McAllister Justice (2 page)

McAllister heard footsteps running off into the night. He got up, went to the marshal and rolled him onto his back.

“Joe.”

In the dim lamplight, the marshal raised his eyes to the big man.

“He got me clean through the guts, Rem,” he said. “He's killed me.”

“Hold on. I'll light a lamp and get you inside.”

McAllister hurried into the office, struck a match and found a lamp on the battered desk. He lit the lamp, replaced the chimney and went outside again. Picking the lawman up in his arms, he carried him inside, going through the doorway beyond the desk into a small room with a narrow cot in it. He laid Diblon down on it. When he had brought in the lamp from the office, he saw that the marshal's front was covered with blood and Diblon was groaning softly. McAllister unbuckled the belt, removed it, opened the pants, shirt and longjohns, and found that the belly had been torn open. It was not a pretty sight. Reaching for a towel, he folded it tightly, placed it over the wound and put Joe's hands over it to hold it in place.

“Don't move,” McAllister said. “I'm going to get the doc. Where's he at?”

“No good, I'm a goner.”

“Where's the doc at, Joe?”

“Leave it.”

“Where's he at, Joe? Don't waste time.”

The marshal screwed his face up as the pain hit him, rolled on one side and doubled his body up.

McAllister bent over him and shouted: “Where's he at, goddam you?”

The ashen lips whispered. “McMichael's maybe.”

Where the hell was McMichael's?

McAllister turned and went to the outer door of the office. Two men stood there staring in.

“Who was shot?” one demanded.

“Where's McMichael's?” McAllister demanded.

They both stared at him in surprise and one said: “South end of Fremont. You a stranger here?”

McAllister thrust between them and swung south. His foot struck something on the sidewalk and, looking down, he saw that it was a gun. Picking it up, he found that it was a Smith and Wesson. As he walked, he inspected it and found that two shots had been fired. He dropped it into his coat pocket and started to run. At the end of Fremont, he found no saloon or store bearing the name McMichael and stopped a man to ask its whereabouts. The fellow grinned fatuously and pointed to a double-storeyed plank house.

“That's Katey's place,” he said with a snicker.

McAllister waded through the mud, went up to the front door and banged on it with his fist. It was opened by a large man, wearing black clothes, a blackjack sticking out of a pocket and a few days' growth of whiskers on his face.

“Doc here?” McAllister demanded.

“Maybe.”

“Yes or no?”

“Maybe.”

“Try bein' helpful.”

“If he's here, he ain't in no mood to be disturbed.”

From behind the man came the sound of a piano accompanying a woman singing flat. The words were not of the parlor variety and McAllister reckoned he had come to a cathouse.

“Man's been shot,” he explained. “He's like to die and I have to have a doctor.”

The man growled–

“Mister, you get the hell outa here. Doc's a real good client and my orders is –”

“Kate around?”

“She's busy right now. Now, either come ahead and join the fun or get the hell outa here, will yuh?”

McAllister took the Smith and Wesson from his pocket and said: “Let's go find doc, shall we?”

The bouncer stared at him without expression.

“You don't use guns around Miz Kate's place,” he said in a shocked voice. “We're all friends here. Put the gun away, mister. I'll go find doc.”

McAllister put the gun away and the man pulled the sap so fast from his pocket that it was all the big man could do to dive under it as it was aimed at his head. His shoulder hit the bouncer's knees as the man leaned into the blow with the result that he went over McAllister's head and landed on his' face, on the boardwalk. From the sound, McAllister gathered that either the planks or the face suffered under the impact.

But the bouncer wasn't finished. He came up like a rubber ball, growling inarticulately and reaching for McAllister in the blindness of rage and pain. Two blows with the ball of the hand rocked him and a solid left swing to his belly doubled him up. Sweet reason came to him when McAllister clipped him smartly behind the right ear. He kneeled and looked up at McAllister with pathetic disbelief on his face.

“My Gawd,” he remarked thickly.

“Let's go find the doc,” McAllister suggested gently.

