The Homesman (23 page)

The storms had passed, and there was sun that day, and late in it Briggs came upon a sight so surprising that he stopped the wagon. A long, flat stretch of prairie lay ahead, and far off, in the center of the flat, stood a two-storey structure of large proportions. A westering sun flashed from two rows of real glass windows, above and below, and glared the color of the structure: a loud, strutty blue. A building like this had no business here. And just as unbelievable were the hundreds, no, the thousands of white stakes in the ground in even rows on all sides of it. He moved the wagon on and discovered that the placement of the stakes, white with new paint, was neat and regular, some rows far enough apart to drive along between, which he was doing. Then it came to him. This was a street. This was a paper town. And sure enough, he reached a sign, stopped, and worked the big letters in his mind until they made sense:
TOWN OF FAIRFIELD WELCOME
.

If there was one paper town in the Territory, there were, or had been, or would be, a hundred. Briggs admired the brass and vision of the promoters. A gang of them got together, put up some money, bribed the legislature to pass an Act of Incorporation, hired ne'er-do-wells to perjure themselves and claim up to a thousand acres of land, and staked the acreage into streets and building lots a hundred twenty-five feet by twenty-five. Next they put up a hotel to accommodate themselves and any tin-horn investors they could lure off the trail. Then they hightailed it to the nearest newspaper or print shop and rolled out fliers touting the new town. To buy “shares” in it now, these proclaimed, ten lots at a crack, was a guarantee of riches later, for this was a town singularly blessed by location and the Supreme Being. It was based upon a prosperous agriculture; it was well watered and timbered; it possessed fine indications of lead, iron, coal, and salt. A railroad line was on its way. Lithographs pictured broad avenues, elegant residences, an opera house, churches, a college, and a river with wharfs to which swarms of steamboats were tied. Fliers and lithographs were mailed east by the thousands, while salesmen were employed at a dollar a day and commission to work the adjacent states of Iowa and Missouri. The drumbeating done, the trap baited, the promoters then sat back, rubbed their hands, and awaited the bonanza. When it arrived, and with it thousands of innocent dollars, they decamped to seek opportunity elsewhere, not even troubling themselves to tear down the hotel or pull up stakes.

Sure enough, the blue paint on the hotel was new and the lettering on its front said
FAIRFIELD HOTEL
. And just as Briggs pulled the wagon up before it, he had a notion. This was the night to leave them and this was the pluperfect place. He'd take two rooms, one for them, one for himself. They could sleep four to a bed. He'd order supper for all and see they got a hot bath. Then during the night he'd be gone, depositing the sewing bag and their papers on the hotel desk. Bless them, he'd leave them clean and sound asleep in a real bed with their stomachs full—what more could they ask? Let the owners take care of them where he left off. For their troubles they could keep wagon, mules, and the gelding. Fair exchange.

He climbed down, mounted the steps to the hotel door, and entered. The inside, thanks to the windows and the sinking sun, was as light as the out. His first feeling was one of impermanence. It was a paper hotel for a paper town, nailed together in a hurry, furnished to be habitable and respectable for a short period, then stripped of its glass and whiskey and left with ghosts for guests until it fell down of rot or was blown away by the wind. Facing him, some feet away, a broad staircase ran up to the second floor. To his right, before the row of bare, uncurtained windows, was an assortment of old chairs and sofas. To his left was a long bar in front of shelves stocked with bottles, and between the bottles and the bar, leaning on the latter looking at him, was a great big belly of a man, presumably the barkeep. He was no spring chicken. He had a bald head, gray chop whiskers, and owl eyes with fat under them. Briggs moved slowly toward him.

“How do,” he said.

The barkeep nodded.

“Nice place you've got here.”

This was not a talkative barkeep.

“You open for business?”

Owl Eyes nodded.

“Well,” said Briggs, “you've got some. I'm carrying four women outside. I'll need a room tonight for them and one for me. We can use a bath now and supper later.”

“We're full up.”

Briggs cocked his head. “With who?”

“Take my word.”

Briggs moved to the bar and laid palms down on it. “It says hotel out front. Now we've come a hell of a long ways. We need two rooms and so on.”

“Sorry.”

