Tanglefoot Page 9

  ‘You were there when the vote was taken by the council, I understand,’ Chad said. ‘You voted against it, didn’t you?’

  Hicks nodded. ‘I did, and so did Kennedy and Walsh.’

  ‘But then … how many members does the council have?’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘Then you had the majority, so how…?’

  ‘Mayor Swanson stepped in. I won’t say he was angry, but he was upset. He said that according to the town charter, he was allowed to vote. He voted for enactment.’

  ‘That still left you with a tie vote.’

  ‘Yes,’ Hicks said, ‘and the matter was sent up to Judge Lambert for a final decision.’

  ‘Swanson’s brother-in-law.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Hicks said. Then he shrugged slightly. ‘Stinks, doesn’t it?’

  Chad shook his head in wonder. ‘You people have a strange way of doing business.’

  A little defensively, Hicks replied. ‘We didn’t have the time – the days, weeks to invest in debating the law. Kennedy owns the lumberyard, Walsh the hardware store. They couldn’t close down for weeks while this dragged on. None of us thought the law could be enforced anyway. Ben Cody? He was so close to retirement that he wouldn’t walk across the street to try do so.

  ‘I suppose,’ Hicks went on in a more thoughtful tone, ‘that we should have known that Glen Walker would be on the lookout for someone to replace Cody.’

  ‘Me,’ Chad was forced to admit. ‘Just a fool who’d do what he was told.’

  ‘But you’re refusing to do it?’

  ‘Walk into the Clipper or FitzRoy and tell them they have to pay five per cent of their take to us for law enforcement from now on? No. I’d be more of threat to them than anyone I was supposed to be protecting them against. Except that I’d be robbing them legally. Who will they blame? Not the mayor, the judge, not Glen Walker, but the man who comes in and demands money from them. I’d have a target on my back in this town.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Hicks said. He was lost in his own thoughts. He removed his spectacles again and rubbed his eyes. ‘So you intend to try to stand up against Walker and his crew?’

  ‘I’d be a renegade lawman they’d feel justified in getting rid of, wouldn’t I? Tell me, Hicks, how many men does Walker have working for him? Thugs, I mean.’

  ‘I couldn’t say exactly. There’s Skinny Jim Foote, his chief gunman. Randall Hart and Lloyd Pearson that I know of. There could be a dozen I don’t know about.’

  ‘I’ll be a marked man,’ Chad said. He probably already was. He had been shot at twice from ambush and he knew that Walker had already approached Starr about taking his job.

  Listen to Candida – ride out of town, and now! You can’t win this fight, he told himself, and it’s not really even your fight.

  A stray beam of morning sunlight glinted off his badge and reflected off Hicks’s spectacles.

  ‘Can you help me out, Hicks? Are you willing to?’

  ‘How? What can I do?’ Hicks spread his hands.

  ‘That’s what I’m here to ask you. You’re the one with the law degree. Can’t we get that law off the books before the trouble really begins? Can’t you think of a way to get rid of the mayor and Judge Lambert?’

  ‘And of course, Glen Walker?’

  ‘Leave Glen Walker to me,’ Chad said, for again Candida had been right, clever woman that she was. You will have to kill Glen Walker.

  ‘Have you any ideas?’ Chad asked, pursuing the thought. ‘Because if something isn’t done about this law, the streets will be running with blood. You, me, everyone else who’s threatened might just as well leave town now, tails between our legs, because when it’s time to enforce the new taxes, people will start shooting. I don’t think that’s the kind of town you want to live in.’

  ‘We could force a referendum on the ordinance,’ Hicks said. ‘We could also seek a recall vote on Mayor Swanson. As for the judge – he’s an appointee of the circuit court. We could petition for his impeachment on the grounds of malfeasance.’

  ‘You could do all that?’

  ‘Yes, or I could just thrust my head into a threshing machine,’ Hicks said, obviously upset now. ‘How long do you think they’d let me live if they found out I was carrying on such legal maneuvering?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Chad rose from his chair and planted his hat on his head. ‘All right, then. It’s all up to you then, Mr Hicks. It’s your town, not mine. If you don’t care enough to take the risks needed to keep it clean, I can’t make you.’

