Give-A-Damn Jones: A Novel of the West

by Bill Pronzini

  He was in fine fettle tonight, smiling and humming to himself, happy as a pup with two tails. And well he should be after three more extractions, four gold fillings, ten mouth examinations, an order for one complete set of vulcanite dentures, and every last bottle we had of Doc Christmas’s Wonder Painkiller sold. Before we left Box Elder and went to another town, we’d have to buy some of the ingredients we needed to mix us up a new batch. Which we’d do in private somewheres along the trail in whichever direction the doc reckoned on heading. If we kept on doing this kind of business, we’d run out of gold and the other stuff Doc used sooner than expected; then we’d have to lay over in one of the bigger towns while we waited for his sublet dentist in Spokane to send us what was needed.

  It’d been a real successful two days, all right, just as he figured it would be, but I still didn’t feel right about the whole business. Lying to the law and deceiving folks the way we done. It was some sinful, even in a good cause.

  The doc a marksman? Hell’s bells, he couldn’t hit the side of a barn with that old Colt pistol of his in broad daylight, much less shoot a man’s eye out on a dark night.

  He wasn’t the one ventilated Elrod Patch.

  The tramp printer, Artemas Jones, done it.

  The way it actual happened, Doc and me was tucked up on our bunks and he was snoring away when the horses commenced to kick up a fuss. I was just barely dozing so I heard ’em plain and I knowed right away something was wrong. I shook Doc awake, then there was a yell outside, and just as I flung open the rear door I heard “Let go that hammer, Patch!” and a snarled answer I couldn’t make out. I scrambled out of the wagon with Doc right behind me cussing, something he don’t usually do.

  Sure enough, the two of ’em was over by the horses, Patch with that five-pound sledge lifted straight up in the air and Jones about ten paces away with his legs spread and one arm stretched out long. “I’m warning you, Patch, I’ll fire!” he yells, but Patch didn’t pay no attention. He let out a bellow and charged. It was too dark to see the pistol in Jones’s hand until it spit flame, surprising hell out of both Doc and me. And down Patch went like an axed steer.

  The two of us run over there. Jones lowered his pistol and says half angry, half sad, “I had to do it. He didn’t give me a choice.”

  “Self-defense,” Doc says. Wasn’t no doubt in either of us that that’s what it was.

  “He was getting ready to bash one or both of your horses,” Jones says, leaning down to tuck the pistol into the top of his boot. “Would have if I hadn’t come along when I did.”

  “We’re grateful to you for stepping in. Why did you?”

  “One of the things I can’t abide is cruelty to animals.”

  “Us neither,” I says. “Sure glad you stayed out walking long as you did.”

  “And that you were in the right place at the right time,” Doc agrees.

  “Just my luck,” Jones says, which seemed like kind of a funny thing to say since the luck was all Doc’s and mine.

  Nobody’d been close enough to hear the shot, the hour being late and the flat being some distance from the nearest buildings. We got the horses calmed down, then Doc sent me to get a lantern out of the wagon and he looked close at Patch to make sure he was dead. Jones says he guessed he’d better go fetch the law, but he didn’t sound happy about it. I asked him why and he says even with two witnesses to the fact he’d shot in self-defense, it was common knowledge him and Patch had had some trouble, and besides, the horses wasn’t his property and he’d had no good reason to be walking around out here after dark. Likely the marshal would lock him up until an inquest could be convened, and maybe he’d be exonerated and maybe he wouldn’t. Folks in small towns was always some leery of tramp printers in general, he says, and he’d figured to hit the road after the next issue of the newspaper come out.

  That was when Doc had his brainstorm. “You did me a great service tonight, sir,” he says to Jones, “now I propose to do you one in return. I shall be the one to lay claim to the self-defense shooting, otherwise telling the tale exactly as it happened. The horses are my property, and I have every right to defend myself when they and I are attacked. Patch threatened Homer and me and my belongings in front of witnesses, a fact which I reported to Marshal Jennison. Traveling dentists being less undesirable than traveling typographers, chances are I will not be held in custody or otherwise prevented from leaving Box Elder.”

