Eureka (2 page)

“Looka there,” he said, “the sheeny rich kid and his pal.”

He walked out on the porch, down the steps to the wood-slat sidewalk and, as the two boys rode past, he flicked his cigarette at them. It arced past Brodie's face and bounced off Ben's shoulder.

“Hey, kid,” Guilfoyle said to Brodie, “who's your kike friend?”

Brodie did not hesitate. He handed his reins to Ben.

“Hold my horse,” he snapped as he swung out of the saddle and landed flat-footed on the wooden walk in front of the red-haired lout.

“What d'you want?” Guilfoyle sneered, his thumbs hooked though his suspenders.

Brodie didn't say anything. He was sizing up Guilfoyle, remembering what his father had told him early on about street fighting:
Size up your foe. Look for his soft spots. Distract him. Hit first. Go for his nose. It hurts like hell, knocks him off balance, draws blood. Draw first blood, you win.

Guilfoyle had three inches on him and probably twenty pounds. But he was a dimwit, which meant he was slow. And he had bad teeth, rotten teeth.

“Your breath is uglier than you are,” Brodie said. “I can smell you from here.”

On the porch, Arnie Riker frowned and leaned forward. His front chair legs smacked hard on the porch floor.

Guilfoyle's smile evaporated. He looked puzzled.

Brodie took the instant. He kicked Guilfoyle in the shin. The big kid yowled like an injured dog, lost his balance, reached down and as he did, Brodie threw the hardest punch he could muster, a hard right straight into Guilfoyle's nose. Brodie felt Guilfoyle's bones crush, felt the cartilage flatten, felt the warm flood of blood on his fist.

Guilfoyle staggered back several steps, blood streaming from his nose, pain gurgling in his throat. Brodie quickly followed him, hit him with a left and a right in the stomach. Guilfoyle roared with rage, threw a wild left that clipped Brodie on the corner of his left eye. It was a glancing blow, but it snapped Brodie's head and he saw sparks for a moment. But it didn't slow him down. He stepped in and kneed Guilfoyle in the groin, and as the young thug dropped to his knees, Brodie put all he had into a roundhouse right. It smashed into Guilfoyle's mouth and Brodie felt the big redhead's teeth crumble, felt pain in his own knuckles.

Guilfoyle fell sideways off the walk into the mud. He lay on his back, one hand clutching his broken nose and busted teeth, the other grabbing his groin. Tears were flowing down his cheeks.

Riker stood up, his fists clenched in anger.

“Stand up,” he yelled. “Stand up, you damn crybaby.”

Guilfoyle groaned, rolled on his side, and tried to get up, but he was whipped. His hand slid in the mud and he fell again. He spit out a broken tooth and smeared blood over his face with the back of his hand.

Disgusted, Riker spat at Guilfoyle, and turned to the other three toughs who had joined him to watch the fight.

“Knock that little shit into the middle of next week,” he snarled.

One of them reached inside the door and grabbed a baseball bat. The three of them started down the steps.

Ben had eased the horses up to the hitch rail. He got off his horse, tied them both up, and hurried to join Brodie.

The three toughs walked toward Brodie, who didn't move an inch. He was sizing them up as they sauntered toward him. He'd feint a left toward the one in the middle, smack the one holding the bat with a right to the mouth, and hopefully grab the bat and even things up.

It never happened.

A shadow as big as a cloud fell across them. Riker's hooligans looked up and Brodie looked over his shoulder.

Buck Tallman was sitting on a strawberry roan, his back as straight as a wall, his blond hair curling down around his shoulders from under a flat western hat. His face was leathery tan with a bushy handlebar mustache, its ends pointing toward flinty gray eyes. He was wearing a light-colored leather jacket with fringe down the sleeves. His sheriff's badge was pinned to the holster where his .44 Peacemaker nestled on his hip. It looked as big as a cannon.

He smiled down at Riker's young roughnecks and at the stricken Guilfoyle.

“One on one's a fair fight,” he said, looking straight into Riker's eyes. “Three on one don't work with me. Understood?”

Riker didn't say anything. The three ruffians nodded and went meekly back into the hotel. Riker stared down at the beaten Guilfoyle, who was still sprawled in the mud, and shook his head.

“You're pitiful,” he growled. Then he turned and went into the brothel.

