by E. R. Slade
Buck stood up. “Don’t you folks on that Committee see how closing the store just plays into the hands of the big cattlemen? They’re sending the sheriff because it’s in their interest to see the store shut down. They’d never do it otherwise. Their man Calpet told me they’d call off the sheriff if I’d get rid of all the farm machinery and stop giving credit to sodbusters.”
Hastings was startled. “What did you tell him?”
“I said farm machinery is part of my business, and so is extending credit to anybody that I think will pay his debts.”
Hastings looked impressed. “You told him that?”
“I did.”
“I will admit this does put rather a different light on things. I’m not sure any of us on the Committee has really thought things through to the extent we should have. But you have taken a big chance. I must advise you to tread very carefully around the cattlemen. You may find yourself facing Snake Ed’s gun. Mr. Maxwell, I shall call a meeting in, say, an hour? Can you be here to present your case once more?”
“I’ll be here.”
Buck reopened the store and went back to his whittling, disappointed in Parker. There wasn’t time to go out to see the man before the meeting, but maybe he wasn’t worth going to see anyway. If the Committee didn’t reverse themselves, the chance of conducting future negotiations without involving firearms was slim.
And what would Mary Ellen think of that?
~*~
After formally opening the meeting and leading the Lord’s prayer, Hastings laid out the case for Buck, making much of Buck’s confrontation with Calpet and suggesting that this action revealed Buck to be just the sort of man they needed running Wyoming Hardware. He said that even if they had to wait a little longer for their money, accepting Buck’s offer would result in the most overall advantage to the community. He said their main duty was to the welfare of the town, and the thing of paramount importance at the present time was to encourage and strengthen every ally they had in their struggle against the unfair, illegal, and immoral tactics of the range-hogging cattlemen. He painted a glowing picture of Buck’s stalwart character and honest courage in the face of adversity, so that Buck hardly recognized himself.
Then he asked Buck if he wanted to add anything.
“You give me this chance,” he said, “and I’ll guarantee credit to anyone who can reasonably be expected to pay his bills, and you can count on me staying in the farm machinery business. That is a promise, and I don’t make promises lightly.”
“I can’t see what you bothered to call this meeting for,” Gabriel Tole said, irritably. “All you’ve got is his word he said any of that to Calpet. And you can be sure he didn’t, because if he had he’d be dead by now. Maxwell’s a liar, Oliver. I’d have thought you’d have had sense enough to see that.”
Hastings colored, whether with embarrassment or anger, Buck couldn’t tell. He kept silent.
Several others held forth, and it was clear Tole’s analysis made compelling sense to them. When they voted, only Hastings was in favor of allowing Buck to keep his store, the nervous little fellow who’d voted with him the last time jumping over to the majority.
Buck stood blocking most of the light from the low sun outside the window. He was not wearing his gun, but from the looks on the faces you might have thought he was about to draw on them—and it was not an unreasonable reaction to the look in his eye.
“There’s something don’t seem to register with you,” he said. “Them cattlemen aim to shut down Wyoming Hardware as far as anybody but themselves is concerned. If you think you’re going to take over that store, you better ask yourselves who you got that’s going to stand up to them critters.”
He settled his hat with hands careful against his rage, turned away. Tole waited until Buck was outside the office before exclaiming, “Always threatenin’ us! You see that, gentlemen? We’d be better off with no store at all than with him runnin’ it.”
Buck halted, then gave in to his fury and stepped back into the doorway, fixing Tole with a glint-eyed glare.
“Mister,” he said, “if all you understand is threats, then here’s one. You don’t take the offer I’ve give you, the next offer I make will be made out of lead.”
Chapter Nine
Buck tried to go back to his whittling, but was too angry to sit still. He paced the floor a few times, then reached for his Colt.
Of course he wasn’t wearing it.
“Be wearin’ it next time,” he muttered, whipping it from under the counter.
