Ralph Compton - Bluff City

Clay sought to knee him again but could not move his leg.

“And so it ends,” Bantarro said. He tensed to plunge the knife into Clay’s throat. “Adios.”

Light bathed them in a bright glare and someone demanded, “What the hell is going on here? What are you two doing?”

Startled, Bantarro twisted to see who it was. Clay saw the man clearly over Bantarro’s shoulder.

Deputy Wiggins had come up behind the bandit and stood with a lantern held aloft in one hand and his revolver in the other. Because Bantarro was on top, he did not realize Clay was involved until Bantarro moved. “You!” he blurted, and extended his revolver. “Put your hands up, both of you! You are under arrest.”

Bantarro moved. Quick as thought, he sprang up off Clay and his pistol sprang to his hand. He fanned it, twice.

Dumbfounded, Wiggins staggered. He looked down at the holes in his chest and the dark stains beginning to spread, and he bleated, “I’m not supposed to die.” Then he did, his knees folding under him.

Bantarro pivoted toward Clay. In the split second that took, Clay drew and fired his pearl-handled Colt from flat on his back. He aimed high and scored high. A hole appeared between Bantarro’s bushy brows and the top of his skull exploded in a spray of hat, hair and gore.

Clay was on his feet before the body came to rest next to Wiggins’s. Voices from both ends of the alley warned him he was trapped. Whirling toward the doorway, he took a step, and stopped.

Melanie stood there, staring in mute horror at the dead men.

“Bantarro killed the deputy, not me.”

“Dead people,” Melanie said softly. “Everywhere you go, there are dead people.”

Clay could not linger. The voices at both ends of the alley were louder. “Bantarro was trying to kill me. It’s not my fault.”

“It never is, is it?”

“I have no time for this,” Clay said brusquely, and bounded past her. She snatched at his sleeve, but he shrugged her hand off and ran down the hall. He went past the printing press, the desks and the counter to the front. A glance out the window confirmed the ruckus at the back had drawn the searchers from the street. It was deserted for the moment. He opened the door.

“Wait!” Melanie called.

Clay did no such thing. He turned right and walked fast, but not so fast that it would attract attention, until he had covered half a dozen blocks. Convinced no one had pursued him, he slowed and headed in a roundabout manner for the outskirts of town, toward the apartment and the claybank. So much had happened so quickly that he had not had much time to think about it, but he did now. Something Bantarro said had stuck in his mind, the comment about “the other one” who would “reward” Bantarro for slaying him.

At that time of night the residential neighborhoods lay quiet under the stars. Clay was one of the few abroad. He avoided the few people he encountered by melting into the shadows until they had gone by. When he came within sight of the house, he stopped. He had learned his lesson. He made a complete circuit of the picket fence before he used the rear gate.

Thankfully, the claybank was where he had left it. He hurried into the shed and brought out the bridle, his saddle and the saddle blanket. Thus encumbered, he stepped to the claybank.

“Took you long enough.”

Clay nearly jumped. He turned as the speaker materialized out of a black patch under the porch overhang. “What the blazes are you doing here?”

“Is that any way to greet one of the few friends you have?” Marshal Tom Vale asked.

“How did you know where to find me?”

“I’m the law. It’s my business to know,” Vale said with a forced grin that immediately died. “We need to talk, Adams. Or do you prefer Baine?”

“I answer to both these days.” Clay turned back to the claybank. “Say your piece while I saddle up.”

“You’re leaving?”

“Wouldn’t you? Harve Barker is out to get me. Jesse Stark wants me dead. People are scouring the streets for me.” Clay adjusted the bridle. “I’d say that lighting a shuck is the smart thing to do.”

“It’s not like you to run from a fight,” Marshal Vale said. “Are you sure there’s not another reason?”

“If there is it is mine.”

“Suit yourself. But that’s not why I’m here. I have talked to Melanie. She told me you were not to blame for Wiggins.”

“She did?” Clay asked, his spirits perking.

“Wiggins had his faults. He was lazy and he talked too much, and he never bathed nearly enough. But he always did what I told him and upheld the law as best he could.”

“That’s as good an epitaph as any,” Clay remarked while smoothing the saddle blanket.

“The Mexican who shot him was one of the Stark gang, which puts the blame for Wiggins at Stark’s feet,” Marshal Vale said.

“Bantarro was after me. Your deputy was in the wrong place at the wrong time and it cost him his life. He accidentally saved mine.”

“Then you owe him,” Marshal Vale said.

“I can’t repay a dead man.”

“Maybe you can. Maybe we can help one another and put an end to this once and for all.”

About to throw his saddle on, Clay paused and looked at the lawman. “You have been leading up to something. Get it off your chest so I can be on my way.”

“Fair enough.” Marshal Vale walked up, took a battered tin star from his pocket and pinned it to Clay’s buckskin shirt.

Clay stared at the badge and then at the lawman, and then at the badge again. “What in God’s name is this?”

“They call it a badge.”

“What is it doing on me?”

“Deputies are required to wear them,” Marshal Vale said.

Clay laughed, waited for the lawman to say something, and when Vale just stood there, Clay laughed some more. Still laughing, he swung his saddle onto the claybank and set to work on the cinch.

“Is that all you are going to do? Laugh?”

“Were you kicked in the head by a horse? Or did you down a bottle of coffin varnish before you came here?” Clay snorted and shook his head in amusement. “Making me your deputy won’t work.”

“Give me one good reason.”

Clay faced him. “I can give you a whole passel. What will folks say when they find out you hired Neville Baine, the gun-shark?”

“I am not hiring Neville Baine. I’m hiring Clay Adams, who works at the newspaper but happens to be a fair hand with a six-gun.” Vale held up a hand when Clay went to speak. “I grant you that a lot of people have heard of Baine. I grant that a lot have heard the rumor he is alive and well. But only a few know that Neville Baine and Clay Adams are one and the same.”

“Everyone will know once Melanie writes her account of what happened up in the mountains.”

“She has decided to leave out the part about you being Baine.”

“It’s not like her to leave something like that out,” Clay said. “She believes in telling the whole truth and nothing but the whole truth.”

“Let’s just say she and I had a nice talk and I persuaded her to leave out one or two details.”

“You told her you planned to make me your deputy?”

“The idea came to me when I was standing over poor Wiggins,” Marshal Vale said. “She was there with me.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing at first. Then she sort of smiled and went inside the Courier, and came back out with the story she had been writing. She let me read it. That’s when I asked her not to spill your secret to the whole world.”

“I don’t rightly know what to say,” Clay said. “You have done me the biggest favor anyone ever did me.”

“Say yes to the badge,” Marshal Vale urged.

“Why me? What makes you think I can do a good enough job? You are taking an awful risk.”