A moment later in the office, McAllister took down two white dusters from the wall and the two men hastily shrugged themselves into the white coats. Now they looked for firearms and found them without trouble in a closed wall rack. The rifles there were chained by their trigger-guards. This started them both cursing and sweating. It could not be too long before Lancaster returned with the meals. They found that one of the keys on the keyring fitted the lock on the chain and a moment later each chose a repeating Henry. In a desk drawer they found boxes of ammunition and from them filled their pockets with shells.
So far so good.
Clegg said: “What now?”
“We wait for Lancaster. We tie him up, eat dinner and walk out of here.”
“We’ll need some luck.”
“You never spoke a truer word.”
Seven
Emilio was sweating. The heat contributed to that and so did naked fear. He knew that he risked everything this morning. It had been him who had urged his partners to attempt to break out the prisoners in daylight. “Who would ever think,” he said, “that men would attack a jail in daylight?” The others had been no more than half-convinced. Emilio had his way in other things as well. They did not have many firearms to their names, but they all agreed that they would most likely have to kill a man before the day’s work was done.
The thought had appalled Emilio. Were they crazy? Why was there need to kill anybody? If they did that they would be faced by a murder charge. They could all end up on the end of a rope instead of wealthy men. They were not in this affair for violence and dramatics. They were in it solely to obtain the Spanish gold. Besides, the sound of shots would alarm the whole town and that was the last thing they wanted. The Anglos around here were not great lovers of Mexicans and they would all turn out for a Mex-hunt. This last point carried some weight and they decided to go with clubs. One or two, Emilio knew, had knives hidden in their shirts, just in case.
Now Emilio stood in the shadow of the narrow alleyway between the bank and the hardware store and sweated. He looked across the road at Ignacio who stood near the Chinese laundry trying to look inconspicuous. Charlie Arbiter was sauntering nonchalantly down the center of the street looking as dreamy and lost as usual. The others were scattered up and down the street ready to give warning or obstruct anybody with a gun in a hurry to reach the hubbub which before long would arise from the sheriff’s office.
To Emilio’s right, the door of the café opened and a man came out carrying a fully-laden tray. This was Billy Lancaster, the sheriff’s deputy. He angled across the street towards the sheriff’s office and almost straight in Ignacio’s direction. As he came near, the Mexican gave him a greeting and the deputy curtly returned it. His boot-heels rapped briefly on the boardwalk and he held the tray with one hand while he opened the door of the office. A moment later, he disappeared inside.
Emilio decided that this was the right time or there never would be one. They had all the lawmen in one place. If they could be secured, the rescuers would be safe from interruption by the law.
Emilio raised his hand and walked out into the bright sunlight. He saw Ignacio become suddenly alert and start for the door of the office. He carried his club in his left hand and a bright bladed knife showed in his right. Emilio was very afraid that his kinsman was set on killing somebody that day and his unease increased alarmingly.
Ignacio reached the door. The other Mexicans were all homing in on the office.
Old Charlie Arbiter had quickened his pace. Emilio found that his heart was thumping violently.
Ignacio opened the office door and went inside. To Emilio’s surprise, he closed the door behind him. Not a sound came from the office. Charlie Arbiter passed him and reached the door next. He went quickly inside and Emilio was on his heels.
The scene inside the office so astounded Emilio that he could not believe that he was not in a dream. Two men in dusters held the middle of the floor with rifles in their hands. On the floor almost at their feet, the deputy, Billy Lancaster, lay groaning with blood streaming from a gash in his head.
One of the men in the dusters said: “Too late, boys, the job’s been done. Nothin’ like a little self-help.” Emilio knew the voice was McAllister’s but he could scarcely believe the evidence of his ears. He turned his attention to McAllister’s companion and saw that it was Jack Clegg, who was a notorious man known to everybody as a rascal, and wanted by a dozen law offices up and down the country. For Emilio, the situation grew more frightening every minute.
McAllister said: “Tie this man up, friends, and put him with the others in the cells. Gag him well—we don’t want them raising an alarm till we’re well out of town.”
As they bound the fallen man, McAllister told them what he intended to do and suggested what they should do. He and Clegg would fetch their horses from the livery and would ride out of town going south to put any witnesses off the scent. They would meet Emilio and his cousins on the Tucson road as soon after dark as they could make it. Let them bring all the supplies they would need for a trip to where the Spanish gold was hidden.
Emilio was emboldened to say: “What of this gringo? You are not suggesting that he joins our expedition? We have made no allowance for an extra man.”
McAllister brushed his objection aside.
“I owe it to him,” he said. “Without him I would still be in that cell. All he’ll cost you is grub. Him and me will split my pay.”
Before they could argue about it, McAllister was at the door looking up and down the street. Seeing that the way was clear, he pulled his hat down over his eyes, assumed a convincing limp, changed the way he held his body and walked out on to the street.
Emilio said to his kin: “Hurry. This is good. These two have saved us a lot of trouble.” But he wondered, just the same. Lancaster started to come around, but Ignacio showed him the knife and told him if he so much as opened his mouth his throat would be cut. The deputy seemed thoroughly convinced. He lay back and permitted himself to be bound without lifting a finger in resistance.
