"The marshal spends a fair amount of time riding the circuit, serving process and looking in on folks livin' by themselves," I said, thinking aloud. "How long should we wait if he's out of town?"
"Overnight?" Rusty rubbed his chin stubble as he wrestled with the morality of staying until tomorrow if the marshal had to be tracked down.
"You got money for a hotel room?" Staying in any of the hotels held no attraction for me. Bedbugs the size of small dogs gnawed at a man's limbs, and the mattresses were all lumpy, stuffed with corn husks mixed with feathers or old shredded blankets.
I heaved a sigh. Maggie had a good mattress so that spending the night with her afforded more than her soiled dove favors. Paying just to sleep on that goose down filled mattress would have been worth the coin. Feeling her snuggled up all naked and warm, skin touching skin all night long, even on the hottest night, made a man feel frisky.
"I ain't got two dimes to rub together, but Gus said he'd run me a tab until payday. That's only a week off."
"Be careful what interest he'll charge."
"Interest? What do you mean, Charlie?"
It took the rest of the ride through town to explain how banks made money and what Gus intended doing if Rusty was foolish enough to borrow money from a barkeep.
"If 'n I run up a bill of a dollar, he might want me to give him back two? Fer a single, solitary week? That's highway robbery!"
I chuckled at his newfound knowledge. We rode past Gus' and angled away, heading toward the marshal's office. My back ached and my legs felt like old tree stumps from the long ride. Foolishly standing in the stirrups to stretch, I lost my balance and toppled from Monte's back when a powerful gust came whipping down from the mountains.
God's sense of humor appealed to Rusty. He laughed until tears ran down his cheeks when I smashed facedown into a half-frozen mud puddle. As I tried to get my feet under me, I slipped and fell again. Getting my knees under me, I rose as a rope whirred through the air and a loop settled down over my shoulders. A quick tug tightened the rope, and I was drug off like I was some calf doing whatever he could to avoid branding.
Rusty dragged me along a few yards, then sent a ripple down the rope. The loop released my arms.
"You son of a bitch. Why'd you go and do that?" I stumbled to my feet and wiped away the mud. All I succeeded in doing was shifting it from one spot to another on my fancy fleece-lined coat.
"Charlie, you're one funny lookin' gent, all smeared up with mud. You look like them wooden Indians standin' outside smoke shops. I had to save you from drownin', didn't I?" Rusty laughed even harder as he pulled in his rope and coiled it before fastening it down to his saddle with a rawhide thong.
It took a few seconds to skin out of my coat. The freezing wind made my teeth chatter as I snapped the coat a few times and sent mud flying in all directions. Then I reached into my shirt and took out the rustler's picture. The wind tattered the edges of the paper as I held it out for Rusty to see what he had contributed to.
"That's all smeared up," he said, peering down at the waterlogged paper. "Ain't nobody kin tell what that outlaw looks like from that."
"I got to get me some paper and do another drawing." The paper crinkled up in the wind. The pencil drawing made better fire starter now than a way of identifying a rustler.
"Well, now, that suits me jist fine. We kin git out of this wind and shelter at, oh, there!" Rusty pointed to the Watering Hole.
The front door had been closed against the wind, but it being just after noon, Gus had to be inside taking care of his lunch crowd. The lure of not only a warm place to work on a new drawing but also a beer and a sandwich drew me. Every step I took squished and sucked. Mud had gotten into my boots, much to Rusty's delight. The whole way into the saloon he made raunchy comments about what it sounded like as I walked.
Forcing the door open let in a blast of air that caused the trapped smoke inside to swirl about in small tornadoes. Rusty pushed me on through, wanting to get out of the weather. I took a step and looked down at my boots. The mud and damp caused the sawdust from the floor to clump and stick like paper wasps on their nest. Kicking did nothing to dislodge the sawdust. Giving up, I tromped to the bar and put my elbows down on the only two clean spots. Gus left something to be desired when it came to mopping up spills.
"Two beers," Rusty said. He glanced at me.
