Shawn O'Brien Town Tamer # 1

by W. , Johnstone, William

  Cobb had never been shot before, and he shrieked his pain and outrage and went down on one knee, the corded muscle of his neck straining against the skin.

  But now his men were firing.

  Ruby fell under Lee Dorian’s gun and Sedley, who was now shooting wild in Cobb’s general direction, took a bullet that tore a chunk out of his left bicep.

  Matt Rhodes worked his rifle well and stood his ground, but with old eyes, his shooting had little effect.

  He was hit hard and thumped onto the street in a sitting position, blood pumping from his chest.

  Sally ran around Sedley, flung her arms into the air and yelled,

  “Moon goddess hear me well,

  thrust those demons back to hell!”

  “Are you crazy!” Sedley screamed.

  He grabbed Sally by the arm, dragged her onto the boardwalk and forced her to lie flat on her stomach. Sedley threw himself on top of her. Then, holding the protesting girl down with his weight, he fed cartridges into his Colt, his trembling fingers dropping more than he loaded.

  Ruby crawled through the mud of the street and pulled herself onto the boardwalk, bullets kicking around her, splintering wood.

  “How bad are you hurt?” Sedley yelled.

  “How the hell should I know?” Ruby said.

  “Then lie down and stay down,” Sedley said.

  “What are you doing to that girl?” Ruby said.

  “Lying on top of her. Hell, she was standing in the street trying to cast spells.”

  “Let me up,” Sally yelled.

  “Hamp, you’re a damned pervert,” Ruby said. “Let her go.”

  A trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth and her breathing came hard and fast.

  Walsh and Kane edged closer to the boardwalk, firing as they came.

  Bullets split the air around Sedley and the women, and wood chips flew into the air.

  Sedley raised himself up and fired at the gunmen and they retreated a few steps. Neither of them was hit.

  Rhodes was down with a fatal wound, but the old soldier had sand and he wasn’t out of it.

  He called to Cobb by name, and then threw the Winchester to his shoulder.

  Rhodes fired and clipped a half-moon of flesh out of the top of Cobb’s left ear.

  Cobb reacted like a man who’d just been stung by a hornet.

  He clapped a hand to his ear and his eyes widened as it came away bloody.

  Screaming in rage, Cobb got to his feet and charged Rhodes.

  The old man tried to lever his rifle again, but it was beyond his fading strength.

  Cobb staggered to the Rhodes, shoved his gun into the old man’s face and triggered a shot.

  Blood and bone fanning from a black wound just under his right eye, Rhodes fell onto his back and lay still.

  Revolver in hand, Hank Cobb, bent over and staggering, headed for the livery. Shot for the first time in his life, his scheme to become the king of Holy Rood in ruins, his only thought was escape.

  Even when Sedley took a pot at him as he went by, and missed, Cobb didn’t return fire or slow his pace.

  His need for a horse was greater than his desire to kill a tinhorn gambler.

  Behind Cobb a volley of gunfire rattled. Angry bullets whined around him and kicked up vees of mud at his feet.

  He turned his head and his eyes popped, showing the whites.

  At least a dozen men, firing an assortment of contraband weapons, were spread out across the street, firing as they came.

  Walsh was down on all fours, coughing up black blood.

  Beside him Jonas Kane was taking hits but still getting his work in, his face grim and determined.

  After a quick, terrified glance at the oncoming townsmen, Lee Dorian took to his heels and ran after Cobb.

  “Hold them off, Lee,” Cobb yelled over his shoulder. “I’ll saddle the horses.”

  Dorian was showing yellow, but he fought down his fear and took up a position in the stable doorway and fired his rifle at the men in the street.

  “For God’s sake hurry, boss,” he shrieked. “I can’t hold them for long.”

  A few of the townsmen hesitated and looked for cover, but most stood their ground and shot back at Dorian.

  The gunman yelped as a bullet burned across his thigh, drawing blood.

  “Boss—”

  But Cobb, riding bareback on a rangy buckskin, galloped past him.

  “Get your own damned horse,” he yelled.

