“Don’t be so impressed,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Don’t you know what the word ‘legend’ means? It’s a myth. Something widely believed in, but just not true.”
Tulley had slept most of the day.
The sheriff had put him on night patrol, and that meant a lot of prowling around, checking doors and alleys. The work was nerve-racking at times but mostly dull. During the day, Tulley slept on a cot in one of the cells at the rear of the office, because Clem over at the livery was put out with him for quitting and wouldn’t let him sleep in his usual corner.
His stint on night patrol started at sundown and he was to keep it up for an hour after the Victory closed. Right now the saloon was open — it was going on eleven P.M. The place had no set closing time, but this time of week, business would be slow. By one A.M., they’d likely close the shutters over them batwing doors and lock up all around. So by two A.M. or so, he could hit the cot in that cell again.
Till tonight, Tulley had been walking on a cloud. A deputy! With his own badge! His own scattergun! And, thanks to Caleb York, the Citizens Committee had agreed to pay him forty dollars a month. The last time he made forty dollars was that silver strike that petered out the second week.
But walking up and down this sandy street made him thirsty. He was dragging. He looked almost longingly at the boardwalk he had so often crawled under to sleep, and sleep it off. It was cool under there in the warm times, and warm in the cool ones. He reckoned a man never had a more cozy resting spot betwixt womb and grave.
And he had traded that snug nest, and the companionship of a good bottle, for a jail cell?
Of course, Caleb York said he’d find Tulley something better. Just give him time. But time was something Caleb York didn’t have — Tulley knew the sheriff was only here for now. That when the robbery matter was wrapped up in a bow, Caleb York and his reputation would get on the stage, and then where would Tulley be?
Would the next sheriff keep him on?
Not likely. Not dang likely. Not damn likely.
His gut was twitching with the want of God’s sweet nectar. His throat ain’t felt this parched since the mule before Daisy up and died on him in the desert. He sat on the boardwalk steps in front of the hardware store and thought about his lot in life, the scattergun across his lap. He might have cried some.
Then got to his feet, shook the feeling off, told that damn thirst to crawl back in its hole, and Deputy Jonathan Tulley strode with pride down the street. Very much on patrol. And he was fine, just fine until he stepped into the pool of light spilling from the Victory.
He crept up to the batwing doors and peeked over, and in.
Hell’s bells but it was dead in there. Hardly a soul. Some men playing poker and that was about all she wrote. The fancy girls was at a table smoking little cee-gars, and looking glum like flowers nobody wanted to pluck. One gal, the beautiful one that ran the place, was at the bar talking to Hub about something. Damn, she was fine to look at, spitting image of her dead sister, only younger and smoother of face.
But that only made Tulley sad again. When had he last been with a woman? Ten year? Twenty year? Twenty, since one he didn’t pay. Ten, since he could afford paying. The thirst was back, raging like a fire in his belly that needed dousing right damn now.
He licked the driest lips in creation and pushed through them doors. He staggered like the drunk he hadn’t been in ages over to the bar and he stood right next to Miss Rita.
He said, “Deputy Tulley. Makin’ my nightly rounds, ma’am. Could ye stand me to a short one?”
She smiled on half her face, making one pretty dimple. “Do you deputies drink on the job?”
“Now and then we does. When the night calls for it.”
“Sure about that, Deputy?”
She smiled wickedly and nodded over her shoulder.
At the poker table, a man in black with his back to Tulley was turning his way.
Sheriff Caleb York.
“Evening, Sheriff,” Tulley said, too loud, grinning like a damn hyena. “Just makin’ my rounds!”
Caleb York shrugged and returned to his game, as if he were saying, Your choice, Deputy. Up to you.
Tulley grinned at the boss lady. “Ma’am, what I mean to request is... have you any saspirilly?”
She did have, and Tulley drank the sarsaparilla down. The stuff had a patent-medicine taste with some licorice and vanilla mixed in. He didn’t mind it none.
When he was finished, Tulley said, very loud, “Well, that was the best dang saspirilly I had me in some time!”
Caleb York, at the poker table, made a noise that Tulley thought might be a grunt or maybe a laugh.
Anyway, Tulley went on back out into the street, to continue his night rounds. While he was there, he checked the alley behind the Victory and, between some garbage barrels, he found a dead man.
On his side, kind of sprawled there, the little weak-chinned character had glasses on that was sitting crooked on his face, his eyes open but blank as a dolly’s, his expression froze in something like surprise or pain or maybe both. Tulley didn’t move the poor feller, but not being at all squeamish got down close to see that the belly of the nice gray vest under a gray jacket was blood-soaked.
But dried. Going black and crusty.
A scorched bullet hole, in the middle of all that dark red.
The deputy couldn’t place him at first. It was dark back here, which didn’t make it no easier. So the deputy flicked a kitchen match with a thumbnail and lit up the contorted face.
“Well, I’ll be danged,” Tulley said to no one who could hear.
It was that clerk from the bank.
That Herbert Upton.
Tulley ran and got the sheriff. After all, he knew right where he was.
Chapter Nine
Caleb York threw in his cards — all he had was a measly pair of deuces, anyway — but did take the time to collect his cash and coin before following his steamed-up deputy out of the Victory.
In the cool evening air, Tulley led York behind the building to the sideways figure on the ground between two garbage barrels, where the sheriff knelt and had a look. Tulley got a kitchen match going, sending flickery orange over the crumpled body.
“Fetch Doc Miller,” York said, still crouched there looking at the corpse.
The doctor’s living quarters were behind his simple waiting room and surgery on the second floor of the three-story bank building.
“Doc might be sleepin’,” Tulley said, waving out the match.
“Wake him. Knock hard and keep knocking.”
The deputy nodded and started off.
“Tulley!”
“Yes, Sheriff?”
“Tell Doc what you found. Tell him who you found. And he can leave his medical bag behind. He already lost this patient.”
“Yes, Sheriff.”
“And, Tulley! Have Doc haul over one of those wicker baskets for bodies. He’ll need your help with it.”
Tulley nodded and ran off, fast as his bandy legs would let him, holding his scattergun high in one hand like a one-man Indian raiding party. If he dropped the thing, more than just Doc Miller would wake up. Whole damn town, maybe.
While he waited for the physician, York made his own diagnosis. Upton had been shot close-up — the powder burns told that tale. That meant the clerk got it from somebody he knew, probably somebody he trusted. The blood on the entry wound, blackened and crusted, meant the killing hadn’t just happened. The larger wound in back, ragged and bloodier, was similarly black and clotted.
Some hours had passed since the trigger on a gun stuck in Upton’s belly had been pulled. Maybe the doc could hazard a guess how many. But York doubted the crime had occurred here in this alley. On a busy night at the Victory, a shot might have got lost in honky-tonk piano and gambling din. On a quiet night like this one, the report of a weapon would have cut right through, and made itself known.