Six-Gun Law

by Jory Sherman

  “Dinero, por favor,” the Mexican said.

  Lew fished a dollar bill out of his pocket and placed it in the man’s hand.

  “Un mil de gracias.”

  The man stepped aside and Lew walked into the dark interior of the cantina. Lanterns lit the stage at the back of the large room. People sat at tables, men and women, watching the musicians. Some clapped their hands to the music. Others sang the words of the song. Bleary-eyed men sat at the bar. One or two looked his way, then turned back to their private conversations.

  Lew stepped up to the end of the bar and put his boot up on the rail. There was sawdust on the dirt floor and brass spittoons were placed at empty places along the foot rail. A bartender, a rotund Mexican, noticed him and walked slowly toward him, puffing on a cigarillo.

  “Whiskey,” Lew said.

  The bartender nodded, pulled a bottle from the well, grabbed a shot glass from underneath, set it down, and poured it full.

  “Two bits,” the bartender said.

  Lew nodded and placed coins on the counter. The bartender swiped a quarter from the pile and walked to the cash register, which consisted of two cigar boxes, one for bills, the other for coins.

  Once Lew’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, he looked around the room. Most of the customers seemed to be Mexicans, but he saw some who were not. These he studied intently. None of them looked familiar.

  He raised his glass, put it to his lips.

  Someone came through the door behind him. Lew started to turn around when he felt something hard jab into his back.

  “I spotted you a block away,” a voice said. “You’ve been dogging me all afternoon.”

  Lew set down the glass, started to turn around.

  The man jabbed him harder.

  “You just sit tight until we straighten this all out. What’s your play, mister?”

  “No play,” Lew said. “I’m looking for someone.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet you are. I seen you before, ain’t I?”

  “I don’t know who you are,” Lew said. “Is that a gun in my back?”

  “It sure ain’t my pecker.”

  “McDermott?”

  “You just said the magic word, mister. Now, who in hell are you and what in hell do you want?”

  “If you’re McDermott, I’ve got a proposition for you.”

  “You were with that Smith woman this mornin’. Her and her kids. She’s a married lady.”

  “I know. How long are you going to stand there behind me?”

  “Let’s hear your proposition. And it better be good.”

  The man spoke so low nobody near them could hear him. No one was looking their way. It was odd that McDermott had gotten the jump on him. He must have been in one of the stores or hiding somewhere along Guadalupe Street, watching Lew all the time. He’d waited, then had come inside the cantina and gotten the drop on Lew. Lew wondered just how far McDermott would go in front of witnesses. He wanted a look at his face, though, before he said another word.

  “You’ll hear what I have to say after you put away that gun and talk to my face, man to man.”

  “Tough boy, are you? Why, hell, you ain’t hardly dry behind the ears yet. You better talk or I’ll let some daylight in that back of yours.”

  Lew thought fast.

  “Carol Smith sent me,” he said. “She wants to talk to you. Tonight.”

  “She does? Me?”

  Lew felt the pressure in his back subside as McDermott relaxed.

  “Yes. If you want, I’ll take you to her.”

  “Yeah? What does she want to see me about?”

  “She wants to give you money, McDermott. She wants you to do her a favor.”

  “What favor would that be?”

  “You’ll have to ask her yourself. I’m just the messenger.”

  McDermott pulled the pistol barrel away from Lew’s back.

  That was all that he was waiting for. Life or death is decided in an instant sometimes. And sometimes, that instant can seem to last an eternity.

  This was one of those times.

  Lew struck like a snake and life hung in the balance, teetering on the edge of eternity.

  27

  HORATIO BLACKHAWK RODE INTO PUEBLO BEFORE NOON, HIS face glazed with dust, his horse black with sweat. Indian summer gripped the land in one last blaze of heat, and his shirt was soaked with sweat, his hatband dripping salty drops of moisture into his slitted eyes. He picked his way through wagons leaving town, headed for either Denver or Santa Fe, and the main street was clogged with traffic.

