The back room of the Kansas Star was thick with cigar smoke. It rose in grey-blue columns high through the yellow lantern light and spread over the stained ceiling, coiling into wreaths in the corners. Several bottles stood on the table, more empty than full. Voices clamored for attention, occasionally a bunched fist hammered the heavy wood table and glasses shook against one another.
Harry Miller leaned back in his chair, levering it onto its rear legs; he tilted the glass of sour mash whisky to his lips and swallowed it down. The way they were going at it, they were likely to be there the rest of the night. Squabbling and arguing like a bunch of kids, not one of them who was listening to what anyone else was saying, each of them sure that what he was saying was the only thing that made any sense.
As far as he could tell, not one of them was making a lot of sense at all. There were times when he found it difficult to understand how they’d got where they had, how they’d made their money, achieved their position. Huh! Times, too, when Miller wondered how he’d got where he was too. Marshal of Caldwell these past two and a bit years, silver shield on his waistcoat to prove it, the lettering engraved there for anyone to read. An office down the street with a jailhouse out back; money in an envelope from the bank on the first day of each new month.
Harry Miller shook his head: marshal of Caldwell.
Since he’d been appointed the town had grown, job had grown – if the other men in the room had their way both would grow a whole lot more. He looked round at them. Caleb Deignton, florid-faced, the leader of the town council and owner of a good third of the grazing land south from the town limits to the border with Indian Territory. John Philip Marquand, a mild-mannered, silver-haired banker who had recently bought up the section of town where the railroad would build their station and adjoining stockyards. Jules Weinstein, who wore gold stick pins and sweet-smelling toilet water, who had a pretty young wife with a taste for fast horses and younger cow hands, who owned three stores, one saloon, a dining room, a saddlers, a gunsmiths, a barber shop and a few other places Miller reckoned he might have missed at the last count.
There were others — and loudest amongst them was Andrew Fairburn, who as President of the Cattle Growers’ Association had probably pushed harder than anyone else to open up the two to the railroad. A spur line down from Wichita would make Caldwell a cattle town to rival Abilene, Ellsworth, Dodge City and Wichita in their heydays. The cattlemen driving their herds up from Texas would be able to sell their stock not too many miles north of the Kansas border and save themselves time and trouble. More profits for them on account of the drive being shorter; bigger profits for the railroad company, the town, seemingly for everyone. Such a good idea, who could possibly be against it?
Well: there were the Kansas cattle ranchers who claimed that Texas stock carried disease and contaminated their own herds; there were the groups of moral reformers who said that the Texas cowboys had the morals of fornicating lice and spread certain contagious diseases through the community — and especially through the rooms of those establishments which were there solely to cater for their excessive and perverted needs; there were the Cheyenne and Arapaho who felt cheated at the meager grazing rights they were paid when the Texan herds moved up through their territory; there were the members of the Farmers’ Protective Association; there were the Grangers; there were... but that was enough to be going on with.
Suffice to say that not everyone thought Fairburn’s plan to bring the railhead to Caldwell was a good idea. Even the railroad companies weren’t too sure. They were not prepared to commit themselves to the expense of building the spur line without the townsfolk paying high subsidies. The latest installment of which had been in the black attaché case Fairburn had been so anxious about. Neither were they in agreement about which company would run a line down: the Santa Fe Railroad and the Kansas City, Burlington and South Western Railway were currently in dispute about this.
You might, thought Miller as he tipped some more mash whisky into his glass, say there was a deal of conflict on the matter.
‘... and those two cowardly bastards...’ Fairburn’s voice rose momentarily above all others, ‘who were supposed to be guarding the money never as much as fired a shot. A stinking drunk from the stables did more than they even attempted.’
‘And got himself killed in the process,’ someone put in, but Fairburn ignored the remark if he ever heard it.
‘Now they’ve got the gall to be asking for the twenty dollars they never did a thing to earn.’
