CHAPTER
SIX 

Talk drifted to politics while the buckboard creaked and groaned across the mile or so remaining of the flat and comparatively barren expanse at the end of which lay the town of Atlas. David Naile, not interested greatly in politics per se, liked that kind of conversation nonetheless, because politics and business could be inextricably linked. 

Tom Bledsoe spat every time he mentioned the word Democrat, making Bledsoe’s own political bent obvious. 

Atlas, like most of Nevada in the post Civil War period, was a Republican stronghold, but Jess Fowler had thrown his weight to the Democrats in the state government. Because the Democrats were a minority who wished to improve their lot, Fowler could figuratively—and literally— get away with murder as long as he provided financial support. As a result, Atlas was, effectively, rendered an island in a hostile and violent sea controlled by Fowler. 

Steve Fowler, a notorious bank robber and killer, was often seen out in the county, roaming about unmolested between his murderous rampages of lawlessness, occasionally in company with his older brother, Jess, and the county sheriff. 

Republican loyalty was the reason that Nevada was a state and not a territory, statehood having been rushed through in the aftermath of the Civil War. During the War Between the States—“In Georgia, where we come from,” David interjected, “some people still refer to that as the War of Northern Aggression.”—Nevada had supplied the Union with much of the financial capital needed to keep Mr. Lincoln’s armies marching and winning. Because of the rush to statehood, Nevada was in many ways still wild and untamed. 

“Reckon y’all weren’t ol’ ‘nough to fight,” Bledsoe said to David’s father. 

David smiled as he heard his father’s response. “I’m forty-six and this is 1896. An eleven-year-old wouldn’t have gotten too far trying to join up.” His father had just given the impression that he was born in 1850, without actually lying and saying that he was. 

“What caused Yankees like y’all t’ move t’ Georgia there?” 

“Well, I make my living as a writer, and Ellen and I just got tired of the hard winters in Chicago right around the time Lizzie was born. So we moved south.” That was all true. Brilliant, David thought. Then David’s father laughed a little conspiratorially. “I never did push the idea that I was a distant relative of President Grant’s vice-president, though.” True again. 

Bledsoe laughed out loud. “Dang, ain’t y’all the smart ones! Yeah, them ol’ Rebs for fact woulda wanted t’ skin y’all’s hide.” 

“We found the people in Georgia to be pretty much like people everywhere: lots of nice ones and some few not so nice. It’s a good place to live—Georgia.” 

“I’ve got a question, Mr. Bledsoe,” David interrupted. 

“Ask away, boy.” 

“How is it that a man who spits when he says the word Democrat and calls Southerners Rebs has what I’d call a Southern accent?” 

“Pa was born in southern Illinois, and Momma’s people had come out from the Carolinas. A whole mess o’ families from them parts moved west to Kansas and, lemme tell y’all, boy, soundin’ Southern weren’t no good thang in certain o’ them parts o’ Kansas in them times.” 

“‘Bloody Kansas,’” David’s father interjected. 

“It were that fo’ sure. Yeah. It were that.” And, abruptly, as if lost in some unpleasant reverie, Tom Bledsoe fell silent. 

Bledsoe turned the wagon and, stretched out before them, in all its lack of splendor, lay Atlas, Nevada. 

The town was one long street of clapboard buildings, mostly whitewashed, some painted gray or slate-blue. Corrals—each with one or more lean-tos—were set at the near and far ends of the street. Beyond the farthest of the buildings and the respective corrals lay a half-dozen or so smallish tents and one larger one, these all faded khaki in color. 

The Bledsoes’ wagon turned right midway along the main street—it was as broad in the past as it had been in the future—and into what was the beginning of the residential street Jack remembered. In 1896, there were but a few houses, no more than a dozen. These were also clapboard, some with nicely maintained white fences and smallish front yards, all of the houses looking to have been built from the same simple architectural plan, to have been coated from the same lot of white paint. 

As if proudly wearing symbols of defiance, one of the houses had green-painted window shutters. These brazen badges of nonconformity were slatted, as usual, but, rather than the upper edges being mere unadorned one-by-two, their tops rose several inches upward, forming almost a heart shape. There was a cutout of a heart at the center of each of these crown pieces. It reminded David of the small chair by the fireplace. 

“That your sister-in-law’s house, Tom?” Jack asked. 

“Them shutters, right! Y’all got the eye, Jack.” 

