Heller with a Gun (1955)

by L'amour, Louis

  Chapter Three.

  NOBODY MOVED. The man in the doorway looked down the table at Mabry, then advanced a step into the room. When he stopped his right side was toward them.

  His features were lean and vulpine. Mabry could see that the fellow was primed for a killing, and he was the man he had seen watching the game in the outer room. “You brought in Pete Griffin?”

  Mabry’s right side was toward the door as he sat on the bench. His coffee cup, freshly filled, was before him. He waited while a slow count of five might have been made, and then he replied, “I brought him in.”

  “Where’s Pete now?”

  The speaker came on another step, his eyes holding on Mabry.

  “I said, where’s Pete?”

  “Heard you.” Mabry looked around at him. “You want him, go find him.”

  A second man came into the room and moved wide of the first. This man was not hunting trouble. “Bent?” Benton ignored him. He had come into the room set for a killing, for a quick flare of anger, then shooting. Yet the attitude of Mabry gave him nothing upon which to hang it.

  Mabry took the cup and cradled it in his hands. Benton tensed; Mabry might throw the hot coffee. He drew back half a step.

  Healy looked from Mabry to Benton, seemingly aware for the first time that the situation was taut with danger. Sweat began to bead his brow, and his lips tightened. There was only one door and Benton stood with his back to it. Janice Ryan sat very still, her attention centered on Mabry.

  “Bent?”

  Distracted, Benton turned a little. “Shut up!”

  Aware of his mistake, he jerked back, but Mabry seemed oblivious even of his presence. Mabry tasted his coffee. Then, putting down the cup, he fished in his shirt pocket for makings and began to build a smoke.

  “Bent,” the smaller man persisted, “not new. This ain’t the place.”

  Benton was himself unsure. Mabry’s failure to react to his challenge upset him. He dared not draw and shoot a man in the presence of witnesses when the man made no overt move, and when, as far as he could see, the man was not even wearing a gun.

  Yet he could see no way to let go and get out. He hesitated, then repeated, “I want to know where Griffin is!” Mabry struck a match and lit his cigarette.

  Benton’s face flushed. He considered himself a dangerous man and was so considered by others. Yet Mabry did not seem even to take him seriously.

  “By God!” He took an angry step forward. “If you’ve killed Pete “

  Mabry looked around at him. “Why don’t you get out of here?”

  His tone was bored, slightly tinged with impatience. Benton’s resentment burst into fury and his right hand dropped to his gun.

  Yet as his hand dropped, Mabry’s right slapped back and grabbed Benton’s wrist, spinning him forward and off balance. Instantly Mabry swung both feet over the bench and smashed into the man before he could regain his balance.

  Knocked against the wall, his breath smashed from him, Benton tried to turn and draw, but as he turned, Mabry hit him with a wicked right to the chin that completed the turn for him. And as it ended, Mabry swung an underhanded left to the stomach.

  Benton caught the punch in the solar plexus and it jerked his mouth open as he gasped for wind. Mabry hit him with a right, then a left that knocked him against the wall again, and a right that bounced his skull hard off the wall. The gunman slumped to the floor.

  King Mabry turned on the smaller man. “You’ll be Joe Noss. You wanted out of this, so you’re out. But take him with you.”

  And as the white-faced Noss stooped to get hold of Benton, Mabry added, “And both of you stay out of my way.”

  He sat down and ‘picked up his cigarette. He drew deep, and as his eyes met Janice’s he said, “If that’s too brutal, better get out. It’s nothing to what you’re liable to see between here and Alder Gulch.”

  “I didn’t say anything,” she said. “I didn’t say anything at all.”

  He got up abruptly, irritated with himself. He was no kid to be upset by the first pretty girl who came along. He had seen a lot of women, known a lot of them.

  But not like this one. Never like this one.

  He walked out and nobody said anything. At the bar he stopped, aware of the undercurrent of interest. Hat Creek Station had seen much rough, brutal action, but fists were not much used where guns were carried. It was something new to be considered in estimating the caliber of King Mabry.

