A little talk passed here and there around him between the newcomers and those who had been there before, a few quick glances in his own direction during which his eyes met the pig-eyes of the big man. You didn’t have to know men very well to recognize the vicious callousness in them. Nor the truculent pride. Spur had hurt that and this man wouldn’t forget. Not ever.
Time passed and the marshal could feel the tension rising like a tangible thing. He was now being conspicuously ignored.
Henry Wragg walked in, looking unusually battered and careworn, a bedraggled rooster, spurs rampant, anger a-simmer under the surface.
He walked straight up to Smelling and said as softly as he could make his incongruously booming voice, ‘You seen him?’
‘No,’ Smelling snared back at him. ‘The bastard’s holed up.’
Wragg thought about that and said, ‘More ways than one of gettin’ a rat from its hole.’
The big man caught him by the arm.
‘Think again. See that well-dressed jasper along the bar?’
The little man turned his head, met the eyes of the marshal with his own deadly ones and tried vainly to stare the lawman down.
‘Yeah, I see him. What so special?’
‘A United States Marshal.’
Henry put his look on Smelling and could see the man was shaken.
‘So what?’ he asked.
‘He come in with Spur.’
He got a little satisfaction watching the effect of that on Wragg.
‘That don’t make sense.’
‘But it’s the truth. So what now?’
Wragg didn’t know. He needed a drink and he stood there till Smelling reluctantly bought him one.
When he’d downed the whiskey and felt its crude fire warm his meager body, he said, ‘A lawman can walk into a ball good as anybody.’
The straw-boss, standing on his other side from Smelling, said, ‘I ain’t mixing with no lawman killing.’
Smelling said fiercely, ‘Use your goddam haid, you damn fool. We gotta think about this.’
Wragg laughed nastily and in a voice of poison, asked ‘Guts runnin’ out on you?’ and watched the rage swell the big man bigger till he looked like an angry frog. He got some fun out of seeing that. One of Smelling’s riders snickered and that quite made Henry’s evening for him.
The evening got unmade when a sudden hush fell on the crowded room and peering through the smoke, he saw Spur walking slowly down the stairs.
Smelling, watching his face, saw his expression and turned. He let air out of his lungs with a hissing sound.
The straw-boss whispered in his ear, ‘The damn fool don’t have a gun.’
Foggart turned from the bar and greeted Spur with, ‘What’ll you have, Sam?’
Spur said whiskey and Foggart got in close to tell him, ‘Drink up and let’s get out of here. We’ll gain nothing by staying.’
Spur looked along the bar and found nine pairs of eyes watching him. Turning, he saw there wasn’t a man there that wasn’t doing the same thing. The place was so silent that a dripping tap was plain to hear.
‘If I walk out of here now,’ Spur said, ‘I might as well not have come. I’d be finished in this town.’
The marshal said, ‘You stay and you’ll be finished all right.’
Spur said with a little grin, ‘Right under the nose of a Federal marshal, Ly?’
Foggart suggested that even a United States marshal could die of lead.
Several men went through the street door on to the boardwalk fast and stood there staring in through the dirty windows.
The barkeep slapped a glass down on the counter and said, ‘No trouble here, please Mr. Spur.’
Spur turned to him, saying, ‘Did I start it before?’ He raised his voice, speaking ostensibly to the man, ‘I’m here on the same terms as I was before, but this time I don’t have two pieces of lead in me and I don’t have a gun. I have law. There’re dozen men in here tonight, now, who’ve broken the law. If they feel like running now’s the time to do it.’
From the looks on the faces of the men nearest to him, he knew that all of them knew who Foggart was.
A voice further down the bar muttered, ‘Yaller bastard!’
Leaning on the wood, Spur said, ‘Maybe the man thet said that would care to walk out here and say it to my face.’
Heads turned away from him as men went back to their drinks.
Spur asked, ‘Was it you, Smelling?’
The big man lifted his head and shouted suddenly, ‘It wasn’t me. But I’ll say it now. Dirty, yaller, murderin’ bastard. You cut down some good men and there ain’t a man here now that wouldn’t like a chance to do something about it.’
