Читать книгу Trail Town - Ernest Haycox - Страница 4

Table of Contents

WEARING the star, Dan Mitchell was a man whose tenure on living expired and was renewed from hour to hour, and since certainty was a thing he could never have in the major run of his life he prized it greatly and made the small details of his day into a pattern that seldom varied.

Exactly at seven he came to Webber's House for breakfast, occupying the table in the far corner, facing the door. Invariably he left River Bend at eight on his gray road horse, making the ten miles to his hide-out ranch in the Aspen Hills by half past nine, there to idle away an hour with his morning cigar.

He had this one fine hour of natural ease before swinging to the saddle again. On the return trip he customarily paused at the break of the hill road to view the blue and yellow and gray plain below him as it ran into the far curve of the earth. Spanish River, leaving the Aspen Hills, made its sweeping bend over the prairie and fell into a canyon for its five-hundred-mile journey to the Missouri. River Bend's crosshatch pattern of irregular streets and houses lay in the bight of this curve. Its chimneys spiraled smoke into the clear morning light and its windowpanes set up bright flashes of sunlight. South of the river was the dust and dun scatter of cattle herds driven up from Texas to this town which was the shipping-point at the end of a thousand-mile trail.

Standing on this high ledge, Mitchell looked out upon the town in which for twelve hours each day his life ran its hard and narrow and never certain way. For this one brief interval he was free of its treacheries. For this little while he escaped the pressure of its dark alleys and lightless windows, its suspicions and lusts and violences; and during this time he relaxed and breathed the morning's winy air and was his own man.

At twelve he entered Race Street, put up his road horse and took noon meal at Webber's House. Thereafter he lay back in Fred Henkle's barber chair for a shave while the idleness in him gradually gave way to a fine-hard edge, and at one o'clock precisely, the second cigar of the day freshly burning between his teeth, he crossed Willow and entered the jail office beneath the courthouse.

Ad Morfitt, the night marshal who covered the slack-tide period from midnight until noon, had come in from his final tour of the town. Ad Morfitt was a gray, competent man turned taciturn from observing the sins of the world during the drab hours of his shift. He murmured, "Hello," and hung up his belt and gun on a peg. He stood in the room's center and looked out upon the bright street, sleepy but reluctant to go home. Middle-aged and married, he had little pleasure to expect from the contentious Mrs. Morfitt waiting his return.

Mitchell said, "Anything new?"

"Couple drunks in the cooler. Was a shootin' scrape about two this mornin' but nobody hit nothin'. And a free-for-all in Straight-Edge Lizzie's. She had the boys laid out by the time I got there. Nothin' much."

Mitchell said, "Fine fresh day."

Ad Morfitt gave Mitchell an older man's critical eye. Mitchell was twenty-eight, half an inch over six feet, and weighed a hundred and ninety pounds. He had the weight and build for his job; he could buck his way through a saloon crowd to come out with his man and had often done it. In a rough-and-tumble fight he was as tough as a marshal had to be if he wanted to survive the punishment of those wild and salty riders who rode up the trail with Texas cattle. Nor was there a streak of concealed fear in him, for Morfitt had long watched for it and had not found it. Mitchell's hair was the shade of dressed harness leather and brushed down at his ears in frontiersman style. He had full long lips and a heavy nose and rock-gray eyes and big bones and the strong juices of a young man's vitality bubbled in him. He could play the quiet game or the quick one, and though there was a broad streak of kindness in him he could be, as Morfitt well knew, cruel in a tight place.

Morfitt said, "All mornin's are fine to you. Wait till you get my age."

When Mitchell smiled one deep line broke out from the corner of each eye. He put on his gun belt. "Lot of fight left in you yet, Ad."

"Nothin' ever happens to a night marshal. Them hours are quiet. I been at it sixteen years and I'll live a long time. You're the target, not me. You're the big fellow on a buckskin horse—you're the law of the town. I seen a lot of marshals come and go. Loud ones and soft ones. Good ones and some that was no better than outlaws. Not many are livin'. They either died in a hurry or somethin' else happened. You know what that was?"

"You say it."

