by Jack Sheriff
‘Well? How’d it go with McLure?’
Sagger downed half his drink, set the glass down, and looked at the gunsmith.
‘About like you said. A lot of questions. Precious few answers from me that gave him any more than you got.’
Cree snorted. ‘Some would say you’re playing your cards a mite too close to your vest.’
Drinking, shrewd eyes watching Sagger over the rim of his glass, Cree let the double-barrelled meaning in his words hang threateningly for a moment while Sagger mulled them over and Keegan watched impassively from the sidelines. Then Sagger slammed his drink down hard enough to slop beer.
‘Godammit, Jake!’ he said fiercely. ‘That’s my right. My ma’s dead and buried, my pa’s gone missing, and right now what I’m doing is trusting to my judgement. Maybe what’s bothering me is I’m looking at a grain of sand and seeing a mountain, so before I jump in with both feet I’d like more to go on.’
Red Keegan cleared his throat.
‘Your pa was in here two nights back.’
In the sudden silence, Sagger glanced around quickly as the swing doors flapped and two men walked in and crossed to a window table, registered this sudden arrival of Texas Dean and Beebob Hawkins and felt a prickling stir of unease, then turned again to Keegan.
‘Go on.’
The burly, red-haired saloonist’s eyes were cautious. ‘First, I need to know what’s going on.’ He, too, glanced away at the newcomers before returning his gaze to Sagger and raising his eyebrows.
‘Hell, it’s no secret. You’ve been standing there, you’ve already heard most of it.’ Sagger looked down, fiddling clumsily with the wet glass. ‘Two nights ago is when it happened. Becky came through to the living-room, found her ma with her throat cut. Pa had gone out earlier that same night. He’s not been seen since.’
‘That’s it, in a nutshell,’ Cree said. ‘Enough to prod your memory, Red?’
‘Nothing wrong with my memory,’ Keegan said, and he reached for a jug, topped up Sagger’s glass. ‘I’m sorry to hear about your ma, feller, but I had a pain in my guts just watching those two sittin’ with their heads together and—’
‘Two?’
‘Your pa and a mean-looking feller with pistols tied down, wearing clothes and a hat looked like they’d been picked off a Mex’ rubbish tip when the buzzards had been and gone. Hell, I could smell him from here, and your pa—’
‘This feller have a name, Red?’ Cree said.
‘He spoke to Sagger and no one else, and I never saw him before that night,’ the saloonist said bluntly, biting off the words, and his eyes flicked across the room and back and suddenly were defiant.
‘You scared of those two dummies?’ Cree had raised his voice, and now he put his glass down carefully, watching Keegan’s eyes.
‘Easy, Jake,’ Sagger said softly.
‘Too many people being too tight-mouthed sticks in my craw,’ Cree said, still loud, and across the room a chair scraped.
‘You mind explaining that there comment,’ Beebob Hawkins called, ‘to a couple of fellers settin’ minding their own business?’ His voice was a lazy southern drawl. The chair had been his, and now he circled the table and came across to the bar with the graceful walk of a dancer, his colourless eyes curiously pale in his sun-browned face. Behind him, Texas Dean had already stepped sideways away from the window table, and now the unshaven gunslinger with the gaunt look of an undertaker drifted silently to the end of the bar.
‘We’ve had a killing out at Bar C, a good man gone missing,’ Cree said, ‘but when questions get asked, people’re so close mouthed they’re likely to starve to death.’ He’d turned away from the bar, and had Dean on the edge of his vision as he spoke to Hawkins. His apron had been discarded in his workshop, and over his serge pants he wore a gunbelt holding an engraved, nickel-plated Colt .45 with carved ivory grips. A modern model designed for a dandy, perhaps, Will Sagger thought, but here worn with pride by a craftsman who could use it to shoot the pips out of a playing card at twenty paces.
Beebob Hawkins had moved closer. His head was tilted, his pistol worn high and on the left side, butt forward, but it was the bony, big-knuckled hands that drew Sagger’s gaze for the white crescents of old scars told of countless barroom brawls.
‘People bein’ close-mouthed,’ Hawkins repeated softly, and his eyes narrowed. ‘Not yet clear enough, Cree.’
