“Be glad to, West. Watch ’em. They’re both dirty at the game.”
Buck drained his beer mug and said, “Not nearly as dirty as I am.”
Then Buck smashed the mug into Carson’s face. The heavy mug broke the man’s nose on impact. Buck then jabbed the jagged broken edges into the man’s cheek and lips, sending the bully screaming and bleeding to the sawdust-covered floor.
Buck hit Phillips a combination left and right, glazing the man’s eyes with the short, brutal punches. Buck did not like to fight with his bare fists, knowing it was a fool’s game. But sometimes that was the only immediate option. Until other objects could be brought into play.
Phillips jumped to his boots, in a crouch. Buck stepped close and brought one knee up, at the same time bringing both hands down. As his hands grabbed the man’s neck, his knee came in contact with the man’s face. The crunch of breaking bones was loud in the saloon.
The fight was over. Carson lay squalling and bleeding on the floor beside the unconscious Phillips. Buck turned around. Marshal Dooley was standing by his deputy.
“Any law against a fair fight, Marshal?” Buck asked. “It was two against one.”
“And they were outnumbered at those odds,” Dooley said. “No, West, there is no law against it. Yet,” he added. “But someday there will be.”
Buck retrieved his guns and buckled them around his waist. “Not as long as there are people so stupid as to place and praise physical brawn over the capacity of reason.”
Dooley blinked. “Who are you, West? You’re no drifting gunhand. You’ve got intelligence.”
“Anybody who wishes to do so can read, Marshal. And most of us can think and reason. That’s who I am. Good night, Marshal.”
Buck picked up his hat from the bar and walked out into the night.
“More to him than meets the eyes, Marshal,” the deputy observed.
“Yeah,” said the marshal. “But it’s that unknown about him that I’m afraid of.”
Buck spent the next three days loafing and listening around Challis. He read a dozen six-month-old newspapers, bought a well-worn book of verse by Shelley and began reading that. He played a little poker, winning some, losing some, and ending up breaking about even. Twice he saw a couple of the most disreputable-looking men he’d seen in years. He knew they were mountain men, and he knew they were checking on him. The men had to be close to seventy years old, but they still looked like they could wrestle a grizzly bear. And probably win.
Some of the so-called “good people” of the community sniffed disdainfully at the sight of the buckskin-clad old men, snubbing them, having highly uncomplimentary things to say about them. Buck wanted to say, “But these men opened the way west. These men faced the dangers, most of the time alone. And many of their compadres were killed opening the way west. Had it not been for them, you folks would still be waiting to make the trek westward. These men are some of the true heroes of our time; living legends. You should welcome them, praise them, not snub and insult them.”
But Buck kept his mouth shut, knowing he would be wasting his words. He recalled the words of that fellow called Thoreau: If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
But Buck knew there was more to it than that. And he silently cursed his lack of education, vowing to read and retain more wisdom of words. He had left his books, his precious books, back at the cabin in that lovely lonely meadow, where he had buried his wife and son. Nicole and Arthur. He knew someday he’d return to that valley. If he lived through his mission.
He leaned back in his chair on the boardwalk, his back to a storefront, and pondered away a few moments, wondering why so many people built false and unworthy idols. These old mountain men were, in some cases, like military men. Looked down on and cursed until the need for them arises, then, as that moment passes, they are once more shunted aside. Like those signs Buck had been seeing on some stores: No Irish wanted here.
Buck’s philosophical meanderings were shoved aside as his eyes found the two men walking slowly down the center of the dirt main street.
Phillips and Carson. Both of them wearing two pistols. Their hands were near the pistols, ready to draw. With a sigh, Buck stood up and looked around him. Then he remembered: Marshal Dooley and his deputy had left that morning to ride out to a ranch; something about rustling.
“Get out in the street, West!” pig-face Phillips yelled.
Buck stepped off the boardwalk, slipping the leather thongs from the hammers of his .44s as he walked.
Front doors and windows facing the street banged shut as the residents headed for cover. Gunfights were nothing new to these people. They just wanted to view it from a safe place.
“It doesn’t have to be this way, boys!” Buck called. But he knew it did. With people like Carson and Phillips, winning was the only way. So-called “loss of face” was totally unacceptable. Reasoning was beyond their comprehension.
Something is wrong with this method of settling disputes, Buck thought. And something is very wrong with my own personal vendetta. But the young man, self-educated as far as his education went, knew that, at this point in the advancement of civilization, a dusty street and the smell of gunsmoke was judge and jury.
But he also knew that lawyers weren’t the final answer, either. They mucked matters up too much, twisting and reshaping the truth.
There had to be a better middle ground. But damned if he knew what it was.
“You ready to die, boy?” Carson yelled.
Buck cut his eyes for just an instant. Standing in front of a saloon was one of the men from back at the trading post. What was his name? Jerry. Yeah. Big Jack’s buddy. And standing a few yards from him, an old buckskin-dressed mountain man. The mountain man, old and big and still solid, cradled a Henry repeating rifle in the crook of one massive arm.
“We all have to see the elephant sometime,” Buck said. He could tell the men facing him were nervous. Since he had whipped them that night, Buck had heard stories about Carson and Phillips. They were thugs and ne’er-do-wells. Shiftless troublemakers. Buck had heard that the pair had used guns before, but were not gunhands, per se. They were back-shooters, cowards. But of course, as Buck knew well, most bullies were cowards.
Buck stood in the center of the street, standing tall and straight, his big hands, rough and work-hardened, close to his guns.
There was fifty feet between the men when Carson and pig-face Phillips stopped. Buck could see the sweat on the men’s faces. Buck knew he could not afford to draw first. Even though the men were trash, this was their town; Buck was a stranger. They had to draw first in order for it to be called self-defense. Even if it was two on one.
Buck stood quietly, waiting.
“You had no call to scar us up like you did,” Carson yelled. “You don’t fight fair.”
Buck waited.
Then Buck knew what had been wrong with his philosophical thinking of a few moments ago. These men were mentally ill-equipped to face the day-to-day struggles of living peacefully. But was that Buck’s fault? Was he, and others like him, responsible for Carson and Phillips and others like them? What would happen if he presented them with an armload of books, saying to them, “Here, gentlemen, within these pages lie the answers. Here is a thousand years of wisdom. Understand this and you’ll learn how to cope; how to live decently…” Buck shook those thoughts away.
We are all put here on this earth with the capability to learn to reason. These men, and others like them, don’t want to learn. Therefore, it lies on their head, not mine. We come into this world naked and helpless and squalling. Yes. But we are equal to the task of learning.