McAllister Makes War

by Matt Chisholm

  Slowly, he walked back to the office, knocked and called and after a fairly long delay the door was opened. Pat O’Doran said: “The wanderer returns.” McAllister stepped into the lamplight and the Irishman said: “Jesus!. What in the holy name happened to youse?”

  “I was clobbered. But good.”

  Pat said: “I have the very cure for that right here.”

  He found the whiskey bottle and handed it to McAllister, who took a good pull and felt a bit better. He took another pull and felt better still.

  Five minutes later the mayor appeared fluffing and huffing, telling McAllister that things looked bad for him and he didn’t know what view the judge was going to take of the affair. Things seemed to have gone from bad to worse since Malloy had been killed. McAllister told him that if he wasn’t satisfied with what he was doing, he had better get himself another marshal. The mayor took a drink and changed his tone a little. He was a very worried man. He didn’t want any more killings in his town. Already the eastern newspapers were saying bad things about his town.

  The mayor departed and the young doctor arrived. He had dug the bullet out of Darcy. He handed it to McAllister who inspected it and passed it on to Carson. The marshal pursed his lips and said: “Thirty-eight.”

  “That let’s me out,” McAllister said. The doctor picked up his case and went. His head aching like hell, his temper short, McAllister spent an hour with Marve trying to make him talk, trying every angle he knew, but he didn’t get anywhere. He decided to sleep and did so.

  He awoke at dawn, took a wash, shaved and felt a little more human, but his head still ached like a fury. He inspected his wounded – Pat said he felt fine, just fine and he’d be skipping in a couple of days. McAllister walked over to the restaurant and fetched breakfast from the little Mexican girl for his wounded and the prisoners. After he had eaten well himself – a plate of ham and three eggs washed down with a pot of coffee. He felt even better then. He carried the tray back to the office and watched the others eat. The Texas cowhand was looking chastened and Marve was sullen.

  “Feel like talkin’, Marve?” McAllister asked.

  “Go to hell.”

  “Watch out somebody don’t come through that door and gun you down like they did Frank.”

  Marve gave him a deadly look and turned away.

  McAllister left Pat in charge, shotgun on desk and walked over to the Golden Fleece. There was a swamper at work and the barkeep McAllister had spoken to before was smoking a cigar and watching the swamper lugubriously. There were one or two drunks left over from the night before, but otherwise the place was empty.

  “Mornin’,” said McAllister.

  “Mornin’.”

  “What happens now?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Your boss is dead. Who owns this place now?”

  “How should I know? I only work here.”

  McAllister said: “I’ll take a look around the office.”

  “I wouldn’t do that if I was you.”

  “You aim to stop me?”

  “Don’t get me wrong, marshal. Hell, all I meant was... well, the owner ... There must be an owner.”

  McAllister smiled.

  “He’ll turn up. You’ll see.”

  McAllister walked through the bar into the office.

  He spent the next thirty minutes going through Fred Darcy’s desk. Darcy had not been the tidiest of men, nor had he been methodical in any way. The place was a mess, but McAllister learned few things about Darcy he hadn’t known before. He had been mixed up in cattle deals, which may or may not have been straight; he had run some women down on the line, west of town; he had lent money at exhorbitant rates. McAllister decided the only nice thing about the man was his whiskey. He sat down on the couch, put his feet on the table and sipped from the bottle. This wasn’t the rubbish sold to the customers out front. This was the real McCoy. McAllister was fully appreciative of the fact.

  He dozed a little, drank a little and started to forget his headache.

  The door opened and a man entered.

  McAllister looked at him through lowered lashes. It was Will Drummond.

  Drummond said in a cool gentle voice: “May I ask what the meaning of this is?”

  McAllister hadn’t seen this side of the man before and it interested him. He drank deeply from the bottle, belched and said: “Mornin’.”

  “I asked you a question, marshal.”

  McAllister drank again and put the bottle down on the table. He placed his feet on the floor and stood up.

