Walkers Creek - A Western

by R. Bentley Davies

  He turns the horse and splashes across the creek. She determines to try to make him stay in town. They get on too well to let this go.

  'You could try the saloon,' she calls after him.

  'What?' he stops and twists awkwardly on the horse's back to hear her.

  'To find the girl. They might know who she is in the saloon.'

  She watches Logan ride off, knowing that the deputy has watched the whole exchange from his vantage point behind her.

  CHAPTER NINE

  So far he has avoided the saloon. There was trouble enough waiting for him at the hotel with that charade that Humby and the Sheriff concocted with the limping man. Visiting the saloon seemed like asking for trouble. But now he has reason to go there. This girl must be known by someone and everyone is pointing in the this direction even if it is for the wrong reasons.

  It is getting towards noon as Logan strolls warily up the street. The cheerful smiles of the people that pass by and the fact that he's the only one wearing a gun no longer fool him into thinking of Walkers Creek as a perfect town. The naïve lack of concern is just a façade. Underneath it is just as crooked and dangerous as anywhere else.

  Flies buzz round something spilled on the porch of the saloon. Raised voices inside tell him that the place at least isn't empty. He pushes through the doors and heads for the bar, half-expecting the noise to stop as he walks in. Nobody reacts, not even the barman.

  In the corner four men are sat around a table playing cards. Four more are stood watching, occasionally remarking in loud voices about the action in the game.

  'They've been playing all night.' says the barman, finally putting down the glass he's been polishing.

  'A big money game then?' says Logan.

  'I doubt it. Doesn't stop them thinking they're playing a game that'll go down in legend as one of the great poker games of all time.'

  'Those sort of games usually end with someone getting shot.'

  'So long as it isn't in here they can do what they like. Anyway, what can I get you?'

  He orders a beer. He tastes it but it isn't good. He decides to get to the issue as quickly as possible so he doesn't have to drink too much of this stuff.

  'I came in to ask about a girl.'

  The barman raises an eyebrow.

  'It's early, but it shouldn't be a problem. Take a seat.' And the barman departs quickly through a door behind the bar before Logan can say anything more.

  He sits down at a table a little apart from the rowdy card game. The people in this nice town seem remarkably quick to assume that you're looking for a prostitute. He begins to wonder if it is something about his appearance that gives that impression. He takes off his new white hat to look at it. Does it make him look like a man who buys women?

  'Hi there, you can buy me a drink.' she says in a tired voice, too tired to try to be alluring. She's wearing a blur of red silk and black lace but it looks bunched and tucked in odd places as though it has been pulled on in a hurry. She probably has a pretty face under all the make-up. Her lipstick is a little smeared. She pulls up a chair and sits very close beside him. She is wearing a powerful flowery perfume that makes him gag a little with the foul tasting beer. He tries not to think about what smells the perfume is meant to mask.

  'Good morning. Who might you be?' He says. He finds the thought of this woman in bed quite distasteful, especially so early in the day, but he realizes that she'll be a good opportunity to find out about who delivered his note with his breakfast.

  'I'm Brandy. Your wife kick you out of bed early or have you not been home yet?' She tries a smile. A couple of teeth are missing.

  'Up all night? Not me, but those boys seem to be managing it alright.' He points at the card game which has gone quiet for a moment.

  'Them?' she laughs. It's a mean laugh that ends in a sneer. 'They can't hold their liquor and they ain't no better at going without sleep than I am. Their heads are so empty it's taking them an hour to play a hand.'

  'Who are they? Miners?'

  'You don't know?'

  'I'm from out of town.'

  'That one sat down on the left, Jake Capstan, he's the foreman of the mine. The others work for him. Oh, except for the one with his back to you. That's Frank Lake.' The limping man again.

  'Shot himself in the foot?' he says.

  'I thought you said you didn't know them.'

  'I had the pleasure of Frank's company yesterday. I'm not keen to repeat the experience.'

  'Do you want to go upstairs?'

