Silver City clung to the side of the mountain, looking as if even a small rock would sweep it away. Above it the face of a thousand foot cliff went straight up. Carmody passed the third lookout about a mile from town. The lookout was squatting on top of a tall rock. He didn’t challenge Carmody; he didn’t do anything. After that the trail slanted up between narrow rock walls, then it widened again, and there was Silver City.
Some years had dragged by since Carmody saw it last. It was hard to believe that in its heyday this sprawl of wrecked and burned and decaying buildings had been sweet home for fifteen hundred miners, whores, cardsharps, saloonkeepers, Chinamen, and gunslingers. There never was much silver, even less city. They had called it another Panamint; it didn’t last half as long. The ore, at best, was low grade—not worth hauling heavy refining machinery into the middle of the Sangre de Cristos. As it was, the town wouldn’t have lasted long as it did if its life hadn’t been stretched out by lies and rumors. Finally, even the most optimistic diggers had drifted on, leaving Silver City to the human scavengers and the wolves.
Carmody rode past the burned-out Tabor Hotel, once the pride of Silver City. The old Ninebark Saloon next door had perished in the same fire. The sandstone jail and town marshal’s office still had walls, but the roof was gone. Someone was beating on iron with a hammer inside the roofless jail. An old man in patched miner’s duds came out and stared at Carmody as he rode past.
There were two horses tied at the rail outside Mike Halsted’s place. Carmody still thought of it as Mike Halsted’s place. The roughly painted sign nailed up over the door was somewhat more weathered; that was about the only change. Carmody hitched his horse and went inside.
The years between might not have happened. Mike Halsted was standing behind the splintered plank bar, his thick hairy hands on top of it, a cold cigar stub pasted in the corner of his wide mouth. Halsted always wore a black frock coat and a false-front dickey without collar or tie. The coat was always sprinkled with grey cigar ash, the dickey always looked clean. That’s how he was dressed now. Carmody figured Halsted must have bought up every clean dickey in Silver City before the town closed down.
Halsted was a heavy, dirty, lazy man who never moved more than he had to. He talked so much that he didn’t seem to have any energy left for much else except grubbing for money. He loved money as much as he hated to wash.
There were two men standing at the bar. They turned around when Halsted spoke past them to Carmody. “Don’t ask for beer, Carmody,” the saloonkeeper said. “The last of the suds ran out some years back and there ain’t enough trade to keep up a brewery. Ain’t that a fact, boys?”
The last remark was directed at the two hard cases at the bar. They had been shaking dice for the drinks when Carmody walked in. They didn’t answer Halsted. They didn’t do anything except look at Carmody.
He didn’t know them. To Halsted he said, “Whisky—you got anything to eat?”
Halsted set out a bottle and a glass. Carmody decided that Halsted’s shirtfront was the only clean thing about him. Halsted wore a gray wool shirt under the dickey, winter and summer. Carmody didn’t think he had chinked in since the last time he saw him. Halsted smelled bad, and that hadn’t changed, either.
Halsted said, “I can give you a two-dollar steak. Better make that a five-dollar steak.”
Carmody drowned a drink and poured another. “What’s the difference?” he asked.
“It costs three dollars more—to you,” Halsted said. Carmody didn’t see that as much of a joke; Halsted seemed to think Eddie Foy couldn’t have done better. One of the hard cases cracked a smile that didn’t get as far as his eyes. The other man drank his whisky. They both watched Carmody.
Halsted yelled something and an old Negro with one milky eye and one good one came out of the lean-to kitchen behind the bar. “One Delmonico special,” Halsted said, winking at the two hard cases. Halsted picked up a dirty rag and wiped the bar. “Don’t mind us, Carmody. We don’t get many visitors up this way. A little joke now and then helps us to while away the lonesome hours.”
There were two tables and seven chairs in the saloon. Carmody wondered what Halsted would do if eight men wanted to sit down at one time. He took the bottle and glass and sat down. The steak started frying in the kitchen. The whole place smelled of bad whisky, tobacco smoke and frying fat. He didn’t think anything would happen until somebody mentioned Frank Garrison. After he had the steak and another drink there would be plenty of time.
Halsted knew what Carmody was thinking, and tried to wait him out. Waiting or keeping his big mouth shut didn’t sit too well with Halsted. It was a wonder to Carmody that the saloonkeeper managed to stay alive in a country where men who ran off at the mouth usually got shot.
Hiding his smile with the bar rag, Halsted said, “Seen Frank lately?”
Carmody said he hadn’t. He didn’t say anything else. The whisky didn’t have much kick to it. It was just like Halsted to water his whisky, then overcharge for it. There wasn’t much water, just enough to take off the fighting edge.
“So you ain’t seen Frank?” Halsted started again. “Now I wonder where that rascal is these days?”
Carmody gave the appearance of a man whose main interest was a drink and a smoke. “I thought Frank might be in these parts,” he said. Halsted wasn’t about to get any more explanation than that.
