Chapter Two

It was near evening with a long red gash across the underbelly of heaven when a graying man atop a steeldust gelding came down through Lincoln’s roadway dust, turned in at the livery barn, and stepped down. This man, too, was a stranger in town. He stood there holding his reins, gazing down the roadway with a thoughtful, almost cynical, expression. And when Derby Hat came out to take the steeldust, this one said: “Where’s a good place to eat?”

Derby Hat pointed across the road without saying a word. In fact, although he was asked several other questions, he never once unlocked his lips. He’d nod or he’d point, or he’d shake his head, but he would not be drawn into a conversation, and that graying, stockily built, travel-stained stranger looked wonderingly at him, before he walked away, heading for the café.

Lincoln was beginning to come to life now. Riders loped in from the backcountry; townsmen, finished with their days’ labors, sought relaxation at the card tables and bars. It was a different town from what it had been much earlier when that first stranger had ridden in, gotten his horse reshod, and had ridden out again. It was cooler, too, not only in town but out upon the range.

That graying man sat at the counter and thoughtfully ate his supper. Beside him, freshly scrubbed but still smelling of horse, black iron, and forge smoke, was the squat, mighty man from the smithy across the road. As he reached over in front of the graying man for one of the forks stuck tines-up in a water glass, he mumbled an apology for reaching.

The graying man nodded and said: “Almost too hot to eat.”

The blacksmith considered this a moment, then made a little wry smile. “One of them situations where you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” he said.

The graying man also smiled a little. He was finished now, all but his coffee that he held up in both hands. “Funny thing about the heat,” he murmured casually. “I got a habit of carrying peppermint with me when I make one of these midsummer rides. It makes me feel downright cool, and yet, by golly, it’s all in my head. I sweat just as much and suffer just as much, actually, only sucking on that peppermint makes me think otherwise.”

The blacksmith listened to this and chuckled. “A man’s got to outwit himself sometimes,” he said. “Today I was shoein’ a long-legged bay horse for a feller … new shoes all around … and I’d taken a drink of water just before I went to work. The more I sweated, the more I had to drink.”

“Yeah. I know how that is.”

“Well, sort of like your peppermint, I went over, upended the bucket over my shoulders, went back, and worked right on through until I was finished, and, as long as that water … and my sweat … were dryin’ on me, I wasn’t thirsty.”

The graying man gently nodded, sipped his coffee, and swung to put a studious gaze upon George the blacksmith. “It’s the impressions things make,” he murmured. “Now, a few minutes ago I rode in over at the livery barn. There was a sort of flabby feller over there wearing a derby hat. He didn’t say a word. I asked where I could eat and he pointed over here. I asked him where the rooming house was, and he pointed again. I know blamed well he wasn’t a mute and I also know I didn’t say anything to make him sulk at me. But my impression was that he was either without the means for talking or was upset about something and couldn’t shake it off long enough to be civil.”

George brought up some coins, counted them meticulously, and placed several of them upon the counter beside his emptied plate. He screwed up his forehead, looked around at the graying stranger as a man might look who’d discovered that what had started out as a light, very casual exchange between strangers had suddenly become not so light and casual.

“That feller you’re talkin’ about got quite a shock this afternoon,” he said, stood up, nodded, and walked on out of the café.

There were other men in the café. It appeared to be a place where the single merchants of Lincoln congregated at mealtimes. There were also several cowboys. The graying man sipped and gazed quietly around. His eyes never obtrusively lingered but neither did they skip over a single face; he seemed to have that developed sense of observation some men had that enabled him to see things closely without seeming to.

He was about average height, perhaps even an inch or two below average height. His age could have been anywhere from thirty to forty-four or forty-five, for, although his hair was gray at the temples, giving him an unmistakable appearance of seasoned good age, his face had scarcely a line on it, except around the eyes; there, the lines were small, criss-crossing crow’s feet. They had come there not altogether from habitual squinting in a raw, sun-blasted land. They were the lines caused by shrewd calculation, shrewd observation, and thoughtfulness.

