The Lawbringers 3, page 6
The sheriff watched his brother with disappointment. “You just don’t care, do you?”
“Not much left to care about,” Pete said. “Besides, I don’t guess we’ll have to worry about that mob any more tonight. They’ll be packin’ off soon.”
“I don’t know how the hell you can be so certain of that.”
“I’ve seen mobs before,” Pete said, in a tone that lacked animation. “They’re not quite sure enough yet about you and me. If someone was to convince them that nobody else but me could have killed that prospector, then they’d be after me in a split second. As it is, it’s going to take a good deal of powerful convincing to get them to make a move. They won’t take a chance on my guns and your shotgun unless they’re damn sure of themselves and pumped up, to boot. They’re not that pumped up yet. Nobody’s organized them. If they’d been organized and positive, they never would have let you get this far. You know that, Brother John?”
Brother John only said tiredly, “Get some sleep, then,” and went outside with his shotgun hung over the bend of his elbow. He tiptoed to the head of the stairs to look down and listen but not much seemed to be going on downstairs. The crowd was breaking up; he heard the front door open and close several times, accompanied each time by a finger of cold wind making the lamps flicker. Morgan went back down the hall into the room next to his brother’s. There was only a single blanket on the bed and the room was chilly, but he was too bone-tired to care; he lay down with the shotgun across his stomach and closed his eyes and breathed silently, listening. All he could hear was the wind outside and the vague murmur of voices in the room directly below … Justice’s room. He intended to keep watch that way, with his alert ears, but the day’s punishment caught up with him suddenly and he was asleep.
He awoke once, alarmed, feeling something was wrong. Outside, the air was absolutely still; there was not a single sound in the night. Blackness was so deep he thought for an instant he had gone blind. Then, sizzling, a bolt of lightning split the sky, exploding a splash of light against his eyes. Thunder rolled massively and the wind came rushing by the eaves, bringing flakes of snow riding on it. Morgan turned on his side and closed his eyes once more. After a moment, restless, he got up and banged on the wall with his fist.
His brother’s voice, groggy, answered his pounding: “What the hell is wrong?”
“You all right?”
“Yes. Go to sleep, damn it.”
Morgan felt his way back to the bed and lay down. It took him a while to get to sleep this time, but finally he drowsed. His dreams were fitful.
He was awakened by a loud, abrupt crash, which he knew immediately had not been thunder. His half-memory of it told him it had been a gunshot. Frightened, he grabbed the shotgun and leaped off the bed to the door, realizing abstractedly that the room was light enough for him to see. It must be morning, though it was gray and dim. He flung himself into the corridor and wheeled to his brother’s door, swinging it open and raising the shotgun apprehensively.
A faded curtain flapped at the open window. His brother lay on the bed, breathing with difficulty; but for a moment Morgan saw nothing in that quiet scene to arouse him. Then he saw the paleness of his brother’s face and the half-raised position of his arm; he heard the bubbling of his brother’s breath and he leaped forward.
Blood welled from Pete’s chest, staining the bedclothes, turning quickly dark and brown. Pete’s eyes were closed and Morgan touched the hand clenched across his chest. Pete didn’t move. Morgan cursed and swung to the window to look out.
He couldn’t even see the ground a floor below, the snow flew so thickly. It came in through the open window and covered the sill evenly. He slammed the window shut, casting one backward glance through the pane as he ran to get the doctor. Snow battered the glass and whistled in his ears. The big snow had begun.
Chapter Five
The jagged wind rushed forward; the dark spread of clouds covered the sky and boiling between earth and cloud was the whipping whiteness of snow and tiny hailstones. The wind’s echo trembled along the street, rising and falling in tortured fury. It pounded him like a heavy piston when he fought his way across the dark width of the street with the doctor in tow. The whole pressure of it was around him and upon him, shaking him, making him question his bearings and squint through his defensively raised hands to make sure he was still pointed in the right direction. No night could be more impenetrable than this wretched morning. Snow and hail sliced into him and by him, falling in slanted sheets, pummeling his shoulder and arm. The driven snow never reached the earth; it flew in horizontal planes, skimming the street and bouncing away.
