When they finally rode into Caldwell it was the lazy fading of the sun and the shrill chattering of small birds which chased between the trees of the orchard at the southern edge of town. The buildings were set back on either side of a wide main street - some thirty feet of dirt and dust and packed mud. As they advanced the cabins became more substantial: a few houses fashioned from stone as well as wood; stores that were three times as deep as they were wide; a hotel with a shaky-looking second story. For perhaps a hundred yards along each side there was a boardwalk, with, here and there, slanting wooden awnings supported by wooden pillars sunk into the street. Caldwell General Store - J. Weinstein, Prop. West Kansas District & County Bank. Caldwell Dining Rooms - J. Weinstein, Prop. Kansas Star: Hotel and Saloon. Weinstein Guns & Ammunition. Caldwell Citizen. Lucky Lady Saloon & Gambling House. Front Street Store - J. Weinstein, Prop. Roundabout there Hart stopped looking.
Folk didn’t stop looking at him.
No one had wanted news about the new regulator to get out, but when there were as many people in the know as the members of the town council, their wives and families, there was no way of keeping things quiet. So when Wes Hart rode slow down the center of the street with Jay Cambridge alongside him there was little doubt who or what he was.
Like any other cowtown, Caldwell was used to gunmen; even to those who did more than wear their pistols with style and keep their mouths for shooting off with. But word had got round how Andrew Fairburn had been held up and robbed of the money that was due to go to the railroad company. Two thousand dollars. And rumor went that some of the Four Bars men had been involved. What hadn’t been rumor was old Nesty, tied with a length of rope to the back of the rig they’d gone out on, tied up and dead. That wasn’t any rumor. Nor was the fact that Marshal Harry Miller hadn’t stirred off his rear end to do anything about apprehending the killers. Instead, word went, he’d asked permission from the town council to send for an outside gun.
Word hadn’t got it exactly right, but it was close enough.
Quite a few men looked at Miller disgusted after that — if he wasn’t man enough to do his own work then he shouldn’t be wearing the badge.
If any of them had asked him just why he hadn’t ridden out to the Four Bars and made an arrest or two, he would have told them it was due to a lack of evidence. Which was part of the truth. He probably wouldn’t have told them that after the description Barer oft had given him of the two gunslingers who’d both taken the money and put paid to Nesty, he didn’t hold with the idea of going up against them. Not if it was at all possible to avoid. They sounded fast and mean and out of the marshal’s class and what he wanted to do was carry on drawing his pay for as long as he could.
‘Marshal’s office,’ said Jay, pointing across the street.
‘Yeah.’ Hart hauled on the rein and the grey headed for the hitching post set close against the boardwalk.
The building was squat. The single reinforced door was shut, the one small window that faced the street had its wooden shutter set to. A sign hammered on to the wall gave the lawman’s name. Despite this, Miller was waiting for them when they entered, standing back of his desk with his badge looking shined up on his vest and his hand ready to shake that of the new regulator.
‘Wes Hart?’
‘Right.’
‘Good to meet. Heard good things about you.’ Miller withdrew his hand and stepped a pace away, letting his gaze take Hart in. ‘Word is you’re a man as does what he sets out to do. Does it well.’
‘I guess,’ said Hart, ‘we all try to do that.’
Miller nodded. ‘Yeah, we try.’
‘You want me for anythin’?’ asked Jay Cambridge, who had remained just inside the door.
Miller bent and reached inside one of the drawers of his desk. He came up with six gold pieces — a five and five ones. ‘There’s your money, Jay. You did well to find Hart here fast as you did.’
‘Thanks, marshal.’ Jay dropped the coins into his pants pocket. ‘You seen anythin’ of Seth?’
‘Ain’t seen him. Heard he’s mending pretty well, though.’
‘Thanks. I’ll go see.’ He raised a hand towards Hart, nodded goodbye, and went back on to the street.
Miller pulled round a chair for Hart and then took a bottle of sour mash whiskey from another drawer. ‘Taste?’
‘Sure. Throat’s dry from ridin’.’
Miller half-filled a couple of glasses. ‘I guess Jay gave you what’s going on around town. Railroad, subsidy money getting stolen and such?’
‘He told me what he knew.’
‘And what we want you to do?’
Hart swallowed a little of the whiskey and coughed as it hit the back of his throat. ‘Get your money back if it’s still around. I don’t see anyone being too upset about the old boy bein’ shot, but I guess you want to make sure them as did it don’t think it’s open season.’ He set down the glass and looked at Miller. ‘Keep ‘em scared off until the deal with the railroad’s signed and sealed and the tracks are gettin’ laid. That it?’
Miller smiled. ‘About sums it up.’
