Where the Bullets Fly

by Terrence McCauley

  The crowd grew louder when two men appeared at the end of the coach car and walked down the stairs.

  Mackey had kept up with the news from back east by reading newspapers and periodicals that were often months old by the time he got them. He had seen photos and illustrations of Mr. Rice and Mr. Van Dorn before, which was why he knew the first man off the train was Silas Van Dorn.

  The young investor had come from a wealthy New York family that could trace its lineage back to the days when New York had been New Amsterdam and a thriving Dutch colony. But the young Mr. Van Dorn had already earned his own solid reputation—and fortune—in the complicated world of finance. He was tall and gangly to the point of looking feeble. The adoration of the crowd appeared lost on him as he dabbed at his head and face with a linen handkerchief, clutching the banister as he descended one step at a time.

  “Guess traveling doesn’t agree with him,” Billy said. “That man looks worse than you do, if that’s possible.”

  Mackey ignored the comment and watched the second man step off the train. Mr. Frazer Rice was as tall as Van Dorn, but older by about twenty years and much healthier looking. His silver muttonchops gave him a sophisticated air, while his years made him appear more at ease with himself. More certain. He doffed his hat to the cheering crowd, a simple act that generated even more enthusiasm from the townsfolk.

  Mackey watched Mayor Mason step in front of Mary just as she offered up a basket of goods to Mr. Rice and Mr. Van Dorn. He blocked Mary’s view of Rice as he pumped the hands of the wealthy men and ushered them up to the raised wooden platform he had built for the occasion. Mackey smiled. Mary had just learned one of the oldest lessons of Dover Station: the most dangerous place in town wasn’t in front of Mackey’s gun. It was between Mayor Mason and an important man.

  The band drifted back into “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Mason practically pulled the investors through the bustling crowd and up the stairs to the wooden platform. Mr. Rice seemed to have begged off as someone helped him to the waiting carriage.

  Rice nodded solemnly to the cheering crowd as Mason beckoned Doc Ridley to leave his post with the band and join them on the stage. But Mackey knew the people weren’t applauding any of the men on the platform. They were applauding the money they had brought with them, or, more precisely, the letters of credit they had from practically every major bank in the world. They weren’t cheering for the future of Dover Station or even the New Yorkers’ vision of what the tiny Montana town could be. They were cheering their own good fortune and how Rice and Rice’s money could buy it.

  These strong, independent people had sacrificed enough forging a town out of the wilderness. Now they were looking to cash in on their hard work by sticking their hands in Mr. Rice’s pockets. But Mackey knew no one took anything from someone like Mr. Rice that he didn’t give freely. And men like Mr. Rice often took more than they gave. He would give them his money, but not before he had their gold, their lumber, their beef, and their farms. And he’d make it look like he was doing them a favor by taking it away from them.

  Mackey knew every single one of the people cheering for the newcomers. Most of them had watched him grow up, though in that moment, Aaron Mackey didn’t recognize any of them.

  Mayor Mason was at the foot of the stairs to greet his guests and quickly ushered both men over to the wooden platform he had constructed.

  As Doc Ridley scrambled up to the platform, Mason caught sight of Mackey and Billy standing at a good distance from the crowd.

  He used his impressive lung power to call out to the sheriff. “Ah, there’s our sheriff, Mr. Rice. Aaron Mackey, the Hero of Adobe Flats. Aaron, come join us and . . .”

  But Mackey acted as if he hadn’t heard the mayor and turned to leave the ceremony. He was beginning to feel poorly again, only he wasn’t sure if it was from the pneumonia or the proceedings. And he was in no mood to be around strangers.

  Billy started to follow him, but Mackey said, “You stay here and keep an eye on things. With Mary here, I’m going to grab a few hours of sleep in my own bed for a change.”

  “You don’t look too steady on your feet,” Billy observed. “I’d like to walk with you.”

  Mackey grinned as he patted his old friend’s arm. “I’ve got my Winchester with me. What could go wrong?”

  As he headed home, he could still hear Mason calling out to him from the platform, but he saw no reason to stop.

