by Les Weil
Monte Walsh eased rump down on the top step of the porch and contemplated his handiwork with solemn satisfaction. Shiny black shoes stepped down beside his old boots and striped trousers bent at the knees as Chet Rollins eased down beside him. Together they looked out at the still increasing clamor. The circuit of riders was complete now, strung out all the way around, racing in fine noisy fettle. The yellow dog and three others, unable to resist the contagion, dashed about, erratic, aimless, dodging hoofs, barking their best. Dobe Chavez had joined Sunfish Perkins and the two of them with the aid of a grooved board were launching skyrockets. A wagon, commandeered from beside one of the stores, loaded with yelling black-headed youngsters, streamers of toilet paper trailing behind, Chalkeye Ferrero on the driving seat, careened out and into the racing circuit.
"Well, well," murmured Chet Rollins. "The boys are sure doing themselves proud."
Inside in the lobby his bride stood by the window trying to decide whether to cheer as she might have a few years before or to be shocked into tears as somehow seemed called for now. Near the front doorway Aunt Effie had dashed daringly forward to take Justice Coleman by the arm, impeding his progress to the porch for a better view.
"Stop them," she demanded. "Stop them before they kill somebody!"
"Madam," said Justice Coleman, "I would not think of trying that even if I had a regiment of cavalry behind me. Have you ever tried to stop an avalanche?"
"The sheriff then," she wailed. "I know there's one. I met him."
"Madam," said Doc Frantz, trying to get past to the porch, "if you will bother to look you will see that he has left us to go help with the fireworks."
The gunfire dropped away, guns emptied, and the yipping of the racing circuit had a less terrifying sound. More people were pushing out on the porch. A sleek grain-fed gray, veteran of the show world, frisky and full of the juice of the grain, cavorting in superb gyrations out in the plaza, suddenly turned and drove straight for the Harmony House. It wove through the riders dashing past and clattered up the steps to the porch and Sonny Jacobs swayed in the saddle, waving his hat, shouting something about kissing the bride. There was a general frantic retreat into the lobby, on back into the rear regions of the building. A shrill scream sounded, echoing along the hall and to the front, followed by what could have been the crash of a heavily loaded table going over and a wild barrage of thuds and bumps and hangings.
"Good God a'mighty!" yelled Monte Walsh. He was up and leaping past the gray into the lobby, on down the hall, past several frantic people hurrying forward, one of them still emitting dwindling screams. The head and shoulders of a neat compact roan, broken reins dangling, wild-eyed in a kind of frightened indignation, appeared in the open doorway to the back room.
Monte threw up his arms, shouting, and the horse backed away inside and three desperate squawking chickens flapped out and past him as he leaped into the doorway and paused an instant, shuddering at what he saw. The roan was very busy, apparently intent on completing the work already begun, hoofs crunching on crockery, legs tangling with the remains of the overturned table, bucking and whirling and kicking in what seemed several directions at once at everything brought within range. Towels and wash cloths sailed about. Sheets and pillow cases were being trampled. A hoof connected with an arm of the davenport and with a fine new crash the pile of framed pictures went to the floor.
Monte groaned and plunged forward, dodging around, and had hold of the bridle. The horse jerked its head and threw him and he landed among the Mexican chairs with a crunch of canes snapping. He plunged again and had hold of the ears and he hung his weight on the head, holding it down. The horse quieted some and he talked, slow and steady, and it stood, still, muscles quivering under its hide. He eased up on the head, talking slow and steady, and it stood, quiet, and when he let go of the ears to take hold of the bridle it seemed to be almost ashamed of itself and tried to nuzzle against him. He drew a long breath and looked around, wincing at the wreckage. In the inner doorway he saw Chet Rollins, round face rigid, eyes wide, and peering from behind the shocked startled disgusted furious face of the bride. He turned away. "Luck and me," he muttered. "How'd I know a damn silly woman'd go screaming in its ear?" He led the roan to the rear door and opened this. He stepped out and down and pulled gently on the reins and with a scramble of hoofs the horse was out and down too. He led it a few feet and dropped the reins and it stood, ground-tied as he had taught it, and he went to the rusty abandoned pump and unlooped the reins of the dun and swung up and moved away along the alley.
