Murder in Dogleg City (15 page)

It occurred to the marshal he might
just be the case. Just what did he know about Rupe, anyhow? Only
what he’d told him when he’d showed up in town a few years before,
afoot, drunk, and half-dead from the spring winds that had all but
peeled the skin off the skinny drink of water.

“
Ah, it ain’t no use,
Sam.”

He looked more to the marshal like an
injured bird that couldn’t fend for itself, off-balance and trying
to make up for it by leaning too far one way, the man’s head
wobbling in the other direction. The wet eyes and trembling lip,
the shot nerves all told Marshal Gardner his drunken friend
couldn’t be long for this world. Then again, he’d seen such
characters outlive healthy, working folk. Unfair or not, the Lord
does protect a drunk, he thought.

Gardner slid open a bottom drawer on
the desk and tossed a boot bottle to Rupe. It arced in the air,
halfway to the seated man, when the marshal winced—he’d just thrown
a glass bottle to a one-armed man, a shaking, drunken one-armed
man, at that. But bird-thin Rupe surprised him. That one good wing
fluttered up, snatched and pulled in the bottle, hugging it to his
belly. “What’s this for?”

“
Ain’t much left, but I
figure it’ll even you out. We have some talking to do and I can’t
have you spending the entire time licking your lips and thinking
about how fast you can get to the nearest bar. I need you to focus
on what we’re saying. Call that gargle my payment on a
conversation.”

Rupe wasted no time in upending the
bottle. His throat worked as if he’d been in the desert for days
without water. He stopped with a few swallows left, ran his hand
across his lips, then said, “I’ve spent a goodly portion of my time
these last few years on my belly, marshal. Mostly because I can’t
for the life of me figure out how to get back up.”

“
I’ve never pried, Rupe,
you know that. But if there’s ever something you need to talk
about, well, I’m as good a listener as a bottle—and a whole lot
less costly and troublesome.”

“
Not nearly so fun,
though.” Rupe snorted a quick laugh.

“
Well thanks all to hell—I
think.”

But Rupe’s face grew serious.
“Breedlove said something earlier that got me thinking. You know,
Sam, how one thing will lead to another in your mind. Before you
know it, you’ve gone so far from where you began, you got no idea
where you are or how you got there?”

“
That’s happened to me a
time or two—take this conversation, for example. I haven’t got a
clue as to what you’re on about.”

“
Okay, okay. Breedlove, he
asked me how old I was. We played slap-and-tickle with that for a
minute, but it got me to thinking back to when I was a freighter. I
told you about that.” Rupe nodded at the marshal.

Gardner returned the gesture, curious
to know here this was going.

“
Had my own rig, an old
ore wagon I got for a song, fixed her up, painted her blue, and got
me a three-yoke team. God, but I loved them boys. Ain’t nothing we
couldn’t haul. I’d hire out for pretty near any job, I was that
sure of ’em .”

“
Good paying work, hauling
freight,” said Gardner.

“
You bet it was. And it
was honest work, I tell you. I had two arms then, and money in my
pocket. And for a time, I had me the closest I’ll ever come to a
son. Boy I called Davey.” He looked at the marshal with a shine in
his eyes and a faint smile on his face. “I never knew his right
name, and if he did, he never told me. Never did speak. He wasn’t
but seven or eight when I come up on him. There was a burned-out
wagon, three dead bodies. It was his ma and pa and sister, I
reckon, from what I could make of the scene. Sioux, I’d guess. They
laid them low, must have stolen their horses, put flame to
everything else.”

“
How’d the boy live
through it?”

“
Hid himself in a gully,
but he saw the whole thing. He was a tough character, though. It
was most likely a week since it had happened that I come along. Did
my best to bury them proper. I was in the midst of it when that kid
jumped right on my back! Thought I had a lion on me. I got him
calmed down in the end.” Rupe smiled to himself at the
memory.

Gardner sipped the cold coffee and
said, “What happened to him? You never mentioned having a
boy.”

