Riding for the Brand (Ss) (1986) (13 page)

He walked to the door and stopped with his hand upon the latch. "He used to tell me about you.

We talked of you, and I came to feel that I knew you well. I had hoped before it happened were" that we could meet. But in a different way than this. What will happen today I want you to see. I do not believe you lack the courage to watch what happens nor to revise your opinions if you feel you have been mistaken. Your brother, as you were advised in my letter, was killed by accident."

"But you shot him! You were in a great hurry to kill."

"He ran up behind me."

"To help you."

"I had seen him a hundred miles from there. It was quick. At such a time one does not think.

One acts."

"Kill first"... She said bitterly, "and look afterward."

His face was stiff. "I am afraid that is just what one does. I am sorry, Julia."

He lifted the latch. "When you see what is done today, try to think how else it might have been handled. If you cannot see this as I do, then before night comes you will think me more cruel than you have before. But if you understand... where there is understanding there is no hate."

Outside the door he paused and surveyed the street with care. Not much longer now.

Across from him was Card's Saloon. One block down the street, his own office and his home, and across from it, just a little beyond, an abandoned barn. He studied it thoughtfully and then glanced again at Card's and at the bank, diagonally across, beyond the milliner's shop.

It would happen here, upon this dusty street, between these buildings. Here men would die, and it was his mission to be sure the right man lived and the bad died. He was expendable, but which was he? Good or bad?

Fitz Moore knew every alley, every door, every corner in this cluster of heat-baked, alkali stamped buildings that soon would be an arena for life and death. His eyes turned thoughtfully again to the abandoned barn. It projected several feet beyond the otherwise carefully lined buildings.

The big door through which hay had once been loaded gaped wide.

So little time!

He knew what they said about him. "Ain't got a friend in town"... He had overheard Mrs.

Jameson say. "Stays to hisself in that long old house. Got it full of books, folks say. But kill you quick as a wink, he would. He's cold mighty cold."

But was he? Was he?

When he had first come to this town he found it a shambles, wrecked by a passing trail-herd crew. He had found it terrorized by the two dozen gunmen and looted by card sharks and thieves. Robbery had been the order of the day, and murder all too frequent. It had been six months now since there had been a robbery of any kind, and more than nine months since the last killing. Did that count for nothing at all?

He took out a cigar and bit off the end. What the matter with him today? He had not felt this in years. Was it, as they say happens to a drowning man, that his life was passing before eyes just before the end? Or was it seeing Julia Mith, the sum total of all he had ever wanted in a girl?

And, realizing who she was, knew how impossible all he had ever longed for had become? I hey had talked of it, he and tom Heath, and I mew tom had written to Julia, suggesting she head west because he had found the man for q bar . And two weeks later tom had been dead have. his, with Fitz Moore's bullet in his heart!

The marshal walked on along the street of false-fronted weather-beaten buildings. Squalid and dismal as they looked, crouching here where desert and mountains met the town was changing. It was growing with the hopes of the people, h their changing needs. This spring, for the t time, flowers had been planted in the yard of house beyond the church, and in front of another house a tree had been trimmed.

From being a haphazard collection of builds, catering to the transient needs of a transient people, the town of Sentinel was becoming vital, acquiring a consciousness of the future, a sense of belonging. A strong land growing, a Iand which would give birth to strong sons who could build and plant and harvest. I

Fitz Moore turned into the empty alley between the Emporium and the abandoned barn, which was a relic of over ambition during a boom.

And thoughts persisted. With the marshal dead, and the town helpless.

But how had the outlaw gang planned to kill him? For that it had been planned was to him a certainty. And it must be done and done quickly j bar when the time came.

The loft of the barn commanded a view of the street. The outlaws would come into town riding toward the barn, and somewhere along that j street, easily covered by a rifleman concealed in to the barn, he, the marshal of Sentinel, would be walking. j He climbed the stairs to the loft. The dust on bar the steps had been disturbed. At the top a board creaked under his feet, and a rat scurried away.

The loft was wide and empty. Only dust and wisps of hay.

From that wide door the raid might be stopped, but this was not the place for him. His place was down there in that hot, dusty street, where his presence might count. There was much to do. And now there was only a little time.

Returning to his quarters, Fitz Moore thrust an extra gun into his pocket and belted on a third. Then he put two shotguns into his wood sack. Nobody would be surprised to see him with the sack, for he always carried firewood in it that he got from the pile in back of Gard's.

He saw Jack Thomas sitting in a chair before the livery stable. Barney Gard came from the saloon, glanced at the marshal, and then went back inside.

Fitz Moore paused, relighting his dead cigar.

The topic of what would happen here if the Henry gang attempted a raid was not a new one.

He had heard much speculation. Some men, like Thomas, had brought it up before, trying to feel him out, to discover what he thought, what he would do.

Jack Thomas turned his big head on his thick neck and glanced toward the marshal. He was a good-natured man, but too inquisitive, too dirty.

Johnny Haven, sitting on the steps of the saloon porch, looked at the marshal and grinned.

He was a powerful, aggressive young man.

"How's the town clown?" He asked.

Moore paused, drawing deep on his cigar, permitting himself a glance toward the loft door, almost sixty yards away and across the street.

Deliberately he had placed himself in line with the best shooting position.

"Johnny"... He said, "if anything happens to me, I want you to have this job. If nothing does happen to me, I want you for my deputy."

