"What the hell is it, Turner?" McGill asked.
"I just...just got in from town, boss," the rider replied, gasping for breath. "The hangin's been put off!"
"What!" McGill roared, anger twisting his face.
Flint felt an incredible surge of relief. Somehow, a miracle had taken place.
"The gallows didn't work," the cowboy called Turner panted. "Don't know what happened, but the sheriff was mad as hell at that hangman feller. They're goin' to try again at twelve o'clock. I flogged it on out here to let you know."
Flint's eyes darted around the porch. Everyone was staring at Turner, including McGill. This might be the only chance West and he would get. It was a chance Flint was going to take.
"Now!" he yelled to West. He lashed out behind him, knocking the gun that had been trained at his back from the cowboy's hands to the porch floor. McGill started to turn, but he was too late. Flint threw himself at the rancher, slamming into him and forcing him back a couple of steps. The marshal grasped the shotgun McGill was carrying and wrenched it out of his grip.
Anabel cried out in surprise and fear, but her shriek was lost in the roar of the shotgun as Flint whirled around and blasted both barrels at the Trident hands on the veranda. At this close range they never had a chance. The double load of buckshot blew them backward like bloody rag dolls.
At the same moment that Flint had acted, Jordy West had moved with every bit of speed he could summon, spinning around and driving a hard punch into the face of the man who had been covering him. With his other hand, West snatched the pistol out of the guard's hand and started firing at the men who had not been cut down by the shotgun blast.
McGill launched himself at Flint with a furious yell. Flint spun to meet the charge, whirling the now-empty shotgun as if it were a club. The stock caught McGill in the chest, knocking the breath out of him and stunning him. Flint slashed at him with the barrels of the weapon. A glancing blow clipped McGill's head, but it was hard enough to knock him off his feet.
The gunfire drove the horses tied to the hitch rail into a frenzy. Several of them had jerked their reins loose and were skittering away. West grabbed Anabel's arm and leaped off the porch, heading for the remaining mounts. Anabel looked stunned by the violence that had broken out around her, but as West all but threw her into the saddle on one of the horses, she gathered her wits and grasped the animal's reins.
He vaulted onto the back of another animal, throwing shots at McGill's men as he did to give Flint some cover. Flint bounded off the porch and onto a saddle. He yanked the horse's reins free and shouted, "Come on!"
A hail of bullets followed them as they pounded away from the ranch house. McGill struggled back onto his feet and screamed, "Kill them! Kill all three of them!"
It became obvious a moment later, though, that none of the bullets would reach their targets. Flint, West, and Anabel were crouching against the necks of their mounts, riding desperately for their lives.
Flint glanced over at Anabel Yeager. She was handling herself well, staying in the saddle and getting every ounce of speed from her horse that she could. West was right beside her, twisting in the saddle and firing his pistol at the men on the ranch house porch.
McGill and his men would be coming after them, Flint knew, but they had a few minutes' head start. They had a chance again...a chance to make it to Cheyenne by noon.
17
Several times during that first hour, one of Sheriff Dedrick's deputies came by the gallows and asked K. W. Newcomb if he needed any help with the repairs. Each time, the hangman shook his head. "Coming along just fine," he told the man. Newcomb was sure Dedrick had sent the deputy to check on the progress of the work.
A little after ten o'clock, Newcomb emerged from under the gallows. He noticed many people still hanging around the square, although the crowd wasn’t as large as it had been earlier. The spectators would start drifting back between eleven and twelve.
In the meantime, Newcomb had an important chore to do. He retrieved his coat from the platform, then walked down the street to the sheriff’s office.
The door was locked. Newcomb had to knock and identify himself before Dedrick would let him in. As the sheriff swung the door open, he asked anxiously, "Have you got that gallows fixed yet, Newcomb?"
"Not yet." Newcomb replied. "I've got to go over to the hardware store and pick up a few items to complete the repairs. Some new hinges for one thing. The ones that were on it jammed. They're frozen now, and I don't have time to soak them and break them loose again."
"Well, why are you wasting time here? Go get what you need."
Newcomb grinned. "I just wanted you to know where I was, in case that watchdog of yours goes by the gallows again and sees I'm not there."
Dedrick grunted but didn’t deny that he had sent the deputy. He said, "You're taking this mighty calm, Newcomb. You know a failure like this is going to hurt your reputation."
"Not much I can do about it now," Newcomb said with a shrug. He glanced toward the cellblock door and wished he had time to say hello to Rachel. He decided it wouldn’t look very good right now, and besides, he had less than two hours to find what he was looking for.
"Do you still think everything will be ready by noon?"
"It will," Newcomb assured the sheriff. With a nod, he left the office, pausing on the sidewalk outside as he heard Dedrick relock the door.
Rachel would be safe enough until noon, Newcomb thought. The crowd had threatened to turn ugly for a moment after the gallows had failed, but that had been a temporary reaction. Mayor Yeager had not had enough friends to provoke a lynching.
Rachel's biggest danger now was that Newcomb wouldn’t be able to take advantage of this last-minute opportunity to prove her innocence.
The key was in those papers that Elijah Jones had returned to Anabel Yeager. Newcomb was convinced of that. Although Thatcher Horrigan had tried to disguise his own interest in them, Newcomb knew that the young newspaperman thought they were important, too.
