Lassiter Tough (21 page)

“Brad, you are a rotten son of a bitch!” Tears of rage and fear spilled from her large eyes.

Instead of anger at what she had said, he threw back his head and bellowed with laughter. At the door he said, “I'll be back, so get yourself prettied up. Reckon I'll be marryin' with you after all.”

Wiping her eyes, she ran after him, realizing all of a sudden that reviling him would not help Lassiter in the least. She tugged at his shirt sleeve. “Brad, let's have coffee and talk about this.”

“Talk about what?”

“I just can't believe that Doc Clayburn . . .”

“Believe it.” Grinning, he pulled her fingers from his shirt and started over to O'Leary's. She saw him enter the saloon. When he didn't emerge immediately with his men, she breathed a little easier.

Isobel poured water from a pitcher into a basin and washed her eyes, dried her face on a towel, then told her clerks she had some business to attend to. She hurried out into the clear morning and walked rapidly toward the building where Doc Clayburn had his office and living quarters. It was a narrow, two-story building that stood alone at the eastern edge of town. It was surrounded by a great tangle of mesquite and cottonwoods intended to help mask the activities of the former residents. When Isobel was a young girl, it had been a brothel. Being naturally curious, she used to walk home from school to pass the building. She would stand across the street in the trees and note who came and went. She became such a fixture that some of the girls would at
times laugh and wave to her from the windows. Finally her father got wind of what she was doing and campaigned to have the place closed down. Due to his efforts, such activities were now carried on at a place called Big Creek, three miles out of town. It was not a creek at all, but a very dry wash.

After much knocking and calling his name, Isobel finally got Doc Clayburn to come to his office door. He was bleary-eyed and reeked of alcohol. “Miss Hartney,” he said with so deep a bow that he nearly lost his balance. “What brings you here so early in the morning?”

“Doc, Brad Sanlee just told me that you witnessed Lassiter murder Buck Rooney.” She saw his face tighten. He straightened his shoulders.

She shoved her way into the narrow, cluttered room and closed the door at her back. There was a chemical smell from bottles on a long table. There was a pestle and mortar with a grayish substance in the bottom. Some of it had spilled onto the table. There was also a quart bottle of whiskey with only an inch of dark brown liquid left in it. Next to it was a dirty glass. This morning Doc Clayburn seemed to have aged since the last time she had seen him, which was only a few days before. His rather large sideburns only accentuated his thin and haggard face.

“You . . . you'll have to excuse me, Miss Hartney. I'm expecting a patient.”

“Didn't you hear what I said?” she demanded, leaning down to his height.

It seemed as if the strength had suddenly gone out of his legs. He sank to a padded leather chair, pale and grim. Finally, after much prodding from her, he began to talk. He spoke of a time when he was much younger, back in the state of New York.
“My wife took a fancy to a neighbor. I killed him. Then I turned the gun on my terrified wife, but I couldn't pull the trigger. Because she was the mother of our baby daughter. The man I found in my wife's embrace had friends and influence. Had I stayed, I would have been executed. My daughter is now a mother with children of her own. My arrest would be devastating to her.” He lifted his hands and let them plop to his knees.

“And now Brad's told you to lie about Lassiter or he'll see you arrested.”

“One day I foolishly mentioned the New York killing to Brad. He was only a boy then, but he never forgot. I'd had too much whiskey that day and I was despondent because I'd just received a letter from my daughter. Even after all that had happened, we still corresponded. She wrote that my wife, her mother, had died. As a result, I was in a melancholy mood that day and needed someone to talk to. . . .”

“You can't just accuse Lassiter.”

“For myself, I don't care,” he said wearily. “But my daughter, my only child. Disgrace would be shattering and Brad let me know that he would get word to the law in New York.”

“You'd accuse an innocent man?”

“Isobel, face facts. Lassiter is a known killer.” She started to interrupt, but he waved her to silence. “He's gone unpunished for God knows how many crimes. So in a way it's justice.”

“Not justice but cowardice on your part. Face up to Brad. Defy him. It's only his word against yours about that business back in New York.”

He gave her a sad smile and said, “Then you don't know Brad very well.”

“Oh, I know him.”

