“He used to be in Abilene,” Flint said.
They had a drink. Nobody talked for a while. Then Rockley said, “The boss is upset these days. Ain’t like herself.”
“She won’t have any trouble. Before I — before I go away, I’ll run Baldwin out of town.”
Flint got up, and Rockley looked up at him. “If you ain’t the original Flint, you got to be somebody who was there. You knew about Flint’s arms being held, and that was something I never heard before.”
“He was a good man,” Flint said, “in his way.” He had never spoken of the old killer before, and now he looked at the man in his memory. “I don’t think he had any regard for human life at first. He figured he was in a war, and the cattlemen were in the right. He hated nesters. Well, he was wrong. No man is ever going to make anything right with a gun.
“Only” — he hesitated — “one time he helped a kid who needed it, and don’t ask me why.”
“Where did he come from? Who was he?”
“He never said. He never talked at all, come to think of it, beyond a comment about camp or the weather or when he was trying to teach me something.”
Flint pulled down his hatbrim, hesitated briefly at the door and went out.
Rockley looked over at Milt Ryan. “Well, there she is, Milt. Only one person he could be, if you see it like I do.”
Milt Ryan looked at his whiskey glass and at the bottle and decided against it. “He was the kid at Crossing,” he said, and got up. “Rockley, you ever see Pete Gaddis with his shirt off and his belt down low?”
“He’s got a bullet scar.”
“And he got it at The Crossing.”
Outside in the dark street they stood together, looking carefully around.
“I been wonderin’ about Gaddis,” Ryan said. “He ain’t been himself.”
“He’s got him a good memory,” Rockley agreed. “He thinks Flint wants to give it to him again … higher and on the left side.”
Chapter 13
RED DOLAN, who had tended bar in Dodge, Abilene, Tascosa, and Leadville among other towns, was not deceived by the quiet.
His red hair was freely sprinkled with gray, and with the passing of the wild years had come a wary appreciation of life. The frontier was in Dolan’s blood. He had been tending bar the night Wild Bill Hickok killed Strawhan, and he had been hunting a job in Deadwood when Wild Bill left for Deadwood, which was to be his last town. Aside from the Army doctor who had examined Hickok, Dolan had been the only man alive who knew Wild Bill was going blind, that he barely could see the spots on his cards.
Dolan had been in Montana running a faro game when Morgan Earp killed Billy Brooks, and had known both men. He had been in Virginia City when Eldorado Johnny came up from the Colorado River country, determined to be “chief of Virginia City or the best-looking corpse in the graveyard” … and after Langford Peel shot him, Dolan had attended the funeral
Red Dolan had seen them come and go, and when a youngster walked up to his bar, Dolan could almost tell within a few months how long be would last. The would-be tough ones rarely lasted long enough to have to shave more than once a week.
He had known the original Flint and had been a message center for him. Red Dolan took no sides, but if you wanted to locate a man for a job you told Red. Sooner or later the man showed up.
Old Sulphur Tom Whelan had come up from Horse Springs, and stood at the bar to share old-time talk with Red Dolan. “Buckdun and Flint,” Tom said, “that’s the one I want to see.”
“The good ones rarely shoot it out,” Dolan said, “they know even if they score they can be killed.”
“They’ll meet,” Sulphur Tom insisted, “if Pete Gaddis doesn’t tangle with Flint first.”
“What’s wrong with Gaddis?”
“Ask him about that scar on his belly. They do say Flint was the kid at The Crossing.”
A dust devil danced in the sun-lit street, and a roan horse stood three-legged at the hitch rail. A woman in a gingham dress went along the walk, holding a child by the hand. And down the street a German farmer was loading a pitchfork, shovel, and hoe into his wagon. It was a quiet day in town.
Five men loitered at the back end of the bar. All were Baldwin riders. Strett was there, and Saxon with him. At least twenty Baldwin men were in town, so the quiet did not deceive Dolan in the least.
