“Fine by me, daughter,” Asa said.
“Byron?” Noona said.
“‘ ’Tis a base abandonment of reason to resign our right of thought.’”
“Another of your quotes,” Noona said. “Cut down on those, too. You only do it to show off.”
“Oh, sis.”
“Just because you can memorize more words than anybody doesn’t mean you rub our noses in it.”
“I recite it because I like it.”
“Be that as it may. Half the time I don’t know what in blazes you’re saying, and more often than not it sets Pa off.”
“That’s not my intent.”
“Besides,” Noona said, “that precious poet of yours died, what, over sixty years ago? Not much he said matters today.”
Byron reacted as if she had thrust a blade between his ribs. “You can’t be serious. Lord Byron will be read for a thousand years. For ten thousand. For as long as romance flourishes in the human heart.”
“God help us,” Asa said.
“Don’t belittle me for having poetry in my soul.”
Asa went to reply and glanced at Noona. “Can I? You just told me not to.”
Noona frowned. “I’ll make this one exception but only if you give your word that you won’t bring it up again the rest of the trip.”
“Yes, by all means, go ahead,” Byron said.
“Did this great poet you admire so much ever kill anyone?” Asa asked.
Byron stared.
“Well, did he?”
“Byron was British. They don’t go around shooting each other like we do. They’re civilized.”
Asa swept an arm to encompass the plush interior of the dining car with its shaded windows and cushioned seats and bronze fittings. “We’re not?”
“Dress an ape in a suit and it’s still an ape. Lord Byron did most of his fighting with words. He used them like other men use swords.”
“We’re not apes,” Asa said. “And why did you say ‘most’?”
“Toward the end of his life he fought for Greek independence. Before he could take part in an actual engagement, he came down ill and died.”
“So he didn’t kill anybody.”
Byron drummed his fingers on the table. “I resent what you’re implying.”
“I’m not implying anything, son. I’m saying that it’s unfair to compare me to this poet. He scribbled rhymes for a living. I kill folks, bad folks, the kind who will shoot you as quick as look at you.”
“I know that. I’ve helped you how many times?”
“Then you, of all people, should see that I can’t afford to look at the world the way your poet does. To me, life isn’t a romance. It’s grim and hard, and it will kill you if you give it half a chance.”
“I don’t think you should be like Byron, Pa. I just wish you didn’t kill, period.”
“Ah,” Asa said.
“Can’t you see it’s wrong?”
Asa looked out the window at the scenery rolling by, then said, “I had a parson say the same thing once. Went on and on about how evil I am. He quoted from the Bible, that commandment about not ever killing.”
When Byron didn’t respond, Noona was prompted by curiosity to ask, “What did you tell him?”
“I’ve never read the Bible all the way through. Your mother did. She liked to read it sometimes in the evenings after supper. You rememember?”
Noona nodded.
“One part I recollected was that not long after God gave those commandments the parson went on about, those Jewish people got to their Promised Land, or whatever it was.”
“I remember that part,” Noona said.
“What was the first thing they did when they got there?” Asa said. “I’ll tell you. They killed everybody. Wiped out whole towns and cities. Folks who worshipped other gods.”
“Is there a point to this?” Byron asked.
“If it was all right for the Jews to go around killing all those bad folks, I reckon it’s all right for me.”
“I never thought of it like that,” Noona said. “It’s good to know the Almighty won’t hold it against us.”
Byron looked from her to their father and back again. “Do they serve drinks on this train?”
31
Later, Asa lay on his back in his berth with a hand under his head, staring at the ceiling and waiting for sleep to claim him.
He was worried about his son. He truly was.
Byron had changed. When he was younger he was bright and bushy-tailed. Then Mary took sick, and his disposition became gloomy. After she died, he fell into a sulk that lasted over a year.
The boy read more than ever. He’d always liked to, ever since he first learned how. Asa had thought it a waste of his son’s time to read so much but Mary had said to let Byron be, that book-learning was a good thing and Byron would be better for it.
Not hardly, Asa thought. After her death, the boy became so caught up in books, his book world mattered more than the real one.
Especially that damn poet. For the life of him, Asa couldn’t savvy what was so wonderful about Lord Byron. Unknown to his son, he’d snuck a few looks at the boy’s books about him.
A lot of the poems had to do with ladies, Asa discovered. It seemed that every time Lord Byron fell in love, he wrote a new poem about it. And he fell in love a lot.
Asa was surprised to come across a poem Lord Byron wrote in memory of his dog. Any man who cared for dogs couldn’t be all bad, but still.
As for the rest, it was so much Greek. Asa tried to read Don Juan because his son liked it so much. But a lot of the meaning, if there was any, went over his head.
Asa would be the first to admit he wasn’t the smartest gent who ever drew breath. He could count the books he’d read on one hand and have fingers left over. And when people talked about politics and religion and the like, it put him to sleep.
