The funny thing was, we had breakfast together after that. At least we sat at the same table with Sam. The old man, for a glutton, a drunk and a womanizer, never failed to have a big brass-clasped Bible at his elbow when food was brought in. Maybe he had another Bible beside the bed when he climbed up on those lardy Mexicans. Probably not; still, thanks to the Lord had to be given.
Sam gave it, kept it short. “Thanks, Lord, for the grub,” Sam said—and started shoveling.
A bit red-eyed, Sam was cheerful as he heaped his plate with steak and eggs, buckwheats, butter biscuits. I poured a cup of jumping-hot coffee and told him the boys were coming along fine. No more shooting or other trouble along the boundary line—not yet.
I didn’t make my report to Sam till he was dabbing his mouth with a bed-sized bib. Graciela, the favorite, brought in a bottle and Sam put some extra life in his coffee, and mine.
“What you got there? A big reader, are you?” The question was for the kid.
“You mean this?” The kid never went anywhere without one of those damn-fool dime novels. He reached for his back pocket and held up a crack-spined yellow-paper book. I guess he had a fair collection of trash in his saddlebag, because when he wasn’t working on his draw he was off reading in a corner.
“Mind if I take a look?” For a man with no schooling of any kind, Sam was a demon for books. How he found time between satisfying his belly and other things I’ll never know. But he did. The old man liked Washington Irving best of all; his all-time favorite scribbler, he said.
The torn cover of the kid’s book was shiny with grease. Sam read the title and author: “The True Story of Jesse James” by T. Paige Lumley. Published by the Medkiff Wide-Awake Library, 17 Union Square, New York. Copyright 1887 … ”
Sam hocked in the back of his throat but didn’t spit. I knew the sound; Sam was disgusted. He thumbed to the first page and read: “Had he but listened to his sainted mother, God bless her! However, regret is of no avail … ”
“That one’s kind of slow,” the kid chimed in, a bit ruffled at Sam’s sarcastic way of reading. “The one about brother Billy has that one beat a mile. I don’t mean the one by Garrett, the murdering sneak. I mean the one by George Jenkins Foster, famous author and lecturer.”
“Is he now?” Sam skipped and read on: “It must be confessed that Jesse’s interest lay not in the Three R’s as we know them. Riding, roping, revolvers were the young Missourian’s first loves; and yet, for all that, he was a good lad, quick of temper yet possessed of a keen sense of justice unusual in one so young ...”
Between them, Sam and the kid could spoil any man’s breakfast. I put more whisky in my coffee.
“I told you that one was kind of slow.” It was a showdown between Washington Irving and Ned Buntline, king of the dime novel storytellers. The kid pressed his point with, “You want to read a real book, read the one about Billy. I got the whole shooting match— “‘John Wesley Hardin: The Unvarnished Truth as told by his sister, Mrs. Woodrow Simmons of North Fork, Nebraska.’ Another bang-up job is ‘A Man Wronged: The Truth About Wild Bill Hickok’...”
Throwing the book on the table, Sam said, “My but you’re a powerful reader, Tex. Speaking of Hickok—saw him one time in Abilene. Never saw a gun come out faster when he killed that farmer. Big drunk dumb Swede. Yeah, he had a gun—must be the first one he ever owned. I could run a mile faster’n he could pull it.”
The kid flared up at this insult to Hickok’s glorious name. “That can’t be true, Mr. Blatchford. Wild Bill wasn’t like that.”
“I was there, Tex. They say Hickok used tame Indians and town drunks for targets. Ain’t that so, Carmody?”
All I said was pass the biscuits.
There was no stopping this God damned literary discussion. “Bullshit,” the kid argued. “They downgrade all good men once they’re dead. But they ain’t going to throw Tex McCarty down in the mud. They ain’t going to murder me.”
“Who is they?” Sam wanted to know, then decided it wasn’t worth knowing. “You’d do better to read The Life of General Grant, something self-improving like that. Aw, simmer down, boy, and eat your breakfast.”
“I hear you, Mr. Blatchford. I ain’t hungry.”