  Chapter 8

  Mackey woke in another cold sweat.

  His fever had brought him back in time; back to that sunrise on the arid hillside of Adobe Flats all those years ago. He could smell the dry desert air and the gun smoke from the skirmish that had made him famous and earned him a promotion to captain. The sounds of Apache war cries and dying men still echoed from his dream.

  It took him a few moments to remember he was in his own bed and in his own house. Memories of the shootings at the Tin Horn and seeing Katie in the rocking chair and his run-in with Jeb Taylor on Front Street slowly reminded him it had only been a dream. He wondered if all of that had been a dream, as well. But the tightness in his right hand and the soreness in his shoulder from the recoil of the Winchester reminded him the killings had been all too real.

  He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep. He remembered it had been going on dusk when he’d first come upstairs and crawled into bed. It was now completely dark on Front Street, save for the lanterns some stores lit each night.

  His pillow and bedclothes were soaked in his sweat. He felt like he had just stepped out of a warm bath on a cold night. But as cold as he was, he didn’t have the chills he’d felt every time he’d woken up for the past month. In fact, he felt better than he could remember. He wondered if the fever that had been plaguing him had finally broken.

  In the darkness, he felt at the mattress beside him in the hope that Mary might be there.

  She wasn’t and he understood why.

  Mary had lost most of her family to the fever sickness on the trek out to Montana from back east. She’d been touchy about germs and sickness ever since.

  He remembered the first time he saw her. It was the day he had returned to Dover Station after being drummed out of the cavalry. He’d brought Billy back home with him, expecting Pappy to be waiting to meet the train.

  Instead, Pappy had arranged for a crowd to greet him as he stepped off the train. There was bunting and cheering and even a band from Ridge Haven, the next town over. Mayor Mason and the town elders made a great show of lining up to shake his hand and give speeches that welcomed home the Pride and Joy of Dover Station. The hero of the Battle of Adobe Flats.

  He remembered suffering through the ceremony, almost cringing at every mention of Adobe Flats. He hated how they praised him for the battle, yet ignored that he’d been sent home in quiet disgrace. He thought the grounds for his dismissal were far more heroic than anything he’d done on Adobe Flats that morning.

  But no one saw any point in allowing the truth to get in the way of a great party. Old women who had remembered him from boyhood lined up to kiss his cheek and asked God to bless him. Young women looked at him longingly while their jealous husbands, who had tended crops or worked mining claims instead of soldiering, refused to look his way. Young boys crowded around him and told him they wanted to be just like him when they grew up.

  But neither the adulation of his town nor the scorn of his army could compare with the memory he had of Mary from that day. Her hair had been fairer then, and her eyes held a reverent love of a returning hero.

  He later understood why. She had arrived in town two years before his return, recently married to a mean old drunk she had wed out of need, not love. After her husband drank himself to death, she heard the townspeople tell stories about Dover Station’s Favorite Son: Captain Aaron Mackey, graduate of West Point and the Hero of Adobe Flats.

  He knew Mary had been in love with him before she had ever met him. Before she even knew what he looked like. He should hav
e put her off. He should have pushed her away. But upon his return home, Captain Mackey had been a man who had needed to be loved by someone, even if the reasons for Mary’s love were based on tall tales and lies.

  A few days after Mackey returned, Pappy saw to it that his son ran unopposed for sheriff. Mackey’s first act was to appoint Billy his deputy. When his future was set, Mary and Aaron were married within two months of his return.

  But Mary soon realized her husband was neither the hero of whom she had long dreamed nor the myth she had chosen to believe. He was just a man who had done the job he had been trained to do, the job he had loved, but would never be allowed to do again. He was no longer a captain in his beloved United States Cavalry. He was just the sheriff of a small town of miners and farmers and ranchers in the middle of the Montana wilderness.

  He had little prospect or inclination to be anything else. Mackey knew this troubled his wife above all else.

