The Black Muldoon Read online

  “Yeah,” said the stableman.

  Jimmy Bristol went out into the rain and let it whip on his face. He smiled at the cold and the wet and the sting of it. There were few places where the water had not already soaked through to his skin, but that made small difference. Better to be wet by rain than by the melting snow and hail of a blizzard, as he had been three days before this.

  He walked into the lunch counter and leaned on the rail. There was nobody else in the place, but it was an old, established eating house to judge by the greasy, battered look of the bill of fare that was written against the wall, and to judge, also, by the way the linoleum on the floor was worn into paths with holes in them.

  “Have you got some hotcake batter all mixed?”

  The cook was a man of importance. The lower part of his body and the lower part of his face bulged out into dignified curves. He had a drooping mustache, too, and he caught hold of one glistening, steam-dampened end of this mustache as he answered: “I got hotcake batter mixed.”

  “I don’t mean just dough. I don’t mean self-rising, either. I mean honest hotcakes, not leathery flapjacks.”

  “You mean something that comes apart in your mouth, eh?”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “Look at that,” said the cook. He pulled out a deep crockery bowl and showed to the eager eyes of Jimmy Bristol a yellowish, liquid mass whose surface was roughened by many bubblings of effervescence, a slow and sticky working of the whole.

  “That’s it,” said Jimmy Bristol. The cook smiled at him, and he smiled at the cook.

  “Slap a couple of dozen of those on the fire,” said Jimmy Bristol. “Is that stove clean?”

  “Look,” said the cook.

  He swabbed his steamy hand over a part of it and offered the tips of his fingers to Bristol’s eyes—and nose, for that matter.

  “All right. It’s clean,” said Bristol. “Cover that stove with flapjacks. Pronto! But wait a minute … have you got some maple syrup?”

  “You mean maple syrup or maple syrup?” asked the cook.

  “I mean maple syrup.”

  “It’s ten cents a plate extra.”

  “That’s the kind of maple syrup I mean.”

  A positive fire of enthusiasm came upon the cook. “Taste it first,” he said. “Let the taste of it start working in on you while I start them flapjacks cooking.” He offered a battered can.

  Jimmy Bristol took it, uncorked it, sniffed it as though it were a wine of vintage, and set it down with a sigh. “It’s real,” he said. “One more thing.”

  The cook was ladling out hotcakes all over the stove. “You bet it’s real,” he said.

  “And maybe,” said Bristol tenderly, “maybe you have some real coffee here? I don’t mean that Mocha and Java that costs twenty-three cents a pound. I mean real coffee.”

  “What kind? What brand?” asked the cook.

  “The kind that you like,” said Jimmy Bristol.

  It was an inspiration. The cook smiled a coy and greasy smile over the shoulder. Then he winked. Then he said: “All right, brother. You’ll have it.”

  “And maybe,” went on Jimmy Bristol, “you’ve got real milk from the inside of a cow instead of from the inside of a can?”

  The cook turned around on him. “Me,” he said, stabbing his breast with his thumb, “I keep cows. I keep Jersey cows. You know what I mean?”

  “I’m trying to believe you, brother,” said Jimmy Bristol.

  “Look,” said the cook. He raised a large, glass pitcher. At the top was a yellow stain of cream that ran through the upper strata of the milk. But, even so, there remained a rich tinting of yellow through the whole mass of the liquid.

  Before Jimmy Bristol could speak, however, a boy who looked like the cook without the curves of the face and the stomach came running in and gasped across the counter: “Pop, the sheriff’s been looking in through the back window!”

  II

  When the cook heard this, he put his lips all on one side of his mouth and then bit the hard-drawn, opposite corner.

  “Whatcha mean?” he asked of the lad. “Get out of here. Whatcha mean?”

  “I mean, I seen him,” said the lad. “Jiminy, and didn’t I. I seen him give the glass a swab with his hand and look through.” Saying this, he fled out of the room the way he had come in.

  “Thunder,” said the cook, “what would that mean?”

