by Bill Crider
She sat in her bed and listened. The thunder rumbled again, and she knew that the sound of it was what had awakened her. She also knew that she had been sleeping lightly and restlessly before the thunder ever began.
She got out of the bed and tried to straighten the twisted sheets. Her cotton gown was damp with sweat. She would not be able to go back to sleep for a while.
She walked in the pitch darkness to a small table and found a match. She scratched it on the underside of the table, and there was a sharp spurt of flame. She lit the lamp that sat on the table, then went to sit in the wooden rocker near her bed.
It was Ryan's fault that she couldn't sleep.
She kicked her foot against the floor and set the rocker in motion. After she had returned to town that night, leaving Ryan to whatever Kane and his men had in mind for him, she had gone to bed and slept soundly. She had told herself that she had done the right thing, taken the necessary step to gain her independence, and that she shouldn't be troubled by it.
She hadn't been, not then. But later, when she saw what Kane was doing to Sally Ryan and when Ryan himself didn't return, she found herself dreading nightfall. She had spent more than one night in the rocker, watching the shadows that the wavering light of the lamp threw on the wall.
Gradually, she had gotten over her restlessness and sleeplessness. For the last year, she had been sleeping quite soundly, or at least up until the time of Sally Ryan's murder. That event had cost her a few nights, but once again she had settled down and convinced herself that it was none of her doing and none of her business.
Now Ryan was back, and she was in the rocker. The way he looked—the scar on his face, the stiffness of his back, the way he held his arm in front of him—she shook her head. There was no way she could deny responsibility, though he had never accused her, never even mentioned the cause of what she could so plainly see must be the result of considerable physical suffering.
Of course that was the kind of man he was. He held no bitterness in him, never had; but he had possessed a sense of justice that at first she thought must now be missing.
It was still there, however. She had seen it in his face that morning, and she knew that he would do what he could about Billy Kane.
She wondered why she cared about Billy. After what his brother had done to her—mustn't think about that, she warned herself; mustn't think of the way this cafe came to be mine—why should she worry about what happened to Billy? She hardly even knew him. But she told herself that she knew enough about him to know that he wouldn't kill anyone, and that he shouldn't die for no reason at all. Unless being Kane's brother was reason enough.
Billy Kane wasn't the real problem, and she knew it. Neither was her sense of justice.
It was Ryan.
Seeing him again, talking to him, she realized that whatever she had felt for him in the first place was still there. Somehow she felt a great contempt for herself. Ryan would never have made her dependent on him. He would have allowed her whatever freedom she wanted. Why hadn't she realized that before?
She rocked and listened to the thunder, sounding hushed and far away.
It was too late to worry about her life with Ryan now. Whatever chance there had been had died that night at Shatter's Grove.
Kane snapped the reins and the horses picked up their pace. He didn't know how far behind he had gotten, and he wanted to get to Ryan's shack. He was afraid that his men might not be able to restrain themselves once they got their hands on Ryan. It would be a shame not to get there in time.
Almost as soon as he turned off on the road leading to the shack, he heard a horse coming in his direction. He stopped the wagon and waited.
The horse came to a halt only a few feet in front of him, but he couldn't see who was riding it. It was too dark. "Who's there?" he said.
"McGee."
"What's the trouble, McGee? By God, you better not tell me that Ryan got away!"
"I don't know what to tell you, then," McGee said. He could imagine Kane's face, red and twisted. He was just as glad he couldn't see it.
"What happened, goddammit? Who let him escape?”
“Nobody," McGee said.
"Nobody?" The anger in Kane's voice gave way to puzzlement.
"Nobody," McGee repeated. "He wasn't there in the first place. No one's there. The place is empty."
Chapter Ten
The streets of Tularosa were deserted. Faint flashes of lightning gave the only light. If anyone had heard about the possibility of an escape by Billy Kane, no one seemed to care. Everyone who could get inside had already gone in; the visitors to town who had no place to stay had set up tents or were sleeping under their wagons. There was no one out and about, not even a stray dog.
No one, that is, except for Ryan, who sat on his horse watching the jail, which looked like a solid block of darkness distinguishable from its surroundings only by the light in its window. The light outlined the windows in neat squares, but it was faint and dim. Ryan supposed that Bass had lit only one lamp.
Ryan had been watching the jail since nightfall, concealing himself behind the dilapidated walls of what had once been Tularosa's only bathhouse. The owner had long since gone broke and departed, leaving behind his building, which soon fell into disrepair. It was the closest building to the jail, and on the opposite side of the street, so it gave Ryan a good vantage point. It was so dark that he knew no one could see him, and his only worry was that he might not be able to see Kane and his men when and if they did indeed attack the jail.
He had still not made up his mind about what to do, even though he was there. If he stopped Kane, the hanging would go on as scheduled, and Billy would die. It seemed that his only other choice would be to assure Billy's escape, but that might involve harming Bass or his deputies.
