Bo swung around, glanced at the other prisoners. They drew back like they’d unexpectedly found themselves standing on the brink of a long drop. Bo walked out of the cell block and slammed the door behind him.
“Hang on,” he called through the door to Scratch as he set the Greener on the desk. “I’ll take the bar off the door. Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” Scratch replied. “Open up and I’ll tell you about it.”
Bo grunted as he lifted the bar from its brackets and set it aside. He unlocked the door and swung it open. Scratch came in, not wasting any time in doing it. He knew as well as Bo did what a good target a man made when he was standing in a lighted doorway.
Bo shut the door, turned the key in the lock, and set the bar back in place. Scratch said, “I reckon you heard the shots?”
“I did. I knew you had to be right in the middle of them, too.”
“Damn straight. There were bushwhackers waitin’ in the alley outside the window of my hotel room. They made a mess of the place, but the only thing that got me was a piece of flyin’ glass when the window broke.” Scratch touched a small smear of dried blood on his tanned, leathery cheek. “Reckon I made things hot enough for ’em that they gave up and lit a shuck.”
“Did you get a look at them?”
Scratch shook his head. “Nope. Never saw anything except muzzle flashes.”
“Bound to have been the Deverys, though.”
“Bound to,” the silver-haired Texan agreed. “Unless it was friends of that fella Murdock and those other hombres we had to shoot.”
Bo ran a thumbnail along his jawline as he frowned in thought. “Yeah, I suppose it could’ve been something like that. My money’s on the Deverys, though.”
“Yeah, mine, too. When you heard the shootin’, your first impulse was go chargin’ out there, wasn’t it?”
Bo grunted. “Well, sure. I figured you were in trouble.”
“And that old man Devery’s cunnin’ enough to know that. You done the right thing by stayin’ forted up in here, Bo.”
“Yeah,” Bo said with a hint of bitterness in his voice. “I know that, but it wouldn’t have helped much if it turned out you were dead.”
Scratch grinned. “But I ain’t. I’m hale and hearty as ever. So don’t lose no sleep over it.”
“I don’t intend to. I reckon you’re planning to stay here the rest of the night?”
Scratch pointed at the sofa with his thumb. “It’s probably a mite lumpy, but one of us can sleep there while the other stays awake and on guard. Sound like a good idea to you?”
“It does,” Bo agreed. “And we’d better get used to it, too. We may have to keep it up until everything is settled.” He looked toward the back room, where the sound of Biscuits O’Brien’s snores continued unabated. “Because I don’t think we’re going to be getting any help any time soon.”
The rest of the night passed quietly. With the impending war between the Texans and the Deverys, it seemed that the rest of the troublemakers in the settlement were content to hold their hell-raising in abeyance, at least for the time being. Bo knew that wouldn’t last, but he was grateful for any break that he and Scratch could get.
Early the next morning, while Bo was brewing a pot of coffee, Biscuits O’Brien stumbled out of the back room groaning and holding his head. Scratch pulled out the chair at the desk and let Biscuits slump into it. The sheriff rested his elbows on the desk and ran his fingers through his tangled hair.
“Damn it, somebody make the room stop spinnin’!”
“The room’s still, Sheriff, I’m afraid it’s your head,” Bo told him. “I’ll have the coffee ready in a minute, if you’d like a cup.”
Biscuits groaned again. “I don’t want any coffee. Damn it, I’m already too sober!” He yanked a drawer open and started to paw through it. “Where’s my bottle?” His voice grew more desperate. “Where’s my bottle? Where’s it gone?”
“Take it easy,” Bo said. “It’s still there.”
“Ah!” Biscuits snatched at something in the drawer and brought up the half-full bottle of whiskey. “Thank the Lord!”
Scratch reached over and took the bottle out of his hand before Biscuits could pull the cork. Biscuits let out a startled yelp and stared at Scratch as if the silver-haired Texan had just grown a second head.
“What the hell are you doin’? Gimme that back!”
Biscuits tried to lunge up out of the chair and reach for the bottle, but he moaned and fell back. His hands clutched the edge of the desk in a death grip like the world was about to throw him off if he didn’t hang on for dear life.