With it strapped on he took another turn up and down, then propped himself against the office doorpost, blowing air out through his nose.
The fact was, he’d done a stupid thing. If there had been any chance left of changing the minds of the men on that church committee, he’d finished it. He’d even eliminated any maneuvering room.
Now there was going to be a gun battle over this—with the county sheriff. Unless he backed down.
He could walk away, and take up Hastings on his offer. If Hastings really did have big plans and needed a right-hand man, maybe the smart thing would be to make use of the opportunity. Cut his losses.
Did it make sense to go to war? Even to prevent losing almost everything he owned?
He tried to picture himself clerking for Hastings, competing with those two pasty-faced kids for the fattest plums the great man chose to throw. All he could think of was Hastings’ fat wife wanting him to go out the back door because there was honest mud on his clothes.
Maybe it wasn’t being fair to her—maybe her company were people she needed to impress for the sake of Hastings’ business interests.
But he had trouble giving a damn about any deal Hastings thought he had to make with anybody offended by a little mud. And now he was thinking of the look on Hastings’ face when the possibility of taking over the hardware business in town had seemed a promising bet to him.
Buck’s jaw clamped shut so tight his teeth creaked. Out came the Colt for an automatic check of the load.
Well, if he was going to fight a war, first thing to find out was what side Parker planned to be on—and, incidentally, what Mary Ellen thought.
~*~
He arrived at the Parkers’ not long before sundown to find the household in an uproar. They were all out on the porch, Parker and his wife talking at once. Mary Ellen, standing several feet away from them, was the first to notice Buck. She came down the steps and stopped a few feet off as he dismounted. Her parents saw him then and went silent.
“What’s the matter?” he asked her.
She swallowed. “We’ve heard some bad news. There’s talk of shooting and lynching. We’ve been worried about you.”
Mrs. Parker, standing erect and challenging on the porch, said, “Mary Ellen, come away from that man this instant.”
“Mama, you’ve only just been talking about what might happen to Mr. Maxwell, and here he is safe in our yard. I think we owe it to him to be at least civil.” There came that flash in her eyes again.
“Mary Ellen!” The woman was clearly angry, but Buck thought more frightened than angry.
“Leave off, Mother,” rumbled Parker. He, too, was flushed. “She’s only worried same’s you are.”
“I declare, Allen Parker, a body would think you cared nothing for the welfare of your own daughter. And after telling us the things you found out!”
“What things?” Buck, not in a patient mood, gave Mrs. Parker a look that would have shaken the boots right off the average rustler.
She stood it without flinching for as much as the count of ten. Then she threw up her hands and went wordlessly into the house.
“She found out about the vigilantes,” Parker said. “She’s worried sick about them coming here. She don’t want me bringin’ ’em down on us by tryin’ to help you.”
“Oh,” Buck said, as if he’d just been told he was standing in quicksand.
“Why don’t you tell him all of it, Papa?” Mary Ellen said, h
er chin up. She gave Buck a look as though to let him know she could be counted on.
“Put your horse in the barn,” said Parker. “We’ll be in the house.”
When Buck went into the kitchen, Parker sat side-to the table, one big hand on it, staring blankly at his wife, who stood at the stove stiff-backed, her anger more blistering than the heat from the fire. Mary Ellen, across the table from her father, sat on the front edge of her chair working knitting needles as though they were a pair of daggers.
“Guess I should have thought ahead more before I asked you for help,” Buck said to Parker, putting his hat on his knee as he sat down. “But I don’t see why anybody should bother you now—the Committee just decided again to have the sheriff take my store.”
Parker shifted in his chair. “I did go see Hastings,” he said. “Martha didn’t want me to because we heard about the vigilantes this morning from one of the neighbors.” He gave his wife a wary look. She went on stirring something in a pot. “I didn’t git nowhere.”
“Papa,” Mary Ellen said, “I think you should tell Mr. Maxwell what Mr. Hastings said and what the neighbors are saying.”
