West Of Dodge (Ss) (1996) (5 page)

When he cleaned the riffles and the apron after two hours of work, he had nearly an ounce and a half of gold to put in the leather sack.

It was a good claim. No wonder that Richter was bothering around. Trust him to be thinking of the claim as well as Janey. Although, he decided, beginning to show some intelligence about girls, it would be better not to suggest that to her. At sundown, when he walked wearily back up the path to the cabin, he had two ounces of gold.

Em smiled at him. "My! You've worked hard! How did it go? Did Janey bother you?"

"Naw!" he said. "I didn't even know she was there."

Janey flared. "Oh--Oh, you didn't?" She flounced away angrily and began rattling pans.

Tandy stared after her, deeply puzzled. Em put her hand on his shoulder. "That's all right, Tandy," she said. "Girls are like that."

"That's right!" Janey called out angrily. "Take his side!" She burst into tears and walked away toward the edge of the woods.

Tandy stared after her helplessly, and then dried his hands and followed. "Look," he protested. "I didn't--"

"Oh, go away!" She turned half around, not looking at him. "Don't talk to me!"

He looked at the back of her neck where little whorls of hair curled against a whiteness the sun had not reached. He hesitated, tempted to kiss her neck, but the thought made him flush guiltily. Instead, he lifted a tentative hand to her shoulder.

She let it rest there a minute, then jerked her shoulder away. "Don't touch me!" she said.

He looked at her, then slowly turned and walked back to the fire where Em smiled kindly and handed him a plate and a cup. He sat down, suddenly conscious of his hunger, and began to eat. He was enjoying the food hugely when he saw Janey come up to the fire, her face streaked with tears. She glared at him. "That's it--eat\ All you ever think about is eatingl"

Tandy looked at her in astonishment, his mind filled with protest. Words rose to his lips but were stifled there. He looked at his food, and suddenly his appetite was gene. Disgustedly, he got to his feet. Whoever could figure a girl out, anyway? What was she mad about?

He turned back to Em. "Ma'am," he said, his eyes showing his misery, "I reckon I'm makin' trouble here. Janey, she's some aggravated with me, so I figure you'd best take this here gold. I'll be walkin' along."

"She's not really angry," Em said. "Girls are that way. I expect they always will be. A girl has to fuss a certain amount or she doesn't feel right."

"I don't know about that," he said doubtfully. "Sally, she--"

Janey had turned on him. "So that's it! You've got a--a--" Tears rose to her eyes. "You've got a sweetheart!"

"No such thing!" he protested.

"Well." Her head came up and her eyes flared. "I don't carel"

Janey turned away from him, her chin high. He pushed the gold sack into Em Peters's hand and picked up his pack and shotgun and turned away. Em stared after him helplessly, and Janey, hearing his retreating footsteps, turned sharply, pure agony in her eyes. She took an involuntary step after him, then stopped. Tandy Meadows walked into the brush, and they heard him moving away toward the main trail.

Wearily, Em Peters began to scrape the food from the dishes. Neither of them saw Richter until he was close alongside them. "Pulled out, did he? I figured he would."

Em Peters faced him. "You go away, Carl Richter! I don't want you around here, nor any of your kind!"

Richter laughed. "Don't be a fool!" he said. "I'm stayin'. You'll get used to me." He looked around. "Janey, you pour me some of that coffee."

"I'll do no such thing!"

Richter's face turned ugly. With a quick step, he grabbed for her.

"I'd not be doin' that."

All eyes turned toward Tandy Meadows, who had come silently back through the trees.

Carl Richter stood very still, choking with fury. He had thought the boy was gone. By the--! He'd show him. He wheeled and started for his rifle.

"Go ahead." Tandy was calm. "You pick that rifle up. That's what I want."

"I'll kill you!" Richter shouted.

"I reckon not." Tandy Meadows eared back the Roper's hammer.