“I’m gonna be sick. Oh, hell, I’m gonna be sick. Help me into one of the cells. I gotta lay down.”
“You can’t go in the cells,” Bo said. “They’re occupied.”
“That’s what we wanted to tell you,” Scratch added. “That’s why you need to wait on that eye-opener. Your brain don’t need to be all muddled up right now.”
“Occupied?” Biscuits muttered. “You mean…we got prisoners locked up?”
“That’s right,” Bo said.
Biscuits pulled at his hair again. “I wondered why I woke up on that cot. The bunks in the cells are comfort…comfortabler.”
“That ain’t a word,” Scratch said.
“Shut up and gimme that damn bottle! Who’s the sheriff here?”
Scratch held the bottle out of reach. Bo said, “You’re the sheriff, Biscuits. That’s why you need to think straight. We have prisoners. Important prisoners.”
Biscuits stared at him out of bleary eyes. “Who?”
“Thad, Reuben, and Simeon Devery.”
The sheriff’s eyes got wide, although not as wide as Thad’s had been the night before when Bo pointed the shotgun at him. “Deverys!” Biscuits exploded. “You can’t lock up any of the Deverys!”
“Too late,” Scratch said with a grin. “We already went and done it.”
“But…but why?”
“They went loco—or just crazy mean—and started wrecking one of the whorehouses,” Bo explained. “Bella’s Place.”
Biscuits panted. Sweat coated his face. “That…that ain’t no reason to arrest ’em. Pa Devery would’ve made good the damages.”
“Really?” Scratch asked doubtfully.
“Well…no, prob’ly not. He prob’ly would’ve told Bella to go suck an egg.”
“That’s not all,” Bo went on. “They pistol-whipped a man who works for Bella—”
“George? Good ol’ George?” Biscuits interrupted.
“That’s right.”
“Is he hurt bad?”
“I reckon he’ll be all right, but what they did to him is assault and attempted murder. They could’ve killed him easy enough. And then Thad drew on me, which is attempted murder of a peace officer.”
“He didn’t shoot you, did he?”
“Nope.” Bo took a sip of the coffee he had just poured in a cup. “Because I shot him first.”
“Son of a bitch! You shot a Devery?”
“Yep.”
“Is he…” Biscuits swallowed and had to force himself to finish the question with a visible effort. “Is he dead?”
“No, he’s just got a busted wing. But he won’t be wrecking a whorehouse or trying to shoot a lawman, or anybody else, for that matter, any time soon.”
Biscuits closed his eyes and breathed heavily for a moment. Then he said, “I didn’t think things could get any worse, but I reckon they have. We got to let those boys go right now.”
Scratch shook his head. “Can’t do that, Sheriff. They’re under arrest. A judge’ll have to rule before we can release ’em.”
“Judge?” Biscuits shrilled. “What judge? There ain’t no judge around here but the circuit rider, and he won’t be back for weeks!”
Bo said, “There’s going to be an election. Mankiller’s going to elect a judge, along with a mayor and a town council. Things are going to be run properly around here from now on.”
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Biscuits stared at him for a few seconds, then said, “I get it now. You’re crazier’n I am! Just a couple of crazy old coots who think you’re real lawmen! There ain’t no such thing in these parts. There’s only the Deverys.”
“Not anymore,” Bo said. “The decent people in town—and there are enough of them to make a difference, whether you believe that or not—have had enough. There may not be anything we can do right now about the Deverys collecting half of what everybody makes, but at least we can stop them from running roughshod over the whole settlement and everybody else in these parts.”
“And while we’re puttin’ a stop to the Deverys’ shenanigans, we’ll clean up the rest of the hellholes around here, too,” Scratch added. “Mankiller’s gonna be a safe place to live.”
“You two really have been chewin’ locoweed, haven’t you?” Biscuits muttered.
Bo smiled. “I’ll tell you something even more loco, Biscuits…you’re going to help us.”
