He pushed his mount hard, for he wanted to reach the Hatch & Hodges Station at Cottonwood Creek before the rain came. Overhead, the sky was becoming blacker.
At a quarter to four Kleecan stopped at the edge of the mesa. In front of him the ground dropped gradually a thousand yards or more to the adobe stagecoach station at Cottonwood Creek. He watched a Hatch & Hodges Concord start to roll, the greasers jump to the sides, and he could faintly hear the shouts of the driver as he reined with one hand and threw gravel at the lead horses with the other. Within a hundred feet the momentum was up and the Concord streaked past the low adobe wall that ringed the station house on four sides.
The yells grew fainter and the dust trail stretched and puffed and soon the coach passed from view, following a bend in the Cottonwood, and all that was left was the cylinder of dust that rolled on to the north into the approaching blackness.
Somewhere in the stillness there was the coldthroated howl of a dog coyote. It complemented the dreary blackness pressing from the north like a soul in hell's despair. Kleecan stiffened in the saddle and started to the south into a yellowness that was sun glare and hazy reflection from the northern storm, and with it the deathlike stillness. Then his eye caught motion. It was a speck, a blur against the yellow gray, and he knew it to be the dust raised from fast moving horses. Probably four miles off. Three, four horses. It was hard to tell in the haze. When he reached the bottom of the grade he could no longer see the dust, but he was sure the riders had been heading for the Hatch & Hodges Station.
Art McLeverty, the station agent, came out of the doorway and stood under the front ramada, scratching a massive stomach. His stubby fingers clawed at a soiled expanse of blue striped shirt, collarless, the neckband frayed, framing a lobster red neck and above it an even deeper red, puffy face.
Kleecan called it the map of Ireland because he had heard the expression somewhere and knew McLeverty thought of it as a compliment.
McLeverty sucked in his stomach and yelled in no particular direction, 'Roberto! !Aqui muy pronto! ' And almost at once a small Mexican boy was in front of the mount, taking the reins from Kleecan.
The station agent led the way through the doorway and then to the right to the small mahogany bar that crossed one side of the narrow room. On the opposite side of the doorway was the long plank table and eight cane bottomed Douglas chairs where the stage passengers ate, and between bar and table, against the back wall, was the rolltop desk where McLeverty kept his accounts and schedules. Bare, cold to the eye, grimy from sand blowing through the open doorway, it was where Kleecan went for a drink when he had the time.
He leaned on the bar and took off his hat, rubbing the back of his hand over eyes and forehead.
Thin, dark hair was smeared against the whiteness of a receding hairline, but an inch above the eyes the face turned tan and weather beaten and the dragoon mustache, waxed at the tips, accentuated a face that could look ferocious as well as kindly.
With his hat on, straight over his eyes, the brim cut a shadow of hardness over his face and Kleecan looked stern and cold. Without the hat he looked kindly because the creases at the corners of his eyes cut a perpetual smile in his light blue eyes. He dropped the hat back onto his head, loosely.
'Oh, guess I'll have mescal, Art.' He said it slowly, as if after deliberation, though he drank mescal every time he came here.
The station agent reached for the bottle of pale liquid and set it in front of Kleecan, then picked up a thick tumbler and passed it against his shirt before placing it next to the bottle. McLeverty looked as if he was memorizing a speech. He was about to say something, but Kleecan had started to talk.
'If you'd slice up a hen and drop her into the mescal when it's brewin', you'd get a little tone to it. Damn white stuff looks like water.' He was pouring as he spoke. He cleared his throat and drank down half a tumblerful.
'I don't make it, I only sell it.' McLeverty said it hurriedly. He was almost puffing, so anxious to tell something he knew. 'Listen, Kleecan! Didn't you hear the news no, I know you didn't. . . .' And then he blurted it out: 'The paymaster got robbed and killed this morning! Indians!' He had said it.
Now he relaxed.
