Gun Play at Cross Creek (6 page)

Chapter 10

WITH THE BOX OF BULLETS
in his hand, Morgan walked back to the window. Kinkaid was no longer in sight, but Morgan stared after the marshal for a long time. Finally, realizing he wasn't going to see him again, he moved to the back of the store.

He leaned back against the shelves behind the counter, wondering whether Kinkaid had just threatened him, or not. The mind-set of a man who lived with a gun in his hand was a peculiar one. Used to offense, he had a tendency to find one where none was intended. But Kinkaid was not a subtle man. And there had been nothing subtle about the exchange. Or had there been?

To get his mind off it, Morgan grabbed the ladder and the paint can. He walked out into the heat and unfolded the heavy wooden ladder. It was old, covered with drips of a dozen colors of paint, scarred and nicked on every rung. “It's seen almost as much wear and tear as I have,” Morgan mumbled, as he knelt to open the paint. He took the can in both hands and shook it rapidly, like an angry parent trying to shake some sense into a wayward child.

When he was satisfied the paint would be mixed, he fished a pocket knife out of his jeans and pried the lid off. The paint was bright red. There were still a few swirls of oil on the surface, and he took the long-handled brush and stirred the top inch or two with the handle, wiped it off on a rag, and started up the ladder.

As he climbed, he found himself out in the bright sunlight. It felt warm on his back and the back of his neck. The sign was desperately in need of repainting, and Morgan scraped the last few flakes of the old blue lettering away with one callused palm.

Concentrating on the delicate demands of the job, he realized he'd be better off to take the sign down. He could control the brush better, and the paint wouldn't run. Shaking his head in annoyance, he climbed back down, set the paint on the boardwalk alongside the door, and stepped back into the welcome shade of the store. It felt ten degrees cooler, at least, and he wiped beads of sweat off his forehead with one rolled-up shirtsleeve.

Henessey kept tools in the back. Morgan had seen them during his inventory. He found a hammer and a pair of pliers. They should do the trick. He was back outside and halfway up the ladder when the next cowhand rode past. Morgan watched him tie up and head into the Whistle Wetter Tavern.

The sign was down in fifteen minutes. He used an old canvas for a drop cloth, and got down on his hands and knees with a pencil to block out the letters. He was almost done when he saw Henessey up the street. The shop owner was talking to three men he didn't recognize. A little beyond the men, he saw a bright white steeple and realized the meeting must have just finished, spilling the men out into the street where a few of them continued talking.

As Morgan watched, Henessey lit another cigar and wreathed the four men in thick smoke. Morgan went back to his work and etched the last three letters in place. As he backed up to eyeball his handiwork, Henessey approached.

“Well, well, well. Knocked the darn thing right off the roof, did you, Morgan?” He laughed. “I didn't expect you to put so much work into that old sign. But now that I get a good look at it, I guess you got the right idea.”

“I hope you don't mind, Mr. Henessey. But it was in pretty bad shape.”

“Mind, course I don't mind. Lot of gumption you got, Morgan. You just might have been tailor made for the mercantile profession.”

“I doubt that.”

“Don't be so sure. Listen, I got some white paint in the back room. You might as well do the whole shebang, since you got off to such a good start. I can cover the store for the rest of the afternoon. If you don't mind, that is. I can even pay you a little on the side. Seems to me you didn't hire on as a handy man and sign painter, too. Not for the wages I offered.”

“No need. I just thought I might as well do it right if I was gonna do it at all.”

“You thought right. Let me get you that paint.” He stepped up on the boardwalk, looked down at the sign for a moment. “You got a right sharp eye. Those letters are neat as a pin. You must have a steady hand, Morgan.”

Morgan smiled to himself. “You don't know the half of it.”

“What line of work were you in before you come to Cross Creek?”

“Oh, this and that.”

Henessey smiled. “You don't want to say, that's fine by me. I always judge a man by what he does next, not by what he done last. Seems to work out, too.”

