He dismounted before her house and tied his horse to the fence. There was a single lamp burning inside. He went up the graveled walk, onto the porch, and knocked lightly on the door.
A woman answered it, a middle-aged, sour-faced, gaunt-bodied woman, who scowled at him. Sloan said, “I want to see Sylvia Flint. Is she awake?”
“Who’re you?”
“Sloan Hewitt.”
She opened the door a bit wider. The light apparently glinted from his badge, for her manner changed. “You’re the new marshal, ain’t you? Come on in.”
News certainly traveled fast, thought Sloan. He went in, removing his hat as he did. The woman said, “Wondered what you’d look like. Wondered what kind of man would take on a job like that.”
Sloan said, “Now you know. Is Sylvia awake?”
“She’s awake.” She turned her head and called shrilly, “Marshal’s here to see you.”
A door opened, and Sylvia came into the room. Her eyes were red, her face very pale. Her hair was disordered, and she put her hands up to smooth it. She had obviously wakened only a few moments before, because her face still showed signs of heavy sleeping. She said, “Marshal? Sloan, are you crazy?”
“Maybe.”
“It would take a troop of cavalry to tame this town. I hope you didn’t … because of Debbie …”
Sloan asked softly, “How are you now?”
Her eyes glistened with fresh tears. “I’m all right, Sloan.”
The woman said harshly, “Then I’ll be getting on. I got work to do.”
Sylvia turned to her. “Thank you, Missus Pugh. Thank you for staying with me.”
The woman grunted, but did not reply. She got her hat, put it on, and stood before the mirror while she pinned it to her piled-up hair with an eight-inch hatpin. She went out the door without further comment.
Sylvia waited until the door had closed. Then she said, “Sit down, Sloan. Sit down a minute and let me look at you.”
He went over and sat down on the sofa. She met his glance for a moment, then looked away. “You’re wondering why I left before you came home.”
“Yes. I’m wondering. But you don’t have to tell me unless you want to.”
“You have a right to know. But … Sloan … I just can’t talk about it now.” She turned her head and met his glance again. “You’ve changed. You’re bigger … older … you’re more handsome than ever.”
“It’s been a long time.”
“Yes. Yes, it has.” Sloan thought she had twisted her face and brightened her eyes again. He asked, “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Not right now. But will you come … to the funeral, Sloan?”
“Of course.”
Dimly, he heard a faint burst of gunshots from the direction of the lower end of Texas Street. He got up quickly. “Will you be all right?”
“I’ll be all right. Be careful, Sloan. Please be careful.”
He nodded and hurried to the door. He flashed a quick smile at her, then mounted his horse, and pounded away in the direction from which the shots had come. He was realizing as he rode that this would be a test in the eyes of the town. This would be the most important action he would take, however long he remained as marshal of the town.
He passed the hotel at a hard gallop and thundered down Texas Street. He watched the entrance to each saloon closely, and swung down before the one belonging to Jeff Burle, the Cowman’s Pride, when he noticed that the barker was not in his accustomed place out front. He looped the reins of his horse over the rail and stepped through the swinging doors.
Immediately every eye in the saloon was on him, almost as though they had been waiting for him to appear. In a small, cleared circle halfway to the bar, a man lay on the floor face down, a pool of blood leaking out from beneath his chest. Another man stood in the cleared area, a defiant look in his angry eyes. Jeff Burle was behind the bar, a shotgun in his hands. This was more or less what Sloan had expected, and yet there was something wrong. He sensed it, though he knew there was no basis for such a suspicion. He pushed his way through the crowd, reached the cleared circle, and stopped. “What happened?”
The man stared at him truculently but did not reply. Burle spoke from behind the bar. “Only thing I know, Marshal, is that the dead man wasn’t armed.”
Sloan stared hard at the truculent one, then let his eyes drift swiftly, appraisingly, over the faces of the waiting crowd. He said, “I’ll take your gun.”
“By God, you’re goin’ to have to take it! Because I ain’t goin’ to give it to you!”
Burle’s voice broke in. “Take it, Marshal. If he moves, I’ll blow him apart.”
This was the jarring note that Sloan, without realizing it, had been waiting for. Now he saw others. The truculent man’s scowl was a bit too deep. The others seemed a shade too expectant. There was a nervous grin on one cowboy’s face, and his eyes fell away guiltily when Sloan’s touched them. Sloan understood. This play had been engineered by Burle. When he had disarmed the killer and placed him under arrest, the man on the floor would get up, and everyone in the place would roar with laughter at the marshal’s discomfiture. He would become an object of ridicule. Any chance he’d had of establishing authority would be gone. Clever. Easier than killing him. Everyone would have a good laugh, and the town could go on as lawlessly as before. Only it wasn’t going to work. Blood began to pound hard and fast through his veins. His stomach felt flat and empty, his hands as though every nerve in them was jumping.
He approached the “killer,” circling as though wary, circling so that he had to pass the “corpse” on the floor. Passing, he swung a savage boot. The toe sank into the ribs of the man on the floor.
He reacted as Sloan had expected. He yelled, rolled, and came to his feet. He charged furiously. Sloan side-stepped at the last instant and, drawing his gun, brought the barrel around with numbing force against the side of the man’s head. The man pitched forward into the crowd and fell as they scrambled to get away.
Sloan’s action had startled the “killer,” and for an instant he was motionless. Then his hand streaked for his gun. Sloan shot without hesitation. The man drove back into the crowd, upon whose faces there was no humor now. Sloan swung toward the bar, very aware of that shotgun in Jeff Burle’s hands. In the act of raising it, Burle stopped. He froze, with the shotgun halfway to his shoulder. His face lost color, and his eyes took on the startled look of fear. Sloan said evenly, “Lay it on the bar. Easy.”
