Ten families remained to scrape the leavings because they couldn’t afford to go anywhere. The parents died, the sisters went off to find obscure relations, two of the sons were killed in War Two, another went away to die in a drunk tank somewhere, still another just plain disappeared. Now five men were left, all in their fifties.
Each had his family claim, each worked it steadily enough to produce enough gold flakes to keep him in essentials, and each ignored the state government which turned their town into a barely-accessible tourist attraction (only one road led here, an unmarked, thirty-miles-long collection of jagged rocks). Warren, the live-in ranger, passed gradually from a state of being tolerated by the five remaining natives of Glory and into a twilight zone of acceptance.
Tod Spencer, who owned the biggest house, had turned it into the town’s working general store. Actually, it was the communal pantry of the five. Tod kept a rigid accounting of all supplies, and his books and shelves were always open to the other four. It was a workable arrangement, and Tod’s house had become the stereotyped country gathering place.
Joe Morgan was already there with Tod, and after Rudell arrived, Phil Boyer walked in. When Larry Dobbs got there, the five of them sat on the wide veranda and drank coffee and watched the stranger who was not a tourist at all.
“Now just what in the hell does he think he’s doin’?” asked Phil Boyer of no one in particular.
Tod Spencer, his Lucky Strike centered in his thin lips, coughed his dry cough and said, “Looks to me like he’s headin’ up toward the mill.”
“He ain’t payin’ no attention to them Keep Out Danger signs.” This from Joe Morgan.
“You notice somethin’ peculiar about that fella?” asked, Phil Boyer.
“Walks funny,” Larry Dobbs grunted.
But Rudell had noticed what Phil had. “He ain’t walkin’ on that dirt road. He’s walkin’ on the side of it, in the brush. Watchin’ the road...” Rudell let his voice trail off.
Joe Morgan said that it wouldn’t be long before Ranger Warren noticed that the fella was heading up where he wasn’t supposed to, and would start yelling pretty soon. He wasn’t off the mark by more than half a minute.
“Hey! Hey, you!”
None of the five could see Ranger Warren, but they knew he must be somewhere on the other side of the old schoolhouse by the sound of his voice. They looked back up the hill and saw the stocky man standing with arms akimbo, his back to the town, staring at the dirt road leading into the leaning walls of the mill. He did not give any outward sign of having heard the ranger.
“Get down outa there! Hey!”
Finally, the stranger turned. No hurry about him. Looked over toward the school.
“Get down off there! Go on!”
The stocky man paused a moment, the started leisurely down the hill. This time, he didn’t worry about staying off the road, but marched straight down its dusty surface. Ranger Warren appeared then, walking across the sparse sagebrush, his strides long and angry-looking, to meet the man. He started talking before he reached the stranger.
The stranger just kept walking his rolling, side-to-side walk, now and then glancing at Ranger Warren, who was now alongside keeping pace. The stranger just kept moving, never changing his speed, until finally he stopped and turned toward Warren, his movement seeming impatient, irritated. Warren stopped talking and stood still. Watching the two of them, Rudell thought of a rattlesnake and a jackrabbit.
The stranger was talking quietly. Warren, a tall man in his late thirties, listened, jerked, shook his head. The stranger asked him something. Warren spoke, the words carrying clearly back to the five by a stray gust of air.
“No, I haven’t. You know how many people I see here every day?” The stranger spoke some more. “No, I said! If somebody like that came around here, I’d know about it!” The stranger asked something else. “Listen, what are you trying to pull, here? This is state property and you can be ordered off if you try any funny stuff! Now you just—”
But the stranger had turned away from Warren and walked away, leaving the ranger standing there looking nervously after him. The five on Tod’s veranda got a good look at the man as he came rolling by, and all nodded civilly to him when he nodded at them. He walked on up the street toward the parking lot.
“Looks like Warren’s glad that fella’s leavin’,” said Phil Boyer.
“He’ll be over to brag it up, how he threw him out of town, and all,” muttered Joe Morgan.
But Morgan was wrong. Ranger Warren stood indecisively for a moment before finding something over at the saloon which interested him.
And Phil was wrong about the stocky man leaving. He appeared at Tod’s veranda not quite thirty minutes later, holding a big blue-and-white ice-chest, which had to be heavy. He wasn’t even breathing hard.
“This looks like the only place in town to get a beer,” he said with Marciano’s voice. His grin seemed open and cheery enough, but there were still those eyes, telling Rudell to be careful.
“Nothin’ here’s for sale,” coughed Tod around his Lucky Strike.
“Well, that’s no problem.” The man put the ice-chest down on Tod’s porch and opened it. His hand came out holding a can of Coors, with a frosty bit of crumbled ice clinging to the bottom of it. “This stuff ain’t for sale, either.” He tossed the can toward Larry Dobbs, who snatched and caught it. “I just like to have some company. My name’s Black.”
“Larry Dobbs,” mumbled Larry Dobbs. As he was introduced to each of the other four, Black handed out the Coors, and took their stiff, unaccustomed thank-yous. Maybe because it was getting warm, Black took off his windbreaker, and now Rudell saw the reason for the swaggering walk. Black’s arms and torso were muscled like a wrestler’s. He had to walk that way.
Black opened a can for himself, closed the ice-chest’s lid, and sat down easily on top of it. After taking a long drink, he sighed and burped and grinned again. “You boys are the only ones living here, right?”
“Us and the ranger,” grunted Joe Morgan.
“Well, does he count? I mean, he’s here because somebody told him to be. You guys are here because you all wanted to be.” Black raised his eyebrows at Rudell Foster and made it into a question.
“Yea.” And there was nothing else to say.
“Us sittin’ here, we’re all there is,” said Tod Spencer. He started to say something else, but broke into a fit of coughing so bad he had to take his Lucky Strike out of his mouth. Little bits of tobacco clung to his lower lip.
“What Tod was gonna say was, if you’re lookin’ for somebody else that lives in Glory, you can stop lookin’.” That was Phil Boyer.
The man Black chuffed out a short laugh and finished off the rest of his Coors. “Well, that’s plain enough, and you guys have been watching me look all day. The ranger doesn’t want to remember too much, but then he’s busy with tourists all the time. Maybe one of you noticed the man I’m trying to find.”
“We only take one day off a week,” said Larry Dobbs.
“Most the rest of the time we’re up at our claims,” said Joe Morgan.
“Most likely we didn’t see ’im,” said Tod Spencer, plucking tobacco off his tongue.
“Then again, maybe one of us did,” said Rudell Foster.
“What’s he look like?” asked Phil Boyer.
Black had looked hard at each of them. Finally he settled on Rudell Foster to talk to. “Forty years old. Skinny. Little pot belly. Soft hands. Going bald on top and gray around the edges. Weak chin. Veins in his nose. Talks like he’s from the east coast. And if you saw him he was probably nervous. You didn’t see that guy, did you, Rudell?”