John and Major Sanderson continued to share such stories.
“What made you decide to go into the fur-trapping business?” Sanderson asked. “I thought you had some girl you were anxious to marry back in, where was it? Boston? Philadelphia?”
“Philadelphia, and it didn’t work out,” John said.
“That happened to a number of people, I think,” Sanderson said.
“Yes. But not everyone did something as foolish as I did.”
Sanderson chuckled. “What did you do that was so foolish?”
“I joined the French Foreign Legion.”
“What? You did? But wait . . . I’ve read about the Foreign Legion. The term of enlistment is five years, isn’t it? If you joined the Foreign Legion, how is it that you are no longer a member?”
“Let’s just say that I altered my contract with them.”
“You altered your contract? What do you mean?”
“I deserted.”
“Oh,” Sanderson said. “Are you afraid that . . . what I mean is, do you think they’ll come looking for you?”
“No. They would have to come, not only to America, but to the Rocky Mountains to find me. They won’t waste their time, they’ll just recruit someone to take my place.”
“Bobby, can’t we find a more pleasant subject to discuss?”
“Yes, forgive me, my dear,” Major Sanderson said. He smiled. “Because tomorrow is Independence Day, it will be a day of no work for the men. We plan to have a day-long celebration, and a barbeque. You’ll probably smell the meat cooking tonight.”
Smoke did smell the meat cooking all night long, two beef halves on spits that were suspended over glowing coals. By the next morning morale on the post was high, not only because of the barbeque, but because the day was given over to celebrations and games. One of the games was baseball, the first time Smoke had ever seen the game played.
That night there was a dance. Held at the sutler’s store, it was for everyone on the post, enlisted and officers alike, though it was somewhat limited, due to the lack of women. The wives of the post did their part by allowing their dance cards to be filled by the bachelor officers and men, and it wasn’t all that unusual to see Major Sanderson’s wife, Cindy, dancing with a young private.
There were very few single women at the post, mostly laundresses who lived on “Soapsuds Row” washing and ironing the post laundry. As a rule, the laundresses did not stay single very long. They were prime candidates for marriage to the noncommissioned officers of the post.
Both John and Smoke danced once with the major’s wife, but generally stayed out of the dance in order to give the men of the post more opportunities. There were a few of the women, though, who made it known by looks and gestures that they would welcome a dance with the two handsome strangers.
The next morning, the two men left immediately after breakfast.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Two weeks later Smoke and John reached the town of Theresa, Montana. Theresa was a one-street town that had grown up at this location in order to take advantage of the only water in the area. They surveyed the town as they rode in, and realized it could be any out-of-the-way town, anywhere in the West. There was almost an ethereal quality to them.
The Cattleman’s Saloon wasn’t hard to find. It was the biggest and grandest building in the entire town. Inside, the saloon was out of the sun, but the air was still and stuffy, and the dozen or so customers who were drinking had to use their bandanas to continually wipe the sweat from their faces. Behind the bar was a sign that read: PLEASE USE THE SPITTOONS. Despite that admonition, the floor was stained with tobacco juice.
There was no gilt-edged mirror, but there was a real bar and an ample supply of beer and decent whiskey. The saloon had an upstairs section at the back, with a stairway going up to a second-floor landing. When Smoke glanced up, he could see rooms opening off the landing. A heavily painted saloon girl was taking a cowboy up the stairs with her. Smoke had never been upstairs with a bar girl, but he had a pretty good idea of what went on there.
The upstairs area didn’t extend all the way to the front of the building. The main room of the saloon was big, with exposed rafters below the high, peaked ceiling. There were three tables with drinking customers, and a fourth table that had a card game going on.
Smoke and John bellied up to the bar.
“What’ll it be?” the barkeep asked as he moved down to the two men. He wiped up a spill with a wet, smelly rag.
“Beer,” Smoke said.
“I’ll have the same.”
Smoke slid a dime across the bar and the bartender drew two mugs of beer from the barrel behind the bar.
Smoke turned his back to the bar and looked out over the room. A bar girl sidled up to him then. She was heavily painted and showed the dissipation of her profession. There was no humor or life left to her eyes, and when she saw that Smoke wasn’t interested, she turned and walked back to sit by the piano player.
The piano player wore a small, round derby hat and kept his sleeves up with garter belts. He was pounding away, though whatever music he was playing was practically lost amidst the noise of the many conversations.
A girl came down the stairs and went up to the bar. Glancing over at her, Smoke saw that one eye was red and swollen nearly shut. It still had the glowing look of a very fresh injury.
“Millie, what happened?” the bartender asked.
“Nothing happened,” the girl said, putting her hand up to cover the eye. “Don’t worry about it.”
“What do you mean, don’t worry about it? It’s clear to see that someone just hit you.”
“Please, don’t say nothin’ about it,” Millie said. “He wants a bottle of whiskey.” Millie put some money on the table.
“The hell he does. Did Colby hit you?” The bartender tried to touch her eye, but Millie pulled away from him.
“Please, Don, just drop it,” Millie said. “It’s no big thing and I don’t want to . . .”
“You don’t want to what?”
