Bullets Don't Die

by J. A. Johnstone

  “No, he didn’t. He swung his fist, that’s all. I reckon if Ahern had beaten him to death then, he could’ve claimed self-defense, although that would’ve been a stretch since he’s twice Ed’s size. But that’s not what happened. For some reason Ahern pulled first.

  “Ed made a fight of it, though. He didn’t go down right away, and managed to get his gun out after he was hit and got some shots off. Everybody in the place went diving for cover. It was a pretty good battle for a minute or so, but that’s all. Ahern wasn’t even hit, but poor Ed was shot to pieces. Then Ahern picked up Ed’s body, made some comment about how it wasn’t worth scraping his knuckles on trash like that, and chunked him through my window. That’s the story, Marshal . . . and I say it’s murder.”

  The Kid thought so, too. From the sound of it, even if Phillips had drawn first, his death would have still been murder. Maybe not legally, but certainly morally.

  With the eyewitness testimony he had just heard, there was no question Ahern was legally guilty of murder and ought to hang for it. The members of a jury hadn’t decided that yet . . . but they would if they got the chance.

  They would if Marshal Cumberland locked up Ahern and held him for trial. That was what it amounted to.

  Cumberland didn’t seem to be disposed to do that, however. He was obviously looking for a way out of the dilemma when he asked, “Did anybody else in the saloon see things the same way, Constance?”

  “Did anybody . . . They all saw it that way, if they were looking, because that’s what happened!”

  “You won’t mind if I ask them to back up your story, then? Otherwise it’s just your word.”

  “Which ought to be good enough.” Constance scowled and turned to look over the bat wings. “Somebody come out here and tell this pitiful excuse for a marshal that Ahern murdered Ed Phillips!”

  No one came out of the saloon.

  Constance grabbed the bat wings and jerked them open.

  “I said come out here and tell the truth!” she bellowed.

  The Kid looked past her into the barroom. He could see a lot of pale, nervous faces, faces that were lowered or turned away so their owners wouldn’t have to look directly at Constance.

  “If you want to keep drinking here, you’ll tell the marshal what happened!”

  Not even that threat was enough to make any of the saloon’s patrons budge.

  But one man did come to the door. He was short and slender, wearing an apron over a stained white shirt and dark pants and carrying a mop. His thinning hair was almost colorless.

  “It was like Miss Constance said, Riley,” he told the marshal in a mild, hesitant voice. “Jed Ahern picked the fight, and he didn’t wait for Mr. Phillips to draw. It was murder, all right.”

  “Well, of course you’re gonna agree with her,” Cumberland said. “You’re the swamper here at the Trailblazer. You work for her.”

  “But it’s the truth,” the man insisted. “Doesn’t your own father’s word mean anything to you, Riley?”

  The Kid’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. He could tell from the flush creeping across Cumberland’s face the swamper was telling the truth about being the marshal’s father. Nobody else seemed surprised, so The Kid figured the relationship was common knowledge around Copperhead Springs.

  One of the saloon’s customers, a man with a thick white mustache, muttered, “Well, hell,” then stepped forward to join Constance and the swamper on the boardwalk. “I’m tired of letting the Broken Spoke run roughshod over everybody in town. It’s all true, what they said, Marshal. Ahern murdered Ed Phillips, and you really ought to lock him up.”

  Cumberland was starting to look sick. The Kid knew what he was thinking. Tate had told him the Broken Spoke was the biggest ranch in the area, which meant the man who owned it was probably the most powerful man in those parts. Apparently that was Harlan Levesy, the son of Cy Levesy, Marshal Tate’s old friend. If The Kid had to guess, he’d say it was likely Cy was dead and Harlan had inherited the Broken Spoke.

  Inherited it, hired a hardcase crew ramrodded by the brutal Jed Ahern, and set out to tighten his grip even more. The Kid had seen similar setups in the past and had heard about more of them from Frank Morgan, who had stepped in to help out folks against range hogs on numerous occasions.

  However, none of that was really any of The Kid’s business. He had come to Copperhead Springs because Jared Tate had saved his life during the run-in with those outlaws. It was up to the people of the town to settle their own problems.

