Although the Marriner crew only numbered fourteen, the ranch usually sustained a population of at least thirty or forty toughs. Some of them were on the drift and some of them belonged with the stolen herds that pastured on Matador meadows. Some of them used it as a hideout when things got too hot for them on one side of the border or the other. And some of them came to spark old Buel’s adopted daughter Wanda.
Wanda was an orchid in a cactus garden. Somehow she had defied all the laws of heredity and environment. She had grown into a willowy young beauty, soft-voiced and blush-cheeked. At nineteen she had a body that made men fight over her, croon over her, and lay themselves at her feet.
They courted her even more desperately than they might have because she paid absolutely no attention to any of them.
Campfire songs had been written about Wanda. It was said she had broken a thousand hearts. Her smile was as good as another woman’s kiss. But her smiles were not for the rustlers of the Matador. Wanda had no shining visions of big cities and bright lights; all she wanted, privately, was a good sound man and a nice quiet home. But she knew she wouldn’t get anything like that from any of the toughs who frequented the ranch.
And so she waited.
Saturday morning, just after sunup, a rider galloped his lathered horse into the Matador yard. Ma Marriner came out on the galleried veranda of the long, low adobe ranch house. She propped her thick arms akimbo and frowned disapproval upon the rider, who flung himself off the foam-flecked horse and ran up on the porch, clumsily yanking off his hat. “Miz Marriner, I—”
“You oughta be shot for what you’ve done to that horse,” Ma Marriner said. She always talked in a voice that most women would have reserved for use at the height of a stampede.
She roared, “You’ve windbroke that animal. He’ll never be fit to ride again. Why, I ain’t never—”
“Miz Marriner,” the rider cut in boldly, “this is the third horse I’ve rid out from under me in the last twenty-four hours.”
“Then you oughta be shot three times,” she shouted back at him. “I might’ve expected such like from these no-count drifters that pass by, but from a regular old hand like you, Sandee, I just don’t—”
“Ma’am,” Sandee said, “you got to listen to what I got to say to you.”
Something in the grim earnest gleam of Sandee’s eye brought the old woman down from her lofty indignation. She said mildly, “All right, Sandee. Go ahead and tell me. Old Buel got hisself arrested, is that it?”
There was yet another interruption: the door opened and Wanda stepped out onto the veranda. She was a tall girl, supple and full of grace and youthful spring. She had the littlest waist a man ever did see. Sandee’s fingers clawed at his hat brim and mangled it. He began to stutter. Wanda’s proud breasts strained against the homespun of her dress; her dark hair cascaded soft around her shoulders. She had enormous brown eyes that could melt a man down into a puddle.
Sandee gawked and fidgeted. “Ma’am, ladies that is, I—I don’t know how to say this to y’all—”
“Clear your craw and expectorate it out,” roared Ma Marriner.
Wanda said gently, “What is it, Clem? Just take your time, now.” Her voice was soothing like a soft cool hand.
Clem Sandee tried to smooth his hat back into a semblance of shape. “He’s dead,” he muttered. He looked up and blurted, “Old Buel. He got shot. Dead. And Cleve, he—”
“Dead?” Ma thundered. “Dead?”
“Yes, ma’am. He—”
“What do you mean, dead?” she shouted. “What in the God damn thunderation do you mean, dead?”
Wanda’s hand had flown to her mouth. She took it down and said in a small voice, “What did you say about Cleve?”
“Got his wing busted, Miss Wanda. Gunshot in the elbow. I seen them take him down to jail after the sawbones splinted his arm up. Nobody seen me ride out of town. You see, I doubled back to lend a hand, only it was all over by the time I got back after that big Mex deputy run me out of town, and I didn’t get no chance to—”
“Dead?” roared Ma.
Wanda took her by the elbow. “Come inside, Ma. Clem, help me get Ma inside.”
“Dead?”
Wanda said anxiously, “You’re sure my brother is all right, Clem?”
