by Lauran Paine
Finally, a man said: “Seems kind of young for a gunfighter.”
“Mostly they are young,” stated the standing man, implying with his crispness a great knowledge of gunfighters. “Mostly, too, they don’t none of ’em live to get much older.”
“Good thing folks heard that rumor of his coming,” someone said.
The leaning man, long silent in a thoughtful way, now straightened up off the tree trunk. “Sheriff Mike can’t hold him. He ain’t killed no one yet. You got to have charges to hold a man in jail.”
“Yeah,” mumbled someone. “And when he turns him loose then what?”
The standing man had an answer for this. He said: “He’ll go see Hobart, get his blood money and a name then maybe tomorrow or the next day someone from town gets bushwhacked. Then the gunfighter rides on with his money, plumb safe and we got to bury someone.”
“About this lynching business,” a man said now. “Sheriff Mulaney had likely not go along with it.” Someone snorted in response, but the man continued: “He ain’t going to put up much of an argument. Not Mike. He’s sicker than most of us of all this squabbling with Hobart’s Diamond H cow outfit.” After a pause followed by silence among the others, this same man added: “I’ll bet five, six fellows could walk in on Mike tonight with masks on, throw down on him, take that danged murderer out of his cell, and lynch him, and Mike wouldn’t say a word.”
The standing man spread wide his legs and leaned back to gaze upward. “This here tree,” he stated with knowledgeable force, “is just exactly right for a lynching.”
Nearly a full minute passed before the slit-eyed man with the folded hands got to his feet and said: “Well ?”
The others, excepting the standing man, shifted where they sat. Two who were whittling peeled off longer slivers with their knives, indications of troubled thoughts, then one of them closed his knife with sharp finality and also arose.
“I’m with you,” he said softly.
Seconds ticked away. They arose to stand resolutely, one by one. The last man to arise was the wizened, weathered man whose mahogany hide gave him an appearance of having Indian blood. He carefully pouched a cud of chewing tobacco, saying to the others: “We got to go somewhere and plan this. We can’t stand around here talking, it’s too dangerous.”
“Behind the blacksmith shed out back of the livery barn,” a man said, beginning to move away. “But make it look casual-like. Can’t take no chances.”
Several uneasy glances were bent upon the front of Sheriff Mike Mulaney’s office. There was nothing down there to see. The door was closed, sunlight glittered against the one small barred window, and there was no horse at Mulaney’s hitch rail.
In fact, all of Gunsight seemed to be indoors. A bonneted woman passed into Blakely’s Emporium, basket on her arm. And then the length of the plank walk was empty.
In the livery barn doorway, a hostler lounged, arms crossed, brown-paper cigarette dead between his lips. In the recessed entrance to Howell’s saddlery old Jacob Howell himself sat in an old cane-bottomed chair that was wired together, tilted back against the woodwork, drowsing. Old Jacob had come to Gunsight before there had been a town there at all. He had once been a beaver trapper and mountain man.
* * * * *
The door of Mulaney’s office opened inward. It was a purposefully reinforced great slab of mountain oak, hung with forged hardware nothing short of dynamite could have forced from without. The rest of the sheriff’s office was similarly constructed. It was, some said, the oldest log building in Gunsight. Old Jacob said it had originally been built by trappers as a fort, and many times Mulaney had reason to outspokenly condemn the shortsightedness of its builders because—with its two-foot-thick sod roof and windowless, massive log walls—it was a veritable oven during the hot months.
Even when Mulaney had no reason to fret during Wyoming’s summers, his granite character was not leavened any by soaring temperatures within his combination office and jail. But now, with a prisoner on his hands and an uneasy feeling in his mind, Sheriff Mike’s irascibility was just barely below the boiling point.
“Mister,” he said forcefully to Pete Knight through the cell bars, “I don’t expect you to say you’re a gunfighter but do us both a favor and don’t say anything at all for a while. I’m sick up to here of just listening to you.”
