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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Ernest Haycox's novel 'Trail Town' epitomizes the classic western genre with its vivid descriptions of the rugged landscapes and tough characters that populate the American frontier. Written in a clear and concise prose style, Haycox captures the essence of the Wild West while exploring themes of lawlessness, justice, and the struggle for survival. Set in a remote town along a dusty trail, the novel follows the lives of a diverse cast of characters, each with their own motivations and conflicts, as they navigate the harsh realities of the frontier. Haycox's attention to detail and historical accuracy make 'Trail Town' a compelling and immersive read for fans of western fiction. Ernest Haycox, known for his authentic portrayal of the American West, drew on his own experiences and extensive research to bring the landscape and culture of the frontier to life in 'Trail Town'. His expertise in the genre shines through in this gripping tale of adventure and adversity. I highly recommend 'Trail Town' to anyone interested in exploring the complexities of the western frontier and the human spirit in the face of danger and uncertainty.
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Trail Town
Table of Contents
1. THIS IS RIVER BEND
WEARING the star, Dan Mitchell was a man whose tenure on living expired and was renewed from hour to hour, and since certainty was a thing he could never have in the major run of his life he prized it greatly and made the small details of his day into a pattern that seldom varied.
Exactly at seven he came to Webber's House for breakfast, occupying the table in the far corner, facing the door. Invariably he left River Bend at eight on his gray road horse, making the ten miles to his hide-out ranch in the Aspen Hills by half past nine, there to idle away an hour with his morning cigar.
He had this one fine hour of natural ease before swinging to the saddle again. On the return trip he customarily paused at the break of the hill road to view the blue and yellow and gray plain below him as it ran into the far curve of the earth. Spanish River, leaving the Aspen Hills, made its sweeping bend over the prairie and fell into a canyon for its five-hundred-mile journey to the Missouri. River Bend's crosshatch pattern of irregular streets and houses lay in the bight of this curve. Its chimneys spiraled smoke into the clear morning light and its windowpanes set up bright flashes of sunlight. South of the river was the dust and dun scatter of cattle herds driven up from Texas to this town which was the shipping-point at the end of a thousand-mile trail.
Standing on this high ledge, Mitchell looked out upon the town in which for twelve hours each day his life ran its hard and narrow and never certain way. For this one brief interval he was free of its treacheries. For this little while he escaped the pressure of its dark alleys and lightless windows, its suspicions and lusts and violences; and during this time he relaxed and breathed the morning's winy air and was his own man.
At twelve he entered Race Street, put up his road horse and took noon meal at Webber's House. Thereafter he lay back in Fred Henkle's barber chair for a shave while the idleness in him gradually gave way to a fine-hard edge, and at one o'clock precisely, the second cigar of the day freshly burning between his teeth, he crossed Willow and entered the jail office beneath the courthouse.
Ad Morfitt, the night marshal who covered the slack-tide period from midnight until noon, had come in from his final tour of the town. Ad Morfitt was a gray, competent man turned taciturn from observing the sins of the world during the drab hours of his shift. He murmured, "Hello," and hung up his belt and gun on a peg. He stood in the room's center and looked out upon the bright street, sleepy but reluctant to go home. Middle-aged and married, he had little pleasure to expect from the contentious Mrs. Morfitt waiting his return.
Mitchell said, "Anything new?"
"Couple drunks in the cooler. Was a shootin' scrape about two this mornin' but nobody hit nothin'. And a free-for-all in Straight-Edge Lizzie's. She had the boys laid out by the time I got there. Nothin' much."
Mitchell said, "Fine fresh day."
Ad Morfitt gave Mitchell an older man's critical eye. Mitchell was twenty-eight, half an inch over six feet, and weighed a hundred and ninety pounds. He had the weight and build for his job; he could buck his way through a saloon crowd to come out with his man and had often done it. In a rough-and-tumble fight he was as tough as a marshal had to be if he wanted to survive the punishment of those wild and salty riders who rode up the trail with Texas cattle. Nor was there a streak of concealed fear in him, for Morfitt had long watched for it and had not found it. Mitchell's hair was the shade of dressed harness leather and brushed down at his ears in frontiersman style. He had full long lips and a heavy nose and rock-gray eyes and big bones and the strong juices of a young man's vitality bubbled in him. He could play the quiet game or the quick one, and though there was a broad streak of kindness in him he could be, as Morfitt well knew, cruel in a tight place.
