McAllister Justice (3 page)

“Two hundred a month.”

The mayor looked horrified. “Diblon received ninety dollars per month.”

McAllister grinned coldly.

“I'm glad he ain't in no condition to hear you tell that naughty lie, mayor. Come again.”

“All right. He received one hundred.”

“And a bullet in the belly.”

“I stick at a hundred.”

McAllister took the badge from his coat and tossed it on the table. “I pass.”

As he started to walk out of the room, Sillitoe caught him by the arm and said: “One twenty-five.”

McAllister gave him a long look and said: “One fifty.”

The mayor nodded not wanting to hear himself say the sum. McAllister went and picked up the badge and put it back on.

“Done,” he said.

“You're a hard man, McAllister,” the mayor told him with an aggrieved look.

“That's what you're buying, ain't it?”

Sillitoe laughed, not unpleasantly and looked like a man you could get along with under less trying circumstances. McAllister reckoned that, if he lived long enough, he might grow to like him.

“I'll have to pay the extra out of my own pocket,” the mayor was saying, “and I reckon that gives me the right to call the tune. So – no gambling concessions, no private killings. From here on, you're a servant of the town. Let's have that clear from the start.”

McAllister smiled nastily.

“Give me a week,” he said. “Then you can talk all you want about what I can do and what I can't do.”

The mayor gave him a long look, went to say something and
thought better of it, which convinced McAllister that maybe the man had some sense.

“All right,” Sillitoe said. “Let me know how Diblon gets along.”

“Come and find out for yourself,” McAllister told him flatly. “He got that in your service.”

The mayor flushed, again swallowed some words and said: “All right,” before he walked out.

The doctor pulled a blanket up to Diblon's chin, walked to the bowl of water on the table, splashed some water from a jug into it, and started washing up.

Without looking at McAllister, he said: “You sound pretty big. Make the most of it - you won't be that way long.”

McAllister said: “Sure.”

When the doctor had washed up and wiped his hands on a dirty towel, he said: “That'll be ten dollars.”

“That should cover an evenin' at Kate's, you old ram. Get out of here. I'll pay you some time.”

“You don't have credit,” the little man snapped.

“Your mistake. I don't have anything else. And get this into your little head. You come in to see Joe first thing in the morning. I don't want to have to come looking for you. If you ain't here I'll arrest you.”

“What for?”

“Spitting on the sidewalk, interferin' with young girls, anything my dirty mind can think up.”

The doctor started to gabble angrily, but McAllister threw him his coat and bustled him out of the door. The doctor called him some unpleasant names and McAllister, grinning said: “Have the law on me.”

The doctor out of sight, McAllister put on Diblon's gun-belt and inspected the Colt 1861 model resting in the holster. It looked fine to him and it felt pretty good to have a fine gun like that strapped on again. The Smith and Wesson, he dropped into his coat pocket. He'd need that. It was the only evidence he had. If it
was
evidence. He checked that Joe was still breathing and found that he was, just. Then he went out
of the office and locked the door behind him. Crossing the street, he entered a store. The storekeeper was busy, but he located the man's wife at the rear of the place and introduced himself as the new marshal. The woman was about thirty-five, a fading blonde who knew a good-looking man when she saw one. She seemed to think that she saw one right now, because she showed a lot of teeth and patted her hair a few times while they were talking.

“I'm Mrs. Charles Seaburg,” she said and offered her hand in a genteel manner. “That's my husband out front.”

“We must get acquainted. Always nice to know that the solid citizens are behind you, ma'am.” Seaburg was solid, all right. About two hundred and thirty pounds of solidity Storekeepers ate in Malcolm City if nobody else did. “Right now, I'd be obliged if you could recommend some good lady to play nurse to Mr. Diblon.”

“My word! Is he sick?”

“Sick as they come, ma'am.”

She said there were a dozen ladies who would like the job and who could use the money no doubt. Her own dear sister might be prevailed upon … Mrs. Seaburg wasn't slow. Through her sister she could learn what was going on in the marshal's office, maybe, and just how sick the marshal was.

