Bury Them Deep in War Smoke Read online

  Elmer looked and grinned at his mentor.

  ‘I said walking makes a man thirsty,’ he repeated.

  Fallen stopped and rested the palm of his hand on his holstered gun grip, and sighed as he rubbed his powerful jaw thoughtfully. He still could not get his mind off the letter that Sam Foster had shown him hours earlier. He glanced beyond the array of brightly lit saloons and gambling halls at Boot Hill, and silently thought about Heck.

  ‘What you thinking about, Marshal Fallen?’ Elmer asked as he held on to the massive double-barrelled shotgun.

  ‘I was just thinking about Heck,’ the lawman replied.

  Elmer raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Why would you be thinking about that old egg sucker for?’

  Fallen hid his amusement and turned away from his scrawny young deputy. ‘That’s no way to be talking about a fellow deputy, Elmer.’

  Elmer’s expression changed. ‘Since when has Heck bin a deputy, Marshal Fallen?’

  ‘Since just before sundown.’ The lawman answered. ‘Heck was there when I needed a job done, and he jumped at the chance to help me out.’

  ‘You made him a deputy?’ Elmer croaked.

  Fallen nodded firmly. ‘You were off looking for your gun, as I recall.’

  Elmer had always prided himself on being a deputy marshal, and did not like the notion that he had competition. He rubbed his throat and sidled up to the thoughtful Fallen.

  ‘I’m awful thirsty, Marshal Fallen,’ he repeated. ‘I’m even thirstier than I was before I learned that Heck has been made a deputy.’

  ‘Special deputy, Elmer,’ Fallen corrected, as his fingers fumbled in his pocket. The high-shouldered marshal pulled his pocket watch from his vest pocket and flicked its lid open. He moved under a street light, and its amber light lit up the face of the time-piece. The marshal nodded and then snapped the lid shut before returning it to his pocket.

  ‘It’s only just turned midnight,’ Fallen nodded. ‘I reckon it’s still early.’

  Elmer gripped his shotgun excitedly. ‘You mean we can go and have us a few drinks, Marshal Fallen?’

  Fallen stretched his massive arms and then grinned.

  ‘Sure,’ he sighed. ‘Reckon old Doc Weaver might still be in the Longhorn about now.’

  Elmer’s face lit up. ‘I’m sure glad you thought about us having a few drinks, Marshal. My finances are a bit stretched at this time o’ the month.’

  The two figures stepped down from the boardwalk and began the slow walk towards the Longhorn Saloon. Lantern light and piano music washed out through its swing doors in greeting as the lawmen approached their favoured drinking hole.

  ‘Are you broke again, Elmer?’ Fallen asked, as his keen senses continued to study the quiet street. ‘You were paid last Friday, like me. How can you get through your wages even before you get them?’

  They weaved through a dozen saddle horses tied to a hitching pole, ducked under its twisted length and then stepped up on to the boardwalk. Fallen rested a hand on the top of the swing doors and paused as he waited for a reply from his young friend, who was still drooling at the thought of having a few drinks. Elmer dried his mouth on his sleeve and looked up into the marshal’s face.

  ‘I got me a whole heap of overheads, Marshal Fallen,’ he stated, waving his long double-barrelled weapon around. ‘You can’t imagine how plumb expensive it is nowadays for a hombre on deputy wages. It ain’t like it was in your time.’

  Fallen narrowed his eyes.

  ‘How old do you reckon I am, Elmer?’ he drawled.

  The deputy raised his eyebrows and studied his superior carefully, before shrugging and looking at his boot leather coyly. ‘You gotta be pretty old.’

  Fallen removed his hat and ran his fingers through his mop of thick black hair before returning the Stetson. ‘Old? I’m only just a tad over thirty. I bet you’re almost as old as me!’

  ‘I surely doubt that, Marshal Fallen,’ Elmer blurted. Matt Fallen began to nod, and Elmer forced a sheepish grin.

  ‘I’m still awful thirsty, Marshal,’ he reminded his superior. ‘War Smoke is getting so damn big that it’s plumb tuckering, walking our rounds nowadays.’

  ‘It was much smaller in my day,’ the lawman joshed. ‘When I got here it was just a tent, two hound dogs and a spittoon.’

