Andromeda Gun

by John Boyd

  Ian took advantage of the temporary freedom from females to engage the preacher in a theological discussion.

  “For some reason, sir, I feel a powerful interest in this Angel Gabriel. Some of the best people I know are named for him. Where does he hail from?”

  “From heaven, son, out beyond the stars. He’s a powerful man in heaven, an archangel. Some folks think he might have had something to do with Jesus since he was seen calling on Mary just before Christ was born.”

  “Where’d he get the name Gabriel?”

  “Some Hebrew called him by the name and it stuck.”

  “Does the name mean anything in Hebrew?”

  “Can’t say since I’m not a Hebrew. You might ask Abe Bernbaum. He’s a Hebrew.”

  “Is he the little fellow with the big head and the deep voice?”

  “Yes, sir,” the preacher smiled. “He’s Shoshone Flats’ naysayer and woe-bearer, but he’s God’s own tailor, the town’s official tailor, in fact.”

  Suddenly the preacher paused and dropped his head in a meditation so deep Ian felt he might be going to sleep on his feet, but he quickly aroused himself.

  “Brother McCloud, when I was walking among them sinners, the Holy Ghost asked me to give you a proposal in my capacity as town mayor. We’ve got Brother Faust as sheriff, but he’s a little too old and too Christian for a lawman. If you’d consent to abide with us for a while and act as his deputy, I know a young man with your spunk and grit could help bring law and order to Shoshone Flats and get us enough prisoners to straighten out that curve and maybe fill in a few chuckholes in the road. Of course, we ain’t the richest town in the world. We couldn’t afford to pay you much, but there are other benefits. As the law, you’d have full protection of the law when the Avenging Angels ride against you, you’d get a brand-new suit of clothes at the town’s expense, a free burial preached by me if you should come to an untimely end, and you’d get the loan of a saddle and a fast horse.”

  Ian became alert at the mention of a fast horse, but immediately he spotted a loophole in the mayor’s argument. “The nag you issued to Sheriff Faust looks pretty spavined to me.”

  “We issue the horse to fit the man,” Winchester explained. “Brother Hendricks, the best Gentile horse breeder in the valley, supplies the town with its horses, and he has a genius for matching the horse to the man.”

  Ian’s thinking was assisted by a gust of rain on the roof. With a fast horse under him and the town emptied of people on Tuesday, he’d have the perfect arrangement for holding up the bank. Meanwhile, he’d have the use of the hotel room tonight and Monday night, so he wouldn’t have to get wet.

  “How much does the job pay?” He feigned an interest.

  “Eight dollars a week, but you can bed down in the jailhouse, and the town pays for your meals, either at the restaurant or the saloon, depending on whether you like chicken or steak. We’d like to pay more, but the town’s treasury is low.”

  Suddenly the solution of a problem he did not intend to solve lay clear in Ian’s mind. He said, “Mr. Mayor, I could build you a road, pay myself fifteen dollars a week, and add to the town’s treasury without costing the town a penny, if you’d let me appoint the justice of peace.”

  “Well, son”—the mayor rubbed his jaw—“that might cause legal problems. I’m supposed to appoint the justice of peace—we’ve had no use for one with Sheriff Faust—and the city charter won’t let me pay over eight dollars a week to a deputy because the high sheriff only makes eight dollars and two bits.”

  “I don’t know nothing about legal problems,” Ian said, “but I can solve them two. You appoint the justice of peace I ask you to appoint and, instead of raising my salary, give me a percentage of all the fines the justice of peace collects.”

  “Brother McCloud, you’ve just earned yourself a position of responsibility in the thriving community of Shoshone Flats…

  “Brother Hendricks,” he called over Ian’s shoulder, “I want you to come over and meet our new deputy sheriff, Brother Ian McCloud. What kind of horse can you offer him?”

  Brother Hendricks, the horse breeder, advanced with a limp. Ian saw that the man had once been tall and rawboned, but he was bent now from a curvature of the spine, and his right shoulder was a huge lump. Cocking his head, he looked up to Ian from beneath brows corrugated with scar tissue. He was studying the man.

