“What kind of business?”
Nolan tossed a silver dollar onto the bar. “Get me that bottle, barkeep?”
Ira stared at the coin as if considering refusal, then scooped it into his pocket and set what was left of the bourbon onto the bar. “Here she be,” Ira said, cackling with satisfaction. “Or what’s left of her.”
Nolan picked up the bottle without response. “Well, Wilder, are you curious enough to hear me out?”
Ethan drained his bourbon in two deep swallows, then slapped the glass back on the bar. Tapping the rim with a finger, he said: “Pour me another one, Ira. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Ethan followed Nolan to his table at the rear of the room. A partially played hand of solitaire was spread out across the scarred wooden surface. Nolan gathered the cards with the same deftness he’d used handling his revolver, then sank into his chair, his back to the wall. Ethan sat down opposite him, ramrod straight, waiting. Nolan didn’t beat around the bush. “I’ve been sent up here to acquire land for a new cattle co-operative. It’s come to my attention that the Wilders own some of the best land north of the Marias. I want to buy it.”
“Sorry.” Ethan stood.
“Don’t be so quick to dismiss my proposal,” Nolan said. “I work for Westminster Cattle and Mining, out of their Bismarck office, and they’ve authorized me to make you a fair offer.”
“No,” Ethan said. “We’re not interested in selling.”
“You won’t even listen to my offer?”
“I’m afraid not,” Ethan replied. He walked back to the bar, where Ira stood grinning from ear to ear.
“Did he offer to make you rich?”
“You knew what he was after?”
“If it was your pa’s land, then I’d figured as much. He’s bought a few homesteads already, but all that land ain’t gonna amount to squat if he can’t get the Bar-Five. Your pa knew what he was doing when he bought that post and all the land around it.”
The Wilders—Jacob and his boys—had filed on five tracts of one hundred and sixty acres apiece when the government opened the land up for homesteads—nearly a thousand acres of rolling grasslands. It wasn’t much compared to some of the bigger outfits moving into the region, but it wasn’t the land Jacob had been after. It was the water contained within the boundaries of the Bar-Five, an even score of the best sweet-water springs between the Marias and the Canadian border. With ownership of the Bar-Five, the Wilders could lay claim to better than twenty thousand acres of prime grassland.
Ira poured a fresh drink, the cheap stuff this time, and Ethan swallowed cautiously. “There’s some kick in that one,” he said.
“It’s expected for them that don’t know no better.”
“You shouldn’t have given me a taste of the good stuff. Now I know better.”
Ira laughed. “I got another bottle of bourbon under the bar if you want to fork over some of that bounty money you got for your pelts.”
Ethan smiled, but his expression had turned reflective. “I expect we ought to start branding our stock again.”
“The Cattlemen’s Association is planning its fall roundup next month,” Ira said. “Throw in with them. It’d make it easier for everyone, and maybe get people to thinking more kindly of you boys. Part of what upsets folks so much is the way your pa acts like he don’t need no one.”
“He doesn’t, Ira,” Ethan replied. “None of us do.”
Ira shrugged as if miffed. “Suit yourself. I was just talking.”
“Who’s running the roundup this year?”
“Charlie Kestler’s been running it ever since . . .” Ira’s words trailed off.
Ethan glanced over his shoulder. Nolan Andrews was coming toward the bar, brows furrowed into a gun sight above a blunt nose. Stopping several feet away, he brushed the tail of his suit coat away from his revolver.
“Maybe I didn’t make myself clear, Wilder,” Nolan said softly. “You and I have business to discuss. You took off before we were finished.”
“No, you made yourself clear enough.”
Nolan’s lips drew taut. His fingers brushed the pearl grips of his Colt. But it was his eyes that sent a chill skittering down Ethan’s spine. He’d seen that same look in his pa’s eyes, right before all hell broke loose.
“I talked to your daddy a couple of weeks ago, and he was of the same opinion,” Nolan said. “People told me to wait until you got back, that, if anyone could talk sense into your old man, it would be you. It appears you aren’t as smart as people thought.”
“You’re likely right,” Ethan replied mildly. He turned away from the bar with weary reluctance. “We won’t sell, Mister Andrews, and that’s a flat-out fact, so let’s cut the crap and get to it.”
