Maverick Marshall (3 page)

Minnie’s raw Irish voice came from back of the bar. “Whativer are ye doin’ a-runnin’ around me place like a banshee?”

She was a big coarse-boned woman with an orange-colored pompadour untidily bushed above crimson cheeks. Thirty years ago she might have been handsome but time had taken away this advantage; she had given up bemoaning or bothering about it. She was interested in one thing — cash, like the rest of them. “What’s that ye’ve got on yer shirtfront, Frank? Don’t be tellin’ me ye’ve turned plumb fool at last.”

Frank grinned a little sheepishly, rubbed the palms of his hands against the thighs of his pants. “Any redheads around?”

“Redheads, is it?” She was watching him shrewdly. “I got the one from Saint Looey, if that’s who ye’re meanin’. I figured after the — ”

“I’m not talking about fillies.”

“Then ye’re in the wrong stall. Do yer huntin’ some other place.”

Frank swung around. “What outfit you fellers with?”

Resentment was plain in the cut of their eyes. Minnie said, giving him the flat of her tongue. “Don’t be rowellin’ me guests, ye dom star-packin’ blatherskite!” But after a moment the smallest one said, “Gourd an’ Vine. Out of Corpus.”

“Get shucked of that hardware if you come into town tomorrow. You can’t go heeled in any place that sells whisky. Including this dive.” Frank went out.

He could, of course, have searched the place, but not without laying up trouble. If Tularosa was here he’d have to come out.

Frank got on his horse. He scowled, knowing he couldn’t afford to hang fire here. He had the whole town to patrol and the riskiest hours were still ahead.

He breathed a sigh into the darkness and swore irascibly. It was in his mind the Council had jobbed him, keeping Tularosa back until he’d taken the oath. Yet in fairness he had to admit he couldn’t blame them. Nobody would have touched this job with a prod pole if it had been aired Tularosa was the first thing on the docket. The man was like a wild animal.

Frank shook his head and cursed again, and observed Danny Settles shuffling along with his sack, threadbare coat flapping around bony legs as he picked a muttering way toward the Mercantile. Probably going after groceries, trying to reach the doors before Krantz locked up.

Perhaps because he was a loner himself, Frank had always had a soft place in his heart for Danny Settles who was the nearest thing South Fork had to a halfwit. He had a cave or a burrow somewhere out in the Barrens. It was the measure of his queerness that he made pets of crawling varmints. He’d been around as long as Frank could remember, the butt of coarse jokes and a lot of fool horseplay, a wizard at repairing firearms and the credulity of a child. He pieced out a precarious existence doing exacting odd jobs for Bernie, the gunsmith, while waiting for the monthly pittance mailed West by his father, a Boston industrialist who had gone to great lengths to be shed of him. He was the result, it was said, of too much education.

Frank’s thoughts went resentfully back to John Arnold. Arnold and Gurden had played him for a sucker. There was no doubt about it. They’d known Ashenfeldt was dead, and by whose hand, when they’d set this up for him.

He was mad enough to shove the damned badge down their throats. Yet even as this occurred to him Frank saw in his mind the face and shape of Honey Kimberland and licked parched lips. The one good thing, Frank guessed, in his life. Actually, he supposed, he’d ought to thank the damned Council for giving him this chance. But, hating abysmally to be maneuvered, he scowled at the dust-fogged shine of the Opal, knowing it was Gurden who’d kept Tularosa hidden till they’d got Frank clinched into the job. Chip Gurden had known Frank couldn’t back down after that.

Frank yanked his six-shooter savagely out of its leather and let the dun carry him across the hundred-foot width of the hoof-tracked road.

The blacksmith was still working by the light of a lantern. Frank, cutting around to come up from the holding grounds, caught the iron-dulled strokes of his hammer. Frank heard the mumble of voices as he moved up on the door. He walked the dun into the light of the lanterns, seeing the smith bent over his bellows and the squatted-down shape of a cow wrangler watching him. He was an old coot, this trail hand, weathered and wrinkled as a chucked-away boot. Frank, eyeing the both of them, spoke to the smith. “You got that hub ready yet for Draicup’s wagon?”

The smith’s head came around. “Why, hello, Frank. Just about, I guess.”

“Don’t turn loose of it till I give you the word.”

The smith and that other one traded quick glances.