‘Fine. Now I’d like a place to stay, somewhere to put my things so’s I can wash this dirt off me and then get the feel of the place.’
Miller offered the bottle to Hart, who refused it with a shake of the head. ‘Later, maybe.’
‘Okay,’ The marshal poured himself a small shot, threw it down and drummed the fingers of his left hand on the table, ‘Members of the town council … said they wanted to see you soon as you got in. My job to take you to ‘em.’
Hart waved a hand dismissively. ‘It’ll wait till I’m feelin’ settled an’ got the trail dirt out my eyes.’
Miller hesitated, then agreed with a nod of the head. ‘Room for you at the Kansas Star. Clerk’s expecting you. S’pose...’ Miller pulled out a watch from the side of his vest opposite the shield. ‘... we say an hour from now?’
‘Make that two.’
‘Two hours to wash up?’
‘Man’s got to eat.’
Hart thanked the lawman for the drink, arranged to meet him in the bar of the hotel and left. Harry Miller seemed decent enough, straight enough, too, far as he could tell. Hart guessed that in most situations he’d be able to handle himself pretty well. But with things hotting up in Caldwell and likely to get hotter, Hart could understand why he’d been called in.
Out on the boardwalk, he wiped a rime of sweat from inside his flat-brimmed hat and set it back at a slight angle on his head. He stroked Clay’s nose and patted her neck and climbed easily into the saddle. There were still folk looking at him like he’d just stepped out of the forest. A bunch of kids gawping from lower down the planking; a couple of men leaning against a pillar outside the barbershop as though it would collapse the second they moved. Hart waited till a wagon loaded high with feed had passed along the street and then followed it down in the direction of Barcroft’s livery stable.
The clerk behind the desk in the foyer of the Kansas Star was a thin young man with a pair of shiny bracelets holding up his shirtsleeves and an eyeshade keeping back the glare from the large, plate glass window. He twitched a little when Hart headed for him, one side of his mouth pinching up and one hand fussing with a quill pen.
‘Name’s Hart. Got a room for me?’
‘Hart?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Yes, sir. We’ve got a room for you. Yes, Hart. Yes.’ He turned the register round for Hart to sign and hand him the pen. His hand was shaking more than a little.
‘If you want,’ he said, ‘you can make your mark.’
‘Bullshit!’
‘Sir, I…’
‘Forget it.’
Hart wrote his name quickly, the letters large and angular. He put down the pen and held out his hand for the key. The clerk had difficulty freeing it from the hook at back of him; even more difficulty in settling it into the palm of Hart’s hand.
Hart dropped the key on to the counter and grabbed hold of the clerk’s shirtfront instead. The clerk squeaked like a young hog.
‘You know somethin’ you ain’t tellin’ me?’
‘No, sir! No, sir! Oh, no, sir!’
Hart let him go and he rocked back against the key board and metal jangled against metal. The green eyeshade had dropped over one eye; the other eye blinked fearfully.
Hart pocketed the key, picked up his saddlebags and the rifle and shotgun wrapped inside his Indian blanket, and left the clerk dribbling and trying to set his shirt to rights.
The room was on the upper floor, the last to the left of the stairs. Hart set down what he was carrying, flicked the thong off the hammer of his Colt and turned the key in the lock. It turned stiffly. He pushed back the door fast and went in faster.
There was a medium size bed with brass railings at the head but not the foot, an oak chest of drawers and a roughly fashioned wardrobe, a wash stand with a bowl and jug in matching patterns of blue and pink roses and a mirror behind; there was a window with blue and green curtains closed half across and on the floor a rag rug with at least two burn marks. A shaft of sunlight came into the room between the curtains and motes of dust danced inside it. Hart thought that for a place like Caldwell it was a pretty good room.
He wondered who had put the envelope so neatly against the exact center of the blue and pink patterned bowl.
He brought his things into the room, hung the saddlebags over the rail at the head of the bed, sat down and pulled off his boots. There were holes in the toes of both pairs of socks and inside them the soles of his feet ached and throbbed with being too hot for too long. It was good to be able to move his toes and massage his feet: it was good to sit on something more comfortable than a saddle.
Hart reached for the envelope and slit it open with his finger. The letter was written in a careful, crabbed hand and had the merit of being brief. What it said didn’t surprise him — it told him to pack up and get out of town. It even offered him three hundred dollars to do so. What did surprise him was that the letter was signed: Clancy Shire, Chairman, Farmers’ Protective Association.
Hart tapped the letter against his left hand a few times before returning it to its envelope and the envelope to his pocket. It was still there when he walked down the stairs some three-quarters of an hour later in a fresh, crumpled shirt but the same pants and boots, the same black leather vest and the same flat-brimmed black hat. The loop of leather was back on the hammer of his Colt and the holster was secured to his leg.
