Marshal Jeremy Six #6

by Brian Garfield

  The Home of Great Western Fiction!

  Wade Cruze and his men were in Spanish Flat, waiting. As hardcase a crew as ever rode the Arizona range, they were loaded for bear. Because their herd was on its way to town also, but under another man’s brand and prodded by an equally gun-quick crew.

  Marshal Six knew he’d need every bit of his trigger talent and lawman cunning to keep that restless bunch from shooting the town to pieces before their real targets arrived. The dispute was between two ranchers and it might be that both had right on their side, because it seemed to Six that there was an unknown third party prodding things along.

  If Six didn’t move lightning fast at the exact right time, there was sure going to be a blood-red round up right in the center of Spanish Flat and maybe no town left by sunset.

  MARSHAL JEREMY SIX 6: BRAND OF THE GUN

  By Brian Garfield writing as Brian Wynne

  First Published by Ace Books in 1968

  Copyright © 1968, 2019 by Brian Garfield

  First Digital Edition: December 2019

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Cover Art by Gordon Crabb

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Agent.

  One

  Jeremy Six looked out past the swinging doors at the mother-of-pearl drizzle. It had been misting down since dawn, mucking the dirt streets of Spanish Flat and fogging visibility until it was hard to see across the street. Oilskins flapping, hat brims lowered, men went by with their shoulders hunched, their faces as gray as the rain.

  He stepped back to let a tall man enter—a big horseman with mud on his boots. The cowboy flapped off his hat and batted it against his waterlogged chaps, drenching the floor. “Howdy, Marshal.”

  Jeremy Six acknowledged the greeting with a dip of his head, but the cowboy did not walk by; he rearranged the creases in his hat and put it on, and said, “I saw Wade Cruze and his crew a few miles out on the flats. Headed into town.”

  “Been expecting that,” Six said. “There’s an Army cattle buyer in town from Fort Dragoon. Thanks for the word, Jimmy.”

  “It ain’t just that,” Jimmy said. His eyes flicked up speculatively. “Cruze has got his whole crew and a couple of toughs with him. But no hjusterd.”

  “No herd?”

  “Not one single cow,” the cowboy said. “Thought you better know, Marshal.” He turned toward the saloon bar.

  Six muttered his thanks and went back to the front door to look out. Creases bracketed his mouth and a frown brought his eyebrows down. He reached for his slicker, tipped it off the wall peg and shouldered into it. He was reaching for his hat when he felt weight behind him and turned.

  Clarissa Vane, who owned the place, looked him up and down and made a little smile with her pretty mouth. “Lots of weather we’re having.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Drink?”

  “No thanks. If I took a drink every time I wanted one I’d be drunk by noon every day.”

  “Job getting you down, Jeremy?”

  “It’s a gray day,” he said. “Guess I’m just in that kind of mood.”

  “Something’s wrong,” she said. “I can tell by your face.”

  “No, nothing’s wrong.”

  “You’re a bad liar.”

  It made him smile—a brief flash across his craggy face. “You’re a hard girl to lie to.”

  “What’s the trouble?” Her voice was low, close to a whisky baritone, but she was a slim woman with no brassy surface; there was concern in her eyes.

  “Might not mean trouble,” he said. “Jimmy tells me Wade Cruze is coming into town with his crew and one or two gunslingers—and no herd.”

  “No herd?”

  “Exactly,” he said, and clapped his hat on. “Hold the fort.”

  “I’ll keep some coffee warm for you.”

  He smiled, briefly again, and swept out of the Glad Hand. The drizzle hit him in the face like a prickling of cactus needles. Under the flapping lapels of the rain slicker his badge of office flickered dully at intervals as the wind pulled the oilskin back. He was a big solid man with a blunt chin and blunt, heavy hands. A single short barreled revolver swung with his hip as he walked, tied down in a drab holster of old leather.

