14
Father Clayton got to Jason’s office at roughly the same time Jason did. Fortunately, Jason thought, he’d held it to one beer across the street, and so he was a sober man when the father announced he wished to talk.
“’Bout what?” Jason asked as he ushered the father into the chair opposite his, then sat down himself.
The father smiled. “Your fine neighbors across the street, Dr. and Mrs. Morelli, have seen fit to let me stay under their roof while I peruse your town.”
“And how do we read out?” Jason asked, while he wondered if someone had changed the definition of “perused” while he’d been away.
“Oh,” said the father. He chuckled. “I see. Oh, dear, I just did it again, didn’t I?”
Jason smiled. “Sort of sideways. What’d you want to talk about, Father?”
“The church I intend to build in Fury.” He folded his arms and leaned back in his chair smugly.
Jason thought, Well, aren’t we full of ourselves? but he said, “You intend to build a parish? Here? Does Fury have enough Catholics to make that worthwhile?”
“Oh, my, yes, indeed it does!” said the father. “By my count it’s over seventy souls, with a number of others with no place to worship.”
If that was a sideways slam at Milcher, Jason supposed it was well-placed. But he figured the town needed something besides a Catholic mission to keep it morally “proper.” Whatever that was. Actually, in his opinion, the town was pretty moral just as it was.
“Gee,” he said flatly. “That many.”
There hadn’t been any question in the way he’d said it, but the father took it as one. He said, “Do you doubt my count, son?”
“Not at all,” Jason said. “And if you don’t mind, I’m not your ‘son.’ And please, just call me Jason.” It made him uncomfortable, plus which, he felt as if it was an insult to his late father. As mixed as his feelings were toward Jedediah’s memory, he wouldn’t stand for that from anyone.
“Very well, then,” said the priest, suddenly mild. It was as if he’d forgotten for a moment that anyone existed outside the Church’s realm, and now he was humbled. Idly, Jason wondered if he was going to perform an act of contrition on the spot. But if he was expecting one, he was disappointed.
“I’ve chosen the best location for the mission—it will be more mission than church, I believe—and I need to discover who owns the lot. I’m told that you know everyone, and are therefore the person to ask.”
Jason leaned forward and crossed his arms on the desk. “And which parcel has appealed to you, Father?”
“The lot just down the street from your office, Marshal. Just two doors away.”
Jason lifted a brow. He didn’t mind the Church being so close to his office, but wondered that the father would want his mission that nearby. He said, “Nobody owns it.”
The father tilted his head. “No one?”
“Nobody’s claimed it yet.” Jason shrugged. There hadn’t been anybody proposing interest in that lot for a very long time, either.
“Can I claim it? In the Church’s name, of course,” the priest added quickly, with a wave of his hands.
“You’re as welcome to it as anyone, I suppose,” Jason said.
“Do I need to sign something?”
“Nope. Just build on it and it’s yours.”
Father Clayton beamed at him and clapped his hands together. “Marvelous! Just marvelous! You don’t know how welcome this news is, Marshal!” He nearly leapt to his feet.
Jason expected him to dance to the door if this was any indication, but he said, “And welcome to Fury, Father Clayton.”
“Please, call me Father Micah!” the effusive priest said. “That’s Micah with an ‘H’ on the end.”
“All right, Father Micah. Good luck!”
“No, thank you, Marshal. I mean, Jason!” He stopped stock-still, and Jason could practically see the wheels in his mind turning rapidly round and round. He asked, “Marshal Jason, or just Jason?”
“Just Jason, Father,” Jason said, standing. Nobody had been this tickled to grab land in town since they first built the place! He guessed he didn’t mind the Catholics moving in with an official presence down the street from him.
The father—Father Micah, he reminded himself—made his exit, and Jason sat back down. So the Holy Roman Empire now had a stake in Fury. Idly, he wondered if they’d be of any help with the Indians or Sampson Davis.
He snorted out a laugh, and then went back to work.
Jason didn’t discover until later that afternoon, where the town fathers planned to build their water tower.
“But you can’t!” he sputtered. “There’s a Catholic mission going in there!”
Salmon Kendall, who had given him the news, and who now stood across his desk, handing him the weekly newspaper, said, “But we’ve already decided, Jason.”
