Chapter Three—“You Folks Have Fun Killing Each Other”

     As I was reading the menu, the door opened and the young lady who had threatened to blow me in two with her shotgun came in. She looked around, saw me, and headed towards my table.
     She stood there a moment. “Do you mind?” she asked, obviously wanting to know if I objected to her sitting down.
     Usually I stood up when a lady came up to a table I was sitting at or came into a room or whatever. But I wasn’t convinced yet that this was a lady. So I didn’t stand. But I did say, “Go ahead,” and she did, across from me.
     I looked at her. She was pretty. The raven hair, sea-green eyes, full red lips, pixy nose, nice chin, long neck… “You brushed your hair,” I said.
     “Yes. Yes, I did,” she said. “I…hadn’t had much of a chance today.”
     I just nodded. The waitress brought my milk. I downed the whole thing, and asked for another. “And bring me some fried chicken—white meat—mashed potatoes, and green beans. Cherry pie for dessert.” I looked at the girl across from me. “You want anything?”
     She hesitated. “No, thank you.”
     I glanced at the waitress. “Bring her the same thing I’m having. If she doesn’t want it, I’ll eat it.” The waitress nodded and left, the girl smiled.
     “You have a nice smile,” I told her. “You ought to do it more often.”
     “You ought to try it sometime, too.”
     I grunted. “I’m not especially in a smiling mood today. I had somebody threaten to blow me in two with a shotgun, some wild Roman chariot driver almost ran me down with her wagon, and then some gorilla tried to pound me into dust. What is it with you people, anyway? Incidentally, my name is Robert Constance.”
     “I’m Kelly Atkins,” she replied. “It’s…nice to meet you under different circumstances.”
     I stared at her. “Maybe. Let’s start out by you telling me why you threatened me this morning but now you’re having lunch with me.”
     She sighed. “It’s a long story.”
     “I’ve got a big meal coming. Maybe two.” And she smiled at that.
     “I am hungry,” she said, “so I might end up eating yours if you don’t hurry.” Then she paused. “Ok, here’s the deal in a nutshell. Jim Perry owns the biggest ranch this side of the river. Gail Sanders owns everything on the other side of the river. Or wants to. There are a number of us smaller farmers and ranchers who have a little piece of land and we want to be left alone. Well, Perry is threatening to run us all off—on this side—and Gail Sanders is threatening on the other side. And then they are going to have a winner-take-all war. Of course, we small fry won’t care, because we’ll all either be dead or gone.”
     “So you thought I might be a hired gun for Perry come to run you off your land. Or Sanders to run some people off the land over there.”
     She nodded. “Something like that.”
     “Do you own your land?”
     “My pa and I have a note on it. We need to pay the bank $500 in two weeks or Kragan, the banker, is going to foreclose. That’s all we owe on our land. We’re trying to get him to wait till we can sell some cattle in the fall, but he won’t do it. He thinks if he can get the land he can sell it to Perry.” She grunted. “Perry will kill him.”
     I made a face at that. “So you aren’t squatting on Perry’s land?”
     “Perry doesn’t really own a thing. Or Gail Sanders. They came—or in Gail’s case, her father—before anybody else and put their cattle on open range. Never paid a dime for it, but they think they own it all anyway. Dad and I filed for our quarter section and we’ve got some good grass and water. We’ll make it if Kragan will let us.” She shook her head. “So we’ve got Perry breathing down our necks, and Kragan threatening to foreclose.” She gave me a wry smile. “I guess I was a little hasty this morning, and I’m sorry, but I’m a little on edge at the moment.”
     I frowned. “All Perry has to do is wait for Kragan to foreclose. Buy the notes cheap. Or, more than likely, intimidate him into just giving him the land since he thinks it’s his anyway.”
     “Yeah, that’s probably what he’ll do.”
     Our food came, and we started eating. Kelly’s words had cut me deep, deep into my heart. Big yo-yo wants to run the little guy out so he can have the whole shebang. Where had I heard that before? I guess I’d never get away from things that reminded me of Julie.
     After a few bites, I asked her, “Why did you come and talk to me? Just to apologize?”
     “Well, that, but also to tell you that you are a town hero at the moment, but you also might not have very long to live.”
     “Jake’s buddies?”
     “No, they won’t mess with you. Gail Sanders.”
     “Why?”
     “She’s the one who almost ran you down this morning.”
     I couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “Soooo…she’s the lovely I said I was going to slap her teeth down her throat.”
