much; it hurt to down anything and feel that busted bone moving around in me.
After a few days, I couldn’t bear it, and forced myself to get out into some fresh air and hobble around. The clean air done me good, and the next day I hobbled down the slope and into Swamp Creek, just to see the sights. The town was full of miners. They mostly wore dust caps and dungarees and hobnailed boots, and I was plumb respectful. They had persuaded me that they ain’t to be messed with.
Swamp Creek was a rowdy little town, even in broad daylight, when the saloons were all roarin’ and the gamblers were all at their green tables, and they was a drunk leaning into a wall every few yards. There wasn’t no law in Swamp Creek, except for a town constable the miners put in there to keep the lid on. But the constable was an old drunk hisself, and he didn’t have a jail neither. But he had a lockup even so. They’d planted a piece of mining rail in the ground, and given the old boy some leg irons, and that was the jail. That didn’t sound like much, but it was no fun bein’ leg-ironed to that post in broiling sun, or through a winter’s night, so even if it wasn’t much, it kept the lid on Swamp Creek. But real law, sheriff law, that was some distance away, in Butte. And that’s how everyone wanted it. That was the thing about any mining town. It wanted the law just as far away as it could get.
I kept a sharp eye out for them Hermit miners, fearful of a repeat performance, but they was all busy up there blowing ore out of their mine. I knew I wouldn’t recognize them, and I’m not sure they’d recognize me, except I was so stove up. But things look different by daylight, and there were lots of stoved-up men in Swamp Creek. Those Hermit Mine boys, they was probably all about seven feet tall and shoulders wide as an ax handle. Me, I’m cowboy sized, which is about medium.
Now, all this time I’m wondering what my bosses are up to. Scruples, he vanished somewhere, and I hardly saw Amanda, except when she was taking some air. But something was goin’ on, even if I didn’t have a clue. There wasn’t no more raids on what they called trespassers in the mines they claimed to own, and things was pretty peaceful. But I didn’t believe for a minute that things was going to stay quiet. Whatever Scruples was up to, I’d find out soon enough.
Then one afternoon, a new man showed up in the bunkhouse while I was takin’ my siesta, and we looked each other over. I thought maybe I knew who he was, though we’d never met. I knew because of his habits. First thing he did was open the one window and the door. He chose a bunk in the corner, got a scrub bucket and some Fels Naptha, and scrubbed the hell out of the whole area. Then he washed the old blanket lyin’ there and hung it out to dry. This one, he was thin and neat and clean. He had fingernails so clean they actually looked white. He was shaven close, too, and I imagined he scraped his jaw every morning. He wore a shirt so clean I couldn’t see one food stain on it, and even his britches was clean and washed. But that interested me less than his rig, which was a well-oiled gunbelt that he tied low on his left leg. Left-hander then, which fit with what I knew.
“I’m called Cotton,” I said.
He smiled. “Your reputation precedes you,” he said, and I wallowed that around in my head for a while, not knowing what to make of it.
“I always use my entire name, which is a rarity in my trade. I am Rudolph Costello Glan.”
That’s who I thought. Scruples had hired himself an assassin. Glan was the cleanest man in Montana, and the dirtiest backshooter alive. He didn’t get into no fights; he simply stalked and killed, usually with a high-powered rifle. It sent a small chill flowing through my busted bones.
“I think I heard of you once,” I said.
“I’m afraid I haven’t heard of you,” he replied.
I didn’t think I wanted to be heard of by someone like Glan.
“I’m just a wandering cowboy,” is what I said. “Some miners learned me to respect them, which is why I’m laying around here.”
“I don’t teach anyone to respect me,” Glan said. “Except at the last.”
I watched him get settled. In his war bag were changes of clothing, and several bars of soap, and some witch hazel so he’d smell good.
“You mind if I leave the window open?” he asked.
“Suits me,” I said. “But the rest, they’ll close it. They can’t stand fresh air with no stink in it.”
“We seem to share the same tastes,” Glan said.
I wasn’t so sure I shared anything with Glan. “Scruples, he got some work for you?” I asked.
“I have a contract with Transactions, Incorporated, which requires my confidentiality,” he said. “I’m afraid I can’t discuss it.”
“Pay and anything else?” I asked, riled up some.
He simply smiled.
He didn’t say nothing, but I sure as hell knew he had his own little contract with Amanda, and he was looking forward to collectin’ real soon.
I shouldn’t of got heated up. It wasn’t none of my business. But I did. Even if she made her own deals, I didn’t much like it. Banged up as I was, I still thought of Amanda as belongin’ to no one but Scruples and me.
“You going to be well enough to help out soon?” he asked politely.
I got the feeling he was hoping I wouldn’t be. “Pretty quick now, but I don’t even have a rig, and there’s no gunsmith in town.”
“Pity, isn’t it?” Glan asked.
There was a miners’ cemetery outside of town, and I thought there’d be some new graves in it pretty quick.
Chapter Seven
A few days later, Carter Scruples sent for me, and I hiked upslope to the Pullman Palace Car. He let me in from the rear platform, and there was Amanda, too, perched in a fancy chair with fabric that looked like spun gold. They were both in good cheer. She was wearing purple, to match the enamel of the palace car.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Gettin’ around now.”
“We’re going back to work,” he said.
I didn’t know whether that was good or bad, the way I was feeling about this whole outfit.
“We’re going to drive off trespassers from our property. Two more gents are coming in tonight, and with Glan, we’ll have what we need.”
I wondered who the gunslicks might be, and whether they were Glan’s caliber, or just another bunch of thugs. At any rate, things was pickin’ up some, and they was fixing to put me back into the middle of it. I guess they got over being mad at me.
“We’ve waited too long. Every day we’re not in control of our property, we lose money. We’re going after the Hermit Mine again, and this time there won’t be any errors.”
He didn’t quite say they were my errors, so I smiled some.
“You’re going to ride in this afternoon and deliver this envelope, and wait for an answer,” he said.
“Ride in?”
