Marshal Jeremy Six #3

by Brian Garfield

  When he reached the stable door, the small knot of men would not meet his glance; they turned away and faded into the shadows. He walked into the doorway and saw the mob gathered in a circle.

  Clete Lash hung from the stable rafter, his head tilted far over to one side, his boots swinging.

  Six’s harsh voice was a croak: “Cut him down!” The mob swung toward him. He leveled the shotgun; its bores wavered in his grasp. “Cut him down!”

  Crease spoke quickly: “All right. Luther, cut him down. He’s dead, anyhow. I heard his neck snap.”

  Clete Lash’s wide-open eyes and purpling, distended tongue left no doubt he was dead. The man called Luther climbed up on a stall partition and hacked away at the rope until the strands parted and Clete Lash plummeted to the ground. No one broke the body’s fall.

  Hal Craycroft was looking steadfastly at the ground before his toes. His hands were wringing, washing themselves. Craycroft’s chest heaved; his cheeks were wet with tears.

  Crease was wiping his hands on his barkeep’s apron. “Jeremy—”

  “Shut up,” Six snarled. His lips peeled back from his teeth. He reached out with one arm to steady himself against the side of the doorway. “You fools,” he muttered.

  Craycroft finally looked up. “It’s done and I don’t regret it. It had to be done, Jeremy. But I guess the law calls it murder.” He walked toward Six. “We’re liable to arrest. All right—we won’t dispute it. Take us.”

  “Not tonight,” said Jeremy Six in a hollow voice. “Not ever. If the law’s only wanted in this town when it’s convenient, then you can find yourselves a marshal who thinks that way.” He took his badge and dropped it at Craycroft’s feet; he turned on his heel and lurched away.

  Crease caught up with him and supported him by one arm. “You got hurt pretty bad. I’ll help you home and get the doctor.”

  Six wrenched himself away. “Take your hand off me, Crease.” His eyes, like charcoal, burned against Crease; and Crease retreated. Six dropped the shotgun in the street and staggered away from the mob. No one stopped him; no one spoke at all.

  Three

  Clarissa Vane put her lighted cigarette on the edge of the desk and dampened a clean towel in a sink-pan of warm water. She said, “Lie back, damn it, before you bleed to death.” She turned to the couch where Six was trying to sit up, pushed him back and washed his cheek gently. “Here. Hold this against your cheek until the doc gets here.”

  Six’s eyes were as dull as slate. Clarissa picked up the burning cigarette and sat down on a chair, pulling it up beside Six. She knelt forward to place the cigarette between his lips. Six took a deep drag and exhaled smoke through his nostrils.

  Clarissa’s office door was closed. From beyond, Six could hear the saloon piano, playing soft sad melodies. The saloon was all but empty, or at least it had been five minutes ago when he staggered in.

  He said crookedly, “Too bad. Lynchings are kind of bad for business.”

  “They’ll pick it up,” she said. “In a little while they’ll want to drink the town dry, trying to forget it. Oh, Jeremy—for God’s sake let go of it. Quit tying yourself up in knots. They lynched the man. All right—they were wrong. But he had it coming. You’ve got to remember that Cynthia Craycroft was the closest thing this town ever had to an angel of mercy.”

  He did not reply. His eyes watched her bitterly. She said compassionately, “You’ve always wanted people to be better than they are, haven’t you? It eats you up inside to find out that even good men can get so angry they’ll do things that are completely beyond reason. Jeremy, you’ve got to learn to take people as they are. You can’t make them better than they were.”

  He said in a monotone, “Hal Craycroft was one of the city assemblymen who appointed me to keep the peace.”

  She answered in a harder voice, “What if it had been your wife, Jeremy?”

  His eyes seemed to sink into deep hollows. “My wife,” he muttered, “was killed by a stampeding mob just like this one. Eight years ago.”

  Her eyes grew round. “I didn’t know,” she said softly. “Oh, Jeremy—I’m so sorry.”

  Knuckles rapped the door. Clarissa got out of her chair and moved slowly to the entrance.