  Jimmy Bristol saw that the hotcakes were apt to be spoiled. He said: “The sheriff is looking around the town, and maybe he’s looking for me.”

  At this the cook leaned suddenly nearer across the bar. He leaned so near that his glance was able to reach down across the farther edge of the counter and so find the big holster that was strapped to the thigh of Bristol’s right leg. It had been black leather once, but now it was worn in many places to a slimy gray.

  “Ugh!” grunted the cook, and opened his eyes.

  “My name is Jimmy Bristol,” said the outlaw. “There’s five thousand dollars on my head. I came into this town not to shoot it up, but to get hotcakes and maple syrup, and coffee with real milk in it.”

  The cook licked his lips. Slowly color began to return to his blanched face. Although as a flapjack maker he was a man of parts, it was evident that he had no ambition to become an outlaw catcher.

  “How long you been out?” he asked finally.

  “Three months,” said Bristol.

  Suddenly the cook grinned. “I was out once myself. It wasn’t nothing much … but I had to leave a town once. I was only out three days … but it was the biggest half of my life, them three days was.”

  He turned, suddenly twitched back to the stove by a sense of duty, and at that moment, the sheriff entered—the very moment when the cook began to shovel the first hotcakes onto a platter. For such a patron as Jimmy Bristol, he disdained to offer a mere plate.

  The sheriff of that town was almost as fat as the cook at the lunch counter, but under his puffy body extended a pair of long, wiry legs that looked capable of mastering the toughest bronco on the range. He wore a gun on each side of him. His hat was on the side of his head.

  The cook saw him coming as he shoved the platter before Bristol, between the half roll of butter and the can of syrup.

  “That’s him,” whispered the cook.

  “All right,” said Bristol. “It’s not time for me to move yet.”

  The sheriff came up and paused four feet away.

  “I’m Tom Denton,” he said. “I’m the sheriff.”

  “Hello, Sheriff,” said Bristol. “Anything biting you?” He turned his young, handsome face on the sheriff and smiled straight into his eyes. The sun had burned Bristol to a golden brown, and that color set off the blue-gray of his eyes. It was only now and then that too much light crowded into the pupils of those eyes and made them blaze without any color.

  “Nothing’s biting me,” said the sheriff. “I just wondered what your hurry was?”

  “You mean, getting on through town?”

  “That’s what I mean,” said the sheriff, running his eyes slowly over the big shoulders of Bristol and then down to the spoon-handled spurs that arched out from the heels of his boots. “You only got fifteen minutes in town, eh?”

  Bristol smiled and hooked a thumb over his shoulder.

  “That dummy in the stables had an idea, did he?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” said the sheriff. “Maybe he did, at that.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” said Bristol. “I’ve been working on the Jerry Comfort place, and Jerry laid me off the other day. I’ve got a cousin upcountry, working on the other side of the Kennisaw Gap, over near Milton. He wrote me a long time ago it was a good layout, and they fed well. So I thought I’d ramble up that way. I aimed to get up closer to the gap tonight and stop over at some ranch house. Tomorrow they’re taking on three new men where my cousin works, and I aim to be one of the three, but even if I put on ten more miles tonight, I’ll still be forty miles short of Mil
ton. Isn’t that about right?”

  “But why the fifteen minutes? Why not an hour?” asked the sheriff.

  “And let the chestnut get cold?” asked Bristol, smiling and shaking his head.

  “There’s something in that,” agreed the sheriff, pursing his lips in doubt. Then he added: “Stand up and turn your back to me.”

  Rather slowly Bristol obeyed.

  “Now,” said the sheriff, “pull a gun with your left hand and aim it at that doorknob … that back doorknob.”

  Bristol hitched up the holster on his right thigh, reached across his body with his left hand, and drew out the revolver. He balanced the gun carefully, but still the muzzle of it wavered from side to side. He did not squint down the barrel with his left eye, but with his right eye, holding the gun well toward that side of his body.

  Suddenly the sheriff laughed. “All right,” he said. “Put up that gun and feed your face. Sorry I bothered you, son. But I had an idea.”

