by Paul Bagdon
“I thank the good folks who handed these to me,” he said, holding the envelopes up. “My cup runneth over. But, my good people, you’ve already provided me with a church and a home, and Mr. O’Keefe has offered to supply me with his and Bessie’s wonderful food. I have no need for money. I’m sure that there are people in our congregation who can put these generous offerings to good use for food or medicine or whatever it is they lack and cannot afford. I’m going to call upon Marshall Flood to administer this money as he sees fit. As the lawman in town, he sees both the good and the bad, the wealthy and the needy, the joy and the suffering, and he’ll know best where the funds are needed the most.” He motioned to Ben. “Will you do that for us, Marshall? Could you step up here for a moment, please?”
Ben, standing next to Carlos and Maria, remained in place until Maria nudged him forward toward where the preacher was waiting. Ben walked stiffly ahead, not at all comfortable. When he stood next to the preacher to accept the envelopes, the contrast between the two men was glaringly apparent. Rev Warner was at ease, casual but alert. Ben’s hands hung at his sides awkwardly; he had no idea what to do with them.
“I, uhh . . . thanks, Reverend Warner. I’ll try to give this money to the nost meedy—uhh . . . most needy. And I . . . uhh . . .” Ben’s voice and the thought died together. His eyes found Lee’s, and she smiled at him.
The preacher handed the envelopes to Ben, who accepted them with a damp right hand. “I’m sure you will, Marshall,” Warner said. “And I thank you for your—”
The sharp bark of a rifle shot filled the café like an unanticipated burst of thunder. Ben released the envelopes, and his right hand swooped down to his holstered Colt .45. In less than a second, the weapon was in his hand and he was dashing toward the door. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rev Warner’s right shoulder dip as his hand darted to his own right side.
In front of Scott’s Mercantile, next to the café, a young boy stood gawking at a lever-action Winchester 30.06 rifle in the dirt at his feet, next to a farm wagon with a pair of mules tied to the hitching post. The youngster’s eyes were wide with fear, and his face was moon-pale. Ben holstered his pistol and quickly strode toward the boy. He stopped, glaring down at the frightened youth, whose eyes were glistening with tears.
“I didn’t mean for it to go off, Marshall. I promise I didn’t! I was jist gonna look at it an’ hold it is all. Then when I was pullin’ it out from under the seat, I dropped it an’ it went off. I didn’t mean nothin’, Marshall Flood.”
“Doesn’t much matter what you meant or didn’t mean, Wilbert,” Ben said. “A slug kills a person just as dead whether you mean to kill him or not.” He paused for a moment, holding the boy’s gaze. “Did you work the lever, boy? Cock the rifle?”
“Nossir. I promise I didn’t.”
“I believe you, Wilbert. When you dropped the rifle, the butt hit the ground first, right?”
“Yessir. That’s when it went off.”
Ben crouched down, putting himself at eye level with the boy. “You know you could have killed someone today? Maybe somebody walking by or maybe somebody inside the café? Maybe one of the kids you go to school with? How do you think you’d feel then?”
“I . . . I’d be awful sad an’ sorry, Marshall,” the boy said, his voice a constricted whisper.
“Guns aren’t toys, Wilbert. They’re as deadly as a sack of rattlesnakes. You understand that?”
“Yessir. I surely do.”
“Now, I need a promise from you. I want you to raise your right hand and promise you’ll never fool around with guns again till you’re a grown man or till you have a good man teachin’ you about them. Go on, boy—raise your hand and say that promise.”
Wilbert complied, his voice barely audible through his tears. Then Ben stood and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Good, then. You an’ me, we’re friends again. Right?”
“Yessir.”
“No more cryin’ now, hear?”
“I ain’t gonna cry no more, but I ain’t ever gonna forget my promise neither.”
“Good. Where’s your pa?”
Wilbert mumbled something Ben could barely hear. “Speak up, son. I can’t hear you. But I guess I already know where your pa is, don’t I?”
“Yessir. He’s at the Drovers’. He tol’ me to wait here an’ he’d be along shortly, but he’s been gone a powerful long time.”
