Gun Law

by Ralph Cotton

  “Without guns, who, or what, will keep us safe from you, Marshal?” Dandly asked, speaking boldly with his pencil and writing pad between himself and the lawman.

  Kern gave him a smoldering look. “Safe from me?” he said in a flat yet threatening voice. “What are you trying to say, Dandy?”

  The newsman stood firm in spite of the marshal’s harsh demeanor. “I’m not only talking about you necessarily, Marshal,” he said. “I’m talking about the law and the government in general.”

  “You’re saying you don’t trust the law?” said Kern.

  “Not entirely,” said Dandly.

  “You don’t trust lawmen?” said Kern.

  “That’s correct,” Dandly said. “Not beyond what’s reasonable.”

  “You don’t even trust the government?” the marshal said as if in disbelief. “What kind of a low, unpatriotic weasel are you, Ed Dandy?”

  Chapter 2

  Sherman Dahl awakened in a strange bed with a cool damp cloth pressed to his forehead. The two bullets had not rendered him completely unconscious, but their impact had knocked the breath from him so thoroughly that it had left him in a stunned haze. Nothing around him felt real.

  “Are you feeling better now . . . ?” he heard a woman’s voice ask.

  He remembered lying on the sawdust floor, feeling two men lift his shoulders and heels and carry him from the saloon. After that a filmy darkness had engulfed him.

  Feeling better . . . ? Dahl sorted through it as he opened his eyes and looked around slowly. He was in a small room. Pain pounded in his chest. Thin faded curtains stirred on a breeze through an open window across the room. Afternoon sunlight stood dim and slanted on the plank floor.

  “Yes, ma’am . . . ,” he said weakly. “I am feeling some better.” But that wasn’t true. He felt as if a mule had kicked him in his chest. He continued to look around, getting his bearings.

  Noticing the questioning look on his face, the young woman said quietly, “Don’t worry, mister. This isn’t one of the crib rooms over the saloon.”

  “Oh . . . ?” Dahl had no idea what she was referring to.

  “What I mean is, you’re not being charged for anything. I had them put you in a buckboard. I brought you here because I didn’t know where else to take you. The doctor helped me with you.”

  “I see,” Dahl whispered. Although he wasn’t completely certain where he was, things were beginning to come back to him now. The gunfight, the explosions, the blood. He felt the impact of the two shots again in his chest. He pictured himself flying backward, in slow motion, like a man trapped inside a bad dream.

  “I’m Sara Cayes,” the young woman said. “You can call me Sara. I’m one of the doves from the Lucky Devil Saloon and Brothel. I was there when you came in shooting.”

  Dahl just looked at her. She was too young and too pretty to be a dove, he told himself. But who was he to say? He recalled seeing her in the saloon—catching a glimpse of her as she’d bent over him lying helpless on the floor of the bar.

  “I remember you, ma’am,” he said. “I’m obliged.”

  “It’s Sara,” she reminded him. She gave a light, pretty smile. “And you’re most welcome,” she added. “Those men you shot, Cordell Garrant and the others? They were all killers and thieves.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I know,” Dahl said.

  “Ma’am?” She gave him a look.

  “I mean, Miss Sara,” he said, correcting himself.

  “Good,” she said. She patted his forearm. “I bet you have a name too.”

  He offered a thin, weak smile. The pain in his chest stifled his every movement.

  “I’m Sherman Dahl, ma’am—I mean Miss Sara,” he said.

  “Well . . . I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Sherman Dahl,” she said, placing the damp cloth back against his forehead. “All the while you were asleep, you kept calling me Lilly.”

  “Oh . . . ?” He continued to stare at her.

  “Is Lilly your woman?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Dahl said.

  “I see . . . ,” said Sara a bit coolly. She lowered the cloth from his forehead.

  Dahl saw the slightest look of disappointment on her face. “That is, she was my woman.”

  “But not anymore?” she asked, looking at him expectantly.

  “This past winter. The fever . . . ,” Dahl said. He stopped there.

  He didn’t need to finish his words. She read the rest of it in the look on his face.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Dahl spread the front of his shirt open and looked down at his purple and swollen chest.