Rumors of the telegrams sent from McCartys were getting around town. James T. Kettleman was somewhere in the country and he had thrown a monkey wrench into Baldwin’s plans.
Dolan felt intimations of trouble sharpen when Rockley and Milt Ryan came in. Rockley was a salty customer. Milt Ryan was a hard-bitten old mountain man.
A few doors up the street, Jim Flint went into the Grand and, hearing familiar laughter from the dining room, he walked in. Lottie sat there with Port Baldwin, and their laughter stilled as he entered the room.
Flint nodded briefly and Lottie watched him pass. It was hard to believe that this handsome, easy-walking man was actually her husband.
Baldwin was telling her some coarse joke and she felt a flicker of irritation that she was here instead of across the room with Jim. He was one of the few men she had known who always treated her with respect.
Jim looked composed, and the lines in his face had relaxed. “I can’t believe it,” she said suddenly. “Jim Kettleman — a gunfighter!”
Port Baldwin looked grim. “You would have believed it the day he shot up the town. Beaten within an inch of his life, blood all over him, clothes torn, face swollen, and he scared that bunch who work for me clear out of town. He killed two men that day, and put lead into some others.”
She looked at Baldwin with surprise. “You sound as if you admire him!”
“I hate his guts,” Baldwin said brutally, “and I’d like him dead, but by the Lord Harry, he’s a fighting man! I’ll give him that. He’s a real fighting man.”
He gulped coffee, put the cup down, and then added, “With a gun, he is. I’d give a-plenty to get at him with my hands. I’d like to pound his face in.”
“You couldn’t do it, Port, so don’t ever try.” Lottie surprised herself by the comment.
He looked at her in obvious astonishment. “I couldn’t? Are you crazy?” He doubled a ham-like fist. “I could beat him to death with this. Nobody ever stood up to me in a fist fight, nor rough and tumble, either.”
He opened his big right hand. “I can bend sixty-penny spikes like you fold a newspaper.” He indicated Flint. “I’d break him like he was a dry stick.”
Lottie regarded him coolly. “Don’t ever try it, Port. I have a feeling that we had better leave him alone. He’s poison for us. Bad luck.”
“Not if he’s dead.”
Lottie glanced down the room at Flint. He did not look like a man who was dying. But what if he did die? What if he died now, where everybody would know he was dead? A good lawyer — and then all those millions, in Paris, Vienna, London.
“I must talk to him. That is why I came out here, you know.”
Coolly, as she listened with half her attention to Port Baldwin, her thoughts sorted out the situation. It might require several long fights in court, but no matter what sort of a will he had left, she was sure she would win in the end.
To get that money Jim had to be dead. There was no sense in letting her head be turned by the fact that he was attractive. Men were attractive to her only in so far as they could supply her with what she wanted. She wanted money, she wanted the attention of men, and she wanted to control men.
“You’re a fool if you think you can get anywhere by talking,” Baldwin said, “because he will not listen, and it will not matter whether he does or not.”
She drew back her chair and got to her feet. “Nevertheless, I shall talk to him.”
She went down the room to his table with every eye upon her, and when she reached him he got to his feet and drew back a chair for her. “Will you sit down, Lottie? I am sure you will understand if I do not say I am
glad to see you.”
When she was seated she said quickly, “Jim you should have stayed in New York. You can have better care.”
“So he told you, did he? I fancied he was an old gossip. I was a fool to have gone to him.”
“He is the best doctor in New York!”
“The most fashionable, you mean. It does not follow that he is also the best.”
“Are you coming back?”
“Of course not.”
“Jim … what about me? You spoiled me, Jim. I can’t live on a hundred dollars a month.”
He looked up at her, coldly amused. “I am sure you can if you must. But I did not expect you to. I expected you would find someone else, marry him, and that someone would, of course, be able to support you in the style you believe you deserve.”
“What makes you think I want to marry again?”
