17
When the people of Whizbang began to stir the next morning, they saw the old camp of Slocum set up anew just on the other side of the town limits sign. They could see that there were three men up there sitting around a campfire. They gathered in small groups and looked and pointed and speculated about what it meant. Most of the citizens of the town knew little about the causes of the recent violence in their midst. Some thought that Slocum must be some kind of evil gunfighter intent on the destruction of their town. Others, having got wind of Amos Foss’s association with Slocum, feared something deeper than that. Most were just confused and curious.
Eventually Slick, Cain, Barber, and Hedley formed their own little group. For a moment they stared up at the camp in silence. Finally Barber spoke up and said, “They’s three men, but they’s a bunch of horses.”
“What do you make of that, Slick?” Cain asked.
“I don’t know,” said Slick. He was staring at the camp, squinting because of the bright early morning sky. “I’d say Slocum and Amos Foss. Looks like they got them some help though. They’s a third man up there.”
“They’s a bunch of horses,” said Barber.
“That could mean more men,” Slick said.
“Where are they then?” asked Hedley.
“Hell,” said Cain, “we don’t know who they are. They could be anywhere. They could be down here amongst us.”
Hedley looked around nervously. “I don’t see no strangers in town,” he said.
“They could be anywhere,” said Cain.
“I wonder who that third man up there is,” Slick mused.
“Hey,” said Barber, “I got an old spyglass over in my shop.”
“Well, run and get the son of a bitch,” Slick said.
Barber hurried off. The other three kept staring at the little camp. “How many horses is up there?” Hedley asked. “How many would you say?”
“I can see eight,” Cain said. “That goddamn big spotty-ass horse and seven more. That’s all I can see.”
“Then there could be eight men up there,” Hedley said.
“They’s three up there for sure,” said Cain. “Maybe five more laying around that we can’t see. Maybe five more anywhere.”
“They wouldn’t be too far away without their horses,” Hedley said. “Would they?”
“They could be down here in town,” said Slick.
“I don’t see them,” Hedley said. “I don’t see no strangers.”
“I think we done had this conversation,” said Slick. “It sure ain’t going nowhere.”
Barber came panting back with his spyglass, and Slick yanked it away from him. He pointed the glass at the camp and stuck its small end to his left eye. Squinting his right eye, he made some adjustments to the spyglass.
“I see Slocum,” he said. “Son of a bitch is smoking a cee-gar as calm as you please. There’s Amos. Goddamn. That there’s Murf with them. Murf Richie.”
“The double-crossing son of a bitch,” said Cain, reaching for the spyglass. “Let me see that thing.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Slick, ignoring Cain’s request. “Looks to me like he might be tied up. It’s kind of hard to tell for sure. It’s Murf though. I see him plain as day.”
“Do you see anyone else?” Hedley asked.
“No one else,” said Slick. “Just them three. Them three and eight horses.”
By the time the sun was high overhead, some of the people in town had gone on about their business, but a few clusters still stood around staring at the camp. One of the clusters was that of Slick, Cain, Barber, and Hedley. The three men in the camp above watched them.
“How long are you two going to just set here like this?” Richie asked them.
“It ain’t nothing for you to worry about,” Slocum said.
“Long as it takes, I reckon,” said Foss.
“I’m getting kinda hungry,” Richie said.
“You’ll get hungrier before it’s over,” Slocum said. He took a drag on his cigar, then laid it aside. He reached over and picked up his Winchester. He cranked a shell into the chamber, then raised the rifle to his shoulder. He took careful aim.
Back down in the street, Barber raised the spyglass to his eye, Slick having finally relinquished it. He was looking at Richie.
“I think he is tied up,” he said. “Slocum and Amos caught him, and they’ve got him tied up. That’s what. He never double-crossed us after all. He’s their prisoner.”
“Prisoners talk,” said Cain.
“Could be,” Slick agreed.
Barber moved the glass over to look at Amos Foss. Then he moved it on to focus on Slocum, and he saw the Winchester aimed straight at him. “Goddamn!” he shouted. “He’s fixing to shoot.” The group of four scattered in four directions just as the shot rang out. Dirt was kicked up in the street where Barber had been standing. Suddenly all the people standing in the street became animated. Others came running out of shops and out of houses to look.
Slocum put down the rifle and picked up his cigar. He took a couple of puffs to make sure it was still going.
“What’d you do that for?” Richie asked.
“Give them something more to worry about,” said Slocum. “Say, we got anymore coffee in that pot?”
Halley came home for lunch, and Millicent already had a big spread laid out. The two ladies sat down and ate together. Then Halley poured them each another cup of coffee.
