The Marshal of Whitburg

by E. R. Slade

  “Sit down, Pike. Get hold of yourself. This is your first day. Time to get a little perspective.”

  Lon had no desire to sit, but Everson sat and he decided not to push the point.

  “All right then,” Lon said. “Explain to me why you let them go. There are plenty of witnesses to what happened, you realize.”

  “I’m sure,” Everson murmured. He moved some papers around on his desk, finally ending up moving them out of the way. Then he leaned forward on his elbows.

  “If we tried to jail everybody who gets into a fight in this town, there’d be no place to put them all, and it would cost the taxpayers a fortune. The circuit judge only comes here three or four times a year and we can’t afford to crowd up his schedule with a lot of small stuff. We’ve got to save the jail and the trials for things that really amount to something.”

  “Assault doesn’t amount to anything?”

  “Getting hit once in a while is part of the job. Those boys were just drunk and letting loose like anybody might do. Can you say you’ve never been drunk and taken a swing at somebody because you felt a little better than you ought to?”

  “I can indeed say that,” Lon returned sharply. “I’ve been drunk only once in my life, and I never tried to hit anybody on account of it.”

  Everson made a wry face as though he’d just caught a whiff of some unpleasant smell.

  “Well,” he said, “that’s as may be. But it’s common enough around here, and we can’t get ourselves tied up making an issue out of it. We just stop the fights and the excitement all we can and leave it at that. Those boys aren’t really bad, you know. Jail is for the really bad ones.”

  “Like the holdup men?”

  “Like the holdup men.”

  “Which we don’t try to catch.”

  There was Everson’s look again, the one Lon didn’t care for. But he wasn’t in the mood to be intimidated.

  “Why don’t we?” he pressed.

  “You’d better get a handle on that temper of yours,” Everson said, “or it’ll get you in a whole lot of trouble.”

  Chapter Ten

  He’d slept, but not very well. There was a noticeable lump on his left temple but no blood since the skin hadn’t been broken. He hadn’t gone off duty until one in the morning. Fortunately there hadn’t been any more fights to break up.

  He was supposed to start all over by seven a.m. The prospect of repeating yesterday over and over indefinitely seemed intolerable and made him want to quit and clear out.

  After all, the only thing keeping him here was his own sense of responsibility to keep his word. But if all he was going to wind up doing was risk his life every night breaking up fights to little purpose, what was the point?

  But to quit after one day?

  He knew he couldn’t do that.

  A week then. If things didn’t settle out to something that looked reasonable by that time, he’d clear off.

  This thought sustained him enough to get him out of bed and washed up. He studied the lump in the mirror, knew it wasn’t really that much to worry about, and decided to ignore it. It had throbbed a little in response to the exertion of getting up, but that was fading already.

  He got dressed, strapped on his gun belt, realizing it was now his main tool of trade, and pulled the weapon out to look it over. It didn’t seem to have been harmed by the excitement. That, he supposed, was good.

  As he lifted his hat off the hook he thought of Zinnia and how he’d felt about handing it to her, how embarrassed by it he’d been.

  Not that it mattered anymore, he thought bleakly.

  “Just so you know,” Warner said as Lon came past the front desk. “People agree with you, not Everson, about Ames, Bednor and the Folsom brothers. In fact, there’s some in town wouldn’t have cared if you’d shot them dead.”

  “Oh? Why is that?”

  “They’re a bad lot.”

  “Not according to Everson,” Lon said, trying to avoid sounding bitter about it.

  “Interesting. What excuse did he give for turning them loose? Or did he give one?”

  “Said we couldn’t clutter up the jail with unimportant offenders, said it would cost the taxpayers a fortune.”

  “Well, there’s something to that point of view in a town like this. But the way I hear, those four ganged up on you and would have beaten you to a pulp if they’d gotten the chance. They say you got the upper hand all on your own. You must be quite a man in a fight.”

  “I never thought so. I was desperate. I figured my life was on the line.”

  “Might have been, too. You were right to jail them.”

  “Tell me something, Scott. You think there’s any possibility Everson set me up? Wants me to quit and leave town? It’s been bugging me ever since about three in the morning.”

  Scott Warner’s jaw stiffened, the end of his unlit cigarette flicking up and staying there.

  “I couldn’t say,” he said slowly. “I wouldn’t have read Everson that way, but now you bring it up ...”

  “Are they particular friends of his or anything? Do they always get off light?”

  “When they shoot up a saloon or start a brawl Everson always stops it, but I don’t remember him jailing them. Then again, he hardly ever jails anybody.”

  “Who are they? What do you know about them?”

  “Not a whole lot. If they’re not drinking I don’t think they’re much trouble, though I’d guess one or other of them lifts a chicken or something once in a while, that kind of thing. You know, of course, that Ames is Jack’s brother.”

  “Jack?”

  “The man you prevented from shooting Everson.”

  “Is he. No, I didn’t know that.”

  Lon went along to the office, thinking. Everson told him his job was still patrolling.

  “How’d you make out investigating Shorty’s saloon?” he asked Everson, making it casual.

