Murder in Dogleg City (20 page)

“
Why did you kill
Alexander Munder, Offerman?”

“
Who says I
did?”

“
Abby, the
madam.”

Offerman chuckled, without mirth.
“Well, since you ask, have you ever laid eyes on Munder’s widow? I
figure to have myself a little romp with the lady, as soon as our
business here is finished. I’d heard plenty of talk about how
controlling she is—I figured when he didn’t come home she’d send
someone to look for him, or for his killer, and that you’d be the
first one folks would send her to. And then we’d have this very
meeting—but I knew she wouldn’t do it right off, so I’d have time
to prepare for you.”

“
And pluggin’ Laird? That
was to set me up to take the fall?”

“
Of course. That was plan
A. Then, if you wriggled out of that, plan B would still get your
attention. But I figure you know what this is really all about by
now, don’t you?”

“
Uh-huh. You’re upset that
I had to put a bullet in that murderin’ pile of manure you called a
brother. Right?”

The Mexican’s shoulder moved, just a
hair, and Samuel Jones called out from the back of the
room.

“
Hold on, amigo,” the
gambler said. “The odds aren’t as good as you think.”

Offerman scowled. “Jones,” he hissed.
“I was wondering where you were. You’re an idiot, he can’t pay you
half what I would’ve.”

“
He already has,” Jones
said.

The other customers had quickly made
their way outside, and Rob Parker had set down his whiskey glasses
and ducked behind the bar. Dab Henry stepped out of his office, saw
what was happening, and quickly went back inside.

Rattlesnake Jake smiled coldly. “Go
ahead, gents, yank those smoke wagons, if you’ve a mind
to.”

Offerman’s hand shot to his revolver
as he jumped up. His face was red with rage. He’d no more than
gotten the six-shooter out of his holster than he saw a smoky blast
coming his way. Malchius Offerman had but a split second to
appraise his situation before falling back into his chair, a bloody
bloom spreading across his white shirt, with a bullet hole in the
center of it. As he dropped back with a thud, his gun went off,
blowing a hole in his own boot. He was stone cold dead.

The other men had leapt to their feet
and drawn as well. Randolph flipped the table over and dove to the
ground behind it, pulling his Colt as he did so. The Mexican
whirled around and raised his gun at Samuel Jones—the gambler stood
sideways to make a harder target, his revolver leveled, and sent a
bullet crashing into the Mexican’s forehead.

The fat man snapped off a shot at
Jake, terrified, and the bullet whizzed past the bounty hunter’s
ear. Jake pumped three bullets rapidly into the man’s chest, and he
whimpered as he collapsed on the saloon floor.

Randolph fired at Samuel Jones, and
the slug clipped the gambler’s jacket. Jones returned fire, hitting
the crouching gunman in the gut. Randolph struggled to lift his gun
for another shot, and a second bullet from Jones punched into his
heart. He sagged into a heap with a final gasp.

It was over. Ten shots had been fired.
Six seconds had passed. Four men lay dead in pools of blood on the
floor around the overturned table. Gun smoke hung thick in the air,
and curled from the pistol barrels of Rattlesnake Jake and Samuel
Jones. Rob Parker slowly raised his head above the bar.

Jake heard deliberate footsteps behind
him, and he turned slowly.

Marshal Sam Gardner stood in the
doorway, leaning on the cane in his left hand, his right hand
resting on his revolver’s butt. His deputies, Quint Croy and Seamus
O’Connor, flanked him.

A moment passed in silence, then the
marshal spoke.

“
Well, then,” he said.
“Are you boys about finished here, or did you plan to shoot one
another a few times while you’re at it?”

“
That’s up to Jake, I
guess,” Jones said. Then, to the bounty hunter, he added, “Now
we’re square. If you want to take Ira up on his offer.”

Rattlesnake Jake slowly lowered his
weapon and eased it into his holster.

“
No,” he said, “we ain’t
square. Now it’s swung back to you. If some other New Orleans dandy
shows up sniffin’ around, I reckon I’ll be backin’ you up. It may
be hard for you to believe, but I do know something about honor
myself.”

