by Len Levinson
“It’s me!” called Fred Ramsay. “Put the goddamned rifle down.”
Hurley lowered the rifle and stepped out from behind the boulder. “Where’s Chopak?”
“In town.”
“How come?”
“He’s gone loco, I think.”
Ramsay rode up the winding trail to the campsite, where men slept around the charred remains of a fire. They stirred as Ramsay approached, and when they saw who it was, they sat up and wrapped their blankets around them.
Ramsay picketed his horse and pulled off the saddle. He hoisted the saddle onto his shoulders and carried it toward the circle of outlaws, dropping it to the ground.
Moonlight shone on the gathering of men, and they were unshaven and dirty, their gunbelts close by. Casey lit his cigarette with a match and blew smoke out of his nose.
“Why’d Chopak stay in town?” he asked.
“He wanted to shoot John Stone. That’s the galoot who killed our men.”
“Why didn’t you stay with him?”
“I thought you told us to come back and tell you what was goin’ on. You said not to start any shit ourselves.”
“You should’ve stuck with Chopak.”
“I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t.”
“You see Stone?”
“Yeah, I seen him. Big feller, carries two Colts. They made him deputy sheriff. Chopak tried to back-shoot him in a bar, but Stone saw him first and it didn’t work. Chopak and me left town, but then Chopak turned around and went back, so’s he could bushwhack Stone. Maybe Stone’s dead by now, I don’t know. Stone got a good look at Chopak, so Chopak’ll have to be careful. Stone ain’t nobody to fuck with.”
Casey puffed his cigarette in silence, trying not to get mad. The men often disobeyed orders, and he didn’t like it. It was hard to control them.
“You find out where Stone lives?” he asked Ramsay.
“At the hotel. He works nights out of the sheriff’s office.”
Casey knew where the hotel and the sheriff’s office were. He’d studied the town in detail when he’d planned the bank robbery. It had been like a military operation and would’ve worked if it hadn’t been for John Stone.
He knew where Stone lived and worked, so it wouldn’t be difficult to track him down. There were six men left in the gang, and that should be plenty.
Casey inhaled his cigarette and blew smoke into the air. “Tomorrow night we’ll shoot John Stone,” he said.
“What if Chopak already got him?” asked Ramsay.
“If Chopak already got him, then we can’t git him twice. But if Chopak didn’t get him, then we’ll find him and shoot him down like a dog. Then we’ll tie him up behind one of our horses and drag his body through town. We’ll show them people what kind of hero he is, and then we’ll hit that bank again, only this time we’ll take every goddamn penny out of it.” He held the cigarette between his fingers, and its tip glowed cherry red in the darkness. “Nobody messes with the Deke Casey gang and gets away with it,” he said. “John Stone has got to die.”
Chapter Four
It was morning in Petie, and the sun shone brightly in the sky. Dr. McGrath carried his little black bag along the sidewalk and stopped in front of Mayor Randlett’s law office, opened the door, and went inside.
Jennifer sat behind the front desk, and her father was pulling papers out of a file cabinet.
“Morning,” said Dr. McGrath sleepily.
“You look like hell, Bill,” Mayor Randlett said. “What happened?”
“Been up all night. Two shootings and one knifing. Every time I went to bed, somebody woke me up and I had to go out again. Think I’m gonna take today off and try to catch up on my sleep.”
“How’d our new deputy sheriff hold up?”
“Somebody tried to bushwhack him from the roof opposite the sheriff’s office. Don’t know who it was. Before that he had to shoot a drunken cowboy at Miss Elsie’s. Then there was a knife and bottle fracas at the Acme. He had a bad night. Also heard he had a run-in with Rawlins. Seems Rawlins cursed him out at the Paradise in front of a lot of people, but Stone ignored him and nothing came of it. Hope Stone isn’t getting discouraged with the job too quick. He’s a good man and I’d hate to see us lose him.”
“I’ll have a talk with him,” Randlett replied. “Most nights around here are pretty quiet.”
