But the whites didn’t care. They couldn’t see past his red skin.
Asa hated it. He hated being branded as something he wasn’t. He was a white man in a red man’s skin, and he hated that more than anything.
Early on, Asa had learned to ignore the looks and the sneers and the contempt. He couldn’t change human nature. So he shut the haters out. As long as they left him alone, as long as all they did was sneer and mutter behind his back, he held his temper in check.
It wasn’t easy. When he was younger, he’d sometimes have too much to drink. That always ended badly. He’d lost count of the saloon fights he was in, lost count of the bigots he’d beaten into a beer-speckled floor.
Then came his sweet Mary, and everything changed.
Now, waiting in the alley in the dark of the new night for the Circle K, Asa thought about Mary’s love for him, and how happy she’d made him. How the twenty years they were together were the best of his life. To have her torn from his side and his heart by consumption was the cruelest trick life could play on him.
Suddenly hooves clomped, intruding on Asa’s reverie. He looked out. A pair of riders was approaching, and while they and their mounts weren’t more than silhouettes, he could tell they were cowboys.
Moving into the middle of the street, Asa barred their way. “Hold up,” he commanded.
They drew rein and the younger said, “Who are you to be tellin’ us what to do?”
“Are you with the Circle K?”
“We are,” the young puncher said. “What’s it to you?”
“Use your head, Kyle,” the other cowhand said. “He must be the one.”
“Oh,” Kyle said. “You reckon so, Longley?”
Longley leaned on his saddle horn. “Am I right, and you’re the jasper who had a run-in with Jake Bass and Crusty the other night?”
“I am,” Asa said.
“Mr. Knox has heard about the council hirin’ you. He sent us to invite you out to the ranch.”
“And be bushwhacked along the way or be gunned down when I got there?”
“Mr. Knox gives his word you won’t be harmed.”
“Why should I believe him?”
“All he wants to do is talk. He’d like to have you to supper tomorrow night.”
“No.”
Longley sighed. “He was afraid you’d be pigheaded. He said if we couldn’t persuade you, he’ll ride into town by his lonesome tomorrow and talk to you here. Two in the afternoon at the Griddle House. Would you agree to that, at least?”
“Here is better than there,” Asa said.
“It’s settled, then.” Longley raised his reins. “That’s all we came to say.”
“Can’t we have a drink?” Kyle asked him.
“No. We’re headin’ back to the ranch.” Longley wheeled his mount, then stopped and looked over his shoulder. “One thing, mister. Hurt Mr. Knox and we’ll hunt you down and make you wish you weren’t ever born.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Asa said.
15
Asa had taken off his slicker and hung it on a peg on the wall and was about to sit on the bed and take off his boots when a light knock sounded. He snatched up the Winchester shotgun and moved to one side of the door, saying, “Who is it?”
“Who do you think?”
Asa opened the door. They were both there, and he frowned. “I told you we weren’t to be seen together yet.”
“Are we going to argue about it, or are you going to let us in?” Byron said.
“Please, Pa,” Noona said.
Asa motioned, and when they stepped past, he poked his head out and looked both ways. The hallway was empty. He quickly shut the door. “Doesn’t appear you were seen.”
“We were careful,” Noona said. “Just like you taught us.” She spread her arms. “Do I get a hug or not?”
Asa hugged her and turned to Byron, who had plopped down on the bed in the same spot where he had just been fixing to sit. “This your idea?”
“It’s always me,” Byron said.
“You’re the one who listens less,” Asa said. “I have rules for a reason.”
“We know, we know,” Noona said. “So we get to go on breathing.”
“Hypocritical, if you ask me,” Byron said.
“Don’t start on him,” Noona said. “We didn’t come here for that.”
“Hypocritical how?” Asa asked.
“You have all these rules to keep us alive,” Byron said. “Rules we wouldn’t need if you didn’t send us into situations where our lives were at risk. I call that hypocritical.”
“Damn it, Byron,” Noona said.
“Don’t swear,” Asa said. “Ladies don’t swear. Your mother never did.”
“Sis isn’t her, and I’m not you,” Byron said. “And we’re full grown, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“I notice a lot,” Asa said.
“Have you noticed me getting tired of this?” Byron said. “When I was sixteen it was exciting. Go into a town ahead of you, scout it out, and be ready to back your play when you made your move. I’m twenty-four now, and it’s lost its luster. It’s not exciting anymore. It’s just dangerous.”
“Always has been,” Asa said.
“You’re not listening, Paw,” Byron said, drawling the “Pa” so it sounded hillbilly, because he knew it would annoy him. “We’re tired of the deceit and play-acting, and neither of us wants to take lead for you or have a blade shoved in our guts.”
“Speak for yourself,” Noona said. “I’ll take lead for him anytime.”
“So he doesn’t speak for both of you?” Asa needed to know.
Noona placed her hand on his arm. “I’m twenty-two now. I suppose I should be getting on with my life. Maybe find a husband and settle down and have a nice house and kids, like Ma did.”
“That’s what normal people do,” Byron said.
“We’re not normal,” Noona said.