Nolan’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “That’s bold for a man carrying an outdated cap-and-ball pistol.”
Suddenly the old, trail-scarred Remington Army felt like a chunk of anvil on Ethan’s hip, so snug in its Indian-made holster of rawhide and brain-tanned elk and fancy beadwork that he knew he’d never come close to outdrawing his opponent. But he wouldn’t back down. No Wilder would.
“Now, hold on,” Ira said in a disarmingly agreeable tone. “Ethan ain’t well-heeled at all, but I am.” There was a Derringer in Ira’s right hand; Ethan hadn’t even known he carried one.
Nolan swore softly and raised his hands level with the bar. “I would have figured you for a shotgun man, barkeep,” he said.
“I prefer a scatter-gun,” Ira admitted, “but too many people expect it. They don’t anticipate a belly gun, and that’s what gives me the edge.”
Breathing a sigh of relief, Ethan walked over to lift Nolan’s pearl-handled revolver from its hand-tooled holster. Backing away, he raised the Colt, muzzle up, and cocked it experimentally. “By damn, he’s right, Ira. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear this thing was broken.” He handed the revolver across the bar.
“You think that’s funny because your friend’s got the drop on me,” Nolan said to Ethan. “It won’t feel this funny the next time we meet.”
“S-h-h,” Ira chided. “I’m trying to listen.” He was holding the Colt next to his ear, cocking it repeatedly and lowering the hammer. When he handed it back to Ethan, there was new respect in his eyes. “That’s a sweet pistol or I wouldn’t say so. I wouldn’t mind having my old hogleg slicked up like that.”
Opening the loading gate, Ethan rotated the cylinder until all chambers were empty. He looked up in surprise when the sixth bullet dropped into his palm. “I don’t know many people who carry a gun with six beans in the wheel. You’re either mighty confident, or desperate.”
Nolan didn’t reply. He was staring at Ira’s Derringer, silently seething. Ethan set the Colt on the bar, scattered the cartridges beside it, then unbuckled his own gun belt, and placed it beside Nolan’s revolver. “I always did say a gun was a coward’s way of settling an argument. Why don’t you and me do this as if you’ve got a spine behind all those big threats?” He raised his fists.
Nolan looked momentarily stunned by Ethan’s proposal. Then he laughed. “I’m going to enjoy beating the hell out of you, Wilder.”
“You haven’t done it yet,” Ethan replied, but his sentence was abruptly punctuated by a startled grunt, and his head rocked back on his shoulders as if hinged at the spine.
“Jesus!” Ira shouted, as completely caught off guard by Nolan’s swift response as Ethan had been.
Spun into the bar by Nolan’s punch, Ethan grabbed clumsily for the far edge, barely keeping his feet. Looking up, he saw Ira staring at him worriedly. Ethan felt the same way. He’d barely seen Nolan’s fist blazing across the empty space between them, hadn’t even begun to duck aside when it slammed into his chin.
He got his feet under him and turned, fists raised warily. Nolan was smiling broadly as he closed on the younger man. He led with his left foot, both arms up with the elbows tucked tight in front of him, backs of his hands turned outward. Ethan recognized the stance. He�
��d seen it a hundred times before in newspaper woodcuts and on broadsheets—the classic pose of a professional boxer.
Nolan feigned a left, then shot his right fist forward like a cannonball, but Ethan was ready this time, and parried it. Nolan’s brow arched in approval. He circled to his left. Ethan gratefully moved away from the bar, backing toward the middle of the floor where he had room to maneuver. Nolan followed patiently.
Ethan eased forward, fists moving in slow, erratic circles. He was looking for an opening, an edge, anything to even the odds. Without warning, he lunged forward, swinging low under Nolan’s elbow, aiming for his ribs. But Nolan was too wily for such a lumbering attack. He side-stepped the blow and launched a quick, short jab of his own. Ethan staggered backward into the suddenly twirling saloon. From a long way off, he heard Ira shout: “Watch it, Ethan!”
“Trying,” he muttered, swinging an uppercut that Nolan easily batted away, taking a sledge-hammer punch to his chest in return. The next thing he knew, he was on his hands and knees, staring at the thin carpet of sawdust on the floor. He could hear Nolan laughing. Or at least he thought it was Nolan. The sound seemed strangely distant, filtered by a roaring in his ears, the floor undulating in rhythmic waves beneath his nose.
