Andromeda Gun (12 page)

“That would be about thirty dollars tuition,” he said. “Maybe that’s why the Mormons won’t send their children to school. Mr. Bryce Peyton’s eighteen would cost him about seventy dollars, likely more’n he makes for a year. If you cut your rate on big orders, maybe the Mormons would come in.”

“One thing I’m bound and determined, Ian, is never to lower my fees. A dollar earned is a dollar saved, I say.”

“I ain’t really took to the idea myself,” he admitted, “I was just practicing my sums.”

“Fie on sums. Now, you tell me Ian, what would you like to do most, right now?”

Right now, he would like for her to kiss him and hug him, but he was shy around schoolteachers with high ideals, so he merely said, “You’d slap my face if I told you.”

“You know I’m dead set against violence. Go right ahead and tell me.”

“Ladies first.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die if you tell?”

“Cross my heart,” he promised.

“I’d like to have one good, solid sin under my belt,” she confessed, “so I could go up to the altar and confess it in church. I feel a might lonely, sitting back there in the pews all by myself when the other women go strutting up. Then mama won’t lord it over me. Tell me, Ian, have you ever had a hankering to sin?”

“Not till right now, Gabe. All other times, I just fall into them, natural like. But I’d like to march up to the altar and kneel beside you.”

“Why, Ian, that’s the nicest thing a boy ever said to me. I want to reward you with something that almost any girl can give a boy, but it counts for more when it’s give for the first time. I want to give you the first kiss I ever gave a boy.”

“I’d really appreciate it, Gabe.”

She reached up and kissed him on the lips, but she didn’t hug him.

“That’s half of what I wanted,” he admitted, “but it looks like I’m going to have to take the other half on my own.”

He put his arms around her and hugged her, giving her back a kiss.

“To the swing, Ian,” she whispered.

Now he knew what Bain had meant when the saloon keeper said he could taste poker chips. Ian could taste the wood, paint, cushions, and chain the swing swung by, and he was going to chance it if it meant getting gunned down in the dark.

“Let’s go, girl.”

As he stood, he could faintly see from the corner of his eyes a deeper darkness move behind the dark honeysuckle vines on the south side of the porch. “Gabe, we got us a snooper,” he whispered, and sprinted along the yard toward the vines, drawing his pistol.

He was running in high-heeled boots, and he had to swing around a rosebush planted near the corner of the porch. Whoever it had been was alerted by Ian’s movement and was sprinting toward the ravine. Ian pulled to a halt, knowing he was beaten before he started, for the whop-whop of shoes hitting the ground was dwindling across the side yard.

Probably some chicken-stealing Indian, Ian decided; the snooper was running too fast to be a white man.

Suddenly the rapid whop-whop of the running shoes ended in a sodden whomp, and there was silence.

“Some Indian’s necked himself on the clothesline, Gabe,” he called to the girl, keeping his voice low. “Crack the parlor door to give us a little light, but go easy so you don’t wake up your mama. She’d die if she thought some Indian was stealing her chickens.”

He walked through the dark to the clothesline and felt along it until he stepped on a body. Grabbing it by a leg, he dragged it toward the front porch. From its weight, it might make a good culvert digger, except Indians were lazy. Gabriella watched from the porch as he dragged the body into the spreading sliver of light from the parlor.

His Indian was Billy Peyton, bandaged hand and all, dressed in overall and shod in clodknockers. In a fit of rage, Ian drew back his foot and kicked the supine farmer prone.

Peyton’s rib cracked, he moaned, and Gabriella screamed from the porch, “Don’t do that, Ian. Oh, please don’t!”

Denied physical expression by the girl’s dislike of violence, Ian shouted down at Peyton, “Come on, act alive. I heard you moan, so I know you ain’t dead. So far, all you’ve got is a little necking. I know you’ve took more than this.”

Suddenly Liza’s voice keened through the front bedroom window, “Gentle does it, Ian. That filly ain’t been broke yet.”

“Oh, mother,” Gabriella shouted. “Get back to your own bedroom and quit eavesdropping.”

As Gabriella rushed over to slam the window shut, Billy Peyton sat up, rubbing his jaw.

“Why are you sneaking around here, plowboy?” Ian asked.

“I brought over your laundry, Mr. McCloud, like you told me to do.”