  He recalled what Katherine had said earlier that day: Mary had fallen in love with a myth in uniform. He knew this was true. She could not abide the flawed man who wore it. Despite her lowly upbringing on the streets of Dublin, she had never fancied herself to be the wife of a lawman in a small wilderness town. She had pushed him to use his fame as the Hero of Adobe Flats to get a job as a banker, a railroad man, or a territorial official. She wanted him to do something with prestige so she, in turn, could live the life of which she had always dreamed. But Mackey had been elected sheriff of a town that had fallen into recklessness. He and Billy were too busy with the present to give much thought to the future.

  The weight of all these memories forced him to sit on the edge of her side of the bed. He laid a hand on what should have been her pillow, but had rarely been used. He knew the reason for that, too. Mary had gotten pregnant on their wedding night, but lost that baby and the one after that. Neither of them had been at fault, but Mary held him responsible just the same. For the death of their babies as much as for the death of her dreams. For not being the man she had hoped he would be. For not being the man she needed him to be.

  The disappointing reality of her condition changed her. Mary’s soft Irish beauty soon became as faded as the memory of his supposed exploits against the red savages at Adobe Flats. Her eyes became swollen from tears and lack of sleep. Her blond hair had taken the color of dry straw as her fair skin became blotchy. She walked with a slight stoop. She looked and acted like an old woman, but she wasn’t even thirty yet.

  Things had slowly grown worse with every passing week in the five years since. She railed at him over everything. Even the most minor infraction sparked her rage. Mackey stayed in the marriage because he wanted to make up for whatever disappointment he had caused her. But her resentment only grew worse. Katherine’s arrival in town had done nothing to change that except make it even harder for him to do his duty. But for all his faults, being a quitter wasn’t one of them. He still had to try to make Mary happy.

  Mackey struggled out of bed, struck a match, and lit the lamp on his bedside table. He washed himself off at the washbasin and toweled himself dry. He ran his hand across the thickening stubble along his face and thought about shaving. But when he saw how much his hand shook, he thought better of it.

  He put on clean clothes, unpinned the copper star from his old shirt and pinned it on his new one. He was surprised by how loose his shirt and pants had become in only the last couple of days. The fever had burned through more weight than he’d realized. As loose as they were, the clean clothes made him feel better than he had in weeks. He was even a little hungry. He pulled on his boots and walked downstairs.

  He had just reached the bottom step when Mary began shouting at him from the kitchen.

  “Well, there he is.” Her brogue was sharper and more cutting than Sim Halstead’s Bowie knife. “If it isn’t the grand man himself come home to pollute my house with his filth and disease. Here I am, workin’ my fingers to the bone night and day to keep this miserable hovel clean and in you come dirtyin’ the place up again. I don’t know just who in the hell you think you are, mister, but I’ll not be allowin’ you to spread your vermin to me. You can save that for your drunks and your jailbirds and your fancy whore down the street. And don’t think for a moment that I believe you’re as sick as all that, either. Just a way of gettin’ sympathy, if you ask me.”

  Mackey tugged at the loose fabric of his shirt. “Then how do you explain this? I must’ve lost ten pounds in the past week.”

  But Mary had never been one to allow evidence to get in the way of a good rant. “You sure seemed spry enough to kill five men today. But then you come home wheezin’ like a bunch of old bagpipes. It’s all a great big charade; just an excuse for you to sit down at the jail with Billy, getting’ drunk and chasing after that Boston whore who came chasin’ out here after you. And don’t think I don’t know about that one because I do. Why it was only just an hour ago where Belle Ridley herself told me . . .”

  Mackey stopped listening. There was no point in arguing with her, especially when she invoked the name of Doc Ridley’s wife. Mary believed Belle Ridley was as infallible as the Pope and just as pious. He knew arguing with her was pointless. She wouldn’t listen; not when she was like this and she was like this all the time. She would just get quiet while he explained himself, only to take up the argument exactly where she’d left off as soon as he stopped talking.

  Lately, insulting Katherine had been Mary’s weapon of choice. He hadn’t asked Katherine to come to Dover Station after her husband died, but Mary would never believe him.

