by Cotton Smith
Jaudon rubbed his nose. “I need ze poster. Now. It is ze proclamation for ze town to understand.”
“Find someone else.” Seitmeyer rubbed his nose. “I’m too busy.”
Lady Holt motioned Jaudon away and smiled warmly at the editor. “I understand how you feel, Mr. Seitmeyer. You see us as unmerciful—and uncaring.” She waved her finger. “But that is not so, sir. I intend to donate the money to build a church for Caisson. The money will be turned over to the council as soon as this terrible lawlessness, this rustling, the murdering, is ended.”
“That’s a very generous offer, Mrs. Holt.”
“Yes, it is, but I am a very generous person. And caring. When I take hold of this entire region, many will benefit,” she said. “Certainly the Caisson Reporter will grow and prosper.”
Without responding, the editor walked over to the table next to the wall. It was stacked with papers, books and envelopes. He shuffled through one stack, then another.
Finally, he found what he was looking for and yanked the newspaper clipping free of the others.
“I wrote this last year. You should read it, Mrs. Holt.” He handed the crumpled paper to her. “I haven’t changed my mind—and won’t, no matter how many churches you pay for.”
She took the clipping, looked at it and crumpled the paper in her fist. The headline read Holt plans to control entire region by any means necessary. Her face transformed into purple hate.
“You stupid little man. I will squash you like this piece of paper.” Lady Holt looked over at the Frenchman and nodded.
Returning the subtle directive with a grin, Jaudon stepped closer to Seitmeyer.
“I want you two out of here. There’s no outlawry in Caisson—except for you. Get out.” The editor shoved the bigger Jaudon away.
“Oui, vous are through.” The Frenchman drew a revolver and raised it
Seitmeyer’s hands rose too slowly to stop the barrel slamming against his head. “No…” he gasped, fell against the printing press and collapsed on the floor. A thin trail of blood eased from his head and slid along the wood planks.
Without examining the downed editor, Lady Holt ordered Jaudon to send a rider to bring Elliott. The black servant would know how to set type, she was certain. Her men were to work through town, picking up every issue of the latest Caisson Reporter they could find. She intended to publish a new edition immediately.
After her band of gunmen were finished with retrieval, she wanted them to make a swing through the remaining ranches, burning all the buildings, stampeding the herds and killing anyone they found.
“I’m sick and tired of this,” she snarled. “This is my land. My land.”
Jaudon returned his gun to its holster, straightened his coat lapels, wanting to ask if he could get something to eat first.
“Vous want Tapan to lead this—or me?” he asked, keeping his hunger to himself.
Stepping toward the door, Lady Holt smiled. “Get yourself something to eat. I know you’re starved. I want you good and ready to lead the men. You’re the Ranger captain—and they’re the Rangers. We want that cover of legitimacy.”
“Bien. How about Dimitry and Tapan going with us? We could use their guns if we run into Checker and Cordell.”
“That is fine. Tapan is the new sheriff and, logically, should be with you,” she said.
“Sacre blue! It is too bad we don’t have Meade with us. We could use his gun. Who is this ‘A’?”
“I don’t know and right now I don’t have time to worry about him—or Meade.”
Jaudon frowned. He didn’t like things he couldn’t control any more than she did. “Too bad. We could have used him.” Jaudon glanced at his holstered revolvers. “I vould like ze bastard’s guns. They very nice, vous know.”
“Bull. He lied about killing the big Ranger. I don’t like people lying to me.” Her face contorted into a scowl. “Tapan wired the marshal there—to get my money back,” she said, glancing out the window at the street where a black man was helping an older woman to her feet.
“Vous think this A is helping Gardner—and them?” Jaudon’s large belly rose and released.
Running her finger across her lips, she replied, “I have no idea. What does one man matter?”
“Speaking of ze one man, what do vous want with him?” Jaudon motioned with his head toward the unconscious editor.
“If he’s dead, get the undertaker. If he’s not, get the doctor.” She smiled and grabbed the doorknob. “There’s a black man outside. Looks like some old woman fell down.”