Bowing to the inevitable, I fished out a silver dollar. It had been mighty lonesome in my vest pocket anyway. Saving it for a rainy day had been my intent, but the dark clouds filtering down over the Big Snowy Mountains to the east intended to rain. That intention made this a rainy day, or so went my thirsty thinking.
"Heard tell you boys got all excited over some rustlers last night." Gus plunked down two mugs of beer. I counted the change twice to be sure he didn't try palming one of the nickels as he was wont to do before answering.
"That's why we come to town. Is the marshal anywhere to be found?"
Gus stared hard at me, as if I had grown a new head. His expression melted down until it matched the best of any tinhorn gambler I had ever set across from. He might have been inquiring about the weather, but he was too tense to make me believe something wasn't eating him up, something he didn't want to reveal.
"Had a likeness of one, but it got ruined," Rusty spoke up. Before I could nudge him to quiet, he went on. "Charlie here, he's 'bout the best artist you ever did see. He caught sight of one of them varmints and drew his picture. Purty one, too, but like he said, it got all soaked and ruined when he fell into a mud puddle."
Rusty began spinning the story of how a wind gust had blown me clean off Monte and carried me a dozen yards into the only mud hole in town. His story got too bald-faced too soon for my taste. You need to build up with a story, adding a lie here and there like a good cook throws in sage or salt, chili or exotic spices to make his stew better by degrees. Rusty lacked patience and wanted to get to the punch line fast. He didn't tell jokes any better than he told stories, which was good for me. If any of the other wranglers working at the OH learned how to spin a yarn, I'd be out of a job, no matter how willing I was to ride night herd. They kept me around for my tall tales and to take their minds off how bad a cook Texas Pete was.
I left him bending Gus' ear and went to a table under a window that let in enough light for me to see. Somebody had dropped a newspaper onto the floor. I picked up a sheet and worked to clean my boots. As the mud fell off one gooey clump at a time, I felt eyes on me. Without being too obvious, I sneaked a look around the saloon. A dozen men had crowded in for lunch. Most all laughed at Rusty's story of my fall from grace — or my fall from Monte — but one stared at me like a hungry wolf that had found dinner.
Wadding up the newspaper, I started to toss it back on the floor. A spot on the back page had escaped my mud and any newsprint, leaving a four-inch square of rumpled but clean paper. I found my drawing pencil tucked away in my sash where I carried it like a sword, wetted the tip with my tongue, smoothed the paper and began working with quick, sure strokes. The whistle of the wind and the raucous laughter inside the Watering Hole faded as the lines of a once-seen face began reappearing in front of me. Even the bitter beer's taste faded into a distant memory as the sketch expanded from a few quick lines into a full portrait. The smallness robbed the rustler's face of detail, but there'd never been a wanted poster with a better drawn mug on it.
Rearing back to take a better look caused a minor collision. I looked up. The cowboy who had been eyeing me so hard stared over my shoulder at the drawing.
"You know him?"
The man jumped as if I had poked him in the gut. He shook his head vehemently and backed away. The door slammed hard behind him as he ran out into the wind.
"What was that about?" Rusty pulled up a chair and settled down. His glass had nothing but foam left around the rim. From the way he eyed my half-drunk beer, his whistle still needed a bit of wetting. I pushed my mug to him. A quick gulp drained the beer.
"Ca
n't say. You know him? He must have thought I was doing his picture to steal his soul."
"T'warn't no Injun." Rusty leaned back and called to Gus. "Who was that?"
"Don't rightly know, but he looks like one of the new hands out on the Triangle K spread. Or maybe I seen him in here with one of them boys."
Rusty settled back. "Newcomer to the basin."
I smoothed out the picture. Wrinkles showed across the jaw and over one eye, but there was no removing them from the paper short of ironing. Considering how many times I'd burned holes in my shirt using a flat iron heated up way too much on the stove, this drawing had to be appreciated as it was.
"Time to corral the marshal." I picked up the drawing and stood. My feet had glued themselves to the floor where the mud hadn't been entirely scraped off. Rusty laughed at the new sucking sounds and made more of his lewd comments. Ignoring him proved easier now that a new portrait damned some rustler to the fiery pits for his thieving ways.
