“Anybody in here?” he called.
No answer greeted him. He did, however, hear another rustling noise. It sounded as though it came from the counter. He frowned.
“Hello! Anybody here? I need to buy some goods.”
Something sounding mighty near a hiccup issued from the direction of the counter. Charley squinted for all he was worth, but didn’t see a soul. He walked up to the counter and noticed the absent proprietor had secured one of those brand-new cash register machines. It was kind of pretty, all polished brass and fancy frilly etchings and all.
“Must do a good business,” he muttered to keep himself company. Then he called out once more, “Hello! Anybody here?”
Yet another noise from behind the counter prompted a frown. Charley knew that was a human sniffle. What in the devil was going on here?
The sudden horrible thought that it was the missing proprietor making those noises, that he’d been gagged and bound and left behind his counter after some scoundrel had robbed the till, made Charley’s frown deepen. Shoot, how many robber gangs could a town this size support, anyway? He vaulted lightly over the counter, using his good arm to brace himself. The hand on his gunshot arm rested lightly on the pistol in his waistband.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! I’ll put it all back! I didn’t mean nothin’!”
The gentleman from whom those words issued cowered further under the counter. His hands covered his head, squashing a floppy-brimmed felt hat to his scalp. From the squeak in his voice and the tenderness of the exposed skin on his neck and hands, Charley reckoned the fellow to be around fourteen or fifteen years old. He shook his head, dismayed.
“I’m not going to shoot you, boy. What are you doing back here?”
The boy quaked with fright and it seemed to take him a minute to understand the import of Charley’s words. Slowly, his hands dropped from his hat and he dared lift his head. Freckles stood out in stark relief against a face blanched with terror. Charley noticed bills and coins gripped in one of the lad’s hands. He felt a sudden rush of sadness, coupled with sympathetic understanding.
“Damn, boy, were you trying to rob this place?” He shook his head again, distressed that one so young should have succumbed to the lure of an unguarded till. Hell, he felt bad enough about his own lapse into criminality, and he was nearing thirty.
It looked as if the boy was trying hard not to cry. “I—I didn’t mean nothin’.” His voice trembled.
“You don’t really want to do something like this do you, boy?”
The lad shook his head too quickly. Charley concluded at once that he wasn’t thinking yet because he was too scared. And devil take it, Charley wanted this boy to think. It was awful being on the run, having the law after you. Charley knew it for a certified fact.
He stared down at the boy, wondering what he could say to turn him from this path he was on. The boy stared up at him, his eyes as round as prickly pear fruit.
“You live here in Rothwell, son?”
The boy nodded.
“What’s your name?”
“Homer. Homer Paul.”
“You know what happens to people who steal, don’t you, Homer?”
Homer nodded.
“You think it would be fun to have to look over your shoulder all the time to see if the law’s on your tail?”
A shake.
“You know folks take a dim view of thieves, don’t you, Homer? Lots of folks’d just as soon shoot a thief as not.”
A nod.
“Does your ma know what you’re doing here, son?”
Homer Paul’s head shook back and forth miserably.
Very gently, Charley asked, “You think something like this would make her proud of you, Homer?”
Homer’s head drooped like a wilted lily. Charley saw it shake back and forth again.
“Well, why don’t you just get on up now, Homer. We’ll put the money back in the register and nobody’ll ever need to know.”
Charley held out a hand. Homer looked at it as he might look at a rattlesnake poised to strike. Then, after shooting another quick look up at Charley’s face, he gripped his hand and stood.
Charley kept Homer’s hand while he said, “My name is Charley Wilde, Homer, and if you want to forget we met this way, it’ll be all right with me. Deal?”
Taking a big sniff Charley knew he hated like fire, Homer shook Charley’s hand. He uttered a shaky, “Thanks, Mr. Wilde.”
“Just call me Charley, Homer. I hear it’s the way things are done out here in the West.” He guessed his grin was a little lopsided when he recalled Addie’s blithe recitation of the customs prevailing in the territory. Oh, Addie, Addie. Whatever was he going to do with her?
