Spurr discovered three other businesses still in operation in South Pass City—the Grover H. M. Henry Hardware and Dry Goods, a harness shop, and the livery barn once owned by Wild Bill Harriman but now operated by an old cowboy named Melvin Lilly, who lived in a cabin behind the place with his consumptive wife, Rose.
Spurr stabled his horses with Lilly, whom he informed of the Vultures’ threat and suggested the man spread the word to Henry and Harriman, adding that they all should consider staying low until the storm had passed. Spurr didn’t appreciate the dark, worried look the old cowboy gave him after the lawman left the livery barn with his Winchester, but he could understand the man’s skepticism.
He wouldn’t want him protecting his town from the Vultures, either.
He limped up the street to the tallest building in town—the Wind River Hotel and Saloon. The windows were boarded up, but it wasn’t hard to pry off one of the boards and step through the gap. As he moved through the dark, musty bowels of the place, he felt ghosts staring out at him from every dark nook and cranny, remembering all the revelry that had once taken place here, all the chips and gold dust won and lost at the roulette wheels and poker tables.
He continued up to the broad, creaky stairs, rats squawking indignantly, bats mewling and flapping somewhere unseen, to the fourth story and strode through one of the east-facing rooms. After kicking out another couple of planks from over the door to the balcony, he stepped out and looked around at the sprawling, dilapidated collection of buildings appearing forlorn under the lens-clear, high-country sun.
There was little movement except what the light wind blew. Peering off to the east, Spurr saw little movement out there, either. And, when he’d peered off another balcony on the building’s opposite side, he spied nothing in the other directions. The Wind Rivers were like giant anvils, tall and sprawling and snow-capped to the northeast, their slopes and foothills sliced with canyons through which the Vultures might ride toward the town, staying out of sight to within a mile or so.
But Spurr didn’t think so. They knew he was only one man alone. Even if he’d equaled their number, it was their custom to ride in roughshod and to squeeze as much terror out of their victims as possible before they started blasting away with their guns.
He dragged a chair out onto the balcony that faced east and sagged wearily into it, his bones creaking almost as loudly as the chair’s dry wood. He leaned his gun against the wall behind him, sat back in the chair, and keeping an eye skinned to the east, slowly built a quirley.
He’d built and smoked the quirley and was wanting another one, and still nothing moved in the east. There were only the rolling hills of sage, juniper, and cedar, with occasional bluffs and escarpments jutting against the horizon.
Spurr leaned forward, elbows on his knees, blue eyes carefully scanning each fold, every tree and rock and shallow gulley—anywhere a man might hide. “Where the hell are you?” he heard himself growl, not liking the fatigue he heard in his voice.
The sun arced slowly across the sky and dropped quickly in the west. Shadows turned, lengthened, thinned. A gray veil dropped over South Pass City. Footsteps sounded in the street, and he stood and looked down to see Della Ramsay moving toward him holding a round wooden tray and a plate covered with a red towel. When she saw Spurr, she stopped, her blond hair and the shawl she’d drawn over her shoulders buffeting in the chill breeze whispering over the mountains.
“Spurr, you gotta eat,” she said.
It wasn’t like him, but he wasn’t hungry. Or maybe he just hadn’t realized he was.
“Don’t come in here, Della,” he said, not wanting her to negotiate the hazards of the dark, dilapidated building. “I’ll come down.”
Inside, darkness had settled thickly over the hotel’s ruined husk. He found a candle, lit it, and used it to light his way down to the broad front porch. Della stood just outside the boarded-up doors, holding the tray from which the rich, succulent smell of a hot steak emanated. Spurr’s gut gurgled, twisted. He was hungry, after all.
“Just fried one for myself and Mrs. Wilde and remembered that hollow leg of yours.” Della smiled. Two bottles stood on the tray—one with amber liquid, one with clear. “Whiskey and water,” she explained.
“Don’t know how to thank you, Della.”