  “I’d match him with Midnight,” he said finally. “Midnight’s as fast as greased lightning, mister. If he can’t throw you, he pinwheels and crushes you. If he can throw you, he’ll stomp you to death. He’s a killer horse, but, by the holy jumping Jehoshaphat, the horse has got spirit!”

  “Sounds like my kind of horse,” Ian said.

  On the ride home, under a misting sky, Gabriella was excited over Ian’s appointment. Strangely, Liza, who was experiencing her own elation over a successful move to furnish lunch boxes to the Territorial Stage Lines—one cent going to Birnie and five to Ian—did not share her daughter’s enthusiasm.

  “All Brother Winchester’s doing is getting rid of Ian so he won’t run for mayor. Once you’ve built the road, Ian, he’ll take credit and get himself reelected.”

  With strange detachment, Ian saw the truth in what she said, but he saw deeper to another truth: a mayor indebted to a law officer might become the tool of his own lieutenant. Yet it was a matter that wouldn’t concern him after Tuesday.

  “I reckon you’re right, Liza, but I ain’t intending to run for mayor, and if I’m going to load up that jail with lawbreakers, them criminals have got to be fed. As long as the Territorial Stage Lines agreed on a lunch box price, the town of Shoshone Flats will figure it’s getting a bargain, and I calculate I’ll be needing over a hundred a week. Of course, I ain’t much good at sums.”

  “Nonsense, Ian McCloud,” Liza ejaculated, “you’re a genius as well as a he-man.”

  “Oh, mother. Don’t be so obvious.”

  “One thing you have to say about me, daughter, is that I’m grateful. After we’ve had the chicken dinner I promised you, Ian, I’m inviting you to stay for supper. I’ll fix you some of the best chicken dumplings you ever et.”

  Already Ian was beginning to feel over-chickened, especially now that he knew more solid meat was available at the saloon.

  “No’m. I appreciate it, but I got to write some letters to El Paso, and I got to take this rig back to the livery stable, so I’ll have to turn down your kind invitation to supper.”

  All these people were going to a lot of trouble, he thought, just to help him steal a fast horse and rob their bank, but they were getting something back. False hope wasn’t much, but it was better than no hope at all.

  Despite its triumph at the church meeting, G-7 was disappointed.

  Aware that the patterns of man’s fate were seldom accidental, it was pleased to have elicited the correct responses from Ian at the services, and it knew that one step at a time was the most it could hope to accomplish in leading the man to legality, but fascinating educational bypaths were opening to it, right here on the buggy’s seat, and its host was ignoring them.

  Both females were competing for Ian’s amorous attention. Yet G-7 knew that the romance it had hoped to research was going to be postponed, partly because of the inhibitions aroused in Ian by the presence of the girl’s mother, a presence which actually more than doubled the area of experimentation, partly because of the rain, but mostly because Ian was preoccupied with a five-cent rebate on a twenty-five cent box lunch for nonexistent prisoners. Somehow the prospect of the former Johnny Loco tapping the public till appealed to McCloud’s ironic humor.

  Love of money was the root of this man’s evil. Seated between two women, both eager and the older one willing, he dreamed of theoretical profits and of real cash waiting in a bank to be robbed. Even after his psychic lust was appeased and his thoughts turned from profits, they did not turn to the women beside him.

  He thought of a stallion called Midnight. Any horse that liked
to kill men was bound to be a spirited steed. Moreover, with his freshly activated neural cells G-7 had quickened for high moral purposes, McCloud had hit on a plan to break the stallion of its pinwheeling habits forever.

  4

  Ian canceled his planned steak supper at Bain’s saloon. Shyness, politeness, and susceptibility to Liza’s persuasiveness had led him to eat three extra helpings of fried chicken, and, by the time the overburdened mare pulled him the muddy way into town, the torpor of digestion left him indifferent to food. From the livery stable he went directly to the hotel. Spreading his pallet beneath the gray light from the window, he took the Gideon’s Bible from the dresser and sprawled beneath the window to leaf through the pages.