He was a simple man with simple needs, and simple thoughts. It amazed him that any son of his could read someone like Lord Byron and take his meaning.
He’d long suspected that no good would come of it, and he’d been proven right.
All that highfalutin nonsense about not killing—Asa was sure his son picked that up from books.
He hadn’t found anything in his skimming of Lord Byron’s works that flat-out said so, but he did remember someone telling him once that poets had gentle souls, and ever since his son became obsessed with Lord Byron, he’d become so gentle-minded that now he couldn’t abide snuffing wicks.
Asa rolled onto his side and closed his eyes. He needed to stop thinking about it. He needed to keep his head clear for Ordville.
Town taming was a serious business. It was no job for amateurs. Or for poets with gentle souls. He was glad this was Byron’s last time. If the boy kept at it, he’d wind up as dead as that silly poet.
32
Byron listened to the clack-clack-clack of the car under him and the sound of the locomotive and wished he could get to sleep.
He didn’t know which bothered him more. That his pa couldn’t see that town taming was flat-out wrong, or his worry over the fact that sooner or later his father’s luck would run out.
When he was little, Byron had looked up to him. In his eyes, his father had been the finest man alive. Devoted to his mother, caring toward his sister and him. He couldn’t recall a single instance where his father raised his voice to them in anger or beat them, as some fathers did.
Back then Asa had been a marshal, and Byron had taken pride in that—in the star his father wore and how people respected him so.
Then his mother came down with consumption, and their lives changed forever. He’d seen how devastated his father was. How a lot of the joy went out of him. How he wasn’t the same man he’d once been.
Proof of that was when his father gave
up his badge and took to town taming.
Byron saw the change, even if his pa didn’t. Where before Asa had served the law and protected folks by arresting the bad men who preyed on them, now he served no law but his own and blew the badmen to bits with that shotgun of his.
So what if towns hired him to do just that? It was nothing more nor less than sanctioned murder.
Byron had lent a hand, at first, for no other reason than that Asa was his father. But as time went on, as the killings mounted, he began to question the rightness of it.
Asa wasn’t blowing those bad men apart out of any sense of right and wrong. Everyone else assumed he did it for the money, but Byron knew better.
The town taming was an excuse for Asa to kill.
What Byron didn’t understand, and desperately wished to, was why. Why did his father feel the need to take so many lives? What satisfaction could spilling so much blood give him?
It didn’t give Byron any. He was sick of it. He’d stuck it out as long as he could, and now he wanted to quit.
He wished his sister would do the same, but she still adored Asa as he once had. She also, he had to admit, didn’t mind the killing one bit.
Byron would use their time in Ordville to try and persuade her to give up town taming, to live a normal life, like he was going to do.
He refused to do any killing in Ordville. He might as well start now to live as ordinary people did.
If nothing else, it should help him sleep better.
33
Noona was restless.
She couldn’t get the constant quarreling between her pa and her brother out of her head.
She tried. Pressing her cheek into the soft pillow, she pulled the blanket higher and gave thanks that she was in a comfortable bunk and not sleeping on the hard ground.
She emptied her head and waited to drift off, and didn’t.
Consarn Byron anyhow, she thought.
It was one thing for him to decide he was too good to kill anymore. That was his right. No one was forcing him.
But it was another for him to constantly badger their pa about it. To belittle him. To make him seem like some sort of monster for doing what so few had the grit to do.
Noona liked town taming. She had no problem with pulling the trigger on murderers and robbers and others of their unsavory ilk. It wasn’t any different from, say, ridding a house of rats. Let the rats run wild, and they’d destroy it. Let bad men run wild, and they’d destroy a town.
She was proud of what their pa did, and proud that he let her take part.
Lately Byron had been going on to her about how she should live a “normal” life. To her, normal meant a husband and kids and a house. It meant settling down. It meant doing dishes and laundry and cleaning and stitching.
She wasn’t ready for that yet.
Domesticity would be a lot less exciting than town taming.
She got to travel, to meet new people! Sure, she had to put lead into a few, but only the bad ones.
She’d go on doing it as long as she could—or as long as her pa did, and he showed no signs of stopping anytime soon.
It wouldn’t be the same without Byron, though. Three was better than two when it came to watching one another’s backs.
Noona cared for him a lot. They weren’t like some brothers and sisters who were forever spatting. They got along fine. Or had, until he climbed on his high horse about the taming.
He’d once brought up the point that females didn’t do what she did. They didn’t tote guns, didn’t play-act in saloons, and they certainly didn’t blow holes in bad men.
But the only reason more women didn’t was their upbringing. They were taught that girls should behave in such-and-such a manner. Always be polite. Always be sweet. Learn to cook and learn to sew and learn to polish silverware and shoes so they could wait on their husbands mouth and foot.