The place came to life as men shifted their feet, murmuring assent.
Foggart said in Spur’s ear, ‘For God’s sake, you damn fool. You looking for trouble.’
Spur answered by stepping away from the bar in the small clear space.
‘Now’s your chance to do something about it personally,’ he said. ‘Or maybe you can only shoot men and act big when you’re sided.’
Short silence again till someone across the room shouted,
‘Take the guts outa him, Smelling.’ That roused them all and they bayed so loud the whole building seemed to shake.
When the noise subsided, Smelling said in an indistinct, surly voice, ‘You know damn well I’m carrying a wound.’
‘A month old. That makes us quits. Take off your gunbelt, punk.’
They yelled for Smelling to do that. His own men urged him on, knowing what he could do with fist and boot when the rage was in him.
He downed a drink and shucked his gunbelt, letting it hit the floor. Shrugging his great shoulders, he grinned briefly and growled out, ‘You don’t know what you’re askin’ for, owlhoot.’
Spur tossed his hat on the bar, slipped out of his coat and tore off his trim tie.
The barkeep yelled, ‘For Pete’s sake take it out on the street, gents.’
One of the Smelling riders told him what he could do with himself. He couldn’t.
Smelling took a pace forward and said, ‘You’re gonna wish you hadn’t never come back, Spur.’
‘Save your wind, you’re going to need it.’
With a bellow that could have been heard the other end of Main, Smelling charged.
Spur met him head on, smashed a fist into his face and another to the throat. That stopped the big man dead, shaking his head and gasping from the shock of it. Spur backed off, standing lean and lightweight compared with his opponent, watching him. The crowd yelled for Smelling, angry at the two telling blows, a little shamed that a stranger should have delivered them.
The pride was hurt more in Smelling than his face. He wore it like an armor against his defeat.
Through flesh that was numbed beyond pain he mumbled, ‘I’ll kill you.’
‘Words,’ Spur said gravely and hit him in the stomach a long lunging blow that drove him caving back against the bar. Almost helpless, Smelling lashed out with a multitude of clumsy haymakers, his speed cut to nil by the rapidly delivered punishment he had taken. The lean man backed away from them, batting a couple down with his hand at the end of the cumbersome attack and slamming one short punch back in the return, rocking Smelling on his heels, staggering him backwards, clutching wildly at the bar, driving bottles and glasses to crash on the planks, bringing howls of alarm from the bartender.
The big man stayed against the wood, elbows holding him shakily on his feet, face bloodied, eyes red, hair hanging over, his face, sweat and gore mixed. He swore incoherently and tried to get into the attack again. He was game enough.
The crowd was silent, as stunned as their champion.
‘Not so much fun as attacking a woman, eh, Smelling?’ Spur asked loud enough for every man there to hear.
Wragg took a pace along the bar and whispered to Smelling. The big man cocked his head, listening, trying to smile through his ruined lips.
&
nbsp; Stiff-legged, he lurched from the bar and came on again. He took three hard-driven fists from Spur and kept on coming. From some hidden store of energy he seemed to gain momentum. Ducking under a swing for his head, he came in low, great arms outstretched, hands grasping, got a grip on Spur’s shirt and swung him around off his feet and threw him. Spur hit the base of the bar full length with a crash that again shook the building, tried to get up and fell again, this time against the legs of the Smelling riders. All was confusion as they tried to get out of his way, during which someone kicked him in the head.
The fact that it was a short, swift, furtive kick was the only thing that saved him. It brought a momentary blackness, but Smelling wasn’t fast enough to take advantage of it. As he advanced on the fallen man, Spur came forward in a lunging tackle and brought him down like a falling mountain. A chair went to matchwood, Spur came half to his feet and dropped his knees into Smelling’s stomach.
Smelling’s legs kicked convulsively, his hand beat twice on the floor weakly, and then he might have been dead.
Spur stood up slowly.
‘If there’re anymore,’ he said, ‘I’ll be happy to oblige.’
There came the triple click of a gun being cocked and Foggart said, ‘Little man, take your hand out of your coat or I’ll blast you.’
