Jim Saddler 4, page 9
“I think it’s a fine party,” he said.
“You forgot to invite Mrs. Ballard,” I said.
Danziger didn’t answer until he stuck his face in his drink. “Wrong, my friend. I did invite her. I invited all the Flannerys. I thought we could talk this out over a few drinks. Could be they’ll show up later.”
“You won’t like it if they do.”
Down at the end of the still dusty ballroom, the mechanical piano gave out a grinding sound as if it needed oil. The musicians played louder to cover it. They were game gents, those musicians, and while they worked their asses off for the dancers, one of Casey’s boys brought pitchers of cold beer to the bandstand.
Danziger smiled at me, thinking he had it all wrapped up. “You’ll be pleased to hear I decided not to move the capital from up north. Too much trouble. What I’m going to do is reopen the mines in this town.”
“That’ll take some doing,” I said. “The mines are all played out. You saw the tip heaps when you rode in. That’s all that’s left.”
“It can be done,” Danziger said.
“They won’t believe you,” I said. “What was in the mines has been taken out. McLandress knows that, they all do. You can’t mine what isn’t there.”
“Wrong again,” Danziger said. “Those tip heaps, as you call them, are still full of valuable ore. In the old days they didn’t know how to get everything out. Now they do. That’s a fact, Deputy. Ask any mining engineer. They’re starting to do it all over. It’s going to mean new prosperity for this town.”
“If it gets done.”
“Well, yes, that’s a consideration. They scratch my back and I’ll scratch theirs. That’s how it works.”
Back at the punchbowl, McLandress was trying to listen; so Danziger raised his voice to a vote-getting level. “This town is going back on the map, Mr. Saddler. There’ll be a new era of prosperity. You have my personal guarantee on that. Dragoon Wells is going to be one lively town.”
“Livelier than you think,” I said. “I don’t give a shit what you do—you’re not getting that girl.”
The piano was beginning to sound like a keg of nails being rolled down a hill, and after trying to fix it, the hotel man pulled the lever that shut it off. McLandress jumped into the sudden silence and called on Danziger to make a speech. Acknowledging the applause, Danziger said he’d be glad to make a speech—“A short one, folks”—provided they didn’t close down the bar. That got even more applause and Danziger went one way and I went another. Going out I snagged a full quart from the bar and went back to the jail.
Nine
Laurie was waiting for me in the shadows, and I put my gun away as she came out. She was wearing a caped coat with a hood over a flowered nightdress. Red sateen slippers peeped out from under the hem of the coat.
“I know,” I said. “Your father will kill you if he finds you here. Why aren’t you at the party?”
She was in a hurry to get inside the jail. “My father wouldn’t let me go. He thinks I looked flushed. If he only knew what I’m flushed about. Maybe it’s more than the flush. He said you were sure to be there, and he doesn’t think I should be seen talking to a man like you.”
I smiled at her. “Your father’s right. Besides, I don’t feel much like talking.”
Laurie giggled. “Me neither. What have you been thinking about us? Have you decided? If I don’t get out of this town I’m going to go crazy. What’s taking you so long to make up your mind? Wasn’t it good with me?” I didn’t know what to say. Most men would have grabbed her, grabbed the money, and been out of town inside of an hour. Nobody had to get shot—the money belonged to her, sort of. I liked this crazy girl, and it galled me to act like a shit-kicker. Without the money she would have been dandy; with it she was a lonesome cowboy’s dream.
Laurie came up close to me and I kissed her. “I’m going to be so good to you that you’ll have to go with me,” she said. “I’m going to break your back. That’s a terrible thing to say, isn’t it?”
“Sounds like poetry to me,” I said, and we went in to bed like an old married couple. But nothing we did in there was old or married. I hadn’t changed the bedclothes since Kate, and Laurie sniffed suspiciously.