“You made those?” Without waiting for a reply, Jack declared, “You’re one hell of a good carpenter, especially with hand tools.” 

That was a slip up, and David mentally noted it. 

“Y’all know o’ some other kind o’ tool?” 

“I just meant that carpenters’ tools require a great deal of skill and patience.” 

“Learnt carpentry back in what y’all called Bloody Kansas when I was a sprout. Pa was right smart at it, and they was a lot o’ call fo’ pine boxes and such, if’n y’all get my drift.” 

The era of fighting between pro-and anti-slavery factions within Kansas had precipitated some of the most prolific bloodshed in the history of the United States, and schooled the country for the conflict to come. John Brown was that school’s most infamous alumnus, graduating to the raid on the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry. David’s father had made them watch the Errol Flynn movie Santa Fe Trail, and Raymond Massey’s portrayal of John Brown was so scary David actually remembered it. 

“You’ve had a rough life, Tom,” Jack Naile said, sounding like he meant it. 

“Ain’t we all.” 

“And you’re a bit of a philosopher, too.” 

“I ain’t no what-you-said; I’m a Republican.” 

“That, too, then,” David supplied, imagining his father was about to go into a lengthy explanation of the meaning of the term philosopher. Instead, the buckboard stopped. 

Margaret Diamond was a smallish woman, quite pretty and refreshingly well-spoken, her house neat in the extreme, except for piles of books and sheaves of writing paper. Mary looked, by comparison, old enough to be her sister’s mother, if, in fact, there were any family resemblance. There was none apparent, except that both sisters had the same color hair and eyes; brown and brown. 

The meeting with Margaret Diamond was brief, the woman obviously feeling quite “poorly.” With admirable politeness, she had offered to prepare tea and vouchsafed that she had some little cakes, but Ellen had declined on their behalf. “We really have to get some clothes and find a place to stay.” 

Margaret seemed somewhat disconnected, one minute suggesting Mrs. Treacher’s boarding house as the best of available accommodations, especially for ladies, then in the next breath switching subjects to lament that her pupils at Atlas’ one-room schoolhouse would fall behind in their studies. Then she offered to make tea again, evidently failing to remember her earlier invitation. 

Mrs. Treacher’s boarding house was back on the main street, and Tom Bledsoe drove them there in his buckboard, accomplishing a U-turn with it in front of his sister-in-law’s house. “She gets a fever now and again; ain’t bad like the last time, I reckon.” 

Ellen, alone with Lizzie in the back of the buckboard, asked, “What sort of illness is it that Miss Diamond has?” 

“Don’t rightly know, ma’am, and that’s fo’ fact. Last time Doc Severinson was in Atlas—” 

“Doc Severinson?” Jack repeated, incredulous. 

“Y’all heard o’ the Doc?” 

“Forget it, Jack; it’ll only confuse things,” Ellen cautioned. 

Jack nodded silently as Tom Bledsoe went on. “Leastways, ol’ Doc tol’ Margaret she oughta get herself down t’ Carson City for a good looksee with the docs they got down there. But, Margaret, she don’t cotton much t’ leavin’ her students fo’ no week or two.” 

Ellen volunteered, “Maybe we can help, Lizzie and I.” 

“I’ll tell Margaret, then, if’n y’all like.” 

“Sure,” Lizzie volunteered. 

Each “survival kit,” aside from things like aspirin, acetaminophen tablets, antiseptic cream, bandages, water-purification tablets and a good knife, contained a small gold bar. Ellen, Elizabeth and David each had such a kit. Within the attaché case were the diamonds and three additional gold bars. Converting one of these to current United States money at the general store—which, somehow or another, Jack Naile realized that they would come to own—provided them with enough cash for their immediate needs and then some. 

A “suite” of rooms at Mrs. Treacher’s rented for the princely sum of twenty dollars a month, including clean linens, breakfast and dinner, which was called “supper.” Mrs. Treacher was, at one time in an apparently quite distant past, British. She was a well-spoken woman, but her speech was very plain, and her usage was peculiarly stilted. As a guess, Jack Naile assumed that she might have spent her younger years “in service” to some household in England or in the eastern United States, following a husband west. She wore a simple silver wedding band, but there had been no mention of a Mr. Treacher. Short, plump, rosy-cheeked, she reminded Jack Naile of some movie version of a “typical” Swiss or German hausfrau. 