Morgan nodded. He wasn't about to let himself get drawn into some confessional autobiography. He knelt by the signboard and darkened a couple of the pencil lines as Henessey disappeared inside. The shopkeeper was back in two minutes, his apron on but untied, and a can of white paint in hand.

“This ought to spruce her up just fine,” he said, handing the paint down to Morgan. “I'll be inside, you need me. Got some old calico you can use for rags, if you need 'em.”

“I'm all set, Mr. Henessey.”

Henessey stopped in the doorway and looked back over his shoulder. “Listen here, Morgan. You're gonna work for me, you might as well call me Lyle, like ever'body else.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And don't sir me. Just because I own this place, that don't mean I expect a grown man to bow down like some wet-behind-the-ears schoolboy.”

“Whatever you say, Lyle.”

“That's more like it, Morgan. When you done there, let me know. I'll give you a hand puttin' 'er back up, once the paint dries. Shouldn't take long in this dang heat.” He mopped his brow and neck with a colorful handkerchief, then vanished again.

As Morgan worked, he could hear Lyle inside, humming in a big, off-key baritone. Every so often, another hand or two would drift in, find his favorite watering hole, and start on a long weekend. Some of the saloons were already getting loud as Morgan finished the white background. Lyle had been right, too, about the drying time. One end was already dry by the time he got to the other. He figured he'd take a fifteen-minute break and get some cold tea. By then, he should be able to do the lettering without worrying about the red paint running into the white.

The meticulous work was making him edgy. Everytime he finished a letter, he'd back away from the board. His hands would be stiff with tension, and the muscles in the back of his neck and in his jaw would be hard as buckshot.

It was near six o'clock when Henessey appeared in the doorway for the eighth time. “Are you still not done, Morgan? Jaysus, you're takin' the devil's own sweet time with that sign. Is it Leonardo I should be calling you, now? Will you be after jabberin' to me in Eyetalian now?”

“One more, Lyle. Just one more. It would have helped matters if your name was Ryan or Kelly.”

Henessey laughed. “Well, if I stay here any longer, my name might not be any shorter, but the Missus will shorten something else of mine, something I treasure more than me name, if you know what I mean. Have you ever been married, Morgan?”

Atwater hesitated. Henessey noticed, but didn't press the issue. “I don't blame you. Many's the time I thought about skippin' out meself. I may one day yet.”

Atwater turned away.

“Oh, now, Morgan. Don't be takin' on like that. You show me the married man doesn't make a joke like that now and then, and I'll show you a widower.” He laughed again, then, some secret sensitivity in him struggling to the surface at long last, he closed his mouth and the door to the shop. But he was back a moment later, his jacket draped over his arm. It was still warm, and he was a big man, feeling a little the worse after a long day in the uncommon heat.

“I left you a key,” he said, “with your first week's pay. It's by the cash drawer.”

That was all, no ceremony, just a simple gesture, but it spoke volumes both about Henessey and about what he thought of his new employee. “I'll see you in the morning. Maybe you'll have the sign done by then, eh?” He was still laughing when he ducked around the corner and moved down the alley to pick up his horse tethered behind the shop.

There was a sudden horrendous roar, and Morgan turned to look up the street. The last bits of glass were cascading through the frame of The Hangin' Tree's front window. A cowboy lay on his back in the glittering shards, along with a broken chair. An instant later, another cowhand came through the window, this one feetfirst. He stood over the first, another chair raised over his head.

Someone shouted, and the cowboy turned to look back into the broken window. Morgan started to move, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone else moving from across the street. Unconsciously, he felt for his hip, then realized his gunbelt was coiled on a chair in the back of Henessey's shop. He stopped, confused by the unfamiliar emptiness along his thigh.

The figure to his right had crystallized into the figure of Brett Kinkaid. Despite the heat, the marshal was still wearing a jacket.