‘Thought one of them took a bullet in the leg?’ a voice asked, but Fairburn waved the consideration aside.
‘Men like that don’t deserve a cent,’ he said, ‘and I’ll see that they don’t get one.’
‘Pay them!’
Harry Miller followed his shout with a crash as the bottom of his glass hit the table.
‘Pay them!’
Voices stilled gradually; Andrew Fairburn looked across the table at the marshal as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
‘You think twenty dollars is good payment for a man’s life, Fairburn?’
Fairburn flushed and blinked. Someone else coughed. Smoke continued to rise towards the ceiling.
‘Huh? Twenty dollars?’
‘That isn’t the…’
‘It damn well is! How much money did you have in that case? ‘
Fairburn licked his lips; his grey eyes flickered nervously. Miller didn’t usually interfere in meetings and the fact that he was now was unsettling. ‘You know how much. Two thousand dollars.’
‘Uh-huh. And some of that yours, right. Came from your pocket.’
‘Yes, I...’
‘How much belonged to them two, Jay and Seth?’
‘None of it.’
‘Nothing?’
‘That’s right.’
‘No stake?’
‘No. Look, Miller, I don’t…’
The marshal stood up and leaned the fingertips of both hands down onto the table. ‘They stood to earn twenty dollars lookin’ after that two thousand and you expected ‘em to get shot to save it when even though some of it was your own you didn’t have the spunk to do one damned thing to keep it.’
Andrew Fairburn put one hand to his mouth; he had gone pale. All of the men at the table were staring at him now.
‘You didn’t do a thing.’
‘It … it wasn’t my job,’ Fairburn stammered. ‘We were paying them to guard the money.’
‘Yeah,’ sneered Miller. ‘Twenty bucks.’
The marshal glanced round the table and sat back down. ‘Pay ‘em,’ he said, ‘you pay ‘em.’
In the silence that followed cigars were relit, glasses replenished. John Philip Marquand set his match against the edge of the table, adjusted his rimless spectacles and hemmed a couple of times to make sure he had everyone’s attention. When he spoke it was with a soft voice, soft like the swish of green dollar bills being rubbed together as they passed from hand to hand.
‘It seems to me that the reason for the theft is clear. If the subsidy we are due to pay to the railroad company fails to arrive, they are less likely to carry through with their projected line. There are, unfortunately, a great many people who feel they have good reason for doing this. Which of them is behind this particular act is, I think, a matter for later consideration. A matter for our marshal.’
Several eyes drifted towards Miller, who had rocked his chair back on to its hind legs and was watching the banker with an expressionless face. ‘What we have to recognize is that for the first time gunfighters and outlaws have apparently been hired to work against our best designs for the community.’
‘And yourselves,’ murmured Miller, but no one appeared to hear him.
‘In this circumstance,’ Marquand went on, ‘I propose that we have no alternative but to take similar action.’
As the meaning of Marquand’s words sank in, their impact, quiet though they had been, was as great as the marshal’s earlier outburst.
‘Now, John,’ said Caleb Deignton, surprise in his voice, ‘you surely aren’t suggesting we hire ourselves a gang of desperadoes?’
‘Apart from any other considerations,’ added Weinstein quickly, ‘think of the ammunition that would give to those folk who are always holding meetings and parading round with placards.’
‘Once you get men like that in town, once you’ve invited ‘em in,’ said Miller, ‘it ain’t goin’ to be easy to get ‘em out. Knew a feller out past Butte, he did the same. Willsson his name was, maybe you heard of him. They cleaned up his trouble for him – stayed to make him a whole lot more. Poisoned the whole town.’
There were murmurs of agreement round the table at the marshal’s words; even Fairburn seemed to agree. But Marquand waited until the objections had stilled and his soft voice spoke again.
‘You misunderstand me, friends, I wasn’t thinking of bringing a bunch of outlaws into Caldwell, not outlaws at all and no more than one.’