“Yes,” he said after a moment of searching her eyes, “I guess you do.”

She felt herself flush. But this morning there was more at stake than her indiscretions. It was a man's life. At first she tried to reason with him, but he kept shaking his head. Finally she lost her temper. He got up from the chair, squared his shoulders and asked her to leave.

“What's a worthless life like Lassiter's?” he demanded when she hesitated. “His life weighed against the well-being of my daughter and grandchildren?”

“Lassiter's isn't a worthless life,” she said stiffly. “He's honorable and decent. It's men like Brad who've spread those vile stories about him.”

“Ah, women,” he said, peering at her out of bloodshot eyes, “always entranced by a rogue.”

“Doc. I'm ashamed at you.”

“Perhaps. But remember this. As you reminded me that it was only Brad's word against mine, so it's the same between you and me. If you reveal this discussion we've had this morning, I'll deny it.” He looked resolute and for the first time his gaze was unwavering.

Troubled by what she had learned, she wondered what to do. Perhaps Lassiter would be in town today, since it was Saturday. Or at least some of his men would be in. She could send a message that she had to see him. On the way back to her store, she walked near enough to O'Leary's hitching post to see that the Diamond Eight horses were still there. At least Brad wasn't making an immediate move.

It was over two hours later that she happened to see Lassiter riding along the alley from the direction of the bank. Rushing to the rear door, she waved and called to him, but he ignored her and rode rapidly
away. At first she was so angered by his rudeness that she almost hated him. Then later she calmed down and thought seriously about the danger he faced.

There was one thing she didn't realize. Over an hour before, Brad and his men had left O'Leary's, riding west out of town so they wouldn't have to pass her store.

Esperanza Herrera had gone back into her small house and closed the door. Lassiter was riding toward the headquarters of Box C, the big adobe in the cluster of cottonwoods. He had just dismounted in front of the house, hurrying up the veranda steps, when his ears picked up the distinctive clack of a shod hoof on rock. His head jerked around in the direction of the sound. He froze at the sight of men riding up through the cottonwoods by the barn.

Spinning around, he started running back down the veranda steps, intending to grab his rifle from the saddle boot. But he had only taken two steps when he heard a squeak of hinges as the door at his back was suddenly opened.

“Hold it, Lassiter!” It was Brad Sanlee's amused voice.

Lassiter looked over his shoulder. One of Sanlee's arms was tight around Millie's slender waist, his fingers gripping a .45 aimed at Lassiter. The other hand was across his half-sister's mouth. Her eyes were
wild with mingled fury and alarm. She tried to struggle there in the doorway of the big house, but Sanlee was too strong.

As Lassiter stood frozen on the veranda step, Doane and Pinto George came riding around one corner of the house. From the opposite direction appeared Joe Tige, the upper edge of a dirty bandage at the open collar of his shirt. At his side was Jeddy Quine with the drooping left eyelid, and the new Box C hand, Pete Barkley, the turncoat. As they rode up through the cottonwoods by the barn, there was a smug look on Barkley's face. He chewed tobacco and spat a brown stream.

“Stand hitched, Lassiter,” came Sanlee's voice at his back. “Don't even twitch a finger. You'll do that if you think anything at all of my kid sister. If not, well . . .” He let it hang there with all the ugly connotations.

Lassiter clenched his teeth. Everything flashed across Lassiter's mind like a streak of lightning: to come all this way, fight all the battles and have it end like this. And just as quickly it was gone. He straightened his shoulders and spoke firmly.

“Leave your sister out of it. This is between you an' me.”

“Yeah, it sure is, Lassiter.” Sanlee chuckled. “You got that part of it right, anyhow. Now you back up the steps. Slow an' easy. An' don't look around. I'll tell you when to stop.”

Lassiter eyed the men who were watching him with tight amusement from their saddles—all except Joe Tige, whom he had shot the day Rooney died. Tige glared.

Knowing he had no choice, under the circumstances, Lassiter backed slowly until Sanlee called a halt. He felt a gun rammed against his spine. Although
he did not look around, he could hear the strangled sounds of anger made by Millie against the hand pressed over her mouth.