Boiling but trying not to show it, Jason came back with, “Salmon, all buildings to be erected have to be cleared through this office, and that means me.”
“You were drinking at the time.”
Jason just stared at him. Why couldn’t he back down, like a normal person? And where the hell was Marshal Todd? He’d been going to go up to the boardinghouse to have a word or two with Sampson Davis, and Jason had been waiting to hear something from him for several hours, but nothing, not a blessed peep.
“So anyhow,” Salmon went on, “we’re sendin’ a contingent up into the Bradshaws first thing in the morning. The Slade brothers have spent the entire afternoon getting the wagons ready, I’ve been to the mercantile and bought saws and awls and dried beans and such, as well as rope, from Solomon, and my wife’s been cooking all day so they don’t starve to death on their own grub. Just thought you’d want to know.” He dropped the paper on Jason’s desk.
The headline read, MARSHAL SHOOTS KILLER LURKING IN ALLEY! but Jason just glanced at it. He said, “Find another place to put up your water tower, Salmon.”
“’Fraid not. The site’s centrally located, it’s level, and that’s where we picked. The Catholics can put their mission anyplace. That end lot, by the saloon, for instance. Or on the next street over,” he added, poking a thumb over his shoulder, toward the office’s back door. “There’s plenty of room back there.”
Jason now found himself championing a cause he had no stake in, either way, but he said, “Dammit, Salmon! I gave my word—the word of the town—to the Father when I said he could have the lot. And I will not go back on it!”
That was the whole point, he realized. His word.
Well, tough.
Salmon, who was beginning to look a tad peeved, grudgingly let out air between pursed lips, then said, “I’ll have a word with the father, then?”
“Do what you want.” Jason picked up the paper.
Salmon left, and when he was gone, Jason just sat there, shaking his head. The paper dropped from his hand, and he asked the air, “What do you people want from me, anyway?”
But he already knew the answer. They wanted somebody to do the dirty jobs they couldn’t be troubled with, like handle the likes of Teddy Gunderson, or the perennially hysterical Matt MacDonald, or organizing them when they really were under attack. And the rest of the time, he guessed he could just go hang.
“Well, maybe I will,” he muttered to himself. “Maybe I’ll just ride on out of here and get myself back East, where I belong.”
But first, he had to check on Abe Todd. He hoped he wouldn’t find him shot dead, and chockful of Sampson Davis’s bullets. On the other hand, he mused as he stood up and walked to take his hat off the rack, it’d solve a plethora of problems for him. . . .
He didn’t find Abe across the street, in the saloon, nor did he find him (or any trace of Davis, for that matter) at the boardinghouse or the café. Where the hell had they disappeared to? He walked over to the stable, found nothing, then stuck his head into Abigail’s place. Still nothing, not even a lousy card cheat. Scratching his head, he leaned against a post outside the mercantile and stared down the street.
A few moments later, he was rewarded by the sight of Abe Todd, coming out of the barber shop looking slicked up and shiny as a new penny.
“What is this?” he muttered to himself. “Some kind of marshal’s ritual, like ‘Slick up before you shoot’? Or maybe I should say ‘afterwards’ . . . ?”
Todd spotted him, and waving, began to walk toward him. Jason moved forward, too, and met him in the center of the single, long block that made up Main Street.
“Been waitin’ on you,” Jason said, in place of a greeting. “What’s goin’ on with Davis?”
“Got me,” replied the newly shorn Todd, who smelled too strongly of witch hazel. “I couldn’t find ’im, so I went to the barber instead.”
“Well, his horse is still at the stable.”
Todd scratched the back of his neck, probably at some stray hairs. “Well, I guess he’s disappeared, then.” He looked up the street, past Jason. “Where else is there?”
Jason thought for a second, then said, “The wagon train?”
“Worth a little hunt,” said Todd.
But when they got up by the gate, Todd didn’t turn to go outside. Instead, he said, “Hang on a second,” and walked forward, toward the schoolhouse. Or at least, what passed for a schoolhouse in Fury.
“You’re not goin’ to find him in there!” Jason yelled at his back.
“Not lookin’ for him,” Abe Todd bellowed, then stepped inside the little schoolhouse. The door closed behind him.
