Where the Bullets Fly

by Terrence McCauley

  Mackey walked out to meet him where Front Street met the road out of town. He decided to leave his rifle back at the jailhouse in favor of keeping his hands free. The handle of his Colt jutted out over his buckle within easy reach.

  The messenger stopped and waived his flimsy white rag at the sheriff. “Flag of truce, lawman. Means you can’t hurt me none, least while I’m holdin’ it. That’s the law.”

  Mackey stopped at the edge of the boardwalk, which he figured was well out of range of Darabont’s rifles in the hills. “State your business.”

  “You ain’t the mayor. Mr. Darabont says I gotta speak to the mayor and only to the mayor.”

  “I’m as close to the mayor as you’re going to get, so state your business or go away.”

  The messenger shrugged. “Don’t make no difference to me. Just repeatin’ what the man said to say.” He dug out a piece of paper from his vest pocket and held it out to Mackey.

  Mackey was too far away to take it. He wouldn’t have taken it, even if he’d been closer.

  The messenger said, “These here are what Mr. Darabont is callin’ his list of demands. Mr. Darabont wants you to know these are his rules and his rules are final. He said that means you don’t get to change them.”

  Mackey stayed on the boardwalk. “What does it say?”

  “How the hell should I know? Can’t hardly write my name much less read.” The man spat a stream of tobacco juice into the thoroughfare. “But he told me he wants all the street lamps to get lit as per usual. That’s important. Says if you keep the town dark, he starts torturing one of the women we got. Says you’re supposed to give me your answer.” He held the paper out to him again. “It’s all written down for you right here better than I could ever tell it. Here. Take it, read it and give me your answer.”

  Mackey pulled his Colt and fired a single shot into the messenger’s belly.

  The man dropped his makeshift flag as he stumbled back a few steps before dropping to the ground, cradling his bleeding belly. “He shot me, boys!” he yelled out as loud as he could. He kicked at the dirt to try to get back on his feet, but kept falling down. “This son of a bitch shot me under a flag of . . .”

  Mackey’s next shot hit him in the head. As the man fell quiet, a strong wind picked up and took the letter he’d been clutching. Mackey saw it blowing eastward and away from town. He didn’t go after it. He had no intention of reading it anyway.

  From the edge of the boardwalk, Mackey opened the cylinder of the Colt, pulled out the two dead bullets and inserted two new rounds from his belt before snapping the cylinder shut.

  A scattering of rifle fire broke out along the hillside. The bullets fell well short of the boardwalk, kicking up dirt as they hit. A few managed to plunk the messenger’s corpse as the riflemen tried to find their range, but no rounds came close to the sheriff.

  Mackey made a point of stepping on the white rag as he walked back to the jail.

  When Mackey reached the jail, he found his father restraining a red-faced Brian Mason just inside the doorway. “What the hell is the matter with you? That man came under a flag of truce!”

  Mackey walked past him toward the stove. He needed coffee. “Flag of truce only means something in an engagement between two armies. Brian. Darabont’s men aren’t an army so the tradition doesn’t apply.”

  Pappy surprised him by saying, “You should’ve at least read Darabont’s demands, Aaron.”

  “What for? He’s going to do what he wants anyway. Besides, that bastard said Darabont was specific about keeping all the street lamps lit tonight. I planned on doing that anyway.”

  “He did?” Pappy relaxed his grip on the mayor’s shoulder. “But why? He’d have an advantage in the dark.”

  “Who knows? Who cares?” He took a sip of coffee. The warmth felt good in his throat. “It won’t make any difference. He’s dug in up there and we’re dug in down here. Just a matter of who makes the first mistake. And I believe he just did.”

  Underhill didn’t look convinced. “How?”

  As was his custom, Billy answered for him. “Because now we know where they’re positioned. And how far they can shoot from where they are. Mighty useful information.”

  Underhill clearly still didn’t like it. “What about the tradition of not shooting the messenger and all that?”

  “Henry the Fourth,” Mackey said as he sat behind his desk.