He looked around and saw the bar to the side of the entrance and off that a side room with tables set out for eating. There were only a few men in the bar, no one in the dining room. Hart ordered a glass of beer and took it to one of the tables. He was two mouthfuls into his drink when a girl who looked part Indian, maybe Arapaho – soft darkness of the eyes and sheen of skin over the cheekbones – came to ask what he wanted. He asked her for a steak with potatoes and greens and a couple of eggs on top of the steak. She inclined her head to one side a fraction as if to show that she understood and backed away without speaking. A few more customers came in, noise from the saloon escalated. By the time Hart had more or less finished his meal, someone had started playing a squeezebox and the occasional laugh, loud and provocative, of a woman sounded high above the general clamor.
Hart dropped a few coins onto the table, resettled his hat on his head and went through towards the bar. No one exactly stopped what they were doing the instant that happened, but certainly Hart’s appearance caused more than a few conversations to falter to a halt, more than one glass of beer to be slopped over the side.
Hart ignored the attention, used enough to it in similar situations. As a Texas Ranger he’d gone into enough cantinas and bordellos to know the effect of a lot of eyes focusing hard and fast.
‘Whiskey.’
‘Got you.’
The barkeep was short and fat and bald save for a few licks of dark hair that somehow survived near the top of his head.
‘You’re the new regulator, ain’t you?’ the barman asked as he poured the whiskey.
Hart nodded, said nothing, paid for the drink and turned so that his side – left side – was leaning against the bar. The accordion player switched from one ballad to another without a break. A woman wearing a green dress fringed with ratty fur made half a dozen paces towards Hart before she thought better of it and ran her hand up the inside of a cow-puncher’s thigh instead.
The first slug of whiskey was still making its way down Hart’s gullet when he picked out the boy. A shock of reddish hair, curly at the ends, a brown coat, long and torn by the left sleeve and pocket, a snarl round his mouth and more than a lick of fear in his eyes. Hart couldn’t have said for sure how he knew, but he did.
He adjusted his stance slowly, the boy still moving between tables, between people, pretending to be heading anywhere but towards where Hart was standing but now they both knew better.
Hart transferred the glass to his left hand and with a swift movement, made as the boy went behind a couple of men standing by the blackjack table, he freed the hammer of his Colt .45.
Next time the boy moved, Hart picked out the gun belt angled across his pants and got a glimpse of a pistol butt as his arm brushed the flapping coat aside.
Hart spoke to the bartender in words that were low yet clear, delivered without turning his head. ‘Answer clear. You got a sawn-off back there?’
The hesitation was slight. ‘Yes. Right here un...’
‘Okay. If what I think is going to happen happens, you get that sawn-off up on the counter fast.’
‘But what?’
It was too late for the question and anyway the boy provided the answer. He weaved between the saloon girl in the green dress and the man she’d been trying to make up to and when his coat came back this time it was no accident.
‘Mister!’
Hart eased himself clear of the bar, leaving room for his right arm.
‘Mister!’
‘I hear you.’
So had more than a few of the men around the bar now; the woman in green widened her eyes and backed away, knocking into a table and spilling drinks and cards. Shouts of protest rose and quickly faded.
‘You’re a killer, mister. A hired gun nobody done want.’
The boy’s eyes were light grey, strangely so, almost like eggshell. The fingers of his hands kept opening and closing; it was those on the right hand which concerned Hart. They were inches away from the grip of the holstered gun. The boy’s Adam’s apple bobbed a couple of times and he made another pace forward.
‘Who hired you, son?’ Hart’s voice was clear and flat, emotionless.
Someone at the rear of the room scuttled out of the door and Hart hoped that whoever it was had gone to fetch the marshal. He realized that despite the now almost total silence the squeezebox was still being played. The words of the song sounded through Hart’s mind.
Last night I dreamed of my true love,
All in my arms I had her;
When I awoke she was not there,
I was left alone without her.
‘I said, who hired you to get yourself killed?’
‘Nobody hired me an’ I ain’t goin’ to get killed.’ The grey eyes flickered and the hand twitched and Hart thought it was going to be then, but it was not.
‘Get out of here, boy.’
‘Don’t call me no boy.’
‘Then leave.’
‘I ain’t.’
‘Then you’re a boy.’
‘No!’
‘A fool kid someone poured whisky down and gave a few dollars to and sent in here to get shot.’
‘That ain’t…’
Hart took a step away from the bar and the boy flinched as though he’d been struck. But his gun hand was still close by the butt of his weapon and he didn’t move back. Around both men the crowd pressed close, those at the front unwillingly squeezed nearer by the men behind.
