“If the law’s only wanted when it’s convenient, then you can find yourself a marshal who thinks that way.” Jeremy Six took his badge off, mounted his horse, and rode away from Spanish Flat.
But habit lingers and a trained trigger finger gets itchy. So when Jeremy fell in with an odd pair—a greenhorn newspaperman and bespectacled ex-con—and the three were ambushed on the road to Rifle Gap, it proved beyond his ability to keep out of the action.
And action there was in plenty as an intricate plot unfolded for control of the lush Concho Valley that also involved extracting a six-gun vengeance for the dark doings of a desperado past.
One
Jeremy Six rode along the narrow mountain trail with his back braced taut, half expecting a bullet. Great shelves and slabs of gray-yellow rock shot back glittering reflections of the sun, making him squint and rendering vision difficult. Behind any glaring rock a rifle might be waiting for him.
His horse was a surefooted sorrel gelding, white-maned, a mountain-trained cutting horse. On careful feet it carried him at a ground-eating gait, up past the glittering rock faces. Jeremy Six was both an experienced manhunter and a cautious man: he carried his six-gun in his hand while his narrowed eyes swept the crags and shadows of the tortured mountainsides.
He came around a bend onto a high promontory. From here the land fell away from him like a rock into a well. Below the promontory, the great Mogul Rim plummeted down. The country planed off severely until, a thousand feet beneath him, Jeremy Six could see the vast flow of the desert plain sweeping away into the west. This abrupt change in the land, from jagged mountains to barren flats, always had the capacity to stir him, no matter how often he came upon it.
The brass badge winked on his vest. It was a reflection of the man. Jeremy Six’s face was carved in the shape of a shield. Out of his jurisdiction here, he unpinned the badge and put it away in a pocket where it would not flash sunlight signals.
Off to his left, a haze of sifting dust in the air brought him around. He turned the sorrel back into the brakes and went that way, losing sight of the dust cloud when the trail dropped him below ridge-level.
Jeremy Six made a high, slightly bent shape in the saddle. His dark hair stuck untidily out from under his hat brim; his eyes were bleak, anticipating the dismal and dangerous work ahead. There was no doubt in his mind that he would run down Clete Lash—if not today, then tomorrow, or next week. Patience was part of the job. But in time, in Arizona or beyond, Jeremy Six would ride his man down—because no man committed murder in Jeremy Six’s town, not without paying the price.
Out ahead rode Clete Lash and his two partners. That might or might not be their dust beyond the ridge. They might be well ahead of him by now—it was impossible to judge the age of tracks in the dry powder of the trail. They had had perhaps half an hour on him when Jeremy Six had galloped out of Spanish Flat, but he was convinced he had cut that lead during the afternoon. He had no fear they might outdistance him for his sorrel was the equal of any mountain horse in the county. The greatest risk was that they might double back on their own back trail and set up an ambush. That was why Jeremy Six’s alert attention never stopped surveying the shadows on both sides of the trail.
He was not visibly frightened by the possibility of ambush, nor by the odds against him—three against his gun.
Cresting the ridge, he saw below him a small flock of sheep crossing the road, guided by a Navajo squaw and two dogs. That was the source of the dust in the air. When he rode past, Jeremy Six touched his hat brim and saw the Indian woman’s answering gap-toothed smile. He cantered across an open burn, and left the trail when it dipped into a narrow-sided canyon. He made his own track up the side of the mountain, searching the canyon slopes below, but if there was an ambush, it was well hidden from above. He had to make a series of switch-back turns, leaning far forward across the horse’s withers, before he topped the hogback; he stopped long enough to sweep the rugged humpbacked country with his gaze. Afterward, he put the sorrel downslope, rode through a tilted district of stunted piñons, and reached the far end of the canyon trail. A brief study showed him that the three horsemen had come this way. The wind had not yet drifted over their tracks; they could not be far ahead.
Dropping out of the piñon area into a tan gray section spined with creosote and yucca, he came upon a sandy place in the trail. Here dust still lingered in the air; they had passed here within the last ten minutes, turned off the main trail and headed into the deeper heights of the Yellows.
