Shotgun Charlie (10 page)

Charlie pulled back, looked at Pap. The old man's eyes were still open, filming with a death glaze, staring at him, a wide smile on his bloody lips. His silly dented bowler hat sat a few feet away, the bent silk flower more crumpled than ever.

Charlie swallowed, nodded, a lone tear rolled down his face, balanced on the end of his nose. “I reckon you heard me all right.” The tear dropped, hit Pap's cheek.

Then the crowd set upon Charlie with a howling vengeance.

“Gentlemen, I expect you know why I convened this meeting.” Horace McCafferty stood at the head of the long table in the council chamber. The rotund man thumbed the lapels of his amply cut frock coat and jutted his chin, though it was so round no one noticed. He regarded each of the men in turn.

“Oh, get on with it, Horace. We got bigger things to deal with than you today.”

The fat man winced. “I am merely trying to perpetuate the air of dignity and respect that befits this institution we have erected.”

“Institution?” Gimble, the editor of the
Bakersfield Gazette
, snorted and shifted his cigar to the other side of his mouth. “Horace, there's nothing to convene. We need to get this dang show on the road. We have a bank full of people handled so savagely that they might never recover. One man, old Muley Timmons, was shot, clubbed, and then, sadly, expired of his wounds. God rest his old soul. Good man. Then there was our fellow on the council, Tollinson, the banker, and his subordinate, the Matthews boy, a good lad. Both of them treated rough enough that we might never get the full story of what happened out of them. And we have a giant of a man imprisoned for crimes we can't in all likelihood pin on him.”

“Why not?” shouted Stewbins, a normally docile man whose outburst and slammed fist on the tabletop paused them all for a long moment. “Why can't we just let the crowds have him and be done with it?”

Gimble, the newspaperman, took a breath, rubbed his eyes. “That would be anarchy, Mel. And you know as well as I that we can't allow that to happen here in Bakersfield.”

“And why not? Worked out with that Indian-looking bank-robbing, killing thief they laid low.”

Gimble ignored him and continued with his litany of affronts. “As Mel Stewbins so kindly reminded us, we have had one of the robbers savaged apart at the hands of our otherwise gentle townsfolk. We have a stranger, an old man, gunned down in the street. Marcus Cottrell was shot dead by the man who was savaged. A couple of other folks were wounded.” He rubbed his eyes, as much from the long list of affronts as from the blue smoke drifting into them. He sighed and continued. “And perhaps saddest of all, little Minnie Petersen was trampled by one of the thieves' horses—the same man who appeared to be the boss of the thieving gang, same man who shot the old stranger, same man who was likely connected somehow with them all. Poor Minnie may or may not live. We don't know yet. If she does, well, I pity her family. And if she should leave us, well, my response will be the same.” He shook his head, regarded his folded hands on the table before him.

The assembled men nodded in mutual commiseration.

He continued. “And that's not taking into account the as-yet-unknown tally of money the thieves made off with. The Indian, or Mexican, or whatever he was, had a tidy sum on him, and there were four other bank robbers seen to ride out of town, with roughly the same number of bags draped about their persons and on their saddles. Given this scant information, we can draw a rough conclusion as to how much money was stolen from the bank.”

“The big fella in the jail, he has to be part of the gang,” said Stewbins. “He seems a fool, but I think there's more going on in his bean than he lets on. I think we can wear him down before we hang him.”

“What do you think you'll get from him?” said the newspaperman. “Some folks said he was shot at. Others said he was a shooter. Still others claim he was the one with the shotgun, the one who shot the old man. Then he felt badly about it and held the man until he died.”

“Yes, and I heard that he was all those things and more!” McCafferty, still standing, thumbed his lapels all the harder. “I heard that he held the old man down and strangled him until he died in his arms. Can you imagine? And to think we have these brutes running rampant in our town. It's almost too much to bear.”

“Regardless,” said Gimble, “we have to keep him locked up until we can get the law in here to deal with him.”

“What law? We don't even have a constable anymore. He up and quit, then crawled inside a bottle. He should be strung up too for leaving us so high and dry.”

“Look, Horace, I know how you all feel about the man in the prison. And I can't say I wholly disagree with you, but if we let our citizens run vigilante roughshod over everybody who commits a crime in these parts, why, it won't be long before anyone who happens to look askance at Widow Dunphy will be strung up in a tree with their own braces. And what will we have then?”

“We'll have a town safer than it is now!” Stewbins scowled and slammed his fist to the tabletop again. Drinking glasses shook and rattled.

“No,” said Gimble, eyes closed and sighing. “We'll have a town no one in their right mind would come to invest in. We'll have a town with much promise but with no hope of ever growing larger, and the very real prospect of the town shrinking and dying on the vine, drying up. And that means no more business and that means no more profits.”

