As Hardwick had said, with the loan of six teams and a couple of saddle horses to haze them out to the Teton, the wolfers ran their pelts into Fort Benton right smart. Bumping up Front Street in wagons, they cut a sorry sight, the grim set of their jaws testifying that they knew they were laughing stocks for getting carelessly relieved of their horses on the very doorstep of civilization. In the saloons to which they dispersed, there were sly remarks and winks about infantry and church parades and having to visit a cobbler to get your boots half-soled. That is unless the redhead, Tom Hardwick, happened to be present. He and John Evans were standing drinks all around in an endeavour to recruit a posse to recover the horses and punish the Indians. Both men were well-known in Benton. Most considered Evans an easygoing, affable sort, but Hardwick was held to be a dicey proposition and nobody to mock to his face.
As the day wore on the wolfers got drunker, touchier, and blood-thirstier. There was no stampede of volunteers to help retrieve the horses, and a reluctance to sign on often occasioned charges of cowardice and name-calling, a scuffle or two. Among the wolfers themselves there was resentment against Hardwick for threatening to turn them out of Benton so soon to pursue the horse-rustlers, nipping their fun in the bud after a solitary, cold winter. Philander Vogle, for one, was trying to cram as much amusement as he could into an afternoon at a crib on the line. The crib girls were the cheapest a jump, but they didn’t allow you to take your boots off, so Vogle stood at the end of the bed with a bottle in his fist, his pants down around his ankles, waiting for Nature to reassert herself with the wherewithal for a repeat poke. However, the lazy whore kept dozing off in between times – which wasn’t much encouragement to Nature.
Throughout the course of the day the Englishman’s boy kept moving, drifting up and down the town. He had nowhere to stop, nothing to do, nothing to eat but a box of crackers bought at a general store for an exorbitant price. Left high and dry by the Englishman’s untimely death, starvation seemed a probable fate. When he tired of tramping, he perched himself on a wagon tongue or a barrel, the flies and dust from Front Street settling on him as he gnawed his dry crackers and cogitated plans. Maybe he should try to swap his fancy pistol for a double-barrel and shells to keep himself in meat, potting grouse or rabbit or duck. The truth was, no matter how much sense such a scheme might make, no matter how hungry he might get, he knew he was not going to part with the pistol. The pistol made him, for the first time in his life, any man’s equal.
When night drew down, Fort Benton grew a good deal livelier even than it was during the day. The saloons poured light and music and drunken patrons into the street where they pissed and fought in the roadway. These fights, noisy affairs with much loud cursing and bellowing of threats, riled the horses tied to the hitching posts to a terrible pitch. They thrashed about, rolling their eyes and tossing their heads until their terror and tension became unbearable. Then they flew at one another, like the men in the street, kicking and biting and rearing until a tether broke and one went careering off helter-skelter down the dark street.
Meanwhile, the Englishman’s boy kept on the prowl, sidling out of the way when any particularly dangerous- looking drunk came lurching and muttering out of the gloom. A clear sky spelled that a chilly night was a certainty and staying on the tramp was the only way to keep the cold out of his bones until the livery-stable office closed and he could sneak into the barn and burrow in the hay.
By and by he found himself procrastinating outside the Star Saloon, debating whether or not to invest two bits in a drink. A tot in the belly and a warm place to stop would ease him through the cold hours until it was safe to scare up a place to sleep. It was a thorny, troublesome calculation, money weighed against comfort, but then, through the smeared saloon window, he spied the redheaded Hardwick seated at a poker table. A face he recognized somehow decided him. He went in.
The bar was packed. A fug of dense smoke, animal heat, stale sweat, and rancid grease greeted him as he stepped through the door. The smell of unwashed hide-hunters, mule-skinners, prospectors, and bullwhackers came as a shock after the crisp, clean night air, even to him, who couldn’t remember the last time a scrub cloth had touched him. At the far end of the room, behind a low fence with a swinging gate in it, he could see roughnecks galloping hurdy-gurdy girls in dizzy circles to a breakneck air battered out of an untuned piano. Picking his way amid the gambling tables to the bar, he bumped into a man who shot him a drunken, hostile stare. For a moment, the boy couldn’t place the stranger and then he recognized the headgear, a collapsible black silk top hat which Dawe had kept stowed in his steamer trunk. Its wearer was none other than the owner of the Overland Hotel, the same man the Englishman’s boy had blackmailed into renting them a room.