  The streets were sparsely scattered with those few pedestrians who had to make their way from place to place in spite of the rain. As Six passed them, each made a greeting of some kind—some friendly, some only properly courteous. Six had a full complement of close friends, he was not a lonely sort of man, but beyond his circle of friends he had the acquaintance and respect of every citizen of Spanish Flat: Arizona Territory, in these days uncomfortably close to the recent Indian wars, was a country still on the verge of lawlessness—and the badge and gun of Jeremy Six were the dike that stood between the town and a flood of violent outlawry. Lonely or not, a man who stood such solitary sentinel duty had to live as if he stood always on the brink of a precipice—alert every moment of the day, watchful of his back and the looming mountains yonder.

  He walked into the main street, glanced both ways, and turned toward the Drover’s Rest, striding through the drizzle like a heavy-headed lion. The steady light downpour had made a quagmire of the street, and when he stepped down to go across, his weight pushed his boots down ankle-deep into sucking mud. He climbed the porch of the Drover’s Rest and paused there to kick soaked clods from his boots before he went inside.

  The atmosphere inside the big low-ceilinged bar room was steamy and close. This was ordinarily dry country, swept by the hot winds off the desert just to the west; the men of the town were outdoor men and the infrequent rains that drove them indoors made them restless and irritable because they had nothing to occupy them inside a building. The Drover’s Rest was uncommonly busy, considering that it was still short of noon; the cowhands and teamsters and carpenters and dairy men who lined the bar were talking loudly and angrily about whatever came to mind.

  A fat man in a claw hammer coat accosted him just inside the door. “Morning, Marshal.”

  Six nodded with reserved courtesy. “Mr. McQuarter.”

  “There’s a rumor going up and down the bar that Wade Cruze is on his way in.”

  “So I hear.”

  “About time,” McQuarter said. Six grunted something and began to go past. He tolerated McQuarter because duty required of him that he tolerate everybody on the right side of the law. But he had no liking for the fat cattle buyer. There was something slovenly about Owen McQuarter, in spite of his good clothes and jeweled stickpin.

  McQuarter wasn’t ready to let Six pass. He held out his flaccid arm. “Somebody said something about Cruze not having any cows with him.”

  “News gets around fast,” Six observed.

  “I made a miserable trip down here to make a deal for that Terrapin herd. The Army needs beef. What’s Cruze doing riding in here with a crew if he hasn’t got a herd to sell?”

  “Maybe you’d better ask him that,” Six said. “I’m a marshal, not an oracle.” He was about to go on when the urge struck him to needle McQuarter. “Besides, I thought you came down here to meet your daughter.”

  “My ward, not my daughter. But I expected to conduct some business as lon
g as I was making the trip.”

  “It won’t be a total loss then, either way, will it?” Some secret amusement flashed momentarily behind the screen of the fat man’s expression; he said, “No, I guess it won’t at that.” And Six went on to the bar.

  He passed a few desultory words with Hal Craycroft, bartender and owner of the Drover’s Rest, and selected a cigar from Craycroft’s stock. He bit off the tip and lit the cigar, and barely had it going to his satisfaction when a lanky cattleman came into the place and made a path straight toward him.

  Six squinted through the rise of cigar smoke. The cattleman, Larry Keene, was a local man, a friend of Six’s and one of the more rough-hewn pillars of the community; and Keene looked as if he had something on his mind.

  He didn’t waste any breath with preliminaries; he plunged right in. “Cruze is coming in with Candy Briscoe and Fred Hook and a crew that looks like it’s primed for trouble, Jeremy.”

  “But no cows,” Six murmured. “That right Larry?”

  Keene’s eyebrows went up. “Yeah. That’s right. I guess you already got word, then.”

  “I didn’t know the toughs were Briscoe and Hook. That adds a piece to the puzzle.”

  Owen McQuarter had edged up closer; he tugged at his fat cheek and said, “Those names mean something to you, Marshal?”

  “Could be,” Six said.

  Larry Keene glanced at the cattle buyer. “Candy Briscoe would slit your throat for a peso. And Hook’s made a little gun reputation for himself along the border.”

  McQuarter said, “How good is he?”

