Dark Territory

by Terrence McCauley

  But judging from the amount of blood he could see on the foreman’s shirt and the swelling about his head and face, Mackey now knew that a quiet fury had been building inside Eddows for some time. He had given his foreman one hell of a beating before trussing him up and bringing him outside to hang.

  There would be plenty of time to find out why this had happened. Right now, he had to find a way to keep a skinny man from allowing a fat man to hang from the biggest construction site in the territory.

  From behind him, Mackey heard Billy call out, “I’m not going near you, Eddows. I’m just going to speak to the sheriff about how to keep anyone from getting too close to you. I won’t go an inch past him, I promise.”

  Eddows stammered before saying, “You try anything, black boy, and Ross hangs. Understand?”

  Billy stopped a few paces behind the sheriff. “Let me shoot this son of a bitch, Aaron. I can take his head off with the Sharps, even in this wind.”

  Mackey had to hold on to his hat by the brim to keep it on his head. He had no doubt Billy could hit him, especially with that buffalo gun he carried. Billy Sunday had been the best shot in the outfit when they had served together in the cavalry, and his skills had only improved in the years since.

  But there was a time for gunplay and a time for other things. “Can’t shoot him. Look at the way he set it up. If we shoot Eddows, he lets go of the foreman’s belt and Ross hangs. He’s also got Ross too far out over the edge so we can’t try to wing him and knock him back inside.”

  Mackey looked over the setup again in the hopes that he had missed something, but he had not. “Looks like Eddows is a more complicated man than we thought.”

  “Then what are we going to do?” Billy asked. “We can’t just stand here and watch like everyone else.”

  Mackey looked out at the crowds beginning to gather on the boardwalks. Whether it was Tent City squatters over on Second Street or old-line Dover Station townsfolk on Front Street, everyone enjoyed a spectacle.

  “I think we can talk him down,” Mackey said. “If Eddows wanted to kill Ross, he could’ve shot him or just thrown him off the building. He didn’t. He’s doing this because he wants an audience. He has something to say. Let’s give him the chance. Maybe the more he talks, the longer Ross lives.” He grabbed his hat again before it blew off his head. “Besides, there isn’t much we can do about it anyway.”

  Billy held on to his hat, too. “Might not be able to stop him anyway if the wind stays like this. And when Grant finds out what’s going on down here, he’s liable to turn this into a goddamned circus.”

  Mackey knew the general manager of the Dover Station Company was not one to shy away from public events. He knew Grant would be here the moment he heard of it. If Eddows hated his foreman, it stood to reason he probably hated Grant even more.

  Mackey did not want that to happen. Three men had just died less than a block away. But, then again, Mackey knew he rarely got what he wanted, especially when it came to James Grant.

  To Billy, he said, “Hang back by the jailhouse with the Sharps. If we have to, you hit Eddows and I’ll take Ross. In the meantime, watch the crowd and steer Grant clear of this place until we know what Eddows wants.”

  Billy slowly took a few steps back toward the porch. “I will. I’m right here if you need me.”

  The number of spectators cramming the boardwalks around the site had nearly doubled in the short amount of time Mackey had been speaking with Billy. The horror of the townspeople was only rivaled by their curiosity about what would happen next.

  The cluster of workers at the base of the building had begun jockeying for position for the best view.

  With the storm kicking up and Grant on his way, Mackey decided it was time to get Eddows talking. “All right, Jed. You’ve got your audience, and you’ve got my attention. No one’s coming near you, and Billy and me are in plain sight. How about you pull Mr. Ross back from the ledge and tell us what’s on your mind?”

  “No way,” Eddows shouted back. “I know what that black bastard of yours can do with that Sharps of his. I swear to God, I see him so much as look in my direction, Ross swings, understand?”

  “No one’s aiming anything at you and no one’s going to, either, as long as you don’t do anything stupid. You’ve obviously got something on your mind, so might as well say it.” He motioned to the crowd that now jammed every available space on the boardwalk. “You’ve got plenty of people here willing to listen.”

