His horse's hoofs drummed on the old plank bridge, still sturdy and solid. Sleeping echoes awakened, warning anyone who might be holed up within the town.
Slowing to a walk, he drew his Winchester. At the near end of the street he drew up, studying the situation.
The windows stared with vacant eyes at the lengthening shadowsâ¦a bat swooped low above him. The town was a picture of silence and desolation.
Coarse weeds and brush grew in the street, and where the boardwalk had broken through, weeds had filled the spaces. Here and there glass lay upon the walk as it had fallen from a broken window. Several of the windows had been boarded up, and the hitch rail was down, lying in the street. The old signs were weathered and faint.
He walked his horse slowly up the street, staring from sign to sign. Memories flooded back.â¦
Buell's Bank
â¦that one would have to come down.
Susan Brown's Hats, Shoes & Notionsâ¦Assay Officeâ¦Yankee Saloonâ¦Veitch Hotel: Room & Boardâ¦Deming's Emporiumâ¦General Merchandiseâ¦Pearly Gates' Saloon & Dance Hallâ¦Mom Jelks' Home-Made Pies, Cakes & Breadâ¦Blacksmith Shop
â¦There were others, some almost illegible.
Riding back down the street, he searched for and found Deming's ladder, which he had once used long ago, and removed the sign from Buell's Bank, carefully breaking it up for kindling.
There was no sign on the long bunkhouse that had offered bunks to those less discriminating than the hotel patrons. Not far from it was the jail, blasted from solid rock, and boasting three iron-barred cells. It was a gloomy place but, so far as he remembered, it had never been used.
He led his horse to the reservoir back of the Yankee Saloon, a tank built of stone some sixteen feet across and, as he recalled, about eight feet deep. A thin trickle of water ran from the tank, and a somewhat larger trickle ran into it.
He led the black to the water and let him drink, then after a few minutes led him back down the street and tied him near the Yankee Saloon. With the butt of his Winchester he smashed the hasp from the saloon door and pushed it open.
It was still light enough for him to see that the mirror behind the bar was intact, and that there were several rows of glasses and empty bottles. In the back a dim stairway led to a balcony, where cavernous doorways opened to several rooms.
Chairs and tables still stood in the room, and poker chips were scattered about, a few playing cards among them. Dust lay thick over everything, and cobwebs hung everywhere. A folded newspaper lay beside a cup and saucer on one of the back tables. In a corner sat a pot-bellied stove. He opened the stove door and could feel no draft down the chimney. No doubt birds had nested there.
When he stepped outside his boots echoed on the boardwalk. The sun was gone now, and gloomy shadows gathered between the buildings and in the lee of the mountain. Those great empty eyes of the windows stared down upon him.
The short boom had brought capital to the town. Several moneyed men, anxious to realize on such a boom as the Comstock, had been among the first to rush in. It was one of these who had built the hotel and the Yankee Saloon.
When the crash came and the people fled, disappointed and angry, they left all behind that they could not easily carry. Dishes, glassware, books, papers, odds and ends of clothingâall were left behind. They had fled as if in a hurry to be free of any evidence of their gullibility.
A vagrant breeze skittered a dry leaf along the walkâthe only movement in this silent place.
He was a fool, a fool to attempt what he had in mind, yet what else was there? If those people in the wagons were trapped by circumstances, he was trapped too.
He had worked at many things. He had been a buffalo hunter, a cowhand, trail driver, miner, stage driver, shotgun guardânone of them for long. Longest of all he had been a gambler.
He glanced at the reflection of himself in a darkening window. His eyes could make out no detail, but he knew what was there. A tall man, lean of body, wide of shoulder; a narrow, triangular face, high cheekbones and a strong jaw. On his jaw a bullet scar gave his face a somewhat piratical cast. A tall man wearing a black, flat-brimmed hat and a black frock coat; but Fallon saw more than that: he saw in that vague reflection a shadow, the shadow of failure.
