Dead Warrior (6 page)

He was interrupted by the animal in question, which thrust its head over the man’s shoulder, as though it were indeed accustomed to taking part in human conversation. Its master gave it a pained look, then faced me with a helpless shrug.

“I see you are afflicted with the burden of a beast, too. What do you call him?”

Not minded to stand there unarmed any longer, I took a step back toward camp. “Oh, just Jim.”

“Is that his only name?” the fellow asked. “Yours, sir, must be an animal with an even disposition and regular habits. I call mine Darwin’s Waterloo, because he’s a denial of the theories of evolution and natural selection. I call him Inspiration, because he never comes when I desire it but crowds me when I have no time for him. I call him Lot’s Wife, because he would rather look back than see where he’s
going. I call him James Fitz-James, because when he takes his stand it is easier to move boulders than him. I call him Ajax, because he defies the lightning of my wrath. I call him Whitman, because he has a barbaric yawp out of which I can make no sense. I call him Socrates, because he goes his own way, regardless of any man’s reproaches. I call him, in short, but that doesn’t in the least mean that he pays any attention, so he sometimes leaves me speechless.”

“That must be his most remarkable faculty,” I said. “Do you care to say how you call yourself?”

“Orestes Hatfield, doctor of enough philosophy to have left the jaded civilization of the Atlantic coastal plain in order to join fortunes with the people of boundless intellectual horizons who live here in the West.”

“When you can find any of them,” I reminded him. Determined to force the issue, I started walking again, and he fell into step beside me. “You’re a university professor, I take it?”

“If you’re speaking in terms of the present, you take it wrong,” he declared. “Seven months ago next Wednesday I broke off in the middle of a lecture whose theme was ‘The Triumph of Modern Culture’ and looked my students over. I saw eyes, sir, some nineteen pairs of them. I saw hard, suspicious crow’s eyes, I saw foolish, trusting spaniel eyes; I saw shallow, wondering calf eyes; I saw cloud-filmed frog eyes; I saw opaque, crumb-hunting mouse eyes; I saw sleep-defying owl eyes; I saw the utterly indifferent eyes of a just-fed snake and at least one set of maliciously criminal eyes, like those of Jonathan Wild, my mule; but I saw no eyes at all which indicated any grasp of what I had been talking about.”

I could see the wisp of smoke rising from my campfire. “What did you do?” I asked my companion.

“I pondered,” Dr. Hatfield said, “and reached the inescapable conclusion that if producing such minds was a triumph for modern culture, it was a hollow one. The East, it was then clear to me, had become sterile and decadent, so the thing to do was to strike for a region where the way of life tempted the mind to independent exploration.”

“There are new ways of thinking here,” I admitted, my mind going back to McQuinn and Ed Whittlesey, “but I don’t know how much eagerness for scholarship you’re going to find.”

“Oh, it will have to be stimulated by a university,” the professor said. “But what they have in the West is the vigor, the feeling for life, the mental flexibility which comes with the necessity for building everything from scratch.”

I couldn’t imagine how he was going to start the university needed to spark this rebirth of civilization. He was not without a plan of action, however.

“All I have to do,” he explained, as we came within sight of the stagecoach, “is either to find a suitable bonanza myself or to encounter a successful prospector looking for a way to make his wealth of service to society. One of the two should fall to my lot sooner or later.”

After hitching up Jim, I put the coffeepot on the coals again. “There’s lots more advice where this came from, so I won’t mind if you throw it away,” I told Hatfield, while we were sipping and smoking a few minutes later, “but you’re going through dangerous country for a man afoot; and I believe you’ll find it useless to prospect here, too.”

“But I don’t like to ride, and a true scholar finds out for himself instead of taking hearsay for granted,” he answered my objections. “California wasn’t considered a probable source of gold prior to James Marshall’s discovery, remember.” Gulping the last of his coffee, he nodded to where the
mule was browsing on willow leaves. “Are you going to leave me to the dubious mercies of that hybrid?”

“In a couple of minutes,” I said. “It’s possible that gold does lurk in the grass hereabouts, but there’s no chance of finding what I am looking for, which is a stage line franchise.”

“I can’t contest that point.” He used a knife to ream out the bowl of his pipe before he spoke again. “You might try Midas Touch, if you’re thinking of going over into New Mexico Territory. The surrounding ore field had been parceled out into claims previous to my arrival, so I didn’t stay; but the denizens seemed to be strongly of the opinion that the land had remarkable possibilities.”

The Panhandle was good cattle country, and the longhorns I found lower down in it seemed to appreciate the fact. For my own tastes it was too flat, and Tascosa looked to be a town where only cowmen would be at home. Accordingly I there turned west.

