Rafferty said insistently, “Tell me what’s wrong with them, Six. You know this kind of town. How do I get through to them? What’s keeping them quiet?”
Six looked at him long enough to say, “They’re scared, Rafferty. That’s all. Just scared.”
There was something about the charcoal duskiness of Six’s eyes that made Rafferty slide back in his chair. “Yeah,” he muttered. After that he did not speak for a while. But finally curiosity got the better of his discretion. “Will you tell me something, Six?”
“What?”
“Listen, don’t get me wrong, I damn well appreciate what you did today. You most likely saved my life by drawing that ambusher’s fire away from me and then shooting him.”
Six was tired. He felt tired most of the time lately. “What do you want to know, Rafferty?”
Rafferty leaned forward and spoke in a low confidential voice. “How do you feel when you kill a man?”
Something dangerous gleamed momentarily in Six’s eyes. He turned his attention down to his plate, speared a piece of potato on his fork and lifted it. “Why do you want to know? Do you just want a quote you can put down that will make your readers’ flesh crawl?”
“No,” said Rafferty. “I just want to know.” His eyes were wide and intent on Six.
Six swallowed the potato and put his fork down. “I’ll tell you, then. It frightens the hell out of me.”
“Then why do you do it?”
“Because sometimes a man has to.”
Rafferty was wiser than Six had given him credit for. He said, “No. I won’t buy that. I believe it does frighten you, but I don’t believe that’s all of it. Is it?”
“It frightens me,” Six answered, “but I enjoy it. Yes, by God, I enjoy it. Now, is that what you wanted to know?”
Six stood up. The backs of his knees knocked his chair back; it tipped over backwards and crashed to the floor. He dropped coins on the table and rammed out of the cafe.
When he hit the open air of the evening, it seemed to revive him. He cursed, angry that he had let the correspondent upset him.
But there was a growing anger inside him that would not subside. It had been growing since the day he had ridden away from Spanish Flat; and no matter where he rode, he could not outrun it. But he was not yet ready to stand and face it. He knew that; and yet he let it drive him up the street into the saloon, where he took a place at the bar and commenced to ease his pain with heavy transfusions of red whisky.
He accidentally jostled his neighbor at the bar. The cowboy wheeled belligerently. But Six’s eyes had an ominous, murky color: the cowboy stared at him and then turned away and resumed his conversation with the man on his right.
Six’s face tightened; he thought, Lord, I wanted him to pick a fight with me. Get a grip on yourself. He came out of his little dark enclosure, far enough to see the saloon: he had not even noticed the other people in the place until now.
It was close to nine o’clock. The place was beginning to jam up with customers. But although it was a middling-thick crowd, there was no boisterous laughter, no loud talk. Eyes were timid and furtive. Most of the customers appeared to be townspeople, prospectors, mountain horse-hunters, and working cowboys who probably came from small ranches in the foothills. And all of them looked frequently at the door.
They were afraid, Six saw. Afraid that some valley gunfighters might arrive from Singletree or from Lance Head. It occurred to him that it was Saturday night, and that might be the cause of the grinding fear in the room. It was a fear so strong he could smell it and taste it. Whoever entered the saloon was immediately gripped by it.
A layer of cigar smoke clung beneath the ceiling. There was a subdued murmur of talk. There were the usual saloon noises—the scraping of chairs, the thud of boot heels, the clicking of poker chips, the high ring of bottle against glass; but all of it was muted, and these sounds reached Six as they might have reached him against a high wind.
Six recognized one man, a second-rate gunman who called himself Mike Zeno. Zeno was over in a corner with a girl whose heavy breasts bubbled over the round scoop of her cheap dress; Zeno was talking in a sincere whisper, probably telling her how beautiful she was. The girl seemed very happy to listen to him. Zeno had grown up in an Eastern slum and probably had a fair-sized lexicon of smooth love-making talk, much of which would be new to the girl. Zeno was one of those shadow-trail riders who were chronically on the run from the law. Six had put him in jail once.
Zeno was a stocky man with dark jowls and an enormous nose. His idle glance swept the room, and touched on Six for a moment. The gunman smiled slightly and dipped his head in greeting, and returned his eyes to the girl.
