Monte Walsh

by Les Weil

  Doc had come into the Territory fifteen years before, no youngster even then, tired of an east coast practice inherited from his father that consisted chiefly of prescribing unnecessary but soothing pills for elderly ladies. He had been aiming at Albuquerque and a possible post at a sanatorium there and along in the night at a stage relay station on the way several lank grim horsemen appeared out of the dark demanding that the driver take a hurry call for a doctor on to the next town and the driver spat out his tobacco quid and remarked he could do better than that and before Doc was quite sure what was happening he and his little bag were hustled out of the coach and onto a horse and he was being led at a pace that jolted his back teeth through clean starlit distances to the few scattered squat shapes of the buildings of a tiny village lost somewhere in the immensity of the big land and then in the light of two smoky lamps in a small smelly saloon he was probing for a bullet deep in the chest of a young cowpuncher he would have said should still be in school and instead had just had a pint of whisky poured down his throat and was muttering as the overdose of alcohol took him: "Don't take no mind of my hollerin' an' thrashin', Doc, just yank the son of a bitch out." `

  The bullet had cracked a rib and grazed the heart besides doing damage to a lung and it was three days before Doc could tell himself with any certainty that his patient would live very likely to stop other bullets at other times in other places. During those days, unable to avoid such things, pinned to them by proximity, he sewed up several wicked knife slashes in two swarthy-skinned men who seemed proud of needing such attention and forgot their quarrel in the common enterprise of insisting upon paying for the stitches and pooled their resources to present him with a goat and he lanced a big abscess on the rump of a mule belonging to a man named Holloway who had recently started a livery stable and he was told he now had credit coming to him there and he treated for snakebite a mangy yellow dog and acquired a worshipping shadow in the form of the black-haired eightyear-old owner of the dog and he set and splinted with pieces of barrel stave the broken arm of another young cowpuncher who came riding in with the arm hanging limp and pressed a pair of spurs on him in payment and he found himself looking often into the distances of the harsh bitter beautiful land and speculating on the powers of the hot chili, inescapably mixed into the only food available at the one little cafe, to clear the phlegm from a clogged throat and loosen congestion in the sinuses. Somewhere along the line, probably that first

  night when he was all but kidnapped from the coach, he must have complained that his trunk was still in the boot. The clothes in it were unimportant, but the books and instruments were not. He was inquiring about ways and means of getting on to Albuquerque after it when a man he vaguely recognized as one of the kidnappers came into town driving a wagon and in the wagon was his trunk and tied to the tailgate by a lead rope was a tough little cow pony. "Yours, ain't it?" said the man, reaching back to pat the trunk. "I an' the boys been chasin' it an' roped it off up by Tijeras. We're a mite low on cash these days, Doc, but we figger mebbe you can use that there hoss." Doc was confronting that situation of increasing livestock supposed to be his now when one of the men whose slashes he had sewed hobbled up grinning apologetically and talked fast in mixed Spanish and English which the wagon man translated as meaning that this here greaser's woman was down with her sixth and she had dropped the other five with no trouble at all but this one this time was bad very bad and perhaps el senor medico would find it in his great goodness to do something.

  Doc Frantz had sighed and picked up his little bag. Across the way was an abandoned adobe storeroom, doorway and windows blank but walls and roof still sound. "Put the trunk in there," he had said ...

  Doc sat in his favorite chair and looked out through the glass that had been freighted in long ago by a grateful but otherwise penniless patient and set into a new frame in the blank window space by another. After fifteen years he had long since stopped fooling himself by thinking he would get on to Albuquerque someday or would even want to do anything that foolish. He had $213 in the town's new and only small bank and would have difficulty making anyone accept any of those dollars in exchange for anything he might want in town and the high dry dusty climate of this incomprehensible country had given him the apparent wrung-out constitution of a desert burro and he had recently graduated with honors of appetite from red chili to the fiery green and wondered how anyone could enjoy a meal without it.

