The Circuit Rider (7 page)

T
hey
hit the city of Prosperity just past noon. Tower hesitated to think of it as a
city, but it was more than a town.

He
was hungry and a little tired. One thing you could say about Bird Hitchcock, as
slight as she was, she could snore up a storm. Especially when she hit the
bottle like she did last night. Tower knew why. They were close enough to town
that she could restock her supply. But it wasn’t just the snoring. Sometimes
Bird had nightmares, and as much as Tower wanted to know, he never asked her
about them.

None
of his business. And if she ever did decide to talk to him, which seemed highly
unlikely, that would be her decision.

A
small herd of cattle had just been driven down the main street into the
stockyards at the edge of town, and Tower could smell the animals, rough and
ragged from their long trek up from Texas.

“Meet
you at the hotel later,” Bird said, and Tower watched her ride directly to the
first saloon on the street.

He
nodded, then slowed his horse to a walk, scanning the storefronts ahead for the
general store. They were running short on some basic supplies: salt, flour, and
bacon.

In
addition to a place to stock up on things they needed for the trail, the
general store was the lifeblood of a city this size, and Tower wanted to meet
with its owner to see about setting up a service.

Tower
passed by the usual establishments: barber, blacksmith shop, dentist. There was
even a billiards club.

Finally,
Tower spotted a storefront with a sign reading Larkin’s Dry Goods.

There
was a calico dress in the front window. For a moment, he pictured Bird wearing
it and laughed out loud. The absurdity of it! The day Bird Hitchcock wore a
dress was the same day the world would end.

Tower
tied his horse to the hitching post and went inside the store.

“Howdy,”
the clerk said. He was a pink-faced man with a crisp white shirt and bright-red
suspenders.

“Hello,”
Tower answered.

“Help
you?” the clerk said.

“Name’s
Tower. I’m here to pick up a few goods and see about setting up a service.”

“Good
to meet you, Mr. Tower. Name’s Burt Larkin. I own the place, and we’d love to
have a meetin’ here,” he said. “We’re building a church, even have a pile of
lumber, but don’t have a regular preacher just yet.”

“I’d
be obliged if you’d help me get the word out,” Tower said.

The
door opened behind Tower, and he glanced back. A woman with a shawl and a small
black purse over her wrist entered. Tower nodded to her.

“Be
happy to, Mr. Tower,” Larkin said.

Tower
turned from the woman and glanced at the shelves.

“Appreciate
it,” he said. “I’ll be gathering my supplies — ”

The
first blow caused Tower to duck, thinking a can of beans had fallen from a
shelf.

He
turned, and the woman who’d entered the store was in front of him, her face filled
with rage.

“Bastard!”
she shouted. She raked the side of Tower’s face with her nails, and he stepped
back.

“Stop!”
Larkin shouted.

The
woman’s face was a mask of fury, and she swung at Tower with both hands, great
slaps that windmilled at Tower, who had backed against the shelves and offered
no resistance.

Larkin
got between them.

“Stop
it! He’s a preacher!”

Tower
watched as the woman’s hand entered the shopkeeper’s apron and emerged with a
small derringer. The barrel swung his way, and he ducked as the shot thundered
in the small room.

Tower
smelled gunpowder as Larkin and the woman struggled over the derringer.

And
then he heard the click of a gun being cocked.

Instead
of a shot, he heard a voice.

One
he recognized.

“I’ve
never killed a lady,” Bird Hitchcock said. Tower looked up and saw Bird
standing behind the crazed woman with her .45 planted against his assailant’s
temple.

“I’d
hate to start now.”

T
hey
were in Mike Tower’s hotel room. He sat on the bed, and Bird tossed him a hand
towel soaked in whiskey.

“Wipe
this on those cuts,” she said. “Damn waste of good whiskey, though.”

She
sat in a wing chair covered with flowery upholstery. The hotel was fancier than
she would have liked, and more expensive than Tower cared for, but it was the
only one with rooms available.

Bird
poured whiskey into a glass that was sitting on the table next to a washbasin. She
curled her fingers around the glass and looked at Tower.

“What
in the good goddamned hell was that all about?” she said, then drank from the
glass.

Tower
stood, walked to the mirror hanging above the washbasin, and wiped at the
scratches on his face. Bird thought he looked uncomfortable with the question
and found it interesting that he was avoiding the answer.

“I
don’t know,” he finally said.

“Well,
do you know the woman?” she said.

“I
don’t believe so.”

“Then
you need to practice making a better first impression on people,” Bird said.
“What did you do, skip ahead of her in line at the store?”

Tower
hung the whiskey-soaked towel on a peg next to the table with the
washbasin. Before he could answer Bird’s question, there was a knock on the
door.

“Maybe
she’s back to finish the job,” Bird said. She polished off the rest of the
whiskey in her glass, set it back on the table, and went to the door. She put
her right hand on the butt of her gun and opened the door with her left.

“Afternoon,
ma’am,” a man said. He was older, with white hair and a neatly trimmed white
beard. Bright-blue eyes glanced at Bird, then found Tower.

Bird
noticed the gold star pinned to the man’s brown leather vest.

