Fallon (1963)

by L'amour, Louis

  “When a man gets to enjoying hard work,” he said to himself, “he ought to shoot himself.” But he did not feel that way.

  The sound of footsteps made him turn his head, and he saw Ginia Blane and Ruth Damon. He straightened up from his work.

  “You may tell your father the store is across the street, Miss Damon. Your father can clean it up and open with whatever he has to put on the shelves.”

  He glanced at Ginia, although he had hoped it would not be necessary. She made him uncomfortable. “If your father wishes to repair that wheel he will find tools in the blacksmith shop. I hope he will see fit to go into business there.”

  “What are you going to do?” Ginia asked, too politely. “Shoot people?”

  “Your brother doesn’t approve of me, Miss Blane, and neither do you. How fortunate for me that it does not matter. However,” he added, “no matter what your brother believes, had I not come along he would now have two badly burned feet.”

  Ginia Blane had heard chiefly the remark that it did not matter what she thought, and she had not expected that. Like most very pretty girls, she was accustomed to men making an effort to please her. Most of the boys or men she had known would have been embarrassed by her sarcasm, and even had they been ready with a sharp reply, they would not have made it. To be brushed aside so easily irritated her.

  “I’m sure,” she said stiffly, “that nothing you do will have the slightest interest for me.”

  “Good!” he said cheefully. “Now, unless you want to become dishwasher in a saloon, I suggest you run along and play.”

  Her mouth opened, but the words would not come; so turning sharply on her heel, she led the way across the street. She was furious. She told herself that never, never under any circumstances, would she speak to him again.

  While the water was heating, Fallon assembled all the glasses and bottles he could find, and cleaned out the sink. Next, he found a barrel, tightened the hoops as best he could and filled the barrel with water. Promptly water ran in streams from all the cracks but given time, it would swell tight.

  Wherever he went he kept his Winchester beside him, taking it from room to room as he worked, or as he studied the work to be done. When he needed that rifle he would need it fast, and he was under no illusions about Blane or Damon. They would not realize the necessity to help him until it was too late. They had lived in a far tamer world than his. But he could not complain about their work.

  With the exception of Al Damon, they all pitched in and worked hard.

  Dividing his time between the saloon and the street, Fallon worked from before daylight until after sundown. Stripped to the waist, his lean, powerful body bronzed by the sun, he removed the brush and weeds from the street, and made a sprinkler out of an old can and tried wetting it down.

  Ginia looked at him and sniffed. “You seem to forget,” she said primly, “there are ladies present.”

  “If it offends you to see a man peeled to his belt,” he said, “I suggest you get over it while you have the time.”

  By sundown of the second day he was pruning the trees. He had already knocked together a window box and transplanted some desert flowers in it.

  On the third day he rode out to the trail and put up his sign.

  RED HORSE

  6 MILES

  Then he returned to the place where he had first seen the faded Buell’s Bluff sign and, after gathering some inkweed from alongside the dry lake, he brought the broken-up sign back to town and burned it.

  When he had mixed up his color from the inkweed, he went along the street touching up the signs, not only at Damon’s store and the blacksmith shop, but at other places too. Al Damon saw him doing this and asked, “What’s the idea of that? Ain’t nobody to run them places.”

  “There will be,” Fallon replied shortly. Al Damon was the one person in the group he did not like; he had not liked him from the first day when he had shirked his job of staying with Jim Blane at the wagon.

  Ginia Blane stopped by again. She had watched him mix up the inkweed, and now she watched him lettering the signs. “Where did you learn something like that?”

  she asked. “I mean that you could get dye from that plant?”

  “An Indian couldn’t go to a corner store, so he used what lay about him.” He gestured at the hills. “There’s food and medicine out there too, if you know what to look for.”

  “If somebody doesn’t show up soon, you may need to know things like that. Our supplies won’t last forever.” And she moved away.

  He had already staked two claims, both of which had had a good bit of work done on them during the former operation. Now, the signs finished, he went to work with a pick and shovel, throwing more waste out on the dump to give it the fresh look of recent mining.

