A Century of Great Western Stories

by A Century of Great Western Stories (retail) (epub)

  We were sitting in the kitchen with the scent of bread sweet on the air and a jay on the window ledge and the breeze soft and warm on the underside of the curtains.

  And I didn’t know what to do.

  I just went over to her and knelt down beside her and took her tiny hand and held it gently as I could. I kept saying over and over, “Oh, Gillian, come on now; oh, Gillian, please,” and things like that, but neither words nor touches helped, she just sat there and cried without sound, her frail body shaking with her grief.

  And then Annie was in the doorway saying. “Did Chase hurt you, Mommy?”

  Gillian got herself together quickly, brought apron to nose and eyes to daub tears, and cleared her throat sternly to speak. “No, hon, he didn’t hurt me.”

  “I wouldn’t like him if he hurt you, Mommy.”

  “It’s fine, honey, really. You go on back outside now.”

  Annie looked at me for a time, confused and ready to hate me if Gillian said to, and then turned and slowly left the doorway.

  We sat in silence again until she said, “I don’t want you to come out here anymore.”

  “Oh, God, Gillian. You don’t know how long I’ve waited to—”

  “I was hoping prison would change you. Force you to grow up and forget about Reeves.” She sounded as if she were about to start crying again. “But is hasn’t. I was just fooling myself all those years while I waited.”

  I wanted to point out that she’d been doing more than “waiting,” what with having a daughter during that time. But the words died in my throat, and I felt guilty for making Gillian carry on this way.

  She put her head down on the table and started crying again, her slender shoulders shaking miserably. I leaned over and kissed her on the back of the head and slipped out through the gathering blue shadows of the afternoon.

  As I walked over to my horse, Annie looked up from combing her pony and said, “Is my mommy still sad?”

  I swung up in the saddle and said, “Right now she is. But if you go in and see her, she won’t be.”

  She nodded solemnly, put down the brush she was using, and set off walking to the ranch house.

  Part 5

  “You got a name, son?”

  “Chase.”

  “You got a first name?”

  “Sorry. Guess people usually call me plain ‘Chase.’ First name’s Robert.”

  “Well, son, I wish I could help you, but I can’t. See that Indian out there on the loading dock?”

  “Yessir.”

  “That sonofabitch does the work of three white men and he don’t complain half as much as they do.”

  “Good worker, huh?”

  “Good? Hell, great. That’s why I don’t need nobody right now. But I tell ya. If you’re around town in three, four weeks, you try me again, ’cause you never can tell.”

  “That’s right. You never can tell.”

  “Good luck, son, you shouldn’t have no problem, big strong young man like you.”

  “Yessir. And thank you, sir.”

  That’s how it went all afternoon. I went up and down the alleys, knocking on the back doors of every business I could find, and it was always the same story. Just hired me somebody last week; or business been a little slow lately; or why don’t ya try down the street, son?

  Near dusk, when I was walking into the lumberyard, I saw Chief Hollister and he gave me a smirk as if he knew that I wasn’t getting anywhere and that I’d been damned foolish to turn down his offer.

  As I had been.

  Part 6

  That night, I sat in a chair next to Annie’s bed reading aloud a book called Standard Fairy Tales. Nearby a kerosene lantern flickered light through the cottage.

  “How tall was Jack’s beanstalk?”

  “Didn’t you already ask me that?”

  She giggled. “Uh-huh.”

  “It was eighty feet tall.”

  “Last time you said it was sixty feet tall.”

  “I lied.”

  She giggled again. “You don’t lie. My mom says you’re a good man.”

  I looked up from my book to Gillian in the rocker in the corner. She was knitting. The rocker squeaked pleasantly back and forth, back and forth, as a slow summer rain pattered on the full-grown leaves of the elm trees on either side of the house.

  “You said I was a good man?” I asked Gillian.

  She smiled her easy smile. “I believe I said something like that, yes.”