  The marshal found a nondescript hotel on Hidalgo Street, Hotel Popular, where he got a room and arranged with the clerk for a bath. After he dressed in clean dry clothing, he found a hand laundry and a livery stable. He dropped off his dirty clothes and was promised them the following day. He kept his horse, however, after watering him and brushing him down, and rode to the police station, where he announced himself, showed his credentials, and was ushered into the chief ’s office.

  The chief, wearing a mustard-colored uniform, was short, bald, stocky, with a bulbous nose flanked by red spidery veins that showed the effects of too much drink. He was fanning himself at his desk, pulling on a cigar that belched noxious smoke that smelled like burning rope to Blackhawk.

  “I’m Roland Enfante,” the chief said. “What can I do for you, Marshal?”

  Blackhawk stood there, facing the desk, because Enfante did not indicate either of the two chairs where the marshal might sit.

  “I’m looking for two men, Chief. One is not wanted for any crime, name of Jeff or Jeffrey Stevens. The other is a man named Lew Wetzel Zane, wanted for murder of a police officer.”

  Enfante blinked like some oversized toad. He puffed on his cigar, wreathing his head in a halo of blue smoke. Blackhawk almost expected a small black tongue to dart from between his lips and shiver as it probed for scent.

  “Ah. This is recent, yes?”

  Blackhawk shrugged. “Probably. Names ring a bell?”

  “Um, a bell, yes. I am trying to think of the officer who handled the case. There was a man murdered in a hotel.” The chief looked out through the open door and yelled at a policeman sitting at a small table. “Luis, the hotel murder. You know it? Who was the investigator? What hotel? And who was the deceased?”

  Luis Acevedo, without looking up from the sheaf of papers in front of him, yelled back.

  “Wayne Smith, the Fountain. Deceased, one Jeff Stevens. Suspect, Zane.”

  “Ah, there you have it, Marshal. A Mr. Jeff Stevens was murdered in his hotel room. He had also been shot, perhaps the day before. He was strangled to death, and his partner, a man named Zane, has disappeared. We are looking for this man.”

  “Much obliged, Chief,” Blackhawk said, and turned to go.

  “It is too bad, Marshal Blackhawk, that the man you seek was not captured. Is there a reward?”

  “Not that I know of,” Blackhawk lied. He did not trust Enfante. And from the look of the other officer, the one at the table, they were overworked and underpaid, which was typical of any police department he had visited.

  “Good luck to you, Marshal,” Enfante called as Blackhawk strode through the outer office and bent down to open a small gate.

  Blackhawk did not reply. His lungs were full of cigar smoke and he yearned for fresh air. But there was none outside. He could smell the odors of the smelters and when he looked up, there were streamers of yellow and brown smoke streaking the airless sky.

  Next he went to the Fountain Hotel and spoke to the desk clerk, after identifying himself.

  “Do you recall a murder here, within the past week or so, I think, of a man named Jeff Stevens?”

  “We’d like to forget that.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “John Bascomb.”

  “Were you on duty when the murder occurred?”

  “I was.”

  “What can you tell me about it?”

  “Nothing, really. A
man was murdered. The police investigated. The murderer disappeared.”

  Blackhawk studied the man. He could almost always tell when a man was lying, or covering up something. John Bascomb, he decided, wanted to sweep the murder under the rug and pretend it had never happened. Or he knew something he didn’t want to tell.

  “Who determined the cause of death?” Blackhawk said, taking a different tack. Sometimes such a tactic could disarm the witness. Ask an easy question, then get back to the hard ones.

  “Ah, we have a surgeon, a physician, who lives in the hotel, Dr. Renfrew. Junius Renfrew. His office is just down the street. He’s the one you should talk to, sir.”

  “I will. Who discovered the body?”

  “Well, Dr. Renfrew. The man was his patient, for a gunshot wound.”

  “He just walked in his room and found him dead?”

  “His door was open, yes. Dr. Renfrew said he went to Stevens’s room to check on his progress. Mr. Stevens was dead. I was called up to the room as a witness.”

  “And what did you see?”

  Bascomb began to perspire. The furrows on his forehead broke out in beads of sweat, and his sideburns appeared to leak as the perspiration streamed down the edge of his cheek.