  The ground looked good—no question about that. Yet how many such holes in the ground had he seen? How many samples had he examined, those carefully selected samples every miner shows when talking of his claim? Always the rich samples were chosen, the best instead of the average.

  He walked back into the drift, studying the formation. He had worked a little in mines, understood only a little, but this did look good. He tried a few pans, but found no color.

  On the third day he had killed a deer and a mess of blue quail … on the fifth day, a Big Horn sheep. And he had brought in a mess of squaw cabbage and some wild onions.

  “Stake claims,” he advised the group, “whether you work them or not. You can always sell them with a nice profit when others begin to come.”

  “And what if you sell a mining claim where there’s no gold?” Ginia asked.

  “If I knew there was gold there, I’d keep it myself,” he replied bluntly. “There are always some who want to take their chances on a claim.”

  “And you wouldn’t care if they found anything or not?”

  “Why should I? Am I my brother’s keeper?”

  No question about it, Ginia Blane was against him, and the further he stayed away from her the better. Jim Blane did not even speak to him.

  On the seventh day four wagons rolled in. They did some trading with Damon, and Blane repaired a wheel, but they did not stay. They had nothing in their minds but California.

  Later that day Fallon killed a deer and was riding back into town when he saw a strange horse tied at the hitching rail in front of Damon’s store. Touching the black with a spur, he drummed across the bridge and up the street. As he reached the store, a man came out.

  He was a wiry, slender man with insolent eyes. He stopped on the boardwalk and started to roll a cigarette. He wore a tied-down gun and there was a rifle in the boot on the saddle. There was a canteen, but no blanket roll and no saddlebags.

  “Live around here?” Fallon asked.

  The taunting eyes surveyed Fallon with care as the man touched his tongue to his cigarette, and then drawing his fingers along it, he said, “Down the road a piece.”

  “I didn’t figure you’d come far,” Fallon replied pointedly, his glance shifting to the man’s horse.

  The man looked around, getting out a match. “Red Horse? Now, that’s odd. I don’t recall ever hearing of such a town around here.”

  “You have now.”

  The man took his time with the match, his eyes noting Fallon’s gun. “You’ll be this Fallon gent … Macon Fallon. The name has a familiar sound.”

  “So does Bellows.”

  The man chuckled. “You lay it right on the line, don’t you? Well, I’m not Bellows, although he did suggest I drop around and offer our services.”

  “They aren’t needed.”

  “Bellows will decide that.” Coolly, he looked around. “Seems to me there’s only four or five of you here. That’s not very many, is it?”

  Fallon stepped down from his horse. “Do you see that bridge down there, my friend? You tell Bellows that every man he sends to Red Horse—every one who doesn’t die with lead in him—will hang from that bridge.

  “You can also tell hi
m that if he sends so much as one man down here to make trouble, I’ll come after him.”

  “You’re carrying a high hand there, friend. It sounds like you’re running a bluff.”

  Fallon felt anger mounting within him. Also, he knew that at the first sign of weakness the Bellows outfit would come down upon them.

  “You’re wearing a gun,” he said.

  The man looked at him thoughtfully, his eyes suddenly wary. “I’d say that sounds like you’re pretty sure of yourself.” He shook his head. “I’ll not call, Mr.

  Fallon.”

  Standing on the street, Fallon watched the man ride slowly out of town, and then he turned on his heel and went into the store.

  “Another customer,” Damon said cheerfully, “bought tobacco.”

  Fallon indicated his hip. “Where’s your gun?”

  “Gun?”

  “Look,” Fallon said, showing his irritation, “that man you just had in here is a killer. He’s one of the Bellows outfit. You put on a gun and wear it, and you be ready to use it.”

  “Seems like tomfoolery to me,” the older man said testily. “I never heard of any Bellows gang.”

  “Nor I,” Jim Blane said. “I think those men out on the road were just passing through.”

