by Neal Barrett
It was a peculiar thing, Howie thought. Everytime someone took something from him, they gave something-back. It wasn’t always something bad, he realized. Jacob and Pardo had given him terrible needs, things he didn’t want at all, but Aimie had given him something deep and wonderful that he wanted very much. It seemed like what people did taught you what to do back to them.
There wasn’t any question anymore about going south or running away or anything else. He would stay. He would stay until he was man enough to face Pardo, and kill him. It wasn’t a good thing, but it was something that had to be. And of course Pardo would know that, too.
Chapter Twenty
The town of Roundtree clustered about the far bend of a dry river. Time, and hot winds from the Kansas prairie, had warped the plank buildings and turned them dusty gray. They leaned slightly westward, now, like thirsty old men waiting for water to bubble up out of the parched ground.
Fifty or so people had lived in Roundtree before Lathan burst out of Colorado to swallow Danefield, Caravel Keep, and a clear road to the flat country. Now, the rebels breathed down Loyalist necks in Dodge and threatened to cut supply lines all the way to Arkansas Territory. Still, there was a relative quiet in the north and the big fighting to the south had made Roundtree’s fortune. Near enough to Dodge, but close to rebel ground as well, it was useful to both sides without really belonging to either. The fifty citizens had swelled to five-thousand and new buildings rose out of the prairie as fast as men could stand raw timber on end.
It was a place where arms of all kinds could be bought, sold, or traded. Black powder and fresh water brought nearly the same price until a fair well was drilled close to town. Good raw metal was worth a quarter of its weight in silver. And a fine horse might be bought in Roundtree one week and sold there twice the next—its interim owners mysteriously missing.
The town was thick with rebel and Loyalist soldiers, though neither appeared in uniform, and none would admit to any interest in the war. Most were disguised as merchants, raiders, or thieves; and in truth, there were few among them who couldn’t rise to such roles. In Roundtree they spied honestly on one another, plied each other with whiskey and women, and traded mounts for their respective armies—always pocketing a fair piece of change for their troubles. It was common enough here to buy back your own stolen mounts and more than once a soldier had found himself bidding for arms against a brother officer.
It was in Roundtree that Pardo had made his deal with Loyalist leaders to join the big meat herd and see it safely through Tennessee and Arkansas Territory. And it was here that he had promptly doubled his money and then some by selling the deal back to Lathan’s men.
No one was foolish enough to think the raid was any accident—certainly no one in Roundtree. And it was common talk that Colonel Monroe in Dodge had put a price on Pardo’s head for it. Double-dealing was one thing—that was part of the game—but the loss of such an enormous quantity of meat had hurt the government badly, and they weren’t likely to forget it.
Pardo laughed it off in good humor and said, where everyone could hear, that Monroe was more worried about losing a star on his shirt than any meat herd and that’s what was truly getting his back up. To copper his bet, though, Howie knew, he’d secretly sent word to Monroe that he hadn’t had anything to do with the rebels stealing his meat, that he was out the rest of his own money on the deal, and had been lucky to get away with his hide. He even offered to hire out at almost nothing to take soldiers into eastern Colorado to steal the herd back from the rebels. Monroe didn’t answer and Pardo didn’t expect him to.
Meanwhile, Pardo had his hands full getting an arms shipment ready for Jeb Hacker, Lathan’s top trader in Roundtree and the man who’d closed the meat deal. Guns were getting scarcer than ever and Hacker had offered a high premium for every weapon Pardo could furnish. Which gave Pardo the idea it’d be plain foolish to deal solely with the rebels; if Monroe wanted to play the fool, why, there were other government officers who’d be glad enough to get in on the bidding. Especially, he figured, if it appeared like the guns were coming from someone who didn’t have anything to do with him directly. That’d work just fine and a little healthy competition wouldn’t hurt the price any…
If that kind of business didn’t get Pardo’s head on a stick, nothing would, Howie thought sourly. It seemed like the man was stretching his luck as far as it’d go, just to see if he could—like he didn’t have enough trouble and had to stir up some more.
