"And with a man getting killed," Cully replied. "How about it, Cooper? Are you sticking with your story?"
"I didn't go near that damned circus after I left, and my boys here can back me up. That good enough for you, Deputy?" Cooper sneered.
Cully laughed shortly. "An alibi like that's not worth a pile of buffalo dung. You'd better not try anything else, Cooper, because I'm going to keep an eye on you. I haven't forgotten how you tried to ruin Miss Richardson's act."
Cooper tossed off the liquor in his glass and thumped it down on the table. "You warnin' me, Markham?"
"I sure as hell am."
Cooper shook his head. "I don't take too kindly to that." Suddenly, he flung the empty glass at Cully's head.
Cully had been expecting it. He dodged aside, the glass missing him by inches. Cooper exploded out of his chair, overturning the table as he came at Cully with a roar of anger. He threw a roundhouse right with enough steam behind it to take off Cully's head.
The punch never connected. Cully ducked under it, stepped in close, and hooked a right to Cooper's jaw, knocking him backward. Cooper stumbled over his chair and fell heavily. As he landed on the floor, he yelled, "Get him!"
Five men surged toward Cully in an angry wave. Undaunted by the odds, Cully lunged toward the man in the center, meeting the charge. As Cully slammed a fist into the man's middle, he heard meaty sounds of knuckles impacting flesh on both sides of him.
"Gang up on the lad, will ye?" Angus MacQuarrie howled on Cully's right as he rained blows on one of the other hardcases. To the left, Bruno Waldman fought in silence punctuated by a grunt of effort as he picked up two of the men and banged their heads together.
Cooper was back on his feet. He threw himself into the fracas. He tackled Cully, driving him backward. Cully's feet went out from under him, and both men fell. They landed on the table where the poker game had been in progress, smashing the table into kindling and scattering money and chips all over the floor. The poker players yelped in protest and scurried out of the way.
Cully slipped out of Cooper's grasp and clipped him on the jaw with a punch. One of the other men brought a chair crashing down on Angus's head. Angus shook his head, then turned with a shout and laid his hands on the attacker, flinging him over the bar. Bottles shattered as the man smashed into the backbar.
Cully grinned as he saw how Angus had handled the threat, but Cooper cut short Cully's appreciation by clubbing him from behind with both hands. Cully went down on one knee. Cooper leaped on his back, looping an arm around the deputy's throat and shutting off his air. Gasping, Cully fell forward, hauling Cooper over his head. Cooper slammed to the floor on his back, shaking the planks with the impact of his landing.
Cully rolled over and came to his feet, facing Cooper as the other man also got up. Cully was aware that Angus and Bruno were at his back, holding off the other members of Cooper's gang. That left him to deal with Cooper.
Bigger and heavier than Cully, Cooper had a longer reach. But Cully was quicker, and the punches that he drove into Cooper's face stung mercilessly. Cully received several blows to the midsection that threatened to double him over, but he kept to his feet and bored ahead, snapping his fists into Cooper's solar plexus until Cooper was set up for the final punch.
Cully put everything he had into the uppercut, timing it perfectly and catching Cooper on the point of the chin. Cooper's head jerked up and around, and his eyes rolled up in his head. He swayed for a second, then collapsed bonelessly on the floor.
Breathing heavily and aching all over, Cully turned around to see Angus and Bruno grinning at him.
Around them on the floor sprawled the bodies of their opponents. Two of the men were out cold. The other three were moaning and slowly trying to get up.
From the doorway Lucas Flint said, "Well, I see you didn't need my help after all."
"Lucas!" Angus exclaimed. "Ye missed a good fight, man!"
"I can see that," Flint said, nodding. "Looks like quite a bit of damage. Who started it?" He was staring hard at Cully as he asked the question.
"I did, Marshal," Cully said. "I'll pay for the damages." He glanced at Cooper's still form and went on. "But it was worth it."
"Ye'll do no such," Angus declared. He bent over Cooper and extracted a couple of bills from inside the man's vest. Looking up at Flint, Angus continued, "Cooper threw the first punch, Lucas. 'Tis only fair tha' he pay for most o' the damage."