At Sanlee's order, Pinto George dismounted and ran lightly up the veranda steps. The pale eyes were mocking as he gingerly reached out and unbuckled Lassiter's gun belt. Then he stepped back, wrapped the belt around the holstered revolver and threw it over the railing into some geraniums that Millie had been trying to grow.

“With your fangs pulled, you're kinda harmless-lookin',” Sanlee said jovially. He had removed his hand from Millie's mouth. She turned on him in rage, but he only laughed.

Then she said to Lassiter, “He came sneaking in the back door before I knew what happened.” She seemed close to tears of anger and frustration. “Now he's got some crazy idea. . . .”

“I told her she's gonna marry Marcus Kilhaven,” Sanlee said bluntly. “An' she is.”

“No!” she cried. “It worked once with Rep Chandler, but not again!”

“It'll work again, sis.”

“Damn you, Brad, you can't force me. . . .”

“I can an' I will.” His voice hardened. “You know how things are done around here.”

“Don't bother to tell me.”

“You're a widow lady an' I'm your brother. An' I step in an' take over. An' I say what's best for you. You marryin' Kilhaven is best.”

“Best for you, you mean!” she screamed and tried to claw his face. But he gripped her two wrists in one large hand. His smile was ugly through the beard. “Spitfire, that's what you are. I reckon Kilhaven will sure appreciate that in a wife.”

When she tried to run, Sanlee grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. Her hair swung wildly and the shoulder of her dress ripped down to the top of a white camisole. A nipple and the upper part of a breast showed through the thin material.

“Keep an eye on Lassiter!” Sanlee shouted angrily at the ring of staring riders around the veranda. Five of them Lassiter remembered from roundup, but he didn't know their names. But they had the mark of toughness in lean faces as did the others.

Then Sanlee pulled Millie back into the house and threw a coat over her shoulders. He pushed her back to the porch.

“Two of you hitch up a wagon an' be quick about it!” Sanlee ordered. Two of the men hurried to the corral.

Never had Lassiter felt so completely helpless. If he turned and tried to give Millie a hand, he'd likely take a bullet in the spine. And at the same time his very move could endanger Millie. During the interval while a team was being hitched to one of the buckboards, Lassiter stood stiffly, his back to Sanlee. He was trying to calmly talk Sanlee into letting Millie go and settle the score between the two of them, man to man.

“You claim you saw me stand up to Doc Kelmmer that time in Tucson,” Lassiter reminded. “Let's you and me go at it the same.”

“You been takin' laudanum for those wounds of yours, it seems like. An' it's made your head soft. I don't aim to stand up to you. I aim to beat you to your knees. We oughta have a velvet collar for you, Lassiter. 'Cause the hang rope might tear open that cut on your throat. That'd be a shame now, wouldn't it?”

All of the men laughed and some slapped themselves on their thighs with glee.

Millie's face went dead white as she stared up into her half-brother's face. “You didn't mean what you said . . . surely you didn't. . . .”

“I aim to hang him.”

Millie screamed.

At Sanlee's order, Doane came up and seized Lassiter from behind and lifted him off his feet. It made Lassiter feel like a small boy being embraced by a madman. He lashed out with his feet all the way down the steps. But with one of Doane's thick arms around his waist, the other pinning his chest, he was helpless.

Doane's breath smelled of stale whiskey and tobacco. “I aim to finish what I started with the knife,” Doane said softly through his teeth.

Then Doane swung Lassiter up and sat him on the saddle as easily as he might handle a baby. Lassiter tried to kick him in the face. But Doane seized an ankle and twisted it so hard that Lassiter felt a stab of pain shoot up his leg. At first he thought the powerful twisting motion might have snapped a bone. But after a moment the throbbing pain subsided and he could move his foot.

“You can't get away with this, Sanlee!” Lassiter shouted. Someone had taken his rifle out of the saddle boot. With his revolver gone, all he had left were his fists, which he waved in the air for emphasis. “The sheriff will—”

Sanlee cut it off with a bellow of laughter. “I'm the sheriff here, Lassiter.” Grinning through his beard, he took a badge from his pocket. He pinned it to the front of his faded work shirt:
DEPUTY SHERIFF, TIEMPO COUNTY
.