“Thanks, Charley.” Still clutching the money, Homer took a big gulp and blurted out, “You mean it, Charley? You won’t tell Sheriff Small about this?”
The mention of Fermin Small made Charley pinch his lips together. “Homer, I give you my word of honor I won’t go within twenty feet of Sheriff Small if I can help it.”
Homer stared intently at Charley’s face for another couple of seconds. He had to crick his neck back in order to do it, as Charley was a shade over six feet tall and Homer himself was of only medium height. Then he heaved a big, shuddering sigh that might have been a muffled sob, thrust the wad of bills and coins into Charley’s hand, and said, “Then, thank you. I’ll never forget this, Charley.”
Instead of vaulting the counter as Charley had done, the boy squatted and slid under it. Then Homer Paul exited the Rothwell General Merchandise and Dry Goods Emporium at a dead run. Charley watched him race through the door and skid a sharp right, and figured he probably wouldn’t stop running until he got home.
“Fool kid.”
Then he began sorting the bills and coins out on the counter. It took him a minute or two to figure out how to work the cash register but as he possessed a turn for the mechanical, he managed. Carefully, he put all the money back in what looked like its proper place and shut the cash drawer.
He’d just leaped back over the counter when a tremendous crash nearly scared the daylights out of him. He crouched and whirled around, the sound having reminded him too forcefully of similar noises he’d heard during the war.
“Put yer damned hands up!”
“Aw, hell.” Charley heart dropped to his boots when recognized the voice of Fermin Small, even if he couldn’t yet see him. He also did as he was told because he didn’t care to get shot again and he figured, if experience were anything by which to judge, the sheriff had a gun aimed at him. He let his gaze follow the sound of the crunches and clatters coming from a far corner of the mercantile and lifted his brows when he finally detected Fermin Small.
“Have an accident, Sheriff?” he asked acidly, although he guessed it wasn’t a wise thing to do, as Small had aimed his pistol at Charley’s own revered middle. Again.
Still, it was difficult to remain unmoved by sarcasm when he saw the sheriff with one foot in a bean barrel and the other scrambling for purchase on a floor littered with dried pinto beans. Beans dripped from Small’s hat, bounced from his shoulders and into his boots, and clattered onto the floor like hailstones. Charley guessed he’d knocked the barrel over while trying to sneak up on him. Served the bastard right.
“Just don’t you move, you son of a polecat,” Small growled. Charley guessed he was trying to sound constabularial.
“I won’t move, Sheriff, but I don’t know what you’re aiming that gun at me for.”
“I’m aimin’ at you,” Small said, slipping to his knee on a bean, “‘cause of you tryin’ to rob this here mercantile.”
“I did no such thing,” said Charley, finding it easy to sound indignant.
Small’s pistol wavered as he fought for footing, renewing Charley’s concern for his unprotected middle.
“Then what in tarnation was you doin’ jumpin’ over the counter? Where’s Phipps?”
“Who’s Phipps?”
“
The proprietor of this here store’s who.”
The sheriff finally managed to yank his foot out of the bean barrel. Unfortunately, his foot came free of his boot as he did so and the boot remained in the barrel. He glared at it spitefully.
“I don’t know. I came in here to get some things for the Blewitt ladies, and there was nobody in the store.”
“A likely story.”
Suddenly the door to the mercantile burst open and a harried-looking middle-aged man hurried in. He stopped short and thrust his hands in the air when Fermin Small spun around and pointed his gun at him. The movement was too quick for the beans, though, and Fermin fell backwards, landing on his poorly padded rear end. His finger tightened around the trigger as he fell and a shot rang out. Both the newcomer and Charley Wilde hit the floor.
The bullet, fortunately, struck neither man. It lodged in a barrel perched on a shelf above the sheriff, shattering one stave.
The man on the floor by the door hollered, “What in tarnation’s the matter with you, Fermin Small? Why in hell are you shootin’ your gun off in my store?” He scrambled to his feet. “And what the hell are you doin’ with your boot in my bean barrel?”
