Marshal Jeremy Six #7

by Brian Garfield

  The Home of Great Western Fiction!

  Spanish Flat was a town balanced between high country and desert, between mines and ranches, between horsemen and hoemen, between the law-abiding and the naturally lawless. At any moment, the balance could shift and the place go up in gunsmoke. One man kept watch on that balance. His name was Jeremy Six and he wore the marshal’s badge.

  But even the best lawman has to have a deputy—and when Jeremy’s new segundo set out to even a few old scores with the owlhooters, it meant that the law itself in Spanish Flat had gone loco—and every badge was a fair target for a six-shooter.

  MARSHAL JEREMY SIX 7: GUNDOWN

  By Brian Garfield writing as Brian Wynne

  First Published by Ace Books in 1969

  Copyright © 1969, 2020 by Brian Garfield

  First Digital Edition: April 2020

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Cover Art by Gordon Crabb

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Agent.

  One

  Sundown splashed red lances of burnt dusty clouds across the sky westward; the blood-colored glow tainted the rooftops of Spanish Flat. July heat lifted from the powdery streets like steam off a hot griddle. Stores and shops threw their doors and windows open after the compulsory afternoon siesta—from midafternoon till sundown it was too hot to conduct business in this season—and the sawdust floors of twenty-three saloons and bars echoed the thud of boots worn by thirsty men. They were boots of many kinds: miners’ jackboots, railroad engineers’ soft riding boots, farmers’ tough low-heeled boots, townsmen’s low-top boot-shoes, mountain ranchers’ roughout buck boots with the loose tips folded down. Most of them, however, were the calf-length, high-heel, pointed-toe boots of working Arizona cowboys. Spanish Flat supported an area that included mountain horse ranches, silver and lead mines, dairies and riverbank farms, and a railroad spur; but most of all it supported cattle ranches.

  Sprawled on the edge of the flats, the town faced desert to the west and the high Mogul Rim of the mountains to the east. You could ride east ten miles and be in high-country lodgepole forest, deep and green and cool; you could ride south ten miles and be on yellow grass hills that stretched away, past small mountain ranges, clear to the Mexican border; you could ride north ten miles and be along the Smoke River, cottonwood banks separating rich bunchgrass cattle ranches; and you could ride west ten miles and find yourself on the rim of a vast clay desert, fading away toward California, endless miles of sand, brush, and cactus. Out there was the Camino Diablo—the Devil’s Road—a trail for none but the desperate, littered with bleached bones, dried brittle by the brass sun.

  It was a town seated in precarious balance between high country and desert, between mines and ranches, between horsemen and groundlings, between law and lawlessness. The thin pivot could shift Spanish Flat from order to disorder at any moment—and one man decided that balance. His name was Six; he wore the peace officer’s badge.

  Marshal Jeremy Six began his first rounds of the evening by walking up the main street from his office to the sturdy, respectable Drovers Rest Saloon—headquarters for the cattlemen, aristocrats of Smoke Valley society. From there, after a few desultory words with Hal Craycroft, who owned the place, Six went by the railroad depot, the telegraph office, the wagon freight express station, and the Dragoon stagecoach office. That much was routine. Now, stripped down to his shirtsleeves and walking without hurry, he turned down a side street and covered the two-block distance that brought him to the edge of Cat Town. There was no pattern to his movements; he never took the same route twice in a row. To do so would have been to invite ambush, for Cat Town was a place where the lawman’s dull-gleaming badge was tolerated most of the time, but never really at home.

  Cat Town’s narrow dusty streets were powdered lines dividing irregular rows of drab stores, saloons, flophouses, stables and gambling dens, most of them built of adobe and now half-melting back into the earth from which they had come. Jeremy Six’s boots, moving at a deliberate pace, boiled up dust to mark his passage. There was a crowd of horses, tough fourteen-hand mustangs, bunched at the rack before the Tres Candelas cantina; and as Six came around the corner a block away, a cowboy pitched out of the saloon, sprawled across the sidewalk, flopped into the street and staggered to his feet. The cowboy’s face was red—perhaps a reflection of the sunset clouds overhead. He dusted himself off and addressed a loud string of oaths at the door of the cantina, from which issued four more cowboys. They came backing out of the place, guns drawn and pointed into the saloon.

