Nightfall at Little Aces

by Ralph Cotton

  “Oh, thinking about me?” Sheriff Gale’s eyes brightened with hope.

  “Yes,” said Emma, “it’s true. I realized how rude I’ve been with you these past weeks. You must think me a terrible person, Vince.”

  “No, Emma,” said the sheriff, his Colt sliding down into his holster. “You put that thought out of your head. I could never think anything bad about you.” He swept his tall Stetson from atop his head. “Sometimes it takes something terrible like this to make two people realize how much they need each other.”

  “You are so kind, Vince,” Emma said, feeling less trapped than before. “I don’t know what I’d do without you here, helping me, being strong for me. I—”

  “Shhh, wait a minute,” Gale said, cutting her off as he turned toward the sound of a voice coming from the fence out back. Stepping over and opening the back door, he looked out to Bland Woolard, who had heard the gunshot while walking to his buggy out in front of the livery barn.

  “Everything all right in there, Sheriff?” Woolard called out. Trailing along the fence behind Woolard, Sheriff Gale saw, Curtis Clay was tapping along with his walking stick, Little Dog walking along in front of him.

  “Everything is all right here, Councilman,” Gale called out. “One of the late sheriff’s guns accidentally discharged in the wardrobe. No harm done.”

  Hearing the sheriff, Emma breathed easier.

  “I understand, Sheriff.” Bland Woolard nodded, waved a hand, and turned and walked way. “You heard him, Curtis,” he said as the blind man walked toward him along the fence, “everything is all right…just an accident.”

  “Yes, sir, I heard him,” said Curtis, stopping, turning his blank eyes in the direction of the Vertrees cottage. “I’m glad to hear it.” But Curtis knew from the sound of the sheriff’s voice that something wasn’t all right in there. What had he heard in the sheriff’s voice, tension, a slight deceptiveness? He wasn’t sure, and he wanted to hear more.

  Continuing along the fence, Curtis stopped at a point where his shoe touched a small rock he’d placed there weeks ago. Seeing Clay stop on that spot and turn facing straight through the yard to the rear door, Sheriff Gale said quietly over his shoulder to Emma, “Woolard’s gone. But Curtis Clay is standing back there. I swear, sometimes I believe that ole Negro can see as well as the next fellow.”

  “Can I do anything for you, Sheriff?” Clay called out, just to get to hear the sheriff’s voice again and further analyze it.

  “Obliged, Curtis,” Gale replied, “but everything is all right. I’ve got everything under control.” He smiled to himself with satisfaction, realizing how quickly his standing with Emma Vertrees had changed.

  “I hear you, Sheriff Gale,” said Curtis, raising a hand. “If you or Mrs. Vertrees need anything I can do, you holler for me.”

  “Will do, Curtis,” said the sheriff, watching Little Dog turn around with a gentle tap of the walking stick on his rump and head back toward the shack. Curtis walked along behind him. “I don’t know who leads and who follows with those two,” Gale commented offhandedly as he turned back to Emma and the body lying with its boot soles facing him.

  “Sheriff, what will we do with his body?” Emma asked quickly, not wanting to give Gale time to reconsider helping her cover up her act.

  The sheriff shook his head slowly, looking down at the corpse with uncertainty. “What were you going to do before I got here?” he asked, looking at the blankets, the ball of twine, and the butcher knife.

  “I was going to cut him into pieces and haul the pieces out into the wilds,” she replied matter-offactly. “Is that the best thing to do?” She wanted to get his involvement in whatever happened from here on in the matter.

  “You were going to butcher him like a steer?” The sheriff stared at her with a look of shocked disbelief.

  Seeing his expression, Emma said, “Oh, of course not. I must have been out of my head with fear. I could never have done something like that. I’m still horrified at having shot him.”

  “I know you are. A gentle lovely woman like you shouldn’t have to face this ugliness alone,” Gale said sympathetically. “Leave it to me, I’ll get rid of this rascal. You clean up here and try to put this whole terrible mess out of your mind.”

  “Vince, I—I can’t tell you how grateful I am,” said Emma. “I hope you will allow me to thank you properly after we’re through with all this.”

