Past All Dishonor (12 page)

I held my breath, and when they moved off I raised on tiptoe to look, but next door was a vacant lot with no lights or anything, and all I could see was shadows. I went inside to warn Rocco and tell him what I thought we should do, which was to get deputies and get them quick. But when I started over to him, where he was talking to some officers near my chair, I stopped. Because coming into the place, with Red Caskie, the fellow that did his errands, his brother Raymond, that had charge of all chemical operations at his mine, and three or four hombres from his office, was Brewer. My head began to pound. I went over to my chair and sat down, but instead of saying something to Rocco I looked at the clock. It was twenty minutes to nine.

Once you saw him, the idea that Brewer could love anybody, unless it was himself, was nothing more or less than funny. He was good-looking enough, in a heavy kind of way, and always had a grin and wave of the hand for whoever came along, but just the same he wasn’t romantic. He wasn’t as tall as I am, but he was at least six feet, with a big barrel chest and a rolling walk they said he got from being a lumberman, up in Wisconsin. Anyway, making all the money he had came from all the stuff he knew about timber. Up to a few months ago almost anybody that could timber a mine so it wouldn’t cave in and kill everybody down there could get rich in Virginia City, and he was thick with Deidesheimer, who taught them how to make squaresets, so right at the start he had a big advantage. Then he brought his brothers in, who were in some college back east, and sent them to work for a bank, and after they learned all they could about processes and finances, they came back with him again. Then Will went to San Francisco, to deal with the mint and the silver-buyers, and Raymond took charge of the mill. But when it came to George, it affected him the way it would affect any dumb lumberman from the north woods that made about ten times as much money as he ever thought he would have. He got this idea that only the best was good enough for him, whether it was food, drink, or cigars, and if you ask me, the main thing he saw in Morina was that she could pile on more clothes, diamonds, and ribbons than any other woman in town, so of course that made her the best, and the way he figured things out, the perfect wife.

He began rapping on the bar with his cane, and ordered up champagne for everybody in the house. Jake had a grin all over his face, and began yelling at Ike and Davey to fill the ice tub, to open cases, to get out the extra glasses in the closet. But when he got out a bottle and held it for Brewer, it wasn’t good enough. Brewer smashed it down on a beer tap, and told him to get some real champagne, and me, I don’t know one champagne from another, but a funny look come over Jake’s face. I can’t prove it, but I’d bet the champagne Brewer paid for that night wasn’t as good as the champagne he slopped on the floor.

Rocco was all grin too, and motioned all dealers and croupiers to close down their games. So the whole mob, except me, crowded to the bar. Caskie came over. “What’s the matter, Rog, don’t you feel sociable?”

“I’m supposed to stay sober.”

“George, he wants you.”

“Tell him thanks, but tonight I’m off it.”

“Listen, there’s not many hombres in this town that’s too goddam busy to step over to the bar when George Brewer wants to buy them a drink.”

“I’m on duty.”

“Listen, Rog, that’s what he’s in here for.”

“To get me drunk?”

“He knows about you.”

“What’s he know?”

“About you and Morina.”

“He don’t know much, if that’s all.”

“And about Hale too. He knows all about that, and he’s liked you ever since. He thinks it was pretty damn nice, the way you treated that hombre, and he wants to buy you a drink.”

“Well, that’s different.”

“That sounds more like it.”

“Tell him soon as I finish my nine o’clock round, I’ll be over, but I’d rather he started the others off first, so if we want to talk, we can do it quiet and not have a lot of whooping and hollering going on account he’s put out free drinks.”

“He’ll like you for that, Rog.”

I wasn’t taking his drink, but if he came in there to buy me one and I turned it down, he might plunk down his money and walk out. That wouldn’t do for what I had in mind.

At seven of, the first bottle came out of the ice, where Ike had been twirling it and feeling if it was cold enough. Jake cut the wire, the cork hit the ceiling, and foam spilled out. Glasses were lined up on the bar for ten feet now, dozens and dozens of them, and Jake began filling them. Davey cut another wire, another cork popped, and Jake took the second bottle. Eighteen or twenty glasses were ready, and Brewer picked up one. “To the Union, one and indivisible forever!”

“’Ray!”