  Not once did he speculate about his unusual desire to read the Bible, because the unnatural act fitted well into his extraordinary day. Consciously, he knew only that he wanted to read something, anything. This morning he had been embarrassed to admit in the presence of a schoolteacher that he had read so little, and what reading he had done never led him to the opinion that it was dangerous, as Liza averred.

  Still, Liza had a point. Billy Peyton’s dime novels and his jealousy toward Bacon had cost the Mormon a finger. Ian could not understand why John Milton would gun down the widow’s husband for reading a book—the widow, yes; John Milton, no—but he could understand that there might be indirect perils to the pastime. Reading in the half light of a cloudy afternoon might weaken a gunfighter’s eyes and eventually get him killed.

  Above and beyond Ian’s educational embarrassment, which was accompanied by a sense of futility—he realized that at this late date any attempt to shore up his ignorance would be the equivalent of a limber finger in a very porous dike—he was impelled to the Bible by a peculiar interest which, somehow, seemed natural. Ordinarily, his interest in celestial beings was equal to, but did not exceed, his interest in hagiology. Winchester’s description of angels as beings of light had stirred his curiosity, and, in effect, he was unconsciously checking Winchester’s sources for the preacher’s report on the halo effect.

  Now that he was getting the hang of reading, he skimmed through the “begats” of the Old Testament, finding few references to heaven and fewer to angels. In Genesis, however, he paused for a long moment to consider a passage:

  And it came to pass… that the sons of God saw the daughters of men and found them fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.

  The man’s eyes had found a clue to a mystery the man was not even aware of, and Ian thought he paused over the passage to consider the mechanical problems involved in such an arrangement. From his very limited knowledge of angels, he did not think they were equipped for marriage, but he was not one to argue against the Bible.

  Also, he did not know that he regarded the paragraph as a reliquary for an ancient truth.

  With varying degrees of interest he read on through twenty-one books of the Bible until, as the still-clouded sun moved toward setting and the day waned outside the window, he came to Solomon’s Song. He muttered aloud, “No wonder this hombre had a thousand wives.”

  Here was raw material aplenty for courting a schoolteacher, though some of it was a little too raw; he could never tell Gabriella his bowels were moved for her. Sometimes the language was a little too less or too much. Gabriella’s breasts were not like those of a young roe; she could give a few inches to any deer he had seen. And her face was not as terrible as an army with banners, not to a man who had lain behind the breastworks at Marye’s Heights and watched the blue-bellied Yankees climb the hill. Still, allowing for the lapses, Solomon was a master of sweet talk.

  Reluctantly Ian closed the book and laid it aside. Further reading would strain his eyes, and a lighted lamp in the room might reveal him to some Mormon sharp-shooter outside with a rifle. Laying his pistol atop the Bible, he spread-eagled on the pallet, hearing the beginning tinkle of Bain’s piano with the “plonk” on the middle D and thinking of the breasts of women. Whoever Solomon sang to must have been more like Gabe than Liza, else Solomon wouldn’t have spent so many compliments on thighs and navels. The widow’s bosom would have hogged the works, for verily, her breasts were like melons, Stone Mountain watermelons.

  Visions of watermelons flowed so naturally into Ian’s mind he found the thought no more unusual than his session with the Bible, or the after-feeling that he had been searching the Scriptures for something more definite than spiritual guidance or salvation. He yawned and stretched, thinking: Next to killing Colonel Blicket, there’s nothing I’d like better than a piece of watermelon.

  At six in the morning Ian awakened, resolved to carry out Sunday’s plan; get deputized this Monday; bust a bronc, rob the bank on Tuesday; then ride out of the deserted town on the fastest horse in Wyoming. He drank half a glass of water for breakfast and walked over to the sheriff’s office. Following the sound of snores, he found Sheriff Faust asleep in a jail cell at the rear of the building.

  Ian reached down and shook the man awake. Faust opened his eyes, raised himself on one elbow, and asked, “Huh?”

  “Winchester sent me over to get deputized. You’re looking at your new deputy.”

  Faust listened, lay back, and spoke with his eyes closed, “Go take an inventory of the armory, then look over the wanted posters on my desk. File them according to real name, not alias, and try to memorize the descriptions. Soon as I wake up, I’ll swear you in.”