  “Henry the who?” Underhill asked.

  “More like Henry the What.” Mackey poured coffee into his mug. “It’s a play by Shakespeare. Don’t worry, marshal. Darabont’s an educated man. He appreciates the reference.” He looked at Underhill and Pappy. “You two best get to work fortifying the town. They’re liable to make a run at us just after nightfall. Take the mayor here with you. Help give the people a bit more . . . confidence.”

  The three men left, while Billy kept watching the street from the jailhouse window. His Sharps rifle was next to him, leaning against the wall. “You know I’d never speak against you in front of anyone, Aaron. Not even Pappy.”

  “I know. But you will now.”

  “Shooting that man puts you in a damned awkward place, especially if Darabont takes to torturing one of the women he’s got.”

  Mackey sipped his coffee. “He’s going to do what he’s going to do, Billy. You know that.”

  “Sure I do, but one of those women is Katherine.”

  Mackey set his mug on the desk. “I know, but they’re down a man and that might make a difference.”

  Billy kept looking out the window. “The town might feel different about it if they hear a woman screaming all night. They might start blaming you for bringing this on them in the first place.”

  Mackey set his mug on the desk. “Just means we’ll have to end this damned thing before any panic sets in.” He needed to change the subject. The thought of Darabont working over Katherine was too much for him right then. “You get a look at their positions when they started firing at me?”

  “Yep.”

  “Think you’ll be able to hit them from here?”

  “Not from here. Too far away, even for the Sharps. But the Boudreauxs and me should be able to nail a few if we hit them from either the blacksmith shop or the livery.”

  Mackey thought of the man he’d just killed, lying dead at the end of Front Street. “Some might call what I did murder.”

  Billy spat into the spittoon by the door. “I wouldn’t.”

  Chapter 22

  Mackey might not have had much success in raising a posse to go after Darabont, but Pappy had managed to scrounge up forty townsmen willing and able to defend the town.

  Most of them were former soldiers who had fought on opposite sides of the war, but Mackey knew that war had been a long time ago. They were different men now. Shopkeepers and townsmen; travelers and cow punchers in off the trail; loggers and miners who’d been in town for one reason or another and found themselves stuck there by Darabont’s siege. Many of them had been friends of Jeb Taylor and Old Wilkes and customers of the whores who’d been killed. Some were kids who’d grown up listening to the war stories of their fathers and thought this might be their chance for a glory all their own.

  It wasn’t the army he wanted, but the only army he had.

  Mackey and Billy had broken up the men into four shifts of ten men at a time, keeping watch around the clock. Mackey placed the men in a standard defensive formation in buildings around the town. All forty were ordered to come running to their assigned positions if any shooting started.

  The rest of the men were either too drunk or too timid to be of much use unless Darabont’s men rode down Front Street. Even then, they’d probably do more harm than good.

  Mackey decided Dover Station was as ready as it could be. It probably wouldn’t be enough against an all-out assault, but it was all he had.

  The second shift of ten men had taken over for the two Mexicans, Brahm, and the Boudreauxs, taking up their positions at the head and rear of F
ront Street and all the buildings in between.

  The first shift was drinking coffee in the jailhouse while Billy, Underhill, and Mackey were out on the jailhouse porch. Billy and Underhill were on their feet, rifles in hand, watching for anything to shoot at, but finding nothing. They kept looking anyway.

  Mackey was in his rocker; his Winchester leaned against the wall to his right. He felt a tinge of weakness from his pneumonia, but he wasn’t as weak as he had been only the day before. Fear and anger could do wonderful things.

  He knew they might be out of range of Darabont’s rifles, but his men would see them in front of the jailhouse. He wanted them to see how relaxed he was. He wasn’t hunkered down somewhere. He appeared to be just a man in a rocking chair, at peace with his surroundings.

  It was going on sundown and long, straight shadows were cast across Front Street. It was almost quitting time at the various businesses around town. Usually the street would be busy with people closing up shop and going home. But no one was going home tonight, and the shops were staying open later than they’d intended. Maybe all night because there was nowhere else to go. No one wanted to risk having Darabont’s men loot their stores, either.

