“Wait, wait, wait,” Jason said, holding up his hands. “Start over!”
“You heard me the first time,” Ward growled, and pulled Jason to his feet, using his good arm. “He wants the leader of the whites to come fight him, and he’s serious. He’s singin’ his death song, in case you want t’know just how serious he is.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, goddamn it!”
Jason blinked three times in rapid succession, as if waking from a deep sleep, and then he straightened. “What weapons?”
“Knives.”
“Aw, crud.”
“Don’t worry, I set the freighter’s smithy to whetting you the finest blade he could lay his hands on.”
Jason sniffed. He had never been very good with a knife. “That’s comforting.” He walked forward and opened the door, ushering Ward out before him. “When’s this supposed to happen?”
“Whenever you show up, I guess. Though he did say something about high noon.”
“Good. I like noontime,” Jason said facetiously. “Sun doesn’t get in your eyes unless you look straight up. Just burns the living crud out of you.”
“Could be worse,” said Ward. “Could be July.”
The two men walked purposefully across the square, behind the livery, and up the nearest ladder. Jason could hear the death song now, just faintly. It was tuneless, as far as he could figure, and that brave had no business singing it—or any other song. Or tune.
Or collection of random things that were supposed to be notes.
Jason listened for a moment to what he considered to be just noise. “What’s he saying?” he asked Ward.
Ward shrugged. “More death song.”
“This fight he wants to have. Is it supposed to be to the death then? Or is he doing it just to scare us?”
“He’s an Apache. Is there any other kind than the first?”
“Figures.”
Jason sighed. Just when you thought things were over, they weren’t.
“He ain’t got no more braves with him. Only thing he brought was that red and white pony, tied out to the left, back behind those prickly pears.” Ward gestured, stabbing his finger until Jason saw the pinto tethered behind the cactus.
“What happens if he wins?”
“He goes home and they have a big party. And he probably saves a little face.”
“And then he comes back to polish off the rest of us?”
Ward thought about it for a second before he said, “I reckon so.”
“And if I win?”
“Then I don’t reckon he goes home at all.”
“Retribution?”
Ward shrugged.
Jason didn’t have a good feeling about this, but before he could say anything, Saul Cohen, who he’d forgotten was there behind him, said, “I’ll go in your place, Jason. They don’t know your face.”
Jason wheeled about. There was not one flicker of fear or even apprehension on Saul’s face. How the heck did he do that?
Slowly, Jason shook his head. “God bless you, Saul, but no. You have a wife and children who need you, and who’d never forgive me if I got you killed on my account. But there is something you can do.”
“Anything.”
“I want Ward to come along and translate.” Next to him, Ward nodded.
Jason turned back toward Saul. “And I need you to stay up here. If the Apache takes me down, I want you to kill him before he can make it to that pony and ride back to his people.”
Saul started to open his mouth, but before he could utter a peep, Jason added, “If you have to pretend that he’s going to turn any moment and shoot at you, then pretend.”
A hint of a smile ticked at the edges of Saul’s lips. “Yes, Jason. I’ll do it.”
Jason clapped him on the shoulder. “Knew you would, buddy.” Then to Ward, he said, “C’mon. I’ve got our best man to back me up.”
“But goldang it, Jason!” Ward kept grumbling as they made their way into the livery. “Why you got to fight him anyway? It ain’t like the whole Apache nation’s out there watchin’, and gonna give you a turkey iffen you win and the promise to leave you on your own for the rest’a your natural life.”
“I know that, Ward.” He climbed through a broken window, and Ward followed.
“But Jason…Oh, cripes! I just don’t get you at all sometimes. And why do we gotta go through the window all the time?”
“That’s all right, Ward,” he replied. “The window was closer. And I don’t get me either.”
Jason found Jenny, who reacted slightly more violently than had Ward.
In fact, she wept and beat on Jason’s chest with her fists. And then she cursed him up one side and down the other for being six kinds of a fool.
And then she asked the same question that Ward had. “Why don’t you just go back up there and shoot him? They attacked us, not the other way round. They don’t have any sense of fairness or decency. Why should you show them any at all?”
He looked at her for a moment before he said, “Somebody’s got to do to the right thing, Jenny.”
“But why’s it always us?” she called after him. “Why is it always you?”