  “Oh, I feel properly thanked just being able to look at you and see that you’re finally smiling back at me, Emma.” Sheriff Gale smiled himself. “Now, I’ll go get a pack mule and be right back. We’ll wait until tonight when it’s dark and I’ll haul him away from here.”

  “Oh, wait, Sheriff,” said Emma. “I just remembered, he has a horse.”

  “A horse.” Gale stared at her. “How would you know that?”

  Thinking fast, Emma said, “He told me he had one. He said he’d left it at a hitch rail across the street, out in front of the Little Aces Saloon, so no one would see it while I was out.”

  “All right, I can believe that.” Gale nodded, finding it plausible. Seeing the look in her eyes, he quickly said, “I mean, of course I believe it. I’m just wondering if anybody else would.”

  “Why wouldn’t they?” Emma asked coolly. “It’s the truth.”

  “They would,” Gale replied. “Isn’t that what I just said?” He spread his hands, showing her how much he agreed with her. Then he changed the subject and said, “It could take a while to find his horse this time of day with the town so busy. I’ll look for it later. I better go get the pack mule now, and make sure we’ll have it when we need it tonight.”

  Inside the livery barn, Curtis Clay caught the scent of the sheriff as soon as the lawman stepped into the doorway. With the midmorning sunlight at Gale’s back, Curtis could make out the lawman’s dark shadowy image, but nothing more. “Yes, sir, Sheriff Gale?” he said, standing up from pouring water into a tin pan for Little Dog. “You thought of something I could do for you after all?”

  “Well, in a manner of speaking, yes, Curtis,” said Gale. “I’m going to need that pack mule, Delilah, that the town keeps here. Is she available?”

  “She sure is, Sheriff,” said Clay. “Delilah is the most available gal in town.” He grinned. “Want me to go fetch her for you? Tell me how you want her rigged, pack frame, saddle, or cart harness?”

  “Obliged, Curtis,” said Gale, “but don’t trouble yourself. I’ll handle her. You go ahead and look after Little Dog.” He didn’t want to reveal any more to Clay than he had to. The blind man had a way of putting things together with only a small amount of information.

  “It’s no trouble, Sheriff,” said Curtis.

  “No, please, I’ve got her,” said Gale. He stepped past the blind man toward the corral where the pack mule would be this time of morning.

  “All right, Sheriff,” said Curtis, staring blindly at the ceiling as the sheriff headed out the side door. “The pack frame is hanging over the grain bin where I been keeping it.”

  “Obliged, Curtis,” said Gale.

  Curtis smiled faintly, noting to himself how the sheriff’s voice revealed a high level of tension. The fact that the lawman tried hard to keep from sounding tense and nervous only made his condition more clear to Curtis’s sharp hearing. Whatever Sheriff Gale needed Delilah for, the blind man was certain the lawman had no need for a pack frame.

  When Gale returned to Emma’s cottage, leading the pack mule, Emma had stepped out onto the back porch and down into the yard to meet him. While he’d been gone, she had done little to clean up the bloody mess on the wall and floor, but had used the time alone to change the sheets and pillowcases, straighten up the bedroom, and get rid of any signs of the young cowboy.

  Stepping close to him, she looked the mule up and down and asked, “How did it go?”

  “It went fine. Why wouldn’t it?” said Gale. “It’s the town’s livery operation. I’m the sheriff.” He smiled at her. “You just t
ry to relax and let me take care of you, Emma. You’re in good hands now.”

  Emma put a hand on his muscular arm and squeezed admiringly. “I know that, Vince,” she said softly.

  “How is it going, cleaning up in there?” Gale asked, nodding toward the kitchen.

  “It’s terrible,” said Emma. “I start shaking when I try to do anything. That horrible scene keeps coming back to my mind.” She touched her wrist to her forehead. “But I will get it done, eventually, I’m certain.”

  “You leave it alone,” Gale said gallantly. “I ought to be ashamed of myself, expecting you to do all that. Why don’t you fix us a pot of coffee? I’ll clean his brains off the wall.”

  “I can’t let you do that, Vince,” Emma protested weakly. But she only stood back and watched as he hitched the pack mule and started into the house, rolling up his shirtsleeves.

  Chapter 8

  In the darkened shade of a white oak in the alleyway behind Emma’s cottage, Beck stood watching her house out of curiosity, deciding to see if he could get a look at the man Emma had told him about.