With accommodations arranged for the immediate future, there were other pressing concerns, funds or the lack thereof fortunately not among them. The ample gold supply that the Naile family had brought with them into the past would carry them through, as David gauged it, for more than a year, providing sufficient opportunity to eventually bring the diamonds to San Francisco and convert these into serious money. 

No one thought to be hungry, and by afternoon Ellen and Elizabeth were back at the general store acquiring clothing and other necessities. 

There was little in the way of ready-to-wear, most women apparently making their own clothing or engaging the services of the town’s solitary dressmaker. 

Jack and David fared little better, finding themselves faced with two alternatives: poorly cut, boxy-styled vested woolen suits or heavy, canvaslike work clothes. “It’s a cinch Roy Rogers never would have shopped here,” Jack remarked to his son. They were trying to determine if any of the suits would be close enough in size to be a decent fit. 

“I’m not going to wear shit like this for the rest of my life,” David announced. 

“I know you’ve never thought a great deal of my sense of sartorial resplendence, but we can’t start the first Nevada nudist colony, so pick some threads that’ll make do for the time being. We can get down to Carson City after a while and find something better. We can order out of a catalogue, maybe. Anyway, once we own this place, we can stock it with clothes we’ll all like—or at least tolerate.” 

David groaned, taking the most expensive suit of the few available. It was twelve dollars. 

The Naile family’s “suite” consisted of two bedrooms— surprisingly clean—and a small sitting room. The outhouse was behind the boarding house, of course, but there were chamber pots (“Who gets to clean these?” Lizzie asked the moment Mrs. Treacher had left them). There was a room at the end of the second-floor hallway with a large bathtub. Lizzie was given first dibs on the tub, but said she wouldn’t use it unless her mother sat outside the door. Ellen agreed, but insisted on Lizzie doing the same for her. 

Jack bathed last. It was safe to wear his Rolex on his wrist since no one could see him, and he smudged soapy water from its face to read the time. He’d reset the watch to local time shortly after they’d reached Atlas, and the luminous black face read nearly nine in the evening. All his life, Jack Naile had hated baths, seeing the concept of sitting in a bathtub as nothing more than simmering in one’s own dirt; but there was no such thing as a shower to be had in Atlas, all the more reason to move forward on acquiring the property where they would have their house built. Even without the amenities packed within the Suburban, a shower could be rigged, a good one. 

After a bland dinner at Mrs. Treacher’s table, and conversation generally even more bland with a corset salesman, the traveling dentist (who had commended them on the apparently fine condition of their teeth) and a gun salesman, Jack had taken David with him and gone off to arrange a carriage for the following morning. 

Upon their return to Mrs. Treacher’s, the gun salesman had been seated on the boarding-house front porch smoking a cigar. His name was Ben or Bob something, and he was a tall man for the period, about five nine or ten, and wore a plain gray three-piece suit. His hair was blond and straight, slicked back over a high forehead that seemed to be gaining ground in a battle against his hairline. Jack judged the man’s age at close to forty, but he seemed quite fit and trim. After a moment, David went inside and Jack lit a cigarette. “You’re from back East, though I can’t say I’ve seen prerolled cigarettes.” 

“They’re much more convenient this way,” Jack told him, his voice a little shaky sounding to him. He’d almost used the disposable Bic lighter from his pocket to fire the cigarette but had remembered at the very last second to strike a match against the porch rail instead. “So, what’s a Colt Single Action Army revolver sell for these days?” 

“I can get you a nice blued one for eighteen dollars. Nickel—but it will last longer—costs two dollars more. You’ll see ‘em higher, but not lower. That’s sure a nice lookin’ one on your hip.” 

Jack didn’t offer to show it to the man, lest he notice that the gun hadn’t been made yet and wouldn’t be until 1971. 

“Didn’t figure you’d show me your gun, Mr. Naile.” 

“And why is that?” 

“Me, as a salesman, I’m good with names. Bob Cranston’s the name, and guns are my game.” He laughed as he pulled a business card—one of the old, square kind, larger than its late-twentieth-century counterpart—from his vest pocket. 

Jack took the card. “Thanks.” 

“I’ve never seen a man with a gun like that who didn’t use it for making his living. You don’t strike me as one of Fowler’s range detectives, so that means you must’ve been a lawdog somewhere, back the other side of the Mississippi, maybe. Bein’ a salesman, I got a good ear for the way people talk. Only two places from around here you and your wife and family could be from, and that’s San Francisco or Denver, but I’d say Chicago’s more like it. Policeman back there?” 

