Vengeance Creek

by Robert J. Randisi

  4

  Shaye and James made late rounds together in an awkward silence. They stopped in several saloons, checked the locked doors of some businesses, made sure the parts of the town that were shutting down for the night were secure, then headed back to the office.

  “Pa?” James said on the way.

  “Yes, James?”

  “You miss Ma, don’t you?”

  Shaye hesitated, then said, “I miss Ma and Matthew, James.”

  “So do I.”

  After a couple more blocks Shaye said, “Why did you ask me that?”

  “Um, you hide it real well,” James said. “I mean, you’re…quiet. Somebody lookin’ at you couldn’t tell, you know?”

  “Men wear their grief differently, James,” Shaye said. “Look at Thomas. He wears it as quietly as I do.”

  “But Thomas talk to me about it.”

  “He does?”

  “Well…when I ask ’im.”

  Shaye put his arm around his younger son’s shoulders. “James, whenever you ask me, I’ll talk to you about it too. How’s that?”

  “That’d be good, Pa,” James said. “That’d be real good.”

  When Cardwell and Davis registered at the Palace Hotel, Cardwell checked the register to see if any of his other men had arrived yet. They took one room with two beds, went upstairs to drop off their rifles and saddlebags.

  “I saw you checkin’ the book,” Davis said. “Anybody else here yet?”

  “No,” Cardwell said, “we’re first.”

  “I know any of these other fellas?”

  “No,” Cardwell said. “I figured you might have a problem double-crossing somebody you know.”

  “Not if there’s enough money involved.”

  “This bank’s supposed to hold a lot,” Cardwell said. “Lots of ranchers in the area bank here.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I got somebody on the inside who’s been keepin’ me informed,” Cardwell said.

  “You trust them?”

  “I trust the information.”

  “You gonna cut them in?”

  “I’ll have to see about that.”

  Davis went to the window and looked down at the street. “Awful quiet around here once the sun goes down,” he commented.

  “We’ll see how busy she is when the sun comes up,” Cardwell said. “Gotta remember this is a weekday too. Folks worked all day and went home to eat and sleep. Weekend might be a little livelier.”

  “Why don’t we find a part of town that’s livelier now?” Davis asked. “I could sure use a beer and a woman about now.”

  “So could I,” Cardwell said. “Let’s go find ’em.”

  Thomas stopped in at the Road House Saloon, where the bartenders and saloon girls all knew him.

  “Beer, Tom?” Al Baker asked him.

  “Yep.”

  Baker, who not only worked the bar but owned the place, placed a cold mug in front of Thomas, who paid him. Thomas had long ago told Baker that whether he was wearing a badge or not, he paid his way. The older man respected him for that.

  “Hi, Tommy.” A blonde in a red dress sidled up to him, pressing her hips firmly against his. He could feel the warmth through both their clothes.

  “Hello, Belinda.”

  “Been a while since you came to see me.”

  He didn’t want to tell her that he only came around when he was depressed, and that he’d had a few good weeks until now.

  “Been busy.”

  “Too busy for me?” She stuck out her lower lip and blinked her eyes. She was a few years older than him, and while he liked her, the little girl trick didn’t suit her.

  “Don’t do that,” he said. “You look silly when you do that.”

  “Ooh,” she said, removing her hips from his, “somebody’s in a bad mood.”

  “Foul,” he corrected her. “I’m in a foul mood.”

  “Well,” she said, “I’ll leave you alone, then,” and she flounced away.

  Belinda was pretty enough, but not tonight. Tonight it would take a lot to change his mood—maybe even a miracle.

  5

  Thomas had kept his mood from James all day. Since he was the older brother, he believed he had to be strong for the younger. He knew that with Matthew gone, James needed him even more. But it was hard, being strong for somebody else. Sometimes you just needed to get away and give in to your mood.

  He also didn’t want his father knowing how he felt. Dan Shaye had enough on his mind. He’d lost a wife and a son. Thomas recognized that the deaths in their family had been hardest of all on his father. So when he felt down—or foul, as he felt right now—he came to this side of town, usually to this saloon, and drank alone.

