Free E.L. Doctorow by Welcome to Hard Times

exchange. And I began to be tried too. We neither of us figured there was much good in Leo Jenks.
    But one morning Molly approached him and with aloud, throaty voice, said to him: “Mr. Jenks, you find any use for that gun except in oiling it?”
    He was sitting with his back to a wheel and he sprang up fast when she spoke and took his hat off.
    “Well yes’m, ah kin shoot whur yew kin see.”
    “Is that right?”
    “It is, yes’m.”
    “Well I see a windmill over there, and on top of that windmill is eight stubby blades and I’m looking at the one wavin’ straight up at heaven.”
    Jenks put on his hat and cocked his pistol, aimed, and sent off a shot which splintered the topmost blade. The horses shied. Over by his shack John Bear stopped hoeing his rows and stood up to watch.
    “I see the neck of a bottle,” cried Molly, “sticking up out of that rubble there.”
    Jenks turned, took aim where she pointed, and the piece of glass sprayed into the air. Three more times Molly fixed her eye on things—a stone, a hump of dirt, a stick of wood—and each time this Jenks placed his round where she called it. The shots echoed off the rock hills and came back to us. Everyone was watching now, the women over by their tent, Zar from a corner of his new corral, and Jimmy squatting on the back of the Major’s buckboard. I was close enough to Jenks to see that when he took his aim those shifty wolf eyes of his squinted with some true knowledge.
    He finally holstered his pistol and took his hat off again.
    “I thank you, Mr. Jenks,” Molly said looking my way, “it’s good to find a man in these parts. I wish the Lord my husband knew the gun the way you do!”
    After that Jenks had no trouble deciding what was hisaim in life. He rode the wagon off east one dawn and at night came back with a half a dozen prairie dogs slung from the box. You have to be quick to hit a prairie dog while he’s diving for his hole—I learned later Jenks parked the stage in the middle of a dog town and lay atop of it for hours till the animals forgot he was there and came up out of their burrows.
    Jenks turned out to be a good hunter and he bartered his kills for my water or for Zar’s liquor or for one of the girls. Fresh meat is a luxury and there is nothing will go down easier than a well-roasted haunch of dog or a good rabbit stew. But when Molly cooked up some of Jenks’s meat she always spiced it with her scorn, which made it hard to swallow.
    By the time the stage came we were seeing the last of summer. The sun was getting white and it was setting earlier. The winds were lasting and they put out more of a bite. Each day they blew off more of the old town dust and ate away the char of the old street. Zar had his place built, a long low public house of clapboard and sod, it stood where his tent had stood—on the north side of the windmill—and its door, like the door of my new shack, faced to the southeast. When the stage drove in it was in front of Zar’s that the driver reined his horses.
    We were all there to meet it, even John Bear. The stage was run by the Territory Express Company and the name was painted in red letters along the side. The letters were well covered with dust and grime, the tails of the horses were caked with mudballs. Our town was a good trip from the last stop.
    The driver was Alf Moffet; I knew him. He sat up onhis box leaning forward with his arms on his knees and the reins loose in his hand. He was looking for a face he knew and the first one he saw was Molly.
    “Why Miss Molly,” he said, “I heard you and Flo was dead.”
    Molly frowned but she said nothing. The Russian and his ladies were right there and I feared Alf would say too much. I had not had trouble with any of the miners that way. Molly was hid the first few Saturdays they came and after that they did not think to question her. But I knew Alf for a fun-loving man, he had a voice full of gravel and he liked to talk.
    “Well Alf,” I said