  He looks at the stairs. Even if he wanted to go up the stairs, there was no way he was going to make it to them without attracting Frank's attention.

  'Oh wait, you from out of town? Are you the man that punched down Frank Lake in the hotel yesterday?'

  Logan nods hesitantly, wondering where this is leading. She reaches over and kisses him hard on the lips. She tastes of aniseed.

  'Well done. I wish I'd seen it. I've been wanting to knock that fool down since the first day I set eyes on him.'

  She calls over the barman and whispers something in his ear.

  Just then a man emerges from one of the rooms and starts heading down the stairs adjusting his pants. Logan recognizes him immediately. It is McLaren.

  'Now this man has a story.'

  'Is he a miner too?' he tries to feign ignorance.

  'I guess he might be now. He used to have a little cabin up the valley. He pretended to do some farming but I reckon he's a cattle rustler. Anyway, he must have stolen the wrong man's cattle because someone stuck some dynamite down his chimney and blew up that little cabin.'

  'Lucky for him they didn't hang him for stealing cattle.'

  'Oh nobody can prove nothing about that. And even if they could his friend Mr. Humby would look after him. Seems to me like he's being looked after okay right now if he can afford to spend the night here every night. Working his way through the girls one by one.'

  McLaren has wandered over to watch the card game and is greeted noisily by the others.

  'So how many girls are there?' Logan sees his opportunity to get some information.

  'Only eight at the moment. You want someone else?' she seems hopeful that he'll say yes to that question.

  'I'm just interested. You know, for another day. Obviously I'd ask for you first.' She smiles at the simple compliment. 'I'm sure I saw a Mexican girl.'

  'There are a couple. I think McLaren's just spent the night with one of them.'

  'McLaren?' feigning ignorance again.

  'The cattle rustler.'

  'Oh right. But it wouldn't have been her I saw in the street just now if she was with him.'

  'Just now? Well that wouldn't have been Luisa either, she got knocked around a bit by a drunken miner last week and is hiding away until her face comes back into shape.'

  He winces at the thought.

  'Don't feel too sorry for her. He's paying for it. She'll make a tidy sum out of that. You can say what you like about the law enforcement in this town, but when somebody steps out of line you can be certain they'll pay for it.'

  So he is no clearer about who the mysterious girl was who brought him breakfast. It doesn't sound as though she's one of the working girls at the saloon anyway.

  A new commotion attracts their attention across to the card game. One of the players has slumped asleep and fallen from his chair onto the floor. Brandy laughs her sneering nasty laugh.

  'I told you they couldn't hold their liquor,' she says.

  The spectators are finding it mightily amusing and are laughing so hard they can barely stand, but the other three players, Frank Lake and Jake Capstan included, just stay sat concentrating on the game. Or perhaps they're asleep too. It seems the player who passed out was so exhausted that even hitting the floor didn't wake him. Still laughing hard, the spectators each grab a limb and carry him bodily out of the saloon.

  'You go boys!' Brandy yells after them. 'You go wake him up.' And she laughs again.

  They he
ar a splash and whooping holler from outside as the sleeping card player is dumped into the water trough in the street.

  'Don't you go trailing all that water in here,' the barman says sternly on his way back in from somewhere. Logan hadn't noticed him go out. He has the look of a man who has seen this too many times before.

  McLaren seems to pause a little as he sees Logan as if unsure where he has seen him before, but then continues on to the card table, brushing the splashed water from his clothes. Logan is reasonably sure McLaren could never have seen him. He was careful when watching the cabin to stay well out of sight. He remembers that he now has a new hat too. It seems impossible that he should have been recognized. Maybe he is being mistaken for someone else. Then from the corner of his eye he notices that Brandy is trying to surreptitiously signal something.

  'Is something wrong?'

  'Wrong? Why would anything be wrong?'

  'You were waving.'

  'No, that's just...' she flounders trying to think of an explanation. Then she resorts to her more normal approach and grabs his thigh and leans in for a kiss.