Turning, Spur saw that the marshal held a cocked gun. Henry Wragg was taking an empty hand from beneath his coat. He looked sick to the stomach with anger.
A man thrust his way through the swing doors and said, ‘What in hell’s goin’ on here?’
Sheriff Carlson, carrying a ten-bore, double-barreled, sawn-off shotgun stepped into the small clearing.
Foggart said, ‘A personal matter, sheriff. Take my word on it.’
Carlson eyed the motionless Smelling and the tense riders along the bar, gave Wragg a glance and looked hesitant.
‘Mr. Spur, I’d take it as a personal favor if you and your friend would leave.’
Foggart and Spur exchanged looks, nodded.
Spur said, ‘All right. Best sort the sheep from the goats, sheriff,’ and with that walked away with Foggart up the stairs.
Carlson’s greener wandered in the general direction of the Smelling men and Henry Wragg and he said, ‘Pick him up, boys, and bring him over to my place. The doc can look at him there.’
The straw-boss asked indignantly, ‘Hell, you ain’t arrestin’ Mr. Smelling.’
The sheriff looked very surprised.
‘Arrest, Mr. Smelling? Whoever’d do that?’
The greener still looked careless at them as they muttered among themselves and gathered their fallen boss. He groaned a little as they lifted him and flipped a hand feebly, but beyond that there was no sign of life. A man in the crowd said, ‘Ain’t that Spur a goddam Injun?’
‘Henry,’ Carlson told the little man, ‘you’d best come along, too. And you, Bob,’ as he picked out Thurminger at a table. Two more of the men who had taken part in the attempt to kill Spur a month back were mentioned by name, looked surly and followed the lawman out.
They all assembled in the office while a doctor did what he could for Smelling. ‘When he had finished his work he stood back from the table on which the rancher lay and said, ‘Nothing broken. It’s a miracle. It must have been a tough steer to have trod him this way.’
‘Yeah,’ the sheriff affirmed, ‘a tough steer all right. Too tough to rope.’
The straw-boss said, ‘I ain’t never met up with a crittur I couldn’t hawg-tie.’
The sheriff turned on him quickly, ‘Now, see here, Hertz, and all the rest of you, I’ll give it to you straight. The man that come in with Spur is a United States marshal.’
Hertz snapped, ‘We know that.’
Henry boomed, ‘Now don’t start all over, Carlson. We heard all this from you before. The man’s a murderer and we got law in this town.’
Bob Thurminger laughed.
‘It don’t reach far out of town. And how about the miner with his head smashed in not a coupla hours back?’
Henry said sententiously, ‘A man’s own town comes first. The citizens here have had an injustice done and this Foggart ain’t a local man.’
‘You can’t buck a federal marshal.’
‘You got a gun and some guts and you can buck any Goddamn thing on earth.’
With some venom, Carlson snapped out, ‘That’s what they all said from John Wes Hardin down.’
Before Henry could reply to that Jed Masters and another man walked in and the undertaker said, ‘This right what I hear about Spur bein’ in town?’
Someone asked, ‘Where the hell you been, man?’
‘Quiet game of poker is all.’ Jed stood looking down at Smelling, picking his teeth with a piece of straw, sucking loudly every now and then. ‘Funny, I was playing poker when that heller hit town before.’
‘Carlson here don’t want us to hurt a hair of his head.’ Henry told him, ‘He has a United States marshal along.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘Yeah.’
Thurminger looked serious, worried.
‘Maybe … could be this fellow Foggart’ll clear up this country.’
They talked about it this way and that, listened still-faced when Carlson told them of what Spur and the marshal intended to do.
Thurminger asked, ‘Can they do this?’
‘I reckon they can,’ the sheriff replied.
‘If you let ’em,’ Hertz put in.
The sheriff got himself out into the middle of them and waved a forefinger at them as if he were school mastering them.
‘Now see here, all of you. I’m not foolin’. I’m goin’ to ask questions around this town in the next few days an’ while I’m doin’ that, there’ll be no trouble. You got that?’