That small incident told Six an important, and dangerous, thing. The fact that Zeno, a self-admitted outlaw, was ready to acknowledge Six’s presence and yet not fear it, was an indication that the town was far gone. For only in a town without law could an outlaw feel safe. Rifle Gap was fast on its way to being an outlaw town.
A cowboy with his face flushed barged into the saloon and started talking excitedly to the first men he saw. It started a buzz of fearful excitement that traveled swiftly through the crowd. The word passed from group to group. Six overheard the news when it was relayed to the cowboy beside him: “Tom Monday got to Lance Head this afternoon. But that ain’t all. Matthew Dane hired some competition for Monday. They’re sayin’ Britt Hazlitt’s due in town tonight, to stand up for Singletree.”
“Jesus,” replied the cowboy. “That’s just about all we need. I’m drawing my time.”
“Chickening out, Bud?”
“You can just bet I am. I don’t figure to stick around this basin and get my tail shot off in a crossfire. It ain’t none of my fight. I’ll see you sometime, Fred.” The cowboy pushed away from the bar and made his way out of the place.
It went that way. Bud was not the only man who hurried out of the saloon with a stride so determined that it was clear they intended to keep going until they were well beyond range of the Concho Basin. And that was the way of it. Six had seen it before; it was all part of a pattern. He had seen the same thing happen over in New Mexico, in Lincoln County. Rival ranchers had let their feud get out of hand. The population of honest working people had decreased at the same rate as the increase of the outlaw population. In time, all semblance of order would disappear. Gunmen would stride across the land like cyclopean fighters, fighting their monumental duels with absolute disregard for the smaller men who might accidentally get in the way of flying bullets. And it would not matter how many gunmen wiped each other out. As long as there was a war, there would be men to fill the armies. Word went out in all directions like sunbeams: Range war in the Concho Basin. Top wages for gun work. The way honey drew bears, war would draw gunmen from every corner of the West.
Six thought, It’s time for me to push on. But he stayed where he was, rooted at the bar by a reluctance he could not identify. The idea vaguely crossed his mind that he did not have much money left. The big ranches were paying top gun money; and for a brief moment he thought, Why not?—but then a cooler second thought steadied him. There were a few principles he had always obeyed, and one of them was that he had never killed for hire. His gun was not for rent. Except, he thought bitterly, when I sold my gun to Spanish Flat. But that would never happen again. He would never again wear a badge. The badge was only a symbol which allowed a man to do other men’s killing for them.
And Jeremy Six was sick of killing. It made no difference whether it was for himself or for the badge. They could take care of their own murdering from now on; they would get no more help from him.
He was at the end of the bar when he saw, by way of the mirror, the blond arm-in-a-sling figure of Rafferty enter the saloon. Rafferty became enthusiastic right away; at last he had a whole crowd to talk to. Rafferty plunged right in, asking questions right and left. Six did not pay much attention to him. He slouched over the bar, nursing a drink slowly; he had no desire to get drunk, an
d yet something held him in the saloon. He did not want to go out into the night just now, or back to the dark loneliness of his room.
Nick Story walked in a few minutes later. Story looked very pleased with himself. He was a little man with eyeglasses, looking gray and older than his years, but his face was animated tonight by a visible sense of triumph. Six had no particular liking for the Nick Storys of the world. Most of them, in his experience, went through life blaming other people for everything, and devoted all their energies to troublemaking. Nick Story would never be a happy man; it showed in his face. But in his constant struggle against unhappiness, he would destroy a great many others.
Story took a place halfway down the bar and joined a desultory conversation there. Steve Rafferty had his notebook and pencil in hand and was busy scribbling down something he was being told by a tall, cheerful-faced cowboy. The chances were even that the cowboy was pulling Rafferty’s leg, filling him up with a tall story of the kind that cowboys loved to tell.
And, in the far corner, the melon-breasted girl took offense at some remark of Mike Zeno’s; with a flash of eyes she stood up, gave Zeno an arch look, and walked away from Zeno’s table. Zeno sat smoldering angrily. The girl adjusted a smile on her lips and wiggled up to a miner at the far end of the bar.
