Thunder and Roses (31 page)

“It was legal,” said Pericles quietly. Fellows sat while that sank in. Pericles put coffee before him and said, “It was legal, even if it was no good, boy. Your gun makes big noise, big trouble. Barstow, he say the law is loaded heavier’n you are. Is right.”

“Why, you interferin’ ol’ belly-stuffer!” bawled Fellows. “You spiked my gun thet a way a-purpose!”

“Please,” Pericles whispered out of a dry throat. His face was puckered with terror, for Fellows was three degrees uglier than just formidable when his dander soared. “Fellows. Please, boy. Hey. No make trouble in my place. Drink you coffee. You right. Meest’ Barstow tell me about this county seat business. Federal judge, he give charter because of well. No use to tell you—you get mad, all
you sense run out you mouth, you shoot and then you hang. No good. Well City is county seat. Is legal.”

“They cain’t do this!” wailed Fellows. “All this country here was settled out o’ Tamarisk! Then this Easterner walks off with the rail line an’ th’ county records and sits down on desert he bought fer nothin’ and can sell fer a mint!”

“Is the business methods he talk about.”

“It’s the business, all right,” gritted Fellows, and added something about Barstow that would have been shocking in Greek. Or even in Portuguese.

Fellows slurped broodingly at his coffee. Pericles went back to packing liquor bottles in the crate. At length Fellows said, “We c’n git up a bigger posse than Barstow.”

Pericles froze, half bent over the crate, his shoulders hunched up and his head back as if his nape had been touched by a hot iron. He waited.

“Scoop up our own records, huh?” muttered Fellows inevitably. “Hell, we c’n shoot our way through those shacks of his’n and be gone with th’ papers before they know what’s up. And it’ll take a damn sight more’n twenty armed men an’ a coupla court orders to pry us loose, this time.”

“Now, Fellows,” said Pericles carefully. “Don’ talk this kind stuff, you hear? You get troops from Topeka an’ a rope for your neck.”

“Not me,” snarled the youngster. “I’ll get lead in my blood, or I’ll be over th’ border afore that happens.”

“Fellows,” said Pericles pleadingly, “you can’t fight everyt’ing with guns. Yes? Sometimes you got to use somet’ing else.”

“Fer the likes o’ Barstow? What you goin’ to do? Use a skillet an’ a han’ful o’ cayenne? Maybe you want to feed Barstow an’ his gunmen ontil they bust, huh?” He regarded the Greek with scorn, which changed to interest as he noticed what Pericles was doing. “What’s the idea o’ stashing all the firewater?”

“So it not break.”

“Break how? You expectin’ trouble here?” He leaped to his feet. “Someone pushin’ you around, Peri? Who is it? Le’s stop it afore it starts. Who do you want hawg-tied an’ branded?”

“Shh, boy.” Pericles almost laughed. “Don’ you worry your head.” He took down a hammer and battened the top of the crate. When he had finished he stood up, mopped his face and head, and came around the counter.

“Fellows, listen. You good feller, see? I don’ wan’ see you in bad trouble. Wait awhile, hun? Don’ make this posse stuff.
Please
, Fellows, hun? This Meest’ Barstow, he is a hard man. Well City got plenty guards, boy. Rifles. All night, until four o’clock in morning, it gets light a little, Barstow got guards out. You get posse, you get killed. Somebody get killed, anyway. Tamarisk men they get killed. Wait awhile, hun?”

“Wait, hell. Armed guards? This toad wants a war, does he? This one askin’ fer it.” Fellows scowled; then his head snapped up. “You say he pulls his guards an hour before sunup?”

“Sure. No need them. Men stirrin’ about then anyway. But make to forget it, hun, Fellows? You a good boy. Don’ get in bad trouble. Don’ use you hosses for to make posse.”

Having planted his seeds, Pericles bent to the task of sliding the heavy crate around behind the partition. That, oddly enough, placed it by the side door and its loading-stage, against which was backed his battered old buckboard.

Trask, the yard-goods merchant, an ex-sailor and a crack shot, reined in beside the glowering Fellows. Around them jogged the rest of the Tamarisk posse. A crescent moon showed the Well City trail vaguely, and pointed up the twin ruts of a wagon that had passed earlier.

“Hell of a note,” grunted Trask. “Skedaddlin’ around this time o’ night. I tried to turn in after the meetin’ an’ didn’t know whether I should stay up late or git up early. Turned in an’ tried to sleep, still couldn’t make up my mind, an’ now”—he yawned hugely—“I don’t rightly know if I’m awake or not. Way I feel, I wouldn’t know silk f’m sailcloth.”

