Relentless (3 page)

    “I rode in with my own horse.”

    “Tough shit. Train or stage. I’ll have deputies at each depot to make sure you get on board.”

    “What if I don’t?”

    “Then you go to jail.”

    “For what?”

    I smiled. “I’m not sure yet. But I’ve got a pretty good mind when it comes to thinking up ways to keep youngsters like you in jail.”

    He did it. I expected it. He did it and I did it, and I beat him to it even faster than I had before.

    “And in every town you go to, kid, there’ll be ten men even faster than I am. And they won’t be gunnies, they’ll just be average citizens all settled down and married. They do their fast draws at family reunions and picnics to show off to the grandkids. They wouldn’t get into a gunfight any more than you’d try to jump off a mountain and fly. That fast-draw stuff is strictly for yellowbacks, kid. And you’d better learn that before it’s too late.”

    He threw a lot of dirty words at the door I was pulling closed behind me. I hoped he’d take the train or the stage. I didn’t like him. I didn’t want him in my jail.

    Perry Dolan looked up as I walked over to his front desk. “You take care of him, Marshal?”

    “Shot him four times in his sleep. In the back.”

    “You ever gonna let me forget that?”

    I laughed. “Not anytime soon.”

    “Hey,” he said, “what’s this?”

    He hefted a large envelope on the palm of his hand, then held it up for me to see. It had my name on it. No stamp, no other markings.

    “Where’d this come from?” I said.

    “I don’t know. I had to step down the hall a minute. I guess somebody must’ve put it here when I was gone. Anyway, here you go.”

    

    

    I took the envelope with me. I headed for the livery. I was looking forward to giving Lucy Daly the good news.

    About a block from the livery I opened the envelope and peeked inside. I didn’t have any time to give it a proper count, but a rough guess put the value of all those greenbacks inside at somewhere around $10,000.

    There was a simple card with a typewritten note on it.

    FROM A FRIEND

    

    

    THE ENVELOPE RODE in my saddlebags all the way out to Lucy Daly’s and back. Even when Lucy was hugging me and making me eat one of her locally famous muffins, all I could think about was what that envelope meant. She got a little teary at the end, Lucy did, so thankful that I’d been able to strike a deal with the tax assessor, who’d come up with some alternative way to assess her. She looked worn and sweet and lonely standing there on the porch of her faded little ranch house. She made me wonder about my own folks back in Nebraska. I really did need to see them soon. I wasn’t getting any younger and they sure as hell weren’t either.

    My first hour back in town was taken up with a squabble between Larry Carstairs, who runs one of the two general stores, and his competitor Max Barlow, who runs the other one. They’d gotten into a fistfight right in the middle of the street over something that one of them allegedly said about the other. The person who’d started the fight was one Kenneth T. Blaine, a haberdasher who loved to start trouble.

    When he couldn’t do it by passing along legitimate gossip, he just made it up.

    Now, a fistfight isn’t usually a big problem for a peace officer. No guns, no knives, just fists. You angle yourself in between the fighters and give each of them a shove in the opposite direction.

    But there’s something you have to know about Carstairs and Barlow. Larry’s sixty-eight, and Max is seventy-one. Larry has a heart condition, and Barlow has asthma so bad you can hear him coming a block away.

    There is always an element of folks who’ll turn out for any kind of fight-dogs, cats, kids, doesn’t matter as long as there’s combat of some sort.

    But this was ridiculous, two old coots swinging wild like this, either one of them perfectly capable of dropping dead on the spot.

    I didn’t give either of them a shove. I was afraid to. What I did was get my arms around each of their necks and start moving them toward the shade of our town park. We’ve got some nice elms standing over park benches there.

    I didn’t pay any attention to what they were saying. I just told somebody to run and get their wives.

    With that suggestion, both men quit their angry babbling.

    “What you want to go and do that for?” Larry said.

    “We can settle this our ownselves,” Max said.