Halsted wiped the bar again. “No, sir,” he said, shaking his head. “I guess nobody’s seen Frank.”
This time both hard cases smiled. One was a tall, rangy man, a onetime cowpuncher by the look of him, with a flat-crowned hat jammed down on streaky, yellow hair. He had taken off his lined canvas coat and laid it across the end of the bar. He was wearing a leather vest over a new-looking shirt with wide stripes. The loose sleeves of the shirt were bunched up and held with red armbands, giving his hands free play.
The hands never moved from matched Colts.
The other man was about the same age and build. He had a badly scarred face, and grew side-whiskers as well as a heavy moustache. The sheepskin coat he was wearing was open, showing a walnut-butted .45. It was hard to tell with the scars and the whiskers, but Carmody figured the two men might be brothers.
“You boys ain’t seen Frank, have you?” Halsted enquired.
“Hell no,” the man with the scarred face answered in a slow, Texas voice. He was looking at Carmody as he said it.
“You see Frank?” the saloonkeeper asked the other man.
“Don’t even know the man,” the answer came.
Scarface poured drinks for both of them; they waited.
Carmody had been through scenes like this before. It looked like some of these so-called tough hombres never learned to go easy with men they didn’t know. A man got tired of teaching them manners, especially when he had other more pressing business to attend to.
With Halsted’s whisky you had to drink twice as much to make it count. While he was having another drink he heard the Negro cook digging the steak off the skillet and dumping it on to a plate.
Halsted was peeved by Carmody’s lack of interest. He started needling again. “Looks like you come a long way for nothing, Carmody,” he said. “Maybe you’ll have better luck in some other town.”
“Could be,” Carmody agreed, tipping the bottle again.
The hard case in the fancy shirt showed big, stained teeth like a horse. “Sounds like a right agreeable feller, don’t he?”
Scarface said, “That’s one way of looking at it.”
Carmody thought Scarface wanted to say something smarter than that, but he didn’t have the head for it.
It seemed to make him mad, because he slopped out another drink and drank it down. He sucked irritably at the drops of liquor in his ragged moustache.
The play was moving from Halsted to the two hard cases. That was how it usually went. Some clown started it and the bad boys took over. Carmody didn’t know how bad the two men at the bar thought they were; pretty bad, he guessed.
The old colored man sloped out of the kitchen with the steak on a tin plate. To get to where Carmody was he had to go past the front of the bar. Scarface put out a foot and the old Negro stumbled and the steak hit the packed-dirt floor. The old man’s blind, milky eye rolled in his head and he started to mumble some kind of apology.
“No,” Carmody said when the Negro tried to pick up the steak. The old man didn’t seem to hear him. Without raising his voice., Carmody told him to leave the steak where it was. Shaking with fear, the Negro raced back into the kitchen and slammed the door.
The two hard cases set down their drinks and moved apart along the bar. Halsted got out of the way. The steak lay on the dirt floor; a cockroach came out of a hole in the wall, interested, but ready to run. Other cockroaches made an appearance.
Carmody got up slowly, the fingers of his right hand brushing against the oiled leather of his holster. It was too bad about the steak. It didn’t look like much of a steak; it was the only steak he’d come close to having for most of a week. He knew the two hard cases wouldn’t pick up the steak even if he got the drop on them. As the man said, they’d rather die first. That was what they’d have to do: there was no third way.
Halsted thought he had a surprise for Carmody. “Think about it, Carmody,” he said. “This is the Hatten boys you’re looking at—Corey and Bud.”
The Hatten brothers didn’t strut the way some gunmen did when they heard their names spoken in that tone of voice. Halsted knew he didn’t have to explain who the Hatten boys were. They had made a big name for themselves in the range wars up in Montana and Wyoming. Talk was that even a feared killer like Tom Horn had backed away from a showdown with Bud and Corey Hatten.
Carmody recalled some of the things he knew about them. Bud was the one with the scars. They said he had been right handsome before a bunch of wild cows ran over his face during a prairie fire. It hurt his feelings to look out from behind a face like that; he killed men to make himself feel better. Bud was meaner than Corey, which wasn’t saying much for Corey.
One cockroach, less cautious than the rest, reached the steak. The others followed along, using up time.
“I don’t suppose I could persuade you to pick up my dinner?” Carmody asked Bud Hatten.
Bud was a shade faster than Corey, they said. The scarred man would have to die first. Carmody figured on one bullet for Bud, then two for Corey. After that two more for Bud and one for Halsted, if killing the saloonkeeper was necessary. The job was sure as hell getting off to a bad start.
“You pick it up,” Bud Hatten said. Corey didn’t say anything.
Carmody smiled at him. “Any time you’re ready, boys,” he said. He wasn’t going to wait that long. Most gunmen, no matter how fast they were, had to get set. It didn’t last more than a big fraction of a second and they did it unconsciously; it was something you watched for. Carmody had trained himself not to do it.