  Logan pulls back.

  'I think I should leave. This hasn't been quite as much fun as I'd hoped.' He stands to go. Brandy still has a firm grip on his thigh.

  'No, don't go yet.'

  He reaches down to unlatch her hand from his leg. She notices something at the door and suddenly relaxes her grip.

  'I'm sorry.' She says quietly. The tone of her voice has changed. It is as though it is the first thing she has said that she actually means.

  At the door stand two men. They both wear holstered pistols and one has a Winchester tucked under his arm that is pointing carelessly in Logan's direction. They are both wearing little shiny badges proclaiming that they are deputies. The card game falls silent but then gradually a murmur starts as they realize that the deputies don't seem interested in them. The two men stride straight across to Brandy and Logan. She shrinks away from him.

  'Would you come with us please.'

  Logan looks at Brandy as she creeps slowly backwards. She mouths 'I'm sorry' again.

  'I think there must be some mistake.' He starts considering where his exits might be and how he might unstick himself from the end of this rifle barrel.

  'No mistake mister. The sheriff just wants a word is all.'

  'Just a friendly word.' His partner adds.

  'Sure.' says Logan. Perhaps the street will provide more opportunities for escape. Or maybe there is nothing to worry about. That's it, there's nothing to worry about. You always send two men with guns to fetch someone that you thought you might like to make friends with. This is all wrong. This town is all wrong. The mysterious Mexican girl delivering his breakfast and a note, the suspiciously late time for the handover of the money, all of this together is ringing alarm bells so loud in Logan's head that he can hardly think. The only answer must be to get clear out of town. What about Emily? What about the money he's owed? Right now, he just wants to leave it all behind. He must just shake these two goons and then make a run for it. There's nothing for him here in Walkers Creek.

  The rifle barrel nudges him and he obediently begins walking towards the door. Frank Lake stands up from the card game and watches Logan leave with a big smile.

  Out in the sunshine he blinks a few times getting accustomed to the brightness. The street is uncharacteristically quiet. He was hoping for some traffic, a wagon or two and some horses to create an opportunity for something. But there is nothing. The barber waves a greeting from the porch outside his shop. Logan waves back hoping to make it look less like he's being arrested. The deputies stay stony faced and follow him to the sheriff's office.

  The deputies leave him at the door. One of them gives him a firm shove in the back so that he stumbles in.

  'Ah, Mr. Tanner.' The sheriff is sat at his desk cleaning a large pearl-handled revolver. 'I've been looking forward to this.'

  'Thank you.' He is taking in his surroundings. Trying to work out where the exits are and where the weapons are. There isn't going to be much chance to get out except through the door he came in and there'll be two deputies waiting on the other side of that. There are bars on the windows.

  'Don't worry, you're not under arrest. Take a seat. Take off your hat.'

  There is a wooden chair that has seen better days. Dents and scratches and worrying stains suggest the chair as seen a good deal of violence. It looks as though it will hardly hold his weight but he pulls it up and sits down gingerly. It creaks but it holds.

  He takes off his hat. Keeping it in his lap might mean he could use it to hide a reach for his gun. Would that work? Of course not. There'll be no gunplay in here. And if he's not hiding a draw behind his hat then he'll feel pretty stupid with it on his lap, as though he needs it to protect himself. He reaches out and places it on the sheriff's desk instead, carelessly knocking over one of the neat line of six bullets that are stood on their ends.

  The sheriff ignores the bullet as it rolls along the desk and peers at Logan down the barrel of the gun he is cleaning.

  'That was an interesting altercation you had yesterday in La Rosa.'

  He knew it was a set up. Is the sheriff going to show his hand and reveal why he had Lake come and pick that fight?

  'I hope I'm not in any trouble over that?'

  'No, no, I already told you, you're not in any trouble. But you are new here in town and I wouldn't be doing my job if I wasn't taking an interest in what you're up to now, would I?'

  Logan shrugs. He is still trying to work out what the sheriff is up to.