‘Will Sagger is holding something back – but his ma’s dead and from a grieving man I’d expect reticence. He needs help. Red’s not telling all he knows – and for that, I blame the demeanour of you and your partner.’
At the end of the bar, black-clad Texas Dean’s cold laugh was like a death rattle. ‘Hell, we’re two tough lookin’ customers all right. But nobody’s close-mouthed, ’cause there’s nothing to tell. A man rides in from Hole In The Wall and Daniel Sagger goes back to his bad old ways, that’s the beginning and the end of a dull story—’
‘You’re lying!’
‘And you’re still wet behind the ears,’ Beebob Hawkins snarled at Will Sagger, and he stepped around Cree, planted a big hand on Sagger’s chest and slammed him back against the bar. Cree stepped swiftly away from the bar with his hand at his hip, but in turning to face Hawkins and Sagger he put Texas Dean behind him – and every man froze at the oily click of a pistol’s hammer.
‘Lift your hands, move back against the shelves, Red,’ Dean said, and the big saloonist lifted his hands from the scattergun under the counter with a sibilant hiss of anger. Dean nodded satisfaction, moved his pistol to cover the gunsmith. ‘Cree, why don’t you mosey on over to your shop and maybe oil a few guns while Beebob clears this up?’
‘I’ll wait.’
‘Out.’ The pistol waggled. ‘And stay away from Cliff McClure.’ Cree hesitated, glared at Red Keegan, tossed a glance at Will Sagger that was unreadable then turned and went out through the swing doors.
‘Smooth as silk, Texas,’ Hawkins said, and turned back to Sagger. ‘Now, where had we arrived at?’
‘You were blackening my pa’s good name.’
‘Why, that was Texas doin’ that, but I guess I share his views,’ said Hawkins.
‘And now you’re going to eat your words.’
‘Hell, he was tellin’ the truth, Sagger. That poisonous-lookin’ feller Red couldn’t put a name to was Amos Skillin, but he’s only one of several rode down to Ten Mile in the past weeks to twist your pa’s arm.’
‘He’s right,’ Red Keegan said.
‘But not about the reason,’ Sagger said.
‘Ain’t give you the reason,’ Hawkins said. ‘Told you your pa’s arm got twisted once too often and this time he went along, but I’ll be damned if I said why.’
‘Something about his bad old ways?’
‘Goin’ back to them’s what he did, not why he did it. Why, hell, everyone knows Daniel Sagger moved up to Wyoming back in the seventies because there was no place left for him to hide—’
Sagger hit him.
He half turned, then slammed a foot down and whipped his right fist round in a swinging hook. His fist cracked against Beebob Hawkins’s cheekbone. Pain knifed to his elbow as the big man stumbled backwards and fell across a table. Sagger went after him in a flat dive. He landed atop the downed man, grabbed his shirt front with both hands and slid with him to the floor as the table splintered.
Hawkins exploded. Like a cat, his stringy muscles seemed to expand in all directions as he twisted his lean frame and reared free. As he did so, his hard fists rained bruising blows on Sagger’s face. Dribbling salty blood, pawing at the air, Sagger fell away from the savage attack. His shoulders slammed into the sawdust. He kicked out wildly. His right boot drove like a piston into Hawkins’s groin. The lean man recoiled, yowling and spitting.
Sagger spun, and went after him. His shoulder sent a table flying. Doubled over in agony, Hawkins took Sagger’s heavy assault on his broad shoulders. Then the man’s big hand shot up and fastened in Sagger’
s hair. It clamped tight, tugged. Fiery pain flared as Sagger felt his scalp begin to rip. He grabbed the man’s wrist and hung on as he rolled over Hawkins, landed flat on his back with an agonized grunt. Hawkins shifted his hand. It landed like a broad claw over Sagger’s mouth and nose, and Hawkins pushed down hard. Grinning, he levered himself to his knees behind Sagger. His weight ground Sagger’s head into the sawdust.
Snuffling, struggling to draw ragged breath against the horny palm, Sagger hung on to the man’s wrist and doubled at the waist. Both feet swung over in a fast, overhead kick. His boots slammed into Hawkins’s face and he heard the crunch of bone. He released the wrist. The hand slid away.
