‘Good day, Mr Hart. God’s blessing on you for your kindness and hospitality.’
‘Sure.’
Hart flicked at Clay’s reins and touched his spurs to her flanks and set off between the aspens and back on to the trail towards the valley.
Edwards watched him disappear from sight, unloaded his weapon and returned shell and gun to their respective pockets. After a few moments he, too, set off on the downward trail.
Chapter Two
Sterling City, Creek City - all over the south-west there were two-bit places that didn’t amount to more than a plateful of beans and all of them taking the name of city as though that would give them a dignity and a status they couldn’t otherwise hope for. A handful of buildings, adobes or sod-houses, a spring or a well and all you needed then was someone who could write well enough to set the name up on a board and hammer it into the ground. After that it depended on a whole lot of things whether the place grew and prospered or withered away and died - became the ghost of a town, the ghost of one man’s idea.
Creek City seemed to be doing better than many towns Hart had seen; certainly better than most settlements inside the vast and largely lawless area known as Indian Territory.
Over to the east things weren’t so bad due to the efforts of Hanging Judge Parker at Fort Smith. He did his best to keep his hangman in action winter or summer, stretching the necks of any desperado that was unfortunate enough to stand in the dock before him.
There was a United States Marshal named Fagan, James F. Fagan, who worked the territory under the Judge’s eagle eye and saw to it that the good Judge had no shortage of custom. Fagan was a good lawman in his own way, straight and hard. Hart had worked for him as a deputy - until things had got to the point where Hart had thrown the marshal’s badge back in his face and ridden out. Since that time he’d kept out of Fagan’s way and he hoped Fagan would keep out of his.
Here to the west it was a rare sight to meet up with one of the marshal’s deputies and what law there was tended to be what men took it into their own hands to make. Which suited Wes Hart fine.
The main reason Creek City was thriving was the closeness of the Dodge City Cattle Trail which wound up through Texas and across the Cheyenne and Arapaho lands towards the markets of the cow towns in Kansas. In the last couple of years the number of herds being driven north on this trail or the Trader’s Trail or Chisholm Cattle Trail had grown almost out of hand.
The town had grown to meet the herder’s needs. Which meant all manner of feedstuffs and supplies, saloons and eating houses, livery stables, barbers and saddlers, an apothecary’s and, in no way least, a whorehouse.
When Hart rode in the afternoon was settling into dusk and the light had faded enough for it to be possible to see clearly the flame of the kerosene lantern that burned outside the saloon. A couple of wagons trundled along in the opposite direction, one loaded with sacks of flour and the other bearing nothing more than a barefoot kid sucking on a lollypop and swinging his legs over the end of the tailboard.
Horses were tied up at intervals down the sides of the main street and men stood on the boardwalk in small groups passing the time of day, maybe sharing a pipe or two of tobacco before going to the saloon for a hand of poker and a beer.
Two women with parasols went slowly past the dress shop, turning their heads in the direction of the clothes laid out in the window.
Someone called out to Hart and he nodded to a man he half-recognized but not more. He rode on down and turned left off the street towards Ben Clarke’s new Livery Stable. The old one had been burned down when Hart had clashed with Crazy John Carter.
Clarke wasn’t there, but the black who worked for him was and he walked clumsily forward as Hart dismounted - clumsily on account of one leg being missing from the knee down and its place taken by a wooden stump - and took the reins of the grey mare.
‘Look after her good.’
‘Sure will, Mr Hart. You stayin’ long this time?’
‘Depends. Take care of her anyway.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Hart unfastened his saddlebags and pulled the Henry clear from its scabbard; he threw the bags over his left shoulder, gripped the rifle in his left hand and walked back towards the main street. Dust scuffed up from the low heels of his boots and the rowels of his spurs made a small jangling sound as he lengthened his stride.
Milly Cooper’s boarding house was down at the southern edge of the town and it was distinguished by sporting both clean sheets and a tin bath that was so fashioned that you sat up in it and soaked yourself at the same time.
