The big man’s face went from being arrogant and mildly amused to cold, vicious, and ruthless in an instant. He drew back a leg that seemed as big as a tree trunk, and The Kid knew he was about to kick Tate before the old lawman could reach the fallen gun.
In a blur of speed, The Kid palmed out his Colt and pointed it at the big man. Even though the Colt was a double-action, his thumb looped over the hammer and drew it back.
Something about the sound of a gun being cocked froze the blood of most men.
“Don’t do it,” The Kid warned. “I’ll put a bullet in you before I let you hurt that man.”
The big man trembled a little from the need to lash out that obviously gripped him. He said between clenched teeth, “You don’t know what you’re doin’.”
“I’m helping a friend,” The Kid said. His voice was hard and flat. “Marshal, can you get up?”
“Of course I can get up,” Tate snapped. He snatched his gun from the boardwalk and scrambled to his feet. “I’m not hurt. I just tripped and lost my balance.”
“That’s good,” The Kid said. “Maybe you’d better go check on that fella who got thrown through the window.” Ever since he’d gotten his first glimpse of the massive hombre he was covering at the moment, he’d had a pretty good idea what had happened. He didn’t know who had fired the shots, though.
Tate went down the steps and hurried over to the man who still lay huddled in the street next to the boardwalk. He knelt beside the still figure and rolled it over.
A moment later, Tate lifted his head and announced in grim tones, “This man’s dead, Kid. He’s been shot three times.”
“Self-defense,” the big man rumbled. He hadn’t moved since The Kid threw down on him, but his eyes burned brightly with hatred. “You can ask anybody in the saloon. They’ll tell you.”
The Kid had a hunch the people in the saloon would say whatever they thought this monster wanted them to say. A number of pale, worried faces were looking through the windows, intently watching the tense confrontation on the boardwalk, but taking no part in it.
Likewise, the street had cleared quickly as the trouble developed. The Kid sensed he and Tate were on their own.
For the moment, the situation was under control. The townspeople might be too scared to help him and Tate, but as long as they weren’t interfering, The Kid figured he and the old lawman could take care of themselves.
Tate came back over to the steps. “I’ll ask the people in the saloon, all right. I’ll ask anybody who’ll talk to me. And I’ll get to the bottom of this, I can promise you that much, mister. But I’ll do it after I’ve locked you up.”
The big man frowned at him. “What are you talkin’ about? You can’t lock me up!”
“We’ll see about that. What’s your name?”
“You don’t know who I am?” The big man sounded like he couldn’t believe that.
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking, now would I?” Tate snapped. “Tell me your name, blast it.”
“I’m Jed Ahern,” the man said. “Ramrod out at the Broken Spoke, you old fool.”
“Keep a civil tongue in your head. You’re already looking at a possible murder charge.”
“It was self-defense, I tell you!”
Tate went on as if he hadn’t heard the interruption. “And it won’t do you any good to lie about where you work. Ed McAfee’s the foreman at the Broken Spoke. I’ve known him for years.”
“Ed . . . who?”
A bad feeling was starting to stir inside The Kid again. “Marshal, we can hash this out later. Maybe we’d better get this fella locked up.”
Tate nodded. “That’s a good idea.”
“Which way’s the jail?”
“Why, it’s right down . . .” Tate’s voice trailed off as he began to look around in confusion.
The Kid had suspected as much.
The marshal’s office and jail was probably somewhere along Main Street. The town wasn’t so big they couldn’t find it.
He had a feeling it wasn’t Tate’s office anymore, though—which left the question of where the actual marshal of Copperhead Springs might be.
“Come on,” The Kid ordered Ahern.
The big man shook his head and stayed where he was, his legs planted firmly on the boardwalk like the tree trunks they resembled.
“You’re loco. I’m not goin’ anywhere with you. You don’t have any right to arrest me. You’re the ones breakin’ the law, not me.”
“You see that badge on the marshal’s vest?”
“I see a hunk of tin,” Ahern said, sneering again. “It don’t mean nothin’ to me. He ain’t the marshal here, so he’s got no right to arrest me.”