Chester Arthur Rollins stood in the rear doorway of the wrecked room and watched him go. The clamor from the plaza still sounded, dwindling, but he did not hear it. Mrs. Rollins was saying something in a sharp tone behind him but he did not hear her. He closed the door behind him and stepped down and went to the roan and reached to the small square piece of cardboard tied to the bridle and turned this to read the one sentence printed in pencil on it: You will want her to be riding with you and not get hurt.
The door opened again and Mrs. Rollins was in the doorway and other people were gathering behind her and perhaps she and they were speaking but he did not hear. He was watching a lean hunched figure riding slowly away on an old deep-chested leggy dun. Suddenly he moved, disregarding his fine striped trousers and cutaway coat, and he was on the roan bareback, leaning down for the broken reins, and it wheeled neatly for him and was off in clean smooth stride after the dun. It pulled up alongside and at a touch on the reins slowed to match the other's slow jog.
Together an old dun and a young roan jogged along the alley that had become little more than a trail out of town now and the rider of the dun stared straight ahead.
"It's the best horse I ever had under me," said Chet.
"Yeah," said Monte, staring ahead. "It's all right. It'll take care of her."
They jogged on.
"Goddamn it!" said Monte. "Go on back there. Leave me alone. I messed things plenty. I let you down a time like this. I ain't fit to be-"
"You overgrown infant," said Chet, gently. "You ain't--you haven't ever let me down. It was just another fool wedding like they have by the dozen everywhere. You've fixed that. You've put your mark on it. You've made it something to remember."
They jogged on.
Monte's head rose and he looked sideways at Chet and a small wry grin twisted his lips.
"All in one place," he said.
"They sure were," said Chet. "She sure can't say they weren't. Now maybe you're ready to come back and help wind it up. There's no ring in my nose yet. Come on, I'll beat you back. I'll bet this thing can run the legs off that old crowbait of yours. If it does what I think it'll do, it'll take me right up on the porch and into the lobby. Give Aunt Effie another thrill."
* * *
Shadows of late afternoon lengthened around the deserted plaza littered with considerable debris that would remain there until the junior partner of the firm of Holloway and Rollins would return from his honeymoon in Kansas City and at the urging of his wife revive the clean-up and beautifying committee. The sawhorses and planks would be removed the day after tomorrow but the bits of broken glass and pieces of beer mugs around them would stay until the committee would fill two buckets with them. The nails in the flagpole and the scorchings where Sunfish Perkins and Dobe Chavez and Sheriff MacKnight had experimented with pinwheels were unsightly and would require particular attention. The three of the scrawny trees trampled flat would have to be replaced. So would the tie rail snapped in two when Chalkeye Ferrero tried to drive and stand up and shout and look about all at the same time and toppled to the ground and the wagon with its load of yelling youngsters careened into the rail, and the damage might have been worse if Monte Walsh, coming in along main street on an old leggy dun at full gallop with a young roan two jumps behind, had not swerved and raced alongside and dived off the dun to take the off horse of the team around the neck and bring the wagon to a halt in a cloud of dust. The outline of the Har
mony House against the sky would never be the same again with every one of the little wooden knobs of onetime fancy scrollwork gone. The dents on the front steps and porch made by the hoofs of a grain-fed gray and that same young roan and those on into the lobby made by the roan would be covered with paint that would not quite hide them and in time Old Man Engle would tell a tale about them with a postscript about some other marks in a back room growing taller with each telling. And across the way the glass in the front window of Doc Frantz's office, cracked where an errant skyrocket had hit, would remain until replaced after a few months by a workman paid by Justice Coleman. The crack did not interrupt Doe's daily view. Or Sheriff MacKnight's. But it did Justice Coleman's.
The plaza was deserted now for the inclusive sufficient reason that virtually the entire immediate movable population of Harmony was assembled a half block from the northeast corner by the stage station where the driver of the five-thirty stage sat on the box, already thirty-five minutes late, and waited patiently while more rounds of farewells drew out the delay.
