Three-Ten to Yuma and Other Stories

by Elmore Leonard

  He said just above a whisper, though it was clear in the silence, “End of the line.”

  The man turned in his saddle, looking at Scallen curiously. “The jail’s around on Commercial.”

  “I want you to be comfortable.”

  Scallen stepped out of the saddle, lifting a Winchester from the boot, and walked toward the hotel’s side door. A figure stood in the gloom of the doorway, behind the screen, and as Scallen reached the steps the screen door opened.

  “Are you the marshal?”

  “Yes, sir.” Scallen’s voice was soft and without emotion. “Deputy, from Bisbee.”

  “We’re ready for you. Two-oh-seven. A corner…fronts on Commercial.” He sounded proud of the accommodation.

  “You’re Mr. Timpey?”

  The man in the doorway looked surprised. “Yeah, Wells Fargo. Who’d you expect?”

  “You might have got a back room, Mr. Timpey. One with no windows.” He swung the shotgun on the man still mounted. “Step down easy, Jim.”

  The man, who was in his early twenties, a few years younger than Scallen, sat with one hand over the other on the saddle horn. Now he gripped the horn and swung down. When he was on the ground his hands were still close together, iron manacles holding them three chain lengths apart. Scallen motioned him toward the door with the stubby barrel of the shotgun.

  “Anyone in the lobby?”

  “The desk clerk,” Timpey answered him, “and a man in a chair by the front door.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know. He’s asleep…got his brim down over his eyes.”

  “Did you see anyone out on Commercial?”

  “No…I haven’t been out there.” At first he had seemed nervous, but now he was irritated, and a frown made his face pout childishly.

  Scallen said calmly, “Mr. Timpey, it was your line this man robbed. You want to see him go all the way to Yuma, don’t you?”

  “Certainly I do.” His eyes went to the outlaw, Jim Kidd, then back to Scallen hurriedly. “But why all the melodrama? The man’s under arrest—already been sentenced.”

  “But he’s not in jail till he walks through the gates at Yuma,” Scallen said. “I’m only one man, Mr. Timpey, and I’ve got to get him there.”

  “Well, dammit…I’m not the law! Why didn’t you bring men with you? All I know is I got a wire from our Bisbee office to get a hotel room and meet you here the morning of November third. There weren’t any instructions that I had to get myself deputized a marshal. That’s your job.”

  “I know it is, Mr. Timpey,” Scallen said, and smiled, though it was an effort. “But I want to make sure no one knows Jim Kidd’s in Contention until after train time this afternoon.”

  Jim Kidd had been looking from one to the other with a faintly amused grin. Now he said to Timpey, “He means he’s afraid somebody’s going to jump him.” He smiled at Scallen. “That marshal must’ve really sold you a bill of goods.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Timpey said.

  Kidd went on before Scallen could answer. “They hid me in the Huachuca lockup ’cause they knew nobody could get at me there…and finally the Bisbee marshal gets a plan. He and some others hopped the train in Benson last night, heading for Yuma with an army prisoner passed off as me.” Kidd laughed, as if the idea were ridiculous.

  “Is that right?” Timpey said.

  Scallen nodded. “Pretty much right.”

  “How does he know all about it?”

  “He’s got ears and ten fingers to add with.”

  “I don’t like it. Why just one man?”

  “Every deputy from here down to Bisbee is out trying to scare up the rest of them. Jim here’s the only one we caught,” Scallen explained—then added, “alive.”

  Timpey shot a glance at the outlaw. “Is he the one who killed Dick Moons?”

  “One of the passengers swears he saw who did it…and he didn’t identify Kidd at the trial.”

  Timpey shook his head. “Dick drove for us a long time. You know his brother lives here in Contention. When he heard about it he almost went crazy.” He hesitated, and then said again, “I don’t like it.”