“
There’s not any wanted
posters on Mister Jones here down at the sheriff’s office,” Gardner
offered. “So he’s not wanted in Kansas. What some rich family in
New Orleans wants is none of my business, unless it causes trouble
in my town.”

“
That’s good enough for
me,” Jake said. He had privately decided to tell Dave Maynard at
the telegraph office to just thrown away whatever answers he
received to his inquiries about Samuel Jones.

Jones holstered his own weapon. “Much
obliged, I believe, is the appropriate response.”

Jake shrugged. “I figure it’s in my
best interests to just keep you around—if there’re any private
bounties on you, I’ll have you handy if I ever have a dry month and
need some quick cash.”

They nodded politely at one another,
then Jake turned to the sheriff. “You need to question us, or any
of that?”

Gardner shook his head. “No, boys, I
guess I have a pretty good idea what happened. You’re free to
go.”

“
Good,” Jake said. “I have
business.”

“
Where are you headed?”
Samuel Jones asked.

“
On a sad mission, I’m
afraid,” Jake said with a wry smile. “I have to go out to the
Munder ranch to let the widow know we got her husband’s killer.
Then, I’ll probably have to hang around awhile consoling the poor,
distraught thing. Could take a spell.”

Jake walked through the door. Gardner
spoke to his deputies.

“
Quint, go fetch Gravely.
Tell him to bring his wagon. Seamus, grab some of those yay-hoos
out there and stack these bodies up in the street.”

Jones took a seat at his regular
table.

Dab Henry’s door cautiously opened
once more, and His Honor stuck his head out.

“
It’s safe, Dab,” Gardner
said, “but let’s just step into your office and have a
conversation, shall we?”

Dab nodded absently, and Gardner
walked in and closed the door behind him.

“
Dab,” he said, “looks
like you’re gonna have to get a new whiskey representative. We seem
to go through ’em quick around here.”

“
I—yeah, I guess
so.”

“
I also think you’re gonna
have to level with me for once,” the marshal said. “About your pal
Mister Offerman.”

Dab sighed. “Hell, Sam,” he said. “I
didn’t know all of this was gonna happen. Hell.”

Gardner sat down in the mayor’s guest
chair, and put his bad leg up on Dab’s desk.

“
Keep talkin’,” he
said.

“
Well,” Dab said
nervously, “I’m not sure where to start.” He sounded like a child
caught at the cookie jar.

“
Just jump in anywhere,”
Gardner said.

Dab sighed. “It all
started when that Laird Jenkins character started coming around. He
was in here Monday night, drinkin’ maybe a little more than he
planned on, and he started talking to Offerman. He told the drummer
about how him and Ira Breedlove was
compadres
from way back, and how
good Ira had been to him, givin’ him work and all when he came into
town.”

“
What kind of work?” the
marshal asked, although he knew.

“
He was workin’ on Asa
Pepper,” Dab said. “Ira was gonna float that old bastard a loan, in
order to get a piece of his action and start squeezin’ me out. That
made me mad as hell, I don’t mind sayin’—it’s just not honest
business.”

“
In other words, you
didn’t think of it first,” the marshal said, and the mayor
shrugged.

“
Anyways,” Dab continued,
“the drummer came to me right away with this information. And he
said he could help me—if I promised to give him my exclusive
whiskey buyin’ business, he’d throw a wrench in Ira’s little plan.
So I thought, sure, why not.”

Gardner took out a cigar and lit it.
“Naturally, you never inquired into how he was going to disrupt
Ira’s operation. Or whether those methods would be
legal.”

“
I sure didn’t think he
would shoot Jenkins in the back while he was takin’ a leak,” the
mayor said ruefully.

“
Not that you cared,”
Gardner pointed out, and Dab shrugged again.

“
All right, then,” the
marshal said. “Let me see if I have all this straight. You
authorize a whiskey drummer to gum up Ira’s plan to convince Asa
Pepper to help him drive you and the other saloons out of the whore
business. The whiskey drummer accomplishes this by murdering the
joker who is probably the closest thing Ira has ever had to a
friend, including his dog. Am I right so far?”

