Ernest Haycox - The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox

In the end hunger got the best of him. He quartered down the slope within hailing distance and stopped again.

"Hello, the camp."

One of the figures by the fire spoke over a shoulder. "Come on down, then."

He advanced, swung his horse so that it put him directly toward the fire, and dismounted. He was instantly aware of a hard and prolonged scrutiny, and further aware of the others out in the shadows. It was a quick camp; horses stood a few yards off. A shotgun rested within arm's reach of the nearest man, and Gillette's questing eyes noted that each of the two wore a Colt on each hip. The ivory tip of a knife stuck from one fellow's boot. Heavy armament, even for prospectors.

"Saw your fire," explained Gillette. "I'm bound for Deadwood, from Nelson, and it's strange country to me. How much farther to town?"

"Fifteen miles."

"Straight along that road?"

"Yeah."

He squatted at the fire, warming his hands. A frying pan filled with bacon lay against a rock and a coffee pot sat beside it. Casually he turned his attention from one man to the other and out of the brief survey he received a warning. He knew his own kind, and he also knew the stamp of the border renegade, for he had been raised in a country where outlaw factions flourished their brief day and died suddenly. These men were of that type. Plainly so. The spokesman's face was heavily pitted above the line of the beard, one ear was without a lobe. The man met Gillette's inspection with a sullen, half-lidded counter glance. Of a sudden he shot a question belligerently across the small interval.

"From Nelson, huh? Travellin' almighty light, ain't yuh?"

"In a hurry," agreed Gillette. "Travelling light."

The spokesman's hand rose to signal to someone out of sight "Look at his pony, Kid."

Spurs jingled. Faces came into the fire's glow, ill-stamped faces, the sweepings and trash of the desert. Without turning he felt himself to be covered from behind. His muscles bunched as he recognized the trap he had let himself into. A sallow youth ambled up, briefly murmuring:

"He's travelled all right. Hoss dusty." And the youth crouched in the circle, staring at Gillette with open antagonism. Gillette turned about; a giant of a man stood a pace to his rear, arms akimbo.

"In my country," said Gillette evenly, "it isn't polite to cover a man's back."

The giant shifted, but the spokesman flared. "Nobody invited you here, fella. How do we know who yuh are or where yuh come from?"

"When a man announces himself that's usually ample. As to the invitation, I'll relieve you of my presence in a hurry."

"Don't be in no rush," growled the spokesman. "Yuh came and yuh stay till we see what's inside yore coco. Sounds like another damned fishin' party to me."

Gillette held his peace. The giant barred his retreat. He understood, however, that the sooner he made his exit the better and the easier it would be. He had fallen in with an errant band of cutthroats and they were weighing him for what he was worth. Six of them, all before him, save for the giant. He heard the Kid mutter a short phrase about the time, and the spokesman, looking sidewise at Gillette, pulled a watch from his pocket and tilted it against the light. At that point the giant moved around until he stood behind this apparent leader of the crowd. "Better do somethin', Hazel."

"Do what?" snapped the leader.

"Don't bite my nose off, old-timer," rumbled the giant, "or I'll pull yuh apart."

Hazel turned to Gillette. "Lemme see yore guns."

"Not my guns," drawled Gillette. "Do I look that green?"

Hazel threw up his head, and a swift anger pulled at the corners of his mouth. "Yuh tryin' to ace me, fella? Do I see 'em or do I take 'em?"

"No powder-burning' around here and now," warned the giant, both to Gillette and to his chief. "It ain't the time."

Gillette was cross-legged; he had done this trick before, he could do it again. He swayed his torso a little forward, seeing in a glance the loose posture of each; they were confident enough of themselves. The Kid spat into the fire. "Oh, hell, let's see what he totes in his pockets an' throw him in the creek. Who's gettin' religious around here now?"

"You'll have to take 'em," snapped Gillette. His legs carried him up in one swift surge and the firelight ran along the blued barrel of his piece. All this in a single sweep of his muscles. "You damned rascals, does a traveller have to show a passport to get into Deadwood? There's where I'm goin', and all you're going to see of my gun is the front end. I'm no deputy and I'm not chasing him, understand? Now swallow it. If you want to make an argument, go ahead."

"You're a dead man," cried Hazel, swaying on his haunches.

"So are you, then," drawled Gillette. "We'll be two of the stillest corpses around Deadwood. Keep your hand away from your belt. Kid—don't teeter like that. Have I got to argue my way to Deadwood?"

"No powder-burnin'," muttered the giant, who seemed to be more peaceably inclined. "Let 'im go—what's it matter?"

"I'm going," muttered Gillette grimly. He stepped backward, retreating foot by foot into the shadows. He had passed one point of danger, and it left him with the same satisfaction that a man has in winning a pot on a bluff. He grinned, though it was a wry grin. "If I see you in Deadwood I'll treat you to a drop of rye. But don't try to stop a Texas traveller. And I sure hope that bacon and coffee chokes you." Talk sometimes served a purpose, and apparently it bridged that parlous interval while he retreated still farther from the fire and reached his horse. He was up on the moment. The man named Hazel started to reach for his gun, but the giant, standing near, kicked his arm away; the Kid's yellow teeth glimmered in the light—the Kid was one of those adolescent white savages turned utterly bad. Tom Gillette studied the faces a moment longer, engraving them on his memory.

"Yore spotted!" cried Hazel. "I'll see the word gets out to bring back yore skelp."

"Something tells me you're a fraud," murmured Gillette. "How long has Deadwood stood for this foolishness?"

"Go on, get out of here," advised the giant. "Don't crowd your luck."

"That's advice, too," said Tom and backed his pony up the slope. The shadows closed about him and the circle, freed of threat, began to stir. The Kid whipped about, and at that moment Gillette touched his spurs and raced away, sliding to the far side of the pony. A juniper bush grazed his face and took his hat; a single explosion followed after, and then the giant's voice rose and fell like a maul. "You cussed little nipple rat, stop that or I'll tear yore lungs outen yuh! Want to spoil..."

The rest of it was lost to Gillette. His pony carried him up and over the ridge; the fire winked out. He regained the trail and galloped steadily onward.

"I stumbled into a convention," he mused. "They've got a piece of business on their chests and I upset 'em."

Weariness came on the heels of the let-down. It seemed he was born into a world full of treachery, full of disappointment. His mother had only thought to make a better man of him in shipping him East to school; yet it seemed to him he would have been better off in Texas, toughening himself inside and out. Four years had left him a little soft, had confused him as to the elemental facts of existence; and again he remembered a piece of his father's advice: "East is sheltered, it's a woman's country. West is for a man, my son, and don't you ever forget it."

How could he forget it? The sight of the P.R.N. ranch boss sliding forward to the saloon floor still sickened him. So thinking, he at last sighted the lights of Deadwood, forded a creek, and rode down the single uneven street of this boisterous Mecca of the West.

Deadwood crouched between hill and creek, its tents and log huts and frame structures rambling along the street in a disjointed double row. There were no sidewalks, and the crowd, wandering from place to place, kept out upon the pock-marked road running between. A cordwood pile and a tent nearly blocked this end of the thoroughfare; Gillette circled around and rode by the suspended sign-boards: Denver Grocery Store, City Market, The Senate, and so on past the outflung beams of lamplight. An occasional tree stood like a sentry on the street. Everywhere was a clutter of boards and timber and boxes—the roughing-in material of a town on the make. Then the street ran up a scarred slope and wound around stumps into the hills. The straggling pines marched down to the very building walls of Deadwood.