“I want to be,” Byron said to Noona. “And I’ve put it off long enough. Hell, I started giving him hints two years ago, but he wouldn’t take them.”
“What hints?” Asa asked.
“How many times have I told you I’m tired of the killing? How many times have I said I’m sick of all the traveling around? If they aren’t hints, I don’t know what is.”
Asa didn’t say anything.
“I thought as much,” Byron said. “You only notice when it suits you.”
“Byron,” Noona said.
“I’m not holding back anymore.” Byron stood. “You listen, Pa, and you listen good. This is the last one. When it’s over, I’m going back east. I’ll take what I have saved and live like ordinary folks for a change. You can go on making the world suffer for what it did to Ma, but count me out.”
“Suffer?” Asa said.
“As if you don’t know,” Byron said. “You didn’t take this town-tamer business up until after she died.”
“I still don’t savvy,” Asa said.
“Sure you do. You hated how she was treated when she was alive, how no one would have anything to do with her because she was married to a breed. Or that’s what they take you for, anyhow. So you get back at them by killing as many of them as you can.”
“That’s not it at all.”
“Oh, really?” Byron said. “Explain it to me, then. Explain it so I’ll finally understand why one human being makes his living exterminating other human beings.” Byron paused, then quoted, “‘Yet this was not the end I did pursue, surely I once beheld a nobler aim.’”
“You and your poetry,” Asa said.
“That’s another thing you hate, isn’t it? That the fruit of your loins has the soul of a poet?”
“Don’t talk about loins in front of your sister.”
“And don’t change the subject.
Explain it to me. I’m waiting.” Byron folded his arms.
Asa looked at each of them and at his son and felt a knife pierce his heart. They didn’t know how much it meant to him, working together as a family. He’d always known this day would come, though. That one or both of them would have enough. “I don’t justify myself to anyone.”
“Not even me, your own son?” Byron said in mock surprise.
“I have to admit,” Noona said quietly, “that there are occasions when the ugly parts bother me.”
“Sometimes the ‘ugly parts,’ as you call them, are the only way to settle it,” Asa said.
“Sometimes?” Byron said, and snorted. “Name one town you’ve tamed where you haven’t had to kill somebody.”
“We’ve tamed,” Asa corrected him.
“There you go again,” Byron said. “You avoid answering when you don’t like the question.” He stood and stepped to the door. “This is getting me nowhere, sis, as I knew it would. Let’s go.”
Noona looked into Asa’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“What for? He’s the one who’s quitting on us.”
Noona pecked him on the cheek. Byron cracked the door and glanced both ways, and they slipped out and were gone.
Asa shut the door after them, leaned his brow against it, and closed his eyes. “Oh, Mary,” he said.
16
The Griddle House was popular. The woman who ran it made some of the best flapjacks this side of the Mississippi River, and her other food was equally delicious. Breakfast and supper were her busiest hours, but the middle of the afternoon still saw a lot of people at different tables.
“After you, Mr. Delaware,” Weldon Knox said, holding the door open.
“No. You first,” Asa said. He’d waited at the end of town, and when a half dozen riders appeared, he figured he’d been lied to. But they’d stopped a ways out and Knox came on alone, true to his word.
Now Knox entered, saying, “You don’t trust anyone, do you?”
“It’s how I stay alive.”
Knox made for a table near a mother and her young girl, but Asa said, “Over here”, and chose one in a corner where he could sit with his back to the wall and watch the door and the window, both.
“Yes, sir,” Weldon Knox said. “Not a sliver of trust in you.” He removed his bowler and placed it beside him. Nattily dressed, he wasn’t much over five feet tall and had a thin mustache and no chin. His eyes were ferretlike and his jaw twitched a lot.
Asa chalked that up to nerves. He leaned the Winchester against his chair and folded his hands. “They said you wanted to talk.”
“I do, indeed.” Knox glanced at the front door. “I can’t believe I got away with it.”
“With what?”
Before Knox could answer, the lady who owned the eatery came over. Knox asked for soup. Asa settled for coffee. Nothing more was said until after she returned with their order and walked off.
Knox cleared his throat. “What do you know about me, Mr. Delaware?”
“You came here to talk about you?”
“Humor me, if you would.”
Asa shrugged. “You’re from back east somewhere. You bought the Circle K about seven years ago. For a while you and the town got along well, and then you hired Bull Cumberland.”
“‘Hired’ isn’t how I would put it, but go on.”
“You brought in more like him—border trash. Gunmen and rustlers and road agents . . . so now you have your very own wild bunch.”
“Did you ever think they might have me?”
“You’re the big sugar,” Asa said.
“I own the ranch, yes, but I haven’t run it in a long while.” Knox seemed to wither in on himself and placed both hands on the table and bowed his head. “God help me.”
Asa waited.
“I didn’t hire Bull Cumberland. He showed up at the ranch one day and informed me that he was going to work there, and that was that. I was a little put off, but to my sorrow I didn’t have the gumption to tell him no—even when my foreman objected. And the very next day, my foreman was dead.” Knox looked up. “Kicked by a horse, Cumberland claimed. Fool that I was, I believed him. And when he offered to take my foreman’s place, I let him.”