“Sure,” the bouncer said, getting unsteadily to his feet. “Anything you say.” He took a long look at McAllister and added: “Sir.”

He led McAllister through the lobby-cum-parlor where several painted and half-naked women were drinking and being fondled by several men who had enough wealth to spend on other things beside food. They didn't take much notice of him except for a red-headed woman who called out: “Come on and join the fun, honey.”

The other end of the room finished in a flight of stairs up which the bouncer led McAllister. Halfway up, he tried to kick backward at the big man's face, but McAllister caught him by the ankle, stepped aside and threw him down the stairs. He
broke several bannister rods as he went and made a lot of noise. That stopped the fondling as everybody turned to look.

“You don't learn too fast, Clarence,” McAllister said, more in hurt than anger.

One of the men threw a blonde off his knee and slapped a hand down on his gun-butt, but McAllister palmed the Smith and Wesson and said: “Get back to the good work, mister. This ain't your day.”

One of the women swore.

McAllister asked the bouncer: “Which room?”

The man said: “Seven.”

McAllister turned and walked up the stairs and found the room without any difficulty. He went in without knocking. It was so small that there was hardly room for a bed and chair. On the bed, McAllister viewed the bare buttocks (male) and two pairs of bare feet (male and female).

“Sorry to interrupt, doc,” McAllister said, “but I have a man shot near to death. I reckon you'd best come.”

A hot and rabbity face appeared over one bony shoulder, snarling, “Get the hell outa here.”

McAllister laughed.

“Everybody tells me that, but it don't do no good. Climb down and let's go.”

The woman screamed at him to get out and that Kate would kill him.

The doctor yelled, wanting to know if McAllister held nothing sacred.

The big man's reply was to step up to the bed, take the man by the scruff of his neck, heave him off the woman and dump him on the floor. The little doctor started to scream obscenities, but McAllister just said: “You're wastin' your time. Get into them duds and let's go.”

The doctor yelled some more till McAllister cocked the gun in his right hand and told him that he could either come along or have his fool head blown off.

The woman yelled again: “Kate'll kill you for this.”

McAllister picked a pair of pants up from a chair and
threw them at the doctor and the little man started to climb into them, eyeing the gun tremulously.

“P-put that g-gun away.”

The woman got off the bed and hit McAllister in the face. He pushed her away and said: “Stay clear, honey, or you'll get hurt,” but she came at him again and he was forced to knock her into the corner of the room with a back-handed slap. She lay there, looking at him with some respect and said: “You dirty low-down, son-of-a-bitch.”

The doctor reached for his shirt and said: “You struck one of Kate's girls. She'll kill you for this.”

McAllister said: “This Kate sure do sound lethal.”

“You never said a truer word,” a voice from the doorway said.

He turned and saw framed in the doorway one of the most magnificent creatures he had ever set eyes on. Jet black hair piled high, dark smoldering eyes, the figure of a goddess and the delicate hands of a lady. He reckoned that if this was Kate she could try killing him any day of the week so long as she used only the methods of her profession. He touched his hat politely with his left hand.

“Ma'am.”

He'd be damned if there wasn't a start of a smile at the corners of her deliciously full mouth. But she doused it quickly and looked magnificently angry.

“Mister,” she said, “you can't come around here actin' this way.”

“I asked for you, ma'am,” he told her, “knowin' your reputation as an angel of mercy. I have a man shot nigh to death and he sure needs a doc fast.”

She simmered a little and accepted the homage of his words and eyes.

“I didn't never allow a client in a house of mine to be interrupted in this way. What do you do if I say you can't take doc?”

“I blow his fool head off, ma'am.”

She snorted. “Bluff!”

“Try me. I'm broke and a good friend of mine's just been bushwhacked. I don't have a thing to lose. Maybe I look like the original smilin' boy, but don't be fooled none, ma'am. I'm purely com-posed of bile.”

The doctor pulled on his coat and said in a shaking voice: “Leave it be, Kate. I'll go.”