  He sat on his favorite chair that had been repaired with hand-carved spindles by another patient and looked out at the major points of occasional sudden interest in the little town of Harmony that was no longer quite so little, organized now, beginning to take on some shape with a few new buildings beginning to outline a central plaza and a few new streets beginning to straggle out a few blocks. Not much of a place, an unwary visitor from elsewhere might have said. Just a sleepy little town drowsing in late morning sunlight. But to one of his intimate acquaintance with it, the omens were unmistakable. Angled across the plaza from his window the windows of Old Man Engle's Harmony House wore the highly unusual sheen of a recent washing and the wide porch and two-story front had their first fresh coat of paint since the original of forty-three years before. This was mid-week and yet several wagons were drawn up by the two general stores, having brought families that usually showed only on Saturdays. A surprising number of cow ponies for this time of day drooped along tie rails and every now and then another rider or two drifted in and dismounted and looped reins and disappeared through swinging doors.

  Doc Frantz sat by his window and several hundred feet away, in the relatively dim interior of Thornburg's nameless little saloon around a corner from the two slightly more respectable emporiums of liquid refreshment on the plaza, Chalkeye Ferrero hoisted a drink. "Whoosh an' hello an' crack the whip," he remarked to sundry of his fellows. "Maybe us horny hoptoads're out of place at doings like today. I seen three plug hats an' a topper an' a pair of spats over at the hotel. Not to mention a frilly female what looked two holes through me without even seein' me. But I reckon we got to be on hand when ol' Chet gets hisself hitched."

  A stagecoach crawled out of distance to the northeast, marked by its plume of dust, and grew larger and seemed to pick up speed as it approached and it rolled to a creaking stop at the station a half block off the plaza along what had been and still qualified as the main street. Two more obvious aliens from the mysterious fashionable regions far to the east,

  a man and a woman, climbed carefully out, glancing apprehensively about at the half dozen swarthy-skinned onlookers who had silently materialized out of nowhere to see the sight.

  A wrinkled whisky-mottled old face with scraggly chin whiskers and topped by a few tufts of scraggly gray hair appeared in the coach window. "Snakes an' tarant'las an' centeepedes," it said. The woman shook her skirt vigorously, ignoring the remark, and opened and raised a dainty parasol over her flowered hat and veil while the man tried vainly to slap the dust out of his clothes and they moved along the street, stepping cautiously around holes in the board sidewalk, to the Harmony House and were greeted on the porch by Clark Aloysius Engle himself in frock coat and checkered vest and high starched collar.

  Sugar Wyman and Dally Johnson, ambling past somewhat slicked and scrubbed with packages containing new shirts under arms, stopped to watch Old Man Engle escort his latest visitors inside the old hotel.

  "If you was to ask me," said Sugar, "I'd ante Chet'll sure have to be halter-broke if he's goin' to travel much with that kind of comp'ny."

  Back across the plaza behind his window Doc Frantz turned his head and grunted something resembling a greeting as Sheriff MacKnight came in through the front doorway and closed the door after him to shut out the glare and shoved his own favorite chair into secondary position by the table and eased his big bulk into it. Together in habitual companion­able silence they looked out the window.

  "Interesting," murmured Doc. "An interesting social mixture. Relatives and guests of the bride one dist
inct variety. Friends of the groom another. Quite another."

  Into view along the other side of the plaza came a small neat stocky bay, tired and dusty, and stopped by the tie rail of a low adobe building with the simple sign Harness Shop and the man in the saddle in plain dark dusty suit and wide­brimmed wide-banded sombrero was stout and swarthy­skinned and black-mustached and he swung down with easy grace despite his weight and went into the shop.

  "Chavez," said Sheriff MacKnight. "You owe me a dollar, Doc. You still don't know 'em like I do. Better'n a hundred twenty miles but he's here. A gathering of the clan."

  "What there is left of it," said Doc Frantz.

  Across the plaza, inside the little shop, Dobe Chavez leaned back against the one small counter and reached to slap the thick thigh of Sunfish Perkins perched on it and looked over and down steadily at old Cal Brennan in his wheelchair. "Ees good," he said, "to woman all right for Chet?"

  "He thinks so," said Cal. "An' that's all that matters."

