Big Jim 9 Read online

  ‘I’ll go with you,’ Jim decided.

  The clinic presided over by Drs. Whitney and Jefferson Lake was a rambling, single-storied edifice at the east end of a street angling off Main. It boasted accommodation for a dozen patients and, for many years to come, would serve as Marris County’s hospital.

  Jefferson, the younger of the two healers, admitted them to the room in which so many sick children, expectant mothers, worried fathers and injured hell-raisers had waited for attention. It resembled a fair-sized barber shop, except for the absence of swivel chairs and mirrors. The doctor had finished operating on the wounded deputy only a short time before.

  ‘It will be a long haul for Boone Kittridge,’ he told them. ‘The bullet-graze at his temple set up a concussion. The left arm won’t be useable for a couple of months at least, and—’

  ‘Just how many times was Kittridge hit?’ interjected Jim.

  ‘Three times,’ said Lake. ‘The head wound, the broken arm and the chest wound. That third bullet went right through, missed the heart and lungs.’

  ‘Mr. Kittridge will recover?’ asked Kell.

  ‘I’d say yes,’ nodded Lake. ‘Eventually.’

  ‘Eventually is a long word,’ Jim remarked.

  ‘Boone Kittridge is no youngster,’ said Lake. ‘There was extensive bleeding. At his age, he can’t afford such loss of blood.’ He jerked a thumb. ‘His wife and daughter are with him now—although they won’t be able to talk to him for quite some time. He’s under sedation.’

  ‘Well,’ frowned Kell, ‘I just wanted to—find out how he is.’

  Emma joined them a few minutes later. The doctor departed. Jim nodded politely to the girl, seated himself in a corner and began rolling a cigarette; he pretended not to observe them, when Emma stood on tip-toe to kiss the sad-eyed young gambler. It was obvious she had been weeping.

  ‘I couldn’t feel worse, I suppose,’ she murmured, ‘if Dad had died. Uncle Max was—so close—so very dear to me.’

  ‘About your father …’ began Kell.

  ‘Mother’s with him now,’ said Emma. ‘Dr. Jeff says he’ll need a lot of treatment, a lot of time—a lot of rest …’ She shook her head worriedly. ‘He’ll be the most troublesome patient they ever had here.’

  ‘Sure.’ Kell nodded, grinned a wry grin. ‘I can’t imagine Boone Kittridge would enjoy so much inactivity.’

  ‘Kell—listen to me …’ she breathed.

  ‘You don’t have to say anything,’ he assured her. ‘If you two would sooner talk in private …’ offered Jim, rising from his chair.

  ‘Please stay,’ she begged. ‘Kell needs a friend right now. As for what I have to say to him, I’m not embarrassed.’ She stared earnestly at Kell. ‘I never really despised you—for becoming a gambler. Please believe me, Kell. It was only—my disappointment …’

  ‘I know,’ frowned Kell. ‘The same disappointment suffered by my father.’ He held her hands in his and, as tactfully as possible changed the subject. ‘Do you happen to know if your fattier made any statement after they brought him to the clinic?’

  ‘Dr. Jeff has already told Leo Hurst,’ said Emma. ‘Dad didn’t say very much—only that he couldn’t recognize them in the dark.’

  ‘Maybe Hurst will find them tonight—I mean before daylight,’ said Kell. ‘But it doesn’t seem likely. More likely he’ll be organizing another posse.’

  ‘I guess so,’ she nodded.

  ‘I’ll catch up with the posse,’ he told her, ‘right after the funeral.’

  ‘That,’ she sighed, ‘is pretty much what I expected you’d do.’

  ‘Better late than never,’ he challenged. ‘Is that what you’re thinking?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head emphatically. ‘This tragedy would still have happened, Kell, whether or not you were a deputy. There’s no connection. Not really.’ She hesitated a moment, then raised herself to kiss him again. ‘I’d best go back and sit with mother awhile. We’ll be at the chapel of course.’

  ‘I’ll see you then,’ said Kell.

  Between now and sunrise, Big Jim didn’t expect to sleep; nevertheless he returned to his room at the Calvert House, peeled off his clothes and went back to bed. Kell Garrard, he supposed would be doing likewise—if he wasn’t pacing his room above the barroom of the Silver Queen. The youthful gambler was keeping his grief under tight control, resisting the urge to console himself with whisky. Well, these were good signs, indications that the once-flippant Kell was now a sadder and wiser man.

