time sitting on his porch, his chair tipped back against the wall, keeping an eye on things. Marshal of Twenty-Mile. A highly respected man.
He no longer read his Ringo Kid books.
The town slowly returned to its habitual routines and concerns. Professor Murphy found a hogshead out behind the depot to replace the barrel he had lost, and he paid Oskar Bjorkvist two-bits to scrub it clean enough for miners. The boy occasionally looked up from this work and glared at Matthew, sitting across the street, watching through half-closed eyes.
Frenchy assumed Mr. Delanny's authority at the Traveller's Welcome. She even sat at his table, occasionally laying out solitaire. After a crisp no-holds-barred talk with Jeff Calder that left his ears sizzling with accusations of kiss-ass, lick-spittle kowtowing toward those outlaws, she gave the war hero a choice between doing all the cleaning, sweeping, bed-changing, and laundry, in addition to his work as bartender, or getting the hell out and stumping his way down to Destiny. He also had to make the breakfast every morning, which he did with angry assaults on the Dayton Imperial and (when he was sure Frenchy was out of earshot) with growling mutters about uppity niggers that you can't give an inch, or they'll take an ell. His efforts at baking biscuits were so total a disaster that Frenchy told him not to bother, just go back to beans, bacon, and coffee-if he had the brass to call this gritty sludge coffee!
It was over a cup of that gritty sludge that Frenchy gave Kersti clear, unembroidered technical advice about how to work fast, keep herself clean, and handle the men. She explained that it was just a job. 'That's the only way to think of it, honey. Just a job. And if anything happens that you can't handle, just walk out of the room and come down to me. I'll take care of it. I know it seems scary. It was the same with me when I started out, and I was a helluva lot younger than you. Don't worry, you'll do just fine. No, no, that's all right. Go ahead and cry, if you want to. You've got a right.' But Kersti sniffed and shook her head, and Frenchy told her she could have any of her fancy dresses that could be made to fit, so she'd better go look through her own wardrobe and choose the prettiest.
Later that afternoon, Frenchy was looking on as Jeff Calder arranged the bottles of the whiskey he had carried up from the dug cellar beneath the trap door. The squeak-flap of the bat-winged doors caused her to turn. Matthew stood there, his shotgun cradled in the crook of his arm. She looked at him with a defiant cock of one eyebrow, automatically turning her scarred side toward him. He scowled at the row of bottles; then, knowing that he only had one shell left, he shrugged and left.
It was three days before B. J. found the heart to drag himself out of bed, weak from muscle atrophy and not having eaten. He got the forge going out in the shoeing shed and toiled away, clumsily burning some words into one of the mining company's standard wooden grave markers, now and again looking up into the low-hanging, sky from which descended that chill, flat, no-smell smell of snow. Winter was coming in, and soon. He ruined the first two markers because burning in the epitaphs had been Coots's job. And anyway, B. J. had always been inept with tools. Coots used to rag him about it. In the end, the words looked as though a child had painstakingly scrawled them.
AARON COOTS
DIED OCTOBER 4, 1898
A BELOVED COMPANION ON THE BRIEF JOURNEY
He squinted at this last line critically, knowing that Coots would have scoffed at the sentimentalism. He considered doing another marker with just 'Aaron Coots' on it, but in the end he justified his declaration of affection by reminding himself that burials and funerals had nothing to do with the dead. It was all for the consolation of the living. And if the message was sentimental…? Well, he was a sentimental man, and he wanted to say publicly that he had loved Aaron Coots.
Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus tam cari captis?
The swelling in Matthew's wrist had almost gone by Saturday evening when the ore train pulled in, its kerosene headlamp picking out snow crystals that hung in the cold dry air. Its whistle screamed, and steam hissed against the trouser legs of the miners as they clambered down whooping and shouting. They knew nothing, of course, of what had happened in Twenty-Mile since their last visit.
