Keller grinned and said, “Yeah, I reckon that’s right. I’m gonna let you live, Seymour.”
“But . . . but . . .”
“Get out o’ here while you got the chance,” Keller advised.
“You mean you’re backing down?”
Keller’s face hardened again, and for a second Seymour thought he had just made the worst mistake of his life. But then the man said, “No, I mean that no self-respectin’ gunfighter wants to get tarred with the brush o’ killin’ the biggest coward in the West. Hell, if I shot you, I’d be a laughin’stock from one end o’ Texas to the other!”
Shaking his head, Keller turned away with a dismissive wave. He rejoined his friends and headed away down the street. The crowds along the boardwalk broke up and dispersed in a hurry.
Seymour was left standing alone in the middle of the street, gun in hand. No one was laughing at him now. No one even paid any attention to him.
Because he was no longer even worthy of scorn.
Chapter 16
Seymour didn’t think things could possibly get any worse than they were at that moment.
Unfortunately, he was wrong.
As he looked around, the people who had gathered to watch him die turned their heads. They didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to even acknowledge his existence. But despite that, he felt eyes watching him, and as he slowly turned his gaze toward the school at the end of the street, his blood turned cold and sluggish in his veins.
Maggie O’Ryan stood there just outside the door of the school, staring at him. She had witnessed his shame. She had seen the gunman called Keller turn and walk away, totally dismissing Seymour from consideration.
At that moment, Seymour wished he could just melt away into the nothingness that was all he deserved. He would have rather died under Keller’s gun than have Maggie see what had happened. He wasn’t sure why that was so important to him, but it was.
He turned and stumbled toward the boardwalk, unsure of where he was going or what he was doing, knowing only that he couldn’t stay there. Even at this distance he could feel Maggie’s pity, and that wasn’t what he wanted. He didn’t know what he wanted, but that wasn’t it.
Pierre Delacroix was suddenly there in front of him. The saloon keeper grasped his arm. “Come with me, mon ami,” Delacroix said. “You look like you need a drink.”
“I told you, I . . . I don’t indulge in spirits.”
“This is a special occasion. You are still alive.”
Seymour gave a bitter laugh. “Only because I’m not worth killing.”
“The drawing of another breath is always a reason to celebrate.” Delacroix urged him toward the Black Bull, and Seymour was too stunned to put up a fight. He didn’t even think about the fact that it was still early in the morning.
“Are you sure you want a pariah like me in your establishment?”
Delacroix shrugged. “No one will care.”
Again the bitter laughter from Seymour. “That’s the problem. No one cares. Least of all me.”
But he allowed Delacroix to lead him into the saloon, and at the Cajun’s urging he tucked the pistol behind his belt rather than carrying it. Delacroix took him to a table in a rear corner of the big room and sat him down. At this hour, not many customers were in the Black Bull. No one was sitting close to the table where Seymour slumped into one of the empty chairs.
Delacroix signaled to the bartender. The man brought over a bottle and two glasses. Delacroix sat down across the table from Seymour and poured the drinks. He pushed one of the glasses toward Seymour and said, “I know it does not seem like it now, but everyone will forget about this in a day or two.”
Seymour looked at the glass, which had a couple of inches of whiskey in it, as if he had never seen such a thing before. Then he took a deep breath, reached out, and picked it up.
“That’s right,” Delacroix said. “It will do you good.”
Moving as if his brain had no conscious control over his muscles, Seymour brought the glass to his lips, tilted his head back, and swallowed all the whiskey in one gulp.
No matter how upset and depressed he was, the fiery stuff jolted him as it went down. His throat burst into flame and his belly exploded. His eyes opened so wide they looked like they were about to leap from their sockets. His already pale skin turned the color and texture of thin paper. A second after he had swallowed the whiskey, a spasm wracked him, making him lean forward over the table. His fingers scrabbled feebly against the wood. Surely not even being shot out there in the street would have hurt this much.
Seymour rested his head on the table and moaned. Delacroix laughed, not unkindly, and said, “You will become accustomed to it, mon ami. And you will find that you have no finer friend in this world.”
