The Lawmen (8 page)

15

There were about two hours of daylight remaining as Clay made the rounds of Topaz. In the west the sky was a swollen, purplish-black. The rumble of thunder sounded like distant artillery. Clay could have been back at Chancellorsville, or the Wilderness, or any of a dozen other killing grounds. He half expected to look around and see his old company lined up behind him. Here and there the sun broke through the clouds, its slanting rays turning the town’s whitewashed adobe buildings gold.

The dusty streets were quiet. People avoided Clay, as they had all day. Sweat ran down his neck and back in the now muggy heat, turning his shirt into a wet rag. His eyes were moving, watching, afraid.

He stopped at stores and saloons, trying to look routine, so that it would not be obvious when he went to the Ocean View—he didn’t want to get Julie in any more trouble with the Hopkins gang. At Goldman’s Hardware he purchased ammunition for his and Essex’s weapons. The store’s frightened owner put the assorted shells and boxes of paper cartridges into a bag for him.

The Ocean View Saloon was off by itself at the end of Apache Street, in the Triangle, not far from where Essex lived. The sign over the entrance sported a crude painting of a beach at sunrise. Inside, the saloon was dark and shabby, a miners’ hangout by its clientele and the artifacts on the walls. This wasn’t a prime place for a working girl like Julie. Soldiers’ bars were the worst, but this was just a step up. A whore working here might get fifteen dollars a throw, if she was lucky—and after making all her payoffs, she might keep seven. Clay felt sorry for Julie, and he felt anger at the Hopkins brothers for what they had done to her, and that anger made him all the more determined to defy them.

The bartender was a big fellow with tobacco stains in his beard and down the front of his red flannel shirt. “What can I do for you, Marshal?” he asked Clay in a none-too-friendly tone.

“Just checking,” Clay told him. “Everything all right in here?”

The barkeep looked up and down the bar. “’Pears all right to me.”

“Good,” Clay said. “Let me have a bottle of rye—to take with me.”

The barkeep produced the bottle. Clay paid for it, then wandered into the back room, hoping that he was not too obvious about what he was doing, hoping that Julie would be there.

The small back room contained card tables and a pool table. It was darker and smokier here than out front, and at first Clay’s heart sank because he didn’t see Julie in the crowd of noisy miners and the whores who circulated among them. Then he made her out, in the blue dress and the hat with the forlorn feather. She noticed him at the same moment, and he saw her start.

Clay gave the room the once-over. As his gaze swept from left to right, he caught Julie’s eyes and motioned her to meet him outside. She blinked slowly. Clay nodded, as if satisfied by what he’d seen, then went back out through the front door.

He waited for her behind an abandoned shed, out of sight of the customers using the saloon’s privy. The air reeked with the stench of urine and rotting garbage. The ground was littered with tin cans and bottles.

There were footsteps and Julie appeared, glancing over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching. She saw the whiskey in his hand. “That bottle for us?”

“No,” Clay said, “it’s for Vance Hopkins.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “You two made up?”

“Not exactly.”

“So what do you want me to do this time—shoot Wes in the back for you?”

“No, I want you to rent three horses—good ones, with a lot of bottom. Have them saddled and ready, with two days’ grain, in the alley behind the A-l restaurant this evening, just before this storm hits. Can you do that?”

“What are you up to?”

“It’s best you don’t know. Will you do it?”

She sounded resigned. “Do I have a choice?”

Clay reached in his pocket and handed her twenty-seven dollars. “This is all the money I have left. The bill will probably be more.” He cleared his throat. “Is there any chance I could maybe. . .”

“Borrow the rest from me?” she asked. He nodded, and she rolled her eyes. “On top of everything else, I have to finance you? I don’t see why they just didn’t make me the marshal. I’m doing all the work.”

“Will you lend me the money or not?”

“Yes, yes, I’ll lend it to you. Not that I’ll ever get it back.”

Clay looked embarrassed, knowing that what she said was true. “I don’t mean to throw so much of this on you. It’s just that I. . . I . . .”

Suddenly she stood on tiptoe and kissed him, shutting her eyes and wrapping her arms around his shoulders. Her lips were soft and sweet; her tongue probed his mouth. Then she stepped back. “I don’t mind.”

Clay didn’t know how to react. “Don’t forget the horses,” he stammered after a second.

“They’ll be there,” she told him, grinning.

She waved and started back to the saloon. Clay continued on his rounds. It was hard to keep his mind on what he was supposed to be doing. He couldn’t stop thinking about Julie, remembering the taste of her kiss. This part of the town had fallen eerily silent, but he paid the silence little attention; he supposed it was due to the approaching storm.