Morfitt said, "All mornin's are fine to you. Wait till you get my age."
When Mitchell smiled one deep line broke out from the corner of each eye. He put on his gun belt. "Lot of fight left in you yet, Ad."
"Nothin' ever happens to a night marshal. Them hours are quiet. I been at it sixteen years and I'll live a long time. You're the target, not me. You're the big fellow on a buckskin horse—you're the law of the town. I seen a lot of marshals come and go. Loud ones and soft ones. Good ones and some that was no better than outlaws. Not many are livin'. They either died in a hurry or somethin' else happened. You know what that was?"
"You say it."
"Pressure. Walkin' down the street it pushed on their shoulders. One day it opened a hole and the sand started pourin' out of these fellows. Either they just broke and ran or else they lost judgment and got sucked into a play they shouldn't of, and died right there. You been here a year. You're feelin' it, too. That's why you get out of town in the mornin'. Let me tell you somethin'. When you walk down these alleys at night and you keep wantin' to turn around and see what's behind, then it is time to quit." He had meanwhile built himself a smoke and now took a swipe at it with his tongue, sealed it, and lighted it. "It'll be active around here after supper. Couple more big outfits came up the trail today."
He started for the doorway and paused in front of an incoming man so tall that he had to duck his peaked hat beneath the doorframe, a great florid Texan with massive jaws and a golden goatee and eyes of marbled agate.
This man pointed a finger at Mitchell. "You the marshal here? I'm Cap Ryker, Anchor outfit, Texas. Just brought a herd up the trail. Payin' off my boys here so's they can take a fling at the honeypots. Been sixty days on trail, so they're dry. Might be a little noise and hell but it is all in fun."
"The town," said Mitchell, "is open."
Cap Ryker's natural voice seemed to be a shout. "What I came to tell you was I want no funny stuff. These boys are entitled to a run for their money. Anybody try to put 'em through the wringer or slug 'em in a back alley and I'll get these Texas outfits together and clean this place from hell to breakfast. You understand?"
Mitchell's answer remained soft. "Just two things. Your boys stay below the deadline on Willow Street and they check their guns. Beyond that the sky's the limit. If they don't want to get trapped in an alley tell 'em to stay out of the alleys."
Cap Ryker shouted again, "No funny stuff," and ducked out of the room. He paused on the walk and he let go a shrill whoop whose echoes broke through noon's quiet, and stamped away. Ad Morfitt shrugged his shoulders and passed to the street, finding no element of surprise in one more Texan blowing off steam.
Mitchell moved back to the big cell behind the office and unlocked the door on a pair of cowhands, sallow and scratched and hard-used by the night.
He said, "Go on."
"How about our money?" one of them asked.
"Where'd you leave it last?"
The puncher spoke to his companion in a dreary voice: "Where was we last, Fog?"
They departed, leaving behind the stale incense of whisky and cigars. It was a quarter of two by Mitchell's watch when he wound it. He lifted his gun to have a look at the loads; he gave the cylinder one brief whirl and replaced the gun. Leaving the office, he faced the length of Race Street with the sun in his eyes. Behind him, too, lay Willow Street, the deadline between respectability and the town's lusty evil. Four blocks onward, at the foot of this street and adjacent to the stockyards, stood The Drovers' Hotel. Between Mitchell and The Drovers' lay twelve saloons, The Dream dance hall, Naab's shooting-gallery, three stables, and the scatter of general stores catering to the trail cowboy's trade. Except for three narrow cross streets these places stood shoulder to shoulder. South of Race and parallel to it ran Bismarck Alley with its cheaper saloons, its rooming-houses, and its mansions of amusement from which late at night pianos issued their bawdy invitation.
Ford Green, the county's prosecuting attorney, stepped from the main door of the courthouse and gave the sun a wry glance. He paused to look both ways on the street and his eyes touched Mitchell and issued no warmth. He said, "Hello," and moved down Race, his passage ruffling the dust of old enmity. He had long legs and a thick upper body which made him appear top-heavy, and one hank of black hair stood on his uncovered head like a disturbed crow's wing. Mitchell jiggled the cigar between his teeth and set out on his first round of the day, following the exact route he had established one year before when new at the job.