Biscuits started shaking his head. “Oh, no. No, you’re in this mess on your own. I don’t want any part of it!”
“It’s too late for that. You’re the sheriff. Thad and those other boys were arrested on your watch. Jackson Devery’s going to blame you for what happened, too.”
Biscuits shot up out of his chair, and this time he made it. “No!” he cried. He pawed at the badge pinned to his vest and finally succeeded in ripping it free. He threw it on the desk, where it bounced off and landed in the floor with a tinny clatter. “I won’t be the sheriff anymore! I quit! I’m done, you hear me?”
Scratch bent and picked up the badge. He rubbed it against his shirt to get the dust off it. “Don’t reckon you can do that, Biscuits,” he said. “Leastways, not yet.”
Biscuits stared at him in disbelief. “You’re sayin’ I can’t quit my job?”
“There’s no one in authority to accept your resignation,” Bo pointed out. “If you really want to quit, you’ll have to wait until after the election. Then you can turn in your resignation to the town council.”
It was a flimsy excuse and Bo knew it, but he was counting on Biscuits’s head hurting too much for the sheriff to think it through.
That was what happened. Biscuits slumped back into the chair and pulled a little more hair out. By the time the Texans left Mankiller—if they lived to do so—he was liable to be bald as an egg, Bo thought.
“What am I gonna do?” Biscuits asked miserably. “What am I gonna do?”
“Is there any chance you can stay sober? If there is, you can stay here and guard the prisoners while Scratch and I deal with bringing law and order to the rest of the town. You’ll have to keep a clear head, though. The Deverys are liable to try some tricks.”
“Stay…sober?” Biscuits repeated, sounding so uncomprehending that he might as well have been speaking a foreign language.
“That’s right. If you can do that, Biscuits, you’ve got a chance to be a real lawman, whether you think that’s possible or not.”
“I dunno.” Biscuits licked his lips. “I could sure use a drink to help me think.”
Scratch shook his head. “If you’re gonna help us out, Biscuits, you’ve taken your last drink for a while.”
“No! Oh, God…no, I can’t, I just can’t…”
Someone knocked on the front door and interrupted Biscuits’s moaning.
Bo and Scratch turned quickly in that direction, their hands going to their guns. “Who’s there?” Bo called.
“It’s Lucinda Bonner,” a pleasant female voice answered. “Harlan Green told me that you’re living in there now, so I took the liberty of bringing your breakfast over to you. I have flapjacks and bacon and scrambled eggs—”
Biscuits made a gagging, choking sound and bolted out of the chair. He flung himself at the door to the back room and disappeared in there. Hideous sounds filled the office until Bo closed the door, muffling them somewhat. Scratch shook his head and said, “Hope he found a bucket in time.”
“Goodness gracious,” Lucinda said when Bo unlocked the door and opened it for her, so she could carry a large tray filled with covered plates into the office. “What was that racket?”
“Nothing for you to worry about, ma’am,” Bo assured her. “Sheriff O’Brien’s just, uh, not very hungry right now.”
“But that’s all right,” Scratch added with a grin. “More for us that way!”
CHAPTER 20
Biscuits stubbornly refused to eat anything, but he did finally come out of the back room after Lucinda was gone and accept a cup of coffee. As he sat down at the desk to sip the strong black brew, he said with a bleak frown, “You know Devery’s gonna kill all of us, don’t you?”
“He might try,” Scratch said. “That don’t mean he’ll succeed.”
Biscuits shook his head. “I still don’t see why you’re doin’ this. What do you hope to gain from it?”
“They stole our horses and all our gear,” Bo said. “We have to do something about that.”
“So you’re gonna try to take their town away from them?”
Scratch smiled. “Somethin’ like that.”
“Plus it’s just the right thing to do,” Bo added. “Folks around here deserve better than to have the Deverys taking advantage of them. There’s a good chance they’ve gotten away with murder more than once, and that just can’t stand.”
“People get away with murder all the time,” Biscuits said. “You gonna clean up the whole world, Creel?”
“Nope,” Bo said. “Just this little corner of it.”
