Have Brides, Will Travel

by William W. Johnstone

  “I don’t know what to say.” Craddock spread his hands and shook his head. He looked over at Cecilia, but she turned away, and so did the other ladies who had been listening to the conversation. When he looked back at Susan Hampshire, she sniffed and turned her back on him, too. She started to move off through the crowd, which was getting impatient for the next round of the boxing match to begin.

  Craddock’s problems were his own lookout. Bo said to Scratch, “Keep an eye on the girls,” then hurried to intercept Susan Hampshire.

  She stopped short as he stepped in front of her and took off his hat.

  “Pardon me—” she began, then said, “Wait. I know you, don’t I?”

  “We met on the train from Fort Worth to El Paso,” he said. “I’m Bo Creel.”

  “Bo! Of course. I remember you now.” She shook her head in confusion. “What are you doing here?”

  “It’s a long story. How’d you get to Silverhill?”

  “By stagecoach, earlier today.”

  With everything else that had been going on, Bo hadn’t even noticed that the stage from El Paso had rolled into town. After getting off the train there, Susan must have gotten a hotel room and waited for the next stagecoach to Silverhill.

  “You came all the way out here just to follow Craddock?”

  “Wait a moment. You know Mr. Craddock?”

  “Yeah, I’m afraid our trails have crossed a few times. It’s all part of that long story I mentioned. I could tell you all about it... over a late supper tonight, maybe?”

  What the hell? How had those words come out of his mouth? He didn’t go chasing after women. At least, he hadn’t for a long time.

  “To answer your first question,” Susan said, “yes, I followed Mr. Craddock. I wanted him to have to look me in the eye and reject me in person. I was going to demand an explanation, as well, but I see now that’s not necessary. Mr. Craddock is a shallow, narrow-minded. . .”

  “Fool,” Bo suggested.

  “Yes. A fool. And that’s all the explanation his actions require.” Her chin lifted. “Now I can go back home with some self-respect still intact.”

  “But not just yet,” Bo said. “You’ve come all this way. You might as well stay a few days. Come to think of it, you’ll have to, since the stagecoach has probably left already and you’ll have to wait for it to come again before you can go back to El Paso.”

  “That’s true,” she admitted. “Were you thinking that you might be willing to keep me company while I’m waiting?”

  “That’s sort of what I had in mind,” Bo said.

  She seemed to think about it, but only for a moment, before nodding. “All right. We can begin with that late supper you mentioned.”

  The bell rang to signal the start of the next round.

  “But first,” Susan went on, “at least you can tell me what in the world is going on here!”

  CHAPTER 37

  The second semifinal bout ended with a knockout in the next round. After a half-hour break, the final match would begin.

  During that interval, Bo and Susan Hampshire had coffee in the dining room of the Territorial House, and he explained to her about the competitions Forbes Dyson had staged.

  “I’m surprised that Mr. Keegan would have gone along with such a thing,” Susan commented. “He seemed like a very honorable man.”

  “Cyrus didn’t know about it,” Bo said. “Dyson fooled him.”

  Susan cocked a finely arched eyebrow and said, “The same way I fooled Mr. Keegan and Mr. Craddock?”

  Bo shook his head. “You didn’t try to fool anybody,” he told her. “You told the truth.”

  “Well . . . there’s such a thing as a lie of omission, I suppose.” She sighed. “I could have been more forthcoming. I was angry at Mr. Craddock—”

  “And you had every right to be.”

  “But some portion of the blame for the misunderstanding lies with me,” Susan went on. “Perhaps I owe him an apology . . .”

  “I don’t think so.” Bo smiled. “But if you decide you do, you ought to wait before you deliver it. Let him stew awhile first.”

  Susan laughed and said, “Now, that I could certainly do.”

  They rejoined the others outside before the final boxing match got under way. Susan talked and laughed with the five young women. Her presence made Hugh Craddock visibly uncomfortable, but that didn’t bother anyone except him.

  Scratch said quietly to Bo, “You and that Miss Hampshire seem to be gettin’ along mighty fine.”