  “Doc Washburn looked at you,” Sara explained. “He said you have some crushed bones and a badly bruised heart.”

  “A bruised heart . . . ?” He sounded doubtful, but he closed the front of his shirt and allowed his body to relax on the feather mattress.

  The two fell silent for a moment.

  Finally Dahl asked, “Do you live here?”

  “Yes, I do, sometimes anyway,” she said. She looked around, paused, then shrugged and said, “I know it seems strange, a dove living away from the saloon where she works. But I like it here . . . it’s quiet. It’s right outside of Kindred.” She gestured a hand toward the open window. Dahl could see Kindred in the distance, not too far off.

  “You live here all alone?” Dahl asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “This was Widow Jefferies’ place, but she died before I got here last spring. Most of the roof fell in last winter. The place is in bad repair. But I fixed this room up with things I found in the barn, and some belongings I brought in myself.”

  “It looks real nice,” Dahl said, sensing that she wanted him to comment.

  She smiled. “I think everybody needs a place to be, don’t you?”

  “I—I expect so,” said Dahl, the pain in his chest all the more pronounced when he spoke.

  She stood up from the edge of the bed. “I have some food cooking outside in a chimnea. I’ll go check on it. I hope you like roasted rabbit and beans.”

  “Rabbit and beans sounds good,” Dahl said.

  Sara made her way to the door, but before she could turn the handle, the door burst open and Marshal Emerson Kern walked inside the room. He stood with a hip cocked, his right hand resting on his holstered revolver.

  “Well,” Kern said, staring at Dahl, “I see you’re still alive.” He looked Dahl over good. “I’m Emerson Kern, town marshal,” he said. “And you’d be . . . ?”

  “I’m Sherman Dahl.” He cut a glance toward his rolled-up gun belt lying on a chair beside the bed. Draped over the chair back lay a Korean bulletproof vest the woman must have taken off him while he was unconscious.

  “You won’t be needing that gun,” Kern said, seeing Dahl’s quick sidelong glance. “They were all four outlaws with prices on their heads. That is what you were after, wasn’t it? The bounty?”

  “Yes, sort of,” Dahl said. He eased down, but the pain in his chest remained intense.

  “Sort of?” The marshal stared at him, tapping his fingers on his gun butt. “Are you a bounty hunter or not?”

  “I’m working for the Western Railways Alliance,” said Dahl. “They hired me to track down those four men. They derailed a train and robbed it . . . cost the lives of six passengers and two railroad employees.”

  “I see,” said Kern, “and Western Rails Alliance didn’t like the way the law was handling things. So they took matters into their own hands—hired you to get the job done.”

  “That’s right, Marshal,” said Dahl.

  “That makes you a hired gun, then?” the marshal said bluntly.

  “I consider myself a fighting man, Marshal,” Dahl said. “Someone needs a person to fight for them, I’m for hire. This time it happens to be Western Rails Alliance.”

  “A fighting man,” the marshal said with a wry smile. “But I take it you’d kill about anybody, for about any reason?” he asked.

  “That’s not how it is, Marshal
,” Dahl said.

  “Yeah, I think that’s exactly how it is,” Kern said, a strong edge to his voice. He gave another thin smile. “Not that I care, mind you. What a man does is his own business. But you don’t want to be coming back into my town, especially armed. You won’t be welcome in Kindred.”

  “I understand,” Dahl said quietly. “But what about my horse?”

  “What about him?” said Kern.

  “I’ll need to come into town and get him,” Dahl said.

  “I could keep your horse, sell him to pay for all the mess at the saloon, all the burying that’s going to have to be done.”

  Dahl stared at him.

  “I could,” said Kern. “But I’m not going to.” He jerked his head toward the open window. “I brought him with me. He’s hitched out front. There’s a letter in your saddlebags attesting that you killed those four jakes. I signed it.”

  “Obliged, Marshal,” Dahl said.

  “Don’t be,” said Kern. “I figured if I brought your horse and the letter out to you, there’d be no other reason for you to step foot in Kindred. Am I right?”

