Walter Van Tilburg Clark

by Les Weil

  I gave the knob a yank, and it was attached to something all right. Way inside the house there was a little, ugly tinkle that kept on after I let go of the knob. A door opened and closed somewhere inside, and there were slow, heavy steps coming. Then the door opened in hont of us. It was a tall big-boned woman with a long, yellow, mistrustful face and gold-rimmed glasses, wearing a frilly house-cap and a purple dress that was all sleeves and skirt. Probably we'd just taken her out of something she was doing, but she acted like we were there to mob the Judge. She stood in the opening with her hands on her hips, so nobody could have squeezed by, and took a hard look at my gun-belt and chaps.

  "Well?" she wanted to know.

  I figured a soft beginning wasn't going to hurt, and took off my hat.

  "The Judge in, ma'am?"

  "Yes, he is."

  I waited for the rest, but it didn't come.

  "Could we see him?" I asked.

  "You got business?"

  I was getting a little sore. "No," I said, "we just dropped over for tea."

  "Humph," she said, and didn't crack a bit.

  "Mr. Davies sent us, ma'am," Joyce explained. "It's important, ma'am. The Judge would want to know."

  "Mr. Davies, eh?" she said. "That's different. But it's not regular office hours," she added.

  I started to follow her in, and she stopped.

  "You wait here," she told us. "I'll ask the Judge if he'll see you. What's your name?" she asked me without warning.

  I told her, and she grunted again, and went about five steps in the dark, red-carpeted hall, and gave a couple of sharp raps on a door, half turning around at the same time to keep an eye on us.

  A big voice boomed out, "Come in, come in," like it had been looking forward for hours and with a lot of pleasure to that knock. She gave us another look, and went in and closed the door firmly behind her. We weren't going to get in on any secrets, anyway.

  "That the Judge's wife?" I asked.

  Joyce shook his head. "She died before I came here. That's his housekeeper, Mrs. Larch."

  "How long she been with him?"

  "I don't know. Ever since his wife died, I guess."

  "Well," I said, "you can see why the Judge has times when he don't seem able to make up his mind."

  Joyce grinned again as if he didn't want to. I was making up a little.

  The office door opened again, and Mrs. Larch came out. She closed the door and advanced on us, but this time, when she halted, left us room to squeeze by.

  "Go on in," she ordered.

  "Is the sheriff here too?" I asked her.

  She closed the outside door behind us, so we were trapped in the dark with her, except for a little oil flame burning in a red globe overhead.

  "No, he isn't," she said, and started her slow parade toward the back of the house.

  Joyce gave me a rabbity look and ran after her a few steps.

  "Mrs. Larch . . ."

  She stopped and wheeled into a company-front facing him.

  "Do you know where he is, Mrs. Larch? The sheriff, I inean?"

  "No, I don't," she said, and went on back.

  After that I couldn't help knocking at the office door and I kept my hat off.

  Joyce was whispering at me that we had to find the sheriff, we had to.

  The same big voice called, "Come in, come in," again.

  When we got inside the big voice kept booming, "Well, well, Croft; how are things out in your neck of the woods?"

  "All right, I guess," I said.

  But they weren't all right here. The Judge looked the same as I'd always seen him outside, wide and round, in a black frock coat, a white, big-collared shirt and a black string tie, his large face pasty, with folds of fat over the collar, bulging brown eyes, and a mouth with a shape like a woman's mouth, but with a big, pendulous lower lip, like men get who talk a lot without thinking much first. He got up from in front of his roller-top desk in the corner which was full of shelves of thick, pale-brown books with red labels, all pretty new-looking, and came to meet me with his hand out as if he was conferring special favor. The Judge never missed a chance on that sort of thing. But not only Risley wasn't there, but Mapes was. He was sitting with his chair tilted back right next to the door. His gun belt and sombrero and coat were hanging on the hooks above him.

