Charlie Martz and Other Stories (5 page)

He wore a sweat-stained sombrero that had a silver concha band, and his lips formed a smile that turned them down at one corner.

“Charlie, you trying to sell these boys a big bill of goods? The first part sounded all right. Could have happened. But I thought I'd better stop you before you found yourself in a fish story. I'm just gettin' at how come you decorate your gun with a notch when that notch is standing right in front of you?” The stranger bellowed with laughter. “Don't you know me, Charlie?”

The rider's spurs chinged in rhythm to his heavy stride as he took a few steps to the bar and leaned his elbow on the edge. Mickey Tigh shuffled down to him to be of service, but the rider waved him away.

“This is strictly business,” he said, without taking his eyes from Charlie. “Maybe one later.” He pushed his hat back from his forehead and leered at the sheriff.

Charlie blanched and lurched a half step forward.

“I come in at the wrong time, Charlie? Did I wreck your yarn?” The corner of the gunman's mouth drooped even farther and he shot a glance at Vance Roman holding the sheriff's pistol.

“You pointin' that at me, son?”

“No, sir,” Vance stammered. “This is Charlie's. I was only lookin' at it.”

The gunman had an amused smile on his face. “Oh, that the gun Charlie shot all those outlaws with? Say, I'd like to take a look-see at such a famous iron as that. I'm especially interested if it's the one Charlie used on Reb Spadea.”

He walked up to Vance slowly, swaggering with the confidence of two heavy pistols on his hips, and took the Colt out of his extended hand. There wasn't any sign of resistance from the cowboy. He inspected the gun carefully, spinning the cylinder, and then looked up at Charlie.

“This the one you got Reb with, eh?”

“You know that as well as I do, Reb. You were on the receiving end!” The sheriff spoke with just the slightest nervous edge to his tone, but if nervousness was there his face showed no sign of it. “I thought you were up to Fort Harrison for good, Reb?”

“Can't keep a good man down, Charlie. About three months ago I got kinda sick of choppin' rocks and seein' blue coats every place I looked, so I decided to hit out and look up my old
compadre,
Charlie Martz—the one who bought my ticket to Harrison.” Reb still wore the sneering smile on his lips, but there was no gleam in his eyes. They were lifeless. Dead serious. “After ten years of lookin' at stone walls, you'd get a little tired, too, wouldn't you Charlie?”

“Been ten years already, Reb? Yeah, I guess it has,” Charlie reflected. “It was in '78 when we got you.”

“When
you
got me, Charlie. I ain't about to forget those ten years, and that piece of lead in my side—and I still don't think you deserve a notch on your gun for a wound. Big or little.

“Well, that all depends on how you figure your scoring. I figured catching a man of your reputation deserved a notch . . . whether you were underground or just in the calaboose. Don't forget, you were supposed to be in there for good,” Charlie argued.

Reb Spadea was silent for a moment.

“I just got an idea, Charlie. And it's in keepin' with why I'm here. I just figured out how we can make that a legitimate notch. Long as you don't care in particular whose name it belongs to.”

“What you pushin' at, Reb?” Charlie asked. It would be a lot better if the outlaw just spoke out plain. Charlie didn't trust him, but with the distrust, there was still curiosity.

“Well, Charlie, to be perfectly frank with you, I came here to kill you.” Reb Spadea was just stating a simple fact. Nothing to get excited about.

But there was a natural commotion in the Four Aces when this was announced. No one moved too deliberately. Actually, it was like
the room being filled with one long gasp. Charlie, the Count, and Mickey Tigh stood perfectly still. Vance Roman edged innocently over to the safety-in-numbers circle of Spanish Hat riders. Although at that time this group looked something a bit less than formidable. Sid, especially, looked as if any minute his knees would buckle and he'd faint dead away. Vance Roman's mouth hung open as he watched the outlaw with wide eyes of disbelief. He couldn't believe here was the notorious Reb Spadea.

The outlaw was visibly pleased with the shocked expressions. It was no little satisfaction to him to be able to walk into a saloon and with just a few casual words turn everyone's blood to ice water. Reb Spadea would liked to have just stood back for a while longer and watch the faces filled with fear and awe staring at him: but there was business at hand to be taken care of
pronto
. There was no sense in hanging around too long. No one's luck lasts forever.

“Here's how it is, Charlie. It's very simple. You want to make that notch good and I want to take a shot at you. So we'll draw ag'in each other; only I'll use your gun and you can use one of mine. That way I'll get you and your gun will get a notch.”

The Count started to say something, but cut the word off before it was all the way out when Charlie shot a glance at him. The sheriff's face was impassive, but to the Count it told a story.

“Looks like you're leading the band, Reb,” the sheriff drawled. “So I can't very well contradict you. Only I would rather use my own iron.”

