Friends
Authors: Charles Hackenberry
FRIENDS
FRIENDS
CHARLES HACKENBERRY
M. EVANS
Lanham
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Boulder
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New York
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Toronto
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Plymouth, UK
Published by M. Evans
An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com
10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom
Distributed by National Book Network
Copyright © 1993 by Charles Hackenberry
First paperback edition 2014
All rights reserved
. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The hardback edition of this book was previously cataloged by the Library of Congress as follows:
Hackenberry, Charles, 1939-
Friends /Charles Hackenberry.
p. cm. â        (An Evans novel of the West)
I. Title. II. Series.
PS3558.A276F75Â Â Â Â 1993
813'.54âdc20
93-12943
CIP
ISBN: 978-0-87131-729-X (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN: 978-1-59077-341-3 (electronic)
ISBN: 978-1-59077-340-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesâPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
This book is dedicated to
Ray Matthews
former collaborator
and
lifelong friend.
Chapter One
Back in the winter of'77 I was deputying up in Two Scalp, Dakota Territory, waiting for my friend Clete Shannon-who was the Sheriff there at the time-to say the word for us to quit our jobs and head south. The reason I remember the date so well, come the new year they had strung up a banner behind the bar at Clooney's with 1877 wrote out in big numbers, and we drunk a few more than we usually did. At least I did. Every year I get surprised at how high the numbers of the years is getting, and it makes me just thirstier than hell.
Along about April I noticed Clete'd started riding out in the mornings, scouting around, even before the bad weather was all gone, when fog still hung over the snow and made staying in bed real tempting.
At first, I thought him riding around like that was just restlessness. I was that way a little too. I used to be a lot more that way myself when I was a younger man. Then for a few days I believed he was trying to find the gold Palmer Wilson and that bunch stole from the bankâeither for himself or for the reward of it. But then it hit meâhe had gotten pretty friendly with one of the young gals from around there, Mary McLeod her name was. I worried he might be planning on settling down, off looking for a spot for a ranch, and to hell with our plans for Texas.
Being Clete's deputy give me mighty little to do but think things over, morning or night. Two Scalp's deader'n a sucker in a sandstorm. Not that there wasn't plenty of trouble before me and Clete broke it up that fallâbut when Whitey DuShane and Tom Nace took up residence in the bone yard, things got a lot quieter.
What Clete would get all cold and wet for, riding around those hills, was eatin' at me while I stood at the bar sipping whiskey after sundown one evening. And when I heard him ride back into town, I stepped out on the walk and waited. After a while I seen him lumbering up the street.
"Come in here and buy me a drink," I told him. "Unless you start taking on more whiskey, you're blood's gonna freeze out on them long rides."
I wasn't sure he would without an argument, but he followed me inside and we settled into my regular spot at the bar.
After
he'd tipped his hat to all the folks that said hello to him, that is, which was nearly everone in the place, even the whores. He took a long, careful look around.
"Somebody trying to shoot you that I don't know about?" I ask him.
"Just habit," he said, looking at me. Them deep green eyes of his always made me think of wolves I seen on the trail once. "You notice too damn much, Willie."
Tubbs the barkeep brought us our liquor and wouldn't take Clete's money for it, though he'd had the conscience to pick mine up earlier.
"I just try to keep my eyes open, but I'm surprised I didn't notice 'til recent how much you've been spooking around out thereâmust be a couple times a week. Still, early morning ain't my most alert time of day. What I can't figure out is why you're doing it. Is it the reward or what?"
That surprised him a little. "Well, I don't know either, but I suspect it's the
what.
You'll be the first to know, after me."
"And when'll I know about when we're leaving this damn town and going someplace where it's warmer and friendlier?" I asked him.
Clete rubbed his squared-off chin and then put back his whiskey. "More than I can tell you right now," he said. "I've got some figuring to do, and some other business. It's still too cold, anyway."
"Sure," I told him. "That McLeod girl ain't the other business you had in mind, though, is it?"
"You could start off by yourself if you're in such a damned hurry to get out of here," he said, a little sharper than was called for. "I could catch up to you later."
I put back the bottom half of my rye before I answered. "Well, I guess I'll wait around a little longer, but I ain't waiting forever, you understand."
Clete just nodded.
After a while Tubbs came over and we got us two more whiskeys.
"Anybody new come in today?" Clete ask the round-bellied barman while he was pouring them.
