Rolling Thunder

by Paul Lederer

  EIGHT

  I believed Peebles. He wanted me dead. If I had had any doubts that all of them were not in on the conspiracy, they now vanished. Not a man present spoke a word of caution to Peebles on my behalf.

  ‘I don’t see any point in continuing this conversation,’ Peebles said. Then calmly he drew his pistol from its high-riding holster and aimed it at my head. I had sensed that this was coming, though it was sudden and the moment incongruous. I was already on my feet, Peebles still in his leather chair. Instinct more than thought propelled me up and over his desk, and as a shot from his .32 revolver sounded, echoing through the room, I hurled myself, shoulder first at the window behind the desk.

  I heard a woman scream. Someone – Judge Manx perhaps – yelled out ‘murderer!’ I rolled through the shattered glass at the foot of the wall into the dark night, leaped to my feet and lunged into the cottonwood copse, seeing three faces staring at me from the lighted window. I wove my way through the trees and started toward the front of the house where my horse was hitched.

  Slowly, painfully, I realized that the bullet Peebles had fired had tagged me. A searing pain, low down on my body, began to nag me. Touching it, looking at my fingertips, I saw that he had drilled me just above my right hip.

  As if that knowledge slowed me, I began to stagger in my weaving run, my Colt now dangling in my left hand without my recalling drawing it. I looked behind me, my breath coming in tortured gasps, but no one was pursuing me from that quarter. I rounded the corner of the big house and saw two rough-shod men with rifles standing on the porch, their eyes searching the darkness for me.

  My horse was gone!

  Of course they had taken the big gray from me. I felt stupid, dazed. I was afoot in their town which was an armed encampment. I remembered Peebles’s warning to me – I would not get out of this town alive. As I entered the alley that led past the brick courthouse toward the south end of town, and the stable where I might be able to snatch up another horse I heard the angry shouts behind me in a crescendo that rose to a whoop of pleasure. I had been spotted and they were after me in a minute.

  I staggered on, holding my side which was bleeding more profusely than I had thought. My breath came in harsh gasps. My knees threatened to buckle with each stride. I could have turned and fired at my pursuers, but there were too many of them and I would only do them the favor of pinpointing my position. I staggered on, stumbling, once nearly going to the ground as I tripped over an unseen object in the dark alleyway.

  Ahead of me now, stark against the surrounding black oak-trees, I saw Tabor’s stable, where I meant to try stealing a horse. But the building was unlighted, its double doors closed. Cursing silently, I turned to watch the mob following me. They advanced slowly, no man willing to risk being to be the first to take a bullet. But they came inexorably, urging each other forward, and I knew that it was only a matter of time before they swarmed over me.

  Desperately I tried banging on the locked stable doors. Hot blood leaked from my side, my hair hung in my eyes. The Colt was heavy as an anvil in my hand. It was no use. I turned my back to the tall double doors and braced myself for a shoot-out.

  Then I heard a creak, rusty hinges shifting their position and a Judas door at the stable entrance opened, revealing a dark, faceless man surrounded by deep interior darkness. A hand reached out and touched my shoulder and I spun, crouching, my Colt cocked and ready.

  ‘Get in here, Tom!’ Barney Weber whispered desperately. ‘Now!’

  I followed the freckle-faced man into the interior of the barn. Did I trust him? No. I trusted no man these days, but there was little choice.

  ‘Over here,’ Barney said and he led me to a corner cabinet, head-high but only two feet by two in depth and width. ‘Get in there. I’ll get rid of them,’ Barney said, and I managed to force my body into the small space where rakes and shovels hung. As I did so I heard Barney snap shut a padlock on the door’s hasp. I was a prisoner now. I had to trust Barney, yet could not. I was beginning to get light-headed from exertion and the loss of blood. My side still flared with pain. I heard the pounding of fists on the double doors of the stable, and I waited, cocked Colt in my hand, the darkness around me nearly complete, the life dripping out of me.

  ‘Open up!’ I heard through the door of my hiding-place. ‘Weber, are you in there? Open up!’

  ‘Minute,’ Barney replied sleepily. I heard the creak of the hinges on the big doors and then Barney again, ‘What’s this about, men?’

