting mayor or
any other kind.”
“As much as I do not like you,” Ginia confessed, “you have done a lot for the
town. You deserve to be mayor.”
“I don’t like you, either,” Fallon replied coolly, “and I deserve nothing of the
kind. The only reason I interfered was because the man was so obviously a
crook.”
“John Buell,” she said, looking straight into his eyes, “of Buell’s Bluff.”
He finished buttoning his shirt, giving all his attention to the buttons. She
knew then. Well, that tore it. Now he was getting out of town. When he lifted
his eyes to her his face betrayed nothing.
“I am afraid that I don’t get a chance to do enough for the town to be a good
mayor at the stage this town is now passing through. There are too many
interruptions for me.”
“Don’t ignore the subject, Mr. Fallon. I am sure no honest man would be so adept
at turning things to his advantage as you seem to be. My father is an impatient
man, Mr. Fallon, but not a suspicious one. I am afraid that I am suspicious.
“You hesitated out there on the trail that day before you named the town, and