The cold crept inside him and the whole world seemed unreal; he could see nothing and the wind pressed against him with such force that the ground seemed to tilt and whirl under his feet. Some large object spun swiftly past him – a branch ripped away from a tree, flying down the street like a piece of debris washed along by a raging torrent. He could no longer trust his sense of direction but finally he reached a porch and saw the doctor’s coattails flapping in front of him, and he followed the doctor inside the hotel lobby.
The storm’s wail diminished only slightly when he fought the door shut and stood fast, exhausted as though he had just come through a long, great test of his physical stamina. Outside, the wind felt along the walls, found tiny cracks, and sent little gusts tearing through them, making lamp flames flicker and the fire leap in the fireplace. Driven hailstones crashed and bounced and rumbled over the roof and the walls. A group of men, seeking warmth and shelter, crowded around the fireplace. Morgan ignored them. Three steps at a time, he led the doctor upstairs and moved rapidly down the hallway into his brother’s room.
Dr. Webb set down his creased leather satchel and bent over Pete. Above the roar of the storm Morgan could hear the rasp of his brother’s breathing. He stood two steps behind the doctor and chafed while the doctor made his slow, competent judgment. Finally the doctor straightened and turned to pick up his bag. He took it to the dresser and opened it. “Go downstairs and get me some hot water, hot as you can get it. I’ll have to bathe that wound. And see if you can find some fresh sheets for the bed.”
“How is it?”
“Bad,” Dr. Webb grunted.
“Will he pull through?”
“Who’s to say?” the doctor said. “Go on – on the run, boy.”
Morgan went back down the corridor with long strides. When he came downstairs he went into the back of the building and found a bucket, which he filled with water from the tank and brought forward to the lobby. Saying nothing, he pushed through the crowd and set the bucket in the fireplace. Then he went back, followed by curious glances, to look for sheets for his brother’s bed.
By the time he found the sheets folded away on closet shelves and returned to the lobby, the surface of the water in his buckets was beginning to boil. He went through the crowd again, getting out a glove to lift the bucket with.
Phil Landering came up and said, “What’s happened?”
Morgan didn’t answer. He took the bucket upstairs and said to Dr. Webb, “Did you find the bullet?”
The doctor turned and handed him a small object, and took the bucket from him to set it down. “Small caliber,” the doctor said, leaning over his patient.
Morgan examined the slug in his palm. “Sure is,” he said. “Thirty-two. Hundred and ten grain, I’d guess. Maybe a .32-20. What do you think?”
“That was my guess,” Dr. Webb said without turning. “Which isn’t much help, since .32-20’s come in both rifles and pistols.”
“Probably a pistol,” Morgan said. “Our man must have lifted a ladder against the sill and climbed up to get the window open. He wouldn’t have dragged a rifle all the way up here just to shoot at a range of five feet.”
“Good reasoning,” the doctor said, “but what if the window was already open, and your man fired from the roof across the alley?”
“Two things against that,” Morgan answered, trying to remain businesslike so he wouldn’t have to think about his brother’s precarious hold on life. “First, the snowfall was so thick that I don’t think a man across the alley could have seen in here. Second, that window was closed last night when I was here, and I doubt Pete would have opened it in this foul weather. This room’s cool enough with the window shut.”
“Sure is,” the doctor observed. “If he perks up a little, we’ll have to move him into a room with a fireplace.”
“There’s one down the hall,” Morgan said, and took a restless turn around the room, bouncing the small lead slug in his open hand. “Who do you know that owns a .32-20 caliber sixgun?”
“Nobody, offhand,” Dr. Webb said. “I don’t inspect firearms as a part of physical examinations. For all I know, your own belt gun is a .32-20.”
