Twin Guns

It's building up, Kirby thought.

The smell of trouble, big trouble, hung thick in the air of the Gold Nugget. Kirby's thoughts went racing. Maybe not tonight, or tomorrow night. But it will come just as sure as winter snows will soon cover the range; maybe by spring. Winter is no time for fighting… except for the yearly battle of cattlemen against the elements. In winter men thought first of their animals, then of themselves.

Kirby finished his beer and signaled to Joe, the barkeep, for another. He, too, could feel the tension building up. Joe got a fresh glass and drew another beer, his usual wide smile hidden by the furrows of a worried frown. He wanted to say something, Kirby realized, but he didn't dare bring it out in the open. Should I tell him not to worry? Kirby decided against it. Never know what will happen, he mused. Maybe tonight's the night. He took the fresh beer and, glass in hand, walked across the floor to a table against the wall.

It's just like him to be late, thought Kirby. He was always late for everything except trouble. Not that he ever cared a hoot. He cared nothing whatsoever for any inconvenience, any worry, any real misery that he caused. And all his life he had been bringing grief to someone.

Kirby took off his brush jacket and tossed it over the back of a chair. There had been a chill in the air when he left Wagon Spoke, a chill that foretold the nearness of winter's real cold. The jacket had felt good on the long ride in to town. But now the air in the Gold Nugget felt oppressive and heavy.

He kneed a chair from the table and let his long length drop into a comfortable position. He pulled his hat down over his eyes against the glare of the big kerosene lamp directly overhead. Idly twisting his glass, he watched the door.

Kirby Street was a tall man, but not skinny. When he was seated, his broad, thick shoulders seemed to belong to a man much heavier than he was. The shoulders gave no hint of the surprisingly slender waist, the long legs that seemed almost too slight to carry his weight. His face was thin but not stretched too taut over really fine bone structure. His was the face of a man trained fine, a man who worked in the open. His mouth was generous without being pouting; the deep brown eyes showed wrinkles at their edges, wrinkles that came from squinting into sunlit distances. They were eyes in which red sparks flickered in times of anger or mirth. Black wavy hair showed from beneath the wide brim of his weather-softened Stetson.

He was dressed about like every other man in the saloon… except that he was cleaner than most. Tight-fitting levis showed the white smudges of wear and washing. A bright red flannel shirt, the only evidence of masculine vanity, stretched tight across his chest. It didn't show from a sitting position, but about his waist was belted a sturdy, well-worn holster from which protruded the polished walnut grip of a Colt .45… the weapon and belt little different from those worn by almost every other man present. His feet, crossed beneath the table, were shod in bench-made Justins.

All in all, Kirby Street was a man who would always attract attention, even in a crowd; prosperous-looking, pleasant-looking. And just now he was a man so obviously wrestling with a problem that even a stranger who could not know the depth of his harassment would have hesitated to break into his thoughts.

He stopped Joe, returning to the bar after taking the order of four stud poker players at a table behind him. "Another beer, Joe," he said. "I've let this one get flat." Joe nodded and moved away. A few minutes later he placed a full glass at his elbow and wordlessly went on with his tray to serve the poker players.

He's afraid that trouble will bust up his business, he thought. If Joe would look around he'd see that he never had it so good; there are folks here from clean up at the end of nowhere. A sigh escaped his lips as his mind played with the fact that not a man here tonight had tried to engage him in conversation, although everyone had gone out of his way to greet him when he entered the Nugget. Where will it all end, and when? He didn't have the answer.

And then the man whose message had created the evening's taut uncertainty chose that moment to bang open the batwings and march to the bar. He was followed by two men, both armed. One of them wore his guns in low-cut holsters thonged down just above the knees.

The newcomer waved a hand in greeting to the room. "Howdy, gents," he said in a strong, pleasant voice. His eyes swept the room, missing nothing, and finally came to rest on Kirby.

"Evening, Kirby," he drawled, his voice changing so subtly that only the most observant caught the change. "Have one on me?" His eyes held Kirby's, who rose slowly and joined his twin brother at the bar.

"Evening, Bill; howdy, fellows." He nodded to the two men at his brother's elbow. "Reckon I can hold another beer."

There was an audible sound of men taking a deep breath. This was it! This was the source of the electric tension that had been building. This was the meeting of brother face to face with brother; the first in more than a year. It was a meeting that would have surprised no one had it started in gunplay, and would surprise none if it ended in burning powder and spilled blood.

The whole range knew the story… or at least all of it that had occurred up to that moment. They knew that Kirby Street and his identical twin had been bitter enemies since the death of their mother and, more recently, the death of their father. Old "Muddy" Street had been the patriarch of the country, the oldest settler, and founder of the vast Wagon Spoke brand.

The range knew that Kirby held his brother personally responsible for the death of their mother, whom he had worshipped.

In his usual harum-scarum, devil-may-care way, Bill had started to town in the buckboard, driving a team of half-broken mustangs. Both Kirby and the old man had asked him not to trust Ma Street's safety to the spooky team. Ma had laughingly insisted that she wasn't too old to enjoy a ride behind such a spirited team. Bill would take care of her, she said. But he hadn't! With no thought for her safety, he had let the team run, confident that his strength and the spade bits would bring them down when he got tired of the wild ride. An hour later Ma Street was dead, the half-wild team plunging into town, dragging wreckage and broken harness. Characteristically, Bill came out of the accident without a mark on him. But he paid for it.