“All right as he can be, with his elbow all busted to pieces,” Sandee replied.
They had coaxed Ma into lying down on the battered old divan. Wanda had placed a damp folded towel over her forehead. She seemed to have simmered down, but now she sat up and flung the towel away and began to curse in a thunderous monotone until Wanda said sharply, “Ma!”
The old woman’s voice ran down. She scrubbed her face with horny palms and pinched the bridge of her nose, turned one way and then the other, walked around wringing her hands, banged her big fist against the wall, and finally came to a halt facing Clem Sandee.
“Clem.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Old Buel is dead. That right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Who shot him? Six?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Six ain’t that fast with a gun,” said Ma shrewdly. “He ain’t fast enough to beat my Buel in a fair fight. No man alive is. Six shot him in the back, didn’t he?”
“Ma’am, he—”
“Shot old Buel when he wasn’t looking, didn’t he? Back-shot him. Heard old Buel was coming after him, and set up to bushwhack him. It must have been in the middle of the night, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am, only—”
“Come out of some dark alleyway, Six did, and shot my Buel dead in the back.”
“Well, ma’am, it wasn’t exactly like that. You see—”
“I grieve, Clem Sandee. I grieve that my man’s dead, and I grieve that you nor Cleve nor any of those other men stopped it.”
“We didn’t get no chance, ma’am. I don’t know how he did it, but Six rounded up all them others one at a time. Wasn’t no regular Matador hands there except me, you know. The rest of them was along to hit at the bank, but they never got near it. I’ll tell you the truth, ma’am, I ain’t got the hint of a notion what could’ve happened to the rest of them, but they all done disappeared into thin air and I reckon it must’ve been Six’s doing.”
“Shot them all in the back, I reckon,” Ma shouted.
“No, ma’am. They wasn’t no shooting, not until old Buel got his. Then Cleve, he went at Six, but Six out-drawed him.”
“I can believe that. Cleve never was as good as his pa with a gun. That boy’s always been one to think before he started shootin’, and that kind of behaving ain’t no good.”
Clem Sandee said anxiously, “I did what old Buel told me, ma’am. Set myself up across the street to cover the bank. But that sneakin’ deputy come up behind me and got the drop with a double bore ten gauge and it was like I was looking down two big tunnels into my own grave. I didn’t have no choice, ma’am.”
“You could have stood there and died,” Ma said.
“Yes, ma’am. But then there wouldn’t be nobody to bring you the word.”
“That’s a fact,” the old woman conceded.
“I dropped my gun right there and started walking, ma’am. Didn’t know if that deputy’d let me get away or not, but I figured I had to try it. I had a rifle on my saddle, see. Anyhow he didn’t move to stop me, so I went on down and got my horse and pretended to ride out of town. Then I doubled back down the next street and come up behind the bank.”
“Did you see Six shoot old Buel?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’se just in time to see that.”
“In the back.”
“Well, ma’am, I don’t reckon—”
“You’d have saved me a good deal of trouble if you’d shot Six on the spot.”
“Ma’am, I just couldn’t do that. The street was full of people, time I got my rifle out and found a place.”
“Just as well you didn’t shoot Six,” Ma shouted. “That’s a pleasu
re I want for myself. You say they’ve got Cleve in the jailhouse?”
“Yes, ma’am. Right in the middle of town.”
“Round up the crew and get them mounted, Clem. Every man you can find.”
“Ma’am, you don’t figure to bust him out of jail?”
Wanda stepped forward and put a hand on her foster-mother’s arm. “Ma, they’re bound to have the jail guarded.”
“I’ll git him out,” Ma roared. “I’ll git him out, and by God I promise you I’ll have Six’s hide on a spit!”
Four
Six left his desk, glanced at the clock, and walked back through the jail corridor to Cleve Marriner’s cell. “How you making it, Cleve?”
