by Ralph Cotton
But Vane shrugged, showing no interest in who could assemble a gun the fastest. “How fast are you at drawing and shooting? is what I want to know.”
“Faster than most, Clay said matter-of-factly.
“Come on, Curtis, stop joking,” Bryant said, seeing trouble ahead. “He’s blind, fellows!”
“Let’s see what you’ve got, blind man,” Vane said, straightening up from the bar. “Just for fun, let’s see how fast you can skin that shooter and aim it at me.”
“Mister, he’s blind,” a voice called out from down the bar. Vane responded with a silencing stare.
“I don’t do nothing with my Remington for fun,” said Curtis. “You want to see who’s best, I’ll do it for a dollar.”
“Stop it, Curtis, this is not what you do!” said Bryant. “You’re not even wearing a holster!”
“But I can draw as good and aim as straight as the next man,” Curtis said. He’d felt how much lighter the bottle had become after Vane had drunk from it, and he resented it.
“I don’t care about drawing,” said Vane. “Are you saying you’ll bet a dollar that you’ll point that Remington right at me…straight at me?” he queried. As he spoke he gave Roundhead a wink.
“Right at your belly, sir,” Clay said confidently.
“Come on, Detective, let’s roll double or nothing for some drinks,” Bryant tried to cut in.
But Vane would have none of it. He laid a dollar on the bar. “You count to three for us, bartender,” he said. Then he silently took two steps away from the bar and said nothing more, knowing the blind man could only aim by the sound of his voice.
“I don’t like this,” said Bryant. But seeing the look on the two detectives’ faces, he said, “One!”
Clay poised his hand above the butt of his Remington. At his feet Little Dog stood up, walked a few inches away, and sat back down.
“Two!” said the bartender.
Vane grinned, his hand also poised near his gun butt.
But before the bartender could finish the count, Colonel Dan Elgin burst through the batwing doors and shouted, “Stand down, Detective Vane, or I’ll have you horsewhipped in the public street!”
“Colonel Elgin!” Fear came into Vane’s eyes. He sobered, his hands coming up chest high as if the colonel held a gun on him. “Sir, this is not what it looks like, I swear it’s not!”
Behind the colonel the rest of the posse crowded through the doors and spread out. Clay turned toward the rumble of boots as they came to a halt on the plank floor. Little Dog scooted closer to Clay’s foot.
“Oh, it isn’t?” the colonel said to Vane with sarcasm, looking at Clay’s clouded eyes. “Let’s see how well I can guess. Apparently I’ve walked in just in time to find one of my scouts, drunk, getting ready to shoot a blind man?” He asked the man standing nearest to him, “How accurately did I call that, Pale Lee?”
“You nailed it, Colonel,” Pale Lee Hodges said with a grim expression. “A public horsewhipping sounds mild to me.”
Chapter 11
Bobby Vane and Roundhead Mitchell sweated out most of their whiskey explaining to the colonel everything that had happened since their arrival in Little Aces. While they talked, nobody took notice of Clay when he’d followed Little Dog to a small table out of the glow of lantern light where he sat down and listened as he drank his whiskey. Little Dog sat at his feet.
“Colonel, that is the gospel truth,” Vane said. “Frank was red-eyed crazy over finding his brother’s horse but not finding his brother.” He’d finishing his story about the ranger, the sheriff, and Frank Skimmer facing off in the street. “If we’d have thought it would help Frank, and our image as representatives of you and the posse, we would have gone at it tooth and nail. I just fig—”
“Shut up, Vane!” said the colonel, his face red, with a vein standing tight on his forehead. “You didn’t do anything because you were both scared, that’s the short and simple truth of it.” He calmed himself and added as he looked all around the saloon, “I’m terribly disappointed in both of you.”
Most of the regular drinking crowd had left as the posse men began filing along the bar, laying their rifles up alongside the bar top. “As it turns out, you two did the best thing,” said Elgin. “We want to kill outlaws, not lawmen.”
Pale Lee Hodges walked back in through the batwing doors, having left moments ago to go to the sheriff’s office. “He’s telling the truth, Colonel. Skimmer is in jail,” he said, looking Vane up and down in disdain.
