Sergeant Rylan was heavy in his voice, a drillmaster talking to recruits. “In the time when I first drew Western duty,” he said, “there was a prosperity on the land, and almost every lieutenant carried a colonel’s brevet in his pocket, from the war. So we who rode the Indian land were honored with the leadership of many a European officer—mercenaries, though they preferred the title of professionals. Italians, Frenchmen, plenty of Germans, some Irish, and them no better than the others. The brevet colonel-lieutenants, you see, preferred duty at Fort Myers and Governor’s Island. ’Twas then I heard the silly talk you have been talking, Dan Younge. Divide the Indians and beat them. Maybe it’s good when you’re fighting Russians, or maybe so the kind of Indians that Englishmen fight, but this kind, now, you divide them, and you have a hundred little bands, each of which’ll kill a couple of white men, take the scalps and ride off.”
Dan Younge said: “I see.”
“From now on, there’ll be no Rock Spring Reservations Shoshone. But the Snakes and the Cheyennes, the Wasatch Utes and a dozen other tribes’ll each have a few more people in it. Can you tell one Indian from another, if he changes his name and his pony, his head-band and his way of talking?”
Dan Younge said: “No.”
“So let us each write his name down the way he wants it on the graveboard, in case there’s any left to bury scalpless bodies. But I’m taking some of those murdering miners with me, if I’m lucky. We’ll stake out tonight.”
Haley said: “He’s a gloomy one, the sarge. And talkative.”
But Haley wasn’t laughing and neither was Rylan or Dan Younge. They rode on to town with their handful of posse-men behind them.
Rock Spring was armed and patrolled. A sentry challenged them a hundred yards out of the town, another where the board sidewalks started. The second one was a soldier; he said, “Lieutenant’s declared martial law, Sarge.”
Rylan said: “Ay,” and rode on. At the livery stable he said: “Later, then, Dan,” and went up the street towards the military camp, his wounded trooper still beside him.
The possemen were scattering to their homes. The streets were quiet, the Great Chance closed. Martial Law. Dan Younge unsaddled and rubbed Ranger down well, baited the horse’s manger and hayrack, and then took off his shirt and scrubbed in the livery stable horse trough.
He was fiercely dirty; he hadn’t realized it before. He wanted a bath, hot and all over, but it wasn’t worth while waking the barber who owned all of Rock Spring’s public bathtubs.
Then he remembered. The barber was dead. His name had been Codlin, and he was out in the malapie someplace, what was left of him. His widow owned the bathtubs and the barber chair and the razors and shaving mugs now.
Dan Younge slapped himself dry and pulled his filthy shirt on again. He went on down the runway, and out onto the Main Street. Quiet. The closing of the saloon, the declaring of martial law, had kept the people in their houses; it seemed nobody knew the posse was back yet. In the morning, women would come out with their garbage, with their washing, and see that a neighbor’s husband was home, would ask about her own man—and then there would be wailing, there would be curses called down on the heads of the men who had led the townsmen out into the malapie.
Until the Indians struck, until the miners struck, and then there’d be nothing—a big rock with water gushing out from under it, some rock-lined holes where foundations had been, some half burnt timbers.
There were lights in the sheriff’s office, in the hotel, in Sydnor’s store. Dan Younge stood looking. A woman’s figure hitched across Sydnor’s lamplight, but he couldn’t make out whether it was Ellen Lea or Phyllis Sydnor.
He turned towards the hotel. They’d give him food there, and he could take a can of hot water up to his room and maybe get a good washdown before Rylan sent for him.
But, in turning, his eyes raked the sheriff’s office. The broken glass had been replaced with oat sacking, and light showed through in a hundred pinholes. They outlined another woman—or the sheriff had grown a bosom and hips.
He went that way, his heels loud on the boardwalk, then his knuckles loud on the door. Jack Romayne called for him to come in, and he opened the door.
Romayne was at his desk, fiddling with some papers that would, now, never get filed. Ellen Lea was moving around the place with a peacock feather duster, tidying up.
