Novel 1979 - The Iron Marshall (v5.0) Read online

  He ducked under a row of standing cars and saw some moving cars ahead of him. He ran, caught the ladder-rung and swung himself up and over into an empty gondola.

  The train gathered speed.

  Behind him there were shouts and yells. They were searching. A shot…not aimed toward him, apparently. Gasping, he dropped to a sitting position against the side of the car.

  God, was he tired!

  The train whistled and he looked up to see roofs going by. It was raining harder now.

  Chapter 3

  *

  WHEN SHANAGHY AWAKENED again he lay for some time, just thinking. There was no sound but the trickling of water from the small creek and the chirping of birds. Somewhere the birds were singing an endless variety of songs. He did not know much about birds.

  After awhile he sat up and looked around. He wrapped his arms around his knees and rested his chin on his arms. He had never known a morning so still…Yes, he had—when he was a boy in Ireland and walked to the upper pasture to bring the horses down. It had been quiet in Ireland, too.

  He got up, went to the stream. After taking off his shirt, he bathed his face, head and shoulders in the cold water. It felt good. Then he rolled up his blankets. Finding a few coals left in the fire, he rekindled it and broiled some bacon.

  Then he examined the guns. The pistol was a good one, brand-new, apparently. Whose outfit did he have, anyway? He belted on the gun, tried it for balance and feel. It felt good.

  He had to get back to New York. That meant returning to the railroad and finding a town or a water-tank. Some place where a train might stop. He had to get back, Morrissey would need him.

  Shanaghy walked back to his blanket-roll, but instead of picking it up he sat down again. Damn, it felt good! Just the stillness, the peace. After the hectic life he had been living…

  He knew the sound of horses’ hoofs when he heard them, and he heard them now. For a moment he remained where he was, just listening. Then he got up, moved the blanket-roll out of sight near a tree and leaned the shotgun against the tree. The coat he wore effectively concealed the pistol.

  Shanaghy walked down to the ashes of the fire. Now maybe he could find out where he was and how far away was the nearest town.

  There were four of them and they came down the slope toward the stream, riding together. One man, on a gray horse, trailed a little behind.

  “Hey!” He heard one of them speak. “Somebody’s…”

  They rode through the stream and pulled up about twenty feet away from him.

  “Look,” one of them said, “it’s a pilgrim!”

  “How are you?” Shanaghy said. “I wonder if…”

  “It’s an Irish pilgrim,” another said. “What d’ you know about that?”

  Three of them were about his own age, one of them probably younger. The fourth was a lean, wiry old man with a battered, narrow-brimmed hat and an old gray coat and patched, homespun pants. This man had his hands behind him.

  Shanaghy squatted on his heels, stirring the ashes and adding a few sticks. “Headin’ for town,” he said casually. “How far is it?”

  Some of the sticks caught a small fire.

  The heavier-set of the riders took a coil of rope from his saddle and shook out a loop. He moved toward a large cottonwood. “How about here?” he suggested.

  “Wait a minute,” another said. “What about him?”

  A man in a white buckskin vest had looked on but not yet spoken. He had sat, staring at Shanaghy. Then slowly he smiled. “We can always make it two,” he said.

  The heavy-set one looked startled. “But we don’t even know him. He ain’t done any harm.”

  “How do we know? He looks to me like a sinful man.” He turned his full attention to Shanaghy. “Where’s your horse?”

  “I don’t have one.” Shanaghy was wary. He was in trouble but he did not know how much, nor had he quite understood what they were talking about. “I dropped off a train.”

  “Out here? You must be crazy! It’s forty miles to the nearest town.”

  “I can walk.”

  “Walk? Now I know you’re crazy.”

  The man in the white vest spoke again. “He shouldn’t be here. He’s in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Shanaghy was growing irritated. “This looks like a good place to me,” he said. “I like it.”

  “You hear that?” White Vest said. “He says he likes it.”

  There was a moment of silence, then the man on the horse with his hands behind him said, “I always knew you were rotten, Drako.”

  “Bass?” Drako glanced at the man with the coiled rope. “Take him.”