  And, as long as people left him alone, there was never any trouble.

  Cardwell wanted a saloon with a lot of activity. He and Davis kept walking until they reached a more lively part of town. With several saloons to choose from, he picked the Road House. It was the biggest, the brightest, and the loudest.

  “Now, this is my kind of place,” Davis said, looking around. “Look at all the women.”

  “Don’t get into trouble, Sean.”

  “How would I do that?” Davis asked innocently.

  “By treating every woman you meet like a whore.”

  “Ain’t they?”

  “No,” Cardwell said, “they’re not. If you want a whore, then go find a whorehouse.”

  “Later,” Davis said. “I want to try this place out first.”

  “There’s a table,” Cardwell said. “I’ll grab it, and you go to the bar and get two beers.”

  “Okay.”

  Davis went to the bar, which didn’t have much in the way of elbow room. He decided to force his way in, and by doing so, spilled some of Thomas’s beer.

  “Hey!” Thomas yelled. “Take it easy.”

  “I need two beers!” Davis shouted at the bartender, ignoring Thomas.

  “There’s room for everyone, you know,” Thomas said. “No need to push.”

  Davis looked at Thomas and said, “Stay out of my way and you won’t get pushed.”

  “Look, friend,” Thomas said, “I’m just tryin’ to give you some advice—”

  “Keep your damned advice to yourself,” Davis said.

  “Hey, mister,” the bartender, Al Baker, started, “you don’t want to be talking to him that way, he’s—”

  “This man owes me a beer, Al,” Thomas said. “Draw three and he’ll pay for them.”

  Davis turned to face Thomas. Some of the other men at the bar sensed the trouble and backed off, giving the two men room.

  “I’m only payin’ for two beers,” Davis said belligerently. “You pay for your own.”

  “I did pay for my own,” Thomas said. “And you spilled it. That means you owe me one.”

  “I don’t owe you shit!”

  Baker set three mugs of beer on the bar and looked at the two men, wondering who was going to pay for what.

  “Look,” Thomas said, “I tried to do this nicely, so now I’m tellin’ you—pay for the three beers.”

  Davis looked Thomas up and down. He saw a big man in his mid-twenties, at least ten years younger than him. He wasn’t about to let some young punk tell him what to do.

  “You know how to use that hogleg?” he asked, nodding at Thomas’s revolve.

  “I’ve been known to.”

  “Is it worth usin’ it for a beer?”

  Thomas spread his feet and planted them firmly beneath him. “It’ll be worth it to teach you a lesson,” he said, “and it might ease my bad mood.”

  “I’ll take care of your mood—” Davis said, taking a step back. Before he could do anything else, though, Ben Cardwell stepped between the two men and planted his right hand against Davis’s chest.

  “Back off, Sean,” he said with authority. “You did spill the man’s beer. I saw you.” He looked at Thomas. “My friend is clumsy. I apologize.” Then he turned to the
bar and tossed some coins on it. “That cover the three beers?”

  “It covers it,” Al Baker said.

  “Enjoy your beer,” Cardwell said to Thomas.

  “What the hell—” Davis began.

  “Let’s sit down!” Cardwell snapped at him. “Now!”

  He grabbed Davis by the arm and literally dragged him across the floor to their table.

  “I thought he was gonna draw his gun for sure,” Baker said to Thomas.

  “He was,” Thomas said. “He would have, if his friend hadn’t stopped him.”

  “Then you would have killed him.”

  Thomas looked at Baker, picked up his beer and said, “Yes.”

  “Over a beer?”

  Thomas put his elbows on the bar. “It would have been more than that.”

  “What the hell did you do that for?” Davis asked after Cardwell had forced him into a chair.

  A large, ham-handed man, he easily pushed the slighter, shorter man into his seat.

  “You didn’t recognize that man?”

  Davis looked across the room at Thomas, who had his back to him now. “No, should I?”

