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Authors: Matt Chisholm

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BOOK: Gunsmoke for McAllister
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He rode slowly through the dust down a broad street with houses on either side; chickens and dogs rooted in the dust, women sat around gossiping; here one made tortillas over a slow fire; here were a few stalls with patient Mexicans shooing away the ever-present flies; an unhurrying string of burros passed him, an old man and a boy beating their bony haunches regularly with sticks. Eyes fell on the tarp and the booted feet showing out of one end. They eyed the dark man, his weapons, with dark unfathomable eyes. An old man walked into his path, unseeing.

McAllister halted his horse and called: ‘Old one.'

The man stopped and blinked up at him from under the wide brim of his hat. His clothes were faded and wash-worn cotton.

‘Señor.'

‘Is there a sheriff's office in town?'

He reacted to McAllister's excellent Spanish.

‘Seguramente.'
He gestured with the under-edge of his hand, fingers stiff. If the gentleman would go ahead to the intersection and turn right, he could not fail to find the sheriff's office. The old eyes flitted to the dead man and away. McAllister thanked him politely and moved on. The old man watched him go, then quickened his pace to some cronies in the shade to talk of what he had seen. Was the caballero an Anglo or a Mexican? they asked him. He looked abashed. That he could not say. He spoke the language well and he looked … the old man floundered. For now he came to think of it, the man on the horse had looked like an Indian. But he was big. They themselves had seen how big he was. A formidable man. And with a dead man on the horse behind him. There was drama here. Had he found the man dead? Had he killed him himself? Would a man bring a man he had killed in to the sheriff? And this sheriff of all sheriffs? They looked after the man on the California horse with wonder in their eyes.

McAllister went slowly down the centre of the street, turned right at the intersection and came to a fine adobe building with the large legend of SHERIFF on its front. There was a hitching rail on the street and a man sitting in a rocker in the shade of an overhang. A badge glistened on the man's vest.

McAllister halted.

‘You the sheriff?' he asked.

The man nodded briefly and said: ‘Yes.' He filled the chair, tapering from massive shoulders to ludicrously slender hips. His
skin was white where he had pushed his hat back, and it was sensitive as shown by the redness of the skin where sun and wind had burnt it. His heavy mustache and hair were greased so they glistened blue-black; his eyes so pale that the darks were hardly distinguishable from the whites. This gave him a terrible blind look. The lips were sensuous and full, the chin below them heavy.

McAllister stepped down from the saddle.

‘I have a dead man here,' he said.

The lawman raised his shining eyebrows and stood up. He walked around the sorrel and stared for a moment at the dead man's boots.

‘I know these boots,' he said. He walked round to the head and pulled back the tarp. ‘I know that face too. Come on into the office.'

McAllister followed him into the office. It was a large sparsely-furnished room with a second door to one side. There was a desk, a few chairs, a roughly-made cupboard and a gun-rack with a chain run through the trigger-guards of a dozen rifles and shotguns. It was cool after the hot sun outside.

‘Siddown,' the sheriff said and McAllister sat.

The sheriff hauled a piece of paper toward him from the desk top as though it took real effort and McAllister was being a nuisance. Picking up a pen, he dipped it in some ink.

‘What's your name?' he asked.

‘McAllister.'

‘Any kin to old Chad McAllister?' He stared for a moment with apparent blindness at McAllister.

‘Son.'

The sheriff grunted and wrote. Then he asked: ‘You know the man outside?'

‘Never saw him before in my life.'

‘How'd he die?'

‘Gunshot wounds.'

‘Why?'

‘He jumped me in camp. Threw down on me. I didn't have any choice. It was him or me.'

‘That's Charlie Burrows out there. You shot old Charlie.'

‘He belong around here?'

The sheriff smiled.

‘He sure does. He was my deputy.'

Chapter 2

McAllister sat very still. He knew he was in trouble.

The sheriff said: ‘I always told Charlie he'd get himself killed the way he went on. Now it's happened. Poor old Charlie. Well, talkin' won't bring him back.' He got to his feet. ‘We'll take him down to the undertaker's. He didn't live so good, but no reason why we shouldn't plant him well. Go ahead.'

McAllister rose and walked toward the door. He had barely reached it when he heard the gun cock behind him. He stopped and stayed still.

