by Lauran Paine
“You listen to me, boy, this here ain’t funny. There’s only that sheriff and his deputized friend out there. And I’ve seen brick buildings like this one dynamited before.”
Duncan went right on smiling. “Hell, old man, you wanted to buy your boy some time. I can’t think of a better way than by you doing the rope dance beside me tonight.”
Parton shot Duncan a venomous look, swung around, and began pacing across his cell. He continued to pace for some time, occasionally halting to cock his head in a listening fashion, before he would begin to cover the distance of floor again.
Duncan worked up a smoke, lit it, and blew smoke toward that high little barred window in the rear wall. “I’m feeling better for the first time since they tossed me in here,” he said loudly, catching old Parton’s attention and holding it with this loud talk. “It’s unreal how all those things piled up against me, but, by golly, I think some of that black luck is rubbing off on you now, and I sure like that, Parton. I do for a fact.”
“All they got on me,” snarled the old man, “is that my boy and Jerry Swindin tried to get the express office money cache. I wasn’t in on it and they can’t prove otherwise.”
Duncan’s smile deepened, his frosty stare brightened, turned sardonic and cruel. “Parton, you just try and tell that to a lynch mob. There’ll be so much shouting going on when those drunken range riders bust in here, you could shoot a cannon and no one’d hear it. Besides, all those lynchers have to know is that you’re in here. That’s all. Old man, they’ll stretch your scrawny neck until they can read a newspaper through it.”
Parton swore at Duncan, using savage profanity for the first time. He went to the back wall, stood there, head cocked for a moment, then shuffled back toward the front of his cell again.
“You think this is funny,” he snarled. “Go back there and listen. That bunch out there ain’t goin’ to wait until this here judge gets his pump back in workin’ order. Go on ... go back there and listen.”
Duncan didn’t go. He leaned upon his cell door, smoking and slowly losing his smile. He’d extricated all the grim pleasure he wished to out of this perilous situation, and turned next to wondering just how much of a chance Berryhill and Thorne would have at eluding a town full of half-drunk, excited cowboys and townsmen. He came eventually to the conclusion that the time factor was likely to prove important, perhaps even critical. Thorne and the sheriff could not hope to leave town with their two prisoners in broad daylight and he doubted very much, judging from the solid and increasing racket out front, if they could prevent trouble until after dark, when it would perhaps be safe to try and spirit their prisoners away.
He dropped his smoke, stepped upon it, shot a careless glance over at old Parton, crossed his cell to the rear wall, and leaned there. At once the old man said loudly: “Hear that? Well, you still think it’s funny?”
Duncan inclined his head. “It keeps getting funnier, you old goat. I’ve got nothing to lose. They’re going to hang me anyway. That’s been tickling you since last night. Now it’s my turn to smile a little.”
“Blessed little,” growled old Parton. “Why don’t that damned sheriff do like you said ... send for some soldiers or some US marshals?”
“That reminds me,” said Duncan. “Thanks for helping me out about that telegraph office.”
“By gawd, I’ll tell ’em I’m no relation to you ... that you killed their expressman on your own.”
“No good, Parton. You’ve already put on your act for both Berryhill and Thorne. It was real good play-acting, too. I could’ve strangled you then, but now I think I’ll just start calling you pa. In fact, if we get a chance to say anything just before they yank us, I’ll tell ’em you planned that job from start to finish. I’ll even say you told me to kill that expressman.”
Parton put up a hand and began swiftly, agitatedly to comb his beard. He crossed to his pallet, gazed down at it, turned, and took another three steps and listened at the back wall again.
Duncan lay down, tilted up his hat, and closed his eyes. He didn’t feel at all like sleeping, and actually old Parton was right. There wasn’t anything funny about those increasing catcalls outside at all. But he wanted to think and this was the best way.
He rummaged among all the things that had happened to him in the last twenty-four hours for some logical explanation of how so many coincidences could dovetail around him so perfectly. He also thought back to everything that had been said between him and Sheriff Berryhill or Jack Thorne, which might give him some clue as to how—if that mob out there didn’t get him—he might still come out of this alive.