New Mexico itself was a tableland which only gradually gave way to hills of any consequence, and the novelty of stage driving had worn off. Feeling safe from the tribes of the Indian Territory, and not yet so far west that I was in danger of being attacked by Apaches, I developed the habit of breaking the monotony of the trip by reading as I rolled along.

Absorbed in
Vanity Fair
, I didn’t at first look up when the team came to a halt during the afternoon of my third day out of Tascosa. I hoped they would undertake to proceed without interrupting me, but when it became plain that they would not I impatiently raised my head.

What had stopped the horses was a split of the road together with my failure to indicate a choice of route. There was a tree at the fork which stretched a branch over the road
slicing off south and west. A scarecrow dressed like a faro dealer was suspended from this branch by a rope around its neck. Nailed to the trunk of the tree was a handbill bearing an explanatory legend.

I had seen more inviting pieces of civic promotion. It seemed to be aimed at professional gamblers only, however, and Midas Touch had been on my mind, in the capacity of a possible destination, ever since Dr. Hatfield had made me aware of its existence. After some hesitation I clucked to the team and turned off down the left-hand fork.

THE FIRST THING I NOTICED about Midas Touch was that everybody went armed, which had been the exception rather than the rule in Three Deuces. Otherwise it was similar except for the setting. In place of the towering Rinkatinks, with their facing of cliffs, there were rolling hills, standing bare above wooded hollows.

“Where’d you come from?” the proprietor said, when I had checked in at a livery stable. A rangy, broken-nosed fellow, he, too, wore a gun, which he had to keep hitching out of the way as he helped me unharness.

“Colorado. The camp’s still there, but the people aren’t,” I explained. “Is there any chance that they’ll need a stage here?”

“Well, if somebody does need one, he’ll help hisself to it, if you go around naked thataway. Ain’t you got a hog leg?”

Remembering what I had seen at the road fork, I fished my revolver out of the coach. “Tough town, eh?”

“It’s too tough for me, and I taught Jesse James all he knows,” the man confided. “They’re havin’ a gamblers’ war, and that’s the meanest thing that can happen to a town. It ain’t enough that a man has to work all day. He can’t go into a saloon at night without makin’ an enemy of the fellow
whose saloon he
didn’t
go into. So to keep on the right side of everybody he has to keep goin’ into
all
the saloons, and before it comes time to work again a man is plumb used up from just bein’ obligin’.”

While he was stabling the team, I pulled one of my bags out of the boot and picked up my rifle. “What’s the trouble about?” I asked when he rejoined me.

His face assumed a conspiratorial air, and he made a pretense of looking about for eavesdroppers. “If you tell anybody I said this, I’ll swear you’re a liar, and nobody around here doubts
my
word about nothin’.”

“Then you’re absolutely safe,” I humored him. “Let’s have the story.”

“Charlie Barringer wants the whole kaboodle of us to drop all our dough on his layouts, and Shotgun John Courtney, who come here from Silver City, has been tryin’ to get anyways half of it. Now I ain’t sayin’ whether this is so or not, but Charlie claims that the ones that has been cheatin’ us right along is honest gamblers, while the ones which John has brought in to show us a new brand of skinnin’ is tinhorns.”

That seemed to identify the author of the handbill. “Is Barringer winning his fight to keep the home boys in business?”

“You said that; I didn’t.” Once again my companion peered around the empty stable yard with mock caution. “Well, to give you just the facts, I’d say Charlie was ahead, five stiffs to three. That helped the popularity of his layouts some, and it looked like Charlie might get the whole town on his side, up until Shotgun pulled what he done last night. I ain’t sure it was fair, and everybody knows that nothin’ that ain’t fair gets my okay; but he drug in the prettiest girl that ever drawed men out of one saloon and filled up another to
deal for him. I went to have a look at her myself, so of course everybody else done it.”

Anxious to find a hotel and get cleaned up, I had begun to edge away from him, but at that I stopped. “Do you happen to recall her name?”

“Seems like it was Candy,” he answered, “but if so, it was rock candy. While I was moonin’ at her, she done busted me so that I couldn’t even find the pieces. Like I say, I don’t know as Courtney done the square thing.”

My interest in the morality of Shotgun John was tepid. What did touch me was that I would have the opportunity of getting rid of the ten thousand dollars with which Blackfoot Terry had burdened me. It was in a cheerful frame of mind, therefore, that I started to take in the town after supper.

