by Jack Martin
‘Well what have we here?’ Sam Bowden jumped of his bunk and stood by the bars of the cell as soon as he saw them enter. ‘Is this pretty thing another deputy? Old men and young women. I admire your style, Masters.’
‘I’ve heard enough from you,’ Cole said and tossed the contents of a vase of water at the jailed man. The water slapped the prisoner in the face and he cursed as he sprung backwards. He wiped his face on his sleeve and glared long and hard at the sheriff
Jessie looked troubled and Cole, recognizing this, drew the curtain to partition the office from the cells. He went to her and held her tightly, feeling the warmth of her body against his, the softness of her womanhood evident even beneath the layers of clothing she wore.
‘Let him go, Cole,’ she said.
Cole broke the embrace. He looked at her for a moment and then shook his head. ‘You know I can’t do that. He’s got to face the judge. I’ve got to make sure he faces justice.’
‘Is this all worth dying for?’
‘He killed someone, you know that. I’m the sheriff of this town and it’s my duty.’
‘Duty,’ she almost spat the word as if it left a distasteful taste in her mouth. ‘While the rest of the town cower away and let you face the Bowdens alone. That’s a misplaced duty. That’s suicide.’
‘It’s besides the point.’ He went to his desk and picked up his still smoldering pipe and sucked the bit between his teeth.
‘Release him into his father’s custody,’ Jessie half pleaded. ‘He’ll still face the judge.’
‘No,’ Cole said, firmly. ‘He stays here and sees no one. I’ve no doubt his father’ll bring in some hotshot lawyer from back east and get him acquitted in any case.’
‘There you are then.’ She went to the window and peered outside but the street was quiet, too quiet. It seemed the entire township were expecting the arrival of old man Bowden and his cowboys and were hiding away. Cowards. The lot of them; stinking cowards. ‘It’s just not worth it. This town’s just not worth it.’
‘No,’ Cole said. ‘You’re wrong. It’s worth it if this town’s ever to be a safe place to live, to raise a family. And I’m going to make sure of that. Sam Bowden’s gonna answer to the law for his crimes. That’s all there is to it.’
‘You’re a stubborn fool, Cole Masters.’ It was infuriating the way he stuck to his ideals no matter what but, she supposed, that was what made him the man he was. The man she loved. It was no use arguing further, her pleas would fall onto deaf ears. She knew Cole Masters well enough to recognize that.
‘Maybe.’ Cole crossed the room and took a glance through the door. Em was still there, sat on the boardwalk, keeping sentry but the street was quiet. Perhaps Bowden would not come, would let his son take his medicine for a change. But deep down Cole knew that was about as likely as snow in July.
‘You’ve got to go now,’ Cole said, firmly and smiled at her.
She nodded, resigned.
Cole took her arm and led her towards the door. ‘I know what I’m doing. I’ll be fine. You just go home and wait for me.’
For a moment it looked as if she would protest further but then she smiled, warmly and nodded. ‘Be careful.’ She kissed him gently and whispered: ‘I love you.’
They were about to leave when Em came through the door like a loco bull with the sunstroke. His eyes were bulging and spittle flew from his lips as he yelled excitedly: ‘Bowden’s here.’
Chapter Three
‘We’re looking to talk with you, Masters,’ Clem Bowden said and stood in the centre of Main Street, his ranch foreman at his side. He was clutching a Winchester while his man stood beside him, wearing a pair of pearl handled Colts. There were another two men, both armed with rifles, a few feet behind them. The other men had scattered to strategic points of the street.
Cole cursed beneath his breath and looked first at the old man and then at Jessie. ‘You two stay here.’ He took his rifle, an aged Spencer from its hook upon the wall and stepped outside.
‘Then talk,’ Cole replied, feeling a slight tremor in his voice and hoping it wasn’t audible to Bowden and his men. He felt his finger tensing on the trigger of his rifle and took several deep breaths, willing himself to relax. He stepped down from the boardwalk and onto the street He glanced back at the jailhouse to make sure Jessie and the old man had not followed, they hadn’t, and then stared at Clem Bowden.