  Scallen felt his patience wearing away, but he kept his voice even when he said, “Maybe I don’t either…but what you like and what I like aren’t going to matter a whole lot, with the marshal past Tucson by now. You can grumble about it all you want, Mr. Timpey, as long as you keep it under your breath. Jim’s got friends…and since I have to haul him clear across the territory, I’d just as soon they didn’t know about it.”

  Timpey fidgeted nervously. “I don’t see why I have to get dragged into this. My job’s got nothing to do with law enforcement….”

  “You have the room key?”

  “In the door. All I’m responsible for is the stage run between here and Tucson—”

  Scallen shoved the Winchester at him. “If you’ll take care of this and the horses till I get back, I’ll be obliged to you…and I know I don’t have to ask you not to mention we’re at the hotel.”

  He waved the shotgun and nodded and Jim Kidd went ahead of him through the side door into the hotel lobby. Scallen was a stride behind him, holding the stubby shotgun close to his leg. “Up the stairs on the right, Jim.”

  Kidd started up, but Scallen paused to glance at the figure in the armchair near the front. He was sitting on his spine with limp hands folded on his stomach and, as Timpey had described, his hat low over the upper part of his face. You’ve seen people sleeping in hotel lobbies before, Scallen told himself, and followed Kidd up the stairs. He couldn’t stand and wonder about it.

  Room 207 was narrow and high-ceilinged, with a single window looking down on Commercial Street. An iron bed was placed the long way against one wall and extended to the right side of the window, and along the opposite wall was a dresser with washbasin and pitcher and next to it a rough-board wardrobe. An unpainted table and two straight chairs took up most of the remaining space.

  “Lay down on the bed if you want to,” Scallen said.

  “Why don’t you sleep?” Kidd asked. “I’ll hold the shotgun.”

  The deputy moved one of the straight chairs near to the door and the other to the side of the table opposite the bed. Then he sat down, resting the shotgun on the table so that it pointed directly at Jim Kidd sitting on the edge of the bed near the window.

  He gazed vacantly outside. A patch of dismal sky showed above the frame buildings across the way, but he was not sitting close enough to look directly down onto the street. He said, indifferently, “I think it’s going to rain.”

  There was a silence, and then Scallen said, “Jim, I don’t have anything against you personally…this is what I get paid for, but I just want it understood that if you start across the seven feet between us, I’m going to pull both triggers at once—without first asking you to stop. That clear?”

  Kidd looked at the deputy marshal, then his eyes drifted out the window again. “It’s kinda cold too.” He rubbed his hands together and the three chain links rattled against each other. “The window’s open a crack. Can I close it?”

  Scallen’s grip tightened on the shotgun and he brought the barrel up, though he wasn’t aware of it. “If you can reach it from where you’re sitting.”

  Kidd looked at the windowsill and said without reaching toward it, “Too far.”

  “All right,” Scallen said, rising. “Lay back on the bed.” He worked his gun belt around so that now the Colt was on his left hip.

  Kidd went back slowly, smiling. “You don’t take any chances, do you? Where’s your sporting blood?”

  “Down in Bisbee with my wife and three youngsters,” Scallen told him without smiling, and moved around the table.

  There were no grips on the window frame. Standing with his side to the window, facing the man on the bed, he put the heel of his hand on the bottom ledge of the frame and shoved down hard. The window banged shut and with the slam he saw Jim Kidd kicking up off of his
back, his body straining to rise without his hands to help. Momentarily, Scallen hesitated and his finger tensed on the trigger. Kidd’s feet were on the floor, his body swinging up and his head down to lunge from the bed. Scallen took one step and brought his knee up hard against Kidd’s face.

  The outlaw went back across the bed, his head striking the wall. He lay there with his eyes open looking at Scallen.

  “Feel better now, Jim?”

  Kidd brought his hands up to his mouth, working the jaw around. “Well, I had to try you out,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d shoot.”

  “But you know I will the next time.”

  For a few minutes Kidd remained motionless. Then he began to pull himself straight. “I just want to sit up.”

