by Bill Crider
After that, Jack drifted around the border for a while, picking up the glass eye along the way, then worked his way north and wound up in Dry Springs. He'd taken the deputy's job because it was something to do and because Ward Vincent had assured him there was no danger in it, despite the way the last sheriff had died.
"Nothin' ever happens here," Vincent said. "Worst scrape you might get into would be some drunk cowboy tryin' to force his affections on some saloon girl that's too tired to fool with him that night. And how often do you think that would happen?"
"Never, prob'ly," Jack said.
"That's right. You do the job right, you'll never have to worry about gettin' shot up or losin' that other eye."
That was just fine by Jack, who admitted himself, though only to Vincent, that what had happened to him down on the border had changed his outlook on a whole lot of things.
"I don't know what it was," he said. "Whether it was my eye, or bitin' that fella's ear off, or the way Estrella looked lyin' there on the floor. She'd been so pretty before, so happy, tellin' me about how she was gonna leave that cantina some day with a big, good-lookin' fella like me and go off and have a house full of kids and cook and get fat. Then there she was, dead and bloody and ugly, never goin' anywhere again, much less with me."
Things like that happened more often than you'd think in the bars and cantinas, and they bothered lots of people less than they bothered Jack. He was the kind who took the whole episode to heart.
"Seems like I just never had the stomach for killin' after that," he said. "Or even for fightin' much. I can hold down the deputy job, though, if it's as easy as you say."
It was, and Jack had done a good job over the years. There had never been any call for him to engage in violence, and he never had.
So why am I worried about him? Vincent wondered. It was probably because of the old incident, that was all, and there wasn't really any similarity between the two. If Jack hated violence so much, there wasn't any chance he would have killed Liz Randall, and his having no stomach for it probably did more than anything else to explain why he had stood up to the men. He was ashamed of his own part, however small it had been, in what they had done to Paco. Having experienced a similar fate himself, he would naturally want to stand up for the boy.
Wouldn't he? Somehow, Vincent couldn't quite stop thinking about it.
And there was something else that was bothering him, something he couldn't quite pin down, that was squirming around in the back of his mind. He thought it was important, but he figured that if it was, it would come clear sooner or later.
He had plenty of other things to worry about right now, more than he wanted, and the first one was how he was going to find Paco Morales.
22.
Len Hawkins handed Harl Case a box of 12-gauge shotgun shells.
"If that don't do the job on him, nothin' will," Hawkins said.
Harl hefted the box in his right hand. In his left he was holding the Whitney single-shot that Len had already given him.
"It won't shot but once, but if you hit him with it, once will be all you need," Len said. "You can count on that, all right."
Len's store hadn't been opened that day, since Len did all the work himself, but he didn't mind taking a day off in a good cause, and catching up with Paco Morales seemed like a good enough cause to him.
Len was going to take his Winchester repeater, but Harl didn't have anything but a hand gun, and that hadn't been fired in years.
"Hell, you can't do this kinda work with some old hogleg that you don't even know'll shoot," Len said. "We'll go over to the store and I'll fix you up right and proper."
Everyone else thought of himself as appropriately armed. The cowboys all had pistols that they considered adequate. Charley Davis and Benteen had rifles, as did Turley Ross. Lane Harper was the only one who didn't carry a weapon as a matter of course, but he said he could take the sawed-off double barrel that was kept behind the bar at Danton's saloon.
"If I get close enough to use it, we won't have to worry about diggin' a grave," he said. "There won't be enough of that meskin left to bury." Everybody knew it was pretty much the truth. You could blow off a barn door and kill a horse with the same shot from a sawed-off.
Harl looked around the store. In the dim light he could see the barrels of nails, the bundles of ax handles and hoe handles, the plow shares, the pistols behind the glass of the counter where Len kept them. It might have been his imagination, but he thought he could smell gun oil.
"Better put you a shell in the breech," Len told him. "You don't want to get caught off guard."
