Fallon leaned back in his chair, tasting the wine. “Excellent vintage,” he said. “Brennan is to be complimented.”
He looked up … it was fortunate that he was a poker player, for he looked right into the eyes of Iron John Buell, swindler, card shark, and gunman. He was all of that and more. He was the original founder of Buell’s Bluff.
Macon Fallon, who had played his part in many peculiar scenes in his life, turned not a hair, nor betrayed by even a flicker of an eyelash that he recognized Iron John.
He took his time, holding the advantage he wanted. Iron John was standing as though awaiting his decision, and every moment he stood there was an added advantage for Fallon.
Fallon tasted the wine again, and then carefully he put down his glass. “You were saying?” he asked.
“I said”���Buell’s voice was loud���“we don’t intend to pay any rent, or any percentage, either. We don’t figure you own this town.”
“I see,” Fallon smiled slightly. “I expect you will be moving on, then, you and your friends. Although,” and he spoke loud enough to be heard clearly, “we welcome citizens with trades who are willing to abide by the rules laid down.”
He sipped his wine. “Of course,” he said, “you cannot expect anyone to abide by your trumped-up election. Not more than half a dozen of the men in this room are entitled to vote. The others have not established residence.
“Moreover,” he added, “as in the case of most mining communities, the first settlers draw up the rules of the community, and such rules are accepted in law. I have those rules. Your election was apparently held in ignorance or defiance of them. That is scarcely the right attitude.”
He put down his glass. He felt very cool, very sure of himself. This was Iron John Buell who stood here, a very tough man and a worse crook than he, Macon Fallon, could ever attempt to be.
“It has come to my attention,” he said quietly, but his voice could be heard in every corner of the room, “that you have appointed a marshal, and even a deputy marshal. We have had no trouble here, and we expect none … unless it be from Utes or from the Bellows gang.”
Iron John Buell was uneasy. He had expected nothing like this. Macon Fallon was altogether too sure of himself … why? He was losing face, he was suddenly sure of that. Without thinking, he said, “Marshal … arrest this man!”
Fallon smiled. “Arrest me? For what? For drinking wine? For minding my own affairs?”
Gleason was pleased. There had been altogether too much talk. He stepped around Buell and up to the table.
“You!” he said loudly. “Get up!”
He dropped a large hand to Fallon’s shoulder, and Macon Fallon, who had never liked to be touched, brushed the hand away, and at the same instant he jerked hard on the toe he had hooked around Gleason’s leg.
Off balance, Gleason’s arms pawed at the air, and then he fell. He hit the floor hard, and before he could stir a shotgun muzzle was put against his throat by Shelley, who had not risen from the table.
Gleason’s flailing arms eased back to the floor and he lay still, his face a sickly yellow, for which Macon Fallon, an understanding man, blamed him not at all. A shotgun against the throat is a very persuasive argument.
Fallon lifted his wine glass again. “One thing I think I should explain,” he said in the same quiet voice, heard by all, “the dam which holds back water for irrigation was built by me, with some help from Mr. Teel. The rights to that water are in my hands. Furthermore, the only source of water for the town is the spring on this property, which belongs to me. I will allow traveling water���once only���to anyone wishing to move on across the desert. To all those who refuse to pay their rent or percentage, I shall allow nothing at all as long as they remain here.”
“You can’t get away with this!” Buell protested angrily. “I am the mayor!”
“On the contrary,” Fallon replied, “I am acting mayor. No legal elections have been held by bona fide residents of the town.”
He got to his feet. “Let me say this. I arrived here first. I cleaned up the street, retouched the signs, built the dam, helped to plant the first crops. I assigned the businesses and places of business. I put Red Horse on the map!”
He paused, then looked right at Buell. “If there is anyone present who can claim to have been here before me, and who can justly claim the site was not abandoned, he has only to speak up now.”
