Murder in Dogleg City (7 page)

Sweeney had trampled down the tall
grass beyond the Wolf Creek sign, making a fairly straight line
running north and south. “How’s that, Samuel?”

“
Fine. Would you like
north or south, Valentine?”

“
Let’s flip a
coin.”

Samuel dug a silver dollar from a vest
pocket. “Heads or tails?”

“
Tails,” Hébert
said.

Samuel flipped the coin and let it
fall on the ground. It landed tails up. “Your choice of weapon or
position, Valentine. Which do you prefer?” He picked up the
coin.

The crowd lined both sides of the
dueling ground. Neither Hébert nor Samuel paid them any attention.
“I choose the southerly position, as I am a man of the south,”
Hébert said.

“
Very well. The pistols.
Give the box to Angus, if you please.”

Hébert handed the box to Sweeney. He
opened the box and held it out toward Samuel, who casually chose a
pistol. He checked the load and the priming. He inspected the flint
and the frizzen. All was in excellent order.

“
Gentlemen,” Sweeney said
in a loud voice. “This is a field of honor. Mister Hébert, will you
take the southern position please, facing south. Mister Jones, take
the northern position please, facing north.”

The duelists took their
places.

“
At the count of five, you
will turn and shoot,” Sweeney said. "If both parties are still
standing after the weapons have been fired, they will be reloaded
and you will shoot again. Cock your weapons.”

The hammers cocked with a double
click.

"Ready your weapons."

Samuel and Hébert brought their
pistols to their shoulders, muzzles skyward.

Sweeney counted. "One."

"Two."

"Three."

"Four."

"Five."

Samuel and Hébert pivoted,
presenting their right sides to their opponents. Samuel’s face was
placid, as if he cared not whether he lived or died, but Hébert’s
neck above his collar had turned red, and the blood climbed to
flush his face. “
Merde
,” he shouted, and pulled the trigger.

Samuel Jones stood perfectly still.
The .58 caliber ball from Hébert’s pistol flew past his head, close
enough to ruffle his longish hair.

The recoil of the dueling pistol
lifted Hébert's right arm high as Samuel fired. His ball took
Hébert beneath his right arm and smashed a rib. The bone deformed
the soft lead ball, which tumbled through Hébert's chest cavity,
tearing heart and lungs. He dropped to his knees, released the
pistol, and fell on his face in the grass.

Sweeney rushed to the fallen man. In a
moment, he stood and turned to face Samuel Jones. “We can call Doc
Munro if you want, Samuel, but this man’s dead.”

Samuel Jones carefully placed the
dueling pistol in its box and stood for a moment looking at
Valentine Hébert’s lifeless form. Then, without speaking, he walked
back to the Lucky Break. Deputy O’Connor was approaching the crowd,
but Samuel did not slow down until he reached the
saloon.

“
Hal,” he said. “Could I
have a beer, please?” He sat down at his table and picked up his
cards.

CHAPTER THREE

Marshal Sam Gardner massaged his stiff
leg and sighed.

“
Well, there’s no getting
around it, old hoss,” he said—partly to the appendage and partly to
himself, although he supposed it really amounted to the same thing.
“Doc Munro said I needed to be exercising you more. We have enough
to occupy us for the rest of the day and into the evening, and it
looks like we’re in for a hike all over Wolf Creek.”

Deputy Quint Croy had left the
marshal’s office, after delivering his report, to finally turn in
for the day so he could be fresh for his night shift duties—so
there was no one around to hear Sam talking to his own leg.
Witnesses might have thought he had already started on the day’s
ration of whiskey—and, by his own reckoning, that auspicious moment
was not far off—but no, it was just Samuel Horace Gardner and his
bum limb. He had to admit, it was more of a conversationalist—and
certainly listened better—than a good deal of the people he had to
deal with in this town.

