Chapter Four
“Damn it, Luther, we’re too old to sleep in a livery stable,” Shamus complained. “And too old to be spreading our blankets on the ground, come to that. Somehow I always manage to bed down on a rock.”
“I have a couple of empty cells, Shamus,” Clitherow offered. “Iron cots and straw mattresses, I’m afraid, but I can supply clean blankets.”
“Hell, Jim, anything’s better than lying on horse dung,” Ironside said.
“You’re very kind,” Shamus said. “But I don’t want you to go to any trouble for us.”
“It’s no problem. I have a cabin at the edge of town,” the sheriff said. “It’s about the size of a closet, but it’s enough for my needs. I sent the orphan kid who slept in the jailhouse to Dromore with my message and he never came back.”
“Jacob takes all kinds of waifs and strays under his wing and he gave the kid a job at Dromore,” Ironside explained.
Exhausted, Shamus quickly put an end to the conversation. “We gratefully accept the hospitality of your jail.”
The pretty young Ma’s Kitchen waitress refilled coffee cups and smiled, revealing good teeth. “How were your steak and eggs, gentlemen?”
“Just fine, Molly.” Clitherow help up his cup.
Ironside looked up at the girl as she filled his cup. “Molly, who is the dude in the gray suit sitting with his back to the wall?”
The girl smiled again. “Ooh, he’s very handsome, isn’t he?”
“I didn’t notice,” Ironside said sarcastically. “But who is he?”
“I don’t know. I expect he’s just passing through, unfortunately.” Molly refilled Shamus’s cup and turned her attention to the next table.
Shamus took a sip. “Luther, if you’re so all-fired determined to know the man’s name, why don’t you ask him?”
“Hell, no, I’m not doing that. He might be on the scout and I’d embarrass him.”
“He troubles you, Luther?” Clitherow asked. “You think he may have planted the dynamite?”
“Nah, I don’t think that. Dudes like that just grate on me, is all.”
Shamus coughed. “To change the subject, Jim, when do you expect your deputy to return to Recoil?”
“He sent a rider to tell me he’d be back today.”
“I hope he’s got some news for us. We can’t fight an invisible enemy.”
Ironside eyed the door. “Uh-oh, I see gun trouble coming down.”
A tall, gaunt man had just stepped inside. Dressed in the black broadcloth pants, boiled white shirt, and string tie of the frontier gunman-gambler, he wore an ivory-handled Colt yellowed with age on his right hip. His eyes were almost hidden in the shadows cast by his shaggy black eyebrows.
Silence fell on the crowded restaurant.
A chair scraped. The man in the expensive gray suit tensed.
Jim Clitherow stood, but the gaunt man nailed him with eyes the color of green ice. “Sit down, lawman. This is none of your concern.”
Ironside, familiar with the codes and manners of gun fighting men, whispered, “Stay out of it, Jim. He’ll kill you.”
A look of puzzlement came over Clitherow’s face.
“He’ll kill you, Jim,” Ironside whispered again.
Shamus studied the tall man who had stopped in the middle of the floor. “Sit down, Jim,” he said, his voice low and urgent.
Confused, Clitherow still heeded the colonel’s warning and sat.
“Some men are better left alone,” Shamus said. “That is one of them.”
The tall man spoke, his lips barely moving under his mustache. “You know why I’m here, Dallas Steele. I’m calling you out.”
“I reckoned on this happening, Seth.” The man in the gray suit showed no sign of a weapon. “I thought you might come after me.”
“Calvin Downs was just twenty-three years old.”
“Your brother was old enough to kill three men in Horse Neck, working for a rich man who wanted to get richer at the expense of everybody else.”
“Downs was all right.” Seth shrugged his shoulders.
“He was a snake, Seth. You knew it then and you know it now.”
“Damn you, he was my brother, and you killed him. I can’t let that pass.”
“I guess you can’t, Seth. You know I’ll kill you, don’t you?”
“I have to try.”
“Walk away from it, Seth. Downs made his reputation killing old men and farm boys. A tinhorn like that isn’t worth dying for.”
“I’m faster than Downs, Dallas,” Seth said.
“Downs wasn’t fast. He didn’t come close to being fast.”
“I have to try.”
Dallas nodded, but said nothing. He looked pained, like a man recalling old, unhappy memories of similar situations that had gone before.
Clitherow tried to rise to his feet, but Ironside held him down. “You’re outclassed here, Jim. You stay put.”
But Clitherow pulled out of Ironside’s grasp and stood, his hand dropping for his gun.
“Damn you, Steele!” Seth yelled.
And he drew.
He was fast. Lightning fast. His gun had even cleared leather when Dallas Steele’s bullet crashed between his eyes.
For a single, horrified moment before the darkness took him, Seth Benson, gunman, gambler, man killer, learned what a fast draw really meant.
Jim Clitherow pulled free of Ironside as scared patrons stampeded for the door. “It’s over,” he yelled. “Go back to your seats and finish breakfast.”
“Damn you, Clitherow,” a miner in a plaid shirt and lace-up boots said. “You served us up a dead man for breakfast.”
Another male voice claimed that his wife was “all a-tremble” over the killing and other diners muttered their sympathy.
Ironside rose to his feet and in a voice like a thunderclap roared, “The sheriff didn’t kill that man.”
People looked at each other in puzzlement, then at Ironside.
“I killed him.” Dallas Steele walked into the middle of the floor and looked down at the body. “His name was Seth Benson and he called me out.”
“Sheriff”—a matronly woman pointed at Steele—“arrest that man.”
“For what? It was a fair fight.” Ironside was irritated. “Benson went for his gun first and Steele fired in self-defense.”
Shamus stood up at the table. “I second that. The gentleman here”—he motioned to Steele—“tried to make it go away. You all heard him.”
Several diners muttered agreement and Steele said, “Seth was informed, but he couldn’t let it go. It was his way.”
Sheriff Clitherow had been silent, but now he looked up at the shooter and said, “You’re Dallas Steele, the one they call the Fighting Pink.”
“Yes, I believe that’s what they call me.” Steel gave a little bow. “At your service, Sheriff.”
“Are you here in Recoil on official business?” Clitherow asked.
“You could say that. I was asked to assess the situation and report my findings to Washington. This affair with Seth was a complication I neither anticipated nor sought.”
Ironside had been the first to declare that Steele had acted in self-defense, but he hadn’t warmed to the man. “Where’s your gun, mister? The sheriff may want to take it.”
Steele pulled back his coat and revealed a short-barreled blue Colt in a shoulder holster. “Do you want my gun, Sheriff?”
“No, I guess not.” Clitherow looked around the room. “Somebody get Elijah Doddle. We’re sure keeping him busy.”