The Iron Marshall

by Louis L'Amour

  "Not in this town, you won't."

  Angrily, Shanaghy strode up the street to the hotel. What in God's name was happening? Had she gone crazy?

  A man standing in front of Holstrum's turned abruptly away as he approached, and another deliberately walked across the street, away from him.

  Shanaghy pushed open the door and entered the hotel, starting for the stairs. Suddenly he stopped. His gear ... or, rather, Rig's gear and his few extra clothes, were bundled up at the bottom of the stairs.

  He looked up to find the clerk smiling at him, a malicious smile. That clerk had never liked him, anyway..

  "Sorry, Mr. Marshal-man. We needed your room. You'll have to look somewhere else."

  The clerk leaned his elbows on the desk. "We don't want your kind around here, mister. My advice to you is get while the getting is good. They can't prove anything right now, but they will. And when they do, you'll hang. You'll hang! D'you hear me?"

  Chapter Seventeen

  SHANAGHY EMERGED upon the street, shaken by the sudden twist events had taken. He stood for a minute or two, his gear beside him, trying to adjust to the situation.

  He had been warned they would try to kill him, and they still might. But what they were doing now was many times more effective, or so it seemed to him. The townspeople he was trying to aid and protect had turned against him.

  They believed him a murderer, and he had to admit that looking at things the way they were, such a theory was plausible.

  Now he had no horse, no place to sleep, and he doubted if he could even buy a meal. Who had started the story? By the time he figured that out, it would be already too late. Whatever was going to happen here would happen within the next few hours.

  Taking up his gear he went down the street to Holstrum's store. The store was empty when he entered except for Holstrum himself, who peered at him from over his glasses.

  "I need a place to stay," Shanaghy said. "They put me out at the hotel."

  The storekeeper shrugged. "I have nothing for you." His manner was cool. "My advice is to leave ... while it is still possible. You are not liked here. Since you have come much has happened, and there are many who believe you yourself killed poor Mr. Carpenter. My advice is to go ... before enough men get together to hang you."

  A moment Shanaghy hesitated, but Holstrum had turned away. Taking up his gear he walked out to the street again.

  It was impossible, and yet ... it had happened. Who had started the rumor? And why?

  Maybe it was only an idea that started in the mind of an overwrought and grief-stricken woman. And maybe it was an idea put there by somebody who saw a chance to destroy him ... or at least to get him out of town.

  Shanaghy thought suddenly of his prisoners. He must have walked right by them, unthinking. He looked again.

  They were gone.

  Greenwood ... He would go to Greenwood.

  One man was finishing a beer as he entered. The man glanced at him, put a coin on the bar and walked out.

  Shanaghy stepped up to the bar. "How about it? Are you shutting me out, too?"

  Greenwood's features were expressionless. "What'll you have?"

  "Beer."

  Greenwood drew the beer and placed it before him. "It's a small community, and stories get around. Carpenter's been murdered. Folks start asking who stood to gain by it, and your name came up first. Carp was a well liked man. He'd had no trouble before. You come to town, you work at his shop and suddenly he's dead ... You find his body, but the barn where he was killed burned, and with it all the evidence."

  Greenwood glanced at Shanaghy. "You had anything to eat?"

  "No ... and I'm hungry."

  "Don't have much here, but I can give you a bowl of chili and some crackers." He dished it up. "Lived in Tucson a good many years back. All you could get in a restaurant there in those days was chili, chili and beans or beef. You'd think I'd be sick of it, but I'm not."

  Greenwood put the bowl of steaming chili and another bowl filled with oyster crackers on the bar. "You want to know what I think? I don't believe you murdered Carp. I do know he liked you, and I think you did him ... well as you knew him."

  "We talked a little. I did like him."

  Greenwood lit a cigar. "You've got enemies, and if I feed you they'll be my enemies."

  "I'll stay away."

  "You needn't." Greenwood puffed thoughtfully at the cigar. "In this case your enemies have to be my enemies. I mean those who aren't just misguided but real enemies."

  Greenwood took Shanaghy's beer from the bar and put a head on it. "That's partly my money coming in on the train."

