Frisco Ho The boy rode into South Pass City on a broad-chested roan far too large for him. He was as dusty as the road and just as unremarkable, no longer young enough to incite the maternal instincts of the woman passing on the street, too young still to have the presence of power and danger that is rightfully carried by a man. So he rode in unnoticed, except by the girl just a few years older who worked Robinson's boarding house on the eastern edge of the main street. She stopped her porch sweeping and watched as he rode right through to the far edge of the town and then swung his horse around to retrace his path. The boy unhorsed in front of the Clairmont House, took off his hat, slapped the dust off his wool jacket and brown canvas pants, stepped into the hotel. The girl leaned on a porch post and counted. Before she reached eight he was back on the street, hat on head, grabbing hold of his saddle horn and pulling himself back onto his mount. He meandered back down the street until he stopped right in front of her. He leaned forward, pushed his hat off his face. "You serving dinner, ma'am?" "It's late, but I reckon we could rustle up something," she said. "How much would it set me back?" "About a third of what they'd clip off you at the Clairmont." "That's about a third more than I was hoping, but I suppose that's the way it is in a boomtown." She pushed herself off the post. "Come on in, I'll set you a place." "I'd be much obliged, ma'am," he said as he jumped down off his horse and hitched it to a rail. She turned around. "I'm not your mother's age," she said. "You don't need be calling me ma'am." "No ma'am," he said. She stood safely off to the side in the small dining room as he wolfed down the slumgullion with three fried eggs on top, corn mash, fried apples, pilot bread slathered with butter. Watching him eat was like watching the locusts take over a field of wheat in time of drought, and she found his seriousness at the effort endearing. He was a blonde boy with soft features and blue eyes. It looked like he had started shaving without needing to. Just looking at him made her feel older, suddenly conscious of the width of her hips and upswell of her breasts beneath her calico dress and apron. While he dug his fork into the remains of his molasses pie she poured him another cup of coffee. "How long you been on the road, cowboy?" she asked. "Four months." "What have you been eating?" "Beans and stick biscuits," he said, "except when it's stick biscuits and beans." "You need a room?" "No thank you ma'am, I'll do with my prairie feathers. A real bed on top of a meal like this is more luxury than I could stand." "More than you could stand or your wallet?" "Both of us. I'd get so spoiled next thing you'd know I'd be asking for a bath." "And what a tragedy that would be to the flea population of Wyoming." "You might be right there, ma'am. Can you tell me, you hear of a man coming through this way name of Bob Olive?" She didn't answer. "He's tall, with a long mustache and a mustard yellow jacket. Rides a sweet black Morgan with a sock on its left foreleg." "Does he sport a bangled band about the crown of his hat?" "That's the one." "Never heard hide nor tail of him. And if you know what's best for you, you never heard of him neither." He pushed his chair back from the table, leaned back so it balanced on its rear legs, took a pouch of tobacco and a roll of papers out of his vest. As he rolled his cigarette he said, "You may be right about that ma'am, but since I've been tracking him the last four months, it's about time he got found." He slipped the rolled cigarette all the way into his mouth to moisten it and then held it up to her. "You want to join me?" Her shock gave way to a strange thrill. She had never before been offered a cigarette by a man. Billy would never dare to imagine she smoked, he had her too high on his pedestal. He even got tongue tied just saying, "Hello, Miss Blue, what a fine day it is today." But this boy leaned back, licked the roll, and offered it to her just like that. She glanced quickly about the dining room. It was late enough so there were no other patrons, and Mrs. Robinson was upstairs taking her daily beauty rest, fat good it would do her. She looked again at the boy leaning back with the cigarette in his fingers. He was maybe a little older than she had first thought, and better looking too. She pulled the chair out from the other side of the table, sat down, and snatched the cigarette out of his hand. "I'm Hillary," she said, leaning forward to light the cigarette on the match he had just struck on his boot sole. "Hillary Blue." "Lloyd Ketchum." "Lloyd, can I give you