Texas Gundown

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  Seymour wasn’t sure what pleased him more—the compliment or the fact that she had called him by his first name. He said, “It’s only been a week, and I haven’t really done that much.”

  “You’ve stopped three saloon fights, and you jailed two men who were drunk and firing their guns in the air. Someone could have been hurt in all of those incidents.”

  He shrugged. “I’m a salesman by trade, you know. Not a very good one maybe, but I do know how to talk to people. I was fortunate to persuade those men to settle their differences without violence, and as for the two men I arrested . . . well, they were really too inebriated to put up much of an argument.”

  “You just let them sleep it off and then released them in the morning. You could have fined them or made them stay in jail longer.”

  Seymour shook his head. “There didn’t seem to be any point in that. They were already so hung-over they were suffering a considerable punishment.”

  “Even so, people can see that you’re a reasonable man, and they like that. You’re winning them over, Seymour.” Maggie looked down at the floor and added, “You’ve won me over. I . . . I wasn’t sure how good a lawman you’d be. But now I think you’re doing a fine job.”

  Seymour’s heart swelled. If Maggie admired him as a lawman, then how did she feel about him as a man? He wondered how she would feel about having dinner with him some evening at the café.

  At the moment, she was more concerned with her unfortunate student. She looked up and went on. “That’s why I think you should go see Mr. Dietrich. If you told him to stop mistreating Randolph, he might listen to you.”

  Seymour couldn’t stop a dubious frown from appearing on his face. He said, “I don’t know about that, Maggie.” If she was going to call him Seymour, surely it would be all right if he called her Maggie. She didn’t object to the familiarity as he went on. “After all, a parent has the right to discipline a child however he sees fit.”

  “Within reason! Whipping a child until he can’t walk isn’t reasonable!”

  “I agree with you, but the law doesn’t really make any distinction about such things.”

  “How do you know about the law? You were a dry-goods salesman before you pinned on that badge.”

  Seymour winced a little. He liked Maggie O’Ryan, liked her a great deal, but she could be plain-spoken, even blunt on occasion. Like now.

  “I found a law book in the desk,” he explained. “I suppose one of the previous holders of this job left it behind. I’ve been reading it at night. Studying it. Enforcing the laws is my job now, you know.”

  She crossed her arms and gave him an intent look. “Well, I’m making an official complaint against Gunther Dietrich, and as the marshal, you’re required to investigate.”

  “I am?”

  “You are.”

  Seymour wasn’t sure that was right, but he supposed it wouldn’t do any harm to go have a talk with this Dietrich fellow. As he’d told Maggie, he was usually able to use his salesman’s skills to persuade people to do what he wanted. Well, sometimes anyway.

  He reached for his hat. “Where can I find Mr. Dietrich?”

  “I’ll show you,” Maggie said.

  “I don’t know if it’s a good idea for you to come along.”

  “Randolph is my student. I’m going.”

  Seymour could tell that he would be wasting his time by arguing. He put his hat on and nodded. “All right. But if there’s any trouble, let me handle it. That’s my job.”

  “Of course.”

  Fear hopped around inside him like a spooked rabbit as he and Maggie walked along the street. He wondered how big Gunther Dietrich was. He asked, “What does Mr. Dietrich do for a living?”

  “He works at the wagon yard.”

  Seymour nodded. It sounded like Dietrich might be a pretty burly fellow. All the more reason to resolve this peacefully.

  The Dietrich family lived in a small adobe house not far from the wagon yard. It was just Randolph and his father, Maggie explained. The boy’s mother had passed away several years earlier. That was probably one reason Maggie was so concerned about him, Seymour thought. Her maternal instinct made her want to take care of him since he no longer had a mother of his own.

  Lantern light shone through the windows of the house. Keeping a tight rein on his nervousness, Seymour marched up to the door, followed by Maggie, and rapped sharply on the panel.

  When the door opened, the huge shape of the man inside seemed to blot out the light from the lantern. His bullet-shaped head was devoid of hair except for a pair of bushy eyebrows.

  “Yeah?” Gunther Dietrich growled. “What do you want?”