  ‘Anybody in here?’

  ‘Been locked up for two hours. Nobody’s here but me. Why, what’s up?’

  No one responded. Someone said, ‘He must have made for the dry gulch. Trying to hide out there.’

  Someone muttered a reply which I could not hear through the planks of the tool shed. After a lot of mumbled consultation and savage cursing, the posse made its way up the street, voices fading to silence. I heard Barney on the other side of the door say:

  ‘Give it another ten minutes, Tom. Make sure they’re gone.’

  It was more like fifteen minutes, seeming like an hour, as I stood cramped, cold, my fury building before I heard Barney insert his key in the padlock of the tool-bin door and swing it open. He looked frightened out of his mind, his knees were wobbling with fear and yet he had done what he had to save my skin. It gave me a new respect for him. I told him that and thanked him sincerely.

  ‘Tom,’ Barney said, ‘you always treated me right. The problem was, as you know, I was just never cut out to be a fighting man. I’d like to apologize for—’

  ‘I don’t need an apology,’ I said. I was still holding my side. Blood could be seen leaking slowly through my fingers by the dull light of a kerosene-lantern hanging on the wall of the stable, and my faded red shirt was stained with deeper crimson.

  ‘I’ve some new linen,’ Barney said. ‘Tabor uses it when he plasters a pony’s bowed tendon. Let me get a roll of it and we’ll wrap you up as tight as we can.’

  Gratefully I followed Barney into a tiny room which seemed to be where he lived. There was a narrow cot with a tick mattress, a well-thumbed magazine, a chipped cup on a scarred table and little else. I stripped off my shirt and let Barney wash and bind my wound. Shivering in the night, I asked him through chattering teeth:

  ‘Is there any way I can borrow a horse from you?’

  ‘How about your own horse?’ Barney asked with a grin that was weak but satisfied.

  ‘My gray!’ I asked in astonishment.

  ‘Yeah. There was a runction up the street near the Peebles’ house. I saw your gray come loping away. A couple of men tried to catch him up, but he was having no part of it. After the fuss died down I called to him. He knows me, of course, and I led him over here.’

  ‘He’s in the stable?’ I grunted as Barney cinched me up with his bandage.

  ‘No. That didn’t seem like a good idea. They’d have found him here, and lain in wait for you. I picketed him in the oak-grove out back. That’s how I knew I should watch for you, guessing you’d be coming along sooner or later … if you could. I knew you’d be needing a pony.’

  ‘You’re a marvel, Barney.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Barney sheared off the end of the bandage roll and stepped back. ‘I’m sorry about all of this, Tom. For the way I ran. Maybe some day … when things are settled.…’

  ‘I’ll have a place for you, Barney,’ I promised. ‘When things get settled.’

  He smiled briefly and I saw his old nervousness returning. ‘There’s a back door,’ he said hastily, keeping his eyes averted. ‘It’s best you slip out quick before someone comes back.’

  I agreed. The back door, which was hidden behind a stack of hay and feed-sacking, was apparently seldom used. Barney cleared the clutter away, and with a brief, uneasy smile, he swung the door open. I moved cautiously out into the chill of night. I worked my way into the oak-grove, seeing now a group of torch-carrying men on the far side of town, scattering weird angry shadows as they move
d. Looking, I assumed, for me.

  In a pained crouch I worked my way through the massive old trees. I whistled once, waited and listened and whistled again. That time I hear a horse nicker and stamp impatient feet and I knew I had found my gray.

  I stroked his warm neck, painfully dragging myself up into the saddle. I sat my horse uncertainly for a moment, pondering as the faintest hint of light beyond the western mountains offered notice that the rising moon would be taking its place in the sky before long. Anyone recognizing my horse would be instantly on alert. However, being without a horse was a much greater risk. When my work was done I would need to be quickly away from Stratton. I kneed the gray and we started slowly through the back alleys of the town.

  I had been arguing with myself all the way down the long trail as to whether or not I should actually do what I was planning, but the reception I had received, the bullet that had creased my side but surely had been meant to kill me had hardened my resolve.

  The damming of the river would certainly kill Stratton. In time. But the anger riding with me now had tilted the scales toward sudden vengeance. I would destroy this town sooner rather than later.

