The Lawmen Read Free

wood. Just beyond was a series of irregularly shaped dunes that on closer inspection turned out to be trash heaps, followed by a cactus- and scrub-covered plain that led up to the hills where the big silver mine lay.
    To the left Clay saw a slight rise dotted with wooden crosses and headboards leaning at all angles. “Boot Hill,” McCarty explained. “We don’t have a regular cemetery yet. We don’t need one—there’s not many here that die from natural causes.” A group of men were moving around the burial place with shovels, and McCarty said, “They’re planting somebody now.”
    Clay looked closer. “No, they’re not. They’re digging somebody up. I don’t know much about the law, but I know that ain’t right.”
    Clay started across the sandy waste toward Boot Hill, with the news hawk McCarty a step behind. They climbed the rise to find four young men opening a grave. The men were passing a whiskey bottle as they worked. One of them looked up as Clay and McCarty approached. He pushed his neighbor’s shoulder. “Cyrus.”
    Cyrus looked up, too. He saw the shield on Clay’s chest and he straightened. “You the marshal?”
    “That’s right,” Clay replied affably. “What’re you boys up to?”
    Cyrus leaned on his shovel, wiping his sweaty brow. “Ol’ Billy Ray Jackson—this here’s his grave—it’s his birthday today. He got hisself shot two days back, and me and the boys allowed as how a man shouldn’t go without a drink on his birthday.”
    “So we’re fixin’ to give him one,” Cyrus’s companion added.
    “He’d of done the same for us,” a third chimed in.
    “It’s all right, ain’t it?” Cyrus asked Clay.
    “Well ...” Clay didn’t know what to say.
    Cyrus went on. “Ol’ Billy Ray, he sure liked a drink.”
    Clay glanced at the amused McCarty. “Go ahead,” he told the men uncertainly.
    “Thankee, Marshal. Thankee for sure.”
    The men shoveled more dirt out of the grave, revealing a cheap wooden casket and unleashing a noticeable aroma. “Lift ’er up,” Cyrus told his friends. “Careful now.”
    The men heaved the casket onto the lip of the grave. “How’d ol’ Billy Ray get shot?” Clay asked.
    “Stagecoach guard done it,” Cyrus replied.
    Clay was surprised. “He was trying to hold up the stage?”
     Cyrus looked embarrassed. “Sort of.”
    “Were you boys helping him?”
    “Well, yes, we was,” one of the other men admitted.
    “It wasn’t our fault,” the third swore, “we was drunk.”
    With their knives, Cyrus and his friends pried off the casket’s lid. They opened the shroud, revealing a peaceful- looking young man with his hands crossed on his chest. The smell grew worse.
    While his companions removed their hats, Cyrus took the whiskey bottle and poured a substantial amount down the dead man’s open mouth. “Happy birthday, partner,” he said. “Happy birthday,” the other three chorused,
    To Clay, McCarty muttered, “We told you this was a tough town.”
    The four outlaws stood misty-eyed beside the grave. Cyrus offered the bottle to Clay. “How ’bout you, Marshal? Want a drink?”
    The thought of drinking from a bottle that had just been in a dead man’s mouth did not appeal to Clay. He was about to decline the offer when there was a commotion behind him. He turned to see a roughly garbed man hurrying toward the cemetery. “Somebody said that new marshal was up here,” the man panted.
    Clay stepped forward. “I’m Marshal Chandler.”
    “Better come along, Marshal. There’s trouble at Tom Anderson’s Place.”
     

 
    3
     
    “What kind of trouble?” Clay asked, as he and McCarty followed the messenger down from Boot Hill, leaving the four outlaws to their birthday celebration.
    “Bull whacker on a whiskey brave,” the messenger replied. In the distance there was a gunshot. “That’ll be him now.”
    The three men hurried across the sandy waste. “Where is Tom Anderson’s?” Clay asked.
    “The Triangle,”