Andromeda Gun
Page 12
After Mickey O’Shea was appointed foreman of the road crew, Ian had time for other activities. O’Shea shared his boss’ determination and drive to keep the work rolling on schedule, a spirit given added impetus by the mayor’s announcement that there would be an official ribbon cutting on September 2 when the road reached the town’s first building.
Actually the crew required little driving. After the blast from O’ Shea’s Gap brought them to the attention of the valley dwellers, the crew members acquired a cheering section. Equipped in uniforms, and marching and working with military precision, the road gang drew galleries of young ladies from all religious denominations, and a few with no religious or moral affiliations, who watched from gigs and horses drawn off the road. Ian did not disapprove because the girls drove the crew to super efforts.
O’Shea was the foreman and appointed his own lead men, but Ian kept the discipline in his own hands. When Liza came to Ian with the complaint that Mr. Birnie was demanding only the best portions of the chickens for his stagecoach passengers, Ian had her put the wings and necks in black boxes. If a man gave less than his maximum effort in the morning, he was black boxed when Liza brought lunches. Less than a maximum effort for the afternoon entitled the offender to a night in the cell closest to Sheriff Faust, with his snores and skunky smell, at the end of the corridor.
Straight across the valley, the wide, graveled road inched toward Shoshone Flats. Once it was past O’Shea’s Gap, progress was on schedule, but progress took planning. Ian discovered a stonemason among the prisoners and sent him ahead to construct culverts of stone instead of the board troughs originally used. O’Shea himself became so fascinated by the stone work that he spent too much time with the forward crew, and Ian black boxed the foreman.
Ian was judicious in his labor practices, not from humanity but for efficiency. He attempted to allocate the tasks according to the skills and strengths of the individuals in the crew. The old man whose pistol Ian had fired and who kept insisting he was innocent of the original charge of disturbing the peace was so convincing that Ian assigned him to the comparatively easy job of water boy. Such simple gestures helped give Ian the reputation for being a just man.
Augmenting the crew was easier since Ian had developed his reading ability. He studied the town’s ordinances in order to uncover the more fragile laws. There were four vacancies in a jailhouse which would squeeze in sixteen prisoners, so he was able to act on O’Shea’s request for four more workmen to form a cleanup gang to go ahead of the gravel spreaders and remove debris and fill chuckholes in the road.
Ian’s coup came when he pondered aloud which of two horses was the faster in the presence of the horses’ owners, two young blades who had ridden into town and were loitering before the barber shop. In the ensuing conversation, one challenged the other to a quarter-mile race using the barber’s pole as a finish line. Bets were freely wagered on the outcome amid a small crowd which gathered on the boardwalk to watch the finish.
Both racers lost when they were arrested for galloping their horses down Main Street during business hours, and the horses were impounded for the use of Mickey O’Shea and the stonemason.
In addition, Ian acquired two splendid physical specimens from the bettors on the boardwalk, because gambling was still illegal in the town—draw poker had been ruled a game of skill. Unfortunately one of the bettors paid the fine, leaving Ian’s work gang one short for a full complement.
Ian spent little of his working day in town. Billy Peyton had laid by his winter wheat and was hanging out at Miss Stewart’s Restaurant again, and Ian did not wish to cramp Billy’s style. Ian knew he would bid farewell to the girl on September 2, and in one of his rare moments of unselfishness, he felt the wealthiest Methodist landowner in the valley might prove a solace to a girl with Gabriella’s sharp eye for a penny. Also, he stayed out of town because Sheriff Faust bored him.
Faust was a cornucopia of knowledge relative to distilled, brewed, or fermented spirits. When he wasn’t handling his administrative problems at Bain’s Saloon, he sat around the office detailing various recipes for rye whiskey, corn whiskey, and beer. Ian had run a few stills in his boyhood, so he was not interested in the details of moonshining, but he would lend an ear to the beer story.
