The Man From Nowhere

Chapter 1

At ten o’clock sharp on a fine spring evening, the Honorable Company of Concerned Citizens, City of Alma, New Mexico Territory, hanged the Hart brothers: Billy, Bobby and young Jimmy.

Next morning, at dawn, they came for Eddie Oates, the town drunk.

Let it be noted that at first the four Concerned Citizens present tried to wake the sleeping Oates almost gently. But when the little man continued to snore and slobber in his sleep, the boots went in.

Even after he woke, red-eyed and puking, kicks slammed into Oates’ ribs, none driven harder and by more rage than those of Cornelius Baxter, Alma’s only banker and richest citizen.

To even the most casual observer, the reason for Baxter ’s anger would not have been hard to find.

His expensive patent leather ankle boots, hand sewn by Rigby and Sons of New York, Boston and Denver, were splashed with the green bile that had erupted from Oates’ mouth.

God alone knows how it would have ended had not John L. Battles, proprietor of the Silver Nugget saloon, stuck out a pudgy hand and pushed Baxter away.

“Let it be,” he said. “We didn’t come here to kill the man.”

It took the banker a while.

The others present saw the boiling fury in Baxter bubble away gradually, then settle to a low simmer. He lifted pale blue eyes to Battles, for the saloon keeper was a tall man, and said, quiet and even, “John, don’t ever lay a hand on me again or I’ll kill you.”

After twenty years on the frontier, Battles was not a man to take a step back from anyone. He said, “Anytime you want to heel yourself, Baxter, we can have at it.”

Baxter’s face was crimson, the mouth under his mustache a thin, hard line, white and pinched at the corners.

Tall, stringy Jeddah Piper, the town undertaker, saw the danger and decided to act. “Here, this won’t do,” he said. “The Apaches have us under the gun and we’re all on edge. Gentlemen, let’s not start fighting among ourselves.”

The fourth citizen present, Clem Hamilton, who owned a dry goods store, tossed in his two cents’ worth. “Jed’s right,” he said. “Are we going to fight over a drunken nothing like Eddie Oates when we got Mescaleros all around us?”

Piper saw hesitation in the faces of Baxter and Battles and said quickly, “Get him to his feet. We’ll take him outside, where he can join the rest of them.”

“Wait,” Baxter said. He began to wipe his shoes on Oates’ shirt and pants. “The little son of a bitch can’t smell any worse.”

John L. Battles laughed, and with that, the bad blood that had lain between him and the banker was forgotten.