  With that Chad started toward the door, feeling neither defeated nor victorious. He had made a try. That was all he could do.

  As he reached the front door he heard Hicks call to him weakly.

  ‘Listen, Marshal.…’

  But Chad thought he had done all the listening that he was capable of. Either Hicks’s conscience would prod him to do the right thing, or he would simply take the easy route, satisfying himself that there was really nothing he could accomplish anyway.

  And what was there that Chad could really accomplish against this stacked deal? The air outside was stagnant and dry. It had the stink of corruption about it. The streets were nearly empty as the temperature continued to climb across the desert community. His buckskin horse was still hitched in front of the marshal’s office, its head hanging, miserable under the weight of the high sun. Chad decided to stable the animal, where it would at least have shade and water. The horse was right:

  It was not the sort of day to strike out across the long desert. It was only the concept and not the reality that seemed alluring.

  TEN

  The front door to the jailhouse was unbarred when Chad returned from stabling his horse. Apparently Starr had not felt concerned about his own safety. Or maybe he had just staggered off to bed without remembering to do it. Chad smiled faintly. These nightly conversations Starr was having with Peggy Kimball seemed to be wearing his deputy down.

  Chad entered the office, leaving the door open behind him. There was the slightest of breezes rising and he thought it might cool things off a bit. No sooner had he stepped inside than Starr appeared from the back room, where he had his cot.

  ‘I am going to find a way to get me a place to live somewhere no matter what it takes,’ Starr said in a sleep-mutter. ‘Is there any water in that barrel?’

  He walked to the small oaken barrel that they used chiefly to store water to boil for coffee. He used the dipper to take a drink. The remainder of the water in the dipper he splashed over his head. He turned toward Chad. ‘You’ve been gone a while, Marshal. What’ve you been doing.’

  ‘Getting us in more trouble, I suppose,’ Chad answered.

  ‘Oh? Why don’t you just give it up, Chad? You’re not cut out for this, and you know it.’

  ‘You want my job?’ Chad asked.

  ‘Maybe I do,’ Starr answered. He leaned back against the counter. ‘I mean, maybe I should want it. Peggy was asking me when I thought we could move in together, when I could get her out of the saloon business. I think she has been talking to Glen Walker again about what an opportunity I had.’

  ‘There’s only one person with an opportunity in Las Palmas – and that’s Glen Walker,’ Chad answered.

  ‘Well, by God!’ Starr snarled. His eyes went narrow and he drew and fired his Colt before Chad could have touched his own pistol. From behind him Chad heard a moan, the whimper of a crippled animal, and he spun around in confusion, seeing Domino Jones – dead – against the office floor, a gun trickling free of his grip.

  ‘Starr!’ Chad said, still trying to catch his breath. For a moment there, he thought his frustrated deputy had turned on him, turned violently. He turned to find Starr holstering his pistol, his head still damp, his eyes still bleary.

  ‘That’s one less of them,’ Starr muttered, then he started back toward his cot in the storeroom.

  Chad stood over the body of Domino Jones. A few passers-by had stopped to peer into the office, summoned
by the sound of gunfire. How many times did that make it that Starr had saved his life? He remembered Starr’s words: You’re not really cut out for this, and you know it.

  ‘I’ll keep practicing,’ he said to no one. Then to the group of men standing in the doorway, ‘I want you to get this man out of here. The town will pay you two dollars each for the job.’

  Would they? Who knew? And Chad did not care; he just wanted the late, abominable Domino Jones taken out of his sight.

  But the man remained in his memory as he seated himself at his desk again.

  Glen Walker was muttering to himself as he walked back to his hotel and entered the room. Carmalita was there on the bed – where else would she be? He took off his coat and flung it aside. Then he walked to the window and stared out at the sun-beaten town of Las Palmas.

  That stupid Domino Jones had gotten drunk and had chosen to just walk right into the marshal’s office and brace him there. And gotten himself gunned down. The idiot! Chad Dempster must be better with a gun than Walker had given him credit for. He had gotten Charlie Burnett the day he had also winged Domino in the alley. Randall Hart had missed him when he was sent to eliminate Dempster on his way home. Lloyd Pearson had not returned from the job he had been given.

