The Devil Will Come (12 page)

Bounty

I’ve never been much good when it comes to recollecting dates and such, but I can still bring to mind the exact day that the Collector rode into Tucumcari. It was August 9, 1871, and I know that for certain because it was the day I reached the grand age of 16 years. When you’re a kid, you remember things that happen on your birthday, and I don’t guess I’ll ever forget
that
birthday, no matter how many years have passed since.

Pa had me out in front of the jail with a push broom, sweeping up the sand that’s always collecting on the wooden sidewalk. Folks who live in this part of New Mexico are used to sand — along with the heat and tumbleweeds and rattlers — but Pa was fussy about little things. He used to say that, as Sheriff, the condition of the jail was a reflection on him, and he wanted it to reflect a man who took pride in his work.

He paid me a few cents a week for helping out around the jail after school and during the summer, but I would’ve done it for free, and I reckon he knew that. I had the notion back then that I wanted to wear a lawman’s star myself one day, so this seemed like good experience for the future. Besides, I liked being around my Pa, and he used to spend a lot more time at the jail than he ever did at home.

So, I was moving that broom around, desultory-like, and I must’ve been daydreaming, as well, because I didn’t notice the stranger’s approach. I just looked up, and there he was, mounted on that big sorrel horse, squinting down at me. A sturdy-looking mule was tethered to his saddle by a length of rope.

I was startled, and I guess I jumped a little, but the man didn’t smirk at my fright, the way lots of folks would. I kind of liked him for that.

Which was funny, in a way, because he didn’t have the sort of face that you’d take to, right off. It wasn’t that he looked mean, or cold, or crazy — I’d seen
those
often enough to recognize ‘em by sight — but there was something there that made you wary. A long time later, I figured out what it was: the stranger’s face had on it the mark of experience— too much experience, as if he had seen more of the world and its ways than any one person ought to.

The man on the sorrel horse looked like someone who had lost each and every one of his illusions.

His solid-looking upper body was covered by a serape — a kind of poncho that was favored by lots of folks around those parts, Mex and Anglo alike. Underneath all the dirt and sweat and trail dust, the serape had strange designs woven into it. Some of those symbols reminded me of a blanket I’d once seen wrapped around an Indian
shaman
who was said to have real strong medicine.

A weather-beaten broad-brimmed hat kept the stranger’s eyes in shadow. His mouth was wrapped around a short cigarillo that he puffed on from time to time, and he looked like he hadn’t shaved in a week, maybe more.

We stared at each other for a couple of heartbeats before he said, in a soft, raspy voice, “I don’t reckon you’d be the Sheriff.” He might’ve smiled for an instant as he said that, but I wasn’t sure.

“Nawsir, that’s my Pa.” I gestured toward the jail’s front door. “He’s inside, if’n you got business with him.”

“Much obliged,” he said with a nod, then dismounted. As he was tying the sorrel’s reins to the hitching post, I noticed for the first time the scabbard that hung from his saddle. It was a beautiful piece of leather work— hand-tooled, by the look of it. But it was the rifle it held that made my eyes widen.

“Say, mister,” I said, being real careful to sound polite, “is that there a
Creedmoor
?”

“That it is,” he replied, without looking up from the slipknot he was tying in the mule’s reins. He said nothing more, but he didn’t need to.

I reckon all boys around these parts grow up half-crazy about guns, and I was no exception. Though I’d never seen a Creedmoor for real, there was an article with pictures of it in one of the magazines down at Sam’s Tonsorial Parlor. The article said the Creedmoor was the most accurate rifle ever made, and, if you were a skilled marksman, you could blow a man’s head
clean off
from a half-mile away.

Something told me that the man in the serape was one of those marksmen that the magazine writer had in mind.

I followed him inside, hoping to find some work to do that would keep me within earshot of anything the stranger and Pa had to say to each other.

As I came in, the man in the serape was handing Pa a folded-up sheet of paper. “There’s a warrant out on this man,” he said, the cigarillo still clenched between his teeth. “I hear tell he lives around these parts.”

Bounty hunter
.