  The lawmen entered the saloon and wandered through the cloud of tobacco smoke. They navigated a route between card tables and bargirls to the long bar counter where Doc Weaver was hunched over an empty glass. It was obvious the elderly doctor was low on funds and weighing up if he should buy another drink or not. His wrinkled eyes caught the reflections of the lawmen in the mirror set behind the bartender.

  ‘It’s about time you got here, Matt,’ Doc grumbled as he toyed with his empty whiskey glass. ‘A man could die of dehydration waiting for you.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Doc,’ Fallen patted the old-timer on his back and pointed to the bartender. ‘Elmer drags his feet a lot lately. The boy gets slower every day.’

  The bartender caught Fallen’s attention.

  ‘Two beers, Marshal?’ Slim Cooper asked the towering lawman.

  ‘And a whiskey for Doc, Slim,’ Fallen nodded as he rested a boot on the brass rail that fronted the wooden counter between spittoons.

  ‘Thank you kindly, Matt,’ Doc said as he turned his wrinkled face to greet the marshal. ‘It’s damn quiet in town tonight.’

  ‘It sure is, Doc,’ Fallen agreed. ‘Too damn quiet for my liking. I don’t like it when it’s this peaceful.’

  ‘Trouble’s brewing someplace,’ Doc said as he watched the bartender fill his glass with amber liquor. ‘I can feel it my bones.’

  Fallen tossed a silver dollar into the bartender’s hands and pushed one of the glasses to Elmer, who gratefully raised it to his mouth and started guzzling.

  ‘I’d have figured that you’d relish trouble, Doc,’ Matt said after taking a swallow of beer. ‘The more trouble, the more money you make.’

  Doc raised his bushy eyebrows as he sipped his whiskey and nodded. ‘That’s true, Matt. Trouble is, I’m getting old. I get plumb tuckered when things get too cantankerous around here.’

  Fallen fished two dollars out of his pocket and dropped them into his old friend’s jacket breast pocket.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Doc asked stroking his white moustache with his fingers.

  ‘Don’t you recall that gunslinger who called me out last week, Doc?’ Fallen downed the rest of his beer and pushed his glass towards the bartender. ‘I forgot to pay you your fee for confirming the critter was dead.’

  Doc eyed his tall pal: ‘Much obliged.’

  ‘Two more beers, Slim!’ the marshal indicated to Cooper.

  Doc patted his pocket and heard the coins rattling against one another. ‘I forgot all about that idiot. That boy was fast, but not fast enough.’

  ‘Apart from that idiot, War Smoke has bin damn quiet for months, Doc,’ Fallen tossed another dollar at Slim as two more beers were placed before them. ‘I don’t like it when it’s too quiet. Makes me edgy.’

  ‘A little bird tells me that you were talking to old Sam earlier, Matt,’ Doc sighed. ‘How come?’

  ‘Just something Heck told me about,’ Fallen said, his large hand rubbing the nape of his neck. ‘Sam got himself a letter with fifty dollars in it. He was instructed to have three graves dug up on Boot Hill.’

  ‘Fifty dollars?’ Doc gasped enviously. ‘The lucky bastard. I can’t recall the last time I had that much money. I knew I should have been an undertaker instead of a quack.’

  Elmer leaned around Fallen, ‘What you both talking about?’

  ‘Suck on them suds, boy,’ Doc chuckled.

  Fallen studied the busy saloon. It was still busy, and yet unusually quiet. He shook his head thoughtfully.

  ‘Folks are real peaceable again,’ he sighed.

  Doc drained his glass and turned to face the room full of patrons. A wry smile came to the veteran medical man as he
adjusted his jacket and pulled his black derby down towards his spectacles.

  ‘I’ll be wishing you a fond goodnight, boys,’ he grinned as he started towards the swing doors. ‘I’m off to my cot.’

  Elmer nudged Fallen like an annoying mosquito until he finally got the lawman’s attention. The tall marshal glanced down on the smiling deputy.

  ‘What do you want now, Elmer?’ he drawled. It then became obvious that Elmer was staring at one of the bargirls. Fallen shook his head and rested a paw on his deputy. ‘Has she got teeth? Most of the gals in here ain’t got teeth.’

  Elmer looked offended.

