Marshal Jeremy Six #4 the Proud Riders Page 8

  “I know. But you’re a damn fool. You should’ve come to see the doc weeks ago.”

  Chavis didn’t make any reply. He dismounted and hitched his horse—the big palomino stallion—at the rail. The palomino stood gently and settled itself hipshot to wait for him, Chavis patted the horse and climbed the porch. When he knocked on the door, he rested his arm on the wall for support. Paradise, watching him, shook his head mutely.

  Someone opened the door. There was a brief exchange of conversation, and Chavis disappeared inside. Thereupon Paradise pulled back on his reins, turned his horse and rode up the street toward the barbershop. When he dismounted he reached into his pocket. The five-dollar half-eagle was still there; there hadn’t been any place to spend it. By the time he bought himself a bath, shave and haircut his stake would be halved, but that didn’t matter; when you were down that low, it was more important to feel clean and neat and dignified than to pinch a few extra pennies. Besides, it was only a day’s ride to Spanish Flat. And as soon as the hearing was over, he’d get his two hundred dollars bail money back. After that maybe he’d sit into a card game and try to build up his stake.

  Or maybe he’d bet the two hundred on Chavis to win the horse race. You had to hand it to the big rancher. Bruised and battered, never giving himself enough time to eat or rest, Chavis had plowed into each day with the stubborn grim energy of driven determination. Paradise, a gambling man and fighting man, was no horse-trainer; all he could do was watch, and help tie the palomino down again after it threw Chavis off.

  There was no counting the number of times Chavis had gone pitching off the hurricane deck of that madly bucking stallion. It was, to Paradise, nothing short of a miracle that Chavis hadn’t broken any bones. In fact Paradise was half prepared to believe that Chavis had indeed broken a bone, but wasn’t telling. That was ridiculous, of course, but the fact that the idea could have occurred to him at all was some indication of the way Paradise regarded his friend.

  There was no question that Chavis was an incredible fighter. Time after time, Paradise had seen him climb to his feet and stagger back to the horse after it pitched him off. Driving himself beyond human endurance, Chavis had picked up the reins and hauled himself into the saddle by a supreme effort of will. Bleeding at the nose, reeling blindly around, Chavis refused to quit. He kept getting back on the horse, kept riding it out, kept sinking the spurs and challenging the big palomino to deliver its worst.

  In the end, Chavis had won: the palomino capitulated. Paradise had watched, with a measure of awe and wonder, while Chavis had laid himself low over the palomino’s withers and let the galloping stallion carry him across the plateau.

  Chavis had not broken the palomino’s wind, and he had not broken its spirit. He had only tamed it.

  It had been a performance worth watching, Paradise reflected as he sank into the steaming-hot tub in the cedar room behind the barbershop. It had been magnificent. But it had taken its toll: Chavis had paid a fearsome price. How high that price was, Paradise wasn’t sure. He would probably find out soon. Chavis’ dizzy spells had kept getting worse, and more frequent, and finally when he could not stand watching it any longer, Paradise had said: That’s enough, Tracy. If I have to I’ll take your gun away from you, if that’s what it takes to make you head for the nearest doctor.

  Paradise had seen sickness and injury enough, in his time, to know that Chavis’ fainting spells were caused by something more than ordinary exhaustion or physical punishment. There hadn’t been a single morning, since that first day when Chavis tried riding the palomino, when the big rancher had awakened with clear eyes. And it had got worse.

  At first his eyes had only been slightly bloodshot, with thin red veins running across the white. After the first few days he looked like a dying bull in a bullfight: the dark pupils of his eyes were almost flooded by the crimson wash that filled his eye-sockets.

  But the man just wouldn’t quit. Paradise would never forget the morning he had awakened to see the palomino looming against the dawn and Chavis, already out of his blankets and dressed, finishing his coffee and never taking his painful red eyes off the horse. Chavis had said, That goddam horse, always standing up there like a man’s conscience. And then Chavis had got to his feet and walked over to the horse and started to talk to it.

