“âOf the first grape only,'” Fallon quoted.
Brennan glanced up from the bottle he he had taken from under the bar. “âA vine bears three grapes,'” he said, “âthe first of pleasure, the second of drunkenness, and the third of repentance.'” He filled two glasses two-thirds full. “I believe it was Anacharsis who said that.”
He pushed one glass across the bar to Fallon, then lifted his own. “To Red Horse!” he said.
“Ah?â¦yesâ¦yes, of course. To Red Horse!”
But he had hesitated. Brennan, lying that night between white sheets, considered that.
He had hesitatedâ¦why?
Chapter 3
F
OUR MEN WERE seated about the fire when Al Damon rode up. The place was a hollow among the rocks and brush not over half a mile from the lower end of the flat. The trail young Damon had followed from the flat to the hollow was invisible from the town itself, and the town was invisible from the hollow. Bellows was there, as they had said he would be, and Tandy Herren.
“Got any news for us, kid?”
Al swung down from the saddle and sauntered up to the fire, supremely conscious of the heavy pistol on his leg. He squatted on his heels and started to roll a cigarette.
“Nobody expects any trouble, if that's what you mean.”
“And there won't be any trouble.” Bellows winked at the men across the fire. “We just want to have a talk with that man Fallon. The one who runs everything down there.” Al spat. “He doesn't run me. And he ain't about to!”
Luther Semple, who sat beside Bellows, had been a sidehill farmer in the Ozarks when the War Between the States broke out. He had no particular interest in the war, but the prospect of loot interested him very much indeed. He joined Quantrill first, then Bloody Bill Anderson, and finally Bellows. He was a lean, sour-faced man who had moved west with Bellows, raiding lonely buffalo hunters' camps or murdering travelers.
“Whyn't you take him on, Al?” Lute said. “Be a feather in your bonnet to kill him.”
“He leaves me alone.”
“Scairt, that's what he is, he's scairt of you.”
Al Damon did not quite believe that, but it sounded good and he wanted them to believe it. “He leaves me alone,” he repeated.
“He had no business shootin' up my man like he done,” Bellows said. “That man's still laid up.”
Tandy Herren said nothing. Al stole a quick glance at him through the smoke of his cigarette. Herren was a lean, wolfish young man only two or three years older than Al himself. He wore two pearl-handled pistols.
Al felt a thrill of excitement go through him as he looked at those guns. Lute had told him Tandy had killed sixteen men.
“Seems to be a lot of comin' and goin' down there,” Bellows commented. “Your pa must be doin' a nice business.”
“It's that Brennan up at the saloonâ¦he rakes it in with both hands.”
“Whyn't you promote a dance down there? All those pretty women. You had you a dance, we'd all come a-callin'. Only trouble with outlawin', women-folks are scarce. Different when you go to town, for they sure fling themselves at you. Fair sets a woman a-sweatin' to get nigh a real honest-to-Charley outlaw.”
Tandy Herren glanced at Lute skeptically. “You tell
me
. When was the last time you had a woman worked up over you-outlaw or no?”
“It's a fact!” Lute insisted. “An outlaw's reckless an' darin'â¦womenfolks set up an' look at men like that.”
Al Damon was uncomfortable. The talk always got around to women, and all he wanted to do was hold up a stage or run off some cows.
“That there Blane filly. Vince, when he was down there to town, he seen her. Said she was really somethin'.”
“She's pretty,” Al admitted, “but uppity.”
He took up the pot and added coffee to his cup. He ought to be getting back. Pa had come down on the flat the other day when he was not there and had raised pure-dee hell about it.
“Here”âBellows took up a canteenâ“try some of this in your coffee. Put hair on your chest.”
Bellows dumped a slug of whiskey in Al's cup, and Al choked off his protest. To tell the truth, he didn't really care for whiskey. He drank it because it seemed the thing to do.
“Who's the law down there? Have they got themselves a marshal yet? Or is it vigilantes?”
“Aw!” Al scoffed. “They're a bunch of farmers. Ain't nerve enough for vigilantes. More'n likely Fallon considers himself the law, but he doesn't wear a badge.”
