L'Amour, Louis - Novel 06

by To Tame a Land

  When I pushed open the door of the Bucket of Blood I was met by a wave of hot air, thick with tobacco smoke and the sour odor of bad whisky. At least a hundred men crowded the small room, standing three deep at the bar.

  Bearded men loafed along the walls, leaning or squatting and watching for a favorable moment to grab a chair.

  This was a familiar scene, and I had known it before, in other towns. There were even familiar faces, men whose names I didn’t know, but whom I had seen in Denver, Santa Fe, or Mason Crossing. There was even one I knew from New Orleans.

  Moving through the crowd, I was lucky enough to get close to the bar. Beside me two men talked Norwegian, and down the bar I heard a man order in German, and the bartender replied in the same language. This was the West, a melting pot, a conglomeration. These were hard tough, reckless men from all over the world, following the lure of a wild new country and quick riches in the mines.

  No telling what had happened to Liza here. Maybe she had seen the place and what it was like and had gone on. Certainly this town was no place for a pretty girl alone.

  Two hours later I was no closer to finding her. True, I wasn’t asking questions. I was listening, drifting from place to place, keeping my eyes open. The stage station was closed, so I couldn’t check there.

  Snow kept falling. The Gold Miner’s Daughter was jammed when Mustang found me there.

  “Got a place,” he said, “and it wasn’t easy. This town is crowded.”

  We drifted around the tables. We had a drink, and I played a little roulette and lost fifteen dollars, then won five of it back.

  Turning toward the door, I saw a man stop and take another look at me, then walk on. He knew me from somewhere.

  All of a sudden, somebody swore, men jammed back out of the way, and a gun blasted.

  It was that quick, and all over. A man in digging clothes was backing up slowly, both hands holding his stomach. He sat down and rolled over, moaning softly.

  The gambler with the gun in his hand walked around the table and stood over him. Coolly he lifted his pistol for another shot.

  Me, I don’t know why I did it, but I stepped from the crowd.

  “He’s dying. Leave him alone.”

  The gambler was in his shirt sleeves and vest. He was a tall, pale man with a mustache. His eyes held such cruelty as I’ve never seen before. He looked coolly at me.

  “You’re making it your business?”

  He held a derringer in his hand. It was one of those short guns with two barrels, each holding a .44 cartridge.

  “I am.”

  He looked at me. His gun was in his hand, half lifted.

  Mine was in my holster. Yet he had one shot left, and if he did not kill me with that shot, he was a dead man.

  He shrugged. “He’ll die, anyway. No use to shoot again.”

  The man on the floor coughed heavily and stared at the gambler. “Cheat … You cheat …” and then he sagged back on the floor and died.

  He wore a gun, all right, but it was buttoned under his coat. He’d had no chance at all.

  “He lies,” the gambler said contemptuously. “He just couldn’t take losing.”

  “He sure didn’t have that gun where he could use it,” I said.

  The gambler was turning away, but now he swung around to face me, his face livid. “You keep your mouth shut!” he shouted. “I’ve taken all I’m going to.”

  “If I was the law in this town,” I said, “you’d be on the first stage out. And you’d never show your face in town again. This was murder. He had no chance, none at all.”

  The derringer started to lift, coming up slowly. And just when I was going to take my chance and draw, I heard Mustang’s voice.

  “His gun ain’t drawed, mister … but mine is!”

  And it was. The gambler didn’t like that big six looking at him. He shrugged and turned sharply away.

  “You push your luck, stranger,” a miner said quietly. “That’s Key Novak. He’s killed three men in the past two months.”

  With Mustang at my side I turned away and walked out, leaving the Gold Miner’s Daughter and starting up the street. We had taken only a few steps when a door closed behind us and we heard footsteps on the walk.

  Flattening into a doorway with my gun in my hand, I watched three men coming down the walk. Mustang was standing on the other side, half behind a water trough and an awning post. A frozen water barrel offered added protection.

