Slip Gun

by J. T. Edson

  Then what?’

  ‘I was fixing to stop Charlie Hopkirk breaking it, mostly. Which he would’ve done if he’d throwed lead into one of them fellers.’

  ‘But you assaulted them, not him!’ Yorck croaked, seeing a flicker of a grin on Jeffreys’ face although none of the other men at the desk displayed emotion.

  ‘I was facing their way and thought it was a good thing to do,’ Smith said.

  ‘You thought—!’

  ‘I always think, Counselor. Those pair’d already bust the law, so I stopped them. But, if you ask around, you’ll find that I was just as set on stopping Mr. Hopkirk doing it, even and up to killing him if I had to.’

  ‘This whole affair—’ Yorck began.

  ‘Have you seen these two young fellers, Counselor?’ Smith interrupted.

  ‘Well, no. I haven’t,’ the lawyer admitted. ‘I only learned about their arrest and treatment on my arrival.’

  ‘Take the Counselor down to see his clients, Mr. Ottaway,’ Smith ordered, giving Yorck no opportunity to continue. ‘You’d best go along, Mr. Jeffreys.’

  ‘Sure, marshal,’ Ottaway responded. ‘It’s this way, Counselor.’

  ‘Now look here—!’ Yorck spluttered, his temper rising at Smith’s abrupt dismissal. He was used to more respectful treatment at the hands of peace officers.

  ‘If the Counselor doesn’t want to go and see them,’ Smith continued calmly, ‘you two had best make the rounds. We’ll make them tonight, Mr. Frith.’

  ‘Just a minute there!’ Yorck began.

  ‘While you’re over the river, Mr. Ottaway—’ Smith drawled.

  ‘Are you refusing to let me see my clients?’ the lawyer challenged.

  ‘I’d say I’ve been trying to get you to do it,’ Smith countered.

  ‘Only, way folks’re boiling into town and us being short-handed, I can’t keep two deputies waiting around the office until you’re good and ready to start. That wouldn’t be doing the right ’n’ legal thing by the good tax-paying citizens of Widow’s Creek. Now would it?’

  Anger sent a red flush rising through Yorck’s pallid cheeks as he forced himself to admit that, despite his legal training, he had been outmaneuvered by Smith. On hearing of the agitators’ arrest, he had come along expecting an easy time and no great difficulty in enforcing his will upon the peace officers. Instead, he had been out-talked and forced into a corner. Against Marshal Caster and his deputies, Yorck would have held a powerful weapon. Such tactics would avail him nothing when dealing with the men who stood around the desk. None of them had anything to lose if he should bring pressure to bear and cause their dismissal. So he could only yield and comply with Smith’s suggestion.

  ‘Why didn’t you hit him with one of those fancy rulings you spout, Wax?’ Frith inquired, after Yorck had departed with Ottaway and Jeffreys.

  ‘I only use them on folks who don’t know better, but won’t be likely to admit it,’ Smith replied. ‘You can bet a son-of-a-bitch like him knows every damned law and ruling, Federal or local.’

  ‘You sure got him all turned about and which-ways,’ Frith stated, grinning with admiration. ‘Say. Just what kind of game’ve we got sat in on?’

  Hooking a boot up on to the desk, Smith told the burly man why Wil wanted them in town instead of her regular officers. Although he felt sure that Frith could be trusted, he made no mention of the display of jewelry which would be arriving. That had been Wil Jeffreys’ secret and Smith figured that she should be the one to make the news of it public. One thing was certain. After the fight with Lily Shivers, the lady mayor was in no condition to carry out her duties that day.

  ‘Have you found out who slashed your girths?’ Frith inquired.

  ‘Nope,’ Smith admitted. ‘Except that it was somebody who didn’t want me getting here ahead of him—or her.’

  ‘Lily?’ Frith suggested.

  ‘It could be. Her and the mayor’ve one helluva hate for each other,’ Smith replied ‘And I ran into a fuss in her place this morning.’

  ‘So Ottaway told me. But the Sheppey boys’ve been putting word around that they aimed to make wolf-bait of you first time seeing. It could’ve been chance they was in the Bull. Or they might’ve figured you travelling up with Lily, you’d get good enough friends to go visit her and wouldn’t be expecting trouble.’

