McAllister Justice (7 page)

McAllister turned, swiveling on his backside on the seat.

Another rider came up on the left, grasped the roof-rail and heaved himself aboard. McAllister swung hard with the pistol at arm's length and smashed the barrel into the man's face, knocking him to the ground.

Only one thing was sure. Up where he was, he was too good a target. He jumped to the ground on the left side in time to meet the man he had knocked off the roof coming to his feet. The fellow was groggy and had apparently dropped his gun, but he flung himself unhesitatingly at McAllister. The marshal kicked him hard in the knee, then laid his gun-barrel alongside his head as he went over.

Turning, McAllister caught sight of a rider coming around the rear of the stage. The man was having trouble with his horse that didn't seem to like gunfire. McAllister shot him out of the saddle and cocked again as three others drove out of the rain. They were bunched close and offered an unmissable target.

But McAllister never fired.

One of the men fell forward onto the neck of his horse and the animal took him out of the fight, slipping and sliding in the mud. The animal tried to climb the side of the butte, lost its footing and went down. One of the other horses screamed in agony and fell to its knees, pitching its rider onto the road. He landed on his head, tried vainly to rise and stayed down. The third man wrenched his horse's head around and high-tailed west, lashing it with his quirt.

Gingerly, nerves taut, McAllister approached the rear of the stage and looked around. A couple more of the attackers were
pulling out, pounding away into the rain. A rifle cracked damply.

The man whose horse had been shot, got shakily to his feet and yelled: “This ain't my fight,” when McAllister turned his gun on him.

“Tell me whose it is,” McAllister said.

Dolan stepped from the stage, saying: “Well, that's over.” He stopped when he saw the road-agent and took a pace backward.

“Get around behind him and keep him covered,” McAllister ordered, approached the masked man and wrenched the bandanna from his face.

Hard-bitten, dark features were revealed. Nobody McAllister knew. A week's stubble on the long chin, hair uncut, a wart on the nose.

McAllister searched for a gun and found none. Taking a pair of handcuffs from his pocket, he clipped one to the man's wrist, pulled him to the stage and fastened the other cuff to the handrail by the door of the vehicle.

A horse was approaching them at a trot from the direction of town. Both he and Dolan turned to cover the rider.

“Sing out,” McAllister shouted, “or you're mutton.”

The rider pulled up and yelled back: “Don't mention the word to me, pard. It ain't decent.”

Sime!

“What the hell're you doin' here?” McAllister demanded. “I told you to stay in town.”

The deputy laughed and heeled his horse up to them. When he had climbed stiffly from the saddle and thrown away the water gathered in the brim of his hat, he said: “It was a lovely day for a ride. Lucky for you I'm a disobedient son-of-a-bitch. These boys had you dead to rights.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe my ass. Had half a mind to leave them finish it and draw a full marshal's pay.”

“You don't have half a mind.”

“I got enough mind to watch the west of town instead of the
east like you said. Caught a bunch of'em breakin* down timber out of there and followed 'em.”

McAllister grunted. “All right, so you're smart. I don't know what I'd do without you. And you left two good witnesses back in town with no protection.”

Sime shrugged. “That's the way she goes, I reckon. Now, let's go ahead and get this crate into Deadwood before them bad boys see you're a cinch for a hold-up.”

McAllister snarled: “You get back into town.”

“Now, wait a minute -”

“Git.”

Being a somewhat privileged man because he had ridden with McAllister in the old days, Sime called him a few choice names that made Dolan shudder, mounted his horse and turned it.

“See you,” he said.

As he lifted the lines, McAllister said: “Sime.”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

Sime nodded affably and said: “Don't get sentimental.”

“Watch out for them bastards. Maybe they didn't go too far.”

“I'll do that.”

He touched the gelding with the spurs and sent it at a canter down the road.

McAllister said softly: “They stopped breeding that kind, I reckon.” He approached the man handcuffed to the stage and said: “Inside, you.” The man protested and McAllister lifted him bodily inside, then turned to take care of the other fallen man, saying: “We'll bury the dead on the way back.”