  The men drew abreast and in the light from a nearby window I recognized the man who had appeared to recognize me in the saloon. They stopped, and this man spoke. “Tyler, you don’t know me, but I used to see you around Kansas City. Heard about you from Billy Dixon.”

  “So?”

  “I heard you were the man who killed Rice Wheeler? And Leet Bowers?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Tyler, we want a marshal in this town. One who will clean out the crooked gamblers and the thugs. We had two knife killings last night. We don’t know who did them. We had a miner killed last week. The crooks are running the town. We’ll give you two hundred and fifty a month to clean up for us.”

  This was a surprise. I’d never fancied myself as the law before. On the other hand, there would be no better way to look the town over for Liza.

  “All right,” I said, “but I want Mustang as deputy.”

  “As you like.” He hesitated. “My name is Murdock. I own the general store. This is Eph Graham, agent for Wells Fargo. Newton here has the hardware store and the mining supplies. We’re the town council.”

  “All right.”

  “One thing … the present marshal is John Lang. He’s the Texas gunman. He has to be fired.”

  My eyes went over the three of them. A wagon was passing in the street and the clop-clop of the heavy hoof s in the stiffening mud was loud. “I fire him?” I asked.

  Newton looked uneasy, and Murdock shifted his feet, but Graham nodded.

  “He’s dangerous … and we think he’s with the crooks.’

  Gesturing toward the crowded saloons, I said, “This won’t be easy. Suppose somebody gets hurt?”

  “We’ll back you. Organize vigilantes if you want them.”

  “We won’t need them.”

  Murdock took some badges from his pocket and handed them to me. I shook my head. “These are all right, but I want a signed paper, appointing us. Signed by all three of you.”

  They gave it to me and I was the new marshal of Alta, with Mustang Roberts as deputy.

  They walked away and we stood there getting used to the idea. Mustang, he looked over at me and grinned.

  “Like ‘em tough, don’t you?” Then he added, “Now we can really look for your girl.”

  “What I was figuring,” I said, “so let’s get busy.”

  He hitched his guns. “What’s first?”

  “We fire the marshal. Rather, I fire him. You stand by.”

  So we turned around and walked down the street toward the marshal’s office and I was glad Mustang Roberts walked beside me.

  Chapter 12

  IT WAS a square frame building in front of the stone jail. It had two rooms: the outer office, and an inner room where the marshal slept.

  John Lang was sitting behind the desk with his feet on it, and there was another man, a bearded man, who sat on an iron safe against the wall.

  The floor was dirty, a few scattered cigar and cigarette butts lying around, and some old papers, flyspecked and yellow. There was a rack holding several rifles and shotguns.

  Pushing the door open, I stepped in. Lang looked up at me, then looked again. He saw that badge on my shirt and his face set and his eyes grew wary.

  “Who���re you?”

  “The new marshal. I’m to tell you you’re fired.”

  The bearded man chuckled. “You git out’n here, kid, whilst you’re able. Ain’t nobody firin’ us. They done tried. Ain’t they, Hal?”

  With some people you don’t talk, you don’t
explain. I’d told ‘em; now it was up to me to fire ‘em.

  Before Lang knew what was happening, I grabbed the boots on the desk and slammed them to the floor. His boots hit the floor and he came up with a lunge, but the advantage was mine, and I kept it. As he clawed for his gun I hit him in the mouth and he sat back down in the chair so hard it toppled over backward.

  It happened so fast the deputy scarcely got his mouth open, and he had just started to move when I turned with the punch and hit him in the teeth, slamming his skull against the wall with a dull thud.

  He was stunned when Mustang grabbed him. As I swung back, Lang’s gun was coming free. So I palmed mine and shot him. He took the first bullet in the throat and the second in the chest, and he just lay back on the floor and stayed there.

  Then I turned on the deputy, whom Mustang had disarmed. “You’re fired, too. You want to take a chance and draw, or do you want to get out of town?”

  He wanted to draw but he didn’t want to die. He stared hard at me, sweating it out for a full minute, and then he said, “Soon’s the storm’s over I’ll ride.”

