Gaylord's Badge

by John Benteen

  “Where?” Swain asked.

  Gaylord shifted in the saddle. “At the house of a woman named Carla Doane,” he said.

  Well after midnight they entered the town from its western outskirts, threading through its few back streets, dark now. Then, ahead, Gaylord saw it: the familiar outline, Carla’s house. Something wrenched within him. How often had he approached it on the sly like this? ... Then he pulled up his horse. A light still burned in the kitchen; she was up late. Then he eased. Of course she would be, the night before election day.

  “Stay here,” he told Morrell and Swain, leaving them in a pool of shadow. He dismounted, handed reins to Swain, and went forward on foot. He knew the way by heart, opening the back gate easily by feel; then through the well-kept yard and up the steps. Gently he rapped on the back door.

  For a moment there was silence. Then the curtain over its glass panel was pulled back; Gaylord found himself staring into the face of Terry Fielding—and the muzzle of Fielding’s gun. After a second Fielding recognized him. Slowly the door swung open. “All right, Gaylord,” the lawyer said. “Come in.” But he kept his snub-barreled Colt leveled.

  Tieless, he was in his shirtsleeves, his face drawn and haggard. Then Carla whispered, “Frank—” Gaylord turned. She stood in the corner of the room, fully dressed, and she looked older, tired, eyes smudged with weariness—but to him she had never seemed lovelier. She took a step toward him, then halted.

  Fielding said, “Did you get Morrell?”

  “I got him, but he didn’t kill Clint and Joey.” Gaylord spoke swiftly. “Listen, Terry, Carla, I got to have some help … ” He told them quickly about Morrell and Swain, and Fielding’s jaw set. He lowered the gun. Gaylord finished: “Anyhow, I ... I know the truth now. I know what a fool I’ve been, and ... that don’t matter. What matters is this: I’ve still got this badge, and as long as I’m wearing it I aim to use it. I want to get Swain out of sight, hide him here until you can find me a dozen men, two dozen, who want to help me get rid of Gruber. I’ll deputize all of ’em and we’ll ride for Chain and protect Swain while he fires Gruber. Then I’ll arrest—”

  “You’ll arrest nobody,” Terry Fielding said.

  Gaylord stared at him. “What?”

  “You aren’t the sheriff of Colter County anymore,” Fielding said. “You haven’t been since the day you went to Chain, before you hit Morrell’s trail.”

  “Wait a minute,” Gaylord said.

  “It’s true, Frank.” Carla came to him. “Remember, you weren’t elected. You were hired by the county board, at Gruber’s behest. Well, he had you fired by the county board, too. For malfeasance of duty, failure to stop the rustling. He took your badge away days ago and gave it to Tom Lang. Made Lang acting sheriff, called a new Republican convention, struck your name off all the tickets, put Lang’s on with stickers. You are just an ordinary citizen now, and the word is that Gruber has signed a warrant against you for rustling. Lang has orders to arrest you if you show your face in town.”

  Gaylord drew in breath. “Well,” he said. “Well … ” His mind wrestled with the implications of this. Then he remembered Morrell and Swain out there in the darkness. “Terry,” he said. “Tell ’em to come in, will you? If it’s all right with Carla.”

  “It’s all right with me,” she said. “Terry, go ahead.”

  Fielding hesitated, then went out. Gaylord dropped into a chair. “So I don’t have the badge any longer. Gruber’s running Lang. Who’re you running in Clint’s place?”

  “Nobody,” she said. “We couldn’t find anybody to run.”

  Suddenly Gaylord stood up. “What do you mean?”

  “Terry wanted to, but I wouldn’t let him. It would have been suicide.” Carla’s face worked. “As soon as Lang was appointed, he deputized a lot of Chain gunmen. They’re all over town. Every time one of our people speaks up, he gets arrested—and then he gets beaten up. And I’ve had the word from Lang direct. Anybody we nominate is a dead man. Maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t. All I know is that neither Terry nor I could take responsibility for asking anyone to run in the face of such a threat. And I wouldn’t let Terry run himself.”

  “You wouldn’t let— You and Terry are pretty close,” Gaylord said. All at once he felt his fatigue. Before he could say anything else Morrell, Swain, and Fielding came in.

