When Sam rode into town, the main street was mostly empty in the blistering Arizona sun. A few wagons were parked in front of buildings, and a handful of saddle horses were tied at hitch rails. Less than half a dozen pedestrians were making their way along the boardwalks or trying to avoid the piles of horse droppings that littered the broad, dusty avenue.
No one seemed to pay much attention to Sam, despite his buckskin shirt and copper-hued features. Many frontiersmen had such deep, permanent tans that they appeared almost to have Indian blood.
Anyway, Indians were nothing out of the ordinary around here.
Sam had followed the wagon and horse tracks to within a couple of miles of Flat Rock. When the trail got that close, it was lost in the welter of tracks left by other riders and vehicles coming and going from the settlement.
Since he didn’t know anyone here in Flat Rock, he couldn’t trust anyone, either. He couldn’t even go to the law, if there was any, because it was possible the authorities were connected to the bushwhackers. He and Matt had run into plenty of crooked lawmen in the past.
While he was trying to figure out how to proceed, he might as well get something to eat besides the dried venison and corn he’d been subsisting on for the past day, he decided. He angled his horse toward the hitch rail in front of a squat adobe building with a sign on it that read simply CAFÉ.
Sam dismounted and wrapped his horse’s reins around the rail. As he stepped toward the open door, two men in dusty, well-worn range garb came out of the building. Heavy revolvers rode in holsters on their hips.
One of the men was tall and thin, with a hawk-like face and a drooping black mustache. He had an open-clasp knife in his hand and was using the point of the blade to worry at a piece of food stuck in his teeth. That seemed to Sam like a fairly dangerous method for a man to pick his teeth.
The other hombre was shorter and considerably stockier than his companion, though not actually fat. His battered old brown Stetson was thumbed back on a thatch of rusty red hair. He had an open, honest face with a slight scattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks.
The tall man folded his knife and slipped it into a pocket as he gave Sam a smile and a friendly nod.
“Howdy,” he said.
“Good morning,” Sam replied. “Or good afternoon. I’m not sure exactly which it is.”
The short man pulled a big railroad watch attached to a thick chain from his pocket and flipped it open.
“Seventeen minutes after twelve,” he announced. “So it’s afternoon.”
“Well, then, good afternoon,” Sam said.
“Are you new in town?” the tall man asked. “Don’t recollect seein’ you around Flat Rock before.”
“This is the first time I’ve been here,” Sam replied.
“Just passin’ through?” the shorter man asked.
Sam was puzzled by the questions, but then he remembered how much interest strangers sometimes drew in frontier towns. Anything to break the monotony of a sometimes drab existence was welcome.
And surrounded by such a rugged, arid landscape, life in Flat Rock would certainly be drab.
Sam had no real idea what the men he was searching for looked like, but the bushwhackers might have studied him and Matt through field glasses before they opened fire.
So for all he knew, these two apparent grub-line riders could be part of the gang.
Which meant they could know who he was, too.
But without any way of being sure about that, all he could do for the moment was play along.
“That’s right, just passing through,” he said.
“If you’re lookin’ for a ridin’ job, there ain’t many to be had hereabouts,” the tall cowboy told him. “We ain’t lookin’, in particular, ’cause our dinero ain’t run out yet. But Flat Rock’s a good place to be if you’re aimin’ to make some money. It just looks like a sleepy little burg. Lots of excitin’ things goin’ on in this town, yes, sir.”
“Well, that’s good to know,” Sam said. He was about to decide that these two men were just the pair of harmless cowpokes they appeared to be, although he couldn’t rule out anything else. He nodded toward the door of the café. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m a mite hungry ...”
“Then you’ve come to the right place,” the shorter man said. “Best chow in town.”
“I’m obliged,” Sam said. He took a step toward the door.
“Say,” the tall man spoke up, “I don’t mean no offense, but you look like you got some Injun blood in you.”
Sam stopped.
