HEAD REELING FROM the news of his brother’s death, Mark Talbot walked across the street in a daze. It wasn’t until ten minutes later that he finally stopped walking and realized he’d been drifting aimlessly up one side of the street and down the other. His toes and face were nearly frozen.
Seeing the sign for the Sundowner Saloon, he headed that way.
“Help you, mister?” the barkeep asked. A stout man in a crisp white shirt and armbands was standing behind the bar reading the newspaper spread open upon the polished mahogany.
Talbot walked as far as the roaring cast-iron stove in the middle of the room. “Give me a boilermaker, will ya?” His voice was low and taut, and he did not look at the apron as he spoke. His mind was on his brother and on the man or men who had killed him.
He set his war bag on one chair and himself in another, only a few feet from the stove. He looked briefly around and saw that the two cowboys on the other side of the stove, nursing whiskeys and playing a friendly game of cards, were the only other patrons.
The cowboys’ good-natured banter was an irritating contrast to Talbot’s dark mood. Still, the tavern was as good a place as any to get warm and to digest the news of Dave’s
death, to try and get a handle on what he was going to do now.
The barkeep came with the beer and whiskey, and Talbot paid him. Obviously curious about the bearded, shaggy-headed stranger, the man lingered, attempting small talk. Discouraging it, Talbot offered only curt replies to the man’s questions, and soon the apron drifted back behind the bar.
Talbot warmed his cold feet by the stove, nursed his beer, and sipped his whiskey, which soothed his chill body but did nothing to quell the torment of his soul.
Lost in his own brooding, he did not see one of the cowboys stand and walk slowly past him, regarding him warily until he’d made the door and stepped outside. Neither did Talbot notice the other cowboy get up and move to the bar. The man turned to Talbot and tucked his coat behind his gun.
It wasn’t until Talbot had finished his whiskey and turned to the bar to ask for another that he realized the barman had disappeared. Only the cowboy stood there, a lean man with a hawkish face, regarding him darkly. Talbot’s gaze dropped to the man’s gun, prominently displayed.
The front door opened. Boots thundered across the floor, on a wave of chill air. Talbot twisted around to see three red-faced men approach. Their spurs beat a raucous rhythm on the rough pine boards. All wore blanket coats and hats snugged under knit scarves. The tips of their greased holsters showed beneath their coats.
Talbot saw the other man who’d been playing cards earlier. He walked past Talbot to rejoin the cowboy standing with his back to the bar. Both stared at Talbot as though he were something a dog had left on the floor.
One of the other two men stopped directly behind Talbot and about five feet away. His anger growing at the obvious confrontation, Talbot was craning his head to regard the man
when the other moved around the table, pulled out a chair, threw his gloves down, and started unbuttoning his coat.
Talbot nearly laughed at the man’s arrogance. “Sit down and make yourself at home.”
As though he hadn’t heard, the man—a slender individual in his fifties, with reddish-brown hair flecked with gray and a close-cropped mustache—regarded the bar. “Bring over a couple of whiskeys, boys.”
“Thanks, but I’ll drink alone,” Talbot said.
Again the man did not respond. He regarded Talbot blankly and sat down, throwing his coat out from his gun. It was an obvious threat. He sat staring at Talbot until the whiskeys came. He threw the drink back and slammed the empty glass on the table.
Talbot felt rage burn up from the base of his spine. His heart beat erratically. A muscle twitched in his cheek. He was in no mood for indulging the insolence of strangers.
The sandy-haired man calmly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Suddenly his right arm jerked, and he lifted a revolver above the table, aimed at Talbot’s heart. “All right, who are you and who you workin’ for?” he said, red-faced and nearly shouting.
Talbot let two seconds pass. He set both hands on the table’s edge and leaned forward, staring into the stranger’s eyes. He said through gritted teeth, “None of your goddamn business!”
Then, springing to a crouch, he gave the table a violent shove forward, thrusting it into the man’s chest, knocking his pistol up and sending him over backward with a startled yell. The pistol cracked, sending the slug into the rafters.
A half-second later Talbot was on his feet and wheeling toward the man behind him. The man had been pulling his .44, and as Talbot lunged for him, he brought the butt of
the gun down hard against Talbot’s head. Talbot dropped to a knee, shaken.
