onto the car vestibule. Dorchester went down to the track as well, and as the cars began to move, he walked alongside, keeping pace with the train while it pulled away from the depot.
“Remember, as soon as you arrive—”
“Send you a telegram, yes, I promise,” Pamela said, calling back to him, since the train was picking up speed and opening up the space between them. “And I’ll write to you in a few days to tell you what a wonderful time I’m having.”
“’Bye!” Dorchester called, waving.
“’Bye!”
Dorchester remained on the platform, watching until the train, moving rapidly, receded in the distance. Not until it was a remote whistle and a puff of smoke in the clear, blue sky did he return to the coach. His driver was sitting on the seat, waiting patiently for him.
“Are you ready to go home now, Mr. Dorchester?”
“Yes, thank you,” Dorchester replied.
As the coach pulled away from the station, he fought hard to suppress the strange sense of foreboding that was rising in his stomach.
It was late afternoon when Mason Hawke approached the little town. From his perspective and distance, the settlement looked little more inviting than any other group of the brown hummocks and hills common to that country. He stopped on a ridge and looked down at the town while removing his canteen from the saddle pommel. He took a swallow, recorked the canteen, then put back. Slapping his legs against the side of his horse, he headed the animal down the long slope of the ridge, wondering what town this was.
A small sign just on the edge of town answered the question for him:
SAGE CREEK
POPULATION 123
COME GROW WITH US.
The weathered board and faded letters indicated that the sign had been there for some time, no doubt erected when there was still some hope for the town’s future. Hawke doubted there were 123 residents in the town today, and, despite the optimistic tone of the sign, that the town was still growing.
In addition to the false-fronted shanties that lined both sides of the street, there were a few sod buildings, and even some tents, straggling along for nearly a quarter of a mile. Then, just as abruptly as the town started, it quit, and the prairie began again.
Hawke knew about such towns; he had been in hundreds of them over the last several years. He knew that in the spring the street would be a muddy mire, worked by the horses’ hooves and mixed with their droppings to become a stinking, sucking, pool of ooze. In the winter it would be frozen solid, while in the summer it would bake as hard as rock.
It was summer now, and the sun was yellow and hot.
The buildings were weathered and leaning, and the painted signs on the front of the edifices were worn and hard to read. A wagon was backed up to the general store, and a couple of men were listlessly unloading it. They looked over at Hawke, curious as to who he was and what brought him to town, though neither of them were ambitious enough to speak to him.
Hawke dismounted in front of a saloon called the Brown Dirt Cowboy and went inside. Shadows made the saloon seem cooler, but that was illusory. It was nearly as hot inside as out, and without the benefit of a breath of air, even more stifling. The customers were sweating in their drinks and wiping their faces with bandannas.
As always when he entered a strange saloon, Hawke checked the place out. To one unfamiliar with what he was doing, his glance appeared to be little more than idle curiosity. But it was a studied surveillance. Who was armed? What type of guns were they carrying? How were they wearing them? Was there anyone here he knew? More important, was there anyone here who know him, and who might take this opportunity to settle some old score, real or imagined, for himself or a friend?
It appeared that there were only workers and cowboys there. The couple of men who were armed were young; probably wearing their guns as much for show as anything, he thought. And from the way the pistols rode on their hips, he would have bet that they had never used them for anything but target practice, and not very successfully at that.
The bartender stood behind the bar. In front of him were two glasses with whiskey remaining in them, and he poured the whiskey back into a bottle, corked it, and put the bottle on the shelf behind the bar. He wiped the glasses out with his stained apron, then set them among the unused glasses. Seeing Hawke step up to the bar, the bartender moved down toward him.
“Whiskey,” Hawke said.
The barman reached for the bottle he had just poured the whiskey back into, but Hawke pointed to an unopened bottle.
“That one. And a clean glass.”
Shrugging, the saloonkeeper pulled the cork from the fresh bottle.
“You’re new in town,” the bartender said. It wasn’t a question, it was a declaration.
“I’m not in town,” Hawke said. “I’m just passing through. Thought I’d have a couple of drinks, eat some food that isn’t trail-cooked, and maybe get a room for the night.”
“What brings you to this neck of the woods?” the barkeep asked as he poured the whiskey.
“Nothing in particular,” Hawke said. “I’m just wandering around.”
“We don’t get too many of your kind in here,” one of the men at the bar said.
Hawke paid for his drink, then lifted it to his lips. Taking a swallow, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Is there a place to eat in this town?”
“Mollie’s, just down the street,” the bartender said. “Nothin’ fancy, but the food is good.”
“Hey, mister, are you deef?” someone at the bar said. “I said we don’t get too many of your kind here.”
The tone of the man’s voice was more challenging than friendly, and Hawke turned to look at him. He had a bushy red beard and was wearing a dirty shirt and a sweat-stained hat.
“Oh?” Hawke replied. “And just what would my kind be?”
“I’d say you are a saddle tramp,” the bushy-bearded man said.
“Barkeep,” Hawke said. He nodded toward his antagonist. “Give my new friend here a drink, on me.”
The bartender put a glass in front of the bearded man. “Here you go, Metzger. Compliments of the gentlemen.”
Metzger picked the glass up and held it toward Hawke as if offering a toast. Hawke returned the gesture, then lifted his glass to his mouth. Metzger lifted his glass too, but he didn’t drink it. Instead, with an evil smile, he turned the glass upside down and spilled the whiskey on the bar.
“I don’t drink with saddle tramps like you,” he said.
“Wait, let me get this straight,” Hawke replied. “Is it that you don’t drink with any saddle tramp? Or you just don’t drink with saddle tramps like me?”
The others in the saloon laughed, and Metzger, realizing that they laughing at him, grew angry. He pointed at Hawke.
“I don’t like you, mister,” he said. “I don’t like you at all.”
“Well, maybe if you had a bath your disposition would improve. How long has it been since you had one? Two years? Three? Ten? I mean, having to smell yourself for that long is bound to get to you after a while.”
Again, those in the saloon laughed.
“Metzger, looks to me like this here fella is just a little too quick for you,” one of the bar patrons said.
Metzger, his face flushed red with anger and embarrassment, charged toward Hawke with a loud yell.
“Look out, mister! He has a knife!” someone shouted, and Hawke saw a silver blade flashing.
Hawke jerked to one side just in time to keep from being badly cut. At almost exactly the same time, he pulled his pistol from his holster and brought it down hard, on Metzger’s head. Metzger went down like a sack of potatoes.
Hawke put his pistol back in his holster then picked up his drink.
