Novel 1979 - The Iron Marshall (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  “How much of it is yours?”

  “The big part. I’ve got a hundred and fifty thousand coming in. Other businessmen around town have maybe another fifty. Carp has some and so does Holstrum.”

  “I don’t comprehend. Why is so much of it yours?”

  “We wanted the cattle business and I had access to more cash than the others. Good credit. So I agreed to carry the weight of it.”

  Shanaghy looked at Greenwood thoughtfully, then went on with his eating. He was hungry and the chili tasted good…very good. Yet there was a feeling that he was missing something, and a feeling of impending doom.

  “Greenwood,” Shanaghy said suddenly, “if I were you I’d close up shop and keep out of sight. I think your number is up, too.”

  “Mine?”

  “You just said most of that money was yours. By coming into the picture I’ve messed up their plans. I don’t think they intended to kill anyone…Maybe they didn’t…except for Rig. Then when I came into the picture they had to kill me. Well, they haven’t done it so far but they’ll keep trying.

  “Now, they’re trying to run me out of town. They’ve taken my room from me. I’ve no place to eat, and they’ve taken my horse. I’d lay a bet I can’t even get a ticket out of town, although maybe they’d be glad to see me go.”

  “What’s happening, then?”

  “It’s somebody right here in town who is mixed up in all this. I tell you, man, they had it all worked out, until Rig Barrett smelled something rotten.” Shanaghy paused, then asked, “Whose idea was it to hire Rig?”

  “Mine. Judge McBane agreed. So did Carpenter. Holstrum did, then he worried about it, afraid we’d get a worse lawman than we had. He voted against it finally.”

  “Carp was for it?”

  “He was.”

  Shanaghy finished the chili and drank the last of the beer. “You’d better hole up. I can’t promise you where I’ll be, but they shan’t drive me out. I’ll find a horse somewhere—”

  “I have several. Take your pick. And there’s all the gear you’ll need, right out back.” Greenwood reached under the bar and pulled out a shotgun. “I have this, and if you need me—”

  “You just stay here. I may need a place to come to.”

  He paused, looking up the empty street. It was too empty…and that worried him. “Greenwood, how well do you know Mrs. Carpenter?”

  The saloon-keeper looked up the sunlit street where the dust stirred briefly. “Not much.” He spoke reluctantly, as one who did not talk about women, at least about decent women. “She kept pretty much to herself…Didn’t socialize a lot. Folks seemed to like her, but…well, she was stand-offish.

  “Carp was different. He liked folks, enjoyed sitting around talking. He was a serious man, though, and knew what he was about. Sometimes…” he hesitated, “sometimes I figure she thought she was a mite too good for all of us, Carp included.”

  “And her brother?”

  “They were close. Saw a lot of one another, but he wasn’t a mixer, either. He’d come in here, time to time, and buy a bottle.” He scowled. “Come to think of it, here lately he’s been buying more. Sometimes two or three bottles at a time.”

  “Becoming a drunk?”

  “I never saw him drunk. No…I don’t think so.”

  “How about other stuff? Groceries?

  Greenwood shrugged. “No…Holstrum would be the only one would know about that.”

  “I was wondering…Maybe he was buying that whiskey for somebody else? Somebody who didn’t want to show up around town?”

  Shanaghy got up. Greenwood rinsed out the bowls and his beer mug, then dried his hands on his apron. It was cool and pleasant in the small saloon. Shanaghy looked up the street. Already the buildings looked weather-beaten and old. Sun, wind and blown sand would do that. In the prairie country, towns had a way of aging very fast.

  The wind picked up a little dust and carried it along, then dropped it. A horse tied at the hitching-rail stamped his feet and blew through his nostrils. Shanaghy missed the clang of the hammer from the smithy.

  Carp had been a good man, a solid man. And now he was dead…just when he had been trying to help, too.

  Was that the reason? Was it just that he was in the way?

  Tom Shanaghy stirred restlessly, irritably. He was out of his depth. What was going on here, anyway? His thoughts strayed to New York and Morrissey. At least he knew there who his enemies were. Yet now it all seemed so far, far away.

