Joseph West - The Man From Nowhere - A Ralph Compton Novel

“Do you think Rivette is right, Eddie? Will that McWilliams woman come here?”

Nantan was whispering in the darkness, her mouth close to Oates’ neck.

“Yeah, I think she will. Warren Rivette doesn’t air out his lungs often, but when he does, what he says is worth listening to.”

They had chosen a bedroom on the first floor of the hotel and Oates had spread his blanket roll on the rough timber planking. Moonlight, as thin as mist, filtered through the naked windows and cast elongated crosses that rose from the floor and stretched up the far wall.

“Eddie, is she a danger to us, this woman, to you and me?”

“She’s a danger to Stella, so she is an enemy of all of us.”

Nantan nodded, her soft lips brushing Oates’ skin. “That is how it should be. It is the Apache way.”

The girl was quiet for so long, Oates thought she was asleep, but she whispered, “Eddie, we are not truly man and wife until our bodies have joined. Do you believe that? Nellie told me it is so.”

“Nellie doesn’t have the sense God gave a goose. But when your shoulder heals, we will join. You’re the last person in the world I’d want to hurt, Nantan.”

Another long stretch of quiet; then she said, “Sleep well, my husband.”

“You too, Mrs. Oates. You too.”

Chapter 35

Three months passed and during that time Oates and Nantan made four trips to Silver City. On his last visit he arranged for a brewer’s dray to deliver whiskey, beer and a French glass mirror to Rivette’s saloon. Oates and Sam Tatum had helped the gambler renovate the Sideboard, now renamed the Riverboat. And Rivette placed an optimistic painted sign outside the premises that promised patrons FINEST CIGARS, CORDIALS AND LIQUORS.

Stella took over the best gingerbread house in town, and she, Lorraine and Nellie imported furniture, carpets and bedding from Silver City. It took the better part of two months, but when the Golden Garter opened for business, all agreed that the place must rival the best cathouses in Denver or Dodge City.

Miners and even a few cowboys began to drift into Heartbreak and by their fourth month, Stella and Rivette saw their business pick up. The attractions also attracted the rougher, outlaw element, and several times Oates and the gambler were forced to run them out of town.

But, with paying customers at a premium, the high-rolling hard cases were usually told they could come back when they were prepared to act like gentlemen, and most did.

The lack of a proper eating house was a problem, but that was solved by the arrival of Hermann the German, his fat wife and two even fatter daughters.

By Oates’ estimate, Hermann Schmidt would skin out at around three hundred fifty pounds and his wife and daughters a few ounces less.

Schmidt said he was headed north to Socorro, where the Buffalo Soldiers stationed at Fort Craig would be a regular source of customers for his steaks, sausages and pies. He winked at Rivette and told him that he might also be able to find husbands among the officers for his daughters.

But when Schmidt saw that the restaurant in town had been abandoned more or less intact, he parked his wagon and declared that he was willing to make a trial of it.

The big German wanted to name his place the Aschaffenburg, but wiser heads prevailed and he agreed to change it to the more manageable Hermann’s Kitchen.

A steady stream of supply wagons now regularly blocked Heartbreak’s only street and the stagecoach drivers regularly stopped to allow passengers to sample tastier fare than Bill Daley’s fried elk and beans.

Fall came and went and Heartbreak prospered.

Stella hired three new girls, a man named Fallon took over the hotel and a second saloon opened. There was now a general store and talk of a ladies’ dress and hat shop arriving soon.

Sam Tatum found a new career, painting portraits of miners to send home to loved ones, for which they paid handsomely. Using Nellie as a model, Tatum also did naked lady pictures for Rivette’s saloon and the Golden Garter and was well on his way to becoming a well-to-do artist.

Oates and Nantan found a house on the outskirts of town and he made a living doing odd jobs around town and managed to stay away from the bottle.

In November, as winter cracked down hard across the high country, Nantan announced that she was pregnant. Stella and Lorraine were delighted and declared themselves aunts to the unborn they confidently predicted would be a girl. Nellie was unimpressed and told anyone who would listen that Nantan’s whole pregnancy thing was probably a false alarm.

After the first snow, many miners decided to winter in town and all twenty rooms in the Bon View were rented. It seemed that everyone was doing a booming business and Stella and Rivette, who were now constantly in each other’s company, were getting rich.

For his part, Oates felt out of place in a town he’d helped resurrect from the dead. His odd jobs did not earn him a lot of money and were getting fewer as winter arrived. Nantan needed a comfortable home to raise her child and a husband who could support her.

Oates owned his horse, saddle, guns and the dead man’s clothes he stood up in. There was not much there to build a future around, especially one that involved a wife and child.

As others prospered, Oates grew poorer, and he recognized a danger within himself. Self-pity seduces a man and soon he acts like a victim, a destructive emotion that Oates knew could take him by the ear and lead him to the whiskey bottle.

But one cold afternoon in early December, the attempted holdup of a Wells Fargo stage would be the first link in a chain of events that would change Eddie Oates’ life forever.

He was walking back to his house with a few things Nantan needed from the general store when the stage clattered to a stop outside the hotel. A bloody, wounded driver was up on the box, a dead passenger inside and grim old Ethan Savage, the shotgun guard, blistering the air with curses.

Oates looked up at the guard. “What happened, Ethan?” he asked.

“We was attacked just this side o’ Animas Peak, that’s what happened. Ol’ Charlie Grant here took a bullet in the arm an’ we lost a passenger when them eedjits started shooting at us as we lit out of there.”

A crowd had gathered and Grant was helped down from the box. The dead passenger, an elderly man in black broadcloth, was carried into the hotel.

“Recognize any of them, Ethan?” Oates asked.

“Oh yeah. Mash Halleck was one o’ them fer sure.” Savage spit a stream of tobacco juice over the side of the stage, then rubbed the back of his gloved hand across his mouth. “He was wearing a bandanna over the bottom of his face, but there’s no mistaking them eyes o’ his, cold like an ornery snake. I seen ol’ Mash up close too many times not to recognize him.”

“How many were there?”

“Four—Mash and three others.”

Suddenly Warren Rivette was at Oates’ elbow. “Can you tell us anything about the others, Ethan?”

“Well, if’n I was a bettin’ man like you, Rivette, I’d wager one o’ them was Mash’s son Clem. All I can tell you about t’other robbers was that one seemed young and well set up, riding a mighty pretty Palouse hoss, and the fourth man looked like a puncher.” The old man smiled. “I got a load of buckshot into him.”

Oates turned to Rivette. “Charlie McWilliams rides a Palouse horse.”

Rivette nodded. “Could be him all right.” To Savage he said, “What are you carrying that would make you a target for an outlaw like Halleck?”

“No strongbox this trip. The only money on this stage is what the passengers are carrying. I figure Mash was only huntin’ a road stake, sure enough.”

“You better see to the driver and your passengers, Ethan,” Rivette said.