At the moment, his mind wasn’t on Pardo at all, or the cartload of nothing he was supposed to be watching. Harlie and Ketch hauled the small wagon, with the top tied down real careful, while Howie or someone else who could handle a gun kept an eye out for trouble. There wasn’t much thinking to a job like that, but someone had to do it. It seemed plain crazy to worry about raiders hitting one little cart right in the middle of Roundtree with the streets full of people—but it happened, sometimes. It wouldn’t if Pardo and the other dealers who had something going would keep all their business in one place instead of putting one piece together here, and another somewhere else. Only that was plain asking for trouble. The man who put his whole operation under one roof would likely be out of business before the day was out. It had happened more than twice in Roundtree.
If you were in the arms and ammunition trade, you knew better than to bring all your craftsmen together, or to let a man who worked for you know who got the parts after him. That was the quickest way in the world to get a knife in your ribs.
So there were carts covered to look like whatever they weren’t passing through Roundtree at all hours of the day; some full of valuable metals or sacks of springs and bores, and some full of nothing at all going places where nobody was. The decoys didn’t do much good, because there were enough idlers in Roundtree willing to follow most anything for a copper.
The truth was, as Howie and most everyone else knew, the really important goods went from place to place in a man’s pocket or under a woman’s skirt. It was less trouble than the business with the carts. On the other hand, the more people you used, the greater the chance they also worked for someone else.
In Roundtree, there were guards guarding guards and watchers watching watchers. There was work for everybody. And for the few, like Pardo, who had the cunning and patience to keep an eye on everything in town at once, there was a great deal of money to be made. If you could only keep alive long enough to spend it.
It was enough to make a man’s head hurt, Howie thought irritably. When the cart reached Center Street, he left Harlie and Ketch to play out the rest of the game and disappeared quickly into the noonday crowd. Instead of going directly back to the Keep, he circled through the middle of town, past the crowded clapboard shops and narrow stalls that stretched the length of Roundtree’s main avenue of commerce. It was a noisy, sprawling street; merchants large and small vied for every copper that lined a passing pocket. They were intense, quick-eyed men, hungry for trade at ever- climbing prices. No one knew how long the war might last. Why, God forbid, it could end tomorrow!
There were vegetable sellers, feed mash merchants, and whiskey dealers by the dozen. A man could buy steel blades, wheat flour, hemp rope, cotton cloth, bone tools, clay kettles, horse blankets, real and false gemstones, and pretty girls no more than fourteen summers old. (“And you’ll be the first to touch her, sir, I promise you that!”)
Howie passed the butcher shop where a small boy tried vainly to keep clouds of black flies from hanging cuts of meat. Next door, a whole carcass dripped grease over sizzling coals, while the butcher’s other offspring kept it turning. It was prime young mare, fat and full of juices. Howie hadn’t eaten since sunup and the rich smells assailed his empty stomach. He gave the boy coppers for a meaty rib half as long as his forearm and gnawed it happily through the crowd.
He’d gone no more than a block before he was certain someone else was in his tracks—and more than one, at that. He’d felt vaguely uneasy since morning, when
they’d loaded the cart on Dryside past the Keep. The usual watchers were about; Howie knew the regulars well enough. But there was someone else, too. He could have easily dismissed the whole business, but if they were still with him after he’d left the cart behind, that was a different brand of trouble altogether.
Keeping to the busy street, he glanced in stalls and shops for another short block, then turned off the avenue and walked south toward the dry river, and Pardo’s Keep. They wouldn’t push him until they were ready, only Howie didn’t figure on waiting for that. Pardo was right about some things. If the problem was low down and dirty enough, he likely had an answer for it. In this case, it was clear as day. Get square behind whatever’s after you.
There were at least two of them. Howie figured three. He’d seen the first two briefly, in the crowd behind him. The third was hanging back, playing shadow out of sight.
