The Marshal of Whitburg

by E. R. Slade

  The newspaper was not much, being locally printed. The big headline was, “DEPUTY BILLY THOMPSON KILLED BY BANDITS! NEW DEPUTY HIRED.” The subtitle said, “New deputy Lon Pike saved Everson’s life, would have chased Billy’s killers to the ends of the earth.”

  Several more people told him they wished he’d taken the marshal’s job and asked if he was going after the bandits. He had to tell them that that decision was up to Everson. None of them looked satisfied with this answer.

  Things were so quiet, Lon went down to the new tent that said “DRINK” on the flap and looked inside for Everson. A short, thickset man with bright appraising eyes sat on an empty keg next to several hogsheads laid across a crude timber frame, one of which had a spigot in the bunghole. Glasses were lined up on a bench in front of them.

  “Drink?” the man asked solicitously, standing up. “On the house, seeing as how you’re the new deputy.”

  “No thanks. Can’t drink while I’m working. Seen Everson this morning?”

  “Nope. Not yet.”

  “Expecting him, then?”

  The man gave a sly grin. “Wouldn’t you? After last night? But I got as good sauce here as anybody. Try some.”

  “No, that’s Everson’s department. He does the investigating. I’m just here because I thought he might have gotten here by now. Guess he’s got other chores to do first. I’m new. I don’t know the routine much yet.”

  “Thought I told you not to bother with this place,” came from the doorway. Everson did not sound at all pleased.

  “I came to find you,” Lon said. “It’s pretty quiet everywhere. Sure you don’t want me to be doing something else until things heat up more later?”

  “Pike, first thing you got to figure out about being a deputy is that mostly it’s boring. And just be glad it is. Now get on with your rounds. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

  “As long as that’s what you want,” Lon said, and went out. He couldn’t help the suspicion that Everson’s main reason for hiring him was to keep him from doing something that would show Everson up. If he’d been marshal and hired a new deputy, and there was an investigation to do, he’d have sent him around asking questions.

  He kept wanting to ride out to meet the stage and escort it into town. At least from the edge of their jurisdiction. Which, come to think of it, Everson had never described the location of. It seemed hard to believe that much would go on in town Everson couldn’t easily handle alone before noontime, or even before at least late afternoon, plenty of time to make sure of the stage.

  But on the other hand, he thought, as he reached the next watering hole, this way he wouldn’t be at much risk of a shootout with men good enough with guns that they’d shot Billy straight between the eyes.

  As he went from saloon to saloon—getting some raised eyebrows for doing something that was on the face of it a waste of time—he started wondering which of the two men he’d passed who he assumed had killed Billy was the crack shot. Or were they both?

  “Lookin’ fer somebody?” asked the next saloonkeeper as Lon stepped in.

  “Just doing my rounds,” he said laconically.

  But by the time he’d started around the third time that morning, he started interrupting little huddles of men talking in low voices, eyeing him curiously. He noticed that his travels began to be watched by men lounging in the street. And more and more men started lounging here and there. Lon didn’t know if this was normal or on account of curiosity about what he was up to.

  Noontime came, and with it the stage. He could hear it several minutes before it came into view, the horses going full tilt, the driver cracking his long whip over their heads. Lon first heard it as he stepped out of yet another saloon and stopped to watch as it arrived.

  The driver hauled up before the depot and the horses stood lathered and panting. He and the man riding shotgun climbed down, and three men and a woman emerged stiffly from within the coach and went into the depot while two boys came out. One swarmed up onto the stage and undid lashings, handing down bags to the other. Two more men came and unhitched the horses, lead them around to the rear of the depot to a paddock and returned with fresh ones.

  Lon went across and down the street to the depot. Two men in broadcloth now stood in front of it apparently waiting to get aboard the outgoing stage. There was also a bunch of luggage and freight waiting to be loaded, and once the roof of the stage had been emptied the boys set to work reloading it with outgoing stuff.

