sprinkler out of an old can and tried wetting it down.
Ginia looked at him and sniffed. “You seem to forget,” she said primly, “there
are ladies present.”
“If it offends you to see a man peeled to his belt,” he said, “I suggest you get
over it while you have the time.”
By sundown of the second day he was pruning the trees. He had already knocked
together a window box and transplanted some desert flowers in it.
On the third day he rode out to the trail and put up his sign.
RED HORSE
6 MILES
Then he returned to the place where he had first seen the faded Buell’s Bluff
sign and, after gathering some inkweed from alongside the dry lake, he brought
the broken-up sign back to town and burned it.
When he had mixed up his color from the inkweed, he went along the street
touching up the signs, not only at Damon’s store and the blacksmith shop, but at
other places too. Al Damon saw him doing this and asked, “What’s the idea of
that? Ain’t nobody to run them places.”
“There will be,” Fallon replied shortly. Al Damon was the one person in the
group he did not like; he had not liked him from the first day when he had
shirked his job of staying with Jim Blane at the wagon.
Ginia Blane stopped by again. She had watched him mix up the inkweed, and now
she watched him lettering the signs. “Where did you learn something like that?”
she asked. “I mean that you could get dye from that plant?”
“An Indian couldn’t go to a corner store, so he used what lay about him.” He
gestured at the hills. “There’s food and medicine out there too, if you know
what to look for.”
“If somebody doesn’t show up soon, you may need to know things like that. Our
supplies won’t last forever.” And she moved away.
He had already staked two claims, both of which had had a good bit of work done
on them during the former operation. Now, the signs finished, he went to work
with a pick and shovel, throwing more waste out on the dump to give it the fresh
look of recent mining.
The ground looked good—no question about that. Yet how many such holes in the
ground had he seen? How many samples had he examined, those carefully selected
samples every miner shows when talking of his claim? Always the rich samples
were chosen, the best instead of the average.
He walked back into the drift, studying the formation. He had worked a little in
mines, understood only a little, but this did look good. He tried a few pans,
but found no color.
On the third day he had killed a deer and a mess of blue quail … on the fifth
day, a Big Horn sheep. And he had brought in a mess of squaw cabbage and some
wild onions.
“Stake claims,” he advised the group, “whether you work them or not. You can
always sell them with a nice profit when others begin to come.”
“And what if you sell a mining claim where there’s no gold?” Ginia asked.
“If I knew there was gold there, I’d keep it myself,” he replied bluntly. “There
are always some who want to take their chances on a claim.”
“And you wouldn’t care if they found anything or not?”
“Why should I? Am I my brother’s keeper?”
No question about it, Ginia Blane was against him, and the further he stayed
away from her the better. Jim Blane did not even speak to him.
On the seventh day four wagons rolled in. They did some trading with Damon, and
Blane repaired a wheel, but they did not stay. They had nothing in their minds
but California.
Later that day Fallon killed a deer and was riding back into town when he saw a
strange horse tied at the hitching rail in front of Damon’s store. Touching the
black with a spur, he drummed across the bridge and up the street. As he reached
the store, a man came out.
He was a wiry, slender man with insolent eyes. He stopped on the boardwalk and
started to roll a cigarette. He wore a tied-down gun and there was a rifle in
the boot on the saddle. There was a canteen, but no blanket roll and no
saddlebags.
“Live around here?” Fallon asked.
The taunting eyes surveyed Fallon with care as the man touched his tongue to his
cigarette, and then drawing his fingers along it, he said, “Down the road a
piece.”
“I didn’t figure you’d come far,” Fallon replied pointedly, his glance shifting
to the man’s horse.
The man looked around, getting out a match. “Red Horse? Now, that’s odd. I don’t
recall ever hearing of such a town around here.”
“You have now.”
The man took his time with the match, his eyes noting Fallon’s gun. “You’ll be
this Fallon gent … Macon Fallon. The name has a familiar sound.”
“So does Bellows.”
The man chuckled. “You lay it right on the line, don’t you? Well, I’m not
Bellows, although he did suggest I drop around and offer our services.”
“They aren’t needed.”
“Bellows will decide that.” Coolly, he looked around. “Seems to me there’s only
four or five of you here. That’s not very many, is it?”
Fallon stepped down from his horse. “Do you see that bridge down there, my
friend? You tell Bellows that every man he sends to Red Horse—every one who
doesn’t die with lead in him—will hang from that bridge.
“You can also tell him that if he sends so much as one man down here to make
trouble, I’ll come after him.”
“You’re carrying a high hand there, friend. It sounds like you’re running a
bluff.”
Fallon felt anger mounting within him. Also, he knew that at the first sign of
weakness the Bellows outfit would come down upon them.
“You’re wearing a gun,” he said.
The man looked at him thoughtfully, his eyes suddenly wary. “I’d say that sounds
like you’re pretty sure of yourself.” He shook his head. “I’ll not call, Mr.
Fallon.”
Standing on the street, Fallon watched the man ride slowly out of town, and then
he turned on his heel and went into the store.
“Another customer,” Damon said cheerfully, “bought tobacco.”
Fallon indicated his hip. “Where’s your gun?”
“Gun?”
“Look,” Fallon said, showing his irritation, “that man you just had in here is a
killer. He’s one of the Bellows outfit. You put on a gun and wear it, and you be
ready to use it.”
“Seems like tomfoolery to me,” the older man said testily. “I never heard of any
Bellows gang.”
“Nor I,” Jim Blane said. “I think those men out on the road were just passing
through.”
“If it wasn’t for your womenfolks I’d ride out of here and let you take the
consequences. You people think of the West as if it was Philadelphia.”
He rode away, and Damon shrugged. “What’s he so touchy about? That seemed a
right nice feller. Pleasant as all get out.”
“Mr. Damon,” Ginia interposed, “maybe he’s right. After all, they did tie Jim
up, and they hit him.”
“They were drunk!” Jim scoffed. “Just drunken cowhands carrying on. There was no
need to shoot that man like he did, no need at all.”
Ginia walked up the street. Dislike him as she would, there was no getting
around the fact that he had worked harder than any of them, and he had asked for
no help in cleaning up the street, painting the signs, or repairing the
boardwalk.
Not that she trusted him … not one bit. But so far as she could see, he had
not lied.
He was polishing glasses when she walked into the saloon. “I don’t know why you
do that. You’ve nothing to sell.”
He gestured toward the barrel. “You underestimate me. That’s full of whiskey.
Indian whiskey, I’ll admit, but whiskey.”
“But where could you get it?”
“It depends on what a man has handy, but the formula was worked out by the
Indian traders back along the Missouri. Your mother had two gallons of prune
juice that had fermented, and she was going to throw it out. I started with
that. Then I shaved up a pound of rank black chewing tobacco and a couple of
pounds of red peppers. I boiled them together to get the strength out of the
tobacco and the peppers. Mrs. Damon had a bottle of Jamaica ginger, so I added
that. I dumped it all into forty gallons of spring water, added two bars of soap
to give it a bead, and a gallon of black molasses.”
“People will drink that?”
“It’s the only whiskey in town.”
“I just don’t understand you, Mr. Fallon. Why, that would kill a man!”
“Not the men out here. I promise you, some of them will like it, others will