"All right," Flint decided. He turned to Cooper's friends and told them, "Get him out of here."
"Let me wake him up first," Bruno Waldman said. He got his untouched mug of beer from the bar and dashed the contents in Cooper's face. Cooper came up off the floor, blinking and sputtering. Bruno said, "That was probably a waste of good beer."
A couple of Cooper's companions grabbed his arms and pulled him to his feet. Still sputtering, they led him out of the tavern.
Flint looked at Cully. "Did he have an alibi for last night?"
"Oh, he claimed he was drinking in some saloon.
His two sidekicks backed him up. But that doesn't mean anything, Marshal."
"Maybe, maybe not." Flint gestured at Cully's face. "Your mouth's bleeding, you know."
Cully lifted his hand to his mouth and then looked at the crimson on his fingers. He grinned. "Like I said, it was worth it."
11
Cully held his horse to an easy canter. The spirited pinto preferred a faster pace, but any other gait made Cully wince. Cooper had lost the fight, but he had been an aggressive opponent, and Cully had taken his share of hard blows. He certainly felt them now. By morning he would be quite stiff, the bruises an angry purple.
As he approached the circus camp, he heard the distinctive pattern of gunfire that told him Jemma was practicing. As much as he wanted to turn his horse and follow the sound to see her, he knew he had to do his job first. Flint had sent him to the encampment to check that nothing further had gone amiss. Riding away from the gunshots, Cully realized that each day he was taking his work more and more seriously. Nodding to several performers and roustabouts who greeted him, Cully walked the pinto among the circus wagons until he came to Professor Horace Houser's. He dismounted with a twinge of pain and knocked on the door.
When Houser opened it a moment later, he looked haggard, and Cully supposed he had gotten as little sleep as anyone else the night before. "Good afternoon, Deputy," Houser said. "What can I do for you?"
"Marshal Flint sent me out to see if there's been any trouble around here today," Cully told him.
"No, thank God. Everything has been quiet." Houser gestured at the bruises and scratches on Cully's face. "Bruno Waldman told me about your little set-to with that Cooper chap. Are you still convinced that he's the one who killed my employee and released the animals?"
"I am," Cully said grimly.
"Then why isn't the man under arrest?"
Cully shook his head. "It's not that easy, sir. There's a matter of evidence. So far we don't have any against Cooper."
"Then I suggest you find some before someone else is murdered."
Cully kept his anger in check. Houser was tired, and that was probably why he sounded so bitter. "We'll be out here for the performance tonight," the deputy said. "I don't think Cooper will try anything else for a while."
"I hope not."
Cully said goodbye to the ringmaster and mounted up again, turning his horse toward the clearing where Jemma practiced at the edge of the camp. As he approached, the guns fell silent, and he spotted the little clown Grady fetching more targets from Jemma's wagon.
Jemma was reloading her guns as she stood to one side. Today she wore a butternut shirt and brown whipcord pants. Despite the outfit, there was nothing mannish about her. Her long hair blew gently in the breeze.
"Howdy, ma'am," Cully said, drawing his horse to a halt near her.
"Howdy yourself," Jemma replied. She glanced up at him, then quickly looked again. "Good Lord," she exclaimed. "What happened to
you?"
"Just a difference of opinion." Cully grinned. He found that the bruises didn’t hurt quite so much now that Jemma had noticed them. "I ran into Ned Cooper this afternoon in town."
"That awful man who tried to ruin my performance?"
"That's the one. I told him to steer clear of the circus, and he took exception to it."
Jemma slid her right-hand gun into its holster and drew the left-hand Colt. "So, the two of you had a fight."
Cully shrugged. "Wasn't much. Just him and a couple dozen of his friends against me. They never stood a chance."
Looking down at the gun she was reloading, Jemma said, "You must be quite a fighter." There was a slight tone of mockery in her voice.
Cully slid down from the saddle. Yielding to the impulse that had nagged at him since the first time he saw her, he stepped close to her. He quickly slid his arms around her, and as he drew her close to him, her head tilted back. Cully's lips came down on hers in a long, hard kiss. Jemma's mouth was every bit as warm and sweet as he had expected it to be. She seemed to be enjoying herself as much as he was.
