And then Jack asked old man Griffiths if he had any idea who he’d like to be the new sheriff, and Griffiths said, ‘I figure Zeke would do just fine. He’s the only one ever does any work. Harper never does. Whenever there’s any trouble, Harper always manages to be someplace else.’
Jack took the tin star from out of his shirt pocket and tossed it to Zeke, who caught it one-handed and pinned it on his vest.
Everybody seemed to be happy about Zeke being sheriff. Except for Harper and his Uncle Wally.
‘We should string ’em up,’ shouted somebody.
Jack shook his head. ‘That wouldn’t be right. They ain’t murdered anybody, far as I know.’
Everybody went quiet for a moment, trying to remember if Harper or his uncle had murdered anybody. But it seemed they hadn’t, because nobody could think of anybody they may have murdered.
Somebody shouted, ‘Tar and feather ’em!’ The good folk of Dry Rock liked that idea.
‘I got some tar I could contribute,’ said the new mayor.
‘And we got some feather pillows,’ said one of the saloon women.
‘What do you think, Sheriff?’ Jack asked Zeke.
Zeke nodded slowly. ‘I reckon we should tar and feather ’em, maybe tie ’em to a post for a spell, and people could throw stuff at ’em if they wanted. Vegetables, manure, stuff like that. No rocks though, that wouldn’t be right. Then I could put ’em in jail till the stagecoach arrives in two days’ time. I’ll let ’em collect their belongings, put ’em on the stage. . . . How does that sound?’
‘Sounds good,’ said Jake.
Just about all the townspeople liked that too.
‘One more thing,’ said Jack. He slid his gun into his holster and turned to face Harper. ‘I told you what would happen if you called me a sonofabitch again, and you did.’ The punch was smooth and well-practised, starting at the hips so that all of Jack’s upper body weight was behind it. His fist smashed into Harper’s nose, snapping the bone and knocking Harper off his feet so he went crashing down on the dirt on to his overstuffed derrière.
Some of the townsfolk cheered at that, but former Mayor Dunning wasn’t one of them. He reached into his vest pocket. It looked like he was going to pull out his watch, but instead he pulled out a tiny derringer two-shot pistol. He pointed the gun at Jack’s head.
Jack didn’t know what Dunning was thinking. Maybe he wasn’t thinking at all. Here he was, pulling a two-shot .22 calibre gun at Jack in front of a crowd of people, many of them armed with six-guns, half of them already inclined to string him up. There wasn’t any way he was going to get away with shooting Jack. Maybe he was so twisted up with rage and hurt pride he just didn’t care about that.
But before he’d managed to squeeze the trigger a knife handle appeared in his vest, where his heart was. Dunning looked down at the knife handle in disbelief, then all the life went out of his eyes and his legs gave way. He was dead before he hit the dirt.
Zeke had been the one who’d thrown the knife.
‘Thanks,’ said Jack.
‘Don’t mention it,’ said Zeke.
The newly elected Mayor Griffiths said, ‘Why’d you use the knife? Why didn’t you just shoot him?’
‘Bullet from a six-gun might have gone right through. I didn’t want to hurt anybody standing behind.’
Griffiths grinned, said, ‘I knew I’d made the right choice of sheriff.’
Some of the townsfolk dragged Harper off to tie him to a post while Griffiths went into his store to fetch the tar, and one of the saloon women ran to fetch a feather pillow.
Jack looked around, trying to see if he could find Matt Taylor, the newspaper man, the man he’d been aiming to talk to before all the excitement had started.
CHAPTER FIVE
He found Matt Taylor in the newspaper office, scribbling in a notebook with a stubby pencil.
‘I’d have thought you’d be out there,’ said Jack.
‘I was out there,’ said Matt, a fifty-year-old with sparse grey hair and thick-lensed spectacles. ‘Now I’m writing down what I saw before I forget it.’
‘Then you’re going to print it, for everybody to read?’
‘That’s the idea, Jack. Good to see you again, by the way.’ Then a shadow passed behind his eyes and he remembered what had happened to Jack’s ma and pa. He stopped his scribbling, laid down his pencil, took off his spectacles and looked up at Jack. ‘I’m sorry about your folks. That was a terrible thing.’
