by Short, Luke;
“You, too, Mickey,” Johnny said to Hogan. Hogan did. Johnny walked over and yanked Hogan’s chair out into the middle of the floor and grasped the back of it. Then he said to Leach, “Pick up your chair, Leach. I’m goin’ to see if you’ve got a sign of a brain in that skull of yours. I’ll crack it wide open with this chair if I have a chance—and I will.”
Leach hesitated for a moment, then picked up his chair and circled out into the cleared space. Johnny, grinning now at the absurd weapons of this fight, came at Leach with chair outthrust, jabbing. Leach raised his chair up and swung it viciously at Johnny’s, but Johnny drew his own back and the momentum of the swing carried Leach half way around, exposing his back. Johnny put the legs of his chair in Leach’s back and shoved with all his weight and strength and Leach went off balance to sprawl across his chair on the floor. There was a scattering of subdued laughter throughout the room.
Leach rose with a growl of fury and threw his chair at Johnny, who caught it in his own chair. Then Johnny picked it up and threw it back, and Leach, dancing to escape its low sweep, got his feet tangled in the rungs and crashed to the floor again. There was a howl of laughter through the room.
“Give him your chairs,” Johnny called to the seated men. He was laughing delightedly now. But Leach could see nothing funny in all this. Impotent, he was cursing in bitter fury, and as each chair skidded out to him, he picked it up and threw it at Johnny. Johnny stopped two of them, ducked the third, and then, still on his knees, saw the spittoon beside the bar rail. Without hesitating a moment, he picked it up and sailed it at Leach. It crashed on the wall behind Leach, and all its contents were dumped over Leach’s shoulders and clothes. Before Leach could collect his wits, Johnny had vaulted behind the bar and was leveling a barrage of bottles at him. They came fast and furious, breaking on the wall and splashing over Leach, who could not get out of the way. The room was in an uproar of laughter.
When Johnny had hit him a half dozen times, Leach picked up a chair to use it for a shield. Johnny sailed five bottles over Leach’s head, and as each one broke, Leach got a fresh bath of whisky, brandy, gin, and rum. Finally, when Leach was cowering against the wall in the front corner, Johnny called to Hank, “Open the door, Hank.”
Hank did, and Leach made a dash for it. Johnny had a waiter’s tray in his hand, and as Leach was almost to the door, he sailed it, flat, at Leach’s head. It hit him a glancing blow, just as he was in the doorway, and the last that laughing crowd saw of Leach Wigran, bully and bucko rustler, was a flash of his boots as he sprawled out onto the boardwalk.
Johnny turned now to confront the rest of the hardcases. He had a bottle in each hand. “Make a run, boys,” he invited. “My aim’s improving.”
Three of them made a run for the door, and Johnny, laughing himself now, let them have the bottles. They were clean misses, as he had intended, but that did not lessen the stampede for the door. In a very few moments, under that barrage of glassware, the room was cleared of the hardcases. Only the townspeople and punchers and miners were left. Johnny waited until he heard the pounding of horses’ hoofs in the streets, and then Hugo, up on the roof, sent a peppering of buckshot at the retreating riders.
Johnny’s grin died as he faced Tim Prince, who was regarding the wreckage of his place with a dour poker face.
“How do your bad boys stack up now, Tim?” he asked quietly.
Tim only shook his head.
“Still think they’re worth backin’?” Johnny asked him.
“They never was,” Tim said dryly. “I don’t give credit.”
“But as long as you thought they had a chance to lick me, you were on their side. Wasn’t that it?”
“Pretty close,” Tim said, and spat at a spot where the spittoon had been.
Johnny looked at the mess across the room, the broken chairs, the broken mirror, the shattered door, and then he smiled narrowly. He walked over to Prince. “How would you like to be put under bond to keep the peace, Prince?”
Tim regarded him levelly, and did not speak for a long moment. “I don’t think you could do it, Sheriff. You don’t own the town.”
Without turning, Johnny said to Hank, “Go get Stevens, the J. P., Hank.”
Hank started for the door when Prince raised a hand. “All right, you could,” he said calmly. “I guess this is your town, now, Johnny. What you say goes.”