Faust had the idea that fifty acres belonging to Billy Peyton along the creek south of Widow Stewart’s ranch would be good soil for growing hops. If the Methodist would sell, Sheriff Faust told Ian, Faust was willing to pay $500 for the acreage. Faust planned to retire shortly, and he dreamed of brewing his own beer in his old age, and he was so serious about his retirement plans he had drawn the design for his oast.
As a favor to the old man, and sensing an opportunity to profit, Ian had Gabriella sound Billy out about selling the fifty acres. When the answer came, an emphatic “No,” Ian understood. Billy was playing his cards close to his vest with the girl, and property was the only card Billy had.
On the job, Ian kept an open ear for suggestions from the crew, but when Mickey came up with a stonemason’s request that he be permitted to span a small creek half a mile ahead with a stone arch bridge, Ian thought this suggestion too fanciful. Still, the existing wooden structure was ten yards downstream from the new place Ian wished to cross because the road was being cut through a hummock the old road skirted. Since the hummock was rocky and the rocks had to be removed, Ian figured they could be used to bridge the creek, so he gave the foreman the go-ahead.
Mickey thought for a moment, and said, “The stonemason will need an assistant, captain, a big man to lift the rocks by himself.”
Ian shrugged. “We got space for one more. I’ll ride into town and see what I can pick up.”
Within an hour after he arrived in Shoshone Flats, Ian had spotted his man, a giant almost seven feet tall and built to mammoth proportions. Ian followed his prey at a discreet distance, waiting for the man to break a law.
To Ian’s disappointment, the giant walked on a straight, purposeful line from the hardware store to Abe’s tailor shop, moving as if he knew where and why he was going and wasting no time. Obviously Ian was tailing a respectable citizen. Even so, he observed the length of the man’s stride and the width of his shoulders with avidity. Ian wanted the giant and was determined to get him.
As Ian eased up to the doorway of the tailor’s shop, his hopes arose. Inside, the giant was arguing with Bernbaum, his voice rumbling with an anger that shook the shop.
“I ain’t paying no twelve fifty for the suit, Abe. I talked to a man in Pocatello who was wearing one just like it he got for eleven eight-eight.”
“Yes, sir,” Ian heard Abe explain, “but there is a railhead at Pocatello. The goods must be shipped, and someone must pay the freight. Also, Jebediah, a man of your size takes more cloth.”
“I’ll listen to reason, Abe, when you can give me a reason. All right, I take ten cents more cloth, and you pay fifteen for the hauling—that’s being generous—so you add two bits to the eleven eight-eight. The way I figure, that suit shouldn’t cost me more than twenty-five cents over the eleven eight-eight or, to be exact, twelve dollars and thirteen cents. I ain’t paying you a penny more.”
That did it. The man was a swindler. A quarter added to eleven eighty-eight came out to twelve twenty-three, as any fool knew. The big man had deliberately forgot to carry the one. And he was the worse sort of swindler, using his size to scare little Abe while he stood there juggling figures. Any citizen who’d bully a man was no better than a lawman.
“But I’ve finished the suit, Mr. Clayton,” Abe insisted, “and we agreed, before I started, that twelve fifty was a fair price.”
“That was before I sent to the city to find out I was getting slickered.”
“But, Jeb, consider the fabric. Look at this seam. Feel the material! You may pay a little extra with Bernbaum, but you get a lot more. There’s not a better-tailored piece of cloth in all the territory. Believe me, J. C, this suit would be a bargain at thirteen fifty.”
There the man was again with his figures, and Ian figured it was time for the law to take a hand. He stepped through the doorway and into the shop, asking, “Abe, did this man agree to pay you twelve dollars and four bits for that suit?”
Abe seemed startled and upset by Ian’s entrance.
“Yes, deputy. That was about the figure we agreed on.”
“Looks like we got a clear case of defrauding a merchant, Abe,” Ian said. “You’re under arrest, mister.”
“Under arrest?” The big man turned and looked down on his accuser. “Mister, me and Abe’s just bargaining.”
“Swindling a storekeeper ain’t the kind of bargaining we take to in Shoshone Flats.”