  “You’re right, Marshal,” Dahl said. “I’ll get my boots on and—”

  “Oh, I don’t care about you being here in the widow’s shack,” said Kern. “This is outside of town. I have no say. But don’t step inside the town line armed, you understand ? Or are you and I going to get cross with each other?”

  Dahl stared at him with ice blue eyes. “I don’t plan on coming into your town armed or unarmed, Marshal,” he said calmly. “That’s enough said on it.”

  “Good, then, we’re clear on the matter,” said Kern, ignoring Dahl’s cold stare. He looked around for a reason to change the subject and lessen the tense stillness between them.

  “Is that the thing that keeps you alive?” the marshal asked, nodding at the frayed and patched Korean vest.

  “It has, more times than once,” Dahl said.

  Kern shook his head. “What the hell will they think of next?” He turned to Sara Cayes. “What shape is he in?”

  “Doc Washburn said his breastbone is broken—crushed is how he put it,” she said. “It’s awfully bruised.” She touched a hand to the center of her chest to indicate where Dahl’s breastbone had been hammered by the bullets.

  “I bet it is,” said Kern. He looked at the quilted vest, at the many patched-over bullet holes in its front, its sides. “But I expect he’s used to that. Am I right, mister?” he asked Dahl.

  Dahl stared ahead without reply.

  “He shouldn’t ride for a day or two, Doc said,” Sara replied. “I told Doc I’d look after him here.”

  “Yeah . . . ?” Kern looked her up and down as if he was questioning her motives. “Well, do what the doctor says is best. Take care of your hired gun friend here. But see to it you get him back on his feet and send him on his way as soon as you can.”

  “Thanks, Marshal Kern. I will,” she said, seeing him touch his hat brim toward her, then turn to the door.

  Before walking out, he looked back and said to Dahl, “I’m happy I won’t be seeing you again.”

  Dahl continued to stare at him from the bed without reply.

  “A fighting man . . . ,” the marshal murmured to himself. He shook his head as he walked out the door.

  It was later in the afternoon when Dr. Fred Washburn knocked on the door to the widow’s shack. Sara unlatched the door and let him inside. The large potbellied doctor with muttonchop sideburns took off a battered derby hat and walked over to the bed where Dahl sat leaning back against a pillow. He set his worn leather medicine case down on the stand beside the bed and laid his hat atop it.

  “Well, young man, I can see you haven’t let the pain keep you flat on your back,” he said to Dahl. “That’s always a good thing.” He smiled. “The more you let pain stop you, the more it will stop you, I always say. Are you still spitting up blood?”

  Dahl stared at him. “I didn’t know I was,” he said.

  “Well, you were. I’m Dr. F. Washburn, young man. Who are you?” the big doctor asked, looming above the bed.

  “I’m Sherman Dahl, Doctor.”

  “All right, then, Mr. Dahl, let’s take a look at you,” the doctor said. He spread the front of Dahl’s shirt open for a quick look at his bruised and swollen chest. Then he pulled out a white handkerchief from his pocket and said, “Spit on this. Let’s see its color.”

  Dahl spit onto the clean handkerchief. He and the doctor both looked at it closely.

  “Much better,” the doctor said. “It was pinkish last time.”

  “I told him what you said, about his heart being bruised,” Sara offered, stepping closer to the doctor beside the bed.

  “That’s right, as bruised as an overripe peach,” the doctor commented, gazing down at Dahl as if he saw the doubt in his eyes.

  “Begging your pardon, Doctor, I’ve never heard of a heart being bruised,” Dahl said.

  “You have now.” The doctor gave a short grin. He looked around for an empty chair, but upon seeing none, he took a breath and said, “Mr. Dahl, the heart is a large muscle—I should know, I held many of them in my hands while studying medicine in Pennsylvania.”

  Sara stepped away, found a short wooden chair for the large man and pulled it over beside the bed. “Here, Dr. Washburn,” she said.

  “Thank you, Sara,” said the doctor. He sank onto the small chair and rested his thick hands on his knees.

  “The excruciating pain you feel in your chest is the same sort of pain you would feel pressing down on a small bruise on your arm, except it is a hundred times worse.”

  “I can’t argue with that, Doctor,” Dahl said. “It hurts when I move. But I’ve been hammered by bullets before.”