  The driver came back out of the depot. He was small and wiry with a flamboyant sweep of hair, beard, and mustache. He got out a long pipe which, once set in his brown-stained teeth, swept down almost halfway to his enormous belt buckle before turning up in an out-sized bowl. He was busy loading this bowl and getting the thing alight when Lon stepped over to him casually and asked, “Any trouble?”

  The man’s bright eyes darted all over Lon, battered hat to worn boot toe, then fixed on his face. “And who might you be? I see you’re wearin’ a star, but I don’t know you.”

  “Lon Pike. Brand new deputy. Billy was killed up the mountain trail a piece. Trip okay?”

  “Didn’t git held up this time, if that’s what you mean,” the driver said, looking sideways at Lon as though trying to figure him out. “New deputy, eh? Billy’s dead. That’s too bad. Always liked Billy.”

  “They shot him straight between the eyes.”

  “Thet so.” This seemed to sober the driver considerably. “Is you going after ’em?” he asked, peering through pipe smoke at Lon.

  “That’s for Marshal Everson to decide.”

  “Oh, ’tis.” The driver seemed to lose interest, and started cursing the stable hands for the order in which they were hitching the horses. Likely he didn’t expect much of Everson.

  The stage left without incident and Lon went back to his patrolling. As the afternoon wore on, interest in his activities waned, and so did the friendliness of some who earlier seemed eager to congratulate him on his new job. Must be they’d figured out that all he was doing was what he said he was, and they were disappointed.

  And maybe they had a right to be disappointed.

  As darkness fell, things heated up in the saloons. In the space of an hour, Lon broke up two fist fights. It was pretty much as Everson had said, though: once they saw the law arrive they tended to calm down in a hurry.

  Then he heard gunshots in the Four Aces Saloon. As he headed down there his throat was tight. Something about that place had seemed ominous every time he’d looked in all day. The clientele was more thickly sprinkled with hardcases and he just had the feeling somehow in the pit of his stomach that dealing with a problem here might not be as easy as other places.

  This establishment wasn’t a tent but a wooden building. It had some pretensions, having a long mahogany bar in fairly good condition with a minimum of chipped places—though it had a few bullet holes—and there was an equally long mirror behind it in a gilded, ornate frame.

  Or rather, there had been. Most of the mirror was missing now, a few shattered pieces left in one corner at the far end, and the proprietor was not to be seen behind the bar.

  Shot him? Lon wondered, pulling his own gun before pushing through the batwings.

  Most of the patrons were off along one side or the other of the room, huddled around small tables. In the middle of the room there were three men and several demolished chairs and tables. Cards and whiskey tumblers were strewn on the sawdust-covered floor.

  The tallest of the three men held a smoking pistol. The other two, squat, careless-looking toughs, were watching the tall man with eager anticipation. Seemed they were in the midst of having some fun.

  “What’s going on here?” Lon asked, stepping in, gun in hand.

  The tall man spun on his heel, gun starting to level until he saw Lon’s gun aimed straight at him. He halted, hesitated, then tipped his gun barrel at the ceiling.

  “Put it away,” Lon said.

  “If it ain’t the new depity,�
� the tall man said derisively, gun still in hand.

  “Put it away.”

  “Why surely, depity,” he said and jabbed it home in his holster. His eyes flicked to one side, then back again, which Lon didn’t understand the significance of then. “Stop in to wet your whistle, depity?”

  “I’d like an explanation of what’s been going on in here. You smash these tables and chairs and shoot out the mirror?”

  The tall man looked around in mock horror. “Why, look at all this. Ken, Stilly, did you notice all this mess?” This last was directed at his companions, and they wagged their heads in exaggerated amazement to see such things.

  Behind the bar, the dark-eyed proprietor had appeared from down below it, cautiously. At least he wasn’t dead.

  Lon glanced around the room. “Anybody hurt in here?”

  Dead silence.

  “All right then, you three better come with me. First thing, all of you, unbuckle your gun belts and drop them.”

