Pappy could not see well in the low light of his room, but could see more men in the store behind him.
“Who are you?” was all Pappy could think to say.
“To you?” the man grinned. “Death. Yes, sir. Nothing more pitiful on God’s green earth than the sight of a helpless old man in his drawers. A pitiful sight to behold indeed.”
The man’s eyes widened when Pappy raised the coach gun that had been hidden among the sheets. “Behold this.”
He fired. Both barrels caught the man in the chest, sending him flying back into the store.
Pappy dropped the empty shotgun and rolled across the bed as gunshots began ringing out from the store. Round after round struck the wall and floor around his bed. He ignored the fire burning in his calf as he dove for the door and slammed it shut. More bullets slammed into the door. He had just managed to throw the bolt before his leg gave way.
Slumped against the side of the doorway, he looked down at his leg and saw a gaping wound in his left calf. He almost cried out when he saw blood pouring from the place where his heel used to be.
The gunfire stopped as he caught the unmistakable smell of what every shop owner in the world feared most.
Smoke.
The bastards planned on burning him out if they could not kill him outright.
He eyed the Winchester that Jerry had given him to keep in his room. As bullets began to pierce the door, he knew that rifle was his only hope. He tried to get to his feet, but the pain in his leg and foot was too great. He knew if he tried to stand again, he would black out from the pain and die in the fire.
He crawled to the bed and used all of his strength to pull himself up. With one good leg under him, he hopped over to the dresser and grabbed hold of the rifle. He put all of his weight against the dresser in a bid to move it so he could block the door. But with only one good leg under him, the task was impossible.
And the smoke from outside was getting thicker and beginning to roll under the door.
The store he had built with his own two hands was burning around him.
It was at that exact moment that Brendan Mackey knew he had a choice. He could leave this world as a cowering old man, either gunned down in the corner of his bedroom and found choked to death by the smoke, or he could leave this world the way his dear old mother had told him he had come into it, kicking and screaming with everything he had.
In the end, he realized he had no choice at all.
Using the Winchester as a poor cane, Pappy hobbled to the door. He managed to keep his balance, even as a bullet pierced the door and caught him in the left shoulder.
He paused beside the door a moment to catch his breath. This was not the end he had envisioned. Not on the long, interminable boat ride from Ireland. Not at Rocky Face Ridge. Not at Adairsville. Not when he had fought the very land itself to help build what had become Dover Station.
It may not have been the end he had planned for, but it was the only one he had. Might as well make the most of it.
He slid the bolt aside and threw the door open. He screamed the name of the one thing in the world that meant everything to him. Words he had never been able to bring himself to voice before.
“I love you, Aaron!”
With that, Brendan Mackey stumbled into the smoke and gunfire, brought up his rifle, and killed the first man he saw.
CHAPTER 24
From the cover of an overturned wagon on the north end of town, Jerry Halstead shot a man who had charged at him brandishing a chair leg. Edison covered him as he quickly reloaded his Colt.
“They’re thicker than flies,” Edison said as he shot a man who was about to throw another flaming bottle of whiskey at the Campbell Arms. The top floor of the hotel was already engulfed in fire. Flames lapped out the broken windows and climbed up at the roof.
His Colt reloaded, Jerry holstered the pistol and grabbed up his Winchester. The mob in front of them had finally been pushed back close enough to Lee Street for Edison’s men to start making their way out of the hotel. The ten men dashed out the front door and joined Edison and the other deputies behind the overturned wagon.
Jerry took careful aim at the center of the mob and fired. A man cried out as he spun around and fell to the ground. The mob turned toward the direction of gunfire and, now that they had re-formed, howled as they ran toward their position.
All fifteen men were in place by then and opened up on the crowd. Their rifles cut down dozens of men in one volley. The crowd quickly ducked and broke at a dead run back toward Lee Street.
