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<h2>IV</h2> The main street was an empty, lonely place in spite of the humming bright tunnels of the town's saloons. Tesno stepped off the boardwalk into the dark river of the street, angling toward a dim white globe with HOTEL lettered on it. The pasty-faced night clerk looked up from a game of solitaire as he entered the cluttered lobby. The air was heavy with stale smoke and the smell of unpainted wood. "I had your saddlebags and blanket roll brought down from the livery," the clerk said, slapping Tesno's key on the desk. "And, oh, a Mr. Warren wanted to see you. He said to tell you he'd be at the Pink Lady. That's a saloon." "Warren? Did he say what he wanted?" "He said Mr. Vickers' sent him." Tesno muttered thanks. He stood toying with his key, then dropped it on the desk and wheeled back into the night. He quickly walked the short block to the Pink Lady, passing no one, not liking the darkness of the town. The saloon was full, the jangle of the piano half-smothered by the roar of voices, the clink of glasses and faro checks, the whir and clatter of a wheel of fortune. But as he paused inside the batwings, squinting against the stale brightness, the noise ebbed. Heads turned toward him, then cautiously away. And he knew at once something was in the air. He sauntered on into the place. A little Irishman turned away from the bar and hissed at him as he passed. "Watch it, Bucko." Tesno nodded at the man, who looked vaguely familiar. So I walked into it, he thought. They set me up, and I walked into it. It would be a fight, he guessed. Otherwise the crowd wouldn't know, wouldn't be waiting for a show. Some hired tough had been bragging himself up to it, probably, mouthing off about some pretended grudge. Men made a place for him at the bar, and he took it. Pinky Bronklin slid up and laid his pincerlike hand on the wood. He looked downright cheerful. "Man named Warren asked me to meet him here," Tesno said. "You know him?" Pinky shook his head. The white scar glistened on his flushed face. "You want a drink?" "I'll have a cigar." Pinky moved away. Tesno turned casually away from the bar. A huge blond man with a broken nose got up from a table and swaggered toward the bar. Tesno made room for him but still got an elbow in the ribs. The man was half a head taller than Tesno's six feet, outweighed him by forty pounds. Silence clamped the room now. Even the piano had stopped. Pinky came up with a box of cigars. Tesno took five, laid a quarter on the bar. "Beer," the big man said. He turned to Tesno, looked him over, grinned. There was a tooth missing from the grin. "Your name Warren?" Tesno said, biting off the end of a cigar. "This here is Hobo Hobson," Pinky said, setting a bottle of beer on the bar. "Hobo, meet Mr. Tesno." "I figured this was him," Hobson said loudly. "He killed a friend of mine at Pend Oreille. Shot him in the back." "Not so!" A high-pitched voice came from near the door, and Tesno saw that the little Irishman had stepped out from the crowd. "I was there. Ace Gandy was blazing away with a revolver when he died. Tesno took a slug in the leg before he even fired." Someone pulled the man back. Hobson faced the bar as if to pick up his beer; instead, he swung at Tesno's head with a vicious backhanded blow. Tensed for something of the kind, Tesno stepped back. Hobson's hand missed its target but sent the cigar flying from Tesno's mouth. "My fault," Tesno said mildly, giving the man room. Hobson's grin was broader than ever. A shock of blond hair had fallen across his forehead, and he seemed more animal than man. A stand-up-and-swing, stomp-a-man-when-he's-down fighter, Tesno thought. A bear-hugger and an eye-gouger. But a man who depended on his own monstrous strength and fighting knowledge rather than on weapons. Not the sort to pull a knife or a Henry D. "It seems this Tesno backs away from a fight when he ain't got a gun," Hobson said. "Depends," Tesno said. He sent his glance over the crowd, which had coagulated into a half circle. In front of a faro table near the far wall, he spotted Madrid's barber-pole shirt. He raked a match across his rump and lighted another cigar. "Who sent you?" he asked Hobson. "Sent me? Sent me where?" "I've seen back-country pros before. You're a Sunday-afternoon pug, a winner-take-all man who doesn't fight for fun. Who's paying you?" "You killed a friend of mine. That's enough." Hobson tipped up the bottle of beer, drank deeply, set it down. Tesno laid his cigar