1
John Slocum dropped his saddle with a sigh of relief. Before him, bare railroad tracks stretched out across the bleak landscape, twin ribbons of iron touching the distant and empty horizons east and west. For the moment the tracks were no more comforting than the barren sand, rocks, and cactus of the desert itself. But finding them was John’s salvation, for he knew a westbound train would be passing this way sometime before sundown.
His Appaloosa had stepped in an unseen gopher hole just after dawn this morning. With the horse’s leg broken in two places, Slocum had no choice but to put the poor creature down. It had not been an easy task, carrying a saddle more than ten miles on his shoulder, but he knew the railroad was near and he didn’t want to lose his saddle. Besides, it made a pretty good pillow, and that was precisely the use Slocum put it to as he lay down alongside the track to await the train.
Thirty miles west of John’s present position was the town of Prosperity. Despite its optimistic name, Prosperity was little more than a flyblown speck on the wide-open range. It had reached its peak when it was End of Track, a “hell on wheels,” with enough cafés, saloons, and bawdy houses to take care of the men who were building the railroad. But as the railroad continued on its westward trek, Prosperity lost some of its importance and much of its population. It was gradually beginning to recover though, and its hearty citizens hung on, waiting for the eventual bounty the railroad was sure to bring.
Two young men, passing through the town, stopped in front of the Red Bull Saloon. Swinging down from their horses, they patted their dusters down.
“Whoo-ee, Darrel, you’re raising a cloud there like a summer dust storm,” one of them said.
“Yeah, well, that gets rid of the dust from my coat, but there’s only one way to get it out of my throat. And that’s a cool, wet beer.”
“You got that right,” the first one said, laughing.
The two young men went into the saloon, then stepped up to the bar. The saloon was relatively quiet, with only four men at one table and a fifth standing down at the far end of the bar. The four at the table were playing cards; the one at the end of the bar was nursing a drink. The man nursing the drink was bald. He had a round, cannonball-shaped head and a prominent brow ridge, but no eyebrows. The head seemed to sit directly on his shoulders without benefit of a neck.
As the boys stepped up to the bar, the man with the cannonball head looked at them with an unblinking stare.
“What’ll it be, gents?” the bartender asked.
One of the two boys stared back at the bald man.
“Billy?” Darrel said. “The bartender asked what’ll we have.”
“Oh,” Billy said. “Uh, two beers.”
“Two beers it is,” the bartender replied. He turned to draw the beers.
“And I’ll have the same,” Darrel added.
The bartender laughed. “You boys sound like you’ve got a thirst.”
“Yes, sir, we have,” Billy said. “We have ridden hard for about six days now. Come up from Texas.”
“Have you now?” the bartender replied. “That’s a long ride. What brings you to Prosperity?”
“We’re looking for a spread called Cross Pass,” Darrel said. “We came here to meet with a gentleman by the name of Ian MacTavish. Do you know him?”
“What are you meeting with MacTavish about?” Cannonball asked.
“Excuse me, sir. Are you Mr. MacTavish?” Darrel asked.
“No.”
“Then, no disrespect, mister, but I reckon what we’re meeting with MacTavish about is between MacTavish and us.”
The bartender put the beers in front of the two boys and they each picked up one.
“Did you say you came up from Texas?” Cannonball asked.
“Yes, sir, the great state of Texas,” Darrel said. “Here’s to Texas,” he added, holding out his beer.
“I’d just as soon drink piss as drink a toast to Texas,” Cannonball said.
Using the back of his hand, Billy wiped beer foam from his mouth. It was obvious that Cannonball had irritated him, and for the briefest of moments, that irritation reflected on his face. But he put it aside, then forced a smile.
“Hell, mister, if you don’t like Texas, then all that means is that you just haven’t seen the right part of it,” Billy said. “Texas is so big, you have to find something about it you like.”
“No, I don’t,” Cannonball said. “I don’t like Texas and I don’t like anyone who is from Texas.”
Darrel had less patience than Billy. “You got something stuck in your craw, mister?” he asked, bristling now at the man’s comment. He turned away from the bar to face the man at the other end.
“Easy, Darrel,” Billy said, reaching out for his partner. “I’m sure he doesn’t mean anything personal by that remark. If he doesn’t like Texas, he doesn’t have to live there.”
Darrel glared at Cannonball, but the expression on the man’s face never changed.
“I just don’t like being insulted by some roundheaded son of a bitch who doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Darrel said.
“We promised Colonel Galen we wouldn’t get in no trouble, remember?” Billy said. “We’re just up here to make a deal with Mr. MacTavish. That’s all.”
