Chapter 4 A Remarkable Lie
His fate was sealed when Livy appeared at the jail, wearing her sunbonnet and a dainty pair of white gloves. She gestured to the outside door.
"Davy's outside, marshal. I hope you won't mind if I talk to the prisoner? I brought him a bit of food, too."
"You can go in, Miss Livy," said the marshal, adding, "wonder why you bother with him, though."
Since only Livy and the town marshal were present, and not the deputy, there was no need for pretense between them. Both knew that the man in the cell was not Mike Keene.
In the scorched dress she had mended, she glided through the door to Bret's cell, walking up to the bars. Bret, seeing her, perked up a bit and came to his feet. She had a basket on one arm, reminding him that he hadn't eaten since breakfast, hours earlier.
She spoke low and handed Bret several things through the bars, a couple of sandwiches, wrapped in cloth, and an apple, since the basket itself wouldn't fit. He took it all with thanks, saying, "Have you seen Mike?"
She nodded, glad that the marshal had stayed in his office. "He came after the deputy took you. Almost like he was waiting. His friend came too and I had to feed them. I just got away. Davy and I brought back the wagon you rented."
"Thanks, again," Bret said, meaning it. "Do you know where they went?"
"Ah, into the hills. Mike has an old shack up there. It's where his gang hides out. Once I had to bring some whiskey to him and his friends, so I know where it is."
"How do you stand this life?" Bret asked, with genuine sympathy. "I mean the work and worryin' and all?"
"I get by the best I know how, Bret, though when Mike's gone, it's hard."
"This is what you want?"
Livy's answer was interrupted by the arrival of the deputy marshal, Horatio Darby. One of a pair of orphans in the street, wrestling in and out of the horse trough, had been sent to get him at Axton's behest. He had been at a poker table in the Poker Face Saloon.
"Well, ma'am," Darby asked, "change your story yet? Husband still in Tucson?"
Bret spoke up first. "I had to tell him, Livy, that Mike's around here."
"He surely is," she said lowly. Eyeing Bret, she stood back from the bars a bit. "I'm lookin' at him."
Bret's heart turned a cartwheel. "What do you mean, Livy? You're sayin' I'm Mike Keene?"
"Mike, eat up," she said. "You have a long ride tomorrow. Take Sugar." Almost as an afterthought, she added, "Please be safe."
Bret, mystified at this change of heart in Livy, asked, "What did he do to you? Threaten you or the boy?"
She shook her head, then strode out of the cell block and exited the jail. Davy, on a bench by the door, waited for her with a yo-yo. He loved playing with it. His pa had given it to him on one of his rare visits to the farm.
Davy's face was dark and unreadable, even to his ma. He could sense something wasn't right. Maybe it was the way she took his arm and pulled him off the bench, as if she was in a hurry to go home.
"It's a long walk home, Davy," she said, looking down at him with searching eyes. "I hope you're up to it."
On the way there, pangs of conscience assailed Livy at every step. She had betrayed the only man, besides the farmer Ezra, who had shown her any kindness in ages.
As the jail door closed on her, Bret, inside the cell, had called, "Livy! Come back and tell the truth!" To Darby, he said, "I don't know why she did it," meaning why she lied.
"Eat up, Keene," said the deputy. "I expect you'll need every bite when we get to Cheyenne."
Bret lit upon an idea. "She told me about a shack, deputy. A shack! Keene's gang holes up in it."
Darby shook his head, turning to go, too. He was surprised to see that Axton had slipped out of the jail.
"Listen to me!" Bret begged him. "You've got to ride up there. Catch 'em all. Keene's gang."
"Keene," Darby said, turning back. Sweat plastered his sparse white hair to his forehead. "I don't much like my job. Pay's low. Too low to get shot up by a gang. What they do is fine. I got you." He smirked. "And that's all I came for. I'm retiring on that $500."
"I'll say it to my dyin' day, deputy," which didn't look too far off, "I'm not Keene."
"You're him, for sure now. Didn't she just say so?"
"He's got to her in some way. Maybe it's the boy."
"Where's the proof? She says you're Mike Keene. Axton says so."
"And he's gone to warn Mike Keene!" Bret cried. "You must go stop him."
"Can't. While Axton's out, I gotta stay 'nd guard you."
Bret lit upon another idea, though he had not done so well with the idea of Darby riding alone up to the hills and capturing the whole gang.
"You can ask at the General Store. When I came to get supplies, the man there said I wasn't Mike Keene. If the marshal gets to him, he'll say—"
"Got a bug about that, don't you?" Darby asked, chortling. He took a deep breath for what he was about to say. "Everybody tells somebody to say you're Mike Keene. Can't you just be Mike Keene, and let it go at that?"
