Silver

by Graham Masterton

  Cassidy had good reason to be careful.

  There were vengeful men on his trail and a dead lawman back in the town who they were calling Chico. So he watched his back-trail constantly.

  Ahead of him, there were outlaws with watchful eyes and ready trigger-fingers and a bag of gold coins which by rights belonged to Cassidy. So he was equally wary of the trail ahead.

  And then, of course, there were the Apache. It was not a time to stop and admire the scenery. But the bay needed a break, so he let it walk into a little cove halfway down the trail, where he could see the great spread of the Tonto Basin before him, loosened the saddle girth and let the horse feed on a bate of grain. He made coffee on a hatful of fire and chewed jerky, while he watched the land under his eye.

  He had been a fool to stop at Chico, he knew that. Coming down from the frying heat of the Mohave desert, he had hungered after a plate of steak and potatoes that he had not cooked himself, a glass of whiskey and a hand of cards.

  Cassidy admitted - even to himself - to have a weakness for cards, so rather than take his saddle bag full of money into the saloon with him, he had lodged it in the bank in the little adobe cube across the street. That money had been a long time earning; it cost him two holes in his hide and a sword slash across his chest which had come close to opening him up and made him very leery of French cavalry troopers. He had carried the money and acquired the scars across a very long distance by avoiding the society of men who might take the cash off him.

  He intended to turn the money into a little spread in the green valley he had found between the heights of the Superstitions, and raise horses there. Cassidy was fond of horses. He understood them and he thought they understood him. Also, they did not carry guns or knives, and they did not become protective about their womenfolk.

  With his life savings locked in the bank’s big, iron safe, he relaxed a bit. More than a bit, a lot. He had his steak and potatoes and he had his whiskey, which was inevitably a disappointment, because in a town like Chico, the whiskey was likely to be of local manufacture and to include such ingredients as rattle snake heads, to give it bite, and a rat or two, to give it body.

  It was said of Taos Lightning whiskey that nobody who ever tasted it survived long enough to become an addict and Chico’s Lucky Strike Saloon’s whiskey must have been a second cousin, twice removed on the downhill side of the family, for its taste.

  The little town of Chico interested Cassidy. At one time in his life he had been a sheriff in just such a town and he was fascinated by the resemblance between Sidewinder Flats and Chico. There was the same dirt street, facing the general store, where everything from miners’ pickaxes to ribbons for ladies’ finery was sold.

  There was a smattering of saloons, ranging from the Mexican cantina, all adobe arches and low doorways at the south end of town to the false front of the Lucky Strike. There was a restaurant, frequented no doubt by the ranchers’ wives and daughters, when they came in to buy the bolts of cloth and frills they made into surprisingly good dresses for the social occasions.

  And there was the huddle of buildings tucked away behind the main street like an anthill and connected by passageways, and covert gaps in the adobe walls and fences between the back yards, in which the majority of the poorer folk of Chico lived and depressingly often, died.

  The main street was where the better off did their shopping, bought their stores and ate their steak and potatoes. The shanty town was where the worse off folk had their existences. Well advised people stayed away from it during the hours of darkness and treated it with deep suspicion during the hours of daylight. Such caution paid off.

  But it was the closest Cassidy had been to civilization, represented by a tin bath full of hot water, a rough cotton towel and a bed with sheets on it for many months, and he wanted to feel clean and well fed on food he had not shot, caught or trapped and cooked himself, mellow from a drink, and relaxed over cards.

  He started his relaxation by buying himself a new outfit in the general store. The storekeeper tried to interest him in a broadcloth suit and a cotton shirt with a hangman’s noose neck, and pleats in the breast, but he chose instead a dark brown wool shirt, jeans, socks and a new union suit. His leather vest was an old friend and it had a secret pocket he had designed himself. Then he stood himself a wide, flat black hat.