  Seymour had trouble finding his voice. He swallowed a couple of times. Maggie must have grown impatient, because she leaned past him and said, “This is Marshal Standish, Mr. Dietrich. I’ve told him about what happened to Randolph.”

  Dietrich sneered. “So you went runnin’ to the law, did you?”

  Angered by the way the man looked at Maggie, Seymour finally spoke up. “Mr. Dietrich, it’s been reported to me that you’re mistreating your son. I’ve come to ask you to cease such behavior.”

  “What?”

  “Stop whipping Randolph,” Maggie said.

  Dietrich shook his head. “He’s my boy. I’ll do whatever I see fit to do. I got the right.”

  “Not necessarily,” Seymour said, thinking back over some of the things he had read in that battered old law book he’d found in the marshal’s desk. “There are certain provisions in the law that allow the authorities to remove a child from circum- stances that endanger him.” More anger welled up inside him, momentarily over- coming the nervousness and fear. “I would think that being beaten past the point of being able to walk would certainly qualify.”

  Dietrich frowned and shook his head. “What are you sayin’?”

  “The marshal is going to take Randolph away from you if you don’t start treating him better,” Maggie said.

  Dietrich’s eyebrows jerked around like caterpillars on a hot rock. “Take my boy away from me?” he rumbled. “You’ll go to hell first!”

  He stepped forward and swung a fist like a sledgehammer at Seymour’s head. The attack didn’t take Seymour completely by surprise. He had been able to tell from the first moment of the confrontation how belligerent Dietrich was and knew things might come to this. With his heart pounding, he ducked under the sweeping, roundhouse blow and shouted, “Maggie! Get back!”

  Maggie let out a cry of alarm as she stumbled backward. Seymour hoped she had the sense to stay out of this struggle. He leaped to the side as Dietrich swung again, this time an uppercut that would have taken Seymour’s head off if it had connected. He put his hand on his gun and shouted, “Mr. Dietrich, stop it! Stop it or I’ll have to arrest you!”

  Dietrich growled something that Seymour guessed were curses in German. He lunged at Seymour with his arms widespread, obviously intending to wrap up the smaller man in a bone-crushing bear hug.

  Seymour twisted away at the last second. He knew that he would stand no chance against the monstrous Dietrich in a fistfight. He had to resort to his gun.

  Which, of course, was still empty since; he had forgotten to reload it after Maggie interrupted his practice in the marshal’s office. Still, the revolver was less likely to break on Dietrich’s skull than his hands were. As Dietrich stumbled past him, Seymour yanked the gun from its holster and swung it as hard as he could at Dietrich’s head.

  Barrel met skull with a resounding clunk! Dietrich didn’t go down, though, as Seymour had hoped he would. Instead he let out a bellow of pain and annoyance and brought around an arm like the trunk of a young tree in a sweeping blow that crashed across Seymour’s chest and knocked him off his feet. Seymour went down hard in the doorway of the house, but managed to hang on to the gun. Maggie screamed his name.

  Seymour barely had time to be pleased by that before Dietrich wheeled around and launched a kick at him. Panic erupted inside him
at the thought of the big man stomping him to death. He rolled aside frantically, again causing Dietrich to miss. This time Dietrich was thrown off balance. As he tried to catch himself, Seymour lashed out and kicked him in the knee. Dietrich howled and toppled over back- ward.

  Dietrich landed so hard on his back that all the breath was knocked out of his body. He lay there gasping for air like a fish out of water. Seymour scrambled over to him and hit him with the gun again. This time Dietrich’s eyes rolled up in their sockets, he let out a groan, and then he lay still as he passed out.

  Maggie rushed to Seymour as he pushed himself to his feet. She clutched his arms and asked, “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”

  Seymour took a deep breath and shook his head. “N-no, I’m fine. Just . . . just a bit winded.”

  And still scared. His heart was pounding like a trip-hammer, its usual reaction whenever he was afraid. But he felt a surge of fierce satisfaction as he looked at Dietrich’s motionless form stretched on the ground in front of the house. Seymour could barely believe that he had managed to subdue such a brute. Again, luck had been on his side.

