As he served McLendon his breakfast of coffee and biscuits on Wednesday morning, Major Mulkins said, “I hope that you’re finding your stay in our community to be acceptable.”
“The Owaysis was diverting,” McLendon said. “Crazy George Mitchell is worthy of the name. But I still look forward to boarding the stage back to Florence. My first act on arrival will be seeking out a laundry. Every item of my clothing is soiled from travel and constant heat.”
“Florence is the bigger place, but we’re not without our own conveniences,” Mulkins said. “A laundry operates behind this hotel, on the fringes of the prospectors’ tents. If you take your dirty clothes there after you finish your breakfast, they’ll likely be returned clean and fresh-smelling to you around dinnertime. It’s a Chink laundry, to be sure, but I think you’ll discover that the pigtailed race has a knack for efficient service.”
After eating, McLendon rolled most of his clothing into a loose bundle. He located the adobe laundry just where Mulkins said. He went inside and found it difficult to breathe in the ferocious heat. Water boiled in a huge kettle over a fire. Two large tin tubs stood against the back wall. An elderly Chinese woman bent over one of them, wringing out a pair of overalls. She carefully hung the overalls on a line stretched along a side wall; they dangled there alongside several other pairs as well as a number of dripping shirts and drawers and a few dresses. McLendon thought he recognized the daring frock worn the day before by Ella in the Owaysis.
The elderly woman noticed McLendon and held out her hands for his bundled clothing. She picked through, separating drawers and shirts and pants, and said, “Two dolla.”
Two dollars seemed steep to McLendon, but he needed clean clothes. “All right,” he said. “When will my laundry be ready?”
She frowned and repeated, “Two dolla.”
“I understand the cost. I’m trying to determine when I’ll get the cleaned clothes back. Major Mulkins mentioned one-day service.”
“Two dolla.”
A younger Chinese woman came in, hauling two sloshing buckets. She said to McLendon, “My mother wants you to give her two dollars now. She requires payment in advance because too many people have cheated her, taking their laundered clothes and then refusing to pay.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” McLendon said.
“I’m sure, but Mother still wants the money now.” She watched as McLendon handed over two dollars, then gestured to several piles of clothing stacked near the washtubs. “There are some things to be laundered ahead of yours, but if you come by around late afternoon your clothes should be ready. Washing dries quickly in this hot climate. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’ll get back to work.”
The morning stretched ahead for McLendon. He thought it was too early to go into the saloon. Instead he wandered to the farrier’s shop, where he watched as Charlie Rogers mended a cracked pickax head for a waiting prospector. Rogers used tongs to place a strip of heat-softened metal over the crack, tapped it firmly into place with a hammer, and then plunged the ax head into a bucket of water to cool.
“There you are,” he said to the prospector. “It’ll be three bits. Shall I put it on your tab?” The prospector, dark eyes glittering on either side of a hooked nose, nodded, took the tool, and left the shop without saying a word.
“Is the fellow a mute, or merely rude?” McLendon asked.
The mayor blotted perspiration from his forehead. “Oh, that’s just Turner. He never talks much. But among all the prospectors so far, he’s the one who most believes that he’ll make his fortune here.” Rogers motioned for McLendon to follow him outside, and pointed to a small shack apparently constructed from rough wood planks and parts of packing cases. The shack was about fifty yards beyond the rest of the prospectors’ tents. “He proved he’s here to stay when he put up a permanent place on the hill. I suppose he built it some distance away because he don’t often care for company. It’s all right. We welcome all kinds. Meanwhile, I hope you’re enjoying a pleasant morning?”
“I’ve just dropped off laundry with the old Chinese woman. She was adamant regarding payment in advance.”
“Well, you can’t hardly blame her. They set up that shop maybe two months ago, and some of the early customers neglected to pay. Many have no respect for the yellows—don’t think of them as real people. Myself, I’m glad we’ve got some. Their vegetables and the laundry come in mighty handy. Rose has got a delicate constitution. I wouldn’t want my jelly bunny wearing herself out over a washboard.”
McLendon passed the rest of the morning in the hotel lobby, chatting with Mulkins and reading The Last of the Mohicans. Mulkins was impressed.
“It’s a fine thing to be an educated man,” he said. “I can read some myself, but I never took to books as such. What’s that one about?” After McLendon summarized the story, Mulkins said, “That sounds like a stem-winder. We’ve got a few readers in town, the sheriff especially, and others who aspire to the skill.”
“Are there many books here to be read? I assume that they’re in short supply.”
