"Not exactly," the man said softly. "But I guess you’ll do for now."
Bob woke up in the back of the wagon, wedged between the wall and an enormous contraption that filled up the rest of the compartment. It was covered by a dirty tarp and Bob clutched handfuls of it to pull himself off the floor. "Hello?" he called out. There wasn’t room enough to stand inside the wagon. Sharp metal corners stuck into him from whatever was hidden beneath the tarp. Bob hammered his fist against the wall and shouted, "Hello? Anybody out there?"
The wagon’s brake screeched and Bob had to brace himself against the doorframe to keep from getting bounced into the heavy metal frame. He reached down to feel the floor and realized his gun was missing and reached around in the darkness to see if he’d dropped it. That was when the side door opened and there it was, pointed right at him.
The man holding the gun was old enough that his long hair ran thick with streaks of silver. His eyes were feline, drawn to sharp points over his weathered cheeks. His long, thin mustache dropped straight down toward the gleaming white preacher collar around his throat. "What’s your name, son?"
"Bob Ford," Bob said. He put both his hands up through the door and added, "Sir."
The man wrapped both of his black leather-gloved hands around the Devastator and cocked the handle back. "I’m only going to ask you this one time, Bob Ford. What are you doing out here?"
Bob lowered his eyes for a moment, feeling his lip twitch while his mind spun like a roulette wheel, waiting to land on some kind of answer. "My destrier died and I was stranded. I thought I was a goner for sure until you came along."
"You with a gang, Bob Ford?"
"No, sir."
"You with a gang that steals women and sells them off-planet? They get mad at you and leave you out here, Bob Ford?"
"No, sir! But I reckon me and you have a similar interest in finding such men. I come to Seneca to find just such a person and bring him to justice, God willing."
"You some kind of a lawman? You don’t look like one."
"No, sir, I ain’t no lawman. I’m just trying to find the type of villain you seem to be so agitated about and hand him over to Johnny Saringo at the first opportunity."
The preacher’s eyes narrowed, "Saringo’s looking for him?"
"Yes, sir."
"And what does he have over you to make you do such a thing?"
Bob shook his head, "That’s a private matter, sir, and I prefer not to speak of it, even if you are a preacher and even if you do have me at gunpoint."
The preacher flipped the gun backwards and dropped it behind his belt in one fluid motion. "I’m gonna hold on to this weapon for a while until we get to know one another a little better if that’s all right with you, Mr. Ford. Come on out of there now. You can ride up front since you’re awake."
Bob stepped out of the wagon and said, "I appreciate that, sir. I also want you to know I appreciate you rescuing me from certain death and that I understand your hesitation about my intentions."
The preacher grabbed the forward carriage’s hand rail and hoisted himself up. "You always talk this much?"
"Only when I’m nervous, sir."
"I put the gun away, son."
Bob climbed up into the seat beside him and said, "Guns I’m used to. I meant about being around a preacher."
Bob reached up and clutched his throat, trying to force himself to swallow dry. There was nothing to swallow. He looked down at the cantina on the seat between him and the preacher and dreamed about the sea of refreshment within. He wanted to lick the beads of sweat puddling on the seat’s wooden board. He thought about grabbing for his gun.
"What are you doing?"
Bob turned back to face front and said, "Nothing."
"Why you grabbing your throat?"
"Because I can’t swallow."
"Swallow what?"
Bob shrugged and looked away. The preacher picked up the cantina and tossed it into Bob’s lap. "You waiting for a special invite, boy? Drink the whole thing. We’re not too far from Seneca 6, plus I got more in the back."
"You sure, sir?"
The preacher looked at him sideways, trying to assess the young man’s tone. "You’re either sassing me or you haven’t run into many kind people during the course of your life, son."
"Not particularly, no sir."
"Maybe it’s just that there aren’t too many to run into, Mister Ford. The way I see it, there’s the types that are born good. Graceful people from the ground up. They come into this world like a cool breeze on a hot day. Mainly, I reckon they’re womenfolk."
