by Lauran Paine
Copyright © 2012 by Mona Paine
First Skyhorse Publishing edition published 2016 by arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Cover design by Brian Peterson
Print ISBN: 978-1-63450-757-8
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63450-758-5
Printed in the United States of America
Chapter One
The heat was a suction that drew moisture from the earth, the air, from living things. It danced and writhed in gelatinous waves. It was almost a physical presence that pressed with lethargic heaviness, and it was accompanied by an evil yellow haze that blurred out the mountains in the background and obscured the prairie.
It was a sullen glitter, a blight upon the land. It pained the eyes, and drove into thin, watery, insufficient shade all living things. Nothing moved around the town or out upon that vast plain. It was midday.
People said of northern New Mexico Territory that it was a sullen and hostile place full of tarantulas, rattlesnakes, Gila monsters, and cruel people. They also said that in its breath-gone summer evenings a man could stretch forth his hand and touch the moon, the red-gold stars. It depended upon the individual’s reaction to this raw land, to its endless and ageless silence. Some felt crushed by its hugeness and some responded to its unaltered freshness.
And some, like Troy Warfield, accepted its heat, its changing moods, its immensity, with a philosophical indifference, because they had grown to adulthood in it, or in land just like it.
Warfield appeared upon one of those shimmering northern foothills with the faded sky behind him, with the steady run of plain in front of him, considering that town down there the way one strange dog surveys another strange dog.
He was the only moving thing and for a long while he sat up there just looking. Taking in the sights, the distances, the landmarks, carefully noting everything about this country that lay south of Colorado on his route down into old Mexico.
He was a deliberate man with an iron jaw, wide-spaced eyes that seemed never to be wholly still, and the rawhide-flat and angular build of a life-long rider. He was right at six feet tall, neither an inch under nor an inch over. Right now his steely gaze was hooded behind the half droop of lids, while his wide lips lay closed without pressure for as long as it took him to take the measure of the town down below. He took that measure, much as a fighter measures an opponent, before nudging his leggy bay horse downward from the foothills.
From a mile out that town didn’t do much for Troy Warfield. For one thing it was a typical borderland village with its false-fronted wooden buildings, its older, more enduring adobe structures, its dust, and its inevitable setting astraddle a stage road from far downcountry to far upcountry. For another thing, since environment molds people, this would be simply another of those semi-desert towns in the New Mexico cow country. The saloons would have different names, the people would have different faces, but the gossip would be just as fallacious and cruel, the interests would be identical, and the reserved acceptance of a stranger wouldn’t be any different from the same attitude Warfield had encountered in a dozen similar villages since he’d started traveling southward.
Still, a man on the move had certain basic requirements that only a town could accommodate, so Warfield passed down to the evil yellow-hazed plain and slouched along on his way to that town. Horseshoes wore out, a man’s supply of tobacco dwindled, and the need for replenishment of his meager food stocks existed.
Where Warfield came across the stage road, a sign said that town’s name was Lincoln. It also gave the population as being two hundred and fifty. It didn’t give the name of the county Lincoln was situated in, not that this troubled Warfield, but neither did it give the information that he was seeking—how far was the Mexican border from Lincoln?—and that did trouble him.
He passed into Lincoln, and felt the first shade he’d encountered in the little dusty cañon created by opposing sets of store fronts. It was still early afternoon, and the shade was pale and practically useless, but it was shade.
He headed straight for the livery barn, dismounted there, began offsaddling, and by the time he was finished, a copiously sweating older man wearing a derby hat atop a fine head of skin came over and studied Warfield, his outfit, and his leggy, big breedy bay horse.
“Fine animal,” this liveryman said mechanically.
Warfield finished, turned, and looked at the man. “Take him to the smithy,” he said. “Get him shod all around.”
The derby hat bobbed up and down.
“Then fetch him back here to your barn, put him in a box stall, grain him light, and hay him heavy.”
The derby bobbed again. “Be a dollar six-bits for the shoein’ and another dollar for the rest.”
Warfield handed across several large silver coins. “Have your day man rub him down good, too. He’s earned it, and like you said, mister, he’s a fine animal.”
Derby Hat accepted the coins, looked at the patiently standing horse, and said: “Built for speed and endurance, that one.”
Warfield turned, ran a long glance up and down the opposite store fronts, then looked back. “How much farther to the Mex border?” he asked.
Derby Hat answered at once as though, even while he was studying Warfield’s horse, he had been thinking of this distance, too. “Few hundred miles due south.” Derby Hat took the bay’s lead shank, turned, and went shuffling southward toward the adjoining building, which was Lincoln’s blacksmith shop. At the doorway he turned, looked past the bay where Warfield’s long, gun-weighted form was passing across toward the place sporting an immense and weathered old rack of elk antlers above the door, and which was appropriately named The Antlers Saloon. Derby Hat remained out there in that wilting sunlight until Warfield disappeared through a pair of louvered doors across the way, then he sucked back a shallow, long breath, and pushed it out again in a sigh, faced forward, and shuffled on inside the sooty blacksmith shop where a short but incredibly massive, broad, and deep-chested man was greedily sucking water out of a soiled old dented dipper.