  When the kitchen door began to open, he watched from around the thick tree trunk as Sheriff Gale stepped out onto the porch, Emma right behind him. At the porch steps the sheriff turned, and Beck watched a smiling Emma place a hand affectionately on the lawman’s broad chest.

  So it was the sheriff after all. He watched the two standing close, Gale speaking to her upturned face, his head bowed. Why had she lied to him? Beck had to ask himself. It would have made no difference to him that she was involved with a lawman.

  “You could have told me, Emma,” Beck murmured in disappointment, watching Gale roll his sleeves down and button his cuffs. At a hitch rail in the shade beside the porch, he saw the pack mule and the sheriff’s horse standing side by side. Gale picked up a bag of oats from the porch, stepped down, and walk toward the animals.

  Well, tough break…, Beck told himself. Letting out a breath, he stepped back and leaned against the tree trunk for a moment before walking away. He wasn’t sure why Emma would lie about her and the sheriff, but he’d seen enough to know what was going on. A person can change a lot over seven years’ time, he reminded himself with regret.

  As soon as he saw the sheriff out making his rounds tonight, he’d come back. He needed to hear what she had to say on the matter. He owed her that much, he told himself, riding out along a thin path that led away from the alley.

  On an out-of-the-way path as he walked along toward the wide dirt street, he suddenly ducked down at the sight of three riders slowing their horses from a brisk pace to a walk as they reached the town limits.

  “Uh oh, detectives!” Beck said to himself, recognizing Roundhead Mitchell’s grim moon face beneath a dusty bowler that looked much too small for his large head. Without hesitation, Beck ran crouched down along the path into the cover of brush and woods. He only stopped for a moment to consider his situation; then he hurried to a spot where he could observe the livery barn without being seen.

  For twenty minutes he forced himself to be patient as Curtis Clay sat at the wooden table outside his shack beside the livery barn. The blind man took his time cleaning his big revolver. “Come on, Clay, get out of this heat,” Beck said to himself. He kept a wary eye toward the alley leading to the dirt street, watching for the three detectives who might bring their horses to the livery any minute.

  Finally, the blind man shoved the revolver into his belt, wiped his forehead with a gray handkerchief, and stood up and tapped the side of his shoe gently against Little Dog, who lay sleeping against his foot. “It’s about time….” Beck breathed a sigh of relief, watching the man and the dog walk inside the shack, the revolver stuck down inside his belt.

  As soon as man and dog were inside the shack, Beck slipped wide around the barn and inside through a side door. He walked straight to one of the rental horse stalls and took out the big red roan he’d eyed earlier in case such an emergency as this should arise. As Clay had instructed, he left a gold coin on the roan’s stall to cover the rental, saddled it, walked it out, and rode away quietly.

  Atop the roan, Beck heeled it out through a stretch of wild grass, onto a path through a stretch of tangled brush, then onto a wooded hillside north of Little Aces. A mile into the shelter of trees, Beck finally stopped and looked back. Beck patted the roan’s neck. As if the horse could understand him, he said, “I’m not hightailing out of here yet. Forewarned is forearmed,” He smiled, staring in the direction of town. Now that he knew the detectives were there, all he had to do was avoid them. Or, better yet, leave, he warned himself.

  “I won’t leave until I’ve looked into her eyes and asked her why she didn’t think she could be on the level with me,” he said quietly to the surrounding woods. Then he said to the roan, “Looks like you’re stuck with me until I can slip in and get my horse back from the blind man….”

  On the busy street running through Little Aces, the three detectives rode their horses along at a walk. A few feet ahead of the other two, Bobby Vane looked back and forth at the pedestrians along the boardwalks lining both sides of the street. “I always find it peculiar why a mud hole like this turns into a town,” he said over his shoulder.

  Behind him, Roundhead Mitchell rode with a sawed-off shotgun lying across his lap, his broad hand resting on the cut-down stock that he’d wrapped with rawhide, fashioning a pistol grip. “Maybe it wasn’t a mud hole until it turned into a town,” he replied.

  “Maybe.” Vane shrugged, not liking the idea of Roundhead questioning what he’d said. “There’s some places that were mud holes before anybody showed up. Some turned mud holes afterward, I expect.”