  ‘Like I said, Ric, Lily and Miss Jeffreys hate each other. They locked horns tooth-and-claw this afternoon over a new sign— Hell, no. Lily’d already had that sign busted and burned. So why the hell did they fight?’

  ‘Who won?’

  ‘Miss Jeffreys, looked like,’ Smith answered. ‘Only there’d be nothing for them to fight over. Damn it! There’re questions that need answers and the two gals who can give them’ll not be able to afore morning at the earliest.’

  ‘One thing’s for sure,’ Frith said. ‘Somebody don’t want us here. They’ve tried to gun both you and me down. How about Ottaway?’

  ‘If they have, he hasn’t mentioned it to me,’ Smith replied. ‘’Course, him and me’ve never been what you’d call bueno amigos.’

  ‘I wouldn’t. I only speak French, German and good old U.S.,’ Frith replied. ‘Maybe we should ask him. Trouble is, I’m not sworn in yet.’

  ‘I’m taking you on,’ Smith declared. ‘But you’ll likely have to wait until morning to talk money with Miss Jeffreys.’

  ‘What brought Yorck down on us?’ Frith inquired, apparently accepting the situation and satisfied that he would find the conditions of employment suitable.

  Smith explained about the meeting and the two young men’s abortive attempt to disrupt it.

  ‘Up to them, I wondered if either the ranchers or a homesteader had heard about me coming and thought the other side’d sent for me,’ the Texan concluded. ‘I don’t anymore.’

  ‘Or me,’ Frith admitted. ‘But those Free Land bastards might not want us around if they aim to make trouble during the fair.’

  ‘It’s something to think on,’ Smith agreed. Would they have the money and means to find out we’d been sent for and hire men to come after us?’

  ‘I don’t know about the means. But they’d have the money. There’s some rich fellers backing them. Damned if I can see why a feller with plenty of cash ties in with that kind of trash.’

  ‘Makes ’em feel like they’re doing good for the less fortunate folks, maybe,’ Smith guessed. ‘Or they aim to be sure that they’re running things if folks like the Free Land bunch should manage to take over. Sounds like the Counselor’s done talking to his clients.’

  Stalking into the office ahead of Jeffreys and Ottaway, the lawyer glared indignantly at Smith.

  ‘I wish to state my complete dissatisfaction at the way in which those two young men have been treated!’ Yorck announced.

  ‘Mr. Ottaway, can you and Mr. Jeffreys go and make a rounds across the river?’ Smith asked, without sparing the speaker as much as a glance. ‘The Counselor’s clients had them farmers so stirred up that there might be trouble. It’d be best if they saw some law around.’

  ‘Yo!’ Ottaway answered. ‘Let’s go, Stan.’

  ‘What was you saying, Counselor?’ asked Smith.

  Yorck drew in a deep breath and let it out again before answering, ‘They, my clients, claim they were assaulted as soon as they tried to walk peaceably into the meeting—’

  ‘It was a private meeting,’ Smith corrected. ‘And they bust in like crazy men. So I stopped them before real bad trouble could start.’

  ‘And what are they being charged with?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘I wasn’t figuring on it. If the doctor finds that they hadn’t been driven crazy by that marijuana they was smoking, but was only drunk and acting loco through it, I’ll leave them asleep it off for the night and turn them loose in the morning.’

  ‘But—But—’ Yorck croaked.

  ‘It’s always been the way,’ Smith went on. ‘If a feller gets wild when
he’s drunk, he spends the night in pokey and pays for any damage he’s caused. Crazy folks, now, no matter how they got that way, they get took off to some place where they can be looked after proper.’

  ‘Are you implying that my clients are insane?’ Yorck barked.

  ‘I’m no doctor, Counselor,’ Smith replied. ‘All I know is that fellers’d have to be drunk, or loco, to act the way they did.’

  ‘Was I you, Counselor,’ Frith put in. ‘I’d go down and ask your clients which they are, crazy or drunk.’

  Escorting Yorck down to the basement, Smith and Frith stood outside the steel-barred door while he explained the position to his clients. Startled exclamations broke from the two young men when the lawyer warned that a doctor had been asked to come and check upon their sanity.

  ‘That’s the most outrageous thing I’ve ever heard!’ blustered the taller of the pair. ‘Philo and I are as sane as you.’

