to him beyond that, yet … suppose he could get a stake here? He could go to
San Francisco, open a small business of his own, find a house somewhere, settle
down. He could go to the theater, read books … he could be a gentleman.
It all depended on what happened here. He must, from these empty shells, create
the image of a living, breathing town. He must make those claims appear worked,
and he must play upon the imaginations of his possible customers.
Long after dark he heard the wagon rumble across the bridge and turn into an
area just outside of town. There they drew up, and there they unyoked the oxen.
Ginia rode up the street to meet him.
“Your town doesn’t amount to much,” she said.
“What did you expect of a ghost town? Gaslight and red carpets?”
Blane came up to them. “Depressing,” he said gloomily. “I don’t like it.”
“It’s all right, pa. It will look better by daylight. You’ll see.”
It was evidence of her influence that he accepted her reassurance and walked
back to the wagon.
“Pa’s down,” Ginia said worriedly. “I never saw him like this before.”
Macon Fallon removed his hat and let the cool air of evening stir around his
temples. “Did you ever put yourself in his place?” he asked. “There’s a man with
a wife and family. He’s brought them two-thirds the way across a continent—to
what? Your pa,” he added, “is no longer a boy. And he’s starting all over, in a
new country, with almost nothing. He’s scared, Miss Blane, and he has a right to
be.”
“And you?”
Fallon shrugged. “Believe me, no man knows what it means to be scared until he
has to think of others besides himself … those he’s supposed to care for and
protect. A man with a wife and family has, in the words of Francis Bacon, given
hostages to fortune.”
“And you?” she repeated. “Have you given no hostages to fortune?”
“I’m a man alone,” he replied shortly, “a man with nothing to add up but a
column of wasted years.”
Deliberately, he started his horse toward the others, and she rode beside him.
A campfire had been started, and Blane stood beside it, talking. “I don’t like
leaving that boy back there alone, but these oxen are too tuckered for that trip
tonight.”
“I thought young Damon stayed with him?” Fallon said.
Al Damon looked up from where he lounged beside the fire. “He’ll do all right by
himself. I didn’t want to wait back there by that damn wagon.”
Blane started to speak, but young Damon Was looking at Fallon belligerently.
“What’s the matter? Don’t you like it?”
Fallon stifled a sudden burst of temper. After all, he needed these people.
“There have been Indians around, and for that matter it is somewhere in this
area where the Bellows outfit have been raiding wagon trains. Somebody should
certainly be back there with that boy tonight, so when I have watered my horse
again, I’ll ride back.”
“You’re tired,” Ginia objected, “and your horse is, too. You’ve come a long way,
mister.”
Their eyes met across the fire. He was tired, and he was impatent too. He would
have liked to reach down and pick up that Al Damon and slap some sense into him.
“No matter,” he said. “I’ll go.”
He could not resist a parting comment, and when he was in the saddle he turned
and glanced at Al. “Have a pleasant evening,” he said coolly.
Ginia came after him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Al’s not the nicest person in the
world, and lately he’s been worse. Ever since he started wearing that gun.”
“Keep them out of the town tonight,” he warned. “The floors are old and there’s
wreckage lying about. Too many chances of snakes, or a bad fall.”
He started to turn his horse, then added, “If young Damon wears that gun out
here he’d best grow up to it. When a man packs a gun he’s supposed to handle the
responsibility that goes with it.”
Ginia had started to move away, but she turned back. “I’ll keep them in camp.”
She looked into his eyes. “You do your part, and I’ll do mine. You’ll see that.”
After the black horse had drunk again at the reservoir Fallon started back down
the road. The stars were out, the night was velvet soft, and there was a faint
breeze off the mountains. Around the town the mountains were as bare as
mountains of the moon, but farther back there must be trees, for sometimes he
almost believed he could smell the pines. However, there was more tangible
evidence, for in the wash that ran past the bench and half around it, there were
logs, battered trunks of trees carried down by the flash floods. Someday he
would find that forest, if forest there was.
As he rode past the camp he heard Al Damon’s voice. “Aw, whatya expect? Why does
it need two of us back there? I wanted some coffee, and Jim, he said never
mind.”
Pausing on the rise from which the town was visible, Fallon looked back. It was
swallowed in darkness now, with only the tiny red eye of the campfire winking as
people passed between himself and it.
That flat below the town—if that wash could be dammed up to hold what water came
in those flash floods, a man might irrigate enough to make a crop on that bench.
He chuckled at himself. “Still a farmer at heart, Macon. You’ll never outgrow
it.”
How far back was that farm? Seventeen years? And before that, a hazy
recollection of white rail fences and a great white house with columns and a
graveled drive. That was the plantation his father had inherited, and on which
he was born.
His father had inherited slaves too, and he did not hold with slavery, so he
freed them all. Without slaves the plantation could not be worked, and he soon
discovered that in freeing slaves he had not only given up a large part of his
wealth but the friendship of his neighbors as well. They were slaveholders, and
resented his act. Not one of them would make an offer for his land, and when it
was finally sold it brought a tenth of its value.
His father had known a lot about land, but nothing about the management of
money, and the small farm in Missouri had scarcely paid for itself. Macon’s
brother Patrick had been killed by night riders when Macon was twelve, but Macon
put a bullet through the skull of one of them as they rode off. With young
Patrick dead, the heart went out of his father. Locusts got the crop one year,
frost the next. And then one night Colonel Patrick Fallon heard a man boast that
it was he who had killed young Patrick. The Colonel named him for a skulking
murderer and a coward, and died with the man’s bullet in him.
Three nights later the killer of two Fallons met the third—by that time a
gangling boy of fifteen whose hands were born with a deftness beyond that of
most men. It showed in his handling of cards, and in his use of guns as well.
On that dark road Macon Fallon gave the killer his chance and left him dead, gun
in hand, bullet through his belly. And then young Macon Fallon had ridden on to
Independence and joined a wagon train for Santa Fe.
Throughout the years that followed, he never lost his interest in land and
crops, for it lay deep within his nature. He was Irish first and a farmer
second, and both had a love for the land.
He was thinking over this past of his as he neared the wagon. His horse was
walking in sand, and he could hear the voices before he came within sight of the
men. He heard more than one rough voice, and then a cry of pain. He drew rein
and listened.
“There’s women’s fixin’s in that wagon, so there’s got to be women about.” It
was a surly, drunken voice. “And I’ll take oath there was another wagon here
when I first seen you from the bluff yonder.”
Another man spoke up. “You tell us what we want to know an’ we’ll turn you
loose.”
Fallon walked his horse a few steps further, going up slope until his eyes could
see over the slight knoll that hid the wagon.
Four men stood around the fire, and young Jim Blane had his hands tied behind
him. There was a trickle of blood from his lip. “I’m alone,” Jim insisted. “The
women’s clothes belong to ma. We’re taking them to her in California. There was
another wagon, but it went on. When they get to water they’ll be coming back for
me.”
“Don’t lie to me, boy. You speak up, or we’ll have your boots off and see how