Six-Gun Law

by Jory Sherman

  The two went inside. Ed held the door open, closed it behind him.

  Blackhawk stared at the young woman who stood in the center of the front room. She had an apron bunched up in her hands, hands that were red from washing in lye-soap water, he surmised. He was surprised at her beauty, the natural beauty of a young woman who wore no rouge or jewelry, had on a simple cotton dress. She stood there in bare feet, and those were comely, too, he thought. Her hair hung down in ringlets, framing an oval face that was still peppered with freckles around her straight, patrician nose.

  “Ma’am,” Blackhawk said, taking off his hat.

  “This here’s Marshal Blackhawk, Seneca. You want some tea, or Seneca can boil us some coffee right quick.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Marshal,” Seneca said. The marshal was glad that she didn’t curtsy, but stood there, looking at him with a bold look in her eyes.

  “Pleased to meet you, Miss Jones. No, I won’t stay, thanks, Mr. Jones. If you folks wouldn’t mind, I’d like to hear what you have to say about what happened to you a week or so ago.”

  “You mean about the kidnapping,” Seneca said, waving Blackhawk to her father’s large chair. She sat demurely on the divan. Her father sauntered over and sat beside her so that they both faced the marshal, like willing witnesses.

  “Yes’m, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Surely,” Seneca said. “I’ll let my daddy start it off, like it happened, and then I’ll tell you what happened after those two men dragged me to Alpena in the dead of night.”

  Ed and his daughter told their respective stories. Seneca left nothing out, even telling Blackhawk how she had felt after Lew had killed three men.

  “I’m afraid I wasn’t very nice to him, seeing as he’s left and all without really saying good-bye.”

  “You mean he didn’t kiss you or promise to write you,” Blackhawk said.

  Seneca blushed. “He just said good-bye and left me on the bridge. Rode off home, I reckon.”

  “What did you think about him killing those men?”

  “Well, it was self-defense. And he was trying to rescue me from Virg and Luke.”

  “But you think he might have gone too far? Killing them like that?”

  Seneca squirmed and started to wring her hands.

  “No, it wasn’t that.”

  “What was it?”

  “I—I just thought he was a mite too calm about it. My brains were plumb rattled. All that shooting and the noise, the sound of bullets whizzing everywhere, hitting things in the store. It was like a nightmare, Marshal.”

  “I see.”

  “Maybe he just kept it all inside. Lew’s that way. He doesn’t say much sometimes, but I know he’s thinking deep.”

  “Do you have any idea where he went, Miss Jones?”

  She shook her head. “Out West, I guess.”

  “He ever talk about that?”

  “No, not really. I just know his daddy took him elk hunting out to Colorado one year. Least, I think that’s where it was.”

  “Thank you. Thank you both.”

  “What are you going to do, Marshal?” Ed asked. “You know that boy’s innocent of any crime. It was self-defense, both when he killed those boys and their no-account fathers.”

  “And what about Sheriff Colfax?” Blackhawk said. “A man who had a duty to perform, who was gunned down in the performance of that duty.”

  “He was just as crooked as Pope and Canby,” Jones said. “Fact is, he was in cahoots with them, the way I hear it.”

  Blackhawk said nothing. Instead, he stared at Seneca for a long time, wondering if she was going to come to Zane’s defense regarding the Alpena sheriff who had been killed.

  She stared right back at him, her lips quivering ever so slightly as if trying to form words that were locked deep inside her and refused to let her utter them.

  9

  LEW HAD BEEN RIDING FOR ALMOST A WEEK, DISCOVERING muscles in his body that he did not know he had until they started throbbing after each long day in the saddle. He had stayed well away from the towns, avoiding them even if it meant an extra hour’s ride. He crossed into Oklahoma and was surprised at how quickly the land changed. There were gently rolling hills as far as he could see, a green, undulating land dotted here and there with farms where cattle and horses grazed under a perfect blue sky.

  He passed a few wagons and carts, waved, and continued on his way without having to answer any questions. Roads seemed to lead off the main road and go nowhere, but all showed signs of traffic. On one such road, he saw horse tracks coming from some distant nothing and then heading west. They caught Lew’s attention because he realized that the horse was favoring its left foreleg. He expected to come across a lame horse at any moment, or one that had played out and could no longer be ridden.

