Comes a horseman, p.1
Comes a Horseman, page 1
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Comes a Horseman
Paul Lederer writing as C. J. Sommers
ONE
Dancer was the man’s name, or what he called himself. If he had another name no one knew what it was. He came in off the desert one broiling hot day riding a big bay horse with a black mane and tail, and a few heads were raised to watch him as he entered the town of Matchstick. Passing a crudely made barn at the outskirts of Matchstick he was observed by two men working there. They noticed that he carried two scabbards for his Henry repeating rifles, one on either side of his saddle, also that two Colt revolvers decorated his hips. There was a third, empty holster at the back of his belt.
‘He don’t want that one jolting out while he’s riding,’ Drew Tucker told his younger cousin.
‘He looks like he’s going off to war,’ Harvey Tucker said.
‘Wherever he goes there’s likely to be a war,’ Drew answered. ‘That is one bad man and the only thing to do is stay well clear of him.’
Doretta (Dottie) Lang was sweeping off the porch in front of Nichols’ General Store when she saw the stranger ride into town. She straightened up, putting a hand at the base of her spine. Dottie Lang was six months pregnant and the work was getting harder for her. Most people thought that clerking in a store was a soft job, but they forgot the shelving of items, the constant clean-up, the bending and stretching. She didn’t hate Tyne Nichols, after all, he had given her a job when she sorely needed one, but he was not an easy man to work for with his constant fussing and cursing.
Yes, she needed the job–the bank was threatening to foreclose on the tiny twenty-five acre ranch she and her husband, Tom, shared. Tom worked from sunup to sundown as Dottie did when she was at the ranch, but they had no ready cash and a baby on the way and so Dottie had taken the job in Matchstick to try to save enough for present and future expenses.
As the rider approached the store, which was on the very outskirts of Matchstick, Dottie looked up to examine him, as one did with every stranger in this remote part of the country. He was tall, wearing a buckskin jacket over a yellow silk shirt. He glanced her way and she saw that his eyes were a soft gray, yet expressionless and cold enough to pierce through the heart. She thought, ‘This is a man who will not stand for being insulted or lied to.’ She had to turn her own eyes away from his stare and return to her chore.
Whoever he was, she knew instinctively, that he was a very hard man.
Porky Bing who worked at the Come Along Stable saw the tall man on the bay horse kicking up a stream of light dust as he approached. Being a stableman by nature and profession, he appreciated the depth and muscle of the bay’s chest and looked instinctively at the brand on its right flank: XO, a well-known Texas brand. So the stranger with the cold eyes was a visitor, or only passing through.
Or just maybe, Bing thought as he studied the way the man was set up and how he was armed, he had some serious business to conduct in Matchstick.
‘I’ll be leaving my saddle. I know you’ll keep an eye on it.’ That sounded more like an order than a request to Bing.
He saw Dancer pull a pistol wrapped in oilskin from his saddle-bags, unwrap it, and tuck it into the holster riding on the back of his belt. What does a man want with three pistols? Bing wondered. It had been common in the West years ago when cap-and-ball pistols took so much longer to reload, and when the Indian menace was much greater. Men then had carried three, four pistols, even more. Perhaps the tall man had carried over the habit – or, Bing speculated – maybe he was in the kind of business that required a lot of firepower.
As he watched, the tall man slid both of his Henry rifles from their scabbards and tucked them under one arm.
‘Do you happen to know of a good hotel?’ Dancer asked.
‘Yes, sir. There’s the Silver Palace, three blocks up on the south side of the street.’
Dancer nodded and left the stable. Bing found that his heart slowed a little. He did not care for being in that man’s presence.
‘Well, what’s he here for!’ Brian Solon demanded of the town marshal.
‘I don’t know,’ Royce Peebles said evenly. ‘Besides we don’t even know that it’s Dancer.’
