Red Water

by J. R. Roberts

  “Last chance to call it even,” Clint said. “What do you say?”

  Since the redhead was caught with his .44 only halfway out of its holster, he opened his hand to let it drop back in place. “Fine, but you’ve been warned. You try to work against this posse and you’ll be strung up right alongside Laramie and them other two.”

  Clint nodded and stepped back so he could keep all three men in his sights. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind. You fellows give my best to Marshal Flynt.”

  The men grumbled plenty of foul words as Clint headed for the street, but they made sure to keep their voices low enough to stay out of trouble.

  FIFTEEN

  Clint left the alley in a rush, but wasn’t about to give the three men the pleasure of thinking they’d scared him out. He kept his steps purposeful and got away without running. Once he was a ways down the street, he found a spot on the boardwalk, leaned against a post, and kept his eyes open.

  Frank emerged first. The deputy looked up and down the street a few times before realizing he was drawing plenty of attention on his own. He holstered his pistol and motioned for the men behind him to do the same. After that, Arvin and the redhead stepped out.

  Arvin was more nervous than the other two combined. Clint could tell that much even with a good portion of the street between them. The redhead may or may not have spotted Clint, but he obviously knew it was too late to rekindle any more trouble without possibly turning things into a full shooting war. Judging by the way he scolded the other two men, Clint guessed the redhead was saying as much right now.

  Just to be safe, Clint lowered his head so his hat covered most of his face. There were enough other people on the street around him to keep him hidden until the three men walked back toward Dale’s.

  “What was the meaning of that?” Allie asked as she practically leaped at Clint from a doorway.

  Clint couldn’t help but jump. “Jesus! Where were you hiding?”

  “I wasn’t far enough away to keep from noticing that fight you had back there. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not,” she said as she reached out to fuss with his face and shirt. “You’re all rumpled and . . . are you bleeding?”

  Gently moving her hands away from him, Clint turned and wrapped an arm around Allie to move her along with him. “I’m trying not to draw any attention here, and you’re not helping.”

  “Then maybe I should just run along and have a word with the marshal. Perhaps he’d like to know you were attacking his men.”

  “You truly think that?” Clint asked.

  “With all the nonsense you’ve been saying and doing, I hardly know what to think.”

  Allie wasn’t a pivotal part of anything Clint was doing. He knew he could leave her where she stood and was fairly confident she wouldn’t try to get him into any trouble with the law. What he didn’t like, however, was the anger that was spreading across her face like a brushfire. She was much too pretty to be left so angry.

  “Sorry about all of this,” he told her. “I truly am. Sometimes I kind of get pulled into these things.”

  “From where I’m standing, you didn’t get pulled into anything. It looked to me like you walked in all by yourself.”

  “That’s fair enough.”

  Although she worked to stay mad, Allie was unable to maintain the stern frown that she’d been wearing only a few moments ago. Instead, she lowered her voice and told him, “If Marshal Flynt wasn’t such a shifty-eyed pig, I would’ve kept walking when you told me to.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No. I guess I didn’t.”

  “Why’s that?” Clint asked.

  “Because,” Allie replied, “there’s one more night of Founder’s Day to celebrate and I don’t want to do it alone.”

  “Those must have been some founders to get a day that lasts for two.”

  “Try four,” she corrected. “To be honest, this town just sort of carries on to carry on. I doubt more than a few of the old-timers can actually name one of the founders.”

  “I was planning on looking into Flynt’s posse,” Clint said.

  “You should have time. The music won’t even get started for another few hours.”

  Clint’s intention had been to get out of town and move along. That had been his intention for some time and, like the times before it, something came along to push that intention toward the back of his head.

  There was an unmistakable gleam in Allie’s eye that told him she truly wanted him to stay for a dance. And after dancing, there was always more to do. Suddenly, something else came to mind.

  “What about Gwen?” he asked. “She took up most of my dancing time the other night.”

  “It was more than that, from what I hear,” Allie replied with a knowing, and approving, smirk.

  Now there was no chance of Clint leaving before he saw the night through.

  SIXTEEN

  Allie had her shop to tend to and Gwen was nowhere to be found, so Clint was able to deal with his own business for the rest of the day. As it turned out, his business didn’t consist of much more than finding a spot across from Dale’s and watching men drift in and out of the place. Marshal Flynt had set up shop inside and only stuck his nose out for the occasional breath before getting back to his table.

  Once in a while, Clint peeked through the window to make sure the lawmen hadn’t slipped out through some back door. As early evening came along, Clint grew tired of lurking and decided to have a beer. He could think of a lot better places than Dale’s, but none of those places made him feel like the center of attention.

  The second he walked inside, most of the people at Dale’s were looking him over. Flynt and the other lawmen stared him down as if Clint’s face were on the wanted posters, while the bartender didn’t try to hide the fact that he was reaching below the bar for some sort of weapon. Before any threats could be made, Clint stole the barkeep’s thunder by striding up to the bar and proclaiming, “I’ll have a beer.”

  “You’ll pay for it here and now,” the barkeep warned. “I ain’t about to run back and forth.”

  “Of course,” Clint said. “That’s the policy. It’s written right there on the sign.”