“It’s .44,” Morgan muttered, and came to a stand by the window, where he wiped frost off the pane and put his thoughtful glance on the storm whipping past outside. The .32-20 was far from rare on the frontier, but it wasn’t by any means as popular as the bigger caliber guns, and was normally useful only for small varmint-shooting and self-defense at extremely short range. No sensible man whose life might depend on his gun would be caught with nothing larger than a .32-20 revolver. It was the sort of storekeeper might secure near his cash box, or a gambler carry under his coat; it might be found on a banker but never on a range man – or almost never.
There was always that qualification. He could make certain judgments based on what was custom, what was normal, what was average. But he couldn’t eliminate the possibility of a cowboy owning such a pistol. It wasn’t unheard of by a long shot; it was only uncommon.
Which left him in as much of a muddle as he had been in before. Only now his brother was hovering on the brink of death. Behind him he heard the soft, occasional movements of Dr. Webb as he worked steadily, cleansing, applying ointments, sewing, bandaging, hoping.
On a Colt frame, it was impossible to distinguish a large caliber from a small caliber, except by close examination. Superficially the Peacemaker, the “Frontier Model Colt,” was the same in appearance no matter what its caliber. External dimensions and shapes were all the same; the handles were all the same contour; the barrels could be any one of a number of lengths, regardless of the size of the bore; the only means of detecting a weapon’s caliber was to look squarely down the front of it into the muzzle, or to have it in hand to open up and look at the rims of the shells in the cylinder chambers. This fact made it all but impossible, unless some lucky accident happened, for him to find the gun that had shot Pete. He couldn’t very well cruise the whole valley demanding a look at everybody’s belt gun, especially in this weather, which could kill a man before he got a mile from his starting place.
There was, of course, the overwhelming probability that the man who had shot Pete was still in Aztec. No man, even a desperate killer, would brave the blizzard that raged over the valley of the Yankee this morning. But even this knowledge was of little help. Hundreds of men and women had gathered in town for shelter to wait out the weather. Cowboys had ridden in from flimsy line cabins. Half of Justice’s Horsehead crew, half of Bill Quade’s Rocking M crew, a good number of punchers from Davenport’s Bell Ranch, and quite a few small ranchers, homesteaders, prospectors and drifters had congregated during the previous day in Aztec, because it was the best place to be in such a time: a man in trouble had a better chance of getting help in time when he was among a crowd. Then, too, there was the usual population, now swelled by this influx. Most of the hotel’s rooms were full. Quite a number of ranch and valley people were quartered in friends’ houses. With the feeling that prevailed against Morgan, he had no chance of inspecting weapons – even if the killer had been senseless enough not to get rid of his odd-caliber gun. And, Morgan thought dismally, even if he did find a .32-20 revolver on someone, what would it prove? There must be more than one such gun in Aztec today.
He put his back to the window, feeling the pressures that had built up against him so quickly in the past twenty-four hours. It seemed a much longer time than that. He shook his head as though trying to clear it; he said, “Any opinion, Doc?”
“About the killer?”
“No. About Pete.”
“It’s strictly up to God,” Dr. Webb said. “He’s got an even chance of pulling through or dying.”
“How soon will you be able to know?”
“It may take days,” Dr. Webb said in a tone washed of all emotion – his professional voice. “He’s unconscious now and a lot of it will depend on how soon he comes out of the coma, if he ever does.”
The doctor’s last words echoed with abysmal hollowness in Morgan’s ears. He looked down at his brother, chest wrapped in wide, thick bandages; he watched the calmness of his brother’s face, the gentle dilation of his nostrils, the pale scar on the side of the face, the features at rest now that were so seldom at rest. He said something yesterday, Morgan recalled. What was it, now?
“Don’t risk your life for me, Johnny. I don’t care that much about it any more. It wouldn’t be worth it.” That was what Pete had said. Perhaps he had wanted it this way – quietly and unknown, as he slept. But Morgan couldn’t wholly believe that. Pete had been lustful and buoyantly active. He was an angry, intense man with a good many grudges against the world, but when it came down to this kind of finality, Morgan knew his brother wouldn’t have wanted to give up so easily.
