Another said, “Why in Christ he rape ’em? Whores? You don’t have to rape ’em… they give it up for two bits, some of ’em.”
“Yeah, why did he rape ’em?” another wanted to know.
“He never says.”
A tall man in a gray wool suit and polished black boots was shaking his head. “Seems to me, sir, that this is no fit conversation in the presence of ladies.”
The miners were looking around, trying to find the ladies. All they saw were a few whores mulling about. They didn’t figure that sort counted as being ladies.
“They ain’t no ladies here, chief,” a miner said. “In case you haven’t noticed.”
“I find it objectionable all the same.”
The miners laughed at that to a man. Looked like maybe they were going to start trouble over it… but then they saw the pistols hanging from the man’s belt. Fine and sleek they were, Colt Peacemakers with ivory handles. The weapons of a shootist.
The miners filtered away, figuring today wasn’t the day to die.
“And you, sir,” the tall man said to Cabe. “If you are a bounty hunter as you claim, if you are indeed hunting this man, then I seriously doubt you will find him in the bottom of a glass of beer.”
Cabe looked at Carny, just shook his head. “Listen, mister. I came in for a drink, not to listen you run that silver-plated mouth of yours.”
The tall man took a step forward. “All the manners of a rutting hog. How wonderful that is.”
“Like I said, I just want to drink my beer. So will you kindly go fuck yourself?”
The tall man’s face drained of color. “That, sir, is no way for a gentleman to talk. Profanity is the product of a weak mind.”
“Well, that’s me-weak-minded Arkansas trash. I claim to be nothing else.”
An easterner. A dandy. That’s what this fellow was. These days, didn’t seem you could spit without hitting one. Cabe generally just left them alone, regardless of how he felt about that sort. Most of ’em didn’t bother no one. Then there were this kind.
“No, sir, you are certainly no gentleman, surely. You are rude, coarse, and obnoxious.”
“Yes, sir, as you said.” Cabe set his glass on the bar, put his hat on. “Now please kindly step out of my sight before the doc has to pull my spurs out of your fine white ass.”
But he wasn’t moving and Cabe was starting to wonder if he’d have to bury this sumbitch, too.
“If your mother had any sense, bounty hunter, she would’ve drowned you in a sack before you grew to stink up this country.”
Cabe felt the hairs along the back of his neck bristle. No, no, he wasn’t going to let this bastard push him into something he would regret. Just wasn’t going to happen. He was walking away from this one.
The tall man had positioned himself between Cabe and the door now.
Which meant that Cabe had two choices: go around him or right through. It wasn’t much of a decision for Cabe, being that he went around no man. It wasn’t his way. It had cost him in blood and bruises through the years, but he backed down from no one.
He thought: I will not pull my pistol, not if there’s any other way.
The dandy stood his ground and Cabe came right at him, not slowing, not so much as breaking stride. When he was precious feet away, the tall man pulled his Colts. Pulled ’em pretty fast, too. But not fast enough. By the time he cleared leather, Cabe was close enough to smell. A few quick steps and he had hammered the dandy in the face with two quick, straight jabs that put him to his knees. Cabe kicked him in the belly to keep him down. Somewhere during the process, the tall man lost his pistols. Cabe saw them and kicked them away.
“Now,” he said, just plain sick of bullshit like this, “y’all go home to Boston or Charlottesville or where ever in the fuck you came from. You go back home to daddy’s money and his title. Because out here, you’re gonna get your fool self killed.”
Cabe went right past him, left him coughing and gasping, blood bubbling from his dislocated nose. He had almost made the front door when the dandy screamed out obscenities and pulled a little five-shot Remington Elliot .32.
Cabe just stood there, knowing he couldn’t move quick enough.
The gun was on him.
The tall man was filled with rage and hate.
Just then two men carrying shotguns burst through the door. They were dressed in dusty trail clothes and plainsman-style hats.
“You there,” the first said. “Drop that pistol or I’ll cut you in half.”
The dandy lowered it, let it slide from his fingers.
The second one turned to Cabe, looked him up and down. “You Cabe? Tyler Cabe? The Arkansas bounty hunter?”
“I would be.”
The shotguns came around in his direction now. “Then you better come with us.”
9
For some time after Tyler Cabe left, Janice Dirker found herself thinking about him. About how he carried himself, the way he spoke, that unflappable honesty that was the earmark, it seemed, of who and what he was. She found herself thinking about these things and knowing that he excited her. Excited some part of her that had lain long dormant like a volcano just biding its time until it would erupt.
Tyler Cabe was a free-spirit.
He seemed to be entirely unconventional. Had no true respect for money or position, for authority or cultural values. He lived as he chose, said what he pleased to whom he pleased. He was a rogue element. Seemed to have more in common with the red man than the white. Maybe this is what excited her. He was so different than the other men she’d known. Now, her husband Jackson, was completely the opposite. He had bearing, had station, had unshakable confidence. But he was stiff and unyielding and emotions seemed to be a foreign thing to him. Mere malfunctions of character, rather than compliments to it. For though Jackson was a good man who invariably did the right thing at the right time, he was cold. Terribly cold and methodical.
And Tyler Cabe?
Anything but. He was tough and trail-weary, had ridden the backside of society for far too long. He was surely lacking in refinement or social graces, but what he lacked there he surely made up in warmth and humanity. He was warm and friendly and wore his emotions proudly. He had depth and sincerity and compassion. He was everything Jackson wasn’t and was not afraid to be so. Her father would have despised him. And although Jackson was a Yankee, he was exactly the sort of man her father would have paired her with-a man of dignity, resolve, and bearing. His idea of what a man should be. And Cabe? Her father would have instantly dismissed him as “hill-trash”.
Cabe, however, was not the most outwardly handsome of men.
He was tall and lanky, powerful without being manifestly muscular. His face was weathered from hard-living and hard riding, set with draws and hollows, lined by experience. Then there were those scars across his face. He would have been a menacing character had it not been for those beautifully sad green eyes that offset the rest and gave him a pained, melancholy look.
There was no doubt in Janice’s mind that she was attracted to him.
Maybe it was the hotel and the staff and daily drudgery of keeping things running. Jackson was part of that, she supposed. Just another reminder of toil and unhappiness… and perhaps all these things combined is what made Tyler Cabe seem so fresh, so exciting. For he was, if anything, the image of a pirate from her teenage fantasies-a scoundrel, a libertine, a wolf in a world of sheep and dogs.
These were the things Janice mulled over that windy evening when the giant came through the door.
Maybe giant wasn’t entirely applicable, but there was no getting around the fact that her visitor was closer to seven-feet than six. He was dressed in a shaggy buffalo coat that was just as ragged and worn as the hide of a mangy grizzly. Crossed bandoleers of brass cartridges were belted over his chest. A big Colt Dragoon pistol hung at the crotch of his fringed deerskin pants. His face was hard, his eyes like unblinking iron, a steel gray beard hung down to his chest.