Without noticing the name of it, I entered the first saloon I came to. It had a long bar with a gambling setup in a room beyond it. The cluster of men in it were not playing faro, though. They were in conference, and earnest about it.

I had ordered but had not yet been served when one of them bore down upon me. He moved stiff-legged and ready for action, a dude gambler, clean and mean as a prize bull.

I didn’t like the way he inspected me from six inches above my head, but there was no law that said he couldn’t. “Where are you from?” he demanded.

My drink had come. I reached for it.

“They call me Baltimore.”

This annoyed him as much as I thought it would. His chest swelled up and when it did I could see the outline of the gunstock under the black broadcloth coat.

“I didn’t ask about your alias.” The pale gray eyes showed intelligence as well as arrogance. “I want to know where you were before you hit Midas Touch.”

My dilemma was that although I didn’t want trouble, I
didn’t want to oblige this fellow. It was the barkeep who resolved the situation.

“This guy come in drivin’ a stagecoach, Charlie. I seen him as I was comin’ on shift here. It had some town names painted on it that I’d never heard of.” Having volunteered that much, the bartender turned his flat, expressionless face toward me. “Mr. Barringer’s got a right to ask you what time it is, mister. He owns this place.”

“And this town,” Barringer added.

“Well, to complete the introduction,” I said, “my name is Carruthers. Three Deuces, up Colorado way, fizzled out, and I’m looking for a town that needs stage service.”

“Three Deuces went bust, eh?” He had traded in his belligerence for the air of a man considering an employment application. “We have connections with the main transcontinental route to the south, but I’ve been thinking about linking us up with the Rio Grande Valley line at Socorro. Drop around here to the Eldorado in the morning, and we’ll talk it over.”

It was unnecessary for me to ask why he had been so sharp at the outset. What he had suspected was that I might be some gunman brought in by his rival in the town’s gambling war. It occurred to me as I left that I might have to convince Courtney of my innocence, too.

Bar gossip taught me that the Taj Mahal was where Miss Tandy held forth, but I thought it over at several saloons before I came to a decision. Seen hobnobbing with her, I would be branded as partisan in a quarrel of which I wanted no part.

Eventually I did seek her out, however, because I had made up my mind about Midas Touch. Not liking the feel of the place, I wasn’t going to stay; but I couldn’t leave without delivering
the money and the message. The former was still stowed in one of my bags, and in any case I didn’t want to make the transaction in public. What I planned was to wait until Miss Tandy was ready to leave and make an appointment to see her the first thing in the morning.

In the past few months I had been told much about this young woman. The things I had heard did not prepare me for what I saw. I had been expecting the sight of anything from a dashing Amazon to a flaming virago. The face I beheld was one of still beauty, so lost in dream as to be emotionless.

That much I took in before I was jostled from my vantage point by men who wanted to gamble at her table. It was easy to see why Charlie Barringer was disgruntled. The Eldorado had been all but deserted, while men swarmed through the Taj Mahal like school fish in shoal water.

Deciding that I must pay my way if I wanted a good look at the girl, I waited my turn and bought checks at her table. A couple of fellows were playing tens, so I placed my bet on the layout’s six of spades. Having done that, I claimed a player’s freedom to observe the dealer closely.

She was dressed in green trimmed with gold, a slim young woman with white, slender hands which wove the cards together effortlessly. She wore hair that was too deep for honey and too light for bronze close around her face. This gave much the same impression as a star seen in a mist-dimmed pool. The loveliness was there, but the qualities of life were sunk in the mesmerized expression I had first noticed.

Contrastingly her voice was crisp, when she had filled the dealer’s box and had started nudging out the turns of cards. “The tiger’s ready, gentlemen.” Georgia, I guessed. Barring the businesslike tone, it was such a voice as I had heard in ballrooms during a visit I had once made to Savannah.

While I was engaged in making this deduction she suddenly turned to the house man in the observer’s seat. “Are you my lookout?” she demanded.

The man addressed, who had been slouching in his chair, sat up and pushed his stovepipe hat back from over his eyes. “Why sure,” he said.

“Well, quit leering at me and watch the board,” she commanded, without losing her look of remote disinterest. “You just let that left-handed gentleman move his chips to where four cards would pay off instead of only one.” She paused just an instant. “I’m not going to pay him on any of them,” she added, as though by way of afterthought, “and I have a gun that seconds the motion, in case he has doubts.”

I was indignant with the left-handed player at first, but after a little I began to have a sneaking sympathy for him. I had counted on the fifty dollars I had invested in checks to see me through the evening, if nothing more. With Miss Tandy officiating, they melted away in less than an hour.