“Get up, Ethan!” Ira shouted.
Ethan sank back on his heels. Nolan could have finished it then if he’d wanted to, but he apparently had other plans. Recalling the man’s attempt to goad him into drawing his gun, Ethan suddenly understood what he wanted. Nolan Andrews wasn’t a speculator in land or cattle or mining. He was a solver of problems—a killer, when the need arose—and he, or the men he worked for, wanted the Bar-Five. Nolan had tried to purchase the ranch legitimately, first from Jacob, then from Ethan. When that didn’t work, Nolan had tried to provoke a fight. Ira had prevented gun play, but like Ethan, a damned fool, had handed Andrews a second opportunity as handily as a waiter offering to refresh a cup of coffee.
Ethan hadn’t lost a fist fight since he was sixteen, when he’d gone toe-to-toe with his old man over a ruined supper of burned liver, but he realized he could lose this one, and the thought shook him badly. Growing up in a rough-and-tumble world, he knew how to fight. More important, he knew how to win. But he’d never met anyone like Nolan Andrews before. There was almost an art to the burly man’s moves, like the intricate steps of a waltz or the deft brush strokes of a painter. Ethan couldn’t win using Queensbury Rules; he didn’t have the training for that. But he could still win. There was a way.
With a bellow, Ethan surged to his feet. Nolan laughed harshly and brought his fist down like a pile driver, a blow that could have broken Ethan’s neck if it had connected. But Ethan had learned his lesson. At the last minute, he darted to the side, throwing a short, powerful jab to Nolan’s solar plexus as he passed. Nolan grunted and stumbled backward, a look of astonishment coming over his face. Ethan whirled and swung a hard left that caught Nolan behind his ear. The big man reeled. Ethan struck again, spilling blood and spittle from Nolan’s mashed lips. But that was all he got, three quick hammer-like blows that staggered the gunman, but didn’t drop him. When Ethan swung again, Nolan threw up an arm, deflected his punch.
Ethan didn’t even see the fist that rammed into his cheek. He fell back and would have gone down if not for the heavy table he came up against. Nolan pressed his attack, fists pumping. Ethan tried to block, to duck, dodge, and parry, but to no avail. His chest heaved and his lungs burned for oxygen; his feet seemed to drag over the sawdust-covered floor. He felt Nolan’s knuckles bounce off a bicep. Another blow struck his shoulder, close to his neck. Two more struck him squarely in the chest, and a fluttering darkness descended around him. In growing desperation, Ethan kicked out with his foot, catching Nolan in the knee. It was a lucky strike and lightly placed, but it was enough to cause Nolan to lurch and nearly lose his balance.
Ethan retreated. Nolan followed warily, spitting blood. The cocky, confident grin was gone now, replaced by a smoldering rage. Ethan had seen that look before, too, in the eyes of predators.
Blood was dripping from Ethan’s face, and sweat stung his eyes. Nolan was crowding him, attempting to draw him into the offensive. Ethan refused the bait. He knew Nolan had some trick up his sleeve, and he was determined to avoid it. Instead, he backed right into it.
Feeling something pressing against the back of his thighs, Ethan knew he’d come up against the table in the back of the room. The same table where Nolan had pitched his offer to purchase the Bar-Five.
He was trapped, nowhere else to go.
Feigning rage, Ethan leaped forward with a curse. Nolan stepped back, braced himself, then launched a right that should have unscrewed Ethan’s head from its shoulders. But Ethan wasn’t there. Using the same tactic he’d employed earlier, he dodged to his right at the last minute, grabbing the half-empty bottle of bourbon Nolan had left on the table as he did. As Nolan’s fist whistled past Ethan’s ear, Ethan swung the bottle with everything he had. The hard glass took Nolan behind his ear, felling the gunman in a deluge of broken glass and bourbon.
Gasping for air, Ethan sagged into a nearby chair. He thought that, if Nolan regained his feet now, he was finished.
“Lord God,” Ira breathed, coming over with a tumbler of whiskey. “That’s the best fight I’ve seen in many a year.”
“He’s been trained,” Ethan panted, trying his best to ignore the twirling lights of the saloon.