‘That’s what people are saying,’ the angry Brian Solon said. Solon was not only the owner of the huge SS ranch south of Matchstick, but the man who virtually controlled the politics of Cameron County, as was frequently the case in cattle country where the economy was based on big ranches. Marshal Peebles had not seen the cattleman this concerned since he had discovered three local men with running irons changing his brand to their own legally registered 88 mark two years earlier. Then Solon had threatened to change his own brand to something unprintable. The threat was never carried out, of course, because Brian Solon was running about 6,000 head of cattle on his wide-spreading range, and the work would have taken a staggering amount of time. Brian Solon was not a man who liked to waste time or money.
‘Well, you had better find out who he is for sure – and if it is Dancer, find out what he is doing here,’ Solon ordered.
‘I’ll do my best,’ Peebles answered, which was not a firm enough response for Brian Solon.
‘Do it, or I’ll have your badge,’ Solon threatened before he put on his hat and stalked out the door, banging it shut as he passed through.
Peebles sat behind his desk, boots propped up and chewed his mustache while he pondered his orders. He did wear a badge and it wouldn’t seem out of the ordinary to ask a man for his name, but it would be a little like demanding that Mysterious Dave Mather tell him what he was up to. Those types of men didn’t take kindly to prying. And their reactions were often volatile.
Considering further, as the marshal pared his fingernails with a pocketknife, Peebles thought he could simply find the man with his back turned and say, ‘Mr Dancer?’ Of course, that could provoke the response of a drawn pistol if the man happened to be jittery on that particular morning. If the man was Dancer at all – who was to say he was? Few people knew Dancer. Few who were still alive. Probably it was only a rumor that had started in some saloon.
That didn’t calm Peebles’s nerves at all. He was not a lawman by inclination, but out of necessity. He had developed a fondness for eating. Sighing, he folded his knife and rose. He would begin with the stables – the man must have left his horse somewhere; if not he was simply halting for a drink or provisions and would be on his way soon whether Peebles talked to him or not.
Somehow the marshal did not feel that Dancer was leaving soon. He was here with some aim in mind. The question was, what?
Sanford Wilkes was at work in the small bank he owned. His teller, Porter Hall had taken a lunch break. Wilkes was crouched in front of the small safe in his office, sweat beading his bald head, his small eyes over-excited. He had heard the rumor – Dancer was in Matchstick. Why? How could anyone have known about the stolen bank assets? Yet someone must have summoned the man. One of his depositors? That seemed improbable, yet the badman had descended on Matchstick for some purpose. Sanford Wilkes was perspiring profusely. He counted the bills and gold in his vault once, twice and began again … he could not have embezzled that much money! Yet the evidence said that he had.
It had begun with chipping $500 from a depositor’s money to buy his wife a new carriage she coveted. That was a year ago. Agatha was one of those banker’s wives who had the strange idea that since her husband worked in a bank around all that money, he must necessarily be wealthy himself. It was the only reason she had agreed to marry the short, balding man. When the life she was forced to lead proved to be less than that of her dreams, Agatha felt deprived; she thought her husband parsimonious. With all of his money she was expected to get by on a paltry twenty-dollar a month allowance. Why, the mayor’s wife, Flora, was budgeted double that, Agatha happened to know. How was she to keep up appearances on such a stingy stipend?
She felt that Sanford was misusing her, and so she pled for more money. And pled. Her nagging did the trick, she was happy to discover, and her own allowance doubled and then tripled after she had made it clear to Sanford that she was suffering at his hands and would not put up with it long. Since it had worked once, it became a regular habit of Agatha’s and she increased her demands and the volume of same until Sanford had started staying away from home more frequently.
That habit had led him to spending more time at the Blue Ribbon saloon where out of boredom he had begun to drink more and gamble heavily at the roulette table. Of course he lost more than he won, but he was able to sustain his habit by using the same method as he used to finance Agatha’s whims. At one point he had sat down with pencil and paper and estimated that he owed the bank – that is, everyone in town – a total of $5,700.
