Cemetery Jones 5

by William R. Cox

  That was when two burly men emerged from the passing throng. With belligerent scowls they blocked the way.

  Bat quickly moved in front of Renee, elbowing Sam as he spoke. “Well, if it ain’t Curly Bill and Bad Bull. You boys lookin’ for somethin’?”

  The one Bat had called Curly Bill was not particularly curly haired, as far as Sam could see, but he was big enough to lift a pool table one-handed; you could strike a match on his jaw. Without taking his angry eyes off Sam, Curly Bill said to Bat, “Who’s your friend?”

  “This feller? Why, this is Sam Jones from Sunrise. And Miz Renee Hart, and you gents will kindly behave yourselves like gentlemen in the presence of a lady. Ma’am, I take dubious pleasure in introducing the Messrs. Bill Brocius and Bull Baxter.” Bat frowned. “Too many B’s there—maybe one of you boys ought to think about changing your name?”

  Unamused, Bull Baxter growled, “Who the hell’s your friend Jones here? Looks too dusty for another one of your fancy men.”

  The one called Curly Bill said, “Sam Jones? Heard the name. Wouldn’t be Cemetery Jones, any chance?”

  Bat said, “Sam doesn’t take kindly to that name.”

  “Don’t he now.” Curly Bill said to Bull Baxter, “Looks mighty like as if the Earps are bringin’ in an army, one at a time.”

  Baxter said to Bat, “I reckon the sheriff’ll need to hear about this.”

  Bat said to Sam, “These are cowboys. Think of themselves as big bad men. Only Curly Bill, here, he didn’t look so bad the other night.”

  “You talk loud for a dead man.” It seemed, Sam observed, that this Curly Bill Brocius was not a man for repartee. Curly Bill smiled a wicked little smile. “Bat, you just tell Luke Short he ain’t got long to live. And the same might be true for anybody hangs too close with him.” The heavy-lidded glance moved pointedly from Sam to Bat.

  “Now that seems a mite unfriendly,” said Sam Jones. “I’d think it over if I were you. Seeing as Luke Short’s a close friend of mine.”

  “There you go,” said Brocius to Bull Baxter. “You see? A real hard case. Threatenin’ people no sooner than he gets here.”

  A curious little crowd was milling around them, pretending not to eavesdrop. Renee had stepped to the entry of the hotel. She stopped there, one hand in her purse. Sam knew that she had her .32 S&W in her grasp.

  Through the crowd, sided by a pair of tall, scowling men, appeared a small shabby figure whose threadbare canvas vest was adorned with a metal star. “What’s this? What’s all this?” His tone was demanding, but the squeaky voice did not carry the authority it was meant to command.

  Bat said dryly, “Sam, this here’s Sheriff Johnny Behan. These two friends of his would be Frank McLowery and Ike Clanton.”

  McLowery and Clanton. Sam had heard of them, well enough. He sized up the two tall men.

  “Don’t know what all these cowboys are doing here in town. Ought to be out in the wilderness stealing cows—I can’t see how they expect to earn a living here on the street in broad daylight.” Bat’s tone was light, almost jeering, but in it there was a warning.

  Sam unbuttoned his jacket, easing his shoulder holster. He said quietly, “Renee, go inside, please.”

  Sheriff Behan said in his high voice, fretful, fearful, “Now take it easy here, fellers. You-all’re blockin’ the street.”

  Sam’s glance took the measure of the newcomers. Ike Clanton and Frank McLowery met his stare with silent bravado.

  Bat Masterson said, “Matter of fact, it’s probably a good thing you’re here, Sheriff. We could do with a little law enforcement here. Friend Brocius here has been threatening the peace and dignity of the town. We’re witness to the fact he uttered death threats upon the person of Luke Short.”

  As if in direct reply, there was a cheer from several throats. Miners formed a lane, doffing their headgear. Sheriff Behan and the others were visibly taken aback; they wheeled to confront the new disturbance.

  Sam turned. Through the lane came Luke Short. Accompanying him was a lovely lady dressed in black. She was smiling.

  Bat said softly to Sam, “That’s Nellie Cashman.”

  Sam stared. A line, a phrase from the poetry Renee often read to him came to mind: “She walks in beauty ...”