  Carla looked nervously at Fielding. “Did you put the horses out of sight?”

  “In the carriage house,” Fielding said.

  “This house is watched day and night, I’m almost sure of it,” Carla said. Then she turned to Morrell. “Lew, I’m sorry if we thought harshly of you. Frank has told us—”

  “It wasn’t your fault. Carla Doane, meet Lord Peter Swain.”

  “Delighted,” the Englishman said, and when she put out her hand he raised and kissed it. Carla looked surprised, then pleased. As Fielding made sure that all the blinds were down, she poured coffee from a big pot on the stove. “Anyhow, there it is,” she said, as they drank it. “Gruber and Chain Ranch have clamped down an iron hand on this town. There’ll be Chain gunmen watching the polling place tomorrow ... Lang will be reelected without opposition. Then anybody who moves against Chain will be an outlaw.”

  Swain’s face reddened. “I will not tolerate this. I will not have my ranch used for such purposes. I intend to confront this man Gruber and have it out with him!”

  Fielding said quietly, “Don’t be a fool, Lord Peter. The best thing you can do is slip out of here quietly now and go to Cheyenne. See the association people there and enlist their help. If you stay here, Gruber will see that you don’t live long enough to fire him.”

  “I am sorry,” Swain said. “That is not my way of doing business. I hired the man and I can let him go. And once he is gone, you are quite free to do with him what you like.” He struck the table. “But I will not leave without a confrontation with that man!”

  They all looked at him and recognized his purpose. “Then you’ll have to hide here for a while,” Fielding said. “Maybe a long while. Until the dust has settled and Gruber’s off guard and maybe I can get some men together. Meanwhile, we’ve been euchred out. We’ve just all been euchred out.”

  His eyes ranged over Gaylord, Morrell, and Swain. “Frank, you and Lew had better ride out right away. There’s still time. But you’re finished here, both of you, until things change … ”

  “No,” Gaylord said.

  “Frank.” Carla came to him. “Please listen to Terry. I can’t hide you all. You’ve—”

  Gaylord stood up. “I don’t want you to hide me, Carla,” he said quietly. Slowly, carefully, he unpinned his badge. “All right,” he said. “I don’t own that anymore. Somehow, it makes it easier. In a way, it’s always been bigger than I was; it’s dragged me this way and that. It’s kept me poor and it’s kept me tired, trying to live up to it. And now it’s off, and all at once I feel free. I’m not Sheriff Gaylord any longer. I’m just Frank Gaylord. For the first time since I was twenty.”

  “Frank.” Carla’s face was pale. ‘“You’re not making sense.”

  “To me I am,” he said. “That badge, that hunk of tin. That goddamn piece of metal. In the long run, it’s been a star I followed in the wrong direction. It’s cost me everything I really ever wanted: it even”—his eyes met hers—“cost me you.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but he went on.

  “So I’m shut of it right now,” he said. “I’m free at last to do what I want to do.”

  “Frank, no,” said Carla. “You can’t—”

  “Yes, I can,” Gaylord said. He saw how Swain was staring at him glazedly, nearly dead with fatigue. Before he went on, he lifted Swain by one arm and led him to Carla’s bedroom. “I think you’d better lie down here,” he said. “Later on I may need you.”

  “No,” Swain murmured. But when he sprawled out on the bed he closed his eyes. Gaylord looked down at him, then went back to the kitchen. “Watch out for Swain,” he said. “After I fin
ish with Lang and Gruber, his decks will be clear. He’s a good man, and he can put in a new administration at Chain that’ll make everything different.” Gaylord loosened his gun in his holster. “Where does Lang stay, now that he’s sheriff?”

  “I wouldn’t tell you, Frank.” Carla’s voice was husky, frightened. “I love you too much.”

  “Love,” he said. “Honey, you’ve put your bets on the wrong horse. I love you, too. I was off the track for a while, with Florence Gruber, but—but it doesn’t matter now. I just want Lang, and then I want Gruber. Then we’ll work it out.”

  “Gaylord, wait,” said Fielding, but Gaylord shoved by him. “All right, I’ll find him on my own,” he said, and he stalked toward the front door. But before he reached it fists hammered on it. Then it suddenly broke open, flew inward, and all at once Tom Lang, carrying his shotgun, and Ross Gruber were there.

