Adam Steele 35, page 1
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Somewhere between Abilene and San Antonio Adam Steele became a man of property. Not a settled man – this property was as mobile as he was. Two of the finest white Arab stallions he’d ever seen, bought on an impulse at a trailside auction just outside the small town of Braddock, Texas. Two stallions that conferred on him a certain pride of possession as he led them into town.
Trouble was, the rule may be that possession is nine parts of the law but the law in Braddock was pretty unruly. And possession turned out to be strictly temporary – for Steele and for a whole succession of new owners. Most of whom found out that life could be a pretty temporary business as well.
ADAM STEELE 35: STRANGER IN A STRANGE TOWN
By George G. Gilman
Copyright © 1983 by George G. Gilman
This electronic edition published March 2024
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
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Series Editor: Mike Stotter
Cover Illustration © Tony Masero
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for:
Denis and Annie
no Indians,
but they are pretty good with arrows.
Chapter One
EL PASO HAD been good for two weeks but Adam Steele was now glad to be riding an open trail again, with nowhere particular in mind to go and all the time in the world to get wherever destiny chose to take him. It was the early morning of the second day out of town and it promised to be fine, with not a sign of the irritating wind that so often blew through this west Texas area. He headed at an easy pace along the arrow straight trail across a piece of country that was desolate to every as yet unhazed horizon. Often he allowed the empty sky and the vacant land to see a sign of his contentment: when his face showed a smile with a boyish quality that acted to drop perhaps five or six years off his age. And sometimes he whistled, albeit tunelessly and for just a few seconds, through the teeth that were displayed between his drawn back lips.
This Virginian who was a long way and a lot of years from home was not usually so demonstrative about his innermost feelings, even when he was so far removed from anyone who might chance to catch him in a moment of unguardedness. But then this man astride the black stallion heading toward the newly risen sun was not normally so confident of his ability to show his feelings – except on those occasions when necessity had implanted the need to kill. And that had not happened since a long time before El Paso, on a trail far to the west of the Texas town where he had been paid the amount of five thousand dollars by a wealthy Mexican rancher. The payment made not for the killing – the Mexican was prepared to offer much more for that. But Adam Steele did not kill for money. Had committed most of the other evils of which a man is capable, but always stopped short of this one.
He looked not at all like any kind of killer as he reached a fork in the trail and reined in his horse alongside a two-pointer signpost of sun-bleached and time-pitted timber with lettering that had been seared into the wood in a year when the towns named were in their infancy. To the northeast was Abilene; to the southeast, San Antonio. He unhooked a canteen from the horn of his saddle and sucked some warm but still sweet water from it as he contemplated the alternatives.
He was not a tall nor a conventionally powerfully built man, stood a part of an inch over five and a half feet and weighed no more than a hundred and fifty pounds. But there was, at second or third glance, a look of compact strength in the way his lean frame was put together. Likewise, at first impression there was in the structure of his face nothing to suggest he was any different from the mass of his fellow men. It was the undoubtedly good-looking face of a man of about forty – except when the boyish smile subtracted a few years. A sun-burnished face with element-toughened skin networked by the lines of the passing years and by experiences that were more often hard than soft. With eyes that were coal black in pure white surrounds, always alert. A mouth that was gentle in its line – in repose looking more inclined to smile than to scowl. Teeth that were even and unstained. An unprominent nose. When he was younger, the premature grayness of his formerly red hair had caused him to stand out in small crowds, but he was now of an age where his years and the hair coloration formed an unremarkable match. The hair was neatly trimmed short, but allowed to extend into controlled sideburns. He was clean-shaven – newly so at this time of the day.
He sealed the canteen, hung it back on the horn and heeled his mount in the direction of the more northerly town – for no other reason than that the sun would be less of a bother to his eyes while it inched its way up the unclouded dome of the sky. He rode at the same unhurried pace as before.
Out here on the west Texas emptiness between the Guadalupe Mountains on the New Mexico border and the Sierra Viega range beyond which the Rio Grande marked the international boundary with old Mexico, anyone who did happen to come within sight of Adam Steele would certainly give him more than a single passing glance. But it was not until late in the afternoon when he was some ten miles up the Abilene trail that his style of dress attracted more attention to him than would have been the case had he worn garb similar to that of the men who watched him.
His attire was that of a man of the city: a dark suit of expensive cut with a cream-colored vest and a white shirt worn beneath the wide-lapeled jacket. Around his neck a white silken scarf loosely tied to form a cravat. On his hands were skintight buckskin gloves, black in color. On his feet were spurless riding boots with the pants cuff outside, also black. His Stetson was broad-brimmed and low-crowned, gray with a black band of tooled leather. He displayed no gun on his person. Every item of the clothing was less than three weeks off the shelves of El Paso stores, purchased with a portion of the five thousand dollars he had received from one Mexican after killing another. The ornate saddle – black, studded with metallic ornamentation – and the black stallion to which it was cinched had been in his possession a little longer. Both in fine condition, having been well treated by yet another Mexican who died to the west of El Paso.
