12
After the introductions were made and they ate a good dinner, Jason and Abe retired to the front porch for a smoke.
Abe rubbed at his belly. “That was the finest spread I’ve seen for a long time,” he said, referring to the amazing meal Jenny had created on short notice. “Lip-smackin’ good!”
Jason nodded, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “She’s turnin’ into a fine cook, all right. Our mother was class A in the kitchen, too. Guess it runs in the family.”
Abe, who was rolling his second smoke, said, “Yup. You come from a strong line, Jason. How old are you, anyway?”
Jason blinked. Nobody had asked his age in years and years. He hesitated a moment, then said, “Twenty-five. Give or take.” He felt downright stupid. He could never remember if you counted from the year you were born, or the next year, when you were one. Look at you, he thought. Some college material!
“That’s awful young to have to run a whole town,” Abe said. He struck a match and lit his smoke.
“Tell me about it,” Jason replied. “I been doin’ it since we got here. All I wanted to do was go back East, to college, but they wouldn’t have it.”
“Who? The citizens?”
“Yeah.”
Abe chuckled softly. “Was that after the first Apache attack?”
Jason felt his brow wrinkle. “How’d you know about that?”
“Word gets ‘round, usually without much care for the details. But I heard stories about some little town where they held off Apache by makin’ a moat outta fire.”
Without enthusiasm—having told the story or listened to somebody else retell it on countless occasions—Jason said, “That was us, all right. We still keep a supply of tar handy, just in case. Get it regular, shipped out from those tar pits in California. The ones outside Los Angeles.”
“Your idea?”
“Yeah.” Jason dug into his pocket for his fixings bag. As he took it out and fiddled with the drawstring, he said, “You can still see some’a the scorch marks out south of town, right along where the wagon train’s parked. We filled the moat back in after a while, but the ground . . .”
“That was a damn fine idea, Jason.”
“Thanks.” He lit his smoke, took a puff, and said, “Desperate times call for desperate measures. Or words to that effect.”
He heard the door opening, and swiveled toward it. It was Jenny, carrying a tray. He stood up to help her, because the tray looked heavy.
“Thank you, Jason,” she said, smiling. “Thought you gents might be thirsty, so I brought you some limeade.”
Jason set the tray down on the small table they kept on the porch. “Limes? Where’d you get limes?” He’d got his hands on a sapling last year and planted it out back, in the corral, but it wasn’t yet big enough to bear fruit.
“The wagon train, silly.” She lifted the pitcher and poured out the first glass, which she handed to Abe. As she poured the second, then the third, she added, “I don’t know where we’d be without the wagon trains that come through. They bring us all sorts of wonderful things!” She handed a glass to Jason, then picked one up herself. “Mind if I join you?”
“Not at all!” said Abe, and motioned her toward the spare chair. Jason sat down after she did. Abe took a long drink. “Right good, Miss Jenny, right good!”
“Thank you, Marshal Todd,” she said offhandedly. And then, “Jason, will Rafe be all right? Don’t you need to go get him or something?”
Jason slowly shook his head. “He knows about Davis, and I sent a note up about Gunderson. If he’s smart, he’ll just stick to that room of his. And Sam said he’d take meals up. Don’t worry, he’s well looked after.”
“That’s right, Miss Jenny. He stays in that room, he’s dead safe.”
Jenny turned toward Abe. “That’s what I’m worried about. The dead part, that is.”
“Sorry. Guess I put it the wrong way.”
“No, you didn’t, Abe,” Jason said from his chair. “Rafe is gonna be fine. We just have to figure out how to get rid of Davis and Gunderson.”
Jenny pursed her lips and made a face. “Well, Jason, can’t you just throw them out of town? I mean, you’re the marshal!”
“That’s another thing I been meanin’ to talk to you about,” Abe began. “You ain’t a marshal, you know. Technical-like, you’re the sheriff of Fury. Technical speakin’, that is.”
“Only the U.S. Marshals can be marshals?” asked Jason. He’d been suspecting it for years. He took a drag on his smoke and said, hopefully, “This mean I don’t have a job anymore?” before he exhaled a cloud of smoke.