  Behind the table Scallen said, “Help yourself.” He watched Kidd stare out the window.

  Then, “How much do you make, Marshal?” Kidd asked the question abruptly.

  “I don’t think it’s any of your business.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  Scallen hesitated. “A hundred and fifty a month,” he said, finally, “some expenses, and a dollar bounty for every arrest against a Bisbee ordinance in the town limits.”

  Kidd shook his head sympathetically. “And you got a wife and three kids.”

  “Well, it’s more than a cowhand makes.”

  “But you’re not a cowhand.”

  “I’ve worked my share of beef.”

  “Forty a month and keep, huh?” Kidd laughed.

  “That’s right, forty a month,” Scallen said. He felt awkward. “How much do you make?”

  Kidd grinned. When he smiled he looked very young, hardly out of his teens. “Name a month,” he said. “It varies.”

  “But you’ve made a lot of money.”

  “Enough. I can buy what I want.”

  “What are you going to be wanting the next five years?”

  “You’re pretty sure we’re going to Yuma.”

  “And you’re pretty sure we’re not,” Scallen said. “Well, I’ve got two train passes and a shotgun that says we are. What’ve you got?”

  Kidd smiled. “You’ll see.” Then he said right after it, his tone changing, “What made you join the law?”

  “The money,” Scallen answered, and felt foolish as he said it. But he went on, “I was working for a spread over by the Pantano Wash when Old Nana broke loose and raised hell up the Santa Rosa Valley. The army was going around in circles, so the Pima County marshal got up a bunch to help out and we tracked Apaches almost all spring. The marshal and I got along fine, so he offered me a deputy job if I wanted it.” He wanted to say that he started for seventy-five and worked up to the one hundred and fifty, but he didn’t.

  “And then someday you’ll get to be marshal and make two hundred.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And then one night a drunk cowhand you’ve never seen will be tearing up somebody’s saloon and you’ll go in to arrest him and he’ll drill you with a lucky shot before you get your gun out.”

  “So you’re telling me I’m crazy.”

  “If you don’t already know it.”

  Scallen took his hand off the shotgun and pulled tobacco and paper from his shirt pocket and began rolling a cigarette. “Have you figured out yet what my price is?”

  Kidd looked startled, momentarily, but the grin returned. “No, I haven’t. Maybe you come higher than I thought.”

  Scallen scratched a match across the table, lighted the cigarette, then threw it to the floor, between Kidd’s boots. “You don’t have enough money, Jim.”

  Kidd shrugged, then reached down for the cigarette. “You’ve treated me pretty good. I just wanted to make it easy on you.”

  The sun came into the room after a while. Weakly at first, cold and hazy. Then it warmed and brightened and cast an oblong patch of light between the bed and the table. The morning wore on slowly because there was nothing to do and each man sat restlessly thinking about somewhere else, though it was a restlessness within and it showed on neither of them.

  The deputy rolled cigarettes for the outlaw and himself and most of the time they smoked in silence. Once Kidd asked him what time the train left. He told him shortly after three, but Kidd made no comment.

  Scallen went to the window and looked out at the narrow rutted road that was Commercial Street. He pulled a watch from his vest pocket and looked at it. It was almost noon, yet there were few people about. He wondered about this and asked himself if it was unnaturally quiet for a Saturday noon in Contention…or if it were just his nerves….

  He studied the man standing under the wooden awning across the street, leaning idly against a support post with his thumbs hooked in his belt and his flat-crowned hat on the back of his head. There was something familiar about him. And each time Scallen had gone to the window—a few times during the past hour—the man had been there.

  He glanced at Jim Kidd lying across the bed, then looked out the window in time to see another man moving up next to the one at the post. They stood together for the space of a minute before the second man turned a horse from the tie rail, swung up, and rode off down the street.

  The man at the post watched him go and tilted his hat against the sun glare. And then it registered. With the hat low on his forehead Scallen saw him again as he had that morning. The man lying in the armchair…as if asleep.