  “She’s a nice lady,” Bo said. “We met on the train between Fort Worth and El Paso.”

  “Yeah, I got that idea.”

  “Don’t make it out to be any more than it is, though,” Bo cautioned. “Craddock may be loco enough to think she’s too old for him, but she’s a heap younger than me.”

  “She wouldn’t be the first gal who ain’t bothered by that.” Scratch grinned. “As I recollect, you’ve had some nice young fillies chasin’ after you in the past.”

  “And none of them have caught me, have they?”

  “There’s an old sayin’ about how there’s a first time for everything,” Scratch reminded him as one eyelid drooped in a wink.

  Forbes Dyson climbed into the ring and raised his voice to announce the beginning of the final bout. He introduced the two contestants, a miner from the mountains and Silverhill’s blacksmith; and then the referee, who had been brought in from El Paso especially for this event, stepped in and got the round started.

  The two fighters circled each other warily and then began throwing punches, but they were just feeling each other out at this point. They had seen each other in action during the earlier rounds, and each probably had some plan of attack in mind, but they didn’t launch into it right away.

  Then the blacksmith feinted, the miner bit on it, and the blacksmith’s right fist slammed into the miner’s jaw, knocking him back against the ropes. The miner bounced off, ducked under an attempted follow-up by the blacksmith, and hooked a left-right combination into the blacksmith’s midsection.

  They were fighting in earnest now, slugging away at each other with more power and determination than real skill.

  That fierce exchange got the crowd even more excited, and once again, the shouts were like thunder.

  But even over that sound, Bo and everyone else heard the boom of an explosion somewhere else in town, followed instantly by crashing gunshots and terrified screams.

  * * *

  Philip Armbruster had worked his way up close behind where the mail-order brides stood. As he heard the blast, he lunged toward Luella. At the same time, Sanchez and the other men opened fire. Armbruster had instructed them—supposedly on behalf of Jaime Mendoza—to shoot over the heads of the crowd, with the goal of stampeding them, not actually hurting anyone.

  Armbruster hoped it would work out that way. He wasn’t sure just how careful Sanchez and the others would be, but he had done what he could to try to prevent bloodshed.

  It was more important that he get Luella and take her away from here, to some place where she could get to know him and fall in love with him.

  As he grabbed her from behind, she writhed and fought, of course, but with so many people lunging around wildly, he was able to separate her from her companions without too much trouble. Now to reach the horses and get out of Silverhill . . .

  * * *

  The smokehouse door swung open, and Jaime Mendoza stepped out into the night. The two guards had alerted him a moment earlier that they were about to let him “escape.” Now he was free again.

  “Give me a gun,” he said to one of the men.

  “The boss didn’t say nothin’ about that,” the guard responded. “He just told us to let you out of here when we got the signal. We just saw a light in one of the second-floor windows in the saloon, and that was it.”

  “So you can just light a shuck, greaser,” the second man said. “We’ll come up with a story about how you managed to get out.�
��

  “Or perhaps you won’t have to worry about that,” Mendoza murmured.

  “What’s that?”

  The explosion shook the ground under their feet. The two guards instinctively turned toward it. As fast as a striking snake, Mendoza’s hand closed around the butt of a gun holstered on the closest man’s hip. He yanked the gun out and in the same motion lifted it and blasted a round through the side of the man’s head.

  The second guard tried to swing his shotgun around, but with blinding speed, Mendoza shot him in the head, too, and his corpse dropped to the ground next to the body of his dead companion. Mendoza bent over, pulled the second guard’s Colt from its holster, and then, with irons in both hands, he headed toward the middle of town.

  * * *

  The thought that this was another distraction staged by Jaime Mendoza’s gang to rescue their leader and kidnap the young women flashed into Bo’s mind as soon as he heard the explosion. He turned swiftly toward them, in time to see a Mexican grab Luella and drag her into the crowd. It was like the killings at the strongman competition all over again. He drew his gun, but he couldn’t risk a shot, and in the blink of an eye, Luella and her captor were gone.

