by JR Roberts
They both went to the door and stepped outside. As they did they saw two men starting to take the body off of Eclipse’s saddle.
“Hold it!” Clint snapped.
The two men stopped and looked at him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Clint asked.
“You can’t take this body in here,” one man said.
“You never should’ve brought it to town,” the other man said. “We got orders to take it back out.”
“I’ll put a bullet in the first man who touches that body again,” Clint said.
The two men froze with their hands inches from Agnes. They both wore guns, and looked like they knew how to use them.
“Mister,” one said, “you’re askin’ for trouble.”
“That’s the story of my life, friend,” Clint said. “I always seem to be asking for trouble.”
“I think I should introduce you boys to this feller,” Lewis Tully said. “Meet Clint Adams.”
Now the two men pulled their hands away from the body as if they’d been burned.
“The Gunsmith?” the first one said.
“That’s right,” Clint said. “Still want to take that body off my horse?”
“Mister,” the second man said, “we don’t want no trouble. We’re just tryin’ to do our jobs.”
“Well,” Clint said, “go back to whoever your boss is and tell him you couldn’t get it done.”
“He’ll just send more men to get it done,” the first one said.
“I’ll be waiting,” Clint promised.
The two men looked at each other, then back at Clint.
“We can go?” one asked.
“What are your names?”
“I’m Franco,” the first man said, “this is Todd.”
“You can both go,” Clint said. “But if your boss decides to send more men?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t be with them.”
Franco and Todd both hurried off.
“Let’s get this body inside before somebody else gets brave,” Tully suggested.
They removed Aggie’s body from the horse and carried it inside.
“Back room,” Tully said, pointing. Clint took the body in his arms and carried it back there, set it down on a table.
“I’ll have to get a casket built,” Tully said, coming in behind him. “Then I’ll bury her.”
“I suppose since I brought her in I’ll have to pay,” Clint said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Tully said. “It’ll be on the house.”
“Why?”
“Aggie deserved better than this.”
“How well did you know her?”
Tully said, “Come out here.”
They went back into the front room. Tully took out a bottle of whiskey and poured two glasses.
“This is my second since I got to town, and no food,” Clint said, accepting it. “No more.”
“Aggie and me, we were kids together in this town,” Tully said, “before it grew into Winslow. I went East for an education, only just came back as they were dragging her out of town, kicking and screaming.”
“Did you try to stop them?”
“How?” Tully asked. “I didn’t even have a gun. So I came here to see my grandfather, and found out he was dead. This place was closed up.”
“Like the saloons and the church?” Clint asked.
“No, not like that. Just closed and locked, no boards,” Tully said. “I was able to get in pretty easy. But now only two people in this town I knew are gone. I buried him yesterday, and I’ll bury Aggie soon as I get a box made. I want to do it proper.”
“And then what?” Clint asked.
“I don’t know,” Tully said.
“Are you trained in this profession?”
“I worked for my grandfather a while, before I left,” Tully said. “I can do it.”
“But do you want to?”
“That’s the question,” Tully said. “This isn’t the same town I knew. Far from it. Oh, it’s bigger, all right, but not the same kind of people. Not with everybody cow towing to that Gaines feller.”
“I guess not.”
They finished their drinks and put their glasses down.
“You might as well get yourself situated,” Tully said. “You know where the livery is?”
“The sheriff told me.”
“There’s a hotel just down the street,” Tully told him, “good as any in town.”
“Is that where you’re staying?”
“No,” Tully said, “I’m in my grandfather’s house. It’s at the Western end of town.”
It was back the way Clint had ridden in, when he spotted all the homes.
“You wanna get something to eat after I get settled?” Clint asked. “I can come back for you.”
“You think it’ll be okay to leave her alone here?” Tully asked Clint.
“It’ll take Gaines a little while to figure out what happened here, today,” Clint said. “We can lock this place up tight.”
“There’s a little café right across the street,” Tully said. “Why don’t you just meet me there in an hour? That way we can still keep an eye on the place.”
“Sounds as good as anything I can think of,” Clint said. “I’ll see you then.”
As Clint went to the door, Tully called out to him.
“Yeah?” Clint asked.
“Thanks,” Tully said. “I mean, thanks for bringing her back to town. Nobody else would’ve.”
“Sure.”
“But you bought yourself a whole passel of trouble, I’m afraid. You know that.”
“Yeah,” Clint said, “I probably did.”
Chapter Five
Clint got Eclipse situated at the livery, then got himself a hotel room. After that he walked to the café to meet young Tully, the undertaker.
“Are you alone, sir?” a waiter asked.
“No, I’m waiting for someone.”
“This way, then.”
“I’d prefer something near the back.”
“Sure.”
The waiter showed him to a back table and took his order for a cup of coffee. Clint still wanted a beer after coming off the trail, but that would have to wait until later.
