Vigilante Dawn

by Ralph Compton

  “No!” Clay said in a voice that hit everyone in the vicinity of that wagon like a sharp jab. “Not yet. Whatever you do, hero, this little girl dies first. Understand?”

  Those words ignited a spark within Jarrett that burned through almost everything human within him to leave nothing but animal instinct and feral rage. Perhaps spotting that inside him, Clay shifted his aim with a simple flex of his wrist. The gun in his hand barked once and spat a single round through the meat of Jarrett’s thigh like the talon of a passing hawk. He felt a burn through that leg, but the grazing scratch wasn’t nearly enough to put him down.

  “Please, Jarrett!” Norris begged. “Do what they say!”

  Just then, Jarrett saw something in the icy depths of Clay’s eyes.

  Reluctance.

  Clay might have been a killer, but he didn’t want to kill Grace. Jarrett was certain enough of that to want to keep fighting. His desire grew even stronger when he heard a voice carried to him on the wind from the direction of the ranch.

  “Mr. Pekoe?” Matt hollered. “We heard the shot. You all right?”

  Matt and Pete were riding back along the perimeter on the other side of the fence. They’d responded to the gunshot as they would on any number of occasions when such a signal had been used to call for a hand.

  “Get the others!” Jarrett shouted desperately. “These men are trying to kill us!”

  He couldn’t have hoped for a better sight than when Pete urged his horse to take off at a run toward the road leading to the center of the ranch and Matt reached for the rifle kept in the boot of his saddle. Pete only made it another couple of yards before a rifle shot cracked through the air, hissed past the wagon, and knocked him from his saddle.

  Jarrett couldn’t tell if Matt had seen the other man fall or not. In the end, it didn’t matter. The next bullet from the rifleman in the distance snapped Matt’s head straight back and sent him to the dirt.

  “No!” Jarrett shouted. When he drew his next couple of breaths, he expected to feel a rifle bullet punch through him as well. Some part of him felt it was only right that he tasted the same lead that had claimed both of his men.

  “You’ve pushed this far enough,” Clay said. “You wanna push it further or should we all conduct ourselves in a more civilized manner?”

  It wasn’t in Jarrett’s nature to give up. It also wasn’t in his nature to put good people at risk. Realizing he simply didn’t have any other options, he let the Colt slip from his hand. “Whatever money I got,” he said to the gunmen, “it’s yours.”

  Clay nodded solemnly. “Money’s just the start, but it’s a good one. Now let’s get a look at this ranch of yours.”

  Chapter 4

  Once Jarrett handed himself over to the gunmen, events passed by in a rush. His Colt was taken from him. He was roughly searched for any other weapons by Dave, who found a hunting knife hanging from his belt and claimed it before doubling Jarrett over with a solid punch to his gut.

  “That’s for being such a pain in the ass,” Dave snarled.

  As much as he wanted to fight back, Jarrett had already been shown the futility of that train of thought. Besides, he didn’t have enough wind left in his sails to do much by way of damage, so he remained bent at the waist until he was pulled upright and shoved toward his horse.

  “You get any ideas,” Dave said while taking the Winchester from Jarrett’s saddle, “and the lead will fly.”

  “So you keep saying,” Jarrett groaned.

  “You think I’m foolin’ about?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” Dave said. “Now get on that horse and introduce me to the rest of your men.”

  “Why? So you can slaughter them like you did Matt and Pete?”

  “I didn’t slaughter nobody. If’n you’d like me to start, then I’d be happy to oblige.”

  “Tell me why you want to see the rest of my men.”

  The wagon was only a few yards away, and from there, Clay said, “Just put the man’s mind at ease, Dave. It ain’t like he’s in a spot where he can do anything about it. It’ll make the rest go that much quicker.”

  Unlike the younger gunman, Clay didn’t have to threaten Norris or his family with every other breath. The deadly promise lurked below each word just as surely as sharks circled beneath calm waters of the sea.