“We’re from Chicago originally, but we lived in Georgia for a while. And, no. I’ve never been a policeman. You’ll have to excuse me. It’s been good talking with you.” 

Jack had left the porch. He found that David was using the bath. Twenty minutes later, with water that was more cool than hot, it had been Jack’s turn. He’d washed his hair first, and then bathed. 

Jack checked the Rolex again; he’d have to find some way in which to wear his watch without attracting attention. He stood up, slowly dousing himself head to foot with the last pitcher of fresh water. 

Definitely. Build a house, take a shower. 

Mounted on a rented bay mare, Jack rode in comparative silence beside the carriage, which only sat three people. David sat on the far right side of its solitary seat, near the brake and the rifle, his hands holding the reins. Lizzie sat on the opposite side, Ellen in the middle. 

“This is more comfortable than that buckboard thing Mr. Bledsoe drives,” Lizzie declared with an air of finality. 

As best Jack Naile could recall the terrain, and judging from the map and his modern lensatic-compass bearings, they were nearing the site of what would be/had been their home here. 

On the way out of town, as they passed the larger of Atlas’ two saloons, he had spotted what he assumed were some of Jess Fowler’s range detectives. A quick glance exchanged with his wife had confirmed that she had pegged the men as Fowler’s minions also. Jack was, of course, armed, as was David, David having donned the old Hollywood rig so that the holster was on his left side, the gun butt forward, the cartridge loops across his abdomen. However David carried a gun, Jack sincerely did not want his son to have to use one against another human being, and especially against someone who was evidently quite skilled at killing as a trade. 

The stream’s water sparkled clean and cold and ran fast, just as it had/would in the future (only almost certainly cleaner). 

“Hey, guys,” Jack Naile suggested. “How about you ladies taking a dip in the stream? Closest thing we’ll have to taking a shower until we get one rigged up.” 

“It’s going to be cold, Jack.” Ellen scrunched her nose, but eventually agreed. While the ladies took a quick dip, Jack and David watered the horses downstream and out of visual range. Sooner than Jack would have expected, Ellen found them, her hair dripping wet and the skirt of her “storebought” green dress clinging to her legs. “I never would have done that if I’d thought about not having towels, Jack. Watch the rocks. They’re slippery. But even though it was a little cool, it feels so good to be clean.” 

Jack Naile looked over at his son, “Just like the YMCA pool in Athens, huh? Come on!” 

Once they hit the water, Ellen’s description of the water temperature proved woefully inadequate. “This is freezing!” Jack shouted as he stepped into the stream. 

“Yeah! Isn’t it though!? Didn’t you wonder why my lips had turned blue, Jack?” Ellen called back from the other side of the carriage, where she and Lizzie stood out of sight. 

“Lips are not what’s turned blue on me!” 

“You shouldn’t talk that way in front of your daughter, Jack! You and David have fun. If you’re good, maybe we won’t hide your clothes.” 

Five minutes by the face of the Rolex was all that Jack could take, and David was out of the water in three minutes flat. David was rubbing his naked arms and legs to shed excess water, glaring as Jack emerged from the stream. “This was a dumb idea, Dad.” 

“We’ll get used to it, son!” But Jack hoped they wouldn’t have to get used to it for long. On the return trip to Atlas, Ellen and Lizzie sat huddled in their shawls, their bodies still shaking a little. Maybe David had been right, Jack Naile mused. It had been a dumb idea. 

It was very nearly dusk as Jack was handed back his deposit on the buggy and the horse and saddle. He’d dropped his family in front of the store that would, if this round of history proved out, someday be theirs. Rather progressively, considering that the time was after five, the store had still been open. David had taken the rifle with him, Jack keeping charge of the all-important attaché case that contained the family fortune. 

Jack lit a cigarette, his second of the day, remembering to use a match rather than the Bic. He was down to one pack remaining and, after that, it would be learning to roll his own, smoking cigars or quitting. 

He felt lighthearted, more so than at any time since their abrupt and potentially deadly arrival in the past. The property where the house would be built looked even better than it had/would. If they could rig it up and find something to use for wiring, the stream would provide more than enough hydroelectric-power potential. And despite the water temperature, the dip in the stream had been fun. Had the children been elsewhere, it would have been more fun, with Ellen’s body up against his in the water and wanting his body’s warmth once out of the stream. Yet those times would come. All too soon, he realized with each day that passed, the kids would be grown, on their own, he and Ellen alone with memories of a past that was a future that had not happened yet, but somehow had. 