  When he was done shaking hands with me, the Judge smoothed back his thick, black mane, cut off square at the collar, like a senator's, put one hand in his pocket, played with the half-dozen emblems and charms on his watch chain with the other, teetered from his heels to his toes two or three times, lifted his head, smiled at me like I was the biggest pleasure he'd had in years, and drew a great, deep breath, like he was about to start an oration. I'd seen him go through all that when all he finally said was, "How-do-you-do?" to some lady he wasn't sure he ladn't met before. The Judge had a lot of public manner.

  "Well, well," he said, "you don't appear to have been pining away, exactly, since I last saw you."

  He took Joyce a kind of on the side.

  "And what can I do for you gentlemen?"

  I knew he probably hadn't the faintest notion where he'd seen me before, but I let that go, and nodded at Joyce to show he was doing the talking. But the kid was tangled. He didn't know what to say with Mapes there. I had to risk it.

  "We're here for Mr. Davies," I said.

  "Yes, yes, so Mrs. Larch said. And how is my good friend Davies these days? Well, I trust?"

  "He's all right, I guess," I said. "Could we see you alone for a minute, Judge?"

  Mapes let his chair down, but it wasn't to go. He sat looking at us.

  The Judge didn't know what to do about that. He cleared his throat and inflated again, grinning more than ever.

  "So, so," he said, "matters of a rather private nature, eh?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Mapes stayed there, though.

  Joyce got his breath. "Mr. Davies said particularly, just you and Mr. Risley, sir."

  "So, so," said the Judge again, and looked at Mapes.

  "Risley ain't here," Mapes said. "I'm actin' sheriff."

  "That's right, quite right," the Judge assured us, before I could speak. I tried to pick up the ground we'd lost.

  "Where'd he go?" I asked Mapes.

  "Down to Drew's, early this mornin'."

  "When'll he be back?"

  "He didn't say. Maybe not for a couple of days." He grinned like he wanted to see me try to get out of that one.

  "I'm acting sheriff," he said, thumbing out the badge on his vest. "Anything you can tell Risley, you can tell me."

  Joyce started to speak, and decided not to. I looked at the Judge.

  "That's right, quite right," he said, with that damn­fool cheerfulness. "The sheriff deputized Mr. Mapes before me, last night. It's official; entirely official." He cleared his throat and teetered again. He'd argued himself around to suit the way it had to go anyhow.

  "If you have business which requires Mr. Risley's services, you may speak quite freely before Mr. Mapes."

  "I saw that kid Greene, from down to Drew's, come by hell-for-leather half an hour ago," Mapes said, standing up. "I thought it didn't look like no pleasure jaunt. What's up?"

  I couldn't see any way out of it. It was more than ten miles down to Drew's. Like Davies, I didn't think the badge would be any help, and I knew Mapes wouldn't. He'd do just what the men wanted him to do. But we couldn't get Risley, and they couldn't make things any worse than they were anyway, from Davies' point of view. If the Judge couldn't change the direction of things, least with him there Davies wouldn't have to feel that the whole blame was his. And besides, maybe the fact that Risley was down at Drew's meant something itself.

  Joyce, though, was sticking to orders.

  "Mr. Davies said you and Mr. Risley, sir."

  "Quit the stalling," Mapes said, his neck swelling out and his heavy, red face getting redder. "What the hell does Mr. Davies want, anyway?"

  "Now, Mapes," the Judge
said, "the boy has a mission. He's merely acting on instructions, I presume."

  "If it's sheriff's business, I'm sheriff," Mapes said.

  "Sure," I said, thinking I'd make one more try. "We know that, Butch. But it's not us. We're here for Mr. Davies. Now if you'd let us have a minute alone, we'll give the Judge our story, and then if he thinks it's your job, he'll tell you."

  "Certainly, certainly," the Judge said. "If the matter touches your official capacity, I shall let you know at once, Mapes."

  Mapes stood with his feet apart and stared at us, one after the other. He had a huge chest and shoulders, and a small head with a red, fleshy face, small black eyes, thick black eyebrows, and short-cropped, bristly hair and beard. Like Winder, he always looked angry, even when he laughed, but in a more irritated way, as if his blood was up but he wasn't clear what was wrong.

