Lonnie Gentry

by Peter Brandvold

  Lonnie looked around, keeping an eye out for Dupree.

  Chase said, “If you two kids think you’re gonna hold me in that jail, you’re soft in your thinker boxes. I’m too much for you. Let me go, and I’ll ride on out of here, and you’ll never see me again. Hell, you got the money!”

  Casey licked her lips and there was only a slight quiver in her voice as she said quietly, “You heard me, Chase.”

  Lonnie held his carbine up high across his chest. He worked the cocking mechanism loudly, seating a cartridge in the rifle’s action while staring threateningly at Chase. The metallic rasp was so loud that it started a dog barking somewhere to the east, and a night bird took flight, cawing.

  Casey glanced at Lonnie, gave him a half smile, then turned back to Chase.

  The deputy sighed, swung his right boot over his saddle horn, and leaped straight down to the ground. He groaned and fell back against his horse, his wounds grieving him.

  “Galldarn it,” he complained. “I’m gonna need a sawbones take a look at these wounds!”

  “In the morning,” Casey said, waving her gun at him.

  When they got Chase inside the jailhouse and Lonnie had lit a lamp so Casey could see to open a cell, she gave the deputy an angry prod with her pistol barrel. Chase stumbled into the far right cell, cursing. He said several nasty things to Casey about her being a girl and him being a man, but he shut up when she poked the gun through the bars and stared at him over the barrel.

  She had him turn around so she could remove his handcuffs. Then she ordered him to give her his badge, and when he did, Casey tossed it to Lonnie standing by the door where he could see both inside the office as well as into the street, though it was so dark he couldn’t see much out there.

  He was feeling spooky about Dupree. The outlaw had to be out there somewhere, waiting for the right time to make a move.

  “Consider yourself deputized,” Casey said.

  Lonnie looked at the five-pointed tin star in the glove of his hand. It was badly tarnished, mostly gray, but the letters were clear: DEPUTY TOWN MARSHAL.

  Lonnie felt himself suddenly grow an inch taller, and his shoulders felt fuller and wider.

  “Oh, so you two kids are gonna play at lawdoggin’ now, huh?” Chase glowered through the bars at them, chuckling caustically.

  “That’s right,” Casey said as she reached into a pocket of her coat.

  She pulled a badge like Lonnie’s out of the pocket, and pinned it to her left lapel. She stared down at it. It said TOWN MARSHAL. When she gazed up at Lonnie, her eyes were shiny with tears.

  “How do I look?” she asked.

  Lonnie thought she looked better than anything he’d ever seen in his whole life. “You look wonderful,” he blurted, and turned away as his ears started to burn with embarrassment.

  Casey brushed a fist across her cheek and hardened her voice as she turned to regard Chase, who was now slumped on his cot. “I’ll be over to feed you in the morning … if you don’t bleed to death in the meantime.”

  “Hey!” he yelled. “You can’t leave me locked up here in the dark, bleedin’ like this!”

  “I’m going to do you a favor and leave the lamp on,” Casey said. “And that’s more than you deserve.”

  Chase cursed her and continued to demand a doctor.

  As though she hadn’t heard him, Casey followed Lonnie outside, and closed and locked the door behind her. She’d left the lamp lit on her father’s desk and the orange glow flickered in the windows. Chase continued to curse and yell and to rattle his cell door.

  Casey sighed and turned to Lonnie. “Big night for you, huh? I bet you’re hungry.”

  Lonnie shrugged. “I reckon I could eat something.”

  “Come on,” she said, dropping down the porch steps and jerking her chestnut’s reins free of the hitch rack. “I’ll rustle you something up, and then you can bed down in our spare room.”

  “You mean we’re goin’ to your house?” Lonnie said, shocked. “I can throw down in the livery barn.”

  Casey swung up onto the chestnut’s back. “If Dupree’s here, he’ll find you there.” She narrowed a beautiful eye at Lonnie. “And you’ll be greased for a sputtering pan, cowboy.”

  Lonnie looked around the dark street, suppressing a shudder.

  “Come on,” Casey said, turning the chestnut away from the jailhouse.

  “Hold on.”