“We’ve got ’em turned, boys!” Edison cheered before turning to one of the men who had been trapped in the hotel. “You ready to get back some of your own?”
“Just say where, boss.”
“Right here and now. Take five of you and head down the next street. Hit them on Lee Street from the side, but don’t get boxed in again. Fall back to Front Street if you need to. We’ll hit them from the north end and finish them off.”
The men took off in the direction where Edison had ordered them to go.
Jerry had never seen action like this before, so he was more than happy to let Edison take the lead. “Where do you want the rest of us?”
“With me. Let’s keep pushing them back toward Lee Street,” Edison said. “We’ll keep them boxed in over there.”
Jerry followed Edison as he and his ten men broke cover and ran toward the head of Lee Street. They cut down a few stragglers who had fallen behind the main body of the mob like they were stepping on bugs.
One man brandished a knife, but Edison shot him dead before he got close enough to use it.
Another man popped out from a storefront and charged Jerry from the side. Jerry slammed him in the face with the butt of his Winchester, stopping him cold. Another swipe of the butt connected with the man’s jaw and put him down for good.
By the time he caught up with Edison and his men, they had already formed a line that stretched across Lee Street. Their open brown dusters billowed in the breeze.
Jerry looked down Lee Street and caught a glimpse of what he had always envisioned hell would look like.
The street was packed with people breaking everything there was to break and shooting at everything there was to shoot. Every storefront he could see had been shattered and its contents pulled out into the street. The boardwalk was littered with clothing and baskets and broken glass.
People who had been caught in the fray, or those who had been part of it, were slumped against buildings and in the street. No building had escaped the wrath of the mob except one.
The Ruby stood as untouched as the day it had first opened. A few Hancock men stood guard from the second-floor balcony, looking down at the scene the way one might watch a prizefight.
That was when Jerry’s deepest suspicions had been confirmed. The Hancocks had to have been behind all of this. Grant had probably planned it, just as he had planned on shooting Pappy.
The thought of raising his rifle and cutting down the men on the balcony where they stood suddenly seemed like a wonderful idea. He had no doubt The Ruby was packed with Hancock men who would be quick to finish him off, but suddenly, that did not matter.
The waste, the death, the bloodshed they had caused that day overwhelmed him, and killing as many of them as possible was the only thing that made sense to him, even if it cost him his own life.
Edison’s voice from the center of the line of gunmen snapped him out of it. “Boys, we weren’t lawmen when we got here, and we ain’t lawmen tonight. Not after this. Let’s show these animals what the Edison gang is all about.”
The men raised their rifles in unison and began firing into the crowd as they began to move down Lee Street at a slow, measured walk.
Jerry wanted to follow them. He wanted to join in the killing. He wanted to help them match blood for blood. Hate for hate.
But in that moment, he found himself rooted to the ground where he stood as if he was chained there. For over the shouts
and screams and gunfire, he could have sworn he heard a high-pitched cackle come from The Ruby. The same cackle he had heard in the graveyard all those months ago, the day they had laid Walter Underhill in his grave.
The cackle of Mad Nellie Hancock.
And as he watched Edison lead his men on their murderous walk down Lee Street, Jerry Halstead saw something else. Something that he knew could only be one thing, but his mind was too slow to understand.
Flames shooting high into the Montana night like a dark sunrise, the darkest sunrise he could imagine. Flames rising from the Dover Station General Store and Mercantile.
“Oh God. Pappy.”
He broke back toward Front Street and ran faster than he ever run before.
* * *
The heat from the burning store laid Jerry Halstead flat in the middle of the street.
About a dozen townspeople had gathered to throw buckets of water on the building, but they could not get close. Jerry wondered where the fire brigade wagon was, but he knew it would not come.
It was the same overturned wagon they had used for cover in front of The Campbell Arms.
And although there was no way for him to know for certain, he knew Pappy was still in there, somewhere among the flames.