“Oh, don’t be a fool!” snapped Jenny. She stood up abruptly and announced, “I’m going to bed. Miss Electa Morton wants me in early.” And with that, she simply took her glass of limeade and went into the house.
“Is it just me, or is she getting’ snippy?” Jason muttered, mostly to himself.
But Abraham Todd had sharp ears, it seemed. He said, “She ain’t that bad. Who’s Miss Electa Morton, anyhow?”
Jason turned toward him again. “She’s our schoolmarm. Jenny’s her assistant.”
“Interestin’.”
It is? thought Jason, but made no comment. They sat there for a little while longer, Jason finishing his smoke and limeade while Abe finished off the rest of the pitcher, and then Jason led him into the house and down the back hall to the guest room.
It wasn’t much of a guest room, he supposed, being only eight feet by ten and without a bureau, but there was a cot and a chamber pot, and nobody had complained yet about the marshal’s hospitality.
Which reminded him: Was he now supposed to take on the title of sheriff, and repaint the sign and remold the badge?
The next morning, as he sat behind his desk, Jason was still considering this. Ward, who had gone on home after a quiet night, took a complaining Wash Keogh along with him. He’d decided not to chance the ten minutes he’d miss watching the saloon by simply walking Wash back to his lodgings, and so Wash had spent the night snoozing, as an unofficial prisoner.
It looked to Jason as if they weren’t going to get much help out of Wash, if he was half as angry with Ward as he put on. Then again, you never could tell with him. Jason was a pretty fair hand at reading folks, and he could tell that Wash was withholding something or other from them, but he wasn’t going to press him. Not right now, anyway.
He had left the house before Abe was up, figuring that the man had spent a long day on a hot and dusty trail the day before, and could probably use the extra sleep. But later today, when Abe came into the office, they were going to have a serious discussion about their plans for Davis and Gunderson.
He slid a quick glance across the street, but saw nothing, as usual: a fact which should have comforted him, but which only filled him with additional dread. He knew they had to be dealt with—and the sooner the better—but he wasn’t looking forward to it in the slightest. He had a feeling that whatever action they decided on, the reaction to it was going to end up messy. And that was an understatement. He worried about Ward and he worried about Wash and now Abe, too. And mostly, he worried about himself—not whether he’d die, that being a distinct possibility, but whether he would acquit himself in a manner that would do honor to his father’s name.
Oh, all right, and whether he’d be forever done with the chance to go to school, back East. That chance was slipping further away every day.
Halfway through the morning, before Abe had checked in at the marshal’s office, Teddy Gunderson was waiting in the alley next to the Milchers’ church, practicing his fast draw.
That was pretty damned fast, he told himself when he outdrew the shaggy dog that crossed the alley’s mouth. And I ain’t bein’ cocky about that, neither.
A man in his profession had to be both fast and accurate, if he wanted to survive. And he had a lot to survive for. That great big bounty on Lynch was going to be the end of his career as a gun, and the beginning of his career as . . . Theodore Gunderson, San Francisco Brahmin. He had started to think about it yesterday, and at first, it had been just in fun. But then he got to kind of liking the idea.
He could picture himself groomed up slick in a silk suit, real fancy, smoking an expensive cigar in one of those big mansions, at one of those big, high-tone parties up on Nob Hill. He figured he had everything but the money. And it was just down the street, at the saloon.
He’d known that lousy bartender was lying to him. He’d figured all along that Lynch was upstairs. But he was too smart to go barging up there and banging on doors, especially with what looked like the town lawman sitting right there at one of the barroom tables.
No, he’d decided to wait for Lynch to cross his path, and then he’d just wing him, put him a little bit out of commission. And then they’d ride back over the Colorado River, to California.
Teddy Gunderson had it all figured out, all right. A desert sparrow suddenly fluttered down from the roof, and he drew on it, too.
Damn fast, he thought smugly. If he had pulled the trigger this morning, he’d have killed four sparrows, two doves, one pack rat, three quails, and the ugliest dog he’d ever seen. It would have been a high body count.
Inside the church, the Reverend Milcher saw the flutter of wings and glanced up at the movement. He glimpsed the man he would later learn was Teddy as he pulled his gun on the bird, and wondered who in creation was out there, pretending to shoot sparrows.
He walked closer to the window for a better look.