“Colonel Galen?” Cannonball asked. He laughed a short, mirthless laugh. “Would he be one of those Confederate colonels? As I recall, they gave that rank to just about everyone in the Confederate army, didn’t they?”
“For your information, Colonel Galen holds his commission by authority of Victoria, Queen of England,” Billy said.
“Victoria, Queen of England. You mean whore of England, don’t you?”
“That’s it, mister! I’m going to mop the floor with your sorry hide!” Darrel said. He put up his fists.
Cannonball smiled, a smile without mirth. “If we’re going to fight, why don’t we make it permanent?” he asked. He stepped away from the bar and flipped his jacket back, exposing a pistol that he wore low and kicked out, in the way of a gunfighter.
“Mr. Caulder, I’m sure these boys would apologize to you if you asked them for it,” the bartender said. “There’s no need to carry this any further.”
“Caulder? James Caulder!” Billy suddenly exclaimed. “My God, Darrel, back off. Don’t you know who this is? This is the man they call the Widow Maker!”
Darrel realized now that he had been suckered into this, and he stopped, then opened his fists and held his hands, palm out, in front of him.
“Now, wait a minute!” he said. “Hold on! There’s no need to carry things this far. This isn’t worth either one of us dying over.”
“Oh, it won’t be either of us, sonny. It’ll just be you,” Cannonball said. “Both of you,” he added, looking at Billy. “You came here together, you are going to die together.”
“Neither my cousin nor I have any intention of drawing on you,” Billy said. “If you shoot us, you are going to have to shoot us in cold blood, in front of these witnesses.”
“What witnesses?” Caulder asked, looking toward the table where the card players had interrupted their game to watch the unfolding drama. “I don’t see any witnesses.”
Taking their cue, all four men got up from the table, two of them standing so quickly that their chairs fell over. The chairs struck the floor with two pops, as loud as gunshots, and both Billy and Darrel jumped. The four card players hurried out the front door, followed by the bartender. Billy’s knees grew so weak that he could barely stand, and he felt nauseated.
“Please, Mr. Caulder, we don’t want any trouble,” Billy said. “Why don’t you just let us apologize and we’ll go on our way?”
Caulder shook his head. “You boys brought me to this ball, now you’re goin’ to have to dance with me,” Caulder said. “Pull your guns.”
“The sheriff,” Darrel said. “How are you going to explain this to the sheriff?”
Smiling, Caulder turned the lapel of his jacket over. There, pinned to the back side of the lapel, was a sheriff’s badge.
“I won’t have any trouble at all,” he said, his evil smile growing broader.
Billy and Darrel looked at each other, then, with an imperceptible signal, they started their draw. Though the two young men were able to defend themselves in most bar fights, they were badly overmatched in this fight. They made ragged, desperate grabs for their pistols.
So bad were they that Caulder had the luxury of waiting for just a moment to see which of the two offered him the most competition. Deciding it was Darrel, Caulder pulled his pistol and shot Darrel first. Billy, shocked at seeing his cousin killed right before his eyes, released his pistol and let it fall back into his holster. He was still looking at Darrel when Caulder’s second shot, so close to the first one that some who were outside thought they heard only one report, hit Billy in the neck. He fell on top of Darrel.
Caulder walked through the cloud of gun smoke and quickly looked through the clothes of the two men he killed. In Billy’s pocket he found an envelope from Colonel Galen addressed to Ian MacTavish. He took the envelope and put it in his own pocket, then walked back down to the end of the bar. He was calmly sipping his whiskey by the time a few of the citizens of the town got up the nerve to look inside.
Slocum waited for the train for three hours. When first he saw it, it was approaching at about twenty miles per hour, a respectable enough speed, though the vastness of the desert made it appear as if the train were going much slower. Against the great panorama of the desert the train seemed puny, and even the smoke that poured from its stack made but a tiny scar against the orange vault of sunset sky.
He could hear the train quite easily, the sound of its puffing engine carrying to him across the wide, flat ground the way sound travels across water. He stepped up onto the track and began waving. When he heard the steam valve close and the train begin braking, he knew that the engineer had spotted him and was going to stop. As the engine approached, it gave some perspective as to how large the desert really was, for the train that had appeared so tiny before was now a behemoth, blocking out the sky. It ground to a reluctant halt, its stack puffing black smoke, and its driver wheels wreathed in tendrils of white steam that purpled as they drifted away in the fading light.
The engineer’s face appeared in the window and Slocum felt a prickly sensation as he realized that someone was holding a gun on him. He couldn’t see it, but he knew that whoever it was—probably the fireman—had to be hiding in the tender.