Jeremy Six decided to keep to the ridge tops, that route being the shortest. He knew this country as most men knew their own houses, and was thus aware that there were only two watering places within the afternoon’s ride. Seven Springs lay four hours ride to the northwest; Winchester Tanks was half an hour due south, half a mile below the summit of Longshot Mountain. It was doubtful the three fugitives would turn northward for Seven Springs, not with the Mexican Border within a day’s ride. He settled on Winchester Tanks.
Clete Lash and his partners would most likely keep to the low canyon bottoms to avoid discovery, and to cover their trail in the rocks. By urging the game sorrel, Six might beat them to Winchester Tanks.
His guess, a lawman’s safe bet, proved correct. He had been settled in above the Tanks for perhaps five minutes when the three gunmen halted their jaded mounts and dismounted by the muddy bank of the waterhole. The horses put their heads down, muzzled the surface scum aside, and drank noisily. Jeremy Six waited until all three men were kneeling down beside the water with their backs to him. Then he let his strong, clear call ring out across the Tanks:
“Hike ’em, boys. Move a whisker and you’re dead.” He laid his eyes down his rifle barrel.
Clete Lash pulled himself slowly back from the pool; his long emaciated face was calm. He was starting to lift his hands when the small, mouse like man beside him dived for the cover of his horse, both hands spilling down at holstered revolvers. Jeremy Six laid his cheek along the rifle stock, settled the sight and squeezed a bullet into the little man’s knee. The little man lost his footing, but when he fell both his guns began spitting lead under the horse’s belly. Jeremy Six levered a shell into the breech and his second shot, deadlier placed, bored through the little man’s eye.
Clete Lash’s second man, watching this cool slaughter, went into panic. His hand clawed at his gun—and Six shot the man under the rib. The bullet drove the man around and down into the water.
The body lay quiet; ripples in the pool circled away slowly. Clete Lash raised both empty hands above his head. He stood motionlessly while Six walked down out of the rocks, leading his horse. Clete Lash’s eyes were bitterly resigned. Six made a gesture with his rifle and Lash, moving very slowly, unbuckled his gunbelt and let it drop to the earth. He stepped back away from it, moving until his heel nudged the dead man on the edge of the waterhole. He looked down at the body; his face displayed no expression at all until his lip curled up and he said, “Damn fools. Neither one of them knew better than to fight the drop.” He nodded toward Jeremy Six. “Who are you?”
“Six. Marshal of Spanish Flat.”
“Out of your bailiwick, ain’t you?”
“A woman’s dead, Lash.”
“I know,” said Clete Lash. “I’m sorry about that. Not that it makes any difference. It wasn’t on purpose. She got in the way of my gun. It happens that way sometimes.”
Jeremy Six laid the man’s gunbelt across the saddlehorn and mounted up. He wheezed and sat back, and glanced west toward the setting sun. The day was gone forever, the job almost done.
“Tie them across their saddles and get mounted.” He drew his revolver and laid its muzzle on Clete Lash’s narrow chest. Lash regarded him wit
h dispassionate eyes, and turned toward the dead men.
Two
At midnight Jeremy Six rode into Spanish Flat with his prisoner and the bodies of Lash’s partners. The town seemed asleep, and Six’s face showed relief until he turned the corner and saw a grim crowd gathered in front of the marshal’s office. The crowd parted to let him pass. No one said a word. Six got down, holding his gun on Clete Lash. Lash was a bony man, all legs and arms and Adam’s apple. With a blank glance at the crowd, Lash dismounted and walked into the office.
Six stopped in the doorway and looked back. The crowd swelled forward toward him, but the silence was eerie. Six broke it:
“Take these two down to Ivy’s and tell him to fit them for boxes.”
Someone muttered. The mutter became a growl that spread through the crowd. One man, a bartender called Crease, spoke to a man beside him: “Go get Hal Craycroft.”
Hal Craycroft was the husband of the woman who had been killed. Six said, “Leave Craycroft alone. He’s got trouble enough.”
“Like the trouble we’ve got waiting for Clete Lash,” said Crease, in a curiously subdued monotone. “Go on, Frankie. Get Hal. He’ll want to be here.”