    “Yeah, you were doing a fine job of it,” I said. “The temperature’s somewhere in the high eighties, you both have serious medical conditions, and between you you’re going on two hundred years old. Yeah, you were doing a damn fine job of it, all right.”

    “She’s gonna kick my ass clear into the next county, Sheriff,” Larry said, sounding like a scared little kid.

    “Good,” I said. “Maybe next time, you’ll keep that in mind.”

    “She won’t bake me a pie for two weeks,” Max said. “That’s how she always punishes me.”

    “I just wish that damned Kenny Blaine hadn’t told me what you said about me,” Larry said.

    “That’s what I was tryin’ to tell you,” Larry said. “I didn’t say it. And if I wanted to say it, I sure as hell wouldn’t say it to Kenny Blaine, who’d go right straight to you and tell you I said it.”

    I left it to their wives to sort through it all.

    

    

    I was just finishing up my mail when he came in. The sudden silence was what made me look up. Tom had been talking to another deputy about an upcoming court trial when the door opened. And then they stopped talking.

    I looked up to see what could possibly cause them to just quit speaking. And there in the doorway stood my answer.

    You think of important men as exuding their importance. Something lionlike in their look or manner or gait. You don’t think of them as small, slight men with small, slight voices and nervous little mannerisms. It was said that Paul could fill your ashtray with his fingernails. He was always anxiously chewing on them and spitting them out. This wasn’t to say that he wasn’t capable of violence. But he ordered it, he didn’t participate in it.

    He said, “I wondered if we might speak somewhere alone, Marshal.”

    Tom said, "Time for our break anyway, Lane. Why don’t we head down the street.” Tom always knew how to handle things.

    “Sure.”

    They left.

    “I’m sorry to interrupt your day this way, Marshal.”

    “Why don’t you sit down, Paul?”

    He sat down. He wore a cheap suit, had a cheap haircut, and smoked a cheap little corncob pipe. He couldn’t have weighed more than one-thirty or topped five-five. How he’d produced his strapping, belligerent son had long been a subject of comic speculation.

    He bit a nail and said, “Did you get my package?”

    “Yes, I did, Paul.”

    “That’s a serious offer.”

    “I know that.”

    “I’m just trying to spare you and the town some trouble.”

    “I know that, too, Paul.”

    “This has changed him, Marshal.”

    “I see.”

    “I know that sounds like something any father would say, but it really has changed him. Made Trent see the kind of young man he’s turning into. Throwing his weight around and bullying people and everything.” He hesitated. Bit on a nail. “It’s kind of funny.”

    “Oh?”

    “My father was a big, burly man just like Trent is. He was always sorry that I didn’t turn out more like him. I suppose he figured it took a big man to oversee everything he’d built up for himself-two short-line railroads, a big cattle spread, three different factories right here in town, half-dozen banks-he didn’t think I could ever handle it all. I just wish he could’ve lived to see me triple everything he did. These days a man needs brains, not brawn.”

    I agree.

    Another gnaw on his nail. He spat the residue precisely into my empty ashtray. “He’s a throwback, Trent is. I’m working on him, Marshal. I really am. I want him to make something of himself before it’s too late.”

    I hated to say it, but I had to. I believed Paul’s contrition and humility. But he had to look at the facts. “He tried to kill me, Paul. I’m the law here. There are half-dozen witnesses to what he did.”

    He cleared his throat. “They’re not going to testify.” There was always a point in any conversation with Paul when you had to take a closer look at him. And when you did take a second look, you saw the big strapping soul of his reflected in his eyes. He might not have his daddy’s body, but he sure did have his daddy’s heart and spirit. He would do anything to have his way.

    “I see,” I said.

    “They’re good citizens, Marshal, that’s all. They don’t think a trial would be good for the town. People would take sides, argue. They love this town as much as I do.” He paused. “And as much as you do, Marshal. Because I know you love this town.”

    We were now officially in bullshit land. He’d come in here sincerely enough, a father doing his desperate best to save his son from a prison stint. But now he was all calculation and oil, trying to smooth me into agreeing with him. There was an implicit threat in all this, of course. In a very real sense, he ran this town.