  He had wanted no trouble when he came here. He wanted only to board the train and leave. He had even bought his ticket…and he could still do that, he could do it tomorrow—if somebody would sell him one…

  Suddenly his eye caught a flicker of movement up the street. There was a man standing in the deepest shade of the awning in front of the express office. The man had a rifle.

  Shanaghy watched for a minute or two, his eyes slowly sweeping the scene before him, his mind racing. They were ready for him. They were all set to kill him, and now they had undoubtedly enlisted some of the good men of the town as well, convincing them that he had killed Carpenter.

  Walking into a cold deck like that was not to his liking. He glanced around at Greenwood. “Close up and hole up, and don’t let anybody in unless it’s me.” He paused a minute. “Greenwood, I’m beginning to get the pattern. You were to be the patsy all along. I mean, maybe they started out with other ideas but it was your money they wanted. I’m going to take one of your horses and slip out of town. I’m going to ride to Patterson’s outfit for help.”

  Greenwood shifted the shotgun from one hand to the other, nodding slowly. “All right, Shanaghy, I’ll stand pat. But for God’s sake get back here.”

  Greenwood put the shotgun on the bar and mopped his brow. “They won’t let you get out of town, Shanaghy. By now they are watching my horses. They might think you’d run but they hasn’t take the chance.”

  Tom Shanaghy was of the same notion. He stared up the street, trying to fit all the pieces together. There had to be somebody in town…Who?

  The idea that kept nagging at him made no sense, yet it could fit…it did fit. In part at least. If he just knew who his enemies were, he would know better how to proceed.

  “What about Holstrum?” he asked suddenly.

  Greenwood shrugged. “He stands to lose, too. Anyway, I can’t see him figuring this out.”

  “Some of those big, slow men are damn smart,” Shanaghy said. “It doesn’t pay to underrate them.” He was looking up the street and thinking. They didn’t have much time.

  He swore bitterly. “Hell of it is, there’s some good but mistaken men out there. I don’t want to kill anybody who doesn’t have it coming.”

  He looked around. “Greenwood, that girl’s in it, I know, and so’s that George whatever-his-name-is. But who was it turned the town against me? It surely wasn’t one of them. It had to be a local. It had to be somebody folks would listen to.”

  “Who, then?”

  Shanaghy turned his head and stared at him. “They would listen to you, Greenie.”

  Greenwood shrugged. “It wasn’t me. Like you’ve said, most of that money will be mine. I stand to lose it all. I stretched my credit, Shanaghy. I’ll be broke if we lose that money…wiped out.”

  “The judge?”

  “Him? Not on your life! He’s a solid man, an honest man. If there was one man in town…”

  Greenwood paused. “Shanaghy, that young woman you spoke of? The one who met the gambler? You said she seemed to come from the south?”

  “Aye…and that was a thing I wished to speak to him about…Carpenter knew her horse, I am sure of it.”

  Greenwood poured them each a beer. He rested his hands on the bar and wet his lips with his tongue. Then reluctantly he said, “Holstrum has a place down thataway.”

  “I know. I’ve been thinking of that. And Holstrum voted against Rig Barrett being brought in.”

  Shanaghy watched up the empty street. There were t
wo riflemen in sight now, watching the saloon. He had a hunch the back was no better. He glanced at the clock. Almost an hour…but what could he do? To venture out was to get shot. They were going to win. They were going to defeat him, after all. How had he ever been such a fool as to believe he could bring this off? What experience did he have that qualified him to step into Rig Barrett’s shoes? But who else had there been?

  He thought of Jan. She had ridden off with that strange old man, supposedly to see Rig…Where? Did her father and brother know where she was? Her brother? What kind of a bungling fool was he, anyway?

  Where was Josh Lundy? And where did he stand now? Restlessly, he paced the floor, watching every window, every door. Nobody was on the street. As if on signal all shopping seemed to have ceased. No rigs were tied along the street.