“I’m half Cheyenne,” he said. He had never denied or been ashamed of his heritage.
The tall man grinned.
“I’m an eighth Cherokee, myself. Like I said, no offense meant, just curious. Only way a fella really finds out anything is by askin’ questions.”
“I suppose that’s true.” Sam grasped the doorknob and nodded to the two men. “So long.”
He opened the door and went inside before the talkative cowboys could say anything else.
Sleepy little burg or not, the café was doing good business in this noon hour. Half a dozen tables covered with blue-checked tablecloths were occupied, and the stools along the counter were almost all full.
Sam took one that wasn’t and sat down between a burly man who looked like a freighter and a smaller gent in a suit and rimless spectacles.
The freighter, if that’s what he was, ignored Sam, but the other man nodded and said, “Hello.” His formerly stiff collar had wilted in the heat.
Sam returned the nod.
“Afternoon.”
The man held out his hand.
“Noah Reilly.”
Sam shook the townsman’s hand and introduced himself.
“I’m Sam Two Wolves.”
“That’s certainly a colorful and unusual name.”
Sam shrugged.
“Not where I come from.”
“Where’s that?”
“Montana,” Sam said without going into any more details. Folks in Flat Rock seemed to be a friendly, inquisitive bunch.
“I’ve never been to Montana. From everything I’ve heard, I’m sure it’s beautiful up there. More beautiful than this part of Arizona, anyway.”
A middle-aged counterman with gray hair and a white apron came over and said, “Noah, quit yam-merin’ at this fella. He probably came in for something to eat, not a lot of talk.”
“No, that’s all right, really,” Sam said as he saw the contrite expression that appeared on the bespectacled man’s face. “I don’t mind talking. But I would like something to eat.”
“Lunch special’s chicken and dumplin’s,” the counterman told him.
Sam nodded and said, “That’ll be fine, thanks.”
“Comin’ up.”
As the counterman turned to the pass-through window that led to the kitchen, Noah Reilly pointed to the empty bowl in front of him and told Sam, “I had the chicken and dumplings. Delicious. You’ll enjoy it.”
“I’m sure I will. What do you do for a living, Mr. Reilly?”
“You can call me Noah. I work at the general store.”
Sam had taken the man for a clerk of some sort, so he wasn’t surprised by Reilly’s answer.
“I’ll bet you know everybody in town, then.”
Reilly grinned.
“All the ones who have any money to spend, anyway.” He laughed at his own mild wit.
“You probably don’t get a lot of strangers riding through Flat Rock.”
“No, not as out of the way as we are here. Most people have to have a good reason to come to Flat Rock, or they’d never even hear of it. But people always need supplies, and this is the only place in fifty or sixty miles to get them.”
“That’s true,” Sam admitted. He didn’t see how talking to Noah Reilly was going to help him find the men who tried to kill him and Matt, but he didn’t have anything better to do at the moment, he supposed.
“Are you a full-blooded I
ndian, Sam?” Reilly went on.
The blunt question made Sam raise his eyebrows a little.
“Half Cheyenne,” he explained, just as he had told the tall cowboy outside.
“Most of the Indians in these parts were Navajo. This is part of their reservation, you know.”
Sam nodded and said, “So I’ve heard. They’re peaceful, though, aren’t they?”
“For the most part. Some of the people around here still get nervous about the Navajo, even though all the trouble with them seems to have been over for fifteen years. But for all we know, some of them may have long memories.”
“Could be,” Sam said. Caballo Rojo was old enough to have taken part in the Navajo wars back in the Sixties.
“Well, no standing in the way of progress, eh?” Reilly scraped his stool back. “Here comes Harvey with your food, and I have to get back to work. It was a pleasure to meet you, Sam.”
“Likewise,” Sam said with a nod.
Reilly reached down to the floor, picked up a black hat, and put it on. He placed some coins on the counter to pay for his meal and left the café as the counterman put a big bowl of chicken and dumplings in front of Sam.