    “I’m hoping you’ll keep that envelope, Marshal.”

    “Can’t.”

    “Why not?”

    “First, because it’s a bribe. And if I accepted it, then I’d be just as guilty as you are right now. Second, because I still plan to testify tomorrow. Third, because I meant what I said. Even if I did want to back down, I couldn’t. People saw him try to kill me. I admit he was drunk. And I admit he probably does regret doing it, if only because he knows he’s in trouble now. But how the hell can I claim to be an impartial lawman if I let him get away with it? I’m in just as much a fix here as you and your boy are, Paul.”

    “You’re not the one who’ll have to go to prison.”

    I sighed. “Look, Paul, the county attorney wants to go ahead with this. He feels the same way I do. We don’t have any choice. But I talked to him yesterday and he’s agreed to recommend to the judge that we go easy on this. What it’ll come down to is he drops the charges to drunk-and-disorderly, resisting arrest, and carrying a firearm in the city. He’ll give
him
six months in county jail and a three-year probation. Now, Trent can sure as hell live with that.”

    “Do you know what my father would do if he knew his grandson was being sent to jail, even for six months?”

    “Your father’s dead, Paul.”

    “But his name isn’t. His heritage isn’t. We built this region, Marshal. It was my father’s capital that got everything going out here.”

    This was the only part of the conversation that surprised me. I’d expected him to plead like a father, I’d expected him to threaten like a Webley, but I hadn’t expected him to invoke some mythical, mystical “heritage” that sounded vaguely like the legend of King Arthur. Maybe there was a magical sword somewhere in the Webley family.

    Then: “Every town marshal before you cooperated with me, Lane. And I took care of them. They all retired with nice little bank accounts because of me. And if you won’t cooperate with me, maybe the man who replaces you will.”

    I just shook my head. It wasn’t a threat worth responding to. “I thought you’d be happy to hear what the county attorney came up with, Paul.”

    He stood up. I adjusted my evaluation of his height downward. Five-four. A kid with graying hair and wattles.

    He slid it out from inside his jacket. It was a day for envelopes bearing all sorts of ominous news. A mysterious friend from my wife’s past. A pack containing ten thousand dollars. And now what would this be?

    We traded envelopes.

    He picked up the ten thousand I pushed back at him, and while he was doing that, I checked out the envelope he pushed at me.

    It wasn’t addressed to anybody, but it had a familiar business name on the upper left-hand comer.

    ROYALTON HOTEL Chicago, Illinois

    “There’re some interesting things in there, Marshal. One day I got to worrying about you and your wife. Just curious. You know how people get. So I hired the Pinkertons to check you two out. You checked out pretty well, Marshal. A lot of people have a lot of respect for you.” He hesitated, enjoying himself. “But your wife-and I’m sure she’s a fine woman-well, why don’t you read some of the things in there and see if you still want to testify tomorrow. I’m staying in town tonight at the hotel. I’ll be glad to talk any time you want to.”

    And with that, he was gone.

    I went to the window and watched him board his fancy buggy. His wife Laura waited there with fragile serenity. She was a treasure he’d brought back from the East. It was rumored that she was subject to serious mental lapses and had been in and out of asylums for much of her life. There were also rumors that she’d grown restless in Skylar. But there are always rumors about rich women, especially if they’re as elegantly icy as Laura Webley.

    

    

    I PUT THE letter in the drawer and left it there the rest of the afternoon. I was afraid if I read it I wouldn’t get any work done.

    A federal marshal had a train layover, so he stopped in to kill some time. We’d known each other slightly over the years but hadn’t ever become friends, and that was obvious in the strained nature of our conversation.

    After he left, a man from the livery came up and said he’d just had a horse come in bearing the brand that I’d alerted him to. A dozen of the horses had been rustled, nice roans that would bring a good price. He said the man who’d brought it in was now over at one of our more popular saloons.