“For what?”
“For arguing with you.”
She smiled. “George, this wasn’t arguing. We were hashing things out. It’s the way folks are meant to do things. When we have different ways of looking at things, we need to go back and forth and figure things out. If you disagree strongly with someone, it’s wrong to just politely pretend all is well. If you love somebody, you should care enough to challenge them. So thank you, George, for questioning me. It made me stronger.”
George smiled at this. “I’m glad.”
“But George?”
“Yeah?”
“Next time, just tell me. Don’t pout for a couple of days first.”
George turned red at that but laughed. “All right, Mary. Go get changed.”
43
Mayfield boarded the big, white horse at the livery and walked the streets of Leadville.
He hated this town. Its noise and commotion and teeming wickedness.
With its promise of quick money, Leadville led most folks to ruin.
To Mayfield, the whole place felt like a warning to the West and the nation as a whole. The West was evolving quickly. The same could be said for the whole nation, especially as industrialization rose in the East, but the East already understood progress and wealth, and it would be stabilized against outsized change by its institutions and corruption and massive population.
Once a society was large and complicated enough, it could benefit only so much by increased productivity and revenue. The wealthy would grow richer, the corrupt would grow more powerful… and the working man? He would carry on, as he always carried on, sacrificing his time and health and ultimately his life for something to eat and the chance to marry and have children. That was it.
But in the West, things had been different.
Or at least it seemed like they might be different.
Different and better.
And in some stretches, the West was better. Of course, Mayfield rarely visited these places. There was no call for him in quiet regions where people treated each other with respect.
Places like Leadville, places where money flowed, vice thrived, and blood ran in the streets… these were his stomping grounds.
He just wished the West would pay attention to places like Leadville, put two and two together, and wipe them from the map.
As he walked along, he was unsurprised to see the town’s many saloons, gambling houses, and bordellos open and running at full capacity despite the state’s law against such establishments operating on Sundays.
People here didn’t care about the law. They cared about silver and alcohol, gambling and sporting girls.
None of which interested Mayfield in the least. Like money, these things held no power over him.
He cared only for the law and specifically, for enforcing the law and taking bad men out of circulation, alive if he must, dead if he had his way.
Somewhere here in this godforsaken town, Toole and his cronies were celebrating the murder of Conn Sullivan and Bill Sheffield.
Mayfield went from place to place, looking for them, starting with the saloons. People looked at him, saw the badge, and elbowed each other.
Some, no doubt, recognized him.
Even those who did not recognize him understood he was a U.S. Marshal.
And that meant real law.
Their reaction provided a degree of satisfaction. It meant U.S. Marshals still had a good name here, a name that invoked wary respect.