“Now I know you need to be locked up, saying I’m not the marshal,” Tate shot back. “You’re not in your right mind.” He gestured with the gun in his hand. “Now, are you coming along peacefully, or do I have to buffalo you and drag you?”
It would take a horse and a rope to drag the massive Ahern, The Kid thought. Also, if the big man’s skull was as solid and sturdy as the rest of him appeared to be, they might have to wallop him with a pistol barrel half a dozen times to knock him out, and he doubted Ahern would cooperate in the process that long. It was getting to the point where they might have to shoot him in the leg, and that had the potential to be pretty messy.
A swift drumming of hoofbeats suddenly sounded along the street. Somebody was in a mighty big hurry. Tate turned his head to look.
With speed shocking in such a massive, ape-like figure, Ahern made a move, leaping toward Tate. One of his big paws batted aside the marshal’s gun before Tate could pull the trigger.
The Kid couldn’t risk a shot. Ahern and the old lawman were too close together.
Ahern’s hands clamped down on Tate’s shoulders. Whirling, he literally threw Tate at The Kid, much like he must have thrown the dead man through the saloon window. The Kid tried to leap aside but couldn’t avoid the impact as Tate crashed into him. The collision knocked The Kid off his feet, and he crashed onto the boardwalk on his back.
With a roar, Ahern leaped at him, clearly intending to stomp him to death.
Chapter 7
With doom literally looming above him, The Kid moved fast, throwing himself to the side and flinging his hands up to grab the boot Ahern was trying to plant in the middle of his face. With a loud grunt of effort, he heaved on it.
If Ahern hadn’t had one foot in the air, The Kid probably wouldn’t have been able to budge his massive weight. As it was, Ahern let out a startled yell as he suddenly found himself tipping toward the edge of the boardwalk. He fell against the railing and crashed right through it with a splintering of wood.
The Kid rolled onto hands and knees and quickly pushed himself to his feet. He knew falling off the boardwalk wouldn’t be enough to put Ahern out of the fight.
The Kid took a quick glance at Tate. The marshal had struggled to a sitting position on the boardwalk next to the saloon’s front wall. His hat had flown off and he’d dropped his gun again, but he seemed to be all right.
The Kid’s attention shifted back to Ahern.
The big man was fighting his way up through the cloud of dust puffing around him in the street. He bellowed, “You! I’m gonna kill you!”
With nimble speed that was so surprising, he leaped onto the boardwalk and charged The Kid, throwing a looping right.
The Kid was fast, too, and ducked under the blow. He stepped in close to hook a left and a right into the big target that was Ahern’s belly. As he suspected, the man’s gut was prominent, but it wasn’t that soft. Ahern didn’t seem to even feel the punches.
Using the same arm he had missed with, Ahern brought it sweeping back around. The Kid twisted and raised his shoulder so Ahern’s forearm crashed into it instead of the side of his head. If the strike had found its intended target, it might have broken The Kid’s neck.
As it was, the impact knocked him off his feet and sent him flying against the wall of t
he saloon.
The Kid bounced off and staggered, and before he could catch his balance, Ahern was on him again. Seeing the giant’s arms opened wide, he dragged in a deep breath as he was caught in a bear hug.
It was just about the worst thing that could happen. The Kid’s speed and quickness were the only advantages he had, and those didn’t amount to much against Ahern. He was so much quicker than The Kid had expected.
As long as he was trapped inside the circle of Ahern’s arms, The Kid had no real weapons and only a few moments before he ran out of air.
Those moments might just postpone the inevitable. Ahern was strong enough to break his ribs and crush the life out of him.
The monster’s grip never loosened as he picked up The Kid, gusting foul, whiskey-laden breath into The Kid’s face from a distance of mere inches. “Not so damn smart now, are you?” Ahern jeered as he glowered at him.
The Kid’s ribs seemed to groan and creak under Ahern’s tremendous pressure. His head spun. He knew he might pass out, and if he did, more than the fight would be over.
His life probably would be, too.
He had one weapon left, he realized suddenly. Jerking his head back, he quickly drove it forward, lowering it so the crown of his forehead slammed into Ahern’s nose.
