The saloon had been attacked, and one Indian, thinking there might be a door, had thrust his hand through the porthole, grasping for a hand-hold. It had been promptly lopped off, and then hung there as a reminder to others. Nobody had ever attempted that again.
The big room of the saloon was empty except for the saloonkeeper himself, who was bartender as well. He was leaning on the bar reading a month-old newspaper.
“Third time I’ve read that,” he said, “but there ain’t anything else to read. I’ve memorized all the labels on the cans, and on every bottle in the house.”
“I’ve a book in one of my saddlebags,” I said. “I’ll leave it with you.”
“Ain’t one of them pony express novels, is it? I sure like to read them. Makes it seem mighty exciting out here.”
He placed a couple of bottles on the bar. “Fact is, it was reading them books started me out here. So far I’ve had no chance to save nary a white woman from the redskins. Come to consider it, I ain’t seen but one white woman, and no Indian would have her.”
“It’s a history,” I said regretfully.
“Hey, now that’s fine!” He was genuinely pleased. “By the time I figure out what they’re gettin’ at, and how it really must have been, this here will be a settled-up country with kids walking to school.”
“Do you think that will ever be?” D’Artaguette said.
“Why not?”
“How’s business?” I asked.
“You makin’ jokes? Ain’t been a dozen people in here this month. There just ain’t no business, none a-tall. But it’ll pick up … time the cattle start movin’.”
“I haven’t seen a soul in the country around,” I commented, casually. “Who comes to a place like this?”
The bartender touched a finger to his mustache. “Mostly folks to use the wires … right now my guess would be there’s a war startin’ west of here. You boys want to use those guns, you head west.
“Man in here t’other day, askin’ about fightin’ men. Flanagan, down to the station, he told me he wired for riflemen.”
D’Artaguette shook his head in a puzzled way. “Me, I’m just a cowman,” he said, “headin’ south to meet a herd that’s overdue, but I wouldn’t know where to get a lot of fighters if I wanted them. Maybe back in Texas.”
“Hell, you don’t need to go that far! Missouri, Arkansas … eastern Kansas … there’s plenty of men who don’t care who they shoot. You take Missouri, now. Those squirrel shooters over there, they’d shoot anybody, you pay them enough.
“Take that James outfit, now. James and them Youngers – they’ve got a lot of men around them, men who run with them now and again. You could hire that lot. Times are bad, dry year, and that bunch don’t take much to honest farmin’. That Jesse, now. Don’t know as he ever earned an honest dollar. Took to horse-thievin’ even before he joined up with Quantrell.”
D’Artaguette traced circles with his glass on the bar, and I kept silent. If we just listened, this man was going to tell us all we needed to know.
Suddenly, a thought occurred to me. “Get you that book,” I said, and walked outside.
Meharry was standing outside the station talking to Flanagan. Going out to the horses, I took the battered copy of Carlyle’s French Revolution from my saddlebag. Books were hard to come by, and I’d brought this one from England, but I’d read it twice and it might be a cheap price to pay for a friend in the right place. While I was out there I took a careful look at the hills around. They seemed innocent of trouble, but I trusted them not at all.
Battery Mason was standing at the corner of the building. “Keep an eye out,” I said. “I’ve a hunch.”
Where the station stood, the ground was flat, but it swelled slowly up into low hills not over a quarter of a mile away. Such country is deceptive, and although it seemed open, and surprise an impossibility, one could take it too much for granted, and surprise was possible. I had seen it happen in just such terrain.
When I went back inside the saloon the bartender was setting them up. He grinned broadly at the sight of the book. “Well, now. There’s a good piece of book for you. Thank you, mister. Thank you kindly.”
He turned it admiringly in his hands, then hefted it. “Now, that there,” he said speculatively, “why, that should keep a man in readin’ for a year, or nigh to it.”
“It’s a fine book,” I said.
He turned the pages. “Yep. Like I thought. Mighty full of big words, and some I never seen before! Now, I like that. I admire a writer who has words … time I figure out what he means by them, a book will last me twice as long. Thank you again, sir!”
Battery Mason stepped to the door. “Conn,” he said, “somebody’s comin'”
Chapter 7
It has been given me that I live in the moment, with an awareness heightened by every impression of the senses. No doubt a part of it was natural to me, but it was also conditioned in me by Jim Sotherton.
He lived in such a way, and he was forever commenting to me on how few people actually lived now. Most people, he said, exist in an emptiness between memory and anticipation, but never live in the moment.
Whatever natural tendency I may have had toward living in the moment was developed and increased by Sotherton’s comments, and by his own awareness.
Now when I stepped from the door of the saloon into the bright sunlight, I stood for a moment to let my eyes become accustomed to the change of light. As I stood there on the weathered boardwalk, I looked down at the gray boards, at the cracks, the slivers, the places where some idle hand had whittled with a knife, and I was aware of the warm sun and the silence, of water dripping from the water tank used by the railroad into a trough used by passing riders. And then I looked up and walked to the end of the porch with Mason.
The air was startlingly clear. Far away in the sky was a puff of cloud against the blue. The smooth flow of the rolling hill was a soft green with the new grass growing, and I stood there, feeling the weight of the gun against my leg, the sun on my shoulders, squinting my eyes against the distance, watching the rider on the far-off hill.
He was one man alone, and he rode a mule. That was obvious from the gait of the animal. Sunlight gleamed on a rifle barrel.
Battery Mason swore suddenly, then he said, “Conn, you know more than one man who rides a mule?”
“Not in this country.”
It was Hoback. He was coming on along the flank of the hill, taking his time.
A little chill went through me, the sort of chill you have when they say somebody has stepped on your grave.
The air was completely still, and I could smell the dust in the space – scarcely to be called a street – between the saloon and the station. Around the tight little knot of buildings all was bare, open to the sky and the wind. Only the distant rider moved.
Lowering my eyes for a moment, I saw an ant struggling with some tiny object, but an object larger than itself. Battery was leaning against the corner of the saloon, and I knew what was going through his mind. That was Bill Hoback, the Dutchman, out there.
We had not sent for him, and the chances were he was not riding in search of a job, so he must have been hired by McDonald or by Frank Shalett. McDonald was unlikely to have heard of the Dutchman, so it must have been Shalett’s idea.
Shalett again. Now, who was Shalett?
Nobody needed to tell me, or Battery Mason, who the Dutchman was. He was a man-hunter. A man who stalked other men to kill – to kill for cash. He hunted men the way other men hunted buffalo, or deer. He stalked them, killed them, collected his price.
For a man riding a mule who was so well known by chuck-wagon yarns, the Dutchman managed to drop out of sight whenever he wanted. But he was known as a fast and deadly accurate shot with any kind of weapon. Handy with a pistol, though he relied more on a rifle or shotgun, both of which he habitually carried.
Nobody knew how many men he had killed, probably he didn’t know himself. Does a butcher keep track of the beeves he slaughters?
By now he had seen us, of that I was sure; but he was coming on, riding right down to the station.