  The doctor came in with a sour look on his craggy face. “I heard about it,” he said. “A shame. A crying shame, Jeremy. All right, let’s have a look at you.” Six lifted the damp towel away from his cheek.

  The doctor grunted. “That’s a nasty cut. It will leave a scar. I’ll have to sew it up. Any headache?”

  “Some.”

  “You may have a mild concussion. I’d advise you stay put for a day or two. Let me know if you have any dizzy spells.” The doctor turned and looked up at Clarissa. “Get some water boiling. I’ll have to sterilize some instruments.”

  A shaft of sunlight came through the narrow window. Six stood looking out across the backyard, toward the desert horizon forty miles away. Heat waves undulated above the flats. A wide pall of dust would represent a cattle herd moving to new pasture on one of the big ranches. Six’s hand touched the red railroad-track welt along his cheek. This morning the doctor had removed the stitches.

  Moving like an old man, he crossed the bedroom and opened the bureau drawer, and began throwing clothes into a worn carpetbag.

  When he was done, he buckled down the straps of the bag and set it beside the front door. He turned around, looking the place over—the little two-room adobe where he had lived for more than five years. A lithograph hung framed on the wall, a New England snow scene, and he took a pace toward it, but then stopped, and left it where it was. There was nothing else. His rifle in its scabbard lay across the carpet bag. The pair of saddlebags held cooking utensils; the blanket-roll included his rain-slicker and linen duster. His one Sunday suit, of black wool, was packed in the carpetbag. There had been a time, on the gambler’s circuit, when Jeremy Six had owned a dozen trim suits and silken vests, a score of ruffled shirts and celluloid collars and string neckties. Somewhere along the years they had been discarded.

  He owned a handful of possessions, most of the necessities—like his two revolvers, his ammunition-reloading equipment, his shaving gear, an extra pair of flat-heeled walking boots and a spare hat for Sunday wear. Down at the stable were his horse and saddle. He stood in the middle of the room looking at the door; he did not want to see the inside of the livery stable again, and so he went outside and walked half a block to Mrs. Orbea’s house, and gave Mrs. Orbea’s fourth son—the twelve-year-old—half a dollar to fetch his horse for him.

  He was about to turn into his own house when he saw Clarissa coming down the quiet side street He stopped to wait for her.

  Clarissa, who owned the Glad Hand Saloon, moved with aristocratic vitality. She was a slim woman of cool beauty. Her hair was long, heavily black; it fell in cascades to her shoulders. She was graceful and, Six had decided long ago, her smile was as good as a kiss.

  She came up to him and put her large dark eyes on him. “They told me you were leaving. You didn’t say anything to me.”

  “I’ve always hated saying goodbye.” He lifted his arm and let her precede him into the little house.

  When she was inside she only glanced at the small pile of belongings; she stepped around them and went into the room, looking around the place as if she had never seen it before. “What are you doing with the house?”

  “Figured to give it to you,” he said. “You’ve lived long enough in that cramped box behind the saloon.”

  Her smile was slow but deep. “So,” she said. “You did intend to stop and see me on your way out of town.”

  His nod was an admission. His big frame filled the open doorway; he was about to step inside when he heard the clatter of hoofbeats, and turned to see the Orbea youth riding his horse up the street. The boy tied the horse in front of the house, spoke briefly, and went along home.

  Six closed the door and said to Clarissa, “For a while I had it in mind to ask you to come with me
.” She did not speak; but her eyes were fixed on his face and her slender fingers rose to touch her throat. Six said, “I decided not to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t know where I’m going from here.”

  “Did you think that would matter to me?”

  “It matters,” he said, “to me.”

  “You never give anyone but yourself credit for knowing the risks they take.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Clarissa, I’ve got a lot of things to sort out.”

  “I know,” she answered in an understanding way. “I know, Jeremy. But I don’t like not knowing where to find you when you get sorted out.”

  “I’ll find you,” he said, “if you still want me to.” Her brief, low laugh had an ironic ring. After a moment she said, “Well then, I guess I’m used to waiting.”

  He said, “I can’t ask you to wait.”

