Andromeda Gun

by John Boyd

He turned to the girl. “I got official business in town, Gabe. I appreciate you telling me about the stars, and I’ll miss swinging in the swing with you, but I’ve got to hightail it back to Shoshone Flats.”

  Gabriella seemed at once relieved and apprehensive after his announcement.

  “I’m so upset by that jackleg Mormon I wouldn’t make good company for a preacher, so I’m willing to tell you good night, but I don’t know what I’m going to tell mama. She thinks you were yelling at me and not at Billy.”

  “Tell her I’ll need fourteen box lunches a quarter-mile west of Dead Man’s Curve at noon tomorrow. Tell her she’s been appointed commissary steward for the town’s jail. At the restaurant, you figure on fourteen extra hands for breakfast and supper. Charge them an extra nickel for me—because they’ll dirty up your place with road dust.”

  Ian was withdrawing from the porch as he issued the instructions, and, turning, he moved toward Midnight with swift, purposeful strides. The stallion must have sensed the inner urgency of the master who swung aboard it, for it swallowed the darkness in giant gulps as it raced northward toward Shoshone Flats.

  G-7 was foiled again.

  Granted its host was responding to short-range objectives designed to lead a man of limited vision to long-range goals, McCloud was avoiding for the most trivial of reasons those diversions G-7 wished to explore for educational purposes. On the porch, the girl had screwed her courage to the point where she could essay a feeble attempt at dalliance—though no hosannas could be raised for the directness of her method—yet, in the honeysuckle embalmed darkness, McCloud could not see what flowers were at his feet. This man, so direct, brutal, and effective with other men and horses, had stifled his rapacity for the weak female out of some incomprehensible desire to protect the virtue of Western womanhood.

  Of what value was this virtue the man helped the girl to hoard against himself? Virginity were no treasure till spent as Liza could have told them, robust, yearning Liza. Love was not love which faltered when it altercation found. Just when G-7 began to feel in the darkness of Ian’s mind the beginning glow of sunrise, the phantom radiance vanished and it was wrapped again in night, once by the idea of a nail in a saddle and now by a clothesline.

  G-7 realized that it and its host were growing polarized along differing axes. While the man fumbled toward the hesitant virgin on the porch, a veritable earth mother crouched palpitant in the darkness of the front bedroom, seeking only crumbs of vicarious pleasure. Though the mother was fifteen years older than the daughter, she was only ten years older than Ian.

  One decade, a mere photon in the cold light of eternity, yet the time span acted as a barrier between the male and the superbly ovulating female with a pelvic span at least a third again as wide as her daughter’s, disregarding the mammae, and G-7 had no intentions of disregarding the mammae. Ian McCloud might be its host, but Liza Stewart was its woman.

  Before he walked through the swinging doors, Ian knew the poker tables had already been set up in Bain’s saloon. Inside, the player piano tinkled out “The Camptown Races” with a dull sound in the middle D, but the tinkle of glasses had slowed in tempo. The laughter of women had become more solicitous and strident, for now the girls had competition. Key change of all was the pleasant murmur underlying all other noises, the whirr of shuffled cards and click of tossed chips.

  Entering, moving through the astringent odor of gamblers’ sweat, Ian asked the first bartender, “Where’s Bain?”

  “In his office, first door right, at the end of the bar.”

  He strode the sixty-odd feet to Bain’s office, past drinkers who eyed his badge with hostility, past Sheriff Faust, whose face was hidden in the foam of a schooner of beer, past six women held erect by their corsets and together by layers of makeup. He shouldered through the feminine ogles, unheeding, knowing the girls were overworked, and unwilling to add to their burdens. Only one of them, a chicken-necked, high-cheekboned, half-breed Shoshone, possessed even an approximation of youth and good looks, and Ian’s appreciation was as objective as it was casual. He had been touched by too fine a madness to be drawn to fallen women; he had looked upon Gabriella by starlight .

  G-7’s opinion of the girls differed, particularly regarding the Shoshone. Framed by blue-black hair, her olive skin subdued the highlights of her high cheekbones, which, themselves, imparted the quality of sculpture to a head borne regally on her slender neck. She might have been an Indian princess and the others her ladies-in-waiting, for they all shared her grace of posture, a slight forward sling to their pelvises which enhanced the harmonics of their forms.