"Pressure. Walkin' down the street it pushed on their shoulders. One day it opened a hole and the sand started pourin' out of these fellows. Either they just broke and ran or else they lost judgment and got sucked into a play they shouldn't of, and died right there. You been here a year. You're feelin' it, too. That's why you get out of town in the mornin'. Let me tell you somethin'. When you walk down these alleys at night and you keep wantin' to turn around and see what's behind, then it is time to quit." He had meanwhile built himself a smoke and now took a swipe at it with his tongue, sealed it, and lighted it. "It'll be active around here after supper. Couple more big outfits came up the trail today."

He started for the doorway and paused in front of an incoming man so tall that he had to duck his peaked hat beneath the doorframe, a great florid Texan with massive jaws and a golden goatee and eyes of marbled agate.

This man pointed a finger at Mitchell. "You the marshal here? I'm Cap Ryker, Anchor outfit, Texas. Just brought a herd up the trail. Payin' off my boys here so's they can take a fling at the honeypots. Been sixty days on trail, so they're dry. Might be a little noise and hell but it is all in fun."

"The town," said Mitchell, "is open."

Cap Ryker's natural voice seemed to be a shout. "What I came to tell you was I want no funny stuff. These boys are entitled to a run for their money. Anybody try to put 'em through the wringer or slug 'em in a back alley and I'll get these Texas outfits together and clean this place from hell to breakfast. You understand?"

Mitchell's answer remained soft. "Just two things. Your boys stay below the deadline on Willow Street and they check their guns. Beyond that the sky's the limit. If they don't want to get trapped in an alley tell 'em to stay out of the alleys."

Cap Ryker shouted again, "No funny stuff," and ducked out of the room. He paused on the walk and he let go a shrill whoop whose echoes broke through noon's quiet, and stamped away. Ad Morfitt shrugged his shoulders and passed to the street, finding no element of surprise in one more Texan blowing off steam.

Mitchell moved back to the big cell behind the office and unlocked the door on a pair of cowhands, sallow and scratched and hard-used by the night.

He said, "Go on."

"How about our money?" one of them asked.

"Where'd you leave it last?"

The puncher spoke to his companion in a dreary voice: "Where was we last, Fog?"

They departed, leaving behind the stale incense of whisky and cigars. It was a quarter of two by Mitchell's watch when he wound it. He lifted his gun to have a look at the loads; he gave the cylinder one brief whirl and replaced the gun. Leaving the office, he faced the length of Race Street with the sun in his eyes. Behind him, too, lay Willow Street, the deadline between respectability and the town's lusty evil. Four blocks onward, at the foot of this street and adjacent to the stockyards, stood The Drovers' Hotel. Between Mitchell and The Drovers' lay twelve saloons, The Dream dance hall, Naab's shooting-gallery, three stables, and the scatter of general stores catering to the trail cowboy's trade. Except for three narrow cross streets these places stood shoulder to shoulder. South of Race and parallel to it ran Bismarck Alley with its cheaper saloons, its rooming-houses, and its mansions of amusement from which late at night pianos issued their bawdy invitation.

Ford Green, the county's prosecuting attorney, stepped from the main door of the courthouse and gave the sun a wry glance. He paused to look both ways on the street and his eyes touched Mitchell and issued no warmth. He said, "Hello," and moved down Race, his passage ruffling the dust of old enmity. He had long legs and a thick upper body which made him appear top-heavy, and one hank of black hair stood on his uncovered head like a disturbed crow's wing. Mitchell jiggled the cigar between his teeth and set out on his first round of the day, following the exact route he had established one year before when new at the job.

Behind him on Willow there was some display of activity but here on Race Street, the playground of the trail rider when night came, lay the drugged and uneasy quiet of a quarter sleeping off its excesses. Roustabouts swept out the trash of the previous night, and as he passed one saloon doorway after another he moved through the bitter-reeking gusts of burned tobacco and spilled whisky and the dead air wherein many men had left their earthy odors.

He passed the Arcade, the Bullshead, and diagonally crossed Briar Street to come to Charley Fair's saloon. This, The Pride, occupied a half block and was the largest place of its kind between Texas and Montana, its row of double doors flashing their inlay of green and red glass against the rising light.