“That was mighty good, Millie,” Halley said.
“Thank you,” said Millicent, but she seemed somewhat distracted.
“What’s wrong?” Halley asked her. “I can tell it’s something.”
“I’m worried about Amos and John,” said Millicent. “I can hardly stand it. Halley will you loan me a horse and saddle?”
“You fixing to ride after them?” Halley asked.
“Yes,” said Millicent. “I want to.”
“Then let’s both go,” Halley said. “You pack us a bunch of food while I go out and saddle a couple of horses.”
“Right now?” Millicent said, her face brightening up.
“Why wait?” Halley said, as she stood up and put her hat on. She headed for the door, and Millicent too jumped up from her chair.
“All right,” she said.
Slick, Cain, Hedley, and Barber were gathered again inside the Booze Palace. They were not, however, sitting at their favorite corner table. Instead they were at the front of the big main room. Looking out the window there, they could watch the Slocum camp. Slick was standing at the window. The others sat at a nearby table. There was a whiskey bottle on the table, and the three seated men each had a glass. There was a fourth glass on the table for Slick.
“They ain’t moved up there,” Slick said.
“Anyone else showed up?” asked Hedley.
“Just them same three is all,” Slick said.
“I’m sure curious about all them extra horses,” Hedley said.
“Yeah,” said Barber, standing up and taking his glass to move over by the window with Slick. “And the men what rode them. Where the hell are they?”
“The bastards are cooking a meal,” Slick said. “They’re going to sit up there and eat while we watch them.”
“What are we going to do, Gordie?” Barber asked.
“Sammy,” Slick said to Cain, “you’re a pretty good rifle shot, ain’t you?”
“I ain’t bad,” Cain said.
“Can you hit one of them from here?” Slick asked.
Cain stood up and moved to the window. “It’s a long shot,” he said. He walked to the door and positioned himself in the doorway as he would to shoot. “A hell of a long shot. If I was to make it, it’d be the best shot I ever made. It’d have to be a good shot, and it would have to be a lucky one, too.”
“Where’s your rifle?” Slick asked.
“Out on my horse,” said Cain.
“Why don’t you go get it and try a shot?” Slick said.
Cain stood in the doorway for a few quiet seconds, looking up at the camp in the distance. Then he hurried out to his horse at the rail, jerked out the rifle from the scabbard and hurried back in. He cranked a shell into the chamber. Then he braced himself against the doorway and raised the rifle to his shoulder. He took his time getting settled and sighting in.
“Give me that spyglass,” Slick said, and Barber handed it over. Slick sighted in on the camp with the spyglass and watched. Cain squeezed the trigger, and the rifle roared and bucked. “Shit,” said Slick, “you got Murf. You got him. Try another shot. Hurry it up.”
Up at the campsite, Slocum and Foss each grabbed their rifles as Murf Richie fell forward into the fire. Both men fired as fast as they could into the front door and the front window of the Booze Palace down below.
As bullets thudded into the doorjamb and the walls around the door, Sammy Cain whooped and danced away, moving back into the room. At the same time, Slick and the others were showered with glass as bullets smashed the big front window. They yelled and scampered back into the safety of the center of the room as well.
“Damn you,” said Dutch from behind the bar. “You started it now.”
“Shut up,” said Slick.
Other customers in the saloon got up hurriedly and left by the back door. No one was left in the place but the four conspirators and Dutch.
“Now what?” Cain said.
“Maybe we can slip up on them after dark,” Slick said.
“Shit,” said Cain. “You know they’ll be expecting that. We’d walk right into a trap. That’s what we’d be doing.”
“They’ve stopped shooting,” Barber said.
Slick eased his way back to the now-shattered front window to sneak a look. He found the spyglass on the floor and picked it up. Looking through it, he saw no sign of either Slocum or Foss. He saw Richie’s corpse. Someone had dragged it out of the fire. The fire still burned. The eight horses were still there where they had been. He turned to reach for the whiskey bottle on the table, but it was shattered. He walked over to the bar and ordered another. Dutch gave it to him, and he drank from the bottle.
“Well?” said Barber. He got no answer. “Well, what’d you see?”
“No sign of Slocum or Foss,” Slick said. “That’s what I seen. No sign of either one of them.”
“That got them spooked, all right,” Foss said.
“I reckon,” said Slocum. The two men had simply moved back a little from the campsite to hide behind some boulders. From their new vantage point, they were still able to keep their eyes on the street below.
“The question is,” said Foss, “what will they do now that they’re spooked?”