Biscuits sighed. “You’ve put me in a hell of a bind. Devery’s not gonna trust me now.”
“He never trusted you. If he did, he wouldn’t have tried to keep you drunk all the time by slipping you extra money for whiskey.”
At the mention of drinking, Biscuits’s tongue came out of his mouth and licked nervously over his lips. “Just a taste?” he asked. “Just one damned taste?”
“Not yet,” Bo said. “You need to be away from the stuff for a while before you try to handle it again. You may not be able to, even then.”
“You’re meaner’n a damn Comanche.”
“You’ll thank me later,” Bo said.
“Don’t count on it.”
It was time for Bo and Scratch to make the morning rounds, but before they left, they searched the sheriff’s office for more bottles of whiskey that Biscuits might have stashed here and there. They found several, and Scratch gathered them up in his arms as the Texans prepared to leave.
“What’re you gonna do with that stuff?” Biscuits asked. A pathetic whine came into his voice. “I paid for it with my own money. I need it. You got no right to steal it like this.”
“We’re not stealing it,” Bo said. “We’re just keeping it for you, for the time being. Maybe you’ll get it back sometime.”
“I’m your boss, you know,” Biscuits blustered. “I give the orders around here, not you.”
“If you have any orders concerning the law business, you go right ahead and tell us what they are. But we’re taking this booze away because we’re your friends, not your deputies.”
“I don’t remember askin’ you to be my friends, damn it!”
“Well,” Bo said, “sometimes friendship is forced upon us.”
Biscuits slumped back in the chair and shook his head miserably. “Go on. Get out. And if you really want to do me a favor, get on your horses and ride out of Mankiller and don’t ever come back!”
Scratch looked at Bo. “That reminds me. We’d best go talk to Edgar and make sure he got our horses back from his brother.”
“Good idea,” Bo said with a nod. To Biscuits, he added, “If the prisoners get restless, you can tell them that we’ll bring back some breakfast for them in a little while.”
Biscuits didn’t look up. He just waved a trembling hand to acknowledge that he heard.
Once they were in the street and out of earshot, Scratch said, “You know, it’s fixin’ to get a lot worse
for that gent. He’ll be sicker the longer he’s without his tonic.”
Bo nodded. “I know. I wish one of those cells was empty. It would be better if we could just lock him up until he’s over the worst of it. Unless we stay there and watch him every minute of the time, he can slip out and find something to drink. We may not be able to help him at all.”
“But we can try, is that it?”
“I reckon it’s worth it to try,” Bo said. He nodded toward the whiskey bottles in Scratch’s arms. “What are you going to do with those?”
“Thought we might take ’em over to the hotel and see if Harlan’d lock ’em up in his safe for us,” Scratch said with a smile. “They’re valuables. At least, ol’ Biscuits thinks they are.”
“That’s a good idea. Come on.”
They went along the street to the Rocky Mountain Hotel, where Harlan Green was surprised but willing to lock up the whiskey for them.
“First time I’ve ever had bottles in my safe, I think,” he commented. “I’m not supposed to give these back to Sheriff O’Brien, is that it?”
“He shouldn’t even know that you have them, but if he comes asking about them, just deny knowing anything,” Bo said. “We’ll take the responsibility.”
Green nodded. “Fine.” He paused. “You know, after the attempt on Deputy Morton’s life, last night was about as quiet as any we’ve had around here for a while. I think maybe the two of you have gotten the town so shaken up already that folks are more likely to behave themselves.”
“Maybe,” Bo said, “but I wouldn’t count on that lasting.”
From the hotel they walked up to Edgar’s Livery Stable. Edgar Devery was standing in front of the barn as they approached. He cut his eyes back and forth as if wondering if he ought to go and hide from them, but in the end he stayed where he was and gave Bo and Scratch a curt nod as they came up to him.
“Your horses are back in their stalls,” he told them. “My brother didn’t like it at all, but he went along with it.”
“Good,” Bo said. “We won’t have to arrest you for horse theft, then.”
“That trumped-up charge never would’a stuck,” Edgar said.
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