  “An’ I’ll ask you a question? What the hell’s it got to do with you?”

  “I happen to own this place.”

  McAllister grinned broadly.

  “I’ve been waitin’ here forcin’ your whiskey down me to find that out.”

  Drummond pursed his lips.

  “It’s no secret. It was a piece of legitimate trading. Darcy wanted to leave town and he came to me with an offer.”

  “I’ll bet it was to your advantage with him on the run an’ all,” McAllister offered.

  “I’m a business man.”

  “It must have given you quite a turn seein’ me waitin’ here.”

  “Not at all. It annoyed me a little to see you making yourself at home with your feet on my table.”

  McAllister walked past him to the door and turned. He had a feeling about this man. There was something here he didn’t like. He hadn’t liked it the first time he had seen Drummond.

  “You’ll find I’m goin’ to annoy you a whole lot before I’m done, Drummond,” he said.

  “I’m not at all sure I like your tone, marshal,” Drummond said. “There’s an implied threat in it.”

  “You’re not goin’ to like anythin’ about me before long,” McAllister told him. “You’re goin’ to hate my guts. You’re the smooth smilin’ boy in this town, Drummond. You’re the nice-mannered eligible bachelor all the girls hanker after and the mothers swoon over. But I think that underneath that nice outside there’s a rotten inside.”

  “Good God, man,” Drummond said, “what kind of a marshal are you, talking this way? This could be the finish of you. This is libel of the worst order.”

  “There ain’t nobody here but us two, an’ you wouldn’t spread it around the nasty marshal called you a nasty man,” McAllister said.

  Drummond changed his tack.

  “Look, Mr. McAllister,” he said, “I don’t know what started this, but we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot together. Let’s start afresh.”

  “Let’s not,” said McAllister. “Let’s stay nice and unfriendly. Then when I hang you I shan’t feel so bad about it.”

  “Hang me?” Drummond cried, looking as though he were astonished out of his wits. “What in heaven’s name are you saying?”

  “I’m sayin’ I’ll hang you before I’m through, Drummond,” McAllister informed him coolly. “I have a nose for skunks like you an’ I ain’t never wrong.”

  “What am I supposed to have done? What led up to this crazy talk? I don’t know what notion you have in your head about me, but I swear I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  McAllister leaned in the doorway, filling it.

  “I ain’t tellin’ you a thing, Drummond,” he said. “You sweat awhile. You or one of your boys’ll have to get me from a dark alley if’n you want to stop me. So just sweat and think up all the ways you can of killin’ me without leaving a trace. You’ll need to be good. You won’t get me like Malloy or Frank Little was got.”

  “You mean you think I’m connected with those foul murders? You must be out of your mind.”

  “’Sright. I’m real crazy. Just watch the crazy things I do. You’ll the laughin’.”

  McAllister turned away.

  Drummond listened to the sound of his bootfalls dying away through the saloon. He found that he was shaking. McAllister had said he would let him sweat. To his disgust he found that he was sweating. Damn the
man. He had challenged him. He had dared him to try and kill him. He’d kill him all right. He shoot him in the guts and watch him die, he’d laugh in his face as he writhed in agony for the last time. God damn him to hell.

  He reached out for the whiskey bottle on the table and found to his disgust that McAllister had finished it. He cursed insanely and flung the bottle across the room. Searching in the cupboard on the far side of the room, he found another, removed the cork and drank deeply.

  He sat down and tried to think. Slowly, he regained command of himself. The situation looked dangerous. McAllister couldn’t have anything to go on, but he was a reckless man and therefore dangerous. Instinctively, Drummond knew that here was a man who didn’t work by the book. McAllister wasn’t orthodox and he didn’t care.

  So, what had to be done?

  There must be more killings. First, though he was tempted to kill McAllister, he knew he must kill Marve Little. If Marve talked, he could kill McAllister ten times over and it wouldn’t prevent a rope from going around his neck.

  How to kill Marve?

  Try the simple way first.