“I can’t answer that one,” Slocum said. “We’ll just have to wait and see. We sure do need to keep watching that damn street down there, though. Watch it like a couple of hawks.”
“Yeah,” Foss agreed.
It was the morning of their second day of riding when Millicent and Halley came across the two cowboys at the camp that had originally been set up by Slocum and Foss. Halley pulled a rifle out of a scabbard, cranked a shell into the chamber, and then moved slowly toward the camp. Millicent followed her. When the two cowboys saw the two women approaching, they grinned and stood up to greet them.
“Well now,” said Red Bandy, “what’ve we got here?”
“Nothing for you to get too excited about,” Halley said.
“Well,” Bandy said, “we was just getting a meal started here. How would you two ladies like to join us?”
“We might,” said Halley, “but keep your distance.”
She swung a leg over her saddle and dropped to the ground. Millicent, too, dismounted. Halley walked toward the cowboys, still holding the rifle ready.
“You—you don’t need that gun on us,” Bandy said. “We ain’t going to do you no harm.”
“I don’t see no horses,” Halley said. “Men without horses in this country’s likely to do anything to get some.”
“Aw, well,” Bandy said, “we got horses, all right. It’s just that some other fellas borried them for a few days. They’ll be coming back with them. We ain’t stranded out here but just for a few days.”
“If you’ll stay on that side of the fire,” said Halley, “we’ll stay on this side. We’ll stop a spell and eat with you.”
“All right,” said Bandy. “That’s all right.”
He headed for the far side of the fire, and Candy Watson followed him. Their footsteps were mincing, and then Halley noticed that they were barefoot. She realized just then that she couldn’t see any guns anywhere around the camp. The cowboys sat on the ground on the other side of the fire from the women. Then Halley, followed by Millicent, moved close to the fire. The women sat.
“Go on ahead, ladies,” said Bandy. “Dish yourselves up some grub. Me and Candy here will wait our turn.”
Millicent moved forward to fix plates for Halley and herself. Both women kept close watch on the two cowboys. When Millicent gave Halley her plate and then sat back down with her own, she gave the two cowboys a hard look.
“You two met up with John Slocum and Amos Foss, didn’t you?” she said.
“What?” said Bandy.
“There’s no need in lying to me about it,” she said. “I prepared this food for them myself, and I recognize the dishes.”
Halley raised the rifle. “Where are they?” she asked. “What have you done?”
Both cowboys raised their hands over their heads. “Now wait a minute,” Bandy said. “We ain’t done nothing. Don’t shoot that thing.”
“Ma’am, uh, ladies,” said Watson, speaking for the first time since the women had come into the camp, “we did do something, too. This here was their camp. Slocum and Foss. You’re right. We rode in, and they spotted us for horse thieves right away. Well, whenever we said that we was headed west to hunt more horses—we pretended we was hunting wild horses, you see—whenever we said we was headed west, Slocum, he said that he didn’t want us headed west. He took our horses and our guns and our boots, and he left us some food and stuff and a hundred dollars. He said he’d bring our stuff back in a few days.”
“That’s the truth, ladies,” Bandy said.
Halley burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Bandy asked.
“That’s our Slocum,” Halley said, when she managed to speak again. “That’s your good fortune, too. He had a choice of either killing you or paying you to sit here, and you lucked out. That’s all. And the reason he didn’t want you two riding west and a stealing horses is because of my little horse ranch out thataway.”
“I kinda figured that,” said Bandy, ducking his head and looking ashamed.
“Ma’am,” Watson said, “Mr. Foss and Mr. Slocum, they kinda put a scare on us, and they kinda taught us a lesson, too. We’ve been setting here with nothing to do but think and talk, and I just want you to know that, even when we get our own horses and guns back, well, your horses are going to be safe.”
“They’ll be safe from us,” Bandy said.
“That’s what I mean, ma‘am,” Watson went on. “We ain’t going to do no more stealing. We’re looking for honest work from here on out. In fact, if they bring back those four horses we stole, we aim to take them back where they belong. I just wanted you to know that, ma’am.”
“Well, boys,” said Halley, “I’m glad you told us that, and I believe you.”
She laid her rifle aside and picked up the plate of food that Millicent had brought her. She figured that if either of the cowboys meant to make a move against her, this would be his chance. She tried to act unconcerned, but she really kept herself alert for anything that might happen. Bandy made a sudden move and she tensed, ready for action. He picked up a plate and began to dish himself out a meal. She relaxed. She was glad that she hadn’t made herself obvious in her readiness.