“You guess right,” Johnny said. “I’m givin’ you your choice, Prince. You hire a bouncer tough enough to keep these hardcases from makin’ trouble in your saloon. When one of that gang comes in—and they’ll try it—throw them out. Either do that or I’ll put you under bond to keep the peace. And once I do that and one of my deputies walks in here and sees one of these tinhorns in your place, I’ll shut you down for good and all. What about it?”
Prince threw up both hands and said, “I got a livin’ to make here, and why—”
“What about it?” Johnny asked.
Prince shrugged and said, “All right. I’ll hire the bouncer. You’re the boss now.”
Johnny rapped the flat of his palm on the bar and it echoed in that silence. “You will!” he said bluntly. “If you don’t I’ll run you out of town, Tim. I first laughed Leach Wigran out of town. When you go, nobody’ll laugh—not even me—because it won’t be a laughing matter.”
With that, he signaled to Turk and Hank and walked out the door. The street was ominously quiet.
“Let’s make it the Gem next,” Johnny said.
They approached the Gem in the same way they did Prince’s, but their reception there was different. The games and drinking were orderly. Only one known hardcase was in the place and he was playing solitaire at a lone table.
Johnny approached him and said, “The curfew’s rung, fella. Clear out. Go home to bed.”
The man only nodded and rose and went out, and Hank reported that he had ridden out of town. At the bar, Johnny asked the barkeep, “What happened to the bad boys, Jim? It’s sort of quiet in here. Quiet’s awful noticeable in your place, ain’t it?”
“They cleared out,” Jim said, and grinned.
The three of them went down the long line of saloons, not skipping one of the twelve. And each one was orderly, with not a known hardcase in the whole crowd. To each saloonkeeper, Johnny made the same proposition that he had made Tim Prince. He said he was going to try and keep the hardcases out of Cosmos, but he wanted co-operation. They could either hire a bouncer to keep order or be bonded to keep the peace. And one and all, they agreed to his proposition. They had no alternative.
Back at the office, Johnny and Turk and Hank and Hugo looked at each other and grinned.
“Well?” Johnny said.
“They ain’t out of the county yet,” Hank told him.
“They will be,” Johnny said quietly, and that was a promise that he planned to keep.
Chapter Nine: VOTES FOR BAILY BLUE
Monday in Cosmos was the quietest day anyone could remember. Not one gunshot sounded over the busy street clatter; not once did the long line of ore freighters have to stop while a street brawl blocked traffic. Business was good everywhere except at the saloons. Turk, on the north end of the street, had a six-minute argument with an undesirable who hadn’t heard about Johnny’s new regime. It was Cass Briggs. Turk was gentle with him, didn’t even bother to hit him, and Cass rode away without ever having reached town. Hank spent the day whittling. Johnny roved the saloons and streets on the watch for trouble that never came.
He saw Tip Rogers at noon just as he passed the bank, and Tip grinned self-consciously at him.
“Goin’ to the dance?” Johnny drawled, reminding him of his wager.
“Alone,” Tip said, nodding, and laughed a little. “That’s all right, Hendry. You win. I’d go to dances alone for six months if it meant cleanin’ up this place.”
“You watch.”
“I am,” Tip said.
The afternoon was calm as the morning. After supper, Johnny, up in his attic
room, dressed for the dance that was to be held in the courthouse that night, and then came down to sit in the lobby while Nora completed her dressing. When she came out, her tawny hair combed back into a loose knot at the base of her neck and her rich green dress full and sweeping, Johnny knew that no woman had ever looked so beautiful. The first thing he said was, “Marry me tomorrow?”
Nora laughed with pleasure and looked at him. He stood tall and clean-looking in his white shirt and red neckerchief and hand-tooled boots. Nora was almost tempted to say yes, but then she remembered. “Clean up the county first, Johnny.”
The orchestra—a piano, violin, and accordion—was in full swing when they arrived at the courthouse. Bledsoe, having deposited his mountain of a wife at a wall chair, was calling the dances from the platform. The whole town had turned out. Turk, true to his resolve to reform, was struggling manfully but politely to dance with a little restaurant waitress as shy as himself. Hank had on a boiled collar and worked at pushing Mrs. Jenkins around as if her two hundred pounds of very active flesh were at least eight hundred. Over in the corner opposite the orchestra, Major Fitz, in a neatly tailored black suit, was joking and making himself popular with half a dozen laughing girls.