  He drank again and smiled to himself. It was going to take a smarter man than McAllister to stop William Drummond.

  Chapter Thirteen

  They sat or lay around in the office, smoking, drinking coffee, occasionally talking. The judge had come and gone. A peppery old number with years of administering some kind of law on a rough frontier. He hadn’t been very clean, nor very coherent, nor very sober for that matter, but his judgment had been sound enough. It was he who had insisted in holding court in the office. He didn’t want any more shooting. The Texas cowhand he had set free with a ten dollar fine for carrying a gun within the town limits. He had done no more than question McAllister about Marve Little and told the defending attorney that Marve was a villain and he had better have a good case or else. Such behavior may not have been ethical, but it was to the point and Marve was sitting in the single cell looking pretty disheartened right now. McAllister had said that he would have his case against Marve complete in the next few days. The judge declared that the prisoner should be kept on ice for that period, the attorney objected, the judge told him to mind his own Goddamn business. When judge and defense retired, the prosecuting attorney, a middle-aged man about as sober as the judge, stayed behind to discuss Marve’s case with McAllister, but they didn’t get very far because McAllister didn’t feel like discussing it. So the lawyer hurried off to the Golden Fleece for his mid-morning pickmeup.

  Carson said: “You don’t expect to pin this bastard, do you, Rem?”

  McAllister said: “I’ll pin the one who killed Malloy and Frank.”

  “How?”

  “I ain’t too sure of that. All I know is I’ll do it. I feel it in my water.”

  Pat roared: “A premonition, by God. Nothin’ likelier, me laddo.”

  They tossed the subject this way and that, but it didn’t get them anywhere. Pat suggested McAllister bought them a bottle to while away the time. McAllister drifted down Main and came back with a bottle. But he didn’t drink. He was too depressed. He liked to drink seriously when he felt good. If he drank when he felt bad it made him feel like hell. He lay on the floor dozing and thinking. He made his rounds in the evening. The town was pretty full of trail riders among whom he knew more than a few. He took a couple of drinks in two different saloons, received news of Texas and wandered back to the office. Come supper time, he went down the street and fetched a tray of food from the restaurant and fed marshals and prisoner. He didn’t feel like eating himself. Pat ate as if he hadn’t had a meal in weeks. McAllister and Carson twigged him idly about it. After the meal, Pat took some exercise up and down the office and swore that he’d be running in a couple of days. McAllister collected the dishes in the office, put them on the tray and went over to the cell.

  “Push ’em out under the door, Marve,” he told the prisoner.

  Marve looked up from where he was sitting on the cot. He put the mug from which he had been drinking onto the clean plate and pushed them with his foot under the cell door. McAllister bent down. As his hand touched the plate he heard the gun come to full cock. Looking up, he saw the gun in Marve’s hand.

  “Take it easy, Mack,” Marve said.

  “Don’t call me Mack,” McAllister told him.

  He straightened up and knew he was as near death as he could ever get. It wasn’t a nice feeling. Carson screwed himself around on the bed so he could see better.

  “Holy Mother,” Pat said.

  “Anybody looks at me wrong an’ McAllister gets it,” Marve told them. “Unbuckle your gunbelt and be awfully careful how you do it, McAllister.”

  McAllister unbuckled his belt. Holster, gun and belt thudded on the floor.

  “Kick ’em this way,” Marve said. McAllister obeyed. Not taking his eyes from the man in front of him, Marve bent down and pulled the Remington from leather with his left hand. “Now, let me outa here.”

  McAllister said: “I don’t have the key.”

  “Where’s it at?”

  “On the hook yonder.”

  Marve said: “Fetch it, Pat. Take it real easy now or McAllister’s dead.”

  The big Irishman stepped across the room and lifted the large keyring down from the hook.