‘Thanks, Matt.’
‘I heard it was Pimas. That so?’
‘No. That’s a lie that lazy fool Harper made up so he wouldn’t have to do any thinking.’
‘That’s what I figured. Pimas never caused anybody any trouble. Not in my time, anyway. Didn’t see why they should start now.’
‘By the way, I’d prefer it if you didn’t write about what happened out there.’
Matt looked like Jack had slapped him across the face. ‘Are you crazy? I’m a newspaperman. What I’m writing is the history of Dry Rock. That’s an important thing. A few years ago this town wasn’t even a town. It was all tents and wooden shacks. Now we got brick buildings. Real brick too, not mud brick. Another ten, twenty years, this place could be big as Tombstone. Why, they’re talking about bringing the railway here. There’ll be stockyards. We could have buildings four, five, six storeys or more high, like in Kansas City. . . .’
And a big statue of a lady with a torch, like the one they got now in New York, thought Jack. He didn’t like the idea of all those buildings. He’d seen cities back east, and in Europe, and he didn’t care for them much. To his mind, in cities you couldn’t be a full-grown human being. Cities made you small. And the bigger the city, the smaller you got, till you were no bigger and no more important than an ant. But out in the desert or on the prairie, a man could be himself, had room to breathe and to grow to his full extent. He guessed women felt much the same. He didn’t say any of this to Matt Taylor, though. Judging by the gleam in Matt’s eyes, he couldn’t wait for the locomotives and the stockyards and the buildings that grew all the way up around you so there was hardly any sky left.
‘That may be so,’ interrupted Jack. ‘But I still don’t want you to write about it.’
‘Why not? I told you, this is history I’m writing here. A chronicle of the West, as important as any writings by Tacitus or Pliny the Younger. Why in years to come, future generations will read about. . . .’
Jack held up his hand, cutting off Matt before he got going again. A man could get old waiting for Matt Taylor to stop talking. ‘Future generations will be able to manage just fine without hearing anything about me,’ he said. ‘What I’m worried about is some young buck reading about me, and wanting to make a name for himself by challenging me to a gunfight, simply on account of I’m famous. I’m quick on the draw, but I’m not so fast I can’t be beat. You wouldn’t want my death on your conscience, now would you?’
Jack knew he’d hit Matt where it hurt. Matt was a good man. He never would be able to stand thinking he’d been responsible for Jack getting gunned down by a young fool wanting to get himself a reputation. ‘No I would not,’ sighed Matt. Then he brightened a little and said, ‘How about if I wrote the story, but changed your name to something else?’
‘I guess that’d be OK,’ said Jack. ‘How about calling me “Mort Tolson”?’
‘Why Mort Tolson?’
‘Just a name I plucked out of the air a little while back. I was trying to scare Harper, telling him what a quick draw I am, and how I’d killed the so-called fastest gun west of Kansas. Then I had to think of a name, so I picked Mort Tolson. Don’t know why. Knew a Mort once, but never knew any Tolsons. Anyway, he was dumb enough to believe it.’
Matt picked up his pencil again and wrote the name Mort Tolson on the sheet of paper he’d been scribbling on. ‘Mort Tolson it is,’ said Matt. ‘Nobody will hear from me it was you made fools of Harper and Dunning.’
‘That ain’t the reas
on I came in here, though.’ said Jack. ‘What I’d like to know is, have you heard about any bank robberies north of here? Or train robberies? Something of that kind. I reckon the men who killed my ma and pa were travelling south, and they’re heading to Mexico. I figure they raided my folks’ place looking for provisions, and didn’t care much if they had to kill to get ’em. All of which causes me to think they were outlaws.’
‘Wait a moment,’ said Matt. ‘There was something I read in the one of the newspapers that arrived five days ago. . . .’ He searched among the various newspapers that were scattered around the office till he found the one he wanted. ‘Here we are. . . . A bank was robbed up in Utah. They killed a teller and two of the customers, and got away with around ten thousand dollars. That was two days before this newspaper was published, and it’s about a week old. . . .’
