The Bold Frontier

by John Jakes

  The kitchen door banged open and Will Pertwee jumped through. “Say, that drummer’s hollering for more flapjack syrup, Mrs. Thorne.”

  “All right, tell him to keep his britches on.” She reached for the crockery pitcher while Will danced past her, fairly jigging on the old linoleum in front of Lou Hand.

  “You going after Bob Siringo, sheriff?”

  “Not unless he gives me cause.”

  “But outlaws, gunfighters, they always do, don’t they? That’s why they’re outlaws.”

  He couldn’t refute Will’s bloodthirsty logic. It angered him. He grabbed Will’s shoulder and shoved him aside so hard, the boy exclaimed, “Ow!” Jesse gave him a startled, alarmed look as she prepared to take the full pitcher of syrup to the dining room. Lou tramped through the dining room and up the stairs, strange leaden pains deviling his belly all of a sudden. Though fully dressed, he was freezing.

  On the stair landing he paused by the lace-curtained window and stared at the vista of the Sierras with the sun above their icy peaks. The sun was a pale yellow-white disk, clearly visible in blowing misty clouds. Wish I could shoot down that sun, he thought. Shoot it down here for some warmth.

  Or go back to Florida. Why didn’t I have the gumption? There were so many mornings I could have turned in the star and said, “That’s it, I resign.” Any morning up till this one …

  He trudged on up the stairs. He hauled his gunbelt off the bedpost and cinched it around his expanding middle. He re-settled the Frontier Colt in the holster, and as he did so his eye grazed the yellowed news clip with the admonition from Mr. Greeley. Lou Hand made a face.

  “You damn fool,” he said.

  He walked past the Congress Hotel, but on the opposite side of Sierra Street. He saw nothing more alarming than Regis, the colored porter, emptying last night’s slopjars in the street.

  White Pass smelled of woodsmoke this morning, and horse turds in the street, and the cold-metal stink of deep winter through your half-stuffed nose. Lou Hand shivered and stuck his gloved hands deep in the pockets of his sheep-lined coat. Under the slanted brim of his flat hat, he saw the main drag of White Pass for what it was: a pitiful excuse for a town. It was a way-station on the California stage route—one through coach a day, each day, when the passes were open—but the mines in the neighborhood didn’t produce much ore any more, and the White Pass Reduction Mill filled the morning with a slow chump-chunk that had a lugubrious rhythm of failure about it.

  Reaching his one-story office on the corner opposite Levering’s Apothecary (CLOSED PERMANENTLY said the crude paper sign in the window), Lou Hand drew the door key from his pocket. When he put it in the lock, the door swung in. Lou felt his heartbeat skip.

  “Come on in, it’s me,” said a voice he recognized. Then Lou Hand smelled the vile stink of his caller’s green-wrapped nickel cigars. The visitor was installed behind Lou Hand’s desk, his tooled boots resting up on the blotter. “I let myself in with the council’s key.”

  “Perfectly all right, Mr. Mayor,” Lou Hand said, shutting the door and shucking out of coat and hat.

  Marshall Marsden ran the livery, one of the few businesses in White Pass that wasn’t failing or up for sale. He was a slight, bald man with eight children, all of whom were named Marshall Junior or Marcella or Marceline or some other M-variant of his own, apparently-revered name. The mayor loved off-color stories. This morning, however, there was no trace of humor in his small brown eyes.

  “Did you hear about Bob Siringo?”

  Lou Hand pulled the dodger off its tack on the bulletin board. The illustration was one of those pen-and-ink sketches of infinite vagueness: the bland features, staring eyes, and mandarin mustaches of the desperado could have belonged to any number of innocent-looking young men.

  “I heard about some guest at the hotel who looks like Bob Siringo.”

  Marsden jerked his boots off the desk and landed them on the floor with a bang. “Well, it’s him, he’s making no secret of it.”

  “Is that right.” Lou Hand had dreaded some such confirmation. He began tossing kindling into the stove. His hand wasn’t steady as he lit the match.

  “That’s right,” Marsden said, and Lou Hand noticed a glint of perspiration on his brow despite the chill of the tiny office. “And what I’ve got to say to you, sheriff, is short and sweet. Get him out of town.”

