CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Riding gives a man lots of time to think. Some men fill up
that time with whistling or humming or low singing. Some men talk to
themselves, or their horses. I knew a man once who’d recited verses of poetry
he’d memorized – Shakespeare and Virgil. But I like it quiet, mostly. It’s
never a bad thing to be alone with your thoughts. I’ve always suspected the men
who are noisy in the saddle are the men who don’t like what’s rattling around
in their heads.
But imagination can be a terrible thing sometimes. Even
though I was looking at the Kansas prarie, all my eyes could see was Chester,
walking up to two cowboys over on Front Street. I couldn’t get the scene out of
my head. I could even hear the conversation.
The big one – Stobo, Kitty had said – calling out, “Hey lady
– you ever been to Texas? Real men down there. Not like these short dressed
Kansans.” Then he’d laugh, and his friend would laugh. Trevitt. Stobo and Trevitt.
I could almost hear Chester’s slow, lazy cadence. “Alright,
boys. Now, that’s enough.”
“Who’s this?” Stobo would ask.
“Preacher, maybe,” Trevitt would answer.
Then Chester would say, “Boys, Marshal Dillon sent me down
here.”
“And we’re gonna send you right back to the Marshal,” Stobo
would answer, his piggish eyes gleaming. “With a message.”
But Chester would just plow on. “Mr. Dillon said you can have
all the fun you like, but leave the ladies alone.”
Trevitt would look at his friend and say, “That’s the whole
trouble with these Dodgelings – they’ve been left alone too long.”
Stobo would laugh and say, “Yeah! What they need is a couple
of big-handed Texas men.”
Chester would know I didn’t want any shooting, so he’d try to
calm things down. “Look, why don’t you go over there to the Allafraganza. I’ll
buy you both a beer.”
Stobo would like that offer. He’d think it was weak. “You
will, huh? Well, that’s mighty thoughty of you, mister.”
“We
just don’t want any trouble, that’s all,” Chester would say. And Stobo would
nod and smile real big and say, “Sure we don’t. And I’ve got an idea how we
won’t have any. Wait’ll I get on my horse here. Stay with our friend a minute,
Trevitt – ”
Or maybe it was Trevitt who went to get the horse and Stobo
who stayed behind to distract Chester. It didn’t matter to me. They were both
going to pay. One of them had roped him, and yanked him off his feet, making
his gun spill out of his holster. And then they’d dragged him, dragged him
right past my office, while I was sitting in there playing cards with Doc and
letting Chester do my job.
I kept seeing the same scene again and again, with small
changes each time. Every time it was worse.
That’s why I started talking outloud. It wasn’t anything
important, just talking about the scenery, and women I’d known, and guns I’d
owned. If the kid had been with me, he’d have gotten me to name all the men I’d
killed. But he wasn’t, and so I thought instead about the places I’d seen –
Amarillo, San Antonio, Laredo. I talked about anything that would keep my mind
off of the image of Chester lying there in the scrub, facedown, with a rope
around his ankles. I talked and I talked, and sometimes what I said even made
sense.
“Funny how everything feeds into something else,” I said at
one point. “Streams feed rivers. Kindling feeds a fire. And violence and
shooting feeds into more violence and shooting. I try to do something right in
town, I teach the city a lesson about the importance of law, and because of
what happened while I was teaching that lesson, a couple of Texas cowboys drag
Chester three miles from the back of their horses.”
My horse didn’t say anything.
“Funny. Yeah, funny. Funny how I don’t feel like laughing.”
I got back to talking about places, but I ran out of places
I’d been, so I started listing places I’d heard about – far off places like
Paris, and Egypt, and China. Then I thought about the Chinese cook who’d been
killed by Clay Richards in the bank, while he was trading shots with the clerk.
I wondered how a man could travel so far, just to be killed in a chance fight
by a stray bullet. I wondered about his family, and about his plans, and what
kind of a future he’d wanted.
That got me back to thinking about the clerk, Fred Grinnell.
“He wasn’t a big man,” I said. “Not brave, really. Fred never
even wore a gun. Matter of fact, I’m surprised he put up a fight at the bank.
I’d’ve thought he would just have handed over the money without a fuss, and be
happy to escape with his life. But maybe he just didn’t like Clay. Maybe it made
him mad that it was Clay robbing him. I mean, the night when Clay’d been
celebrating, Fred was looking murder at him…”
It was then that all the pieces clicked together. It’s like a
train that’s stopped, and all the parts look solid and separate. Then the next
minute the train starts moving, and everything runs smoothly, gliding along
over the rails, and everything fits. Everything about Clay fit now. I suddenly
felt really bad about that poor Chinaman. We already knew he’d been in the
wrong place at the wrong time, but now I knew he never stood a chance. The
flying lead was preordained, by both Clay and Fred.
