Andromeda Gun (7 page)

“Sister Betsy, control yourself,” the preacher said. “There’s an administrative problem here, which the average citizen can’t be expected to understand; namely, who’s going to pay the labor?”

“Preacher,” Ian said helpfully, “why not use the jail prisoners in a road gang.”

“There ain’t no prisoners, Brother McCloud. Our good sheriff, Brother Faust, is as strong a believer in brotherly love, even when it’s against the town’s policy. But I thank you and welcome you to Shoshone Flats. My sermon for today is ‘Heaven as It Really Is.’ ”

Ian sat down as the preacher jumped quickly into his sermon. After fifteen minutes, Ian figured it might be time to excuse himself and go steal the horse, but a flurry of rain on the roof made him reconsider. Hiding out in weather like this, all night, waiting for the bank to open, could give a man lung congestion, and the lone saddle horse at the hitching rack didn’t look like much of a mudder. If he waited for the evening services, the weather might clear, and clearing weather would also give him a better selection of horses.

Also, Ian was beginning to pay attention to the sermon, and, for reasons he could not understand, was even growing interested.

Brother Winchester was describing the sights and sounds of heaven, beginning with the first sweet notes of Gabriel’s trumpet.

“Ah, sweet music to the ears of the saved, brothers and sisters, but a dirge unto the damned.”

He got past the golden gate in fine style, describing it with a jeweler’s attention to the details, but when he came to describing the throne of God, either his vision failed him or his voice faltered. “Pure radiance, brothers and sisters, shimmering, ineffable, surrounded by luminous flights of angels enwrapped in righteous robes of peace.”

Inside Ian, G-7 listened tensely. This earthman was giving a literal description of a launching pad with waiting pilots on a stand-by detail.

And Winchester’s human audience was straining to catch every dip and quaver of his voice when the preacher made a political error. “I tell you, brothers and sisters, I half-envy the soul of our late Brother Trotter, which, at this very minute, is walking up to that throne of radiance and all enveloping peace. Brother Trotter is done forever with life’s toil. For him, no more the ordeal of facing winter’s rages atop a coach seat, no more the fear of stage robbers, no more the toiling on the long upgrades, the breaking on the downgrades…”

“And no more Dead Man’s Curve,” Betsy Troop shrilled from the rear. “Ian McCloud for mayor.”

“No more the taunts of men, the bile of females, nor the scorn that civic merit from the nonvoter takes,” Winchester continued. His righteous wrath closed the breech, and a few of the women began to sob audibly as he swung back to the safer fields of heaven.

Whatever his faults as a mayor, Ian decided, Winchester was a spellbinding preacher, and he proved it at the close of the sermon. Repentance of sin was the key to paradise, he said, and he invited his audience forward to the alter to kneel and pray for forgiveness of their sins. He built his plea up to a final adjuration, “Now the time has come, brothers and sisters, to come forward and confess to Jesus and be saved. Come to Jesus, now, you sinners.”

On the word “now” the organist began the old hymn, “Come to Jesus Now,” but a quick-step march would have been more appropriate for the congregation. Almost as a body, it rose and went forward, with Liza Stewart leading the procession, and it was good that Liza should lead, Ian thought, because anyone in front of her would have been trampled in her rush to get to the altar. Gabriella sat pat.

“Are you going forward?” Ian asked the girl.

“Schoolteachers don’t sin,” she said. “But you go ahead, if you’re a mind to.”

“I’m a little shy about such things,” he admitted, “but Liza don’t seem backwards. She was pounding leather to get up there, and she don’t seem sinful to me.”

“A woman can think sinful thoughts,” Gabriella said, “and if my mother’s asking forgiveness for what I think she’s been thinking, well, I never!”

Ian could almost hear Gabriella’s jaws snap shut with indignation, and he hastened to comfort her. “Gabriella, she can’t even think sinful thoughts out there on the ranch with nothing but them chickens.”

“You don’t know mama!”

Brother Winchester was moving among his kneeling flock, bending to whisper words of inspiration and faith to each sinner.

Ian noticed that his ministrations over Liza were somewhat prolonged, and, in the middle of the church, Ian had a sinful thought regarding the preacher’s motives, but Winchester’s show of forgiveness seemed to soften Gabriella.

“You can help Sister Liza, Brother Ian,” she said, “by not looking at her as if you were studying her and by not saying complimentary things to her. Help her be strong, Brother Ian, for mama is weak.”

