Sid Stratton said, “Been a pleasure. I hope we’ll see you down here again soon.”
“And give you gents a chance to get even?” Krausmeier said. “Hell, no. I’ve had my fun, boys. Ought to be enough to last me quite a spell. I don’t guess I’ll be back.” With that, he nodded and stepped to the door. Stratton’s face closed down into a savage mask, which Krausmeier did not see because his back was turned; but Earle saw it, and felt the hairs at the back of his neck crawl with alarm.
Stratton said in a deceptive low voice, “Old man, you’re walking out of here with pretty near eight thousand dollars you won tonight, most of it mine.”
“Ain’t yours now, is it?” Krausmeier said amiably, his hand on the door.
“You owe us a chance to try winning it back,” Stratton said.
“I don’t agree,” said Krausmeier. “We all took the same chance, didn’t we?” His glance suddenly came around and bored into Stratton’s. Suddenly he smiled again. “Good night, gents. Been a good card game. You comin’, Earle?”
Earle looked at the empty spot on the table where his money—rather, the money he had borrowed from Stratton—had been. “Yeah,” he said, “I’ll give you a ride home, Amos.”
Krausmeier nodded and opened the door, which was when a petite figure walked purposefully up to the door from the saloon barroom beyond.
Earle said, “Lisa, what in hell are you doing here?”
“You were supposed to pick me up at midnight,” she said. “Even Ginny Dali has to go to bed sometime, Earle. Do you know what time it is?”
“I—I guess I forgot,” he said lamely. When he pulled out his snap-lid pocket-watch he saw it was getting close to three o’clock in the morning. He flushed. “Lisa, I just didn’t realize. I’m sorry.”
“You had damn well better be,” she said, red-faced with anger but nonetheless beautiful. Oblivious to the fact that other men were standing there to witness it, she laced into her brother with a string of distinctly unladylike oaths which culminated when she said, “And I think it’s just about goddamn time you grew up and started facing your responsibilities. You gave me your word, Earle. You broke it. Around this part of the country a man’s word is supposed to mean something.”
By this point Earle’s color had turned lobster-red; his ears burned. He could not look any of the men in the eye, and it abruptly occurred to him that no real man would allow his own sister to talk to him in such a way. Reaching for the only solution he could think of, he crossed the intervening distance with three long strides and delivered a ringing slap across Lisa’s face.
It rocked her head around, knocked her back a step, and made her gasp. For a moment the scene was frozen in a tableau; then old Amos Krausmeier broke out of his shock by grabbing Earle’s shoulder. Krausmeier spun Earle around and said harshly, “That ain’t no way to treat a lady, boy, especially not your own sister.”
“I don’t want any lip from you, you old son of a bitch,” Earle shouted. “Get your stinking hands off me.” He wrenched Krausmeier’s grip loose and flung the old man’s hand away.
Krausmeier pressed his lips together grimly and said, “That ain’t the way to talk to me, boy,” and brought his fist up from the waist. It smacked the shelf of Earle’s jaw like the flat of a cleaver striking a side of beef. Earle backpedaled and lost his balance, fell across a chair and tumbled to the floor, tangled up in the rungs and legs of the chair. His curses filled the saloon.
Krausmeier massaged his knuckles; his eyes had narrowed to wedges. He might have been an old man but he hadn’t lost any of the whipcord toughness he had built up during years of hardrock prospecting.
With a howl of rage, Earle got his feet under him and came up from the floor with the chair in his right hand. He hurled it from a crouch. The chair caught Krausmeier across the side of the head, propelled him back against the wall, and clattered away. Krausmeier’s eyes rolled up and he slid down the wall to a loose sitting position.
Sid Stratton crouched by the old man and gave him a close scrutiny. “Out cold,” he said. “Kid, you better take your sister and clear out of here. You don’t want to get her mixed up in any trouble.”
Confused, Earle nodded numbly. “Come on,” he said; he grabbed Lisa by the arm and propelled her ahead of him, through the half-deserted saloon and out to the street. The buggy was still hitched out front.
