“No, I don’t think so,” Jim answered. “But that’s my cousin up there. I wouldn’t take it too kindly to see you shoot him.”
“You shoulda stayed out of it,” Shardeen said in a grating voice. From the look on his face, it was obvious that Shardeen was thinking about calling Jim’s bluff.
Jim smiled at Shardeen, an icy smile that told the gunman he wasn’t afraid.
“You’re thinking about trying me, aren’t you?” Jim asked in a voice that was calm as if he were calling a bluff in a poker game. “Well, go ahead. You’re pretty fast. You might beat me.”
“Why don’t you put your gun away?” Shardeen asked. “We’ll do this fair and square.”
“No, I have a better idea. I think I’ll just kill you and get it over with.”
“No!” Shardeen shouted in sudden fear. It was the kind of fear he instilled in others and everyone in the saloon watched in morbid fascination as the drama played out before them.
“Get out of here,” Jim said.
Shardeen’s face curled into a vicious sneer as he slipped his pistol back into its holster.
“We may run into each other again,” Shardeen warned. “When the odds are more even.”
“Could be,” Jim admitted.
“I’ll be lookin’ forward to it,” Shardeen said. Backing carefully across the floor, he put his hand behind him, feeling for the beaded strings. Once he found them, he slipped through them, then was gone.
Ten miles out of Santa Fe, a heavy, booming thunder rolled over the gray veils of rain and the ominous black clouds that crowded the hills. Though it had not yet reached them, the storm was moving quickly, and Barry Riggsbee and Tennessee Tuttle took ponchos from their saddlebags, shook them out, then slipped them on to be prepared for the impending downpour.
Barry was about five foot eight, ash-blond, young in years, but with the hard face and the seasoned blue eyes of someone who had seen more than his share of hard times. Tennessee was six foot one, with broad shoulders and dark hair. Having found no work in Santa Fe, the two were about to leave for Texas when a telegram from Jim Robison arrived telling them of some job riding for Clay Allison.
“Tennessee, we need to find us some place to get!” Barry called.
“Take a look over there,” Tennessee called back. “Looks like a line shack.”
“Looks deserted, though.”
“All the better,” Tennessee insisted.
The line shack was a good two miles away and the rain broke about halfway there. They prodded the horses into a trot and covered the last mile in short order. A lean-to extended from the side of the shack, and the two cowboys put their horses under the makeshift shelter before they went inside.
The door was padlocked from the outside, proof, if proof was needed, that the shack was empty. Tennessee jerked on the padlock to make certain that it was really locked.
It was.
“So what do we do now?” Barry asked.
Tennessee thought for no more than a moment, then he rammed his shoulder into the door. With a wrenching sound, the hasp tore loose.
“Hated to do that,” Tennessee said. “But it serves ’em right for being so mean as to lock a place like this. They had to know that from time to time someone might need it for shelter.”
“That’s probably why they locked it,” Barry said. “To keep people like us out.”
“Yeah? Well, then I’m glad I broke in.” With Tennessee leading the way, the two men stepped inside.
A dim, watery light filtered through dirty windows, barely pushing back the shadows. It was cold and damp and the air of the little deserted shack was redolent with the sour odor of being closed up for a while. But the stale smell of woodsmoke from fires long extinguished still lingered.
“Wonder if there’s anything in the possibles drawer?” Barry asked, as he started rifling through the cabinet.
“You know there ain’t goin’ to be,” Tennessee said. “Whoever wintered here done just what we done. They stayed until the last drop of coffee was drunk and the last bean was et.”
“Ha! They left some matches!” Barry said, triumphantly holding up a box. “Leastwise, we can get us a fire goin’.”
Half an hour later, with the rain coming down hard outside and a wood fire snapping in the little potbellied stove inside, Barry Riggsbee and Tennessee Tuttle drank the last of their coffee and chewed on a piece of jerky.
“Well, now, all things told, I’d say we’re livin’ in high cotton,” Tennessee said as he pulled his boots off and held his feet toward the stove. “We got a roof to keep the rain off, and a fire to drive out the cold.”
“A beer would be nice,” Barry said.
Tennessee snorted what might have been a laugh. “A beer?”
“Yeah. I mean, let’s keep this in perspective. Being inside by a warm fire is nicer than being outside in the rain. But it lacks a hell of a lot in being tall cotton.”
“Damn, you’d bitch if you got hung with a new rope,” Tennessee said with a laugh.
Barry was quiet for a moment, then he asked, very solemnly, “Tennessee, you ever see a man get hung?”
“Uh, no, not really,” Tennessee answered. “I was in a crowd once when they hung someone, but he was on the other side of the fence from me so I didn’t really get to see anything. How ’bout you?”
“I saw a man lynched once,” Barry answered. “It wasn’t a pretty sight.” Unconsciously, he pulled his collar away from his neck. He cleared his throat, then changed subjects. “I bet it’s two more days before we make El Paso. If our food lasts that long.”
“We don’t have to worry none about our food lastin’. More’n likely I’ll still be chewin’ on this same piece of jerky,” Tennessee said, holding up the piece of withered meat. Both men laughed.
“Wonder what ranch this is?” Barry asked as he looked around the little cabin.
“Not much tellin’. ’Bout the only thing for sure it, it prob’ly had as big a cow die-up as any of the other ranches did. Else there’d still be cowboys here,” Tennessee replied.
“I’ll say this for ’em—the cowboys that worked here had a good place to winter in. I’ve seen lot worse line shacks.”
“That’s true. We’ve wintered in worse ourselves,” Tennessee said.
Barry let his eyes sweep slowly around the little cabin.
“Hey, there’s a newspaper,” he said, pointing to a shelf over one of the bunks.
“It’s prob’ly old.”
“What difference does that make? I haven’t even seen a newspaper in a month of Sundays. No matter how old it is it’ll be news to me.” Barry retrieved the paper. “It’s dated March third, 1886. What’s today’s date?”
“Damn if I know,” Tennessee answered. “I think it’s 1886, though.”
“From the cold rain, I’d make it late March or early April,” Barry said. “So the paper isn’t all that old.” He read for a moment, then whistled softly. “Well, imagine that.”
“What?”
“Out in California they’re loading oranges onto trains and sending them all the way to New York to sell.”
“Yeah? We live in amazin’ times, don’t we?” Tennessee replied.
“I reckon we do.”
“What else does it say?”
“There’s a story in here about the big snow-storm. They’re callin’ it the ‘Blizzard of 1886.’ ”
“What’s it say?”
“It’ started on January sixth, and they’re calling it the worst blizzard in history. Temperature dropped from sixty-five degrees to fifteen below zero in less than two hours.”
“That’s right. It did do that,” Tennessee said. “I recollect I was down to the south pond and was warm enough that I was thinkin’ about how nice and cool the water looked. Then the snow hit and I wasn’t sure I would be able to find my way back to the bunkhouse. Then again, it wasn’t that much better in the bunkhouse. The snow blew in through the cracks around the windows and between the boards so that by the next morning it was six inches deep on the floor.”