“Hey,” Parton breathed sharply, suddenly. “Get up ... someone’s coming.”
Duncan eased back his hat, looked up the corridor, saw Berryhill approaching with two tin trays, and arose. The sheriff pushed Parton’s tray under his door and moved to do the same for Duncan. He said not a word and his expression was grimly and tightly locked. Parton bombarded him with questions, seared him with insults and imprecations, and wheedled at him in a whining tone that inspired Duncan to say: “Shut up! You got a yellow streak up your back a yard wide.”
Parton went quiet but his cold old eyes never once moved off Sheriff Berryhill, who raised up from pushing Duncan’s tray in to him, and said: “You don’t hear so good, do you?”
“Good enough,” snapped Duncan. “You and that old goat over there got your guts running out your feet. I’ve heard mobs before.”
“Well, if you had a lick of sense, you’d be afraid of this one,” rapped out Berryhill. “There are close to a hundred men out there. Most of them have been drinkin’ steadily now for two hours. By three o’clock, if Walt Sheay isn’t on the bench in his courtroom ... ” Berryhill gravely wagged his head back and forth without finishing his last sentence, his steady gaze never departing from Duncan’s countenance.
“Hey, Sheriff, listen to me a minute,” Parton nearly shouted. “You got to send for help. That’s your job ... protectin’ your prisoners. You got to send ... ”
“Parton,” cut in the lawman harshly, “you should’ve made a better study of this countryside before you settled here to rob the express office. The nearest Army post is four days’ ride from here and the nearest marshal is six hundred miles away. Even if they could fly like a bird couldn’t any of them get here fast enough.”
Right after Berryhill said this someone out front hurled a large rock against the jailhouse street-side wall. This impact reverberated through the entire building.
Parton jumped. “Sheriff, you got to arm us. We got a right to protect ourselves. Sheriff, Sheriff ... ”
Berryhill was walking away. He turned, passed beyond sight, and a moment later Duncan heard the bar drop behind that massively separating oak door.
“You’re a preacher,” Duncan said to Parton. “Now’s the time to get down on your prayer bones and start working up a miracle.”
Chapter Seven
Duncan had no very exact idea of the time when that outside racket began suddenly and audibly to increase, but he thought it had to be close to 3:00 p.m. He got up, walked over to the back wall, and stood there considering those catcalling, derisive outcries coming around to him from the front roadway.
In his adjoining cell Jeremiah Parton’s forehead was visibly shiny and his talon-like hands, instead of combing that bushy old gray beard, were now twisting it.
Duncan heard a rattle of stones strike the jailhouse from out front. He turned to see Parton’s reaction to this. The old man was standing with his legs wide-planted and his head forward, straining to hear. He very clearly did not believe Berryhill and Thorne would be able to keep out that ugly mob. He turned, saw Duncan standing over there watching him, and shook his shaggy head.
“Bad,” he muttered. “It’s bad out there, boy. I don’t like this even a little bit.”
“You’ll like it less when they bust in h
ere, Parton.”
“Damn you!” screeched the old man, suddenly coming unwound and whipping upright, facing Duncan. “Damn you for a fool. I tell you they’re goin’ to get inside. Beat on your bars, get someone in here to set us loose and give us arms. We got a right to protect ourselves ... that’s the cussed law.”
“Naw,” Duncan replied, still calm, still watching old Parton’s agitation with clinical interest. “That’s not the law here, I can tell you that right now. Berryhill doesn’t care. He told me on the ride in, he knew these people too well to fight them over someone like me.”
“He didn’t,” croaked Parton.
Duncan nodded. “Wait and see.”
Almost as though this were a cue for his entrance, Sheriff Berryhill appeared in the cellblock. He was carrying a sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun. Standing back in the doorway, which led into the outer office, stood Jack Thorne, also armed with a riot gun.
Berryhill came along briskly, shot Duncan a look, and halted at old Parton’s cell to put aside his shotgun, insert a key, and swing back Parton’s cell door.