“I don’t want to make him mad at me.”
“Honey, looks to me like he’s already mad at you. And if he isn’t already mad, looks like it makes no difference to him one way or the other.”
“It’s all right, please, don’t make any trouble.”
“No trouble. I’ll just go up there and tell him his time is up.” Don started from around behind the bar.
“No, don’t, please!” Millie said. “I told you, nothing is going on.” She reached out to grab him. “Don, I’m afraid he’ll kill you. You know how good he is with that gun, and how he’s always lookin’ to use it. He’ll use it on you.”
Don hesitated. “All right,” he said. “I won’t go up ’n say anything to him, but you don’t go back up there neither.”
“We ain’t . . . done nothin’ yet,” Millie said. “He’ll just say he ain’t got what he’s paid for.”
“Then I’ll give him his money back. But you don’t have to go back up there. Not if he’s beating you.”
As the two were talking, Colby, bare-chested, and wearing only his trousers and gun belt, appeared at the railing on the upper balcony.
“Hey, you! Bitch!” he shouted down at the girl. “What the hell’s keeping you? You’ve been down there long enough. Get back up here!”
“Colby, she’s not coming back up there,” Don said. “You’ve had her long enough.”
“What do you mean, I’ve had her long enough? I’ll by damn have her as long as I want her. Do you understand? How long I have her ain’t none of your business.”
“No, now, your time is up. There’s another gent wantin’ her.”
“Yeah? Just who would that be?” Colby looked down over the floor of the saloon. “Who else is wantin’ her?” he asked. “Who wants her bad enough to come through me to get her?”
Millie looked out over the rest of the saloon patrons, the expression in her eyes showing her fear of Colby, and her desperate bid for someone to h
elp her.
There was absolute silence as all the other men in the saloon found something on the floor, or the back wall, or the front window to examine. Not one man would meet Millie’s eyes.
“Well, now, turns out you was lyin’, doesn’t it?” Colby said. The smile that spread across his face was totally devoid of all humor.
“Why don’t you leave her alone, Colby?” The other bar girl said. This was the same one who had made a tentative advance toward Smoke and John when they first came into the saloon.
“There ain’t nobody asked for your opinion,” Colby replied with a snarl. “Besides, if she don’t come with me, who would she go with? You done seen that nobody else wants her. Hell, she’s nothin’ but a whore, same as you. Now, you, Millie, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll get your ass back up here, now!”
Millie clinched her hands into fists and shook her head resolutely. “No,” she said, her voice so quiet that Smoke could barely hear it. “No, I’m not coming back up.”
“What do you mean you ain’t comin’ back up? I paid for you. You hear me, girl? I paid for you! You belong to me.”
“Your time is up,” Millie said.
“My time is up when I say my time is up.”
Millie put her hand down in a dress pocket, then pulled out two pieces of silver.
“Here is your money,” she said. “I’ll give it back to you.”
Colby pulled his pistol and pointed it toward Millie.
“I don’t want my money, bitch. I want you. Now you get back up here or I’ll shoot you dead where you stand.”
“Like the lady said, your time is up,” Smoke said. “I believe I’m next, miss, if you don’t mind.” If the girl had actually gone back upstairs, then he wasn’t going to try and stop her. But she was showing courage enough to refuse, and Smoke felt that her courage should be rewarded. He intended to see to it that she didn’t have to go up if she didn’t want to.
Millie looked at Smoke with an expression of hope, but when she saw how young he was, the expression of hope died.
“No,” she said quietly. She held her hand out and shook her head. “No, honey, I appreciate it, but you don’t need to get involved.”
“Ha!” Colby said. “I say let him get involved. You want to take me on, do you, sonny?”
“If I have to,” Smoke said.
Colby chuckled. “Oh, you don’t have to, sonny. You can just tell me you’re sorry, then tell the bitch there to get on back up here where she belongs.”
“Well, I don’t plan to apologize, and I don’t plan to tell her to go back up there. It seems pretty obvious to everyone here that she doesn’t want to.”
“Now, do you want to tell me why the hell I should care what she wants? She’s got no choice,” Colby said. “Neither do you, mister. Or haven’t you noticed that I happen to be holding a gun in my hand.”
“Oh, yeah, I see the gun,” Smoke said. “And I’m asking you, nicely, to put it away.”
Colby laughed out loud. “Do you people hear this young punk? He’s asking me, nicely, to put the gun away.”
“Or drop it,” Smoke said.
“And if I don’t do either?”
“I’ll kill you,” Smoke said easily.
“You,” Colby said to John. “You’re a dumb son of a bitch to be standin’ there next to him like that. When I start shootin’, I ain’t goin’ to be all that particular about where I’m shootin’.”
John leaned back against the bar and took a swallow of his beer before he replied.
“I’m in no danger,” John said.
“You’re in no danger, huh? And what gives you that idea?”
“I’m in no danger because you won’t be shooting,” he said.
“What do you mean, I won’t be shooting?”
“I mean if you don’t do what my friend says, if you don’t put your pistol away, or drop it, he’ll kill you before you can even get a shot off.”
It was the calm and very understated way John made his comment that made everyone’s hair stand on end.
