Rasmussen glared at John Henry for a long moment. “Before you get too big for your britches, mister, you’d better take a look over your shoulder.”
“So you can cut loose your wolf with that Greener?” John Henry said. “I don’t think so.”
The unmistakable metallic ratcheting of a gun being cocked came from behind him, followed by a man’s voice saying, “You better think again.”
John Henry tensed. Rasmussen must have sent a deputy around the saloon to come in the back way. That was actually a pretty smart move.
The second man’s voice was nervous, and John Henry knew there were few things in this world more dangerous than a nervous man with a cocked gun in his hand. “Sheriff, tell your deputy to take it easy and not get trigger-happy. If you’re that bound and determined, I reckon I’ll come with you.”
“Now you’re making sense,” Rasmussen growled. “Take your gun out, careful-like, and put it on the bar, then step away from it. Use your left hand.”
John Henry could shoot just about as well with his left hand as he could with his right, but the sheriff didn’t know that. Slowly, he followed Rasmussen’s orders.
Rasmussen motioned again with the shotgun, moving John Henry away from the bar, out of reach of the Colt. The lawman moved in then. He lowered the shotgun and pulled a pair of handcuffs from his pocket.
“Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”
John Henry started to do as he was told, but as Rasmussen came closer, he made a fast turn and lunged for the shotgun.
The grab missed. Rasmussen grunted, twisted, and brought the weapon up in a stroke that ended with the stock slamming into the side of John Henry’s head. The blow caused John Henry to fall to his knees.
Rasmussen didn’t stop there. He hit him again.
John Henry stretched out on the floor only a few feet from the body of the man he had killed a short time earlier. A black wave shot through with red streaks washed over his brain.
Things weren’t going exactly like he had anticipated, he thought, but it took care of the first step in his plan, anyway.
Chapter Six
John Henry stirred on the bunk, opened his eyes, lifted his head a little, and let it fall back on the thin mattress. Pain set up a crescendo inside his skull. A groan escaped from his lips as he closed his eyes again.
“Don’t bother pretending you’re not awake. I heard you and saw you move.”
John Henry cracked one eye. Sheriff Rasmussen sat on a three-legged stool outside the cell, puffing on a black briar pipe that wreathed a cloud of tobacco smoke around his head.
Rasmussen took the pipe stem out of his mouth and went on. “You’re a damned fool, you know that?”
Slowly, John Henry forced himself to sit up and swing his legs off the bunk. He ran the fingers of both hands through the thick tangle of his dark hair and sighed as he leaned forward and tried not to be sick. “So I’ve been told, Sheriff. What are you referring to, specifically?”
“I talked to everybody who was in the saloon when you killed Jimmy Deverill. Every single one of them swears up and down that Deverill drew first and that you shot him in self-defense. All you had to do was spend one lousy night in jail, and the inquest would have cleared you.”
“I don’t like being behind bars. It give me the fantods. I can’t stand it.”
Rasmussen snorted. “You’d better get used to it. You resisted arrest and assaulted a peace officer. That’s going to land you at least a six-month sentence, more than likely.”
John Henry lifted a hand, rubbed the lump on his head, and smiled ruefully. “I think you’re the only one who landed a blow, Sheriff. Seems to me that you’re the one who did the assaulting.”
“The law doesn’t see it that way.” Rasmussen stood up. “You’ll go up before Judge Doolittle tomorrow, after the inquest into Deverill’s death. One of my deputies will bring you some supper after a while.”
“I’m in no hurry. I’m not hungry.”
“Law says I got to provide a meal. Whether you eat it or not is up to you.” Rasmussen walked out of the cell block. The heavy wooden door closed with a solid thump behind him.
John Henry took a look at his surroundings. He was in a good-sized cell block with half a dozen barred enclosures on each side of a center aisle. The floors and outer walls were stone.
Each cell had a single small, barred window set high in the outside wall. Because of that, John Henry had a hunch the jail was located in the basement of the county courthouse he had seen earlier.