As Jack approached the boarding house from the opposite side of the street, he wondered absently if Ellen, Lizzie and David had already gone up on the little porch and continued inside. 

The corset salesman, looking weary beyond endurance, sat in the solitary rocking chair. Jack couldn’t remember his name. “Let me guess. The axle for your wagon still isn’t fixed.” 

“You’re right there, fella.” The corset salesman shifted his bulk—he was pushing three hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce—simultaneously with shifting the stump of a cigar from the left side of his mouth to the right side. “I needa be on my way soon. Got customers to see.” 

“Corsets a big business?” 

“Big. Future’s in corsets.” Jack laughed silently at that. “Someday every woman in this here great land o’ ours gonna be wearin’ one o’ my corsets. See, I don’t just sell ’em, neighbor. My brother-in-law and me, we own the factory back in Chicago what makes ‘em. I cover the West and he covers the East.” 

“Sounds like he’s got the easier job, friend.” 

“Future’s in the West, neighbor. And your average woman, well, she wants to have what other women have, and that’s a corset. If’n you’ll pardon the word, ‘virgin’ territory. That’s what the West is for corsets. Virgin territory.” 

Jack Naile shrugged his shoulders. “Where I come from, most of the women who wear corsets aren’t exactly virgins. Say, you see my wife and son and daughter come in?” 

“That wife o’ yours—and I mean no disrespect—but her and your daughter, you might wanna get ‘em some of the Night Thrush corsets. They’re top o’ the line. Top!” 

“My girls aren’t the corset type, friend; but, I’ll ask them. So, they went inside?” Jack pressed. 

“Ain’t seen ‘em, neighbor, and I been on this here porch since . . .” He tugged a big gold pocket watch from the confines of his nearly bursting vest. “Since half-past four.” 

Jack licked his lips, simultaneously snapping away the butt of his cigarette and thumbing the hammer loop off his revolver holster. 

“Thanks, friend!” Jack shouted, grabbing up the attaché case as he broke into a dead run through the gathering darkness, toward the store, his right hand on the butt of his gun lest it pop out of the holster. 

Jack heard indistinguishable voices from the narrow breezeway to the side of the store. The store’s lights were still on. He passed the store at a dead run, glancing through the near window, the double doors and the far window as he ran. The aproned, balding proprietor was sweeping up, no sign of customers. 

The sounds coming from the breezeway were definitely voices, male and female. 

Jack stopped, his hand still on the butt of his Colt, his palms sweating. 

“Lookee heah, gals. Don’t matter no mind to me an’ Lester whether you hitch up them there skirts y’selves or we go an’ do it fer ya. Less’n ya like gettin’ on ya knees and doin’ us that way. And don’t go lookin’ to the boy. If’n he wakes up, it won’t be for a long time, and that’s fo’ fact.” 

“Go to hell, you son of a bitch.” 

It was Ellen’s voice, and Jack, stepping into the mouth of the breezeway, announced, “And I can send both you assholes to hell real quick.” 

The only light in the breezeway came in broad pale-yellow shafts emanating from gaps in the curtained windows above. The general store had a false front, but the building beside it had a true second floor, the rooms there serving as a cheap rooming house for cowboys and drifters. 

Ellen and Lizzie, all but lost in shadow, but obviously scared, stood shoulder to shoulder, their backs against the side wall of the Merchants Café. The men bracing them, on the general-store side of the breezeway, were more readily visible in the weak light from the café’s second-story windows. 

David lay sprawled on the ground, mostly in shadow, and Jack couldn’t tell his condition. 

“Lester” and the man who’d declared his foul intentions wheeled around to face Jack. They had the look of Fowler’s range detectives about them, broad-brimmed slouched hats, leather stovepipe chaps, each of the men with a six-gun at his right hip and a second one butt forward at his left. Jack noticed one of them had a third revolver, probably David’s. 

“They mess with you or Lizzie, Ellen?” 

“They don’t have the balls, Jack. One of them—that piece of shit, Lester—” Ellen stabbed an accusatory right index finger toward the man with David’s revolver in his belt—“he slugged David from behind while David was beating the crap out of the other one.” 

Jack Naile wanted a cigarette very badly. “If you harmed my son, guys, you’re in deep shit.” 