That was the one sentence Gimble had uttered that managed to shut them all up for long moments. Finally McCafferty, visibly shaken by the disastrous prospect, said, “Well, what do you suggest we do about it, then?” His tone was still antagonistic, as though he knew the obvious answer but wanted Gimble to spell it out for him.

Gimble happily obliged. “We are in a dicey situation, gentlemen. We must retain order in Bakersfield. To do that we must squelch any action remotely smacking of vigilantism. For that is a black eye this town will not be able to sustain for all the reasons I mentioned.”

“So?”

“So we need to act in a unified way to get law and order back on the docket here in Bakersfield. And the best way to do that is to get the best lawman we can afford. Fortunately he still lives here in town. Though I hear he's readying to move from here. We must get Marshal Dodd Wickham back on the job. We must beg him if need be. I really see no other option.”

McCafferty snorted, shook his head, but offered no verbal opposition. The other four nodded slowly.

Gimble said, “Now, it's one thing for us to sit here and make a list of all the things we'd like to have happen. It's another thing entirely for them to come true.”

“What are you saying?”

“I'm saying that I don't think Wickham will accept. If I was him I'd be leery of working with us. We didn't exactly treat him kindly in this very room a few weeks back.”

Another long silence, in which several of the men shuffled papers, and one of them dug around in his mouth with a fingernail, dislodging a hunk of his breakfast from his teeth.

“Who's going to be the one to go humble himself before the old man?”

No one said anything. Finally Gimble sighed. “I'll go, then. Can't be all that bad, right? Besides, I used to be chummy with the man.”

They all knew it was hokum, as no one had ever really been friendly with the marshal. Which was the way he wanted it, apparently. But this time would be different. It had to be.

“Maybe we can get Mamie Lofton to talk to him. She seems sweet on him, after all.”

“Mamie Lofton? Really? Well, don't that beat all?”

“I'm sure he's heard all about the mess so far. But one of us has to make the effort to visit him. Maybe earlier in the day is better. Rumor has it he's pretty well into the bottle by the end of the day.”

“You'd think he'd feel guilty about all this, wouldn't you?”

“Nah,” said McCafferty, thumbing his lapels, looking bleary-eyed at the tabletop, at the spot Wickham had so recently dented on the otherwise fine, smooth surface. “He's a crusty old cur with a heart of stone. Ain't no way he cares. Not about any of us anyway. Not about Bakersfield.”

“Marshal?”
Bang, bang, bang!
Mamie Lofton's knuckles rapped hard on the weathered wood of the front door. “Marshal! You may as well come to the door. I know for a fact you are home and ignoring me. We can't have it both ways in life. You understand? You either come to the door and hear what I have to say or I will be forced to smack a rock through that perfect window right beside the door. And don't think I won't do it, Marshal. And get a move on, will you? I left my shop closed and I can ill afford to lose sales because of some old drunkard.”

Presently she heard a shuffling-clumping sound from inside. It grew closer. She rapped on the door again and it swung open to reveal a wet-eyed old man in his stocking feet and a tight-set mouth.

“What do you want, ma'am?”

“Ma'am? Everything we've . . . participated in together and you call me ‘ma'am'?” Mamie outthrust an arm and pushed right past the astonished man.

“But . . .”

“But nothing.”

“I . . . don't have much say in the matter, do I?”

“Not this time, Marshal.”

“Nor anytime, as I recall,” he mumbled as he closed the door behind her.

“Don't think I didn't hear that,” she said, turning around as she strode manfully down the hall.

Marshal Dodd Wickham's house was a rental, something that though he did not own, he had managed to find nonetheless quite comfortable as an abode for the many years he had been Bakersfield's chief lawman. It consisted of two bedrooms upstairs, a kitchen and dining room downstairs toward the back of the house, and a formal sitting room to the front. It was a small house as such went in Bakersfield, but it suited his needs nicely. It was just far enough from his former office that it required a brisk walk each morning to get there.

He'd been about to leave this place, had intended to, but he'd allowed his baser demons, rascals he'd not allowed to rise to the surface of his stalwart personality, to escape. They came about in the form of drink. A number of bottles of fine whiskey, most empty, stood neatly aligned on an otherwise bare sideboard.

“My stars, Dodd,” said Mamie Lofton, calling him by his given name for the first time since arriving. She surveyed the room, her purse handles looped in the crook of one arm, her gloved hands poised, fingers thrust upward as if she were about to perform surgery.

“While I respect a body's requirement's for privacy—I know of what I speak, having been enjoying spinsterhood for a good many years now—I can also recognize when a body has ventured far beyond the parameters of what is acceptable in and out of society. And you, sir”—she dragged open the heavy drapes to allow full sunlight to invade the somber room—“have self-indulged in such silly little notions for far too long.”

“What do you want, Mamie? I am a busy man.” Wickham gestured limply at the two open valises askew atop the dining table visible through the doorway leading to the next room.