She narrowed one eye as the breeze rustled her freshly brushed hair, bangs hanging over her brows. “How ’bout keepin’ yourself alive? I could use someone to share a drink and a game of cards with. Gets quiet around here between roundups.”
Spurr accepted the tray from her. “I’m gonna give it my best shot.”
He glanced to the east along the broad, darkening street. “Not yet. They’re out there, though. I can smell ’em.”
“Might be an overfilled privy on the windward side of town.” Della gave a disgusted expression. “What’d this territory ever do to rate those devils?” She reached up and placed a hand against the side of his face, caressing his ragged, dusty beard and leathery cheek. “You’re one of the good ones, Spurr. You be careful.”
“Best get inside now, Della. No tellin’ when they’ll show.”
She caressed him an instant longer, offered him a brittle smile, then turned and, holding her skirts above her feet, walked down the hotel’s rotting steps. Spurr watched until she was safely back inside the Overland Trail, then ducked through the gap between the boards over a window, relit his candle, and headed back upstairs. He sat back down in his chair on the balcony, tray on his knees, and dug into the succulent steak, smiling. Della had remembered how he liked it done.
He drank the whiskey mixed with water so as to keep him head about him, and ate the steak and fried potatoes and two large chunks of crusty, buttered wheat bread. When he’d swabbed the last of the steak juice off the plate with a last scrap of bread, he gave a belch and set the tray on the floor. He used his knife to sharpen a match, picked his teeth clean, then tossed the pick over the balcony into the street below and grabbed his rifle.
He looked around carefully. Near darkness had fallen, though small, dull streaks of red and gold flashed occasionally as the sun continued sinking behind the far western ridges. Stars kindled like lamps of a distant town. He raked his gaze carefully up and down the street, but seeing nothing there he retured his scrutiny to the east. The skin above the bridge of his nose creased.
He narrowed his eyes, felt his weak ticker increase its beat slightly. Far out at a small notch in the hills, a feeble orange light shone. It could have been the light of one of the miners’ cabins scattered throughout the hills, but Spurr’s time-sharpened instincts told him it was the Vultures.
As the darkness thickened and the far light brightened, so that he could see the orange-yellow, saber-like flames as they danced, his resolve solidified. It was Stanhope, all right. He’d set up camp about a mile away—just far enough for his gang’s large campfire to be seen from town.
Just letting Spurr know they were out there. And that they were coming soon.
Spurr gave a steely grin. Frustration nagged at him. He had to fight it off. They’d come when they came and he couldn’t let Stanhope’s ploy get under his skin, because it was the fear, the terror that the gang loved to evoke. They didn’t want to just ride in a shoot and be done with it. No. They wanted to squeeze every ounce of menace they could out of this.
Spurr slacked into his chair, tipped his hat down over his eyes, and tried to sleep. He could only doze, waking to see that the stars had wheeled themselves into different positions. The eastern campfire remained—neither larger nor smaller. The air grew cool, downright cold, but the lawman held his position, as uncomfortable as it was.
Twice, he got up and walked around the ghostly quiet town, stretching, getting the blood moving. Then he returned to his balcony and dozed.
He was awake at dawn. He strolled around the town once more, checked on Della and Erin, both asleep in their rooms, then returned to the balcony. The fire faded as the sky paled. Just as the large red ball of the sun began bleeding up into the far eastern horizon, Spurr saw a line of riders moving abreast toward town. They grew gradually against the lightening horizon until Spurr could distinguish the riders from their horses, see the rifles bristling up around their heads as they rode with the butts pressed against their thighs.
Very gradually he could make out the colors of their clothing, see their various jackets whipping out in the wind, see their horses’ heads bobbing, the occasional clods of sod or small sage branches whipped up by their trotting hooves.
“Time to dance?” Spurr said aloud to himself, staring toward the gang. “All right, then—let’s dance!”