  "All right," he said finally, as if he'd decided that whatever we had to say couldn't matter much, anyway.

  At the door he turned, his face redder than ever, and told the Judge, "If it's a sheriff's job, you call me. See?"

  "Of course, of course," the Judge said, flushing.

  When I had closed the door behind Mapes the Judge said, "And now," rubbing his hands together as if he had settled everything without a hitch, "now what seems to be the trouble?"

  With Mapes out of the way, Joyce told him rapidly. I went over to the front window, but listened while Joyce told him, and the Judge, all business, asked him questions about who was there, and just what Greene had said, and other things, most of which Joyce couldn't answer very well. But I figured my job, which was bodyguard, was done, and didn't horn in. From the window, which was in a bow, I could see Mapes standing at the top of the porch steps with his thumb in his belt. The Judge didn't show any signs of doing anything but put more questions. Joyce was getting excited.

  "It's not that Mr. Davies doesn't want them to go," he explained for the third or fourth time.

  "No, no, of course not," the Judge agreed.

  "He just doesn't want it to be a lynching."

  "No. Can't let that sort of thing start, of course."

  Joyce explained again how he wanted a posse sworn in.

  "Assuredly," the Judge said. "Only proper procedure. Anything else inevitably leads to worse lawlessness, violence. I've been telling them that for years," he said angrily, as if he suddenly recognized a personal insult. "For years," he repeated. And then I could hear him striding back and forth and snorting.

  "Mr. Davies asks will you come at once, sir. The men are already gathering, and they wouldn't listen to him or Mr. Osgood."

  The Judge stopped walking.

  I saw a rider coming down the street at a lope. He was one of the men who had been at Canby's when Greene came. He saw Mapes and yelled something to him. Mapes called out to him, and the rider pulled around, yelling something more.

  "Mr. Davies wanted you and Mr. Risley to come, sir," Joyce was pleading.

  "Eh? Oh, yes, yes. But Risley isn't here."

  He started walking again. "Today of all days," he said angrily.

  "If you would come, sir. You could talk to them."

  "It's not in my position-" the Judge began. Then he said, even more angrily, "No, no. It's not the place of either a judge or a lawyer. It lies in the sheriff's office. I have no police authority."

  The rider had wheeled his horse toward the main street and pushed him up to a lope again. Mapes was coming in. I turned around.

  "Risley's at Drew's?" I asked.

  "Yes, yes. Thought there might be something ..." the Judge began.

  I cut in. "If you could get the men to promise they'd take orders from Risley. They'll have to go that way, anyhow.

  Mapes came in, leaving the door open again. He didn't look at us, or say anything, but took his gun down, and buckled it on, and then took down another little gun in an arm-pit holster and slung it on so it would be between his vest and coat. He had big, thick, stubby fingered hands, and had trouble with the waist thong on the arm-holster.

  "And where are you going, Mapes?" the Judge fumed.

  "Rustlers got Kinkaid this morning," Mapes said, still working at the knot. He got it, and looked around at us that angry grin.

  "There's a posse forming, just in case you hadn't heard," he said.

  "That's sheriff's work, ain't it, Judge?" he asked, reaching his coat down.

  "That's no posse, Mapes," the Judge roared. "It's not a posse," he repeated, "it's a lawless mob, a lynching mob, Mapes."

  It seemed to me to be stretching it a little. Those men may have been bent on hanging somebody without the delay of a trial, but there was a lot of difference between the way they were going at it and what I thought of as a mob. I didn't say anything, though.

  "It'll bee a posse when I get there, won't it, Judge?" Mapes asked.

  "It will not," bellowed the Judge, a lot angrier than there was any call for, even with the way Mapes spoke.

  Joyce looked from one to the other of them for a moment, His face was white, so the pimples showed in red blotches on it, or rather kind of blue. Then he slipped out door silently.

  "I'll deppitize 'em all proper, Judge," Mapes said. His coat was on, and he put his sombrero on the back of his head.

  "You can't do it," the Judge told him. "Risley's th only one empowered to deputize."