Behind him on Willow there was some display of activity but here on Race Street, the playground of the trail rider when night came, lay the drugged and uneasy quiet of a quarter sleeping off its excesses. Roustabouts swept out the trash of the previous night, and as he passed one saloon doorway after another he moved through the bitter-reeking gusts of burned tobacco and spilled whisky and the dead air wherein many men had left their earthy odors.
He passed the Arcade, the Bullshead, and diagonally crossed Briar Street to come to Charley Fair's saloon. This, The Pride, occupied a half block and was the largest place of its kind between Texas and Montana, its row of double doors flashing their inlay of green and red glass against the rising light.
Charley Fair moved from the place's emptiness and came into the sunshine, his eyes squeezed against unaccustomed brightness. He had a round head bulked on a short, tremendous neck; he was built in the shape of a barrel, immovable and powerful, and he invariably carried one hand—from which three fingers were missing—jammed beneath the band of his trousers. In this town Charley Fair spoke for the gambling element and therefore in this town Charley Fair was half the law.
He said, "Three new trail outfits camped across the river. Be lively here tonight."
"Expect so," assented Mitchell.
Adjoining The Pride was The Dream dance hall. Now he crossed Ute Street, skirted Jack McGeen's saloon, Spreckel's Cowboy Store, Naab's shooting-gallery and Solomon's Notion Emporium. The last block, beyond Sage, contained saloons solidly and brought up against The Drover's, which was favored by the trail cattle owners and by the sports of River Bend who, because of the invisible deadline on Willow, were denied the comforts of Webber's House. East of The Drovers' were the stockpens to hold Texas beef and the loading-spur of the railroad.
He circled The Drovers' and entered Bismarck Alley which paralleled Race as it moved back toward Willow. Its cheap saloons were closed; the green shades of its houses were tight drawn against the day. One lone woman stood in this alley, warming herself in a patch of sun and as he came up she turned a white sleepy face to him and smiled.
"Morning, Dan."
"Morning, Rita."
At intervals on the alley small back lots lay crowded with empty boxes and junk and the litter of careless living. The rear compound of Brinton's stable also faced the alley. Going forward, he watched these places for whatever change might be in them, and he scanned all the windows of the surrounding houses; for in this alley at night he had once been shot at, and would be again, and now he measured it for warning of that second time.
The alley came into Willow, which was a long T cross stroke at the top of Race. On Willow were the town's substantial stores and shops, shoulder to shoulder without break all down to the yellow depot shack on the north edge of town. Willow was the barrier against which at night the wild tide of Race Street broke and fell away. Willow was the parapet behind which in the west quarter of River Bend, on Antelope Street, the general and respectable citizens lived.
He had made his first swing, so exactly patterned in his regular routine that when he stepped into Brinton's stable to saddle his buckskin the whistle of the three-o'clock train sounded over the prairie, as it did on all other days. In front of the stable, now mounted, he paused to look along Willow. A freighter, six horses and heavy wagon stood in front of Dug Neil's wholesale warehouse, ready for a long haul over the prairie to War Bonnet, eighty miles west. The county's sheriff, Bravo Trimble, sauntered forward to meet Ford Green in front of Ed Balder's big general store. A moment later Ed Balder came out and these three made a casual group, accidentally formed.
Perhaps accidentally. This was River Bend, wherein the pressures and schemings of men moved beneath the surface. In the narrows of Bismarck Alley Mitchell had watched those upper windows from which one night a bullet might come; now he looked upon those three gathered men with the same awareness of possible danger. He knew the wants of each. Singly they could not hurt him but if, in the shifting balances and changing secret liaisons of this town, they joined their wants together they could destroy him. He stored the scene in his head and turned from Willow to Antelope. Looking behind, he saw a single puncher come slowly up Race, early drunk.
Antelope Street lay behind the shelter of Willow's business buildings. Here stood the houses of the merchants and of the cattlemen who came out of the Aspen Hills to winter in town, each house centered in its brown and lifeless lawn. The day was warm, the sun half down the sky. The Eastern train bad arrived at the depot, its engine's bell sharp-ringing through the heated quiet. Coming to the depot, Mitchell reined in to watch the passengers arrive at this last milepost on the prairie—townsmen returning from distant Omaha, commercial travelers and settlers who, drawn by the magic of free land, were here to find homesteads. Bill Mellen, the town's real-estate agent, spotted this last group with an unerring eye and soon had them collected. Bill Mellen was an enthusiastic talker. Mitchell noticed how these people hung to his words, their faces growing light and pleased.