Mulkins mopped his brow with a bright blue cloth. It was very warm inside the hotel. “Well, the sheriff has some, and also Miss Gabrielle. They share with the few who can sufficiently decipher them. And, thanks some to him and mostly to her, more can all the time. What they do is—”
The Major was interrupted by the Mexican woman who cleaned the Elite. She asked in halting English if Mulkins wanted her to mop the floor of the lobby or the dining room next.
“I think the dining room, Mrs. Mendoza,” Mulkins said. “Take your time and make a thorough job of it. Now, Mr. McLendon, I was telling you about Miss Gabrielle.”
McLendon was trying hard not to even think about Gabrielle. To change the subject, he said, “You mentioned earlier that Mrs. Mendoza lives on Culloden Ranch across the creek. Does her husband live there too?”
“Quickie Mendoza is one of the vaqueros employed by Collin MacPherson to protect his ranch and, happily, this town,” Mulkins said. “I believe that there are about twenty vaqueros in all, separate from the several dozen hands he employs to tend his cattle. Mr. MacPherson sells beef to the Army at its various camps and also to us here in Glorious. Without that, we’d be mostly reduced to eating jackrabbit stew, if we were able to catch the rabbits.”
“I saw two riders in town last night that I took for MacPherson vaqueros,” McLendon said. “They struck me as sinister.”
“They look like hard men because they are, and that’s what’s required to keep the Apaches at bay. I understand Mr. MacPherson’s foreman recruited them right out of Sonora in Mexico, where they fought Indians on a daily basis. He mounts them on the best horses and arms them with the finest weapons. Last night, did you notice the pistols those riders carried? They’re double-action Remington-Riders, very costly and hard to come by out here. I believe they were ordered directly from the eastern manufacturer.”
“I know very little about guns,” McLendon admitted. “I have a Navy Colt that I purchased in Houston, and I know how to load and, I suppose, fire it. But I have no idea of what ‘double-action’ means.”
Mulkins launched into an extensive explanation. Most frontier handguns, including McLendon’s Navy Colt, were single-action. Their hammers had to be cocked by the shooter’s thumb before he pulled the trigger with his index finger to fire—so that was one action at a time. Double-action models, just beginning to be widely manufactured, were better because pulling the trigger cocked and then fired the weapon—two actions in one. “That provides a faster rate of fire than single-action. I believe that within two or three years double-action models will be the rule rather than the exception.”
“So Mr. MacPherson really does provide his men with the very best handguns.”
“Yes, and the best repeating rifles as well. Most of us in Glorious have old-model Henry repeaters or shotguns. We’re none of us gun hands, and unlikely to hit what we aim at. It’s the town’s good fortune that Mr. MacPherson looks after our welfare as well as his own.”
They sat for a few moments in companionable silence. McLendon could hear the swishing sound of Mrs. Mendoza’s mop on the dining room’s wood floor. “I haven’t seen any of the MacPherson vaqueros get down off their horses and spend leisure time in town,” he said. “Are they forbidden to trade with you?”
“It’s more that they have little need for such,” Mulkins said. “The Culloden Ranch has its own blacksmith and cook, and there’s a bunkhouse for the single men and adobe huts for the married men and their wives, so most of their needs are seen to there. And when they do choose to mingle in town, it sometimes gets uncomfortable. By nature they seem quick-tempered and prone to find insult where none is intended. We’ve had a few incidents, all thankfully resolved without too much damage. Sheriff Saint steps in, or if necessary we summon the ranch foreman. He’s the hardest man of them all. Angel Misterio, ‘the Mystery Angel’ in English. If he’s an angel, he’s a dark one. But he keeps those vaqueros in line.”
“You make it sound as though without MacPherson and his vaqueros, you might not have a town at all.”
Mulkins finished his cigarette and began rolling another. “There’s no way to know, but I’m glad we haven’t had to find out.”
McLendon took lunch at the Owaysis: more pickles and some spicy beef jerky. He drank beer, being careful to pace himself this time. Bob Pugh came in for pickles and jerky, and when he said he couldn’t stay to talk because he had to muck out stables, McLendon offered to help. It was something to do. At Pugh’s livery he took off his suit coat, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and set to work. The stables were behind the livery and next to the corral. Flies swarmed there, but the roof blocked the worst of the sun. After two hours Pugh suggested a water break and told McLendon that he was impressed.
“You may not be a rider, but you’re a natural hand with a shovel and pitchfork,” Pugh said. He and McLendon cleaned stalls, laid down fresh straw, and fetched water for the mules from a nearby town well. When McLendon finally glanced at his pocket watch, it was just after five.
