Sidewinders#2 Massacre At Whiskey Flats

by William W. Johnstone

  “Well, if you want to schedule a hearing for the prisoners and an inquest for the dead gent in the town meeting hall tomorrow morning, I reckon that would be all right,” Reilly said. “We’ll get it out of the way. No point in waiting.”

  McHale nodded. “I couldn’t agree more. What will the prisoners be charged with?”

  “Uh…” Reilly glanced at Bo, who hoped it wasn’t too obvious that he was trying to remember what he had been told earlier. “Disturbing the peace, I suppose.”

  “Is there a law against firing a gun in the town limits?” Bo asked.

  McHale frowned and shook his head. “Not that I know of.”

  Reilly picked up quickly on the hint, saying, “Maybe that’s something the town council ought to take up at its next meeting. You’ve got to enact some laws around here if you want me and my deputies to enforce them.”

  “That’s an excellent idea. I’ll sure bring it up with the council. For now, I’ll fine those boys as heavy as I can for disturbing the peace. I don’t suppose we can keep them locked up for a while?”

  “Depends on whether or not they pay their fines,” Bo said, speaking from experience. He and Scratch had been locked up more than once facing either a fine or a jail sentence.

  McHale tugged at his close-cropped beard. “I don’t suppose we can make the fines unreasonably heavy. We have to be fair about this, even though our goal is to clean up the town by any means necessary.”

  Reilly slapped him on the back affably and said, “Don’t worry, Mayor. You’ll get the hang of all this. We do things by the book now in Whiskey Flats.”

  Bo managed to keep a straight face at the idea of Reilly saying they were going to do things by the book…but it wasn’t easy.

  A short time later, they were on their way back to the marshal’s office when they ran into Rawhide Abbott. She had cuffed her battered old hat back so that it hung on the back of her neck by the chin strap and let her auburn curls spill freely around her shoulders. Bo thought she looked mighty pretty, and judging by the semi-stunned expression on his face, so did Jake Reilly.

  Reilly snatched his hat off and held it in front of his chest as he said, “Hello, Miss Abbott. It sure is nice to see you again.”

  “Put your hat back on, Marshal,” she told him. “You don’t have to fall all over yourself bein’ polite to me.”

  “A gentleman should always be polite to a lady.”

  “I never claimed to be a lady.” She turned to Bo. “What are you gonna do with those prisoners you’ve got locked up?”

  The fact that she asked him about the prisoners instead of Reilly was a little troubling, Bo thought. Was she starting to suspect that Reilly wasn’t actually calling the shots?

  “We’ll hold them tonight and then have a hearing tomorrow morning,” Bo told her. “Mayor McHale will fine them, and if they pay up, we’ll let them go.”

  “Oh, they’ll pay up,” Rawhide said. “Or rather, Dodge Emerson will.”

  “Who’s Dodge Emerson?” Reilly asked. “I don’t think I’ve heard mention of him until now.”

  “Emerson owns the Royal Flush Saloon, the biggest and best place south of the bridge. He’s got it in his head that if he can get all the business owners down there to work together, they can stop the law from running them out of town. He’ll pay the fines, just to get those roughnecks in debt to him.”

  “We don’t want to close the saloons down or force the men who own them to leave town,” Reilly pointed out. “All Bo and Scratch and I are supposed to do is enforce the law and put a stop to all the killing and thievery.”

  Rawhide shook her head. “You don’t think Jonas McHale will stop at that, do you? He’s like any reformer. He wants anything he doesn’t agree with gone, and he wants the law to do the dirty work for him. Wait and see if I’m not right.”

  “Well, I don’t take orders from McHale, and neither do my deputies,” Reilly responded with a touch of bluster in his voice.

  “Actually, you do,” Rawhide said. “You were hired to enforce the laws the town council passes, and they do pretty much whatever McHale wants them to. So he is your boss.”

  Reilly looked at Bo, who shrugged. It was a fact of life. Even a lawman had to answer to somebody.

  “We’ll just see about that,” Reilly said. “The mayor strikes me as a reasonable man. I’m sure he won’t overstep his boundaries.”

