Trouble Shooter. Ernest Haycox
put in Ed Tarrant, "how long should good liquor be ignored?"
They were silent a little while, and then Peace lifted his glass and echoed the thought that was in the minds of all of them. "Here," he said, "is to '68—the year we beat the Central into Salt Lake."
They drank on that and they broke up. Sam Reed stopped at the door to drop an afterthought. "You don't travel alone this year, Frank. Overmile sticks with you particularly. Phil Morgan is at hand for your use. When you get to Fort Sanders you'll find Lieutenant Millard has orders to accompany you on any trip off the road."
"What's that for?" demanded Peace.
But Sam Reed only shrugged his shoulders and went out, Jack Casement following. Peace remained in his tracks, a tall and unruly presence in that room, with his black head faintly bent. There was a sharpness and a hardiness in the look he threw at those three deep friends ranged about him. He saw the way they studied him, with an affection—and with a concern.
He said again: "What's it all for?"
Leach Overmile blew a ring of cigarette smoke casually upward. Pure blandness covered the cheeks of this silver-headed ex-cowpuncher and faint crew's feet wrinkles sprang shrewdly about his eyes. Phil Morgan was an inscrutable figure in the chair, teeth clenched about the stem of his pipe. Ed Tarrant lifted his glass against the light, squinting through it.
"You don't know yet?" murmured Overmile,
"I don't like mystery, you slab-sided horse wrangler."
"No mystery," remarked Overmile quietly. "This Indian business is just a side trip. Reed sent word to all the joints last night that the railroad proposed to back up its authority in all end of track towns this year—and that you were the man to clean 'em up if they got tough. Ed Tarrant was in the Club last night when the news trickled through. The gamblers held a meetin' about it. We know for a fact they wired Campeaux, who, was winterin' in Omaha. That's what brought him along in such a hurry."
He stopped and blew another smoke ring at the cloudy ceiling. But Phil Morgan said evenly: "Tell him the rest, Leach."
Overrnile drawled: "At this meetin' the toughs decided to put you to sleep if you started anything. Which is why Reed said you wouldn't travel alone this year."
Frank Peace let his eyes narrow a moment, considering it. Afterwarrd the grin they were all waiting for laid a taut streak across his skin. He said indolently: "I'm to be chaperoned? Brethren, I'll run you ragged. I'll have you sittin' on front porches and back steps all summer. Now get away from my sight—I'm busy. See you at the train in two hours."
"Another drink?" suggested Ed Tarrant hopefully. But Frank Peace, bound for the door, swept him forward with a long arm. They went down the stairs and out through the lobby of the Rollins House into Cheyenne's windy, tumultuous street.
Peace said: "At the train," and swung away, cutting around the corner of Eddy and going along it at a fast cruising stride. There were men working at the guy ropes of Campeaux's Club saloon, cursing the wind as they slid into the heavy mud; and a four-horse team pulled away from it, high laden with freight. It was the way all these joints worked. Tonight the Club was in full roar at Cheyenne. But end of track crept on past Sherman Summit into Laramie Plains, and Laramie City was only a few days from steel. Tomorrow night Campeaux's Club saloon would be pitched in Laramie, waiting for the Irish Paddies to come swinging in off the first work train—money in their pockets, a thirst in their throats, and the very devil in their bony fists.
And around the Club's enormous tent would be all the other shanty hells, with their spielers crying across the street: "Come on, you rondo-coolo sports—come on over and give us a bet!" Spring was here, the railroad stirred from its sleep, and 1868 would be a lustier year, a more roaring year—and a deadlier year.
He turned in front of a small two-storied frame building wedged between other buildings of like rawness and newness. A sign above it said briefly: OLIVER MERCANTILE COMPANY, and inside he saw Bardee Oliver's pointed smooth Yankee face turning slowly and obstinately from side to side at a customer across the counter, It roused Peace's sense of humor. Bardee Oliver was on his way to a fortune through that one gift he had of being able to shake his head. In this prodigal country where men were turned giddy by the buoyant air Bardee kept his senses.
He saw Peace. He said, "Hello, Frank," as a matter of course. This casualness was something he never departed from, fire or storm or gun fight. "Eileen," he added, "is just up the stairs," and afterward he turned his attention back to the customer.
Peace went across the store more rapidly than he realized. He skirted the piles of sacked flour, the boxes of canned goods, the heavy tiers of lard tubs; he came to the narrow stairway and went up two steps at a time to knock impatiently on the upper door.
A voice, like the cool, remote tinkle of porcelain, said: "Come in."
He pushed the door aside. Across the room Eileen Oliver turned slowly around, slowly and gracefully and without hurry.
It was this picture—the promise of this picture—that had been long in his memory, stirring his restlessness during the month he had been away, a restlessness that was like vaguely remembering something valuable that he had left behind him and might lose, A fear of that sort—a feeling of unease and uncertainty. She had on a dress that lay tightly against her slim waist, that accented the self-reliance of her small, square shoulders. Her hair was quite dark, drawn back in the strict, center-parted fashion of the time; her eyes were gray, and all this darkness gave to her small, distinct and oval face a remote olive tint. She was a quiet girl and her smile now sweetened rather than lightened the grave, even lines of those New England lips.
She said, "I hoped you'd be in tonight, Frank," and the slight gesture of her head sent two jade eardrops into quiet motion.
"Is that all, Eileen?" he said, and went straight across the room. Her hands came up in a quick gesture of defense. But he brought her to him with a hard sweep of his long arms.
She said, half in a whisper, "Frank!" When he kissed her he caught the perfume of her hair. Her lips slid away from him and her hands put a steady pressure against his wide chest. Her eyes were very bright; color stained her cheeks. "Frank—why are you so rough!"
He was laughing then, for he had remembered that self-possession was the key to this girl and that she hated unsettling emotions. There was that much of her father's casualness in her make-up. He looked at her until her eyes dropped and that strange shyness pushed his spirits higher than they had been. He reached down and caught the point of her chin, and lifted it and said, "Eileen—coolness is for strangers." But she had a need for self-possession that he could not break through. Her eyes flashed out quick anger and she shoved his arm aside.
"Eileen," he said, remotely stung, "are you afraid to be alive?"
She caught her breath. She said, "Frank!" Her hands held him by the coat lapels and he saw through her reserve, down into some part of her that held flame. It was soon shut out. She dropped her hands, and humor turned her lips frankly at the corners. "It doesn't take us long to quarrel, does it?"
"If you fed me I'd be more agreeable."
She said, "Sit down," and went into the kitchen.
There was, Peace thought, an unbreakable serenity in this room. The boards hadn't yet been painted or papered, the furniture was scarred by usage and travel—and the robust, turbulent echoes of a Cheyenne busy with its work and its pleasure beat like waves against the thin walls. Yet the personality of the girl was stronger than these other influences. Quiet as she was, she had put the impress of her will upon the room; it was a matter of orderliness, of small touches of grace against the bare walls. He got out his pipe and packed it, feeling ease go through him.
She came back and put a plate in front of him, and said: "Cold scraps. Has Omaha changed?"
"Packed solid with railroad stuff. Mud hub-deep on the main street. Steamboats tied by the dozen to the docks. It's a railroad town now, Eileen."
She said: "We should be grateful for the railroad, I suppose. It is life for all of us." She sat down opposite him, her arms