Behind the bars young Knight, with both hands curled around the steel bars, knuckles white from holding, watched Mulaney go to his desk, fling down his hat, and mop sweat off his face. “I gave you everything you need to find out about me,” he stated forcefully, ignoring Mulaney’s request for silence. “Why don’t you send telegrams and ”
“The nearest telegraph station is sixty miles from here,” broke in Mulaney, glaring. “How many times I got to tell you that?”
“You can send someone. Wire my brother he’ll ”
“I don’t want to hear about your damned brother anymore.”
Mulaney flung himself down at the desk. Behind him, the prisoner considered his back a moment, then spoke again, his voice sharply edged with frustration and indignation.
“You got no right to hold me here. You got to let me out sooner or later. When are you going to get it through your head I’m no gunfighter. If one is coming here I can’t help that. But I swear to you like I already said a dozen times I’m only ”
“Yeah, I know. You’re just a rider looking for work. You’ve heard Diamond H is a good paying outfit.” Mulaney pushed back, arose, crushed on his hat, and stalked toward the door. “Knight, I got no idea how good you are with a gun, but I’ll tell you one thing if you aren’t good enough to gun down the men you go after, you can always talk ’em to death.”
Mulaney passed out of the office, carefully locked the door after himself, then went mutteringly along the plank walk toward the Drovers’ and Cattlemen’s Restaurant. Around him, evening shadows were beginning to puddle out in the roadway, to lengthen across the store fronts, and darken the valley sides or the mountains. As he passed those idlers’ benches under the cottonwood tree he was relieved to see they were empty. Everyone, but particularly Gunsight’s idlers, knew better how a sheriff should work than the sheriff did himself. He rarely passed the tree that someone didn’t volunteer an opinion on what he was doing wrong and how he should operate. He turned into the restaurant, stalked up to the log counter, and dropped down on one of the stools.
“Supper for me,” he said to the fat man behind the counter, “and a tray for my prisoner.”
The fat man nodded stoically but did not offer to move toward the kitchen with any hurry. Instead, he leaned a little, lowering his voice as he did so, and spoke. “Mike, there’s a lot of feeling around. In here I get the tag ends of a lot of conversations. I thought I ought to warn you about ”
Mulaney raised his bitter gaze and halted the fat man’s speech in midsentence with it. “Just the supper,” he said tonelessly. “Just the damned food, Buck.”
Later, eating his own meal, Sheriff Mulaney reflected: his prisoner had none of the hardness, the assurance, or the attitude, of a gunman. This bothered him. But on the other hand, you could never know about gunmen. They didn’t advertise. They tried not to appear as they really were. Consequently, short of finding their faces upon Wanted dodgers, you could never be certain.
Mulaney had looked through every dodger he’d ever received. His prisoner’s face was not among them. He had read descriptions until his eyes ached, too, and again there had been nothing.
He drank two cups of coffee and made a cigarette, scowling into his cup. He had never been a man to put stock in rumors, but neither had he been a man who took chances when it was unnecessary to do so. Thus, in the end, he had heeded rumor this time, believing it wiser to jail this stranger to his town first, in that way avoiding trouble until he could ascertain exactly who his prisoner was.
Gunsight was, he knew, se
ething with anger at Diamond H. Arthur Hobart, the valley’s biggest cattleman, had never, since Mulaney could remember, treated the town as anything but an essential evil. He had supported his riders’ indiscretions in the town and had finally, only two weeks earlier, hurled the threat which Gunsighters were now practically up in arms about. He had said openly in the Cross Timbers Saloon that if the townsmen didn’t stop victimizing his riders, he’d burn Gunsight to the ground. Then, when he was challenged about this by several local Gunsighters who were present when he made this statement, he had rallied his riders, stared down the townsmen, and, before stalking out, made one last remark. He would, he said, bring in his own law enforcer, and when he did that, the townsmen had better walk softly.
Now, mused Mulaney, he had a man in his jail who, rumor was convinced, was this law enforcer.
