Gomez said: “I haven’t come to save your life, Spur.” No ‘Mr.’ now. “Maybe pretty soon I’ll be taking it.”
Spur looked startled. He glanced at Rick. The deputy’s face was as grim as the rest. He stared at Spur in a kind of doleful wonderment.
“What’s he talkin’ about, Rick?”
Rick said: “We just come from the canyon, Sam. We rid right along your sign. You put us off a mite here an’ there, but the sheriff’s pretty smart when it comes to trackin’. You led us right here, boy. Now we’re goin’ to take you back to town an’ pretty soon, after the trial, we’re goin’ to put a rope around your neck.”
Spur found himself shaking a little.
A lot of satisfaction started to show on Randerson’s face. Brocius looked about the same.
“What exactly am I supposed to of done?” he asked.
Gomez said in a cold voice: “Rick told you we followed you from the canyon. Naturally, we found the burro-train. The whole story is clear.”
Spur said: “You’re crazy. Any fool could see that train was wiped out hours before I reached there. I didn’t have anything to do with that an’ you know it.”
Gomez said: “You went back for something and I’m going to find out what. You must have done, else how did you find the train in all that country.”
“Vultures. Any road, what about Randerson’s rider?”
“The man you killed?” Gomez smiled. “He trailed you when he spotted you. He knew who you were and was naturally curious to see what you were up to out there. The sign is plain. We know just what happened.”
“You know damn well,” Spur said, “it would be just as easy to prove that I found Randerson’s rider there and was suspicious.”
Gomez’s smile broadened.
“But that’s not what we’re going to prove,” he said. “Will one of you gentlemen fetch Spur’s horse.”
Randerson said: “You should have come five minutes later. We’d have killed him for you and saved the county money.”
“You wasn’t doin’ a very good job,” Rick said, “not from what I saw of it.”
When the roan was brought up, they ordered him into the saddle, his hands were tied to the saddlehorn again and his feet were fastened under the animal’s belly. The posse mounted and formed up around him and they moved away, leaving Randerson and his men glowering after them. As he passed the head of the yard, Spur glanced toward the house and saw Lucinia standing on the gallery, watching them. He reckoned he owed her about as much as he owed her father. Trouble was, it didn’t look like he was going to live to pay his debts. Not unless he thought of something pretty smart.
Chapter Six
It was dark.
They clattered over the bridge that spanned the creek, slowing their horses to a walk and then they were moving in a mass across the plaza. When they reached the sheriff’s office, they eased themselves in their saddles and the sheriff thanked them and said he’d see them all in the morning. They rode away slowly, heading for the nearest saloon to burn the dust from their throats.
Spur saw that it was a fine night, the stars and the moon were out. Somewhere a Mexican was serenading somebody in a high-pitched nasal tenor voice to the accompaniment of a guitar.
Rick and the sheriff stepped stiffly from the saddle, tied their horses and Rick cut Spur free. Spur threw a leg over the saddlehorn, kicked his left foot free of the stirrup-iron and slipped to the ground. His legs tried to buckle under him, but he would not allow that.
Gomez said: “Rick, first go inside and light the lamp. I don’t think I want to be in the dark with this hombre.” Rick laughed and walked inside. A match flared, the light came gently, Gomez prodded Spur with a rifle muzzle and the prisoner walked into the office. Inside it was as he had seen it before, a dank impersonal place, characterless from its occupation by many different men. Gomez went to his desk, found a bottle and poured himself and his deputy a drink, looking at Spur over the rim of the glass.
“You know,” he said, “I think I am a little sick to the stomach when I look at you, Spur.”
Rick said with infinite regret: “Some of us go one way and some another. There’s no telling which road a man will take. Now if you had asked me, I’d of said, you’d of gone straight, Sam. You were good with a gun, you’d do to ride the river with, but someplace inside you was something respectable. But I was wrong. You turned lobo.”
Spur walked to the grill door of the cage, waiting to be let in.
