He went back to his office to get his windbreaker—in this dry country, night brought its quick chill no matter how hot the day had been. Armed against the cool air currents that flowed through the streets of Spanish Flat, he turned back toward Cat Town to make his rounds. This time he started at Fat Annie’s and worked his way through the district by a haphazard route. The back streets were quiet; it was a desultory Tuesday night. There were enough shift-workers from the mines and reduction mills to keep Cat Town’s business establishments open, but not enough to make noise or trouble. That would wait for Saturday night, as it always did—Saturday night and a jail full of men with headaches and thick tongues and bloodshot belligerence. It would be pleasant, Six reflected, to have a deputy to share the job. Craycroft and Chavis were right, of course; Six had spent his Circuit apprenticeship in Kansas towns with populations no greater than Spanish Flat’s, and with police forces numbering as many as eight or ten men. It would have taken arrogant vanity, not ordinary pride, to insist that he alone could go on handling a town the size Spanish Flat had become. Still, there was a moment’s regret in the knowledge that the town had outgrown him; it wouldn’t be his town any longer. But that was nothing more than a moment’s passing thought-brief, and broken by sudden action.
It started with subtle movement in the shadows at the far corner of Madam Lil’s two-story establishment. Six stopped walking. The shadow moved to the building’s far corner, paused, and slipped back out of sight around the corner. Six squinted, trying to make out the darker area beyond, and went toward that point, moving cautiously. He got close to the front wall of Madam Lil’s; the sound of a girl laughing low in her throat reached him through a dark open window. Then he heard the crunch of boots around the corner. He went that far and looked around the edge, not exposing more of himself than he had to.
He saw movement again, a vague big shadow drifting back into the alley. The man’s stealth had drawn Six’s attention; now it drew Six into the alley.
At the far end of the alley was the back corral of a small freight yard. Beyond the corral was the barn. The shadowy figure was climbing over the fence into the corral; dropped to the ground and started running across the compound, into the heavier shadow of the harness shed by the barn. Six dogtrotted to the corral fence and slipped between the rails, palming his gun, thumbing the hammer back. He heard metal clank inside the shed—the fugitive stumbling over an empty pail. Six went past half a dozen skittish mules and drew close to the shed; he said, “Come on out, fellow. This is the marshal.”
A gun sounded. Its long flash of yellow-orange flashed from just inside the open door. Six saw it and heard it—and felt it. The blow turned him half around. By reflex as much as thought, he whipped his revolver up, leveled it from a crouch, and answered the shot. His aiming point was the reflected glow of muzzle-flame, still fading on the surfaces of his eyes.
A giant figure appeared in the doorway, falling, hands lifted halfway to chest. The gun fell from the man’s fist; his knees went loose and he tumbled to the ground without trying to break his fall with his hands. His shoulder hit the fence and toppled him over, so that he landed on his back. In the faint wash of dim light, Six recognized the face: Clete Jennings, Sid Stratton’s bouncer.
The gun felt too heavy in Six’s fist. He let it drop into the holster. When his forearm grazed his ribs, he felt something warm and sticky. A wave of weakness dimmed his vision; he felt nauseous. When he tried to walk to the fence, his legs wobbled and he had to grab the top rail for support. He bent over to crawl through the fence, went through and fell on his face. A mule came over and tried to nuzzle him through the fence but the rails were too close together. Shaking his head in dizzy anger, Six got his legs under him and stumbled around to the front of the barn. The last part of the way he bounced himself along the wall, one shoulder sliding.
Directly across the street was Clarissa Vane’s Glad Hand Saloon. The sound of the shots must have attracted attention; the door stood open, crowded with men looking out. A woman’s voice spoke within the place; the men stepped aside to let her come through the door. Through clouding eyes, Six recognized Clarissa’s slim graceful silhouette.
He tried to put on a reassuring smile; he stepped into the street, emerging from the barn’s shadow. There was nothing to hang on to, and his legs couldn’t do the job alone; he cursed and fell down.
He heard Clarissa’s abrupt intake of breath, and her quick footfalls. She was kneeling over him, saying his name over and over again. Six growled, “All right, all right. I’m not dead. Get me on my feet.”