  Mr. Bain was seated at his desk, a bottle of Red Dog before him, totaling a column of figures which he shoved aside when Ian entered. He arose in greeting, “Come in, deputy. Draw up a chair and have a drink of my private stock. I know you took the pledge, but what Brother Winchester don’t know won’t hurt him.”

  Bain was wasting the ritual on Ian because the deputy was already in, seated, and reaching for the bottle of whiskey.

  “Keep your seat, Bain,” he said, taking a drink from the bottle. “I’m here strictly on business. Coming in, I noticed all the poker tables were full.”

  “Yeah, but business has been slow. I filled the last ones just before you came in.”

  “You’re lying, Bain, but it don’t make no difference. I want you to fork over eighteen dollars a night for my quarter share of the road fund and have it ready prompt every morning in cash, even if a blizzard closes your dive. That way I won’t have to worry about you cheating. The first morning that money ain’t forthcoming, I padlock the place.”

  “Deputy, you’re not being reasonable. Tonight was opening night. Most nights won’t be so good. Besides, I got Mayor Winchester’s cut to worry about, and you’ll be eating into his take.”

  “What Winchester don’t know won’t hurt him,” Ian reminded Bain, “but I ain’t here to do your bookkeeping. Fork up my eighteen tomorrow or close… Now, here’s what I want done around one tonight: Pass out a free drink to each big winner and give each table’s heavy loser a double of whatever he’s been drinking. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Right now I want you to come out and stand next to me while I tell your customers I’m going to abide by the policies of Sheriff Faust, far as law enforcement’s concerned.”

  “Boss,” Bain objected, “if you tell them galoots that, they won’t respect you.”

  “I ain’t asking advice. Let’s go.”

  Bain followed him from the office. Outside, the player piano was playing “I Dream of Jennie with the Plink-Plonk Hair.”

  “Turn that thing off and don’t turn it on again till its fixed.”

  As Bain hastened to turn off the piano, Ian climbed to the top of the bar and clapped his hands for attention. As he waited for the voices to die, he marveled at his own thought processes which had grasped the connection between a posted ordinance, Billy Peyton’s neck, and the habitual riotousness of Westerners. It was as if someone else were doing his thinking for him.

  “Folks,” he announced, “I apologize for breaking into your fun, but I’d like to tell you that as deputy of this here town I intend to carry out the policies of your beloved Sheriff Faust.”

  Hoots and derisive laughter arose from the crowd, but the bleary-eyed Faust lifted a fresh schooner of beer to salute himself in full approval of the announcement.

  Putting a hesitant, pleading smile on his face, Ian used the first Biblical quotation of his life. “I want to remind you that wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging, and whosoever is deceived thereby, is not wise.”

  “Amen,” some wiseacre croaked.

  “But I ain’t here to talk about the evils of drink. I’m here to ask you boys to cooperate with the high sheriff and me to see that the town’s laws get obeyed. Please don’t get too drunk to set on a horse. Please don’t race your horses during business hours. And for this one I’m giving you a ‘pretty please’: Don’t fire your
pistols as you ride out tonight. I get up with the chickens, so I need my sleep.

  “There’s just one more thing I’d like to say. Mr. Bain has kindly agreed to get the piano fixed. To celebrate, I’m inviting you to come forward and have a drink on me… Put the charges on my tab, Mr. Bain… Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.”

  A few cheers of appreciation sounded as the men gathered at the bar, but the hurrahs had a brassy ring. In the habitual ritual, some of the drinkers lifted their glasses toward the man who was trying to buy their favors, but they no longer eyed him with hostility. They sneered at him in contempt.

  As Ian turned toward the door, smiling deferentially, tipping his hat to the girls, they, too, ceased to ogle him. Instead, they gazed at him with sad-eyed professional sympathy, as if he were one of their number who would soon be called upon to render services without remuneration.