“I don’t suppose anythin’ I can say can do any good,” he said, “but every thin’ I saw out there in the canyon and every thin’ that happened to me since points to Randerson. You ever checked where he first made his money?”
Gomez said: “I’ve checked.”
“Where did he get it?”
“In a poker game in El Paso.”
Spur turned his head to look at Rick.
“Did I ever lie to you, Rick?”
“Can’t say you did.”
“Then will it help to tell you I never had anything to do with what happened out there in the canyon?”
Rick looked sick.
“It wouldn’t help a Goddam.” He reached down the keys from the wall, opened the grill door and pushed Spur into the cell. The door clanged to behind him. Rick hung the keys back on their hook.
“Rick,” Gomez said, “would you watch the shop while I go get something to eat.”
“Sure, I ain’t hungry.”
“Have another drink.”
“Good idea.”
The sheriff walked out of the office, Rick took off his dusty coat and hung it on a hook, poured himself another drink and sat sipping it. Spur sat on the cot and filled his pipe; he fired it and tried to think. His main worry was what Jody would do when the news reached him that he, Spur, was in jail. Whatever happened, Jody must not contact him publicly. Then he thought about the possibility of Gomez pinning the canyon crime on him and he suspected that the sheriff could do it. Spur had a reputation from Mexico to the Canadian border; it had been magnified a thousand times in the telling. There must be many people who thought him to be a mad-dog killer. He could be condemned in men’s minds before the jury heard the case. He would get a square deal from the judge, of that he felt sure, but he knew that the evidence against him would be good. Within a few days he could be swinging by the neck from a rope. Would Jody intervene? Dare he? Or would he be able to pin the crime on Randerson before the end of the trial? Jody was good, but was he that good?
Spur began to think about escape.
Rick put his feet on the sheriff’s desk and said: “Remember that little red-headed English whore up in Deadwood ... what was her name?”
“Rosa.”
“That’s her. What happened to her?”
“She married a horse-rancher named Caldwell. Had a couple of kids. Did well for herself.”
Rick poured himself another drink; lit a cigar, puffed smoke. Not once did he look at Spur.
Spur said: “I ain’t your man, Rick. You know it.”
“I don’t know it.”
“Hell, you know me from way back. What happened in the canyon ain’t my kind of deal.”
Rick stood up, walked to the window and stood staring into the lamplit street.
“We’re goin’ to hang you, Sam. It won’t do you no good to talk. So, just shut up, will you? It ain’t easy for a man to hang an old partner. So shut up.”
Spur laughed and the sound had a crack in it.
“How about this man Gomez?” he asked.
Rick swung from the window.
“What do you mean?”
“Is he straight?”
Rick stared at him as if he was something a coyote would refuse.
“You ask that about Gomez? One of the straightest men I know.”
Spur said: “I think I’ll take a nap.”
He lay down on the cot and put his hands behind his head. He wondered about Rick, how a man like Gomez had come to accept him as a deputy.
Of course, the west had often accepted ex-gunhands as law enforcement officers. Spur remembered the wild, unstable streak in Rick that had showed through so often. It had been strong. Could a man ever change his nature as Rick seemed to now be claiming? If Gomez had taken Rick in, did it mean that the sheriff was a do-gooder, green or simply venal? There were a great many unanswered questions here.
He dozed.
The sound of the street door opening roused him. Raising his head, he saw Gomez enter. Rick took his feet off the sheriff’s desk, stood up and said: “You look like a man with a good steak under your belt.”
Gomez smiled: “I am. Now you go home, Rick, to that pretty wife of yours. Come in at daylight.”
“Thanks, sheriff. You all right on your lonesome?”
“Sure. Why not? The very bad man is behind bars. Not even the great Sam Spur can do too much with our fine bars.”
Rick said goodnight and went. The sheriff brought out a cot from a side room and threw a pile of blankets down on it. Spur sat on the edge of his bed and asked: “Do prisoners eat around here?”
“You will eat shortly. I have asked for a meal to be sent over from the hotel.” He smiled. “I am told that Miss Regan owes you several days keep. I must think of the taxpayers’ money.”
