McAllister 6

by Matt Chisholm

  The few drinks he bought paid off. He learned a good deal from Mark Tully about the proposed horse race, he even went so far as to hint that he might be entering a horse. Tully at once paid him some attention. The more the merrier. He, Mark, had failed to notice the kind of horse this fellow was on when he first came into town. Surely, if it was something out of the ordinary, he would have noticed. Or one of the boys would and mentioned it. A first-class horse never went unnoticed in this country.

  He also learned from the dispatcher at the stage office that Lennie Wallach’s daughter, Debbie, was going out on the stage first thing in the morning. Cam Brennan went back to his room and brooded. The girl had to be stopped, of course, but how? He had a strong feeling that she was a necessary part of this commission. With her out of the way, his position would be considerably weakened. He thought of leaving a note under Wallach’s door, but rejected that as too risky. If he were seen, it might go badly for him later on. He could not be too careful.

  He knew that the stage would have to be stopped and the girl taken off. But that also constituted a terrible risk. If he were to do it, his absence from town would be noticed and a fool could see that it coincided with the girl’s abduction. What then was he to do?

  The problem exercised him far into the night.

  Around eleven o’clock, he noticed in the lamplight a small piece of paper poking from under the door. Picking it up, he saw on it three small dots placed in a triangle. Under them was written ‘midnight’.

  Now he started to sweat a little.

  Eleven

  His daughter, Deborah, always made Lennie Wallach feel guilty. Mainly because he was the cause of a Jewish girl living in isolation amongst gentiles. Not that the folks around here did anything much to make them feel isolated, but Lennie knew that he could not bring the girl up after the Jewish manner out here in this wilderness. Lennie was not orthodox himself, not even a practicing Jew. It was just that he felt Jewish and thought he owed the girl some of that Jewishness for herself. He could not explain the feeling, so he did not try, but that did not stop him feeling guilty. He wanted to see her married to a good Jewish boy and to raise good Jewish children. In his self-acknowledged perversity he had brought her to this frontier town, where her chances of meeting another Jew of the right quality to suit Lennie were pretty slim.

  The years they had spent together, setting up presses under the most appalling conditions, had been exciting and worthwhile for him – and he hoped some of his enjoyment had been shared with the girl. She was a good newspaperman, she wrote well, maybe even better than he – and that was saying something in Lennie’s book.

  Now he looked at her, writing away with a scratching pen by lamplight, her dark head bent over the sheet in front of her.

  ‘What’re you writing?’ he asked, perching his spectacles up on his forehead.

  ‘The book.’

  This was her own and very private work, of which they did not speak. It was not that Lennie disapproved; quite the reverse, he was proud of her effort. It was just tacitly agreed between them that he did not interfere in her personal writing.

  ‘I shall see it yet,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your name on the title page of a book. That’ll make me pretty damned proud, Debbie.’

  ‘Then you’d better prepare yourself, papa.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘I’m working on the second volume now.’

  ‘You don’t mean to tell me—’

  ‘I do mean to tell you.’

  ‘When, how, who? How the hell do you keep a thing like that to yourself?’

  He threw over his chair and rushed across the office to her, dodging the press and knocking over a pile of old copies of papers.

  She looked up at him, smiling at his excitement. ‘Keep calm. Remember that heart of yours. I was going to save the news until I could hand you a copy and watch your face when you saw my name on the cover.’

  ‘Wretched girl!’

  ‘Preston and Foster of Chicago bought it. They offered me an advance for a second.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How have you managed to keep it to yourself?’

  ‘I don’t know. Sometimes I thought I’d bust.’

  ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘Black Horse Country Memoirs.’

  ‘So you used material you picked up here in this office?’ Suddenly, his excitement had evaporated. She watched it go with apprehension in her heart. She saw the joy fade from his face and she felt as though she had struck him. He found the chair he had knocked the newspapers from and sat down. ‘You know what I’m thinking, darling,’ he said.

  Soberly, she said: ‘I know.’ He was thinking that all the material which he had flaunted in the faces of their enemies here would now be reaching a wider audience in the world outside. The inequities of certain of the big cattle outfits would shortly be broadcast wide to the nation. Few people read their newspaper, but men in Washington and New York would see her book.

  ‘I’m sending you to Caspar, but now I’m wondering if you’ll be safe there, even. My God, child, where will you be safe after this?’

  ‘Papa, you’re making it worse than it is. Men don’t make war on women.’

  ‘They don’t? Oh, my God, what do we do now?’ He put his leonine head in his hands, feeling helpless and a coward too. Why hadn’t he gone into the clothing trade as his father had begged him? By following his first love, he had sacrificed the only creature on the earth whom he loved whole-heartedly.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘I should sell up here, lock, stock and barrel, and come with you.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I won’t allow that. That’s complete defeat. Honestly, papa, life’s not worth living by going to meet defeat halfway. Neither of us are made that way.’

  He looked at her as if for the first time. He had been so occupied with his own battles and decisions and excitements over the last few years that he had failed to see that she had grown into an independent and intelligent woman. And a very beautiful one, too.

  ‘Just the same,’ he said, ‘I’m responsible for you, my dear. I am your father.’

