Gun Law

by Ralph Cotton

  Beyond the wall, Dahl looked down at the two dead guards, Frost sprawled on the floor with a checkered napkin tucked down in his collar. Sealy sat slumped back in a chair, a checkered napkin spread across his lap. Both guards had white foamy spittle on their lips.

  “Poisoned!” said Stevens, staring, repulsed by the sight, but unable to take his eyes away.

  “My God!” said Shaggs. “Who would do something like this?”

  “Take your best guess,” Dahl said. He slipped his big Colt back into its holster, turned and walked toward the door, Billy Nichols right behind him.

  “My best guess?” said Shaggs, hurrying along beside him, out onto the street. “My best guess is that Emerson Kern has orchestrated this entire thing! He has deceived us, misled us and has now stolen our money!”

  “It wasn’t your money,” said Dahl, walking to the middle of the street through the blood and carnage.

  “I meant the bank’s money,” said Shaggs. “But it’s our money too—”

  “It’s not the bank’s money either,” Dahl said. He stooped down, loosened the gun belt from around Tribold Cooper’s waist and pulled it free.

  “It’s not?” Shaggs said. He spread his hands. “Then whose money is it?”

  “It belongs to the Derning and British Mining Company,” Dahl replied.

  “How—how do you know that?” Shaggs questioned, appearing both impressed and bewildered.

  “It says so on the bag,” Dahl answered. He reached out with the toe of his boot and pointed to the letters on the stiff canvas.

  “Oh . . . ,” said Shaggs.

  “And you can’t blame Emerson Kern for all of this,” Dahl said.

  “No, you’re right, sir,” said Shaggs. “I blame Mayor Coakley. He’s the stupid son of a bitch who allowed this to happen. Him and his damn gun law.”

  Dahl stopped and looked squarely at Shaggs. “If he’s a stupid son of a bitch, what are the rest of you?” he asked, his sharp stare hitting all of the armed townsmen standing in the street.

  “Sir . . . ?” the barber said.

  “You’re the ones who voted him in. You set the stage for everything else that happened here,” Dahl said with finality on the matter.

  Shaggs and the others squirmed.

  “Be that as it may,” Walter Stevens said, stepping forward, “what will you charge us to hunt him down and bring him back here?”

  “Like I told you before, there’re some things I won’t take pay for doing,” Dahl said. He turned to Billy Nichols and handed him Cooper’s gun belt, an empty slim-jim holster hanging on it. “Put this on. Sooner or later you’ll get tired of carrying that Colt in your hand.”

  Stevens started to say, “But what if we—”

  “I’ll bring him back to you, no charge,” said Dahl. “But don’t count on him being alive.”

  “No, of course not,” said Stevens. “I have a feeling you’ll find poor Lyndon Matheson somewhere along the trail. I’m almost certain that Kern took him hostage.”

  “Don’t count on that either,” said Dahl. He looked off toward a trail leading up into the hills. “Bankers have a way of coming through these things unscathed.”

  Billy adjusted the gun belt around his waist and shoved the Colt down into the holster.

  “Can I ride with you, Teacher?” he asked.

  Teacher . . . Dahl looked him up and down.

  “Have you got a horse?” he asked.

  “Well, no. . . .” The young man looked down at the ground, embarrassed. “I don’t have much of nothing.”

  “Don’t worry about it, you’re still young. You’ve got time,” said Dahl. He turned and called out to the townsmen gathered around them, “This man needs a horse. Anybody got a horse for our friend here?”

  Nearly every hand went up.

  “See how it works?” Dahl said to the young man. “Show folks what you stand for. The good ones will always stand with you.”

  “I’m learning,” the young man said. He nodded and fell in beside Dahl, following him to the livery barn.

  At the edge of an upward-reaching hill trail outside Kindred, Kern stood with his rifle in hand, the tip of its barrel pointed at Lyndon Matheson’s side.

  “I like the sound of things,” he said, staring back toward Kindred. “The townsmen have gotten their guns back by now, but they’re not shooting at us.”

  Matheson pushed the straying rifle barrel away from him. “Will you watch where you’re pointing that thing? I hate guns.”

