Wilt smiled. “My Martha feels the same way. She says a woman should have the right to cover her head or not.”
“Why would they pass such a law?”
“You go into Promise, you’ll understand quick enough,” Wilt said. “But I wouldn’t advise it. They don’t cotton to strangers much.”
“Is that a fact?”
“My pa never lies, mister,” Samuel bristled.
“I wasn’t saying he did, peckerwood.” Fargo sipped more coffee.
“The last time we were in town,” Wilt went on, “the marshal told us we have to pay a dollar fine for Martha not wearing her bonnet. We had five days to pay. It’s been seven and we haven’t so it’s likely they’ll send someone to collect.”
“Over our dead bodies,” Samuel said.
“I won’t tell you again to be quiet,” Wilt said.
Fargo twirled the Colt into his holster. “You can pick up your rifles and go on with your hunt. I reckon I’ll fight shy of this Promise. There are enough nuisances in my life.” He gave Samuel a pointed glance.
“You’ll have to swing pretty wide,” Wilt said. “There’s the town and the farms and a few ranches around it. Could take you a day or two out of your way.”
Fargo didn’t like the idea of the delay. He watched closely as the pair reclaimed their long guns. Both had the presence of mind to keep the barrels pointed down. “Off you go,” he said.
They turned and went to the trees and Wilt paused to look back. “If you change your mind, be careful, you hear? I wasn’t kidding about them not liking strangers. Any excuse they can come up with to give you a hard time, they will.”
Father and son hiked off. Fargo kept his right hand close to his Colt until they were out of sight. He sat back, opened his saddlebags, and took out a bundle wrapped in rabbit fur.
Opening it, he helped himself to several pieces of pemmican.
He liked pemmican more than jerky. The berries mixed with the ground meat and the fat lent it a zesty taste.
The sun was half an hour high when Fargo got under way. He held the Ovaro to a walk until he was out of the hills and then brought it to a trot until he came to a rutted road and a sign.
He drew rein and read it out loud.
“Promise. Twenty miles. The cleanest little town west of the Mississippi.” Fargo scratched his beard. Frontier towns were notorious for the windblown dust that got into everything, and for droppings in their streets. To have one boast of being clean was a novelty.
Fargo rode on. Now and then he passed farmhouses and a few cabins. In ten miles he came on a fork and another sign. It said the same thing and added in smaller letters, “Stable service. Saloon open noon until midnight. Preachers welcome. Drummers and patent medicine men are not.”
“Well now,” Fargo said. He had a decision to make; go around or ride on through. Since he didn’t much like the idea of losing a day or two, he went on. The mention of a saloon helped persuade him. It had been a week since his last drink and he would dearly love some whiskey.
A mile out Fargo came on yet another sign, the biggest and grandest yet. It mentioned that Promise had a population of one hundred and twelve souls. Harry Bascomb was mayor. Lloyd Travers was marshal.
“Good to know,” Fargo said, and grinned. He’d seldom come across a town so full of itself. Gigging the stallion, he continued to the outskirts. He’d expected a quiet little hamlet with a few horses at hitch rails and not a lot of people moving about. Instead, to his consternation, the street was lined with parked farm wagons and buckboards and there had to be thirty horses tied off. Folks were everywhere, strolling about, peering in store windows and whatnot. A lot were families with kids.
A celebration of some sort, Fargo reckoned, and gigged the Ovaro. He was conscious of the stares thrown his way. But he was a stranger and that was normal.
The sole saloon was next to the general store. It was called Abe’s, and the rail out front was full. Fargo reined around to the side and dismounted. He arched his back to relieve a kink and let the reins dangle. The Ovaro wouldn’t go anywhere.
A stream of people flowed along the boardwalk. Fargo touched his hat to a pair of young ladies in bright dresses and bonnets who grinned and giggled and sashayed on by. He looked around and saw that all the females wore bonnets, even the smallest girls.
Fargo pushed on the batwings. The familiar scents of liquor and cigar smoke and the clink of poker chips made him glad he had stopped. The place was packed. He shouldered to the bar and smacked the counter and a bartender with a bushy mustache and a big smile came over.
“What will it be, stranger?”
“Whiskey.” Fargo fished a coin from his pocket. As the bartender produced a glass and poured, he motioned and said, “It’s not the Fourth of July, is it?” He didn’t make it a habit to keep up with the calendar.
The bartender chuckled. “Sure isn’t. All this to-do is because of the hanging.”
“The what?” Fargo said, although he’d heard perfectly well.
“Everyone is in town to see Steve Lucas strung up.” The bartender glanced at a clock above the shelves behind the bar.
“In about an hour. I’ll be closing so I can go. It’s not every day you get to see someone swing.”
“No, it’s not,” Fargo said. The times he had, he tried to forget. It was an awful way to die.
“The mayor is going to give a speech and there are booths where you can buy juice and cakes and pie.”
“Nothing like a hanging to work up an appetite,” Fargo said.
About to turn away, the bartender gave him a sharp look.
“I don’t know as I like your tone. The man being hung deserves it. He was caught red-handed.”
“Caught doing what?”
It wasn’t the bartender who answered. It was a tall, lanky man in a broad-brimmed black hat and a vest with a star on it.
“Rustling.”
Fargo turned. “Marshal Travers, I take it?”
The lawman nodded. He had a long, bony face and close-set eyes. “I found the cow myself in his barn.”
“
“One or twenty, it’s all the same. Lucas stole it and he has to pay.” Travers leaned on an elbow. “You here for the necktie social or some other reason?”
Fargo treated himself to a swallow of Monongahela. “For this. Then I aim to be on my way.”
“Make sure you stay out of trouble. You won’t like what happens if you don’t.”
Fargo held his temper in check and said, “You’re not very friendly.”
“We have a nice town here and we like to keep it that way,”
Marshal Travers said, and smiled. “So no, we’re not very friendly at all.”
