The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard - Elmore Leonard [92]
“Down in Bisbee with my wife and three youngsters,” Scallen told him without smiling, and moved around the table.
There were no grips on the window frame. Standing with his side to the window, facing the man on the bed, he put the heel of his hand on the bottom ledge of the frame and shoved down hard. The window banged shut and with the slam he saw Jim Kidd kicking up off of his back, his body straining to rise without his hands to help. Momentarily, Scallen hesitated and his finger tensed on the trigger. Kidd’s feet were on the floor, his body swinging up and his head down to lunge from the bed. Scallen took one step and brought his knee up hard against Kidd’s face.
The outlaw went back across the bed, his head striking the wall. He lay there with his eyes open looking at Scallen.
“Feel better now, Jim?”
Kidd brought his hands up to his mouth, working the jaw around. “Well, I had to try you out,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d shoot.”
“But you know I will the next time.”
For a few minutes Kidd remained motionless. Then he began to pull himself straight. “I just want to sit up.”
Behind the table Scallen said, “Help yourself.” He watched Kidd stare out the window.
Then, “How much do you make, Marshal?” Kidd asked the question abruptly.
“I don’t think it’s any of your business.”
“What difference does it make?”
Scallen hesitated. “A hundred and fifty a month,” he said, finally, “some expenses, and a dollar bounty for every arrest against a Bisbee ordinance in the town limits.”
Kidd shook his head sympathetically. “And you got a wife and three kids.”
“Well, it’s more than a cowhand makes.”
“But you’re not a cowhand.”
“I’ve worked my share of beef.”
“Forty a month and keep, huh?” Kidd laughed.
“That’s right, forty a month,” Scallen said. He felt awkward. “How much do you make?”
Kidd grinned. When he smiled he looked very young, hardly out of his teens. “Name a month,” he said. “It varies.”
“But you’ve made a lot of money.”
“Enough. I can buy what I want.”
“What are you going to be wanting the next five years?”
“You’re pretty sure we’re going to Yuma.”
“And you’re pretty sure we’re not,” Scallen said. “Well, I’ve got two train passes and a shotgun that says we are. What’ve you got?”
Kidd smiled. “You’ll see.” Then he said right after it, his tone changing, “What made you join the law?”
“The money,” Scallen answered, and felt foolish as he said it. But he went on, “I was working for a spread over by the Pantano Wash when Old Nana broke loose and raised hell up the Santa Rosa Valley. The army was going around in circles, so the Pima County marshal got up a bunch to help out and we tracked Apaches almost all spring. The marshal and I got along fine, so he offered me a deputy job if I wanted it.” He wanted to say that he started for seventy-five and worked up to the one hundred and fifty, but he didn’t.
“And then someday you’ll get to be marshal and make two hundred.”
“Maybe.”
“And then one night a drunk cowhand you’ve never seen will be tearing up somebody’s saloon and you’ll go in to arrest him and he’ll drill you with a lucky shot before you get your gun out.”
“So you’re telling me I’m crazy.”
“If you don’t already know it.”
Scallen took his hand off the shotgun and pulled tobacco and paper from his shirt pocket and began rolling a cigarette. “Have you figured out yet what my price is?”
Kidd looked startled, momentarily, but the grin returned. “No, I haven’t. Maybe you come higher than I thought.”
Scallen scratched a match across the table, lighted the cigarette, then threw it to the floor, between Kidd’s boots. “You don’t have enough money, Jim.”
Kidd shrugged, then reached down for the cigarette. “You’ve treated me pretty good. I just wanted to make it easy on you.”
The sun came into the room after a while. Weakly at first, cold and hazy. Then it warmed and brightened and cast an oblong patch of light between the bed and the table. The morning wore on slowly because there was nothing to do and each man sat restlessly thinking about somewhere else,