  Eddows looked away. He still held on to the foreman’s belt but clearly hadn’t expected the chance to say anything.

  One of the workers clustered at the base of the building yelled to Mackey, “Just shoot the son of a bitch and get it over with.”

  “Yeah,” another called out. “Blow his damned head off and let us get back to work. This nonsense is costing us money.

  Still another yelled, “There’s ten men in Tent City who’d take Jed’s place, and the company’s got other foremen they can send to run the job.”

  Mackey ignored them. He didn’t think Eddows had heard them because of the wind, but the man had been quiet too long to suit him. “Come on, Jed. Speak up and let’s talk this through.”

  Eddows looked confused, as if he had only just realized what he had done. But his grip on Ross’s belt never faltered, and the foreman was still pitched dangerously at the edge of the scaffold.

  “It wasn’t any one thing that done it, I guess,” Eddows yelled. “It was a whole bunch of things balled up into a knot. Him yelling at me, screaming all the time. Threatening to fire me or throw me off the goddamned building because I wasn’t working fast enough or because I’d made a mistake. You know how long I’ve been working here?”

  “Not exactly, but it’s about four months near as I can figure.” He decided it would be a good idea to add, “Billy and I remember sitting in front of the jailhouse seeing you go to work. Saw you here every single day, rain or shine. Heard good things about you.”

  “That’s a lie!” Eddows screamed. “The only time you heard my name was when this cruel son of a bitch screamed at me over something I’d done or hadn’t done yet. Nothing I do is ever good enough for him. He’s an oppressor. He feeds off my labor and does none of his own. He needs to be stopped.”

  He pushed Ross closer to the edge of the scaffold. The foreman screamed and so did many of the spectators, as much out of excitement as fear.

  Mackey kept his rifle aimed at the ground. The wind was still too strong.

  Eddows laughed as he eased Ross back a bit from the edge. “This is the quietest I’ve heard him since I started working for him. For once, he ain’t yelling at me about staying on his goddamned schedule so he can make his goddamned bonus. None of us get any bonuses, sheriff. Only him. That sound fair to you?”

  “No, it doesn’t. I didn’t know about that. I can talk to Jim Grant about that if you want.”

  But Eddows had not heard him. “You know how many houses I framed for him? Ten in three weeks. Ten! A lot of us did. He worked us like dogs and whipped us worse, but we got it done, didn’t we, boys?”

  Some of the workers cheered up to him. Most hurled curses at him.

  Eddows went on. “And now he’s working us even harder to get this damned building open in a month. This place look like it’ll be done in a month to you, sheriff?”

  One of the ironworkers called out, “It would be if you weren’t pulling this shit now, you crazy bastard.”

  Mackey had to yell over the ensuing argument to get Eddows’s attention. “I know you’re tired, son. A lot of people have been working real hard to change this town, and we appreciate it, even if Ross doesn’t. You remember seeing me and Billy on the porch all those mornings, don’t you? So you know I’m not just saying that.”

  The sheriff couldn’t be sure, but he thought Eddows pulled Ross a little farther away from the ledge.

  Mercifully, the wind had died down, so Mackey didn’t have to yell as loud when he said, “I know you�
�ve had a bad time of it. A lot of people have, so how about I make a deal with you? Take that noose off Ross’s head and pull him back inside, and I promise I’ll talk to Jim Grant about easing up their schedule some. I know my head could stand a little less banging and I’m sure yours could, too. A bump in wages and a slower pace. Sound fair?”

  “Sounds like a bunch of bullshit, if you ask me,” Eddows yelled. “I know all about you, Mackey. You’re just as bad as the cruel bastard I’ve got strung up right here. I saw you riding around with Mr. Rice after Darabont hit us. His company owns you like it owns everything else in this damned town. There ain’t no way I live after what I’ve done. Hell, even I know that, and I’m an idiot.” He pushed Ross to the edge and the foreman screamed again. “Ain’t that right, Mr. Ross? Ain’t that one of them pet names you’ve got for me?”