He stretched back in his chair,
reaching into the corner, behind the coat-rack. He pulled out his
new walking stick. It was made of fine mahogany, expertly
crafted—and at the head, the best part of all. It was carved into
the shape of a wolf. The bottom was capped with heavy steel, to
protect it from wear as he tapped his way along the boardwalks,
and, more importantly, to give it sufficient heft when he swung it
through the air and used it to crack the skull of some
ne’er-do-well or other. As he was certain he would, and probably
before the week was out. He might even have the opportunity to
whack a miscreant or two—he smiled again at his little joke to the
annoying Frenchie a couple of hours earlier, and of how he had used
the pretense of not knowing how to pronounce the man’s name as a
way to take him down a peg in the eyes of Seamus. He wished he had
thought to make the same joke to Hébert, and ruffle his feathers a
bit more. The marshal hated being taken for an idiot.

He held it in his hands, once more
admiring the workmanship and feeling the balance of it. The marshal
had commissioned this fine tool soon after he had been shot by the
Danby Gang, from Joseph Nash—the carpenter whose shop was near
Doctor Munro’s. The man was a virtual magician with saw and lathe.
Nash was very unprepossessing, and seemed to be interested only in
the items he crafted in his shop, but he had a secret—one which he
divulged to Sam some months ago, no doubt because he respected the
marshal’s wartime reputation.

Joseph Nash, the quiet, shy carpenter,
had been a sergeant in an Indiana infantry regiment, and had won
the Medal of Honor. It seems he had braved enemy fire to pull
several of his comrades to safety, receiving multiple wounds in the
process. He swore the marshal to secrecy, for he did not want
townsfolk crowding around him asking for details—but he wanted to
tell someone, and he had chosen the one person in town that would
both understand the fog of combat and who could resist the urge to
engage in hero-worship. After all, the marshal had to admit,
everyone knows that Sam Gardner can idolize only one person at a
time—either a lady he is trying to woo or, more often,
himself.

Sam had initially planned to send off
for a walking stick, thinking of perhaps a silver-tip or a
concealed sword, but had decided to send the business to Nash. It
was the least he could do; despite his self-confessed vanity, Sam
Gardner believed that Joseph Nash was a greater hero than he.
Besides, he liked to give his business to good Union men, wherever
possible.

Sam imagined he would have
to use the stick with his left hand, keeping his
main droit
free for a
fast draw if necessary. The staff—that word sounded so much better
than
cane
—would
also give him considerably more reach than his long-barreled Colt,
for subduing miscreants. He took a few practice whacks through the
air to get a feel for it.

The office door opened, and his new
deputy Seamus O’Connor stepped in. Sam realized, with a bit of a
start, that he was going to have to stop thinking of Quint as the
“new deputy” now, and advance him to the rank of “veteran” in his
mind. It was a sad thought. Quint was a very capable young man, if
a bit of a bore, but he was not quite the veteran that Fred Garvey
had been. Sam burned with anger when he thought about the Danbys
and their rampage through his town, and the loss of a man who was
the closest thing he’d had in years to a friend—and the fire blazed
hotter still at the knowledge that Sam had been left too wounded to
ride after the bastards and bring them to justice. These thoughts
inspired Sam to take one more emphatic swing at the air with his
new walking stick.

“
I’m sorry to be bustin’
in on ye, Marshal,” O’Connor said, “and you playin’ with your
shillelagh and all. But I found old Rupe, like you asked—he was
fast asleep in Ben Tolliver’s hayloft.” O’Connor looked beside him,
and realized he had entered alone. “Damn, he was right
here.”

The big deputy stepped back outside,
and a moment later he re-entered holding Rupe Tingley by the scruff
of the neck like a wet puppy. The two men presented a stark
contrast.

Seamus O’Connor stood six feet five in
his socks. His height was augmented by the battered stovepipe hat
he wore; his breadth was augmented by the great red walrus
mustaches that flowed from under his oft-broken nose. He had faced
danger aplenty in his time, from employment as a New York City
constable in Five Points to service as a first sergeant in the 63rd
New York Infantry, part of the celebrated Irish Brigade, during the
war. He had made his way West as a railroad worker—when he heard
that a constabulary position had opened up in Wolf Creek due to the
death of Fred Garvey, O’Connor had drawn his wages from the
AT&SF and applied at once.