some advice." "Yes you can, ma'am," he said as he rolled another for himself. "Go back to Iowa." "Nebraska, ma'am. We got ourselves a spread out in Jefferson County." "Nebraska, even better. Lloyd, go back to Nebraska, back to your land, forget all about Bob Olive with his mustard jacket and bangled headband. Go back to your farm and let him be." He struck another match and lit his cigarette. "Can't do that, ma'am." "He's a killer, pure and simple. He's got nothing but death in his eyes. I've looked into them, they were like a chill wind blowing right down my spine. Go home." "Can't. You said you saw him." "No I didn't. I never saw him, ever." "Well, assuming you never had seen him, where wouldn't you be seeing him now?" "Go home, Lloyd." "It's too late, ma'am." He squeezed the end of his cigarette, dropped the butt into his tobacco pouch, slammed the front legs of his chair to the floor and stood. "How much do I owe you?" "Eighty five cents." He took another pouch out of his vest, pulled out a silver dollar, laid it on the table. "It was a pleasure, ma'am. Thanks for the company." She wasn't looking at him as he made his way around the tables and headed out the door. She was looking out the window at the street, dry and dusty, near empty in the harsh afternoon light. "He's playing Faro in the back of Lindsey's saloon between here and the Clairmont." Lloyd stopped. "Thank you, ma'am." "Don't thank me, Lloyd. I'm doing you no favor. And you, not even carrying a gun." "No, ma'am," said Lloyd Ketchum. "Not yet." She cleared the dishes, washed and dried, set the dining room for the small supper crowd. When she returned to the porch to finish her sweeping the street was empty, even his horse was gone. She thought for a moment that maybe he'd taken her advice and gone off back to Nebraska, and was surprised that she felt bereft at the prospect. But then the shutter doors of Lindsey's banged open and someone flew through the doorway landing hard onto the dirt of the street, dust rising about him. Lloyd. She started after the young fool but stopped as he dragged himself to his feet. He rubbed his shoulder, wiped the blood off his face and slowly, without turning back to the saloon, limped for the livery. Good, he had learned his lesson, was heading home. She felt a strange urge to run out to the street, to stop his horse when he started riding back east, to tell him to grab a hold of her and take her out of this dying boomtown. But he didn't leave the livery with his horse, he left with just a saddlebag riding his shoulder, and he made his way toward her. "Your face is a mess," she said when he stopped before her on the porch. "So I been told." "Come inside, I'll wash it clean and fix what I can fix." "Thank you, ma'am." She took a rag and washed the blood from off his lip and out of the gash beneath his eye, while he sat stiffly on a chair and winced, but let out not a sound. When she was finished the cleaning she dusted the wounds with carbolic they stored in a jar in the kitchen. "Guess you learned your lesson now, boy. You're lucky he didn't kill you." "Not yet at least." "Not yet? You're going to give him a chance to finish it?" "We're meeting in the street in thirty minutes." "You are a fool. Well I'm not going to work any more on a face that'll be laying in the dirt a half hour from now." "I don't blame you, ma'am." "Go home, Lloyd." "Can't." "Why not?" "He killed my daddy." "Oh, Lloyd. No. I'm sorry." "It was him, not you. You ain't got no call to be sorry. But he killed my daddy, and where we was raised you just can't let that be." "What about the law? Let a marshall take care of it." "Law said it was self defense, but it warn't. Olive came in to help his brother deal with a problem. His brother owns the law as well as most of the town where my daddy brought us. Bob Olive solved the problem and my daddy lay dead with a bullet in his heart. Shot through the back and still the marshall called it self defense. I got no choice but to do something about it." "So he'll kill the son as well as the father." "He'll try, but it won't be so easy as he thinks." "He already beat you bloody. What's going to stop him from going all the way." "I wanted him to beat me. I wanted him to think he can have hisself a few drinks and laugh with his buddies and still not give me more than a moment's thought. I wanted him to think I was a young fool with nothing but a false bravado holding him up." "And you're not?" "No ma'am," he said, as he reached for the saddlebag slung over the chair. From out of the bag he pulled a gun belt and a gun. He stood, strapped the belt around his hips with the gun butt facing forward. He pulled