Wragg said, nastily, ‘You tell that to the road agents,’ and the sheriff couldn’t help saying, ‘No, you tell ’em, Henry.’
It was a fool thing to do, but it got some results. The little man started as if a gun had gone off behind him. Hertz jerked his head around and stared at Henry.
Wragg boomed, ‘And what in hell’s that supposed to mean?’
Suddenly angry, the sheriff shouted back, ‘Anything you like to damn well make of it.’
When they’d all trooped out and Hertz and his men had carried away their battered boss in a borrowed buckboard, the sheriff sat down and worried about things. He should’ve kept his leaking mouth shut, he told himself, and some of his courage drained out of him.
From his place at the table, tattered cards in his hands, Ely said, helpfully, ‘There’s gonna be trouble. You didn’t ought to’ve sided that feller Spur.’
The sheriff yelled, ‘Shut your fool mouth. I ain’t sided with nobody. I stand for law and order.’’
‘Yeah,’ Ely said with a new boldness, ‘maybe, but you tell that to the town. Sheriff’s git voted in … an’ they git voted out.’
With a sudden ominous calm, Carlson asked, ‘You wanta go on workin’ here, Ely?’
Ely raised lugubrious eyes.
‘I’m thinkin’ about that,’ he said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A day passed.
News came into town by a Smelling rider that the boss was up and about. The rider felt sorry for that fellow Spur. He was sure going to pay for what he’d done.
The sheriff went around town asking questions, drawing up a list of men who had taken part in the attack on Sam Spur. Marshal Foggart did some questioning on his own behalf.
The town itself was divided. True to the West, it had some love for a badman. It also liked a fighter. Spur had cut down their local bully-boy to size in the matter of a couple of minutes. That was enough to impress anybody with blood in his veins.
Some of the town-men continued to walk stiff-legged around Spur, but one or two stopped for conversation in the street and seemed pleased to be chatting on equal terms with a man of his terrible reputation. Just what had gone to make up that reputation none of them were qu
ite sure. Various legends were told of him—how he had stood off a patrol of the redoubtable Texas Rangers; how he had taken on three gunmen in Tucson; how he had killed two top-notch marshals in Fort Griffin … they even believed the tale of how he had robbed the rich to give to the poor. Some seemed regretful that he had been forgiven his past sins and was no longer an outlaw. Some frankly said it was a lie and he was still a ruffian who should be watched.
The town rapidly became divided over what should be done about him. Bob Thurminger, having had a few hours to think over the arrival of the United States marshal, cooled a mite and came out on the side of the law. Wait and see what happened—if the law didn’t deal with the son of a bitch, the town could afford a rope. He carried some weight and he took a good few with him. The other faction, egged on by Henry Wragg and Hertz, Smelling’s foreman, were for cutting him down anyway they could.
Spur appeared to go about his business unconcerned by it all.
But Foggart wasn’t unconcerned.
His fear was that if a trial of the men guilty of trying to murder Spur took place it might well be with him lying dead on a slab down at Jed Masters’s place. That would please Jed who was spreading the story that Spur was at the back of all the robberies that had taken place in the neighborhood over the past couple of years. He’d been lying low and not showing himself in town till a month back.
Foggart didn’t know how tragically wrong he was.
On the second day, Shwartz appeared on the street at last, looking pale and worn, a shadow of a man leaning on two sticks and walking at a snail’s pace. He aroused some sympathy and a lot of curiosity. He was heard to say in a weak voice that he didn’t aim to take this kind of punishment from any man living. The town liked that and talked about it over drinks or the supper table. Respectable people were saying loudly that decent people couldn’t live in this town any longer. No, sir.
Foggart wasn’t doing too badly with his evidence and neither was the sheriff. They compared notes and began to consider that they would have enough to present to the judge when he came around in a week’s time on circuit. Things would go smoothly if nobody backed out. They rather thought they would. On the third day the Smelling riders were in town and spending money freely. The rancher took a room at the Drover’s Rest and wasn’t seen on the street after he had booked in there. Fie looked subdued and his face was marked, but beyond that he looked pretty bully.
The Gun is my Brother Page 16