  “I can see you have.” The doctor looked at the vest lying over the chair back. He had also noticed the scars and healed bullet wounds on Dahl’s upper body when he’d first examined him.

  “It’ll go away,” Dahl said.

  “Yes, it will,” the doctor agreed. “The breastbone will mend quick enough. If you lie still a few days, you’ll let the bruising heal on your heart. If you don’t take it easy, you could overwork your heart and get yourself buried alongside those men you killed.”

  “I’ll take it easy a day or two,” Dahl said. “But then I’ll have to get on up and get back—”

  He stopped himself. He had started to say get back home, but it had occurred to him that there would be no one waiting there for him—not anymore.

  The doctor saw the change in his eyes.

  “What’s your hurry, young man?” he said. He gave a nod toward Sara and added, “You won’t find more capable hands to take care of you than Sara’s here.”

  Sara smiled and looked down modestly.

  “No hurry, Doctor,” Dahl said, “now that I think of it.”

  “Good, then,” said the doctor, looking back and forth between the two of them. “I will warn you to keep out of Kindred whilst you’re staying here.”

  “I’ve already been given a warning by Marshal Kern,” Dahl said.

  “A warning from Kern is a warning indeed,” the doctor said. “If Sara here hasn’t already told you, Emerson Kern was recently appointed to his job by our newly elected mayor, William Coakley.” He gave Sara a look.

  “No, I hadn’t mentioned it, Doctor,” Sara said.

  The doctor continued talking to Dahl. “The thing is, Mayor Coakley ran on a platform of cleaning the streets of Kindred of all the riffraff cowhands and drifters who come here on their way back from a big drive. He won his election, then left town. Nobody’s seen him for a week. Gone off celebrating, I suppose—damn politicians. None of them is worth a dead dog’s ass.”

  Dahl only nodded. He ignored the remark about the new mayor and speculated, “I could find myself looked at as one of those drifters?”

  “I expect nobody here knows quite how to look at you, Mr. Dahl,” the doctor said. “That’s why it’s probably best you do as Kern sa
ys, stay out of what he now calls his town.”

  “I heard the warning. I won’t be causing any trouble,” Dahl said. “I don’t care whose town it is.”

  “That’s good.” The big doctor pushed himself up from his chair. “Unless you need anything for the pain, I can say my job is through. I will check back on you in two days,” he added. He wadded his handkerchief and put it away.

  Dahl reached down into his trouser pocket and pulled out a gold coin. “Obliged for your help, Doctor.” He held the coin out.

  But the doctor held his thick hand out, refusing the coin. “Put your money away, young man. I’m not a doctor who takes pay for just looking at somebody and telling them what’s hurting.” He grinned. “You knew what was hurting before I even got here.”

  “I want to pay you, Doctor,” Dahl insisted.

  “All right, then. But for this amount, let me give you some more medical advice,” the doctor said, taking the coin. “No gunfighting. No chopping wood. No hauling water . . .” He looked at Sara, then at the bed, then back at Dahl. “Anything else, I expect you’ll do it whether I say so or not.”

  “Obliged again, Doctor,” Dahl said.

  Dahl and Sara watched the doctor leave.

  When he was out of sight, Sara turned to Dahl and said, “Will you give me your word that you won’t leave until the doctor comes back in two days and says you’re well enough to ride?”

  “I don’t think I’m hurt that bad,” Dahl said, “but yes, I promise.”

  Sara smiled, reaching behind her back and loosening the strings on her apron. “Well, if you’re not hurt that bad, maybe . . .”

  She had to let her words trail when someone knocked on the door. Without waiting for a reply or an invitation, a man walked into the room, pencil and paper in hand.

  “Please keep that thought in mind,” Dahl said to her in a lowered voice.

  “There you are, young man,” the man said with a wide grin. “The doctor just told me it would be all right for us to talk a little.”

  Dahl looked at Sara.

  “This is Ed Dandly,” Sara said, introducing the intruder. “He runs the newspaper here in Kindred.” To Ed Dandly she said, “Mr. Dandly, this is Mr. Sherman Dahl. . . .”