Perley looked toward the small posse of vigilantes, the cause of the outlaws suddenly changing their route of escape. In the lead, he saw Rooster and Possum, charging like wild Indians. The posse was on foot, so they broke off their pursuit when they reached the bridge, then, out of breath, they walked over to the jail.
“Took you a little while,” Perley said to Possum when he and Rooster walked up to him.
“Well,” Possum replied. “Me and Rooster had to do some talkin’ before we could get enough men to go save the jail.” He shrugged. “And it bein’ Sunday, you know, everything kinda runs slow on Sundays.” He paused then to look at the bullet-riddled sheriff’s office. “Boy, they were tryin’ to chop this place up, weren’t they?”
“Shot to hell,” Rooster crowed as he walked up to join them. “You know you got a prisoner tryin’ to escape out the back?”
“That’s Eli,” Perley said. “I guess we’ll have to pull him outta the window. Don’t you reckon, Sheriff? You could leave him there, but you can’t get any air in with him pluggin’ the window.”
“We’re glad to see you and Perley made it through that jailbreak, Sheriff,” John Payne said as he walked up to join the conversation. “Sorry we didn’t get down here sooner. We’ll get a little better at it when we get organized. I don’t think we were all expectin’ to answer the call this soon.”
“I think me and Perley are glad to have your support, even if it was after I got all my windows shot out,” Sheriff Mason said and managed a little laugh. A couple you fellows wanta help me pull my prisoner back in jail?” They all volunteered, so they went inside.
“What the hell?” Horace Brooks exclaimed when he saw Eli Priest’s lower body, from his behind on down, with a heavy four-foot bench hanging from his feet.
Mason chuckled. “That’s Perley’s method for makin’ sure a prisoner don’t get sucked out the window if a tornado hits town.” They all chuckled with him, including Slim in the next cell, but excluding Eli, who was enduring another defeat at the hands of a window.
It struck Perley that he might be witnessing the evolution of a qualified sheriff. Watching Mason now, talking with the few members of the council who had responded to his call for help, he saw a different man. Decidedly different from the cautious, somber man who was reluctant to challenge Ned Stark. He even had a sense of humor, with that crack about Eli getting sucked out the window. The sheriff had undoubtedly made a commitment to the town when he decided to deny Ned Stark, so Perley hoped the town would back him up.
CHAPTER 13
“That was one of the liveliest Sunday mornings we’ve ever had around here,” Ralph Wheeler declared when he returned to the hotel dining room where his wife waited for him. He was one of the five men who responded to Possum’s call for volunteers to rush to the relief of the two under siege in the jailhouse. It was obvious to those still in the dining room that the mayor was feeling his manhood after his part in the rout of the five outlaws. “I reckon I won’t have any more use for this right now,” he said to Emma as he returned her shotgun. “I thank you for the use of your weapon.” He had borrowed it when Possum and Rooster were asking for help. He and Cora had just come from church to eat dinner in the hotel, and he wasn’t wearing a weapon. “I never fired it, didn’t have to,” he said. He was distracted momentarily when Perley walked in the dining room. “Perley,” he called out. “Everything all right down at the jail?”
“Yep, everything’s all right,” Perley answered, thinking it an odd question, since Wheeler just came from the jail a few minutes before him. He soon realized that the mayor was still on a high after the newly conceived vigilance committee had responded to save the jail. He wanted to warn him that a man like Ned Stark was not easily defeated and might be determined to seek his own vengeance after today. But he decided to wait and let him enjoy his victory for a little while. His thoughts were immediately steered to another subject by a question from Rachael Parker.
“You never got to eat your dinner, did you?”
“No, ma’am, I didn’t,” he answered. “And I reckon I’m too late to get it now.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “Bess put a plate in the oven to save for you, while the oven was cooling. You can thank Alice for that. It was her idea. I hope it hasn’t dried out by now.”
“Doesn’t matter if it has,” Perley assured her. “I surely appreciate it, and I’ll thank her for thinkin’ of me. Nothin’ cranks up your appetite like sittin’ in a little room while a gang of maniacs try to shoot it to pieces. If you don’t mind, I’ll just go in the kitchen to eat it.” The dining room was beginning to become crowded with folks anxious over the first response by the vigilantes. He was happy to join Bess, who was sitting at the kitchen table, having a cup of coffee after cleaning up the dinner dishes.