  Jarrett hung his head and climbed into Twitch’s saddle. The gelding shifted as he always did, giving his rider a little dose of familiarity to let him know that not everything in his world had come undone.

  “You’re gonna show me the rest of your men to keep them alive,” Dave said. “We can either round them up all at once or hunt them down one at a time. The more you make us work, the worse things’ll be.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good. Now get moving.”

  They rode across Jarrett’s land, touring the Lazy J while he made introductions as if Dave were a new hand that had been hired on through the summer. When each of the three remaining workers showed Dave the bunkhouse, they were knocked on the back of the head with the butt of a pistol and tied up. In what was surely a show of dominance as well as some kind of perverse thrill, Dave even made Jarrett help in dragging his own men to the back of the bunkhouse where they wouldn’t block the doorway. The process took just over an hour and when it was through, Jarrett wound up in front of the main house watching the wagon come rolling up to within a few yards of the porch. On any other time, such a sight would have brought a smile to his face. This day, however, it filled him with dread.

  “I was hoping you might have gotten away,” Jarrett said as he helped Jen down from the seat atop the wagon.

  She gripped his hand with desperate strength and still nearly toppled on her way down. “There’s nowhere to run,” she said in a shaky voice. “Lord only knows how many more of them are out there.”

  Jarrett could still only see the two gunmen. Clay had a hold of Grace’s wrist, but at least he was no longer pointing a gun to her head.

  Norris was at the back of the wagon doing his best to coax his son into the open. “Come on, Scott. You can’t stay in there forever.”

  “I need to protect Autumn,” the boy replied from within the wagon.

  “We all want to protect her. Now bring her out here to me, son. Come on now.”

  Dave was tying the horses to a post near the house, and when he drew a breath to yell something toward the wagon, he was silenced by a sharp expression from Clay.

  Without having a stranger bark at him, the boy poked his nose into the fresh air. His face was wet with tears and he held on to a bundle of blankets as if it were the most precious package in known creation. He was a small boy with his father’s eyes and his mother’s thick dark hair. If that hair remained as curly as it was now, he would have no trouble whatsoever in attracting female attention when he got older. Jarrett got hardly a glimpse of the pudgy little face wrapped up in all those blankets and couldn’t have been more grateful for it. The baby was quiet and blissfully unaware of what was happening around her. Where Jen had seemed on the verge of fainting away just a few moments ago, she regained all of her vigor when she saw her youngest two children.

  “Come here, Scott,” she said while hurrying around to the back end of the wagon. “Let me get a look at you.”

  The boy approached her as if they were the only souls left in the world. Jen lowered herself to the young boy’s level so she could wrap her arms around him and gently squeeze Autumn between the two of them.

  “Aw.” Clay sighed. “Ain’t that just sweet?”

  Jarrett couldn’t decide which would bother him more: if the outlaw’s words were a sarcastic mockery or if they held genuine sentiment.

  When he approached Clay, Jarrett didn’t give a damn how anxious Dave seemed to get. Ignoring the pistol in the younger outlaw’s hands, he addressed the skinnier of the two when
he asked, “What are you going to do with them?”

  “Who?” Clay asked. “Those two little angels?”

  “Yes,” Jarrett said through clenched teeth. “They’ve been through enough without you tossing them in with the others.”

  “I suppose you’d prefer they not be tied up as well?”

  Hoping to refrain from saying things like that where they could be heard by his niece and nephew, Jarrett quickly replied, “That’s right. It’s not like either them or their mother can pose much of a threat.”

  “I suppose not. Still, however they’re treated, it depends on you.”

  “Perfect. If it’s up to me, then let them all go.”

  Clay let out a laugh that shook almost every inch of his bony frame. When he caught his breath, he said, “Tell you what. If you got any better suggestions, I’d like to hear ’em.”

  “There’s plenty of room in the house,” Jarrett said.