The man screamed like a little girl.
That unexpected reaction prompted The Kid to strike again the same way. He felt the hot gush of blood over his forehead as the cartilage inside the big man’s nose collapsed with an ugly crunching sound.
Howling in pain, Ahern pressed both hands to his nose as blood bubbled from it, and The Kid dropped four or five inches to the boardwalk. He stumbled as he landed and almost fell, but slapped a hand against the wall and kept himself upright.
A second later, that racket broke off as the big man came barreling at The Kid like a runaway train. His blood-smeared face was like something out of a nightmare . . . or something that would give somebody nightmares.
The Kid waited until the last possible second to move, then threw himself aside. Ahern plowed into the saloon wall at full speed. The Trailblazer Saloon was well built. The wall shivered slightly, but the building didn’t fall down. Ahern bounced off and stumbled backward toward the edge of the boardwalk again.
The Kid helped him along by bending sideways at the waist, lifting his right foot, and driving the heel of his boot into Ahern’s stomach.
The railing, already broken, wasn’t there to slow him as he flew off the boardwalk. His arms flailed wildly, but there was nothing for him to catch. He landed a good ten feet from the edge of the boardwalk, with a sound much like a boulder would have made had it been dropped from a height. He didn’t moan, didn’t writhe, didn’t try to get up. His hands and feet twitched a couple of times, and then he lay still.
The Kid looked around to see if Tate was still all right. He saw the old lawman standing a few yards away, but Tate was no longer alone. A tall, rawboned man stood with him and he had a gun in his hand.
The Kid’s Colt was gone. He had dropped it sometime during the ruckus, and while he was sure it was nearby he couldn’t see it.
Anyway, he wouldn’t have wanted to draw on the man with Tate, but that fella was wearing a badge, too.
Tate said, “Are you all right, uh . . . uh . . . ?” He had forgotten The Kid’s name again.
Hesitating a moment to catch his breath, The Kid said, “Yeah, I reckon I’m fine, Marshal. My ribs’ll be a little sore from that bear hug, but Ahern didn’t break any of them.”
“You’re lucky, mister,” the younger badge-toter said. “Jed Ahern has squeezed the life plumb out of more than one man.”
That news didn’t surprise The Kid, having felt the strength of Ahern’s grip.
“Why isn’t he in prison, then?”
The man shrugged. “They were fair fights. As fair as any fight between Ahern and a human being could be, I guess. Although to really be fair, he’d have to be fighting a grizzly bear or a mountain lion.”
The Kid pointed to the body still lying in the street near the boardwalk. “I’m pretty sure he shot that man, then threw him out the window for good measure.”
“Did you actually see that happen?”
“Well, no,” The Kid admitted, “but there were a lot of shots in the saloon, and then just as the marshal and I got here, the body came flying out through the window. Ahern sauntered out just a second or two later, obviously pleased with himself.”
“But you didn’t actually see him hurt anybody, is that right?”
“No,” The Kid snapped. “Not until he attacked the marshal and me when we tried to take him to jail.” He wondered why Tate was staring at the boardwalk with a confused frown on his face instead of speaking up.
“That’s another thing,” the younger lawman said. “You keep calling old Jared here the marshal, when he’s not. He hasn’t been for several years now.”
The Kid had been afraid of that. His worry was confirmed.
“Not true,” Tate muttered without looking up. “I’m the marshal of Copperhead Springs. I’m the marshal.”
“No, Jared, I am, remember? Riley Cumberland ?”
Tate still didn’t look up, but he shook his head stubbornly. “I’m the marshal.”
Cumberland looked at The Kid. “Look, mister, I reckon I can give you the benefit of the doubt if you thought you were lending a helping hand to a real lawman, but you weren’t. Jared retired as the town’s marshal four years ago when he started getting forgetful. If you’ve been around him for very long at all, you’ll have seen how easily he gets confused.”
“I’ve seen it,” The Kid said, his face and voice grim. “I also saw him save my life a few days ago.”
