by Abigail Roux
He stood in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb and holding Wash’s shotgun in the crook of his arm as Wash dealt with the warrants. Men like Dusty Rose had a lot of admirers and a lot of enemies, any of whom might like to catch him as he was being led from a cell in hand irons. It was Flynn’s and Wash’s job to make certain the prisoners got where they were going alive, preferably without much loss of limb. The government wanted them to still be breathing before they stretched their necks.
But Flynn was of the opinion that if anyone intended to harm Dusty Rose in this particular town, they would have done so already. It would be plenty easy to stick your gun through the bars of the jail cell’s window and blow someone away. Lynch mobs were still nearly uncontrollable in these parts too. But, regardless of what his gut told him about the lack of danger, Flynn kept one eye on the street, just in case.
“Just the two of you sent to get ’em?” the sheriff asked as he eyed Wash’s sling with rheumy blue eyes that had probably once been sharp and hard.
“You expect them to give us trouble?” Wash asked, obviously not at all concerned with the implication that he wasn’t able to handle the job with his injured arm.
The sheriff shrugged and handed Wash back the leather packet that contained their papers. “See for yourself,” he invited with a gesture toward the cells in the back partition of the rickety building.
Wash slid the warrants into the waterproof pouch inside his duster and turned to incline his head at Flynn. Flynn gave one last look at the calm street outside and then glanced to the couple of sheriff’s deputies who were to keep guard for them. They nodded in unison, and Flynn turned to follow Wash into the back. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but soon Flynn could make out two small cells, along with their occupants.
Two men were sitting in one cell. One of them was wearing what was left of a tattered Army uniform and glaring up at them balefully. The other was wearing oilskin pants and a jacket that appeared to be homemade. His greasy hair fell over his face as he sat with his head bowed and his hands hanging between his knees. He didn’t look up at them.
Both men were unkempt, long hair and overgrown beards full of dirt and grit. Flynn had been dirty before, the trail always did that, but even he had to wrinkle his nose at the state and smell of the two men.
“How long they been here?” Wash asked with obvious distaste.
“Four days,” the sheriff answered from the doorway.
Four days wasn’t long enough for them to have achieved the level of filth they had managed, and Flynn glanced at the sheriff doubtfully.
“They was dragged behind a chuck wagon from the Fort. Don’t know how long they kept ’em over yon. Ain’t our job to delouse ’em,” the sheriff explained.
Flynn looked back at the two men. “Great.”
The last prisoner sat alone in the other cell, lounging against the plank wall with one foot pulled up onto the cot. A dream book—a packet of papers used to roll cigarettes—sat on his knee. He was rolling a thin, brown cheroot between long, graceful fingers. Flynn examined him as he licked the paper and folded it over with exceptional care.
He was younger than Flynn had expected for a gunman of his expansive reputation. Flynn was certain he hadn’t yet reached thirty. He appeared to be about as tall as Flynn and Wash both were, but he was all wiry muscle. It made him appear lanky and taller than he probably was. And, for once, the picture on the dime novel cover didn’t really give its subject due justice. He had sharp features: thin lips, an aristocratic nose, and high cheekbones. His black hair had been cropped shorter than was the style, the ends just barely curling over his ears, but because he had been denied any visits to the barber during his incarceration, it had grown slightly wild. His goatee and sideburns were unkempt as well, but he still managed to appear put-together. His black eyes were dancing with amusement as he observed them.
Wash walked over to the other cell and looked in at him. The sheriff had said he’d been in the jail here in Junction City for a little over a week, waiting for transport, but he was clean and calm. His clothing was rumpled, but that was only to be expected; he appeared to be wearing the same clothing in which he had been arrested. He’d either been traveling or having a night on the town. Or he was just a dandy, like the rumors claimed.
