“An Apache!” someone in the group cried. “I’m not looking for no Apache. They can kill you without you ever seeing them. I’m getting back to the saloon!”
“Smith shouldn’t have been out here at this time of night anyway. Got what he deserved,” came another voice from the crowd. Soon all the men were headed back to the saloon, leaving Smith’s body to grow cold in the alley.
“Thanks, Roy,” Madigan said as they were again left by themselves, “but why the story about the Apache? It was self-defense and I could have handled the likes of them.”
Roy Talley took one last look through a crack in the door to make sure no one else was around. “If I hadn’t made up that fool story, then seems to me they wouldn’t be back at the saloon getting good and drunk. They would be right here trying to get someone else killed. And like I said, I don’t want to be the one to catch a stray bullet! Now how’s about you and me getting ourselves a bite of the best chow around these parts?”
“Sounds good to me,” Madigan agreed as he climbed up on the springboard for the ride out to Anny’s.
Anny’s boarding house was a two-story affair painted white with red shutters. A fence kept the livestock a short distance from the house while a swinging gate allowed the guests access to the walkway leading up to the large sun porch. Madigan immediately liked what he saw and looked forward to a hot meal and warm bed. And from the looks of this place, he was going to get both.
A sign out front declared: “No booze, women of the night, or drunkards allowed. All rules enforced with shotgun.”
“This Anny mean what she says on that sign?” Madigan asked Roy as they pulled up to the hitching post.
“Every word of it,” Roy replied with a twinkle in his eye.
The inside of the house was as clean as any place Madigan had ever laid eyes on. The meal was plentiful, the room as clean as his mother used to keep, and the other people dining there were pleasant, except for the long- haired preacher that kept eyeing Madigan’s guns while commenting on the sins of the likes of men such as him. But Madigan never gave him much mind.
Men like that were usually cowards hiding behind the Good Book like a shield. When he finally tired of the man’s banter, he gave him a hard look that must have frozen the poor man’s tongue, for Madigan heard nothing more from him the remainder of the night. At least the man had the common sense to recognize a warning when he saw one.
Now this is the way to live, Madigan thought to himself as he drifted off to sleep. That night Madigan slept like a baby, feeling really safe for the first time in weeks.
The next morning he was up at the crack of dawn and ready to be on his way. Coming down the stairs from his room, Madigan was surprised to smell bacon already cooking. Normally he’d skip breakfast, but the smell of that bacon made him decide to start out on a full stomach.
He had just sat down in the dining room when Anny appeared with a plate of food that could have fed two men.
“Figured you to be an early riser,” she said as she set the plate in front of him.
“I’m not the only one it seems,” he said as he lifted a hot cup of coffee to his lips. Anny gave him a big smile that showed sparkling white teeth, a rarity for a woman Anny’s age.
“I always liked a man that got the day started with the sun and a full stomach. Why, if I was twenty years younger I’d. .”
“I’d be ten years old,” Madigan cut in.
“Right!” Anny sighed as she dropped her arms to her sides. “Always too young!” she said with a laugh that seemed to light up the room. “Always too young.”
True to Roy’s word, as Madigan walked outside, there on the flag pole was a white piece of cloth. At the pole’s base was a bait of corn. Madigan didn’t have to look to know that a short distance away was a saddled horse galloping towards him. Errand Boy wanted his breakfast.
Madigan let the horse eat, then mounted up and was soon at the back of Roy’s livery stable. The first rays of light threw long shadows on the ground and Madigan instinctively studied them for any signs of something out of place before dismounting. Roy was sitting on a bale of hay fiddling with an old harness. He looked up as Madigan approached.
“How’d you like your breakfast?” he asked.
“How’d you know I had some?” Madigan quipped.
Roy looked up at him and yawned. “Anny was fixin’ yours while I was finishing mine. What did you think, an old man like me just naturally gonna sleep all day? I been up so long I was just thinkin’ about taking myself a well- earned nap,” Roy said with another yawn. “By the way, seen something that might interest you.”
“Some of them boys up and moving already?” Madigan asked with interest, knowing that if they were up and about, he was sure to have trouble before he could be rid of this town.
“Not any of them boys. They all got them some lady friends so they’ll be sleeping late. That you can be sure of. But last night when I got back, I see where they were joined by five more men. Must have wired some of their friends in the next town to join them,” Roy said. “Anyway, getting back to what I was to say, about an hour ago I was just returning from Anny’s when I saw a couple of strange looking gents come riding up here to the back door of my stable.”
“In what way were they strange?”
“Well, first off, one of them was a might taller than anyone I’ve ever seen in my life. Maybe going close to six-feet-six I’d wager.” Roy shifted his weight on the bale of hay before going on with the rest of the story. “Now if he was in the middle of a passel of tall men, he wouldn’t have stood out so much. But the gent with him wasn’t much bigger than a boy,” Roy said seriously, while gesturing with his hand to show the height of the man.
“Sure it wasn’t a man and his son you saw, old-timer?”
Roy winced at the name ‘old-timer’. “No, the short gent was a grown man, I tell you. But one thing for sure, the guns he was a carrying weren’t anything but full-grown Colts.” Roy came to his feet and closed the gap between them to just a few feet. “Mr. Madigan, I got the funniest feelin’ that man-boy can use those shootin’ irons too! Just the way he handled himself, no show-off like a lot of the runts you see nowadays.”
“You think he’s a gun out for hire? A lot of them seem to be popping up on the trail heading for California.”
“Oh, he’s a gun hand all right, but I don’t think you could hire him with a wagon load of money. I’ve seen the likes of him once or twice in my day. No, he’s got something more important on his mind, and his kind always get it done, or die trying.”
Roy turned to walk away, stood, turned back around and scratched his chin, then said with a puzzled look on his face, “The short one took a good hard look around when he first rode up, then pulled a small book out of his saddlebag and wrote something in it! Damned if I’m not tellin’ the truth!”
What Roy told Madigan about this little man had him curious to say the least. A gunman that wrote things in a little book was as uncommon as an honest whore. But Madigan had no doubt that Roy said it just as it happened. Stranger things had taken place in the West. That he could attest to.
“What was the other one like?” he asked, his curiosity fully aroused by this time.
“Big. Big and kind’ve quiet. Had the look of an intelligent man, though. Wore his gun down low. As soon as he stepped down from his horse, he tied his holster down. I think he was prepared for any trouble that came his way.”
“Did they give you an idea of what they wanted?”
“More’n that. They told me what they was doing in town. Said they needed supplies and didn’t want to wait around for the general store to open. I told them Sherm Basketskill always opened early, so if they’d just go over, he was probably opened already.”
“Did they?” Madigan asked.
“Did they what?”
“Did they go get what they needed?”
Roy spit another stain of chew, this time narrowly missing Madigan’s boots. “Thought I was going to get you again, didn’t you?” he chuckled.
“Sure did,” Madigan said, still waiting for an answer to his question.
“Oh, yeah. You was askin’ about them two fellows. They did and they didn’t. They got their supplies, but they