  Then he was gone, spurring the buckskin along the wagon road. Within moments, he vanished into the sheeting rain and lighting shimmered around him.

  Dorian, knowing that he’d no time to bridle a mount, stepped out of the livery, threw down his rifle and then his holstered Colt.

  He glanced at Jonas Kane dead on the ground and raised his hands as the townsmen got closer.

  “Don’t shoot! I’m out of it!” he screamed.

  Then Lee Dorian, a man killer by trade, a woman killer by inclination, looked around at the men ringing him and saw his death in their faces.

  He called out to one of the men by name.

  “Luke, can you make this go away?”

  The man called Luke shook his head, his eyes merciless.

  And a dark, wet stain appeared in Dorian’s crotch and spread down his legs.

  “Damn you all . . . rabbits!” he yelled.

  Guns roared.

  Hit by bullets and buckshot, Dorian jerked this way and that like a puppet manipulated by a child, his body almost torn apart.

  He dropped to the ground, twitching, and the man called Luke put the muzzle of his rifle between Dorian’s eyes and fired.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Shawn O’Brien stood at the sheriff’s office window and looked into the street.

  “Hell, Shawn, you’re not one to take a hand, are you?” Ford Platt said.

  “Let the men of this town redeem themselves and find their self-respect,” Shawn said. “Better this was their fight.”

  “Pity Cobb escaped though,” Platt said.

  “He was badly wounded, and the only place he can find a doctor is Silver Reef,” Shawn said. “I’ll go after him as soon as I’ve settled things here.”

  He watched the town undertaker and his assistants lay out the bodies of six men—two townsmen, three of Cobb’s gun hands and the torn, bloody corpse of Jasper Wolfden.

  The undertaker was a tall thin man wearing a black claw hammer coat and a top hat. He hopped around the bodies like a crow and pushed back the gawking crowd that had gathered.

  “What are you going to do with these people?” Shawn said.

  “Nothing,” Platt said. “I can’t arrest a whole town.”

  A black blowfly landed on his cheek and he brushed it away.

  “My job isn’t done until I kill or arrest Hank Cobb,” Platt said. “That’s why I’ll be heading to Silver Reef with you.”

  “Then you’ll need this.”

  Shawn passed the derringer to Platt, who dropped it into a pocket without comment.

  The door opened and Hamp Sedley, a fat bandage on his upper arm, stepped inside.

  “How is she?” Shawn said.

  Dark shadows pooled in the hollows of the gambler’s face.

  “Ruby isn’t going to make it, O’Brien,” he said. “She’s asking for you.”

  “Is Sally with her? And the doctor?” Shawn said.

  “Yeah, Sally is with her, but the doctor left. A couple of men stopped bullets and he’s attending to them.”

  “That damned pill roller left Ruby to die?” Platt said.

  “He’s an old man who did his best,” Sedley said. “He can’t raise the dead.”

  “I’ll go see her,” Shawn said.

  The thunderstorm had passed, but the black and mustard sky had spitefully settled into a drizzle for the rest of the day. The air smelled of wet pine, streaked with the tang of gun smoke.

  Ignoring a man who yelled after him demanding to know the
whereabouts of his money, Shawn crossed the street and walked into the hotel.

  The surly desk clerk recognized Shawn as the man who’d rescued Sally and caused all kinds of hell. But he was smart enough to confine himself to saying. “Room fourteen. Upstairs.”

  “Obliged,” Shawn said.

  The clerk didn’t answer.

  Ruby lay propped up with pillows in a brass bed. The ceiling was mirrored, a relic of Holy Rood’s wilder days, and a crepe-draped portrait of the gallant Custer hung on one wall.

  Ruby gestured to the mirror. “Made me feel right at home, didn’t they?”

  Shawn smiled. “How are you, Ruby?”

  The woman was very pale and the blue death shadows had gathered under her eyes.

  “Dying,” she said. “I’m lung-shot, and I’ve seen enough lung-shot cowboys to know that there’s no coming back from this.”

  She coughed and specks of red appeared on her white lips.

