“What do you mean?” Weasel asked. “That’s what it says don’t it?”
“You see the space between the dollar sign ‘n the two?”
“Yeah.”
“Looks to me like there’d be enough room to put another number in there,” Mack said.
“Yeah,” Luke agreed.
“Why you could put a one in there ‘n turn it into twelve hunnert ‘n fifty dollars real easy,” Weasel suggested.
“It’d be just as easy to turn it into seven thousand, two hunnert ‘n fifty dollars,” Mack said.
“That’s why you’re the smart one, Mack,” Luke said.
“Soon as we get somewhere’s so I can get a pen ‘n ink, I’ll do that very thing.”
“Only thing is, I doubt if McCall even has two hunnert ‘n fifty dollars, let alone seven thousand, two hunnert ‘n fifty dollars,” Weasel said.
“No, but he’s got a saloon,” Mack said.
“What good is that to us? We don’t even know where it is.”
“Are you kiddin’? All we have to do is ask around. There can’t be too many saloons in this part of the country called the Red House,” Mack said. Somebody’ll tell us where it’s at.”
“If we was to own a saloon, does that mean we could have all the liquor ‘n whores we wanted?” Weasel added.
“Wait a minute,” Luke said. “Are you sayin’ we could get us a saloon?”
“A saloon, or seven thousand, two hunnert ‘n fifty dollars,” Mack said. “And the truth is, I don’t care which it is.”
“Yeah!” Luke said. “It don’t matter which it is at all!”
Cade rode out of town the next morning before the sun came up. Raymond Ritter had agreed to hire him for $150, half of what he was paying the other men, which was a pittance compared to what he had picked up at the poker game at the Red House. He felt guilty about taking the money, but it wasn’t his fault Reynolds was cheating. Since Dodge City didn’t have a bank, he had taken most of the money and put it in the vault that Charles Rath kept at the back of his store. He had held back $300 just in case there was an opportunity to pick up a game with the graders or the track layers.
He hadn’t ridden far when he reached the work site.
“Who’s the boss?” Cade asked when he slid off his horse.
“Who wants to know?”
“That would be me, Cade McCall.”
“Ed Masterson,” the man replied with a ready grin. He shook Cade’s hand, then took him over to the other two men. “This is Theo Deger, and the young banty rooster there is my brother.”
“William Barclay Masterson,” the young man said, as he took off his hat and bowed. He was obviously the youngest of the three men, not appearing to be more than eighteen years old.
“That’s quite a mouthful,” Cade said.
“Don’t pay him any mind,” Ed said. “Everybody calls him Bat.”
“Then Bat it shall be,” Cade said.
“Cade McCall? You’re the gentleman who dispatched the late Cap Jensen, aren’t you?” Bat asked.
“Dispatched?”
“Vanquished, defeated, subdued, subjugated.”
“Killed,” Theo added.
Cade tilted his head, not quite getting the drift of the conversation.
“You’ll have to get used to that,” Ed said with a chuckle. “Bat’s always learning new words and using them as soon as he learns ‘em. He carries a dictionary.”
“It is my intention to be a writer someday,” Bat said. “And words are the tools of a writer’s trade, just as a saw and hammer are the implements employed by a carpenter.”
“Or a pair of mules and a draw grader for this job,” Theo said.
“I can understand that,” Cade said. “And, because you called me a gentleman, may I take it that Jensen wasn’t a friend of yours? I would not like to think that you’re planning any type of revenge for him.”
“Oh, heavens no,” Bat replied, resolutely. “You may disabuse yourself of any thought that I have such an idea in mind. I once had the displeasure of playing a few hands of poker with Jensen. I found him to be an uncouth reprobate, a despicable, contumacious cur with less redemptive tissue than an outhouse cockroach, as well as a person of moral turpitude and questionable parentage.”
“In other words,” Ed added, “Jensen was a low-assed, mealy-mouthed son of a bitch.”
