“Don’t go sell them two Winchesters on us.”
“They’re yours, Mr. Sweete. I’m taking them out of the case now.”
“C’mon, Jonah. I got me a terrible thirst and know a place down the street what sells saddle varnish they call whiskey!”
The plank floor in the dingy watering hole where Jonah and Shad sat at a corner table proved little better than dirt itself. In places the floor turned to mud and icy slop with so much November traffic. Despite the constant feeding of two wood stoves in the corners, the temperature in the place remained cold, the breath of so many like fine gauze above the knots at the tables and along the rickety bar, what with the incessant opening of the noisy, ill- fitting door.
“You mind I join you fellas?”
Jonah looked up into the haze of wood and tobacco smoke, enough to choke a man more accustomed to the clean air of the windswept prairie, finding a stranger gazing down at Sweete, his handsome face wreathed in breathsmoke. The stranger held a whole loaf of bread and an entire sausage that looked to weigh ten pounds by itself in one hand, while in the other he cradled a glass and the neck of a full bottle.
“Looks like you’re drinking the good stuff,” Sweete commented, his eyes coming clear enough to study the stranger’s bottle.
“I’m looking to share your table and my whiskey,” he said, shrugging a shoulder at the full room. “Don’t want to stand at the bar, eating my supper. And this here’s the last chair. Besides, you fellas look like good company.”
“Don’t mind company, neither of us,” Sweete said.
“And your whiskey too.” Hook licked his lips, anticipating the taste of the good stuff. If he could still taste the good stuff after so much of the saddle varnish.
“Got enough here to share,” the stranger offered, tearing off an end of the huge loaf of dark bread. “Help yourselves.” He reached beneath the tail of his calf-length coat and pulled forth a large skinning knife he put to work slicing off delicate slivers of the fragrant sausage.
It made Jonah’s mouth water. “Mister, you’re welcome at our table anytime. We was just talking about getting out of here and finding us something to eat.”
“From the looks of it—if you fellas don’t mind me being honest—you boys don’t look like you’re gonna be off anywhere for a while.”
Sweete rocked slightly in his chair. “Damn, but I think the man’s right, Jonah. S’pose we sit here and help this stranger dispose of his vittles, like he offered. Then we can work on finding ourselves a place to spend the night.”
“You fellas passing through yourselves?”
“On our way out of town,” Jonah answered. “You?”
“Up from Fort Dodge a few days back. Didn’t find no work down there. Damn, but I thought there’d always be something for a man to do around a army post—honest money—if he was willing to work.”
“Maybe not this time of year,” Sweete said. “Quarter-master across the creek at Larned might find you something to do keep you fed this winter. But you keep eating this high on the hog, you’ll be busted inside of a week.”
“I got a little money set back,” the stranger admitted. “Enough to feed on. Put me up a night or two when the weather gets bad—leastways until I can get on something regular.”
“Where you been working?”
His eyes went back to the sausage, slicing, slicing slowly in careful, considered strokes like he really knew what he was doing with the sticker. Like he was weighing his answer.
“Been down south of here for some time.”
“You a Yankee though,” Jonah said.
“Damn—but you don’t got no manners,” Shad slurred. “He don’t mean to be rude, mister.”
“I s’pose I am,” the stranger answered. “Leastways, I didn’t do any fighting back east—if that’s what you’re asking. I figure you’re from the South.”
“By God, if you don’t have that right,” Jonah replied. “Where you do your fighting during the war?”
“Didn’t. Nothing more than a civilian—working what I could during that time.”
“Where ’bouts?” Shad inquired. “Out here to Kansas country?”
He tore part of a slice off with his big teeth in that handsome, well-groomed face of his. “Some time out here, yeah. The rest on the borderlands.”
It snagged Jonah’s attention as he stuffed a piece of dark crust into his own mouth. He vowed he would not sound anxious. “Just where … on the borderlands? Down to Texas? Up to Arkansas? Or just in the Territories?”
The stranger poured more good whiskey in the three short, smoky glasses. Apparently disarmed. “No. Mostly in southern Missouri. On the run to keep ahead of … ahead of any army wanted me to do its fighting for it.”
Hook sagged back in the chair, his belly feeling more settled now for the food. His gut more settled, yet disappointed was he that the stranger had not been part of either army that might know something of that band of freebooters that had come marching through his quiet valley back of a time.
“You been south of here, was it?” Jonah asked. “Not much on south, less’n you get into Injun country.”
“Injuns don’t bother me none,” he answered. “Now, that sausage was tasty, it was. You fellas eat up the rest. And,” he said, rising from his chair, “you figure on needing a place out of the snow—”
“It starting to snow outside?” Sweete asked, turning clumsily in his chair.
“Was when I came in. Big ol’ flakes, mister,” said the stranger. “I got me a small room for the night down the street.”
“Jenkins place?”
“That’s the one,” he replied.
“What’s a man do to feed himself down in the Territories?” Jonah asked before the stranger was ready to push away into the crowd.
He smiled at Hook. “Whatever he can to keep himself busy, I suppose. You fellas don’t finish that bottle, bring it ’long with you.”
Sweete held up his hand. “By the way …”
“Yeah, I forgot my manners too,” he replied, taking the old man’s hand, shaking it quickly then letting it go.
“Shad Sweete.”
The Confederate held his hand out to the stranger reaching across the table. “Jonah Hook.”
“Glad to meet you fellas. Riley Fordham is my name. You come make yourselves to home with me tonight before I pull out to go talk with the quartermaster out to Larned in the morning.”
“Least we’ll be dry, Jonah.”
Fordham smiled with those big, pretty teeth of his as he turned and was gone through the smoke and tobacco haze and the crowd. The air stirred as the noisy door opened, then closed, shutting out the swirl of wet, icy flakes that had come to settle on central Kansas Territory.
“He might know something, Shad.”
“It’s for certain the man knows good whiskey, Jonah.”
“Dammit—I mean he might know about that bunch disappeared down in the Territories.”
“Been a long time, son.”
“We were fixing on going down there together.”
“Been wanting to talk to you about that.”
“Sounds like your whiskey’s talking now, old man.”
Sweete laughed. “All right. Let’s talk another time about going down to sniff around.”
Jonah gazed through the crowd, through that ill-fitting door, and right on through the icy, swirling mist squeezing down on the central plains.
“I scent me something, Shad. That fella—Riley Fordham … he smells like he just might have something to tell me about Missouri. And the Territories.”
“And that bunch you got a hankering to gut real slow with a dull elk antler?”
With a crooked grin that lit up the face beneath the wolfish, yellowed eyes, Hook said, “Real … real