He slowly got to his feet, leaving his rifle on the buckled mud of Front Street and began to pull off his shirt. He would wrap it around his face and run into the building. Maybe Pappy was still in there, in a closet maybe, or a cellar though he had no idea if the store even had a cellar. He did not know anything, and that was the problem. He had to know for certain.
He had just pulled his shirttails free and was about to cover his face when he felt a bony hand grip his arm. He brought his free hand back to strike, but lowered it when he saw it was Doc Ridley. His thin face was blackened from the smoke. A thin trickle of blood flowed from a deep cut in his scalp.
“Don’t, son. Don’t. It’s no use. I already tried to get in as soon as I saw the flames. It was too hot then and it’s much worse now.”
His hand fell away from Jerry’s arm and dropped to his side. He looked around him and Jerry did, too. Everywhere he looked, fire danced in the darkness. “It’s gone, son. It’s all gone. Everything we did. All that we built. All gone. Ashes to ashes. Dust unto the dust.”
Doc Ridley looked at the flames that reached ever higher into the night. Jerry realized that for all his skill, for all of his bravery, he had no choice but to stand there and watch along with him.
“He’s gone,” Doc Ridley whispered among the shouts of the dying and the killing. “Brendan Mackey is dead. He was supposed to be indestructible. He was a force of nature. He can’t be gone but—.” He raised a trembling hand to his mouth. “My God. My God.”
He was sobbing when Jerry watched him walk away from the flames.
The ammunition in the store caught fire and exploded. The sudden burst of heat and force launched Jerry backward through the air until he found himself on his backside in the middle of the thoroughfare.
He wanted to get up. He wanted to make one last run at the burning building. He wanted to believe Pappy still had a chance. Doc Ridley was right. The man was a force of nature. The man was tough.
But for all of his toughness, Pappy was still just a man. And no man could survive that. Not even Brendan Mackey.
Jeremiah Halstead drew his knees up close to his chin, hung his head, and wept.
CHAPTER 25
Billy sat up in bed when he heard someone knocking on his hotel room door. The Creole woman lying next to him—whose name he could not remember if he had ever known it at all—was still too drunk from the previous evening to stir.
Billy sat on the edge of the bed and reached for his pants as the knocking turned into pounding.
“Damn it, Sunday.” Billy recognized it as Judge Forester’s voice. “I know you’re in there. Open this door right now. This is a matter of vital importance.”
The judge? Billy buttoned his pants and pulled his braces over his shoulders as he paddled barefoot to the door. He pulled the Colt from his gun belt hanging over a chair. No sense in being careless.
Judge Forester whisked off his hat as he pushed his way into Billy’s room before the deputy had a chance to fully open it. Billy quickly shut the door behind him in case someone had forced the jurist to set him up at gunpoint. With Grant on the loose and vengeful as he was, Billy saw no harm in an abundance of caution.
“What’s the urgency, your honor?”
“I have news.” Then Forester caught sight of the sleeping Creole woman in his bed. Based on his expression, it was clear to Billy that Forester recognized her. Billy imagined he had been a customer of hers from time to time.
The judge took his eyes away from the soiled dove in Billy’s bed. “I need you to sit down, Deputy, because I’m afraid what I’ve come here to tell you is going to come as a shock.”
But Billy did not sit down. “Is it Aaron?”
Forester’s chins wagged as he shook his head. “Dover Station had a riot last night. A bad one. The worst this territory has ever seen.”
Billy thought of Jerry and of Edison and of Pappy and wondered what had happened to them. “How bad was it?”
“Bad. About fifty people killed. Nearly every businesses and home burned out from what I’ve been told. The governor is waiting for another telegram this morning once Chief Edison has had a chance to survey the damage properly.”
Forester cleared his throat. “Brendan Mackey was killed in a fire that broke out in his store.”
Billy heard the words. He understood everything the judge had just told him. But the true meaning of those words had failed to reach him.