Harl was wondering about that. How was he going to get caught off guard by a kid? How come they needed so many men to go after him? It wasn't like they were goin' after Wes Hardin or Jesse James.
When it came right down to it, Harl was having second thoughts about the whole thing. He wasn't a gunman by either inclination or practice. He liked animals, and he liked taking care of them. Did a good job of it, too, according to all his customers.
He had kept the livery stable for fifteen years in Dry Springs. For the last couple of years, his boys had been old enough to do most of the work, and he'd more or less turned it over to them. That was why he had time to have a few drinks now and then. It was why he'd been in the saloon at least two different times when he wished to hell he'd been somewhere else.
The first time had been when the elder Morales had been killed.
The second was last night, when that Jack Simkins had come by, askin' if they could go lookin' for the preacher's girl. How did he get into things like that, anyhow? Maybe he ought to start spendin' more time at home and a lot less around places that sold liquor.
He slipped a 12-gauge shell into the breech of the Whitney and looked at Len. "You reckon we're doin' the right thing?" he asked.
"What the hell does that mean?" Hawkins asked. He was feeding shells into the Winchester. "We're goin' after a killer. That's the right thing, ain't it?"
Harl shrugged. "Maybe not; it all depends."
Len laid the rifle down on the counter top. "You beginnin' to turn yellow, Harl? I wouldn't've thought it of you."
Harl shook his head. "It ain't that. I ain't afraid. But the truth of the matter is, we ain't really got no business goin' after that boy. We got us a sheriff in town for that kind of thing. Maybe we oughta leave it to him. It's his job to do, after all."
"You know Ward Vincent as well as I do," Len said. "He's a good enough fella, steady, you can depend on him to be there when there's a drunk needs throwed out of the saloon on Saturday night or when somebody steals a cow -- which ain't happened in years, now that I think of it. Comes to somethin' like this, though, well, he's a little skittish. You remember when that gambler shot that meskin?"
"Paco's daddy," Harl said. "Sure, I remember. I wish I didn't."
"Well, that's the kinda thing I mean," Len said. "You and me both know what happened that time, and if Vincent had pushed it, he would've found out. He didn't, though."
"Nobody wanted him to," Harl pointed out. He was thinking about the way it had happened that time. He had figured that Moran was cheatin', just like Morales had, but he hadn't wanted to call him on it. There was somethin' about the gambler's eyes that Harl didn't like, somethin' that said 'trouble' just as plain as if Moran had a sign hangin' around his neck. Besides, he couldn't figure out just how the cheatin' was done.
Morales hadn't figured it out, either, but he'd finally had enough. When he'd called Moran a cheater, the gambler hadn't hesitated. He'd pulled his big pistol and shot Morales right in the chest.
"You all saw what happened, didn't you?" Moran said.
Most of them had hesitated to say they had, but Moran still had his gun in his hand, so finally somebody -- it was Turley Ross, Harl thought, or maybe Lane Harper -- said, "Yeah. We saw it. He made the first move."
After that, they all went along. Morales was just a meskin, anyhow, and Moran had a right to shoot somebody tha
t was callin' him a cheat, if the fella couldn't prove it. Even Harl went along, though he hadn't really felt right about it. He wondered what would've happened if he'd been the one to say somethin' about the cheatin'. If it had been him that got shot, how long would it've taken his buddies to say the same thing they were sayin' about Morales?
He even wondered how long it would've take him to say the same thing about them.
Moran had been icy calm about the shooting. When he saw that things were goin' his way, he holstered the pistol and said, "These damn greasers ought never to gamble. They don't know anything about how to play cards, and they always try to say an honest man is cheatin' when they don't win. I reckon that's the reason he went for his knife. We ought never to've let him get into the game."
He was right about lettin' Morales have a seat at the table, and Harl knew it as well as anybody. They usually didn't let meskins in any of the games in the saloon. It was all right for them to have a drink or two, but lettin' 'em in a game was just askin' for trouble.