  “If it wasn’t for your womenfolks I’d ride out of here and let you take the consequences. You people think of the West as if it was Philadelphia.”

  He rode away, and Damon shrugged. “What’s he so touchy about? That seemed a right nice feller. Pleasant as all get out.”

  “Mr. Damon,” Ginia interposed, “maybe he’s right. After all, they did tie Jim up, and they hit him.”

  “They were drunk!” Jim scoffed. “Just drunken cowhands carrying on. There was no need to shoot that man like he did, no need at all.”

  Ginia walked up the street. Dislike him as she would, there was no getting around the fact that he had worked harder than any of them, and he had asked for no help in cleaning up the street, painting the signs, or repairing the boardwalk.

  Not that she trusted him … not one bit. But so far as she could see, he had not lied.

  He was polishing glasses when she walked into the saloon. “I don’t know why you do that. You’ve nothing to sell.”

  He gestured toward the barrel. “You underestimate me. That’s full of whiskey.

  Indian whiskey, I’ll admit, but whiskey.”

  “But where could you get it?”

  “It depends on what a man has handy, but the formula was worked out by the Indian traders back along the Missouri. Your mother had two gallons of prune juice that had fermented, and she was going to throw it out. I started with that. Then I shaved up a pound of rank black chewing tobacco and a couple of pounds of red peppers. I boiled them together to get the strength out of the tobacco and the peppers. Mrs. Damon had a bottle of Jamaica ginger, so I added that. I dumped it all into forty gallons of spring water, added two bars of soap to give it a bead, and a gallon of black molasses.”

  “People will drink that?”

  “It’s the only whiskey in town.”

  “I just don’t understand you, Mr. Fallon. Why, that would kill a man!”

  “Not the men out here. I promise you, some of them will like it, others will tolerate it.”

  She frowned, her eyes searching his face. “Mr. Fallon, just what are you trying to do?”

  “It should be obvious. I’m playing midwife to a town. Red Horse never really lived, so I’m giving it a second chance.”

  “And then what?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? The chances are I’ll go on to somewhere else.”

  Fallon no longer ate with the Damons and the Blanes. Young Jim Blane obviously disliked him, and some of this feeling seemed to have rubbed off on the others.

  When he killed meat he shared it with them, then went on about his business.

  He had scouted the flat below the town. There was just enough grade to permit an easy flow of water if he could get water on the upper part of the flat. The bed of the wash offered at least one very good site for a dam … a narrow place where the walls and bottom were rock for a short distance. He had rolled a few stones into position across the wash, then with his rope he had snaked a couple of logs down.

  Each time he rode out from town he scouted for tracks, but found none. The stock was grazing in a small herd on the lower part of the flat, with Al Damon herding.

  Restlessly, Fallon watched the trail each day, but he saw no wagons, no movement at all, and time was running out. Their slim food supply was steadily growing less, and this in spite of his contributions of meat. He himself was living on meat, squaw cabbage, wild onions, and whatever else he could glean from the desert around.

  The canyon itself, the dark maw opening into the mountains beyond and behind the town, intrigued him. The walls reared up suddenly just a few hundred yards beyond the last building, but you could not see more than fifty feet into the canyon from the best vantage point the town had to offer. If a man was caught in that canyon by a flash flood he would simply have no chance at all.

  On the eleventh day a wagon showed up, rumbling over the bridge and into the town. Fallon rode out to meet it. The driver of the wagon was a lean, hard-faced man who wore a belt gun and had a rifle beside him, leaning against the seat.

  The woman beside him was motherly-looking, and her face showed strength. Joshua Teel was from Missouri, a harnessmaker by trade, and Fallon took an instant liking to him.

  “If you’re interested in mining,” Fallon said to him, “there are claims to be had; but if you’re a harnessmaker, why not work at your trade and prospect in your spare time?”

  “Injuns about?”

  “Used to be, but not since we’ve been around. Not even any sign.” At the risk of losing a prospective citizen, he added, “Frankly, you look like a man I’d like to have on my side. The Bellows outfit is around, and they’re as bad as any Indians.”

