Right between the Eyes

by William W. Johnstone

  “That’s exactly my point. I’m damn well aware of the trouble I already have. What I’m trying to find out is how strong’s the likelihood of me and my men needing to be prepared for even more coming from Larkin.”

  Hines held Bob’s eyes for several beats and then abruptly looked away, his shoulders sagging. “To the best of my knowledge, John ain’t coming back looking for trouble,” he said. “But you’ve got a point—it’ll be just a matter of time before he runs into Saul Norton, whether he goes looking for him or not. And I don’t doubt for a minute that the blamed fool is gonna make a run at trying to patch things up with Victoria. What’ll happen when he actually gets here and is faced head-on with those situations . . . I can’t say.”

  “But as far as the men on the jury who found Larkin guilty—you don’t see him looking to try and get even with any of them for their verdict?”

  Hines shook his head firmly. “No. That’s ridiculous. I don’t believe for a second John has anything like that in mind.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Bob stood up from his bale of straw. “Appreciate your time, Earl. When Larkin shows up, make sure he comes around to see me. Tell him I harbor no kind of ill will toward him and I’ll do everything I can to treat him square . . . I hope you believe that, too.”

  Hines nodded. “I do. You’re a fair and decent man, Marshal. Whatever else happens, I know John has no worries about you playing him false.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Before going home for lunch, Bob stopped by the jail long enough to pick up the list of jurors Fred had ready for him. He also took time to tell his chief deputy about his encounter with Smoky Barnett and the other two Rocking W men.

  “When Peter and Vern get back, make sure to tell them about that as well,” Bob added. “For the foreseeable future, I suggest we all keep a sharp eye on any Rocking W men who come to town. I’ve done a pretty good job of riling the whole nest, so I expect they’ll all be on the proddy side.”

  “Not much doubt about that, the way they ganged up on poor Mr. Streeter all over again. Good thing you showed up when you did,” said Fred.

  Bob frowned. “For Streeter’s sake, I guess it was. But, like I said, it sure added to riling up the whole works. Barnett made a point of saying how Wardell was bringing in a hired gun, so that sure as hell ain’t gonna settle things down.”

  “No, that’s for sure. But hey, did Earl Hines have anything worthwhile to say about Larkin coming back? It was a smart idea to go talk to him, I’d forgot how good a buddies him and Larkin were.”

  “Nothing I’d want to take to the bank,” Bob said with a shrug. “He freely admitted to being good friends with Larkin, so naturally he tried to put him in the best light. The two of ’em have been corresponding while Larkin was away, and I guess it’s set up for Larkin to be staying at Hines’s place for a while when he gets back to town.” Bob held up the list of jurors and waved it. “Hines made a pretty convincing case for none of these men having to be worried about Larkin. But he couldn’t say the same for Saul Norton. And he—Hines, that is—seemed to think there wasn’t much doubt that Larkin would be trying to make contact with Victoria Emory as soon as he could.”

  Fred winced. “Ugh. That’ll stir the pot in a hurry. Every indication is that Miss Victoria won’t like it. And you can bet Norton won’t. And old Jackson Emory—no matter he’s wheelchair-bound and keeps mostly to himself these days in that big old house—has still got the teeth to do some chomping if his daughter starts squealing that Larkin is bothering her.”

  “Boy, I’m sure glad I stopped by long enough for you to cheer me up with your sunny outlook on things,” said Bob as he started for the door. “There I was, on the verge of thinking things appeared a little gloomy.”

  * * *

  At home, Consuela had lunch waiting. Although she could never be exactly sure when Bob could get away—and sometimes it wasn’t at all—she always managed to have something ready. Today it was a beef sandwich on sourdough bread and a cup of corn chowder.

  As they ate, Bob filled her in on the morning’s events. Consuela was a good listener, attentive and seldom interrupting until the telling was done.

  “It sounds to me,” she said now, when that stage was reached, “like you are making sure that if and when Rance Brannigan gets here, he will have no shortage of reasons to pay attention to you.”

