Brian Garfield (13 page)

“There's a few too many in this country who wouldn't know fair play from buffalo chips.” Joe Ferris swung angrily about. “Damn you, Pack, don't you ever carry a gun?”

“I'm no good with them … What's this? I'm not chief of police here. Why air your lungs at me?”

“Well it gives me a bellyache,” Joe grumbled.

It was enough of an apology.

Pack suddenly realized he still had the baseball in his hand. It seemed mortifyingly foolish.

The girl from the cafe appeared in the door. Swede faced her helplessly. “I've lost it all, Katie.”

She stared, eyes big as dollars. Pack thought:
She'll turn her back on him now, faster than you can say Jack Robinson.

He saw the girl take Swede's hand in both of her own as if it were a lovely flower. “It's all right,” she said. “We'll start again.”

Swede brooded at her and finally brought himself to say to Joe Ferris, “I can't pay you back the hundred dollars.”

“You'll pay it sometime,” said Joe.

“I guess not. I just can't stay on. No longer.”

Joe and Swede were not meeting each other's eyes. Pack felt the discomfort coming off both men. The girl Katie said to Swede, “You're going to have to decide.”

“Well I know that.”

“Decide, then.”

“All right. I've decided.”

“What? What did you decide?”

“I've decided,” he said, “that I don't know what to decide.”

“Then I'll tell you what you're going to do.” She leaned close to whisper to him. Pack watched them in mild disbelief.

“I've lost it all, Katie. How can I marry you when I've lost my reputation?”

“I don't mind,” said Katie. “I lost mine quite a while ago.”

Her smile was so sweet it tore Pack's heart.

And Swede said to Joe Ferris, “All right then. Is this building worth a hundred dollars to you?”

And so it came to pass that Swede Nelson signed over his store to Joe Ferris, in cancellation of a hundred-dollar debt and in an effort to keep the store out of the hands of Jerry Paddock and his ilk; and the very next afternoon, Monday, Swede and Katie departed in Swede's old freight wagon, inasmuch as they lacked train fare and had no particular destination in mind anyhow.

Outside the newspaper office Pack and Joe Ferris stood watching the freight wagon rattle out of town.

Katie's mother, slat-sided wilted woman who seldom ever spoke, stood on the cafe stoop shading her eyes with her hand. Katie looked back once and waved. The mother put her eyes down and wiped her hands on her apron. Perhaps she was wondering if Swede really meant to catch up with the circuit parson in Montana. Pack reminded himself to reassure her at supper about that. Swede was a man of his word.

The wagon went by the meat-packing factory—sprawl of peaked tinroof buildings skewered by the towering brick smokestack, toward which Joe Ferris made a face. “Smell always puts me in mind of Indians burning prisoners at the stake.”

“You ever see an Indian burn a prisoner at the stake?”

“Why, no. But this is just what it would smell like. I just know that.”

“Price of progress,” said Pack. He watched the wagon ford the river and make its way along the bend on the far bank where squatted the splintered grey drooping remains of what used to be the town of Little Missouri—“Little Misery” to those who had known it.

He saw Jerry Paddock standing in the shadows two blocks away. From this distance Pack could not tell if he was smiling.

Alerted by Pack's expression, Joe Ferris turned his head that way. At sight of the villain he said in an ominous voice, “One day …”

“Now, what if he wasn't the one?”

Joe snorted. “What if the sky's not blue?” He stared furiously at the dark sinister figure. “Back before you came here, I remember old what's-his-name from Arkansas. Jerry Paddock owed him three hundred dollars, I believe it was. The man got shod into a funeral procession—kicked to death by a horse, or so Jerry Paddock told it. It sounded pretty peculiar if you happened to know anything about the ways of horses.”

It was true, Pack thought, that to Jerry Paddock morality meant no more than grammar. But he said, “Don't take up for Swede with your eyes shut, Joe. You find the stolen goods or a witness who saw the deed and we can go to Mandan and call in Sheriff Harmon. But without evidence—”

“Sometimes you just exasperate the hell out of me.”

“Is that so.”

After a moment Pack's good-natured poultice of patience drew the outrage out of Joe Ferris; he said crossly, “You should've been a preacher.”

