Steel: And Other Stories Read online

  Crossed on his narrow waist, riding low, a brace of gunbelts hung, sagging with the weight of two Colt .44s in their holsters.

  I confess to staring at the transformation. Few men in Grantville wore two pistols, much less slender young city men just arrived in town.

  In my mind, I heard again the questions he had put to me. I had to set my glass down for the sudden, unaccountable shaking of my hand.

  The other customers of the Nellie Gold looked only briefly at the young man, then returned to their several attentions. George P. Shaughnessy looked up, smiling, gave the customary unnecessary wipe across the immaculate mahogany of the bar top, and asked the young man’s pleasure.

  “Whiskey,” the young man said.

  “Any special kind, now?” George asked.

  “Any kind,” the young man said, thumbing back his hat with studied carelessness.

  It was when the amber fluid was almost to the glass top that the young man asked the question I had somehow known he would ask from the moment I had recognized him.

  “Tell me, who’s the quickest pistolman in town?”

  George looked up. “I beg your pardon, mister?”

  The young man repeated the question, his face emotionless.

  “Now, what does a fine young fellow like you want to know that for?” George asked him in a fatherly way.

  It was like the tightening of hide across a drum top the way the skin grew taut across the young man’s cheeks.

  “I asked you a question,” he said with unpleasant flatness. “Answer it.”

  The two closest customers cut off their talking to observe. I felt my hands grow cold upon the table top. There was ruthlessness in the young man’s voice.

  But George’s face still retained the bantering cast it almost always had.

  “Are you going to answer my question?” the young man said, drawing back his hands and tensing them with light suggestiveness along the bar edge.

  “What’s your name, son?” George asked.

  The young man’s mouth grew hard and his eyes went cold beneath the shadowing brim of his hat. Then a calculating smile played thinly on his lips. “My name is Riker,” he said as if somehow he expected this unknown name to strike terror into all our hearts.

  “Well, young Mr. Riker, may I ask you why you want to know about the quickest pistolman in town?”

  “Who is it?” There was no smile on Riker’s lips now; it had faded quickly into that grim, unyielding line again. In back I noticed one of the three poker players peering across the top of half-doors into the main saloon.

  “Well, now,” George said, smiling, “there’s Sheriff Cleat. I’d say that he’s about—”

  His face went slack. A pistol was pointing at his chest.

  “Don’t tell me lies,” young Riker said in tightly restrained anger. “I know your sheriff is a yellow dog; a man at the hotel told me so. I want the truth.”

  He emphasized the word again with a sudden thumbing back of hammer. George’s face went white.

  “Mr. Riker, you’re making a very bad mistake,” he said, then twitched back as the long pistol barrel jabbed into his chest.

  Riker’s mouth was twisted with fury. “Are you going to tell me?” he raged. His young voice cracked in the middle of the sentence like an adolescent’s.

  “Selkirk,” George said quickly.

  * * *

  The young man drew back his pistol, another smile trembling for a moment on his lips. He threw across a nervous glance at where I sat but did not recognize me. Then his cold blue eyes were on George again.

  “Selkirk,” he repeated. “What’s the first name?”

  “Barth,” George told him, his voice having neither anger nor fear.

  “Barth Selkirk.” The young man spoke the name as though to fix it in his mind. Then he leaned forward quickly, his nostrils flaring, the thin line of his mouth once more grown rigid.

  “You tell him I want to kill him,” he said. “Tell him I—” He swallowed hastily and jammed his lips together. “Tonight,” he said then. “Right here. At eight o’clock.” He shoved out the pistol barrel again. “You tell him,” he commanded.

  George said nothing and Riker backed away from the bar, glancing over his shoulder once to see where the doors were. As he retreated, the high heel of his right boot gave a little inward and he almost fell. As he staggered for balance, his pistol barrel pointed restlessly around the room, and in the rising color of his face, his eyes looked with nervous apprehension into every dark corner.