  Mackey knew the stagecoach from Butte was due to arrive any minute. He wished he could’ve been able to warn them off somehow, maybe send a rider out to keep them away, but he couldn’t. Maybe Sim Halstead had managed to tip them off, but he doubted it. Sim would’ve been busy with other things.

  Thinking of the stage reminded him of Katherine and the other women Darabont had taken. He figured she’d be comforting the other captives if she could, keeping their spirits up. It was her way. It was who she was.

  Mackey realized he was gripping the armrest of his rocker too hard. He opened his hands and closed his eyes as he willed his anger to subside. There’d be time for anger and rage, but now was the time for order and planning. He’d know more when Sim came back.

  Sim had to come back.

  He tried to distract himself by listening to Underhill talking to Billy. “How many of them you figure there are up there?” Underhill asked the deputy. “Your men were watching them the longest from both ends of Front Street.”

  “The Boudreaux boys counted about twenty on this side,” Billy said. “Solomon counted as many from Katie’s place. They couldn’t get a clear shot at any of them, so they didn’t waste the bullets, but they could see them up in the hills. Saw some cigarette smoke drift up from behind the rocks.” He nodded toward the top of the hill. “My guess is they’ve got the captives up there somewhere. Probably got a wagon or something with the rest of their supplies.”

  Mackey watched Underhill mindlessly drum his fingers on the stock of his rifle as he watched the dying light on the hillside. The marshal was nervous. Mackey couldn’t blame him.

  Underhill said, “Bastards gotta move some time, don’t they? Get something to eat. Take a dump. Stretch their legs.”

  “Most likely will do that when it gets dark,” Billy said. “That’s what I’d do in their place.” He looked back at Mackey. “That’s what we did, wasn’t it?”

  Mackey remembered. He kept rocking.

  “At that Adobe Flats thing?” Underhill asked.

  Mackey kept quiet and kept rocking. That was a different time and different place. Apache were different from Darabont’s men. Disciplined and predictable. They hit hard and moved on fast. Darabont was no Apache. There was no sense in trying to relate the two.

  Underhill kept talking the way nervous men do. “I stopped by the newspaper office earlier. Is your wife the skinny Irish girl with yellow hair?”

  “Yep,” Mackey said. “That would be Mary.”

  “She was whipping everyone into shape pretty good. Taking charge and getting everyone settled.”

  “Yep,” Mackey repeated. “That would be Mary.”

  He looked like he wanted to say more on the subject, but didn’t. That didn’t stop him from talking. “Your buddy Sim must’ve gotten himself caught or shot. Probably would’ve been back by now if he hadn’t.”

  “He’s waiting until after dark to make his way into town,” Billy said. “He’ll probably take care of a few of those bastards, too, on his way in.”

  Mackey saw that Underhill looked like he had more to say but had decided against it.

  Mackey kept rocking, looking up Front Street; praying for dark. Praying for something to break.

  Don’t be dead, Sim.

  * * *

  The sun had just disappeared behind Snake Hill when it happened.

  Mackey heard it before he saw it. The sound of a team of panicked horses running toward Front Street at a full gallop.

  He’d just gotten to his feet when they came into view. The horses had good reason to panic.

  They were hitched to a burning stagecoach.

  Smoke and flame billowed out of the coach as the team of horses careened around the corner and onto Front Street. The coach bucked and rocked wildly as the four-horse team ran flat out in a useless attempt to escape the burning cargo they were pulling behind them.

  Mackey yelled into the defenders drinking coffee in the jailhouse. “Get back to your positions! They’ll be coming now. Shoot anything you see. Move!”

  As the men spilled out of the jail and ran in their respective directions, Mackey watched the horses barrel toward the jailhouse, their bodies thick with sweat and their eyes wide with panic. The burning coach’s wheels warbled and almost flipped over several times. If one of the wheels came loose on Front Street, the coach could slam into one of the buildings and start one hell of a fire.