“You want somethin’ done right, I guess you gotta do it yourself,” Jason muttered with a frown, and strode on through the gates, out to where the wagons lined the wall.
Ezra Welk hadn’t wasted any time once he rode into Fury. He found the livery and put up his horse, then grabbed a beer at Abigail’s, which he found was practically deserted. But she gave him directions to the boardinghouse, where he was presently ensconced. Sitting in a chair beside the window, he looked out over the street below.
There was a marshal’s office—no way to tell if it was federal or local from here, anyway—and while he watched, a Catholic priest went in for a few minutes, then came out smiling and practically jigging his way up the street. And then the law came out. Local, by the looks of him. Young, too, probably green as grass.
Ezra snorted. He didn’t have anything to worry about here in Fury.
Fury. Now, that was a funny name for a town. Maybe there’d been some kind of battle here, some big whoop-up. It had to have been fought furiously, though, to earn the name, and you would’ve thought he’d have heard about it, even over in California.
Well, it was just another question to ask over at the saloon. There was one right at the end of the street, and it looked (and sounded) quite a bit more lively than Abigail’s place had been. He watched while the so-called marshal made his way out of the saloon and ambled up the street, and only then did he stand up, light himself a new smoke, and make his way downstairs and outside, to the street.
Not a third of the way down the line, Jason ran into Doctor Morelli, who looked sour and pale.
“What’s wrong?” Jason asked.
Morelli shook his head. “It’s a day for death, Jason. I have a feeling that Frank Saulk will be dead before the sun sets.”
Jason hadn’t a clue whom he was speaking about, so Morelli added, “The fellow who was hit by the saguaro?”
Now he remembered. He nodded. “Yeah. He gone septic?”
Morelli nodded. “And he’s getting worse as fast as I’ve ever seen. He’ll leave that wife and those children behind to fend for themselves. It’s a shame, a real shame.”
Solemnly, Jason nodded. “Sure is. You seen Sampson Davis today, Doc?”
The physician said, “No, I haven’t. Why?”
“No reason.” He looked down the line. “Well, got to move. See you later.”
Morelli waving him on, he set off. But by the time he reached the last wagon, there was still no Davis in evidence. Where the hell had he got to, Jason wondered as, frowning, he made his way back up to the gate. A man didn’t just disappear like that. Especially such a big man as Sampson Davis.
By the time he’d walked clear back to the office, checking in every public building along the way, he still hadn’t turned anything up. He was angry with Marshal Todd, mad at Sampson Davis, incensed by the town fathers and their damned water tower, and pretty much fit to be tied with the whole town and its situation.
“I should’ve just gone,” he muttered as he shoved his desk to one side in passing. “I should have just left ’em to take care of the Indians by themselves. They didn’t need me. They never did.” He slumped down into his chair. “I never should have turned Cleo around and come back.”
He closed his eyes and images flooded into his head, images of what should have been: him having a laugh with some boys outside the school library, him checking the grade sheets and finding nothing but “A’s” beside his name, him applying for a position and shaking hands with the president of the company, him getting married. But the girl he pictured, the woman who became his wife, was Megan MacDonald. And when they rode home after the wedding, it was to Fury and the little house on Second Street, where he lived now.
He gave up. Fury had taken root in his fantasies, and there was no killing it, no stopping it now.
Thoroughly cowed by himself, he put his head down on the desk and tried to will himself dead, but it didn’t work. Instead, he suddenly sat bolt upright.
He knew where Sampson Davis was.
He’d thought Davis would be back at the boardinghouse, shut up in his room with no one the wiser, but he was wrong. Not only did Mrs. Kendall say she hadn’t seen him, but when she let him up to check the room, it was so empty of Davis that the place practically echoed.
He had run into the final wall, and hard.
But when he went back outside after that humiliating little hunt, Abe Todd practically ran smack into him on the sidewalk.
“Where’ve you been?” he asked, a little more huffily than he would have liked.
“Out lookin’ for you,” Abe replied. “Where you been?”
“Outside, siftin’ through the wagons, lookin’ for Davis.”
“No luck?”
“Nope.”
Abe shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “Well, come with me, then.”
He started on down the walk, with Jason tagging at his heels like a pet dog.
He reminded himself of the dog, Hannibal, who, most of the time, had been given free rein of the town these past few days. He didn’t like it, and he made himself catch up with Abe, then matched him, stride for stride.