"I'm not him!" Bret seethed.
"Don't holler, son. So help me, I don't take kindly to it at all."
"Sorry, deputy." And Bret genuinely was. "It's just I'm thinkin' straight, with all that's happened."
"You want both o' them sandwiches?"
Bret, not feeling particularly hungry, shook his head. "No, you can have one, and the apple, too." He handed the sandwich through the bars. Darby tucked it inside his shirt. Bret held out the apple next. When the deputy had all but taken it, Bret dropped it on the floor outside the cell.
As Darby bent to retrieve it, Bret clobbered him with the heel of his hand. The deputy slipped to his knees, and Bret reached through the bars to slip Darby's gun out of its holster. Now he was armed. Before he had only been desperate.
He gestured for Darby to take a seat on the floor by the wall, under a high, bright window. He didn't dare let Darby go into the outer office to the hook by the door where the keys were. He'd lose the angle to shoot Darby if he got around the corner of the wall.
Instead, sitting on the bunk, he ate the remaining sandwich Livy had brought. Waiting for Axton to show up again, he kept his gun handy and his eye on the deputy.
Darby unwrapped the sandwich Bret had given him and ate it with relish. He knew it was only a matter of time before he had his gun back in its holster again.
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Time hung heavy as the two men waited for the town marshal to reappear. Soon Bret felt drowsy. Darby must have been sleepy, too, because once he finished his sandwich, he dropped off like a rock, snoring.
About an hour later, in the slant of a low sun, Darby woke and looked at his timepiece. Just after six. No going back to sleep now. He sat musing on the nodding prisoner. A youngish man, Bret would likely have sharp reflexes, so Darby didn't try anything. He just waited, too.
Finally, Lem Axton staggered in, the worse for drink. He was less lucky at cards that afternoon than he had been at getting hammered. Yet his one clear-headed deed, before imbibing to excess on Mike's money, was to get word to Mike Keene that Livy had identified Bret Maverick as him.
Dazed, fighting a fantasy horde of bottle flies in front of his eyes, all spurred on by drink, he stared at the cells. He saw the dozing prisoner in his, then, as his watery eyes glissaded over to the deputy on the floor outside Bret's cell, he had a start. The situation wasn't exactly as he had left it.
"Glad you're here, marshal," said Darby, getting up from the floor. "I have to go out and stretch my legs."
Bret woke with a start and waved the gun about. "No one's goin' anywhere," he muttered, stifling a huge yawn. "Marshal, oh, you're back. Get the key."
"Get it for him, marshal, so I can get out of here."
The apprehensive Axton turned about. Too quickly. In his pickled state, he fell against the door jamb, then stumbled to the hook where the keys were. He tottered back into the cell block.
"Unlock the door, marshal," said Bret, "or I'll shoot Darby."
"Do as he says, Axton. A bullet's the last thing I want. A beer first, at least.
Axton fumbled so with the keys that the deputy grabbed them out of his hand and opened the cell door himself.
"Now, both of you," said the prisoner with a short flourish of the gun, "get into that other cell. Move!"
The deputy dragged the soused marshal into the empty cell next to Bret's old one, both men moving back to the far wall. Bret locked them in with the other key on the ring.
"This won't help you, Keene," said Darby, holding the bars in both hands and peering out.
Bret swallowed, hoarse from thirst. "It doesn't have to. By the time you get out, I'll be long gone. And just for the record, my name isn't Keene. It's Maverick. Remember that!" He paused. "Now, each of you take out a handkerchief. That's right. Both of you have one. Now gag each other," he said, a bit breathlessly. He watched the operation proceed. Now you, deputy, and you, marshal, get down on your knees. Pray!"
On their knees for the first time since they were knee-high to a grasshopper, and gagged, the two lawmen were 'fit to be tied' and Bret was ready to vamoose. He backed up to the door of the cell block with the keys in hand. Axton's besotted eyes were full of alarm, as if those keys were a life preserver, and he was a drowning man.
"I'm takin' them, marshal," Bret told him. "Somebody'll be along, I'm sure, to let you out."
He had only gained a little time, but it would have to do. It was a dark, empty street. Even the orphans and their dogs had gone to their straw piles. Across the street from the jail was the livery. He ran over and slipped in. Once inside, he smelled hay and horse. Reassuring.
