E. Doctorow - Welcome to Hard Times

Well he looked so deliberate toying with those arms day after day it took me some time to understand he was trying all the while to make up his mind for staying or moving on. He was just a poky, traveling where the trail took him, he had himself a black coach and he didn’t know how best to gain from it. Zar was angry because I let the fellow draw free water for the mule and grey and for his own horse, a patch-bald sorrel, while he did nothing in exchange. And I began to be tried too. We neither of us figured there was much good in Leo Jenks.

But one morning Molly approached him and with a loud, throaty voice, said to him: “Mr. Jenks, you find any use for that gun except in oiling it?”

He was sitting with his back to a wheel and he sprang up fast when she spoke and took his hat off.

“Well yes’m, ah kin shoot whur yew kin see.”

“Is that right?”

“It is, yes’m.”

“Well I see a windmill over there, and on top of that windmill is eight stubby blades and I’m looking at the one wavin’ straight up at heaven.”

Jenks put on his hat and cocked his pistol, aimed, and sent off a shot which splintered the topmost blade. The horses shied. Over by his shack John Bear stopped hoeing his rows and stood up to watch.

“I see the neck of a bottle,” cried Molly, “sticking up out of that rubble there.”

Jenks turned, took aim where she pointed, and the piece of glass sprayed into the air. Three more times Molly fixed her eye on things — a stone, a hump of dirt, a stick of wood — and each time this Jenks placed his round where she called it. The shots echoed off the rock hills and came back to us. Everyone was watching now, the women over by their tent, Zar from a corner of his new corral, and Jimmy squatting on the back of the Major’s buckboard. I was close enough to Jenks to see that when he took his aim those shifty wolf eyes of his squinted with some true knowledge.

He finally holstered his pistol and took his hat off again.

“I thank you, Mr. Jenks,” Molly said looking my way, “it’s good to find a man in these parts. I wish the Lord my husband knew the gun the way you do!”

After that Jenks had no trouble deciding what was his aim in life. He rode the wagon off east one dawn and at night came back with a half a dozen prairie dogs slung from the box. You have to be quick to hit a prairie dog while he’s diving for his hole — I learned later Jenks parked the stage in the middle of a dog town and lay atop of it for hours till the animals forgot he was there and came up out of their burrows.

Jenks turned out to be a good hunter and he bartered his kills for my water or for Zar’s liquor or for one of the girls. Fresh meat is a luxury and there is nothing will go down easier than a well-roasted haunch of dog or a good rabbit stew. But when Molly cooked up some of Jenks’s meat she always spiced it with her scorn, which made it hard to swallow.

By the time the stage came we were seeing the last of summer. The sun was getting white and it was setting earlier. The winds were lasting and they put out more of a bite. Each day they blew off more of the old town dust and ate away the char of the old street. Zar had his place built, a long low public house of clapboard and sod, it stood where his tent had stood — on the north side of the windmill — and its door, like the door of my new shack, faced to the southeast. When the stage drove in it was in front of Zar’s that the driver reined his horses.

We were all there to meet it, even John Bear. The stage was run by the Territory Express Company and the name was painted in red letters along the side. The letters were well covered with dust and grime, the tails of the horses were caked with mudballs. Our town was a good trip from the last stop.

The driver was Alf Moffet; I knew him. He sat up on his box leaning forward with his arms on his knees and the reins loose in his hand. He was looking for a face he knew and the first one he saw was Molly.

“Why Miss Molly,” he said, “I heard you and Flo was dead.”

Molly frowned but she said nothing. The Russian and his ladies were right there and I feared Alf would say too much. I had not had trouble with any of the miners that way. Molly was hid the first few Saturdays they came and after that they did not think to question her. But I knew Alf for a fun-loving man, he had a voice full of gravel and he liked to talk.

“Well Alf,” I said stepping up and clearing my throat, “we had a fire here as you can see but we’re not all dead. These here are some of our new citizens”—I pointed to Mae and Jessie and Adah—“and if you’ll step down and come into the new saloon I’ll buy you a drink and maybe introduce you to them.”

“I can’t be stopping long, Blue,” Alf said, but he allowed me to take his arm while he jumped down. He grabbed his mail pouch and told the other man on the box, an old man I did not know, to unload. There were two barrels lashed to the back of the stage and a pile of boxes on the roof as well as what was inside. The Express took on freight if there was any room left after passengers. We always got supplies in plenty when it came and I had been counting on that since the day of the fire.

Inside Zar’s place there were lamps burning. It was afternoon but the Russian had not built any windows. I sat Alf down on a camp chair at a wooden table and after our eyes were accustomed to the shadow I motioned to Zar and he smilingly brought over a full bottle of whiskey and two glasses — just the way I had told him to do it. The glassware was Avery’s old stock Jimmy and I had recovered the day after the fire. I wanted to be careful with Alf.

He was a big square-faced man, grey underneath his hat. He tossed off three drinks neat and when the dust was washed from his throat we began talking.

“We got some orders to put in with you Alf,” I said.

“Well Blue I don’t know. Company wants me to tell ’em when I get back if’n Hard Times is worth the trip any more.”

“Miners are showing up more than ever, Alf. The Russian here is doing a good trade. People comin’ every day. This Mr. Jenks — I don’t know whether you saw him put there — he’s all the way from Kentucky.”

Alf tilted his head to one side and smiled at me.

“That was just a little accident, that fire,” I said. “The town will be up like a weed before you know it, Alf.”

“Well now Blue I always liked you, yessir. If you was hanging by your fingers from a cliff you’d call it climbin’ a mountain.”

Alf had heard about the fire from one of the people from the town — he didn’t say who. I couldn’t tell him any lies. “Same thing happened just a few years back to the town of Kingsville. Kingsville, Kansas. Did you know it?”

“Never heard of it.”

Alf poured another drink: “Well sir it was a good town, a railroad head. They had two, three livery stables, couple of stores, lots of nice frame houses, a jail made of brick, some dandy saloons and a two-story hotel. Bunch of these Bad Men come along one spring, stayed three days. Killed twenty people. Broke up the hotel, wrecked the stores. Bricked up the doors and windows of the jailhouse, made of it an oven and roasted the Sheriff alive. Town never came back.”

“What about the railroad?”

“Catcher come along the following summer and they laid track right on through for another thirty miles. Pass by today you can wave at the prairie grass.”

“Them Bad Men are sure a plague, Alf. It’s no use denying. Let’s have another drink.”

When his head went back to receive the liquor I motioned to Zar who had been standing by the door. A moment later Mae and Jessie came in and sat down at the table. After I made the introduction I went out into the light.