Coming on him fresh from the hell of malapie and prairie heat, from the dour sight of the Indian fires, it almost made Dan Younge laugh, this calm sight of a woman dusting and a man filling out forms. He said: “We’re back, sheriff.”
Romayne looked up, startled. “I didn’t hear you come into town.”
“Not enough of us to raise a dust,” Dan Younge said.
Jack Romayne didn’t get it. He even smiled, and maybe that would be the last smile in the short history of Rock Spring. “You did a quick job,” he said. “I’ve been sitting here thinking I should have gone with you, but you didn’t need me.”
“That’s right,” Dan Younge said. He’d always been a man of careful diction, but he could hear a drawl creeping into his voice now. “That’s right. One more man blown to hell wouldn’t have helped a bit.”
Ellen Lea dropped the feather duster. Jack Romayne pushed his chair away from his desk. Romayne said: “Blown up?” His voice cracked and he squeaked.
“Dynamite,” Dan Younge said. “That malapie’s like a fort. They just hid behind the boulders and heaved sticks of powder at us. Eight of us came back.”
Jack Romayne said: “I’ve got to see Sydnor.” He stumbled from behind the desk and half skidded across the office, and was gone. The oatsack window fluttered for a minute and was still.
Ellen Lea said, “That seems to be that.”
Dan Younge said, “I’m sorry,” though he wasn’t quite sure what he was sorry for. Love’s young dream—and Ellen Lea wasn’t that young—destroyed didn’t seem too important in a town that was about to be burnt down, to a girl whose scalp would probably ride on an Indian’s waist tomorrow or the next day.
That hair—he’d never noticed before—seemed to be in two braids wrapped around Ellen Lea’s head. He wondered what it would look like down, and then wondered if he was thinking of passion—or scalping.
Stop thinking, Dan. He said: “A lot to do tonight. I’m going to wash up and eat at the hotel. Would you eat with me?”
Ellen Lea nodded and said: “I’ll meet you in the dining room in a quarter of an hour.” He turned away and would have left, but she spoke again. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Women are awful fools. It doesn’t make much difference now that I was in love with a coward and a braggart, does it?”
The lobby of the hotel was filling up. Dan Younge had never been in a town under martial law before, but he supposed that Beer’s orders had been against men ganging up on the street. Since the Great Chance was closed, the hotel lobby was the only place where fearful men could try to borrow courage from each other.
Shurtz was near the desk. Dan Younge went over and said, “I asked Mrs. Lea to supper with me. Can you feed us?”
“Chipped beef, creamed. Some canned vegetables an’ fried potatoes. We’re feeding everybody the same.”
“It’ll do fine. She’ll be here any minute.”
Shurtz nodded, but he didn’t turn away. Finally he said: “Mr. Younge…”
Dan said nothing. He had a pretty good idea of what was coming.
“If you could settle your bill tonight. I mean, with the Army taking over…”
Dan Younge didn’t see what the Army had to do with it. But this was pretty good evidence that the news of the posse’s defeat and the Indians’ breakout was through the town. If Shurtz was going to be killed, he’d want to die with as much money in his pocket as possible; or maybe the possession of money was a comfort to him, a charm against death.
Dan started to reach for
his pocket, and thought better of it. He suppressed a smile, and stepped to the desk, took a sheet of hotel letterpaper, and wrote on it: “Mr. Wellman, please pay Mr. Shurtz my hotel bill out of what I have coming to me,” and signed it, handed it over. “This’ll more than cover it.”
Shurtz looked unhappy, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
Dan Younge went out on the porch. After awhile Ellen Lea came up and he rose to offer her an arm and lead her into the dining room.
Seated, he said, “Here goes your reputation, eating with a gambler.”
“That hardly matters,” Ellen Lea said, in her direct way. “I don’t say that because it’s now, the end of Rock Spring. But because people who’d look down on me for going with a gambler aren’t people whose opinions ever mattered. Not ever.”
The waitress was putting unappetizing looking plates of food in front of them. Dan Younge let her get away before he said, “Never?”
Ellen Lea said, “Not since I was a silly goose aged thirteen.”
Dan Younge said: “I got an idea you’re maybe a little smarter than I am. I think maybe I’ve been a little too ready to imagine people looking at me cross-eyed because of what I am.”
