Blood and Gold

“When I say you drink with me, you’ll drink with me,” he yelled, turning to his grinning compadres at the table, seeking their support. The man knew he had gone way too far to back down, and though I’d given him an out, his pride wouldn’t let him take it. He swung back to the bar. “Damn you, Doan, I told you to bring a bottle.”

“Mister,” I said again, “I don’t want your whiskey. I’m not partial to it.”

Burt jerked the bottle from Doan’s hand, pulled the cork and held the whiskey high. “Open your trap,” he said. “You’re either gonna drink like a man or be carried out of here with two broken legs.”

Me, I’d had enough. I was tired and wet and as far as I was concerned this hoedown was over.

Two things happened very fast. First, Burt grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled me toward him, the splashing bottle poised so he could ram it into my mouth. Second, I palmed my Colt and slammed the barrel hard against the side of his head.

For a moment the man just stood there, looking at me with glazed eyes that rolled like dice in his head. Then he collapsed to the floor with a crash that shook the building, as though an anvil had just dropped on his head.

I swung the Colt, covering the three punchers at the table, but not a one of them even twitched an eyelid. Three pairs of eyes regarded me in stunned horror, like I’d just scared them into salvation and Sunday school.

“Yee-hah!” The old man by the stove sprang to his feet, spry as you please, and threw his arms into the air. “Man, oh, man,” he yelled, “I never seen nobody draw a Colt that fast. Boy,” he hollered at me, “you’re quick as double-geared lightning an’ no mistake.”

I ignored the oldster and spoke to the punchers at the table. “The man at my feet was duly notified,” I said. “Any of you three have a problem with that?”

The youngest of the punchers, a boy about my own age, shook his head. “We got no problem with you,” and after a moment’s hesitation, he added, “mister.”

I nodded to the fallen Burt. “Then carry him out of here and let him sleep it off.”

The three waddies rose as one and helped their limp, groaning compadre to his feet. I watched them carry Burt through the door before I turned back to the bar.

Jonathan Doan was looking hard at me, a strange expression that I found difficult to read in his eyes. “You’ve grown up, Dusty,” he said finally. “I’d say you’ve grown up considerable since the spring.”

He reached under the bar, found another bottle of Bass Ale and slid it across the bar.

“This one’s on me, Mr. Hannah,” he said.

Chapter 9

I rose at first light and brushed straw from my hair and clothes, stepped down the ladder from the hayloft, then checked on the black. The big horse seemed rested and looked like he was ready for the trail.

Corwin Doan was asleep in his office and I didn’t wake him. I found a tin cup, quietly helped myself from the coffeepot on top of the stove and stepped to the door of the livery stable.

The rain had stopped for now, but a heavy mist hung over the Red, thick gray fingers spilling over its banks, probing among the buildings and corrals of the crossing so the cabins and fences looked like they were emerging from a cloud.

I set the cup at my feet, rolled a cigarette, picked up the cup again and smoked and drank, enjoying the sharp morning tang of tobacco and coffee and the quiet tranquillity of the breaking day.

Ten minutes later I saddled the black and rode to the general store. Jonathan Doan was already up and doing and he told me Burt, nursing a hangover and a busted head, had ridden out an hour earlier. He said he didn’t much care, on account of how he had no regard for the man, him being a bully and a no-account an’ all.

I bought coffee, a little baking powder, cornmeal and flour. Bacon being expensive at that time and place, I settled for a slab of salt pork and my only extravagance was a small sack of the black-and-white peppermint balls I’d seen the night before.

Before he made up my meager order, Doan poured me a cup of coffee and told me to help myself to some soda crackers and cheese. Thus I made an excellent breakfast before I took to the trail again, riding through a gray mist under a grayer sky.

I figured I was due north of the SP Connected, but before I reached the ranch I must cross a hundred miles of broken, hilly country with two questions uppermost in my mind: Where were Lafe Wingo and the Owens brothers? And where were the Apaches?

For these I had no answers, neither question being calculated to set a man’s mind at ease. When the rain began again, a steady downpour accompanied by the rumble of distant thunder, it only added to my gloom.

Ahead of me lay both forks of the Wichita and beyond that, down to the Cottonwood Creek country about twenty miles west of the dogleg of the Western Trail, was the SP Connected.