Authors: Nelson Nye
Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller, #Suspense, #Western, #Contemporary, #Detective
Maverick Marshall
Maverick
Marshal
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
CHAPTER ONE
It began with a big temptation — too big for a man like Frank to resist no matter what trouble it might run him into. Turbulence and violence had given him a rep. He knew that it was the bold men in this world who got their names in the pot. He also knew with his first sight of the town that he was never going back to punching cows for old Sam Church.
In a place like South Fork, which was a jumping-off point for outfits heading up the trail to Dodge City, a person had to be born on the right side of Gurden’s saloon or be a part of the scum for the rest of his natural. Such, at least, was the established tradition. Now Frank saw a way of changing all that.
He was going to wake this place up!
Marshal of South Fork
, he breathed, and reared back his shoulders.
He grinned as he thought of Honey Kimberland. Smallest waist, biggest smile, yellowest hair of any girl in the country; and as far above Frank as the damn moon — but there wasn’t no law against dreaming.
She had been in Frank’s mind ever since the day he’d hauled her out of that south-shore boghole where she’d run just in time to miss the horns of Church’s bull. Frank had cut down the bull with his pistol (and worked half the next winter getting its cost off the books) before he’d realized it wasn’t about to go into that muck even for a tidbit as tempting as Honey.
Four years ago — Lord how time flew! Frank wondered if she remembered, being not much over fifteen when he’d saved her. He recollected the look of her knees with the mud on them, and the way she had clung to him shivering and shaking. She’d been well filled out even then and he remembered the clean woman smell of her hair…. He remembered too damn well, he thought wryly.
It was nearly full dark and the nighthawks were swooping when he came into town and worked his dun horse through the Saturday night crush. He put the animal up to the pole fronting Gurden’s Saloon and sat a spell having his look along the street. Frank was a big fellow and a rough one with his burly brawler’s shoulders. And yet someway, strangely, he was a little reluctant about the marshal’s job, thinking back to that talk he’d had with John Arnold. Arnold, one of the town councilmen, was a man grown old in the cow game, closest to being tolerant of any of the local big owners.
“But why me?” Frank had asked when Arnold let it be known the Town Council was dissatisfied with the man they’d fetched in from outside to pack their tin. “Ashenfeldt’s a tophand at this pistol-packing business. All I know is cows.”
Arnold, smiling, shifted his cud. “You’ve made your mark in this town as a real scraperoo. It’s these local sports who’ve put the skids under Joe. They won’t try that with you — they’ll know better. Besides,” Arnold said, warming up to his subject, “you’re ambitious.”
Frank scowled. But it was true enough, he supposed. If he was ever to make any impression on Honey it was time he got known for something besides brawling and shoving cows’ tails around. Still it wasn’t a job he would voluntarily have gone after. He knew the riptide of pressures by which things around here were made to suit the big owners and could not resist taking a sly poke at the rancher. “You hunting a dog that’ll come to your whistle?”
The tightening of Arnold’s hands showed the shaft had gone home, but he said easy enough, “We’ve got to have a man who understands local conditions, one who’ll know when to reach and when to leave well enough alone. You fit that to a T.”
“What’s old Church think about it?”
“I haven’t talked to Church about it; the deal is up to the Town Council. Pay is one-twenty a month. I could put it into cows for you, Frank.”
It would be obliging Arnold to take the marshal’s job, which meant it probably would suit Honey Kimberland’s old man too. Kimberland generally pulled most of the strings that got pulled. Without at least his tacit approval a man wouldn’t look to get anywhere at all here. W. T. Kimberland
was
South Fork — and his daughter wouldn’t be marrying any thirty-a-month cowhand.
Frank took a deep breath. “How do you know I can have the damned job?”
Arnold said quietly, “Push it around for a while in your mind. Council won’t meet before Saturday night. If you want to take a whirl at it, come in.”
So here he was, and it was Saturday night with the dust and the racket boiling out of the street and the town crammed with men who would just as lief gutshoot a tinbadge as look at him.
Among the mounds of stored goods in the back room of the Mercantile, Krantz, who owned the place, sat around with the other two Councilmen, sourly nursing their secret antagonisms, paying little attention to the voices out front where his weary clerks, wishing mightily to be done, tramped about the gabbing customers, reaching down and stacking purchases absent-mindedly ordered between bursts of gossip.
Krantz pushed an already soggy bandana across the moist shine of his completely bald head. He said, “I don’t like it.”
Chip Gurden, who owned the Opal and could generally be counted on to front for the riffraff and drifters, sighed. “Seems like I remember you sayin’ that.” His glance sawed at Krantz’s nerves. The storekeeper jumped up, frustratedly fidgeting and popping his knuckles while his eyes slewed irascibly from one to the other of them. “That roughneck! How can ve trust our lives yet, und our goots, to such a one?”
Gurden’s saloonkeeper’s face in the light of the lamps showed no more expression than one of his table checks.
Arnold said, “He’ll be all right.”
Krantz, swinging back, sat down heavily. “Yah! All right for you cow people! What about the rest of us?”
“If he don’t stay in line, two votes from this Council will take the tin away from him,” said Arnold.
Gurden nodded. He fetched a black stogie from a case and bit the end off. He considered it a moment, scratched a match and fired up. “That’s for sure,” he said dryly. He broke the match and put his foot on it.
