The Killers of Cimarron by Frank Leslie

Author:Frank Leslie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-05-17T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Sitting on the veranda of the Skinner House Hotel in Buffaloville, on a quiet midweek afternoon under a clear Wyoming sky, Deputy U.S. Marshal Spurr raised his beer schooner to his bearded lips and drained it.

The malty brew crackled down his throat and warmed his belly. It made his head feel light and cast a dreamy glow upon the dusty, sun-bleached little ranch town that always looked its ugliest about now. At three p.m., Buffaloville was all sharp edges and garish hues. It was all dust and tumbleweeds and squawky ranch wagons and the flat barks of some riled-up old hound. The toneless snicks of a shopkeeper sweeping the horse dung from his porch, or the hammering hooves of drovers heading back to their ranch after visiting the mercantile for coffee and tobacco or windmill parts.

This time of the day, the world lacked dimension, laughter, and the soft prattle of a piano or a guitar emanating from a dark, smoky cantina. It lacked the sublimity of females no matter how fallen, painted, or toothless.

This time of the day, the town lacked a soul.

The beer gave the town back its soul, reacquainted the place with a higher power, turned the occasional breeze shepherding tumbleweeds down a trash-strewn alley into a poem.

Spurr studied the empty glass, watched with a sour expression, the last beer bubbles and lines of froth clinging to the inside of the schooner. Cunning crept into the lawman’s mind on little cat feet. He looked toward Abilene’s tidy blue frame house set slightly back from the main street, surrounded with a picket fence in need of fresh paint and boasting a small but healthy-looking ponderosa pine just off her front porch.

Abilene herself was nowhere to be seen. Her curtains were drawn over her windows.

Spurr’s heart picked up its beat. He turned his attention to the Cheyenne Saloon across the street on his left—a simple, log structure with a shake roof and elk antlers over its pine-plank door that was propped open with a stone. His heart quickened even more.

He cleared his throat and turned his head a little to call behind him, “Lyle? Hey, Lyle, you in there?”

Behind him, silence. A fly buzzed and ticked against the hotel’s screen door.

A rocking chair squawked and a man grunted.

“Lyle? Wake up, damn it. The pestilence committee needs you out here at once. Pronto.”

In the lobby behind Spurr, the hotel proprietor sighed. “Goddamnit, Spurr, I was dead asleep. What the hell do you want now?”

“Go over to the Cheyenne and fetch me another beer.”

“You know I can’t fetch you more than one beer, Spurr. Abilene’s orders.”

“Abilene’s gettin’ her beauty sleep. Besides, Lyle, when did you start takin’ orders from women?”

“Well, let’s see—I’m fifty-six years old . . .”

“Lyle, if you fetch me another beer, I’ll give you a dollar. The beer’s a nickel. You, bein’ a businessman, should appreciate such a wide profit margin.”

Lyle chuffed. The chair in the lobby squawked and there was the thud of Kingman slapping the arms of his rocking chair in frustration.

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