‘One?’ echoed Deignton.
The silver-haired banker nodded modestly. ‘One man. A pistoleer. A shootist. A man who is fast and accurate with a gun and who will use it to do our bidding.’
‘If it’s a question of a single man,’ asked Weinstein, ‘why can’t the marshal here take on another deputy? Someone fast with a gun, just until this business blows over.’
John Philip Marquand leaned forward, arms folded. ‘It might be useful if our man were not too strongly associated with the official law in the town. I mean, we might know for certain who’s behind bringing in these men, but not be able to prove it. Now that would tie Marshal Miller’s hands, but not those of our shootist...’ The banker looked up and coughed into the back of his hand. ‘… our regulator.’
The hut had been empty when Wes Hart had come upon it. The door had been swinging in the easterly wind and clung on by no more than half a hinge. The square holes cut for windows never seemed to have had anything covering them but sacking and all that had remained of that had been a few scraps left attached to the nails which had held it in place. The inside of the place had stunk with the leavings of animals and another, stranger smell which Hart had not been able to identify.
If the boarding house in Pinto hadn’t been burned down a month back, Hart would never have been interested, but if it was a choice between this and sleeping on the straw at the stable then the hut might be the better. He’d cleaned it out with a makeshift broom and set his bedroll alongside one wall; gathered wood and made a fire in the grate. Now smoke spiraled lazily up through the hole in the roof. A chair had been left behind when the previous occupants had moved on. One leg had been broken off but it still served, so Hart had dragged it outside and was sitting on it as it lurched three-legged towards the ground.
The sun shone down from a sky that was bright blue and cloudless. Hart’s flat-brimmed black hat was eased forward so as to keep the brightness of the sun from the faded blue of his eyes. The brown stubble round his chin was almost a beard; the moustache was thicker and fuller, more recognizable. Cheekbones forced themselves high against the tanned skin of a lean face.
Hart held a tin pan in his left hand, a fork in the right. The beans he was eating were hot and tasted of salt bacon from the fat he had cooked them in. They tasted good. He wished he had a wedge of bread to wipe around the inside of the pan and take up all of the juice but he didn’t. Instead, when he’d forked out all that he could, he slid his finger down the inside of the pan and scooped the leavings up and sucked them into his mouth. More than just good.
Finally, Hart dropped pan and fork to the ground and watched the small cloud of dust rise up several inches in the air. The land was recovering from the dry winter but it was slow and gradual. The greens of grass were less deep, the buds on the trees less open. If the summer was too fierce then everything might be burned out.
Hart unbuttoned the final button of his leather waistcoat and scratched at his ribs through the rough flannel of his grey shirt. He was wearing brown wool pants with buckskin sewn over the seat and down the inner thighs. The pants were held tight at the top by a leather belt; another belt, wider and stronger, held the holster for his pistol. The thin thong of leather which kept the end of the holster tight against his leg when he was walking now hung loose. A smaller thong had been slipped over the pistol’s hammer.
The gun itself was a Colt Peacemaker .45, indistinguishable from so many others save for the mother-of-pearl grip on which was carved an emblem showing a snake gripped tight within the beak and claws of an eagle. It was not the only weapon that Hart possessed, but it was the one he liked most, the one he trusted, the one that most felt a part of him whenever he moved into action.
Two other guns leaned against the wall inside the hut, an arm’s reach from the door. The first of these was a Henry .44 rifle, the saddle gun which Hart preferred to the Winchester. Alongside, shorter, the ugly sawn-off double barrels of a Remington ten-gauge shotgun which Hart liked to use when the odds were high against him or when he was having to work in a confined but crowded space.
Work.
Hart’s first job had been with the Butterfield Overland Mail when he was a boy of fourteen. Wes had quit home, his mother already dead in childbirth and his father meaner-tempered with every month that passed. He had left his three sisters and his brother, Sean, and since that day he had not seen hide or hair of one of them. Three years with the stage line drove him hard and he learned about horses, began to learn how to use a gun – began to learn about the ways of other men.
