Ralph Compton Brother's Keeper

by Ralph Compton

  The man came into view. He was hanging back, moving carefully. Intent on them, he went past the doorway that concealed Jesse Lee. Evidently the man didn’t hear the Southerner come up behind him, and he certainly never saw the flash of nickel plating as Jesse Lee brought his Colt crashing down on the back of the man’s head. Once, twice, the revolver gleamed, and the man folded without an outcry.

  Jesse Lee swiftly caught up.

  “Which one was it?” Ned asked.

  “Carnes,” Jesse Lee said. “He’ll be out awhile.”

  “Good. That’s two,” Ned said.

  “Only six left, and Galt besides,” Crawford said, and mustered a chuckle. “We’ve pretty near got them licked.”

  “You’re pokin’ fun at me, aren’t you?” Ned said.

  “Whatever gave you that notion?”

  “Hush,” Jesse Lee said, and wagged a hand at the air. “Don’t you hear that?”

  Thal had. A block or so to the north, someone was shouting angrily. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, though.

  “That sounds like Trevor Galt,” Ursula said.

  “What’s he so mad about?” Ned wondered.

  “Want to bet it’s us?” Crawford said.

  Thal had realized something else. “Why are we just standin’ here? The stable is to the south, and Galt and his assassins are goin’ the other way.”

  Ned snapped his fingers in elation. “That’s right! We can get there before they can think to stop us.”

  “Move your boots,” Jesse Lee said, and broke into a run.

  Thal exerted extra effort to keep up. In Texas, he went nearly everywhere on horseback. Running was beneath most cowboys. He was out of practice, and the high heels on his boots didn’t help.

  A few of the folks out and about gave them quizzical looks, no doubt puzzled by why so many men—and one woman—were running down the street in the middle of the night.

  At the next junction Jesse Lee turned right. He was out ahead by a good dozen feet.

  “Look at him go,” Ursula said. “Isn’t he marvelous!”

  “If you say so.” Thal was focused on his breathing. He couldn’t afford to become winded and slow the others down.

  “The shouting has stopped,” Crawford said.

  Thal tilted his ear into the wind. As much noise as they were making, all he heard was the beat of their feet.

  “Who’s that?” Ursula asked abruptly. She was looking behind them.

  Someone was hard in pursuit. A familiar middling-sized figure in a bulky coat. Metal glinted in one hand.

  “Carnes!” Thal realized. The man must have a head like iron.

  The special deputy thrust an arm at them. Clearly Carnes intended to shoot them in the back.

  Thal stopped and drew his Colt. He took deliberate aim just as Carnes’s revolver boomed. One of the others cried out.

  Thal squeezed the trigger.

  Carnes stumbled as if he’d tripped over his own feet, but he didn’t go down. Recovering, he snapped another shot and came on faster.

  Thal fired a second time. The special deputy was only twenty yards away, but it might as well be fifty. Thal wasn’t sure if he hit him. Then Crawford and Ned both fired, and Carnes pitched forward, his arms outflung. A shriek tore from his throat, and he struck the ground and convulsed.

  “We got him, by heaven,” Ned exclaimed.

  “We should make certain he’s dead,” Ursula said.

  Jesse Lee came running back. “No,” he said, grabbing her arm. “Galt and his assassins will have heard. They’ll come quick.”

  Ned swallowed. “Do we stay and fight or skedaddle?”

  “What do you think?” Jesse Lee said, and fairly flew.

  Thal would give anything for his horse. He consoled himself with the thought that in a few minutes he would be in the saddle and could say so long forever to the Sodom and Gomorrah of the Black Hills. He was never coming back, no matter what happened to Myles. If his brother got shot again, so be it.

  Myles had made his bed, as folks liked to say, and now he could lie—or die—in it.

  “There it is!” Ned cried.

  The livery was at the end of the block. The large double doors were closed, and there was no sign of life.

  “Last one in the saddle is a rotten egg,” Ned said.