  Casey glanced over her shoulder at him. “Why?”

  Lonnie was standing in the stirrups as he stared south along the main street. “Heard somethin’.”

  Actually, the General had heard something and had twitched one ear and then the other. Then Lonnie had heard it, too. He heard it again now—the murmur of distant voices. Casey must have heard it, too, because she gave a slight gasp as she whipped her head forward.

  There was silence for a time, then Lonnie heard a man’s low, hard voice as well as the slow clomping of approaching horses. As he stared off toward the south end of town, he saw several shadows jostling in the darkness.

  “Come on!” Lonnie said, and reined the General through a break between the jailhouse and the drugstore sitting beside it.

  Silently, Casey turned the chestnut after him. Lonnie looked around wildly, feeling his heart starting to beat fast again—his poor, tired heart!—and then he saw Arapaho Creek flashing beyond some cottonwoods and pines. He whistled softly to Casey and spurred the General through the trees and down a gradual slope to the edge of the willows lining the water that gurgled gently over the rocks forming the creek bed.

  The boy slipped down off the General’s back and tied the reins to a branch of a willow shrub.

  “Do you think it’s them?” Casey whispered.

  “I don’t know, but I think we’d best find out.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Lonnie shucked his carbine from its saddle boot, quietly levered a cartridge into the chamber, and off-cocked the hammer. Casey followed him as he jogged up the slope, the quarter moon lighting his way back through the cottonwoods and pines.

  When he’d gained the top of the slope, he turned right and tramped along the rear of several shops before slipping through a narrow break and slowing his pace as he headed toward the main street. When he reached the mouth of the alley that opened onto the street, he dropped behind a rain barrel and shuttled his gaze to the west.

  Three riders were making their way toward Lonnie and Casey, who’d dropped to one knee behind Lonnie’s left shoulder, so she wouldn’t be seen from the street. The riders were little more than silhouettes in the darkness, their faces dark ovals beneath the brims of their hats. Starlight shone in their horses’ eyes, glistened off bridle chains and off the silver trimming Shannon Dupree’s gaudy Texas saddle.

  Lonnie glanced anxiously at Casey and gave her arm a hard tug as he threw himself against the side of the shop on his right. Casey pressed her back to the wall beside Lonnie.

  Very quietly, so that it was little louder than a breath, she said, “Is it them?”

  Lonnie nodded, staring at her with wide, grave eyes. He’d have recognized that fancy saddle skirt anywhere. Both skirts of Dupree’s saddle were decorated with two small, coiled silver riatas, one overlapping the other. Lonnie had heard Dupree once say that he’d won the saddle in a poker game with a Mexican cowboy from west Texas.

  Dupree was very proud of that saddle.

  Lonnie turned his head so that he could look between the rain barrel and the side of the shop to see the street. The clomping of the horses grew until the dark shapes of the horses and riders were passing in front of Lonnie, roughly fifteen yards away.

  “Where you s’pose we’re gonna find the little twerp?” one of the men said, his voice loud in the quiet night.

  “I don’t know, but we’ll find him, all right. I’m bettin’ the money is in the marshal’s office.”

  Lonnie hardened his jaws at the sound of Dupree’s voice. Again, he wondered about his mother.

  The low, rum
bling voice of Fuego said, “Ain’t that the jailhouse up ahead? Look—there’s a light in the window.”

  “Well, I’ll be jiggered,” Dupree said.

  They passed Lonnie and were following a slight curve in the street as they headed toward the marshal’s office.

  Lonnie turned to Casey. “Did you hear?”

  She nodded as she gained her feet and began jogging at a crouch back in the direction from which they’d come. “Come on!”

  “Where to?”

  “The jailhouse!”

  “Why?” Lonnie said, catching up to her as they gained the rear of the shops.

  “We left Chase in there!”

  “So what?” Lonnie said, running along behind the girl as she headed in the direction of the jailhouse. “We’d best light a shuck out of here, Miss Casey. Town ain’t safe no more!”

  “It’ll be safer if we know where those killers head once they leave the jailhouse!” Casey paused to catch her breath, leaning forward, her hands on her knees. “I wanna know where they’re headin’ so I can tell Bill Barrows, the deputy US marshal over in Camp Collins. As soon as the Wells Fargo office opens, I’m sendin’ that telegram.”