Kirby whipped him in a brutal fight that ended forever the farce of brother love. The fight brought out the truth: that the brothers, identical in appearance but a world apart in every other way, had always despised each other.

Muddy Street never recovered from the blow of Ma's death. The iron will that had sustained him for half a century had seemed to melt away. There was no fight left in him. He quietly set about the business of dividing Wagon into two equal parts. It was like splitting his heart into two pieces when he surrendered the divided ranch. Only his tired old eyes showed his hurt and despair when Bill took his share, without a word of thanks, and moved across the Clear to set up his own headquarters. His allotted cows were rebranded with his own brand, the Lazy B. He never again visited Wagon, and was barely civil when he met Muddy on the street.

As if unable to bear this split of his own flesh and blood, the thought of Wagon Spoke divided, his sons being bitter enemies, Muddy turned a gun upon himself. "Accident," said a friendly coroner. "Suicide," said the range. Until tonight Kirby and Bill had not spoken, not even at their father's funeral.

There had been no outward sign of trouble since his death. But the country knew war was in the making.

For one thing, there had been a remarkable change in Bill. From an unthinking, careless boy, with no obligations, no worries, he had undergone a remarkable metamorphosis. He had become a hard, grasping, ruthless man, caring for but one thing, the power that came with cows and land to graze them.

Kirby had watched the change come about, puzzled. His men had brought him word of things he had found hard to believe. The range, remembering old Muddy Street, how he had fought his battles, was prone to say: "He's just like his old man." Kirby knew better.

His father had been flint and steel, but his hardness had been tempered by mercy and his abiding belief in the law of fair play. He was capable of gunning down a man, as he had proved more than once. But on every occasion his victim had deserved killing, and had gone down only after he had been given the opportunity to draw first.

Kirby knew that his father had been governed in all his actions by what Ma Street would say. It was Ma Street who stood behind him in his battle to create an empire of the wilderness. She never would have condoned for an instant some of the things Bill did as a matter of course.

His was a different, brutal kind of hardness. When he took his share of Wagon, the money that was his share, he had changed overnight. He became a man obsessed, a man drunk with power, a tyrant who would brook no interference in his plans for Lazy B.

Kirby heard with a feeling of sickness the fate of the squatters.

A determined farmer, first of many who were to follow in the years to come, had squatted on Lazy B grass. He had settled with his wife, their kids, a cow, some chickens, and the desire to wrest a living from the soil. That he would ever have caused any real trouble to Lazy B is doubtful. Nonetheless, Bill had ordered him off the range. When the squatter ignored repeated warnings, Bill rode one day to the sod shanty, called the man to the yard, and in the presence of his wife and children, shot him between the eyes.

Whether or not the farmer was even armed was a question. No one remarked on it openly, for fear of drawing Bill's wrath. He reported that the man had gone for his gun. The man's wife pointed out that her husband didn't even own a pistol.

Kirby had given her the money to take her children and return to her father's home in Iowa.

That was only one of a number of incidents that were causing a growing uneasiness among the townspeople and the ranchers. Fair play was the basis of the unspoken code by which these people lived. Had Bill been fair with the squatter? Had he been fair in his dealings with the merchants of Streeter, the town named for his father? Had he not, in the course of a year, brought ruin upon two small ranchers who opposed him? Opinion was divided, just as the whole country could become divided.

And with the growing uneasiness, there also grew the conviction that one of two men would be ruler of the range: Kirby, who in every way was so like his father; or Bill, so different. He represented the unknown quality. No one knew what the new Bill Street might do if he won or lost the coming battle.

Everyone knew, too, that if there were no other reason, Kirby and Bill would some day tangle over Jennifer Bryant, the girl who had made her home at Wagon Spoke not so long ago.

Jennifer had been one of the few survivors of a wagon train massacre. Ma Street had taken Jennifer to raise as one of her own after the tragedy. Cochise and his Apaches, loosed on the countryside by the infamous broken treaty, had chanced upon the train. They had made short work of the men and women, who had never had a chance to defend themselves. Jennifer had been hidden in the brush, and the Apaches had been in too big a hurry to search out her hiding place. Muddy had brought the waif home to Wagon.

Jennifer had grown up as a member of the family, the horror of what she had seen gradually diminishing with the years. Like another boy, she played with Kirby and Bill, fought with them, laughed with them, and often worked at their side.

It was Kirby who first discovered that Jen was no longer a child but a beautiful young woman. He discovered, too, that she suddenly filled his thoughts, his youthful dreams, far more than a foster sister should. He never told her, but she, too, felt the change in their boy-girl relationship.

Bill's discovery of Jen's femininity was typical and the cause of a severe beating from his bother. Accustomed to taking what he wanted without asking, he grabbed Jen one evening and tried to kiss her. In the battle that followed, Bill had been so thoroughly whipped by Kirby that Muddy had had to send for the doctor.

"He got what he deserved," said Muddy. Ma agreed. Not long after that she wisely arranged for Jen's departure from Wagon, giving her education as a schoolteacher as the excuse.

That had been a long time ago. Jen was now teaching in Streeter. Apparently she had forgiven Bill. She seemed to have no favorite but was seen with whichever one happened to have business in Streeter. Unless she chose an outsider, all knew that sooner or later she would have to choose between Kirby and Bill.

And now matters had reached at least a minor climax. For the word had gotten around. Bill Street had sent a message to his brother asking for a meeting and naming the Gold Nugget as the rendezvous spot.