The bedroll and its contents, and the sheepskin topcoat lashed to it, tied on behind the saddle, were all bought brand new in the town. Likewise, the supplies in the pair of bulging saddlebags. Not so the only weapon that the dudishly dressed rider carried overtly – a .44 caliber Colt Hartford six shot revolving rifle that was held in the forward slung boot on the right side of the saddle. This was many years old and Adam Steele’s only material inheritance from a once immensely wealthy father, whose name was in the inscription on the gold plate screwed to the right side of the fire-scorched rosewood stock:
To Benjamin P. Steele, with gratitude
Abraham Lincoln.
Far less obvious than the sporting model rifle that the Virginian had never used for the hunting of game, was a short-bladed and double-edged throwing knife that he carried in a sheath strapped to his right leg – which he could reach through a slit in the outside seam of his pants leg. Only the more perceptive watchers of this lone rider, incongruously dressed for the kind of country he travelled, might find cause to wonder about the short slit in the pants of his near-new suit. And it was unlikely that anyone who did not know him would suspect that the scarf he now affected in the manner of a cravat could, if the occasion demanded, become an Oriental instrument of strangulation.
There was, Steele saw after a careful study, nobody he recognized in the group of two dozen or so men and four women who eyed him with a range of expressions from indifference to resentment as he closed with them; their surprise at his dudish appearance diminished as the greater part of their attention was recaptured by the reason they had assembled here at the side of the trail. In the front yard of a farmhouse formed by the house itself, a barn, one fence of a corral and a second fence with a gate in it that divided the property from the trail. The fences were falling down, the house and barn were in disrepair and the fields out back of the house were weed-choked after at least one season of neglect.
‘Good afternoon to you, sir! If you have come to purchase, I am afraid you are a little late! There is just the one lot left! But, I feel I can say without fear of contradiction, this final lot is the finest—’
‘Quit with the sales talk and get on with the sale, Byron Nolan!’ a woman demanded impatiently. ‘It’s near suppertime and I got me three hungry young ones in need of feedin.’
‘Now it’s you holdin’ up the proceedin’s instead of him, Lizzie Tucker!’ a man cut in, loud but sounding weary.
The people had arrived at the isolated farm on horseback or aboard wagons. Some of them riding with neighbors for there were just ten saddle horses and two flatbeds with pairs in the traces on the trail side of the yard’s front fence. Inside the yard, parked at one end of the stoop of the house, was a new-looking buggy without a horse in the shafts. This obviously belonged to Nolan who stood on the stoop, a short, stoutly built, red round-faced man in a city-style suit that was less well tailored from cheaper fabric than the one Steele wore. The auctioneer’s boots were shinier, though. And, in the appropriate surroundings, his high hat would probably be considered a good deal more fashionable. He had a fussy, officious manner and looked to be the kind of man it was easy to insult.
Or perhaps this impression was only created by the tough, thick-skinned look of the man’s audience as his color deepened and he replaced gold-framed spectacles on his nose to scan some papers clutched in both his pudgy hands. While he was out of his element against the farm backdrop, the men and women were very much as one with it – to the extent of looking time-ravaged and as ill-kempt as the buildings, fences and fields of what a faded paint sign on the front gate proclaimed to be Haskins Farm. In an age range from thirty to seventy, all the women at the lower end and most of the men over fifty-five, all of them had the stamp of farming people; with the careworn look and threadbare clothing that told of much hard work for little reward. They were clean, though, of flesh and clothes and there was a well-tended look to their animals and their wagons. So, poor people but the kind that took pains to maintain appearances as best they could.
And thus it was that Adam Steele felt an affinity with them as he halted his stallion and remained in the saddle between the hitched horses and the parked wagons on the trail – for during almost all the times that were worse than they were for him now, he had done his best to achieve the highest standards he could in the way he was.
‘Yes, yes, we must get on,’ Nolan agreed, digging a watch from a vest pocket and flicking open the cover to peer at the dial. He shook his head, as if disbelieving the watch. Then replaced it in his pocket and looked toward the barn to call: ‘All right, Mr. Pardo, bring out the animals!’
Steele glanced back over his right shoulder and was able to look directly at the sun through the edge of a narrow bank of cloud just above the south-western horizon. Placed the time at between six and seven – closer to seven. Looked back at the darkly-shadowed open doorway of the dilapidated barn and, on this occasion, sensing that some interest had switched back to him, was easily able to conceal what he felt about the two white stallions that a sad-faced man in blue denim coveralls led into the fading light of afternoon becoming evening.
‘Here you are, ladies and gentlemen!’ the auctioneer announced eagerly. ‘You have all, with the single exception of the newly arrived gentleman, had the opportunity already to examine at close quarters these two fine Arab stallions that were purchased by the late Jeremiah Haskins before his untimely—’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, Nolan!’ a man with a gray beard that reached halfway down his chest groaned loudly. ‘We all know all we need to know about them there animals—’ceptin’ for what money you’re gonna start the biddin’ at!’