“Say, mister, I heard about what you did. The sheriff’s right. You are a damned fool.”
Evidently, John Henry wasn’t the only prisoner. He looked to his right. An empty cell was next to his, but in the cell beyond that, a man stood leaning against the bars with a grin on his face.
He was about thirty, a medium-sized gent with brown hair and a cocky grin on his handsome face. His suit was a little threadbare but had once been of good quality.
“I don’t recall asking your opinion,” John Henry replied in a sullen tone.
“No, but I’ll offer it to you anyway,” the man said brightly. “My name’s Nick, by the way. Nick Mallette. With an e on the end.”
John Henry didn’t say anything.
“You don’t have to tell me who you are,” the other prisoner went on after a moment. “Carl told me all about you while you were still out cold. That’s Carl Baird, one of the sheriff’s deputies. The one who helped Rasmussen bring you in, in fact. He’s a talkative sort.”
“Like you,” John Henry said.
Mallette chuckled. “Oh, he talks even more than I do, Saxon. He told me how you outdrew Jimmy Deverill and gunned him down. That’s pretty good. Deverill was fast.”
“He had to be. A man with as many enemies as he had would have been dead in a hurry if he wasn’t fast.”
“Sort of like you, eh?”
Despite the ache in his head, that comment made John Henry smile. “Yeah, sort of like me, I guess.” He paused, then asked, “Why are you locked up in here, Mallette? You don’t exactly look like a desperado.”
“Well, looks can be deceiving. Actually, though, despite my current circumstances, I’m not an outlaw. I’m a gambler. Slick fingers and the gift of gab, you know.”
“You’ve got the last part, all right. It can’t be illegal to gamble in Kiowa City, though. I saw several poker games going on in the Paradise.”
“Gambling’s not illegal. Killing people is.”
“You killed somebody?”
“Oh, not here. Don’t get me wrong. It was back in Kansas City. And the fellow didn’t give me any choice. It was supposed to be a friendly game, but he thought I had a fifth ace up my sleeve and took offense at the idea. What I really had up my sleeve was a derringer, and he was a little too slow getting his gun out.”
Mallette shook his head. “First and only time I’ve ever had to resort to violence to get myself out of a fix. And I had to go and kill a state senator’s brother.”
“So justified or not, you had to light out,” John Henry said.
“That’s right. I made it this far before a lawman recognized me from the wanted posters the Kansas City authorities sent out to all the surrounding states. A lot of people around here seem to think that Sheriff Rasmussen isn’t too bright, but the man’s got a good eye. I’ll give him credit for that.”
The fugitive gambler sighed. “I suppose I shouldn’t have stayed around here as long as I did. I should have spent the night, played a game or two and fattened my poke, picked up a few supplies, and headed for the Silver Skull.”
John Henry frowned. “What’s that, a saloon? I never heard of it.”
“Really? An hombre like you? I figured you’d know about it since according to Carl, you’re some sort of badman.”
“I haven’t spent much time in these parts,” John Henry said quickly to cover up any possible mistake on his part. “Most of my hell-raising has been down in Texas and the Nati
ons.”
“I’m new to the area myself,” Mallette said. “But a fellow told me about the place over a card table one night, a couple towns back. He said that if I ever found myself riding some lonely trails and listening to the owl hoot, I should head for a place called the Silver Skull. It’s an old ranch that’s supposed to be somewhere northwest of here, and the fellow who was telling about it said men who ride on the wrong side of the law are welcome there.”
That was just the sort of information John Henry had been looking for. Such outlaw sanctuaries were common down in Indian Territory, and it stood to reason they would exist in Kansas, too. He would have led his fellow prisoner around to the subject if he’d had to, but Mallette’s natural garrulousness had saved him the trouble. “Sounds like just the sort of place I might like to stop over. You wouldn’t happen to have directions to it, would you?”