Charley Fair moved from the place's emptiness and came into the sunshine, his eyes squeezed against unaccustomed brightness. He had a round head bulked on a short, tremendous neck; he was built in the shape of a barrel, immovable and powerful, and he invariably carried one hand—from which three fingers were missing—jammed beneath the band of his trousers. In this town Charley Fair spoke for the gambling element and therefore in this town Charley Fair was half the law.

He said, "Three new trail outfits camped across the river. Be lively here tonight."

"Expect so," assented Mitchell.

Adjoining The Pride was The Dream dance hall. Now he crossed Ute Street, skirted Jack McGeen's saloon, Spreckel's Cowboy Store, Naab's shooting-gallery and Solomon's Notion Emporium. The last block, beyond Sage, contained saloons solidly and brought up against The Drover's, which was favored by the trail cattle owners and by the sports of River Bend who, because of the invisible deadline on Willow, were denied the comforts of Webber's House. East of The Drovers' were the stockpens to hold Texas beef and the loading-spur of the railroad.

He circled The Drovers' and entered Bismarck Alley which paralleled Race as it moved back toward Willow. Its cheap saloons were closed; the green shades of its houses were tight drawn against the day. One lone woman stood in this alley, warming herself in a patch of sun and as he came up she turned a white sleepy face to him and smiled.

"Morning, Dan."

"Morning, Rita."

At intervals on the alley small back lots lay crowded with empty boxes and junk and the litter of careless living. The rear compound of Brinton's stable also faced the alley. Going forward, he watched these places for whatever change might be in them, and he scanned all the windows of the surrounding houses; for in this alley at night he had once been shot at, and would be again, and now he measured it for warning of that second time.

The alley came into Willow, which was a long T cross stroke at the top of Race. On Willow were the town's substantial stores and shops, shoulder to shoulder without break all down to the yellow depot shack on the north edge of town. Willow was the barrier against which at night the wild tide of Race Street broke and fell away. Willow was the parapet behind which in the west quarter of River Bend, on Antelope Street, the general and respectable citizens lived.

He had made his first swing, so exactly patterned in his regular routine that when he stepped into Brinton's stable to saddle his buckskin the whistle of the three-o'clock train sounded over the prairie, as it did on all other days. In front of the stable, now mounted, he paused to look along Willow. A freighter, six horses and heavy wagon stood in front of Dug Neil's wholesale warehouse, ready for a long haul over the prairie to War Bonnet, eighty miles west. The county's sheriff, Bravo Trimble, sauntered forward to meet Ford Green in front of Ed Balder's big general store. A moment later Ed Balder came out and these three made a casual group, accidentally formed.

Perhaps accidentally. This was River Bend, wherein the pressures and schemings of men moved beneath the surface. In the narrows of Bismarck Alley Mitchell had watched those upper windows from which one night a bullet might come; now he looked upon those three gathered men with the same awareness of possible danger. He knew the wants of each. Singly they could not hurt him but if, in the shifting balances and changing secret liaisons of this town, they joined their wants together they could destroy him. He stored the scene in his head and turned from Willow to Antelope. Looking behind, he saw a single puncher come slowly up Race, early drunk.

Antelope Street lay behind the shelter of Willow's business buildings. Here stood the houses of the merchants and of the cattlemen who came out of the Aspen Hills to winter in town, each house centered in its brown and lifeless lawn. The day was warm, the sun half down the sky. The Eastern train bad arrived at the depot, its engine's bell sharp-ringing through the heated quiet. Coming to the depot, Mitchell reined in to watch the passengers arrive at this last milepost on the prairie—townsmen returning from distant Omaha, commercial travelers and settlers who, drawn by the magic of free land, were here to find homesteads. Bill Mellen, the town's real-estate agent, spotted this last group with an unerring eye and soon had them collected. Bill Mellen was an enthusiastic talker. Mitchell noticed how these people hung to his words, their faces growing light and pleased.

As he watched them a streak of motion appeared at the extreme edge of his vision and he swung about to see Sherry Gault step from Balder's store and advance toward Fogel's meat market, and now the lone cowpuncher who had been weaving up Race crossed the invisible deadline in Willow's deep sheet of silver dust and reached the sidewalk. He walked with his head down, seeing nothing until he came dead against Sherry Gault. He stopped, straightened, and gave her a long stare.