Six was faintly aware of these and other small incidents in the saloon; in spite of his preoccupation, his habits of alertness had not deserted him. And so it was that he had a clear picture of the placement of individuals and the types of people in the place, when the door slammed open and two hard-breathing men stalked inside.
Six immediately recognized one of them: Britt Hazlitt, a rider of the Circuit—gambler, ex-train robber, gunman. Hazlitt was fair-skinned and brown eyed, with a face which was deceptively easy in repose. But Six knew him. Hazlitt was not merely a gunfighter. He was a spectacularly good one.
The man beside Hazlitt was a big-boned, high-cheeked man with Texas stamped all over him. His legs and arms were long; his face was handsome enough, but rugged and tough: he was a man who would give no quarter and ask none, an arrogant, hard man who would be inclined to batter down an obstacle rather than go around it. The man’s proud level eyes swept the crowd with a certain measure of contempt.
The crowd had gone silent. Whispers spread through the room and one of them reached Six’s ears: The tall Texan was the owner of Singletree. He was Matthew Dane.
Nine
“For those of you that don’t know me, I am Matthew Dane. This man is Hazlitt, Britt Hazlitt. I’ve come here because I figured half the population would be in here on a Saturday night, and it looks like I’m not too far wrong. I’ve got something to say to this town.”
Matthew Dane addressed the crowd in a level voice. He did not have to speak loudly; no one else was talking at all. Jeremy Six swiveled on his heel and rested one elbow on the bar. Beside Matthew Dane, Britt Hazlitt stepped back against the wall by the door and covered the entire room with his attention. When Hazlitt’s glance paused on Six, Hazlitt nodded with reserve; Six knew that from that moment on, Hazlitt was very much aware of Six’s exact placement in the room.
Dane spoke in flat, abrupt tones. He did not seem to care whether his words stung anyone. “I’ve got no more love for men like Hazlitt than any of you. But a man’s got to defend himself. Tave Lockyear is a greedy bastard who wants the whole basin to himself. He knows and I know and you know that Lockyear hasn’t got half enough cattle to fill up the land here. I didn’t come here to start a war. There was plenty of room for Lockyear and me and maybe some others besides, but the Lance Head bunch don’t see it that way. They started shooting at my boys. Where I come from, if a man takes a shot at you, you shoot back. That’s what Hazlitt’s doing here tonight. He wouldn’t be here if Lockyear hadn’t hired Tom Monday.”
Matthew Dane paused. He surveyed the crowd with a deliberate sweep of his cool eyes. His voice was an unhurried prairie twang. “I respect Dan Latourette and I expect you do too, but he’s laid up in bed because a Lance Head gun cut him down. There ain’t no law left around here except what we can make for ourselves. All right, I’ve never been a man who stepped away from what needed to be done. I’m setting down a law for you tonight. I see some storekeepers in the crowd—you can carry the word to the rest of the town. I’m serving notice on this town tonight. No storekeeper in Rifle Gap will trade with Lance Head, as of now. I’m posting a crew of men in town to enforce it. I don’t intend to set it to music, gents, so I’ll say it just once more. If you sell so much as a sack of tobacco to any Lance Head rider, I’ll close you down.”
Matthew Dane did not wait for any reaction. He turned on his heel and drove a path through the door.
Dane’s heels were audible, going down the porch steps; and then his horse started up and trotted away.
Britt Hazlitt stood by the door with a lazy smile. He touched one of his guns, but said nothing; and in a moment he curled out of the saloon.
A babble of talk burst forth like a flood through a broken dam. The man beside Six grabbed him by the arm and spoke excitedly, with cries of anguish, until Six’s bleak eyes made the man’s talk run down, and the man backed away in evident fright. Six glimpsed Rafferty, busy in the crowd, scribbling frantically in his notebook. And at the far end of the bar, Nick Story was frowning toward the door.
