by John Legg
“Be glad to,” Rhodes said with a grin. He counted out the gold and silver coins onto the bar. When he had three neat stacks, he handed one to Bonner, and another to Flake. He swept up the third heap for himself.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Rhodes was shaving, the lower half of his face covered with lather, when a knock came at the door. “Who is it?” he called, as his hand rested on a nearby revolver.
“Logan Macmillan.”
“Come on in.” He watched the door in the mirror. When he was sure it was Macmillan, and that he was alone, he went back to shaving, sliding the straight razor smoothly over the stubble.
“This the best you can do?” Macmillan asked with a little smile, waving a hand at the room.
“Well, it’s small and cramped, but it’s home,” Rhodes said dryly.
Macmillan took a seat in a rickety chair at a matching table. Neither seemed very steady, so when Macmillan sat, he did so gingerly.
Rhodes finished shaving and wiped his face off with some sacking. Then he turned toward his visitor. “What can I do for you, Mr. Macmillan?” he asked, more than a little curious.
“I talked a little more with Mr. Flake last night after that fracas over in Hornbeck’s. He seems to have a mighty high opinion of you, Travis.”
Rhodes nodded and reached for his shirt, which was hanging from a bedpost. He began pulling it on.
“A number of other folks in town feel the same.”
“Speak your piece, Logan,” Rhodes said. He wasn’t angry, but he was not fond of people who didn’t just come out with whatever it was they wanted to say.
“All right,” Macmillan said with a weak grin. “Since Marshal Pritchard has crossed the divide, we need a marshal. And I thought that...”
“I thought you said all these folks had good opinions of me,” Rhodes interjected, now a little annoyed.
“They do, but what does that...”
“You were going to offer me Pritchard’s job, weren’t you?” When Macmillan nodded almost meekly, Rhodes continued. “If all those folks seem to be of favorable opinion of me, just why in the hell are they sendin’ me to my doom?”
“But they…”
“You went through, what, five, six marshals in six months? How long did the longest one last? Two months?”
Macmillan sighed. “All that’s true. But you know as well as I do that Intolerance needs a lawman. Preferably a good, strong, fearless one! Man who takes this job can’t be afraid of death. I saw you last night after all that was done. Nine men of ten would’ve been sick at what went on. You looked like it was just another day in a saloon.”
“What’s your interest in this?” Rhodes asked. He suspected that Macmillan wanted him to be a private lawman to police his mines.
Macmillan grinned. “I’m the mayor.”
Rhodes was speechless for some moments. “You keep that fact mighty quiet,” he said finally. He went back to buttoning his shirt.
Macmillan shrugged. “Folks who need to know, know. I’d get every idiot in the mining district bothering me at every hour of the day or night if it got spread around.” He paused. “Now, what do you say?”
Rhodes tucked his shirttails into his pants. “What’re you offerin’?” he finally asked.
“Fifty bucks a month, plus half of all the fines you collect. The rest of the fines go into the city treasury.”
“Like last night?”
“Like last night. We’ll get you a newer, better place to live, paid for by the city. You’ll be allowed up to three deputies—you can pick anyone you like. And,” he tacked on with a small smile, “you’ll get the best goddamn funeral money can buy when the time comes.”
Rhodes smiled at that, too. “Mighty generous.” He paused. “What about Pritchard’s deputies?”
A sour look crossed Macmillan’s face. “Wade was down to only one by now. He quit last night, right after Wade was killed. Said the thirty bucks—or even fifty—wasn’t worth the fuss.”
Rhodes nodded, understanding the man’s reluctance to take on such a position.
“So what do you say, Travis? You’ll take the job?”
“What about supplies?”
“All you need for the job, plus living. Paid for by the city.”
Rhodes mulled it for a few minutes. It sounded reasonable, but he still was skeptical. “Who’s paying me?”
“The city.”
“Not Ludwig and Macmillan?”