“George,” said Derby Hat, “here’s a chore for you. All four feet and all new shoes.”
George put down his dipper, swung the back of a filthy hand across his lips to swipe away the residue of that long drink, and turned for a good look at the bay horse. “Well, well,” he boomed quietly. “For a change this one’s owner ain’t a skinflint. New shoes instead of resets.” George lifted his sweaty, seamed, and coarse-featured face with its bold and candid little blue eyes, and he smiled. He was a battered man with scars upon him from innumerable brawls with recalcitrant horses, mules, and oxen, not to mention his share of brawling men.
“Fine animal,” he said. “Who’s he belong to?”
Derby Hat shrugged, his expression turning resignedly caustic. “Stranger passin’ through. Tal
lish younger feller … maybe twenty-eight, thirty. Over at the Antlers right now. First question he asked was … how far was it to Mexico?” Derby Hat shrugged again.
George walked over, picked up a front hoof, swung around, and took the hoof between his upper legs as he said: “One of them, eh? Well, like I’ve said before, the Lord didn’t put me here on this earth to judge folks … just to shoe their horses and be amused by ’em.”
Derby Hat dropped the lead shank. He seemed loath to step back out into the furious sunlight. He shuffled around the bay where he could watch George work.
“I still say we could be losin’ a fortune here in Lincoln by not makin’ some effort to check up on these fellers. You know blamed well that of the maybe seventy-five or a hundred who pass through askin’ that same question every year, maybe at least fifty of ’em got prices on their heads.”
George was levering off the old, thin-worn shoe and didn’t look up. But he said, shaking his head to fling off sweat: “What good’s money if you’re not around to spend it?”
“You always say that,” grumbled Derby Hat. “You know blamed well the fellers head for the saloon and drape their dried-out carcasses over the bar … with their backs to the door. Hell’s bells, even without any he’p from the constable, a couple or three of us businessmen could get the drop, march ’em over to the calabozo, lock ’em up, and write for the reward. George, I’m tellin’ you within one year we’d be rich.”
George put aside his pulling tongs, picked up his farrier’s knife, and began to gouge out on either side of the frog. “Dead,” he said. “Not rich … dead.”
“Pshaw!”
George cocked his head upward. Two rivulets of sweat cut through the oily dust on his face but the expression there was unmistakable. George had evidently heard this argument so many times in the past that it annoyed him. He said, those little blue eyes hardening: “You know what I think? I think it’s a pretty damned fine line a man draws between what’s decent and what’s indecent, when he starts bein’ greedy. Maybe this one is runnin’ … maybe he done somethin’ up north the law wants him for. But goin’ to bed at night with a clear conscience is his worry … not mine, and maybe collectin’ three, four hundred dollars … which I’d only spend, anyway … wouldn’t make me a whole lot better’n he is, because sneakin’ up behind a feller and gettin’ the drop on him for that money would bother my conscience, too.”
George waited briefly for comment, but Derby Hat just stood there, quietly sweating, so George went back to work paring at that hoof, only now his powerful arms and shoulders rippled with increased force because he was thinking hard thoughts.
Derby Hat put a hand upon the bellows handle, gave it a downward push, forcing air up under the forge where cherry-red coals glowed, and said: “You’re not lookin’ at it right. These fellers are criminals … wanted men. They broke the law … probably murdered folks or robbed banks or rustled livestock. While the rest of us sweat for a livin’, they make a lot of money with guns. It’s our bound duty to help apprehend ’em.”
George finished preparing the forehoof for the new shoe, dropped it, straightened up slowly with a grimace from the pain in his back, tossed aside his tools, and went to a rack where he selected a blanked steel shoe. He squinted at this shoe appraisingly, then tossed it into the fire, hit the bellows handle twice to bring on a white-hot heat, and, while waiting, he said to Derby Hat: “We got a constable in Lincoln. It’s his bound duty to apprehend outlaws. When you or me or some other feller starts gettin’ the kind of ideas you’re talkin’ about it’s not because he cares a damned bit about the law, and you know it. It’s because he wants some easy money, too … the same as that outlaw did … and that don’t make him a danged bit better’n the outlaw. And I’m goin’ to tell you once more … you keep flirtin’ with this and you’re goin’ to get killed.”
Derby Hat threw up his hands. He half turned as though to march out of the shop, and he froze. Leaning over there just inside the sooty entrance was that lanky man who owned the leggy bay horse. He’d obviously been leaning there, listening to this conversation for some time. Derby Hat’s face turned slack and gray while his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, just once, as he swallowed.
Warfield kept gazing over at Derby Hat.
