Bluff city, p.7
Bluff City, page 7
Now it was Clay who shrugged. “Better now than later, and better I know it is coming than wonder if the stories about him are true.”
“I saw you flip that coin,” the gambler said. “I saw you miss it. Nicely done. I hope your lady is worth the risk.”
“Have you ever wanted to crawl into a woman’s heart and stay there?” Clay bluntly asked.
A pained expression came over Wesley Oaks. “Yes,” he said throatily. “As a matter of fact, I have.”
“How did it work out, if that is not too personal?”
“She let me in and I stayed there for six years,” Wesley said. “The six best years of my life. I wasn’t a gambler then. I pushed a plow for a living. I married that gal. We bought a farm. One day she was out in the barn milking the cows, and when she bent down to pick up the stool a hornet stung the cow she was about to milk and the cow kicked her. Crushed her head like you would crush a grape. Can you imagine? A stupid damn cow killed the woman I loved. I shot it, after.” He stopped and looked down at himself. “Why in hell am I telling you this?”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Clay said. “That woman of yours, she was to you as Melanie is to me.”
“Have you told the young lady how you feel?”
“Not yet. I figure I shouldn’t throw my loop until I’m sure the mare is mine to rope.”
Wesley Oaks chuckled. “I like you, son. You are welcome to sit in on my games any time you want.”
Clay was smiling when he left the Emporium half an hour later. He bent his steps toward the outskirts of town, and his apartment. He made a point of glancing at every storefront window he passed, and had gone a couple of blocks when he spotted the three men who were following him. He did not let on that he knew they were there but continued strolling along as if he did not have a care in creation.
The three held well back until the center of town, with its many streetlamps, was behind them, and Clay was passing through a quiet—and dark—neighborhood. They began to narrow the gap.
The trio wore townsman’s clothes. Bowlers crowned their heads. Brogans were their favored footwear. They were perfectly ordinary, except that each was a brawny husky with shoulders as wide as a buffalo’s and a neck as thick as a bull’s.
Clay walked faster. He knew the area, having been through it many times on his way to and from work. Around the next corner was a house under construction. He took that corner, and the instant he was out of sight he broke into a run.
Stacks of lumber offered plenty of places to hide, but he was not trying to shake his shadowers. He was after a suitable board or a tool.
The frame and the floor had been erected. Lying on the floor near the edge was a three-foot length of wood. Hefting it, Clay smiled. He moved into the inky shadow of a stack of planking, and waited.
The three men were abreast of the lot when they stopped and glanced about in confusion.
“Where did he get to?” one wondered.
“He must have seen us and run off, but he can’t have gotten far,” said the second. “If we hurry we can catch him.”
The third was the smart one. He proved it by saying, “Hold your horses. It could be that is exactly what he wants us to think. It could be that’s exactly what he wants us to do.” The man motioned at the construction site. “I say we check there first.”
“What if you’re wrong?” said the first man. “Then he gets away, and Mr. Barker has us strung up by our thumbs.”
“I have an idea,” the second man said. “I’ll go on ahead while the two of you look around. If you find him, give a holler. If I find him, I’ll trail him to where he is staying and come fetch you.”
The two who were staying separated and entered the lot from different directions. One drew a short-barreled pistol from under his jacket. The other produced a dagger. Judging by how they carried themselves, and how silently they moved, they had a lot of experience at this sort of thing.
Clay might as well have been carved from wood. He did not move, did not twitch, did not blink. He held the club shoulder-high, his muscles bunched.
The thug with the pistol crept closer. He was staring at the frame, not the stack, and it was doubtful he knew what felled him.
Stepping into the open, Clay swung his club. It caught the man across the back of the head and the man’s legs folded as if they were soggy cheese. Clay whirled, but the man with the dagger had not heard. Crouching, Clay stalked him. This one was more alert. The man repeatedly glanced back. Taking him by surprise would be difficult.