The fragile, brittle conviviality of the evening was smashed. Men drifted away from the bar and tables. A steady stream poured out of the saloon until only a few men remained. The bartender came out from behind the bar to collect glasses and wipe the tables clean; the barkeep made a face toward the clock: it was only half-past ten, and this Saturday night was all shot to shingles. The buxom girl, obviously too shaken to stay alone, left the saloon with a miner whose beard looked as if it probably harbored burrs and bugs.
Six felt as though his feet had been planted. He stayed at the bar while the bartender went around trimming lamps. Nick Story was with Mike Zeno at the corner table, talking softly. Rafferty sat alone at a table, working in his notebook. There was no one else left in the place. The barkeep spent some time washing glasses in a pan full of opaque water with a few limp suds on top. When that was done he straightened the display of bottles and paused opposite Six. “I’m going to sit down. Ain’t nothing to do here. Want me to leave the bottle for you?”
Six regarded his half-empty glass. “No, thanks. I’ll just finish this one.” He paid for the drink and lost interest in the bartender, who went to the back of the room and sat back and closed his eyes.
Rafferty closed his notebook, looked up and glanced around. He seemed surprised, as if he only realized now that the place had emptied. He came over to Six and said, “That was a bombshell Dane fired off, wasn’t it? What do you think will happen next?”
“I couldn’t care less.”
“Don’t you care about anything, Six?”
It was a good question, Six thought. He made no answer aloud. He was staring down into his drink, watching it turn brown and amber in the flickering lamplight.
Rafferty made his usual effort to revive the conversation: “This Hazlitt fellow, now. I’ve read about him. His whole family got wiped out dining the War and he’s been on the rampage ever since he grew up. They say he’s killed a lot of men, just for looking cross-eyed at him. I’d kind of like to know what makes a man like that.”
“If you’re lucky you’ll never find out,” Six told him.
“You’re not like that, Six. Not yet. But I get a feeling you could be. I wonder what makes you tick. Or maybe it’s what makes you tick so loud. You walk into a room and don’t say a thing, and maybe there are eight or ten taller men in the same room, but I noticed it tonight—everybody knew you were there. You’ve got some kind of impact, Six. I can’t pin it down altogether, but I guess maybe it’s something to do with being a killer. A fast gun. Nobody has to be told—they can feel it or smell it or something.”
Six said, “Do you ever get bunions on your lips?”
�
��I know I talk a lot. What the hell. It’s no crime, is it? I like to find things out. Sometimes if you needle a man enough, he tells you what you want to know.”
Six turned and faced him. “Look, Rafferty, I’m causing no ruckus to you and all I want is to be left alone.”
“Is it?” Rafferty demanded. “Six, I get a feeling you want somebody to show you the way. You don’t know where the hell you are right now. Ever since I met you, you’ve been acting like one of those Old Testament characters who knows exactly where he thinks the line is drawn between right and wrong. Somebody trampled on your book of rules someplace back along the line, and you just can’t forgive that. Somebody must have done something that showed you there aren’t any granite-hard rules where human creatures are concerned. You got all confused, didn’t you? Something just won’t fit into your simple little classifications. Now you turn your back on the whole damn world because you figure it double-crossed you.”
Six said in a very quiet voice, “When I want a preacher I’ll call on one. For a dude who doesn’t know a gunsight from a buttonhole, you’re talking way out of turn, Rafferty.”
“Maybe I am. But I’m no fighter, and you know it. And I just figure that gives me a little more leeway with you than another man might get. Because I don’t figure you’re going to shoot me, or beat me up with my shoulder all shot up the way it is.”
“I’m beginning to think Story was right when he said you newspapermen were like dogs sniffing after the hind ends of bitches.”
Rafferty grinned. “Don’t try to get me mad enough to leave. I’ve got a pretty thick hide.”
Six glanced at the door; the sound of boot heels on the porch had alerted him. When the door opened, Six straightened up and took a sidewise pace away from Rafferty. That was Britt Hazlitt in the doorway, and he obviously had Six on his mind.
Hazlitt came straight over to Six, ignoring Story and Zeno at the far table. Hazlitt nodded briefly. “Jeremy.”
Rafferty had his eyes wide open. He made no effort to move away; he listened raptly.
Marshal Jeremy Six #3 Page 6