A roll brought him on to his knees, chest heaving. Hawkins was on hands and knees, head hanging, spitting blood and splintered teeth. Without looking at Sagger or lifting his head, he snapped a hand across his body. It came back fast, clutching a six-gun. The barrel whipped sideways, cracked across Sagger’s jaw. At the back of his eyes, lights flashed like stars against a flaming red sky. His head rang. He crumpled face down in the sawdust, and Beebob Hawkins came down heavily astride his back.
‘That’s enough!’
The hand that had clamped on Sagger’s shirt collar slowly relaxed. He twisted, rammed an elbow into the big man’s ribs, broke the weakening grip and threw him clear. When he looked towards the doors, face slick with blood, eyes unfocused, he didn’t need to see the tall shape outlined against blue spring skies, or the shotgun that was cocked and deadly to know who had roared the warning.
Squinting through his agony, Will Sagger grinned happily.
‘Good of you to join us, Dave Lee.’
Chapter Four
‘So tell me: were Beebob Hawkins and Texas Dean being their usual ornery selves – or is there a whole lot more to this than anyone’s lettin’ on?’
Will Sagger was leaking blood on to the floor of Cliff McClure’s office over by the gun rack. Dave Lee Nelson was in the corner propping up the big iron safe, and looked more than equal to the task: his wide shoulders were threatening to split his faded cotton shirt, and his massive head with its mop of blond hair and drooping dragoon moustache looked hard enough to drive fence posts.
On the street side of his desk, McLure was standing well back from the sound and the fury.
He’d been out doing his rounds at the other end of Ten Mile Halt when the fracas developed in Keegan’s. The first he’d known of it was when he caught sight of Beebob Hawkins’s bloody mask as he whipped his bronc down the centre of the street, then jumped smartly back on to the plankwalk when a sneering Texas Dean cut his horse in close enough to catch him with one stirrup and kick dust in his face.
Tight-lipped, McLure had rubbed his hip and looked the other way to watch Sagger and Nelson enter his jail office, followed them at a slower pace to allow his anger to subside, then come close to being blasted back out into the street by the ferocity of Sagger’s verbal attack.
Now, he let what appeared to be Sagger’s closing question hang like a bad smell in the suddenly silent room, then came away from the door and dropped into the flimsy wooden chair.
‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘you should say what you mean.’
‘Goddammit, McClure, you know what I mean. Red Keegan’s behind his bar with his mouth all puckered like a dried grape and his eyes shifty. Beebob Hawkins is scattering insults like a man sowing corn, and it looks like I’m the only man around here still in the dark – except for Dave here, who’s also the only man so far to lift a finger to help.’
McLure sighed. ‘First off, a man has to help himself, Will – and you ain’t doin’ that.’
Hotly, Sagger said, ‘You’ve no damn right—’
‘I’ve every right. You say your ma’s dead, your pa missing. All that tells me is two decent people suddenly ain’t where they should be, and when their son walks in here talking of killing, and pushing his weight around, then my suspicions—’
‘Jesus, are you suggesting—?’
‘Knock it off!’
The sudden silence was like that following a thunderclap. Will Sagger clamped his teeth, glared fiercely at McClure, then used his arms to lower himself gingerly into the marshal’s swivel chair. Across the desk, McClure held his gaze. Sagger was aware of Dave Lee Nelson, a towering figure to his left with the shotgun alongside him, tilted against the safe. His silence was . . . what? Accusing? His way of willing him to listen to McClure, to open up to him?
Sagger leaned forward. Blood dripped on to the desk. He scrubbed it with his sleeve, brought the sleeve up to his bloody mouth. Still looking down, he said, ‘Pa’s got a Winchester .44-.40. Model of 1873. He won it in a sharpshooting contest at a Texas county fair.’ He looked up, met McClure’s level gaze. ‘It’s still on its hooks, back home.’
McClure thought a moment, then nodded slowly.
‘Where this is going seems about as hard to get a fix on as a single snowflake in a blizzard. So, tell me, is this what you’ve been holding back?’
Sagger nodded.
‘Your pa wouldn’t do that, is that what you’re saying? He wouldn’t ride out without his ’73 Winchester?’ He shook his head. ‘Hell, boy, assuming you’ve been telling the truth about that night, we just don’t know what went on. Could be any number of reasons your pa left his rifle behind, first one springing to mind being he had no damn choice.’