None of that for her. She wasn’t a homebody. And she’d as soon gag as let a man rule her life.
Town taming let her avoid all that.
So far as she knew, she was the first and only female town tamer. For her own safety, her pa hadn’t let it be well known—which was a shame.
Noona felt herself drifting off. She thought of Ordville and what might be in store for them. It wouldn’t be anything they hadn’t seen before.
Life seldom surprised her anymore. She doubted Ordville would.
Part Four
34
Ordville, Colorado, got its start by accident.
One summer’s day a grizzled prospector with the handle of Lester Ordville was leading his contrary mule, Abigail, along an unnamed creek high in the Rockies. When she balked at going on, he sat down to rest and noticed a patch of color, not in the creek but in a bluff on the other side.
Taking his pick, Ordville chipped at the rock and soon exposed a vein—not of gold, which was disappointing, but of silver. Silver didn’t fetch as much, but enough of it could put a person in money for life.
Ordville filed a claim, brought in workers, and established the Stubborn Mule Mining Company. The ground under the bluff yielded over a ton of silver in the first year, and it wasn’t long before a town sprang up. They named it after him even though he wanted to name the town Abigail.
Ten years went by.
In that time, Lester had a mansion built and married a woman thirty years younger than he was. Her name was Darcy. They met one day when she bumped into him as he was coming out of his barber’s. She hinted that he should ask her out and he mustered the courage to do it. One thing led to another, with most of the things Darcy’s doing, and before Lester could quite collect his wits, he was wed.
Darcy spent his money so fast, it was a wonder Lester didn’t go broke. She wanted so much, and he was so eager to please, that he sold his mine to a conglomerate for what he thought was enough money to last him a lifetime. It lasted a year and a half. Darcy left him for greener and younger pastures and Lester ended up in a shack at the end of town. Just him and Abigail, who was too old and worn to go prospecting, but at least she didn’t spend him to death.
The conglomerate didn’t just take over the mine. They took over the town. The first thing they did was change the mine’s name to the Studevant Silver Lode.
Arthur Studevant was the head of the conglomerate and liked his name on everything he owned. His philosophy could be summed up in his favorite expression: “Why settle for a hundred thousand when you can make a million?”
Studevant brought in more men and expanded operations. He increased ore production by a whopping thirty-five percent. If that was all he did it would have been remarkable, but Studevant had other business interests besides mines.
The men who worked in his mines needed someplace to live. They needed clothes to wear. Needed food to eat. Most important of all, they needed a shot of whiskey at the end of a hard day’s labor and a congenial atmosphere in which to enjoy it.
That was why when Arthur Studevant took over a mine, he took over the town, too. He opened boardinghouses, bought up existing properties, and rented them out. He opened eateries. More important, as far as raking in profits went, were his saloons. In Ordville he opened five within half a year of taking over the mine and made it known that men who worked for him should frequent his establishments and not others. Small wonder that most of the existing saloons and two restaurants closed for lack of business.
Ordville became a company town.
And since Studevant controlled it, he got to run it the way he pleased. And the way he pleased was wide open.
Common sense said that saloons open twenty-four hours made more money than saloons only open for twelve. So Studevant kept his open twenty-four.
Common sense said that saloons open seven days a week made more money than saloons open six. So Studevant kept his open seven.
The town had three churc
hes. The men of the cloth who ran them complained that Studevant was breaking the Sabbath, but he silenced two of them with generous donations. The third was Catholic, and in Studevant’s eyes didn’t count.
His next act should have provoked howls of righteous indignation from every upright soul in Ordville, yet only a few married women raised a fuss and were ignored.
Studevant opened the Rocky Mountain Social Club. It wasn’t a club in that you didn’t have to buy a membership to join, and it wasn’t social except that its patrons got to frolic with naked women for money.
Studevant brought in a professional madam from St. Louis to run the place, and rumor had it they were quite close.
All of this Asa Delaware learned before he even left Texas. All it took was a couple of visits to the Austin library and newspaper. Noona did the visiting since he wasn’t much at reading. She always handled that part.
Now, as the Ordville Express chugged up a steep grade to the pass that would take the train over the divide, Asa gazed out the window of the dining car at a spectacular vista of miles-high snowcapped peaks, and pondered.
He’d have to be mighty careful how he went about taming a place like Ordville.
It was one thing to tangle with an outlaw rancher like Weldon Knox and another to go up against someone as rich and powerful as Arthur Studevant.
It could be that Studevant had simply let things get out of hand with his wide-open policy and would welcome a chance to rein in the rough element. But Asa couldn’t count on that.
He’d learn more once he got there and talked to the mayor.
Byron would try to land a job as a bartender and Noona would do her dove act, and between the three of them, they’d know what was what in no time.
“Always get to know a town before taming it” was another of Asa’s rules.
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