Episode 12

The Hand of a Righteous Man

The locomotive stood along the long platform of roughhewn timber, sending a tower of white smoke into a cloudless sky of pearlescent blue. It was huffing like a horse panting for the waters of a cooling stream. The freshly white-washed water tower stood just beyond the station house. The name of the town was painted in neatly spaced crimson letters either side.

Mercury Wells.

The wells outside of town being the entire reason for the town’s being. Deep springs that delivered the needed water to a thirsty railroad at the promised speed of Mercury himself. The town itself looked just born or perhaps sprung up out of the land overnight.

Only a half dozen of the buildings down the main strip sported paint. The rest were bare wood, some with shake roofs. Even more were covered with tarred canvas. Tents were in abundance. The boardwalks were still under construction in anticipation of winter rains that would turn the wide main street into a sea of muck. But for now, under the hammering sun of summer, the place was dry as old bones. There was a single structure of brick that sat midway between the finished buildings and the lanes of tents beyond. It was low and flat roofed and formed a dividing line between newcomers and the newly established as certain as a wall of Jericho.

A slim man, dressed all in black from head to silver-tipped toes, stepped from a passenger car onto the platform. He wore a pair of Colts in an unusual left-handed rig. His coat was jet black and long. A fine gold chain hung across his vest and from it dangled a tiny crucifix in silver. His hair was silver as well, worn longish and brushed back to touch his collar under a broad-brimmed black Stetson with a flat crown.

He stood a moment in silent appraisal of the train station and the town beyond. Porters were working to unload freight from a mail car and, farther down the rails, a ramp was being brought up to a horse cart. The man in black squinted to a boy squatting in the shadows of the station awning. He fished in a pocket and brought out a half-dollar coin and held it for the boy to see. The boy, a half-breed with a filthy face and ragged clothes, raced over to the man, eyes on the coin glinting in the sun.

“See that chestnut mare they’re bringing out?” the man said.

The boy looked to see a horse stamping its feet on the ramp as a porter led it down on the dirt alongside the tracks. The boy nodded.

“Her name is Sassafras. You bring her and her saddle along to the livery. Then come find me at the hotel.”

“Which hotel, mister?”

“Which is the best hotel, son?”

“The Grand Prairie.”

“Then find me at the Grand Prairie,” the man said and dropped the half-dollar into the boy’s open hand.

“Who I ask for?” the boy said, staring at the most money he’d ever held in his hand in his life.

“Joe Wiley,” the man said.

The boy looked up, his prize forgotten, to goggle open-mouthed at the tall stranger. Then, clutching the coin, he ran off to where the porter stood holding the reins of the chestnut mare.

“What’s it look like, son?” said a man stepping from the car to the head of the steps. The man wore gray whiskers streaked with white but neatly trimmed. He wore smoked lenses on his face under a battered hat. His clothes were fine gray wool but rumpled from the long trip. He gripped a carpet bag in a gloved hand.

“Like any other tank town,” Joe Wiley said and reached a hand up to the older man, only to have it batted away.

“Smells like a cow town.”

“There’s beef all right.”

“How many steps?” Ben Temple asked in irritation.

“Three and a drop,” Joe said with a crooked smile, lowering his hand.

One hand gliding lightly on the handrail, Ben moved down to hop to the platform.

“You Joe Wiley?” A man crossed the platform with a hand out. Two men followed him as if towed on a line. All three were drovers, hard men in hats with busted brims, patched shirts and chaps worn over boots with worn heels. Gloves with flared cuffs were folded in the belt straps of their chaps. The man in the lead walked and moved like a boss, a Schofield revolver hung in a Mexican rig at his hip. The other two weren’t heeled though one held a Sharps carbine cradled in his arms. It was Joe’s livelihood to notice things like that.

“Homer Gibbs,” the boss man said. “Ramrod and foreman from the Three Rivers.”

“It was your employer who wired me,” Joe said taking the man’s hand in his. A hard callused hand, white across the back with the scars of old rope burns.

“I was over running some stock in and saw the train coming in. Thought maybe you’d be on it as Mr. Nostrand’s been expecting you this week.” Gibbs nodded across the tracks to the high fences and cowsheds of a stockyard set away from the rail line.

“Thanks for the welcome. Will I be seeing Mr. Nostrand?”

“Not for a few days, I’d figure. He told me to keep a look out for you. He wanted you to have this in the meanwhile.” Gibbs retrieved a leather sack from a pocket of his vest and held it out. Joe noticed it was tied with a length of steel wire.

“And what is this?” Joe took the sack and weighed it in his hand.

“Mr. Nostrand said to tell you to consider it a sort of advance in exchange for taking up his offer,” Gibbs said, eyeing the sack with a look of veiled curiosity that let Joe know that he had not looked in the sack himself.

“Well, thank him for me and tell him I look forward to meeting him myself,” Joe said, placing the sack in the pocket of his coat.

Gibbs nodded and grunted in reply before he and the silent pair backed away to step from the platform and cross the tracks back to the yards.

“I hear a jingle,” Ben said, stepping to Joe’s side as they stepped away from the train.

“You heard the man. An advance,” Joe said and walked a half pace before his friend.

“Sounded like gold coins. Gold makes a warmer sibilance than silver when it clinks,” Ben said.

“One step,” Joe said, and Ben made the single step from the timber platform to the hard pan without a second’s hesitation in his progress.

“In advance of what exactly?” Ben said.

“Certain considerations, I would wager.”

Ben snorted.

“That’s what I thought,” Joe said as the pair made their way from the station and down the bustling main drag of yet another boomtown needing the hand of a righteous man.