The Marshal of Whitburg

by E. R. Slade

  “I’m gwyne the call you out, marshal. Thet’s wha—aat I’m gwyne to do. You owe me, and you’re gwyne to pay.”

  “Jack, you’re drunk,” the marshal said in disgust, getting up. He took the man by the collar and a handful of the back of his shirt, spun him around and propelled him through the opening into the dance hall and slammed the door after him.

  “I got to git a lock for that door,” he said casually. “Although,” he added, “things like that don’t usually happen when Vern’s in there.”

  “What’s he upset about?” Lon asked.

  “No telling. Just drunk.”

  “I keep thinking about those heavy sacks. Did the bank get robbed around here or anything?”

  “I told you. I ask the questions.”

  “All right.” Lon sat there trying to figure out the marshal. It seemed to him maybe the marshal was competent with drunks but not so competent otherwise. Not that it was his problem.

  The man hunched his shoulders, straightened his cuffs, then sat back down.

  “Now then, Mr. Pike,” he began, but got no further before the street door opened.

  Lon turned to look, wondering if it would be the drunk again, but instead in came a big, solid, prosperous-looking man in a black frock coat, gray vest, white shirt, and a black silk stovepipe hat. He was slightly flushed and breathing as though he’d been exerting himself a bit.

  “Everson,” he said, leveling a finger at the marshal, “I told you to put together a posse to chase those bank robbers. It was unconscionable to send that boy out after them alone.”

  “Calm down, Mr. Tuft,” Marshal Everson said. “You’re not making very much sense. Perhaps you’d like to have a seat?”

  “I think it’s time you did more of your job standing up,” Tuft said, “or at least astride a horse going after those thieves.”

  “Mr. Tuft, you really need to calm down. I’m aware of your loss and am in the process of doing something about it. Yelling won’t make anything happen any faster.”

  “Holding up stages is one thing. That’s the stage line’s problem. But this time it was my bank. That’s my problem. Which means it’s your problem. Riding your horse instead of your easy chair will make things happen faster, and that’s a fact. You can be replaced, you know.”

  Lon didn’t care for the momentary thin-lipped mirthless smile that passed across the marshal’s face.

  “I see,” he said. “Perhaps you’d prefer Vern?”

  “Vern?” Tuft said as though bewildered. “Who said anything about him? He’s barely competent to keep order in your dance hall. But that’s your affair. Now what I want to know is ...”

  At that moment the door from the dance hall slammed open again and Jack piled in, this time with a pistol in his hand. Lon saw him raise it as though to fire and instinct took over. He made a dive and drove the heel of his hand against Jack’s wrist just as the gun went off.

  Chapter Two

  The pistol clattered onto the top of the marshal’s desk, slid spinning across it and fell to the floor beyond. By that time Lon had wrestled Jack down. Jack was surprisingly nimble for being drunk and he was very strong. Lon couldn’t seem to find a way to secure him and end the struggle.

  There was a deafening roar at his ear and Jack jolted under him, quivered, and then relaxed all at once.

  Lon didn’t know what more might happen and leaped back out of the way. The marshal was calmly holstering his gun. Blood was pumping out a wound in Jack’s side. His face was draining paler by the moment. Lon quickly squatted and tried to staunch the flow.

  “Never mind him,” Everson said. “He’s been asking for it a long time.”

  “He looks like he’s dying quick,” Lon said. “What about that doctor? He right outside?”

  “Never mind the doctor.”

  “I’ll get the doctor,” Tuft said and stepped to the front door, opened it and stuck his head out. “Come quick, Doc,” he said. “Man’s been shot in here.”

  In came an elderly, bent man carrying a black bag. He was white-haired and his hands were laced with blue veins. He stepped quickly to Jack and struggled his way down to his knees on the floor beside him. He took hold of Jack’s wrist, obviously looking for a pulse. Jack was taking short, raspy breaths and his eyes were staring without apparent comprehension.

  Then the breathing stopped.

  The doctor felt here and there, shook his head, closed Jack’s eyes, and got back to his feet.

  “Hit too many vitals,” he said. He had a deep, sad voice that seemed out of character with his frail body.