“Well, I don’t doubt it a bit. Jared was a mighty fine lawman in his time, and on his good days, I guess he can still handle himself pretty well.” Cumberland’s voice hardened. “But he’s got no right to arrest anybody anymore. I don’t even know what he’s doing here. He’s supposed to be in Wichita, living with his daughter Bertha.”
Tate brightened a little at the mention of that name. “Bertha. That’s my little girl, Kid.” His memory of who The Kid was had come back to him. “I’ll introduce you to her. Cute as a button, she is. Just turned seven.”
There was nothing The Kid could do but nod. “That’s fine, Marshal. I’m looking forward to it.”
Cumberland sighed. “You see what I mean. Now, I reckon I’d better get this mess cleaned up. It’s a fine thing for a man to get back to town and find something like this waiting for him.”
The Kid had already figured out Cumberland was the one who’d come galloping up just before the fight with Jed Ahern broke out. “Are you going to lock up Ahern until you find out what happened?”
“I can’t lock up a man just on your say-so, mister,” Cumberland replied. “And since you already told me you didn’t see him do anything wrong—”
“I did,” a new voice said. A woman’s voice. She pushed the bat wings aside and stepped out of the saloon. “I saw Ahern shoot and kill Ed Phillips, and I’m willing to testify to it in a court of law.”
Chapter 8
Marshal Riley Cumberland looked pained. “Damn it, Constance, you know that’s not a very smart thing to do.”
“What’s not smart?” the woman demanded. “Telling the truth? Or expecting you to do your job, even if it means stirring up Harlan Levesy?”
“You got no call to talk that way,” Cumberland snapped.
Tate looked up at the tall young lawman beside him and asked, “Why would you be worried about upsetting Harlan Levesy? He’s a little boy.”
Cumberland ignored him. “I always do my job, but there’s nothing wrong with making sure what happened and not jumping to any conclusions.”
“Oh, no,” Constance said, her voice edge with bitter sarcasm. “You wouldn’t want to jump to the conclusion that the Broken Spoke crew is nothing but a bunch of no-good hardcases now.”
She was a big, middle-
aged woman, seemingly almost as broad as she was tall, with red hair and a pugnacious expression on her round face. She wore a high-necked, long-sleeved gown of dark green silk and, due to the powerful nature of her personality, cut an impressive figure.
She wasn’t the sort of woman he would want to cross, The Kid decided. She looked like she could break most hombres in two.
The Kid picked up his hat, knocked some of the dust off of it, and settled it on his head. “You go right ahead and find out what happened, Marshal. Sounds like you’ve got an eyewitness right here.”
Cumberland glared at him for a second, then holstered his revolver and said to Constance, “All right, go ahead and tell me about it.”
“Ed Phillips was in my place having a drink when Ahern came in. He was proddy as ever—”
“Phillips, you mean?” Cumberland interrupted.
She gave him a scathing look. “Did you ever know Ed Phillips to be proddy in your life?” she demanded. “The man wouldn’t hardly step on a scorpion! No, I’m talking about Ahern. He was looking to pick a fight, the same way he is about half the time when he comes into town, and his eyes happened to light on Ed this time.”
While Constance was talking, Tate edged away from Cumberland and came over to The Kid. “None of this makes any sense, Kid,” he said quietly. “There’s some sort of trickery going on. Cy Levesy would never hire a man like Ahern, and his boy Harlan couldn’t. Shoot, Harlan’s only ten or twelve years old!”
Tate was lost in the past again, The Kid thought. He wasn’t sure the old lawman was ever fully in the present anymore. “We’ll see what they have to say, Marshal.”
“Be careful. Folks will try to put one over on you.”
“Well, I’ve got you to steer me right,” The Kid said.
Tate smiled and nodded. “You sure do.”
Constance was saying, “Ed knew what sort of varmint Ahern is, so he tried to put up with the man picking at him. Ed tried to leave, but Ahern wouldn’t let him. Finally Ed just couldn’t stand it anymore. He threw a punch at Ahern . . . That’s when Ahern shot him.”
“Phillips didn’t reach for his gun?” Cumberland asked with a frown.
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