Boomer

by Clifton Adams

  Then, without a flicker of warning, he kicked the still form savagely with the sharp toe of his boot. Lloyd groaned, and a sharp sound of surprise escaped the crowd. They had thought the gunman was dead.

  Lloyd groped blindly, trying to shove himself away from this new source of pain, but Farley, in his rage, stepped in again and slashed at the gunman again with his boot.

  “That's enough!” Dagget yelled. And there was a steely warning in the marshal's voice that not even Farley could ignore. Lloyd's eyes were glazed, and he lay in a crooked, distorted position on a dirty patch of snow. Painfully, he turned his head and gazed up at Farley, and a slow, cool savagery formed behind his slitted eyes.

  “That was a mistake, Ben.” The voice was little more than a whisper, but it carried like the whine of a bullet. “A bad mistake...” And then he closed his eyes and lay still.

  An uneasy silence surrounded the bizarre scene for just a moment before Doc Lewellen, reeking with whisky, stumbled through to the marshal's side.

  “Looks like you've got your work cut out for you, Doc,” Dagget said. “Your sickroom unlocked?”

  The frail old man nodded and walked unsteadily to Bud Muller.

  “How bad is he?” Grant asked.

  The old man shrugged. “He's young and strong; that much is on his side.” Then he moved to Kirk Lloyd and made a brief examination. “Bounced a bullet off his rib,” he said. “Not much more than knocked the wind out of him. Well, some of you men help me get them to the sickroom.”

  Grant and Valois watched them pick up the gunman and the boy and carry them back toward town. Battle had escaped in the confusion, but the marshal would find him when he wanted him. Dagget had other things on his mind right now. There was Farley, still furious and lusting for a hanging. And there were Farley's men, more of them than the marshal liked to think about. And it was a long way to Muskogee and the nearest federal jail.

  Kiefer, on that winter night of 1906, was a sprawling, howling infant only a few days old. Boom towns such as Sabo and Kiefer got their full growth almost overnight, and died almost as quickly, most of them, when the boom was over. Schools, churches and jails were the last to come, if they came at all. But some of the children got a minimum of teaching at home, church meetings were held irregularly in eating houses or saloons, and jails were where you found them.

  Jim Dagget found his near the makeshift depot, in another abandoned boxcar shunted off on a siding. It was not comfortable, but it shut out the wind, and, bolted and locked from the outside, it was stronger than any other building in Kiefer.

  Turk Valois' face wore a grin as he climbed into the dark interior smelling strongly of lumber and cattle and a thousand other things. “How long do you aim to keep us here, Marshal?”

  “As long as necessary,” Dagget said harshly. “I wouldn't stand a chance getting you to Muskogee or Tulsa, the way Farley's riled up.”

  “What are we supposed to do if Farley decides to burn this boxcar down?”

  “Ben's too smart to try that—it would bring the whole federal government on his back, and he knows it.” He looked at Grant for one long moment before sliding the heavy door between them. “I told you once, Grant, that I don't like men that get into too much trouble.”

  “Has it occurred to you, Dagget, that there might be more than one side to this? Those timbers belonged to the Mullers. Battle gave us credit and told us to pick them up.”

  “I intend to ask Battle about that.”

  Darkness closed in around them as Dagget slammed the big sliding door, and they could hear him bolting and locking it from the outside. Grant was in no mood for talking. He began thinking of Bud Muller and how lifeless the boy had looked when they had carried him away.

  Was he dead? Was he going to die?

  There were a thousand questions without answers. He sat with his back against the walls of the boxcar as the slow chill of winter settled in his bones. And he thought again of Rhea and wondered what he was going to say to her if her brother died. First her father, now Bud. There was a limit to the punishment a girl could take—even a girl like Rhea.

  It was then that Grant began to learn a strange thing about himself. He didn't want Rhea to change. More than once he had cursed her brazen show of superiority, and her greed, and her consuming ambition—still, it was her storm and fire that had drawn him to her and he didn't want those things changed. He didn't want her spirit broken and gelded—and this was a strange realization and difficult to accept.