Out on the street, Jack Clegg said: “You had me worried there, Rem, when I saw the sheriff with the key to the cells. I didn’t know there was a spare key. How did you get hold of it, any road? You didn’t tell me.”
“No, Jack,” McAllister said dryly, “you’re right. I didn’t.”
Eight
If anybody had told Jack Clegg that he could have broken out of jail and walked from the sheriff’s office to the livery stable, he would not have believed it. When he had actually done it and was saddling his horse, he still found it hard to believe. Having got this far, he told himself, his luck must turn and some officious fool would be bound to challenge him before he succeeded in riding out of Crewsville.
He thought the challenge had come when the proprietor of the livery demanded to know their authority for taking their horses. He had been informed by the sheriff in person that the horses had been impounded by the county and could not be removed without the sheriff’s word. McAllister tried to talk him out of it, because neither man had any wish to resort to more violence, but the man persisted and would have run out of the livery yard into the street, shouting for the law, if McAllister had not unlimbered the gun he had borrowed from the sheriff and told him if he persisted he would have his head blown off. This sobered the man considerably. He came quite meekly into the barn for the two escapers to bind and gag him and conceal him behind a vast pile of hay.
McAllister and Clegg rode out of town past the sheriff’s office and turned south along the creek road. Their departure was witnessed by a number of citizens who later reported the fact to the judge and the sheriff. But that was hours later. When they had lost sight of the town, the two riders took the cut-off to the Tucson road and traveled part of the day in the company of a freight train pulled by slow-moving oxen. In this they conformed to the custom of the place and time, for some enthusiasts among the local Chiricahua Apaches were taking an alarming interest in weak part
ies of white men moving along that same road. That night the train camped in the shelter of the foothills and was joined by a party of Mexicans led by a citizen of Crewsville named Emilio Chavez. The following day the Chavez party joined forces with the two riders clad in their white dusters and turned for the hills, while the ox-train crept on its slow course in the direction of New Mexico.
~*~
Meanwhile, as they say, back at the sheriff’s office, a small Chinese gentleman who owned the restaurant which catered for the needs of the lawmen and their prisoners became worried for his trade when no deputy arrived to fetch the breakfast for the office’s inmates. This on top of his absence the evening before for the evening meal had made Mr. Lee fearful that he had lost the county trade. It was he who discovered the sheriff and his deputies gagged and bound in the cells. It was this unfortunate restaurateur who suffered the rage and fury of the three Anglos’ anger. Mr. Lee remembered his need for trade and kept a silent tongue. He would save for some future time a reminder to the sheriff that it had been he, Mr. Lee, who had rescued them from their predicament and that, had it not been for his humble self, sheriff and deputies would be lying in those noisome cells to this very day.
The sheriff, hungry, dirty and unshaven, staggered to the judge’s house to report. He received a cold reception from the judge and, to his horror and surprise, the same kind from the source of his passion, the fair Fortuna. As business must always come before pleasure, Southern first talked hard to save his reputation in the eyes of the judge. The humiliating walk from the office to the judge’s house had given him time for a little thought.
After he had taken rebukes and curses from the man he despised and hated, after Tynsdale had blown cigar smoke in his face and not offered him the drink he needed, Southern took a grip on himself and said: “It ain’t so damn bad, judge, I tell you. I had this contingency in mind even before McAllister broke out. A man in my position has to think of everything. Just look at it this way—”
“By God, Southern,” said the judge, “I’ve just about had my bellyful of you. This had better be good,”
Southern bit back his angry words. “If McAllister didn’t escape, if he was still in jail or dead, what excuse would I have to leave town for a good few days. Now I have a reason.”
The judge puffed at his cigar with infuriating and skeptical calm before he said: “When did a sheriff chase after a couple of hardcases without a sworn posse? Can you answer me that?”
Southern stared at him, lost for a moment. “Ah, well—yes—yes. Of course. A good question. It just so happens this sheriff has confidence in his own prowess.” That was a good word, prowess. “He don’t aim to put any honest citizens in danger. No, sir. He has their interests at heart. McAllister and Clegg are desperate men. They kill at the drop of a hat. The brave sheriff and his gallant deputies are willing to risk their own necks as a part of their duty to the county.”
“Is that a fact?” said the judge dryly.
“You’ll see,” said the sheriff.
“I’d better,” said Tynsdale. “Or it’ll go damned hard for you, Southern. Now, quit wasting time and get riding.”
As the sheriff left the house, he came on Fortuna in the hall.
“My, sheriff,” she said with a smile he didn’t like, “you look as though you could use a tub and a razor.”
He rushed from the house, thinking in an agony of embarrassment: How could a woman change so quickly?