  In the morning, after bathing and shaving, Jim donned his clothes, strapped his Colt about his loins and toted his Winchester down to the lobby. The night-clerk named a restaurant that might be open at this early hour. In the first light of dawn, he entered the small diner on North Main and was grateful to learn that he could have ham, eggs, hot biscuits and coffee immediately.

  The woman who waited on him, a fat, affable widow known as Ma Gantry, offered the latest news of the search for the bank-robbers.

  ‘As if it wasn’t bad enough they should bust the Midwest Bank and kill Max Garrard, they darn near put L-Bar-W out of business.’

  ‘That’s a ranch close to town?’ Jim asked.

  Ma Gantry took that as an invitation to seat herself. Folding her pudgy arms on the tabletop, she explained: ‘L-Bar-W is south of town. The L stands for Horrie Luscombe. The W is for Kane Wilton. They’re partners.’

  ‘And how did these bank bandits nearly put them out of business?’

  ‘Rode clear across L-Bar-W range they did. Four of ’em—one with a couple grain sacks slung from his saddle. They were sighted by a cowpoke name of Doan—just before they stampeded the herd.’

  ‘Easy enough to guess why they’d do that,’ mused Jim.

  ‘Sure enough.’ The fat woman nodded vehemently. ‘Those thievin’ killers ran the herd a lot of miles south, rode right along with the herd, and you know what that means. Who could cut sign of four riders from the tracks of three hundred steers?’

  ‘A smart way of covering their back-trail,’ he conceded. ‘Mighty convenient.’

  ‘The other posses came home about an hour ago,’ she told him. ‘It’s my guess Leo Hurst’s bunch will be in soon. They’ll get discouraged—or saddle sore—or just plain thirsty.’ She grimaced in disgust. ‘Townmen ain’t worth a hill of beans as posse riders anyway. And those cowpokes—all of ’em nursin’ sore heads from last night’s spree.’

  ‘How’d you know about the stampede at L-Bar-W?’ he thought to ask.

  ‘Couple of Hurst’s volunteers up and quit,’ said Ma Gantry. ‘They stopped by here for a cup of coffee just before you came in.’

  ‘They were out at the ranch with Hurst?’

  ‘When Hurst parleyed with Luscombe and Wilton. Only there wasn’t much time for a parley. That whole herd was scattered far south of L-Bar-W range, and Luscombe and Wilton had to lend a hand to round ’em up. They only got three punchers on their payroll.’

  Soon afterwards, when Jim emerged from the diner, he observed a body of horsemen moving along the next block, reining up outside a livery stable; another search party had returned. He headed in that direction, engaged one of the riders in conversation.

  ‘Sure—we’re the bunch that rode out with Hurst,’ the man told him, ‘and Hurst is still out there. He just don’t seem to understand.’

  ‘To understand what?’ challenged Jim.

  The man dismounted, eyed him blankly.

  ‘Why, doggone it, he ain’t never gonna cut sign of them four killers. They stampeded the L-Bar-W herd. How do you follow tracks after a stampede? It just don’t make sense.’

  ‘So you all came home,’ frowned Jim.

  ‘Hurst is still snoopin’ around,’ shrugged the towner, ‘somewheres south of L-Bar-W. He’s sore as a boil, and he ain’t about to give up. Well, he’ll have to quit sooner or later—when he runs out of provisions.’

  Grim-faced, Jim strode along the boardwalk to the nearest general store. It took him
only a short time to purchase a substantial quantity of supplies, including spare ammunition. He then hurried to the McDade stable, readied Hank for the trail, slid his Winchester into its sheath and secured the provisions, packing some into his saddlebags, the rest in a gunnysack slung from the pommel. He led the big black out of the barn and along the street to the hitchrail outside the Silver Queen.

  When he entered, all was quiet. The only customers were a quartet of townsmen, all wearing a fine layer of trail-dust, leaning on the bar and conversing with the shirt-sleeved Steve Erikson. They didn’t raise their voices. Now and again they cast covert glances at the man seated alone in the corner nearest the batwings.

  Kell Garrard was slumped in his chair, his elbows propped on the tabletop, his moody eyes studying the liquor in his glass. In the center of the table he had placed one of the items handed him by the undertaker, the side-arm of the late Sheriff Garrard. Its walnut butt jutted from the well-worn, plain leather holster around which was coiled the cartridge belt. He touched the butt, thoughtfully running an index finger over its smooth surface. Only by a preoccupied nod did he acknowledge Jim’s presence.