“I have my reputation to think of.”

The little man ran three paces up the room and three paces down. “You look out for your reputation and I'll see to my life.”

“Smart boy,” McAllister said, nodding approval. “Now get goin'.”

For a moment, Kate McMichael looked as if she would prevent their going, but she stepped aside when the doctor made a frightened charge for the door. As he went past her, she said to McAllister: “You got yourself a heap of trouble, mister.”

He stopped and gave her the full benefit of white teeth in an Indian-brown face.

“You wouldn't make trouble for your own kind, would you, Miss Kate?”

She looked surprised.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“If your daddy didn't come from the Six Counties, I'll eat my boots.”

She flushed. “You Scotch-Irish?”

“The name's McAllister.” Touching his hat, he walked on, still holding the Smith and Wesson, thumb on hammer.

Joe Diblon was nearly dead when they reached him.

He had fallen off the bed and was bleeding over the floor. McAllister lifted him gently in his arms and put him back on the bed.

The little doctor, swaying and shaking still, said: “That's the marshal.”

McAllister nodded. “Fix him up.”

The doctor hesitated. “When a marshal gets shot in this town, he stays shot. This is the third in the last couple of months.”

“Fix him just the same.”

The doctor made a closer inspection of the wound, inspected the marshal's back with some difficulty to check if the bullet had passed clean through the body. It hadn't. He looked up and shook his head.

“I can't do a thing for him.”

McAllister looked mean.

“Doc, you fix him good. Hear? Or I'm goin' to take it out on your hide. Now get started.”

Muttering and shaking, the doctor got started, first begging for a drink. McAllister found a bottle in the marshal's desk drawer and gave him a generous one. He gave himself a more generous one and felt quite cheerful. As he was pouring a second one, the office door opened and a middle-aged, well-dressed man walked in. He wore a brown derby, a heavy topcoat and a harassed look. In his small hand, he carried a silver-headed cane.

“I heard there was a shooting,” he said.

McAllister downed the second whiskey and said: “Who might you be?”

“I ask the questions here. Now, who are you?”

The little doctor was muttering in the rear room. McAllister
sat behind the marshal's desk and leaned back at his ease. The newcomer crossed the office and stood over McAllister, but found that even while sitting down the big man couldn't be looked down on. This seemed to nettle the man in the brown derby.

“You tell me who you are,” McAllister said. “I'm bigger.”

“My name is Nick Sillitoe. I'm the unfortunate who bears the title of mayor in this town.”

“That's great, mister mayor. I'm Remington McAllister and in the small back room yonder lies Joseph C. Diblon, the unfortunate who bears the title of marshal in this town,”

Sillitoe boggled.

“Did Joe get it?”

“He has a forty-five slug resting snugly in his entrails.”

The mayor rushed into the rear room and McAllister followed him to find the doctor sweating and muttering, up to his elbows in blood. The mayor went pale at the sight of the wounded man and stood helplessly for a full minute saying, “My God,” over and over.

The doctor said: “I'm wasting my time, but this son-of-a-bitch won't listen.”

The mayor looked at McAllister.

“Where do you come into this?”

“Aw, Joe an' me've been arrestin' each other off an' on for years. We're kind of attached.”

The mayor took off the derby, scratched through the thin hair of his head and looked lost.

“Joe's the last. We'll never find another. All there's left is gun-hands ready to make a quick dollar. Mr. McAllister, I've heard of you … you wouldn't…? At a time like this a man has to make snap decisions. And I…”

His words trailed off as McAllister stepped to the bed, took the badge from Diblon's coat and fastened it on his own.

“I take it,” the mayor said not without humor, “that you accept.” He looked like a man who had witnessed a miracle and couldn't believe the evidence of his eyes.

“I ain't acceptin' a thing,” McAllister said. He didn't dislike
Sillitoe, but he didn't feel amiable about anything right that minute. “I'm demanding. Everything's scarce in this town and that includes lawmen. The price comes high.”

“How high?”