Ralph Compton Straight Shooter

by Ralph Compton

  “I’ve heard,” Aldus replied. “It seems there are plenty of masked men running around this town.”

  “You have, have you?”

  Stepping closer to the desk as if he were breaking up a fight, Hayes said, “Come, now, gentlemen. It’s been a rough day or two and I’m sure we’re all on edge. We’re all just trying to do the right thing, after all.”

  “The marshal says that man in there is the one who came after me,” Aldus said. “Shouldn’t he be interested if I say he might not be the one? I was the one who should be able to tell you better than anyone else.”

  “The man was wearing a mask,” Borden pointed out.

  “He also fought like a wild man. That one in there is more like a whipped mule.”

  “Like I told you. Men tend to lose their fire when they land in a cage. Besides, he confessed.”

  “He did?” Hayes asked. Turning to Aldus, he added, “Well, there you go! That changes things.”

  Aldus looked around at all the lawmen in the room who were, at the moment, watching him carefully. Ignoring their cautious glares, he looked toward the jail cells and then back down to the mask and gun lying on the desk in front of him. “I hit him a few times when we tussled,” Aldus said as the fight played itself through in his mind. “But it wasn’t enough to make him look the way he does now.”

  “He was wearing a mask,” the marshal said in an angry growl. “There’s no telling what he looked like under there. You’re a professional fighter. You could have easily hit him hard enough to get one of his eyes to swell shut.”

  “That man’s eyes are blue. When he came at me at the hotel, I could see both eyes beneath the mask and they were green.”

  Suddenly the marshal’s demeanor lightened and he lowered himself back down onto his chair. “Come, now, Brick. You can’t stand there and tell me you remember every last punch you give a man during a fistfight or what color his eyes were when they were partly covered by a mask. I’ve talked to other fighters and they say it all runs together after a while. I’ve been in my share of scrapes and even I could tell you that much is true.”

  “And what about them bruises?” Aldus asked.

  “More marks from your scuffle at the hotel,” Borden quickly replied.

  “They’re fresher than that.”

  “Can you honestly tell me you know that?”

  “Yeah. I can. If there’s one thing I know about, it’s wounds a man gets after getting his face pounded. I’ve seen more shades of bruises than colors a poet’s seen in a sunset, and them that are on his face weren’t made very long ago. Did you or your men rough him up?”

  Having flipped to the end of the ledger, Marshal Borden closed the book and stood up again. This time, he balled up a fist and slammed it down on top of the leather-bound volume. “If me or my men had to do more than ask politely to get an armed man into a jail cell, that’s no business of yours! And if you want to stand there and accuse me of beating an innocent man, then you and I will have another fight on our hands.”

  “There’s no need for that,” Hayes said. “I’m certain my friend here is just trying to share his expertise with you because it may be of some use in your investigation.”

  “Investigation’s over,” Borden said without taking his eyes off Aldus. “He confessed to the crime and I got no reason not to believe him. There’s a dozen ways someone could be mistaken, especially when they’re talking about something that happened as quick as you said you were attacked. Even if he wasn’t the man who took a swing at you, he still fired on one of my men.

  “Besides,” Borden added, “innocent men don’t generally wear masks. From that remark you made earlier, it seems you’ve heard a thing or two about the vigilantes around here. They all wear those same sacks over their heads because they’re cowards who don’t want their faces to be seen. Even if the man in that cell isn’t the one who took a swing at you, he’s still wanted for plenty of other things. First among them is murder. The very same murder that you witnessed when you first rode into town.”

  “He confessed to that, too?” Hayes asked.

  “He did. Gunned down my deputy like a dog in the street with this very gun,” Borden said while placing a hand on the Peacemaker. “So you see, Brick, there’s more on my plate than you getting pulled from a bathtub. In fact, now’s a real good time for the two of you to tell me all about those men who rode into Cedar Rapids to buy guns and ammunition.”

  “Are you gonna mess our faces up, too, if we don’t tell you what you need to hear?” Aldus asked.

  “The reason I ask is the ordinances I’ve put into place to try and ease some of the violence around here. I started out trying to prevent guns from being carried in Seedley at all, but that caused more ruckus than it was worth. So I took to registering everyone’s guns so people would know someone is at least keeping track of what’s out there, and if they didn’t register them, I had a legal right to take the guns away from them, which is what I was trying to do with the first ordinance. Whenever there was a problem with these vigilantes,” Borden continued, “my men and I had the legal right to round up all the guns we could.”

  “You should be rounding up men,” Aldus said. “Not just guns.”

  “We didn’t have many men to go after,” the marshal said. “There were a few names, but nothing came of it. I can’t toss men into a jail cell just because I heard their name, and trying to keep the guns out of folks’ hands was the next best thing.”

  “From what I hear, these men are buying weapons on a fairly regular basis,” Hayes said.

  “Ain’t much of a surprise,” Paul said. He was the deputy with the large build and thick beard. “Every time those vigilantes show themselves, there’s more of them.”