  He had killed scores of men as a cavalry officer. As a sheriff, he’d faced down scores more. He had commanded men in battle, cornered renegade Apache on the warpath and faced down lawless men intent on killing him. But an Irish girl who was a hundred pounds soaking wet laid into him every time she had the mind to, and he let her. He was a fighting man who never had the will to fight his own wife. He didn’t know why he took it, but for some reason, he did.

  This was why he simply pulled on his flat-brim hat and took his gun belt off the newel post as the hate and venom spilled out of her. He had to buckle the gun belt several notches below normal and move the holster farther back from the buckle, closer to his left hip. The handle of the Colt still curved closer to the buckle; giving him an easy draw if he needed it.

  Mary’s litany of insults rose even louder when she saw him take his Winchester down from the rifle rack beside the front door.

  “And just where the hell do you think you’re off to at this time of the evenin’?” she yelled.

  “Patrol.” It was his standard excuse whenever she got like this, because when she was this bad, he preferred to be anywhere but home. He had no idea what time it was, but he hoped he still might be able to get something to eat over at Katie’s Place or that new café that had opened down the street last week. Or was it last month? He’d been sick for so long, he’d lost all sense of time. He didn’t care where he wound up, as long as it wasn’t here with her.

  When he opened the door, he saw a man leaning against the beam of the boardwalk.

  Chapter 9

  Mackey drew his Colt and aimed it at the stranger’s belly.

  The stranger let out a long whistle as he raised his hands. “Gun metal clearing leather. Ain’t a more dignified or deadlier sound known to man.”

  Mackey saw the man was lanky as hell, a few inches taller and a few pounds thinner than he. He had dark eyes beneath the brim of a beat-up bowler, from which a mess of scraggily brown hair hung down to his shoulders. His long beard was thinned out in patches, like he pulled on it too much.

  The holster on his hip and the one on his belt were empty. But Mackey knew unarmed men weren’t necessarily harmless, especially a man who carried two guns. “What the hell are you doing on my porch, boy?”

  The stranger kept his hands raised. “I meant no offense, sheriff. I wanted to see you, but didn’t want to be so forward as to knock on your door and disturb your even
ing. My name is Alexander Darabont, but my friends call me Lex.”

  The name meant nothing to him. He kept his gun on the stranger as he glanced at a group of four strangers on the boardwalk across Front Street watching the house, every one of them as grizzly as Darabont. Dusty clothes and long, greasy hair and lean, hungry looks. It was tough to be certain in the dim light of the boardwalk torches, but they seemed to be unarmed.

  One of the four stood out. He had high cheekbones and a darker complexion than the others. His hair was longer, blacker, and straighter. Mackey had seen his share of half-breeds and knew he was looking at one now. Half Mexican, half Apache and probably as dangerous as he looked.

  “I see you’ve noticed my friends,” Darabont said. “The exotic looking one who seems to have caught your eye is Concho. His mother was Mexican and his father is believed to have been . . .”

  “Apache,” Mackey said.

  Darabont’s smile grew. “I see Concho’s reputation precedes him.”

  “No. I just know the type.” He looked back at Darabont. “What I don’t know is why you’re here. I asked you once. I won’t ask again.”

  “Forgive me. All this time on the trail seems to have dulled my manners. I probably should have knocked, but I didn’t want to trouble your lovely wife.” He looked past Mackey at the inside of the house, and offered a crooked, yellow smile. “She sounds like a lovely woman. I’ve always loved the gentle music of an Irish brogue.”

  Mackey pulled the door shut with his left hand while keeping Darabont covered with his right. “State your business.”

  “My associates and I have come to town looking for some friends of ours who have gone missing.”

  Mackey looked across the street at the four men. None of them had moved. “That so?”

  “When our friends failed to return to our camp by nightfall this evening, we naturally grew concerned for their welfare. We looked for signs of them on the trail between our camp and this here lovely town of yours. Failing to find any sign of them, we thought it best to continue our search within town limits. We expected to find them drunk in an alley or spending time with the ladies in that whorehouse up on the hill.” Darabont’s eyes didn’t look so friendly any more. “We didn’t expect to find them murdered. By you.”