  “Well, I just want you to know that I’m mighty grateful. It’s nice to have somebody thinking nice thoughts about me.”

  “Did you really like my roast beef tonight?”

  “I like it very much.”

  “You didn’t think it was tough?”

  “I thought it was tender.”

  “You really mean that?”

  “I really mean that.”

  Truth was, the meat had been tough as hell. Cooking had never been one of Gillian’s strengths. Great baker—breads and rolls and pies—but terrible, terrible cook.

  “I like to close my eyes and hear you read, Chase. I like it as much as Annie does.”

  “I’ll read some more.”

  “I remember when you wrote and told me—when you were away, I mean—how that man taught you to read.”

  “When you were in the Army?” Annie said.

  “Yes,” I looked over at Gillian again. “When I was in the Army.”

  “Tell me about the Army. You promised.”

  “When we have a little more time, I’ll tell you.”

  “Don’t we have time now?”

  “Nope.”

  “How come?”

  “Because we’ve got to find out what the giant’s going to do to Jack.”

  “Go on, Chase,” Gillian said. “Annie and I’ll close our eyes and you read.”

  So they closed their eyes and I read.

  LATER ON THAT night, after Annie fell asleep, Gillian and I went down to the willow by the creek that ran in the back of her yard, and made love standing up, the way we used to sometimes in the old days.

  When her dress was down and my pants were up, we walked along the creek listening to the frogs and the crickets and the owls. The rain had stopped and everything smelled minty and fresh in the midnight moon.

  “You never did answer that one letter of mine, Chase.”

  “Which letter was that?”

  “The one where I asked you if you’d ever say you loved me.”

  “I guess I figured you knew.”

  We walked a little more in silence. Stars filled the sky and everything smelled cool and fresh after the rain.

  “Annie sure likes you.”

  “I sure like her.”

  “Says she hopes she sees you some more.”

  “Hope I see her some more.”

  We came to the small leg of river that ran below a railroad bridge. The water was silver in the moonlight.

  I skipped rocks across the surface and she laughed and said it was good to see me acting so young; she’d been afraid that prison would make of me what prison had earlier made of an uncle of hers, a scared old man in a thirty-year-old’s body.

  About halfway back to the cabin I said, “Who’s Annie’s father, Gillian?”

  “I was wondering when you’d ask me that.”

  “She’s mine, isn’t she?”

  “Yes,” Gillian said, “yes, she is.”

  Part 7

  Just in case you think that a policeman’s life is filled with the kind of derring-do you read about in yellow-backs or eastern newspapers, consider the fact that I spent my first two days walking all over town handing out circulars that came from Chief Hollister. They read:

  Cleanup notice is hereby given to property owners that all rubbish and disease breeding matter must be removed from their premises at once, or the work will be done by my officers at the owners’ expense. The town board, sitting as a board of health, has ordered all pigsty and other nuisances to be abated. This o
rder will be rigidly enforced.

  (Signed) Chief of Police, Ev Hollister

  As you might expect, humans being humans, very little in the town was cleaned up by the owners, so most of us men, fine and shiny in our blue serge uniform coats with the bright brass buttons and the snug white gloves—most of us had to do the cleaning up. The men called it the “pig shit detail,” and you got on it by drawing the smallest straw. I got on it twice in three weeks, which meant that Gillian had to do some extra hard cleaning of my uniform. But I don’t mean to sound as if I was unhappy. I wasn’t. My second weekend as an officer, Gillian and I got married, and my third weekend we sat Annie down and told her that I was her father and that we’d all be living together now forever. Annie cried and Gillian cried and I tried not to, but as I hugged them to me, I couldn’t help myself. I cried at least a little bit, too. The hell of it was, I wasn’t even sure why we were all crying. It was something the two females understood, not me.

  In my first three weeks as an officer, I did not get into a gunfight, ward off an Indian attack, save a stagecoach from plunging into a ravine, rush an infant from a burning building, or even help an old lady across a busy street.

