One by one, heads and rifles popped up and showed Deegan how nicely they were positioned. Some said howdy, others just waved.
“They’re watching for Apaches,” I told the sheriff.
Like Sam, the sheriff was high-colored; now rage turned him pale, not purple. The way he turned his horse nearly tumbled the rider behind him. Over his shoulder he said, “I’ll be back, gunslinger.”
I was about to tell him not to hurry when the kid went into a crouch. He grinned and swung his left hand across the side of his holster. “I’m calling you a yellow coward, Deegan. Want to do something about it?”
I should have figured on something like that. Some time had just been bought—Deegan might or might not come back—and now McCarty was spoiling the sale.
Gray as a gravestone, Deegan turned back to face the kid. For Sam to call him a crook wasn’t all that bad. Sam, after all, was a drunk old man—and maybe Deegan was a crook. Wyatt Earp was crooked as they come and laughed about it; Deegan couldn’t laugh off the brand of coward.
Deegan pointed with his safe hand. “You said?”
“The kid’s a fool,” I cut in, facing away from the posse. Maybe that was a mistake, if some of the more ambitious deputies went for their guns, but I had to do it.
I said, “Ride out, Deegan. I’ll handle the kid.”
Not looking at me, McCarty said, “Nobody handles me. I’m doing what you been paid to do.”
“Ease up or I’ll drop you sure,” I told him. God damn, it was a fool situation. Here I was putting myself between the sheriff and the kid, knowing full well that Deegan’s men would cut loose at the first shot.
I was beginning to feel left out; those two fellers were so tensed up they didn’t even look my way.
Deegan forgot his badge, his warrants; forgot everything but the name-calling runty kid. His face was the color of wood ash, so the sweat that trickled through his stained mustache was cold and nervous. “You stay out, Carmody. Every man here keep out—you hear me. This runt called me yellow just now. I’m waiting, runt.”
“You first,” the kid snarled.
“You call it, misfit.”
That did it. McCarty’s hand went for the .38, but I had my gun out and cocked before his finger curled inside the trigger guard. Deegan’s hand hadn’t even come close to the holster. When I turned my gun included the sheriff. I told him to ride out. “You made your point.”
Indeed he had, and if I hadn’t stopped it Deegan would be lying dead beside his horse. For a man past his prime he had earned the right to sound off as he turned his horse. “This changes nothing,” he said.
I stayed where I was and told the riflemen to do the same. “They may wheel and try to make a rush. If they do, kill the whole bunch. No prisoners.”
That’s how it had to be if Deegan tried for a surprise attack. One man or all of them would make no difference to the law, so it might as well be the whole bunch. But they just rode on through, and I sent two men to trail them to the wire.
Yelling for a bottle, Sam sat heavily in a porch rocker. I guess he was thinking of the wild old days when sheriffs were made to be shot. “I don’t know what to think,” he said. One of the women, the one called Juanita, came running with the bourbon and thought he was talking to her.
“This life she is a puzzle, Senor Blatchford,” the
woman said. Sam might ride them long and hard, but
they never called him by his given name.
Sam told her to go straight to hell, then dropped half a pint of bourbon into his belly. “Everybody go to hell.”
I didn’t move till the dust of Deegan’s horses had moved out a long way. Two men were posted to watch from the hay-hoist in the barn; the rest went back to their chores. The kid hadn’t moved, didn’t move more than his eyes when I walked up close. Sam, the bottle held chest high, watched from the porch.
“I want you to listen good, you pea-brained son of a bitch. That’s you, Tex. The only reason I don’t beat the shit out both ends. You’re wounded, you’re too small. That leaves the gun … ”
“So it does,” the kid answered.
I hoped he was mad enough to take my offer. “You want another go-round I’ll give you odds. What sort of odds you want? Try hard—think of something.”
“No odds,” McCarty said back. “One more day I’ll be giving you odds.”
It wasn’t my intention to slap spit from the kid’s mouth with the flat of my hand. There was no thought behind it, because I used my gun hand to do it. He went crashing back against the porch, caught his heel in soft dirt, and fell on his back in a patch of dying flowers the women had planted. Sam was roaring something, but I didn’t listen. I pointed a finger at McCarty. “Cross me one more time—once more—and you’re dead.”