This was U.S. Marshal John Trent, a man whose almost nondescript, very average appearance had enabled him to build a reputation around his name that was almost a legend, because until he introduced himself, which Trent did not often do, people had visions of this notorious lawman as being nearly ten feet tall, as implacable as death itself, and as deadly as a whole troop of cavalry.

He finished his coffee, tossed down payment, and walked out into the fading evening. There was a rising breath of air coming fragrantly from the punished roadway; here and there wooden store fronts popped as the wood cooled after daytime’s furious heat.

There was a solemn blandness to this night, a kind of melancholy resignation that accompanied the faint scent of greasewood, sage, cured grass. This was the half-light, half-dark hour of total loneliness for strangers, when being far from home brought up in them all the quiet memories.

Trent made a cigarette out front of the café, lit it, and saw that powerful blacksmith walking along toward the northward saloon with elk antlers bolted overhead. He watched and he speculated. Trent was a man who knew men. That blacksmith had been some part of whatever had happened here today involving the liveryman. It was one of the idiosyncrasies of this sparse, hard life that men were wise in the ways of keeping their own counsel where the law and what it stood for was not always available to give protection.

Trent smoked on. He was tired and he was dehydrated. He knew where Lincoln’s rooming house was—a bed with a genuine set of springs under it could seem more desirable than a handsome woman to a man in his condition. But Trent had a feeling. It wasn’t anything he could pin down or even define, yet it was a solid premonition in the dark places of his mind. He’d felt it before, near the end of a trail.

He dropped the smoke, stepped on it, turned, and walked north toward that same saloon the blacksmith had entered. As a hound dog picks up his wanted scent, so did John Trent obey the proddings of that feeling he had.

The Antlers Saloon was one out of many just like it. There was one large, barn-like room with an iron stove in a far corner, with tables and chairs scattered back along the walls, and with a worn-smooth old bar running along the far wall with shelves and pictures behind it. There were also the typical patrons—cowboys, merchants from the town itself, freighters, stage men, a few traveling men, here and there old-timers whose world, once large and violent and colorful, was now shrunk to the size of these four rough walls where they idled away their sundown years in a good, masculine atmosphere, picking up a free drink now and then, and living for little else.

Generally the customers knew one another. There was a little joking back and forth, a little careless comradeship, and occasionally the quick flash of a spun coin to see which of two men would stand the drinks.

Trent blended into this tobacco-hazed atmosphere as easily as a lizard on a rock. His expression was easy, near to smiling, his dusty attire and tied-down .45 were nondescript. Only Trent’s eyes held a veiled but sharper look until he spotted the blacksmith, then they became as good naturedly indifferent as all the other eyes in that restless room.

He eased in beside George and called for a beer. He stood there, one spurred boot draped across the brass rail underfoot, quietly sipping.

George was having a straight shot of rye whiskey. He turned, recognized the graying man, nodded, and got a carefully smoothed-out expression upon his scarred countenance.

Trent understood. He put down the beer glass, half twisted from the middle, and said: “You know what we could do, friend? We could play this game for half the night, me askin’, you duckin’ around the questions.” Trent beckoned to the barman, pointed to their glasses, and said to George: “But you put in a hard day. So did I.” He leaned over the bar, waited out the barman, then lifted his replenished glass and gazed into its bubbly amberness. “Which way did he ride out?”

George hadn’t touched his whiskey glass. He swung his head though, and he said: “Who?”

“The feller who had his horse fresh shod with new shoes all around, friend.”

“All I told you …”

“Was that you’d shod a feller’s leggy bay horse all around, friend,” interrupted Trent. He sipped, looked through the upheld glass again, and said: “I could describe those shoes to you … the ones you pulled off. One had the outside calk worn smooth, another was split at the toe. Friend, I’ve been trailing the horse that wore those shoes too long, too far. I’ve had a hard day, too.”