out the gun, spun the cylinder slowly to check the chambers, and holstered it again. "Oh Lord, save us now," she said. "You ever kill anyone with that thing?" "No ma'am, but I sure have sent tin flying." "It might be a little different with a man." "Don't know why it would." "Cause he'll be shooting at you." "He'll try. If something happens to me, Miss Blue, there's some money in the bag and the address of my family. Will you send them word of what happened and use the money to keep my horse till one of my brothers shows to pick him up. He's a good horse, they'll need him at the farm." "Why aren't your brothers here instead of you?" "They're good with the plow, but never took to the gun." "And you did." "My daddy taught me." "So you think you're fast, Lloyd, is that it?" "Yes ma'am. You ever see a buzzard's eye twitch in the wind." "No, I haven't." "That's cause it happens too fast to see." "I swear, Lloyd," she said. "You seem to have grown ten years in the last ten minutes." "You'll take care of the horse?" "I'll take care of the horse." "Thank you, ma'am. His name is Tornado. He's a good horse. Give him a brushing every now and then, he likes that. I'll be leaving now, if that's all right." "No, it's too soon." She was surprised at the desperation in her voice. "You said you had a half hour." "I do, but I want to be on the west side if I can help it. It's better having the sun behind me." "Good luck then, Lloyd." "No such thing anymore." "I don't understand." "If he kills me I'll be dead. If I kill him his brother will send someone after me and it will start all over again. Man who kills Bob Olive isn't going to have a moment's peace what's left of his natural born life. Either way, I'll never be able to go back to what I was, which is all I really want." "Then go home. Just go." "Can't. If I go home without trying, it won't be the same neither. Thanks for everything, ma'am." "Stop calling me ma'am." "Yes, ma'am." She rushed to the porch and gripped the post as she watched the boy walk away from her, into the setting sun. It was one of the saddest sights she had ever seen in her life. That boy and his earnest march to his doom touched her in a way she couldn't fathom. He reached Lindsey's saloon and kept walking until he found a spot that satisfied him and turned around. He cast a long shadow in the late afternoon sun. The streets were strangely empty, the word had already been passed. The Town Marshall was on business in Atlantic City, and even if he was here, he would dither about like a fool until it was too late to step in. No one was going to stop this, no one. Lloyd stood at the end of the road waiting, calmly, one hand resting on his belt. With the sun low like it was she could only make out his silhouette and in silhouette he looked not like a boy but like a man, a short man, true, but still a man, powerful and dangerous. "Come inside, Hillary." She spun around. It was Mrs. Robinson swathed in her horrid orange robe. "No ma'am," she said. "Do what I say, girl. Come inside this instant. Don't disobey me or they'll be consequences." "Do what you got to do, ma'am. I mean to watch." Mrs. Robinson turned crimson and stared at her for a long moment before she closed the door hard. When Hillary turned back to the street Bob Olive was outside, his mustard coat cinched at the waist with his gun belt. Hillary hid as much of her body as she could behind a porch post, only her head poking out so she could see. Her breath caught in her throat at the scene. Olive swayed slightly as he took his position about twenty-five yards from the boy. "I want it to be noted that I didn't start this," Olive shouted out in his high scratchy voice, like a crow's caw. He waved his arm at the empty street and shuttered windows as if there were crowds gathered round. "I want it to be noted that I was minding my own business when this boy came at me. And I also want it to be noted that I won't be drawing first. I'll let this boy make the first move so there ain't no question when I kill him that I killed him in self-defense." There was no response from the empty street. "You ready boy," shouted Olive, "to meet the devil?" "I done met him already," said Lloyd in a voice that barely reached to Hillary. "Do your worst, then, boy," said Olive. The two stood motionless in the street, facing one another, still as statues, motionless, not even a tremor passing through them. Then Olive's right hand darted for his gun. A shot rang. Olive's body jerked, staggered, and dropped like a stone. It all happened so quickly she couldn't comprehend what had occurred until she realized, suddenly, that she knew now how fast a buzzard's eye twitched