‘I want you to release my son,’ Clem said.
‘I can’t do that,’ Cole replied. ‘It’s a little more serious than shooting up the town this time. Your son killed someone.’
Clem looked down at the ground and shook his head. ‘I hear it was only a whore,’ he said. ‘And besides any witnesses my boy did it?’
‘No,’ Cole scanned the street. Bowden had men everywhere and there were at least six rifles on him that he was aware of. ‘No witnesses.’
‘Then what makes you certain my boy did it?’
‘Don’t know anyone else who’d take pleasure is cutting up a defenseless woman.’
That seemed to anger Clem. ‘Woman,’ he roared. ‘It weren’t no woman. This was a whore. Just because God gave her titties don’t make her no woman.’
‘She was a woman, sure enough.’ Cole stood his ground, feeling the evil eye of each and every weapon trained on him. He bit his lower lip to quell his nerves and prayed that the anguish he was feeling was not visible. He muscles ached and felt as heavy as lead. He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to shoot if the need arose and suddenly the enormity of the danger facing him sent his stomach into spasms.
‘My son will face trial,’ Clem Bowden said, firmly. ‘But until that day comes I’ll see him released into my custody.’
‘No,’ Cole said, spitting the words out of a dry mouth. The whiskey he’d drunk earlier left a sour taste in the back of his throat and he coughed, almost hearing fingers tense on triggers as he did so. ‘I’m the law in this town and I say he stays under lock and key.’
‘We’ll we’re going to take him,’ Clem said and nodded to his ranch foreman besides him. ‘You going to stop us?’
Clem took a step forward and then Cole sensed movement behind him and he turned to see both Jessie and old man Tanner standing on the boardwalk outside the jailhouse.
There was one of Bowden’s gunmen to either side of Jessie and Em and both suddenly trained their weapons on them, one apiece.
‘Shit,’ Cole said.
Clem and his ranch foreman kept their steady pace and were now almost level with Cole. They didn’t alter their course but kept coming with measured, purposeful strides.
Clem Bowden made eye contact with Cole and the beginning of a small smile appeared at the corners of his mouth.
Cole tried to keep his panic under control but it wasn’t easy and he felt beads of sweat being squeezed out of his forehead.
‘That’s good, Sheriff,’ Clem said as they approached him. They were now only a few feet away. ‘You can’t stop us so don’t bother trying. Let’s do this nice and peaceable.’
Cole wanted to call him a son of a bitch. Wanted to draw his weapon and face Hell itself. As long as he took that smug bastard Bowden to the grave with him it wouldn’t have been in vain.
He would have too if it were not for Jessie and Em behind him. If he fired then they would certainly get it, either by design or in the crossfire. Cole guessed the former would be the most likely.
‘I’m just going to take your weapons from you, ‘Bowden said. ‘Don’t get all jumpy and start a war you can’t possibly win.’
Cole narrowed his eyes and bit down even further on his lip so that he tasted blood. He glanced again at Jessie and the old man and then bowed his head while Clem’s hand reached out and took the rifle from his hands, which he in turn handed to his foreman.
‘Good, good,’ Clem said and then ever so slowly slid Cole’s six shooters from their holsters.
‘Very wise,’ Clem Bowden said, turning the guns over and over in his hand while he bal
anced his own Winchester against his hip. He tossed Cole’s Colts onto the ground several feet away. ‘The keys to release my son.’
He held out a hand.
‘Top drawer of my desk,’ Cole said. He had to resist the urge to reach out and strangle all life from the man’s scrawny neck. ‘And take this while you’re at it.’ He pulled his badge from his shirt and slapped it down into Clem’s hand. He had failed in his duty and didn’t deserve the badge of office. He stood there, head bowed, feeling more shame than fear.
‘You retiring?’ Clem asked and tossed the badge in his hand, as if testing its weight. ‘Can’t say I blame you none. The people of this town sure enough don’t want to back you up. Seems foolish to put your life on the line for them.’