     Kelly smiled. “Yeah. Oh, I loved it when you said that, and believe me, everybody else in town did, too. And the way you handled Jake Barton. He is—was—segundo on Jim Perry’s ranch, bullied everybody, picked a fight with anybody he could, and nobody could lick him. Believe me, you made lots of friends when you whipped him and ran him out of town.”
     “I thought maybe I was a little hard on him, breaking his hand and knee like that.”
     Kelly shook her head. “Uh uh. He’s had that coming a long time, believe me.”
     “I probably didn’t exactly make friends with Jim Perry, either.”
     “Well, maybe not, but he has plenty of hired killers. And he may want to hire you, too.”
     I started to say something, but then I saw the restaurant door open and Gail Sanders come in. She spied me immediately and came over. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, in a voice that didn’t sound like she was, “but may I sit down?”
     I glanced at Kelly, who shrugged. So I made a motion for Gail to sit. Notice: I didn’t stand for her, either.
     She wasn’t exactly ugly herself. Strawberry blonde, lush and wavy down past her shoulders, blue eyes, firm mouth and chin, skin that had been out in the sun, but that only enhanced her natural color and made her more beautiful. She was about the same height and build as Kelly. I could tell immediately that there was no love lost between the two.
     “I guess this little tart has told you who I am,” Gail said. The “tart” being Kelly, of course.
     I saw Kelly’s eyes blaze, but I smiled and winked at her. “Yes. You’re Gail Sanders, Roman chariot driver extraordinaire.”
     She grunted at that. “Sorry about that. I get in a hurry sometimes.” Then, “I’ll come right to the point. I want to hire you. $100 a month.”
     My eyebrows shot up. “For what?”
     She gave me a “get serious” look. “I suppose you know how to use that gun as well as you do your fists.”
     “Well, I do know which end of it the bullet comes out of.”
     She nodded. “It won’t take long for what happened today to get around. I have some people squatting on my land across the river”—here she threw a glance at Kelly, though the Atkins weren’t on Gail’s side—“and they need some… encouragement…to leave. I’d rather it be done peacefully, but some of them need persuading.”
     I was working on my cherry pie now. My milk glass was empty and I caught the waitresses eye and held it up for a refill. “I don’t know,” I said. “I think I’ll go talk to Jim Perry and see if he’ll offer me $150 a month.”
     Gail didn’t seem to like that and Kelly’s eyes narrowed at me as well. She wasn’t quite sure whether I was serious or not. I actually hadn’t told her anything about myself, except my name, so as far as she knew, I was a gunslinger for hire.
     “I don’t think he’ll pay that much.”
     I shrugged. “I guess it depends on how highly he values my services. From what I hear, he’s got an opening now.” I took a swallow of milk to help the dry cherry pie go down.
     “For a segundo, yes, but I doubt he pays that much for that position. Well, I’d like for you to come out to my ranch this afternoon, if you would. I want to show you around, see if I can talk you into helping me.”
     I looked at her and wiped my lips with my napkin. “Where’s your ranch?”
     She gave me directions. I nodded. “I’ll be out there later.”
     She gave Kelly a smug look, and said, “Ok. I’ll be waiting,” and she got up and left.
     Kelly had a disgusted expression on her face, and started to get up as well. “I wish I had shot you now,” she mumbled.
     “Kelly, sit down,” I said. “I have absolutely no intention of helping either Gail Sanders or Jim Perry.”
     She slowly slid back into her chair. “Then why did you tell her you’d go out to Clearwater this afternoon?” Clearwater, I assumed, was the name of the Sanders ranch.
     “Well, maybe because you didn’t invite me out to your place.”
     She gave me an annoyed look. “You’ll go to work for her if she pays you enough, won’t you.”
     I sighed and finished my milk. “Kelly, I’m just drifting at the moment, and I have no desire to get into the middle of a range war. I…” I stopped. Somebody came into the restaurant and he looked important. Everybody was bowing down to him like he was king. I made a motion with my head. “Jim Perry, I presume.”
     Kelly glanced quickly, then said, “Yeah.”
     And, not too surprisingly, he came over to our table. He saw Kelly and grunted. “She doesn’t have enough money to hire you.” He sat down without asking.
     He was a big man, probably mid-50s. Iron gray hair, thick, wavy. Sharp eyes that matched the color of his hair. Weather-beaten face that might once have been handsome, but now was showing the lines of age. He wasn’t quite able to control the paunch in his stomach, either, but he was obviously one tough hombre—and he was just as obviously used to getting his way.
     I said, “Gail Sanders just offered me $100 a month. What will you pay?”
     “150.”
     I shot a glance at Kelly and tried to hide a smile. “Not bad.” Then I said to Kelly, “And how much will you pay?”
     “I can’t afford to pay you anything.”
