by Jake Logan
“We all saw him, Mrs. Chandler.”
Lil began to sob anew, although for a different reason than the reverend thought.
Bill Messenger didn’t stop running until he reached the livery stable.
And when he looked back over his shoulder, he saw, of all things, the tall man being dragged out of the hotel and toward the jail!
Bill leaned back against the livery wall and sighed. There was no one coming after him? Nobody?
He even allowed himself a half smile.
But it went as quickly as it had come when he remembered that the bridegroom had fallen, not the bride. Was his aim truly that bad?
Charlie Townsend couldn’t believe his luck.
He’d ridden out past the town and over the rise, and as far as he was aware, not a soul had spotted him. Of course, he had a new crease in his shoulder, courtesy of one of those two inside the building. One of those two with guns, aimed right at him, it seemed.
He also had a face full of glass, but that was easy enough to remedy. After he got another two or three miles from town, he’d stop and get it all picked out. He’d use the mirror from his shaving kit.
Of course, the whole thing had been bad timing. He had no way of knowing whether his shot had hit home. At least nobody suspected him of being up to no good, because nobody was chasing him.
But it was driving him crazy, not knowing if he’d taken down Chandler. Almost as crazy as the pain in his shoulder and his face.
Well, screw another two or three miles. He’d best take care of himself right here and now.
He reined in his horse, dismounted, and pulled his shaving kit from his saddlebags. Good thing he insisted that all the hands carry food, water, basic medicines, and toiletries with them at all times. You never knew when you might be trapped out in the nowheres by a sudden sandstorm or a hellacious downpour.
He picked the glass from his face and scalp and mopped up the blood before he took a look at his shoulder. As he suspected, it has just creased the meat.
He slathered it with unguent, bound it up with his neckerchief, rolled his sleeve back down, then stitched his shirt with a needle and thread. Nobody’d be the wiser.
Well, except for his face.
But most of the cuts were up high, on his forehead. He put his hat back on and painfully pulled it down low, inspecting himself in his shaving mirror. He could pass, he figured. Especially if he waited until after nightfall to ride in. He could go directly to his quarters, and nobody would bother him.
Nobody’d be the wiser.
He just wished he knew whether his slug had hit home, that was all.
Well, he supposed he’d find out. Tonight or tomorrow, he’d know something.
14
Slocum woke up in the Poleaxe jail, slung uncomfortably over a cot. A stained pillow and a couple of blankets had been tossed in after him and lay scattered and askew on the dirt floor of the cell.
With some difficulty and a great deal of pain, he craned his head back and looked at the desk. Sheriff Miles Kiefer—he supposed—was there with his feet propped up, and he looked self-satisfied and smug.
Slocum wanted to hit him. Course, that would have been something of a problem, what with the sheriff being at least ten feet away from his reach, even if he were standing up, even if somebody hadn’t busted one of his ribs with a well-placed kick. But he still wanted to slug him in the worst way.
Memories were beginning to leak back into Slocum’s mind with all the rapidity of molasses in January, but he did recall a few things. Slocum asked, “You’re Kiefer, right?”
“Last time I checked.” Kiefer lifted his head from the papers he’d been staring at. “Welcome back, Slocum,” he said. “Proud of yourself?”
“Did I get him?” Slocum said, and was surprised when his voice came out in a croak.
“Deader’n dirt,” the sheriff remarked with no emotion. “You could’ve picked a better spot to do it, though, if you were to ask me.”
Slocum sniffed. “If I’d’a waited to go outside and shoot him, he would’a already shot Chandler.” He looked away. “Course, he shot Chandler anyhow, but that was only because my aim was off. Must’a been the glass that done it. And why the hell you got me locked up when you should be out lookin’ for him? Hell, I’ll go with you!”
Slocum started to stand up, but Kiefer said, “Hold on.” And Slocum did.
Slocum cocked a brow. “Why?”