Cade laughed out loud. “Why don’t you tell me what you really thought of him?”
“Anyhow, it’s good to have you with us, in case the Indians decide to pay another visit.”
“You’ve had Indian trouble?”
“Not really, A couple renegades tried to take our stock but Theo scared them off,” Ed said. “I wish there would have been more.”
“You wanted more Indians? That’s a little hard to believe.”
“If there were more than just a few, the army would provide us with an escort. As it is, there are so few Indians out making mischief, the colonel doesn’t think it’s worth it, so that means we’re on our own.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
“Have you ever had to fight Indians before?” Bat asked.
“A time or two,” Cade replied without giving any specific details.
8
“There has to be a better way of making a living than this,” Bat Masterson said, pouring a dipper of water over his head as the hot summer Kansas sun beat down upon him. “I’ve never worked this hard in my life.”
“Quit your whinin’,” Ed replied. “Last winter all I heard was how cold your fingers were, how you couldn’t hang on to your knife, how you’d never skin another buffalo, how you’d never complain about the heat again.”
“I have decided I am a gentleman,” Bat said. “I am as out of place performing physical labor, as would be a pig on a dance floor.”
“Would that be Fat Tom Sherman’s dance floor?” Theo asked, with a chuckle.
“As a matter of fact, considering some of the men I’ve seen there, I suppose you could say that pigs have already appeared on a dance floor,” Bat replied.
After a long day’s work, Cade, who was lying on the grass nearby, his hands laced behind his head, laughed.
“What about you, Cade? Have you ever worked this hard?”
“I was raised on a farm in Tennessee,” Cade replied.
“That’s your answer? You were raised on a farm?”
“If you knew anything about farming, you’d know that was answer enough,” Cade replied.
“I figured it must be something like that. You sure don’t complain much.”
“Actually, I’m glad to have this job.”
“Needing money, are you?”
“It isn’t the money. Working this hard has been…,” Cade searched for some way to explain, “…good for my soul.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve sorta been an asshole,” Cade said.
“It’s takes a big man to admit that. What happened?”
For the next hour, Cade told the story of Arabella, how they had met, holding nothing back, including the fact that she had been a prostitute who arranged for him to be shanghaied, then how they wound up falling in love and marrying . . . and finally the fateful cattle drive where she was kidnapped.
When he first started telling the story, the others laughed at his being shanghaied, but the laughter turned to sorrowful faces when he reached the end of the story.
“I’m glad you found those bastards, and sent them to hell,” Bat said.
“I thought, while I was looking for them, that once I’d killed them, I’d be at peace,” Cade said. “But it didn’t work like that.”
Cade smiled, then continued. “But, my friend, Jeter, suggested that I take this job, and he was right. The hard work has given me a chance to think—to stop feeling sorry for myself. Gentlemen, you are looking at a changed man.”
The Slater brothers were in Dodge City, occupying a table at George Hoover’s saloon.
“I’ve tried
to find McCall to tell ‘im that he owed me this money, so I done some checkin’ around, ‘n found out that he ain’t here. He’s workin’ for the railroad.”
“Workin’ for the railroad? Why’s he workin’ for the railroad if he owns a saloon?” Weasel asked.
“Damn, maybe he don’t own no saloon,” Luke said, disgustedly. “He pulled one over on us, is what he done.”
Mack smiled. “Oh, he owns the saloon, all right. Only he owns just half of it, ‘n he don’t do none of the work there. His partner, a feller by the name of Jeter Willis, is the one that actual runs the saloon.”
“How do you know that?” Luke asked.
“I’ve asked around.”
“Yeah? Well that still don’t do us no good now, does it?” Luke replied. “I mean, we can’t hardly go to this Willis guy ‘n show him this piece of paper ‘n tell him that he owes us seven thousand, two hunnert ‘n fifty dollars. It ain’t his name that’s on the paper.”
“That don’t matter none whether his name’s on the paper or not,” Mack said. “His partner’s name’s on the paper.”