  “Sally cast a spell on me,” she said.

  “It’s a healing spell, Ruby,” Sally said. “It will do you good.”

  “Is there anything I can do for you, Ruby?” Shawn said. “Just name it.”

  “Yes there is, handsome,” the woman said.

  Shawn sat on the bed and waited.

  Ruby clutched his hand, then said, “Shawn, don’t let them lay my bones to rest in this town. I hated the place and all it stood for, and if I’m buried here my soul will never be at peace.”

  “Ruby, you’ll be just fine,” Shawn said, smiling as he squeezed her hand.

  “You know better than that,” the woman said.

  Ruby turned her face to the thin glow of the lighted lamp beside her bed and looked into Shawn’s eyes.

  “Promise me,” she said.

  Shawn talked around the sudden lump in his throat.

  “Where?” he said.

  “You’ll take me there?”

  “I swear it.”

  Ruby smiled. “Among the pines. I want to lie in my grave and hear the wind in the branches.”

  Much overcome, Shawn could only nod.

  “No headstone. No cross. I don’t want anyone to ever find me,” Ruby said.

  Sally bent her head and sobbed silently.

  “Swear it again, Shawn,” Ruby said.

  Her voice was fading, softer now, like a faint summer breeze.

  “I swear it,” Shawn said. “I’ll do exactly as you say.”

  Ruby smiled.

  And a moment later she closed her eyes and all the life that was in her fled.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  “Ruby is dead,” Shawn said. He still felt the ghost of her hand in his. “She died well.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Ford Platt said. “She was a fine woman.”

  Shawn nodded. Said nothing.

  Then, after a long silence, he said, “I promised Ruby that I’d bury her far from here, among the pines.”

  He hesitated again, and then said, “I told the undertaker to preserve her as best he could, and lay her in a sealed coffin.”

  Shawn turned to Platt, who sat at the sheriff’s desk.

  “Hell of a thing to tell a man, any man, even an undertaker,” he said.

  Platt, knowing that anything he said about Ruby would be inadequate, said, “Coffee’s biled.”

  “Smelled it as soon as I came in,” Shawn said. He managed a smile. “I could sure use a cup.”

  “And lookee,” Platt said.

  He held up a full sack of tobacco and papers.

  “I know you’re much addicted to the Texas habit,” he said.

  Shawn smiled. “And the New Mexico Territory habit.”

  “Wherever there are cowboys, huh?” Platt said, passing over the makings.

  “And vaqueros,” Shawn said.

  He built a cigarette, lit it and inhaled deeply.

  “Ahhh . . . I’d almost forgotten how good that is,” he said, blue smoke trickling from his nostrils. “Now where is the coffee?”

  Shawn was on his fourth cigarette and second cup of coffee when the door swung open and four men walked inside.

  “Well, gentlemen, this looks like a delegation,” Platt said.

  A tall, thin man with salt-and-pepper hair and a spade-shaped beard that hung halfway down his chest acted as spokesman.

  “Where is our money?” he said. His tone was brusque, his eyes unfriendly. “I’m the new marshal of Holy Rood, so speak up.”

  “Last I heard it was scattered all over the ridge,” Shawn said.

  “There were sacks up there with coin in them,” the man said. “They’ve gone. Somebody took them.”

  “Who took them?” Platt said.

  “That’s what I’m asking you,” the bearded man said.

  “Maybe Hank Cobb ran off with the sacks,” Shawn said.

  “No, he didn’t. We all saw him and the only thing he had in his hand was a gun.”

  “Then my next suspect would be Mink Morrow,” Shawn said. “If you care to go after him and call him out, you might get the money back.”

  The tall man’s face hardened. He held a Winchester in his right hand and flexed the fingers of his left.

  “There are other suspects,” he said. “Maybe two of them right here in this room.”

  Shawn’s anger flamed. The man was pushing him and he didn’t like to be pushed.

  “Damn you, there is no money,” he said. “The only money you had was on the ridge, and by now the rain has probably washed it away to hell and gone.”

