Andromeda Gun (20 page)

“Who you bringing in this time, Ian?”

“Colonel Jasper Blicket and one of his gang, a fellow called The Sergeant. I don’t recall the names of the two gentlemen on top.”

“The driver used to be Graves Paige,” Sister Betsy said. “Lived over near Jackson City. Never took him for the brainy kind, but I can see he had his share. Poor boy, done give his all for the Territorial Stage Lines. Don’t recognize the other one because he ain’t got no face… Well, as I always said, crime don’t pay.”

“This one will,” Ian disagreed. “Them two inside’s worth about $7,000; $3,000 for the enlisted man and $5,000 for the officer, respectfully.”

“Crime might pay more if you’d learn how to add,” Sister Betsy volunteered, “or if you’d pull down them window curtains and charge twenty-five cents a peek to this crowd coming here.”

“Don’t want people paying to see that crime don’t pay,” Ian said.

Attracted by the growing throng that trailed or walked abreast of the stagecoach, a few walking backwards in front of the stagecoach, Gabriella came out of the restaurant to wave gaily to Ian. He saluted her, but when she looked up at the driver, back at the guard, and peered in at the last soldiers of the Lost Cause, she turned and ran back into the restaurant. Her face was white and she was holding both hands over her mouth, and he knew she was running to the slop jar to throw up.

It occurred to him, then, that a woman should not be judged by her parts but in her totality. It was not enough that a female should have lean flanks—there was also the matter of a strong stomach. Gabriella’s stomach, he was forced to admit, tended to be a mite weak.

On the other hand, Liza, emerging from the stage line’s office after a chicken box delivery, looked on the scene with nothing but admiration.

“Looks like you run into a peck of trouble, Ian, but looks like you managed to handle it, as usual,” she called up to him. “Who you got inside there? General Lee?”

“No’m. He was just a brevet colonel.”

“If them things was alive, you’d have yourself the goldarndest sideshow, ever, of traveling freaks.”

“Sister Betsy had partly the same idea,” Ian told her as he slid from the horse. “If you’re going to be in town for another half hour, I’d like to see you in the sheriff’s office after I turn this coach over to the Jackson City crew and make arrangements to collect my bounty.”

“That won’t take no half hour.”

“No’m, but I got to stop by the bank… I’m impounding them saddle horses, Liza, as stolen goods. How’d you like to own the gray?”

Liza looked at the horse and whistled her appreciation. “Has a chicken got feathers? That’s a five-hundred-dollar horse, Ian. You willing to give it to me?”

“If you’re a reasonable woman.”

“Boy, you’re looking at the reasonablest woman the good Lord ever created.”

Ian’s affairs took longer than half an hour because he found a wrong that needed righting and, in the righting thereof, took his first unassisted step toward respectability and civil responsibility.

The stage line’s relief crew was waiting to drive the coach on to Jackson City. Ian sent word by it to the federal marshal there that he had taken The Colonel and The Sergeant into custody, dead, and would hold the bodies for official identification. While Birnie made arrangements to send the bodies of the driver and guard back to Wind River, Ian conscripted four spectators to carry the dead outlaws to Near-Sighted Charlie’s office. Ian bade the entourage to wait outside since Charlie’s sod-covered icehouse was behind the undertaking establishment, and he entered.

Strangely, Near-Sighted Charlie balked at storing the bodies. “Who’s paying the five dollars for the service, deputy? Ice costs money.”

Charlie was lying, Ian knew; he chopped the ice out of the river each winter free of charge, but the question did pose an administrative problem. If Ian left the bodies on the sidewalk, crowds of curious onlookers would slow the traffic and put the problem under the jurisdiction of the road commissioner and the road fund. If the corpses were left in the sunlight for two or three days, the town would have to be evacuated and the evacuation would be the mayor’s responsibility, an expense of the administration fund.

Ian decided to take first things first and told Charlie, “I’ll sign a five-dollar draw on the road fund, and you collect from Bain.”

“Won’t do no good, deputy. Mayor Winchester passed an ordinance yesterday that no name’s to be honored on the road fund but Commissioner Bain’s.”

If only an administrative problem had been involved, this information would have prompted Ian to leave the bodies on the sidewalk, but he had a financial interest in preserving the physical identity of the outlaws.

