“Twenty bucks a head and no questions asked, Ben.”
Ben Hollister glanced at five blood horses he and his bunch had just driven into Peyote. “All right, Bart.”
“Don’t be six kinds of a fool, Ben!” put in dust-coated Billy Hollister at his brother’s side. “Those horses are worth forty-fifty iron men a head if they’re worth a cent.”
“To a legitimate dealer maybe they are, kid,” said shifty-eyed Bart Hudson, who was about as far from being a legitimate dealer as one could get. “But not to me they ain’t.”
Billy Hollister’s face tightened in the moon shadow of his hat. “You know somethin’, Hudson,” he said thinly, “we might be thieves, but we ain’t in the same class as you.”
Bart Hudson, Peyote’s leading dealer in stolen stock, turned red. He thrust a handful of greenbacks at Ben Hollister and snapped, “You want to deal or don’t you, Ben?”
Ben Hollister gave a frosty smile. “You’re not talking politely, Bart.”
Hudson paled. The crooked dealer was a big man in Peyote, clearing station for the county’s stolen stock on the border, thirty miles east of Sundown Valley. He was as hard as pig iron, but Ben Hollister’s words had just reminded him who it was he was dealing with.
“Sorry, Ben.”
“Forget it, Bart.”
“We got a deal?”
“We’ve got a deal.”
As the money changed hands, Billy Hollister spat out a dirty word and spun on his heel before storming across the street towards the lights of the Shotgun Saloon. Ben watched his brother’s departing figure for a moment, then he turned and nodded to Groot and Arnie McQuade who stood by their horses nearby. The two outlaws immediately headed for the saloon in Billy’s wake; it always paid to keep a close watch on Billy when he got into one of his moods.
As far as saloons went, Peyote’s Shotgun didn’t go far. It was a converted barn that still smelled strongly of horses.
There was a long, unplaned bar and three rickety tables. The only illumination was provided by two fly-speckled bull’s-eye lanterns hanging on fencing wire from the sagging ceiling. There were about a dozen men drinking at the bar and every one of them turned with a respectful greeting as Ben Hollister came in knocking trail dust from his rig with his hat. They were all thieves or fugitives of one stripe or another, but there wasn’t one who didn’t feel his day was made if Ben Hollister gave him a casual nod. A reporter who’d interviewed Ben Hollister in Texas several years ago had written that it was practically impossible to meet the man in person and not like him, regardless of what he was reputed to be. The perceptive newspaperman would have seen his statement substantiated had he been there tonight to witness the respect that flowed out to Hollister from these hard cases.
Pausing here and there for a word with an acquaintance, Hollister finally made his way to the table where his companions sat around a bottle. Groot pulled out a chair for him and Arnie McQuade poured him a drink, but all his brother could manage was a bitter, “Twenty dollars a head! Judas!”
“Let it lie, Billy,” Ben said wearily, lifting his glass. “Luck.”
“Luck,” Billy grunted, lifting his glass but not drinking. He looked reprovingly at his brother for a while, then he said, “Ben, I know I’m supposed to be just a dumb kid, but don’t you reckon it’s time you told me why we had to pass up that strongbox at Shafter’s? I mean, if we’d got our hands on that, we wouldn’t have had to flog ourselves silly gettin’ them horses and we wouldn’t have got ourselves gypped by Hudson, would we?”
Ben Hollister’s patience with his young brother was practically unlimited as Groot and McQuade knew only too well, but the two outlaws detected the sharpness in Ben’s voice as he replied:
“Billy, we all have our faults, I know, but your big fault is that sometimes you talk a blamed sight too much. Now look. We’ve got money in our pockets and there’s whisky and women around, so why can’t you just relax and enjoy yourself?”
But Billy Hollister wasn’t in a mood for relaxing. Each time he’d raised the subject of what had happened at Shafter’s way-station, his brother had changed the subject. Billy didn’t intend to be fobbed off any longer.