“He was good, for a fact, but you slickered him with that bottle of bourbon.” Ira chuckled.
“I’m glad he paid for it before you busted it over his head, though.”
Ira tried to hand Ethan the whiskey, but Ethan waved it away. His limbs were growing weaker, and he knew he was about to pass out. He didn’t want to do it here, though. He wanted to get outside, and tried to say as much to Ira, but his tongue felt stiff as a board and the words muddled up in his brain. The last thing he remembered was Ira asking if he was all right.
Chapter Three
He became aware of the pain first, like the far-off beating of drums. As the pounding grew louder, it became more intrusive, nudging at him like poking fingers. For a while he just lay there and tried to remember where he was and why he hurt so much. It wasn’t until something moved his leg, a well-placed but gentle kick, that he finally woke up.
He was inside and warm. Bare wooden walls, a tin ceiling, the smell of perking coffee. Then a bearded face eclipsed the view, peering down curiously.
“You awake, boy?” Ira Webb demanded in what seemed like a booming whisper. Ethan winced and squeezed his eyes shut. Ira scooted one of Ethan’s legs sideways with his toe. “Come on, son. Haul your butt outta them blankets before you take root.”
Taking his time, Ethan rolled onto his side, then pushed himself up on one elbow. His face felt hot and swollen, and the ache in his ribs kept time to the surge of his pulse. He looked around the room. It was small and cluttered as only a bachelor could tolerate: potbellied stove in one corner, disheveled bunk in another, a table and single chair completed the furnishings, while a dirt-encrusted window filtered the morning light. Ethan lay on the floor beneath the window, a ratty quilt for a mattress.
“I got coffee and some of last night’s warmed-over beef for breakfast,” Ira said. “If you want better, you’ll have to walk down to the café and order it.”
“Whatever you’ve got is fine by me,” Ethan replied, the words hacked out like phlegm. He stood and saw his reflection in the grimy window glass. “Hell,” he grunted, then poked tenderly at his cheek, puffed twice its normal size. “What did the other guy look like?”
“Not half as bad as you,” Ira replied solemnly. “He pummeled you good, boy, but you got in the last punch, and that’s the one that counts.”
Hazily Ethan recalled slamming a bottle of bourbon against a dark-haired man’s skull. “Nolan Andrews?” he said tentatively.
“Yep.”
“Where is he?”
“I dumped him out back in the h
og trough.”
Ethan stepped closer to the window. He was in one of the Bullshead’s back rooms, but knew the hog trough well. It wasn’t a feeder, as the name implied, but rather a shallow gulch behind the saloon where Ira deposited customers who drank too much and couldn’t find their way home unaided. Six or eight years ago, when Ethan was just learning how to kick up his heels in a man’s world, he’d awakened more than once in Ira’s trough, cold and sick and swearing: “Never again.”
But the trough was empty this morning, a barren scab.
“He was gone when I woke up,” Ira confided, dishing yesterday’s meat and boiled potatoes onto a tin plate and setting it on the table alongside a cup of coffee. “Come on ’n’ grab a bite. I need to open shop.”
Ethan turned away from the window. The meat looked dry and tough, the coffee floating a thin, greasy film on top. Poor doings for a hungry man, but he’d eaten worse. Picking up a piece of meat, he tried to bite off a chunk, but discovered his mouth didn’t want to open that far.
“Damn,” Ethan mumbled, cupping his jaw with his free hand and rubbing it gently.
Ira chuckled. “That was a fight,” he allowed. “I never thought I’d see a Wilder get hammered by a dude in a store-bought suit.”
“That dude knew how to box,” Ethan reminded him.
“I saw that. The only thing Nolan Andrews lacked last night was some red tights and leather gloves.” Then he guffawed, spraying pieces of meat across the floor. “And a suitable opponent.”
“He caught me by surprise,” Ethan replied irritably.
“If it had been your daddy he’d tangled with, he’d probably be missing a few pieces of hide this morning.”
Ethan couldn’t argue with that. Jacob Wilder had a reputation as a scrapper, and had been known to thumb out a man’s eyes or break his knees if a fight started to go badly. Ethan figured he’d had the same opportunities a couple of times, but he’d held back. It was, he reflected, what made Jacob Wilder a tougher man than he was.
Wild Side of the River Page 3