That did not stop Sanford Wilkes, or even slow him down, though he did anguish a little more when an even number instead of an odd one came up on the roulette wheel. As with all habits, it was much easier to acquire them than to break. Yet, there always comes a day of reckoning, does there not? He was convinced that this had come on the day that Dancer rode into Matchstick, although he could not have said what made him so certain. Maybe it was a simple case of nerves or an attack of conscience.
He had been planning to foreclose on certain of the small ranchers and sell their properties for a quick infusion of funds, disguising his embezzlement with the new money, but there hadn’t been time for the plan to reach fruition. What Sanford Wilkes was thinking at this moment was how to slip away quietly from Matchstick before he was imprisoned.
The knock on the door brought Dancer’s head up from the task at hand. He had disassembled two pistols and was busy cleaning the trail dust from them and oiling them. His third revolver, which had been protected by oilskin and carried in his saddlebags, rested close at hand on the table of his second-floor room in the Silver Palace Hotel. He quietly cocked it and walked to the door, his gun hand behind his back. He did not think he had any enemies in Matchstick, but that did not mean there was none. He opened the door to find a mustached man with neatly parted pomaded hair and a silver badge glistening on the front of his black shirt.
‘Mind if I come in, Dancer?’ Marshal Royce Peebles asked.
Dancer frowned. He did not like the fact that the lawman knew his name and where to find him. He did not like the fact that his arrival in town had been noted. He shrugged his broad shoulders, though, simply said, ‘I don’t mind,’ and returned to the table where he placed his third revolver within reach, a point not unobserved by Marshal Peebles. ‘What’s on your mind?’ he asked Royce Peebles.
Peebles had taken the only other chair in the room, pulled it near the table and seated himself.
‘Mostly what you’re up to,’ Peebles said, his voice a little thin as he found himself across the table from the noted badman. He tried to put a little more force in his words, yet appear at the same time to be friendly. Dancer’s hard gray eyes were without expression, but it seemed to Peebles that they bored into him.
Peebles cleared his throat and tried a smile. ‘What it is, is a few people around here are concerned that a gunfighter has been hired to do work for those who might have it in for them.’
Dancer didn’t even bother to answer. He had begun to reassemble one of the blue-steel Colts resting on the table.
‘If I could explain further what the local situation is …’ Peebles said. Dancer looked up and met the town marshal’s eyes again as he slapped the cylinder into the clean, reassembled pistol. With some uneasiness Peebles continued:
‘One of our local ranchers is at odds with a number of small settlers whose holdings have closed his corridor to the Chickasaw Creek, where his cattle are normally watered. Especially now, with this drought we’ve been having … he needs that water. The wells he’s dug are not enough for the number of steers he runs.’
Dancer realized that he was expected to say something, but what could he say? He did not care about the squabbling of local ranchers. ‘Tell him to buy ’em out,’ was Dancer’s best advice.
‘It would take a lot of cash which Mr Solon will not have until round-up time, and some of the small ranchers are so stubborn that it seems they wouldn’t take double the worth of the land they claim. And Solon won’t have even fair-market price to pay them if his cattle start dying on him for lack of water.’
Dancer, whose hand had been busy all the while, only shrugged again. He was now reloading the second pistol, holstering it as he finished. Dancer rose to his feet and stared down at Marshal Peebles with that cold gaze of his.
‘What has any of this to do with me?’ he demanded softly.
‘Well some people – Mr Solon, that is – seem to have the idea that the small ranchers have banded together and have hired a professional gunman to come in here and take care of business.’
‘Is that what you think I am?’ Dancer asked. ‘A professional gunman?’
There was something like a muted challenge in his voice and Peebles didn’t feel at all comfortable sitting there any more. He fabricated an answer. ‘You know how people are. I mean, obviously you aren’t a lawman.’
‘Why obviously?’ Dancer asked.
‘Well, you don’t wear a badge,’ Peebles replied shakily.
‘A badge is a way of advertising who you are. Useful in trying to assert your authority – say in trying to break up a bar brawl, but of little use if you’re trying to get things accomplished without letting people know they might be under suspicion.’
