by Paul Bedford
More shooting broke out at the rear of the stables and the young woman finally overcame her fear and tentatively entered the building. She barely escaped being trampled by another panicked animal and then peered around in sheer disbelief. Tongues of flame danced in the rafters above and the burning heat hit her like a wall. The snow on her head was gone in an instant and she couldn’t believe that anyone could survive in such conditions. Then, unbelievably, she caught sight of the huge marshal pounding towards her.
As he stopped next to a wounded horse, a sudden movement caught her attention off to the right. Taw Johnson, with fresh blood coating his left leg, was struggling to get to his feet. Her natural instinct was to rush forward and help him, but something stopped her. The sole remaining outlaw was staring intently at Roy’s marshal. As the mercy shot rang out, Johnson’s right hand dropped to his holster . . . only to find it empty. When tumbling from the hayloft with another gunshot wound, the revolver had leapt from his grasp and ended up mere feet from where Cathy was standing. Blissfully unaware of her presence, the sole remaining scavenger watched as Jared moved rapidly towards him. That man’s features were dripping with a mixture of sweat and water. He was close to collapse from heat exhaustion and so didn’t notice Johnson until they were about three yards apart.
‘You look like a scorched turd, Marshal,’ came the colourful greeting.
Jared came to a shuddering stop and regarded the other man with bewildered surprise.
‘I thought you were a goner for sure,’ he commented.
‘It takes a lot to kill me,’ Taw returned. ‘I take it that poxy man hunter’s finally mustered out.’
Jared nodded wearily. ‘Deader than a wagon tyre.’
The outlaw raised his eyebrows and nodded. The heat was intolerable, but he showed no inclination to move. ‘Then you did good. Real good. That cockchafer’s been haunting me for days. He was something special, in a sick kind of way.’ He paused momentarily. His eyes never left the lawman. ‘Well, I guess I’d better get this leg fixed up and then we’ll be on our way. By we, I mean Cathy and me.’
Having already noticed Johnson’s empty holster, the marshal slowly shook his head. There was far more than just the atrocious weather on his mind.
‘Don’t ask me why, but I only came back here to see if you were still alive. Since you are, you ain’t going anywhere until I find out just who shot Nathan. If he clears you, that’s fine. If not, then you’ll be facing charges.’
Taw smiled, but the apparent good will completely failed to reach his eyes. ‘I kind of thought you might say that.’ So saying, he quickly reached into the folds of his sling and with a flourish produced Jed’s revolver. Cocking it, he levelled it at the lawman and remarked, ‘I’ve seen enough bad men in my time to recognize a good one. So believe me when I say I’ll regret this . . . but not enough not to do it.’
Holding only an empty shotgun and taken completely by surprise, Jared’s sole defence consisted of words. ‘If you gun me down, it’ll be obvious that you did it, because I’m nowhere near Clemens’s body. And in your condition, there’s no way you’d be able to just hightail it out of town.’
Taw shook his head regretfully. ‘Nice try, Marshal, but by morning this place will be just ashes. Your precious citizens will be lucky to even find your belt buckle. Nobody will know who did what.’
From over near the door, a female voice startled them both. ‘I’ll know!’
Both men twitched with surprise, but only one of them was in a position to react. Wincing from the pain in his blood-soaked leg, Taw shuffled to his right, all the while keeping his gun on the lawman. Finally, he was able to observe Cathy with his peripheral vision. His glance took in the cocked revolver in her hand, although he had no idea that it was actually his.
‘Well, well. You’re getting pretty good at sneaking up on people. But you know, the best thing you can do is point that iron somewhere else and leave me to it. Or, come to think of it, you could shoot this law dog yourself. After all, he has just killed your devoted husband!’
Cathy shook her head adamantly. ‘I can’t let you do it. He’s a better man than you’ll ever live to be.’
The outlaw smiled knowingly. ‘Ah, so it’s like that, is it? And not even a tear for poor John Clemens. It seems you’ve got some hard bark on you, Cathy girl, but I don’t think there’s enough to stop me doing what I need to.’
With that, he returned all his attention to the man before him. As his forefinger tightened, he remarked grimly, ‘See you in hell, Marshal!’
As the shot crashed out, Jared’s body jerked uncontrollably. He had steeled himself against the inevitable agony and yet remarkably none came. Instead it was the outlaw who swayed under the punishing impact of a bullet. Taw Johnson stared at him in amazement.
‘I never thought she’d do it,’ he finally managed. His gun hand had wavered and now he made one last supreme effort to get it back on track.
