Buchanan 21

by Jonas Ward

  Along the walls of the office there was a padlocked rifle rack, an assortment of ‘wanted’ notices from other sheriffs and, directly above the desk, a glass-framed poster whose message had been hand-lettered in 12-point gothic. It read:

  THIS IS THE LAW IN SALVATION

  1. No One Shall Bear Arms Without A Permit

  2. Curfew is Ten P.M.

  3. No Female Shall Go Unescorted In Public After Sundown

  4. No Alcoholic Beverage Shall Be Consumed Within Town Limits

  5. No One Shall Engage In Commerce On the Sabbath

  6. No One Shall Be Excused From Church Without A Permit

  By order of Sidney Hallett, High Sheriff

  Stacked on the floor beside the desk was a box that contained letter-sized reprints of the framed poster, and other copies were displayed prominently in all the stores and each bedroom of the hotel.

  Hallett had seated himself behind the desk, awaiting the arrival of Hynman with the money that would go into the safe. Suddenly he cocked his head at a sound outside and got to his feet again. It was the mail stage, en route to Monterey, and he mentally noted that it was running ahead of schedule. Per instructions, the driver slowed the team to a canter along Sinai Street, angled in to stop directly before the office. A minute later the door to the office opened and the man entered with the mail sack.

  “You’re early, Bruno,” Hallett told him.

  “Yeah,” Bruno said, emptying the sack on the desktop. He was a man of medium height, with a pockmarked complexion and furtive eyes. Now he leaned across the desk and spoke in a low voice.

  “I’m carrying a passenger,” he said.

  “Is that so?”

  “A Mex gal. Nuns put her on board at the mission school. Told me to let her off at Salinas. Seems her old man’s bad sick and wants to see her.” As he spoke, the stage driver watched Hallett’s face closely, looked for some sign of interest. Then he said: “She don’t speak English at all,” and at this Hallett’s eyebrows arched expressively. He took a slender panatela from his vest, bit off the end and lighted it thoughtfully.

  “Let’s meet your passenger, Bruno,” he said, getting up from the desk and following the driver outside. The curtains on the coach were closed and Hallett opened the door. Seated inside the darkened carriage was a black-haired, olive-skinned Mexican girl of nineteen. She looked shy, startled by the abrupt intrusion.

  “Buenos días, señorita,” Hallett said, his glance traveling upwards from her slim ankles to her firm bosom, resting finally on her pretty, high-cheekboned face. It was bold and unsubtle, and the girl shifted on the seat uncomfortably.

  “¿Por qué nosotros pararemos?” she asked timidly, not knowing any reason for the coach to halt.

  “Está la ley,” Hallett told her blandly, “and I carry out the law here.” Then, looking up and down the quiet, deserted street he told her in Spanish to come out of the coach.

  “No,” she answered, shaking her head. Hallett pointed significantly to the gleaming silver star.

  “I am the law,” he said this time. “I command you to come out.”

  “I am afraid of you,” she told him quite frankly. “You wish me harm.”

  “What’s she sayin’?” Bruno the driver asked and Hallett motioned him away impatiently. Suddenly he reached inside the coach, closed his hand over her thin wrist.

  “I said—come out!” he told her savagely and pulled her to the ground. Quickly, with both hands on her arms, he hurried her inside the office, across to the connecting door and through that to the little jail. The cell door slammed shut and he turned the key in the lock.

  Bruno was waiting for him in the office.

  “She has some luggage?” Hallett said, breathing heavily from the exertion.

  “A trunk and a handbag.”

  “Scatter them the other side of Hollister,” he told him. “I understand some road agents have been working that stretch lately.”

  “I know what to do.”

  “Yes,” Hallett said. “You’re a smart fellow, Bruno. We’ll always get along together.”

  “Yeah, Sheriff. But you know the old saying—fast pay makes fast friends.”

  “You wouldn’t want to have the money on you, would you? Suppose you’re searched at Salinas?”