We went back into the cold. The wind froze the mud on my Levis and turned my coat into a regular ice box. Most times going to the jailhouse isn't a pleasure. This time the heat boiling from inside proved quite a comfort. Marshal Toms looked up from the same newspaper I had used to draw my sketch, only his expression told me to get to the point. He wasn't in any mood for lollygagging.
"You heard about Horace and the rest of us chasin' after rustlers the other night." I saw no need to give any of the background to our nocturnal adventures. The marshal might be unwilling to stir from his warm chair in the empty calaboose, but he kept his ear to the ground. When he nodded, I pushed the sketch across his desk for him to look at. "That's one of 'em."
"How's that, Russell?"
"I got a decent look at him during the fight."
"At night? What'd he do, want to kiss you?"
"A bolt of lightning did for that, Marshal." It took real control to hold back whumping up a real story. "I seen his face as surely as I do yours right now."
"You do have a mind for details," Toms said, holding the sketch close to study it. "I've seen him before."
"Around town?"
"Not sure," the marshal said. He jerked around when Rusty let out a squeal like a stepped on hound dog. "What's the matter with you, Rawlins? You finally pass that stone?"
"Here, Marshal, lookee here." Rusty pulled down a poster from the wall and dropped it beside my sketch. "Now tell me, ain't that the same owlhoot?"
"Could be, just could be," the marshal said, stroking his beard until it grew a sharp point at the bottom. "Josiah Hanks." He tapped the picture, then compared it again to the wanted poster. "He's a bad one. More robberies under his belt than a dozen desperados his young age, and he's wanted fer all of 'em listed here. And . . ." His voice trailed off as he scowled in concentration.
"You've seen him in town, haven't you?" I read the answer without Toms bothering to reply. "Where? In a saloon?"
"Out south of town while I was servin' process this past week."
"Foreclosin' on widders, more 'n likely," Rusty whispered. I shushed him.
"On the road goin' to the Triangle K I seen him and another fellow talkin'. They rode off 'fore I reached them."
"Didn't you think that was suspicious?" I asked.
"'Course I did, but I had a job to do."
"Five dollars to collect serving papers instead of arrestin' a criminal on a wanted poster," Rusty said. This time he spoke loud enough to draw Marshal Toms' glare. The lawman's eyes were close-set, and he had a nose like a hog. Mottled skin and a mouth holding half a set of teeth, along with that greasy beard of his, made him a fearsome customer, but Rusty wasn't backing down. He returned the look as good as he got.
"I only caught a glimpse as I was puttin' it up," he said defensively. "That there poster only showed up on yesterday's stage. But I seen him before that, before I was on the road. He might work for Jack Cheshire as a puncher."
My boss didn't cotton much to Cheshire, but there wasn't an open feud between the men. Mr. Phillips claimed Cheshire abused his land letting sheep overgraze it so cattle starved. Having shepherded for a couple years when I first got to Montana, I knew that was possible. Sheep bite down deep and pull up grass by the roots, enjoying the taste of dirt as much as the juicy blades. Once the grass is uprooted like that, nothing but bare earth is left behind. No animal can live off just dirt, 'less it's a nightcrawler. And they aren't no good 'cept for using as fish bait.
"Are you gonna arrest him?"
"I need to find him first. I said he might work on the Triangle K. And Cheshire gets mighty jumpy when he sees the flash of a badge."
"Does he have reason for that?" The way Marshal Toms screwed up his face showed how hard he worked to pull out the right words.
"I never heard, mind you, so I don't know for certain sure, but Cheshire might be a wanted man hisself. Him and his family've been respectable enough for the past ten years. Leastways, as long as I've been marshal. He keeps his men in line, mostly, and that daughter of his is a right purty filly."
"I've heard that," I said, nodding. "Never seen her or her pa in town the whole time I've worked on the OH."
"Private folks, but Mira Nell Cheshire's so purty ain't nobody in the whole Judith River basin that can hold a candle to her."
