The War between the States took him away from Butter-field and finished his education in the last two items: guns and men. When the war ended Hart was no more than twenty years of age. He followed his nose after that, working on ranches as both wrangler and cowhand, driving stagecoaches, serving time as a deputy marshal in the southern part of Texas and in Tucson in Arizona Territory. He worked for the army as a scout against both the Apache and the Navaho, learning a lot of respect for the Indian and losing much of what he had for the white man. During much of the 1870s, Hart was a Texas Ranger: it was then that he had met Kathy: then that he had sought to settle down. Build a home. Build a family. First time in his life since he’d turned his back on his own when he was but fourteen.
The memory came to Wes Hart now and he stood up swiftly, the back of his hand sending the three-legged chair somersaulting over and over. For a moment he stared at the ramshackle hut and then he lashed against it with his boot, kicking clear through one of the planks close by the door, the sharp crack of wood raw in the wide silence. He had built her a house, a real house, a place fit to be a home for a wife and kids and she turned her back upon it, turned her back upon him. Forever.
Hart’s eyes closed and his head dipped up and back to face the sun. The warmth of it burned down on him and inside closed lids it glowed orange. Well, damn her! If she didn’t want him, didn’t want his house, then damn her. The stink of flame and ashes crumbled against his brain. He had burned it to the ground.
‘Damn her!’
Hart’s heel hacked into the ground and he realized that he had called out loud: into the fading echo of his voice came the steady rattle of horses’ hoofs.
He reached down and fastened the thong at the bottom of his holster and waited.
Slowly, seen from under the brim of his hat, the riders took shape, divided out and became four men. Their bodies moved up and down more or less in unison. Hats, colored shirts, the glint of holstered guns. The shack was close by the trail from Pinto north to the Kansas border and it didn’t mean anything special for folk to be using it. But the closeness of the border and the lawlessness of Indian Territory caused more than a few outlaws to ride that trail. Hart continued to watch and wait: he wasn’t over-concerned; he just wasn’t about to take any unnecessary chances.
One man rode slightly ahead of the others, broad-shouldered and tall, a bushy beard falling down to his chest, high Stetson set up straight on his head. Behind and to the left rode two who might be brothers; both had round, flat faces, clean-shaven; both wore tan vests over faded blue shirts. The fourth man was young and sallow-faced, the brim of his hat bent down at right angles over his forehead.
Hart took a couple of paces away from the front of the shack and tucked the thumb of his right hand inside his pants belt, letting the fingers curve over the butt of the Colt.
Forty yards away from the shack, the bearded man turned his head and spoke to the others; all four slowed their mounts to the slowest of walks. When they had halved that distance, the leader lifted his right hand and held it palm outwards towards Hart, Indian fashion.
‘Stranger.’
Hart nodded in acknowledgement and moved a step to the side, ensuring that the sun was not impairing his vision.
‘Sure is hot.’
‘Yeah.’
One of the horses raised its head and whinnied and a hand reached out to still it.
‘Your place?’ asked the bearded man, looking towards the shack.
‘For now.’
‘Uh-huh.’ The man glanced over his shoulder at the brothers – Hart was certain now that they were brothers. ‘ We’re heading up Kansas way. Work up there. Yes.’
Hart said nothing, nodded, waited.
The man’s gaze shifted to the Colt below Hart’s right hand.
‘What line of work you in, mister?’
The beginnings of a smile curved onto Hart’s face and that was all the answer the bearded man got.
‘Well,’ he coughed, ‘ain’t none of my business.’
‘No,’ Hart agreed, ‘it ain’t.’
The man laughed, deep and loud. The sallow-faced youngster sniggered. ‘No need to say what you don’t want,’ the man said and laughed again. ‘Hell, I was only lookin’ to pass the time of day.’
‘Sure.’
‘Mind if I take a spell a while? My backside’s sore as anythin’.’
‘Help yourself.’