  “He already had the town council appoint him judge,” Rawhide pointed out. “Seems to me that’s grasping pretty tight to power.”

  Bo ran a thumbnail along his jaw as he frowned in thought. “You don’t like the mayor very much, do you?” he ventured.

  Rawhide shrugged. “He and my father were always rivals, I guess you’d say. McHale never had as much say as he wanted around here until after Pa was gone.”

  “He told us nobody else wanted the job of magistrate. Was that true?”

  “Nobody wanted it bad enough to go up against him,” Rawhide said. “And I don’t reckon there is anybody in town who’s qualified to be the judge…unless it’s Harry Winston.”

  “Who’s Harry Winston?” Reilly asked. “There sure are a lot of names to learn in this town.”

  “Harry used to practice law here,” Rawhide explained. “He gave it up a few years ago after his wife was attacked by a bronco Apache who left the reservation and went on a one-man raid and killing spree. Harry came in just as the varmint was…molesting his wife. They fought, and the Apache knocked Harry out. Probably thought he’d killed him. He did kill Mrs. Winston before he took off to look for more victims. I think the hombre wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, and he got his wish when a cavalry patrol caught up to him and shot him to pieces. But that didn’t help Harry…or his wife. After that, Harry sort of went to pieces, too.”

  Bo could understand that. He remembered the depths to which he had fallen following the deaths of his wife and children. Without Scratch’s help, he never would have clawed his way out of that black hole, which was just one more debt Bo owed to his trail partner.

  “Where is this fella now?” Bo asked. “Is he still here in town?”

  “Oh, he’s here, all right,” Rawhide said. She inclined her head. “Come with me. I’ll introduce you.”

  She led Bo and Reilly up the street, and after a minute it became obvious that she was taking them to McHale’s livery stable.

  “Wait a minute,” Reilly said. “You’re supposed to be taking us to see this Winston fella, not the mayor.”

  “He’s here,” Rawhide said as she led them into the big barn’s cool, shadowy interior. As they started down the wide central aisle, a bandy-legged hostler came out to greet them.

  “Howdy, Rawhide,” he said to the young woman with the easy familiarity of one who had known her ever since she was a little girl. Bo suspected that Rawhide had been sort of a mascot for the whole town while she was growing up. “Somethin’ I can do you for?”

  “We’re lookin’ for Harry, Ike.”

  The old-timer’s bushy eyebrows rose in surprise. “Harry? Why, he’s back yonder muckin’ out that last stall on the right. What’n blazes do you want with Harry, Rawhide?”

  “We’ve got a question to ask him,” Rawhide replied. She motioned for Bo and Reilly to follow her.

  They went along the aisle until they reached the final set of stalls. In the one on the right, a tall, sandy-haired scarecrow of a man in ragged work clothes was using a pitchfork to heap up a mound of soiled straw. His hands were dirty, and he had smudges on his face. Bo didn’t want to think about what those dark brown streaks might be.

  At first, the man didn’t realize the visitors were there, but when he became aware of them, he looked up and blinked bleary eyes behind thick, smeared spectacles that perched on his thin nose. He said, “Hello, Miss Rawhide. How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Harry,” she said with an unaccustomed note of tenderness in her voice. “How about you?”

  “Oh, doing fine, doing fine, I suppose. Are you lookin
g for Mayor McHale?”

  “No, actually, Harry, we were looking for you.” She gestured toward Reilly. “This is John Henry Braddock, the new marshal of Whiskey Flats. You may have heard about him.”

  Winston shook his head, confusion evident on his narrow face. “No, ma’am, I’m afraid I haven’t. I don’t pay too much attention to what goes on in town these days. I just do my job. I haven’t done anything wrong, have I?”

  Rawhide smiled. “No, not at all. We just want to talk to you for a minute. This other fella is Bo Creel, one of Marshal Braddock’s deputies.”

  Winston nodded to Bo and Reilly. “I’m pleased to meet you gentlemen. I can’t think of what you’d want to talk to me about, though, if I’m not in any trouble.”

  “No trouble at all, Harry,” Bo assured him. “Miss Abbott tells us that you used to practice law here in town.”