  Nothing could be better for the thieves. Now they had it all their own way, better even than planned. There would be no fight between the town and Vince Patterson, but Shanaghy, the only officer, was pinned down in the saloon and without allies. Fearful of shooting that might develop, the townsfolk had deserted the streets. So the train would come in with its shipment, it would be unloaded at the platform and the train would depart. The gold would be in the hands of the thieves without a chance of interference.

  Greenwood, who was to receive the shipment, was also pinned down. Instead of a few fast minutes of work, now they could take their time. The thought irritated Shanaghy. They were so sure now that he was whipped.

  Was he?

  He swore again, suddenly, bitterly, and Shanaghy was not a man who was inclined to swear. He looked down the empty street. The train would be coming, the gold would be taken from it, the train would go on. Yet what would they do with the gold? Where would it be taken?

  “I think Holstrum is in it,” he said, suddenly. “I think he has been a part of it from the first. It may even have been his idea.”

  Greenwood said nothing. He looked into his beer, then swallowed some of it.

  “It’s the woman,” Shanaghy said. “It is because of her. Or maybe Holstrum is tired of this,” he said, waving a hand around. “He may want to leave.”

  “He was unhappy here at first,” Greenwood admitted. “He got into it, but things did not move swiftly enough. I believe he expected the town to grow faster, the values to increase. And then,” he shrugged, “there was something the town did not give him, something he wanted.”

  Shanaghy glanced again at the clock. Only a few minutes had passed. He walked back to the bar and finished his own beer.

  What would Morrissey have done? Shanaghy didn’t know but he had an idea Morrissey would have walked out there and dominated the situation by sheer personality. So would Rig Barrett.

  He looked into his empty glass, thinking. Suddenly, his thoughts turned to the water tower. Why were those men so anxious to keep people away? What did the water tower have to do with their plans?

  Suppose they had never intended to bring the gold into town? Suppose it was to have been unloaded there, at the water tower, and spirited away from there while confusion existed in town? Jan had suggested it.

  If Holstrum was involved, that would make sense. His place was not far off and he had horses, and probably a buckboard or wagon.

  “I don’t like any of this.” He turned on Greenwood. “There’s something going on here…I don’t know what it is. There are too many of the wrong people involved, and I can’t believe they are the kind to share. They all seem greedy to me.”

  He shook his head irritably. “Oh, I know it is all imagination! I don’t know anything! But I do know what I feel and I’ve mixed with that kind for half my life! They have a plan…But it doesn’t feel right to me, so I am thinking somebody else has a separate plan.”

  “Tom?” Greenwood pointed. “Look!”

  Shanaghy turned sharply. A young man in a white buckskin vest was dismounting up the street.

  Win Drako!

  Bass was with him, tying his horse close by. Bass looked over his shoulder toward the saloon and said something to Win Drako.

  A door opened up the street and Drako himself appeared. “It will be a day to remember,” Tom Shanaghy said softly, “if a man lives past it!”

  “They’re coming for you,” Greenwood said.

  “Who else?”

  “There’s three of them.”

  “Aye! ’Tis a thing to think on, Greenwood. Three!”

  “They’re coyotes,” Greenwood said contemptuously. “They kept from sight until they knew the whole town was against you, and then they come!”

  “Ah, but the advantage is mine,” Shanaghy said. “They are fools.”

  “The advantage is yours? Are you crazy?”

  “No, Greenie,” Shanaghy said. “A man who stands alone is the stronger because he knows he has no one on whom to lean. He must do it all himself. When there are more than one, each is expecting the other to get it done. Each holds back a little, hoping not to get hurt.”

  He smiled. “It is a favor they have done me, Greenie, a favor indeed. For it is my means to get out of here in one piece. Those others, you see, they will stand back to watch. They will watch to see the Drakos kill me.”

  “Do you want the shotgun?”

  “Keep it. You may need it, man, and I shall do what must be done with a six-shooter. However, I could use another if you have it.”

  “You’re really going out there?”