  Although . . . after that battle with Ahern, The Kid sort of had a personal grudge against the big man. It sure wouldn’t break his heart to see Ahern behind bars, or dangling from a hang rope, for that matter. That was what he deserved.

  At the moment, Ahern was starting to stir, moving his arms and legs where he lay in the street and turning his head from side to side.

  “You’d better make up your mind what you’re going to do, Marshal,” The Kid said. “Ahern’s waking up. If you’re going to put him in jail, you’ll probably have an easier time of it while he’s still groggy.”

  “This stranger’s right,” Constance said. “You’ve got three witnesses accusing Ahern of murder. Isn’t that enough to justify locking him up?”

  “Four witnesses,” another townsman said as he stepped out of the saloon. “It’s time we got some sand in our craw again. Past time, maybe.”

  Several other men crowded just inside the saloon’s entrance started to mutter, and Cumberland realized where things were going. “All right, all right. We’ll lock him up, and the law can run its course. Somebody give me a hand with him.”

  Nobody appeared to be eager to do that, but The Kid didn’t mind. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Let me get some rope from my horse,” Cumberland said. “Roll him onto his belly. I want him tied up good and tight before we try to move him down to the jail.”

  The Kid approached Ahern carefully. The man’s eyes were still closed, but the eyelids were starting to flutter a little. He would regain consciousness soon.

  With a grunt of effort, The Kid rolled Ahern onto his belly. Cumberland hurried over with a length of rope. He pulled Ahern’s arms behind his back and lashed the thick wrists together, pulling the rope pretty tight.

  “Let’s sit him up.” Cumberland and The Kid raised Ahern to a sitting position, and Cumberland wrapped the rest of the rope around and around the man’s massive torso, finally tying it off so Ahern couldn’t move his arms.

  Ahern’s head hung forward. He shook it back and forth, and a rumble like the sound of distant drums grew inside him. It came out in a grated curse as he lifted his head and stared around him in obvious confusion. “What the hell!” he roared. He struggled to move, but couldn’t budge his arms.

  “Take it easy, Ahern,” Cumberland told him. “You’re under arrest.”

  “Arrest! What the hell for?”

  “Murder,” Cumberland said. “You killed Ed Phillips.”

  “That . . . that little gnat? Killin’ him ain’t murder. That’s more like . . . like steppin’ on a piddlin’ little bug!”

  Constance said, “You see, Marshal, he admits it.”

  “That’s not exactly what it sounded like to me,” Cumberland snapped. He took hold of the rope and nodded for The Kid to do likewise. “We need to get him on his feet. Heave him up in one . . . two . . . three!”

  It was a little like lifting a mountain, The Kid thought, but they managed.

  “Help me get him down to the jail.”

  “What about Marshal Tate?”

  From the boardwalk, the swamper said, “We’ll take care of him, mister. Most of us here remember Jared. We’ll look after him just fine. He’ll be here later.”

  The Kid nodded. “I’m obliged.” To Cumberland, he added, “Your father’s a good man.”

  “He’s a damned saloon swamper,” the marshal snapped. “Don’t talk to me about him.”

  “Whatever you say.” That was none of
his business, either, The Kid thought.

  Holding on to the rope keeping Ahern bound, they forced him toward the jail. Ahern lunged back and forth in an attempt to pull free.

  Cumberland drew his gun. “Damn it, I’ll knock you out again if I have to, Ahern!” he warned. “Then we’ll hitch a mule to you and drag you like the side of beef you are.”

  “You’re gonna be sorry you did this, Marshal.” Ahern glared back and forth between Cumberland and The Kid. “When the Broken Spoke gets through with you, you’re gonna be sorry you was ever born!”

  “Too late,” Cumberland said. “Most of the time I already am.”

  Chapter 9

  It took some doing, but The Kid and Marshal Cumberland managed to wrestle Ahern down Main Street, around the corner, into the jail, and finally into a cell. By the time the iron-barred door clanged shut with Ahern on the other side of it, The Kid felt like he’d been digging ditches all day.