“You been putting something on your hair?” she asked, but her voice trailed off when I began to take off her clothes. The people at the party weren’t having half the good time we were. She was right about the second time being better. A man and a woman get to know each other’s bodies after the first time. She bucked under me as I put it into her, and she kept on bucking. God! She was a lovely thing, soft yet firm, strong but yielding, and I drove it in and out of her until her eyes were wild and when her climax came she shuddered her way through it, and then she had another and another. ...
“We’ll have years of this ahead of us,” she whispered. I knew this wasn’t true. Months maybe, but not years. No chance of that, even if I wanted to drag it out that long. But I said nothing. Laurie went on with, “Years of teaching each other, trying it in new ways, doing it in different ways. I have a French book my father doesn’t know about. He’d have a fit of apoplexy if he knew I did. It has drawings. In one picture they’re doing it dog-style. The woman gets down on her hands and knees and the man mounts her in that position. Does that sound good?”
“Sounds wonderful,” I agreed.
“Want to try it?”
“Not right now. A cold, bare jail and a narrow bed isn’t the place for that.”
“That’s true. It would be better in a comfortable hotel room with thick, soft carpets and absolute privacy. Then we’ll try it that way and all the other ways too.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” I said, which was no more than true.
“But we’ll have to get there first,” she prompted me, getting back to the subject of looting her father’s bank. Her foxy little mind never strayed far from that. “We’ll be off the same night we get the money. The money is mine by right. Anyway, what’s my father going to do? Call in the Arizona Rangers to hunt down his own daughter? He won’t do anything because there would be too much scandal. It could harm him in the banking community. If he can’t control his own daughter, et cetera. And think of the fun the newspapers would have with him. My father is not a popular man—too tight with loans, too many foreclosures. We have nothing to fear, Saddler. A bank robbery without risk. I know you’re going to say yes.”
“I probably am,” I said, thinking I’d be a fool if I didn’t. But we didn’t have to rush off that very minute. There was some unfinished business to be seen to. Business that was really none of my business. Still and all
At the moment my unfinished business was with Laurie. This time I lay on my back with my shaft pointing straight up. Laurie sat on it so it penetrated deep, and she gasped at the way it went in. I didn’t have to do a thing. She moved her ass up and down. Her knees were on both sides of me, and she used them for leverage, raising and lowering her ass that way. She was young and supple and lightly built, so she was able to move without effort. Every time her ass moved down it seemed as if my shaft was sticking right up into her middle. It drove me wild. I squeezed her breasts at the same time, and she moaned as much from that as from her up-and-down movement on my cock.
“This position is from that French picture book,” she whispered, hardly able to get the words out. Her face was strained but happy and full of healthy lust.
Hurrah for French picture books, I thought.
Now her ass was moving faster and faster as she worked up to her come. Then her ass came down hard and stayed there while she shuddered all over. She tried a few more up-and-down movements, but she was too weakened from orgasms to be able to manage more than a few. That was enough for me and I shot straight up into her. She came again and shook so hard I was afraid she was going to faint. But she didn’t and after a while the trembling stopped and she smiled at me. Then she stretched out beside me in Johnny Callahan’s bed and whispered, “It was so good I thought I was going to die.”
“It wouldn’t be a bad way to go. There’s nobody like you, Laurie. I’m not just saying that.”
“I hope not, Saddler. I feel as if I can do anything with you. And I want you to do anything with me or to me. I feel no shame with you.”
“Why should you? You’re a woman and I’m a man. We both like the same thing and there’s no holding back.” She sounded serious when she said, “That’s right. There’s no pretending, no taking advantage. I don’t know how honest you are about some things, but you’re honest with me. Not once have you been rough with me.”
“Why would I be rough?”
“Some men like to do it in a rough way. I know. I was with a man in Charleston—I was sixteen—and he used me like an animal. From behind, if you know what I’m saying. He just turned me on my face and rammed it in there. It hurt and if I cried he beat me when he finished. I shouldn’t have gone with him, but I needed a man; and I knew him and I thought I could trust him.”
“Stay away from rough men, men like that,” I said. “Oh I will, Saddler. From now on I’ll stay with you.”