  “He’s no loss,” Everson said shortly. “Pike knocked his gun free but I could see Jack was about to get the better of him.”

  That wasn’t how Lon saw it, but he said nothing.

  “That your name?” Tuft asked Lon.

  “Lon Pike, yes.”

  Tuft held out his hand. “Mr. Pike, that was quick work. I think you may have saved Everson’s life, maybe all our lives. It’s true Jack was a bad one. Liked to get drunk and pick fights. Good shot even when he was drunk. Killed four men, they say. Not here, though. Anyhow, I’m Orville Tuft.”

  Shaking the man’s hand and noting the warm, dry firmness of his grip, Lon said, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Tuft. I gather you were robbed?”

  “Two men robbed my bank just down the street earlier today, yes.”

  “Carry the money off in a pair of burlap sacks?”

  “I’ll ask the questions,” Everson interrupted, clearly annoyed.

  “That’s right,” Tuft said, ignoring Everson.

  “I think I passed them on the trail. A pair of burly, coarse-featured men that looked like brothers; one of them had a scar.” He ran a finger along his own cheek to show where.

  “Pike,” Everson said, “you do your talking to me. Alone.”

  “Mr. Pike,” Tuft said, “I think you are a stranger in town—am I right? I thought so. When you are done answering the marshal’s questions, come along to my house for supper. I’d be honored to welcome you as my guest. It’s not every day,” he added, with a meaningful look at Everson, “that I have a bona fide hero at my table.”

  Everson looked as though he’d like to deal with Tuft as he had just dealt with Jack—the fingers of his gun hand flexed. But he kept his mouth shut.

  “That’s right nice of you,” Lon said. “You might want to wait, though, until I have a chance to get a bath and a shave as I’m sure I don’t smell particularly fresh.”

  Tuft laughed heartily. “Don’t these clothes fool you. It wasn’t so long ago that I reeked of honest sweat myself. My house is the big one next to the bank. Take your time. I’ll tell the cook to wait supper until you arrive.”

  Tuft gave Everson a hard look and went out. The doctor had already gone.

  “He thinks he owns this town,” Everson said. “I guess he mostly does, too. But it doesn’t give him the right to come barging in here and take over investigations, whether it was his bank that got robbed or not. Now then. Where were we?”

  “You going to leave Jack lying there?”

  “I’ll have Vern get rid of him,” he said. He went to the dance hall door, which still stood open, and called to Vern, who came and without comment or change of expression grabbed Jack under the arms and dragged him out. Everson closed the door after him and sat down. “Maybe we can do the rest of this in peace,” he commented.

  The interesting thing to Lon was the change in Everson’s attitude toward him. Instead of his previous suspicious testiness he was now respectful and even nearly friendly. He acted as though they were two men who had in common a weariness of the inferiority of everybody else.

  They went over the whole incident in detail and Lon told him everything he could recall. Then Everson sat back in his chair and lit a pipe.

  “I guess I might as well tell you what happened here today,” he said, squinting through the wreath of pipe smoke. “Those two men you described rode into town from somewheres and pulled up in
front of the bank. This was in the middle of the afternoon. The one with the scar stayed with the horses and the other went in. They cleaned out the safe into those two sacks you saw and rode off. I didn’t see it, Tuft told me. I was a couple of miles from here at the time. But Billy was in town. He was in the middle of stopping a fight that broke out down at the Whiskey Waller Saloon, so they had to go get him, and the holdup men had ridden off by then so he came to find me. I told him he’d better go after those two and try to track them to their lair. When he knew where they’d holed up he was supposed to come back and give me the details so we could lay out a plan of attack.

  “You see, there’s been other holdups around here pretty regular for six months and more—all stages until now—and mostly I’ve gone after them but lost them. They’re good at not leaving much track. This time, though, they didn’t have so much lead on us and I wanted Billy to stay with them until he located where they go to. I sent him on account of he’s younger than me and got a fast horse and he’s a good tracker. Was.”

  He stopped and drew on his pipe, looking at the whitewashed wooden ceiling.