“What good is that?”
“Remember when Lloyd Pugh borrowed that money from pa, ‘n he pledged his farm ag’in it,” Mack said.
“Yeah, I remember that.” Weasel said.
“Uh, huh. Well, have you forgot that Pugh didn’t own the whole farm by his ownself. Paul Albertson owned half of it, only the law said when Pugh pledged the farm, that because he was a partner, well he was pledgin’ it for Albertson too. That’s how it was that pa wound up with it.”
“Yeah, well it didn’t do him no good, did it? Pa lost the farm no more ‘n a year after that,” Weasel said.
“That don’t matter none,” Mack said. “If that was true for the farm . . .”
“That means it’ll be true for the saloon too,” Luke said with a triumphant smile.
“What if he don’t give it up?” Weasel asked. “What if he fights us over it? I mean a farm is one thing, but this here is a saloon in a town.”
“A town without law,” Mack said. “Which we can use.”
“What are you talkin’ about?” Weasel asked. “How is it we’re goin’ to use the law when there ain’t no law in town?”
“What we are going to use, is the fact that there ain’t no law,” Mack replied with a broad smile. “Let’s find out all we can about this man, Willis. We may be able to come up with a way to persuade him to give up the saloon without fightin’ us at all.”
“I don’t know, Mack,” Weasel said. “If he’s all set on hangin’ on to his business, how we goin’ to get him to change his mind?”
“Little brother, if we drag him out of there by his balls, why it just stands to reason that his mind will come along.”
That night, Cade, Bat, Ed, and Theo were sitting around the fire having just eaten their evening meal.
“Look at the stars,” Theo said. “Why, they are so close you can almost reach up and touch ‘em.”
“I wonder how many there are,” Ed asked.
“More than we can see here,” Cade replied. “When I was south of the equator I saw an entirely different night sky. No North Star, no Big Dipper, no Orion’s Belt.”
“When were you south of the equator?” Theo asked.
“When I was on board the Fremad, we sailed down to Argentina.”
“Weren’t you listening, Theo? Cade told us about being shanghaied,” Bat said.
“Yes, but he didn’t say anything about sailing down to Argentina,” Theo replied.
“I envy you, Cade,” Bat said. “To have been shanghaied, to be a soldier during time of war, and not only that, to have been a prisoner of war . . . oh what I wouldn’t give for such experiences as you have had.”
“Good Lord, Bat, why on earth would you say such a thing?” Cade asked.
“Don’t you understand? Experiences for a writer are like canned goods on the shelf to a grocer. They are our stock in trade.”
“How can you call yourself a writer, when you haven’t written anything yet?” Theo asked.
“Here is what you should know about a writer,” Bat replied. “What you see of a writer . . . his published work, is but one tenth of him. A writer is like an iceberg. The iceberg beneath the water is nine times larger than the iceberg you see. But it is that part under water that forms the iceberg. I am currently building that nine tenths by collecting experiences, and interacting with men of strength and integrity . . . people whose presence will add to my growth as a writer, and a man. People like Cade,” he added, throwing a smile toward Cade.
“If I’m the best you can do, you’ve made a poor choice,” Cade said.
There was no false modesty in his self-deprecating remark. He knew that ever since Arabella died, he had been little more than a misanthrope.
“You know, Cade, when you told us your story it wasn’t the first time I had heard parts of it. Ed and I were out on the South Fork last winter, and a man named Wyatt Earp told us about you. He heard it from somebody else who told somebody else. You know how buffalo hunters are . . . they like to tell tales when they get together.”
“If you already knew the story, why’d you let me tell it?”
“For two reasons,” Bat answered. “First of all, I didn’t know Earp’s story was about you, but the main reason I didn’t stop you was I think you needed to tell it. I think telling the story, actually articulating it, as opposed to just thinking about it all the time, was part of this healing you were talking about.”
“For a kid, I think you’re pretty smart,” Cade said.
