Marshal Jeremy Six #6 Page 13

  Eleven

  Friday morning Danziger had his breakfast in the hotel dining room but Marianne did not appear. He paid for his meal and went outside, squaring his shoulders and turning down the street—toward the Marshal’s Office. He went by an alley, intending to go by the place, but a quick imperious hiss drew his attention and he saw Eddie Hanratty with an angry scowl jerking his head in a come-hither signal.

  It wasn’t raining. There had been some drizzling overnight and the alley was still muddy. The sky was as blackly overhung as it had been all week. Danziger trudged through the mud. When Hanratty was sure he was coming, the squat Irishman turned on his heel and went back through the alley to the empty lot behind, and turned in under the overhang of an outside staircase. Standing there in the shadows, Hanratty waited for Danziger to join him. Impatient anger pushed Hanratty’s lips in and out.

  Danziger was hardly within earshot when Hanratty snarled at him, “Friend, you’re after hanging on by an eyelash. You understand what I’m saying to you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You don’t listen good, do you?”

  “Maybe you didn’t talk loud enough,” Danziger murmured.

  Hanratty’s eyes widened. “So. It’s more money you’re after.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Hanratty reached out and bunched up the front of Danziger’s shirt in his fist. Before he could firm up his grip, he found his arm batted away by a contemptuous swing of Danziger’s arm. Hanratty frowned and studied him. Off-balance, Hanratty said, “Just what the hell have you been doing for the last forty-eight hours?”

  “Maybe I was reading the Bible.”

  “Reading books makes people nearsighted, didn’t you know that?” Hanratty laughed flatly, but his eyes were at odds with his mouth. He was becoming aware that there was something in this Danziger that hadn’t been in him the other night; it was taking Hanratty time to adjust to the new circumstances.

  “Know what day this is?” Hanratty said.

  “Friday. I’ve got till midnight tomorrow. Why don’t you simmer down?”

  “Simmer down?” Hanratty demanded. “Look, friend, you left your horse out behind the ice house the other night and I took you at your word. When you didn’t do the job I had to scramble myself back there and retrieve the money from your saddlebags.”

  “You said that yesterday.”

  “We didn’t get a chance to talk. I told you to meet me here and you didn’t show up.”

  “I had other business.”

  Hanratty lifted his hand, but thought better of grabbing his lapel. “You better stop and study on that a while, Danziger. You’re making a powerful mistake, stalling any longer.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  “You haven’t got any chances left,” Hanratty said. “I’d be reminding you of this, friend: whoever eats my bread is obliged to sing my songs. And don’t you forget it.”

  “It’s not your bread,” Danziger said. “You don’t think I’m fool enough to believe you’re in this by yourself, do you?”

  If Hanratty was surprised, he didn’t show it. “That makes no difference to you, friend. I’ve got you hog-tied and sweating, that’s all you need to know. Now I want to hear from you why it is that you haven’t finished … the job you’re here for. The girl is still alive. Why?”

  “The deal was for Saturday night, remember?”

  “You’re stalling. I saw you eating with her last night. You falling for that girl, Danziger? You ought to know better, honest to God. Women are all alike, they’ve just got different faces so you can tell them apart.”—A remark that revealed more about Hanratty than it did about women’s faces.

  Hanratty added, “You got no reason to check up on the girl, Danziger. Your job’s to kill her.”

  “How I do the job is my business,” Danziger said. “It’s to your advantage that I do it clean.”

  “Meaning?”

  “If I learn enough about the girl’s habits, then I can pick a time and place where it’s safe to do the job. That way there’s no chance I’ll be arrested. You ought to care about that, Hanratty, because if I got caught there’s always the chance they’d force me to admit who paid me to do the job. If I don’t get caught, then you don’t get caught. It’s that simple.”

  Hanratty’s lips peeled back off his discolored teeth. “By Jesus,” he rasped, “if you ever open your mouth, Danziger—”

  “Don’t be an idiot. As long as I’m free the only thing I could accomplish by admitting the job would be to get myself hung.”

  Hanratty nodded. “Just remember that.”