The Count's eyes almost popped out of his head. In his excitement he fumbled around for words of objection, but the outlaw cut him off before he could say a word. Reb had made up his mind how it was going to be, and nobody was going to change it.

“I told you how we're goin' to play it, Charlie, so ain't no use of you thinkin' of something else,” Reb stated. “Besides, how we goin' to make that notch good if you're usin' the gun?” He chuckled.

“It was just a thought.”

“Well, get those thoughts out of your head and start thinkin' what you're goin' to do with this,” the outlaw said, drawing a pistol and handing it to the sheriff. He slipped Charlie's Colt into the empty holster and stepped back two feet. “Watch you don't shoot yourself in the foot now. That's got a hone-trigger on it. 'Course, that's if you last long enough to get your hand around the butt. I don't figure you will.” Reb was speaking for the benefit of the crowd. They'd have a better story to tell their children if he flavored it up a little bit. Reb was dead set on making a legend out of himself—no matter what it cost.

“And we'll stand pretty close, Charlie. I figure your eyes ain't what they used to be.” That ought to give them something to talk about!

The sheriff and the outlaw stood no more than four feet apart. Spadea wore a broad, confident smile. His feet braced and his arms hanging limply. He'd done this before. More than once. Charlie looked a little nervous, but around the eyes there was an expression of a kind that might have been considered amusement. Reb was too full of his own confidence to notice it.

Reb crooked a thumb on his gun belt. “You can commence anytime you want, Charlie.”

And Charlie commenced while the words were still fresh on Reb's lips.

Throughout the border country you're likely to hear the story a hundred different ways, but they all agree on one thing—the main thing. Both men jerked their guns at the same split second. Maybe Reb was a shade ahead, but when the guns came up, Charlie came out of his crouch, leaped at the gunman, and smashed his Colt across the outlaw's face. One story states that the gun crashed against a face that wore a very surprised look.

Reb Spadea sagged to the floor. The force of the blow knocked
him backward a step, and he went down full on his back and lay still. His outstretched hand still clutched the Colt.

Charlie stepped over to the sprawled form and with the toe of his boot pried the pistol from the outlaw's hand. He glanced at the Count and then kicked the revolver in his direction.

“Here you are, Rudy. I don't guess I do deserve that notch.”

But if four cowhands from the Spanish Hat spread had not been too dumbfounded at that moment to speak, Charlie Martz might have gotten quite an argument.

A
LMOST NOTHING WAS KNOWN
of the Chinese-Malay girl Ah Min before the murder of Police Officer Harold Crowley. The day she was brought in, a number of soldiers from a Suffolk regiment identified her by name. A year ago, they said, she had been working in a Kuala Lumpur dance hall; and they remembered her because in all of K.L. they'd never known a girl who looked so inviting, yet acted so believably innocent. They claimed to have seen her frequently at that time; but aside from her name, they knew nothing about her.

With the Crowley incident Ah Min was rediscovered. This time in a Communist jungle camp—technically, a camp of the Thirteenth Regiment, Malayan Races Liberation Army—ten miles north of the village of Ladang.

According to the news item in the
Singapore Straits Times,
Crowley's jeep, with three Malays from his police jungle squad aboard, was ambushed on the main tarmac highway not far from
their Ladang post. A grenade stopped the jeep as they scrambled for cover, Sten guns opened up from the secondary jungle growth close to the road. Crowley and his three Malays were killed instantly.

Within the hour a company from the Suffolk regiment was on the trail of the terrorists. The
Straits Times
account called it pure luck that they were able to locate the jungle camp late the same afternoon. That may be. At any rate, a brief skirmish took place; no one on either side was hit; the terrorists melted into the jungle, safe from effective pursuit with night closing in. And only the Chinese-Malay girl was found in one of the attap huts.

For two full days Ah Min was questioned by Military Intelligence. It can be said that she was treated exceptionally well during this period. Perhaps because she did look rather forlorn and helpless, sitting quietly in her khaki shirt and trousers—faded and torn and several sizes too large for her—answering politely, never complaining of the long hours of repetitious questions.

Where were her father and mother? Both dead. Closest relative? A widowed aunt living in Ladang. But Ah Min lived in K.L.? Only to be able to work to support her aunt. Was she a member of the Malayan Communist Party? No. Even though she was found in a Communist camp?

Ah Min answered that a man she had met in K.L., a Chinese of apparent means, had asked her to come care for his children as an
amah
. She consented, went with him and soon found herself in the jungle camp, closely guarded. Was the man who had deceived her the leader? She thought he was.

So she was shown a photograph of Tam Lee, the most wanted terrorist operating in the Ladang area. Was this the man? Ah Min nodded. Though it must be an old photograph, she said. Tam Lee was much thinner now and he seldom smiled. Intelligence seemed pleased with this.