“Damn right I’m telling the truth,” Vane growled, giving Hodges a threatening stare, but not taking things any further with the colonel standing there.
“The sheriff’s not there, though,” Hodges added, ignoring Vane’s stare.
“Not there?” the colonel asked.
“No, he’s not, Colonel, Skimmer is there all alone and madder than a kicked rattlesnake.”
“What kind of tinhorn sheriff leaves a prisoner unattended?” the colonel asked toward the ceiling, gripping the edge of the bar in anger.
“We’ve got a good sheriff here in Little Aces,” Bland Woolard cut in from the far end of the bar where he’d been standing watching in silence.
The colonel wheeled around toward the sound of his voice. The posse men all turned and stared. “Who the devil are you, then?” Colonel Elgin demanded.
“I’m—I’m Town Councilman Bland Woolard,” came Woolard’s unsteady reply. “I’m sure if Sheriff Gale left a prisoner alone for a few minutes, he had good reason, sir.”
“Councilman, eh?” Elgin said with contempt. “What else do you do around here?” He eyed Woolard closely as the councilman walked along the bar past the posse men, his hat in hand.
“I manage the Little Aces livery barn,” said Woolard. He gestured a hand toward the bar. “I keep books for the Little Aces Saloon. I trade in horses—”
The colonel cut him off gruffly, saying, “Since you do so much for Little Aces anyway, you’re just the man to help us find the Little Aces sheriff.”
Woolard started to protest, but a shove from a posse man behind him sent him stumbling toward the door behind the colonel, who had already turned on his heel and left.
No sooner had the colonel, his posse, and Woolard gone out the batwing doors than Curly Bryant let out a sigh of relief and spoke to Clay, who sat quietly sipping from his bottle of whiskey. “I’m glad to see the last of those two,” he said, referring to Roundhead and Vane. “You didn’t realize what a tight spot you were in there for a minute.”
“Oh, I realized it rightly enough,” said Clay. “I’m blind, not simpleminded.”
“If you realized what kind of men they were, why on earth did you agree to a drawing contest?” Bryant asked, a little irritated, considering the trouble it could have caused inside the saloon.
“For a dollar,” Clay said with a shrug. “A man don’t always get to choose who he does business with. He drank up some of my whiskey, I needed to get it back.”
Bryant shook his head, glad it was over. “How is that whiskey tonight, Curtis?” he asked.
“It’s good, same as always, Mr. Bryant.” He held the bottle up in his hand toward the sound of Curly’s voice. “You’re welcome to drink.”
“Obliged, Curtis, but no,” Curly said with a smug half smile.
Curtis nodded, then lowered the bottle and corked it. He knew that Curly Bryant poured leftovers from shot glasses into empty bottles and saved them to sell to him. But Clay never acted any the wiser, knowing this was the only whiskey he could afford. He was sure other people realized it too, since up until tonight he’d never had to share drinking it with anybody.
“Then I expect Little Dog better take me on home,” Clay said to the bartender. As he stood up, and his walking stick felt around gently for Little Dog and found him standing in front of him, he asked, “What do you suppose happened to the detective’s brother, Curly?”
“I couldn’t guess,” Curly replied. “These cowboys come and
go, get drunk, knock their brains out on a low-hanging tree limb, who knows?”
“But his horse is still here,” said Curtis.
“Yeah, that’s right,” said Curly, giving it only a second of consideration. “So maybe he’s laid up with a woman. He could still come staggering in.”
“Yeah, a woman,” Clay mused, his expression and his cloudy eyes revealing nothing. “That’s what I think too.” He tapped the walking stick on the floor and said, “Come on, Little Dog, take us home.”
Outside on the dark street, the colonel and his men walked straight to the sheriff’s office and shoved the door open. Inside the empty office, Colonel Elgin walked to the cell where Frank Skimmer stood with his hands wrapped around the bars. Skimmer looked down in shame under the colonel’s gaze.
“I was relying on you to keep Mitchell and Vane in line. You disappointed me,” Elgin said.
Skimmer looked up and said in his own defense, “I had things under control until that damned Ranger Burrack showed up with a scattergun.”