  Then he was at the doors again, his chest rising and falling rapidly. Before our blinking eyes, the pistol seemed to leap back into its holster. Young Riker smiled uncertainly, obviously desperate to convey the impression that he was in full command of the moment.

  “Tell him I don’t like him,” he said as if he were tossing out a casual reason for his intention to kill Selkirk. He swallowed again, lowering his chin a trifle to hide the movement of his throat.

  “Tell him he’s a dirty Rebel,” he said in a breathless-sounding voice. “Tell him—tell him I’m a Yankee and I hate all Rebels!”

  For another moment he stood before us in wavering defiance. Then suddenly he was gone.

  George broke the spell. We heard the clink of glass on glass as he poured himself a drink. We watched him swallow it in a single gulp. “Young fool,” he muttered.

  I got up and went over to him.

  “How do you like that?” he asked me, gesturing one big hand in the general direction of the doors.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked him, conscious of the two men now sauntering with affected carelessness for the doors.

  “What am I supposed to do?” George asked me. “Tell Selkirk, I guess.”

  I told George about my talk with young Riker and of his strange transformation from city boy to, apparently, self-appointed pistol killer.

  “Well,” George said when I was finished talking, “where does that leave me? I can’t have a young idiot like that angry with me. Do you know his triggers were filed to a hair? Did you see the way he slung that Colt?” he shook his head. “He’s a fool,” he said. “But a dangerous fool—one that a man can’t let himself take chances with.”

  “Don’t tell Selkirk,” I said. “I’ll go to the sheriff and—”

  George waved an open palm at me. “Don’t joke now, John,” he said. “You know Cleat hides his head under the pillow when there’s shooting in the air.”

  “But this would be a slaughter, George,” I said. “Selkirk is a hardened killer, you know that for a fact.”

  George eyed me curiously. “Why are you concerned about it?” he asked me.

  “Because he’s a boy,” I said. “Because he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

  George shrugged. “The boy came in and asked for it himself, didn’t he?” he said. “Besides, even if I say nothing, Selkirk will hear about it, you can be sure of that. Those two who just went out—don’t you think they’ll spread the word?”

  A grim smile raised Shaughnessy’s lips. “The boy will get his fight,” he said. “And may the Lord have mercy on his soul.”

  George was right. Word of the young stranger’s challenge flew about the town as if the wind had blown it. And with the word, the threadbare symbol of our justice, Sheriff Cleat, sought the sanctuary of his house, having either scoffed at all storm warnings or ignored them in his practiced way.

  But the storm was coming; everyone knew it. The people who had found some reason to bring them to the square—they knew it. The men thronging the Nellie Gold who seemed to have developed a thirst quite out of keeping with their normal desires—they knew it. Death is a fascinating lure to men who can stand aside and watch it operate on someone else.

  I stationed myself near the entrance of the Nellie Gold, hoping that I might speak to young Riker, who had been in his hotel room all afternoon, alone.

  * * *

  At seven-thirty, Selkirk and his ruffian friends galloped to the hit
ching rack, tied up their snorting mounts, and went into the saloon. I heard the greetings offered them and their returning laughs and shouts. They were elated, all of them; that was not hard to see. Things had been dull for them in the past few months. Cleat had offered no resistance, only smiling fatuously to their bullying insults. And, in the absence of any other man willing to draw his pistol on Barth Selkirk, the days had dragged for him and for his gang, who thrived on violence. Gambling and drinking and the company of Grantville’s lost women was not enough for these men. It was why they were all bubbling with excited anticipation that night.

  While I stood waiting on the wooden sidewalk, endlessly drawing out my pocket watch, I heard the men shouting back and forth among themselves inside the saloon. But the deep, measured voice of Barth Selkirk I did not hear. He did not shout or laugh then or ever. It was why he hovered like a menacing wraith across our town. For he spoke his frightening logic with the thunder of his pistols and all men knew it.

  Time was passing. It was the first time in my life that impending death had taken on such immediacy to me. My boys had died a thousand miles from me, falling while, oblivious, I sold flour to the blacksmith’s wife. My wife had died slowly, passing in the peace of slumber, without a cry or a sob.