Milly herself was a spinster woman of anything between forty and fifty years who treated all men with avid suspicion and looked at them through her steel-rimmed spectacles as though she feared they’d contaminate both her and her house. Maybe that was why she was so fastidious about having her lodgers bath often and bed down between freshly laundered sheets.
She peered at Hart when she opened the door and acknowledged that she recognized him with a bird-like dip of the head and a curt word of greeting.
‘Staying long?’ she inquired as Hart followed her up the carpeted stairs.
‘Depends,’ Hart answered and earned himself another suspicious look for doing so.
The house smelt of lavender. Hart couldn’t figure out if that was due to the polish Milly Cooper used on the furniture or if she kept little bags of the stuff, dried, inside the cupboards and wardrobes. Possibly she sprinkled lavender water all over herself after she’d bathed.
He looked at her in the doorway and smiled at the thought.
‘And what are you so amused by?’ she asked with the sharpness of sour apples.
‘Well, Milly,’ he replied in a lazy voice. ‘I was just wonderin’ what that fine body of yours looked like when it was stripped of all that whalebone and taffeta an’ stuff you keep it wrapped up in.’
Her mouth opened wide, the lips forming a perfect O. The only sound to emerge was a strained hissing, like she was having difficulty catching her breath. After several seconds she gave up and spun round on her heels, slamming the door shut so that it vibrated noisily in the frame.
Hart laughed and went to the door, opening it again. He glimpsed her greying hair beyond the banister rail and heard the soft, hurried tread of her feet on the stairs.
‘I’m thinkin’ of takin’ a bath, Milly, you want to scrub my back?’
Another door slammed loudly below and then there was silence - except for Hart’s chuckle. Yes, it was going to be a good night; one to remember. He took a clean shirt from his bags, the only one he had, and draped it over the end of the bed in the hope that some of the creases might drop out while he was getting himself spruced up.
Before very long he was sitting in Milly Cooper’s tin bath with a glass of whiskey in his right hand and a woman in his mind and it wasn’t Milly Cooper. He was wondering what it was that attracted him to Kate Stein and deciding that it was more than her undoubted good looks. It was her independence. The fact that she’d made it clear right from the start that she could take him or leave him. In fact, taking him was the one thing she’d so far refused to do and leaving him was a thing she’d proved very good at. But beyond that Kate had showed that she cared for him enough to look after him when he’d got shot in the back the time Crazy John Carter and his men had come into town looking for him. Other times they’d spent evenings, parts of them anyway, talking about all manner of things - Kate drinking chilled white wine and just occasionally touching his arm with the back of her hand, letting her fingers brush against his thigh. Gestures that said okay, I know you’re a man and an attractive one and someday, some night...
At least, that was what Hart reckoned them to mean and up to the present he’d been happy enough to let the idea float around in his mind while he took his needs and pleasures with one or other of Kate’s girls.
Evie, now, small breasts with dark, round nipples like liquorice root, small, dark eyes...
Hart d
rank a little of the whiskey and tried to dismiss the image from his mind. No sense in hurrying things along too fast.
Less than half an hour later he was back on the street, heels clipping the boardwalk as he headed for the saloon. He’d put on his clean blue shirt, wearing a light leather vest over it; straight dark brown pants hung outside his boots, held tight at his waist by a slim leather belt. His gunbelt was heavier and wider, the buckle large and dull, square. The gun that rode snugly inside the holster was a Colt Peacemaker -45 caliber with a mother-of-pearl grip which had the struggling figures of an eagle and a snake carved on to it. No matter how hard the snake tried, there was no doubt which one was winning.
Hart heard the music when he was still a block away. Piano and banjo playing a tune that he didn’t recognize and couldn’t be certain the two musicians did either.
There were more people on the street, more horses tethered in line. Men stepped around him as he strode towards the source of the music. The light outside burned brightly now, clearly. Hart pushed open the doors and stepped into the noise and smoke and hustle. A few men turned round to see who’d come in, but only a few. Most were too intent upon the cards held in their hand, the glass to their lips, the girl whose stockings were smooth against their ringer ends.
