Fallon Read online

  “Gimme a whiskey.” His tone indicated that he half expected to be refused the drink and was prepared to make an issue of it.

  “Two bits a shot,” Brennan said. “Most places it’s less, but whiskey is hard to come by out here.”

  Al Damon slapped a silver dollar on the bar. “You think I ain’t got it?” he demanded. “Now give me that drink.”

  Brennan served him without comment and held the whiskey up to see the light through the amber liquid.

  “Are you still herding the stock?” Fallon asked mildly.

  “Sure. What of it?”

  “Who’s with them now?”

  “Aw, they’re all right. What’s to bother them?”

  “The Bellows crowd might run them off.”

  Al Damon turned his back to the bar and rested his elbows on it; a heel hung over the brass rail. “You’re makin’ a big thing out of them,” he said sarcastically. “What would a high-powered outfit like that want with a bunch of old work oxen?”

  “High-powered?” Fallon repeated. “That outfit? There isn’t guts enough in the crowd to tackle a bunch of grown men. Not unless they outnumber them five to one.”

  Al put his glass down so hard he spilled whiskey. “A lot you know! That’s a tough outfit!”

  Fallon ignored the comment and glanced out the door, a frown gathering over his eyes. He started to ask a question, then thought better of it.

  At the bar Al was saying to Brennan, “Pa says you tended bar in Abilene. Was Hickok there when you were?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hear tell he was slick with a gun. Why, they do say he was the fastest of all them outlaws!”

  “He wasn’t an outlaw. He was the town marshal.”

  “Wild Bill Hickok? I figured him for an outlaw for sure.”

  “Very few outlaws are gunfighters,” Brennan said. “As for Hickok, those of us who knew him liked him for other reasons than his skill with weapons.”

  “What about that there Clay Allison? Wasn’t he an outlaw?”

  “He ranches down around Cimarron. He’s no outlaw.”

  Fallon finished his coffee and refilled his cup. “One thing it takes to make a gunfighter,” he commented, “that no amount of practice will give you.”

  Al Damon turned belligerently. “What’s that?” It was quite obvious that he had no liking for Fallon.

  “Guts enough to look at a man who is shooting at you, and shoot back. I’ve seen many a would-be gunfighter act big and brave until suddenly he actually gets into a gun battle with a grown man who’s cold sober. Then they turn yellow as saffron.”

  Al Damon, at nineteen, had fallen into a familiar pattern. He had decided that he was unique, something very special. Without having tested it, he decided he was the material of which gunfighters are made. He had tied down his gun, had taken to swaggering and talking tough. The one fact that so far had not impressed itself on his consciousness was that when a man wears a gun he is no longer playing games. A gun implies that, if need be, he will shoot. It also implies that if circumstances so develop, he may be shot at.

  Macon Fallon was deeply disturbed, but he did not wish it to show. Nobody had a corner on being foolish, and he had himself had his foolish moments���but not with a gun. Gunfighters were created by circumstances, not by deliberate choice. Once they had the reputation, they often worked hard to become better at it, but that was simply self-preservation. Nobody in his right mind wanted the name of gunman.

  In a country where all men wore guns and where it was the accepted manner of settling disputes, a few were sure to be gifted with a little more skill, a little more nerve; and surviving, they became known as gunfighters.

  Most of the gun battles he knew of had been over nothing important. Like that one at Seven Pines. With a shock, Macon Fallon realized he had been so busy repairing and touching up the town that he had completely forgotten Seven Pines. By now the posse, sobered up, might have thought better of lynching. On the other hand, they might have convinced themselves they were right, and might continue to look for him, or to make inquiries.

  With all the rest of his troubles, why did Al Damon have to take the notion that he was a gunfighter? Fallon knew what would happen next. Damon would swagger around a bit, but in the back of his mind would be the notion that he had never shot anybody, and that he would not be a real gunfighter until he had.

  Fallon finished his coffee and went outside. He could not forget that silver dollar on the bar, or Al’s sudden defense of the Bellows outfit. Where had Al picked up that money? He might have brought it west with him … but had he?