  Yet now I was deeply in this fearful moment. Because I had spoken to young Riker, because—yes, I knew it now—he had reminded me of Lew, I now stood shivering in the darkness, my hands clammy in my coat pockets, in my stomach a hardening knot of dread.

  And then my watch read eight. I looked up—and I heard his boots clumping on the wood in even, unhurried strides.

  I stepped out from the shadows and moved toward him. The people in the square had grown suddenly quiet. I sensed men’s eyes on me as I walked toward Riker’s approaching form. It was, I knew, the distortion of nerves and darkness, but he seemed taller than before as he walked along with measured steps, his small hands swinging tensely at his sides.

  I stopped before him. For a moment, he looked irritably confused. Then that smile that showed no humor flickered on his tightly drawn face.

  “It’s the grocery man,” he said, his voice dry and brittle.

  I swallowed the cold tightness in my throat. “Son, you’re making a mistake,” I said, “a very bad mistake.”

  “Get out of my way,” he told me curtly, his eyes glancing over my shoulder at the saloon.

  “Son, believe me. Barth Selkirk is too much for you to—”

  In the dull glowing of saloon light, the eyes he turned on me were the blue of frozen, lifeless things. My voice broke off, and without another word, I stepped aside to let him pass. When a man sees in another man’s eyes the insensible determination that I saw in Riker’s, it is best to step aside. There are no words that will affect such men.

  A moment more he looked at me and then, squaring his shoulders, he started walking again. He did not stop until he stood before the batwings of the Nellie Gold.

  I moved closer, staring at the light and shadows of his face illuminated by the inside lamps. And it seemed as though, for a moment, the mask of relentless cruelty fell from his features to reveal stark terror.

  But it was only a moment, and I could not be certain I had really seen it. Abruptly, the eyes caught fire again, the thin mouth tightened, and Riker shoved through the doors with one long stride.

  There was silence, utter ringing silence in that room. Even the scuffing of my bootheels sounded very loud as I edged cautiously to the doors.

  Then, as I reached them, there was that sudden rustling, thumping, jingling combination of sounds that indicated general withdrawal from the two opposing men.

  I looked in carefully.

  Riker stood erect, his back to me, looking toward the bar. It now stood deserted save for one man.

  Barth Selkirk was a tall man who looked even taller because of the black he wore. His hair was long and blond; it hung in thick ringlets beneath his wide-brimmed hat. He wore his pistol low on his right hip, the butt reversed, the holster thonged tightly to his thigh. His face was long and tanned, his eyes as sky-blue as Riker’s, his mouth a motionless line beneath the well-trimmed length of his mustaches.

  I had never seen Abilene’s Hickok, but the word had always been that Selkirk might have been his twin.

  * * *

  As the two eyed each other, it was as though every watching man in that room had ceased to function, their breaths frozen, their bodies petrified—only their eyes alive, shifting back and forth from man to man. It might have been a room of statues, so silently did each man stand.

  Then I saw Selkirk’s broad chest slowly expanding as it filled with air. And as it slowly sank, his deep voice broke the silence with the impact of a hammer blow on glass.

  “Well?” he said and let his boot slide off the brass rail and thump down onto the floor.

  An instant pause. Then, suddenly, a gasping in that room as if one man had gasped instead of all.

  For Selkirk’s fingers, barely to the butt of his pistol, had turned to stone as he gaped dumbly at the brace of Colts in Riker’s hands.

  “Why you dirty—” he began—and then his voice was lost in the deafening roar of pistol fire. His body was flung back against the bar edge as if a club had struck him in the chest. He held there for a moment, his face blank with astonishment. Then the second pistol kicked thundering in Riker’s hand and Selkirk went down in a twisted heap.

  I looked dazedly at Selkirk’s still body, staring at the great gush of blood from his torn chest. Then, my eyes were on Riker again as he stood veiled in acrid smoke before the staring men.

