And so, with pry bars and a pick and sledgehammer, the two men had been straining and pounding frantically to increase the size of the split. Another foot, maybe even six inches, would do the trick, but the thick iron, jagged-edged and slick from the driving rain, remained stubbornly unyielding. Both men had gashes on their hands and arms, torn through leather gloves and shirt sleeves, with no discernible measure of success to show for it.
All the while, they were keenly aware that in addition to the battering of the storm, precious minutes were ticking by and the intensity of the gun battle waged by the other gang members was fiercely intensifying.
When his pry bar slipped for the sixth or seventh time, Greer was pitched off balance and fell against the scraping rubble of broken bricks. He turned the air blue with a curse and flung the ineffective tool hard against the twisted metal. “It ain’t happenin’, Reese,” he said dejectedly. “We ain’t gained one inch since we started. We can strain our muscles and scrape our knuckles until the sun comes up and we ain’t gonna be able to make that hole no bigger with the tools we got. We’re whipped.”
“We can’t give up!” Modello insisted.
“You hear that gunfire out there? Must be twenty guns firin’ on our boys by now. They can’t keep up for much longer. They’ll either run out of ammo or just plain get overrun and gunned down. It’s time to light a shuck out of here while there’s still any of us left.”
“Damn!” Modello took a savage but futile swing at the iron barrier with his sledgehammer. The hammer’s heavy head hit with a loud clang and bounced erratically back, nearly striking him in the face.
* * *
From the roof of Bullock’s Saloon, Vern Macy had been swapping lead with the shooter across the street on top of the bank. Vern had no way of knowing the identity of Johnny Three Ponies, but he knew one thing. Whoever he was, he was a slippery, lucky rascal when it came to dodging bullets and keeping up his own return fire. More than once, a slug had torn through the air so close to Vern’s face he felt the heat of its passing. On top of that, the shooter on the bank roof and his partner down in the alley were still managing to throw enough lead into the street to keep the marshal and the townsmen from closing on the bank.
Knowing it was critical to take out the roof shooter like he’d promised the marshal he could and would, Vern decided to risk a desperation move by trying one of the oldest tricks in the book. He drew certain fire by exposing himself for a fraction of a second longer than he had at any previous point. When the expected bullets came, again passing so close their whine was wincingly loud, he threw up his arms in a dramatic fashion and fell back, even crying out for added effect. Not that the opposing shooter could probably hear him, but if he saw Vern’s dramatic fall in the lightning pops that cooperated in a timely manner, it ought to be enough to convince him he’d scored a hit.
Cautiously, slowly pushing himself up off the pebbled surface of Bullock’s roof, Vern bellied to a spot several feet from where he’d fallen. Rising ever so slow and careful, he lifted his head above the ledge of the saloon’s front edifice until he could peer across to the bank. The rifleman was continuing to shoot and duck but was once again concentrating solely on the street below. He’d clearly bought Vern’s act and no longer had any concern for further threat from atop the saloon.
Vern wasted no time showing him the error of his judgment. He thrust up higher, slamming the Winchester’s stock to his shoulder, and levered off two rounds in quick succession. His first bullet hit his target in the middle of the chest, causing him to jerk upright. The second slug pounded in slightly off center, spinning him around awkwardly. He pitched into a fall that carried him outward and on down to the street where he landed, arms and legs akimbo, without so much as a twitch of life left in him.
Vern’s quick glance straight downward revealed Marshal Hatfield looking back up at him. A flash of lightning showed the marshal’s face shiny and wet from the rain, and wearing a grin. “Good job, kid,” he hollered up then the grin faded. “Now get your butt back down here. We still got more work to do!”
* * *
A moment after the sledgehammer nearly struck Reese Modello in the face, Bad Luck Chuck Ainsley came running back from where he’d been holding a position on the cross street. “Jesus, they just got Johnny Three Ponies,” he blurted. “Blew him clean off the roof! We’re in for it now. There must be a couple dozen men out there. No way in hell we can hold ’em back now, not without Johnny coverin’ from the roof.”
