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TWO HOURS INTO THEIR new employment, Lee and Carter rode at the back of a line of ranch hands, heading toward Silver Creek. Stem hadn’t ordered them to clean out the stable, as Lee expected.
Instead, he’d told them to pump water from the well for everyone, a duty that had taken longer than they expected as they fought a seemingly endless battle to satisfy the other ranch hands’ demands. After that, Stem had told them to follow everyone else from the ranch. Turning from the dusty trail, Lee noted that Carter, although riding stiffly, wasn’t faring as badly as Lee thought he might.
“I thought that you’d never ridden a horse?” Lee asked.
Carter shook his head. “I said my family couldn’t afford to buy horses on our farm. That doesn’t mean I didn’t get to ride horses from other farms.”
“Remind me to explain to you how you answer a potential employer’s questions.”
“My pa always said I should tell the truth, so when Marshal Brown asked me if I had experience of hard riding, I told him I hadn’t.”
“My pa told me to tell the truth, too. It did me no good.”
After ten minutes of slow riding, Stem halted the cortège outside the trading post. The sun was past its highest, the fierce glare from the light rock creating shimmering eddies across the barren landscape.
To shelter his eyes Lee held his hand to his brow as everyone dismounted. As the ranch hands filed into the trading post, he and Carter dismounted, too. With a shrug to Carter, Lee shuffled on to stand behind the last man, Dave Trent.
“Are we here to get supplies?” he asked.
“Nope,” Dave said. “We is getting out of the sun and getting into some entertainment. There be precious little to be had in here, but better than you’ll get at the ranch.”
“Haven’t we got more important things to do at the ranch?”
Dave pointed at the trails that were empty for miles in all directions and shrugged.
“Nope.”
The man queuing before him, Mitchell O’Flaherty, turned and laughed at Dave’s comment and with that, they headed into the trading post. Lee marched inside after them. The trading post provided everything that anyone could need.
Sacks of food, clothing and prospecting tools filled the room in teetering piles. The ranch hands shuffled through a gap in the wares. On the other side of the clutter there was a half-stable, half-smithy.
By the back wall, a dozen beer barrels were dotted around a rough-hewn slab of wood set atop two barrels. As soon as Lee and Carter emerged from the maze of supplies, Stem turned around and grinned at them.
“What do you new boys fancy, then? Beer, beer, beer, or beer?”
Lee smiled. “Beer.”
Everyone burst into laughter, and the men’s backs resounded to the sound of half a dozen well-aimed slaps. With an arm wrapped around Lee’s neck and his other arm wrapped around Carter’s shoulders, Stem led them to the rough table where an apron-clad man stood, grinning.
“My young friend here would like a beer and so would this one, and so would I.” Stem released his grip and gestured at the other men. “And so would all of us.”
“Coming right up, Stem,” the bartender said. He poured a steady stream of beer into large unwashed tin mugs, the beer consisting of more foam than brew.
“Did you hear who’s working at the Marriott ranch now?” Stem asked, throwing a handful of coins on to the table.
Lee tried to listen to the bartender’s reply, but Carter leaned toward him.
“This beer-drinking, is it all right?”
Lee turned to Carter. “You have drunk beer before, haven’t you?”
Carter shook his head. “We couldn’t afford beer back on my farm and. . . .”
“If you just do what everyone else does, you’ll be fine.”
“How do you get to be so wise?”
Lee rubbed his chin and then smiled. “I’ll explain in a way my pa once explained something to me.” Lee cleared his throat and placed a hand on his chest. “Once, my friend, in a village at the foot of a great mountain, the corn harvest had gone badly.”
The conversation around him stopped and his fellow ranch hands leaned forward with their mouths open in anticipation of his tale. Lee turned away from Carter and waggled his eyebrows.
“In this village, the village elder had two beautiful daughters,” he said.
Everyone leaned closer.
* * *
AFTER THREE MUGS OF beer at the trading post, Carter was glassy-eyed and Lee thought the room was spinning. The other ranch hands had drunk three times as much as they had and were nowhere near as glassy-eyed.
Neither was anyone discussing heading back to the Wayne ranch and beginning today’s work. As Lee fingered his latest mug of beer, the horses whinnied outside. As there were no windows in the trading post, Lee edged closer to Stem to ask him if he should investigate, but then the door flew open and three men slipped through the supplies and swaggered into the saloon area.
Moving jerkily, Stem and the other ranch hands turned to the latest arrivals – identified by murmured comments as Elliott Jameson, Orem Stack and Talbot Court. These men were well-dressed, dust-free, clean-shaven, with lean builds and smirking superior smiles.
With hands on hips, they faced Stem. Then Elliott stepped forward. He folded his arms and appraised Stem, from his sweaty brow to his scuffed boots, and then back up to his wide paunch.
“I might have guessed you’d be stinking up this excuse for a saloon,” he said.
Stem ran the back of his hand over his mouth and breathed through his nostrils. Including Lee and Carter, Stem’s group comprised ten men. The new group contained three men. In an exaggerated lunge, Stem leaned forward and spat on the floor, creating a sticky patch in the sawdust between them.
“So you’re Alistair Marriott’s new ranch foreman. I hope you enjoy working for him.” Stem snorted. “Then again, snakes enjoy each other’s company.”