Of course, there was nothing much I could do about it. I’d
talk to Francie when I got back to town, but I was pretty sure there was no one
left alive to arrest. And the warm feeling solving that puzzle gave me didn’t
last long. All I had to do was think of Chester lying up at Doc’s place, with
that horrible wheezing breath, and I was back to the dull anger I’d started
with. I stopped talking to my horse, since it wasn’t helping. The horse didn’t
seem to mind.
By nightfall I’d reached the camp of the Crowtrack herd. I
rode in slow, looking around, but I knew even if I saw Trevitt and Stobo I
probably wouldn’t recognize them. One with a weasel-face, one big. That’s all I
had.
A couple of cowboys saw that I was a stranger and guns
appeared.
“Who are ya, mister?” shouted one of them. “Stop there!”
I stopped my horse and dismounted. “Who’s the trail boss
here?” I asked. “Where is he?”
One of the cowboys stepped forward. He was older than most of
the riders, as trail bosses tend to be, and he wore a scruffy beard. Unusual
for a Texan. “Here I am,” he said. “You might as well turn around, stranger. I
don’t need any riders.”
“Maybe not,” I said, “but you got two riders I need.”
“How’s that?” The bearded trail boss looked confused. “Just
what do you want, mister?”
“This is the Crowtrack outfit, isn’t it?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m looking for a couple of your men. Called Stobo and
Trevitt.”
The beard bristled a little as he looked me up and down.
“They ain’t here, mister.”
“Then where are they?”
The trail boss thought again, then made up his mind. “They
come back this afternoon, picked up their gear and left. Didn’t even wait to
get paid off. I’m tellin’ you this just ‘cause they’re no good and I’m glad
they’re gone.”
“Which way’d they go?”
He spat on the ground to show me how much I mattered to him.
“I wouldn’t tell you if I knew, mister.”
“I didn’t think you would. Even though I saved one of your
men from bleeding to death last night, I didn’t come out here expecting any
favors.”
“Who are you, anyway?”
“I’m a US Marshal out of Dodge.”
The man blinked, then looked at my belt. That made him smile.
“That so? Well, I don’t know what you want them for and I don’t care, but
how’re you gonna take them, Marshal? Put salt on their tails?” Behind him his
men laughed. “You ought to at least take a club if you’re goin’ after that
Stobo. He’s mean ‘n he’s big – besides bein’ a Texan!”
There were laughs and scoffs and cat-calls from the cowboys.
I just stood there, looking at them. I thought I was being pretty Indian-like,
standing, waiting, without expression. But there must have been something in my
face to let them know what was inside me, because the laughter slowly died away.
“We’ve hung Texans up here before, mister,” I said, then
turned my back and remounted my horse. I walked it away from them slowly. I
heard the ususal whispers behind me, but I was busy wondering which way I
should go to follow my quarry. There was still almost no moon, and it was too
dark to try and find their tracks in all this mess. I’d probably have to make a
camp and wait for morning.
I was pretty well away from the Crowtrack camp when I heard a
voice whisper to me. “Marshal?”
I turned in the saddle, and I saw a young man, no more than
seventeen. He was thin and reedy and looked like a stiff breeze could knock him
over.
“Yeah,” I said.
The young cowboy took off his hat and whispered, “I heard
Stobo and Trevitt say they were headed west, followin’ the Arkansas.”
I studied him hard. “Where you from, son?”
He looked down at the ground. “Texas, near Waco.”
“What’re you snivelling around, informing on these men for?”
The teenager raised his head in anger, then saw my face and
ducked it down again. “That Stobo kicked me. Knocked me down and kicked me.”
Like I said, I’ve been lied to before. I get lied to a lot.
I’m pretty good at telling when I’m being lied to. I don’t always know what the
lie means, like with Francie. I just know it’s a lie. And this scared, willowy
teen wasn’t lying. Stobo had kicked him, alright. Probably one of a hundred
indignities heaped on him since he left Waco. Hell, the way I was feeling, I
wanted to kick him, too.
“Alright, son,” I said. “I’ll ride along the Arkansas. But
you go back to Texas and learn how to fight your own battles.”
