by Clyde Barker
Setting his brother to wander the town and make himself conspicuous was the only scheme that Grant Clancy had been able to come up with at such short notice. After the conversation they had had that morning, he was asking if this whole thing was too much of a risk for Brent. It honestly seemed that the two of them might be able to form some kind of bond now and that was something that was quite unlooked for. It would be the hell of a thing if something were to befall Brent now, just when it seemed that an old breach might be at the point of being healed.
As Brent paraded up and down Main Street and popped into various places where a man might stay the night, either Grant or one of his deputies was watching the passers-by to see if anybody was taking any special notice of the travel-stained young man. So far though, the only looks that Brent Clancy had attracted were those he would be apt to garner in any respectable and well-regulated town, which was to say slight distaste and disapproval. None of those looking at the man with the bloody clothing looked like they were planning to murder him.
By midday, Sheriff Clancy had decided that enough time had been spent on the exercise and told one of the deputies to tell his brother to follow a circuitous route to the office and meet him there. When Brent slipped into the sheriff’s office, his brother was already waiting. He said, ‘I think we’ve mined this reef to death. I don’t doubt that those fellows who were chasing you are somewhere in town, but we’ll not find them like this. You want to eat?’
‘I’m pretty well starved.’
‘Before we get something, I was wondering how you’d feel about carrying on lending me more of a hand, leastways ’til this blamed visit is over?’
‘How so?’
‘Why, as a deputy of course. I could give you a star and then we could set down here and try to work out what the game will be. If the two of us can’t fathom out the case, then the Clancy family have fewer brains than I’d always thought.’
‘I don’t see that there’s much to think over,’ said Brent. ‘I’d say that somebody, most like those men who were after me, are planning to kill the president. Either they’ll blow him up or they’ll start shooting from the rooftops, but it’s too much of a coincidence, that map and all.’
‘I read it the same way. But short of calling in the army, I’m not sure what I can do to guard against every type of mischief. They might have a mine laid at the railway depot already or be planning to shoot at the president as he speaks at the civic hall or a hundred other things. There’s only so much I can do. I only have four deputies, if you’ll believe it.’
‘Well, I reckon you’ve got five, if you mean what you say about wanting to sign me up.’
‘I’m right glad to hear it. Once I’ve sworn you in, I’ll trouble you to check out some of those lines on that map, the ones that look like lines of fire. It might help us to figure out if some of those people who are in on this are fixing for to start shooting at the president from rooftops or something of the sort. Fine reputation that’ll give the town! Go down in history as the place where the president was shot by assassins.’
Although Grant was speaking lightly, it was plain that he was seriously disturbed about what might be about to happen in Terra Nova. When some terrible thing in the law-breaking way occurs somewhere, the local police or sheriff usually gets the blame and is criticised for lack of vigilance. Quite apart from any objective compassion and concern for the welfare of President Johnson, it would certainly be a blow to Grant Clancy’s political ambitions in Terra Nova, should any harm befall him while he was in town.
Chapter 7
When he went to his bed that evening, Brent Clancy felt more at ease with himself and his life than he had since the beginning of the war. He and his brother were starting to get to know each other and it turned out that maybe Grant was not such an out and out stiff’un as Brent had always supposed. Lordy, they were even working alongside each other; something that a few days ago would have seemed to Brent like some kind of extravagant fantasy. Even Eliza and her children had unbent towards him. When she heard that her husband had appointed Brent as a temporary deputy, she knew that her brother-in-law must be a more trustworthy and reliable individual than she had thought. That was enough for her to give the fellow the benefit of the doubt. This softened attitude towards Brent had been picked up by her children, who consented to allow their uncle to read them a story at bedtime. All in all, the evening had been the pleasantest that Brent could recollect since the war had ended.
Brent was awoken in the middle of the night by a strange cracking sound. He listened in the darkness to the creaking and cracking, until he was sure that it was not the aftermath of some disturbing dream. Then he opened his eyes and discovered that the darkness was not as absolute as might have been expected. From outside the window he could see an eerie and flickering glow. It took but the merest fraction of a second for him to combine the wavering light with the crackling sound and for Clancy to realize that the house was on fire. He leapt from the bed and rushed over to the door, grabbing at the brass handle and finding that it was practically red hot. Nevertheless, he grasped it and opened the door, to be greeted by a roaring wall of flame.
There would have been no purpose in Clancy trying to walk through the furnace that the corridor outside his room had become. There was mischief afoot, of that he had no doubt. For this reason, he snatched up the pistol lying on the table by the bed and then pulled on his jacket. For want of night attire, he had been sleeping in his britches and so he looked decent enough. The window was open and Clancy scrambled through it.