“Burrack again,” the colonel said, his fists clenching at his sides. “It appears our entire mission is going to be plagued by him, if we don’t do something about it.”
“Get me out of here, I’ll do something about it, Colonel,” said Skimmer. “You can count on that.”
“Yes, and that’s the same thing Strap and Bloody Vlak said,” the colonel replied. “They’re still trying to catch up to us after he took their horses out from under them and left them afoot.”
“There’s no cause to compare me to them two, Colonel,” said Skimmer. “What happened to me could’ve happened to anybody. Besides, I was mindful of how it would look on our posse, me burning down a couple of lawmen right in the street.” He gave the colonel a dark look. “If you don’t think I could’ve handled them both, you had no business ever hiring me.”
The colonel shook the barred door with both hands, then called out to the posse men milling about the sheriff’s office, “Where is that blasted cell key, Woolard?”
“I don’t know, Colonel, we’re all looking,” Woolard called back to him. His defense of the sheriff had changed now that he’d found himself surrounded by railroad detectives. “Gale is going to get a piece of my mind over this!”
Turning back to Skimmer, Elgin finally answered him, saying bluntly, “I hired you to get a job done. You won’t get it done from inside a jail cell.” He considered things, then said, “As for the ranger, I have yet to meet him face-to-face. Once I do, we might just find out that for a price he’ll willingly shake the stone from my boot and get the hell out of our way.”
“He ain’t that kind of lawman, Colonel,” Skimmer warned. “The only way he’ll get out of our way is for us to kill him.”
“We’ll see.” Elgin shook the cell door again in frustration. “Where’s that key, blast it!” he bellowed out to the posse men as they continued ransacking the sheriff’s office.
“We’re looking for it, Colonel,” Pale Lee shouted in reply.
Sheriff Gale stepped in through the open doorway, a cloth-covered basket in his hand. He looked all around at the posse men, then at Woolard, who had gotten down on his hands and knees to look up under the desktop. “I can save all of you some time,” Gale said quietly, a shotgun hanging over the crook of his arm. “You won’t find a key in here anywhere. I hid it.” He stepped over and set the basket on the rummaged desktop.
“You hid it?” Woolard said in astonishment. “That’s the craziest thing I ever heard of, hiding a cell key! Why on earth would you do something like that? This is Colonel Elgin and his posse.”
Gale tipped his hat; then he took his time, looked all around again, and answered Woolard quietly. “I was concerned somebody might come in looking for it, maybe try to set the prisoner free while I was out.” He stared pointedly at Woolard.
Woolard looked away, red-faced in embarrassment; but only for a moment. “There!” he said. “What were you doing leaving a prisoner alone anyway? Where’s Lloyd the blacksmith?”
“I don’t always send for Lloyd. I often leave a prisoner alone when I go to supper,” Gale said. He nodded toward the basket on the desk. “I bring back supper for the prisoner, keeps anybody else from having to—sort of a two-birds-with-one-stone deal, Councilman.”
Woolard looked defeated in his attempt to lay any blame on the sheriff. His attitude shifted again, back into the sheriff’s defense. “There, Colonel, you see?” he said. “I told you the sheriff would have good reason if he left for a few minutes.”
Looking suspicious, the colonel stepped over, stuck his hand down inside the basket, and felt the warmth of the food. Gale had hurried to Emma’s and picked up the basket of food on his way back from dropping Omar’s body off high up in the hills north of town. “Whatever,” he grumbled under his breath. Looking at Gale, he said, “I’ll pay my man’s fine and get him out of here now.”
“Not tonight, Colonel Elgin,” said Gale. “Last I checked he was still killing mad at everybody. I won’t turn him lose until morning.”
“What? Do you realize who you are talking to, Sheriff?” Elgin said heatedly. “I said I want this man released, and I want him released tonight, right now! This instant!”
“And I said, in the morning, Colonel,” Gale repeated firmly, “after the man has cooled down some. Not one minute before.”
“Let me out of here and give me my gun! I’ll show you cooled down!” Skimmer called out from his cell, not helping his case any.
“See what I mean, Colonel?” Gale said. “I can’t turn that kind of attitude loose tonight.”