When he finally broke the kiss, Jemma leaned back in his arms and smiled up at him. "Grabbing a girl with a loaded gun in her hand isn't the smartest thing you could do, Deputy," she said softly.
"I notice you didn't shoot me," Cully pointed out.
"I thought about it—"
Another voice called, "Excuse me, but if you two are through, we've got some work to do, Jemma."
She smiled as she looked over at Grady. The little man had set up the fresh targets. "You're right, Grady," she told him. To Cully, she said, "You may not have noticed, but your arms are still around me."
"I noticed." He nodded. "You know, I'm surely going to hate it when you leave with the circus."
"Me, too," she replied. "Now that you've been so bold, maybe we'd better take advantage of the time we've got."
"Sounds like a good idea to me." Cully's mouth came down on hers once again.
Grady might be getting impatient, but he would be going with Jemma when the circus left Abilene; Cully wouldn’t.
As Patrick Hammond passed between two wagons carrying a bucket of water, he saw Grady. Patrick hesitated, then set the bucket down and hurried over to say hello to his new friend.
"Hi, Grady," Patrick said, noticing that Grady seemed bothered about something. "What's wrong?"
Grady glanced around. "Oh, hello, Patrick. You want to know what's wrong?" He jerked a thumb at the couple embracing nearby. "That's what's wrong. Somebody not keeping her mind on business."
Patrick took a closer look at the man and woman and suddenly realized who they were. "Hey, that's Cully!" he exclaimed.
"That's right. And it looks like Jemma's gone all moony over him." Grady slowly shook his head. "That's not good. Not when you work with guns. You've got to concentrate on what you're doing."
Patrick started to point out that the same statement could apply to Cully but then stopped. He was bothered as he watched Cully kiss Jemma Richardson. When it came to romance, he was pretty well lost.
Ever since they had come to Abilene, Patrick had figured that sooner or later his sister Alice and Cully Markham would end up together. He knew that Alice liked Cully, and Patrick worshiped him. So it would have been perfectly all right with him if Cully and Alice had decided to get married. But he could see with his own eyes just how interested Cully was in Jemma.
Patrick shook his head. There wasn’t anything he could do about Cully and Jemma—or Cully and Alice, for that matter. Grown-ups usually did what they wanted. They could work out their own problems, because they certainly didn’t listen to advice from kids.
"I see you've still got the job," Grady said, breaking into Patrick's train of thought.
"What?" Patrick asked.
"The job." Grady pointed at the bucket of water that Patrick had been carrying. "You know, hauling water for the animals."
"Oh, yeah. I love it. Some of the other fellows from the orphanage are working with me."
Grady grinned. "From the way you talked about how you were going to get in trouble when you went home last night, I didn't know if we'd see you today or not."
Patrick winced at the reminder of the dressing down he had gotten from Sister Lorraine. "I did get in some trouble," he admitted. "But when I told Sister Lorraine about how much fun the job was and how I was earning extra money, she decided it wouldn't hurt anything. Might even be a learning experience, she said, and she told the other fellows they could come out here after school and see about hiring on, too."
Grady slapped Patrick on the shoulder. "Well, I'm glad you came back. You'll learn a few things if you hang around a circus for long enough.” He waggled an eyebrow. “Of course, not all of them are things that a nun would approve of."
That was true enough, Patrick thought, glancing again at Cully and Jemma.
Big Mike's was little more than a shack on Buckeye Street on the northern edge of town. It offered anonymity, whiskey that would burn a hole in your gullet, and one soiled dove whose better days had been about twenty years earlier. The air inside was dimly lit by a couple of lanterns and was full of cigarette smoke. The bar consisted of rough-cut wide planks laid atop whiskey barrels. There were a few rickety tables with uneven legs.
Ned Cooper was alone when he slouched into Big Mike's that evening. There was a huge, mottled bruise on his jaw where Cully's final punch had caught him. His whole body ached, and inside him the desire for revenge burned like an inferno. He wondered what the hell he was doing here.