  “I doubt he needs much more reason than our unfinished business from the past,” Bob replied with a faint smile. “But you’re right, I seem to keep finding new ways to tangle with Wardell and his current crew. So, from Wardell’s perspective, if he adds Brannigan to his payroll, then part of the way he’ll expect him to earn his keep will be dealing with me.”

  “But you do not fear him, do you?” Consuela said, regarding him closely.

  Bob took a drink of his after-meal coffee. Then: “I don’t fear him in a face-to-face confrontation, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a cautious . . . respect, I guess is the right word . . . for his toughness, his skill with a gun, his craftiness. But those are things I think I can overcome. What I fear is that, even if I beat him, the secret of my past as the Devil’s River Kid will be revealed. That, I don’t know how to overcome.”

  Consuela gazed even deeper into his eyes, as if she were seeing all the way to his soul. “But you’ll find a way. I know you will.”

  She reached across the table and put her hand on his. Bob looked down as her smooth, silky palm slid across his knuckles and her fingertips slipped under this thumb. She held her hand there and squeezed. Not hard, just gentle, steady pressure. Yet there was a strength there far beyond the mere physical kind. Consuela was silently conveying the existence of the unbreakable bond between them.

  CHAPTER 17

  On his way back to the jail, Bob encountered just about the last person in town that he wanted to run into.

  As he was passing in front of the Shirley House Hotel, a voice hailed him from the middle of the street. “Marshal! Marshal Hatfield!”

  Bob turned his head and saw newspaperman Owen Dutton hurrying in his direction. Sighing resignedly, he paused in a slice of shade thrown by the strip of shake-shingled awning that extended out above the boardwalk in front of the hotel.

  Dutton stepped up on the boardwalk next to him. Pulling a wrinkled handkerchief from his hip pocket, he lifted his bowler hat and used the hanky to pat the beads of sweat standing out across his forehead.

  “My goodness,” the newspaperman said. “These spring days are getting warmer and warmer. If they’re any indication of what’s to come, I fear this summer is going to be a scorcher.”

  “We’ll have some days like that, for sure,” Bob said amiably.

  Dutton replaced the hanky, resettled the bowler, and adjusted the spectacles riding near the tip of his nose. He was a smallish man in his middle twenties, four inches shorter than Bob, with rounded shoulders, hands that had never seen a callus, and the beginnings of a paunch pushing out above the waistband of his trousers. His most distinguishing feature was a pair of thick, curiously dark—almost black—eyebrows that stood out in sharp contrast with the reddish hair in evidence on his head and in the bushy muttonchop sideburns obscuring the hinges of his jaw.

  “Speaking of things heating up around here,” Dutton said, cocking his head back to peer up at Bob through the thick-lensed spectacles perched on the end of his nose, “makes a very good segue to the matters I have sought you out to discuss.”

  Bob frowned. “I’ve got a lot going on, Dutton. If you want a piece of my time you’re gonna have to come up with something a little more serious to talk about than the warming weather.”

  “Very well,” said Dutton, poking out his lower lip in a smug manner. “How about non-weather-related subject matter like the rustling that Ed Wardell insists is taking place out on his spread and the hired gun or guns that he therefore feels forced to bring in because the law isn’t doing anything to help him? How about the near-lynchi
ng that took place yesterday out at the Rocking W? How about the vengeance-seeking ex-con due back in our town any minute now . . . ? Don’t you think these matters are significant enough for the public, via me and my newspaper, to know your thoughts and intentions regarding them?”

  “You’re blowing each and every one of these things out of proportion, Dutton, and you damn well know it,” Bob said through clenched teeth.

  “Am I?” the newspaperman challenged. “Then, as I just said, tell me your thoughts and intentions regarding them and help me gain a different perspective.”

  Bob looked around at the street busy with activity and people starting to gawk. “Okay,” he muttered grudgingly. “But standing here ain’t the place to discuss it. Come on with me to my office.”

  “Delighted to,” said Dutton, falling in step behind as the marshal resumed heading for his original destination.

  When they got to the jail, they found Peter and Vern leafing through a stack of wanted posters, refreshing their memories of fugitives suspected to be in or near the area and familiarizing themselves with anything new that might have come in while they were away.