Seymour doubted that. After a few moments, though, the inferno inside him subsided somewhat, leaving behind a warmth that was somehow comforting, even on a summer morning where the West Texas heat was already building to a sim- mer. Seymour was able to lift his head. He blinked a few times and then forced out, “It’s not so bad.”
“As I told you.” Delacroix picked up the bottle and refilled Seymour’s glass. “Sip this one, instead of taking it all at once.”
Seymour did like the saloon keeper said, sipping the whiskey instead of bolting it down. That increased the warmth in his belly without setting him on fire again. He drew strength from that warmth.
Delacroix hadn’t taken his own drink yet, but Seymour didn’t care about that. He didn’t particularly want company at this moment either, but he couldn’t very well ask Delacroix to leave. The Black Bull belonged to the Cajun after all.
Seymour sat there in sullen silence, sipping the whiskey. He lost track of time. All he knew was that after a while Delacroix got up to do something else, but the saloon keeper left the bottle on the table. Whenever Seymour’s glass was empty, he reached out and snagged the bottle by the neck. His hand shook a little, so that the bottle rattled against the glass as he poured, but overall he thought he was steadier now than he had been earlier. He’d been trembling so bad in the street that it was a wonder he’d been able to stand up.
The chink-chink-chink of spurs made Seymour raise his gaze from the table. A man came to a stop a few feet from the table and stared at him. Seymour blinked eyes grown bleary from drink and looked back at him.
The man was stocky, with a dark, squarish face. He wore a black-and-white cowhide vest and a flat-crowned black hat. The butt of a gun with checkered grips stuck up from the holster on his hip.
“You’re him,” the man said in a gravelly voice. “Seymour the Lily-Livered.”
Seymour made no response. There was nothing to say.
“You know who I am?” the man asked.
Seymour managed to shake his head. The motion made the saloon seem to tilt first one way and then the other, but he thought that was just because of the whiskey he had imbibed. The building wasn’t actually moving.
“I’m Ned Akin. I’m fast with a gun, and I’ve killed four men. Folks around here think I’m a pretty bad hombre.”
Akin was hardly the first. In less than twenty-four hours, Seymour had encountered Cole Halliday, Jack Keller, and now this man Akin. What was it about him that drew these gunfighters to him like moths to a flame? Did he give off some sort of scent that was undetectable except to those who were prone to bullying and brutalizing those who were weaker than them?
“They say you’re the most cowardly man in the West,” Akin went on. “I reckon I got to see that to believe it. On your feet, dude. I see you got a gun. But you won’t use it, will you? You’re too lily-livered for that.”
Seymour looked past Akin and saw Pierre Delacroix standing at the bar with a worried expression on his face. The Cajun didn’t want this confrontation happening inside his saloon. But he wasn’t going to interfere either, Seymour sensed. Probably because Ned Akin was every bit as dangerous as he claimed to be.
“Well, how about it, Seymour?”
Akin prodded. “You gonna show me just how cowardly you are, or are you gonna just sit there starin’ at me like some sort o’ half-wit?”
Seymour laughed. “Go ahead and shoot me,” he said. “Get it over with.”
Akin frowned. “You want me to kill you? You ain’t gonna beg for your life?”
Seymour put his hands on the table. “I’m not afraid of you,” he said as he pushed himself to his feet, and to his enormous surprise he realized that he meant it. Nothing Akin could do to him would be any worse than the things he had already endured.
Nothing could be worse than making a fool of himself in front of Maggie O’Ryan.
Akin’s face flushed in anger. “Damn you, dude, I could kill you right now.”
Seymour smiled. “You wouldn’t dare.” He belched and swayed. “Then you’d be known as . . . the man who wasted a bullet—” Another belch. “—on Seymour the Lily-Livered.”
He suddenly doubled over, and all the whiskey he’d guzzled down since coming into the Black Bull raged back up his throat and spewed from his mouth, splattering all over Ned Akin’s boots. The gunfighter jumped back with a curse as Seymour emptied his belly. “You son of a bitch!” he howled. His hand stabbed toward his gun.