Chuckling, Jaudon explained about the owner coming from the sewing store and yelling at him—and Tapan running at her with his horse. Realizing who the woman was, she told him the woman had been considered as Opat’s replacement for municipal judge.
“Cela va sans dire…ah, of course.”
From the alley, London Fiss ran to the knocked-down woman. He laid his long-barreled saddle revolver on the ground as he knelt beside her and slowly helped her to stand.
“Thank you, sir, thank you,” she said, patting him on the arm as she gathered her feet. “I’m all right. Knocked the wind out of me.” She took a deep breath. “You work for Mrs. Peale, don’t you? You’d better get out of here. They want all of you.” She patted his arm again. “I appreciate your kindness. There weren’t any white men who were brave enough to help me. But please go.”
After retrieving his weapon, Fiss glanced down the street and saw Tapan wheel his horse away from the saloon hitching rack. He had gone there after knocking down the dry goods owner with the intention of joining the other men.
“Ma’am, step away. Trouble is coming,” the black man said.
She hesitated, saw the horseman galloping toward them and hurried to the sidewalk, knowing it was too late to tell him to leave. Running now would only get him shot in the back.
Fiss didn’t move. Tapan shot and missed. The black man raised his gun and fired. Twice. Tapan’s horse squealed and stumbled. Tapan flew over the horse’s neck as the animal skidded and collapsed. Still holding the reins in his left hand and his pistol in the other, the gunman hit the street, bounced once and didn’t move. Only his gun bounced a second time from his opened hand.
Fiss looked at the older woman, touched the brim of his hat and spun back toward the alley.
The gunshots outside made Lady Holt jump.
“What the hell?” she said.
“Stay here!” Jaudon ran toward the door, yanking free his revolver again, shifting it to his left hand and drawing the second with his right. His thick stomach wobbled with the fury of his movement.
He opened the door just far enough to see the street in front of them. Holt gunmen were pouring from the No. 8 Saloon. Tapan lay unmoving in the street, not far from his dead horse.
The black man drew his holstered second gun as he ran toward the alley.
Jaudon fired through the crack with both guns.
Fiss jerked and his left arm twitched as one of Jaudon’s bullets tore into it. The gun in his left hand popped free. He half turned and shot at Jaudon. His bullet thudded into the building wall a few inches from the opened door. Jaudon jumped back. Fiss fired again at the oncoming horde of gunmen up the street. A stunned Margaret Loren screamed for him to run.
At the far end of the alley, London Fiss jumped on his waiting horse and spurred it into a hard run. He had left the animal there, readied, just in case. He hadn’t planned on getting involved at all, but he couldn’t just let that poor woman lie in the street. He raced into the open plains, leaving the town behind him. There was a possibility some of Holt’s men might follow, so he wouldn’t ride directly to the Morgan Peale Ranch. Or go near the small pond where they were going to bury the dead Ranger, either. He would make it look as if he were leaving. For good. He swung his smooth-running horse to the south, running across soft ground wherever he could find it.
“Tapan! Tapan?” Jaudon finally stepped through the door and onto the sidewalk.
The handsome gunfighter didn’t move.
Four Holt gunmen caught up with Jaudon and three more moved to check on Tapan.
“What’s going on?” Lady Holt yelled from inside.
“I do not know, m’lady. Tapan is down,” Jaudon yelled back.
“My God! Is he shot?” she screamed.
“I do not know. Yet.”
“Get the bastards!”
“C’est ca.” He caught himself. “Right. There is only one. He is gone. Up ze alley. Had ze horse waiting.”
Lady Holt screamed, “I want him hanged.”
Jaudon holstered his guns and yelled for his men to ride after the escaping Fiss. He turned back to Lady Holt, who was clearly distraught. “Oui, it vas ze darkie working for ze Peale woman.”
“I want him hanged. Let all the bastards see it—and know the rage of…me.” Lady Holt stamped out onto the sidewalk.
“No! No, you will not.”
The challenge stopped Jaudon and his men. They turned to look at Margaret Loren. “He didn’t do anything except help me get up—after your man tried to run over me with his horse. That awful man in the street there. He came after him, too. Shooting.”