  Back across the plaza again, behind their window, Doc Frantz and Sheriff MacKnight turned heads and grunted greetings as Justice Coleman closed the front door behind him and shifted the one remaining chair to his regular position. He took cigars from a pocket and passed them. "Secrets," he said, settling into the chair. "Just revealed. I made out the license a while ago. Mary's middle name is Witherspoon. Rollins's is Arthur."

  From one of the straggling side streets came an old deep­chested leggy dun and the man in the saddle was a lean length of rawhide beginning to thicken a little at last around the middle and his worn old boots were newly polished and his fresh-washed pants had the press of a night under a mattress and his shirt was new and colorful and a gay silk handkerchief was knotted loosely around his throat and his old wide-brimmed hat had a new beaded band. The dun trotted briskly, spring in each step despite its age, and the man sat flat to the saddle, a part of the horse beneath him, and they angled directly across the plaza and stopped by a tie rail near' the big barnlike structure of the livery stable and the man swung down in one smooth easy motion and looped reins and opened one of the big doors of the stable and disappeared inside.

  "Walsh," said Justice Coleman. "He gave me some business the first day I ever hit this town. He has rarely disappointed me ever since."

  "Right," said Sheriff MacKnight. "I'll lay you another dollar, Doc, the lid blows off something this afternoon. It don't fail often when Monte's in town."

  * * *

  A mangy yellow dog, great-grandson of one once treated for snakebite, wary of the wagons by the stores and of the cow ponies along rails, wandered across the plaza, seeking some shade for siesta. There was none m the relentless glare of the sun almost directly overhead. That provided by the scrawny little trees planted a few weeks before by a committee headed by Chester Arthur Rollins at the urging of his fiancee Mary Witherspoon Engle was thin and speckly and not worthy of the word.

  The dog sniffed the base of the flagpole recently erected in the center of the plaza, displayed mild interest, raised a leg in lazy routine, and wandered on. It shuffled along the front of the livery stable and near one and between the wall and several recently planted lilac bushes found the closest approximation to shade immediately available. It turned around twice and lay down, head on paws. Its eyes closed. They opened and the head rose.

  A sleek grain-fed gray had appeared out of somewhere and was trotting around the plaza. It stopped in front of the livery stable and Sonny Jacobs leaned back in silver-studded saddle to look up at the sign. He pushed his big hat further up his forehead. "And Rollins," he said. The gray trotted on and stopped by Bennie Martinez's Twenty-Four Hour Cafe. Sonny swung down and strolled in.

  The dog's head dropped on its paws. Its eyes closed. The little town of Harmony drowsed in the sun, deceptive, apparently empty of humanity. The dog's eyes opened and it rose to its feet and slunk away around the building in disgust. The two big doors of the stable were creaking open.

  Monte Walsh emerged between them and pushed each in turn all the way back and hooked it to the wall. He disappeared inside. He emerged again on the driving seat of a light wagon drawn by a heavy-set old mule with a scar on its rump. He pulled reins to stop and looked around. "Now where'd that fat-faced baboon go and get to now," he murmured.

  The small door that led into the corner of the building partitioned off inside for an office opened and Chester Arthur Rollins emerged. His square-built solid body was encased in a new brown business suit. His suntanned throat was encircled by an already limp collar on a striped shirt and by a black string tie. His serious round face whose cheeks were beginning to jowl just a bit was topped by a new brown hat with very modest brim.

  "My oh my," said Monte. "You got the look already. What for'd you put on that fool coat?"

  "Just trying to get used to it," said Chet, stepping up to the seat. "She says a man ought to be wearing one when out in public." He pulled up his neatly pressed pants at the knees and settled back on the seat. "A businessman, anyways," he said.

  Monte looked sideways at him and away and clucked to the mule. It waggled one ear, recognized authority along the reins, and leaned lazily into the harness. The wagon moved up the street and around a corner of the plaza.

  "It's not so bad," said Chet. "Keeps out as much heat as it keeps in. Same principle as an Indian and his blanket."

  "You'll be coming down with sunstroke," said Monte. "Mistaking that puny little thing for a hat."