  Nellie Cashman was dark but not a lady of the night. Her large dark eyes and long lashes were not coquettish. A gentle smile adorned her perfect features; her big brown eyes seemed to bestow a blessing among her myriad admirers. Her dark hair was drawn back in severe fashion. She strode the walk as if it belonged to her. Handsome, dapper Luke seemed diminished in her company.

  In a deep contralto voice she said, “All right, my friends. Go about your foolish ways. I’ll be seeing you too soon.”

  She paused only a brief moment in the bright noon sunshine, then went past Sam and Bat like a puff of black cloud.

  Big Curly Bill Brocius was her target. She slapped him across the face, once, twice. Hard. “Beat a poor little man that couldn’t fight back, would you? I dare you to try it on me.”

  Brocius didn’t stir.

  She whirled around. “John Behan, you let him out of jail, you pretense of a lawman.”

  But Behan was hurrying away through the laughing crowd, from which came cries of, “Yay, Nellie. Give it to ’em, Nellie.”

  Curly Bill Brocius turned and strode away, trying to muster dignity. Sam saw, with amusement, how Brocius had to control his urge to run.

  Clanton and McLowery followed him. It broke the tension. Nellie Cashman returned to take Sam’s hand in a remarkably firm grasp, saying, “I’ve heard a lot about you and your lady. From Luke. I’m sure we’ll be great friends. Miss Hart must play the piano for me. But now I know you want to clean up after your journey. We’ll be waiting.”

  Before they knew it, Renee and Sam were upstairs. Their luggage was in their adjoining rooms. They paused in the hall.

  Sam said, “Welcome to Tombstone. I reckon.”

  “That lovely lady knows how to take charge.”

  “She scared the law and the bad men all at the same time,” said Sam. “Never did see anything like it.”

  “In general,” said Renee, “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anything like this town.”

  There was warm water in their rooms, and thick clean towels and scented soap. A conglomeration of the wildest of the west and the perquisites of the effete East, Sam thought. In his younger days he would have plunged into it with utter abandon and enthusiasm. Now he was not so certain. Menace seemed to hang over the town like an impending blizzard.

  Always meticulous about his person, he stripped and washed from head to foot. It had been strange on Allen Street just now. As if he were attending a play in an outdoor theater. He had not been really in the scene: he was an outsider—not a part of it. The only trepidation had been for Renee, and that had been fleeting. It could have been written, with more dialogue, by Ned Buntline—E.C.Z. Judson in his zaniest dime-novel exposition of the wild west.

  Yet there had been real danger for a moment or two. A jagged hole had appeared in the citified façade of Tombstone. That a bully and a lawman had fled before a woman meant only that the well-meaning crowd was against them—for the moment. If the perfidious got themselves organized against the citizenry it could be a different matter.

  Sam dressed in his city clothing, the jacket of which had been made to accommodate a shoulder holster. If there was any place under the sun where he would make a move unarmed it was not this wild town of Tombstone. He tapped on the connecting door and, from the other room Renee, never a fusspot, an experienced traveler, said that she was ready. They went together down wide stairs to the dining room of the Cosmopolitan Hotel.

  It was indeed comparative to a big city establishment. Yet Sam felt again that it was a play, that it had been placed there; it had not grown from proper beginnings. It was a temporary place for people who did not truly belong upon this mesa of limited size.

  Halfway down the staircase Renee paus
ed. She was wearing black trimmed with silver, her shoulders covered with a filmy scarf.

  The room was crowded with a midday dinner crowd. Luke was down there. He waved to indicate their table. People looked, looked again, stared. It was a proud moment for Sam, looking down upon the assemblage as it acknowledged the beauty of his lady. He saw Wyatt Earp sitting with people who could only have been from the business world. In a casual way, Wyatt returned his salute; Sam saw Wyatt’s little smile of greeting. Then Renee went on ahead, seeming to float in a mist of beauty.

  Bat and Luke stood. A waiter dressed in neat alpaca leaped to hold a chair. Beside the table was an iced bucket holding a magnum of champagne. The table was chaste beneath unsoiled white napery. All male eyes were still on Renee and the equally gorgeous Nellie Cashman.

  Sam grinned. “Never had so much attention since the pigs ate my kid brother.”