  “Oh, really?” said Kern. He turned his eyes to the tall, regal-standing banker. “I’m not surprised. I noticed how scared you are of them when I pretended to stick one in your back,” he said.

  Matheson frowned. “I thought you had lost your mind and deviated entirely from our plan.”

  “No,” said Kern, “I just did it to get a rise out of you.” He chuckled. “I wouldn’t do nothing to change our plan. It was too perfect.” He touched his fingertips to the circle of dried blood on his shirt. He’d wiped the blood from Lyle Sloane’s chest onto his own after shooting the unsuspecting gunman.

  “It was until now,” Matheson said, gesturing at the trail behind them, where the buggy sat with a length of wheel broken away from the spokes. An extra horse stood hitched to the rear of the buggy. Two large laundry bags from the Li Woo Laundry House lay in the small rear buggy seat. The three canvas bags of payroll money had been emptied into them.

  “We sent the townsmen off chasing Whitesides and the others, and here we are—not a shot’s fired at us,” said Kern.

  “Thank goodness for that,” Matheson said.

  Kern looked at him again. “Because you really hate guns,” he reiterated for the banker, teasing him.

  “Yes, really,” said Matheson.

  “And why is that?” Kern asked.

  “Why indeed . . . ,” Matheson chuffed. “They’re loud, vulgar and crude. Civilized mankind has no place for such monstrous, deadly weapons.”

  “Vulgar and crude, eh?” Kern looked at the rifle in his hand, turning it back and forth.

  “Precisely,” said Matheson.

  Kern smiled to himself. “Not at all as refined or dignified as, say . . . poison?”

  Matheson just looked at him stonily for a moment.

  “We really should get busy and change the wheel,” he said. “You’ll find tools in the undercarriage, along with a spare wheel.”

  “Oh, will I?” said Kern, noting how Matheson had just passed the physical labor off onto him. “You bankers must think of everything.”

  Matheson gave a smug grin, standing with his hands folded behind his back, his swallowtail coat stirring slightly on a warm breeze.

  “I had the blacksmith install a spare wheel for just such an emergency as this,” he said. He swept a hand back toward the buggy. “So, have at it, and we’ll soon depart from this terrible frontier.”

  “Hunh-uh,” said Kern. “You change the wheel.”

  “You must be joking,” said Matheson. “I’m a banker and a politician. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “I’ll show you,” said Kern.

  “No, I refuse to do it,” Matheson said.

  Kern eased the gun barrel back around, pointed it at his chest and cocked the hammer.

  “I know how vulgar this must look, but here’s a nasty ol’ gun pointed at you, Mr. Banker-Politician,” Kern said. “Now, unless you’ve got some leftover poison you’d like to point back at me, you better do like I tell you.”

  Kern followed the banker to the buggy and stood back and watched as Matheson took off his black swallowtail suit coat with a sour look on his face. Matheson folded his coat neatly and laid it in the buggy beside the two laundry bags stuffed with money. He rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt, loosened his collar, lay down on his back in the dirt and crawled under the buggy.

  “It’s not here,” he said.

  “What do you mean, it’s not there?” said Kern, stooping for a better look.

&nb
sp; “That blasted Fannin!” said Matheson, crawling back from under the buggy, dirt and black grease streaking his white shirt.

  Kern stared at him.

  “I specifically told that imbecile to mount a spare wheel under this buggy. I even paid him to do it!” he raged.

  Kern shook his head. He looked off the trail back toward Kindred and let out a breath.

  “You’re starting to try my patience, Lyndon,” he said, a sense of warning in his voice.

  “It’s not my fault that Fannin didn’t do as he was told,” said Matheson.

  “I wonder if a rifle shot would tip anybody off that we’re up here,” Kern said, thinking out loud.

  Matheson looked worried. He scrambled around on the ground picking up pieces of the broken wheel.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Kern asked, his thumb slipping over the rifle hammer.

  “I once watched my father fix a buggy wheel,” Matheson replied, fitting a broken length of rounded wooden rim on the wagon spokes sticking down into the dirt. “I believe I can piece this together well enough to get us up the trail. There’s a place Dr. Washburn has up there where he goes to get drunk without making a spectacle of himself. I’m certain he has spare wheels there.”