  Danziger began to turn away, but Hanratty said quickly, “Just one thing, friend. You wouldn’t be forgetting Mr. Boat, would you?”

  Danziger’s bleak eyes pinned him back like a butterfly on a board. “Don’t mention that name to me again,” he said, and tramped out to the alley.

  He had taken a chance, lying to Hanratty. But it was a risk calculated to protect Marianne. He went on down toward the Marshal’s Office, fairly well satisfied that his scheme had succeeded.

  Last night he had made his decision. Or maybe it was Marianne who had made it for him. He’d known what he had to do. There was no question about it; he was not going to go through with Hanratty’s job. He wasn’t going to kill the girl.

  But if he told that to Hanratty now, it would give Hanratty time. He could have said to Hanratty, The deals off, Hanratty, get yourself another boy—but then Hanratty would have done just that. Hanratty would have hired somebody else to kill the girl.

  At first, Danziger had thought, Let him. He had almost decided to be frank with Hanratty, and to glue himself to Marianne from now until Sunday, to protect her from anyone Hanratty might employ to try to kill her. But a cooler second thought had changed his mind. There was no foolproof way to protect the life of someone threatened with murder. If McQuarter and Hanratty were determined enough—and they obviously were—then it would be nothing but luck that would save Marianne’s life. He could lock himself up in a hotel room with her but they could set the hotel on fire and shoot her from ambush as she ran out. There were a million ways to kill a person. No protective device was foolproof.

  It was better to let them go on believing Danziger planned to kill her. As long as he could keep them convinced of that, they wouldn’t make any other arrangements against her life. And by the time they found out Danziger wasn’t finishing the job, it would be too late for them to change their plans. If Marianne lived until Sunday, there would no longer be any profit in having her killed. She would be safe after Saturday midnight.

  So he had played along with Hanratty. He had no qualms about double-crossing Hanratty and McQuarter. Whatever happened to them now was no more than their due. The girl would inherit the estate, and McQuarter would be found short. He’d be jailed for embezzlement. As for Hanratty, he wasn’t worth bothering with.

  And as for Steve Boat ...

  That had been the hard decision; that had been the one he was sure Marianne had made for him. For without her quiet strength, the remembered image of it, he would have been unable to make the decision he made.

  To hell with Boat. Let him come after me if that’s what he wants.

  Six looked up when Danziger walked into the office. Danziger said, “Morning, Jeremy.”

  “You look like a new man. What happened?”

  “Maybe I saw the light. Maybe I just woke up out of a bad dream.” Danziger walked across the office and examined the gun rack. “How about this ten-gauge Greener with the double-set triggers?”

  “You’ve decided to take the job?” Six said without concealing his surprise.

  Danziger grinned. “Yes, I have.”

  “Think of that,” Six said. He tossed a ring of keys across the office. Danziger selected one, fit it into the chain padlock, and freed the shotgun. He locked up again and threw the key ring back on the desk, and broke the shotgun open to check its breech. “Where’ll I find shells?”


  Six opened a drawer and got a carton of ten-gauge buckshot shells. He pushed it across the desk. Danziger started stuffing them into his pockets.

  Six didn’t ask questions. He stood up and administered the oath of office. Danziger said, “So help me God,” and lowered his right hand to pick up the last two shells out of the carton and ram them into the twin breeches of the shotgun. He snapped it shut and set the hammers on safety, and leaned the gun against the wall. Then he pulled up a chair and said, “Fill me in.”

  Six lifted the lid off the glass jar and selected a cigar. “Want one?”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  Both men lit up. Six sat back and propped his boots on the desk. He glanced out through the window—his attention was drawn momentarily by a rider, a stranger, who came up the street and racked his horse before the Drover’s Rest and went inside. What held Six’s attention was the horse—a tall, handsome palomino gelding that pawed the earth proudly.

  He brought his glance back to Danziger and said, “It stacks up like this: McQuarter’s got a safe full of Army scrip waiting to pay for a herd of cattle to feed the troopers and the Reservation Apaches up at Fort Dragoon. McQuarter’s to take delivery here at Spanish Flat and the Army will send down a crew to drive them up from here. There was a verbal agreement that Wade Cruze’s Terrapin ranch was to supply the cattle.”