  Not only that, but Seymour was beginning to realize that a healthy dose of fear was not necessarily a bad thing. It made a man move faster and fight harder.

  “P-Pa?”

  The voice from inside the house made both Seymour and Maggie turn. A small blond boy hobbled forward, obviously in pain. Maggie rushed over to him and knelt to hug him.

  “It’s all right, Randolph,” she told him as she patted his back. “Your father won’t hurt you anymore.”

  The boy looked past Seymour at the unconscious form of his father. “Pa!” He tried to pull loose from Maggie’s arms.

  Seymour put a hand on her shoulder. “Let him go,” he said. “He’s worried about his father.”

  She looked up at him, frowning in confusion. “But . . . but the man mistreated him!”

  “He’s still the boy’s father,” Seymour pointed out.

  Maggie let go of Randolph, who limped over to drop to his knees beside Dietrich. The boy said, “Pa, are you gonna be all right?”

  Dietrich let out a groan and began stirring. Seymour took cartridges from the loops on his belt and began reloading his gun. As he did so, he said, “I’m sorry I had to hit him like that, son. He didn’t give me any choice. I think that in the future he’ll treat you a little better. At least I hope so. If he doesn’t, you let me know.”

  Randolph looked up at him. “Are . . . are you gonna arrest him, Marshal?”

  “Not this time, and if he treats you right from now on, I don’t think I’ll have to.”

  Seymour snapped the gun’s loading gate closed and holstered the weapon. “Can you tell him that when he’s good and awake?”

  “Y-yeah. I guess so.”

  Seymour patted his shoulder. “Good.” He looked toward the street, feeling eyes watching him, and was surprised to see that a group of townspeople had gathered. He said, “Can a couple of you men come help Mr. Dietrich back into his house?” Two of the townies hurried forward to do as Seymour asked. Maggie asked, “Are you sure you shouldn’t arrest him?”

  “I think he’s learned his lesson.” Seymour hoped his confidence wasn’t misplaced. And while he had that confidence, he went on. “Would you do me the honor of having dinner with me tomorrow night, Miss O’Ryan?” Since he was asking such a momentous question, it seemed proper to speak more formally. Maggie blinked in surprise, but after a second she said, “I . . . I think I’d like that, Marshal Standish.”

  Seymour smiled. To do that took considerable restraint, because what he wanted to do was let out a whoop of glee and leap into the air. He nodded and said, “I’ll call for you at six o’clock?”

  “That . . . that will be fine. And thank you for helping me this evening.”

  He gave his hat brim a tug. “That’s my job.” He offered her his arm. “Now, with your permission, I’ll walk you home.”

  Maggie hesitated, but again, only for a second. Then she linked her arm with his and smiled. “Thank you, Marshal.”

  As they walked off, Seymour glanced at the crowd again. He thought he saw several admiring gazes from the townspeople. Maybe they really were coming to respect him, as Maggie had said.

  What he didn’t notice was J. Emerson Heathcote, editor and publisher of the Sweet Apple Gazette, scribbling furiously on a pad of paper with a stub of a pencil.

  Heathcote’s pudgy face bore the look of a man who had just stumbled over a buried trove of treasure....

  Chapter 23

  “Was this town here the last time we were down this way?” Sam Two Wolves asked as he and Matt Bodine rode slowly down the main street of the settlement they had come to a few days after their encounter in the Davis Mountains with cantankerous old Alby McCormick.

  Matt shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He pointed to an elevated water tank next to the double line of gleaming steel rails. “And there’s the reason why. The railroad hadn’t come through yet. The locomotives needed a water stop here, so viola, there it is.”

  “Why’d you call me Viola?”

  Matt frowned. “I didn’t call you Viola. It’s a French word. Means, well, there it is, I reckon.”

  Sam shook his head. “No, Viola is a woman’s name. Or a musical instrument sort of like a violin. You’re thinking of v-o-i-l-a, pronounced vah-lah. Surely that’s the French word you meant.”

  “Maybe so. But don’t call me Shirley.”

  They glared at each other for a second, and then grinned. Sam reined in and called over to a skinny man lounging in the doorway of a general store, “Hey, friend, what’s the name of this place?”