in the wind. The boy put his gun back in his holster and walked deliberately toward the dead man in the middle of the road. Slowly townsfolk started appearing in the street, first one, then the next, then the next, stepping out of doorways that had been tightly closed just moments before. The boy ignored them all as he made his way to the dead man. When he reached him he stooped onto his haunches at the edge of the puddling blood and put his hat in his hands. A moment later Hillary stooped by his side and took hold of his arm. She didn't want to look at the dead man, so instead she looked at the boy. He was crying. "My daddy taught me a game he learned in the war," he said. "We used to play it some in the field after the hay harvest. You carve a hickory limb all smooth and then someone throws a ball of stuffed horsehide and you try to hit it as far as you can. I loved playing that game. I meant to teach it to my own son in that very same field." "You'll do it. I know you'll do it." "It's nice to think so, isn't it," he said. "Excuse me sir, can I have a word." It was a tall thin man, standing behind them, in a three piece suit and bowler hat. He had long thin fingers that fluttered about. The boy stood and faced the man and nodded. "I was here to speak to Mr. Olive," continued the man, "which of course now is impossible. But after your impressive display we've decided you might be an even better choice. I come here from Logan Utah, just through the Hastings Cutoff. Beautiful country, God's country, but we're having some problems with a group of ruffians that have endangered everything we've been working for. What we need sir is someone to enforce the laws as they've been written. We're not going to stand by niceties, no sir, but we do need the law enforced and we need a man who can do the enforcing. The pay, needless to say, will be substantial, and you will be doing the good citizens of Logan a great favor. I wonder, sir, if we could talk about our situation over supper." The boy looked at Hillary for a moment before replying. "That would be fine." "Splendid," said the man. "We're staying at the Clairmont. Do you need a room, we could hire you a room." "All right." "Under what name should we register you?" "Ketchum. Lloyd Ketchum." "And your hometown sir?" The boy thought a moment. "Don't have one no more." He nodded at Hillary. "I'll be around to pick up the saddlebags," he said before following the man towards the Clairmont. Hillary watched him enter the fancy hotel and then turned away just as the undertaker's cart was rounding the bend. Inside the boardinghouse she ignored Mrs. Robinson's hectoring and climbed the stairs to her room, closing the door behind her and locking the clasp. From a hollowed place in her bureau she took out a wad of bills and counted. Ninety-seven dollars, all she had saved from her work in South Pass City and now it was time to put it to use. She had thought she would buy a wedding dress and a trousseau. Billy Owen was sweet on her and with the right prodding she could muster his courage enough for him to ask. His spread was going strong and she thought that someday Billy was going to be the most successful rancher in the territory. Still, he wasn't much one for words, was Billy, and the Wyoming winters could be long and dark. She counted the money once more. You don't see what she saw that day and stand still. You don't see a man die and a boy's fate shift in the twitch of a buzzard's eye and stand still. You step forward or step back, one or other, that's all you can do. Billy was a step back, and nothing wrong with that. But that's not why she ran from her aunt's house in Illinois and changed her name from Talloway to Blue. If she took a stage to Rock Springs and then caught the Union Pacific, west, she could be in San Francisco in less than a fortnight. She just happened to know the costs, just happened to spend nights with her candle studying the schedules and the fees. She could calculate the price to the penny. San Francisco. She had heard things. It was a wild city, overrun with miners and gold tycoons. Dance halls, theaters, hurdy-gurdy houses. Couldn't she step lightly, couldn't she sing like a winged angel. The opportunities were endless. She could be in San Francisco in a fortnight and still have maybe forty dollars to get started on. It wouldn't be much, but it would be enough, and when it ran out she'd do what she had to do. Whatever she had to do. No sin there, Lloyd had taught her that, She had never seen the ocean before. She wondered if you could spy China from San Francisco Bay. She was ready to bet her life that you could. C. Hodgson Fell 1932 Back to Top