Bob nodded while he thought about the Alvarez sisters, working girls who preyed on men at the Dalewood Saloon in the Filthy Five. Beautiful and treacherous. They could drain a man in more ways than fifteen. Probably not the kind of cool breeze the preacher means, he thought.
"The other types are ones making up for the wrongs they done. Trying to buy back their souls a little piece at a time."
Bob turned to look at the man’s hard, weather-beaten features and said, "Is that you, sir?"
The preacher grunted and said, "There’s not enough good I could do to pay off what I got coming, Mister Ford. Let’s just say I’m trying to purchase some leniency."
Chapter 9: Treat 'Em Like a Million Bucks
Betsy rocked the baby back and forth and hushed her but Claire shoved her hands away and wailed in protest. Betsy tried sitting with her, standing with her, bouncing her. Nothing worked. She felt herself getting angry and knew it was time to put the child down and walk away. She laid her back down in the crib and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath and counted to ten.
"Everything all right?"
She looked up to see her husband leaning against the doorframe. "No, not really."
"I’ll take over."
Betsy snorted in contempt, "Oh really? Since when?"
"Since right now. Since I saw you sitting there looking so tired."
"Sure. Go for it."
Sam walked over to the crib and picked up his little girl. His hands were bigger than the back of her head. "What’s the matter, baby girl? You cutting some teeth?" he said. "I know that’s no fun. When your daddy was a baby, grandpa would rub whiskey on his gums. Worked like a charm."
"You put whiskey in my child’s mouth and I will personally shoot you, Samuel Clayton," Betsy said.
Sam smiled and bounced Claire up and down in his arms. She stopped wailing and played with his face, sticking wet fingers in his mouth and talking in soft, high-pitched gurgles. "See that?" Sam said. "She’s a Clayton all right. One talk of whiskey and she’s happy as a clam."
Betsy sighed and stood up from the rocking chair. "If you don’t mind, I’m gonna go lay down. Hopefully she stays quiet long enough for me to actually fall asleep." She made it as far as the bedroom door when Claire threw back her head and started screaming again. Betsy whimpered and dropped her head in defeat. "Here. Give her back to me."
"Nope. I’ve got a better idea. You go on and lay down. I’ll handle this."
She looked at him skeptically. "You're serious?"
"Absolutely." He carried Claire past her and said, "Come on, you. Daddy’s gonna show you something." Sam pushed the front door open and walked out onto the porch, looking up at the glittering sky in the clear expanse beyond the mountain peaks. He bounced Claire against his chest as he hurried down the steps and went around the side of the house. "You want to see the ponies?" he said.
He walked over to the barn and Claire stared at his massive destrier. He patted the animal on the side and said, "Be nice now. Feel how soft he is." He took her tiny fingers and stroked the animal’s fur. Claire laughed in wonder as she patted and pulled. Sam grabbed his saddle horn and in one swift movement swung himself up onto the animal’s back. He clicked his teeth and they backed out of the stall and started to walk.
Sam turned Claire around and sat her face forward in the saddle, keeping his arm around her small chest as they gently rocked side to sid
e. She played with the destrier’s mane and cooed softly as the cool evening breeze blew through her golden hair. Sam looked up at the twin moons and said, "I wasn’t much older than your brother when we came here. I spent my early years on a freighter where my daddy worked in the furnace room. He hired on with the mining company and off we went. I’d never seen a skyline before. Couldn’t believe how big it was. Sometimes I’d just sit on the porch look up at it, watching it change from day to night."
He picked Claire back up and she laid her head against his chest and grew still. "Guess I bored you back to sleep, huh?"
He kissed the top of her head and guided the destrier back to its stall. He kept Claire tight to his chest as he lowered himself down and headed for the house. He knew it wouldn’t always be so easy to make her content. Knew it wouldn’t always be so easy to keep her safe. But for right now, it was, and he took a deep breath of her fine, soft hair and locked the door behind him.
He put Claire down in her crib and checked the windows in her room. Locked. He shut her door and looked into his own bedroom. Betsy lay on top of the covers, sound asleep. He covered her up and walked around in the dark, inspecting the windows and the yard outside. All silent. All safe. Sam unholstered his Colt Defender and laid it on the nightstand next to his pillow. He stopped suddenly and lowered his head to listen.