“Hell, lady, it’s just a darkie,” one of the Holt gunmen said.
That brought chuckles from the rest.
“Tapan’s coming around,” another said.
Jaudon looked back at Lady Holt for direction. If she wanted this bothersome woman killed, so be it. The cattle baroness licked her lips and turned her head slightly to the right.
“What, Iva Lee? Let the woman go? Why? Oh, sure.”
Jaudon and his men weren’t sure what they were hearing. He motioned for his men to get their horses. Margaret walked down the sidewalk to Lady Holt.
Lady Holt stared at her as if not seeing. Her face paled, then turned red, then normal again. She pointed at Tapan, who was now sitting with Jaudon talking to him.
“Get a doctor for him. And for this man…inside. He fell down and hurt himself.” She spun and went inside the editor’s office without waiting for Margaret to reach her.
The dry goods store owner grabbed the doorknob. From inside, Lady Holt screamed, “I’ll kill you if you come inside. Me an’ Iva Lee.”
Chapter Thirty-three
Hesitating, Margaret Loren opened the newspaper office door and stepped inside. “Mrs. Holt, I need to talk with you. I was hoping you’d see that this isn’t the way to build a community.”
Lady Holt stood a foot away from the printing press. Her eyes were wild, her complexion crimson once more.
“I told you to get out.” The words blurted from her mouth, leaving spittle on her lips.
The energetic store owner took a half step backward, refound her courage and walked closer. For the first time, she saw the unconscious editor on the floor.
“Oh my! Henry…is he…?” She rushed to his side.
Haughtily, Lady Holt said, “I have no idea. He slipped and hit his head. I called for a doctor to come.” She glanced away as if hearing a voice and looked back, “Oh yes, Iva Lee wants me to tell you that you have on a pretty dress.” She blinked twice. “I want to buy…ah, six custom dresses from you.”
Either Margaret didn’t hear the comments or didn’t care. “Find me a towel. Anything! Hurry!”
Lady Holt stared at her, not believing she had heard correctly. This woman had dared to command her to do something. She turned away and sat down at the editor’s desk. Taking a pen and stroking it in the inkwell, she began to write. At the top of the paper, she wrote:
The Caisson Reporter, scratched out Reporter and wrote Phoenix next to it. Below the heading, she scratched Town Enjoys New Peace as Ranger Captain Sil Jaudon Combines Forces with Major Rancher.
Taking a second sheet of paper, she wrote Arrest Warrants Issued for Emmett Gardner, Charles Carlson, Morgan Peale, John Checker, London Fiss and Rule Cordell.
Smiling, she grabbed a third sheet, dabbed her pen into the ink again and wrote Lady Holt Agrees to Take Over Three Small Ranches After Owners Are Killed.
She would write the stories later. It was important to get the overall sense of them down. Elliott would know how to set type, she told herself. Her most important task, right now, was getting the stories ready for a special edition. She had already written the proclamation of emergency law Jaudon had announced in the street. Elliott would set it first.
A knock on the door, answered by Margaret, brought Jaudon and the town doctor. The Frenchman barely noticed the store owner, moving to the editor’s desk to report Tapan Moore was going to be fine; he had merely had the wind knocked out of him.
Her eyes flashed and she mouthed, “Thank you, Great Phoenix.”
He ignored the supplication; legends were for people with too much time on their hands. He also reported one of his riders had left for the ranch and Elliott. All of the new newspaper copies had been collected and were being burned.
“All of them?” she asked, turning her head to the left.
“Oui. All that we could find, m’lady.” Jaudon bowed slightly.
Lowering the pen, she straightened her back and stared at him. “That is not all. Didn’t I say that I wanted all of them collected and destroyed?”
The Frenchman listened without speaking. He hated this kind of rebuke. How the hell would he know if they got all of the copies? Somebody might have one hidden somewhere. What difference did it make? He smiled and said he would personally check out the situation.
“Good. I will expect a report of perfection.”
Outside, he saw Luke Dimitry walking toward him from across the street. His horse had just been tied to the hitching rack.
