The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard - Elmore Leonard [24]
Kleecan took another drink before looking at the Irishman. “What happened to the other two guards? They always ride at least six.”
“They think they were carried away by the ’Paches. What else you think! They weren’t around!”
“Art, there’re only two things wrong with your story,” he said. “Number one: Mescaleros don’t scalp. You been out here long enough to know that. And it wouldn’t be Yavapais, Maricopas, or Pimas, ’cause they’ve been farmin’ so long their boys don’t know what a scalp knife looks like—and an Arapaho hasn’t been down this far in ten years. Number two: Just a little more than three hours ago I shot Juan Pony as dead as you can get. And he was too full of mescal to have taken any paymaster.”
Kleecan pushed away from the bar and did a half kneebend. “Damn Indian like to ruined me for life.”
McLeverty didn’t know what to say. He stood behind the bar with his mouth slightly open and watched his story break up into little pieces.
The scout couldn’t help smiling. When news reaches a man in a lonely corner like the Cottonwood station, he will tell it to himself over and over, savoring it, waiting, his jaw aching to tell it to the next man that comes in from an even farther corner. He was a little bit sorry he had spoiled the news-breaking for McLeverty.
Kleecan said, “Tell you what, Art. I’ll bet you five to three dollars that there weren’t any Indians around and that those two missin’ guards are in on the deal.”
As he spoke his gaze drifted along the front wall and then stopped at the wide window. There was the flat whiteness, the darkness above it, then in the distance the dust cloud. A few moments later he made out three horsemen. His eyes narrowed from habit, years of squinting into the distance, and he judged that two of the riders could be wearing cavalry blue.
“Get the Army up this way much, Art?”
McLeverty followed the scout’s gaze out the window. He squinted for a long time, then his eyes became wider as the riders drew closer, and next they were bulging, for McLeverty seldom enough got a troop of cavalry on patrol up this way—let alone two troopers and a civilian—and it was easy to see he was thinking of what Kleecan had said about the other two guards being a part of the holdup.
And Kleecan was thinking of the same thing. He had been making conversation before. Now he wasn’t sure. He told himself it was just the timing that made him think that way.
McLeverty couldn’t turn his eyes from the window. He just stared. Finally he said, “God, do you suppose those three—”
“Four,” Kleecan said. “I’ll add another dollar that there’re four of them.”
TWO TROOPERS and a civilian, dressed for riding, came into the room slowly and glanced around before walking over to the bar. But even in their slight hesitancy they had smiled. They stood at the bar brushing trail dust from their coats, still smiling, and talked about the coming rain and the dark sky, and they offered to buy the station agent and the scout a drink. Kleecan didn’t speak because he was trying to picture the happy world these men were living in. It wasn’t cynicism. It was just that men didn’t ride into an out-of-the-way stage station covered with the grime of hours on horseback and then suddenly react with a brotherly-love spirit that belonged to Christmas Eve. A saddle doesn’t treat a man that way.
McLeverty was pushing the bottle across the bar to the three men when the back door opened and the fourth one entered. Like the other civilian his coat was open and a pistol hung at his side. McLeverty looked at the man and then to Kleecan and in the look there was a mixture of suspicion,