The bearded man swung down from the saddle. He was bigger than Hart had thought at first. Four or five inches over six foot and around forty pounds more than the hundred and seventy Hart weighed himself. A Colt .45 sat high in a holster on the right of his buckskin pants and a cartridge belt hung left to right across his worn greasy plain shirt. Like all of them, sweat ran down his face and neck and stained his clothes dark where they touched the skin.
The other three stayed mounted: watching.
‘Name’s Jakes. Matthew Jakes.’ He pulled at a tangle of brown beard. ‘Could be you heard of me?’
Hart had not. He said so.
Matthew Jakes looked genuinely surprised, more than a little put out.
‘There’s plenty as has,’ he said. ‘Plenty.’ The tone made it clear that Jakes thought a lot of them had lived to regret it – if they’d emerged from the experience alive at all.
‘These here,’ Jakes announced with a sweep of the hand, ‘are the Donaldsons. Them’s twins. Andy an’ Angus. And this is Dink.’ The big man laughed. ‘Say howdy, Dink.’
The sallow youth grunted and then cleared his throat and spat, as if any kind of talk didn’t agree with him.
‘Hart,’ said Hart. ‘Wes Hart’
Jakes shook his head as though he hadn’t heard that name either, but something at the back of his eyes, some slight hesitation in his manner suggested that he had. If that was the case, it still didn’t stop him looking enviously at the gun.
‘Knew a feller once down Matamoros had him a pistol like that. All that fancy work on the butt.’ A red tongue licked at Matthew Jakes’ lips. ‘You wouldn’t care to let me have a closer look, I reckon? Sort of, handle it myself.’
His eyes shone as he waited for Hart’s reply. One of the brother’s mounts, Andy’s or Angus’s, shied a little and the man in the saddle moved him off and gentled him through a circle, quietening him down.
‘You know the answer to that,’ said Hart.
‘Yeah,’ grinned Jakes, rubbing at his beard and moustache. ‘Yeah, I guess I do.’
And he slapped the flat of his large hand against the front of his shirt and hollered with laughter. The twins back of him laughed a little, too, but not as much, not as certainly. Dink, he tightened his mouth still further and stroked the shiny wood butt of his saddle gun as if it were some kind of comforter.
‘Shame,’ called Jakes through his laughter. ‘I’d dearly love to set my hands on a gun like that.’
And in a split second the laughter stopped.
Matthew Jakes’ hand moved from shirt to holster faster than most: Hart’s fingers were no longer curved above the grip of the Colt; they were tight about it, thumb on the hammer, beginning to lever it back, the pistol beginning to slide up from the inside of the greased holster.
Both of the Donaldsons had begun a move towards their weapons; Dink’s hand no longer caressed his rifle butt but was pulling it out of its scabbard.
‘Shit! Oh, shit!’ Jakes shouted and let his huge body rock forward and back a little and then his hand fell away from his gun. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
Hart released a breath, his eyes narrowed and his body taut. He stayed as he was while Jakes turned and hauled himself up into the saddle and gripped the reins around his left hand.
‘Matthew Jakes,’ he said. ‘Matthew Jakes. Remember the name.’
Hart watched until they were little more than indistinct shapes shrouded by the film of dust that rose in their wake. The sun was as strong and the blue of the sky had brightened until it was the color of Navaho cloth, fresh
spun and dyed. When he did move, he went inside the shack and broke the barrels of the shotgun and pushed a pair of ten-gauge cartridges down into the openings and snapped the gun shut. He thought Matthew Jakes might not consider he’d done enough to imprint his name in Hart’s mind: he thought he might be back. Anyhow, he wasn’t about to take chances.
That was how Hart had survived thirty-six years on the frontier.
Not taking chances.
Chapter Three
The dawn came cold and early: a silver line that cut the sky like a knife. Slowly, the sun began to seep above that line like blood. It wasn’t Matthew Jakes who rode back along the trail, his slow-moving shape now a blur of darkness, now an outline sharply defined. It wasn’t Jakes; it wasn’t either of the Donaldson twins and it wasn’t the sallow-faced Dink. It was Jay Cambridge who came in on the trail from Pinto, looking for the gunman with the mother-of-pearl Colt .45 and the air of a man who knows how to use it — and will if the price is right.
