Blood on Mcallister by Matt Chisholm

change. Maybe Mart would stake him.
    So he told Rigby where he was headed, saddled the canelo and set off. He felt good; the run and the fooling around with Billy Gage had made him feel in fine fettle. He envied the contestants in the coming competition. As he rode, he wondered about Gage and still found it hard to believe that he had been the other man in the hotel room. If he had been McAllister was no judge of character.
    He followed the creek north-west as Rigby had directed, rounded the bluff he met at the bend in the creek and saw the lights of the town in front of him. The canelo lifted its feet.
    As he rode in, he found that the streets were lighted after a fashion. They showed him a rapidly growing town. Here was a building half constructed, there one just completed. The place was a patchwork of different types of buildings. Some were of the frame type, one on the outskirts was of the old adobe kind. Here the bank showed new brick walls. He rode down Main, looking for the sheriff’s office and found it. He brought the canelo to a halt, stepped down and hitched the horse.
    When he walked in, Mart Krantz had his chair tilted back, his feet on his desk, a cigar going well and a book in his hands. Mart was a great reader.
    He was an angular hawk of a man with a close-cut unfashionable mustache. His hair was pepper and salt, though he was no more than thirty-five, his mustache was almost white. The things Mart had seen and done were enough to turn a man gray before his time. He looked ineffectual enough, but his eyes gave him away. He was a man with great calm, deadly calm. He was one of the best lawmen McAllister had ever known.
    He looked over the top of his book at the big man in the doorway and said: ‘Wa-al, I’ll be God-damned.’
    Ho got so slowly to his feet that it was not possible tobelieve that he was capable of moving with incredible speed.
    â€˜Howdy, Mart.’
    They met mid-room and shook. The sheriff looked as pleased as he ever did.
    â€˜What brought you into my bailiwick?’ ‘Stayin’ out to Jim Rigby’s.’
    â€˜Take a weight off’n your feet, boy. Drink?’ McAllister nodded and Mart produced a bottle. He poured, they drank.
    They talked. Mostly it was do-you-remember-when and such like. They chuckled a little; Mart seldom laughed outright. They had another drink. Finally, McAllister said: ‘Can you stake me, Mart?’
    â€˜Sure,’ said the sheriff. ‘How much?’
    â€˜Fifty hurt you?’
    â€˜Naw,’ Mart said as if the idea was ridiculous. He would have said the same had it been his last fifty. He went to a safe in the corner of the sparsely furnished room, took some notes out, counted them and brought them to McAllister.
    â€˜Thanks.’ McAllister shoved them away in his pocket. ‘Things quiet around here?’
    â€˜You know how it is, boy. Waitin’ for the cow-crowd to come in. Liven up then.’
    â€˜Know a feller called Harry Shultz?’
    Mart never forgot a name or a face.
    â€˜You mean the one calls himself Billy Gage’s manager?’
    â€˜That’s the one.’
    â€˜Never saw him before in my life.’ He waited for McAllister to tell him why he was interested. Mart never asked a question if waiting would bring him an answer.
    â€˜He tried to roll me in Abbotsville. Hell, he did roll me. Cut me with that little ole knife of his’n. He’d been a mite handier with it, I’d be dead.’
    â€˜Say, ain’t he out to Rigby’s too?’
    â€˜Sure is. He attacked me in the hotel room. The light was pretty bad, so I’m makin’ out I didn’t see him.’ McAllister smiled. ‘It has him real puzzled. Thought you might have a dodger for him.’
    â€˜Where’s he from?’
    McAllister told him what Billy Gage had told him. Mart said: ‘I have a friend in the New York Police Department. I could wire him from Abbotsville. Got a man