Chapter Twenty-five
Marshal Cline stared at Elmer for a long moment before recognition slowly passed across his face.
“Gleason? Elmer Gleason, is that you?”
“Well, I ain’t no ghost.”
“Hell, I heard you went to sea. I thought maybe you’d drowned someplace.”
“Near ’bout did a couple of times. Have a seat. I’ll buy you a drink. And ’cause we ain’t seen each other in a long while, I’ll buy you the most expensive drink in the house.”
Marshal Cline smiled, then took his seat. He lifted his hand toward the barkeep. “Whiskey,” he called out.
“I heard you was marshalin’ up here,” Elmer said. “I had to come see for myself if it was true.”
“Well, you’ve seen,” he said, taking the whiskey from the barkeeper. “What do you think?”
“I have to say that I’m damn surprised. I never thought I’d see my old friend C.F. Cline on this side of the law.”
“Old friend? We may have pulled a couple of jobs together, but we never was what you would call close friends. Hell, the way I remember it, you run away to sea to keep me from killin’ you.”
“Is that the way you remember it?” Elmer asked, calmly and unemotionally.
“Yeah.” Cline took a drink, then set the glass back down. “Hell of it is, though, I don’t remember for the life of me why it is that I was about to kill you.”
“Does that mean I’m safe, ’til you remember?”
Cline laughed. “I reckon it does. What’d you kill the boy for?”
“It seemed the thing to do. I mean, seein’ as he was tryin’ to kill me.”
“Did you know him?”
“I met him about fifteen minutes ago.”
“You only knew him for fifteen minutes, and he tried to kill you? How the hell did you piss somebody off enough in just fifteen minutes that he wanted to kill you?”
“It might have had something to do with the fact that I sort of knocked him facedown into a pile of horse shit.”
Cline laughed again, this time so hard that he got the attention of the others in the saloon. One of the others came over to the table.
“For a marshal just come to arrest someone for a killin’, you two seem to be gettin’ on pretty well.”
“Johnny, this here is my old friend Elmer Gleason. Elmer, this is Johnny Taylor.”
“You robbed the bank in Chugwater,” Elmer said. It wasn’t a question, nor was it a challenge. It was a simple statement of fact.
“How do you know that?” Johnny asked, his suspicions aroused. “Are you a lawman?”
“Hell, Johnny, ever’body in Laramie County knows you robbed that bank. And no, I ain’t no lawman any more than my ol’ friend C.F. Cline is a lawman.”
“That’s a funny way of puttin’ it. Seein’ as Cline is a lawman.”
“Is he?”
Johnny looked at Cline, then shook his head and smiled. “I reckon you’re right. He ain’t no lawman. Not no real lawman, anyway. Real lawmen ain’t welcome here. So, tell me, Gleason, what are you doin’ in Bordeaux?”
“I come here ’cause I thought this was a place where folks didn’t ask you a lot of fool questions.”
“Some folks don’t ask questions and some do. I got a reason for askin’. Seein’ as you know I held up the bank in Chugwater, it could be that you are a bounty hunter. If you are, you’re goin’ to play hell collectin’ on it.”
“Or, it could be that your operation was so slick, and you got so much money, that I might be wantin’ to join up with you for your next one.”
“How do you know there’s goin’ to be a next one?”
“I don’t see you walkin’ away from a winnin’ hand on the table.”
“You and Mr. Gleason ought to get along, Johnny, seein’ as you are in the same business,” Cline said.
“You’ve held up banks before?” Johnny asked.
“With your marshal,” Elmer answered.
“Jonesburg, Kansas,” Cline said.
Johnny nodded. “All right, come on, let me introduce you to some of my pals.”
Elmer stood up, but before he walked away he looked back down at Cline. “What about the man I just kilt? Do I need to be signin’ any papers, or goin’ before a judge, or a justice of the peace or anything?”
“You got twenty dollars on you?” Cline asked.
“Yeah, I got twenty dollars.”
“Give it to me, and this will all go away.”
“Twenty dollars, and I don’t hear nothin’ else from it? How does that work?”
“I’m not your ordinary kind of city marshal. I don’t draw a salary from the city. I have to come up with my own ways of makin’ money.”
“I’ll give you ten dollars.”
“That ain’t enough. I got to make a livin’.”
“Twenty dollars is all I got. I ain’t givin’ you all I got.”
“Keep your twenty dollars, Mr. Gleason,” Johnny said. “I’ll pay it for you.”
“Well, that’s mighty nice of you.”
Johnny put a twenty-dollar bill on the table in front of Cline, then escorted Elmer over to meet the others with him.
“Gleason wants to join up with us,” Johnny said after he introduced him to the others.
“I don’t know, he’s a little old, ain’t he?” Evans asked.
“You might be right,” Johnny replied. “I know that’s what Kid Dingo thought.”
The others laughed.
“Yeah, well, I don’t mean nothin’ by it. I was just sayin’, is all.”
During the entire conversation Harper had been staring at Elmer. Now he spoke for the first time. “I’ve seen you before, somewhere.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Johnny said. “I expect you two have run in some of the same circles.”
