Gaddis took a gulp of rye whiskey. “Buckdun’s in town,” he commented.
“That means somebody’s going to die.” Dolan relighted his cigar that had gone out. “But you’re wrong. He’s not in town. He rode out before daybreak.”
Gaddis considered the information. It seemed unlikely there was any connection, but Ed Flynn had ridden out before daybreak, too. Ed was bound south for Horse Springs, and nobody would know about that. Yet the more he thought of it, the more he worried. Flynn was a good man — steady. But he was no match for Buckdun, even if Buckdun gave him a chance, which he wouldn’t.
“Odd breed,” Gaddis said. “I never could see dry-gulching a man.”
Red Dolan’s thoughts moved back down the years. “Yes,” he mused, “they are an odd breed. I knew one, a long time ago. To him it was like fighting a war in which he was a soldier. Only I think he changed his mind about it, after awhile.”
“What became of him?”
Dolan brushed the ash from his cigar. “Dropped off the end of the world. I never knew what happened to him — and I would have known.”
“Friend?”
“Folks used to leave word with me sometimes. You know how it is, tending bar.” Dolan paused. “No, I’d not say he was a friend. I don’t believe he ever had a friend — unless it was that kid.”
Pete Gaddis shivered. It was the feeling you had, they said, when somebody stepped on your grave.
“There was a kid came to Abilene once, hunting him,” Dolan went on. “A few months later Flint showed up. I never did see them together, and down at the stable where the kid worked, the boss said they never talked. Only when Flint disappeared, the kid did too.”
Pete Gaddis took out the brown papers and built a cigarette. He had known Dolan several years and they had talked a lot about guns and cows and liquor and boom towns, but they had never said anything about where or who or how. It was a strange thing that never until now had they touched upon anything they had in common.
“A man like that can’t have friends,” Gaddis said. “Even a friend can be trusted so far. I doubt if a man in that business would have many friends.” Gaddis changed the subject. “This Buckdun — did he ride south?”
Dolan looked carefully at his cigar. “I don’t know,” he said. “I made it a point.”
Gaddis downed the last of his whiskey. He drank very little, taking his time with every drink. He took a last drag on the cigarette and dropped it in the sawdust and rubbed it out carefully with his boot toe.
“Bud was in — you know that long, thin galoot who rides for Nugent? He was some liquored up and he was telling us something about a stranger who backed Tom Nugent down.”
“A stranger, you say?”
“Big, dark man who backed his talk with a fancy shotgun. Told Nugent he didn’t like to have his sleep disturbed, and when Nugent ordered him off the land he told him to go to hell.”
Gaddis chuckled. “I’d like to have seen that. Nugent’s a fire-eater.”
“This time he backed right up.”
Pete Gaddis pulled his hatbrim down and walked out of the Divide Saloon into the evening. A stranger. Of course there were a lot of strangers around.
He walked across the street to the restaurant, thinking about that stranger. Tom Nugent’s activities were well known, and, if he had met the stranger, it had been over east, beyond Ceboletta Mesa the night he was chasing down those squatters.
That meant, if the stranger was the man to whom he had talked near the lava beds, that the stranger was working his way west.
But from where he had encountered him, always allowing it was the same man, he must have headed south. Nothing could cross the lava and nobody like him had showed up in Alamitos. And there was nothing to the south until Horse Springs, and the plains where Kaybar cattle grazed.
Suppose more than one gunman had been imported? Suppose this man who was sandy enough to buck Tom Nugent and back him down was a killer imported to kill — whom?
Nancy?
Unlikely. Not many men would kill a woman, and he doubted if a killer could even be hired to do it.
Ed Flynn…
Here he was on surer ground, and the thought worried him. If he only knew where the man had come from. Or if he had a look at him. Bud had seen him.
And if he knew Bud, he would be in town tonight. Bud was a tough hand, but one who liked his bottle.
Flynn was gone, anyway. He had headed for Santa Fe to file those claims.
Pete Gaddis settled down to wait.
It was the third day before Kettleman managed to get the mare to take sugar from his hand, but once she did she allowed him to pet her, and within the hour he had a bridle on her, and then a saddle.
She humped her back a little at the saddle, but not much, and he petted her and talked to her.
The big red stallion did not approve. He blew and shook his mane and pawed earth. He ran up, then ran away. He was furious, but he was also afraid. Undoubtedly he was puzzled, too, for the mare was unexcited and even seemed pleased at what was happening.
He curried the mare, cleaned the burrs from her tail, and cleaned her hoofs. It had been a long time since he had helped shoe a horse but he knew how it was done.
When he got into the saddle the mare did not even buck. She was old, but more important there was a vague memory in her mind of other days when she had been well treated and cared for and there had been grain to eat, and always the sugar. He rode her around the oval, then back to the tunnel.
He was going to ride the mare to Horse Springs, but even as he sat the saddle, he was looking at that big red stallion. He had never seen a more beautiful horse — and the way it moved!
There was a black that looked good, and a big steel-dust, almost as big as the red stallion and perhaps a year or two younger.
The stage station at Horse Springs was a low building with an awning supported by posts sunk in the ground. Wind and weather had battered the unpainted structure, fading the few signs and reducing the color to a nondescript gray.
A half-dozen other buildings had gone up in the vicinity, a couple of which had been abandoned and now stood empty. The main station was occupied by the saloon, post office, and general store operated by Sulphur Tom Whalen.
Sulphur Tom had his name from the dozens of stories he had to tell of his youth on the Sulphur River of northeast Texas and of such gunfighters as Cullen Baker, Bob Lee, and the participants in the Five County feuds.
He was a tall man, his high, thin shoulders stooped and crossed by suspenders over a red flannel undershirt. He rarely shaved, and his sandy walrus mustache was stained by tobacco. For a man with so many stories of gun battles to tell, Sulphur Tom was remarkable for his own skill in avoiding trouble.
His strict neutrality was backed up by a conveniently located shotgun which he had never used so far as anyone knew. Even when raiding Apaches came around he managed to remain neutral by offering them gifts of sugar and tobacco.
As a normal thing three or four loafers squatted on their heels under the awning or, if the weather permitted, alongside the fence of the nearby corral. There, amid much smoking and spitting, they lied about horses they had broken, steers they had branded, and bears they had killed.
Only two of the four were holding down the position outside the door when the man called Kettleman appeared. He came from the west and he was riding an old mare and she was walking.
When the big man in the flat-heeled boots swung down at Horse Springs, eyes went from him to the ancient brand on the mare. The brand was a fair representation of a six-shooter.
He stepped down from the saddle and, without a glance at the waiting men, went inside. Sulphur Tom had been at the door, but he retreated to his bar and waited. The stranger ignored the bar.
“I’m calling for mail,” he said, “mail and a large box.”
Sulphur Tom veiled his eyes. “Name?”
“Jim Flint,” he said quietly.
Sulphur Tom had his head down, washing a glass, and he completed the job before he looked up. He looked straight at the newcomer. Guiltily, he averted his eyes.