“Two men are in jail. One of them’s hurt pretty bad. He went at Stone with a broken bottle, and Stone nearly cut his arm off with that knife he carries.”
“Stone’s a tough customer. No doubt about it. He’s just what this town needs.”
“Thought I’d drop by to let you know what happened last night. Know you like to stay on top of things.”
Dr. McGrath left Randlett’s office, and Jennifer said to her father, “Why don’t you invite John Stone to dinner tonight? Then you could talk with him in a comfortable setting, and he’d be more receptive to what you had to say.”
Mayor Randlett thought about it for a few moments. “Good idea. I’ll ask him later today.”
A huge wagon filled with crates rolled past the Olympia Hotel, and the freighter flicked his whip at the haunch of one of his horses. “Move on there, you son of a bitch!” he hollered at the top of his lungs.
John Stone opened his eyes. It was the third time he’d been awakened that morning. His window faced the street, and the noise was constant. He rolled out of bed and rubbed his eyes.
Curtains covered the window, but the bright morning sun peeked through anyway. He had a headache and felt sick to his stomach. Two men were talking on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, and he could hear practically every word. He couldn’t close his window, because the room’d get too hot.
The only thing to do was change his room. He got up, dressed, and descended the stairs to the lobby.
“What can I do for you, Deputy?” asked the desk clerk, Howard Conway.
“My room’s too noisy, and I was wondering if you might have something quiet at the back of the hotel.”
“We’re all full up today. Sorry. Maybe we can find something for you tomorrow.”
Stone climbed the stairs and returned to his room. He undressed, dropped into bed, and covered his head with the pillow. Outside on the street three cowboys galloped by on their horses, and their horses’ hooves sounded as if they were pounding inside Stone’s brain.
A promise is a promise, Stone thought, but if I don t find someplace quiet to sleep pretty soon, I might have to leave this town early.
Thad Cooper walked into Mayor Randlett’s office. “I’d like to speak with your father,” he said to Jennifer.
“Anything wrong?”
“Sheriff Rawlins again.”
At that moment the door to the back office opened, and Mayor Randlett rushed out, carrying a sheaf of legal documents in his hand. “Morning, Thad,” Mayor Randlett said. “You say something about our sheriff?”
“I had a run-in with him last night at the Acme. He attacked me for no reason at all, insulted me, and slapped me in front of the crowd there. It was quite humiliating, and there was nothing I could do about it. I and a lot of other people are getting pretty fed up with the antics of Rawlins. The man’s completely out of hand. I am a member of the town council, after all. If he thinks he can slap me around, what’s he going to do with the ordinary citizens of this town? I think we ought to consider having a special meeting of the council to discuss getting rid of Rawlins for once and for all. I think when he starts pushing around elected public officials, he’s going too far.”
“We can fire him, Thad. That’s no problem. But we don’t have anybody to replace him with yet, and we need a sheriff. Whether you like Rawlins or not, you’ve got to admit that he keeps the lid on this town.”
“What about our new deputy?”
“That’s a possibility that we’re working on, but we don’t have him yet. It might take some doing to convince him to accept the job. He said he’s leaving after a month.�
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“Offer him more money.”
“I think I’d better have a talk with Rawlins first. He’s done a lot for this town. We have to give him a chance.”
“He’s had all the chances he should get. He’s a drunk and a bully, and I don’t think we should put up with him anymore. We’d be better off with a volunteer vigilante group than with Rawlins.”
Mayor Randlett gazed into Cooper’s eyes. “Who’s going to be in the volunteer vigilante group?”
“I’m sure somebody’d join.”
“You?”
“Well, I’m kind of busy.”
“So’s everybody else. The plain fact is that nobody wants to put his life on the line. That’s why we need Rawlins. We’re stuck with him until we can find somebody else. But I’ll talk with him. Maybe he’ll listen to reason.”
Sheriff Rawlins approached the front door of his office and noticed that the window was shattered. He opened the door and stepped inside.
“What the hell happened to the window?” he asked Pritchard.
“Somebody tried to bushwhack Deputy Stone from the roof across the street, but Stone shot him first.”