  ‘Then you must’ve been drunk,’ Smith drawled. ‘It’s one or the other.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Philo Wymar snorted.

  ‘You’ll find Doctor Riley at his office, Ric,’ Smith said calmly. ‘Go fetch him. And show him those cigarettes we took from this pair afore he makes his examination of them.’

  Watching the young agitators, Frith could see from their expressions that Smith had won. Deprived of their cigarettes, the two young agitators had already lost their marijuana-induced courage. Back East, the location of their previous trouble-making activities, they had always been supported by lawyers and politicians who could wield influence over the local peace officers. They had no such advantage in Widow’s Creek.

  Given time to think, the pair could see how their behavior would appear to people who did not sympathize with their lofty ideals. They were all too aware of the revulsion felt by ordinary men and women towards the use of narcotics. Let the local doctor announce in court that they had been smoking marijuana and the jury would find against them without hesitation. While a term in jail might cloak them with an air of martyrdom, neither was willing to make such a sacrifice.

  ‘We’d been drinking and thought it would be a bit of sport to burst in on that meeting,’ Wymar admitted sullenly. ‘Now can we go?’

  ‘Not until morning,’ Smith replied.

  ‘I fail to see why not,’ Yorck put in.

  Teller don’t get over being drunk that quick,’ Smith answered. ‘And if I let them loose, what’ll I do with some cowhand, or farmer, who gets brought in drunk, then says he’s sober and should be let out?’

  ‘These two young gentlemen are hardly in the same class as a drunken cowboy or farmer,’ the lawyer pointed out.

  ‘All the more reason for holding them, Counselor,’ Frith commented dryly. ‘I seem to recall you whooping up a storm in Cheyenne last year ‘cause some rich feller’s son was let out of the jail and the cowhands he’d been drinking with got held all night. You reckoned then that the law should be the same for everybody, rich or poor.’

  ‘We’ll let them out if you say so,’ Smith went on, delighted with the information Frith had just given. ‘I don’t know what other folks’ll say, though, when they read why I did it in the newspapers.’

  ‘Newspapers?’ gulped the lawyer, knowing he was trapped.

  ‘Had the feller who runs the Widow’s Creek News in about the fuss at the meeting,’ Smith elaborated. ‘I asked him to come around later and he should be here soon. What do you say I should do, Counselor?’

  ‘I think that you young men will have to stay for the night,’ Yorck declared, avoiding meeting the prisoners’ or the peace officers’ eyes. ‘If you aren’t released in the morning, I will take action. And I warn you, marshal, that I will report your behavior to the mayor in the morning.’

  ‘That’s your privilege, Counselor,’ Smith drawled, feeling sure that Wil Jeffreys could straighten out the matter—if not to Yorck’s satisfaction. ‘Now, if you’re all through here, I’ve got other work to do.’

  Chapter Thirteen – The Mayor’s Busy Morning

  ‘Miss Shivers to see you, Miss Jeffreys,’ Ryall announced from the door of the banker’s private office.

  ‘Show her in, please,’ Wil replied.

  Wearing her grey travelling costume and hat, instead of the garish dress which had been her attire on other visits to the bank, and with a veil covering her face, Lily Shivers limped into the office. She glanced at the clock on the wall, which showed the time to be nine o’clock, then turned her eyes to the other girl.

  Seated at her desk, Wil had her hair down and looked more feminine than was usual during working hours. In fact, she would have been out-and-out attractive but for the marks left by the fight on her face. Studying two eyes which resembled Blue Point oysters peeping out of their shells and other indications, Lily found some faint satisfaction.

  ‘You look a mess,’ Lily commented, shoving up her veil to expose features even more bruised and swollen. ‘And, before you tell me, I look worse.’

  ‘Sit down, please,’ Wil said, coldly formal, then looked by the blonde to where her teller stood at the door. ‘If anybody else wants to see me, I’ll not be more than ten minutes.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Ryall answered and left, closing the door.

  ‘All right,’ Lily said, sitting down with some care due to the bite she had received on her rump during the wild rolling tangle on the floor. ‘You licked me. How long do I have before I get out of town?’

  ‘Do you want to get out of town?’ Wil countered.

  ‘Do I have any choice? You’re calling the play.’

  ‘As you’ve pointed out several times, I am a pretty good business-maw—’

  ‘So?’ Lily challenged.