“I need to go pick up my laundry,” he said to Pugh. “Perhaps after dinner I’ll see you back at the Owaysis.”
When McLendon returned to the laundry and stepped inside, he was dismayed to see Gabrielle talking animatedly to the young Chinese woman. Gabrielle nodded at him politely, gathered up some laundered clothes, and left.
“Your clothes are ready,” the Chinese woman said. She piled the folded shirts, drawers, and pants in his arms and said, “Thank you for your business. Come again.”
Still unsettled by encountering Gabrielle, McLendon said, “You speak very good English.”
She gave him a quizzical look. “Were you born in America?”
“Of course.”
“So was I. We both speak good English.”
McLendon, his arms full of laundry, retreated outside. He almost collided with Gabrielle, who was waiting for him.
“Let’s not be foolish,” she said. “We’re not going to be able to completely avoid each other. This is a small place, and you’re here until the stage leaves next week. We can say hello and be polite.”
“After our previous conversation, I’ll find that hard,” McLendon said.
“It doesn’t have to be. We’ll keep it short and painless. I hope you pass a pleasant evening. Now I must go fix dinner for my father. Good night.”
MCLENDON WENT BACK to the hotel and changed into a freshly laundered shirt, drawers, and trousers. The clean clothes felt wonderful. He ate in the dining room and then decided to walk next door to the Owaysis. There didn’t seem to be any other places in town to find evening diversion. But before he could go inside, he was hailed by a rangy fellow whose hatband sported a jaunty feather.
“Can we have a moment?” the man asked, extending his hand. “I’m Lemmy Duke, and I work for Mr. MacPherson of the Culloden Ranch. Perhaps we might have a word in a quiet place? The lobby of your hotel would do nicely.”
They went back inside the Elite and sat in adjacent lobby chairs. Duke rolled a cigarette and offered the tobacco and papers to McLendon, who declined. After he had his cigarette properly lit and had asked McLendon’s name, Duke said, “Those of us at the Culloden always take notice of unusual newcomers. You’re not a prospector, it’s clear, nor a drummer on a sales call. I hope it’s not presumptuous to ask your purpose here in Glorious.”
“I’ve already been asked this by the mayor and the sheriff. My response remains the same. I came to see an acquaintance.”
Duke took a long drag on his cigarette and blew a perfect smoke ring. “So you don’t intend, say, to open yourself a little business? Another hotel, perhaps, or a shop or dining establishment of some sort?”
“Hardly. I’m eager to leave, and intend to on next week’s Florence stage. But I don’t understand why my plans are of any interest to you or your boss.”
“They aren’t, so long as they don’t pose a threat to the fine businesspeople here. Major Mulkins with this hotel, Mayor Rogers and his farrier shop, old Pugh with the livery, and the Tirritos with their store. These are fine people who’ve risked a lot to establish themselves, and who deserve the opportunity to prosper when this town does. They don’t need competitors now when there’s so little business to be had, and it’s their right to reap the profits when that grand time comes. So we of the Culloden like to gently discourage additional businesses just now. Later on, I’m sure there will be no problem. But not at present.”
“That’s the opposite view of Mayor Rogers. He practically begged me to stay in any capacity that I chose.”
“Mayor Rogers is a fine man who should be more cognizant of his own best interests.” Duke carefully stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray on the table beside his chair. “Well, Mr. McLendon, I’m glad we had this talk. Enjoy your brief stay in Glorious, and let us know at the Culloden if we can be of service.” He tipped his hat, and moments later McLendon saw him on horseback, trotting out of town in the direction of Culloden Ranch.
• • •
THE OWAYSIS WAS even more crowded than the night before. Bob Pugh waved for McLendon to join him standing at the bar because all of the tables were taken.
“I just had a talk with a fellow named Lemmy Duke,” McLendon said. “It was less a conversation than an interrogation.”
“Lemmy’s a curious man,” Pugh said. “I’ve known him for some time, and he’s always full of questions. Turn your attention to more important things. I believe you’ll sample the stronger libations tonight. You earned the upgrade with so much hard work this afternoon on my behalf. George, my friend McLendon and I require servings of your finest.” Crazy George poured whiskey into two shot glasses. Pugh handed one to McLendon, who recoiled at the sharp odor.
“It stinks like turpentine,” he complained.
“You’re not imbibing the smell,” Pugh said. “Drink your whiskey.”
McLendon gingerly touched the rim of the shot glass to his lips.