They began to yell and drink. But they crowded around him too, and for me that was bad. I got my high chair and took it to Rocco. “Maybe, tonight at least, we could find a place for Mr. Brewer to sit.”

Rocco ran over with it and Brewer raised his glass to me like he was some kind of duke and I bowed back as elegant as I could. Then he climbed up on it and hooked his heels over the foot rest. He was a head and a half above the crowd. As Jake refilled his glass a slim man in a red shirt, with two guns on his hips, came in. He blinked when he saw the celebration, but Rocco went over, handed him a glass, and said all drinks were on Mr. Brewer, so drink his health. Brewer raised his glass at him, and he nodded with a quick, pale grin and took a sip. Then he drifted over to the edge of the crowd. He was facing Brewer, but his eyes began running over the room. When he saw me, he shifted his glass from his right hand to his left. I took a stroll down the room, past the croupiers counting money, and as I moved he turned. When I stopped at the dollar table and gave the wheel a spin, he was between me and Brewer, about six feet from me and the same distance from the chair, with the three of us right in line. The clock said one minute of.

Two men came in wearing guns, one of them with his coat buttoned tight. They had a hangdog look to them, and Rocco, instead of handing them a drink, came over to me. “Roger—”

“I’m watching every move they make.”

“All right, boy.”

“And stay away from Red Shirt.”

“Him too?”

“I think so.”

At nine a big man came in, with a red beard and both hands in his coat pockets. He took a quick look at the room, spotted first the two that had just come in, then Red Shirt over near the bar. Then he whipped a red handkerchief out of one pocket. Red Shirt reached for his gun, the one on his left hip with reversed stock, and got it out. But I drew with the handkerchief too, and before he could shoot I plugged him, through the head. And while he was falling I shot again, for the place where his head had been, and Brewer pitched over. After that it was like one of those lantern slides, where the boy chases the butterfly to the end of the pier, then falls in to the fishes, but it takes six pictures to show what happened in one second. I threw myself backward over the roulette table and rolled, and when I hit the floor I had three tables between me and the men near the door. The big man was already shooting for me, and I shot at him once and missed. I had to get closer, and ran on my knees and one hand up toward the front, and he was doing the same on the other side of the tables, to get me. He raised up and I shot again and he dropped. I turned toward the other two. I only had two shots left and I couldn’t waste anything. But they were legging it for the door. I got one of them in the back as he started through the door. The other one I got outside, as he was jumping on his horse. It went galloping down the street with him hanging to one stirrup.

“Duval, who killed George Brewer?”

“That I don’t know.”

“Don’t trifle, boy. Who killed him?”

“I heard what the doctor said, what Mr. Rocco said, what these other witnesses said. They say I shot twice at this unidentified man, and that one of those shots killed Mr. Brewer. They say I took cover back of the roulette equipment then, and shot the big man Hoke Irving. They say I got the little man as he was leaving, and the other one outside. So I guess if anybody killed Mr. Brewer, it had to be me. But if I leave guessing out and tell it like I remember it, all I know is this man here started to draw and I started to shoot. From there on I’ve got no clear recollection of anything until I saw that horse go running down the street, and I never even knew Mr. Brewer was dead until I got back inside. Nobody regrets it more than I do. But I’m under oath to tell you the truth, and I’m telling it as well as I can. And I’m certainly not trifling with you.”

“That all you got to say?”

“Yes sir, it is.”

It was the City Marshal, and he started his inquest as soon as the wagon came back with the man the horse had dragged down the street. First he put me under arrest and detailed a deputy to guard me. Then he picked six men out of the crowd to serve as a coroner’s jury. Then he sent for the same doctor that wanted to cut off my arm. Then he told everybody to hold up their right hand and swear that the evidence they would give before him would be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Then he began examining witnesses, first the doctor, to get him to pronounce the dead men dead, and tell what they died of. Then Raymond Brewer, to identify his brother. Then a whole flock of people, practically everybody in the place, and a fellow that had just got in a few days ago from Nebraska got all excited when he identified Hoke Irving, but nobody had names for the other three. Then he had all five bodies laid out in front of the bar, and drew over them one of the oilcloth covers for the roulette tables. Then he began taking testimony. He was cold, tough, cold, and official with everybody, and you couldn’t tell what his opinion was, if he had one. When I got done, he asked the jury if there were any questions they wanted to ask, and after some stuff they got me to explain, about where I was when the shooting started, where Irving was, and where I took cover, he told them to consider their verdict. They whispered a minute or two, and then the one he had appointed foreman got up and said: “We the jury empaneled to consider the deaths of George Brewer, Hoke Irving, and three unidentified men, find that the first-named came to his death by gunshot wound inflicted by one Roger Duval in an unintentional, unavoidable, and accidental manner connected with the discharge of his duties as guard in the Esperanza gambling hall, and that the other four were killed by the same Roger Duval as a lawful and necessary measure to prevent murder, larceny, and other crimes the deceased had conspired, intended, and attempted to commit on the said premises which Duval was hired to guard.”