  What I did do was spend from five in the afternoon till midnight, six nights a week, walking around the town and making sure that everything was locked up tight. Because what you had in a town like this, a mining town where bitter men drank a lot, were robberies. So my job was to walk a six-block area every night and rattle the doors on most of the businesses. I had been given the right to shoot on sight any burglar who offered me any resistance at all. I had also been given the key to most businesses so that in case I had to get inside, suspecting that a burglar might have hidden in there during business hours, I didn’t have to bother Hollister or any of the merchants who were all home, presumably sleeping. At first, having the keys made me nervous—I’d never been one for much responsibility—but then as Gillian said over Sunday dinner, “You should be proud the merchants have that kind of trust in you, Chase.”

  Somewhere during those first few weeks, I gave up any notion of getting back at Reeves. I had convinced myself that Gillian was right, my brothers would have wanted me to pick up my life after prison and do something decent with it. Every once in a while I’d glimpse Reeves swaggering down the street but I’d just turn my head and look the other way. I had a wife and daughter now and they were all that mattered.

  Summer became Indian summer and Indian summer became autumn. By now most people in town knew me and seemed to like me. I enjoyed the feeling.

  “THAT UNIFORM LOOKS good on you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m glad I spotted you in the restaurant that day.” It was just afternoon, and you could smell the whiskey on him but you couldn’t exactly say he was drunk yet.

  I nodded. “Me too, Chief.”

  I’d been going to the back for a drink of water, passing Hollister’s office on the way. He’d called me in and started talking, sitting behind his desk with his feet up and his hands folded on his stomach.

  He smiled. “Merchants’re always asking me how I think you’re doing.”

  “The keys?”

  He nodded. “Yup. They want to make sure you’re the kind of man they can trust. They like you and they want to keep it that way.”

  “So do I.”

  “We had a fellow here—three, four years ago, I guess—good fellow, too, least he was when he started, but by the end he was breaking into the stores himself and then reporting all these burglaries.”

  “He might have been good but he doesn’t sound too smart.”

  Hollister started to say something but then peeked out his window and saw a fancy black surrey pull up outside the two-story redbrick police station. The surrey belonged to his wife. She was always out and about in it. She had the kind of red-haired society-lady good looks that went just fine with a surrey like this one, and so naturally people resented her and whispered tales of her supposed infidelity. The police officers especially liked to tell such tales. It gave them a way to get back at Hollister, who always made it clear that he was at least one cut above us. He had been brought here by the merchants, and it was with the merchants he was friends. I’d even seen him eat lunch up to Casey’s Restaurant with Reeves.

  A minute later his eyes strayed from me and fixed on something over my shoulder. He smiled in a way that made him look ten years younger.

  “Come on in and meet officer Chase,” Hollister said in a smooth social voice.

  I turned and saw her. She was a beauty all right, cat-green eyes to complement the silken red hair, nose and mouth and neck classical as a piece of sculpture. As she came into the room, she brought a scent of sweet cachet with her. In her crisp white blouse and full, dark green skirt, her hair caught up with a comb at the back of her head, she looked like a very beautiful schoolmarm.

  “H-How are you d-doing?” she said to her husband.

  That was the dirtiest part of the joke about Mrs. Hollister. Here you had all this beauty and grace and poise—she’d been schooled back East—and yet it was all marred by her very bad stutter, something she was clearly ashamed of. A lot of beautiful women like to flirt. They are saucy of eye and brazen of gait. But not Claire Hollister. She always walked with her eyes downcast, moving quickly, as if she wished she were invisible.

  “Just a minute, hon,” Hollister said, taking her hand and stroking it gently. “I’ll finish with Chase here and you can tell me about your day.”

