I’m not vengeful, but I aim to get it.” Putting on my hat, I added, ‘I’m surely going to have to get it quick, or rustle some work.
I’ve only got a little money left.” ‘How do you figure to get it?” ‘First off, I’m simply going to them and ask for it.” Con made no reply until he had tugged on his boots.
He got up and stamped them into place on his feet.
‘n is about as simple a method as anybody could suggest. And when they refuse, as they surely will, what then?” “I’ll tell everybody in town what happened.” They may say yore just crying. In this country a man fights his own battles.” comally’re surely right, but I’m beginning to find out there’s a whole lot they don’t know. Pa was forever trying to tell me things, but I wouldn’t listen. I thought pa was a stick-in-the-mud, and Doc and the Kid knew more than he did.” Belting on my six-shooter, I took up the Winchester.
‘What I figure is this. I want folks to know where I stand. I want folks to know why I am after those three, and just what they’ve done .
..” “Do you think that will help?” “I just ain’t sure. But if it comes to a shooting affair and I kill one of them, I want folks to know I’m not just a murderer.” He nodded “That’s good thinking. But if you tell that story around, one of them is sure to call you a liar.” “And there’ll be shooting? Is that what you meanr We climbed down the ladder from the loft and studied the layout. Neither of us wanted to be drygulched. “When you tell that story,” Con said, “wear your gun loose. You’ll surely need it.” We started off to get breakfast. ‘Have you ever been in a gun battle?” ‘ationo, sir.” “Then don’t try a fast draw. You’ll get yourself killed.
Take your time, get your gun out, and make the first shot count .
. . you may not get another.” “I’m pretty fast.” Forget it. You’ve no idea whether you’re fast or not, and the only way you’ll find out is against somebody. If you’re wrong, you’re dead.
“Anyway, most of the fast draws I’ve seen ended with the first shot going into the dust right out between the two of them. So take your time, and make your first one good.
If your man goes down, or staggers, continue to shoot. But slowly … and carefully.” After a moment he added, “I’ve seen men kill with half a dozen bullets in them.
Don’t count a man as dead until you’ve seen them fill in his grave.” There seemed to be nobody watching the restaurant.
A good many people were coming and going along the street, and some rigs were tied here and there, or were passing. The street was chewed up and muddy. The clouds had broken and a ray of sunshine was bright on the face of the restaurant.
We crossed the street, pausing once to let a freight wagon pass, drawn by half a dozen bulls. On the boardwalk we stamped the mud from our feet. My eyes happened to go up and I caught a’flicker of movement at a curtained window.
“Somebody up there. First window over the hardware store.” “All right,” Con said, “lees go inside.” The man who had served us the night before was on the job. He was a hard-bitten old man with gnarled hands that looked as if they’d spent years Nwapped around a pick handle.
“I got the Sharps,” he commented. “I don’t take kindly to folks shootin” into my place of business.” “Ought to be a law against it,” I said.
He didn’t wait to take our order. He just brought out a high ,stack of flapjacks and a pitcher of syrup and set them on the table.
“I got eggs and meat if you want them “I’ll stick with flapjacks,” I said. “I got me an eggsand-meat appetite, but a flapjack bankroll.” “Eat up. If a man’s going to get shot coming out of my restaurant I want folks to figure he ate well, anyhow.” We ate. The meat was venison, fresh shot in the mountains. The eggs were fresh laid-sometime or other.
The man was a talker, like many lonely men I’ve known. They herd sheep or cattle, or prospect by themselves, and when they come into town they talk, just to hear the sound of their own voice and somebody answering.
He told us about Leadville. It hadn’t had the name for long, and actually, he said, there was more silver than lead. The town had been Oro City for a while, and before that it was Slabtown. Back around 1860 a man named Abe Lee had done some placer mining in California Gulch.
The town never amounted to much until a prospector took on a partner who told him that reddish sand he’d been throwing out was carbonate of lead, with a silver content so high it scared him.
Business picked up, and the town boomed, Presently the man IggTaught a fresh pot of coffee to the table and sat down with us.
“NV-E’RE ten thousand feet up,” he said, “and she gets awful cold.
Folks around here say we get ten months of winter, and two months mighty late in the fall.” Mountains reared up all around the town, with the trees playing out at timberline. The mountains were scarred with prospect holes; everybody was mining, everybody dreaming about making the big strike.
Those who weren’t actually digging had grub-staked men who were. The idea of getting rich was in the air.
There’d been only a scattering of folks along the creeks at first, but now there was somewhere between thirty and sixty thousand people, depending on who you talked to and how sober he was. The men who were making money spent it; they drank champagne like water. Men who didn’t even care for champagne drank it because a man who had money spent it, and champagne was the mark of riches.
Con told me that a good deal of what passed for champagne was made sters running around picking up the empty bottles and refilling them.
One Irish laborer struck it rich and went down the street buying suits for everybody he knew.
He didn’t know me and I was kind of slow getting acquainted. By the time I could call him by name his pocket had played out and he was putting the bum on me for a meal. My luck ran that way … and well out in front of me.
I wasn’t likely to be one of the nabobs who ate at the Tontine. I was lucky to get a plate of oxtail soup at Smoothey’s, which sold for five cents and was in my class of income.
Con and me, huntinv them, ran into Doc Sites and Kid Reese at the Bon Ton. We were pushing through the crowd and came face to face with them.
“Hello, Kid,” I said. ‘allyou and Doc getting ready to return my money?” Several people stopped to listen, smelling excitement, and the Kid’s face kind of thinned down. He threw a quick look at Doc, but Doc was looking at me.
“What’re you talkin” about?” the Kid blustered.
“You took PA’S horse with our money on it, and money that belonged to a lot of poor folks down in Texas. You knew that horse was ours.
I’d loaned it to you a time or two.” The Kid started to push by, because more people were stopping to listen. “That ain’t so!” he said roughly.
Then I opened my big mouth and said the one thing I shouldn’t have, “You callin , me a liar, Kid?” y more. ere All of a sudden we were in the crowded an There was space all around us.
The Kid stood stock-still, his face white and stiff, and Doc was off to one side, as if he had no part in it.
I’d had no idea of throwing a challenge at him like that. It just sort of came out.
“I ain’t called you nothin”,” he said, and shoved by me.
I let him go.
Doc started to leave too. “Doc,” I said, “I want my money. You and the Yid bring it to the jolly Cork eatin’ house, and have it there by noontime.” Doc never said a word. He just pushed by and went out, and folks started talking again. One man offered to buy us a drink. comWhat was that all about?” he asked.
So I told him.
“He may come a-shootin,” he said when I’d finished.
“Yes, sir. I reckoned on that, but I can’t see my way clear to getting’ my money unless I carry trouble to them.” The man thrust out a hand. “I’m Bill Bush.
I like the way you stand, so if you need a friend, call on me.” “Yes, sir. If you know where a man could get a few days of work, I’d be obliged. Chasing these men has run me short.” Con Judy stepped up then, and Bush saw him for the first time.