“Good idea.”
“They call that buggery, don’t they?”
“They do, but you don’t have to go on with this. You’ve told me and that’s the end of it.”
But she wasn’t ready to let it go. You might say little Laurie had sex, in all its variations, on her feverish little mind.
“Have you ever been buggered, Saddler?”
“No,” I said firmly. “I have not.”
“It will be so nice in Mexico City,” she said, abruptly changing the subject. I was glad of the change. Discussing buggery is not like discussing the weather. Give me the weather or the price of pork.
“Would you like a drink?” I asked her, and when she said yes I gave her a drink of Daniel’s.
“Ah,” she said, “not as good as sex, but good.”
We lay quietly listening to the thump of the music coming from the hotel. “Don’t take too long, Saddler, please don’t,” she whispered. “I know I said that before, but I feel the wildness building up in me and I have to let it go. If it can’t be you, then I’ll have to find someone else. I have to get the money before my father makes me marry some old geezer. Or some young geezer. He keeps talking about it. Then all my chances will be gone.” Right then I heard them coming. The music stopped and they were on their way. Laurie heard them too, men with loud voices. “Oh God! I have to go out the back way. Kiss me, Saddler, and please say yes.”
The voices stopped before they reached the jail. I looked around to see if Laurie had left anything. She hadn’t. Then McLandress yelled from outside, “You in there, Deputy?”
I yelled for them to come in. Whatever it was, Danziger was sure to be behind it. McLandress didn’t come in first. Instead, a giant of a man I’d seen at the party opened the door. I had seen him glowering at me in the hotel, but put it down to nothing special. Now I knew it had to be more than that. He’d been drinking or dancing or both; sweat rolled off him like rain, and there were widening stains under the armpits of his heavy dark suit. His blond hair had been clipped so short in the Prussian style that his pink scalp showed through.
“Where’s the Mayor?” I asked him.
The banker bulled his way through the crowd and came in followed by as many as could get in. I’d seen them before, the lumber company man and some others. None of them looked like working men; money-hungry small-town businessmen is what they were. They shuffled in silently, and I knew McLandress was going to do the talking. Danziger had pulled the strings and here they were!
“You had more room back at the hotel,” I said to the banker. I think I sounded friendly enough. I didn’t have a thing against the stupid bastards. Money smells as sweet in my nose as it does in any man’s, but I won’t grub for it. That’s what they were doing, sucking up to a schemer like Danziger.
It pained McLandress to be polite to me. The banker, being a banker, was the kind to make a sour face at a poor man’s hello, then run to lick a rich man’s boots.
McLandress cleared his throat noisily. “We’ve come to talk to you,” he began. “It’s time we had a talk.”
I did my best to look agreeable. “What do you want to talk about?”
They mumbled back, some not liking me, some maybe even hating me because I was an obstacle that had to be moved and they weren’t sure how to do it. I was standing between them and the money, and that’s enough to make any businessman hate you. They believed all they had to do was to get rid of me and the money would come rolling in. Looking at the mealy mouth bunch of shits, I was almost ready to concede that Danziger had more class. He was what he was and didn’t pretend to be anything else.
Only the big man with the clipped head wasn’t afraid of me, and I wondered again who he was. I knew McLandress was trying to work up enough nerve to tell me to quit, I was fired, or whatever. Before he spoke, the banker looked to make sure the big blond brute was still there. Then I got it. This was the man they wanted to put in as town marshal. After I decided that, I began to watch him more carefully. Rough stuff, if it came, would come from him.
“This has to be said, Mr. Saddler,” the banker began, puckering his womanish lips. Behind him there was a murmur of agreement. I crossed my legs to make myself more comfortable, and wouldn’t you know it, the rifle I held ended up pointing straight at the banker’s jowly face.
At first, McLandress was like a rabbit looking at a snake. “Let me save time and say it for you,” I said. “You want me to leave, but I don’t want to leave. And maybe you want to know why I’ve been talking so tough to Danziger. Because he’s a sneaking night crawler, is the answer. Danziger works for a man that burned a whole town and murdered its people. You want to hear more?”