Sam lurched down from the porch and got between us. “Enough of that, Carmody. You too, McCarty. Stop it or I’ll sit on the both of you.”
That was the worst torture I could think of, so I backed off. Sam reached out a hand to pull the kid back on his feet. The kid pushed his hand away, then without another word Sam grabbed the kid by the belt and lifted him like an empty satchel. “You got a mean temper, boy,” Sam roared, setting the kid down hard.
McCarty used his hat to brush the dirt off his fancy striped pants. In my time I had met a few fellers like that; in flood, fire or Indian attack you’d find them worrying about how they looked. The kid set his hat on straight. “I was just looking out for you, Mr. Blatchford. Anyway—the best I know how. You been a friend to me, first person ever ...”
The kid cut short his speech, and I thought—so that’s what a bashful rat looks like.
Old Sam was bashful too, or else he was suffering from a bad case of gas on the stomach. Whichever, it put wrinkles in his face, a pucker in his thick lips. He looked at the ground, saying slowly, “Appreciate that, Tex, only you got to listen to Carmody. He’s the man in charge.”
After the kid went away squeezing his rubber ball, Sam yelled me up on the porch for a drink. He sat in the rocker. I leaned against the porch rail drinking whisky from the bottle.
“Mighty close for a while,” Sam said. “And you know something, for a minute there I didn’t give a damn what happened. It’s got to come, so I thought why not here and now.”
I was watching Graciela trying to put life back in her damaged flowerbed. Sam took the bottle and I said, “You want to die that bad, Sam?”
“Not that bad, not at all, Carmody. It’s just I get to thinking about the man I was—and ain’t no more.”
“No fat ladies, no whisky in hell, Sam. Think on that. You sure ain’t going no place else.”
Being joshed about what a sinful old man he was put Sam back in good spirits. Bent over her flowers, Graciela showed strong smooth brown legs. Sam looked at her and licked the corner of his mouth. “By God, you’re right. A barefoot boy running ragged from Tennessee. That’s what I was. Ain’t got much to complain about. You know another man my age—uh, fifty-six years old—can empty a bottle and jump a woman every night of the week?”
Yeah, he sure was something, I said. The part about his age was a lie—Sam was well past sixty and maybe every other night for a woman was more like it—yet he did all right for himself. “There,” I said like a doctor shutting his black bag, “you’re feeling better already.”
Still and all, Sam wasn’t altogether ready to settle for the quieter pleasures in life. Without thinking, his hand reached for the butt of the right-hand Colt. He stroked the converted percussion Colt like it was a quiet woman wanting nothing more than an occasional pat on the rump.
He pulled the heavy framed gun, let it slide back into the holster. “Should have been me calling down the sheriff, not that kid. Peculiar sort, I guess, but you got to admire his grit.”
Not me, I said.
“Maybe you made a mistake, Carmody. Stopping the kid. Deegan dead—maybe Saxbee would take the hint?”
More than anything, that proved how far Sam had stumbled int
o old age. In the old days when the New Mexico Territory was wilder than a virgin on a honeymoon you just might get away with murdering a sheriff. You might stay around and keep from being hung, provided you could buy the kind of witnesses a court was likely to believe. But now …
I spelled it out for him. “Deegan gets killed for any reason, the Territorial Governor has got to act. So far you and Saxbee are a long way from Santa Fe, and maybe the Governor knows something about the trouble down this way, but hasn’t done anything because nothing real big has happened yet. Not too serious, so he doesn’t want to be bothered. You—anybody—kills Deegan and you won’t get another sheriff, you’ll get the militia.”
Not wanting to face facts, Sam tried to drown them with whisky. “Militia my hind end!” he growled. “In the old days we’d of whipped the militia too. Any damn fool that got in our way ...”
I let him run till he got tired, then I reined him in with, “Look, Sam, maybe we’re still in trouble with the law after today. Could be it’ll blow over, given time. Deegan’s bone weary and today he nearly got killed. My guess is he won’t be in a hurry to chance it again. Saxbee may howl but Deegan’s still the law. I say give him a chance to let those warrants get moldy.”