  “They won’t find nothin’ in Salinas,” Bruno said. “And I may be taken off this run when I reach Monterey. May not get back this way.”

  The street door opened and Bull Hynman entered, carrying a large iron box. He and the stage driver exchanged brief nods.

  “Give our friend two hundred dollars,” Hallett said and Hynman’s small black eyes sparked. He opened the box, counted out the money and handed it to Bruno. Then, without inquiring, he opened the connecting door and went on into the jail. Bruno had left when Hynman returned.

  “She don’t savvy nothin’, Sid,” the Chief Deputy said.

  “Maude will teach her what English she’ll need.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Hynman said, then laughed unpleasantly. “Wouldn’t the folks in church be surprised,” he said, “if they knew where their money was spent today?”

  Hallett, a man devoid of any humor, made no comment. He had been sorting out the mail delivery, in his capacity as Postmaster, holding envelopes up to the light, hefting packages, studying return addresses.

  “I kind of go for that little gal myself,” Hynman was saying.

  “What?” Hallett asked absently. He had suddenly hunched forward, brows knitted, all his attention on a letter gripped tightly in his fingers.

  “The one inside,” Hynman said. “I wouldn’t mind helpin’ myself …”

  Hallett raised his head in agitation. “Take her out to Maude’s in the covered wagon,” he said sharply.

  “Do I got to come right back, Sid?”

  “Your lust will be your undoing, Hynman.”

  “Yeah, but do you need me for anything?”

  Hallett waved him away, began ripping open the envelope. It was addressed to Mrs. Frank Booth, Renton’s Hotel, Salvation, California, and he began reading it without a qualm of conscience.

  Dear Ellen:

  I got out of prison this morning. It is a wonderful feeling to be free again and I can’t wait until we are together.

  But plans are changed. Instead of coming back there I want you to meet me in San Francisco. Take a room under the name of Mary Brown in the Palace Hotel.

  I got some business matters to attend to and will join you there. Leave town without telling anybody where you are going.

  Your husband,

  FRANK

  Hallett read the letter again, a third time, then replaced it in the envelope. There was deep concern in his face as he took another letter from a desk drawer, an official document from the office of the warden at the penitentiary in Marysville. This was addressed to him, as Sheriff of Salvation, and looked well thumbed as he studied it once more.

  Dear Sir:

  In reply to your recent inquiry, inmate number 514, Frank Booth, will be released from this institution on or about 18 July.

  As to his physical condition, Booth appears to be in excellent health.

  The Chief of Guards reports, however, that during the past year Booth has formed a close friendship with another inmate, one Luther Reeves. Reeves is a large man, domineering of character, and with a well earned reputation as a desperado. His previous record includes desertion from the U.S. Army, armed robbery and rape. He was sentenced to this institution for a bank holdup for a term of five years. He was released on 3 June, this year.

  I include the above information for the reason that the Chief of Guards believes that Booth and Reeves plan to join forces following Booth’s release and continue their criminal careers.

  Hoping that this supposition is erroneous, I remain

  Respectfully yours,

  A. HARVEY FLOWERS, WARDEN

  Hallett returned the warden’s letter to his desk, sat for several minutes deep in thought. Then he left the office
, mounted a fine horse tethered out back and rode purposefully out of the town.

  It wasn’t far, not a long ride, and quite soon he came to a rambling, three-storied white house surrounded by giant oaks that give it a look of peace, security, and impregnable coolness. The sheriff dismounted below the veranda, handed over the reins of his horse to a Mexican boy and climbed the fourteen wooden steps. A gray-haired woman opened the front door, stepped through to greet him.

  “Well, I declare!” she said in a pleasant Georgia accent. “What a pleasant surprise! Are you staying with us for dinner, Reverend?” She gave him his ecclesiastical title naturally, without hesitation, as though she thought of him only in that role and not the enforcer of the law.

  “Thank you, Sister Martin,” Hallett said formally, dampening her own enthusiasm, “but I can’t stay. Is your good husband at home?”