Frankie went away. Crease talked to the two men who had picked up the reins to lead the dead men’s horses away. “Tell Ivy to make that three coffins.” Six swung inside, prodding Clete Lash ahead of him. He took the prisoner through the office and locked him up in the cell block beyond. He was turning to leave when Lash spoke in a mild tone:
“Figure to let them do it, Marshal?”
“They’ll cool off. You’ll get your trial.”
“Not that it’ll do much good. A man’s just as dead hung legal as he is lynched.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” said Jeremy Six. He locked the cell block and went back to the sidewalk. The crowd was shifting around, as if their feet were tired after standing around for hours. No one did much talking, and it was clear that the crowd was in the most dangerous of moods. They had probably done all their shouting and cursing earlier; now they stood soaked in false lethargy, numbed by a complete absence of feeling which was the mark of an impending explosion.
Jeremy Six said, “Lash will get his due. Go home now.”
Crease said, “You did a good job bringing him in, Jeremy.”
“Thanks. Just remember it’s still my job. My job to keep him safe for trial.”
Crease said in a reasoning way, “It’s an insult to a court to soil it with that scum. A waste of money and time. Lash don’t deserve to stay alive from now to execution day.”
“Go on home,” Six said again. “This isn’t a lynching kind of town. You boys know that.”
A wide-shouldered figure came ramming along the walk, head bowed down—Hal Craycroft, who owned the Drover’s Rest, which was the town’s principal hotel and saloon. Craycroft did not seem to be aware of the knot of men blocking his path along the walk; and the men, recognizing him, made a path for him. Craycroft walked through without looking to either side. He did not stop until he was within two paces of Jeremy Six, just outside the office door.
“I hear you brought him in.”
“He’s inside. You ought to get some rest, Hal. You’re all beat to hell.”
“Cynthia can do the resting for both of us,” said Craycroft. In the wash of lamplight, his eyes were bloodshot, his face streaked by tracks of pain and tears. He lifted one hand in a loose-fisted gesture. “Jeremy, that man in there does not deserve to live while she’s lying on Con Ivy’s table.”
“Do you intend to try a lynching, Hal?” Six’s voice was easy, without force; these men were his friends.
Craycroft’s face was haunted by tragedy, and the unreasonable thrashing rage which follows it; and the dull stubborn look in his eyes did not cover up his fury. Crease, who was Craycroft’s head bartender, stepped up on the boardwalk beside Craycroft. “We’ve all seen what a smart lawyer can do in a courtroom. Do you believe it’s right to give Clete Lash a chance? A chance he never gave Cynthia Craycroft?”
Jeremy Six said, “If you lynch the man, will it make her live again?”
Someone hidden in the crowd yelled: “Quit wasting time with talk. I got the rope right here.”
Six’s revolver was in its holster. Now he took one step backward into the doorway and lifted the six-gun, holding it up with the muzzle pointing over their heads. “Hal!”
Craycroft made no answer. Six said, “Maybe you can get me out of your way. But some of you will get hurt. I’ll shoot to kill if I have to.”
Craycroft’s voice rumbled out of his chest. “Stand aside, Jeremy.”
Abruptly, Six brought the gun level. The crisp clicking of the hammer was a distinct, harsh sound when he cocked it. The gun lay trained steadily on Craycroft’s chest. Six’s voice turned hard. “I’ve kept the peace in Spanish Flat for enough years to make you people know that I mean what I say.”
Crease stepped forward. His anger, swelled by unthinking mob spirit, made him either unaware of Six’s gun or indifferent to it. He said, “Nobody’s ungrateful. You took a raw town and tamed it down. But if we want to keep it a fit place to live, we’ve got to serve notice that no man can get away with what Clete Lash did. The only answer to give him is a rope—quick and final, the way he gave it to Cynthia.”
“Is that what you call justice, Crease?” Six demanded.
“By God, it is! A tooth for a tooth.”
Hal Craycroft said woodenly, “Get out of the way, Jeremy.”
“I guess not,” Jeremy Six murmured. He settled his feet. “The first man through this door is a dead man. Which one of you wants the first bullet?”