“Want some coffee or a cup of buttermilk?”
“Coffee will be fine,” Sam said.
“Comin’ up,” the man replied. That seemed to be a habitual response with him.
Sam took a bite of the food while the counterman poured coffee in a cup for him.
“That is good,” he said. “Mr. Reilly told me it would be. He was right.”
The counterman chuckled.
“Ol’ Noah likes to talk, that’s for sure. Hope he didn’t bend your ear too much.”
“Not at all,” Sam said. “Everybody in town seems pretty friendly. I ran into a couple of cowboys just outside who talked to me, too.”
“Tall, skinny fella and a little redheaded gink?” When Sam nodded, the counterman went on, “Yeah, they’ve been hangin’ around town for a week or so. Don’t know where they get their money, but they seem pretty flush. Maybe they’ve been lucky at the tables over in Lady Augusta’s place.”
Sam’s interest had perked up at the counterman’s mention of how the two cowboys had been in Flat Rock only for a week or so. Of course, that timing didn’t have to mean a thing ...
But it was an indication that the two men had shown up in this area about the same time as he and Matt had been ambushed. The fact that they had money but didn’t seem to be working for it was intriguing, too.
But before Sam pursued that angle, he satisfied his curiosity on another matter.
“Lady Augusta?” he repeated.
“You haven’t heard of the Buckingham Palace Saloon?”
Sam shook his head.
“Woman came into town about a year ago,” the counterman explained. “Said her name was Lady Augusta Winslow. She let it be known that she was some sort of English nobility. I couldn’t say one way or the other about that. Whole thing could be just a crock of buffalo chips. But she talks like an Englisher, I’ll give her that. And she had enough money to start the Buckingham, which is what most folks around here call the place. Biggest and best saloon and poker parlor in Flat Rock, which means it’s the biggest and best in the whole Four Corners. You should check it out.”
“They let half-breeds in there?” Sam asked.
“Mister, they’d let a dang Rooshian cossack in if he had money to buy booze or gamble.”
“I just thought since Mr. Reilly said folks around here are still a little nervous about the Navajo ...”
“Well, that’s true,” Harvey said with a nod. “But you look as much like a white man as an Indian, so I don’t reckon you’d have any problems.” He rubbed his jaw and frowned in thought. “Except maybe with John Henry Boyd.”
“Who’s that?”
Before Harvey could answer, the teamster sitting next to Sam suddenly turned toward him and said, “By God, mister, are you gonna sit there flappin’ your gums all day? Your food’s gettin’ cold!”
“Take it easy, Jase,” the counterman said. “Nothin’ wrong with a little conversation.”
“There is when it’s gettin’ on my nerves!”
Sam said, “Take it easy, friend. No one meant to cause a problem here.”
The teamster muttered something under his breath, shoved his stool back, and stood up. He tossed a coin on the counter and stalked out of the café.
“Don’t mind him,” Harvey said as he scooped up the coin. “He’s like a surly old bull buffalo pawin’ the ground. He don’t mean nothin’ by it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Sam said. “Now, you were sayin’ about this John Henry Boyd fella ...”
“He owns the Devil’s Pitchfork ranch, south of here,” the counterman explained. “Has a powerful hate for Indians of all kinds. I don’t know for sure why he feels that way, but I’ve heard it said that his whole family, except for him, was wiped out when Indians attacked the wagon train they were traveling with, twenty years or more ago.”
Sam nodded. It was an old, familiar story. There had been plenty of senseless bloodshed on both sides during the long clash between red men and white on the frontier, and it had left a lot of hatred behind it. He wished things could have been otherwise, but no one could change history.
“If you’re just passin’ through, though, you shouldn’t have to worry about John Henry,” the counterman went on. “He don’t come into town much. He’s almost always out at the ranch.” He lowered his voice. “Which, to hear some folks tell it, is as much of a way station for hombres on the dodge as it is a real ranch.”