Ellen Lea said: “I was about to say you seemed different from most gamblers, but it just occurred to me you’re about the only one I ever knew.”
They ate then, heartily, considering the poor quality of the food. Ellen Lea said: “The cook ran out of town some time this afternoon, while you were over at the malapie. Almost a hundred people have slipped out Jack Romayne says.”
Dan Younge looked up quickly, to see if she’d mentioned the sheriff by mistake, if she was sorry for it. But she was forking potatoes into her mouth. She ate with an unladylike gusto that was, somehow, good to see. A man would keep his appetite eating with a girl like that year after year.
Aware of the trend of his thoughts, he spoke, “With Shoshone all over the prairie, and a good part of them hostile, you can say goodbye to anybody out there alone. People should have stayed in town.”
“Dan, you weren’t surprised when Jack Romayne fell apart before.”
Dan Younge shrugged.
Ellen said: “I guess he did it before. Maybe when you and he went out after the murderers, the first time. He asked me to marry him. Maybe I would have, I’m lonely enough, goodness knows, and he’s fun to talk to. I guess you’d say that wasn’t much reason to get married, though.”
Dan Younge said nothing for a moment. Then he said: “Even if the people who slipped out of town fell in with the part of the Indians who don’t want a war, it won’t do them any good. The friendly Shoshone won’t kill them, but they won’t help them or stop the other Indians from killing them.”
“I guess I got put in my place,” Ellen Lea said. “I’m a woman who says what’s on my mind. I hoped you’d be the same sort of man.”
Dan Younge got up, put a two-bit piece under the edge of his plate—the waitress might as well die happy—and said, “Thanks for eating with me. I like to talk my mind out, too, and what I gotta say is this. If we weren’t all going to be killed tonight or maybe tomorrow, I’d sure like a chance at running that well rig you own. But that’s an easy thing to say when time’s run out, and who’d believe me?”
“Why, I would,” Ellen Lea said. She stood up, too. “And if Mr. Beer’s men weren’t poking bulls’ eye lamps into every dark corner of town, I would be pleased to let you kiss me.” And she walked away, leaving Dan Younge gaping after her.
A moment later he was chuckling. She had taken that hand, and she had taken it on a bluff. You might say she’d beaten a full house with two pairs. It was something that had seldom been done to him.
CHAPTER XXIII
Sergeant Rylan was back in uniform; incredibly neat and well-brushed and shaved after his day in the malapie. Dan Younge sat down next to him on the porch and passed over one of two cigars he’d bought in the lobby.
The sergeant bit off the end of the cigar, spat it into the street, accepted a light. He was no longer the sorrowing, beaten commander of the afternoon. The past was past, and he was simply a soldier resting up for whatever trouble lay ahead.
Someone was coming down the boardwalk fast. From the sound of the heeltaps, it was a woman.
Rylan said: “Oh, lord. Another wife to tell me I killed her husband.”
Dan Younge said: “Have much of that?”
“Two. One of them didn’t know what she was sayin’. Mrs. Patson went out of her way to tell me it wasn’t my fault, which helped some, not enough…”
The woman burst up on the porch. Two of the men on patrol were right behind her. Rylan waved them away; she was Ellen Lea. The sergeant started to get up. She said: “No, I’ve something I want to tell you both.”
Then she stopped and looked around. Dan Younge was on his feet, his hand stretched out towards her, but she spoke to the sergeant. “Jack Romayne just came to me. Charley Sydnor’s getting out of town, tonight, early tomorrow morning, while it’s still dark. He told Jack about it. Jack’s going along, as a bodyguard. There’s a secret way out, your sentries don’t know about it.”
Rylan looked up at Dan Younge, and then they slowly nodded.
Dan Younge said: “He’s the same to the end. He figured like we did; there’ll be a big sale made around midnight. Then he’ll go away with his friends… Ellen, Jack wanted you to go with him?”
“I couldn’t leave Rock Spring just now,” Ellen Lea said. “A man just offered to take over my well rig and run it for me. I couldn’t leave that.”