The sheriff shouted: ‘Carlos.'

There was a pause, then the side door opened and a man walked into the office. The sheriff said: ‘Carlos, don't get between my gun an' this man, but take his gun. You think you can do that?' Carlos must have thought he could. McAllister heard him come close and then the weight of the Remington went from his right side. Suddenly, he felt naked and defenseless without it. The sheriff said: ‘Turn around.' He turned.

Carlos was a Mexican. He was tall and thin and dressed in Anglo clothes. And he was grinning, showing broken teeth. He carried a Colt's gun at his hip and the deputy's badge fitted him just about as well as a halo would have fitted the devil.

‘He killed Charlie Burrows,' the sheriff said and the grin dropped from the Mexican's face. Different expressions flitted across it – doubt, fear, anger. ‘We'll put this feller with the others, then you take Charlie down to the undertaker.'

Carlos reached for a club where it leaned against the wall.

The sheriff came close to McAllister and the muzzle of the gun was shoved into his hard belly.

‘You'll pay for Charlie,' the sheriff said. ‘You'll pay for him good. Hear?'

McAllister said: ‘What am I supposed to do when a man comes at me with a gun? Kiss him?' McAllister knew talking wouldn't do him any good. It didn't. The sheriff hit him in the throat with the edge of his hand. McAllister staggered back, choking. Instinctively, he started toward the man, but Carlos hit him with the club and knocked him across the room.

The sheriff said: ‘Get up and walk through that door.'

McAllister got to his feet, his head feeling as if it had been
kicked by a Kentucky mule. The room seemed to whirl around him and his legs felt as if they wanted to fold under him. Carlos opened the door and gestured to him. He walked through the doorway, went down three stone steps and found himself in a large room built of adobe, so large that it could have been called a hall. In the centre of this was a big cage of iron bars. Four sides and a roof, all of iron bars. The light was dim in there, but he could make out some half-dozen figures crouched in the cage. Keys rattled, the sheriff passed him and opened a grated door in the cage. He gestured and McAllister stepped forward. When he stood on the threshold of the cage, Carlos hit him in the back of the neck with the club and he pitched forward. Dimly, he heard the door clang to behind him. Footsteps sounded, died away and a door closed. He heard himself groan and rolled over.

A face looked down at him. A Mexican face.

In Spanish he heard: ‘He is hurt.'

Another voice said: ‘What do you expect after Carlos has dealt with him?'

Soft hands touched him.

‘Pobrecito.'
That was a woman's voice. A woman in here? He tried to sit up and failed. He opened his eyes and saw her – a young woman of his own age, dark hair falling about her face, shadowing her dark liquid eyes. ‘They have nearly killed him.' Water trickled into his mouth. He drank thirstily. When at last he sat up he said: ‘Thanks' and looked around him at them as they stood and knelt around him. Most of them were Mexicans, but one was an Anglo, a fellow a few years older than himself who had the looks of a cattleman.

McAllister said: ‘Howdy, folks. Name's Rem McAllister.'

The cowhand said: ‘I heard of you. I'm Chalk White. What you here for, if a man can ask?'

McAllister said: ‘The sheriff tells me a man who jumped me an' I killed was his deputy.'

‘Charlie Burrows?' White asked and McAllister nodded. The cowhand whistled. A buzz of talk came from the Mexicans. They were stunned and impressed by die information.

McAllister looked at the girl. He reckoned being in jail couldn't be all that bad with a lovely thing like her around. She smiled at him and for a moment he forgot Carlos' club. She was dressed in a white blouse and a wide Mexican skirt of red worked handsomely with some sort of stitching around the hem. She looked good enough to eat.

The rest, he noticed, were all young men, most of them well-built. Maybe oldsters didn't commit crimes in Euly. They introduced themselves to him politely, telling their names and their occupations. He noticed another thing now – most of them came from out of town. White was an itinerant rider looking for work. One of the Mexicans said he was there for pulling a knife on a deputy, another for being drunk, but the rest didn't seem to know what they were there for. They put the fact of their arrest down to the incomprehensible whim of the Americanos. That meant gringo, but they were too polite to say so in front of McAllister and White.

‘Anybody tried getting outa here?' McAllister asked.

White said: ‘Nobody could get through these bars. We tried diggin' in the floor with our hands, but the bars go deep.'