  “You’ll ride now. Storm or no storm. If you’re in town an hour from now, you can die or go to jail.”

  He swallowed, backing off. “Wait’ll you hear from Billings! You won’t get away with this! Why, he’ll break you! He’ll break that damn town council, too.”

  So I hit him again. “Beat it,” I said, and he beat it.

  Mustang, who had been holding the deputy’s gun, ready to return it if he decided to gamble, put it in a desk drawer.

  He took out the makings and rolled a smoke. “You know,” he said, “when you first joined up back there in Texas, some of the boys thought you were a sure-enough tenderfoot. They should have seen what I seen.”

  I looked around the dirty little office. It was nothing that would make a man respect the law. I looked over at Roberts. “You, you’re my deputy. We enforce the law. We enforce it tough. We don’t shoot anybody unless we have to, we don’t hit anybody unless we have to. But we only give an order once.

  “No card cheating. No robbery. No burglary. No robbing drunks. No beating up innocent people. No gun fights. No women molested. “

  “Fist fights?”

  “As long as they don’t bust up property. If the match looks pretty even, let ‘em have it out. If it gets one-sided, stop it.

  “We protect the helpless, the innocent, and the folks who are doing legitimate business.”

  “All right.” He glanced at Lang’s body. “I guess I better get him out of here.”

  “No. We’ll let Billings do that.”

  “Who?”

  “Billings. From what the deputy said, he figures he’s boss. We’ll let him take Lang out and dig the grave. We’ll let him mop up the floor.”

  Mustang Roberts drew a deep breath. He looked at me to see if I was serious, but he needn’t have. He’d known me long enough to know I didn’t talk idle.

  “This will be something to see.” He hesitated. “I ain’t told you before, but this here Billings may know something about your girl.”

  That stopped me. I felt myself getting sick inside. In town only a few hours, I’d heard enough to know that Billings ran the houses where the red-light women were.

  I knew he ran two of the toughest saloons. Men leaving those saloons with money seldom got far.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Mustang added. “It’s nothing definite. Only he was seen talking to her, and he was taking a powerful interest in her. That was right after she got off the stage.”

  “All right. First things first. We’ll let Billings bury his dead.”

  Billings was a big man. He was a man with black, plastered-down hair on a round skull, a wide face, florid of complexion, and a black walrus mustache, but trimmed more neatly than most. He stood about three inches over six feet, and he must have weighed well over two hundred pounds. He wore a striped silk shirt with sleeve garters and black pants. He smoked a big black cigar and he carried his gun in a holster shoved down in his waistband. It was good for a fast draw.

  His place was smaller than some and dirtier than most, but there were a dozen games going when we pushed through the door bringing a blast of cold, fresh air into the stuffy interior. I walked over to him. “Billings?”

  He turned to look at me and his eyes dropped to the badge, then lifted. “You show that to John Lang?”

  “Yes.” I spoke quietly. “It was the last thing he ever saw.”

  You could have heard a feather drop in that room.

  You couldn’t hear a breath drawn. The idea was beginning to work its way through their heads. That Texas gunman was gone. John Lang was dead.

  Mustang Roberts was obviously another Texan. About me, they didn’t know. They were going to learn fast.

  Billings took the cigar from his teeth. “I see. Let’s go into my office and have a talk.”

  “We haven’t time. Lang is lying on the floor in my office and he needs burying. Also, the floor needs mopping.��� He looked at me, his hard pale-blue eyes measuring me. He didn’t like what he saw.

  “So?”

  “So you’ll do it.”

  Somebody swore. I saw a man with cards in his hand lay them down. I saw his smile begin to grow, and I saw his eyes wrinkle with humor. All this I saw from the corners of my eyes. I was watching Billings.

  He looked at me. Never had I seen a pair of eyes like that. They were careful eyes. Very hard eyes, but careful. This was the most dangerous man I had seen. Yet I doubted if this man would kill. He would see that it was done by someone else. He’ was too careful to risk it.