The War between the States took him away from Butter-field and finished his education in the last two items: guns and men. When the war ended Hart was no more than twenty years of age. He followed his nose after that, working on ranches as both wrangler and cowhand, driving stagecoaches, serving time as a deputy marshal in the southern part of Texas and in Tucson in Arizona Territory. He worked for the army as a scout against both the Apache and the Navaho, learning a lot of respect for the Indian and losing much of what he had for the white man. During much of the 1870s, Hart was a Texas Ranger: it was then that he had met Kathy: then that he had sought to settle down. Build a home. Build a family. First time in his life since he’d turned his back on his own when he was but fourteen.
The memory came to Wes Hart now and he stood up swiftly, the back of his hand sending the three-legged chair somersaulting over and over. For a moment he stared at the ramshackle hut and then he lashed against it with his boot, kicking clear through one of the planks close by the door, the sharp crack of wood raw in the wide silence. He had built her a house, a real house, a place fit to be a home for a wife and kids and she turned her back upon it, turned her back upon him. Forever.
Hart’s eyes closed and his head dipped up and back to face the sun. The warmth of it burned down on him and inside closed lids it glowed orange. Well, damn her! If she didn’t want him, didn’t want his house, then damn her. The stink of flame and ashes crumbled against his brain. He had burned it to the ground.
‘Damn her!’
Hart’s heel hacked into the ground and he realized that he had called out loud: into the fading echo of his voice came the steady rattle of horses’ hoofs.
He reached down and fastened the thong at the bottom of his holster and waited.
Slowly, seen from under the brim of his hat, the riders took shape, divided out and became four men. Their bodies moved up and down more or less in unison. Hats, colored shirts, the glint of holstered guns. The shack was close by the trail from Pinto north to the Kansas border and it didn’t mean anything special for folk to be using it. But the closeness of the border and the lawlessness of Indian Territory caused more than a few outlaws to ride that trail. Hart continued to watch and wait: he wasn’t over-concerned; he just wasn’t about to take any unnecessary chances.
One man rode slightly ahead of the others, broad-shouldered and tall, a bushy beard falling down to his chest, high Stetson set up straight on his head. Behind and to the left rode two who might be brothers; both had round, flat faces, clean-shaven; both wore tan vests over faded blue shirts. The fourth man was young and sallow-faced, the brim of his hat bent down at right angles over his forehead.
Hart took a couple of paces away from the front of the shack and tucked the thumb of his right hand inside his pants belt, letting the fingers curve over the butt of the Colt.
Forty yards away from the shack, the bearded man turned his head and spoke to the others; all four slowed their mounts to the slowest of walks. When they had halved that distance, the leader lifted his right hand and held it palm outwards towards Hart, Indian fashion.
‘Stranger.’
Hart nodded in acknowledgement and moved a step to the side, ensuring that the sun was not impairing his vision.
‘Sure is hot.’
‘Yeah.’
One of the horses raised its head and whinnied and a hand reached out to still it.
‘Your place?’ asked the bearded man, looking towards the shack.
‘For now.’
‘Uh-huh.’ The man glanced over his shoulder at the brothers – Hart was certain now that they were brothers. ‘ We’re heading up Kansas way. Work up there. Yes.’
Hart said nothing, nodded, waited.
The man’s gaze shifted to the Colt below Hart’s right hand.
‘What line of work you in, mister?’
The beginnings of a smile curved onto Hart’s face and that was all the answer the bearded man got.
‘Well,’ he coughed, ‘ain’t none of my business.’
‘No,’ Hart agreed, ‘it ain’t.’
The man laughed, deep and loud. The sallow-faced youngster sniggered. ‘No need to say what you don’t want,’ the man said and laughed again. ‘Hell, I was only lookin’ to pass the time of day.’