Lisa said, “Earle, for pity’s sake, let’s—”
“Just shut up,” he said. “Shut up and get in the buggy and just for Christ’s sake keep your goddamn mouth shut, will you?”
Four
Jim Destiny followed Tracy Chavis out of the Glad Hand to the street. The night had turned cool; the moon was down. Chavis said, “That’s just about all. You’ve got a picture of the rounds you’ll have to make.”
The new deputy said, “Almost. You’ve showed me the Marshal’s Office, the main street, and most every dive here in Cat Town, except for one.”
Chavis gave him a hooded look; it was hard to make out the rancher’s expression in the street. The only illumination came from sporadic windows, from which dim lamplight splashed out across the rickety boardwalks of Cat Town. Chavis said, “Judging by the way you talked a while back, I figured out it might be better to leave Stratton’s place till you’ve had time to get your bearings.”
“Time to cool off and change my mind about Stratton—that’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
“I just didn’t want you to go off half-cocked,” Chavis said candidly.
Destiny glanced at him with customary bleakness. “I don’t know why it should make any difference to you, he said, “but I gave my word to Marshal Six. I play the game by his rules. Along the Circuit where I come from, a man’s word counts for something.”
“I know,” Chavis said softly. “I rode the Circuit myself for a few years. You’d have been no more than half-grown then.”
They were walking south along a narrow street; Jim Destiny gave a big rancher a sidewise glance and said, “If that’s the case, and if you’re such an all-fired great friend of the marshal’s, why didn’t you take the deputy job yourself?”
“I did—until somebody better fit for it came along.”
“What makes you think I’m any better fit than you?”
Chavis drawled, “I like to think I’m a smart man, and I believe a smart man’s a man who knows his own limitations. I’ve been off the Circuit a good many years. I’ve got a ranch to run, a wife and little girl and crew to look after. I haven’t lifted my fist or gun against a man in a fight for a good long time. I’d be a fool if I didn’t realize a man loses his edge damned fast if he doesn’t keep himself honed and sharpened up. You get older, you get clumsy, you lose your speed and your reflexes, you forget just which muscles you’ve got to use in a fight. Maybe you don’t lose it all, but you blunt the edge enough to raise the odds against you. And I don’t think I’d be doing Jeremy Six a favor if all I did was get into a jam and mess things up worse than they already are. Right now we’ve got to deal with Sid Stratton and that hardcase bunch he’s got with him, and they know every trick in the book. It’d be no service to Jeremy Six or to this town to send a rusty old rancher like me to keep the lid on them. They’re too quick and too sharp. It takes a young fellow like you, with speed and guts and savvy enough to know all the tricks Stratton knows.”
“You may be giving me more credit than I’m due,” said Jim Destiny. He added darkly, “There were four of us brothers, and I was the slowest and the dumbest.”
“You’ve still got the savvy and the reflexes,” said Chavis, “which is more than can be said for me or the likes of—” He was cut off by the abrupt sound of a gunshot. It came from somewhere in the near distance, a loud hollow boom that signified a heavy-caliber revolver going off indoors.
Destiny was up on his toes, gun in hand, running for the intersection, before the echo died. He reached the corner and whipped around with careful speed, crouched, gun out.
Chavis caught up, ha
lf a second behind, and said in a wry drawl, “You see what I mean about reflexes, boy.”
“That Stratton’s place up yonder?”
“Yeah.”
“Then that’s where it must’ve come from. No other lights on in the street. Who’s that in the buggy, now?”
A young man’s narrow, angular shape vaulted up into the seat of a buggy in front of the Tres Candelas cantina; the buggy came rocking and bucking forward, and as it approached Destiny made out a second figure on the seat—a slim pretty girl, her face twisted over her shoulder, looking back at the saloon with a wide-eyed expression of shock and alarm. The buggy went caroming by, its driver cracking his whip and yelling at the horse with his lips peeled back in strain.
Destiny was out in the street, gun lifted, shouting for the buggy to halt; but the driver whipped the horse right on. Either he didn’t see Destiny or he made a point of pretending not to see him. The buggy sped past, squealed around the corner and rushed away toward the end of town.