  7

  After he returned to the jailhouse, Ian set up a cot for the sheriff in the corridor at the rear of the cell block and hung a lighted lantern on the wall to guide Faust to bed. From the armory he optimistically took all sixteen leg irons and threaded them onto the coffle chain. He spread his pallet and went to the desk where he penciled a letter to Colonel Jasper Blicket.

  Dear Col.

  Reckon you didn’t expect to here from me, Johnny Loco. After I led them bluebellies up the canyon, like you told me to, and Hey You skeedaddled South with the money, I circled back. But my horse throwed a shoe and I had to walk to the rondevoo. Hey You was there but shot dead and the money gone. Waited for you and Sarge but when you didn’t come I vamoosed. I didn’t kill Hey You because I didn’t have no bullets left. I shot them all at the horse soldiers. I didn’t steel the swag because I didn’t have no horse. They was only two nails in that shoe it throwed. You ought to kill that smithy of yourn. I wondered around in the desert till I got picked up by a Navvyhoe sheep herder. His old woman took to me so I had to kill him. I took his horse and rode north to Pokotella and hired out as shotgun for the Terrytorial stage. Next month I guard the rear, end out of Wind River. It leaves there at sunset, Sept. 3, for Jackson City. About dawn the stage comes off the ramparts. If the Sarge puts a bolder on the road where it narrows along the cliff I can get the driver from behind. Bring me a running horse. It’s the payroll for Old Hickory Mine, all green backs and easy to carry.

  Yr. Obdt. Svt.

  J. Loco

  He addressed an envelope to Colonel J. Brazewell, General Delivery, Green River, Wyoming, sealed the letter in it, and left the jailhouse, carrying a lariat in his hand, to walk diagonally north across the street to the post office. After dropping the envelope into the wall box, he tied the rope around the cornerpost of the post office porch and uncoiled the line behind him as he went across the street to the hardware store where he tied the free end of the lariat around a porch pillar and drew the line taut with a running sheepshank.

  Twenty yards north of the sheriff’s office and nine feet off the ground, the rope stretched across the road. Invisible in the darkness, the barrier would remain invisible until moonrise, a full hour after the saloon closed.

  The implications of Ian’s letter and his rope trick concerned G-7. While it complacently assumed it was leading its host step by step to righteousness, Ian was developing long-range plans for a giant leap back into lawlessness. Earlier, G-7 had formulated an optimistic progress report it intended to send to Galactic Central, but Ian’s letter indicated its planned realignments were askew. Its plans were becoming Ian’s plots; its wisdom his cunning. Even Ian’s cooperation with other members of his species was proving unilateral; they cooperated with him but not he with them.

  That it had chosen a forcible host G-7 still must concede, one who applied his minimal knowledge for maximal effects, but it was not enough for one to possess the qualities of a saint, one must also be saintly. Ian’s drive to avenge the murder of Jesus Garcia was illogical and sinful. Being dead, Garcia could not appreciate the effort, and Ian, now, was certainly aware from the Scriptures that vengeance did not fall under his jurisdiction. Of course, Ian was moved in part by the insult from Colonel Blicket still locked in his memory nodes, but even that motivation was suspect; words were immaterial and its host was otherwise concerned only with material considerations.

  September 3, G-7 realized, was the deadline for its efforts. If Ian reached the crossroad and chose the path of darkness, it would know that it had failed on earth. But it was a Legionnaire and must not fail. It had converted the raspers of Markab 5 to Galactic Brotherhood, and it would not be defeated by the humans of Sun 3. It had a tradition to uphold, and, more, it had what its host would call “an ace in the hole.”

  Deep within the man who now dozed fitfully on his pallet, a man who had failed often, planned a wakeful planner which had never failed.

  At midnight Sheriff Faust came in, too drunk to get his key in the lock. Awakened by the fumblings, Ian let the old man through the door and told him, “Sheriff, I fixed you a cot at the end of the cellblock because I figure we’ll be using all the jail’s bunks tonight.”

  “Deputy, I ain’t going back there.”

  “Why not?” Ian bridled, fearing Faust might be asserting his administrative authority.

  “Because I’ve gone as far as I can go, ” the sheriff answered, falling forward.

  Ian caught him and tossed him over a shoulder, carrying him to the rear. Before they reached the cot, the sheriff was snoring, and with each exhalation he emitted the skunky odor of green beer.