  The tall man’s eyes flicked again, and this time Lon caught on to the significance but wasn’t quite quick enough to completely avoid the chair leg spinning through the air and it caught him on the left temple.

  He was dimly aware of losing his gun and of falling. Then they were upon him.

  Chapter Nine

  He was only stunned for a moment, but in that moment two sets of hands managed to get hold of him and yank him to his feet. He saw what they intended as the tall man’s face, grinning fiercely with anticipation, loomed over him.

  They had him now by the arms and here came the tall man’s thick fist. He yanked to the side, felt the hands on his left arm slip and then the blow land in his midsection.

  But he had hardened his belly muscles and the blow didn’t do that much real harm. He kept turning, and his left arm came free. He brought it around in a clumsy blow to the man who was holding his right arm and when that did nothing, stepped toward him, shoving, sticking his foot behind one of the other man’s, and the other fell losing his grip.

  The tall man had swung again, missed, and now stepped to reach for him, irritated.

  Lon saw his gun in the sawdust, dove after it, came up with it by the barrel, hadn’t time to turn it in his hand and just as the tall man took another swing he used the butt of the gun to good effect against the tall man’s skull just above his ear.

  The other two men, plus another coming up holding the chair leg, hesitated. Lon got his gun turned around and aimed it.

  “Drop it,” he told the man with the chair leg. “Anybody moves, they get shot.”

  The place went silent. Lots of blank oval faces all around the room. The assailants looked cautiously at each other. The tall man lay on the floor with his hand to his head, plainly trying to figure out how to see straight again.

  “Now then,” Lon said, beginning to be aware of the pain of the blow to his own temple. “Drop your gun belts.”

  This time they came off. Even the tall man on the floor was focusing enough to manage it.

  “Help him up,” Lon said, nodding at the tall man. “We’re going to take a little walk.”

  He marched them to the marshal’s office. Though Everson had not said anything about it, Lon had noticed there was a small stone building around the corner from the office. He’d also seen a key hanging on a hook behind Everson’s desk.

  Not letting on that he had any doubts about what he was doing, and hoping he wasn’t about to be embarrassed, he took them to the little building and tried the key. It worked. The place was clearly a jail, though nobody was inside. It was just a single room about ten feet square with no windows and two doors, one inside the other, the inner one of iron bars, the outer of wood.

  “Inside,” he said, and they filed in, looking plenty sober, though he could smell whiskey on the breath of each of them as they sidled past him. He clanged the inner door shut after them, locked it, and stood looking at them a moment, only now starting to credit all that had happened. He felt lucky this had worked out as well as it had, but uneasy about where things might go from here. These men wouldn’t be in jail forever. They weren’t likely to forget what he’d done to them.

  “How about some names,” he said, keeping his voice steady and even, ignoring the throbbing in his temple. He had not so much as touched the tender spot. Time enough for that when he was in private. This was no time to show any sign of weakness, he knew that. “Starting with you,” he added, looking at the tall man, when nobody said anything.

  “Bud,” he said sullenly, still cautiously feeling around over his ear where a small amount of blood matted his longish scraggly hair.

  “Bud who?”

  “Ames.”

  Two of the other three were brothers, Ken and Stilly Folsom; the third man, who had thrown the chair leg, was Glen Bednor. None of these names meant anything to Lon, but he was planning to find out what they meant to people who knew them.

  As Lon turned to leave, Stilly said, plaintively, “You ain’t going to leave us here too long, are you?”

  “Assault of a deputy is a serious crime,” Lon said, hoping it was. “You’ll have to stand trial.” As he said it he doubted it would be true, but there was no use missing a chance to impress them with the idea that they’d done something that could have consequences.

  He went and hung the key back on its hook. He supposed he ought to go find Everson to let him know about all this, but it was in his mind to find out more about who these men were first. He just wanted to know.