“No, but the man who told me about it said that if I was in the right area, I’d know it. I found that rather puzzling, but he didn’t offer any other explanation.” Mallette laughed. “If you plan to search for it like some sort of El Dorado, my friend, you’re going to have to wait a while. At least six months, I believe the sheriff said.”
“I can’t wait that long,” John Henry said. “I’d go loco if I had to sit in here for that long.”
“Considering what I have waiting for me back in Kansas City, I’d gladly stay here for as long as they want to keep me,” Mallette said. “It won’t take that long for some Missouri deputy sheriffs to show up and fetch me back there, though.”
“For shooting a man when he drew on you first?” John Henry asked with a frown.
“Yes, the situation does rather resemble yours, doesn’t it? They seem to take a more lenient attitude toward self-defense out here, and like I said, the dead man was the brother of an influential politician.”
“Still, it doesn’t seem right.”
“Not to me, either, but what can a person do?”
“I don’t know about you,” John Henry said, “but I’m going to get out of here.”
Mallette straightened from his casual pose leaning against the bars between cells. “You’re talking about escaping?”
“Like I said, I can’t stay in here. I’ll go loco if I do.”
“Could you . . . if you do get away . . . is there a chance you might take me with you?”
John Henry didn’t answer right away. Having a fugitive like Mallette with him might come in handy with his plan, making his pose as an outlaw more believable, but it would mean helping the man escape from justice. John Henry had only Mallette’s word for what had happened back in Kansas City. The gambler might actually be guilty of cold-blooded murder.
There was no question about the guilt of whoever was responsible for the deaths of Charles Houston and Lucas Winslow, whether it was Simon Garrett or someone else. That was the case that had brought John Henry to Kiowa City, not some killing over a poker table back in Kansas City. “I’ll think about it. You and I don’t know each other. I’ll have to decide if I can trust you. You should be thinking about the same thing.”
“Considering the alternative, Saxon, not trusting you would probably be the death of me!”
Chapter Seven
The deputy who brought supper for the prisoners was the same one who had thrown down on John Henry from behind in the Paradise Saloon. “Step back away from the bars,” Carl Baird warned as he approached the door of John Henry’s cell with a tray. “The sheriff warned me not to get too close or take any chances with you, Saxon. He said you’re a fast gun.”
“I’m pretty harmless in here, I’d say,” John Henry told him with a smile.
“Yeah, but only as long as those bars are between us.”
Baird slid the tray through the slot in the door designed for that purpose. John Henry took it and didn’t try anything. He was actually a little hungry now that his headache had faded.
“Here you go, Nick,” Baird said when he gave Mallette his supper.
“Thanks, Carl. Any word on when those deputies from Missouri are supposed to be here?”
“Not that I know of. But you’d have to ask the sheriff about that.”
“All right. Thanks anyway.”
Baird hesitated. “I’m sorry you’re in such a terrible fix, Nick. You don’t seem like such a bad hombre.”
“Well, I appreciate that,” Mallette replied with a smile. “I’ve had a lot of good luck in my life. Maybe the bad luck just finally caught up to me.”
“Yeah, it’ll do that,” Baird said. “I’ll be back for those trays later.” He left the cell block.
John Henry sat on his bunk and asked quietly, “Is he as dumb as he sounds and acts like?”
“Good-hearted is more like it, rather than dumb. Carl doesn’t want to believe the worst of anybody, even prisoners. He’d rather believe the best.”
“That’s not a very good quality for a lawman to have.”
“You sound like you’re speaking from experience,” Mallette said with a speculative frown on his face.
“I’ve dealt with plenty of them.” John Henry left it at that for Mallette to draw his own conclusions.
The meal consisted of a chunk of roast beef between two slabs of bread, plus a cup of watery stew and another cup filled with coffee. None of it required any utensils, so there was nothing for a prisoner to squirrel away and use as a weapon later on.
The food was surprisingly good for jailhouse grub. The beef was tender, the bread freshly baked, and the stew savory. Now that the pounding in his head had eased up considerably, John Henry was hungry, so he enjoyed the meal.