Bellows dumped a liberal dose of whiskey into his own coffee. “Seems to me,” he said shrewdly, “what you need is an election. You could call yourselves an election and vote Fallon right out. Then you folks could run the town as you please.”
Al gulped his coffee and whiskey and felt it burn all the way down. “I dunno. Fallon owns the town. I can't see how we could run him out.”
“Who says he owns the town? You ever hear of a man who
owned a town?
”
Al took another swallow of coffee and tried to recall, but failed to recollect anything of the kind. Not that he knew much about towns or their governments. His dislike of Fallon was now given a sense of grievance. After all, why should pa and the rest of them give him all that money? All he had done was know the town was there and take them to it.
Just wait until he saw pa! And they all thought they knew so all-fired much! And old man Blaneâ¦But he would talk to Jim first. Jim Blane did not like Fallon the least bit, nor did Ginia.
If he could throw Fallon out of town, Al was thinking, that would make him a big man.
“If you could get rid of Fallon,” Bellows suggested, “you might take over your ownself. You could run the town.”
He had not considered thatâ¦yet, why not? Then his sudden elation vanished. They knew him too well. Blane would laugh at him, and so would pa. “They seen me grow up,” he told himself; “they'd never believe I could do it.”
Still, if he got rid of Fallon by himself�
Bellows seemed to divine what he was thinking. “What if you shot Fallon right out of his job? They wouldn't give you any argument then. Why, you'd be
chief!
You'd be top man!”
There was a distant rumble of thunder, but Al did not notice it. And he had forgotten the cattle.
Bellows got to his feet and kicked dirt on the fire. “Here,”âhe handed the half-empty bottle to Alâ“you finish this. See you next week. One of the boys will drop by and tell you where.”
Bellows mounted and then glanced sharply at Al. “Fallon shot one of my men. There'd be a place in my outfit for the man who put a bullet into him.” And he added, “I don't care if he's killed or notâI just want him out of action.”
They rode away, and Al had another drink and watched them go. He still had not been taken to the hideout, which meant they did not trust him. Wellâ¦he'd show them!
The sun was still high and hot. He took another drink, and pocketed the bottle. Then he swung into the saddle and started for the flat.
He was not used to whiskey and he had taken on quite a lot, but he was not thinking of that. He was thinking of Fallon. If he could kill Fallon, he could be the bossâ¦the marshal, maybe. He would stand on the corner in a black coat, and he would get a pair of pearl-handled pistols like those Tandy Herren wore.
And he'd show that uppity snip of a Ginia Blane!
Suddenly, he came upon a vague sort of trail. It was narrow, no more than six to eight inches wide and very old. Made by Indians, no doubt, or by mountain sheep. He stared at it, let his eyes follow it. Some fifty yards farther along and out in the open on a barren shoulder, it simply vanished, erased by time. But still farther on, away up the slope, it seemed to appear again.
Drunkenly, he stared at the almost invisible trail. Why, this must be the trail he'd heard Fallon wondering about. Fallon had said there were no sheep tracks up the canyon, so they must have another way over the mountains. This could be it.
Turning his mount, he followed the trail for half a mile, picking out bits of it here and there. It was only occasionally visible, and when he finally gave up he had passed the flat, and no thought of cattle was in his mind. Vaguely, he heard a rumble back in the mountainsâ¦sounded like thunder.
He was very drunk and very sleepy. He drank the last of the whiskey and turned his horse toward town. The sun had disappeared, but he gave it no thought. He dropped the empty bottle beside the ancient trail.
It was not easy to find a way down off the mountain, and it was the horse that found it, and not Al Damon.
That night it rained in the mountains.
Macon Fallon was tired and had gone to bed early. He awoke to the flash of lightning and the sound of thunder. There was a patter of rain on the roof.
Then he sat up abruptly. It was going to rainâ¦it was sprinkling even now. The brief patter stilled, and Fallon sat up in bed staring at the window and trying to figure out why he had awakened so suddenly.
The dam!
He tried to think of something that remained undone; but if the water came, he was as ready as he would ever be.