Chavis walked out into the street and said, “No hurry anyhow; I recognized them. Earle and Lisa Mainwaring. Brother and sister. Their father owns a big house at that end of town.”
“Solid citizen?”
“About the richest man around here.”
“No wonder they wanted to keep their noses clean,” Destiny said, with the instant judgment of experience. “Trust the rich ones to scramble like mad when there’s dirt to hide away from. Come on, let’s go down and see what happened.”
“I hope it was just some cowboy letting off steam, ventilating the roof.”
“Not from the way those two lit out,” Destiny said. He gave Chavis another glance as they hurried toward the saloon; he said, “Quit worrying about me, Chavis. Don’t try to watch me and Stratton both. I won’t fly off the handle. No shooting unless they leave us no choice.”
“All right,” Chavis said—the sign of his trust.
The cantina’s lights, from open door and windows, blinked in their faces. They walked through the powder of the street; as they drew near, one man’s high, flat shape retreated around a corner of the building. Two others filled the doorway. Neither was Sid Stratton. Destiny recognized one of them—AL Hutton, one of Stratton’s hired tinhorns. Hutton was narrow as a blade. It was his voice that laid a toneless challenge on them: “Who’s that?”
Inner light cast a butter-colored gleam through the door onto the street. When Destiny and Chavis stepped onto the walk they had to enter that light; Hutton and his companion backed inside and Hutton’s voice whipped at them:
“By God, Jim Destiny! You’re sure as hell draggin’ your picket, kid.”
A night wind roved the street, throwing up the smell of dust and horses, of stale beer and tobacco smoke and men’s sweat. Destiny’s glance swept the shadows beside the door. There was that one man who had retreated around the corner, now possibly waiting outside a window with a gun in his hand. Inside the place, a handful of men collected along the bar, silently watching. Al Hutton’s breathing came hard and sighing out of him; and the one beside him was a high, still shape with his hand poised near his gun.
Destiny said, “Where’s Stratton?”
“Back room,” Hutton murmured, his eyes never straying from Destiny’s face.
“Get him out here,” Destiny said; his voice matched Hutton’s for dryness—the dryness of a breeze rattling through a field of dead grass. He walked into the saloon, stepping immediately to one side, putting his back to the wall. Chavis lingered by the door.
“Get him out here, Al,” Destiny said again, very gently. His gun was lifted and cocked; now he moved it an inch, lining up on Hutton. The back door squeaked open then. There had been no click of a latch; it was evident the door had been slightly ajar, the man behind it a witness to everything.
Stratton stepped into sight and said, “I’m out here. What the hell is your piece of this, Destiny?”
Destiny touched his free hand to the dull badge on his shirt. “I’ve hired on for the town. Deputy marshal. Now tell us about that gunshot.”
The easy smile stirred Stratton’s lips. “Been trying to figure it out myself,” he said. “We’ve got a dead man back here and I’ m embarrassed, because he was alone in the room when it happened and I’m damned if I know who shot him.”
“Likely,” murmured Destiny. “Stand out of the way, then. I’ll have a look.” He gave Chavis a brief glance, walked across the bar room and went past Stratton into the back room. A card table was set up, surrounded by chairs; cards were scattered across the table but there was no money in sight. A man sprawled against the baseboard of the far wall. Destiny crossed the room, knelt down and examined the man.
The man was very dead. Destiny said, “Who was he?”
“Name of Amos Krausmeier,” said Stratton. “He owned a mine up by the Mogul.”
“Rich man?”
“Not the richest. Not poor.”
The bullet had gone in Krausmeier’s right temple. There were powder burns around the wound. Krausmeier had a revolver in his loose right hand. Destiny pried it out of the dead grip and inspected it. “Fired once,” he said. “You trying to set this up like a suicide, Sid?”
“I didn’t set up anything,” Stratton said, even-tempered. “I can tell you this much. He came here to play cards and he had quite a big wad with him—six, seven thousand dollars. He lost all of it. Maybe he couldn’t afford to lose that much.”
“So he killed himself?” Destiny stood up. “You’re a lousy liar.”