Life had been much simpler for the past three years than it was now, and Ryan momentarily regretted ever returning to Tularosa. Things had been much simpler when he was with the old man. There was nothing to life except sleeping and healing, a slow, inexorable rhythm, so that one hardly even noticed the passage of time.
That stage of his life had ended early one night when the curandero had awakened him by gently nudging his shoulder. It was clear to Ryan almost instantly that the old man was leaving. By now they understood one another fairly well, even without words.
The old man put his hands on Ryan's shoulders and spoke quietly to him for almost a minute. Ryan didn't understand much of it, but he understood the last word. Adios.
The old man smiled in the darkness, and Ryan smiled with him. He didn't know why the Indian had to go, but he understood that it was necessary.
The old man turned, and Ryan watched him walk away. There had been no moon that night, either, and the old man in his black clothing was soon absorbed into the darkness. He was walking very slowly when he disappeared.
After he was gone, Ryan felt a powerful sense of loss. He felt it more strongly than he had when he realized what must have happened to his land. The old man had been a true friend, even though they had never had a real talk, even though they knew nothing about each other.
But that wasn't true. They knew each other in a way that very few people did, with that special relationship between the healer and the healed. Without the Indian, Ryan would have died.
Because of him, he had lived, and he knew that the old man would not have left him had he not thought that it was time. Ryan could take care of himself now. His body had knit itself back together as well as it ever would.
He still wore the brace, and his left arm still hung pretty much immobile, but it was clear that neither his back nor his arm would ever improve much beyond the way they were now.
He began to do more walking, leaving his lean-to and covering the area in a circle around it, making the circle bigger each day. He used the pistol to get his food now, and he cooked it for himself. Even the rabbits didn't taste as good as when the old man had fixed them.
Finally, he began to roam for
miles in one direction or the other, in more or less a straight line. When he recognized the signs of a town in the area, he retreated to his lean-to, but after a week of considering it, he decided it was time.
He knew that he could lose himself in a town as well as he could lose himself anywhere, and that was what he did. He got a job working cattle, kept to himself, made no friends, had as little contact with others as possible. No one cared, as long as he did his job and kept out of trouble. It wasn't easy, working with one hand, but he managed to adjust. He might have gone on that way forever if he hadn't happened to see the article about Billy Kane in a newspaper that someone had brought to town and left lying around in a barbershop.
When he read the article, he knew that it was time to go home, and whatever regret he felt, sitting there at well past midnight watching the dark and silent jail, he knew would pass. His body had healed as much as possible, but it was his spirit that needed healing now. He thought that process had at last begun.
As he watched a faraway lightning flash, he hoped that he was right.
"That bastard Ryan could be anywhere around here," Barson said. He, Long, and McGee were riding ahead of Kane's wagon, circling the long way around to the jail. Though McGee was listening, Barson's remark was clearly addressed to Long.
"Don't worry," Long said. "We'll get him."
To McGee, they seemed overly concerned. Ryan had been in town for more than a day, and he had made no move to hurt them. He hadn't even tried to see them. It seemed to McGee that a man bent on revenge would do something right off, not wait around about it.
"Maybe he's not interested in us," McGee said. "Maybe he just came back because this is where he lives."
"Not anymore, he don't," Barson said. He rode his horse close to McGee, who could smell both the horse and the man. The horse smelled better. "He don't belong around here at all," Barson went on. "He's just trouble."
"If he don't bother us, he's not," McGee said. The less he had to do with Ryan, the better. He'd lost all the fingers he wanted to lose.
"Just his bein' around bothers us," Long said. "If Billy just shot him the first time like he ought to, we wouldn't be here right now."
"Billy'd still be in jail," McGee said. "And we'd still be breakin' him out."
"Maybe so," Barson said. "But we wouldn't be worryin' about that bastard Ryan and what he might do."
McGee didn't say anything, and the conversation stopped. They rode to within a mile of the jail and halted. The wagon caught up with them.
The thunder and lightning had moved closer. It was Kane's plan to wait until the small hours of the morning, when he thought Bass and the deputies would be asleep, or at least not very alert. He didn't like the idea of the storm. It might keep them awake. It would certainly make them nervous.
"We may as well go on in," Kane said. "The rain might work against us when it comes."
"What about Billy?" Long said. "He got any idea about what we're gonna do?"
"Not unless you told him," Kane said. "I haven't been allowed into the cells very often."
Neither had Long, or anyone else.
"You mean, we're just gonna blow up the jail and hope he gets away?" Barson said.
"That's about it," Kane said.
"What if we kill him?" Long wondered.
"We won't. And if we do, it's no more than will happen to him in the morning, anyway. Let's just hope that he has the presence of mind to take advantage of the situation we present him with. If he does, then things will be fine. If not, well . . ." Kane let his voice trail off. He didn't have too much faith in his younger brother's ability to do anything, much less to think fast in a crisis. But it was the best plan he had been able to devise. There was no way he was going to ride into town with his men, guns blazing. He maintained at least the facade of a respectable landowner, and he was going to do nothing to damage that facade. Whatever he did would be done in secrecy and under the cover of darkness. He wanted no one to see him or his men.
