Payback at Big Silver (14 page)

Harper started to take a step forward, but Edsel moved quick and stepped between the two.

“He's right, Harper,” said Edsel. “We straightened it out. As soon as the time is right, we're taking another crack at it. The Ranger is going down, along with Sheppard Stone.”

“Straightened out, huh?” Harper stared at his father, his contempt only slightly hidden. “I'm hearing a lot of talk here,” he said. “But it's going to take more than
talk
to kill them lawmen, Stone or Burrack, either one.” He took a step backward and raised another drink of bourbon. “Don't worry, Papa Edsel,
old man
,” he said to his father. “I'll kill the lawmen. I'll kill them both, and I won't have to buy a saloon to get it done.” He glared at Edsel and said to Lon Bartow and Three-toed Delbert Swank, “Come on, jail pards. Let's go finish this bottle and get washed up for dinner.”

Edsel, Rudabaugh and Charlie Knapp watched the three younger gunmen walk away.

“He's going to be all right,” Edsel said, puffing on his cigar, putting on a confident face. “He's been in jail cells of one kind or another going on three months now, waiting to go to Yuma. It'll take him a day or two, but he'll get back to his old self.”

His old self. . . .

Knapp and Rudabaugh looked at each other. Neither of them had ever seen Harper Centrila act much better than he had done just now. But they knew better than to say anything.

“We know that, boss,” said Knapp. “Everybody's a little high-strung right now—we'll all feel a lot better when we get these law dogs in our gun sights.”

Three days later: Big Silver, Arizona Badlands

Sheriff Sheppard Stone had awakened in the night with a sense of terrible dread. He'd been sweaty and shaky and could feel his heart pounding hard in his chest. He'd boiled a pot of strong coffee and drunk it mug upon mug, smoking with it the six cigarettes he'd rolled and laid atop his desk. Something bad was coming—coming soon, he'd told himself. Today even. He'd dressed and pulled on his duster and picked up his rifle, wondering how much of this was real, and how much was whiskey craziness.

Either way . . .

Rifle in hand, he'd walked the dark, silent streets until the sun streaked and glittered along the eastern edge of the planet. As the town awakened behind him, he walked the outer perimeters. He had no idea how far he'd walked. He'd walked and smoked and fed himself cough drops one after another until his shirt pocket was nearly emptied of them. Still the foreboding, the dark premonition, whatever it was. He sighed a long breath.

He stood at the edge of town as daylight broke and watched five horsemen riding in across the sand flats. He watched them as the sun rose stronger, and as the morning heat closed over the desert and left the riders obscured in a wavering veil. He still kept a wary eye out toward the riders as he walked back along the busy street.

Suddenly he stopped and a strange realization struck him. Even though the riders were still only distant images in a swirl of sunlight and sand—too far away to recognize—he knew beyond any doubt or any shred of rationale that when they arrived one of them would be Harper Centrila.

Harper Centrila? Whoa, Sheriff,
he cautioned, reminding himself that by now Harper Centrila was looking out from behind bars at Yuma Penitentiary.

Take it easy.

He tried to tell himself this was just the whiskey still playing with his nerves, as it had been throughout the night. But he couldn't shake the belief that the younger gunman was out there on the flats, riding into town this very moment. Here it was again, he told himself, that strange feeling that everything happening had happened before. He rubbed his eyes as if to do so might erase the image from his mind. Yet he saw Harper out there, right down to the dusty blue bib-front shirt he wore—
would be wearing,
he corrected himself. He saw him plain as day.

He walked on, feeling the skin on the back of his neck crawl. This was not some trick of the mind as the doctor suggested. This was real; this was happening.

He moved the cough drop to the side of his mouth as he walked and tapped his fingers to his gun butt, trying to shake the weirdness that had crept in around him.
All right . . . ,
he told himself with resolve. He'd been expecting trouble. Here it came. He'd deal with it.

But first things first.

He walked past the Silver Palace, keeping on the opposite side of the busy street. A block farther, he looked all around to make sure he wasn't being watched. Then he crossed the street, maneuvered around passing freight wagons and buggies and slipped into an alley that ran back behind the Silver Palace. He climbed a long set of wooden stairs and unlocked the rear door with a key no one knew he had, and slipped inside unseen. He walked down an empty hallway and stopped and knocked softly on a large oak door. From downstairs he heard a bartender gathering empty glasses, straightening empty chairs.