“No, sir.” Macmillan seemed almost offended. “You will be the marshal of Intolerance, not a guard for Ludwig and Macmillan. Unless...”
Ah, here it comes now, Rhodes thought.
“...you want to take that as a job in addition to the marshal job. Or instead of.”
Rhodes was nearly disappointed that his suspicions were unfounded. “I don’t do any work for you, is that right?”
“That’s right.” Macmillan paused. “That’s another reason I keep quiet about being the mayor. Most folks’d think you—or any other marshal the city hired—was a company man.”
“You got an office?”
“Yep.”
“Jail?”
“Behind the office.”
“Judge?”
Macmillan shrugged. “A couple of the older lawyers act in that capacity sometimes.” He smiled again. “You’ll be the final judge in many of the infractions, Travis. Somebody’s breaking the law—or even what you think is the law—you arrest them, jail them, fine them, or run them the hell out of town.”
“Gives me a lot of power.”
Macmillan nodded. “Another reason why we’re selective with the men we hire as marshals. Not only does he have to be good with a gun and with his fists, he has to be a fair-minded man; one not easy to rile. You’re such a man, I believe.” Macmillan shut up, allowing Rhodes some time for thinking.
Rhodes paced the room a little, working it over in his mind. There was little to keep him from taking the job. He was not afraid of death, and it would give him something sort of stable as a job which meant he could propose to Hallie. Still, he had suspicions that there was more to this than Macmillan was letting on. That and the fact that the marshals lasted so short a time in Intolerance. Hallie would not be happy about that, he was certain.
But, he thought, if he took the job with the idea of keeping it just through the winter, Hallie might be agreeable. He hoped so anyway. However, he would not tell Macmillan it was for him only a temporary job. He would worry about that when spring came.
“Looks like you got yourself a marshal, Mr. Macmillan.”
“Great,” he said. He stood and pulled a star from his jacket pocket. He came forward to pin it on Rhodes’s shirt.
“A gold badge?” Rhodes asked, surprised.
“What else would we use in a town whose sole industry is in gold?” He stepped back, patting the badge to sort of settle it. “Come on, I’ll show you to your office.”
Rhodes, who had not put on his backup pistol under his shirt because Macmillan was there, hesitated. He would feel odd going out without it. Then he shrugged, and put on his long, black coat. He still had the two Whitneys in his belt and the scattergun. He grabbed the shotgun and went outside into the cool afternoon.
The marshal’s office was just north of what could be considered the center of town. It was set amidst all the troublesome spots in the city, for the most part. It was surrounded by saloons, brothels, gambling parlors, two discreet opium houses, hardware stores, and billiard rooms. It would be nothing if not lively, Rhodes figured.
Macmillan walked past the office, though, toward the house just to the south of the jail and slightly behind it. Macmillan led the way inside. It was empty except for some basic furniture, and it smelled freshly washed.
“I had it cleaned and emptied last night,” Macmillan said. “For you, or for whoever took the job.”
Rhodes nodded and prowled through the place. The house was two rooms—the outer one was kitchen and dining room, the rear one a bedroom. T
he bedroom contained a wood four-post bed on which was a thin blanket and a quilt. There was also a small table and side chair, two lanterns on the walls, another on the table; a chest of drawers on which were a basin and pitcher, and a large wardrobe chest. There were no windows in the bedroom, which Rhodes felt was wise. No one could raise the hackles of people more than a marshal, and to have windows where someone could blast him easily was not too wise.
The kitchen dining area had a sink with a pump. “That work?” Rhodes asked, pointing.
“Sure does. Might need priming every once in a while, but it works.”
There was a flat work surface, a pantry, a dining table, and a hutch with a small supply of dishes, cutlery, and other household items.
“Wade didn’t often use any of the kitchen stuff,” Macmillan said. “He preferred to eat out. For a while, though, he had a woman come in every day to do the cleaning and cooking.”
Rhodes nodded. “Well, we best go and see the office now,” he said.