  “I’ve seen Cruze,” Danziger told Six. “I haven’t seen any cattle.”

  “Uh-huh. That’s where the trouble comes in. Cruze claims Travis Canaday swindled him out of his herd. He’s got a confession signed by a couple of crooked gamblers to prove it. And Canaday’s on his way into town with the herd, planning to sell it to the Army as his own.”

  “I see,” Danziger said. “So Cruze is waiting for Canaday to show up so he can take the cows away from Canaday.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Six said. “Canaday ought to arrive with the herd by tomorrow sometime. Late in the day, I expect. If Canaday brings his Warbonnet crew into town and Cruze gathers his own crew to meet them, there’s likely to be a small-sized war.”

  “And your main street the battlefield,” Danziger finished for him. “Knowing you, I can’t believe you’re just sitting here waiting for the blood to start flowing. You’ve got a plan to stop the fight, haven’t you?”

  Six’s sly grin grew across his cheeks. “You’ve got sharp eyes.”

  “I remember you pretty well,” Danziger acknowledged. “You haven’t changed a bit. I never knew you to get trapped inside a place that had only one door out. There’s always a back door with you. What is it this time?”

  Six said, “You may have noticed that Cruze’s men have been getting mighty friendly treatment around town.”

  “Except for those two gunnies that your hotshot gunsmith took out,” Danziger put in dryly. “Yes, I’ve noticed, now that you mention it. A lot of free rounds of drinks being set up by the house. Friendly conversation from bartenders. That what you mean?”

  “I want Cruze’s boys to think the town’s wide open to them. Last night almost all of them got pretty well drunk.”

  “You expect them to drink themselves under the table and not be able to fight Canaday when he shows up?” Danziger looked doubtful.

  Six shook his head. “I just want them to have a good time,” he said. His eyes were twinkling. “Until tonight.”

  “What happens tonight?”

  “Canaday will be coming into town tomorrow sometime. If Cruze’s whole crew is locked up in jail when Canaday arrives, there won’t be any fight.”

  “Jail?” Danziger took the cigar out of his mouth. “And you expected to arrest all fifteen or twenty of them by yourself?”

  “One at a time,” Six explained. “They’ll get drunk tonight and I’ll pull them in one by one. I can hold them forty-eight hours on drunk-and-disorderly. By the time they’re released Sunday night, McQuarter will have possession of the herd, and Canaday’s bound to have enough sense to clear out before that.”

  “You hope,” Danziger said wryly. “Well, I admit it’s as likely to work as anything I can think of offhand. You want me to give you a hand arresting the cowboys, that it?”

  “Yes. I’m obliged to you for coming in, Cort. It was going to be touch-and-go if a bunch of them decided to gang up on me once they found out what I was up to.”

  Six’s cigar had grown a tall ash. He tapped it off into the ash tray on his desk. “Mind telling me what changed your mind?”

  “A girl,” Danziger said without hesitation. “A missionary priest dressed up to look like a pretty girl.”

  “Marianne Holbrook.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I heard you pumping Will Greer yesterday. I wondered about that.”

  Danziger gave him a sharp look. Six kept his expression blank as he said mildly, “Seemed to be a funny way to go about making her acquaintance.”

  “I’d just as soon not talk about it,” Danziger said.

  “Suit yourself. I’m glad to have you aboard.” Six got up and extended his hand. Danziger gave him his quick, firm handshake. The two men smiled, almost identically—the smiles of two men who were not fooling themselves about the dangerous business on which they were about to embark.

  Six sat back down and glanced out the window just as the stranger who had recently arrived came out of the Drover’s Rest, mounted the handsome palomino gelding, and headed out of town the way he had come. Six watched him ride out of sight to the south. Something made him get up and go to the window and follow the rider down the road with his gaze. It wasn’t the usual thing for a trail-weary stranger to ride into town, spend ten minutes in a saloon, and go back down the trail he had just come up.