Briggs scowled. Easing back from the bar, he opened his suitcoat to show off his cannon. He had a hunch the sight of that black, burned handle might make an owl blink. “Mister,” he said, “I didn't stop here for a ruckus. But I am damn tired, and when I'm tired I get temperish. This is a hotel. I've got money. I want two rooms and the rest or the reason why not. Right now.”

The barkeep blinked. “Just a minute.” And he was out from behind the bar and following his belly to the stairs. Light as a feather on his feet, he was. “Mr. Duffy!” he called up the stairs. “Somebody here! Can you come down?” He looked at Briggs and levitated back behind the bar.

A man tripped down the stairs in a stovepipe hat. He stepped briskly to Briggs.

“My name is Aloysius Duffy,” said he, offering a hand. “And yours, sir?”

“Briggs.”

“What can we do for you?”

Briggs listed his requirements: two rooms, five hot baths, five suppers. Duffy listened politely. A gent in his forties, of average height, Duffy was a ruddy-faced fellow and wore, besides the stovepipe, a boiled shirt and red cravat and black trousers and snappy yellow oxfords and what passed for a diamond stickpin. The hand he had offered was soft, and it had surely signed a worthless certificate more often than it had swung a scythe. His movements and manner bespoke business before pleasure.

“I see.” Duffy did not. “But why two rooms?”

“Well, I'm not by myself. I'm driving a frame wagon with four passengers. Women.”

“Women?” Duffy's eyes were brighter than his stickpin. “Ah. An unusual cargo, I must say.” He sobered. “In any case, Mr. Briggs, I regret I can't oblige you.”

“I'd like to know why not. This is a hotel, ain't it? Open for business?”

“Let me explain.” Duffy held up two fingers to the barkeep. “Come along,” he invited. “Pleasure before business. Have a drink on the house.”

They went to the bar and watched as two shots were poured. The promoter gestured with his glass. “To your health, sir.” He fired his off and waited on Briggs. “Now, then. My partners are upstairs. The four of us are heavily invested in Fairfield, which will one day, I have no doubt whatever, be a city envied far and wide for its thriving trade and commerce and the natural beauty of its situation. In the meantime, sir, in order to recover our outlay, we are selling shares in it.” He licked his lips, held up two fingers, and the barkeep poured. Duffy tipped and downed and Briggs did likewise. “Mr. Briggs, you couldn't have shown up at a more inauspicious time. It so happens we are bringing up from St. Louis a party of potential investors, sixteen of them, by steamboat. Some may be accompanied by their wives. They are to debark at Upper Mormon, and we have spring wagons waiting there to carry them overland here. We expected them last night, but they failed to appear. However, they will certainly arrive tonight, and their numbers will strain the resources of this hotel.” Duffy put a consoling hand on Briggs's arm. “That's it in a nutshell, sir. I trust you recognize we cannot accommodate anyone else. These are gentlemen of means, and we hope and expect to convey to them a very considerable wad of shares in Fairfield. In fact, the fate of our entire venture may very well depend—”

“They've lost their minds.”

“Who?”

“The women.”

Briggs heard his words. Had it not been for the whiskey, he would not have uttered them. He must have been worn to the bone. Two drinks had never had such sudden effect. It had been like having gunpowder go off in his guts.

Duffy's mouth was open. “Are you, are you saying they're insane?”

“They're crazy.”

The promoter stared. “You expect me to believe—”

“This winter. One murdered her baby. Wolves scared one cuckoo. One tried to kill her old man. The youngest lost three kids in two days. Diphtheria.”

Duffy continued to stare. Even the barkeep's eyes were wide.

Briggs went on. “We set out from up near Wamego four, five weeks ago. I'm taking them home. That is, I'm taking them to Hebron, to some churchwomen who'll carry them on to their kinfolk back east on the cars. They're in sad condition. Dirty and tired and hungry. That's why I need—”

“That's enough!” Duffy snapped. “More than enough. Let me see them.”

Briggs started for the door. Duffy turned back and said something under his voice to the barkeep, then joined Briggs, who led the way out the door and down the steps. Duffy stopped.

“I've never seen a wagon like that.”

“Or what's inside.”