Kleecan hadn't looked up. He poured another drink. 'I'm not kiddin' with you, Art. You ought to watch the Mexes make it. Throw a few pieces of raw chicken in it and your mescal'll turn kind of a yellow. Makes it look like it's got some body.'
'Damn it, Kleecan! I said the paymaster got robbed! The paywagon burned and the paymaster, Major Ulrich, and four of the guards shot and scalped as bald as you please. Passengers going up to Holbrook were all talking about it. They said a cavalry patrol'd stopped them on the road from Apache and told them and then asked them if they'd seen anything. And they were all scared to hell 'cause the cavalry lieutenant told them he was sure it was Juan Pony and some Mescaleros, 'cause no one's seen Juan in almost a week. Damn butchers are probably all up in the hills now.'
Kleecan took another drink before looking at the Irishman. 'What happened to the other two guards? They always ride at least six.'
'They think they were carried away by the 'Paches. What else you think! They weren't around!'
'Art, there're only two things wrong with your story,' he said. 'Number one: Mescaleros don't scalp. You been out here long enough to know that.
And it wouldn't be Yavapais, Maricopas, or Pimas, 'cause they've been farmin' so long their boys don't know what a scalp knife looks like and an Arapaho hasn't been down this far in ten years. Number two: Just a little more than three hours ago I shot Juan Pony as dead as you can get. And he was too full of mescal to have taken any paymaster.'
Kleecan pushed away from the bar and did a half kneebend. 'Damn Indian like to ruined me for life.'
McLeverty didn't know what to say. He stood behind the bar with his mouth slightly open and watched his story break up into little pieces.
The scout couldn't help smiling. When news reaches a man in a lonely corner like the Cottonwood station, he will tell it to himself over and over, savoring it, waiting, his jaw aching to tell it to the next man that comes in from an even farther corner. He was a little bit sorry he had spoiled the news breaking for McLeverty.
Kleecan said, 'Tell you what, Art. I'll bet you five to three dollars that there weren't any Indians around and that those two missin' guards are in on the deal.'
As he spoke his gaze drifted along the front wall and then stopped at the wide window. There was the flat whiteness, the darkness above it, then in the distance the dust cloud. A few moments later he made out three horsemen. His eyes narrowed from habit, years of squinting into the distance, and he judged that two of the riders could be wearing cavalry blue.
'Get the Army up this way much, Art?'
McLeverty followed the scout's gaze out the window. He squinted for a long time, then his eyes became wider as the riders drew closer, and next they were bulging, for McLeverty seldom enough got a troop of cavalry on patrol up this way let alone two troopers and a civilian and it was easy to see he was thinking of what Kleecan had said about the other two guards being a part of the holdup.
And Kleecan was thinking of the same thing. He had been making conversation before. Now he wasn't sure. He told himself it was just the timing that made him think that way.
McLeverty couldn't turn his eyes from the window. He just stared. Finally he said, 'God, do you suppose those three '
'Four,' Kleecan said. 'I'll add another dollar that there're four of them.'
Two troopers and a civilian, dressed for riding, came into the room slowly and glanced around before walking over to the bar. But even in their slight hesitancy they had smiled. They stood at the bar brushing trail dust from their coats, still smiling, and talked about the coming rain and the dark sky, and they offered to buy the station agent and the scout a drink. Kleecan didn't speak because he was trying to picture the happy world these men were living in. It wasn't cynicism. It was just that men didn't ride into an out of the way stage station covered with the grime of hours on horseback and then suddenly react with a brotherly love spirit that belonged to Christmas Eve. A saddle doesn't treat a man that way.
McLeverty was pushing the bottle across the bar to the three men when the back door opened and the fourth one entered. Like the other civilian his coat was open and a pistol hung at his side. McLeverty looked at the man and then to Kleecan and in the look there was a mixture of suspicion, respect, and fear.
The fourth man saw the suspicion.
