The Wanderer
David Ferranti
Sam glanced back at the saloon door. “That sounds like a tall tale to me,” Abe chuckled.
Abe hit his shoulder, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough
to be felt. “It’s true,” Ray insisted. “Heard it off a man who rode with a
man who saw it. A flock of ravens brings him meat whenever
he’s hungry.”
“Quit gawking,” Abe hissed. “He’ll get here eventually. Have
Bill pour you another drink.”
Sam swung back around. “I wasn’t gawking,” he said.
“Sure you weren’t,” Abe replied. He sipped his whiskey.
Abe’s biting mockery combined with the sour sound of the
tuneless piano in the back of the Dead Horse Saloon made
Sam grit his teeth. He gestured for Bill to fill up his glass. The
bartender obliged.
This was a story that Sam had not heard. He exchanged a look
with Abe.
“He talks to them,” Ray continued. “To the birds. And they
talk back. Tell him things. Secret things. Just ask Bill, he’ll tell
you. Amos has been coming through his town since he built this
saloon.”
The bartender had been making his rounds of the saloon’s few
tables, but the sound of his name brought him back to the bar.
For perhaps the hundredth time that night, Sam wondered if
coming to the saloon had been a mistake. He’d been following a
hunch, and so far, his hunches hadn’t let him down. “You youngsters want to know about Amos? Well, you aren’t
the first, and you won’t be the last either.” He set down his filthy
cleaning rag.
Sam hadn’t gotten a hunch one way or another on the cattle
drive job. That’s why he’d come here, to find Amos and speak
with him. “He’s a tycoon from the East who grew tired of that life and
came out West to find something different. Or a Confederate
soldier who survived Gettysburg. Or the son of a fur trader and
an Indian woman, abandoned by his mother and raised by des-
ert coyotes. No one knows the truth. No one even knows where
to start looking for it.” Bill shrugged. “More whiskey?”
Abe finished the rest of his whiskey and set the glass down with
exaggerated care. His long, slim fingers traced the smooth wood
of the bar, worn down over the years by hundreds of patrons.
“What do we actually know about Amos?”
The question caught Sam off guard. “This isn’t another one of
your jokes, is it?”
“No,” Abe said. “For once it’s not. I’m just curious.”
“He passes through town every now and then,” Sam replied.
“He’s not a cowboy, or a trader, or anything. Doesn’t even own
a horse.”
“Brave man.” A slight sarcastic edge crept back into Abe’s voice.
“Walking all over the West with no horse. How does he eat? Or
hide from Indians?”
“The birds feed him.” The comment came from a grizzled man
sitting further down the bar— it was Ray, one of the town’s
deputies who seemed to spend very little time deputizing and
quite a lot of time drinking.
12 Spring 2017
Abe wanted more whiskey. Sam refused. He examined his fin-
gernails, and began to clean them with his knife.
The saloon door creaked open. A man stood there, outlined
against the murky night by the dim lamplight coming from the
bar. As he walked into the saloon, Sam noticed a slight limp
in his step. The stranger’s eyes were dark and hooded, his hair
tangled and flecked with grey, his clothes ripped and covered
with dust. There was no gun belt around his waist, no holster at
his hip. He was the only man in the saloon not wearing a gun.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Abe nudged his shoulder. “That must be
Amos.”
Sam slipped his knife back into his sheath. The stranger reached
the bar, accepted a glass from Bill with a nod of thanks. Sam
watched those hooded eyes flick back and forth as he drank.
Abe nudged him again. “Well? Go ask him then. I still say we
should take it, but if it’ll put your mind at ease, you may as
well.”