‘Right on!’ a woman agreed and there was a lot of head nodding and affirmative sounds as the auctioneer tried once more to delay the start of the final business of the day.
‘But I think it only fair that the stranger should be allowed, if he wishes, to take a look at the stallions and be made cognizant of their impeccable pedigree—’
‘If he wanted to do all that, he should’ve showed up at the sale at the proper time, Nolan!’ the gray-bearded man snapped, his fretful impatience moving toward anger; which he shared in a glower between the man on the stoop of the house and the one astride the black horse beyond the front fence of the yard.
And then Adam Steele curtailed the new chorus of agreement when he raised a hand to touch it to the brim of his hat and said in a soft-spoken drawl that clearly announced his Virginian background: ‘Grateful to you for your thought of me, Mr. Nolan. But I reckon I can see enough from here for my purpose.’
The round-and red-faced auctioneer was perplexed by the response from the stranger, while the loose-knit crowd of countrywise men and women on the yard before him were for the most part satisfied that the delay was at an end. Just a few spared a final look of suspicion for Steele before they gave their full attention back to Byron.
‘Now,’ Nolan said into the expectant silence, rustling the sheaf of papers in his hand. ‘As the catalogue states, the final lot may be divided into two should there be two interested parties – and no single party who wishes to purchase the pair.’
‘A hundred bucks the pair, Nolan!’ the gray-bearded man bid as the auctioneer waited for a response to his implied query.
‘One twenty-five!’ Lizzie Tucker called firmly and stood with her hands fisted on her broad hips and with her ample bosom thrust forward in an attitude of determined challenge.
‘Ladies and gent—’ Byron Nolan tried to interject.
‘One fifty!’
‘And another twenty-five!’
‘Two fifty and I’m out above that!’
‘Two sixty, Nolan!’
The man who had bid two fifty spat angrily into the dirt of the yard, but then shrugged his shoulders in resignation as he moved away from the group, gave a look of lost hope to the pair of white stallions being held at the bridles by the sad faced man, and went into the barn.
‘Two seventy-five.’
‘Three!’
‘Ah, my opening bid price has been reached!’ the auctioneer announced, with a grin of relief that became eagerness as he now began to point with his free hand at the prospect of each new bid.
This as, in fifty-dollar leaps, the offer for the two horses rose at a slowed down rate to five hundred and fifty dollars. By which time almost half the people at the sale had lost interest in the final lot – moved into and out of the barn to collect the items they had been able to afford earlier in the day. Farm implements mostly, and some household furniture and bric-a-brac, a cage with four chickens in it clucking noisily, a mongrel dog with a silent and dejected look, some books tied together with twine, a man’s clothing far from new, and various boxes of all shapes and sizes that kept their contents a secret at this late stage.
The gray-bearded man with a Deep South accent that was more pronounced as his irritation with the proceedings expanded was bitterly out of the bidding when it topped the seven hundred mark. And he glowered at the man who stood immediately at his side as this smaller, paler-skinned, clean shaven man snapped:
‘And fifty!’ Then side-stepped a pace away from the only man who had been competing with him above five hundred and fifty.
‘With Mr. Curtis, Mr. Devlin,’ the highly excited and slightly sweating auctioneer urged, pointing to the smaller man as he eyed the other one eagerly.
‘Ain’t just him!’ the bearded Devlin said with a sneer of contempt which he shared with Curtis who ignored him and a man and a woman who did not. ‘It’s him and the Tuckers in it together!’
‘If we are—’ the bulky Lizzie Tucker began.
‘It ain’t none of your business, Harv!’ A thinner, younger, less dominant and a male version of the woman completed.
‘Please, please, personalities must not enter into—’ Nolan pleaded, mopping at his brow with the papers as anxiety displaced his happiness of moments ago.
‘Have the nags and to hell with the whole damn lot of you!’ Devlin snarled, turning on his heels and storming toward the barn – would have charged Curtis out of his way had not the smaller and now quietly smiling man stepped forward.
‘With Mr. Nathanial Curtis!’ Nolan reminded his much-diminished audience as he squinted into the dull redness of the almost set sun that glinted with a brighter color off the lenses of his spectacles. ‘Once, twice—’
‘One thousand dollars!’ Adam Steele called, needing to raise his voice to be heard above the body of sound around him as wagons were loaded with purchases and maneuvered for a return trip and horses were awkwardly mounted by riders clutching cartons and sacks and unpacked items.
‘Sir?’ Nolan asked into the sudden silence that was brought by the Virginian’s bid.
‘The man said one thousand dollars!’ Harv Devlin responded with a pronounced triumphant glee in his voice and on his heavily-bearded face as he emerged from the barn, a wooden crate with obviously weighty contents held with both hands up on a shoulder.