  Lou Hand lit a third match and finally got the kindling started. The warmth was small, of no use against the mortal chill that had invaded his heart and soul after he woke from the frequently repeated dream.

  “Why?” Lou Hand said to the mayor.

  “We don’t want his ilk here. He was down at the livery first thing this morning, talking to Marcy. Trying to find a new horse. She said he made—lewd suggestions.”

  Lou frowned. “Is she positive he meant—?”

  “You calling my own daughter a liar? I want him out, Lou. As elected mayor of White Pass, I’m officially telling you to get him out of town.”

  “I surely hate to push something like that if there’s no …”

  “I’m ordering you to push it, in the name of town council. Why do you think we pay you? Hell, this is the first time you’ve ever faced something this serious.”

  And the last? he thought, with a strained, almost wistful look at the dodger tossed onto the desk.

  “Time you earned your wages,” Mayor Marsden exclaimed as he grabbed his derby and put it on with a snap of his wrist.

  “If he hasn’t got a horse …” Lou began.

  “No, and Marcy refused to sell him one. She was scared to death, but she stood up to the little slug. If a woman can do that—”

  “I hear you,” Lou Hand interrupted, beet-faced and furious all of a sudden. “But you hear me for a minute. If it’s Bob Siringo, and he doesn’t have a horse, he can’t get out of here until six P.M., earliest, when the Sacramento stage comes through.” The eastbound presumably had cleared the way station at half past five, while Lou Hand was still enmeshed in his dreams of Red Fish Pass at high noon. The place he never should have left.

  Mayor Marsden sneered. “It’s a convenient excuse for stalling all day. But all right, six p.m.’s your limit. See that he’s gone.”

  Marsden slammed the door and Lou Hand listened to his boots tap-tap quickly away on the plank sidewalk. The sheriff felt heavy and old and doomed as he walked to the potbelly stove, yanked the door open and swore. For the kindling had gone out, and what wafted against his upraised palms from the black ashy interior was cold; just more cold; a brush of air that seemed, to his worried imagination, cold as the breath from a grave.

  Lou Hand fooled around the office all morning. It was his custom to stroll back to Jesse Thorne’s for his big meal at noon, and he started in that direction but gave up the idea after walking one block. His stomach hurt, too severely for him to eat so much as a mouthful of Jesse’s usual: pot roast with horseradish on the side; boiled or mashed potatoes and a gravy boat almost big enough to float a Vanderbilt yacht.

  He leaned his hip against a hitchrack and squinted over the swayed back of an old gray looking half dead from the weight of its saddle. Diagonally in the middle of the next block, opposite, Lou Hand had a fine view of the portico of the Congress Hotel. As he studied the hotel and chewed on his lower lip, a recognizable figure walked out jauntily, almost colliding with an old woman in a bonnet and faded cloth coat.

  Lou dodged back, into the shadows of the entrance alcove of Weinbaum’s Hardware, boarded up and plastered with To Let notices. The man outside the hotel wore a stained tan duster and boots with very high heels. When he bumped the old woman, knocking a parcel out of the crook of her arm, he immediately snatched it from the dirty snowbank into which it fell, presented it to her, then swept off his tall loaf-crowned hat with a deep bow. In a sorry place like White Pass, that kind of bow should have brought a snicker, but somehow, the man made it look not only graceful but proper.

  Mollified, the old woman patted the man’s
stained sleeve and went on. The man watched her go, then started walking, cutting left into an alley beside the hotel and there disappearing.

  But not before Lou Hand had a clear look at the pale cheeks and mandarin mustaches under the tall hat. No mistaking the features from the dodger. It was Bob Siringo, or his twin.

  Where was he going? In search of a horse? He wouldn’t find any but plugs in White Pass, that was probably the problem Lou thought. He glanced at the icy disk of the sun, still mist-shrouded, and noticed his own faint shadow fading in and out as he walked slowly back to his office. There he shut the door and sat bundled in his coat in the chill silence, wondering—asking himself—how long he could wait before he carried out Mayor Marsden’s charge.

