Lawman

As if in answer, a shot rang out inside the bank building next door, and a heartbeat later, a woman screamed. Then her screams blended with shouting, just as three masked men dashed out of the bank, one of them carrying an obviously full, heavy gunnysack.

Even as Cal tensed to respond, the sheriff came running out of his office opposite the bank, drawing his gun. He aimed, fired, and one of the bandits, the one carrying the gunnysack, went down with a hoarse cry. But then one of his partners fired, even as the other one snatched up the gunnysack, and Cal saw the weathered old face of the sheriff go rigid with agony as he clutched his chest and fell, measuring his length in the dusty street.

Everyone else who had been on the street had taken cover, Cal noted as he took aim over the withers of his horse. Good, then his shot wouldn’t be apt to hit an innocent person. He fired, and his shot dropped the man who had gunned down the sheriff.

Cal hadn’t shot at a man since the first half of the war, but evidently his practice had paid off, he thought grimly as the outlaw fell.

Now the only one alive, the third bandit looked wildly in Cal’s direction before yanking his mount’s reins from the hitching post. He aimed a wild shot that whistled harmlessly past Cal, then vaulted into the saddle, still clutching the gunnysack by its drawstrings, and spurred his horse. “Hyaaah! Giddap!”

The world narrowed to the back of that fleeing outlaw as Cal took aim again. He fired as the horse hit a full gallop, and saw the bloody hole appear in the outlaw’s upper back. The man’s arms flailed wide, dropping the gunnysack. Coins spilled out the loose top and into the dirt. Boneless as a rag doll, the man fell from the saddle, landing with a thud. The horse galloped on.

In the momentary silence that followed, punctuated only by the pounding hoofbeats, Cal was barely aware of the faces plastered at every window as he holstered his gun. It was over. The outlaws were all dead.

A moment later there was an explosion of noise as people shoved and elbowed their way out of the bank, the general store, the saloon and into the street, hollering back and forth to one another about what had just taken place. A couple of men went to the fallen sheriff, turned him gently over, and when they saw there was nothing to be done, closed his eyes. They did likewise for the bandits who had died just outside the bank. But the rest of the townspeople started to clap and cheer.

“That was some shooting, mister!” someone cried ‘ out.

“He can see to shoot better with just one eye than most men can with both a theirs!” Cal heard an excited youth say. The boy ran the few yards to the body of the bandit who had fallen from his horse.

He turned the man over with his foot. “He’s dead, all right! Shot right through the heart!” he called. He ran a few feet back and snatched up the bag, stuffing in the coins that had spilled out. “An’ here’s the money, all safe an sound!”

Cal ignored the praise. Oh, he’d done the right thing. But he had killed two men in little more than the time it had taken to blink twice, and even though one of them had murdered the sheriff, he couldn’t rejoice in the fact that he had taken two human lives. He felt sick inside. He wanted to flee from the sight of the exultant faces he saw around him; he even turned to mount Blue, forgetting all about Livy being inside the doctor’s office. But as he was loosening the gelding’s reins, someone clapped him on the back.

“That was quick thinking, mister, and excellent shooting, like the boy said.”

Cal turned, intending to tell whoever it was to just leave him the hell alone, but before he could get the words out, the prosperously dressed man wearing a handlebar mustache extended his hand.

“James Long, mayor of Gillespie Springs. I’m also the owner of the hotel.” He beamed at Cal.

In spite of himself, Cal found himself returning the handshake, though he couldn’t return his smile. “Cal Devlin.”

“Well, Mr. Devlin, you have the town’s thanks for your quick actions, which saved their hard-earned funds on deposit in the bank.”

“Too bad I wasn’t fast enough to save the sheriff,” Cal muttered. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

“All in good time, sir,” Long persisted, keeping a hand on Cal’s arm. “As you pointed out, the town has been tragically deprived of its peace officer. And I’m repeating myself, but I’m impressed with your quick action and accurate shooting. Might you be interested in the job?”

“I’m no lawman, I’m a minister,” Cal replied.

“Oh?” Long was surprised, of course. “And where is your pulpit, if I may ask?”

“Well…” Cal hesitated, not knowing if the man had heard of the notorious minister in Bryan who had fought for the Union. While he wasn’t exactly reveling in the mayor’s praise, he didn’t want that praise to turn to disgust, either. “I guess you could say I’m not exactly employed as a man of the cloth right now. But—”

“Doing anything else you can’t leave?” interrupted another well-dressed gentleman, who had just joined the mustachioed mayor.