He swung his feet to the floor and went to the window. He looked toward the mountains and could make out the great thunderheads that loomed above them. Lightning lit up a cloud like a huge incandescent globe. As he watched, speculating on what the rain would mean to the town and the crops that had been planted, he saw a rider coming up the street. From the way the man sat his saddle, he was either drunk or hurt.
Sure that the man was injured, Fallon started to turn from the window when lightning flashed again.
It was Al Damon.
“Al Damon?” he said aloud, unbelievingly.
He glanced at his watch. It was past one in the morning and Al should have been in bed hours ago, and the stock in the corrals. Turning swiftly, he went to the back window, which looked toward the corrals. At the flash of lightning he strained his eyes toward them. The corrals were empty!
If the stock was not in its corrals, then the herd must have taken shelter from the approaching storm in its usual place, the undercut bank above the dam. But it was one of the duties of the herdsman to keep the stock from returning to that shelter.
For a quarter of a mile above the dam there was no way of escape from the wash by anything larger than a man on foot or a mountain lion. A flash flood in the mountains, which would surely follow any heavy rainfall there, would drown every head of stock at Red Horse, except for the riding horses kept in the town itself.
Those cattle and horses represented every chance of escape these people had if anything went wrong at Red Horse. To some of them, their stock represented their very existence here, and without it they could not survive.
There was no hesitation in Macon Fallon. He glimpsed the empty corral and, turning swiftly, he grabbed his pants off the chair and stepped into them. In a sudden panic, he stamped into his boots and caught up his gun belt. As he strapped it on, he caught up his hat and slicker and ran for the door.
Brennan, sitting up in bed and reading from Montaigne by a coal-oil lamp, heard the door close, heard the rush of Fallon's feet on the steps. He got out of bed and went to the window. The street below was empty.
He stood there for a minute or two, worrying about what was happening, but reflecting that had Fallon needed him he would have rapped on his door.
Fallon threw the saddle on the black and led him to the door of the stable. Thunder rumbled in the mountains as he stepped into the stirrup. He had always told himself he was a selfish man, and he believed it. So far he had not paused to consider what he was about to do in reference to that belief.
The black was an excellent stock horse, and automatically Fallon felt for the rope at the pommel as he turned the horse into the street.
A dark figure moved in front of the harness shop, working with a shovel. Somebody was ditching in expectation of rain.
“Teel?”
“Is that you, Fallon?”
“Going to check the stock. I could use a hand.”
“Got to get my slicker.”
Teel wasted no time. Fallon could see him saddling up by the light of a lantern. There was a smell of fresh hay and manure, and Teel moving swiftly in the vague light seemed like a figure in some witchery.
Rain was pouring down upon the mountains when they reached the flat. The Missourian knew as well as Fallon where the cattle sheltered. The town's oxen, some of its horses, and all of the mules and cows were there.
At the cut in the bank Fallon caught Teel's arm. “You stay here to guide them. I'll go down and start them back.”
“Two can do it better,” Teel said, and started his horse down the cut.
“When the water comes,” Fallon shouted above the thunder, “she'll come a-rolling with logs, bouldersâeverything! You leave it to me!”
Teel ignored him, and went down the bank, with Fallon following. On the bottom they spurred their horses, charging at a dead run along the floor of the wash toward the cattle. At any moment Fallon expected to hear the roar of the flood rushing down from behind them. The hair prickled along the back of his neck.
Several of the oxen and mules were already on their feet, looking nervously toward the mountains. Teel rode into them, slapping with his coiled rope. “
Hi
-yuh!
Hi
-yuh! Git with it now!
Git!
”
Sluggishly, the rest got to their feet. Desperately, yelling and slapping with their ropes, the men got them started. Fallon slid his .44 into his hand and put a bullet into the air. The cattle started to move, but the leaders held back.
“Hike 'em!” Fallon shouted. “The leaders can smell it! Once they hear that water comin', nothing will make them go toward it!”
Firing their guns, yelling, and whipping with their ropes, they started the reluctant herd up the wash. Fallon felt a coolness on his face, and terror swept through him. He knew that feelingâ¦he had felt it before. A wall of water was pushing the air before it.