Buck Tallman was a product of the previous century, of lawless western towns where violence was a way of life. Tallman had brought to Eureka the harsh morality of that frontier, had ridden with Pat Garrett and Bat Masterson, and had dime novels written about him.

Nobody messed with Buck Tallman. Everybody knew he was hired by the men on the Hill, the Olympus of the gods who owned the railroad and the land, and had friends in high places in Sacramento. They called the shots. In Eureka, Buck Tallman's job was to keep the peace within the limits they set.

Tallman leaned forward in the saddle and held his hand out to Brodie, who grabbed it and was swung up behind the saddle of the colorful rider.

“Thanks,” Brodie said.

“What are you two doin' down here? Y'know how Mr. Eli feels about that.”

“Going to get a soda,” Ben answered. “We've been playing baseball up on the field.”

Tallman looked back at Brodie. “You got a little shiner there. Needs some ice.”

As they rode the block toward the pharmacy, Brodie put both hands under himself and swung over onto his own horse. They pulled up in front of a small shop with a large window announcing “Gullman's Pharmaceutical Parlor,” with a rendering of a mortar and pestle under the lettering.

“Hey, Doc,” Tallman called out.

“Yes, sir,” came the answer from inside the store, and Gullman stepped out.

“How about bringin' us three strawberry soda pops? Put 'em on my tab.”

“Good enough,” the owner answered. “They're good and cold; Jesse just come back from the icehouse.”

“Good, throw some ice in a small bag while you're about it,” Tallman said.

Gullman returned quickly with the three sodas and a paper bag of ice.

Tallman wheeled the roan around and headed toward the ocean, with Ben and Brodie following. They tethered their horses to a tree at the edge of the beach and hunched down Indian-style on the sand. For a change, the sun was out. The sky was cloudless. It was so clear you could see the waves breaking at the entrance to the bay, almost two miles away.

Brodie dug some ice out of the soggy bag and winced as he pressed it against the welt on the corner of his eye. Water dribbled down the side of his face.

“You'll be goin' back East soon, won't you, Ben?” Tallman said.

Ben nodded. “Papa and I are going to Boston in a month to get me set up. Soon as school's out.”

“You gonna marry Isabel?”

“Well, she's going East to school, too,” Ben said, his face reddening. “But it's too early to be thinking about getting married.”

“How about you, Brodie? What are you gonna do?”

Brodie picked up a handful of sand and watched it stream from his fist. “Haven't thought much about it,” was all he said.

Tallman was mentor to the two boys, had taught them how to stand in the stirrups at a full gallop to take the load off the horse's back; how to draw a gun in a single, fluid move, skimming the hammer back with the flat of the hand, pointing the piece—like you would point a finger—before making a fist and squeezing the trigger, all the while without changing expression. No hint of a move in the eyes or jaw muscles. No giveaways. And stay loose, don't tighten up, concentrate on the eyes and face of your foe.

“Their eyes'll tell you when to squeeze off,” he had told them. “It's a look you never forget.”

“Like what?” Brodie asked.

“Plenty a things. Fear, hesitation, a little twitch of the eye, anxiousness. It's a giveaway look for damn sure. You'll know it, if ever you see it.”

The talk didn't mean much to Ben, who loved a shotgun and the hunt, while Brodie loved pistol shooting.

“So who's the best shot you ever knew?” asked Brodie.

“Phoebe Moses is the best shot alive,” he said without hesitation.

“A
girl
!” Ben said incredulously.

“C'mon,” Brodie said.

“Phoebe Anne Oakley Moses. You boys know her better as Annie Oakley. I met her a few years ago when Bill Cody's Wild West Show was in Chicago. She shoots over her shoulder with a rifle better than me, Wyatt, Pat Garrett, or her husband, Frank Butler—who was damn good himself—can shoot with a pistol. You could toss a playin' card in the air and she'd put a dozen shots in it 'fore it hit the ground. Her and Frank are still with the show, far as I know.”

“How about that abalone shell down there,” Brodie said suddenly.

“What shell?” Tallman asked, casually looking down the beach.

Brodie looked down the beach. A red abalone shell was lying at the edge of the surf about fifty feet away. He had to squint to see it clearly. “The red one. Down the beach there.”

