He held his hand out and I shook it. Taking the bags I left the store feeling very much in the man’s debt. Of everyone so far he seemed to respect me the most and I didn’t intend to disappoint him.
Stepping back out on the boardwalk I made my way to the wash house just down the street and opened a tab. The Chinese owner was only too glad to offer the new Marshal a bath.
*****
The water was cooling off, but the feel of just water against my skin, after the feeling of being parched without it still vivid in my memory kept me staying within the tepid water overly long. The bath had helped to take the residual sting out of my arm too.
The doors of the wash house busted open and three men with a jingle of spurs strode into the room. With stated harshness the leader of the three jerked a finger at me and asked, “You the new Marshal?”
“One and the same.”
“Well I want to know what you’re going to do about the squatters that have moved onto my range! The last coward they had to wear a tin star didn’t do a thing! The gutless wonder! Now how about it?”
“And your name would be?” I asked calmly.
“Doug Stryker. I own one of the biggest spreads around Orlaca.”
I nodded, “Well Mr. Stryker I’ll look into it and I’ll let you know what I find out.”
The man swore viciously and said, “You’ll look into it right now! Boys pull the tinhorn coward out of that tub!”
The timbers of the barrel tub shattered and all three men stumbled about trying to keep their footing as the sudsy water washed about their legs. Standing up I shoved the two enforcers towards their master and stooping down I grabbed a hold of the metal band that had held in the staves of the washtub.
Bringing the wide band of metal up and over my head I then rammed it down over the heads of the three men. It was a tight fit and with startled exclamations the men fought against the metal band that held their arms to their sides and kept all three of them pressed tightly together.
Cursing they fought against each other in their bid to be free. Picking up one of the slats of the tub I proceeded to conk the three foulmouthed individuals on the head and with startled grunts of pain they fell to the wet floor still bound together.
I wasn’t done yet though. The three banded together men were silent party to me picking up three bars of soap, which I then rammed into their unconscious mouths.
“There maybe that will clean your mouths out and teach you to leave a man taking a bath alone!” I said with satisfaction.
I turned to see the Chinaman, who ran the place, looking upon the whole scene with shock.
“Sorry about the tub.” I said.
“No! No! It okay.” He said, as he dashed forward and rifled through Doug Stryker’s pockets and came out with several coins, which he held up triumphantly, “See!”
I nodded, even as I noted for future reference not to leave loose change in my pockets when I came to take a bath.
The Chinaman blabbered on excitedly as I dressed and then abruptly sobered up at a sudden realization, “What about when they wake up? Big trouble! They come for you!”
I shrugged and said, “They’re welcome to come.”
Chinaman said pointing to my chest, “You brave man! Make good Marshal Man, maybe I should…….” He trailed off, as he made a gesture, as if wringing a chicken’s neck before pointing to the three metal banded men.
“Wong that would be murder and I’d hate to have to hang you.”
He shrugged and offered hopefully, “Less trouble for all?”
Smiling I shook my head no. Adjusting my new clothes, which fit me perfectly, I slid my feet into my new boots and slung on my gun belt. “Behave yourself Wong.” I called out as I left the wash house.
I walked on down the street to the jailhouse. Looking around the town I wondered for the first time about the key aspects of my job. Just what did a Marshal do?
Such as what was in my authority to do and how far did my jurisdiction extend from the town?
A host of other questions suddenly plagued my mind and troubled I headed on into the jail. I walked in only to see Edgar packing his stuff up.
“All done with the funeral?” I asked.
Edgar looked up guiltily, but I didn’t overly care now about how I had been fooled into accepting this job.
“Are there any books on law or the such in the town?”
Edgar blinked in surprise and then gesturing to the desk he said, “Yeah I think there’s a couple of books in one of those drawers.”
“Thanks.” I said going to the desk.
Edgar went back to packing up, but after a moment he went back to watching me as I cracked open one of the dusty books from the bottom drawer. After a while he went back to packing.
He was all but out the door with his stuff when he came back to the desk and laid something on it. Breaking my focus from the rather boring treatise on law I saw that it was a badge that he had laid down.
There was still blood on it. Edgar backed away silently and went out the door and closed it.
I looked from the badge to the boring book of laws in my hand. I dropped the book back in the drawer and rooting around I came out with a Bible that reminded me of the one that my mother had read from.
Fingering its worn edges I snorted absently in disgust. I hadn’t even been sworn into office as Marshal over a Bible as the custom was to do. Such inattention to detail spoke a great deal as to how long these people expected me to survive as Marshal.
I cracked the Bible open and read for a while. It had been a long time and I found myself absorbed into the stories that I’d heard read to me by my mother.
Chapter Five
Lobo Marshal
It was evening when I stepped free of the jail. Time to make my evening rounds. I smiled hollowly at the reality of how I of all people had been elected to the position of keeping the peace.
I made my way past people enjoying the cooler air and received cordial hellos and introductions, which I responded to in kind. I kept the conversations to a minimum and I revealed as little about myself as possible.
