Murder in Dogleg City (13 page)

Jake nodded again. “Which means
there's a good chance Jones has got a bounty on his head. I could
look into that, try to find out just how much he's
worth.”

“
Or you could just kill
him first and then figure it out,” Ira suggested.

“
I could,” Jake said, “but
that's not the way I do things.”

“
Just a suggestion,” Ira
replied with a shrug.

Jake frowned in thought and rubbed his
chin. “I'll see what I can do,” he said after a moment. “Maybe send
a few telegrams and try to find out something about Mister Samuel
Jones and that fella he killed.”

Ira spread his hands and said,
“However you want to proceed is fine with me. I've done my
part.”

Jake grunted. “I'd ask why you want me
to go after Jones, but I reckon I can make a pretty good guess. You
want to get back at his boss for something.” The bounty hunter
turned to leave but paused in the doorway and looked back at Ira.
“Sooner or later, people in this town are gonna have to take sides
in a whole new war, ain't they?”

Ira pursed his lips and said, “That's
possible, Jake. I'd say that it's very possible indeed.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Marshal Gardner hadn’t intended to
return to his office quite so soon that afternoon. But then he
remembered Rupe in the back room, hopefully sleeping off whatever
fumes were left of the previous night’s toot—unless he’d already
wandered off for another poke at the liquor windmill.

Gardner clunked on into his office and
hung on the door a moment. “Rupe? You still here?”

He waited a second, heard nothing,
then closed the door and dropped his hat on the desktop. He laced
his fingers through his hair and sighed. A grunt sounded from the
back room. Gardner smiled.

The lawman walked over and leaned
against the doorframe. The skinny one-armed drunk lay on his back,
eyes closed, his tongue, no doubt feeling dry and wooden, ran
slowly inside his mouth, smacking his lips, then he groaned
again.

“
I figure you might want
to get on out of here, maybe get a bite and a beer. What do you
say, Rupe?” Sam knew he had Rupe at the word “beer,” but he pulled
a straight face.

The drunk laid his right hand on the
edge of the cot, grunted his way upright, and planted feet to the
floor.

“
Rupe, if you don’t mind
me saying, you’ve looked better.”

Rupe rasped his hand across the back
of his neck, shook his head. “Yep, I reckon I’ve been prettier, but
it’s been a long time since.” He offered a weary smile to the
marshal.

No matter how many times he hauled the
skinny man’s backside out of the gutter, Gardner was always amazed
at Rupe’s capacity for good humor. He could be shaking in the
throes of a hard hangover, but he’d still manage a bleary-eyed
grin.

“
If there was any way I
could drag that hangover out of you, why I guess I’d do it,
Rupe.”

“
You had the power to do
that, marshal, there’s a whole lot of folks in this town who’d pay
you for the cure on a daily basis. Nah, I asked for it, I reckon I
deserve it. I could sure take you up on that offer of a beer,
marshal.”

“
If you recall, it wasn’t
only for a beer. Food, too.”

Rupe smiled, his eyes closed, his head
bobbing almost between his knees. “So that must mean you’re still
looking for answers to your killing.”

“
Yep. It’s what I
do.”

“
That and a whole passel
of other things.”

“
What do you mean by
that?”

“
Nothing to get your
dander up over, just angling for a joke and not finding a
fish.”

“
For a one-armed drunk,
you are a curious man, Rupe.”

“
You mean you find me a
curiosity.”

“
That’s what I said. Now
gain your feet and we’ll get to it. I have worked up a powerful
hunger.”

“
Okay, okay.” Rupe
straightened up, his hand visoring his eyes against the
day.

A few minutes later found the pair
headed along the dirt track between buildings. The afternoon was
another warm one and the marshal hung a step or two to the side of
his gamey friend. If Rupe noticed he didn’t say
anything,

“
I don’t suppose you’d
consider stopping off for a bath, Rupe?”

Rupe stopped and sighed. All around
him the wilted denizens of Dogleg ambled along. “I can’t abide a
bath without a shave and haircut first. So I reckon I’ll just
wait.”

Marshal Gardner brightened and laid a
hand on his friend’s shoulder. “As it happens, I see that Hix has
an empty seat in there. What do you say to that?”

“
I say I still don’t have
any money, Sam.” Rupe walked on. Sam stood still. Soon enough Rupe
stopped, too. “You’re going to hold that promised beer just out of
reach, aren’t you?”

“
Yep.”

Rupe sighed and turned back toward the
barber shop. “Let’s get it over with, then.”

A few minutes later he was in the
chair, much to Hix’s dismay. Then the barber slapped Rupe on the
head.

“
What in the Kee-rist are
you doin’, Hix?” Tingley spun in the barber chair, tried to free
himself of the wrap the barber had draped on him, but only
succeeded in further knotting himself in it.

The barber had jumped back out of
reach. This sort of reaction from his customers wasn’t anything
new. In fact, it happened more than he cared to admit.

“
I saw a bug of some sort
on your head. Figured I’d swat it off for you.”

Tingley eyed the barber and rubbed his
balding pate with his right hand. “Well I wish to hell you’d ease
off such behavior.” He slowly turned back around in the seat. “Or
at least warn a body before you commence to rapping him on the
bean.”

The two men eyed each other in the
mirror.

Hix nodded. “I hear you, Rupe.” But he
knew that as soon as he saw another louse crawling on someone’s
head, there would be nothing for it but he’d have to swat at it.
Such things were the one major misgiving he had with his pursuit of
the tonsorial arts. He sighed and did his best to hurry along with
the drunk’s trim.

For his part, Marshal Gardner had been
content to sit back and watch the proceedings with a half-grin,
idly playing with the handle of his new walking stick.

