swallowed up by dust and distance.
“What’s going on here?”
Tyree turned and watched as Sheriff Tobin, pulling a suspender over the shoulder of his dirty red vest, bellied his way through the crowd.
“Can’t a man get any sleep around here?” he demanded, his eyes hidden behind his round, dark glasses. The hair that showed under the lawman’s hat was pure white and his face was pasty, like the skin on the belly of a dead fish.
“Sheriff, this man just done for the Kid,” someone in the crowd yelled. “Smashed both his hands to pulp.”
Then it seemed everybody was talking at once, trying to get in their two cents’ worth about what they’d just witnessed. Many voices were raised, but Tyree heard none that were friendly.
“Where is the Kid now?” Tobin asked, his uplifted hands quieting the crowd.
“He’s gone, Sheriff,” Tyree said. “And he won’t be coming back.”
He looked into Tobin’s face but could not read the man’s eyes, hidden as they were behind their circles of darkness.
Tobin turned and saw the bartender on the boardwalk. “Benny, what happened?”
The bartender stepped off the walk and pointed to Tyree. “This man braced the Kid in the saloon. Then he dragged him out here and smashed up both his hands, just like you was told, Sheriff.” The man called Benny turned and extended his arms to the crowd. “I think it’s a crying shame that an honest citizen can’t enjoy a little celebration in the saloon without being attacked and manhandled.”
A murmur of agreement ran through the crowd. A few were the respectable townspeople of Crooked Creek, but most were drifters and the assorted riffraff of the frontier, anxious for any kind of excitement, especially a possible lynching.
Tyree was an outsider here, and all the town’s sympathies were with the Arapaho Kid.
“Honest citizen, huh?” Tyree asked Tobin. He stepped closer to the big lawman. “Hold out your hand, Tobin.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
Tobin extended his powerful white paw and Tyree dropped the four double eagles into his palm. “You’ll find another one on the bar in the saloon. The Kid told me Quirt Laytham gave him these—a bonus for murdering Owen Fowler.”
Some of the respectable element in the crowd exchanged puzzled looks, wondering about what Tyree had just said, trying to gauge the truth or falsity of it.
Tobin felt, rather than saw, the shift in attitude and stepped quickly into the breach. “Maybe that’s what the Kid said, Tyree, and maybe it wasn’t. But in any case I wouldn’t take the word of a damn breed on anything.”
A tall, thin man who looked like a merchant in a broadcloth suit and a high celluloid collar, said, “Hear, hear.” Tobin pressed home his advantage.
“You people break it up now,” he said. “Be about your business.” He turned to Tyree. “You come with me. I want to talk to you.”
“You arresting me, Sheriff?” Tyree asked, his voice hard-edged.
“No, though I could for what you did back at the wash. Cost us some good men.”
“They were coming at me shooting,” Tyree said. “I was defending myself.”
Tobin rubbed a hand across his unshaven cheeks then glanced at the blazing sun. “I don’t care to stand here in the street and talk. I burn up real easy. Come with me to my office.”
“What do you want to talk about, Tobin?” Tyree asked.
The big lawman stepped closer, so close Tyree could smell him, and his voice dropped to a confidential whisper. “I’ve got another proposition for you, and this one you’d be well-advised to take.”
Chapter 12
The sheriff’s office was a low log cabin with a timber roof, sandwiched between the telegraph office and a hardware store. It had a narrow porch and an awning held up by slender poles, a rocking chair set to one side of the door.
Inside, the place smelled like Tobin himself, a heavy mix of stale sweat, tobacco juice and smoke from the kerosene lantern that hung from a ceiling beam, its orange flame guttering. Black canvas shades were pulled down across the cabin’s two windows, blocking out every glimpse of sunlight, and the air was thick, cloying and close, hard to breathe.
A door at the rear of the office hung ajar on rawhide hinges and beyond was a single cell. The front wall of the cell was of red brick, a barred, iron door to the right. The rustler Roy Will lay on his back on a bunk in the half- light, staring at the ceiling, his shoulder heavily bandaged.
Tobin closed the office door leading to the cell. “I plan on hanging him the day after tomorrow, but, even so, it’s best he doesn’t hear our talk.” The lawman sat at his desk, opened a drawer and took out a bottle of whiskey. “Drink?” he asked.
Tyree shook his head. “Cut to the chase, Tobin. What’s your proposition?”
Tobin lifted the bottle to his mouth, took a gulping swallow that made his throat bob, then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. He sat in silence for a few moments, studying the tall younger man, then said, “Tyree, now that Fowler is dead, this thing is over and it’s time you was riding on. There’s no point in your staying around and causing all kinds of trouble for everybody. Which brings me to this. . . .”
Tobin slid open another drawer, rooted around for a few moments, then came up with a thick stack of greenbacks. He threw the money on the desk in front of Tyree. “That’s a thousand dollars, more money than you’ll ever see in one place at one time in your whole life. All you got to do is lean over, pick it up and then be on your way. Ride out of the territory, Tyree. Go to Denver maybe and spend the money on women and whiskey. Hell, man, have yourself a time.”
Tyree made no attempt to pick up the money. He tilted his head to one side, smiling. “I’d say Quirt Laytham must be mighty scared of me.”
“Mr. Laytham isn’t scared of anybody,” Tobin scoffed, “especially not you.”
“Then why did he tell you to bribe me with a thousand dollars?”
The lamplight accentuated the pockmarks that cratered the sheriff’s white cheeks, picking out the beads of sweat on his forehead and nose. It was unbearably hot in the office. Tyree felt his shirt sticking to him, the fetid, feral stench of the fat lawman assailing his nostrils.
“You’re so smart, ain’t you, Tyree?” Tobin said. “So damned smart.” He leaned forward and propped his elbows on the desk. “Get this through your thick skull: Quirt Laytham doesn’t need to bribe you to leave anywhere. Step in his way again and he’ll crush you like a bug.” The sheriff shook his head. “No, this money was give me by somebody else, somebody who wants you long gone from here. For your own good, you understand.”
Tobin shifted his bulk in the chair and it squeaked in protest, sending a frightened rat scuttling across the floor. “After that . . . ah . . . shall we say, unpleasantness at Hatch Wash, Mr. Laytham and me figured Fowler would head for Luke Boyd’s place, seeing as how him and the old man were real close at one time. Me, I was gonna ride out there with the money today and talk to you private, like. But now there’s no need because there you stand as bold as brass and on the prod as ever was.”
“Who put up the money?” Tyree asked, intrigued despite himself.
Tobin grinned, saliva stranding between his small, pegged teeth. He tapped the side of his nose with a forefinger. “That’s between me and the snubbin’ post, boy, or maybe I should say between me and the party of the third.” As though suddenly bored with the whole business, Tobin pushed the pile of bills toward Tyree. “Now take that and you git. If Mr. Laytham or Luther Darcy happen to ride into town, you’re a dead man.”
“No, it’s your turn to listen, Tobin,” Tyree said. “Hand that money back to whoever gave it to you and tell him I’m staying right here until I settle a score with Quirt Laytham. On his orders, his men, your deputies, hung and then shot me and me just a stranger—”
“I know, I know,” Tobin interrupted, his irritation evident. “Just a stranger passing through. I’ve heard all that