Outside, Teddy holstered his sidearm once again. He was keenly attuned to the rustles and stirs which might be made by a potential target. A daring strike made by a finch, perhaps. Or maybe that really ugly dog would come by again.
Deputy U. S. Marshal Abe Todd had left Jason’s house, and was walking up the street toward the Cohens’ Mercantile. He was in a good mood, having been left to sleep in, and having partaken of some of the best of Jenny’s kitchen—in unexpectedly large quantities.
He was just turning the corner to walk down the main street when it happened, he later said. He heard the hum of men conversing coming from across the street, and turned to see a Catholic priest talking with a man carrying a doctor’s bag as they walked up toward his direction.
It was then that he saw the movement in the alley: He saw a man fitting Teddy Gunderson’s description, saw him quick-draw his rig and aim it toward the men, and he shouted, “Down, Father!” in that gruff voice turned up to a full roar volume.
He got the Father’s attention immediately, and the man took in the situation. With remarkable speed, he threw out his arm and pushed his companion clear of the alley’s mouth and followed him down as Marshal Todd fired upon the gunman back in the alley.
The man fell as suddenly and surely as the two living targets had thrown themselves on the ground, and Todd made his way across the street. When he got to the two men, he said, “You fellas all right?”
The priest, who introduced himself as Father Micah Clayton, helped the other man—a Dr. Morelli—to his feet. Both agreed they were all right, but rattled.
“Who was it?” asked Dr. Morelli, picking up his bag. “Is he wounded?” He followed Marshall Todd into the alley and quickly hunched down to the body.
“Dunno. Hope he’s dead,” Marshal Todd said in a voice divorced from emotion.
While Morelli fussed over the body, the priest reminded Todd that he was there. He asked, “Was he . . . is he Catholic?”
Todd said, “Don’t think it matters much now, Father,” and finally holstered his gun. Even the doctor’s ministrations weren’t going to perform a miracle, and he doubted that the priest was going to cause Teddy to rise from the dead.
Morelli said, “I’m afraid he’s gone.” Slowly, he got to his feet, and then looked up at Todd. “Who in tarnation was he, anyhow? And come to think of it, who are you?”
Abe Todd was on the verge of saying, “The man who just saved your necks,” when Jason came running up the street toward them. He parted a gathering crowd of spectators.
“What is it? What happened?” he shouted, his gun in his hand. And then he saw the body, sheltered by the bodies of the doc and Father Clayton. He turned his attention toward Abe. “Is it Gunderson?”
“Yup. Don’t know what the hell he was doin’, drawin’ down on these fellers, but there wasn’t a lotta time to ask him.”
A new voice spoke up. “Why, I don’t believe that was his intention at all! I’ve been watching him for several minutes, and it looked to me as if he was only practicing with his firearm.”
Jason looked at him. “And you saw this from where, Reverend Milcher?”
The reverend walked forward, then pointed down the alley to a window roughly ten feet beyond where Gunderson’s body lay.
Jason said, “So you couldn’t see the street?”
“I’m afraid not.”
If you were to ask Abe, he thought the sheriff looked pretty damned relieved to have Gunderson off his plate. And he wondered why they were taking so long just standing around when they could be carting the body off and getting on down to the jail.
And then Jason said, “Doc, you wanta help us haul him to the undertakers? C’mon, Abe.” He stepped through the alley, where he picked up an arm. Abe took the other one, and the two of them dragged Gunderson out into the street.
Abigail Krimp had come out to see what had caused the commotion, and stood in the street, arms folded, head shaking. “That’s a true and certain shame,” she said, “killin’ a pretty boy like that. Don’t he look just like one’a them angels in an Eye-talian paintin’?”
“He was drawing on Doctor Morelli and a member of the priesthood, Abigail,” Jason said through clenched teeth. Dragging bodies through the streets didn’t appear to be one of his favorite chores.
“He’s purty, though,” Abigail said with a sigh before she turned and walked back up toward her bar.
Abe, Jason, and now Dr. Morelli walked in the opposite direction, bearing Teddy Gunderson’s corpse between them.
And Abe was thinking, Hell, and it ain’t even close to noon, yet!
It was the beginning of a very active day in Fury.