  “Good enough. You don’t get deader than dead.” Keene shrugged and turned back to Six. “For all that, they’re all worthless, ’cept Briscoe. I hear he’s worth five hundred to some sheriff in Wyoming.”

  “Hardly seems worth that much, does he?” Six murmured. “Anyhow, I haven’t got any extradition papers on him.”

  McQuarter was puffing up, rearing back on his dignity. “You mean you won’t touch them, Marshal?”

  “Not unless they commit a crime.”

  “Haven’t you got authority?”

  “I’ve got complete authority,” Six said, “to follow the law to the letter. Don’t heat up so fast, McQuarter. What’s bothering you?”

  “If you knew Wade Cruze you’d know what was bothering me.”

  “I know him,” Six said.

  “Then you know what kind of man he is. They say there’s moss growing down his north side. He may own a big ranch but he’s still a common tough when you get right down to it. Maybe he’s decided that he doesn’t need to trail a cattle herd in here, because he figures I’m waiting with the money to pay for it and he can just as easily rob me of the money and keep his cows.”

  “He’s not that stupid,” Six said. “Nobody pulls off that kind of thing in my town, and Cruze knows it.”

  “Then what’s he up to?”

  “I reckon we’ll find that out when he gets here.”

  McQuarter said, “You take this all mighty easy, Marshal, considering that I’m sitting on quite a few thousand dollars of Government scrip waiting to pay for that cattle herd.”

  “You just leave that scrip where it is in the Wells Fargo safe,” Six said, “and you won’t have any trouble.”

  “Sure. And what if Wade Cruze decides he wants to make a bone orchard out of this town, just for the all-fired hell of it?”

  “All right, McQuarter,” Six said. “That’ll be enough.”

  He turned his back deliberately to the fat man, indicating that the discussion was ended, and after a flustered moment McQuarter waddled away toward a card table.

  The close air made streaks of beaded steam on the saloon windows. Larry Keene bellied up to the bar beside Six and said, “I never did like that toadstool McQuarter. But he’s got a point. I reckon Wade Cruze is the only man I ever knew to get thrown out of Fat Annie’s cathouse for insulting a girl. Wade was born with the hair-side out, that’s for sure, and you never can tell what he’s likely to do.”

  Six pointed toward the door. “Looks like we’ll be finding out soon enough. Sounds like them.”

  Muffled by the muddy bog of the street, the dull thudding of hoof beats subsided to a halt outside the big saloon. Six turned around and cocked his elbows over the bar behind him. Face wreathed in cigar smoke, he watched the doors unblinkingly. It did not escape his notice that conversation inside the saloon had been suspended; no one spoke. The men nearest the door drifted away from it to clear the front of the room, leaving a wide empty swath between Six and the door. Larry Keene ranged himself alongside Six and picked his teeth with a splinter; a reckless grin flashed across Keene’s lantern-jawed face.

  A wolf-throated roar of laughter preceded Wade Cruze’s entry into the saloon, and those who did not know Cruze were surprised to see that the owner of that loud gravel voice was in fact a little bandy-legged man, narrow as a plank, with a brown beard down to his second shirt button. He looked as small as a young boy who had not yet attained his full growth; but Wade Cruze was all whipcord and steel, a raggedy-edged rawhider who had hewn a cattle empire out of tough Indian country and held it by the power of his fist and gun.

  He entered laughing. Six recognized the man behind him as his foreman, Sid Arklin; Arklin was chuckling and it was clear he had just made a remark his boss thought uproarious. Behind these two, a cluster of hats appeared outside the doors. Cruze and Arklin stopped and looked around the wide open space that had been left for them by the saloon’s inhabitants.

  Cruze stopped laughing and elevated his brows in surprise. His glance swept the crowd and came to rest on Jeremy Six. “What in the hell is all this?”

  Larry Keene drawled, “The boys weren’t sure which way you’d buck, Wade.”

  Cruze howled with laughter. He slapped his knee and punched his foreman on the arm hard enough to make Arklin cringe and step aside. “Hear that, Sid? Hell, I got this whole town buffaloed and I ain’t even done a thing.”