  The brick courthouse was silent. A single light gleamed through the window of a first-floor office. No one was on the streets. They were either in the saloons getting drunk or out roaming the wash with their torches, looking to shoot me down. I scouted the building out as I circled it and ended up hitching the gray outside a back door which stood slightly ajar, letting a sliver of yellow light leak out into the alley. Then I hefted my heavy saddle-bags, shouldered them and entered the building.

  It was going to be a hell of a night.

  There was a certain sort of blind madness settling over me. A hatred without anger, the need to destroy with no compunctions attached to it. My boots clicked down the hallway of the courthouse. At a cross-corridor I glanced up and down, seeing the barred cubicles. The city jail.

  There was no one occupying any of the cells. You had to do a lot to be arrested in Stratton.

  Opening each door as I passed, I made my way through the empty building. Everyone seemed to have gone home or was attending Shelley Peebles’s party … or was out searching for me. I shifted my heavy saddle-bags from one shoulder to the other. My side continued to ache, to bleed, staining the white bandage to deep crimson.

  The last door on my left along the corridor – the one I had seen light shining from – was partly open. Drawing my right-hand Colt I stepped through the doorway. A man in a dark suit, his tie loose sat there looking up at me. He wore bifocals; his dark hair was marcelled and plastered into place. He watched me with startled eyes as I approached.

  ‘Who in blazes are you!’ he demanded.

  ‘Are you the mayor?’ I asked.

  ‘Certainly,’ he replied as if my ignorance was an affront to his dignity.

  ‘Put on your coat. Go home. Don’t look back,’ I said, showing him the muzzle of my .44.

  ‘You can’t come barging in here …’ he began. He looked at me more cautiously then. I don’t know how much he could read of the anger in my eyes, but the sight of a bleeding man, hatless and unshaven, twin Colts at the ready, gave him pause to consider his position. ‘See here,’ he said calmly, ‘we can’t have this, you know?’

  ‘We have it,’ I said solemnly. I let my saddlebags drop to the floor, keeping an eye on the mayor, my right hand on the grips of my dangling Colt. ‘You’ve got to pay attention to good advice when you’re given it.’

  I crouched down, opened my saddle-bags and saw the mayor’s eyes open as wide as saucers as he recognized the dynamite in my hand for what it was. ‘I’d go if I were you,’ I said again.

  He rose unsteadily, gawking at me, his eyes magnified through his spectacles. Nervously he began to warn me as I fixed my fuses, thought better of it and said only: ‘When Mr Peebles hears …’

  I smiled crookedly. ‘Oh, he will hear, Mayor. I promise you that.’ Then I growled. ‘Get the hell out of here unless you want to be blown to dog-meat!’

  Neglecting his overcoat he sidled past me and rushed toward the door, his legs moving as if they had been affixed haphazardly. I whistled softly to myself and continued with my deadly work.

  How much time had I? Two minutes? Five minutes? How long would it take for the mayor to rush to Peebles’s manor and get help? No matter. I was finished with my fusing and out the door before a minute had elapsed, and the threatening, asplike hiss of the burning fuses had begun as sparks slithered along their length toward the dynamite bundle.

  I ran limping down the corridor toward the back door of the courthouse. The mayor had left it open wide as he fled. I was nearly as frightened as he was. Fuses are not that predictable, no matter how many times you have used them. Some fizzle, some burn hot due to imperfect priming. I had seen more than one hard rock engineer fatally fooled on the railroad line. I swung into the gray’s saddle and turned his head toward the forest verge, weaving through the stumps the town-builders had left behind in their clearing.

  I ducked low to avoid a low-hanging bough and heard the familiar grumbling of explosives – a whuffing sound like the inhalation of powerful lungs, the bunching of a bellows before the explosive outward thrust began. I kept on riding, hard.

  Then it came. The blast panicked my horse, shivered through the pines, sent a wave of heat across my back. I reined in. I wanted to see it. The impulse was too strong to ignore. Turning back, I saw the courthouse go up in a wash of flame. Fragments of bricks flew hundreds of feet into the air. The deep-throated boom of the explosion rattled my eardrums and erased any other sounds from the town. Red dust drifted in a huge smoky storm across Stratton, enveloping it in a choking cloud.