He sat at his desk and started on some paper work. Five minutes later, the street door opened and Inez walked in carrying a loaded tray. The sight of her shook Spur, he got to his feet and went to the grill. She came into the center of the office and stared at him. Her face looked drawn and tired.
Gomez said: “Put the tray on the desk, Inez.”
She put it on the desk. Spur saw that she was wearing shoes now. As she bent over the desk, he appreciated the lovely golden curve of the back of her neck. As if she felt his eyes on her, she turned and gave him an uncertain smile. Then she walked to the door and was gone, leaving Spur with a sense of infinite sadness. The sheriff pushed the tray under the cell door after he had inspected the food.
“The girl must have lost her heart to you,” he said. “The meal is too good for a man such as you.” He walked back to the desk and continued with his work. There was no sound but the scratch of his pen and the guttering of the lamp. Spur picked up the tray and ate with it on his lap, sitting on the cot. The meal was a superbly cooked steak, fried potatoes and a jug of coffee, a freshly baked apple pie. There were no utensils, so Spur picked up the steak in his fingers.
Something on the plate that had been underneath the steak caught his eye. A small square of paper, now impregnated with grease. He glanced at Gomez - the man was absorbed. Biting into the steak and starting to chew, he picked up the piece of paper and with some difficulty in the dim light saw that it had been written on in a neat feminine hand. The language was Spanish.
“Midnight. The window. Stay awake.”
He slipped the paper into his mouth and chewed it up with the next piece of meat. It could be a plant and most likely was, but a man couldn’t be too careful. It ruined a perfectly good piece of steak. He chewed on, switched his gaze to the window, knowing already that it was high up and barred. Nobody could expect him to get out that way.
He finished the meal, pushed the tray under the door and lay on the cot. Maybe he would need to be rested by midnight.
He thought. Gomez could want him dead before a trial. It had happened before and it could happen again. But, even if this was a plant, it might nevertheless offer him an opportunity of getting away. And he needed to get away, not only because he didn’t want to die, but to do what he had come here for. That meant as much to him as life itself.
The message had been written by a woman; the language suggested a Mexican woman; but it might have come from Jody. He could be covering himself.
He dozed lightly; Gomez worked on. Slowly the town went to sleep, the dog that had yapped the evening away on the plaza became silent, the wheeled-traffic stopped, an occasional horseman loped by. The serenading guitar lost voice, as though the player had either got his way with his lady love or had tired and gone home.
The sheriff rose and placed a bar across the street door. He filled the lamp with oil, made up his bed and took a look at Spur who lay still with his eyes closed.
Spur did not move till he had heard the man’s boot heels cross the room and the bed creak as the sheriff lay down. The cot was on the other side of the table on which the lamp stood. Spur could see no more than the man’s boots. He did not know if Gomez could see him in the cell or not. That was a chance he would have to take at midnight. He looked at his watch and saw that there were fifteen minutes to go. Now everything could depend on whether or not the sheriff was a light sleeper, or if he was a man who took a long time to fall asleep. Spur wanted him in a deep sleep on the dot of midnight.
Within five minutes, the sheriff was snoring lightly. That could be faking.
Spur waited, slowly easing himself off the cot when his watch showed him that he had three minutes to midnight. He went carefully to below the window and found to his satisfaction that he was in shadow there. The sheriff’s snoring continued steadily.
It must have been dead on midnight when he heard a faint scrabbling against the wall beneath the window and a moment later something made of metal tapped gently against a bar. A small hand holding a dark object was silhouetted against the moonlit sky. Spur put up his hand and grasped a small revolver. The hand released it and was gone. A woman. Spur put the gun in the dim lamplight for a brief moment and saw that it was a lady’s pocket Colt. With the tips of his fingers, he checked the loads. They were all there and did not seem to have been tampered with. Another chance he’d have to take.
The scrabbling sound came again and a moment later a small dark head showed at the opening.
