MacKinnon

by Johnny D. Boggs

  It would’ve been so beautiful, he thought, but at least I have all of the money from Charley the Trey’s place. No, I don’t. Most of that is in the saddlebags on that dun chasing after Chico Archuleta.

  Swearing, he reached inside his vest pocket, only to find gold pieces. The boy ticket taker smiled patiently. Martin shoved his hand into his pants pocket and brought out a nickel. He handed that to the boy.

  “Well,” the boy said. “That’s a start.”

  Glancing over his shoulder, Martin frowned. He saw Sam MacKinnon had stepped off the dirt and gravel path that ended at the Saragosa House. Martin swore, but at least MacKinnon was staring at the corrals. Martin’s hand returned to his vest pocket, and he pulled out a double eagle. He slammed it into the boy’s hand.

  “Well,” the boy stammered. “I don’t know if I can make change.”

  Martin pushed past him. “It’s for Roswell’s civic improvement,” he said.

  “But you need your ticket, mister.”

  He kept walking, head bent, moving to the fellow in a white cap who kept yelling: “Peanuts. Roasted nuts. Get your roasted nuts, ladies and gents.”

  “Hey!” The boy at the ticket gate just would not shut up. “You can’t …”

  * * * * *

  “You can’t come in here wearing no guns, mister!”

  MacKinnon was making a beeline for the corrals when the shout from near the ball field caused him to pivot. A kid, wearing a pillbox cap of black wool with yellow horizontal stripes across the top above the brim, stood waving a small piece of paper in his right hand.

  MacKinnon spotted Jace Martin, no hat but a gun belt on his hip, brush past another fellow at a peanut stand, and disappear in the shadows of the bleachers.

  Sam MacKinnon made his way toward the ticket gate.

  Shaking his head, the boy turned around and shoved the ticket into his pocket and tossed the gold coin into the money box. He wet his lips and started to smile as MacKinnon walked toward the field. His mouth opened, but no words came out as he watched the hard-scrabbled man, holding his left hand over his right side, walk straight through the gate and toward the playing field. Something told the kid to keep his trap closed.

  * * * * *

  Jace Martin pushed. He saw the ballplayers, dressed in ridiculous outfits out in the field. Some sat and others stood behind the benches.

  “That pitch was a strike!” yelled a man in a black hat and suit.

  Martin’s eyes looked to the man yelling. A star was pinned to the lapel of his vest.

  “Are you blind, Marshal?” someone in the crowd yelled. “That wasn’t nowhere near home plate!”

  Martin moved down, looking for a seat, but the people were on their feet at the moment, so he couldn’t tell if there was any space open. There had to be more people here than lived in Roswell. The barkeep hadn’t been kidding. Martin moved to the side, and then he saw horses way off, several yards behind the man in the straw hat and bib-front shirt standing well beyond the man throwing the balls. People too cheap or unable to afford the fifty-cent ticket were watching the game from way back yonder.

  Martin moved to the edge of the fence. It was a long walk to get to the horses. He glanced at the marshal umpiring the game. The lawman did not wear a gun.

  “Hey, mister, no guns allowed at this here game!” a big, beefy man yelled at Martin, and moved toward him. “Hey, you hear me?”

  Jace Martin didn’t have much of a choice. He stepped onto the field and made a beeline for those horses.

  “What the Sam Hill!” The man who was moving his arm like a windmill, stopped, and dropped the baseball. The man holding the bat-stick stepped aside, cursed, and sprayed tobacco juice into the dirt.

  The marshal stepped in front of the pitcher, grabbed his vest, and flaunted his badge, saying: “Get off the playing field, you damned fool!”

  Hesitating, Martin stopped, trying to figure out what to do. The crowd in the stands began booing and hissing. A hurled sarsaparilla bottle just missed his head. The man with the bat-stick started toward Martin, so he turned, and moved back—only to come to a stop. He cursed.

  Sam MacKinnon was stepping out onto the field now.

  “Hey!” the marshal yelled to Martin’s back. “That’s a gun in your waistband.”

  “There’s one in his holster, too!” the pitcher advised the lawman.

  Someone screamed. MacKinnon continued to walk toward Martin.

  So, Jace Martin pulled the gun from his holster and thumbed back the hammer.

  “Boys!” someone yelled from one of the ballists’ benches. “That’s Sam MacKinnon.”