Burle complied. The fear in his eyes faded, to be replaced by uncontrollable fury and hatred more vitriolic than Sloan had ever seen in the eyes of a man before. Sloan said, “Your saloon’s closed. You’re under arrest.” He waited, a wicked light growing in his eyes. He could see Burle’s thoughts through the changing expressions on his face. Incredulous disbelief. Then the raw fury again. Then recklessness that made his glance drop toward the shotgun on the bar.
Sloan said softly, “Grab it, Burle. Go ahead. Then I can close your damned saloon for good.”
Those in the crowd had been prepared to laugh. Taken by surprise, they had not yet recovered sufficiently to become dangerous. Burle, glancing at their faces, apparently understood their mood.
Sloan stepped to the bar and picked up the shotgun. He turned his head and shouted, “This place is closed. You got ten minutes to finish your drinks and leave.” He glanced back at Burle. “Come on. Let’s go.” Burle was trembling with rage. His face was white. Sloan said harshly, with savage emphasis, “You son-of-a-bitch, I don’t care whether you walk out or whether I have you carried out on a door. Now move, before my patience all runs out.”
Burle came from behind the bar. Without looking at Sloan, he pushed his way angrily through the crowd to the doors. Sloan followed.
There would be no more jokes. The lines were drawn, and the fight was in deadly earnest now. But that was the way he wanted it. That was the only way he could even hope to win.
In front of the Cowman’s Pride, he paused to untie his horse, mounted, then followed Burle up the street. The man walked angrily, swiftly. Behind them, the saloon began to empty its occupants out onto the walk and into the street.
Sloan had made an implacable and powerful enemy, but this episode tonight could not have worked out better from his own standpoint. While he regretted the necessity of killing the make-believe killer, he’d had no choice. The man had been trying for his gun and would have killed him without hesitation if he’d been able to get it out.
He reached the bank and rode beyond to the new marshal’s office and jail. He swung down and tied his horse. There were lamps burning inside, and there was the sound of a hammer. Apparently the carpenters were still at work.
He said coldly, “Go on in.”
Burle turned his head. “What’s the charge?”
Sloan gave him a savage push. “Don’t crowd me, Burle. I don’t need to charge you to hold you overnight.”
“You’ll regret this, Hewitt.”
“Sure. Sure I will. Why don’t you take a look at things the way they really are, Burle? You’re not the big man you think you are. You’re just a two-bit saloonkeeper.”
Burle opened the door and stepped inside. Sloan followed, the shotgun still cradled on his arm. There were two carpenters working, one a middle-aged man in overalls, the other a boy, obviously an apprentice. Sloan asked, “Got any cells ready yet?”
The man nodded. “All finished back there. It’s a wooden building, though, so I wouldn’t say it was very strong.”
Sloan nodded. He gestured with his head to Burle. “Go on.”
Burle glared at him, then stalked back to the rear of the building. There were four small cells, two on each side. The bars were made of iron pipe set in holes drilled in four-by-fours, which were spiked to ceiling and floor. A two-by-four, also drilled, made the bars rigid between ceiling and floor. It would take a powerful man to break out without tools, but anyone with a crowbar, an ax, or a sledge could break out in a matter of minutes.
Sloan closed one of the cell doors behind Burle. He snapped the padlock shut and pocketed the key that had been in it. He returned to the office.
The carpenters had begun to clean up. The older one said, “Dryden promised to get some furniture in here first thing in the morning.”
Sloan nodded. He stepped out on the walk, fished for a cigar, bit off the end, and lit it. Downstreet he could see the last of the crowd pouring from the Cowman’s Pride. He could see the place begin to grow dark as someone went around blowing out the lamps. For the first time he began to realize what a monstrous job he had undertaken. He began to comprehend the extent to which opposition would develop. Burle might be a two-bit saloonkeeper, but he could muster considerable support among the other saloonkeepers. Next time their play wouldn’t be a joke.
Down in the cattle pens a cow bawled for her calf, and out on the plain a pack of coyotes yammered and yipped. A warm breeze blew in from the south, bringing its wild, free smell, bringing, too, the smells of the town, of manure in the loading pens, of horses in the corrals behind the livery barn, of hides and bones at the hide warehouse. It brought the smell of locomotive smoke and, a few moments later, the lost, eerie sound of the locomotive’s whistle as it pulled out going east.
Sound on the walk made Sloan whirl nervously, his hand streaking toward his gun. A bit sheepishly, he let it fall away as he recognized Merline Morris coming toward him.
If she noticed his nervous reflexive action, she didn’t comment on it. She said simply, “Good evening, Marshal.”
He nodded.
She came up close to him and stood looking up into his face. There was a fresh, faint fragrance about her he found vaguely stirring. She said, “I see you took the job. I wish you luck.”
“Thanks.”
“What made you change your mind? Debbie?”
“Partly, I suppose.”
“You knew her mother before, didn’t you?”
He stifled the irritation that touched him and stared down into her steady eyes. He weighed the tone her voice had possessed, and his mouth twisted in a small, wry grin. He said, “I knew her. We were going to be married after the war, but when I got mustered out, she had gone away.”
Merline’s eyes were large now, troubled. Sloan knew she was wondering—about Debbie—wondering if Sloan had been her father. Her glance lowered and a faint flush stained her cheeks. She said, “I’m sorry.”
He did not pretend to misunderstand. “Don’t apologize. Your curiosity is natural enough.”
She changed the subject. “I saw you bring Jeff Burle to jail.” He didn’t reply, and after a moment she looked up and met his eyes again. “Be careful, Sloan. And watch Jeff Burle. He’s a dangerous man. He’ll kill you if he can.
Sloan said, “I’ll watch him.”
Merline murmured something and turned away. He watched her until she disappeared into the darkness of the street.