As he watched them a streak of motion appeared at the extreme edge of his vision and he swung about to see Sherry Gault step from Balder's store and advance toward Fogel's meat market, and now the lone cowpuncher who had been weaving up Race crossed the invisible deadline in Willow's deep sheet of silver dust and reached the sidewalk. He walked with his head down, seeing nothing until he came dead against Sherry Gault. He stopped, straightened, and gave her a long stare.
Mitchell swung his horse and moved toward that scene. Sherry Gault was saying something to the cowpuncher, for Mitchell saw her lips stir. Then the puncher reached out to touch her. Mitchell dropped from his horse, at the same time noting that Ford Green now came from Henkle's barbershop at a half run. Mitchell closed in on the puncher. He caught the man at the coat collar and swung him, arm's length, in a wide circle; he braced his feet as he turned and flung the cowpuncher hard against the wall of the butcher shop. The puncher's head slammed the wall and he whirled and struck out with his hands, catching Mitchell in the face and belly. Mitchell came against him, shoving him back to the wall with his shoulder.
Ford Green rushed in. He got beside Mitchell and he landed a blow on the puncher's unprotected face, crying, "I'll show you what happens to a damned drunk bum—"
Mitchell turned and put the flat of his arm against Ford Green's chest, the force of the blow knocking the prosecuting attorney off his feet into the dust of the street. The puncher, meanwhile free, cut into Mitchell wildly with his fists. Mitchell lifted a shoulder and used the flat of his hand full on the puncher's face, batting the puncher's head against the wall until the man's eyes began to dull up. After that he stepped away. Wind drew in and out of him, deep and even while he waited; he showed no anger and he showed no excitement.
Ford Green stood at the edge of the sidewalk. "What'd you do that for?" he said. "I was giving you a hand."
The puncher, once drunk, now was sober.
Mitchell said, "What's your outfit?"
"Anchor."
Ford Green said, "Throw him in jail!"
Mitchell kept his glance on the puncher. "You got yourself in a little trouble. That's too bad. Pull out of town—and don't come again."
"Throw him in jail," repeated Ford Green.
The puncher laid a rebel glance on Ford Green. He drew one hand across his face and saw blood on it and anger turned his eyes pale. He was a lad toughened by the trail, hungry and lawless and proud, and his pride had been affronted.
"Damn right I'll go," he breathed. "But, by God, I'll get my crowd and we'll be back tonight!"
Mitchell said, "Don't make that mistake, friend. No harm's done so far. Might be next trip."
"We'll see—we'll see!" cried the puncher and rushed across Willow into Race, so angered that he could not walk straight.
Ed Balder had watched this from his store and the people from the train stood by with Bill Mellen. This audience had observed Mitchell knock Ford Green into the dust and now Ford Green stood close at hand, humiliation shaking him out of his dry caution. "If you're a marshal why don't you do a proper job of it? What are you for?"
"To keep the fools from the respectable, and the respectable from the fools," murmured Mitchell. "Ford, never interfere with me when I'm handling a man."
"If a woman can't be safe on this street—" said Ford.
"On this street," said Mitchell, "she's safe," and turned to Sherry Gault. "Nothing happened to her."
She had not spoken, this tall daughter of Mike Gault who ran his ranch twenty miles away in the Aspens. She had shown no surprise, no excitement. She stood calmly back from the scene, a girl wise in the ways of this land and its men and quite accustomed to its violence. She wore a riding-skirt and a green jacket and a small round hat on dark hair. She met his glance in a full way—self-assured and with her temper willfully set against him. Her lips were red and expressive and full at the centers.
"Why did you rough him up?"
"An example for the rest of the boys."
"Then why did you let him go?"
He still had part of his cigar. He made a point of lighting it before he spoke. He found some humor in the situation and that humor slid into the angles of his brown face; it was a humor that held some acid and some iron.
"The fault was not entirely his."
Ford Green said, "What's that?"
