Just a walk. That’s all he’d planned it to be. Just a short, easy stroll up and down the street. Get his bearings and equilibrium back. Stretch his legs.
The short walk had become a long one, winding around the streets and alleys of Dodge. Rather than feeling more dizzy, he felt better the farther he went. His headache was even diminishing.
Hang physicians, and hang Joseph. Liam’s instinct all along had been that he could shake this thing off more quickly by keeping moving than just lying around. He’d made the right choice in taking this walk.
Now, though, he was facing a strong temptation to make a wrong choice. The saloon before him was bright and cheerful and inviting. He heard music and laughter and the clink of bottle necks on shot glasses, and the whirring of a gambling wheel. He heard a woman’s voice, bright and pretty to hear, saying something he couldn’t make out, then laughing.
Liam wanted to be in that saloon in the worst way.
He swore beneath his breath. The money in his pocket had been given him by Joseph. He didn’t have the right to spend it in a saloon.
Or did he? Joseph had said he could pay him back later on. Which would make this his money, not Joseph’s.
All he needed was one drink, maybe two. No cards, no women. Just a drink or two. And he could ask around about work, maybe actually find a job in one of the all-night entertainment establishments that teemed in Dodge. He could inquire with people about whether they knew anyone named Patrick Carrigan. Nothing to feel guilty about.
The guilt was there nonetheless when he walked through the door. He reminded himself that he’d pay Joseph back as soon as he had work of his own. What he would spend tonight, which wouldn’t be much, was rightly his to spend.
He found a table and sat down, so glad to be in a saloon again that he couldn’t help but grin.
One of the guiding rules that Joseph’s father had drilled into him was one that had proven itself to Joseph many times: “Son,” the old man had said, “when instinct tells you there is danger, always, always heed it.”
So when Joseph heard the slow cacophony of hoof-beats approaching him from the darkness ahead, and an alarm sounded in some recess of his brain, he didn’t doubt himself for a moment. He turned off the road and headed into a little clump of cottonwoods growing beside a creek and from his hiding place watched as a half-dozen horsemen rode by. The moon had been friendly, ducking behind a fast-moving cloud as he left the road but coming out again as the riders went by. He was able to see them clearly, although he was unobserved himself.
They were all big men, all bearded, and all well armed. Joseph noted the butts of rifles in saddle boots, and the pistols holstered on each man. He heard one man talking, his voice low and gruff. Joseph couldn’t make out exactly what he said beyond a few cuss-words.
He waited until the group was past before he emerged and rode on toward the barn that was, for one more night, the closest thing he had to a home. He was glad he’d avoided the riders. The notion that they would not have let him pass without trouble couldn’t be shaken.
Joseph held the lighted match aloft until it burned down to his fingers, when he was forced to shake it out. Then he lighted another and gaped again at the scattered mess that had once been his few possessions.
Several items were gone, his two extra shirts and pairs of trousers among them. His shaving gear was still there, but his socks were gone, and his two extra handkerchiefs. A paring knife was missing, along with all of his stored food. No skillet. His coffee tin was gone and his coffeepot had been stomped flat, probably in pure meanness. The Dutch oven was gone, though his metal plate and three-pronged fork remained.
Worst of all, his Colt pistol with the bone handle, and the bowie knife with the handle that matched it, were gone, along with the gun belt he’d bought in San Antonio a year ago. The pistol and the knife had been gifts from a fellow soldier, a Marylander who had served at Joseph’s side nearly through the entire war. Randall Pink, ironically, had survived horrific combat for two years, only to die a year after the war of an infection picked up from a rusted nail he chanced to step upon.
Joseph shook out the second match and sank onto his haunches there in the dark barn loft, feeling sick at heart. He’d not anticipated anything like this. An abandoned barn had seemed a safe enough place to keep his possessions. What thief would come poking around such an unpromising place?
Joseph realized that the thief might still be about. It was dark there; he could be hiding in the loft itself at that moment, mere yards away from him. Joseph lit another match and looked around, then another three in succession as he explored possible hiding places.