He reached the end of a block of adobe houses and stepped into the street. Suddenly some sixth sense—the same sense that had saved him so many times during the war—made him pull back. As he did, the air was torn by a shotgun blast from alongside the adobe wall. Moving backward, Clay felt the blast’s heat; he heard the deadly pellets spray past the spot where his head had been a heartbeat before.

Shaken, he dropped his bag of shells and the bottle and prepared to face his unknown assailant. As he did, he heard movement behind him. He turned to see a man appear at the end of the block with a rifle. The man fired. Clay fired his own shotgun at the same time, then sprinted across the narrow street toward a cluster of Mexican
jacales
. Rifle bullets followed him; there must have been a half-dozen men shooting at him.

He went to the ground between two of the ramshackle
jacales
. More shots sounded; bullets splintered wood. Clay drew his pistol and fired, as much to give himself time as anything else. He got up again and ran down the narrow passageway between the
jacales
. An old, solid-wheeled
carreta
blocked his way. He scrambled over its tongue and took cover behind it, firing at the first man who appeared at the head of the alley. The man dodged backward.

Footsteps to his rear told him he was surrounded, trapped. He was going to die in a stinking alley full of dog shit. He was going to die alone, too—not a single person in town was going to help him. A bullet from behind him thunked into the
carreta
, just missing his head. He snapped off another pistol shot in that direction. He got up again and, with the strength of desperation, pulled down some of the mesquite logs forming the wall of a
jacal
, ripping them free of their hemp bindings while bullets spattered around him, and threw himself inside the building. He knew he’d bought himself only a minute’s respite.

The
jacal
was empty. A shadow appeared at the open doorway. Clay whirled, firing the remaining barrel of his shotgun. The figure vanished in powder smoke, seemingly snatched away. All around the ill-fitting walls of the
jacal
he saw movement. Shots were fired through the cracks between the logs; another shotgun blasted. Clay jerked his head away as splinters exploded past his eyes.

Then somebody cried, “Let’s go,” and the shadowy figures began running away. Clay heard rifle shots from nearby.

Clay scrambled out of the
jacal
to find Essex standing in the narrow alley, firing the Henry repeater at the retreating assassins. The men were too far away for Clay’s pistol, but they made a perfect target for the rifle.

Essex fired and missed. He fired again and missed again. Then the repeater jammed, and Essex fiddled uncertainly with the lever. Clay grabbed the rifle from his hands, but by then the gunmen were gone, lost in the warren of buildings that made up the Triangle.

Clay swore. “No sense going after them. They’d just ambush us.” He rounded on Essex. “How the hell did you miss a shot like that? You told me you knew how to shoot.”

“And you was stupid enough to believe it,” Essex retorted. “What do you think—ol’ Massa lined us niggers up and taught us how to use his rifles, case we ever wanted to revolt?”

“Then why’d you say it?”

“If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t have given me the job.”

“Well, you ain’t got the job anymore. You’re fired.”

“You can’t fire me,” Essex said.

“I just did.”

“I won’t leave.”

“What good are you going to be if you can’t shoot?”

“I just saved your dumb ass, didn’t I?”

“Yeah,” Clay admitted, “I guess you did. How’d you get here so quick, anyway?”

“I expected something like this to happen. I didn’t trust no promises Wes Hopkins made.”

A small crowd had gathered. Clay saw Julie among them. She was coming forward, worried. He frowned and shook his head slightly as a sign that she should stop. He didn’t want people making the connection between her and him any more than necessary. She watched another second, then withdrew.

Clay cursed himself for being stupid. That was why this part of town had been so quiet. It was why the
jacal
had been empty. The people here had known—or sensed—that the ambush was coming. He glared at the crowd, and it began to breakup.

Clay and Essex walked around to the front of the
jacal
. The man that Clay had hit with the shotgun lay on his back, his chest a welter of blood and bone and torn clothing. Clay tried not to look at the gaping wound, concentrating instead on the blood-splattered face.

“Know him?” he asked Essex.

Essex nodded. “Name’s Sam Grady. He’s a shoulder hitter.”

“One of Hopkins’s men?”

“Runs with them sometimes. Mostly he’s an independent operator.”

“Pretty smart of Wes. He hires this fellow to kill us, then figures he can deny any involvement.”

With his knife, Clay cleared the jam in the Henry repeater and tossed the weapon back to Essex, then he retrieved his scattered ammunition purchases. Miraculously, the bottle of rye had not broken when it fell.

