“You must be out of your head, Benedict,” Hank Brazos blurted, one hour and half a bottle of rye whisky later.
“Crazy as a loon,” said Arnold Woodcock, sitting bolt upright on the battered sofa in the front room of his ramshackle house on Socorro Road.
“Five thousand dollars, gentlemen,” Benedict intoned, not at all put off by their lack of enthusiasm for the plan he’d just outlined. He ashed his cigar elaborately, set it between his teeth and hooked his hands in his lapels. “Five thousand dollars,” he repeated. “How long has it been since you saw that kind of money, Arnold? Or even fifty. Come, be truthful now, Woodcock. How long has it been since you had fifty dollars to call your own?”
Brazos said something in an angry voice, but Arnold Woodcock didn’t hear what it was—he was concentrating on Benedict’s words. He looked around his shambles of a room and a huge wave of whisky-induced self-pity swept over him. Fifty dollars? He’d never had fifty dollars in his life. All he’d ever had was this shack on a hard bit of dirt that his folks had left him, plus a work mule that wouldn’t work, a sway-backed saddler that hated him, and just enough money coming in so that if he saved and scrimped and went without for three months at a time, he could afford one blowout such as the one he’d been enjoying in Hatch earlier tonight when the Jory thing had cropped up again. One booze-up every three months.
Slowly now, he felt Benedict’s crazy scheme take hold of him as he thought of how life had always short-changed him. Life had cheated him all along the line and then rubbed insult into injury by bestowing upon him a physical likeness to a notorious outlaw and killer. And Duke Benedict, this stylish dude, had proposed a way he could make a play for more money than he’d ever dreamed of in all his life, and at the same time turn to an advantage his accursed resemblance to Turk Jory.
“All right, Duke,” he said slowly, getting to his feet, “I guess you’ve only got to look at me to know I wouldn’t know what fifty dollars looks like. But ... but I want to hear more about this idea of yours.”
“It’s a crazy, stupid, louse-brained idea!” Brazos said with some passion.
Benedict propped an expensive black boot up on a packing crate chair and said, “I’ll spell it out just once more. Gulliver cheated us out of five hundred dollars, Brazos. You’re not going to deny that, are you?”
“No ... no, I reckon as how that’s straight enough.”
“Very well. Now, all I’m suggesting is that we team up with Arnold and beat the fat sheriff of Perona at his own game. After we collect we’ll vanish.”
Brazos shook his big head. “Damn it all, it’d be too risky, man.”
“Yeah, too risky,” chimed in Woodcock. Then, “But just say I was fool enough to go along with this idea ... what would my cut be?”
“We have five hundred dollars coming to us from the Littlehorse deal,” Benedict said easily. “On top of that, Gulliver has added two hundred dollars of his own, so that makes a total of seven hundred dollars. With a three-way split, that makes approximately two hundred and thirty dollars each.”
Woodcock’s face fell. “But there’s five grand on Jory’s head, Duke. What about the rest of the money?”
“Yeah, what about it, Yank?” Brazos said.
“Well, surely you didn’t think we’d be keeping the rest, did you?” Benedict said. “The balance goes back to the law office afterwards. We’re not thieves, mister, even if Sheriff Gulliver is. All we want is what’s coming to us, plus Gulliver’s two hundred which he certainly owes us in compensation.” The gambling man exhaled twin streams of cigar smoke. “Do you still think it’s crazy?”
Brazos stared at him for a long moment, then a slow smile moved the corners of his mouth. “Hey, you know, Yank, maybe it don’t sound so loco after all. I mean, at first I figgered it wasn’t honest. But if we only collected what’s rightfully ours ...” He left the sentence unfinished as he turned to Woodcock. “By golly, he’s the livin’ spit of them posters, ain’t he?”
It was hot in Perona. Sheriff Seth Gulliver sighed and slid deeper into his oversized horsehair-stuffed chair in the law office. His big boots were crossed atop the spur-scarred desk, and his vast stomach rose and fell a little erratically.
The sheriff was feeling just a little uneasy this afternoon and it had nothing to do with the heat or the weight of an uneasy conscience. His problem was entirely a digestive one. It was Thursday, flapjack day at the Mid-Town Diner, and the lawman was fond of nothing as he was of flapjacks. During a two-hour session at his regular table at the Mid-Town, he had consumed flapjacks with ham, flapjacks with eggs, flapjacks with syrup and even flapjacks with flapjacks. He’d worn out two waitresses bringing him plates and after the flapjacks he’d rounded things off with a pitcher of milk, a slab of apple pie that would have choked a goat, and an apple.
He felt he should have passed up the apple.
Trying to ignore the rumblings of protest from beneath his belt buckle, Gulliver cocked an eye at the jailhouse clock. It was almost four. He’d sent the deputy along on an errand to the wheelwright’s ten minutes back, and he should be back any minute. When he returned, Gulliver would send him next door to the saloon for a jug of beer. He sensed that the most likely cause of his uneasiness was that his diet consisted of two many solids in proportion to liquids. A jug of beer should set that to rights.
He must have dozed a little, for when he looked up suddenly he saw Perona’s attorney-at-law and undertaker, Eli Peachman, standing before his desk. Gulliver blinked up at the attorney as he slowly came awake, then he saw that Peachman was not alone. He had a good-looking dude with him. When Gulliver suddenly realized who the fellow was, he dropped his boots to the floor with a bang.