"Why wasn't it?" asked Sherry Gault, probing into Mitchell's mind with her steady interest. This girl, he remembered, wore Ford Green's ring and this was a puzzle he could not unravel, knowing Green's dry and calculating spirit. Green was a man who wanted something from the world and proposed to get it. This girl, for all the reserve she put against the world, had fire and striking aliveness.
He said, "The boy came across the street with his head down. Then he looked up and saw something in front of him. He knew he was drunk and didn't believe what he saw. So he put out his arm and touched you."
She had a strong mind and she was resisting him, silently and stubbornly. Out of some strange reason she wanted no interference from him, she wanted no part of him to intrude upon her. Her eyes were hazel and deep and they held his glance, and curiosity at last made her say:
"What did he think he was seeing?"
"What does a thirsty man want?"
She dropped her eyes, meaning to break the effect of his words. He knew she did it deliberately, her will unable to endure interference. He pulled on the cigar; he watched the exhaled smoke spiral into the air; he saw her head lift.
Her words held short, faint scorn. "What was it, then?"
"Beauty."
She looked aside quickly at Ford Green and her voice was light and hurried. "Walk to the hotel with me, Ford." She started to turn away, and he knew what was in her mind. She had been trapped into this talk and now regretted it. Humor showed in him again and she noticed it and stopped at once, her head rising. "Well, did he see it, or didn't he?"
"I forgot to ask him," was Mitchell's dry answer.
Storm moved darkly over her face. She said, "Come on, Ford," and went down the street. Mitchell stepped to the buckskin and mounted. This was near four-thirty and the sun, dropping below the parapet of the store buildings on Willow, began to throw longer shadows down Race. The cowpuncher from the Anchor outfit at this moment left The Pride saloon, made a quick jump to his horse, and left River Bend with a long yell. Will Gatewood, the Wells-Fargo agent, came from his office.
"He'll cause you trouble, Dan."
"Expect so," agreed Mitchell. As he turned into Race for another tour of the town he saw Sherry Gault pause at the entrance to Webber's House. She was speaking to Ford Green but suddenly she ceased speaking and her face turned and he received the full strike of her eyes. He held her complete attention and during that moment he saw her as the cowpuncher had seen her, the shape and dream of beauty, the image of a still flame burning in the night, perfect and pure-centered with white heat. Afterward he swung down Race.
She said to Ford Green, "You hate him, don't you?"
"Just say he stands in my way."
She was impatient with his roundabout words. "If he stands in your way then you hate him. Don't be afraid of the word. It is an honest word."
"Afraid?" he said, and was affronted. The dryness grew more pronounced on his face. "You don't know me, Sherry. Riding back to the ranch tonight?"
She said, "Yes." She stepped away from him, with Race Street before her.
All along those walks men began to move in preparation for the coming night. A floorman stepped from The Pride and opened the swinging doors, pair by pair, latching them to the outer wall. Big Annie, broad and buxom in her high-colored silks, appeared from Bismarck Alley and entered Spreckel's Cowboy Store. Half a dozen riders appeared in town and filed through the Arcade's door. The piano player in The Dream dance hall idly warmed his fingers with little pieces of tunes. George Hazelhurst, a gambler in The Pride, strolled up from The Drover's, neat in his black suit and stiff white shirt.
Will Gatewood's wife came out of Antelope into Willow and strolled forward with her parasol gaily raked. She was a small and dark girl with a pair of eyes quickly inquiring into the sights and sounds of this town—ready for instant laughter. Love of color showed itself in her clothes, which were brighter than those worn by other women on Antelope, and as she walked along she seemed to have about her an eagerness to please and be pleased. She smiled across the dust at her husband and waited for his sober face to break and when this man only nodded with a kind of preoccupied courtesy her smile turned wistful. In another moment he swung back into his office.
Hazelhurst moved up to Fred Henkle's barbershop and paused there to light a cigar. Idling along the opposite walk, Will Gatewood's wife looked at him with steady interest, observing the length of his hands and the fastidiousness of his dress. His face was rather pale and his reputation was wholly a gambler's reputation, yet he carried himself very straight and he looked out on the world with a pair of black, lost eyes which mirrored a steel pride. He was a polished and courteous and soft-voiced man holding himself deliberately aloof from his fellowmen. He had finished lighting his cigar and his glance came about so that he saw Irma Gatewood. The street was between them, the deadline was between them, the whole world of social pattern was between them. Both of them knew it, yet Irma Gatewood held his glance and for a moment they were completely engrossed in each other. It was Hazelhurst who knew his place and at last slowly dropped his head.