  Inside the saloon, Brennan gestured after Fallon. “There goes a man. A dangerous man.”

  “Him?” Al’s voice was filled with incredulous contempt. “I wouldn’t be afraid to take him on myself. He doesn’t look so tough to me.”

  “I’ve helped bury men who used those same words.” Brennan leaned his hands on the bar. “Kid, you’ve tied on a gun, but did you ever see a man gut-shot? Bleeding to death with, his innards in the dust? It doesn’t have to be the other man���it can be you. Keep that in mind.”

  Al gulped whiskey and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “What of it?” he said boldly. “I’ll likely look on it my ownself.”

  “And probably they will be your own. I’ve seen them come and go, kid, and let me tell you something. You aren’t one of them. You aren’t even the beginning of a gunfighter.”

  After Al Damon had gone, Brennan cursed himself for a fool. Nothing he could have said would make Al Damon more anxious to prove him wrong. Only, after a time a man became impatient. Each one of these youngsters thought he had discovered something new, and each one was following a trail that had been worn down by those who had gone before, making the same mistakes. What they were seeking was empty and flat, and what they stood to lose was all the warmth and beauty of life, the things worth having that they might never realize; but the things they valued���the food, the drink, the girls, and the reputation���all would be gone like a wisp of smoke … and for what?

  Brennan went to the street end of the bar, where there was a window that permitted him to see some distance down the street. He had said this was his town, and so he wished it to be. He was tired of moving. He wanted to dig in somewhere and stay there.

  Already he had begun to create the world he wanted to keep, and part of it he had brought with him. He liked operating a saloon. He enjoyed selling good whiskey. A quiet man, not talkative himself, he liked conviviality around him, liked the easy talk, the friendliness of men. Drunks he did not like, but he had learned to cope with them.

  Brennan had really built for himself two worlds: the world of the saloon, where he worked and earned his keep; and the world of his own rooms when he went upstairs and closed the door behind him. He would not, he told himself, mix with the townspeople … that way lay trouble. Like Macon Fallon, he would keep to himself.

  He and Fallon rarely talked together; when they did it was usually over coffee in the morning. Brennan had never been inside Fallon’s quarters, nor Fallon inside his.

  Brennan and his Negro handyman had carried his things upstairs after dark, and arranged them in his rooms. He had a few paintings, and they were good ones, an upright piano, and about fifty books. A customer had given him a copy of Montaigne, and that had started him reading. Twenty years had passed since then … he still had that copy of Montaigne. In one room a Turkish rug was on the floor, and a fine four-poster bed stood against the wall.

  Habitually, Brennan kept a Winchester rifle near the window and a shotgun under the bar in the saloon, and he always carried one of his derringers on his person. Other weapons he had cached in likely places.

  He had rolled into Red Horse with two wagons containing most of what he had been able to accumulate in all his years up to now, and it was not much. In another sense, he came to Red Horse with a great deal, for most of what John Brennan had gathered was in his own mind.

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p; He was a man who loved the flavor of things���to live life slowly, to enjoy his books, music, paintings, people, and the life around him. He had come to the frontier almost of necessity, but he had remained because he loved it.

  John Brennan welcomed all men, was friend to few. He had not formed a definite opinion about Macon Fallon as yet, but he liked him anyway. There was strength in the man, and background too. It showed in so many little things. It showed in his way of speaking of woman, always with courtesy, never indicating familiarity, always with respect. It showed in the way he ate, the way he drank, the manner in which he carried himself. Brennan was not of the gentry, but he knew gentry when he saw them.

  There was one thing in particular about Fallon that Brennan wondered about. Macon Fallon was seeking residents for his town; he made overtures to those with trades���except for miners. In a town whose wealth was supposed to be founded on mining, there were no miners. This was curious, and John Brennan wanted to know why.

  Twenty-nine families now lived in Red Horse. The hotel had been opened, a doctor had hung out his shingle, Damon had taken in a partner named Crest, with additional stock. A bakery had opened.