He picked up his still-three-quarters-full whiskey bottle and his rifle and moved off the balcony and through the room and downstairs to the broad, rotting porch. He took his time, conserving his energy. On the porch, he looked toward where the Vultures seemed to float toward him against the vast, pulsing scarlet ball of the sun. They were a hundred yards from the edge of town and closing slowly now, all heads facing Spurr.
The old lawman set his bottle on the porch rail, leaned his rifle against a post, and plucked the small burlap sack from the breast pocket of his hickory shirt, then shook a single pill into the palm of his hand. He tossed the pill into his mouth, held it beneath his tongue, then popped the cork on the bottle. Rolling the pill to the back of his throat, he took a pull from the bottle, washing down the tablet.
He sighed and smacked his lips, looked toward the oncoming riders once more, and took another pull of the bracing whiskey that set fire to his tonsils and rocketed lightning through his brain and his heavy limbs, awakening his tired heart.
He corked the bottle, set it down on the porch rail. He picked up his rifle, racked a round into the chamber, off cocked the hammer, and walked to the top of the porch steps. The Vultures were at the edge of town now, narrowing their cluster a little as they came on along the broad main drag, walking their horses now, the horses tossing their heads as though sensing the gravity of the situation before them.
Stanhope was in his position at the middle of the pack. A sawed-off shotgun dangled around his belly, but he held a carbine in his gloved hands. His brother, thinner and a head shorter, rode to his right. Magpie Quint in his black hat and red vest rode to his left. Spurr recognized the others from their wanted circulars—Ed Crow, Hector Debo, who had a bloody bandage wrapped around his knee, causing Spurr to smile a little as he remembered the agonized grunt in the ravine last night; and Quiet Boon Coffey with his half-dozen bristling six-shooters including a silver-chased LeMat in a shoulder holster.
Spurr walked down to the street and turned to face the gang. Clell Stanhope, with those two dark tattoos on his broad, bearded cheeks, beneath his black top hat, drew his reins back in one hand and raised the other hand. He and the others stopped their horses about sixty yards up the street from Spurr. Stanhope smiled, turned his head to say something to the others, and then they all swung down from their saddles.
The horses were herded off down a break between two boarded-up buildings and then the gang spread out across the street, Stanhope in the middle once more. He lifted his chin to shout, “Spurr, you old bastard—you ready to finish this thing?”
Spurr stepped farther into the street, squared his shoulders, spread his moccasins, and set his rifle on his shoulder. “Just to be clear, does that mean you boys aren’t going to comply with my order as a deputy United States marshal assigned by Chief Marshal Henry Brackett to throw your guns down and submit to arrest?”
He heard them laughing, glancing at each other. Stanhope turned back to Spurr. “Yep,” the outlaw leader said. “That’s what it means, all right.”
“All right,” Spurr returned, holding his rifle across his chest. “Then I reckon we are indeed gonna finish this thing, you yellow-livered, child-killing, woman-abusing plop of hookworm infested dogshit!”
Stanhope’s smile was replaced by a scowl. The others spread out on either side of him hardened their jaws, darkened their eyes, and racked shells into their rifle chambers.
Something moved to Spurr’s right, on the far side of the street, and the lawman turned his head quickly to see the half-breed, Yakima Henry, step out of an alley mouth. Henry’s blue-black hair blew about his hard-planed, saddle-leather cheeks. He held a Yellowboy repeater in one hand; the thumb of his other gloved hand was tucked behind his left suspender that was drawn taut against his broad chest and oak-hard belly clad in red-and-black calico.
He blinked his green eyes set deep in stony sockets as he stopped near a waterbarrel at the far side of the street. Spurr’s look was a question to which the half-breed replied with a shrug and a squint, “Don’t care for lawmen. Don’t care for most men of any stripe. But you’re one crazy-tough old bull, and it’s only right you got someone sidin’ you, Spurr.”
Spurr stared at him skeptically, then slowly nodded, inching up his measure of the man. “I’d admire to have you side me, Yakima.”
The half-breed walked out into the street, stopped about ten feet to Spurr’s right, and turned to face the Vultures.