  Six’s pace quickened; he lifted to a trot, on the balls of his feet, clapping his right hand down over the walnut grips of his holstered revolver. But by the time he reached the sidewalk across the street from the Tres Candelas, the cowboys had gathered their reins and mounted their mustangs.

  A quick glance, too brief to be conscious, had implanted in Six’s mind the Chainlink brand on the horses’ flanks; that was confirmed when he recognized one of the cowhands, a tall redhead who went by the name of Bud Cooley.

  There had been no gunshots; but Six’s thinking had jumped the straight track of his mind. More alert and more questioning than he had been, he stopped still. “Hold it, boys.”

  High on the saddle, Bud Cooley whipped his head around, his dark freckled face squinting through the sunset light. He had been in the act of pushing his gun back into its holster; now he froze, holding the half-holstered gun, ready to complete the operation but equally ready to pull the gun out again.

  Six said, “What’s this, Bud?”

  “You damn lawmen ain’t never around when you’re needed,” Bud Cooley said. His voice was an angry rasp.

  “Needed for what?”

  The cowboy jerked his head toward the saloon. “Stratton’s tinhorns got a crosscut rigged up in there. How come you ain’t run them out of town?”

  “You’re saying they cheated you at the tables?” Six said.

  Cooley’s companions spoke a growl of assent. Cooley said, “Took our month’s pay off the bunch of us in less than an hour. Ain’t no way an honest game could do that, Marshal. I say the place is running crooked rigs. I say it’s time you closed them down, Stratton and that pack of shills, and run them out of town fast enough to scrape some hide off ’em.”

  A vague shadow in the saloon doorway moved forward a pace, into the light—Sid Stratton, pale and slightly smiling. His silk-soft voice rode into the hot street without anger: “You call a man a cheat, cowboy, you ought to be able to prove it. Prove my tables cheated you, and I’ll close myself out and run myself out of town.”

  Cooley shifted his stare to Stratton. “You know I can’t prove it on you, bucko. If we could prove it, we’d have tom down that dump around your ears. You’d be pickin’ up your teeth with two busted arms right about now.”

  The cowboys growled again. Jeremy Six let pent-up air out of his chest. It was obvious Cooley was not sure enough of himself to do more than bluster; it was obvious the moment of white heat had passed. With the threat postponed, Six stepped down off the walk and crossed the street, threading between the Chainlink mustangs until he reached the porch of the cantina. He climbed up and turned to face
Bud Cooley and the cowboys. “All right, you’ve had your fun. If you haven’t got evidence on Stratton, you can’t sign a complaint. And without a complaint against him, he’s free to run his business.”

  Sid Stratton’s face became half-blank, half-smirk; and Bud Cooley’s voice shot toward Six: “I guess that makes it clear whose side you’re on, don’t it, Six?”

  “Don’t jump to confusions, Bud.”

  “Aagh,” Cooley said in disgust, and abruptly yanked his horse around. The mustangs broke from standing-start to a scratching gallop that clouded the street with dust and propelled the cowboys around the bend of the street. When the sound of their retreat died, Six heard Sid Stratton’s dry chuckle behind him.

  “Much obliged, Marshal,” Stratton said. “Buy you a drink.”

  Six turned to answer, but Stratton had backed inside and gone. Six went in through the narrow doorway and saw the tall gambler, already halfway to the bar. Stratton’s bartender-bouncer, Clete Jennings, stood like an angry ox at the near end of the roughhewn plank bar, massaging his knuckles; it must have been Jennings who had thrown the cowboy out into the street. Back in a corner, at a card table with a half-full whiskey bottle before him, sat young Earle Mainwaring, eyes bloodshot and face shadowed by a cloud of uncertainty.