  “We saw him earlier,” Cardwell said. “He was wearing a badge.”

  “One of the deputies?”

  “That’s right. We don’t need you gettin’ into trouble with the law tonight, Sean.”

  Davis looked across the room again, but some of the men who had spread out to give them room to resolve their conflict before had closed ranks again, and he couldn’t see the lawman.

  “But…he wasn’t wearin’ his badge.” The long, slender nose that gave his face the look of a weasel twitched.

  “I noticed that.”

  “You sure—”

  “I’m sure,” Cardwell said.

  Davis drank down a quarter of his beer.

  “I would have killed him, you know.”

  “Probably,” Cardwell said, “but that would have caused us a lot of trouble we don’t need right now. So drink your beer and get used to the fact that you’re not killin’ anybody…not tonight, anyway.”

  6

  “I thought I told you never to tell anyone I’m a deputy, Al,” Thomas said to Baker.

  “Thomas,” Baker said, “everybody else in here knows it already. It was just those strangers—”

  “I don’t care,” Thomas said. “If I wanted people to know—strangers—I’d wear the damned badge.”

  “Okay,” Baker said, “sorry.”

  Thomas pushed his empty mug forward.

  “Another?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You usually nurse one,” Baker said, picking up the mug. “This’ll make two.”

  “Three,” Thomas said, “counting the one that was spilled. Besides, what are you, my father?”

  “Thomas—”

  “I already have a father,” he said. “Give me another beer.”

  “Comin’ up.”

  Thomas made a point of not turning around to look at the two strangers. No sense inviting another confrontation. Somebody might not walk away next time.

  “I’m going home,” Dan Shaye said. “You comin’?”

  “I think I’m gonna walk around town some more, Pa,” James said. “Make sure everything’s all right.”

  They had just done that, so Shaye suspected James had something else on his mind. Maybe that gal Thomas had been talking about.

  “Suit yourself, James,” he said. “Just don’t get yourself into trouble.”

  “I’ll be careful, Pa.”

  “Good night, then.”

  Shaye walked home to a quiet house. He knew instinctively that Thomas was out, and not inside, asleep. Maybe that was where James was going, to find his brother.

  Thomas finished that next beer and pushed the mug away. He was surprised at his own anger. He suspected it had been burning in his belly for a year, and two beers plus the better part of a third had probably fanned the flame. He felt ashamed when he realized who he was angry at.

  He was considering another beer, wondering if it would put out the flame or fan it into an uncontrollable blaze when he felt someone sidle up next to him.

  “James.”

  “Big brother.”

  “Want a beer?”

  “How many have you had?”

  “Enough.”

  “I’ll skip it.”

  Thomas turned his head to look at his brother. “How’d you know where I was?”

  “I looked.”

  “Why?”

  “Something’s been botherin’ you, Thomas,” James said. “I thought you might wanna talk about it.”

  “James—” Thomas started, but he stopped abruptly.

  “Thomas?”

  “Let’s get out of here, James,” Thomas said, “and I’ll talk to you.”

  They turned away from the bar and headed for the door together under the watchful eyes of Ben Cardwell and Sean Davis.

  “Why don’t we follow them?” Davis asked. “We can get rid of them tonight.”

  “Yeah,” Cardwell said, “that’s all we need is two dead deputies showin’ up in the mornin’—and the rest of our men aren’t here yet.”

  “With the two deputies dead, you and me can do the job alone,” Davis said.

  “Sean,” Cardwell said, “who makes all the plans?”

  “Well…you, usually.”

  “And how do things turn out?”

  “Well, okay, usually.”

  “Then shut up,” Cardwell said, “and stop tryin’ to do the thinkin’. You ain’t cut out for it.”

  Thomas and James walked back toward the center of town, where it was quiet.

  “What’s goin’ on, Thomas?” James asked.

  Thomas didn’t answer right away.

  “Come on, Thomas,” James said. “I know you’re the older brother, and you’re always there for me, but sometime you gotta let me be there for you…you know?”

