Rawhide Flat

by Ralph Compton

  “I wasn’t planning on keeping her.”

  “What are you going to do with her? Throw her out in the street naked? Give her back to Reuben Stark? What?”

  Annoyed, Crane said, “What the hell are women’s fixin’s?”

  “You know, dresses, hats, shoes, bloomers, corsets and such. The fancy stuff females wear.”

  “She don’t need corsets. She’s already skinny as a rail. Anyhow, I don’t know where to get all that—that—froufrou.”

  “Take Sarah across the street to the New York Fashion Emporium. Ask for Minnie Lewis and tell her I sent you. Minnie’s an old battle-axe but she’ll steer you right.”

  Crane felt a lump rise in his throat. “Dresses . . . bloomers . . . how much does it all cost?”

  “A lot,” Masterson said without a tinge of remorse.

  “Gus, I can’t walk around Rawhide Flat in a shift,” Sarah said. Her eyes were wide and pleading. “What would the other girls in town think of me?”

  “Yeah, Gus, what would the other girls think of her? Leave her with Minnie and then come back. We need to talk.”

  Glad to take out his irritation on someone, Crane snapped. “Damn right we do, Sheriff. I want to know how Judah Walsh died and why you lit a shuck on me. And then there’s the matter of a cowboy who turned up his toes in the Texas Belle.”

  “Just as I said, Gus. We need to talk.”

  Weighed down by responsibility not of his making, the marshal looked at Sarah and was forced to admit to himself that the girl needed clothes.

  “Sarah, when I take you over there to the store, don’t go loco with yourself. A plain dress and shoes, that’s all you need.”

  The sheriff was grinning. “Seems to me the little lady will need a heap more than that.”

  Crane’s eyes were cold, the color of rainwater. “Masterson, do you enjoy spending another man’s money?”

  “Always,” the sheriff said cheerfully.

  Minnie Lewis was in her forties, dressed in rustling black, and she looked like she’d been raised on scripture and prune juice. She regarded Crane with obvious distaste as he stood, out of place and awkward, surrounded by female clothing, some of it of an embarrassingly intimate nature.

  But the woman was kind to Sarah and when Crane said, “She needs—,” Minnie immediately cut him off and snapped, “I know what she needs.”

  She consulted the watch hanging from a fob pinned to the front of her dress. “Come back in an hour, and be warned, I do not tolerate tardiness.”

  The marshal was horrified. “How long does it take to buy a dress?”

  “An hour.”

  Minnie shooed Crane out of the store as though she were chasing an egg-sucking hound from the chicken coop. “One hour, Marshal,” she said. “No more, no less.”

  Crane stumbled out onto the boardwalk and looked over at the sheriff’s office.

  He was overjoyed that he could now vent his rage on Paul Masterson.

  Chapter 16

  Paul Masterson laid a cup of coffee on the table in front of Crane.

  “Careful,” he said, “it’s hot and you don’t want to burn your tongue. Then you wouldn’t be able to do all that speechifying you’ve been planning.”

  “I can talk just fine,” Crane snapped, his irritation walking hand in hand with belligerence. “And the first thing I want to talk about is how come Judah Walsh isn’t with us anymore.”

  Masterson leaned forward on his chair and slowly rotated his cup by the brim, regarding with fixed attention the brown swirl of the coffee. “I heard about Maxie Starr,” he said. “I took it hard.”

  “I have a good idea just how hard you took it and I’m leaving that for later. Right now I want to know about Walsh.”

  “I killed him.”

  Crane was startled. “You killed him?”

  “Shot him out of the saddle. I—”

  The door burst open and Minnie Lewis stormed inside, Sarah in tow. The black rustle of the woman’s dress made her sound like a vengeful bat.

  She pointed an accusing finger at Crane. “You! You monster!”

  Sarah wailed, “I told you he didn’t—”

  “Silence, girl! Minnie Lewis is speaking for you.”

  The woman turned all her attention to the marshal. “Did you do this?”

  Crane was alarmed. He rose to his feet, his mouth working. “Do what?”

  The woman had wrapped Sarah in a sheet of some kind and now she ordered the girl to turn around. When Sarah did, Minnie pulled the blanket down from her back.