  Faust resumed snoring.

  Ian walked forward between twin rows of cells, four cells on each side with one bunk to the cell, and his mind continued to attack the problem he was not yet committed to solving. If he were to build the road for Shoshone Flats, a jail housing eight men would not be big enough for the twelve or fourteen men he would need on the work gang, unless some of the prisoners slept on the floor.

  Ian looked into the armory, an upright cupboard without a lock. On a side shelf was a box of shells for a sawed-off shotgun, the only modern piece in the gun rack. There was a muzzle loading flintlock without rifling in the barrel such as he had first been issued when he joined the C. S. Army and a chain with sixteen leg irons which had probably been used for transporting slave coffles before the war. He took the padlock from the coffle chain, tested the hasp, and locked the armory, dropping the key in his pocket. He decided to keep the cupboard locked. The shotgun would be immobilized for Tuesday’s operation, and the rest of the equipment might be of value to a museum.

  Piled high on a corner of the sheriff’s desk, the wanted posters were covered with dust, the bottom ones yellowed with age. Sheriff Faust had not looked at the circulars for years, but Ian was interested in the law’s comments on his friends. He riffled through the top layer and tossed three of the first ten posters into the wastebasket. They were badly in need of updating.

  Billy the Kid had been killed by Pat Garrett down in Mexico, Joe Burke lay in the Tombstone, Arizona, boothill. Ian himself had killed Frank Casper in Mexico, when Frank paid Ian’s favorite girl an extra peso for her services. Casper’s death was not officially known since the rurales were lax about records; but it would become officially known as soon as Ian was deputized, so he tossed Casper into the wastebasket.

  In the second segment he lifted from the pile, he found one he tore up in a sudden spasm of anger.

  WANTED—$50 REWARD

  Ian McCleod, alias Johnny Loco. Gray eyes, sandy hair, medium weight, medium height, medium build. This man’s nondescript appearance makes him hard to identify. The alias, Loco, was given to him because in playing poker he always draws to an inside straight. Wanted for questioning in several petty thefts and for the murder of his accomplice, Jesus Garcia, a Mexican vagrant.

  The poster went as far wrong as it could go. His last name was not spelled right, and he was called Loco because he killed any man who fooled around with his women. Colonel Blicket, with the sergeant, had killed Hey You Garcia—his first name was not spelled right either—and their holdup of a cavalry train guarding the Army payrol
l had not been petty theft. After the heist and before they split—Ian to decoy the horse soldiers up a draw—Hey You reckoned the pouch he carried contained over $6,000 in greenbacks.

  The colonel had taken Ian’s cash and the law his credit.

  Ian was still riled when he came across a poster which charged him with greater anger.

  $5,000 REWARD—DEAD OR ALIVE

  Jasper Blicket, alias the Colonel, alias Rawhead. Wanted for murder, robbery, horse theft, arson, rape and pillage. Approximately 6′6″ tall. Weighs about 170. Very skinny. Completely bald. Black eyes sunk deep in sockets. Teeth shows when he grins. Former colonel in Quantrill’s Guerrillas, he plans and executes his forays in a military manner while wearing the uniform of a colonel, C.S.A. Rides a giant gray. (See Morley, Joe)

  Ian smiled an ironic smile as he riffled through the posters, looking for Morley, Joe. A man worth $50 himself was soon going to kill a man whose official value was ten times as much.

  $3,000 REWARD—DEAD OR ALIVE

  Joe Morley, alias The Sergeant, alias the Monk. Wanted for murder, robbery, horse theft. Short, 5′5″, broad, with low, sloping forehead and sloping shoulders. Hair black, almost kinky, and close cropped. Extremely long arms and short legs. No visible neck. Member of Colonel Jasper Blicket’s gang. Wears Confederate kepi with sergeant’s chevrons.

  Ian filed the live posters in the cabinet except for those of Blicket and The Sergeant which he took to the front of the building and nailed on the wall next to the ordinance forbidding the discharge of firearms inside the town limits. Ian considered his act an idle gesture of goodwill toward a town which entrusted him with office. He did not know that within him another was laying longer-ranged plans.