“Passin’ through,” Hawk replied. “It’s been a good while since I was in your town. I used to know a fellow that lived near here—thought I’d look him up, if he’s still here—name of Thacker, Hog Thacker.”
“Hog Thacker,” the bartender repeated. “Can’t say as I know anybody by that name. Little place like this, you’d think you’d remember somebody with a name like that.” He turned to the man standing at the end of the bar. “Say, boss, you know anybody named Hog Thacker?”
His boss didn’t take but a second to respond. “No, sorry. How ’bout you, John? Ever hear of anybody named Hog Thacker?”
John Alderson shook his head. “No, the only Thacker I know is a woman who works in my hotel, Ethel Thacker, but I don’t think she’s married. I don’t really believe she’s got any family at all.”
“Much obliged,” Hawk said. “I reckon ol’ Hog’s moved on. Well, no matter.” He turned back to the bartender. “Know a good place to get some breakfast?”
Overhearing, Alderson answered before the bartender had a chance. “The hotel’s hard to beat for breakfast, dinner, or supper.” He looked at his watch. “Breakfast is about over, but you can still get something to eat if you don’t waste much time.”
“Much obliged, gentlemen,” Hawk said. “I think I’ll hurry right on over there.” He drained the last of his coffee. “Good day to ya.”
Outside, he climbed into the saddle and headed toward the hotel, certain that he was on Hog’s trail. He hadn’t expected anyone in town to know Hog, since he figured Hog wasn’t around that much, and if there was more than one Thacker in town, they surely would have known. The most important thing for him now, except getting some breakfast, was to find Ethel Thacker, for she would lead him to Hog.
* * *
Janet Combs looked up from the table where she had sat down to have her usual cup of coffee, now that the breakfast customers were gone. Her first reaction to seeing the doorway filled with the tall man in the buckskin shirt was to tell him he was too late if he was looking for breakfast and too early for dinner. As soon as he spotted her, he walked over to her table, with a long, casual stride she couldn’t help noticing. “Good mornin’, ma’am,” he said. “I can see I’m too late for breakfast, but I’d sure appreciate it if I could just buy a cup of coffee. I just rode into town. I was hopin’ to make it in time for breakfast, ’cause I’d heard this was the place to get the finest food in the territory.”
She didn’t respond immediately, taking a few moments to decide. He seemed so sincere and polite that she finally gave in. “I guess we can give you a cup of coffee, since you’re new in town.” She hesitated a moment more. “I’m sorry we’re already cleaning up the kitchen.”
“I understand,” he quickly replied. “I’ll make do on that cup of coffee, and I apologize for botherin’ you this late.”
“How about a cold biscuit with a slice of ham?” she asked, surrendering to his polite respect.
“That’d be like a real banquet,” he said with a wide grin.
“Alice,” she called out, and waited a moment until a plump little woman stuck her head out the kitchen door. “Fix Mr. . . .” She paused and looked at him, questioning.
“Hawk,” he said.
“Fix Mr. Hawk up with one of those leftover biscuits, please, and stick a slice of that ham in it. I’ll get him some coffee.” She gave him a smile as she got up to fetch the coffee.
He watched her as she went to the stove at the end of the dining room, where a pot was still warming, but he was not admiring her obvious feminine charm. He was thinking that he now knew that the cook’s name was Alice and not Ethel. And he had already eliminated the lady getting his coffee. She was too young and much too pretty and polished to be the wife of someone like Hog Thacker. He decided that the woman he wanted to identify must be tending her duties in the hotel. At that moment, another woman came out of the kitchen. She was carrying a load of dishes to set up for dinner. He knew immediately that she was Ethel Thacker. A stout, middle-aged woman, she wore a look of melancholy and fatigue. When Janet came back to the table with his coffee, he asked, “Is that lady with the dishes Mary Simpson? It sure looks like her, but that was a long time ago.”
Janet turned to look to be sure it wasn’t Alice who had come out of the kitchen. “No,” she said, “that’s Ethel Thacker.” She turned back to him. “Who’s Mary Simpson, a friend of yours?”