Sitting there I was jealous of the boys and their bunkhouse cooking. Bad or good, you could eat your grub and not have to listen.
“What do you think?” Sam asked after McCarty went out in a cold rage.
I repeated what I said the first night, that McCarty was a whole mess of trouble in one small man. “Maybe he’s Billy’s brother. Could be but doesn’t matter. Send him packing, Sam. If you don’t, then don’t ask again.”
“You’re a hard man, Carmody. That kid, it’s like he wants so hard to be somebody important. Think back when you were a kid. You ever want that?”
“Maybe every kid does. With me it wore off in due time.”
Early or not, Sam had put away enough bourbon to be a wise fat man. “Wore off because you did what you damn well pleased. Me too in a different way. But the kid … ”
I stood up, said I had work to do.
Sam moved his hand and stared at the whisky swirling in the bottom of his glass. Drunks and crystal ball gazers get the same moony look when they’re looking into the future. “Sure I got a fine ranch, money in the bank,” Sam said. “But what else have I got? No boy’s all bad, Carmody.”
I said I’d give him odds on that.
“Maybe you’d better do that work you spoke of.” Coming from Sam to me—I was no hired hand—that was pretty short. I didn’t mind.
I went out and had a word fight with Dink Westfall about taking the hands away from their regular chores. The ranch was going to hell in a hand cart, Westfall argued. Naturally it wasn’t, not yet, but the big ramrod had a point. Westfall, some kind of Dutchman who had changed his name, thought he was tough enough to stand up to me, but there’s a difference between fist-tough and gun-tough. On a wild Saturday night I’d want no tougher man to back me in a saloon brawl. Tough or not, he was still a Dutch farmer at heart.
“Talk to Sam,” I said. “If he decides for you—tell him so long for me. Or we could settle this another way. Just you and me behind the barn?”
Westfall’s face seemed to think it would come to that. The real hefty gents find it easy to make up their minds about certain matters, such as how easy, maybe pleasant, it is to use their feet and fists on men smaller than they are. I just hoped Dink Westfall wouldn’t be too disappointed when it came time to teach me a lesson. That I badly needed to be put in my rightful humble place was the foremost thought in the big man’s mind.
That business over with, though not settled, I rounded up the boys and talked as hearty as an old Indian-fighting cavalry sergeant, about all the things they needed to know—and didn’t. Of course those ranch hands weren’t strapped down with army regulations, so I didn’t call them the usual things recruits get called. Such as clodhoppers, bog-trotters, sow-bellied tramps. But I do think I managed to get most of my points across.
One hulking young cowboy with straw colored hair and a hand-me-down Stetson sizes too small for his narrow head took one of my points as if I had stuck it in nobody but him. Some of those boys had drifted southwest from farm country in Kansas and Missouri. All I said was ranching took speedier thinking than farming. I think I was that polite.
This feller had been hunkered down listening before he got up. “I used to be a farmer, mister. You trying to say farmers are all stupid? You tell me yes and I’ll pump you good. Now suppose you say which is which, mister?”
I might have settled him down with a joke, if he hadn’t bunched his fists, if he hadn’t taken that one step forward. If I let him get away with that, fairly soon I’d be dancing with the whole bunch.
“For you, son, the answer is yes,” I said. My fist came up like a swung hammer and knocked him on his rump in the dirt. I moved in close where I could cripple him with kicks if he tried to go on with it. He didn’t move, just rubbed
his jaw, so I was able to talk like the kindly old schoolteacher instead of putting him in a bed of pain for a month.
“Son,” I said, pointing a finger. “That was nothing but a rap on the knuckles, so to speak. Try that again and you’ll walk peculiar for the rest of your life. That ends the sermon for the day, boys.”
They didn’t think it was all that funny, but you should have seen them grin.
“The next order of business,” I said.
That was showing them how to explode dynamite without a fuse without getting killed, and they were getting the hang of it when one of the fence riders came tearing toward the ranch on a sweated horse. He lit down and said trouble, big trouble. County Sheriff Deegan and a party of deputies were at the wire asking to come in. Usually they aren’t that polite unless they’re nervous. I was glad the local law was feeling that way.