With a shout of rage, Colby swung his gun toward Smoke, but in one smooth and incredibly fast motion, Smoke drew and fired. Colby dropped his gun over the rail and it fell with a clatter to the bar floor, twelve feet below. He grabbed his chest, then turned his hand out and looked down in surprise and disbelief as his palm began filling with his own blood. His eyes rolled back in his head and he pitched forward, crashing through the railing, then turning over once in midair before he landed heavily on his back alongside his dropped gun.
Colby lay motionless on the floor with open, but sightless eyes staring toward the ceiling. It had all happened so fast that no one else in the saloon had made so much as one move . . . it was as if they had all been frozen in position, an eerie tableau, watching the action take place around them.
The gun smoke from the single shot formed a cloud which drifted slowly toward the door. Beams of sunlight became visible as they stabbed through the cloud. There were rapid and heavy footfalls on the wooden sidewalk outside as more people began coming in through the swinging doors. One of them was wearing a badge.
“What happened here?”
Everybody began talking at once.
“Hold, hold it!” the lawman said, holding up his hands. He walked over and looked down at Colby’s body.
“The world is a better place without this son of a bitch,” he said. “All I need to know is, was it a fair fight?”
“Fair fight? Marshal, Colby had his gun out and was fixin’ to shoot before the young feller there even drawed his gun!” the bartender said.
“Then I see no reason to get the judge to come here and hold a hearing,” the marshal said. “You the one that did it?” the marshal asked.
“Yes.”
“You’re a stranger here, ain’t you?”
“Yes, my friend and I are going up to Montana to trap beaver and marten.”
“Tell you what. I got no quarrel with you. Seein’ as ever’one in here says you was in the right. And, seein’ as Colby was one worthless son of a bitch. But it might be better if you moved on tonight.”
“Do you mind if we stay long enough to have our supper?” Smoke asked.
“Yeah, you can. Go on over to the café and order anything you want. I’ll even pay for it. For the both of you.”
“That’s very nice of you, Marshal.”
Finishing their beer, Smoke and John followed the marshal over to Waggy’s Café. They were met by a small, gray-haired man.
“Gentlemen, this is William Wagner, owner of Waggy’s Café. And you’ll not find a better café in town.”
“Well, now, James, I’d just feel real complimented, if I wasn’t the only café in town,” Wagner said.
“Waggy, I want you to give these two men anything they want, and bill the city.”
“All right, Marshal,” Waggy replied. “Have a seat, gentlemen.”
John started to sit at a table in the middle of the room, but Smoke shook his head no.
“We’ll sit back there in the corner,” he said. “That way we’ll both have our backs against the wall.”
“You really think that’s necessary?”
“Yeah, I do,” Smoke said. “It’s hard to imagine someone like Colby with friends, but if he does have any, I wouldn’t want them coming toward us without our seeing them.”
“Yeah, I see what you mean,” John said. John smiled. “I have to tell you, I’m really looking forward to this meal.”
“Now I’m hurt,” Smoke teased. “Why, that sounds like you aren’t all that pleased with my cooking.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m pleased, all right. But it’s been a month of Sundays since I’ve had fried chicken, and I see that they have that here. I intend to enjoy myself.”
“Yeah, me too,” Smoke admitted.
The men ordered, and the waiter began bringing food to the table. Between them they ate an entire chicken, a dozen biscuits, mashed potatoes, gravy, and green
beans. They finished the meal off with two slices each of black and blue pie, made with a combination of black- and blueberries. Their eating was of such a prodigious nature that it drew the attention of everyone else in the café.
“I’ll tell you two boys the truth,” Waggy said. “If the city wasn’t payin’ for your meals, I’d just about let you eat for free. Seein’ you boys enjoyin’ your food that much is about as good a job of advertisin’ as I could hope for.”
“It’s not hard to appreciate good food, and we thank you,” John said.
Old Main Building
“I’ve read about that shooting in the Cattleman’s Saloon,” Professor Armbruster said. “The town of Theresa doesn’t even exist anymore, and when you look it up, turns out that the shooting you just described is one of the highlights of its entire history. The man you killed was Braxton Colby. He is said to have killed more than twenty men, and, after he was killed, turned out that he had murdered at least three women.”
“I gave him a chance to back out of it,” Smoke said.
“Yes, the way you just told the story squares with everything I’ve read about it. Did you have any repercussions from killing Colby?”
“Do you mean did anyone come after us for revenge?”
“Well, did they?”
“Yes, that very night,” Smoke said.
“I thought that might be the case, though I must confess that in the reports I have read the stories vary so that I’ve never been able to ascertain which one was true or even if it actually happened.”
“It happened,” Smoke said.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Theresa
Smoke opened his eyes. Something had awakened him and he lay very still. The doorknob turned and he was up, reaching for the gun that lay on a table by his bed. He moved as quietly as a cat, stepping to the side of the door and cocking his Colt .44. His senses were alert, his body alive with readiness. Smoke could hear someone breathing on the other side of the door. A thin shaft of hall light shone underneath. Outside the hotel he heard a tinkling piano and a burst of laughter.
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