Leaving Epitaph (2 page)

The day after his wife was buried, Sheriff Daniel Shaye stood across the desk from Mayor Charles Garnett.

“The town wants to know when you’re going after the gang, Dan,” Garnett said.

“Worried about their money, are they?”

“Yes, they’re very worried about their money,” the mayor said. “Most of the town had their money in the bank, Dan. Jesus, this is 1889, for Chrissake. There’s not supposed to be bank robbers anymore.”

Shaye stared at the florid-faced mayor, a big man in his fifties whose face always shone red when he was distressed.

“If the town’s so concerned, Mayor, then how come no one will volunteer for a posse?”

Mayor Garnett sat back in his chair. “You want the honest truth, Dan?”

“Honesty would be a nice change, coming from a politician, Charlie,” Shaye said.

“I don’t think I deserved that.”

Shaye did not reply.

“They’re afraid of you, Dan.”

“What?”

“It’s been four days since Mary’s…since Mary died, only one since she was buried,” Garnett explained. “The whole town turned out for her funeral, and all they felt from you was hate.”

“Where was the whole town when the Langer gang rode Mary down, Charlie?”

“I’ve talked with the reverend, Dan,” Garnett said. “You can’t blame the whole town for that. That was the Langer gang. Blame them. Hate them. Go after them.”

“I am going after them, Charlie,” Shaye said, “with or without a posse.”

“What about your deputies?”

“They quit.”

“Did they say why?”

“They didn’t say a word,” Shaye answered. “I found their badges on my desk this morning.”

“They’re afraid of you too, Dan.”

“What about you, Mayor?” Shaye asked. “Are you also afraid of me?”

Garnett hesitated, then said, “A little. I’ve never seen you like this, Dan. I’ve never seen a man so filled with…rage. You…you…vibrate with it. Containing it seems to take all your strength. I don’t think anyone wants to be around when it comes out.”

“The only ones who have to fear that is the Langer gang.”

“It’s been four days,” Garnett said. “They’re getting farther and farther away with our money.”

“Is that all you’re worried about, Mayor?” Shaye asked. “All you’re concerned with? The money?”

“Of course not, Dan,” Garnett said. “We want them brought to justice for what they did to Mary, but be realistic. You can’t bring Mary back, but you can bring them—and the money—back.”

For a moment Mayor Garnett thought he’d gone too far. That barely contained rage he’d seen before flared in Dan Shaye’s eyes and then subsided.

“Dan,” Charlie Garnett said, “we’re friends. We’ve been friends for twelve years, since you and Mary brought the boys here and you took the job as sheriff. I think I should be able to speak freely here.”

Shaye hesitated, then said, “Go ahead.”

“I think,” Garnett said, very carefully, “what you’re feeling is not so much anger as guilt.”

“Over what?”

“You weren’t there when Mary…when the gang hit the bank. You didn’t get there in time to stop them, or to save her.”

“I was at the other end of town, Mayor,” Shaye said, “doing my job.”

“I know that, Dan,” Garnett said, “and so do you. There was nothing you could have done.”

“Oh, but there was,” Shaye said. “If I’d been there I could have stopped them.”

“All eight of them?”

“I would have stopped them,” Shaye said again. “I would have kept Mary alive.”

“Dan—”

“Charlie,” Shaye said, cutting the man off, “I’m going after that gang even if I have to go alone. I’m going to kill them, one by one—”

“Dan,” Garnett said, “that’s not your job—”

“—and if they still have the money, I’ll bring it back here,” Shaye went on, not giving the mayor a chance to finish. “But understand this: My first duty is to my dead wife, and to my sons, to avenge their mother’s death. My duty is not to a town that stood by and watched her die, or who will stand by now and not volunteer to lift a finger to help hunt them down.”

“They’re storekeepers, Dan,” Garnett said, “not manhunters.”

“No,” Shaye said, “that’s me. I’m the manhunter, and that’s what I’m going to do. Hunt them down.”

“Alone.”

“Yes, if I have to,” Shaye said. “What I need to know is, do you want this badge back?”

“If I take that badge, then you’ll have no authority to hunt them,” Garnett said. “You’ll be no better than a bounty hunter.”

“That’s right.”

“I won’t do that to you, Dan,” Garnett said. “I
told you, we’re friends. You keep the badge, and you find somebody to pin those deputies’ badges on. The town will be with you in spirit and goodwill—”

“This town can take its spirit and goodwill and stick it up its collective ass, Charlie,” Shaye said. “And that includes you.”