“I’m a-waitin’ on thet wheel, son,” the squatted gent said mildly.

This meekness didn’t deceive Frank. There wasn’t one trail hand in twenty who was not plumb willing, night or day, to tackle his weight in wildcats. Frank said to the trail hand:

“Slide out of that shell belt.”

The mild eyes measured him.

The smith said nervously, “Man, that’s Frank Carrico!”

The old man, grunting, finally let the belt drop.

“Want I should git it fer you, Frank?” the smith asked.

“Just hang onto that wheel till I tell you different.” Frank backed his dun out of the light from the door.

He’d been lucky! There was sweat all over him. His hands got to shaking till he had to grab hold of the horn to keep them quiet when he thought of what a fool he’d been to go and brace that jigger with his back wide open. If Tularosa had come up or been around someplace watching — Frank bitterly swore.

He picked up his reins and sent the dun toward the street. A glance swiveled over his shoulder at Minnie’s revealed nothing suspicious. He drew a ragged breath. Worry could do a man in sure as anything! He fetched his face around for a look at the Chuckwagon. It was off there ahead of him, its canvas top a dirty blur against the lantern beneath its fly.

He fetched Honey back into mind, recalling the soft exciting feel of her with her heart pounding wildly and the smell of her tumbled hair whipping round him. The job was worth this risk if it would do what he wanted.

He wasn’t sure it would. But let him once get this town to eating out of his hand and a proper respect slapped into these trail crews and he guessed not many doors would stay shut against him.

This was still a young land where what you did was more important than who you were or where you’d come from. Old W. T. wasn’t a man to forget that. If half the stories were true
his
start wouldn’t bear much looking into either.

Frank was forty yards from the subdued shine of the flapping canvas when he became aware of the stopped wagon. There was a girl holding the reins, and a horse-backer talking to her. This was about all Frank could make out, the moon being under a cloud at the moment. A little wind had sprung up, whipping their words away. He likely wouldn’t have noticed them at all if he had been less edgy and they hadn’t been caught against the light from the Blue Flag.

With Honey on his mind they took immediate hold of his interest. He kneed the dun toward them, remembering the wagon from Bar 40 at the Mercantile. He got nearer. He saw the girl shake her head and sway away from the fellow, saw the man’s arm come up as he bent after her from the saddle. The girl reached for the whip. Snorting contemptuously, the fellow grabbed her.

Frank didn’t wait to see any more. He slammed the dun into the other man’s mount, catching him by the coat at the shoulder, yanking him back with an uncaring roughness that mighty near dumped him onto the ground. “Ma’am, is this galoot bothering you?”

In Frank’s grip the man, who seemed to be on the bony side, was in no position to do much of anything, suspended as he was halfway out of the saddle. His horse snorted nervously, dancing a little.

“Why, no, not particularly.” Her voice was pleasant. It wasn’t Honey’s. She was new here. She didn’t seem much excited — appeared more like she was smiling. It kind of made Frank feel foolish.

Perhaps she sensed his resentment. “I wouldn’t want you to drop him under those hoofs.”

Frank very nearly did. For, just then, the moon came out. The fellow twisted his head, and Frank felt like Jonah in the belly of the whale.

The “galoot” he had hold of was Tularosa.

Frank had time only to realize this — when young Church, taut with fury, yelled:

“Frank!”

Frank saw the glint of metal in Church’s lifting hand. Tularosa began to struggle, trying to get leverage, trying to pull his far leg across the drag of the saddle. Frank was in a bad spot. He slapped the gunfighter savagely. Then he growled at Church, “Will, keep out of this.”

“Don’t use that tone on me, you bastard!”

Frank half turned the frozen mask of his face. In that fleeting fragment of time his mind absorbed details without conscious understanding or realization of it even: the still look of the girl, the forward clump of Church’s boots, the collecting crowd closing in about them. Yet never for an instant did Frank’s glance quit the man he had hold of. While Church in his drunken fury might shoot, there was not the slightest question about Tularosa. The moment that sidewinder got any leverage he’d latch onto a gun and he would damn sure use it.

The strain of keeping his grip, of holding the fellow off balance, was beginning to play hell with the muscles of Frank’s arm. He could hear Church coming up and, made hollow by the torture of this impasse, he rammed a knee into Tularosa’s chest. It fetched a grunt from the redhead, but too much of Frank’s strength was concentrated on holding him. The blow did nothing to ease the deadlock that was pushing Frank toward the brink of disaster.