  “He had instructions not to try to confront them,” he said. “And I guess he didn’t, either. They ambushed him and he didn’t have much choice. Looks to me like they hit him two or three times in the first volley and he warn’t fit to ride and had to fight it out.”

  Pipe smoke thickened in the room, as Everson quickly drew in and puffed out several mouthfuls of it. Lon kept silent, trying to decide what he thought of Everson. Something about this account bothered him but he couldn’t quite place what it was.

  “He knew the risks, Pike. Sometimes it happens that way. Goes with the job.”

  “I know it’s none of my concern,” Lon said, “and to tell you the truth I’m glad enough it ain’t my concern. But I’m curious how you plan to handle the thing from here.”

  Everson removed his pipe, stretching his lips, getting his squint back.

  “Tuft thinks I ought to get up a posse. I could do that, but I doubt it would do much good. It’s been tried. I could ride up there after them myself, and I guess I might do that in the morning, look over where they killed Billy. But it never comes to anything. Sounds wrong to say it, but really the only thing to do is wait for the next chance at them and hope to catch them in the act.”

  “Tuft isn’t likely to think much of that, I shouldn’t imagine,” Lon commented, “but I suppose if they’re that hard to track ...”

  Lon was thinking that if it had been his responsibility he’d have gone with Billy, and if he hadn’t he’d be halfway up the mountain by now after those two. But it wasn’t his job, and as he had said, he was happy enough it wasn’t.

  “Tuft can afford it,” Everson said. “Some of the others that has got held up can afford it a lot less. Let me tell you something. If I had a dime for every mile I’ve rode hunting them two I could retire. I’ve about wore out my saddle over this thing, not to mention my butt.”

  Well, maybe he had. Maybe, Lon thought, if it had been me I’d have the same attitude with that much discouragement.

  Maybe.

  “If you don’t have any more questions,” Lon said, “I’d like to tend to my horse and find some place to clean up a bit.”

  “Gabe’s livery is good. And right next door to him you can get a bath and all that. If I think of something more to ask, I’ll come hunt you up.”

  His horse still stood at the rail, not exactly patiently, more like resignedly, but Billy’s body was gone. Gabe’s turned out to be all right. A sallow-faced boy showed him a stall. The place was fairly clean as such enterprises went and all the horses looked groomed and happy shaking out their hay with their teeth looking for the best morsels.

  After seeing to Blacky, he tended to his own shabby condition and half an hour later stepped out onto the board sidewalk feeling like a completely different man. He’d even bought a new shirt and a pair of pants in anticipation of job hunting.

  He went along to the one house in town that could be called a mansion and walked between a pair of fancy ironwork hitching posts on the street and climbed the broad shallow steps between the two wooden columns at the corners of the porch. He lifted the iron knocker, which was in the form of a miner’s rock hammer, and clanked it against its cast iron base.

  There were footsteps, quick and light, and the big mahogany door opened.

  The sight of her made his breath catch, though there was little illumination from the street and only a dim lamp on a table in the hall within.

  “You must be Mr. Pike,” she said, and something about the musical quality of her voice melted parts inside he hadn’t even known were solidified.

  “That’s right,” he got out, his voice sounding strange. “Lon Pike. This is Orville Tuft’s house?”

  “Yes!” she said, as though announcing he’d just won a prize. “Please come in! We’ve been expecting you.”

  He stepped in, and of course managed to slightly trip over the edge of the thick rug on the polished floor of the hallway.

  “You know,” she said gaily, “everybody trips on that silly rug. I think we ought to take it up. Don’t you?

  “Er—well, I guess I’m just a little clumsy, that’s all, maybe.”

  At least I’m starting out by making a good impression, he thought, irritated with himself.

  “Not at all,” she said encouragingly. “Can I take your hat?”

  He was suddenly aware of how sweat-stained and possibly ripe his battered old Stetson was and hesitated to hand it to her.

  “Excuse me,” he said, taking it off and realizing with a momentary horror that he might have worn it to eat had she not said something. It had been a long time since he’d been anywhere near anything that might be called polite society. “I don’t imagine I’ll have much use for this gun belt, either,” he said. “Unless you have perhaps invited a bandit or two to your table tonight.” Now he’d said it, his supposed joke seemed in poor taste, especially considering the circumstances.