It had been Marshal Miller who’d recalled rumors of a tall shootist who sometimes rode with a brightly colored Indian blanket over one shoulder: and who sometimes had a sawn-off stashed underneath its folds which he used like sudden lightning.
Miller knew that the man had worked for a while as a deputy United States Marshal down in Indian Territory, working the area known as the Cherokee Outlet. That had been under Marshal James Fagan from Fort Smith. After that brief spell, Miller knew there had been other jobs but he knew little enough about them. It seemed, though, that this might be the man they needed up in Caldwell. So Miller had got Jay and Seth their twenty dollars apiece and then he’d offered Jay ten more for riding down below the border and seeking out the one they wanted. Ten dollars in Jay’s pocket and another ten if he brought the man back.
Jay Cambridge needed that money.
By the time he got back to Caldwell, he figured that Seth’s leg would have started to mend and then the two of them would be able to find work together, the way it had been for the past three years. A man like this Wes Hart he’d been sent to find, it was okay for him to work alone, maybe he preferred it, maybe needed it. Some men were like that: loners. But that wasn’t the way Jay liked it to be. He wanted someone to swap a yarn with, pass a bottle to, a friend who’d watch your back when it became necessary. He had respect for a man who chose the loner’s path but he knew it wasn’t for him. No.
Jay saw the shack and reined in. He fingered a cigarette paper from his vest pocket and spread it out, tipping strands of dark brown tobacco carefully down. He evened it out by shaking the paper gently, then rolled it with practiced, careful fingers, licking along the edge with the end of his tongue; he spat away the few stray flecks of tobacco, set the cigarette between his lips, and stared down at the shack. The first rays of light were striking it now, putting color and shape into the boards. Jay hauled at the collar of the short wool coat he was wearing; it was still cold and the air was keen. He wondered if whoever was down in the shack was at that moment watching him. He struck a match and lit the cigarette, drawing down hard.
There was a dapple grey attached by a long rope to a broken piece of fencing out back of the shack, cropping at what little grass it could find. A man appeared at the doorway, bucket in hand; he walked over to the well by the side of the building and drew water. He must have known that Jay was there, riding in, but he showed little concern. Somehow, Jay found that more disturbing than if the man had taken his rifle and watched him approach. It suggested he didn’t need to care.
Jay rode in easy, making sure his hands didn’t stray too close to the saddle gun that was poking up past his left thigh, nor the pistol at his belt.
When he drew his animal to a halt, Hart was watering his horse.
‘Sharp mornin’.’
‘Sure is.’ Without looking up.
‘You Wes Hart?’
‘Who’s askin’?’ Now the eyes, narrow and faded blue, searched Jay’s face as Hart waited for his answer.
‘You don’t know me.’
‘No.’
‘Name don’t matter. I come down from…’
‘Talk to a man, I like to know his name.’ Hart was standing straight now, horse and bucket forgotten. Jay recognized the butt of the Colt at his hip from Miller’s description.
‘Name’s Jay. Marshal from Caldwell sent me down. See you. Talk to you.’
‘Marshal?’
‘Miller. Harry Miller.’
Hart gave a sharp shake of the head; he didn’t know the man. ‘What’s this Miller want with me?’
Jay Cambridge dropped the butt of his cigarette to the ground. ‘Claims to be needin’ a regulator.’
‘That so?’ Hart smiled, the briefest of softening about the line of his mouth.
Jay licked his lips, spat away a last fragment of the dark tobacco.
‘You sleep on the trail?’
Jay patted the bedroll, tied up behind his saddle.
‘Get down a while. I got coffee on. Warm your bones through a little. Then we can talk.’
Hart took the bucket and went inside. Through one of the squares of window he watched the newcomer loop the reins of his mount around the broken fence post. He figured him to be around thirty, a couple of inches under six foot, ten or so pounds lighter than himself. Something about the way he carried himself, the way he hesitated before he spoke, something in his face suggested he was a man who might be trusted. Might — Hart always left time and room to revise opinions made early.