The message had found him late that afternoon, while he and his companions were trying to drink away their aches and pains in another of Abilene's many saloons. A dirty-faced street kid had darted into the place and tugged at his sleeve, thrusting a folded piece of paper into his hand. The kid ran away before Cooper could ask him what the devil he was doing.
Cooper had unfolded the paper carefully, and he was glad he did. That way he was able to conceal the bank note he found there. Along with the money was a note promising more if he would come to Big Mike's tonight at nine o'clock.
His first thought was that it was a trap. He had plenty of enemies, and most of them wouldn’t hesitate to trick him. It was even possible that Cully Markham was behind the message.
It was nine now, Cooper thought as he approached the bar. Whatever was going to happen would happen soon.
"Gimme a whiskey," Cooper rasped to the bartender. He leaned his left hand on the bar, keeping his right close to the butt of the pistol on that side. His eyes surveyed the room in the dirty mirror behind the bar. There were perhaps a dozen men in the saloon, all of them nursing drinks and minding their own business. The prostitute, her hair dyed an impossible shade of orange, was trying to strike a bargain with one of the customers. Cooper thought a few of the men looked familiar, but he could not place any of them.
He sipped the fiery liquor in the glass the bartender shoved toward him and he winced as it burned his scraped mouth. The squeal of the batwing hinges made him glance over his shoulder.
A dark-haired man in a suit came into the dingy little saloon. With a pronounced limp he walked toward the bar.
Cooper stiffened and quickly put his drink back on the bar. He recognized the newcomer as the man who had put up the circus handbills—the man Cooper and his friends had tried to rough up a few days earlier. For a moment, it occurred to Cooper that the cripple had set up this meeting as a trap to get back at him for having picked a fight. Some of the circus roustabouts might be waiting outside to jump him. If that were the case, they would get more than they bargained for.
The man with the limp spotted Cooper and started toward him. He stepped up to the bar next to Cooper and said, "Take it easy. You look like you're about ready to go for your gun."
Cooper didn’t relax. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"I sent for you," Asa Parker said. "But don't worry. It's not a trap, if that's what you're thinking. Why don't I buy
you a drink?"
Without taking his eyes off Parker, Cooper tossed off the rest of his whiskey. "Why don't you do that?"
Parker signaled for the bartender to refill Cooper's glass and said, "Bring me a beer." When both men had their drinks, Parker suggested, "Why don't we go sit down and talk about why I arranged this meeting?"
Cooper, still suspicious, nodded and said, "Sure."
They carried their drinks to a vacant table in a corner. Keeping his voice low, Parker said, "I hear you've had some trouble with those circus folk."
Cooper hunched over his glass of whiskey. "What if I have?" he answered in surly tones. "What business is it of yours? Ain't you one of them?"
Parker lifted the mug of beer to his lips and sipped from it. "I may work for the circus," he said, "but I'm no longer one of them." He slapped his bad leg. "Not since the day I got this bum leg. I've been working on it, exercising it and strengthening it while no one's around, but it will never be the same. And neither will I."
Cooper peered across the table at the former acrobat. There was something in the tone of Parker's voice that Cooper recognized—the sound of a man seeking vengeance. A sly smile spread across Cooper's bruised face. "Reckon you've got a score to settle with that there circus, then."
Parker nodded slowly. "Yes. Yes, I do, and you can help me, Mr. Cooper."
"Why the hell would I want to do that?"
"For two reasons. One, you could do some score-settling yourself, and two, my plan could mean a great deal of money for you."
Cooper's interest quickened at the mention of money. He leaned back in his chair and finished off his drink. "Tell me what you've got in mind," he said.
Parker pushed his unfinished beer aside. "At every performance, after all the spectators have been admitted, the ticket receipts are taken into a small tent near the entrance to the big top. The money is counted there and then locked into a metal box. The box is taken to Houser's wagon and put in a safe there. It would be very easy to get into that tent while the money is being counted and take it. Everyone's attention will be on the big tent where the show is going on. Usually, there's no one in the small tent except Houser's bookkeeper. He won't be any trouble."
Rattler's Law, Volume One Page 35