  Thomas looked at his little brother and realized he was right. If he was always going to be there for James, who would ever be there for him? His father? He couldn’t very well do that, could he? After all, wasn’t that who he was mad at?

  “Tell me something, little brother,” Thomas said. “Do you ever get angry?”

  “What?” James asked. “Well, sure, yeah, I get mad sometimes.”

  “At who?”

  James shrugged. “I get mad at Ethan Langer, for killin’ Ma and Matthew.”

  “But he’s dead,” Thomas said. “You can’t stay mad at a dead man.”

  “What are you sayin’, Thomas?” James asked. “Who do you get mad at?”

  Thomas hesitated. How would his brother react when he told him?

  “I—I’m mad at Pa.”

  “At Pa?” James asked, surprised. “But…why?”

  “I guess…deep down I blame him for Ma’s death, and for Matthew’s.”

  James stopped and grabbed Thomas’s arm. “What are you talkin’ about?” he asked. “Pa feels more pain about Ma’s death than any of us—and Matthew. How could you blame him…that’s just not fair.”

  “Well…I don’t feel it all the time,” Thomas said. “Sometimes it just…comes over me.”

  “Have you ever talked to Pa about it?”

  “No,” Thomas said, “I would never tell Pa that.”

  “Why not?”

  “It would hurt him.”

  “If you’re so mad at him, why don’t you want to hurt him?” James asked.

  “Because I love him.”

  James shook his head. “I’m confused.”

  “Imagine how I feel,” Thomas said. “Look, James, this is just something I feel sometimes, okay? There’s no need to tell Pa about it. Agreed?”

  “Thomas—”

  “If he ever needs to be told,” Thomas said, “or if I ever need to tell him, I will. But it should be me who tells him, shouldn’t it?”

  James hesitated, then sighed and said, “Yes, I suppose it should.”

  “Okay
, then,” Thomas said, putting his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Then let’s go home and go to bed.”

  James nodded and the two brothers began to walk again, this time toward the house they shared with their father.

  7

  Dan Shaye was usually the first to rise in the morning. It used to be his wife, Mary, who woke first and had breakfast on the table for her husband and her sons. Since her death—and since their move—he was unable to sleep for more than a few hours each night, so he got into the habit of rising first and trying to have breakfast ready for Thomas and James. The only problem was he was not a very good cook. On the trail he was passable—beans and coffee being his specialty—but in the kitchen he was a disaster. The boys often fretted about whether he would have breakfast ready when they woke up.

  Today he made coffee, and nothing else. Took pity on his own stomach as well as his sons’.

  “I thought we’d go to the café for breakfast today,” he told them when they came into the kitchen.

  “Suits me,” Thomas said, frowning into his coffee. “Not that I’m insultin’ your cookin’ or nothin’, Pa.”

  “That’s all right, son,” Shaye said. “I can insult my own cookin’ enough for the three of us.”

  “Flapjacks ain’t bad when you make ’em, Pa,” James offered.

  “I know,” Shaye said, “I noticed how much butter and sugar syrup you slather on them because they’re so good.”

  James looked away, put his coffee down half finished.

  “All right, then, deputies,” Shaye said. “I can see you’re not even gonna finish the coffee this mornin’, so let’s go and get us somethin’ decent to eat.”

  The café they usually ate breakfast in was a popular one in town. Off the main street, people still sought it out in the mornings, and town folk rarely recommended it to strangers.

  “Your table’s empty, Sheriff,” the waiter said as they entered.

  Shaye had always considered having a table waiting in the better restaurants a small thing to expect as part of the sheriff’s job. Never one to demand any kind of graft from local businesses, this was the closest he ever came to a payoff.

  James led the way, following the waiter to the table, and Thomas took the opportunity to tug on his father’s arm and say, “There she is.”

  “There who is?” Shaye asked, looking around.

  “Over against the wall, sittin’ with an older woman,” Thomas said. “That’s the teller gal James is sweet on.”