“I don’t like it,” Krantz repeated.
“Vote against him then,” Arnold suggested smoothly.
Gurden growled through the smoke, “Maybe Frank’s got other fish to fry. We been here twenty minutes already.”
Arnold said to Krantz, “You’re the Clerk of this outfit. Call the meeting adjourned if it’ll make you feel any better.”
Krantz glared, affronted. “You talk like you was Kimberland. You know this — this
wildman
will look out for your interests. Py Gott! Gurden has bouncers. Me, all I got iss a fortune in breakables und a pair of scairt clerks! Ve got to haf some law in this — ”
Someone’s fist banged heavily against the door.
Krantz, still fuming, got up and unbarred it. Frank Carrico came in and heard the door slammed behind him. “So you’re here!” Krantz scowled. Frank looked at the other two. “Thought I was expected.”
“Begun to think you weren’t coming.” Arnold shoved a keg out.
Frank, settling his back to the wall, searched Gurden’s face. “This deal suit you?”
“I’ll string along.”
“Yah — you got bouncers!” Krantz, with his head up like a dog catching wolf smell, demanded of Frank bitterly: “You understandt this chob do you?”
“Expect I could make out to get a line on it.” Frank, knowing Krantz didn’t like him, considered the storekeeper, grinning a little. “Main thing, I reckon, is to keep you fellers in business, ain’t it?”
“Iss something funny? Why you grin? Ve got troubles — wild-eyed crazy galoots wit pistols. Py Gott, ve need protection! Las’ night these trail hands wreck Fantshon’s blace like a pig vind!”
“Where was your badge toter?” asked Frank.
“He done the best he could,” Gurden said.
Arnold, clearing his throat, suggested getting down to business. Frank stared at the rancher, trying to lay hold of something. Top dogs in South Fork acknowledged no one but W. T. Kimberland and it was gnawing at Frank’s mind that Arnold would be acting for W. T. right now.
Krantz blew out his cheeks and glared about him dismally, his look lingering longest on the face of the saloonkeeper. Gurden gave him no encouragement. Krantz swabbed his baldness again with the wadded bandanna and testily said, “Comes now Frank Carrico, a candidate for marshal. All in favor signify by saying ‘aye’.”
“Aye.” That was Arnold, looking smug and mighty virtuous. Gurden’s slow nod held a hint of wry humor.
Krantz said bitterly, “Lift your right hand and put the other on this book.”
After Frank was sworn in he pocketed the keys the storekeeper gave him and picked up the paper on which were set forth the duties of his office, local ordinances and so forth. His glance went to Arnold. “Where’s the badge?”
“We’ll step over to Ben’s” Arnold murmured.
Ben Holliday ran the local furniture emporium. When there was call for it he also furnished caskets at three times the actual cost. There could only be one reason, Frank reflected, for going to Ben’s. He took a tighter grip on himself going over there, but when he stood with the others staring down at Ashenfeldt’s body, he couldn’t restrain a shiver. Peering at Arnold he said: “Who did it?”
Gurden’s grin was thin and crooked. “Make a guess.”
“Some drunken trail hand?”
“One of Draicup’s crowd,” Arnold said. Frank’s eyes slitted.
Krantz said, “didn’t you know they vas back?”
“Which one?” Frank asked, sounding like something had got stuck in his windpipe. Three months ago, in a drunken brawl, Frank had smashed a heap of glass in Gurden’s Opal bar.
The saloonkeeper now, with the remembrance of this coming alive on his cheeks, said, “Tularosa,” and showed a huge enjoyment. “Maybe that star don’t look so good to you now.”
Frank reached down and got the tin from the dead man’s vest. With his face hard as rock he fastened it onto his shirt front. His eyes cut at Arnold. “Draicup’s crew still around?”
“Tularosa’s here. Fetched in a wagon with a busted hub and him and another’s laying over to wait for it.”
Krantz, ever fearful of violence, said, “you can have the exbense of vun deputy — up to, that is, fifty dollars a month. If you haf to bay more it comes out of your bocket.”
“How free a hand have I got with this job?”
Arnold said, “In what way?”
Frank waved the paper the storekeeper had given him. “This part about guns. Man would need an army to disarm every ranny that comes into this town.”
“You asked for it.” That was Gurden.
Arnold fingered his thin mustache. “What do you have in mind, Frank?”
“It’s the rotgut,” Franks said, “that puts these boys on the prod.”
The sardonic enjoyment fell off Gurden’s face. “Now wait a minute! If you think for one — ”
“I was going to suggest,” Frank said mildly, “that whenever they come into a place where they can buy it we make it a rule their guns must be checked at the bar. I’ll undertake to make that stick.”
“It would help,” Krantz said, brightening.
Arnold nodded.
Chip Gurden said grudgingly, “I’ll go along on that,” and got up. “What are you figurin’ to do about Tularosa?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“He killed somebody, didn’t he? Put the sonofabitch in jail!”
• • •
Draicup, held to be rougher than a cob, hailed from someplace down in the brasada. He’d been here before and always drove a mixed herd which was road-branded Spur. He packed a thick wallet crammed with powers of attorney and had taken twenty thousand cattle up to Dodge. His passing last year had cost the town four men — three of these killed by this same Tularosa.