  He thought about this for a long while, and in the darkness he wondered what Turk Valois was thinking about. The runner had kept his distance as far as Rhea was concerned, that strange combination of love and hate showing only occasionally in his dark eyes. He was a proud man and knew how to keep aloof—and Grant wished sometimes that he had the knack himself.

  With another kind of man it would have seemed strange, returning to the source of his hurt, the way Turk had. But with Valois it all seemed natural enough; perhaps he was trying to prove to the world, or to himself, that he wasn't hurt at all. Maybe he figured that if he could face Rhea Muller every day without flinching, that was all the proof he needed.

  At last Grant tried to get comfortable on the hard plank floor of the boxcar, but he knew that there would be little sleep for them that night. The money belt about his waist caused a bulge against his ribs and he sat up again, frowning, the seed of an idea growing slowly in his mind. He had almost forgotten about the money. All of it was still there. Not a penny of it had he spent.

  Until this moment the money had been almost an abstraction, symbolic of his independence and manhood. He had taken it because he had believed that it was rightfully his, but now he began to think of it in a more realistic light. Twenty-five hundred dollars in real money! Legal tender for goods in any shop, store, or saloon in any state or territory in the nation.

  Strangely, this surprised him. Why, he could have stopped all this trouble at the beginning simply by paying Battle for the timbers!

  But after a moment's thought he saw that it was not so simple as that. He was forgetting Dagget again. The suspicious-minded marshal would be very interested to know where an ordinary saddle tramp had laid his hands on five hundred dollars.

  Still, if somebody else should give the money to Battle...

  Working in the darkness, he unbuttoned his windbreaker and shirt and shifted the money belt around, knowing from the feel which pouch to open. He counted out twenty-five twenty-dollar bills, then carefully shifted the money belt back to its original position.

  “Turk.”

  It was the first word either of them had spoken since Dagget had slammed the boxcar door. “I thought you were asleep,” the runner said, and Grant was faintly startled to hear the voice so close to him.

  “I'm not asleep; I've been thinking.”

  “So have I, but I can't think of a way to get out of this boxcar.”

  “That isn't what I've been thinking about. Sooner or later Dagget will take us out of here and to a federal jail, if Farley makes his charges stick. I want you to take this.”

  They fumbled in the darkness and the runner made a small sound of surprise. “What is it?”

  “Five hundred dollars, the amount the Mullers owe on the derrick timbers. I want you to give it to Battle when we get out of here. Or give it to Dagget, and he can pay Battle.”

  Valois whistled softly. “Five hundred dollars I Where did you get that much money?”

  “Never mind. Will you do as I ask?”

  “Sure.” But his voice said that he was still puzzled. “There's one thing I'd like to know, though. Why are you so anxious to give away five hundred dollars?”

  Grant could feel the color rising to his face and was glad that he was hidden in darkness. “I guess you know the answer as well as I do, Valois.”

  The runner laughed explosively, and the sound was surprisingly loud in the close confines of the boxcar. “So it's Rhea!” And his tone said that he was no longer laug
hing.

  “It's my own idea,” Grant said tightly. “Rhea didn't ask for it.”

  “She doesn't have to ask. All she has to do is look at a man and he starts shelling out, and he keeps shelling out until he's...”

  The suddenness of Grant's anger caught him off guard. “That's enough!” he almost shouted. And for a moment there was only silence and darkness, and when Grant spoke it was almost as though he were talking to himself. “I mean, Farley started this thing and I don't want to see him finish it, that's all.”

  There was another period of silence, and Grant could almost feel the runner's bleak, humorless smile. “All right,” Valois said at last. “I have my own reasons for what I'm doing, and you have yours. We'll let it go at that. But there's one more thing I'm curious about. Why don't you give this money to Dagget yourself?”

  Grant had the uncomfortable feeling that Valois was guessing part of the answer. As Dagget would have done, the runner was wondering where the money had come from. “I saved it,” he said at last.

  And Valois sighed. “Well, I guess it was a foolish question anyway. Do you think we'll get any sleep in this damn thing?”