  Anne Martin laughed, as she did at the slightest provocation. “Now where else would Cyrus be on a Sunday, Reverend?” She held the big door open. “Come on in and I’ll call him down.” But she didn’t have to. Cyrus Martin, short, thick-bodied, nearly bald, was descending the wide, curving staircase, looking at his visitor with an alarmed expression. Very obviously, despite his wife’s easy talent for graciousness, the grim-faced man in the wintry black suit was no casual visitor.

  “What’s wrong, Sidney?” Martin asked, causing Anne to look at him wonderingly.

  “A word in private,” Hallett said in his abrupt fashion. “You’ll excuse us?” he amended to Anne.

  “Why, certainly. Has something happened in town?”

  “The continuing affairs of men,” Hallett told her, telling her nothing.

  “We’ll go to the study,” Martin said, leading the way down the deep carpeted corridor. It was a handsome house, handsomely furnished, but neither more nor less than befitted the president of the Salvation Bank—whose wife had a private income of some three thousand a year. He ushered Sid Hallett inside his study, a comfortable room of leather chairs, pinewood paneling, deep fireplace and shelves lined with the classics and other books well thought of by Victorian standards. Neither man looked quite right in here. Cyrus Martin didn’t measure up to the way of life it was supposed to represent. He became suddenly revealed as just a bumbling, ineffectual personality, nervous-eyed, all but faceless. And the room, with its high ceiling, its air of quiet, respectable austerity, only served to bring out the coldness of Sid Hallett, the theatricality of his eccentric dress and mannerisms.

  “What’s wrong?” the banker asked again.

  But the sheriff was engaged in a perusal of the book titles and did not answer immediately. When he did speak it was deceptively casual, with his back still turned to the other man.

  “I don’t imagine you’ve forgotten Frank Booth,” he said.

  “Of course I haven’t. What about him?”

  “He’s paid his debt to society,” Hallett said, turning around. “I think he might be coming back to pay us a visit.”

  Cyrus Martin decided to sit down. The big chair seemed to swallow him whole.

  “Have three years passed so quickly?” he said. “I can hardly believe it.”

  “I imagine the time hasn’t been quite so fleeting for young Booth,” Hallett remarked drily.

  Martin was stroking his mouth, a nervous gesture.

  “What will he do—I mean, what will happen when he comes here?”

  “He might try to kill us,” Hallett said. “He might even try to rob our bank.” He spoke as if the two had varying degrees of importance.

  “Frank Booth?” Martin asked, and apparently there was something incredulous about that.

  “Oh, he’ll be quite changed after three years in Marysville,” the sheriff assured him. “And he also has a new friend. A desperado, from the description of him.”

  “But surely you can do something, Sidney.”

  “Forewarned is forearmed,” Hallett replied. “But the reason I rode out here with the news is primarily to prepare you for any eventuality. This is a time for calm, thoughtful preparation. You and I, Cyrus,” the gaunt man said meaningfully, “must stand together in this thing.”

  “Of course we will, Sidney,” Martin said, ruffled by the implication.

  “Yes. Of course we will,” Hallett echoed. A bleak smile touched his thin lips. “The fellow said it wonderfully in one of your books, Cyrus. We will swim together, or we will sink together.” The smile vanished. “Now I think I’ll be on my way,” he said.

  “I’ll see you to the door.”

  “Not necessary,” Hallett told him. Then, “We missed you and Mrs. Martin at services this morning.”

  “I wasn’t feeling too well earlier,” the banker said.

  “We must pay our obligations to Jehovah,” Hallett said, and on that sanctimonious note he strode out of the room, out of the house, a resolved man with still another mission to perform on this deceptively quiet Sunday.

  Three

  “Go ’way from here!” the woman named Maude shrilled unpleasantly from behind the shuttered door. “We don’t open till sundown!”

  “This ain’t trade, ma’am,” Buchanan told her, shifting the veterinary to a more comfortable spot on his shoulder. “We just want the use of a tub and some towels.”