  "How much of it is yours?"

  "The big part. I've got a hundred and fifty thousand coming in. Other businessmen around town have maybe another fifty. Carp has some and so does Holstrum."

  "I don't comprehend. Why is so much of it yours?"

  "We wanted the cattle business and I had access to more cash than the others. Good credit. So I agreed to carry the weight of it."

  Shanaghy looked at Greenwood thoughtfully, then went on with his eating. He was hungry and the chili tasted good ... very good. Yet there was a feeling that he was missing something, and a feeling of impending doom.

  "Greenwood," Shanaghy said suddenly, "if I were you I'd close up shop and keep out of sight. I think your number is up, too."

  "Mine?"

  "You just said most of that money was yours. By coming into the picture I've messed up their plans. I don't think they intended to kill anyone ... Maybe they didn't ... except for Rig. Then when I came into the picture they had to kill me. Well, they haven't done it so far but they'll keep trying.

  "Now, they're trying to run me out of town. They've taken my room from me. I've no place to eat, and they've taken my horse. I'd lay a bet I can't even get a ticket out of town, although maybe they'd be glad to see me go."

  "What's happening, then?"

  "It's somebody right here in town who is mixed up in all this. I tell you, man, they had it all worked out, until Rig Barrett smelled something rotten." Shanaghy paused, then asked, "Whose idea was it to hire Rig?"

  "Mine. Judge McBane agreed. So did Carpenter. Holstrum did, then he worried about it, afraid we'd get a worse lawman than we had. He voted against it finally."

  "Carp was for it."

  "He was."

  Shanaghy finished the chili and drank the last of the beer. "You'd better hole up. I can't promise you where I'll be, but they shan't drive me out. I'll find a horse somewhere-"

  "I have several. Take your pick. And there's all the gear you'll need, right out back." Greenwood reached under the bar and pulled out a shotgun. "I have this, and if you need me-"

  "You just stay here. I may need a place to come to."

  He paused, looking up the empty street. It was too empty ... and that worried him. "Greenwood, how well do you know Mrs. Carpenter?"

  The saloonkeeper looked up the sunlit street where the dust stirred briefly. "Not much." He spoke reluctantly, as one who did not talk about women, at least about decent women. "She kept pretty much to herself ... Didn't socialize a lot. Folks seemed to like her, but ... well, she was standoffish.

  "Carp was different. He liked folks, enjoyed sitting around talking. He was a serious man, though, and knew what he was about. Sometimes ... " -he hesitated- "sometimes I figure she thought she was a mite too good for all of us, Carp included."

  "And her brother?"

  "They were close. Saw a lot of one another, but he wasn't a mixer, either. He'd come in here, time to time, and buy a bottle." He scowled. "Come to think of it, here lately he's been buying more. Sometimes two or three bottles at a time."

  "Becoming a drunk?"

  "I never saw him drunk. No ... I don't think so."

  "How about other stuff? Groceries?"

  Greenwood shrugged. "No ... Holstrum would be the only one who would know about that."

  "I was wondering ... Maybe he was buying that whiskey for somebody else? Some
body who didn't want to show up around town?"

  Shanaghy got up. Greenwood rinsed out the bowls and his beer mug, then dried his hands on his apron. It was cool and pleasant in the small saloon. Shanaghy looked up the street. Already the buildings looked weather-beaten and old. Sun, wind and blown sand would do that. In the prairie country, towns had a way of aging very fast.

  The wind picked up a little dust and carried it along, then dropped it. A horse tied at the hitching-rail stamped his feet and blew through his nostrils. Shanaghy missed the clang of the hammer from the smithy.

  Carp had been a good man, a solid man. And now he was dead ... just when he had been trying to help, too.

  Was that the reason? Was it just that he was in the way?

  Tom Shanaghy stirred restlessly, irritably. He was out of his depth. What was going on here, anyway? His thoughts strayed to New York and Morrissey. At least he knew there who his enemies were. Yet now it all seemed so far, far away.