  I wanted to smile, to laugh, but strangely there was no thrill in the aftermath. As with the destruction of the Sentinels, there was no joy in the destruction of men’s labors. Nor in those of nature.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said harshly to the gray who twitched his ears as if to ask, ‘What did I do?’

  I was almost through with my night’s work. Working my way along the north end of town I was nearly alone. The entire town had rushed to the scene of the destroyed courthouse. No one went too near, perhaps fearing a secondary explosion. Still they were drawn as if by irresistible impulse to the scene of destruction. I rode the alleys carefully, watching every moving shadow, and eventually swung down behind the telegraph office.

  I found the telegrapher, a narrow, stiff man wearing a green eyeshade, watching the fire which still colored the sky over Stratton through the front window.

  ‘What do you think happened?’ he asked me without turning his head.

  ‘No telling. Probably they’ll find out come morning.’

  ‘I suppose,’ the telegrapher said, clicking his tongue. ‘Too bad – that was sort of a symbol of civic pride around here. No town for a hundred miles in the Territory had a brick building.’

  ‘It can be rebuilt,’ I said, going to the counter to wait for the man.

  ‘Yes, but you know how long it takes to get bricks and glass shipped out here.’

  ‘I do.’ I had been writing my two telegrams on the yellow paper provided for that purpose. Only now did the telegrapher seem to notice that the rough man before him wore a torn shirt, bloody, hastily wrapped bandage, was hatless and dirty.

  ‘Say, what happened to you, mister? Were you near to the courthouse when it went up?’

  I grinned. ‘A little too close. I was just talking to the mayor, on my way out the door when the blast went off.’

  Now the telegraph man’s eyes narrowed. I shoved my wires across the desk toward him. He scanned them quickly and said, ‘I can’t send these,’ much as Brian Gerwig had insisted at the newspaper office.

  ‘Sure you can,’ I told him, placing my walnut-handled Colt on the counter. I smiled without showing him any teeth. ‘And I’ll wait here for confirmation that they have been received, if it’s all right with you.’

  The stone house stood a
lone and still in the soft glow of moonlight. I rode my horse past it on whispering hoofs to the stable where I put the gray up. Removing the saddle was an agony. My side felt ready to explode. Fresh hot blood leaked down, into my trousers and boot. I leaned my head heavily against the horse’s back and waited for the dizziness of pain to pass.

  I was aware suddenly of a moon-silhouetted figure in the doorway behind me. I reached for my gun and half-turned.

  ‘Tom?’

  It was Julia Holt, I saw now. She had pinned her red hair up and wore a pale-blue shawl around her shoulders. She walked slowly toward me, frowning, ‘You look like you could use a little help, Tom.’

  ‘I’ll manage.’

  ‘That’s one of your problems, Tom,’ she said, ‘always has been. You insist on doing everything alone.’ She removed her shawl, folded it carefully and put it aside. Then she hefted my heavy saddle and placed it over a stall partition. I watched as she climbed up the wooden ladder, skirts hoisted, to fork down some fresh hay for the gray. I had twice begun to argue with her again, but found I hadn’t the strength or the inclination.

  When Julia had come back down from the loft she stood looking at me, her brows drawn together. ‘Where did they get you, Tom?’

  ‘Here,’ I said, continuing to hold my wound as if that could stop the bleeding. ‘It’s not too bad.’

  ‘I can tell,’ Julia said with faint mockery. There was perspiration on my brow, blood leaking between my fingers, and my legs wobbled once. ‘Come on into the house; let’s see what I can do.’

  She turned from me and started away. I blurted out something that had been on my mind for a while. ‘Julia … why have we never talked, why have you always been so distant?’

  Without turning toward me she answered evenly: ‘Tom, all the way on the long road West you had another woman, remember? And besides, I was much too young for you – you never even glanced at me, although I hoped you would.’

  I couldn’t think what to say for a minute. Carrying my rifle, I limped toward the stable door. Tightly wrapped in her shawl again, Julia turned to face me as I drew even. I looked down into her pretty, young, determined face, and thought that I must have been a damned fool. This was a woman of the West, a helper, a girl with fine instincts.