The trouble was, thought Mulaney, he had an intuitive feeling he had the wrong man in jail. On the other hand, no strangers had appeared in Gunsight since Hobart had made that statement. Mulaney got up, tossed down some coins, took the prepared tray for his prisoner’s supper, and left the restaurant. There was probably only one way to find out whether Pete Knight was Hobart’s enforcer or not. It was to do exactly as Knight himself had requested—send someone down to the telegraph station at Casper.
Chapter Three
Sheriff Mike Mulaney let himself into the office of the jailhouse, barred the door from the inside, and took Knight’s supper across to him. As he slid the tray under the cell door, he said: “I’m going to send a man over to Casper to send those telegrams about you.” As he straightened up, he added: “I hope that satisfies you.”
Knight’s boyish gray gaze slightly brightened, then it turned ironic. He wagged his head at Mulaney. “Sure takes a long time for something to get through your skull.” He took up the tray, passed farther back to the bunk of his cell, and perched there to eat.
Mulaney watched a moment, then sighed and went to his desk.
The hours ticked by slowly. Mulaney, having thought it best to stay with the prisoner for the night, eased himself back down into his chair after having walked around the office to take the kinks out of his back and legs. No sooner had he settled when there was a hard rap at the door, which brought him fully upright again.
“Mike?” a voice called. “It’s Slim. I want to see you a minute.”
Mulaney crossed to the door, raised the bar, and pulled. The door swung inward. Five masked men instantly sprang inside. Mulaney, taken totally by surprise, looked blankly from their shrouded faces to their bared pistols. Slowly a ruddy flush darkened his face.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, still holding to the door. “Take those silly flour sacks off, put up those guns, and get out of here.”
“Mike, we’re going to take this here killer off your hands. Now you just rest easy-like, and it’ll all be over within ”
“Slim, of all the dumb stunts you ever pulled in a lifetime full of dumb stunts, this is the dumbest. Now get out of here before I lock the lot of you up and throw away the key!”
The tallest of the masked men stared hard at Sheriff Mulaney before he cocked his six-gun. This sharp, mechanical sound froze everyone in the office, even Pete Knight, who was standing like stone, staring at the intruders from inside his cell.
The masked man Sheriff Mulaney had addressed as Slim, now said: “Mike, you got no call to use that tone of voice to us. We’re doing you a favor, taking this Diamond H gunfighter off your hands.”
“Diamond H nothing,” Mulaney stormed, entirely angry now, the astonishment and shock passed. “There’s no proof yet who this fellow is. And you know that as well as I do!”
“Proof enough for us,” a masked man snarled. He flagged at Mulaney with his six-gun. “Go over by the desk and shut up.” To the others around him, this man said: “One of you fellows get the key. Slim, keep watch at the door.” Whoever this man was, he spoke and acted as though he had done this before. “Go on now,” he said to Sheriff Mulaney, who had not moved from the door. “Over by your desk.”
After a tense half minute, his hands balling into tight fists, Mulaney finally obeyed, his lips drawn flat and his eyes venomous.
As a masked man took up his key ring, Sheriff Mulaney said to him: “You touch that prisoner and so help me I’ll see you in prison for it. Put those keys down!”
The masked man, flinching from Mulaney’s tone and murderous stare, hesitated. The man over by the door, whose narrow face showed its definite thin angularity even under the flour-sack mask, cried sharply: “Toss me them keys!”
This was done. The narrow-faced man started forward.
In the cell Pete Knight shrank back against the farthest wall. From behind the narrow-faced man, who had holstered his six-gun to work the lock and key, Mulaney said: “I know every one of you. You touch my prisoner, and I’ll see every man jack of you in hell! Get away from that door!”
The man over by the door flung down the keys, pulled open the door, then turned about to look steadily at Mulaney. He was obviously having troubled thoughts and said now: “Listen, we’re telling you again we’re doing you a favor. You know Hobart will get some Cheyenne lawyers and get this fellow turned loose.”
Mulaney swore at this man, then exclaimed sharply: “Whatever give you the idea I’d let you have a prisoner of mine this man or anyone else? He’s going to have a hearing, and I’m going to be—”
“Mulaney! You’re a fool. You’d better go along. The whole town favors this and you know it.”