Then Clay saw a wheelbarrow filled with dirt. Dropping to his knees and elbows behind it, he tapped the bottom of the wheelbarrow with his club. It was half a minute before a pair of brogans crept into view. Clay waited, and when the brogans were next to the wheelbarrow, he heaved erect and swung.
It should have worked. By rights, Clay should have knocked the hired cutthroat senseless. But the man happened to see him as he rose, and ducked. Clay was thrown off balance. Before he could recover, the man kicked at the wheelbarrow and sent it toppling against Clay.
Clay tried to spring to safety but slipped. He landed on his back with the heavy wheelbarrow across his legs and dirt spilling across his stomach and chest.
Voicing a howl of triumph, the man with the dagger lunged, spearing the double-edged tip at Clay’s chest. Clay blocked it with the club. But he had only delayed the inevitable. Pinned as he was, he was as good as slain.
The man wielding the dagger thought so, too. Grinning, he skipped to one side and then the other. “I aim to whittle you done to the bone,” he snarled.
“Don’t you mean kill me?” Clay stalled.
“We’re to persuade you, not feed you to the worms,” the man revealed. “You don’t rate higher than a petty nuisance.”
“Those sound like Barker’s words.”
“Who?” The man smirked. “I’ve never heard that name before. But the gent we work for did want us to make sure you got his message.”
“Barker’s words again,” Clay said. By now he had a handful of dirt, but he wanted the man closer.
“A few weeks laid up in bed might convince you to leave well enough be,” the man related.
“When you see him,” Clay said, “tell him it will take more than cheap toughs to scare me off.”
“Cheap, am I? For that I’ll cut your leg so you walk with a limp the rest of your days.”
The man bent toward him, and Clay threw the dirt. With a bark of anger the man backed away and rubbed at his eyes. He was still rubbing when Clay reared and raised the club. “Don’t forget to give your boss my message.” His blow was precise and powerful.
No outcries had split the night. No lamps had been lit in adjacent homes. Clay bore left at the street. He held onto the club until he had gone far enough to feel it was no longer needed.
The claybank was dozing when Clay arrived at his apartment. Slipping inside, he inserted his key. His room was as dark as the bottom of a well. Fumbling with the lamp, he got it lit and adjusted the wick.
“About time you showed up.”
Startled, Clay spun. He started to reach under his jacket but froze at the sight of a battered badge on the intruder’s shirt. “Who are you? How did you get in here? What do you want?”
“Who I am should be obvious,” the man replied, tapping his badge. He appeared to be in his fifties and had an air of weariness about him. “Getting in was easy. Your landlord gave me the spare key. As for why I’m here, that should be obvious, too.”
“I must be stupid, then,” Clay said.
“No, but you could very well soon be dead.”
Chapter 9
“If you are fixing to gun me down I would like to know why.”
“It’s not me you have to watch out for,” the lawman said. He smiled and held out his hand. “But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m Marshal Vale. Tom Vale. You’ve met a deputy of mine, I believe. Deputy Wiggins.”
“Pleased to meet you.” Clay took the other chair and set his derby on the small table. “But I don’t quite follow your meaning.”
“Don’t you?” Marshal Vale said. “When you make an enemy, you don’t make puny ones, do you? Harve Barker isn’t a weak sister. He thinks he is God Almighty but acts more like Satan.”
“How did you find out so fast?”
“About half an hour ago a friend of mine came to see me,” Marshal Vale said. “Seems he had taken a shine to you and doesn’t want you back-shot.”
“This friend have a handle?”
“Wesley Oaks.” Marshal Vale tiredly rubbed his eyes. “He and I go back a ways. When he vouches for someone, I know that someone would do to ride the river with.”
“I appreciate the compliment.”
“I’m not done. Baiting Barker was stupid. You should have kept your mouth shut and quietly gone on seeing Miss Stanley instead of bringing things to a head.”
Clay said, “I can take care of myself.”