  And at the same instant the back door opened and the man named Withers stood there with drawn gun.

  Chapter Twelve

  As the sawed-off shotgun centered on his belly, Frank Gaylord halted. “Stand fast,” Tom Lang rasped.

  Gaylord lifted his hand away from his gun.

  Lang moved on down the corridor, skull-face grinning, pushing Gaylord ahead of him with the shotgun barrels. Gruber came close behind, Colt out, square face triumphant. “Frank,” he said. “Did you really think we were that stupid? Not to watch this house day and night, knowing that you’d come here soon as you returned?” Then they were in the kitchen. Withers had already lifted Fielding’s gun, and Lew Morrell, back against the wall, had his hands raised.

  “Now, isn’t this a pretty scene,” Gruber said, as Lang stepped aside. “Rustlers and murderers and their fancy women all together. Sheriff Lang, you’ve made a big haul tonight. You’ve got Morrell, who killed the Wallaces. You’ve got former Sheriff Gaylord, who branded Chain Ranch cattle with his own brand, as we can prove to the association and the legislature. And you’ve got a woman of the town plying her trade—Mrs. Doane, I mean. I suppose Fielding was someone’s accomplice.”

  Carefully, warily, still keeping his Colt aimed, he went to the stove and picked up the coffeepot. “Some, in the dead of night, we will take in. Others may stay here—dead. Morrell, for instance, who came back to his inamorata, Mrs. Doane. And, finding her in bed with Fielding, killed them both in a fit of jealousy. Or ... we’ll work out something. Of course, Frank Gaylord goes to Rawlins on a charge of rustling, and—” His brows arched. “Does it surprise you, Frank, that I have a solution for every problem, an answer to every question? Well, that’s my specialty. I think ahead, work out these situations in my mind. When Florence wrote me that she was being run out of Philadelphia—she’s not quite the sweet little virgin, my dear sister, that we led you to imagine—I immediately thought of how I could turn the burden of her presence to my advantage.”

  He grinned. “I had you two paired before she even got here. But, God, you bored her, Frank. She’s used to a lot more action than you provided. Lucky for her that Tom Lang was around to fill in the gaps while you were gone … ” Then he said, “Withers, I think you’d better start collecting guns. Don’t get in Tom’s line of fire. These people are tricky.”

  “Yes, sir.” Withers approached Morrell, who stood with hands high, back against the kitchen wall.

  “A plan for every contingency,” Gruber continued. “Wallace fouled me up, but Tom took care of him—not with his trademark, of course, the shotgun. And then you wouldn’t go along. That was my only misjudgment. Usually I’m pretty accurate, but you foxed me. I didn’t quite have my hooks—or Florence’s—in you quite enough. But that’s all right, I’ll take care of that, too. And if anybody comes from England to plague me, I’ve got that arranged—”

  “Indeed?” a cool voice said from the doorway connecting the bedroom to the kitchen. “I think not, Major Gruber. I can imagine no plan which will keep me from discharging you from the management of Chain Ranch as of this moment.”

  Every head in the room jerked around then to stare at the why Englishman in the doorway, unarmed, yet impressive in his righteousness, as if his trust in law and rectitude were armor enough. Gruber’s face turned the color of tallow. “You,” he whispered, and the Colt in his hand sagged.

  “Indeed,” Lord Peter said again. “And—”

  Gaylord heard no more. Because Lang was staring at Lord Peter, momentarily slack-jawed, and that shotgun had to be taken out; and then Gaylord left the floor in a long, swooping dive. Lang, aware of movement, squawked and whirled, but he was too late. Gaylord came in underneath the sawed-off barrels, knocked them up, and the room literally shook as both triggers went, eighteen buckshots slamming into the ceiling, bringing down a rain of plaster. Then Gaylord had wrenched the gun from Lang, his weight bearing the skull-faced man to the floor. Lang howled something, but Gaylord raised the shotgun high, and then, with all his strength, he brought the copper-studded stock smashing down. He felt bone give beneath the force and Lang was limp. Gaylord flung away the sawed-off and rolled. As he came up he was aware of more guns roaring: Morrell’s drawn Colt lanced flame and Withers was knocked back across the table. His body hit the oil lamp there and it skittered to the floor, smashed, and spread a tongue of dancing flame. Gaylord clawed for his own gun, but too late. As Morrell turned, Gruber fired. Morrell staggered and dropped to one knee. Gaylord had a glimpse of Swain standing slack-jawed; then flame licked up the kitchen curtains with a hungry sound, behind Gruber’s back. Gruber dodged aside, and Gaylord was reaching for his Colt when Fielding dodged across his field of fire. “Carla!” Fielding yelled, and seized her, pulling her sideways.