‘Just do what you will,’ Cole snarled, each and every syllable dripping with a thick gravy of contempt but he knew Clem was making sense. If only one or two of the town’s men had stood up and joined the fight then maybe he could have handled the situation. Bowden wouldn’t have been so keen to push if he’d faced several guns rather than a lone lawman.
To Hell with the town.
‘No one gives a damn for one more dead whore. There’s plenty more just waiting to take her place,’ Clem said and brought the butt of his rifle twisting into Cole’s stomach with sudden force, driving the wind from him in a roar.
Cole doubled up and the other man, Bowden’s foreman, hit him squarely in the side of his head with the butt of the Spencer and brought up a knee into his jaw with a sickening thud. It felt like there was a tornado inside Cole’s head and his legs buckled beneath him.
Jessie screamed as she saw him fall to the ground but it sounded faint and distant to Cole like something deep within a dream. He tried to lift himself from the dirt but his limbs refused to work and a paralyzing pain ran the length of his body, sending red-hot pin pricks into the deepest recesses of his soul. He coughed, spluttered, and again tried to lift himself but he had no strength and he didn’t even whimper as he felt another boot being driven into his side.
Mercifully blackness overtook him quickly and everything else ceased to matter. The very air around him became treacle and he could feel himself drifting about in a thick haze.
Cole tried to speak, couldn’t.
Then…nothing.
Chapter Four
The slightest movement caused extreme pain but Cole ignored it.
Gritting his teeth, grunting, he managed to pull himself upright.
He stood there for a moment on unsteady feet, at first unsure of where he was, how he had gotten here. Then it came back to him—Clem Bowden’s sneering face, the rifle butt hard and cruel, the vicious blows reined in on him and then the darkness that overtook him. His stomach cartwheeled and bile gathered in the back of his throat.
He was at Jessie’s, a makeshift bed placed on the floor. She would be sleeping in the bedroom, he guessed, and he didn’t feel like disturbing her. Not at the moment. He wasn’t sure what time it was and he didn’t much feel like company.
He recalled coming around earlier, Jess, the old man and the town doctor had hovered over him, seeing double, probably concussed. The doc had given him some sort of sedative to ease the hammering in his head and then he had fallen into a deep sleep.
With the recollection his stomach turned again and he stumbled outside and fell to his knees, vomiting in the street. He knew from his army days that vomiting was the result of concussion and he feared feinting away again. He bit his lip and held his head in his hands.
He lay there for several long minutes, the cooling night air having an invigorating effect on him.
Music drifted over from the Majestic but that gave Cole little idea of what time it actually was since the saloon had been known to stay in full swing until dawn. He ran a hand through his tousled hair, connecting with a lump the size of an eagle egg on the back of his head. It smarted when he touched it and then his fingers probed the left side of his face. His eye was swollen and there was dry blood caked around a tender feeling gash.
He figured he must look a pretty picture just at the moment.
His jaw ached too and he remembered Bowden’s man driving a knee like a hammer into it, knocking him senseless. He spat, tasting blood on his swollen tongue, and then went back inside.
He crept over to the fireplace so as not to wake Jessie and felt along the mantle for the pipe he kept there. He located it and then took a tobacco jar from the cabinet and filled the bowl. There were matches with the tobacco and soon he had himself a smoke going. It was painful though to hold the pipe in his mouth and he gave it up without finishing it.
He noticed his gun belt and Colts hanging on the back of the door and he grabbed it and put it on. He looked around in the semi-darkness for the rest of his belongings, but other than his hat he couldn’t see anything else. If they had collected his star and rifle from the street then he couldn’t see them. He didn’t want to light a lamp and risk the flickering light disturbing Jessie in the next room and so he grabbed his hat and went back outside.
He churned the day’s events over and over in his mind. He knew that he had been put in an impossible situation. With all those guns on him there was no chance he could have survived had there been a fight but that wasn’t the reason he had held back—he was sure of that. It had been Jessie and the old man standing there, it was concern for their lives that had quelled his hand.