  That was probably what Darabont was counting on.

  And there was only one way to stop it.

  Mackey brought his Winchester to his shoulder, aimed and fired at the two lead horses, then the two behind them. Underhill and Billy did the same.

  The team of horses buckled and crashed to the ground. The burning stagecoach snapped loose from the harness and tumbled over them, crashing onto the hardening mud of Front Street. The burning coach shattered on impact, sending burning embers all over the boardwalk near the livery and the blacksmith on either side of the thoroughfare. One wheel of the coach bounced free, burning as it wobbled up Front Street until it fell over in front of the Tin Horn.

  Rifle fire erupted from both ends of Front Street. Mackey could understand a few of them getting jumpy and firing at random, but not all of them at once.

  Since the blacksmith shop was closer, he decided to run there. Billy and Underhill were right behind him.

  Mackey ran past the body of the messenger he’d killed earlier that day. Bullets kicked up dirt at their feet as they ran within range of Darabont’s rifles. Two of the townsmen were firing up at the hill, their bullets ricocheting off the rocks. The Boudreauxs fired from the livery stable across Front Street. He remembered he had posted one of them down to Katie’s Place on the other side of town, but this was no time to argue.

  Mackey took cover in the doorway of the blacksmith’s shop. He brought his Winchester to his shoulder; covering Billy and Underhill as they ran toward his position. A bullet struck the front of the building, inches away from his head. He spotted the shooter crouching behind a distant boulder to his right, well out of range of the Boudreauxs’ rifles.

  But not his.

  Mackey aimed at the boulder, waiting for the man to reappear for another shot. He figured the man was either reloading or hoping to flank the Boudreauxs’ position at the stable. He hoped the dying sunlight held out just a little longer.

  When the man moved, he didn’t show much of himself, but enough for a man of Mackey’s skill. The sheriff fired once and watched the man go down in a puff of red dust.

  A series of loud, rebel yells and cheers echoed from behind him down Front Street. He figured Pappy’s boys must be in the thick of it on the south end of town.

  Mackey ducked into the blacksmith’s shop and saw Underhill at the far left of the structure, looking for anyone trying to flank the
building. Billy was at the center window, scanning the hillside for more targets with his Sharps.

  “See any of them?”

  Billy fired, and a man yelped in the distance. “Not anymore.”

  “What about you, Underhill?”

  “I’ve got two over here, but they’re biding their time behind the fence over there.”

  Mackey joined him at the window and aimed at where Underhill was targeting. It was a broken wooden corral whose bottom rail had dropped long ago, and the grass and weeds had grown thick around it.

  Underhill said, “I think they’re trying to get around to the cemetery and aim down at us from there.”

  Hoping to make them break cover, Mackey fired twice into the overgrowth. One of the men jumped as a bullet hit him in the leg. Underhill shot him through the chest.

  The weeds moved as the other man crawled farther along the fence line.

  Underhill fired again. The man cried out as he scrambled to his feet and made a dash toward the cover of the cemetery. Mackey fired once and brought the man down.

  The man had fallen within range of Darabont’s guns, but close enough for Mackey to reach before he died. He couldn’t count on Sim getting back any time soon. He needed to get the wounded man to tell him how many were with him.

  He laid his Winchester against the wall. “I’m going out there. Cover me.”

  Before either man could stop him, Mackey drew his pistol and darted out from the cover of the blacksmith’s workshop and ran toward where the last Darabont man had fallen.

  Bullets flew in both directions as Mackey ran. He didn’t think about how many times he’d almost been killed. He didn’t dare.

  He slid to a halt in the tall grass next to the man he’d just shot. He was bleeding from the leg and a gaping hole in the side of his chest. Mackey kept low as he quickly looked for other gunmen approaching from the rocky hillside, but saw no one.

  The man was groaning, but Mackey shook him hard. “How many of you are up there? Tell me and I’ll finish you quick.”