  “That whole business turned out to be a lot of hogwash. I tried some of Shorty’s whiskey. It’s just about the best in town. I’d say somebody was worried about competition.”

  “No dead body?”

  “Not from Shorty’s whiskey.”

  To make the day pass easier, Lon decided to ask some questions as he made his rounds. By noontime he’d discovered that Shorty had bought a hogshead of the best whiskey in town as soon as he heard about the council meeting, and that it was quite a change from what he’d been serving before that. Lon was referred to the undertaker when he asked if anybody had actually died.

  After lunch he dropped by the undertaker’s, found the old man with his enormous mustache drooping as he peered through thick spectacles at his work on a casket. He had a long sad face and the hollow eyes of a man who’d seen too much.

  “I hear a man by the name of Rawson died of Shorty’s whiskey,” Lon said. “People tell me you’re the man to ask about it.”

  “It’s true,” the undertaker said sadly. “He was my son. This is his casket.”

  “Your son!” Lon said, surprised. Nobody had told him that.

  “I know he never amounted to anything. Liked his drink and his cards between digging graves. But he was still my son.”

  “Then you asked Turnbull to get Shorty’s shut down?”

  “I did.”

  “You’re sure it was Shorty’s liquor that did it?”

  “No doubt about it. Doc said so himself. We both went to Turnbull.”

  “I’ve been told that Shorty has started serving the best liquor in town.”

  “I heard that, too.”

  “Who else you know that got sick?”

  “I hear there have been others, but I don’t know them.”

  “A wonder they haven’t gotten together and run Shorty out of town.”

  “I think folks were hoping the council would do it. Now they haven’t I don’t know what will happen.”

  When Lon passed the office he stepped in—Everson was cleaning his pistol, a thing he seemed to enjoy doing and spent
more time at than he needed to.

  “Before you close the case about Shorty’s, you might want to go talk to Rawson the undertaker. It was his son that died.”

  Everson’s cheeks bunched under his eyes. “I told you to patrol, didn’t I? Didn’t I?”

  “You did, and I have been. But I asked a couple of questions here and there as I went along and people say Shorty switched over to good whiskey when he heard about the council meeting.”

  “People say things. But I got no proof. Now you listen to me, Pike. You do your patrolling. I’ll do the investigating. That clear?”

  “Just trying to help, that’s all.”

  He went out and made a round or two, though there was obviously hardly any point in it at this time of day. His mind ran on the question of whether to follow Emerson’s orders or his own inclination. What responsibility did he have to tiptoe around Everson’s desire to avoid his incompetence being shown up? If that was what it was. Certainly he had responsibility to act if it was worse than that. But could he say he knew it was worse?

  Everson’s reasons for his actions and inaction could be just what he said they were. And it could certainly be that Everson’s experience had shown him how things actually worked as opposed to how they ought to work. As the new deputy, Lon maybe ought to defer to Everson’s judgment on these things?

  But he couldn’t shake the suspicion that there was more to Everson’s motives than met the eye. Or maybe it was that his temperament was different from Everson’s?

  Without having consciously concluded anything, after his second tedious round of the afternoon he started asking if anybody knew where Bud Ames was. At the third saloon in which he asked this question a man sitting at a table shuffling cards waiting for somebody to sit down and play him said Bud Ames had a shabby little room in a lean-to back of the saloon next door. The proprietor of that saloon said yes, it was true but that he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Ames yet today. Not that it was unusual.

  “Expect he might be up and around a bit later today after the way you dented his head last night,” the man said, grinning.

  “He ever shoot this place up, like he does the Four Aces from time to time?”

  The grin pulled a little to the side. “Not after I started renting him a room,” he said.

  “How about his buddies? Rent them rooms, too?”

  “No. Don’t have but the one to rent. But they go where he goes, do what he does.”

  “Guess I’ll see if he’s up yet.”

  He went around the rear of the building through an alley full of empty whiskey bottles, rusted out tin cans and other trash—seemed not everything made it to the dump in the woods—and found the lean-to. It was definitely a casual sort of afterthought tacked on the back of the main building. It consisted of a saggy row of boards nailed against the rear wall, about as high as a man could reach, their lower ends sitting directly on the ground ten feet away, with more boards nailed over the spaces in the primary boards. Additional boards were nailed upright against the open ends without bothering about battens. There was a door in the near end, something apparently salvaged from a building which had burned as it was quite charred at the top. It had once been a rather fancy door, but now hung on a couple of leather hinges which didn’t look as though they’d last much longer. There was also a rusty joint of stovepipe sticking up at the other end.

  Lon’s knock was not answered at first, and then only with a groan.

  “Bud Ames,” Lon called. “Deputy Pike.”

  That news brought a scurrying sound from inside. Then came a moment’s quiet, followed by an audible click as of a hammer going back on a gun of some kind.

  Lon stepped quickly to the side, wondered if he’d get shot if he said anything more.

  “I’m just here to talk,” he said. “That’s all.”

  “Yeah?” came Ames’ voice from inside. There was challenge in it, but also fear and caution.

  “I wanted to ask you something. I don’t have my gun out or anything. Can I open the door without getting shot?”