  No place for a woman, Mabry told himself.

  Behind him the momentary silence held. Then Tom Healy looked at Janice. “I’m a fool. You shouldn’t be out here. None of you should.”

  “Because of that? That could happen anywhere.” “It may be worse. That’s what he said.”

  She looked across the table, knowing what this trip meant to Healy, knowing there was nothing back East for him.

  “Do you want to quit, Tom? Is that it?”

  “You know me better than that.”

  “All right, then. We’ll go on.”

  “There’s only trails. We may run short of supplies before we get through. And there’s Indians.”

  “Friendly Indians.”

  “You’ve a choice. I haven’t. I failed back East. I’m bankrupt. The frontier’s my last chance.”

  She looked at him, her eyes grave and quiet. “It may be that for a lot of us, Tom.”

  His coffee was cold, so he took another cup and filled it. He had no idea why Janice was willing to go West with him. Maybe somewhere back along the line of days she had known her own failure. Nevertheless, what he had said was true. For him there was no turning back. He had to make it on the frontier or he was through. He had been finished when the letter from Jack Langrishe reached him, telling of the rich harvest to be reaped on the frontier in the cow and mining towns. Langrishe had a theatre in Deadwood, and there were other places. So Tom Healy put together his little troupe of five people and started West.

  He had not been good enough for New York and Philadelphia. He had not been good enough for London, either. Not to be at the top, and that was where he wanted to be. The Western trip began well. They made expenses in St. Louis and Kansas City. They showed a profit in Caldwell, Newton, and Ellsworth. In Dodge and Abilene they did better, but in Cheyenne they found the competition of a better troupe and barely broke even. And the other troupe was going on West.

  Then Healy heard about Alder Gulch. For ten years it had been a boom camp. Now it was tapering off. The big attractions missed it now, yet there was still money there, and they wanted entertainment.

  It was winter and the snow was two feet deep on the level, except where the fierce winds had blown the ground free. Alder Gulch was far away in Montana, but with luck and Barker to guide them, they could get through. Yet Mabry’s doubt worried him. He was a good judge of people, and Mabry was a man who should know. And he did not seem to be a man to waste breath on idle talk. Yet what else to do?

  The ground had been free of snow when they left Cheyenne, the weather mild for the time of year. Hat Creek Station had been the first stop on the northward trek. And they were snowed in.

  It was part of his profession to put up a front, and being an Irishman, he did it well. Actually, there was less than a thousand dollars of his own money in the ironbound box. There was that much more that belonged to the others, and-something that nobody knew but himself-there was also fifteen thousand dollars in gold that he was taking to Maguire in Butte to build a theatre.

  Secretly he admitted to himself that he headed a company of misfits. Janice was no actress. She was a beautiful girl who should be married to some man of wealth and position. She had spoken to him vaguely of past theatrical successes, but he knew they were the sort of lie the theatre breeds. What actor or actress was ever strictly honest about past successes or failures? Certainly not Tom Healy. And certainly not that charming old windbag, Doc Guilford.

  Janice was not even the type. She was competent, he admitted that, and on the fro
ntier all they demanded was a woman. If she was pretty, so much the better.

  Janice had that quality, barely definable, something that indicates breeding. Tom Healy was Irish, and an Irishman knows a thoroughbred. Bur like them all. Janice was running from something. Probably only fear of poverty among her own kind.

  Doc Guilford was an old fraud. But an amusing fraud with a variety of talents, and he could be funny.

  Of them all, Maggie had been the best. Maggie had gone up, partly on talent, partly on beauty. Her mistake was to love the theatre too much, and she staved with it. Her beauty faded, but she still kept on … and she would always keep on.

  How old was Maggie? Fifty? Or nearer sixty? Or only a rough-weather forty-five?

  She had rheumatism and she complained about the rough riding of the wagons, but on stage her old tear-jerkers could still reach any crowd she played to. And in her dramatic roles she was always good.

