The Murdock's Law (6 page)

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Authors: Loren D. Estleman

BOOK: The Murdock's Law
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The cowhand took the cigar from his mouth, spat out bits of tobacco, and crushed it out in a crystal ashtray full of chewed brown butts on the table. In
the excitement he had bitten through it. He lit another. Puffing it into life: “Six Bar Six, Périgueux, what difference does it make? They was trying to scare me into quitting as foreman. They know I don't rabbit when it's just my hide, so they tried to get at me through Dale. If I leave, Terwilliger goes under. He can't get no one else to ramrod with things like they are.”
“So what's going to happen tonight?”
“I reckon that's between me and that consumptive bastard.”
“I reckon not. The law's here now. We'll take care of Mather, if Mather's behind the raids.”
“How?” He snapped the still-burning match into the mounded tray. “You going to throw the old bushwhacker in front of Dick's horse and trip it up?”
Mild laughter bubbled around the room. The Major went on chewing as if he hadn't heard. His shoulders and the crown of his hat were white from the plaster dust that was still dribbling from the gaping hole in the ceiling.
“Whose idea was it to bring in Chris Shedwell?” I asked Pardee. “Yours or Terwilliger's?”
He restacked his chips. “Wouldn't make much sense, would it? Us hiring him and then me coming here to square things myself.”
He had a point.
“You're a gambling man,” I said. “I'll make you a bet.” Tucking the Winchester under my arm, I came around the bar and gathered up the scattered cards with my free hand. When the deck was intact I shuffled and dealt us each five. Then I peeled a five-dollar bill off the roll in my pocket and laid it on
the table. “If I don't arrest the men who hoorawed your brother in a week, you can even things up your own way, short of killing.”
Pardee pursed his lips around the cigar, drumming his fingers on the cards I'd dealt him face down. At length he picked up a chip and somersaulted it expertly across his knuckles and back, turning it over in the cracks between.
“And if you arrest them?”
“Call off the feud. Consider yourself square with Mather and Périgueux. For my part, I'll see that the night riders stand trial for abduction and malicious mischief. But I'll do it my way, which includes shutting down this saloon tonight.”
He frowned at the chip as he manipulated it faster and faster, back and forth across his hand. Then he snapped it off his thumb. It rolled over in the air several times and landed flat atop my five dollars. “Pick up your cards.”
I did, arranging them and placing them face up on the table. I had a pair of jacks. He glanced at them, nodded, and turned his over. Three sixes and two kings stared up at me impassively.
“Full house,” he announced. “Sure hope you're not on a sour streak, Marshal.”
The Terwilliger crew left, some reluctantly but not inclined to argue with their foreman, and soon we heard their hoofbeats receding in the direction of the ranch. With them gone, the bartender at the Glory saw little point in stopping us from closing the place even if he had wanted to, which evidently he didn't any more. He helped us roust out the more stubborn customers, turned out the lamps, and locked up, grasping his dripping revolver uselessly in one hand. I sent him off with a reminder to send the bill for the damaged ceiling to the marshal's office and a warning not to jack up the amount.
We found the last two saloons on our side of the street dark, the doors already locked. Our fame was spreading. As we turned away from the final stop, Yardlinger said, “Why bother anyway? With Pardee and his boys out of town we've got nothing to worry
about. Why not let Mather's hands drink up and go?”
“Two reasons. First, if we let them get a snootful in the mood they'll be in, they might decide to go hunting for Terwilliger men or take out their frustration on some other target.” I paused while he set fire to a cheroot.
“Second?” He squirted smoke through his nostrils and watched the flame on his match creep close to his fingers. It was dark out, the only illumination a ghostly glow from the fogged windows of the hotels and late-closing shops.
“Second, a lawman has to finish what he starts, or folks get to thinking he's soft. If he keeps changing his mind, they'll wonder if anything he says is worth much.”
“That why you pistol-whipped Alf back at the Glory?”
I sighed. “I was wondering when you'd get around to that.”
“You didn't have to hit him. You had his gun.”
“I didn't do it for him. I did it for the others in the room who were watching. The Major understands. He fired his scattergun through the roof for the same reason.”
The old guerrilla shifted his plug from one cheek to the other. “You said not to be afeared of making noise.”
“So the bartender puts steak on his eye and the ceiling gets a patch,” I said. “Beats the cost of burial.”
“I don't think that's the reason you hit him,”
insisted the former marshal. “I think it was because you liked it.”