Ben nodded his head. “You go on into the café an’ tell Bessie I want you to have a piece of pie with a big scoop of ice cream on it, OK?”
Wilbert’s smile was like a blaze of sweet sunshine on a gray and rainy day. He ran off to O’Keefe’s.
The Drovers’ Inn was an ugly scar on the face of Burnt Rock’s Main Street. Gambling, the sale of alcohol, and the carrying of firearms were legal in Texas. Prostitution, however, was not legal, and Ben had put an end to it the day he’d been sworn in. He patrolled the bar several times a night, always disgusted by the braying, drunken laughter and the curses that flowed out the batwing doors and into the street like raw sewage. The majority of those who spent time in Ben’s cells were arrested in or near the Drovers’ Inn, and two men, made bold and stupid by liquor, had challenged Ben with weapons. One of them was dead and buried in an unmarked tomb outside of town in the area of the cemetery reserved for the poor and the unknown. The other was serving time for bank robbery in Yuma, Arizona.
Ben stepped through the batwings and stood still for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim light and the heavy cloud of tobacco smoke. Talking and laughing stopped as all eyes swung toward him. The stench of stale beer, sweat, vomit, and long-unwashed men struck Ben like a blow, but he kept his face neutral. He walked the length of the bar to its end, where a buffalo of a man dressed in denim pants and a filthy shirt sat slouched over his glass of amber liquid. A long-barreled army Colt hung in a holster on the man’s hip.
Ben tugged the buffalo’s pistol from its holster and dropped it to the damp sawdust covering the floor, then buried his right fist deep into the big man’s gut. The second punch flattened an already misshapen nose that had been broken many times before.
Ben held Wilbert’s pa up by a handful of shirt to keep him from collapsing on the floor. “If you ever come into my town again with a weapon cocked, I’ll break it over your head,” he snarled. “Is that real clear?” He released his grip, and the buffalo dropped to the floor. Ben walked the length of the bar again and then went through the batwings to the street. Once out, he stopped and took a huge draught of clean, fresh Texas air.
Most of the welcoming committee had gone back to their homes or their jobs by the time Ben returned to the café. Rev Warner sat at a table with Lee and Missy, and Bessie and Mike hustled about cleaning and rearranging tables for dinner. Ben pulled up a chair.
“Everything OK, Ben?” Lee asked.
“Yeah. It is now. That fool Buck Starrett carried a rifle under his wagon seat, cocked and ready to fire. His boy started messin’ with it and dropped it and it went off.”
He rested his right hand on the table but quickly withdrew it and put it in his lap. His knuckles were freshly abraded and there was blood on them. But the move was too late—he knew Lee had seen them.
“That shot gave me a start,” Warner said. “I almost fell over, I was so scared. I kind of lost my balance and had to grab a table to keep from falling and making a fool of myself.” He smiled. “It wouldn’t make the best impression—the new preacher sprawled out on the floor.”
Ben’s eyes flicked to the preacher’s, held them for a moment, and then looked away.
“You couldn’t have made a better impression than you did, Rev,” Missy gushed. “All of us know we made the right choice.”
The preacher smiled at Missy. “I thank you for your kind words,” he said. Then he turned his attention to Ben. “Your job is a dangerous one, Marshall Flood. I’ll keep you in my prayers.”
Ben nodded. “Thanks, Rev—and it’s Ben from now on, OK? We do
n’t hold with a whole lot of, uhh . . .” “Rigid convention?” Rev Warner offered.
Ben’s eyes tightened for a moment and then relaxed. “Yeah,” he said. “Rigid convention.”
Lee smiled at Ben. “I’ve invited Rev and Missy out for dinner on Monday. Carlos and Maria will be there too. Can you make it?”
“I don’t see why not,” Ben said. “I’ll look forward to it—’specially if you’re makin’ chicken an’ dumplings.”
“That’s the menu,” Lee said. “And I’ll make an extra bowl of mashed potatoes, just the way you like them.”
“Great. A man couldn’t ask for more’n that.” He shifted his attention to the preacher. “You don’t have a horse, Rev. If you like, I’ll introduce you to Howard over at the stable. He’s got a good string in his barn just now—an’ he’ll give you a fair price. Maybe you want to take a look at what he has.”
