Chuck opened the door at the end of the walkway and motioned the others through. Once inside, he locked it using a key from a ring he gripped tightly in one hand. “It’s the door straight ahead,” he said. “Don’t kill him. I can’t explain that away.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Otto told him rather unconvincingly.
“And I want my money.”
Wolpert stepped up to the door and peeked in through a slot that had been cut through it. Sure enough, there was a man sitting in a chair with his arms shackled behind him and his ankles tied to its wooden legs. Taking a wad of cash from his pocket that represented the last of what he’d brought with him, Wolpert said, “There’s your money. Now go find somewhere else to be. We don’t need an audience and you don’t need to see what we’re up to.”
“Fine by me. You’ve got five minutes. Five. I’ll be keeping track myself.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Otto said impatiently. “Five minutes. Now scat.”
Twitching at Otto’s command, Chuck took a step in the wrong direction before turning and rushing toward the door at the end of the hall. Once he was through it, he was more than happy to scurry down the hall and get back to his normal duties.
Otto pulled the slotted door open and walked inside. A wide, reptilian smile appeared on his face and grew even wider when he fished what looked like a short filleting knife from his pocket. Holding the knife out so the blade caught some of the paltry light being cast by the room’s single lantern, he sneered, “I don’t know who you ran afoul of, but you’re about to be real sorry you did. See that?”
“Yeah,” the man in the chair replied. “I ain’t blind.”
“Well, you’re gonna get real acquainted with this here blade.”
Wolpert stepped inside the room, which wasn’t much bigger than a closet. Apart from the chair and the lantern, the three men were the only things inside that tight space.
The man in the chair let out a tired sigh. “Did that twitchy friend of yours wake me up so you could waggle that little knife in front of me or are you gonna do something?”
“Oh, I’ll do something all right! How about this?”
Wolpert still had his back to the other two so he could make sure the hallway beyond the door was clear. Chuck had lingered for a few seconds as if he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to keep an eye on what was going on or if he possibly wanted to stick around long enough to hear something. The guard finally left the hallway completely at about the same time Otto took a swing at the prisoner.
The knife flashed through the air, but was more of a flinch than a stab. Its edge bumped against the other man’s face and drew about as much blood as might be found if he’d cut himself while shaving.
“That the best you got?” the man groaned. “Hope you don’t mind if I go back to sleep.”
“Sleep?” Otto said. “You wanna sleep? You’ll be sleeping in hell by the time I’m done. No, wait. About halfway through when I’m done, you’ll wish you were sleeping in hell! What’ve you got say to—”
Wolpert cut him short with a straight right cross that snapped Otto’s head to one side. It seemed as if Otto might have had some fight in him, but he managed to stay upright for only a second before dropping. Rather than let the deputy hit the floor, Wolpert caught him by the shoulder of his jacket and held him up just long enough to lower him down quietly.
“Well now,” the man in the chair said. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Are you Eddie Vernon?”
“Yeah.”
“I hear you know your way around a Sharps rifle,” Wolpert said as he rummaged through Otto’s pockets. “Best shot in three states?”
Despite the spot he was in, the other man never seemed to fret. He even shrugged his shoulders and shifted a bit as though his shackles were simply a mild obstacle to his own comfort. “You got my name right, but that’s about it. That is, unless you know of another Eddie Vernon.”
Wolpert found what he was looking for and removed a set of small keys from Otto’s pocket. Looking over to the chair, he asked as part two of his little test, “What about safes? Think you know your way around one of those?”
Eddie’s face brightened in a way that let Wolpert know he had the right man. “Now, that’s something I can do. I’ll need my arms and legs free, though.”
“Aren’t you going to ask who sent me?”
“If it’s not Bart Hankel, I’ll be surprised.”
“You mean Burt Sampil?”
“Yeah,” Eddie replied with another grin. “That’s the one.”
It wasn’t anything elaborate, but Wolpert knew he’d just passed a test himself.
“So I take it you’re not here to give me a thrashing for something I done?”
“No,” Wolpert said. “We’re getting out of here.”
Happiness flickered across Eddie’s face for a fraction of a second, but was soon replaced by deep concern. “Where are we going? I didn’t fight to stay alive in this pit just to get buried in a hole outside some ranch.”
“Get on the wrong side of a rancher, did you?” Wolpert asked as he stepped around to unlock the shackles around Eddie’s wrists. After that had time to stew, he stepped back around to where Eddie could see him. “I meant what I said about Burt.” Backing up as Eddie brought his arms around front so he could rub some of the feeling back into his wrists, he tossed the keys so they landed flat upon the other man’s stomach. “But if you don’t get out of them leg irons soon enough, we won’t be going anywhere.”
“More like I’ll be going back to my old spot on the floor in the next room and you’ll be the fresh meat in the cage.”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
Wolpert stood with his eye to the slot in the door and his back to the chair. Thanks to Otto’s glass chin, the deputy was going to be out for a while, but that didn’t mean they had a lot of time. Wolpert needed to find something out as quickly as possible and he didn’t think he’d have to wait.