“You damn well better be awake when we ride into Well City,” said Fellows.

“Now, look, puppy,” said the grizzled Trask. “Maybe you set this here forest fire, but just because we think you was right don’t say you kin snap an’ snarl at yer betters.”

“Ah, it’s that lousy Zapappas,” said Fellows. “All this time claimin’ he’s a friend o’ mine, an’ then pullin’ a thing like this,” and he nodded at the wagon tracks. “What was it you tol’ me about rats leavin’ a founderin’ ship?”

“Don’t blame him too much,” said Trask. “He’s stuck with Tamarisk longer’n any of us an’ he rates a break from it. You know what they say about little fat guys. They’re all good-natured because they can’t fight an’ they can’t run.”

“Thet’s all right s’far as it goes,” said Fellows. “But he didn’t have to tote all thet likker over to Well City to grease his way into their gold mine.”

Trask gave a reluctant, affirmative snort. “That was sorta small.”

They went through the draw and emerged on a shelf overlooking Well City. There were two guttering fires to be seen north and south of the town, which was dark and still under the bright stars and the weak moonlight. The posse milled together and drew up.

“What time is it?”

“Not four yet.”

Whup-whup-whoo-oop!

“Whut’n blazes was that?”

“A drunken poke if ever I heerd one.”

There was a blaze of light in the largest building as the door was flung open, apparently blown by a gust of loose laughter.

“Ev’vy man Jack in th’ town must be in there gettin’ fried,” somebody said.

“Yeah, on Zapappas’s likker, the skonk,” said another.

“Thet’s one feller we’ll squar’ with, whatever.”

“I brung a rope.”

Somebody cracked a bullwhip. “This is better.”

Trask spoke up. “It won’t get Tamarisk a thing to stampede that little coyote. Let’m alone. He don’t know what he’s doin’.”

“Feelin’ real friendly, ain’tcha?” said an anonymous voice from the rear ranks. “Why don’t you go on down and have a drink o’ whisky?”

“Stow that,” barked Trask. “We git to pullin’ an’ haulin’ amongst ourselves, we won’t get no town records out o’ Well City. Now settle down fer about forty minutes. Mickey, get that there phony seizure
paper of yours ready to whip out. You sure it’s got enough ‘Whereas’s’ on it to keep ’em puzzled ontil we get clear with th’ records?”

“That it has,” said Mickey Mack. “
And
a gold seal. With ribbons.”

“Good. Relax, boys. Talk quiet an’ try to keep your hosses offen the rocks.”

The posse dismounted and hobbled their mounts. Fellows lounged over to the Well City side of the draw and stood looking out at the half dozen shacks that were the county seat. A few feet down the slope from him were the shadowy masses of a large boulder and a small one. He felt the scalp muscles behind his ears contract at the faint hiss that suddenly reached him from the rocks. He froze, stared. Nothing. As he relaxed, the hiss was repeated.

Now, any other man there would have reported the matter and gotten cover for an investigation. But Fellows’s approach was always a direct one. He tiptoed forward, gained the small boulder, waited tensely, then moved on to the larger one. Bracing himself with his hands, he peered carefully around it. Behind him, and between the two boulders, an extension of the black shadow reached out and lifted his gun from his holster, to jam it firmly into his spinal column, just below the shoulder blades.

“Walk,” said a faint whisper.

The bruise-making solidity of the gunsight in his back was completely convincing. Without a sound he walked downgrade, without attempting to turn around or to make a sound, and the gun shifted only enough to steer him. His captor kept him to the blackest shadows, and turned him into the mouth of a dry gulch that opened on the draw a hundred yards away.
He won’t shoot me if I don’t make him
, he thought desperately.
The posse—

The gun turned him to the wall. He stopped, his hands up. This was it, whatever “it” might be. “Well?” he said softly.

“Hey, boy. Don’ be mad, hey.”

“Zapappas!”

The gun muzzle rammed in agonizingly. “You be quiet with you mouth.”

There was a tense silence, and then Fellows, breathing hard, whispered, “All right, Peri. You talk. I’ll listen.”

“At’s good, boy,” said Pericles in a low voice. ‘Hey, you t’ink they goin’ hang me?”

“Reckon they will, Peri.”

“Oh no. No. This wrong. You tell ’em.”

“Me? I’d help ’em ef you’d get that equalizer out’n my back.”

Surprisingly, Pericles’s voice was gentle, and the gun was removed as he said sadly, “Sit down, Fellows. Here. Tak you gun.”