“
I had him a couple of
years. I’d grown right fond of him, never could figure out who his
people were, nor where they had come from, where they were headed.
So I just took him on as my own. He was tough, by God. I expect he
would have taken over the business, but them damned Sioux.
Murdering sons-of-bitches….”

The marshal nodded, but said nothing.
He’d never heard this story before, but he’d heard plenty of
similar stories, and he could guess what was coming.

“
They got us one day when
we were too far from anywhere to make a run for it. Must have been
five or six of them. First thing I knew of it I saw arrows sticking
out of my oxens’ backs. They never had time to do more than tear at
the traces before those Indians come down at us out of the hill to
our right, like screaming birds. I was reaching for the shotgun but
damn, I had no time. One of them rode right up, hit me on the back
of the head with what, I never saw. It was enough of a blow to drop
me from the wagon. Then I got an arrow in the arm, pinned me to the
ground just as neat as you please.” He wagged his stumped arm, the
ragged shirt sleeve flapped at his side.

“
I come around in time to
see Davey had been laid right, arrows and cuts all over him, but he
was a fighter. Kicking and biting and grabbing, just like a lion. I
tell you, Sam, that kid was a tough one.”

Gardner was about to speak, but Rupe
continued. “One of them bastards, a fat one, I remember—had no
shirt and he was built like a sloppy woman—that bastard knelt hard
right on the boy’s chest.”

Rupe’s voice cracked, he closed his
eyes and ran his hand under his nose. His voice grew husky, deeper.
“Took Davey’s topknot. But it was a messy affair. I suspect that
damned Indian’s blade was dull. The boy wasn’t yet dead, still
bleeding out, and the blood from his head bubbled and washed down
his face, thick like molasses. I can still smell it—hot and raw
like something a body shouldn’t ever have to smell. Oh, God, and
his eyes fluttered open and he stared right at me. Give me a
look.”

He looked at the marshal, his eyes
wet. “Do you know, that look on his young face wasn’t one of blame.
No sir, it was one of forgiveness. And I ain’t telling a windy,
because forgiveness is the last thing I want or deserve. But that
boy, in his last seconds of life, he was more man than I have ever
been, or will ever be.”

His bandaged head slumped back down
between the points of his shoulders, and it was a long minute
before the marshal realized the pathetic one-armed drunk was
sobbing. A tear ran off Rupe’s thin nose, hit the wood floor. “I
couldn’t move. I thought I was dying, when that savage hit my head
I couldn’t feel anything. I wish to hell I had died then, I tell
you. They didn’t even see fit to scalp me. Just left me alive, damn
their eyes.”

“
It ain’t too late, Rupe.
You could do that boy proud yet—”

Faster than Gardner had ever seen the
man move, Rupe jumped to his feet and pointed a long, trembling
finger at him. “No sir, don’t you dare! You may have picked me up
off my face more times than I deserve, might have gotten me paying
work that a one-armed man ought not have, might have bought me more
meals than a body such as me has a right to eat, might have bought
me this haircut and shave, but that don’t never give you nor
anybody else the right to tell me what I should be doing where that
boy’s memory is concerned.”

In a lowered, shaking voice he said,
“I should never have talked of it.” He made for the jailhouse door,
then stopped and made his way to the back room. The marshal heard
him lie down on the bunk.

Sam Gardner stayed in his chair for a
long time, staring at that spot on the floor long after Rupe’s tear
had dried.

* * *

Gardner had been considering making
another pot of coffee—it was going to be a long night—when from the
back room he heard—not Rupe’s snores, as he expected—but the sound
of the man getting up off the bunk. Then Rupe appeared in the
doorway.

“
Can’t sleep?”

“
Brogans.”

“
What?”

“
Remember how I said how
things look different from the ground, how I spent so much time
down there it seems natural somehow?”

“
Yeah, sure. What of
it?”