“Do you order the said Duval held?”

“We do not.”

“Release your prisoner.”

The deputy gave me a clap on the back, and right away the place went into the craziest hullabaloo you ever heard. They yelled for me, stomped on the floor, shook my hand, and hollered at the bartenders to give me a drink. I didn’t want any drink. I wanted to be alone. But they wouldn’t have it that way, and I had to stand there at the bar pretending to believe I was a hero. And then all of a sudden you could hear a pin drop. The men from Brewer’s mine had picked him up and were carrying him out when Raymond Brewer must have said something, because the Marshal called him over.

“Mr. Brewer, say that over again and to me, what you just now said to your men, about the jury’s verdict on your brother.”

“I said it’s a disgrace.”

“And how is it a disgrace?”

“Roger Duval meant to kill my brother, that’s how.”

“You mean—he
murdered
him?”

“He saw his chance when this thing started tonight, and I say it’s shameful that he be exonerated, and treated like a public hero, instead of being held for trial like the rat that he is.”

“Mister, this is a serious charge.”

“You think I don’t know it?”

“You got any proof?”

“The idea that Roger Duval could kill somebody by accident is just about as silly as the idea he wouldn’t kill him if he had a reason. He’s the best gunman in town, he’s here because he’s a dead shot, and he doesn’t hit what he aims to miss, and he doesn’t miss what he aims to hit.”

“That just says he done it because he done it.”

“He did.”

“What might this here reason be?”

“A woman.”

“Just that?”

“Isn’t it enough?”

“A man kills a woman over a man, and a woman kills a man over a woman, but a man kills a man over a woman so seldom that I’d have to know a little more about it if I really meant to believe it. Can you tell me who this woman is, and why one man would kill another on account of her?”

“Yeah, she’s a—”

I don’t know if my hand twitched, or if one of his men gave him a sign, or what. The deputy had let me clean and reload the gun while the inquest was going on, and it was in its regular place under my arm. Anyway, he cut it off in the middle of a snarl, and finished off with: “—a resident of this town.”

“That don’t prove nothing to me.”

“It does to me.”

He started out after the body, but every two or three steps he’d turn and look at me and lick his lips, and from the way the whole crowd looked at the both of us, I knew I had that man to kill or he’d do the same for me.

W
HEN THEY’D BEEN HOLLERING
for me as a hero I didn’t want any drink, but now they were staring at me as a killer I had to have it. Because maybe nothing could be proved, but they knew from the way it was said and the way it was heard that what had been said was true. And even if it meant nothing to them, except one more thing to bet on, as which man would get it when the shooting began, it did to me. I hadn’t got used to it, this Western idea that a man’s life was the cheapest thing there was, and I had killed a man that had never done anything to me but take off my hands the worst girl in the world for me to have, and I’d shot him in the back of the head without even giving him a chance to turn around. Eyes were looking at me, and my face felt like it was hanging off my cheekbones in pouches. I ordered wheat, because it gets there quicker than rye, and I guess I had a dozen slugs. Then I must have looked queer, because Rocco came over and said take the rest of the night off, so I went home. But I didn’t sleep. I lay there, and it got light, and the bugle sounded, and the flag went up on Mount Davidson, and still I lay there, staring out at the sky. I tried to think of Raymond Brewer, and what I had to do to him, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t take any interest in him, or what I was going to do next, or Morina, or anything. It was like I had turned numb all over.