The drop to the ground below was not a considerable one, Clancy thought that by hanging from the ledge and reducing the distance to the ground a little, he could manage it without any serious injury. What shocked him was the brightness from the next window to his, where the curtains had evidently taken fire and were now sending out sparks into the night. The whole house must be ablaze! It was a wonder that none of the neighbours had yet noticed, which even as he hung from the windowsill struck Clancy as a strange and significant circumstance. The fall into the garden winded him, but he did not, as he had feared, break or even sprain either of his ankles. As soon as he landed, he sprang to his feet, but saw at once that the case was hopeless.
It was only the fact that he had been sleeping in the spare bedroom that had saved Brent Clancy’s life. It was jutting out a little from the rest of the upper storey and so was slightly removed from the fire below. The whole lower floor of the house was a raging inferno and the upper floor too, with the sole exception of the corner of the house where his room had been, was also burning fiercely. Nobody could have survived such a holocaust. Despite this pessimistic conviction, Clancy raced around to the back door of the house, which let on to the garden. The glass in this was shattered, as were all the windows; allowing a powerful draught of air to enter the house and feed the flames. Entering through that way would simply end in him being burned to a crisp and so he went haring round the side of the house to see if the front door facing the street would be any better. It was not. The hallway, or what could be glimpsed of it through the flames, was almost entirely consumed, as was the staircase. It was as he stood there, debating in his mind how he could make a rescue attempt, that there came a colossal, splintering crash and a sudden surge of fire from the windows. The floor of the upper storey of the house had crashed down into the ground floor. Any faint hope that somebody might be left alive was now extinguished. Clancy just stood there, his eyes blinded by tears. It was only at this point that the first of the neighbours appeared on the scene.
‘Lord a mercy,’ said the middle-aged man who hurried up, evidently having thrown a coat over his nightshirt. ‘What a fearful thing. Did everybody get out safely, would you know?’
The roar of the internal collapse of the Clancy family’s home had seemingly woken others, for in ones and twos, others drifted to the roadway outside the burning house. They muttered things like, ‘Terrible, terrible!’ and ‘Did the children get out saf
ely?’ For his part, Brent could not speak. He just stood there dumbly, hoping that the children had died swiftly of smoke inhalation, rather than suffering the agony of being burned alive. One of the men living nearby was looking hard at Clancy in the glare of the flames and at length came over to him and said in a sharp, suspicious voice, ‘I don’t mind that you live hereabouts. What brings you here at such a time?’
Some of those who were watching the fire came over to see what answer Clancy would make to this challenge. It was clear enough to him that he was suspicioned of starting the fire. He said, ‘My name’s Brent Clancy. I’m the sheriff’s brother.’
Because he had no time for fooling around and was in any case struck all of a heap by the death of his brother and his family, Clancy decided to cut all this short at once. He did so by drawing attention to the star that his brother had pinned to his jacket less than twelve hours ago. He said, ‘Case none of you have noticed, I’m a deputy and if anybody’s going to be asking questions, that’ll be me. Everybody understand that?’ It seemed that they did, for there were no more questions, although Clancy received many sidelong glances. He looked around the gathering crowd and said, ‘Anybody see or hear anything? Before the fire, I mean.’
Apparently, nothing had been heard or seen and the first that anybody present had known of the matter was the crash of the inside of the sheriff’s house collapsing in on itself. Clancy said, ‘Does this town run to a fire brigade?’
‘There’s a bunch of volunteers. You want I should rouse ’em?’
‘What do you think?’ asked Clancy sarcastically, ‘You reckon that would be a smart move?’
‘I’ll run over and knock on a few doors.’
It took the better part of an hour for the fire crew to arrive, by which time the wooden-framed house was in the last stages of collapse. The fire engine was no more than a large tank of water, which had to be pumped by two men operating a mechanism that resembled a seesaw. They sprayed water at the house, which damped down the flames a little, while one of the men began poking around the garden. After a spell, the man who it seemed was in charge of the town’s fire crew came over to where Clancy was standing. He had been directed there by some of the men standing around. Word had spread that this scruffy young stranger was apparently a deputy, which made him the nearest thing to a representative of authority in the vicinity. Most of the people who had come out to watch somebody’s house burn down were returning to their homes now. They had fulfilled their civic duty by sending for the fire engine and commiserating with the only survivor of the blaze and, it now being nigh on three in the morning, wished only to snuggle down again in their beds. The fireman said, ‘Pardon me for asking, but they say you’re a lawman.’
It was an extraordinary turnabout for Brent to find himself in such a character, but he had to admit the truth of the man’s tentative enquiry. He said, ‘I reckon so. Leastways, I’m a deputy and the sheriff is dead. How can I help?’
‘Thought you might care to see what we found round the side of yon house,’ said the man, his face grim. ‘Looks to me like that fire weren’t no accident.’
‘The hell you talking about?’ asked Clancy roughly, ‘What have you found?’
‘Come along of me and I’ll show you.’