  Now Domino Jones. Maybe Skinny Jim could take him: he was quick on the draw, but Walker had started to think he would have to get rid of the man himself.

  With that thought in his mind he retrieved his rolled-up gunbelt and Colt revolver from the top shelf of the closet and sat down at the table to clean and oil the pistol while Carmalita, sitting up against the pillows, watched him with wide, dark eyes.

  ‘I thought you didn’t do that no more,’ she said uneasily. ‘You said no more shooting, that there were easier ways for us to make money.’

  ‘Good help is hard to come by,’ Walker growled.

  ‘Send out the Skinny Jimmy,’ Carmalita said, swinging her legs to the side of the bed, watching him with concern.

  ‘I probably will let him take a try,’ Walker answered, cleaning the muzzle of the pistol with a small brass brush. ‘But I have a feeling that this is going to come down to him and me eventually.’

  ‘Who is him?’ she asked although she thought she already knew the answer. She crossed the room to sit down facing Glen Walker as he checked the action on the pistol, then slowly began loading six brass cartridges into the chambers. ‘You are talking about Tangletoes, aren’t you?’

  ‘Marshal Charles Proctor Dempster,’ Glen Walker said glumly, slapping the loading gate of the revolver shut and holstering it. ‘He’s just gotten to be too much to handle. He’s been seen out at Ben Cody’s place, and visiting Reg Hicks.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The lawyer who sits on the town council. I don’t know what those two are cooking up, but Charles Dempster has gotten out of hand. I regret the day I ever hatched the plan involving him – don’t say anything, Carmalita!’

  ‘I wasn’t – not about that.’ She leaned across the table and took his hand. ‘But do you have to kill him? My cousin, Candida, she had grown very fond of this man.’

  ‘That’s no reason not to take care of business,’ Walker snapped, rising to place his gun away for the time being. With his back to Carmalita, he said, ‘Or have you forgotten all the plans we have made – a grand house with servants, a surrey and a matched set of bay horses, furs and silks and satins to wrap yourself in?’

  ‘I have forgotten none of it,’ Carmalita said. ‘And I will always appreciate it. But, Glen, sometimes plans go wrong.’

  ‘Not this one,’ Glen Walker said in what was nearly a snarl. ‘I won’t let this one go wrong, and as for Candida, well, it’s just too bad for her. I’ll be back after lunch. I need to talk to the mayor and Judge Lambert and let them know that Hicks might be trying to stick his nose into our business as well.’

  He went out and closed the door firmly. Carmalita sat on her bed in her night clothes, staring after him.

  ‘Poor Candida,’ she said aloud. ‘Poor Candida.’

  Jim Foote sat gloomily at a round table in the corner of the Clipper saloon. It had been a long time since he was thin, but the name ‘Skinny Jim’ had stuck to him, and they would probably still call him that if he gained so much weight that he resembled Ben Cody. The saloon was crowded, as it always was when the desert sun drifted high.

  Foote was in the dumps because he had just gotten word that his closest friend and long-time saddle partner, Lloyd Pearson, had been found shot dead up along Lindo Creek. Rumor had it that the marshal, Dempster, must have done it. Skinny Jim didn’t see how it could have happened that way. Lloyd was a very careful man.

  Jim sipped at his beer, not really tasting it. Around him was the noisy, constant turmoil of the Clipper saloon crowd. It was irritating to a man in his mood. One voice in particular offended him.

  ‘It’s only twenty bucks, Biggs,’ Deacon Forge was whining. ‘You know I’m good for twenty.’

  Foote glanced that way. Deacon Forge sat at a four-man poker game, his cards folded together in front of his chin.

  ‘Hell, you don’t even have a job any more,’ Aaron Biggs, a big, red-faced man replied. ‘I wouldn’t take your marker for a dime.’

  ‘Just take my IOU,’ Forge was pleading. He might have thought he had a good hand, but he seemed to have forgotten that you have to pay to play. His voice was irritating Skinny Jim. When Forge thought he was riding high he had come in here every night to gamble. Twice, while he was still deputy marshal, Deacon Forge had arrested Skinny Jim, both times ruining a night Jim had planned. Skinny Jim couldn’t stand the man, especially not today.

  ‘I’ll put my horse up,’ Forge was saying.