  Mackey gripped the Winchester at his side a little tighter. If he let Ross fall, Mackey would have no choice but to shoot Eddows. And he’d have to do it fast before the wind picked up again.

  He had to give it one last try. “I don’t think you’re stupid, Jeb. I just think you’re tired and scared and need some rest. And there’s no reason to kill you over what you’ve done so far. Who cares if you hurt Mr. Ross? Hell, I can’t think of a soldier or a workingman who hasn’t dreamed of hurting his boss at one time or another. I know I have.”

  Eddows’s face grew scarlet as he yelled, “I want him dead! I want my oppressor dead! I want fair pay for fair work and I want to be treated like a human being!”

  Despite his rage, Mackey could see Eddows changing somehow. He could not tell if that was good or bad, but he knew he had been given the chance to end this.

  “But you’re not a killer,” the sheriff continued. “If you were, you would’ve done it by now. You’re doing this because you want to be heard and you want help. I’m offering all of that to you right now. All you’ve got to do is pull him back inside and end this peacefully.”

  Eddows surprised him by stepping back and pulling Ross with him. The foreman was now practically standing on the scaffold, though the tips of his feet were still over the side. Ross would still hang if Eddows let go.

  But he was safer than he had been since the entire mess began, so Mackey kept pushing. “That’s a good start, Jeb.”

  “It’s not going to end too well for me if I end up in jail,” Eddows yelled back.

  “I’m sure he won’t press charges against you,” Mackey lied. He didn’t know Ross at all, except that he worked on the Municipal Building. But there was a time for the truth and a time to lie, and this was no time for the truth. “You’ve got everything you want, Eddows. You’ll have accomplished something for you and your friends. All you’ve got to do is pull him back inside and take that noose off his neck.”

  “That true?” Eddows nudged Ross closer to the edge again. “That true about what he said about you not pressing charges? I want to hear you say it.”

  “Of course!” Ross screamed. “I-I was wrong to say those horrible things to you, Jeb, and I’m sorry. Things will get better, I promise. Just don’t let me hang. Please. I’ve got a family to feed. Please.”

  “Family?” Eddows’s rage seemed to spill over as he yanked his boss all the way in from the ledge so that they were practically standing next to each other. “You don’t think I have a family? What about my wife and my kids? You think I take the strap from you all day every day because I like it? You think I let you treat me like a dog just because I think that’s all I am? You talk about your family, you miserable . . .”

  Mackey saw Eddows shift his weight.

  His anger had finally won the battle.

  He was going to throw Ross off the scaffold.

  Billy had seen it, too, because both lawmen raised their rifles and fired at their chosen targets at exactly the same time.

  The impact of the fifty-caliber slug from Billy’s Sharps threw young Eddows back into the building.

  Mackey’s shot struck Ross high in the right shoulder and sent the bound man spinning before he fell back and out of view. The amount of slack on the rope still hanging over the edge of the scaffold told him that the foreman had not been hanged.

  Mackey joined the flow of ironworkers and townspeople running into the building. He yelled back to Billy, “You stay here and try to keep everyone back. I’ll go check on Ross.”

  * * *

  Mackey raced into the building, but found the way clogged with carpenters and ironworkers scrambling to get back into the building. He yelled for them to clear the way, but it was no use.

  By the time the sheriff forced his way through the crowd and up to the third floor, he saw the workers cheer as they cut loose the last of the foreman’s bindings.

  A small group had gathered around the spot where Eddows’s body had landed. Billy’s fifty-caliber round had made a massive hole in the left side of his chest, probably killing him on impact. They might not have seen what a gun designed to kill buffalo could do to a human body before, bit Mackey had. It was never pretty.

  Mackey quickly made his way over to Ross and found one of the workers had already rigged a tourniquet for the foreman’s right arm from some of the rope that had previously bound him.

  The wounded man smiled up at Mackey. His nose had been broken and a couple of teeth had been chipped, but he looked happy. “That was some damned fine shooting, sheriff. I owe you and your deputy my life. Which one got me?”