  The house was pine, sun-dried, painted, and now flame spread across the floor at the base of the wall. Gruber turned and yelled, “Gaylord!” He raised his gun, then dodged again as burning curtains fell. Then Swain, coming out of his paralysis, launched himself at Gruber. Gruber saw him coming, stepped aside, nimble for so large a man, and slammed his Colt barrel against Swain’s head. The Englishman went down. Fielding was dragging Carla toward the door. The whole east wall and the rear of the kitchen were in flames now. Gaylord, Colt out, felt the heat as he raised his gun.

  Gruber was a flickering target in the orange light. He punched off a shot and Gaylord heard its mean whisper by his shoulder, and before he could fire, Gruber had jumped over Swain’s prone form and was in the doorway to the bedroom. Gaylord loosed two slugs from the Colt, saw them plow splinters. They would drive Gruber back. Carla was safe; Fielding had her out. And beyond her he could think only of Gruber; Gruber was all he wanted. He ran for the doorway, thumbing back the hammer.

  With sense enough to pivot as he hit it, he twisted his body sideways to make a smaller target. Gruber was in the corridor, and his shot sliced by Gaylord’s belly. Gaylord fired at him and Gruber dodged, and then he was in the front hall, where stairs led to a part of the house Carla had not used since her husband’s death. Gaylord heard Gruber’s pounding footsteps on the stairs, heard behind him the roar of hungry flames devouring sun-dried boards.

  That did not matter; nothing mattered except that he had two more rounds in his gun and Gruber was up there somewhere. And Gruber was the man he wanted, the man he had to have. For Clint, for Joey, for Billy Dann and Phil Hoff, and for everything he had cost Frank Gaylord. Gaylord dodged to the foot of the stairs. Gruber fired down at him. The bullet plucked Gaylord’s arm, knocking away skin and a quarter inch of meat. Gaylord went up the stairs at a run. Gruber himself could not have more than two rounds left. He saw Gruber’s face, square, contorted, at the stair’s head, halted, lined his Colt, and Gruber dodged again behind a corridor, was in the upstairs hall now. Safe, and able to rake the stairs.

  But now smoke from the fire boiled up them, a thick, black, breath-sucking cloud. Gaylord laughed; under that cover, he plunged upward. Now he was in the hall. Below, there was a crackling, roaring sound. The corridor was thick with smoke. Gaylord yelled: “Gruber!”

  Then
he heard glass smash. A draught of air cleared the hall. He saw Gruber at the hall’s end, hoisting a window, stepping out onto the roof of the wing below. From there, an easy drop to the ground, and Gruber would be in the clear. Gaylord ran for him, but Gruber yelled something and fired again, and Gaylord shrank back just in time. Then Gruber was on the roof.

  Gagging, coughing, in the smoke that filled the hall, Gaylord ran to the window. Eyes watering, he reached the open frame, sucking in gulps of air. His vision cleared. Gruber was scrambling down the gently sloping roof of the annex; from its edge it would be an easy leap to the ground below. Instinctively Gaylord started to plunge through the window, then halted. Familiar with the layout of the house, he knew what was under that section of roof, and—

  “Gruber!” he yelled.

  Gruber heard his voice. Poised to jump, he turned and saw Gaylord in the window, outlined by flame behind him, a perfect target. In the flickering light, Gruber’s face contorted, he took two long steps back in Gaylord’s direction and raised his gun.

  “Goddamn you!” he bellowed. “You have ruined me, ruined everything!” He aimed the Colt, mindless of his own safety, caught up in rage, bringing down the barrel exactly as if he were on an Army firing range. Gaylord brought up his own gun, eyes burning from the smoke. Gruber’s shape danced, swirled in its blowing veil. Gaylord fired.