Elliott grinned and gestured at the row of ranch hands.
“Lorne is a bigger snake than Alistair is, except he pays less and employs drunkards, no-hopers and even Chinese. Things must get more desperate with every passing day.”
Lee slammed his mug on the table with a resounding crash.
“Lorne only employs the best,” he said, his voice louder than he intended it to be.
Elliott sneered at Lee and laughed. “You’re right, the drunkest drunkards, the most hopeless no-hopers and the smallest Chinese. Step aside, Stem. We’re here for a drink.”
Stem squared off to Elliott. “We don’t drink with Marriott’s ranch hands.”
“That’s no problem.” Elliott shrugged. “You can leave.”
Stem snorted. “We aren’t moving.”
Elliott and the two men flanking him all chuckled. Then, with a shouted oath, Elliott charged at Stem with his head down. He wrapped his arms around Stem’s chest and pushed him back against the table, which rocked, the barrels sloshing dangerously.
This was the only cue anyone needed, and within seconds Wayne’s ranch hands had charged at Marriott’s ranch hands. At the back of the saloon area, Lee and Carter didn’t move.
“A fair fight is one thing, but we outnumber them,” Carter said. “Joining in just isn’t fair.”
Lee nodded, but then one of Wayne’s ranch hands, Dave, stumbled from the mêlée to land on his back, shaking his head. Then another ranch hand, Finch Calligan, landed beside him. Wayne’s ranch hands outnumbered Marriott’s, but the newcomers more than made up for their lack of manpower with their superior fighting skill, so Lee and Carter nodded to each other and waded into the fray.
Lee aimed his charge across the saloon area straight at Elliott, who had grasped Stem’s shoulders and was repeatedly slamming him back against the wall. Lee slid to a halt. He grabbed Elliott from behind in a bear-hug and tried to drag him to the floor.
Instead, Elliott kicked back, crashing his heel into Lee’s shin. Pain shot up Lee’s leg and he stumbled, catching his cheek on Elliott’s flailing elbow. He collapsed. Flat on the floor, Lee shook his head to clear it of the fog that threatened to fill his mind.
With a short kick, Elliott stamped at his fingers. Lee only just scraped them back before the boot ground into the floor. Then Elliott whirled around to slam Stem back against the wall again.
Lee rolled to his feet and dashed to help one of his fellow ranch hands, Mitchell, in his fight with Orem. He hunched forward while he waited for an opening. Mitchell and Orem exchanged two blows and then Orem backed away a pace.
Taking this as his opening, Lee lowered his shoulder and at full tilt, he charged Orem. With a leading shoulder, he slammed into Orem’s side and pushed him five paces across the room and into a barrel of beer.
They toppled over the barrel, landing in a heap on the other side. With his senses muddled, Lee kept his head down and threw his arms up. He secured a tight grip of Orem’s head and banged it against the barrel, and then again.
As Lee hammered Orem’s head for the third time, Orem reached up, slipped a stranglehold around Lee’s neck and pulled him down. Lee thrust his elbow sideways. Soft flesh yielded as Orem gasped in his ear and rolled over the barrel.
With Orem prone, Lee pounced, but with surprisingly agility Orem rolled away and rose to his feet, leaving Lee to slam into the floor. Lee cringed away from an expected kick, but the blow didn’t come.
At least three other men had bundled into Orem, and with a flurry of blows from all directions they pummeled him to the floor. Lee stood up and headed for the group, ready to join in the pummeling, but from behind, two wide arms wrapped around his chest. With his feet set wide apart, Lee flexed his elbow again, just as Stem shouted in his ear.
“Stop!” Stem said. “We won.”
Lee shrugged from Stem’s grip and turned around. Marriott’s ranch hands lay flat on the sawdust-covered floor, but only five of Wayne’s men were prone, Carter included. As one by one, the fallen fighters stirred, Lee walked across the saloon area to stand beside Carter, who sat up and held his head.
“What happened?” he said.
“We won,” Lee said. “That’s what happened.”
Carter touched his scalp and winced. “Why does winning hurt so much?”
“Losing hurts more. Is anything too painful?”
“Everything’s too painful. Someone got a lucky drop on me.”
“I’m sure he did.” Lee laughed.
The bartender set a bucket of water beside them and Carter splashed a handful on his face, freeing a patch of his skin from the grime. Lee smiled. Dave and Mitchell were passing another bucket of water to Marriott’s ranch hands and checking that they were all right.
When everyone had availed themselves of a dunk in the water bucket, Elliott, Orem and Talbot rose to their feet. Elliott dragged them into a huddle. They exchanged low words and broke up.
While Elliott rubbed his hands, Wayne’s ranch hands formed a line in front of the beer table. Elliott rolled his shoulders and spat on the sawdust-strewn floor.
“You beat us, but you outnumbered us by more than three to one.” He sneered. “Think what would happen if we had even numbers.”
Stem laughed. “Yeah, they’d be even more Marriott boys with sore heads.”
As Elliott bunched his fists, Stem swaggered across the saloon area and thrust his face to within inches of Elliott’s. Then Elliott smiled.
“Here’s me reckoning I’m right and there’s you reckoning you are.” Elliott rubbed his firm jaw. “I reckon there’s only way we can prove which one of us is.”