Harlan Ellison
The End of the Time of Leinard
Sheriff Frank Leinard felt the creeping cold of the grave—his or the old man's—riming his body. Every inch of his skin; but not the flesh of his right hand. He stood ready, right hand warm and loose, poised in limbo above the gun. His belly was drawn in tightly, his legs well-planted, body half-turned to present the narrowest target.
“I don't want to draw on you, Gus ... don't make me,” he said softly. But his voice carried down the street to the old man.
The breeze coming in from the west end of town ruffled his lank brown hair. The breeze whispered of holy rain for which the town had hoped, and it bore the metallic scent of the barranca, miles away. The breeze also stirred the shirttail hanging from Gus Tabbert's pants. The flap of cotton shirting over the old man's holster.
Tabbert swayed. It was obvious he was drunk. “’N I ain't gonna make ya draw, Sher'f. But you ain't gonna take me t'no jail, neither...”
The Sheriff's hard, square face grew even tighter. “We don't like drunks that make noise and shoot up the Palace, Gus. You know that. Now just settle back and don't make me draw on you.”
There was a staggering movement from Tabbert, and he fumbled awkwardly past the shirttail, trying to get his fingers around the old, heavy Colt Walker.
Frank Leinard's right hand became invisible for an instant, and reappeared with the big Colt Army .44 free of the holster; and the August peace of the town was shattered by two sharp, quick reports, like a bull-whip snick-snickering.
Gus Tabbert took a tentative step, felt at himself and twisted forward, face-first into the dust. He was dead before he hit. He lay there with the revolver halfway out of its holster, his legs crushed up under him.
The breeze ruffled his gray hair.
* * * *
“Look, Frank, you gotta understand somethin'.” Pete Redallo, who ran the livery, and was also the spokesman for the City Council—what there was of it—stood with his sweat-stained hat in his hand. He stood before Frank Leinard's desk in the Sheriff's office with three of his fellow councilors. He had come to ask Frank Leinard to resign.
“You gotta know Bartisville ain't the same as it used to be. Things is changed, Frank.”
Leinard was a big, rangy man, with small, deep-set eyes of black and a full, gray-flecked mustache. He wore heavy lumberjack shirts and no vest, and he sweated a great deaclass="underline" there were always two heavy, dark semicircles under his armpits. He wore the .44 low on the right side, with the concho thongs tied down on his thigh. There was a quiet competence about him, a strength, an assertiveness. He was the kind of man youngsters followed around with knives and whittle-sticks, begging for a little attention. He was the Sheriff, bred in the bone, anywhichway you looked at him, awake or on the nod.
His voice was soft, but never wheedling. Stronger than ever now, as he said, “How do you mean, Pete? Changed?”
Redallo twisted the hat. He looked to his friends for aid. They nudged him with their eyes, to continue.
“Well, like this, Frank. Ya see, before, when Bartisville was just gettin’ started, when we was the end of the trail drive for everybody in this territory, we was a pretty wild town. Now we ain't belittlin’ what you done here; you made this a decent town for our wives and kids, Frank.”
“But you got to understand something, Frank,” Morn Ashley said, with that sweet voice of his. “You gotta understand that those days are behind us. Hell, Frank, it's comin’ up on the Turn of the Century. New times! New ways of doin’ things diff'rent from before. Why, I can run the bridge across the Shawsack without no trouble't'all nowadays. Used to be that I'd have to drop down every man thought he could pass without payin’ my toll. But things is calmed down quite a lot, and there ain't no call for all the gunslingin’ you do.”
“Like I was sayin', Frank,” Pete Redallo continued, asserting his position as spokesman with slight belligerence, “this was a wild town, and you came down from Kansas, and cleaned it up. Now we ain't belittlin’ you at all. It was what we hadda have done, and you done it. We're mighty grateful for that. But, well, we, uh—”
“What're you tryin’ to say, Pete?” Frank asked. His gaze was steady, without guile.
“Well, uh, well, there was just no call to shoot up poor old Gus Tabbert that way.”
“He was drunk and disorderly. He drew on me.”
Redallo dropped the hat, a flush hitting his cheekbones. “You know Gus was always drunk, Frank. And the little bit of shootin’ he did was nothin’ compared to what used to happen when Con Farlow's boys used to hit town. Tabbert oughtn't to be dead. It's just not right, is all.”
Morn Ashley moved up beside Redallo.
“Look, Frank, I'll be honest ’bout this.
“You've gotten to be more than just Sheriff ’round here. The way some folks feel, you're the law entire. The mayor, and the Council, and whatall. And that ain't right, Frank. This is as much your town as ours, but you don't act the way we figger a Sheriff should, no more.
“We're lots quieter now. The frontier days are gone, Frank. When you had to draw on every man who shot up a saloon, that was another time... what was right then, it just don't seem proper now. Hell, Frank, old Tabbert was a friend to all of us—”
“Gus was my friend, too, Morn,” Leinard said, softly.
“That's what we're tryin’ to say, Frank.” It was Karl Breslin from the B-slash-D speaking for the first time. “When you had plenty of rowdy-dowdys to tame, you were in fine style; but now that it's mostly families and such in Bartisville, you've taken to huntin’ yore meat in the townsfolk. We just want you to understand that times change, and the men gotta change with ’em, otherwise—”
Leinard stood up slowly. He was a big man, well over six feet, graying but fit, and they edged back warily. There was no telling what burned beneath that calm surface. The way he always spoke so soft and warm. Leinard put his hands out — fingers spread, palms flat — on the desk. His face was calm, as he answered them.
“What you're tryin’ to say is, you want me to resign. That right, Pete, Morn, Karl, Anse? That it?”
They stumbled and stammered and mumbled. “Well, no, that ain't exactly...” or “Oh, you know how things are, Frank...” and “Now don't get sore, Frank...” But he knew what they meant. It stuck up in their craws like a raw potato too big to get down.
Leinard spoke quietly, surely. “You remember Louise Springer, the girl they had for schoolmarm ’bout three years back?” They nodded. His face slipped into an expression of sadness.
“Remember there was a lot of talk I was going to marry up with her?” They nodded again, and Anse Pfeiffer from the General Store added, “We never knew what happened there, Frank. Never thought it was our look-to finding out. No call to bring it up now, is there?”
Leinard nodded his head somberly. “Yes, Anse. There is. Just as there's reason to bring up now that I've never been invited to your house for supper. Nor yours, Pete, nor Morn's house, nor Karl's neither. Why's that?”
They stammered again, averting their eyes.
“When I asked Louise Springer to marry me,” Frank Leinard said, with a tinge of coolness in his voice, “you know what she said?” They did not answer. Each stared elsewhere. It was not an easy thing they were asking of this big man who had served them for so long a time.
“I'll tell you. She said: ‘No, I can't do it, Frank.’ So I asked her why, and after a long while she told me. I had to look up a word with Doc Crenkell, ’cause I didn't know what it was. You know what she called me, you men? She called me a pariah.
“You know what that is ... answer me! You know?”
They shook their heads. His voice was hungry, and tortured, and straining. Not soft and warm, but lost and sad.