  Shanaghy had never seen anybody rope steers, but he had heard stories from his old friend who taught him to shoot. He saw the rope go up, saw the loop shoot at him and as the horse gathered itself to leap he threw himself toward a tree. The trunk was no more than six feet from him and he was quick. For Shanaghy, to think was to act. He threw himself past the tree, then around it in a lunge.

  The loop caught him as he had known it would, but as the horse leaped to drag him he had a turn around the tree, then a second. The horse hit the end of the rope with a lunge and the girth parted. The horse charged on, then man, saddle and rope hit the ground hard.

  Drako swore and the third man grabbed for a gun.

  Shanaghy never knew how he did it but he had not stopped moving. When the girth broke he had thrown off the rope and when the third man grabbed for his gun, Shanaghy shot him.

  He intended to shoot him through the body but the man was moving and the bullet caught his left arm at the elbow, breaking it.

  “Next time,” Shanaghy covered his miss, “I’ll break the other arm. Now get out of here…all of you.”

  “Mister?” The man with his hands behind him spoke softly, desperately. “Mister, I never begged for anything in my life, but—”

  For the first time Shanaghy realized that the man’s hands were tied behind his back.

  “Leave that man here,” Shanaghy said. “Let go that lead-rope and leave him.”

  “I’ll be damned if I will!” Drako shouted.

  “You’ll be dead if you don’t,” Shanaghy replied. “I was mindin’ my own affairs. You come bargin’ in here an’ you just tried to sweep too many streets all to once. If you want to live long enough to see sundown you’ll get out, and if you come back you’ll deserve what you get.”

  “Oh, we’ll be back, all right!”

  Drako dropped the lead-rope and turned his horse away. “We’ll surely be back!”

  Shanaghy watched them ride away and then he walked over to the bound man and cut his hands loose. “Don’t know what they had you for, chum,” he said, “but that’s a bad lot.”

  The man rubbed his wrists. “You’re new in this country,” he replied grimly. “They was fixin’ to hang me. If you hadn’t been here I’d be dead by now.”

  Shanaghy walked to the tree where he had concealed his blanket-roll and the shotgun, and took them up.

  “My name’s Tom Shanaghy,” he said.

  “Josh Lundy,” the older man said. Then he added, “We got but one horse. No use killin’ him carryin’ double. You ride awhile, then I will.”

  Lundy reached for the bed-roll but stopped abruptly, his eyes on the shotgun. Then slowly he took the roll of blankets and tied it behind the saddle. “You carry a shotgun all the time?” he asked. Something in his tone drew Shanaghy’s attention.

  “No…Why?”

  “Wondered.”

  Yet suddenly Lundy’s manner had changed. The friendliness was gone from his tone and he was somehow cool and remote.

  “You come far?” he asked suddenly.

  “New York.”

  “On a train, you said?”

  “Uh-huh. Railroad bull bounced me off back yonder a ways. I walked for awhile, then saw this stream and followed her to here.”

  “Got you an outfit there. Didn’t figure you fellers in New York carried blanket-rolls
.”

  “We don’t.”

  “You were almighty quick with that gun,” Lundy said. “I never seen a man no quicker.”

  “Fellow taught me. I never used a gun very much. Where I come from it’s knuckle-and-skull, the boots if you go down.”

  Tom Shanaghy was used to walking and he stepped off briskly. He was puzzled by all that had happened and waited for Lundy to explain, which he seemed in no hurry to do. In fact, since seeing the shotgun he had said very little.

  Shanaghy looked around as he walked. As far as he could see there was nothing but grass and sky and the twin ruts of the trail cutting through the grass ahead. Here and there along the road there were sunflowers in bloom.

  He paused suddenly. “Lundy, what in God’s name do they do with all this country? There’s no farms.”

  “Cattle country,” Lundy replied, “grazin’ land. Used to be buffalo.”

  Something moved in the distance, a moment of tawny-red when caught by the sun’s rays, then a flicker of white and they were gone.

  “What was that? Cows?”

  “Antelope,” Lundy said. “There’s a good many of them.”