The other man was a big fellow, wearing a fish, and looking pretty sick from two blows on the head. McAllister got him into the stage and chained him to his colleague.

Nothing of moment happened for the rest of the trip, except that once they were bogged down in mud and had to manhandle the heavy vehicle onto firm ground. And about five
miles out of Deadwood they met a party of about a hundred men tramping heads down in the rain. They were armed and desperate enough for gold to challenge both the Indians and the Army that were out to stop them. Gold was the right of every free-born American and nobody was going to stop them.

McAllister did not stay to argue. The Army might not have its heart in stopping them, but the Sioux with their homeland at stake would be hacking them to pieces inside a week.

The City was reached, the gold left, the team changed and, unshaven, dirty and red-eyed with weariness, McAllister turned the stage around and headed back. Dolan protested that they should wait over a day to travel on schedule, but McAllister cheerfully told him to go to hell. Next Dolan protested against taking the two road-agents back with them. McAllister ignored that one and whipped up his horses.

They reached Malcolm City near dusk on the following day.

It seemed muddier and fuller than when they had left it. The return of the stage created quite a stir. The two bemused and raging road-agents were a sensation. McAllister threw them in a cell together with Sime's help and within ten minutes was faced by a shifty-eyed man wearing broadcloth who claimed he was a lawyer and demanded their release. McAllister told
him
to go to hell and the man declared that he was Henry Mulligan who had practised law for twenty years and was well known in the Capitol. The marshal would be hearing more from him. He had no right to arrest anybody outside the city limits. McAllister asked him if he would choose to walk out or get thrown out.

He walked. Fast.

Jenny Mann came into the office to tell him that her patient looked a little better. Just as he was going in to see Diblon, a messenger came from the stage-agent with a wire in his hand. It was from the federal marshal, appointing McAllister temporarily as a deputy United States Marshal. Letters of appointment followed and would reach him within a week if the roads, the road-agents and the Sioux allowed.

McAllister went to see Joe Diblon. Jenny Mann followed him in.

Joe looked pretty sick, but a sight better than he had previously.

When McAllister asked him how he was, he managed a grin.

“Can you talk?”

“Sure.”

Jenny Mann came forward. “Mr. Diblon must not talk for long or be excited under any circumstances.”

“There are some things I have to ask him,” McAllister told her. “Maybe you wouldn't mind leaving us alone for a while.”

She refused, he insisted, she refused again and finding that he couldn't bring himself to tell so pretty a woman to go to hell, he allowed her to stay.

“On one condition,” he told her. “Anything we say must not be repeated to anybody.”

She looked indignant and swore herself to silence. She went and stood by the window which was the furthest she could get from the bed.

McAllister sat on the side of the bed and leaned close to the wounded man. “Joe – do you know who shot you?”

“No.”

“That jasper was waiting for you. Who would want you dead?”

“A dozen men.”

“Yeah – but they'd be men who'd want to kill you on the open street so folks could see them do it. Maybe somebody wanted to rub you out because you knew something about them.”

“That could be any amount of men.”

The voice was weak and McAllister could only hear with difficulty.

“Joe, he dropped George Paston's gun right by you.”

“So?”

“I don't know. I wondered if you did.”

McAllister started when a soft voice said at his side: “Mr. McAllister, I must insist that you don't question Mr. Diblon further.”

McAllister said: “You ever have a run in with Paston?”

Diblon nodded.

“What about?”

“The Federal Marshal asked me to look into these gold robberies. He reckons the headquarters is in town.”

“George Paston?”

“Could be? But that don't mean George shot me. Hell, he wouldn't drop his own gun by me.”

“Any other suspects?”

“For the gold?”

“Yeah.”

Diblon stared first at McAllister, then shifted his eyes uneasily to the woman. His pale lips whispered, “Fenni-more.”

