by Bill Dugan
A tall order.
In the back room, a sack of beans draped over his shoulder, Morgan was clinging to a ladder when he heard the first scream. A piercing shriek, it sounded more like a bird cry than a human voice, a screaming eagle, or an angry hawk. He shrugged it off, even when a deeper voice responded. Neither was intelligible, and he was getting curious. By the time he reached the floor, a full-blown argument was in progress. A man and a woman venting some inexpressible spleen, maybe the ultimate war between the genders.
Probably sex somewhere in the bottom of that barrel, he thought, as he dropped the beans on a sack of flour. The bottom sack cushioned the blow and spewed a great cloud of powdery dust. Morgan coughed, and clapped his hands free of the flour residue as he walked to the door.
Already he could see a crowd gathering in the street. The men were laughing, the women talking among themselves and pretending not to look. When he reached the doorway, he saw the antagonists. A woman in a slip and bare feet stood on the open second-floor porch of The Hangin’ Tree Hotel. My hotel, he thought. She was gesticulating at a cowhand in the street, who kept shaking his head, pointing and shouting something in no language Morgan had ever heard. But he understood it, all the same.
People were beginning to treat the argument like a theatrical performance, even clapping after a particularly histrionic exchange. As near as anyone could make out, the woman, whose name apparently was Marlene, felt she was entitled to compensation for certain services of an intimate nature she had rendered to the cowhand. For his part, the cowhand, a man known only as McKay, refused to pay on the grounds of incompetence in the delivery of said services.
As the nature of the dispute became more widely appreciated, the men laughed louder, and the women started to drift away. The latter talked among themselves, raising their own voices to drown out the argument.
Morgan leaned against the roof column to the left of the door. He spotted Henessey in the crowd, who saw him and waved, a grin splitting his face into unequal portions from ear to ear. He gestured for Morgan to join him, but Morgan refused.
He was getting ready to go on back inside when he spotted Brett Kinkaid leaning out of the marshal’s office door.
Morgan cupped his hands and shouted, “Lyle, shut him up, quick.”
Henessey turned. It was obvious he hadn’t understood and Morgan started off the porch, pointing down the street toward Kinkaid, who was outside now, standing with hands on hips and shaking his head.
Henessey got the point at once, and bullied his way through the crowd. Draping an arm around McKay, he tried to drag the cowboy away, but it only seemed to heighten the intensity of his passion. McKay broke free, turned long enough to plant a stiff arm, with open palm, in the middle of Lyle’s chest and shove him away. The crowd parted like waves around the prow of a ship, then closed again as Lyle stumbled and fell at the rear of the throng.
Morgan stepped off the boardwalk as Kinkaid started up the street. Henessey was struggling back through the crowd again, but no one but Morgan and Lyle seemed to realize what was about to happen, what would certainly happen unless someone could shut McKay up and get him off the street. Even then, Morgan knew, it might be difficult to convince Kinkaid to let it alone. But if McKay was still shouting when the marshal reached him, it would be altogether impossible.
Henessey managed to break through the front edge of the milling circle. Morgan was at the back of the crowd now. Lyle snaked a thick arm around McKay’s neck and yanked him backward. The cowboy turned again and caught Henessey on the jaw with an uppercut that staggered the older man and sent him reeling. Marlene shrieked even louder, whether for Henessey to mind his own business or for McKay to leave the storekeeper alone wasn’t clear.
The words “leave him alone” hung in the air, but no one except Marlene seemed to know to whom they referred and to whom they had been addressed. McKay didn’t care. Glad to have an adversary he could deal with on more familiar and more direct terms, he swung at Henessey again. He bore in with his arms flailing, but he was three sheets to the wind and the punches sailed harmlessly wide as Henessey charged forward with his head lowered.
McKay tripped and fell and Henessey, too much a gentleman to press his advantage, stood circling until a boot caught him in the groin and he doubled over and fell to his knees, vomiting all over McKay’s legs.
Morgan broke through the crowd and hauled Henessey out of reach of another kick. He had his back to the cowboy when something caught him on the side of the head. He went down hard, and realized McKay had cracked him with his pistol barrel. Morgan lay there staring up at the blue sky, his head spinning. He was aware of a warm trickle down the side of his head, the sticky moisture puddling in his right ear.