  Jim seated himself, dug out his makings and began building a cigarette. Abruptly, he enquired, ‘How much news have you heard?’

  ‘Leo is fighting a lost cause, the way I hear it,’ muttered Kell. ‘The bandits ran off the Luscombe and Wilton herd—to blot out their tracks. But Leo is a very dedicated man, Jim, so he’s still out there, still doing his damnedest to find a trail to follow. He was devoted to my father— did you know that?’ Jim shook his head. ‘Yes. Leo and old Boone Kittridge. They had a proper appreciation of the sterling qualities of Max Garrard—and it’s too bad I can’t say the same for his son.’

  ‘What do you want to do?’ Jim demanded as he lit his smoke.

  Kell replied, very quietly, ‘I’ll finish this drink and go to my father’s funeral. Then I’ll take my father’s gun, saddle his horse and ride out to find Leo. Maybe I’ll never find the man who shot Max Garrard but—by thunder— I’ll try. I’ll try damned hard!’

  ‘Be ready to leave after the funeral,’ said Jim. ‘I’ll be riding along with you.’

  Six – No Groom For Big Rosa

  Leaving the black stallion tethered to the saloon hitch-rack, Jim hustled downtown towards the county jail. He had no qualms about playing turnkey in Hurst’s absence and setting Benito free. This, after all, was in accord with his deal with the late sheriff. If Kell refrained from swearing a charge, and if Jim guaranteed to remove the Mex from Marris County, Benito could be released.

  He went by way of a back alley, because Capitan Cortez, that somnolent, nondescript burro’ was accommodated in the jailhouse yard. It was his intention to prepare the burro for the trail, then take him around to fetch Benito.

  Not until he had done this, not until he was tethering the burro to the rail outside the law office, did he realize that the headquarters of law and order was becoming somewhat overcrowded. Was today some feast day upon which all local Mexicans turned out? There were sombreroed Mexicans in the alley between the jailhouse and the Pasquale restaurant, on the restaurant porch, on the law office porch and also inside the law office. They all glowered at him truculently as he forced his way in— fat Mexicans, lean Mexicans, young, old and middle-aged Mexicans. Both sexes were represented, the so-called weaker sex by a half-dozen or so bovine females in lace mantillas. Voices—many voices—were raised in anger. The entrance to the cell-block was open.

  Jim ignored the challenging glares of the local Mexicans and devoted all his attention to the buck-toothed, nervous Lothario in the cell-block entrance: Benito didn’t appear any too pleased with himself right now. A bulky Mex stood to either side of him. They gripped shotguns and the arms of the most demoralized thief north of the Rio Grande.

  ‘Saludos, Amigo Jim.’ On this occasion, the greeting didn’t sound as sassy as usual. Benito flashed him a weak, rueful grin. ‘At last you are here.’

  ‘And I’m not the only one,’ Jim dryly remarked. ‘Who is this hombre—this gigante?’ demanded the pudgy Señor Pasquale.

  While mouthing that question, he brandished a gleaming pistola. The weapon was cocked, and the big ex-sergeant, a firearms expert, had little patience with men who carelessly handled a cocked revolver. He frowned challengingly at Pasquale, addressed him in his own tongue. ‘Habla usted ingles?’

  ‘I am speak the best of English!’ Pasquale pompously asserted. ‘¡Muy bien!’

  ‘Well—that’s a matter of opinion,’ drawled Jim.

  ‘¡Por favor, Amigo Jim!’ begged Benito. ‘Take me out of here!’

  This plea was the signal for an indignant outburst from the assembled Mexicans. The women shrilled abuse. The men mumbled Spanish curses and, but for Jim s harshly-worded warning, blood might have been spilled then and there.

  ‘The first hero that points a gun at me—I’ll bend it over his fool head!’

  His vocal volume and his stone-hard expression caused the Mexicans to lapse into sullen silence. They still brandished their hardware, but took care not to direct the muzzles at him. Slowly, deliberately, he hooked a boot under a chair-rung, drew the chair to him, planted the boot on it. He propped an elbow on his bent knee, calmly took a pull at his cigarette, traded stares with Pasquale.

  ‘All right now,’ he growled. ‘Just what the hell is going on here?’