Finally they gave her back to District Police with a somewhat
vague recommendation. The girl hadn't been armed when she was taken, so they couldn't very well execute her. She could be placed in a detention camp. However the poor girl was cooperative enough. She seemed the sort who'd been kicked around and taken advantage of all her life. Perhaps it was time someone treated her decently. Which could mean simply letting her go free. Still, it wouldn't do to take unnecessary chances.

So Ah Min was sent to the Communist rehabilitation school at Taiping. The School of Great Peace and Tranquility.

During the morning at Taiping, beginning the second week, Ah Min attended required courses. One explained the necessity for resettlement as long as the terrorists relied on the villages for their subsistence. Another stressed the need for Malay and Chinese to live together in an atmosphere of mutual respect and understanding. Still another course dealt briefly with the responsibilities Malaya would soon face as an independent nation. Ah Min's eyes would remain on the instructor, but her thoughts were elsewhere.

Most frequently she relived the six months in the jungle with Tam Lee. The camp had been comfortable, fairly large for being so close to a village, and there had always been enough to eat. The idle times had been the best, when they simply rested or talked or planned ambushes, and when there were no pamphlets to read. The Malayan Communist Party was forever providing dull, political-sounding literature.

There were other girls in the camp, most of them married and happy to be with their husbands. Ah Min was certain Tam planned to marry her. Why else would he want her near instead of working for him in K.L.? He enjoyed her company, she knew. And he respected her ability to plan. A number of times, setting up ambushes, he had acted on her quietly offered suggestions. The way they stopped Harold Crowley's jeep, for example, had been Ah Min's idea.

She could picture it clearly, seeing Tam Lee step out to the road as the jeep approached. He had clutched the grenade to his stomach, bent almost double, dragging his feet and waving feebly as if for help. And as the jeep came to a stop, she saw him lob the grenade underhanded onto the flat hood of the vehicle and dive for the side of the road. There was the explosion and the men struggling to free themselves.

Ah Min could feel the Sten gun in her hands again, the frame stock pressed against her side. She rose with the others and fired point-blank at the jeep, keeping the trigger squeezed, feeling the vibration and hearing the exhilarating clattering sound of the automatic weapons on both sides of her.

The rest was not worth remembering.

In the afternoon—every afternoon while she was at Taiping—Ah Min studied shorthand and typing. This course, an elective, was not taken simply to pass the time. Already a plan was forming in her mind: a way to aid Tam Lee that could be exceptionally interesting, yet required only a normal amount of luck to put into practice. And if it failed she would simply rejoin Tam Lee in the jungle.

Each evening she read the
Straits Times
for news of Ladang. This was the sixth year of the Emergency in Malaya and now only major terrorist incidents were considered newsworthy. Still, at least once every two weeks there was mention of Tam Lee. He now had 15,000 Straits dollars on his head and his organization was fast gaining notoriety as the Ladang Gang.

During the early part of March the gang ambushed two lorries of special constables, killing six men, wounding thirteen, and escaping with two bren-guns and four hundred rounds of ammunition.

In mid-March a police-lieutenant, A. B. Clad, who had replaced Harold Crowley at Ladang, reported the capture of three of the gang. Clad had lain in ambush six days with a handful of his police jungle squad to do it—“demonstrating patience and jungle fighting
ability learned while serving with a Gurkha regiment during the war,” the newspaper account said of Clad.

Tam Lee was mentioned again in early May when the Ladang Gang stopped a Kuala Lumpur–bound bus and unloaded all the passengers except three men—later identified as police informers and one-time Communists. They tied these three to their seats, doused the bus with gasoline, and set it afire. The passengers failed to identify any of the terrorist photographs the police showed them.

That same month Police-Lieutenant A. B. Clad was in the news again. Returning from a visit to a nearby rubber estate, Clad had roared straight through a bandit ambush doing seventy miles per hour and taking a curve at just under fifty while the Sten-gun slugs slammed against his car.

There was a somewhat blurred photograph of Clad standing next to his bullet-marked Riley sedan. The incident was newsworthy because Barney Clad only two years before had been a member of the Jaguar racing team. It was noted that Clad had finished second in the famous Le Mans 24-hour sports car race in 1953.

In June Tam Lee's gang slashed 540 rubber trees in the Ladang area. He led a night raid on the newly established resettlement camp at Seremban, blowing up over a hundred feet of barbed wire and injuring two constables. Twice that month he destroyed the water pipe and telephone lines leading into Ladang.

Barney Clad, it was noted during this same period, had organized an interpolice post badminton tournament for the entire sate of Selangor. Finals to be played the first week of July in K.L.

This last item was unusual enough to rate a close-up photograph of the tournament organizer. Ah Min studied the youthful face of Barney Clad. His age was given as twenty-nine, but he looked much younger. He was smiling—apparently proud of himself, Ah Min decided—and showing very white teeth against his deeply tanned complexion.