Charlie Garnett spread his beefy hands and said, “If I could even still sit a horse, I’d be right with you, Dan—”

“Save it, Charlie,” Shaye said. “You’re all alike, all of you storekeepers and politicians.” He turned, stalked over to the door, opened it, then stood there with his hand on the knob. “I’ll be leaving in the morning. I’ll outfit myself from the general store. I assume the town will foot the bill?”

“Of course. It’s the least we can do.”

“It’s the very least you will do, Charlie.”

“Dan—”

Shaye stopped with one foot out the door. “What?”

“What are you going to do for deputies?”

“I don’t know, Charlie,” Shaye said, “but with or without deputies or a posse, I’m leaving in the morning.”

As Sheriff Daniel Shaye walked out the door, slamming it behind him, Mayor Charles Garnett thought that, one way or another, he would never see Shaye again.

On the street in front of City Hall, Dan Shaye stopped and stood on the boardwalk. People walked past him and lowered their eyes, not wanting to meet his. He had thought for years that they were his friends, his wife’s friends, but the events of the past few days had proven him wrong. They were not his friends. He was the sheriff, and they were the town, and there would always be a barrier between them.

He stepped into the street and crossed over, headed for his office. He knew his days as sheriff of Epitaph were numbered. He needed the badge only to give him some semblance of authority while he hunted the gang, even though he was sure to end up out of his jurisdiction. After that, from wherever he ended up, he’d send it back to them.

He’d spent the better part of the day trying to replace his deputies or round up a posse, and had failed at both. Now there was only one course of action left to him.

When he reached his office, he opened the door and stepped inside. He found three men waiting for him, and they were all wearing deputy’s badges.

“Hello, boys,” he said to his three sons.

Earlier in the day the three boys had talked while at the house, which was situated at the south end of town. They had spent the past twelve years there, but now it felt oddly empty.

“What are we gonna do, Thomas?” James asked his older brother. “We can’t just let Pa go after those men without us.”

“He ain’t gonna get a posse up,” Matthew said. “And his deputies have already quit.”

Matthew had gone to town earlier in the day to get some idea of what was happening, and had returned with this news.

“There’s only one thing we can do, boys,” Thomas said. “We got to be Pa’s deputies.”

“He used to call us that, when I was little,” James said. “His little deputies, remember?”

“I remember,” Matthew said. “Ma used to tell him not to even think about it.”

“Well,” Thomas said, “he’s gonna have to think about it now, ’cause we’re all he’s got. And we got a right to avenge Ma’s death, just as much as he has.”

“Even me?” James asked hopefully.

“Even you, James,” Thomas said. “You’re a man growed, just like we are.”

“So what do we do, Thomas?” Matthew asked.

“We go to town,” Thomas said, “and we don’t give Pa a choice.”

“We stand up to him?” Matthew asked.

“That’s what we do.”

“We ain’t never done that before,” James said.

“Well, we’re gonna have to do it now,” Thomas said. “We got to be together on this. Matthew?”

The middle brother took a moment to think, then nodded and said, “Yes.”

“James?”

“Oh, yes,” the younger brother said without hesitation.

“Then let’s go to town, boys.”

The three boys had just pinned on the badges they’d found on top of and inside the desk when their father walked into the office.

“What have we here?” he asked.

“Deputies, Pa,” Thomas said.

“Three of us,” Matthew said.

“We heard what was happening in town,” James said. “You need us, Pa.”

“And we deserve to go along,” Thomas said. “She was our mother. We got a right to avenge her death.”

Dan Shaye studied his three sons. They all stood as tall as he, Matthew even taller and bigger. They all wore guns. He knew that Thomas could shoot. He knew that Matthew’s size and
strength made him deadly in a fight. James was nineteen, though. He could not shoot like his older brother, nor could he fight like Matthew. But he had the same rights as the other two boys.

“Pa?” Thomas said.

“My three deputies,” Shaye said. “Your mother would kill me for pinning those badges on you.”

“You didn’t pin ’em on us,” Thomas pointed out.

“We pinned ’em on ourselves,” James added.

“Yeah,” Dan Shaye said, “yeah, you did.”

In truth, Shaye had already decided that his only course of action was to take his sons along, after first deputizing them. They had never gone against another man in a fight, never killed another man, but he had no choice. If he was going to catch up to the Langer gang and make them pay for what they had done to Mary Shaye, he couldn’t go alone.

“You boys have to do what I say, when I say.”

“We will, Pa,” Thomas said.

“Every step of the way,” Shaye added, “no questions asked.”

“We will,” Matthew said.

“James?”

“Yeah, Pa?”

“You’ll have to do the cooking.”

James smiled and said, “Right, Pa.”