“Swindling? Swindling Abe? Why, you young whippersnapper…”
Now, the man had insulted an officer. Ian was a whip snapper, not a whippersnapper.
Whomp! Ian’s quirt handle slammed into the giant’s stomach, a little below the belt because of the disparity in their sizes, and the big man doubled over in pain, bringing his head down so Ian did not have to jump to hit it. Whack! The quirt handle landed above the man’s left ear. Ian considered it merciful to knock him unconscious since the first blow had been even lower than Ian intended.
“Look, Abe”—Ian turned to a pale Bernbaum—“I want this case off the docket fast, and I want the prisoner on my road gang. You can measure him for his jailhouse denims while he’s laying here. Then I’ll drag him over to the jail, though I might need Midnight’s help. You bring a complaint for defrauding a merchant, and I’ll get him for insulting a peace officer. You award yourself the twelve fifty for the suit, then give him three days or thirty dollars. I want his time, not his money.”
Strangely befuddled, the usually reliable tailor bridled.
“Ian, this man is Jebediah Clayton. He’s a Mormon, and you know how the mayor is about handling Mormons in town. This one even the Gentiles call J. C. in Shoshone Flat, so you can tell by his initials what the people think about him around here. He wasn’t going to defraud me, not for one minute. He just likes to bargain. Besides, there’s a legal question here. How can I be judge and plaintiff at the same time?”
Ian considered the situation for a moment. He was a reasonable man and did not want Mayor Winchester to consider him a pigheaded subordinate, too stiff-necked to abide by the town’s policies. Personally, he did not wish to antagonize the Mormons since they were already using the road to trickle a few deposits into the bank, but the road had to go through. Also he was getting a reputation for being a fair man, evenhanded in his dispensation of punishment, and he did not wish to appear to be favoring the Mormons and the Hebrew by arresting only Gentiles.
“I declare, Abe, you’re always confusing things. Trouble is, you don’t know how to confuse them enough. Now, if you’re bringing a false report against this man, just say so… I need an assistant water boy on my work gang… If you ain’t, do as I say. Somebody’s got to teach these Mormons to respect the law. No, if you ain’t bringing no false report, start measuring that man for his work clothes.”
Abe reached into his pocket and began to unfold his tape measure.
“Ian, being the judge and plaintiff in this case doesn’t strike me as being anywhere as irregular as being the judge and the defendant.”
The input impinging on G-7’s slightly diminished energy system was both encouraging and strangely disquieting.
Ian McCloud was becoming a living legend in the valley. It was as if the dwellers on this small segment of a planet—which, judged by one of its oldest records, the Bible, differed only in size and not in degree from Shoshone Flats—had been waiting for a strong man to appear. The citizens, incarcerated and free, were flocking around him. Disparate elements were being brought together to work for the common good, a good visible to all eyes. A shining high road of crushed rock and decomposed granite was stretching across the meadows. No one sought to question Ian’s motives—those who knew his motives were tarnished were placated by their own gains—because the road was there and growing.
For the man himself, the idea of a road had become an obsession second only to Colonel Blicket. Principally because of the fines he had levied and the graft he was taking from his various enterprises, very few Gentile funds other than Ian’s own and those of his cohorts were going into the bank. On the other hand, emboldened perhaps by the number of Gentiles in jail, the Mormons were beginning to use the bank more and more, and a new spirit of economic accommodation was making itself felt between the religious factions in the valley. Peace seemed imminent in Shoshone Flats.
Now, in an act completely contrary to his own interests, McCloud had arrested a Mormon. For nothing more than a keystone on the arch of a stone bridge, he had risked the fragile tranquillity of the community and his yet to be ill-gotten gains from the bank. He had arrested an honest, gentle, and lawabiding giant whom even Gentiles referred to reverently by his initials, J. C.
G-7 threw up its tendrils in despair. McCloud would have to work his way out of this dilemma alone, without the assistance of his guardian angel.