Someone else was awake in the house.
He walked over to Jem’s door and pushed it open quietly, hearing the crickets singing through the open bedroom window. Dual moonlight filled the room up with pale blue. Jem’s eyes were clenched shut. A little too clenched. "What are you doing up so late?" Sam said.
"I couldn’t sleep cause you and Claire were outside."
The boy’s pocketknife was laying on the nightstand next to him with the blade open, at the ready. "What’s that for?" Sam said.
"Nothing. I was just listening to make sure you were both okay. In case he came back."
"Oh," Sam said softly. He walked over to the nightstand and picked the knife up. "What were you gonna do with this? Whittle him to death?"
Jem grunted in protest, "You’re the one who told me anything could be a weapon."
Sam nodded, "You’re right. So what’s the matter, you don’t think the old man has what it takes to protect the family anymore?"
"No, I didn’t say that. I just thought, you know, what if?"
"What if," Sam whispered. "Let me tell you about what if. When I first hired on as a deputy sheriff I was greener than the grass in a rainforest. I didn’t know how to talk to anyone. I thought yelling at them was the only way to get them to listen to me. I was mean, because I thought it made me sound tough. But you know what it made me sound instead? Stupid." He closed Jem’s knife and put it back on the nightstand, making sure it was out of the boy’s reach. "Anyways, Lyle says to me one day—"
"Who’s Lyle?"
"The old sheriff. So anyway, Lyle says to me one day, ‘Boy, you ain’t gonna last long around here yelling at folks like that. One day, you gonna need help and won’t nobody be around. Plenty a’ lawmen got their lives saved by townsfolk who jumped in. So always remember this here. Treat everybody you meet like they was a million bucks. And no matter what, always have a plan to kill `em.’"
Jem laughed sharply and Sam chuckled with him but told him to keep his voice down. "Old Lyle sure was a character. But I always remembered what he said and that, plus a little of your 'what if' is the reason I’m sitting here talking to you right now."
Jem sat up in his bed. "What happened?"
"I was riding in one morning, getting the lay of the land like I do. Making sure nobody stole the town overnight, you know? The sun was just coming up and it made the whole valley sparkle like…like…I don’t know. Rubies, or something. Real peaceful. Then some woman comes running up on me, shouting, ‘Mister Clayton! Mister Clayton! Hal Bellows is killing his wife! She’s screaming for help!’ So I ride over there and go in real slow, right? Only an idiot rushes headfirst into uncertainty. I stop and listen, and I don’t hear a damn thing. It’s totally quiet."
"Were they dead?" Jem whispered.
"Hush," Sam said. "First off, if they was dead, you just ruined the story. Second, why you gotta always be so morbid?"
Jem shrugged and asked him to go on.
"So I go up to the front door, creeping up real quiet. It’s silent as a graveyard in the house. I look through the windows and don’t see nothing. Finally, I knock on the door and Hal Bellows opens it up.
"‘Morning, Sheriff. Everything all right?’
"I says, ‘I was about to ask you the same thing, Hal.’
"He gets all puzzled and taken aback then. ‘What do you mean?’
"I say, ‘I mean one of your neighbors told me you were having a knockdown fight with the missus.’"
"No she didn’t," Jem said. "She said he was killing her."
"Boy, you are the worst story-listener I ever met. Worse than your mother, even. How about I leave and you can tell it to yourself without me here to bother you?"
"I’m sorry! I’ll be quiet," Jem said. He covered his mouth with both his hands and said, "Go on."
Sam waited a moment to see if the boy was going to stay quiet. "So he tells me his wife has been sick in bed all morning with the flu. ‘I’ll bring her down here if you need me to, Sheriff, but she might throw up on your shoes,’ he says. Real slick. Not a hint of the shakes.
"‘No, that’s certainly not necessary," I say. And for a moment, it’s just me standing there looking at him and him doing the same to me. Imagine what each one of us was thinking, but all the time we’re just smiling and nodding and meanwhile the gears of both are brains are grinding themselves to pieces.