While rummaging through Otto’s pockets, he’d found the deputy’s pocket watch and tucked it under the cylinder of Otto’s holstered pistol. “How many guards are on duty?”
“Three.”
Then came the clatter of the pocket watch hitting the floor. When Wolpert turned around, he drew his pistol and thumbed back the hammer in one smooth motion. Eddie was crouched next to Otto with the deputy’s gun in hand. He looked up at Wolpert and asked, “What do you plan on doing with that old six-shooter?”
“Depends on what you plan on doing with yours.”
“Did you really expect me to go anywhere without a pistol? Why’d you leave it here for me, then?”
Wolpert couldn’t fault the other man’s logic. Also, Eddie wasn’t aiming his pistol anywhere close to him. “You said three guards?” he asked. “Does that count the one that let us in here?”
“If you mean Chuck, then yeah,” Eddie replied. “He likes to think he’s cock of the walk so long as them other two are on duty. We only see them when they poke their noses out to make their rounds. Other than that, they’re either playing cards or drinking whiskey.”
“Hand over that pistol.”
“What?”
“You heard me,” Wolpert said as he stepped forward and extended his left hand. His gun was aimed at the floor for the moment, but was only a heartbeat away from changing that situation. “Hand it over. You want to waste time debating or should I carve a few holes through you right now?”
He wasn’t happy about it, but Eddie flipped the gun around so the handle was pointed out toward Wolpert. As far as the sheriff was concerned, Eddie had passed the biggest test so far.
“What now?” Eddie asked.
“Now we see about getting you some company on the way out of here.”
“Did Burt really send you to fetch me?”
“Yeah.”
“Seems like he would have wanted me to be armed.”
Wolpert tucked Otto’s gun under his belt so it was tougher to snatch th
an if it was in his holster. After taking another glimpse into the hallway, he said, “Yeah, I’m sure he would have. But he’s not the one doing this. I am. And I want to get out of here with a minimum of spilt blood.”
“That could be difficult, you know.”
“Yeah. I know. Where are those other guards?”
“They walked through the doors on the opposite side of the big cage,” Eddie explained. “I don’t know much about what’s beyond them doors because the guards, warden and lawmen are the only ones who use ’em. Haven’t you been here before?”
“Think you can wrap those shackles around your hands so it looks like they’re still on?”
“I suppose. What about the leg irons?”
Nodding toward Otto, Wolpert said, “Put them on our friend down there.”
All too happy to comply with that order, Eddie clamped one of the iron cuffs around Otto’s ankle and the other around his wrist. When he looked back again, Wolpert saw that the deputy’s chains had also been wrapped through the supports of the chair itself so it attached the piece of furniture to Otto’s legs.
“Should slow him down a bit,” Eddie said with a shrug.
“Fine. Stay here and wait for me to clear the way. If you come out before then, you’ll take your chances with whatever is unleashed out there.”
“Sounds ominous,” Eddie said with an exaggerated shudder.
Chapter 20
Wolpert pulled the door open, stepped into the hall and eased it so it was all but completely shut behind him. The deserted hallway felt about three times as long as when he’d walked down it the first time. The door at the other end was open and he did his best to walk through it as if there weren’t a thing wrong. The trick to that was in holding his head high and keeping a somewhat aggravated expression on his face as if he had every right to go where he was going and was in a rush to get there. Since there were only prisoners watching him from the large cage when he emerged from the hall, Wolpert motioned for Tom to come over to him.
He approached to the bars, shoving aside another prisoner who tugged on his sleeve while snarling, “You’d better be here to get us out.”
“Or what? You’ll rattle your cage at me? Just take a breath and tell me if you boys have managed to find the men we’re after.”
“Yeah,” Tom said. “Two of them anyhow. They were caught and tossed in here the same time as Eddie Vernon. Juan’s been talking to ’em since we got here.”
“Got acquainted pretty quickly, huh?”
“A few of these boys are friends of Burt’s. Soon as they caught wind that something might be brewing, they been pestering us to be a part of it.”
Looking around at the other sets of expectant eyes trained on him, Wolpert grunted, “We came for specific men. Not to empty this whole damn place.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Tom assured him. “Burt won’t want anything to do with these men anyways. They been caught so many times that they gotta be either stupid or cursed.”
Wolpert stood up and looked toward the sound of an opening door. “You, Juan and Cade get the other men ready to go. And make sure you keep it down to those two. Anyone else will be shot and left here. Understood?”
Although a good portion of the prisoners were still asleep or too far away to hear much of the conversation, Tom took another look to make sure. He nodded and moved toward Cade, who sat nursing a wound that had been freshly reopened sometime during his stay. The fidgety ones who pestered Tom did so for only another few seconds before they were knocked onto their backsides by the big man.
As he made his way around the large cage, Wolpert was reminded even more of a large zoo exhibit. He hadn’t been to many himself, but he’d seen a few pictures and heard several stories of folks who’d gone to throw bits of food at exotic critters and watch as they crawled around on rocks. Even if those were animals, they had to have lived in better conditions than those at Dog Creek Jail. There was another door on that side of the room that was marked GUARDS AND WARDEN ONLY. It looked solid and formidable enough, but Wolpert checked it before getting too worked up. The door was unlocked. More than likely, the guards that Eddie had mentioned were planning on making their rounds soon. Suddenly, the handle was jerked from his grasp and he quickly found himself standing face-to-face with Otto’s friend.