  Bristol put up the gun and buckled down the flap of the holster over it again. He sat down on the stool in front of the lunch counter and began to lay slabs of butter between the strata of the pile of hotcakes.

  “What idea did you have?” he asked.

  “There’s a fellow named Jimmy Bristol that’s riding not a thousand miles from here,” said the sheriff. “From what I hear, I guess that he’s a bigger man than you are. But just the same … well, I thought I’d see.”

  “See how big I am?” asked Bristol, apparently amazed.

  “Jimmy Bristol’s a two-handed man,” said the sheriff. “He’s a little faster and a little better with the left than he is with the right. But it’s easy to see that you’re no two-handed man.” He laughed again. “You took hold of that gun with your left like an old woman,” he added. “Well, so long. It’s all right, son. I just had an idea … that was all.”

  He left the place, and the cook sighed. He seemed to be deflating, although his dimensions grew no less.

  “My Jiminy,” said the cook. “And you are Jimmy Bristol?”

  “These,” said Bristol, “are the best hotcakes that I ever laid a lip over. And this,” he added, raising the cup of coffee and hot milk, “is the best coffee and the finest milk that I ever set a tooth in. Brother, here’s to you, and bottom’s up.”

  He was as good as his word. When he put down the cup, he saw that the cook was mopping his forehead with a towel, and still the perspiration gleamed again and again on his brow.

  “You’ve finished that platter of hotcakes,” said the cook. “Maybe you better drift along, son. I wouldn’t want …”

  “It’s not time to go,” said Bristol. “It’s nowhere near time to go. Let’s have some more. The next row of ’em are beginning to smoke. Look at the beauties puff up, will you?”

  “Yeah. They’re made, that’s what they are,” said the cook. And he stacked them on the platter once more. He laid his hands on the edge of the counter and smiled with a frightened admiration upon Bristol. “You got the cold-steel nerve,” he declared. “I never seen nothing like it.” He added: “What they want you for?”

  “Not much,” said Jimmy Bristol. “There was a fellow in Tombstone who felt like four of a kind when he was only holding three tens, and so he borrowed one out of his sleeve. When I saw it, he started to draw, but I beat him to it. And I took the pot and went away. But a lot of people at the burying of that hombre didn’t know about the cards up the sleeve or him going for his gun, and they thought that they’d better inquire into the business. So they came and asked me a few questions, which I answered over my shoulder as I was cutting the wind, because I saw too many guns and too many ropes in that crowd, and I’ve got a right tender neck when it comes to stretching hemp. And when my own horse wore out, I borrowed another. And that made me a horse thief. You see how the landslide starts?” He laughed a little. “That was three months ago,” he said.

  “My Jiminy,” said the cook.

  Jimmy Bristol looked at a far corner of the ceiling. “I’ll tell you, partner,” he said. “I spent too much time learning how to shoot with both hands. I was riding for a fall, and I got it. Besides, these three months have been fun. The best in my life. Except that I got pretty hungry for hotcakes and maple syrup.”

  The back door of the room opened, and there entered a quick-stepping fellow with a set face and blazing eyes.

  The cook saw that, and saw the flash of the man’s gun. But he hardly followed the whiplash movement by which Jimmy Bristol produced a gun from inside his slicker. With his left hand, he produced it and fired. The stranger dropped his own gun and caught at his right shoulder with his left hand.

  “I’m sorry, Bob,” said Jimmy Bristol. “I only trimmed the wick, though. I didn’t put out the light. The cook, here, will put a bandage on you.”

  “Damn you!” said the wounded man. “You murdering hoss thief … you …”

  “Tie up his shoulder, cook, will you?” requested Jimmy Bristol.

  “You better get out,” said the cook in a hoarse whisper.

  “There’s still time,” said Jimmy Bristol, putting up his gun. “I can finish this platter. Fill up my cup again before you start working on him, will you?”

  He continued eating, while the cook ran around to the wounded man and made him sit in a chair.

  “Go raise the town, you danged fool!” shouted the stranger. “That’s Jimmy Bristol, and there’s five thousand bucks on his murdering head!”

