Shadow of the Gun

by West, Joseph A. ; Compton, Ralph

  That, McBride decided, was putting it mildly. It seemed Allison did not object to the man’s criminal activities in the least. He was still pondering that fact when Moses entered with a loaded silver tray.

  He laid a shallow bowl of what looked like thin chicken broth in front of Allison, then passed a huge platter with a thick steak, roasted potatoes and peas to McBride.

  The woman picked up her spoon. “Please eat, John,” she smiled.

  Western men, surrounded by the best prime beef in the world, burned their steaks to the consistency of old boot leather. McBride, to his surprise when he cut into his meat, discovered that it had been cooked medium rare, the way he liked it.

  “The food is to your liking?” Allison asked. She had yet to try her soup.

  “Wonderful,” McBride said, chewing. He was eating fast before the coldness of the room chilled his steak. “How did Moses know how I like my beef cooked?”

  “I think he heard your”—she smiled, taking any possible sting out of it—“Noo Yawk accent and drew his own conclusions. And you are from New York, aren’t you, John?”

  McBride nodded, his head bent over his plate. “Yes I am.”

  “And you were a police officer of some kind.”

  That surprised him. McBride lifted his eyes to Allison’s. “How did you know?”

  “There’s something about you that speaks lawman to me. Maybe that’s why you agreed to become our new town marshal.”

  “You know that too?”

  “There’s little that happens in Suicide I don’t know about.” She hesitated a heartbeat. “What kind of police officer were you?”

  “A good one, I hope.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant, what did you do in the police force?”

  “I was a detective sergeant. A shadow as we were called.”

  Allison considered this, then said after a while, “John, can I depend on your protection?”

  McBride was surprised again. “Of course, but protection from what?”

  “From those who would do me and this house harm.”

  “I won’t let anything happen to you, Allison,” McBride said, meaning every word.

  The woman reached out and placed her slender white hand over his huge scarred paw. “Thank you, John. Just know that I may need you sooner than you think.”

  “Better eat your soup,” McBride said softly.

  But Allison pushed her bowl, untouched, away from her. “I eat very little,” she said, frowning. “I have an absolute horror of getting fat and ugly.”

  Chapter 21

  After dinner Allison suggested they withdraw to the drawing room while Moses dealt with the dishes.

  For an hour they talked of inconsequential things, the woman questioning McBride closely about how large the bustles of New York’s fashionable belles were and how tiny their hats. He in turn asked about Allison’s finishing school and finally got a chance to tell her about his young Chinese wards and how he hoped his cantina would help provide them with a good education.

  Finally Allison pulled her kimono closer around her and rose to her feet. “John, the hour grows late. You’ve been an excellent guest, most gracious, understanding and erudite, and I wouldn’t dream of making you walk home in the dark and cold. You may stay here tonight.”

  She pulled a cord hanging by the fireplace and said, “Moses will show you to your room.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Allison,” McBride said, feeling vaguely disappointed. “But I don’t want to be any trouble.”

  “No trouble at all. I’ll sleep better knowing you are under my roof.” The door opened and she said, “Ah, here Moses is now. Then I’ll bid you good night.”

  After Allison left, the haunting memory of her perfume lingering, Moses picked up a candelabra and said, “This way, please.”

  They climbed the staircase, then turned along a balcony, the giant’s moving shadow an enormous, hulking shape on the wall. The balcony led to a short hallway with a door on either side and a narrow stairway at the end. Moses opened the door on the left and ushered McBride inside. There was a large, four-poster bed, a dresser and a single overstuffed chair. Both windows were open, the curtains blowing.

  Moses laid the guttering candelabra on the dresser and turned to McBride. The man’s eyes were hidden in shadow. “Breakfast is at six sharp,” he said. “I’ll wake you then.”

  Then he turned and was gone, taking the candles with him. McBride heard a key turn in the lock—on the outside of the door.