At the forge, George hadn’t seen Warfield yet. As he poked the calk end of that reddening shoe deeper into his forge fire, he said to Derby Hat: “Maybe you’d get three, four of these fellers, but directly the word would get around, and one day some fellers’d ride into your barn, get down, ask you your name … then shoot you. Just like that. It’s happened before. You can’t start livin’ by the gun and not expect ….” George looked up and also saw Warfield standing over there half in sooty gloom, half in reflected light from the roadway. He didn’t have to be told who that lanky stranger was. Derby Hat’s expression made that painfully obvious.
Warfield straightened up, stepped over, walked around the bay, and afterward halted behind George at the forge. He smiled. It was a slow, wintry kind of a smile.
“I can see you growing old with grandchildren around your knee,” Warfield said. “The way a man should grow old.” He put his gaze over upon Derby Hat. “I got doubts about you though, mister. Your friend made a good point a while back … greed gets folks killed. Inside the law or outside it. Unless you change, you’re not going to last long.”
Warfield stepped back so the blacksmith could work. He eased down upon a keg half full of horseshoe blanks, crossed one leg over the other, and nodded at George. “I’ll just sit here and wait,” he said. “Then I’ll be on my way.”
Chapter Two
It was near evening with a long red gash across the underbelly of heaven when a graying man atop a steeldust gelding came down through Lincoln’s roadway dust, turned in at the livery barn, and stepped down. This man, too, was a stranger in town. He stood there holding his reins, gazing down the roadway with a thoughtful, almost cynical, expression. And when Derby Hat came out to take the steeldust, this one said: “Where’s a good place to eat?”
Derby Hat pointed across the road without saying a word. In fact, although he was asked several other questions, he never once unlocked his lips. He’d nod or he’d point, or he’d shake his head, but he would not be drawn into a conversation, and that graying, stockily built, travel-stained stranger looked wonderingly at him, before he walked away, heading for the café.
Lincoln was beginning to come to life now. Riders loped in from the backcountry; townsmen, finished with their days’ labors, sought relaxation at the card tables and bars. It was a different town from what it had been much earlier when that first stranger had ridden in, gotten his horse reshod, and had ridden out again. It was cooler, too, not only in town but out upon the range.
That graying man sat at the counter and thoughtfully ate his supper. Beside him, freshly scrubbed but still smelling of horse, black iron, and forge smoke, was the squat, mighty man from the smithy across the road. As he reached over in front of the graying man for one of the forks stuck tines-up in a water glass, he mumbled an apology for reaching.
The graying man nodded and said: “Almost too hot to eat.”
The blacksmith considered this a moment, then made a little wry smile. “One of them situations where you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” he said.
The graying man also smiled a little. He was finished now, all but his coffee that he held up in both hands. “Funny thing about the heat,” he murmured casually. “I got a habit of carrying peppermint with me when I make one of these midsummer rides. It makes me feel downright cool, and yet, by golly, it’s all in my head. I sweat just as much and suffer just as much, actually, only sucking on that peppermint makes me think otherwise.”
The blacksmith listened to this and chuckled. “A man’s got to outwit himself sometimes,” he said. “Today I was shoein’ a long-legged bay horse for a feller … new shoes all around … and I’d taken a drink of water just before I went to work. T
he more I sweated, the more I had to drink.”
“Yeah. I know how that is.”
“Well, sort of like your peppermint, I went over, upended the bucket over my shoulders, went back, and worked right on through until I was finished, and, as long as that water … and my sweat … were dryin’ on me, I wasn’t thirsty.”
The graying man gently nodded, sipped his coffee, and swung to put a studious gaze upon George the blacksmith. “It’s the impressions things make,” he murmured. “Now, a few minutes ago I rode in over at the livery barn. There was a sort of flabby feller over there wearing a derby hat. He didn’t say a word. I asked where I could eat and he pointed over here. I asked him where the rooming house was, and he pointed again. I know blamed well he wasn’t a mute and I also know I didn’t say anything to make him sulk at me. But my impression was that he was either without the means for talking or was upset about something and couldn’t shake it off long enough to be civil.”
George brought up some coins, counted them meticulously, and placed several of them upon the counter beside his emptied plate. He screwed up his forehead, looked around at the graying stranger as a man might look who’d discovered that what had started out as a light, very casual exchange between strangers had suddenly become not so light and casual.
“That feller you’re talkin’ about got quite a shock this afternoon,” he said, stood up, nodded, and walked on out of the café.
There were other men in the café. It appeared to be a place where the single merchants of Lincoln congregated at mealtimes. There were also several cowboys. The graying man sipped and gazed quietly around. His eyes never obtrusively lingered but neither did they skip over a single face; he seemed to have that developed sense of observation some men had that enabled him to see things closely without seeming to.
He was about average height, perhaps even an inch or two below average height. His age could have been anywhere from thirty to forty-four or forty-five, for, although his hair was gray at the temples, giving him an unmistakable appearance of seasoned good age, his face had scarcely a line on it, except around the eyes; there, the lines were small, criss-crossing crow’s feet. They had come there not altogether from habitual squinting in a raw, sun-blasted land. They were the lines caused by shrewd calculation, shrewd observation, and thoughtfulness.