  Yesterday, that had been. And Chavis had saddled the palomino and climbed into the saddle like an old man. The palomino had tensed up to buck, and Paradise had seen Chavis’ legs lock around the horse. But then, unaccountably, the horse had slackened up and started to walk around, without hurry, and when Chavis had picked up the reins the horse had lifted its head and obeyed the rider without objection.

  There was something for a man to regret in that sight. Paradise always hated to see any wild thing subjugated. Freedom was too precious to him.

  He was still engaged in his reverie when he got out of the hot tub, toweled himself as well as he could with one hand, and climbed into his clothes. He had got rather used to it now—getting dressed one-handed was more of an annoyance than a difficulty.

  He had been without his gun for weeks now, but he never got over the feeling of nakedness without it; and that feeling was particularly acute now. Out in the hills alone with Chavis and the horses, he hadn’t minded so much. But here in town, where anybody might recognize him at any time, the danger was great.

  Showing none of that on his face, he went out into the front of the shop and paid the barber, and was on his way out when a brisk chunky man trotted up to the door. “Your name Paradise?”

  Paradise agreed that it was. The chunky man said, “Doc Belden asked me to tell you he’d like you to come up to his place. Know where it is?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  Worried, Paradise crossed the boardwalk with two long strides, gathered the reins in quick synchronization with his rise to the saddle, and broke his horse into an immediate gallop toward the doctor’s office.

  He dismounted beside the palomino and went up the steps two at a time. By the time he hit the porch, the door was opening.

  The doctor was a solid-framed man in a gray vest and shirtsleeves. He had a practical square face. “I didn’t mean you to break your neck getting here. It’s not that urgent.” Paradise looked around the surgery. It was soaked in the aura of laudanum, liniment, carbolic acid, and the other subtle odors issuing from medical chemicals. Beakers and jars lined the shelves. The room was very clean.

  Paradise said, “Where’s Tracy?”

  “Bed.”

  Paradise veiled his eyes. “I see. How bad is it?”

  The doctor grinned briefly. “He doesn’t want me talking to you. Just asked me to send for you. You can go in.” The doctor crossed the room ahead of him and ushered him into a hallway. “Second door on the left. Don’t stay too long. If you don’t come out in a couple of minutes I’ll have to shoo you out.”

  Paradise went down the hall. The house was bigger than it looked from out front. It seemed to serve as a small hospital.

  Chavis was grumbling when Paradise entered the small room. The cot had an iron frame. Chavis was propped up on pillows with his head high, sitting up, wearing pajamas that were six inches too short for his long legs. His feet and ankles protruded awkwardly. There was no humor in his eyes when they struck Paradise’s.

  “The bastard won’t let me out of here.”

  “I don’t wonder,” Paradise said. “A madman like you, it’s dangerous letting you loose.”

  “It’s no laughing matter,” Chavis said. His eyes were as bloodshot as ever—perhaps more so. “Do you realize what day this is?”

  “Tuesday, isn’t it?” Paradise said mildly.

  “A week from tomorrow,” Chavis said tightly, “is the Fourth of July.”

  “And?”

  “John, it may not have occurred to you that they will hold that race with or without me.”

  “Yeah, that’s possible.” Paradise picked up the straight chair, reversed it, and sat down astraddle the
chair with his arm across its back. “Look, you’ve got yourself a fancy horse there, Tracy. A real Sunday horse. You can sell him and get quite a piece of change.”

  “Not two thousand dollars, or anything like it.”

  “And that’s how much you need to save the ranch, is it?”

  “Not a penny less.”

  “Maybe I can win that much at cards, if I can get my stake back from that marshal of yours.”

  “I don’t want any handouts,” said Chavis. “Thanks just the same. Now, I want you to do something for me.”

  “Name it,” Paradise said, a little surprised: Chavis had never asked for anything.

  “I want to put you on my payroll for a week,” Chavis said.

  “I thought you were broke,” Paradise said drily.