“
Well, I wouldn’t put it
quite that way, but basically, yeah.”

“
So then Ira is very
unhappy. This Frenchman Hébert comes along looking for your house
gambler, gets himself shot, and Ira figures Samuel Jones must have
a price on his head. So—from what those boys were saying
outside—Ira puts our local bounty hunter on Jones, mostly as a way
to send you a message.”

“
Message?”

“
That he knows you were
behind his friend’s murder, and he was going to make you pay.
Probably a piece at a time.”

“
Well, that seems childish
on his part,” Dab said. Gardner ignored him.

“
But the joke was on you
and Ira,” the marshal continued, “because the whiskey drummer was
playing you both, and everybody else—all to get at Rattlesnake
Jake. Which he got his chance at, but he didn’t do so good.
Offerman was pretty slick, but criminal enterprise seemed to be a
little harder than he thought it would be.”

Gardner puffed on the
cigar and blew a smoke ring, then said, “I have to admit, though,
he did pretty damn good at the
selling
part. He sold all you sons
of bitches, and good. The facing down two gunfighters, that he
didn’t handle well at all. There’s a lesson to be learned in there
somewhere, Dab, if we can figure out what it is.”

“
You really think so?” Dab
said, a little confused.

“
Nah, not really. But
here’s what I
do
think. Our murderer is dead as hell, so that’s a positive
outcome. As for everything else I’ve said, well, most of it is
conjecture and not one whit of it would hold up in court. So here’s
the situation I’m left with—you and Ira Breedlove are pulling
people’s strings, and sending people to kill each other, all so you
can prove which one’s got the biggest horns.”

He puffed again, then turned his head
and blew smoke straight at the mayor.

“
Not much I can do about
it, I guess,” Gardner said. “Not this time. But you idiots are
gonna keep pushing each other, harder and harder, till you blow the
lid off this town. And when it gets to that point, percentages or
not, if I have to I’ll just shoot you both.”

Gardner stood up, with some
difficulty—his leg had stiffened on him. He cocked his head,
listening to the muffled noise from the main room.

“
Sounds like your business
is pickin’ up, Dab,” he said. “And that’s damn good news. I don’t
want to cut my own purse, not if I can help it. You have a good
night, now. I’m headed over to the Wolf’s Den to tell Ira the same
thing I just told you.”

“
You wouldn’t—you wouldn’t
really do that, would you?”

“
Wouldn’t what, tell Ira
for sure that you were behind his friend Laird’s
murder?”

“
No,” Dab said. “I mean,
you wouldn’t really shoot me, would you?”

Sam Gardner smiled. “I suppose I’d
probably shoot Ira first, if that makes you feel
better.”

Dab paused a moment. “It does, kinda,”
he said.

Gardner opened the door and stepped
into the saloon. Quint Croy was waiting for him.

“
We got those bodies over
to Gravely’s,” Quint said.

“
Good, good. Let them soak
his floorboards for awhile.”

“
Marshal?” Quint
said.

“
Yeah?”

Quint looked confused. “Marshal, I’m
not sure I understand everything that has happened this
week.”

Gardner put an arm on his deputy’s
shoulder as they passed through the batwings and into the Kansas
night.

“
Not much to understand,
really,” Sam said. “Just another night in Dogleg City, that’s
all.”

Marshal Sam Gardner paused and looked
around the dark street, smiling almost sadly. “Just another night
in Dogleg City.”

THE END

ABOUT THE
AUTHORS

PHIL DUNLAP

I am the author of nine
published Westerns, with three more in the “chute”. I’ve
contributed to three anthologies, and published numerous short
stories. I write chiefly in the Western genre, although I confess
to harboring a soft spot for mysteries. Most of my Westerns are
also mysteries as a number of reviewers have pointed out.
Saving Mattie
(Treble
Heart Books) won the EPPIE Award for the Best Traditional Western
2009.
Blood on the Rimrock
(Avalon Books, now AmazonEncore) was a finalist
in the 2009 Best Books of Indiana competition sponsored by the
Indiana State Library and the Library of Congress.