“Couldn’t find the darkie,” he said. “Didn’t look like he was headed for Peale’s place, more like due south. Maybe he’s running.”
“How bad was he hurt?”
“Don’t know that. Never saw him,” Dimitry said. “The way he was riding, I’d say he wasn’t hurt bad.”
Jaudon resisted asking how he knew that. Lady Holt would have asked the question, but he wasn’t Lady Holt. The Frenchman stepped down from the sidewalk and onto the street. “I want the blacksmith dead. He might cause trouble. Later.”
“Got it. I’ll do it myself.”
“A knife would be the best.”
“I would like that.”
Smiling evilly, Jaudon said he wanted all of his men ready to ride out after that. They would hit the Peale Ranch first, then the others. This would be the day.
“What happened to Henry?” the doctor said as he entered, ignoring both Margaret and Lady Holt.
“I have no idea.” Lady Holt snorted. “Fell against something, I guess. Can you get him out of here? We have work to do.”
The young, slim physician’s eyebrows cocked in reaction as he slid beside the unconscious editor. He opened his large black bag, took out a stethoscope and listened to Seitmeyer’s breathing. Lady Holt returned to her writing, as if the room were empty and this were her own domain. Jaudon stared over the doctor’s shoulder, occasionally making a comment, sometimes in French.
Margaret leaned over and asked if she could do anything to help.
“I’m going to need hot water and cloths,” the doctor said. “I can’t move him like this. It’s too big a risk.”
Margaret was on her feet quickly and headed to the back room of the newspaper office, an odd sort of part kitchen and part storeroom, grabbed the only container she could find. An old pot. A towel and a shirt lay on a cluttered shelf. She took them, too. Hurrying past Lady Holt, who was writing furiously, she handed the towel and shirt to the doctor and left. Minutes later, she returned with the pot filled from the city well and placed it on the stove to heat.
“There’s not much I can do for him,” the doctor announced. “After I clean his wound, we’ll just have to let him sleep—and see what God wishes.”
Lady Holt looked up from her writing. “You’re not serious, are you, Doctor? We’re going to need room to get t
he next edition out.” She waved her left arm to demonstrate the need for space.
Angrily, the young physician glared at her. “I am quite serious, madam. A man’s life is at stake.” He glanced past her toward Margaret standing by the stove. “Mrs. Loren, is the water hot? It doesn’t have to be boiling.”
Chapter Thirty-four
At Morgan Peale’s ranch, the small group of defenders ate silently. Rikor reluctantly agreed to stand watch down by the first ridge. Sending along some of Morgan’s donuts—and the promise of stew later—made it easier for him to go. Anyone coming from town could be seen for miles from that vantage point.
John Checker said he wasn’t hungry and resisted anyone looking at the wound on his side, even though it had bled through his shirt. He insisted that he was fine, doing so gruffly. The death of his friend lay heavily on him and it was obvious. He stood by the fireplace, drinking coffee and staring into the yellow coals.
After eating, Emmett said, “Ya know, I’d sure like to be a-seein’ my boys. The rest o’ ’em. Reckon yu’re a-missin’ your family, too, Rule. Think we could take a ride down thar? To yur place?” He put the last bite of stew into his mouth and savored it. “Like to see mine, too. See if my beeves are still happy. Got a lot of things to do there. That barn roof’s in need of fixin’.”
“That’s up to John,” Rule said, sipping his coffee. “Mrs. Peale, that was a fine meal. We thank you. Best stew I’ve had in a long time.”
“You’re welcome—and please call me Morgan,” Morgan said, removing some of the used dishes from the table and heading to the small kitchen.
From the counter, she looked back at the tall Ranger, drawn to him in ways she hadn’t felt since her feelings for her late husband. They were feelings she didn’t think would ever arise again. Or should. Yet she wanted to go to him. To comfort him, she told herself. Of course, to comfort him. He was a lonely man; any woman could read that. A man difficult to reach. Would he allow her close? To his soul? Had a woman ever done so?
She placed the dishes in a large bowl filled with hot water, cut off some soap shavings from the large bar and massaged the water to create a thin line of suds.