Asa stayed silent.
“I was stupid, I know. But Bull Cumberland has a way of intimidating people. Part of it has to do with his eyes.”
“Say again?”
“There’s nothing in them. No emotion, no feeling. They’re as flat as I hear the eyes of sharks are supposed to be. They’re killer eyes, Mr. Delaware, if there is such a thing. I confess that when he looks at me, my legs turn to water.”
“Folks say he’s snake-mean,” Asa mentioned when the rancher didn’t go on.
“They don’t know the half of it. Anyway, he wasted no time bringing in more of his kind—that vile Jake Bass, the gunman; Old Tom, the stage robber; Crusty, who’s an expert at changing brands with a running iron; Tyree Lucas and Chadwell and the rest. And before I knew it, they’d taken over.”
At moments like these, Asa wished he could peer into a person’s soul. “You expect me to believe that?”
“As God is my witness,” Knox said solemnly, “I’m telling you the truth.”
“You didn’t go to the marshal?”
“I have a wife, Mr. Delaware. Bull made it plain what would befall her if I opposed him. And besides, he murdered the marshal not long after.”
“Why didn’t you say something to the Rangers when they came?”
“Same reason. When they showed up at my ranch, Bull stood behind me on the porch with his hand on his revolver while I talked to them. He’d already told me what to say.”
“I see,” Asa said. But did he? “This could well be a trick.”
“I’m not that devious.”
“So you say.”
Weldon Knox glanced at the front door and wrung his hands. “What can I do to make you believe me?”
Asa debated with himself. If the man was shamming, he was good at it. “You never once thought to slip word to friends in town?”
“I haven’t been allowed to come here alone until now,” Knox said, “and I wouldn’t feel right putting another’s life in peril. If Bull Cumberland were to find out—”
“He let you come in alone today.”
Knox nodded. “To deal with you on his behalf. I’ve been meekly doing as he wants for so long, maybe he believes I wouldn’t dare do what I’m doing.”
“Deal with me?”
Knox did more nodding. “He’s heard of you. How or where I don’t know. Some of the others wanted to kill you, but he told them no. I thought that maybe he’s afraid of you.”
“Your story is stretching thin,” Asa said. “I’ve met his kind before. They’re a lot of things, but yellow isn’t one of them.”
“You didn’t let me finish. I thought he might be afraid but I learned different. He says that if they kill you, word might get around. A town marshal is no big thing, because no one much cares except the town. But for someone famous like you, the newspapers might write it up. And the Rangers or the federal law might investigate. You were a federal marshal once, I’ve been told.”
“Deputy U.S. marshal,” Asa said.
“Same thing, more or less. Bull Cumberland thinks you might have friends who are federal law, and he doesn’t want them nosing around.”
“Smart of him,” Asa said. Truth was, he didn’t know if any of the men toting badges back when he did were still at it. He’d resigned pretty near eleven years ago, shortly after Mary took sick. He was by her side every day and night until the consumption claimed her. He didn’t regret it. Not one bit.
“Anyway, that’s why I’m here,” Weldon Knox was saying. “Cumberland wants me to buy you off.”
Asa sat back. “You don’t say.”
<
br /> “He’s heard that your standard fee is a thousand dollars. Is that true?”
“Whatever it is, it’s my business.”
“Rightly so,” Knox said quickly. “He instructed me to offer you five thousand on his behalf if you’ll pack up and go pester someone else. His very words.”
Asa whistled.
“Five thousand is a lot of money. I wouldn’t blame you if you took it.”
When Asa didn’t say anything, Knox drummed his fingers on the table.
“Well? What will you do?”
Asa stared at those drumming fingers and an icy wind seemed to blow through him. “Tell him I’ll think about it.”
“He figured you’d leap at his offer.”
“He figured wrong.”
“What’s there to think about? We’re talking five thousand dollars. That’s forty times more than the average person earns in a year.”
“I’m not much at arithmetic,” Asa said.
“Be serious, man. I don’t see how you can refuse.”
It took all of Asa’s self-control not to reach across the table, grab Knox by the throat, and throttle him. “I need a couple of days to think about it.”
“To think about five thousand dollars?”
Asa tested his hunch with, “You keep mentioning how much as if you’re offering it yourself.”
Weldon Knox blinked and shook his head. “It’s Bull Cumberland.”
“Two days,” Asa said. “Ask him to give me that much.”
“Very well,” Knox said, and stood. “I guess I’ve said all I need to. I’ll report back to him. Two days it is.” He donned his bowler and hustled out.
The cold feeling in Asa became an iceberg. “That was another mistake you made.”
17
Asa took a stroll about the town. He could use the exercise. He didn’t get nearly as much as he used to. Not that he was flabby or overweight. But the gray hair at his temples was a sign he wasn’t as spry as he used to be. He wasn’t quite as quick or accurate with a pistol, either, which was why he favored the shotgun. Just point and fire and he could blow a man pretty near in half.
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