  Left in darkness, he stumbled across the room and shut the windows. He made his way back to the bed, removed his elastic-sided boots and placed them and his hat on the carpeted floor beside him. He took off his coat and pants, let them drop, and climbed between the sheets, pulling the patchwork comforter higher around his neck. The sheets felt damp, clammy, but he was tired out from his long ride earlier in the day and from the large meal he’d eaten, and sleep found him quickly.

  McBride woke to the sound of voices.

  The room was still dark and he guessed he’d been asleep only for a couple of hours. He lay on his back, hands behind his head and, his ears straining, listened.

  Recalling the layout of the house, his bedroom must be directly under one of the turret rooms. The voices were muffled, but one was a woman’s; the other, harsher, lower, belonged to a man.

  Did Moses live in the turret room and was Allison up there talking to him?

  But as he listened, McBride realized that the male voice did not belong to Moses. It was a strained rumble, interrupted by long pauses, the intonation of a sick man or a man in pain. The woman’s voice, Allison’s voice, was higher and more distinct.

  McBride listened but heard only tattered fragments of speech, the man’s voice saying, “…dangerous…no good…best alone…”

  Then Allison: “…need him…get rid…move on…”

  The male voice coming back: “…this town…time…I want…finish it…get Guerrero…”

  McBride rolled out of bed, the springs shrieking under him. The voices suddenly stilled. He crossed to the door, floorboards creaking under his weight, and listened. He heard hurried footsteps on the stairs outside the wall of his room, then silence.

  He waited at the door for several long minutes, then made his way back to bed.

  With whom had Allison been talking? And about what? McBride had no answer for either question and for the time being he dismissed them from his mind.

  Right now he needed more sleep.

  The love beautiful women have for candlelight dates back millennia, and candlelight loves them passionately in return. But in the cold, gray dawn there is no candlelight, only reality. There are no mysteries, no hidden things; everything is revealed.

  When Allison Elliot, dressed in a demure morning gown of brown taffeta, took her seat beside McBride in the dining room, he noticed a hardness about her mouth and fine lines between her eyebrows that suggested a woman who frowned much and laughed little. He had not seen either the night before. All the womanly softness had fled from her with the morning, revealing steel.

  Now McBride could imagine Allison Elliot using a Sharps rifle.

  “Did you sleep well, John?” she asked, fluttering a napkin onto her lap.

  “Very well. Like a log, as they say.”

  “The coyotes complained all night. I thought they might have disturbed you.”

  “I heard nothing,” McBride said, his face expressionless.

  Allison held his eyes for several moments; then she smiled. “Coffee?”

  Moses served McBride a huge breakfast of bacon, eggs and sourdough biscuits. To his amazement the man poured three fingers of whiskey, laid the glass in front of Allison and beside that a long, black cheroot.

  “May I beg your indulgence?” the woman asked, holding up the cigar between two fingers.

  “Of course,” McBride said, his fork poised midway between his plate and mouth. Allison Elliot was turning out to be a strange woman.


  Moses thumbed a match into flame, lit Allison’s cigar, then bowed and left.

  “A good cigar and bonded bourbon was a morning ritual of my father’s,” she said. “I follow in his footsteps.”

  McBride nodded. He didn’t know what to say. He bent to his plate again just as the woman blew a cloud of smoke into his face—whether by accident or design he could not tell.

  After breakfast Allison rose and said, “It was so lovely having you visit, John. We must do it again sometime.” She smiled. “Moses will see you to the door.”

  McBride remembered the Apache threat and McKay’s request that Allison allow her house to be used as a redoubt in the event of an attack. Now he told her that much.

  The woman’s back stiffened and a cold blaze kindled in her eyes. “The Apaches have never bothered this house. No, what you suggest is out of the question. And you can tell that to Jed McKay and the others.”

  Allison turned on her heel and swept out of the room, leaving McBride to dangle his hat in his hands and feel small, like a poor relative who’d just been turned down for a handout.

  When McBride walked through the gray morning and stepped into the El Coyote Azul he was pleased to see that the place was busy. Every table was taken and the fat ladies were so busy cooking and serving they didn’t notice him come in. But Adam Whitehead did.