Pushing his glass away from him with an angry gesture, he said, “Look, Ben, I reckon you owe us an explanation. Okay, so that Benedict dude was an old pard of yours. So why couldn’t we have gone ahead with the job as planned? We weren’t robbin’ him, were we?”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it, Billy.”
“Why not?” Billy insisted. “What’s so special about this Benedict character anyway?”
Something cold touched Ben Hollister’s face at that. He looked down at his brown hands lying on the rough tabletop and said quietly and deliberately, “Be quiet, Billy. I won’t tell you again.”
Billy looked around angrily at the other three then banged his hand on the table. “The hell with that hogswill, Ben! I want to know what makes that skunk so special!”
Ben Hollister lifted his eyes. “What’s so special about him, Billy?” he said softly. “He’s a man I call friend. And you will keep your tongue off him, hear?”
Drinkers turned curiously as Billy Hollister leaped to his feet, knocking back a chair. The boy glared down at his brother for a handful of tense seconds, eyes bright with the crazy anger that his companions of the owlhoot knew only too well. Then, his mouth twisted into an ugly grimace, he snatched up his hat and stormed out.
As the batwings flapped to silence behind Billy, big Arnie McQuade made to get to his feet. “Want me to go keep an eye on him, Ben?”
“No, let him be,” Ben Hollister replied, picking up his glass. “I can’t have you boys playing nursemaid to him all the time.” Then, tasting his whisky, he added, “He’ll get over it. He always does.”
It was quiet at the table after that, Billy’s outburst having put something of a dampener on things. After a while, Arnie McQuade went to another table to play a little faro, leaving Hollister and Groot alone.
Groot, a leathery old veteran of the owlhoot trails who’d known Ben Hollister on and off for about twenty years, studied his leader in silence for a minute as they worked slowly on the whisky. Then he said quietly:
“You want to talk about Shafter’s, Ben? I mean now Billy and the others ain’t around?”
“Maybe,” Hollister said with a shrug. Then, meeting the old man’s eyes, he continued, “I guess you do have an explanation coming, Groot—all of you.” He sucked deep on the cigarette and let smoke trickle out of his nose. “The simple fact of the matter is, old-timer, that I was ashamed.”
Groot’s grizzled gray brows came down in a perplexed frown. “Ashamed, Ben? What the hell of?”
Hollister sighed. “Ashamed to meet Duke Benedict after all those years in that situation. You see, in the old days when I met Duke in Kansas City, I was something different from what I am now. I wore silk shirts and there wasn’t a town I couldn’t ride into. I was a gunfighter, as you know, but there was no outlaw tag on me. Somehow, bumping into Duke Benedict that way, I realized just how much I’d changed in those years. I found myself seeing myself as he would have had to see me; a bad man with patches in his trousers, sunk to holding up stagecoaches.” He pulled deeply on the cigarette again, then met the other’s eyes. “You understand now, Groot? You understand why I couldn’t take that strongbox? All I wanted was to get away from there.”
After a thoughtful space of time, old Groot said slowly, “Well, maybe I understand a little, Ben, though I can’t say as how I agree all the way with what you’ve said. Okay, so you’re an outlaw on account of that’s what they made you. But what’s Benedict that he should make you feel ashamed? What is he, Ben?”
“Why, I guess he’s a gambler, a gunfighter—and from what he told me at the way-station, a man-hunter now.”
“Well, I’ll say one thing for him—he’s one hell of a hand with a gun. I been knockin’ about with you on and off for the best part of twenty years, Ben, and that’s the closest I ever seen you come to gettin’ outdrawn.”
Ben Hollister laughed softly. “Well, he should be good, Sam, seeing as how I taught him.”
“You’ve taught a lot of fellers gunplay, but I ain’t seen none of ’em come within a hoot and a holler of that pilgrim.”