“What difference does it make whose signature it is? You can’t see it nohow.”

“I heard your voice, deputy, so I know you’re out there, and the mayor said, in particular, that the deputy sheriff’s signature was no longer to be honored.”

Administrative hedges Ian could understand, but to be singled out for a loss of an honest privilege was another matter. A cold rage seized him. While he had been out of town for less than twenty-four hours, answering the call of civil duty, protecting the public, the mayor had been slipping around his back, fencing him out from the trough. Ian had known this was occurring, yesterday, but it had not mattered to the badman he had been yesterday. Now he was going straight, and the first time, ever, he reached into the till for a legitimate expense, the mayor slammed the drawer on his fingers.

The minute Ian finished the road, he had been spurned by the official who had used him. For the only time in his life, Ian was suffering an undeserved injustice, and the mayor’s treachery rankled. In plain view of an ordinary man, he bent over Charlie’s desk and wrote out a five-dollar chit, signing it.

“Here’s your chit, Charlie. There’s your bodies. This paper’s as good as gold. You can take my word.”

“What other collateral can you give me?”

“Winchester on a slab, and no cutback to me on his funeral expenses.”

The iron ring in Ian’s voice brought a smile of agreement to the undertaker’s face. “Knowing you and knowing him, I figure I’m bound to get paid one way or the other.”

Charlie turned and called outside, “Take the departed ones to the icehouse, boys.”

Striding from the undertaker’s to the bank, Ian managed to rein his anger with a brand-new halter—objective detachment. Killing Winchester would not teach the mayor the error of his ways. Besides, the mayor was also a preacher; murdering him might not set well with most of his congregation, would lower Ian’s standing as a law-abiding citizen in the community, and any public official who figured out a way to tap the public till six days a week and Sunday deserved a more subtle chastisement than a bullet in the head.

Suddenly he had an idea. He could teach the mayor humility without having to pistol-whip the preacher, and the solution to the Winchester problem lay in Bain, the biggest contributor to the mayor’s campaign fund.

Three minutes after he left the bank, Ian shouldered through the swinging doors of the saloon and moved along the bar toward the back room, ignoring Faust at his beer-drinking station. As he moved, Ian was conscious that he was passing a milestone in his life and taking a giant stride toward respectability. He was going to complete his first commercial arrangement kept entirely within the letter of the law.

Seated at his desk and totaling a column of figures, Bain looked up and began a nervous smile of greeting to his visitor, which was quickly squelched by the hostility of McCloud.

“Bain, I liked the way you and Winchester tried to squeeze me out of the road fund.”

“It wasn’t my idea, deputy. The mayor didn’t like the way you disobeyed his orders and run in the big Mormon. Anyway, the road fund’s been diverted into the administration fund. Matter of fact, there’s no point even having a road commissioner. Through connections with the mayor, Mickey O’Shea’s got all the contracts sewed up. All I was appointed for was to name the Winchester Pike because the mayor didn’t think it proper to name the road after himself, himself. I couldn’t fight city hall, so I had to take the job, and that’s the honest truth, deputy. You can trust me.”

“I trust you, Bain, just as much as I trust my brother, the brother I shot for stealing my horse, but I ain’t asking for my share of the road fund back. I just want my share of the poker take. That’s all.”

“You want a part of the business?”

“You might call it that.”

“How much you willing to invest?”

“Three ounces of lead”—Ian tapped his holster—“if my take ain’t forthcoming.”

“Deputy,” Bain said, visibly paling, “the agreement’s all right with me, but I got a silent partner I’d have to explain your share to.”

“If you got a silent partner, it’d have to be Winchester. Since he preaches against gambling, drinking, and whoring every Sunday, it wouldn’t be right for him to make a profit from gambling, drinking, and whoring.”

“Deputy, I ain’t saying you’re right, and I ain’t saying you’re wrong, but I will say you use damned good logic when you’re thinking.”

“How much did Winchester invest in this place?”

“Nothing in money. All that pious rascal did was issue me the draw-poker license… I’d be willing to make a bargain with you, deputy.” A shrewd look came into Bain’s eyes. “You invest in Winchester what you promised to invest in me, you can have half the profits in my business.”

Obviously, the saloon keeper was hurting. He was as much a victim of the mayor, probably, as Ian.

