McAllister asked the bouncer: “Which room?”
The man said: “Seven.”
McAllister turned and walked up the stairs and found the room without any difficulty. He went in without knocking. It was so small that there was hardly room for a bed and chair. On the bed, McAllister viewed the bare buttocks (male) and two pairs of bare feet (male and female).
“Sorry to interrupt, doc,” McAllister said, “but I have a man shot near to death. I reckon you’d best come.”
A hot and rabbity face appeared over one bony shoulder, snarling, “Get the hell outa here.”
McAllister laughed.
“Everybody tells me that, but it don’t do no good. Climb down and let’s go.”
The woman screamed at him to get out and that Kate would kill him.
The doctor yelled, wanting to know if McAllister held nothing sacred.
The big man’s reply was to step up to the bed, take the man by the scruff of his neck, heave him off the woman and dump him on the floor. The little doctor started to scream obscenities, but McAllister just said: “You’re wastin’ your time. Get into them duds and let’s go.”
The doctor yelled some more till McAllister cocked the gun in his right hand and told him that he could either come along or have his fool head blown off.
The woman yelled again: “Kate’ll kill you for this.”
McAllister picked a pair of pants up from a chair and threw them at the doctor and the little man started to climb into them, eyeing the gun tremulously.
“P-put that g-gun away.”
The woman got off the bed and hit McAllister in the face. He pushed her away and said: “Stay clear, honey, or you’ll get hurt,” but she came at him again and he was forced to knock her into the corner of the room with a back-handed slap. She lay there, looking at him with some respect and said: “You dirty low-down, son-of-a-bitch.”
The doctor reached for his shirt and said: “You struck one of Kate’s girls. She’ll kill you for this.”
McAllister said: “This Kate sure do sound lethal.”
“You never said a truer word,” a voice from the doorway said.
He turned and saw framed in the doorway one of the most magnificent creatures he had ever set eyes on. Jet black hair piled high, dark smoldering eyes, the figure of a goddess and the delicate hands of a lady. He reckoned that if this was Kate she could try killing him any day of the week so long as she used only the methods of her profession. He touched his hat politely with his left hand.
“Ma’am.”
He’d be damned if there wasn’t a start of a smile at the corners of her deliciously full mouth. But she doused it quickly and looked magnificently angry.
“Mister,” she said, “you can’t come around here actin’ this way.”
“I asked for you, ma’am,” he told her, “knowin’ your reputation as an angel of mercy. I have a man shot nigh to death and he sure needs a doc fast.”
She simmered a little and accepted the homage of his words and eyes.
“I didn’t never allow a client in a house of mine to be interrupted in this way. What do you do if I say you can’t take doc?”
“I blow his fool head off, ma’am.”
She snorted. “Bluff!”
“Try me. I’m broke and a good friend of mine’s just been bushwhacked. I don’t have a thing to lose. Maybe I look like the original smilin’ boy, but don’t be fooled none, ma’am. I’m purely com-posed of bile.”
The doctor pulled on his coat and said in a shaking voice: “Leave it be, Kate. I’ll go.”
“I have my reputation to think of.”
The little man ran three paces up the room and three paces down. “You look out for your reputation and I’ll see to my life.”
“Smart boy,” McAllister said, nodding approval. “Now get goin’.”
For a moment, Kate McMichael looked as if she would prevent their going, but she stepped aside when the doctor made a frightened charge for the door. As he went past her, she said to McAllister: “You got yourself a heap of trouble, mister.”
He stopped and gave her the full benefit of white teeth in an Indian-brown face.
“You wouldn’t make trouble for your own kind, would you, Miss Kate?”
She looked surprised.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If your daddy didn’t come from the Six Counties, I’ll eat my boots.”
She flushed. “You Scotch-Irish?”
“The name’s McAllister.” Touching his hat, he walked on, still holding the Smith and Wesson, thumb on hammer.
Chapter Two
Joe Diblon was nearly dead when they reached him.