“You taken up drinking as a hobby?” Essex asked as Clay picked it up.

“No,” Clay said, “it’s a present for someone.” Then he added, “We better get back. The jail’s wide open with both of us gone.”

Clay and Essex left the Triangle and walked down Tucson Street. It was cloudy now, with gusts of wind. The temperature was falling. They passed the hotel where Hopkins’s men were congregated, watching the approaching storm. Wes and Lee were with them. Wes was smoking a cheroot; he smiled as Clay and Essex came up. Lee just stared.

Wes said, “Heard shooting at the end of the Triangle, Marshal. You have some trouble?”

“You know damn well I did,” Clay replied. “You broke your word to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t play stupid, Wes, it doesn’t become you. Don’t deny that you know Sam Grady. Don’t deny you hired him to kill me. It was only a miracle he didn’t succeed.”

Wes gestured with the cheroot. “Sure, I know Grady, but I swear to you, I didn’t hire him to kill you. Nor did anyone who works for me.”

He seemed to be telling the truth. Clay said, “If it wasn’t you, who was it?”

Wes was all innocence. “It must have been a group of concerned citizens.”

Lee Hopkins and some of Wes’s men laughed. Wes went on, “Face it, Chandler—you’re licked. Quit being stubborn and let Vance go.”

“Not a chance, Wes.”

Wes shrugged. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow morning, at nine twenty-seven.”

Clay and Essex kept walking. Essex said, “Looks like we got the whole town against us now.”

“You’re welcome to back out, if you want,” Clay told him.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Essex said.

“Yes, I would.”

“Well, it ain’t gonna happen. We’re in this together— partner.”

16

It was dusk when Clay and Essex returned to the marshal’s office. The wind had picked up, blowing paper and empty cans along the street. To the west, the storm clouds towered high above the town, like some malevolent, amorphous beast.

Inside, Clay laid the freshly purchased ammunition on his desk. Then he went to the cells, where he handed the bottle of rye to Vance. “What’s this?” the young outlaw asked.

“A present,” Clay told him. Essex looked on, puzzled.

Vance was suspicious. “It ain’t poisoned or nothin’, is it?”

“It better not be. It cost me two dollars and twenty-five cents.”

Vance uncorked the bottle and drank—first a sip, then a long pull. “Ah, that’s good,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He drank again and sighed with relief, like a terminally ill man who at the last moment receives life-saving medicine. He held the bottle toward Clay. “Care for a snort, Marshal?”

“No, thanks,” Clay replied. “I ain’t much of a drinker.”

Vance didn’t offer the bottle to Essex.

Clay moved to the broken front window to view the approaching storm. Sheet lightning flickered across the turbid black sky. Thunder rumbled more loudly. People were taking cover, but Wes Hopkins’s men held their ground, watching the jail.

In his cell Vance was happily slugging down the rye. “How ’bout a game of cards?” he called to Clay.

“Sorry. I don’t gamble much, either.”

“Damn,” said Vance. “Regular bluenose, ain’t you?” He took another drink and began singing to himself. “Father, dear Father, come home with me now . . .” He laughed and tilted the bottle again.

In the front room, Clay took what food was left from the whores’ visit and began stuffing it into one of the picnic hampers.

“What are you up to?” Essex asked him.

“I‘m cleaning up, that’s all.”

When he was finished with the food, Clay checked the prisoner. The level in the whiskey bottle was well down. “Why’d you change your mind about the liquor?” Vance asked.

“Maybe I feel guilty for not letting you have that bottle the girls brought you. Maybe I’m just a nice fellow.”

“You’re a lot nicer’n Wes, that’s for sure. He’s pissed as hell at me, you know, for gettin’ in trouble like I done.” There was a loud clap of thunder overhead. Vance looked up, then drank again. “Wes is jealous of me—that’s a fact. ’Cause I’m better lookin’ than him, and I do better with the ladies.” He winked. “I used to be friendly with that little lady of yours, until Lee opened up her face.”

Essex expected Clay to get angry, but the marshal showed no reaction to Vance’s statement. Instead, he said amiably, “Wes might be jealous, but he’s sure ready to come to your side when you’re in trouble.”

“We’re all like that,” Vance explained. “I’d do the same for Wes or Lee, was it them.” He chuckled. “I ‘member when I’se a kid. I’d start fights, and Wes and Lee would come along and join in if I was doin’ bad. That’s the way our ma raised us up, you know—after Pa run out on us. ‘Don’t take no shit off nobody’—that’s what Ma always told us. And we never did. Still don’t.”