Then everything went black.
Kinkaid was at the back of the crowd now, and the men started to back away as he shoved on through. McKay, still blissfully unaware of the marshal’s arrival, and geared up enough that he might not have cared if he had known, tucked his gun away and turned back to his original adversary. Marlene had a better vantage point, and she stood with her knuckles crammed between her painted lips.
It finally dawned on McKay that something was wrong. He whirled in a circle once, then again before his eyes lit on Kinkaid. He was drunk, but not so drunk he couldn’t realize he had dug himself a very deep hole. The marshal walked past the cowboy and stood under the porch of the hotel. He pointed at Marlene and told her to go inside.
Tom Atwater was stepping out of the dry goods store next door to the hotel as Kinkaid pulled his shiny silk jacket back off his hip. He saw Morgan on the ground, Henessey bent over him, and Kinkaid walking toward McKay. The cowboy unbuckled his gunbelt and let it fall as Kinkaid took another step and then another.
“You going to regret that, boy,” the marshal said.
“I don’t want no trouble, Marshal,” McKay said. He dropped his gun in the dirt, then backed away, holding his arms out as if to ward off the menace approaching him.
“Too late for that, boy. Trouble already arrived. You’re lookin’ at him.”
“Leave him alone, Kinkaid,” Henessey shouted. “He dropped his gun. Just lock him up until he’s sober.”
“Henessey, you are fat and you are an old man. I don’t need any advice from a shopkeeper,” he said. Then turning to McKay, “Pick it up, boy.”
“No, sir.”
“Pick it up. You brought it to town, use the damn thing.”
“No, sir, I won’t do that.”
“You might as well, boy.”
McKay hesitated. He started to bend.
“Don’t do it!” Henessey shouted. “He’ll kill you.”
McKay looked at him. His light blue eyes looked like two huge cornflowers. They bugged out of his face, and beads of sweat coalesced on his forehead and ran down into them. He blinked, trying to unblur his vision as he stared at Henessey, then at the gun and finally at Marshal Kinkaid.
“Pick it up!”
McKay licked his lips and started to bend again.
Tom saw the movement and he saw Kinkaid’s fingers uncurl. He launched himself through the air as McKay backed up a step and Kinkaid lowered his hand toward the Colt on his hip. Tom hit him just above the kidneys, driving a shoulder in hard and sending Kinkaid sprawling.
The marshal cursed as he sprawled in the dust. He sat up as Tom got to his feet. He looked up at the young man and his lips curled back in a smile. “Well, well, well,” he said. “Son, you have just bought yourself a world of trouble.”
Kinkaid climbed to his feet and brushed the yellow dust from his jacket. “Looks like you’re gonna get to see the inside of our little jail, Atwater.”
Morgan groaned and tried to sit up. Henessey was bent over him trying to wake him up, but Morgan was only dimly aware of what was going on. He shook his head and braced himself on Henessey’s shoulder. But his head was spinning and he fell back in the dirt as Kinkaid pulled his gun.
Henessey heard the scrape of metal on leath
er and leaped to his feet. He grabbed Kinkaid by the arm and said, “Leave him be, Kinkaid. All he did was stop you from killing an unarmed man. You may be the law in Cross Creek, but that ain’t a crime, and you ain’t gonna be the law much longer.”
Kinkaid smiled. “You got to work that out with Tate Crimmins, Lyle. You know that,” he said. Gesturing with his gun, he directed Tom to walk to his office.
“You hurt that boy and I’ll see you pay for it, Kinkaid.”
The marshal didn’t even bother to glance over his shoulder.
Henessey worked feverishly to rouse Morgan, and when he couldn’t, grabbed a couple of men and brought him into the store. He moistened a towel in the horse trough in the alley beside his store and after a few minutes, Morgan regained consciousness.
He was only vaguely aware of where he was, but he knew by the look on Henessey’s face that something was wrong. As his head cleared, he remembered seeing Tom step out of the doorway of the dry goods shop, and he remembered seeing Kinkaid push through the crowd.