If these people only knew half of what I’d been caught up in. That didn’t matter in the here and now.
I needed a horse and some money and while I was at it I would do my best to be the Marshal this town needed. My life had no real direction or purpose to it so why not do something meaningful and risk my life in the protection of others from the rougher element of humanity such as myself.
A wolf guarding the flock from danger so to speak. I’d never fit in with the pack anyway. I’d always been a loner.
In the world of wolves they had a name for such a loner, lobo. If a pack of wolves came across a lobo wolf they would do their best to kill it, but lobo wolves didn’t go down easy. There was always the chance that the lobo wolf might kill the alpha male and take over the pack.
In the end it was usually best to just leave the lobo wolf alone, but men like wolves were always challenged by those few who didn’t adhere to the law of pack mentality that the majority of individuals found themselves constantly bound up in.
They should try being out on their own more, I mused absentmindedly. They might take a liking to it.
The town was already shaping up for me into a visual representation of hierarchy. There was at least one roving pack on the fringes of the herd represented by Doug Stryker.
There were likely others, maybe even a few lobos.
The herd in town was more complex. You had those filling their faces over at the café content to be led wherever the best grazing was to be had. Then you had the store owner Angus that kept to himself like a lone bull content to let another boss the herd, while possessing of all perhaps the best attributes for leadership.
Thaddeus the blacksmith featured himself to be the he-bull, but he lacked the mental capacity to lead the herd well and the town as a herd seemed well led. So who was the unseen hand directing the course of events?
Edgar? I doubted it instantly. He
had intelligence, but he was more interested in discovering the story than writing it.
There were a lot of people I hadn’t met yet and I had no doubt that the pieces of the puzzle would fill in with time.
Stopping my walk I listened to the sounds of music on the night breeze. Surprisingly it wasn’t coming from the dance hall saloon just up the street from me. I turned down the side street beside me and the source of the sound became clear as I saw a small church, which had light streaming from all its windows.
It was Wednesday. I turned back as I acknowledged that the town had a significant element of faith to it to be going at it like they were on a weeknight.
Reaching main street I noticed I was beside the general store. It was closed, but the hours indicated that it closed early on Wednesdays. Angus therefore no doubt was a part of the church fellowship.
It only confirmed what I already thought of the man. The preacher very well could be one of the leaders of the community as was often the case in small towns.
If he was though he wasn’t favored by the main headship, as he would’ve been involved in the hiring process and I no doubt would’ve been sworn in over a Bible. I stopped as I thought deeply for a moment, Angus hadn’t been involved either and I felt very sure that Thaddeus hadn’t had the bright idea or the clout to make such a big decision on his own.
I started walking again, maybe I was overthinking it all. But the more I thought about it my hiring seemed to originate from the darker element within the town.
No one knew anything about me. So who would leap at the opportunity of hiring a recovering snakebitten individual?
Someone who expected me to be an easy target for execution if need be. I was also a man without money. Nodding to myself I made a mental note to keep track of whoever was the first to offer me money in order to look the other way.
I stopped, as I felt that I was the source of someone’s focused gaze. Slowly I turned to face a shadowy form alongside of some barrels.
“Glad to see that you made it!” The shadowy figure said rather jovially.
“What is going on?” I asked roughly, as I stepped up to the old indian from the desert.
I would’ve grabbed a hold of him, but well, I wasn’t sure that was a good idea. He had after all disappeared on me before and then there had been that freak thing with the lights that floated on air. Then the freak sandstorm when I tried to go south instead of west. Then…….”Did you sick that snake on me?” I asked, as the question dawned brightly in my mind.
“No my friend.” The old man said completely serious.
“You’re not my friend!” I affirmed roughly.
“Perhaps I am not, but then again perhaps you will find the need to have a friend. Taran things are not what they seem.”
“How do you do that? How do you know my name?”
“It has long been prophesied among the indian people that you would come and now you have.” The old man said with a smile before he turned and started to walk away.
“What did you mean that everything isn’t what it seems?” I asked a little desperately.
“This place is a gateway Taran.”
“A gateway for what?” I asked puzzled, as to me this was nothing but a backwater town of little importance to anything.
“Not so Taran. You would do well to continue looking for what lies hidden. That which is done in secret can’t bear the light of day and things done in darkness bear no good deed to mankind.”
“Evil? A gateway of evil?” I clarified and smiling the old man nodded approvingly, as if rewarding me for being a good student.
At a loss I asked, “What kind of evil?”
“All kinds Taran. You would do well to read 1 Timothy 6:10 in your Bible back at the jail.”
He began disappearing and stepping forward I grasped a hold of nothing but air. I spun around, but nothing moved. The old man was gone.
A Bible verse? What indian knew enough of the white man’s Bible to reference Scripture? This one apparently.
Spooky. The whole disappearing thing, how he set me up with helping a woman that didn’t even exist, and now this town. What was he up to?
What did he have to gain in all of this? And why was he pointing out Bible Scriptures to me and speaking of great evil? A gateway of evil?