“No, don’t delicate-sip it like a woman,” Pugh said. “Toss it down.” He raised his own glass and guzzled the contents. “Aaah. Do it like that. Get yourself the full effect.”
“I’m not sure I want the full effect,” McLendon said dubiously, but he noticed that Crazy George and Mary Somebody and many of the others clustered around the bar were watching, so he gulped down the shot of red-eye with the immediate resulting sensation of having swallowed liquid fire. He felt it sear his throat and then burn its way down into his entrails. He coughed convulsively while everyone laughed.
“It takes some getting used to,” Pugh assured him, slapping McLendon on the back and signaling Crazy George for another round. “After the first five or six your gullet gets numbed up.”
“I believe that five or six would kill me,” McLendon gasped.
“Oh, hardly. Now settle down and let’s drink.”
McLendon found himself enjoying a convivial evening. Some of the prospectors talked of adventures in the Pinal Mountains and other parts of the territories, fine colorful tales of grizzly bears and flash floods and Indians and, always, the huge strikes of gold or silver that they just missed making—it was always the other fellow working nearby who had the luck. Each of them was positive that this time he’d be the fortunate one.
“I like these people,” McLendon confided to Pugh.
“Most of them are good ’uns, though of course any crowd includes its share of miscreants,” Pugh said.
Prospectors made up most of the bar crowd. Mayor Rogers sat at a table with Major Mulkins—“It’s rare the Major emerges from his hotel,” Pugh told McLendon. “He always fears he’ll miss greeting a potential guest”—and three of the Culloden Ranch vaqueros drank at another table. They were the only patrons wearing holstered guns.
“Why are they armed and no one else apparently is?” McLendon asked Pugh.
“I expect that they finished their assigned patrols and wanted drinks before returning to the ranch,” Pugh said. “The rest of us have no use for guns in town, though we certainly take them when we venture beyond it. Charlie Rogers and the sheriff are talking about a no-guns policy where all weapons have to be checked when anyone rides in. That would be sensible policy and I hope that it’s imposed. Liquor and guns are a particularly bad combination.”
Within minutes Pugh’s words proved prophetic. A prospector who’d had too much stumbled into the vaqueros’ tables, spilling their drinks in their laps. One of the vaqueros jumped up and shoved the prospector, who lurched into another table. The men seated there stood and shouted at the vaquero, whose two companions rose and shouted back. Behind the bar, Crazy George peered nearsightedly in the direction of the disturbance and inched his hand down to the metal pipe in his boot. Bob Pugh leaned forward and murmured, “George, guns are to hand and that pipe won’t suffice. Stay still and I’ll run for the sheriff.”
As Pugh hurried from the bar, a half-dozen prospectors and the three vaqueros continued to scream at each other. Someone shouted, “Take it outside!” and they did, spilling out into the inky night. Most of the Owaysis crowd followed. McLendon found himself swept up in the rush. Once outside, he sensed as much as saw that the prospectors and vaqueros were in the center of a spectator ring. As McLendon’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that one of the prospectors waved a wide-bladed knife. A vaquero taunted him, making clucking noises and keeping his hand on the butt of his pistol. The other two Mexicans talked to their friend, apparently urging him to forget the gun. He pulled away, snarling at them in Spanish, and one of the vaqueros pushed through the crowd and ran to where three horses were tethered between the saloon and the Elite Hotel. He mounted and raced off.
“Yellowbelly Mexican’s running from the fight,” an onlooker told McLendon.
The prospector with the knife and the vaquero with his hand on his gun circled each other, barking threats. There was sudden rustling off to the right, and Sheriff Joe Saint slipped through the crowd. Saint stepped between the two men, holding up his hands and saying, “Stand down, stand down.” He seemed to McLendon like a slightly built child attempting to break up a brawl between much older, tougher boys. “We’ll go and talk,” Saint said. “Whatever’s happened, there’s no need for this.” There was a slight but discernible tremor in the sheriff’s voice. He was, McLendon realized, afraid.
The angry vaquero knew it too. “Go back to your jail, Sheriff. This man called me a greaser. I will not be insulted.”
“You are a fucking greaser,” the prospector sneered, waving his knife. “Go ahead, pull that gun. I’ll slice your nuts before you can shoot.”
“We protect your white asses and you call us greasers. Show me how you can fight.”
“Don’t make me arrest you both,” Saint said, pleading rather than warning. “Do the smart thing, walk away.”