  He added a few boxes of .44 bullets, because they fitted both his Colt and his Winchester repeating rifle, and a new silk bandana, because it would serve several purposes, including keeping out dust, keeping warm and protecting his neck from chafing against his collar, filtering drinking water, and serving as a sling if needed.

  He felt smart and clean when he had dressed and debated for a moment whether to put on his gun-belt. Surely, he thought, here in civilization he could go around without a sidearm. Then he thought back to Sidewinder Flats, checked the loads in the Colt, and slung it on his hip. He felt naked without its familiar weight, anyhow.

  He changed his mind over sleeping in the hotel, too, when he threw back the blankets on the bed and saw a flea jumping on the white of the sheets. When he was sleeping rough on the road, he had somehow managed to get rid of the fleas he had picked up in his last town and he wanted to stay that way.

  Clean clothes, a clean skin and a clean bed he thought to himself and decided to have his game of cards, his steak and his drink and then sleep outside town under a grove of cottonwoods he had noticed on the way in. There would be water down there - which would keep his horse happy - and a carpet of leaves which would act as a warning if anybody tried to creep up on him.

  There was no way he could get his money out of the bank tonight, anyway, and he would have to come back for it in the morning.

  So he brought his bedroll and his war bag down to the saloon, got his horse from the stables - where it was just making itself comfortable for the night. He saddled it and stood it at the hitching rail outside the saloon.

  Carrying his rifle and his saddlebags, he settled down inside the saloon and ordered his meal.

  As he ordered from the waitress and stretched his legs out under the table, he assumed that Sidewinder Flats had been just like this place; all the equipment of civilization, without the finish.

  Cassidy had been in London and Paris; he had worn a red tunic and fought Afghans in the Khyber Pass, and Berbers in a dark blue greatcoat in the Sahara. He had scouted for General Crook and gathered up horses for the US Cavalry in New Mexico.

  He liked the West. It reminded him of the rocks and sand of Afghanistan and General Crook he respected as a commander with the wiles of an Apache and the stamina of an Afghan. The General rode a mule and carried his equipment on pack animals, which meant he could go where the Apache went, instead of being held back by loaded wagons. Cassidy approved of a soldier who took advantage of his enemies’ knowledge of the land.

  His steak and fried potatoes arrived with it a shot of whiskey. He sipped at it carefully, coughed and blotted his streaming eyes on the end of his new neck scarf. Then he ordered a glass of beer. It was safer.

  The steak and fried potatoes were remarkably good. He had grown tired of game over the past few weeks, though he knew that when he hit the trail again, he would enjoy it just as much.

  Cassidy finished the meal with a slice of apple pie doused in cream and sat back to nurse his coffee and survey the room.

  His saddle bags and rifle were in the corner behind him and he was using the bedroll as a cushion, so he had all his possessions within his sight, which in a town like Chico counted for quite a lot.

  The girls at the bar tempted him not at all, though all three of them eyed him with interest. He was a good looking man and now that he was shaved, bathed and well dressed, he would have attracted any woman. They did not, however, interest him. He had nothing against bar girls as such, but this trio was a sorry lot, faces lined and drawn, and the paint sat garishly on their cheeks. One of them had almost no bosom at all and her low cut gown fell away from her breast bone like
a badly wrapped bandage. The other two were tubby and had the dead eyes and hard voices of their profession.

  At the bar there were also a dozen men or so; two were wearing broadcloth suits and he classified them as local businessmen. Half a dozen were cowhands in from the nearby ranches. They wore range clothes, clean but worn, and they all carried guns.

  The remaining few men were professionals. Two sat at a table by themselves, with a bottle and two glasses. Like Cassidy, they also had schooners of beer, and he noticed that the level in the bottle had not gone down since he came in; though from time to time, one of the men raised a whiskey glass to his lips and put it down again. The level did not go down in the glasses either.

  They were pretending to drink, but were not doing so. What they wanted, then, was a reason to be in the bar without having to slow themselves down with the poisonous liquid in the whiskey bottle. None of the other men seemed to acknowledge them; so they were either not locals or locals who nobody liked or trusted.