Rylan said: “Stay in the hotel, and away from windows. That Romayne ain’t much, but he might work himself up to shooting a woman from a dark street.” Then, remembering, perhaps, that Rock Spring had named Ellen Lea Jack Romayne’s girl, he said, quickly, “A man under fear of death should not be judged.”
Dan Younge moved his thumb a little and Ellen Lea saw the gesture; she went on into the hotel lobby. Dan turned to Rylan, “You’ll want Lieutenant Beer to know about this. It’s my thought that I should be the one to tell him.”
Rylan said: “I wish we knew where Sydnor’s way out of town was.”
“I know,” Dan Younge said. “I’ve known quite awhile.”
“You could have…” Rylan said.
Dan Younge cut him off. “It wasn’t any of my business,” he said. “I’ll see Beer.” He went off the porch, fast, passed the patrols without being challenged, then was at Sydnor’s back door. He couldn’t remember that he had ever gone through the front door of this house. Well, he’d be consistent on this, his last visit.
He opened the door and went in. There was no light showing anyplace. He stood at the foot of the backstairs and called: “Lieutenant! Lieutenant Beer!”
There was some noise from upstairs. Dan Younge felt his old sardonic grin coming over his face, felt his old, sour joy in telling the world to go to hell.
Upstairs a door opened, a match was struck, and the stench of sulphur drifted down to Dan. Then a lamp wick caught, and there was the clink of glass as the chimney was put on the lamp.
Looking up, Dan could see Beer standing at the head of the stairs, holding the lamp up. The lieutenant was in uniform and campaign hat, the broad black brim shaded his face so that it was hard to see if that face was red. He called, “Who’s there?”
“Rylan sent me, lieutenant. Message for you.”
The lamp would not shine down the stairs, show Beer who was talking. He started down, carrying the light. When he came even with Dan Younge, he missed his lamp again, and this time there was no doubt about it. He was blushing.
Dan Younge said, “You’ve been dealing with the enemy, Beer?”
Beer said: “Talk sense.”
“Sydnor, Jack Romayne, maybe some more, plan to make a break out of town to the malapie, go away with the miners. I imagine they plan
on taking the lady with them.” He gestured upstairs, keeping his face solemn.
Beer frowned. “If they go out of town the Indians will kill them.”
“Not them. It’s a short run to the malapie, and they’ll be going with the miners.”
Beer said a curious thing. He said: “Damn a man who’d take a woman to an outlaw camp. Sydnor ought to have more sense, more decency.”
Dan Younge chuckled. “Two objections. One, I don’t know your definition of a lady, but I imagine it doesn’t include the kind upstairs. Two, it’s run for the malapie or get killed, and Sydnor’s got money tied up in his Phyllis. He wouldn’t want to leave her for the Shoshone.”
Beer swore. “I’d better get downtown.”
“Yep,” Dan Younge was grinning now. “You better bring the lady, too.”
But Beer stood a moment more, then, when he saw that Dan Younge was making no move to go ahead of him, he shrugged his blue shoulders and went upstairs again, leaving Dan Younge in the dark.
A murmur of voices came back down, and then the light reappeared, and Beer was giving Phyllis Sydnor an arm down the stairs. She had on a buff serge riding outfit, long skirt over the boots, and she had never looked more beautiful.
She looked at Dan and bowed and said, “Good evening, Mr. Younge,” and it was all over. This was one town he could stay in, and not run away from a lady.
It was too bad that it was a town that was about to blow itself off the earth.
CHAPTER XXIV
They walked downtown in silence, the three of them. They passed no one but the patrols. Rock Spring had gone to bed, or had congregated in the hotel.
Rylan stood up when his officer came on the hotel porch. “All quiet, sir. I broke the town up. Women are in the hotel, men I got over in the livery stable and the corral. Haley’s in charge of keeping them there, and patrols are out.”
Beer nodded. “How’s Haley’s wound?”
“He can handle a pistol all right. The ladies are in the hotel, Mrs. Sydnor. If you’ll go into the lobby.”
She said: “My husband’s waiting for me over in his store. It’s close by, we’ll…”
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