  “You can’t just leave me all trussed up like this!” Ahern bellowed at them through the bars. He was fully conscious again and practically foaming at the mouth with rage.

  “Turn around and back up against the bars,” Cumberland told him. “It’ll mean ruining a perfectly good piece of rope, but I’ll cut you loose.”

  Ahern stood there glaring for a couple seconds, then did what Cumberland told him. The marshal took a clasp knife from his pocket, opened it, and reached through the bars with the blade to saw the ropes loose. As the pieces of lasso fell away, The Kid knelt, reached through the bars, and retrieved them.

  “Can’t even feel my damn hands,” Ahern complained when his arms were free. “You didn’t have any call to tie me that tight.”

  “I’ve seen what you can do when you get mad, Ahern,” Cumberland said. “I wasn’t taking any chances.”

  “You never seen me when I was really mad. Not like now. But that ain’t the worst of it. Harlan ain’t gonna stand for one of his boys bein’ treated like this.”

  “Let me worry about Harlan Levesy.”

  Ahern threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, you better worry! You better worry a lot!”

  With his mouth twisting like he’d bitten into something sour, Cumberland jerked his head toward the cell block door and motioned for The Kid to go ahead of him into the office at the front of the building.

  The marshal heaved a sigh as he sank into a swivel chair behind a paper-cluttered desk. “Did I ever get your name, mister?”

  “It’s Morgan,” The Kid said.

  “How in the world did you wind up in Copperhead Springs with old Jared Tate?”

  “I ran into the marshal a couple days east of here.”

  “He’s not a marshal anymore.” Cumberland’s voice had a tone of irritated impatience to it.

  “That’s the way he introduced himself to me, so that’s the way I think of him.”

  Cumberland took off his hat and expertly tossed it onto a hook attached to the wall behind him. “He’s not in his right mind, you know. Can’t remember anything anymore.”

  “He knows who he is . . . or who he was, anyway,” The Kid pointed out.

  Cumberland shrugged. “Yeah, but from what I hear, some days he doesn’t even know his own daughter, and he lives with her . . . and she takes care of him. I’ll bet she wasn’t watching him close enough, and he wandered off and didn’t know how to get back to her place.”

  “That’s in Wichita, you said?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So he was able to make it all the way across the state, almost back to his old hometown, traveling by himself,” The Kid pointed out. “That doesn’t sound to me like a man who’s not in his right mind.”

  Cumberland grimaced. “Tate can take care of himself most of the time. He just thinks it’s twenty years ago. So I’m not surprised he made it that far. If it’s something he knew how to do back then, he still knows how to do it . . . mostly. His daughter and my sister were friends when the Tates still lived here. Edna gets letters from Bertha now and then. Bertha says her pa’s forgetting more and more things these days, simple things that he used to do all the time.”

  Like how to put water in a coffeepot, The Kid thought, suddenly remembering the first night he and Tate had spent on the trail.

  “I don’t guess any of that really matters,” Cumberland went on. “He’s here, and there are people like my pa who will look after him until we can figure out what to do with him. Jared Tate is just about the least of my worries right now.”

  “With Ahern being the biggest worry?”

  “With Ahern’s boss being the biggest worry.”

  The Kid didn’t much like Marshal Riley Cumberland, but the bleak look in the marshal’s eyes almost made him feel sorry for the man. He reminded himself that Cumberland would have been willing to look the other way when it came to Ed Phillips’s murder. He wanted to know why.

  “Harlan Levesy’s got this town treed, doesn’t he?”

  “Not Levesy himself, but the men who work for him.” Cumberland paused. “I guess it’s pretty much the same thing, isn’t it?”

  “Pretty much,” The Kid agreed.

  Cumberland swung the chair from side to side a little as he said, “Tell me again, what business is this of yours?”

  “None, I suppose. I’m just a drifter, thought I might look for a riding job in these parts. After I met up with Marshal Tate, he said he’d put in a good word for me with Cy Levesy, the owner of the Broken Spoke.”

  “Cy died two years ago.”

  “I’m not surprised to hear it.”