  Even though the bartender had looked ready to take a swing at Clint before, those words nearly brought him over the top of the bar to lunge at Clint’s throat. Instead, he quickly filled a glass, slammed it on the bar so half of it spilled onto the floor, and then charged him full price. Clint took the beer and casually walked over to the table where the lawmen were holding court.

  “You got some nerve showing your face around here.” Flynt grunted.

  “Why?” Clint asked. “You intend on throwing me in jail for not allowing your men to drag me off the street and beat me to a pulp?”

  Flynt’s eyes narrowed, making his fleshy face seem even more piggish. “What do you want, Adams?”

  “I want to know when we’re leaving. I am still on the posse, right?”

  “I figured that was some sort of joke.”

  Clint pulled in a breath and let it out as a sigh. Leaning down a bit, he dropped his voice and said, “A man in my line of work can’t afford to be talked about like I’m just some dreg who takes money for pulling a trigger. Every saloon is full of men who would take a shot at me the minute they thought I could be pushed around so easily. Your men went too far and they got what they deserved as well. I’m here now to talk to you man to man.”

  It took a few moments, but Flynt grunted to the deputies surrounding him and they found somewhere else to be. He then motioned to one of the free chairs and waited for Clint to sit down before grumbling, “But what you said about them outlaws . . .”

  “What did you expect me to say? That I was trembling at the thought of someone like Laramie setting his sights on me? If I said anything else about them, I’d have other gunmen looking me up the minute I stepped out that door. Surely, a man like you knows this sort of thin
g.”

  Marshal Flynt was confused. That much could be seen on his face, which was just fine by Clint. After all, Clint had specifically mixed a bunch of nonsense in with enough compliments to Flynt’s supposed toughness to completely snow the lawman.

  Rather than admit to his confusion or ask Clint to explain himself any more, the marshal accepted the double-talk with half a grin. “Yeah,” he said. “I know plenty about that sort of thing. Just like you should know I couldn’t sit back and let you call me out like that in my own town.”

  Clint nodded. “I know. That’s why I didn’t kill any of those deputies you sent out for me. It’s also why I’d still like to ride with your posse.”

  “You do?”

  “I have a reputation to uphold, but your money spends just as well as anyone else’s. I also think you know just as well as I do that my services are worth a bit more than what you’re paying the rest of these locals.”

  Now that he was back on his own ground, Flynt leaned in his rickety chair like a king reclining on his throne. “Why should I do that?”

  “Because,” Clint replied simply, “I can lead you to these men in half the time.”

  “You ain’t known as a tracker.”

  “You’ve heard plenty about me.”

  “Yeah,” Flynt replied. “I have.”

  “Men in saloons gossip plenty about folks like me. As you can see, I do plenty to make sure everything about me isn’t so widely known. That’s what keeps someone like me alive while others like Laramie wind up on wanted notices or under a few feet of dirt.”

  Clint was truly getting a feel for what sort of double-talk the marshal wanted to hear and what would confuse him just enough to suit Clint’s purposes. Flynt’s eyes clouded over a bit, but he kept nodding as if he knew exactly what Clint was talking about. If that truly was the case, he’d already know that Clint was stringing together half-truths with chunks of manure as he went along.

  “I can pay you twice the going rate,” Flynt said, “but you’ll have to do more work.”

  “I’ll track those outlaws and make sure you men get pointed in the right direction.”

  “If we find them, I expect you to put that famous gun of yours to work as well,” Flynt demanded.

  “You’re the boss. Just to be clear,” Clint added as a way to maintain the picture he’d put into the lawman’s head, “I don’t want to hear any talk about you shoving me around or keeping me in line. I’ll take orders from you, but—”

  Flynt cut him off by using his fingers to turn an imaginary key over his liver lips. “This arrangement is between us,” he grumbled.

  “When does the posse leave?”

  “First light, tomorrow morning. None of the locals would leave before Founder’s Day was over anyhow. Have a good time, but not too good.”

  Standing up, Clint nodded and said, “I’ll just have to see about that.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Before Clint had to wonder where he might get supper that night, he could smell beef being cooked someplace just outside the window of his rented room. Opening the window and leaning outside, Clint quickly realized the entire street was filled with the inviting scent, which emanated from a long table set beneath the Founder’s Day banner.

  Clint threw on a nicer shirt and gave his boots a once-over before strolling down to the festivities. Soon after he’d tracked down the food piled onto the table, he spotted Allie waving to him from across the street. She wore a black dress accented by white ribbons and walked with just enough of a strut to show she was aware of how well the dress hugged her figure.

  “Glad to see you’re still here,” she said as she stepped up beside him and took a clean plate from the pile at the end of the table. Glancing at Clint’s face, she added, “And no more bruises, I see.”

  “Not yet anyway,” Clint chided.

  “So you’re still going along with that posse?”

  Busying himself with the ample selection of meat, vegetables, and other side dishes, he replied, “That’s the plan.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but it looked like those were the marshal’s men who pulled you off the street.”

  “They were. Marshal Flynt and I have come to an understanding.” Seeing the puzzled expression on her face, Clint leaned in close to her ear and added, “I blew enough smoke for him to come around to my way of thinking.”

