in his general store, knew it as soon as he saw them. He watched as they looked the town over and then turned their attention to his store. They came inside with the demeanor of gunslingers, sweeping the store with cold, measuring eyes. Aaron, who had been sorting mail, cut his eyes to the short-barreled Wingmaster pump shotgun that lay under the counter. You just never know-he had learned that from years of living on the edge of nowhere. The men were wearing military-style eyeglasses, new hunting boots, and factory-stiff canvas game jackets. Aaron knew they weren’t fly fishermen, and elk and mule deer weren’t in season for a spell. Aaron assumed the coats were hiding handguns.
Aaron Clark had lived high in the clouds over Montana for sixty-eight years. His store, Clark’s Reward General Merchandise, comprised six low log buildings built one into the other over the course of 120 years. The bulk of his business came from loggers, sportsmen, and the few full-time residents. Mountain people were clannish, but they could abide visiting sportsmen as long as they were well behaved-didn’t shoot livestock, take too many trout, try to make the local women, and didn’t overstay their welcome. Lumberjacks? Well, on the weekends you gave them elbow room and prayed they kept their knives folded and their motor-driven saws in their trucks. Years before Aaron had been forced to kill one who was attempting to saw off the head of the bartender with a knife for refusing to sell him a fifteenth glass of bourbon. Luckily the knife had been dull and there had been time for a barmaid to fetch Aaron. There were still nine buckshot holes in one wall of the saloon where the pattern overestimated the size of the man.
There was a constable who lived fifteen miles away, the county’s sheriff three times that far. The killing of the lumberjack was ruled death by misadventure. The bartender’s neck took sixty stitches but healed eventually, and the locals called him Frankenstein because it looked as if his head had been hastily added to his torso. The residents of Clark’s Reward, Montana, were the serious sort, and even the drunkest of loggers would have to be mighty desperate to challenge any of them. The local axiom was, “If a boy can’t shoot the heart out of a running deer by the time he’s three, he’s considered retarded.”
Aaron Clark wasn’t afraid of the two men he was watching. Hell, he had always stayed in shape and kept a gun handy. Regardless of what the movies might show, never once in the history of the West had any outlaw or gang of outlaws intimidated a town full of citizens into submission. The American West had always been populated by people with the grit and the means to defend their own. It might be different in the cities and towns, but in places like Clark’s Reward, Montana, the law was still pretty much what you made it. Generally speaking, mountain people didn’t run crying to the authorities every time there was trouble; they handled it themselves, in their own way, and usually it stayed handled.
Clark’s Reward wasn’t one of those places you drove into accidentally. People came there on purpose or not at all.
The Black Canyon Inn, down the street, was open only during hunting season, and it had room for about two dozen sportsmen at any given time. The local guides, almost one-fourth of the resident total, bunked clients there. The guides were responsible for attracting most of the area’s cash flow. There was a restaurant/lounge where a line painted on the floor separated the two enterprises. It got lively after the dinner crowd thinned out and the jukebox was plugged in, but it was rare that anyone crossed the line with a drink in hand; the restaurant was a respectable establishment where families could take meals. The bar served three kinds of beer, all domestic, four brands of bourbon, one domestic vodka. Beefeater gin, and a single malt Scotch for the fancy-pants shooters and fly fishermen from the city. The jukebox was filled with country tunes, the whinier the better. A yodel here and there didn’t hurt the chances of a song staying on the menu.
Aaron’s general store also served as the post office, and he accepted payments for electricity from those few who had it and used it. He, like his father and grandfather before him, took the “general store” title to heart. He sold staples, hardware, knives of all manner, utility clothing, Harley-Davidson T-shirts, sleeping bags, snuff, sporting guns and ammunition, fishing rigs, and a thousand other items jammed onto shelves, packed into glass display cases, hanging on the walls or from the ceilings, and loaded into crannies. For people who wanted real choice in groceries or tools, there was the town of Rusty Nail, which had a grocery and hardware store in separate buildings. Aaron ran the store alone because people that far out at the edge of the earth were honest. The rule of the mountain was “Never piss off the people you may need to save your life down the line.” Due to grudges, hungry animals, the weather, and particularly unfriendly geography, people who went out their doors didn’t always manage to get back in.
Aaron watched the men out of the corner of his eye as he sorted the mail. The larger of the two had jet-black hair, a high forehead, and eyes the color of topsoil. The other was five seven or so and looked to Aaron to be wound up tight as a truck spring. They were physically different as a dime and a dollar, but they could have grown up sucking at the same hind tit for all the real difference there was between them. They were tough characters, no question about that, and IRS serious.
The big one ambled over, leaned against the counter, and smiled, showing a line of even teeth. He must do the talking for the pair. The shorter man was looking around, fingering the stock without seeming to take any interest. “Hello there,” the big man said. “Nice place you got here.”
“I help you fellows?” Aaron asked.
“Well, I hope so. We’re looking for a man,” he said. “An old friend of ours.”
“Well, there ain’t as many men around these parts as bears. Have a name, your friend?”
“Paul Masterson.”
Aaron swallowed hard but kept on sorting without looking up. He remembered what Paul had said. A man might show up some day. He’ll probably be alone. He might say he is an old friend. He might have an official vehicle or identification. He might not be armed, and he might seem friendly. He might ask nicely, or he might remove your skin with a straight razor while he asks. He’ll be here to kill me.
Aaron tried to mask the reaction. In the past five years not but one person had asked for Paul Masterson, and the request had caught him off guard. “Paul Masterson, you say? Masterson’s a common enough name. Lots of Mastersons in Montana. Fellow name of Henry Masterson founded this burg.”
“Paul Masterson gets his mail here, doesn’t he?” the larger man said.
“I sort a right smart amount a’ mail. Paul Masterson, you say? What’s he look like?”
The large man shifted against the counter and spread his hands apart, palms down. Aaron could almost feel his breath. “He’s about five foot ten, hundred and seventy pounds give or take. Limps a bit favoring the left leg and has this nasty scar the shape of a horseshoe on the side of his face. He likely wears a patch over his right eye. Be hard to miss.”
Aaron continued to sort through the letters. “Horseshoe shape you said? Horse kick him?”
“A nine-millimeter horse,” the smaller man said.
“Sissy gun. Give me a two hundred forty grain forty-five, preferably long Colt. That’s a bullet you can be proud of.”
“Where is he?” the big man pressed.
Aaron said, “Blond-headed cuss, built like a boxer? Nasty-ass disposition? Hermit.”
“Can you tell us how to find him?”
“I ain’t certain that it’s my place to sell maps to people’s houses. He might not take to having company.”
“Well,” the man said, “can you tell me how often he gets his mail?”
“He comes in for it once a week. Sometimes every two to three weeks. You fellows have business with him or just want to be catching up?”
“Touching base. We’re good friends, like I said.”
“You can prove that?”
Aaron pressed his leg against the stock of the gun and measured in microseconds the time it would take to get it up. It was loaded and the safety was off. He made his hand tremble as he handled the mail. Don’t fret me, you stupid son of a bitch… I’m old and I’m feeble… He figured they’d both be road stiff and wouldn’t think the old man a danger. And they’d have to get their hands into the coats. If push came to shove, the men would eat up three to five seconds getting the handguns out and in operation. By then they’ll be stumbling around dead, looking for the gates a’ hell.
The big man sighed too loudly, lifted his right hand, and slipped it toward the jacket. Aaron moved with the reflexes of a freshly wet cat, bringing the gun up and sticking it under the man’s chin with enough force to draw blood and put him on his tiptoes. The man’s face was pointed up at the rafters even though his eyes were still