Johnny soon lost Nora to one of the many men who clamored for a dance with her. He felt a hand on his arm and wheeled to confront Hugo Miller, who said, “Let’s find a quiet corner, Johnny.”
They walked over to a window, and Hugo lighted up his pipe. “I’ve got what you wanted,” he said, and blew out his match. His deep eyes were watchful as he observed Johnny’s face tighten and lose some of its good humor.
“The volcanic breccia?”
“Yes. A man brought it in tonight while I was dressing for the party.”
“Know him?”
“Nope. He didn’t look much like a hardcase, either. Clean-shaven, tall, a puncher about my age. He said he was in a hurry for a report. Wanted me to stay in tonight and turn out the assay report for him.”
“Give any name?”
“Lemrath. I told him I’d leave the dance a little later and come back and work on it. I told him I’d have it tomorrow night.”
“Is he still in town?” Johnny demanded.
“Possibly.” Hugo smoked in silence a moment. “It’s just occurred to me, Johnny—if you wait around till he comes back and arrest him then, you’re going to have a hard nut to crack. He won’t talk, and you’ll get no farther. Why not try another way?”
“What?”
“Let me fake his report. I’ll give him such a wild assay that the first thing he’ll do will be to dash for the claim recorder. That way, you’ll find out not only who owns the claim but where it is. If you want him, all you’ll have to do will be to go out to his workings and get him.”
Reluctantly, Johnny agreed to this idea. Almost surely this Lemrath was the man he had been waiting for. He must be Pick’s killer, and Johnny’s impulse was to go after him this very moment. But there was wisdom in Hugo’s suggestion. Let Lemrath lead him to the ore deposit, which would be the additional proof needed. Not, Johnny swore darkly, that Lemrath would ever come to trial; he would die before Johnny’s guns. But still proof would be needed to vindicate himself, Johnny thought. He looked over the dance floor, took a deep breath, and said quietly to Hugo, “Did you check up to see if Lemrath had filed any claims?”
“Yes. He hasn’t.”
“Then we’d better wait,” Johnny said glumly.
“I thought you’d see it that way,” Hugo said, and walked off.
Just then, Bledsoe called a Ladies’ Choice, and Johnny was almost mobbed by girls. Tonight, as always, he was the most popular man on the dance floor, and the engaging thing about it to Nora was that Johnny didn’t seem to know it. She watched him dancing with a half-dozen girls, feeling a little jealous, when she heard Major Fitz addressing her. He was standing beside her, watching the dancers.
“Not hard to see who’s the man most in demand tonight, is it, Nora?”
Nora flushed a little and laughed. “Yourself, Major Fitz.”
“Nonsense. I’m a relic. I mean your Johnny.”
“That’s because he’s the new sheriff and this is an election dance.”
Major Fitz, smiling a little, asked her to dance. As he swung her out on the floor, they saw a rider in dusty Levi’s and Stetson make his way through the dancers to Bledsoe’s side and begin talking in a low, urgent voice.
“Wonder what’s up?” Major Fitz asked. Then pretty soon Bledsoe excused himself, sought out the three other county commissioners, and retired to one of the offices in the front of the building.
Nora had forgotten all about it when Johnny came over to claim his first dance. Halfway through it, Bledsoe again appeared, and this time he hurried to the platform and waved the orchestra to silence.
“Folks,” Bledsoe said. “I’ve got news.” Everyone stopped dancing and waited. “The votes were just brought in from Doane’s Trading-Post over in the corner of the county. It seems there were fifty-six votes cast in that corner of the county. Unfortunately, this changes the result of the election.” He paused. “Since all fifty-six of these votes were cast for Baily Blue, that puts him ahead of Johnny Hendry by some twenty-eight votes.”
Notwithstanding the fact that Baily Blue and his wife were right there among them, the dancers raised a storm of angry protest. Bledsoe raised his hand for silence, but it was awhile before he got it. When he did, someone called out, “That’s plain ballot-stuffin’! Why weren’t them voters registered?”