  “Get to the hotel!” he told Susan Hampshire. “You ought to be safe there! Scratch! Rance! Guard the ladies!”

  With that, he went after Luella and the man who had snatched her.

  * * *

  The guards at the freight office had been grumbling earlier in the evening about not being able to go and watch the boxing matches.

  Now they lay crumpled in death, dark pools spreading around them as blood flowed from their slashed throats. Smoke from the blast curled out the door and windows of the office.

  Jack Bouma stood in front of the building, gun in hand, as Dyson’s men carried crates full of silver ingots out of the office and loaded them in two wagons.

  Farther up the street, chaos reigned. Nobody was coming in this direction, though. The panicked crowd had fled from where the explosion had taken place. That situation probably wouldn’t last long, but Bouma and his crew needed only a few more minutes to finish cleaning out the safe.

  Then two struggling figures emerged from the melee and stumbled toward the freight office. A man and a woman, Bouma saw. From what he could make out in the edges of the glare from the multitude of torches that surrounded the boxing ring, a Mexican and one of those mail-order brides.

  Neither represented a threat to the robbery that Bouma and Dyson were trying to pull off.

  But then, running after them, came another man, and this one Bouma recognized as Bo Creel. He didn’t like Creel, had known with his gunman’s instincts that Creel was a problem as soon as he met the old pelican. Bouma’s mouth twisted in a snarl as he brought up his gun, aimed past the Mexican and the girl, and pulled the trigger.

  * * *

  “Hey!” a man yelled behind Armbruster and Luella.

  Armbruster twisted his head to look around, and that caused him to veer to his right. At that same instant, Luella twisted her body to the left and almost got loose, but Armbruster clamped his left hand on her right arm just in time to prevent her escape.

  A split second later, something slammed into his right shoulder with sledgehammer force. Pain and shock filled his entire being as he spun around, losing his hold on Luella in the process, and crumpled to the ground.

  * * *

  For an instant, Bo thought Luella was hit, but then he saw her stumble away and the Mexican sprawled in the street. He’d seen the Colt flame as it bloomed into a crimson flower in the darkness in front of the freight office. Now he spotted the wagons and the men loading crates into them and knew immediately what was going on.

  And there in the street in front of the building, the lean figure of Jack Bouma, gun in hand. Another spurt of orange from the muzzle, the wind-rip of a bullet past his ear, and then Bo was down on one knee, the Colt thrust out in front of him, bucking and roaring as he fired twice.

  Bouma took a couple of stumbling steps backward as the bullets smashed into his chest. His mouth opened and closed like that of a fish out of water. He triggered one more shot, but it was just nerves spasming as they died, and the slug went into the dirt a few feet in front of him. He fell to his knees, bent far backward, and then toppled over to lie in a motionless heap.

  Bo went into a roll as some of the other men stopped what they were doing and opened fire on him. Bullets kicked up dirt where he had been a heartbeat earlier. He came to a stop on his belly and triggered three times, spraying lead among the silver thieves. Two of the outlaws went down.

  Bo’s Colt was empty now, though, and he didn’t figure the others would be in any mood to let him reload.

  He didn’t have to, because at that moment Rance Plummer and several of the SJ cowboys charged along the street, guns blazing. The silver thieves were concentrating on Bo and didn’t see this new threat until a couple of them had already gone down, filled with bullet holes.

  For ten seconds that seemed longer, a storm of lead swept back and forth along the street as Bo sprawled underneath it, and when it ended, the outlaws were all either already dead or kicking out their lives. Some of the SJ crew were wounded, but all were still on their feet.

  Plummer helped Bo up and asked, “You all right, Creel?”

  “Yeah, thanks to you and those other hombres.” Swiftly, Bo started thumbing fresh cartridges from his shell belt into his Colt. “Where’s Scratch?”

