Marshal, you lay a finger on that boy, and you’ll have worse than a broke arm,” I warned him while raising the Greener ready to strike. “If it wasn’t for him, who knows what might have happened, perhaps a dead U.S. Marshal for you to explain.”
He scowled then said, “I don’t want that Mex kid in my office. He doesn’t come in here unless it’s to spend time in one of those cells.” He paused to look at Elfego, then began his little tirade again. “And I don’t reckon it’ll be long before he pays a visit. Now get him out of here!”
I was doing all I could to stay calm, but I was ready to give Marshal Udall a good thump or two. I nodded at Elfego, and he turned to leave. However, he stopped at the entrance to look at Udall. “I won’t come here again, Marshal,” he said, then smiled. “Until the time it becomes my office.”
With that he walked out. I thought that the Marshal was fit to be tied. If I hadn’t been standing there he would have gone after the boy. I waited a few seconds before asking to see Adams, his prisoner.
“What for?” he asked, still in a snarling mood. “This is town business, not federal and I’d ask you to stay out of my affairs.”
He was getting closer and closer to a thump, but I stayed cool. “I just want to ask him about the extortion business he’s involved with.”
“You’re crazy!” barked Udall. “What extortion?”
I tried to stare daggers into him, but he wouldn’t meet my eye. “Marshal, either you don’t know your town very well, or perhaps you’re involved in it…” I let that statement hang watching for his reaction.
There was none, or very little. “Go ahead, ask Adams your questions. He was seeing a federal marshal hassle his friends so he came to help them.”
“Hmmm, that’s mighty interesting. He tell you that, Marshal? He couldn’t even see me inside the store and his friends were still outside trying to gain entrance when the shooting started.” Upon seeing him lying on the cot, smoking, his hat half pulled down over his face. After inhaling and removing the smoke I could see an arrogant look on his face. I turned around to reach for the keys.
When I opened the cell door, he jumped up, his hat flying off to the floor. The arrogance was gone and replaced by fear. “You, you can’t…”
“Can’t what?” I questioned. I slapped the barrel of the Greener into the palm of my left hand. “I just want to ask a few questions.”
He had now gotten up and backed himself into the corner. “You ought not to intimidate a prisoner,” he whimpered.
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Mister. I just want to know who you’re workin’ for.”
He looked down, looked around, looked at my shotgun, looked at the ceiling, even looked for help from Udall, but he never would look directly at me. He finally spoke, but it was so low I couldn’t hear him. “Out of work, don’t work for nobody,” he said in a croaky voice.
I smiled, then imparted a few words of wisdom. “I’m goin’ to visit your friends, an’ if they give me a story different from yours, well, let’s just say it won’t go well for you. I can’t abide liars.”
As I stepped from the cell, he hollered, Anton Knaught, Insurance, Security, and Protection Services. It’s three blocks down, around the corner from the Shady Nook Saloon.”
Remaining at the door to the cell just having closed it, I inquired, “What about Stinson? Who is he?”
He shrugged his shoulders, and had a puzzled look on his face. I tipped my hat with the end of the barrel, “Be seein’ you.”
I walked out hanging the keys back on the hook and on out the door not bothering to look at Udall.
A half block away, Elfego was sitting on a bench in the shade. He didn’t move as I approached him. “Can you show me Anton Knaught’s office?”
He didn’t answer, but looked up at me with a somber face. “Marshal Forrest, you don’t think of me as a little kid, do you?”
It had bothered him when I called him a boy back in the marshal’s office. I sat down on the bench beside him. “No, you’re not a little kid, or a little boy either. You’ve got some growin’ to do, some learnin’ to do, but you handled yourself like a man back in the store,” I said, then frowned at him. “I don’t know how it happened, but one thing I should tell you is that I don’t cotton to anyone takin’ my gun from my holster. Savvy?”
There came upon his face that large grin. “Sorry, but it seemed the thing to do at the time.”