24
The town of Fury buried Sampson Davis the next day.
The only Jew serving as a pall bearer, Solomon, was aided by Jason, Salmon Kendall, Wash Keogh, Rafe Lynch, Marshal Todd and, of all people, the Reverend Milcher. Solomon had resisted Milcher’s inclusion long and hard, but when no one else came forward, he had to give in. Neither the Reverend Bean nor Father Micah was anywhere in sight.
They carried his body in a casket made with no metal fittings, just pegs and wedges to hold it together, and before the casket left the jail, both Rachael and Judith performed the ritual keriah, or symbolic rending of their clothes. This entailed each of them making a small tear—made where Judith said she could fix it, of course—in her clothing, in lieu of Sampsom having no family present.
When the procession made its way up the street—stopping seven times for reasons Jason didn’t completely understand—and into the cemetery, the “mourners” recited the 23rd Psalm, Solomon recited the memorial prayer El Maleh Rakhamin, the Mourner’s Kaddish, and since they had no rabbi present, the eulogy. It was short but memorable, and during the first part of it Solomon was so nervous that he shook and stuttered a bit. But all in all, it went pretty smoothly, Jason thought, right through the part where they all had to shovel three scoops of earth onto the echoing coffin, say, “May he come to his place in peace,” and then stick the shovel back in the pile of earth where he’d found it. This was to avoid the passing on of death, Solomon told them, as if it were catching.
They all had to wait until the grave was completely filled in, then the pall bearers were told to wash their hands before they left—Jason and Abe used the horse trough—and that was it. So far as Jason was concerned, anyhow.
While nearly the entire saloon had emptied to go and catch a peek at Davis’s funeral, Ezra Welk sat nearly alone in the saloon, deciding if right now would be the best time to go and shoot that goofy excuse for a dog that seemed to be hanging around town. He finally decided against it.
But he was bored silly. This town was getting entirely too calm for him. He was pissed that he’d missed the whole Indian thing, pissed that he didn’t get to see Davis hang, or at least watch them haul the marshal’s body into town over his horse. Either marshal would have done. What was the danged West coming to, anyhow?
He thought again about the dog, and thought something that ugly surely didn’t deserve to live. He’d decided not to shoot it, but now he reconsidered. After all, who the hell’d miss it?
He downed the rest of his beer, stood up, and started for the batwing doors.
Bill Crachit, having been left by Solomon to guard the mercantile against Hannibal, sat slouched in a chair beneath the overhang. There were no customers during the funeral, and he’d spent a peaceful half hour sitting out front, watching Hannibal drowse (and chase imaginary rabbits in his sleep) on the sidewalk outside the marshal’s office.
But as he watched, he noticed a man come out of the saloon. He’d figured about everybody else was at the funeral, but he’d been wrong. He hadn’t seen this fellow before, either.
The fellow started to walk across the street, toward the marshal’s office, and as he walked, he pulled his gun.
Bill stood up, all the hairs on his neck standing on end.
The man stopped in the middle of the road and raised his pistol, pointing it at Hannibal.
“Stop! Don’t!” Bill leapt off the porch and took two long strides before he heard the shot.
At first he thought Hannibal was dead, and then he realized that the gunshot had come from behind him. The man down the street had fallen, while the dog was just gaining his feet, yawning and stretching.
From behind him, a voice asked, “You okay, Bill?”
Tears pooling in his eyes, he whirled about and recognized the speaker, who was just shoving his Colt back in its holster.
Thickly, he replied, “Yessir, Marshal Fury. I mean, Jason.” Then he got some of the stiff back in his spine. He shot an accusing finger toward the body lying down the street. “Did you see? He was gonna shoot Hannibal!”
Jason nodded. There was another man with him. The deputy U.S. marshal, Bill thought, and he was wearing a brand new hat, a heavy-duty Stetson. Mr. Cohen had sold it to him the first thing this morning.
Jason said, “I don’t believe he’s gonna try that again, for a while, anyway.”
“Mebbe not never,” said the U.S. Marshal, and started ahead, on down the street.
Bill heard Jason mutter, “Christ, no . . .” before he took off, running down the street after the older marshal.
Jason skidded to a halt next to Abe, just as he stopped beside the downed man. “Is he . . . is he still alive?” he asked hopefully, his voice shaking almost as hard as his knees. He’d shot men before, but never just for threatening a dog! What had he been thinking?
Abe didn’t answer him, at least, not yet. He had bent to the body, checked for a pulse, and was going through the pockets. He found a worn wallet, stood up, and started going through it.
After what seemed like hours (during which Jason imagined himself going through a trial, then being marched out to a scaffold and hanged, then being read over by the Reverend Milcher in a much less kindly tone than he’d used for Ward), Abe looked up and said, “Thought so.”
“What does that mean?”
“Thought he looked familiar. He was Ezra Welk, wanted for a string’a killin’s and robberies over the last ten, fifteen years or so.” He looked over toward Jason. “Wanted in the Arizona Territory, too. Reckon there’s a bunch’a folks who’ll be tickled pink to close the books on him.”
