Gunsights - Leonard Elmore John. Страница 15

“I don't know if we can do them in the daylight, but I got some ideas.” She smiled at him and said, “Being married is fun, you know it?”

Moon was getting dressed, buttoning his shirt and looking out the window, when he saw Brendan Early. He said, “Jesus Christ.” Kate came over in her bloomers to look too.

There he was, Moon's best man, walking along the street in a file of jail prisoners carrying shovels and picks, the group dressed in washed-out denim uniforms-the letter “P” stenciled in white on the shirts and pants-being herded along by several armed men on horseback.

“Jesus Christ,” Moon said again, with awe. “What's he done now?”

When Moon found them, the work detail was clearing a drainage ditch about two miles from town, up in the hills back of the mine works. Mounted, he circled and came down from above them to approach Bren Early working with a shovel, in his jail uniform, his new Stetson dirty and sweat-stained. There were four guards with shotguns. The one on the high side, dismounted and sitting about ten yards off in the shade of a cedar stand, heard Moon first and raised his shotgun as he got to his feet.

“Don't come no closer!”

Now Bren Early straightened and was looking this way, leaning on the high end of his shovel. He watched Moon nudging his buckskin down toward them-not knowing Moon's game, so not calling out or saying anything.

“I said don't come no closer!”

This man with the shotgun was the Cochise County Deputy Sheriff for Sweetmary. His name-Moon had learned in town-was R.J. Bruckner. Moon said it now, inquiringly.

“Mr. Bruckner?”

“What do you want?”

There did not appear to be any warmth or cordiality in the man.

He was heavy-set and mean-looking with a big nose and a florid complexion to go with his ugly disposition. Moon would try sounding patient and respectful and see what happened.

He said, “My, it's a hot day to be working, isn't it?”

“You got business with me, state it,” Bruckner said, “or else get your nosey ass out of here.”

My oh my, Moon thought, taking off his hat and resetting it low against the sun, giving himself a little time to adjust and remain calm. The plug of tobacco in his jaw felt dry and he sucked on it a little.

“I wonder if I could have a word with one of your prisoners.”

“God Almighty,” Bruckner said, “get the hell away from here.”

“That good-looking fella there, name of Early. His mama's worried about him,” Moon said, “and sent me out looking.”

“Tell his mama she can visit him at Yuma. That boy's going away for twenty years.”

“Can I ask what he's done?”

“Held up the Benson stage and was caught at it.”

Bren Early, standing in the drainage ditch, was shaking his head slowly, meaning no, he didn't, or just weary of it all.

“Has he been tried already?”

“Hasn't come up yet.”

“Then how do you know he's getting twenty years?”

“It's what I'll recommend to the Circuit Court in Tombstone.”

“Oh,” Moon nodded, showing how agreeable he was. “When is the trial going to be?”

“When I take him down there,” Bruckner said.

“Pretty soon now?”

“When I decide,” Bruckner said, irritated now. “Get the hell away from here 'fore I put you in the ditch with him.”

R.J. Bruckner did not know at that moment-as Moon's hand went to his shirtfront but stopped before going inside the coat-how close he was to being shot.

Back at the Congress Hotel Moon said to his wife, “I have never had the urge like I did right then. It's not good, to be armed and feel like that.”

“But understandable,” Kate said, “What are we gonna do?”

“Stay here another night, if it's all right.”

“Whatever you decide,” his wife said. She loved this man very much, but sometimes his calmness frightened her. She watched him wash and change his shirt and slip on the shoulder holster that held the big Colt's revolver-hidden once his coat was on, but she knew it was there and she knew the man, seeing him again standing at the adobe wall in Sonora.

After supper Mr. and Mrs. Moon sat in rocking chairs on the porch of the Congress Hotel-Kate saying, “This is what you like to do, huh?”-until the Mexican boy came up to them and said in Spanish, “He left.” Moon gave the boy two bits and walked down LaSalle Street to the building with the sign that said DEPUTY SHERIFF-COCHISE COUNTY.

Inside the office he told the assistant deputy on duty he was here to see a prisoner, one Brendan Early and, before the deputy could say anything, laid a five-dollar piece on the man's desk.

“Open your coat,” the deputy said.

Moon handed the man his Colt's, then followed him through a locked door, down an aisle of cells and up a back stairway to a row of cells on the second floor. Moon had never seen a jail this size, able to hold thirty or more prisoners, in a dinky mining town.

“You know why,” Bren Early said, talking to Moon through the bars-the deputy standing back a few paces watching them-“because the son of a bitch is making money off us. The mine company pays him fifty cents a day per man to work on roads and drainage and this horse fart Bruckner puts it in his pocket.”

“You talk to a lawyer?”

“Shit no, not till I go to trial. Listen, there're rummies in here for drunk and disorderly been working months. He thinks I'm a road agent, I could be in here a year before I ever see a courtroom. And then I got to face this other idiot who's gonna point to me and say I tried to rob the stage.”

“Did you?”

“Jesus Christ, I'm telling you, I don't get out of here I'm gonna take my shovel and bust it over that horse fart's head.”

“You're looking pretty good though,” Moon said. “Better'n you did at the wedding trying to drink up all the whiskey.”

Close to the bars Bren Early said, “You gonna get me out of here or I have to do it myself?”

“I have to take my wife home,” Moon said. “Then, after that.”

“After that, what? I'm not gonna last any time in this place. You know it, too.”

“Don't get him mad at you,” Moon said. “Say please and thank you or else keep your mouth shut till I get back.”

“When-goddamn it.”

“You might see it coming,” Moon said, “but I doubt it.”

This jail was hard time with no relief. Chop rocks and clear ditches or sweat to death in that second-floor, tin-roof cell. (The Fourth of July they sat up there listening to fools shooting their guns off in the street, expecting any moment bullets to come flying in the barred windows.) Bren Early could think of reports he'd read describing Confederate prisons, like Belle Isle in the James River and Libby's warehouse in Richmond, where Union soldiers rotted away and died by the thousands. Compared to those places the Sweetmary lockup was a resort hotel. But Bren would put R.J. Bruckner up with any of the sadistic guards he'd read about, including the infamous Captain Wirz of Andersonville.

One day after work Bruckner marched Bren Early down to the basement of the jail and took him into a room that was like a root cellar. Bren hoped for a moment he would be alone with Bruckner, but two other deputies stood by with pick handles while Bruckner questioned him about the stage holdup.

“One of your accomplices, now deceased, was named Pierson. What are the names of the other two?”

They stood with the lantern hanging behind them by the locked door.

“I wasn't part of it, so I don't know,” Bren Early said.

Bruckner stepped forward and hooked a fist into Bren's stomach and Bren hit him hard in the face, jolting him; but that was his only punch before the two deputies stepped in, swinging their pick handles, and beat him to the dirt floor.

Bruckner said, “What's the names of your other two chums?”

Bren said, “I never saw 'em before.”

“Once more,” Bruckner said.