  Jones didn’t much like the idea and says so, but Doc talked him into it. Two things made up his mind for him, if you ask me. One was that ordinance against carrying guns in the town limits; he didn’t have good reason to’ve kept his tucked inside his boot instead of turning it in at the marshal’s office. The other thing was just before Doc finished his closing argument, a train whistle sounded off in the distance. Ain’t no roadster I ever heard of could resist that call for long—it was like being pulled by invisible strings. He’d do whatever it took to keep from being tied down when the pull become too strong.

  I knew Doc’s suggestion wasn’t all out of the goodness of his heart, that he had what he called an ulterior motive. He says to me later that Patch being a pariah, folks hereabouts would be relieved he wouldn’t be around to bully ’em no more, hail Doc as a hero for ventilating him, and come around to show their appreciation. Which is just what they done. Doc may be a queer old bird, but he’s whip-smart and always on the lookout for ways to feather his nest.

  Anyhow, Jones finally give in. But before he left he says that if the law give Doc any grief, he’d go see the marshal and set things straight. He’s got his own principles, too, Jones has. Meanwhile, Doc says, he wasn’t to have any contact with us or us with him. Jones agreed to that, too, and kept to his word.

  When he was gone, Doc got that old pistol of his out of the wagon, wrapped a piece of cloth around it, and went and fired a round into the river. Then he put on his coat, told me what to say when he come back with the law, and headed off for the marshal’s office. I fretted some while he was gone, but it all come off slick as butter, just the way he said it would. Still, I hadn’t been easy in my mind since, even after the marshal’s visit this afternoon, and wouldn’t be until we were long gone from Box Elder …

  “Homer.”

  “Eh?”

  “You were woolgathering. Why?”

  “Oh,” I says, “just thinking about getting back on the road again and all the work ahead of us.” A little white lie. Wasn’t no sense in sharing my misgivings with him. “I’ll start the fire for supper—”

  “No, not tonight, my boy,” Doc says. “Tonight we shall celebrate with a restaurant meal in town.”

  “You sure that’s a good idea?”

  “And why not? We can certainly afford it, and we’ll be well received. No one will bother the wagon or the horses while we’re gone.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Lock up and we’ll be off,” he says, rubbing his hands together. “I haven’t been this hungry for a rare beefsteak since we left Spokane.”

  SETH JENNISON

  Sometimes, seems like, trouble comes in bunches like wormy apples.

  You take all that had happened here lately. First the wrangle between Colonel Greathouse and the nesters, then Jim Tarbeaux coming back after five years in prison to stir things up, then Elrod Patch making threats and getting himself shot while trying to brain Doc Christmas’s horses, then that Square G hand Yandle busting up Tarbeaux’s place and demanding the Kendall loot at gunpoint. And now, just as I was sitting down to my supper at the Elite Café, here come Mary Beth Greathouse with yet another wormy apple for the barrel.

  She headed for my table soon as she spied me. My office had been her first stop, she said, and Abner had told her where I was. She’d just come from Tarbeaux’s place, and when she started in telling me what she found there, I said I already knew about it and explained how Tarbeaux had brought Yandle in and what had happened between the two of ’em. The fact that Tarbeaux was all right relieved her
considerable. She wanted to know where he was now, and I said I didn’t know, last I’d seen him was when him and Will Satterlee left my office together.

  “How long ago was that, Marshal?”

  “Must’ve been more’n an hour.”

  “Did they say where they were going?”

  “No. Newspaper office, maybe. Might be Tarbeaux’s on his way home by now.”

  “No, I’d have seen him on the road. He must still be in town.” She nibbled on her lower lip, and a pretty one it was. Even a confirmed bachelor like me never gets too old to admire an attractive girl and her assets. “I should try to find him before I tell you what else happened today, but now that I’m here … I better not hold it back any longer.”

  “Hold what back, Mary Beth?”