“Yes’m,” Ian promised, slightly addled.

“Now, if you wish to go up and join the others, Brother Ian, I’ll understand, but don’t kneel next to mama.”

It wasn’t shyness that restrained Ian but his schedule. If he went forward and confessed his sins, he might be here until Tuesday and he was leaving Monday morning.

“No, Gabriella, I come with you and I’m staying with you.”

Suddenly she reached over and patted the back of his hand, saying, “You
are
strong, Ian.”

Even as he thrilled to her touch, he thrilled more to the knowledge that there was something of her mother in Gabriella Stewart.

After the sermon, there was a brief fellowship period over coffee in the kitchen at the rear of the church. As the ladies gathered in one room to plan picnic hampers and as Liza corraled Mr. Birnie in an isolated corner, the men gathered around Brother Winchester to thank him for his soul-saving effort and for setting their feet on the path of salvation.

Ian took advantage of the temporary freedom from females to engage the preacher in a theological discussion.

“For some reason, sir, I feel a powerful interest in this Angel Gabriel. Some of the best people I know are named for him. Where does he hail from?”

“From heaven, son, out beyond the stars. He’s a powerful man in heaven, an archangel. Some folks think he might have had something to do with Jesus since he was seen calling on Mary just before Christ was born.”

“Where’d he get the name Gabriel?”

“Some Hebrew called him by the name and it stuck.”

“Does the name mean anything in Hebrew?”

“Can’t say since I’m not a Hebrew. You might ask Abe Bernbaum. He’s a Hebrew.”

“Is he the little fellow with the big head and the deep voice?”

“Yes, sir,” the preacher smiled. “He’s Shoshone Flats’ naysayer and woe-bearer, but he’s God’s own tailor, the town’s official tailor, in fact.”

Suddenly the preacher paused and dropped his head in a meditation so deep Ian felt he might be going to sleep on his feet, but he quickly aroused himself.

“Brother McCloud, when I was walking among them sinners, the Holy Ghost asked me to give you a proposal in my capacity as town mayor. We’ve got Brother Faust as sheriff, but he’s a little too old and too Christian for a lawman. If you’d consent to abide with us for a while and act as his deputy, I know a young man with your spunk and grit could help bring law and order to Shoshone Flats and get us enough prisoners to straighten out that curve and maybe fill in a few chuckholes in the road. Of course, we ain’t the richest town in the world. We couldn’t afford to pay you much, but there are other benefits. As the law, you’d have full protection of the law when the Avenging Angels ride against you, you’d get a brand-new suit of clothes at the town’s expense, a free burial preached by me if you should come to an untimely end, and you’d get the loan of a saddle and a fast horse.”

Ian became alert at the mention of a fast horse, but immediately he spotted a loophole in the mayor’s argument. “The nag you issued to Sheriff Faust looks pretty spavined to me.”

“We issue the horse to fit the man,” Winchester explained. “Brother Hendricks, the best Gentile horse breeder in the valley, supplies the town with its horses, and he has a genius for matching the horse to the man.”

Ian’s thinking was assisted by a gust of rain on the roof. With a fast horse under him and the town emptied of people on Tuesday, he’d have the perfect arrangement for holding up the bank. Meanwhile, he’d have the use of the hotel room tonight and Monday night, so he wouldn’t have to get wet.

“How much does the job pay?” He feigned an interest.

“Eight dollars a week, but you can bed down in the jailhouse, and the town pays for your meals, either at the restaurant or the saloon, depending on whether you like chicken or steak. We’d like to pay more, but the town’s treasury is low.”

Suddenly the solution of a problem he did not intend to solve lay clear in Ian’s mind. He said, “Mr. Mayor, I could build you a road, pay myself fifteen dollars a week, and add to the town’s treasury without costing the town a penny, if you’d let me appoint the justice of peace.”

“Well, son”—the mayor rubbed his jaw—“that might cause legal problems. I’m supposed to appoint the justice of peace—we’ve had no use for one with Sheriff Faust—and the city charter won’t let me pay over eight dollars a week to a deputy because the high sheriff only makes eight dollars and two bits.”

“I don’t know nothing about legal problems,” Ian said, “but I can solve them two. You appoint the justice of peace I ask you to appoint and, instead of raising my salary, give me a percentage of all the fines the justice of peace collects.”