  I heard him swallow convulsively. “My name is Riker,” he said, his voice trembling in spite of efforts to control it. “Remember that. Riker.”

  He backed off nervously, his left pistol holstered in a blur of movement, his right still pointed toward the crowd of men.

  Then he was out of the saloon again, his face contorted with a mixture of fear and exultation as he turned and saw me standing there.

  “Did you see it?” he asked me in a shaking voice. “Did you see it?”

  I looked at him without a word as his head jerked to the side and he looked into the saloon again, his hands plummeting down like shot birds to his pistol butts.

  Apparently he saw no menace, for instantly his eyes were back on me again—excited, swollen-pupiled eyes.

  “They won’t forget me now, will they?” he said and swallowed. “They’ll remember my name. They’ll be afraid of it.”

  He started to walk past me, then twitched to the side and leaned, with a sudden weakness, against the saloon wall, his chest heaving with breath, his blue eyes jumping around feverishly. He kept gasping at the air as if he were choking.

  He swallowed with difficulty. “Did you see it?” he asked me again, as if he were desperate to share his murderous triumph. “He didn’t even get to pull his pistols—didn’t even get to pull them.” His lean chest shuddered with turbulent breath. “That’s how,” he gasped, “that’s how to do it.” Another gasp. “I showed them. I showed them all how to do it. I came from the city and I showed them how. I got the best one they had, the best one.” His throat moved so quickly it made a dry, clicking sound. “I showed them,” he muttered.

  He looked around blinking. “Now I’ll—”

  He looked all around with frightened eyes, as if an army of silent killers were encircling him. His face went slack and he forced together his shaking lips.

  “Get out of my way,” he suddenly ordered and pushed me aside. I turned and watched him walking rapidly toward the hotel, looking to the sides and over his shoulder with quick jerks of his head, his hands half poised at his sides.

  I tried to understand young Riker, but I couldn’t. He was from the city; that I knew. Some city in the mass of cities had borne him. He had come to Grantville with the deliberate intention of singling out the fastest pistolman and killing him face to face. That made no sense to me. That seemed a purposeless desire.

&n
bsp; Now what would he do? He had told me he was only going to be in Grantville for a while. Now that Selkirk was dead, that while was over.

  Where would young Riker go next? And would the same scenes repeat themselves in the next town, and the next, and the next after that? The young city man arriving, changing outfits, asking for the most dangerous pistolman, meeting him—was that how it was going to be in every town? How long could such insanity last? How long before he met a man who would not lose the draw?

  My mind was filled with these questions. But, over all, the single question—Why? Why was he doing this thing? What calculating madness had driven him from the city to seek out death in this strange land?

  While I stood there wondering, Barth Selkirk’s men carried out the blood-soaked body of their slain god and laid him carefully across his horse. I was so close to them that I could see his blond hair ruffling slowly in the night wind and hear his life’s blood spattering on the darkness of the street.

  Then I saw the six men looking toward the Blue Buck Hotel, their eyes glinting vengefully in the light from the Nellie Gold, and I heard their voices talking low. No words came clear to me as they murmured among themselves, but from the way they kept looking toward the hotel I knew of what they spoke.

  I drew back into the shadows again, thinking they might see me and carry their conversation elsewhere. I stood in the blackness watching. Somehow I knew exactly what they intended even before one of their shadowy group slapped a palm against his pistol butt and said distinctly, “Come on.”

  I saw them move away slowly, the six of them, their voices suddenly stilled, their eyes directed at the hotel they were walking toward.

  Foolishness again; it is an old man’s trademark. For, suddenly, I found myself stepping from the shadows and turning the corner of the saloon, then running down the alley between the Nellie Gold and Pike’s Saddlery; rushing through the squares of light made by the saloon windows, then into darkness again. I had no idea why I was running. I seemed driven by an unseen force which clutched all reason from my mind but one thought—warn him.

  My breath was quickly lost. I felt my coattails flapping like furious bird wings against my legs. Each thudding bootfall drove a mail-gloved fist against my heart.