He spent the next hour preparing his departure, ordering supplies, a change of horses and sending a messenger to find the local guide, a tame Mohave Indian who had last been seen drinking over-enthusiastically from a whiskey bottle somewhere on the edge of Mex-town. The two deputies looked for him. They questioned local Mexicans and might as well have made their enquiries of the local burros. Mexicans were suspicious of the deputies, all deputies. And sheriffs too. Well they might be. They saw the two lawmen in their true colors pretty quickly when Lancaster informed a few of them that, if they did not discover where the goddam Indian was hiding his drunken self, those same local Mexicans would find themselves charged with a number of crimes. The two deputies were not impressed by the protests that no crimes had been committed. Tully informed them they would be arrested for crimes they would no doubt commit sooner or later. The Mexicans understood that kind of talk. They reasoned with themselves that they did not owe much to a drunken Mohave and they told the lawmen that Punk (for such was the Indian’s only known name) was sleeping off the whiskey under a shady willow at the creek’s edge.
One deputy rode to the creek, found the Mohave and dunked him a few times in the water, then ran him at his stirrup, grasping his braids the while, until together they reached the sheriff’s office. By this time, the unfortunate Indian was bone-shakingly sober. He was also fighting mad, but not mad enough to resort to violence in the white man’s world. So he stuck out for a high price and got it agreed so quickly that he assumed, not unreasonably, that he did not stand a snowball’s chance in hell of getting it. They found him a horse and permitted him a hackamore and no saddle. He considered that fair, for he knew as well as they did that, if there had been a saddle, he would have sold it for drink as soon as their backs were turned.
The four men rode out of Crewsville with a spare horse each and a strong mule carrying their camping gear and supplies. The sheriff was not the keenest trail-rider in the world and he saw no reason to forego all his creature comforts just because he was (officially) scouring the countryside for two escaped criminals. He swore loudly in front of witnesses that he would get his men, dead or alive. Most of the witnesses knew what that meant. Harry Dewlap from the dry goods store started taking bets. Ma Bighton came flouncing down the street demanding that the county pay for McAllister’s board and lodging. The county had chased McAllister out of town so it was only just that she should be recompensed by the county. She hoped nobody knew that McAllister had paid a week in advance.
Nine
About the only happy and carefree member of the party that headed into the Three Soldiers country of the great sierra was Jack Clegg. There were several other members of the party, of course, who considered him as no member at all. As soon as they were clear of the freight train, indeed, Charlie Arbiter called a halt and demanded to know what McAllister thought he was doing bringing in a total stranger without the permission of the men who were, after all, McAllister’s employers.
McAllister dismounted, eased a cinch on his saddle to show that he was in no hurry and that there was no reason why at least his horse should not benefit from the halt.
“Charlie,” he said, “have no fear, you are not going to be robbed. My friend and partner here will not cost you a penny. Not one single, solitary, goddam dime.” He spoke in Spanish and Jack Clegg, who had no more than a few words of cow-pen Spanish, put a puzzled look on his face. He eyed McAllister suspiciously, as he would have eyed anybody of Anglo race who spoke a heathen tongue with such facility.
Charlie Arbiter said: “I am sure you understand, Rem, that it’s not the expense that’s worrying us, but the fact that you have brought in a man we do not know. As we don’t know him, we don’t trust him. Would you, in our position, with so much at stake?”
“But certainly, Charlie,” McAllister declared, “I would be the same. But I’m not in your position, for God’s sake. I happen to trust Jack here. Without him I would still be back in Crewsville rotting in that stinking jail. To get out of that same jail I had to offer the fellow something. So I offered him a half-share in whatever I get from this amazing haul of Spanish gold. Could I do less?”
Ignacio put in his offering to the argument—“We are sure you meant well. But hell is paved with good intentions.”
“Say,” said McAllister, brightening, “I never heard that. Where’d you pick that up?”
Ignacio was not to be joshed out of his position. Physically he might be a lightweight, but morally he was a veritable bulldog.
“McAllister,” he said, “yo
u find some way of getting rid of this fellow.”
“If I get rid of him he would follow us. Safer to have him with us under our eyes.”
Charlie said: “By God, you’re tempting me, man. If he’s that kind let us solve the problem quickly now.”
McAllister realized that the situation was serious. He said: “You touch him and you touch me and we’d best have that pretty clear.”
McAllister told him that they were all expressing their pleasure in his company.
Clegg said: “They don’t sound too pleased to me. I caught a word here and there.”
“Aw,” said McAllister, “you know how foreign lingos are. They always sound like a fellow’s real mad.”
“They look real mad to me,” said Jack.
“Not a bit of it. You’ll see.” He switched back to Spanish. “Listen, men, that old sheriff back there, he’s not going to sit still while I’m out of jail. He’s going to come after us for all we have or will have. In fact, I shouldn’t wonder if that’s why he put me in jail in the first place. I have been adding two and two together and getting a number of pretty funny answers.”
Charlie and his Mexican colleagues started to look worried, as well they might.
“Christ,” said the old prospector in English, “you don’t reckon—?”
“I do,” said McAllister, “and so do you, you lyin’ old goat.”
Charlie made an angry gobbling noise. He pointed at Clegg and piped: “I’m gettin’ around to thinkin’ this is a put-up job, McAllister. It ain’t just chance that put you in the cells together. This has to be a goddam plot.”
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