  “Who they belong to?”

  Lundy glanced at him. “God, I guess you could say. They’re wild.”

  “Can you hunt them?”

  “Uh-huh. Not the best eatin’ though. They’re good enough, but not so good as buffalo or deer meat.” He walked the horse in silence for several minutes and then asked, “What do you aim to do now?”

  “Me? Catch a train back to New York. I piled on that train in a hurry and I was dead tired. I never wanted to get this far away.” He hesitated, suddenly thoughtful. “Say, how far is it to New York, anyway?”

  Lundy shrugged. “You got me. Maybe a thousand miles.”

  Shanaghy pulled up short. “A thousand…? It can’t be!”

  “It is. Maybe more. This here’s Kansas you’re in.” Lundy pointed ahead. “Colorado’s right over there. You must have been really knocked out when you hit that train.”

  “Well…I’d been movin’ a lot. Hadn’t slept much, that’s true. I was dead beat.” He scowled, thinking back. “I woke up now and again but it seems the train was always movin’. One time I looked out and there was nothing but four or five buildings across the street and some riders…I don’t know where that was.”

  “Least, you had you an outfit.”

  Shanaghy offered no reply. He was growing increasingly uneasy. The best thing he could do was get to a station and buy a ticket for New York. There, at least, he knew what was going on.

  “Those lads back yonder,” he said suddenly, “what were they going to hang you for?”

  “I stole a horse. That’s hanging out here. But this one I stole back. Belongs to a girl-kid. That Drako…he wanted the horse.”

  “The girl got the horse now?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Shanaghy looked at the saddle. “That’s a heavy piece there. That saddle, I mean.”

  “Stock saddle. It’s a work saddle. A man handlin’ cattle and rough stock needs a good saddle to work from and this here’s the best. Most cowhands spend most of their lives settin’ in saddles just like this.

  “I seen some of those eastern saddles…like postage stamps. They’re all right for somebody who spends an hour or so in the saddle, but a cowhand is up in the leather sixteen to eighteen hours a day. He’s roping stock from the saddle and needs a pommel where he can either tie fast or take a turn, depending on how he was raised and where he learned his business. A saddle is a cowhand’s work-bench.”

  Lundy pulled up. “ ’Bout time you took a turn, although I ain’t much at walkin’.”

  Shanaghy mounted and settled himself in the strange saddle. It felt good. The seat was natural, and although the stirrups were longer than he was used to he did not take time to shorten them.

  “Town up ahead,” Lundy commented, after awhile. “You keep that gun handy. Drako may be around. That’s a rough crew he runs with and they don’t like anybody messing with them.”

  “What about you?”

  “When we get close to town I’m goin’ to cut an’ run. I’ve got friends there, somebody who’ll lend me a gun. I ain’t huntin’ trouble. You being a stranger…you be right careful. From what I’ve heard they fight with fists back east. Well, out here it’s like in the South. We settle our troubles with guns.”

  Shadows were long when they rode into town. Shanaghy was again in the saddle when they reached the town’s edge and he stepped down. “Here’s your horse, Lundy,” he said. “See you around.”

  “Shanaghy?” Lundy hesitated a moment as if reluctant to speak. “Better keep that shotgun out of sight. Somebody will recognize it.”

  “Recognize it? How?”

  “I don’t know how you come to have it,” Lundy said, “but that shotgun is known by sight in at least twenty towns out here. That shotgun belonged to Marshal Rig Barrett.”

  “I never heard of him.”

  “Well, ever’body out here has. Rig was his own army. When he moved into a place folks knew he was there. He cleaned up towns, outlaw gangs, train robberies, whatever. And he never let anybody even handle one of his guns.”

  “So?”

  Josh Lundy gathered the reins and stepped into the saddle. “Marshal Rig Barrett had a lot of enemies, Shanaghy. He had a lot of friends, too. And they are going to be asking questions and wanting answers.”