  At dusk, he smelled something and Ruben’s ears perked up, stiffened to twitching cones. Smoke, Lew realized. The wind was from the west, and that’s where the smoke was drifting from, beyond one of those rolling hills that seemed to go on forever. Lew kept Ruben at a walk and loosened the Colt in its holster. He’d had no trouble, so far, but one never knew what lay ahead on an unknown trail.

  When he topped the rise, Lew saw the campfire, off to the right, in a cluster of trees by a small creek. There, from the signs on the road, was the lame horse, stripped of saddle, blanket, and saddlebags, tied to a tree, its left foreleg cocked like a hunting dog’s leg. The man was chopping wood with a small hatchet and feeding split faggots into the fire. The sky was a smear of orange and pink and purple, the sun just below the horizon, tingeing the long thin clouds that hung motionless above the sunken cauldron that had burned his face all afternoon.

  Lew was going to ride on by, but the man straightened up and lifted an arm in a beckoning wave.

  “Ho, stranger,” the man called. “Come. I’m goin’ to fix some coffee here directly.”

  Lew hesitated.

  The man wasn’t wearing a side arm, and his rifle was still in its boot, attached to the saddle. His voice sounded friendly enough, and he was a small man who looked to be in his fifties or sixties. Coffee sounded good to Lew. He hadn’t had a hot meal since leaving Osage, preferring to light no fires at night, and anxious to keep riding in the mornings. Lew’s mouth filled with saliva. His throat was parched.

  He turned his horse and headed for the trees, the cool and inviting stream. Companionship.

  “You got a lame horse,” Lew said as he rode up.

  “Lookin’ that way. Light down. My name’s Jeff Stevens.”

  “Lew Zane.” He swung out of the saddle. “I’ll take a look at your horse, if you like.”

  “Sure. I don’t know why he come up lame. Been favoring that right leg since a while after we left home this morning.”

  “He’s not lame yet, Mr. Stevens, but he’s heading that way.”

  “Hey, call me Jeff, please. I’ll have that coffee cooking in no time.”

  Lew didn’t unsaddle Ruben, but tied him to a willow tree downstream from Jeff’s horse.

  Stevens was short, wiry, with a day’s stubble on his chin. His face was wrinkled with age. He looked like he was fifty or sixty. His old felt hat was crumpled and worn, stained with years of sweat and dirt. He had bright brown eyes, with the firelight dancing in them as he leaned over and stuck a coffeepot snug against the flames. He wore simple, home-spun clothes, a linsey-woolsey shirt, duck trousers, work boots that laced up with leather thongs. He reminded Lew of some of the people back home, those who worked at the stave factory or who helped Ed Jones when he went to making sorghum.

  Lew walked over to the crippled horse, straddled its left leg, and lifted its hoof. He could see it well enough in the twilight. He felt around the shoe, tested it to see if it was loose. It was a fairly new shoe, hardly worn at all. He felt for pebbles, any small, sharp stones that could have become wedged in between the iron shoe and the soft foot.

  “I checked for stones in that hoof,” Stevens said.

 
“None that I can find. Still looking,” Lew said.

  He touched one spot, however, and the horse pulled its hoof, trying to get it away from Lew’s hands. He probed again, with his finger, once the horse settled down.

  “Easy, boy,” Lew said.

  He felt something, a hard little stub in the back of the foot, just under the heel, near the frog. He put his thumb and index finger on either side of it and pressed inward. The horse winced. A ripple coursed up its leg, exciting each muscle. Lew’s fingers tightened around the object, and he pulled at it. The horse jerked its hoof away and Lew fell backward. But he had the object. He held it up to the firelight.

  “Got it,” he said. “A danged splinter in its hoof, right at the heel.”

  “Be damned,” Stevens said, and walked over. He looked at the splinter, then took it from Lew’s hand. There was a smear of blood on it.

  “Must of got that when I rode past my gate. Had some old rotten boards lyin’ out there in a pool of water and old Leroy here must have stepped plumb in it.”

