He chuckled. “Ah! Now I see. You and Julie have had your heads together: How can we get him to stop this marshaling business and settle down?” Zeb looked at them seriously. “I’ll be glad to settle down whenever I can. Men serve as they can. I do not have the education to help make the laws—one thing I can do, is enforce them.
“Julie doesn’t like me to wear a gun. I’ll take it off when I can—until then it will be necessary for the men of peace to have guns, as long as men of violence do. We can’t put all the force in the hands of evil.” He smiled at Julie. “You’ll be glad to know—Charlie Gant is leaving town.”
Chapter 21
Zeb Rawlings rolled out of bed at daybreak, as had been his custom for years. The hotel room in which they had spent the night was furnished with one chair, a stand for the bowl and water pitcher, with a small mirror above it, and the bed itself—that was all.
Always a quiet man, he dressed with special care this morning, not wishing to wake Julie. In his sock feet he stepped over to the window and looked out. At this hour the street was relatively empty, for the sun had not yet come over the mountains. But down there on the boardwalk a man was loafing, smoking a cigarette. On the ground near his feet were the butts of several cigarettes—he must have been there some time.
Lifting his eyes, Zeb looked toward the mine. There a wagon was drawn up, and men were loading it. A guard with a shotgun sat on the wagon seat, and two mounted guards were nearby.
The man in the street turned his head slightly and Zeb saw that he was one of those who had been at the station to meet Charlie Gant. It was falling into place, each neat, carefully planned piece of it. So neat, and yet so obvious. Zeb went over to the chair, sat down, and tugged on his boots. Taking up his hat, coat, and gun belt, he went to the door, opened it carefully, and stepped out into the hall. In the bathroom at the end of the hall he buckled on the gun belt, bathed his hands and face, and then slipped into his coat. All these actions required time, but it was time that Zeb needed. He would first see how the boys had gotten along in their wagon, but his mind was not on them, but on Charlie Gant and the gold.
From long experience, he could almost chart the steps to be taken, just as he had been sure there would be a lookout in the street to be sure the gold shipment did pull away from the mine and was loaded on the train. The telegraph was valuable to the law; it was also a great help to outlaws. The lobby was empty when he walked through, and when he stepped out on the boardwalk, the watcher was gone. Up the street, and some distance away, Zeb saw the gold wagon driving toward the station, which lay just outside of town. By the time it reached the station, or within a minute or two afterward, the lookout would be at the station too, or within sight of it. Down the street in front of the Bon-Ton Restaurant a man in an apron was sweeping the boardwalk. Sunlight fell between the buildings, and at the end of the walk his broom moved in and out of the sunlight. Linus and Prescott were just waking up and Zeb sat with them and smoked a cigar while they washed at the livery-stable pump.
Off in the distance a train whistled … the east-bound train which passed through only a short time before the westbound train which would pick up the gold. Whatever was to be done about Charlie Gant had to be done now. Sitting there on the bench by the livery stable, he made up his mind about that. Not that he hadn’t reached the same conclusion hours ago, but he had to study the situation for a possible alternative.
If he was let alone, Charlie would do what he had come to do, and then he would be free to locate Zeb Rawlings, and never so long as Gant lived would Zeb or any of his family live in security. There would be times when he would have to be away from the ranch, and most of the time he would be out on the range … his family would be alone, virtually helpless if Gant chose to strike at him through his family, and Gant was such a man.
When Zeb walked into the hotel dining room with the boys, Lou Ramsey was there, seated at the table with Aunt Lilith and Julie. He got up, his face stern. “I had a visit from Charlie Gant last night,” Ramsey said. “I don’t like it, Zeb.”
“Well?”
“He said he saw you. That you were looking for trouble.”
“You believe that?”
Lou Ramsey looked at him angrily. “Zeb, it doesn’t matter whether I believe it. You’re taking your trouble to your own territory. You’re not going to make trouble for me here. I won’t have it, Zeb.”
“There won’t be any more. Gant’s gone. He rode out before daylight this morning.”
Ramsey hesitated, startled and displeased by the information, even though half expecting it. “Alone?”
“You know better than that. He took his outfit with him, and you know as well as I do they’ll be somewhere between here and Kingman, waiting for that train.” Zeb paused, then went ahead. “Lou, if I could have three deputies … or even two. To get on that train with me.”
“You don’t fool me a bit, Rawlings. It ain’t a robbery you’re expecting. I know how you feel about Gant. Texas the first time—you still carry the lead where he shot you. Then it was Oklahoma, when you killed Floyd. And now … here.” Ramsey looked around at Julie and Lilith. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’ll have to forgive me. If you can’t stop him, I must, but he isn’t going to make my office a part of it.”
“You haven’t eaten, Zeb,” Julie protested. “Why don’t you sit down?” Lou Ramsey strode from the room, and Zeb seated himself. He glanced across the table at Lilith. “I’m sorry, Aunt Lil. I’m sorry all this has to happen just when you arrive.”
The waitress brought coffee to the table, and then Zeb’s breakfast. Slowly, the tension went out of him. He genuinely liked Ramsey, and did not want trouble with him, especially as he so clearly understood the marshal’s position. He blamed Ramsey not at all for his stand; only for Zeb it was an impossible stand at the moment.
“Who is Charlie Gant?” Lilith asked.
Zeb looked at her in surprise, not that she should ask, but that he himself had never given it a thought. It might be, he told himself, extremely important to know just who Gant was.
After all, who is any man? Charlie Gant was a gambler. He was also an outlaw. Moreover, he was a brother to Floyd Gant, who had not only been an outlaw but a gunman.
Odd, when you came to think of it, how few gunfighters were actually outlaws. Some of them became outlaws later, often because of changes in public attitude or in the attitude of the law.
A gunfighter, or gunman, was actually no more than a man who, because of some unusual gift of dexterity, coordination, and nerve, became better with a gun than others. He was no particular type of person, other than possessing more than usual ability to face a gun in another man’s hand and shoot back; nor was he of any particular profession. Most gunfighters had been officers of the law, but that was a result of their skill, rather than otherwise. Hickok had been a stagedriver and scout for the army. Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Billy Brooks, and many others had been buffalo hunters; Clay Allison, Pink Higgins, and John Slaughter had been ranchers, Ben Thompson a gambler, Doc Halliday a dentist, Temple Houston a lawyer. Billy the Kid had been a drifting cowhand and gambler, then a feudist in the Lincoln County war, and actually only an outlaw after that war ended.
Chris Madsen had been a soldier in several armies, among them the French Foreign Legion; Buckey O’Neill was a newspaper editor, probate judge, and superintendent of schools, as well as a frontier sheriff; many gunfighters had been ex-soldiers. And who was Charlie Gant?
“Takes me back a long time when you ask that, Aunt Lil,” Zeb commented, “and Lou Ramsey knows it. That’s why he’s edgy about this situation.” “We knew Floyd first,” Julie said. “Zeb met him in the Panhandle when they were buffalo hunting.”
“Not that we were ever friends,” Zeb said, “but we got along all right. It was sort of nip-and-tuck between us with pistols, but with a rifle I could outshoot him.