‘Sure.’
‘Mind if I take a spell a while? My backside’s sore as anythin’.’
‘Help yourself.’
The bearded man swung down from the saddle. He was bigger than Hart had thought at first. Four or five inches over six foot and around forty pounds more than the hundred and seventy Hart weighed himself. A Colt .45 sat high in a holster on the right of his buckskin pants and a cartridge belt hung left to right across his worn greasy plain shirt. Like all of them, sweat ran down his face and neck and stained his clothes dark where they touched the skin.
The other three stayed mounted: watching.
‘Name’s Jakes. Matthew Jakes.’ He pulled at a tangle of brown beard. ‘Could be you heard of me?’
Hart had not. He said so.
Matthew Jakes looked genuinely surprised, more than a little put out.
‘There’s plenty as has,’ he said. ‘Plenty.’ The tone made it clear that Jakes thought a lot of them had lived to regret it – if they’d emerged from the experience alive at all.
‘These here,’ Jakes announced with a sweep of the hand, ‘are the Donaldsons. Them’s twins. Andy an’ Angus. And this is Dink.’ The big man laughed. ‘Say howdy, Dink.’
The sallow youth grunted and then cleared his throat and spat, as if any kind of talk didn’t agree with him.
‘Hart,’ said Hart. ‘Wes Hart’
Jakes shook his head as though he hadn’t heard that name either, but something at the back of his eyes, some slight hesitation in his manner suggested that he had. If that was the case, it still didn’t stop him looking enviously at the gun.
‘Knew a feller once down Matamoros had him a pistol like that. All that fancy work on the butt.’ A red tongue licked at Matthew Jakes’ lips. ‘You wouldn’t care to let me have a closer look, I reckon? Sort of, handle it myself.’
His eyes shone as he waited for Hart’s reply. One of the brother’s mounts, Andy’s or Angus’s, shied a little and the man in the saddle moved him off and gentled him through a circle, quietening him down.
‘You know the answer to that,’ said Hart.
‘Yeah,’ grinned Jakes, rubbing at his beard and moustache. ‘Yeah, I guess I do.’
And he slapped the flat of his large hand against the front of his shirt and hollered with laughter. The twins back of him laughed a little, too, but not as much, not as certainly. Dink, he tightened his mouth still further and stroked the shiny wood butt of his saddle gun as if it were some kind of comforter.
‘Shame,’ called Jakes through his laughter. ‘I’d dearly love to set my hands on a gun like that.’
And in a split second the laughter stopped.
Matthew Jakes’ hand moved from shirt to holster faster than most: Hart’s fingers were no longer curved above the grip of the Colt; they were tight about it, thumb on the hammer, beginning to lever it back, the pistol beginning to slide up from the inside of the greased holster.
Both of the Donaldsons had begun a move towards their weapons; Dink’s hand no longer caressed his rifle butt but was pulling it out of its scabbard.
‘Shit! Oh, shit!’ Jakes shouted and let his huge body rock forward and back a little and then his hand fell away from his gun. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
Hart released a breath, his eyes narrowed and his body taut. He stayed as he was while Jakes turned and hauled himself up into the saddle and gripped the reins around his left hand.
‘Matthew Jakes,’ he said. ‘Matthew Jakes. Remember the name.’
Hart watched until they were little more than indistinct shapes shrouded by the film of dust that rose in their wake. The sun was as strong and the blue of the sky had brightened until it was the color of Navaho cloth, fresh spun and dyed. When he did move, he went inside the shack and broke the barrels of the shotgun and pushed a pair of ten-gauge cartridges down into the openings and snapped the gun shut. He thought Matthew Jakes might not consider he’d done enough to imprint his name in Hart’s mind: he thought he might be back. Anyhow, he wasn’t about to take chances.
That was how Hart had survived thirty-six years on the frontier.
Not taking chances.