  He had wanted no trouble when he came here. He wanted only to board the train and leave. He had even bought his ticket ... and he could still do that, he could do it tomorrow- if somebody would sell him one ...

  Suddenly his eye caught a flicker of movement up the street. There was a man standing in the deepest shade of the awning in front of the express office. The man had a rifle.

  Shanaghy watched for a minute or two, his eyes slowly sweeping the scene before him, his mind racing. They were ready for him. They were all set to kill him, and now they had undoubtedly enlisted some of the good men of the town as well, convincing them that he had killed Carpenter.

  Walking into a cold deck like that was not to his liking. He glanced around at Greenwood. "Close up and hole up, and don't let anybody in unless it's me." He paused a minute. "Greenwood, I'm beginning to get the pattern. You were to be the patsy all along. I mean, maybe they started out with other ideas but it was your money they wanted. I'm going to take one of your horses and slip out of town. I'm going to ride to Patterson's outfit for help."

  Greenwood shifted the shotgun from one hand to the other, nodding slowly. "All right, Shanaghy, I'll stand pat. But for God's sake get back here."

  Greenwood put the shotgun on the bar and mopped his brow. "They won't let you get out of town, Shanaghy. By now they are watching my horses. They might think you'd run but they dasn't take the chance."

  Tom Shanaghy was of the same notion. He stared up the street, trying to fit all the pieces together. There had to be somebody in town ... Who?

  The idea that kept nagging at him made no sense, yet it could fit ... it did fit. In part at least. If he just knew who his enemies were, he would know better how to proceed.

  "What about Holstrum?" he asked suddenly.

  Greenwood shrugged. "He stands to lose, too. Anyway, I can't see him figuring this out."

  "Some of those big, slow men are damn smart," Shanaghy said. "It doesn't pay to underrate them." He was looking up the street and thinking. They didn't have much time.

  He swore bitterly. "Hell of it is, there's some good but mistaken men out there. I don't want to kill anybody who doesn't have it coming."

  He looked around. "Greenwood, that girl's in it, I know, and so's that George whatever-his-name-is. But who was it turned the town against me? It surely wasn't one of them. It had to be a local. It had to be somebody folks would listen to."

  "Who, then?"

  Shanaghy turned his head and stared at him. "They would listen to you, Greenie."

  Greenwood shrugged. "It wasn't me. Like you've said, most of that money will be mine. I stand to lose it all. I stretched my credit, Shanaghy. I'll be broke if we lose that money ... wiped out."

  "The judge?"

  "Him? Not on your life! He's a solid man, an honest man. If there was one man in town ... "

  Greenwood paused. "Shanaghy, that young woman you spoke of? The one who met the gambler? You said she seemed to come from the south?"

  "Aye ... and that was a thing I wished to speak to him about ... Carpenter knew her horse, I am sure of it."

  Greenwood poured them each a beer. He rested his hands on the bar and wet his lips with his tongue. Then reluctantly he said, "Holstrum has a place down thataway."

  "I know. I've been thinking of that. And Holstrum voted against Rig Barrett being brought in."

  Shanaghy watched up the empty street. There were two riflemen in sight now, watching the saloon. He had a hunch the back was no better. He glanced at the clock. Almost an hour ... but what could he do? To venture out was to get shot. They were going to win. They were going to defeat him, after all. How had he ever been such a fool as to believe he could bring this off? What experience did he have that qualified him to step into Rig Barrett's shoes? But who else had there been?

  He thought of Jan. She had ridden off with that strange old man, supposedly to see Rig ... Where? Did her father and brother know where she was? Her brother? What kind of a bungling fool was he, anyway?

  Where was Josh Lundy? And where did he stand now? Restlessly, he paced the floor, watching every window, every door. Nobody was on the street. As if on signal all shopping seemed to have ceased. No rigs were tied along the street.

  Nothing could be better for the thieves. Now they had it all their own way, better even than planned. There would be no fight between the town and Vince Patterson, but Shanaghy, the only officer, was pinned down in the saloon and without allies. Fearful of shooting that might develop, the townsfolk had deserted the streets. So the train would come in with its shipment, it would be unloaded at the platform and the train would depart. The gold would be in the hands of the thieves without a chance of interference.