  “I’ll pay you after the race, John. Look, I’m serious. This damned sawbones is going to keep me in this bed if he has to tie me down—he said as much. I’ve busted a blood vessel in my head or something like that. Hemorrhage, I think he called it. I’m supposed to stay put and give it a chance to heal up. It may take a few days. I need somebody to give that horse a workout every day. It’s no bucking bronc anymore, but it’s got to have more practice with a human rider. It’s got to learn how to take jumps with a man on board. How to balance a human weight when he’s going up and down hills. You don’t have to be a bronc buster, John. But somebody’s got to keep riding that damned horse while I’m laid up, and I don’t know anybody I can trust outside of you and Jeremy Six. And Jeremy’s too far away and too damned busy. Will you do it?”

  “Sure,” Paradise said. “I’ve got nothing better to do anyway, until I get my hearing.” He got up from the chair, touched his hat casually, said, “I’ll see you later—take it easy,” and went.

  Outside, he picked up the reins of his own horse and Chavis’ palomino, and walked down the street leading them. He was thinking darkly that a brain hemorrhage was something you didn’t get over in “a few days.”

  Jeremy Six was taking his ease, propped back in a tilted chair out front of his office. In a few minutes he would have to start making his rounds; just now he sat back with his hat tipped forward across his eyes and savored the few minutes of inactivity.

  When he looked up from his hat he saw two familiar figures coming forward: Ike and Malachi Lockhart.

  Familiar, if not welcome. It had become practically a daily pilgrimage. Every day, at just about the same time of day, Ike and Malachi appeared on the sheriff’s office porch, and Ike would say, as he said now, “We come to visit Seth.”

  Anticipating the ritual without relish, Six got out of his seat slowly and indicated the door with a sardonic flourish. “After you, gents.”

  Inside the office, he made them both plant their feet four feet away from the wall, and raise their hands above their heads, and lean forward against their palms. Then he went over them for concealed weapons. Finding nothing—he always found nothing, but every day he gave them the same thorough search, because it just might be that they were hoping to lull him off his guard—finding nothing today, he let them into the cellblock and stood in the cell corridor with his arms folded, watching, while Ike and Malachi walked down to Seth’s cell and stood in front of it, talking through the bars.

  There was something taut and subdued about them today. It made Six watch them with special care. He had the feeling that Ike and Malachi were concealing some powerful, livid anger; that their surface calmness was like the still eye of a hurricane. Something’s on their minds, that’s for sure, he thought.

  It looked as if they were having a strategy conference down there. They kept their voices down so that Six couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Ike’s arms kept rising and falling and he injected a good deal of venom and muted fire into his hissing talk.

  Finally Six raised his voice. “Time’s up. Come on.”

  Ike and Malachi turned on their heels and stalked forward. Their hard eyes burned like rubies: there was no question any longer, but that they were blazing mad about something.

  Ike came up to Six and jabbed his finger at Six’s chest. “When’s that goddam judge getting here?”

  “Friday. Monday, maybe. Don’t worry about it.”

  “You been stalling long enough,” Ike said flatly. “You know damn well you haven’t got a damn thing to hold him on. If they was a judge within hailing distance, I’d have had him out on a writ of habeas corpus two weeks ago. And you know it.”

  “What of it?” Six said. He waved them through into the office; while he followed them into the office and closed the cellblock door, he was thinking: Ike’s got a teacher somewhere. He wouldn’t have thought of habeas corpus all on his own. Well, maybe it’s none of my concern. Maybe if I’m smart what I’ll do is go ahead and let Seth go now. That way at least maybe they’ll be out of my hair by the time the rest of the trouble starts around here.

  But he was just stubborn enough to want to finish what he’d started, even though it appeared to have produced no results at all, except complications.

  Dominguez came in, glanced expressionlessly at the Lockharts, and went to the rack to take down his gunbelt and badge.

  Ike said to Six, “I ain’t fooling, Marshal. It’s time you let my son out of here. Now, you don’t want no trouble. You just—”

  “The answer,” Six told him, “is no!”

  Ike was about to continue when a shadow filled the door. Six glanced that way—and saw John Paradise’s small figure in the doorway. Paradise’s eyes had closed down guardedly at sight of the Lockharts, father and son; Paradise became wholly still. Six thought, There is something here that they know and I do not, and he watched what happened then with alert care.