He felt her touch, gentle and hesitant. He said, “Where am I hit?”
Clarissa’s voice seemed to come from a long distance away. “One of you bug-eyed bastards get the doctor. On the run!”
There was the quick scratch of running boots, the lift of sudden talk. “It’s the marshal—he’s been shot!”
Clarissa said, “Will you idiots shut up and help me carry him inside?”
Six didn’t feel them pick him up; the last thing he remembered was his own mumbling, “Looks like I sure need a deputy now, doesn’t it?” He went out cold.
Two
Three days of easy riding brought Jim Destiny from Silver City to the edge of the Smoke River at a wide muddy ford. He gave the current a brief scrutiny, raked his horse with both spurs and sent it into the river. The horse plunged deep and splashed forward struggling. Destiny sat with his knees drawn up, ready to jump if the horse should lose its footing in the quick bottom; but the horse scrambled gamely and hit firm bottom past midstream. The shallow water beyond made for easy passage.
The horse heaved ashore, and Jim Destiny stepped to the ground. Water spurted from the tops of his boots. He dipped his long-jawed face in the river, took a sparing drink, and plunged his head under long enough to cool off. When he put his hat on it shaded his features—thin-bladed nose, lips pressed together sternly and bracketed by creases, blue-gray eyes surrounded by crow’s feet. His expression was weary, closed up by bitterness.
He stepped into the saddle, turned from the river and left the trees, striking out across the flats. Eyes slitted against the glare, he turned his head slowly to be sure of the horizons. Heat rolled up from the earth and breathed wearily across the plain.
The river made a loop; within forty-five minutes he penetrated a cool green cottonwood grove, watered the horse again, and went on across the hot plain. Ahead of him the mountains ranged close along the far bank of the river. He followed the twists of the muddy Smoke. The limestone cliffs of the Mogul Rim closed in on the flank of the river where it corkscrewed around another bend; he crossed a homesteader’s field sparsely grazed by rangy cattle, threaded a meadow of brown-eyed yellow daisies, and then left the trees. The trail became a road which left the river behind; it took him forward at a lackadaisical canter. The rooftops of a town appeared on the skyline.
Spanish Flat, he supposed. It didn’t make much difference to Jim Destiny.
He was very young—twenty-two—but grief and misery had left their tracks on him. He came from a family of brothers famous throughout the frontier; he was the least well-known of them, and the last to survive. At twenty-two he was the only Destiny left. Not long ago, there had been four, of whom Steve—the late Stephen Destiny—had been the best, and the best-known. Steve had died in Silver City last October.
Jim Destiny studied Spanish Flat without much interest, put his horse down the powder of the main street and racked it in front of the hotel. He found a fat bald clerk sweating behind the desk, lips moving while he read a dime novel. The clerk took his dollar, gave him a room key and pointed back along a dark hallway. Jim Destiny signed his name in the register, and immediately thought better of it—why had he used his real name? Habit, he supposed. There was no reason to hide, yet no reason to advertise either. But now it was done. He couldn’t change it without attracting attention.
He picked up his warbag and bounced it in the circle of his fist. “Some place I ca
n get a bath and a shave?”
“Barbershop down the street,” the clerk said, with an uninterested wave of his hand in a general southerly direction. He put his nose back in the dime novel; to Jim Destiny’s relief, he had not bothered to glance at the signature in the register.
Destiny left his bag in the room. It was an ordinary hotel room, small and bare, walls of stucco over adobe, painted drab yellow. There was an iron-frame bed with a straw-tick mattress, homespun sheets; in one corner stood a narrow chest, uncertain on uneven legs, supporting a cracked mirror, a pitcher filled with stale warm water, and a chipped porcelain basin. There was a bar of dirty soap and a limp gray towel. A single oil lamp hung from the ceiling. The narrow window looked out across an alley to the brick wall of a bank. The room was hot and stuffy; he flung the window open and left immediately, walking out into the late afternoon sun. He took his horse to the livery stable down-street, paid to have it fed and curried, and walked to the barbershop. Without particular satisfaction, he settled into a hot tub, cleaned up, toweled and dressed, and went out front to wait his turn in the barber’s chair. He picked up a penny dreadful and scowled at its lurid jacket: Four Desperate Men, Or, The True and Authentic Account of the Infamous Destiny Brothers. By Joshua Stark. He opened it and began to read, absorbed with disgust and fuming anger. Any resemblance between the truth about his brothers and the fantastic account in his hands was more than coincidental; it was libelous.