  Greenwood, who was to receive the shipment, was also pinned down. Instead of a few fast minutes of work, now they could take their time. The thought irritated Shanaghy. They were so sure now that he was whipped.

  Was he?

  He swore again, suddenly, bitterly, and Shanaghy was not a man who was inclined to swear. He looked down the empty street. The train would be coming, the gold would be taken from it, the train would go on. Yet what would they do with the gold? Where would it be taken?

  "I think Holstrum is in it," he said, suddenly. "I think he has been a part of it from the first. It may even have been his idea."

  Greenwood said nothing. He looked into his beer, then swallowed some of it.

  "It's the woman," Shanaghy said. "It is because of her. Or maybe Holstrum is tired of this," he said, waving a hand around. "He may want to leave."

  "He was unhappy here at first," Greenwood admitted. "He got into it, but things did not move swiftly enough. I believe he expected the town to grow faster, the values to increase. And then," he shrugged, "there was something the town did not give him, something he wanted."

  Shanaghy glanced again at the clock. Only a few minutes had passed. He walked back to the bar and finished his own beer.

  What would Morrissey have done? Shanaghy didn't know but he had an idea Morrissey would have walked out there and dominated the situation by sheer personality. So would Rig Barrett.

  He looked into his empty glass, thinking. Suddenly, his thoughts turned to the water tower. Why were those men so anxious to keep people away? What did the water tower have to do with their plans?

  Suppose they had never intended to bring the gold into town? Suppose it was to have been unloaded there, at the water tower, and spirited away from there while confusion existed in town? Jan had suggested it.

  If Holstrum was involved, that would make sense. His place was not far off and he had horses, and probably a buckboard or wagon.

  "I don't like any of this." He turned on Greenwood. "There's something going on here ... I don't know what it is. There are too many of the wrong people involved, and I can't believe they are the kind to share. They all seem greedy to me."

  He shook his head irritably. "Oh, I know it is all imagination! I don't know anything! But I do know what I feel and I've mixed with that kind for half my life! They have
a plan ... But it doesn't feel right to me, so I am thinking somebody else has a separate plan."

  "Tom?" Greenwood pointed. "Look!"

  Shanaghy turned sharply. A young man in a white buckskin vest was dismounting up the street.

  Win Drako!

  Bass was with him, tying his horse close by. Bass looked over his shoulder toward the saloon and said something to Win Drako.

  A door opened up the street and Drako himself appeared. "It will be a day to remember," Tom Shanaghy said softly, "if a man lives past it!"

  "They're coming for you," Greenwood said.

  "Who else?"

  "There's three of them."

  "Aye! 'Tis a thing to think on, Greenwood. Three!"

  "They're coyotes," Greenwood said contemptuously. "They kept from sight until they knew the whole town was against you, and then they come!"

  "Ah, but the advantage is mine," Shanaghy said. "They are fools."

  "The advantage is yours? Are you crazy?"

  "No, Greenie," Shanaghy said. "A man who stands alone is the stronger because he knows he has no one on whom to lean. He must do it all himself. When there are more than one, each is expecting the other to get it done. Each holds back a little, hoping not to get hurt."

  He smiled. "It is a favor they have done me, Greenie, a favor indeed. For it is my means to get out of here in one piece. Those others, you see, they will stand back to watch. They will watch to see the Drakos kill me."

  "Do you want the shotgun?"

  "Keep it. You may need it, man, and I shall do what must be done with a six-shooter. However, I could use another if you have it."

  "You're really going out there?"

  "Aye." He took the gun Greenwood handed him, glanced to see if it was loaded. "Aye, I am going out, and I shall keep going, me lad! I shall go until this is done with and then I'll be going back to New York."

  He paused a moment, his hand on the latch. The three men up the street stood together, talking, glancing from time to time at the saloon.

  "They will be expecting me there, for I wrote a note to Morrissey. I wished him to know that I had not run out on him, and I told him I'd be back when this was over. Have a care for yourself, Greenie." He lifted the latch.