Wolf Moon Read Free Page B

hard. "You ever thought of being a police officer?"
        I could imagine the men back in territorial prison listening in on this conversation. They'd be howling.
        "Guess not, Chief."
        "Well, if you stay around here, you should consider it. The work is steady and the pay ain't bad, forty-eight dollars a month. And folks have a lot of respect for a police officer."
        My mind drifted back to the mother of the youngster who'd died in a "mysterious fall" in his jail cell. I wondered how much respect she had for police officers.
        "Well, I sure do appreciate the interest, Chief. How about I think it over for a couple days?"
        "Lot of men would jump at the chance to be on my police force." There was just a hint of anger in his tone. He wasn't used to getting turned down.
        I put forth my hand.
        He stood up and made a big pretense of not seeing my hand sticking out there.
        "You think it over," he said, and left.
        The smile was back on him as soon as he reached the front of the place, where he flirted with a couple of ladies at a table and told a bawdy joke to an old man with a hearing horn. I knew it was bawdy by the way the old guy laughed, that burst of harsh pleasure.
        Through the window, I watched Chief Hollister make his way down the street. The water wagon was out already, soaking down the dust as much as possible. A telephone pole was being planted on a corner half a block away. Ragged summertime kids stood watching, fascinated. Later they'd spin tales of how different a place Rock Ridge would be with telephones.
        Up in the hills you could see the mines, watch the smoke rise and hear the hard rattling noise of the hoists and pumps and mills. In prison an ex-miner had told me what it was like to be 2,300 feet down when the temperature hit 120 and they had to lower ice down the shaft because that low your tools got so hot you sometimes couldn't hold them. And sometimes you got so dehydrated and sick down there that you started puking up blood-all so two or three already rich men in New York could get even richer.
        And who would keep all those miners in line if they ever once started any kind of real protest?
        None other than the dead-eyed man I'd just met, Rock Ridge's esteemed police chief, Ev Hollister. Over in Leadville they'd recently given a police chief and two of his officers $500 each for killing three miners who were trying to lead a strike. Law was the same in all mining towns.
        I paid my money, went down to the livery and got my horse, and rode out to see Gillian.
        

4
        
        It was a hardscrabble ranch house with a few hardscrabble outbuildings on the edge of some jack pines in the foothills of the blue, aloof mountains. It was not quite half a mile out of town.
        In the front yard a very pretty little girl of eight or so spoke with great intimacy to a dun pony no taller than she was. The little girl wore a blue gingham dress that set off her shining blond pigtails just fine. When she looked me full in the face, I saw the puzzlement in her eyes, the same puzzlement as in mine. She favored her mother, and that tumbled me into sorrow. I guess I hadn't any right to expect that Gillian would go without a man all these years. As for the little girl staring at me-I was long conditioned to people studying my scars, repelled and snake-charmed at the same time, but then I remembered my new blond beard that covered the scars. They couldn't be seen now except in the strongest sunlight. Yet the little girl still stared at me. "I don't think I've ever seen eyes that blue," I said.
        She smiled.
        "Are you enjoying the summer?"
        She nodded. "I'm Annie. I bet I know who you are. You're Chase. My mom talks about you all the time." It was a day of orange butterflies and white fluffy dandelions and quick silken birds the color of blooded sunsets. And now fancy little