“How do you know it’s the same man, mister?”

Trent put the glass down and looked squarely at George. “How many leggy bay horses have you shod today that were being ridden by strangers?”

George didn’t answer. He took up his shot glass, balanced it, tipped his head, and downed the fiery liquor. After that he rapidly blinked for a moment before he said: “South. He rode south.”

“What happened with the liveryman, friend?”

George blew out raw breath. That whiskey had been very green. “He was talkin’ about gettin’ the drop on some of these drifters that come down here on their way over the line into Mexico. He’s talked like that before … only this time that feller who owned the leggy bay horse had walked up without either of us hearin’ him, and was standin’ in the shadows of my shop, listenin’.”

Trent smiled. His eyes came to a gradual twinkle. He suddenly laughed. He could imagine it all now, and it struck him funny, particularly since he’d seen that derby-hatted liveryman who was anything but a brave man.

The blacksmith didn’t laugh; he didn’t even smile. But he looked understandingly at Trent. “That feller figured on stayin’ in town until that happened. After that, he sat there until I finished, paid me, went back after his saddle, and rode on out … southward.”

Trent shook his head at the barman’s inquiring look. He faced George again with the hum of voices all around them, with the tobacco smoke growing steadily thicker as the evening turned to solid night outside. “Your friend,” he said evenly, “is a fool. One of these days he’ll get killed.” Then Trent walked on out of the saloon.

There was a rash of opaque stars overhead now, and a lop-sided old moon was serenely floating across the great vault of heaven. A scratch of light blazed briefly across infinity where a falling star turned to cinder and rained earthward in fragments.

Trent looked over where the rooming house stood. He also considered the livery barn where a pair of lamps burned inside, hanging from rafters to light the runway. Warfield hadn’t eaten or rested. Neither had his horse. Neither had Trent rested—but he’d eaten and his horse had both eaten and rested. It wasn’t much of an edge, but sometimes this was all it took.

If you pushed them hard enough, sooner or later you gained an infinitesimal advantage. The trick of pursuit was to know when you had that much of an edge, and how to exploit it.

Trent knew. The horse was the critical thing. A man could suffer a little. He could catnap in the saddle or he could take his belt up an extra notch. But he had to have a strong animal under him.

Well, here in this god-forsaken little cow town it had finally happened. After seven hundred miles—and with about three hundred left to go—Trent had finally gotten an edge. That’s all he’d been waiting for, just enough of an advantage to enable him to overtake Warfield.

“Mister …?”

Trent turned. The thickly made blacksmith was standing there.

“You’re the law, aren’t you?”

Trent nodded. “Yeah, friend, I’m the law.”

“What did he do that you’re after him so hard?”

“He murdered,” said Trent softly, and kept staring at the blacksmith until George turned, stepped down into the roadway, set his shoulders, and walked straight on over toward the livery barn.

Trent somberly watched the blacksmith disappear over where those interior hanging lanterns were. He waited a little longer, then he, too, crossed the roadway.

Now, there was music coming from the saloons; there were off-key masculine voices being raised in discordant singing. Sometimes it didn’t take much to give release to bone-dry gullets and repressed spirits in hot summertime. Sometimes only a couple of beers did it.

Trent walked into the livery barn, saw the blacksmith and liveryman in earnest conversation farther along, and bellowed for his horse. The liveryman started in his boots. He hastened after Trent’s animal, and the blacksmith glanced up, saw Trent, turned, and walked on out through the rear of the barn.

Trent turned to view the little town. A half hour from now Lincoln would be another shadowy place in his memory. He sighed, thinking of that bed with springs under it. When his horse came along, saddled and bridled, Trent scarcely wasted a glance at the liveryman except to say: “What’s the next town, friend, and how far from here is it?”

“Fourteen miles, and it’s called Daggett.”

Trent flipped the liveryman $1 from atop the saddle, reined around, and went riding stolidly southward on out of Lincoln with the night closing instantly around him. He still had an edge.