Stone removed his hat and parked the cough drop in his jaw as the door opened. He looked at the woman's face in the shadowy morning light.

“Mae Rose,” he said in a lowered, almost troubled-sounding voice, “are you alone?”

The door opened some more as the young woman stepped back. She wore soft house slippers, a robe with its sash tied loosely at her narrow waist.

“Yes, Shep, I'm alone,” she replied stiffly. She glanced along the hallway, motioned him inside and closed the door behind him. She leaned against the door and studied his face questioningly, then lowered her eyes. “I must look a mess.”

“Look at me, Mae Rose,” Stone said. He stepped forward and tipped her chin up and gazed into her eyes. “If you were any prettier, I don't think I could stand it.”

“Go on with you, Sheriff,” she said, giving him a bashful toss-away look. “Besides, you've got some nerve showing up here. I don't see you for a month . . . then I hear that you got drunk, shot up the town, thought you turned into a wolf or some such nonsense?”

“That's right, I thought I was a wolf, Mae Rose,” Stone said. “I got drunk and shot up the town. I lost my mind. There, that's my confession, satisfied?” he said. He studied the younger woman's face in the dim morning light, a silver pin holding back long ringlets of her red hair, a trace of freckles sprinkled across her nose.

“It's a start,” she said. She let out a breath in exasperation and stepped forward against him. Her arms went around him. “Come here, Sheriff, let me take hold of you.” Her voice changed that quick, from surly, inconsolable, to soothing, inviting.

Always at her work. . . .

Stone smiled tightly, returned her embrace, but he spoke down to her as she rested her face against his chest.

“I'm not here for that, Mae Rose,” he said softly.

“Oh?” She looked up at him, released him a little. “What about me?” she said coyly. “What if it's something that
I
want, Mr.
Law Hawk
?”

“I'm not here to play around, Mae Rose,” he said, knowing the game. He lifted her arms from around him gently and took a step back. He reached inside his duster and took out a leather drawstring pouch. “I've come to bring you this.” He jiggled the pouch and saw her eyes brighten at the muffled sound of gold coins.

“Oh my, Sheriff,” she said, “I see you still know how to tickle a gal's fun spot.” She smiled playfully. But she saw the sheriff's serious expression and settled. “What
is it
you want me to do, for
all that gold
?” she said suggestively. She reached out and stroked the leather pouch as he held it chest high.

“I want you to take it and get headed back to Denver City tonight,” Stone said. He held the pouch up.

“Tonight?” said Mae Rose. “Why tonight?”

“Why
not
tonight?” Stone said, jiggling the bulging pouch of gold coins. “Take a horse, go after dark so nobody sees you leave. Ride to Secondary and take the stage north from there. The trail to Secondary is always safe of a night—but watch yourself just the same,” he instructed. “There's enough gold here to last you awhile, get you settled in.” Seeing the questioning look on her face, he added, “You're always saying you want to go back there. Now that this place has changed hands, I figured I'd stake your trip.” He released the pouch to her. “You won't like working for Edsel Centrila. He's a snake.”

“Oh?” said Mae Rose, chiding him a little. “
Imagine
, a snake in the saloon and brothel business. What's this world come to?”

Stone's face reddened a little; he smiled thinly.

“Take this serious, Mae Rose,” he warned. “Centrila has some dangerous men working for him.”

“Okay, I'm serious, Sheriff,” she said. She spread the drawstring open and looked down at the glint of gold in the dim light. She looked back up at Stone.

“My goodness, Shep,” she said ponderously. She hefted the pouch on both palms. Then she said, “I get set up there, and you'll come join me later—like we've talked about?”

Stone stalled for a second. That thought hadn't occurred to him until she mentioned it.

“Yes,” he said finally, “that's my plan. I'll be coming later on.”

She looked suspicious.

“You're not a good liar, Sheriff,” she said. “You're not planning on coming to Denver City.” She jiggled the gold coins in the pouch. “What's this about?”

Stone shook his head.

“I've never seen a woman in your profession have such a hard time taking gold from a man,” he said, sounding a little put out by her questions.

“Well, you've seen it now,” Mae Rose said in a firm tone. “So tell me,” she insisted.