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out Ian’s bandanna, freshly laundered, starched, and ironed. “I didn’t want to take it all the way to town. I’m a little sensitive about my finger, and farming’s been keeping me busy. Besides, I wanted to see if Miss Stewart would let me call on her when you’re not visiting, because I know she wants them Mormon children for her school and I can help.”

“Billy Peyton, you can call on me if you wish, but I’ll never marry a Mormon.”

“I’ve decided to convert, ma’am. I’m joining the Methodist Church next Sunday, and I’d be powerfully pleased if you’d let me come calling, if you’re not ashamed to be seen with a cripple like me.”

“Oh, hush up, Billy. You’re no cripple. Quit feeling sorry for yourself. And I’ll believe you’re converted when I see you baptized, next Sunday morning.”

“Where’s your horse?” Ian asked.

“I left my mule down in the ravine—the beast has a fondness for willow leaves—and came up on foot. I wasn’t going to stay, but I got interested in the stars. Then I waited to see if you could persuade Miss Stewart to sit in the swing. I courted her for six months and never got her out of the parlor.”

“Well, boy, you’ve brung my laundry, and you’ve seen all you’re going to see. Scratch gravel!”

Holding his neck, Billy Peyton stumbled off into the darkness. Listening to his footsteps make a wide circuit of the clothesline, Ian suddenly found the answer to his greatest problem. Already he knew enough about the town’s laws to get him a road gang by morning and put enough money into the road fund to pay top prices for box lunches.

He turned to the girl. “I got official business in town, Gabe. I appreciate you telling me about the stars, and I’ll miss swinging in the swing with you, but I’ve got to hightail it back to Shoshone Flats.”

Gabriella seemed at once relieved and apprehensive after his announcement.

“I’m so upset by that jackleg Mormon I wouldn’t make good company for a preacher, so I’m willing to tell you good night, but I don’t know what I’m going to tell mama. She thinks you were yelling at me and not at Billy.”

“Tell her I’ll need fourteen box lunches a quarter-mile west of Dead Man’s Curve at noon tomorrow. Tell her she’s been appointed commissary steward for the town’s jail. At the restaurant, you figure on fourteen extra hands for breakfast and supper. Charge them an extra nickel for me—because they’ll dirty up your place with road dust.”

Ian was withdrawing from the porch as he issued the instructions, and, turning, he moved toward Midnight with swift, purposeful strides. The stallion must have sensed the inner urgency of the master who swung aboard it, for it swallowed the darkness in giant gulps as it raced northward toward Shoshone Flats.

G-7 was foiled again.

Granted its host was responding to short-range objectives designed to lead a man of limited vision to long-range goals, McCloud was avoiding for the most trivial of reasons those diversions G-7 wished to explore for educational purposes. On the porch, the girl had screwed her courage to the point where she could essay a feeble attempt at dalliance—though no hosannas could be raised for the directness of her method—yet, in the honeysuckle embalmed darkness, McCloud could not see what flowers were at his feet. This man, so direct, brutal, and effective with other men and horses, had stifled his rapacity for the weak female out of some incomprehensible desire to protect the virtue of Western womanhood.

Of what value was this virtue the man helped the girl to hoard against himself? Virginity were no treasure till spent as Liza could have told them, robust, yearning Liza. Love was not love which faltered when it altercation found. Just when G-7 began to feel in the darkness of Ian’s mind the beginning glow of sunrise, the phantom radiance vanished and it was wrapped again in night, once by the idea of a nail in a saddle and now by a clothesline.

G-7 realized that it and its host were growing polarized along differing axes. While the man fumbled toward the hesitant virgin on the porch, a veritable earth mother crouched palpitant in the darkness of the front bedroom, seeking only crumbs of vicarious pleasure. Though the mother was fifteen years older than the daughter, she was only ten years older than Ian.

One decade, a mere photon in the cold light of eternity, yet the time span acted as a barrier between the male and the superbly ovulating female with a pelvic span at least a third again as wide as her daughter’s, disregarding the mammae, and G-7 had no intentions of disregarding the mammae. Ian McCloud might be its host, but Liza Stewart was its woman.

Before he walked through the swinging doors, Ian knew the poker tables had already been set up in Bain’s saloon. Inside, the player piano tinkled out “The Camptown Races” with a dull sound in the middle D, but the tinkle of glasses had slowed in tempo. The laughter of women had become more solicitous and strident, for now the girls had competition. Key change of all was the pleasant murmur underlying all other noises, the whirr of shuffled cards and click of tossed chips.

