“Who the heck’s that?” a voice, much closer, asked. Ward looked toward it and saw Riley, the wagon master, strolling over toward him.
“Dunno,” Ward replied with a shrug. “Mighty odd. Guess we’ll have to wait till he gets close enough that we can hear what he’s—”
“Indians! Apache! Help!” came the cry, finally clear.
“Sayin’,” Ward finished. “And don’t go getting’ yourself in an uproar. I reckon it’s just one of MacDonald’s men. Apache don’t attack at night, but MacDonald sees Indians like other men see tumbleweeds.”
Riley folded his arms and stared out toward the rider galloping toward them. “He’s gonna ruin that horse.”
“Probably.” Ward ground out his smoke. “Reckon I’d best go round up the marshal. The U.S. Marshal, that is. Me and Jason, we ain’t got no jurisdiction out at MacDonald’s ranch.”
Riley said, “Well, good luck, then,” and wandered back toward his wagon while Ward started down the street, to the saloon.
That dang Matt MacDonald sure had a way of messing up his evenings.
Abe Todd was minding his own business, getting smashed at the saloon and keeping an eye on Sampson Davis, when the batwing doors burst in and two men shouldered through. Ward was one of them, and he raised a hand to acknowledge him. He didn’t expect Ward to come over to his table, though, but that’s what he did next, followed by the shorter man who’d come through the door with him.
The shorter man stared at the badge on Abe’s chest just long enough for Ward to say, “Sorry, Abe,” and shrug before the other man—a boy, really—started in.
He elbowed Ward aside and said, “I’m Steven McCord, sir, and I work for Mr. Matt MacDonald down south at the Double M, and we got Indians, a passel of Indians, the Apache kind, and he sent me to come get help right away and the town law ain’t never any help, so I come straight to you.” His long sentence finished at last, he leaned forward, catching himself on the tabletop as if he were exhausted.
Abe didn’t move, except to tilt his elbow and take another slug of bourbon. “At night?” he finally said. “You got Apache attacking you at night?”
McCord nodded his head frantically.
“Anybody actually shoot an arrow at you?”
McCord’s features bunched up. “What? No, but they’re comin’! Mr. MacDonald, he seen their dust cloud on the horizon.”
Abe studied his glass. “He did, did he?”
“Yessir! C’mon! Time’s wastin’!”
Abe leaned back in his chair and Ward sat down, probably to watch the show. Abe let the edification begin.
“Son, the Apache aren’t attackin’ your boss’s ranch. They don’t attack at night, for one thing. And for another, if they wanted to attack you, you wouldn’t see ’em comin’. They’d just be there, and you’d be dead—or wishin’ you were.”
“But—”
“No ‘buts’ about it,” Abe cut in, and lifted his glass again. He polished off the last of his bourbon. “Now, go on back home. Or sit down and have a drink. Your choice. But I ain’t runnin’ out there like some dumb cluck with my head cut off.”
“But—”
“Sorry, Steve, but that’s all she wrote,” Ward said, standing up, putting a hand on both of the young man’s shoulders, and turning him back toward the door. “Your boss’s imagination is runnin’ off with him again. That’s all there is to it, and this time, we ain’t gonna play, all right?”
Steve McCord, a nice kid who had come in with the wagon train before last, walked out the door, dejected. Ward called, “And you walk that horse for at least a mile, McCord.”
A muffled, “I know, I know,” came from the direction into which he’d disappeared, and then he was gone. Ward pulled out a chair again, wondering if Jason’d shoot him if he had a beer.
But then, he figured Jason’d be so tickled that he’d got rid of MacDonald’s rider that he wouldn’t mind, and so he signaled the serving gal and indicated a beer.
“That was right masterful,” he said to Abe.
“Nothin’ but the truth.” Abe leaned farther back in his chair, and for a second, Ward thought he was going to go to sleep. But when the barmaid brought Ward’s beer, Abe sat up and said, “One more round, honey.”
“That kid’s gonna be in a peck’a trouble when he gets back to the ranch alone,” Ward said, sipping his beer gratefully. It tasted good. “Matt MacDonald ain’t somebody you want to cross.”
Abe picked up his shot glass. “Not my problem,” he said, and drank half of it down. “The U.S. Marshal’s office ain’t for babysittin’.”
Ward nodded. The marshal’s office must be for getting drunk instead, he thought, then wiped the idea from his mind. He wasn’t there to judge Abe Todd. He was there to have a beer. He took another sip.
He wondered what Jason would have done, though.
Jason, relieved to be off-duty, finished a good dinner, then went out to the porch to smoke. He was halfway through his cigarette when Jenny came out.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, sitting down in the chair beside him like a bag of bricks.
“Nothing.” He turned toward her. “Why?”
“Because you didn’t say two words during dinner, or when you came into the house. Something’s eating at you, Jason. Anybody could see that.”
“It’s just . . . sometimes I wish I wasn’t marshal. Sometimes I wish we hadn’t come west at all.”
“Why? I like it here!”
“I know you do, Jenny. And to tell you the truth, that’s the only reason I’m still here.” And it was the truth, he just realized. Epiphanies could be curious things, and this one fell on him like a keg filled with nails. He wanted to weep.
“For me? Jason, you don’t need to stay for me. I’m fine!”
He took a drag on his smoke, then stubbed it out. “You wouldn’t be so fine if the Apache attacked again. Or if you married that jerk, MacDonald. Or if you—”
“Stop it!” She slouched back in her chair, hard. “You can stop listing things.”
Jason pulled out his fixings bag again and muttered, “That’s what you think.”
She stared at him through the darkness. He wasn’t going to find any comfort here tonight. He stood up.
“Where you going?”
Fixings bag dangling from his fingers, he said, “To the saloon. I feel like a drink.”
Jason didn’t know how he felt, truth be told.
He guessed it all had to do with the people and the situation concerned. But he was shaken up, no doubt about it. He wished he could just wave his hand and permanently get rid of Davis and Lynch and Todd and the town fathers and the whole world, and go happily back East. He’d force Jenny to go with him, that’s what he’d do. He’d bind and gag her until they got east of the Missouri or maybe even the Mississippi! Maybe by then she wouldn’t want to yell at him so much. Maybe she’d feel home calling to her, too.
He realized he’d stopped walking, and was leaning against the rail out front of Solomon’s Mercantile, and suddenly, he wondered about the baby. The lights were on in an upstairs window, and he heard, just faintly, the sound of Solomon laughing. Jason allowed himself a small smile. The baby must be some better, then.
But even that implied good news couldn’t cheer him up. He just felt . . . itchy. Like something bad was going to happen, something he didn’t have any control over, and he didn’t like it. He was used to having control over most things that mattered, but not the thing that was coming. Whatever it was.
He rolled himself a smoke and started on down the street, lighting his cigarette as he walked. The smoke tasted more brittle than usual, oddly dirty, and he almost put it out, but by then he was on the walk outside the saloon. “Aw, screw it,” he muttered, and pushed his way inside.
The first thing he did was check the place that Davis had staked out earlier, and sure enough, he was still there, still tossing back his rotgut like there wasn’t enough in the world to get him drunk, wasn’t enough to even make him stagger a little. And then from his right, he heard, “Jason!” and looked over to see Ward and Abe slouched at a table quite near him. He walked on over.