“They were,” Bledsoe assured him glumly. He looked over the crowd and then raised his voice to call to a man at the rear. “Doane, come up here.”
The dusty rider came forward. He was an ordinary-looking man in rough clothes, unshaven, a little stiff from his long hours in the saddle. When he stood beside Bledsoe, the merchant announced, “This is Morg Doane, the election judge over there. Tell them, Morg.”
“Like he said,” Doane began, “it looks legal. Last registration day I was out at one of my line camps. Had been for a week. I left the registration book with one of my clerks. I never even thought to look at it when I got home. Come this election, I took out the book. There was somethin’ like fifty-six men registered. I couldn’t ask my clerk about it because he’d left. But them fifty-six men voted, and I guess they had a legal right to.”
“Did you know any of them?” Bledsoe asked.
“Not me. They claimed they’d had a wild-horse camp up on the edge of the Calicoes for somethin’ like two years now. Mebbeso, but I never saw it.”
Johnny left Nora and elbowed his way through to the front of the crowd. “Did you bring that register with you, Doane?’”
“It’s up front, there.”
Johnny went up to one of the front offices, where the other commissioners were gathered, their faces solemn as owls. One glance at the book showed the fifty-six names registered. Johnny looked up at Bledsoe. “That ink looks mighty fresh to me, Bledsoe. Maybe it was put there in March, but I’d say it came closer to bein’ only a week old.” He swiveled his gaze to Doane, whose eyes were untroubled, fearless.
“You say this clerk of yours left a couple of weeks ago, Doane?’”
“That’s right.”
“And he never mentioned to you when you got back from your line camp last March that fifty-six voters had registered?”
“Nary a word.”
“Don’t that strike you as a little queer?” Johnny persisted. “If there were fifty-six men up in your end of the county, wouldn’t you mention it to folks?”
“I would. But then there’s always wild-horse hunters up where we are.”
“But fifty-six—that’s a lot. Wouldn’t it naturally be mentioned?”
“I reckon so,” Doane said slowly. “Howsomever, it wasn’t. I never even looked at the book all year. Election day, I’d ’ve forgot it if all these men hadn’t come in and wanted to vote. Then I dug up the book, and sure enough, the names was there.”
Johnny watched him all the while he was talking. If any man looked honest Doane did, but the fact remained that the whole setup seemed crooked. “Answer me this, then,” Johnny said mildly. “Wouldn’t it have been possible for a man to watch your place until you went away, then go in and talk to your clerk? Maybe he could have slipped him a hundred dollars or so, and the clerk would have given him the registration book. Next day, he would bring it back to the clerk with fifty-six extra names registered. Your clerk, knowing questions would be asked, just picked up and left. Why shouldn’t he? He had a stake.”
“It could be,” Doane admitted. Here he allowed himself a spare smile. “Lord, son, it surprised me more’n it did you.”
Baily Blue shouldered his way forward. He said gently, “Johnny, you ain’t a very good loser. This all looks legal to me. You’re huntin’ excuses instead of acceptin’ facts.”
“Why haven’t we seen or heard of these fifty-six horse-hunters?” Johnny drawled.
“That’s danged easy to explain,” Baily said. “They’re a good sixty miles from Cosmos, right on the very edge of the county. When they want to go to town for a drink or for grub, they just drift down over the Calicoes to Bowling county. It’s only a short fifteen miles over the Calicoes—nothin’ for a man that knows the trails. And they’d know ’em.” He smiled amiably at everyone in the room. “Me, I never kicked when Johnny was elected. It was the mandate of the people. I don’t see any reason why he should kick now. Tough luck, that’s all.”
Johnny’s mouth came shut with a click, and he straightened. “I’m not kickin’, Baily, providin’ it’s fair, and decidin’ that is in the hands of the election board, which is the county commissioners. I’ll leave it up to them.” He turned and stalked out of the room.
Outside, Nora came up to him. “What did they decide?” she asked breathlessly, and Johnny, stony-faced, only shrugged.
The orchestra made a halfhearted attempt to put the dance in full swing again, but people had lost their enthusiasm. Major Fitz, Hank and Turk, and Nora and Johnny, along with Hugo Miller, all gathered at one side of the room to wait. Johnny told them quietly what had happened.