  The sun vanished behind threatening clouds of dark gray that rolled over the mountains from the northwest about four o’clock. Hungry and bone-chilled, Lou Hand stared at the ticking wall clock and realized he couldn’t procrastinate any longer— principally because he could no longer bear the nervous pain torturing his gut. He checked his Colt once again, and set out on what he fancied might be his last walk anywhere.

  Sid Thalheimer, the hotel clerk, was scratching a pen across some old bills at the counter of the Congress. Lou pushed back his hat.

  “Sid, I hear you had a Mr. Bob Siringo registered. Is he still here?”

  Sid caught the hopeful note and gave Lou Hand a sad, even pitying look. “He was upstairs taking a nap. Came down ten minutes ago. He’s in there.” Sid’s thumb hooked at the connecting door to the hotel’s saloon bar.

  “Say anything about checking out today, did he?”

  “No, he’s staying one more night.”

  Lou swallowed back a large lump in his throat. “No he isn’t, you can have the room.”

  Without waiting for a reaction, Lou Hand pivoted on the scuffed heel of his boot and walked across the old Oriental carpet to the batwings in the archway, and the incredible pregnant silence that seemed to be waiting in the dim room beyond. Lou’s boots sounded loud as the trampling of a mastodon; at least they sounded that way to his inner ear.

  He unbuttoned his coat before he pushed the doors open. Clarence, the day barkeep, flashed him a look from behind the long mahogany, then quickly found some glassware to polish at the far end. The Congress saloon bar held but one customer, standing up in front of an almost untouched schooner of beer that had lost its head. Like everything else in White Pass, the saloon bar looked dark; grimy; cold.

  “Bob Siringo?” Lou Hand said from the entrance, hoping his wild inner tension didn’t show.

  “I am, sir,” said the young man, taking off his loaf-crown hat and smoothing his thinning oiled dark hair with his palm. The desperado’s smile was polite but wary.

  “I’m the sheriff.”

  “Yes, sir, so I figured,” Bob Siringo said, in a tone that revealed nothing.

  “Lou Hand’s my name.”

  “Pleased to meet you. May I invite you for a drink?”

  Lou Hand’s cold nose itched. Was this some trap? He took three steps forward, between the flimsy stained tables, and paused by the upright piano whose keyboard resembled a mouth of yellow teeth with several missing. From there he had a better look at Siringo’s eyes. Pale and keen in their awareness not only of the sheriff but all the surroundings of the room—even, somehow, the barkeep behind Siringo’s back, furiously polishing glassware near the hall leading to the rear door.

  “Yes, that’d be all right.”

  “Over there?” Bob Siringo said, picking up his schooner and gesturing. He didn’t leave any room for Lou to answer one way or another. He’d chosen the round table in the corner at the front of the bar.

  He dropped a coin, ka-plink, on the mahogany, and said to Clarence, “Give Mr. Hand anything he wants, please.” Then Siringo walked quickly to the table and slid around to the corner chair, dropping his hat in front of him. Where he sat, his back was fully protected, and he could observe not only the room but, on his immediate right, a good portion of Sierra Street beyond the streaked and dirty front window.

  Lou Hand picked up his shot of whiskey with a short nod to Clarence, who was still staying out of range. He sat down opposite Bob Siringo, who had a pleasant, watchful expression on his face. The sheriff sipped from the shot of redeye, wanting the Dutch courage, every last drop of it. But he held back because he was fearful of losing whatever advantage a clear head might give him.

  Noting again the alertness of Bob Siringo’s pale eyes, he realized that was exactly none.

  “Mr. Siringo …” Lou Hand cleared his throat. “What are you doing hanging around this town?”

  “Well, sir, I didn’t know a man had to explain himself that way in the free United States …”

  “A man like you always has to explain himself.”

  Siringo didn’t like that. He started to reply, then checked as a shabby man Lou Hand didn’t recognize rubbed some dirt from the outside of the window and peered in at the drinkers.

  The man’s jaw dropped; he knew who was sitting there in the corner. He rushed away. The winter twilight was closing fast on the sad, nearly deserted street. A few snowflakes flurried suddenly, and Lou Hand wished he were lying buck naked and frying on a sandy beach back home …

  Bob Siringo sighed. “Day before yesterday, up the trail a piece, when the snowstorm hit, my mount foundered and snapped a leg in a drift. I had to shoot Rex. Then I had to come the rest of the way on foot. That was a pisser of a storm, sheriff. For a long time I didn’t know whether I’d find a town. Whether I’d make it. I did, and here I am, resting up.” He smiled and lifted one shoulder in a shrug, then drank a good swallow of beer.