“Out!” he snapped.
Parton moved with surprising alacrity. Heretofore Duncan had seen him only as a shuffling, aged renegade. Now he saw this other side of that old man’s character. Parton halted with his back to Berryhill, staring at that leaning shotgun.
Duncan said casually: “Watch him, Sheriff. That was a tomfool thing to do ... to leave that shotgun like that.”
Berryhill looked up and around, put out a thick arm to push off old Parton, then scooped up the gun and wordlessly stepped along to Duncan’s cell.
“Go on up front,” he ordered Parton. “Up where Jack is. Get any more silly ideas and I’ll feed you to those wolves out there.”
Parton was hiking toward Thorne when Berryhill flung back Duncan’s door and jerked his head. Duncan walked out, turned, and struck out after Parton.
At the doorway, Thorne, looking grim as death, stepped back, brusquely motioned both prisoners into the outer office, and waited for Berryhill to come along before he closed and barred that cellblock door again.
In Berryhill’s office it became instantly apparent to Duncan and Parton why the two lawmen were so grim and hair-triggered. In the outside roadway a mob of hooting, stone-throwing, cursing men milled aimlessly in front of the jailhouse. There was one small, barred window Duncan could peer through to see that mob. They were mostly cowboys. There were some townsmen, too, but not nearly as many as there were range men.
Parton stepped over beside Duncan, craned for a look out, swung away as a stone broke the window, and flinched at the tinkling sound of falling glass.
Berryhill and Thorne looked up at the sound of the breaking glass. Thorne went forward as though to poke his shotgun barrel out at the crowd but Berryhill sang out at him in a sharp way, halting Thorne in his tracks.
“Don’t make ’em any madder,” cautioned the sheriff. “It’s five o’clock. We’ve got to keep ’em neutralized a couple hours longer before it’ll be dark.”
Duncan looked inquiringly over where Berryhill was chucking shotgun loads from a rumpled cardboard box into a shirt pocket.
“What about the trial?” he asked.
“That,” growled Thorne, turning back and spearing Duncan with a cold stare, “will be postponed a while longer. Judge Sheay’s not up to sitting on the bench yet.” Thorne’s mighty shoulders rolled up, his stare became truculent, and his large hands curled into fists. “You two Partons are goin’ to get some good men hurt tonight, I think, and what roils me is that the pair of you together isn’t worth the hand off one of those men out there.”
Berryhill put a disapproving look upon his deputy and curtly motioned toward the spilled shotgun shells. “Fill your pockets!” he called over that outside hooting. “It’s not them, Jack, it’s the law. I already told you that.”
Berryhill went over and wordlessly began scooping up shells. Duncan stepped away from that broken window, went to a bench, and dropped down watching the sheriff. Berryhill was nervous, but more than that he was obdurate. Clearly he did not like the position he now found himself in—what man would?—but he was no deviationist. If a battle started, he’d be in there with his riot gun, friends outside or enemies.
This should have made Duncan feel better but it didn’t. He kept thinking what Berryhill had said about those men being his friends.
Jeremiah Parton glided away from that window, also, but he, from time to time, eyed the rack of upright Winchester carbines on across the room. Jack Thorne caught the bearded old man’s calculating glance over there, and shook his head gently at Parton.
“You go ahead and try it if you want to,” he said. “But when you do, remember one thing, old man ... you’ll be going for Big Casino. Either you make it good or you make it dead. Won’t be any middle course at that distance if I line up your belly with this here scattergun.”
Parton crossed over to where Duncan was sitting upright, alert to each discordant sound, eased down there, and glanced around at the younger man.
“They’ll never get it done,” he breathed, his rough tone full of conviction. “They can’t no more slip us out of here than they can fly. Listen to ’em out there.”
“Pretty hard to hear anything else,” Duncan commented, turning away from the old man.
Berryhill came over, looked first at Parton, then at Duncan as he leaned upon his shotgun, and said: “We could leave right now, only there’s nothing but open country beyond town. They’d spot four riders before we were a mile out.”