  But she laughed gamely. “Not that I know of,” she said. “But you never know with Pa!” she added with a gaiety that seemed a little artificial perhaps.

  He had stepped toward a hat rack that stood to the left and held his hat as though to hang it there. On a shelf on top he saw a shiny silk stovepipe hat, on a hook under, a spotless Stetson, and underneath that hung a well-oiled gun belt.

  “This all right?” he asked.

  For answer she lifted the hat out of his hand and hung it next to the Stetson, beside which it looked even more unworthy than he’d imagined it would. He could have bought a hat, he was thinking.

  He unbuckled the gun belt, wondering if she would want the honor of hanging that up, too.

  She did, apparently not the least bothered by the heft of it. Nor by the dried-sweat grubbiness of it. Lon hardly recognized it as his own, looking at it with her eyes. Or rather, he recognized it plain enough—and himself as even further beneath the level of the company he was to keep this evening than he’d thought. Didn’t do a lot for his confidence. But he was who he was, and there was no use pretending otherwise.

  The beautiful girl in the long flowing calico gown, brown hair done up in fashionable ringlets, seemed unconcerned with the number and size of the obstacles Lon saw between them. Not that there was any sensible reason why she should be concerned, he reminded himself morosely.

  She led the way briskly past the stairs—majestic enough to impress even the most imperious Boston aristocrat—along a mahogany-paneled hallway and into a large living room with a fire in a huge hearth opposite, in front of which sat Orville Tuft in a plush easy chair.

  He looked around as they came in, putting down a book he was reading and getting to his feet, smiling broadly, holding out his hand.

  There was much better lighting in this room, lamps alight all around it. Some ladies who looked very attractive in dim light looked less so in good light; but with this girl it was the other way around. He thought she
might be about twenty or along there, and as far as he could see her beauty was perfect in every way.

  “Hello, Mr. Tuft,” he said, trying to keep his attention on his host instead of on the girl.

  Tuft was certainly the most enthusiastic handshaker Lon had ever met, even using his free hand to clasp Lon’s forearm. As his uncle would have said, Tuft had a ten gallon handshake, meaning that if he’d shaken with a pump handle that’s how much water he’d have brought up.

  “Honor to have you here, son,” Tuft said. “I see you’ve met my daughter, Zinnia. You can tell how much my wife—God rest her soul—liked flowers. Zinny, would you go tell Martha she can put supper on? There’s a good girl. Mr. Pike looks hungry enough to eat a whole steer. I expect I’m almost that hungry myself.”

  They were soon seated in the next room at a long, polished mahogany table and a stolid, stout woman of about sixty served a huge beef stew. She never smiled and said not a word, but she did stand by watching Lon expectantly.

  “Well, pitch in, my boy,” Tuft said.

  Tuft sat at the end of the table and Lon and Zinnia were on either side next to him facing each other. What was it about the girl? He’d never come this adrift about even Gloria, and he’d thought he wanted to marry Gloria. Gloria wasn’t interested and took up with a bank clerk. Presumably Zinnia would regard any interest of his with mild amusement. If lowly Gloria had thought him beneath her, what would Zinnia think? She probably wouldn’t take seriously any man less imposing than her father. Maybe he’d have to own half the state to interest her.

  “... but what do you think?” Tuft was asking him.

  “I—er, about what, sir?”

  Both of them were now eyeing him with some amusement. All he could think of was how much her eyes sparkled.

  “About Everson,” Tuft said, glancing at his daughter and then back at Lon. “I think he’s incompetent.”

  Lon looked into his plate, forced himself to focus.

  “I’m in no position to judge that,” he said carefully. “But it does seem odd to me that he’s making so little effort to hunt down the bank robbers. If it were me and Billy had been my deputy,” he added, remembering the pained, surprised expression on Billy’s face, “I’d have headed straight out the door and up the mountain after those men. But he says it’s futile, that they are hard to track. I guess he’d know more about them than I would, since I just arrived in these parts.”