Wolf Moon Read Free Page A

laborers.
        Near midnight I'd pitched from my dry and dusty mount and taken a room down the street at the Excelsior Hotel. I didn't know exactly what to expect from Gillian yet.
        According to the Gazeteer, Rock Ridge was a town of four thousand souls, five banks, twelve churches (I found it curious that the Gazeteer folks would list banks before houses of the Lord), two schools, ten manufacturing plants, and a police department of "eighteen able and trustworthy men, among the finest in all the West." (On a following page was a small story about how a prisoner had died of a "mysterious fall" in his jail cell, and how his widowed mother was planning to sue the town, which of course told me a hell of a lot more about the police force than all of the newspaper's glowing adjectives.)
        I was just about to ask for another cup of coffee when the front door opened up and a man in a dark blue serge uniform with shiny gold buttons on the coat came in, the coat resembling a Union Army jacket that had been stripped of all insignia. He wore a Navy Colt strapped around his considerable belly and carried in his right hand a long club that had an impressive number of knicks and knocks on it, not to mention a few dark stains that were likely blood that soap hadn't been able to cleanse. The contrast of his natty white gloves only made the club look all the more brutal. He had a square and massive blond head and intelligent blue eyes that were curiously sorrowful. He was probably my age, on the lee side of thirty.
        He made a circuit, the policeman, like a mayor up for re-election, ultimately offering a nod, a handshake, a smile or a soft greeting word to virtually everybody in the place. And they grinned instantly and maybe a little too heartily, like kids trying hard not to displease a mean parent. They were afraid of him, and some of them even despised him, and the more they grinned and the more they laughed at his little jokes, the more I sensed their fear.
        When he was done, he walked over to a plump serving woman who had long been holding a lone cup of coffee for him. He thanked her, looked around, and then settled his eyes on me.
        He came over, pulled out a chair, sat down and put forth a hand that looked big and strong enough to choke a full-grown bear.
        "You'd be Mr. Chase?"
        I nodded.
        "Got your name at the hotel desk. Always like to know who's staying over in our little town."
        I said nothing, just watched him. Hick law, I figured, trying to intimidate me into pushing on. He wouldn't know anything about my time in prison, but he wouldn't want me around town, either, not unless I had some reason for being here.
        "Name's Ev Hollister. I'm the chief of police."
        "Nice to meet you."
        "This is a friendly place."
        "Seems to be."
        "And we're always happy to welcome strangers here."
        "I appreciate that."
        "Long as we know their business." When he finished with this line, he shot me one of his empty white smiles.
        "May be looking for a place to settle."
        "You have any special trade?"
         Yeah , I wanted to say, bank robbing. Which bank would you suggest I hit first? "Nothing special. Little of this, little of that."
        "Little of this, little of that, huh?"
        "Uh-huh." I gave him one of my own empty white smiles. "All strictly legal of course."
        "Glad you said that."
        "Oh?"
        He took some of his coffee and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He was proud of those hands the way a man is proud of a certain gun. They were outsize, powerful hands. "Cholera came through here three months ago."
        "Bad stuff."
        "Struck the Flannery family especially hard."
        "They kin of yours?"
        "No, but they gave this town two of the best officers I ever had. Brothers. About your age and build. Damned good men." He looked at me straight and