  ‘Look at the lives we’re leading,’ she said, and he was taken aback by her self-assurance, something he had not noticed before. He felt her confidence like a solid thing. ‘We’re both doing what we want most in life. You want to marry me off, but I am quite naturally choosing something else. I’m a writer and I want to go on being a writer more than anything else. This book is only the start. I’m making a choice and I’m sticking to it. A bunch of prairie bums with more money and power than’s good for them are not going to stop me.’

  He could have cheered. Yet at the same time he was terrified for her.

  ‘All right,’ he said, knowing that this was the first of many such defeats in the future, ‘I’ll stay here. But when you get to Caspar, I want you to lose your identity and go on to Chicago. Will you do that, just so I can sleep nights? Is that too much to ask.’

  She smiled and thought about it before she said: ‘All right.’

  ‘Go to your Uncle Sam and Aunt Sarah. Will you do that?’

  ‘All right.’

  Lennie Wallach began to feel better. He thought about his daughter’s success and started to ask her about the new volume.

  ‘I have only reached halfway,’ she told him. ‘I think the second half is what is happening now and what will happen in the future. Maybe nothing will happen.’

  That sobered him again. ‘Plenty’s going to happen,’ he said. ‘The next month, the next year, it don’t matter when, but the whole lid is going to blow off this country.’

  Lennie Wallach was a good newspaper man and he knew what he was talking about.

  Twelve

  Cam Brennan swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat tensed and alert when the three soft taps came on his door. ‘Who is this?’ he demanded in a low voice.

  ‘Number Three.’<
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  ‘Come ahead.’

  A tall and shadowy figure entered the room and stood just inside the still-open door.

  ‘Turn that lamp lower,’ it ordered.

  Brennan did not like the tone. It assumed instant obedience. But just the same he reached out and turned the low-burning wick still lower. The other man shut the door silently and sat on the chair near the curtained window. He said: ‘I am armed and my gun is pointed at you. There is enough lamplight for me to see you clearly.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Brennan said, allowing his annoyance to ruffle his calm a little. ‘What is this? So I’m doing a job for you. It doesn’t call for all this shenanigans.’

  ‘We’ll be the judge of that,’ the man said. Brennan tried to place the accent, but could not. The man was a white American, but gave away no other information. ‘What is the delay in your carrying out your commission?’

  ‘Not really a delay. A week or two, no more.’

  The man said: ‘That could be inconvenient to us.’

  ‘You’ll have to leave the judgment of when to do it to me. I have long experience in this kind of thing.’

  ‘I hear you are thinking of entering a horse in this horse race.’

  That shook Brennan. Whoever was hiring him must have ears all over. The information gave him more respect for the people he was dealing with than he had had till now.

  He thought quickly: ‘It gives me a good reason for hanging around here.’

  ‘Isn’t buying cattle enough?’

  ‘No harm in reinforcing the idea a little.’

  ‘Or are you delaying here so you can enter your horse in this race?’

  ‘Maybe it could look that way,’ Brennan said, ‘but it ain’t so. Directly, the race is over, I kill the mark. You can bank on it.’ He wondered if this was the time to put the pressure on, but thought it better to be cautious for a while. This man sounded very competent and self-assured.

  The man asked: ‘Is there anything more?’

  This fellow had been smart, learning about him wanting to put a horse in the race. Maybe it would not be a bad thing to show him that Brennan could also pick up information. He said tentatively: ‘Did you hear about the Wallach girl?’

  The man said: ‘What about her?’

  ‘Did you know she was leaving town?’

  He could feel that the man hated to admit lack of knowledge. The shadowy figure said: ‘Give me the details.’

  Brennan said: ‘I’m hired to rub a man out. The girl is extra.’

  The man seemed to brood on that for a while. ‘Can she be stopped without being killed?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Brennan, ‘who wants to kill a woman?’

  ‘Who indeed? When is she going?’

  ‘Tomorrow, on the stage.’

  ‘How will you prevent it?’

  ‘I’ll take her off the stage.’

  The man’s brief silence showed that he had his doubts. ‘Can it be done?’

  ‘I wouldn’t offer if I thought it couldn’t. If the price is right, I’ll fix it.’

  The shadow said: ‘I won’t dicker about it. Take it or leave it.’

  ‘Just so’s you remember my services come high. I didn’t ever have a failure.’

  ‘Five hundred dollars.’

  ‘I’ll take it.’

  The shadow asked: ‘How will you do it?’

  ‘That’s neither here nor there.’

  The shadow received this without objecting. ‘I don’t have sufficient funds on me right now to pay you an advance. I shall do so next time we meet.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Brennan said. ‘There has to be trust on both sides.’

  The man grunted and rose. He went to the door and opened it without making a sound. Brennan at once got to his feet and went quietly on the toes of his stockinged feet to the door and peered up and down the hall. The man had disappeared. The killer smiled to himself. Next time he met with this fellow, he would trace him to his source. Then he would put the screws on. But that would be after Wallach was dead.