“I know too little about men and nothing at all about the Almighty.”

“You do pretend to know more about right and wrong than a fire-escape sin buster.”

“My prayer book's
The Bad Lands Cow Boy
, and my rod and my staff they comfort thee.”

Following the Northern Pacific's right-of-way to the west, the wagon disappeared past the knee of Graveyard Butte.

When it was gone the mother went back into the cafe without any expression at all on her face.

Joe Ferris said, “D'you imagine we'll hear from them sometime?”

“Possibly. If the Indians and road agents and blizzards don't get them.”

Joe said, “True enough. Well then. We fixing to finish that baseball game next Sunday or you boys willing to forfeit?”

“What was the score?”

“Thirty-one to fourteen. Seventh inning.”

“I'll put it to a vote.” Standing at the front door of the newspaper office, regarding the building diagonally opposite, Pack said, “Got yourself a store.”

“Some board lumber is all. No stock of merchandise and no money to buy it.”

“One thing at a time. At least it's four walls and a roof. That's what you wanted.”

“I can sleep there anyhow. If Jerry Paddock doesn't mistake that for competition.”

Joe took a hitch in the gunbelt around his waist. Pack glanced at it, for it was unusual to see Joe wearing a weapon in town. The revolver in the holster was big—a Remington from the look of it; probably a .44—and the loops in Joe's prairie belt held thirty or forty cartridges. It made Pack uneasy.

Joe saw the direction of his friend's glance; he looked sharply at Pack.

Choosing to change the subject Pack cocked an eye toward the angle of the sun. It was time to feed and water the guest in the Bastille.

As they set forth he said, “I had Katie fixed in my mind as six months away from a painted shanty queen. I knew for certain she'd put her back to Swede—and look what happened. How old does a man have to get before he has the wisdom to understand the first damn thing about a woman?”

“Old enough to grow wrinkles on his horns, may be. All the same, wish I had
my
young lady here.” There was a moment while Joe considered things. He frowned over his shoulder toward the vacant store.

“Why do we let Jerry Paddock have his way? Even a baseball game has got to have rules.”

They waved their way with violent hand-flappings through a plague of flies. Pack said, “Always rules, and always those inclined to flout them.”

“That's why you elect an Umpire … Now
that's
what this town needs! An Umpire.”

The abattoir smell was terrible today. Pack turned his face out of the wind. “Now, I may have a word with the Marquis.”

“About Jerry Paddock?”

“Just so,” Pack said. “The Marquis may be too trusting.” He added, “Now, I believe it's a typical weakness in geniuses.”

They found hunters at the Bastille—Redhead Finnegan and Frank O'Donnell and young Riley Luffsey and four of their drinking companions.

The louts were amusing themselves by throwing stones and empty bottles at the door of the windowless prison cabin.

The rattling racket was loud enough out here; Pack could imagine what it must do to a man's ears inside the echoing strongbox; he did not wonder at the bellowing screams of bewildered fury that roared pathetically from within. The door shook—not so much from the rataplan of stones and bottles as from the pounding of the prisoner's enraged fists.

“Now boys,” Pack said, “I expect that's enough.”

The ruffians swung to peer at him. Riley Luffsey put his brash grin on Pack. “That critter needs his exercise, don't he? We're just helping him out.”

Joe Ferris said, “What's the matter—you boys run out of fences to cut?”

Full of good nature, Riley Luffsey laughed. “Sure. Come on, Joe, give the critter his exercise.”

Pack felt the ill will in “Bitter Creek” Redhead Finnegan's scowl. With very little provocation this could become something with which he would prefer not to tangle. Uncertain, searching for a fair resolution, he said, “Might not hurt to give him an airing.”

“That's right,” said Luffsey eagerly. “Open the door and let it run some.”

Redhead Finnegan's eyes were crowded with a bright blue tension. After some visible thought he said, “The kid will bring him back,” and nearly smiled at Luffsey. “Won't you, kid.”

Joe Ferris said dryly, “And if he doesn't?”

“Can't nothing get away from me,” Riley Luffsey boasted.