Waking the stable boy, he hushed him to be quiet. Bret found Sugar, saddled him, and made away into the night, his sharp ears picking up the rousing shrieks of the two men in the cell. He still had the keys to their cell in his hand. Once on the road out of town, near Cemetery Hill, he threw them into a bramble bush, then rode on across the dark prairie.
By running away, he wasn't taking much of a risk. As Bret Maverick, he'd just vanish, and continue his trip to Abilene, Kansas, as before. The deputy would just go on looking for Mike Keene. He might even turn him up someday—but he wouldn't be Bret Maverick ever again.
Bret tried to ride past the turn-off to Livy's farm, but Sugar balked. Bret had to admit that Sugar was right. He had a feeling for Livy that went beyond mere sympathy. Other chords in him had been sounded, so he had to know if she was alright.
Riding up onto the farm, he got off Sugar and led him to drink from the pond, tying him down low to a rock. Then while Sugar grazed and munched his way to the earth, Bret crept closer to the house, hiding here and there in order to watch for signs of the Keene gang. Inside the house, a lamp was till lit. Why was it lit so late!
It might have been a signal to Keene.
"I'm a fool to come back," Bret chided himself. Then, he took the opposite side of the debate. "But it's the first place Darby and a posse will look."
But he had to see Livy. He peeked in the window, saw her asleep in the rocker, and moved to the door. The latch string was still out, signifying that Livy was waiting for someone to appear.
He stepped in and Livy wakened with a start.
"Who—who are you!" she blurted.
"Your husband," said Bret, coldly.
"Bret, it's you. You got away?"
"Yeah, but they'll be on my trail in no time. I just came by, Livy, to see if you were okay."
"You've got to go, Bret. I'm alright, but you've got to go," she said, rising. "I'll put something in a bag for you, but then you've got to clear out of here. Mike'll be by soon."
"What made you do it?" Bret asked. "Finger me as Mike?" Then he looked around. Missing someone, he strode to the boy's room, which was empty. Returning, he said, "Davy?"
"Mike took him to his cabin in the hills," she said, her voice strained and tired. Her eyes were still wet. She'd been crying a while.
Bret experienced a disconcerting mix of curiosity and befuddlement. "Whatever for?"
Wringing her hands, Livy told him everything. "He promised to bring Davy back—if I lied about you." She welled up again. "I had to do it, Bret. Mike said he'd take Davy off to Mexico, teach him the 'ropes,' as he put it. I believed him."
"Was he always this way?"
"Once, he was kind, gentle. Then he turned outlaw to raise money for the farm. He'd come back, farm a little, then go off again. I've had to deal with marshals, sheriffs, and even bounty hunters."
Sympathetic, Bret said, "I'm sure you have."
She set about getting some things for him, then returned, handing him a flour sack-full. "Now you must go." She opened the door again.
He stopped her with his hands on her arms. "Where's the cabin, Livy? It's your only chance to live in peace," Bret urged. "Davy's, too."
Tears sprang to her eyes again. "I can't betray Mike."
Bret looked down at her perplexed face and asked, softer now, "Where is he, Livy? Where's Mike?"
"You're goin' after him?"
"I've got to, though it amazes me how I got into this mess." He chose his next words well. "Someday, one of his men will get a notion to hurt you. Or maybe a bounty hunter will. And Davy—he might join him anyway, not knowin' any better."
Bret firmed up his grip on Livy's arms. She started to take notice, looking at his rather bold eyes and wondering if she could resist. "Tell me where the cabin is," he said.
"You can't fight them all by yourself, Bret."
"I won't. You can help me. The posse will be here soon. Tell 'em where I've gone. That'll be help enough."
"But will you wait? Or go charging in?"
"I've never been in the cavalry," he quipped. "I'll wait till Darby shows up."
She laughed slightly. Bret sized up the situation and bent his head down to Livy's lips. She didn't flinch, or let an old wedding vow stop her. When he let her go, she told him about the shack and where he could find it.
He was gone after that, riding like the wind over the prairie, a dry, brown land by day, but by night, a very silent cave of earth and sky. Millions of stars were reflected in the pond, where Sugar had been nibbling grass earlier. Bret took off the reins from the rock and climbed on.
A charge, like a bolt of lightning, had been lit in him then. He'd find Mike's hideout and observe the comings and goings of the Keene gang. He'd guide the posse to it. Darby would nab Mike and his men.
The misunderstanding of who he was cleared up to Axton's and Darby's satisfaction, Bret Maverick would be again on his way to Abilene, and the poker tables in Shotgun Ben Thompson's Bulls Head Saloon, where an actual bull's head presided over the fun and games in the high-stakes gambling den below.