“Back y’all’s play an’ fill y’all’s hand!” Lester of the three revolvers shouted, the gun at Lester’s right hip springing from his holster as if levitated by David Copperfield. 

Jack felt his body moving, his right leg snapping out and forward, his right shoulder dropping as his right knee slightly bent and the fingers of his right hand closed around the butt of his Colt. Something whistled past Jack’s right ear—probably a bullet. 

The sound of the Colt firing from the hand at the end of Jack’s extended right arm shocked him into awareness of what he’d been doing only by reflex action. The single shot from Jack’s Colt struck Lester somewhere between the dark wild rag over Lester’s Adam’s apple and the belt buckle above Lester’s chaps. Lester fell back against the wall of the general store. 

The unnamed man, who had threatened Jack’s wife and daughter with rape, had a six gun in his right hand and was grabbing for Lizzie with his left. Ellen punched him in the face. He let go of Lizzie and seemed perplexed for a split second, stepping more fully into one of the shafts of yellow light. Hit the woman or shoot the man? 

Jack didn’t wait for the range detective’s decision, triggering a second shot. The man’s right eye and cheekbone seemed to collapse, as if sucked into his face, his pistol discharging into the ground near his boots. His body sprawled back along the wall of the general store. 

“My God, Daddy,” Lizzie murmured, just loudly enough that Jack could make out the words over the ringing in his ears. And he heard something else. The voices of men behind him, cheering, applauding. 

Jack felt suddenly nauseous, but suppressed the reaction, dropping to his knees beside David. Ellen and Lizzie were already at David’s side. 

Lizzie was crying, hugging David. Ellen said something like, “He’s alive.” So far. 

The town’s occasional doctor was, of course, not in town, but the traveling dentist who had been so impressed with the Naile family’s dental hygiene was among the cheering crowd of well-wishers who surrounded Jack in the aftermath of the shooting. In lieu of a medical doctor, the dentist had volunteered to examine David and treat, as best he could, any injuries David might have sustained. The two men Jack had shot needed no treatment. 

Jack was rather out of it, and Ellen took over. “Yes, please, examine him.” David was starting to come around. Western movies and detective novels notwithstanding, any blow on the head could be serious, and one which resulted in unconsciousness, however fleetingly, could be deadly. 

After an almost too-quick examination to ascertain that David’s neck or back had not been broken from the range detective’s blow with a pistol butt, two of the townsmen made a chair seat of their locked hands and carried David to Mrs. Treacher’s, ensconcing him in the parlor. 

A large crowd had gathered on the porch, with more gathering in the street. 

Jack, still seeming numb, knelt beside the couch as the dentist—his name was Joel Lowery—looked David over more carefully. Lizzie held an oil lamp for Dr. Lowery while Ellen held David’s hand. Ellen felt oddly reassured when David jerked his hand from hers. 

“How many fingers am I holdin’ up, young fella?” Lowery asked, raising three fingers of his right hand. 

“Three.” 

“Good. Now, focus on my index finger and follow it with your eyes as I move it.” 

“I’m following it just fine.” 

“I’ll be the judge of that. Any double vision?” 

“No.” 

“Headache?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Good. A headache is logical to expect after a blow like you got. There’s a bruise on the right side of your neck. The polecat missed your spinal column. Good thing. Must have just grazed your skull behind the right ear. Here. Listen to my watch.” He placed his pocketwatch beside David’s right ear, gradually moving it farther and farther away. “Can you still hear it?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Keep listenin’ and tell me when—” 

“I can’t really hear it now.” 

“You’ve got good hearin’, young fella. Get a good night’s rest and take it easy for the next couple of days, and you should be fine.” 

“Thank you,” Ellen said sincerely. 

“We’re in your debt, Doctor,” Jack volunteered, his voice barely above a whisper. 

“No. I don’t charge for doctorin’ unless I gotta cut somebody open and dig out a bullet or like that. Dentistry is my trade. And you folks could sure help me by tellin’ me what it is that you use on your teeth. The young fella, here, looks like all his teeth are perfect. That’s not too surprising with a good diet, and the same with your daughter. But you and your wife gotta be near twice their ages and your teeth look just as good.” 

“Not quite,” Ellen confided. 

“Can you analyze something for chemical content?” Jack asked. 

“Daddy!” Lizzie cautioned. 

Dr. Lowery said, “I can send it back east.” 

“Good. I’ll give you a sample of what we use on our teeth, and you can check it for yourself.” 