“Where can I find her?”

It appeared that Jenny was right here on the premises and Mrs. Seaburg would have her come right over … where was the marshal at? In the office? My, that was no place for a sick man. But sister would be right over.

McAllister thanked her with the courtesy his old man had drummed into him with a large-buckled strap and departed.

He found Diblon in a high fever and spent the next hour doing his best to reduce it by bathing the patient with cold water from the chipped china jug. He was fairly successful and Diblon fell into a deep, though troubled, sleep, muttering and cursing with such obscenity that McAllister trembled for
the good lady who would, he hoped, arrive shortly to take up the duties of nurse.

Waiting for her, he checked the armoury and found that chained in a rack he had at his disposal two scatter-guns, one made by Greener of Pall Mall, London, England, and in fair condition; a Spencer carbine and an old Henry he liked the look of. There was enough ammunition for him to police the town if he stayed alive long enough to do it.

Sitting behind the desk with his feet up in time-honored fashion, sipping Diblon's whiskey, he considered the situation and didn't like any part of it.

He hadn't been in town a week yet, but he reckoned he knew it pretty well. Its morals and behavior would be much the same as any of the other ramshackle, makeshift settlements he had been in during his years spent up and down the frontier. Here ruled the law of the fast buck, the knife and the gun. The stage from Deadwood had been held up twice since he had been here and several times before that. Not by professionals, but by desperate men who had no money to buy food for their bellies or warmth for their chilled blood; miners who couldn't reach the gold through the cavalry patrols that barred the road into Indian territory; cowhands who had sold their owners' herds and gambled the money away; men who, had come from the east, telling their womenfolk and their kids that they'd make a fortune and send for them.

Only yesterday, seven men had stopped the stage at Crofter's Bend. They shot the guard but fled when a passenger opened up on them with a scatter-gun. Those seven men were here in town, more desperate than ever, with scores of others of their kind.

In town there was the man who had shot Joe Diblon. And that killing had been premeditated. The man had waited in the dark for Joe and cut him down in cold blood. A back-shooter; and that kind were hell-on-wheels to negotiate.

So that gave McAllister two main chores to start with. Police the town and find Joe's attacker.

He reckoned if he had six good deputies it wouldn't be enough.

Did he have a deputy? he wondered. He'd forgotten to ask Sillitoe that.

Knuckles rapped shyly on the door to the street and he growled: “Come.” This, he thought, would be the storekeeper's sis-in-law.

The door opened and a woman stepped inside.

McAllister got to his feet as fast as a kid of eighteen would for a beautiful play-actress. This woman was the answer to a great many prayers, mature and adolescent.

She was smiling modestly. Medium height, plainly dressed in a neat gray outfit topped by a cute bonnet of rather rakish design. She didn't need bright colors, because she was all gold; her hair with a soft tinge of red in it. Trim waist, perfect hands and … the rest was so damned womanly, McAllister just stood and stared.

“I'm Jenny Mann,” she said softly. “Mrs. Seaburg's sister.”

He wanted to say that it wasn't possible, but he didn't. He took his hat off and said: “Pleased to meet you, ma'am. Obliged you could come so quick.”

“You must be Mr. McAllister.”

A bright smile.

“Yes'm.”

“My sister told me all about you.”

Another bright smile. She looked toward the inner room.

“Joe's in there, Miss Mann. I'm afraid he's hurt bad. You sure you can handle it?” She looked too delicate to attend a man with a bullet in his guts.

“Hurt?” she said. “I understood he was sick.”

“He was shot,” McAllister informed her and watched the flutter of alarm that went across her face. “In the stomach.”

“Gracious,” she said. Then: “You men and your guns!”

McAllister felt rebuked along with the rest of mankind. He took her in and showed her Joe, but she didn't seem at all put out at the sight. She examined the wound with pursed
lips and said: “You're right, he's bad. But I've seen worse.”

