Cannon Ball reared and twisted into a corkscrew turn. Winters, tired and relaxed, was caught off-guard; he went out of his saddle and landed in a bed of dust between sharp rocks. His one remaining contact with Cannon Ball was a strip of bridle leather; to that he clung with fierce, angry determination. Then, with snap-beetle abruptness he flipped over, landed on his feet, and in a couple of jumps was back on top.
“Well, well,” a queer-sounding voice said derisively. “If it ain’t Deputy Marshal Winters hisself, spilled like a shot cougar from a tree-limb.” Winters swung his horse around. What he saw gave him a shiver; it was no wonder, he thought, that sight of its shadow had caused Cannon Ball to throw a fit. Here on horseback before him was a thing that passed as human, yet looked like something out of a collection of horrors. He was a man with long legs, a short, thick torso, and a small, barely-visible head—to all appearances utterly neck-less and half-imbedded between chunky, broad shoulders.
Winters patted his horse. “Steady, boy, it’s human.” Cannon Ball pranced to left and right, pawed, and snorted. Winters continued to stroke his neck. “Fact is, it’s a man on a horse. Name’s Wheezy Mainrod. Wheezy was a butcher at Forlorn Gap, back in its boom-days.”
Wheezy Mainrod had stopped his ambling plug. “So you know me, eh?” His voice was as wheezy as ever. To its wheeziness, qualities of derision and malice had attached themselves. “Sure, I was a butcher in Forlorn Gap, and who’s to say I ain’t still carryin’ on a small business thereabouts? A man can have a share of gold without bein’ a deputy-marshal or a gravel-scratcher, can’t he?”
Cannon Ball rode uneasily at anchor, while Winters kept a tight knee-clamp against his ribs. Winters had a curious eye on two huge canvas bags slung from Mainrod’s saddlehorn, one on each side. “Just what kind of business are you carrying on, Wheezy Mainrod?”
Between Wheezy’s lumpy shoulders and his hat brim, there was but a small aperture, a recess from which Wheezy’s small eyes blinked. He made Winters think of a Texas terrapin, head retracted, but still visible.
“Something I’ve always noticed about you, Winters,” said Wheezy. “You’re one to stick your nose in other people’s business; a meddler, that’s what. But I don’t mind tellin’ you—I’m a wool-merchant. See these two bags of wool? I’m takin’ ’em to a weaver what lives ’twixt here and Pedigo Road. He pays me good money for ’em, too. And that’s what talks with me—money; purty, shiny gold money. Some men gets it one way, some another.”
Curiosity had led Winters to another point of inquiry. Each bag at its bottom had assumed a reddish-brown discoloration. “Looks like you’ve had your wool bags settin’ in tubs of blood, Wheezy. You ain’t sanitary.”
Wheezy Mainrod’s eyes became little chinks of light back in a cave. He wheezed with sinister insinuation, “Ever hear about a cat as was killed by curiosity?”
Winters made another discovery; Wheezy had a six-gun in his right hand, its dangerous end pointed generally in Winters’ direction. It presented no immediate threat, however, Winters figured— though he knew a drawn gun to have several points of advantage over one shoved down tight in a holster. Warily, he scratched his chin and lowered his eyes. “Looks as if blood might be drippin’ from them wool-bags, too; wouldn’t be packin’ a couple of dead sheep, would you, Wheezy?”
Wheezy’s momentary silence was attended by a tensing of his gun-hand. He glanced at Winters’ right hip and wheezed, “If I wanted to take my friend a few chops of mutton, that’d be my business, wouldn’t it? Well, wouldn’t it?”
Mainrod’s six-gun lifted to a more convincing position. Winters suddenly appreciated his danger and began to perspire; that dripping blood could have been from something besides sheep meat. Contrary suspicion was inspired and accentuated by Wheezy Mainrod’s belligerent coldness.
Winters put an urgent friendliness into his manner. “Yes, sir, Wheezy, your business; you bet your life. Chops of mutton or chops of whatnot, it’s sure no affair of mine. So, if you’ll excuse this fool horse I’m ridin’, I’ll get him past you and be on my way.
Mainrod pulled over and Winters gigged his horse’s flanks. Cannon Ball went by in a sideways, rearing walk. When past, he snorted, whirled, and leaped into a run. Winters held on and let him tear. For once he was of one mind with his horse; he wanted no truck with a wool-merchant.
* * * *
Lamps of evening appeared one by one in Forlorn Gap. A stagecoach arrived from Elkhorn Pass; dropped a couple of passengers at Goodlett Hotel; changed horses; and drifted on eastward. Horsebackers dusted in, origins and destinations alike unknown. Some put up at Goodlett’s; some hitched temporarily at Doc Bogannon’s saloon.
Business was good at Bogannon’s for several hours: drinkers and card players had their recreation, their good luck and bad, and moved on. Bogie was too busy to take particular note of any customer until they had simmered down to a mere handful. One then stood out with black-sheep distinction—a small man in a small, round hat, with bushy burnsides, critical eyes, and a pointed chin.
He strode back and forth in front of Bogie’s bar and cast disapproving glances hither and yon.
Doc Bogannon had settled down to washing and polishing glasses for a spell, but this promenader roused his interest. “You working off a soreness of some sort, my friend?”
His guest paused and faced Bogannon. “Sir!” Bogie wasn’t sure whether that sir was a rebuke or a question. “No impertinence was intended, Mr. —. Well, now, I don’t really believe I’ve heard your name. I’m Doc Bogannon, if condescension permits you to take note of one so insignificant as I.”
“Circumstances of a wretched existence have taught me to endure every sort of discord, imperfection and nuisance—including persons who are bent on being sociable. My name, since you are determined to be a quidnunc, is Aloysius McGuffy”
Bogie put down glass and polishing cloth. He placed his big hands, palms down, on his bar and stared in wonder. “Ah, indeed!” He shook his head in mock amazement. “Now, if you’ll indulge my further inquisitiveness, would you, by any chance, be a Boston McGuffy?”
Aloysius McGuffy lifted bushy eyebrows and lowered, expressive mouth-corners. “Boston, eh? How did you know?”
Doc Bogannon leaned back and folded his arms contentedly. He was a tall man—broadly built— with a fine head, luxuriant black hair, and mild, sympathetic eyes. In appearance, he would have graced any position of honor or power; yet, for reasons best known to himself, he was satisfied with life as owner of a saloon and companion of a half-breed Shoshone wife—in a semi-ghost town of gold-diggers and assorted wayfarers.
He looked upon Aloysius McGuffy not with merited distaste, but with heartfelt affection. “I did not exactly know, McGuffy, that you’re from Boston, but I’ll say this: Boston does put a mark of distinction upon a man.”
“Fa!” popped McGuffy. He resumed his half-angry promenade. “Boston has been my undoing, my curse. Until I saw Boston, I derived some measure of satisfaction from things about me. A clouded sunset, for example, gave me a modest thrill by its evanescent glory. Sweeping clouds inspired vague suggestion of vast, unharnessed power. I saw a measure of beauty in a rosebud, sensed a faint touch of divinity in its fragrance. At night a wind-whisper was not unknown to initiate poetic thoughts, though I confess that it set no ethereal bells to ringing in my soul.” McGuffy swung his arms in a gesture of hopeless frustration. “Then, in Boston, I studied art.”
“Ah,”