“Nope, Bain,” Ian’s voice softened. “All I aim to do is learn him humility. Besides, that justice of the peace of mine might have me hanged for killing a mayor. Anyhow, we need somebody in the office we can trust, and you and me can trust Winchester to be a hypocrite.”

Bain said, “That’s for damned sure.”

“You keep giving me my take from tables and take it out of the mayor’s administration fund. Tell him it’s a campaign contribution to keep me from running for mayor on a reform ticket. Tell him I got wind of his part ownership of a sin palace, and if he gets out of line, he’ll be rode out of town on a rail by his own congregation.”

“I’d drink to that, deputy, and so would the mayor if he was here, but since he ain’t, I got a better idea. Why don’t you run for mayor and get that buzzard-beaked sky pilot off our roost. If I could charge him regular rates for upstairs entertainment, I could get back in a week the contribution he squeezed out of me.

“No, I ain’t running for mayor. I’m thinking about doing something with a lot more people.”

Bain pulled the cork out with his teeth. “You’d make a good governor, deputy, and I’d make a good road commissioner for the Territory of Wyoming. Let’s drink to it.”

“No, I got to do my drinking elsewhere. Put a bottle in the bag with my last night’s kitty, and I’ll mosey along. When Near-Sighted Charlie gets here with a chit, pay it out of Winchester’s share of the administration fund.”

It was Bain’s idea that he was going to run for governor, not Ian’s, but Ian decided to let him keep the idea. Hope for a respectable job was a good thing for a saloon keeper to have, and Bain’s dream of becoming territorial road commissioner was only partial recompense for the wrongs Winchester had done the man. It was the mayor who had to be taught a lesson he should have known as a preacher, that the love of money was the root of all evil. Ian calculated from the weight of the sack he hoisted that he was charging Winchester about $20 a day for his lesson.

It might have been lonely in the sheriff’s office with all the cells empty if Liza hadn’t been waiting for him. Besides, he was so tired he could feel the weight of his gun belt, which he unbuckled and hung on the wall, an unusual act for Ian, which was soon to have drastic consequences.

Liza took the edge off his loneliness and even alleviated in part his weariness. He had always considered her a handsome woman, but when he shoved the sack of money into the desk and removed the bottle of whiskey, her radiance lighted the building.

“I thought you’d took the pledge, Ian?”

She was sitting in front of the desk on which he kept a pitcher of water, and as he drew two tin mugs from the drawer, he answered, “Yeah, but I break it when the occasion warrants. I reckon you know what this occasion is… Say ‘when.’ ”

He pulled the cork from the bottle and started to pour, thinking, she might not be a filly, but she was some mare. She was big and strong, and the way her dark hair curled around her white, chiseled face and her dark eyes was mighty fetching.

“When you mentioned the horse,” she said, “I started thinking dowry. I figured you’d be worth more than them books, which is about all my poor orphaned daughter can offer a man, which ain’t much unless he’s a book lover.”

“The whiskey’s going to spill,” he said.

“Top it off level,” she said. “If the cup had a saucer you could let it run over.”

“You ain’t leaving room for water.”

“Don’t need water… There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for that little girl of mine. Might even throw in the chicken ranch and go to work for Bain upstairs. So I don’t want my wits about me when I’m talking dowry with Ian McCloud. All I was going to give Billy Peyton was her father’s books, but I know you ain’t no book lover.”

Suddenly, she paused, and added, almost wistfully, “Not being a book lover might be a pity for any boy bent on marrying Gabriella.”

Ian was shy about contradicting the lady. If Liza thought he was here to talk dowry, he’d let her go on thinking so, at least until they were into their second cup of whiskey.

“I could use your chicken ranch,” Ian said thoughtfully, “but I don’t need books as long as I got a wife who can add figures. She won’t have to subtract.”

“Don’t matter about the books,” Liza agreed. “Reading don’t put no chickens in the pot, and reading got Gabe’s pa killed.

“She don’t like for me to talk about this—it’s sort of a family disgrace—but you ought to know something about her blood lines; her pa wasn’t killed by no fall from a horse. He got knocked off.”

Liza lifted her cup and took a deep, pensive draft of whiskey. Ian followed her example, seeing her eyes grow sad.