  Lou Hand helped himself to another sip of courage. “Well, I’m not on the prod, Mr. Siringo, because you haven’t caused any trouble. But the town fathers want you to leave White Pass.”

  “Shit,” Bob Siringo said, losing his smile and thumping his stein on the table so hard some of the golden beer slopped out. The smell was strong; sweet; melancholy, somehow.

  “It’s that girl, I’ll bet. The one at the livery—?”

  “You’re a quick study, Mr. Siringo. Yes, exactly right. You see—ah—unfortunately, she’s the daughter of the mayor.”

  “Just my God-damn luck,” Bob Siringo said with another sigh. “I’ve had two bad, bad weaknesses, sheriff. One is for young females with a lot of stuff up here.” He patted the bosom of his duster. Now, instead of smiling, he smirked.

  “Every man’s got a weakness, sheriff. What’s yours?”

  Mine? I hate this place. This job. I don’t want to die here … for the sake of a godforsaken, frozen, no-account town full of people with no hope left …

  “Never mind. May I ask you to move on, Mr. Siringo?”

  “Well, you can ask. But I can’t find myself a decent horse. I’ve looked.”

  “There’s a coach through here at six P.M. every evening. Going the way you want to go—down toward Sacramento.”

  “Oh, no, I don’t take that kind of transportation,” Bob Siringo said. “Too many strangers. Too many windows for people to get at you.”

  Lou Hand swallowed again.

  “I’m afraid you haven’t got any say in it. I’m ordering you.”

  Bob Siringo’s pale eyes showed a moment’s murderous malice. Then he covered it by leaning back; relaxing; letting the tension visibly leave his shoulders.

  “Oh, come on. You do that, sheriff, you’ll probably draw to back it up—I’ll kill you—what’s accomplished? I came to this burg by accident. I’ll leave when I can.”

  “No, not good enough …”

  “I’m not getting on any fucking stage, do you understand?”

  Lou Hand just stared at him, terrified. Bob Siringo turned in his chair. “Barkeep? What’s the time?”

  “Quarter past five, sir,” Clarence sang out.

  Bob Siringo put on another smile, though Lou Hand thought this one was false; intended to lull him. “Then we’ve got at least forty-
five minutes to be friendly. Don’t go wild when I unbutton my duster and reach, sheriff. I’m going to put my hogleg on the table as a gesture of my good will. You can take hold of yours if you want, just in case. But don’t shoot me by mistake, all right?”

  “All right,” Lou Hand whispered.

  He lowered his hand down to his Colt while Bob Siringo pulled his. It was a .45-caliber Colt, U.S. Army model, with the intimidating 7.5-inch barrel. A real show-off piece. Well cared for, too. It gleamed faintly with oil, showing not a spot of rust, as Clarence illuminated the room by lighting three of the kerosene chimney lamps in the fixture hanging from the ceiling.

  “There,” Bob Siringo said. “That’s my one and only weapon. So relax.” He rubbed his upper arms. “Jesus, it’s cold in here.”

  “It’s always cold in White Pass.” Outside, Lou Hand saw someone dart along the far side of the street, pointing toward the window. A second dimly-glimpsed figure rushed away. Youngsters, he realized as he watched the first one tie a muffler tighter under his chin and over his ears. Will Pertwee.

  “Sheriff,” Bob Siringo said with apparent sincerity. “I want to show you that I don’t have any bad intentions. Barkeep? Bring us a bottle. A good bottle. On my tab.” Clarence delivered a bottle of expensive Kentucky whiskey. Siringo uncorked it and sniffed. “Very fine. Put a good tip down for yourself, barkeep.” Clarence swallowed his answer and hurried away. Siringo shoved his stein to one side and gestured for Lou Hand to finish his shot, which he did. Then Siringo poured.

  “Have a good drink, sheriff. Warm up. Think it over. Do you really want to push this issue of my leaving town?”