The man said: “You believe it now?”
“I believe,” McAllister said, “that is gold. I believe it’s in your hand.”
“So you refuse to come with us?”
“Not necessarily. I’ll go for wages. Put in my hand each day.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred dollars a month.”
They looked aghast. They were not men who earned large sums of money. Thirty dollars a month was the most they ever dreamed of.
Ignacio spread his hands in despair. “Where would we hope to find such money?”
McAllister said: “You offered me twenty thousand.”
“But that is if we reach the gold.”
“Maybe you won’t reach the gold.” Emilio said, after doing a rapid sum in his head: “Say thirty days to the month. That means we give you each day … oh, let us say six dollars a day and keep it simple.”
McAllister said: “All right.”
An elderly cousin, who had sat in the corner without a word so far, said: “We shall discuss this amongst ourselves. You shall not wait long for our reply, señor.”
His voice was cold. McAllister knew they felt as if he had betrayed them. What the hell, he thought. Why do Mexicans take one look at me and trust me? Why can’t they simply suspect me like they do every other Anglo?
Emilio looked at him in a way that dismissed all the good talk and quiet drinks they’d had together. He was just another gringo on the make. There could be no more jokes together about him being a gringo and Emilio a greaser.
He said: “You know where to find me.”
When he reached the doorway, Charlie called after him in English: “McAllister.” McAllister turned. “What you just heard is private.”
“Sure ”
“Not a word.”
“My word on it.”
That seemed to satisfy them. They knew his word was good. And somehow that made the situation a little easier for him. He walked through the stifling heat of Mex town. A little girl, the flies black on a cut in her arm, howled because a stray dog had stolen something she was eating. Her mother came and drove the dog away, scooped up the child and carried her down a narrow side-alley. The dog swallowed hard, sat in the dust and scratched itself luxuriously.
McAllister thought—that was the way life went. No matter what, somebody got hurt.
He reached his hotel: the Bighton House. Proprietor: Ma Bighton who owned the place, a lot of fat and a fairly thick black moustache. She was unlovely and unloved. Once some man had thought enough of her to marry her. Or was it her cooking that attracted him? It was superb. Not only that, the beds here were good and minus fleas and other unauthorized inhabitants. Her hired help, little Maise Lou, was sitting on the stairs picking her nose.
“You’ll give yourself indigestion,” McAllister told her and passed upwards. His room was airless, so he left the door open, kicked his boots off and lay on the bed. He felt the whiskey bottle, extracted it from his pocket, pulled the cork with his teeth and took down a good mouthful. He put the bottle on the floor, lay back and closed his eyes.
Three
When he woke, the room was in darkness.
He thought with some satisfaction that he must have slept several hours. That was good—now he could make a night of it.
Very near him a voice said: “You awake?”
McAllister thought about that voice. It was no more than a whisper, but he thought he knew it. He thought about his gun and knew he would never reach it. It hung from the back of the chair by the side of the bed and he would have to turn and stretch back to get at it.
“Sure,” he said, “I’m awake.”
The voice said, still speaking softly: “You know who this is?”
“Sure.”
“Well, there’s another one like me between the door and the window. We both hold guns. Got it?”
“Just.”
“McAllister, we ain’t funnin’. You’d best believe it.”
“I believe it.”
“Good. Now, you get off the bed. On the window side.” That showed McAllister that the man knew where his gun was. “Then you light the lamp. When that’s done, I’ll tell you what you do next.”
McAllister decided that their eyes were accustomed to the dark and that they could see him lying on the bed. He looked down and found that he could see his feet fairly clearly. Both men were in shadow. They had a complete advantage. So he swung his legs over the left side of the bed and stood up.
“I’m takin’ out a lucifer,” he said.
“Go ahead.”
He struck the match on the seat of his pants, held it high, raised the chimney of the lamp on the bureau, lit the wick, turned it down and dropped the funnel into place. The light glistened on the badges of the two men. He blew the match out and dropped it on the floor.
“Now what?”
The man on the far side of the bed threw McAllister’s boots on to the bed. “Put them on.” McAllister sat on the bed and pulled on a boot. He reached out and touched the whiskey bottle standing on the floor.
The man between the window and the door said: “Don’t.” McAllister pulled on the other boot and stood up to stamp his feet home. He turned and took a look at the man on the far side of the bed.
Sheriff Mark Southern. Thirty-five years old, literate, Protestant and come from Ohio via Texas and New Mexico. Came into the country with a freighting outfit as a mule-skinner. Bought a wagon and went into business for himself. A nice manner with the ladies and political ambitions. Saw himself as an all-male, red-blooded American man for whom women and honest men should be grateful. There had been some accusations that his votes had been rigged. Nobody took much notice of that; such accusations usually flew. He was nicely dressed and he carried himself well. McAllister had a few drinks with him whenever he was in town.