  ‘Your balance in the bank stands at eleven thousand, six-hundred and fifty-six dollars and twenty-nine cents—’

  ‘You’re sure it’s twenty-nine cents?’

  ‘Positive,’ Wil declared. ‘That makes you the bank’s largest individual depositor. As its president, I’d be a fool to let such a valuable account be run out of town.’

  ‘How does the mayor feel about it?’ Lily challenged.

  ‘As mayor, I know that you pay all your civic taxes promptly, in full and without complaint. I also know that you contribute generously to any worthwhile charities. You run a respectable, clean and well-kept business and your gambling games are honest.’

  ‘How would you know that?’

  ‘I had the Pinkerton Agency’s gambling expert brought in to check on them,’ Wil admitted and saw the blonde’s swollen lips tighten. ‘Not for personal reasons, I assure you. A certain prominent citizen had been losing heavily at your tables and accused you of cheating. I insisted that we learned the truth before taking any action against you.’

  ‘So that’s why he never went and complained to Bert Caster!’ Lily breathed.

  ‘He went, and complained, but I had proof that you ran straight games,’ Wil replied. ‘About that new sign of yours?’

  ‘It’s gone,’ Lily told her.

  ‘And had before I came to see you. Damn it, Shivery, what made you do it?’

  ‘I saw that I was losing friends because of it.’

  ‘I mean why did you keep riding me?’

  ‘To see if I could get under your hide and make you stop being a lady businessman. All my life folks have said to me, “Why don’t you act more like Wilhemina Jeffreys?” And all along I knew that you was Just as much of a roughneck as I am. Only you had enough sense to hide it. You could always get the better of me, Wil. Even when I thought I’d shoved your face in the dirt with Vendy, it came out you’d done the smart thing. And after that son-of-a-bitch deserted me—I’m not shocking you, am I?’

  ‘I’d decided he was a son-of-a-bitch before you did,’ Wil reminded her.

  ‘Well, after I came back, I just had to lash out at somebody,’ Lily confessed. ‘So I picked on you. It was your fault, coming telling me I should have been warned by you throwing him over. Right then, I swore I’d see if there w
as a woman under it all. Or if there was any of the old Chilly-Willie left in you.’

  ‘I tossed you in the Elk Fork for calling me that,’ Wil remarked.

  ‘You came in with me,’ Lily protested, smiling and cocking her head over so that she could study Wil through her one open eye. ‘Are we friends?’

  ‘There’s nothing I’d like better,’ Wil said sincerely. ‘Except for one thing that is.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you try to get your claws into Poona Woodstole, Shivery-Shakes, what I did to you yesterday will only be the start of it.’

  ‘By the Lord, Chilly-Willie,’ Lily replied, grinning as well as her swollen lips would let her. ‘I do believe you mean it.’

  ‘You’d better not forget it, or you’ll damned soon find out whether I do or not,’ Wil warned, also smiling. ‘By the way. If you can hobble that far, how about coming to my place for dinner tonight?’

  ‘Will Stanley approve?’ Lily asked.

  ‘I think he’s changing for the better,’ Wil answered. ‘He was working with Mr. Smith and the deputies all day yesterday and this morning he’d left for the marshal’s office before I got up.’

  ‘About time, too,’ Lily sniffed. ‘If I come, do I need to bring a pair of gloves?’

  ‘Only if you’ve got any notions about trying to rub my face in the dirt with Poona,’ Wil told her. ‘Because, Shiver, I know he’s worth having.’

  ‘That figures. You’ve started dressing like a gal again now I’m free to go after him.’

  ‘Will you come?’

  ‘I might as well. Do you reckon I dare go into the Bull looking like this and after you licked me? Damn it, Wil, you near on bust my head. For a prim and proper business-lady, you sure fight dirty.’

  ‘So do you. I can hardly sit down, the way you bit my butt-end.’

  ‘I know just how you feel,’ Lily sympathized, moving on the chair in an attempt at relieving the pressure on her injury. ‘Haven’t we been fools, Wil?’

  ‘Bloody fools, as Poona would say,’ Wil agreed, trying to smile. ‘You’ll come tonight?’

  ‘I’ll be around at seven,’ Lily confirmed. ‘That’ll give us time to have a long talk. And if I can do anything at all to help you bring off the fair, you’ve only got to tell me.’