That surprised McAllister. This woman looked as though she couldn't bear to see a fly squashed.

“You think he has a chance?” He knew he didn't give Joe a snowball's chance in hell.

“When we undertake to nurse a man, we must be convinced from the start that he will live and work all the time to that end,” she said coldly.

“Sure,” he agreed. “That's the way.”

She told him that she wanted to put fresh dressings on the wound and wanted the wherewithal to keep it clean. She gave her instructions and he went to get her the chemistry she wanted. When he returned, he found that she had settled in. A bed was made up on the floor on the other side of the room from the wounded man and the whole place looked as though it had been cleaned out. Jenny Mann didn't have a hair out of place and looked as cool and shy as she had when she had come in.

“You intend to stay all the time?” McAllister asked as he put the bottles and dressings on the table.

“Yes, Mr. McAllister, I intend to stay until Mr. Diblon is on his feet again.” She looked at him levelly and he gazed back at her in admiration.

“I reckon you'll do, ma'am,” he said.

She tossed her head and some of the shyness seemed to go.

“I'm sure that's praise indeed,” she said. “Now from here on, Mr. McAllister, you'll knock before you come in here.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

He went back into his office and closed the door carefully behind him. He took a look around his new abode. Beyond the grilled gate at the side of the office, he found three cells. Two small ones and a large one, big enough to hold twenty men with some discomfort. He thought that was pretty good equipment for a new town. He reckoned on having all three well-filled by nightfall tomorrow. The day after the word would get around that there was tough law in town and things would quieten down nicely. After that only those that
prided themselves on their hell-raising ability would try to run foul of the law.

Going through Diblon's effects, he found a hickory club, thick at one end and about three feet long. Better than a gun for everyday police work. He put the wrist-loop over his wrist and went out.

His first stop was at a gunsmith's owned by a man he knew. He asked for credit and got it on the strength of the badge on his coat.

“Did you ever hear of a gun called a Le Matt?” he asked.

The man cocked his head and said: “I not only heard of it I have one right here.” He took a gun from under the counter and gave it to McAllister. “Belonged to Bill Danvers who was last marshal but one. I got it cheap when he was killed out on the Deadwood road.”

With that tucked in his belt, loaded, McAllister felt better walking the boardwalks. He had learned the virtues of the gun from his old friend, Joe Blade, who had used it to great effect in the many fracases he had found himself in, not withstanding the possession of only one leg.
¹
The gun was made for close-fighting and could be a terror in a mob. It had two barrels, up-and-over; the top one fed by a revolving chamber of .40 caliber; the lower one was a smooth-bore shot-gun and was hell at close range.

McAllister smiled.

He liked to be hell at close range when the odds were against him. This beauty evened up the odds considerably and might even make up for the deputy who didn't seem to be there.

Next he went to see the judge.

He was a brisk Easterner living in a frame house on Fremont, not a spit away from Kate's cat-house. He had not been in the West long enough to fear wrong-doers. Which suited McAllister's book. He liked what he saw of the man and arranged for court to be convened the following morning at nine o'clock, at the Paradise Saloon on McKinley Street. The proprietor let the law have his premises at no charge
because court boosted the sale of hard liquor.

“That's pretty early,” the judge remarked.

“When the cells're full, you want to empty 'em fast for fresh customers,” McAllister told him.

“How many prisoners do you have now?”

“None - I'm just off to get some,” McAllister told the surprised man and left.

He went to the Paradise to inform the owner that court would be held on his premises the following morning. The owner, a Texan by the name of Ring Maelmann, five foot high, tough and sporting mustaches that threatened to tickle his shoulders, thought it sad that a fine big fellow like McAllister should be cursed by a badge that would see him dead in no time at all. There was a lot of laughter from the customers and a couple of them got nasty and tried to cut McAllister down to size. He used the club to such effect that he cut them so small nobody saw them for the next few hours.

He was puzzling the problem of carting two grown men to the cells on his lonesome when he spotted Sime Gregson drinking at the bar and minding his own business.