  Looking at the structure situated more or less at the center of the Lazy J, Clay scowled as if he’d just bitten into a rotten piece of fruit. “That really ain’t much of a house. I thought there’d be something a lot bigger, to be honest.”

  “I have three bedrooms of good size. Two have doors with locks and windows that are too small to be of much concern.”

  “Sounds like a fine sales pitch,” Clay scoffed. “So long as it’s accurate.”

  “I know every inch of that house,” Jarrett assured him. “I did build it, after all.”

  “All right, then. I’ll bring the girl upstairs myself. If the rooms are like you say, then I can lock her in so she’s nice and comfortable. If not, then I’ll tie her up so she’ll never remember what comfortable is.”

  When Clay started to reach for Grace again, both Jarrett and Norris moved to intercept him. The outlaw pulled the gun from his holster and had it ready to fire in a flicker of motion. The look in his eye left no room for doubt that he would kill the next man who took a step forward.

  Despite the gun being pointed at him or the intent of the man holding it, Norris looked Clay dead in the eye and said, “If you harm one hair on that girl’s head, I swear I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” Dave snapped.

  Before his partner could make the threat he’d surely been cooking up in his head, Clay motioned for him to stand down and returned Norris’s intense glare. Quietly, calmly, Clay said, “Go on, Norris. Tell me what you’ll do.”

  Hearing the gunman address his hostage in such a coolly familiar way was jarring. Since it was plain to see that no words would have much effect on him, Norris choked back whatever ones he’d been planning to say.

  “Yeah,” Clay growled through a sly grin. “That’s what I thought. Dave, watch these good folks while I take the young lady up to her room.”

  It was physically painful for Jarrett to watch Clay take hold of Grace’s arm and escort her into the house. After the two of them disappeared inside, an eerie silence fell upon the entire ranch.

  Jen held her baby close with one arm and had the other wrapped around her son’s shoulders. Her eyes were trained upon her husband, pleading with him to perform some sort of miracle that would free them all.

  Ashamed of his limitations as a mortal man, Norris couldn’t bear to look at her.

  Dave licked his lips while holding a rifle in his hands.

  When Clay emerged from the house alone after an acceptably short amount of time, Jarrett was finally able to let go of the breath he’d been holding.

  Clay stood on the porch, looking out at the people in front of him while clearly savoring the power he held over each and every one of them. After a prolonged silence, he clapped his hands together and rubbed them as if he were trying to build enough heat to create a fire. “Well, now,” he announced. “Seems you were right about them rooms. Sturdy doors. Windows might be a bit too big for my liking, but that ain’t much of a worry. If any of you try to creep out of any of them, one of my men posted outside will pick you off like pigeons.”

  “So does this mean we can stay in the house instead of in the barn like a bunch of animals?” Jarrett asked.

  Dave chuckled. “I don’t know. I kinda like the barn idea.”

  “You want in the house so bad?” Clay said. “Then you can stay in the house. Or close to it anyway. Don’t get too comfortable, though. There’s plenty of work to be done.”

  “Might help if you told me what work you’re talking about.”

  “First of all . . . you know any good knots?”

  Neither of the brothers responded to that, but the two gunmen got quite a laugh out of it. Everything that had happened that day, combined with whatever had happened before he arrived at the ranch, suddenly became too much for Norris to bear. It didn’t matter that he was unarmed. Jarrett recognized the look in his younger brother’s eyes as the one he’d gotten when he finally had enough of being pinned down and teased by his siblings.

  “No,” Jarrett warned when he saw Norris’s muscles tense. “Don’t.”

  Norris took one and a half steps toward Clay before a rifle shot cracked through the air to drive a bullet into the ground inches away from Norris’s foot.

  Even though Dave was the one to draw his .45, Clay had the look of someone who was closer to putting Norris down.

  “By all means,” Clay hissed. “Proceed.”