"A drummer came in on the early stage, but that's all. You could ask your deputy, though. He's here almost as much as I am." The sonofabitch give me a big grin and then went down the bar to tend to the rest of his customers. I never liked that damn Tubbs anyway.
Clete killed his whiskey in a belt. Lots of men and more than a few of the gals came and patted him on the back or said a word or two of praise to him, about bringing law and order to Dakota Territory and the like, but he didn't let it swell him up much. I started to order another round, but Clete shook his head.
"Count me out," he said and started toward the door. "I gotta get up early tomorrow, and I believe you know where I'm going."
"I expect I do, but where're you going now? They let out your room upstairs here to someone who pays his bills regular?"
"No, I sleep here most nights. But old Nell keeps a room for me out at her place, you know. And she's been spooked lately. Thinks somebody's fussing with her cattle, though she hasn't missed any." He walked back to the bar. "I almost forgot. Nell asked me to invite you out for supper Sunday after next. Me and Mary are going to be there and some other people. Nell said to be sure to mention she was roasting a chicken. She said she never seen a Texan that wouldn't walk five miles for a chicken dinner, especially a free one." He slapped me on the shoulder and walked out the door.
"Well, maybe I'll be there and maybe I won't!" I yelled after him. Clete, he just kept on going.
* * *
A hollow-cheeked man in a high-peaked hat lay with his long legs splayed out on an oiled scrap of canvas just below the brow of a hill haifa mile from Nell Larson's ranch house, watching. He took three deep swallows of cold coffee from his canteen and then replaced the cork. His skeletal hands rolled a cigarette. He licked it and stuck it between his thin lips. He would wait to light
it.
He would wait.
Of course I had to go. Come the Sunday after next, I rode out to Nell's place listening to the prairie larks nearly the whole way. When I got there, I saw a lot more people than I thought there was going to be. The preacher, Mary McLeod and her father Jesse, old Jim Talfer, some of Nell's family from down Yankton way, and other folks I didn't know.
The women all helped Nell in the kitchen, cooking lots of different things, it smelled like-and it sure smelled good. Ermaline Doughty and her girl were fussing with the big table that Nell had set up in her parlor-all sorts of fancy forks and spoons and such. First I come up here, it was all hardtack and salt pork and sittin' on the ground.
The men were out beside the bam and I lit my pipe when I got there. The talk was of gold strikes and Indian attacks and cattle ailments and the like. I noticed Clete wasn't saying much, just looking out at the hills.
"Something interesting out there?" I asked, moving over to the fence beside him.
"No, not that I can find," he said kind of slow. "Someone was out there, though, but I think Nell's wrong. He wasn't fooling with the steers. He camped right where we did that night we went after Whitey DuShane at the Haney ranch."
"Yes, indeed, I remember-"
"So do I," Clete butted in, "but I need you to help me with
this
." He looked close at that rolling land. "From out where he camped you can see Nell's house through the break between those ridges. You figure that's what he's doing, spying on Nell?"
"Beats me," I offered. "She got any enemies 'round here?"
"I don't think so, but I'll ask her."
"She seems a little old for it to be tomcats sniffing at the door-yard," I told him. "Ain't Indians is it?"
"No. They're raiding over to the west of here, but it don't smell like an Indian camp. One man by himselfâI'm pretty sure of that." He set his jaw and looked at his boots. "How would you feel about riding up there and taking a look around tomorrow?"
"You asking or telling?"
"Well, I'm asking because this isn't in town, you know. Just be a favor for Nell."
Well, that was different. Clete and me hadn't been there a whole year, but she treated him and me both like family right from the start-him especially. My guess always was that Nell sort of saw Clete as the son she'd wished she'd had. "Be happy to," I said. "How old's the sign?"
"Two, maybe three days. Think you can see anything I didn't, you old fart?"
"Jest you wait," I said, laying hold of his arm and leading him back to the rest of the fellows, for I seen that Jim Talfer had pulled out a pint.
After a while someone rung the dinner bell and all the men started down to the house.
Well, the table looked just grand, I guess you'd say. Nell had these plates with gold leaves in the middle, and cups to match and little plates and finger bowls and I don't know what-all. She said later, while we was eating one of the best chicken dinners north of the Mason Dixie line, that her momma had brought all this fine stuff west in a wagon. And that her momma's grandma had lugged it all the way from Scotland! One of the ladies had gathered a bouquet of purple and white pasqueflowers and had set them on the white tablecloth too.