So I was about to go. I figured the old lady who ran up on me was crazy, or maybe she heard Mrs. Bellows getting sick and thought it was something else. I took a step back to leave when this tiny little voice in the back of my head said, what if? Now, this whole time I’m talking to Hal, I can’t see his hands. They’re inside the doorway, up against the frame. I laid my hand on the grip of my pistol like I was resting it there and I said, ‘You know, Hal. I sure could use a drink.’
And that’s the first time I saw it in Hal’s face. He didn’t flinch, but he didn’t move either. It was like the smile he was wearing got stuck in place. ‘We’re all out of coffee, Sheriff,’ he says.
‘Water will do just fine. How about you let me in?’
He looked over his shoulder at the kitchen, then back at me, and everything about him changed. His shoulders slumped. His face sagged down and he looked like he was about to fall down. But he didn’t. He come back up and there was red in his eyes. He spat out something that didn’t make no sense, except the parts about his wife and a few curse words. That was when he pulled the double-barrel Winchester from around the side of the door to blow a hole in my chest."
"But he didn’t, because you were too fast for him," Jem said quickly.
"He almost did," Sam said. "Almost. Except I was ready, you see? I had my plan and I had my 'what if,' and when old Hal whipped that shotgun around I already had my gun out."
"So what happened next? Did you arrest him?"
"No," Sam said.
"Did you buffalo his head with the butt of your pistol?"
"No," Sam said. "I shot him."
Jem laid back down and let out a deep breath. "I thought maybe you found some other way."
Sam grunted and nodded. "Anyway, Mrs. Bellows body was in the kitchen. Turns out that crazy old lady was right. Hal had killed her." He got up and stretched out his back, "I reckon it’s time for bed. If your mother asks, I told you a story about Wallop the Pony, all right?"
"All right," Jem said. "Goodnight, pop."
Sam said goodnight and went to leave, when he looked back at Jem’s open window. "I’ll sleep better if you close it and lock it, but it’s up to you."
Jem threw the covers off and got up to go for the window. "Never hurts to wonder 'what if,' right?"
Chapter 10: And Have a Plan to Kill 'Em
Nell Baker was waiting by the Sheriff's door before it even opened. She was tapping her thick foot impatiently and looking like she'd accidentally sipped sour milk when she saw the man riding up. "I was here at quarter of seven. You weren't here," she said. When there was no answer but a 'Good morning, Miss Baker,' she followed him through the door, talking non-stop. "My sister and I inherited our mother's house when she passed on, and we agreed to not sell anything unless the other person was present. Well, she went and gave a pair of antique severian earrings to her oldest daughter, and I want you to arrest her."
Phil Wallows heard Nell yelling from inside the sheriff's office as he walked up. He reached for the door and yanked his hand back as she ripped it open and came storming past. "Of all the lazy, no-good law this town has had, now we get stuck with the worst one. You ain't nothin' like your daddy was, I'll tell you that!" she hollered over her shoulder.
Wallows took off his floppy hat and stepped inside, smiling crookedly at the man sitting behind the desk. "Morning, Sheriff. I know you're kind of new to things around here…well, okay, fair enough. But you were away a long, long time. Anyway, the reason I come by today is to ask for your assistance with a theft of which I was the victimized party. Mr. Meadows who runs the roof repair business over yonder took a deposit from me to do work for which he has not yet completed."
He nodded several times as the other man spoke, "Yeah, I know he's sick. I heard all about it, but that ain't no excuse to not honor a contract, now I want the man charged with thievery." Wallows' face contorted in confusion, "When Walt Junger was in this office, it wouldn't have even been a discussion. He understood the value of a contract, sir." Wallows threw the sheriff's door open and glared out at the half-dozen people gathered on the porch and steps, waiting for their turn to go inside. "I hope none of you are looking for any kind of satisfaction in here. This is what happens when you hire an outsider!"
Guns of Seneca 6 Box Set Collected Saga (Chambers 1-4) Page 27