Back down the line somewhere there had been dreams, ambitions, even certainties. Success had been only just around the corner, tomorrow,â¦now where was it? Cynically, and without self-deception, he regarded that shadow in the window. That was Macon Fallon, drifter, gambler, ne'er-do-well, staking his last chance on a town that was as big a fraud as he was himself.
What had Ginia said? That he was a sham. Well, she was right. There was nothing to him beyond that, yetâ¦suppose he could get a stake here? He could go to San Francisco, open a small business of his own, find a house somewhere, settle down. He could go to the theater, read booksâ¦he could be a gentleman.
It all depended on what happened here. He must, from these empty shells, create the image of a living, breathing town. He must make those claims appear worked, and he must play upon the imaginations of his possible customers.
Long after dark he heard the wagon rumble across the bridge and turn into an area just outside of town. There they drew up, and there they unyoked the oxen. Ginia rode up the street to meet him.
“Your town doesn't amount to much,” she said.
“What did you expect of a ghost town? Gaslight and red carpets?”
Blane came up to them. “Depressing,” he said gloomily. “I don't like it.”
“It's all right, pa. It will look better by daylight. You'll see.”
It was evidence of her influence that he accepted her reassurance and walked back to the wagon.
“Pa's down,” Ginia said worriedly. “I never saw him like this before.”
Macon Fallon removed his hat and let the cool air of evening stir around his temples. “Did you ever put yourself in his place?” he asked. “There's a man with a wife and family. He's brought them two-thirds the way across a continentâto what? Your pa,” he added, “is no longer a boy. And he's starting all over, in a new country, with almost nothing. He's scared, Miss Blane, and he has a right to be.”
“And you?”
Fallon shrugged. “Believe me, no man knows what it means to be scared until he has to think of others besides himselfâ¦those he's supposed to care for and protect. A man with a wife and family has, in the words of Francis Bacon, given hostages to fortune.”
“And you?” she repeated. “Have you given no hostages to fortune?”
“I'm a man alone,” he replied shortly, “a man with nothing to add up but a column of wasted years.”
Deliberately, he started his horse toward the others, and she rode beside him.
A campfire had been started, and Blane stood beside it, talking. “I don't like leaving that boy back there alone, but these oxen are too tuckered for that trip tonight.”
“I thought young Damon stayed with him?” Fallon said.
Al Damon looked up from where he lounged beside the fire. “He'll do all right by himself. I didn't want to wait back there by that damn' wagon.”
Blane started to speak, but young Damon was looking at Fallon belligerently. “What's the matter? Don't you like it?”
Fallon stifled a sudden burst of temper. After all, he needed these people.
“There have been Indians around, and for that matter it is somewhere in this area where the Bellows outfit have been raiding wagon trains. Somebody should certainly be back there with that boy tonight, so when I have watered my horse again, I'll ride back.”
“You're tired,” Ginia objected, “and your horse is, too. You've come a long way, mister.”
Their eyes met across the fire. He was tired, and he was impatent too. He would have liked to reach down and pick up that Al Damon and slap some sense into him.
“No matter,” he said. “I'll go.”
He could not resist a parting comment, and when he was in the saddle he turned and glanced at Al. “Have a pleasant evening,” he said coolly.
Ginia came after him. “I'm sorry,” she said. “Al's not the nicest person in the world, and lately he's been worse. Ever since he started wearing that gun.”
“Keep them out of the town tonight,” he warned. “The floors are old and there's wreckage lying about. Too many chances of snakes, or a bad fall.”
He started to turn his horse, then added, “If young Damon wears that gun out here he'd best grow up to it. When a man packs a gun he's supposed to handle the responsibility that goes with it.”
Ginia had started to move away, but she turned back. “I'll keep them in camp.” She looked into his eyes. “You do your part, and I'll do mine. You'll see that.”
After the black horse had drunk again at the reservoir Fallon started back down the road. The stars were out, the night was velvet soft, and there was a faint breeze off the mountains. Around the town the mountains were as bare as mountains of the moon, but farther back there must be trees, for sometimes he almost believed he could smell the pines. However, there was more tangible evidence, for in the wash that ran past the bench and half around it, there were logs, battered trunks of trees carried down by the flash floods. Someday he would find that forest, if forest there was.