He wore a black shirt under a tailored vest that was the color of rye whiskey. A black silk ascot was tied neatly around his neck and tucked into his vest. In Flynn’s experience, neckwear was the first thing a prisoner would loosen and toss to the floor of his cell in frustration. The fact that it was still there meant Rose was a cool customer. His boots, Flynn noticed, weren’t even dusty. He hadn’t paced while in the cell. All in all, he cut a mighty fine picture for a man stuck behind bars.
“Dusty Rose?” Wash asked him in a low voice.
The man looked up at Wash with unreadable black eyes and slipped the cigarette he had been rolling into his mouth. The cigarette jumped between his lips when he spoke.
“I don’t really go by that name,” he answered in a soft, surprisingly deep voice as he reached into his breast pocket and extracted a match.
“You’re an Englishman,” Flynn blurted. Nothing he had ever heard or read about Dusty Rose had mentioned that.
“So it would seem,” the prisoner murmured as his eyes traveled to land on Flynn and examine him critically. He reached down and struck the match on the side of his boot, carefully lighting his cigarette and then waving the match out without ever looking away.
“What’s your real name?” Wash asked, obviously not as thrown by the revelation as Flynn had been. But then, Wash never seemed thrown by anything. Unless you counted that one horse.
The prisoner looked from Flynn to Wash again and lowered his foot to the floor as he leaned forward on the hard cot. “I was arrested under the name Rose,” he answered with something like amusement.
“Is that your real name?” Wash asked impatiently.
“Does it really matter, Marshal?”
“Are we sure this is the right man, Sheriff?” Wash demanded as he pushed away from the bars and turned to the sheriff.
“That there’s the man known as Dusty Rose back East, Marshal,” the sheriff answered with a confident nod. “His real name, as far as we know it, is Gabriel. Gabriel Rose.”
“Gabriel,” Flynn echoed.
“You didn’t think his Christian name was Dusty, did ya?” the sheriff asked in amusement.
“I can’t say I’ve ever given him that much thought,” Flynn grumbled with a restless shift of his weight, lying through his teeth.
The prisoner snorted. “Do you give anything much thought, Marshal?” He inhaled from his cigarette as he watched Flynn. He was sitting up straight now, one leg crossed genteelly over the other as he rested a forearm on his knee. He held his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger daintily, and when he exhaled, the smoke formed a perfect ring as it floated away from him.
Flynn watched him with a frown and decided the best response at this point was no response at all.
“I’m Deputy Marshal William Henry Washington. You can call me Wash. And this is Deputy Marshal Eli Flynn. You can call him Sir,” Wash announced to the three men. “We’re going to be taking you to St. Louis.”
“Are you going to bathe them before we get under way?” Rose asked with an elegant wave of his fingers at his fellow prisoners. “Or shall I stock up on more tobacco and papers before we begin?”
“Hey, fuck you, Mary,” one of the other men snarled through the bars that divided them. His voice was heavy and sluggish, just like he looked.
Rose’s eyes slid to stare at the man. “I prefer my partners willing and able.”
The man in the buckskin, who had remained quiet, rolled his eyes and let his head bang against the plank behind him, as if he were used to this sort of exchange and was growing tired of it. His louder companion stood and took two steps toward Rose, but his progress was stopped by the chains that attached him to the bars of th
e cell. Rose raised his chin and, with a smirk, blew another smoke ring toward the man.
The sheriff picked up a carved wooden cane and banged it against the iron bars, shouting at the men like he would at animals in a cage.
“Well,” Wash said as he turned back to Flynn and nodded, taking his shotgun and sliding it into the crook of his arm. “Let’s get this dog and pony show on the road.”
The sheriff ordered a pair of his deputies to move the two soldiers to the wagon as a third stood guard over the crowd. No one in the town knew the two soldiers, though, and they merely looked on curiously. Wash took care of the warrants and paperwork as Flynn carefully set his shotgun against the wall and unlocked Rose’s cell. He stepped in with a pair of irons in his hand and nodded at the man.
“Stand up, please,” he requested. He had learned that being civil at the start of transports often made things easier. If the prisoner gave him trouble, then he would give him trouble right back. Until then, a please here and there didn’t hurt anything. He was probably one of only a few officers of the law who believed that.