For a moment we stood watching each other in the gloom. Smoke drifted straight up from the glowing end of his cheroot in the motionless air before it was caught and blown ragged by the wind above brim level. Then there was a noise in the street and all three of us spun in that direction, long guns ready. Randy Cross and Earl Trotter mounted the boardwalk.
“Next time announce yourself,” I snarled in my relief. “Another second and you'd have been breathing out your belly.”
Cross ignored the comment. “Well, they're shut down on our side. If there's a drop of alcohol to be got in town, it's horse liniment.”
“Any trouble?”
“Couple of prospectors tried to jump Randy in the House of Mirrors,” said Earl. “I asked them not to.”
The other deputy snorted. “He kicked one in the belly and clubbed the other across the knees with his shotgun. You should of heard him howl. First one's still heaving, I reckon.”
“That's the way I used to make Pa's horses behave,” shrugged the younger man.
I turned to Yardlinger. “How many cathouses in town?”
“Just one, Martha's, over on Arapaho. But she serves claret. A man'd be all night getting drunk enough to start anything.”
“Just so we know where they'll be if they decide to stick.”
“That's them now,” said Cross.
Rumbling hoofbeats swelled as a dozen riders swung into the north end of the street, trailing a fog of horses' breath. I pointed at the open doors of the livery stable, each of which sported a burning lantern hanging on a nail. “Confiscate those and bring them along.”
Earl obeyed, ignoring the protests of the old Negro in charge, and hurried to catch up with us. As we approached the riders, the thunder of hoofs faltered and died. The darkness on the street had alerted the newcomers. Steel slid from leather, hammers rolled back with a racheting sound.
When the lanterns arrived I took one and held it up as I walked across in front of the line of horse-men.
Dick Mather regarded me in hostile silence, a sick man slumped in a linen duster and gripping the pommel of his saddle in both hands as if to keep from toppling off. The man to his immediate right had a broken nose and one thick black eyebrow that went straight across both eyes, giving him a primitive look that was completed by his close-cropped black beard. The gun in his left hand was a Smith & Wesson American .44. The other riders were ten years younger, but their faces were as hard as the weapons they brandished.
I finished my inspection and returned to Yardlinger's side. The five of us were strung out across the street, forming a human barricade with guns in hand.
“That's Abel Turk next to Mather, the bearded one,” the chief deputy informed me. “Foreman at
the Six Bar Six. He hasn't seen many backs hereabouts since his reputation got around.”
“What's going on, Murdock?” demanded the rancher in his phlegmy baritone. “Whole town in mourning for Marshal Arno?”
“Not until his replacement dried up the watering holes,” I replied. “You're welcome to stay as long as you like, boys, but there'll be no drinking tonight.”
“What gives you that right?” The man Yardlinger had identified as Abel Turk spoke quietly, with no threat in his deep voice. Never trust a man who's slow to anger. I looked him over again, then returned to Mather.
“Don't you tell your hands anything?”
“He told me some hot iron who calls himself Murdock is playing lawman,” Turk said. “That still don't give you leave to refuse a thirsty cowman a drink.”
“Maybe it doesn't. But this does.” I patted the carbine.
“We aren't breaking any laws,” huffed Mather.
“You're flashing a lot of steel for law-abiding citizens.”
He let that go. “You running us out of town?”
“Not at all. Like you said, you haven't broken any laws. But if you try to get into one of the saloons, I'll arrest you all for breaking and entering. I understand there's an open door on Arapaho Street.”
“No thanks.” The rancher gathered his reins. His shaggy gray tossed its head and whinnied softly, clouds of steam billowing from its nostrils. “I never did take to keeping all my chickens in one henhouse when there's a skunk loose.”
I grinned. “There's an insult in there somewhere, but you're forgiven. Any word from Helena?”
“I sent your boss a wire asking him to relieve you as city marshal. I haven't heard anything yet. He must keep banker's hours. What are you smirking about?”
“Life in general,” I replied. Blackthorne had been in his office at least once since we'd parted, to confirm Yardlinger's query about my appointment. Ignoring Mather's request meant he wanted me to stay on as marshal. I didn't know why. His contrariness had been known to cause strokes among his superiors in Washington City.
The rancher's fever-sunken eyes darted to Yardlinger. “You in on this?”
“I do what I'm told.” The former marshal's tone was noncommittal.
“What about the rest of you?”
Cross and Earl kept silent, letting their shotguns say it all. Major Brody spat tobacco at the gray's left forefoot, missing the hoof by less than an inch. The animal shied and blew out its nostrils.