Shaking my head I headed toward the building that I expected would be the source of most of my grief as a marshal, the town’s dance hall saloon. Combine whiskey and women and you had a recipe to turn the tamest of men into a bull on the prod eager to tear down and destroy anything that got in his way.
The sound of the laughter of women and the notes of a terribly off key piano reached out to clamor against my nerves. I had no love for saloons or the women they offered.
I preferred to do my drinking in private and as for women……… it had been a long time.
*****
My hands closed over top of the batwing doors, as I stared into the festive scene of the saloon beyond. Thaddeus was there, but not Edgar. That was good to see. I didn’t know why, but it just was.
Things were beginning to add up and the old man, indian or not, had taken the high road with me. In fact I didn’t think that I’d be alive right now if not for his intervention at the cave.
Intervention from what I did not know, but the fact remained that he’d been a friend to me. His appearance just now out in the street surely couldn’t be coincidental, when in fact, he had halted my approach to the den of wickedness inherent to every city of man.
If God was behind all the strangeness that had suddenly come to full bloom in my life then surely He’d made a mistake this time in order to send a messed up case like me into a situation that needed fixed. Funny how my mind leapt to the fact that God must be involved somehow.
I pushed on into the bar and immediately became the focus of all eyes. It was a new experience for me.
I was always looked on as a threat, but never had I felt such instant hatred by so many. The silver star on my chest carried a weight of its own.
I made my way off to the side and sat down at an empty table and the barroom scene soon picked back up into the usual ebb and flow of a night dedicated to the usual debaucheries.
A barmaid came close to my shoulder and leaning in close so that my cheek almost grazed her mostly exposed chest she asked softly, “What can I be getting yuh handsome?”
Her overuse of perfume was on the verge of choking me and I didn’t care for the much groped view she offered. I raised my eyes to hers and all the false joviality fell from hers as her face reflected the need to escape from the unknown that I represented.
“Whiskey.” I said flatly.
She nodded and hurried off quickly.
Thaddeus sat down heavily at the table beside me. His face was flushed from drinking and his demeanor was even more jovial than earlier in the day. He was the happy drunk version apparently.
“How did the funeral go?” I asked casually.
He blinked at me before responding, “Ahhh well…….well as you can expect for a funeral anyway.” He finished with, as he floundered about with what to say.
I nodded.
I wanted him gone from my table. I didn’t like him.
My whiskey was set down before me without the view this time and I said, “Thank you.”
She nodded and hurried away.
Thaddeus was talking about what I wasn’t sure as I was intentionally doing my best to ignore him. I had something else occupying my attention. Someone was watching me.
Many people were looking at me off and on, but this was different. I was being studied, even probed by some unknown source within the room. I didn’t like the predatory feel of it at all.
Every nerve within me felt alive and throbbing with the alarm I felt at the presence of the unknown watcher.
“Aren’t you going to drink that?” Thaddeus asked blearily.
I glanced to him, “No. I don’t have any money yet. Would you mind taking care of this for me
?”
“Not at all my friend!” Thaddeus said greedily, as he reached out and grabbed up the shot glass of whiskey and brought it to his lips to slurp noisily at it.
I missed the numbing affect the alcohol would’ve had, although in truth it would have taken most of the bottle to forget for a moment and enjoy peace from my memories of the past. Now was not the time to drink though, if there ever was a time for that.
I stood up to leave and noticed Thaddeus staring moodily at the chipped surface of the table. Perhaps not the happy type after all.
I turned to leave and that’s when I saw her. She’d sat off in a booth to my rear out of view.
Her eyes were calculation itself and her beauty was far from the usual sordid prettiness common to these saloon environments. She smiled and I sensed the predatory feeling I had felt before all over again.
She crooked a finger at me and I found myself rather hesitant to move forward toward her. There was just something different about this woman.
She was to fine in appearance for the place and yet she seemed at home here. I walked to her booth feeling every bit the lackey for obeying her command, but I was curious.
“Welcome to my establishment Marshal. I trust that you have found all in order?”
Everything about her was eye-catching and yet I found her off-putting. Why was that?
Forcing myself to nod I said, “You run a tight ship. I’ve noticed only a minimal amount of dealer fraud on the part of your blackjack dealer and the whiskey smells genuine and not the creation of a bar of lye soap dropped into a bucket of swamp acid.”
She laughed out loud. She had very white teeth.
Smiling again she showed me all of them as she said, “You do paint a rather grim picture of establishments in my profession. I do hope you come to enjoy yourself here anyway. I have a lot to offer.”
Her eyes drifted down me and then back up to mine and there was little to be not guessed at what she meant by that.
I started backing away, “Alas I am a man of limited means and what money I will make, should I survive, is best put elsewhere.”
She shook her head, as her dark brown hair coasted about her bare shoulders, “Your credit is good here Marshal. Come as often as you like. Play cards, have drinks on the house, and enjoy all my girls have to offer at no charge.”
“What if I prefer to enjoy something more expensive?” I asked suggestively letting my eyes run down her and all that the red dress partially exposed and yet still hinted at.