  Of them all, Dodie Saxon was the only one who might be on the way up. She was seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen. Nobody knew, and Dodie was not talking. She was tall and she was well built and she was sexy. She could dance and she could sing, and, moreover, she was a solid citizen. She was a clear-thinking youngster with both feet on the ground, and of them all, she was the only one with a future.

  And these were the people he was taking off into the middle of a Wyoming winter over a trail he had never seen, into a country where he would be completely out of place.

  The only shooting he had ever done was in a shooting gallery, and he had never killed so much as a rabbit or slept out of doors even one night.

  Until he was eleven he had lived in a thatched but in Ireland, then on a back street in Dublin, and after that he had never been far from a theatre or rooming house. When he had money he ordered meals; when he had no money he starved. But he had never cooked a meal in his life.

  So it was Alder Gulch or break up the company and turn them loose to sink or swim with little money in a country where none of them belonged.

  Barker had been a godsend. On his first day at Hat Creek he had met Barker, a strapping big man in a buffalo coat that made him seem even bigger. He had an easygoing, friendly way about him that made a man overlook the sharpness of his eyes. Barker heard Healy inquiring the route to Alder Gulch and Virginia City, in Montana. “Been over that trail,” he’d said. “Nothing easy about it.” “Could we make it? With the vans?”

  Barker had glanced through the window at the vans. “Take money. You’d have to take off the wheels and put ‘em on sled runners. And you’d have to have drivers who know this country in the winter.”

  Healy ordered drinks. “We’ve got to make the trip,” he said, “and we can pay.”

  Barker glanced at the sign on the vans and his voice changed subtly. “Oh? You’re Tom Healy? Of the Healy Shows?”

  Healy had paid for the drinks with a gold piece.

  “If you’re serious,” Barker told him, “I can furnish the drivers!’

  Nobody else offered any comment. One rough-hewn old man got abruptly to his feet and, after a quick, hard stare at Barker, walked out.

  Barker knew the country and Barker could get the men. Out of insecurity and doubt came resolution, and the plans went forward. Barker would handle everything. “Just leave it to me,” he told them.

  Two drivers appeared. “Reliable,” Barker said. “They worked for me before.”

  Wycoff was a stolid Pole with a heavy-featured, stupid-looking face. He had big, coarse hands and a hard jaw. He was heavy-shouldered and powerful. Art Boyle was a slender man with quick, prying eyes that seemed always to hold some secret, cynical amusement of their own. Neither man impressed Healy, but Barker assured him he need not worry. Getting teamsters for a northern trip in winter was difficult, and these were good men. Healy hesitated to ask questions, fearing to show his own ignorance, and equally afraid he would hear something that would make it impossible for him to delude himself any longer. Alder Gulch was the only way out. And why should Barker say it could be done if it was impossible? He knew the country and was willing to go. Nonetheless, a rankling doubt remained. He stared gloomily at the snow-covered window and listened to the rising wind.

  In the outer room there was boisterous laughter. He listened, feeling doubt uneasy within him. Only the quiet courage of the girl at his side gave him strength. For the first time he began to appreciate his helplessness here, so far from the familiar lights and sounds of cities. He had never seen a map of Wyoming. He had only the vaguest idea of the location of Alder Gulch. He was a fool-a simple-minded, utterly ridiculous …

  “I wish he was going with us.”

  He knew to whom she referred, and the same thought had occurred to him. “Barker doesn’t like him.”

  “I know. He’s a killer. Maybe an outlaw.”

  Wind whined under the eaves. Healy got to his feet and walked to the window. “He wouldn’t come, anyway.” “No, I guess not. And trouble follows men like that.” Janice came to him. “Don’t worry, Tom. We’ll make it.” Williams appeared in the door, drying his hands on a bar towel. “Some of the boys …” he began. Then he stopped. “Well, we were wondering if you folks would put on a show. We’re all snowed in, like. The boys would pay. Take up a collection.”

  Healy hesitated. Why not? They could not leave before morning, anyway.

  “We’d pay,” Williams insisted. “They suggested it.” “You’ll have to clear one end of the room,” Healy said.