  She made an angry face, eyes flashing in the starlight. “By God, they’re gonna pay for killin’ my pa!”

  Casey started running again, stopped, and looked back at him. “Are you comin’?”

  Lonnie looked toward where they’d left the horses. He really wanted to ride and keep on riding. He never wanted to see Shannon Dupree again. The boy’s life grew more and more precious to him every time he nearly lost it, and that was getting to be too many times.

  He looked at Casey. She was staring at him, frowning critically. As afraid as he was, how could he run out on Casey Stoveville?

  Inwardly, he groaned.

  “Yeah,” he said, steeling his courage. “Yeah, of course, I am.”

  They ran.

  CHAPTER 27

  There was a loud bang!

  Running ahead of Lonnie, Casey yelped and fell. For a second, Lonnie thought she’d been shot but then he realized what the sound had been.

  Dupree and the other two outlaws had busted the jailhouse door open. Lonnie could hear them stomping around in the building whose rear wall lay just ahead.

  Chase’s shrill voice called out, “Now, just you wait, Dupree! Just you wait!”

  Lonnie gave Casey his hand, and he helped her to her feet. Without saying anything, they continued running to the side of the jailhouse. They pressed their backs against the rough, cool stones, one on each side of a sashed window through which flickering orange lamplight slanted out onto the dirt around Lonnie’s boots.

  The window was partly covered with an old, tattered flour sack curtain. There was a five-inch gap between the two flaps of the curtain. Lonnie held his hat against his chest as he rose onto his boot toes and peered through the window into the jailhouse.

  By flickering lamplight, he could see Dupree stepping back from the cell in which Chase stood, the prisoner’s hands wrapped around the bars. Dupree cuffed his hat back on his blond head and slacked down into Marshal Stoveville’s swivel chair, facing Chase’s cell.

  “So you tried to make off with the money, did you, Deputy?” Dupree said, laughing. “But the kid got the better of you, did he?”

  Fuego and Childress were standing near the open door, facing the jail cell. Fuego had a boot propped on a chair near the door and was rolling a cigarette, an elbow propped on a knee. Childress was scraping grit out from under his fingernails with a Barlow knife and grinning in that mocking way of his.

  “So where’s the money now?” Dupree wanted to know.

  “How should I know?” Chase said, his frightened, slightly high-pitched voice echoing around the cave-like room. “That kid of yours and that girl—Stoveville’s daughter—took it and lit out. For all I know, they headed to Mexico!”

  “That kid ain’t mine,” Dupree said. “Let me be clear on that. That kid is his mother’s and some dead blue-belly Yankee. I never would have fathered a no-account, thieving, sneaking, little jasper like that one.”

  “Thieving, huh?” Chase’s ironic laughter at that was short- lived. Dupree glared at him.

  “Stoveville’s daughter, you say?” the blond outlaw leader said.

  “That’s right. They’re in it together. She’s tougher’n she looks. Must take after her pa.”

  Lonnie glanced at Casey. She didn’t return the glance. She was too busy staring through the window, her head a little lower and to the left of his own.

  Fuego turned to Dupree. “They’re probably over at Stoveville’s place.”

  “Where’s the Stoveville house?” Dupree asked Chase.

  Chase poked his arm out of the cell door, pointing toward the jailhouse’s front wall. “Two blocks south. Little frame house with a garden and a buggy shed. Big cottonwood in the front yard. Can’t miss it. That’s probably where they are, all right. Say, would you fellas mind turnin’ me loose?”

  “Turn you loose?” Childress said, chuckling and closing his knife.

  Chase hesitated. “Yeah, I mean … why not? I ain’t no deputy anymore. You got nothin’ to worry about from me. I’m gettin’ shed of this town first thing in the mornin’!”

  “You’re gettin’ shed of this town right now,” Dupree said.

  Lonnie hadn’t seen Dupree pull his gun, but now the boy saw the gun in Dupree’s gloved right hand. There was a loud pop! and orange-red flames stabbed from the pistol’s barrel in the direction of Chase.