He had fallen off the bed and was bleeding over the floor. McAllister lifted him gently in his arms and put him back on the bed.
The little doctor, swaying and shaking still, said: “That’s the marshal.”
McAllister nodded. “Fix him up.”
The doctor hesitated. “When a marshal gets shot in this town, he stays shot. This is the third in the last couple of months.”
“Fix him just the same.”
The doctor made a closer inspection of the wound, inspected the marshal’s back with some difficulty to check if the bullet had passed clean through the body. It hadn’t. He looked up and shook his head.
“I can’t do a thing for him.”
McAllister looked mean.
“Doc, you fix him good. Hear? Or I’m goin’ to take it out on your hide. Now get started.”
Muttering and shaking, the doctor got started, first begging for a drink. McAllister found a bottle in the marshal’s desk drawer and gave him a generous one. He gave himself a more generous one and felt quite cheerful. As he was pouring a second one, the office door opened and a middle-aged, well-dressed man walked in. He wore a brown derby, a heavy topcoat and a harassed look. In his small hand, he carried a silver-headed cane.
“I heard there was a shooting,” he said.
McAllister downed the second whiskey and said: “Who might you be?”
“I ask the questions here. Now, who are you?”
The little doctor was muttering in the rear room. McAllistersat behind the marshal’s desk and leaned back at his ease. The newcomer crossed the office and stood over McAllister, but found that even while sitting down the big man couldn’t be looked down on. This seemed to nettle the man in the brown derby.
“You tell me who you are,” McAllister said. “I’m bigger.”
“My name is Nick Sillitoe. I’m the unfortunate who bears the title of mayor in this town.”
“That’s great, mister mayor. I’m Remington McAllister and in the small back room yonder lies Joseph C. Diblon, the unfortunate who bears the title of marshal in this town,”
Sillitoe boggled.
“Did Joe get it?”
“He has a forty-five slug resting snugly in his entrails.”
The mayor rushed into the rear room and McAllister followed him to find the doctor sweating and muttering, up to his elbows in blood. The mayor went pale at the sight of the wounded man and stood helplessly for a full minute saying, “My God,” over and over.
The doctor said: “I’m wasting my time, but this son-of-a-bitch won’t listen.”
The mayor looked at McAllister.
“Where do you come into this?”
“Aw, Joe an’ me’ve been arrestin’ each other off an’ on for years. We’re kind of attached.”
The mayor took off the derby, scratched through the thin hair of his head and looked lost.
“Joe’s the last. We’ll never find another. All there’s left is gun-hands ready to make a quick dollar. Mr. McAllister, I’ve heard of you … you wouldn’t…? At a time like this a man has to make snap decisions. And I…”
His words trailed off as McAllister stepped to the bed, took the badge from Diblon’s coat and fastened it on his own.
“I take it,” the mayor said not without humor, “that you accept.” He looked
like a man who had witnessed a miracle and couldn’t believe the evidence of his eyes.
“I ain’t acceptin’ a thing,” McAllister said. He didn’t dislike Sillitoe, but he didn’t feel amiable about anything right that minute. “I’m demanding. Everything’s scarce in this town and that includes lawmen. The price comes high.”
“How high?”
“Two hundred a month.”
The mayor looked horrified. “Diblon received ninety dollars per month.”
McAllister grinned coldly.
“I’m glad he ain’t in no condition to hear you tell that naughty lie, mayor. Come again.”
“All right. He received one hundred.”
“And a bullet in the belly.”
“I stick at a hundred.”
McAllister took the badge from his coat and tossed it on the table. “I pass.”
As he started to walk out of the room, Sillitoe caught him by the arm and said: “One twenty-five.”
McAllister gave him a long look and said: “One fifty.”
The mayor nodded not wanting to hear himself say the sum. McAllister went and picked up the badge and put it back on.
“Done,” he said.
“You’re a hard man, McAllister,” the mayor told him with an aggrieved look.
“That’s what you’re buying, ain’t it?”