  “I guess you know how upset the Colonel has been over Mr. Satterlee’s last editorial. This afternoon I overheard him ordering Jada Kinch to … well, to see to it that there wouldn’t be another one for a good long while.”

  “See to it how?”

  “By breaking into the Banner office tonight and doing as much damage as he could to the printing equipment.”

  There it was, the latest trouble, the apple with the worm wiggling around inside. Hellfire! The Colonel must’ve taken leave of his senses to issue a fool order like that, and Kinch likewise to agree to carry it out. But I didn’t say that to Mary Beth. She was wrought up enough as it was.

  I patted her hand and said, “You done the right thing, telling me. What time is the break-in planned for?”

  “They didn’t say exactly. After midnight sometime. The Colonel told Kinch to ride in after dark, but to stay out of town until it was time. What are you going to do, Marshal?”

  That was a good question. Didn’t matter where Kinch was now; even if I could find him, I couldn’t arrest him on hearsay evidence before he committed a crime, and he’d just stonewall me anyway. Besides which, I couldn’t very well tell him how I’d found out. But neither could I let him vandalize the newspaper office. The thing to do, then, was to set up watch and catch him in the act of breaking and entering. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to come in the front way, so the place for a watch was in the back alley within sight of the rear door.

  I sure didn’t relish the idea of standing around for the Lord knew how long waiting for Kinch to make his move, tired as I was after a long day. I could give the job to Abner, but he’s got his rounds to make and he’s a lazy cuss, sleeps more hours than he’s awake—not the most reliable deputy I’ve ever had. Nor the bravest. Kinch is big and knot-tough. Hell, he’d eat Abner for breakfast.

  No, like it or not, the job was mine.

  I said to Mary Beth, “You just leave things to me. I’ll see to it Kinch don’t do what he was told to.”

  “What about the Colonel? Will you have to arrest him?”

  “Not me, the Square G’s out of my jurisdiction, but I reckon the county sheriff will when I report to him. Inciting illegal trespass and destruction of private property is a felony crime.”

  She gnawed on her lip some more. “He’ll go to prison?”

  “Jail yes, until he posts bond. Prison … I reckon not, if there’s no actual destruction. Judge will most likely slap him with a big fine and put him on probation.”

  “Would I have to testify against him?”

  “You would if Kinch don’t own up. You’re the only other witness.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that. My own father…”

  Well, she wouldn’t have a choice if there was a trial. And there would be; Will Satterlee would make certain of that. I could just see him licking his chops when he found out about this. And he would—no way to keep it a secret.

  But I didn’t say any of that to the girl. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Mary Beth. Important thing right now is for me to put a stop to this foolishness before it gets out of hand. Might be a good idea for you to take a room at the hotel for the night. Kind of late to be riding all the way back home alone.”

  She got up on her feet. “Not until I find Jim,” she said, and hurried on out with her back straight as a stick. She had her head screwed on the right way and plenty of sand, but I felt sorry for her just the same. Hadn’t been easy coming to me the way she had, in defiance of a stubborn, reckless old grudge-holder like Colonel Elijah Greathouse. I wouldn’t put it past him to disown her for what he’d consider disloyalty.

  I had my supper, without enjoying it much, and then went to find Abner and tell him about the latest wormy apple.

  JIM TARBEAUX

  I didn’t trust Cable or his motives. A sudden change of heart wasn’t like him at all. Possible, maybe, but more likely he had something up his sleeve. But what? Not meeting me with his shotgun loaded this time. He was a coward clean through; I doubted he had the guts to pull trigger on me from ambush, much less look me in the eye. Why the hour delay, then? And why the saddle shop?

  Well, I’d find out soon enough. And after what had happened with that bastard Yandle this afternoon, I would be extra careful. Even though I wasn’t worried about being met with violence, I wished I had a sidearm that I could conceal under my coat just in case. As it was, I would have to trust my ability to handle the situation unarmed. I couldn’t very well walk into the shop toting the old Springfield and risk spooking him if Cable really was ready to come clean.