Craycroft lifted both lapels of his coat. “No gun,” he said. “You won’t kill me, Jeremy.”
“Clete Lash has no gun,” Six said grimly. “Will that stop you?”
“No. That won’t stop us.”
“Then figure it out,” said Six. “I’m sworn to uphold the law.”
Crease said viciously, “When a man has no heart they fill up the hole with a badge.”
Six said, “Nobody gets past this door while I’m standing here. That’s the sum of it. I give you my word—”
His voice was cut off by the hiss and flap of a rope-noose, arching toward him over the heads of the crowd. Six caught the looping rope’s fall in the corner of his vision. He flung up his arm and twisted to one side; the rope snagged around his arm and as he wheeled to fling it away, Crease’s rock-hard fist slammed across his gun hand.
A pile of men carried Six down. He heard the grunts of scuffling; he lashed out with his boot and heard someone cry out. The gun was ripped from his fist. He braced his legs and with a mammoth effort of strength, flung himself to his feet. His fist collided with Crease’s jaw; the man’s head rocked back to one side and Crease’s eyes lost focus. A figure swirled out of the shadows and Six brought his arm up, crashing the heel of his palm into the man’s nose, crashing it up from under; blood splashed across his hand from the man’s face, and the face fell away. Six roared for order. His voice was lost in a babble of unleashed shouting. The crowd had burst its dam of apathy and Jeremy Six felt himself carried down again by the flood tide.
Men slammed against him, burying him; furious yelling deafened him. With both arms pinned, Six straggled to roll free. Under a mass of bodies, he rolled off the edge of the boardwalk and struck the dusty street on shoulder and hip. He got one arm loose and pushed a man away, took a strangle-hold on another man and levered himself half-upright, and then a boot swung out of the darkness, laid his cheek open to the bone, and knocked him down flat, stunned.
He felt the warm flow of his own blood, he tasted it and was half-blinded by it. The mob surged away from him, storming inside the jail. Half-conscious, he fought stubbornly to get his feet under him. Hoarse yelling filled the street. He staggered forward; his outstretched hands reached the edge of the walk and he stood there, tilted over and propped against the walk trying to clear his head.
A pair of men rushed by, coming out of the jail; they brushed past him and a noose, hanging free, slapped his face as the men went by. Six dragged one leg forward and tried to stand up. Someone ran out of the jail, battered Six aside with his palm and ran on; Six fell across the boardwalk, bruising his ribs. His vision swam with the dark red colors. Boots made a loud rataplan on the boards. He heard, very distinctly, a calm voice speaking—Clete Lash’s voice:
“All right, gents. Take it easy—take it easy. I ain’t fighting you.”
The boots tramped away; the sound of shouting diminished and the crowd moved toward the center of town.
Left alone, Six levered himself painfully upright against the wall. He stripped off his neck-bandanna and blotted his cheek. Vision slowly cleared for him. He stumbled inside, reached down a shotgun, and went back outside. Through a thin mist-coating he saw the last two men disappear around the corner, a block away; he set himself along the boardwalk, putting one foot down grimly in front of the other.
He staggered against the wall and fought for balance. His head throbbed; blood pulsed from his open cheek. He held the bandanna against the wound and weaved down the walk. A lamp glittered out of the window of a deserted shop. He heard the mob voice swell into an enormous shout. A wave of dizziness buckled his knees; he fell off the edge of the walk into the street, losing his grip on the shotgun.
He found it under the walk, picked it up and lurched to his feet. Moving like a machine, he forced his will to propel him to the corner, and around, bringing up the shotgun and easing back both hammers.
A final shout of triumph erupted from the crowd, and suddenly there was silence. Six’s uncertain vision showed him a few men crowding toward the big open maw of the livery stable, thirty feet down-street. He shouldered the shotgun, pointed it up in the air and fired one barrel. The recoil almost knocked him down. The racket echoed down the street. Lowering the gun, Six broke into a painful shuffling run toward the stable; his knees threatened to collapse but he made himself keep his feet.
Marshal Jeremy Six #3 Page 1