A nervous drummer in notions and drygoods poked his head out a window of the coach and spoke upward. "This is ridiculous," he said. "I have to make a train tonight."
"Quit bellyachin'," said the driver. "Rollins don't get married every day." He spat a stream of tobacco juice down by the near wheel. "Come to think of it," he said, "they won't want you knockin' aroun' in theah with 'em. You climb out an' up heah with me."
Tallied overall it had been a surprisingly successful afternoon, perhaps because most of the imported guests had been startled and stampeded into accepting almost anything and the friends of the groom had blown off any grouch or grudge with the steam of their own stampede. Doc Frantz's social mixture had managed to mix medium well. Old Man Engle, relieved that the ceremony itself had not been interrupted, had shooed everyone out of the wrecked back room and closed and locked the doors and surprised himself and daughter by taking a firm stand. "Forget it for now," he said. "What's done can't be undone and it isn't as bad as it looks. I'll assess the damage tomorrow and write it off as operating expenses. Not many people ever get a plate-eating horse for a present." And while the women remained on the porch, an audience not overly enthusiastic but still an audience, the men had drifted down to mingle with the doings on the plaza. Sonny Jacobs, mildly apologetic for his previous performance, had made amends by demonstrating how his gray could waltz to music. Young Juan Gonzales, rigged in a fiesta costume hastily borrowed, had jumped up on the planks beside the beer barrel and beat out a Spanish dance with tapping toes and slapping heels. There had been a brief explosive interlude when Sugar Wyman and Daily Johnson found an empty keg and a piece of board and rubbed resin on them and began to saw the board over the keg and that could have stopped everything with everyone running for cover to protect tortured eardrums but Monte Walsh had got to them in time to block that particular performance with a flying tackle performance of his own. Cousin Eunice in sober respectable floor-length gown, all unaware her once careful hairdo was in rather fetching disarray from scrambles back and forth in the hotel, had been flutteringly impressed by the flavorous encouragement of a stout black-mustached onetime outlaw with a bullet scar along one cheek and enticed out on the steps to discover that singing to three guitars in the hands of racial masters of them was much more invigorating than singing to a decrepit old piano. Two of the native residents, known variously as Tio Pedro and Primo Leyba, had come forward offering their own attraction and in a pit hastily formed with a tarpaulin held against legs by willing hands Pedro's bright-colored gamecock had finished off Leyba's more deadly-looking dark one in one minute and twenty-seven seconds. To the bride's surprise it was Uncle John Haley himself who refereed the bout and who, after leading several dozen horny horsemen, now minus their horses, in a toast to her in warm beer, recognized the inadequacy of the beverage for the occasion and the company and conferred with Bennie Martinez about a special price for a half case of whisky. Which was not as dangerous as it might have been because the time was short. There had been only one brawl and that brief and almost cheerful, no killing animosity in it, more a mere release of energy and a playing to the gallery than anything else.
"Well," sniffed Aunt Effie to the bride. "Things do seem to have got out of hand. Not what we planned at all. But my heavens, I must say, I have never seen anything quite like it."
And now Mary Engle Rollins was receiving the last tearful goodbyes and solicitous admonitions from the women and Chester Arthur Rollins was in brown business suit again and his back was sore from slappings and his right arm limp from shakings and the other men had stepped back some in instinctive courtesy and he stood by the coach door facing Monte Walsh.
"You got all the bags?" he said.
"Yeah," said Monte. "They're all aboard."
Thirty feet away old Cal Brennan sat in his wheelchair and Sunfish Perkins was beside him. "I sure hate to see that," said Cal softly. "What's left of the Slash Y is goin' fast now. The heart of the old outfit's splittin' right there while we watch."
The two men stood by the coach, looking at one another, in the midst of the crowded space removed and tight in their own pocket of simple elemental isolation.
Chet's lips moved as if he would speak but no sound came.
"There ain't no way to say it," said Monte. "So don't try."