The man who dangled from O’Connor’s
massive paw could not have been more different. Rupe Tingley had
the scrawny frame of a man who has been on a drunk for several
years. There was no trace of the confidence that radiated from his
Irish captor’s visage; if anything, when emotion passed over Rupe’s
features it was most often shame. Unless thirst could be counted as
an emotion, and in Rupe’s case it probably could be.

Rupe’s left arm was missing just below
the elbow. No one knew how he had lost it, but it was a regrettably
common sight—only six years since the war had ended—to see blind,
crippled, and maimed men on the streets of most any town. Most
people didn’t prod them for particulars, and most of them didn’t
volunteer any. Still, Sam couldn’t help wondering if Rupe had
crawled into a bottle because of the loss of his arm—the marshal
knew many who had—or if some deeper, less visible injury had driven
him there.

“
What shall I do with the
darlin’ man, sir?” O’Connor asked.

“
Just dump him into that
chair.”

The deputy did so, none too
ceremoniously. Rupe still did not wake up.

“
Did you look into that
incident at the Lucky Break?” Sam asked his deputy.

O’Connor nodded. “That I did. This
stranger—Hay Bear—just took a good look at the house dealer, Jones,
and challenged him to a fancy old-fashioned duel, which they held
out by the corral. Mister Jones came out on top. It plays that way
with all the witnesses. Jones claims not to know the fella—said he
was vaguely familiar, though, and figured he might have cleaned the
man out on some river boat somewhere.”

Sam nodded. “I imagine that must
happen a lot in his business. Oh well. I suppose, busy as this town
is getting, we’ll be seeing more and more daylight shootings. But
I’ll let Dab know that if this gambler of his starts making it a
habit, he’ll have to move on. I aim to keep a lid on this pot and
keep it from boiling over.”

“
All right then, Marshal,”
O’Connor announced. “I’ll be gettin’ back to my rounds,
then.”

“
Thanks, Seamus. I’ll most
likely see you around town later this evening.”

O’Connor departed, and Sam climbed to
his feet and walked around his desk, to stand over Rupe. He leaned
down and gave the drunk a few mild smacks on the cheek until his
eyes lolled open.

“
Rise and shine,
Rupe.”

The drunk sputtered. “Marshal—Marshal
Gardner?”

“
In the flesh,” Sam
said.

Rupe looked around. “Is there—is there
a mess needs cleanin’ up?” Rupe earned his drinking money by
swamping the floors at various saloons, cleaning the livery stable,
and sometimes sweeping up around the jail and the marshal’s
office—wherever someone needed a hand. But only one
hand.

Sam shook his head. “Oh, there’s a
mess all right, and you can help me clean it up, but not like you
think.”

“
I—I don’t
understand.”

Sam pulled his own chair around from
behind his desk, so he could sit beside Rupe.

“
Let me ask you something,
Rupe. I’ve been good to you, haven’t I? Wouldn’t you say I’ve
treated you fair?”

Rupe’s eyes seemed to clear after a
moment, and he gained some focus. He nodded slowly.

“
Oh, Lord, yes, Marshal. I
reckon you’ve treated me better than anybody in this town. You were
the first one took me in off the street, and gave me honest
work—without laughing at me, or making sport. And you bein’ a
famous lawman, that—that kinda made it mean even more. You didn’t
have to be nice to me.”

The marshal reflected on Rupe’s words
for a moment. “Well, I don’t know about that last part. The higher
a man goes up, the more he knows how far a man can fall. And
besides that, I know people, Rupe. You have to, in this job. And
I’ve always seen a spark in you. I’m not quite sure what it is, but
it’s there. There’s more to you than meets the eye.”

Rupe’s eyes misted for a moment, then
he said, “Where’s that mess you wanted me to mop up,
Marshal?”