  So he headed back to the Four Aces Saloon, feeling contrary enough to refuse attention to his throbbing temple. The place had been mostly cleaned up and was quiet, just the low murmur of card players and a few men propped against the bar, each with a foot on the brass rail, hoisting their drinks. The proprietor was back to wiping glasses, though another man was still cleaning up broken glass from the shattered mirror.

  Lon paused, looking over the batwings, taking this all in. He’d done his job and peace had ensued. There was at least a small amount of satisfaction in that, a feeling it had never occurred to him to even imagine he might have.

  He adjusted his hat and pushed inside.

  All talk stopped. The proprietor gave him a big smile.

  “You’d better have a drink, Deputy Pike,” he said. “On the house, of course. That was an impressive piece of work.”

  “Thanks, but I’m on duty.” He walked to the bar and all eyes followed. “What can you tell me about those men? They make trouble regularly?”

  The proprietor, who had a faintly foreign cast to him, became voluble. “That bunch!” he exclaimed. “I don’t care if they never come back here again, any of them, ever. Bums. Deadbeats. Scum.”

  “They live in town or just come in here once in a while to let off steam?”

  “Oh, they’re always around. Like a bad smell.”

  “Any of them work?”

  “Not much. Do an odd job once in a while, enough to get whiskey money, that’s about it. Like to get drunk and raise the devil along the way.”

  “I know the kind. Well, they’re in jail now, but it’s up to Marshal Everson to charge them.”

  The proprietor’s face went glum. “Everson.”

  “What’s the problem with him?”

  “Well, he’ll come in and break up a fight all right. But mostly he doesn’t jail anybody. Never charges them with anything. At least not that bunch you hauled out of here.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “It’s like he don’t want to offend them or something. You know how much those four have cost me just in the last six months? Hundreds. Hundreds! That’s the fifth mirror I’ve had to replace. I’m going to have to start buying them by the gross. I don’t even know how many tables and chairs. I don’t buy good ones anymore. Can’t afford to. Glasses, shot out lamps. I have to hire a man full time to clean up and make repairs. And does Everson care about that?”

  “Have you told him all this?”

  The man waved his arms. “Told him! Eve
ry time I tell him. It does no good at all.”

  “Well, I don’t know what his thinking is. I’m new here. I’ll talk to him, see what he says.”

  “You’d do that? Would you?”

  “Sure. You understand I can’t promise anything. I’m only a deputy.”

  “Why didn’t you take the marshal’s job?”

  “Man ought to start at the beginning. So that’s what I’m doing.”

  As he left, all eyes followed again. It was flattering in a way, but also unnerving.

  When he went looking for Everson, the first thing he saw was the four men he’d jailed coming out of the alley. He started to run, cursing himself for the stupid thing he’d done in leaving the key hanging in plain sight in Everson’s office where some friend of theirs had obviously retrieved it and let them out.

  But they made no effort to run. In fact, they stopped and grinned at him as he approached. They were wearing their gun belts; maybe that gave them confidence.

  Then here came Everson, key in hand, from the alley.

  “What’re you doing?” Lon demanded, astonished and offended both.

  “Clear off,” Everson said to the four he’d just let out. “Don’t let me catch you making any more trouble.”

  “No, sir,” they all said.

  They grinned the wider at Lon, mockingly tipped their hats and ambled away.

  “I jailed those men for a reason,” Lon said, more heatedly than he’d intended. “What’d you let them out for?”

  “Let’s go into my office,” Everson said, stepping firmly toward it.

  Once inside, Lon slammed the door closed, again not having quite intended to do it. He resolved to get hold of himself. He was allowing his personal feelings to get the better of him and that wouldn’t do in a job like this.

  “Those men,” Lon said, as evenly and calmly as he could, “were shooting up the Four Aces. The mirror was wrecked, so were the tables and chairs. The owner is getting tired of it. When I interrupted they attacked me. Luckily, I managed to avoid the beating they intended for me and got them jailed. I think they ought to be charged with assault, as well as disturbing the peace and destroying property.”