We’d had a few of them pass through the territory before, mean-looking bastards with bad teeth, mostly. They’d checked in with the Sheriff, like the law said they had to, but none of them had ever found whoever it was they were hunting down here in Tucumcari.

Until now
.

Pa unfolded the wanted poster as I began to sweep imaginary dirt out of the far corner. I was worried that he might chuck me out, but he seemed not to notice that I was even there.

Pa gave that poster no more than a glance. “Mortimer? Dead or alive? There’s a price on
Douglas Mortimer
?” The amazement was clear in Pa’s voice— hell, I was so startled myself that I damn near dropped my broom. Mr. Mortimer was president of the bank and surely the richest man in the territory. He was married to the prettiest woman any of us had ever seen, and the talk was she didn’t even nag him, much. His luck at poker was legendary, and his skill at hunting and fishing, well some folks called it plain uncanny.

I knew something similar was going through Pa’s mind, too.

“Mister,” he said, “are you sure you’ve got the right man? I know ‘Douglas Mortimer’ ain’t the most common name there is, but the fella you want can’t be the one who lives here. He’s president of the bank, for God’s sake.”

The stranger shrugged his big shoulders. “Sounds like you know the man.” He gestured with his chin. “Picture’s right there on the circular. You tell me.”

Pa studied that wanted poster for a full minute or more. “All right, there’s a resemblance,” he said finally. “But it’s just a sketch, after all. No way to know how accurate the damn thing is.”

The other man nodded, as if he’d heard it all before. “Let’s go see him, then. Get this settled, one way or the other.”

“Now that sounds like an idea. The bank’s just up the street a little ways. He’ll be there, I expect.” Pa buckled on his gun belt and picked up his hat. “One thing,” he said to the stranger. His voice was quiet now, and dangerous. “I’ve heard tell that some of you bounty hunters use that ‘Wanted: dead or alive’ business like it was a damn hunting license.
But not in my town
. You ain’t gonna shoot nobody— not without a good reason. Not unless you want to swing for murder.”

The stranger took the cigarillo out of his mouth and picked a shred of tobacco off his tongue. He dropped it— not on the floor, but into the spittoon that Pa kept next to his desk. “It’s their choice, Sheriff,” he said evenly. “Up in the saddle or draped over it, it’s up to them. Every time.”

Pa looked at him for a moment longer, then said, “All right, then. Let’s get to it.”

Glancing at me, he said, “Keep an eye on things “til I get back, Tommy.” He was out the door before I could even say “Yes, sir.”

Listening to Pa’s footfall on the wooden sidewalk, along with the jangle of the stranger’s spurs, I started to feel kind of poorly. I didn’t believe in intuition, not even the women’s kind that Ma sometimes claimed to have. But I had what I guess you’d call a premonition about all this, and it had my guts twisting like a trampled rattlesnake.

I put away the broom and wandered over to Pa’s desk, where he’d left the wanted poster the stranger had brought. The sketch
did
look quite a bit like Mr. Mortimer, and I wondered what the artist had worked from— a photograph, or a description, or had he known his man personally?

I read on down, looking for the name of the judge or the court that had issued the warrant. There was something there, near the bottom, but I couldn’t quite make out the words. The letters seemed to blur or flicker as I tried to read them.

I hoped this didn’t mean that I needed spectacles— those were for sissies and old people, and I didn’t figure I qualified either way.

The best way to make the time pass was to keep busy, so I fetched the broom out again and started sweeping the rest of the floor. I hadn’t been at it very long before I heard the shots.

There was no doubt in my mind what it was. Gunfire sounds like nothing else in the world. I heard two shots, close together, from someplace close by.

Like the bank
.

Two shots, and then silence— empty, aching silence.

I could have run over there, to the bank. Hell, I didn’t make up my mind to do it more than seven or eight times. But I stopped myself each time. Pa would be mighty angry if I ran off and left the jail unattended.

And that’s the idea that I hung on to, like a drowning man grabs a lifeline:
Pa would be mad
. Staying there inside the jail was my way of affirming that Pa was alive, showing that it still mattered whether I left the jail or not.

I don’t know how long I stood there, my hands choking the broom handle, before I heard the jangle of spurs.