“Blessed be the peacemaker,” Sam said bitterly. “That’s from the Good Book.”
I was thinking that less than two weeks ago I’d been having a good old time in Fronteras. A bandit had been bothering an Englishman who owned a silver mine east of Durango. I was working alone because the Englishman wasn’t scared enough to be free with his silver, so it took some doing before I made that bandit mad enough, careless enough to chase me into a narrow gorge. Just four sticks of dynamite, exploded by rifle fire, brought the world down on that bandit’s head and brought me the easiest five hundred dollars I ever earned.
The money was just about gone, and I was worn down ten pounds with tequila and women and two-day poker games, when Sam’s message-taker caught up with me in Fronteras. Now, looking at Sam on his porch, I knew I should have stayed where I was. Sam’s letter said it was a clear-cut old-fashioned range war, but now I knew better. And that God damned kid! I guess I was mad because Sam or nobody else had asked me to bring a gun-crazy kid …
Still, the situation had to be explained. I hate to shoot trouble for a man that doesn’t know his own mind. “Never mind the Good Book,” I told Sam. “First you say it’s war, but it isn’t. Then you say I’m to train your boys, be ready for trouble when—if—it comes. Next thing you turn about and say maybe I should let that crazy kid kill the sheriff.”
Sam looked mad enough to send me packing, and that wouldn’t bother me one bit. About the time I rode north from Sonora they said President Diaz was looking to recruit gringo officers for a special force to stop Texas-based revolutionaries from sneaking across the Rio Grande. Maybe there was still time to become at least a first lieutenant.
“You’re twisting my words,” Sam blustered.
“Then untwist them, lay them out in a line,” I said. “You can sit tight, wait for Saxbee to set the country on fire. Because he starts it doesn’t mean he’ll finish it. Or you can start it. You say Deegan, the Judge, the whole town of Mariposa is in Saxbee’s pocket.”
Sam, dark faced, said they were.
“Okay, then say the word and I’ll clean house. Kill Deegan, burn the town, dangle Saxbee from a tree. One word, I’ll do it. I’m on wages, so you got to say for what.”
Raising himself to scratch his butt, Sam asked, “You’d do all that?”
Sure I would.
Sam was sarcastic but not so sure. “No extra charge for widows and orphans?”
“Say what you want, Sam.” Nothing more from me was what I hoped he’d say. The fat fool knew that widows and orphans weren’t my line of work. But, knowing me, he also knew I’d gun down just about any man he pointed out. And I’d do a lot worse than that.
“You handle it. You’re paid to handle it, Carmody.” Sam lumbered into the house snorting with overworked lungs and shaking with temper, and if he slammed every door like that, pretty soon he’d be laying out money to carpenters and glasscutters. It wasn’t exactly what they call an awkward parting, though Sam didn’t love me like a brother when I went back to see how the boys were doing.
“Same here, fat man,” I said to the closed door.
Chapter Five
I was more than glad to get away from Sam and his old-man regrets about the decline of manliness in the Great Wild West. He wasn’t paying me to be a talking companion; there was still plenty of work to be done with his riders.
Like Sam said and I agreed, a lot of work-shy sugarfoots and sod busters had drifted into ranch jobs. Time was, not so long ago, when every rider on a spread was ready to do double duty as light cavalry at a moment’s notice. Twenty years back, at the end of a trail drive, you could walk into a saloon and recruit two sets of armies. What was the war about? Hell, nobody cared.
Of course, between fights, it wasn’t all that exciting, though if you were to believe scribblers like Ned Buntline, ranch work was nothing but one big round of blood and thunder. Not a dull moment, day or night, what with Indians, rustlers, bandits. Not to leave out stampedes, ten-foot Gila monsters and ladies taken for ransom. Not that the fighting spirit had died out, but there’s a difference between wanting to fight and knowing how. My job, while it lasted, was teacher.