  Brennan was at the bar early in the day that marked the beginning of the town’s fourth week. The door opened and Joshua Teel entered.

  “Where’s the meetin’?” he asked.

  “Meeting?”

  “Macon Fallon said to meet him here. Said there’d be others.”

  Brennan jerked his head toward the back room. “Fallon’s back there. There’s others with him.”

  He watched the Missourian go into the back room and close the door after him. Odd, that Fallon had said nothing to him. He took out a cigar and clipped the end, staring down the street at nothing at all.

  Teel, Riordan, and Shelley … all fighting men … The door opened, and Devol came in with Zeno Yearly. Brennan again jerked his head to indicate the rear room. He struck a match. He lifted it to light his cigar.

  Teel was a veteran of Indian and border fighting, Riordan and Shelley had both been with the Fifth Cavalry. He was not sure about Devol, but Yearly was a trail driver and a Texan.

  After the men had gone, Fallon came into the room and ordered coffee, which Brennan kept ready. “Felt no need to talk to you,” Fallon said suddenly. “You told me this was your town, and you stood ready to fight if need be.”

  “You are expecting trouble soon?”

  “Any day.” He tasted his coffee and put the cup down. “Blane, Damon, Crest, and some of that lot, they’d talk too much trying to make up their minds, and by that time the town would be burning over their heads, and their women raped or murdered. I want a few men I can count on. I want to know where they are, and how ready they are.”

  He sipped the coffee again, and then went on. “I think I can handle whatever comes, and they will start with me. What I want is half a dozen men at least who won’t get so interested in what I’m doing that they forget to keep watch.”

  “What about me?” Brennan demanded. “You leaving me out?”

  “You stay right where you are. You’ll know what to do without me telling you. It seems likely some of them will come in here, and if they do, I’d like them out of action.”

  Brennan put his cigar on the edge of the bar, carefully, so as not to disturb the ash. “I should like to open a bottle of wine,” he said.

  ” ‘Of the first grape only,’ ” Fallon quoted.

  Brennan glanced up from the bottle he had taken from under the bar. ” ‘A vine bears three grapes,’ ” he said, ” ‘the first of pleasure, the second of drunkenness, and the third of repentance.’” He filled two glasses two-thirds full. “I believe it was Anacharsis who said that.” He pushed one glass across the bar to Fallon, then lifted his own. “To Red Horse!” he said.

  “Ah? … yes … yes, of course. To Red Horse!”

  But he had hesitated. Brennan, lying that night between white sheets, considered that. He had hesitated … why?

  Chapter III

  FOUR MEN WERE seated about the fire when Al Damon rode up. The place was a hollow among the rocks and brush not over half a mile from the lower end of the flat. The trail young Damon had followed from the flat to the hollow was invisible from the town itself, and the town was invisible from the hollow. Bellows was there, as they had said he would be, and Tandy Herren.

  “Got any news for us, kid?”

  Al swung down from the saddle and sauntered up to the fire, supremely conscious of the heavy pistol on his leg. He squatted on his heels and started to roll a cigarette.

  “Nobody expects any trouble, if that’s what you mean.”

  “And there won’t be any trouble.” Bellows winked at the men across the fire. “We just want to have a talk with that man Fallon. The one who runs everything down there.”

  Al spat. “He doesn’t run me. And he ain’t about to!”

  Luther Semple, who sat beside Bellows, had been a sidehill farmer in the Ozarks when the War Between the States broke out. He had no particular interest in the war, but the prospect of loot interested him very much indeed. He joined Quantrill first, then Bloody Bill Anderson, and finally Bellows. He was a lean, sour-faced man who had moved west with Bellows, raiding lonely buffalo hunters’ camps or murdering travelers.

  “Whyn’t you take him on, Al?” Lute said. “Be a feather in your bonnet to kill him.”

  “He leaves me alone.”

  “Scairt, that’s what he is, he’s scairt of you.”

  Al Damon did not quite believe that, but it sounded good and he wanted them to believe it. “He leaves me alone,” he repeated.

  “He had no business shootin’ up my man like he done,” Bellows said. “That man’s still laid up.”