The promoter gave him a glance and, approaching the vehicle, chose one of the windows. He attempted to peer in, but in the process knocked off his stovepipe. He picked it up and handed the hat to Briggs. Then he hooked fingers over the lower edge of the window and stuck his head inside. A minute must have passed. He withdrew his head.

“Lord God,” said Aloysius Duffy.

Briggs returned his stovepipe. Duffy stood with it in his hands, on his face the expression he would use at a funeral or a bankruptcy.

“A tragedy,” he said.

“I told you,” Briggs said.

“I apologize.”

“They were fine women.”

“From the heart.”

“How can you turn 'em away?”

“I can't.”

Duffy shook his head and, carrying his hat, started for the hotel door, Briggs after him thinking he'd pulled it off, that the women had been their own best witness, and that he'd even buy Duffy a couple of drinks once the new guests were bathed and fed and tucked in their trundle bed.

But the instant they entered the hotel the promoter jumped aside, and three men faced Briggs, two with rifles, one with a pistol, obviously Duffy's partners from upstairs. No one pointed anything at him, the rifles cradled, the pistol hanging, but there they were, two men bearded, one clean-shaven, all in boiled shirts and all three looking a hole through Briggs, and there were the weapons, loaded and ready.

And then Duffy stepped over beside them and there were four, though Duffy wasn't armed.

“Mr. Briggs, I've apologized to you, but that's as far as I'm prepared to go,” he said, his contrition gone. “That's my limit. Those women are pitiful, I concede, but we can't have them here tonight. The milk of human kindness be damned. My partners and I have put our souls and bankrolls into this project, and we won't lose out under any circumstances.” He donned his stovepipe and gave the top a tap. “Now just you turn around and be out the door and take that wagon away and Godspeed to you.”

Briggs did it without thinking. His snake of a right arm had the repeater out of his belt and leveled so rapidly none of them had time to draw breath.

“Shoe's on the other foot,” he said. “You just let those guns down on the floor—be real careful—and open up those rooms and heat water.” With his thumb he cocked the Colt's. “Do it, goddam you. Do it right now.”

Then something was pressed into the small of his back, hard and round. He knew what it was. The barkeep was indeed light as a feather on his feet.

“Shoe's back where it belongs, Mr. Briggs,” said Aloysius Duffy. “Behind you is Mr. Jacobus, our host and barkeep, with his trusty shotgun. Either you put your weapon away or he will blow you to Kingdom Come. Do it. Right now.”

Briggs belted the gun.

“Well done,” said Duffy. “On your way, my friend, and be grateful for the whiskey.”

Briggs stood where he was. “All right. But I'll tell you what I think. You are the worst bunch of pissant reprobates I've ever run into.”

The shotgun pressed him. He turned and began to move very slowly toward the door, hands at his sides, the tread of his boots heavy on the wooden floor.

“You shut your door to these poor women,” he said so they could hear him, “and you'll answer for it the rest of your lives. You won't sleep. You'll choke on drinks. The food you eat'll block up your bowels and you'll die of your own shit.”

This time the shotgun hurt.

Nevertheless he stopped. “I'll be back this way,” he said, and searched for a word he'd never used before until he found it. “You have insulted me,” he said, “so I'll be back. You wait.”

The bastard barkeep shotgunned him out the door and down the steps and kept the weapon on him while he climbed to the seat and took the reins and moved the mules away at a trot.

Briggs was sick. Briggs was blood-mad. He took care to direct the span over as many white stakes as he could, trampling them under hoof, crushing them with wheels. Past the last of them, gone for good from the paper town, he drove in a straight line over the prairie in gathering darkness. He was sick because the bottom had fallen out of his plan. How and where was he to dump them now? He was furious with himself because he'd let four boiled shirts who scarcely knew one end of a gun from the other get the drop on him. How, going back into the hotel with Duffy, could he have missed the barkeep's absence? How, in the name of Christ, could he ever settle the score? Sooner or later, he had to.

He spotted a small stand of trees and pulled into it and sat smoldering and thinking until a round, consoling moon came up and he had worked up a scheme as good as the first one and a damnsight more gratifying. Jumping down, wishing he had some corn for them, he tied the mules to a tree and went to the rear of the wagon, unbolted the doors, and opened them.