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3
Mid-Morning Break
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"Jess, I can't arrest people for falling in love!" Mort Cory glared at his young friend for even daring to suggest a solution which would in fact work extremely well in terms of keeping the peace, not to mention retaining intact the bodily health of numerous young men. It was just totally out of the question!
His erstwhile deputy was sitting on the edge of his desk, glowering and drumming his heels against the side of it with pent-up irritation. Since he was wearing spurs this was not doing a lot of good to the desk.
"I can't do anything!" Mort repeated crossly. "No-one's broken any law."
This was perfectly true. But he had been pacing the main street all morning, deterring trouble by his mere presence, aided by the occasional jangle of handcuffs. Who would have thought that a simple shopping expedition could result in so much potential violence? He was tired and quite out of his normal calm temper. His well-earned break had been interrupted by the persistent Texan, who had drunk half his coffee and eaten far more than his fair share of biscuit, while proposing this impossible scheme. So Mort was in no mood to put up with Jess's mad idea for the wholesale incarceration of all the male populace under thirty.
"Go home and take Slim with you - or you'll be the ones lining my cells!"
"That ain't fair and you know it, Mort!"
"Jess, you've been spoiling for a fight all week!" Mort pointed out. "And Slim isn't exactly acting like his normal, sensible self either."
"Y' can say that again," Jess agreed, "but only about old Hard Rock. I've been the model of a well behaved citizen." He was quite reasonably aggrieved that his self-control and stoical silence had gone unnoticed.
Mort stared at him, suddenly realising the truth of this assertion. "So how come you're the only one in the vicinity who's not taken to such a charming young lady?"
"Oh, Mort! Not you too!" Jess groaned.
"I'm just saying!" A guilty shade of red suffused Mort's tanned countenance.
"You're just as hopeless as all the rest!" Jess told him coldly. "All your patrollin' this morning was just so you could keep your eyes on her, ain't that so?"
If possible, Mort blushed even harder. He made no reply being, like Slim, essentially truthful, but unwilling to bare his soul to Jess. At least, not on this subject. "I can't see what your objection to her is?" he asked, in an attempt to divert the conversation away from his own feelings.
"Scalps!" Jess said succinctly.
Mort's eyebrows shot up. "Scalps? I'm sure she's never been anywhere more frightening than the circus. She's a fine example of gentle, well-brought up womanhood."
"Oh yeah? Well that's what you see. All I see is a whole load of scalps danglin' from her belt!"
"Nonsense!" Mort tried to sound robust and unconcerned at the same time. "How can an innocent little girl like her possibly be serious about …" he almost balked at the word: "men?"
"She ain't," Jess agreed. "She's just enjoyin' all the attention and everyone runnin' after her. Collectin' proposals like the Sioux collect scalps. There's nothing in it more than that. No real feelings, no idea what she's doin', nothing but a lot of vanity and empty-headed flirtin'."
Mort looked him in amazement. "Since when did you get so picky, Jess Harper? Seems you've been happy enough to run around with plenty of empty-headed women – or so I recall?"
Jess glowered at him and said: "Women, not girls. And not so empty-headed they don't know what they're offerin'!"
"I don't think I want to know about that," Mort told him disapprovingly. "Not if you mean you're just not interested in simple fun."
"That simple fun is settin' half of Laramie at odds with the rest," Jess snapped. "Life's turnin' into one long scrap! All I want to do is make sure Slim doesn't get his head or his heart broken."
"He's old enough and big enough to look after himself," Mort retorted. "And you know he won't thank you for trying to act otherwise."
Jess heaved such a doleful sigh that Mort felt momentarily quite sorry for him. "I've been keepin' my mouth shut as much as I can. And I've been keepin' out of trouble, as you'd well know if y' bothered to pay attention."
"You? Keep out of trouble?" Mort looked as though he had just seen a flight of well-scrubbed pink pigs alight outside his door.
"Yeah, me. Next time y're called out, it ain't gonna be me at the bottom of it!"
Mort was just about to retort that he usually found Jess at the top of whatever fight was going on, when mayhem did indeed erupt outside. Furious yells rang in the air like the opening notes of a symphony, there were reverberating bass crashes denoting attempts to pass through solid doors without opening them first, the tinkle of broken glass formed a soprano line and Mort provided the percussion by grabbing a handful of handcuffs which rattled musically against his rifle.
"Come on!" he snapped.
"What, me?" Jess was wearing his most guileless expression again, just for the sake of getting a rise out of Mort. "I'm the one keepin' out of trouble, remember?"
"You're the one who's supposed to be keeping Slim alive, aren't you?" Mort reminded him.
He didn't need to, because Jess was already out of the door in front of him before he had uttered the last breath of his joking protest.
They looked up the street. And down the street. The entire surface seemed to be a mass of rolling, thumping, struggling bodies – a sight with which Jess, for one, was becoming nauseatingly familiar. Through the dust-cloud thus raised, Mrs. Mulholland and her charming teenage visitor could be seen beating a retreat into the doorway of the hotel. No-one actually seemed to be dead yet, but the fight was fierce enough for some mad fool to resort to gun-play at any moment.
And in that moment, Slim appeared, as Jess had expected, in the alleyway alongside Mort's office, which led to the feed merchant's store.
And in another moment, Jess had launched himself into a flying tackle, bringing his sometime boss to an abrupt halt, flat on his face in the dust.
And in that moment, there were sixty seconds of impotent, speechless fury.
Only sixty seconds.
"Jess, what the hell are you doing!"
Several perfectly obvious replies flitted through Jess's brain, before he settled on the one least likely to incur severe physical retaliation. "Keepin' that man across the street with the shotgun from blowin' your head off!" This was not entirely in keeping with the facts, since the man in question was waving the said gun around quite at random. "No, don't look, you idiot!"
Jess rammed Slim's face firmly into the dust, figuring that, as it had already lost an encounter with a newel post and several stairs, he was unlikely to be doing too obvious additional damage. "I don't care if y' head is solid marble, I ain't figurin' on being splattered with the chippings when he puts a bullet through it."
"Let … me … breathe!" Slim gasped, because Jess, knowing that his partner had the advantage of both weight and height, was not above using underhand tactics to keep him prone. "No! Let me up!" He gave a convulsive heave, struggling to throw Jess off, but the Texan had Slim's arm twisted wrenchingly against his shoulder-blades and for good measure was applying his full weight across the back of Slim's knees.
"Stay put, Rock Head!"
"I need to fight for her! For her honour!" Slim really had got it badly this time.
"Y' need to keep out of it and let them all get arrested for disturbin' the peace. Then you'll have far less competition," Jess told him with indisputable logic.
"You think?"
"I know. Now let's wait for a lull and we'll make a dash for the Livery. The sooner we get home, the sooner Jonesy can start patchin' up your face for Saturday night!"