“Brother McCloud, you’ve just earned yourself a position of responsibility in the thriving community of Shoshone Flats…

“Brother Hendricks,” he called over Ian’s shoulder, “I want you to come over and meet our new deputy sheriff, Brother Ian McCloud. What kind of horse can you offer him?”

Brother Hendricks, the horse breeder, advanced with a limp. Ian saw that the man had once been tall and rawboned, but he was bent now from a curvature of the spine, and his right shoulder was a huge lump. Cocking his head, he looked up to Ian from beneath brows corrugated with scar tissue. He was studying the man.

“I’d match him with Midnight,” he said finally. “Midnight’s as fast as greased lightning, mister. If he can’t throw you, he pinwheels and crushes you. If he can throw you, he’ll stomp you to death. He’s a killer horse, but, by the holy jumping Jehoshaphat, the horse has got spirit!”

“Sounds like my kind of horse,” Ian said.

On the ride home, under a misting sky, Gabriella was excited over Ian’s appointment. Strangely, Liza, who was experiencing her own elation over a successful move to furnish lunch boxes to the Territorial Stage Lines—one cent going to Birnie and five to Ian—did not share her daughter’s enthusiasm.

“All Brother Winchester’s doing is getting rid of Ian so he won’t run for mayor. Once you’ve built the road, Ian, he’ll take credit and get himself reelected.”

With strange detachment, Ian saw the truth in what she said, but he saw deeper to another truth: a mayor indebted to a law officer might become the tool of his own lieutenant. Yet it was a matter that wouldn’t concern him after Tuesday.

“I reckon you’re right, Liza, but I ain’t intending to run for mayor, and if I’m going to load up that jail with lawbreakers, them criminals have got to be fed. As long as the Territorial Stage Lines agreed on a lunch box price, the town of Shoshone Flats will figure it’s getting a bargain, and I calculate I’ll be needing over a hundred a week. Of course, I ain’t much good at sums.”

“Nonsense, Ian McCloud,” Liza ejaculated, “you’re a genius as well as a he-man.”

“Oh, mother. Don’t be so obvious.”

“One thing you have to say about me, daughter, is that I’m grateful. After we’ve had the chicken dinner I promised you, Ian, I’m inviting you to stay for supper. I’ll fix you some of the best chicken dumplings you ever et.”

Already Ian was beginning to feel over-chickened, especially now that he knew more solid meat was available at the saloon.

“No’m. I appreciate it, but I got to write some letters to El Paso, and I got to take this rig back to the livery stable, so I’ll have to turn down your kind invitation to supper.”

All these people were going to a lot of trouble, he thought, just to help him steal a fast horse and rob their bank, but they were getting something back. False hope wasn’t much, but it was better than no hope at all.

Despite its triumph at the church meeting, G-7 was disappointed.

Aware that the patterns of man’s fate were seldom accidental, it was pleased to have elicited the correct responses from Ian at the services, and it knew that one step at a time was the most it could hope to accomplish in leading the man to legality, but fascinating educational bypaths were opening to it, right here on the buggy’s seat, and its host was ignoring them.

Both females were competing for Ian’s amorous attention. Yet G-7 knew that the romance it had hoped to research was going to be postponed, partly because of the inhibitions aroused in Ian by the presence of the girl’s mother, a presence which actually more than doubled the area of experimentation, partly because of the rain, but mostly because Ian was preoccupied with a five-cent rebate on a twenty-five cent box lunch for nonexistent prisoners. Somehow the prospect of the former Johnny Loco tapping the public till appealed to McCloud’s ironic humor.

Love of money was the root of this man’s evil. Seated between two women, both eager and the older one willing, he dreamed of theoretical profits and of real cash waiting in a bank to be robbed. Even after his psychic lust was appeased and his thoughts turned from profits, they did not turn to the women beside him.

He thought of a stallion called Midnight. Any horse that liked to kill men was bound to be a spirited steed. Moreover, with his freshly activated neural cells G-7 had quickened for high moral purposes, McCloud had hit on a plan to break the stallion of its pinwheeling habits forever.

Ian canceled his planned steak supper at Bain’s saloon. Shyness, politeness, and susceptibility to Liza’s persuasiveness had led him to eat three extra helpings of fried chicken, and, by the time the overburdened mare pulled him the muddy way into town, the torpor of digestion left him indifferent to food. From the livery stable he went directly to the hotel. Spreading his pallet beneath the gray light from the window, he took the Gideon’s Bible from the dresser and sprawled beneath the window to leaf through the pages.