McLendon sensed that the prospector was ready to comply. He’d done plenty of posturing and the sheriff’s presence gave him a plausible excuse not to fight. Without risking his life needlessly, he could return to the Owaysis and his friends would praise his courage. But the vaquero was different: he considered himself unforgivably insulted and intended to shoot. He smiled and said, “Remove yourself, Sheriff,” and Saint took a reflexive step back. It was about to begin.
McLendon couldn’t have explained why he did it. The vaquero was going to kill the prospector, but it was none of his business. He hated being stuck in Glorious and was counting the hours until he escaped on the Florence stage. But Bob Pugh had been cordial to him, and so had Major Mulkins, and Crazy George and Mary Somebody and Mayor Rogers were all right too. If the vaquero shot the prospector, it would cause trouble for his new acquaintances. So McLendon shouldered his way inside the human circle and stepped beside the Mexican.
“You want some too?” the vaquero asked, and McLendon shook his head.
“I want to ask about that gun of yours,” he said. “Double-action, is it?”
“What? Are you loco?”
“No,” McLendon said, keeping his voice relaxed and friendly. “It’s just that somebody was telling me about single-action versus double-action and I didn’t really understand. Now, yours is double-action, right?” Bewildered, the vaquero nodded. McLendon kept looking at him, trying to hold the Mexican’s full attention. From the corner of his eye he saw Sheriff Saint talking quietly to the prospector, moving him discreetly away. “I’ve got a Navy Colt, but before I shoot I have to cock it. But you don’t have to do that with yours? Can I look at it?”
“Get away from me, hombre,” the vaquero said, and pushed McLendon aside, but by then Saint had the prospector out of sight and the crowd began to drift back inside the Owaysis. McLendon stepped back in front of the Mexican and smiled.
“Let me buy you a drink,” he suggested. “I want to learn about double-action.”
“What the fuck?” the vaquero growled. “Get away, I’m going to kill that man.”
“I don’t think so,” McLendon said. “The sheriff’s taken him off and everyone’s going back to the bar. It’s all over. You might as well have a drink.”
He led the thwarted shooter and the second vaquero back into the saloon, and soon they were seated at a table. Encouraged by McLendon, after only a few minutes of conversation both men displayed their pistols and earnestly explained to him why the guns’ mechanisms didn’t require cocking before firing. Bob Pugh and Mayor Rogers watched from beside the bar, shaking their heads in wonder. Juan Luis, the vaquero who almost fought the prospector, had just suggested he give McLendon some shooting lessons when another Mexican arrived. His lithe body had no angles at all, and he appeared to glide rather than walk. There was an air of authority about him. Everyone else in the Owaysis stopped talking and watched as he approached the table where the vaqueros and McLendon sat. The vaqueros jumped to their feet and stood at near-military attention as he sharply questioned them in Spanish. They stuttered replies in the same language. The man jerked his head toward the door and the vaqueros scrambled out. A moment later hoofbeats pounded toward the west. He’d clearly ordered them back to Culloden Ranch.
The man said to the mayor, “Señor Rogers, my jefe and I sincerely apologize for tonight’s disturbance. Our men have instructions never to engage in unpleasantness in town, no matter what the provocation.” Turning to McLendon, he said, “I am Angel Misterio, foreman for Señor MacPherson. What is your name?”
“Cash McLendon.”
“Then allow me to express my thanks, Señor McLendon. I am informed that you prevented matters from reaching the point of actual violence, and you did this by asking Juan Luis about his pistola. Why did you attempt that subject?”
McLendon studied Misterio. The man was dressed in a dark shirt and trousers, with a gun belt on his hips and a long knife in a sheath. A thin scar ran from his right eyebrow across his cheekbone to his earlobe, and he exuded a sense of absolute self-assurance. Like Killer Boots in St. Louis, Misterio would murder without hesitation, but with quick strikes rather than bludgeoning.
“All men like to talk about what they love, and your vaqueros love their guns,” McLendon said. “It seemed an obvious strategy.”
“Obvious to you, amigo.” Misterio looked around the saloon. “Gentlemen, my employer wishes to buy everyone here a drink. Again, we regret the unpleasantness and assure you that it will not be repeated.” He dropped a fistful of coins on the bar and added to Crazy George, “Señor MacPherson especially wants to pay for all Señor McLendon’s drinks for the rest of the evening.” He bowed gracefully to McLendon, then to Mayor Rogers, and left the saloon.
Everyone surged toward the bar, hollering for Crazy George to fill their glasses. Bob Pugh stopped them with outstretched arms and said, “Boys, let the hero go first.” Then he said to McLendon, “I advise drinking long and a lot. The whiskey always tastes better when a rich man’s buying.”