“Dammit, Morgan, wake up.” Henessey screamed it at him, and he jerked his head away, aggravating the already severe headache that threatened to split his skull in two.
“Kinkaid’s got Tom,” he said. “We got to go get him out of jail.”
“Help me up, Lyle, dammit. Help me up.” Morgan got to his feet and went down on one knee almost immediately.
“You come as soon as you can. I got to get down there,” Henessey said.
Chapter 18
AS TOM WAS PUSHED toward the jail, prodded in the back by Kinkaid’s gun barrel, he kept glancing over his shoulder. The crowd seemed confused by what was happening. McKay stood on the front edge, holding his face in his hands and shaking. Some of the others took a few tentative steps after the marshal and his prisoner, but Kinkaid whirled on them, waved the pistol, and shouted, “You all go home.”
He pointed the big Colt first at one, then another, and then a third. No one wanted to die. And no one on the street, least of all Tom Atwater, doubted that Kinkaid would shoot. The marshal was very close to the edge, and a single footstep might send him over the edge. If he went, and everyone seemed to understand this, he would drag others with him. He couldn’t kill them all, they knew that, but no one wanted to be the first.
Tom was looking for Morgan. He had lost sight of him as he went down, and never did see him again. Then, when Henessey bulled his way through the crowd, Tom saw Morgan’s limp body suspended like a side of beef and he stopped. Kinkaid saw it and he turned.
When he turned back, he smiled. “Your old man don’t look so high and mighty now, does he?”
Tom stared at him, and Kinkaid stuck his face forward, “Does he?” There was some indescribable hatred in Kinkaid and it was reflected in every muscle and sinew and tendon. It was as if a human skin had been shed and something venomous and ugly had been born.
Knowing what Kinkaid wanted to hear, he shook his head gently. “No,” he said, “he doesn’t.”
“Funny, ain’t it, how he come back here and I come here, and now lookit what’s happened. We are gonna have to settle this, you know. Me and him.” Kinkaid shook his head, as if in amazement. “We surely are gonna have to settle it. Almost enough to give a man religion, you know that?”
Tom couldn’t help himself. “Religion? You must be joking.”
Kinkaid lashed out with the pistol. The gun caught Tom on the cheek under the left eye, and the lead sight opened a gash an inch long. He fell to his knees, but wouldn’t give Kinkaid the satisfaction of reaching up to touch the wound.
“Get up!”
Tom struggled to his feet. He stumbled and fell, then got up again. Kinkaid kicked him and Tom rolled over, then scrambled to his feet. He started to charge Kinkaid, saw the gun, and looked into the black hole of the barrel. He was trembling. He wanted to kill Kinkaid, and wanted to run as far and as fast as he could.
But he could do neither. Again he looked up the street. The crowd had thinned, and the handful of onlookers just stood mute as statues staring after the marshal.
“Don’t be lookin’ for help, Atwater,” Kinkaid said. “There ain’t no help. You think anybody in this shithole of a town is going to come and save you? No way.”
He poked Tom in the ribs with the gun, and for one rapturous second, Tom saw himself grabbing the gun and turning it on his tormentor. But it would never work. And he thought of his mother. Who would help her? Morgan? Maybe, and if Kinkaid killed him, then what?
He stumbled backward toward the jail. Every couple of steps he felt the hard barrel of the Colt slam into his spine. It was like Kinkaid wanted him to run, or to strike back. At the entrance to the marshal’s office, Kinkaid brought the barrel down hard on Tom’s shoulders. Something cracked, like a dry branch snapping off, and searing pain flashed all through the shoulder. His arm went limp.
“Up, watch your step, sonny boy. Don’t want you to get hurt.” Kinkaid laughed, shoving him toward the boardwalk. He missed the step and fell, rolling his body to the side to avoid landing on the injured shoulder. The impact was enough. He cried out and rolled onto his back. Kinkaid grabbed him by the bad arm and pulled him to his feet. Tom thought the arm was coming off, it hurt so much.