The other man was Harold Tully. McAllister had known him in Montana as Jack Gray and in Colorado as Jim Priest. He had served as a town marshal in Kansas and had stolen horses in Idaho. McAllister was not surprised to see him wearing a badge. The dividing line between the law officer and the lawless was often not very wide. Maybe he made a good deputy. He could use a gun and he was a hard man with plenty of grit—which was what mattered in a place like Crewsville. He would take drunken diggers, trigger-happy cowboys and gamblers with their hide-away guns in his stride. He probably enjoyed the life.
“Did you get around to tellin’ me what this is about?”
Mark Southern stood up and said: “Time enough for that when we get down at the office.”
Tully rose and opened the door. He said: “You keep three good paces behind me, Rem.”
“Keno.”
McAllister followed him down the stairs. The hired girl was sitting behind the desk in the lobby sucking her thumb. She was reading a dime novel very slowly. She looked up briefly and said: “Hello, Mr. Tully. Hello, Mr. McAllister. Hello, sheriff.”
They all told her hello as they passed her. Then they were out on the street, stumbling a little on the iron hard ruts in the semi-darkness. Tully angled across the street towards the light burning in the county sheriff’s office. There were few people about. They stopped and stared when they saw the drawn guns in the hands of the lawmen. One or two asked: “What happened, sheriff?” and tried to follow, but Southern cut them short and told them to keep away.
When they reached the office, McAllister found that there were two people there. One was Lancaster, the second deputy. The other was a tired-looking girl with a thin face and large eyes. Her hair was nondescript and needed tidying. She looked as if life had batted her around for a good few years. McAllister did not know her. She sat on a bench against the wall and she had her hands pressed together between her thighs.
Tully turned and faced McAllister.
Lancaster asked: “Any trouble?”
“No,” said the sheriff. He said to the girl: “Well?” He habitually used a smooth and gentle tone with women, but he didn’t use it now.<
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She had fixed her large eyes on McAllister when he entered and she still gazed at him intently.
“It’s him,” she said.
Southern said to the second deputy: “Write down that she recognized the prisoner as the man in question. Get her to sign it.”
The girl took her gaze from McAllister’s face. She scratched her leg and then twisted her fingers together. McAllister had seen plenty like her.
The deputy sat behind the desk and scratched away with a pen for a couple of minutes, his tongue out of the side of his mouth. Writing did not come easy. When he was through, he said: “Don’t you go thinkin’ that’s my best writin’ now. I can do better’n that on a good day. Come an’ sign it here.” The girl walked across the office and then looked at Lancaster in a kind of frozen embarrassment. In disgust, the deputy said: “For the love of God, don’t you go a-tellin’ me you can’t write.” She shook her head and kept it down to hide her face. She was blushing. The redness started at the base of her neck and crept up. “Make your sign then.” He said to the sheriff: “I natcherly don’t care for signs. How about you, sheriff? It don’t seem … well … it ain’t the same as real writin’ like.”
The girl found it difficult even to make the sign. Then the deputy wrote below it and placed the pen carefully on the desk. The sheriff said: “You can go now.”
She looked at all their faces, then hurried from the office.
McAllister pulled a face and said: “Christ, Mark, can’t you do better than this?”
“It’s good enough,” the sheriff said. “This’ll see you to the pen.”
“Wouldn’t a murder have been more thorough? Then you could of hanged me.”
Southern said with an almost genuine surprise: “You didn’t commit a murder, did you?”
“What am I supposed to of done to that girl?”
“Rape.”
“Rape! Good God, nobody’d believe it.”
Southern said: “They’ll believe it. There’s witnesses.”
“There would be.”
The sheriff circled his desk and sat behind it. He put his fingertips together and said: “Now you listen to me, Rem. You behave yourself and it won’t go hard with you. You play your usual kind of fool and we’ll make you wish you’d never been born.”
“That sounds fair enough,” said McAllister.
“I think so.”
“Do I get a lawyer?”
“Of course, what kind of an office do you think I run? You’ll get all your rights as a citizen allow you. First thing in the morning, I’ll have a lawyer in here.”
The two deputies looked disappointed. Southern said: “Put him in a cell, boys. Don’t get near him. This son-of-a-bitch has broken out of more jails than you’ve had hot dinners.”
Tully said: “A tough one, huh?” and laughed. “What if he tries to make a break?”
“You shoot him. If you kill him, it’ll save the county money.”
McAllister said: “I always knew you were too good to be true, Mark, but I didn’t think you’d run to this.”
“You live and learn. All right, boys.” Lancaster pointed his gun at McAllister’s belly and said: “Walk ahead, Rem.”
McAllister went to the door at the rear of the office and opened it. The stench of unwashed bodies and urine hit him in the face. He recoiled for a moment then went ahead. There were two cell doors of solid oak facing him. He tried one and it was locked. When he pushed the other, it swung open.
The cell was just large enough for a man to lie down in, but only one way. You could have put a horse in there if you used a shoehorn. The only objects in there were a bucket and an old blanket. He glimpsed this much by the light of the lamp held by one of the men behind him. Then one of them gave him a violent push in the back and he went into the cell. Before he could turn, the door slammed shut behind him and he was in darkness. There was a tiny window high above his head and through this there showed a glimmer of moonlight. There was a square hole in the door about five feet from the floor which gave him a small patch of light. He heard the lamp being hung on a hook and when he put his eye to the hole, he saw the men walk back into the office. They left the door open and he could hear the murmur of voices.