  “Mr. Stevens was obviously dead. He wasn’t breathing or anything. He smelled bad. There was a bandage around his stomach. Then Mr. Zane came in.”

  “Zane was there?”

  “Yes, sir. He said . . . well, I better not say what he said.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Mr. Zane was probably lying. According to the police.”

  “The police were here, too?”

  “One of them came later. Looking for Mr. Zane.”

  “Oh? Who was this policeman?”

  “Uh, Wayne Smith. He said Mr. Zane had shot Mr. Stevens the night before outside the Double Eagle. He said Zane had then choked Mr. Stevens to death while Mr. Stevens was asleep.”

  “And did Wayne Smith see Mr. Zane?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Mr. Zane left the hotel and I believe he left town.”

  “What makes you believe that?”

  “Wayne Smith came back and said that Mr. Zane was a fugitive.”

  “Did Smith say where Zane had gone?”

  “No, but my brother Charlie, who works the night shift here, believes that Mr. Stevens was gong to Leadville to see his daughter.”

  “What made him believe that?”

  “I believe he overheard the two men, Mr. Zane and Mr. Stevens, talking about that.”

  “What happened at the Double Eagle?”

  “There was a shooting. Mr. Stevens was shot. Wayne Smith told me that.”

  “I’d like to see the two rooms these men occupied,” Blackhawk said.

  “Well, there’s nobody in them right now. I suppose you can go up.”

  Bascomb handed Blackhawk the keys to both rooms. Blackhawk inspected them, didn’t find anything of interest.

  He went back downstairs and handed the keys back to Bascomb.

  “Find anything?” Bascomb asked.

  “No. Where can I find Wayne Smith?”

  “If he’s not at the police station, or investigating, he would be at the Double Eagle. I think he spends his evening hours there.”

  “I see,” Blackhawk said, and walked out of the hotel.

  He found Dr. Renfrew’s office a few moments later. There was a Mexican woman in the anteroom, and a man with a cane.

  “Is the doctor in?” Blackhawk asked the man.

  “He’s back there. You just sit down and wait like me and her.”

  Blackhawk ignored him and walked through a door. He heard voices in one of the back rooms. He walked toward them.

  Renfrew looked startled when Blackhawk filled the doorway. He was removing a splinter from a young man’s finger. He pulled it out and dropped it into a wastebasket.

  “Please wait outside,” Renfrew said. “I’ll see to you when I can.”

  “Doctor this boy and send him on his way, Doc. I’m not a patient.”

  “Police?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Just a minute. Billy, I’m going to clean this and put some salve on it, wrap it up. You keep the dirt out and come back in a week.”

  “Um-hum,” Billy said.

  The doctor cleansed the slight wound, packed it with a salve, wrapped a bandage around it, tied it tight, and ushered the young man from the room.

  “Now, what’s this about, Mr . . .”

  “Horatio Blackhawk. I’m a U.S. marshal. I want to talk to you about the death of Jeff Stevens and the man who was with him, Lew Zane.”

  Renfrew stiffened. He was wearing a white coat, a shirt and tie. He sat on the edge of the examining table, looked at Blackhawk.

  “What do you want to know? Mr. Stevens was a patient of mine. For a short time. He died. His body was autopsied. Cause of death, strangulation. The police have the details.”

  “I heard they believe Zane strangled Jeff Stevens.”

  “One policeman says that,” Renfrew said. “There’s no evidence to that effect.”

  “By one policeman you mean . . .”

  “I mean Wayne Smith.”

  “But you don’t believe him?”

  “No. Zane wasn’t there. I could swear to that. And when he said he had been knocked out, his room keys taken from him, just before Mr. Stevens was murdered, I believed him.”

  “Why is that, Doctor?”

  “I examined a contusion on Mr. Zane’s head. It was severe enough for him to lose consciousness. He came up to the room just after Mr. Stevens was killed. I was there, in fact, shortly after the murder. The body was still warm.”

  “So why do you think Wayne Smith is blaming Zane for the murder?”

  “As I understand it, Wayne Smith is, or was, Mr. Stevens’ son-in-law.”