But he stopped the motion before he drew the revolver. His hand was clenched around the gun butt, but after a second he let go of the weapon and allowed it to slide back down into the holster.
“You’re right, you scrawny little bastard,” Akin snarled. “Killin’ you would just hurt my rep.” He turned and stalked out of the saloon, his spurs going ka-chink, ka-chink again.
Seymour half-sat, half-fell into his chair again. Now that he had thrown up all the whiskey, he wanted another drink. He reached for the bottle.
Delacroix stopped him with a hand on his wrist. “Perhaps you have had enough, Seymour.”
Seymour shook off the Cajun’s hand and grabbed the bottle. “I’ll decide when I’ve had enough.” He didn’t bother with the glass this time, just lifted the bottle and drank straight from the neck. The whiskey didn’t burn near as much going down now. With his free hand, Seymour dug around in his pocket until he found a coin. He dropped it on the table and added, “I can pay for my own drinks.”
Delacroix looked at him for a moment, then shrugged and swept the coin from the table. “As you wish, mon ami.”
“And stop calling me your friend,” Seymour said. “I’m not your friend. I have no friends.”
“That is as you wish, too.” Delacroix motioned for the swamper to come over and mop up the whiskey that Seymour had vomited onto the floor. Luckily, the sawdust scattered thickly on the planks had soaked up some of the mess.
The whiskey in the bottle gurgled as Seymour took another drink. It was a nice sound, he thought. He asked himself why he had wasted so many years disapproving of drinking.
That was the last coherent thought he had for a while.
* * *
He woke up with the sound of piano music in his ears. The tinny strains were accompanied by a considerable amount of loud talking and laughter. Tobacco smoke tickled his nose. Seymour lifted his head and shook it to try to get rid of the annoyances.
That was a mistake.
His head thudded against the table. He left it there for what seemed like an hour, until all the crazy spinning stopped. When he finally pushed himself upright again and opened his eyes, he was more careful about it.
The Black Bull was crowded now, with most of the spaces at the bar filled and poker games going on at several of the tables. Seymour glanced toward the big front windows. One of them was boarded up, and he recalled the drunken cow- boy’s bullet that had nearly hit Miss Maggie O’Ryan the day before. Through the other window, he saw the fading golden light of dusk.
He had been sitting there passed out in the saloon all day, Seymour realized.
His mouth tasted awful, and he was parched. A drink of cool water sounded better than anything in the world. But the thought of it made his stomach clench.
He hadn’t eaten anything in almost twenty-four hours. He needed food and drink. But not whiskey. A shudder went through him at the very idea.
He had to get out of here. His mind reeled at the idea that he had allowed himself to get so thoroughly inebriated. That wasn’t like him at all. He flattened his hands on the table and tried to push himself to his feet.
That made the world lurch to a halt around him and then immediately begin revolving in the wrong direction. As Seymour’s brain spun, he would have fallen if not for the hand that suddenly grasped his arm.
“Let me help you, Seymour,” Pierre Delacroix said.
Seymour recoiled and tried to pull away from the saloon keeper. “You . . . you’ve helped me quite enough!” he said. “You . . . ohhhh . . . you were the one who . . . got me drunk in the first place.”
Delacroix’s face hardened. “No one put a gun to your head and made you drink, Seymour. I provided the whiskey, that is all.”
Seymour wanted to argue with the Cajun, but it just wasn’t worth the effort. He muttered, “Let me out of here. I want to go.”
“Go where?”
That simple question stopped Seymour in his tracks. Sweet Apple wasn’t his home. He had no place here except a dingy hotel room.