Sourly licking my wounds at the bar, I saw Barringer enter with a dozen or so men at his heels. At sight of this band some patrons of the Taj Mahal sidled out the door, while the rest stopped whatever they were doing. The place had looked crowded, but the newcomers didn’t find anybody in their way as they swept past the bar to look over the gambling tables.

“Boys,” Barringer announced at this point, “there are free drinks at the Eldorado and free bullets here. Which do you want?”

The remaining patrons started elsewhere with the haste of bugs no longer sheltered by a flat stone. A lot of them had already jammed through the doorway when a fellow stepped up to confront Barringer. He was a big-beaked chap, a half a
head shorter than the other. I hadn’t seen him before, but his words and the double-barreled weapon in his hands informed me that this must be Shotgun John Courtney.

“You can’t hoorah my place, Charlie,” he said.

A few men grouped themselves behind him as he spoke, while several others, watching from various parts of the room, signified partisanship by standing fast. Miss Tandy had stopped gathering up chips and was watching some men — also Barringer’s followers, I assumed — file in from the rear door. As for me, I realized that my slowness to react had trapped me. Now the tension was such that any movement might be taken as a hostile one.

It was the barkeep, a stocky towhead, who started the landslide. He was stealthily reaching in a drawer, gun-minded, when a man posted to guard against just such a rear attack stepped in from the street and opened fire.

As I hit the floor there were shots, yells and the sound of shattering glass. Shotgun John was on the floor, too, but it didn’t look as if he shared my fervent hopes of being able to rise again. There were three men trying to use the main door at the same time, and I think one of them was hit. Then the last of the lamps was shot out.

They found me behind the bar when lanterns restored light to the place. The barkeep was gone, a trail of blood showing his line of retreat. Courtney and a couple of others remained, because they could never again go anywhere of their own volition. The lookout admonished by Miss Tandy stood against the wall, unhurt but looking as nervous as I undoubtedly did. Miss Tandy herself sat at her faro table, playing solitaire. Everybody else was one of Barringer’s men.

“What’ll we do with this gink, Charlie?” one of my two captors asked, when I had been gun-prodded into the gambler’s
presence. “I never see him before, but he stayed with Shotgun John, and he was packing a six-shooter until we took it away from him.”

Not liking the inference to be drawn from this summary, I made haste to speak up. “I don’t know anything about this business except that it’s none of mine. You remember me, Barringer. I’m just in from Colorado. I told you that earlier this evening.”

The gambler was seated at the other table, watching money being heaped on the layout. For a moment I was afraid he wouldn’t recognize me, but he finally did.

“Oh, you’re the man with the stagecoach.” Abruptly he grinned and turned to a walleyed man standing near him. “A stage is the perfect way to get her out of town,” he said. “We’ll have one of the girls check her stuff out of the hotel and just spread the word that she left after John cashed in.”

“That’s a good notion, Charlie.” The fellow made me nervous by still seeming to watch me while he gazed at his chief. “I’ve been wondering how we was going to get her that far without putting blinders on the town.”

There were some missing parts to his statement. Left undefined was the purpose of the abduction and what would happen to a stage driver made accessory to a kidnapping.

Barringer interrupted my consideration of these points by rising to tap me on the chest. “A hundred dollars cash all right with you for taking two passengers to Socorro?”

Although certain that he would get it back, I nodded and went through the motions of accepting advance payment. “Clinker here will go along with you and help you pack and harness up,” the gambler smilingly told me. “Don’t forget to tell the hotel clerk where he’s heading, Clinker.”

The walleyed outlaw did not lend the helping hand his
chief had promised; but he kept one or the other of his eyes on me while I gathered my belongings, paid a sleepy night clerk and readied the stage for the road.

He did carry my rifle for me, but he relieved himself of even this burden when we reached the coach. Pitching it through one of the windows, he then followed me into the stable. The voluble proprietor was not around, nor was anyone else until we were joined by a fellow with a shotgun. At a word from my guard this man entered the stage.

“He’ll be riding with that gun right where buckshot would blow your tail through the top of your head if it had to go off,” Clinker said, as I obeyed his instructions to let the curtains down. “After I get in, drive back around to the hotel and wait till they bring out
her
traps.”

It was nearly dawn by the time Miss Tandy and the lookout were bundled into the stage, but the saloons were doing a fine business accommodating the people who still wanted to talk about the town’s big excitement. Men strolling from one establishment to the other saw the coach, and a man stationed in front of one saloon bawled to the inmates that Dolly Tandy was leaving. A rush to the street followed, but we were rolling rapidly away from the cheers.