  “That was me,” Mackey admitted. “I tried to wing you, but . . .”

  “No need to apologize. I thought that crazy son of a bitch was going to kill me for sure.”

  “Just be grateful you’re still alive.” To the worker who had tied the tourniquet, he asked, “How bad is it?”

  “You hit him through and through,” the man told him. “Nicked the bone some, but I saw worse on the trail out here. Me and the boys will get him to Doc Ridley right quick, don’t you worry.”

  Mackey stepped aside as six men scrambled forward with a wooden plank to carry Ross down to the street. Eddows had screamed that he hated Ross, but enough of the other workers seemed fond enough of the man to make sure he got medical attention.

  That told Mackey something about Ross. But it didn’t say much about the man who had threatened to hang him. What had driven Eddows to the edge of murder? And to do it so publicly? And what of his talk about oppressors and fair wages? Eddows had sounded like the mysterious stranger at the shooting at Tent City. Mackey knew there were malcontents in any outfit who enjoyed complaining, but to try to kill a leader was something else.

  As he stood aside, waiting for the men carrying Ross to pass, he realized he had never seen Dover Station from such a height, at least, not this close.

  From up there, all of the other original buildings looked smaller than he had expected. Even the jailhouse looked tiny by comparison.

  It was one of the few stone structures in town, built by a former sheriff who had been a mason. He wanted a building that would stand up well enough to fire, should one start in a town where most of the other buildings were wooden. The walls were over a foot thick, and the heavy ironwood door facing Front Street was the only way inside. There were no windows in the cells, only the barred window from where Mackey and Billy could look out on Front Street.

  The jailhouse had long been seen as the only permanent building in town until the Dover Station Company began to build the iron and brick monstrosity where Mackey currently stood across the thoroughfare.

  From where he stood, Aaron Mackey could see what Dover Station had been. The town he had known as a boy and as a captain returned from the army. He saw the streets and avenues Billy and he had patrolled and the stores whose locks he checked each night. They were the old Dover Station. They were the past.

  The Municipal Building and all of the other new construction symbolized what the town was to become. A town he no longer recognized. A town filled with strangers who didn’t know him, only of him. He was Sheriff Aaron Mackey, formerly Ca
ptain Mackey, the Hero of Adobe Flats. Lately, and over Mackey’s objection, James Grant had taken to calling him the Savior of Dover Station. The general manager of the Dover Station Company saw it as some kind of attraction to draw people to town and make them feel safe, as if news of Frazer Rice’s interest in town was not enough of a draw.

  From the third floor of the iron building, Mackey wondered if this new town held any attraction for him. He wondered if there would be any place for him in this building after it was finished. He wondered if he even wanted one.

  When he heard another commotion down on the street, he rushed to the edge of the scaffold. “Christ,” he muttered to himself. “What now?”

  He was not surprised to see James Grant on the boardwalk in front of the jailhouse, waving at the cheering crowd. He had Walter Underhill and two other men with rifles standing by him. Brandishing firearms was illegal in town, even for employees of James Grant. Underhill, a former United States Marshal from Texas, had helped repel Darabont’s raid of the town six months before, so Mackey often let his indiscretions slide.

  None of the townspeople seemed to notice this violation of town law. Everyone cheered Grant like a conquering hero. Given that he represented the company that had made many of them wealthy, Mackey could understand the adulation.

  But understanding James Grant proved a much harder task for the sheriff. Grant was older than Mackey by more than a few years, which put him in his mid-forties. His sandy blond hair and full beard had begun to gray in all the right places, making him look more distinguished than old. What he lacked in height, he made up for in powerful build; he was broad shouldered and thick around the chest. He looked more like a laborer than a man who worked in an office all day. Mackey imagined this was part of his appeal with the public. For, Mackey knew, James Grant had not always worked in an office.

  He had been a rancher in a neighboring town, and before that had owned a stagecoach station after he had run a telegraph office. Rumors abounded that he had once served as a lawman in some capacity in Nebraska, though the town and the time of his service was a matter of some debate.