Dink Westfall didn’t want to learn and by itself that wasn’t so bad. The problem was, if the top hand got away with playing hooky, the rest of the hands might be encouraged to do likewise. Down from Nebraska where things had been as dull as Pennsylvania for years, the big Dutchman or Swede, or whatever he was, kept ducking me every time school was in. I’d go where I thought he was and didn’t find him. Dink would be off looking for strays, cursing out the cookie—always something.
I got the boys in a bunch, but I could feel them grinning at my back when, one more time, I went to dig Westfall out of hiding. To let them grin at my back was bad; if I let Westfall back me off damn soon they’d be grinning at my face.
This time, for a change, he wasn’t hard to find. Over by the side of the barn was where he was, checking a load of lumber that would naturally have been checked first thing it was delivered from the mill. Westfall was making pencil marks in the supply book, wetting the stubby pencil with his tongue, taking it all as serious as St. Peter with a new batch of candidates for everlasting happiness in the hereafter.
“Sure it’s been checked. I’m checking it again. You got any objections?” Westfall was tall to the point where some other men slouch a bit so as not to appear like freaks of nature. I’m six-two, which is tall enough, and though Westfall was at least six-six, which is too many inches for standard beds and women of normal size, he gave the feeling that he’d like to be even taller and bigger than he was. Or maybe that feeling he gave out was just for me.
My feelings were said directly and, yeah, I had one objection. When the school bell rang that meant everybody but Sam and his women, the kid and the cookie, had to be there. Nothing like education helped a man to get ahead.
“Check it later,” I said. “You got things to do.”
That wasn’t what he thought; you could see it in the weary damn-these-fools way he laid the supply book on the pile of lumber. He was even slower putting the chewed pencil in his vest pocket. Just then, between the lumber pile and the barn, I spotted McCarty riding a pony away from the house.
Westfall didn’t turn to look—no reason. Later, maybe, I’d brace the kid about where he’d gone; right now Westfall had to come first. “That’s an order,” I told him. “I’ll back it up if I have to.”
In boots with his sloping heavy shoulders hiked up, Westfall was more than six-six. Given time I might have worn him down; there and then that wasn’t the idea. Anyway I wasn’t sure I could do it by any of the usual fair-play methods.
A few years older, inches taller, sixty pounds heavier, Westfall wanted me to know what a dangerous man he was
. Even for me he was dangerous enough. He had the innocent blue eyes you find in huge men who can’t believe they’ll ever have to prove how tough they are. His eyes were too small for his smoked ham face, and when he squinted with slow anger you’d swear he had no eyes at all.
The slow way he spoke ironed out the last traces of his Dutchy accent. “Carmody,” he said, “you been getting between me and my work since you got here. You should know I don’t like that. Now you go way before I step on you.”
I hated for him to say that. Let a man say he’ll gun me down, beat the pie out of me—why not? Over in West Arkansas, for some reason special to the place, the bad boys mention eye-gouging, tongue cutting and knacker slicing. It’s not just talk with the wool hats down from the Ozarks; somehow it doesn’t make you hot behind the eyes.
He said it again, what I didn’t like. “Step on you, mash you like a bug.”
“Try it, you square head foreigner.”
For Westfall, whose toughness had stopped all the bad names some people throw at foreigners, that was worse than being called a bug. “You dirty killer,” he said, the faint accent thickening with rage. “Never do a day’s work in your life. What do you know about how a real man works, wants to work? You could work but you don’t, stinking saddle tramp bum.”
He was wearing a gun but not in a holster; the worn rubber-handled Colt was stuck inside the waistband of his pants. Instead of moving toward the gun his scarred hand came up in a bunched fist. He took a step and I said whoa.
“Good with a gun, are you?” I asked. “Must be that saddle tramp talk.”
“I don’t need a gun to handle you, not if you’re man enough to try your fists.”
I said I was the sporting kind, ready to try just about anything. “Why don’t we move back where it’s private?”
He might try to jump me, so I kept some distance between us. Westfall went behind the stacked lumber, stood waiting with balled fists. You should have seen how his little pig eyes popped when my hand came up holding a gun. He started to call me a yellow something or other.
Carmody 6 Page 4