The house was all but burned out now. It had been a long, dry summer and the wooden building had flared up like a tinderbox, but with the fuel exhausted and the water sprayed on the smouldering remains by the firemen, it would be only an hour or so before the flames died down entirely. Clancy followed the man round to a side window and watched silently as he picked up two earthenware flagons. He handed one to Clancy, saying, ‘Smell that!’ There was the reek of lamp oil.
‘You reckon as somebody used oil to get a fire going?’ asked Clancy, hardly able to believe that any human being would do such a wicked thing, ‘Is that the only thing you come across?’
‘There’s this as well, though I ain’t precisely sure what to make of it.’ The man bent down and took from a flowerbed a sheet of brown paper, as large as a newspaper. He held it out for Clancy’s inspection. The paper was sticky and there were small fragments of glass stuck to it. ‘What do you make of it?’
Clancy knew very well what to make of it and he felt fury rising within him so fiercely that for a moment he thought he would choke. Then he recollected himself and said quietly, ‘You don’t know what this signifies? But then, why should you? It’s an old trick used by men breaking into property. They smear a pint or two of treacle all over a window and then press brown paper on top of it. Then, they break the window. All the noise when you break a window comes from the glass falling everywhere. The actual breaking itself just makes a muffled crack. Do that at night and you can enter a home, store, bank, what have you, nice and quiet. Just pull off the paper and it takes all the glass with it.’
‘Why, you don’t say so? You surely know your stuff, deputy. I can leave all this with you then?’
Clancy saw no advantage to letting the man know that knowledge of this particular method of burglary dated back to an abortive raid that he and another had attempted on a bank, one dark night. He limited himself to saying quietly, ‘I’ll engage to handle everything from here on in.’
Events were moving at such a breakneck speed that Clancy felt dizzy. He could not rid his mind of the image of those little ones to whom he had read a story just a few hours since. They and their mother and his own brother, all dead. What kind of men would do an atrocious thing like that, killing a woman and children in that way? Deep in his heart, he already knew the answer to that. These were members of the same band who had pursued him here. It was all tied up with President Johnson’s visit.
There was no prospect at all of his being able to sleep any more that night, even had he a bed, and so Clancy thought he’d go down to his brother’s office and see what could be done in preparation for the big day that would soon be dawning. Although he wasn’t at all bothered about some politician from Washington being murdered, those planning this crime were without doubt the same men who had so cruelly massacred his brother and his family. Clancy’s personal desire for vengeance happened to coincide with the requirements of law and order. He would be able to hunt down and kill those dogs quite legally.
Four hours later, Grant Clancy’s deputies arrived at the sheriff’s office. Their boss had impressed upon them most forcibly that this was an important day and that, as he put it, all hands were needed on deck. The first two men to reach the office found the young man who had been introduced to them the day before as Sheriff Clancy’s brother. This fellow was sitting at the boss’s desk, looking through the paperwork there as though he was in charge.
A single, small pane of glass was missing from the street door, which led the two deputies to suppose that the man sitting at the sheriff’s desk had forced an entry to the office. Before they had a chance to express their outrage at this, he apprised them of Grant’s death and asked which of the deputies was now in charge, until a new sheriff was appointed. It appeared that neither of the men knew the answer to this and nor did the other two men when they fetched up a quarter-hour later.
‘Two of you know that my brother swore me in yesterday afternoon,’ said Clancy, ‘And I’m now a legally appointed deputy. I don’t aim for to tread on anybody’s toes, but I’ll be tracking down the men who murdered my brother and his wife and little’uns. If none o’ you fellows is in charge now, then you can deal with matters as you see fit. I know what my brother planned this day and I’ll carry out his wishes as best I’m able.’ Which the four men in the office interpreted, quite correctly, to mean, ‘I’ll do as I please and don’t care a damn what the rest of you do; just don’t get crosswise to me!’
The longest-serving of the four deputies, Tom Parker, who had just turned forty, said, ‘I’ll wire to the County Seat and let ’em know what’s happened. You reckon as we should stop old Andrew Johnson coming to town?’
‘No,’ said Clancy very firmly. ‘First off, i
t’s not what my brother wanted and secondly, I want to catch those as killed him. If they’re going after the president, then that gives me a chance to catch them.’
Brent might have been younger than all of them, but there was something about him that they all recognized, a determination to achieve his purpose no matter how much blood was shed. Not one of them wanted to try conclusions with this man. Parker, who felt that if anybody should be in charge now that Grant was seemingly deceased it should probably be him, said, ‘Your brother was to meet the president at the depot when he arrives. I reckon as I should take over that duty, if nobody objects.’ There were no objections.
From what he’d seen yesterday, when clambering over the rooftops opposite the civic hall, Clancy had come to the conclusion that the sketch map that he had acquired when taking down the stage lately did indeed show lines of fire and that whatever else was going to happen this day, men with rifles would be overlooking the front of the place where President Johnson was speaking. These sharpshooters were likely to be a back-up for a mine designed to destroy the civic hall completely. That too seemed obvious from the description of the building being blown up, which had also been in the vanity case he had lifted.