Rose slowly stood and held out his hands, his eyes following Flynn unerringly. Flynn met them for a moment, trying to get a read on him.
Putting on irons was the most difficult task involved with arresting or escorting a prisoner. The heavy cuffs had to be unlocked with a key, placed onto a prisoner’s wrist and closed, then the key had to be inserted again to lock the two pieces of the cuff together. And that was just one hand. If the prisoner had a mind to escape, he would try it during this process.
Out on the street, the loud soldier shouted obscenities at the gathering crowd and a host of boos and hisses arose in response.
“That man certainly has a way with words,” Rose murmured with a smirk.
It was obvious even to Flynn’s ears that Gabriel Rose was an educated man. It wasn’t unusual for a shootist of any reputation to be intelligent; a man had to either have some smarts or be very lucky to survive long enough to make a name for himself. Flynn once more found himself comparing the prisoner to Doc Holliday, who was not only highly educated, but also possessed a streak of common sense; a rare quality amongst college-educated folks.
Flynn wondered if any of the rumors about Rose were true. He had the soft-spoken confidence of many of the upper-class society types Flynn had come into contact with over the years, but he lacked the pomp and bluster that so many of them had attained from overconfidence or entitlement. Flynn supposed being in jail and accused of murder would do that to anyone, though, no matter how good they were at escaping.
“You got any friends who might be looking to give us trouble?” Flynn asked him as he placed one of the iron loops over Rose’s left wrist and clapped it together. He put the key in and turned it, locking it. His eyes stayed on Rose, but the Englishman merely stared back at him, holding his hands out helpfully as Flynn secured the heavy iron handcuffs.
“I’ve got no friends, Marshal,” Rose answered. Flynn slid the second cuff over his other wrist, frowning at him. Then Rose gave him a slow, mischievous smirk. “I wouldn’t need friends if I were looking to escape.”
Flynn met Rose’s eyes as he locked the second iron in place with a small clinking sound. Rose’s smirk was still in place, but there was no joke in his eyes.
“Would you be so kind as to hand me my coat?” Rose asked him, his hands still held out in front of him obediently.
Flynn cocked his head, considering him, and then he took a careful step and picked up the thick silk frock coat that lay over the end of the cot. He kept his eyes on Rose as he patted it down, making certain nothing was hidden amidst the pockets, then he draped it over the iron between Rose’s wrists. He received a nod of thanks in return.
“My hat as well?” Rose requested just as Flynn started to back away.
Flynn glared at him. A marshal walked a fine line in these instances. You had to show some kindness and decency in order to get cooperation, but you couldn’t allow yourself to be walked all over.
“It’s a fine hat; I wouldn’t want to leave it behind,” Rose added with a look of sincerity.
Flynn narrowed his eyes, then reached carefully to the cot and took hold of the bowler hat. He inspected the inner rim, then set it on Rose’s head and stepped back to survey the result.
“Makes you look like a tenderfoot.”
“And who would want to draw down on some poor tenderfoot in the street, hmm?” Rose drawled.
Flynn raised an eyebrow, nodding in acknowledgment. It obviously hadn’t worked too well, though, if Rose had killed two men in a gunfight. He backed out of the cell and reached behind him to retrieve his shotgun, his eyes never leaving Rose. He cradled it in the crook of his arm and gestured with the barrel for Rose to come out of the cell.
Rose obeyed, smiling crookedly as he passed. Everything he did and said made it obvious that he was highly amused by the whole process, as if being considered a dangerous and capable man was something novel to him. Flynn didn’t think him a real threat, but he’d misjudged men before. He preferred to err on the side of caution and be thought a fool by his prisoners than be proved one and bleed.
By the time Flynn led Rose out onto the raised wooden walkway in front of the jail, the two soldiers were loaded and chained to the side slats of the wagon. A large duffel bag lay along with them.
