Lawless Town Read online

  He was a big man, with everything except muscle and sinew and bone sweated and worked from his six-foot frame. A beard, reddish and ragged, and a floppy wide-brimmed hat all but hid his face. But his eyes peered out, blue as the sky above his head, watchful and narrowed against the glare. Also visible was his nose, a bit sharp but prominent and shaped like the nose of a Cheyenne chief. Shaggy, stinking hides behind—shaggy, stinking men ahead. He grinned wryly as his mind drew the comparison. Then he began to think of what lay ahead. The town. A market for the hides and wagons, too. A bath, a shave, and a change of clothes. He was a man who could grin—whose grin touched every part of his face and not his mouth alone. But a man, too, with something brooding behind his eyes, of bitterness, or disillusionment, that never went away.

  Sid Wessell drove the second wagon, his feet spread and braced. They drove in silence because everything they had to talk about had long since been talked about, and because the noise of wagons and mules made conversation difficult. Withal, they were a companionable pair, with no hidden resentments or angers between them.

  Ahead, the town materialized as a few moments before these two had materialized out of the empty distances to the north. Prairie Town was not very large or prepossessing, but it was larger than when they had seen it last. A town composed of crooked streets lined with one-story frame buildings, their false fronts a shoddy attempt to make them appear more imposing than they were, and eternal dust rising from the streets until it made a thin haze over the entire place. The herds, trailing in from the south, were bunched on the grass within a ten-mile radius to north and west and east, with riders going between the waiting herds and the waiting town. A twin ribbon of steel linked the town with the East. Along this tenuous link of steel puffed a locomotive, drawing a seemingly endless string of cattle cars.

  Skirting the waiting herds, Sloan drove his wagon in and stopped at the crest of a little knoll to stare down at the bustling place. Wagons and riders churned the dust in the streets, the noise of their voices and their rigs making a kind of buzz clearly audible in the summer air. Closer were the residences of the townspeople, simple frame dwellings for the most part, some with lawns, some without. Sloan’s gaze lingered on a woman hanging clothes in the backyard of one, and now, all at once, the brooding loneliness in his eyes became more obvious. She was dressed in a blue gingham gown, her dark hair pinned loosely out of the way atop her head. Her sleeves were rolled above her elbows, and her arms were brown. A little girl was playing with a doll on the lawn nearby. She was too far away for Sloan to see her features. But there was a picture in his mind of what they would be like.

  His face twisted briefly into an expression something like a frown, and then he put his wagon into motion again with the briefest of glances over his shoulder at Sid. Down the slope to the waiting town he went, and along the quiet residential street, all too recently cut from the prairie sod, down the main business street and across the tracks, and thence westward, away from the cattle pens, to the hide warehouse, easily recognizable by its size, its smell, and the towering pile of bleaching bones behind it.

  He pulled the mules to a halt and tied the reins. He jumped down, waited for Sid, then crossed the yard with him. This was Sloan’s first venture as a buffalo hunter, and it would be his last—in spite of the fact that it would pay handsomely for the time he’d spent.

  A man in leather apron, black sleeve protectors, and black skullcap came out of the warehouse to stand in the shade beneath a sign that read: ike solomon—hides and bones.

  Sloan leaped easily to the dock, Sid following. Sloan said, “I’m Sloan Hewitt, and this is Sid Wessell. We’ve got five hundred and sixty-eight hides, more’n ninety percent bulls. We got two wagons and eight mules. What’ll you give for the lot?”

  “Quittin’?”

  Sloan nodded.

  Solomon was a dour, smallish man with shrewd eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses pinched to his nose. “Too hard or too dirty?”

  Sloan’s eyes narrowed at the unpleasantness in Solomon’s tone. “You a hide buyer or do you make your living asking questions?”