All this Sherry Gault observed, particularly the way in which the gambler turned and moved into Henkle's. Looking then at Irma Gatewood, Sherry noticed strong interest liven the girl's prettiness. In River Bend Will Gatewood's wife was a lonely soul, loving a gaiety seldom found here and hungry for an ardent and tempestuous kind of affection her husband was far too sedate to show. At this moment Mitchell was riding toward the end of Willow, high and solid in the sun.
Sherry, unaccountably changing her mind, said to Green, "No, I'm staying over tonight."
2. HEART OF NIGHT
MITCHELL came in from his six-o'clock swing of the town and went directly to Webber's House for supper, sitting alone at the accustomed table in the corner, his back to the wall. Sherry Gault later entered with Ford Green and in a little while Ed and Josephine Balder joined them. The windows were open to let in the first small breeze and the sun dropped and a girl circled the room to light the kerosene bracket lamps and then the glass and silverware in the room were shining and through this bright glow he saw Sherry Gault's face turn to ivory and old rose. The Gaults had a set of rooms in the hotel for use whenever they came to town; and she had changed into a dress of black and gold. Her shoulders were erect, rounding into deep breasts, and her lips struck a strong line of color across the oval of her face, and against her all other women were pale and unfilled.
This was the second time during the day he had seen Ford Green with Ed Balder, so that he now knew the first meeting had been no accident. Behind the bony freckled mask of Ford Green deep ambitions lay, pinching the corners of his lips and making his talk softly calculating. He was a close-mouthed man who moved cautiously and painstakingly from afar to gain his purposes. Those purposes, whatever they were, made him draw toward Ed Balder. Balder, who ran his big general store on Willow, was a power in this town because he spoke for the merchants. Balder was the other half of the law in River Bend.
Mitchell lighted his third cigar of the day and moved idly through the dining-room. Ed Balder looked up and said, "Hello, Dan." Josephine Balder ignored him, and Ford Green nodded without speaking. These various reactions he noted with eyes accustomed to the reading of people's motives for what they might mean to his own life and safety. Sherry Gault's glance lifted and her attention reached him and remained a long moment, reluctantly interested. The light of the room made its pattern of shadows along her cheeks and the hazel surfaces of her eyes glowed. He passed on to the street and crossed to Brinton's stable.
Dick Lestrade, who was twelve years old, stood in the arch of Brinton's and tried to look as though pure accident brought him here. Mitchell stopped. He put his glance along the street, not directly at Dick, and he spoke as a man would speak to another man. "Been a hot day."
"Sure," said Dick Lestrade, from the bottom of his throat. "Mighty warm." He wore long trousers and a thin cotton shirt and his hair was black-damp, whereby Mitchell knew he had been swimming under the Spanish River bridge. He had the burned blackness of boyhood running free and he had boyhood's lank shape. Each day, somewhere along this street, Dick Lestrade made it a point to stand where he might see Mitchell or Bravo Trimble or Haley Evarts, who drove the War Bonnet stage.
"Kind of like to jump in the river on a day like this," said Mitchell.
"I been," said young Dick. "I hit bottom today. Twelve feet under."
"Why, now," observed Mitchell, "that's pretty deep diving."
Dick Lestrade's voice sank deeper in his chest. The men of this town, particularly the men he silently admired, were all brief with their words and so he was brief. "Not hard, when you get the hang of it."
"Sure," said Mitchell and moved into the stable. He saddled the buckskin and came out. He said, still man-to-man, "Another night. Guess I better get about my business."
Dick Lestrade's youthful imagination at last broke through, so that he was no longer a man. He said in a small, quick voice: "Think there'll be trouble tonight?"
"Looks like just another night, Dick," observed Mitchell, and rode to the head of Race.