He took another drink. “After Ma died, Wes took to running things. He’s good at that. Hell, he runs this town—he must be.”

“Don’t you want to get from under Wes’s shadow?” Clay asked him. “Get out on your own?”

Vance shrugged. “Why? I got everything I need, and this way I don’t have to do none of the thinkin’—Wes takes care of all that.”

There was a loud crack of lightning, followed almost simultaneously by a boom of thunder, and all three men started. Vance laughed nervously. “That one was close. Glad we’re in here.”

“I hate bein’ out in this shit,” Essex said, as much to himself as anyone else. “When I was on a cattle drive to Abilene, we was caught on the prairie in storms like this a couple of times, with nowheres to hide, nothing to do but let it roll over you and pray you ain’t the one that’s hit. Lord, I ain’t never been so scared. You get to feelin’ pretty powerless when that happens. You get to rememberin’ your prayers real good.”

Vance pushed back his hair and took another drink. Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe the talk about prayer, but he grew suddenly morose. “I’ll be glad to be out’n here tomorrow. I’m afraid of hangin’, you know, Marshal—always have been. I killed my first man when I was sixteen—I did it just to beat Wes’s record. Wasn’t nobody goin’ to beat Lee’s record, of course. Lee makes Jesse James look like the Angel of Mercy.”

“How many men have you killed?” Clay asked.

“Ain’t sure, really. Fifteen, maybe—no, it’s got to be more than that.” His good humor returned. “You count Mexicans and niggers?”

“
I
count ‘em,” Essex said.

“Well, I killed my share of niggers. Yes, indeedy. Back in Texas. My civic duty, as I saw it.”

Essex grabbed for him through the cell bars. “You ain’t gonna last till your hanging, ’cause I’m gonna—”

There was a terrific bang of lightning and thunder at the same time.

“Jesus!” Vance said in awed tones.

Outside it grew very dark. There was a strong gust of wind. Something blew against the jail wall with a thump. Dust and trash came in the broken window, followed by the sudden heavy pounding of raindrops on the roof and against the adobe walls.

Essex still wanted to go into the cell and get Vance, but his attention was diverted by Clay, who was in the front room again, stuffing his pockets and the inside of his shirt with the ammunition he’d purchased earlier. Curious, Essex came up behind him.

“Fill your pockets,” Clay told him. “Take as much as you can carry.”

“Carry where?” Essex asked.

“Just do as you’re told for once, without a lot of questions.”

“Yassa, Massa,” Essex said in a broad voice, picking up a box of rifle shells. “I’se comin’, Massa. That better?”

“Much better,” Clay said. He lit the kerosene lamp and stuck it in a protected comer where it wouldn’t blow out. He wanted it to look like there was somebody in the office.

Vance sipped more whiskey and nodded off, humming to himself. Outside, rain lashed the street in sheets, turning the thick dust into a sea of mud. Rain ran from the roofs in waterfalls. The office roof was already leaking. Clay looked out the window, squinting against the rain that was being blown almost horizontally through the broken glass, forming a puddle on the floor. Across the street, Wes’s men were gone, fled for cover. Everyone was off the streets, save for the screaming, frightened animals at the hitch rails. Clay hurried down the aisle between the cells and looked out the back door. The men who had been covering that exit were gone, too.

Clay came back to the front, grabbing his shotgun. “Get your rifle,” he told Essex.

Still puzzled, Essex got the rifle while Clay took three blankets from the jail cots. He gave the blankets to Essex. “Here. Take that picnic hamper, too.” Then he went into the cell and raised Vance to his feet. “Come on, sunshine. We’re going for a ride.”

“What!” Essex exclaimed behind them. “What do you mean, ‘ride’?”

But Clay was already leading the stupefied Vance toward the back door. Essex followed, protesting. “Don’t tell me what I think you’re going to tell me.”

Clay opened the back door as another huge crash of lightning and thunder reverberated around him. Behind him Essex said, “Uh-uh. Ain’t no way I’m going out in no goddamn lightning storm. I had enough of that shit. ”

“It’s all right,” Clay told him. “You won’t melt.”

“You ever seen a man fried by lightnin’? I have. I don’t want it to be me.”

Clay pushed Vance from the shelter of the back door. They were immediately drenched by the driving rain. Behind them Essex hesitated, then reluctantly followed, carrying the blankets and picnic hamper. “Somebody gets hit, I hope to hell it’s you,” he shouted to Clay.