The bar was to the right of the room and ran most of its length. A plain glass mirror was fixed to the wall behind it and Hart recalled that the last time he’d been in the place there had been a naked woman painted on the mirror then in use. That one had been shot to smithereens, the woman with it. The two bartenders were the same, though, one tall and thin, the other short and fat; both men now were occupied with serving the customers stretched along the counter before them.
The piano was set against the opposite wall, the stoop-backed man playing it sitting with his head nodding in time to the rhythm and his right foot angled sharply away and tapping. The banjo player sat on a wooden chair, one leg crossed over the other, instrument resting in his lap.
Towards the rear of the room there was a game of black jack in progress, a couple of tables of poker and what looked to be a new roulette wheel.
Hart moved to the bar, easing his way between a couple of cowboys and slapping his hand down on to the counter.
‘Whiskey.’
The tall barkeep pushed a couple of glasses of frothy beer along the surface of the bar and picked up a clean glass from the shelf behind, doing this without needing to look, just as he lifted the whiskey bottle from under the counter in the same practiced way.
‘Ain’t seen you around for a while,’ he said as he took Hart’s money.
‘That’s right.’
‘Stayin’ long?’
‘Maybe.’
Hart downed half the measure of whiskey and glanced quickly to his right as an arm pushed against his side.
‘Hey, how ’bout usin’ that bottle over here?’
The speaker was young, tousle-haired, a broken nose incongruous in the center of his otherwise unremarkable face. He was wearing a plaid shirt and wide leather chaps over his pants; a Remington .44 was holstered on his left side behind the flap of leather.
Hart looked away and finished his drink.
‘Another,’ he said and the tall barkeep leaned over and poured a shot of whiskey from the bottle at the same time as he finished drawing a glass of beer with his other hand.
‘Jesus! What’s a man have to do to get served in this place?’ demanded the cowboy with the broken nose aggressively.
Hart ignored him and tasted his drink: the bartender ignored him and moved towards the far end of the bar. The shorter, fatter barman was occupied at the end nearest to the door.
The cowboy grabbed at an empty bottle, seizing it by the neck and lifting it above his head, bringing it down against the bar edge with a hard swing. The base of the bottle flew off in a piece and smashed into a row of glasses on the shelf in front of the mirror; the sides shattered outwards, spraying glass in every direction, some of it hitting the back of Hart’s hand, several fragments going into his whiskey.
The cowboy knocked the man on his right out of the way and lunged towards the tall bartender, thrusting the jagged bottleneck in the direction of his face.
‘You get me a fuckin’ drink right now or you’re goin’ to be swallowin’ this like it was candy!’
The area around the bar was stilled into silence. Everyone stared at the man with the bottle. Except Hart, who was looking at the short barkeep edging cautiously to where he had a sawn-off shotgun stashed under the counter. Hart knew that within seconds rather than minutes the weapon was going to be pulled into sight and the fat man would likely be blasting away.
He could see that the cowboy’s left hand was close to the butt of the Remington. The taller bartender had so far made no move. The shooting wasn’t far off and if Hart didn’t duck back fast he was liable to be catching some of that buckshot himself.
Instead he closed in behind the cowboy so that when the man’s left hand went to draw the pistol from its holster he found its path stopped by a fierce grip as Hart’s fingers closed about his wrist.
‘What the hell?’
He swung round towards Hart, surprise and anger mixed on his face. The bottle arched in the direction of Hart’s head, slanting sharply, aiming for his eyes. Hart ducked his head backwards at the last moment and chopped down on the inside of the cowboy’s right arm. With a shout of pain, the bottle was dropped to the floor.
Hart jerked the left arm high behind the cowboy’s back and as his head lurched forward, eyes already watering, he punched him twice - once in the stomach and once in the mouth, immediately below his broken nose. The cowboy’s upper lip split open at the center and his teeth bit down into the tip of his tongue sheering a quarter of an inch away.
