“No. Today was fairly slow. What about you? Any . . . trouble?”
“Are you tryin’ to say something, ma’am?”
“Actually, yes. I heard you accepted money from the same men who tried to break that horse thief free. Word is that you accept money for a lot of things. Do you recall that time when my brother Matt couldn’t pay what he owed to one of those women at the Second Saloon?”
Wolpert smirked and said, “Yeah. Those girls put him into some hot water that night.”
“Yes, they did and it only took ten more dollars to get him out. He said you took the money and looked the other way rather than toss him into jail.”
“What would you have preferred?”
“I would have preferred the jail time,” she quickly replied. “At least that would have taught him to handle his affairs properly instead of adding one more misstep to the ones he’s already taken.”
Pressing his fingertips against his forehead, Wolpert closed his eyes and asked, “Can this wait for some other time?”
“No,” she snapped while approaching the desk. “You’ll hear what I have to say and if it hurts, you’ve only got yourself to blame for drinking too much.”
“Fair enough.”
“Matt spends a lot of time in one saloon and Dale spends his time in the other. Between the two of them, they hear just about everything that goes on in this town and see just about all of the folks who pass through. The gunmen who paid you to let Frank go aren’t happy that he’s dead.”
“So I heard.” Wolpert snapped his head up and rubbed a kink from his shoulder. “For a woman who didn’t even know where my office was a little while ago, you’re awfully concerned about my affairs.”
“Matt hears what’s going on and he told me he had a word with you. Then he told me you commenced to drinking right after you and he spoke. That’s a good way to get yourself killed, Sheriff, and I’d hate to see that happen to you.”
“Why? You never noticed me before, so why the hell would you care whether I live or die now?”
“I noticed you,” she told him. “I just never noticed that you were a good man until you shot that horse thief.”
In the span of a few seconds, several emotions made themselves known on his weathered features. Along with the initial confusion, there was also disbelief followed by varying shades of anger. “Killing another man makes me good? Either I’m drunker than I thought or you’ve got a mighty strange way of looking at things.”
“People say you accepted money for letting Frank go,” she explained. “You didn’t look surprised when I mentioned it, so I assume it’s true. If it is, there’s no reason for you to have shot him unless something else happened.”
Shifting his eyes before his guilt became too apparent, Wolpert said, “Maybe you shouldn’t believe everything you hear. Rumors are wicked things.”
“Considering what I heard from the Parkinson family that lives within a stone’s throw of the jail, I’m inclined to believe this rumor more than the rest.”
Wolpert cursed the nosy Mrs. Parkinson under his breath and rubbed his brow.
“Mrs. Parkinson says my name was brought up before the shooting,” Lucy explained. “She didn’t say anything else, but I think you were warning those men to stay away.” She quickly raised a hand and added, “Whether it’s true or not, just let me say what I came to say. I don’t know why I believe you’d protect me, but somehow I do. Call it woman’s intuition. Perhaps I’ve always seen something in your eyes whenever you look at me. Even if there wasn’t, I suppose there is a part of me that’s glad that horse thief is dead. I saw something in his eyes too and it wasn’t good. You did your duty, Sheriff. I appreciate it. Since most folks don’t have much to say to you, I thought I’d give you my thanks.”
“Well, thank you, Lucy.”
“It’s late, so I’ll be going. Please, just promise me you’ll take care of yourself.”
He nodded unconvincingly.
“I hope you do,” she said sincerely. “I’ll be thinking of you.”
It was a simple sentiment, and surely spoken with innocent intent, but it had a profound impact on the man who heard it. Even after Lucy Myles had left his office and closed the door, Wolpert was still mulling those words over in his head.
She’d be thinking of him.
If they’d been spoken by anyone else, the lawman wouldn’t have hung on to those words for more than a second. At best, he might have dismissed them with a wave or rattled off something else to put an end to an otherwise pointless conversation.
“How are you doing?” someone might ask.
The expected response was along the lines of “Good. And you?”
For some, the phrase “I love you” was reflexively followed by “I love you too.” Sheriff Wolpert knew about that reflex all too well. After being married for several years past the point where it stopped being a good idea, he and his wife were both guilty of tossing those words about like pennies at a high-stakes card game. They didn’t mean much under the circumstances and didn’t make a dent in either player’s outcome.
But for some reason, the possibility that Lucy might be thinking of him at some later date stuck with Sheriff Wolpert. Perhaps he liked the notion of someone in town associating his name with something other than a means to an end or a sham with a badge pinned to its chest.
Or perhaps he knew he’d be thinking of her too.
If he concentrated, he could still hear her saying those words. In the years that he’d been living in Sedley, he’d watched Lucy go about her business more times than he could count. He’d seen her at the livery, making her rounds to the stores, going to and from her home. For his first few months in town, he’d been living with Jane as husband and wife. After that fell apart, he had to conduct himself as if he were still a family man. When that disguise became too thin to maintain, he’d just wanted to distance himself from every soul in the world. From then on, approaching another woman, even one as fine as Lucy Myles, didn’t make much sense.
He had jobs to do.
Everyone knew how he got them done.