  “You boys take your lunch yet?” Bob wanted to know.

  “Not yet,” said Peter. “We came in from rounds not too long ago. Told Fred to go ahead and take his, we’d wait until either him or you got back.”

  “Well, as you can see, I’m back,” said Bob. “So go ahead and strap on the feed bag somewhere. Then, since I’m gonna want you to cover late hours tonight, take the rest of the afternoon off. Come back around five or so.”

  The two brothers nodded and then, in almost perfect unison, which was an eerie habit they had, said, “You got it, Marshal.”

  As soon as the Macys went out the door, Dutton said, “They make a couple of fine-looking peace officers.”

  “More important to me than how they look doing it is that they’re mighty good at their jobs,” said Bob.

  “Yes. Of course that is the most important thing,” said Dutton. “I haven’t seen them around for a few days . . . I was beginning to wonder if they’d quit or something. All things considered, it would be most unfortunate timing for you to lose two-thirds of your deputy force right about now.”

  Bob sighed. “Number one, that ain’t gonna happen. They were off on leave for a few days visiting their uncle and younger brother, that’s all. Number two, the cloud of doom you seem so hell-bent on picturing as hanging over our town I don’t believe is nearly as ominous as you’re making it out to be.” The marshal waved an arm at the chair positioned in front of his desk as he settled into his own seat behind it. “Sit down. Take a load off and let’s try to hash out the horse apples from the buffalo chips about these matters that have got you so worked up.”

  “Very well,” said Dutton, dropping onto the chair. “But before we get into those other things, I’d like to ask you a simple question.”

  “I thought that was the whole idea. As a reporter, asking questions is what you do, isn’t it?”

  “To be sure. But this is more of a personal nature. What I’d like to know is, why do you dislike me?”

  This bluntness of the inquiry took Bob by surprise. He didn’t answer right away. Then: “I guess I’ve got to come back with a question of my own. What makes you think that?”

  “The way you act toward me makes it plain enough. Can you deny that I annoy the hell out of you?”

  Bob emitted an abrupt chuckle. “There you go. Yes, you do annoy the hell out of me. But that doesn’t mean I dislike you as a person.”

  “Isn’t it the same thing?”

  “Not the way I see it. Angus McTeague, one of the wealthiest, most respected men in town, annoys me with those cheap-ass, stinking cigars he smokes. Abe Starbuck of the Starbuck Territorial Bank annoys me with his arrogance and the way he treats his employees. But I can’t say I actively dislike either one of them.”

  “So what is it about me that annoys you, then?”

  Bob pointed. “That right there. The way you keep digging. You get an answer to something but you’re not satisfied, you insist on digging deeper.”

  “That’s what a good reporter does.”

  “Then it’s lucky I haven’t ever been around many reporters. Sounds like I’d find them annoying, too.”

  “The first answer someone gives is what they want you to accept. A good reporter has to consider there may be more behind it. Almost all of us have secrets we are reluctant to open up about. Don’t you also find that as a law officer?”

  “This is the West, Dutton. On top of that, Rattlesnake Wells is a boomtown. A big share of the folks around here left some kind of past behind to make it this far. And you’re right, a lot of them want what’s behind them to stay there and don’t want to ‘open up’ about it. I see my job as dealing with the fresh wounds in front of me, not picking the scabs of old ones.”

  “But I see a story as more than just what’s on the surface, I see it going all the way to its roots. I guess that’s where we differ.”

  One corner of Bob’s mouth lifted in a wry grin. “And that’s what makes you so annoying.”

  Dutton blinked a couple of times and then emitted a somewhat uncertain chuckle. “Okay. I guess we’ve covered that, then.” He shifted around some in his chair, produced a notepad and a pencil. “Now, as I know you are busy and I’m taking up your valuable time, let’s get to those other matters I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Okay. But you’re probably gonna come away disappointed. Based on what you rattled off out on the street, I don’t know that I’ve got a lot to add to what you already seem to know.”

  “But you’re not denying any of it, are you?”