“That’s already been taken care of, thanks to Lee,” Warner said. “I’ll soon be the owner of a good horse and a saddle and bridle. I’ll ride out with Missy in her surrey on Monday and ride back on my own mount. But I appreciate the offer.”
Ben’s eyes moved to Lee, questioning.
She answered him. “I’m going to give Rev one of my wrangler remounts. I’m feeding more of them than I have any use for, particularly with winter coming up. There’s a nice gray gelding with an easy temperament. The boys call him Chowder. Know the one I mean?”
Ben nodded. “Sure. Pete used him a bit—said he was a good horse. Matter of fact, Pete hauled a foundered mare outta a mud hole with Chowder, as I recall.”
“Right—that’s the horse.”
“Your boys will miss him,” Ben said, and then wished he hadn’t.
“One thing I have is plenty of horses,” Lee said quickly. “And, like I said, with the price of feed going up all the time, I’m feeding too many of them that don’t do a lick of work.”
Ben suddenly felt uncomfortable. He stood. “Well, I’ve got things that need doin’. Lee—Missy—Rev—I’ll see you on Monday. And I’ll warn you all now—don’t get between me and that chicken an’ dumplings.”
Monday didn’t work out at all for Ben Flood.
As he was taking up the cinch on Snorty’s saddle in the enclosure behind his office, gunfire, shouts, and the chilling sound of shattering glass erupted in the air. All of this was followed by the pounding of hooves on Main Street. Ben secured the cinch, vaulted onto Snorty’s back, and raced him through the open gate of the enclosure. As he charged toward the mouth of the alley between his office and the next building, two cowboys hurtled past at a gallop, both swinging wide loops over their heads.
When Ben cranked Snorty into a skidding left turn to pursue the cowhands, he saw the problem: The street was choked from sidewalk to sidewalk with angry longhorns. The eight or ten head the two wranglers were chasing had a good head start and were running hard. Ben swung Snorty back toward the center of town and groaned.
Several cattle had just entered Scott’s Mercantile—without opening the door. A steer stood on the sidewalk, shaking his massive head, trying to dislodge a lady’s skirt and petticoats from the end of his right horn. A woman screamed from somewhere near the bank. Several more cowboys charged past, working a group of cattle toward the railroad depot.
The heavy crack of a shotgun sounded over the bawling of cows, rebel yells, and screams. A bull with a span of almost five feet between the sharp tips of his horns dropped to his side a few feet from the batwings of the Drovers’ Inn. Ben slammed his horse down the sidewalk toward the saloon, swerving and dodging the charging beef.
“Put up that shotgun before you kill someone!” Ben bellowed at the shooter standing just inside the saloon. “I hear another shot, an’ I’ll close this cesspool down for good!”
A cowhand attempted to cut off a steer heading toward the photography studio, but the panicked animal paid no attention to the rider or his finely trained cow horse. Instead, the steer crashed through the door like a highballing locomotive through a drift of snow. An eye-searing burst of magnesium light flashed for the smallest part of a second before a tremendous cacophony of breaking glass and splintered wood filled the air.
Ben didn’t carry a lariat on his saddle, but he saw that the wranglers were going to need all the help they could get. He turned back toward Scott’s, rode into the store through the smashed doorway, and yelled to the frenzied clerk, “Gimme a good thirty-foot throwin’ rope!”
Four hours later, Snorty was dripping sweat and so was Ben. The cowboys from the Circle R—the group who’d brought the herd in and then lost control of them when the boom of an empty boxcar being secured to a locomotive started a stampede—were settled into the Drovers’ Inn. For once, Ben paid no attention to the yelling, the horse racing on Main Street, or the fistfights. After cooling Snorty, rubbing him down thoroughly, and rationing feed and fresh water, Ben felt the fatigue hit him like a bludgeon. He rarely splurged the twenty cents for a hot bath at the barber shop, but he did so that night. His hands were raw and tingling from handling his rope, his shoulders and arms were leaden and sore from wrestling with steers, and his legs were bruised and aching from being rammed by cattle.
