Gunsmoke Justice (3 page)

B
RAD WAS A MAN
who had developed infinite patience in the past years, and now he found it necessary to call strongly on it against this eagerness to seek out land to settle on.

He felt a more immediate duty to Olaf Hegstrom, and so he stayed by the big man during the first dangerous week of his convalescence. There were a number of things Brad found of interest on the homestead. Olaf had come too late in the season to do much in the way of farming, but he had planted a garden in a clearing behind the house and now Brad, with as much help as Olaf could give him, built a rail fence around it to keep out the ever-present deer. It was no easy chore and more than once Brad wondered at the tenacity of homesteaders.

This business of swinging an ax in cutting and trimming endless poles was something he could not fathom. The idea of breaking good ground for a crop when all a man had to do was to put beef stock on the grass was something else beyond his understanding.

Olaf, in his slow-speaking fashion, made it plain that he could not comprehend a man who did not care to raise the food for his table out of the good earth. When he and Brad were at the garden, he would bend between the rows to pull a weed or cover the partially exposed roots of a plant And sometimes when he stood up he would hold out a handful of rich dirt for Brad’s inspection. There was the love of the soil in his every movement.

And yet, despite the fundamental differences, Brad knew that he and Olaf were basically the same. A strong bond sprang up between them, based not on Olaf’s gratitude or Brad’s feeling of responsibility but on mutual respect.

Olaf, Brad learned in the long days, had been a sailor until a few months ago. From the age of ten, when he ran away to sea, he had known only ships. But after fifteen years of sailing, even though he had risen to mate, his desire drove him back to the land.

“I heard of homestead land,” he told Brad, “In Seattle I leave my ship and come across the mountains.” His broad smile came with the memory. “Green,” he said. “Green and fine in the springtime. But they say, That is government land for cattle in the bottom.’ So I come up here; the land is better. There is more water.” He paused, and added wistfully, “My father had a farm like this.”

“You’re not bothering any cattlemen up here,” Brad said. “Why’d they try to run you out?”

Olaf’s only answer was a puzzled shrug. He did not know. “In town at the saloon once,” he said. “But they had no guns.” He flexed his huge right hand. “I fought and they left me alone. But up there in the gap it was different.”

Up there, Brad agreed, the Double Q had meant business. But he could not understand why any ranch would bother a homesteader who had taken forty acres of grass and a hundred and twenty acres of timber, not all of it level. The place was not even adjoining any ranchers’ land.

They finished the deer fence before dinner. No one had bothered them in the past week. It was as if there were no one within a thousand miles aware of their presence. This in itself was suspicious to Brad. He had known too many of Newt’s kind not to wonder why the Double Q had not swept down on Olaf before this. Town, he thought, might be a good place to find a few answers and find information about land.

Restlessness was eating into his patience, and now that Olaf had the use of both hands he felt he could take the time to make a trip.

He put the last poles on the deer fence, thus finishing a structure higher than a deer could jump and with the poles too close together for one to climb through. Outside the main fence and a foot away was a single-pole fence three feet high. Deer, he pointed out to Olaf, frequently jumped straight up, and with this extra fence there would be no way for them to do so.

“There,” Brad said, “the farm’s all yours. I want no part of it.”

Olaf was sucking on a foul-smelling pipe and he removed it from his mouth, regarding Brad gravely. “No land?”

“Lots of land,” Brad said. He looked down at the rolling forty acres of grass in front of Olaf’s shack. “A man’s no good foot-loose, Olaf. He needs his own dirt with a house on it to keep out the weather. And maybe a woman inside.” It was back on him, this hunger for things he had never had.

“But,” he added with a faint grin, “I’ll take mine in beef.”

Olaf knocked his pipe out into loose dirt, stepped on the ashes and stood up. “We go to town now,” he said slowly. “You’ve stayed away long enough.”

“Mind reader,” Brad said, and went to saddle the horses.

When they were ready, he dragged his spare gun from his war bag and handed it to Olaf. The big man took it without question, thrusting it into the waistband of his jeans. Then, mounting carefully, he led the way down a gentle trail to the valley floor.