Not over fifteen yards separated them. Richter considered that and four loads of buckshot in the cylinder of the boy's shotgun and felt a little sick. He backed off warily from the rifle. "I ain't huntin' no trouble!" he said hoarsely.

"Then you start travelin', mister. I see you along this crick again, an' I'll fill your measly hide with buckshot. You head for Hangtown, you hear me?"

"I got a claim!" Richter protested.

"You get you another one." Tandy Meadows had come from a country where there were few girls but lots of fights. What he lacked in knowledge of the one he more than made up with the other. "You don't get no second chance. Next time I just start a-shootin'."

He stood there, watching Richter start down the trail. He felt a hand rest lightly on his sleeve. Janey said nothing at all, watching the dark figure on the evening trail.

"Did," the voice was low, "did you like Sally . . . very much?"

"Uh-huh."

"Did ... do you like her better than me?"

"Not near so much," he said.

She moved against him, her head close to his shoulder. Sally was his sister, but he wasn't going to tell Janey that.

He was beginning to learn about women. *

*

West of Dodge
.

Lance Kilkenny looked across the counter at the man with the narrow face and the scar on his jaw. "Watch; yourself," Hillman said. "This is Tom Stroud's town, He's marshal here, and he's poison for gunfighters."

"I'll be all right." Kilkenny paid for his shells and walked to the door, a tall, spare man looking much less than his two hundred pounds. His was a narrow, Hamletlike face with high cheekbones and green eyes.

His walk was that of a woodsman rather than a rider, but Hillman had known at once that he wore the two Colts for use rather than for show.

It disturbed Kilkenny to find himself known here, as a gunfighter if not by name. Here he had planned to rest, to hunt a job, to stay out of trouble.

Of Marshal Tom Stroud he knew nothing beyond the bare fact that some two months before Stroud had killed Jim Denton in a Main Street gun battle.

Yet Kilkenny needed no introduction to reputation-hunting marshals. There had been Old John Selman and others who fattened their records on killing gunfighters-- and were rarely particular about an even break.

At the hitch rail Kilkenny studied his gaunt, long-legged buckskin. The horse needed the rest, and badly. Torn between dislike for trouble and consideration for his horse, the needs of the horse won.

He headed for the livery. Glancing back at the store, he saw a slope-shouldered man with dark hair and eyes step awkwardly into the doorway to watch him ride away. Something about the way the man stood, one hand braced against the wall, made Kilkenny think that he was a cripple.

Hillman had not guessed his name. That was fortunate. A man of his sort might guess if given time ... of his sort . . . now where had that thought come from? Rubbing down the buckskin, Kilkenny gave consideration to the idea. What was Hillman's sort?

Something about the storekeeper had marked him in Kilkenny's mind, and it left him uneasy that he could not make a proper estimate of his instinct about the man, yet something disturbed him, left him wary and uncertain.

Hillman was a man in his thirties, as tall as Kilkenny, and only a little bulkier, but probably no heavier. He had a careful, measuring eye.

From the door of the livery stable Kilkenny studied the street, still thinking of Hillman and Stroud. Usually, a storekeeper would want to avoid trouble in a town. Maybe he believed a warning would cause Kilkenny to move on. Building a smoke, he considered that.

Like many western towns, this one was divided into two sections. One was a rough collection of saloons, shanties, and bawdy houses along the railroad and backed by a maze of corrals and feed sheds where cattlemen put up their herds while waiting for shipment east. This was the old town, the town that had been built by the hard-drinking track crews and cattle buyers in the wild days before the town had ever thought to build a church or a schoolhouse.

Running at right angles to the tracks was the newer Main Street. Away from the smell and the flies of the holding pens, it had been built by the merchants who came as the town grew. There were carefully built buildings made of whitewashed planks or brick, with boardwalks connecting one to the next so that the shopper or businessman only occasionally had to brave the rutted mud of the street. There was only one saloon in this part of town, and it was a pretentious affair situated on the ground floor of the new two-story hotel. Behind the stores of the street were grids of one- to five-acre lots where the townspeople lived. Most of the houses had vegetable gardens growing corn and tomatoes, and each had a carriage house, stable, or barn. At the bottom of Main Street was the livery, where Kilkenny now stood, and opposite him, the marshal's office . . . abridge, or a barrier, separating one world from the other.