Jason felt his insides slowly begin to settle themselves again.
“C’mon, hero,” Abe said, thumping Jason’s arm. “Help me drag this dog turd over to the side’a the road.”
They went back to the office when it was over, and Abe pulled out a chair, lit himself a smoke, and said, “Well, I’d best be makin’ my way back up to Prescott.”
“What?” asked Jason. It was the last thing he had expected.
“Gotta file my report. Gotta turn in ol’ Ezra.” He tipped his head toward the door. “Gotta talk to my boss ’bout gettin’ hitched.” He grinned self-consciously. “Gotta arrange a change in duty, too.”
“Electa know about this?”
“Oh, yeah. We talked it all over yesterday. Sure gonna be nice to have her to come home to.”
Abe was fast fading into a waking dreamland, and Jason tried to engage him in conversation. “So, when’re you two tyin’ the knot?”
“What? Oh, next Saturday. I already talked to the reverend.”
“Milcher or Bean?”
“Milcher,” Abe said with a shrug. “He’s the only one what’s got a church. Electa says he used to be pretty pushy, but somethin’ must’a happened, cause he’s got a lot softer lately.”
Well, that was true. But Jason kept on talking. “You find a place to live yet?”
Abe blew out a long plume of smoke before he said, “Well, Electa said that her folks’d be tickled pink to have us move in with them for the time bein’, but I told her that I think I really oughta stick around town. You know, keep in touch.”
Jason nodded. He wholeheartedly agreed.
“So, I reckon we’ll stay at the roomin’ house. I’ve already got a room over there. And Mrs. Kendall says she can give the two of us a bigger one, iffen we want.” He stopped and smiled. “I reckon we’ll take her up on that. Till I can get us a house, that is. Why don’t this town have a telegraph?”
The question caught Jason a little off guard, but he said, “’Cause nobody’s strung the wires, I guess. Don’t know that we’ve got anybody here who knows how to use the damn thing, even if we had one.”
Abe snorted. “Oh, I reckon somebody knows. Just gotta get some wires strung up, that’s all. I’ll check on it while I’m in Prescott.” He stubbed out his smoke and stood up, stretching slightly. “Oh. And I’ll tell ’em about Lynch—don’t you need a new deputy? Been thinkin’ he’d do better’n most—and Teddy Gunderson and Davis and such. That crazy MacDonald character and how he blocked off the Apache water supply, too. Head marshal’ll get a kick outta that one,” he said with a grin and a shake of his head. “Well, I’ll see you in three, four days, Jason. Hold the fort.”
“You’re leaving now?”
“Good a time as any,” Abe replied, already halfway out the door. Jason figured he must be in such a big toot on account of Electa and getting married and all. It was none of his nevermind, but he suddenly realized that in a very short span of time, he’d come to depend on Abe more than he’d wanted.
Well, stiff upper lip and all that, he supposed. He stood up and said, “You have a safe trip, now,” and watched the big man exit his office and head up the street, toward the livery. Then he went back to his desk and sat down with an audible thud—and a heavy sigh.
Hannibal, who was now ensconced in the first cell, echoed his sigh, then lay down on the cot.
Jason flicked a finger toward the cot. “Get down, Hannibal.”
No response.
“Off, Hannibal.”
Nothing.
“What the hell. Stay up there and shed.”
The dog immediately hopped down and stretched out on the floor, leaving Jason to shake his head.
The door opened and Rafe walked in. “That was sure somethin’, wasn’t it?” he asked, grabbing a chair and swinging it around backwards before he plopped down. “And who’s the dead guy on your sidewalk?” He reached for his fixings pouch.
“What was something?” Jason asked before the gears of his brain managed to engage. “Ezra Welk? Oh. You mean the funeral! Yeah, it sure was. I found Davis’s address in his pocket, so I gave it to Solomon. He’s gonna write to the family, let ’em know everything’s handled.”
“Good,” said Rafe, then held forward his tobacco pouch. “Smoke?”
“Thanks.” Jason patted his pocket. “Got my own.”
Well, he’d been thinking it, and now Abe had said it. He supposed he should just do it and get it over with. He cleared his throat, then said, “Rafe, how’d you like a job?”
Rafe puffed on his smoke for a moment, then said, “Ain’t like I need the money, but what you got in mind?”
“I’m needing a deputy, now that Ward’s . . . now that he’s gone. What’d you think?”
“Ain’t comin’ in in the mornings.”
“I want you for night deputy.”
Rafe stared at the cigarette twisting in his fingers, then looked up. “Sure. ’Bout time I spent some time on the right side of the law, don’t’cha think?”
Jason nodded. “I do, indeed.” He still had his doubts, but he figured he was pretty well stuck with it. And he was stubborn. Once committed, he’d hold his ground until hell froze over.