The office was bigger than many Rhodes had seen, but not too big. It was made of stone. Wood framed the doors and windows, which had real glass. Inside, there was a small anteroom that contained two chairs and a small cast-iron stove in a corner. The door was of good, solid wood and there was one window, barred. It was separated from the office by a short railing across its width. The railing had one small, swinging gate.
The rest of the office consisted of a big desk and its chair; one other chair; a weapons rack containing two shotguns and a Henry repeating rifle, a wood bulletin board next to the weapons rack; a small wood rack for hanging the cell keys; a cot and another small stove on which a large coffeepot sat. At the back of the office ran iron bars with a door of the same. Behind were three cells, running width-wise. Each was perhaps ten feet deep by eight wide. There was a very small slit for a window in the rock wall of each cell at the back.
“Not fancy, I grant you,” Macmillan said. “But serviceable.”
“I expect it’ll do.” Rhodes was having second thoughts about this. “You know, don’t you, Mr. Macmillan, that I have no experience at being a lawman?”
“Makes no difference. You have what it takes to do the job. I’m not worried about it, nor is the city council. And so you shouldn’t be.”
Rhodes nodded, some doubts lingering.
“Well, I must bet back to my work, Travis. You need supplies or anything, go to Burgmeier’s. He’ll put them on the city’s bill. He gives you a hard time, come see me. You need information or anything, also come see me. Any questions?”
“Expect not.” He paused. “Oh, one. You have deputy badges?”
“Should be in the top right-hand drawer of the desk. Have some folks in mind for the job?”
“One anyway.”
“The old guy, Bonner? That his name?”
“Yessir.”
Macmillan looked skeptical. “Isn’t he a little long in the tooth for such a job?”
“You need to ask that after last night?”
Macmillan smiled and nodded. “No, I suppose I don’t. Well, it’s your choice. Oh, and, by the way, deputies get thirty a month. Most of the other marshals also left their deputies have half the fines they collected, too. Some allowed the deputies to keep one-fourth, with you getting one-fourth and the city the other half. Again, that’s up to you.”
He paused, thinking. “As for supplies, deputies get what they need for the job. No personal supplies.” He grinned conspiratorially. “Of course, there’s nothing to really say that you couldn’t get some personal supplies for yourself and then decide you really didn’t need them after all and give them to your deputies.” He winked. “But you never heard that from me.”
“Hear what?” Rhodes asked with a chuckle. Maybe this job wouldn’t be so bad after all, he thought.
“All right, Mr....rather, Marshal Rhodes. You’re on your own.” Macmillan strolled out and headed back to his own office.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Rhodes stood for some minutes, not moving, staring out the window and wondering if this wasn’t really a dream—or nightmare. It certainly didn’t seem real to him. His left hand came up and brushed the cold metal of the badge. What a year it had been, he thought. His enlistment had been up two months before Appomattox, and he was released from the army. Here he was, little more than six months later, the marshal in a town of perhaps two thousand people.
He shook his head, turned, and walked to the desk. He sat and began pulling open drawers, wanting to see what was there. He found the deputy badges and tossed one onto the surface of the desk. There was little else in the drawers except junk, most of which he picked up and tossed into the stove. Then he stood and grabbed the rings of keys and tried them all, including the one to the weapons rack. He checked each weapon. None was loaded, and he could find no ammunition in the desk. He would have to rectify that.
Then he pulled the wanted posters off the bulletin board, where they had been stuck up by a thin dagger. He sat again and leafed through the papers. Several of them were quite old, and he tossed them aside. They would do well to get a fire started, he figured. He smiled when he came across posters for Orson Mackey, Floyd Decker, and Clyde Laver. Those he decided he would keep, if simply for his own edification. He didn’t think he would be able to claim the four hundred dollars—two hundred for Mackey and one hundred each for his two companions—anytime soon. He would, however, consider trying to do that.