Tallman didn't need to ask what Brodie wanted him to do. He simply stood up, stood straight with his hands hanging loosely at his sides. His eyes were narrowed slightly. Nothing in his face changed before his right arm moved fluidly up, his hand drawing the .44 as it passed his hip, his left hand fanning back the hammer as his hand stretched out, and

BOOM!

Both boys jumped as the gun roared.

The red shell exploded. Pieces flying left and right, the main piece jumping straight up. As it fell, Tallman fanned off a second shot and it disintegrated.

And just as quickly, the gun was back in its holster and Tallman reached up and tenderly stroked the curves in his mustache.

“You mean that one?” he said.

He took out the pistol, flipped the retainer on the cylinder open and emptied the spent casings into his hand and dropped them in his pocket, then inserted fresh bullets into the slots and flipped the retainer shut. He handed the gun butt-first to Brodie.

“Give it a try,” he said.

The Irish kid took the pistol, stuck the gun between his pants and shirt so the hammer would not catch on his belt. It was on his left side, the butt facing to the right so he could cross-draw. He looked for a target. Twenty feet away a bottle rolled on the beach at the edge of the surf.

He shook his hands and shoulders loose.

His right arm moved swiftly across his body, hauled the big Frontiersman from its resting place. His left hand snapped the hammer back as he raised the gun at arm's length and squeezed his hand. The gun roared, kicked his arm almost straight up. Sand kicked up an inch from the bottle.

“Well, damn,” he muttered.

“That was a good shot,” Tallman said, nodding assurance. “Just a hair to the right.”

Brodie smiled, dropped the empty casing into his hand and gave the casing and the gun back to the sheriff.

“How about you, Ben?” Tallman asked.

“Nah,” Ben answered. “You know I never got the hang of it.”

Tallman looked over his shoulder. The sun was turning red, sinking toward the horizon. He slapped them both on the shoulder.

“You boys better get on up the Hill. Be dinnertime soon.”

They rode the length of the beach to the cliff trail, a wide walkway huddled against the face of the cliff, which rose six hundred feet up the sea side of the Hill and ended at the edge of Grand View, the O'Dell estate. The grand, white-columned mansion sat back from the main road at the end of a drive lined on both sides by small bushes. Behind it and six hundred feet down, the Pacific Ocean stretched to the horizon.

It and the Gorman estate were the two grandest houses on the Hill.

A one-horse surrey was coming up the road from the strip of stores that serviced the families on the Hill. The driver was a powerfully built black man in his twenties, who spoke with an almost musical lilt. His name was Noah. Rumor had it that Shamus O'Dell had bought Noah's mother at a slave market on one of the Caribbean islands. He had bought her as a housekeeper, not knowing she was pregnant. Her son had been raised by O'Dell and educated by his wife, Kate. Noah was fiercely loyal to the family, sometimes acting as a bodyguard for Shamus; sometimes watching over Delilah, who was O'Dell's daughter and one of the three girls in the carriage; sometimes driving the family automobile, a German Daimler, which looked like a formal horse carriage powered by a gas engine and was the only automobile in the valley.

O'Dell never took the car down the hill, fearing the brakes might not hold or it would get mired in mud. So he showed off in it sticking to the broad, forested, five-mile-wide northern mesa, the Hill, where the families of fourteen tycoons lived, five appearing only on weekends. Noah proudly squired O'Dell along the horse trails that served as roads, taking him to the club where the rich men and their male out-of-town guests drank at the bar or played cards. On occasion, Noah drove Delilah to the two-story schoolhouse, where tutors taught the dozen or so children of the barons who lived there year-round.

Two of the girls in the surrey were facing Ben and Brodie as they reached the top of the cliff. The third girl was sitting opposite the other two, with her back to the boys.

When Noah saw the boys, he reined in his horse.

Delilah O'Dell, seventeen and the oldest of the three, already flaunted a sensuous and independent nature that would define her through the years. She was well developed for her age. Blazing red hair cascaded down over her shoulders and curled over her breasts. She ignored Ben, fixing her green eyes on Brodie.

“Looks like you've been rolling those horses in the mud,” she said haughtily.

Ann Harte, the girl sitting next to her, had just turned fifteen and was extremely shy. She giggled nervously, looked down, toyed with her purse, and murmured, “Hello.”