Still, Morales seemed like a steady sort. He'd lived around town for as long as anybody could remember, had a nice family, kept more or less to himself, and never bothered anybody. He had a little money, and it there didn't seem to be any harm in lettin' him sit in for a few hands. He'd done it before, but there hadn't been any outsiders playin' at the time.
And what was that business about a knife? Morales didn't have any knife, not that Harl could remember ever seeing.
That is, he didn't have one the first time Harl looked at him, lyin' there on the floor with the blood soakin' into the front of his shirt.
He sure as hell did the next time Harl looked, though. A real pig-sticker, lyin' right there by his right hand like he'd dropped it when he fell.
Now where did that come from? Harl thought.
Well, he knew where. The gambler, when he'd put his gun up, had reached into his boot and come out with somethin' and put it by the body. Harl hadn't really been lookin'. But it was the knife that he'd put there, no question about it.
"These meskins really like knives," Moran said to no one in particular. "Prob'ly had it in his boot. That's where they carry 'em, mostly."
"That's the truth," somebody said. "They all got one they carry there."
It didn't matter who said that. Harl couldn't remember. But he knew it was a lie, even at the time. Nobody in that saloon could remember ever seein' Morales with a knife.
They all went along with the lie, though, and it seemed to Harl like a sorry coincidence that the same bunch had to be in the saloon to be called out to look for the Randall girl and to find Morales' boy there with her body. Since they were the usual steady customers in Danton's, it wasn't much of a coincidence, really, but it was shame, anyhow.
Harl tried to think who else had been there at the card game, but he couldn't think of anybody except for Willie Turner and Turner had been to drunk to notice anything. At least that's what ever'body thought. Anyhow, he'd never said anything about what happened.
What happened was that they'd all taken the easiest way out, Harl thought. They'd let a man get away with murder because they didn't have the gumption to stand up to him. Maybe they were afraid of gettin' hurt, or maybe they were afraid to take the side of a dead meskin against another white man. For whatever reason, they'd gone along.
And now Harl was afraid they were doing it again. He was just a man who liked horses and had a livery stable. He'd never hurt anybody on purpose, never even gotten into a fight in his life. Now here he was, standing with a scattergun in his hands, about to go gunning for a boy -- just a kid.
What if they were wrong about it? They'd had a little to drink last night, and when they saw Paco Morales, they'd gotten a little carried away. Nothin' wrong with that. They'd seen that girl, and Lordy she was cut up. No wonder things got a little out of hand when they saw Paco. Maybe they were wrong to do it, but nobody could blame them for that, and they could make up for it now. It wasn't too late.
"Len," he said, "what if that boy didn't do it?"
"He did it," Len said, picking up his rifle. "We saw him."
"We saw him there in the grove. We didn't see him lay a hand on that girl, anymore than we saw his daddy pull a knife on that gambler."
"Talkin' that way won't do no good," Len said. "Let's get on back before they leave without us."
He walked by Harl and over to the door. "Come on. I ain't gonna wait for you all day."
Standing there in the doorway, the light behind him, he looked to Harl like a skeleton with a rifle dangling from its
bony hand. That's how skinny he was.
"Len, what if someday it comes out about how there wasn't no knife that other time and the sheriff finds out that it was all Moran's fault that Morales got killed?"
"Who's gonna tell him? You?"
"No. No, I never meant anything like that."
"It's a good thing. Ain't nobody gonna tell, and that sheriff ain't gonna find out any other way. Now, are you comin', or not."
"I'm comin'," Harl said.
23.
Benteen drew Charley to a table in a corner of the saloon. He had a few things he wanted to say before they left. It wouldn't hurt to let everyone have a few more drinks; liquor was just the thing to get them in the mood for what they were about to do. Benteen himself was not a drinking man, but he understood the appeal it had for others.
