They wanted to know exactly what sort of man they’d be working with, too, so Sam said, “Tell us about what’s happened in Sweet Apple since you’ve been here, Seymour. We read a story in the Gazette, but I’m sure there’s more to it than that.” Seymour made a face. “Mr. Heathcote thinks that I’m good copy, as he calls it. When I first arrived he built me up to be a cowardly buffoon—which I am, I sup- pose—but he was also one of the men who came to me and asked me to take the marshal’s job.”
“A man’s only as cowardly as he believes himself to be,” Matt drawled.
“And as for being a buffoon,” Sam said, “I can already tell that that’s not the truth. You’re an intelligent man, Seymour.”
“I suppose so,” Seymour said with a sigh. “It’s true that I always enjoyed school. I’ve thought before that I should have found some sort of academic career. I was never cut out to be a salesman either. But my father was the owner of the company, and he expected me to follow in his footsteps.”
“Sam and I both know what it’s like when a fella wants to please his pa. But when you come right to it, every man has to figure out his own trail, not just follow somebody else’s, no matter how much you admire him.”
“Yes . . . Yes, I suppose you’re right. But that doesn’t help us now, does it?”
“Nope,” Matt agreed. “Right now you’re here, and those outlaws are maybe on their way, and that’s what you’ve got to deal with.”
Looking more decisive than he had so far, Seymour stood up and reached for his hat. “Let’s go,” he said. “I have an idea about where to start recruiting defenders for the town.”
The three men left the marshal’s office and walked along the street toward the Black Bull Saloon. Along the way, Matt felt someone watching him and turned his head to look at the boardwalk. A couple of men were loitering there in front of a hardware store. Something about them was vaguely familiar, and after a second he recalled that he had seen both of them on the train from Marfa. They must have gotten off in Sweet Apple, too. Both men looked out of place. They wore Eastern suits, including derbies. One was short, broad, muscular, and very hairy. The other man was tall and thin, with cold, reptilian eyes and swarthy skin. Matt felt an instinctive dislike for both of them, but the men turned and headed the other way down the street, so he put them out of his mind for now.
He and Sam had more pressing problems. A whole outlaw gang full of them, in fact.
Seymour pushed the batwings aside and led the way into the Black Bull. No one in the place paid much attention to him, which told Matt that folks were getting used to Seymour being their marshal, as odd as that was on the face of it.
Seymour approached one of the men standing at the bar, nursing a mug of beer, and said, “Mr. Halliday, I’d like to talk to you, if you don’t mind.”
Halliday was a hard-looking man with mean little eyes. Matt and Sam had encountered his type many times before. A two-bit gunman who was no doubt dangerous—but not as dangerous as he thought he was.
Halliday greeted Seymour with a sneer. “Well, if it ain’t our famous lily-livered marshal. What do you want, Seymour? Want me to shoot that hat full o’ holes like I did your last one?”
Matt stepped to one side and Sam to the other so that they flanked Seymour.
“The marshal said he wants to talk to you, mister,” Matt snapped.
“I’d listen, if I was you,” Sam said.
Halliday’s eyes flicked back and forth between them. “Who the hell are you two?” he demanded. “Seymour the Lily-livered’s new deputies?”
Matt and Sam looked at each other and shrugged. “How about it, Marshal?” Matt asked. “Are we officially deputized?”
“I . . . I suppose that would be best. Consider yourselves deputy marshals of Sweet Apple.”
Halliday hadn’t lost his sneer. “That still don’t tell me who you are.”
“Name’s Matt Bodine.”
“And I’m Sam Two Wolves.”
Recognition flared in Halliday’s eyes. He knew those names, all right. He knew that Bodine and Two Wolves belonged to the same brotherhood of the gun that he did . . . only at a much higher level. “What do you want with me?” he snarled. “It’s two against one.” He wasn’t counting Seymour.
Matt shook his head. “We’re not lookin’ for trouble, Halliday.”
“The marshal wants to talk to you,” Sam said. “That’s all.”