“I thought I told you to stay put,” Chuck said.
“No, you didn’t.”
“Well, I meant to. Where’s Otto?”
“He told me to give you the rest of that payment.” Reaching under his coat, Wolpert stopped and whispered, “Maybe it’d be better if these men out here didn’t see.”
Before those words were out of his mouth, Chuck stepped back through the door he’d just opened. He stood his ground and planted his feet so Wolpert couldn’t go much farther than a step or two after closing the door behind him. The hallway was similar in shape and size to the opposite one, but the doors weren’t reinforced and the rooms beyond them looked more like living quarters.
“Are there more single-man cells over here?” Wolpert asked.
“Yeah,” Chuck replied. “Down that way.”
When Chuck shifted to glance toward a door that was obviously more reinforced than the others, Wolpert made his move. He didn’t care about where the trouble prisoners were kept and he didn’t care about who might be back there at the moment. All he did care about was that Chuck had looked away from him long enough for the sheriff to wrap his arms around his throat.
Hans Brueckner had been a sergeant when he’d taught recruits how to take down another man without making much of a sound. It had taken Wolpert several lessons to learn the methods, which had extended his cavalry training past the normal limit. But Hans had taken a few young men under his wing and Ezekiel Wolpert had been one of them. Hans was a stout fellow who always reeked of pipe smoke and dark ale. Always ready for a fight, he had a more relaxed air about him than most superior officers and would have done his level best to knock some sense into Wolpert if he’d caught him taking his first ill-gotten dollar. On the other hand, he would have been proud of the way his pupil brought Chuck to his knees.
The well-practiced move was swiftly applied and forcefully maintained. One of Wolpert’s arms slid around the front of Chuck’s throat while the other fell in behind to shut the poor guard’s neck in a makeshift vice. Chuck’s windpipe was neatly closed and all the struggling in the world wasn’t enough to get him loose. Within twenty seconds, Chuck’s body started going limp. A few seconds after that and he could no longer hold up his arms.
Wolpert hung on for just a bit longer to make sure Chuck was completely out. As he lowered the other man to the floor, he eased up on the pressure so as not to choke the other man into an early grave. From the time Chuck had uttered his last offhanded word to the time when he was lying on the floor, no more than a whisper of sound had been made. Yes, indeed, Hans would have been proud.
“What the hell’s going on?”
Whipping his head around, Wolpert spotted a pair of men walking down the far end of the hall. Without missing a beat, he replied, “I think Chuck slipped. Can one of you help me get him up?”
The other two men stomped down the hall like a pair of big brothers who had been asked to help pull their little sister out of the mud. They responded because they knew they had to, but made it clear that such an event wasn’t new to them. Both wore long coats that hung open to show gun belts strapped around their waists and clubs dangling at their hip.
“What’d he trip over this time?” the first man asked.
“Hell if I know. He was giving me a tour and just dropped.”
The second man kept his eyes on Wolpert while his partner squatted down to get a closer look at Chuck. “Ain’t you one of those deputies that brung those new prisoners in earlier?”
“That’s right,” Wolpert said.
“What are you doing here so late?”
The first guard turned to see how Wolpert would respond, but certainly wasn’t exp
ecting to get shoved backward over his fallen partner. As he’d shoved him, Wolpert reached for the club hanging from the guard’s belt and snagged it before its owner fell out of reach. By the time the guard hit the floor, the club was already on its way toward the second man’s knee.
The second guard had sharper reflexes and quickly pivoted to keep from landing on the floor with the others. The club caught him more toward the back of the knee instead of the front where it would have sent a wave of pain all the way through his body. If the blow had landed on the side of the knee, he wouldn’t have been able to stand no matter how much he’d wanted to. The impact of the club did cause his leg to buckle, which did put him off his balance for a moment.
Wolpert took advantage of that moment by rushing forward to swing the club again. This time, he anticipated the guard’s next move by aiming for the man’s gun hand. Sure enough, the guard started to draw his pistol but was cut short when the polished piece of wood rapped against his wrist. Even though Wolpert thought he’d heard a bone snap, he wasn’t going to take any chances. He grabbed the guard’s wrist and gave it a quick twist.
Not only did the guard let go of his gun, but his hand twisted almost completely around. Knowing that the broken wrist would preoccupy the guard for a while, Wolpert grabbed the other man’s gun and tucked it under his belt where he had the start of a fairly decent collection.
When he looked at the first guard, he immediately spotted the shooting iron in that one’s hand. It seemed the guard had collected himself just a bit quicker than Wolpert had guessed and was one finger twitch away from making the Nebraska lawman pay with his life. Rather than give the guard that pleasure, Wolpert dropped flat down onto his belly as the hammer of the guard’s pistol dropped.
Ralph Compton Rusted Tin Page 19