“Because you shot David Chandler, Slocum. I got at least eight or ten witnesses to the fact.”
“You’re loco, Sheriff! Didn’t nobody but me see that yahoo at the window? Or the feller standin’ behind me on the stairs?”
Kiefer shook his head. “They only seen you, with that Colt in your hand, still smokin’.”
“Well, of course it was smokin’!” Slocum shouted. “I just shot the man at the window! Hell, I blew the glass out of it, and I’m damn well sure I hit him, at least! Anybody check for a body in the alley, or at least a blood trail?”
But the sheriff wasn’t having any of it. He gathered his papers, neatened them into a stack, and slid them into a desk drawer without a word passing his lips.
“Damn it, man!” Slocum insisted. “Answer me!”
The sheriff stood up, settled his hat on his head, and walked to the door. “Night deputy’ll be comin’ in soon. Name’a Josh Childers. Me, I’m gonna make my rounds, then drop into the hotel for some dinner. Josh’ll bring you yours.”
Slocum watched the sheriff’s back disappear and the door close behind him. Having already met the night deputy, Slocum couldn’t exactly say he was looking forward to the pleasure of his company, but he supposed another body in the room—any body—would be an improvement. Wind whistled thinly through the boards that made up the building’s walls, giving the place an eerie feel.
He wondered what Lil was up to—other than counting her money, that was. He wondered who it had been to actually file charges against him. Surely Lily would know that he couldn’t have done this!
Well, maybe he could, he thought. But he’d expect her to defend him, damn it.
Almost an hour passed before he heard spur-bearing boots clinking and thumping on the walk outside, and the door creaked open. Deputy Josh Childers appeared in the doorway, a dish towel- shrouded tray balanced on one hand.
“Figured you’d be in here long before this,” the deputy said by way of a hello. “You’re nothin’ but trouble. Told the sheriff so, myself. Fit for nothin’ but the hangman’s noose. And don’t you worry, we got plenty of rope around town.”
“Thank you, son,” replied Slocum. “I’ve been comforted in my hour of need.”
He watched Childers set the tray on the desk and pull out a small folding table, which he set up against the outside bars of Slocum’s cell.
“You expect me to eat through these bars?” Slocum asked.
“If you want to eat anything at all, that’s how you’ll have to do it,” said the deputy as he fetched the covered tray. “Mind you don’t bust none’a the hotel’s dishes, now. We’ll take it outta your hide!”
Frowning, Slocum dragged his cot over to the bars and sat down opposite the table where rested his dinner, which turned out to be roast beef with potatoes and gravy, with side dishes of peas and applesauce and another with three biscuits and two small pots, one filled with honey, the other with butter.
At least they fed their prisoners well in Poleaxe, he thought. Including the ones they planned to hang.
With some difficulty, he began to eat.
Lil took her dinner in her room, Walter, the desk clerk, having offered to bring her something. “Everyone is being so nice,” she had sniffed into her hankie when he’d come rapping at her door a half hour ago.
“There, there, Miss Lil,” he’d muttered later, when he’d arrived, tray in hand. She’d been standing at her window at the time, her back toward him and her face hidden by the curtains, while he set out her dinner on the little table in her room. “There,
there,” Walt said. “The town’ll see that you have everything you need. Anything at all.”
“Anything except David,” she’d snuffled into the hankie in her fist.
And then she felt him behind her, although he didn’t put a hand on her. Was he trying to decide whether to touch her arm, to give her some modicum of physical comfort along with the emotional support he’d already offered?
Lord, she hoped not. As it turned out, he didn’t lay so much as a finger on her.
She heard him step back, then say, “If there’s anything else you need . . .” and slip from the room. Coward.
Of course there was something else she needed! But not from the likes of him.
Slocum would be more like it, but Slocum was cooling his heels up the street in the jail. Had he really, truly done it, the way they said? She could scarcely believe what she’d been told, but so many witnesses couldn’t all be mistaken, could they?