The colonel gritted his teeth behind his handlebar mustache. He saw that the sheriff was stubborn enough to not reveal where the key was hidden, no matter what. “Blast it all!” he growled. He turned and stomped down the hallway to Skimmer’s cell. “Frank, your temper has just cost you a night in jail! If you can keep from exploding again, we’ll be back to get you in the morning.”
Frank reached through the bars and grabbed the colonel by his shirt. “This sheriff knows something about my brother, Colonel! I can feel it down deep inside my bones!”
“Unhand me, Skimmer!” Elgin said in no uncertain tone. “You forget yourself, sir!” He stood rigid, not about to jerk his shirt free of Skimmer’s hand.
“I’m sorry, Colonel Elgin,” Skimmer said, turning loose and smoothing the front of the colonel’s shirt. “Please, forgive me. You’re right, I’m in no condition to walk the streets tonight. I’d kill this sheriff or the ranger one, that’s a plain fact.” He searched the colonel’s eyes. “You will be back for me come morning, won’t you?”
“Of course I’ll be back for you in the morning,” said the colonel. He also smoothed his shirt. “Forget about this heated incident. You’re still my top gunman.”
“I heard Pale Lee Hodges’ voice out there, didn’t I, Colonel?” Skimmer asked.
“Yes, Pale Lee and some others joined us along the trail. But that doesn’t change anything.” The colonel gave a smug grin. “We just have more guns to our advantage.” He turned and walked away, saying over his shoulder, “Get yourself some supper and a good night’s sleep, Frank. Tomorrow our hunt will continue on in earnest.”
At the sheriff’s desk, the colonel said, “I leave my man in your care, Sheriff. I trust nothing will happen to him.”
“Not so long as he minds his manners, like any other prisoner,” Gale said.
When the last of the posse men had left, taking Woolard with them, Gale picked up the basket and walked to Skimmer’s cell. He opened the cloth covering the food and handed Skimmer a plate of beans and pork through the food slot. Skimmer stepped over and laid the warm plate on his bunk, then came back and watched Gale closely as he handed him bread and an empty tin coffee cup.
“You know something about my brother, don’t you, Sheriff?” Skimmer asked.
“I’ll bring in the coffeepot and pour you some hot coffee,” Gale said instead of answering him.
�
�Answer me, damn it!” Skimmer demanded.
Gale stopped and turned, facing him with a troubled expression on his face. “Nothing is going to make you turn loose of this, is it?”
“Hell no,” said Skimmer. “Would you turn loose if it was your brother missing, his horse left standing at a hitch rail?”
Gale stepped back closer to the cell and said, “Just suppose I told you your brother was killed by a man whose horse he stole? Would you look for vengeance?”
Skimmer stared at him. “My brother is no horse thief.”
Gale nodded and went on. “Then, say he was killed by a woman while he was in the midst of forcing his way on her? Would that matter to you?”
“That would be a lie,” Skimmer said flatly. “My brother never had to force his way on a woman. He had women falling down to give themselves to him.” He paused, then asked, “Is that what you’re saying happened to him? It is, isn’t it?” He dropped the tin cup and bread and gripped the bars.
“I said’ Just suppose’ that was what happened,” Gale said. “For all we know he could be wandering around drunk somewhere.” He turned and walked out to the coffeepot atop the wood stove in the corner.
“You’re lying, Sheriff, that is what happened!” Skimmer shouted from the hallway. “Who’s the woman? Tell me! I’ll kill her!”
Instead of picking up the coffeepot, Gale walked to his desk, rummaged through an assortment of small pistols in the bottom drawer, then walked down the hallway with one of them in his left hand, his Colt out of his holster and cocked, hanging down at his side.
Staring at him through the bars, Skimmer didn’t back an inch as Gale raised the Colt and took aim. “Now you’re going to shoot me, Sheriff? Make it look like somebody gave me a gun and I was trying to make a break?”
Gale braced himself, clenched his teeth, and tried to make himself pull the trigger. But he couldn’t. Skimmer only stared. Finally, Gale let out a tight breath and lowered the Colt. “Damn you to hell, Skimmer,” he said. “You’re leaving here come morning. I want you out of my town. Don’t you ever come back.”