“I push baking soda.” 

“Baking soda is good,” Ellen told him, hoping he’d forget about Jack’s offer to give him a sample of latetwentieth-century toothpaste. 

“Your boy looks like he’s gonna be right as rain,” a booming, jovial-sounding voice from behind them volunteered. 

Ellen looked up toward its origin. The man was about her height, over two hundred pounds, somewhere in his late forties or early fifties, a derby hat clutched in both hands as if shielding the classic male potbelly behind it. He had thinning blond hair with a hint of gray and a high forehead over a broadly set face. 

“Hope you’re right.” Ellen smiled up at him. 

“Looks like a healthy young man to begin with. And Dr. Lowery makes a right good sawbones when he has to.” 

“Thanks, Tom,” Lowery said. “Folks, this fella is Tom Berger, mayor of Atlas.” 

Jack stood up, then offered his hand to Ellen, helping her to her feet. Her shoes were caught in the cheaply made hem of her dress, and she shook it free as she stood. “What can we do for you, sir?” Ellen asked, always suspicious of authority, especially since it was appearing in the immediate aftermath of a double killing. There had been no law enforcement of any kind so far. Was the mayor also the marshal? 

“I wanted to talk with your husband, ma’am.” 

“You can talk with us both,” Jack said flatly. 

“Lizzie—stay with your brother. Keep him on that couch resting a while,” Ellen ordered. 

“Would you folks step out on the porch with me?” 

Jack picked up his hat in his left hand and took Ellen’s elbow with his right. The attaché case was under his left arm, and David’s revolver was tucked into the front of his gun belt. “Sure. Crowded out there, isn’t it?” Jack observed. 

“Citizen’s Committee—” 

“If it’s about—” 

“Is and it isn’t, sir. Don’t fret. You neither, ma’am. Nobody’s angry ‘cause some of Jess Fowler’s trash is dead. We just wanna talk is all.” 

The mayor held the door for them. Jack paused to assess the porch, then ushered Ellen through the doorway a step ahead of him. As men saw her, they removed their hats entirely or at least tipped them. Someone pulled up the porch’s solitary rocking chair and offered it for her to sit down. Gathering her skirts about her, she took the offered seat, waiting, almost holding her breath. 

“With you folks new to Atlas and all,” Mayor Berger began, “it’s like as not you don’t know what’s just happened.” 

“I killed two scumbags who assaulted my family and were about to . . .” Jack let the obvious hang as Mayor Berger and some of the other men—some in business suits, some in work clothes—cleared their throats and shuffled their hats nervously in their hands. 

Jack rested the attaché case across Ellen’s lap. Her eyes settled on Jack’s face, trying to read it. As the mayor began to speak, Ellen’s heart began to sink. In her mind’s eye, she saw Jack looking not like Jack at all but like Errol Flynn. And she was Olivia deHavilland, overhearing the good citizens of Dodge City asking Errol Flynn to take on the job of town marshal. 

“Jess Fowler won’t try anything in the open, Mr. Naile,” Mayor Berger was telling them. “But his range detectives won’t rest until they’ve done settled the score with your family, sir.” 

Ellen Naile had a sudden picture of Jess Fowler as a young Bruce Cabot, with Victor Jory cast in the role of Fowler’s chief evil minion. 

“But,” Mayor Berger continued, “Jess Fowler would be less likely to loose his dogs of war against the family of the city marshal. If you’d take the job even for jes’ a little while, that’d give us the time to find ourselves a career peace officer. You saw tonight firsthand what having no law in town can bring about.” 

“Mayor Berger,” Ellen interjected, looking up from the rocking chair. “My husband isn’t a lawman. He’s a writer by trade. He was just defending his family.” 

“I never killed anyone before tonight and I hope to God that I never have to again.” That Jack made this statement amidst a crowd of well over a dozen armed men was a credit to his honesty and his nerve, Ellen reflected, proud of her husband for his courage. 

A voice from the back of the crowd—she recognized the gun salesman—chimed in. Lizzie had said she thought he was handsome. “I don’t live here, it’s true. But you folks might be interested in knowing that the famous Wyatt Earp of Tombstone had killed a man only once before that big gunfight they had down that way. When I was just gettin’ started as a gun salesman and I was workin’ over Colorado way, I sold Doc Holliday a nice little nickel-plated Colt with birdshead grips. I bought him a drink or two, and we talked for a while. I’ll never forget it. But Doc Holliday’s the one what told me that, and there was no reason that he would’ve lied over it.” 