  “This!”

  From shoulders to waist, the girl’s slender back was a mass of vicious red welts and a few of them had broken the skin, leaving traces of crusted blood.

  Crane felt Masterson’s eyes on him, mildly accusing, and he protested, “I didn’t do this!”

  “Of course he didn’t!” Sarah pulled the sheet over her shoulders and she turned to face Minnie Lewis. “I told you that, but you wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “Then who did, child?” the woman asked.

  “An old man called Reuben Stark. I told him I wouldn’t jump the broom with him and he beat me. I—I ran away and Marshal Crane took me in.”

  “Are you telling the truth, child?” Minnie asked, glaring first at Sarah and then Crane, her gaze searching and terrible.

  “She’s telling the truth,” Crane said. Now he’d gotten over his shock, his patience with Minnie was wearing thin. “Reuben Stark used his dog whip on her and I aim to put a bullet into his dirty hide the first chance I get.”

  He’d expected the woman to accuse him of being a violent brute, but to his surprise she sniffed and said, “I should hope so. A man who would do this to a child has no right to walk among decent Christian people. He’s better off dead.”

  She took Sarah by the shoulder. “Come, girl, let’s get you some clothes.”

  The girl looked up at Crane, her eyes bright. “Gus, you should see all the pretty dresses . . . and shoes . . . and hats . . . and . . . and . . .”

  She paused, expecting a response.

  “I’m sure they are pretty,” Crane said. Then, the dreadful image of Sarah’s back still fresh in his mind, he said, a lump forming in his throat, “Get what you need.”

  Minnie consulted her watch again. “Fifty minutes, Marshal. And remember what I told you about tardiness.”

  As she and the girl turned to leave, Crane said, “Sarah, why didn’t you tell me about the whipping last night?”

  The girl smiled. “I thought you had quite enough to worry about last night.”

  “You know, Gus, under that rough exterior you really do have a heart of gold.”

  “I wouldn’t go counting on it if I was you,” Crane said. “Why did you kill Judah Walsh?”

  “I made a deal with him. I told him if he showed me where the town’s money was hid, I’d give him a horse, a hundred dollars and free passage out of the state.”

  “And did he?”

  “Yeah. He figured taking my offer was better than waiting around for the ranchers. Besides, he was scared of you after you opened up his face with a spur. He wanted out of Rawhide Flat real bad.”

  “And did he take you to the money?”

  “He sure did. It was at night and hard to find in the dark, but it was there all right, fifty thousand dollars in paper money and some coin hidden under a flat rock.”

  “Then why did you kill him?”

  “Well, you know, by times I’m a thinking man. So I said to myself, I said, ‘Paul this is not right. It just ain’t true blue.’ ”

  Crane built a smoke. “Go on.”

  “So, I’m looking at ol’ Judah climbing onto his dun hoss, grinning like you please, and I’m thinking, ‘He killed a woman and you’re letting him go.’ He was wearing his gun, so before he rode away I called him.”

  “And then what?” Crane lit his cigarette.

  “He went for his gun and I shot him.”

  “You should have left him for the law.
”

  “Gus, last time I looked, I am the law.”

  “And now you’re the only one who knows where the money is hidden.”

  “Right. First person I told was Ben Hollister. Now he’s very concerned about my welfare. I’d say he’s become my best friend, never wants to leave my side.”

  “You say Walsh drawed down on you?”

  “That’s what I say.”

  “Then you killed him in self-defense.”

  “Seems that way.”

  “When it came right down to it, was Walsh fast with the iron?”

  “He’s dead. I’m alive. What does that tell you?”

  Crane’s coffee was cool enough to drink and he looked at Masterson over the rim of his cup. “Ben Hollister didn’t murder Maxie.”

  “I know.”

  “Then why did you try to kill him in the Texas Belle?”

  “That was none of my doing.”

  “You mean somebody else took a pot at him?”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “Why do you take my word so easy that Hollister didn’t murder Maxie? He might have thought she knew where you were holed up. Speaking of that, where did you and Walsh hide?”