I dropped the broom and stepped over to the window where I could look out at the street, my heart beating like an Injun tom-tom. A few moments later, the bounty hunter appeared. He had something sizeable slung over his left shoulder.

It was a body. He was carrying a man’s body as if it didn’t weigh any more than a sack of flour.

With a quick, practiced movement he slung the corpse over the mule’s saddle, and it was only then that I got a look at the dead man’s face. It was Mister Mortimer, from the bank.

Then someone passed in front of the window, and, a moment later, Pa walked in the door.

* * *

I didn’t throw my arms around him, or any of that little kid stuff. I considered myself a grown man — even if Pa didn’t — and men don’t do that kind of thing. But he knew me pretty well, and I expect the relief was clear on my face— just as the shock and amazement on Pa’s face were obvious to me.

Before I could say anything, Pa wrinkled his nose. “What’s burning?”

Now that he’d mentioned it, I noticed the smell in the room, too. It wasn’t left from the stranger’s
cigarillo
— this was a sharper odor, almost like pitch. Or maybe brimstone.

It seemed that both of us looked over toward the desk at the same time, the desk where the “Wanted” poster had been and where there was now just a thin layer of ash and a few wisps of smoke that disappeared as we watched.

Pa stepped over to his desk and stared at the place where the poster had been. Without looking up, he said, “You do this, Tommy?” but he didn’t sound as if he really thought I was responsible.

“Nawsir, I didn’t touch it! I mean, I picked it up to look at it, but then I just put it—”

Pa made a tired gesture that stopped my protests. He knew that I hadn’t burned up that poster.

I looked out the window again, and saw that the bounty hunter had finished tying Mr. Mortimer’s body on the mule’s saddle. His
cigarillo
had gone out, and he struck a match on the hitching post to re-light it. As he puffed the thing back into life, he looked up, straight through the window and right at me. He gaze wasn’t threatening, exactly, but it seemed to say,
“We’ll see each other again. Count on it.”

As I watched the bounty hunter ride away, I heard from behind me the sound of Pa pulling the cork from the bottle of whiskey he kept in his desk drawer. I’d never seen him drink all by himself. He’d said once that it was for “hospitality,” and he usually brought it out only when the Mayor stopped by. The Mayor was known to take a drink. Or three.

Pa didn’t offer me any whiskey — I wasn’t
that
grown up, I reckon — but he did nod toward a nearby chair. So I sat, and watched my Pa get drunk, and listened to his account of what had happened to Mr. Mortimer.

* * *

On the way to the bank, I say to him, “I don’t think I caught your name, Mister.” I didn’t give a shit what his name was, and if he lied, how was I going to know, anyhow? It was just idle talk.

But he just says, “No, you didn’t.” And that’s it. No explanation, nothing.

So I say, “You’re refusing to tell me your name?”

He don’t get riled at this, like I thought he might. He just says, conversational-like, “A man’s name don’t mean much in this life. It’s what he
does
that gets him lifted up to Heaven at the end, or cast down into Hell. Not what he calls himself.”

This has me thinkin’ that he sounds more like a preacher than a damn bounty hunter, but by then we’re right outside the bank. So, we mosey on in and I make a beeline for Van Cleef, the manager. “We need to see Mister Mortimer, right away,” I tell him. Well, he gives me a look, and then he gives that no-name bounty hunter one that lasts twice as long, but he finally gets off his ass and goes into the office.

I figure it was only a minute or so before he comes back and says, “Go on in.”

I’ve only been in Mortimer’s office twice before, but I always like it there, ‘cause it’s quiet and cool and it’s got the thickest, softest carpet I ever put my feet on. Well, I’ve barely got my mouth open to tell Mortimer about this foolish mix-up when I see he’s lookin’ at that bounty hunter as if Satan himself has walked into the room with me.

He goes white as a sheet and his eyes are like to fall out of his head and his mouth is moving but nothin’s coming out. And the bounty hunter just says, quiet and calm-like, “It’s time, Mortimer.”

And Mortimer, he starts shaking his head, back and forth, back and forth, and he’s mumbling something like “No, not yet, it can’t be, it’s too soon,” and on and on. Then he yanks open one of the drawers in the desk and damned if he don’t come up with a pistol.