  “They call it Marfa,” the man replied. “Don’t ask me why, ’cause I ain’t got no idea.” Judging by his garb, he was a cowboy, like most of the other men Matt and Sam had seen in the settlement. Now that the Apache threat had been ended for the most part in West Texas, cattlemen were moving in and establishing ranches that sprawled over vast areas.

  It was late in the day. The sun had already started to sink below the horizon, and Matt and Sam were grateful that they had come to a town. They wouldn’t have to spend another night on the trail. They could wash the dust out of their throats, get a decent meal, sleep in real beds, and maybe even take a bath. Then, after replenishing their supplies, they could start the last leg of their journey. Sweet Apple wasn’t more than two days’ ride from here, they estimated.

  Matt edged his horse closer to the store’s porch and asked the cowhand, “Been any trouble around here lately?”

  “What sort o’ trouble?”

  “Outlaws,” Matt replied.

  The cowboy shook his head. “Ain’t heard about anything like that. Been plumb peaceful in these parts ’cept on payday. Then the boys from the spreads here-abouts come into town and blow off a little steam.”

  “You know where Sweet Apple is?” Sam asked.

  “Sure. On up the railroad ’bout thirty or forty miles.”

  Matt leaned forward in the saddle. “You haven’t heard about any ruckuses up there?”

  “Nope.” The cowboy frowned. “How come you boys’re so interested in trouble? Lookin’ to make some?”

  Matt held up both hands, palms out. “Not hardly. We’re just like what you said it’s been around here, mister . . . plumb peaceful.”

  “Uh-huh.” The cowboy didn’t look or sound convinced. He shifted the wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek, turned, and went into the store.

  Matt and Sam hitched their horses into motion again and headed on down the street toward a large adobe building with a sign on it proclaiming it to be a hotel. In a low voice, Sam said, “It stands to reason that if Mallory and his gang had raided Sweet Apple already, someone here would have heard about it.”

  “Yeah,” Matt agreed. “You reckon that means they haven’t hit the place yet?”

  “That’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “But why not? We know that’s where
they were headed, and they were far enough ahead of us that they should’ve gotten to Sweet Apple a couple of days ago.”

  “Something happened to delay them,” Sam mused. “Or Mallory changed his plans for some reason and isn’t even going there anymore.”

  “If that’s what happened, then how in blazes are we gonna find them? They could be anywhere west of the Trinity by now.”

  Sam could only shrug. He didn’t have an answer for his blood brother’s question.

  They came to a livery stable before they reached the hotel, and stopped there to make arrangements for their saddle mounts and packhorses to be taken care of for the night. Then they moved on to rent a pair of rooms. The hotel clerk looked a little askance at Sam, and might have been about to say something about his Indian blood, but the sight of the double eagles that Matt dropped on the desk changed his mind. They had brought their saddlebags with them from the livery stable. As they were about to go upstairs to their rooms, something caught Sam’s eye. He picked up a folded newspaper from one of the chairs in the lobby and asked the clerk,

  “Mind if I borrow this?”

  The man shrugged. “You can have it as far as I’m concerned, Mr. Two Wolves. Someone who’s staying here must have left it there.”

  “Thanks,” Sam said with a nod and started up the stairs after Matt.

  “Interested in catching up on the news?” Matt asked when he saw the paper in Sam’s hand. “Might be something about Mallory and his gang in there.”

  “That’s not why I picked it up,” Sam said. He followed Matt into one of the rooms they had rented and unfolded the newspaper. “I saw something about Sweet Apple.” He pointed to one of the headlines and read, “‘Scaredest Man in the West Becomes Fighting Marshal.’”

  “Let me see that,” Matt said as he reached for the paper. “I didn’t know Sweet Apple had a marshal. The place has got such a bad reputation I’m surprised any- body would even take the job.”

  Both of them scanned the densely printed columns of type. The newspaper was the Sweet Apple Gazette, edited and published by one J. Emerson Heathcote ac- cording to the masthead. It was dated the day before, so the blood brothers knew that someone on an eastbound train must have picked it up in Sweet Apple, probably read it on the train, then discarded it here in the hotel.