9
Through his ability to transmit his drive and pride to the road gang, Ian got more than a rock mover from Jebediah Clayton. On the second afternoon of the big farmer’s incarceration, as the scraper scraped, diggers dug, and, up ahead, Jebediah, already a section foreman in charge of a two-man crew, wheelbarrowed boulders from the hummock to the bridge site, Ian was again visited by the Avenging Angels.
Until the dark saints hove into view, it had been a pleasant afternoon for Ian seated astride Midnight atop a rise. Fleecy clouds floated above. Below him the spread skirts of picnicking young ladies dotted the meadow as they watched the stone span rise over the creek. Faintly to his ears came the “Heave, heave, ho” of a crew muscling a gravel wagon forward. Below him to eastward was a promontory overlooking the valley where Liza had told him Gabriella wanted to build her school—two acres or so jutting out into the farmlands of the senior Peyton.
When he spotted the black-coated cortège winding up from the south, Ian feared trouble. Now there were eight instead of six of the Latter-Day Saints, two more than the bullets in his revolver, and he was not a two-gun man.
Six bullets for eight saints!
Feeling the closest emotion to fear he had known since Gettysburg, Ian watched as the horsemen rode up the hill. Even if his gunslinging proved as sharp as the day he winged Billy Peyton, Ian thought, there was no way he could fire and reload in time to get them all. Of course, he could turn and flee. Heretofore flight had been his standard response to the approach of armed men. Now, pride and his investment in the valley prevented him from running.
As the Mormons drew nearer, Ian raised his left hand in greeting, Indian fashion, and Stake Superintendent Peyton raised his right hand in return. Old Man Peyton, Ian decided, was either intending to be reasonable or he knew no more about gunfighting than his son.
“Hello, deputy.”
“Hello, super. What’s the word from heaven?”
“Namoo tells me you’ve got one of my boys in your work gang.”
The voice behind the smile was neither harsh nor hostile, but it was also neither importune nor placating.
Two of the riders were swinging behind Peyton, keeping away from the group and going higher up the hill to outflank Ian and get a clear angle of fire. Probably they were hired guns from Salt Lake City, Ian thought, and swerved his horse to keep them in his line of vision. He would have to get the gunfighters first and hope that in the resulting confusion a couple of the amateurs would shoot one another. Such mix-ups had been known to happen, but it was a slender reed to prop his life on.
G-7 fully agreed with Ian’s estimate of the danger. Alerted by the deliberate approach of Peyton, G-7 had already disengaged its tendrils, leaving only a trailing filament attached to its
host’s otic nerve to register conversations. Invisible in the noonday sun, the nebulosity floated above McCloud.
The man’s fate was solely in his own hands, for Ian’s bright angel had left him.
“Yeah,” Ian admitted, unaware that he had been deserted, “Jebediah Clayton got a little out of line yesterday, three days or thirty dollars’ worth, by defrauding a Hebrew.”
“His arrest and sentencing was all legallike, I reckon.”
Peyton’s remark came perilously close to being a question, and Ian reacted quickly. “You ain’t questioning the court’s decision, are you, mister?”
Ian’s words were a knife thrust Peyton parried with moderation. “Can’t say I am, deputy.”
“Good! Contempt of court could get you twenty days… Except I might have trouble with the pussyfooting judge. He’s been trying to get a little soft lately, and he might let you off with less. Maybe I ought to jail the judge for contempt of court… But you ain’t here to listen to my problems.”
“Maybe the judge is the problem for both of us, deputy. The Hebrew’s been giving you Gentiles thirty days or thirty dollars which figures out at one dollar a day. Then he ups and give J. C. three days or 30 dollars, which figures out at ten dollars a day. If the Hebrew had give J. C. three days or three dollars, the stake could have raised the fine. But, no. That son of Israel ain’t being just with us Mormons.”
On the record, the Mormons couldn’t be trusted, Ian decided. They had brought eight men against a six-shooter, two of the men had tried to outflank him as they parleyed, and now the Mormon was trying to drive a wedge between the Hebrew and the Christian Gentiles to get the Christians over on the Mormon’s side against the Hebrew.