“Hold on, Cletus! Hold on!”
Charley shook his head as he rose from the floor. This idiot sheriff wasn’t going to give up. Dripping dried pinto beans, Fermin Small staggered to his feet and managed to re-aim his gun at Charley’s middle.
“This here varmint’s been a-robbin’ ya, Cletus.”
“Good God,” muttered Charley, disgusted.
Cletus Phipps looked at Charley with interest. “Were you, really?”
“No! No, I was not, either, robbing your store, sir. My name is Charley Wilde. I came in here to buy some things for Miss Adelaide and Miss Ivy Blewitt, and nobody was here. I was—I was looking at your cash register.”
“Purty, ain’t it?” Cletus smiled at Charley and stuck out a hand. “Cletus Phipps, Mr. Wilde. I just got that register in from Ohio last month. It’s a ‘Ritty’s Incorruptible Cashier,’ and it’s ‘sposed to thwart crime. Kind o’ grand, ain’t it?”
“It surely is.” Charley shook Cletus’s hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Phipps. My band arrived in town a couple days ago. We were riding up from El Paso when a gang of crooks tried to rob us. One of ‘em shot me, but it wasn’t too bad. Just got myself a little flesh wound, is all.” He lifted his left arm to show Cletus where his little flesh wound resided.
“Oh, yes. I recollect hearin’ somethin’ of the sort from folks hereabouts. Well, you got yourself stayin’ in the right place, if you got yourself a bullet hole. Miss Addie can doctor anything, from a horse to a man.”
Charley nodded, not surprised. “I reckon she can at that.”
“One o’ your men’s working at the smithy down the road now I hear.”
“Right. That would be Harlan Lewis, our bass horn player.”
“Hold on! Hold on, both of you!”
Fermin Small, aggravated at being ignored by both criminal and victim, strode up to the men as well as he could, in one stockinged foot and one booted one.
“Now, just hold on,” he repeated. “I say you was robbin’ the register, Wilde.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake.” Charley turned to look at the sheriff.
“Where the hell was you, anyway, Cletus?” Sheriff Small sounded aggravated, as if Cletus should have checked with him before he left his establishment untenanted.
“Old Lady Ramirez forgot somethin’ from her order. I run after her so’s she wouldn’t have to make another trip back to town fer it.”
“Well, it was a dad-blasted mistake.” Small waved his pistol. “This polecat’s a durned thief.”
“I am not!”
“Why don’t we just look?” Cletus asked reasonably.
“Good idea,” muttered Charley.
He and Cletus strolled towards the counter, leaving Fermin Small grumbling to himself. He went to the bean barrel, retrieved his boot, and followed them, looking very cranky.
Cletus lifted the counter flap and went inside, beckoning to Charley to follow him. He closed the flap before the sheriff arrived, leaving Small to open the counter for himself.
“See here?” Cletus said to Charley. “This here crank opens the thing up. Don’t it make a nice chunking sound, though?”
“Sure does.”
Both men peered into the cash drawer, then turned toward the sheriff. “Looks like a lot of money in there to me, Mr. Phipps,” Charley observed dryly. “What do you think?”
Cletus swiftly rifled through the bills and tinkled the coins. “It’s all here.”
Fermin Small snorted.
“But it ‘pears to me, Sheriff, as to how you have some explainin’ to do.” Cletus peered deliberately at the mess in the corner of his mercantile. “And some sweepin’ up to do, too.”
Small jammed his gun back into his waistband. “Hell.” He stabbed Charley with a long freckled finger. “I know you’re a dam-blasted crook, Wilde. And I’m gonna nail your hide to the wall one o’ these days.”
“I just came into town to fetch some things for the Blewitt ladies, Sheriff.” As the words left Charley’s lips, a brilliant thought occurred to him. “And to rehearse. The fellows will be playing at Miss Ivy’s Literary League meeting next Wednesday, and we need to practice.” There. The lie he’d told Addie about having band business in town wasn’t a lie anymore. He felt better all at once.
“I hear you fellers are pretty good, too, Charley.”