  He saw the reaction that flooded across Ike’s face. Ike was no good at keeping his emotions secret; he had a weathered, cruel face, but it was a wide-open face that gave away every shift of emotion behind it. Six could all but read his mind. That first blazing look at Paradise—it told a lot of things: Ike was surprised, startled, but more than that, he was indignant, and then, by turns, he was incredulous, shocked, speechless, and—finally—livid with rage.

  “You!” Ike blurted. And then, abruptly, his glance touched Six, shifted to Dominguez, and whipped around quickly to his son Malachi, as if to warn Malachi.

  Ike didn’t have a gun; neither did Malachi.

  And neither did Paradise.

  Considering the amount of red-hot hatred that was wheeling around in the office, Six was fervently relieved that the three of them were disarmed.

  Ike’s right fist formed a claw, hanging where his gun would be if he had a gun. “You,” he growled again, in a rolling low voice full of abject contempt; he curled his lip and spat.

  Six felt he’d watched long enough. He said matter-of-factly, “All right. What’s this all about?”

  Ike didn’t take his eyes off Paradise. He grunted, “Show the man, Malachi.”

  Malachi opened the front of his shirt and pulled out a thin shingle of wood. At sight of it, John Paradise’s eyes flashed briefly, and glanced at the marshal’s gun rack as if measuring the distance to it.

  Malachi dropped the shingle on Six’s desk. Six reached for it, turned it around, and read the inscription that was carved into the wood:

  ELIHU LOCKHART ? – 1886

  AGED ABOUT TWENTY YEARS

  REST IN PEACE

  Ike’s voice was a rasp. “We found that in the Sangres when we went to meet Elihu yesterday. Tracks all over the place. It ain’t rained for weeks down there. I’m betting your boots will fit those tracks, Paradise.”

  “I was there,” Paradise said. “I carved that marker. But I didn’t kill him.”

  Ike wheeled toward Jeremy Six. “You listen to me, Marshal. This sawed-off one-wing here killed my son Ephraim and he’s been after the rest of us ever since. Now he’s killed my youngest. I’ll tell you something, Marshal. If you don’t hang him before I get my hands on him, I’m going to carpet this town with his stinkin’ h
ide.”

  With that, Ike strode forward like a bull. Paradise stepped aside, seeming not to hurry, nonetheless he was out of the way by the time Ike lumbered into the doorway. Ike seemed oblivious; he didn’t even glance at Paradise again.

  Malachi murmured, “Mind what Pa said,” and followed Ike outside.

  Six fingered the inscribed shingle. “How about this, Paradise?”

  “I haven’t got a gun, Marshal. You know that—you took my gun. How could I have shot him?”

  “Guns aren’t too hard to come by.”

  Paradise looked tired—too tired to argue. He said, “No point in beating around the bush. Elihu ambushed me. I didn’t have a gun. Tracy Chavis was there. He shot Elihu while Elihu was getting set to potshot me. You can check with Tracy.”

  “I intend to. Where is he?”

  “In Arroyo Seco. He’s laid up at the doctor’s infirmary there. He’ll be all right, I think. We caught that palomino—I just thought you’d like to know.”

  Six regarded the little one-armed man soberly. Paradise’s eyes were the color of rusty iron. He was a fierce man, under wraps, a solitary man possessed of some secret sorrow.

  Paradise turned and went to the door. On his way out, he said, “One thing puzzles me. Last I heard, Elihu had split off from the rest of the family. He’d settled down and got an honest job, working for Wells Fargo or something like that. Which leaves two questions for you, Marshal. First, what was he doing down in the Sangres ambushing me? And second, how did Ike and Malachi know where to go looking for him? It’s too much of a coincidence to believe they just stumbled across that grave marker.”

  Leaving Six with that to ponder, Paradise left the office. Six heard hoofs start up, heard Paradise ride away, and looked disgustedly at Dominguez. The big deputy hadn’t said a word, the whole time.

  Six said snappishly, “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  Six cursed and hurled the grave-marker across the room.

  Dominguez said mildly, “That won’t help.”

  “You’re wrong. It helps.”

  Dominguez raised his eyebrows. “Yeah?” He went across the office, bent, and picked up the shingle. “It does, huh?”