Mitchell swung his horse and moved toward that scene. Sherry Gault was saying something to the cowpuncher, for Mitchell saw her lips stir. Then the puncher reached out to touch her. Mitchell dropped from his horse, at the same time noting that Ford Green now came from Henkle's barbershop at a half run. Mitchell closed in on the puncher. He caught the man at the coat collar and swung him, arm's length, in a wide circle; he braced his feet as he turned and flung the cowpuncher hard against the wall of the butcher shop. The puncher's head slammed the wall and he whirled and struck out with his hands, catching Mitchell in the face and belly. Mitchell came against him, shoving him back to the wall with his shoulder.

Ford Green rushed in. He got beside Mitchell and he landed a blow on the puncher's unprotected face, crying, "I'll show you what happens to a damned drunk bum—"

Mitchell turned and put the flat of his arm against Ford Green's chest, the force of the blow knocking the prosecuting attorney off his feet into the dust of the street. The puncher, meanwhile free, cut into Mitchell wildly with his fists. Mitchell lifted a shoulder and used the flat of his hand full on the puncher's face, batting the puncher's head against the wall until the man's eyes began to dull up. After that he stepped away. Wind drew in and out of him, deep and even while he waited; he showed no anger and he showed no excitement.

Ford Green stood at the edge of the sidewalk. "What'd you do that for?" he said. "I was giving you a hand."

The puncher, once drunk, now was sober.

Mitchell said, "What's your outfit?"

"Anchor."

Ford Green said, "Throw him in jail!"

Mitchell kept his glance on the puncher. "You got yourself in a little trouble. That's too bad. Pull out of town—and don't come again."

"Throw him in jail," repeated Ford Green.

The puncher laid a rebel glance on Ford Green. He drew one hand across his face and saw blood on it and anger turned his eyes pale. He was a lad toughened by the trail, hungry and lawless and proud, and his pride had been affronted.

"Damn right I'll go," he breathed. "But, by God, I'll get my crowd and we'll be back tonight!"

Mitchell said, "Don't make that mistake, friend. No harm's done so far. Might be next trip."

"We'll see—we'll see!" cried the puncher and rushed across Willow into Race, so angered that he could not walk straight.

Ed Balder had watched this from his store and the people from the train stood by with Bill Mellen. This audience had observed Mitchell knock Ford Green into the dust and now Ford Green stood close at hand, humiliation shaking him out of his dry caution. "If you're a marshal why don't you do a proper job of it? What are you for?"

"To keep the fools from the respectable, and the respectable from the fools," murmured Mitchell. "Ford, never interfere with me when I'm handling a man."

"If a woman can't be safe on this street—" said Ford.

"On this street," said Mitchell, "she's safe," and turned to Sherry Gault. "Nothing happened to her."

She had not spoken, this tall daughter of Mike Gault who ran his ranch twenty miles away in the Aspens. She had shown no surprise, no excitement. She stood calmly back from the scene, a girl wise in the ways of this land and its men and quite accustomed to its violence. She wore a riding-skirt and a green jacket and a small round hat on dark hair. She met his glance in a full way—self-assured and with her temper willfully set against him. Her lips were red and expressive and full at the centers.

"Why did you rough him up?"

"An example for the rest of the boys."

"Then why did you let him go?"

He still had part of his cigar. He made a point of lighting it before he spoke. He found some humor in the situation and that humor slid into the angles of his brown face; it was a humor that held some acid and some iron.

"The fault was not entirely his."

Ford Green said, "What's that?"

"Why wasn't it?" asked Sherry Gault, probing into Mitchell's mind with her steady interest. This girl, he remembered, wore Ford Green's ring and this was a puzzle he could not unravel, knowing Green's dry and calculating spirit. Green was a man who wanted something from the world and proposed to get it. This girl, for all the reserve she put against the world, had fire and striking aliveness.

He said, "The boy came across the street with his head down. Then he looked up and saw something in front of him. He knew he was drunk and didn't believe what he saw. So he put out his arm and touched you."

She had a strong mind and she was resisting him, silently and stubbornly. Out of some strange reason she wanted no interference from him, she wanted no part of him to intrude upon her. Her eyes were hazel and deep and they held his glance, and curiosity at last made her say:

"What did he think he was seeing?"

"What does a thirsty man want?"

