Chapter Thirty-four
“Landslide down the Burro Mountains way took the track out, but it should be repaired by nightfall,” the ticket agent said. “Sorry boys. But on the bright side, you can spend a few hours enjoying the pleasures of Deacon Brody Flat.”
Shawn jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “That’s it?”
“Hell, mister, it’s all you need,” the agent said. “We got a saloon, a general store, and a blacksmith’s shop. Saggy Maggie Monroe entertains at the saloon and Tom Grant over to the general store makes a right tasty sowbelly sandwich.”
“If the train leaves at dusk, when will we reach Lordsburg?” Patrick asked.
“Oh, not later than midnight, depending on the state of the track.” The agent picked up a pen and bent to his ledger. “Now, if you boys will excuse me . . .”
Jacob stepped outside, walked to the edge of the warped wooden platform, and looked across the rails to the town, such as it was. The saloon and store were small, false-fronted buildings showing the effects of weather. They had been painted at one time, but most of the paint had flaked off, leaving just a few forlorn patches of white. Two saddled mustangs stood hipshot at the hitching rail.
“Not much of a place,” Shawn said, stepping beside his brother.
“I’ve seen worse,” Jacob said.
“I haven’t,” Shawn said.
Jacob smiled. “Shawn, you’ve led a sheltered life.”
Shawn turned his head and looked at the Mexican families camped out in the shade of some nearby cottonwoods. They had a fire going and the women were preparing meals as children clung to their skirts.
“That’s what we should do,” he said. “Make camp and eat tortillas in the shade until the train leaves.”
The locomotive and its two cars were a ways down the track, the firebox cold. The afternoon sun gleamed on the rails and in the distance heat shimmered.
Patrick joined his brothers and Jacob said, “Anybody interested in a cold beer?”
“Warm beer, you mean,” Shawn said. “In this godforsaken place,”
“No matter, warm or cold, it will still cut the dust.”
The agent stuck his head through the ticket window. “Boys, just a word of warning. It looks like Logan Epp and Hank Pickett are in town. They own a one-loop ranch west of town.”
“What about them?” Shawn asked.
“Well, they’re nasty customers when they’re sober, but when they get to drinking they’re pure pizen. Logan shot a miner over there to the saloon not a three-month past. He said he could never abide a bald man with a beard so he drawed down and plugged him square. I seen that with my own two eyes.”
“Sounds like a real nice fellow,” Shawn said. “The kind of man you would invite home for tea and crumpets.”
“Well, Logan was drunk at the time, so nobody got down on him too much.”
“We’ll be careful to step around both gentlemen,” Shawn said. “We’re just travelers stranded in a wasteland and none of us wears a beard.”
“I told the white passengers to wait in Grant’s store,” the agent said. “He sells sody pop and bottled beer and he usually has cigars.”
“Thank you,” Patrick said. “For the warning about the ranching gentlemen, I mean.”
“I do what I can to ensure the safety of my passengers and their goods,” the agent said, as though he recited words he’d read on a printed page. His head disappeared through the window.
Shawn said, “Well, where do we have our beer?”
“At the saloon of course,” Jacob said.
“I knew you’d say that.” Shawn stepped off the platform, followed by Jacob and Patrick.
They crossed the dusty street, pushed open the batwing doors and entered the saloon.
“Hello, boys, just in from the range, are ye?” Saggy Maggie, enormously fat in a loose-fitting, blue silk dress, fluttered toward the O’Brien brothers like a schooner under full sail.
“I guess that about sums it up,” Jacob said. “Our train is stuck here because of trouble farther down the track.”
“Then get yourselves a drink and if any of you gents feel the need to throw a leg over the bucking pony, just let me know.”
Patrick, polite to a fault, said, “We’ll be sure to do that, dear lady.”
Maggie laughed and turned to the other patrons in the saloon. “Hear that, boys? The schoolteacher here called me a lady. More than any of you ever done.”
A tall man with the golden eyes of a cougar looked in the saloon mirror at the woman. Without turning his head he said, “Maggie, you were never a lady. You gave up all claim to that title when you shacked up with a Mississippi lowlife for five years in a cabin just back of this saloon.”
“He was good to me. So why not? A man’s a man and they all want the same thing. You’d no call to gun him the way you did, Logan.”
“I was tired of looking at his ugly black face. That was reason enough.”
“That’s tellin’ her, Logan,” said a small man who sat at a table nursing a beer. His daddy might have been a weasel.
“Shut your trap,” Epp said. “Let a man drink in peace.”
“What can I do you for, boys?” the bartender said, his voice timid.
“Three beers,” Jacob said. “Is it cold?”
“No, it’s warm as hoss piss.” Epp was drunk and getting drunker.
“Then it’ll have to do, I guess,” Jacob said.
The bartender poured the beers and Jacob laid a coin on the counter. “And a drink for my two friends at the end of the bar.”
Logan Epp turned to face Jacob. Hank Pickett, with the impassive, sun-browned face of a cigar store Indian, took a step to the rancher’s left.
“I pay for my own drinks, mister,” Epp said, his eyes ugly. “And I don’t care to be beholden to saddle tramps.”