  Martin squeezed the trigger, just clipping MacKinnon’s hair, but that didn’t stop him and the fool kept right on coming.

  “I’ll kill you!” Martin warned MacKinnon as he turned and snapped off another shot that caused the marshal and the pitcher to drop onto their bellies. The ball rolled to the first baseman, one of the cowboys from Engle.

  By that time, there was quite a commotion among the people watching the game. The women were gathering up the children and heading out of the park. A few screamed, and a number of children began to cry.

  Jace Martin turned around, cocking the revolver.

  “MacKinnon!” he yelled. He was pulling the trigger when the baseball busted his ear.

  * * * * *

  A gun roared, and MacKinnon felt another slug whistle past his head. He did not stop. He did not even consider doing such a thing.

  “You need a hand, Sam?”

  MacKinnon shot a glance at the young man who had thrown the baseball. It was that crazy teenager from the Bar Cross, the one always looking for a horse to break, a book to read, a ball game to play, or someone to fight.

  “It’s me, Sam. Gene! Gene Rhodes.”

  MacKinnon didn’t take time to respond. Shaking clarity back into his head, Jace Martin had scrambled to his knees. He looked at the ball in the dirt, then at the pistol beyond his reach. MacKinnon looked back just as Jace Martin started pulling the revolver from behind his back. The gun was cocked, but by then MacKinnon was close and he kicked Martin in the groin.

  The breath shot out of MacKinnon’s lungs, and he doubled over from the misery in his ribs, dropping to his knees. He spit, and found Martin, on his knees, too, his left hand clutching his privates, right hand still holding the revolver, drool spilling from his mouth.

  Martin brought the weapon up, saying: “You son-of—” And MacKinnon powered his right fist into the side of Martin’s jaw.

  Collapsing to the ground, MacKinnon felt something wet leak from his own mouth. Blood? He wasn’t sure.

  “Fight!” one of the Roswell ballists shouted.

  “Get him!” another yelled.

  MacKinnon tried to breathe. He had done some stupid things in his life, but coming, unarmed, after a man armed with two six-shooters, well, that might have been the dumbest. His chest heaved, his insides screamed, but he pushed himself up in an attempt to stand.

  Martin slammed the barrel of the pistol into MacKinnon’s unprotected side. Down went MacKinnon.

  “Should we help him?” someone yelled.

  “Ain’t my fight,” a cowhand answered.

  The marshal had risen. “You pull that trigger, mister,” he said, “and you’ll swing for murder.”

  Martin turned, aimed the gun at the marshal and the crowd, and then brought the weapon around at MacKinnon again.

  But now MacKinnon had the bat-stick in his left hand. And he swung it like a reaper, catching Martin between the ankles and his knees. The gun fired. The bullet plowed up part of the first-base line, and Martin lay writhing on the ground.

  “Help him! For the love of God, help him!”

  Dully, MacKinnon recognized Katie Callahan’s voice.

  “Sam!” she cried. “Oh, God, help him!”r />
  Martin pushed himself to a seated position. He tried to cock the revolver. But fueled by anger, MacKinnon stood up, still holding the bat-stick in his left hand. Bringing the heavy piece of wood level with his waist, MacKinnon grabbed the big end of the piece of wood with his right hand, and dived as Martin leveled the pistol. The bat-stick caught Martin high on his chest, drove him to the ground, and rolled up onto his throat. Feeling insatiable rage, MacKinnon pressed harder on the piece of ash, and closed his eyes from pain, or maybe just hatred.

  “Sam!” Katie kept calling. “Sam! Sam! Please, Sam—don’t!”

  His eyes opened. He saw the bat on Martin’s throat, how pale the man looked, the fear in his eyes, heard that wastrel sucking for air that he could not find.

  Releasing his grip on the bat-stick, MacKinnon rolled off. His chest heaved. His ribs hurt like they had never hurt before. Beside him, Jace Martin kept gagging.

  Gene Rhodes’ excited, boyish face appeared above

  MacKinnon. “That was some fight, boys.” He started emptying the bullets from one of Martin’s guns.

  * * * * *

  Katie touched MacKinnon’s forehead. His eyes opened. She tried to smile as she wiped the tears from her face.

  “Silly fool,” she whispered, brought his right hand to her lips, kissed it, and squeezed his hand hard. “Silly … silly … silly.”