Above the barber’s chair, the clock ticked toward seven o’clock; outside, shadows grew long in the street.
At the Drovers Rest, shortly before sundown, an armed cattleman named Larry Keene stood at the bar with Hal Craycroft and shook his head moodily. “It’s all very well for us to take turns walking Jeremy’s rounds, Hal, but we’re not lawmen. Except for Tracy Chavis, there ain’t one of us who’d know what to do if real trouble started. Couple days we’ll have a Saturday night on our hands—you been thinking about that?”
Craycroft nodded. “It seems amazing to me that our pool of able men is so damn impoverished we can’t even find one man to fill in for Jeremy. It just adds force to what we were talking about the other night. This town needs a deputy. Needs one bad.”
“Well,” Keene observed, “I reckon Tracy and I can try to hold the lid down this Saturday night and next, and by that time let’s hope Jeremy’s back on his feet. He didn’t get shot up too bad, but he lost some blood and it’ll take time to build his strength back. Anyhow, that’s what the doctor told me. I dropped in today; Jeremy’s growlin’ like a bear, and that’s a good sign.”
“He won’t get back on his feet too soon to suit me,” Craycroft said. “That’s for sure.”
“Me neither. I got a feeling this trouble with Stratton and his outfit’ll come to a head not too long from now. I just came from the Tres Candelas.”
“Any trouble?”
“No. Quiet enough. But Stratton’s got some big-money games going at those back tables, and the word’s getting around the valley that there’s big action at Stratton’s place. Some of the mine superintendents and up-valley ranchers have been dropping in to sample the games. So far, Stratton’s been playing them straight, letting them win a little. But I get a feeling he just wants to get some of the big money hooked into that game. Then he’ll lower the boom, and clear out a fortune. What he doesn’t seem to get through his head is that you can get away with that kind of play in a sudden boomtown, where there’s fortunes flowing free and easy. But not in a town like this. Spanish Flat will fight him.”
“I reckon,” Craycroft agreed. “I just hope we can stay out of the line of fire when it happens.”
“That’s no answer, Hal. What we need is some way to stop the fight before it starts. Somebody to pour water on the fuse before it gets to the dynamite. Hell, any fool can take a hand and shoot off his gun once you’ve got a war going. But the only man around here who can stop it before it starts is laid up in bed with a bullet-hole in his ribs.”
A new voice pitched into the conversation: “Not the only man, Larry.” That was Tracy Chavis, coming forward from the door. Chavis joined Keene and Craycroft at the bar, accepted a mug of beer and said, “I just stopped by the hotel. Jim Destiny’s registered.”
Keene said, “Should that mean something?”
Hal Craycroft said, “Hell, Larry, you heard of the Destiny brothers. They cleaned up El Paso and Silver City. Lawmen.”
“Maybe. It does seem to ring a bell.”
Craycroft said to Chavis, “You talk to him yet?”
“He wasn’t in his room. But I’ll find him sometime tonight. Could be he heard our marshal was laid up, and came by to see if he could lend a hand.”
“I hope so,” said Craycroft. “I surely do hope so.”
Night came across the town and the temperature began to drop. In Sid Stratton’s cantina, three ranchers and the superintendent of the Silverbelle Mine played a taut table-stakes game of stud poker with young Earle Mainwaring dealing. Up-street at the Glad Hand, the bartender kept charge of the cash drawer; the owner, Clarissa Vane, was across town by Jeremy Six’s bedside, silently keeping watch while the marshal slept. In the marshal’s stead, big Tracy Chavis made the rounds of Cat Town, passed a few amicable jokes with Fat Annie, and stopped at a small saloon to arrest a man who was too drunk to resist; the man had broken two bottles of whiskey against the wall when he had thrown them at the guitar player and missed. Chavis had to half-carry him to the Marshal’s Office, where it took him some time to find the cell keys. When the drunk was locked up, Chavis stopped at the Chinese Cafe and left instructions with Sing Kai to take breakfast and plenty of coffee to the drunk in the morning. From there, Chavis went to the hotel and knocked on Jim Destiny’s door. There was no answer. He went back to the desk and roused the clerk from dozing.