Weak lamplight filtered into the cell from the end of the hall. Bathed in shadows, Cleve’s face was hard to see; only the white triangular sling that supported his shattered right arm was sharply visible. He said, “I reckon I’ll live to fight another day.”
“Tell me something. Do you think your ma will send the Matador crew to try and break you out of here?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her,” Cleve said, grinning briefly. “Nothing Ma treasures more’n a good free-for-all.” Then his face darkened, became hard. “And by this time she’s got word of what you did to Pa. Hell, Jeremy, if it was you what would you do? You don’t expect us to let you get away scot-free with it. You may as well relax. Because we’re going to kill you.”
“You’ve already tried it once,” Six reminded him, and walked away toward the front of the jail.
In his office the lamp was turned down low, according to Six’s habit; he always burned a low flame at night, so that he could see out through the front window. He pulled his chair up to the desk and plunged distastefully into the paperwork that occupied a sizable, necessary, and wholly unpleasant portion of his working time. Another glance at the clock informed him that he had almost half an hour before the start of his next rounds. There were wanted flyers to sort through, discarding those which recent official correspondence declared canceled; there were notes to write in his methodical crabbed hand—notes to fellow peace officers throughout the Southwest, answering requests for information on the status and/or whereabouts of individuals, whether missing persons or fugitive outlaws or unidentified corpses; there were books to keep (a job he hated with special venom) and expenses to record—One Carton Ammunition, Cal. .45, @ $2.25; there were letters to write to the county sheriff at Aztec and the capital, Prescott, informing them of the death of Buel Marriner and the circumstances of Cleve’s arrest; there was one paragraph he took pleasure in writing, and that was the one which asked for an official commendation for the community citizens who had helped forestall the would-be bank robbery—Craycroft, Keene, Riley, Chavis, and the rest.
As he was signing his name to the letter, one of the men whose name he had just written dismounted in front of the office. Through the window Six saw Tracy Chavis cross the boardwalk to the door and open it without knocking. Chavis came in, nodded a greeting, and glanced around the place. “All secure?”
“Uh-huh.”
Chavis spoke in a casual, conversational way: “Bones and Larry and I decided to spend the weekend in town. I posted a Chainlink man up on top of Morgan Peak to keep an eye on the malpais flats down there. He can see thirty miles.”
Six said, “You didn’t need to do that on my account, Tracy. But I’m obliged.”
“Didn’t need to, maybe, but wanted to anyhow. My lookout can give us five, six hours advance warning if Ma Marriner’s crew comes dusting across the malpais.”
Six got to his feet, tramped restively around the office, and finally came to a halt by the open front door, where he pounded his fist softly on the jamb. He said, “Tracy, there must be fifteen hardcases on the Matador crew, and thirty or forty more guns Ma Marriner can lay her hands on if she needs them.”
“This town’s tough enough to take them on,” Chavis said. “We took on old Buel and his bunch, didn’t we?”
Six wheeled in the doorway to face him. “It’s not the town’s job. It’s my job. That’s what I get paid for.”
“One against fifty? Nobody hired you to fight those odds.”
“That’s beside the point,” Six said.
“Then what is the point?”
Six said, “We’re only guessing they’ll come at us. Maybe they’ll stay home and sulk and forget it after a while. But I doubt it. The Marriners are clannish as hell—old Buel and Ma came out of the Ozarks and they’ve never changed their ways. You can see what a stubborn streak Cleve’s got in him, and I imagine the old woman’s even worse. No, they won’t let it ride. They can’t. They’ll come swarming into this town like vultures into a garbage dump. They want Cleve out of jail and they want my scalp, and they’ll ride roughshod over this town to get it done.”
“The town’s got too much self-respect to let them,” Chavis said. “You know that, Jeremy. We’ll fight them from house to house if we have to.”
“But you don’t have to,” Six murmured. “That’s the point, Tracy. If the Matador bunch comes, they won’t be coming against Spanish Flat. They’ll be coming against me. To free Cleve and kill me. They don’t give a damn about the town or the people in it, one way or the other. And that being the case, I’ve got no right to risk anybody else’s skin. Not yours and not Larry Keene’s, and not even my own deputy’s. Nobody’s.”