  Marshal Maginnis, the umpire, suddenly appeared by MacKinnon and Katie.

  “Somebody better explain to me what the devil this was all about, and it had better be a real good story.”

  “I can do that, Maginnis.”

  Holding a dingy towel that reeked of stale beer and fresh whiskey against his bloodied head, Nelson Bookbinder stepped over Jace Martin.

  “Nelson?” the town marshal said.

  Bookbinder pointed at the smoking revolver that Gene Rhodes still held. “Mind handing me my pistol, sonny?”

  Rhodes paled, but he quickly spun it around, butt forward, and let the lawman take it and slide it into his holster.

  “You busted up a good ball game, Nelson,” Marshal Maginnis said.

  “Yeah …” A hand with long fingers was reaching over and probing Bookbinder’s bleeding head. “Get away from me, Doc,” the lawman snapped at Pres Lewis. “Check out MacKinnon there. His ribs was banged up before he tangled with this reprobate.”

  Bookbinder stared down at Jace Martin.

  “I’ve been on the trail of this rapscallion since he and some other boys robbed Charley the Trey’s Three of Spades in Bonito City. Tracked them into that furnace between here and there.” He shook his head, cringed at the pain, and spit tobacco juice between Martin’s legs. “And his boys up and stole our horses. In the desert. Left us in that wasteland to suffer and die.” The quid of tobacco moved to the opposite cheek. “That ain’t nice.”

  “You let your horses get stole?” Maginnis said. “From under your nose?”

  “Nikita did,” Bookbinder replied.

  “Bull,” the Apache said, having just arrived on the field. But when everyone looked at him, he shrugged. “Well … maybe.”

  “Is this fellow your deputy, Nelson?” Maginnis asked.

  The doctor was on his knees now, pulling up MacKinnon’s shirt. Pres Lewis asked: “Did you bandage him, Nelse?”

  “No.” Bookbinder pointed. “She did.”

  “Well, who is he?” someone asked.

  “He’s a man to ride the river with,” the teenage cowboy, Gene Rhodes, said. “Can’t find nobody better. He taught me a lot two years back when I was just a tenderfoot.”

  Bookbinder nodded. “He’s a man to ride the river with. That’s plain enough. He come across this young lady here in that desert. Her ma had died. Her …” Bookbinder figured to leave out the part about the wastrel of a father. “Her pa was dead some time back. They lost a mule. Busted a wheel. Nobody would stop for them. Ain’t that a terrible state of affairs. Some folks was in too big of a hurry to come to this baseball game, so they left a bunch of kids in that wasteland to die. But this fellow here, Sam MacKinnon, did something, stove up as he was. Helped bury their mother. Got them, and me and my deputies, through the worst sandstorm I’ve ever seen. Got us all here. Fools have written me up in nickel-priced books of lies, but they ought to write the truth about MacKinnon. He hauled me and Nikita and my two deputies, wherever they are right now … likely drunk … out of that furnace.” Bookbinder looked down at Jace Martin. “And he caught the man who led that robbery of Charley the Trey’s place.”

  Looking up at Bookbinder, Jace Martin cursed. “MacKinnon was with me, Marshal. He helped rob Charley’s place.”

  Katie Callahan sucked in a deep breath.

  “Is that a fact?” Bookbinder asked.

  “It is. It’s a wonder you don’t recognize him. Or his horse.”

  “Who else was with you?”

  Martin shook his head. “I don’t squeal on my pards.”

  “You just said MacKinnon was with you.”

  “It’s different.”

  Bookbinder shrugged. “All right.” He spit again. “How many men rode with you? You can tell me that, can’t you?”

  “Three others.”

  The lawman nodded. “Like the three curs that rode out of town when we came here, including the one who wanted to split my skull in front of the Río Hondo. That was Chico Archuleta. Five altogether. That right?”

  “Yeah. But I don’t know any Chico Archuleta.”

  Bookbinder looked at the crowd of ballists and spectators. “I happened to be in Bonito City on Sunday morning. That’s how come Nikita and I went after them. Got a good jump on them, too. Five men robbed Charley’s place. That’s a fact. I got men with me. Mort! Davis!” He had to yell three more times before the two men came onto the field between the pitcher’s line and the batsman’s lines.

  “Tell Jace Martin, Marshal Maginnis, and everyone here what happened in the mountains right after the robbery in Bonito City,” Bookbinder said.