  “If you think the attention’s for you, bub, think again,” said Bat. “Sit down, gents.”

  Luke Short’s glance held Sam’s. It didn’t need words. Luke nodded his head briefly. A gesture of thanks. Thanks for coming—friend.

  Sam’s reply was a quiet smile of acknowledgement.

  “Oysters,” said Bat. “Been that length of time since you had ’em on the half shell, too, I’ll bet.”

  Renee said, “This town grows stranger and stranger.”

  “And when you see the abject poverty the other side of the line,” said Nellie Cashman, “you’ll know how really strange it is. A ferment of life from top to bottom. By the way,” Nellie added, “there’s a girl over at my place who says she knows you two. She calls herself Anna—has a baby boy named Sam. “

  Renee was pleased. “Ah, they did make it across.”

  “Covered in glory,” Nellie said. “Anna’s young man saved Wyatt’s life when some filthy cowboys tried to hold up the stage. I should explain. ‘Cowboys’ hereabouts generally means outlaws.”

  “Not so surprising,” said Bat Masterson. “That was the original meaning of the word, a hundred years ago in the time of the Revolution.” Bat was a fund of odd bits of knowledge like that. No one knew where he came up with them. He was a cheerful rogue, a reckless young sportin’ man, but there was a startling streak of educated refinement in him.

  “How’s our friend Pacheco, then?” Sam asked the dark lady.

  Nellie Cashman shook her head. “When he saw the baby and Anna safe he went away to join his people.”

  “Young fool,” said Bat. “Victorio don’t want kindhearted Indians around him. All he wants is drunks and killers.”

  Sam said, “I seem to recollect Pacheco told us this Old Man Clanton wants Pacheco dead. Between that and Victorio, if he’s still alive he’s plumb lucky.”

  “He’s a grandson of Cochise,” said Nellie.

  “So he says. We tried to keep them with us,” Renee said. “But it seems the Christian Brothers taught him to speak English but they couldn’t change his stubbornness.”

  “Can’t always fault a man for stubbornness,” Sam observed. It earned Renee’s quick amused glance.

  Bat said, “There’s a bunch of worthwhile Chiricahuas up around the old Cochise stronghold. The old-style folks, proud ones—Cochise’s kind of people. They know how to use their heads. But looks like they won’t hold out long against Victorio and his bunch. Victorio’s a firebrand, and I hear his renegades have got ’em outgunned and outsized. With Cochise dead and gone, they’ve got no leader to hold ’em together.”

  Luke said, “We need cavalry here. It’s a holy mess. This local law’s all we’ve got, and half the time it’s at each other’s throats. Virgil Earp’ll probably try to pin a deputy badge on you, Sam,” Luke added. “He’s chief of police.”

  Sam looked across the room. “What about Wyatt?” He was watching the leonine profile of the well-known gamblin’ man. He looked like a cameo silhouette against the bright light that flooded in through the window beyond. Wyatt Earp wasn’t a lawman by profession or desire, but he had a quick decisive way about him—a willingness to buffalo wrongdoers upside the head with the barrel of his .45 without hesitation—and he had developed a reputation for no-nonsense toughness as city marshal in Ellsworth and other Kansas cow towns as he and his brothers followed the railhead camps westward.

  Luke said, “He’s got some kind of federal badge, but I believe it’s limited to tax collecting. If you’re tough enough to collect taxes hereabouts, you get to keep half what you collect.”

  Bat said, “He does some work now and then for Wells Fargo. But you know Wyatt. He won’t carry a badge unless there’s profit in it. So, for what law we’ve got around here, it’s between Virgil Earp and Behan. Behan being the sheriff, installed by the grace of Old Man Clanton.”

  Sam asked, “Who installed Virg, then?”

  “Mayor Clum and the citizens’ committee. Clum publishes the Epitaph. Used to be Apache agent down here. A good man, but no sense of fun.”

  Two waiters came with clear soup and little hot buns and a mound of butter. Sam said, “I seem to be in need of a short lesson in local history here. Can’t seem to catch up with all the confusions.”

  Luke Short said, “Bat’s been writin’ up somethin’. Tell ’em, Bat.”