Still, deep in her heart—if she, indeed, had one—she didn’t believe it. Slocum wouldn’t have killed David. And Slocum especially wouldn’t have killed him in front of a roomful of witnesses!
Her meal half finished, she crumpled her napkin between both hands, then threw it down. She wasn’t going to let them hang Slocum for some . . . some . . . some trick of the light, some sort of mass hysteria! But what could she do?
She began to pace her room, and she paced it through the day and into the night. At long last, she stopped. She’d get him free if she had to break him out of jail herself!
It likely wouldn’t come to that, though, she thought as she grabbed her handbag and started down the stairs toward the lobby. After all, David had practically run this silly excuse for a town. But now David was dead, and she was in charge!
“Ma’am?” the night clerk said as he tried to bolt to his feet, and fell halfway over in the process. “Can I get you something, Missus Chandler?”
She didn’t answer, and she didn’t give him time to ask twice.
She was already out the door.
Charlie Townsend had arrived back at the ranch without incident, had put up his horse, and quickly retired to his little house.
Now he sat in the darkened front room, staring toward town through a window as he carefully cleaned his gun.
The scent of gun oil always cleared his head.
It didn’t matter that he’d blown out the lights. He could have cleaned that pistol in the dark of night, deep down in the belly of a well if he had to.
And he’d had to do just that more than once, back in the war.
Those were the days, he thought. Although it didn’t cross his mind to wonder why. Nor did it cross his mind to theorize on just why he was picking this moment to think about the war. Although it would have been obvious, had he chosen to mull it over.
War was legalized murder, a time when you were lauded for killing as many of your fellow men as you could, so long as they weren’t wearing the same color uniform as you did. And he was preparing to laud himself for just the same thing.
As soon as word came.
He squinted at the clock across the room, failed to read it in the dim light, shrugged, and resumed putting his gun back together.
He’d really expected somebody to come tearing into the yard by this time of the evening. Actually, he’d expected somebody to come tearing in hot on his heels. But enough time had passed since he got home that he figured he was safe and blameless, and had pulled it off, after all.
Unless he’d missed.
Unless David Chandler was sitting upright in that saloon right now, listening to hell’s own harlot sing.
He tossed aside his gun, only half reassembled, and walked to the window. Eyes straining, he tried to bore a hole through the distant rolls of land, to see far away, to town.
Were there riots in the streets?
Was a posse forming in front of the sheriff’s office?
Or were they selling tickets to that whore’s performance hand over fist?
Charlie’s hand let go of the curtains he’d swept aside, and he let out a long sigh, then turned away. He walked back to the little washroom, turned up the lamp, and stared at himself in the badly silvered mirror hanging over his washbasin.
Of course, the light wasn’t so good in here, but he was fairly certain that you couldn’t tell how badly he’d cut his face this afternoon. The human body was a wondrous thing, fixing itself like that. And it had helped that he’d stopped and picked out the glass right off, like he had.
Between me and God, we’ll take care of business, he thought with a smile. He felt a slight sting, but his wounds didn’t open.
The smile stretched into a grin.
There was a sudden commotion outside. They’ve come, he thought.
He was right.
When he trotted out into the yard, he found Jess, owner of the livery, and two other men from town just climbing down off sweat-soaked horses, and two of the Circle C men with them, casting anxious glances his way.
Chandler’s buggy was behind them, pulled by the fancy trotting mare of his, the one he’d called Acey. The seat was empty.
“Charlie . . . um . . .” said one of Chandler’s men. Well, his men, now.
“What’s happened?” Charlie asked. His eye caught Jess’s, and he frowned. Convincingly, he hoped. “What is it, Jess?”
“It’s Mr. Chandler, Charlie,” Jess said as he handed his mount’s reins to one of the Circle C riders. “He’s been shot dead.”
Charlie damped down a sudden urge to hoot and forced his face into a sorrowful expression. “What?” he said. “Our Mr. Chandler?”