McAllister heard Jenny Mann draw her breath in sharply. Boots crashed in the office as the door was thrown back.

McAllister stood up and strode quickly into the office. A big man stood straddle-legged in the center of the room. A man as big as himself, hard-eyed and hard-mouthed. It only needed one look to show McAllister that here was a man that could be a match for him - with guns, fists or women. The realization was sobering.

“You the new marshal?”

The voice was hard too.

“Who're you?” McAllister demanded. He matched the man's looks and voice.

“I'm Fennimore.”

McAllister's eyes dropped to the man's right hand and saw that most of the thumb was missing. His mind somersaulted. He had thought that at last he had nearly come up with the man he was looking for. The man he had hunted for a full year. Scarred face, thumb missing. Here was a man with both those characteristics and this wasn't the man. This wasn't the face he had seen for no more than a brief moment and yet which was printed indelibly on his mind.

“And what,” he asked levelly, “can I do for you, Fennimore?”

With all his toughness, the man showed unease. He hesitated before he spoke.

“It's about that gun of George Paston's.”

“What about it?” McAllister asked.

“I had it. A coupla days back. Everybody knows I had it.”

“But you didn't have it last night?”

“No.”

“That's what you came to tell me.”

“Sure. A man doesn't care to be suspicioned.”

McAllister smiled. Abruptly he changed the subject. “And what do you do for a livin'?” he asked.

Fennimore looked surprised. “What in hell does that have to do -?”

McAllister said: “I'm the marshal here. I'm paid to ask questions.”

“I have the gamblin' concession at the Paston place.”

“All right, Fennimore, run back to your cards. I know where to find you if I want you.”

The man had every right to be mad. And he showed that he was. Very slowly and through clenched teeth: “I don't think I like you, lawman.”

McAllister laughed outright. “I wouldn't want it any other way, tinhorn.”

The gambler tried to control himself; he turned and walked to the door, but he had to speak or burst. Swinging around on the marshal, he said: “I hope to God you tangle with me sometime.”

“We'll tangle all right,” McAllister told him chattily. “When I come around and want you to prove you didn't shoot Joe Diblon.”

The big man slammed out. McAllister walked back into the rear room and Jenny Mann said: “You look for trouble.”

“Don't I?” McAllister sat on the edge of the bed and asked Diblon: “He has a scarred face and a thumb missing. Any more like him around here?”

“Sure,” Diblon said. “Where there's dally men, you'll find fingers and thumbs missing.”

“Could you put a name to one?”

The wounded man frowned, thinking. “Not right now.”

Jenny Mann said: “I cannot allow the patient to talk any more, marshal.” McAllister rose and walked into the office, brooding.

Behind his desk, he tried to think his way through this. There were several possibilities. If the man he was looking for had been the thumbless man who had held up the stage and was indeed in this country, then the shot that had brought Diblon down could have been meant for McAllister. Or Fennimore could have been the man in the stage hold-up. But that did not rule out the fact that McAllister's quarry could have shot Diblon. McAllister was so bone-tired that the thoughts got nowhere, but just rattled around inside his skull. He started to doze off when he became aware that Jenny Mann was standing in front of him.

“Mr. Diblon is sleeping comfortably,” she said. “I propose to go home for a while. Should you need me, you'll know where to find me.”

She went, head held high. Tired though he was, he was not unappreciative of the trimness of her figure as she went. He fell asleep in the chair and did not wake till Sime came in from patrolling the town, bringing a couple of pugnacious drunks with him. He put them in the cells, barred the street door and closed the shutters.

“What's that for?”

“Those two punks you brought in have friends in town.” McAllister staggered to his feet, made himself up a bed on the floor and fell asleep telling Sime to wake him for breakfast.

When Jenny Mann said she was going home for a while, she told the truth, but not the whole truth. True, she crossed the street, but she walked on past her brother-in-law's store and continued until she came to George Paston's saloon. This she entered by a side door at the top of the outside stairs.