Sillitoe laughed, not unpleasantly and looked like a man you could get along with under less trying circumstances. McAllister reckoned that, if he lived long enough, he might grow to like him.
“I’ll have to pay the extra out of my own pocket,” the mayor was saying, “and I reckon that gives me the right to call the tune. So – no gambling concessions, no private killings. From here on, you’re a servant of the town. Let’s have that clear from the start.”
McAllister smiled nastily.
“Give me a week,” he said. “Then you can talk all you want about what I can do and what I can’t do.”
The mayor gave him a long look, went to say something and thought better of it, which convinced McAllister that maybe the man had some sense.
“All right,” Sillitoe said. “Let me know how Diblon gets along.”
“Come and find out for yourself,” McAllister told him flatly. “He got that in your service.”
The mayor flushed, again swallowed some words and said: “All right,” before he walked out.
The doctor pulled a blanket up to Diblon’s chin, walked to the bowl of water on the table, splashed some water from a jug into it, and started washing up.
Without looking at McAllister, he said: “You sound pretty big. Make the most of it - you won’t be that way long.”
McAllister said: “Sure.”
When the doctor had washed up and wiped his hands on a dirty towel, he said: “That’ll be ten dollars.”
“That should cover an evenin’ at Kate’s, you old ram. Get out of here. I’ll pay you some time.”
“You don’t have credit,” the little man snapped.
“Your mistake. I don’t have anything else. And get this into your little head. You come in to see Joe first thing in the morning. I don’t want to have to come looking for you. If you ain’t here I’ll arrest you.”
“What for?”
“Spitting on the sidewalk, interferin’ with young girls, anything my dirty mind can think up.”
The doctor started to gabble angrily, but McAllister threw him his coat and bustled him out of the door. The doctor called him some unpleasant names and McAllister, grinning said: “Have the law on me.”
The doctor out of sight, McAllister put on Diblon’s gun-belt and inspected the Colt 1861 model resting in the holster. It looked fine to him and it felt pretty good to have a fine gun like that strapped on again. The Smith and Wesson, he dropped into his coat pocket. He’d need that. It was the only evidence he had. If it was evidence. He checked that Joe was still breathing and found that he was, just. Then he went out of the office and locked the door behind him. Crossing the street, he entered a store. The storekeeper was busy, but he located the man’s wife at the rear of the place and introduced himself as the new marshal. The woman was about thirty-five, a fading blonde who knew a good-looking man when she saw one. She seemed to think that she saw one right now, because she showed a lot of teeth and patted her hair a few times while they were talking.
“I’m Mrs. Charles Seaburg,” she said and offered her hand in a genteel manner. “That’s my husband out front.”
“We must get acquainted. Always nice to know that the solid citizens are behind you, ma’am.” Seaburg was solid, all right. About two hundred and thirty pounds of solidity Storekeepers ate in Malcolm City if nobody else did. “Right now, I’d be obliged if you could recommend some good lady to play nurse to Mr. Diblon.”
“My word! Is he sick?”
“Sick as they come, ma’am.”
She said there were a dozen ladies who would like the job and who could use the money no doubt. Her own dear sister might be prevailed upon … Mrs. Seaburg wasn’t slow. Through her sister she could learn what was going on in the marshal’s office, maybe, and just how sick the marshal was.
“Where can I find her?”
It appeared that Jenny was right here on the premises and Mrs. Seaburg would have her come right over … where was the marshal at? In the office? My, that was no place for a sick man. But sister would be right over.
McAllister thanked her with the courtesy his old man had drummed into him with a large-buckled strap and departed.
He found Diblon in a high fever and spent the next hour doing his best to reduce it by bathing the patient with cold water from the chipped china jug. He was fairly successful and Diblon fell into a deep, though troubled, sleep, muttering and cursing with such obscenity that McAllister trembled for the good lady who would, he hoped, arrive shortly to take up the duties of nurse.