  To kill an hour, I rode over the bridge to the schoolhouse in its cottonwood motte. I could have stayed in town, had a glass of beer at the Occidental or something to eat at the café, but that would’ve meant being stared at, whispered about. I’d had enough of that. The time would come when I could do as I pleased in Box Elder, no longer an object of scorn and distrust, but that time was still a long way off.

  I went to the schoolhouse because it was deserted at night, a good place to sit quiet and wait, and because I had a small nostalgic feel for it. Most kids resented time spent learning their ABCs, but I hadn’t. I liked reading books, finding out new things—it had made cell time in Deer Lodge a little easier to get through—and I’d even liked the teacher, a stern but fair spinster lady, Miss Seeley, who’d long since died. But I hadn’t learned my lessons well enough back then. If I had, I’d have been able to control that streak of wildness, never chased around with Bob Kendall, never touched that fifty-four hundred dollars.

  I ground-hitched the chestnut and walked around the schoolhouse, looked in through one of the windows even though I couldn’t see much in the darkness. Then I sat on one of the benches and rolled a cigarette and tried not to fidget. A breeze had sprung up, making the night cooler than the last few. It was almost pleasant sitting there, smoking, a free man looking up at the bright clusters of stars in the big Montana sky. Almost.

  Without a watch I had to rely on instinct to tell me when the hour was near up. If I was a little early, so what? I mounted and rode back into town, onto Territory Street to Cable’s saddle shop. The shade was partway up on the front window and lamplight glowed inside. The door wasn’t locked; I opened it far enough to scan the main room without entering.

  Cable wasn’t there. But when I called his name, he answered from behind a partly open door across the room. “You alone, Tarbeaux?”

  “I’m alone.”

  “Come in, then. I’ll be right with you.”

  I stepped in, shut the door after me, and went a little way toward Cable’s workbench. Funny. It seemed emptier than it had before, some of the tools gone. The rest of the room, too, fewer examples of his trade on display. Why would he have moved all of that out?

  The odors of leather and harness oil were as strong as before, but the smell of something else was mixed in with them now. Not in this room, somewhere behind that partly open door. It took only a couple of seconds to identify it.

  Kerosene.

  In the next second I heard the slamming of a door and then a sudden loud whoosh! Spears of yellow-orange flame and a coil of black smoke came shooting through from the rear. The sudden heat was like a furnace door
being thrown open.

  The son of a bitch had set fire to his own shop!

  I spun toward the front door. Cable must have put some sort of accelerant on the floor in here, too; the fire licked at my heels as I yanked the door open, flung myself through, threw it shut again behind me. A man was coming along the boardwalk a short distance away; he yelled something at me that I didn’t pay heed to. There was an alley between the saddle shop and a carpentry shop next door and I veered into it. Before I reached the end, another man came running past in the cross alley behind the shop. Starshine and fireglow let me see that he wasn’t Cable, a man I didn’t recognize. He either saw or heard me, shouted “Fire!” and kept on going.

  I ran the opposite way, the way he’d come. The entire back wall of the saddle shop was ablaze, flames already eating at the shingled roof, oily black smoke billowing high into the clear sky. I felt the singeing heat as I dodged by, raced up the alley to the next corner.

  There was no sign of Cable anywhere.

  WILL SATTERLEE

  I had just finished writing a long account of Jim Tarbeaux’s run-in with Al Yandle when the commotion started. Shouts rose out on Central, followed by the sudden loud ringing of the bell mounted on the wall of the Volunteer Fire Brigade. There was no mistaking that sound. And when the bell began clamoring as it was now, loud and steady with no pauses, it meant that a fire of some size and danger had broken out within the town limits.

  I blew out my desk lamp and hurried outside. Several men summoned by the alarm were scurrying along the boardwalks and in the street, heading down toward the river; others spilling out of the Occidental House across Central increased their numbers. The blaze appeared to be three blocks distant, its smoky, pulsing glow lighting up the sky. Sight of it dried my mouth, put a tightness in my chest. Judging by the amount of firelight and smoke, at least one building was ablaze and possibly more.