“She was just a friend of the family a long time ago.” He didn’t know anyone by that name—it was just the first to pop into his head. He took a long look at the woman, making sure he would recognize her outside the dining room. “No, I can see, now that I’ve looked a little closer. It ain’t her, but she sure looks a lot like her. I don’t know why I thought she might be in Coulson in the first place.”
In a couple of minutes, Alice came from the kitchen with a plate containing two biscuits with ham. “I took a look at him,” she said to Janet, “and figured he was gonna need more’n one biscuit.”
Hawk took his biscuits and coffee to another table and sat down to eat. Before he was finished, Janet got up to refill her cup and walked the pot over to fill his. She stayed a few minutes to talk. “You have family with you, Mr. Hawk?” When he said that he didn’t, she asked if he was looking for work.
“No, ma’am, I’m on my way back to Fort Ellis. I work for the army sometimes, scoutin’.” She nodded as if to say she guessed as much. “I sure am glad I stopped in here, though,” he went on. “You ladies sure know how to run a fine dinin’ room, and I’ll say these biscuits are the best I’ve ever had.”
She flushed appropriately. “Why, thank you, sir, we’re glad you think so. I hope you’ll be back to eat with us again. We’ll be open again at noon for dinner.”
“I surely will,” he said. “I’ll most likely see you at noon. How much do I owe you for the coffee and biscuits?”
“I’ll tell you what,” she said, “I won’t charge you anything. We’ll just call it a welcome-to-town gift.”
“That sure is mighty kind of you, ma’am, but I feel like I oughta owe you somethin’—as nice as you’ve been to me. Looks to me like you ladies work pretty hard, runnin’ this place. Been here since before sunup, I expect. What time does your day usually end?”
Janet laughed at his earnest flattery. “Alice and I don’t go home till after all the supper dishes are washed up, the floor swept, and the tables are set for breakfast.”
“What about the other’n, the one that looks like Mary Simpson, doesn’t she stay and help you?”
“Ethel?” Janet responded, amused by his interest in how hard the three of them worked. “She works in the hotel from breakfast till suppertime, then she goes home.”
“Well, I’d best get outta here before you ladies put me to work sweepin’ the floor or somethin’.” He picked up his hat, struck for an instant by a stray thought that it didn’t look right without the feather in the band. It immediately drew him back from the pleasant encounter with the ladies to the reason he was here. “Thank you again, Miss . . . I don’t even know your name.”
“Janet Combs,” she said.
“Pleased to meet you,” he said, then took his leave. Outside, he stood looking at his horse for a few minutes. So far, it looked as if it was going to be easy to find Hog Thacker. He just had to be sure he was there to see Ethel when she went home. That would be about five o’clock when the dining room opened for supper. In the meantime, he would take care of his horses, making sure they were watered good and fed a ration of oats to supplement their grazing.
Even knowing what he planned to do, he was still undecided about the best way to accomplish it. When he left the Big Timber Hog Ranch, his thinking was no more complicated than finding the man and shooting him down. Now that he was here in Coulson and had seen the sad, mournful countenance of the simple woman he intended to make a widow, he began to question the justice in the execution he had planned. There was no doubt in his mind that Hog deserved killing f
or his part in the death of JoJo Feeley. But did Ethel deserve to be made a widow? In his opinion, she’d be better off, but she might not think so. “Damn it to hell,” he spat, bothered more than a little. Maybe he was wrong in saddling Hog with equal amounts of guilt in the shootings. Maybe he wouldn’t have shot the girl, or the sheriff, if he could have prevented it. Maybe he should try to take Hog to Bozeman and hand him over to the army, like he had offered to do with Red Whitley. Let them decide what he deserved. “I’ll think on it,” he told Rascal. “But I might as well have another crack at that dinin’ room at noon. It might be a long time before I get another chance for a good dinner.”
* * *
“How long you thinkin’?” Waylon Burns asked when Hawk rode up to the stable.
“Maybe overnight,” Hawk answered. “I ain’t plannin’ on bein’ in town long. I wanna leave my packhorse here right now, but I’ll need my buckskin.”
“Whatever you say,” Burns said. “I’ll put him in a stall and you can stow your packs in there with him.”
“How much for me to sleep in there with my horses?”
“A dollar extra,” Burns replied.