Sam, when he came waddling out of the house to hear the news, damned Deegan to the hottest part of hell. Even Sam’s profanity was fat. Sam swore that Deegan, the conniving bastard, was siding with Saxbee all the way. I didn’t know the truth of that, and I didn’t give a damn. All I wanted Sam to do was shut his mouth and let me get on with what I was hired for.
“The man’s a crook, a thief, and a liar,” Sam bellowed loud enough to be heard halfway to the fence. “He’s a poison pup and a … ”
“He’s a sheriff,” I said. “Same difference.”
“Well, sir, he ain’t coming in here. Not to this ranch. Not to where my beloved Eliza lies buried.”
What that had to do with anything I can’t say. Nothing, I’m sure. Sam was a much happier man since a knot in her gut carried off beloved Eliza. The Mexican ladies took up residence about then.
“We don’t have to agree with Deegan,” I said.
The rider from the fence chimed in: “Sheriff’s got all kind of papers, warrants.”
Sam said no. Absolutely not—no, sir. The answer was no. If Deegan put one foot on his property he’d be buried where he fell. After he finished gassing through his mouth, and it took a while, he let me wheel him around to my way of thinking. Wheel is the right word: it was like pulling a wagon loaded with rocks.
“And I still don’t like it,” he roared, going stumpy-legged back into the house to get his guns in order.
I gave the nod and the fence rider raised dust getting away from there. It could be big or middling or even small trouble on the way. The size depended on the sheriff and, since Deegan was a new sheriff to me, I had no way of knowing.
McCarty had been shooting tin cans in a hollow back of the ranch, and now the stink of trouble fetched him back to the house like a wasp. Not so many hours had passed since our little set-to that morning; it looked like his bullet-creased left arm was getting more limber with every minute. I don’t know where he found a rubber ball on a ranch without kids. But he had it and he kept working it between his bony fingers.
When he heard what the trouble was, he put the stupid ball away and stood half-slouched with his backside against the side of the porch. At that point, though, I was more interested in Deegan and what he might have to say. Well, no, there was no might have in my thinking, because I knew what Deegan would have to say. I just hoped he was a godly man who believed a soft answer turneth away wrath. If not …
I heard them coming.
Chapter Four
By then I had the best men armed with rifles and out of sight. Sam came out and stood wheezing on the porch, the tails of his dusty black coat tucked back behind a pair of matched Navy Colts. That was a lot of hardware to carry, but Sam didn’t seem to notice. Those Civil War irons were at least twenty-five years old, but Sam swore by them—and at every other kind of handgun.
Now he checked them and swore at Deegan, who wasn’t there yet. “Blow his spine out through his yellow back,” Sam said to nobody in particular.
“All right, all right, we’ll try it your way,” he said to me.
A deaf man would have heard the noise of Deegan’s posse, but some fool sang out, “Here they come!”
The kid straightened up, moved closer to where Sam was standing. The men had been told often enough, so now I was talking to McCarty, though I didn’t single him out. “Sam talks, I talk—nobody else does nothing I don’t tell them to.”
By way of an answer McCarty spat in the dust. That was all right with me. Just so long as he tried nothing more dangerous.
Without turning my head I told the concealed riflemen to stay low till I told them different.
They came in solid but cautious and raising not more than a foot of dust. It would be hard not to spot Deegan, a big aging man still able to sit a horse without bother but not enjoying it like he used to. All I knew about the man was from talk, and maybe he was a good man in his day, but now he was heavy and not so young—maybe a tired fifty-five. Even when he got close enough to see the droop in his face, he still looked tough—but only if you didn’t know how to read the signs. Deegan was tough but didn’t want to prove it any more. A wooden match, well chewed, stuck out through his juice-stained yellow mustache.
My count was ten men backing the sheriff, and when Deegan got closer he reined in his horse, then started forward at a walk. His deputies edged in behind.
“Far enough,” I said. If it came to shooting I didn’t want to be hit by my own men.
The sheriff took a quick look around before he got back to me. It was quiet and hot. Even the Chinese cookie, who usually rattles his pots no matter what, was quiet. The only sound came from a swing gate that hadn’t been fastened right.