‘Wait.” The voice was female, Mexican and the language was Spanish
Whoever it was dropped lightly to the ground and after that Spur didn’t hear a thing, but for the guttering lamp and Gomez’s softly persistent snore.
Suddenly, the snoring stopped; the sheriff stirred and groaned a little. Spur hastily and as quietly as possible lay down on the cell cot, holding the little gun under the blanket.
There followed what seemed to be the longest wait of his life. The sheriff went back to snoring again and Spur was just thinking that nothing would ever happen, when there came a knock on the street door.
Now maybe I’ll know who’s set me up, Spur thought.
The sheriff sat up abruptly, threw his legs over the side of the bed and picked up a gun.
“Who’s this?” he demanded.
The reply was so soft that Spur couldn’t hear it, but apparently it satisfied the sheriff, because he got up and opened the door.
Inez the waitress from the hotel walked into the office. She wore the same blouse and skirt that she had had on earlier in the evening, but her head and shoulders were covered by a shawl. Her eyes and mouth seemed vivid in the circle of light. She did not look toward Spur.
In Spanish, Spur heard Gomez say: “Good God, girl, what are you doing here at this time of night?”
Again, she spoke so softly that Spur could not hear her words.
Gomez spun around and stared hard at the cell for a moment before striding across the office. He came close to the grill, his gun poking between the bars. Spur viewed him through slitted eyes, making no more than a blurred dark shape of him.
In English, Gomez ordered: “Spur, get up off that bed.”
When Spur didn’t answer, but made a show of stirring sleepily, the sheriff shouted the order again. Strain showed slightly in his voice.
Spur raised his head arid said: “Wha?”
“Get up.”
Spur slowly put his feet over the side of the cot.
“What the Hell?”
Gomez said: “You don’t fool me. You were not asleep.”
“What’re you talkin’ about?”
Inez said something vehemently and Gomez turned to her. Spur lifted the little Colt from under the blankets and said
: “Drop the gun.” Gomez started and Spur rapped: “Drop it.” Maybe Gomez would have fired, but Inez had darted forward and charged her shoulder into him. As she did so, Spur jumped from the bed, hit the side wall and shot his hand out at the sheriff’s gun. If that gun went off, escape could be difficult. He got a grip on the barrel, wrenched it sideways and ground the sheriff’s knuckles against a bar.
The gun went off with a deafening roar and the bullet smacked into a wall.
“Quick,” Spur said. “The keys.”
Inez moved quickly.
Spur shot a hand through the bars, caught the sheriff by his shirt and cocked the Colt.
“Be still.”
Gomez froze and dropped the gun. It clattered to the floor and went off again. Spurs nerves were jumping. He heard the rattle of the keys and one grated in the lock. It was the wrong one. Inez seemed to be beside herself as she hurried, trying key after key till she found the right one and the door swung open. Spur reached around the grating, heaved Gomez into the cell and flung him across it. The sheriff hit the wall and collapsed to the floor. Spur kicked the fallen gun into the office and shut the door with a clang.
He ran to the desk, hurled drawer after drawer to the floor till he found his gun. Checking there were shells in the belt, he slung it around his waist and buckled it. Picking up the sheriff’s rifle that lay on the table, he went to the street door. Inez followed him. Her nerve was shaken now and she was scared. The shots had done that. The town must be roused now.
The sheriff came to the grill and shook the bars, he looked distraught. English forgotten, he shouted in Spanish - “No, no, no, no. You can’t get away. They will shoot you down.”
That clenched it, Spur thought. Inez was straight. He flicked up the bar, took her by the wrist and ran out onto the street, turning left and running along the front of the building. Across the plaza, figures moved in the moonlight. A shout went up at the sight of them. Spur kept going, turned the corner of the building, ran thirty yards and was in the cover of trees. They ran under this cover for another hundred yards till he switched once more and headed left again. They came out of timber into brush, they hit rough ground and he followed the contour of the land and turned right again, north. They were in a dry wash. Here he stopped for breath.
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