The town tolerated him and the rest of the county didn’t give a damn if he lived or died. When those things created the sum of a man, what difference would one woman make?
That difference seemed a whole lot bigger when he knew that woman would be thinking of him. Suddenly, carrying on the way he had with no regard for himself or his duties seemed like a bigger crime than all the ones he’d let pass. If someone like Lucy thought highly enough of him, it seemed only fitting to be worthy of her notice.
“What the hell is wrong with me?” he snarled while hauling himself to his feet and stomping toward the door.
Lucy hadn’t pulled it shut tightly enough and the night’s chill was seeping in like water through the hull of an old boat. Upon reaching the door, Wolpert grabbed the handle, opened it and held it in place. The cold air washed over him, cutting all the way through his muscles to chill the blood coursing through his veins. He stood there until the innermost part of him was cold as a snake’s skin. Pulling in a deep breath was akin to sticking his head into an icy lake. Wolpert’s eyes snapped open and the fire that the whiskey had stoked inside him was promptly snuffed.
“That’s better,” he sighed.
Outside, all he could see was the snow-encrusted wall of the building next to Fancy’s. Even as the wind started to hurt the unprotected skin of his face and hands, Wolpert lingered to savor it. Something about the stark cold made the world quieter. It gave the wind purpose and forced folks to leave the night to those who were equipped to handle it. If he closed his eyes, the sheriff thought he could hear a branch rustle from the trees growing alongside the road two miles outside town.
The headache caused by the liquor spiked from one side of his skull to another, and still the quiet was worth the pain. Wolpert savored the calm for as much as he could bear it because he knew it wouldn’t last much longer.
Chapter 5
It wa
s early evening the next day when a man rode into town on a light gray horse. His clothes were dirty from his time in the saddle, but he sat tall and surveyed the street with eyes that darted within an unmoving head. Besides the gun strapped around his waist, he carried two rifles that hung from boots on either side of his saddle. Folks took notice of him the way they would notice any stranger arriving into Sedley, but they held their tongues and averted their eyes until he’d passed. Even after that, they were reluctant to chatter.
It wasn’t Burt Sampil’s first time in Sedley. Normally, he arrived when there was less daylight falling upon his gaunt, clean-shaven face. The few times he’d arrived at an earlier hour, he’d circled around to the back of the saloons and entered that way. For a man with such a large price on his head, discretion outweighed convenience for nearly every aspect of his existence.
He reined his horse to a stop just shy of the hitching posts outside the First Saloon. One of the plainer houses between it and the livery had a rail in front of its porch and Burt snapped his reins around that within seconds after his boots hit the dirt. He flung his jacket open as if to welcome the biting cold and stomped up the short set of steps that led to the house’s front door. Before he could knock, Cade pulled it open for him.
“You’re a day early,” Cade said.
“That a problem?”
“No, I just thought—”
“Where’s Frank?”
Cade stopped short, seemingly unable to get his mouth to form another sentence. After taking a gulp of air, he said, “Frank’s dead.”
Burt peeled off his coat and threw it onto the chair just inside the front room where Tom was dozing. “I know that! I mean, where’s he buried? He should have been carrying something.”
“Oh, you mean the pouch from those saddlebags? I got it right here.”
Rolling his eyes disparagingly, Burt gritted his teeth and had nearly ground them down to nubs by the time Cade returned with a pouch that looked just big enough to carry a boy’s supply of marbles. “I went back for it while Frank was in jail. One of the livery owner’s brothers was there and he’s a lot easier to get past than—”
“Than what?” Burt snapped. “A woman?” Since Cade didn’t have an answer to that, Burt snatched the pouch from his hand. He weighed it quickly and pressed it between his thumb and fingers. There was only one small item in the pouch, so he didn’t feel the need to open it. “This was supposed to be done quietly.”
Juan appeared from a back room, tucking his shirt into his trousers while a dark-skinned woman struggled to make herself presentable behind him. “It was quiet,” he assured Burt. “Nobody but that one liveryman knows we went back.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. With all the fuss made when Frank went, it don’t matter what happened after.” Burt removed his hat and ran the palm of his hand over the thinning section of hair on top of his head. When he made a second pass, he pressed hard enough to make a bald spot. “Where’d you find the pouch?”
“It was with the gear that came along with those horses from Omaha,” Juan explained. “Cade arranged for us to slip in and I got it. The liveryman don’t even know anything is missing.”
“And it was just the one pouch?”
That question caused every other face to drop. The only one to maintain their calm was the woman. She seemed more anxious to get out of the little house than take part in whatever was going on inside of it.
Finally, one of the men spoke up before they caught hell for keeping their mouths shut. “Yeah, Burt,” Cade said. “It was just one pouch. That’s all Frank said he was after.”
“How many horses were there?”
“Two.”
Burt stalked forward, shoved Juan aside and grabbed the woman by the hair. Now that she was pulled out of the dark room and into the light, the golden color of her hair could be seen. Her cheeks were flushed and she grabbed on to Burt’s wrist with both of her slender hands. Even when she dug her nails into his arm, she didn’t come close to breaking his grip. When he spoke again, it was through a tightly clenched jaw. Suddenly, Burt seemed more like an animal when he snarled, “Who’s this one, then?”