Slowly, Halliday lifted his left hand and rubbed his jaw. “Well . . . I reckon that’s all right.”
Seymour nodded and said, “Thank you, Mr. Halliday. Now, if you’ll be so kind as to wait just a moment . . .” He went over to one of the tables, where several men had watched the confrontation with looks of surprise and puzzlement on their faces. “Mr. Keller, Mr. Akin, would you join us?” Seymour turned back toward the bar. “And Mr. Delacroix, you, too?”
A man in an expensive suit who stood at the bar asked in a Cajun accent, “What are you up to, Seymour?”
“I’m putting together a small . . . discussion group, let’s call it. I’d like to talk to the four of you in my office.”
“Are you arrestin’ us?” one of the men at the table asked.
Seymour shook his head. “Not at all. As I said, I’d just like to talk to you.”
The man called Delacroix smiled. “Why not? I am glad to oblige the friend of the charming Miss O’Ryan.”
Matt didn’t know what that was about, but he saw the way Seymour’s ears suddenly turned red. Whoever Miss O’Ryan was, Matt figured that the marshal was smitten with her.
The seven men left the saloon and walked toward Seymour’s office. Along the way, Matt looked around for the two Eastern dudes he had noticed earlier, but he didn’t see them.
“All right,” Halliday growled when they reached the office and the door was closed behind them. “What is it you and these hired guns o’ yours want, Seymour?”
Looking at Halliday, Keller, and Akin, Seymour said, “I’ve had trouble with all three of you men, but I bear you no ill will. I understand that you’re all proficient with firearms—”
“Try us any time you want and find out for yourself, Seymour,” Keller said.
Seymour held up his hands. “No, no, that’s not what this is about. You’re tough men. I know that.” He looked at the saloon keeper. “You, too, Mr. Delacroix, otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to be a success in your profession. I need some tough men to give me a hand.”
They all stared at him, clearly not understanding what he was getting at.
Delacroix said, “You wish to deputize us, mon ami?”
“Well . . . unofficially, yes.”
A bark of harsh laughter came from Halliday. “I’m no damn lawman.”
“I did say it would be unofficial.”
“Why should we want to help you?” Akin demanded.
Seymour’s answer was blunt, and Matt was glad he’d finally stopped beating around the bush. “Because there’s an entire gang of outlaws on their way to Sweet Apple, and if we’re not ready for their arrival, they might just wipe out the entire town.”
Chapter 26
The three gunmen and the saloon keeper just stared at Seymour for a long moment, as if he had spoken to them in some foreign language they didn’t under- stand. Finally, Delacroix asked, “How do you know this, Seymour?”
“They told me,” Seymour replied with a nod toward Matt and Sam.
“You know who Bodine and Two Wolves are?” Halliday asked. “Gunfighters, that’s who they are. Just a couple o’ driftin’ hellions, on the lookout for trouble.”
“That’s not quite true,” Matt said.
Halliday bristled. “You callin’ me a liar, Bodine?”
“I’m sayin’ that you’re misinformed about Sam and me,” Matt said in a cold voice. “And you’d better listen to the marshal here, because he’s right about what might happen. Deuce Mallory and his gang nearly destroyed a whole town up in the Panhandle a couple of weeks ago. We w
ere there and saw it with our own eyes.”
“How do you know this man Mallory and his cronies are headed here?”
Delacroix asked.
“We went after them,” Sam explained. “We didn’t ever catch up to them, but we did get our hands on one of Mallory’s men who’d been left behind because he was wounded. He’s the one who told us that Mallory and the rest of the gang planned to attack Sweet Apple and then duck across the border into Mexico.”
“But if this is true,” Delacroix said, “why have the outlaws not attacked the town already? You admitted that they were ahead of you and you did not catch up to them.”
Matt shrugged. “Yeah, they should’ve been here before now. We don’t know the answer to that.”
“Maybe they ain’t comin’,” Akin said. “Maybe they decided to raid someplace else.”
“That’s a possibility,” Seymour admitted. “But the possibility still exists that they’ll come here, and so we have to be prepared for them.”