Kinkaid shoved him through the door, and his shoulder slammed into the door frame. He bounced off, and a wave of white light washed over him. He couldn’t see anymore, and he couldn’t hear. All he could do was feel, and the pain was everything. He staggered into the office blinking his eyes, one hand, the right, partly extended for obstacles he couldn’t see, the other curled protectively over his broken collarbone.
The white light gradually disappeared, and he could see the office, materializing out of the brilliant void like a photograph he had once seen developed in Warren Brewster’s newspaper office. But seeing things didn’t change them.
Kinkaid shoved him into the cell block, then kicked him in the lower back. The impact sent him spinning and he crashed into the stone wall at the far end and slipped to the floor. Kinkaid opened the last cell door, then holstered his Colt. He grabbed Tom under the arms and hauled him into the cell.
“Get up, you little bastard,” he screamed. “Get up!”
Tom reached out for support, grabbed the pallet-mattressed cot and was halfway up when Kinkaid kicked him again. This one broke his nose and he went down and lay there, afraid to move. He heard the cell door slam, then the heavy jangle of a key ring. When the key ground in the lock, he knew it was only going to get worse, a lot worse, before it got a little better.
He was bleeding from the gash on his face and from his broken nose. The pain was so intense he couldn’t stand the thought of movement. But he had to. He crawled up onto the cot, using his one good arm, and rolled onto his back. Covering his eyes with one hand, he felt his consciousness slipping away.
And he was thankful.
Kinkaid stood in the cell-block doorway, his back to the office, and watched Tom for a few minutes. It won’t be long now, he thought. He can’t overlook this. Aloud, he said, “Mr. Morgan Atwater, we are about to get our business done. Yessiree, we are about to get our business done.”
He backed through the doorway, still staring at Tom’s motionless form, and closed the door. Conscious of his role, he sat behind his desk, but had difficulty arranging his limbs comfortably. They seemed to have lives of their own. One leg kept jumping, his toe patting the floor irregularly. He looked at the leg, willing it to stop and, when it refused, pushed down on it with his right hand.
His left hand lay on the desk, its fingers wriggling like spider legs as he drummed the wood with his fingertips. He sucked his teeth and stared at the front door. Sooner or later, he knew, someone would come through that door. He hoped it would be Morgan Atwater. He had to come, now. And if not, well, he still had the bait. He would come, sooner or later.
He was watching the sunlit strip of dirt in the naked street, expecting a shadow, something, some warning that the last stage was about to begin. But
when the shadow appeared, it was not Morgan Atwater’s. It was too bulky for that, too rounded, like an oil stain in the dust.
Then he saw Lyle Henessey’s fat face peer around the corner. He didn’t look happy, but that was alright. He didn’t really give a damn what Lyle Henessey thought. The burly storekeeper stepped into the office, his bulk filling the doorway.
“Where’s Tommy Atwater?” Henessey asked.
Here it comes, Kinkaid thought. He leaned back in the chair and propped his booted feet on the desk. The chair creaked while he decided what to say.
“You heard me,” Henessey demanded. “Where is he?”
“Who wants to know?”
“I do. I’m here, and I’m asking. I want to know.”
“Not his father? His father don’t give a damn? Seems unnatural.”
“Damn you, Kinkaid, where is he? I want to see him.”
“He’s in back. In jail. Where he belongs. Don’t think he’s up to visitors, though. Hell, I’m not sure criminals ought to have visitors in the first place.”
“That boy don’t belong in jail, Kinkaid. He didn’t do anything.”
“The hell he didn’t. Jumped me when my back was turned. Stopped me from doing my job. That’s against the law.”
“There is no law here. You stopped doing your job a long time ago. Now, let him go.”
Kinkaid shook his head. “Can’t do it, Lyle.”
“You’d better.”
“Or what? What happens if I don’t let him go, Lyle? You going to make me? Is that it?”
“Your days in Cross Creek are about up, Kinkaid. We already sent a telegram to the capital. You can leave now and go on your way, or you can wait around for the federal marshal to take you away. Either way, you’re gone. And I don’t give a good goddamn which way it is.”
“Maybe I’ll just wait for the marshal. In the meantime, I might have a little talk with Mr. Crimmins.”
“Tate Crimmins won’t help you, Kinkaid. He sent the damned telegram.”