  Thal marveled that his pard could joke at a time like this. The last to get there, he lent a hand as they pulled on the doors.

  “They won’t open!” Ned cried.

  Jesse Lee had already figured out why. “They’re barred on the inside. The livery must close for the night.”

  “There has to be another way in,” Crawford said. “A side door or a back door. Somethin’.”

  Thal was puffing by the time they reached a corral at the rear. He nearly lost his balance clambering over the rails.

  Ten to twelve horses had been dozing, but now they whinnied and pranced about, rattled by the intrusion.

  “I don’t see ours,” Jesse Lee said. “They must be inside.”

  To their immense relief, the back door wasn’t bolted.

  “Find a lantern,” Jesse Lee said. “There has to be one somewhere.”

  Thal groped about in the dark. His fingers brushed a stall and a support beam. He roved his hand higher, to where a peg might be, and hollered, “I found one.”

  “How do we light it?” Ned said. “I don’t have any matches.”

  “I do,” Ursula said. “In my bag.”

  Exercising care, Thal took the lantern down and set it on the ground. He had lit one often enough that he could do so blindfolded. He succeeded on his first try. As the glow spread, he raised the lantern over his head. “Find our animals.”

  The others didn’t need urging. Jesse Lee and Ursula took the stalls on the right, Ned and Crawlord the stalls on the left.

  Midway Ned yelled, “Here’s your animal, pard!”

  Their other mounts were in adjacent stalls, their saddles and bridles in the tack room.

  Toting them out took longer than Thal liked, but presently he led the chestnut down the aisle to the front. Crawford and Ned were already there, and together they removed the heavy bar and carried it to one side so it was out of the way.

  Jesse Lee and Ursula brought their horses up.

  “Sorry it took me so long,” she said. “I can’t saddle my horse as fast as you do.”

  “Let’s get out of here while the gettin’ is good,” Ned said eagerly. He pushed on one door, and Crawford pushed on the other.

  Thal smiled, extinguished the lantern and set it aside, and gripped his saddle horn. The worst was over, and good riddance to American City.

  The next instant, from out of the dark street, came a shout from Trevor Galt. “Throw down your guns and throw up your hands or we’ll wipe you out!”

  Chapter 37

  Ursula felt as if her stomach dropped out of her body. Clutching her belly, she gasped in dismay.

  “We’re trapped!” Ned exclaimed.

  “We can go out the back,” Thal said.

  As if he had heard, Trevor Galt shouted, “We have the stable surrounded. I won’t wait all night. Come out now, while you still can.”

  “Damn,” Crawford said. “This will get ugly.”

  Jesse Lee was pulling his palomino out of the doorway. “Quick,” he said. “Before they cut loose on us.”

  Ursula led her animal over beside his, then glued herself to him as he returned to the door and peered out without exposing himself.

  “We should close these,” he said.

  The doors weren’t open all the way, but close to it. They’d be exposed to gunfire every time they showed themselves. But Ursula worried that if they tried to close them, they’d be fired on. “Maybe we should leave them as they are.”

  �
��Too dangerous,” Jesse Lee said.

  “Let me,” Crawford said. Crouching, he sidled along the door, his arm out for the handle.

  Ursula held her breath. She prayed that in the dark, Galt and his special deputies wouldn’t notice.

  A rifle spanged, and Crawford bleated in pain. Grabbing at his leg, he fired, then backpedaled, limping as he came.

  To cover him, Jesse Lee stepped out and fanned his Colt twice. Crawford reached him and Jesse Lee got an arm around him to support him as other guns opened up.

  “Jesse!” Ursula screamed before she could stop herself.

  Five or six slugs seared the air, but Jesse Lee made it back without being hit. Crawford leaned against the wall, and Jesse let go. “How bad?” he said.

  “Don’t know yet,” Crawford said.

  On the other side of the doorway, Thal and Ned had drawn their six-shooters.

  Ned was in a crouch, and leaning too far out, Ursula thought. “They’re movin’ around out there,” he reported.