  He started for the door, glancing back at Janice. She was looking out the window, and looking past her, he could see a man crunching over the snow toward the barn. It was King Mabry.

  Tom Healy looked at Janice’s expression and then at Mabry. He had reached the barn and was opening the door, a big, powerful man who knew this country and who walked strongly down a way he chose. Healy felt a pang of jealousy.

  He pulled up short, considering that. Him? Jealous? With a curiously empty feeling in his stomach he stared at the glowing stove in the next room. He was in love. He was in love with Janice Ryan.

  Chapter Four.

  HE STOOD ALONE on the outer edge of the crowd that watched the show, a tall, straight man with just a little slope to his shoulders from riding the long trails.

  He wore no gun in sight, but his thumbs were hooked in his belt and Janice had the feeling that the butt of a gun was just behind his hand. It would always be there.

  The light from the coal-oil lamp on the wall touched his face, turning his cheeks into hollows of darkness and his eyes into shadows. He still wore his hat, shoved back from his face. He looked what he was, hard, tough .. . and lonely.

  The thought came unbidden. He would always know loneliness. The mark of it was on him.

  He was a man of violence. No sort of man she would ever have met at home … and no sort of man for her to know. Yet from her childhood she had heard of such men. Watching from behind the edge of the blanket curtain, Janice remembered stories heard when she was a little girl, stories told by half-admiring men of duels and gun battles; but they had never known such a man as this, who walked in a lost world of his own creation.

  Yet King Mabry was not unlike her father. Stern like him, yet with quiet humor sleeping at the corners of his eyes.

  Maggie was out front now, holding them as she always held them with her tear-jerking monologues and her songs of lonely men. Her face was puffy under her too blonde hair, her voice hoarse from whisky and too many years on the boards, but she had them as not even Doc Guilford could get them. Because at heart all these men were sentimental:

  All?

  She looked again at King Mabry. Could a man be sentimental and kill eleven men?

  And what sort of man was he?

  The thought made her look for Benton, but he was nowhere in sight. Joe Noss stood near the door talking to Art Boyle. She thought the name, and then it registered in her consciousness and she looked again.

  Yes, it was Barker’s teamster. He stood very close to Noss, his
eyes on the stage. But she knew he was listening to Noss.

  The sight made her vaguely uneasy, yet there was nothing unusual in two men talking together in these cramped quarters, where sooner or later everybody must rub elbows with everybody else.

  If Mabry was aware of their presence, he gave no indication. His concern seemed only with the show.

  Dodie Saxon came up behind her and Janice drew aside so the younger girl could stand in the opening.

  “Which one is King Mabry?” Dodie whispered.

  Janice indicated the man standing quietly against the wall.

  “He’s handsome.”

  “He’s a killer.”

  Janice spoke more sharply than she had intended. Dodie was too much interested in men, and this man was the wrong one in whom to be interested.

  Dodie shrugged a shapely shoulder. “So? This is Wyoming, not Boston. It’s different here.”

  “It’s still killing.” Janice turned sharply away. “You’re on next, Dodie.”

  Dodie opened her coat, revealing her can-can costume. “I’m ready.”

  Mabry straightened from the wall as applause followed the end of Maggie’s act. He turned his back on the stage and started toward the door.

  “He’s leaving,” Janice said. Just why, she could not have explained, but she was secretly pleased.

  Dodie threw off her coat and signaled Doc Guilford at the piano for her cue. “He won’t leave,” she said pertly. “Not if he’s the man I think he is!”

  She moved into the steps of the can-can, and she moved to something more than music. Janice felt her cheeks flush self-consciously. Dodie had an exciting body that she knew very well how to use, and she delighted in the admiration of men. Yet tonight she was dancing for just one man, and Janice realized it with a pang of jealousy. Angrily she turned away, but her anger was for herself. It was silly to feel as she did when she was not interested in King Mabry, or likely to be.

  Yet she turned and glanced back. Mabry had stopped at the sound of the music. Joe Noss had vanished, but Art Boyle remained where he had been, the stage receiving all his attention now.