  Brought fully awake by his exertions, Ian returned to the pallet, bringing the lantern with him. For a while he lay in the pale light thinking of Gabriella with weird twists and turns of thought. She was lovely and he wanted her, but she was too frail to be the wife of a bank robber. She would do better with some God-fearing farmer who owned a big spread. Billy Peyton would qualify if he converted to the Methodists. Anyone who owned a south forty must have a north forty, about one hundred and sixty acres all told, and, besides, Billy read books.

  Still, despite his poor schooling, Gabriella seemed to like him. If he didn’t have other plans, he might consider reading through the fourth—, fifth—, and sixth-grade primers. A man couldn’t woo a schoolteacher on a third-grade education. But he had other plans.

  A man could be limited by his plans, Ian realized suddenly, while there were no limits to his plans. Drowsing here, he could plan to become President of the United States—Now there was a till to be tapped—and plan to court Gabriella strictly for her favors. A schoolteacher would be smart enough to know that that fate, far from being worse than death, could be downright fun.

  He would court her up to the evening of September 2, then tell her, just before the evening was out, he was leaving because he did not wish to interfere with her future happiness. Seeing how unselfish he was and knowing he was leaving the country, she might have a stroke of generosity. Girls were a lot more willing to be loved when they knew a man was leaving.

  In the drowsy images of beginning sleep, he could see Gabriella standing on the porch and waving good-bye tearfully to the lonesome cowboy who galloped off into the sunset toward Wind River. The pathos of the scene might have aroused him to further wakefulness had he not recalled that he would be riding east and astride Midnight. The horse would not like it when Ian took over the colonel’s giant gray, but Midnight had to go. Not only was the stallion black, which handicapped it for night work, but its affections were getting to be embarrassing.

  So his thoughts, skittering at times to the edge of unselfishness before drawing back, grew jumbled and confused and merged into sleep.

  Awakened by the thunder of hooves from the south, the direction of Bain’s saloon, Ian sat upright and rubbed his eyes, reaching for the coffle chain. Once, he remembered, a schoolteacher had told him it always paid to be polite, and he was reasonably sure that she was right, that his courtesy earlier in the barroom would be rewarded. In a few seconds now, a bunch of rowdies was going to discover that a new bran
d of lawman had arrived in Shoshone Flats.

  Punctuated by “yippees” and “yi-ays,” the hoofbeats drew nearer. When the riders were abreast of the sheriff’s office, a rolling barrage of pistol blasts shook the jailhouse. The sound of the hooves dwindled northward, but only after a rapid series of thuds sounded twenty yards north.

  Rising, Ian carried his manacles and lantern into the night.

  At the rope barrier, Ian counted seventeen lawbreakers, sitting or lying, prone or supine, across the width of the road. One man, wearing the boots and chaps of a ranch hand, was on his feet and walking in a circle. Gleaming in the lantern light, pistols were scattered on both sides of the barrier. Some of the fallen were moaning from rope burns and bruises. A few lay motionless and soundless, either dead, dead drunk, or unconscious.

  Seventeen jailbirds exceeded the town’s accommodations in leg irons and bunk space. One prisoner might have to sleep standing up, and the likeliest candidate seemed the circling sleepwalker.

  Ian walked over to the cowboy, raised the lantern, and asked, “What’s your name, prisoner?”

  Never breaking his stride but scratching his head in perplexity, the cowboy made a full circle before he answered, “I give up. What is it?”

  Though taking a long stroll to nowhere, the cowhand was mobile and apparently ablebodied. He would lead the coffle back to the jailhouse, Ian decided, and turned to the fallen.

  Moving among them, snapping on leg irons, he threaded the chain to put the unconscious men at the end, moving forward through the moaning men and the sitters. He left the smallest, totally unconscious man unchained. When all were chained but the circling cowboy, Ian went down the line to revive the prisoners and get the chain gang moving.

  His methods were direct and effective.

  Standing before the first man in line, a conscious sitter, he said, “On your feet, prisoner.”

  Ear pulling was too tiring, Ian decided. He stood over the next prisoner and said, “Stand up, you.”