Jacob Putney worked the lever on his rifle and drew a bead on the rider making his way down the faint trail toward the Williams farm. After several fruitless days of spying on the place, Putney was tempted to pull the trigger out of sheer frustration, but he held his fire nonetheless. There was only one rider; he wanted three. Besides, with a rifle you didn’t get to see the look on the man’s face when you killed him.
It was this consideration that brought Putney out of his hiding place, a cottonwood thicket overlooking the decrepit farm, and sent him creeping down the slope for a better look. He kept low to the ground, using rock outcroppings and clumps of brush to screen himself from view, coming up behind the tumbledown barn in time to hear the rider dismount in the yard between the barn and the house.
“Anybody home? Hello?” called the newcomer.
He was wasting his breath. The place had been deserted every time Putney checked on it, starting with his first visit several days ago after the tip from Vanderwood. It had taken some looking, but soon Putney came across the run down spread and found a vantage point from which to keep an eye on it. A hot, dry afternoon passed with no sign of life in the buildings below, and around dusk, with no movement or cook smoke coming from the farm, he became impatient enough to sneak down and take a closer look.
What he found was both encouraging and baffling. Fresh hoofmarks and horseshit marked the dooryard and the trail. That and the remains of a cookfire on the cabin hearth told him someone had been here recently. In the barn, the wagon from Sloane’s ranch, still piled with supplies and tools purchased from Vanderwood, confirmed that he had found the right place and reassured him that they would be back; all he had to do was wait. He helped himself to a bottle of whiskey from the wagon to keep him company while he did. Putney didn’t understand why Tom and his friends had left the stuff in the first place, and didn’t much care, so long as they returned for it.
No, what really confused him was the enormous cast iron door propped against the wall in the cabin. In the days that followed, Putney puzzled over it as he sat in the cottonwoods, waiting, hoping to see Tom and Dove Ed and their friend descending the trail to the farm. It didn’t really matter what they intended to do with the door, since he planned to kill them before they could do it, but still…
After a full day and night of waiting, Putney, never a patient man, was beside himself. Where the hell were they? The stolen whiskey was gone and he wanted more. He wanted a hot meal and a woman, and he had more than enough money for both, but here he sat, waiting for three peckerwoods who might not show for days. The small town of Samaria was closer than Malad City
Pressed against the rough boards of the barn wall, Putney listened as the stranger wandered among the buildings, finding the same traces of habitation. He heard the man’s muffled voice inside the cabin calling again, “Anybody home?” and eased himself around the corner of the barn, pointing his rifle at the cabin door. The man’s horse browsed idly in the yard and Putney stole around it in a wide arc, approaching the doorway as quietly as he could. Just outside, he shifted the rifle to his left hand and pulled one of Sloane’s pistols with his right before stepping into the cabin.
“Don’t move,” he said, and cocked the pistol, pointing it at the stranger, who stood with his back to Putney, facing the iron door in the corner. At the sound of Putney’s voice he stiffened and held his empty hands out to his sides.
“Dove Ed?” he said.
Putney said, “Who the hell are you?”
“Name’s Morgan. ‘Member me? I used to bring your Da home of an evening, when he was deep in his cups.” The guy had the same strange accent as Dove Ed, only stronger. Jesus, a whole town full of potato-eaters, Putney thought.
He said, “What do you want?”
“I heard you were back, thought I’d come out and say hello.”
Putney advanced across the room until the muzzle of his revolver pressed into the man’s neck at the base of his skull. He propped his rifle against the wall beside them, then felt with his free hand around the man’s waist, searching for the holster and gun he knew he would find.
“What do you…?” the man began, breaking off as Putney jabbed him with his gun.
“Shut up.” He found the man’s holster and removed from it a workmanlike pistol, not fancy but well-maintained, which he tossed aside, out of reach. Then he stepped back.
“Turn around.” Moving as though his leg pained him the man obeyed, keeping his hands away from his body, and Putney swore to himself. Pinned to the front of the man’s well-worn coat was a dull silver five-pointed star.
* * * * *
From the moment he heard the familiar sound of the pistol being cocked, Morgan found himself praying, and was surprised. He hadn’t done much of it lately, since he no longer attended meeting or had a wife to make him. Twice before, men had pointed guns at him, both of them drunks angry at being refused a drink. Morgan hadn’t prayed then, just talked until the men got tired of holding up a five-pound piece of iron. And after shooting Red Murphy, he hadn’t prayed then either, keeping the recollection as far from him as he could. Now he turned, his lips moving as he consigned himself to the Lord. The back of his head ached where the gun barrel had dug into his scalp, the same gun barrel he now stared down. It yawned like the mouth of a grave.
