Harlan reined up his black, turned in the saddle and grinned without humor. Lightning glimmered scarlet on his narrow skull of a face, making him look like a demon in flame. ‘‘Well now, Hack Burns. I knew him a few years back when he was selling his gun down around the Nueces Plains country to anybody who would hire him.’’ He swung his horse around and threw over his shoulder as he left, ‘‘Mr. McBride, remember that pride cometh before a fall. Hack Burns wasn’t much.’’
Anger burned in McBride. He was losing and it galled him. ‘‘Harlan!’’ he yelled at the lawman’s retreating back. ‘‘Why do you stand alone in the dark among your dead? Why do you do that? Huh, why do you do that?’’
The man’s only reply was to raise his riding crop, lift his head and laugh, a sound like rusty hinges protesting the opening of a long-buried coffin lid.
McBride watched Harlan go until the darkness swallowed him. He clenched his fists, defeated. He felt that he’d been badly beaten up by the man, yet Harlan had not touched him. He’d been pounded by words alone, those and the man’s attitude. Harlan had weighed him in the balance and found him wanting. As far as the marshal was concerned, he was just another saddle tramp passing through who needed to be warned to be on his best behavior.
For the second time that day, McBride was made to feel small. First it had been the cloud-capped land itself and now by a man who had been shaped by it. Thaddeus Harlan was as cold, distant and unforgiving as the mountains, and just as likely to destroy anyone who, unwanted and uninvited, set a single foot wrong.
Rest and Be Thankful was not a town where McBride wished to linger. He planned a fast in and out and no harm done. But when he walked into the night in search of his horse, thunder roared a warning, and behind him the bladed lightning illuminated the bright path to town, beckoning him to his destruction.
Later, with hindsight, McBride knew he should have ridden well clear of the town and taken his chances in the wilderness. Or he could have bedded down in the open by the creek. But he did neither of those things. And what had begun so badly for him was destined to get worse . . . much worse.
Chapter 3
It took John McBride an hour to round up his horse and by the time he rode into Rest and Be Thankful the thunderstorm had growled its way to the east, venting its fury over the desolate canyon country.
Chains of raindrops ticked from hanging signs outside the stores on each side of the wide Main Street, and the mustang picked its way through six inches of yellow churned-up mud. McBride passed a dozen saloons, a brewery and an opera house, and then rode up on a false-fronted, two-story hotel with a painted sign hanging outside that read THE KIP AND KETTLE, DENVER DORA RYAN, PROP.
McBride drew rein outside the hotel and looked the place over. A second sign had been tacked above the stained-glass front door. It proudly proclaimed that the hotel was an official stop for the Barlow-Sanderson stage line and that its restaurant ‘‘served fresh oysters twenty-four hours a day.’’
A hotel that had a stained-glass door, served fresh oysters and was run by Denver Dora Ryan, Prop., was likely to have clean beds, McBride decided. He’d see to his mustang and then check in for the night.
He called out to a man on the boardwalk and asked the way to the livery stable. ‘‘Follow your nose down the street and you’ll see it on the left,’’ the man answered.
McBride touched the brim of his plug hat and swung his horse away from the hotel, but the man’s voice stopped him.
‘‘You ride in for the funeral?’’
‘‘What funeral?’’
‘‘You answered my question with a question, so I guess you didn’t,’’ the man said. He was tall, thin, carried two guns low in crossed belts. He looked tough and capable and wore the careless arrogance of the named gunfighter like a cloak.
‘‘I’m just passing through,’’ McBride said, a fact he felt he should make well known.
The thin man nodded. ‘‘Uh-huh. Ain’t we all?’’ He grinned confidentially, as though he and McBride were sharing a deep secret.
‘‘Sure we are,’’ McBride said, trying his own confidential grin, knowing he was failing miserably.
The gunfighter took a few moments to study McBride’s face; then he said, ‘‘Passin’ through or no, I suggest you be on the street at nine for the funeral procession. Mr. Josephine will be sorely offended if you’re not.’’
‘‘The mayor?’’
‘‘Uh-huh.’’
‘‘I wouldn’t want to offend His Honor. Who’s being buried?’’
‘‘You’ll find out.’’
‘‘I guess I will.’’ McBride touched his hat again. ‘‘Well, see you around.’’
As he rode toward the livery, he glanced over his shoulder. The thin man with the two guns was standing on the boardwalk, watching him.
‘‘Now, why did you tell me that? Damn it all, boy, did I ask for your name?’’
The stable hand paused, the fistful of oats he was about to throw to McBride’s mustang hanging by his side. He was a grizzled old man, dressed in a red undershirt that had faded to a dull orange, striped pants with wide canvas suspenders and scuffed muleeared boots. He also wore an expression that hovered somewhere between irritation and outright anger.
‘‘Sorry,’’ McBride said, smiling inwardly, ‘‘but I reckoned you’d want to know the name of the man who owns the horse.’’
‘‘I know who owns this hoss,’’ the old man said. ‘‘It’s you. An’ there’s eighteen other hosses and four mules in this barn an’ I keep track of who owns each and every one of them. But I don’t know names an’ I don’t want to know. Savvy?’’
‘‘Sorry,’’ McBride said again. The stable smelled of horses, straw and dampness. He could hear rats scuttling in the dark corners.
‘‘Sorry don’t cut it, mister, not in Rest and Be Thankful it don’t.’’ The old man tossed the oats to the mustang, rubbed his hand on his pant leg, then said, an eyebrow crawling up his forehead like a hairy caterpillar: ‘‘You ain’t from around these parts, are you?’’
‘‘No, I’m from back East.’’ McBride hesitated for a heartbeat. ‘‘Originally.’’
The old man nodded. His eyes had the color of blue milk. ‘‘Took you fer some kind of Yankee, with that long face of your’n an’ all. Stayin’ in town for a spell, are ye?’’
McBride shook his head. ‘‘No. Just passing through.’’
‘‘Blow into town, blow out again. That makes good sense. Well, here’s some advice for what it’s worth—don’t ask for anybody’s handle in this town and don’t give your own. If a man wants to know your name, he’ll ask for it an’ smile all the time he’s askin’.’’ The old man’s eyes moved over McBride’s face. ‘‘A while back, a feller used to come here now an’ then and he was mighty free with his name. Proud of it you might say. He called hisself Bill Bonney. Heard o’ him?’’
‘‘Billy the Kid,’’ McBride said, smiling, remembering the dime novels he’d read back in New York. ‘‘The proud Prince of Bandits.’’