Kilkenny crushed out his cigarette. He wore black chaps and a black, flat-crowned, flat-brimmed hat. Under his black Spanish-style jacket he wore a gray flannel shirt. They were colors that lost themselves in any shadow.

He was weary now, every muscle heavy with the fatigue of long hours of riding. His throat was dry, his stomach empty. His mind was sluggish because of the weariness of his body, and he felt short-tempered and irritable because of it.

Normally, he was a quiet, tolerant man with a dry humor and a liking for people, but in his present mood he was wary of himself, knowing the sudden angers that could spring up within him at such times.

Darkness gathered in the hollows of the hills and crept down into the silent alleys, crouching there to wait their hour for creeping into the empty streets. Kilkenny rolled another smoke, trying to relax. He was hungry, but he wanted to calm himself before walking into the company of strangers.

A stray dog trotted up the street ... a door slammed. The town was settling down after supper, and he had not yet eaten. He dropped his cigarette, pushing it into the dust.

There was a grate of boot soles on gravel. A low sentence reached his ears from the bench outside the door. "Reckon Stroud knows?"

"Who can tell what he knows? But he was hired to keep the peace, an' he's done it."

"In his own way."

"Maybe there ain't no other."

"There was once. Stroud shut down the gambling and thievein', but he stopped the Vigilance Committee, too. They'd have strung the worst of them and burnt the old town to the ground. There's some say we'd be better off."

As he crossed the street Kilkenny did not turn to look at the men who had spoken behind him. He could feel the rising tensions. Something here was still poised for trouble. Alive to such things, currents that could mean death if un-watched, he was uneasy at remaining, yet he disliked the idea of going on. Towns were scarce in this country.

It was no common frontier-style boardinghouse he entered, but a large, well-appointed dining room, a place suited to a larger city, a place that would have a reputation in any city.

There was linen on the tables and there was silver and glass, not the usual rough wood and crockery. A young woman came toward him with a menu in her hand. She had a quiet face and dark, lovely eyes.

He noticed the way her eyes had seemed to gather in his dusty clothes and rest momentarily on the low-hung guns. She led him to a corner table and placed the menu before a place where he could sit with his back in the corner, facing the room.

His eyes crinkled at the corners and he smiled a little. "Does it show that much?"

Her own eyes were frank, not unfriendly. "I'm afraid it does."

"This," he indicated the room, "is a surprise."

"It is a way of making a living."

"A gracious way." She looked at him more directly as he spoke. "It is a way one misses."

A small frown gathered between her eyes. "I wonder-- why is it that most gunfighters are gentlemen?"

"Some were born to it," he said, "and some grow into it. Men are rude only when they are insecure."

He was eating his dessert when the door opened and a man came in. It was, Kilkenny guessed at once, Tom Stroud.

He was a square-faced man with the w. Ide shoulders and deep chest of mountain ancestry. He was plainly dressed and walked without swagger, yet there was something solid and indomitable about him. His eyes were blue, a darker blue than that usually seen, and his mustache was shading from brown to gray.

Stroud seated himself, glanced at the menu, and then his eyes lifted and met those of Kilkenny. Instant recognition was there . . . not of him as a name, but as a "gun-fighter. There was also something else, a narrow, measuring gaze.

The slope-shouldered, limping man that he had seen at Hillman's earlier entered the room and crossed to Stroud's table. Stroud's face indicated no welcome, but the man sat down and leaned confidentially across the table. The man talked, low-voiced. Once, Stroud's eyes flickered to Kilkenny. Deliberately, Kilkenny prolonged his coffee.