  “Here’s the thing, Banker-Politician,” Kern said calmly. “I can shoot you, put the money bags on the buggy horses and ride my horse out of here.”

  “Is that the wisest thing for you to do, Kern?” Matheson asked.

  “Yeah,” said Kern, “I’m thinking maybe it is.” He eased the rifle barrel back at Matheson. But then he looked toward Kindred once again, let out a breath and said, “All right, work fast. Get this thing rolling, or I’ll leave you here looking up at the sun.”

  Chapter 24

  Once the wheel was repaired enough to ride on, Matheson drove the buggy up along the hill. To take some of the weight off the buggy, Kern followed on horseback, making sure not to let the laundry bags out of his sight for a second. At the top of hill, where the land leveled off some, Matheson pointed Kern toward a narrower path veering off along a hillside, covered heavily with pine and spruce.

  “This winds about two miles in and stops just before the door to the doctor’s cabin,” he said.

  “After you,” said Kern, wagging him forward with his rifle barrel. “I prefer keeping an eye on you from behind, rather than looking back over my shoulder.”

  “I’ve done nothing to make you distrust me, Kern,” the banker said indignantly.

  “Right,” Kern said, “and you did nothing to the coach guards except to serve them lunch—their last meal, as it turned out.”

  “That was part of our plan, was it not?” said Matheson, his coat still off, his sleeves still rolled up. A black streak of wheel grease stained his cheek.

  “Yep, it was,” said Kern. “There’s just something sneaky and unnatural about poisoning a man. I can’t say why, but it makes my skin crawl.”

  “Oh, what . . . ?” said Matheson. “I suppose it’s much more wholesome to blow a hole through a person’s heart with a big slug of lead?” He slapped the reins to the buggy horse and rolled on.

  As the buggy pulled forward, Kern’s hand tightened on his rifle.

  “Lyndon, I don’t see us lasting together very long in Mexico . . . ,” he murmured under his breath.

  A short time later, the trail widened out onto a flat clearing in the rocky hillside. There, built on stilts beside a runoff stream, stood a cabin made of pine, tin and adobe. Around its side sat the doctor’s buggy, a canvas thrown over it as protection from pine needles and rain.

  “Now, here we have a man who truly likes to drink alone,” Kern quipped in a guarded voice.

  “Finding the doctor here is both a blessing and a curse,” said Matheson. “He can help us put on a new wheel. But I’m sure he’s going to have many questions about these Chinese laundry bags.”

  “We thank him for helping with the wheel,” said Kern. “But if he has too many questions, I’ll be obliged to close his shop.”

  “Come, now, Kern,” said Matheson. “You can’t go around shooting everyone. Sooner or later, it has to stop.”

  “Yeah? Where’d you hear that?” Kern asked, staring at him.

  Matheson shook his head and eased the buggy forward, the patched-up wheel thumping, creaking with each turn.

  “At any rate, we’ve nothing to hide here,” he said. “Doc won’t know a thing about what went on in town. He has no reason not to trust us—you being our new marshal, me the councilman and bank manager.”

  “And we’ll play it just that way, if we can,” said Kern, laying his rifle across his lap and moving his hand away from it.

  “Hello, the house,” Matheson called out, stopping the buggy a few yards away and rising a little from the seat. “Dr. Washburn . . . it is I, Councilman Matheson. The marshal and I need some help here.”

  Peering out the front window and down a long flight of split pine stairs, Sara Cayes turned to Dr. Washburn, who had awakened from a nap in a cushioned rocking chair. He’d left his shoes sitting by the rocker and walked over beside her in his stockinged feet.

  “What should we do, Doc?” she asked.

  Washburn lowered his wire-rimmed spectacles, rubbed sleep from his eyes and sighed as he put them back on. He looked out through the wavy window glass, noticing the crooked buggy wheel and dried bloodstain on Kern’s shirt.

  “If they need help, I expect we’d best help them,” he said. “It is our marshal and one of our councilmen.”