“Lottie, you never wanted to marry. It was merely a device. You will marry again, but you will not want to. It is simply the easiest way for you to get the things you want.”
“There’s another girl?”
“When I may have only a few weeks — perhaps a few days? I have already gone past the time I was expected to live, I believe. No, there is no other girl.”
There was Nancy Kerrigan. His thoughts returned to her, and the way she had looked at him. Her cool, steady gaze had reached some longing deep within him, secret even from himself.
Too many things were secret even from himself, for, once he examined them in the cold light of day, he would know they were not for him. Nothing in his life had geared him for love, for a home, for the life other men led. His was a lonely way, and instinctively he had avoided all thought along such lines, living and dealing on the surface and with surface values.
With such a girl as Nancy … but why think of that? He had been ordered to leave, despised by her and by the others.
Pete Gaddis he had liked. Looking at that, he realized he still liked the man. There was something there … of course it was that old affair at The Crossing.
But The Crossing was years ago and far away. The dead had long been buried. The old feelings were gone. Flint was dust, but he had been avenged before he died. In the old Viking way, enemies had been buried to go with him to whatever hunting grounds remained for one like Flint.
Lottie was irritated. For the first time in her life she was sitting with a man and his attention was wandering. With a kind of desperation she realized that Jim Kettleman, or Flint, or whatever his name was, had slipped away from her and she simply was not going to get him back.
“I wasn’t much of a wife to you, was I, Jim?”
“No, you weren’t.” He looked across the table at her gravely. Beautiful? Yes, she was beautiful, but with no sense of good or evil except as it was good or evil for her.
“I am riding out of town in a little while, and I am not coming back.”
She fought down her anger and frustration, knowing it would defeat her purpose now. “Where will you go?”
“I think you know where I am going, and I have to go alone.”
“But until then? Jim, you can’t leave me like this! Why — why, I have scarcely money enough to get home!”
He looked at her and felt no compassion. They were less than strangers. She had tried to have him killed and, he was sure, would try again. And blame him for the necessity.
“I went away because I wanted to die alone, as I have lived, and that is what I shall do.”
He pushed back from the table and her anger destroyed her judgment. “It’s that Kerrigan girl! That was why you interfered with Port! That cheap little ranch girl!”
He smiled at her. “Lottie, she is neither cheap, nor exactly little, and she is something you will never be— a lady. You have the appearance, she has the quality and the heart. Yes, if things were different, if I had a few years to live and she would have me — but why talk foolishness?”
He got to his feet and took up his hat. Lottie started to speak, but suddenly she was empty of words. With what could you threaten a man who was dying and prepared to die?
They were alone in the room now.
‘“I’m glad you’re dying.” She looked up at him and he thought he had never seen such concentrated hatred in the eyes of anyone. “I’m really glad. And when you die, I hope you think of me, because I’ll be alive!”
Her lovely mouth was twisted with fury, but all he felt was relief. “Lottie, you’re your own worst enemy. The quiet, simple little girls will end up with all the things you want, and you’ll be conniving, cheating, and baiting hooks until you’re old and broke and empty. Believe me, you have my sympathy.”
He walked out into the night.
On the walk he paused. A rider was coming along the quiet street, a tall man on a horse that walked steadily forward. The legs of the horse showed, then the splash of white on his chest, and then both animal and rider came into the light at once.
Buckdun.
If the gunman saw Flint standing on the boardwalk, he gave no indication, but walked his horse on past, holding the reins in his left hand, eyes straight before him.
There was no nonsense about Buckdun. He used a gun because he was good with a gun, and he avoided trouble because trouble led to more trouble and there was no money in it.
Once in Silver City, Flint had heard, a man called Buckdun a liar. Buckdun looked at him coolly and said, “You may think what you like,” and turned his back.
Frustrated, the would-be gunman stood looking around angrily, helplessly.
Furious, he shouted, “I can beat you to the draw! I am faster than you!”