Waiting for her, he checked the armoury and found that chained in a rack he had at his disposal two scatter-guns, one made by Greener of Pall Mall, London, England, and in fair condition; a Spencer carbine and an old Henry he liked the look of. There was enough ammunition for him to police the town if he stayed alive long enough to do it.
Sitting behind the desk with his feet up in time-honored fashion, sipping Diblon’s whiskey, he considered the situation and didn’t like any part of it.
He hadn’t been in town a week yet, but he reckoned he knew it pretty well. Its morals and behavior would be much the same as any of the other ramshackle, makeshift settlements he had been in during his years spent up and down the frontier. Here ruled the law of the fast buck, the knife and the gun. The stage from Deadwood had been held up twice since he had been here and several times before that. Not by professionals, but by desperate men who had no money to buy food for their bellies or warmth for their chilled blood; miners who couldn’t reach the gold through the cavalry patrols that barred the road into Indian territory; cowhands who had sold their owners’ herds and gambled the money away; men who, had come from the east, telling their womenfolk and their kids that they’d make a fortune and send for them.
Only yesterday, seven men had stopped the stage at Crofter’s Bend. They shot the guard but fled when a passenger opened up on them with a scatter-gun. Those seven men were here in town, more desperate than ever, with scores of others of their kind.
In town there was the man who had shot Joe Diblon. And that killing had been premeditated. The man had waited in the dark for Joe and cut him down in cold blood. A back-shooter; and that kind were hell-on-wheels to negotiate.
So that gave McAllister two main chores to start with. Police the town and find Joe’s attacker.
He reckoned if he had six good deputies it wouldn’t be enough.
Did he have a deputy? he wondered. He’d forgotten to ask Sillitoe that.
Knuckles rapped shyly on the door to the street and he growled: “Come.” This, he thought, would be the storekeeper’s sis-in-law.
The door opened and a woman s
tepped inside.
McAllister got to his feet as fast as a kid of eighteen would for a beautiful play-actress. This woman was the answer to a great many prayers, mature and adolescent.
She was smiling modestly. Medium height, plainly dressed in a neat gray outfit topped by a cute bonnet of rather rakish design. She didn’t need bright colors, because she was all gold; her hair with a soft tinge of red in it. Trim waist, perfect hands and … the rest was so damned womanly, McAllister just stood and stared.
“I’m Jenny Mann,” she said softly. “Mrs. Seaburg’s sister.”
He wanted to say that it wasn’t possible, but he didn’t. He took his hat off and said: “Pleased to meet you, ma’am. Obliged you could come so quick.”
“You must be Mr. McAllister.”
A bright smile.
“Yes’m.”
“My sister told me all about you.”
Another bright smile. She looked toward the inner room.
“Joe’s in there, Miss Mann. I’m afraid he’s hurt bad. You sure you can handle it?” She looked too delicate to attend a man with a bullet in his guts.
“Hurt?” she said. “I understood he was sick.”
“He was shot,” McAllister informed her and watched the flutter of alarm that went across her face. “In the stomach.”
“Gracious,” she said. Then: “You men and your guns!”
McAllister felt rebuked along with the rest of mankind. He took her in and showed her Joe, but she didn’t seem at all put out at the sight. She examined the wound with pursed lips and said: “You’re right, he’s bad. But I’ve seen worse.”
That surprised McAllister. This woman looked as though she couldn’t bear to see a fly squashed.
“You think he has a chance?” He knew he didn’t give Joe a snowball’s chance in hell.
“When we undertake to nurse a man, we must be convinced from the start that he will live and work all the time to that end,” she said coldly.
“Sure,” he agreed. “That’s the way.”
She told him that she wanted to put fresh dressings on the wound and wanted the wherewithal to keep it clean. She gave her instructions and he went to get her the chemistry she wanted. When he returned, he found that she had settled in. A bed was made up on the floor on the other side of the room from the wounded man and the whole place looked as though it had been cleaned out. Jenny Mann didn’t have a hair out of place and looked as cool and shy as she had when she had come in.
McAllister Justice Page 2