  Lundy looked up the dusk-filled street. He wanted to be away, but he stalled. “Shanaghy,” his tone sharpened with irritation, “don’t you see? They’re going to want to know how you came by Rig’s shotgun. They’re going to tell themselves the only way you could lay hands on it would be over Rig’s dead body, and they just aren’t going to believe any eastern pilgrim could kill Rig in a fair fight.”

  “I didn’t kill him. I never so much as saw him.”

  “Who’s going to believe that?”

  “Nobody will have to. I’ll be out of town on the next train. This town will never see hide nor hair of me again.”

  “If they see that shotgun and figure you killed Rig, you’ll never get a chance to leave. They’ll hang you, boy. They’ll give you the rope they planned to use on me.”

  “When’s the next train leave? You know this town.”

  “Nothing out of here in either direction until tomorrow noon, and that one is west-bound. There will be an eastbound train tomorrow evening about nine o’clock.”

  Lundy turned his horse and rode off. When he had gone about fifty feet he called back. “Was I you I’d not wait for that evening train.”

  Tom Shanaghy stood alone in the dusty street and swore, slowly, bitterly. Then he unrolled the blankets, took down the shotgun, and rolled it up again.

  He would get something to eat, then a ticket and a bed.

  Chapter 4

  *

  IT WAS SUPPERTIME in town and the streets were almost empty. Not that there was much to the town, only a row of stores, saloons, gambling joints and a hotel or two facing a dusty street from either side. Here and there were hitching rails and there were boardwalks in front of most of the buildings.

  He walked to what looked like the best hotel and went in. The clerk, a tall young man with a sallow face and hollows over his cheekbones, pushed the ledger toward him. He signed it Thomas Shanaghy, New York, and pushed it back.

  “That will be fifty cents, Mr. Shanaghy. Will you be staying long?”

  “Until the eastbound train tomorrow night,” Shanaghy said.

  He paid for the room with a ten-dollar gold piece and received his change.

  “If you are interested in a little game, Mr. Shanaghy,” the clerk suggested, “there’s one going in the back room right here in the hotel.”

  “Thanks,” Shanaghy had been a shill himself and was not to be taken in. “I never gamble.”

  “No? Then perhaps—”

  “I don’t want a girl, either,” Shanaghy said. “I want something to eat, some r
est, and a New York newspaper if you’ve got one.”

  The clerk did not like him very much. He jerked his thumb toward a door from which there was an occasional rattle of dishes. “You can eat in there.” He indicated the opposite direction. “And there’s a saloon over there. As for a New York newspaper…”

  He shuffled through some newspapers on the desk, all well-read by the looks of them. “I am afraid we haven’t any. Occasionally some drummer leaves one in the lobby, so you might look around.”

  Shanaghy considered that and decided against it. He took his key, listened to the directions of the clerk and took up his blanket-roll and went up the stairs. Chances are there would be nothing about the New York gambling war in the paper anyway, he decided. There were always brawls, gang-fights and killings, and the newspapers reported only a small percentage of them. John Morrissey was a popular figure, of course, but Eben Childers was scarcely known away from the Five Points, the Bowery and a scattering of places in the vicinity of Broadway.

  The room offered little. A window over the street, a bed, a chair, a dressing table with an oval mirror, and on the table beneath the mirror a white bowl and pitcher. There was water in the pitcher. On a rack beside it there was a towel.

  On the floor there was a strip of worn carpet. Shanaghy removed his coat, rolled up his sleeves and bathed his face and hands, then put water on his hair and combed it.

  He studied himself critically. At five-nine he was a shade taller than average, and he was stronger than most, due to the hard work in the smithys. The girls along the Line were always telling him how handsome he was, but that was malarkey. They knew he was a friend of Morrissey’s and the Morrissey name stood for power and influence in the world they knew, so they were always buttering him up. Not that he saw much of them. He had always been on the gambling, roughneck side.

  Brushing his coat with his hands, he put it on and picked up his hat and went down the stairs. The restaurant was open, and he went in, ordered some beef and beans and began to relax.

  The waiter was a portly man with slicked-back hair who wore a candy-striped shirt and sleeve-garters. He filled Shanaghy’s cup and slopped a liberal portion into the saucer.