  Tandy Herren said nothing. Al stole a quick glance at him through the smoke of his cigarette. Herren was a lean, wolfish young man only two or three years older than Al himself. He wore two pearl-handled pistols.

  Al felt a thrill of excitement go through him as he looked at those guns. Lute had told him Tandy had killed sixteen men.

  “Seems to be a lot of comin’ and goin’ down there,” Bellows commented. “Your pa must be doin’ a nice business.”

  “It’s that Brennan up at the saloon … he rakes it in with both hands.”

  “Whyn’t you promote a dance down there? All those pretty women. You had you a dance, we’d all come a-callin’. Only trouble with outlawin’, womenfolks are scarce. Different when you go to town, for they sure fling themselves at you. Fair sets a woman a-sweatin’ to get nigh a real honest-to-Charley outlaw.”

  Tandy Herren glanced at Lute skeptically. “You tell me. When was the last time you had a woman worked up over you���outlaw or no?”

  “It’s a fact!” Lute insisted. “An outlaw’s reckless an’ darin’ … womenfolks set up an’ look at men like that.”

  Al Damon was uncomfortable. The talk always got around to women, and all he wanted to do was hold up a stage or run off some cows.

  “That there Blane filly. Vince, when he was down there to town, he seen her. Said she was really somethin’. “

  “She’s pretty,” Al admitted, “but uppity.”

  He took up the pot and added coffee to his cup. He ought to be getting back. Pa had come down on the flat the other day when he was not there and had raised pure-dee hell about it.

  “Here”���Bellows took up a canteen���“try some of this in your coffee. Put hair on your chest.”

  Bellows dumped a slug of whiskey in Al’s cup, and Al choked off his protest. To tell the truth, he didn’t really care for whiskey. He drank it because it seemed the thing to do.

  “Who’s the law down there? Have they got themselves a marshal yet? Or is it vigilantes?”

  “Aw!” Al scoffed. “They’re a bunch of farmers. Ain’t nerve enough for vigilantes. More’n likely Fallon considers himself the law, but he doesn’t wear a badge.”

  Bellows dumped a liberal dose of whiskey into his
own coffee. “Seems to me,” he said shrewdly, “what you need is an election. You could call yourselves an election and vote Fallon right out. Then you folks could run the town as you please.”

  Al gulped his coffee and whiskey and felt it burn all the way down. “I dunno. Fallon owns the town. I can’t see how we could run him out.”

  “Who says he owns the town? You ever hear of a man who owned a town?”

  Al took another swallow of coffee and tried to recall, but failed to recollect anything of the kind. Not that he knew much about towns or their governments. His dislike of Fallon was now given a sense of grievance. After all, why should pa and the rest of them give him all that money? All he had done was know the town was there and take them to it.

  Just wait until he saw pa! And they all thought they knew so all-fired much! And old man Blane … But he would talk to Jim first. Jim Bkne did not like Fallon the least bit, nor did Ginia. If he could throw Fallon out of town, Al was thinking, that would make him a big man.

  “If you could get rid of Fallon,” Bellows suggested, “you might take over your ownself. You could run the town.”

  He had not considered that … yet, why not? Then his sudden elation vanished. They knew him too well. Blane would laugh at him, and so would pa. “They seen me grow up,” he told himself; “they’d never believe I could do it.”

  Still, if he got rid of Fallon by himself … ?

  Bellows seemed to divine what he was thinking. “What if you shot Fallon right out of his job? They wouldn’t give you any argument then. Why, you’d be chief! You’d be top man!”

  There was a distant rumble of thunder, but Al did not notice it. And he had forgotten the cattle. Bellows got to his feet and kicked dirt on the fire. “Here,”���he handed the half-empty bottle to Al���“you finish this. See you next week. One of the boys will drop by and tell you where.”

  Bellows mounted and then glanced sharply at Al. “Fallon shot one of my men. There’d be a place in my outfit for the man who put a bullet into him.” And he added, “I don’t care if he’s killed or not���I just want him out of action.”