Night's soft and warm and earth-stained blackness lay across the land. Except for Webber's House, the stores and shops on Willow Street had closed and all those buildings made a black bulwark, but on Race a thousand lights broke in fractured splinters and fan-shaped gushes from the windows and doors of saloon and dance hall, from Naab's shooting-gallery and Spreckel's Cowboy Store and Solomon's Emporium, from every aperture wherein man spread his wares for the gratification of the Texas cowhand made lusty and hungry and wild by the long ride up the trail. These lights formed a yellow glow in the heart of River Bend and music spilled out and barkers stood at the doorways of The Pride, sing-songing: "This is your house, friend! Best whisky on the trail—the squarest games! Give it a try—give it a try!"
Horsemen swept up Race and wheeled at the hitch racks. They came singly or in solid groups and their shrill crying sailed out along the housetops, dying back somewhere in Antelope's quiet. At this hour River Bend surrendered its respectability and its solid citizens withdrew before the violent night trade upon which, though it fed them, they discreetly closed their eyes.
He moved down the street's center. A new group of cowhands swung around the corner of The Drover's and charged on. These men stood in their stirrups and howled at the dark sky and dust boiled around them and their scorched faces looked upon him, streaked with vital arrogance. Rushing forward, they meant to make him give ground but he held the buckskin to the center of the street. One cowhand yelled his warning. Then dead before him that solid wave split and milled and a rider grazed him in passing, and somebody said, "How much of this street you got to have?"
They saw the star pinned on his vest. Other riders, traveling through River Bend, had carried the news of the town and of its marshal down the trail and now these men ringed around him and watched him with a speculative interest, deviltry making its thin points in their eyes.
Mitchell said, "Put away your guns with the first barkeep you meet. Otherwise the town's yours." He rode on. A woman slipped from an alley into Race and moved with the tide of men, her back to Mitchell. She touched a man's elbow and laughed at him and then her face turned and she saw Mitchell and she wheeled, running back toward the alley. Mitchell thrust the buckskin into the alley, blocking her way. He looked down.
"You know the rule, Florida. No walking on Race. Go on back to your house and stay inside. Last warning."
"What'll you do?" she said in a hard, defiant voice.
"Next time you'll leave town."
He gave ground to let her vanish and swung down Race again. All the doors of The Pride stood open, the crowd growing dense inside. He heard the roulette man call, "Odd and black. Get your bets down." The music in The Dream tumbled into the street and a woman's high, unnatural laugh rasped above the music and the boots of the dancing cowhands shook The Dream with a solid stamping. Over on the edge of town one shot hallooed through the night and the buckskin, long experienced, picked up its ears and moved faster. Turning the corner of The Drover's Hotel, he saw the round disk of a campfire on the vacant ground next to Bismarck Alley. He went toward it.
There was a big wagon and four horses unhitched and standing on picket. Beneath the wagon four children lay asleep in an improvised bed; a man and woman stood by the fire. The man came about at Mitchell's approach, thick and short and reserved.
"Passing through?" asked Mitchell.
"Stayin' here," said the man, "if we can find the land. We're from Minnesota. That," he said, and waved a hand at the steady boil-up of noise on Race Street, "that happen every night?"
"All summer long. You're camped in the wrong place. These trail hands will be riding past here around midnight, drunk and full of trouble. You should be over on the quiet side of town."
"I've got a gun."
Mitchell said at once, "Don't attempt to use it. I'll be coming around the corner of that hotel every hour, or I'll be up that street. Call me if you need help."
"My name's Wallin," said the homesteader. "Which part of this country's best for farmin'?"
"See Bill Mellen in the morning. What's the heavy load in the wagon?"
Wallin took time to kick the fire together with the point of a boot. "Seed wheat. Winter wheat. Think it will grow in this country?"
"Maybe," said Mitchell. "Good luck." He swung back to Bismarck Alley. Impelled by an afterthought, he turned in the saddle. "Don't settle too close to a cattle outfit."
"Free land—Government land, ain't it?" asked Wallin.
"Yes, if you can make it stick," answered Mitchell and went on.
He threaded Bismarck Alley, passing the narrow fronts of the town's cheap saloons at the lower end of the alley. Farther along houses stood with drawn shades showing green stains of light. He passed a vacant lot and skirted Big Annie's, which was a lodging-place for the girls of The Dream dance hall, and came by Brinton's into Willow. Crossing Willow, he turned into Antelope and moved by the big houses set back in their dry lawns. This was the town, the high and the low of it as seen from the deck of a buckskin horse. Riding through it day after day, he saw it completely and came to know its people, their intrigues and their hungers and the odd patterns moving through their heads to stir their hearts. He had his bird's eye view of River Bend, knowing more of the town than a man ought to know and locking it away in a secret place. This job made a man lonely.