“There’s fight in him yet,” he said to Dr. Webb.
“I never saw a man could outfight a bullet.”
“Pete can,” Morgan said, and went to the door. Almost there he paused alertly. He had heard nothing, seen nothing; yet he sensed something was wrong. He reached out his hand to grasp v the doorknob firmly, and whipped the door open.
Just outside, his toe against the threshold, stood Bill Quade, of Rocking M. Morgan said, “What the hell?”
“All right,” Quade said. “I was eavesdropping. Somebody shot your brother, is that it?”
Morgan came into the corridor and shut the door behind him. “That’s it,” he said flatly. “What were you doing prowling around up here?”
“Lookin’ for him,” Quade said, jerking a thumb toward Pete’s door. “I wanted to find out if he was still in town.”
“Or maybe,” Morgan suggested with narrowed eyes, “maybe you wanted to find out if he was still alive.”
“Now, wait a minute, John.” Quade backed up a step and raised his hand, palm out. “I had nothin’ to do with this.”
“Let me see your gun,” Morgan said. His voice carried the suggestion of a threat.
“What? What for?”
Morgan just held out his open hand. “The gun, Bill.”
“Wait a minute,” Quade said again. “I don’t give up my gun to any man without good cause. Are you arresting me?”
“No. I just want a look at your gun.”
Quade thought it over. Morgan laid his glance on the short, stocky man; possibly it was the threat of danger in that glance that prompted the rancher to reach around with his left hand, lift his revolver carefully from its holster and hand it over.
Morgan turned it over in his hand. “Forty-five,” he said, and having found out what he wanted to know, he handed it back to Quade.
Quade dropped it in his holster. “What was that all about?”
“Never mind,” Morgan said, and started away down the hall. Quade took a quick step and stopped him.
“How bad’s your brother hurt?”
“Bad enough.”
“Mortal?”
“Maybe,” Morgan said, and turned. “Why all the interest, if you had nothing to do with it?”
“If the job’s already been done,” Quade said, “I reckon we can all relax some.”
Morgan felt heat rise in his belly. He stepped forward and grabbed a wad of Quade’s shirt in his fist, drew it up tight. Quade was on his tiptoes that way, his chin up, raising his arms to bat away Morgan’s clenched hand, when Morgan threw him back against the corridor wall. Quade’s head hit against the wall with a hollow whack. Morgan pressed him close. He put his forearm against Quade’s throat and held him against the wall, speaking in a flat, tight voice.
“I’ve had just about all I intend to take from you lily-livered, pious animals. You’ve been sitting around town all night waiting for some carrion to eat. You don’t have a single fact you can put your fingers on, but you’re all mighty sure you know who killed Curt Warren. I’ll tell you something, Bill: If that lynching had come off last night, I’d have thrown away my star and gone after each and every one of you with a shotgun, and I wouldn’t have done any talking before I pulled the trigger. Right now there’s a killer walking around this town – maybe there are two different killers walking around this town. But all you small-minded he-gossips can think of is that Pete Morgan’s dying so you’ve got a load off your minds. Well, I’ll give you something else to chew on. When I find the man that shot Warren and the man that shot Pete, I’ll bring the remains around for you hypocritical snakes to look at and ponder over. I’ll rub your faces in it and when I’m through I’ll leave you and your dirty little town to rot. Now take that downstairs and talk it over with your worthless companions.”
He stepped back, releasing Quade. Quade’s brown eyes were wide and his small, button mouth was slightly open. He breathed heavily, lifting his chest and letting it fall; he said nothing, only watching Morgan. Then a voice cut in from behind the sheriff:
“A pretty speech, Sheriff.”
Morgan whirled. Big Hugh Justice was advancing down the hall, smiling thinly. Morgan had no way of knowing how long Justice had stood at the top of the stairs, watching and listening.
“What I said was meant for you too,” Morgan said. “All of you.”
“Very pretty,” Justice repeated. “Who gave you a license to go around roughing up honest citizens, Sheriff?”