  The room had a fair crowd in it; their lusty racket had ceased some moments earlier. The silence ragged Six. He moved to the bar. Big Clete Jennings came along on the opposite side of the bar, wiping the plank with a flannel rag. Sid Stratton nodded a signal to Jennings, who slid a glass toward Six and poured it three-fingers high with whiskey. The pale insidious smile played on Sid Stratton’s square, soft-skinned face. The flesh was loose-pouched around Stratton’s jowls, though he was a thin man everywhere but in his face. His hair was dust-brown and thin, carefully combed across the pink scalp; he wore no hat. His clothes were the elaborate white, silver lace, and black that marked the professional gambler’s uniform. Sleeve garters and a vest-pocket derringer pistol completed his costume, unless there were concealed weapons, of which Six had no doubt—perhaps a knife in a boot-top, another derringer in a handy trouser pocket.

  Stratton was a tall man, but no taller than Six; their glances met on a level. Clete Jennings poured a drink for Stratton, who picked it up without looking at it and raised it in toast toward Six, all the time faintly smiling. It was as if Stratton had just learned that Six could be bought, and that Stratton had the price.

  He was wrong—as Six made abundantly clear by upending his glass of whiskey and letting it splash across the floor. Sawdust and dry gray floorboards soaked it up so fast that the eye could hardly detect a stain only a second later. The rich scent of the powerful whiskey was briefly strong in the air, then gone; it would blend with the steady stink of the place.

  Six put the empty glass down quietly, all the while holding Stratton’s shocked glance. Six’s voice was a dry rustle. “Get my meaning?”

  “No. I guess I don’t.”

  Six said, “You’re pegged, Stratton. You’re clever and you know how to move slow and easy, and so far you’ve kept your skirts clean since you came to this town. But you’ve got tinhorn stamped all over you. I’ll give you this fair warning, which is more than you’d give those cowboys—you can clear out of Spanish Flat now, while nobody’s hurt, or you can stay here and maybe buy enough trouble to settle you in the ground. Fair warning, then: move on while you still can.”

  The smile had become rigid on Stratton’s soft face. He said tautly, “The last marshal that tried to close me down, I closed him down.”

  Six glanced at Clete Jennings, whose massive knotted hand lay on the bar top. Jennings was inspecting the levels in the backbar row of bottles; he was pretending he hadn’t heard the conversation. But the bouncer’s muscles were bunched and corded under the sweat-pasted shirt.

  Six murmured, “I’m not closing you down, Stratton. Not yet. But the first scrap of evidence I get on you will be enough to satisfy me. Fair warning—remember?”

  “You can’t make that stick, Marshal.”

  Six’s shoulders moved up and down an inch. “Maybe. You won’t get a second warning.”

  “Just you remember what I said. You’re only one man. You can get closed down easier than me.” The smile pasted itself across Stratton’s mouth.

  Six’s glance was bleak. He held Stratton’s stare until, with increasing discomfort, Stratton looked away; then Six turned and walked back to the corner where young Earle Mainwaring sat. Earle looked up just once, long enough to recognize Six, and thereafter kept his eyes down. Six hooked a chair-rung with his bootheel, pulled the chair out and sat, facing the youth. Earle Mainwaring was dark, narrow faced, and nervous. Six said, “Evening, Earle.”

  Earle’s voice was strained, muted. “What do you want?”

  “Your dad wouldn’t like it much if he knew you spent all your time in this dive.”

  “You my wet-nurse, or what?” Earle squirmed in the chair. Defensively: “You think my old man doesn’t know where to find me?”

  “If he does, all the more reason for you to stay shut of this kind of place.”

  “Anybody ask you, Marshal?”

  Six said gently, “If you could see yourself, boy.”

  In a guarded low tone, Earle said gratingly, “Look, I got a job here. I work for Stratton, understand? House dealer. I deal fair cards. You can’t arrest a man for that, or drag me out of the place of business where I work. Leave me alone, all right?”

  Six looked around the place—the down-at-the-heels crowd, the low ceiling, curling smoke, chipped flimsy furniture. “Your father could buy and sell a hundred dives like this. You don’t need this kind of job, boy.”