Howie moved slow and easy, giving his followers no trouble. At the end of the block he crossed the street, stopped a moment to hitch up his belt, then turned casually into a narrow alleyway. The minute he was out of sight he broke into a fast run, circled the block, and cut back to the crowded avenue. He was right where he’d started, just past the butcher shop, a short walk from the corner. He saw them coming back up the hill, out of breath, the anger in their faces clear a good block away. From their dour looks, neither was anxious to report their failure.
He guessed their path ahead, a line of shops across the street with an alley at the end. He cut through the strollers and circled the short block, coming up on the alley from behind. Howie grinned to himself. The man was where he ought to be, in the shadow of a doorway a few steps from the street, his eyes on the crowd.
Howie moved, letting the street noise cover him. He wasn’t anxious to handle three of them; the man’s companions would be on him soon. With one motion he turned the man hard against the wall and brought his blade up sharp under the throat. The man stiffened, then let his body go loose. He watched Howie over his shoulder and grinned.
“Don’t want no trouble, boy. Just a little talk.”
“You’ll get it,” snapped Howie. “Move!”
He glanced quickly up the alley, then herded his prisoner out the back way, stopping only when he was several turns from the avenue, where Roundtree backed into the dry river. There was no one about. Only the slat walls and the hot glare of the flats. He searched the man quickly, found a long steel knife and tossed it aside.
“Now we’ll talk some,” he announced. “That’s what you was wanting, ain’t it?” He jammed his own blade back in his belt and replaced it with the pistol. The man looked at the weapon, then at Howie.
“No need for that,” he smiled. “Said I didn’t want no trouble.”
He was a tall man, spare, with no meat on his bones. He had an easy grin and a lazy, friendly manner that set Howie doubly on his guard.
“You been pushing me all day, mister,” he said darkly. “What for?”
“A question or two,” the man shrugged. “Nothing more.”
“Questions about what?”
The man studied him calmly. “Guess we could start off talkin’ about Cory.”
Howie blinked back his surprise. The words shook him visibly, and the man knew it.
“Ah, you recall him, then.”
“I remember him.”
“He was a friend, perhaps?”
“I remember him!” Howie flared. “You follow me ’round all day to ask that?”
“That, and a bit more if you can,” the man said gently. “Like what happened out there… and how come Cory ain’t coming back.”
Howie licked his lips to get the dry out. “Cory got it ’cause the rebels come up on us-and took the herd. He wasn’t the only one, either. Weren’t too many that made it.”
“You did.”
Howie stepped back and raised the barrel of his pistol. “Mister, who the hell are you and what’s Cory to you? And, don’t give me one of them answers that don’t say nothin’!”
The man shrugged bony shoulders. “A friend of Cory’s is all. Maybe one of yours, too.”
“Yeah, I’ll just bet.”
“Might be I could help some.”
“Help who? Me?” Howie laughed uneasily. “I don’t even know you and you ain’t making much sense far as I can see!”
“’Bout as much as you, boy.” The man turned lazy eyes on Howie. “Lordee, isn’t anyone in Roundtree doesn’t know what happened out there. The rebels got the herd all right… but not by themselves they didn’t.”
Howie started to protest; the man held up a hand. “Now I ain’t sayin’ I care one way or the other. What I care about is Cory and what happened to him.”
“And I just told you,” Howie said irritably.
“Ah, you did and you didn’t,” said the man. He wagged a long finger at Howie. “You said he died and I know that. What I’m huntin’ for is how.”
“I already said he—”
“—Died when the rebels took the herd,” the man nodded. “And I’m certain that’s so. What I don’t know is whether one of them did the job, or someone else.” He gave Howie a sly wink. “Pardo himself, maybe? Or one of the others? You recall right off which it was?”
Howie stared at him. “You got to be crazy. Or figure I am.”
“No,” the man blinked at the sun and scratched his scrawny neck. “Don’t guess it’s either of us, boy. It’s the times, mostly. Good men are dying and them that did ’em in are walking the streets with pockets full of silver. Peculiar things are happening everywhere and more’n one man has got hisself tangled in other folk’s affairs deeper’n he’d like to be.” He grinned affably at Howie. “It is some hot out here, you know?