Mrs. Parker stopped her stirring, might even have held her breath. Parker swallowed, cleared his throat. Then he met Buck’s direct gaze.
“That Committee and all the neighbors think you’re on t’other side.”
“Do they,” Buck said, the dearth of customers taking on new significance.
“Hastings said everybody on the Committee believed you was the Stock Growers’ man and the neighbors say the only reason you give us a good deal on the stove and the wood was to make everybody think you’re on our side. They say it was too good a deal and give you away.” Parker’s chin was lifted slightly, revealing where Mary Ellen got the gesture from.
“Is that what you all think?”
“It’s not what I think,” Mary Ellen said, clear and definitive.
Buck waited.
Parker rubbed his jaw, looked at his wife’s straight back. She stared into her pot.
“Just wanted to know what side you’ll be on when the shooting starts,” Buck said, standing.
“What shootin’?” Parker demanded, startled.
Mary Ellen stopped knitting.
“Short of killing the sheriff, I got just one chance now to hang onto my store. I give Snake Ed until next Sunday to turn over the church money. Unless that Church Committee changes their minds, I plan to hold him to it. Chances are, there’ll be shooting before it’s over.”
Mrs. Parker spun around pressing crossed hands to her breast, saying, “My God, Buck, you didn’t!”
Mary Ellen’s knitting fell to the floor.
“I thought I told you about him,” Parker said. “That warn’t too smart.”
“You told me after. But if I hadn’t done it already, I’d do it now. I’ve had enough of Snake Ed, whether the rest of you have or not.”
“But he’ll kill you.” Mrs. Parker spoke as though it was an obvious foregone conclusion.
“I doubt it,” Buck said. “I’ve had doings with his kind before.”
“Not like him,” Parker said. “He’s the fastest gunhand in Wyoming, they say, and I believe it. I seen him. You got to do something different, Buck. You can’t do it that way.”
“That’s right, you can’t.” Mary Ellen was on her feet now. Her fingers clutched the back of her chair hard enough to drive the blood out of them.
Buck, moved by the anguish in her tone, withheld the retort he would otherwise have made.
Instead he bent the truth and said, “There might still be a way out if we could get the Church Committee to see what’s going to happen when they try to sell the store.”
Emotions crowded into Mary Ellen’s face until the fire in her eyes could have lit the stove from across the room.
She said, “Papa, if you still believe Mr. Maxwell is on the side of the Stock Growers’ Association I want to hear you tell him so to his face.”
“Of course he isn’t,” Mrs. Parker said firmly. “But ...” She left off, shaking her head, turning back to her stove.
Parker drew a big hand across the opposite cheek. “I’m right ashamed, Mr. Maxwell. I should have known better than to let Hastin’s or anybody else talk me out of my own judgment. I just wish there was somethin’ I could do to he’p you out, but I don’t see what. That Committee won’t pay no attention to anything I say, and neither will the neighbors.”
“First thing to do is make sure everybody knows about these vigilantes,” Buck said.
“Oh, everybody knows, by now. But knowing don’t do much besides make us all scared. We ain’t gun handlers.”
“At least we know we’re fighting the same fight.”
“What does that mean?” Mrs. Parker was tense.
“Well didn’t you tell me Snake Ed was going to lead that bunch?” Buck asked Parker.
Parker closed his eyes, turned his head to the side as his wife whirled on him.
“Is that true?” she demanded. “How long have you known?”
“Maybe it’s just talk,” Buck said. “I was only going to point out ...”
“Allen Parker,” said his wife, planting her knuckles on her hips, “how long have you known about the vigilantes?”
“Bob and me, we heard something the other day, but there was no telling if it was true, Mother, and I didn’t want you to fret ...”
“FRET!” she said. “I’ve a mind to mangle a skillet over your ears! Fret! he says. And you riding off to town to help a man crazy enough to try shooting it out with Snake Ed McFee! Men! Nothing but pride and stupidity. And meanwhile we might have been killed.”