“Afternoon,
Sheriff,” Bird said. She looked over the man’s shoulder and saw no one else. She
opened the door wider and gestured for the man to come in. “Want a drink?” she
said.

“Howdy,”
the man said to both Bird and Tower. “I don’t believe I’ll take you up on that
drink, ma’am. My name’s Wayne. Wayne Ectors. I’m the sheriff of Prosperity.”

“And
you’re doin’ a damn fine job,” Bird said, refilling her glass. “Except for the
crazy woman at the general store. Hope you’ve got her under lock and key by
now.”

“Bird,”
Tower said. “She was just mistaken about who I am.”

“Yeah,
about that incident — it’s the reason for my visit here,” Ectors said. “Seems what
happened has got some of the menfolk in town a bit riled up.”

“As
I understand it,” Bird said, “she attacked him, not the other way around. Why
aren’t the men upset with her?”

Ectors
took off his hat and nervously fiddled with it.

“Well,
she claims the preacher here raped her,” Ectors said. His blue eyes studied
Tower for a reaction.

“That
is the most ridiculous goddamn thing I’ve ever heard,” Bird said. “We just got
into town an hour ago. How could he possibly have done this to her? Doesn’t
that seem a bit ridiculous?”

The
sheriff put his hat back on, as if he needed something to do. “Well, Ms. Arliss
claims it didn’t happen today. More like a couple of years ago.”

Tower
stood, walked to the window, and looked out over the town’s main street.

“She’s
not telling the truth, Sheriff,” Tower said. “I’ve never seen her before in my
life.”

“Where
did she say this happened?” Bird interjected.

“Down
in Texas.”

Tower
shook his head. “Impossible.”

“So
are you here to arrest Mr. Tower, or are you just being sociable?” Bird said.

The
sheriff shook his head. “No, no. Not at all. Just wanted to let you know that
some of the men in town are a bit upset over this news. They don’t think the
woman has any reason to make up this whole story, so they’re not sure what to
do. They wanted me to come and arrest you, but I can’t do that without any more
evidence.”

Bird
swirled the whiskey in her glass. She had a fairly good idea what the answer
would be, but she decided to ask the question anyway.

“So
you want us to leave town?”

Ectors
was clearly uncomfortable with what he was going to say next. Bird almost
enjoyed watching him struggle with it.

“No,
truth is, I’d like you to stay in town until I can get some more information
from Ms. Arliss, seein’ as how she’s pretty upset.”

Bird
nodded. “We won’t leave town, Sheriff.”

“And
I wanted to warn you about the men.”

Bird
smiled.

“Don’t
worry about us, Mr. Ectors. I find most men can be handled quite easily.”

A
lone
in his room, Mike Tower took off his boots, hung his shirt over the back of the
chair, and put a Bible on the bed.

He
stacked the two pillows against the headboard and stretched out on the bed, his
right hand on top of the book. It was his prized possession, dog-eared and with
a binding that wasn’t going to last more than another year or two. It had seen
him through some dark times, and it looked like it would have to help him get
through yet another.

Soon,
his eyes were closed as the weariness of the ride, the shock of the woman’s
attack, and the fear that hadn’t stopped blossoming in his stomach combined to
overtake him.

He
drifted into a half sleep, and images stuttered through his tired mind.

The
smoke of a battlefield. Gunshots. Dead men and the suffering that came after.

Tower’s
hand twitched at the memories: the feel of a gun in his hand; the drugs from
the army surgeons who’d patched him up coursing through his veins; the hard,
desperate faces of men who had tried to kill him.

Outside
his hotel window, someone cracked a whip and a horse snorted, followed by the
wooden creaking of a wagon as it sprang to life.

Tower
opened his eyes.

The
emptiness of the hotel room soothed him. He thought of his own congregation
that was waiting for him in San Francisco, once he completed this circuit ride.

He
thought of the absence of his guns, how they had once been so familiar and
comforting to him.

The
world before him was one he now met without fear and without a desire to shoot
first. He had been a hard man before he’d discovered a spiritual side to him
that he never would have believed existed. Once he discovered a different way
to live, he had embraced it and never looked back.

Still,
the attack in the general store troubled him. The woman’s face had been
consumed with hatred. Try as he might, he could not place her anywhere in his
past.

Correct
that
, he thought.

He
couldn’t place her anywhere
definitely
in his past. Had her face seemed
familiar? Something tugged at the corner of his memory but then let go, and,
try as he might, he couldn’t get it back.

Like
many men who’d fought in the War between the States, great patches of time were
lost. Whether it was psychological scars from battle or chaos that had consumed
so many men like him afterward, he didn’t know.

Especially
for Mike Tower, considering what he had done during that war. There had been a
time after the war, too, before his spiritual awakening, in which some very
dark things had occurred. Things he’d buried as deeply as he could.

Still,
the past is never really over. Echoes reverberate for years, even generations
afterward. He knew that.

He
picked up the Bible and placed it on his chest.

The
line from the book of Isaiah came to his mind: “Let the wicked forsake his
way…”

Mike
Tower knew he had not done the horrible thing the Arliss woman was accusing him
of doing.

Yet
the thought that crossed like a dark shadow across his soul provided him no
comfort.

He
had done other terrible things.