Rafe was shaking his head and grinning. “Boy, this is a heck of a turnaround, ain’t it?” He turned toward Jason. “You realize I can’t go to California, right? At least, not in an official what-ya-call.”
“Capacity.”
“Yeah, that.”
“I realize it.”
“Well then, yeah. I’d admire to, and thanks for askin’!”
Jason began to roll himself a smoke. “No problem,” he lied, then paused and leaned forward. “I’m trustin’ you, Rafe. Don’t let me down.”
Rafe just grinned at him.
Father Micah was back making his adobe bricks, and had been since breakfast. He had help from inside the walls, as yesterday, and today they were not only making new bricks, but transporting the dried and finished ones inside, as well. Father Micah had already staked out where he wanted the walls and doors to go, so the Morelli and Donovan kids knew where to pile the bricks once they were hauled inside.
In all, the Father had most of five families doing duty this morning, packing brick molds with the mud mixture, turning them out to bake in the Arizona sun, or loading cured bricks onto handcarts for the children to take inside the walls.
He pretty much had a handle on it, he thought to himself, always visualizing what the building would look like when it was finished, and praising God for this opportunity to serve.
And he wasn’t alone in working. There was an entire crew at work in town, erecting the water tower, and Salmon Kendall was their foreman. Or he would be, once he got the type set for his headline story. He’d said he figured that young Sammy could crank the presses as well as anybody else, and he was needed across the street.
The men working on the water tower made so much noise, in fact, that they finally drove Jason from his office and over to the saloon.
“Beer,” he said to Sam, the barkeep, once he arrived. He turned toward the doors and made a face. He could still hear them clear over here, hammering and yammering, but at least it wasn’t so cotton-picking . . . immediate!
Sam slid the beer in front of him, and he gratefully took a long gulp. “How do you stand the noise?”
Sam shrugged. “A body can get used to ’bout anythin’, I reckon. And well,” he added, grinning and tugging a plug of cotton from one ear, “these help.”
Jason cocked his head. “How’d you hear me when I ordered, then?”
“Read your lips,” Sam replied. “You’d be surprised what a feller learns, tendin’ bar.”
Jason tipped his hat, then carried his beer to a table in the front corner of the place. Business was slow, it still being the forenoon, but he noticed a few other fellows coming through the doors and holding their ears, including two that had been working on the job site.
Jason waved one of them over to his table. It was Steve Jeffries, one of the newcomers from the wagon train several months back.
“Mornin’,” Jason said.
“Mornin’ yourself,” Steve echoed. “We makin’ enough noise for you?”
“More than enough. Say, when you fellers plan to finish up, anyhow?”
“Today? Mr. Kendall says we’re workin’ till dark.”
Jason waved his hands. “No, no. I mean the whole job.”
“Oh. Well then, I don’t know. When it’s finished, I reckon.” He snorted out a laugh. “Guess you’d have to ask Mr. Kendall. He’s runnin’ the show.”
Jason sighed. “Okay, thanks, Steve. I’ll do that.”
But in his mind, he thought only one word: Crap!
Solomon Cohen finally finished up the letter he was going to send to California, to Sampson Davis’s family. He had labored over it long and hard—a wastebasket filled with crumpled paper bore witness to that—but it was finally finished, and he set it aside more forcefully than one would normally lay down a piece of paper.
“Finished?” asked Rachael from the kitchen, where she was hard-boiling eggs.
Solomon sat back and sighed. “I suppose.” He almost asked her if she’d heard the bell jingle before he remembered that he’d left Bill Crachit on duty downstairs. He relaxed again. “The service. It was all right?”
“How many times are you going to be asking? It was fine, Sol, just lovely. His family would have been pleased. Now, stop, already.”
Solomon shook his head. “Such a burden to have a kvetching wife . . .”
Rachael stuck her head around the corner. “I heard that,” she growled. But she was grinning. “You know, Solomon, that even a rabbi couldn’t have done a better job than you did. I couldn’t help but be proud.”
Solomon felt himself color slightly at her words. “Thank you, my Rachael. But you shouldn’t say such things. A rabbi would have been much better. Much better.”
She was still smiling. “Yes, dear. You know best, dear.”
Solomon felt the shroud of uncertainty lift from him like a cloak had been pulled from his shoulders, and barked out a laugh. He jumped from his chair and lunged for Rachael, who tried to duck back behind the shelving, but didn’t make it. Solomon caught her in his arms, and the two of them laughed like maniacs until Rachael was in tears.
“Stop, Sol!” she cried. “Stop, already! You’ll make me wet myself!”
He let her go, although he was loathe to, and she stepped back, still tittering, and moved the eggs from the burner to the sink, where she poured off the boiling water and replaced it with cool well water from a bucket.
“Why do you always do that?”
“Because you’re greedy, and I don’t want you to burn yourself.”
“Always thoughtful.”
“I try.”
He took her in his arms again. “And you succeed, my Rachael. You succeed.”
He kissed her, long and hard.