“What’s this?” Flynn demanded of the sheriff’s deputies. They all stared at him.
“Those are my belongings, Marshal,” Rose answered in that soft, cultured voice that Flynn was beginning to find both annoying and unsettling.
Flynn turned to question the sheriff and found the old man standing a few steps away and looking at him blankly.
“Man ain’t been found guilty yet, Marshal,” the sheriff informed him. “If they clear him of these charges down in New Orleans, he’ll be needing his things to go on his way.”
Flynn stared at the man, nonplussed and vaguely annoyed by the presumption. “If you think he’s so damn innocent, then—”
“I think,” Rose interrupted before Flynn could go any further, “this is the good sheriff’s way of saying, ‘Y’all don’t come back now, y’hear?’” he drawled with a suddenly affected southern gentleman’s accent, then he looked up and down the main street idly and placed his cigarette back in his mouth.
“Shut up,” Flynn ordered angrily as he shoved Rose off the sidewalk toward the wagon.
Flynn walked his horse just behind the wagon as Wash handled the mule with his good hand. He watched the three prisoners, trying to place them each into a familiar peg hole.
The loud soldier, a large man named George Hudson, was little more than a big, dumb animal. He had a shock of thin white-blond hair that fell lank over his forehead, and a scraggly beard, stained brown with tobacco juice and grime. He seemed dirtier than his companion did, but Flynn got the feeling that it had less to do with his recent treatment at the hands of the Army and the law and more to do with a natural grubbiness some men seemed to have. He had narrow pig eyes and cruel, thin lips, and he hunched as if he was always preparing to lunge and attack.
The other soldier went by the sole name of Cage, though he had not introduced himself as such. He hadn’t introduced himself as anything. He hadn’t, in fact, said a single word. He was smaller than his fellow soldier, but still a larger man than either Flynn or Wash. Tall and powerfully built, sporting several days of facial growth and long brown hair, which was now tied back at his neck with a leather cord because Wash hadn’t liked not being able to see his eyes. He would perhaps have been a handsome man in different circumstances, and seemed more bothered by his filthy state than Hudson did. It was becoming more apparent that, though they were being transported together, the two soldiers were not companions in any other sense of the word.
Rose drew much of Flynn’s attention, simply because he found the man so peculiar. A true square peg. The Englishman sat leaning against the side slats of the swaying wagon with his back straight and his long le
gs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles as he rested his restrained hands in his lap. He seemed oddly at ease. His eyes had not yet left Hudson, and the big man glared back at him with a hatred Flynn didn’t really understand. They hadn’t been jailed together long enough to have grown to hate each other, he thought, but Flynn supposed some men were quicker to that difficult and dangerous emotion than others.
The wagon wheels protested as Wash pulled the mule up short and slowed to a stop. Flynn clucked his tongue at his horse and urged him to trot up to the front of the wagon.
“Want to bed down for the night?” Wash suggested as the dying light tried to stretch across the flat land. “Got the creek right here.”
Flynn turned in his saddle, peering into the distance as he tried to remember how far the next small town was. He didn’t often make the trip from Junction City to St. Louis, and he’d never made it while attempting to avoid the larger settlements. He wasn’t too proud to admit that he was out of his element.
“Next town’s another half day’s ride, Marshal,” Rose said, as if reading his mind.
Flynn turned to glare at the man. “Shut up.” The words had become his standard response to anything Rose said. The man’s cultured voice just grated him.
Rose chuckled darkly and rolled another cigarette. He had been lighting them almost nonstop the entire trip, trying to ward off the smell of the other two prisoners. He didn’t smoke them much, though, just let the smoke waft around his face, which Flynn thought a phenomenal waste of quality tobacco. His chains clanked as his hands moved, and it was an odd thing to see his long fingers deftly making the papers with his wrists bound together. His eyes danced as he ran his tongue along the paper.
Hudson sneered at him, and Cage merely shook his head and looked away with a heavy sigh. The silent man was obviously just as tired of the sniping and bickering as Flynn was.