CHAPTER 13
Out on the street, the air had cooled considerably with the setting of the sun. Most of the businesses up and down the main drag of Wagon Wheel were closed, their doors locked, windows dark.
On the corner of the next block, however, Buckhorn could see light showing in the window of the newspaper office. Justine York undoubtedly was at work writing her first story on the shooting of the Flying W riders. He thought about going down and ducking in to talk with her for a minute, but decided against it. She had a job to do and needed to be left alone to do it. He’d catch up with her tomorrow.
Looking up the street in the other direction, he saw the sheriff’s office and jail building aglow with light and the shifting shadows of several men milling inside. A single shape, most likely one of the deputies, stood outside smoking a cigarette.
Buckhorn had been given strict orders to check in with the sheriff by the end of the day, but he didn’t think it would be a good time. Under the circumstances, he figured, that was something else that could wait until tomorrow.
Halfway between the sheriff’s office and where Buckhorn stood on the boardwalk out front of the Traveler’s Rest, on the opposite side of the street, was a saloon called the Silver Dollar. It was bigger, more gaudily painted, and—on that particular evening, at least—louder and busier than its competition, the Watering Hole. Normally the kind of place Buckhorn would shy away from if he had the choice.
But having already had a taste of what he might encounter in the Watering Hole and fully intending to pay a visit to both establishments before the night was over anyway, he decided he’d go ahead and give the Silver Dollar a try. Besides, it also happened to be the closest of the two.
He paused for a minute just outside the batwing doors, giving the place a good once-over before pushing the doors wide and going in. It wasn’t quite as crowded as the racket spilling outside indicated, but it was plenty busy and those present were making up for any shortage in number by being extra loud and rowdy.
He found an empty space near one end of the bar, a spot that served double duty by tucking him sort of back and out of the way and providing a good vantage point for observing the goings-on spread across the rest of the room. He ordered a beer.
It came with too much of a head on it, but was cold and tasty once he’d gotten through the foam. Leaning back against the front edge of the bar, elbows propped high on either side, he settled in to watch and listen between leisurely sips of the brew.
The subjects on every tongue were the discovery of the dead men, the drought, and water rights issues. They were generally accepted as being related. Two camps seemed to hash over the matter. Gathered around tables in the center of the room was a large, loud contingent of men who either rode for or were otherwise associated with the Flying W brand. Along the bar and at a couple tables on the fringe was a lesser number—about half—who had interests apart from the big ranch. While no one was advocating the shooting of the cowboys, that bunch seemed not as interested in that aspect as they were in the divisive water rights issue that had been left simmering for too long.
Among the more vocal members of the smaller group, planted just a couple places down the bar from where Buckhorn had landed, was the beefy, jug-eared man he had overheard making a bitter comment about Wainwright earlier at the Good Eats Café. Hampton, the waitress had said his name was. He’d appeared reluctant to spout too much at the restaurant but in the saloon, fortified by liquor and surrounded by others who felt the same, he wasn’t holding much back.
“Boil the pot too long and too hot,” Hampton was saying, “the lid is bound to come off. Wainwright has seen this coming just as well as the rest of us. Why do you think he’s hired so many gun wolves to fill out his crew? So now three men are dead and I say it’s damn near as much his fault as the one who pulled the trigger!”
“You seem to know an awful lot about an awful lot. Leastways you think you do.” One of the bunch from the middle of the room raised his voice a little to be heard. “How do you know there was just one trigger-puller who did for those boys? Them three fellas had more than a little bark on ’em. It would’ve took some doing for just one hombre to shade all three.”
“Aw, it was just a manner of speech, that’s all,” said a man at the bar next to Hampton. “Hamp here’s got no way of knowing how many it took to put down those three, do you, Hamp?”
“I can speak for myself,” Hampton said through clenched teeth. “How many did the trigger-pullin’ on those fellas ain’t the point. The point is that it’s been Wainwright and his stinginess and greed who’s pushed this whole business to the breakin’ point. Well, now it broke. It busted wide open and those three will be just the beginning if somebody don’t do something to make Wainwright see the wrong and right of things.”
“That almost sounded like a threat, Hampton,” said another voice from the pack of cowboys.