Modello wheeled on him. “You sure as hell ain’t helping to hold ’em by comin’ over here and babbling to us instead of bein’ out there layin’ down lead the way you’re supposed to. Get back to your position, you sniveling weasel!”
Ainsley poised uncertainly. His eyes went from Modello’s face to the rupture in the vault that clearly hadn’t been made any bigger, and then back to Modello again.
“N-No.” His voice quavered in spite of his attempt to hold it firm. “No, I won’t. It’s sure suicide to go back there and try to hold off all those men. It’s a lost cause, and I’m gettin’ the hell out of here. So will the rest of you if you have any sense.”
Modello drew his gun and thrust his arm forward, aiming straight at Ainsley. “You get your bony ass back out there, you yellow dog, or I’ll plug you right here myself.” The sound of the hammer being cocked on the steadily leveled six-gun seemed unusually loud and distinct in the midst of the raging storm.
Curiously, the crack of the rifle that came an instant later from only a short distance away was somehow not nearly as sharp. The impact of the slug striking Modello’s side just under his outstretched arm was meaty and solid.
So was the wet-sounding “Huh!” that escaped his lips as he was knocked off his feet and slammed down onto a pile of broken bricks.
“Oh my God! They’re behind us!” wailed Ainsley. Greer spun around, hesitating a fraction of a second to gawk bug-eyed at the fallen Modello, then quickly dropped the pry bar he’d picked back up and made a grab for the revolver on his hip.
“Freeze or die!” commanded the disembodied voice of Deputy Fred Ordway. “You’ve got a half dozen guns trained on you and you don’t have a prayer if you pull that gun.”
Greer hesitated once more for a fraction of a second. Whatever flashed through his mind in that eyeblink of time did not produce a wise decision. “To hell with all of you!” he hollered, and continued his grab for the gun.
Five shots rang out in rapid succession. The muzzle flashes were blurred by the driving rain, but the bullets they hurled were not deterred one bit. The slugs riddled Greer, spinning him partway around and causing him to take a couple of awkward, jerky steps before he crumpled and fell, landing across the legs of Modello.
Ainsley, in the meantime, threw his hands up wildly and shouted, “No, no! Not me!”
The sudden, frantic movement was misinterpreted in the slicing rain and sizzling flashes of lightning. Another volley of shots was loosed, riddling him, too, and knocking him flat. His body skidded a foot or so on the muddy ground and then was still.
* * *
In the alley near the front of the bank building, Salt River Jackson heard the outbreak of shooting behind him and knew that some men must have circled around on Modello and Greer. Probably Ainsley, too. And he knew that Three Ponies was already dead. Like Ainsley, he’d heard the half-breed cry out when a bullet found him, and Salt River had seen him pitch off the roof to land in the middle of Front Street, where his twisted body continued to sprawl.
Salt River knew it was over.
He thought about throwing out his gun and raising his hands, surrendering, but to hell with that. They’d probably shoot him anyway . . . or hang him. He’d sworn a long time ago that he’d never check out with a rope around his neck. If he was going to go out in a hail of lead, damn it, he might as well go throwing some in return.
Diagonally across the street, that damned town marshal had rallied some of the townsmen and they were wheelin
g out a water wagon from an old shed just past the community warning bell. Idly, the old outlaw wondered who had rung that bell just before the dynamite had gone off. It hadn’t really made much difference, but he wished he could know the answer before he died.
He could see what they were up to with the water wagon and thought it was actually kind of clever. Using the wagon’s tongue at the opposite end to steer, they set the rig in motion straight for Salt River’s alley. It was a combination battering ram and mobile shield, with three or four men running along behind it, pouring lead as they went.
From behind his barricade of wooden crates and an oversized rain barrel, Salt River tipped his face up to the rain and thunder and lightning, and laughed wildly. He leveled his gaze on the men rushing him, extended both arms, gripping a pistol in each, and bellowed as he began pulling the triggers, “Come ahead, you sonsabitches! Bring your little push toy and see what it gets you!”