The boy carried on to the bar, ordered his drink, hooked the heel of his boot on the rail and turned to face the room, glass in hand. The man in Dawe’s top hat had his eyes fixed on him. As the boy lifted the tumbler to his lips, a tremor disturbed the surface of the whisky. He held off drinking until it steadied and went smooth as glass, rewarding his coolness with a sip, aware the hotel-keeper had moved in on him, was hovering almost at his elbow.
“You’re the son of a bitch who don’t pick up after himself, ain’t you?” said the hotel man. “Left a corpse in my best bed.”
The boy didn’t answer. He took another sip of whisky and surveyed the occupants of the saloon.
The hotelier was crowding in, thrusting his face at him. “Left a bill behind, too. Unpaid bill and an Englishman gone high in the heat.”
“I settled with your man,” the boy said. “You got all was owed – and more.”
“You filched the Limey’s gear,” said the hotel man. “By rights it’s mine. I got claim on his chattels. You got movables belong to me.” He pointed to the boy’s holster. “That fine ivory-handled pistol for one.”
“I got nothing belongs to you. The gun is for wages he owed me.”
The hotel man smiled. “Wages of sin is death, boy.” He brushed back the skirts of his coat and tucked them behind the butt of his pistol. The bravado of a drunken man.
“No wages is starvation and that’s death, too,” said the boy.
“You goddamn little scut,” the top hat said angrily. “Threatening to fire my hotel. You and your Mr. Biggity Big Englishman.”
“He couldn’t been too big,” said the boy. “His hat fits you just fine.”
The men nearby were beginning to follow these interesting proceedings. One of them laughed loudly.
Spurred by the laughter, the hotel-keeper cried, “You little son of a bitch! I’ll have that gun or I’ll have your hide! Depend on it!”
To those looking on, the Englishman’s boy raised his voice and said, “This man here is aiming to rob me. You heard him say it. You’re witnesses.”
The loud announcement attracted attention. Several nearby tables of faro and poker suspended gaming to see how this was going to play out. A portly man in a good coat and good hat shouted, “What you doing, Stevenson? Stealing this sprat’s sugar tit?” Everyone around the table guffawed appreciatively at his sally.
“I’m a stranger here,” said the boy in a voice which rose above the slackening din. “Whatever falls out here ain’t my doing.”
Suddenly Stevenson seized him by the wrist of his gun hand. There was no use in struggling. He could sense the power of the man’s grip, knew he was not strong enough to break it. He remained very still. Stevenson grinned in his face. “Hello,” he said, and suddenly struck him a savage blow to the ear with his fist. The Englishman’s boy staggered with the force of it, was jerked up short by the wrist.
Dizzied, the boy said to the room, “I ain’t got nothing of this man’s. I ain’t asking for no trouble.” The ringing in his ear made his own voice sound as if it were coming from somewhere distant and deep, the words from his very throat rising out of some unplumbable well.
Stevenson dealt him another blow to the ear. The ear caught fire, the fire sank into his jaw, coursed burning down the side of his neck, running hot in its cords. Stevenson smiled and said “Hello” again. The Englishman’s boy could not hear him this time, could only read his lips mouthing the word. The fist cocked again, and the boy dropped his free hand to his boot-top. The hand jumped up with a metallic glitter.
Stevenson’s face was all bewildered surprise. He stared down at the knife embedded in his armpit. Then the first shock passed; the steel bit bone like a desperate dog, warping and knotting his face beyond all recognition.
“Leave go my hand,” said the boy as he jammed Stevenson up on his toes with the point of the knife. Blood was pouring down the blade like rainwater down a drain spout, soaking the cuff of his jacket sodden and heavy, turning his fingers hot and sticky and reeking.
Stevenson seemed beyond comprehending. Agony was clamping the fingers of his good hand even tighter to the thin wrist.