  “Oh, my god!” Casey screamed, and instantly clamped her hand over her mouth, as shocked and horrified by her own exclamation as by the fact that Dupree had murdered Chase in cold blood.

  “Tell me I didn’t do that,” she whispered to Lonnie.

  Lonnie turned back to the window. Dupree was staring at him and Casey through the warped glass. So were Fuego and Childress. Childress threw his arm out toward the window and shouted, “There they are!”

  “Oh, yeah, you sure did!” Lonnie said, pushing Casey aside as Dupree snapped his revolver toward the window.

  Bang! Bang! Bang-Bang!

  The bullets crashed through the window, blowing out the glass and wooden sashes, shredding the curtains and spraying glass and wood in all directions.

  “Come on, Casey—run! Ru-un!” Lonnie yelled, pulling the girl to her feet and then, holding her hand, lunging into a sprint back toward the rear of the building.

  Beyond the jailhouse, the inky shapes of widely scattered cabins and stock pens and outhouses hunched in the darkness. Lonnie swung around behind the jailhouse as a rifle belched behind him, bullets pluming dust at his and Casey’s feet. He could hear the outlaws yelling, hear the thuds of their boots and the jangling of their spurs.

  Lonnie had released Casey’s hand. She was running only slightly behind him, almost as fast as he was, her own spurred boots ringing in sync with his own.

  “This way!” Lonnie yelled, and they cut between an abandoned cabin and a small warehouse, running hard to the north.

  He wanted to get back to the horses but he wanted to lose Dupree and “the boys” first, because it was going to take him and Casey a minute or so to get mounted and get across the stream and into the mountains. There was a lot of open ground across the stream and a ways up onto the first ridge to the east, and open ground meant that he and the girl could be cut down by rifle fire.

  Lonnie heard a hard thud. Casey groaned and fell, rolling. Lonnie stopped and ran back to her. She was sitting up and leaning forward across her knees, clutching her left ankle near the stone she’d apparently tripped over.

  Lonnie saw a small stack of grayed lumber partly hidden amongst the sage they’d been running through as they’d swung to the west and the horses they’d tied by the creek. Lonnie cast an anxious look behind them. He could see the silhouettes of their pursuers coming through the tall pines and the dark cabins. They were close enough that Lonnie heard their rasping breaths and the jing
ling of their spurs.

  “You gotta get up, Casey!” Lonnie said, wrapping a hand around her arm. “Get up and run!”

  “You go! Leave me!”

  “I ain’t leaving you!” he yelled too loudly.

  “There they are!” Childress shouted.

  CHAPTER 28

  Casey cursed and with a groan she pushed to her feet and continued running down the wooded slope to the west.

  “Come on!” she called behind her.

  “I’ll be comin’!” Lonnie said, dropping to a knee and raising his rifle.

  He was a little startled at how easy shooting at men had gotten to be. But it seemed just as easy for men to stalk him with the intention of killing him … as well as the girl he fancied.

  Lonnie aimed in the general direction of the shadows dancing amongst the trees and cabins, and snapped off three quick shots, his rifle crashing loudly, the echoes leaping toward the moon. He heard one of the men yowl. The others stopped running to take cover, and Lonnie wheeled and ran after Casey.

  He ran hard, pausing twice to look behind. His shots seemed to have slowed Dupree’s pursuit. When Lonnie caught up to Casey, she was limping badly on her left foot.

  “I wish you’d leave me,” she said.

  “If I leave you, they’ll kill you.”

  “They’ll kill us both if they catch us.”

  “They won’t catch us!” Lonnie insisted, suppressing a shudder.

  Lonnie awkwardly took the girl’s right hand.

  “What’re you doing?” she said, frowning at him.

  “Don’t get your back in a hump,” Lonnie said, pulling her arm around his neck. “I’m only helpin’.”

  “Oh.” Casey glanced behind before glancing over at Lonnie. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Lonnie led Casey down to the creek and followed it upstream. He wished they hadn’t hid the horses so well, because he was really starting to sweat about finding them again when, as they followed a horseshoe-shaped bend, the General whickered.