Young Haven could not have been more astonished, but he also was deeply moved. He looked up as if he believed the marshal had been suddenly touched by the heat. Aside from the words, the very fact that Marshal Moore had ventured a personal remark was astonishing.

"You're twenty-six, Johnny, and it's time you grew up. You've played at being a bad man long enough. I've looked the town over, and you're the man I want."

Johnny . . . tom. He avoided thinking of them together, yet there was a connection. tom once had been a good man, too, but now he was a good man gone. Johnny was a good man, much like tom, though walking the hairline of the law.

Johnny Haven was profoundly impressed. To say that he admired and respected this tall, composed man was no more than the truth. After his first forcible arrest by Fitz Moore, Johnny had been furious enough to beat him up or kill him, but each time he had come to town he had found to himself neatly boxed and helpless.

Nor had Fitz Moore ever taken unfair advantage, never striking one blow more than essential and never keeping the young cowhand in jail one hour longer than necessary. And Johnny Haven was honest enough to realize that he never could have handled the situation as well.

Anger had resolved into reluctant admiration.

Only his native stubbornness and the pride of youth had prevented him from giving up the struggle. "Why pick on me?" He spoke roughly to cover his emotion. "You won't be quitting."

There was a faint suggestion of movement from the loft. The marshal glanced at his watch.

Two minutes to ten.

"Johnny "The sudden change of tone brought Johnny's head up sharply. "When the shooting starts, there are two shotguns in this sack. Get behind the end of the water trough and use one of them. Shoot from under the trough.

It's safer."

Two riders walked their mounts into the upper end of the street, almost a half block away. Two men on powerful horses, better horses than would be found on any cow ranch.

Three more riders came from a space between the buildings, from the direction of Peterson's Corral. One of them was riding a gray horse.

They were within twenty yards when Barney Gard came from the saloon carrying two canvas bags. He was headed for the bank when one of the horsemen swung his mount to a route that would cut across Barney's path.

"Shotgun in the sack, Gard."... The Marshal's voice was conversational.

Then, as sunlight glinted on a rifle barrel in the loft door, Fitz Moore took one step forward, drawing as he moved, and the thunder of the rifle merged with the bark of his own gun. Then the rifle clattered, falling, and an arm lay loosely in the loft door.

The marshal had turned instantly. "All right, Henry"... His voice rang like a trumpet call in the narrow street. "You're asking for it!

Take it!"

There was no request for surrender. The rope awaited these men, and death rode their guns and hands.

As one man they drew, and the marshal sprang into the street, landing flat footed and firing. The instant of surprise had been his. And his first shot, only a dancing second after the bullet that had killed the man in the loft, struck Fred Henry over the belt buckle.

Behind and to the marshal's right a shotgun's deep roar blasted the sunlit morning. The man on the gray horse died falling, his gun throwing a useless shot into the hot, still air.

Horses reared, and a cloud of dust and gunpowder arose, stabbed through with crimson flame and the hoarse bark of guns.

A rider leaped his horse at the marshal, but Fitz Moore stood his ground and fired. The rider's face seemed to disintegrate under the impact of the bullet.

And then there was silence. The roaring was gone and only the faint smells lingered the acrid tang of gunpowder, of blood in the dust, of the brighter crimson scent of blood on a saddle.

Johnny Haven got up slowly from behind the horse trough. Barney Gard stared around as if he had just awakened, his hands gripping a shotgun.

There was a babble of sound then, of people running into the street. And a girl with gray eyes was watching. Those eyes seemed to reach across the street and into the heart of the marshal.

"Only one shot"... Barney Gard exclaimed. "I got off only one shot and missed that one!"

"The Henry gang wiped out"... Yelled an excited citizen. "Wait'll Thomas hears of this!"

"He won't be listenin""... Somebody else said.

"They got him."

Fitz Moore turned like a duelist. "I got him," he said flatly. "He was their man. Tried all morning to find out what I'd do if they showed up his An hour later Johnny Haven followed the marshal into the street. Four men were dead and two were in jail.

"How did you know. Marshal?"

"You learn, Johnny. You learn or you die.

That's your lesson for today. Learn to be in the right place at the right time and keep your own counsel. You'll be getting my job."... His cigar was gone. He bit the end from a fresh one and went on, "Jack Thomas was the only man the rider of the gray horse I told you I saw could have reached without crossing the street. He wouldn't have left the horse he'd need for a quick getaway on the wrong side of the street. Besides, I'd been doubtful of Thomas. He was prying too much."

When he entered the Eating House, Julia Heath was at the table again. She was white and shaken. He spoke to her.

"I'm sorry, Julia, but now you see how little time there is for a man when guns are drawn.

These men would have taken the money honest men worked to get, and they would have killed as they have killed before. Such men know only the law of the gun."... He placed his hands on the table. "I should have known you at once, but I never thought after what happened that you would come, even to settle the estate. He was proud of you, Julia, and he was my best friend."

"But you killed him."

Marshal Moore gestured toward the street. "It was like that. Guns exploding, a man dying under my gun, and then running feet behind me in a town where I had no friends. I thought tom was on his ranch in Colorado. I killed the man who was firing at me, turned, and fired toward the running feet. And killed my friend, your brother."

She knew then how it must have been for this man and she was silent.

"And now?" She murmured.

"My job will go to Johnny Haven, but I'm going to stay here and help this town grow, help it become a community of homes, use some of the things I know that have nothing to do with guns. This" he gestured toward the street "should end it for a while. In the breathing space we can mature, settle down, change the houses into homes, and bring some beauty into this makeshift."