Jacob smiled. “A man who’s always on the prod should stay away from whiskey. It makes him irritable and downright unfriendly.”
“Is that a fact?” Epp said.
“Yup, that’s a natural fact,” Jacob said. “But I’m buying you one, anyhow.”
“The hell you are,” Epp argued. “Now you run next door and stay with the women and the rubes until I decide to leave town.”
“I don’t hardly have time.” The old, reckless light was in Jacob’s eyes, the one his brothers had seen many times in the past. “Because after you finish the drink I’m buying, you’re leaving town real quick.”
“What the hell are you?” Epp demanded, his hand close to his gun.
“Me, I’m a man who didn’t make a reputation as a gun hand by shooting old miners and black sharecroppers.”
“Let it go, Jake,” Shawn warned. “We’ve done enough killing to last us for a spell.”
Epp’s eyes opened a little wider. A niggling doubt was added to his certainty that he could kill the tall, shabby puncher with the sweeping dragoon mustache who faced him with such easy, relaxed confidence.
In a small voice, Hank Pickett said, “Who the hell are you, mister?”
“I don’t give a damn what he is,” Epp said. “He can crawl out of here on his hands and knees or be carried out by his pardners. The choice is his.”
Jacob ignored that, “Name’s Jacob O’Brien, out of Texas and then the Glorieta Mesa country.”
That last was a conversation stopper and a man could’ve heard a pin drop in the saloon.
Epp swallowed hard. “I didn’t know it was you.”
“I don’t enjoy a man calling my beer hoss piss and I don’t like a man threatening me,” Jacob said. “Do you understand that?”
Epp was silent.
Patrick said, “For heaven’s sake, say you understand that.”
“I understand that,” Epp said, shrinking in size like a deflated balloon.
“If you’d drawn on me, I would’ve killed you,” Jacob said. “You’re a wanna-be bad man, mister, a piece of back-shooting trash. As soon as I walked in here, I figured you for a scoundrel. You’re not in my class. A thing to remember.”
“Logan,” Pickett said, “let’s head back to the ranch. You’ll have another day.”
“No,” Jacob said. “There will be no more days for Logan. Pretty soon he’ll kill some other poor, scared to death, fumble-fingered rube, just to prove to himself that this was all a bad dream and he’s still a real mean hard case. I won’t stand aside and let that happen.”
Jacob drew and fired.
Epp’s right hand froze in place, clawing over his gun, Jacob’s bullet cut the man’s thumb clean off, as though it had been severed by a butcher’s cleaver.
Epp held up his mangled hand, blood running down his arm. “Damn you,” he screamed. “You shot off my damned thumb.”
“I sure did, didn’t I?” Jacob said. “From now on if you draw down on a man he’ll get an even break.”
“I won’t forget this, O’Brien,” Epp said. “Damn your eyes, I won’t forget this.”
“I hope you don’t. Now get the hell out of here or I’ll shoot off your other thumb.”
“Let it go, Logan,” Pickett said. “When we get back to the ranch I’ll bandage that hand.”
“He gave me no warning,” Epp said. “He just grinned and gunned me.”
“You don’t mess with men like him, Logan,” Pickett said. “He’s all kinds of hell.”
Jacob turned to the door. Several curious onlookers had gathered there when no more shots were fired. “You folks come inside. You can drink in the saloon again. My brother is buying.”
A muscular man in a leather apron stepped through and grinned. “That’s good enough for me.” The blacksmith was bald and sported a thick beard.
A dozen thirsty train passengers followed him inside.
“Logan, are you still here?” Jacob said, looking at Epp. “I’m really surprised.”
“We’re leaving, Mr. O’Brien,” Pickett said. “No need for more fancy moves.” He helped the whimpering Epp through the door, and moments later the two men were riding out of town.
“That’s strange,” Patrick said.
“What’s strange?” Jacob asked.
“When Logan Epp walked into this saloon he was over six foot tall. When he left, he was just a nubbin’. You cut him down to size, Jake.”
“I can’t abide bullies.” Jacob turned Shawn. “I believe the bartender wants you to pay him.”
The train pulled out at four in the afternoon. The ticket agent had assured the O’Brien brothers that the track was clear all the way to Lordsburg. “You’ll fly to your destination on wings of steel,” he’d said, reinforcing Patrick’s belief that there’s a bit of the poet in everybody.
Patrick was looking out the window at the passing terrain, then turned to his brother. “How do you figure Pa and Luther are making out, Jake?”
“We’ll know soon enough, I reckon.”
“Still got a bad feeling?”
“Bad enough.”
“Maybe you’re just upset about gunning that Epp ranny,” Shawn said.
“You know, I’ve been studying on that,” Jacob said. “Instead of blowing off his thumb, should I have put a bullet in his belly and put him out of the gun-slinging business forever? It’s a thing for a man to consider, you know, ponder the right or the wrong of the thing.”
Shawn shook his head. “Jake, you’re an unforgiving feller and that makes you a mighty dangerous enemy.”
Jacob nodded. “Don’t it, though.”