  “None except for the rustling that Wardell keeps squalling about. I haven’t seen anything to convince me it’s taking place, at least not on the scale he claims. Even if it was, it’s technically out of my jurisdiction so there are legal limits to what I could do. But if he came forward with some kind of proof, I might feel different.”

  “What would you do in that case?”

  “I’m not sure exactly. But nobody hates cattle thieves more than me. For starters, if I really believed there was a big rustling problem, I’d probably lean on the federal marshal’s office down in Cheyenne to send a man up. In that case, if he chose to, the U.S. Marshal could authorize me and my deputies to aid him and our jurisdictional limits would be lifted.”

  Dutton frowned. “But my understanding is that the federal marshal who passed through here only a few days ago—Mr. Buford, the one you helped shoot it out against the Silases—ignored Wardell’s request to look into his rustling claims.”

  “Goes to show that Buford didn’t find Wardell’s claims any more valid than I do,” Bob said with a shrug.

  “Yet Wardell insists his problem is real—to the point of bringing in what you can only call a hired gun or gunslinger to represent his cause. You’ve heard the talk of that, haven’t you?”

  Bob nodded. “I have.”

  “Do you believe it?”

  “It seems more likely than not.”

  “You seem awfully calm about it.”

  Bob spread his hands. “What am I supposed to do? Wardell has the right to hire more men if he chooses and wants to spend the money. If they’re gunnies who protect his cattle and do whatever they do out on the range, I got no say in it. If they bring trouble to town, then they’ll find that I do have a say about that.”

  Dutton was scribbling furiously on his notepad. “Can I quote you on that?”

  “That I won’t allow trouble in my town ought not come as a surprise to anybody.”

  “Why do you think someone in Wardell’s employ—gunslinger or otherwise—would come to town in order to cause trouble?”

  Bob made a face. “See? Now that’s the kind of thing I . . . Look, don’t try to be cute about what you don’t know and what you damn well do. Out on the street you already brought up the near-lynching at the Rocking W yesterday. And Wardell’s not makin
g any secret that he’s sore at me and the law in general for failing to help him as much as he thinks we should. Plus, in short order, I expect, you’ll be finding out that just a little while ago I had another run-in with Smoky Barnett, Wardell’s ramrod, right here in town . . . So, given all that, if and when Wardell’s hired gun shows up, don’t it seem pretty damn likely he’ll eventually be sent around to crowd me a little bit?”

  Dutton’s pencil made soft scratching sounds as it moved across the notepad pages. “Good Heavens,” he muttered, perhaps not meaning for it to come out quite so loud, “this could have the makings of another O.K. Corral.”

  “Just see to it you don’t fan the flames ahead of time in order to help bring something like that about,” growled Bob. “Stick to reporting the damn facts, not whipping up some fancified yarn straight out of a dime novel.”

  Dutton bristled. “I beg your pardon. I find it offensive to—”

  “Just remember what I said,” Bob cut him off warningly. “And the same goes for John Larkin, the ‘vengeance-seeking ex-con’ as you called him out on the street. You write something like that in your paper, I’ll make you eat every page. Neither one of us knows Larkin, and we for sure don’t know what he has in mind for returning here. What we do know is that he’s served his time, paid his debt as they say, in accordance with the sentence he got for the crime committed. So until or unless he does something that puts him back on the wrong side of the law, he deserves the same privacy and respect as anybody else. For you to deprive him of that by calling undue attention to him in your newspaper would be mighty ill-advised.”

  Dutton’s face reddened. “Of course. Goes without saying. My remark to you certainly was not . . . No. You’re right. What I said was unfair and uncalled for. It was inexcusable and certainly not the kind of attitude I would ever allow to seep into my writing.”

  Bob eased up a bit, somewhat surprised by the newspaperman backing down and admitting he’d been out of line. He said, “What I’ve told my deputies, and this applies to both Larkin and the situation with Wardell, is that we need to keep a sharp eye peeled and be ready to react to whatever happens. Don’t seem like a bad tactic for you to try and follow, either—react with what you report, but don’t jump ahead and give things a nudge that might help ’em swerve one way or the other.”