Essential Western Novels - Volume 5. Edgar Rice Burroughs

      I

      THE sprawling, haze-dimmed outline of Angels, Casabella County's official seat and only town, had been in front of Clint Charterhouse all during the last five miles riding across the undulating prairie. And because many days and weeks of lonely traveling had taught this tall, hazel-eyed man the value of keeping his mind always occupied he had been speculating on the nature of this remote and isolated place. Experience told him it would be just another double row of sun-baked, paint-peeled buildings with a dusty sweltering street between; and since it was just past noon the citizens would be indoors dawdling. Clint Charterhouse, footloose and fancy free, had entered into and departed from a hundred such habitations of man and found none of them different.

      But as he checked his horse at the very limits of Angels, he discovered all his guesses wrong. This town was different and, with a quick interest breaking through the long saddle drowse, he swept the scene. There indeed lay the double row of paint-peeled buildings, perhaps fifteen on a side, and along the fronts of all ran second story porches that made of each sidewalk a long and shaded gallery. But Angels itself was far from being asleep on this sultry, droning day. The town was full of men. A particular knot of them stood in front of an expansive porch at the far end; lesser groups were by the stable, the saloons, the blacksmith's yawning door. Honest hammer strokes clanged off an anvil; horses rubbed sides at the racks; more riders coursed rapidly into Angels from the far end; and more men waddled across the plaza.

      "Court day?" Clint Charterhouse asked himself. "No, it's the wrong time of the year. Here it is Monday in the middle of roundup season and by every rule of the range this joint ought to be dead as a door nail." His hazel glance narrowed down the street, more closely studying those indolent groups of men. "Might be just my imagination, or do I sort of see them square off against each other, watchful-like? Heard somewhere Casabella took its politics serious—and continuous. For a practically honest man looking for practically honest toil this ain't so good. I'd hate to dab a rope on trouble." But as he said it he smiled. White teeth flashed against a bronzed skin, and a flare of high-humored excitement broke the severity of his eyes.

      As he was observing, so was he being observed. He saw men swing in his direction and stand waiting. And since it was almost as bad taste to stand on the edge of a strange town and peer in as it was to stand outside a strange window and eavesdrop, he spoke gently to the horse and proceeded casually forward. If Angels this day contained two factions—and the impression that such was the case grew more strangely pronounced in Clint Charterhouse's shrewd head—then his entry was somewhat ticklish, for any stray or innocent act might be taken as an indication of his own politics. If he racked his horse on either side he might be involuntarily swearing himself into partisanship with one group. Studying the situation quickly he decided safety lay in putting up his horse at the only visible stable on the street and so he veered in that direction, conscious that he was being scanned by fifty pairs of eyes.

      For that matter horse and rider were worth a second glance. The horse, a true representative of the cowpony—the toughest, staunchest breed in the world for the work it performs—was a glistening coal-black and so largely proportioned that it escaped the stubby, end-forend look of the average range product. By some reversion of nature the fine Arab blood of its ancestors flared strongly in carriage and muscle. Upon its back rested a magnificent square-skirted saddle stamped with an oak leaf pattern and mounted with silver ornaments.

      As for Clint Charterhouse who sat so negligently in this leathered elegance no man in Angels could ever mistake him. Western born, Western raised, he carried the plain print of the land on him. In a country that matured all animate things swiftly, shot them to height yet pinched their girth, Clint Charterhouse followed the rule. There were few men he had to lift his head to, and his shadow on the ground was as slim as the rest. Yet it was not a disjointed slimness. In his flat sinews was a latent strength and in his carriage was a promise of sure and easy swiftness. He had his hat canted slightly to one side and the hot sunlight angled across a bold nose, rounding lips and a square chin. There was a leanness to his face, a clean cut of all features that fell just short of being gaunt. And he looked around at the street and the curious men with an easy gravity. He heard somebody's murmured "Who's Han'some?" but he elected not to take cognizance. Passing into the stable, he slipped saddle and gear to convenient pegs, left a few instructions with the hostler and turned out again, rolling a cigarette.

      The business of building himself a cigarette was to screen a closer scrutiny of his surroundings. If ever a town was troubled with uncertainty and foreboding, Angels filled the bill. Peaceable men didn't stand around in the sultry heat like this; and peaceful men didn't labor so hard to feign indifference. The crowd on this side of the street seemed a little heavier than that on the other and a uniform brand was on most of the ponies over here—Box M.

      "Must be an all-fired big outfit," he told himself, applying a match to his smoke. A pair of men slid casually into the stable behind him, at which Clint Charterhouse allowed himself a reasonable deduction. They were going to give his horse a closer and more thorough scrutiny. "Not that I blame them under the circumstances," he added. "Looks to me as if this was one of those cases where folks only believe what they see and maybe not all of that. But supposing I wasn't a harmless stranger—what could I be that would do 'em any damage? State official, hired gun artist? Doggoned if this don't grow interesting. Little Rollo had better watch his step."

      There was a general stirring of men around him. Across the plaza the doors of a saloon swung to emit a pair of citizens who marched diagonally into the dusty area. One man was beyond middle age and massively scowling; the other was no older than Clint Charterhouse, yellow-haired and laughing. Together the two disappeared in the crowd at the far end of the town and thence inside the building. Perceptibly the interest of Angels shifted that way and more loitering fellows drifted off. But Clint Charterhouse looked at the saloon. It seemed common ground; parties from both sides were crowding through to drink and so he cruised casually across and presently was at a bar forty feet long, wedged between other thirsting gentry and hearing the swell of much talk.

      "Make way, Lum," said a voice behind him. The man at his right elbow swung a swift glance over his shoulder and then edged off from the bar to admit a broad and closely coupled gentleman who regarded Clint Charter-house with a blunt, direct interest. "Stranger to these parts, sir?"