* * *
At the hideout that Stark called his ranch, there was a definitely different aftermath of the failed jailbreak attempt. Junior Humphrey and Jack Sledge were trying to ease the discomfort of their two wounded partners while Stark fumed over the disastrous raid. Duncan was losing a lot of blood as the unlucky recipient of Sheriff Mason’s lucky shot when they were riding away. The shot had caught him in the back, a little right of center, and he had already been bleeding from the graze in his side. “I reckon you were lucky we were that far away when he hit you,” Sledge said as he looked at Duncan’s back. “It’s bleedin’ a lot, but I don’t think the bullet is real deep in your back.”
“Can you get it outta there?” Duncan asked.
“Not without cuttin’ a piece of your back out,” Sledge told him. “It ain’t that deep. You oughta just leave it in there. You can still move your arm, can’t you?”
“Yeah, a little bit,” Duncan said, “but it hurts like hell.”
“There’s a lotta men walkin’ around with a piece of lead in ’em,” Sledge said. “If we get somewhere where there’s a doctor, get him to take it out, if you want to. Can you reach over your shoulder with your other hand and hold this rag over it? When the bleedin’ stops, I’ll try to tie a bandage on you.” He went then to help Frank Deal stop the wound in his shoulder from bleeding. Junior was supposed to help him, but he seemed to be unable to do anything but stare at the hole just below Deal’s collarbone.
“That sure as hell didn’t go the way we wanted it to, did it?” Deal asked Sledge when he moved Junior aside and took a look at the wound.
“Reckon not,” Sledge replied. “They were ready for us, all right. Looks like the town was givin’ us notice that we ain’t welcome there no more.”
Overhearing his comment, Stark broke from the angry trance that had taken over his mind. “We’ll decide who’s welcome in that town and who ain’t,” he grumbled.
Sledge and Deal exchanged doubtful glances. “You thinkin’ about going back any time soon, Boss?” Sledge asked. “We got our asses whipped pretty good today. Looks like they really have organized a vigilance committee.”
Stark turned to stare straight into Sledge’s eyes. “Maybe they have,” he responded, glowering out from under a heavy frown. “But it’s a committee made up of the same store owners and shopkeepers with no backbone that have always been there. Them vigilantes didn’t do a damn thing but run down the street makin’ noise and shootin’ in the air. When a couple of ’em gets shot, that’ll be the end of the vigilantes. We were just unlucky today. We ran into an ambush and got stopped by two men, that damn Judas sheriff and another man. If Mason hadn’t had that extra man, he’da never been able to cover both windows in that office.”
“Perley Gates,” Sledge pronounced.
“Maybe,” Stark responded sharply, reluctant to give Perley any more credit for the destruction of his once formidable gang of outlaws. The man had become a definite thorn in his side ever since he showed up in Bison Gap. “It coulda been anybody in the jail with him.”
“I’ll bet it was Perley Gates that shot me,” Deal said. “I got hit by a shot from the other side of the room—shot me thr
ough the window.”
“Anybody coulda made that shot,” Stark insisted. “He was just lucky.”
“I don’t know, Ned,” Sledge responded doubtfully.
“What the hell’s the matter with you two?” Stark demanded then. “You’re talkin’ like whipped dogs, wantin’ to run off and hide in the bushes. They’ve got two of our men locked up in that jail and I, by God, don’t intend to leave ’em there! What if it was you locked up in that jail, waitin’ for those mealymouthed shopkeepers to hang you? I reckon you’d want the rest of us to get you outta there.” Although his argument was slanted toward his sense of responsibility for the men who rode with him, his real concern was not so noble. He had planned to rustle a sizable herd of cattle down in Blanco County. He needed the money the sale of those cattle would provide. With the four men he had now, it would be hard to herd that many cattle, even if they were all fit. With two of them wounded, it was impossible. If he had Eli and Slim back, it would still be difficult, but it would be possible.
“I ain’t sayin’ we shouldn’ta gone to get Slim and Eli outta there,” Sledge insisted. “I’m just sayin’ we ain’t in no shape to go after ’em again right now.”