Ah Min clipped the photo and studied it for days, comparing it to the picture of Tam Lee in her mind. Comparing this man who organized badminton tournaments with the man who attacked well-guarded resettlement camps. The smiling one who drove fast motor cars and used his life only to amuse himself. The unsmiling one who had been in the jungle eleven years now, fighting first the running-dog Japanese and now the red-haired devil English.

Soon perhaps everyone would see who was the better man. It would require only ordinary luck.

Ah Min was released from Taiping near the end of June. The Malayan Chinese Association, after interviewing her, requested she be given a civil service position to make use of her newly acquired skills of typing and shorthand. “Since she must live in Ladang to support her widowed aunt,” the M.C.A. report stated, “perhaps she could be given a position in the office of the police post—”

B
ARNEY CLAD WAS DELIGHTED
to have a girl who could take shorthand. At least that was the word he used. Ah Min saw little evidence of his delight. Clad smiled the white smile of the photograph and seemed friendly, though far from enthusiastic, sitting low in a canvas chair with his feet crossed on the corner of the desk.

She was more surprised than disappointed that he didn't study her more closely. She knew very well that few girls, even in Kuala Lumpur, could wear a white, tight-fitting
cheongsam
dress as she could. Few had her softly lighted eyes, or knew enough to comb their hair straight and shoulder length so that it would gleam and move subtly as you looked over your shoulder. Yet Clad hadn't even got up.

He asked only a few questions about Taiping before saying, “We can begin right now if you're ready.”

Ah Min nodded. “Certainly. If I may get my book?”

Clad returned her nod. “I'll be right here.”

In the outer office, Clad's Malay police clerk watched Ah Min closely.
What was his name?
she thought.
Yeop. Yes, that was it.
She could feel his eyes on her, but she picked up her notebook and returned to Clad's office without looking at him.

The police lieutenant still sat with his feet on the desk; but now he was intently writing something on a small notepad. Ah Min's eyes rose to the wall map of Malaya behind him. But within the moment her eyes lowered to Clad again, seeing his short-cut brown hair and deeply tanned face and arms. That was a curious thing. The white man was darker than the Chinese and Malays, darker than anyone in the village except the few Tamil Indian people. This smiling, slow-talking, unexcitable Englishman who raced motorcars and organized badminton tournaments—

“Ready?” Clad looked up. “As soon as I file this.”

Ah Min was about to sit down, but now she stopped. Clad had taken a feathered dart from one of the desk drawers. He punched the point through the note he'd written, half turned in the chair, and threw the dart across the room, still with his feet on the desk.

The girl watched him with open astonishment, then looked around. On the wall behind her, pinning their notes to a four-by-five-foot corkboard, were at least a dozen darts.

“My file of things to do,” Clad said. “Notes in plain sight aren't lost.” He saw Ah Min look at him curiously again.

“You might just as well become familiar with it now, Minnie,” Clad said then. “The ones on the right are things to be done soon.” He pointed his pencil in the general direction of the darts. “The ones on the left are things to be done anytime. But sometimes my aim is off and the things to be done soon become things to be done anytime.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “I see.”

“For example,” Clad said, “that note I just filed. That's to remind me—” He paused. “You know about the badminton thing?”

“I heard some about it.”

“It's next Sunday. Here.” Clad's dark face showed momentary concern. “That's something we have to get on right away. Get the word about that it's going to be here instead of K.L.”

Ah Min said, “And the note is to remind you to write letters of explanation.”

Clad shook his head. “I don't have to remind myself of that. No, the one I just filed is a reminder to invite an old friend to the thing Sunday.” He nodded toward the board. “Read it. You can begin getting used to my handwriting.”

Ah Min hesitated. “Which one is it?”

“Somewhere on the right,” Clad said. “To be done soon.”

She moved to the board now, pulled off one of the darts, and read the note aloud. “Phone Rad to bring up a case of Scotch from the Selangor Club Friday.”

“No, not that one.”

She tried another. “Find out where five-four Gurkhas are. Call Mitch for b.t.” Then looked at Clad questioningly.

Clad nodded. Then asked, “You don't understand it?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Mitch is Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Mitchell. Fifth Battalion Fourth Prince of Wales's Own Gurkha Rifles. I served with him during the war. So, when I heard he was somewhere down around K.L., I said to myself, get him to the badminton thing.”

“The b.t.,” Ah Min said, still hesitantly, but nodding her head now.

Clad smiled. “Minnie, my system just sounds complicated. If it wasn't absolutely simple, I wouldn't have any part of it.”

Clad dictated fifteen letters that morning, and during the afternoon, Ah Min typed them. All of them announced the badminton tournament's change of location and urged contestants to arrive early Sunday morning. All were identical but for the last paragraph. Clad varied these, adding something personal and for the most part mildly insulting to each.