He almost gagged on the smell. He had been used to the open air for too long for this kind of thing. But this had happened before and he knew pretty soon he would cease to notice it.
He sat on the floor with his back against the wall, his eyes on the small patch of moonlight above him. He did not push his mind, but let it drift where it would. That was the way ideas came. The only thing he knew for certain was that he had no intention of coming to trial. Whoever had set this up would have done a thorough job. Southern had been too willing to provide a lawyer—which meant that either the lawyer they would offer him would be no damn good or the case against him was watertight.
He heard a soft tapping sound. It seemed to come from the wall at his back. He twisted around and rapped his knuckles on the stout wood. At once he received a reply. Turning around completely, he stayed on his knees and felt over the surface of the wall. After a few seconds he found a crack and put his mouth to it.
“Who are you?”
“Jack Clegg. Who’re you?”
“Rem McAllister.”
He heard the other man chuckle. Which was enough to make a man wonder. Who the hell could raise a laugh in this place? A little light came … Jack Clegg. The name meant something. He reached through the encyclopedia of his mind and he came up with a face. He remembered the man from Deadwood.
The man asked: “Remember me?”
“I remember you. What’re you here for?”
“I bent the barrel of my gun over a deputy’s head. It doesn’t pay to be softhearted. I should of shot the bastard.”
“What’re the chances of gettin’ out?”
“Zero. But that don’t mean a man can’t try. I’ve been here ten days and I’ve thought about it every which way. I came up with one answer. The only way out of here is for somebody outside to bring in a gun.”
“Why’d you hit the deputy?”
“A personal matter.”
That ended it. McAllister left it alone. He said conversationally: “I was carrying a warrant for you up in Deadwood. Did you kill that fellow?”
“Sure,” the other said without a moment’s hesitation. “He was looking for me with a gun, but I saw him before he saw me. What would you do, huh?”
McAllister wondered what there would be for breakfast. He was one meal behind already.
Four
Emilio used the still-burning butt of his cigarette to light a fresh one. He thoughtfully polished the leather of the holster he was working on with the sleeve of his shirt. He was digesting the news that his nephew had just brought him. He looked around at his kinsmen. They were also deep in thought. They looked no happier than he felt.
He said: “We have to decide something quickly. We want McAllister and he is in jail. It is up to us to get him out of jail. That is logical. Without a man like him used to such things we cannot hope to bring back the gold.”
The kinsmen nodded their heads. One said: “You are going to suggest that we hire a smart lawyer. If we put all the money we possess into a hat we could not hire such a one. If we spend the money on a lawyer, how shall we pay McAllister the huge wage that he has demanded?”
Ignacio said, leaning against the wall, hat tipped over his eyes: “The only alternative is for us to do something bold. That means something risky. If we were prepared to take chances with our lives, we would not want to hire McAllister to guard us into the mountains and back.”
Emilio sighed. Ignacio was right. The cousins and uncles sighed. They all knew that Ignacio was right.
After a long pause, Ignacio said: “I think that we shall have to screw up our courage. There is a lot at stake.”
Old Charlie Arbiter, sitting cross-legged on the floor, puffing at his old pipe, spoke for the first time since McAllister had left.
He had dozed there and the others had forgotten him.
“This man McAllister is hell on wheels,” he said. He had a struggle to translate that phrase into Spanish and it sounded pretty funny when he succeeded. “And he’s honest. After his fashion. If he takes our wages, he’ll see us through or he’ll die in the attempt.”
Emilio nodded. “Off and on I have known him many years. He is good and he is hard. An unusual combination. You are right, Ignacio, we must get him out of that jail. It will not be easy, but we must do it. There is a great deal at stake. I think the risk will be worth it. We are none of us getting any younger. Speaking for myself, I could put a great deal of money to excellent use.”
That raised a little laugh, but it died away quickly.
The old uncle pointed a brown finger at Ignacio. “I vote that Ignacio there thinks of a plan. Something simple and direct. Such are all good plans. But it must be bold. Begin thinking, Ignacio. You are the smart one—show us.”
Ignacio pushed himself away from the wall and pushed his hat back from his face so that they could see his eyes in the lamplight.
“I have a plan already,” he said. “The simplest of all. We go and take McAllister out of jail.”
Emilio cried: “You can call that a plan?”
Ignacio said: “Can you think of a better?”
~*~
Mark Southern went to a desk and found a rag to wipe his boots with. That done to his satisfaction, he found a string tie and replaced his bandanna with it. He could have done with a change of shirt, but he was impatient to be gone. It was the woman, he told himself. He could not wait to see the woman. He was ambitious in several directions at once. He wanted power and influence and he wanted that woman. He also wanted the gold.
His two deputies watched him with interest. He thought they didn’t know much about the woman, but they did. The whole town did. Southern made it that obvious. Well, maybe not the whole town. Her husband’s vanity prevented him from knowing about it.
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