Redhead Finnegan's skin was as sticky as overboiled rice. He said, “We'll chip in two bits for the kid if he catches him. If the Lunatic gets away from the kid, we'll whale hell out of the kid.” He leered at the youth.

Luffsey was full of the devil today; he let his bravado get the better of him. “For two bits I'll run all day and all night. Turn him loose, then—let's go.”

Frank O'Donnell's rusty voice scraped at the youth. “How much head start you aim to give him?”

“I'll give him fifty foot. Hell, make it a hundred foot.”

An unpleasant expression stretched Frank O'Donnell's rough pitted cheeks. Perhaps it was intended as a smile. He said to Finnegan, “Half a dollar on the Lunatic—and if the kid don't catch him I'll help knock his ears down.”

“Even bet,” Finnegan said. “One to one.”

Pack said, “Now hold on …”

Riley Luffsey thrust his face eagerly toward Pack. “Come on, Mr. Packard. Turn it loose. I won't let it get away. I can run faster than anything in Dakota. I'm aching to heat my axles. I can run faster than the wind.” To Finnegan he said, “You ought to give him ten-to-one odds.”

“One to one,” Finnegan replied. “I never seen you run a distance.” He glared around him. “Any disputation?”

Three of the ruffians dug coins from their pockets.

Joe Ferris said mildly to Pack, “Give us a chance to swamp the place out.”

Pack considered it. After a moment he warned Finnegan: “Mind he's brought back here without harm.”

Joe Ferris said to the kid, “Chase it through the river while you're about it—give it a bath. Getting so you can smell it a hundred yards downwind.”

Riley Luffsey pressed something into Redhead Finnegan's hand. “I'm betting on myself.”

Pack realized they were staring at him. For a moment he couldn't fathom why. Then Joe Ferris said, “The key.”

He approached the building and hesitated with the key poised at the big padlock. Joe was right, the odor was ripe, even through the thick door.

He turned the key and silently lifted the padlock off its hasp and stepped back out of the way and pulled the door open.

The Lunatic loomed, arms half-raised defensively before him. Plainly he was bewildered, face screwed up in a painful squint against the sudden brightness.

The stink was God-awful. Pack wanted to back away but he felt pinioned and could not move.

The Lunatic's eyes came open and swung slowly to bear upon Pack's face and once again there seemed to be something profound in that strange huge round smooth childlike face.

Pack said softly, “Can you talk? Can you talk to me?”

The Lunatic cocked his head to one side with the quizzicality of a dog listening to an unfamiliar sound.

For a moment their glances interlocked; then there was the
thwack
of a thrown stone against the Lunatic's tattered trouser leg.

The Lunatic bolted along the embankment; the chase was on.

The ruffians got him well started, following in full cry and pelting him with stones until the Lunatic went past the end of town, fleeing at a dead run.

After a bit the crowd stopped. Pack and Joe watched from the door of the Bastille. Young Riley Luffsey waited, playing fair, giving the Lunatic his lead, and when Luffsey began to run Frank O'Donnell tripped him with an outflung foot.

Pack observed that it was typical of the fair play observed by that crowd: O'Donnell was simply protecting his bet, and it did not occur to any of the others to chastise him. The ruffians laughed aloud as Luffsey fell hard—his palms and knees must have taken a bad skinning—but he was up in an instant and giving chase without even a glance at O'Donnell, who by the agonized contortion of his face evidently was trying to smile again; and then, with Finnegan, O'Donnell led the little mob away in a lumbering effort to keep the two runners in sight. Luffsey soon distanced them all.

Pack remained where he was. Joe Ferris said, “What if it gets away?”

“Then Riley Luffsey will take a beating he won't soon forget. And I'll have to borrow your horse and track down the Lunatic.”

“What for? Let it go,” Joe Ferris said. “It's a wild animal anyhow—leave it free.”

“Free to starve? Free to be eaten by bears and wolves?”

“For that critter it'd be better than being locked up in a cage.”

*    *    *

Soon the ruffians adjourned to one of their watering holes for refreshment; but ten minutes later they returned
en masse
, their ranks swollen with curiosity seekers. The mob lurched past the jail up onto the embankment and Pack heard someone shout, “There they are, by damn. Coming back this way—see them there?”