  “Not quite,” Jeremy Six said. He took the cigar out of his mouth and waited for the smoke to lift away. “Were a mite curious, though.”

  “Curious? About what, Marshal?”

  “You didn’t saddle up your whole crew and ride a hundred and fifty miles just to see the sights of Spanish Flat,” Six said.

  Owen McQuarter pushed himself out of the crowd in the back of the place. “Where’re my cows, Cruze?”

  Cruze’s beard turned like a prow in a heavy sea. He sought out the owner of the new voice. “If it ain’t my old friend McQuarter,” he said, with no show of friendliness in his voice.

  “Where’re my cows?” McQuarter demanded again.

  “They ain’t your cows till they’re delivered and you pay for them,” Cruze said. “What’s your bellyache?”

  “I want to know if I made the trip down here for nothing,” McQuarter said. “I don’t hear any cattle out there. I don’t even smell cows on you gents.”

  Jeremy Six pushed away from the bar and went across the room. “What about it, Cruze? Where’s your herd?”

  Cruze glanced at Arklin. Both of them started to chuckle; they seemed to find some private joke that amused them greatly. Cruze said, “The cows’ll be along, Marshal. Don’t you fret.”

  “When?” McQuarter snapped.

  “Maybe four, five days.”

  “Walking all by themselves? You’ve got your whole crew out there.”

  Cruze’s beard chopped up and down when he talked. “Fat man, I don’t like repeating myself. Your cows’ll be here in Spanish Flat by the end of the week—take my word on it. Now God damn it, you people are cutting into my drinking time. What in hell’s the matter with this town?”

  He started to walk forward but Six barred his way. Two men stepped inside through the batwing doors and it didn’t take Six much of a glance to identify them—the gunslingers Fred Hook and Candy Briscoe. Six indicated the two of them with a cool glance and a dip of his head. “What about these two?”

 
; Cruze looked over his shoulder. Hook was staring malevolently at Six; Briscoe’s face was flushed. Wade Cruze said, “All right, what about them?”

  “You always hire gunslingers to drink with you while you’re waiting for a herd of steers to deliver itself?”

  Cruze said, “I like you, Marshal. Always did. You’ve got a sense of humor, which is the only thing separates a man from a razorback pig.”

  Six talked to Cruze, but his words were plainly meant for the two gunslingers. “If anybody makes trouble in my town, Cruze, I sit heavy on them. And that’s a promise.”

  Cruze chuckled. “Look, Marshal, let’s you and me make a little deal. Let’s say—”

  “No deals,” Six interrupted. “No gentlemen’s agreement. I don’t intend to have your hired toughs drive any wedges into this town. I don’t know what you hired these boys for, Cruze, but I can tell you this much: borrowing trouble’s one thing, lending it to your neighbors, that’s another thing. Whatever your private scheme is, you had better not pull it off in this town.”

  “I haven’t broken any laws,” Cruze said. He took a deep breath and lifted his banty bearded face to look directly up at Six. “I aim to have myself some drinks and then get into a hot tub and try to soak some grit and mud out of me. Ain’t going to be any trouble for your good citizens, Marshal. I’m just here to make a dicker for some cows with the Army—meaning Mr. McQuarter over there.”

  “Just see it stays that way,” Six said flatly, and stood aside to let the tough little cattleman march over to the bar. Arklin went along after Cruze, but Hook and Briscoe lingered a moment to stare hotly at Six as if to burn his image indelibly into their memories. Then they went on to the bar, and the fourteen cowhands of Cruze’s Terrapin crew trooped in after them.

  Larry Keene drifted over to Six’s shoulder and muttered, “It doesn’t look good, does it? That cocky little rooster’s up to something, that’s for sure.”

  Six clamped his jaws down on the cigar and sent his glance prowling shrewdly along the bar at the Terrapin men. “Do something for me, Larry. Keep an eye on that wolf pack while I go on down to the office and pick up a little hardware.”