Bored, Buckdun looked at him in the mirror and said, “All right, you’re faster than I am.”
Somebody laughed and the gunman turned sharply, but saw only sober faces. Buckdun lifted his beer and took a swallow and, after a few minutes, the would-be gunman walked out.
Port Baldwin was sitting on his bed in the dark bedroom when Buckdun came in. Baldwin took the cigar from his mouth and poked several bills toward Buckdun. Buckdun picked them up and, after a glance, pocketed them.
“Flint,” Baldwin said, “and I will double the ante.”
“No.”
“May I ask why?”
“He’s too smart, and he has no pattern.”
“Pattern?”
“Of living,” Buckdun replied impatiently. “He isn’t fixed anywhere, he doesn’t belong anywhere, you can’t count on his being any particular place. A man who works somewhere, lives somewhere, has friends he visits or who owns something — they are the easy ones. But Flint is without a pattern. Such men are difficult and they are dangerous.”
“Three thousand.”
“No. Not for any price. Why should I? I play it safe, I do very well. In a few years I shall retire and I’ll have enough for my own outfit, far from here.”
Baldwin rubbed out his cigar. He was angry, and he was worried. Saxon and Strett had done nothing, and he was afraid they would do nothing. And Flint had to die.
It was a matter of first importance now, for with Flint dead, it would be a simple matter to get his deal with the railroad working again. Old Chivington could influence Lottie into helping and they could, between them, come off with something.
But Flint must die … even if Baldwin killed him himself.
Chapter 14
NO ONE in Alamitos doubted that trouble was impending. Red Dolan polished glasses with a wary eye on the five Baldwin riders. At the front of the bar Milt Ryan and Rockley stood talking in low tones, occasionally drinking. Milt had hunted wolves and mountain lions so long he had taken on some of their characteristics. Rockley was not one to side-step a difficulty. All the ingredients were present but one, and that was supplied by the arrival of Pete Gaddis. Until then the Baldwin men had not identified Ryan and Rockley.
Down the street in front of Doc McGinnis’ office, Julius Bent considered the situation. A big, serious man, known for his unfailing good nature as well as his great strength
, Bent had come to town with Nancy and the others.
Nancy had gone to the hotel for supper. Should he go there and stand by in case she needed him, or should he get the boys together and be ready to leave?
Scott and Otero were at the store loading a buckboard with supplies, and few of the townspeople were visible. Julius Bent realized the situation was explosive.
When Nancy Kerrigan entered the dining room of the Grand the only person present was a beautiful girl with red-gold hair, dressed in the height of fashion. Faintly curious, Nancy glanced at her and was startled to find the girl staring at her with undisguised hostility.
The waitress came to Nancy for her order and called her by name, for Nancy had been coming to the Grand from the day it opened. When the waitress started for the kitchen, Lottie got to her feet and approached the table.
“Miss Kerrigan, is it? I am Lottie Kettleman.”
“How do you do? Would you like to sit down? It is rather lonely eating by oneself.”
Lottie seated herself and studied Nancy with shrewd, appraising eyes.
Puzzled, Nancy tried to make conversation. “Have you been in Alamitos long?”
“Are you trying to be funny?”
“No.” Nancy replied coolly. “What is it you want?”
“I said I was Lottie Kettleman.” She paused. “I am the wife of James T. Kettleman.”
“No doubt that is very important, but I am afraid I do not understand what it is you want?”
Lottie was growing angry, but at the same time she began to doubt if what she had suspected were true. Nancy Kerrigan was obviously puzzled.
“You know my husband, I believe. In fact, you have been spending a good deal of time together.”
“You are mistaken. I devote my time to my ranch, and I have almost no social life. I do not know any James T. Kettleman.”
“But you know a Jim Flint.”
Nancy stiffened ever so slightly. “Of course. I believe everyone in Alamitos at least knows who he is. He has — shall I say, he has attracted attention? Several times he has been concerned with ranch business. That is all I know of him.”
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