‘You think I’m a boy, you go for that fancy gun. Then you’ll see.’
Hart shook his head. ‘I don’t need to see, I know. Why don’t you learn the easy way? Get to a mirror, that’s all it needs.’
‘Damn you!’ the redhead hissed and his fingers stopped moving, remained open.
Hart sighed and his body dropped automatically into a slight crouch.
Her long yellow hair like strings of gold.
Came dazzling over my pillow;
That pretty little girl I love so well,
She’s gone…
The pupils of the boy’s eyes flickered upwards, dilated, and he went for his gun. As his fingers grasped the pistol butt, Hart made his move. A blur of speed, a swishing arc and the Colt Peacemaker was in his hand and coming level. The boy’s gun was but half-way clear of leather.
He didn’t know it.
The boy continued with his draw.
In the space at last left by the accordion’s silence the triple click of the Colt’s hammer was awful loud.
As the boy’s arm began to angle upwards, Hart fired. Time to aim, he put a slug through the flesh between chest and shoulder. The boy was swung round so that he was facing the opposite direction; the gun slid between his fingers and fell heavily to the floor. He wanted to turn back again to face the man who had shot him, but somehow his limbs weren’t obeying orders any more.
With a delayed yell of pain, of realization, he crashed to his knees and his head lurched forwards.
Back of the crowd voices rose in anger and a bottle was shattered against a table edge. Hart couldn’t make out the words but he could guess what they were meaning. The shouting spread. Hart made one pace back to the bar counter and the Colt went from right hand to left in a fast border shift. Almost before the butt of the gun was tight between the fingers of his left hand, Hart had clawed the shotgun from behind.
‘Hold it right there!’
Maybe the men pushing forward from the back of the crowd didn’t hear him well enough, soon enough; perhaps they thought he was just bluffing. Hart fired one barrel of the shotgun over their heads and suddenly heads were ducking and weaving, bodies pushing hard into one another to get clear. Hart saw startled faces stare and turn; there were more shouts but they were no longer threatening and then a hasty scuffling around the doors.
Hart leaned back against the bar. Behind, he heard the barkeep slowly release his breath. Hart held his own for several seconds longer. When he was satisfied things were okay, he swiveled towards the redhead on the floor. The boy was leaning forward against one of the tables, still on his knees, his head resting on the stained tabletop. Hart pointed the shotgun at the woman in green and she jumped back and jammed the heel of her hand to her mouth to stifle a scream.
‘See to him,’ Hart said flatly.
He set the shotgun back down on the counter. ‘Thanks.’
The bartender shrugged and set two glasses up. ‘Whew! That was worth going a long ways to see. That was...’
Hart nodded towards the boy. ‘He don’t think so.’
The bartender started to reply, but thought better of it. Instead he poured two strong shots into the glasses.
‘Some welcome, huh?’
Hart nodded. ‘Some welcome.’ He downed the whisky in a single swallow and stepped away. ‘You did well with the gun. Thanks again.’
The barkeep grinned over his glass. ‘Any time.’
‘Next time,’ said Hart, ‘I’ll bring my own.’
The woman with the fur-tinged green dress was bending over the redhead boy and trying to prise his shirt away from his arm. Close to she looked older than Hart had imagined, her eyes watery, lines close and deepening about them like the scratchings of hens’ feet across a dirt yard.
‘How is he?’
‘What do you care?’
Hart was unprepared for the bitterness in her voice. A sliver of spittle clung to her lower lip from where she had spat her words at him.
‘How is he?’ Hart repeated.
‘Out cold.’
Hart moved round so that he could see his face. He reached out towards the boy’s head and the woman knocked his arm aside. He shrugged and straightened. ‘Kin of yours?’
‘I never set eyes on him before.’
‘Then why you so fired up?’
‘You shot him didn’t you? ‘
‘You saw what happened. What the hell d’you expect me to do? Stand there while he put one in me?’
The woman stood up and the dribble of saliva finally fell away from her mouth and trailed down the front of her dress. ‘I heard you goad him into it’
‘He was already primed, lady. I was tryin’ to talk him out of it, that was what.’
‘Then you did a pretty bad job.’
Hart moved closer. ‘I could have killed him.’
‘Maybe best for him you had.’
‘Shit!’
She swung her flat hand up towards Hart’s face and he caught the arm at the elbow and held it fast. For several seconds they stared at one another and then he released her and stepped away.
Harry Miller was walking through the straggle of onlookers.
Hart looked over at him and nodded: ‘Don’t know which drum you move to, marshal, but it sure beats a different time than for the rest of us.’