  He saw his wife, then, and the three youngsters and he could almost feel the little girl sitting on his lap where she had climbed up to kiss him good-bye, and he had promised to bring her something from Tucson. He didn’t know why they had come to him all of a sudden. And after he had put them out of his mind, since there was no room now, there was an upset feeling inside as if he had swallowed something that would not go down all the way. It made his heart beat a little faster.

  Jim Kidd was smiling up at him. “Anybody I know?”

  “I didn’t think it showed.”

  “Like the sun going down.”

  Scallen glanced at the man across the street and then to Jim Kidd. “Come here.” He nodded to the window. “Tell me who your friend is over there.”

  Kidd half rose and leaned over looking out the window, then sat down again. “Charlie Prince.”

  “Somebody else just went for help.”

  “Charlie doesn’t need help.”

  “How did you know you were going to be in Contention?”

  “You told that Wells Fargo man I had friends…and about the posses chasing around in the hills. Figure it out for yourself. You could be looking out a window in Benson and seeing the same thing.”

  “They’re not going to do you any good.”

  “I don’t know any man who’d get himself killed for a hundred and fifty dollars.” Kidd paused. “Especially a man with a wife and young ones….”

  Men rode into town in something less than an hour later. Scallen heard the horses coming up Commercial, and went to the window to see the six riders pull to a stop and range themselves in a line in the middle of the street facing the hotel. Charlie Prince stood behind them, leaning against the post.

  Then he moved away from it, leisurely, and stepped down into the street. He walked between the horses and stopped in front of them just below the window. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Jim!”

  In the quiet street it was like a pistol shot.

  Scallen looked at Kidd, seeing the smile that softened his face and was even in his eyes. Confidence. It was all over him. And even with the manacles on, you would believe that it was Jim Kidd who was holding the shotgun.

  “What do you want me to tell him?” Kidd said.

  “Tell him you’ll write every day.”

  Kidd laughed and went to the window, pushing it up by the top of the frame. It raised a few inches. Then he moved his hands under the window and it slid up all the way.

  “Charlie, you go buy the boys a drink. We’ll be down shortly.”

  “Are you all right?”

&n
bsp; “Sure I’m all right.”

  Charlie Prince hesitated. “What if you don’t come down? He could kill you and say you tried to break…. Jim, you tell him what’ll happen if we hear a gun go off.”

  “He knows,” Kidd said, and closed the window. He looked at Scallen standing motionless with the shotgun under his arm. “Your turn, Marshal.”

  “What do you expect me to say?”

  “Something that makes sense. You said before I didn’t mean a thing to you personally—what you’re doing is just a job. Well, you figure out if it’s worth getting killed for. All you have to do is throw your guns on the bed and let me walk out the door and you can go back to Bisbee and arrest all the drunks you want. Nobody’s going to blame you with the odds stacked seven to one. You know your wife’s not going to complain….”

  “You should have been a lawyer, Jim.”

  The smile began to fade from Kidd’s face. “Come on—what’s it going to be?”

  The door rattled with three knocks in quick succession. Abruptly the room was silent. The two men looked at each other and now the smile disappeared from Kidd’s face completely.

  Scallen moved to the side of the door, tiptoeing in his high-heeled boots, then pointed his shotgun toward the bed. Kidd sat down.

  “Who is it?”

  For a moment there was no answer. Then he heard, “Timpey.”

  He glanced at Kidd, who was watching him. “What do you want?”

  “I’ve got a pot of coffee for you.”

  Scallen hesitated. “You alone?”

  “Of course I am. Hurry up, it’s hot!”

  He drew the key from his coat pocket, then held the shotgun in the crook of his arm as he inserted the key with one hand and turned the knob with the other. The door opened and slammed against him, knocking him back against the dresser. He went off balance, sliding into the wardrobe, going down on his hands and knees, and the shotgun clattered across the floor to the window. He saw Jim Kidd drop to the floor for the gun….

  “Hold it!”