Shaye stepped forward and spread his arms
wide. The three boys stepped forward and all four embraced briefly, but powerfully.

“Let’s go and get outfitted, then,” Shaye said. “Like somebody just told me, it’s the least this town can do.”

The Shaye men spent the rest of the day outfitting themselves with clothing, weapons, food, and horses. In every store they entered they received nothing but cooperation, but no one dared look any of them in the eye.

The clothing they bought had to be good for warm or cold weather, whichever way the trail took them. The food had to be carried between them, because Shaye didn’t want any pack animals slowing them down. Jerky, bacon, and beans would make up their diet for as long as the hunt took.

Shaye allowed the boys to go and buy the clothing and food without him, but he accompanied them to buy weapons and horses. Thomas carried a new Peacemaker and was able to shoot very well with it. Matthew had an old Navy Colt, and James did not have a gun of his own. Shaye obtained for Matthew and James guns
identical to their older brother’s, and they all got the newest model Winchester. All four of them got a new horse for the hunt, picked more for stamina than speed. None of the boys complained about leaving their own horses behind.

“The hunt” was what they were calling it. They did not pretend that it was anything but, because when you hunted, it was understood that you intended to kill your prey.

“I want the three of you to understand something,” Shaye said to his sons later that night, when they were in the Red Garter Saloon. Their presence had killed business for the night, since no one wanted to be in the same room with them—not after the funeral and the sheriff’s unsuccessful attempt to gather a posse. The only other people in the place were the bartender and two saloon girls.

“What’s that, Pa?” Matthew asked.

“We’re not going after these men to bring them back,” Shaye said. “We’re going after them to kill them.”

“Won’t that get you in trouble?” James asked. “I mean, you bein’ the law an’ all?”

“It could get us all in trouble,” Shaye admitted. “We’re all representing the law, but more than that, we’re representing the husband and sons of Mary Shaye. In my book, that’s even more important.”

“To us too, Pa,” Thomas assured him.

“You haven’t killed anyone, you haven’t even ever shot at anyone,” Shaye said. “That’s all going to change.”

“We know that, Pa,” Matthew said.

“Are you ready for it?”

“Sure we are,” James said enthusiastically.

“I don’t think you are,” Shaye said, filling four shot glasses with rye from a bottle he was holding, “but by the time we catch up to them, you will be, because you’re all going to get your education on the trail.”

He picked up his glass and his sons emulated him.

“Here’s to the memory of Mary Shaye,” the father said, and the sons lifted their glasses and joined him in downing his toast.

“Now you boys better get off to bed,” Shaye said. “No more drinking tonight. You’ve got to be sharp in the morning.”

“What about you, Pa?” Thomas asked.

“I’ll be along,” Shaye said. “Go on, do as I say.”

Thomas stood and his brother followed his lead. As they went out the door, Shaye poured himself another glass of rye.

Later Dan Shaye stood in the moonlight at his wife’s grave, still holding the bottle.

“I have to take them with me, Mary,” he said to his dead wife, “if only because I don’t know if I’ll be coming back. I sure have a better chance
of coming back with them than without them, though, don’t I?”

He took a drink from the bottle and then tossed it away, still half full. He wasn’t foolish enough to get drunk the night before the hunt started.

“I’d swear to God that I’ll try my best to keep them safe, but I’m kind of mad at God right now, so I’ll just give you my promise. I’ll keep them safe, and I’ll kill the murdering bastards who took you from us.”

With the promise offered and—he hoped—accepted, he turned and walked to the house where he and his sons would spend the night for perhaps the last time.

The next morning the four Shaye men split the supplies evenly among them and mounted their horses in front of the livery stable.

“Where we headed, Pa?” James asked.

“North,” Shaye said. “They headed north.”

“Why not south, to Mexico?” Matthew asked.

“Because Ethan Langer doesn’t run and hide after he hits a bank,” Shaye said. “He joins up with his brother Aaron, after he and his men also hit a bank.”

“You mean they hit banks in different towns at the same time?” Thomas asked.

“Roughly the same time,” Shaye said. “I got a
telegram yesterday from the sheriff up in Prairie Bend, South Dakota, that the Langer gang hit their bank yesterday. It’s a competition between them, I think, to see who gets more money.”

“Is that sheriff tracking them?” James asked.

“Won’t go out of his jurisdiction.”

“So where will they go?” Matthew asked.

“Aaron and his part of the gang will go south, while Ethan and his part will go north. They’ll probably meet up somewhere in Kansas.”

“So we’re goin’ to Kansas?” James asked.

“We’re going north,” Shaye said. “Wherever they end up, that’s where we’ll end up.”