It sounded about right. ‘How many men robbed the bank, does it say?’
‘Five,’ said Matt. ‘Stuffed their saddle-bags full of banknotes and rode away.’
Jack had little doubt now. The five men who’d killed his ma and pa were likely the same five who’d robbed the bank. ‘Got any descriptions of the men?’
‘Descriptions of the horses are better. Two bays, two chestnuts, and a grey. The grey was ridden by the leader. The men wore bandannas over their faces, but the leader stood out. Witnesses say he was tall and thin, and dressed like an undertaker.’
‘An undertaker?’
‘Black tailcoat and pants, even a black beaver felt top hat. . . .’
CHAPTER SIX
The man in the black beaver felt top hat was watching the man in the battered old derby hat very carefully.
The man in the derby hat was one of his men, and since arriving in the saloon the man had been getting drunker and drunker, and more and more talkative. The man in the top hat, whose name was Amos Payne, had given his men strict orders not to cause any trouble while they were here in Tucson.
They’d stolen a lot of money over the past three years, and they’d been lucky. Only two of the seven men they’d started out with had been killed, and now there were five of them.
Payne had been hiding the bulk of the money in a location close to the Mexican border. All the gang had to do now was get to where the money was, divide it up and disappear.
But all that could be jeopardised if one of his men started bragging about how much money they’d stolen, and about how clever and daring they’d been, robbing all those banks and trains. And bragging is what men have a tendency to do when there are women around.
The man in the battered old derby hat was Jed Sims, and he was sitting at a table about ten feet from where Payne himself sat, in a corner with his back to the wall.
Sims had a bottle of whiskey in his hand, and a woman pressing herself against him, spilling out of her dress. And the way Sims was talking it sounded like any moment he was going to start yapping about that last bank they’d robbed up in Utah, and how much money they’d gotten away with.
Sims leaned in close to the woman, pulled out a couple of dollar bills and stuffed them down the front of the woman’s dress. ‘There’s more where that came from,’ he slurred, grinning at her with his crooked yellow teeth.
The woman smiled like he was the man of her dreams. ‘My, ain’t you the rich man?’
‘I sure am. Why, me and my friends got so much money stashed away, we got near enough to buy the whole of Tucson.’
The woman’s eyes got big. She fluttered her big black eyelashes. ‘Have you now? I had no idea I was talking to such a rich, powerful man. You’re a regular Cornelius Vanderbilt.’
Sims laughed. ‘That’s me, all right. Jedediah Vanderbilt Sims!’
And now the fool had told her his real name, more or less. Amos Payne unfolded his tall, lean body off his seat, crossed over to Sims’s table and placed his hand on the man’s shoulder.
Sims twisted his head around to see who it was. He looked up, saw Amos towering over him, gaunt-faced and cold-eyed, that beaver felt top hat stuck on his head as usual. Jed felt his guts writhe. ‘Hey, Am. . . .’
Amos clamped his bony hand over Sims’s mouth. ‘You’re going back to the rooming house and sleep off the whiskey.’ He removed his hand. Sims didn’t say anything. He just nodded. He didn’t know what he’d done wrong, but he knew he’d done something. All he knew right now was, he wasn’t going to argue. Nobody with any sense argued with Amos Payne. He got up and, still clutching the whiskey bottle, staggered out of the saloon.’Hey!’ the woman shouted at Amos. ‘Who the hell are you? I got to earn a living somehow, you know. How am I supposed to live if you chase my customers away?’
Amos smiled at the woman, but his eyes were colder than a tombstone on a winter’s night.
‘Whether you live or die is of no importance to me,’ he told her. ‘One more or one less painted Jezebel is of no consequence whatsoever when set against the vastness of eternity.’ He touched the brim of his top hat and headed out the door.
The woman stared after him. A part of her wanted to shout cuss words at his departing back. But another, wiser part of her told her to keep her mouth shut.
Amos Payne breathed in the warm night air. He looked around, searching for Jed Sims. Hopefully he’d gone straight back to the rooming house.