  “Aye.” He took the gun Greenwood handed him, glanced to see if it was loaded. “Aye, I am going out, and I shall keep going, me lad! I shall go until this is done with and then I’ll be going back to New York.”

  He paused a moment, his hand on the latch. The three men up the street stood together, talking, glancing from time to time at the saloon.

  “They will be expecting me there, for I wrote a note to Morrissey. I wished him to know that I had not run out on him, and I told him I’d be back when this was over. Have a care for yourself, Greenie.” He lifted the latch.

  Up the street the three men had spread out and were walking toward the saloon.

  Chapter 18

  *

  HE SHOULD FEEL fear, but he did not. He should be wary, but he was not. The three men walking toward him were coming to kill. Their one intent was to kill him, to shoot him down.

  He was disturbed that he was not afraid, for all good sense told him he should be. Three to one…the odds were long.

  Suddenly he remembered something. There were two other Drakos…Dandy and Wilson. He had not seen them but he had heard of them. The moment he thought of them he knew he was in trouble—far deeper trouble than came from just the three men headed toward him.

  They were the window dressing, they were the ones to draw his attention. The others would be nearby…ambushed, waiting.

  Five…It was too many. Sweat beaded his forehead but still, he told himself, he was not afraid. He felt a strange sort of triumph. This was something with which he could deal. He was not by nature a plotter or planner. He liked straightforward enemies with whom he could deal in a straightforward way.

  Holstrum’s store…One or more of them would be there, waiting. From the tail of his eye he caught the slightest of movements. He had taken only three steps out from the store, ahead and to the side. Now the awning posts were on his left, slim trunks of cottonwood holding up the awning. He was a little in the shadow, the three men before him in the bright sun. Then he saw the other man, standing on the steps of the hotel. He had a rifle in his hands and he was lifting it.

  The man in Holstrum’s store suddenly stepped out. Shanaghy caught a fleeting glimpse of the man, wearing a black vest and a red handkerchief about his neck, and then he went for his gun.

  As he did so he heard a sharp cry from his right and up the street. “Win!” It was Josh Lundy’s voice.

  And then Shanaghy was firing. He shot over Drako’s head at the man on the hotel steps with the rifle. And without glancing to see what effect his shot had, he turned right and shot
at the man on the store steps.

  His action was swift and totally unexpected, in that both men believed all his attention was on the men before him. At the same moment he heard a burst of gunfire from right and left, and he saw Win Drako down in the dust and Bass running, hands in the air.

  Drako was looking at him, lifting his gun. But there was something wrong with Drako, the gun was coming up too slowly. Another shot from the left and Drako turned half around and fell.

  In the distance, a train whistled.

  Shanaghy saw Josh Lundy come into the street, rifle in hand, and Josh was walking toward the two men down in the street, walking cautiously.

  From the other side came a tall young man in a black hat and coat, a man he did not know.

  He walked toward Shanaghy, shifting his rifle to his left hand. He held out the right. “Am I always to be getting you out of trouble?” he asked.

  Shanaghy stared. There was something familiar, yet…“On the pier, in New York,” the man said. “We were boys then and John Morrissey saved our bacon.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned! I—!”

  “I am Dick Pendleton…Jan’s brother. It’s been a long time.”

  The train whistled again, nearer.

  Shanaghy grabbed Pendleton’s hand, then suddenly everything started to fall into place.

  “Dick! Another time!” He ran for Drako’s horse, jerked loose the slip knot and sprang to the saddle.

  The water tank! Of course, they’d be doing it there and never coming into the station at all. It was only after he cleared the town that he began to realize what he was letting himself in for.

  There would be several of them. The women…women? Why had he thought that? Then he knew—because there had to be two women. He couldn’t make it out otherwise.

  Two women who might or might not be present. There’d be George, and George, he thought, would be good with a gun. Used to using one, at least. There’d be the man who had posed as the brakeman…and how Shanaghy wanted to see him. He’d made him jump off a freight into darkness. Shanaghy had never wanted to kill a man, and he didn’t want to kill that brakeman, but he would like to give him a taste of what he’d had.