Although he knew better than to try and put his hand on Burt, Juan rushed forward to insinuate himself as much between the other man and the woman as possible. “Just some whore I brought in for the night.”
“You know her any better than that?”
“Yeah, Burt. She’s my regular girl. We go way back.”
She hung on to his wrist loosely, trying more to alleviate some of the pressure than make a futile attempt at escape. “You know me,” she said. “The last time you were here . . . we were together.”
Burt’s eyes narrowed and his lip curled back as if he was trying to display a set of fangs. “I remember you,” he said. “Stayed with me the entire time, right?”
Her head moved up and down as much as his grip on her hair would allow.
“Kept your mouth shut that I was here. Otherwise, I would have heard about it.”
She didn’t say anything and didn’t make a move in hopes that he’d let her go and forget she’d even been in the house. Instead, Burt drew the .44 Smith & Wesson from his holster and pressed the end of the barrel against her forehead. “Or maybe you said something to that barkeep,” he snarled. “You know the one I mean?”
“N-no. There’re lots of barkeeps. I—I don’t . . .”
Juan placed a hand on Burt’s shoulder, but stepped to one side so he wasn’t an easy target. “She knows better than that,” he assured him.
“Then she should’ve known better than to be here!”
“You weren’t supposed to be here!” Juan said. He glanced back and forth between Burt and Cade. Tom had stood to watch the proceedings, but wasn’t inclined to join them. “Isn’t that right, Cade? Tell him!”
“No,” Burt snapped. “I want her to tell me. Go on, honey. Tell me what I want to hear. Tell me the truth now and I can at least know whether or not your word is worth anything. If you did speak out of turn that other time, I need to know where I can show my face around here. Comprende?”
He let go of her hair, eased the side of that hand along her cheek and cinched his fingers around her throat, leaving just enough room for her to breathe. Sweat had begun trickling down her face and body, soaking into the wrinkled slip she wore. “This is important,” Burt whispered while easing the gun away from her forehead. He lowered the weapon just long enough for her to draw breath and then jammed it against her chest directly over her heart.
“I didn’t say anything to anyone!” she yelped. “I don’t know how to prove it, but I didn’t. I swear! Ask anyone and they’ll—they won’t tell you anything because I didn’t—Oh God!”
And like a ray of sunlight cracking through an unexpected hole in the clouds, Burt’s storm passed. He lowered the .44 and stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “That’s good enough for me, honey. If you’re steady enough to keep lying through all of that, we wouldn’t stand a chance against you anyway.” Turning to Juan, he added, “You always did know how to pick ’em.”
The woman didn’t seem to know if she should be relieved yet or not. She inched her way back toward the room from which she’d come and hurried all the way in as soon as she was out of Burt’s reach.
“So,” Juan said, “you knew about Frank?”
“Word travels fast,” Burt explained. “I heard that ol’ Frank was put in the ground. Why don’t you tell me the rest? Oh, and be thorough.”
Glancing nervously toward the room and the woman who had just been terrorized by Burt’s line of questioning, Juan got all his thoughts in a row so he could spool them out in proper order.
A few hours later, the wind had died down enough so that the only sounds were the restless shuffling of a few unlucky horses tied to posts along the street and the rapping of knuckles against a door. The knocking echoed down the street and along the trail leading away from town without stirring so much as a hint of a
reply. It came from the front door of a small cabin in the cluster of nicer homes near the shops. The place faced out toward the rear end of town as if it had been exiled there so as not to detract from the dwellings nearby. The man who stood on the rickety porch could turn around, look out from the top step and see nothing but open prairie while the rest of Sedley was in the cabin’s back lot.
Burt stood on the porch with his head down so his hat covered the upper portion of his face and cast a shadow from the moonlight to obscure the rest. With his long coat bundled and collar up, he could have been anyone that had wandered in from parts unknown. While his efforts would have been enough to fool just about anyone, they weren’t enough to fool the man who owned the cabin.
“What the hell do you want, Burt?” Sheriff Wolpert asked as he stepped around the cabin from the side that faced the shopping district.
Burt stuffed the hand he’d been using to knock into his coat pocket. The other hand had already slipped through a slit in the pocket to rest upon his holstered Smith & Wesson. “Damn, I wish I knew how you walk so softly. You must have cat’s feet.”
“Working with you has given me a lot of practice at sneaking around. State your business and be quick about it. My head’s about to split apart.”
“Surely you’ve been expecting me.”
“Yeah, but not until tomorrow.” Wolpert climbed onto the edge of his porch without using the steps. The warped boards groaned under his weight. If not for the uneven slope that led up to the cabin, he would have pulled up the porch completely. In deference to a few of the town’s burrowing rodents, he left it in place.
“Are you gonna invite me in?”
“If you’re here to pay me back for what happened to Frank, we might as well do it out here,” Wolpert replied. “Shorter distance to drag the body.”
“Mine?” Burt sneered. “Or yours?” After a few seconds passed, he grunted, “How about neither? If I came to kill you, I wouldn’t have taken the chance of you sneakin’ up on me.”
Ralph Compton Rusted Tin Page 5