“Prepared how, mon ami?” Delacroix asked.
Seymour looked around at them. “We have to get ready to fight.”
Again a moment of silence passed as the men mulled over what Seymour had said. Then Halliday asked, “Why us? It ain’t like we’re your friends, Seymour.”
“No . . . but you live here. When Mallory and his men attack, you’ll be in as much danger as anyone else in Sweet Apple. The difference is that men such as yourselves are capable of fighting back.”
“Damn right we can fight!” Keller said. “I ain’t afraid of no owlhoots!”
“How many men does Mallory have?” Delacroix wanted to know.
“We’re not sure,” Matt said. “Somewhere between twenty and thirty is a good guess. But there could be as many as forty of the varmints, and they might’ve picked up even more along the way as they came down here.”
“The seven of us cannot stop them.”
“You probably know other men you can trust,” Seymour said. “Men who can handle themselves in a fight. Help me spread the word . . . but only to men who are willing to keep that knowledge to themselves. We don’t want everyone in the town panicking over something that might not even happen.”
The hardcases thought it over. “I never helped the law before,” Keller muttered.
“Somethin’ about it rubs me the wrong way,” Akin added.
Halliday silenced them with a slash of his hand. “Sweet Apple’s our town, damn it. And Seymour may be lily-livered, but he ain’t stupid. I’ve heard of Deuce Mallory. They say he kills folks like we’d step on a bug. There ain’t no human feelin’ in him. I don’t want to see what him and two dozen snakes just like him would do to this town.”
“Neither do I,” Delacroix agreed. “Two of my bartenders are rugged, courageous men, Seymour, and they can keep their mouths shut. I can recruit them to our cause.”
Halliday rubbed his jaw. “I know some ol’ boys who like a good scrap, too. I reckon they’d agree to give us a hand and keep their traps shut.”
Akin and Keller shrugged and went along with the others, each offering to find some more defenders among the settlement’s more disreputable elements.
“I’ll speak to the members of the town council, too,” Seymour said, “but for the moment I can’t thank you gentlemen enough. With your help, we will prevail if those outlaws make the mistake of attacking Sweet Apple.”
“How much time do we have to get ready?” Halliday asked.
Seymour looked at Matt and Sam. “We honestly don’t know,” Matt said. “Mallory could strike at any time. Might be a good idea to post a lookout at the highest point in town to give us some warnin’ if a large group of riders approaches.”
“That would be the roof of the Black Bull,” Delacroix said. “I’ll send a man up there as soon as I get back to the saloon.”
Seymour nodded in approval of that plan. “The rest of you spread out through town and find more men we can trust.”
They started toward the door, but Halliday paused and looked back with a frown. “Are you sure you’re the same hombre I hoo-rawed down at the train station the day you got here, Seymour?”
“I don’t know.” Seymour smiled. “Sometimes I feel like a different man. A new man.”
“Yeah, well, a bullet don’t care about things like that, so when the time comes, keep your head down.”
* * *
Since Matt and Sam didn’t really know anyone in Sweet Apple, they left it up to Seymour and the men he had already recruited to put together the rest of the force that would defend the town in case the Mallory gang raided it. That afternoon, they saw a wagon roll out of the settlement carrying Jessie Colton and the rest of the Colton clan. Her father Shad was at the reins, handling the team of fine black horses. Half-a-dozen hard-faced cowboys rode behind the wagon, punchers from the Colton spread, no doubt.
A short time later, the Paxton family departed in much the same manner, traveling in a big, sturdy wagon, accompanied by several gun-hung waddies. Matt and Sam noted that the families seemed to have made a point of leaving Sweet Apple at different times.
“Do you think we should have warned them about Mallory?” Sam asked.
Matt thought it over and then shook his head. “From the way the girls were talking, their ranches are a good long way out of town. They shouldn’t be in any danger.”
“Mallory and his men might raid the ranches.”