Entering, moving through the astringent odor of gamblers’ sweat, Ian asked the first bartender, “Where’s Bain?”

“In his office, first door right, at the end of the bar.”

He strode the sixty-odd feet to Bain’s office, past drinkers who eyed his badge with hostility, past Sheriff Faust, whose face was hidden in the foam of a schooner of beer, past six women held erect by their corsets and together by layers of makeup. He shouldered through the feminine ogles, unheeding, knowing the girls were overworked, and unwilling to add to their burdens. Only one of them, a chicken-necked, high-cheekboned, half-breed Shoshone, possessed even an approximation of youth and good looks, and Ian’s appreciation was as objective as it was casual. He had been touched by too fine a madness to be drawn to fallen women; he had looked upon Gabriella by starlight .

G-7’s opinion of the girls differed, particularly regarding the Shoshone. Framed by blue-black hair, her olive skin subdued the highlights of her high cheekbones, which, themselves, imparted the quality of sculpture to a head borne regally on her slender neck. She might have been an Indian princess and the others her ladies-in-waiting, for they all shared her grace of posture, a slight forward sling to their pelvises which enhanced the harmonics of their forms.

Mr. Bain was seated at his desk, a bottle of Red Dog before him, totaling a column of figures which he shoved aside when Ian entered. He arose in greeting, “Come in, deputy. Draw up a chair and have a drink of my private stock. I know you took the pledge, but what Brother Winchester don’t know won’t hurt him.”

Bain was wasting the ritual on Ian because the deputy was already in, seated, and reaching for the bottle of whiskey.

“Keep your seat, Bain,” he said, taking a drink from the bottle. “I’m here strictly on business. Coming in, I noticed all the poker tables were full.”

“Yeah, but business has been slow. I filled the last ones just before you came in.”

“You’re lying, Bain, but it don’t make no difference. I want you to fork over eighteen dollars a night for my quarter share of the road fund and have it ready prompt every morning in cash, even if a blizzard closes your dive. That way I won’t have to worry about you cheating. The first morning that money ain’t forthcoming, I padlock the place.”

“Deputy, you’re not being reasonable. Tonight was opening night. Most nights won’t be so good. Besides, I got Mayor Winchester’s cut to worry about, and you’ll be eating into his take.”

“What Winchester don’t know won’t hurt him,” Ian reminded Bain, “but I ain’t here to do your bookkeeping. Fork up my eighteen tomorrow or close… Now, here’s what I want done around one tonight: Pass out a free drink to each big winner and give each table’s heavy loser a double of whatever he’s been drinking. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Right now I want you to come out and stand next to me while I tell your customers I’m going to abide by the policies of Sheriff Faust, far as law enforcement’s concerned.”

“Boss,” Bain objected, “if you tell them galoots that, they won’t respect you.”

“I ain’t asking advice. Let’s go.”

Bain followed him from the office. Outside, the player piano was playing “I Dream of Jennie with the Plink-Plonk Hair.”

“Turn that thing off and don’t turn it on again till its fixed.”

As Bain hastened to turn off the piano, Ian climbed to the top of the bar and clapped his hands for attention. As he waited for the voices to die, he marveled at his own thought processes which had grasped the connection between a posted ordinance, Billy Peyton’s neck, and the habitual riotousness of Westerners. It was as if someone else were doing his thinking for him.

“Folks,” he announced, “I apologize for breaking into your fun, but I’d like to tell you that as deputy of this here town I intend to carry out the policies of your beloved Sheriff Faust.”

Hoots and derisive laughter arose from the crowd, but the bleary-eyed Faust lifted a fresh schooner of beer to salute himself in full approval of the announcement.

Putting a hesitant, pleading smile on his face, Ian used the first Biblical quotation of his life. “I want to remind you that wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging, and whosoever is deceived thereby, is not wise.”

“Amen,” some wiseacre croaked.

“But I ain’t here to talk about the evils of drink. I’m here to ask you boys to cooperate with the high sheriff and me to see that the town’s laws get obeyed. Please don’t get too drunk to set on a horse. Please don’t race your horses during business hours. And for this one I’m giving you a ‘pretty please’: Don’t fire your pistols as you ride out tonight. I get up with the chickens, so I need my sleep.