If he had been alone to face Bowden and his men then he would have made a play, took as many of them out as possible before the inevitable bullet took him down. He wasn’t afraid to die, not when the principle of law was involved. He represented that law and if he couldn’t stand up for it, face death and destruction on its behalf, do his duty by the badge, then he wasn’t truly a man.
Yet standing there, in the cold night air, he felt like a coward. And that hurt a hell of a lot more than either the throbbing in his head or the aching in his jaw. He spat into the street, tasting blood in the back of his throat and made his way across to the jailhouse. He guessed Sam Bowden would have been released by now and he wanted to see what mess they had made of the place. Not that it mattered much to him.
He had removed his badge and backed down to the Bowden mob.
He didn’t deserve the title of sheriff.
He had tainted the badge.
The jailhouse door wasn’t locked and he walked straight in. Apart from the absence of one prisoner it looked much the same as it had when he had left it earlier.
It seemed like a thousand years ago now, another lifetime.
‘What you doing here, Masters?’
Cole spun on his feet, hand ready to draw, and looked into the eyes of the man who had delivered so much of his earlier beating. The man stood in the doorway, having come in from the street, and Cole cursed himself for his carelessness at not hearing the man approach.
‘You’re Clem Bowden’s foreman.’
‘Was,’ the man said smiling. ‘Name’s Steve McCraw.’
‘Was?’ Cole smiled back even though it hurt to do so. ‘You fed up of the skunk or something?’
‘No,’ Steve said. ‘And you watch what you say about Mister Bowden. I ain’t his foreman no more simply because I’ve got your old job now. Man can’t be in two places at once.’
Cole stared at him. ‘You mean –‘ he didn’t get to finish the sentence before Steve laughed and pulled his long coat open to reveal the tin star pinned to his shirt. He wore a gunbelt with two gleaming Colts in holsters that were tied down to the leg.
‘Town’s last sheriff weren’t up to the task,’ Steve said. ‘So the good people elected a new man there and then.’
‘You?’
‘Yep.’
‘Bowden arrange that?’
‘Mister Bowden,’ Steve said, emphasizing the title. ‘Suggested me for the post and no one said anything against it.’
‘I bet they didn’t,’ Cole said and pointed to the open cells. ‘So did you decide to release the prisoner or was that the o
ld man’s idea?’
‘Samuel Bowden will face trial,’ Steve said, relishing the authority the office of sheriff brought with it and ignoring the other man’s sarcasm. ‘I decided to release him into his father’s custody after they both swore he would remain at the Bowden ranch until the judge gets here. They are both law abiding and honorable men so I see no problem in that.’
‘Sam Bowden cuts up women,’ Cole said. ‘And his father just uses his wealth and position to bully people.’
‘Watch your mouth, Masters,’ Steve said, a glint of anger in his eye, his lips pulled back into a snarl to reveal chipped teeth. ‘You ain’t sheriff in this town no more and if you ain’t long gone by dawn I’m going to come looking for you. Now get out of here and consider it fair warning.
Cole shook his head and poised himself to fight. This time there was no Jessie or the old man to get in the way and a much more even match. He’d be dammed if he would let this go.
Cole sneered at the other man. This was the man who had very nearly broken his jaw and beat him senseless with the butt of a rifle. And to add insult to injury the man was now standing in his office wearing his badge. It made a complete joke of the law. It was as if the man was laughing at everything Cole held in regard and that boiled his blood.
‘Sam Bowden’s a son-of-a-bitch woman killer who deserved to swing,’ Cole said, baiting the new sheriff. ‘And his father’s worse.’
‘Why you,’ Steve said and went for his gun only Cole was quicker.
Gunfire roared and the slug tore into Steve’s chest, sending a spray of crimson into the air and lifting him off his feet and depositing him, already dead into the street. In that split second of a split second before the bullet had torn into him, McCraw’s face seemed to register that he had been beat. A look of incredulous surprise welcomed the bullet that took him into eternity.