  The big blacksmith rose and blocked McBride’s path, standing so close he smelled coffee on the man’s breath. Whitehead got right to the point, his black eyes hostile. “Did you find John Wright and his wife?”

  Lying did not come easily to McBride and he tried to sidestep the issue. “Who told you I was going after them?”

  “McKay. Well, did you find them?”

  Whitehead’s voice was loud and every head was turned in McBride’s direction, even, he noticed, Bear, who was standing at the bar, a cup of coffee in his hand.

  Knowing he was backed into a corner, McBride swallowed and said, “No, I didn’t. That’s a lot of country out there.”

  “No matter,” the blacksmith said. “They’re dead by this time anyhow.”

  One lie building on another, McBride felt trapped. “I wouldn’t say that. If they avoided Apaches I guess they’ll be all right.”

  Whitehead studied McBride’s face for several moments. He said, “I see the lie in your eyes.”

  “Whitehead!” Bear’s voice, an angry bellow. The old scout stepped away from the bar. “You call a man a liar—that’s gun talk.”

  “Bear Miller, I’m not a gunfighter like you,” Whitehead said. “But I see what I see. I think this man is lying to cover for the Elliot witch.”

  There was a murmur of agreement from the others in the cantina and McBride knew he had to defuse the situation fast. Bear took loyalty to a friend seriously and his hand was close to his Colt, the devil dancing in his eyes.

  “Sit down and finish your breakfast, Adam,” McBride said. “If I get news of John Wright and his wife, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “The only news you’ll get of Wright is that he’s dead,” Whitehead said. “You know it, I know it and the witch on the hill knows it.” His head turned to Bear. “I’ve got no quarrel with you. Hell, I was leaving anyway.”

  The big blacksmith brushed angrily past McBride and stepped out of the cantina door.

  A split second later his brains were blown out the right side of his skull as he was hit by a heavy caliber bullet. Then came the echoing blast of a rifle.

  Chapter 22

  Led by McBride, men stampeded for the door. Behind them, Joan Whitehead screamed and kept on screaming.

  McBride glanced briefly at Whitehead, knowing the man was beyond help. He looked wildly around him and saw Jed McKay standing outside his store.

  “Who fired the shot?” he yelled.

  McKay raised his shoulders. “I don’t know.”

  “Where did it come from?”

  “I don’t know that either. I heard the rifle and ran out here.” McKay started to walk toward McBride. “Who is it, Marshal?”

  “Adam Whitehead.”

  “Oh my God!” McKay started to run.

  The blacksmith’s brains were seeping into the dirt, his blood spreading around his head in a dark pool. Joan Whitehead was elbowing her way through the gawking men and McBride yelled, “Keep her away! She doesn’t have to see this.”

  The woman’s hand dived into her purse and she came up holding a .40-caliber Deringer. “John McBride, you try to keep me away from my man and I’ll kill you.”

  “She is his wife, John.” Bear was looking at him, a small plea in his eyes.

  McBride nodded. “Let Mrs. Whitehead pass.”

  The woman threw herself on her husband, sobs racking her thin body. Then she raised her tear-streaked face to the cold sky and screamed, “She did this! It was the witch!”

  More people had gathered and there were loud mutterings. It doesn’t take much to turn an assembly of angry, frightened men into a lynch mob, and already they were taking their first steps along the ragged edge between rationality and madness.

  “Listen men, I’ll find out who did this,” McBride said, holding up his hands for quiet. “Just give me time.”

  “We all know who killed Adam Whitehead,” a man yelled. “It was the Elliot woman or one of them that works for her.”

  “You have no proof of that,” McBride said. “It could even have been an Apache hidden up there in the hill.”

  “No Indian can shoot that far,” the man said. “But Allison Elliot can.”

  “Or her dwarf,” another man hollered. “He’s killed men before with a rifle.”

  “Kill him, kill that evil creature…that thing.” Joan Whitehead was looking up at the men around her, her face a twisted mask of grief and hate. “The man who murdered my husband was no savage. It was Jim Drago, following the witch’s orders.”