Bring their little push toy the marshal and the others surely did. Picking up momentum as it rolled across the street, the high wheels of the wagon hit the edge of the narrow strip of boardwalk running in front of the alley, hopped up and over and came down on the other side, crashing through Salt River’s barricade like it was made up of so many dry twigs.
The old outlaw was pounded back by the impact, ground down amid broken wood and splintered barrel staves, repeatedly squeezing the triggers of his guns even after the hammers were falling on nothing but empty chambers. When they dug him out some time later, there wasn’t a bullet hole in him, but his spine had been wrenched and snapped. He was every bit as dead as his cronies who’d been ventilated by lead.
Chapter 35
“One of the bullets hit square on the harmonica in his pocket,” Dr. Tibbs was explaining. “It stayed there, not penetrating through. The other bullet hit the harmonica, too, but deflected off. Luckily, it veered up and outward, away from his heart. It lodged under the ball of his shoulder.”
“So what’s the verdict?” Vern Macy wanted to know. “Will he recover okay?”
“In time, yes. Fully. He lost a fair amount of blood, so he’s bound to be weak for a while. He’ll have some bruising and muscle soreness where the harmonica was punched against his chest. And, naturally, he’ll be stiff and sore from where I cut the bullet out, but he’s young and strong. It will all heal and before long he’ll be good as new.”
“How much time before he’ll wake up from that chloroform you gave him?” said Bob.
“He should start coming around in a little bit, be out of it altogether within the hour. Get some coffee, or better yet, some strong broth in him as soon as you can. He’ll be sore and hurting at first. Once I get back to my office, I’ll fix up something he can take for the pain. Somebody will have to stop over and get it. After that, just see to it he starts out a little easy and then works steadily back into his normal routine.”
The doctor, Vern, Bob, and Fred were gathered in the marshal’s office. Peter, the patient under discussion, was lying on the cot where he’d started out to get the night’s sleep that never happened and to where Tibbs had been summoned to minister to Peter’s wounds and remove the bullet from him.
Outside, daylight was settling over the town. The slow-moving thunderstorm had finally passed on, but the sky remained an overcast, sooty gray and the air had turned colder, filled with a dampness that many speculated held the threat of snow.
The shoot-out with the bank robbers had been over for almost an hour before anybody got around to returning to the jail and discovering what had happened there. Before the doctor had put him under with chloroform in order to go in after the bullet, Peter had regained consciousness long enough to describe in detail the blond woman who’d shot him.
Knowing Peter was in good hands, Bob had left and made an inquiry at the Shirley House Hotel where Libby Sanders had mentioned she was staying. That had turned up no evidence of her any longer in residence, even though she was still registered. He’d noticed another name on the register—Vernon Brock—which gave Bob cause to do some additional checking. That had turned up neither hide nor hair of the phony U.S. marshal, either. In checking Peterson’s livery stable, Bob had found three horses were missing, one of them the roan Brock had ridden into town on, pretty much making it conclusive. Brock and Libby had joined forces to break Sanders out of jail.
Bob had returned to the jail, discovering surgery was over and Peter had not yet come around.
Once Doc Tibbs had departed, Bob, Fred, and Vern fell into a kind of exhausted, half-numb silence for several minutes. It was the first chance just the three of them—and Peter, too, even though he was temporarily out of it—had the opportunity to spend more than a fleeting moment or two together since the night had literally exploded and propelled them into frenzied, nonstop activity.
At last, it had reached a leveling-off point. The bodies had been cleared from the streets and hauled away to the undertaker; the bank’s money had once again been saved; a bricklayer and blacksmith were already lined up to start fixing the damage from the dynamite; and a general cleanup and repair of broken glass and bullet-scarred building fronts was underway in the light of the new day.