“With my luck, it probably will be,” Clay said.

The men hurried down the alley, soaked to the skin. In the darkness behind the A-l restaurant they made out three horses tethered to a wagon. Then a figure moved from behind the wagon. It was Julie Bennett—her blue dress a sodden wreck, the peacock feather in her pillbox hat wet and bedraggled.

Clay grinned at the sight of her. “Thanks.”

“This better be worth it,” Julie said above the noise of the storm. “Look at my clothes. They’re ruin—”

Clay grabbed her and kissed her, holding her close, feeling the curves of her body through the wet dress. For a moment he wanted to just stay there, to hold her and not go anywhere ever again. Then he let her go. “There, we’re even,” he said. He handed her his shotgun and motioned toward Vance. “Cover him.”

Taken aback by the kiss, Julie held the shotgun on the tottering Vance, who was still drinking. His long wet hair was plastered over his eyes by the rain. He brushed it away, trying to figure out what was going on.

Clay tied the blankets across the eyes of the three terrified horses, to calm them. Then he took the bottle from Vance’s hand and threw it away. He pushed Vance toward one of the horses. “Get on.”

“Where are we—”

“Get on, or I’ll bend that scattergun over your skull.”

Unsteadily, Vance climbed onto the horse. Clay took a rope from the saddle loop. He shook out the rope, took a turn around the prisoner’s wrists, then around his waist, and tied the end to the saddle horn. To Julie he said, “Go home and get dry. Forget you ever saw us. ”

She kissed him and said, “I’ll never forget that. Good luck, Clay Chandler.”

Clay touched her wet cheek, then turned to Essex. “Come on.”

He and Essex led the horses up the alley behind Tucson Street. Clay held the reins of Vance’s horse. Essex put the wicker hamper full of food on his saddle. “Where are we going?” Essex shouted to Clay.

“Tucson,” Clay shouted back.

The driving rain lashed the sides of their faces with such intensity that it hurt. Men and horses slipped and slid in the dark, muddy alley. More lightning cracked, illuminating the night sky. The lightning was so close that Clay felt his eyebrows singe. Its magnetic intensity seemed to drain the strength from his legs even as the roaring thunder threatened to hammer him into the earth. The blindfolded horses balked; Clay and Essex tagged their reins.

“Look,” Essex said, pointing. Off to their right was a reddish glow. “Lightning must have hit one of them buildings over there.”

“That’s good for us,” Clay said. “Means people will be putting out the fire. They’ll be less likely to spot us.”

At the end of the alley, they turned onto the deserted street. The fire’s reddish glow grew, illuminating the sheets of rain that poured from the black sky. Lightning flashed; there was more thunder. As they neared the river, a lightning bolt struck in front of them, snapping the top from a cottonwood tree.

On the horse, terror and rain were sobering Vance up. “Get me out of here. Did you hear me? Take me back. God damn you, Wes is going to cut off your balls for this.”

Clay and Essex ignored him.

They were on the bridge now. The storm was so loud that it drowned the clatter of the horses’ hoofs on the wooden planking. Another flash of lightning showed the river surging just beneath the bridge in whitecapped waves, threatening to carry the structure away.

“Holy shit!” Essex cried.

Beneath them the bridge swayed and wobbled. There was a loud crack of wood. “It’s getting ready to go!” Essex yelled as they pulled the horses along faster.

“I suppose you can’t swim, either,” Clay said.

“How’d you guess?”

“Stop taking!” Vance shouted. “Get us out of here!”

They reached the mud on the bridge’s far side. There were more cracking noises behind them, then the bridge disappeared with a roar. Its heavy timbers vanished and were swept downstream.

Essex bent over with relief. “I’m rememberin’ more of them prayers all the time.”

“That’ll keep Wes off our backs for a while,” Clay said. Vance cried, “You two aren’t lawmen—you’re fools! You could have gotten us killed!”

“We all have to go sometime,” Clay told him. To Essex he said, “Come on.”

Then they were through the belt of woodland and onto the scrub-covered desert. Behind them the fire’s glow showed them where the town was. They walked through the rain and thunder and lightning—Essex with his eyes half closed and praying, Clay just as scared but determined to go through with this, Vance cursing a blue streak.

At last the lightning and thunder drifted to the east. The wind dropped. The torrential downpour moderated to a steady rain. Clay and Essex removed the sodden blankets from the horses’ eyes and threw them away. The two lawmen mounted and, still leading Vance’s horse, rode into the night.