The only other time he stopped was when he came across a wanted poster with a fifteen-hundred-dollar reward. Rhodes studied it for a moment. Dalton Turlow certainly had a list of crimes—Rhodes figured he would have to keep his eyes peeled for Mr. Dalton Turlow. Fifteen hundred would get him out of this job and go a real long way toward setting up a household with Hallie. He sighed and stabbed the posters back into the board with the knife.
Rhodes picked up the deputy badge—it was also of gold—and stuck it in his shirt pocket. With scattergun in hand he stepped outside. Hardly anyone paid him any attention, but he felt considerably self-conscious anyway. He put that from his mind as best he could.
He wondered what to do first. He wanted to get moved into the house he had been given, go tell Hallie, hire Bonner, and get supplies for the office and for the house. He grinned, thinking that maybe this marshaling job was a lot harder than he had imagined.
As he walked, eyes automatically sweeping around, alert to danger, he decided that he had to tell Hallie first—unless he spotted Bonner. He didn’t, and soon was knocking on the St. Johns’ door. Andy answered the door and grinned. “Oh, Sis,” he said, making the second two syllables.
Hallie was delighted to see him—until she spotted the gold badge on Rhodes’s chest. She suddenly frowned.
“I thought you’d be pleased.” he said lamely.
“Pleased at what?” Hallie demanded, eyes snapping fire.
“That I got a job. Now we can...”
She wasn’t interested in hearing any more from him, and her loud, angry voice overrode his quiet one. “What kind of job is that? Huh? Tell me that then, darn you. A job where you ain’t gonna live more’n another couple of weeks. You call that a job? And you were fool enough to think I’d be pleased with such nonsense? What’s wrong with you, you big dummy?”
She had to stop for breath, and Rhodes quickly jumped into the breach. “Now, just calm down a minute, Hallie,” he started. He stopped when he heard Andy snickering. Rhodes turned narrowed eyes on the boy. “Don’t you have some chores to do, boy?” he asked.
“No, sir,” Andy said with a grin.
“I’ll find some for you, but I don’t think you’ll like ’em all that much.”
Andy’s eyes widened, but he still grinned. He hurried outside.
The lull had allowed Hallie to get her wind back, and she started off on another tirade. “Calm down, you said. You expect me to calm down when the man I love, the man I want to marry and raise a family with, the first man I ever loved, and hopefully will be the
only one I’ll ever love, when you come in here and tell me you’ve just taken a job that’s like you committin’ suicide right here in front of me? You expect me to calm down after that. Didn’t you get enough of bloodlettin’ last night, well, didn’t ya?”
“But—”
“But my eye, darn ya. I heard what happened last night down in that sink of degradation. Guns going off all which ways, and you standin’ there in the middle of it all. Now you want to take a job where you have to do that each and every day…”
“It ain’t going to be every day. It’ll—”
But Hallie was not done yet. “I thought you loved me, you fool. I really thought you did. I thought you were gonna take me away from all the gunfightin’ and such.”
“Dammit, Hallie,” Rhodes finally said in exasperation.
“No, Travis. No. Damn you. Damn you.” She was gasping and sobbing and shaking some.
Rhodes wondered whether he should embrace her. Then he shrugged. It wouldn’t hurt to give it a try, he supposed. He wrapped his big, powerful arms around her. She did not really resist, but her body was as stiff as a board. He continued to hold her.
“You think you can let me speak my peace now?” he asked quietly.
She shook her head, getting tears on his shirt. “Well, I’m going to speak it anyway. After I’ve done that and you want me to go, I’ll go.”
Hallie said nothing. “I took it because it pays well, and I aim to lay low. I’m not going to go out looking for trouble. I didn’t tell them that I was going to quit this job after the winter. But that’s what I aim to do. Soon’s winter lets up and spring’s here, I aim to marry you, girl, and we’ll go off somewhere else. That’s if you still want me then.”
Hallie pulled away, and he let her go. “No,” she sniffed, “that’s if you’ll still be alive.” She looked miserable.
“Well, that’s my plan. I gave ’em my word, and I can’t go back on that.”