‘In that case,' McAllister said, ‘there ain't nothin' for us to do but sleep and wait for somethin' to turn up.'

Without a word, he lay down on the ground, put his hat under his head, closed his eyes and apparently fell straight into a deep and untroubled sleep.

* * *

He woke to the sound of clanking chains.

He sat up and put his hat on. A man was bawling at the top of his voice: ‘Come on, out of it, you lousy gringoes. Off your butts.' Somebody ran a stick along the bars of the cage and made a deafening racket. The Mexicans were all on their feet, standing mutely, staring at the burly men standing outside the cage in the lamplight. McAllister got to his feet and looked over the heads of the smaller Mexicans.

The sheriff stood impassively in the lamplight. Carlos stood by with a shotgun in his hands. The shouting came from a big man with a fair beard with a law badge gleaming on his vest. He was aged about thirty and was built big as a house. In his hands he held a club. There was the same stamp on him as there had been on Charlie Burrows. The face was brutal, the eyes savage. The man was of limited intelligence and he was enjoying his power. Such men always triggered off rage in McAllister.

The grille door of the cage swung open and the first Mexican was ordered out. As soon as he was out, the door was clanged to again. McAllister watched interested, wondering why this visit should be made at night. The big fair man picked up something that clinked from the floor. The Mexican was ordered to stand
still with his hands and legs wide. The next moment, his ankles were chained. Then his wrists. This puzzled McAllister. Sure, it wasn't uncommon for men to be chained in Western jails, but it was usually reserved for dangerous criminals or for when men were being taken on a journey.

Another man was brought out of the cage and chained to the first. The big fair man sweated and swore, the sheriff looked on unemotionally. Just once he spoke, ‘Hurry it up, Rich – we don't have all night.' Chalk White was taken out. He objected and tried to make a fight of it, but he was clubbed into subjection by the massive Rich and in a moment was as securely in chains as the others, though prone on the ground. The prisoners were taken out till there was only the girl and McAllister left.

The door was opened.

‘You McAllister,' the sheriff said. ‘Come on out.'

McAllister stepped forward. The sheriff was directly to his left, the prisoners were immediately in front of him with Carlos and the shotgun on the other side of them. The lamp hung above the prisoners. Rich was to his right with the club. McAllister knew that he could be dead in the next ten seconds.

‘Stand here,' Rich said. ‘Legs apart.'

McAllister walked forward and obediently stood with his legs apart. Rich tucked the club under his left arm and knelt down on one knee.

Now
.

McAllister hit him with his balled fist just behind the left ear. Rich fell against the bars with a crash. McAllister moved fast, springing at the lamp and throwing his whole weight through the bunched prisoners, ripping the lamp from its hook and smashing it down on the sheriff who was in the act of drawing his gun. The sheriff yelled in rage and alarm, the light went out and in the general panic and excitement, Carlos fired one barrel of the shotgun. McAllister didn't stop, but turned toward the door leading to the office. He stumbled over somebody on the floor. It could have been a prisoner or the bearded deputy. Whoever it was got his belly trodden on. McAllister stumbled against the bars of the cage, heaved himself upright and ran as fast as he knew how. The shotgun went off again. Something stung McAllister's back and he knew that some of the slugs had hit him. He kept on going. Wrenching the door open, he slammed it behind him, saw there was a bar and dropped it into place.

There was a single lamp burning in the office. Quickly his eyes
searched the room. A gun lay on the desk. He jumped for it and found that it was his own. Scooping it up, he headed for the street. Somebody hurled themselves against the door to the cell, it shook badly, but the bar didn't give. McAllister got the door to the street open.

A man stood there, eyes wide.

‘I – ' he said and McAllister's shoulder took him in the chest, bowling him from his feet.

A horse stood tied at the hitching rail. The canelo! He had some real luck after all. Ripping the line free of the rail, he vaulted into the saddle and raked home the spurs. The horse whirled, got its feet under it and ran. A gun was fired from the window of the jail building and a shot whistled past him. He bunched down over the horse's neck and yelled it on. The animal didn't need any second bidding. It took him out of town fast and he didn't draw rein till he was out on the flats and he could see the moon riding high in a clear sky over the dark shoulders of the mountains. Then he stopped and listened.

BOOK: Gunsmoke for McAllister
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