  “More coffee, mister?” He looked up into the eyes of the waitress. She was a totally different proposition from the bar girls: a fresh faced redhead with freckles and green eyes. A dangerous combination in Cassidy’s experience, but a very attractive one.

  “Sure would, ma’am,” he said. “ And a smoke, too. You have a good cheroot?”

  “We have cheroots. Make your own mind up about the ‘good’ bit,” she said, and the green eyes twinkled back at him.

  “I’ll take a chance,” he said returning the grin. She went away and was on her way back, when one of the men at the opposite table looked over at him. He was a thin, bony man with a cadaverous face and a heavy moustache.

  Cassidy had been aware for some time that the man had been watching him covertly and the attention made him nervous. He was not surprised when the man spoke.

  “That’s your Winchester, mister?”. The question was meant to sound casual, but Cassidy detected a hard edge to it and his right hand, out of sight under the table, flicked the thong off the hammer of the Colt.

  “Ain’t nobody else’s,” he said mildly.

  “Looks familiar to me!” said the man loudly. The tone of voice attracted the attention of the men at the bar, as it was intended to. Heads started to turn.

  “It’s a Winchester,” said Cassidy. “Maybe you seen another one, sometime. They look right similar.”

  There was a mutter of laughter along the bar. The man flushed and his eyes narrowed.

  “You tryin’ to make a fool out o’, me?” he asked menacingly.

  Cassidy picked up his coffee cup and took a drink before he answered. An observant man might have noticed that he handled the cup with his left hand, while his right was under the table out of sight. A careful man might have drawn some conclusions from these two facts.

  Moustache was neither observant nor careful. Worse, he was angry. What had started out as an attempt to buffalo a drifting cowhand and, maybe, to provoke him into an unequal fight, was not going his way.

  He started to stand up from the table and his companion, who seemed to be more observant, reached out to restrain him, only to be shrugged angrily off.

  “You tryin’ to make a fool o’ me?” he snarled.

  Cassidy gave him a friendly grin.

  “Hell, no!” he said, putting down the cup. “I couldn’t possibly improve on the job you’re doin’ your own self!”

  It took a second or two for the insult to sink in, then Moustache came up out of his chair with a roar of rage, reaching for his gun.

  Cassidy stood up, kicking the table over and exposing his own drawn Colt, hammer cocked and pointing straight between the trouble maker’s eyes.

  “Don’t!” he said, once, flatly. The man froze ludicrously in mid-draw, his pistol just clear of the holster. Cassidy pointed at his still seated friend without taking his eyes off the gunman.

  “You can keep your hands on the table and live,” he told the man. “Or you can die right here and now! Make up your own mind. I don’t give a damn!”

  The seated man carefully laid his empty hands on the table top.

  “Good. You choose life,” Cassidy said. “Now, you, Moustache! You seem all fired keen to make a fight with a man you never seen before! Now’s your chance! You can drop that gun and live, or you can try to get me in the time it takes for a bullet to get from here to there. Think you’re fast enough?”.

  He should have killed the man straight out, he knew, but he was unwilling to kill over such a stupid matter. Also he was curious to find out why the two seemed determined to provoke trouble. He was certain he had never seen them, either before, coming into the saloon, clearly there, for a purpose. He doubted if it was because they wanted to kill him. That was incidental.

  The steam had gone out of Moustache’s rage. He stood like a statue, between fighting and giving in, and the tension in the room slowly eased.

  “Open your hand and let it drop,” Cassidy told the would-be gunman. “That’s all you need to do, to live! Why die?”

  The man’s eyes flickered round the room and Cassidy could almost hear the wheels creaking around in his head. Finally he admitted, even to himself, that he had no chance.

  He opened his hand and the gun fell on the floor. It was not even cocked.