Parker lowered his head under this onslaught.
“You really might have told us, Papa,” Mary Ellen said, going to stand beside her mother, put an arm around her.
“The point is,” Buck said, figuring they were far enough into the river now that the best way out was up the other bank, “if it’s true the Association has decided to drive out folks they don’t like, you all got the same choice I do. You either fight or leave. From the looks of things here, I’d say you’ve put in a good solid five years of work and built up a pretty fine little operation. You want to walk away from it?”
Parker again drew a hand over the stubble on one cheek, looking at his wife. She looked back a moment, then turned to her stove, shaking her head quickly. Buck thought he caught a glimpse of tears.
“Don’t see how we’re going to beat a bunch of gunfighters,” Parker said doubtfully. “Especially not Snake Ed.”
“Sometimes his kind ain’t as dangerous as they look. Maybe he’s fast or maybe he ain’t. But it may not be that important.
“There was a man like him once on the Comstock. Six-gun Willie, they called him. For a while people didn’t want to bother about him, thought if they ignored him he’d go away eventually. At first he’d only kill somebody once in a while and folks hoped it wouldn’t be them if they didn’t rile him. When he started taking over claims people began to mutter about him more, but muttering seemed good enough. Then he shot Sarah—I won’t go into who Sarah was, but she was well liked. That finally made people think something had ought to be done about him.
“Trouble was, this fellow was supposed to be mighty fast with a gun. Just a blur, they said. I talked to plenty who’d seen him. They all believed there warn’t no hope of ever being faster. Everybody talked it up and the more they talked the faster he seemed to get. Nobody wanted to try fightin’ him.
“Until there was this old fellow, name of Perkins. He had an old cap and ball five shot you couldn’t hardly hit the broad side of a barn with, and one day he just stepped out in front of Six-gun Willie and shot him dead—and didn’t hit anything until the fifth shot. Six-gun Willie never cleared leather. Never even tried. Just stood there. Hadn’t nobody ever drawed against him before and it froze him up solid.”
“But men have tried to draw against Snake Ed,” Mrs. Parker said, turning to face him.
“Every one lost.”
“That’s true,” Parker agreed soberly. “There was a kid from Texas who come to town last year and got into a disagreement with Snake Ed over cards or some such thing. I seen that kid shoot another cowboy the week before, and it was quick. People thought maybe he could do for Snake. But it turned out he didn’t amount to anything. He never even took hold of his gun before he got knocked down, dead as a hammer.
“I don’t know if you think maybe you’re pretty good with a gun, Buck, but chances are you ain’t near good enough.”
“You can’t win if you don’t fight,” Buck said. “If it’s any comfort, I’ve been in a few gun battles myself, with rustlers. Real rustlers, I mean, not farmers or homesteaders. Some of ’em was gunhands with reputations—I usually found that out later. In eighteen years, not one ever got off a shot against me.”
Mary Ellen had gone pale and her hands shook slightly. Her mother was watching her with concern. Dubiously, Parker sat shaking his head.
Buck moved to go.
“I’ll stay away from here,” he told them, “so you ain’t singled out.”
Nobody said anything.
He crumpled the brim of his hat in both hands, worried about Mary Ellen. She didn’t look good.
Yet she rallied, met his eye. “I’ll see you out,” she said.
“Don’t fight him, Buck,” Mrs. Parker said. “Don’t do it.” Now she was afraid for him, not of him.
“Ma’am,” he said, and put on his hat. “Mr. Parker.” He followed Mary Ellen out onto the porch, and they started for the barn.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have come,” Buck said awkwardly.
“Yes, you should. I’m embarrassed for my family, but this has helped to clear the air.”
“I doubt your ranch’ll be singled out, at least because of me. They’re getting what they want—a shut store—so they got no reason to care what any of you think about it.”
“Do you think settlers will be killed?”