  Hollister was a hard man and a dangerous man and a proud man, yet right now, speaking so softly to his wife, I heard real tenderness in him and I was almost shocked by it. He had a locked room upstairs where he took prisoners at night after he’d been drinking awhile. There was no tenderness in him then. None at all.

  “I just wanted to say you’re doing a good job, Chase, and that I’m glad you got married. A man needs some responsibility. Otherwise he’s not much better than a hobo.”

  It was like an awards ceremony, all the nice words, only there wasn’t any plaque.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I turned toward the door. Claire Hollister nervously got out of my way. She was a skittish woman, which made no sense with that beautiful, sad face of hers.

  “N-Nice to m-meet y-you,” she said, and dropped her eyes, ashamed of herself.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, and left.

  Part 8

  With all the walking I did, I was pretty tired when I got home every night around one o’clock, the honky-tonk piano music still in my ears, the beery scent of the taverns I patrolled still on me. I’d eat the light meal Gillian had set out for me and then I’d go into Annie’s room and kneel down by her bed and just look at her little face made silver by the moonlight, the stray damp wisp of blond hair making her look even younger than she was, and then I’d close my eyes and say the best prayer I knew how, a prayer that Annie and Gillian would always be safe in the invisible arms of the Lord, and a prayer that Hollister would never find out about my prison record and that I’d go on to be a good policeman who eventually got promoted. And then I’d lean over and kiss Annie on the forehead, her kid skin warm to my lips, and then I’d go into our bedroom and strip down to my underwear and climb in next to Gillian and hold her gently and think of how long she’d waited for me and how true she’d been and how her faith had given me this new life of mine, and all I could pray for then was that I would never give in to my worst self and go after Reeves.

  THE FIRST TIME I ever saw Lundgren and Mars they were stepping off the train just about suppertime of an early November evening. Kids and dogs ran down the dark streets toward mothers calling them in for the night.

  I don’t suppose anybody else would have made anything special of them. They were just two middle-aged men in dark business suits, each carrying a carpetbag, each wearing a bowler, one tall and thin, the other short and heavyset. They stood on the depot platform looking around at the town. They tried very hard to give the
impression that they were important men.

  I was making my early rounds. After some months as a policeman, I’d already developed flat feet, bunions, and a suspicious eye for everybody and everything, and that included these two strangers.

  I decided to follow them. They went down the boardwalk past the noise of player pianos and the smells of cigars and the laughter of whores, up past the livery where the Mex was rubbing down a horse that had just been brought in, and down past the gunsmith’s.

  I stayed half a block behind them, rattling doorknobs as I went, making sure the town was locked up tight. In the hills there was talk of a miner’s strike. Socialism was just starting to get a grip on the miners. Hollister had told us to watch out for trouble.

  This particular night, the two strangers ended their walk at the front door of the Whitney Hotel, the town’s best hotel, and a place that always boasts of two presidents having slept in its hallowed beds.

  When I’d given them sufficient time to find rooms for themselves, I walked up to the massive registration desk, turned the guest register around and stared at the names I’d been looking for.

  “I don’t remember inviting you to look at our registration book,” said Hartley, the night man. Because he wears a cravat and attends all the musicales at the opera house, he seems to find himself superior to people like me.

  But by now I didn’t care what he’d said. I had their names and that was all I wanted.

  “Next time I’d appreciate it if you’d ask me first,” he said, petulant as ever.

  “I’ll be sure to do that,” I said, being just sarcastic enough so he’d get the message but not so sarcastic that he could say anything.

  Half an hour later I sat on the stoop of the police station, taking my dinner break.

  In chill evening, the first stars showing, I heard the jingle of a bicycle bell and here came Gillian with Annie up on the handlebars, bringing me my dinner as they did every once in awhile as sort of a special treat.

  “It’s getting nippy,” Gillian said, handing me down a roast beef sandwich and an apple. “You can smell winter in the wind sometimes now.”

  Annie came over and sat down next to me. She couldn’t get used to the idea yet that I was really her father.