He stood just outside of the glow emanating from a street light, courtesy of the Tucson Gas Company. Soon the West wouldn’t be safe for outlaws like him. It was rapidly becoming tamed by railroads and telegraph wires, and gas and electricity, and all manner of things he couldn’t even guess at. Which is why, three years ago he’d come up with his plan: he would get a gang together, rob banks and trains and anyplace else where there’d be rich pickings, and hoard the bulk of the money between robberies.
At the end of those three years Payne would take his share, head down to Mexico, live out the rest of his life like a king.
Only Amos knew the exact location where the money was hidden. The other men didn’t like that part of the arrangement, but that had been the deal when they’d signed up, and they were all so scared of him they daren’t argue.
It would be another two, maybe three days of riding before they got to the money. They’d ridden hard down from Utah, and Amos had decided the men needed a rest in Tucson before they continued. ‘We’ll stay here one night,’ he’d told them as they’d arrived in the city. ‘We’ll all stay at the same rooming house, I’ll tell you which one. We’ll arrive singly, or in pairs. I don’t care what you do, so long as you don’t cause any trouble and you keep your mouths shut. If any of you get thrown in jail, that’s too bad. We’ll leave you stranded and split the money four ways instead of five. And if I hear any of you have talked too much, I’ll hunt you down and close your mouths for good and all. You understand?’
All of them – Mulligan, Cootes, Deakin and Sims – had nodded.
The only one he was really concerned about was Jed Sims. Sims couldn’t hold his liquor, and when he drank his mouth started flapping and didn’t stop, which is why Payne had followed him. Turned out he’d been right. If Amos hadn’t shut Sims up and sent him home, by now Sims would have been alone in a room with the woman, telling her everything.
Amos headed down a side-street, in the direction of the rooming house. He’d got about halfway down the street when a man stepped out of the shadows in front of him and said, ‘Put your hands up, where I can see ’em.’
There wasn’t anybody else around, just Amos and the man who’d stepped out of the shadows. The man had a bandanna around his face and was holding a six-gun pointed at Jed’s heart.
‘Can I help you, my brother?’
‘I ain’t your brother,’ snarled the man. ‘Give me your money. And your watch, and anything else. Now. Or I’ll kill you stone dead.’
‘I am a man of peace,’ said Amos Payne. He lifted the top hat off his head and held it in front of him in both his hands. ‘I do not carry much in the way of money. Two or three dollars, that is all. And my timepiece is worthless.
’
‘Give me what you’ve got,’ said the man. ‘And be quick about it.’
‘Very well,’ said Amos. It was very dark in that side-street, and the man hadn’t seen him slip his right hand inside the hat. And the man didn’t know that Jed carried a derringer pistol in there, in a holster sewn to the side of the crown. ‘I shall pray for your immortal soul,’ he said.
‘It’s your own soul you should pray for,’ said the man. ‘Now give me your damned. . . .’
When Amos Payne squeezed the trigger of the derringer, the bullet shot through the beaver felt, hit the man in the left eye and burrowed deep into his brain. The man’s finger jerked on the trigger of his six-gun as he fell, his own bullet hissing through the air inches from Amos’s head.
Now the man lay motionless on the ground, the gun still in his hand. Amos set the top hat back square on his head, plucked the gun from the man’s fingers and tossed it away. He knelt next to the man and looked into the fellow’s one remaining eye. Amos couldn’t tell if the man was quite dead or not. He touched the man’s neck with his fingertips, felt the faint pulse slow, then stop.
He searched the man, found seven dollars and seventy-five cents. Enough to have the hat repaired, once he could get around to doing it.
‘Verily, I am beset on all sides by thieves and liars, and rascals of every description,’ he said to himself, straightening up and continuing on his way.
The next day the gang collected their horses from the livery stable and rode south, to where Amos had hidden the bulk of the money they’d stolen over the last three years.
Amos Payne prided himself on his knowledge of human nature, and his ability to read men. And he was pretty sure that at least one of the gang was planning to take more than his share. He’d seen it happen before. Men got greedy, they thought they had a right to more than what was rightfully theirs.
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