Rupe rubbed his hand along his cheek,
wincing as his fingertips grazed the bandage looped under his chin.
“I told you I didn’t really see what happened last night, not even
the man’s back. But I did see something.”

Gardner dropped his boots to the floor
and leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “Yeah?”

Rupe nodded, walked to the stove, held
out his hand, though the stove was long cold. “I wasn’t lying then,
I just couldn’t recall much. But I have, you see. Now I have.” He
turned to face Gardner, a smile tugging at his mouth.
“Brogans.”

“
You already said that,
Rupe.”

“
Yeah, but I’m telling you
I think the shooter wore brogans. Hell, I’d swear to
it.”

Gardner stood, the wooden chair
stuttering on the floor. “Rupe, are you damn sure? Do you know what
you’re saying?”

“
Yeah, I know, not a whole
lot of people wear brogans, but this fella did.”

Gardner fingered his moustache. “You
sure it’s a man, then?”

“
Course I’m sure. I ain’t
never been so drunk I can’t tell the difference betwixt a jack and
a jenny.”

“
You know how many men
wear brogans in this town, Rupe.”

“
You askin’ or tellin’,
Sam?” Rupe didn’t even turn around as he said it, just headed into
the back room. Presently, Rupe said, “I know of one man who wears
brogans in this town. And now I wish I hadn’t remembered a damn
thing. And Sam?”

“
Yeah, Rupe.”

“
What I talked of
before….”

“
It’s between us, Rupe.
Nobody else.”

“
Appreciate it,
Sam.”

There was quiet for a moment, then
Gardner heard Rupe lay down again and soon, the steady, heavy
breaths of a man dropping like a stone into a deep
sleep.

Gardner sighed and stoked the
near-dead coals in the stove. He envied Rupe. There wouldn’t be any
sleep for him or his deputies this night, so he’d better make
coffee and hope Croy or O’Connor made it back before too long. They
had people to talk to, things to look at, work to do.

The knot in his gut eased a bit. He
tried to concentrate on the killing, but his mind fixed on Rupe’s
young tortured boy, Davey, staring at Rupe as he died.

* * *

“
Aw, hell no….” Gardner
pushed himself back up to his knees and slapped his palms on his
legs.

“
What?” Deputy Croy
paused, squinting in the morning sun at the mouth of the alley. His
hand rested on a wobbling stack of barrel staves behind which he
was definitely not finding sign of brogans. “Marshal, I hope that
means you found something, because I’m just wasting my time back
here.”

Gardner jerked his chin toward the
dirt before him.

Croy pushed his hat back and leaned
in. He kept his voice low. “They made by brogans, you
think?”

“
Yep.”

“
Some boots might make the
same prints as brogans, though.”

“
True, but there’s more.
That one there? What do you see?”

Croy bent lower, much the same as
Gardner had.

“
Hey, you two….” Ira
Breedlove leaned on the paint-faded post at the corner of the
porch, half smiling. “Little early to be face-down in the dirt,
even for you all.”

The lawmen both looked up at him.
“Mind your own, Breedlove,” said Gardner, then directed his
attention back to the tracks before them.

Straightening up as if he’d been
slapped, Breedlove looked around to see if anyone had heard the
exchange. Then he muttered “ungrateful bastard,” and headed back
inside.

“
It’s that curvy bit there
you’re pointing at, right?”

“
Yep,” said Gardner,
leaning in again. “That’s Rattlesnake Jake’s mark. Likes to wear
his brogans and likes everyone to know he’s a hard
case.”

Croy kept staring at the mark. “From
what I’ve seen and heard, he looks to be one.”

“
In my experience, Quint,
any man who has to go out of his way to prove he’s mean and ornery
isn’t really much of either.”

The men stood and looked down the
nearly empty street.

“
There are always
exceptions,” said Croy.

“
Yep. I reckon we’ll find
out presently if Jake’s one or not.” Marshal Gardner started
walking. “First, you can buy me a cup of coffee.”

Deputy Croy shook his head and
followed the marshal.