Stone cursed to himself under his breath. His fingers trembled as he took the last cough drop from the small wax paper bag in his shirt pocket. He stuck the cough drop into his mouth and wadded the bag in his hand. He looked around for a place to put the empty bag. Mae Rose reached out and took the wadded bag from him.

“All right,” he said, “here it is. You know about the bad blood between Edsel Centrila—your
new boss
—and me?”

Mae Rose shrugged, her hand on her hip, the pouch of gold in her other hand.

“I have heard some things, not enough to hang a hat on,” she said. “I heard he gave you some money to do a favor for him . . . but you didn't do it?” She eyed the pouch of gold coins.

“He tried to get me to bribe a judge to get his son, Harper, out of going to Yuma Penitentiary,” Stone said. “He's likely going to face charges for it.”

“Yes, that is what I heard,” she now admitted. “But what's any of this got to do with me?”

“I don't want him getting his hands on anything or anybody that he knows will hurt me,” said Stone.

“Oh, that's so sweet,” Mae Rose said, half-playful, half-moved by Stone's words. “I mean, you caring what happens to me,” she added.

Stone looked a little embarrassed.

“Well, I do,” he said a little gruffly. “What of it?”

Mae Rose slipped the pouch of gold coins into her robe pocket and kept her hand around it.

“Nothing
of it
,” she said. “I just think it's sweet of you, is all.”

Stone just looked at her. Again he saw her demeanor change in the blink of an eye. She went from soft and sentimental, to a little edgy, matter-of-fact.

“Nobody knows about you and me, Sheriff,” she said. “Leastwise I've never told anybody. What about you?”

“Nobody,” Stone said. “It was nobody's business, I always figured.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about, do you?” Mae Rose said, her hand still clutched around the pouch as if he might change his mind and demand that she give it back. But Stone had no such intention.

“It wasn't me I was worrying about, Mae Rose,” he said, gravity in his voice.

Mae Rose took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“I know, Sheriff,” she said, “and I'm obliged.” She stood running things through her mind.

“Then you'll go to Denver City, like I'm asking you to?” Stone said.

She waited another second before answering. Then she raised her hand from her robe pocket and nodded.

“Yes, I'll go,” she said. “Truth is, I'm through with Big Silver. Now that you've given me a way out, I might go there and quit this business altogether.”

Stone smiled and started to raise his hat and set it atop his head.

“Can you stay awhile, just talk some, Sheriff?” she asked. “I'll get us some coffee and get right back up.” She smiled. “You look like a man who could use some
talk.
”

Stone let his hat and his hand drop back to his side.

“I expect I
could
use some talk, Mae Rose,” he said, “some coffee too, I'd be obliged.” He already knew he wasn't about to tell her about anything going on inside his head. She didn't need to hear any of that, and he didn't need to reveal it. He let out a breath and relaxed. This was good, he told himself—a time-out.

•   •   •

When Stone left through the rear door a half hour later, he walked a block down the alley behind the Silver Palace. He made his way back to the street and crossed it amid the morning wagon and horseback traffic. He continued on to another alleyway, one running beside the undertaker's where a dusty black hearse sat, its brass trimmings gleaming sharply in the midmorning sunlight. Along the alleyway pine coffins stood leaning against the wall of the adobe mortuary building.

Inside the building, the strong smell of chemicals permeated the stall warm air as he walked past the viewing room on his left to an open office door near the rear of the building. Seeing the sheriff at his office door, the town undertaker and tonsorial parlor owner, Braden Goss, stood up and tugged at his black linen vest.

“Morning, Sheriff, do come in,” Goss said. Sunlight through a window strategically formed a halo around his shiny bald head.

“Morning, Goss,” Stone said quietly. “Don't get up on my account.” He raised five gold coins from inside his duster lapel and stood the glistening coins in a short stack atop Goss's desk.

“Oh, I see,” Goss said, never quite comfortable around men who carried guns, be they outlaw or lawman.

“That should square us . . . and something extra for yourself,” the sheriff said, nodding down at the gold coins.

“Indeed, then,” said Goss. He gave a thin, mirthless undertaker's smile. “It's not necessary to offer something extra,” he said. “Yet always appreciated,” he added quickly as his hand shot out, snagged the stack of coins and made them disappear into his clothing like some practicing magician.