  Dagget rolled back the heavy door as soon as it was light, and said, “All right, you two can come out.”

  It was blustery and cold outside and the pewter-colored sky lay heavy and sullen over the colorless hills of the Creek Nation. Grant got stiffly to his feet, chilled to the bone, his in-sides soured with sleeplessness. Before moving into the light he pulled his hat down hard on his head, always acutely conscious of his hair when. Dagget turned those calculating eyes in his direction.

  “Have you heard anything about the boy?” Grant asked.

  “Young Muller? He'll have a sore side for a spell, but he'll be all right. His sister is with him now, in Doc Lewellen's sickroom.”

  Turk Valois swore hoarsely and coughed as he climbed painfully to his feet. “Goddamnit, Dagget, you've got to get a better jail or I'm going to take off somewhere else.”

  The marshal was amused. He stood to one side, his eyes slanted and watchful as the two prisoners eased themselves through the doorway and down to the graveled track bed.

  Grant said, “Did you get the truth out of Battle? Did you get our side of the story?”

  “I didn't have to,” Dagget said flatly. “Battle had it down in writing.”

  Grant and Valois glanced at each other, frowning. But all Dagget said was, “March. We're going over to Battle's supply shack.”

  “You going to take us down to Muskogee?” Valois wanted to know.

  “I guess,” Dagget said with a savage grin, “that decision will be up to Farley. Now march!”

  They marched—rather they stumbled on stiff legs and numb feet with the marshal right behind herding them like reluctant cattle. What had Dagget meant when he had said the decision was up to Farley? The oilman might run Kiefer and Sabo, but the marshal was a man who ran his business in his own way.

  The marshal kept them marching, prodding them from behind with the muzzle of his .45. They stumbled into Kiefer's main street and made their way clumsily across the iron-hard ruts toward Battle's supply tent. Dagget grunted for them to go around the tent, and they swung wide and came up at the supplier's shack of an office.

  “Inside,” the marshal said, almost snarling. He knocked the latch open and shoved the two through the doorway.

  Ben Farley, looking pleased when he saw Dagget and the prisoners, sat at Battle's plank desk. The supplier stood uneasily to one side, hugging close to the coal-oil stove.

  “I'm glad to see you're both here,” Dagget said blandly, looking at Farley. “We can get this thing settled without a lot of fuss.”

  The oilman tilted his chair back and smiled. “What's there to settle, Marshal? These two killers murdered one of my men and shot another. They're murderers, and I mean to see them hanged.”

  Dagget took a frayed cigar from his shirt pocket and inspected it carefully. He licked it expertly and began searching absently for a match. “I take it then that you aim to bring charges against these two with the U. S. marshal's office.”

  “Of course. It's my duty as a decent, law-abiding citizen.” But Farley was wondering what Dagget was getting at, and his eyes narrowed and his smile was not so wide.

  Dagget lighted his cigar, glancing carelessly at Battle. But when he spoke, it was to Farley. “Just what kind of charge do you aim to bring?”

  “I told you. Murder. Unprovoked attack and murder; I've got Battle here as a witness.”

  The marshal nodded. “All right, but you'll have to go down to Muskogee and swear out a complaint.”

  That was the way it was in the Nations, the only dependable source of law enforcement was the government marshals, and their ranks were thin and the system was all but hopelessly snarled in inevitable mountains of red tape. Once, not so long ago, the nearest marshal's office was located at Fort Smith, in Arkansas, but now there was an office in each of the Nations and a man didn't have to ride a hundred miles or more to swear out a complaint. Things were not so bad as they once had been, but they were not good. Local government in towns like Kiefer was practically nonexistent, and the load of law enforcement rested heavily on the thick shoulders of a few men such as Jim Dagget.

  Jails here were few, the courts were overworked, for thieves and killers habitually sought sanctuary in the Nations. Another time, under other conditions, Dagget would not have handled this situation as he did now—but here it was part of his job to see that the overworked courts did not collapse under a mountain of borderline cases, and if he sometimes set himself up as judge and jury, that also was part of the system.