She dropped her eyes, meaning to break the effect of his words. He knew she did it deliberately, her will unable to endure interference. He pulled on the cigar; he watched the exhaled smoke spiral into the air; he saw her head lift.

Her words held short, faint scorn. "What was it, then?"

"Beauty."

She looked aside quickly at Ford Green and her voice was light and hurried. "Walk to the hotel with me, Ford." She started to turn away, and he knew what was in her mind. She had been trapped into this talk and now regretted it. Humor showed in him again and she noticed it and stopped at once, her head rising. "Well, did he see it, or didn't he?"

"I forgot to ask him," was Mitchell's dry answer.

Storm moved darkly over her face. She said, "Come on, Ford," and went down the street. Mitchell stepped to the buckskin and mounted. This was near four-thirty and the sun, dropping below the parapet of the store buildings on Willow, began to throw longer shadows down Race. The cowpuncher from the Anchor outfit at this moment left The Pride saloon, made a quick jump to his horse, and left River Bend with a long yell. Will Gatewood, the Wells-Fargo agent, came from his office.

"He'll cause you trouble, Dan."

"Expect so," agreed Mitchell. As he turned into Race for another tour of the town he saw Sherry Gault pause at the entrance to Webber's House. She was speaking to Ford Green but suddenly she ceased speaking and her face turned and he received the full strike of her eyes. He held her complete attention and during that moment he saw her as the cowpuncher had seen her, the shape and dream of beauty, the image of a still flame burning in the night, perfect and pure-centered with white heat. Afterward he swung down Race.

She said to Ford Green, "You hate him, don't you?"

"Just say he stands in my way."

She was impatient with his roundabout words. "If he stands in your way then you hate him. Don't be afraid of the word. It is an honest word."

"Afraid?" he said, and was affronted. The dryness grew more pronounced on his face. "You don't know me, Sherry. Riding back to the ranch tonight?"

She said, "Yes." She stepped away from him, with Race Street before her.

All along those walks men began to move in preparation for the coming night. A floorman stepped from The Pride and opened the swinging doors, pair by pair, latching them to the outer wall. Big Annie, broad and buxom in her high-colored silks, appeared from Bismarck Alley and entered Spreckel's Cowboy Store. Half a dozen riders appeared in town and filed through the Arcade's door. The piano player in The Dream dance hall idly warmed his fingers with little pieces of tunes. George Hazelhurst, a gambler in The Pride, strolled up from The Drover's, neat in his black suit and stiff white shirt.

Will Gatewood's wife came out of Antelope into Willow and strolled forward with her parasol gaily raked. She was a small and dark girl with a pair of eyes quickly inquiring into the sights and sounds of this town—ready for instant laughter. Love of color showed itself in her clothes, which were brighter than those worn by other women on Antelope, and as she walked along she seemed to have about her an eagerness to please and be pleased. She smiled across the dust at her husband and waited for his sober face to break and when this man only nodded with a kind of preoccupied courtesy her smile turned wistful. In another moment he swung back into his office.

Hazelhurst moved up to Fred Henkle's barbershop and paused there to light a cigar. Idling along the opposite walk, Will Gatewood's wife looked at him with steady interest, observing the length of his hands and the fastidiousness of his dress. His face was rather pale and his reputation was wholly a gambler's reputation, yet he carried himself very straight and he looked out on the world with a pair of black, lost eyes which mirrored a steel pride. He was a polished and courteous and soft-voiced man holding himself deliberately aloof from his fellowmen. He had finished lighting his cigar and his glance came about so that he saw Irma Gatewood. The street was between them, the deadline was between them, the whole world of social pattern was between them. Both of them knew it, yet Irma Gatewood held his glance and for a moment they were completely engrossed in each other. It was Hazelhurst who knew his place and at last slowly dropped his head.

All this Sherry Gault observed, particularly the way in which the gambler turned and moved into Henkle's. Looking then at Irma Gatewood, Sherry noticed strong interest liven the girl's prettiness. In River Bend Will Gatewood's wife was a lonely soul, loving a gaiety seldom found here and hungry for an ardent and tempestuous kind of affection her husband was far too sedate to show. At this moment Mitchell was riding toward the end of Willow, high and solid in the sun.

Sherry, unaccountably changing her mind, said to Green, "No, I'm staying over tonight."