  Norris couldn’t allow himself to step back, but he also knew better than to take another step forward.

  Putting himself directly in front of Norris and turning him around with a rough shove, Clay said, “Let’s get these folks inside before they hurt themselves.”

  Chapter 5

  “You know what’s funny?” Jarrett asked.

  His words broke a silence that had enveloped him and his brother soon after they were tied up and tossed into the room where they now were.

  That had been well over an hour ago. Possibly longer.

  Jarrett’s voice didn’t travel very far. Thanks to the dirt walls and timber support beams around them, the thick wooden planks above their heads, and the dirt floor beneath their feet, any sound seemed more like a muffled presence lingering around their heads or lurking just behind them. Of course, such a peculiar effect could have been caused by the fact that there wasn’t so much as a single flickering candle to provide them one bit of light.

  “I know you’re still here,” Jarrett said before too long. He then sighed. “Damn kid brother. It’s just like him to find a way out and crawl away like a kitten without taking a moment to consider anyone else.”

  “Kitten?” Norris grunted from somewhere nearby. “You haven’t called me that for a while. That was childish of you. Even when you were a child.”

  Jarrett smiled. Even though there was no way for it to be seen, the expression could be heard in his voice when he said, “You used to make those little mewling sounds. Remember?”

  “I was seven.”

  “Meow, meow. You’d do it when someone asked you a question and you didn’t want to answer. Or if you wanted to get on Mother’s good side without having to lift a finger.”

  “I had to do something,” Norris said. “Just to be noticed. Between you and Catherine getting praised for every little accomplishment you made, I didn’t have many other options.”

  “You did plenty,” Jarrett said. “Apart from the mewling.”

  “Sure I did. You and Catherine just did it all first.”

  “You sounded ridiculous. Meow, meow.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, will you let it go?” Norris said. “Aren’t there more important matters at hand right now?”

  “Sure. We just can’t do much about them at the moment.”

  Silence wrapped around them again. The angered breaths coming from Norris’s section of the dark room quickly abated. After that, he said, “You used to torture me with that.”

  “Wit
h what?”

  “Calling me kitten. It’s something you’d call a little girl.”

  Jarrett laughed quietly. “I know,” he mused. “Got under your skin something fierce. Why do you think I kept doing it?”

  Although it might have been the rustle of movement against the boards over their heads, Jarrett was fairly certain he heard his brother trying to suppress a laugh. “When I’d finally escape from you or Catherine, I’d find a quiet spot and think of ways to get you both back.”

  “Under the porch,” Jarrett said. “Or behind the hay bales in the barn. That’s where you’d scamper off to, right?”

  More silence for a short while.

  “Yeah,” Norris finally replied. “How’d you know?”

  “I followed you there when you got away from me. I meant to keep at you, but it seemed better to let you simmer down. Also, if you had a place of your own you wouldn’t pester us for a while.”

  “I appreciate that,” Norris said as if he’d just been given that particular gift. “I did a lot of good thinking in those spots. Nice memories.”

  “Well, don’t get too sentimental. It was Catherine’s idea. I wanted to lurk outside one of those little hiding spots of yours and scare you out of your shoes when you finally poked your head out.”

  “Sounds about right. You never passed up a chance to give someone a fright.” Norris drew a deep breath and let it out. “I don’t recall you mentioning this house had a cellar.”

  “I didn’t want to be locked up in here,” Jarrett said.

  “Good plan.”

  Since his brother no longer sounded like a watch that had been wound too much, Jarrett asked, “So, what happened?”

  “What happened where?”

  “What do you think? What happened during the ride here? I’m guessing those gunmen who decided to pull their weapons and turn this visit into a nightmare aren’t friends of yours.”

  Norris sighed as he was dragged out of his pleasant memories and back into the much darker present. “You’d be right about that. We set out from the bluffs just over a week ago. Made it out of Iowa and into Omaha on the first day. I had some trading to do.”