Chet nodded. Suddenly he reached and grasped Monte's arm and his fingers tightened in a grip that would leave a bruise for days to come and he turned away quickly to fumble with the handle of the coach door and at last get it open for his wife coming to him. The driver pushed the even more nervous drummer over on the box to have elbow room and snaked out his whip snapping and the four horses heaved into the harness and the coach moved, rolling into the long road leading northeastward. A few men ran to swing into saddles and ride out with it, yipping and yelling. Not Monte Walsh. He sat on a corner of the platform in front of the station, gently rubbing one arm, and while the crowd slowly dispersed, drifting away in the letdown of the departure, he sat there, still and quiet, watching the far dust of the coach dwindle into the nothingness of empty space.
* * *
Lights showed now in some of the buildings around the plaza. Not many. Most of Harmony retired regularly with the sun. Over at the Harmony House only glimmers could be seen around the edges of windows. Old Man Engle, with all of his guests who would not be leaving until tomorrow safely inside, had locked the doors and pulled down shades. Much might yet happen in the neighborhood of the Twenty-Four-Hour Cafe and the Jinglebob and Thornburg's nameless saloon before the last of the riders would have wandered away into the early hours of the morning.
The doors of the Jinglebob flipped open and Monte Walsh emerged, swaying some, and looked vaguely about at nothing and sat down on the outer edge of the board sidewalk. Voices rose inside, touching off a burst of raucous laughter. "What've they got to be so goddamned cheerful about?" he said to the mangy yellow dog as it slipped past to go back along the building.
He pushed up and looked vaguely about again, trying to remember where he had left the dun. After a brief search he found it waiting patiently around the corner by Thornburg's and he rode back and angling across the plaza to the little harness shop and tried the front door. Fastened. No light showed inside. He walked around to the door into the rear room and rattled the handle.
"It ain't locked," came the voice of Cal Brennan.
He pushed in and saw a match spurt and in the glow old Cal sitting up in his bed and reaching to light the lamp on a stand beside it.
"I don't sleep much," said Cal. "But I sleep often. Age is sure mighty aggravatin'."
Monte might not have heard him. He stepped over and reached in a pocket and pulled out a small roll of bills and dropped these on the bed. "Morris paid yesterday," he said. "I got that left. Maybe you and Sunfish'll take it and find out from Engle what's broke and replace what you can before they--before Chet gets back."
"Glad to," said Cal. "An' I just
might make up any diff'rence myself."
"No," said Monte. "I did it."
"You sure did," said Cal. "There ain't nobody else with the same holes in his head could of done it just like that. You always was kind of thorough . . . Hey. You goin' already? Blow that thing out for me."
Monte bent over the lamp and blew it out and moved toward the door.
"An' another thing," came Cal's voice from the sudden darkness. "I ain't felt so good in weeks. I been lookin' at those silly damn blobbles on that buildin' for at least two years thinkin' what good targets they'd make."
Monte closed the door and moved around the shop and swung up on the dun. At a slow jog he headed out of town. Time passed over him as slow distance dropped away under the hoofs of the dun and the sound of them, single and lone in the darkness, was strange and lonesome to him. Then he was at the gate to the ranch enclosure and he passed through without dismounting, instinctive in habit, unaware of what he was doing, and then the dun was unsaddled and in the small corral with feed and water for it and he was in the weathered old bunkhouse lighting the lamp and looking around. The untidy disorder of the morning's slicking and polishing was there but he saw none of this. He was staring at an empty stripped bunk. He stepped to the doorway and looked out at the dark shapes of the other buildings still and serene in the dim starlit darkness. "It ain't the same," he said. "It ain't ever going to be the same again."
He reached his right hand into his right pants pocket and pulled the pocket inside out. Empty. "Nothing and nobody," he said. "Just like before." And something stubborn in him said no, not quite. He had a horse and bedded deep in mind and muscles were the skills and the rawhide hard endurance of a trade, of a way of life, that was slipping fast from him and his kind but that still lingered in some of the far rugged stretches of the big land.
