Man in the Saddle. Ernest Haycox

      I. OWEN MERRITT

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      Bourke Prine went into the Palace, looked around the crowd a moment, and saw the door of the back room standing ajar. He turned into that room and paused with his shoulder rested against the door's edge. Sound rolled in from the front part of the saloon, the sound of men's voices cheerfully arguing, the scrape of boots and spurs and chair legs, the dry clatter of poker chips, the sudden rush of horses coming off the Piute Desert at the dead run. A little current of air pulled smoke through the doorway, and somebody's question broke above the steady racket. "When's this weddin'?"

      Bourke spoke to the man sitting so alone at the table. "Thought I'd find you here."

      He tried another match to the limp cigarette between his lips and a half-severe, half-amused glance slid over the edge of his cupped hands. This back room was small and scarred and bare, holding only a table and two chairs. There wasn't anything on the pine-board walls except a pen-and-ink drawing of two horsemen trying to hold a grizzly with their ropes. Every time Bourke came here he said the same thing, and he said it now. "That fellow don't know how to draw horses." But his attention returned to Owen Merritt, who sat so loose-muscled before a table which supported one bottle, one glass, and a coal-oil lamp.

      The lamplight threw its yellow shine directly against Merritt's face. He said in the softest voice, "Shut that damned door."

      Prine closed it with his heel and came over and settled down in the opposite chair. The saloon's noise dropped away to a steady rumble beyond the partition. The smell of tobacco smoke and stale whisky and resin from the pine boards strengthened. Prine took the only glass on the table and helped himself to a drink, and pushed the glass back to Owen Merritt, meanwhile bracing himself to the shock of the whisky by pushing his shoulders forward. He was tall and heavy-chested, and the muscles of his upper body stirred the gray fabric of his shirt. Solidness was the key to Bourke Prine, solidness and a dark skepticism lying deep in his eyes.

      He said, "The Methodist missionary bishop just staged in from Winnemucca, so it will be a proper wedding. The hotel is lighted up like a burnin' haystack, and the women have started cryin' already. What makes women cry at weddings, kid? Skull's riders are all out there belly flat to the bar, plastered with bear grease and bad intentions. You drunk yet, Owen?"

      "The bottle," said Owen Merritt, by way of refuting the charge, "is still half full." He decanted himself a drink but let it lie a moment, speculatively watching the amber shine of the liquor. His long feet were slid under the table and he lay thoroughly slack on the chair, no muscle of his body holding perceptible tension, which was a sufficient reason for Bourke Prine to study his partner with a fresher interest. Owen Merritt's hair was as yellow as the lamplight, lying well down along his forehead. Skin made a tight fit across high cheekbones, turned a ruddy bronze by sun and wind, and his freshness of complexion made his blue eyes a shade darker than they really were. At the moment his expression was wholly unreadable. It was a way Owen Merritt had of dropping a curtain in front of his feelings. He was still and he was loose, but two small signals gave him away to Bourke—the upward strike of his lip corners, as though a smile lay somewhere near, and the manner by which, after downing the drink, he laid the glass on the table and worried it with the blunt ends of his fingers. This was the signal of rashness crowding him hard.

      Prine said, "I don't know where they hide but there's a lot of pretty girls in town. Helen Tague's here. Well sure, she's Sally Bidwell's bridesmaid. And Nan Melotte, and Swanee Vail's daughter, and Irene Spaugh, and some homesteaders' women. Takes a weddin' to bring 'em out. Maybe it's hope."

      Owen Merritt shifted on the chair. Gently, restlessly prodded by Bourke Prine's deliberate talk. "I remember," he said, "one time when my old man was alive: We rode to the rim of the Bunchgrass Hills. It was fall. Heat smoke lay across the desert. Out Christmas Creek way we could see dust rolling up from a band of Piutes crossing down to the antelope country. Wonder what makes a man think of things that mean nothing?"

      Bourke Prine's talk once more pushed against Owen Merritt. "Fay Dutcher is at the front door of this joint, keepin' tally on the Skull riders. Wearin' his pearl-handled gun for the ceremony. Maybe it's a Texas habit." His voice swung away to a lighter, quicker note. "Hugh Clagg's in town," he said, his glance touching Merritt and going away. "I saw Sheriff Medary hangin' around the hotel to kiss the bride. An easy way to keep his politics in good shape. Well, it takes a weddin' to bring 'em out."

      "Antelope are running heavy over in Fremont Basin," said Owen Merritt, in a voice gently controlled. "I guess it's time I had another look at that country."

      Bourke Prine took his turn on the glass and bottle. He split the contents of the bottle, drank his share, and pushed the glass back toward Merritt. He said, "That's your trouble. Always goin' off to take another look at a piece of country. Fiddle-footed. Always smellin' the wind for scent. And so you lose out." He swung his broad torso around and gave Owen Merritt a stiff, hard survey.