The cowboy stepped forward and was about to bring the gun down on his head again when Talbot heaved himself forward and bulled the man over backward. They both hit the floor. The man punched Talbot in the jaw and rolled aside. When Talbot looked up, all the cowboys stood around him, guns drawn and aimed at his face.
Behind the cowboys, the older man had risen to a knee and was regarding Talbot with wide-eyed anger. He was breathing heavily, and his hair was awry. His crushed Stetson lay several feet away.
“You had enough, Slick, or should I have my boys ventilate you now?”
Talbot breathed heavily. Blood dripped from his swelling lower lip. He felt a goose egg growing on his temple. “This the kind of homecoming you’re offering these days?”
“Homecoming?” the man said with a skeptical grunt.
“That’s right.”
“Who are you?”
“Who’d you think I was?”
The man blinked. “I don’t know, but you got trouble written all over you, and we’ve had our fill of trouble around here.”
“Looks can be deceptive,” Talbot growled.
“When you’re dealin’ with killers, you can’t be too careful.”
“I’m no gunman. If you’d taken the time to look, you’d have seen I’m not even armed.”
The man nodded and shot a sharp look at the man who’d summoned him. “I see that now,” he said to the sheepish-looking cowboy.
The cowboy said, “Y-you said to let ya know if we seen any strangers, boss, and this man here … well, he sure looks
like a tough, he acts like a tough, and he sure ain’t from around here.”
“Shut up, Virgil,” the man snapped. To Talbot he said, “The cowboy’s right. A cowboy was murdered by two toughs a few days ago. If you’re not a tough, what are ya, then?”
“I’m Mark Talbot. Owen Talbot’s son.”
The man cocked an eyebrow. “Owen’s boy?”
Talbot nodded. “Been away for a while.” Talbot climbed to his feet and wiped the blood from his lip. “Now I have a question for you. Who poked that burr up your ass?”
One of the cowboys laughed, then covered it with a cough. The older man’s face turned a deeper shade of red. He cowed his men with a look and said gruffly, “All right … holster those irons and get yourselves a drink. We’ll be heading back to the ranch soon.”
When the men had returned to the bar, where the bartender furnished drinks, the rancher said to Talbot, “You’d be suspicious, too, if you been through what I been through around here.”
“Are you talking about the same trouble that killed my brother?”
“One and the same.”
“The sheriff told me the army came in and settled that mess five years ago.”
The man nodded, his jaw tightening. “That’s what I thought. But a week ago a man was shotgunned out east of here. Two days ago a Mex gunman shows up, slinks around town, and disappears into the countryside. We thought maybe you were another gunman Magnusson was bringing in.”
“So you think it’s starting all over again,” Talbot said.
“Hell, it never really stopped. There were always killin’s … hangin’s and such. But when Rinski’s hired man was killed by two masked men with shotguns—beibre a witness!—well, that told me all bets were off. Suzy, bar the door.”
Talbot searched the man’s face gravely. “Who killed my brother?” he said tightly.
Shrugging and shaking his head, the man picked up a chair and sat down on it. “Who knows?”
There was a pause as the man looked around the room, his eyes thoughtful and afraid. Finally his gaze returned to Talbot and his features softened. He said, “I apologize for the trouble. Can I buy you a drink?”
Talbot nodded and sat down across from the man.
“Monty, bring a bottle,” the man called.
“And a beer,” Talbot added.
When the barman had brought the bottle and a beer, and two fresh shotglasses, he filled the glasses, set the bottle on the table, and returned to the bar. At a table on the other side of the room, the other cowboys had started a new game of five-card stud.
The older man shoved his open hand toward Talbot. “Name’s Thornberg,” he said. “Verlyn Thornberg. I ranch south of here, along the Little Missouri.”
Talbot shook the man’s hand. “Mark Talbot.”
“I met your brother in the mercantile once or twice. Don’t believe I’ve ever seen you before.”
“I lit a shuck out of here about seven years ago. Must have been before your time. I left the ranching up to my brother. Figured I was too good for it. Wanted to see the world.”
“Did you see it?”
“Enough to know if there’s such a thing as the good life, it’s here.”
“Maybe it was here, back before I came, right before the trouble,” the man said, thoughtfully sipping his whiskey. Swallowing, he shook his head. “But it ain’t here no more. When did you find out about your brother?”