It was the same kind of distance he had experienced with people who had tried to describe the ocean to him over the years. He could not grasp the enormity of something so large without seeing it for himself. He had no scale to appreciate something so large.
Billy Sunday had always known Pappy would die. He was a man, after all, and all men ultimately died. But Pappy had always been more than a man to him. More in every sense of the word. Just like he knew the ocean existed although he had never seen it, he knew death would one day come for Pappy. He just never thought he would see it. And now that it had happened, he did not quite know what to say.
“You said it was a fire?” was all that came to mind.
“One that was still smoldering as of an hour ago when the last telegram came through,” Forester told him. “The ammunition he sold blew up and caused the fire to jump Front Street and Lee Street. Burned down a good portion of the town, or so they think. Like I said, they’ll be giving more definite reports once the sun’s up. I’ll pass along every bit of information to you as soon as I get them.”
Dover Station burned. Pappy dead. It did not seem possible. Not all at once. Not after all the town had survived. Something else did not make sense, either.
He looked at Forester. “Why are you telling me this? Does Aaron know?”
Judge Forester once more shook his head. “Everyone who knows is too afraid to tell him. No way of knowing how a man will react when he learns his daddy’s dead. I knew they liked to fight with each other, but it was also clear to me that they were very close.” He looked down at the hat in his hands. “I figured you should be the one to tell him, Billy. It just didn’t seem right for anyone else to do it.”
Billy had pegged the judge to be a lot of things, but thoughtful had not been one of them. “I’ll get dressed and tell him right now. He needs to know this right away.”
Forester remained where he was while Billy got dressed. “I wanted to tell you about all of this first for another reason. Part of it is selfish, I’ll admit, but part of it is for Aaron’s own good.”
Billy pulled his shirt over his head and began tucking it into his pants. “Can’t say as I follow you, your honor.”
“I think you do,” the judge said. “You know Aaron Mackey better than anyone, so you know what he’s capable of doing once
he finds out his father burned to death in a riot. That man’s got hellfire in his blood, Deputy, and I need you to keep a tight grip on him. Not just for me, but for his own good, too.”
“You’ve got a point there.” Billy pulled on his boots. “I know Aaron better than any man alive. Even better than Pappy did. Maybe even better than his wife does, so you can take it as gospel when I tell you that no one can stop Aaron from doing what he sets out to do. I can try to move him in a certain direction. Katherine, too, maybe better than me now, but he’s not going to let this go, your honor. I imagine Grant was behind the trouble in Dover Station somehow, and I figure Aaron will come to the same conclusion. He’ll want Grant to answer for that, either in your court or his own.”
“That’s why I was hoping you might be able to move him a little,” Forester tried. “Move him to let the law take its course in this matter. It’s too soon to know what really happened yet. Maybe Grant is dead, too. Maybe he played a role in what happened. Either way, we’ll probably know more by the time Aaron boards the train to go bury his father.”
Billy tucked in his shirt tails. “He’ll be going as soon as possible. There won’t be moving him off that score. And don’t forget he’s the law in this territory, because he won’t be forgetting it.”
Forester bristled. “He’s not the law, only part of it!” The Creole woman stirred, and he quickly lowered his voice. “And he only has his badge because I allowed him to have it. I can unpin it as quickly as I pinned it on.”
Billy grabbed his gun belt and wrapped it around his waist. “The president gave him that star, your honor, not you. And even if you take it from him, it won’t make much of a difference. We’ll be heading to Dover Station as soon as he’s of a mind to go. Sooner rather than later, I’d imagine. And when he goes, I’m going with him, even if that means going against you.”
“I’m not a fool, Sunday,” Forester said. “I know I can’t stop him, and I don’t think any man in town would try. Not even Lynch. But I’m afraid of what he’ll do once he gets to Dover. He’s a man capable of raising hell when he has a mind to, and I’m praying to God you know how to keep him from doing that.”
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