“There’s no proof of what you’re saying,” McLandress protested. “Anyway, the war’s been over a long time.”
“How long is long?” I asked them. I was talking to McLandress, but the question was for everyone. “There’s no limit on what he did. That’s the man you’re pimping for, catching runaway women for. Slave catchers and pimps, that’s what you are, all of you.”
“We didn’t come here to be insulted,” McLandress blustered. “Least of all by the likes of you. You want to know how much we care about this Flannery woman? Not a thing—there’s your answer. She was never one of us when she lived here. If sending her back means life to this town, then to blazes with her. To blazes with the rest of the Flannerys. They’re no neighbors of ours. Mr. Danziger is about to give this town a chance and we’re going to take it. I’ll make it short—we want you to get out.”
“Can’t be done,” I said, keeping an eye on the big man.
“You won’t listen,” the big man said.
“Then don’t stand in the way,” McLandress said. “Let things take their course. Nobody’s asking you to hand over the girl. Keep out of it, that’s all you have to do. That’s what Callahan would do. I wish to God he was here instead of you.”
“But he’s not,” I said. “Anyway, I don’t know that he wouldn’t do the same. That’s not the question. I’m the marshal. You think I should let those bastards have the girl, go fishing or get drunk while they’re taking her back to that butcher. No, sir.”
McLandress sucked in so much air his lardy face turned red. He cleared his throat, getting ready to fire his big gun at me. The big gun was a weary-faced old man with Horace Greeley whiskers and a beaver hat. He trembled like a leaf—a drinker.
“If you please, Judge,” the banker said, pulling him forward by a very frail arm. The old man jumped when his name was called and he dropped a heavy law book. When he got under the light I saw how old and poor he was, and how scared. McLandress grabbed the book off the floor and thrust it at him so hard he nearly knocked him down.
“Go easy with him,” I said.
It was plain that the Judge hadn’t heard a kind word for a very long time. Every miserable town in the West has a judge like this one.
“Thank you, Marshal Saddler, my name is Isaac Ferguson.” He nodded at me and found it hard to stop once he had started.
The banker was puffed up like a rooster about to make a surprise attack on a hen. It’s a wonder he didn’t crow, and now that his jowls were red he looked very much like a rooster. I hoped he wasn’t going to be too disappointed.
The Judge couldn’t find his page and the banker had to help him. The book was the laws of the Arizona Territory and I knew what was coming. It didn’t mean diddly-shit to me. The Judge found it easier to see after he finally discovered his spectacles in his pants pocket. They were dirty and one of the lenses was cracked down the middle.
Blinking at me, holding the law book in shaky hands, he told me I wasn’t any kind of lawful lawman.
“Goddamn right,” the big man said.
The Judge tried to bring the big man into focus. “Please don’t interrupt, Mr. Dorfman,” he said as sternly as his condition would allow. “I was about to cite the statute pertaining to the appointment of deputies and police officers of any kind.”
The old man got started again and he read such and such, paragraph this and that. It boiled down that Johnny was required to send a letter to the Territorial Governor the day he appointed me. This had not been done, the Judge declared. Therefore, I had never been a legal deputy marshal.
“That’s the law, Mr. Saddler. You notice that I address you as Mister instead of Deputy or Marshal. You have been holding office contrary to the laws of this territory. As an officer of the court—that’s what a lawyer is—I direct you to surrender your badge and to vacate these premises. Forthwith, sir.”
I grinned at the Judge. He was a drunk but I liked him. He reminded me of a drunken uncle who died by drinking from the wrong bottle. “You read that real good, Judge,” I said.
The Judge was pleased, but the banker snapped, “Read it yourself if you want to. The law is clear. It should be, even to you. What are you smiling at? This is no joking matter. If you refuse to leave this office, if you defy the law, you can be arrested and prosecuted for—for what, Judge?”