“And a pleasant good afternoon to you, Sheriff,” smiled Duke Benedict. “We’re not disturbing you, I trust?”
Gulliver scowled. “What in hell do you want?” he said gruffly. Then, before Benedict could answer, he went on, “What’s the idea of bargin’ in on me like this, Peachman?”
“We didn’t barge in, Sheriff Gulliver,” pointed out the big-nosed attorney, holding his remarkably prominent belly in two pudgy hands. “We just walked in to find you, shall we say, distracted for the moment?”
Fully awake now, Gulliver looked sharply from one to the other, trying to guess what Duke Benedict, sometime bounty hunter, was doing here in his office with Perona’s attorney-at-law. Gulliver always looked for the worst in other men.
“Well?” he barked. “Come on, come on, out with it. I don’t have all day.”
Benedict smiled, and if there was a hint of wolf in the expression it wasn’t noted by the badge-packer. “Of course,” he murmured, “I know you’re a busy man, Sheriff Gulliver, so we won’t take up more of your time than is necessary. Mr. Peachman, you are the attorney. Kindly inform the sheriff why I’m here ... indeed, why we’re both here.”
Peachman cleared his throat. “Mr. Benedict has retained my services, Sheriff, for the purpose of witnessing his swearing-in as Special Deputy Sheriff.”
“He what?”
“I believe you heard correctly,” Benedict said easily. “You see, Sheriff, I am one who believes strongly in the old adage that one should learn by experience. Now, my partner and I had a little experience here several weeks ago as you will doubtless recall, and—”
“Get to the point,” cut in Gulliver. Fully awake now, he didn’t like the idea of seeing this man he’d cheated smile down at him. “What’s this crap about a swearin’-in? What do you want to get sworn in for?”
“Well, I was just about to come to that, Sheriff.” Benedict ashed his cigar and seated himself. “You see, Brazos and I have decided to enter the bounty hunting profession fulltime. We’re convinced we have a talent for the business. As a matter of fact, we’ve been following this particular line ever since we left your charming town, and in all modesty I must confess we’ve been successful beyond our wildest dreams.”
“Uncommonly successful you might say, Sheriff,” said Peachman, and for the first time Gulliver realized that the attorney was excited about something.
Gulliver scowled mightily at his visitors for a long while before remembering the proud motto of the Gullivers: When in doubt, roar like a bull.
“Will somebody tell me what the hell is going on?”
“Jory,” Benedict said softly.
The name had an effect on Seth Gulliver similar to that of a pin jabbed into a balloon of hot air; he seemed to deflate before their eyes. His jaw dropped open and stayed that way while his eyes popped. “Jory, did you say?” His voice was small in the electric silence.
“I have a lead on Turk Jory,” Benedict said. “In fact, I believe I can deliver Jory to you in a very short time; that is, if the conditions are satisfactory.”
“You ... you know where Jory is?”
“Indeed I do.”
“Where?” Gulliver thumped the desk hard and leaned forward. “Where, damn it? Where?”
“Not so fast, Sheriff,” Benedict drawled. “First, let us talk about money, and good old Act Twenty-one, Section Five. If I bring Turk Jory in, I want to be absolutely certain that I receive ...” he looked meaningly at the big poster of the red-headed bad man on the wall, “... five thousand and two hundred dollars.” His eyes, cold and calculating, now came back to the law officer. “The lot, Sheriff—and I want it guaranteed in black and white by you, which is why I brought Mr. Peachman along with me.”
Gulliver studied the dude’s almost too-handsome face. He searched it for any hint that this high-stepping gambling man might be pulling some sort of stunt, but he found none. Then the sheriff’s eyes went up to the poster on the wall. He’d lived with that bug-eyed face every day of his life. It was there as a constant reminder of the one big black blot on his record, the terrible day when Turk Jory had, with the backing of his trio of gun-toting hardcases, booted no less a personage than Judge Myron Haggerty clear into the street from this very office. And then, before the whole terrified town, Jory had led the sheriff himself, tweaking his fleshy nose, a humiliating two blocks before pushing him into the oversized watering trough in front of the livery.
That had been the blackest day of Sheriff Gulliver’s life and the humiliation hadn’t ended there. Gulliver had Perona in his pocket, yet every time the news of a new Turk Jory escapade reached town, he was conscious of sniggers and elbow-nudging and an occasional coarse jest. The skinny widow with the big dowry he’d planned to marry had witnessed the nose-pulling drama and had dropped him flat. Whenever Judge Haggerty came to town on court business, his first question was invariably, “I don’t see Turk Jory’s name on the charge sheet, do I, Sheriff?” Shame heaped upon shame. But now this fellow was casually telling him that he might bring Jory in—providing the conditions were right. Of course they were right! They were so right that Gulliver was ready, willing and able to play it straight on the bounty money, which demonstrated graphically just how badly his greedy soul craved the satisfaction of getting Turk Jory in his clutches. Turk Jory was even more important to Sheriff Gulliver than five thousand, two hundred dollars.
“All right, Benedict,” he breathed at last, “I’ll do whatever you want. But, so help me, if you are not on the level or—”
“Of course I’m on the level, Sheriff. Why should I lie?”
The rest was a formality. Thirty minutes later, Benedict left the jailhouse wearing a Special Deputy’s star, and in his pocket were two meticulously worded legal documents bearing Gulliver’s signature.