“This fellow Destiny, what’s he look like?”
“Who?” The clerk ground knuckles into his eye sockets.
“The fellow checked in this afternoon.”
“Oh, him. Average size, young fellow. I recollect he was wearing a green shirt and one of them flat-crown black town hats. That’s about all I can recall, Tracy.”
“It’ll do,” Chavis said. “Obliged.” He went outside and teetered on the balls of his feet, looking both ways along the street. Finally he decided to try the cafes; he had just made the rounds of the saloons and didn’t recall seeing anybody of Destiny’s description.
He went into the Cattleman’s Café and was about to go out again when he noticed a young man eating alone at a counter stool. The man’s shirt was yellow, not green, but Chavis took a chance. He pulled up the next stool, sat, ordered coffee, and glanced at the man beside him. The young man’s brown hair was tousled; he wore no hat, but there was a black flat-crowned hat hanging on a peg by the front door. The face was young but weary beyond its years; the young man ate without interest, staring down at his plate all the time.
Chavis said mildly, “You Jim Destiny?”
The young man looked up quickly. For a brief moment his eyes flashed; then he looked down at his plate again and resumed eating. “What if I am?”
“Like to talk to you for a minute.”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” Destiny replied.
“It’s about a job.”
“I’m not hiring.”
“Not for me,” Chavis said. “A job for you.”
“I’m not looking for work.”
“Maybe. But this job’s looking for you. Our marshal’s laid up and the town needs—”
“Look,” Destiny said, cutting in. “I’ve got no interest in what your town needs. I’m just passing through. Now shut up and let me alone, will you?”
“I wish I could. I can’t afford to. Listen, friend, this town’s short a lawman right now and we need one badly. We haven’t got anybody available who’s qualified to handle it.”
“Tough luck,” Destiny said. He scraped his plate with a crust of bread, ate that, and reached for his coffee. Chavis cou
ld not recall ever having seen a man eat so mechanically, so much without pleasure.
Chavis didn’t give up. “Look, you’ve been a peace officer. You know the ropes. You’ve been a marshal, haven’t you?
“Deputy a few times. Never been a marshal.” Destiny glanced at him, briefly, over the rim of his lifted coffee cup. When he put the cup down and wiped his mouth, he said, “I guess you didn’t hear me the first time. I’m not interested.”
“Just do this much. Go along with me to Marshal Six’s place. Talk to him. If you still don’t want the job, I’ll get off your back.”
“You’ll get off my back right now,” Destiny said. He dropped coins on the counter, got up, walked across the room and reached for his hat.
But Chavis was right behind him. Destiny looked at him bleakly. “You don’t know when to quit, do you?”
“Like I said, I can’t afford to.”
Destiny gave him a crooked little smile, without humor, and walked outside. When he paused on the walk, Chavis stepped out behind him and rammed the cold muzzle of his revolver against Destiny’s back.
“I’m not fooling,” Chavis said. “I’m acting deputy marshal right now and I’ve got the power to throw you in the jug for vagrancy.”
“I’ve got money in my jeans,” Destiny said mildly. “You couldn’t make it stick.” If he was afraid of the gun in his back, he gave no sign of it. He neither fought nor ran.
“All right, so we’ll chalk it up to a mistake and the judge will turn you loose and give me a reprimand,” Chavis said. “But the judge won’t get here till the end of next week. In the meantime you’ll spend the time in jail.”
Destiny shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’m in no hurry to get any place. If your town wants to feed me for a week, go ahead and jug me.”
Chavis said, “You really don’t care, do you?”
“Why should I?” Destiny turned around and glanced at Chavis’ gun. “Why don’t you put that thing away? Hell, let’s go and talk to your damned marshal and get it over with. Then maybe I’ll get you off my back.”
Marshal Jeremy Six #7 Page 2