“Sure you can. Every hombre thinks the same. But the Wild Bill Hickoks of this world are few and far between, and it would take a man with Hickok’s ability to stand up to a bastard like Harve Barker.”
“Am I to take it you don’t much care for the man?”
“Barker is poison. He does whatever he wants whenever he wants and crushes anyone who stands in his way. He will crush you over Miss Stanley, and drink a toast after you are dead.”
“He will try,” Clay said. “But I still don’t get exactly why you have paid me a visit.”
“Is there any chance I can talk you into leaving Bluff City?”
Clay Adams gazed out the window. “Not a chance in hell,” he said quietly. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Marshal Vale sighed, then scratched his side. “I figured as much. Then the best I can do is give you my word that, whatever happens, I will deal with you fairly. I am always fair. Ask anyone.”
“If you don’t mind my saying, Wiggins seems a poor choice for a deputy,” Clay remarked.
“There you go again. Sometimes it’s best to keep certain notions to ourselves,” the lawman said. “Wiggins has his faults, but who among us doesn’t? He has his uses, too, not the least of which is that he takes his job seriously and I can count on him to always do what I ask him to do.”
“Speaking of your job,” Clay said, “how is it a town marshal sends a deputy up into the mountains to a mining camp to investigate a robbery? Isn’t that rightly the county sheriff’s job?”
“That it is,” Marshal Vale agreed. “Only the sheriff went and turned in his badge and lit out for California. Bluff City never was much to his liking. He preferred the kind of town where the only excitement a lawman has is riding his rocking chair. Anyway, until an election can be held, the town council asked me to sort of fill in where I can, which is why I sent Wiggins to Calamity. But I would have sent him anyway.”
“Why is that?”
“My job is to catch lawbreakers, and Jesse Stark is the biggest lawbreaker in these parts. He robbed the First Bank of Bluff City once, right under my nose. That’s a humiliation I could have done without.”
“You sure seem decent enough for a badge toter,” Clay commented.
The marshal grinned. “And you sure say the damnedest things.” He rose and stretched. “Well, I’ve said my piece. I need to catch a few hours of shut-eye so I’ll be going. If the next time I see you is in the morgue, don’t say I didn’t warn you about being too pigheaded for your own good.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Clay said dryly. “Thanks for the visit. And if you hear anything new about Jesse Stark, I would be obliged if you passed it on.”
Vale had taken a step but stopped. “What on earth is Stark to you?”
“Didn’t Wes tell you I work at the Courier?”
“As a clerk, I understand.”
“I won’t be a clerk forever.”
Marshal Vale scratched himself again. “Mr. Adams, you worry me more and more. Having Harve Barker for an enemy is bad enough. Nosing after Jesse Stark’s doings is worse. If you’re trying to get yourself killed, you will likely succeed.”
Clay Adams considered that, then said, “Marshal, do you believe in miracles?”
“How your mind works,” Marshal Vale said. “I’m not all that religious, so I can’t rightly say I do or I don’t.”
“Let me try a different way then,” Clay said. “Do you believe in second chances?”
“We take all kinds of chances in life, son. Which particular chance are you talking about?”
“At living,” Clay said.
“If you want to live, stay away from the likes of Harve Barker and Jesse Stark,” the lawman advised.
“I would if I could. But you see, I was different once. A lot different than how you see me. I didn’t much like what I had become but I didn’t see how I could change, me being as I was.”
“You are confusing me more and more.”
“It’s just that life gave me a second chance. I don’t have to be who I was. I can live as I choose. I can do what I want. And I want to do it right this time.”
“I’m all for doing things right,” Marshal Vale said. “But what does all of that have to do with Barker and Stark?”
“Barker likes to boss people around, to tell them what they can and can’t do. But my life is my own and no one is going to tell me how to live it. I won’t let anyone spoil my second chance, no matter how rich and powerful they are.”