Iron John Buell felt a sinking in his stomach. This man Fallon knew him … Fallon knew who he was, what he had done. Buell felt like a fool. Fallon turned aside. “Joboy, will you fill three canteens for me? And bring them here.”
“What’s that for?” Buell demanded.
“For you, Mr. Buell”���Fallon’s voice was suddenly harsh���“and for your high-sounding marshal and deputy marshal. You get three canteens of water … and this warning: Get out and stay out!”
Buell started to bluster. He hoped somebody behind him would say something, but the men at the bar were silent. He glanced around desperately. Gleason lay upon the floor, the shotgun still at his throat, and the man who held the shotgun sat at the table with others who probably also backed Fallon.
Abruptly, he turned and started for the door.
“Buell!” Fallon’s voice rang in the room, and Iron John almost cringed. “You forgot your canteen.”
He turned to the table beside him. “Shelley, will you and Teel escort these men to their horses? And Baordan, would you accompany them, please?”
Buell hesitated. “You sending us out tonight?”
Macon Fallon nodded. “Not only tonight. I am sending you out right now … this minute. If you travel at night your water will last longer; and may I say, you’d better waste no time if you expect it to last until you get to a water hole.”
When they had gone, Fallon stepped up to the bar. The men who stood there were mostly good men, he thought, as he glanced along the bar. He said, “John, the drinks are on me. Serve these gentlemen, will you?”
Then he spoke more quietly. “Gentlemen, I quite understand how exorbitant my demands must seem, but when the town has been put into some sort of shape, the amount will be cut���cut quite liberally. We need good men here. Now, if any of you wish to remain you may talk to Mr. Brennan or, in the morning, to me.”
He turned away and went up the stairs. When he had closed the door behind him he stood still, soaked with perspiration. His collar felt tight, his coat was hot. He peeled off the coat and sat down astride a chair, his arms leaning on the back.
He still could not believe he had won.
Ginia Blane was sewing, but she was also listening. The story of the events at the Yankee Saloon had swept the town, and her father could not believe it. Neither could Damon, and they had been talking it over since breakfast.
Her father had been one of the leaders in the move to oust Fallon from control of the town, and Damon had been with him all the way. For the first time since she could remember, Al and his father had agreed about something. There had been others, of course. That her father had expected to be chosen as Mayor she knew, and she also knew what a shock it had been when the newcomers had deliberately shunted him aside.
Ginia Blane knew nothing of politics, but she had sense enough to recognize organization; and when Buell had been nominated the seconding of the motion had come too quickly���obviously the motion and its seconding had been agreed upon beforehand.
Buell had then been nominated, a man with no chance for election, and then a motion had come to move the nominations be closed and that was promptly seconded. Buell’s election had been a foregone conclusion.
Her father still did not know what had happened to him, but he had been rudely shocked by the manner in which he had been shunted aside, and he could not believe they had failed, even then, to cope with Fallon.
Her father could not face Fallon, and she did not blame him for that.
Al Damon was there also, and he moved his leg, now e
asing the position of the gun he wore. Al, Ginia decided, was afraid somebody would not realize that he was wearing a gun. Al was puzzled.
“But what did he do?” he demanded. “You say he just sat there. He must have done something.”
Needham was telling about it, and he was enjoying it. “I tell you he didn’t do anything!” He chuckled. “Why, you’d of thought he was the schoolmaster and that there Buell a young boy brought up for discipline. He made Buell look like a fool; and then of course, he told him about the water.”
“The water?”
“That he owned it. That he would shut off anybody who didn’t want to pay up. He did say he’d give traveling water to anybody who wanted to leave.”
Ginia thought … of course, of course, why didn’t I realize that? Without water, nobody can live, and the water is his.
“A man could slip down at night and get water from back of the dam,” Damon suggested. “He couldn’t watch all of that.”
“That water?” Mrs. Damon sniffed. “I wouldn’t drink it … or wash with it, if there was anything else. Cattle walk in it, drink from it���everything.”