Fellows stayed, stunned, where he was, face to the rock wall, hands raised, until Pericles’s hand on his shoulder turned him around. The little man, he could see dimly, was extending the gun to him. “Sit down, Fellows.”

Then he talked. He talked for seven minutes, and it was not a gunshot, but a shout of laughter that brought the posse tumbling down the draw. There was no attack at four o’clock.

The bar of morning sunlight had crept so gradually onto Barstow’s sodden face that it had not awakened him. He lay unbeautifully on his back, his collar and belt open, his Eastern clothes rumpled, and his chin higher than his nose.

When the sunlight was abruptly cut off, however, he twitched, turned his head from side to side, moaned, clasped his temples, and sat up. Keeping his eyes tight shut, he shifted his hands cautiously over them, and in the soothing shade, ventured to ease the lids up. A vast throbbing inside his big head nudged another moan through his dry lips. “What a shindig,” he muttered, “for a county seat. Hate to think of the high-jinks when we get to be a state capital.”

Then it was he realized that there was someone standing over him, blocking the sunlight. He looked up quickly, wincing from the effort.

“Git up, Barstow,” said Trask. “You’re done.”

“What are you doing in my—”

“Move,” said Trask, and in such a tone that Barstow, without a second thought nor another syllable of bluster, moved. Trask waited while he pulled on his boots, and then stood aside, nodding toward the door. Barstow’s gun belt hung over a chair near the window.
Trask stood between it and the door. The belt stayed where it was as Barstow walked out.

The Easterner stopped dead as soon as he could see in the light. There was a clump of silent men around the well, watching him.

“H-How—what—” goggled Barstow. He turned, bellowed, “Smith! Oviedo!”

“They took off at daybreak,” said Trask quietly. “The rest of your boys are with us, only maybe a little bit madder.”

“I don’t—I won’t—” Barstow began, turning back toward his shack. Trask spun him around, placed his boot in the small of Barstow’s back, and shoved. Barstow staggered a few steps, went to his knees, scrambled up again, and went toward the well, purely because the men there seemed less menacing than Trask, who followed close behind.

“Wh—what are you going to do?”

“Jest show you something,” said Trask grimly. “Show him, boys.”

Rough hands propelled Barstow through the crowd to the well. Fellows caught him there, put a hard young hand to the nape of the flabby neck, and shoved Barstow’s head over the coping. “What do you see, Barstow?”

Barstow squirmed. “Nothing.”

“Speak up, Barstow.”

“The well is dry,” said Barstow hoarsely.

“Why, Barstow?”

“Those drunken—s!” swore Barstow. “They forgot to fill the well!”

“Filled it every night, didn’t they, Barstow?”

“They—I—” He looked around at the men, some grinning, some glowering. He gulped and nodded his head.

Fellows guffawed. “That’s it, boys. This swamp-frawg had men a-haulin’ water from the spring, every night, when the rest o’ his crew was sleepin’. Figgered to make this place the county seat, get the railroad through here, an’ then sell his holdings an’ clear out, leavin’ someone else to worry about a dry well an’ a useless town.”

Barstow put his hands up to his face miserably, and slumped
against the well. “What are you—” He licked his lips. “What are you going to do?”

“With you?” said Trask. “Why, we talked it over some. At first most of the boys wanted to throw you into your hole in the ground and fill it in. But we figger we’ll do better to tell you how we found out about this, and then turn you loose. We like to think of you rememberin’ it.”

“It was that little guy you were tryin’ to buy into your county seat,” grinned Fellows. “Pericles Zapappas, his name is. He got to figgering. He’s been in this country a long time, longer’n any of us, an’ he knew damn well that there ain’t no water to be dug for hereabouts. So he took up your invite an’ came over here to look at your well. He was so sure there was somethin’ wrong with it that he loaded his mare with two cook pots full of some stuff he brewed. After he left you he circled back and headed for th’ spring. He seen enough of a beaten track up there to make him think he was right. He dropped his pots into th’ spring. They wuz covered with sheep parchment and th’ stuff in ’em leaked through real slow and flavored up th’ water jest fine.” He laughed again.

Trask took over. “He loads up his buckboard with hard likker last night and comes over here to help you celebrate gettin’ the county seat—
after
goadin’ Fellows here to git up a posse to shoot you loose from the county seat records. So thanks to him, all your hands got drunked up. Once he has you all nice and wound up, he takes a drink of water from the well. It tastes just like he knowed it would—like the stuff he put in the spring. That clinches it. He leaves y’all to waller in his likker and goes up to the draw yonder to wait for us.”