It was eight o'clock when he turned by the depot and paced down Railroad Avenue along the black areas of corral and warehouse and the row of small dwellings north of the town's heart. The big passenger engine, waiting its morning run, stood on the siding with its steam faintly simmering and its line of cars dark-shadowed. A man threshed through the boards and loose wire in the Wells-Fargo compound, cursing slowly, and then turned still. Mitchell listened to that a moment and went on. After a year's practice, a peace officer got to know which sounds were dangerous to him and which were not. It was a sense that grew stronger and stronger until, as Ad Morfitt had said, it broke through a marshal's nerves and began to haunt him.
He passed the mouth of Lost Horse Street, from which two months before a man had taken a futile shot at him. He made a wider circle of town and came again to the head of Race. The big bell in the tower boomed out curfew in a round, sullen tone; and hard on its last smoldering echo a shot broke through The Pride. Mitchell said to the buckskin, "Go after it," and moved down the street toward the saloon. Men ran out of other saloons and crossed to The Pride. A second shot broke. Both of those echoes were lighter than the report of a .44 and by that sound he knew it would be one of Charley Fair's gamblers in trouble.
The three big rooms on the front second-floor corner of Webber's House were the year-around quarters of the Gaults when in town; and here Sherry and Ford Green went after dinner. She had not seen Ford for the best part of a month and yet there wasn't much to be said. Neither of these people did a great deal of talking. Ford Green had a dry caution with words and Sherry Gault inevitably expressed everything she felt in the quickest, briefest way. Having known each other for a good many years, their engagement had simply grown into a fact, without great courtship or drama. One day Ford Green had said, "You knew me pretty well, Sherry. Will I do?" And she had said, "All right, Ford."
One thing he had in great measure, an infinite patience. Lacking it, she admired it in him. Physically, she was a restless girl. While he sat idle in a chair, content with the run of things in his mind, she ranged the room, touching objects about it, coming back to stand before him, moving on to the window. She was at the window when the two shots broke from The Pride. What arrested her attention was the unhurried manner of Dan Mitchell as he moved down Race toward the saloon and the broadside shape he made against the light.
"Somebody ought to tell him," she said, "that he makes too plain a target on that horse."
The sound of the shooting had not brought Ford Green from his chair but he knew she would be speaking of Mitchell. "Man on horseback," he said, "that's his own idea."
She watched Mitchell round in at The Pride and step from the horse. Other men rushed at the saloon and street dust grew thick, so that Mitchell's shape was half hidden. He moved at the crowded doorway and suddenly his arms flung men aside, rough and quick, and he vanished inside. She put both hands on the window's sill, struck by his directness in action, her mind fully on him.
"No man," she said, "can rule a town like this very long without making enemies. He knows that. It is like going into a cage of lions. One day he'll be killed, as Curly Ed Gray was before him. Does he know that, Ford?"
"He rules the town," said Ford Green, dry and softly positive. "But he doesn't run it."
"What's the difference? Except for him there wouldn't be a safe hour in River Bend."
"There's a difference," said Ford Green. Now he was interested and bent forward in the chair, using his hands to shape his thoughts. "This town splits in the middle. The gamblers and saloonmen and honky-tonk people on one side, Charley Fair speaking for them. The merchants along Willow Street on the other side, with Ed Balder doing their talking. Those two men run the town. Charley Fair wants no more law than he's got to take. Ed Balder wants law and order, but not the strict kind that will scare the trail cowhands and their money away. There's the law Friend Mitchell is to enforce. He walks a tight rope—not too much, not too little. If he let the toughs have their way the town would die of its own excesses. If he clamped down the lid on the toughs all the trail trade would go somewhere else and the town would be just a little bunch of empty buildings ready for the wind to blow away."
"But it is Mitchell who makes your nice theories work. Do you see Fair or Balder or even yourself out there handling that crowd?"
She was a blunt girl even to those whom she liked or loved. Ford Green gave her a strange glance and his freckled, dry cheeks took on a small color. She had touched him somewhere on a vital point of pride. Recognizing that, she wondered about it.