  “Good!” Cassidy felt bitter. Gone was his relaxed evening in town, his game of cards and his good night’s sleep. These two would never let this humiliation drop. He had, perhaps, only postponed the inevitable. But he had, at least, saved himself the trouble of a court hearing. And in front of a saloon full of witnesses.

  “Now, get out!” he said. The seated man reached out for the gun on the floor, and Cassidy shook his head.

  “Leave it! And yours! Take it out with your left hand, hold it by finger and thumb, drop it on the floor. Do it now!”

  For a moment he thought the man would try something, but after a short pause, he followed instruction. The waitress came unstuck from her frozen position at the bar and the rest of the people in the room began to move again with a murmur of a conversation.

  Cassidy gestured at the door.

  “Out!” He said. “If I see you again, anyplace, any time, I’ll start shooting! That’s an Irish promise!”

  2.

  The atmosphere in the saloon was thick enough to saddle a horse. Cassidy grimaced and picked up the dropped gun from the floor, holstered his own and walked to the bar. He collected the second weapon on the way and unloaded both. He pocketed the bullets.

  “I’ll leave these with you,” he told the barkeep, laying them flat in the polished surface. “If they don’t come back, give them to the sheriff.”

  “And if they do?” said the barkeep, who was a thickset, bald man in a fancy vest and long apron.

  “Well, return them to their owners,” said Cassidy. “What else?”

  “You better keep them your own self,” said a thin man in working clothes who was sitting at a table across the room. “Know who the two of them are?”

  “Sure. They’re two men who think they’re bad because they can try to buffalo a stranger in a bar,” said Cassidy. “They may live long enough to learn better, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”

  “Them two,” said the thin man with the air of a messenger imparting grave news “Them two are the McGibbon brothers, that’s who!”

  Cassidy assumed an expression of interested awe.

  “That’s so? The McGibbon brothers? The McGibbon brothers?”

  “Sure are,” said the thin man with a smirk. “Now you see what you done?”

  “Sure do! I took the guns off of two men who think they’re tough. You a friend of theirs?”

  The thin man looked shifty. “Know them,” he said, “seen ’em around.”

  “Well, if you see ’em around again,” said Cassidy, “tell ’em where their guns are at!”

  He pushed through the bat-wing doors and instantly dropped to one knee. Out in the darkness of the street, two guns banged out, and the doors smacked open aga
in and started swinging as though they were alive.

  Cassidy fired back at where the muzzle flashes had been, and was rewarded with a yelp of pain. He rolled over until he was behind the water trough by the hitching rail and peered round it. His ears were ringing with his own shots, but out in the dark, he could hear muffled voices and then the sound of feet retreating.

  He waited until the sound faded and got up, cautiously. Someone had furnished the ambushers with replacement guns, and that right quickly. That meant they had friends somewhere in town. Nobody, he noticed, had come out of the saloon to see what happened.

  Cassidy put his saddle bags over his horse’s back and secured them to the saddle. Then he led the horse across the street, walking on the saloon side of the animal and struck a match as he hunkered down to examine the ground.

  There were drops of blood near the corner of the building across the street and fresh tracks in the dust. He examined them carefully. One man - the wounded one from the way the drops overlaid his tracks – wore square toed high heeled boots, and the other riding boots with narrow soles and a pointed toe. There was a pronounced amount of wear on the right heel, which suggested he walked with a limp, and Cassidy recalled that when they left the saloon: one of them had limped slightly.

  He had been in the same place for too long and he let the match die. He would know their tracks again. But he still did not know why they had chosen to make trouble for him.

  Simple bullying of a stranger was unlikely in a town like Chico, where strangers passing through would tend to be tough, cross grained men not easy to dominate. Yet there had been a reason for the trouble seeking and he would dearly love to know what it was.

  At the moment, though, he needed a camp site somewhere out of town and sheltered from the night wind and curious eyes. He swung into the saddle and clicked his tongue at the horse. The dun stepped out willingly enough and Cassidy let him find his own way down the road.