“I swear,” Stark scoffed, “I never expected to hear that kinda yellow talk outta you—Slim, maybe, but not you.” He looked at Junior. “What about you, Junior? You scared to go back after Eli and Slim?”
“Hell, no, Ned,” Junior replied at once. “I ain’t scared of nothin’. You’re the boss. If you say go in there and get ’em, I’m ready to ride.”
The simple giant answered exactly as Stark knew he would and that was the reason Stark had asked him. Back to Sledge then, Stark said, “Junior knows, just like I know, that we need to get those boys outta there before they decide to hang ’em.”
“Damn it, Ned,” Sledge charged, “you know I ain’t ever backed away from any job we’ve tried. I’m just talkin’ about the shape we’re in right now. Frank ain’t in no shape to help, neither is Duncan, so it’ll just be the three of us against the whole damn town.”
“And we’re outta coffee and flour,” Junior thought it necessary to remind them again.
Ignoring the childlike man’s remark, Duncan said, “I wanna get Eli and Slim outta that jail, but what Sledge says is true. We ain’t in no shape to go ridin’ back in there for another go-round with Perley Gates and the sheriff. It sure looks like Mason has made a deal with that gunslinger to take over the town. If Slim and Eli hadn’t got theirselves locked up, the smartest thing we coulda done is to move on and find a better place to do our business.” He paused to see if the scowling boss of the gang was going to interrupt. When Stark didn’t, Duncan continued. “You know, we might want to start havin’ a lookout at night. After that little party this mornin’, they might start thinkin’ about payin’ us a visit.”
“I hope to hell they do,” Stark said. “It’d be a whole lot different when they ain’t holed up in that jail. It’d be a good chance to thin that crowd out.”
“That’s another thing,” Sledge reminded him. “That jailhouse was built like a dang fort. How are we gonna break ’em outta there? The only way I can think of to open that thing up is to dynamite it, and we ain’t got no dynamite.”
* * *
Back in Bison Gap, the talk about the successful defense of the town jail continued past dinnertime, and most of the folks went across the creek to look at the bullet-riddled structure. Of special interest was the gaping hole in the cell room wall where a window used to be. One of the spectators discussing the damage to the sheriff’s office suddenly stopped in mid-sentence when he was interrupted by the sound of a train whistle. “Oh, my goodness!” Gomer Sikes exclaimed and pulled out his pocket watch. “I’ve let the time slip up on me. That’s the afternoon train.” He hurried toward the bridge over the creek as fast as a man of his considerable bulk could manage. As stationmaster, Sikes was usually on hand to receive the mailbags, as well as any important passengers. And since the railroad tracks ran behind the stores on Main Street, he had a good little run to reach the station.
Sikes made it to the platform mere seconds before the train ground to a stop at the station. Henry Peacock walked back to the mail car to swap mailbags with the mail clerk while another employee set up the ramp for the lone arriving passenger to lead a solid white horse out of the stock car. Gomer Sikes took special notice of the man leading the horse. Tall and slender, he looked around him as if deciding whether or not the little town was worth his appearance. With thick black hair and a neatly trimmed mustache, he looked the part of a professional gambler. But the fancy black engraved gun belt suggested he might be proficient in something other than a game of cards. Seeing Sikes standing on the platform, the stranger led his horse up even with him and stopped. “Afternoon,” he said.
“Afternoon,” Sikes returned. “Welcome to Bison Gap. You looking for the Buffalo Hump Saloon?”
The stranger looked up at him with an easy smile. “Now, what makes you think that?”
Sikes stumbled over his words, realizing that he might have offended him. “Oh, uh, I just thought you might be looking for some refreshment, since you’ve been riding in the cattle car on such a warm day.”
“This is my first time in Bison Gap,” the stranger said, “and I was going to ask you how to find the hotel. I assume there’s a town over that way somewhere.” He nodded toward the train blocking his view of the town.
“Oh, yes, sir,” Sikes replied. “Bison House Hotel is right over there.” He pointed. “You’ll see it as soon as the train pulls out of the way. Fine establishment, just built this year. It’s operated by two women, the hotel and the dining room. I’m Gomer Sikes, the stationmaster.”