Halsted was sweating; he didn’t expect it to go this far. Carmody was expected to back down. When he didn’t, Halsted began to sweat. They were testing Carmody and the test hadn’t worked out the right way.
“Listen, boys,” Halsted blustered. “A joke is a joke. I’ll pick up the goddamned steak.”
Halsted knew better than to move without being told. Nobody answered him and he didn’t try again. Carmody felt relaxed and easy, with no tension at all, the way it always was before he had to start killing. The tension would come later; right now it wasn’t there. He didn’t move, didn’t react in any way when footsteps sounded outside the saloon door.
“Yo,” Frank Garrison’s voice called out. The door jerked open and Garrison came in, stomping his boots and smiling. The situation didn’t have to be explained to him. “Easy, fellers,” he cautioned them. “Everybody take it easy.”
The Hattens were still tensed-up, hungry to kill something. Garrison didn’t look at Carmody. It took some nerve for him to walk in front of the Hattens when they were like that. Slowly, the strain showing in their hunched shoulders, they put their backs to Carmody.
Carmody stayed where he was. With a huge grin, Frank Garrison turned to him and said, “Damned if it isn’t the old corpse-maker himself.”
“You feel like steak, Frank?” Carmody asked.
Still grinning at Carmody, Garrison snapped his fingers and the saloonkeeper came running with a bottle and a glass. He snapped his fingers again and pointed to Carmody’s bottle. Halsted took it away.
Garrison shoved his gray Stetson back on his head and sat down at the table. There was a trickle of whisky left in Carmody’s glass. Garrison leaned over and poured it on one of the cockroaches. The cockroach began to stagger and twitch. “Look at the bastard,” Garrison said, laughing through white even teeth.
“This is the good stuff,” he said to Carmody, pouring two drinks. “The best stolen money can buy. You ever notice, Carmody, how everything tastes better when you know it’s stolen?”
Carmody drank his whisky.
“Damn if it ain’t good to see you, Carmody,” Garrison said, showing all his white teeth. Garrison’s even features, blue eyes, and black, curly hair went well with his white teeth. Garrison was proud of his teeth in a country where most men’s teeth were brown and broken and mostly gone by thirty-five. Carmody recalled that Garrison kept his teeth white and clean with baking soda—a real ladies’ man.
Garrison filled Carmody’s glass again. “You’re looking right good,” he said.
“You too, Frank.”
Garrison was feeling as good as he looked, and he said so. “Everything’s just fine, Carmody. Couldn’t hardly be better. How are things with you?”
Carmody was supposed to say what he was doing in Silver City. He had a story ready, for what it was worth. He knew Garrison would never believe he was just looking to rejoin the gang. Garrison knew him better than that.
“No big complaints,” he said. “Except nowadays it’s getting harder for a man to work alone. The reason I’m here—there’s a nice fat bank in Raton, New Mexico ...”
Garrison looked thoughtful, then a wide grin spread across his face. “You want me to help you rob a bank? And that’s the only reason you came all the way up here? Nothing at all to do with a girl named Yates?”
There was no use trying to make out as if he hadn’t heard about the Yates girl. With notices stuck plastered all over two states, a man would have to be blind and deaf not to know about it. What he wasn’t supposed to know for sure was that Garrison had taken fifty thousand dollars off the dead mine superintendent’s body. That information had come from Ledbetter. Not wanting to look like a fool, old man Yates had kept that part of it pretty much under wraps.
“Nothing to do with a girl,” Carmody said, grinning. “That ain’t saying I’m not interested. They say you’re holding this girl for ransom, just like in a storybook. I figured it could be just another wild rumor.”
“That so?” Garrison said. “Then you wouldn’t be one bit interested in the reward money? Now if folks were to ask me, I’d say that wasn’t like my old friend Carmody.”
The two hard cases at the bar had their backs turned, but they were listening. They’d turn about fast enough if the talk got edgy.
Carmody said, “You ever know me to go looking for lost girls, have you Frank?”
Garrison was trying to make up his mind. While he was doing it, he told Halsted to fry Carmody a steak, to make it cow meat this time. “A bank in Raton, New Mexico, is it?” he said to Carmody. “That would be the Cattleman’s National?”
There was a grin on Carmody’s face when he spoke. “No, Frank, it wouldn’t. It would be the Raton Bank & Loan Company—as you know damn well.”
“You old fox,” Garrison said. “A nice fat bank, you say?”
“As a Thanksgiving turkey,” Carmody said. “It’s the fattest and best guarded bank in New Mexico. The one bank they say can’t be robbed. That’s why I figure it can, but only with good men. I got the whole plan worked out. You want to talk about it or not?”
“The hell with it!”
“What?”
Garrison said, “The hell with the bank. We got a lot better things to talk about.”