As he rode past the camp he heard Al Damon's voice. “Aw, whatya expect? Why does it need two of us back there? I wanted some coffee, and Jim, he said never mind.”
Pausing on the rise from which the town was visible, Fallon looked back. It was swallowed in darkness now, with only the tiny red eye of the campfire winking as people passed between himself and it.
That flat below the townâif that wash could be dammed up to hold what water came in those flash floods, a man might irrigate enough to make a crop on that bench. He chuckled at himself. “Still a farmer at heart, Macon. You'll never outgrow it.”
How far back was that farm? Seventeen years? And before that, a hazy recollection of white rail fences and a great white house with columns and a graveled drive. That was the plantation his father had inherited, and on which he was born.
His father had inherited slaves too, and he did not hold with slavery, so he freed them all. Without slaves the plantation could not be worked, and he soon discovered that in freeing slaves he had not only given up a large part of his wealth but the friendship of his neighbors as well. They were slaveholders, and resented his act. Not one of them would make an offer for his land, and when it was finally sold it brought a tenth of its value.
His father had known a lot about land, but nothing about the management of money, and the small farm in Missouri had scarcely paid for itself.
Macon's brother Patrick had been killed by night riders when Macon was twelve, but Macon put a bullet through the skull of one of them as they rode off. With young Patrick dead, the heart went out of his father. Locusts got the crop one year, frost the next. And then one night Colonel Patrick Fallon heard a man boast that it was he who had killed young Patrick. The Colonel named him for a skulking murderer and a coward, and died with the man's bullet in him.
Three nights later the killer of two Fallons met the thirdâby that time a gangling boy of fifteen whose hands were born with a deftness beyond that of most men. It showed in his handling of cards, and in his use of guns as well.
On that dark road Macon Fallon gave the killer his chance and left him dead, gun in hand, bullet through his belly. And then young Macon Fallon had ridden on to Independence and joined a wagon train for Santa Fe.
Throughout the years that followed, he never lost his interest in land and crops, for it lay deep within his nature. He was Irish first and a farmer second, and both had a love for the land.
He was thinking over this past of his as he neared the wagon. His horse was walking in sand, and he could hear the voices before he came within sight of the men. He heard more than one rough voice, and then a cry of pain.
He drew rein and listened.
“There's women's fixin's in that wagon, so there's got to be women about.” It was a surly, drunken voice. “And I'll take oath there was another wagon here when I first seen you from the bluff yonder.”
Another man spoke up. “You tell us what we want to know an' we'll turn you loose.”
Fallon walked his horse a few steps further, going up slope until his eyes could see over the slight knoll that hid the wagon.
Four men stood around the fire, and young Jim Blane had his hands tied behind him. There was a trickle of blood from his lip.
“I'm alone,” Jim insisted. “The women's clothes belong to ma. We're taking them to her in California. There was another wagon, but it went on. When they get to water they'll be coming back for me.”
“Don't lie to me, boy. You speak up, or we'll have your boots off and see how much fire your toes will stand.”
Macon Fallon slid the Winchester from its scabbard. These were Bellows' men, he knew, and there was no mercy in them.
“Get his boots off, Deke. He'll talk fast enough.”
Macon Fallon lifted the Winchester, and when he cocked it the sound was loud in the night. Where there had been voices and movement, there was a sudden silence where nothing stirred.
“Get on your horses, and ride out of here,” he said. His tone was conversational, yet all the more deadly for that.
The man standing beside Jim Blane started to lift his rifle, and Fallon shot him through the knee. The man staggered, grasped at his knee, and fell. As one man the others scrambled for their horses.
“You!” Fallon ordered the wounded man. “Get on your horse and get out!”
“He's badly hurt!” Jim Blane protested. “He's bleeding!”
“Back up over here. I'll free your hands.”
The outlaw on the ground was groaning and cursing. He was too concerned with his own wound to notice much, but Fallon had no idea where the others were, and had no intention of appearing in the firelight where he might make a good target.