“No, I can’t honestly say that I am.”

“Mr. Devlin, this here is Mr. Robert Gillespie, the bank president,” Long informed him, and the stocky man extended his hand.

So this was the brother of Livy’s late husband, the man who coveted the small farm left to Livy. He wasn’t at all thin, but somehow Cal had the impression that if Robert Gillespie had been an animal, he’d have been a weasel. Maybe it was the utter coldness of his gray eyes.

“Well, Mr. Devlin, I can only add my urgings,” Gillespie said in a rich, cultured voice. “We have a preacher here in Gillespie Springs, and we had a sheriff, but God rest Olin Watts’s soul, we don’t have a sheriff anymore.”

“Now the way I see it,” Long added in his earnest manner, “bein’ a lawman is just as much servin’ the Lord an’ your fellow man as bein’ a minister is. In both jobs, you stand up for what’s right, am I correct?”

Cal couldn’t argue with that. “I reckon so. But surely there’s a better choice than a one-eyed man,” he said, with a gesture toward his eye patch.

Long’s gaze went to the bodies of the three dead bandits, and then he lifted an eyebrow. “Those fellows wouldn’t agree with you, I think.”

“But—”

“By the power vested in me as mayor, I’m offerin’ you the job, son.”

“And I concur,” added Robert Gillespie.

“But you don’t know anything about me. I could be a murderer or a thief myself,” Cal protested. Or a man who served with the Yankees. He particularly wondered if Gillespie would be so hearty in his urgings if he knew that Cal had just aided his sister-in-law. And then he remembered Livy, whom he had left bleeding in the doctor’s office, and suddenly he was anxious to be done with this interview and see about her.

“I don’t have to know anything,” Long insisted. “What I saw was a man who didn’t have any reason to mix himself up in our troubles—you didn’t know the sheriff, you didn’t have any money in this bank, but you did the right thing anyway. In my book that makes you the right man for the job. Say you’ll at least give it a try. You get your quarters above the sheriffs office gratis of course, free dinner every day from the saloon, supper from the hotel, and forty dollars a month, too. It’s a good deal, I’d say.”

Forty dollars a month—not much more than what the average ranch hand earned. Cal eyed the townspeople, who were staring back at him, some smiling, some solemn—but in none of the faces did he see the hatred he had seen in the faces of the folks in Bryan. Of course, none of these people knew what color his uniform had been in the war, or that he had spent the last half of that war fighting for neither side. They might not be so quick to grin at him if they knew.

But in the meantime, until they found out, he could try being sheriff. Maybe before the gossip spread from Bryan, he could do such a good job that it wouldn’t matter which side he had taken in the war. Hadn’t he been looking for something he could do, something he could call his own?

“All right,” he said. ‘I’ll give it a try.”

Several of the onlookers cheered and clapped again. Gillespie bent over the fallen sheriff and unpinned his badge. He handed it to Long, who wiped it with a handkerchief before holding it out to Cal.

Cal took it, breathed deeply and pinned it to his shirt.

The mayor extended his hand again, and Cal shook it, unsmiling, but that didn’t dampen the mayor’s sense of ceremony. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to present the new sheriff of Gillespie Springs, Cal Devlin!”

The cheers and clapping began all over again, and the throng was just rushing toward Cal when, from behind him, someone cleared his throat.

“Mr. Devlin!” the doctor called from his open doorway.

Cal watched as the doctor caught sight of the bodies by the bank, saw his eyes widen as he realized that one of them was the sheriff. Then the sawbones turned back to Cal and Cal knew he had spotted the badge he had just pinned on.

“All dead?”

Cal nodded.

“Hmmph. Heard the shots, but I was busy with— with the lady you brought in. If I could just have a word with you?”

Cal nodded again and, grateful for the doctor’s timely interruption and for the fact that he hadn’t mentioned Olivia’s name, left the townspeople who had just been about to surround him.

He followed the sawbones back into the office, past Ginny Petree, who glared at him, and her children, who stared at him goggle-eyed. No doubt she would spread the news soon enough that just before he became the new sheriff, Cal had carried Olivia Gillespie into the doctor’s office. He wondered what the president of the Gillespie Springs Bank would make of the gossip.

The doctor didn’t take him into the examining room, however, but into a small room adjacent to that.