“I don’t know why everybody is so anxious to be rid of him,” Ginia interrupted. “What has he done? He’s worked harder and done more than anybody else in town.”
“I’ve worked as hard as anybody!” Blane protested.
“You worked very hard,” Ginia agreed, “in your own shop and for your own profit. Fallon built the dam. Fallon weeded the street, trimmed the trees, repaired the boardwalks, and did a hundred little things to make the town a good place to live.”
“Well, he’s gettin’ paid for it, too!” Damon said resentfully.
“And why not?” Ginia broke her thread, and held up the blouse she was making and studied it critically. “And when I think of what you almost did, I feel positively ill. That Gleason! Every time he looked at me I felt like taking a bath. And you all wanted a change���thank heavens, you didn’t get it!”
They were silent, but unconvinced.
The Yankee Saloon was cool and still. The only sound was that made by Macon Fallon, idly shuffling a deck of cards. He built his bottom stock with care, dealt four hands, and glanced at his own.
Brennan picked up the hand nearest him as he passed the table. Four nines. He picked up the. second, it was four sixes. “Not bad,” he said dryly. “Are they all that good?”
“Mine is better,” Fallon said, and spread four kings on the table.
Brennan put his cloth upon the end of the bar and sat down. He lighted a fresh cigar. Macon Fallon watched him, smiling a little. Brennan had something on his mind.
“Al Damon,” Brennan said, taking the cigar from his lips, “was the first one I heard who talked of an election.”
Macon Fallon swept the cards together, cut them, shifted the cut, and built a center stock, cut to the center and had his stock on the bottom, ready for dealing.
“You know, and I know,” Brennan continued, “that it is not likely he thought of that himself. His pa may have, but Al was talking it up before I ever heard a word of it from Blane or Damon.”
Macon Fallon dealt himself two aces face up, then second-dealt a third ace.
“Those silver dollars, now.” Brennan drew deep on his cigar. “Damon never spends any silver money that I’ve seen, but that’s all Al ever spends.
“I’ve been keeping track … nobody spends silver dollars but him. Silver money is scarce in camp … fact of the matter is, any kind of money is scarce.”
“So?”
“That Bellows man … Lute Semple. He was in here the other night… he paid for his drinks with a silver dollar���mint new.”
Fallon made a neat stack of the deck and put it down on the table. “Do you think Al is meeting some of the Bellows outfit?”
“He didn’t get whiskey from me. He had whiskey. There’s no silver money in town except half dollars, and he has new silver dollars.”
Brennan looked at the lengthening ash on his cigar. “About three months ago an Army pay wagon bound from Carson to Fort Churchill was robbed. Four men killed … it was laid to Indians.”
Brennan looked up at Fallon. “That Army payroll was mostly in brand-new silver dollars.”
Fallon looked out the doorway, watching the sunlight fall across the walk. It all tied in with the fire where somebody had been meeting���nobody would purposely camp in such a spot���and with the empty whiskey bottle he had found.
“You could be right,” he said. Then he told Brennan about the fire he had found.
“What’s next?” Brennan asked.
Fallon shrugged. “Wait. Look, John, Al’s a kid. Sure, he’s nineteen, and you and me, we were men making our way long before that, but he’s nineteen like we were fourteen. Maybe he’ll come to his senses.”
“You know he won’t,” Brennan replied. “Fallon, how many times have you seen an Al Damon strap on a gun like that? First he wants to be a gunfighter; he admires outlaws and gunfighters. He straps on a gun and convinces himself he’s a big man. He practices in secret. If it stopped there, that would be fine; but he’s got to kill somebody.
“A man who’s a gunfighter, he’s killed men, and unless a fellow has, he can’t have the name. He’s not thinking about the fact that the other man will be shooting too. In your dreams you never draw too slow, never get killed … not in daydreams, anyway. So sooner or later he’s going to have to use that gun.”