  Marve said: “Take one step to your right, McAllister,” and was obeyed. Pat approached the cell and placed the key in the lock. In a moment, Marve stepped out into the office. He was in a highly nervous state and he showed it. He was sweating and his eyes were wild. McAllister knew that he would shoot if he were looked at wrong. He prayed that Carson and Pat would behave themselves. He hadn’t planned to die just yet.

  “You’re bein’ a damn fool, Marve,” he said. “You know you can’t get far.”

  “You’ll never put a rope around my neck,” Marve said.

  “I know that. You’ll be dead before you can get out of town. Whoever passed you that gun wants you dead like he wanted Frank dead.”

  Marve wavered for a moment.

  “Save your breath,” he said, “you ain’t talkin’ me back into that cell. Now, don’t nobody come after me or they’re mutton. Hear?”

  He circled around them, facing them all the time and backed toward the door. Thrusting McAllister’s gun under his belt, he felt back for the bar of the door with his left hand, lifted it and opened the door. He seemed to hesitate then, his gun still pointed at McAllister, till, taking a deep breath, he tore the door wide, turned and ran out onto the street.

  * * *

  For a moment, the fleeing prisoner found himself in the circle of light that came from the lamp hanging above the office door. Again, he hesitated, not knowing whether to go right or left. He wanted a horse ... more than anything he wanted a horse. The saloon would have horses hitched in front of it. He started right.

  He heard the rush of movement behind him in the office and turning, he threw a shot through the open door.

  A voice from across the street, startled him into motionless-ness.

  “Halt or I fire.”

  He crouched, strained his eyes and could see nothing but the dark bulk of the lightless buildings across the way. He triggered a shot off in the general direction of the sound of the voice. A window collapsed with a crash of glass.

  A rifle slammed flatly.

  The bullet thudded into the wall of the office and Marve ran.

  The rifle was fired again.

  Something knocked Marve sideways and he tripped on his own feet. He went down hard, but the fight hadn’t gone out of him. Marve would die fighting. The will to survive was strong in him. He cocked and fired at a moving shadow.

  Somebody thundered out of the marshal’s office and roared: “Hold your fire.”

  The rifle slammed again.

  Marve in the act of driving himself to his feet, was hit in the heart. He went down without a sound, kicked twice and lay still.

  * * *

  McAllister stayed still for a mome
nt, his eyes unaccustomed to the dim light of the street. He could see the dim form of Marve Little giving its tiny death kick. A man walked across from the other side of the street. He carried a rifle in his hands. McAllister waited until the light of the lamp fell on his face. It was Will Drummond.

  Drummond halted in the middle of the road.

  McAllister walked to the dead man, rolled him over and took his own gun from his belt. When he straightened up, he turned to gaze for a moment at Drummond before he pushed the gun away into its holster.

  He strolled past Drummond and said: “Come into the office.”

  As McAllister entered the office, Carson and Pat watched him bug-eyed.

  “What happened?” Carson asked. He was sitting up on the bed with his gun in his hand.

  “Marve got himself shot,” McAllister told him.

  “You didn’t shoot him.”

  “No, I didn’t shoot him.”

  Drummond walked in.

  “It was lucky I was there,” he said. “Or he’d have got away.”

  “Real lucky,” McAllister said coldly. “How did you just happen to be there?”

  “Why, I was in the bank opposite.”

  “Kind of late to be callin’ in at the bank, isn’t it? Penshurst would have gone home long gone.”

  “I have an interest in the bank myself. I have a right to be there.”

  That interested McAllister. He thought about it while he listened to the sounds of the street. Folks were running along the street. Voices were raised. They had reached the body and were no doubt now staring at it with curiosity.

  “With a rifle,” McAllister said.

  Drummond started.

  “We keep the weapon at the bank for protection,” he said. “After the raid, we thought it best.”

  “You go home, Mr. Drummond,” McAllister told him. “I’ll write a report on the affair and get you to sign it in the mornin’. I reckon the judge’ll want a word with you too.”

  “I’ll come down first thing in the morning. Anything to oblige.”

  He told them good evening and went out. McAllister followed him onto the sidewalk.