“What do you want, mister? Why’d you stop us?” the engineer asked.
Slocum took his hat off and brushed his hair out of his eyes. The hair was lank, and grained like oak, worn trail-weary long, just over his ears. With it repositioned, he put his hat, sweat-stained and well-worn, back on his head.
“I had to put my horse down,” Slocum explained. “I need a ride.”
The engineer studied him for a moment as if trying to ascertain whether or not Slocum represented any danger to him or to his passengers. Finally he decided it would be safe to pick up this stranger.
“All right,” the engineer said. “A dollar will get you to Prosperity. We’ll be there in about two more hours. Take the second car. The first car is a private car, belonging to Cross Pass.”
“Thanks,” Slocum said. He picked up the saddle and started toward the rear of the train. “Oh, and you can tell your fireman it’s all right to come out now.”
“What the hell? How did you know I was in here?” the fireman’s muffled voice called.
Slocum knew because his very life often depended upon his ability to understand such things.
The private car was the first car behind the tender. It was a beautifully varnished car, bearing a brass plaque with the words Cross Pass Station. As he walked by the car he saw the curtains part, and a woman’s face appeared in one of the windows. It was the face of a middle-aged woman, with gray-streaked hair and the clear skin of someone much younger. She had penetrating blue eyes, and she appraised Slocum in frank curiosity, refusing to look away when Slocum looked back at her.
When Slocum reached the first car just behind the private car, he threw his saddle up onto the deck of the vestibule then climbed up and stepped inside. There were a couple of dozen passengers in the car—men, women, and children—and they all looked up in curiosity at the man who had caused the train to stop in the middle of the desert. Slocum touched the brim of his hat, then walked to the last seat on the right and settled into it. He pulled his legs up so that his knees were resting on the seatback in front of him, reached up and casually tipped his hat forward, then folded his arms across his chest. Within moments, he was sound asleep.
Juanita Arino was returning to Prosperity after a visit with her sister. She was sitting across the aisle from the seat the stranger took when he boarded the train. She thought it very curious that he would get on the train in the middle of the desert, and she wished she had the courage to ask him about it. But she would never disturb him; he was too fearsome-looking for that.
She watched him in the fading light as he drifted off to sleep. He was fearsome, yes, but she found herself strangely attracted to that fearsomeness, and she wondered what it would be like to be with him.
Scolding herself for such a thought, she leaned back in her seat and looked through the window, listening to the rhythmic clack of the wheels over rail joints.
She wasn’t sure when it started, she knew only that an unknown man’s hands were touching her breasts and rubbing her nipples until, like tiny, budding blooms, they rose in response. Then those same hands explored her smooth skin to the dimple of her navel before moving farther down, across the curve of her thighs, and on to her most private part. He followed his hands with his mouth, caressing and kissing the inside of her thighs, then his tongue stabbed into her, sending dizzying charges of pleasure through her entire body. Writhing in delight, she reached down to put her hands on the back of his head and spread her legs wide to pull him into her. It wasn’t until then that he looked up and she saw that the man who was lifting her to such dizzying heights of ecstasy was the stranger who had just boarded the train.
“Señor, what are you doing?” she gasped.
Suddenly Juanita was wide awake and she sat bolt upright in her seat, breathing heavily, looking around the car, wondering if she had spoken out loud. Evidently she had not, for no one seemed to be paying any attention to her. She looked over at the man who had recently boarded and saw that he was still sleeping.
Juanita’s skin was flushed, she was sweating, and her heart was racing. Even more disturbing was the moist, tingling sensation she was feeling between her legs. She squeezed her fists so tightly that her fingernails bit into the palms of her hands. Only then could she make the disturbing images of her dream go away.
“Who do you think it is, Aunt Emma?” Julie MacTavish asked. Julie was tall and slender with copper hair and green eyes.
“Who is who, dear?” Emma answered, looking up from her reading.
“The man who got onto the train.”
Emma chuckled. “Heavens, dear, have you been thinking about him all this time?”
“No. Well, not exactly. I’m just curious, that’s all. Don’t you think it is curious the way he boarded the train, right out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“I’m sure he is just someone who needed a ride. If you noticed, he was carrying a saddle. If I were going to guess, I would say his horse went lame.”
“Yes, that’s probably it. He was good-looking, don’t you think? In a rugged sort of way, I mean?”
Emma MacTavish chuckled. “Now what makes you think, at my age, I would notice things like that?”
“Your age? Aunt Emma, you may be older, but you aren’t dead. And you certainly noticed Uncle Ian.”
“Yes, I did notice your uncle Ian,” Emma agreed with a smile.