“Don't mix in this, Atwater,” he said. “This is my problem. You tend to the store, like a good fellow.”

Then Kinkaid stepped up the leading edge of the boardwalk in front of The Hangin' Tree. “Cowboy,” he said, “you let go of that chair right now. Real easy. If it floats, you walk away. But if it don't, you got a night in the best jail in the county, courtesy of Cross Creek.”

The cowboy shook his head. “This ain't none of your concern. I can handle this just fine.”

“Put the goddamned chair down. Now!”

The cowboy tossed the chair back through the window. It skidded until it slammed into a table. Morgan heard the sound of breaking glass again, this time faint and insubstantial.

“Give me your gun, cowboy,” Kinkaid snapped.

“No, sir, I won't. No cause.”

“I got all the cause I need.”

The cowboy made an exasperated whooshing sound, and shook his head from side to side. Things were out of control now, and he just didn't understand how it happened. Something flew through the shattered frame and landed on the glass shards. The noise startled him and he jerked suddenly.

Just that quickly, Kinkaid had fired twice. As if in slow motion, Atwater saw the young cowhand tumble back through the window and disappear. His face was a mask of profound incomprehension as his hands twitched in front of his suddenly bloody chest. It looked as if he were trying to understand how the bullets could have gotten past before he managed to pluck them out of the air.

“You bastard,” Atwater shouted. He threw himself on Kinkaid and dragged him down. “What in the hell is wrong with you?”

Men spilled out of the saloon now, and pulled Atwater off the marshal. Kinkaid, his lip bloody where he had driven his teeth through the flesh, lay there panting. He licked his lips once, then again.

Atwater turned away, staring at the now-empty window frame as if he weren't quite sure he'd seen anything happen. Then he turned back to Kinkaid. “You didn't have to do that,” he said. “What in the hell did you do that for.”

“You saw it. He was going for his gun.”

“The hell he was. Something spooked him and he reacted, that's all. You killed him for nothing, you stupid sonofabitch.”

“Atwater, you mind your own damn business. Or I'll mind it for you.”

“What are you going to do? You going to shoot me, too? Is that it? Well I don't have a gun and you don't have an excuse.”

Kinkaid laughed. He licked his lip again, then said, “I will have.”

Chapter 11

THEY WERE ALL THERE
. Tate Crimmins, as usual, had been the first one to arrive. Tate was proud of being a man in a hurry. That was no surprise because Tate had yet to find anything about himself he couldn't be proud of. And without working too hard at it, either. He was the mayor, but it was really his money that had got him elected, that and his willingness to shout longer and louder than anybody else.

He was up front of the meeting hall, sitting at a table like a tweed Buddha as the rest of them filed in in ones and twos. He kept fussing with his mustache, twirling the ends of the bushy thing. He didn't wax it, and the first time people met him, they wondered whether they should ask where he got the wooly caterpillar perched under his nose. As soon as they got to know him, though, they were glad they had bitten their tongues. Tate had no sense of humor. He never told a joke and never laughed at one. Two hundred pounds of ill humor on a five-and-a-half-foot frame summed him up.

Schuyler Weems, the Methodist minister, was there, too. It was his church they were using, and they were using it mostly because Tate had built the damn thing in the first place, then bought Weems to run it. Weems was a rail of a man, his spindly arms and legs like sticks inside his black suit. With his pasty skin and sunburned neck, he looked like he earned a little extra by hanging on a couple of sticks in somebody's cornfield when church wasn't in session.

Two of the others, Pete Jarnigan and Milosz Wickowski, were there because their businesses were starting to suffer. Lyle Henessey was there, too, mostly out of curiosity. He already knew what the problem was. He had warned Tate it was going to happen long before it had. And Warren Brewster, a little round man in a white shirt and sleeve garters, a smear of ink on his forehead, stood in the rear of the hall. He wasn't a member of the merchant's association, but he knew them all, and disliked most of them. Running the paper for six years, he had learned to ignore the things he didn't like as long as they didn't affect the public welfare. But this was something he couldn't overlook. While he watched and waited, he kept tugging on the prematurely gray sideburns that he had been cultivating since Yale.