  The answer came from Rosa Pasquale, the restaurant keeper’s fat and frustrated daughter. In the most guttural Spanish of the peon, she unleashed a stream of invective at the uneasy Benito. Jim, as it happened was sufficiently familiar with the lingo to catch the gist of her complaint. Had not this sawnoff caballero wooed and won her? Had he not sung to her of love, promised to marry her, to make her the grand lady of his five thousand acre ranch in California?

  ‘His what?’ Jim interrupted at that point, darting an accusing glance at his small shadow.

  ‘Already I have confessed,’ shrugged Benito. ‘Already I tell them I have—how you say—exaggerate?’

  ‘Exaggerate isn’t quite the word,’ muttered Jim. ‘Consarn you, cucaracha, don’t you ever give up? A five thousand acre ranch in California—for pity’s sakes!’

  ‘How was I to know she would be so foolish as to believe me?’ mumbled Benito.

  ‘The small one will become the husband of our sister,’ declared a flashing-eyed Mexican of slender but formidable physique. ‘It is all arranged.’

  He glared defiantly at Jim, who glared right back at him and asked, ‘Who says so?’

  ‘We say so!’ replied three of the Mexicans in perfect unison.

  Jim looked them over, compared their features with those of the pudgy Señor Pasquale and his rotund daughter, and realized the sorry truth. What other hobbies might the Pasquales have? Every Mex in the office was a Pasquale. Big Rosa appeared to have three times as many brothers and cousins as she was ever apt to need.

  ‘Is all arranged,’ announced Pasquale. ‘We take him from the carcel only long enough to be married to our Rosa. But we do not break the gringo laws. Nunca! We are not jailrobbers! After the wedding, we bring this small hombre back to jail. He will serve his sentence and, when the gringo Rurales release him ...’

  ‘He’ll settle down to married life with Rosa,’ finished Jim, ‘whether he likes it or not. Is that what you have in mind, Señor Pasquale?’

  ‘Por cierto!’ nodded Pasquale. ‘And I advise you, Señor Gigante, not to interfere. You are big, but we are plentiful.’

  ‘Plentiful, yeah,’ Jim agreed. ‘Real abundant.’

  ‘Sí’ Pasquale nodded vehemently.

  ‘Amigo Jim, do not abandon me!’ begged Benito.

  ‘Does the Señorita Rosa understand that the little feller fed her a bunch of crazy lies?’ challenged Jim. ‘He doesn’t own any five thousand acre rancho in California. Matter of fact he doesn’t own much more than an out of tune guitar and a flea-bitten burro.’

  ‘It make no difference;’ countered
Pasquale. ‘He will marry with our Rosa.’

  ‘¡Querida!’ giggled Rosa, advancing on the cringing Benito with plump arms outstretched.

  ‘¡Por favor, Amigo Jim!’ wailed Benito, struggling in the grasp of his captors. ‘Would you see me crushed to death …?’

  ‘I hope this will be a lesson to you,’ drawled Jim.

  ‘Do you forget so easily?’ panted Benito. ‘Do you forget how it felt to be all alone—dying from the bite of the culebra de cascabel?’

  Jim frowned pensively at the tip of his cigarette. The sawn-off thief had struck at his Achilles heel, his deep-rooted sense of obligation. Sure, he had once saved Benito’s worthless life. But, a short time before, Benito had undoubtedly saved the life of James Carey Rand. There was something final and frightening in, the prospect of dying all alone, out in the middle of nowhere, waiting for the venom of a rattlesnake to take its deadly toll. He had been incapable of treating the wound himself because of its location—the small of his back. For what seemed an eternity he was sprawled on face and hands in the hot sun somewhere south of San Marco, Arizona. Undoubtedly he would have died there, but for the coming of his benefactor, a certain buck-toothed, runty Mex who rode up out of nowhere, drew the venom from the wound and thus saved his life. Almost immediately afterwards, Benito Espina had robbed him, but that didn’t alter the fact that he had saved Jim’s life.

  The Pasquales were talking again, and it seemed they had never learned to express themselves quietly or with restraint. While they raged and ranted at the hapless Benito, Jim did some deep thinking. He could have drawn his Colt, clobbered the two Pasquales holding Benito’s arms and made a try for the door. The result would have been mayhem on the grand scale. Before going down under sheer weight of numbers, he would have dented more than a few Mexican skulls. Well, maybe there was an easier way.

  He felt no twinge of conscience at the thought of hood-winking the Pasquales, because he strongly disapproved of shotgun marriages. The pompous Antonio and his man-hungry offspring deserved a scare, a bad scare.