They went through graze dotted with cattle wearing a half dozen brands. This was bunch grass country, and the beef looked contented enough and fat enough so they did not seem interested in the fenced hayfields on the valley slopes. The road began a half mile after they left the last hill and the going was quick after that.

The valley interested Brad as it might any man looking for a place to light. There was always that dream of a spread — a spread like the one he had always craved. And this was fine country to dream on.

Towns interested him, too. Towns, he figured, had the character of the men who built them and the men who controlled them. As he and Olaf drew closer, he could see that this town was like a hundred others in the west. The wide, dusty street with false-fronted buildings stretching a block or two, a few houses scattered here and there, nothing more. Sawhorse Falls would have a few saloons, a blacksmith shop, a general store. Maybe a jail and a hotel with a dining room. It wouldn’t look like much. It wouldn’t mean much to a man until he got to know the people.

Brad drew rein suddenly as a sign loomed up on his right. He stared at it in astonishment. It was neatly lettered and explicit enough.

It read, “
TOWN LIMITS OF SAWHORSE FALLS, NO FIREARMS ALLOWED. LEAVE ALL GUNS AT SHERIFF’S OFFICE. THIS MEANS EVERYBODY.
”

“I’m not going into any town without my gun,” Brad said. Certainly no town where this Double Q might be. Not when he knew that men like Newt were still around.

He started forward again. The river had slid over toward the road here, and on his right he could see the skeletal remains of the mill that must have given the town its name. A quarter of a mile inside the town limits they came to the first buildings. A livery barn was on the east, and just below it a solid-looking general mercantile. Most of the houses seemed to be east of the main street, though there were a few shacks set back between the buildings fronting on the west and the river.

Down from the mercantile was a small restaurant, and next to it a log structure that Brad recognized as a jail. Across from these were the Sawhorse Saloon and a decrepit structure labeled Sawhorse Hotel. Some distance down from the hotel was the One-Shot Saloon.

Toward this saloon Olaf led the way. “Better beer,” he told Brad.

“I’ll go along,” Brad said. He looked around curiously. It was midafternoon now but there was no one on the street. The restaurant was closed, and there was not even a single horse tied along the street. It was almost too quiet.

“A saloon’s a handy place,” he remarked as they tied in front of the One-Shot. “On a hot day it quenches a man’s thirst. On a cold day it warms him. And,” he added softly, “if there’s information, the saloon’s where you’ll find it.”

“Yah,” Olaf agreed. “Good beer.”

Brad led the way into the building. His face was devoid of expression, though he felt an urgency pushing at him now that he was in Sawhorse Falls. He pushed aside the batwing doors and strode into the cool dimness of the saloon. It was not large and it was nearly empty. A single poker game was going on near the rear, and two men were drinking at a table across the small dance floor from the bar. The bar itself was empty except for the bartender, a dark-faced man with a drooping mustache and a doleful expression. His eyes opened wide when Brad and Olaf came up to the bar.

There was a slight pause in the conversation of the two men across the floor, and momentarily the clink of chips ceased; then, as Brad looked around, both began again with more fervor than before.

“Beer,” Brad said to the bartender.

The man brought it. “Say,” he said, “ain’t you the one that — ” He broke off suddenly as the doors swung open. Backing off, he reached under the bar and put his hand on a lead-weighted bung starter.

Brad turned. A man nearly as tall and wide as Olaf Hegstrom had come in. But, where Olaf was solid, this man had a loose flabbiness about him that hinted at soft living and indulgence. His belly pushed against his shirt, trying to overflow his belt, and his jowls hung with weight, quivering slightly as he walked. He moved with surprising grace as he stepped toward the bar.

Now the conversation and the rattle of chips ceased entirely. The two men across the dance floor stood up and backed against the wall. One made his way with soft, sliding motions toward the rear.

The newcomer caught sight of Brad and Olaf, and he paused in full stride. His eyes, set deep in his heavy face, were almost obscured by pouches of fat, but Brad could see the shrewdness in them. He stood a long moment and then his head jerked.

“So you’re the drifter.”