  Solomon frowned. “Market’s three dollars and seventy-eight cents for bulls. I’ll pay three-fifty. Half that for cowhides.” He got out a stub of pencil and figured a moment on his celluloid cuff. Looking up, he said in a take-it-or-leave-it tone, “Three thousand.”

  Sloan said, “Thirty-two hundred.”

  “Thirty-one. And I’ll dock you for every spoiled hide you’ve got.”

  Sloan nodded. “A deal.”

  “Come back this evening. I’ll have your money then.”

  Sloan nodded again. He turned to grin at Sid. “Somebody say something about a bath?”

  He hadn’t known it would be so bad—that slaughtering animals for their hides could so remind a man of the war and the slaughter of men. But it had, and that was why he was quitting now.

  As they got their guns and personal gear out of the wagons, Sid said exultantly, “Take off six hundred we got in the mules and a hundred in the harness and four hundred for the wagons and we still come up with a profit of a thousand apiece. Not bad for two months’ work.”

  No, Sloan thought. It wasn’t bad. If a man stayed with it he could make himself a stake, a start that would put him well along the road to being rich. That is, if a man didn’t think. If a man thought about it at all, he realized that every rotting carcass out there on the plain meant that some Indian lodge would feel the pinch of hunger during the months to come.

  He flung his saddle to a shoulder, hefted his rifle and war sack in his left hand, and trudged away toward town, Sid keeping pace. And now he began to see the changes that had come in the last two months, that had come with the herds and their crews. For one thing, the cattle pens were full. Men, sitting on a fence, tallied cattle into a car. When it was full, another moved into place. And this went on all day.

  The pair left the tracks behind and started up Texas Street. There was a bustle about the town and, even at this hour, a wildness, an untamed quality you didn’t notice until you mingled with the people on the streets and became a part of it. The signs over the saloons were riddled with bullet holes, and one hung from a single chain, the other having been parted by a lucky or remarkably accurate shot.

  Sloan and Sid trudged uptown until they reached a hotel, wide veranda stretching across its face, balconies above the veranda. A bullet-marked sign hung above the steps: drovers rest.

  The pair went in, a bit self-conscious about their appearance and, after registering at the desk, disappeared up the stairs, both grinning a little, both anticipating the feel of being clean, the feel of beds beneath their bodies once again. And, as they did, a volley of shots sounded at the lower end of Texas Street, and down there in the dry dust a man died and stained the dust with his blood. Watching him die, the expressions of concern deepened in the faces of some of those in the street. This town had a man for breakfast every day. This town had a savage and insatiable taste for blood.

  * * * * *

  At sundown, Sloan Hewitt came down the stairs to the lobby, leaving his partner behind in the room, mouth open, snoring noisily. He was dressed now in soft-tanned Texas boots, wool pants tucked into their tops, and a faded Army shirt. He wore no hat. He paused on the veranda, squinting slightly against the orange glare in the western sky, and lit one of the cigars he had purchased at the desk. Then he turned briskly toward the mercantile store across the street and several doors north.

  A dozen riders came thundering down Texas Street, raising a blinding cloud of dust. As they passed the hotel, several of them emptied their guns at the sign in front of the hotel. Sloan had to jump to get out of their way, but he did so cheerfully enough and with no resentment. He watched them disappear into their own cloud of dust as they thundered on down the street.

  He went into the store and bought a hat, fitted it on his head, and stepped out into the soft
dusk of the street with it cocked, uncreased, over his right eye. Now something was noticeable about him that had not been noticeable before—his gun and belt stood out because the rest of him was so clean and new. The belt was cracked and caked with buffalo grease and dust. The revolver holster, hardened by countless wettings, was formed exactly to the shape of the gun it held. The gun itself, the part of it that showed, was different. The grip was scarred, the blue worn off cylinder, hammer, and frame, but a light coating of oil shone on the gleaming metal, and there was not a speck of rust.

