No Good Deed (or What Moffat Did Next)

It was not what I was accustomed to. The coach lacked varnish and even the rudimentary comforts of a pukka mail coach. The driver, a squat fellow with an impenetrable accent, whose beard almost obscured a mouth entirely lacking in teeth, called it a stage coach. The man's clothes were as dusty as the coach and bony horses. His preference in attire seemed to lean toward leather rather than cloth. He accepted a silver dollar in payment, whether this would have been more had I purchased passage at the Overland Stage office, I did not know. It was a relief to take my seat in the coach leaving what passed for a town in the state of Missouri, if only to escape the ripe odour emanating from those clothes or the man himself. My two fellow travellers, however, proved notable for their own peculiarities.

They were fellows of similar age, neither seeming more than thirty. Both were possessed of prodigious moustaches and dressed in what I had come to view as the colonial style. This seemed chiefly to consist of wearing any mismatched colours and cloths cut in unflattering imitations of earlier fashions from London. Both wore the ubiquitous boots and a most peculiar hat. It came as some surprise when one of these fellows thrust out a hand and bellowed over the rattle of the wheels

'Clemens! Both of us, that is. Pleased to meecha!'

I took the proffered hand, the hand was not calloused, but the grip was firm and recognisably on the square. He held my eye as I switched my handshake to what was clearly his brother's hand and gave the name that had served me best.

'Moffat, at your service.'

It transpired that this Clemens and his brother were bound for the Nevada Territory.

'Orion has become part of the grand orchestra of the State,' Clemens said.

I enquired as to what instrument he played.

Clemens' laughter took some time to subside, before he enlightened me further,

'Hell, no! Orion's on his way to a job as Secretary to the State Governor. Imagine that! My own brother a durned parasite.'

His brother gave him a look of affection rather than distaste, which I found surprising. Out of manners and nothing more, I enquired,

'And you?'

His eyes gleamed, there was something puckish about the fellow, as though he found me, his brother, the world at large - and even himself - a rich and satisfying source of amusement.

'Silver!' he said. He swept off his peculiar high-crowned, broad-brimmed hat.

'See! I've even got my Boss of the Plains hat! Got to help a Missouri boy get ahead, after all.'

He pointed at a crudely fashioned maker's label inside the lining. I could not read it in the poor light inside the coach.

'JB'll be as famous as Mr Samuel Colt, or I'm a Dutchman.'

I doubted that, the hat was ugly and hardly suitable for a gentleman. It would not have surprised me to learn that the Clemens brothers had been the only purchasers of this innovatory item. Evidently, Mr Clemens was possessed of an unseemly curiosity, for he chose to enquire of me

'What brings you here, Mr Moffat? You ain't a prospecting type, I reckon.'

'Prospects interest me, not prospecting.' I said.

It was a foolish answer to give such a curious fellow.

'I can tell you're a swell feller, ain't he though, Orion? I reckon we'll rub along fine with him.'

I was unsure whether the fellow could be quite such a pudding-head as he appeared.