One of the men who’d ridden in with Jess came quickly to his side. “You’d best sit down now, Charlie.”
He allowed himself to be walked to a barrel and slowly be seated on it. He’d rehearsed this in his mind so many times and so thoroughly that it wasn’t as hard as he had expected it might be.
It was easy, actually.
But he felt a triumphant smile creeping too close to the surface of his face, and covered it with his hands.
“Tell me what happened,” he said, through a picket fence of fingers, between the twin gags of his palms, through the hands that had so gallantly slain David Chandler. “Tell me the whole story. Tell me who done this awful thing.”
15
Bill Messenger, sleeping quietly in the loft of the livery after sneaking in, was awakened by voices below.
At first, he couldn’t make out what they were saying, and then it came to him, in a roiling burst of anger, that he recognized half the conversation—it was Lily’s voice!
“I still say that you didn’t have to hit him so damned hard, Slocum,” she was saying. “He’s only a boy, you know.”
The man she was with—Slocum, apparently—replied with, “Shut up, Lil.”
“Don’t tell me to shut up!” Lil spat a little too loudly. “Who just broke you out of jail!?”
He heard straw being moved about by boots, heard the creak of a stall door, and the movement of hooves. He crept to the lip of the overhang and peered over.
“You did, darlin’,” replied Slocum. And then Messenger suddenly recognized him; this was the man who had fired just as he had, the big man who was bent on killing Lil! Or Chandler. He wasn’t sure. His blood froze in his veins.
“Then stop being so . . . so . . . so Slocumish!” Lil fairly hollered. “Especially after I tippy-toed down the street with you! Especially since I got yanked into every alley and doorway along the route!”
Slocum wheeled toward her and pulled her into his arms.
And kissed her, hard.
Messenger’s teeth clenched along with his fists. But he was madder at himself than at the couple below. Christ, he was thick as a plank if after all she’d done to him, after everything she’d put him through, he was still jealous!
Slocum released Lil, and still holding her close, he said, “You shouldn’t have done it, Lily,” so softly that Messenger, five feet overhead, barely heard
him.
“Well, what was I supposed to do?” Lily snapped, her eyes flashing. “Let them hang you?”
“You could have spoken up for me,” Slocum said and turned to start tacking up his horse. “That would have been plenty.”
Lil crossed her arms over an ample bosom. “Didn’t see you saying you wanted to stay put.”
“You didn’t give me much choice, did you?”
Lil shook her head. “All right. Come on. I’ll say I captured you. Or recaptured you.”
“Go back to the hotel.”
She gave a little huff and said, “No. I’m staying with you.”
Slocum turned around again. “Sure. You want to camp in the desert.” Messenger heard him give out a quick snort. “I believe that, all right.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do now?”
Slocum finished up and led his horse from its stall. It was a fine animal, if Messenger was any judge. And he was.
“You should have thought of that before,” he said, his hand fisted with reins and resting low on the horse’s withers. “Thanks, Lily. You’re a peach.”
He started to step up on his horse, but Lily stopped him. “Well, what are you going to do?” she asked, almost like a little girl.
“I’m going to try to figure out just what the hell is going on here,” Slocum answered and dusted a kiss over her forehead.
“How can you do that from out of town?”
“I’ll have to figure out a way, won’t I?” he replied and swung into the saddle. “Do what I asked you. Don’t forget.”
Messenger jerked his head back, just in case, and managed not to rustle the hay he was lying on. He closed his eyes for a second and opened them to see Slocum mounted up and stopped at the barn’s mouth. Lil was at the door, and she was peering out.
“All right,” she said. “It’s safe.”
“Bye, baby,” were the last words Slocum said before he rode out the wide doors.
Lil lingered for a moment, and while she stood there, Messenger wondered who the hell Slocum was. And what was he to Lil? He must be something special, for Lil to have broken him out of jail. The act was totally out of character for her.