From the way he spoke and the distant gaze that came to his piggy eyes, Marshal Toms fancied her for himself. That her pa never brought her or the rest of the family to town spoke volumes on his opinion of town and the folks in it. It was a matter of some civic concern that there were fourteen saloons, and the one church at the far end of town needed a pastor since the last one had been run out of town for stealing from the congregation. His argument that he was poor and that money was intended for the poor convinced nobody. Some of the more upstanding gents suggested spending money on a poor rope and seeing how it fit around the preacher's neck. That had been nigh on three months back. With winter threatening more each day, the congregation had to wait until spring to find a new preacher.
"You ain't never seen her?" the marshal asked unexpectedly.
"Can't say that I have. If she's half the beauty you claim, every line of her face and figure would be etched into my brain. All I got up there now's . . . other women." Memory of Maggie's naked body, complete with sags and wrinkles and big brown moles, pushed aside any guess I had about the Cheshire girl's appearance.
"A man might be willing to pay five dollars for a picture." Toms licked his lips, then said, "Or even ten dollars. Silver."
I nodded to let him know I understood — and it was also clear who that "man" willing to pay such a handsome sum was. If there had been any question as to the marshal's letch for Miss Mira it disappeared with the offer of silver. What would Toms expect in return for thirty pieces of silver? That thought got pushed aside. If I kept following such wild notions, that job preaching would look more and more appealing.
"Let's ride on out to the Triangle K, jist to look around," the lawman said.
"Let Mr. Phillips know what you find," I said. Then it came to me what he meant. "You want me to ride with you?"
"That good for nuthin' Rawlins can tell your boss you're on the trail of his rustlers so you won't catch no hell."
I put my hands against my sash. There hadn't been any reason to ride into town wearing my six-shooter. The only weapon I carried, other than my knife, was my trusty pencil shoved under the sash.
"There might be gunplay if this fellow actually works for Cheshire," I said.
"Could be Cheshire is behind the cattle stealin'," said Rusty. "It wouldn't be the first time a piss poor rancher thought to build his herd by rustlin. Not sure how he'd run an OH brand into a Triangle K, but where there's a will, there's a way."
A dozen thoughts collided in my head, but a different part of my anatomy settled the issue.
"I'll go, if you think we might catch sight of Miss Mira," I said.
"You won't regret it, Russell," the marshal said. He shooed Rusty away to return with the news
I had been temporarily deputized, then let me stick an old S&W from the gun rack into my sash, "Just in case."
I went to fetch Monte and worked to knock off as much drying mud from my coat and jeans as I could. If we talked to Jack Cheshire, chances were good we'd see his daughter, too. At least I convinced myself of that as I mounted and trotted from town to join Marshal Toms already on the road.
Only when I saw he carried a sawed-off shotgun across his saddle did I remember the real reason we rode to the Triangle K.
Rustlers.
"You fixin' to arrest him if he's workin' for Cheshire?" I held up the sketch of the rustler.
"I surely will, but don't say nuthin' 'bout the OH cattle. I'll run him in on the wanted poster. Once he's in the lockup, he'll spill his guts 'bout all his crimes."
We rode in silence, the marshal dreaming about Miss Mira and me worrying more and more, mile by mile, if the rustler had gotten as good a look at me as I had of him. Riding up to the Triangle K ranch house could unleash a hail of bullets. Dying in a lovely woman's arms might be good enough for Toms, but I had other fish to fry.
"Here's the road to the main house," the marshal said. He sat staring at the muddy, double rutted track as if his quarry would rise from the ground. "You don't say nuthin'. Let me do all the askin'."
"You're the boss."
"Damned straight I am. I — "
The distant rifle report made me look around. A tiny puff of white gun smoke caught on the wind close to a hundred yards away. A stand of junipers hid whoever had fired. Hand resting on the butt of the S&W, which was as useless as the marshal's shotgun at this range, I turned to ask him what we ought to do.
Toms sat upright in the saddle. Then he half turned in my direction. What happened next defied everything I knew about bones in the human body. Like liquid he kinda melted in the saddle and flowed off his mount all the way to the ground.
West of the Big River: Boxed Set of Eight Western Novels Page 22