“Like I’ve said, she doesn’t go riding with them, she doesn’t walk out with them. She invites them home. Or lets them believe they were invited.”
“So?”
“Then her father sends them away.”
It made no kind of sense to me, and I said as much. John Blake pushed his hat back on his head, then took it off and put it on the table beside him.
“Maybe I’m not making myself dear. The point is, I don’t think she wants to get married, and I think she likes to have her father send these men away. And he does. Oh, believe me, he does!”
Blake paused, and then he said, “Conn, I don’t know whether this makes sense to you or not, but I think she hates men.”
Right then I began to wish Kate Lundy was here. When it comes to cattle, horses, or men, I can handle them. I know all about them, but I’ve never had much truck with women. Give me a good old fist fight; knuckle-and-skull in the street, and I’ll handle my share. Or I’ll take a herd over a bad trail and bring them through in as good shape as any man.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
Blake tossed off his drink. “Conn, if you’d spent your life dealing with trail-town people the way I’ve done, you’d find a lot of things don’t make sense.
“You talk to that boy. You tell him about her, and keep him south of the street.”
“And if I can’t?”
“Then I’ll have to stop him myself.”
There it was … laid right on the line.
“This isn’t a challenge, John. You can look the other way for once. Just don’t see him. Let the boy get over there and find out for himself, and let him get back. Then we’ll ride out of town and there’ll be an end to it.”
He looked at me. “You think it is that easy? Break that rule once – just once – and there’s no more rule. I’d be in a shooting every night in the week all during the season. If one man can go over, why can’t they all?”
We sat there knowing our talk was over and we’d gotten nowhere, yet we were reluctant to get up and walk away, because we both knew that when we did the bars were down and trouble was smoking.
“John, I’m asking you. Look the other way.”
“I can’t. And if I could, McDonald wouldn’t. Believe me, Conn, there’s no give to the man. He’s like iron.”
My mouth was dry and my hands felt awkward and empty on the table before me. The whiskey was there, but I’d no wish for it. Liquor never solved any problem, nor did it make a problem more simple.
“John, if the kid goes north of the street -”
He looked at me. Those cold eyes colder still. “If he goes north of the street … what?”
“I’ll back him, John.”
For a long minute we looked across the table at each other, and each knew what the moment meant. John Blake was a trail-town marshal whose reputation depended on fearlessness. He was a good man with a gun, but a man who used one sparingly. He never threatened, never swaggered, never laid a hand on a gun unless to draw it, and never drew unless to shoot. And he never shot unless to kill.
And in the course of fifteen years as a shotgun guard on Wells-Fargo stages and marshal of cow towns, John Blake had killed eleven men. None of them had been drunks or reputation-seeking youngsters. There were other ways of handling them.
As for myself, John Blake knew enough about me to understand what the decision might mean. There had been a time – although I had never asked for such a reputation – when it was said that I was a faster man than Wes Hardin, and the most dangerous man alive.
“I shall regret that,” he said simply, and I knew the man well enough to know he meant it.
“Tom Lundy is the son I’d like to have had,” I said, “although I’m scarcely old enough to be his father.”
He nodded, acknowledging that it was high praise. After a minute he said, “Can you keep your boys out of it, Conn? I’ve heard talk of men treeing a western town, but you know and I know that it never happened. It never could happen in a town where seventy per cent of the town’s citizens are war veterans, and ninety per cent have fought Indians.
“Aaron McDonald now – don’t underrate the man. He’s a cold fish, but he’s got nerve, and if he thought I’d need it he would back me with fifty rifles, every man-jack of them a dead shot.”
He looked at me. “You’ve fifteen men, I think.”
He was right, of course. If the boys insisted upon backing Tom there would be a slaughter. The town would suffer, but our boys would be shot to doll rags.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
The bartender watched me leave, and I could see the worry on the man’s face. He had a family here, and when shooting started there was no telling who might get hurt.
Out on the street, I stood for a minute in the sunlight. There was only one thing to it, of course. I’d have to pull the crew out of town. We’d have to move the herd.
Kate was at the hotel when I walked in, and I knew she had heard something. We went to a quiet corner of the big, almost empty lobby and sat down.
“What did he say?”
“No give to him, Kate, but I see his point. He doesn’t dare open the door even a crack.” And then I told her what John Blake had said about Linda McDonald. “It doesn’t make sense to me, Kate. Why would a girl do a thing like that?”
Kate was silent, and I waited; for Kate, despite all her surface hardness, was an understanding woman with a lot of savvy where people were concerned.
“She may hate men … and she may love her father.”
“I don’t get you.”
“Sometimes, often without knowing it, a girl measures all men by her father. She may enjoy seeing him run them off, and to her it may be a way of continually proving her father’s superiority.”
“Kate, how do we stand with Hardeman?”
“He’s offered twenty-two dollars a head, but I think he’ll go to twenty-five.”
“Take it, Kate. Let’s get out of here.” She looked at me quickly. “Is it that bad?”
“I’ve told him I’d back Tom. That means that if Tom goes the other side of the street, I’ll be going with him.”
“And you’d fight Blake?”
“It may come to that.”
She got to her feet. “I’ll see Hardeman.” She turned to go, then stopped. “Tom will listen to you, Conn. See him. Tell him how foolish this all is.”
“All right.”
As I walked along the street I realized how serious it had become. It was much more than a boy going uptown to see a girl, for there was bad blood remaining from the War Between the States. Nine of my boys had fought in the Confederate Army, and most of the others had relatives who had. All of them but one were from Texas. One man … and myself.
In a sense, it seemed that I was from Texas, too, for my parents were buried there, and it had been my home longer than anywhere else.
Along the street, in the saloons, the gambling houses, and the stores, and at the livery stable, were men who had fought with the Union, or had been, as I knew McDonald had been, rabid abolitionists. John Blake himself had been a scout for the Union Army.
The Texas trail drivers were, for the most part, uninterested in what lay north of the street. In each trail town there was such a division, and it received unspoken acceptance. The cowhands came to town to have a wild time, and a wild time belonged in the saloons and the houses of the Line. Each man understood that, and regarded it as no slight to be kept south of the street.
John Blake’s rule was a reasonable one, and nobody but an occasional belligerent drunk felt called upon to question it. The case of Tom Lundy was something quite different.
Tom was the younger brother of the boss, but he was also the younger brother of every man on the outfit, even those close to his own age. He was a gentleman, and had always conducted himself as one. He rode the wildest of bucking horses, he was a top hand with a rope, he worked right along with the hands and drew the same wages, and while filled with a reckless, devil-take-the-hindmost attitude when in the saddle, he was always a gentleman. He didn’t drink, and no man in the outfit would have offered him a drink.