‘Then you are …?’
‘Whatever I am, it’s of no interest to you, and frankly none of your business.’
Dancer crossed the wooden floor and swung the door wide. ‘I’m a little trail-weary, Marshal. Now, if you don’t mind, I am going to hit that bed over there and sleep for as many hours as I can.’
Peebles nodded, rose from his chair and walked out into the corridor, realizing that he had learned absolutely nothing about Dancer and his plans.
John Dancer – for that was his full name, one he did not give out because he didn’t want anyone feeling that he was that close to them – locked the door and crossed to the bed. After removing his boots he stared up at the ceiling for a while as the sky grew dark beyond the window and the peace of the day was overtaken by the urgent, bawdy sounds of the night in this small border town.
Esperanza del Rio’s eyes flickered toward the doorway of the Blue Ribbon Saloon as the six men trooped in noisily. They were all riders for the SS ranch, Brian Solon’s spread. Except it was not Brian Solon’s land. Esperanza’s black eyes sparked with hatred. The SS land belonged to her family; it always had. King Philip IV of Spain had awarded the land grant to her ancestor, Domingo del Rio in recognition of his service to his country. Esperanza had grown up with this knowledge and every male member of the del Rio family had sworn to retake the land. As time went by and Spanish power had waned, and the Mexicans had been overwhelmed by a new dynasty of empire-builders, her faith had waned, but not her fervor.
Secretly she disliked the Mexicans as well – they were the ones who had first challenged her family’s right to the Spanish land, claiming that after the revolution it was now all a part of Mexico. But the Mexicans had made no use of the land and their own claim was eventually forgotten. Not so with the Americans, who continued to emigrate westward, devouring land as they came. Esperanza now worked serving tables in this stinking saloon, giving beer and a false smile to the robbers who had deprived her of her birthright. It was a demeaning decline for her and her family.
There were two new arrivals whom she found particularly disgusting, and they were both among the group who had just entered the Blue Ribbon. Bull Brody was a man who looked like a pig and smelled like one as well. If he were stripped and thrown into a hog pen no one would notice his presence, although the pigs would probably move away from his stink. Reno Marke was the other man she disliked violently – he was young and good-looking enough but he seemed to think that he was an Adonis. He was always preening and posing. He could not keep his eyes or hands away from Esperanza, not seeming to understand that she did not like the vain young man. He always smelled strongly of bay rum and took any chance to brush up against Esperanza as she passed him. He did it again as they walked past her and elbowed their way up to the crowded bar.
She sometimes thought about purchasing a gun for the sole purpose of killing the young blond SS rider, yet this was not Spain and no jury would understand her motive. She walked slowly to the table where the SS riders were seated and took their orders, trying to ignore the stares and lingering touch of Reno Marke’s hand on her upper leg.
Tom Lang had finished fitting and nailing on the horseshoes to the last of his fractious colts. The twelve young horses had no idea what was happening to them and they resisted his attentions in a variety of ways. He had made it through the day with having only once been bitten and twice been kicked. One kick on the thigh, one which grazed his cheek with a powerfully launched hoof, but he had wrestled with them – a light-weight against a pack of heavy-weights. Only his determination had let him win the encounters. Those ponies, born wild, were now ready for sale, and represented a small fortune.
Tom rose from the stool he had been sitting on and placed his tools away. Outside the barn a low orange sun was settling behind the hills. It would be dark before long and he still had to harness the team to the buckboard for the trip into town to bring Dottie back to the ranch. With a deep, aggravated shrug, he removed his leather apron. His jawbone was throbbing and a lump was developing there. His leg, he had discovered earlier, had a huge purple bruise on the inside of his thigh. It had been a rough day, but no more difficult than many others. It had to be done if he were to somehow make a living off his twenty-five dry acres, which he had to do – for Dottie’s sake and for the sake of his unborn son … or daughter.