Sheriff Rawlins was puzzled by the news. Why should anybody want to bushwhack Stone?
“Was Stone hurt?” Rawlins asked.
“Not a scratch.”
Rawlins moved toward his desk, his eyes bloodshot and his gait unsteady. His hands shook slightly as he took off his hat and hung it on the peg.
“Anything else happen last night?”
Pritchard picked up a sheet of paper from his desk. “Deputy Stone shot a cowboy who was trying to strangle Miss Dorothy Brenner over at Miss Elsie’s. Then he arrested two cowboys at the Paradise. Seems they attacked him and he cut one of them pretty bad with a knife.”
“Why the knife?”
“The feller attacked him with a broken bottle.”
Rawlins unlocked the door to the jail area and walked back to the cells. In the dim light, he saw two men. One lay on a cot, his arm bandaged, unconscious, his skin pale and face bruised. The other was awake, but his nose was bandaged. He looked like he’d been in a war.
“I think I got a broken rib,” the man with the bandaged nose said. “Every time I move it hurts.”
“Tell it to the judge,” Rawlins replied.
Rawlins left the jail area and sat at his desk. He opened the bottom drawer, took out his bottle, and raised it to his lips. His hands stopped shaking after a few swallows.
He put a stogie into his mouth and lit it up. Who’d want to bushwhack John Stone? It was nagging his mind, because it didn’t make sense. Stone had just arrived in town, and hadn’t been here long enough to make enemies. Maybe the bushwhacker was somebody from his past who’d finally caught up with him. Sheriff Rawlins thought Stone might be a wanted man himself. He decided to look over the wanted posters to see if he could pick him out.
The door opened as Rawlins was about to get the stack of wanted posters. He looked up and saw Mayor Randlett enter the office. Rawlins realized he hadn’t put the bottle of whiskey away, and that didn’t look so good.
Mayor Randlett wore a derby hat, which he didn’t bother to take off, and he didn’t appear very happy.
“What’s this about you insulting Thad Cooper and pushing him around at the Acme last night?” Mayor Randlett demanded.
Sheriff Rawlins stared at him in amazement, because he didn’t remember insulting Thad Cooper and pushing him around at the Acme. Rawlins often had blackouts due to his heavy drinking. He recalled having a run-in with Stone, but couldn’t remember anything about Thad Cooper.
Rawlins looked up at Mayor Randlett and scowled. “What about it!”
“We’re getting sick and tired of you pushing around the citizens of this town.”
“Maybe they need to get pushed around.”
“Thad is a respected citizen and a member of the town council. You seem to forget, Sheriff Rawlins, that you’re working for us, and we’re not working for you. We’re paying you to enforce law and order in this town, not bully the citizens. We’ve warned you before, and we’re coming to the end of our rope with you. We need a sheriff, but your belligerent behavior is becoming more of a problem than we can bear. Nobody’s indispensable, Sheriff Rawlins. I must ask you to bear that in mind in the future.”
Rawlins spat into the brass cuspidor near his desk. Then he raised his whiskey bottle and took a swig, to antagonize Mayor Randlett further. He rinsed his mouth with the fiery whiskey, then swallowed it down.
“You’re talkin’ pretty big, now that you got a new deputy. I reckon you’re aimin’ to move him into my job first thing you get, is that right, Randlett?”
“We have no plans along those lines.”
“You can’t fool me, but let me tell you somethin’. John Stone ain’t what you think he is. I believe he’s a wanted man.”
Mayor Randlett blinked in surprise. “What makes you say that?”
“I ain’t been a lawman for twenty years without learnin’ somethin’. I know you damn people around here think I’m dumb, but I ain’t. You’re gonna have shit on your face when word gets around that you hired a wanted man to be deputy.”
“Sheriff Rawlins, when you have proof of what you say, present it to me. Until then, I don’t want to hear it.”
“You’re like everybody else in this damn town. You don’t want to know the truth.”
“It’s not the truth until you show me the wanted poster with John Stone’s face on it.”