“I respect your sentiments.”
Clay Adams did not appear to hear and went on in that quiet manner of his. “The way I see it, there are two trails each of us can take. One is what they call the straight and narrow. The other is the wild and woolly. But maybe wild and bloody is a better way to describe it. I was on that trail once. I hated it and I hated myself, but I was stuck. Then came the miracle, and now I can give up the old ways if I want to. If I truly and really want to.”
“That part I can understand. I think.”
“If I back down to Barker, if I show yellow, then the miracle was for nothing. I won’t have that. I won’t have my life be worthless. But at the same time, if I stand up to him, I might need to be the me I don’t want to be anymore.”
Marshal Vale scratched his head this time. “Now you have cut the line and cast me adrift, son. I have no idea what in hell you are talking about.”
Clay looked at him. “Maybe there is no getting away from the past. Maybe it always comes back, whether we want it to or not.”
Vale gave the younger man a searching scrutiny. “You sure are a puzzlement if ever I met one. But I see why you impressed Wes. If I can be of any help, you let me know, hear?”
Clay Adams let the lawman out. After he closed the door he leaned his forehead against it and said, “God help me. What if the old urges come back? What if there is no escape?”
Melanie Stanley liked to eat breakfast at a small restaurant a block from the Courier. Her favorite was oatmeal with sugar and milk, and she had just started to eat when someone sank into the seat across from her without asking. “Well, this is a surprise.”
Harve Barker was, as always, the pinnacle of sartorial splendor. But his face was pinched and drawn, and his eyes were quartz prisms. “Melanie.”
“Can this be? The notorious night owl, up before noon?” Melanie poised her spoon over the oatmeal. “What has brought you out and about so early?”
“You have,” Harve Barker said.
Melanie smiled. “I am touched. You got up just to have breakfast with me? I must say, you have kept your romantic nature well hidden until now.”
“We need to talk, my dear.”
Dipping the spoon into the oatmeal, Melanie asked, “About what?”
“Your betrayal.”
The spoon stopped halfway to Melanie’s mouth. “I beg your pardon?”
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out about you and that clerk?” Barker stressed the last word so that the profession of clerking sounded like a job fit for half-wits. “About all the time you spend together? About the nights he has walked you home?”
Melanie set the spoon by the bowl, placed her elbows on the table, and laced her fingers together. “Who I see, and when, and what I do with them, is my own affair.”
“I respectfully disagree,” Barker said. “I have made no secret of my interest in you. Everyone in Bluff City knows my intentions.”
“Everyone in Bluff City can think what they want,” Melanie said. “You and I are friends. That is all we have ever been.”
“I was under the impression we were closer than that,” Harve Barker said.
“You were mistaken.”
Barker gazed out the window at the carriage that had brought him. It cost more than most people earned in a year. “I see. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am to hear you say that. There isn’t a woman anywhere who wouldn’t relish my attention.”
“Friends,” Melanie stressed.
“This clerk is something more?”
“You overstep yourself.”
Barker swung toward her. “He must be. Why else did he have the gall to confront me last night?”
Melanie’s fingers came unraveled. “He did what?”
“You haven’t heard? I should imagine it is the talk of the town by now. Your clerk came into the Emporium and mocked me to my face in front of some of my friends. He told me you are his.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Harve Barker sniffed. “So now I am a liar as well as misguided? It appears I have misjudged you, rather severely, I am afraid. You are not the innocent I took you for. You trifle with men like any common—”
“Be careful,” Melanie said. “Be very careful.” Her hand closed on the spoon as if it were a knife. “It isn’t my innocence that irritates you. It is what you once called my willful nature. I live my life as I see fit, and I am answerable to no one for my actions. Certainly to no man.”
“You need to learn your place in this world.”
Melanie’s eyes flashed fire. “That’s what this is really about. A woman’s place. Not just mine but every woman’s. You can’t stand the thought that women want lives of their own.”