“You expect us all to stand aside and watch while they bust in here and grab Cleve and splatter you all over the floor?”
Six said in a casual voice, so that Chavis would know how significant it was, “They won’t bust in anywhere if Cleve and I aren’t here, Tracy.”
“What?”
It had come to Six slowly, while he had talked; it had worked itself out, a deceptively simple plan, and now it had settled itself down resolutely in his mind. He spelled it out:
“We don’t know for sure that they’re coming in. But if they do, your man on Morgan Peak will give us the warning. We’ll have half a day’s start on them. Suppose I take Cleve Marriner with me and ride out of here. I’ll take the coach road north. If the Matador crew comes after me, they’ll figure I’ve taken the northwest fork, heading for the county seat at Aztec. I want you to spread the word around town that I’ve taken the prisoner to Aztec.”
“Where’ll you actually be?”
“I’ll take the northeast fork. Cut across the Reservation to Fort Dragoon and pick up the railroad there. We’ll ride the train into Arrowhead and I’ll throw Cleve in jail there.”
“Three days’ ride to Fort Dragoon,” Chavis said. “Suppose they catch you on the Reservation? Nothing but desert sand out there to tell what happened to your bones, Jeremy. And if they cut you off, you’re maybe forty or fifty against one. I don’t like it.”
With dry amusement Six said, “I don’t rightly see how you can stop it, Tracy.”
Old Buel Marriner had been the eldest son of an Ozark family that had numbered nine sons and two daughters. Old Buel’s brothers had spread out across Kentucky and Arkansas, and by the 1860’s the clan had become enormous. The second generation members like Cleve had first cousins strewn all through the mountain South and far West. They numbered among them farmers, cattlemen, hog growers, storekeepers, corn-whisky distillers, traveling salesmen, housewives, whores, career soldiers, Wells Fargo shotgun guards, barbers, gamblers, and professional gunmen.
Wes Marriner, the son of Buel’s younger brother John, was a hired gun.
Or rather, at the moment, he was a gun for hire, since he was temporarily unemployed.
There was a time, five years ago, when Wes Marriner had forsaken his grim trade. After a mining camp war at Washington Camp, Wes had fallen in love with a brown-haired girl whose father had been the victim of the gold-claim war. He had married the girl and together they had worked the Pendleton Mine, and for a while Wes Marriner had never regretted having hung up his gun. He had only bitter memories of the Rio Chama war where one man—Wes Marriner—in a cabin st
ood off eight picked gunmen; bitter memories of the greedy wealthy scavengers who paid top gun wages to their hired fighters who had to go out and do the vultures’ dirty work for them. Running the Pendleton Mine was the first job he’d ever had where he hadn’t had to kill somebody to get paid. It had felt good.
But catastrophes always struck in bunches. It wasn’t enough that torrential rains had flooded the mineshafts. The flooding weakened the support timbers and one morning the “A”-level tunnel caved in, burying three miners. The whole mountain settled. It would have taken every penny he had, and every ounce of backbreaking work he could put in, to clear the collapsed tunnels and get the mine producing again. He had been rolling up his sleeves to get started when the cholera had come.
The cholera took his wife. It took his three-year-old son. And it took his spirit.
He had sold the mine for cigarette money, packed everything he wanted to keep on his horse, and ridden away from Washington Camp. South, into Mexico, where perhaps a man might drown his grief in tequila. It hadn’t taken him long to fall in with a crowd of angry peons pushing a ten-centavo revolution against the provincial government; he had strapped on his six-gun and cut a bloody scythe through the revolt-torn mountains.
The revolutionary army had promised him high pay, in gold, for the hire of his gun. But after six months and uncounted shootings the revolutionary junta had fallen.
Marshal Jeremy Six #5 Page 3