“Mallory’s not a rustler,” Matt said. “Wide-looping cattle is too much work for a varmint like him. He’s just interested in loot that he can grab without going to a lot of trouble, like in a bank.” Matt paused. “And killing. He’s interested in killing.” “We ought to take a ride out to those spreads and warn them,” Sam insisted. “Maybe we will in a day or two, after we’ve got things more squared away here.” Sam went along with that idea. The biggest threat was still definitely directed at Sweet Apple.
By that evening, Seymour was able to tell Matt and Sam that a force of twenty- two men, including the three of them, had been assembled to defend the town in case of attack. Of course, other men would fight, too, if it came to that, but these twenty-two knew in advance of the possible danger and would be ready at all times to oppose it. The only outward sign of that, however, was the presence of three men on guard duty—one on the roof of the Black Bull, another in the bell tower of the mission on the edge of town, and the third perched on the roof of the hotel. If any of them detected any signs of an attack, they would fire three shots in the air to alert the rest of the defenders.
The nearest telegraph office was at Fort Davis, which was several days’ ride away, but a rider had been sent there to wire the Texas Rangers for help. Any assistance from the Rangers was probably at least a week off, though, and Matt and Sam both had their doubts the outlaws would delay their attack that long. Although most of them didn’t yet know the danger they were in, the citizens of Sweet Apple were pretty much on their own.
That evening, after having supper with Matt and Sam, Seymour set out to make his rounds by himself, as he usually did. For the time being, he didn’t want to vary his routine. Matt and Sam had alerted him to the possibility that Mallory might have spies in Sweet Apple. Strangers came and went all the time in the settlement. The defenders didn’t want to tip their hand and allow Mallory to discover that he would meet heavy resistance when he raided the town. It would be different, Matt said, if such a possibility would deter the outlaws from attacking. On the contrary, though, such a discovery would probably just make them launch their strike soon- er, before the citizens had time to get any more organized.
Listening to the blood brothers talk, Seymour realized just how much he had to learn about strategy if he was ever going to be a good fighting man. Not that such a thing had ever been one of his ambitions until now . . .
He had just checked the door at the saddle shop when he felt his heart give a little jump as he recognized a figure ahead of him on the boardwalk. Maggie O’Ryan was coming toward him. She
paused suddenly, as if she had just noticed him, too, and wasn’t sure whether to keep coming or not. They were still rather shy around each other, despite the fact that they had had supper together twice. Seymour wasn’t officially courting her, at least not yet, but they were steadily edging in that direction.
Maggie lifted her chin and started walking toward him again. Seymour swallowed and resumed his own journey along the boardwalk. When they got closer to each other, he nodded and said, “Good evening, Maggie.”
“Hello, Seymour,” she replied. “How are you?”
“Fine, fine,” he said, hating the small talk that seemed to be one of the requirements of a new relationship like this. What he really wanted to do was to take her in his arms and kiss her. But he couldn’t do that, of course. It would be highly improper. And he hadn’t yet learned to say to hell with propriety.
He felt worry course through him when he thought about the fact that Maggie would be in danger, too, if the Mallory gang attacked the settlement. Maybe he ought to warn her—
He caught himself before he said anything about it. The outlaws might have by-passed Sweet Apple and already be in Mexico by now. Until that could be determined one way or the other, he didn’t want to cause Maggie any unnecessary worry.
Instead he asked, “How has attendance been at school the past few days?”
She smiled. “Surprisingly good. Oliver Delacroix has even been there every day. It’s like the parents in Sweet Apple have finally realized how important it is for their children to get an education. My hope is that the town is beginning to settle down at last. After all, we have a real marshal now.”
His natural self-deprecation made him start to say that he didn’t know about that, but he stopped himself and said, “And a real school as well. Civilization’s getting quite a foothold here.”
He was about to ask her to have dinner with him again sometime, when a couple of figures suddenly loomed up behind Maggie on the boardwalk. One of them, a short, broad man, bumped heavily against her shoulder as he started past. She cried out softly as the collision made her stumble a step to one side.
Texas Gundown Page 23