  Bristol continued to eat. “The fact is, Bob,” he said, “that your friend McNamara borrowed a card out of his sleeve that day.”

  “You lie!” shouted Bob. “There were three others at the table. They didn’t say nothing about that.”

  “Sure, they didn’t,” answered Bristol. “They all had reasons for getting me out of town. That’s why that game was started … to squeeze me out of Tombstone. So long, Bob.”

  “Help! Murder! Jimmy Bristol’s here!” yelled Bob.

  Bristol rang a $10 gold piece on the counter and stood up. “Here’s to your health, Bob,” he said. And he drained the coffee.

  A stream of men poured through the front door as he walked toward it.

  “Get a doctor,” said Bristol. “There’s a fellow back there raving, and he needs help. He’s tried to kill himself.”

  He passed into the street.

  III

  He reached the livery stable, walking close to the wall of it and suddenly stepping into the open doorway. There was the man with the sponge, gaping round-eyed and listening to sounds of excited shouting that streamed out of the lunch counter not far away.

  Bristol took him by the fat of his chin. “I told you to keep working on that chestnut,” he said.

  “I was working … only … except …” said the man with the sponge.

  “Get the saddle and bridle back on it,” said Bristol.

  Standing in the doorway, he could watch the liveryman saddle the chestnut; he could also watch the street, and as the horse was led up, he saw a sudden rush of men boil out from the front of the lunch counter, like steam out of the spout of a kettle. He knew that in every one of those men, there was a passionate hunger for $5,000 worth of Jimmy Bristol.

  The chestnut was led up to him on the run by the stableman.

  “I kind of thought …” he said.

  Bristol looked him fairly between the eyes. Then he exclaimed: “You’re a poor devil! Here’s another dollar.” He flung the money on the floor, leaped into the saddle, and raced the chestnut up the street.

  He heard shots behind him. The shooting ended as he turned a corner, and half a minute later he was out of that town and heading again toward Kennisaw Gap. And the loneliness of the rain, which is only less than the loneliness of the sea, gathered around him and cupped him in with his own soul.

  He got off and ran when he reached the sweep of the hills and the grama grass that covered them. The chestnut was tired, and he needed to put miles between him and that town.

  He mo
unted and rode again at a steady jog until, far away, he saw the shattered starlight of a lamp shining through a wet windowpane.

  Presently he was in front of a small ranch house. The roof sloped down over the shed-like back of the house, where the lamp was burning from the kitchen window. Dismounting, he looked through that window. The rain had fallen away to a thin drizzle, and through the misted window, he could see the details of the small kitchen and the girl washing dishes. She was as brown as the back of a cowpuncher’s hand, and the darkness of her sunburned skin gave an extra flash to her teeth and her eyes. She was washing dishes and singing, and the words or the music of the song, which he could scarcely hear, kept her laughing.

  Jimmy Bristol began to smile in turn. In fact, he had ridden all the way from the last town with a smile on his lips, fed from a source of upwelling, inward contentment.

  He led his horse past the back of the house and out toward the looming shapes of great barns.

  He pulled open the door of the first one. The moon had risen behind the rain, and since Bristol was looking east, he was able to see the naked skeleton of the barn, the huge beams, and the joists. There were no animals here; there was no bay in the mow. Through a gap in the roof, he could hear the patter of the lonely rain inside the building.

  He closed the door and went on to the next barn gloomily. There were four of those huge barns dimly outlined through the rain and lying about a great corral. And beyond the corral, there was a forest of entangled fencing, such as one finds on a place equipped for the handling of thousands of cattle.

  However, when he pulled open the door of the next barn, he heard a jangle of tin close beside him. He guessed that it must be a lantern hung on a nail, and when he lighted a match, he found it. By the light of the lantern he looked upon a barn whose interior was as vast as the other, which he had dimly beheld in its nakedness against that pale moonshine that made the rain luminous outside the great upper door of the haymow. In this mow, there was a small stack of hay at the farther end. Tethered to the manger and lying down were an old gray mule and a brown mustang.