  “I can’t tell you that, Gus. Maybe later but not now. Getting back to Hollister, he wouldn’t whip a woman. Oh, he might shoot one if it suited his purpose, but he wouldn’t cut her up with a whip like that. Besides, he was sweet on Maxie, asked her to marry him a couple of times.”

  Masterson leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “My guess is that Reuben Stark murdered Maxie with the same whip he used on the girl. I plan to kill him, Gus, him and his sons.”

  Restlessly, the sheriff rose and poured coffee for both of them. “You think that might have been Stark or one of his boys back at the arroyo?” he asked. “Before he tied in with Hollister, the old man never made it a secret that he’s ambitious. He wants to found an empire before it’s too late and the quickest way is to acquire range. Hollister’s got the Rafter-T and if Stark can’t buy, he might be inclined to take it.”

  “The man at the arroyo was taller than Stark or any of his sons,” Crane said. “Maybe he has an inch or two on me.”

  “A range detective and sure-thing killer by the name of Miles McKenna is tall like that. But he’s never been known to leave the Montana Territory. Then there’s Bill Canfield down El Paso way. He’s a string bean who hires out his gun now and then. But the last I heard he’d married a widder woman and was prospering in the baked-pies business.”

  “Good business that,” Crane said. “Gives a man something to think about. He began to build a cigarette. Without taking his eyes from tobacco and paper, he said, “When are you going to tell the town where the money is hid?”

  He expected Masterson to hem and haw, but the sheriff answered without hesitation, “When they decide what’s in it for me.”

  Now Crane looked up. “I don’t catch your drift.”

  “Then I’ll toss it out to you again: I want what’s coming to me—half of the fifty thousand.”

  Chapter 17

  Crane took time to light his cigarette. He felt like a man in a rapidly flooding box canyon, trying to find a way out. Finally he said mildly, “Paul, it’s the town’s money, not yours.”

  “This town owes me.”

  “For what?”

  “For taking the sheriff’s job when nobody else wanted it. For wearing a tin star on my chest that every crazy drunk and wannabe gun tramp wants to use for target practice. For trying to get by on less money than a puncher makes, for having to say, ‘Yes, sir,’ ‘No sir,’ to the bunch of idiots who run this town. And finally because I’m sick and tired of wearing these guns and hearing a rustle in every damned bush and seeing shadows in every alley.

  “I want a wife, Gus, children, a ranch of my own where I can sit in a rocker on my porch of the evening and drink coffee and watch the sun go down before the little lady calls me in for supper.”

  Masterson sank back in his chair. “I’m tired, Gus.” He smiled. “Funny, isn’t it, that I was a tired outlaw and now I’m a tired lawman. But twenty-five thousand dollars can put back the fire in a man’s belly and a spring in his step real quick.”

  Masterson leaned forward. “All I want is my due. I’m not breaking any laws here.”

  Blue tobacco smoke wreathed Crane’s head. His eyes were level, without heat.

  “What you’re doing is stealing, Paul. You’re holding Rawhide Flat to ransom. I’d say that’s breaking the law you’ve sworn to uphold.”

  The sheriff sounded like he’d just bitten into a bitter apple. “And what about you, Gus? That star don’t seem to sit too heavy on your own chest.”

  “Maybe not, but I try to uphold the law. Sure, I do it in my own way, but I’ve not turned my back on this badge and what it stands for.”

  “You think I’m breaking the law?”

  “Yes, I do. The town’s money is your hostage and you’ve gone into the extortion racket.”

  “You drawing a line here, Gus?”

  “It would seem that’s the case.”

  “Take my advice and don’t cross it. Get in my way now and I’ll kill you, Gus. I don’t want to have to do that.”

  Masterson slammed his fist on the table. “Hell, it doesn’t have to be like this. You don’t owe this town a damn thing. Listen, your work here is over. The prisoner you came to collect is dead, shot by local law enforcement while trying to escape. Go back to Virginia City and leave Reuben Stark and Rawhide Flat to me.”

  The sheriff smiled. “I like you, Gus. You bumble around a lot and chase your own tail, but you’re a dedicated police officer and I respect you for that. Years from now, maybe we’ll meet and I’ll buy you a steak dinner, and we’ll talk about the old times and laugh about all this.”

