the Sky-Liners (1967) (6 page)

"Just a question, gentlemen," Masterson said. "You came up here, apparently headed for Sackett's room. Did you have some idea of finishing the job Tory tried to do?"

"Aw, it was nothing like that!" Burr Fetchen waved a careless hand. "Only we had some trouble back in Tennessee, and - "

"Then I suggest you go back to Tennessee and settle it," Earp interrupted. "I won't have shooting in Dodge."

"I give you my word, Marshal," I said, "I won't shoot unless I'm shot at."

"That's fair enough, Sackett. All right, you boys go about your business. If there's any more trouble I'll lock you up."

When they had gone, I said, "Judith, I'm sorry I got you into this."

"You were standing here with me!" she insisted. "Why, I must have come out of my door just as those shots died away."

She had been quick enough. The trouble is that a running man can cover a good distance, and folks just never calculate time as well as they think. In any event, she had stopped a nasty shooting in a crowded place where she or others might have been hurt, and for that much I was glad.

"They didn't tell the truth," she said then. "Tory wasn't going out of town. He was going to have dinner with James and me."

"Late for dinner, isn't it?"

"James said he would be busy. He wanted to eat late. He said the restaurant would not be so crowded."

'I'd better go," I said. I backed off a few steps. "If you change your mind, you can always come back and join us. We'll take you on to your pa."

She smiled a little. "Flagan, I shall not change my mind. I love James, and he loves me."

"You keep telling yourself that. Maybe after a while you'll come to believe it," I said.

"Flagan Sackett, I - "

Maybe it isn't right for a gentleman to walk away whilst a lady is talking, but I did. This was an argument where I was going to have the last word, anyway ... when they found no preacher in town.

There was a corner at the head of the stairs where a body couldn't be seen from above or below, and I stopped there long enough to reload my gun.

Galloway was sitting in the lobby holding a newspaper. He looked up at me, a kind of quizzical look in his eyes. "Hear there was a shooting over to the livery," he said.

"Sounded like it," I agreed, and sat down beside him. In a low tone I added, "That Tory laid for me whilst I was putting hay down the chute. He come close to hangin' up my scalp."

"Yeah, and you better start pullin' slivers out of your face. The light's brighter down here than in that hallway upstairs."

Something had been bothering my face for several minutes, but I'd been too keyed up and too busy talking to notice it much. Gingerly, I put my hand up and touched the end of a pine sliver off that post. Two or three of them I pulled out right there, getting them with my fingers, but there were some others.

We walked down the street to the Peacock, just to look around, and Bat was there. He came over to us, glanced at the side of my face and smiled a little. "I hope you had time to change your socks," he said. "A man can catch cold with wet, muddy socks on."

Me, I had to grin. "Nothing gets by you, does it?"

"I saw you go into the barn. I also saw Tory follow you. I saw the track of a sock foot just back of the barn. I kicked straw over it."

"Thanks."

"When I take to a man, I stand by him. I have reason to believe that you're honest. I have reason to believe the Fetchens are not."

But, no matter how good things looked right at that moment, I was worried. Black Fetchen was not one to take Tory's shooting lying down, and no matter what anybody said, he would lay it to me or Galloway. I'd had no idea of killing anybody; only when a man comes laying for you, what can you do? The worst of it was, he'd outguessed me. All the time, he knew about that other door from the loft, and he figured rightly that I'd find it and use it. That he missed me at all was pure accident. I'd been mostly in the dark or he'd have hit me sure, and he'd been shooting to kill.

After a bit Galloway and me went back to the hotel and crawled into bed. But I slept with a Colt at my hand, and I know Galloway did, too.

Tomorrow two things would happen, both of them likely to bring grief and trouble. First would be Tory's funeral, and second would be when they tried to find somebody to marry Judith and Black Fetchen.

Anybody could read a funeral sermon, but it took a Justice of the Peace or an ordained minister to marry somebody.

