Chance was running because he wanted to stay alive.
The resources of the law though, Chance had told himself a dozen times a hundred times, could always be tapped by Grawson, with his badge, his credentials, with documents from Charleston, forged or otherwise, to which he would have had access.
Thus the people of the town, supposing him to be fleeing from the law, were not as mistaken as one might have supposed.
For most practical purposes Edward Chance was indeed running from the law, and knew it, that law that might with a shuffling of papers, benignly surrender him into the hands of Lester Grawson, Charleston detective, for return to the scene of some hypothetical crime, a return that once had stopped short in an alley in New York City, and next time might terminate in some grove of cottonwoods, or perhaps on the open prairie, or perhaps in some homesteader’s abandoned shack, wherever Grawson, at his pleasure, would decide to perform the execution.
Chance went to the bar. “Bourbon,” he said.
The bartender set a small heavy glass before Chance, turned, took a squarish bottle from in front of the mirror and filled the glass.
The bartender hadn’t said anything, nor had anyone else.
Irritated, Chance threw the drink down, not looking the way it tasted. The swallow of amber fire burned its way down his gullet and hit his empty stomach like dropping a torch into a barrel of oil.
Chance put down a silver three-cent piece on the bar, which the bartender retrieved.
Chance became aware of a burly figure in an unfastened blue jacket next to him.
Chance put down another three-cent piece. The bartender picked up the second coin, then refilled the glass.
“Where you from, Stranger?” asked the voice of the man next to him, the man in the blue jacket. Chance noted the two wide, yellow chevrons on the sleeve. The speaker was drunk. The voice was not pleasant.
Chance turned to look at Corporal Jake Totter. He saw the heavy face, its lines loose from alcohol, the unfriendly gray eyes red and prominently veined. Mostly Chance noted that the nose had been broken and had not been set properly, or had never been set.
“East,” said Chance.
Chance returned to the drink. He picked up the glass.
“I said where you from, Stranger?” repeated the voice. A wide hand, heavy as a wrench, held down his arm.
Chance turned again to regard the man in the unbuttoned blue jacket. He saw long white underwear under the jacket, black around the collar. The man wore suspenders. On the back of his head was a cavalry hat, with crossed sabers on the turned-up brim. Around the man’s neck there was a yellow neckerchief.
“You’re out of uniform, Soldier,” said Chance.
“You ain’t from the East,” said the voice. The words had been slow, measured, slurred with drink, hostile.
“I am,” said Chance.
“You’re a liar,” said the man.
“Take your hand off my arm,” said Chance.
“I know that South-talk,” said the man. “You’re from the South.”
“Once,” said Chance.
“We whipped you,” said the man.
He removed his hand from Chance’s arm and pulled off his jacket, put it on the bar, and put his hat on top of it. Chance noticed that the men in the bar had gathered around, but leaving an open circle near where they stood. Chance thought that someone might as well come up now and draw a scratch line on the floor. How drunk is he, Chance asked himself. Damn drunk, Chance answered his own question.
“We whipped you once,” said Totter, wiping his underwear-clad arm across his face, “and by God we can do it again.”
“Forget it, Corporal,” said Chance.
Chance had been four years old when the war had ended. He doubted if Totter had been much older. Maybe six or seven.
Chance tried to take the drink calmly, but when he lifted it to his mouth, Totter’s arm lashed out and splashed it in his face-The rim of the glass stung his cheek.
It was quiet in the saloon.
Chance put the empty glass down on the bar, with a small click. His face was expressionless. He did not look at Totter directly, though he watched him in the mirror. “You owe me for that drink, Corporal,” said Chance.
Totter, in the mirror, spat in his hands and wiped them on the sides of his trousers, across the yellow stripe that ran to his boots. Then he balled up his fists and hunched over.
Chance noted that Totter was standing with his left side turned a bit toward him. Judging from Totter’s fists this was not a boxing stance, but a natural precaution, protecting himself from a kick. Chance suddenly realized that Totter would not be a particularly pleasant man to fight, particularly not in a saloon. Totter knew what he was up to, and what he guarded against he presumably would not be above doing. If there was a fight it would not be a good one to lose. Therefore, Chance told himself, there must be no risk of losing it.
But Chance did not want to fight.
He had enough trouble.
There would be a sheriff in this town, undoubtedly, and if he were picked up in a brawl, there would be questions, difficulties.
But Totter owed him for a drink.
“I’ll forget this,” said Chance, still not facing Totter, “if you buy me that drink.”
When Totter charged, Chance was not at the bar. He had moved to one side and Totter plunged into the wood. As he did so Chance’s hand seemed to brush at his throat and, choking, Totter sank to the floor, his hands at his neck, his face turning black.
No, said Chance to himself, there would not be a risk of losing it.
What Chance had done could have caused death, if done by an amateur hand, with too much force, too clumsily, not properly, but Chance, a skilled physician, had not broken the cartilage that would have closed the windpipe, that might have closed the life of a drunken soldier in the dusty town of Good Promise, South Dakota.
Chance hauled Totter to his feet and half threw him over the bar, taking the man’s wallet from his hip pocket, and gouging about in it until he found a liberty nickel which he tossed to the bartender, who filled his bourbon glass for him and shoved it back to him, along with two Indian-head pennies in change. Chance returned the pennies to Totter’s wallet and shoved it back in the man’s hip pocket; then he sat Totter down on the brass rail at the foot of the bar, and Totter slid from it to the sawdust floor, sitting there, holding his throat.
“He didn’t even hit him,” said one of the men watching.
“Get up, Jake,” said a soldier standing nearby.
“Get him, Jake!” urged another.
But Jake Totter sat in the sawdust, holding his throat, trying to get oxygen into his lungs.
Chance chucked down the drink.
He looked down at Jake, who was breathing better now, but with difficulty. The burly figure sitting on the floor was now, it seemed, sober, sick, enraged. He rolled over on his side and threw up against the bar.