“Where we goin’?” he asked.
“Saloon.”
Jason put on the brakes and Abe stopped, too, looking curiously at him. He said, “What?”
“I’m not off duty, yet.”
Abe laughed. “Hell, Jason, I ain’t askin’ you there for a drink! We’re just takin’ a look-see.”
“I was in there earlier. He’s not there,” Jason insisted.
“People move around.”
“Oh, all right,” Jason said in disgust, and started walking again.
Davis was in the saloon, all right, sitting at a back corner table all alone, and slogging down whiskeys like they were sarsaparillas. A glance up to the second-floor balcony showed Rafe’s door was closed, which Jason profoundly hoped meant that Rafe was locked up inside it.
“Don’t worry,” said Abe when he followed Jason’s line of vision. “I told him to stay put in there.”
“Like you think he’ll listen.”
“He listened.” And then he steered Jason back to an empty table. “I’m gonna go have a few words with your friend, Davis.” He quirked his mouth while he checked Jason’s position. “You got a clear line’a fire from that chair?”
Jason checked, and nodded.
“Keep an eye peeled.” Abe took off for Davis’s table.
Jason watched while Abe approached and pulled out a chair across from Davis, his back to the room, as if he owned the place in general and Davis’s table in particular. He couldn’t make out Davis’s face, but something told him that Davis wasn’t too happy with the situation.
Abe leaned forward and started to talk, and the words, while Jason couldn’t hear them, appeared to be delivered in a sharp, no-nonsense manner.
Davis said something, then Abe, then Davis again, and then Abe pushed back from the table and stood up. He said a few more words to Davis, then turned his back on him and made his way back over to Jason.
“Wish I could’ve heard that,” Jason said.
“No, you don’t.” Abe pulled out a chair. “The man’s bulldog-stubborn and bear-nasty. He’s gonna stay if he has to move here, permanent.”
Jason sighed. “Not quite what I wanted to hear.”
“Didn’t thrill me none, either.” Abe waved a hand, and a pretty girl showed up, as if by magic.
“Order, sir?” she said.
“Couple shots of bourbon.”
“Got you.” She left.
Jason started to tell him again. “Look, I’m still on the—”
“No, you ain’t. Look at your pocket watch.”
Jason did. It was five past the hour. “Oh,” he said, annoyed, and put it away. “So, now what?”
Abe shrugged. “I guess we wait.” He shoved some change toward the serving girl who’d just brought the drinks. “Same thing again.”
Jason scowled. “Must’a been thirsty work, talkin’ to him.”
Abe picked up his drink and tossed it back in one gulp. Jason hadn’t touched his yet, and he’d only taken a sip when the girl showed up with the second round.
“I got me an idea,” Abe said after he polished off his second bourbon. “How’d you like to be a U.S. Marshal?”
The query caught Jason completely off guard.
“Me?” he asked, then shook his head. “No way, Abe. Not in a million years.”
“Why not?”
“Because then I’d be responsible for Matt MacDonald’s Indians, and shepherding the wagons over to the next man and, well, a whole load of stuff that I’m not prepared to take on.”
Abe cocked his brows. “You chicken?”
“No, I’m not. Jesus! I don’t even want to be the town’s marshal, never aimed for it. I belong back east taking exams, not out here in the middle of nowhere, riding shepherd over folks who don’t give a good goddamn.”
Abe snorted. “Just thought I’d ask. Don’t get your knickers in a knot over it.”
From his table at the opposite end of the room, Ezra Welk watched the whole scene play out. He sat alone, but there were enough bodies between him and the lawmen to prevent his discovery. That was, if anybody was even looking for him.
These boys seemed to have somebody else on their mind, entirely: a big hulking number he didn’t recognize, who was sitting at another table, about halfway between himself and the batwing doors. One of the marshals—a middle-aged one he hadn’t spied before—walked over and had himself some stern words with the big galoot, who looked just as nasty as he was barrel-chested. If it had been up to Ezra, he would have shot the bastard, just for being ugly.
But it wasn’t up to him, especially with the two lawman present. They were currently sitting at a table up toward the front of the bar, talking.
Ezra wasn’t worried, though. He ordered a new whiskey and sat back to watch the show.