  “I guess,” Ames said doubtfully. The sound of his voice made you think every word he spoke hurt.

  “Okay, I’m going to open it.”

  When he did, it was too dark inside to see anything much. The lean-to had a dirt floor, but that was about all he could make out.

  “You willing to come out and talk?” Lon asked.

  “What do you want?”

  “I wondered if you knew why Everson turned you and your friends loose.”

  “I dunno.”

  “You had a brother named Jack, didn’t you?”

  “He’s dead.” There was more edge in Ames’ voice when he said that. And now he appeared from the darkness. He was holding his pistol aimed at the ground. He had to duck to get through the door and then his face scrunched up at the brightness of the outdoors. He looked pretty seedy, and like he’d slept in his clothes—maybe slept in the same ones for a while, not that that was especially unusual. The place where Lon’s pistol butt had landed was swollen, but no worse than Lon’s own bruise.

  “You get along good with Everson?” Lon asked him.

  The man looked at him with what seemed genuine perplexity. “Not really,” he said.

  “He ever jail you?”

  “Once. Just overnight.”

  “Recently?”

  “Last year. What are you asking about my brother for?”

  “Somebody told me Jack was your brother, that’s all, and I thought I’d ask. Why did he barge in threatening to kill Everson?”

  “He never done that,” Ames scoffed.

  “He did. I was there.”

  “You killed him.” Ames’ voice hardened and he fingered his pistol. Lon let his hand come a little nearer the butt of his own pistol, just in case.

  “No,” Lon told him. “I didn’t. I dove at him, knocked his gun loose and we were wrestling on the floor. Everson shot him. Said he thought Jack was about to get the better of me. That wasn’t how I saw it.”

  Ames frowned uncertainly. His dead gray eyes searched Lon’s face, then looked away.

  “I heard you killed him,” he said.

  “I didn’t. It was Everson.”

  “But you held him down so he could do it, then.” The gray eyes came back to Lon’s face.

  “That wasn’t what I was trying to do. I had no idea what Everson was going to do until he did it. You think of a reason Everson might have wanted to kill him?”

  Ames shook his head as though trying to clear the cobwebs out and get his balance again. “I heard you killed him,” he repeated lamely.

  “Who told you that?”

  Ames perked up, seemed to focus. “Vern told me,” he said, as though this would be unchallengeable.

  “Vern? That’s interesting. He wasn’t even in the room.”

  “Said he saw it happen.” Ames was belligerent in his certainty.

  “Well, he didn’t. Is that why you and your pards decided to beat me up? You shot up the saloon knowing I’d come to stop it and that would give you the excuse?”

  Ames’ eyes shifted away, then back, then away. He was confused, unsure what to believe now.

  “So, was that the reason?”

  “We figured you needed a lesson.” Ames’ chin went up defiantly.

  “You were going to kill me?”

  Ames looked away.

  “Were you?”

  “You’re standing there with a tin star pinned on. What do you think I am, a fool?”

  “I guess it doesn’t matter so much now,” Lon said. “Not if you’ve got it straight what really happened. The only reason I was in Everson’s office at all was that I’d found Billy’s body on the trail and figured the place to take him was the law. I didn’t know Jack or anybody else in town. Ames, I want you to tell me something straight. Jack seemed to think he was owed something by Everson. You know what that was about?”

  Ames’ eyes got shifty again. “I never knowed anything about Everson o
wing Jack anything.”

  “Well, that’s what he was talking about when he came barging in the first time and got thrown out. Said he was going to call out Everson.”

  “That was just on account of him being drunk. Jack might say most anything when he was loaded. Didn’t have to make sense.”

  “How about you telling your pards to leave me alone? Because there’s no reason for any of you to have anything against me. And because if you try it again, this time I’ll know I’m not supposed to jail you and might decide to shoot you instead.”

  Ames looked nasty for a moment, but then it passed and he shrugged. “Don’t none of it matter anyhow,” he said and went back into his hovel and shut the door.

  Chapter Eleven

  Though there was one small scuffle about cards to break up, the rest of that day was fairly quiet. When he finally went to bed at around one in the morning he was wondering if his performance the day before had had a salutary effect on those who might otherwise have felt free to settle their differences in a direct fashion without regard to effects on others or their property.

  That was good, if true. It was interesting that he’d seen no sign of Ames’ friends the Folsom brothers or Glen Bednor. He didn’t mind if they all decided to try some other town to have their brand of fun in.

  So he felt better all up one side, but more worried and uncertain all down the other. He couldn’t decide whether to believe Ames when he said he didn’t know why Everson had turned them loose, but he certainly didn’t believe him when he claimed to know nothing about Everson owing his brother anything. He’d been too vehement.

  So what was that all about?

  Did he really want to know? Was it his business anyway?

  When he arrived at the office next morning for his marching orders, Everson glowered at him and ordered him to sit, but didn’t sit himself.

  “How many times do I have to tell you?” he demanded. “You leave the investigating to me.”

  “I haven’t been investigating anything.”

  “Then what business did you have with Bud Ames?”

  How did Everson know about that? Vern? And how did Vern know?