He sank into the hot water like a ship going down on a calm sea, sighing with pleasure at the heat. The knots in his muscles began to ease almost immediately, and a prolonged dunk of his head under the surface of the huge tub washed the sweat and grit from his face and hair.
“Care for a cigar, Marshall?” the barber asked.
“No thanks, Horace. I ’preciate the offer though.”
“Lots of my customers have them a smoke while they’re soakin’. I know you don’t use no spirits, so I won’t offer you none. Tell you what, though—there’s still a light on over to O’Keefe’s. How’d you fancy a cold sarsaparilla?”
“I can’t think of a thing that’d suit me better, Horace,” Ben said. “There’s some change in my vest over on the chair.”
“Your money’s no good here tonight, Ben. The bath an’ the drink is on me. I seen you workin’ them cows with the Circle R boys. You done that an’ you kept the town together too—an’ don’t you think we all don’t appreciate it.”
“Part of the job, Horace.”
The shop was silent after Horace turned the closed sign to face the street and walked to O’Keefe’s Café for the marshall’s sarsaparilla. Ben soaked in the tub, doing his best to ignore the occasional yells of the cowhands. That he’d missed dinner at Lee’s house was the only real regret he had about the day. It had been a long time since he’d worked cattle, but his skills were still there, and he believed he’d shown the cowhands that a lawman can toss a loop and bulldog a steer.
There’ll be lots of other dinners with Lee. But that thought soon became a question—a question that snatched away his peace. Would there be other dinners? Was Lee tired of waiting for him to ask her to marry him? Had she already decided that she couldn’t share her life with a man who had a good chance of stopping a bullet every day he went to work?
When Horace returned to his shop, Ben was dried off, dressed, and pulling on his boots.
“Marshall—what’re ya doin’? If the water cooled some, I’ll warm her up right quick. I got a kettle on the stove.”
“The bath was great, Horace, an’ I thank you for it. But I got things to do at the office.” Ben put on his Stetson and walked out of the barber shop, leaving behind Horace clutching a tall glass of sarsaparilla in his hand.
Hoofbeats outside brought Lee from her chair at the table to her kitchen window. “Maybe that’s Ben,” she said. “Better late than . . . oh, it’s just one of the wranglers.” She forced a smile as she sat down.
“Ain’ much time Ben can call hees own,” Carlos said. “Somethin’ goin’ on in town, Lee. He would no miss your cheeken dinner less he had to.”
“When duty calls a lawman, I suppose he has no options,” Rev Warner said. “It’s a shame he had to miss this wonderful dinner and the conversation w
e’ve had.”
“Ees true, Rev Warner,” Maria said. “Ben—he work too hard.”
“He does for sure,” Missy added with a vigorous nod of her head.
The after-dinner chatter drifted away from Lee. Was it a drunk who needed to be put in a cell? A stolen horse? A fistfight in the street? Couldn’t this one night he have left the town on its own for a few hours? How will Rev Warner feel about his absence? Isn’t welcoming a new preacher, making him feel at home at least as important as—
Laughter jolted Lee back to her kitchen. She forced a guilty laugh, having no idea what had been said.
“So,” Rev Warner concluded, “that was the last time I tried to scare away a polecat by hollering at him. But I’ll tell you this: You never saw a congregation leave a church as fast as those folks did—and the minister was one of the first through the door!”
The laughter began again, and again Lee joined in without real feeling. It had been a good visit, but Ben’s chair was conspicuously vacant. She picked up her cup and sipped at her tea.
“Do you have your first sermon all planned out, Rev?”
“To some degree,” Warner answered. “You see, I’m not much of a public speaker.” He held up his hand as Missy began to protest. “Please—hear me out,” he continued. “The Lord puts the words in my heart. I simply articulate them. I’ve found that the Lord knows a whole lot more about spreading his Word than I do.”
There was quiet laughter at that comment. Carlos burped surreptitiously behind his hand. Maria nudged him sharply with her elbow.
“More tea, anyone?” Lee asked. “Rev? Missy? Carlos? Maria?”
All declined, easing their chairs back from the table.