  “Probably worked its way in there,” Lew said. “You put some mud and moss on that, and you got your horse back, sound as a silver dollar.”

  “Reckon that would do it?”

  “Unless you’ve got some medicant salve. Some mud from that creek and a little tree moss. Just tuck it all around the shoe. Horse will absorb what it needs to close that hole up so it won’t fester.”

  “Much obliged, Lew. Thanks.”

  Lew could smell the coffee. They both heard the water starting to boil. Jeff got a handful of soft mud from just under the creek bank, while Lew scraped some moss from the north side of a small oak. He ground it all up between his hands, rubbing his palms together to create friction. When Jeff held out his hands, Lew sprinkled the moss over the mud, then kneaded it all in.

  Together, they packed the fissure around the horse’s shoe with the mixture. Then Lew pressed the shoe on tight, squeezing the mud into the flesh and the small hole left by the removal of the splinter.

  “That ought to do,” Lew said. “He might favor that foot for a while.”

  “If you don’t got a cup, I brung two,” Jeff said. “That coffee’s burpin’ like a frog with the hiccups.”

  “I’ve got a cup,” Lew said, and walked over to fetch it from his saddlebag. When he returned to the campfire, Jeff had put more kindling on the flames and had set the coffeepot to one side to keep the liquid hot.

  “Set down, find yourself a spot, Lew.”

  Lew squatted well away from the fire. The heat of the day still lingered along that stretch of creek and he had gotten a sweat up working on the horse. Jeff filled Lew’s tin cup as well as his own, squatted a few feet away from his newfound friend.

  “Where you headed, Lew?”

  “No place in particular. West.”

  “Just seeing the country, eh? Wish’t I was younger. I’d do the same.”

  Lew did not say anything. If Stevens was prying, and he didn’t think he was, he didn’t want to tell him too much. Talk left tracks the same as feet.

  “Me, I’m going to Coloraddy. Got a letter from my daughter out there and she’s in a heap of trouble, I reckon. She be needin’ me if she’n and her young’uns are going to make it through the winter.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Lew said, having no idea what kind of trouble the man’s daughter was in, or why she needed her father to help her get through the winter.

  “Carol’s a good girl. She just married the wrong man. He’s nothing but a crook. That whole Smith family was no damned good, and Wayne was the worst of all.”

  Lew sipped the hot coffee, savoring the faint taste and aroma of cinnamon, a trademark of the Arbuckle’s brand. The sky darkened in the west, leaving shreds of dark clouds turning to ash before disappearing. The blue faded in the east and Venus winked on, pulsing like a lone diamond in the blackening sky.

  “Wayne was the head sheriff over in Bolivar,” Jeff said, still musing aloud. “He got in with the crooked judges and lawyers, got real greedy and loose with the law.”

  Lew’s interest piqued at the mention of Wayne Smith’s profession.

  “You say your son-in-law was a sheriff?”

  “Mean as a bulldog with the rabies. Only, Carol didn’t see it. He lied to her, like he lied to everybody else.”

  “Lied about what?”

  “About how he was shaking down the criminals and the public. We never found out anything until after Wayne took Carol and the kids and left in the dead of night. Then it all come out, like dirty laundry on a line.”

  Lew took another sip of coffee and sighed.

  “What do you mean about shaking down the criminals and the public? And how did you find out about what he was doing?”

  “Whenever Wayne arrested someone, he’d ask the criminal if he wanted to go to jail or prison. When he caught a burglar, which he did, he’d give the man a choice. Pay the judge, the lawyer, and him, and Wayne would let him out on bail so he could ply his trade. The burglar would keep robbing people and pay the lawyer, who paid the judge and Wayne. When the trial came up, the burglar was always found not guilty. But Wayne went a lot further than that. He made the bankers and the merchants pay him so they wouldn’t get robbed. Anyone who didn’t pay, got robbed. Pretty soon he had money coming in from a lot of folks. Then someone robbed the bank. Someone Wayne didn’t know and couldn’t catch. The banker raised Cain and told the newspapers and it all come out, everything that Wayne and the crooked lawyers and judges had done.”

  Lew let out a low whistle of surprise.

  “By the time we all read of his schemes in the Bolivar Register, Wayne was long gone. With all the money.”