     I looked at Perry. “Is she and her old man bothering you that much?”
     “If I let her and the other squatters stay, they’ll take all my land within a year.”
     “Why don’t you just buy what you have now so they can’t do it?”
     “I got here first. It’s mine by right of prior possession.”
     I paused for a few moments. “I had a man tell me that one time, Mr. Perry. He wanted every inch of a valley, and he didn’t need half of it. He just wanted it because he was greedy. I filed, bought, and paid for 160 acres in an out of the way corner of it, wasn’t bothering him in the least. Had a few cows, some horses, was doing ok. My wife was expecting our first child. I was gone to town one day and when I got back to the ranch, I had been burned out, and all my livestock killed. My wife was in the house when they burned it down. Her ashes indicated she had been raped and there was a bullet hole in her forehead.”
     I saw Kelly wince. Perry just stared at me.
     I didn’t say anything else, my mind was drifting back to Julie. My home…Julie… never see my home again…
     Kelly was saying something. I looked at her. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
     “I asked what you did?”
     “I’m sitting at this table right now.”
     Perry sneered. “So you ran instead of fought. Not sure I’d want to hire you after all.”
     I looked at him. “The fellow who did that to me, Mr. Perry, didn’t live much longer. Neither did five of his thugs who had a part in it. Unfortunately, he owned the law in that area.” I stopped for a moment “I buried my wife on my land. I’m not sure I could ever go back.”
     “I’m so sorry,” Kelly said.
     “Yeah, I’m sorry about your wife, too,” Perry said. “That was uncalled for.”
     “What are you going to do if Kelly and her father refuse to leave their land? And the other settlers?”
     “I’ve been trying to buy them out, but they won’t sell. They are on my land. What would you do?”
     “I’d run them off, if I had a clear title to that land. You obviously realize you don’t have a legal leg to stand on or you wouldn’t be trying to buy them off. Why don’t you take that money and file legally on the land you’ve been using and that way you won’t have any more settler problems?”
     “Why should I buy land that I’ve been using for 20 years, made improvements on, have worked and slaved over all this time? Now these tinhorns come around and want to take advantage of all the work I’ve put in. I’m not about to let them do it.”
     “So if they don’t leave, you’re prepared to do what Wilson Brant did to my wife.”
     “Well, not that, but I’ll do what’s necessary.”
     Kelly said, “It will be necessary, Mr. Perry, because my dad and I aren’t leaving the land we bought. You’ll be guilty of murder, not that I figure that will bother you much.”
     “You’re going to be leaving it, missy, because the bank is fixing to foreclose on you. I’ll get that land back easy enough. Your dad is really the only one I’m worried about. As soon as you and he leave, the rest of those squatters will pack up and head out, too.”
     Kelly said to me, “We all bought our land legally.”
     I motioned with my head to Perry. “He owns the law around here, doesn’t he.”
     She just nodded. “The deputy is pretty honest, but he’s in love with Gail Sanders. The sheriff was elected with Perry money.”
     “That’s not true,” Perry said sharply.
     Kelly looked at him and didn’t back down. “Yes, it is. And everybody knows it. At least you could be honest about that if nothing else.”
     He sneered again. “Well, you’ll get to know him better in a few days when he comes and drives you off my land.” He said to me, “What are you going to do? I’ll still give you a job.”
     “Mr. Perry, I like this area. It’s very pretty. And under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t mind staying here. If you’ll leave these people alone, I’d come to work for you, just punch cows. $30 a month, beans and board. But I’m not going to work for a man who’s going to do to people what somebody did to me.”
     “I don’t need any more cowhands,” he said.
     “You need a segundo, in case you hadn’t heard.”
     “Yeah, I heard. That’s why I’m here. Nobody’s ever done that to Jake before.”
     “He won’t be doing it to anybody else, either.”
     Perry’s eyes narrowed. “What’s your name, mister?”
     “Robert Constance.”
     “Never heard of you.”
     “Never heard of you, either, till this morning. I’ll make my offer again. I’ll come to work for you, on the condition you leave the Atkins and other people alone.”
     He shook his head. “Not as long as they are on my land.”
     I stood up. “We’re going in circles. There’s a lot of people who are going to be hurt, Perry, and you are the only one who can stop it. But I guess I’ve run into your type before.” I dropped some money on the table. “You folks have fun killing each other.” I walked out of the restaurant.
     And I had every intention of riding out of that valley. The whole thing reminded me of what had happened to me, depressed me to no end, and was making me ill. All I wanted was to top the next rise and, hopefully, find some decent people for a change.
     That wasn’t going to happen, though.