“Before we were ten feet out, you mean,” corrected Parton. “You’d never get us past the door, Sheriff.”
“The door be damned,” said Berryhill. He got no chance to elaborate even if he’d intended to. All at once that roadway bedlam stopped as suddenly as though it had been turned off by a handle.
Berryhill sprang around but Jack Thorne was already moving toward the window ahead of him.
Thorne kept pressed to one side of the wall, craned his neck, and made one long, sweeping look out.
“What is it?” asked Berryhill.
“Over a dozen men with a batterin’ ram, Matt. Have a look. The others are all getting back out of the way.”
Thorne peered out again, longer this time because everyone out in the overflowing roadway was concentrating upon this oncoming log and its burly carriers.
“Dammit, Matt, I don’t like this. Now we’re goin’ to have to shoot.”
Duncan got up, watching the sheriff as he looked out, then stood rigidly for a long time before he started over toward the lawman.
Berryhill saw this from the corner of his eye and snarled: “Go back and sit down. And keep down.”
Thorne protested again. “Matt, dammit. I don’t want to fire into those fellows out there.”
“Over their heads,” retorted Berryhill. “Plenty high, Jack ... just so they’ll understand that we’re not foolin’.”
Thorne reluctantly poked his riot gun through the window, tilted its twin barrels, and fired off first one barrel, and then the other one. The roar of this weapon, plus the nearly total silence outside in the pre-dusk roadway, caused a sudden great commotion.
Every man out there, drunk or sober, knew that was a shotgun. Those carrying the log stood fast the longest, but when several of them cast loose to flee, the others could not continue forward so they ran, also.
Elsewhere that cannon-like roar scattered men like quail. They squawked and ran in every direction. A few drew six-guns and twisted to fire at the jailhouse as they fled, but not many. For some time there was only the solid beat of feet getting out of that exposed roadway. Later, guns were fired and within the jailhouse its occupants distinctly heard the patter of lead against brick.
Jack Thorne, standing well clear of the shattered window looked over at Matt Berryhill. “That did it!” he c
alled over the increasing outside gunfire. “Now they’re stirred up.”
“They were anyway,” retorted Sheriff Berryhill. He craned for an upward look at the mellowing sky. “Not much longer, Jack. Let ’em have a couple more high shots to keep ’em off.”
Thorne obeyed but he did not expose himself. Bullets rained inside through that little window. He would wait for a lull, poke his scattergun out, tilt it, and fire it. Each time he did this, the others had to flatten against the front wall because slugs came through that window like leaden hail.
Old man Parton was the least collected man in Berryhill’s office, and yet he was not so much afraid as he was apprehensive of the outcome of all this. Twice he asked Berryhill for permission to arm himself from that wall rack, and twice the sheriff swore at him.
Duncan, remembering that remark of Berryhill’s about not using the door to leave, remained stationary with both shoulders pressed against the brick wall, watching Berryhill and considering what he might have meant.
The gunfire from outside had become sporadic. Sometimes it seemed to come in volley fashion. Other times it dwindled to only an occasional shot. Duncan noticed that neither the sheriff nor his deputy had much enthusiasm even for what little return shooting they did.
Parton edged over close and said to Duncan: “They’re not half fightin’. It looks to me like them two are just puttin’ up a mock defense.”
“Berryhill has his reasons,” muttered Duncan. “I’ll stake my chances on him.”
“Then you’re a fool,” Parton snarled, stepping away again.
Duncan swung to watch the old man. He was heading in the direction of that gun rack again. Both Berryhill and Thorne were occupied at the little window now, their backs facing the interior of the room.
Duncan hissed at Parton. The old man turned, glared, and started forward again, his intention obvious. Duncan stepped lightly away from his shielding wall, caught up with the old outlaw in four long strides, almost lazily lifted an arm, threw it out, caught Parton’s shirt at the shoulder, and spun the older man around. Just as deliberate and slow-moving, Duncan’s other arm came up. His balled fist caught Parton flush on the point of the jaw, dropping him like a poleaxed steer. That blow made its own sharp sound in the room.