Sagger pursed his lips, then winced and dabbed with his bandanna at the fresh flow of blood and continued to look at McClure, waiting.
‘So,’ McClure went on, more gently now, ‘if you don’t go along with that notion, are you saying that rifle being there means your pa’s dead?’
‘The rifle’s mine,’ Sagger said, ‘when Pa dies. I guess you know he came home for good when I was ten years old. What you maybe don’t know is he brought that rifle with him, wrapped in a torn old army blanket. In those early years we sat and talked, winter nights mostly, by the fire. Ma’d be in bed, and he’d take the rifle down off its hooks, let me hold it, squint along the sights, firelight dancing on the barrel all hard and shiny, him talking real soft and distant. About how ownership hadn’t come easy. How he’d earned that rifle the hard way—’
‘What did he mean?’
Sagger shrugged. ‘What he said: he won it in a shooting contest against tough opposition at a county fair, and that story never changed. That’s what I believed, then, that’s what I believe now . . . I . . .’ He dabbed at his lips, said softly, ‘Then the talking stopped, as time passed, and I grew up and he taught me to shoot and then ranch work took over and it’s twelve years since that day he rode into the yard. . . .’
‘Get to the point, son.’
‘For as long as I can remember he’s been telling me, when he dies, that rifle passes to me with his blessing – only, since he started drinking—’
‘How long’s that?’
‘A month. No, less. Hell, I don’t know for sure.’
‘But every night since he started soaking it up,’ Dave Lee Nelson said in a gravelly voice, ‘and on nights when you’ve not waited up, kid, I’ve more than once helped your pa over to the bunkhouse to get his head down so your ma could sleep easy.’
McClure turned sharply to the older man. ‘He do any talking?’
‘Wild talk. Nightmare talk. I paid no heed.’
Nelson met McClure’s gaze of frank disbelief with a faint smile, and the marshal bit back his obvious irritation and looked at Sagger.
‘Yeah, go on, Will.’
‘I’ve been there most times,’ he said, with a sharp glance at Nelson. ‘A couple of those nights when he’s come home late, worn out, unsteady on his pins, he’s sat at the table in the lamplight with his head in his hands, kinda mumbling. And what he’s been saying is maybe the rifle ain’t coming to me like he’s always said, nice and easy, handed down father to son. Maybe I’m going to have to earn it, like he did, and that’s set me wondering. . . .’
Silence settled over the room. Nelson wandered away from
the safe to the window. McClure set the chair creaking as he drifted away into deep thought and, with a glance at him, Will Sagger slid open the drawer, located the jolt glasses and reached behind him for the whiskey bottle. He was pouring a shot for himself and the marshal when the door banged open and a dusty man with a battered hat and run-over boots came in from the street.
Slim Gillo was taller and leaner than McClure, looked like a starving scarecrow likely to be pulled off balance by the weight of his deputy’s badge, and was as sharp as a whole family of foxes. McClure acknowledged his arrival with a nod, absently reached for the glass Sagger slid across the desk, then realized what he was doing and pushed it away again with a grimace.
‘Time for coffee, not hard liqour,’ he said, with a glare at Sagger, and the lanky deputy took in the room’s occupants with a swift glance, then crossed to the stove and hefted the coffee pot.
‘Been talking to Red Keegan,’ he said.
‘More lies,’ Will Sagger said softly.
Gillo was rattling tin cups. He cast a withering look at Sagger.
‘Red’s in a bind,’ he said. ‘His loyalties lie in one direction, his business interests are tellin’ him to keep his mouth shut or face the consequences.’
‘Those being?’
‘According to Red, who’s had more than one earthy conversation with Beebob Hawkins,’ Gillo said to McClure, ‘if he talks too freely his saloon will finish up as a pile of charred, smouldering wood.’
‘Such talk should be reported.’
‘It has been. In confidence.’ And, as the deputy commenced slopping coffee into four tin cups, there was a warning look of deep solemnity on his long, lean face.
‘What else did Red say?’ McClure said, accepting a steaming cup. ‘In confidence, of course,’ he added, for the benefit of the other listeners.