He drank his coffee and waited for Tully to show up, all the while the target of curious glances from the other diners. After twenty minutes he started to get antsy.
“Leavin’, sir?” as Clint stood.
“I’ll be back,” Clint said. “I just want to go and look for my friend.”
“Okay, sir.”
Clint left the café and crossed over to the undertaker’s place. He tried the front door, found it locked. He thought about Tully being at his grandfather’s house, but he had passed quite a few houses on his way into town. Could he just start knocking on doors? Then he thought he heard a noise from inside. He peered in through the window, didn’t see anything, then he decided to check the back.
As he got around to the back of the building he saw a buckboard sitting there, and then two men came out the back door, carrying a body wrapped in a blanket—Clint’s blanket.
“Stop right there!” Clint shouted.
The reaction was instantaneous. They dropped the body to the ground and went for their guns, leaving no choice. He drew and fired, catching both men in the chest. They fell to the ground, one of them landing right on top of poor Aggie.
Then he heard more noise from inside, so he leaped over the bodies and ran through the back. He saw someone running through the curtained doorway. It was the time he got to the front room, and had gone out the front door.
He returned to the back room and found Tully tied up and shoved into a corner. He holstered his gun, then crouched down to untie the young man.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine!” Tully said. “I’m just mad I let them take me like that. They came in and before I knew what was going on, I was trussed up. Did they get the body?”
“No, it’s in the back. I had to kill two of them, though.”
“Good!” Tully said. “More business for me!”
~*~
By the time they got Aggie’s body back inside, there heard pounding on the front door, which Clint had closed and locked.
Tully answered, and admitted Sheriff Gaines.
“What the hell, Adams?” Gaines shouted. “Trouble, already?”
“Why is that a surprise, Sheriff?” Clint asked. “Everybody’s been telling me I’m going to have trouble.”
“Okay, so what happened?”
“Come with me.”
Clint led Gaines through the back and out the rear door, where the bodies were still lying.
“Jesus Christ!”
“They were coming out the back with Aggie’s body,” Clint said. “I called out for them to stop, and they went for their guns. I didn’t have a choice.”
“I should lock you up!” Gaines said.
“Wait a minute, Sheriff!” Tully shouted, joining them outside. “They broke into my place, tied me up and stole a body. And for all I know, they were gonna kill me before they left. Mr. Adams saved my life! You can’t lock him up for that.”
“And there was another man, who got away,” Clint said. “He’s going to tell his boss they didn’t succeed. Would that be Mr. Stoll, Sheriff?”
“I don’t know,” Gaines said. “How the hell would I?”
“Well, who else doesn’t want Aggie’s body in town?”
“Nobody wants her body in town!’ Gaines said.
“Well, look on the bright side,” Clint said.
“What’s that?” Gaines asked.
“You won’t need anybody to clean these bodies off the street and take them to the undertaker’s,” Clint said. “They’re already here.”
~*~
Gaines made Clint follow him to his office.
“Did you recognize those men?” Clint asked, when they got inside.
“Oh yeah,” Gaines said. “Korson and Deming. They did odd jobs around town,”
“Would they have been working for Mr. Stoll, these days?”
“Maybe.” Gaines took off his hat and fell into his chair. “What the hell am I gonna do with you?”
“You got deputies?”
“No,” Gaines said. “Jesus, we’ve got no saloons, no whorehouses, why would I need deputies?”
“In other words, this is a boring town.”
“A quiet town,” Gaines said. “You know, sometimes I wonder if Mr. Stoll has the right idea.”
“Sometimes?”
“Sometimes I just want a drink.” he took the bottle out of his desk again, held it up to Clint.
“No, thanks,” Clint said. “Is there anyplace I can get a beer?”
“The whole damned town is dry!’ Gaines complained. “And if Mr. Stoll has his way, it’ll be the whole county, soon.”
Gaines poured himself a drink, downed it, and put the bottle away.
“If the whole town’s dry, where’d you get the bottle?” Clint asked.
“I ain’t sayin’!”
“What do you want me to do now?”
“I want you to leave town,” Gaines said, “but you ain’t gonna do that, are you?”
“Afraid not,” Clint said, “at least, not til Aggie’s buried.”
“Jesus,” Gaines said, putting his hand over his face.
“Maybe,” Clint said, “I should go and talk to Mr. Stoll.”
Gaines jerked his hand away from his face and pointed at Clint.
“You stay away from him,” he said. “He’s got this whole town in his pocket.”
“Including you?”
“I told you,” Gaines said, “I wanna keep my job.”
“There’s got to be some people who haven’t gone over to his way of thinking,” Clint said.
“I’m sure there are,” Gaines said, “but they ain’t standin’ up to be counted.”
“Well, maybe they should.”
“You think you’re gonna get some people to back you against Stoll?”
“Who knows?”
Gaines rubbed his face and gave it some thought.
“Well,” he said, then, “considerin’ who you are, yeah, I guess ... who knows?”