Tate was getting restless. He was, as usual, in a hurry, and as mayor, he took things like agendas and schedules more seriously than most. He reached forward for the hand-carved gavel, rapped it on the hard wooden sole plate, and let it down with a clatter. He cleared his throat, and Warren Brewster reached for his pencil.

“Alright, let's get this over with. You people are wasting time.”

“The hell we are. It's easy for you to say,” Wickowski sputtered. “It don't hurt your business. Me, it hurts mine, my business.”

The others shook their heads in agreement. Tate, who owned the bank, was only too aware that most of the rest of the members owed him money to one degree or another. Wickowski had touched a nerve. “Come on, Miles, it ain't that bad.”

“Damn it, Tate. How many times I tell you. Pronounce it Milos
h
. That's my name.”

“Whatever.”

“My front window is gone.”

“And the man who done it is in a pine box. It won't happen again.”

“You tell us Kinkaid would make sure it doesn't happen again. But it happens again and again. He don't stop things. He shoots people after they break something.”

Henessey said, “Maybe Tate's got a secret plan. Maybe he figgers Kinkaid'll kill all the trouble makers.
Then
we have law and order. That it, Tate?”

“Lyle, dammit, you know that ain't it. I want Cross Creek to be as quiet as any of the rest of you do. But it takes a while. You know that. You all knew that when we hired Kinkaid. He's doin' alright, you ask me.”

“You ask
me
, I'd say the only one who's doing alright is Wade Murtagh.” Henessey nodded his head toward the town's funeral director. Murtagh beamed. It was like getting free advertising.

“You're all overreacting, Lyle. Kinkaid's doing what we hired him to do. He's doing his job. That's all there is to it.”

“Six men in two months, Tate. Six! Now who's really overreacting here?”

“What do you want me to do. Turn the town back over to the thugs? You think that would help your businesses. Let's face it, Cross Creek has got to be civilized sooner or later. When it is, your businesses will adjust to it, they'll survive, they'll even flourish. All I'm trying to do is have that happen sooner, rather than later.”

“And if I lose my customers, who forecloses on the mortgage, Tate?” Jarnigan barked. “Or do you send Kinkaid around to evict me with his gun, and drum up a little more business for Wade, while he's at it?”

“That's ridiculous, Pete. Don't make a fool of yourself, now.”

“I'll tell you what I want you to do, Tate,” Henessey said.

Crimmins groaned audibly. “What's that, Lyle?”

“I want you to fire his ass. Get him the hell out of town. The man's a menace. He's out of control.”

“No, I won't do it.”

“Won't, or can't? You afraid of him, too, Tate? Is that what this is all about? You a hostage along with the rest of us?”

“Don't be so melodramatic, Lyle. Nobody's hostage here. Nobody! Those six men he killed, they all made the first move. They all went for their guns before he ever drew. You know that as well as I do. Hell, most of you have been there at least once.”

Warren Brewster interrupted from the back. “Why don't you get the Reverend Weems to tell us what he thinks? Forget about the business side. What's the Christian thing to do here, Reverend?”

“Shut up, Warren. You ain't a member,” Crimmins bellowed. “You got no right to speak here.”

Jarnigan stamped his foot on the ground and got up out of his chair. “Brewster's right. I want to hear what Reverend Weems has to say.”

The minister, looking more like a scarecrow than ever, stood up. His hands shook as he brushed at wisps of hair behind his ears. “I agree with Mr. Crimmins,” he said. He swallowed hard, then sat down as if his legs had suddenly evaporated.

Henessey waved a hand in disgust. “Exemplary Christianity, Reverend. And, I must say, courage unlike any the world has seen since Alexander breathed his last.”