Satisfied that whoever had done this was gone, Joseph descended to the ground level, lit an ancient candle stub that was stuck in a holder on the wall, and examined the ground. Fresh hoofmarks—lots of them.
Joseph shook his head. He’d bet that the very riders he’d avoided on the road were responsible for this theft.
He could let go of all of it except the pistol and the bowie. Those mattered to him, and by heaven, he’d get them back if he could.
Joseph mentally cursed the thieves who’d done this. He cursed himself for having been complacent about the safety of his goods. He cursed the gun law in Dodge City that forbade carrying arms, which was the reason he’d opted to leave his pistol behind in the barn in the first place. Why had he not had the foresight to stash it in his saddlebag, or to give it to Arment to keep locked up in his office at the livery stable?
All Joseph could do was pace about and stew bitterly over his loss. He thought about going into Dodge City and tracking down the thieves, but there were six of them and only one of him—assuming the group he’d seen was responsible for this theft at all. It seemed likely, but he’d have trouble proving it.
Even if he did prove it, they’d probably just shoot him down. They looked the type. And he had no pistol now to use either for persuasion or self-defense. He’d sold his Winchester back in Abilene to generate a few extra dollars. Now he was weaponless.
Well, if nothing else, he could ride back into town and tell Liam what had happened: share the misery a little and make himself feel better.
No. It would accomplish nothing. And Liam would get angry and probably head out to track down the thieves himself. He’d get himself hurt—or worse.
Joseph could do nothing but pace about until he was tired of it, then settle down as best he could with no bedroll and try to get some sleep.
Liam, blissfully ignorant of his brother’s ill fortune, was in an excellent humor. It was a grand and marvelous thing to be free again, out on the town, enjoying the saloons, the taste of whiskey, the smell of smoke hanging in the air, the feel of cards in his hand.
Somewhere halfway through the second drink, his feeling of guilt had stood up and taken his self-restraint by the hand, and the two of them had walked out of the saloon together, leaving Liam alone at the table.
Good riddance. An evening of cards and drink was just what he needed to feel like himself again.
He eyed his hand and threw a chip into the pile in the center of the table. He had a good feeling about this one. He’d win this hand….
And he did. Luck was on his side tonight. He’d won more than he’d lost—not a common occurrence.
He lost the next two hands, then hit a winning streak again. Then he did something that made him proud: He stood up and left the game. He’d taken the money Joseph had given him and multiplied it. He was better off than when he’d come in.
Liam felt downright virtuous. He was doing his part to better his situation, and Joseph’s.
Time now for a good beer, and maybe one of those cheap cigars they sold out of a jar on the bar top.
He had just sat back down at his table with a cigar in one hand and beer in the other when someone slid up to his side.
“Evening, handsome,” the painted woman said. He turned and eyed her but saw nothing to interest him. She was wrinkled and overly perfumed…though the perfume failed to mask the woman’s bodily odors.
“Evening,” he said.
“Mind if I join you? You look lonely sitting at this table.”
“Ma’am, the last time I said yes to such a proposition, I wound up in an alley with my skull busted and my money stolen.”
“She must have been one strong woman.”
“It wasn’t her. It was the toughs she had waiting for me out in the alley.”
“I’ve got no toughs out in any alleys. I’ve got nobody but little old me.”
Little was not the right word, but Liam kindly let that pass. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’ve taken a vow: no sin or vice.” Unless the women are young and pretty, he added mentally.
“No sin or vice, huh? What about the cards and beer?”
“Virtues, ma’am. The truth is, you’re just too much woman for a shy fellow like me.”
She winked and blew him a kiss. “If you change your mind…”
“I’ll keep you in mind.”
“I can get you over that shyness.”
“I’ll bet you can.”
Liam finished his beer and started on another. He watched the poker game and thought about entering it again. But no: He was still ahead, spending not the money Joseph had given him but the money he’d won.
He had every right to be there, and felt no need to hurry back to that lonely gray room.
Luck was with him tonight. Nothing could go wrong.