  “But what about Kern’s deputies?” asked Sara. “We don’t want them to know Celia is here.” She tossed a glance over her shoulder at Celia Knox, lying in a small feather bed, a quilt pulled up over her in spite of the day’s heat.

  “No, we can’t risk letting Kern know she’s here,” said the doctor. “I’ll see what they want. As far as they know, you’re here with me.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Sara, liking the ruse, “and we want to be alone.” She smiled. “So be cross with them, get them away from here.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’ll do my best,” the doctor said, looking her up and down.

  “Dr. Washburn,” Matheson called out again, “are you all right in there?”

  “I’m coming,” the doctor called out, cracking the door open a little. “Let me get my trousers on.”

  Washburn hurriedly unbuttoned his trousers, dropped his suspenders off his shoulders and stripped his shirt from his back. He mussed his hair and started to swing the door open.

  “Wait,” said Sara. She ran to the bed and came back with a spare blanket. She threw it around his shoulders and gave him a slight shove.

  In the buggy, Matheson had started to step down and climb the steps up to the front door. Kern had stepped down from his saddle and followed suit. But they both stopped in their tracks when they saw the front door open. Doc Washburn stepped out onto a plank porch and stared down at them.

  “What the bejesus are you doing up here, Councilman Matheson?” he asked in a growling voice, walking down the steps to keep them from coming up. “Where do I have to go to get away and relax?” he demanded.

  “Our apologies, Dr. Washburn,” said Matheson. “As you can see, we’ve had a wheel problem not far from here. I remembered your place here and . . . well, I thought we would go through your barn and see if you might have a spare buggy wheel.”

  “Yeah, we never expected that you’d be here,” said Kern. “Imagine our surprise to see your buggy sitting there.”

  Washburn looked back and forth at them, noting that there was no hole or rip in Kern’s shirt, only the smeared, dried circle of blood. He let out a breath and jerked his head toward a small barn around the side of the house.

  “All right, there should be a wheel or two in there. But you’ll have to get it yourselves and put it on. Unless one of you is hurt, I’m a little busy right now.” He stared at Kern, but made no gesture toward the dried blood.

  “Yeah?” Kern asked, suddenly looking sus
picious. “Busy doing what?”

  “That, Marshal, is none of your business,” said Washburn. “I told you where the wheel is. Get it, put it on and go away.”

  Kern didn’t like his tone. “Listen, old man—” he said, getting more suspicious, swinging down from his saddle.

  But before he could say anything else, the three of them heard the door swing open. They looked up the long flight of steps.

  “Dr. Freddie, are you going to be all day?” Sara called down, wearing nothing but a thin sheet she held loosely up over the front of her body.

  Good Lord . . . ! Washburn thought, gazing up at her, his mouth agape.

  “Uh—Yes! I’m coming. I’ll be right there,” the old doctor said. He looked back at the two, noting Matheson’s stunned expression and the smug, amused smile on Kern’s face.

  “Gentlemen,” Washburn said gruffly, “need I explain myself any further?”

  “No, Doctor!” said Matheson. “We understand, don’t we, Marshal?”

  “Oh yes, we understand,” said Kern. They looked up the long steps in time to see Sara turn around and walk bare-bottomed back inside the house. “You get on back up there, Dr. Freddie,” Kern said with a grin.

  “Help yourself to any tools, wheels, whatever you need,” said Washburn, turning around and hurrying back up the steps.

  “All this time,” Matheson said, “I thought the old fool came up here to drink alone.”

  “Let’s get busy,” said Kern. “We don’t know how long it’ll be before we’ll have townsmen on our tails.”

  Back inside the house, Dr. Washburn stood puffing and panting from the climb up the steep stairway. With a hand clasped to his chest, he stared at Sara, who was now back in her clothes.

  “How did I do, Doc?” she asked.

  “Lord, gal . . . you did fine . . . absolutely fine,” he said, bug-eyed, trying to catch his breath. He couldn’t get rid of the picture of her—the pale, creamy flesh he’d caught only a glimpse of when she had turned and walked back inside. “Jesus . . . ,” he added.