Hart let go of his left arm and pulled the pistol from his holster, pushing the man back against the bar counter hard. He threw the gun to the tall bartender, who caught it and cocked it with the same precision and lack of fuss that he poured drinks. The fat barkeep had the sawn-off leveled at the cowboy from the other end of the bar.
The cowboy spat at the floor and most of what he spat was blood.
‘Who the fuck are you? What the hell you do that for?’
His eyes were not still, nervous; his mouth was slightly open and bubbles of blood had splattered on to his face as he’d spoken, splattered and burst.
Hart regarded him coldly. ‘Could be I was stoppin’ you gettin’ cut in half by that sawn-off there. Could be I just wanted to get me a drink in peace without some kid comin’ on like a desperado. Either way, don’t matter no more. It’s done.’
The cowboy spat again. Men on either side of them went back to what they were doing, certain now that it was over. Hart noticed the piano again and wondered if it had in fact stopped earlier or whether he’d simply shut it out of his mind. The bartender with the shotgun moved closer.
‘On your way,’ he said, almost pleasantly considering the weapon in his hands.
The cowboy snarled at him and took a couple of paces away from the bar. ‘How ’bout my gun?’
The fat man shook his head slowly, a suggestion of a smile lighting up behind his eyes.
‘Damn! I ain’t goin’ to...’
‘You ain’t in no position to argue,’ put in Hart. ‘You’ll get your gun back tomorrow when you’ve calmed down. You take it now an’ you’re goin’ to be liquorin’ yourself up somewhere else and bargin’ back in here later on wanting to face off me an’ half the world.’
He looked at the cowboy steadily: ‘Forget it.’
The cowboy held his breath for several seconds, glancing from Hart to the two barkeeps, to the faces of those men who were still paying him any attention. Then he exhaled slowly, still a little nervously, and turned about and pushed his way out of the saloon.
Wes Hart shrugged and stepped back to his place at the bar. The taller of the two men behind it filled his glass without being asked.
‘On the house,’ he
said with a grin.
‘Sure.’
Hart downed the whiskey in two swallows.
‘Another? You saved us a lot of bother.’
Hart shook his head. ‘Later, maybe. Right now I think I’ll step over the road an’ see what’s happening over there.’
The two men exchanged a quick glance. Maybe one of them should say something to him, but what was the point? He’d find out soon enough.
Hart nodded at the barmen and turned away, several of the others standing around looking up to watch him as he went, talking about what they’d just seen. Already embroidering it with the kind of embellishments that turn events into tales, facts into fictions.
Hart stopped on the sidewalk and checked to make sure the cowboy wasn’t waiting up for him and then, satisfied, the double doors still swinging lightly behind him, he stepped off into the street.
Chapter Three
The door to the brothel was solid wood, painted green. A brass knocker in the shape of a naked woman had been set at its center. At waist height there was a segmented brass handle. Hart ignored the former and turned the handle, going in off the boards of the sidewalk and pushing the door shut behind him.
It was the same as before - same furniture, same smell that was a mixture of cigars and sweet perfume. Paraffin lamps hung from the ceiling in polished brass brackets above the chairs and settees, upholstered in green and silver stripes, pink and cream. The rosewood tables shone with polish and the metal cuspidors gleamed as if they were made from silver. A number of girls sat at intervals around the large room, mostly wearing loose open robes over silky-seeming underthings. Some of them sat with men, a few by themselves. These looked up as Hart entered and stared at him openly. One girl, wearing a lime green negligée and smoking a cigarette, her long, black hair coiled over one bare shoulder, smiled down at him from the stairway at the center of the room and beckoned him with the hand that wasn’t holding the cigarette.
Hart turned away from her towards the bar in the corner. The figure he expected to see there, a light-toned Negro wearing a striped apron, smiled as if pleased to see him and set one hand to the bottle on the small, curved counter.
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