There was a light rain falling when we went down to the restaurant for breakfast. It was early, and not many folks were about at that hour. The gray faces of the stores were darkened by the rain, and the dust was laid for a few hours at least. A rider in a rain-wet slicker went by on the street, heading for the livery stable. It was a quiet morning in Dodge.

We stopped at the dining-room door, studying the people inside before we entered, and we found a table in a corner where we could watch both doors. Galloway had the rawhide thong slipped back off his six-shooter and so did I, but we were hunting no trouble.

Folks drifted in, mostly men. They were cattlemen, cattle buyers, a scattering of ranch hands, and some of the business folks from the stores. A few of them we already knew by sight, a trick that took only a few hours in Dodge.

There were half a dozen pretty salty characters in that room, too, but Dodge was full of them. As far as that goes, nine-tenths of the adult males in Dodge had fought in the War Between the States or had fought Indians, and quite a few had taken a turn at buffalo hunting. It was no place to come hunting a ruckus unless you were hitched up to go all the way.

We ordered scrambled eggs and ham, something a body didn't find too much west of the Mississippi, where everything was beef and beans. Both of us were wearing store-bought clothes and our guns were almost out of sight There was a rule about packing guns in town unless you were riding out right off, but the law in Dodge was lenient except when the herds were coming up the trail, and this was an off season for that. Evan Hawkes had been almost the only one up the trail right at that time.

Nowhere was there any sign of the Fetchen crowd, nor of Judith.

"You don't suppose they pulled out?" Galloway asked.

" 'Tisn't likely."

Several people glanced over at us, for there were no secrets in Dodge, and by now everybody in town would know who we were and why we were in town; and they would also know the Fetchen crowd.

It was likely that Earp had figured out the shooting by this time, but as had been said, Tory was armed and it was a fair shooting, except that he laid for me like that. He'd tried to ambush me, and he got what was coming to him. Dodge understood things like that.

We ate but our minds were not on our food, hungry as we were, for every moment we were expecting the Fetchens to show up. They did not come, though. The rain eased off, although the clouds remained heavy and it was easy enough to see that the storm was not over. Water dripped from the eaves and from the signboards extending across the boardwalk in some places.

We watched through the windows, and presently a man came in, pausing at the outside door to beat the rain from his hat and to shake it off his raincoat. He came on in, and I heard him, without looking at us, tell Ben Springer, "They had their buryin'. There were nineteen men out there. Looked to be a tough lot."

"Nineteen?" Galloway whispered. "They've found some friends, seems like."

We saw them coming then, a tight riding bunch of men in black slickers and mostly black hats coming down the street through the mud. They drew up across the street and got down from their horses and went to stand under the overhang of the building across the street.

Two turned and drifted down the street to the right, and two more to the left, the rest of them stayed there. It looked as if they were waiting for us.

"Right flatterin', I call it," Galloway said, picking up his coffee cup. "They got themselves an army yonder."

"Be enough to go around," I commented. Then after a minute I said, "I wonder what happened to Judith?"

"You go see. I'll set right here and see if they want to come a-hunting. If they don't, we'll go out to 'em after a bit."

Pushing back my chair, I got up and went into the hotel and up the stairs. When I got to her door, I rapped ... and rapped again.

There was no answer.

I tried rapping again, somewhat louder, and when no answer came I just reached down and opened the door.

The room was empty. The bed was still unmade after she'd slept in it, but she was gone, and her clothes were gone.

When I came back down the stairs I came down moving mighty easy. Nothing like walking wary when a body is facing up to trouble, and I could fairly smell trouble all around.

Nobody was in the lobby, so I walked over to where I could see through the arch into the dining room.

Galloway was sitting right where I'd left him, only there were two Fetchens across the table from him and another at the street door, and all of them had guns.