“Call it what you want, but it’s the truth,” Hampton said stubbornly, “and you all know it.”
“The truth I know,” said a voice that sounded strangely familiar and caused Buckhorn’s ears to perk up, “is that Wainwright did you a favor by buying your failing ranch from you. And now, since he’s got cattle grazing just fine where you couldn’t, you been doing nothing but bellyaching and making excuses until everybody’s sick of hearing it.”
Hampton straightened up at the bar. His whole body went rigid and his meaty hands balled into fists. “Who said that?” he demanded. “Step up here, whoever you are, and I’ll call you a damn liar right to your face!”
Some men shuffled this way and that and a chair or two scraped on the floor from the middle of the crowd. When the bodies had parted a bit, Buckhorn got a clear look at the man Hampton was trading words with and it became evident why his voice had sounded familiar. The man was Conway, who’d been pulling some of the same taunting tactics earlier in the day out front of Justine’s place.
There was no sign of the punchers who’d been with him then, but he appeared to have other allies in their place. Enough for him to feel confident in rising from his chair, body poised snakelike, mouth twisted in a sneer.
“You,” Hampton said, like the acknowledgment left a bad taste in his mouth. “I should have figured as much, Conway. Everybody knows you’re a born liar.”
“Make up your mind,” Conway replied. “Am I a born liar or a damn liar?”
“The meat of it is that you’re a liar. You ain’t worth fancying it up with any extra.”
“Leastways I ain’t some no-account whiner who spends his days looking up a mule’s rear end and making accusations he can’t back up.”
“I can back up plenty when it comes to you, you weasel,” Hampton said, raising his melon-sized fists a little higher. “But since you got half the Flying W crew backing you, is this a discussion between just the two of us? Or are you gonna flick a couple girlie punches from behind your pals and then hang back to let them carry the rest of the load?”
A man who’d been sitting at the table with Conway rose also. He was tall and lean, almost freakishly broad through the shoulders, and had unusually large hands encased in tight black leather gloves. Limp yellow hair fell to his shoulders from under a high-crowned hat, and a walrus mustache of the same color drooped around the corners of his mouth. He wore a matching pinstripe vest and trousers, the latter tucked into high black boots. A nickel-plated Colt with gleaming white grips was prominently displayed in a silver-studded cross-draw holster.
“What if the load turns heavy under the sudden weight of lead, mule skinner?” this man said to Hampton. “You and them fat ham hocks you call fists up to carrying it then?”
“Everybody knows I ain’t no gunman. I ain’t even heeled,” Hampton said, not backing up but straining to hold his voice level.
“Fella starts calling other fellas names and goes blowing wind about how he’s gonna do this and do that, it seems to me he oughta be ready to face the consequences of his words whatever shape they take,” the blond man said. “Doing otherwise makes you look pretty damn stupid, wouldn’t you say, mule skinner?”
“Just to make things clear,” Conway said, squeezing the words in around a nasty chuckle, “I should make sure you know who my friend here is.” He gestured to the blond man with a flourish. “This is Jack Draper. Dandy Jack Draper, as he’s called. I do believe he would qualify as one of those Flying W gun wolves you referred to earlier, Hampton. Although I’m not entirely sure he’s fond of the term.”
“I know who he is,” Hampton said tightly.
“I don’t care if you do or don’t, and I don’t much sweat what mule skinners and other kinds of trash call me neither,” Dandy Jack muttered.
An older man standing at the bar near Hampton said, “There’s no call to be so offensive and turn this into—”
“Shut your piehole, you!” Dandy Jack cut him off. “Unless, that is, you’re heeled and you’re offering to step up and carry mule boy’s load for him.”
“Nobody has to shoulder my load for me,” said Hampton.
Dandy Jack’s cold eyes shifted and his gaze settled on Buckhorn. “Not even him?”
Heads turned and necks craned and all of a sudden everybody in the joint was taking notice of Buckhorn. He remained exactly as he was, unmoving, leaning back calmly, for a long count. Then, slowly, smoothly, he straightened up and let his arms slide off the bar and drift down to his sides.
“Hello, Jack. Been a while.”