But that was better than the saloon. He shook off Delacroix’s hand and stumbled toward the batwings. Some of the saloon’s customers watched him and grinned. Others laughed out loud. Seymour wanted to lash out at them. He didn’t, of course. He didn’t do things like that. He was too civilized and respectable to get in a shouting match with a bunch of half-drunk louts in a frontier saloon. He almost fell again when he reached the batwings. He caught hold of them, swung them aside, and lurched out onto the boardwalk. He didn’t think he was still drunk, but he was so unsteady on his feet that he had to consider the possibility that he might be. He wondered if a pot of strong, black coffee would help. That thought made his stomach lurch, too. But he didn’t throw up, and by focusing his will on what he was doing, he was able to walk down the street toward the hotel in a fairly straightforward fashion. He might have weaved a little, but he didn’t think it was too bad. When he reached the hotel, he fumbled for a second with the doorknob before he was able to get it open. The same clerk was behind the desk. Seymour blinked owlishly at him and said, “Don’t you ever get a break?”
The man ignored the question and said, “You’ve got some visitors, Mr. Standish.”
Seymour had no idea who in Sweet Apple would want to be visiting him. He was a laughingstock, after all, someone to be pointed out and mocked. But then he saw several men stand up from chairs on the other side of the lobby and come toward him. The one who was slightly in the lead said, “Mr. Standish? We’ve been waiting to talk to you.”
The man was portly and well dressed, with mutton chop whiskers and a waxed mustache. The men with him were all similar, with a well-fed, successful air about them. Seymour realized with a shock that he recognized one of them. J. Emerson Heathcote, the newspaper editor and publisher who had done so much to spread that humiliating nickname—Seymour the Lily-Livered—all over town.
“You,” Seymour practically snarled at him.
Heathcote raised his hands, palms out. “I don’t blame you for being upset with me, Seymour, but you have to admit, it made for a good story.”
“You made me look like a cowardly idiot!”
“Silver linings, my boy, silver linings.”
Seymour stared at him in confusion for a second before saying, “What are you talking about?”
The first man who had spoken replied, “You’re already famous, Mr. Standish. Mr. Heathcote put copies of today’s paper on the trains bound for San Antonio and El Paso. He has associates in both places who will pick up the story and run it.”
Heathcote nodded, beaming in satisfaction.
“You mean everyone in Texas is going to read about the most cowardly man in the West?” Seymour asked in a choked voice.
“Yes, and
if the story is picked up by the Eastern papers, it won’t be long until the entire country knows about you, my boy,” Heathcote said. “Harper’s might even send a reporter out here to get the full story.”
Seymour closed his eyes and ran a shaky hand over his face. “My God,” he muttered. “My God.” That meant Uncle Cornelius would find out what an abject failure he was.
Strangely enough, that thought didn’t bother him as much he expected it to. He was a lot more worried that the increased notoriety would make him fall even lower in the eyes of Maggie O’Ryan, if that was even possible.
“I’m the mayor of Sweet Apple,” the first man said. “Abner Mitchell. You already know J. Emerson here, of course, and these gentlemen are the other members of Sweet Apple’s town council. You’re going to put us on the map, Mr. Standish.” Seymour had to laugh. It was a bitter, humorless sound. “All because you were visited by a craven coward like me?”
“No, sir. Because you’re the man who’s going to tame the hell-roaring’est town in the West.” Abner Mitchell reached inside his coat and then held out his hand to- ward Seymour. The lamplight in the hotel lobby gleamed on the star-shaped badge that lay in his palm. “You see, Mr. Standish, we’re here to ask you to accept the job of marshal of Sweet Apple.”
Chapter 17
Seymour could not have been more surprised if the man had asked him to flap his arms and fly to the moon. He was so shocked that for a long moment all he could do was stand there with his mouth open, unable to say anything.
Then he gasped, “Marshal? You want me to be your marshal?”
The members of Sweet Apple’s town council all nodded. “That’s right,” Heathcote said. “Isn’t it a wonderful idea?” He hooked his thumbs in his vest and preened. “I thought of it, you know.”
“You’re insane!” Seymour said.
The newspaperman blinked and looked a little surprised, not to mention crestfallen.
Mayor Mitchell insisted, “Not at all, Mr. Standish. We think you’re the perfect candidate for the job.”
Texas Gundown Page 14