  “In the hotel, with the ladies. They all made it safe and sound. They ought to be all right if they stay there. Hell’s poppin’ all over town. Owlhoots are raidin’ some of the businesses, but it looks like folks have stopped panickin’ and are fightin’ back.”

  “What about Forbes Dyson? Have you seen him?”

  “He’s in the hotel, too, pitchin’ a fit because they’re robbin’ his saloon and he can’t get back there to help run ’em off.”

  Bo didn’t believe for a second that Dyson’s reaction was genuine. Bouma wasn’t smart enough to have come up with this plan on his own. Dyson was neck-deep in it, too, and the pieces of the puzzle fit together well enough in Bo’s mind to form a coherent picture.

  Just as he snapped the Colt’s loading gate closed, Luella rushed up to him and flung her arms around him.

  “Mr. Creel! Thank God you came for me. That man—” Her voice choked off as she turned to look at the spot where her captor had fallen when Bouma shot him. Bo turned his gaze in that direction, too.

  The man was gone.

  Bo grimaced. He didn’t know how badly the Mexican was hit or what his connection was to Jaime Mendoza, but right now none of that mattered. He said to Plummer, “Keep Miss Tolman safe but stay away from the hotel for now.”

  “How come?”

  “Because that’s where I’m headed,” Bo said, “and there’s liable to be more shooting.”

  CHAPTER 38

  The dining room in the Territorial House didn’t have any windows, so that was where Scratch had had the ladies take cover. The building’s adobe walls were stout enough to stop anything short of a cannonball.

  Scratch had hustled Susan Hampshire into the dining room with them. He knew that was what Bo would want him to do.

  The young women were consumed with fear over what might have happened to Luella. Scratch told them, “Bo went after her, and I ain’t ever known Bo to fail when he set out to do somethin’. He’ll bring her back safe. You wait and see.”

  “But it sounds like a war out there,” Cecilia said.

  “Nobody’s going to hurt you,” Hugh Craddock assured her. He had made it into the hotel with them. “I’ll make sure of that.”

  “I’m not worried about myself,” Cecilia snapped. “I’m worried about Luella.”

  “I sent my boys to look for Creel and help him—” Craddock began.

  Forbes Dyson strode through the arched opening between the lobby and the dining room, wearing a harassed, angry look on his face.

  “It s
ounds like the shooting is starting to die down out there,” he said. “Maybe this disaster will be over soon.”

  “What happened?” Cecilia asked. “Did every bandit gang in the territory decide to raid Silverhill tonight?”

  Dyson sighed wearily and said, “That’s what it looked and sounded like. I should have known there are bad men out there who might use the big celebration as distraction for a raid, but in my enthusiasm to promote the town, the thought never crossed my mind.”

  “What was that explosion?” Craddock asked.

  “I don’t know,” Dyson replied with a shake of his head. “I know there was a silver shipment in the safe down at the freight office, and they may have gone after that, but right now I can’t be sure.” He grimaced. “I’m pretty certain they’ve cleaned out all the cash in my safe at the Silver King, though.”

  “We have guns,” Rose said. “We should have stayed out there and fought the outlaws, too.”

  Jean stared at her, aghast, and said, “Have you lost your mind, Rose? We would have all been killed!”

  “Sometimes you’ve got to stand up and fight,” Rose said stubbornly.

  “You’re right,” Beth agreed with her. “If we’re going to be frontierswomen, we have to learn how to . . . to stomp our own snakes!”

  “Miss Beth,” Scratch said, “if I was forty years younger, I reckon I’d court you myself!”

  * * *

  Muzzle flashes still split the night here and there, but for the most part, the battle appeared to be over as Bo approached the Territorial House. He knew from what Rance Plummer had told him that Scratch had gotten the ladies to safety, but he’d feel better about things when he saw that with his own eyes.

  He had just stepped up onto the porch when a man slid out of the shadows of the alley at the other end of the building and climbed onto the porch, as well.

  For a split second, they faced each other there. Jaime Mendoza had guns in both hands, and they came up spitting fire, as that impasse had lasted only a shaved heartbeat of time.