  'As we're on the subject, I was quite impressed with the way you handled Mr. Lake.' He pauses, still tinkering with the gun, reassembling it. Logan says nothing. Without looking up the sheriff adds, 'The Mayor was also interested to see you taking such care to protect his lady friend.'

  The Mayor's lady friend? He doesn't respond to the sheriff straight away. He needs to think about what he's just been told. So Emily is Humby's girl. Of all the people in this town he could have picked to strike up a conversation with, he chooses the Mayor's girl. That's the Mayor that makes everyone look uncomfortable every time someone mentions his name. The sheriff must have been given the task of warning him off her. Part of him said that Emily might be worth the risk of staying in town, but this revelation changes that.

  'Did I step out of line there? I really wasn't aware that Miss Nixon was already spoken for.'

  The sheriff laughs. His eyes still have a disconcerting empty look, even when he laughs.

  'Not a problem Tanner, not a problem.' He finds the repeated use of his name disconcerting as he realizes that he's never introduced himself and has no idea what the sheriff is called. 'Like I said, it was a difficult situation, and you dealt with it well. I saw that and I thought to myself, I could do with a man like that working for me. That's what I thought.'

  This guy is good. One surprise after another. Keep them off balance. And he certainly felt off balance. Why would the sheriff want him to work for him? Should he say that he plans to leave town immediately. No, that's a trump card he'll save to play later.

  'You want me to work for you?'

  'Exactly. Or rather, to work for the town, for me and the Mayor.'

  He tries to get some sense of what is going on in the sheriff's head, but the eyes are blank and empty. The sheriff spins the cylinder of the reassembled but unloaded revolver and pulls the trigger on an empty chamber with the gun pointed at Logan's heart.

  'There was an incident a couple of days ago. You might have heard about it. A man who lives a little out of the town had his house blown up. It seems someone chucked some dynamite in there. Luckily nobody was hurt in the explosion, the man in question was here in the town at the time. Some deputies and me, we rode out to take a look. One of those deputies didn't come back.'

  There is another pause. A wait for some sort of reaction perhaps. More clever little surprises. He is convinced he heard that tale whispered in La Rosa but
assumed it was exaggerated gossip. After all, he knows that although he'd trained his rifle on the deputies from a distance he didn't fire on any of them. The story can't be true. So why is he telling it?

  'So as you can see,' the sheriff continues, 'I have a vacancy for a deputy.'

  He is certain it's a ruse. He just can't work out what's really going on.

  'You're a little reluctant I can see, but that's a good thing. I'd be a bit troubled if you were to snatch at the offer of a job that's opened up because the last man doing it got killed on the job. That's why I wanted a man like you that can handle himself.'

  Logan nods but still can't see where this is going. The sheriff is still not looking up through most of the conversation, slowly and carefully reloading the newly cleaned gun.

  'Let me explain to you how the job works, it might help.

  'I have a team of deputies. There are a dozen. Well, eleven right now I guess. You might think that sounds like quite a few and that you haven't seen that many around. There's a reason for it though. Walkers Creek is a peaceful town. I take it as a personal duty to make sure that it stays that way. People aren't comfortable seeing trouble taking place in their own streets. It makes them nervous. Nervous people carry guns and shoot before they think.

  'You won't see any of that here because I make sure that any trouble is kept well out of town. Mostly my deputies aren't hereabouts, they're in the hills and valleys around keeping watch on the roads and on the comings and goings of strangers, of people like you. Nobody gets into Walkers Creek without our knowing their every movement on their way here.'

  He pauses and puts the now loaded gun down on the table, barrel still pointing at Logan.

  'So you see, I know exactly what happened to my missing deputy. My eyes and ears are everywhere.'

  Logan is feeling very uncomfortable. He took a great deal of care in placing the dynamite to be certain that he wasn't seen. He didn't take so much care once he'd blown the little cabin though. Had he been seen riding away? Why is the sheriff telling him but then not arresting him?