  He locked his door and turned the lamp up. As he did so, he thought he heard a faint sound. Where did it come from? The room next to his? Was it possible …? Sudden apprehension knifed through him. Lifting the lamp, he unlocked his door again and hurried out on to the landing. The next moment, he was in the neighboring room, lamp held high and gun in hand. But the place was empty. The bed was neatly made up and there was no sign that there had been anybody in there lately. Just the same, he wondered ... He would have to be doubly careful from here on.

  The following morning, he approached his formidable landlady – ‘Ah, Mrs Sansom, who is occupying the room next to mine?’

  ‘Number Two, Mr Coulter? Why, nobody.’

  ‘Nobody could have used it without you knowing?’

  ‘Course not. The idea! Nobody comes in and out of this place without me knowing. You can bet your sweet life on that, Mr Coulter.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Thirteen

  The stage left town at eight o’clock on the dot. Cheddy Stubbs was a stickler for time, and unless prevented by fire, flood, acts of God and the foolishness of humans (such as holding up the stage) he had never failed to meet his schedule. He had taken that old mud-wagon of his and the six-mule team through everything that nature and providence could think to throw at an embittered old man sitting up there aloft with the ribbons in his gnarled hands. Once or twice it had been suggested that Cheddy was too old. As it was his habit to knock down anybody who suggested such a thing to his face, not surprisingly he kept his job.

  Cheddy was there this morning, smiling and ready, offering a willing service to those who were hardy or foolish enough to patronize the line. He wore his slightly green ancient frock coat and a large Dragoon pistol of vintage design, and laid a sawed off shotgun at his feet. The line did not run to a messenger up here. And who needed a guard with a savage old goat like Cheddy up top?

  For Debbie Wallach, he actually raised his hat before witnesses, handed her inside facing the horses and checked that she was comfortable – if that was the right word to use in connection with the monstrosity he drove. He told her father: ‘Don’t you fret none now, Len. We’ll git her safe and sound to Caspar, no matter what.’

  Folks commented on how much Wallach was cut up by the departure of his daughter. Cam Brennan hovered on the outskirts of the crowd that always gathered at the stage station at such times. Before it departed, he slipped away and walked to where he had tied his horse earlier in the day. He mounted and rode south to mislead anybody who might see him go. Once out of sight of town, he bore east and circled back towards the main trail. He used the speed of the horse to good advantage and was in position a good half-hour before the stage was due to pass. He had chosen a good spot at the top of a rise where the mules would have to slow to a walk. He did not doubt that the driver would halt there to give the animals a blow. If old Cheddy kept his head and showed sense, everything would be fine. Not a hard way to earn five hundred dollars. Once in cover of the rocks and underbrush, Brennan took his duster from a saddlepocket and put it on. He did not pull the bandanna over the lower part of his face until he heard the mud-wagon approaching.

  A few minutes later, he saw the first pair of mules come round the bend. They were going at a brisk trot. Cheddy kept the whole team working until they reached the start of the gradient, then he at once reduced the pace to a walk. As Brennan had expected, at the top of the trail the old man halted his team and allowed them to blow.

  It was then that Brennan shot Cheddy’s hat from his head. It was not grandstanding. Such behavior was not a part of Brennan’s nature. It was just to show them all down there what he could do.

  ‘Grab sky,’ he bellowed. ‘You stay where you’re at, Cheddy, and don’t even risk blinking. Everybody out now. This side of the coach.’ One by one, they climbed down on to the trail and stood there, facing him, looking up at the rocks and pointing rifle, some of them scared. There were three me
n and Deborah Wallach. ‘Everybody back in the coach except Miss Wallach. She stays where she’s at.’

  One of the men felt compelled to make some show of protest as demanded by his manhood: ‘Now, see here, you can’t—’. Brennan put a forty-four slug between his feet and altered his mind for him. He promptly climbed back into the coach.

  Old Cheddy said: ‘Can I git my hat?’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Brennan.

  The old fellow climbed down on the far side of the coach, recovered his hat, clapped it back on his head and climbed to his seat again. A moment later, his whip cracked and those six mules hit their collars more or less together. The stage went off at a run down the far side of the hill. The girl stood there forlorn and alone. Brennan called down: ‘You climb up here now, missy. Don’t give me any grief and I won’t give you any.’

  Slowly, she climbed the hill.

  Fourteen

  Two miles down the trail, on the far side of a thick stand of timber, old Cheddy reined in his mules and leaned down to the near window.

  ‘This far enough?’ he demanded.

  ‘Sure,’ McAllister told him, and climbed out of the stage. He walked around to the rear of the stage where his two horses were tied and shoved his Henry rifle away in its boot on his saddle. He mounted and sang out: ‘Thanks for your co-operation, boys,’ and headed for timber with the riderless horse following on the lead-line. Old Cheddy called back: ‘See you later, Rem,’ and urged his mules forward.

  McAllister stayed in the cover of the trees until he reached a point from which he could watch the spot where Brennan had removed the girl from the stage. He dismounted, tied his horses and produced a glass from a saddlepocket. With this he was able to pick up Brennan and the girl without too much trouble. The girl was sitting quietly on a rock talking to her captor. McAllister though she looked safe enough and did not need rescuing yet.