Ben Hollister nodded his dark head in agreement and fell silent again, his eyes taking on that faraway look that was becoming more and more familiar to his companions of late. Hollister was aware of the change that had been coming over himself and he wasn’t much surprised when, after several minutes’ silence, old Groot said:
“What’s troubling you these days, Ben? You’re not yourself.”
“Well, I’m forty years of age, Groot. Perhaps that’s it.”
“And I’m over sixty and it seems to me I got more taste for life these days than you have.” Groot was the only member of the bunch who could talk so easily and freely to Ben Hollister. He leaned across the table and his old face was intent. “No, it’s not how old you are, Ben. I know what’s wrong with you, and you just put your finger on it yourself a while back. It’s the life that’s getting you down. You were never born to ride the owlhoot and it’s playin’ you out. Now come on, Ben own up to it. That’s what’s botherin’ you, ain’t it?”
“You always were a little too sharp for a beat-up old cow-lifter, Groot.”
“Then I’m right, ain’t I?”
“Could be. I’m not sure I want to talk about it.”
“But I do. I don’t want to sit back and watch you drawin’ into yourself and changin’ into somebody different. Pack it in, Ben. Quit the Territory and ride. Gosh, man, you got a million miles to lose yourself in out here. You could go any place, do anythin’. Why don’t you, Ben? Why don’t you make up your mind to do it?”
Ben Hollister said softly, “You know why, Groot. You’ve always known why.”
“Billy?”
“Billy.”
“Look, Ben, it’s time that—”
“Why don’t you go join the faro game, Groot? I’m lousy company tonight and I know it.”
Groot was being dismissed and knew it. He got up and with a heavy sigh made his way across to the faro layout, leaving Ben Hollister alone with his thoughts.
They were thoughts of better days. And as the noises and smells and sounds of Peyote’s Shotgun Saloon dimmed, Ben Hollister was walking the streets of Kansas City with a youthful Duke Benedict at his side. They were like two young gods, indestructible in their youth and with a gift of gun speed that set them apart and above ordinary men. He was remembering every glass of whisky, every lovely girl, every memorable night. He could feel the silk next to his skin and see the high shine on his forty-dollar boots as he crossed them on a poker table while the awed and the impressed, the envious and celebrity-conscious flocked around to hear him tell about Indian wars and gunfights and gunfighters ...
Sadness and pleasure worked in him until he was brought back to the present by the sound of a familiar voice.
“Ben.”
Hollister blinked and glanced up to see Billy standing before the table. When Billy had quit the saloon, his good-looking face had been twisted into an ugly mask of anger. Now, looking down at Ben with a hesitant, shame-faced grin, he looked exactly what he was, a nineteen-year-old boy who’d stepped out of line.
“What is it, Billy?”
“I’m sorry, Ben.” Billy spread his hands. “I don’t know why I run off at the mouth like that. But I reckon the next time I do it you oughta give me a good boot in the backside for that’s surely what I need.”
Warmth flowed through Ben Hollister and a slow smile worked across his lips. “Glad you were man enough to come back, Billy,” he said, getting to his feet. Then, going around the table he put an arm around his brother’s shoulder and looked about the saloon as if seeing it clearly for the first time. “Damn!” he said, causing heads to turn. “What’s wrong with this place tonight? Where’s the music?” He clapped his hands and called across to the barkeeper. “Hey, Carlo, go tell Maria to put on her dancing skirt and get herself out here pronto. And Sam, go fetch your guitar. Robbie, we’re going to need your mouth organ.”
“Hey, now you’re really talkin’, Ben, boy,” Billy laughed, tossing his hat at the ceiling, then executing an intricate little dance step on his high-heeled boots. “Let’s lift the goddamn roof instead of sittin’ around mopin’ and chewin’ at one another.”
“Took the words right out of my mouth, Billy.” Ben laughed as he turned to the faro layout. “Come on, Arnie, Groot and the rest of you! We might all be dead tomorrow so let’s howl at the moon tonight!”