Later, after the haircut and shave,
and the last of three plates of food at Ma’s Café—one for the
marshal, two for Rupe, plus a second helping of rum-spiced
cobbler—Rupe shook his head once again.

“
Marshal, I hate to repay
your kindness with silence, but I just can’t seem to think of a
thing that might help you in tracking down whoever it was who shot
that man.”

Gardner leaned over his empty plate.
“You recall why you went out there?”

“
Most likely because I was
out of money and out of drink. They seem to go hand in hand, for
some odd reason. I guess they’re sweet on each other.” Then he
paused. “You know, I seem to recollect something about that new
whiskey peddler. Yes, that’s right—he left and I figured he was
headed to Asa’s, so I followed.”

“
The whiskey
peddler.”

“
Yep. Thought I might hit
him up for a sample or two. Those fellas will sometimes get weary
of lugging all that stock around. You got to catch ’em at the right
time, though.”

“
And did it
work?”

“
Naw, I never made it past
the alley.”

“
Hmm.” The marshal nibbled
the end of his moustache. “Okay, Rupe.” He leaned back and slid a
couple of coins across the table. “Why don’t you head to
Breedlove’s house of vice, see how a cool beer goes down? I expect
he’ll need someone to tidy the place before the evening rush.” He
slapped the table and stood.

“
You’re not
going?”

“
Nope, too much to do.”
Got to see a man about whiskey, thought Gardner. He paused and in a
lower voice said, “Take her easy and keep your head low, you hear?
I’ll see you later.”

Rupe nodded, palmed the coins, and
licked his lips. He followed the marshal out the door.

* * *

A rare lance of afternoon light
reached through fly-specked glass of the top half of a window just
beyond the upright piano. Motes drifted through and were gone from
sight again. Rupe stilled his broom and watched as the
thick-waisted girl stood with her back to the room.

She wasn’t particularly tall, nor even
very pretty, but at that moment, with her face to the light, her
eyes closed and one hand holding her hair up off her neck, she was
the prettiest thing Rupe had seen in a long time. She stood in the
bold light like a cat might lie in the sun, feeling that warmth,
maybe the only time she’d feel that good all day.

The girl brought to mind others Rupe
had known. Lord, but it had been a long time since he’d dallied
with a woman, sober, in daylight on clean white bedding. He’d give
a lot now if he could spend time with a woman again.

And then the girl let out her breath,
dropped her hair, and with it, her shoulders sagged. And as she
turned back toward the dim room, Rupe saw the dark-circled eyes,
the hard-line mouth, skin showing through the pucker of a missing
button, the only boots she owned, beyond cobbling.

How those girls survived as long as
they did was a source of puzzlement to him. Shouldn’t be, though,
he lived a similar thready existence himself. She caught his eye
and stared him down hard until he looked away, back to his broom.
As it should be—after all, he could only imagine what she saw when
she’d looked at him.

“
How old are you, anyway,
Rupe?”

Rupe’s head snapped upright, looked
around.

Ira Breedlove was staring at him, a
cigar protruding from his pooched lips.

Rupe rubbed a sleeve across his
forehead then leaned on the broom like a crutch. “Just how old do
you think I am, Mister Breedlove?”

The bar owner squinted at Rupe through
a veil of cigar smoke. “Anyone ever tell you it’s not polite to
answer a question with a question, Rupe?”

The thin drunk smiled and resumed
sweeping. “Seems like we’re both doing that now.”

Breedlove balled up a bar rag and
threw it at something behind the counter. Whatever it hit rattled,
glass on glass. “I wish to hell you had two arms. Get me twice the
amount of work for the same money.”

Rupe felt his face heat up. He wanted
to give it right back to him, but didn’t dare. There were few
enough places for him to earn money as it was, no sense soiling
this one for himself. He kept silent and retrieved the last of the
brass cuspidors. It was half filled with last night’s spittle. Rupe
carried it with care to the back door.

Behind him he heard Breedlove sigh.
“Never let it be said I don’t give a damn about my
employees.”

Rupe heard him, but it was
guff. The only thing Ira Breedlove was concerned with was making
money.
And so am I
, thought Rupe.
I am not really his
employee, anyway. I am what that man had called me before the
accident—before I hired on as part of that freighting outfit. An
independent contractor. As long as I am paid, I will do what is
asked of me. And some day I won’t take such insults.

But he knew he was fooling himself,
and always would. Every time he swallowed down another insult, it
got easier to swallow the next, and the next. And harder to get his
back up. He wasn’t even sure he knew how to get good and angry any
more.

* * *

It had been a long time since Rupe had
reached into a pocket and found money. It usually went from his
hand to the bartop. He almost never used the trouser pocket on his
left side because that was the side where his arm was missing from
the elbow down. Too hard to reach into with his right hand. But
when he had dumped out the spittoon, he’d leaned against the edge
of that broken table stacked out back and he’d felt something in
that pocket.

Investigation, after a few seconds of
odd wrangling with his right hand, revealed just shy of three
dollars in coins. He gave quick thought as to how it might have
ended up in there and figured he’d put it there the previous night,
before he’d gone outside to—do what? Somehow that had seemed
important.

But he’d found the money an hour
earlier, before the bar filled up. Since then, he’d taken that
money and put it to good use.

“
Mack, give me another,
will you? I am feeling particularly flush tonight.”

The bartender eyed Rupe, who smiled
and placed a coin on the bartop as though he were revealing a small
but intriguing curiosity no one had ever witnessed before. “As you
see, I can pay.”

“
Wonder of wonders,” said
Mack and poured Rupe two tight fingers’ worth. Rupe didn’t even try
to hide his dissatisfaction with the man’s lack of generosity. “And
here I thought we were friends, Mack.”