  “Let’s get him!” somebody yelled.

  “String him up!”

  “You men stay right there!” McBride shouted. “I’m the town marshal and I’ll arrest the first man who makes a move toward the livery barn.”

  A tall, towhead with a broken nose and hot eyes drew a gun from his waistband. “McBride, you step away or by God I’ll drop you right where you stand.”

  “Maddox, the marshal ain’t heeled,” Bear said mildly. “But I am.”

  The man called Maddox hesitated, aware of the old scout’s reputation. But another voice, soft, melodious and amused, ended it.

  “McBride, I can drop…oh…say seven or eight of them pig farmers. You only have to give the word.”

  Every head turned to the speaker, a young man sitting a paint pony. Unshaven and wearing dusty range clothes, he looked like anybody else. But the two silver-plated Remingtons he held muzzle up at each side of his head, his thumbs on the hammers, gave the lie to his ordinary appearance.

  The youngster grinned. “McBride, what say I drop the big towhead just to prove my bona fides?”

  “And what the hell are your bona fides?” a voice yelled.

  “These.” The youngster shook his guns. “And my name. Down in the Brazos River country where I hail from, they call me Roddy Rentzin.”

  A ripple went through the crowd and men were already climbing down, dropping their eyes. Even Bear looked uneasy, and McBride saw him slowly move his hand away from his gun.

  The kid was grinning again. “You, towhead, are you planning to use that gun? If you ain’t, drop it.”

  Maddox was either stupid or brave or both. He turned to face Rentzin as other men moved away from him. “Maybe you was the one who murdered Adam Whitehead, the man you see lying there. You shot him with the rifle on your saddle and then rode into town bold as brass.”

  Rentzin smiled and nodded. “Maybe. But I’m calling you a damn liar.”

  “Enough!” McBride said. “You two let it go.” He moved to step between the men. But he never made it.

  Maddox’s face was wild, scared, but he knew he could not step away from
an insult like that, not if he wanted to hold his head high in the company of men. His gun came up as he eared back the hammer with the palm of his left hand. Too slow. Rentzin’s guns were already hammering. Hit twice, then twice again, Maddox slammed back against the wall of the cantina, his shirtfront crimson. He tried to bring his Colt on target but couldn’t lift it to his eyes. He dropped to his knees, his eyes shocked and unbelieving, then fell facedown in the dirt.

  A sullen drift of gray gun smoke coiled among the onlookers. One by one, few sparing a glance for the two dead men, the crowd faded away until only McBride, Bear and Mrs. Whitehead remained. The woman was staring at Rentzin as though he was some kind of wild animal she’d never seen before.

  Rentzin spoke to McBride. “Fair fight, Marshal. He didn’t give me a choice.” He nodded in the direction of Whitehead. “Who done for him?”

  “I don’t know yet,” McBride said. “But I will.” He moved to Joan Whitehead and put his hand on her shoulder. “Mrs. Whitehead, do you want us to take Adam home?”

  The woman nodded and rose unsteadily to her feet, McBride helping her. “I’ll wash him and bury him in his Masonic apron so he’ll be decent when he meets his Maker,” she said.

  The two fat ladies stepped out of the cantina doorway and flanked Mrs. Whitehead. Tears were rolling down their chubby cheeks as they tried their best to console her in a language she did not understand.

  McBride called some of the men back, including McKay and Nathan Levy, and they carried the dead man to his cabin. His wife, supported by the fat ladies, followed behind them. Maddox had no family but he too was carried to his shack on the edge of town. Suicide had no undertaker, but Levy filled that role and he would take care of Maddox. His fee for a man who died without family was everything the man owned.

  Rentzin watched the grim processions leave, then grinned and holstered his guns. “Well, Marshal, are you going to arrest me?”

  McBride thought for a few moments, then shook his head. “No, it was a fair fight, just like you said.” He lifted cold eyes to the kid’s face. “But you pushed him into it.”