Even as Jared bellowed out, ‘Leave him, Cathy,’ he hurled the empty shotgun at the mortally wounded scavenger and drew his own revolver. Thumbing back the hammer, he fired and then rapidly repeated the action. The two bullets smashed into Johnson’s chest and pitched him backwards. The dying outlaw, torso coated in blood, twitched violently and then lay still. Jared stood over him for a moment, shaking his head. He was suddenly aware that Cathy had joined him.
‘I’m glad his kind don’t all take five bullets to put down,’ he commented. ‘Marshalling is tough enough as it is.’ Then he holstered his Remington and placed a hand on her arm. ‘Thanks for that. Oh, and I’m sorry about your husband, but he really didn’t leave me any choice.’
She gazed up into his eyes and favoured him with a sad smile. ‘I know. He wasn’t an easy man to live with . . . any more than Taw would have been, I suppose. One of these days I might get it right, but for now can we please just get out of here before I burn to death?’
With the sudden release of tension, Jared abruptly realized just how appalling the heat was. Grabbing Timmons’s shotgun, he followed her out of the blazing livery. The ferocious chill almost took their breath away, but for a few moments the blizzard was actually a blessed relief. And quite remarkably there wasn’t a single soul on the street.
‘God damn chickens,’ he shouted over the wind. ‘They all want the law, but when it comes to a shooting, they’re no help at all!’
Keeping the young woman under his lee, he shepherded her over to the saloon. As the two of them burst into the gentle warmth, Jared regarded the assembled citizens scornfully. Tossing the well used sawn-off to one of the startled freighters, he contemptuously remarked, ‘In case you sons of bitches hadn’t noticed, there’s a fire to fight over there!’
Chapter Fourteen
The new day brought with it a bizarre sight in the town of Roy, Montana. The hellish wind had dropped, leaving nearly the whole settlement coated in thick snow. The exception was of course the livery stables, or rather, the vast expanse of smoking ashes that were all that remained of it. Almost the whole population stood around the site, soaking up the tremendous residual heat. It was the first time many of them had been properly warm since the summer.
As Jared and Cathy came out of the eating house after breakfast, he chuckled grimly. ‘Look at them all. They didn’t want to go near the damn place last night. If they’d had anything about them, they could have salvaged some timber for their own stoves.’
Carefully scrutinizing his surroundings as he always did, the lawman noticed that Henry and Kyle Timmons had eschewed the temporary heat source. Having dragged off the snow covered tarpaulin, they were working hard at unloading their wagons. Only once the contents were in McLean’s store would they get paid. The freighters felt his hard stare, but kept their eyes averted.
Jared’s face was red raw and he was sorely tempted to daub it with axle grease. The only thing preventing him was the effect it might have on Cathy. Because the one good feature that had come from the unexpected outbreak of bloody viol
ence was her presence in town. Jared’s problem was that he was unsure how to advance his cause. For all his size and practical abilities, he had never found it easy to interact with the fairer sex. He was about to stumble into an opening gambit when she suddenly made matters a lot easier for him.
‘Why didn’t you want me to finish Taw off?’
With such a subject, the marshal was on firmer ground. Regarding her searchingly, he replied, ‘I’m guessing that you’ve never killed anyone before. It’s a hell of a thing to take a man’s life. It stays with you for a long time. I just wanted to save you from that.’
With no one around to intrude, Cathy turned to face him and gently placed her hands on his shoulders. ‘You’re a good man, Jared Tunstall. I sensed that the first time we met. My problem is that I’ve always got involved with the wrong sort. I just never seem to get it right.’
A surge of hope welled up inside him and he almost did a jig in the slush. Then reality intruded and he came down to earth with a crash. ‘Well, I’ve tried to lead a decent life and probably because of that I haven’t got much to offer. This town doesn’t usually need and certainly doesn’t deserve a good lawman and as the blacksmith, all I’ve got is a shack at the back of the smithy.’
She looked up into his eyes and much to his surprise, favoured him with a delightful laugh. ‘Perhaps you should try your hand at ranching. There just happens to be a small spread up near Chinook that’s very recently had its owner die. It’s called New Haven and it could be the chance for a fresh start for the both of us.’
Jared gazed at her in amazement. ‘You’d take such a risk? You’ve only known me for two days.’
The young woman smiled. ‘Likewise. But by the time we get up there in this weather it’ll seem like a lifetime and if we’ve had enough of each other by then . . . well, this town will still need a blacksmith.’
Unable to contain his pleasure, Jared seized her in a bear hug. The future was definitely looking up. Although tightly enveloped in his arms, Cathy nevertheless managed to add, ‘And there’ll be another consolation if it doesn’t work out, because you’ll also be the owner of a well maintained Sharps rifle!’ With that, she winked at him and he suddenly knew that everything was going to be all right.