“Thank you kindly, Cletus. We’ve been together a long time. Went through the war together. I like to think we’re good musicians.” Charley smiled modestly.
“Regimental band, was you?”
“Yup. Fourth Georgia. Got captured up at Appomattox right before the Surrender.”
Cletus clucked sympathetically. “Durned shame, that.”
“Yes, it was. We lost a lot of men in the war.” Charley shook his head, unhappy memories wiping the smile from his face. “Twelve of us joined up. Only six came back.”
“Durned shame,” Cletus repeated sadly. “Durned shame.”
The grocer rounded on Fermin Small. “And now, Fermin, I expect you better fetch up your deputy Waldo and get this mess cleaned up. I’ll reckon the cost o’ them beans and that barrel and give you a bill by the time you’re through.”
They heard Fermin Small mutter, “Hell,” as he slouched out of the mercantile.
Chapter 7
Lester Frogg waited for Charley by the horses, chewing on a straw, calm as the clear spring day itself. Good old Lester. He’d wait a year if somebody asked him to, Charley sometimes thought.
“Better gather up the boys, Lester. We’re going to have ourselves a rehearsal after all.”
If one’s goal in life were to gain unquestioning obedience from his fellows, it would be well to cultivate people like Lester, Charley decided. Without a single question, Lester nodded, and turned to do Charley’s bidding.
“Wait a minute, Lester. Let’s decide on a place first.”
Lester turned and waited, content as ever to let Charley do the thinking.
“How about over there behind that church?” Charley pointed to a woodsy area through which a frisky river meandered.
Nodding, Lester set off again. This time Charley let him go. While Lester rounded up the band, he finished the duties outlined on Addie’s list.
# # #
The last thrilling notes of the good part of the “William Tell Overture” had just faded, and Charley sighed in satisfaction. Even if they had turned to a life of crime to support themselves, they were still the best brass band he’d ever heard. He felt quite proud of his men.
“Good job, boys,” he said as he shook out his horn.
“I’ll be swallowed, Charley. It felt good to play ‘Tell’ again. Felt like old times.” Harlan Lewis wagged his shaggy head. His face held a faraway look, as though he were recalling good days gone by.
“We done ‘War’ be
tter than we ever done it before,” added Peachy Gilbert.
Charley discreetly turned his head when Peachy hauled out his bandanna and wiped his eyes. He had just begun to clean his horn out with a chamois cloth when a high-pitched child’s giggle captured his attention. Looking up from his cornet, Charley spotted a little girl, maybe two years old, toddling toward them. She was a cute little thing, and Charley grinned. He’d always liked kids.
Suddenly the child veered away from the band and began a toddling run towards the river. Alarmed, Charley jumped up from his stump. He looked around for a parent. Seeing no such animal anywhere in the vicinity, he spat, “Well, hell,” set his cornet on the stump, and charged after the little girl.
He swung her up a bare second before she would have careened into Calhoun Creek. She shrieked with laughter and Charley fought the ridiculous impulse to lecture her. Shoot, she was only two. He looked down at the creek, swollen with recent rains, and shuddered. She could have drowned. He hugged the little girl.
“Shoot, sweetheart, you better either learn to swim or stay close to your mama.”
The baby giggled in his face and Charley cracked a grin.
When, “My baby!” sailed to him from several yards away, he turned to spy a woman racing toward him, her skirts hiked up, her bonnet flapping out behind her like an afterthought. She shrieked, “My baby!” again, and unease slithered up Charley’s spine.
The little girl squirmed in his arms and he put her down on the grassy knoll where the men had been practicing. He braced himself. All he needed was to have some hysterical woman accuse him of trying to kidnap her baby. First the sheriff wanted to nab him for robbery when he’d actually put stolen money back in the till. Now this lady was probably going to have him tarred and feathered for snatching her child. Sometimes he wished he’d been born in another century, one without a war or a frontier or—well, never mind.
He watched narrowly when the woman swept her daughter into her arms. Then he stiffened when she whirled around to face him. Tears streaked her cheeks and her nose was bright red.
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