  ‘I’ve got a horse,’ Aaron Biggs said. ‘I come in here to play for cash – which I am a little short on.’

  ‘You’ve got to listen to me!’ Deacon Forge said, getting to his feet.

  ‘Everyone’s getting damned tired of listening to you,’ Skinny Jim said, rising as well. ‘You’re a lousy gambler, you were a rotten deputy, and you’re not much of a man. I don’t know why they even tolerate you in here.’

  ‘Shut up, Foote!’ Deacon Forge said.

  ‘Did you actually say that to me?’ Skinny Jim said, walking nearer to the card table as other men backed away.

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘I heard you, but I didn’t like it. Back away from that table, Deke. I’d hate to accidentally hit one of the boys.’

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ Deacon Forge said, placing his cards down on the table. Forge was good with a gun, but the alcohol he had consumed gave him an inflated idea of how good. Everyone knew that Skinny Jim was the fastest gun in Las Palmas.

  ‘I’ll tell you when it’s a joke,’ Skinny Jim Foote said coldly. ‘Draw or run!’

  ‘By God, then! You asked for it.’ Deacon Forge went for his Colt. He drew first, but Skinny Jim lived up to his reputation. His pistol banged off a shot just as Forge pulled the trigger on his own gun. Smoke curled up toward the ceiling of the Clipper as men dove for cover, the sound of the sudden shots still echoing in their ears.…

  Chad Dempster happened to be passing by the Clipper at that very moment. The gunfire sent him racing through the door. He could not tell what was going on. Men milled around, looked up from under overturned tables or hid behind the bar. He fired his own revolver into the ceiling to try to calm things down.

  Somehow it worked. Men sat on the floor or pressed their backs against the walls, staring at the man with the badge. Chad crossed the room slowly. He looked down at the still forms of Skinny Jim and Deacon Forge.

  ‘Someone get them out of here,’ he said. ‘The town will pay you two dollars apiece for helping.’ Then, gun smoke burning his nostrils, Chad walked through the swinging doors and out onto the porch, breathing in fresh air. He leaned against the outside wall and ejected the spent cartridge from his Colt, replacing it with a shell from his gunbelt loops. A scrawny man in a badly frayed twill jacket had
emerged from the saloon. His eyes were bleary, his legs unsteady beneath him.

  ‘They were both troublemakers,’ the man said, his eyes bright with liquor. ‘You done this town a favor. That was good shooting in there.’

  There was a surge of men rushing toward the Clipper, drawn by the shots. Chad saw the little drunk walk toward the excited newcomers and point back at him. He was waving his arms and talking up a storm and the men who had not been there seemed to be soaking it up. A rumor had been born and before nightfall even those who had actually witnessed what had happened were challenged in their memories. The rumor became fact before the sun had gone down.

  ‘All right,’ Glen Walker said as he strapped on his sidearm. ‘Enough is enough.’

  Carmalita, who had actually found the energy to stir from the bed and put on her dark-blue dress in hopes of being invited out to dinner, stared at Glen as he buckled the gun on. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, her voice a little tremulous.

  ‘I was just telling you. Don’t you ever listen? Charles Dempster shot both Deacon Forge and Skinny Jim dead over at the Clipper.’

  ‘The tangled-legs man killed Skinny Jimmy?’ an astonished Carmalita asked. ‘You always tell me Skinny Jimmy is the best of your men.’

  ‘He was,’ Walker said without expression. ‘I don’t know how it happened, but everyone in town is talking about it. He got both of them!’

  ‘So now it is up to you,’ Carmalita said.

  ‘It looks like it,’ Glen Walker answered. ‘I don’t know what road the man is following, but I know where it’s going to end.’

  ‘Are we going out to dinner?’ Carmalita asked, stepping near to Glen Walker, plucking at his coat sleeves. He grinned down at the simple woman.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Why not?’

  ‘They’re calling you a real town-tamer,’ Byron Starr said in the jailhouse office. He was smiling, but Chad Dempster wore a heavy frown.

  ‘I told you what happened, Starr. I don’t know how the story got so twisted.’

  ‘Don’t complain about it,’ Starr advised him. ‘It could work to your advantage. Men will think twice about pulling a gun on you.’