  Perhaps “the system” was in Jim Dagget's mind now as he fixed his stern gaze briefly on Grant. He did not look as though he enjoyed the job as it had to be done, but he was a lawman and had learned to make the best of what he had.

  Ben Farley, from behind Battle's desk, was nodding. “I'll be glad to swear out the complaint, Marshal.”

  “Good,” Dagget said stiffly. “But there's something that maybe you ought to know before taking the oath on an unprovoked attack.” He drew a folded slip of yellow paper from his vest pocket and laid it gently on the plank desk.

  Farley frowned and darted a quick glance at Battle. “What is it?”

  “A sales slip, Farley.” And he smiled with that peculiar savagery that seemed always to lie so close to the surface. “It's made out by Battle and signed by young Muller, a record of a business transaction made by them yesterday. Would you like to read it, Farley?”

  A sheet of cold, still fury slipped down behind the oilman's eyes, but he made no move toward the paper.

  “It says here,” Dagget went on, “that Battle sold the Muller lease five hundred dollars' worth of derrick timbers, on credit. So it would appear that the boy acted in good faith when he went to pick up the merchandise last night. You claimed they were stealing the shipment and you and your boys pitched in to give Battle a hand, but the ticket says different.”

  Kurt Battle made a small, explosive sound and wheeled on the marshal. “Where did you get that?”

  Dagget's grin was a hairline slash across his face. “You ought to be more careful about locking your safe.” Then, to Farley, “Do you still want to swear out that complaint of unprovoked attack?”

  Because Battle had insisted on a legal right to five hundred dollars, Farley's plan had boomeranged. With the ticket in Dagget's hands, the last thing Farley wanted was to face the questions of a federal court.

  “A man on your pay roll was killed,” Dagget pushed him. “You've got the right to go to court about it.”

  Farley shot Battle a glance of blinding anger. He stood stiffly, jamming his hat down on his forehead. “I withdraw my complaint,” he said. “I was misled by what Battle told me. You can't prove that I wasn't.”

  “No,” the marshal said, “I guess I can't.”

  Farley fixed his gaze on the sales ticket, and suddenly he grabbed it up and wav
ed it in Dagget's face, then turned his rage on Grant and Turk Valois. “Battle can still withdraw his credit! He doesn't have to give credit to anybody he thinks is a bad risk, even if the material was ordered on consignment!”

  A nervous, bitter humor tugged at the corners of Turk Valois' mouth, and he stepped forward to the marshal's side, drawing the packet of crisp bills from his windbreaker. “We've decided we don't need the credit,” he said, grinning at the oilman. He threw the money on the desk. “Mark the bill paid, Battle. The timbers belong to us legal, and we've got a deputy marshal as witness.”

  Not until they were outside and well away from Battle's supply tent did the marshal speak. “Listen to me!” he said, taking the runner's arm in a steel-trap grip. “I don't want you thinking I did you any favors. Both of you ought to be in jail, along with Farley and Battle, and the wild-eyed Muller kid and the hired gunman.” Suddenly he seemed tired; his eyes were faded with fatigue. “But in the eyes of a court both sides had a good case and probably all of you would have gone free anyway.”

  For just a moment he regained his old savagery. “I'm not a court. But if I have to be, I'm the judge, jury, and executioner... and don't you forget it!”

  Doc Lewellen's office and sickroom was over a feed store a few doors up from the Wheel House. Except for four cots, the interior was as barren as a garret, with only a single oil-drum stove in the middle of the floor to fight back the winter chill.

  Rhea Muller did not look up when Grant and Valois came into the room. She sat ramrod straight on a cane-bottomed chair beside her brother's cot, her pale face set like concrete, and Grant's memory went quickly back to the day of Zack Muller's funeral, for she had looked the same way then. Bud Muller lay motionless beneath a mound of cast-off army blankets, his eyes closed, his face colored with fever in a way that made him look even younger than he was.

  Doc Lewellen glanced at them from the corner of the room where he was scrubbing his hands at a makeshift washstand. “Jim Dagget must be goin' soft,” he said dryly. “I didn't expect to see you two so soon.”