Brad had been braced before, by drunks and by men who had heard of him and were anxious to use him for a notch on their guns. But this man was neither drunk nor full of desire to kill. There was something coldly ominous in his deep voice, and hardness that Brad could feel lay underneath the flabby exterior. Years of drifting, searching for one thing, had taught Brad to measure men. In this one he saw, besides the shrewdness, an iron will.

The bartender slipped up behind Brad, and his words were barely loud enough to be heard. “That’s Quarles. Double Q.”

Brad’s smile was easy, touching his stubborn mouth but not reaching his gray eyes. “I’m the drifter,” he said quietly.

Quarles took the rest of the step he had started, nodded abruptly, and came on up to the bar. He ordered a whisky and deliberately turned his back to Brad and Olaf. He had not come for this, Brad thought. His concentration was on something else; his manner obviously relegated the problem of Brad to the future. And so Brad waited to see what had brought him to a saloon where he was clearly not wanted.

It came quickly. One of the poker players, a short man with broad shoulders and the slim hips and stomach of an athlete, left the table by which he had been standing and moved to the end of the bar. He put an elbow on it, hooking one booted foot over the brass rail so that he faced Quarles. His face was lean and smooth-shaven, with a dark beard struggling up through the skin.

“Whisky, Abe,” he said to the bartender.

When Abe finished serving, he moved to the bottle rack, leaning on it nervously, one hand still clutching the bung starter. He was wishing the Doc had this shift right now. He might be a poor hand at owning a saloon, but he was a good one when it came to stopping trouble. Failing that, he could be counted on to patch up the remains after a fight. But, like every afternoon, the Doc would be asleep in his office. Abe shifted his grip, getting a firmer hold on the bung starter.

Quarles was the first to speak. “So you came to town anyway, Parker.”

“It’s Friday,” Parker said in an unruffled tone. “I come to town every Tuesday and Friday.”

“I told you last week to get out and stay out.”

Now the saloon was completely silent. Not a man there wanted to put himself on record as favoring Jim Parker over Ike Quarles but in the stillness was an evident sympathy. One poker player chose that moment to shift his chair aside, and the grating sound it made was hideous in the stillness.

Parker sipped at his whisky. His cool voice was tinged with insolence. “I’m going into pigs this fall, Quarles. You open to a proposition?”

Abe let out a slow, audible breath. Quarles’ voice ignored the insult. “I threw you out last week. This time they’ll carry you out.”

Brad could feel the temper in the man and he wondered at his judgment that here was an iron will. Quarles was trembling; there seemed to be something about Parker that cut into his reason.

Parker finished the whisky and set down the glass. “That was last week, Quarles,” he said, and took a step toward the dance floor.

The invitation was too plain to miss. Abe had the bung starter ready, but Quarles was amazingly quick. He stepped out of reach before Abe could get into position. Swiftly Quarles came up against Parker, one hand going for Parker’s shirt front and getting a grip. He threw his weight contemptuously, sending Parker spinning across the floor to crash into a table on the far side. The smaller man got slowly to his feet, one hand pressed to his ribs. His face was a blank mask.

Quarles went after him, his heavy legs driving like train pistons. His arms were up, waiting like twin pile drivers. His eyes were almost lost in the fat of his face, but what could be seen of them turned every watcher in the room cold inside. No man had dared bother Ike Quarles before.

Parker waited silently, balancing on his toes. When Quarles came within reach, he flicked out a hand and stepped lightly aside. His knuckles raked Quarles’ fleshy nose, drawing blood. Quarles bellowed and stepped in, his arms flailing. Parker struck again, moved again. Now he had his back to the room and plenty of space in which to work. Quarles turned like a gored rhinoceros.

Quarles’ face began to show the blows. One eye was cut, the other puffing. His lips were flattened against his teeth, and his cheekbones looked as if they had been raked with red paint. He panted as he kept going in on Parker, his breath coming heavily through his heaving chest. He looked done, beaten, but the cunning stayed in his eyes and the steadiness of his movements never wavered.

Parker feinted once too often, got one step too close. His fist licked out and struck. And then Quarles had a grip on his arm and was drawing him close. Parker lashed with his other hand, but the blow scarcely ruffled Quarles’ hair. He lifted the smaller man, grunting his effort, and crashed him to the floor. The boards creaked and Jim Parker could only lie and shake his head.