“The whole town be damned!” cried Sheriff Mike Mulaney. “I’m sheriff here. I know my job, and I sure as hell aim to do it. I’m going to tell you fellows just once more get out of here!”
All but the masked man by the cell winced under Mulaney’s vehement attack. Two of them looked at their associate near to Pete Knight’s cage. The others continued to watch Sheriff Mulaney’s mottled face swollen with rage.
The man by the cell turned his back upon the sheriff, glared at Pete Knight, and, without speaking, gestured for the prisoner to pass out of the cell.
Knight did not at once obey. His face turned a pale gray, rooted and unbelieving.
“Listen, you fellows,” he began to say. “I swear to you I’m no gunfighter. I came here because I heard the pay was good at the Diamond H Ranch. That’s all. I never—”
“Out! Move out of there!” came the order.
Knight looked past, at Mulaney. He stared at the other men in the office, then he pushed off the back wall and passed out of the cell. He stopped and half twisted, as though to make another appeal to the masked man behind him.
At that moment the masked man by the cell said bleakly to Mulaney: “Get in this cell.”
“You go to hell,” snarled the sheriff.
There was an abrupt change in the atmosphere. Beyond Mulaney’s office darkest night dripped its formlessness over Gunsight. It was a little past midnight. The town was dark and silent.
“Mulaney, I’m telling you for the last time—get in that cell!”
No one moved. The sheriff’s fire-pointed glare did not waver. “Hogan,” he said, each word falling into the hush like flakes of iron. “You lynch this fellow and you’ll die for it.” Mulaney looked slowly around at the other masked men. Names fell from his lips in the identical merciless tone. “Slim Evans, Colt Balfrey, Will Holt, Bob Hogan. You think those masks will protect you? They won’t. Not by a damned sight. I know every cussed one of you.” He glared even though he couldn’t see their faces. “You too, Frank. Frank Bell.”
Knight, from the corner of his eye, saw the narrow-faced man’s bared six-gun tip upward slightly and grow steady on the sheriff.
The narrow-faced man said swiftly: “Sheriff, shut up and do like he told you. Get in the cell!”
Mulaney did not respond, but he slowly swung his hot gaze upon the prisoner. He seemed to
weigh something briefly in his mind, then he inclined his head slightly. “I’m sorry, kid. You’re no gunfighter. I’m sorry it had to come out like this. I reckon it’s my fault.”
“Go on,” the young cowboy said, past dry lips. “Do like they want. Let them lock you up.”
Mulaney stood without moving only a second longer, then he slumped. “Sure,” he said, starting forward past his desk, past Pete Knight, and nearly past the masked man with the steadied gun. There, he went flat on his heels and hurled himself forward with a cry. It was a foolish and fatal and heroic thing to do.
Mulaney’s straining body was against Hogan. They staggered together until brought up against the cell front. There, muffled by Mulaney’s body, the masked man’s revolver discharged. It was a meaty, tearing sound. Mulaney, knocked backward by force and impact, stared unbelievingly at the man who had shot him. He went forward from the middle, spilling out his full length upon the floor. He did not move again.
One of the masked men made a sharp, animal cry in his throat and flung around in the direction of the door.
Hogan’s voice lashed out at this man. “He knew us. There wasn’t no other way.”
One of the others, equally as frightened, said: “Let’s go, Hogan. Folks more than likely heard that shot.”
“Take the prisoner,” replied Hogan swiftly, moving away from Sheriff Mulaney’s body. “Hurry up now. Down to the tree.”
Pete Knight had not moved. He was staring down at Sheriff Mike Mulaney as a dark stain blossomed out from the bullet hole and stained his shirt and the floor around him.
Hogan came up and slammed his gun barrel into Knight’s back causing sharp anguish.
“Move, damn you!” he shouted.
Knight moved. He shuffled forward like a sleepwalker. Beyond the sheriff’s office, in the pit of the night, he revived, drew erectly upright and paused. One of the lynchers had produced a coiled lariat from inside his shirt. One end of it had been carefully fashioned into a hangman’s knot.