  “Thinking about selling it to the Eastern newspapers,” said Bat. “I kind of like to write things. You want to know about this town? Let’s see if I can put it straight for you. After all, it’s a right short history. Four years ago there wasn’t a thing here but Goose Flats—jackrabbits and cactus. The whole countryside belonged by default to the Apaches and Old Man Clanton and his sons and his cowboys, and some friends like the McLowery boys. The Apaches would steal stock from the cowboys, and the cowboys would steal it right back. Everything went along smoothly enough. Old Man Clanton was turning himself into the king of Arizona, a few thousand acres at a time. Then an old pack rat name of Ed Schieffelin came prospecting and discovered the silver lode, and all hell broke loose.”

  “That was in ’77,” Luke interjected.

  Bat said, “Old Man Clanton got mad when the first miner stuck a pick in the earth, and he’s been mad ever since.”

  “Madder and madder,” Luke Short said. “That old man’s a caution. He’d be funny if he wasn’t so murderin’ deadly.”

  Bat said, “Now, Wyatt and his brothers came down here from Dodge last year to catch the crest of the boom. They were of a mind to do some gambling. Did pretty good with it. They bought into some saloons and whatnot. Wyatt’s a full partner in the Oriental now. Luke and I, we’ve been doing all right, too. But there wasn’t any law around here until they hired Fred White—he was the city marshal and his jurisdiction ended at the town line, and he was a lone man with no deputies. There wasn’t much he could do when this feud started up.”

  Renee said, “I don’t understand the feud. What brought it on?”

  Bat said, “The Clantons don’t take kindly to interference. They see this town—the very existence of this town—as interference. And if it’s got to be here at all, they want to dominate it. Clanton believes this is his property. He wants to run it. Some folks around here disagree with him. That’s what it’s about.”

  “Seems clear-cut to me,” Sam said. “Simple question of right and wrong. Good and bad. Clanton doesn’t own anything—I can’t believe he ever staked a claim, or bought any land.”

  “Course he didn’t,” Luke Short said. “He just doesn’t like having all these people around—possible witnesses to his thievin’.”

  Bat said, “You’d have been right, Sam, at first. It was a clear-cut question of right and wrong, sure enough, until Doc Holliday came down here.”

  “Doc Holliday,” Sam echoed. “Well, I begin to see your point there, Luke.” He knew enough about Doc Holliday to understand one thing: Wherever that notorious dentist turned up, questions of right and wrong usually became obscured in clouds of gunsmoke.

  Six

  Pacheco never doubted that he could find the way. His childhood memories
were plain as day. His grandfather had been an elderly man when he was born; the boy had been a great favorite of the chieftain. He had listened to the stories of the Chiricahuas and their days of glory and defeat, and none of it had deserted him.

  His experience had been profound. He was the father of a son. His heritage, his natural inherited abilities, had enabled him to profit by it. In him there was this spirit, a mysticism that he couldn’t explain.

  He drove the wagon over a faint trail, through the flats of chaparral, which led to the rocky entrance to the stronghold. He drove with eyes that missed no detail.

  He had taken lives now, counted coup. Back on the road, as the stagecoach was pursued. That it had been in a good cause was neither a plus nor a minus. It was part of his destiny. Cochise had wanted peace with the whites—which did not mean that he loved them but that he had foreseen the future ... the future to which the fanatical Victorio was blind.

  Pacheco’s life would be given to the cause of his grandfather.

  When he saw the two horsemen he was ready. A minute or two before they had not been on a due course toward him. He could see by the way they held their seats in the saddle that they were whites.

  He had lived so long with the ever-present possibility of danger that he was instantaneously on the defense. They would most probably not be friendly. He laid the rifle—Sam Jones’s rifle—across his knees and looped the reins over the seat post without loosening them. The wagon horse continued its leisurely pace.

  As the two whites came within hailing distance they reined in. They were a hard-looking pair, one bearded, the other a pockmarked youth. They were dressed in range clothing. Pacheco remembered the talk about cowboys he had heard in Tombstone. His horse continued to niggle ahead. He inserted his finger into the trigger guard.

  The bearded one called harshly, “Hey, Injun, what you doin’ out here?”

  “Hunting rabbits,” he replied meekly.

  “Well, just hold still whilst we take a look in the wagon. What’s an Injun doin’ with a wagon, anyhow?”