  He walked downstreet, his cigar firmly clamped in his big, strong teeth. He heard the barkers before the larger saloons. He heard the tinkle of pianos, the hum of voices, and occasionally a woman’s laugh. He let himself be jostled by drunks and others too intent on what they were doing to watch where they were going, good-naturedly, because out where he had been, there was nothing but silence, loneliness, and the smell of blood and death.

  He walked past the saloons and beyond—right along the tracks, toward the gloomily towering bulk of the hide warehouse. A single lamp glowed dimly through the dirty office window. Sloan knocked and went inside.

  Solomon sat at a scarred rolltop desk, wearing a green eyeshade, still wearing black sleeve protectors and his black skullcap. He glanced up, then fumbled for a sheet of paper among the others on his cluttered desk. He said, “It tallies three thousand seventy-one dollars.”

  Sloan nodded. Solomon got up and went to the tall wall safe at the rear of his office. Shielding the knob with his body, he twirled it and a few moments later swung open the ponderous door. He said without turning, “Gold or specie?”

  “Gold’s too heavy. Give me paper.”

  Solomon came back to the desk, carrying a black enamel box. He opened it, counted out the money, closed it, and returned it to the safe. Coming back, he counted the money again, then shoved a receipt at Sloan. “Sign for it.”

  Sloan signed. He picked up the bills and stuffed them into his pants pocket. He’d go back to the hotel and put the money in the hotel safe. In the morning he could put it in the bank.

  It was wholly dark outside. He stood for a moment beside the door, letting his eyes become accustomed to the dark. Then he jumped down off the dock and headed along the tracks toward the foot of Texas Street.

  The soft, velvety breeze of a summer night blew off the prairie, blew away the smells of the town and the hide warehouse at his back. It was laden with the smell of crushed sage, with the vague, faint smell of horses and cattle, with the elusive smell of a thousand endless miles of grass. For some reason the soft night breeze reminded him of things—of another place and another time, of a woman faintly scented with lilac and soft and warm, of a promise made that was never kept, and, remembering her, Sloan thought of another woman, the one he had seen hanging clothes on a line today while a small child played nearby.

  Something, some odd uneasiness, made him glance behind, and he saw Solomon standing at the end of his warehouse dock, a dim figure in the faint light shining out of the open office door. He felt the beginning of a chill along his spine, a chill that was premonition, a warning sense bred out of men when they came out of their caves ten thousand years ago but present still in some. His hand dropped toward his gun but too late, for they were suddenly all around him. A hard-swung two-by-four torn from a fence row nearby slammed him on the side of the head and neck, stunning him like a hard-sledged steer.

  Down he went, still conscious but paralyzed and wholly unable to move, thinking, You fool! You poor, damned, stupid fool! You walked into this like a greenhorn straight off the farm! His thoughts stopped, and he could feel the pain of their boots in his ribs, his thighs, his shoulders, and his face. The one with the two-by-four belabored him with it whenever he could swing without hitting one of his savage companions.

  Sloan’s consciousness faded. The last thing he felt was his pockets being searched, the last thing he heard a growling voice, “Got it, Lane?”

  “Yeah. Let’s go.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “If he ain’t, he damn soon will be.”

  “Come on, then.”

  Three of them, one called Lane. Faceless men coming out of the shadows and returning now to the shadows from which they had come. But not voiceless men. He’d know their voices if he ever heard them again. Consciousness left him, and he lay unmoving, as though dead. The rise and fall of his chest was slow and labored, the sound of his breathing rasping but very faint.

  * * * * *

  It was cooler when he regained consciousness, and he knew he had been lying there a long, long time. With returning consciousness came the pain, splitting his head, running like knives down his neck to his collar bone and into his chest. One leg felt broken, and his face burned savagely. His mouth was so puffy he could scarcely lick his lips. But, when he did, he tasted blood.

  He heard someone coming along the tracks and putting forth a supreme effort, managed a voiceless croak. And then, the unbelievable, a girl, running toward him, kneeling beside him. Her voice was crisp. “Are you drunk or hurt?”