Looks to me like friends could talk better in good shade over a drink or two, without pistols and such between ’em.”
The man took a slight step forward. Howie backed off warily and waved his weapon. “I told you what happened to Cory,” he said harshly. “You can take it or leave it, mister. I got nothing else to say.”
“No. Didn’t figure you did, right now.” The man gave him a tired, curious smile.
“Might come to it, though. Can’t never tell.” Without another word, he turned and started back toward the center of town.
“Hey, now just a damn minute!” Howie yelled after him.
The man didn’t answer. He just kept walking, as if Howie wasn’t there. Howie stood in the sun with the pistol hanging from his hand, feeling like a plain fool.
Chapter Twenty-One
Howie tried hard to put the whole business aside, but it wouldn’t go away. He knew he’d handled it badly. He’d had it all over the skinny little stranger and the man had gotten the best of him.
It made him swell up inside just to think about it. If you didn’t take care of yourself in Roundtree, someone else’d sure do it for you. He’d learned his lessons well, and had the scars to prove it. Only—this one had called his bluff and walked clean away.
He knew what had happened. All that talk about Cory had taken the fight out of him and made him act just like a kid again. There wasn’t a day passed that he didn’t think about Cory—he couldn’t forget, and didn’t want to. Long ago, though, he had put that part of himself away in a special place that didn’t hurt so much. It was there, and he could get to it when he wanted to. Only the stranger had come along and found it and brought it right out in the open.
Howie was sure he was going to be sick. The fat, succulent meat he’d eaten earlier was turning heavy in his stomach. He passed a whiskey seller and wondered if a drink would help. Probably just make things worse. He didn’t much like the stuff, anyway.
He tried to think about something else. He thought of Kari Ann and wondered if she was back at the Keep. He thought about the way her eyes looked, gray and smoky and kind of half closed all the time. Like she was just getting out of bed, or thinking about going. He brushed the picture aside. It just made him feel worse, in a different way.
H
owie wondered again just who the man was and what he was really after. Maybe he was one of Colonel Monroe’s people, just fishing around, trying to spook anyone who worked for Pardo and pick up whatever he could.. Probably, he hadn’t ever even known Cory. Finding out what had happened out there wouldn’t be any big thing. One of Pardo’s crew could’ve gotten too much corn whiskey in his gut and talked when he should have been listening.
What was he supposed to do—run and tell Pardo all about it and see if that would put some fat in the fire? Make Pardo itchy, so he’d pull something Monroe could hang on him? Or maybe he, Howie, was supposed to keep the meeting to himself and let Monroe slip the word to Pardo that you couldn’t trust Howie on the street. Howie kicked a big rock and sent it rattling down the alleyway. Lordee, there was sure a lot more thinking to the stealing business than he’d ever figured!
Pardo’s keep was a big, sprawling two-story clapboard left over from Roundtree’s early days. At one time or another it had served as a hotel, brothel, town hall, dry goods store, and, finally, a warehouse for stock feed. It still smelled strongly of the latter. Now, it housed Pardo’s immediate band, eight men and assorted females.
Pardo was extra careful about who stayed in the Keep. The riders he hired from time to time weren’t welcome there and unapproved visitors were frowned upon. Pardo didn’t trust the people who lived there, much less those who didn’t.
The Keep was on the far edge of town, with no other houses close at hand. It backed up to the dry river bed with plenty of breathing room all around so you could see who was coming before they got there. Lew Renner lazed on the porch with a rifle on his lap. Howie nodded as he went up the board steps and inside. The big front room took up most of the lower floor. There was a kitchen in back with rough cabinets for foodstuffs and cooking gear. Boxes, crates, and straw mattresses littered both the main room and the kitchen. A few patched chairs and broken stools were scattered about, but there was no real furniture as such. The Keep was a place that kept other people out while you slept, ate, had a woman, or made plans to go somewhere else. No one pretended anyone lived there, or cared to.