They sported jumbles of clothing, papers, a stack of books, several of which had tumbled to the floor, bringing with them articles of the aforementioned clothing and papers. A derby hat stood upended and balancing dangerously close to the edge of the table.

“It appears to me as if you've made very little progress in the way of, as you put it—let me see if I remember how you voiced it that day a few weeks ago after the council meeting in which you claim you were disposed of. . . .” She rubbed her chin and glanced at the pressed-tin ceiling theatrically. “Oh yes, you were about to embark on a ‘revenge leaving' the likes of which this town would not forget for some time. Isn't that about the gist of it?”

The old man sighed. “Mamie, I realize that you and I have had some high old times together. Heck, you've been a lovely respite for me in this otherwise increasingly soulless town. I hope I have been able to repay in some small way the favors you have . . . bestowed on me.”

“Save your idle chatter, Dodd. I'm not here as a woman scorned. I realize that I don't have enough of a hold on you to keep you here, tied by some silly romantic heartstrings twaddle. And for the record, though time spent with you has always been most pleasurable, I hope you'll not take this the wrong way, but I am always glad to return to my own abode.”

He looked at a half-filled bottle of whiskey on the sideboard, sitting enticingly smack-dab between the two of them. She saw his eyes dart to it, saw his tongue run over his lips, and looked at the bottle herself.

“Oh, for heaven's sake, Dodd. You look like hell. Pour yourself two fingers and pay attention to me. I daresay you're going to need it.”

He paused in reaching for a small drinking glass. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“No, not until you've had your libation.”

He followed through, and though he tried not to guzzle the ample drink, he was unsuccessful. “Out with it, then. What matter of such weighty import called you here, Mamie?” He smiled and sidled a step closer to her.

“Easy, now, Dodd. I would ask you to take a seat, but I know you are a man and as such are not prone to taking suggestions, let alone orders, from a woman. So I'll tell you.”

“Out with it, already, Mamie. My word, you have a way of dragging out the inevitable far beyond the point of reason.”

She grimaced, pulled her purse tight to her chest. “Your lack of presence in office as marshal of Bakersfield has resulted this very morning in the deaths of a number of people.”

“How's that?” said Dodd, steadying himself with a hand on the back of a chair.

The dressmaker explained the events of that very morning, elaborating on what had happened to the little girl, Minnie Petersen.

“As far as I know, the city council, albeit without Tollinson, the banker, convened a special session—that's what they've called it—and are about to send an emissary to ask you to resume your old job. I should say you could write your own meal ticket.”

But Wickham had not heard that last bit. He sagged against the back of the chair that now was truly holding him upright. He also lost all the color in his face and his grizzled, unshaven cheeks took on a drawn, shadowed cast. “Will the little girl, the Petersen girl . . . will she make it?”

Mamie Lofton regarded him with the first soft look she had given him the entire visit. “She passed on about an hour ago, Dodd.”

It was too much to bear. That was all he could think. Too much to bear. He sagged with a groan, barely found the seat of the chair, and slumped into it.

“I know you'll blame yourself, and you may think it harsh of me to say so, but to a certain extent, you are to blame, Dodd.”

He looked up, ashen, at her. “What about my deputy, Randy Scoville? Where was he and his chums? They couldn't wait to get rid of me. They should have been on the job!”

“Well, they were and they weren't. Scoville was clear out of town at his sister's place because he trusted the Tompkins twins to do his deputying for him.”

Wickham shook his head, his indignation already claimed by a wash of regret.

“It's not too late, Dodd, to make amends.”

He looked up at her again. “How's that? Seems as though a whole lot of bad has already been done.”

“Yes, but those thieving killers are long gone. Scoville and his two simps, plus a handful of others from town, formed a posse and took off after them, but that will likely prove fruitless. Scoville's barely brighter than the twins.”

The old man reached for the bottle, but Mamie snatched it from the shelf. “You would be a whole lot more useful if you were relatively sober, don't you agree?”

“What would you like me to do? It seems no matter what I turn my hand to, it comes up foul.” He stared at her a long moment, tears welling in his rheumy eyes.

Finally she broke eye contact with a click of disgust from her tongue. She slammed the bottle down before him, the amber liquid jostling in the bottle. “There, then, if that's what you want so badly. Take it and slink on inside it. It's the easy way, the most logical thing in the world for a drunkard to do.”

“I'm no drunk—”

“Save your words for someone who will care, Dodd Wickham. For that someone is not me.” With that, Mamie Lofton spun away, her bootheels clacking hard down the hallway.

Wickham listened to the front door slam so hard he half thought the leaded panes would collapse and fall to the floor. But they didn't. His gaze rested on the bottle before him. It was the only thing he could rely on anymore. Apparently not Mamie. And certainly not on himself.