  A slight look of panic appeared in the watery eyes behind the smeared lenses. “Oh, that was…a long time ago. I don’t do that anymore.”

  “But you remember the law, don’t you?” Bo persisted. He had thought at first that Winston was drunk, but then he decided that something else was wrong with the man. He wasn’t quite sure what it was, though.

  “Certainly, I remember the law. I practiced for more than ten years. A man doesn’t forget something like that.”

  “So you’d know how to rule fairly in a court case if, say, you were the judge?”

  “Of course.” Winston smiled sadly. “But I could never be a judge.”

  “Why not?” Rawhide asked.

  “Well…” Winston blinked again. “I…I don’t know why. But I’m sure I couldn’t…”

  “That’s why we’re here, Mr. Winston,” Bo said. “We’d like to know if you’d be interested in assuming the position of magistrate here in Whiskey Flats.”

  Ike, the hostler, let out a low whistle of surprise. “Well, what do you know,” he said. “I never would’a suspicioned that.”

  Winston had to lean on the pitchfork to support himself. There was a faraway look in his eyes and a tremor in his voice as he said, “Me? A judge? Really?”

  “You’re not drunk, are you?” Bo asked sharply. Winston’s words were those of an intelligent, educated man, but there was definitely something wrong with him. Bo had to make sure what it was before they could go on with this conversation.

  With a solemn expression on his narrow face, Winston shook his head and said, “No, sir. I don’t touch liquor.”

  Rawhide leaned closer to Bo and Reilly and said in a low voice, “He keeps a bottle of opium in his pocket that he takes a nip from every now and then.”

  “Opium!” Reilly exclaimed. “And you didn’t figure you needed to tell us about that?”

  “It’s my medicine,” Winston said. “It helps me forget…things.”

  Bo said, “But you don’t want to forget things like the law, do you?”

  “Well…no, I suppose not. But I don’t know how to…remember some things…and not the others…”

  Reilly said to Bo, “This isn’t going to work. You can see for yourself he can’t do it.”

  “Hold on a minute,” Bo urged. To Winston, he said, “Harry…you don’t mind if I call you Harry, do you?”

  Winston shook his head. “Not at all. That’s my name.”

  “Harry, would it be worth it to you to give up your medicine if you could be a judge?” Bo knew that giving up opium would be rough on the man, but it could be done. They might have to find a good sturdy place to lock him up for a few days while it was going on, but if they could do that…

  “What’s going on back here?” a new voice asked. Bo, Reilly, and Rawhide turned to see Jonas McHale coming toward them, a frown on his face. Trailing behind him was Ike. Obviously, the hostler had slipped off to tell his boss about the conversation the three visitors were having with Harry Winston.

  “I’m sorry, Mayor,” Winston said hastily. “I’ll get right back to work.”

  “No, that’s all right, Harry,” McHale told him. “I just want to know what these folks are talking to you about.” He looked at Bo and Reilly. “You can’t be serious about asking him to take over as judge.”

  “According to Mr. Winston, he practiced law for over a decade,” Bo said. “Most places on the frontier, that makes a fella eminently qualified to serve as a judge.”

  “And you said yourself that it wasn’t really proper for one man to be both mayor and magistrate,” Reilly put in. Bo was grateful for that. Reilly might think the idea was loco, too, as McHale clearly did, but at least he was willing to play along with Bo’s plan.

  “Well, yes,” McHale agreed grudgingly. “But I hardly think that Harry is the right man for the job. I mean…look at him.”

  It was true that Harry Winston was about the most unimpressive specimen of humanity that Bo had seen in quite a while, but there was something about him…possibly the intelligence that lurked deep in those bleary eyes, behind the terrible pain of memory and the opium that served to partially deaden it…Bo just had a hunch that he was doing the right thing here, and he had learned over the years that his hunches were correct more often than not.

  “I could do it,” Winston said suddenly. “I think I could anyway.”

  “Are you sure?” Bo asked.