Mather's breath whistled in his throat. Without a word he backed his horse out of line, wheeled, and spurred north. It took his men a moment to grasp that he was leaving, and then Turk replaced the hammer on the big American and rammed it into its holster. I caught the glitter of his eyes as he raked them over me, burning my face and figure into his memory. Then they were all gone in a cloud of dust.
“Twenty dollars says we'll see them again,” I said, lowering the Winchester.
Yardlinger laid both his hammers carefully against the caps in the 12-gauge. “No bet.”
“I'm thirsty,” announced the Major.
I wasn't, but I needed a drink. “Is there a bottle in the office?”
“If you don't mind a dead man's liquor,” the chief deputy nodded. “It belonged to Marshal Arno.”
No one objected. Once the lamp was lit in the office, I replaced four of the long guns in the rack along with the extra ammunition while Yardlinger excavated the bottle and Major Brody mopped out the bore of his Remington with oil and a rod. Earl, who had lagged behind to return the borrowed lanterns to the livery, entered just as the cork was pulled.
“That isn't store whiskey,” I commented, looking at the crystal-clear liquid in the bottle.
“That's pure-oldie Masie-Dixie sippin' shine,” whistled the Major. “Hunnert and ten proof.”
“Longer it sits the stronger it gets,” Yardlinger warned. “Bram wasn't much of a drinking man. He took it for evidence from a runner he arrested for introducing to the Cheyennes more than a year ago. I guess the marshal forgot he had it. The fellow hanged himself in his cell.”
I said, “Don't talk, pour.”
“Only one glass.” He held up an amber-tinted container not much bigger than a thimble.
“Who needs it?” The Major seized the bottle.
So we sat around in chairs and on the oak railing, passing the vessel back and forth like kids in a barn, while Major Brody regaled us with progressively
gorier war stories. The liquor was harsh and tasted of cork. After Earl's first pull and a fit of prolonged coughing, he left, and then the drinking got serious.
Somewhere a clock struck nine and Cross weaved out, mumbling something about dinner, a wife, and the imminence of violent death. Half an hour later the Major's monologue dropped to a growl and then silence. When he failed to respond the next time the bottle came around I made an effort to get out of my chair, then gave up and leaned forward, bracing my right arm with my left hand to tug open his eyelids.
“Well, he isn't dead.”
“How can you tell?” said Yardlinger, and started giggling. Someone else was laughing, high and quick like an idiot. I wondered who it was.
“I was just thinking—” He choked and went back to giggling.
I felt the laughter bubbling back up and tried to put it down with another swallow. Some of the whiskey got in my mouth. “What?”
“I was thinking,” he said again, and gasped for air.
“Thinking what?”
“That we had about seven chances of getting killed tonight, and that if we did the city council would have been faced with the problem of appointing their third marshal in two days.”
I was in the middle of another pull. I choked and he leaned across the desk to slap me mightily on the back, nearly falling over when he missed. I laughed then, so clearly and loudly I can hear it to this day. It was the funniest thing anyone had ever said. He
laughed too. It went on like that for the better part of a minute, and when it died we looked at each other and started in again. Finally we were played out. I pushed the bottle across to him. There was a quarter inch left in the bottom.
“Who's Colleen Bower?”
“Who?” He was leaning as far back in the swivel chair as he could without going over, his head resting on the back and his eyes closed. His profile was limned in pale yellow from the low-burning lamp.
I repeated the name and tried to trace the outline of a female figure in the air with my hands. The result was closer to a bull fiddle, but I got my meaning across.
“No one knows for sure.” The stove had gone out and his breath curled when he spoke. “She claims to have been a schoolteacher in Arkansas, but I don't credit it. For a while she called herself Poker Annie and dealt faro in and around the Nations. We got a reader on her a year ago, which was about the time she came to Breen. Couple of half-breeds got themselves shot up over her in Yankton. She cleared out right after and the U.S. marshal wanted to know what happened to a thousand dollars in gold one of the breeds lifted from the express office in Bismarck. Bram arrested her at the Glory where she was dealing and wired Yankton to come get her. Turned out they didn't want her any more. They'd found the gold in the Bismarck express clerk's closet.”
“Arresting someone's a strange way to begin a courtship. You going to finish what's in that bottle or not?”
He opened his eyes and lifted it from the desk, missing the first time he reached for it. The contents drained, he replaced it carefully, using both hands. It fell over, rolled to the edge, and quivered there like a baby bird getting ready for its first flight.
“I think the rest of it was her idea,” he said, watching the bottle. “Gamblers who expect to die in bed have two rules: don't get caught cheating and try to stay on the sunny side of the local law. That last part's easy when you wear petticoats.”

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