“You’d be who?” Deegan wanted to know.
I said Carmody—a concerned citizen. “You’d be County Sheriff Deegan, and I’m sure glad you’re here.”
“You’re glad. About what?” Maybe I was glad, but the sheriff wasn’t.
I said: “You being here saves me a long ride to town. Sheriff, I want to make a complaint. Day before yesterday I was riding along, minding my own business, when two fellers I never saw before tried to kill me. Didn’t say a word, just threw bullets at me. Guess I got lucky and dropped them instead.”
Folded papers stuck out of the sheriff’s shirt pocket. Slowly he raised his left hand—he wore a right-handed belt gun—and tapped the papers. “Not the way I heard it. These here are warrants … ”
Well, so far he wasn’t being too hard-nosed about serving his stinking warrants. I tried for the kind of dry grin a reasonable man shows to a sheriff. “There’s more,” I said. “After I dropped the first two bushwhackers, another bunch of shooters took to chasing me. No reason given, so I ran. Got boxed in a gully and had to shoot a couple. Self defense. I guess I’d be dead for sure if Mr. Blatchford and his boys hadn’t come along. That’s about it, Sheriff.”
There I stood, a concerned citizen, and I hadn’t said one word about the kid. He could jump in or stay out.
McCarty jumped in without taking his backside away from the porch. He said: “I was there too, Sheriff. I was the other feller they told you about.” I guess he had to stand up straight to say his name. “Tex McCarty is who I am.”
Deegan unfolded his papers with the safe hand, and just then Sam uncorked his temper. “Say what you came for, Deegan. What you think you came for.”
Deegan obliged. “These two men—Carmody, McCarty—are under arrest. You too, Sam. Them for murder, you for inciting to murder.” The sheriff held up his warrants like a medicine man with a magic snake tail. “All proper and legal, signed by Judge Kinnear.”
Sam could have got forty years for contempt of court, the things he said about Judge Kinnear. Among other things, he called his honor a calf-lover, a collector of ladies’ underthings, a general menace to little children. Then he started on the sheriff. “They got you roped in tight, don’t they, Deegan. You, Saxbee, Kinnear. What part of my ranch do you figure to get when this is all over? You figure to ask for the home ranch. Many’s the good dinner you ate in that house, Deegan.”
“Sam,” I said.
I
n a minute, Sam said, and was off again. “Ought be no need to tell Sheriff Deegan what he can do with his papers and his gunmen deputies. Like himself—bought and paid for by Noah Saxbee.”
I knew Sam had no proof of that, or he’d be yelling clear to the Mexican border. Deegan might be putting a thumb on the scales of justice, in Saxbee’s favor, but that didn’t mean any hard cash had changed hands, that any binding promises had been made.
True or false, Deegan didn’t like it. My guess was that the sheriff, after the long ride from town, would have preferred to climb down and wipe off his face while somebody fetched him a drink of cold water. But the law had to be upheld, at least propped up. “Better take the easy road, Sam. The other way—you’re in trouble, so is any man that sides you.”
I cut in before Sam could build up more steam. In a more settled part of the country a man—not me—might take his chances with sheriffs and courts. Out where we were anything could happen once a man gave up and was locked up. Usually what happened was a lynch mob and a scared sheriff gone fishing.
“Sorry we can’t let you take us,” I told Deegan with no threat of gunplay. I was easy, relaxed, trying to set a good example for the sheriff and his men. Deegan wasn’t likely to start a fight; about his boys I couldn’t say. “First we got to get us a good lawyer, but they tell me Mariposa City doesn’t have a single law-talker on call. Guess it’ll have to wait till we can send to Albuquerque or Santa Fe.”
Deegan was ready to ride back to Mariposa to loose more of Judge Kinnear’s legal thunder; first he had to mention his ten deputies. Sam said they were hired guns, but that wasn’t gospel. I figured the two young ones with clean duds and unscarred boots were regular deputies; the rest were just working for a day’s wages.
“A fine bunch of boys,” I told Deegan. “So are my boys.” Raising my left hand I called out, “Say howdy to the sheriff, men.”
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