“’Bout an hour ago.”
“Jesus, I’m sorry. That’s tough, comin’ home after seven years to find your brother dead.”
Talbot shook his head, scowling and staring into his whiskey. “It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, no. You know what happened to our ranch? I was Dave’s only kin, and I was out of reach. I hope Magnusson didn’t get it.”
The man thought for a moment. “I believe the Kincaid girl is grazing her beef on it. It abuts her land, as you know, and it’s got good winter cover.”
Talbot lifted his head. “The Kincaid girl? Jacy Kincaid?”
The man nodded.
Visibly surprised, Talbot said, “Why, she can’t be but fourteen years old!”
“I’ve seen Jacy Kincaid,” Verlyn Thornberg said with a humorous air, “and I can tell you she’s no fourteen-year-old. She fills out a cotton shirt and a pair of Levi’s ’bout as well as any girl in the territory, and she’s a better hand on roundup than half the men. Broke most of the hearts on the Bench, too, I might add.”
Talbot did some quick math on his fingers. Sure enough, the girl he’d known on the neighboring ranch would be in her early twenties by now. But the knowledge that she’d taken over the Talbot ranch was too much to grasp.
Talbot said, “You must mean her father assumed the Circle T.”
Thornberg wagged his head. “Nope, Miller Kincaid died of a heart attack two springs ago.”
Talbot remembered the towheaded little tomboy who used to ride her horse over to the Talbot ranch hot summer afternoons when he and Dave were kids. She’d played cowboy and Indians with Talbot and Dave, always accepting her role as the savage warrior good-naturedly. She snared gophers with the Talbot lads, too—as rough and tough as any boy.
She’d had a splash of freckles on the bridge of her nose
and down her cheeks, and for that reason Talbot and Dave had called her Freckles. She’d taken issue with the nickmame, however, and given them each such hard kicks to their shins that they finally had to cease and desist or risk permanent hobbling.
“Well, I’m glad Jacy’s got it,” Talbot said now. “If she turned out anything like her old man, she’ll be good to it—won’t muddy up the springs or overgraze the creeks.”
“She’d turn it back to you,” Thornberg speculated. “Since you were neighbors and all.”
Talbot shook his head. “Nah, it’s hers. She earned it … while I was off on my high horse.” He took a big sip of beer and threw back the last of his whiskey.
Thornberg folded both his hands on the table and leaned toward Talbot, regarding him gravely. “Come to work for me, then.”
Talbot laughed. “Doing what? I haven’t ridden a horse or swung a lasso in a coon’s age. I figured my brother would put up with me ’til I got the hang of it again, but I wouldn’t expect anyone else to.”
Thornberg shook his head. “I don’t mean as a rider. I’ve seen you fight.”
Talbot blinked. “As a fighter?”
Thornberg nodded and smiled conspiratorily. “If it came down to a tussle between you and that Mex gunman the big outfits brought in, I’d place my money on you.”
Talbot just stared at the man, hollowed by the thought that his home had turned into a graveyard and a battlefield, just like the rest of the world.
“How good are you with a gun?” Thornberg continued eagerly.
Talbot blinked and considered the proposition for a moment. He had to admit it was tempting. But the possibility of finding Dave’s killer was slim at best, and the probability
of his getting enmeshed in the very life he’d finally turned away from was great. That life had cost him too much to return to it here at home.
Talbot finished his glass of beer, stood, and reached for his war bag. “Thanks for the offer, but I don’t think so.”
Thornberg frowned. “Where you goin’?”
“To find a place to sleep,” Talbot replied quietly. “Thanks for the drinks.” He swung the war bag over his shoulder and headed for the door.
“What about your brother?” Thornberg cried, incredulous.
Talbot turned back to the man. “I expect I could spend the rest of my life seeking vengeance and end with nothing to show for it but hate. If you had known my brother, you’d know he wouldn’t have wanted that.”
He looked at Thomberg, then at the barman and the other cowboys, who had ceased their game to see what all the commotion was about. Talbot turned away and opened the door.
“Besides, I’m no longer in that line of work,” he mumbled, and went outside, looking for a peaceful place to light.
He wondered if he’d ever find it.