  “I…I…” Doubt appeared in Winston’s eyes and made him look toward the floor, but after a second, he used the pitchfork to steady himself as he straightened, and he looked up and nodded. “I can do it.” He reached into the pocket of his filthy trousers and pulled out a small brown bottle of the sort that came from apothecary shops. He held it out to Bo and went on. “Here. You take my medicine right now before I change my mind.”

  “Loco,” Ike said. “Plumb loco.”

  Bo didn’t think so at all. He took the bottle of opium from Winston and said, “You’re doing the right thing, Harry.”

  McHale shook his head. “You’ll never get the town council to go along with this. And they’ll have to appoint him, you know.”

  Reilly slapped him on the shoulder, operating in his element again. “I think you underestimate your influence, Mayor. Give us a few days and let us work with Harry. If you see that he can do the job after all, I’m sure the council will go along with whatever you recommend.”

  “Well…I suppose I could keep an open mind on the matter…”

  “Of course you can! Even though we haven’t been acquainted for long, I can tell that’s the sort of fellow you are. Fair-minded, and willing to give a man a chance.”

  McHale nodded. “That’s true.” He frowned again as he went on, “But we’re supposed to have a hearing tomorrow about those prisoners who are locked up in the jail, as well as that inquest.”

  “You can go ahead and preside over those,” Bo told him. “It doesn’t matter a whole lot, because according to Rawhide, an hombre named Dodge Emerson is just going to pay their fines anyway.”

  McHale grimaced. “That’s true. Dodge Emerson takes a particular delight at being a thorn in the side of the respectable citizens of Whiskey Flats. So I suppose the hearing is just a formality. The inquest will be, too, since the dead man was killed by a peace officer in the lawful course of his duties.” The mayor nodded. “All right. I’ll handle those matters tomorrow, and then we’ll see what happens with Harry here. I warn you, though…I still think it’s a crazy idea.”

  “Sometimes crazy ideas work out,” Reilly said. He grinned. “Look at me. Who’d have ever thought that a handsome devil like me would turn out to be a marshal?”

  CHAPTER 13

  Scratch’s eyebrows rose as Bo introduced Harry Winston to him. Winston had cleaned up a little at the livery stable’s water trough, but he was still pretty dirty. He didn’t offer to shake hands, just ducked his head in a nod and said, “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Morton. I just hope I can live up to the confidence you and Marshal Braddock and Deputy Creel are showing in me.”

  “Uh-huh,” Scratch said dubiously. He looked at Bo. “This fell
a is gonna be Whiskey Flats’ new judge, eh?”

  “That’s the plan,” Bo said with an emphatic nod. “He’ll be staying here with us for a while before he takes over the court.”

  “You are gonna have the barber bring a tub and some hot water up here, ain’t you?”

  Bo chuckled. “We’ll go down there. Marshal, you mind staying here for a while and keeping an eye on the prisoners?”

  Reilly pulled the chair back from the desk. “Nope. Not as long as you’re back before suppertime.”

  Before the young man could sit down, Scratch took hold of the chair and turned it so that it faced the windows. “You might want to put it like that,” he told Reilly. “Always best to have a wall at your back, as Bill Hickok learned to his regret up in Deadwood a few years back.”

  “Oh.” Reilly glanced nervously at the windows as if bushwhackers were lurking there this very minute. “I see what you mean.”

  Bo and Scratch took Winston and headed down the street to the barbershop. The former lawyer shambled along between the Texans. He licked his lips, and his hands shook a mite. Bo figured Winston was getting thirsty for a swig of his “medicine” along about now.

  The barbershop was run by an affable, muttonchop-whiskered man named McCormick. He was a big man, well over six feet and probably over three hundred pounds, but like a lot of big men, he had a friendly, gentle demeanor to him. He wrinkled his nose as Bo and Scratch came in with Harry Winston.

  “Let me guess,” McCormick said. “You boys want a hot bath for poor Harry here.”

  “How’d you know?” Scratch asked.

  “Ike from the livery stable was already over here, spreading the word about how you intend to make Harry the local judge.” McCormick shook his massive head. “I like you, Harry, always have. You know that. But I ain’t sure you’re up to being a judge.”

  Winston smiled slightly. “Then we’re of one mind, Jerry, because I’m not sure about it either.”