Jay stooped his head under the doorframe and stepped inside. Hart handed him a chipped enamel mug and poured black, steaming coffee into it. Then he filled his own. From one of the saddlebags that leaned against the wall he drew a bottle of whisky.
‘Freshen it up some.’
Jay grinned and held out his mug so that Hart could lace the coffee. ‘That’s fine.’
‘How come,’ asked Hart a few swallows later, ‘this Miller heard of me? How come it’s me he wants?’
Jay shrugged. ‘Said he’d heard tell of you ridin’ the Outlet with a US Deputy’s badge. Tanglin’ with the Belle Starr bunch and comin’ out of it okay.’ He gestured with an open hand. ‘Didn’t say a whole lot more.’
‘But he wanted me anyway?’
‘That’s the way it seems.’
Hart set down his mug and rubbed his hands together. Later, when they rode, if they rode, it would be so warm that the sweat would run down their backs and the coats of their mounts would glisten with it. But that was later.
Jay Cambridge was rolling another cigarette; he offered the makings to Hart who nodded, no.
‘Maybe you better tell me just why this town of yours needs a regulator as well as a marshal.’
Jay tapped the tobacco a little and paused in what he was doing. ‘Can’t tell you much, that’s for Miller an’ maybe the town council.’
Hart poured a little more whisky into his coffee. ‘Let’s have what you got.’
Not rushing, pausing here and there to draw on his cigarette, Jay told Hart as much as he could about the situation up in Caldwell. It got more complicated with each new sentence; there seemed to be more groups of men in conflict in and around that town than would normally be found in a whole county. Hart thought he understood why the place needed a regulator. He even thought it might be fun … for a while.
‘How much they tell you to offer?’
‘Well, I…’
‘An’ no fool hagglin’ around. Play straight.’
Jay nodded. ‘Two hundred. Tops.’
Hart hesitated just long enough for a man to breathe – or die.
‘We’ll ride.’
The land north of the border was flat. The beginnings of tall grass moved sideways with the wind, dipped and swayed lazily back. The sun, higher now in the flecked sky, shimmered off its shifting tops. The two men rode close by a straggle of settlements, sod houses for the most part, families struggling to make it through the other side of spring now that they’d weathered out the wint
er. Cold and want had made the men’s faces lean and hard, hollowed beneath gaunt cheekbones; the women stared out with expressions that were barren and empty. Children stopped playing and ran away after the horses, their eyes dark and too often like stones.
‘It ain’t been easy,’ said Jay, out of earshot of one particular soddie.
‘Hell! It ain’t ever easy,’ replied Hart. ‘Least, not for most.’
A few miles further on they approached a single building made out of wood, lumber that had been paid for and hauled down from one of the forests to the north of the state. Heavy logs had been split and fastened together with nails, the gaps between filled out with mud and sand. The windows even had panes of plate glass and back of one of them was a checked curtain, red and white. A fence, painted white, surrounded a garden and its hand-dug well. Hens scratched and ran and on one of the fence poles a rooster flapped its reddish-brown wings and called out its harsh cry.
The man who came from the house was thickset, no more than six or seven inches over five foot. He was clean-shaven, brown hair cut close to the round of his skull. Hammer in his left hand, rifle in his right. He lifted the hand with the hammer above his eyes and squinted into the sunlight.
‘Howdy!’
‘Good day to you,’ called Jay.
Hart said nothing, slowed his horse and waited. He saw the shape of a woman pass the doorway and heard a child’s voice from within.
‘Been travelin’ far?’ asked the farmer.
‘Since sun-up, mostly,’ answered Jay, reining in.
‘You headin’ Caldwell way?’
‘That’s right.’
The man was listening to Jay but looking at Hart, trying to figure him out, uncertain of whether it was wisest to invite the men to stop and rest or let them move on. The hardness of Hart’s face told him let them be on their way.
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