“What about you, Sheriff?” Clint asked. “You ready to switch sides?”
“I’m on my own side, Adams,” Gaines said, “and that ain’t about to change any time soon.”
Chapter Six
Clint left the sheriff’s office and went back to the undertaker’s.
“I was wonderin’ if you were gonna come back,” Tully said. “I need help bring in those bodies in.”
“Let’s do it,” Clint said.
They went out the back, carried the bodies in and dumped them on another table.
“What are you going to do with them?” Clint asked.
“I’ll wait and see if anybody wants to come in and claim them,” Tully said. “If not, I’ll wrap them in burlap and send them all to Potter’s Field.”
Clint went to close and lock the back door, then joined Tully out front.
“What about that buckboard and horse out there?” Clint asked.
“I guess those are mine, now,” Tully said.
“Yeah,” Clint said, “I don’t suppose anybody would want to claim them, either.” He looked at Tully. “What about that meal?”
“I don’t think I can leave here,” Tully said.
“I can bring something back.”
“And I’ve got a bottle here,” Tully said. “You’re not going to get a drink in a café.”
“I guess I’ll have to eat something if I’m going to drink more whiskey,” Clint said. “That is, unless you know of someplace in town to get beer?”
“Like I told you,” Tully said, “We’ll have to make do with whiskey, for now.”
“Okay, then,” Clint said. “I’ll be back with some food.”
~*~
Clint returned to the café and ordered two steak dinners to take with him. The waiter hurried into the kitchen and came back quickly with two plates in a basket for Clint, along with a smaller basket of warm biscuits.
“There you go, Mr. Adams,” he said.
The waiter didn’t know who Clint was the first time he was in there, of that he was sure. So the word had obviously gotten around after the shooting. It sure hadn’t taken long.
“How much do I owe you?” Clint asked.
“Forget it, sir,” the waiter said. “On the house.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Clint took some money out and forced it on the waiter. “I pay my way.”
“Yessir, thank you, sir.”
“I suppose there’s silverware in here?”
“Oh, yessir!”
“Thanks.”
He left and made his way back to the undertaker’s, people on the street now giving him a wide berth.
“Here we go,” he said, entering. “Steak okay?”
“That’s great.”
Tully had pulled a rickety wooden table into the center of the room, and two chairs. They laid the food out, he poured two drinks, and they sat and began to eat.
~*~
After they finished eating Tully asked, “So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Clint said. “I’ve already gone too far to be able to just walk away. I killed two men.”
“Do we know if they were Mr. Stoll’s men?”
“We don’t know it, for sure,” Clint said, “but who else could they be working for?”
“I don’t know enough about Stoll to guess what he’ll do,” Tully said. “He’s a religious leader, of some sort. But beyond that ... ” He just shrugged.
“He’s got people under his spell,” Clint said. “That’s what it sounds like to me.”
“Closing up saloons and whorehouses, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” Tully said.
“No,” Clint said, “it doesn’t have to be. But if you ask me, it is. He�
�s taking people’s free will away from them. And what are we if we don’t have free will?”
Tully thought about it for a few moments, then asked, “Slaves?” with his eyebrows raised.
Clint nodded.
“And we fought a war for that,” Clint said.
“I was too young,” Tully said.
“Well I wasn’t,” Clint said. “I was just the right age.” He reflected a moment before asking, “Do you want me to stay here overnight?”
Tully thought about the offer, then said, “I don’t know. I mean, I have a gun here, but I don’t know if I’d be able to fight off a bunch of men came. I’m no gunman.”
“I tell you what,” Clint said. “I’ll get my things, check out and come back here. That way you can go home and get some sleep.”
“That sounds good,” Tully said.
“Do you have any other friends in town?” Clint asked. “Anyone else you might be able to count on?”
“I didn’t have a whole lot of friends when I left,” Tully said, “and now that Aggie’s dead, and my grandfather ... no, I’ve got nobody. Why?”
“We might be able to use some help.”
“Like ... from who? The sheriff?”
“That doesn’t seem likely,” Clint said, “but there have got to be some people here who don’t like what’s going on. People who don’t like Stoll, and what he’s done to this town.”
“We’d have to find them,” Tully said.
“Yeah,” Clint said, “that’s what we’d have to do, all right. Find them.”
Chapter Seven
Clint collected his belonging from the hotel, checked out and returned to the undertaker’s.
“I fixed up a cot for you,” Tully said. “My grandfather used to sleep on it.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Tully showed Clint to a small room with the cot in it. Clint dropped his saddlebags on the cot and set his rifle in a corner.
“You know, I was thinking about what you asked me,” the younger man said, “about other friends?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, he wasn’t exactly a friend, but I thought about Father Paul.”
“A priest?”
Tully nodded.
“The town priest,” Tully said. “He must’ve been crushed when Stoll closed the church down.”
“Is he still in town?”
“He is.”
“How do you know?”