"Well, we'll do what we can, then," Long said. "I just hope you ain't thinkin' of puttin' the blame on us if this don't work out exactly right."
"I'm not," Kane said.
"Well then, let's do it," Barson said. He rode up beside the wagon and uncovered the dynamite. "I know what my job is."
"Long?" Kane said.
"I'm ready."
"McGee?"
"Yessir. I'm ready."
"Then do it," Kane said.
The plan was simple. Barson was going to dynamite the back wall of the jail. Whichever law officer was guarding the cell would be stunned by the explosion, or so Kane hoped. Billy might be stunned as well, probably would, but they would pull him out of the wreckage, toss him in the wagon, and be off with him before the other lawmen recovered from their initial shock. If anyone did happen to recover too soon and put up a fight, then he would simply be killed.
Kane hoped to avoid killing. It was going to be difficult enough to keep Billy in hiding and stay out of jail himself without adding in the death of a lawman, but he would kill if he had to. No Kane was going to hang for the death of a whore like the Ryan woman.
Barson removed the dynamite from the wooden box under its heavy tarpaulin cover in the wagon-bed. "These things have got a short fuse," he said. "You boys just wait for me over here somewhere. I'll get back before they blow. "
He rode off and was swallowed by the night. The others watched the black rectangle of the jail, with the flickering light in its windows.
Ryan was watching, too, but he had chosen the best cover and the place that provided him with a sight of most of the jail, not all of it. He could not see the back, and the night was so dark that he could not see Kane and the others where they waited.
As he watched, the wind picked up, getting cooler and stronger. He knew that they were in for a real summer storm, the kind that sometimes came to the edge of West Texas in the summertime, dumping inches of rain in a short amount of time, swelling the few creeks out over their banks and turning the hard, dry dirt into thick mud. Such storms were rare, but Ryan had seen them before. The smell of rain was stronger now, and the bay horse sniffed the air and snorted, shifting its weight around.
Barson wasn't worried about the rain. He had ridden as close to the jail as he dared and gotten off his horse, walking the remaining yards. He put the dynamite sticks at the base of the wall and lit the fuse.
He didn't wait to see if the guard had heard the scratching of the match. He took off toward his horse at a shambling run, not looking back, hurled himself awkwardly into the saddle, and spurred the horse up. It responded, scuffing hard chunks of dirt up with its shoes.
Barson was not quite back to Kane's wagon when the explosion came. It lit up the whole area, and Barson could see Long and McGee silhouetted on their mounts against the black sky. The noise was louder than the loudest thunder.
No one needed orders after that. They all rode hard for the jail, Long and McGee passing Barson as he turned his horse around. Kane rumbled along behind in the wagon, but he would not get too close. The others pulled their handkerchiefs over their faces as they rode, not that they would fool anyone.
Ryan heard the explosion and saw the flare of light, and though he had not been expecting it, he put his horse in motion instantly. He had a pretty good idea of what had happened.
He reached the jail moments before Kane's men. It looked as if the entire back wall was gone, the sun-dried brick blown inward and outward and upward in all directions.
Two men were staggering around in the rubble. One of them looked like Meadows. The other one was probably Billy Kane.
As Ryan arrived, the door from the office was opened, and Ryan could see someone outlined in it by the lamplight. It was Bass, holding a shotgun.
Long was riding hard for the jail when he saw the dark figure of Ryan on horseback. He didn't know who it was, but he knew it was someone who didn't fit into their plans. He drew his pistol and opened fire.
It is very difficul
t to fire accurately from the back of a running horse; Long didn't come anywhere near Ryan with his shots, but one of them struck Meadows, who tumbled backward into the loose bricks that lined the cell area.
Bass loosed a shotgun blast in the direction of whoever was out there. Ryan felt the wind of the shot as it whooshed by.
Higby ran around the outside corner of the jail with another shotgun.
Barson and McGee both fired at him with their pistols, and he ducked back out of sight.
Bass blasted away with the other barrel, then slammed the door to reload.
Ryan had no choice except to hold his reins and leave his gun alone. A one-armed man is at a real disadvantage in a gunfight on horseback. Barson and the others were firing at him now, the muzzle flashes from their pistols lighting up the night.
Ryan had to make a quick decision before Bass or Higby came back with shotgun fire. He was caught between the opposing forces, and he had not yet even made up his own mind about what his position was. He had to do something, even if it was wrong.
He rode the bay up next to Billy Kane. "Hang on," he said.
Billy looked at him vaguely. He might have been deafened by the explosion.
"Hang on!" Ryan yelled.
Billy seemed to get the message. He reached up and gripped the back of Ryan's saddle.
Ryan switched the reins to his useless left hand so they wouldn't fall and helped Billy with his right.
Billy swung up behind him.
The horses were all milling around, everyone in confusion. "It's Ryan!" Barson yelled. "Shoot him!"