Ward was wondering the same thing, but he didn’t give his questions voice. He just did what he always did—said, “Yes, Jason,” or “No, Jason,” and did what he was told. And hated himself for it sometimes.
“It’s comin’ on noon,” he said softly.
“I know,” Jason replied. They’d made the rounds and told everybody of importance what Jason planned to do—and to hold their fire. They were almost back around to the south gate again.
“You ready?” Jason said when they reached it.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Ward said, wishing he were back East, cleaning out somebody’s outhouse. Anything but this.
Jason unstrapped his six-gun and hung it on a post. “That better be there when I get back,” he told Salmon Kendall. They had collected quite a group of followers on their way around the town, and Mayor Kendall was right up front.
Kendall slid it off the post and onto his arm. “I’d admire to hold on to it for you, Jason,” he said.
“And Ward’s, too,” Jason said, motioning to Ward to take off his gun, too.
Ward hesitated a little too long—it was against his religion to go anywhere near a wild Indian without a weapon at his side, if not in hand—but at last he sighed and stripped himself of his gun belt.
Mayor Kendall accepted his rig, too.
And Ward figured that the next time they had an election—here or anyplace else—he was going to run for mayor, not deputy.
And he was definitely not going to toss his hat into the ring for sheriff!
Jason took the big Arkansas toothpick into his hand and gently ran it over his arm. It left behind a thin red line that dripped blood. “Nice,” he said with a smile to the man who’d whetted it.
The man smiled back. “We aim to please,” he replied. And he was the first of them to say, “Best of luck to you, Sheriff.”
Jason nodded while Ward and the others chimed in with their felicitations as well, although Ward noticed that nobody wished him luck. Nobody ever wished the deputy luck, dad-blast it.
Somebody opened the gate’s latch, and it swung in toward them.
The crowd quieted.
“All right, Ward. Let’s do it.” Jason stepped into the opening and out the gate, and into the stark rays of the noontime sun.
Against his better intuition, Ward followed along behind.
“Close it up, men,” Jason shouted, and blast them if they didn’t do it without so much as a by-your-leave!
Ward felt a distinct whistle of cowardly wind flicker over his backside as the gate slammed closed and the latch went back down with a dull and very final thud.
The Apache, who had been sitting on the ground and silent when they first stepped out, rose to his feet. He was tall for an Apache. Ward guessed him at about six feet. And he was as lean and muscular as Jason was, maybe leaner and more muscular.
Great.
Ward found himself wishing that he’d kept that little pocket gun he’d taken off Rollie Biggston last year. He had a feeling it would come in awful handy in a minute or two.
“Tell him who we are and ask what he wants,” Jason said.
“Like we don’t know,” Ward muttered before he spoke up in Apache. “This is Jason Fury, the high sheriff of our city. I am only an interpreter. Jason Fury comes armed as you said, and only, as you said, with one blade. He says he will fight you now, but not until he knows your name.”
Ward translated what he’d said for Jason, then listened while the Indian spoke. He translated this, too: “I am called Lone Wolf. I carry one blade, as I have told you, and nothing more.”
Jason said, “Thanks, Ward. You ask him, if I win this fight, are his people gonna leave us alone?”
Ward jabbered, then the Apache jabbered, then Ward said, “Yup.”
“That took you long enough,” Jason grumbled. “You sure you didn’t recite the Gettysburg Address in there somewhere?”
Ward just looked at him.
Jason said, “Well, how long are they gonna leave us alone for?”
“Didn’t say.”
“But—”
“I wouldn’t press him on it, Jason.”
“Aw, crud…Well, I suppose we’d best get to fighting.”
Ward repeated Jason’s comments to Lone Wolf—except for the “Aw, crud” part—and Lone Wolf replied to him at length.
“He says to take your shirt off,” Ward told Jason.
“Why?” Jason knew he’d bake bright red in no time at all.
“You’re lucky he didn’t tell you to strip outta them pants, too,” Ward said, and Jason finally took him at his word.
He shucked out of the sleeves of his flannel shirt, then tossed it over to Ward.
“Just as well,” he said. “Keep it from gettin’all full of holes like the last one.”
He stood up a little straighter, the knife in his right hand, its blade pointed up and out. “Tell him c’mon, let’s go.”