  “His boy took over the ranch,” Cumberland continued. “Harlan never got along that well with the old man. They had different ideas about how things should be run. Cy started the Broken Spoke and built it into a successful spread, but Harlan thought it could be bigger, make even more money.”

  “So he started making things hard for some of the smaller outfits around him, and when the owners pulled out, he took over.”

  Cumberland’s eyes narrowed with suspicion as he looked at The Kid. “You talk like a man who’s been around some.”

  The Kid shrugged.

  “You sure you didn’t come here to hire your gun to Harlan Levesy, instead of looking for a riding job?” Cumberland asked.

  “I never even heard of Harlan Levesy until a little while ago, Marshal. And I don’t hire out my gun.”

  “You’ve got the look of it. Morgan, you said you’re called . . .”

  Cumberland glanced at the litter of papers on his desk.

  “You can look through those reward dodgers all you want, Marshal, but you won’t find any of them with my name on them,” The Kid said.

  “All right, don’t get your back up. It’s my job to keep the peace here.”

  “That includes letting Jed Ahern get away with murder?”

  The chair let out a loud creak as Cumberland sat forward sharply. “You don’t know what that bunch from the Broken Spoke is like! I’m sorry about Ed Phillips, damned sorry. He was a good man. Drove a freight wagon up here from the railroad every few weeks so we’d always have supplies on the shelves in the stores. And yeah, Ahern murdered him, no matter who threw the first punch or pulled a gun first. It was pure murder and we both know it.”

  “Then why—”

  Cumberland stood up and paced across the room. “Because when Harlan Levesy hears I’ve got his foreman locked up in jail and charged with murder, he’ll send his men to turn Ahern loose. And if I try to stop them, they’ll kill me. And when they’re done with killing me, they’re liable to turn on the rest of the town. I don’t think they’d burn it to the ground . . . Levesy needs a settlement of some sort here . . . but they’d go on a rampage . . . do a lot of damage and hurt some people. Probably kill some people, if you want the truth of it. So you tell me, Mr. Morgan . . . is justice for a man’s life worth that price, especially when in the end there won’t be any justice?”

  The Kid returned the bleak stare Cumberland gave him. He didn’t have an answer exc
ept some abstract nonsense about the kind of law and justice that didn’t mean a damned thing in the face of an attack by a crew of kill-crazed gun-wolves.

  After a moment Cumberland sighed. “Well, it’s too late to do anything about it now. Ahern won’t be in the mood to forgive being locked up like this. He’ll have to have his vengeance on the town . . . and on you. You beat him, and for that he’ll have to kill you. I suppose if you were to light a shuck out of here right now and be long gone by the time he got loose, he might not wreak too much havoc on the rest of us. Might even be that nobody else would die. But you can’t ever tell with Ahern and the rest of that bunch.” He paused, then added, “I don’t suppose you’d leave town?”

  “Run, you mean?”

  “It might save some lives.”

  “This time. Maybe.” The Kid shook his head. “Somebody needs to take the Broken Spoke down a notch.”

  “Yeah,” Cumberland said bitterly. “That’d be a neat trick, now wouldn’t it?”

  The Kid went to the door and looked back at the marshal. “Are you going to let Ahern go as soon as I walk out of here?”

  Cumberland shook his head. “No. Like I said, it’s too late for that. What I’m going to do is ride out to the Broken Spoke and have a talk with Harlan Levesy. Plead with him to be reasonable. That probably won’t do any good, either, but I’ll try.”

  “Good luck, Marshal,” The Kid said.

  “I will need it,” Cumberland said softly.

  The Kid left the office and walked back around the corner to Main Street. Evening was coming on, and not many people were moving around. It was a quiet time of day anyway, but a nervous hush hung over the town, like the calm before a sudden thunderstorm, something these people who lived on the Kansas plains knew well.

  This storm would take human form, though, in the shape of the hardcases who rode for Harlan Levesy.

  The Kid’s long legs carried him toward the Trailblazer Saloon. Somebody had already cleaned up the glass and nailed boards over the broken window, but warm yellow light spilled through the window on the other side of the entrance. The Kid pushed the bat wings aside and went in.