on the edge of the bar. Hobson took one leisurely step forward, then charged, lashing out with his great fists. Throwing up his hands to guard his head, Tesno turned sideways and aimed his left foot at Hobson's left knee. He took a sledgehammer blow on the shoulder that knocked him off balance, but not till he had got his boot sole against the knee. Twisting with his weight against it, he felt the kneecap slide out of place. Hobson gave a strange little yelp of pain. Stumbling, he grabbed his knee with both hands. Tesno was on him like a cat, seizing him by the hair, hauling him forward. Then he plunged his own knee into the man's face to send him careening into a poker table and off it to the floor in an avalanche of cards and chips. Dazed and awkward, bleeding from his mouth, Hobson struggled to get to his feet. Tesno caught him at the base of the skull with a short brutal rabbit-punch that dropped him open-mouthed and motionless in the filthy sawdust of the floor. For a moment, nothing broke the silence. Then someone cursed reverently. "God! God almighty damn!" And a rooster cry rose from the end of the bar—the little Irishman, no doubt. Tesno sauntered to the bar and stuck the cigar between his teeth. "Some of you boys pick him up," he said. "Lug him to the jail." The little Irishman broke from the crowd, gesturing to others. Four of them turned Hobo Hobson on his back preparatory to lifting him. But Pete Madrid stood over them, muttering something, and they straightened. Madrid faced Tesno tensely. "Who in hell do you think you are?" Madrid said. "You've no authority to jail a man." "I want him locked up for the night. And a doctor had better look at him. We'll use the town jail, Marshal." "You'll use it. You and Hobson both." "Maybe you haven't got the straight of it," Tesno said. "I tried to back off. Every man here witnessed it." Madrid's hand made a snake-strike at his hip and came up with his revolver. He gestured toward the door with it and said, "Get moving, cowboy." The cigar had gone out, and Tesno relighted it. Madrid aimed the gun at Tesno's feet. "Walk to jail or go there crippled. It makes no difference to me." Tesno headed for the door, swaggering a little, puffing the cigar. As he passed Madrid, he said, "This is the second mistake you've made today, Marshal." The marshal's office was in a squat log building at the foot of the street. Tesno entered it first. Madrid followed and turned up a low-burning lamp in a wall bracket. The jail was a single cell at the rear of the office. Its iron-bound wooden door stood open. Tesno stopped beside a flat-top desk in the center of the room. The men from the saloon lugged Hobson past him and deposited him on a bunk in the cell. He was still out cold. "He needs a doctor," Tesno said. Madrid still held the revolver. He made no reply except to gesture toward the cell with it. Tesno stepped inside the cell and pulled the door shut behind him. He peered out through the small barred window in the door. Madrid waved the men who had carried Hobson to one side. "Step back from the door," he said to Tesno. Tesno backed up two short steps. Madrid holstered his gun and moved forward to lock the cell, which was fitted with a hasp and staple. A huge padlock with the key in it hung from the staple. Tesno raised his hands and plunged into the door. It smashed into the marshal, knocking the padlock from his hand as he staggered backward. Tesno dived into him, seizing his gun hand as it flashed to his hip, driving him hard into a corner of the desk, falling on top of him as he hit the floor. Tesno was quickly on his feet, the marshal's gun in his hand. Madrid lay on his back, hurt by his collision with the desk, struggling noisily for wind. Tesno seized him by the heels, dragged him roughly into the cell, snapped the lock into place. The little Irishman burst into a high-pitched laugh. "Now who ever heard of such a thing? He jailed the marshal." "Get a doctor, Mike." "Only one's at Vickers' camp." "Get him. I'll be back at the Pink Lady." He yanked open desk drawers till he found his own revolver and gunbelt. He buckled it on, feeling weariness rise in him like a quick-acting drug, wanting nothing so much as his hotel room and its bed. But it was necessary now to show himself back at the saloon, to buy these men a drink. That was the way the game was played. You came in tough. And you swaggered a little for the crowd. <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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