Matthew sat on his porch, his chair tipped back against the wall, watching them tramp their boisterous way past him and up the street to grub down at the boardinghouse before making purchases at the Mercantile and beginning their funning. When the fastest eaters started back up toward the barbershop and the Traveller's Welcome, Matthew met them in the middle of the street.
'Here's what you better know, men,' he said. He spoke without raising his voice, but the miners responded with impatient attention to the quiet authority of his tone-to say nothing of that huge granddaddy of a shotgun over his arm! He explained that they were free to laugh and josh around and cut up all they wanted. And they could have the girls over in the hotel, so long as the girls were willing. 'But there will be no more drinking in Twenty-Mile, because whiskey causes too much of this world's pain and woe. And it's my job to protect people.'
A man in the front grumbled that he'd be goddamned if any kid- 'Hold your mouth!' Matthew snapped. Then he retrieved his calm. 'I'm sorry if some of you don't like it, but that's the way things are going to be from now on, and you'd best not cross me.'
The grumbler faded back into the crowd because the story of the shoot-out between Matthew and the three outlaws had been the principal topic of conversation during the chow-down-that and wondering what had become of the blonde waitress with the big udders.
But the crowd grew ill-tempered as it thickened with men who had poured out of the boardinghouse on their way up for their weekly ration of whiskey and poontang. Professor Murphy came down from where his boiler was puffing and hissing as steam from the barrels of hot water rose into the lightly falling snow. He asked what the hell was going on. Didn't anyone want a shave and a bath? Mrs. Bjorkvist arrived with her son and husband, who still bore yellowing bruises and crusted scabs from having had their faces clapped together. She addressed the miners, saying that Matthew didn't have no right to boss people around! She pushed her face close to Matthew's and said she wasn't going to stand by and let him ruin her business, because if the miners stopped coming down, then what would become of Twenty-Mile, she'd like to know!
Matthew was confused. But… these were the people he was protecting!
'Who does he think he is, anyway?' Jeff Calder asked from deep within the crowd. 'Nobody ever elected him marshal!'
But… these people respected him. He'd faced down those outlaws to keep them safe.
Professor Murphy reminded the miners that they all had guns! 'Hell, he's nothing but an uppity kid that's barely stopped shittin' yaller!'
A riffle of snorting laugher made Matthew's ears burn with humiliation.
Oskar Bjorkvist took this opportunity to throw a rock that hit Matthew, cutting his cheekbone.
The miners pressed forward.
Matthew's lips compressed as he thumbed back the hammer, causing those closest to push back against the chests of those behind.
Doc elbowed his way through. 'Come on now, Ringo. There's no call to-' Matthew repeated that the men could blow off steam as much as they wanted, but no drinking. 'No drinking?' Doc said. 'You gotta be joshing! Me, I intend to have myself a couple of stiff belts before dipping into the poontang. It's a man's right, Ringo, after a whole week up in that hellhole.'
'If you try to walk past me, Doc,' Ringo said in Anthony Bradford Chumms' words, 'you'll be walking into history.' A snowflake landed on his eyelash, but he didn't blink.
Keeping well back in the crowd, Sven Bjorkvist told the men that they didn't have to stand for that! 'That kid ain't right upstairs! Are you men or not? You got guns!'
Doc forced a two-note laugh. 'Now come on, Ringo! A joke's a joke, but things are getting pretty net up.' When Matthew didn't react, Doc abandoned his laugh-it-off tone. 'Now listen to me, kid. I'm going down to the hotel, and you can do whatever you've got the grit to do.' He started to pass, but Matthew swung the barrel level with his middle.
'Don't do it, Doc.' An anxious boyish note replaced the Ringo Kid's soft burr.
Doc squinted, trying to read Matthew's eyes through the gathering twilight and the snowfall.
'Don't do it, Doc,' Matthew repeated. Then he whispered, 'Please don't.'
'Matthew?' Ruth Lillian was edging her way through the crowd. 'Matthew?'