“The story is that you killed those two men from half a mile away . . .”
“It wasn’t half a mile, it was about five hundred yards.”
“It was half a mile. When the myth is better than the truth, go with the myth,” Bat said with a conspiratorial smile. “And lest anyone questions the method by which they were consigned to eternity, I would respond that recreants like that didn’t deserve the honor of being faced down.”
Cade didn’t answer, because no ready response came to him. Instead he stared into the fire, watching the flames lick and curl around the log that was now gleaming red. A gas bubble trapped in the log popped, and it sent up a little shower of sparks.
“Is it true that you gave the kid to Jeter Willis ‘n his wife?” Theo asked.
“No, that’s not true,” Cade replied. “They’re looking out after her for me, but I didn’t give Chantal to them. I couldn’t do that. Chantal is the only thing of Arabella that I have left.”
Even as he said the words, he knew that he was speaking the truth. Chantal, whose very presence had been a painful reminder to him of how Arabella had died, was also a living part of her. She was his child, and from this moment on, he intended to let her know, in every way possible, that he was her father.
The Red House Saloon sat on Front Street between a hardware and a dry goods store. The entire front of the saloon was painted red, with the name, in white across the top of the false front. A handsome structure, it was one of the nicer looking buildings in town.
Luke, Mack, and Weasel had moved from the Hoover Saloon down to the Red House in order to give it a thorough inspection.
“Damn,” Weasel said as they stood out in the middle of Front Street. “Ain’t that somethin’?”
“It’s a fine looking saloon, all right,” Luke said.
“What do you say we go inside and look around?” Mack suggested.
The inside of the saloon was long, and relatively narrow, though it was wide enough to have a double row of tables in addition to the bar. There were two heating stoves in the place, one toward the front and the second toward the rear. It being late August, neither of the stoves was being employed at the present, but a subtle aroma hung about each of them which suggested the smell of smoke from the previous winter.
There were at least half-a-dozen men standing at the bar. There were three times that many sitting at the tables and at least six of tho
se were in uniform. Most were playing cards.
A piano player was grinding away at the back of the saloon, and a glass bowl sat on top of the piano to collect tips for his effort. Two attractive young women were working the floor.
“You think them women will come with it?” Weasel asked.
“Why not? They work here, don’t they?” Luke asked.
“That there ‘n is the one I’m goin’ to get first,” Weasel said, nodding toward one as he subconsciously rubbed himself on the crotch.
The three men stepped up to the bar and the bartender, who had been drying glasses, draped the towel across his shoulder and moved down to the new customers.
“What’ll it be, gents?”
“Whiskey,” Luke ordered, and the other two matched his request.
“You the owner of this place?” Luke asked.
The bartender chuckled. “I wish,” he said. He nodded his head toward the opposite end of the bar. “That’s the owner,” he said. “Well, truth to tell, Mr. Willis only owns half of it, but he’s the only one ever does any work.” The bartender leaned closer so he could speak in quieter voice. “I shouldn’t be sayin’ this, but the other owner ain’t worth a fiddler’s damn. He’s never in here.”
“It looks like you’re doing a pretty good business, being as how it’s the middle of the afternoon.” Mack said.
“Mister, we’re always doing a good business,” the bartender said proudly, as he poured the three shots of whiskey. “But you hang around until it gets dark. You won’t be able to stir this crowd with a stick, they’ll be so many in here.”
“What about them two pretty girls there?” Weasel asked. “This Willis feller has his way with them, does he?”
The smile left the bartender’s lips, and a hostile expression crossed his face.
“It isn’t like that,” he said. “It isn’t like that, at all. In the first place, Mr. Willis is a married man, with a wife ‘n two little girls. He’s also got his ma livin’ with ‘im, so he’s not the kind that would prowl around. And as far as these two girls are concerned? They don’t do anything like that, either. All they serve here are drinks, and pretty smiles.”
The Western Adventures of Cade McCall Box Set Page 46