That was interesting, too, Sam thought. If outlaws frequented Boyd’s ranch, that could have some connection to the attack on him and Matt.
“I’m obliged to you for telling me.”
Harvey grinned.
“Just lookin’ out for my customers. It ain’t like I’ve got all that many of ’em. Tell you what, Jase was right about one thing ... that food’s gettin’ cold.”
“Wouldn’t want that,” Sam said. He dug into the chicken and dumplings.
As he ate, he mulled over everything he had learned so far, which on the surface didn’t amount to a blasted thing. He had some minor suspicions about the two garrulous cowboys he had met outside but nothing really to tie them to the bushwhackers, and what he had heard about the Devil’s Pitchfork Ranch was intriguing.
Other than that, nothing.
Or maybe not quite nothing, he corrected himself. He had learned that the Buckingham Palace was the biggest and most popular saloon in Flat Rock, so that meant most of the people around here would pass through its batwings at one time or another.
If the bushwhackers were still around and on the lookout for him, that would be a good place for them to spot him.
And he wanted them to spot him, no doubt about that. The odds of him being able to find the men he was looking for were slim, so it made more sense to let them find him. Maybe then he could figure out what it was all about.
That amounted to just about the same thing as painting a target on his back, Sam realized ... but this wouldn’t be the first time he had done that.
Usually, though, he had Matt with him. This time he was alone in a strange town that might be full of enemies, for all he knew.
Didn’t matter. When he got through here, he told himself as he ate the chicken and dumplings, it would be time to pay a visit to Buckingham Palace.
The one in Flat Rock, Arizona Territory, not London.
Chapter 14
When he had finished the food and downed the last of the coffee, Sam paid Harvey for the meal, said so long, and left the café.
He looked along the street and spotted the saloon a couple of blocks up. It was a two-story adobe building that actually had two floors, not one and a false front. A narrow balcony ran along the front of the second floor.
The entrance was at the near corner. The sign that read BUCKINGHAM PALACE SALOON—BEER—LIQUOR—GAMES OF CHANCE—
ENTERTAINMENT was so long it took up the front of the building and ran down the side, too.
Before heading for the saloon, Sam looked around for a livery stable. He found one on a side street and turned his horse over to a friendly, middle-aged Mexican who introduced himself as Pablo Garralaga.
“This is a fine horse, señor,” the stableman said. “I will take good care of him.”
“I’m sure you will,” Sam said. “How much?”
“Fifty cents per night, señor. This includes feed and the finest care. And I will repair that damage to your saddle for free. I am skilled at such things.”
Sam handed him two silver dollars, grateful that Garralaga hadn’t asked how his saddle had gotten shot up.
“I’m not sure how long I’ll be in town, but that’ll get us started.”
“Gracias, señor.”
On the off chance that he might find out something else, Sam said, “Do you happen to know a couple of cowboys who’ve been in town about a week? One of them is tall and has a mustache, the other is shorter and has red hair.”
Garralaga rolled his eyes.
“Those two! The little one, he is not so bad, but the tall one, he never stops talking! Always with the questions, questions, questions! He makes me tired just to listen to him.”
“Then they’re keeping their horses here?”
“Sí, señor. Over there.” Garralaga pointed to a pair of stalls near the front of the barn.
Sam strolled over and looked at the horses in apparently idle curiosity. One was a buckskin, the other a wiry paint.
Actually, he was looking at the hoofprints they had left in the dust of their stalls, checking to see if either track was similar to the ones he had found out at the ambush site.
Neither hoofprint looked familiar, so to excuse his actions he just nodded and commented, “Nice-looking horses,” as he came back over to Garralaga.
“These hombres are friends of yours, señor?” the stableman asked.
“Not really. New acquaintances, I guess you’d say.”
Garralaga shrugged and nodded, looking as if he didn’t really understand but didn’t care, either. As long as his customers paid their bills, whatever else they did was none of his business, his expression seemed to say.
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