  Marshal Borden looked down at the burlap sack on his desk as if the very sight of it disgusted him. “So that brings me to my first question. Who did you come to sell guns to?”

  “We were told to speak to Cal Overland,” Hayes said. “That’s the only name I know.”

  “You seem to keep pretty good records,” Borden said while tapping the ledger. “Any chance you might have written down another name or two?”

  “Why?” Aldus asked. “Isn’t the one we gave you good enough?”

  “Cal Overland owns a good portion of land in this county,” the marshal told him. “Including a sizable portion of the land Seedley is built upon. Lots of folks know his name.”

  Aldus let his eyes wander back toward the room with the cells before he looked around at the deputies and finally settled once again on Borden. “What about the man I brought down when your deputy was shot?”

  “What about him?” the marshal asked.

  “Do you know his name?”

  After a few silent moments, Borden replied, “His name’s Frank Healey.”

  “Is he important around here? Important enough to send someone to force me to say whatever I had to in order to get you to turn him loose?”

  Slowly, the marshal nodded. “He’s the son of Niles Healey. The Healeys own a mess of property as well. Between them and the Overlands, they have most of this part of the state wrapped up. Did one of them approach you?”

  “The man who attacked me at the hotel,” Aldus said. “He wanted me to tell you I made a mistake in chasing him down.”

  “But . . . there were other witnesses who saw him shoot at you.”

  “I told you, this man was a wild one. He wasn’t exactly the kind to think clearly before tearing someone’s head off. The point is that he was sent to try and get that one in there off the hook.”

  “Just in time for that other man you recently arrested to be put on another hook,” Hayes said.

  The marshal looked over to the salesman and asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Hayes drew a deep breath to steel himself before saying, “It means that he didn’t shoot your
deputy.”

  Every one of the lawmen leaned in as if they didn’t want to miss a single word. The youngest of them asked, “How could you know that?”

  “He said he shot him with that gun, right?” Hayes asked as he pointed to the pistol on the marshal’s desk.

  Borden nodded. “He swore to it.”

  “That,” Hayes declared as he swept a hand over the Peacemaker, “is a forty-five Colt. The shot that brought your man down in the street when we arrived didn’t come from a forty-five. It was fired from a forty-four. In fact, I’d even wager it was a forty-four Remington.”

  “You’d wager?”

  “Actually, I’d stake my life on it.”

  When he saw the looks that the lawmen were giving one another, Aldus stepped in on his friend’s behalf. “If there’s one thing he knows about, it’s guns. Just hear him out. I’m sure he can back up what he said more than enough to convince you all.”

  “All right,” Borden said. “Convince us.”

  Normally Hayes would have jumped on an opportunity to play to a captive audience. In fact, when Aldus had first watched him work a crowd, he was worried that he’d agreed to assist a huckster instead of a true craftsman. From the fancy clothes he wore to the way he projected his voice, Hayes oftentimes more closely resembled an actor than a gunsmith. But, as Hayes himself had reminded Aldus, showmanship was a large part of selling anything.

  When he was given his chance to speak now, however, Hayes needed a moment to collect himself before saying, “I heard the difference.”

  “You . . . heard it?” Borden asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “And what did you hear?”

  “I heard a shot from a forty-four-caliber Remington.”

  Angling his head as if he were examining a strange insect, the marshal asked, “And why didn’t you share this bit of information before?”

  “Because,” Hayes replied, “you didn’t ask.”

  “You can honestly tell what sort of gun was fired just by the sound it makes?”

  “Why do you say it like that?” When he looked around at the lawmen, Hayes couldn’t find one face that seemed convinced. “Would it seem preposterous if a tracker told you he could tell how big an animal is or what breed it was just by looking at the ground?”

  “I suppose not,” Borden said grudgingly.

  “I have been working with firearms since I was a small boy. I build them. I take them apart. I modify them. I decorate them. I create them. I make every kind of bullet you could imagine and pack the powder that fires them. If you’d like me to prove my skill, I will be most happy to do so.”

  Borden stared at Hayes intently. He no longer seemed amused.

  “Mr. Hayes is an expert in firearms,” Aldus said. “If he told you the killer fired a forty-four Remington, then that’s what he fired. I can also tell you he had green eyes.”

  “You’re just being smart with me now,” Borden growled.

  “The man who attacked me in the hotel had green eyes,” Aldus explained. “Perhaps it’s a stretch to think he’s the same person who killed your deputy, but I don’t think it’s a very big one. At the very least, it should prove you’ve got the wrong man in that jail cell.”

  “You two men are just full of these little facts that you’ve held on to until the last possible second,” the marshal sighed.

  “I wasn’t sure if I could trust you,” Aldus told him. “For all I knew, it could have been one of your boys or a friend of yours who attacked me.”

  “Why would a lawman want to be a vigilante?” Paul asked.

  “I don’t know why men do half the things they do. All I know is that it pays to be careful, and that’s what I was doing. But since Zeke has laid all his cards on the table, so did I.”

  Looking back and forth between Aldus and Hayes, Borden asked, “Is there anything else you want to tell us?”