Hawk thought that was a bit steep, but he didn’t complain. He was operating on money he had found on Red Whitley, so he paid Burns and left the sorrel there while he killed time looking the town over until the dining room opened again. He was one of the first to enter when Janet turned the OPEN sign around. “Well, well,” she greeted him, “you meant it when you said you’d be back.”
“I surely did,” he replied. “I stayed in town just so I could eat here again.”
“Sit down at the long table,” she said. “We serve dinner and supper family style, so you’ll get more to eat at that table.” He did as she suggested, pulling a chair back near the middle of the table. She caught his arm before he could sit down and led him to the end of the table. “The meat platter starts at this end and today it’s pork chops and sometimes there aren’t any left but the small ones when it gets to the other end.”
“Much obliged,” he said.
“You want coffee or water?” She went to get it when he chose coffee. After that, when patrons started arriving, she and Alice became too busy for any more visiting. He marveled that the two women could manage it, but they kept the bowls filled and the coffee hot. It was well worth the charge of fifty cents. When he finished, he paused only a moment to catch Janet coming out of the kitchen with a tray and told her he enjoyed the meal. “You coming back for supper?” she asked.
“I reckon not,” he said. “I wish I could, but I’ve got some business to tend to this evening. I ain’t used to eatin’ two big meals like that in one day, anyway.”
“Well, it was nice to meet you, Mr. Hawk. Maybe you’ll have occasion to pass this way again. I hope you’ll come back to see us, if you do.”
“You can surely count on that,” he said as he started for the door.
* * *
At a couple minutes after five, according to his watch, Ethel Thacker walked out of the hotel. He watched her as she walked down the short street to the stable and went inside. After a few minutes passed, he decided to move from the bench in front of the post office in case she went out the back of the stable. But she appeared at that moment, walking with Waylon Burns, who was leading a mule. At the door, Burns handed the reins to her, but did not offer to help her up into the saddle. Instead, she exchanged a couple of words with him, then walked back up the street, leading the mule. Thinking it best not to let her see him sitting in front of the post office, he started to get to his feet, but she stopped at the general store, tied her mule at the rail, and went inside. She remained in the store for what seemed a long time before she came back outside, carrying a couple of sacks that appeared to be full. He continued to watch as she tied her purchases to her saddle and waited until she climbed on the mule and turned it away from the rail. He let her get out of sight when she turned from the road to pass beside the stable before he climbed aboard Rascal and followed.
He caught sight of her as soon as he turned at the stable, and had to rein Rascal back to allow her to extend her lead, although he would not have expected her to be wary of someone following her. Plodding slowly on her mule, showing no sign of being eager to get home, she rode away from the river until she came to a creek. Instead of crossing, she turned and followed a path that ran beside it. He estimated a distance of about two miles when he lost sight of her again when the creek made a turn around a formation of rocks. When he got to the bend, he pulled up sharply, for he could see the rough shack about fifty yards ahead. Very slowly, he backed Rascal up until concealed by the rocks, where he dismounted and tied the buckskin to a bush growing out of the rocks.
Shadows were already lengthening as he moved up close enough to the shack to see Ethel slide off her mule and lead it to a lean-to attached to the back of the cabin, where a couple of horses were tied. The door of the shack opened wide, but no one came out to help the woman unsaddle her mule or to carry her purchases inside. With no plan for his approach, Hawk decided to wait until it became a little darker before he crossed the opening between the cabin and the cottonwood he now took cover behind. He was counting on surprise to make his attack easier.
* * *
“Where the hell have you been?” Hog met his wife at the door. “I thought you mighta took that money I gave you and run off somewhere. Much longer and I was fixin’ to saddle my horse and hunt you down.”
“I had to go to the store to buy all the food you wanted,” she explained, casting a wary glance in his direction to determine how much he had been drinking. She was disappointed to see a new bottle on the table beside the empty one that had been half-full when she left that morning. He tended to become abusive when he got drunk. From the first, he had been a mean drunk, never a happy drunk like Mr. McAdow. And as the years went by, his mean drunks only got worse. If he went that way tonight, it was going to be even harder for her, since he had been away for such a long time and she had enjoyed his absence. She dreaded the thought of it and hoped that she could avoid the worst of it, if she could get some food in him before he finished that bottle.
