“Been expectin’ you,” he said. He went behind the barred window that did duty for a post office and took several letters from an open box.
The man who now intended to be known as Jim Flint merely glanced at them and thrust them into an inside pocket of his coat. He looked around, then indicated some saddlebags. “I’ll take those, and I can use a couple of burlap bags, if you have them.”
“Reckon I do.” Sulphur Tom took down the saddlebags from their hook and from under a counter he extracted several burlap bags. His eyes strayed to the mare outside. “Unusual brand,” he commented.
Cold eyes measured him. “Is it?”
Mentally, Sulphur Tom backed up. Whatever he was about to say went unsaid. His mouth was dry and something inside him felt queasy. There was something about the big man’s expression that he didn’t like . . . he didn’t like it at all.
Sulphur Tom indicated a box on the floor. “There she is,” he said, “but you’ll pay hell packin’ it on a horse.”
Stooping, Jim Flint lifted the box easily and swung it to his hipbone. Then he walked outside and, taking the bridle reins, he led the horse across the street to the corral. Around the corner and out of sight of the corral he broke open the box and transferred its contents to the saddlebags and the burlap sacks. Loading them on the horse he walked back across the street and stopped again at the station.
He put an order on the counter and pushed it toward Sulphur Tom. “Fill that,” he said, and, turning, he walked to the door.
The two men squatting against the wall were talking idly. “Folks say it’s him, all right. Man! I never expected to see nobody like him out here! Why, Buckdun is a known man! He’s famous as Wild Bill or Clay Allison, or any of them. There’s some say he’s killed more men than all of them put together!”
“Shot ’em in the back,” the other said contemptuously.
“So he shot from ambush — he killed ’em, didn’t he?” He paused. “I wonder who he’s to kill out here?”
Flint walked back to the counter where Sulphur Tom was piling the supplies. “I’ll eat a can of those peaches here,” he said, and opened a can and began to spear them with his knife blade.
When the mail and the box had arrived for Jim Flint, Sulphur Tom had been excited. He had never known Flint, but Sulphur Tom had had a friend who sometimes kept mail for the gunfighter and received money from him. It had been a good thing, and Sulphur Tom thought he might do the same.
More than the money he wanted the association. Like many another man before him he liked the connection with a big-name man, and liked to have secret information. He was not a talker, but it pleased him to know what others did not.
At first glance he felt a sharp sense of disappointment. This man was too young, and there was a pale shade beneath the sunburn that told of a face long sheltered. Then he remembered how it was that a man might be kept from the sun for years.
Prison.
This man could not be the Flint. He was too young. What had Flint’s first name been? He could not recall that he ever heard of him as anything but Flint.
How old had he been?
Come to think of it, he did not know. He had never seen Flint, but he had always surmised him to be a man in his thirties or forties, and that had been a long time ago. He stole another look at the man eating the peaches.
It could be. It just could be.
“A handy man,” he said aloud, “might make himself some money hereabouts. There’s trouble breeding.”
As no reply was forthcoming, he added, “Knowed of a man who favored that Six-Shooter brand — but that was long ago.”
“Old things are best forgotten.” Flint got down from the counter where he had been seated while eating the peaches and went out to the water trough to rinse off his hands. He dried them on his jeans, glancing up the trail as he did so.
Riders were coming. Four of them.
He went back into the store, suddenly irritable at being found here by strangers. The last thing he wanted was to arouse curiosity. The fewer people who knew of his presence the better.
He looked around the store. New York seemed far, far away. The man who had been James T. Kettleman seemed a total stranger. Already he was thinking of himself as Jim Flint.
He looked at himself in a fly-specked mirror, and saw nothing there that looked like death, yet he knew that death was looking back at him. It was unbelievable that a man who had always been so strong could die so simply, yet it was happening.
Despite this thing inside him that was slowly eating away his life, he had always been a man who lived with his muscles as much as with his brain. He had never been ill.
From the day he arrived in New York he had continued his activity, going every day to the gymnasium. He had boxed, wrestled, played handball. And in that second year in New York, before he had begun to win some reputation in the business world, he had fought several times in the prize ring. It had helped to build the capital that finally won success.
He had fought Jack Rooke, an English fighter, meeting Mm at Bull’s Ferry in New Jersey, and whipping him in six minutes with the bare knuckles. He had the Englishman down five times before the end.
A month later he fought ninety-five rounds with Hen Winkle, before the crowd broke down the ropes to save their favorite, Winkle, from a knockout. The fight lasted over two hours.
Two months later, for a thousand-dollar side-bet, he defeated Butt Reilly, knocking him out after one hour of fighting.
He fought four times during the following year, his last bout being at Fox’s American Theatre in Philadelphia, where he won from John Dwyer in nineteen minutes.
After that there was no more time for fighting, for his business was developing rapidly. But he had continued to workout in the gymnasiums, to box occasionally with Mike Donovan or Dominick McCafferty, to wrestle a little, and play handball. There had been no hint of this thing that lay within him.
The door swung open and the four riders came in. Flint glanced at them briefly and saw trouble. The first two were swaggering youngsters with uncut hair and dirty range clothes, just out of their teens. One of the two older men was a Mexican, the other a tough competent-looking man dressed simply, neatly.
“Hey!” one of the younger men yelled at Sulphur Tom. “Give us a drink!”
“Soon’s I finish this order,” Tom replied shortly. The young man came down the bar, hunting trouble.
“Look, old man,” he said, “I reckon you didn’t hear me. I said I wanted a drink. And I want it now.”
Something seemed to rise inside of Jim Flint. Was it bitterness that this tough youngster was going to live when he knew he was going to die? Or was it that old love of battle? For nothing else was left to him now. Or was it that he hoped and wanted to be killed? “He’s waiting on me,” Flint said roughly. “You take your turn.”
The young man turned like a cat. “Why, you — !” The sentence was never completed. Jim Flint, far from the marts of capital and bonds, struck viciously. The young man had started to move in, and the punch caught him flush on his completely unprotected chin.
He hit the floor on his face, as if struck with a mallet.
Jim Flint looked across the fallen man at the three who were with him. “He was hunting trouble. He found it. There’s more if you want to buy.”
The other youngster started to speak, but the older, neatly dressed man interrupted. “You’re quick,” he said, “and you hit hard. How are you with a gun?”
Flint looked across the room and said coolly, “As you see, I am wearing one. If you wish to know how good I am with it, you will have to pay to learn.” There had been no move from the man on the floor.
The rider who had asked his question had his answer.
So he looked down at the fallen man. “Is he dead?”
“I doubt it.” Over his shoulder, Flint said to Sulphur Tom, “Get their drinks. I’ll buy.” The Mexican walked over and turned the boy over with his boot toe. The youngster blinked, and started to sit up, then sank back with a groan.
“Better take his gun,” Sulphur Tom suggested. “He’ll be sore as a stepped-on snake.”