“Thank you, Gomer,” the stranger said but didn’t offer his name. He stepped up into the saddle and said, “A drink before supper might be good, at that.” He turned the white gelding and crossed over the tracks behind the train.
Jimmy McGee stopped in mid-sentence when he was talking to Ida Wicks about the raid on the jailhouse earlier that day. He was distracted by the appearance of the stranger in the door of the saloon. The man paused there for a few moments while he looked over the busy room. A tight-lipped little smile on his face, he seemed to give the impression that he was amused by what he was looking at. “Howdy, stranger,” Jimmy greeted him. “What’s your pleasure?”
The smile widened slightly and he replied, “Good lookin’ young women and rye whiskey.”
“Pour him a whiskey, Jimmy,” Ida said. “I ain’t young no more, and I never was good lookin’, so I can’t do anything for him.” She turned and walked away. “I’ll be cookin’ something for supper.” The stranger threw his head back and laughed.
Jimmy poured him a shot of rye whiskey. The stranger picked it up, tossed it back, and ordered another. “Here’s to older women,” he said and downed the second shot. “They’re more comfortable.”
“What brings you to Bison Gap?” Jimmy asked.
“The train and a snow-white horse,” the stranger said, “and I’m gonna need to put the horse in a stable for the night. The train can take care of itself.”
Jimmy was not impressed by the glib tongue of the stranger and was inclined to be suspicious of his carefree attitude. “Well, sir,” he said, “the stable’s at the other end of the street. Are you wantin’ to sleep with the horse?”
“Hell, no,” the stranger exclaimed. “I wanna sleep in the hotel. Fellow over at the train station—Sikes, I think his name was—said there was a good one here.”
“He wasn’t lyin’,” Jimmy replied. “Bison House, back across the creek, on the north end of town. One of the owners manages it, Emma Slocum. She’ll fix you up with a nice room. If you’re lookin’ for supper, Ida’s throwin’ something together now.” He glanced toward the kitchen, then lowered his voice. “But if you want a little fancier supper, the hotel dinin’ room is where you wanna go.”
The stranger chuckled in appreciation of Jimmy’s careful m
easures to keep from being heard in the kitchen. “I appreciate it, bartender. My name’s Drew Dawson. What’s yours?”
Surprised, because he had gotten the impression the stranger was guarding against giving his name, Jimmy answered, “Jimmy McGee.”
“Nice to meetcha, Jimmy. Pour me another shot of that rye, then I’m gonna go take care of my horse.” He paid Jimmy for the whiskey, started to leave, but paused to ask a question. “When I rode over here, from the main street, there were a lot of people standing around that other building on this side of the creek. What goes on there?”
“That’s the jail,” Jimmy said. “There’s a couple of prisoners in there, and earlier today, some of their friends tried to break ’em out.”
“Well, I’ll swear,” Drew declared. “Did they break ’em out?”
“No, but they shot the jail near-’bout to pieces and pulled a hole in the back where a window used to be.”
“I’ll bet that woke the town up on a Sunday,” Drew said. “Well, I’d best go take care of my horse.” He lowered his voice to a whisper and winked at Jimmy. “Then I’ll go to the hotel for something to eat.”
“You have a good evenin’, sport,” Jimmy called after him. Nice fellow, he thought. I had him figured out wrong when he first came in.
* * *
“That’s a fine-lookin’ horse,” Horace Brooks was inspired to comment when Drew Dawson rode up to the stable. “What’s his name?”
“Thank you, sir,” Drew responded. “I’m glad to see you have an appreciation for fine horses. This one will outlast any horse I’ve ever owned, and I’ve owned some good ones. His name’s Snowball and he’s never failed me, so take good care of him for me.”
“You can count on that,” Horace said. “How long you gonna be with us, Mr. . . . ?”
“Dawson,” he said, “Drew Dawson. I’ll just be here overnight.”
“All right, Mr. Dawson, I’ll take care of Snowball for you. I expect you want me to feed him some oats.”
“Unless you don’t have any other grain,” Drew answered. “Oats make him a little bit windy. But if that’s all you’ve got, give him oats.”
Shot to Hell Page 16