The man pointing the pistol had a whiskery, hard-bitten face, with thin bloodless lips and a nose crooked from being broken more than once. He was about Morgan’s height, but wiry where Morgan was well-fleshed. The man drew back a pace as Morgan faced him and his eyes widened as they fixed on the badge at his lapel…or rather, one eye widened. The other eyelid drooped low in a disturbing parody of a wink.
“You’re not Dove Ed,” Morgan said.
“Shit, no,” the man said. “You the sheriff?”
“That’s right. May I lower my hands now, Mister…?”
The man relaxed his arm a little and the pistol lowered so that it centered on Morgan’s chest rather than his head. “What do you want with Dove Ed?”
“They told me at Owens and Price that he was in town with a couple of friends. Are you Tom?”
That brought a bark of sour laughter. “Not me. Got business with Tom and Dove Ed and their friend, though.”
“Oh?”
“Settling a debt. I promised Tom I’d pay him back.”
“I see. May I lower my hands now, Mr…?”
“John Pursley.” The man did not holster his weapon but pointed it at the floor and Morgan cautiously dropped his hands.
“Do you always introduce yourself so, Mr. Pursley?” he said.
The grin that crossed the man’s face was an unpleasant one, made worse by the drooping eyelid. It was as though that part of his face could show no emotion at all except contempt. The man said, “Guess I scared you a little.”
“You did,” Morgan agreed, rubbing the back of his neck where the gun barrel had been. He limped across the room and bent to retrieve his own pistol. “Was that how you planned to greet Tom as well?”
He straightened up. The man had propped himself on the old table in the center of the room and crossed his arms over his chest. His revolver rested in the crook of his left elbow, not aimed at Morgan, exactly, but pointed in his general direction. It was a handsome piece, Morgan saw now, a Colt Dragoon with tracings etched into the barrel. Ivory grips peeped out from beneath the man’s hand, and there seemed to be a twin to the weapon in the holster on the man’s left hip.
“Can’t be too careful,” the man said.
Morgan rolled the cylinder of his revolver down his arm, checking to see that the loads and percussion caps were intact. He kept his head down, his hat brim hiding his face from the man’s gaze.
“So what do you want with Dove Ed?” the man asked again.
Morgan stuck his pistol into his holster, willing his hand not to shake as he did. He looked up. “A rancher name of Sloane got shot down Corinne way,” he said.
The man’s eyes narrowed, the good eye now becoming as hard and lifeless as the other. His body tensed slightly. Morgan continued before he could respond, “Dove Ed and his friends came into town in a wagon from Sloane’s a couple days ago. The wagon that’s out there in the barn.”
The man turned to stare out the door for a long moment. When he looked at Morgan again, his grin was back. “You think they killed Sloane?”
“I think they got questions to answer.”
The grin widened, then became a full-throated laugh, showing the gaps at the back of his mouth where the man was missing teeth.
“This is no laughing matter, Mr. Pursley,” Morgan said.
“Sorry,” the man said. “I was just thinking, maybe I’ll wait to pay Tom back. Might could be I won’t have to.”
Morgan essayed a smile that stretched his mouth without ever reaching his eyes. He cast a glance around the cabin, then started for the door. The man’s revolver twitched in his hand.
“Where you goin’?”
“Town. To fetch my deputies.”
“What for?” Suspicion tinged the man’s voice and he rose from the table he had rested against.
“If Dove Ed and his friends come back, there’s three of them and only two of us.”
“Us?” The man looked confused. “I ain’t no lawman.”
“Of course. Only I thought you might like a share of the reward.”
The man became instantly alert, even his lazy eyelid raising above half-mast to show Morgan the avarice in them. “There’s a reward for them boys?” he said.
“A thousand dollars for the capture and conviction of Sloane’s killers, yes.”
The man whistled and shook his head.
“Tell you what, Mr. Pursley. I’ll go back and fetch us some help. You keep watch here, and I’ll see to it you get your share of the reward money. What do you say?”
“I say it sounds a damn sight better than paying Tom Mulvehill what I owed him!”
Morgan nodded and led the way out of the cabin. He boarded his mount his mount and turned it to the road back toward Malad City
“I know,” the man said. “Can’t have everything, I guess.”
Morgan urged his horse into a trot. Riding up the hill away from the Williams place he had all he could do not to look back at the man with the lazy eyelid and the two Colt Dragoons; he got the feeling the man’s rifle was pointed at his back and if he turned the man would shoot. He wondered if Bill Murphy had felt this way, waiting for a shot from behind.
He wondered about it all the way up the hill, and when he had crested the ridge and started down the other side, with the farm hidden from view, he clapped heels into his horse and lit out at a gallop for Malad City.
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