“Look, guys,” Jack said in earnest. “I’m not Wyatt Earp, and I’m not Doc Holliday.” 

“All I know, Mr. Naile,” Mayor Berger persisted, “is that you happen to be the first and only person to stand up to Jess Fowler’s gunmen and not come away with a beatin’ at best or jus’ plain shot dead.” 

“You never had a peace officer here?” Ellen asked. 

“Had one up until two months ago,” Mayor Berger admitted, his manner quite suddenly subdued. 

“Dead?” Jack inquired. 

“No. Fowler’s men ran him off. Them two from tonight and four others. Forced Marshal Bilsom to unbuckle his gun belt if’n he wanted to live. Then they figured they’d up an’ see how far they could go. Made him take off his clothes, right there in the middle of the street in front of the general store. By that time, Bilsom had lost any nerve he had. They tied him on a horse stark naked—beggin’ your pardon, Mrs. Naile. Don’t know what possessed me to speak that way in front of a woman.” 

“It’s all right, Mayor Berger,” Ellen reassured him. 

“Anyways, a bunch of us lit out after Bilsom, brought him clothes and a gun and seventy dollars and tol’ ‘im adios.” 

“And none of you made to help the marshal when he was up against six gunmen, professionals?” Jack queried, a poorly disguised tone of disgust edging his voice. 

“Weren’t that way,” another of the men on the porch said. 

“Still. No excuse,” Mayor Burger declared passionately. 

“I still don’t understand,” Ellen said calmly. “Would you please just explain what happened so that I can understand, Mr. Mayor?” Men liked to feel intellectually superior to women, and sometimes the best way to get a man to divulge something he was reluctant to say was to feign ignorance, interest or both. 

“When Bilsom came to town, he made himself off like a professional, a good hand with a gun. Said he’d deputied for Bat Masterson’s brother over in Colorado. And he was the best trick shot I ever seen! Could blow out the pips on a playin’ card at twenty feet fast from the holster. We all seen him do it. Bluffed his way along for two years, never drawin’ that gun o’ his ‘gainst nobody, but always doin’ trick shots, like they say Wild Bill used to do back in the old days in Deadwood.” 

“He was no Wild Bill,” one of the men on the porch suggested. 

“He was yeller,” Mayor Berger confessed. “Pure and simple. When he first took on the job, he insisted that the first time anyone interfered with him as he enforced the law, he’d quit. No matter what, didn’t want nobody t’ help him. By the time we realized he was a charlatan, a liar, a coward, if’n any of us had gone to help, Fowler’s men would’ve killed ‘im. We’d a been jes’ as hoosiered up, and Bilsom woulda been dead in the street. We been advertisin’ for fillin’ the marshal’s position since Bilsom left town.” 

Ellen felt a chill along her spine. Jack had always been a sucker for hard-luck stories, and this was the hardest. A whole town at the mercy of killers because their only lawman had been a jerk. “What about the county sheriff?” Ellen insisted. 

“In Fowler’s pay. Won’t do nothin’ without Fowler tells him to.” 

Ellen looked at Jack, again imagining herself as Olivia de Havilland and Jack as Errol Flynn. But there wouldn’t be any Guinn “Big Boy” Williams or Alan Hale, Sr., to stand and fight at his side. She almost told Jack out loud, “There’s no little boy who’s going to die on the way to the Sunday school picnic. You don’t have to do this.” But Ellen merely said, “Do what you think is best, Jack.” 

“Only until you get a regular peace officer, and only if I’m assured of the fact that all or any of you will back me if it comes to that. Even a half-dozen professionals won’t stand against a whole town united. I’ll take the damn job, but only that way and no other.” 

The townsmen assembled on the porch sent up a cheer, and Mayor Berger pumped Jack’s right hand, smiled down at Ellen, handed Jack a shiny silver-plated star, pumped Jack’s hand again and clapped Jack on the shoulder. 

There should have been a crescendo of music and a quick montage sequence of Jack cleaning up the town. Warner Brothers Pictures would have done it that way. 

But there was none of that, only the smell of tobacco as some of the men lit cigars and Jack lit a cigarette—the match was struck for him by Mayor Berger. 

The only other thing was the hollow, scared feeling Ellen Naile felt in the pit of her stomach. Ellen closed her eyes, letting reality fade to black.