The tables were nigh to empty. Chalk Beeson was sitting across the room at a table with Bob Wright; and Doc Halliday, up early for him, was alone at another table, drinking his breakfast, but keeping an eye on what was happening around.

Black Fetchen was there, along with Burr and a strange rider I didn't know, a man with a shock of hair the color of dead prairie grass, and a scar on his jaw. His heels were run down, but the way he wore his gun sized him up to be a slick one with a shootin' iron, or one who fancied himself so. A lot of the boys who could really handle guns wore them every which way, not slung down low like some of the would-be fast ones.

"It was your doing," Black was saying, "you and that brother of yours. You got that preacher out of town. Well, it ain't going to do you no good. Judith is ridin' west with us, and we'll find us a preacher."

"I'd not like to see harm come to that girl," Galloway commented calmly. "If harm comes to her I'll see this country runs mighty short on Fetchens."

"You won't have the chance. You ain't going to leave this room. Not alive, you ain't."

About that time I heard a board creak. It was almost behind me, and it was faint, but I heard it. Making no move, I let my eyes slant back. Well, the way the morning sunlight fell through the window showed a faint shadow, and I could just see the toe of a boot - a left boot.

Just as I sighted it, the toe bent just a mite like a man taking a step or swinging a gun to hit a man on the head. So I stepped quickly off to the right and back-handed my left fist, swinging hard.

When he cut down with that six-gun barrel he swung down and left, but too slow. My left fist smashed him right in the solar plexus, right under the third button of his shirt, and the wind went out of him as if he'd been steer-kicked. His gun barrel came down, his blow wasted, and by that time my right was moving. It swung hard, catching him full in his unprotected face, smashing his nose like a man stepping on a gourd.

The blood gushed out of his nose and he staggered back, and I walked in on him.

Now, there's a thing about fighting when the chips are down. You get a man going, you don't let up on him. He's apt to come back and beat your ears down. So I reached out, caught him by one ear and swung another right, scattering a few of his teeth. He turned sidewise, and I drove my fist down on his kidney like a hammer, and he hit the floor.

Now, that all amounted to no more than four or five seconds. A body doesn't waste time between punches, and I wasn't in anything less than a hurry.

Nor was I making much noise. It was all short and sharp and over in an instant, and then I was facing back toward that room.

Galloway was sitting easy. Nobody ever did fluster that boy. He was a soft-talking man, but he was tough, and so rough he wore out his clothes from the inside first. There were Fetchens ready to fire, but Galloway wasn't worried so's a body could see, and I was half a mind to leave it all to him. It would serve them right.

One time when he was short of thirteen we were up in the hills. We'd been hunting squirrels and the like, but really looking for a good razor-back hog, Ma being fresh out of side-meat. Well, Galloway seen a big old boar back under the brush, just a-staring at him out of those mean little eyes, and Galloway up and let blast at him. That bullet glanced off the side of the boar's shoulder and the hog took off into the brush. We trailed him for nigh onto two miles before he dropped, and when we came upon him there was a big old cougar standing over him.

Now, that cougar was hungry and he'd found meat, and he wasn't figuring on giving up to no mountain boy. Galloway, he'd shot that wild boar and we needed the side-meat, and he wasn't about to give it up to that big cat. So there they stood, a-staring one at the other.

Galloway was carrying one load in that old smoothbore he had, and he knew if he didn't get the cat with one shot he would be in more trouble than he'd ever seen. A wounded cougar is something nobody wants any truck with, but if that cougar'd known who he was facing he'd have taken out running over the hills.

Galloway up and let blast with his gun just as that cougar leaped at him. The bullet caught the cat in the chest but he was far-off from dead. He knocked Galloway a-rolling and I scrambled for a club, but Galloway was up as quick as the cougar, and he swung the smooth-bore and caught that cat coming in, with a blow on the side of the head. Then before the stunned cougar could more than get his feet under him, Galloway outs with his Arkansas toothpick and then he and that cat were going around and around.