  “Gettin’ into position, most likely,” Jesse Lee said.

  “For what?” Ursula asked.

  “To rush us.”

  Ursula clenched her fists so tight it hurt. She never in a million years would ever have imagined she would be caught in the middle of a gun battle. That they might all be killed was almost too horrible to contemplate. It didn’t seem entirely real, and yet it was. “Give me a gun. I can help. I know how to shoot.”

  “No,” Jesse Lee said without looking at her.

  “Give me one good reason why not?”

  “They see you with a gun, they’ll shoot you.”

  “They might shoot me anyway.”

  “You heard Dyson. Galt wants you alive. But if you take part, he might change his mind.”

  “It’s not right that I can’t help,” Ursula said.

  “If it keeps you alive, it is.”

  Ursula was touched, and upset. This was largely her doing. Thal and his friends had come to American City because of her concern for Myles. The thought of him prompted her to cup a hand to her mouth. “Myles! Are you out there? Can you hear me?”

  His reply was slow in coming. He was somewhere along the buildings on the right side of the street, and hollered, “I hear you, sis.”

  “Let us go, Myles,” Ursula begged. “We only came here on your account.”

  “It’s not up to me, little sister,” Myles answered. “You know that.” He paused. “I didn’t ask you to come. I didn’t send for you. You came on your own, the two of you.”

  “You’re our brother!” Ursula shouted in anger. “I thought you might need us. Wouldn’t you have done the same for me?”

  Again Myles was slow in replying. “Probably not,” he said.

  Ursula was crushed. Her own brother. One of the boys she grew up with. All the fun times they’d had, the playing and working together, had all been for naught. “Oh, Myles,” she said softly. She didn’t think anyone out there could hear her.

  “Don’t blame your brother, Miss Christie,” Trevor Galt bellowed. “This is on your shoulders. Yours, and those cowboys. You’ve attacked my special deputies, and killed one. Murdered an officer of the law.”

  “Hired assassin, is more like it,” Ursula shouted back.

  “Quibbling won’t help you,” Galt said. “The only thing that will is if you toss your weapons out and step out here with your hands in the air. I give you my word we won’t shoot.”

  Over on the other side of the doorway, Thal yelled, “You expect us to trust you?”

  “You’ll be taken into custody and put on trial,” Galt said.

  “And then hanged,” Thal said.

  “If the jury finds you guilty.”

  “A jury you’ll handpick,” Thal said. “With you as the judge, I bet. Nothin’ doin’, mister. We’re not lettin’ you railroad us to the gallows.”

  “Suit yourselves,” Trevor Galt said. “We have plenty of space in the cemetery.”

  Thal surprised Ursula by calling out, “Let my sister go, at least. She didn’t shoot anybody. And if you harm a woman, word will get out. There might not be any real law in these hills, but the government might hear and poke their nose in. You want to risk that?”

  “A feeble threat,” Galt said, but something in his tone suggested the idea troubled him.

  “I tried, sis,” Thal said.

  Crawford had sunk down and sat on the ground and was probing at his thigh. “It missed the bone,” he said to Jesse Lee. “And the bleedin’ has pretty much stopped.”

  “We should bandage it,” Jesse Lee said.

  “After this is over, will do,” Crawford said.

  After what? Ursula thought, and realized what he meant. After they got out of there. If they got out. “There has to be something we can do.” She refused to give in.

  Crawford grunted. “We can wait until daylight and fight our way out.”

  “And be picked off from our saddles like so many flies,” Jesse Lee said. “No, that won’t do. We have to think of what’s best for her.”

  “Me?” Ursula said. “I’m not the only one trapped in here.”

  “You’re the only one that counts,” Jesse Lee said.

  “Your lives matter as much as mine does.”

  It was Crawford who shook his head and gave her a lopsided smile. “No, ma’am, they don’t.”

  * * *

  Thal was worried sick. Not so much for himself or his friends, but for his sister. They had to get her out of there, but how?

  The street outside had gone quiet. After that flurry of movement a while ago, the special deputies were lying low. Probably waiting for them to make the next move.