  “Wayne Smith was related to Jeff Stevens?”

  “Smith married his daughter. A Carol Smith.”

  “And where is she?”

  “Why, I believe Zane said she was in Leadville.”

  “Leadville?”

  “That’s what I understand. Mr. Blackhawk, I have patients waiting.”

  “Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Doc. You’ve been a big help.”

  Blackhawk left the doctor’s office, more puzzled than ever. He went back to the police station, but Smith was not there.

  He headed for the Double Eagle. Something wasn’t right about the murder of Jeff Stevens. The doctor didn’t believe that Zane had murdered him and neither did Blackhawk, after thinking about it. From what Briggs had said, Zane and Stevens were friends. Zane would have no reason to kill Jeff Stevens.

  And why was Smith’s wife in Leadville when he was in Pueblo? That didn’t make sense. It looked to Blackhawk as if Wayne Smith was accusing Zane of everything he could, a shooting at the Double Eagle and a murder at the Fountain Hotel.

  This, Blackhawk decided, was the strangest case he had ever investigated.

  And Zane? He was either a murderer, or the unluckiest man alive.

  28

  LEW GRABBED THE BARREL OF MCDERMOTT’S PISTOL, jerked it from his hand. McDermott made a desperate lunge to retrieve his weapon, but Lew whirled and drove a back-hand into McDermott’s face, knocking him backward. Then he slashed the butt of the pistol across McDermott’s jaw, knocking him to the floor.

  Lew flipped the pistol so that he grasped it by the butt. He stooped down, holding the pistol up close to McDermott’s face. He cocked the trigger and shoved the barrel up tight against McDermott’s upper lip, right under his nose.

  The musicians went silent. A hush fell over the room like a heavy blanket.

  “Listen to me, you bastard,” Lew said, his voice a hoarse rasp laden with rage. “If you ever show your face around Carol Smith and her kids, I’ll blow your head off and feed it to the hogs. You got that?”

  McDermott said nothing in his dazed state. He stared back at Lew with wet eyes, blood starting to ooze out from
the cut in his jaw. The flesh there began to swell and turn red where the pistol had bruised his skin.

  “If you think I don’t mean business, McDermott, go dig up your friends at her cabin. They’re stone dead and the worms are already eating at them.”

  Lew stood up, emptied the cartridges out of McDermott’s pistol. He worked the lever, pushing each bullet out. In the silence of the cantina, each bullet made a distinct clanking sound as it fell into an empty spittoon. Lew dropped the empty pistol into the same spittoon.

  At that moment, a young Mexican woman rushed up and knelt by McDermott. She cradled his head in her hands and spat out a stream of Spanish invective at Lew. McDermott stretched his hand out toward the spittoon, sliding his arm under the woman’s skirt as if to conceal it.

  “Conchita, ten cuidado,” another woman said as she approached.

  Conchita stopped cursing as McDermott’s hand fluttered above the spittoon, stabbing for the butt of his pistol.

  Lew stepped in and brought his boot heel down hard on McDermott’s arm. McDermott cried out in pain. His arm shrank back under Conchita’s skirt, and she rose to strike Lew with her tiny fist balled up like a darning egg.

  Lew sidestepped her and headed toward the door, his right hand hovering near the butt of his pistol.

  He glanced at the patrons in the cantina, looking for anyone who appeared to be ready to fight. No one challenged him, and he walked to the door in three long strides. Conchita assailed him with a fresh string of Spanish curse words, shaking her fist at him and spitting into the air.

  Lew breathed easier once he was outside. The Mexican beggars melted away from him as he strode down the street. The cantina burst into a hubbub of voices all shouting at once.

  But nobody emerged from La Huerta, and nobody followed him.

  When he showed up at the cabin where Carol and her children were staying, it was late in the afternoon and the sky was scudding over with white thunderheads. They seemed to rise from the bowels of the mountains, bright in the sun, brighter than the white show that shone on the highest peaks.

  He was on horseback and he carried a haunch of cooked pork, a hank of sugar beets, a sack of squash, and sweet candies for the children, licorice sticks and chocolate caramel balls the size of quail eggs.