“Am I?” Stratton murmured, unperturbed. “I guess you’d have to prove that, wouldn’t you?”
Destiny stood up and shouldered past Stratton into the bar room. “All right, you gents pay attention a minute.”
The men at the bar turned to look at him. He saw a warning glance travel between Stratton and AL Hutton. Hutton’s narrow face went blank; only his eyes showed feeling, thrusting out a vague uneasiness, rolling from Stratton to Destiny and over to Tracy Chavis, who stood silently near the front door, his gun loose in his grip.
Destiny spoke to the men at the bar. “Just to identify myself, the name is Destiny and I’m your deputy marshal for the time being until Marshal Six gets back on his feet.” He let that sink in; then he said, “A man’s been killed in the back room here. A man by the name of Amos Krausmeier. Anybody see what happened?”
Several men looked at each other; some of them shrugged. One man said, “I didn’t see the shooting, but I can tell you what happened before that.”
Destiny shot an inquiring look at Tracy Chavis, who nodded —an indication that he knew the man who was speaking, and would be inclined to believe what he had to say. The man wore miner’s jackboots and didn’t look like a Stratton employee.
Destiny said, “What’s your name, friend?”
“Bill MacDonald.”
“All right. Tell us about it.”
“Well, Krausmeier came out of the poker-playin’ room in back there. I guess the game had broke up because they all came out—Krausmeier and Stratton, there, and Hutton and that kid, Earle Mainwaring. The kid’s sister came in and she was boiling mad. I guess from what she said that her brother’d been supposed to pick her up at midnight but he hadn’t showed up. She cussed him out real good.”
“When was this?”
“Not long ago.” MacDonald looked at the clock behind the bar. “Around three sometime.”
“Go on.”
“Well, like I said the girl cussed her brother out, and her brother hauled off and smacked her across the face, which was when old Krausmeier stepped in and hauled the kid back and told him to cut it out. So the kid slugged him with a chair.”
“The Mainwaring boy slugged Krausmeier?”
“Yeah, that’s what happened. Knocked Krausmeier out cold. Then the kid left. Dragged his sister with him. They went out the front way. In the meantime Krausmeier started to come to, so Stratton and Hutton dragged him into the back room and laid him down to rest until he felt better.
Then both of them came back into the saloon here. They hadn’t shut the door in the meantime, so we could see it all. When they came out, they shut the door behind them. Krausmeier was in there rubbin’ his jaw when Stratton closed the door.”
“So they left Krausmeier in the back room alone?”
“That’s right. We all had a drink and talked it up some after that. Then we heard the shot.”
“Stratton was here in the bar room with you-all when you heard the shot?” Destiny said.
“That’s right,” said MacDonald. “We all looked up real quick-like, startled you know. Stratton went back there to find out what happened. Then I heard the buggy take off, out front, and then you two came in—you and Chavis, there.”
Destiny looked at Sid Stratton, whose pale face was composed and smug. After a moment Destiny walked over to Tracy Chavis and said, “What do you do about the body?”
“I’ll send somebody to roust the undertaker out of bed and get the old man out of here. I imagine he left a will specifying what to do with the remains. If not, he’ll be buried in Boot Hill.”
Destiny grimaced. He looked across the room at Stratton, passed his taut glance over at Hutton, and said to the room in general, “I expect there’ll be a coroner’s inquest. Don’t any of you leave town until it’s been held.” With that, he marched outside.
Chavis followed him. Destiny ground a fist into palm. “It’s too damned smooth.”
Chavis said, “You’d better have a talk with Earle Mainwaring.”
“I know that,” Destiny snapped. “But it seems damned far-fetched to me that a man could die of a gunshot wound in Sid Stratton’s place, and Stratton not have anything to do with it. I just don’t believe that.”
“Don’t prejudge the case before you’ve got all the facts,” Chavis said.
“I know Stratton.”
“Sure, but you don’t know what happened in there, and you don’t know Earle Mainwaring. He’s a spoiled, hot-tempered kid. I wouldn’t put it past him to kill a man. He’s got a wire down in him somewhere, that boy.”
Marshal Jeremy Six #7 Page 5