  “And your daughter didn’t know about any of this?”

  “Nope. I reckon not. I never knew where Wayne had taken her and them kids until I got that letter the other day. She still doesn’t know what-all Wayne done, but she said he fell in with some bad men and just left them. I think he found himself another woman.”

  “Jeff, that’s the saddest tale I ever heard. Makes my own story seem like a nursery rhyme.”

  “You got a story like that?”

  “No, nothing like that. But I’ve run up against a crooked lawman back home. More than once.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I took the law into my own hands.”

  Stevens finished his coffee and reached for the pot to pour another cup. He offered it to Lew, but Lew shook his head.

  “Might keep me awake, Jeff. You make it strong, and I’ve got some miles to go yet.”

  “If you’re going my way, son, you’re welcome to stay and try your luck with my vittles.”

  “I don’t know,” Lew said.

  “Way I look at it, Lew, if there ain’t no law where you live, you got to become the law yourself. Otherwise, you’re just easy prey, like a mouse in a room full of cats.”

  “The law doesn’t look at it that way.”

  “If the law is bad, like it was in Bolivar, the people have got to root it out. They threw every one of those judges and lawyers in jail. And now we got us a sheriff who’s honest and upholds the law. That’s how it should be.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, Jeff.” Lew set his cup down and stood up.

  “Still bound to ride off on your own, eh? It’ll be dark as pitch tonight with a new moon rising.”

  Lew hesitated.

  “I don’t always talk so much,” Jeff said. “Honest.”

  Lew laughed and sat back down.

  “You’re a pretty good talker, Jeff,” he said. “I reckon we could ride together for a ways. Until we got on each other’s nerves. What have you got in the way of supper?”

  Jeff cracked a smile.

  “It’ll right sure stick to your ribs, Lew. If there’s one danged thing I can do well, it’s cook vittles. And I got deer meat that’s going to turn rancid less’n we eat it. I got turnips and greens, too. I sure couldn’t eat it all by myself.”

  Lew drew in a br
eath. His stomach flexed with hunger and his mouth filled with saliva. He looked up at the night sky, at all the stars that had suddenly appeared. He threw another stick of wood on the fire. Sparks of gold flew up and danced on the air.

  “I’ll unsaddle my horse,” Lew said. “I just hope you don’t snore, Jeff.”

  “I hope you don’t, neither,” Jeff said, and Lew smiled.

  Maybe, he thought, he had made a friend in a friendless world.

  10

  HORATIO BLACKHAWK WAS STILL STARING INTO THE BLUE depths of Seneca’s eyes when Ed cleared his throat, as if to break the spell that seemed to have sprung up between his daughter and the marshal.

  “You mean to stay a while, Marshal?” Ed asked. “If so, you better let Seneca fix us some tea or put the coffee to boiling.”

  “No, I won’t be much longer, Mr. Jones.”

  Still, Blackhawk did not break his stare. Nor did Seneca, who seemed to be locking the marshal into some kind of dare. Ed crossed and uncrossed his legs, not knowing what more to say. He looked at his daughter, hoping she would look at him. But she continued that steady stare into Blackhawk’s eyes. It was like a child’s game, to see who would look away first.

  “I gather, Miss Seneca, that you saw a change in Zane that night of the killings,” said Blackhawk. “And you didn’t like what you saw.”

  “Just call me Seneca, please. I don’t want to get used to being called ‘Miss.’”

  “Oh, then you think Lew Zane will come back here someday?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Ain’t likely,” Ed said, “less’n the law lets him.”

  “Daddy, you hush,” Seneca said. Then, to Blackhawk, she said, “I don’t know what Lew will do, Marshal. I think he should have stayed and seen things through.”

  “What about that question I asked you, Seneca? Did you think Zane changed that night, that maybe the killings didn’t bother him all that much?”

  She drew in a breath, let it out slow, as if trying to collect her thoughts.

  “I don’t know what was in Lew’s mind. I was upset when I saw Pope lying there dead. And then I saw Canby. All that blood. I wondered how Lew could do all that by himself. But I do know that those men were trying to kill Lew and he was just defending himself.”