Sheriff Rawlins puffed his stogie and wondered if he’d gone too far. He had no proof that John Stone was a wanted man, but somehow the words had blurted out of his mouth.
“I got work to do,” Sheriff Rawlins said. “If you don’t mind.”
“I’m not finished yet,” Mayor Randlett replied. “I want you to understand this: If we have any more trouble with you, we’ll have to take it up at the next meeting of the town council.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just what you think it means.”
“Without me, you’ll have outlaws, thieves, and crooks thick as locusts in this town. You’ve never appreciated what I’ve done for you.”
“We appreciate what you’ve done for us, but we don’t appreciate what you’re doing to us, like the way you pushed around Thad Cooper last night.”
“Oh, hell, that weren’t nothin’.”
“It’d better not happen again.”
Sheriff Rawlins narrowed his eyes. ‘‘Don’t threaten me, less’n you’re prepared to back it up.”
“We won’t tolerate endless abuse from you, Rawlins. Don’t push us too far. We’re not as helpless as you might think.”
Sheriff Rawlins laughed, and Mayor Randlett walked out of the office. When he closed the door, a few shards of glass broke loose and fell to the floor.
“Ain’t that a kick in the ass,” Sheriff Rawlins said to Pritchard. “Them bastards get persnickety over every little thing.”
“Slapping a member of the town council isn’t such a little thing,” Pritchard said.
“Them bastards need somebody to wake ’em up every now and then.”
Rawlins arose and went to the file cabinet, pulling out an armful of wanted posters. He dropped them to his desk and began going through them, sipping from his whiskey bottle.
Jennifer looked up from her desk as her father entered the office. “What happened?”
“He’s a hard man,” he replied. “I don’t know what we’re going to do with him.”
“What’d he say about Thad Cooper?”
“He more or less said he’s got a right to push people around if he feels like it.”
“You’ve got to get rid of him, Daddy. You know he’s not going to get any better. He’ll only get worse.”
Mayor Randlett ran his hand over his short gray beard. “He was drinking whiskey out of a bottle while he was talking to me. It was really quite amazing, but I’m afraid he’s got us over a barrel. If we f
ire him, who’ll protect us?”
“What about John Stone?”
The door to the office opened, and Mayor Randlett turned around. He was astonished to see John Stone enter, a bruise on his mouth and his eyes puffy from lack of sleep.
“Well, well, well,” Mayor Randlett said, slapping Stone on the shoulder. “We were just talking about you. Are you all right?”
“I’m living in the Olympia Hotel,” Stone said groggily, “and I can’t sleep. It’s just too damned noisy, and they can’t give me a quieter room because the hotel’s full right now. I just thought I should tell you that if I can’t find a quiet place to sleep pretty soon, I’m probably not going to stay here for a month, as I’d promised.”
Mayor Randlett rubbed his hands together. “You came to the right place. I own quite a lot of real estate in this town, and I’m sure we can find something for you”—he turned to his daughter—“can’t we, dear?”
“Of course,” Jennifer said, thinking swiftly, and then she smiled graciously at Stone, “and until we do, Deputy Stone, you can stay in the guest room at our house, isn’t that right, Daddy?”
“Urn … well … I … certainly.” Mayor Randlett didn’t want to disagree with his daughter in front of Stone.
Jennifer looked up at Stone. “Just go to our house and tell Esmeralda—she’s our maid—to let you have the guest room. I’m sure you’ll find it very peaceful. We live in a quiet part of the town.”
“I couldn’t do that,” Stone said, his voice deep and dull from fatigue.
“Why not?” asked Jennifer.
“I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble.”
“No trouble at all, is it Daddy?”
“Ah … no, none.”
“Then it’s settled,” Jennifer said. She explained to Stone where the house was, on the hill at the eastern end of town. “Make yourself at home. If you get hungry, just tell Esmeralda what you want.”
Stone was so tired he was ready to do anything to get some sleep. “This is very kind of you.”
“It’s our pleasure to help you out. After all, we’re grateful for all you’ve done for us, aren’t we, Daddy?”
“Why … uh … yes.”