  But there was no point worrying himself about it. The rider was gone. He went back to his seat and said, “We’ll start rounding them up about ten o’clock. They ought to be pretty drunk and disorderly by then.”

  Twelve

  Eddie Hanratty tipped the railroad cap far back on his head and leaned against the top of the bar with both elbows. The Tres Candelas was a depressing place, especially since the brutal death of the bartender whom Candy Briscoe had beaten to a pulp, but whoever owned the place had wasted no time hiring a new man to keep it open. Somebody had tried to wash the bloodstains off the woodwork but there were still traces.

  Hanratty had once seen a caged grizzly bear in a traveling circus at Tuscon. He remembered watching the bear waddle back and forth inside the confines of its cage—eight steps to the right, then turn ponderously around, and eight paces to the left, haunches waddling and paws padding. Back and forth, back and forth, always the same eight paces one way and eight paces the other way.

  That was how Hanratty felt—like that caged bear. His mind kept waddling back and forth from one end of his cage to another. McQuarter had given him this job to do and he was beginning to suspect that it wasn’t going to get done, if he left the doing of it to Cort Danziger. McQuarter had told him there would be three thousand dollars in it for him if he’d get it done. He didn’t know why McQuarter had to have the girl dead by tomorrow night, and he didn’t care. But he knew that if the girl wasn’t dead there wouldn’t be any money coming from McQuarter. It was McQuarter who’d suggested he hire Danziger, McQuarter who knew about Steve Boat and Danziger. McQuarter was a slimy man who seemed to know all sorts of dark-shadowed things like that. It made Hanratty feel crawly just to be around the fat cattle buyer. But Hanratty made his living by running various errands of nefarious kind, and it wasn’t up to him to pass judgment on the men who hired him for the shady work he did.

  Hanratty had taken a good look at Cort Danziger’s eyes this morning. He didn’t know what had changed, but he knew he didn’t want to tangle with Danziger. The other night he had insulted Danziger and got away with it. Danziger had changed between then and now. Hanratty wouldn’t get away with it if he tried it again.

  He couldn’t trust Danziger to do the job, but it was too late to do anything about that. He couldn’t f
ire Danziger now. It wasn’t the sort of job you could fire a man from. Danziger would demand his money anyway, and if he didn’t get it he might just shoot Hanratty in the bargain.

  But if Hanratty didn’t do anything, he had the feeling Danziger wouldn’t do anything either. He wasn’t blind. He’d seen the way Danziger was looking at the girl over the dinner table last night. It wasn’t the look a killer gave his victim.

  That was what put Hanratty in the grizzly bear cage. His mind paced back and forth, confined by imprisoning bars: at one end the bars were his feeling, growing stronger all the time, that Danziger wasn’t going to do the job; and at the other end the bars were the knowledge of what McQuarter would do to him if the job didn’t get done.

  Hanratty’s bleak, unhappy glance drifted around the dim saloon. Back in the corner sat Griff Jestro, the town derelict. Griff would sell his own mother for the price of a drink. His face had the same hollow vacant cast that Danziger’s had had the night Hanratty had hired him. But Danziger didn’t look like that anymore. There was a glitter in Danziger’s eyes and a strength in his jaw today, like a man who’d come back from the grave. Hanratty thought sourly, I’d have been better off hiring Griff Jestro. At least he wouldn’t have sobered up on me. He glanced at Griff again. Once an Eastern promoter had come into town with a wagon and set himself up out on the vacant lot beside the feed store. The promoter had had an enormous wild dog in a cage on the wagon. He’d taken the dog out and chained it in the vacant lot and posted a hundred dollars that said his dog could whip any dog in the valley in a fight.

  The promoter had gotten a few takers and his dog had ripped all of them to pieces. Then some sadistic cowboy had got Griff Jestro drunk and dared him to take on the promoter’s wild dog. The cowboys had put together their bankrolls and scraped up two hundred dollars that said the dog would whip Griff and chew him to pieces. They said Griff could have the money if he could whip the dog.