  He stretched out a hand. “For now, let’s agree that you go your way and I go mine.”

  Crane ignored Masterson’s proffered hand. He rose to his feet.

  “Paul, I won’t let you hold this town to ransom. Tell the bank where their money is hidden and we’ll forget this conversation ever happened.”

  Masterson shook his head. “I can’t do that, Gus.”

  “Then the line is drawn.” Crane’s eyes were bleak. For some reason he felt his talk with Masterson had been a humbling experience, like looking into the muzzle of a .45. He said, “And all my talking is done.”

  The marshal stepped to the door and Masterson addressed his retreating back. “Gus, I’m faster, a lot faster than you. Maybe you should bear that in mind, give it some deep thought, like.”

  Without turning Crane said, “Thanks for the advice, Paul. Yeah, I’ll give it my due consideration.”

  “Look, Gus!”

  Sarah, wearing a blue dress that stopped at the ankles to reveal lacy bloomers and button-up boots, did a pirouette. “Well, what do you think?”

  “You look crackerjack, Sarah.” Crane grinned. “Like a New Orleans belle.”

  As the girl gave a little bow of appreciation, Minnie Lewis scowled at the marshal, as though still unconvinced that he was innocent of abusing her.

  The woman finally bent her head to a ledger and chewed on the end of a pencil. Finally her eyes lifted to Crane, wary, as though she expected him to bolt from the store at any second.

  “Right, Marshal,” she said. “Dress, with bustle, ten dollars and eighteen cents; shirt, three dollars and ninety-eight cents; skirt, split, suitable for riding, nine dollars and twenty-five cents; drawers, cotton, frilled, eighty cents; hose, silk, two dollars and forty-seven cents; boots, button, sold at cost, five dollars even.”

  Minnie Lewis arched an eyebrow and glared at Crane accusingly, as though she was sure he’d dispute the prices or confess that he couldn’t pay.

  Using a voice of doom, she said, “Marshal Crane, you owe me thirty-one dollars and sixty-eight cents.”

  Everything was expensive in the Comstock and Crane knew he’d been charged top dollar for every item
Sarah had bought.

  But he had gone this far and there was no turning back. The marshal sighed and paid up.

  Sarah threw her arms around his neck and said, “You’re so good to me, Gus.”

  A frugal man who felt he’d just walked into a female ambush, Crane’s smile was strained. “Don’t mention it. Now, let’s check into the hotel while I still have a few chips left.”

  “I get this whole room all to myself?”

  Sarah looked wonderingly around her, at the iron bedstead, dresser with pitcher and bowl and two cane-backed chairs.

  “Uh-huh, it’s all yours,” Crane said. “My room is right next to yours.” Seeing the girl’s delight in her surroundings, he added, smiling, “It’s not near as nice as this one.”

  “I’ve never had a room to myself before,” Sarah said, as she sat on the bed and bounced up and down. “I always slept in a barn or in a storeroom, anyplace I could find.”

  “You’ll be comfortable here,” Crane said. “It’s not a barn and it’s nice and quiet.”

  Then, to himself, “Augustus, what a really stupid thing to say.”

  Suddenly he wished he was more practiced at talking pretties to womenfolk.

  Chapter 18

  A small sound in the darkness.

  The scuff of a boot.

  A muffled voice, cursing.

  Crane was instantly awake. He rose, padding long-legged in his underwear. He found his hat, then his gun. He opened his creaking room door.

  There were shadows on the stairs. A gun flared and a bullet chipped wood inches from his face.

  “Gus!” It was Sarah’s voice, followed by the crack of the hard blow that slapped her into silence.

  A shadow detached itself from the rest, climbed a single step, stopped and fired. The air beside Crane’s head split and without conscious effort the marshal thumbed off a shot, then another, both sounding as one.

  The man on the stairs crashed into the wall. Then his gun thudded onto the carpeted stairs. He elbowed away from the wall and remained stock-still, bleeding out right where he stood.

  Crane took time to register the gunman’s wound as an arterial hit that had taken him out of the fight. Then he was running. He pushed the dying man aside and took to the stairs. But as he passed, the body fell on him, then slid lower, a heavy weight that hit the marshal on the back of his knees.