“He’s high-spirited all right,” Claibie agreed. “Is this the horse Marshal Cummins is goin’ to put up for auction?”
“Yeah,” Kenny said. “Though why anyone would want this horse is beyond me.”
Claibie looked at the sorrel, which was now prancing around the corral, lifting its legs high in an excess of energy and tossing its head.
“I’ll say this for him,” Claibie said. “He’s a good-looking horse.”
“Bein’ a pretty horse ain’t good enough if he tries to take your head off ever’ time you ride him.”
Claibie chuckled. “You’ve got a point there,” he said.
“I don’t understand the problem, though. The man that shot Deputy Gillis must’ve been ridin’ him,” Kenny said. “Or else, how would the marshal’ve got ahold of him?”
“Could be this is a one-man horse,” Claibie said.
“A one-man horse?”
“There are such horses, horses that are trained so that only one person can ride them,” Claibie said.
“That don’t make no sense to me,” Kenny said. “No, sir, that don’t make no sense a’tall. Why would anyone want to train a horse that way? You make him a one-man horse, that means you can never sell him.”
“It also means nobody can steal him,” Claibie said. “And when someone gets a horse like this one, well, I reckon the natural tendency is to want to hold on to him. And you can do that by training him so that only you can ride him.”
“You’ve worked with horses all your life, Claibie. You ever seen any other horses like this? I mean, trained so’s that only one person could ride ’em?”
“Oh, yes, I’ve seen them,” Claibie said.
“Well, can that ever change? I mean, you take this horse. You think this horse can ever be rode?” Kenny asked.
Claibie looked at the horse. The sorrel was now standing on the opposite side of the corral, looking back toward Claibie and Kenny.
“Yeah, I think it could be rode. By the right person anyway.” Claibie laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“The marshal isn’t the right person.”
“Think he’ll be able to sell him?” Kenny asked.
“Well, not at the auction, since if it goes true to form, he’ll have the auction in the middle of the night, when no one is there to bid against him. What happens afterward is anybody’s guess. Kenny, do me a favor.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t tell the marshal that this is a one-man horse.”
Kenny looked confused for a moment. Then he burst out laughing. “All right,” he agreed. “I won’t say a word. But I sure plan to sneak me a peek first time Marshal Cummins tries to mount this critter. Yes, sir, that’s goin’ to be a sight to see.”
The reaction of any ordinary man who had, by circumstances, escaped the sentence of death by hanging would be not to return to the town that had handed down his sentence. But Matt Jensen was no ordinary man. Matt Jensen was a man with a mission. He planned to clear his name, and avenge the killing of an innocent little girl—not necessarily in that order.
To do this, Matt needed a horse, and the horse he wanted was Spirit, but Spirit was back in Purgatory.
“I can sell you a ticket to Purgatory if you don’t mind ridin’ up on the seat with the driver,” the ticket agent told Matt the next morning when he went to the stage depot to inquire about passage to Purgatory. “The thing is, you see, with the railroad between here ’n’ Purgatory still out, why, we’re runnin’ twice as many trips as normal, and ever’ one of ’em is full.”
“I don’t mind riding with the driver,” Matt said.
“Truth to tell, Mr. Cavanaugh, the ride is better up there anyhow,” the agent said as he handed Matt the ticket.
“Yes, I’ve ridden there before,” Matt said.
Matt took a seat in the waiting room, then watched as two others attempted to buy a ticket on the next stage, only to be turned away because the coach was full.
All the other passengers on the stage had come to Sentinel by the eastbound train. In Sentinel, they learned that they would have to leave the train, and continue by coach for the next thirty-six miles, before they could reboard an eastbound train at Purgatory.
“This is no way to treat customers,” one of the waiting passengers said. “I intend to write a strongly worded letter to the president of the Southern Pacific, expressing my displeasure.”
“The railroad doesn’t care,” another said. “To them, we are just tickets. They have no concern over the disruption they are causing.”
“They can be that way because they have no competition. If another railroad were to be built, believe me, I would take it.”
Matt thought of the injured and dead he had seen lying alongside the wrecked train, and he wanted to suggest to these complaining blowhards that they had no idea what had really caused the disruption. Instead, he just stood up and walked outside to get a breath of fresh air.