  "Maybe so," said Chet. "But I'll be doing it stylish." He took off the brown hat, turned it over in his hands, grinned, and put it back on. "I don't mind," he said. "It was kind of fun letting her pick it out."

  The wagon turned another corner and was moving along the other side of the plaza, past a onetime adobe storeroom. Chet waved cheerfully at three figures seen dimly through the one wide front window.

  "Walsh and Rollins," said Doc Frantz behind the glass. "You never see one without the other being somewhere handy. A man and his shadow--though I'll be blistered if I've ever figured out which is the man and which the shadow."

  "Two men," said Sheriff MacKnight. "Two good men at anytime in anything whenever the chips are down."

  "With a woman being added," said Justice Coleman.

  The wagon moved on, the mule plodding lazily, expending no more energy than the absolute minimum for movement.

  "Yep," said Chet, amiable, conversational. "I don't mind. Wait'll you see me in the outfit I got for the ceremony."

  "My tongue ain't hanging out," said Monte. He stared straight ahead. "And I'm standing up just like I am now. This is me. Just like now. I ain't climbing into any goddamned monkey suit even if Old Engle's got one might fit."

  The wagon moved on and turned another corner, away from the plaza, along the main street and past the stage station.

  "Have I asked you to?" said Chet gently.

  "No," said Monte. "But she did."

  The wagon stopped in front of the low adobe structure beyond the station, by the open doorway with the sign Freight Office. Chet stared off into distance. "You ever start being anything but just what you are," he said gently, "and I'll kick your teeth in." He jumped down. "Come on. This one's from Hat up in Denver. I got a wire from him saying he can't come himself but he wants you to kiss the bride for him." Chet led in through the doorway.

  "Howdy, Pablo," he said to a short thickset man lying on several bales of hay. "You got another package for me?"

  The man raised himself on one elbow, pointed at a heavy wooden crate, and relaxed again.

  Chet started forward. Stopped. Stared at the legend stenciled on the top of the crate.

  "No," he said. He sat down on a bale of hay and took off the brown hat and rubbed his fore­head. "No," he said. "Not another one of them. We got three already."

  Monte cocked his head, looking. The legend was neat and specific: Empire Stove Company. "What d'you know," he said. "Shucks, you can always put her to work and set up for a bakery. That is, if she can bak
e anything worth eating. Let's get it out of here. That is, if town life ain't making you soft."

  Together they hoisted the crate and took it out and heaved it into the wagon. "Motto of this country," said Chet. "When in doubt, send a stove." He settled himself on the driving seat, pulled up his pants, and took the reins. He clucked to the mule and the wagon turned and rolled alongside the warehouse to the alley behind it. The mule plodded at its own pace and they moved toward the center of town again, past the backs of the staggered buildings along the main street.

  "Yep," said Chet. "Dobe sent one and Doc had one brought in and one of her relatives sent another. We'll have to draw straws which to use."

  "Hold an auction," suggested Monte.

  The wagon moved slowly on.

  "That little house Cal owns on Oak Street," said Chet. "He's having it fixed up. Says Mary and me we're to move in soon as we get back. Says he ain't--he hasn't made any money out of it yet and he isn't ready to break the habit. Says if I try paying him rent for the first year he'll have Mac throw me in jail."

  The wagon moved slowly on.

  "You know," said Chet. "He'd do it too."

  The wagon stopped at the rear of the Harmony House which jutted all the way back to the alley. "Come on," said Chet, jumping down. "You ain't--you haven't seen this." He led up the three steps and through the rear door into what had been the dining room until a larger and more respectable replacement had been extended out the other side of the building. The old room had been emptied of the old things stored in it and the walls repainted and it contained now a rather startling array of items. Three new stoves were side by side along one wall, six Mexican leather-and-cane chairs along the opposite wall. A slick shiny leather-covered davenport claimed one end of the room and on it were piled framed pictures and beside it stood an oval-mirrored combination umbrella stand and hat rack. A long table in the middle of the room, made of two smaller tables pushed together, seemed about to stagger under its load of two full sets of flowered dishes and stacks of linen and towels and a variety of fruit bowls and gilt-edged water pitchers and basins and soap dishes and a silver punch bowl.