  Mapes started to answer back. He put one foot upon his chair, and spit over on the corner stove first. He liked it when he had the Judge this way, and didn't want to hurry it too much. There was going to be a wrangle, but I could only see one end of it. I started out after Joyce. We'd give Davies warning, anyhow, though I didn't see what he could do with it.

  I stopped in the door and said, loud enough so the Judge could hear over what Mapes was saying,

  "I'll tell Davies you're coming then, Judge."

  "Yes, yes, of course," he said, just glancing away from Mapes for an instant, and giving me a big, fixed smile. I figured that had him hooked the best I could manage, and ducked out quick, not stopping when I heard him call out in a different voice, showing he knew now what I'd said, "Wait, wait a moment . . ." I passed Mrs. Larch in the middle of the hall, her hands folded over her belly and looking at me like she figured I was to blame for the whole disorder. I gave her a wink and went on out without bothering to close the front door. I figured she'd take care of that, and I was right. Before I could get to the road, I heard it slam, and by the time the Judge got my name from her, and opened the door agam to call to me, I was far enough toward the main street so I could pretend not to hear him.

  Joyce was nearly at the crossing already, running with his coat flapping around him. He could tell Davies all there was to tell. I eased off when I'd got beyond fair cry of the Judge's house. There's better things to run in than high­heeled boots, and it looked like the word had really got around now. I didn't want to make a fool of myself. There were people out in front of every house, craning down toward the corner, and I passed women in the street who were trying to call back their children. One of them looked at me with a scared face. She looked at my gun belt and twisted her apron in her hands. But it wasn't me that scared her.

  "The horses," she said, like I knew everything she was thinking.

  "Send Tommy home if you see him, please," she begged. She didn't even know she didn't know me.

  At the next house a man in chaps was getting on his horse. There was a Winchester on his saddle. A woman, his wife I suppose, was standing right beside the horse and holding onto the man's leg with both hands. She ;s looking up at him and trying to say something and trying not to cry. The man wasn't answering, but just shaking his head short. His face was set and angry, like the many faces I'd been seeing, and he was trying to get her to let go of him before the horse, which was nervy, stepped on her. He was trying to do it without being rough, but she kept hanging on. A little kid, maybe two or three years old, was standing out in the brush in front of the house and crying hard, with her hands right down

>   her sides.

  More people than before were out in the middle of the street watching the crossing, where now and then they could see one of the riders who had let his horse go that far. The excitement had got through the whole villiage.

  One skinny old man in a blue work shirt, with his galluses out over it, and with a narrow, big-nosed head and his gray hair rumpled up so he looked like a rooster, was peering hard through his spectacles, and exclaiming furiously when a rider showed. A little old woman, as skinnny and stooped and chickenlike as he was, was trying to keep him from going any farther. When he saw me I stared at me wildly. He had big eyes, anyway, and they were twice as big through those glasses.

  "You goin'?" he rasped at me, shaking his stick at the corner.

  "John, John," the old lady clucked, "it don't do for you to go gettin' excited."

  `I ain't excited," the old man twittered, pounding his stick on the road, "I ain't excited; I'm jest plumb disgusted."

  I'd stopped because he'd caught hold of my shirt­sleeve.

  "You're goin', ain't you?" he threatened me again. "It looks like it, dad," I said.

  He didn't like my answer.

  "Looks like it?" he crowed. "Looks like it? Well, I guess it better look like it. What kinda stuff you boys made of these days?

  "You know how long they been dandlin' around down there?" He jabbed his stick at the corner again.

  "They got to get information yet," I told him.

  "More'n half an hour, that's what, more'n half an hour already. Half an hour since I seen how they was lally­gaggin' around and started timin' them," he said triumphantly, hauling a big, thick turnip out of his pocket and rapping it with the forefinger of the hand that had the cane in it. He glared up at me with those big eyes.

  "An' God knows how long before that; God only knows. Looks like," he cackled scornfully.

  "John," the old woman protested, "the young man don't even know us."

  "An' a good job fer him he don't," the old man told her.

  He was still hanging onto me.

  "You know those men that was killed?" he asked me.