  ‘They all got teeth, Marshal Fallen!’ he said with a nod of his head.

  ‘I’ll take your word for that,’ Fallen shrugged. ‘You seem to know most of them better than most.’

  ‘Can I have me a sub on my wages, Marshal Fallen?’ Elmer whispered as he took another swig from his beer.

  ‘How much?’ Fallen sighed.

  ‘Three dollars oughta be enough,’ Elmer calculated, as suds dripped off his chin. ‘I’m gonna sweet-talk Miss Diana.’

  Fallen glanced at the attractive girl, then fished out three silver dollars from his vest and handed them to the deputy. The coins had only just landed in the palm of Elmer’s hand when the deputy darted through the crowd after the bargirl.

  The marshal looked at Slim and beckoned for another glass of beer. As the fresh brew was placed before the tall lawman the bartender leaned over the damp counter towards Fallen.

  ‘That boy has got more sap than a maple tree, Marshal,’ Slim laughed as he mopped the counter surface with a rag. ‘He’s chased every one of the girls in here and caught a few by all accounts.’

  ‘As long as that’s all he’s caught,’ the lawman sighed.

  Slim grinned at the lawman. ‘I ain’t seen you sniffing around any of my girls’ petticoats for the longest while, Marshal. You ain’t got religion, have you?’

  Fallen took a mouthful of beer. ‘I’m just biding my time for a while, Slim.’

  The bartender served a couple of the cowboys a few feet along the bar and then returned to the lawman, as Fallen watched his deputy trailing the attractive bargirl around the busy establishment.

  ‘I can’t figure how Elmer can afford all the gals he chases, Matt,’ he wondered as he polished thimble glasses and started to stack them.

  ‘I know exactly how he can afford it, Slim,’ Fallen said.

  ‘How?’ the bartender pressed.

  ‘With all the subs on his wages, I reckon Elmer earns more money than I do, Slim.’ Fallen sighed wistfully.

  ‘Don’t you deduct it from his wages?’ Slim asked.

  ‘By my figuring he’s already borrowed so much that he’ll still be owing me two years after he’s dead,’ Fallen grinned, and glanced at the reflection of his romantic deputy wrapped around the laughing girl.

  Fallen finished his beer, straightened up, touched the brim of his hat and then picked up the scattergun, which Elmer had deserted, off the bar counter and started for the street.

  ‘See you, Slim,’ he said before pushing his way through the swing doors and continuing his journey back towards his office. As he mounted the opposite boardwalk he glanced around the street before entering the lantern-lit office. He was still thinking about his other deputy – the special deputy who was watching the three new graves in hope of discovering who had paid for them to be dug. Heck was a seasoned mountain man, and Fallen had no fear that anything would happen to him. Yet a nagging thought continued to haunt his tired mind: what was going on?

  After talking to Sam, the marshal was no wiser. This was indeed a puzzle, and Fallen did not like puzzles. They troubled him and disturbed his sleep. At least War Smoke was quiet, he thought, as he tossed his hat on to the tall stand and closed the door wearily behind him. Fallen moved around his desk and placed the scattergun on the wall rifle rack beside the variety of other rifles. He then turned back to his desk, adjusted the brass wheel of the lamp and dimmed its illumination before adjusting his gunbelt and sprawling out on the cot inside the first jail cell.

  Normally Fallen would have unbuckled the gunbelt, but something deep in his fretful mind told him to keep it strapped to his hips. He lay on the cot and stared up at the ceiling as his aching body adjusted to the mattress. He was tired, but still that nagging thought kept troubling him: it was like the calm before the storm.

  He was too experienced just to accept the quiet times without trepidation. He knew everything had a price tag, and that included the relatively peaceful periods of time which always came before something bad replaced them. Matt Fallen’s unrivalled experience told him that War Smoke was about to erupt like a volcano, and when it did, nothing and nobody was safe in the sprawling town. He could see images in his mind of the freshly dug graves, and brooded about why anyone might be having them dug. He concluded it was a warning that at least three souls would soon meet their Maker.

  It was a threat. But who was being threatened?

  And more importantly, who was doing the threatening? Sweat trailed down the face of the lawman as he tossed and turned on the far-too-small cot. He was exhausted and needed a few hours’ shuteye, but could not seem to stop his over-active mind from posing unanswerable questions.

