Free E.L. Doctorow by Welcome to Hard Times Page A

stepping up and clearing my throat, “we had a fire here as you can see but we’re not all dead. These here are some of our new citizens”—I pointed to Mae and Jessie and Adah—“and if you’ll step down and come into the new saloon I’ll buy you a drink and maybe introduce you to them.”
    “I can’t be stopping long, Blue,” Alf said, but he allowed me to take his arm while he jumped down. He grabbed his mail pouch and told the other man on the box, an old man I did not know, to unload. There were two barrels lashed to the back of the stage and a pile of boxes on the roof as well as what was inside. The Express took on freight if there was any room left after passengers. We always got supplies in plenty when it came and I had been counting on that since the day of the fire.
    Inside Zar’s place there were lamps burning. It was afternoon but the Russian had not built any windows. I sat Alf down on a camp chair at a wooden table and after our eyes were accustomed to the shadow Imotioned to Zar and he smilingly brought over a full bottle of whiskey and two glasses—just the way I had told him to do it. The glassware was Avery’s old stock Jimmy and I had recovered the day after the fire. I wanted to be careful with Alf.
    He was a big square-faced man, grey underneath his hat. He tossed off three drinks neat and when the dust was washed from his throat we began talking.
    “We got some orders to put in with you Alf,” I said.
    “Well Blue I don’t know. Company wants me to tell ’em when I get back if’n Hard Times is worth the trip any more.”
    “Miners are showing up more than ever, Alf. The Russian here is doing a good trade. People comin’ every day. This Mr. Jenks—I don’t know whether you saw him put there—he’s all the way from Kentucky.”
    Alf tilted his head to one side and smiled at me.
    “That was just a little accident, that fire,” I said. “The town will be up like a weed before you know it, Alf.”
    “Well now Blue I always liked you, yessir. If you was hanging by your fingers from a cliff you’d call it climbin’ a mountain.”
    Alf had heard about the fire from one of the people from the town—he didn’t say who. I couldn’t tell him any lies. “Same thing happened just a few years back to the town of Kingsville. Kingsville, Kansas. Did you know it?”
    “Never heard of it.”
    Alf poured another drink: “Well sir it was a good town, a railroad head. They had two, three livery stables, couple of stores, lots of nice frame houses, a jailmade of brick, some dandy saloons and a two-story hotel. Bunch of these Bad Men come along one spring, stayed three days. Killed twenty people. Broke up the hotel, wrecked the stores. Bricked up the doors and windows of the jailhouse, made of it an oven and roasted the Sheriff alive. Town never came back.”
    “What about the railroad?”
    “Catcher come along the following summer and they laid track right on through for another thirty miles. Pass by today you can wave at the prairie grass.”
    “Them Bad Men are sure a plague, Alf. It’s no use denying. Let’s have another drink.”
    When his head went back to receive the liquor I motioned to Zar who had been standing by the door. A moment later Mae and Jessie came in and sat down at the table. After I made the introduction I went out into the light.
    Bear was helping the old man unload the back of the wagon. Jimmy was on top of the stage untying the lashings. Jenks was fingering the rifle sticking out of the boot by the driver’s seat. But what made me really stand up was the sight of Ezra Maple. I hadn’t stopped to look for passengers, I couldn’t believe my eyes. He was standing there in an Eastern suit, a carpetbag was on the ground beside him. Lord if it wasn’t him!
    “Ezra!” I called.
    But Molly was talking to him and as I walked up she said: “Mister I told you he ain’t here, he couldn’t take the climate. Blue,” Molly said to me, “this is Ezra Maple’s