He sensed the girl was in motion. He made a desperate attempt to reach Tularosa’s holstered pistol, but the grip that kept Tularosa from trying also balked Frank. The saddle-horn prevented Frank from reaching his own.

The girl cried: “Keep out of this!” and snatched up her whip. Frank heard the snarl of Church’s breath. The thump of his stride broke around the near end of the wagon.

“I’m goin’ to cut you down to size!” Church sheezed.

Frank’s left hand, fisting, hit Tularosa on the side of the face. He struck once more but he couldn’t get steam enough into the punches.

The gunfighter grated, “I’ll remember you, mister,” and tried again to get a boot braced against his saddle.

With the flat of his hand Frank cracked Tularosa across the bridge of the nose. The man yelled. Church fired. Tularosa’s horse squealed and, flinging its head down, went to pitching. The gun-fighter’s legs lost contact and the dropped sprawl of his weight dragged Frank off the dun.

They fell into a dust-streaked haze of flying hoofs. Frank lost the man. The smothery stench of powdered earth enveloped them and through this fog Frank glimpsed the hobbling approach of a lantern. The dim grumble of Church’s steady cursing was lost in the racket of hoofs and shouts. Frank’s need to relocate the killer became more acute with each passing instant. It was then, as Frank came onto his knees, that he discovered the full meaning of the word ‘desperation’. In the fall or the rolling he had lost his gun.

He swayed aside, barely avoiding the lashing hoof of a horse. The dust was so thick he couldn’t see two yards in front of him. His face and clothing were gritty with the stuff, his burning eyes were filled with tears. He faintly heard the girl cry out, and he was groping blindly toward her when hardly beyond the stretch of his hand a man sharply screamed. Frank’s legs crashed into something yielding, upending him. Back of him someplace a gun’s report bludgeoned out of the uproar.

The dust started clearing in an updraft of air. Horses and men materialized out of it and patches of oil-yellow light from the store fronts. He caught the shape of the wagon with the girl standing in it. Someone yelled,
“There he is!”
and Frank flung himself around just as Church fired again.

Frank came out of that crouch with a wildly furious swing that took Church full in the wind. Frank gave the big ranchman no time to recover but tore into him with a ferocity that drove Church back into the crowd. Frank jerked the gun from Church’s grip and whacked him across the neck with the butt of it. Church yelled and Frank hit him again. Still yelling, Church fell.

Coughing, wheezing from dust and exertion, Frank saw the lantern throw its shine on Church’s face. The crowd stood silent. One cheek showed a welt like a brand burn where Frank had struck him and there was a red streak of blood against the side of his neck. Church wasn’t out but he was considerably more cautious. He finally squirmed over and was helped to his feet by some of the crowd.

Nothing Will Church did would have surprised Frank much. Old Sam, Will’s sire, was a tight-fisted miser, and Will’s mother was a cowed little wisp of a woman who never opened her mouth unless spoken to. In the five years Frank had ridden for Circle C (doing the work of a foreman on the pay of a horse wrangler) he’d never seen Mrs. Church let go of two words without first peering at Sam or Will for permission.

Young Will shook his shoulders together, glance bright with venom as he twisted his head from one side to the other. “You ain’t done with this,” he said thickly. “Gimme that gun.”

“You ain’t got sense enough to pack a gun, damn you. If you ever fetch another one into this town I’ll lock you up like any other nuisance. Now get going,” Frank growled, swinging away from him.

Men stepped back. Frank found his new hat and picked it up, cuffing the dust off. The outer fringes of the crowd began to dissolve in search of other amusement. The girl’s voice called, “Marshal — ”

Frank walked over. “You all right, Miss?”

She eyed him curiously. “Of course. You won’t need that gun to speak with me.”

Frank looked down at Church’s pistol and put it away. The remains of his anger was still reflected in his cheeks and the weight of regret over losing Tularosa sawed across his morose thoughts till he glanced up and found her smiling. He looked more closely then, for the first time really seeing her.

She was not the kind a man would easily forget. She had shape and there was an attraction of some kind emanating from her that compelled his sharpest interest. It was like a current running between them. Her voice took hold of him too. She said, “I haven’t thanked you — ”