“No, I’ve seen him somewhere just real recent,” Harper said.
“I was wonderin’ if you would recognize me.”
“Then I have seen you before, ain’t I?”
“Yeah, you have. But belly down on the horse like you was, I’m surprised that you seen me at all. Or anyone else for that matter,” Elmer said.
“What?” Johnny asked. “What are you talkin’ about, belly down on a horse?”
“I’m talkin’ ’bout the last time me ’n’ Harper met. Only we didn’t exactly meet. I was standin’ just real close whenever the marshal took him down off the horse and arrested him. I was in the court when I heard the judge let you go, too.”
“Harper, you never told us nothin’ about you bein’ belly down over a horse. What was that all about?”
“Maybe you better let me do the tellin’,” Elmer suggested. “I seen it all.”
“All right, you tell us what happened,” Johnny said.
“What happened is a man by the name of MacCallister come up behind Harper in the saloon. And without so much as a fare-thee-well, while Harper wasn’t lookin’ MacCallister brought a chair down on top of Harper’s head, knocking him out. Then, while Harper was still unconscious, he dragged him out of the saloon and tied him belly down over his own saddle. I’ve seen a lot of dirty tricks in my life, but that’s near ’bout the dirtiest I’ve ever seen.”
“That the way it happened, Harper?” Johnny asked.
“Yeah,” Harper said, glancing toward Elmer. The expression on Harper’s face indicated his thanks for the way Elmer had told the story. “That’s the way it happened all right. The son of a bitch hit me from behind.”
“Then you got as much of a beef with MacCallister as I do.”
“Let me add my own beef to it,” Elmer said.
“What’s your problem with MacCallister?”
“I had a sweet deal goin’, saltin’ an old abandoned mine and gettin’ suckers to invest in it. Then MacCallister come along and homesteaded the land where my mine was. He dynamited the mine shut, and I was put out of business. The main reason I’m wantin’ to join up with you boys is because I want to be a part of the next job you pull. But I was also sort of hopin’ that I might get a chance to get back at him.”
“We’re goin’ to take care of MacCallister all right,” Johnny said. “But first things first. First thing we’re goin’ to do is get my brother out of jail.”
Elmer shook his head. “You ever seen that jail?”
“I seen it once, in the dark.”
“Well, Harper has seen it, ’cause he was in it, so I know he’ll agree. That jail is built out of a double brick wall with reinforced concrete poured down between the walls. If you was to try and blow a hole in that wall, you’d have to use so much dynamite that you’d kill anyone that’s inside, includin’ your brother.”
“Don’t worry, we ain’t goin’ to try nothin’ like that. I’ve got a different plan, and we’ve already started it,” Johnny said.
“If you was in Chugwater the other day, you prob’ly already know about it,” Blunt said. “We kilt two of the citizens and left ’em lyin’ in the street.”
“I was there.”
“We plan to do that again,” Johnny said.
“How many do you plan to kill?”
“I plan to kill as many as it takes, until they turn my brother loose,” Johnny said. “Why? Do you have a problem with that?”
Elmer stuck his hand down into his pocket and pulled out six more shotgun shells.
“I might have to buy me a few more shells,” he said.
Johnny laughed out loud, then slapped Elmer on the back. “Elmer, you’re all right,” he said. “After we take care of business down in Chugwater, it’ll be good to have you along for our next job.”
“Did you really get over thirty thousand dollars out of that robbery in Chugwater?” Elmer asked.
“Thirty? We got over forty,” Calhoun said, proudly.
“Forty thousand dollars.” Elmer whistled. “I ain’t never seen that much money in my whole life. You boys got it on you? Could I see it?”
“Now, do you think we would be so dumb as to carry that much money on us in a place like this?” Johnny asked. “We got near all of it hid out.”
“Where you got it hid?”
Johnny glared at Elmer for a moment; then he laughed. “What? Do you expect us to tell you that, so you can just waltz in and take it all yourself?”
“You can’t blame a fella for tryin’,” Elmer said, smiling back at Johnny. “So, how soon before we can pull another job so I can get some money like that for my own self?”
“I told you. After we get my brother out of jail. And I plan to take another step in that direction tonight.”
The night insects were singing as Johnny, Elmer, and the others waited just outside of town.
“We goin’ to get us another couple of drunks tonight?” Evans asked.
“No. Turns out the two we kilt didn’t have no kin in town, so it didn’t really make that much of a difference to anybody whether they was dead or not. I’m changin’ the plans. Tonight we’re goin’ to raise the stakes a little.”
“What do you mean?” Ike asked.
“Tonight we’re goin’ to make sure we kill someone that will get the attention of the rest of the town.”
“You got ’ny idea who that might be?”
“Yeah, I got me a good idea,” Johnny said. “They’s a woman in town that runs a café. Well, not a regular café. The only thing she sells in her café is pies, but I had me a piece of pie while I was in town, and seemed like there was lots of folks come in to her place while I was there and near all of ’em knew her, and called her by name. Vi, I think it was. I figure if we kilt Vi, and left her body out in the street, it would for sure get some attention.”