  “Maybe I like it.”

  “Do you?”

  Earle made no answer. Six pushed his chair back and said, “Earle, what do you want?” And leaving that hang, he got up and walked away, feeling sour. Garrett Mainwaring was a rich man; he was also a friend of Jeremy Six’s. Six hated to see Mainwaring’s son do this to his father.

  As Six approached the door, he saw Clete Jennings standing there, feet well apart, body balanced forward, as if he were set to swing his fist at Six. Jennings peeled his lips back in a taut deadly smile, and stepped aside to let Six through. In the doorway, Six looked over his shoulder, past Jennings, at Sid Stratton, who stood fingering a cigar at the end of the bar. Stratton’s eyes came up, blank, giving away nothing. He looked at Six for a moment, looked at Jennings, and looked back down at his cigar. Back in the corner, a pretty dark-haired girl had come in the back door and was talking to young Earle Mainwaring, who kept shaking his head.

  Six went outside, past Clete Jennings; in the twilit street he trudged toward the next stop on his rounds, troubled by what he had seen shaping up in the Tres Candelas.

  After supper, Six stopped into the elite Drovers Rest and found Hal Craycroft, proprietor, leaning on his elbows behind the mahogany bar. Tracy Chavis, the big rancher who owned Chainlink, was deep in conversation with the saloonkeeper. The two looked up when Six came in. Muted conversations hummed in the big room; gold coins clicked on felt card tables. Oil lamps on the backbar wall illuminated the big painting of the Little Big Horn massacre.

  Six joined Chavis and Craycroft, nodded, and accepted the cup of coffee Craycroft proffered. Tracy Chavis said, without preamble, “My cowhands told me about that trouble at Stratton’s place.”

  “News gets around fast,” said Six.

  Chavis turned, back against the bar, hooked elbows over the bar and spurred boots over the brass rail. He tipped the big hat back on his head and said, “I guess you haven’t got enough evidence to close him down, eh?”

  “That’s the size of it,” Six said. “If Cooley and the rest of your boys had anything to prove Stratton cheated them, Stratton wouldn’t be open for business tonight.”

  Hal Craycroft leaned forward to speak past Chavis’ back. “Jeremy, we’ve been talking it over.”

  “Talking what over?”

>   “Look, Stratton and his kind, they’re small potatoes, but they’re a sign of what’s happened to this town since the railroad reopened our spur line and the mines built up all these extra payrolls and put in reduction mills and so forth. This ain’t a one-cow town any more, Jeremy. Spanish Flat’s getting big. Hell, we must have seven, eight hundred people right in town and around the edges now.”

  Six gave him a dry glance. “What are you trying to tell me, Hal? That the town’s getting too big for my britches?”

  “Too big for any one man to handle,” Tracy Chavis interjected. “That’s what he means, Jeremy. You’re just one man. You can’t be everywhere at once. You can’t keep an eye on Sid Stratton and the rest of the Cat Town hooligans and still keep the peace all over town.”

  “I do my best. The town’s not so big it can afford a company-strength police force.”

  “Maybe not,” Craycroft said. “But we sure as hell can afford at least one deputy marshal, to help you handle the load.”

  “That’s not in my budget,” Six said.

  “Tomorrow’s council-meeting day. We can sure pass a resolution and vote your office enough for a deputy’s salary.”

  “All right, Hal,” Six said “I’m agreeable if the town’s willing to go the expense. But there’s just one other thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Offhand, I can’t think of anybody around here who’s qualified for the job—except maybe you, Tracy. You want it?”

  The big rancher chuckled. In his day, not more than a few years ago, Chavis had been respected and feared along the Circuit. But now he shook his head. “I’ve settled down, remember? I’ve got a family to feed and a ranch to run. But you’ll find somebody, Jeremy. You just hunt around some.”

  “I’ll do that,” Six said. He drained his cup. “Thanks for the coffee, Hal.” He nodded to the two men and went outside.