Fallon drew the cards to him again. Idly, he ran them through his fingers. “John, what would you have me do? Go to his father? I don’t believe Al would give up the gun because his father told him to���in fact, I know he wouldn’t.
“Maybe I should go to Al? You know what would happen then. He’d try to face me, and I might have to kill him. I don’t want to draw a gun on that boy, John.”
Brennan was silent. Of course, what Fallon said was true. When they went as far as Al Damon had gone, mighty few of them stopped before they killed or were killed. Perhaps fortunately, most of them were killed.
Fallon stacked the cards again and got up. “Going up to the claim,” he said, and went out. Irritation was riding him. He had remained too long in Red Horse. He had a few dollars now, little enough, it was true, but he would be smart to saddle up and ride out. He could get on the stage route and follow it through to Carson. He was playing the fool, staying here. His every instinct told him the top was about to blow off and he was standing right in the middle of it.
He walked up to the mine, peeled off his coat and shirt, and puttered around. In the drift he worked for a good two hours, working away with his pick at the face of the drift, working to rid himself of his worry rather than for any hope of finding anything. In fact, he had no such hope.
He could drive his pick into a crack and wedge off a good-sized chunk. It fell around his feet, and he let it fall. Finally, he put down the pick and went to the mouth of the tunnel.
Red Horse lay below him, and he looked at it with surprise. There were a dozen people on the street, two wagons, and several saddle horses. Lines of wash hung outside nearly every cabin. Three tents had gone up in a neat row back of the Damon store. Beyond the town he could see rows of bright green where corn was up and starting to leaf out … the weeks had gone by too fast.
Two small boys came out of the Damon store and started down the street. There ought to be a school. That was one thing the town needed … a school.
Well, it was none of his affair. He had made his decision as he looked down over the town. Whether or not he sold his claims, he would pull out at the end of another month. He would give it that long.
Yet even as he decided, he felt an odd sinking in his stomach. He was a fool to wait. Buell might come back. Bellows might come. Anything might happen.
He picked up his shirt and put it on and stuffed it into his pants. He was buttoning his shirt when Ginia Blane rode up on the shoulder where the claim lay.
“How do you do, Mr. Actin
g Mayor?” she said politely.
He glanced at her sourly. “I have no desire,” he said, “to be acting mayor or any other kind.”
“As much as I do not like you,” Ginia confessed, “you have done a lot for the town. You deserve to be mayor.”
“I don’t like you, either,” Fallon replied coolly, “and I deserve nothing of the kind. The only reason I interfered was because the man was so obviously a crook.”
“John Buell,” she said, looking straight into his eyes, “of Buell’s Bluff.”
He finished buttoning his shirt, giving all his attention to the buttons. She knew then. Well, that tore it. Now he was getting out of town. When he lifted his eyes to her his face betrayed nothing.
“I am afraid that I don’t get a chance to do enough for the town to be a good mayor at the stage this town is now passing through. There are too many interruptions for me.”
“Don’t ignore the subject, Mr. Fallon. I am sure no honest man would be so adept at turning things to his advantage as you seem to be. My father is an impatient man, Mr. Fallon, but not a suspicious one. I am afraid that I am suspicious.
“You hesitated out there on the trail that day before you named the town, and then you saw our sorrel, and you came up very quickly with a name … Red Horse.
“Naturally, when we moved into town I was curious, and was surprised there wasn’t the name of the town anywhere. There was only one sign missing���the sign in front of the bank.”
“You have a devious mind, Miss Blane. When one is so suspicious of others, it makes a man wonder if there isn’t something wrong with the thinking of that person.”
She was attractive, too damned attractive. Suddenly he wanted to be rid of her. Why didn’t she ride back down to town? Was she spying on him? Yet for what reason? She seemed to know all that was necessary to expose him.
“You know about Buell’s Bluff?”
“Yes … I was a little girl at the time, but I had an uncle who was very excited about it until the boom collapsed.” She regarded him with those cool eyes. “It was a fraud.”
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