As he sipped his coffee, he said through the empty cell to Mallette, “I’ve got another reason I can’t afford to be stuck here for the next six months.”
“A pretty girl waiting for you somewhere?” the fugitive gambler asked with a smile.
“That would be nice, but no. It’s more a matter of not wanting trouble to catch up to me the way it did to you.”
“Ah. You’ve got reward dodgers out on you, just like me.”
John Henry nodded. “From Texas. I’m not sure if they’ve made it all the way up here to Kansas yet, but I don’t want to take the chance. There’s a hangrope waiting for me, too, if I get sent back to Fort Worth. I just wish it was that pretty girl you mentioned, instead.”
“Both can be the death of a man if he’s not careful,” Mallette said.
“Now you’re the one talking like a man with experience.”
Mallette laughed. “Well, I haven’t experienced a hangrope directly, but I have known my share of pretty girls. I’m beginning to think that you and I are kindred spirits, Saxon.” The gambler lowered his voice, although it was unlikely that anybody else was listening. “All the more reason for us to work this escape together.
“What did you have in mind?” John Henry asked, pretending to be wary.
“Like I told you, Deputy Baird is a good-hearted soul. If I call out to him and tell him that you’re choking, he’ll rush in here to help you. All he has to do is get within reach. You can grab him through the bars, yank him against them, and either knock him out or get his gun.”
John Henry considered the plan. It sounded like it might work, and he had been figuring all along that he would try something like that. Having Mallette involved would make the ploy even more believable.
He had a backup plan, too, which involved revealing his true identity to Rasmussen and convincing the sheriff to cooperate, but he preferred to make his escape seem as real as possible. “All right. We’ll give it a try. When?”
“Carl will be back in a little while to get the trays. We’ll make our move then.”
John Henry nodded.
Twenty minutes went by, and then they heard the sound of heavy footsteps descending the staircase from the first floor. Deputy Baird appeared at the end of the hallway and ambled toward the cells.
John Henry slumped forward, choking and gagging as the deputy stumbled toward the bars.<
br />
“Carl!” Mallette cried. “Saxon’s choking on something! You’ve got to help him!”
Baird’s eyes widened. He started to rush down the corridor toward John Henry’s cell, but then he stopped short and frowned, obviously leery of a trick. “What happened to him?”
“I don’t know!” Mallette said. “He just started making that godawful sound, and then his face got all red. I think he must be dying!”
John Henry had his head down so Baird couldn’t see his face and realize Mallette was lying about it being flushed. The deputy still hesitated, so John Henry dropped to his knees, groaned and hunched over, and then pitched forward to lie twitching and writhing on the stone floor.
“I’ll go get help,” Baird said.
“The poor bastard will be dead by the time you get back, Carl!” Mallette argued.
Muttering under his breath, the deputy started toward John Henry’s cell again, pausing on the other side of the bars with his hand on his gun butt. “Saxon! Saxon, can you hear me? What’s wrong with you?”
John Henry made a horrible gasping noise, as if he were struggling to draw in one last breath and failing.
“Damn it.” Baird bent down to reach through the bars, stretching out his left hand in an effort to snag John Henry’s collar and pull him closer.
John Henry’s hands shot up without warning and grabbed the deputy’s arm. He hauled the deputy toward the bars.
Baird barely had time to yelp and try to draw his gun before his head smacked into the iron bars with a solid thump. His eyes rolled up in their sockets and he went limp.
Careful to gauge the impact so it would stun Baird without doing any permanent damage, John Henry held the deputy against the bars with his right hand. He reached through with his left, plucked Baird’s gun from the holster, and pressed the barrel into the hollow under Baird’s jaw.
The deputy blinked rapidly and tried to regain his senses. After a moment, his eyes focused again.
“Keep quiet and you live, Deputy,” John Henry told him. “Let out a yell and I won’t have one damned reason not to go ahead and pull the trigger.”
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