"I want to talk to you a minute," he told Charley when they were seated. "What's this about the sheriff calming Lucille down?"
"She was a little upset with me," Charley explained. "She was doin' a little shootin'."
Benteen nodded. His daughter was a strong-willed, hot-tempered woman, and she knew how to handle a gun. "She have a reason to be doing that?"
"Not a bit of one," Charley said, looking Benteen straight in the eye. "I didn't have anything to do with that girl gettin' herself killed."
"I want to believe that," Benteen said, his glance not wavering from Charley's. "It had better be the truth."
"It is," Charley said, hoping the old man couldn't read his mind and wishing he'd never gone out of the bunk house last night. There were men right there in the room who knew he hadn't gotten there till late, but they hadn't said anything yet. Maybe they wouldn't, ever. You never could tell when they might, though.
"You're sweating a lot, Charley," Benteen said. "You sure you're telling me everything."
"It's a hot day," Charley said. He could feel the sweat running down the back of his neck. "I hadn't been seein' Liz for more'n a month, and that's God's truth."
"Very well," Benteen said. "And God help you if it isn't. Let's see if we can get this little party started."
He moved his chair back from the table and got up. Charley watched his straight back as he walked to the men at the bar. Then he glanced around at one of the other tables and saw the preacher looking at him. The preacher's eyes were like holes in a skull. The sweat on Charley's body felt suddenly chilled.
#
Lucille Benteen saw the men leave the saloon, her father and Charley among them. She heard them, too, yelling and calling out to each other as they stumbled around. They mounted up and swirled away in a cloud of dust, but for some reason they were not headed for the ranch. She wondered where they could be going. It wasn't like her father to go off like that, without coming back by to tell her what he had said to Charley or what Charley had said to him. And the preacher was with them. What on earth would they be doing with the preacher? Her father hadn't been to church in years.
As the last of the riders passed down the street, another man came out of the saloon door and stood watching them. He looked familiar to Lucille, and she realized that he was Willie Turner. She remembered how he had lost his family and taken to drinking. He looked sober enough now, however. She decided to satisfy her curiosity by asking him what was going on.
She went downstairs and through the lobby. The desk clerk looked up as she passed, but he didn't say anything. She was a very at
tractive woman, he thought, and he admired the way her riding britches fit, but she sure was a hellcat. He would've hated to be that Charley Davis and have her mad at him.
When Lucille got outside, Willie Turner was still standing on the boardwalk under the saloon awning, though the riders were by now nearly out of sight. Lucille crossed over to him, looking up and down the street as she did so. There were very few people out in the heat of the day. A woman with a parasol was going in the dry goods store, and one wagon moved slowly past. Two lank dogs were barking as they chased a cat down the street and into an alley, but they didn't look or sound particularly enthusiastic about it.
Lucille stepped up on the boardwalk beside Willie. "Mr. Turner?" she said.
Willie turned to look at her. He hadn't shaved in a good while, and he was unpleasantly fragrant, but Lucille was used to cowhands who didn't bathe much more often than Willie. She was not offended.
"Who're you?" Willie said.
"I'm Lucille Benteen, Roger Benteen's daughter."
"Oh," Willie said vaguely. "I guess I should've known that. Seems like I can't remember too good anymore, though."
"I was wondering," Lucille said. "Where is everyone going?"
"The Morales place," Willie said.
"What are they going out there for?"
"You ain't heard?"
"Heard what?"
"About Liz Randall."
"No. What about her?"
Willie was reluctant to tell the story, but at the same time he found himself wanting to tell, and it all came spilling out, even the part about how he knew that what they were doing was wrong.
Lucille was horrified by the story, especially by what had happened to Liz. She had nothing against the girl; she blamed Charley entirely for whatever had been going on between them, and it was terrible to think that a killer could be lurking around Dry Springs. But what Willie seemed to be saying now was even more horrifying.