  The two men stared at each other.

  Bookbinder prodded. “Just like you told me.”

  “I … well … we … um … we killed one of those bandits,” Mort said.

  “One shot,” Davis added. “Through …” He tapped his chest.

  “There,” Mort finished, and pointed.

  “Where was his horse?” Bookbinder asked.

  “Well … it must have …” Mort looked at Davis.

  “Throwed him. Or …”

  Mort finished for Davis. “They might have pushed him off. To make us, the posse, sort of—”

  “Go after him,” Davis said. “That’s what we did.”

  “That’s exactly what happened,” Jace Martin said, beaming at testimony that would send him to the new penitentiary in Santa Fe. Coughing, he began to massage his throat.

  “Let them talk,” Bookbinder said, and nodded at his two deputies.

  “But Marshal Bookbinder and him …” —Mort nodded at Nikita—“they rode on ahead. After …” He looked down at Martin.

  Davis blinked. “After I shot the man in the mountains. The fella this hombre left behind.”

  “But I saw him first,” Mort said.

  “That’s a bald-faced lie!” Jace Martin tried to get up, but Bookbinder shoved him to the ground.

  “I said let them talk, buster,” Bookbinder said. “If you think about it, and think long and hard, you’ll know there’s one mistake you don’t want to make right about now. So you sit there, you study on things, and you let my two deputies finish. You’ll get your say in court, if you live long enough.”

  Turning back to the two deputies, Bookbinder chose Davis. “Where was this bad hombre shot?”

  “Right through his brisket.” Again, Davis tapped his chest.

  “And where is the body?”

  They w
aited, silently, looking at each other, then at Jace Martin, then at the cowhand and the girl. Mort swallowed. Davis shuffled his feet.

  “I’m waiting,” Bookbinder said.

  “We buried him,” Mort said.

  “Not really,” Davis added. “See, he fell in a hole.”

  “Sinkhole,” Mort said.

  “Or a den for a fox,” Davis said.

  “Or some other wild animal.”

  “We kind of covered up the hole,” Davis added.

  “Might not be able to find it,” Mort said. “It was getting dark, you see.”

  “And we wanted to catch up with the marshal.”

  “That’s it?” Bookbinder asked.

  Both men nodded sheepishly, as they looked down into the dirt.

  Bookbinder nodded. “There you have it.”

  “That’s a bunch of hogwash,” Martin said. “MacKinnon was in on this job with us. You saw him. You all saw him.”

  Bookbinder stared at the two deputies. “Can you identify this man, boys? This Good Sam MacKinnon. Can you say he was one of the robbers at Bonito City?”

  This time, the men shook their heads, and Mort said evenly: “Couldn’t. They all had sacks over their heads.”

  “Wheat sacks,” Davis said.

  “That’ll do, boys. I’m not sure we’ll ever catch the other bandits, but that’s all right. We’ve got this man. And he has already confessed to the robbery. Isn’t that right, Maginnis?”

  “I’ll swear to it in court, Nelson. He wasn’t even provoked.”

  “You’re not getting away with this, Bookbinder!” Martin shouted as he tried to stand up, but Bookbinder stepped on his shoulder and kept him down.

  “You can’t do that, law dog. I say MacKinnon was in on the robbery with me.”

  “My deputies say he wasn’t. I don’t question my deputies, boy. They’re sworn to tell the truth.”

  “You’re a liar!”

  The gun came out of Bookbinder’s holster, and the lawman slowly pulled back the hammer.

  “I’ve had you in my jail in Lincoln a few times, Jace Martin. I’ve had some crimes I would have liked to have arrested you for, too, only couldn’t quite get enough for a judge or jury. You’re a card cheat, a rustler, and I believe you’ve likely done worse. Murder, maybe. And I know you’ve robbed at least one saloon and gambling parlor in my jurisdiction. And there’s one thing that a punk like you ought to learn, and you should have learned it a long, long time ago. You can get away with a lot of things, boy. Cheating at cards. Throwing a wide loop and slapping a running iron on beef that’s not yours. You can bust up a game of baseball, disturb the peace, insult a young lady, and slam a gun into the head of a deputy United States marshal as he’s making an arrest of a fellow suspected of committing a crime. But one thing you never do, boy, and that’s call someone you don’t know well a liar.”