  That was what I thought then. I was wrong, but it seemed like that.

  “Kid, you don’t know what you’re talking about. John did all right in this town. He could have got rich. You can, too. Together, we can run it.”

  “I don’t need you,” I said. “I’m running it now, and I’m running it honest.”

  He looked at his cigar. He was doing some fast thinking.

  “The council wouldn’t stand for this,” he said. “I know they wouldn’t.”

  “It will be too late for them to object. You’re starting now.”

  His temper exploded then. “Like hell I am! Why you damn fool, I “

  Right then I hit him. My fist cut his words off, and before he could get set, I hit him again. This he had not expected. Gunfighters rarely used their hands, and he was a powerful man who outweighed me by a good fifty pounds.

  My second punch knocked him back against the bar, and then I kicked him on the kneecap with a boot heel.

  He went down then. He hit right in his dirty sawdust.

  I reached a hand for him and he grabbed at it with both of his, as I’d expected. And then I hit him on the cheekbone with a short right.

  The skin split as if I’d used a knife, and blood started to trickle. Then I stepped back for him to get up. Hi s hand started for his gun but a voice stopped him. “Don’t try it, Ben. That’s Ryan Tyler.”

  Something inside him seemed to relax and he sat back down on the floor. It bothered me, because he was a man who could control his emotions. He hated me. He wanted me dead. But he was a careful man.

  It was ten to one his games were rigged.

  “All right,” I said, “you’ve got a dirty job to do.”

  Mustang had two guns out and he was looking across them at the room, smiling that tough, reckless smile o f his.

  “Get used to him, boys. It’ll be easier for you. I came up the trail from Texas with him. I seen him kill Leet Bowers. I seen him trim Ollie Burdette down to size and run him out of town. Get used to the idea. He means what he says.”

  Ben Billings got up slowly and carefully. Can’t we talk this over?”

  “No,” I said, and motioned him to the door.

  “I’ll get my coat.”

  “You won’t need it. You’ll be warm enough, working the way you will be.”

  We went, but we weren’t alone. Half the
place came along to see this. Ben Billings had been boss of the town.

  He had been the big boss. He had been his own bouncer, often throwing two men out of his saloon at once. He had ordered men killed. He had ordered men beaten. A few he had beaten thoroughly and cruelly with his own hands.

  They saw him take the body of John Lang outside.

  They saw him get water and mop the floor of the marshal’s office. And by the time he was through there were three or four hundred people in the street.

  This was more than a cleanup job. This was to show the people of Alta that Billings wasn’t as big as he had made them believe. It was to show them that a new system had been born. And there were few disapproving looks in the crowd, even from his own followers.

  There was an old coat that had belonged to Lang in the office. There were gloves and a hat, “Put these on,” I said. “You’ll need them digging the grave.”

  “The ground’s frozen!” he protested. “You couldn’t dig a grave in a week.”

  “I hope it doesn’t take you that long,” I said, “because you’ll be mighty tired by that time.”

  He dug the grave. It was cold and brutal work, with the pick just breaking the ground in tiny flakes. It took him two days and two nights, with time out for meals , and an hour’s sleep I allowed him at three intervals. He dug it with Mustang and me spelling each other in two hour tricks.

  By the time that grave was dug, the town knew who was marshal. Me, I went back downtown and started checking the gambling joints. We found a controlled wheel in one of Billings’ joints, and when Mustang brought in an ax I busted the table right in front of their eyes.

  Two more wheels showed evidence of hasty correction. I let them go. “Just keep ‘em that way,” I said “You can live on the percentage.”

  Key Novak was sitting behind his table waiting for us.

  He looked up at me out of those cold, almost white eyes.

  Only the look in them was different now. It is one thing when you look at an unknown stranger who is scarcely more than a boy. It is another when you look into those same eyes and know the man is fast with a gun, perhaps faster than you.

  Key Novak looked up at me and waited. He hated me, and he was a gunman. He was also a sure-thing operator.