“You needn't get personal, Mr. Henessey.”

“Shut up, Schuyler,” Crimmins barked. “Now, unless there is any further discussion necessary, I think . . .”

“There is Tate, there surely is.”

“What is it, Lyle?”

“I think we ought to vote on it. See whether enough of us want to see the ass end of this bastard's horse.”

The door opened behind him, and Henessey turned to see what was going on. The newcomer stood in the door, his features obliterated by the wash of bright sun spilling in around him.

“You gonna vote on something that concerns me, seems like the decent thing to do would be to invite me, don't you think?” Kinkaid's voice was razor sharp. It echoed from the corners of the high-ceilinged room.

“This doesn't concern you, Kinkaid,” Henessey said.

“The hell it doesn't.”

“You don't belong here.”

“Hey, Lyle, it's a free country. I want to watch the local muckedymucks at work, I got a right. Democracy in action.” He stepped inside, spurs jingling, and moved past Henessey, then turned and faced him. “The way I see it, you men were about to vote on whether or not I still have a job here. Fact is, you ought to know I got a contract. All legal and proper, signed by your mayor, assures me one year of employment as town marshal. Now, anybody . . .”

“Contract?” Henessey spluttered. “Tate, is that right? You gave him a contract?”

“He wanted guarantees, we wanted him. That's what it took, so that's what I did.”

“How come you didn't tell any of us about it?”

“No need. You told me what you all wanted. As mayor, I had the authority, and I did what had to be done. I daresay, none of the rest of you would have acted so decisively.”

“You stupid, insufferably arrogant bastard! Don't you even see what you've done?” Henessey roared. “You've given the man a license to kill other men, and you can't revoke the damned license. Crimmins, you're a fool.”

“Remember who you're talking to, Henessey . . .”

“Oh, don't you worry. I'll not forget that, not for a long, long time. This is one for the family saga, this is.”

“Gents, I'll leave you to your business,” Kinkaid said. He tipped his hat and walked slowly toward the front door again. He stopped with one hand on the door frame and turned. “Of course, you could always offer to buy my contract. I might be willing to waive my rights. But I don't come cheap, as you know. Good morning.”

He was gone, but the foul taste he left in their mouths, all but Crimmins', lingered. Tate still didn't see what all the uproar was about. His cheeks were still red, annoyed as he was at Henessey's insults. But as far as he was concerned, everything was in order.

Kinkaid's announcement had taken more than a little wind out of the merchant's association's already tattered sails. Henessey pushed for a vote, and he got it. But no one wanted to tell Kinkaid he was fired, and if one of them did, no one wanted to pay him what it would cost.

They were stuck. Henessey delivered a tirade, trying to force the issue, but in the end, they just shook their heads. He warned them there would be more shooting, that maybe Kinkaid wouldn't stop at rowdy cowboys, that maybe one of their own family members might run afoul of the increasingly irascible marshal.

But nobody gave a damn except Lyle Henessey.

He left the meeting already hot under the collar. When he saw the marshal waiting across the street, it did nothing to cool him off. Henessey didn't respond to Kinkaid's pleasant wave, but the marshal fell in beside him anyway.

“So, Mr. Henessey, you don't much like me, do you?”

“It's not a question of what I like, Mr. Kinkaid. It's a question of what's right. And this town is a long way from right, at the moment. You were supposed to protect it, not destroy it.”

“Sometimes you have to destroy something in order to save it, Lyle. Maybe you can't understand that, but I can. You can take your choice. You can have me, or you can have the barbarians. But you can't have both.”

“I prefer the barbarians, thank you, Mr. Kinkaid.”

“Course,” the marshal said, stopping so abruptly that Henessey, in spite of his desire to leave the marshal behind, stopped in his tracks and looked back at Kinkaid, “there is another way.”

“Oh, and what might that be?”

“Talk to Mr. Atwater. He'll know.”