  Trouble was indeed brewing, Marshal Fallen reasoned. It always was, in a town like War Smoke. Like tinder-dry brush, the merest spark could ignite it, and it would be up to him to clean up the mess. All he could do was wait until he was called upon to act. It gnawed at his craw, and even after all the years that he had worn a star on his chest, he was still not used to it. The waiting was always the worst. But the decent folks of War Smoke relied upon him, and that was a heavy burden, even for his wide shoulders to carry.

  Matt Fallen closed his eyes and allowed the calming effects of the beer to settle him. Yet even as he fell into the depths of sleep, he was still ready for action, his right hand resting on his holstered gun grip, his fingers curled around it in readiness. He twisted and turned on the far-too-small cot as a hundred troubling notions flashed through his dreams. He hadn’t enjoyed a restful slumber for months, and this night would be no different.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  No snorting bull about to charge at a matador could have appeared more awesome than the tall, black metal monster as it slowly emerged through the night mist on its approach to the train depot at War Smoke. Red-hot sparks of burning cinders rose from its stack into the night and mingled with the cloud of grey smoke that marked its path, billowing upwards in hesitant bursts.

  The hissing of steam escaping around the massive locomotive sounded like a rattlesnake nest when its occupants begin their nightly ritual and ready their fangs in anticipation of fresh prey. From a distance the large black locomotive resembled a mythical dragon moving through the outskirts of War Smoke. A beam of light carved down from its high perch and illuminated the steel rails supporting the train’s tremendous bulk.

  The giant black monster snaked its way through the outskirts of the sprawling settlement towards its goal, every turn of its huge wheels bringing it ever closer to the train depot. As was usual, the train was an hour overdue as it drew nearer to the brightly lit array of wooden structures a few hundred yards from the empty cattle pens. This part of War Smoke was bathed in shadow, apart from the occasional red lanterns that hung outside certain of its more popular properties.

  An ear-splitting whistle broke the eerie silence as the train finally groaned to a halt. As steam gushed from around the long black locomotive the engineer leaned out from the footplate and looked back at the solitary passenger car and the windowless guard’s van hooked up behind it. To even the most ignorant of eyes it was obvious that this was not a freight train ready to load cattle into its caravan of fragrant cars and transport them back east: this was a passenger train.

  Both the driver and his engineer disembarked from their high perch behind the firebox and wandered into one of the wooden buildings set thirty feet away. As th
ey disappeared into the ticket office the train conductor slowly descended the steps and jumped down the last few feet to the dusty ground. He placed a wooden box on the ground to make the last step less bone-jerking for his paying passengers. Roughly thirteen men and women made their way down to the ground and proceeded out into the shadowy surroundings as the conductor checked his time-piece and waited for the last of his human cargo to disembark.

  The last man to leave the brightly lit car was unlike the others who had got off before him down the metal steps. He looked far taller than his actual six feet as he stopped beside the conductor and placed a long slim cigar between his lips. Clad entirely in black with a long matching top coat resting over his shoulders, Jonas Ward gave the appearance of being a sophisticated soul.

  Nothing could have been further from the truth.

  Ward was dangerous. Every pore of his elegant body oozed danger as he struck a match and cupped its flame to his cigar and inhaled.

  ‘My horse is back in there, conductor,’ Ward smiled, as smoke filtered back through his gritted teeth. He shook the match and flicked it away casually as the conductor checked his notes and nodded in agreement.

  ‘So it is,’ the far shorter man said, pacing to the guard’s van and hammering on its locked door. ‘Open up, Charlie. I got me a gentleman out here that wants his horse.’

  The words had barely left the conductor’s lips when the sound of bolts being released filled the air. Ward stepped back and watched as the large door was slid open to reveal the interior of the car. A large man touched his peaked cap and then started to push a board out from the car to use as a ramp.

  ‘Do you have business in War Smoke?’ the conductor asked as the guard continued to secure the wide board.

  Ward sucked in smoke and nodded.

  ‘You could say that, friend,’ he replied drily.

  The conductor sensed that it was far wiser not to pursue this line of smalltalk. He looked around the empty cattle yard, and then studied the stranger wearing the flat-brimmed black Stetson.