Miraculously, except for a few cuts from flying glass, a handful of scrapes and bruises from slipping and falling on the sloppy wet ground, and two or three close-call bullet burns, none of the local responders to the ruckus had come away seriously hurt.
In an attempt to nail down the remaining loose ends, Fred broke what suddenly seemed like an unnerving silence in the office. “The thing I still can’t quite wrap my head around is the notion of Brock and Sanders’s wife working together on the jailbreak. I mean, according to what Arlo claimed and the information you got, Marshal, in that telegram from Cheyenne, Brock has a personal score to settle with Sanders. He may be out to cheat the hangman, but not in a way that Sanders is likely to be thankful for. Yet you said Sanders’s estranged wife was gushing and carrying on about how she still loved her man. If that’s the case, you wouldn’t think she’d be helping Brock if she knew what he had in mind.”
“Reckon that’s the key,” Bob said. “Either Libby don’t know what Brock’s got in mind . . . or all that gushing she did when she showed up to visit Sanders was an act and she has her own score to settle with him. They’d been separated for quite a spell, remember. From what I overheard when I was in the cell block with them, their parting wasn’t exactly without some rough edges.”
“So them breaking Sanders out of jail wasn’t tied in any way to the attempted bank robbery?” Vern asked.
“I don’t think so,” said Bob. “It was just by the screwiest of coincidences both got planned for the same night at roughly the same time. Brock wouldn’t have anything to do with the outlaw gang, I’m certain of that. In a strange kind of way, I figure he still sees himself as being on the right side of the law. Nor would the gang have cooperated with him knowing he had only revenge in mind for Arlo. As for Libby . . . if I’m right in the way I’m beginning to see her, she’d go along with just about anybody for her own chance to get even with Arlo.”
“So,” Fred summed up, “the Sanders gang has been wiped out and Arlo himself, even though he may not make it to the gallows where he surely was headed before, still seems bound for an execution of some sort before it’s all said and done.”
“Not if I can help it,” Bob responded in a flat, somber tone.
“How’s that?” Fred voiced the words, but he and Vern had both swiveled their heads to look questioningly at the marshal.
“You heard me,” Bob answered. “I don’t intend for Brock and Libby to get away with whatever it is they’re planning to do with Sanders. I’m going after ’em.”
“When? How?”
“Right away. As far as how . . . I’m gonna climb on a damn horse and head out to pick up their trail. How else do you think?”
Fred’s brows pulled together tight, wrinkling his forehead. “But, Bob . . . er, Marshal, I mean . . . They lit out three o
r four hours ago in the pouring rain. And now it looks like it’s gonna pucker up and snow any minute. What chance have you got of tracking them after all that?”
“A lot better one than I’ll have sitting here on my duff fretting over what they pulled,” Bob said stubbornly.
“What about your jurisdiction? They’re bound to be well out of that by now.”
“To hell with jurisdiction! Boys, they took a prisoner out of my jail—our jail. And Peter was shot, left for dead, in the process. You think I’m willing to simply report that over the telegraph wire and then sit back on my haunches and leave it to others to run ’em down? Yeah, Sanders is a no-good snake who deserves to hang . . . but only after he’d faced a judge and jury and the sentence was handed down legally. It’s not for the likes of Brock or Libby, no matter what their grudges are, to carry out.”
Vern’s brow puckered. “But if all they want is to kill Sanders, why didn’t they just blast him in his cell?”
“That’s a good question. Think about it,” said Bob, his expression turning even grimmer. “The only thing I can come up with is that they—or at least Brock—don’t want him to die quick and easy. They want him to suffer first.”
“Aw, now that ain’t right,” said Fred. “Sanders is for certain a snake, exactly like you labeled him. Hanging would be one thing. To drag it out . . . torture him, in other words . . . nobody, not even a dumb animal, deserves that.”
“I figure the same,” Bob agreed. “That’s just one more reason I mean to go after ’em. I know the weather and everything else is stacked against me. But I’ve got to try.”
Rattlesnake Wells, Wyoming Page 20