  Another man, short and portly with a florid face said, “Be warned, when we find those responsible for stealing our savings, we’ll hang them.”

  That statement dangled in the air for a few seconds, then Shawn said, his voice so low it was almost a whisper, “No, you won’t.”

  “Damn you, sir, for your impertinence,” the florid man said.

  Shawn rose to his feet. He wore Ed Bowen’s gun rig.

  “Here’s what you’ll do,” he said. “You’ll haul down the gallows and you’ll do the same thing with that—”

  “Obscenity,” Platt offered.

  “Obscenity you call a guillotine,” Shawn said.

  “And how do we keep law and order in this town?” the bearded man said. “What you suggest is impossible.”

  “I don’t know how you’ll keep order,” Shawn said. “But you’ll do it without hanging, burning and beheading people.”

  “There is evil in this town,” the florid man said.

  “I know. I see it standing right here in front of me,” Shawn said.

  Platt took down a shotgun from the gun rack, broke it open and loaded two bright red shells into the chambers.

  He stepped beside Shawn and said, “Go do like the man said.”

  There was recklessness in the bearded fellow’s eyes that Shawn didn’t like. The new marshal of Holy Rood was an unbending man.

  “The gallows and guillotine, aye, and the stake, stay, and be damned to ye,” the man said.

  “I’m with you, Brother Adam,” the florid man said. He waved a hand to the two other townsmen. “And I’m sure these brothers think as I do.”

  The two men muttered their agreement, their faces hostile.

  Shawn shook his head. Then, his voice toneless, he said, “You haven’t learned a thing, have you? You finally got rid of Hank Cobb, and now you plan to take his place and carry on as before.”

  Platt said, “Listen to yourselves—you even call each other brother, like Cobb taught you.”

  “He was a good Christian,” the man called Adam said. “When witches invaded our town, they steered Brother Cobb onto an evil path and that was his downfall.”

  Then, slapping the stock of his rifle for emphasis, “His legacy remains. The gallows, the stake and the guillotine will stay as long as the West is lawless. They are edifices of justice, the very cornerstones of Holy Rood.”

  “I wanted to save this town,” Shawn said. “Tame it, as the newspapers say. But I believe that
all Holy Rood can do now is die and become a ghost. The quicker the better.”

  He picked up the sack from the table.

  “You can give the women back their rings and the men their watches,” he said. “I have no need for them.”

  “Come, gentlemen, we’re leaving,” Adam said, grabbing the sack. “As for you two, you have an hour to return our money and get out of town.”

  “It would go better for you if you surrender the money as you did the jewelry,” the florid man said. “You’ll be watched every minute by riflemen, mind.”

  After the four townsmen filed out the door, Platt said, “Let them destroy themselves, Shawn. My only job now is to bring Cobb to justice.”

  “I wonder how many more will die?” Shawn said.

  “I’m not catching your drift,” Platt said.

  “How many more will be hanged, beheaded or burned in Holy Rood in the coming years?”

  “That is no longer our concern,” Platt said.

  Shawn could only nod. He felt weary, like a defeated prizefighter.

  “All right, we’ll get Ruby’s body and go,” he said. “I’ll round up Hamp Sedley, and then head to the hotel for Sally.”

  “We’ll need a wagon,” Platt said. He seemed a little embarrassed. “For the coffin, I mean.”

  “Yes, we will. And we may have to shoot our way out of this damned town.”

  Platt studied Shawn, the slump of his shoulders and the sad, pained expression on his face.

  “Then let’s get it done,” he said. “I want Hank Cobb to pay for his murders and the sooner the better.”

  Shawn nodded.

  He drained his coffee then stepped out the door.

  And into an ambush . . .

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  The rifle bullet that zipped past Shawn O’Brien’s head missed by less than half an inch, splintered into the doorjamb and drove spikes of weathered pine into Ford Platt’s face.

  As Platt yelped and took a step back, blood running down his cheek, Shawn spotted a man on the pillared whores’ gallery of the abandoned saloon across the street.

  It was the bearded man called Adam and a second rifleman stood next to him.