  He didn’t question fate. He groaned, “Hurt. Help me to my feet.”

  He found out at once that his leg wasn’t broken, for it bore his weight. Gritting his teeth against the pain, leaning heavily upon the strong and slender girl, he went with her along the tracks to Texas Street. And, as he did, anger came to him. It began as a tiny stirring in the back of his mind, but it grew as a fire in dry grass grows until it blazed white-hot all through his brain. Anger. Not because he had lost the money nor because now the months of bloody work were for nothing. Not even because of the pain. No. This fury was partly at himself for making it so easy for them, partly at the town, at the times, at the thing in men that makes them live like beasts of prey.

  This was pure, consuming rage because he was sick of violence and death and because he could see, more clearly than he ever had before, that there could be no end to it for him. It followed him, clung to him, lived with him. He’d tried to avoid it but would never run from it. He walked painfully along toward the lights of the noisy town, the girl half supporting him. Two voices and a name were sharply remembered things in his mind.

  II

  The girl, whose face he still had not seen, turned at the first intersection off Texas Street and after that led him along quieter business and residential streets until she reached a small white cottage sitting at the very edge of the prairie. While he stood door silently on the porch, she went in the unlocked door and lit a lamp. She held the screen open for him, and he stumbled inside to collapse into the first chair he reached.

  He realized at once how bloody and dirty he was and tried to get up, but she pushed him back. “Never mind the chair. Good heavens, what did they hit you with?”

  “A two-by-four, I think.” He stared up at her, trying to make his eyes show him a clearly focused picture of her.

  She was a tall girl, he remembered that much. The top of her head had come well above the point of his shoulder. Her hair was dark, braided, and the braids were coiled around her head. Her eyes, resting on him, were steady and appraising, her mouth firm. He wondered what she had been doing, walking along the railroad tracks in the middle of the night. She wasn’t a saloon girl, that was plain enough.

  “Did they rob you?”

  Her voice, though crisp, had a disturbing timbre, a throaty quality he found pleasant. He nodded and said wryly, “Three thousand.”

  She said, “I’ll get some water and things. Do you think you have any broken bones?”

  “I doubt it. Ribs maybe, but nothing else.”

  She disappeared. He heard the back door, the squeak of the pump in the yard. He heard the back door again, the clatter of a pan, a sound like that of a tea kettle being replaced on the stove. Then she came into the room, carrying a basin of water and an armload of towels.

  “Take off your shirt.
”

  He got up. Wincing, he removed the torn and dirty shirt. She probed gently at his ribs with her fingers, finished, and glanced up at him. “Two broken. You haven’t asked me what I was doing down there at this hour.”

  Sloan said, “Not my business.”

  She didn’t answer that. She was busy washing him with a wet, soapy cloth. The skin had been scraped off in a good many places, and, while his face remained expressionless, his skin twitched and pulled away from the cloth. But she finished at last, dried where she had washed, and then began to wind strips of sheet tightly around his midsection.

  Finishing this, she asked, “What will you do? There is no law in this town.”

  He said, “I’ll make some. I’m sure not going to let it go.”

  “You saw them?”

  “No. I didn’t see them … their faces, that is. But I heard one of their names and I heard their voices.” He reached for his shirt and shrugged into it. The pain was considerably less than it had been before, due to the bandages tightly wound around his middle. He said, “Ma’am, I’m obliged.”

  There was an odd expression in her face. “Forget what you’re planning. Ride on out. If you don’t, they’ll be burying you in the morning.” She studied his face for several moments, then turned away with a little helpless shrug. “Good-bye.”

  The coolness of her voice disturbed him, and he felt ungrateful. He turned to the door and stepped outside. He started down the walk, then halted as he heard her voice. “You lost your hat. See if this one fits.”

  He returned, took the hat from her, and put it on. She said, “It was my father’s.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”