“Well, get your ass goin’,” he ordered. “I ain’t had nothin’ to eat but them biscuits you made last night and a few little ol’ strips of bacon.”
“It won’t be long,” she said, trying to sound cheerful. “I’ll cook up those beans that have been soakin’ since this mornin’. I bought some cornmeal. I can make you some corn bread, and I bought a quarter of a ham. We’ll have a fine supper real soon.” She put more wood on the fire in the fireplace. “I need to split more wood for the fire, too,” she muttered under her breath. To him, she said, “Maybe you won’t drink any more of that whiskey, so you can enjoy your supper.”
“How much likker I drink ain’t none of your business,” he immediately responded, his nostrils seeming to flare in anger.
“I know, I know,” she quickly cried. “I’m just wantin’ you to enjoy your supper.”
“Well, get at it, and damn quick,” he ordered. He sat down at the table and poured himself another drink. The whiskey he had already consumed began to have a numbing effect on his brain now and he began to close his eyes frequently for short periods. Noticing, she stole glances at him, hoping that he might fall asleep, but he would suddenly jerk his head up, his eyes blinking open to stare stupidly at her. Seeming to be awake again, he said, “I swear, you was always a homely woman, but damned if you ain’t got worse-lookin’ every year. Thank God for whorehouses.” The thought of it made him laugh. “There’s this little bucktoothed gal at the Big Timber Hog Ranch that ol’ Red gets all hot and bothered over. She ain’t no bigger’n a willow switch—got yeller hair. I get up that way again, I think I’ll take a ride—see if she’s as good as Red says she is.”
She said nothing, suffering his insulting rantings in silence. At least, it was preferable to the times when he felt the urge to pummel her purely for his entertainment. She had endu
red both before, but it was just so much harder now since his recent absence. She hoped that he would just pass out, as he had done so many times before. But each time he nodded off, he would jerk upright several moments later until finally his chin dropped to rest on his chest and he began to snore. She went to work on the corn bread, thinking that a good plate of beans and corn bread would help sober him when he woke up. She didn’t notice when the cabin door came open until she felt the cold draft of air. When she turned to go and close it, she was confronted with the formidable figure standing in the doorway. She started to scream, but couldn’t make a sound, her voice was so constricted. Then she realized where she had seen him before. “You,” she said, “at the dinin’ room. What do you want?”
“Him,” Hawk said, pointing at the unconscious Hog at the table.
“Are you a lawman?” she asked when her fright over his sudden appearance subsided to the point where she could again talk.
“No, ma’am,” he said. “I’m just wantin’ to see justice done. I’m awful sorry to break in on you like this, but your husband and two friends of his are responsible for the murder of a young woman named Joanna Feeley and shootin’ the sheriff in Helena.”
She could not prevent the horrified gasp that escaped her lips. She had long suspected the three outlaws were capable of uncontrolled violence, but now it was no longer speculation. Hog had finally brought it home with him. “Was the young woman close to you?” Ethel asked.
“Yes, ma’am, she was,” Hawk replied, his gaze concentrated on the still-sleeping outlaw. “She was very special.”
“What are you going to do with Horace?” Ethel asked.
“Well, to tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure. I planned to kill him till I saw you and talked to your friends at the dinin’ room. Then I decided I didn’t want you to lose your husband, so I decided the best thing to do is for me to take him back to Helena to let him stand trial. The sheriff that was shot ain’t dead, so maybe they’d go a little easy on your husband, especially since he ain’t the one that killed the girl. That was Dubose.” She seemed so calm, now over her initial fright, that he wasn’t sure what to make of her. Perhaps she was at peace with the turn of events, maybe expecting this day to ultimately arrive. But his attention had to be returned to Hog because he was making snorting noises in preparation to waking up. “I promise you, I won’t be hard on him, but I’m gonna have to tie his hands.” She nodded, her eyes seeming to focus on something or some time far away. Satisfied that she was going to be calm, he propped his rifle against the wall behind him, took a coil of rope he had brought with him, and began to fashion a loop to put over Hog’s wrists.
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