  “You and your stupid pride,” she said. She tossed her head. “Do you know something? This is the first time I’ve ever seen a man too proud to stand and fight. You’re running out on this town, Jeremy.”

  “No. The town ran out on me.”

  She shook her head absently. Her fingers toyed with a curtain. “It doesn’t matter anyway.” She stirred. “They’ve hired Jack Thompson to take your place.”

  “Jack’s a good man. Solid, dependable, sedate—the kind of law they need, I guess. He’ll do what they tell him to do.”

  “Jeremy,” she pleaded, “don’t go sour on the whole world. Please—I can’t bear to see what you’re doing to yourself.”

  His answer was a crooked smile. Clarissa put her back to the room and stood before the window with her arms folded across her breasts; she was looking toward the center of town. “I remember when you came here. You were a wild man then, just off the gamblers circuit with a reputation for quick shooting. There were only two kinds of people as far as you were concerned—the ones who were scared of you, and the ones who thought they were tough enough to outshoot you. Then you started to cool off. You found out there were men in this town who could treat you without kowtowing to you but without having to fight you. This town did a lot for you, Jeremy. It tamed you just as much as you tamed it. These people deserve better than what you’re giving them.”

  “They deserve nothing,” he said flatly.

  She did not turn. “You’re still thinking about your wife.”

  “Maybe I am. She did nothing more than step out of the house. She got trampled by a mob that had lynching on its brain. They didn’t mean her any harm. They just walked over her because they were too damned full of righteousness to see her—all they could see was the tree where they were going to hang the man. I don’t even remember his name. He’d shot the mayor in a card game.”

  Clarissa turned to face him. “What did you do?”

  His face was twisted. “I wasn’t even there. I was twenty miles away, dickering to sell some horses.”

  “That wasn’t your fault,” she said.

  “Maybe—maybe. But when I got back, I found out who’d led the mob. I went after him.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “He knew I was coming. He’d had two shots at me before I shot him down.”

  “Then you made yourself into a one-man lynch mob,” she said to him.

  “He had a gun. It was a fair fight.”

  “Fair fight,” she said. She shook her head sadly. “What difference can that make to a dead man? Jeremy, you as much as lynched him.”

  “No,” he said stubbornly.

  “And then,” she guessed, “you went on the circuit. You gambled and raised hell. You shot men and made a reputation for yourself.”

  “Yes. I did all that.”

  “Sometimes,” she murmured, “I think you and I are total strangers.”

  “I’m a stranger to myself,” he answered. “That’s why I’m riding out of here alone.”

  “Can I change your mind?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t try.”

  “All right,” she said.

  He nodded. “Thanks, Clarissa.”

  She went toward the door. “You know my mailing address.”

  Her face was sad, but she summoned a smile. Six took two rapid strides and stopped her at the door. She swayed forward. He dropped his lips over her mouth and kissed her gently.

  When she left, he stood alone in the empty house and brooded upon the floor. After a while he put on his hat, picked up his belongings and went out to his waiting horse.

  When he rode out of Spanish Flat, he did not look back.

  Four

  The completely healed scar was a white slash across Jeremy Six’s cheek. He sat his saddle wearily, gloved hands over the saddle horn. Below him lay a vista of yellow-grass, flowing across a broad valley of golden hills. Snow lay in pockets; the April air here on the mountain was cold. Six’s mackinaw was buckled up to the throat and the collar was turned up around his neck.

  His eyes held the bleakness of a man who has left too much behind. He watched evening shadows spread across the valley far beneath him. It would be half a day’s ride from this mountain pass down into the valley; he decided to pitch his camp where he was.

  He built his fire against the face of a granite cliff, and laid his blankets out of the wind. After he had eaten, he sat cross-legged, brooding into the fire. It was something he would not have done in a more balanced mood: staring into a fire blinded a man’s vision in the night.

  It was a faint sound that made him cruelly, suddenly aware of his lapse: the click of a metal horseshoe on rock. Six cursed under his breath and moved on silent feet away from the fire, fading back into a heavy stand of pine timber. The scent of pine needles hung strong on the cold night air. He heard the horse draw nearer; his own horse whinnied in signal, not far away where it stood hobbled in the trees. Six squinted his eyes tight-shut, trying to accustom them to the night.