  Leaning back against the wall, Thal contemplated their predicament. They could climb onto their horses and burst out with their six-shooters blazing, but some of them were bound to be hit. He gazed down the aisle at the rear door, which they’d left open, and felt the faintest of breezes on his face. A brainstorm took root. He glanced at the hayloft, and at all the straw strewn around. “It just might work.”

  “What might?” Ned asked.

  “Keep watch,” Thal said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Goin’ for a stroll?” Ned said.

  Doubled over, Thal moved away from the doors. He stayed close to the stalls so as not to be seen from outside, and when he had gone far enough, he darted to the other side and around to the front, and to his sister and the others. “I’ve got an idea,” he announced.

  “We could use one,” Jesse Lee said.

  Before Thal could share it, Ursula startled him by throwing her arms around him and squeezing him tight.

  “I’m sorry for getting you into this.”

  “It’s not as if you twisted my arm,” Thal joked, and was startled even more when he felt a tear on his neck and she gave a low sob. “Get ahold of yourself, sis. You’ll need your wits about you.”

  “Sorry,” Ursula said, and stepped back.

  Thal turned to Jesse Lee. “It’s best if we try to break out while it’s still dark.”

  “I said as much my own self.”

  “Then how about if we help the dark along?” Thal said. “There’s straw and hay, and there’s that lantern.”

  Jesse Lee licked the tip of the index finger on his left hand, held it up, and turned his hand from side to side. “Not much in the way of wind.”

  “But what there is is blowin’ in the right direction,” Thal said. “It’ll carry the smoke out into the street. Once it’s thick enough, we use our spurs and fight our way out.”

  “It’s a gamble.”

  “I’m open to a better idea.”

  “Wish I had one,” Jesse Lee said.

  “We go for it, then? You’re agreed?”

  “I am.”

  “How can I hel
p?” Ursula asked.

  The three of them hurriedly gathered armfuls of straw and piled the straw in the middle of the aisle about twenty feet in from the double doors. Then Thal climbed to the loft and pushed several hay bales over the edge. Two broke when they struck the ground. The third, they had to cut the twine. Once the hay was added, they had a sizable mound.

  “This should do,” Thal said.

  He brought the lantern over. Jesse Lee had brought his canteen and a blanket.

  “What are those for?”

  The Southerner gave a sly grin. “You wanted to help the dark, remember?”

  “Won’t they guess what we’re up to once they see the fire start?” Ursula asked.

  “So what if they do?” Jesse Lee said. “They won’t rush us when we can drop them before they reach the doors.” Squatting, he spread the blanket out, then opened his canteen and began to wet it. He was careful not to get it so soaked that it would defeat their purpose.

  Thal, meanwhile, got ready to light the wick.

  “I wish there was another way,” Ursula remarked worriedly.

  “Quit your frettin’,” Thal said. “When we make our break, all you should be thinkin’ about is ridin’ like the blazes and nothin’ else.”

  “He’s right,” Jesse Lee said.

  A shout from outside caused Thal to stiffen. It was Myles, calling for him by name.

  “I wonder what he wants,” Ursula said.

  “Thalis! Do you hear me in there?” Myles yelled.

  Setting down the lantern, Thal went to the door but didn’t show himself.

  “My ears work just fine, little brother.”

  “Mr. Galt wants to know what you’re up to in there. We can see some of you movin’ around.”

  “We’re havin’ a jubilee,” Thal yelled. “Want to join us?”

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” Myles said. “Mark my words. They will cut you down if you do.”

  “Does that include you?” Thal said. “Would you shoot your own sister and brother?”

  “Only if you force me to.”

  “What happened to you, Myles?” Thal said sadly.

  “Don’t start with that again. Give yourselves up while you can. If not for your sake, then for sis’s. You won’t be shot. Mr. Galt gives me his word. And not all of you will be hanged. Only whoever shot Bull and killed Carnes. Mr. Galt gave me his word on that too.”