  Eyes along the street turned warily toward Roundhead’s shotgun. Roundhead tipped his too-small bowler with a grim expression and said to Vane, “That’s all Chicago ever was, a big stinking mud hole, where trappers got together just to smell one another’s stink. Damned trappers.” He spat and stared straight ahead. “This whole frontier country is one big mud hole, far as I’m concerned. Washington is the same way, nothing but a big nasty mud hole. I hate that place.”

  “I’ve never been there,” said Vane, still scrutinizing the town as they rode toward a large flat wooden whiskey bottle hanging by chains from an iron frame. The giant bottle was tipped slightly toward the street. Beneath the bottle another sign read, LITTLE ACES #1SALOON.”

  “You haven’t missed anything,” Roundhead offered, the three of them veering their horses toward a long iron hitch rail out in front of the saloon.

  But as they drew closer to the hitch rail, behind them, Frank Skimmer, who had ridden in silence, suddenly jumped his horse ahead of them and said, “This is my kid brother’s horse!” He jumped down from atop his horse and took a closer look at the dusty black gelding standing reined between two other horses. “Yep, that’s his saddle all right,” Skimmer said.

  Looking the gelding over, Roundhead said, “You better tell your kid brother that live horses require feed and water. This one looks like a pile of hide stretched over a washboard.”

  “I expect my brother knows how to take care of a horse as much as the next man,” said Skimmer, taking on a gruff tone. Yet even as he spoke he fanned away a snarling cloud of flies looming above a pile of excrement at the horse’s rear hooves.

  “Suit yourself,” said Roundhead, also noting the excrement and the horse’s neglected condition. He and Vane looked at each other and nudged their horses to the rail.

  “Touchy about his kin, ain’t he?” Vane said under his breath as the two swung down from their saddles and hitched their reins.

  “All big gunmen like him are crazy,” Roundhead commented quietly. “I’ve never seen one yet that wasn’t cat-screaming loco, have you?”

  Bobby Vane didn’t answer. He stood staring as Skimmer bounded up onto the boardwalk and through the batwing doors. “I hope he ain’t forgot that we’re here on business.”

  “By business, I hope you’re not getting ready to
tell me we can’t be drinking on the job, cut some of this dust out of our gullets.”

  “No drinking on the job?” Vane repeated with a wry grin. “I don’t know where you get these strange notions of yours, Roundhead. I never saw a job that didn’t require a certain amount of drinking.”

  They walked inside to the saloon in time to see Frank Skimmer grab a drinker by the front of his shirt and raise him onto his toes. “What do you mean, he’s not even been here? His damn horse is out there, looks like it’s been in one spot long enough to draw buzzards!”

  “Whoa, Mr. Skimmer, please!” said the drinker, not daring to reach for the gun on his hip. “I didn’t say he’s not been here! I said if he’s been here I haven’t seen him!”

  Skimmer turned him loose with a rough shove and turned to the rest of the men and the saloon girls lined along the bar. “Everybody listen like your life depended on it. You all know me. You’ve all heard how quick-triggered I am and how quick-tempered I can get. I’m looking for my brother, Omar Wills. His horse is that black rack of bones standing in a pile of its own leavings.” He pointed toward the hitch rail beyond the batwing doors. “Anybody knows where he is better loosen their jaw and start talking. The longer I wait the more apt I am to go killing wild.”

  “A quick question, Mr. Skimmer,” a tall, broadshouldered surveyor asked innocently, raising a finger for emphasis. “If he’s your brother, how come his name is Wills and yours is Skimmer?”

  “Oh, hell, here we go,” Roundhead said to Bobby Vane, seeing Skimmer jerk the big man from his feet by his belt and the nape of his neck. At the bar the rest of the four-man surveyor crew stood in stunned disbelief and watched their comrade struggle wildly as Skimmer crossed the plank floor. Behind the bar the saloon owner shouted, “No, please! For God sakes!”

  Out front on the wide street, pedestrians ducked and fled as the big surveyor shot headlong through the large window in a spray of broken glass and splintered window frame. A team of wagon horses reared as the man bounced off the iron hitch as if it were a leaf spring and landed into the middle of the street, causing both buggy and saddle traffic to come to a sudden halt.