  In time, the advancing horseman clattered through the pass. Six heard the horse stop, then start up again, not hurrying. His eyes keened the trail but he could distinguish nothing. This far away from main-traveled roads it paid a man to be cautious. He slipped his gun into his palm.

  The horseman came in sight, a vague moving shadow against darker, heavier shadows of mountainsides; he rode directly into the circle of firelight. With both hands in plain sight, the rider spoke mildly:

  “All right, friend. You can show yourself.”

  Six stepped out of the woods, sliding his gun back into its worn holster. He said, “Light down.”

  “Thanks,” said the stranger. “Got any coffee left?” He stepped down and loosened the cinches while Six walked up. When the stranger turned to face Six, he gave a quick impression of cocky youth, blond hair, a reckless grin. He was dressed like a dude, in jodhpurs and engineer’s boots, broadcloth jacket and narrow-brimmed hat. He said, “I’m Rafferty. Steve Rafferty,” as if it were all the introduction he needed.

  “Jeremy Six.” They shook hands and Rafferty spread his palms out over the fire:

  “Quite a chill up in these canyons. I came across the desert from Aztec and it was hotter than hell down there. Hell of a country. Old Greeley’d change his tune if he ever came out and saw what he was telling people to go to. Or maybe that’s what he had in mind when he advised the young man to “Go West.” My editor says it’s the land that God forgot.”

  “Newspaperman?” said Six, sitting down cross-legged and drawing a coal from the fire to light his cigarette.

  “Sure-sure.” Rafferty had a quick nervous way of talking. His eyes were never still. “You look like you know how to use that gun.”

  “Do I?” Six said noncommittally.

  “Haven’t I heard your name somewhere?” Rafferty frowned with thought. “Six—Six. Seems familiar. You anybody I should know about?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Kind of funny, a man named Six carrying a six-gun. Anybody ever call you Mister Six-gun?”

  “It’s been used,” Six s
aid drily.

  Rafferty finished his coffee and stood up. “Mind if I stay the night?”

  “Help yourself,” Six said. “I don’t own the place.”

  “Kind of you,” Rafferty said amiably. He went to his horse and unsaddled it. While he was rubbing the animal down, he kept up a rapid-fire stream of talk:

  “You headed for Rifle Gap? Can’t be more than four, five hours’ ride from here. There’s a bloodbath in the offing down there, or at least that’s what the Clarion thinks. Back in San Francisco, all the papers are full of rumors about the big war brewing down here in the Concho Basin. Old Iron-pants sent me down to see what’s what, write some dispatches.”

  Six grunted and pointed toward the gun which Rafferty carried high on his left hip, butt-forward. “How are you with that thing?”

  “Just fair.”

  “Then put it away,” Six said. “Pack it.”

  Rafferty’s curry brush-hand became still. “What for?”

  “If there’s a range war down in the Basin, it will be attracting every man in Arizona who’s got a loose holster and a hard trigger-finger. Sometimes if they see a man wearing a gun they shoot him first and find out his identity later. They may think twice about shooting an unarmed man, though. If you don’t figure to join the circus, then don’t publish invitations.”

  Rafferty looked down at his gun—the bird’s head grip of a Colt .38 double-action revolver—and back at Six again. He said, “Tell me something, then. Just what’s your part of this?”

  “I’ve got no part. I’m just passing through.”

  Rafferty nodded at Six’s gun. “Then maybe you ought to take your own advice.”

  “Maybe,” Six said cryptically. He threw his cigarette butt into the fire, lay back and rolled his blankets around him; he tipped his hat forward over his face and closed his eyes.

  Steve Rafferty picketed his horse and lugged his saddle up; he took a notebook and pencil out of his saddlebags and began to scribble. After a moment he looked up and said, “Wait a minute. I knew I’d heard that name somewhere. Weren’t you the one who ran the outlaws out of Spanish Flat? The marshal there, weren’t you? What happened—the town get too tame for you? I don’t see any badge on your chest.”