  Allie giggled and scooped a bit of food onto her own plate. “How much smoke are you talking about?”

  “Just enough to make him think he was still the big, tough lawman and I’m the hired gun he was after in the first place.”

  “Maybe you should have used some of that smoke earlier. It could have saved you a bruise or two.”

  “It took me a while to make sure I wanted to go through the trouble.”

  “Tell me again,” Allie said, “why you want to go through the trouble now.”

  Having reached the end of the table, Clint waited for her to finish picking out what she wanted. Even after accepting some dishes offered by the locals who’d made them for the celebration, Allie’s plate was piled less than half as high as Clint’s. Rather than stop at the spot where Clint waited, Allie led the way to a pair of chairs set up beneath a nearby tree.

  “Something’s not right with that marshal,” Clint said after they’d both sat down.

  “I could have told you that,” she replied. “He’s always been a foul-mouthed idiot.”

  “It’s more than that. There’s something I’m missing and it’s driving me crazy.”

  “Are you always so tenacious?”

  “Yeah,” Clint admitted with a shrug. “It tends to get me into a lot of tight spots, but I can’t just step aside when I might be able to do something to help.”

  “Who are you helping?”

  Clint looked down at his plate, picked up a warm biscuit, and took a bite. Once his mouth wasn’t so full, he said, “I haven’t quite decided yet. If this Laramie fellow is just some wayward kid who the marshal wants to string up for some reason of his own, I can prevent that from happening. If those outlaws truly are half as bad as folks are saying, then I can help with that, too.

  “I’ve ridden along with more posses than I can count,” Clint continued. “This one just feels . . . wrong. Whether it is or isn’t, I can add something to the mix.”

  “And,” Allie declared as she pointed a carrot stick at him, “you just can’t abide something going on without you getting your hands in it.”

  “I’d rather think it was something more that that, but you might be onto something there.”

  “I know I am,” she said proudly. “I could recognize it.”

  “Have you known other men like me?”

  She cheerfully shook her head and told him, “No, but both of my grandmothers were fussy busybodies and they had the same problem.”

  Clint looked at her for a few seconds and then broke out laughing. Rather than discus the matter any further, he shifted the conversation to other subjects ranging from the state of Allie’s fixture shop to the sort of trouble her friend Gwen liked to get herself into.

  Scattered throughout the crowd were a few of Flynt’s deputies and several men who had signed on to the posse. With so much of the posse in plain sight, Clint allowed himself to relax and enjoy the night without worrying about the lawmen riding off without him. Even after the music and dancing got started, Marshal Flynt’s booming, drunken voice could be heard from nearly anywhere in town.

  Clint divided his time between piling food onto his plate and dancing enough to make an appetite for another helping. Allie kicked up her heels and started sipping wine as soon as she’d had her dessert. From there, she was either being spun around by Clint in the middle of the other dancing couples or twirling over to some friend of hers who waited with open arms. Clint was surprised to find someone waiting for him as well.

  “You didn’t forget about me, did you?” Gwen asked.

  Clint’s eyes reflexively twitched to where Allie was d
ancing. “Not at all,” he replied. “I just figured—”

  “You figured I’d find somewhere else to be while you romanced my friend,” she said as she sidled her way over to him without losing a step to the beat of the music.

  “That’s not it at all,” Clint replied. He did his best to keep his voice steady, but it was getting more and more difficult as Gwen placed her hands on his hips and writhed against him. “A lot’s happened since I’ve been here.”

  “It’s only been a day.”

  “Feels a lot longer than that.”

  Suddenly, Gwen reached between Clint’s legs. “It is a lot longer, but I think you’ll need some coaxing to get there.”

  Clint smiled, but soon noticed that Allie was making her way over to him. He tried to turn so Gwen couldn’t maintain her grip, but she moved right along with him. Finally, Clint positioned himself so that he was facing Allie while Gwen had her back to Allie.

  “There’s Allie now,” Clint said, hoping Gwen might decide to back up on her own.

  Keeping one hand on Clint’s crotch, Gwen looked over her shoulder and used her free hand to wave.

  Allie walked right over to them and acknowledged Gwen with a tip of the glass she was holding. “You two found each other again, I see.”

  “Actually,” Clint replied, “we were just mentioning that—”

  “Tell you what,” Allie interrupted. “Why don’t the both of you come where I can talk to you without so much noise?”

  Clint shook his head. “No need for that. We’re just having fun.”

  Glancing down to where Gwen’s other hand was, Allie said, “I just bet you are. Come along with me. You’ll want to hear this.”

  Gwen shrugged and turned to follow her friend. Considering where he was being held, Clint didn’t have much choice but to follow.

  EIGHTEEN

  Between trying to keep up with Gwen and trying not to look like he was being led by a very delicate leash, Clint didn’t have any idea where he was going. He doubted he was in too hot water, since both women seemed pleasant enough whenever they looked back to check on him. They didn’t have any weapons in their hands, so he doubted he was being set up for anything too dangerous. Once he was dragged through a narrow doorway just off the street, however, Clint noticed a definite change in Allie’s demeanor.