  “What for?”

  “To sober up Doc here.”

  “Why?”

  “For an operation.”

  “He ain’t a people’s doctor, you damn fool!”

  “It’s a horse,” Buchanan said. “Now come on and open up.”

  There was another long moment of hesitation, then the bolt was slid back and the door opened. Standing behind it, dressed in a gaudy wrapper, was a cynical-eyed, flabby-cheeked woman of forty-odd years, her dyed hair awry, her face weary beyond description. Buchanan met her tired gaze, smiled tentatively and walked inside before she changed her mind. The door was closed at his back, bolted again, plunging the house into a kind of melancholy darkness.

  “You must be crazy with the heat,” Maude told him.

  “I guess. Where’s the tub?”

  “Upstairs. But don’t make any ruckus. My girls are sleeping.”

  “And some coffee, too. Real hot,” Buchanan said, starting up the creaking, rickety flight of stairs, trying to be as quiet as possible under hard conditions.

  “Coffee, too?” the woman below was crying after him raucously. “Where the hell do you think you are, cowboy?”

  “Your girls are sleeping,” Buchanan reminded her, making the turn at the top and spying the iron tub in a small room at the end of the hallway. He carried Doc Allen there, stripped him of his clothes and laid him in the tub. Then he went back downstairs, filled two wooden buckets with very cold artesian well water and returned to his patient. The first bucket he threw directly into the vet’s bewhiskered face, shocking the man awake, and poured the second one over his midsection. The buckets were systematically refilled again, unceremoniously emptied. On his third trip to the tub Buchanan found an audience of two sleepy-eyed girls, and by this time Doc Allen was wide awake and bawling his indignation.

  “Don’t you come near me!” he shouted at sight of the buckets. “Don’t you do it!”

  “Sorry, Doc,” Buchanan said. “Wish there was some other way,” and the cold water went into the tub. The naked man howled anew. Then came the other bucket.

  “What’re you tryin’ to do, kill him?” one of the girls asked.

  Buchanan glanced at her, shook his head. “The coffee ought to be ready,” he said. “How about bringing it up while I towel him?”

  “What do you take me for,” she said tartly, “your maid?”

  Now he looked her over, from head to toe, his eyes twinkling. “No,” he said, “I guess I don’t take you for my maid.”

  “I’ll get the coffee, honey,” the other one said and went off down the corridor with much hip-swinging. When she got back Buchanan had the still-furious veterinary dry and partly dressed again.

  “Much obliged,” h
e said to the girl, taking the steaming mug from her hands.

  “You’re real polite,” she told him, her voice guileless. “You look awful fierce, but I just bet you’re gentle.”

  “As a lamb,” Buchanan agreed with a grin, then turned to Allen. “Here you go, Doc,” he said. “Drink this down and you’ll be ready to do business.”

  “Who in the name of hell are you, anyhow?” Allen demanded. “What’s goin’ on around here today?”

  “Down the hatch,” Buchanan coaxed, holding the coffee to the other man’s lips. “You got a sick horse waiting for you.” He and Allen looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, then the vet took the mug in his own hands and began drinking it.

  “Damnedest outrage I ever heard of,” he complained between swallows. “Man don’t have any rights at all these days.” He went on in that vein until the coffee was gone; then Buchanan helped him to his feet and they started out of the dreary place.

  They were halfway down the stairs when someone began pounding heavily on the door. Maude rushed out to peer through the shutter, but this time she opened it without protest. Bull Hynman came inside, roughly shoving the sobbing, disheveled Mexican girl before him.

  “Brought you a new one, Maude,” Hynman said, a hard, arrogant smile on his face. Buchanan regarded him from the staircase in some surprise, never having seen a procurer before with a Chief Deputy’s star on his fancy silk shirt. He wondered, too, about the new recruit.

  “¡No lo quiero!” she was pleading. “¡Déjeme de ir!”