  “Heard of them.”

  Teel cast a glance at the town, letting his eyes sweep slowly around. “Woman’s tired of movin’, young uns’re sickly. Figured to stop for a mite.”

  “Ever farm any?”

  Teel’s eyes showed a mild interest. “Raised to it. Taken my first steps behind a plow.”

  Macon Fallon explained about the flat, and the dam he had begun. The Missourian listened, his eyes straying from the flat to Fallon’s face from time to time.

  “You shape like a gamblin’ man,” he said at last, “but you talk like a man who’d made hay. I’ll look at it.”

  The following day, Fallon went to the wash and worked the entire day, sunrise to sunset, on his dam. At the beginning, one would hardly have recognized it as a dam, for what he was doing was building a barrier that would catch other debris and pile it up. Nobody from the town came to see what he was doing, and none offered to help.

  On the day that marked the end of the second week, four wagons stopped and business was brisk. One of the wagons pulled up at the Yankee Saloon. It was followed by another wagon driven by a burly Negro.

  The driver of the first wagon came into the saloon, a stocky man with a shock of prematurely gray hair and the beginnings of a paunch. He had a smooth, rosy-cheeked face and keen blue eyes.

  “Brennan’s the name,” he announced. “I’ll have a whiskey.”

  As Fallon poured the glass, Brennan added, “I’m a saloon man myself. Maybe I

  could offer some suggestions.”

  “I’m sure you could,” Fallon replied dryly, “so let me offer one. Don’t drink the whiskey.”

  Brennan glanced at him, then tasted the drink. Carefully, as if fearful it might explode, he replaced the glass on the bar. “Unusual flavor,” he said politely.

  “I don’t believe I recognize the brand.”

  “Indian whiskey. My own version.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll have a glass of water.”

  He tasted the water, then put the glass down, smiling. “Limestone water, the
purest there is … just like from the hills of Bourbon County, Kentucky. My friend”—he gestured toward the water—“if you really want to make good whiskey, there’s the first essential … good water.”

  Fallon walked around the bar. “Mr. Brennan, I don’t want to make whiskey. I

  don’t want to operate a saloon. I’ll supply the water and whatever equipment you need, and I’ll handle, the gambling, if there is any. You operate the saloon and we split fifty-fifty … how’s that?”

  Brennan tasted the water again. “Sixty-forty,” he said. “I have operated saloons in New York, Richmond, Louisville, Abilene, Leadville, Corinne, and Silver Beef.

  I know my business.”

  Fallon looked at him, then out across the flat. Brennan was perhaps thirty-five, and a man who appreciated the good things of life, if Fallon was any judge. Yet here he was, though the towns showed a steady progression westward … why?

  “You’ve made a deal. Take over as of now. Tomorrow we’ll scout the location for a still.”

  “You aren’t going to ask any questions?”

  “If you’re the man who can handle the job, I want you. If you are not, out you go.”

  “I killed a man,” Brennan said.

  “If the Bellows outfit decide to raid us,” Fallon said bluntly, “you may have to kill several.”

  “This is my town,” Brennan said quietly, “and I’m glad to be home.”

  Brennan, among other things, had three barrels of whiskey in his second wagon.

  He also had a case of claret and approximately a hundred empty beer bottles.

  What else he carried was not immediately obvious. They divided the upstairs into two apartments and Brennan moved into one of them.

  Slowly, business picked up. Several wagons came by, and once a whole wagon train drove in and camped the night on the upper flat. Fallon was always around, but each day he worked some upon the dam. Twice, Joshua Teel joined him, bringing his mules to help, and slowly the dam grew.

  It was midafternoon, and Fallon was sitting at a table in the saloon drinking coffee when Al Damon came in. He walked to the bar and lifted a boot to the brass rail. He wore a pair of new Spanish-style boots with high heels and Mexican spurs. His gun, which he had taken to wearing when he began herding cattle, was tied down.