  “Just that if there’s anything we can do to help you in your efforts, we will be happy to assist,” Hayes said.

  Aldus rolled his eyes, mildly surprised that his partner hadn’t topped off the statement with a grand, theatrical bow.

  Marshal Borden smiled like a cat with feathers stuck between its teeth. “Seeing as how I’ve been waiting a long time to have more than a few suspicions to go on before storming up to the homestead of some of this county’s most powerful men, I might just take you up on that. First, there’s one thing I need to check.”

  “Excellent. We’ll just leave you to it.”

  “Hold on, now, Mr. Hayes,” the marshal said. Those words were barely out of his mouth before both deputies stepped in to block the front door. “I can do my checking right now, if you don’t mind waiting.”

  “No,” Hayes said as he looked at the two deputies who wouldn’t have moved if there was a fire in the room unless they’d gotten word from Borden. “We don’t mind at all.”

  “Speak for yerself,” Aldus grunted.

  The marshal took a book from his desk that was similar in size to Hayes’s ledger. He flipped through it until he found the pages he wanted and then started running his finger down several columns of words. Before long, he said, “You mentioned a forty-four Remington?”

  “That’s right,” Hayes replied.

  “That’s the gun that was fired when Lefty was killed?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you’d testify to that in court?”

  “I would.”

  “I just so happen to have a forty-four Remington marked down as belonging to Jesse Overland,” Borden announced. “Cal Overland’s son.”

  “There you go,” Hayes said with a smile. “You have someone to question. Let me know how it turns out.”

  “Oh, you’ll know how it turns out,” Borden said as he stood up and put on his hat. “Because you’re going with us out to the Overland spread.”

  Aldus felt as if someone had snuck in a quick jab to his chin. “We’re what?”

  “Everybody knows that Overland has plenty of men on his payroll,” Borden said. “Scouts, messengers, hired hands, whatever he wants to call them. If he’s one of these vigilantes, it’s possible any of them could be one of them killers.”

  “Right,” Aldus said. “And it’s your job to bring killers to justice. Not ours.”

  “Mr. Hayes was set to meet with them about buying guns, right?”

  “Not him specifically,” Hayes said. “But . . .”

  “But your friend in Cedar Rapids told you to pay Cal Overland a visit when you got to Seedley,” Borden said. “That’s what you said before. Was that a lie?”

  “No,” Hayes sighed.

  “Then you just drive your wagon on to that homestead and pay him a visit. While you’re there, see what you can see. I’ve been there a few times myself,” the marshal explained. “I know him and Niles Healey both have men riding their property lines. With you driving that wagon of yours up to his front door, you’re bound to draw some of Cal’s boys in to greet you. That’ll create an opening so me and my boys can come in and see what we can see.”

  “If you’ve been there before, why not just go there again?” Aldus asked. “It’s not like that would seem very strange.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, things have been coming to a boil around here,” the marshal told him. “Them vigilantes have taken it upon themselves to kill one of my deputies, and Frank Healey is in my jail. Me riding right up to that property where I know I’ll be outnumbered three to one ain’t such a good idea.”

  “Why would any of them shoot your deputy, anyways?” Aldus wondered.

  Coming around his desk, Borden placed a hand on both Hayes’s and Aldus’s shoulders and steered them toward the door. “How about we go and find out?”

  Chapter 15

  Aldus sat in the driver’s seat of the covered wagon with Hayes beside him.
They’d left town as soon as the horses were hitched, and the lawmen supposedly left soon after. Aldus hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Marshal Borden or his deputies since leaving their office, and the only living things sharing the trail with them as far as he could tell were a few squirrels and some rabbits.

  “He’s probably not even coming,” Aldus grumbled.

  Hayes had been working on a Henry rifle for a customer who’d wanted it modified into something that could be even more accurate than the standard models. Aldus wasn’t sure about the technical aspects, but Hayes had been tinkering with that rifle for almost a week. Now he loaded it and gave it another once-over. “I hope they don’t show up,” he said. “Because that means we can conduct the business we came for and be on our way.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re still looking to set up shop in this town!”

  “Of course not, but the whole world doesn’t need to know that. As soon as we find an opportunity, we can excuse ourselves and put this cursed place behind us.”

  “I vote we do that right now.”

  “That marshal is already on the warpath,” Hayes said as if he was afraid the lawmen could somehow overhear him. “We don’t need to draw any of that fire.”

  “For all we know, we’re riding right into a fire! Didn’t you ever think that one of them deputies could be connected to those vigilantes?”

  “I highly doubt it.”

  “Why?” Aldus snapped. “Because a man wearing a badge couldn’t possibly break the law?”

  “No. Because any real gunman, no matter which side of the law he’s on, wouldn’t carry a forty-four Remington when he had a perfectly good Colt. The Remington is inferior in balance to the Peacemaker, and anyone who lived by their gun hand would know that.”

  “Maybe they’re just not as knowledgeable as you on the matter,” Aldus pointed out. “You ever think of that?”