Newcomb had hesitated to involve Anabel in this, but now there was no time to do anything else. Instead of going to the hardware store as he had told Dedrick, Newcomb went directly to the Yeager house. He was going to ask Anabel to show him those papers, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
By themselves, the documents probably wouldn’t clear Rachel of the murder, but they were now evidence and would cast doubt on her guilt and suggest that someone else had a motive. Judge Stephens and Sheriff Dedrick had said all along they regretted the outcome of the trial. Now Newcomb planned to persuade them to reconsider and postpone the execution until all of Yeager's business dealings could be brought out into the open.
Newcomb had not seen Anabel Yeager at the hanging, but that meant nothing. She could well have been there among the large crowd. He just hoped that she was at home now.
He reached the late mayor's house and went up the walk to the front porch. The curtains were drawn, and the place looked quiet. Not unusual under the circumstances, Newcomb thought. Anabel was probably upstairs lying down. He climbed the steps to the porch and started to knock on the front door.
Newcomb stopped before he could rap on the panel, a frown forming on his round face. The door was slightly ajar, no more than an inch or so but definitely open. That struck him as strange. He put a hand against the door and slowly pushed it.
The foyer was shadowy. Newcomb stepped inside and paused again. He thought he had heard a slight sound coming from his right, from the parlor. Some instinct warned him that he was heading into trouble. He slipped a hand into his coat and closed his fingers around the butt of his S&W .38, the little Baby Russian.
A dim figure suddenly moved in the gloom of the parlor, and Newcomb jerked the pistol out. Leveling it at the figure, he growled, "Hold it, mister!"
The shape froze, and a moment later a familiar voice asked, "Is that you, Mr. Newcomb?"
The hangman frowned. "Horrigan? What are you doing here?" Before the newspaperman cou
ld answer, Newcomb stepped over to the window and thrust back the curtain.
The bright sunlight from outside revealed Thatcher Horrigan standing next to the chimney. The sleeve of his light gray jacket was covered with black smudges that Newcomb recognized as soot. Clutched tightly in Horrigan's hand was a thick sheaf of papers.
A light brighter than that streaming in through the window seemed to go off in K. W. Newcomb's brain.
"I'm certainly glad to see you, Mr. Newcomb," Horrigan began excitedly. "Something seems to have happened to Miss Yeager. The house was all closed up when I got here—"
"When you came looking for those papers, you mean," Newcomb cut in. His mind was spinning rapidly, checking and rechecking each facet of the theory that had just occurred to him. There were still some unanswered questions, but what he knew so far made sense. He had no idea where Anabel Yeager was, but he would have been willing to bet she was in danger.
"These papers?" Horrigan said, holding them up and trying to sound baffled.
Something lying on the sofa caught Newcomb's eye. It was a dress, he saw, a dress with soot smudges on the sleeve. That had been enough of a clue to send Horrigan in here to the fireplace. Newcomb nodded to himself. Anabel had some sort of hiding place inside the chimney, and that was where she had concealed the papers. Why she had hidden them, Newcomb didn’t know, but he had a hunch a quick look at them would provide the answer.
"Hand them over," he said.
Horrigan hesitated, swallowing nervously. The barrel of the .38 in Newcomb's hand never wavered. The hangman had long since lost his jovial demeanor. Now he looked positively deadly.
Horrigan held out the papers. Newcomb took them, backed up a couple of steps, and took his eyes off the younger man just long enough to glance at what was written on the documents. They appeared to be some sort of business records, no doubt pertaining to the activities of Mayor Russell Yeager and Lance McGill.
"I guess you thought you were reclaiming something that belonged to you," Newcomb grunted, "since you probably stole these from Yeager in the first place."
"I never stole anything!" Horrigan replied hotly.
"Yeager wouldn't have given these to you. I'd wager they have to do with some illegal activities that the late mayor and his partner were engaged in. You got your hands on them, hid them in the newspaper office, and used them to blackmail Yeager and McGill, didn't you?"
Horrigan gaped at him for a long moment. Then he said abruptly, "I don't have to talk to you. I'm going to swear out a complaint against you, Newcomb. You can't come in here, wave a gun, and make these crazy accusations—"
"Fine," Newcomb broke in. "We'll go see Sheriff Dedrick right now. You can explain to him what you were doing in this house with these documents."
Horrigan took a step forward, his face contorting angrily. "They're mine!" he rasped. "You're trying to ruin everything—"
"Just stand still," Newcomb said coldly, lining up the barrel of the .38 with the bridge of Horrigan's nose. "You're going to listen to me, and then you're going to tell me if I'm right about all this." He took a deep breath. "It's simple enough once you look at it from the proper angle. Yeager and McGill were well on their way to running this whole territory, but you had proof that not only had they gotten a crooked start in their business, they were still breaking the law." Newcomb hefted the stack of papers for emphasis. "You probably didn't blackmail them for money, not yet. Rachel told me you were ambitious. You wanted power, Horrigan. You wanted to be the third leg of that trident they use for a brand."
"You son of a bitch," Horrigan hissed, and Newcomb knew his speculations were right on target.
"Being a newspaperman, you figured that, if you had your own paper, you would have the perfect vehicle for the power you intended to get through Yeager and McGill. And what was the easiest way for you to get your hands on a newspaper? You planned to take Rachel Coleman's!"
Horrigan clenched his fists, his whole body quivering with rage. "You don't know what it was like!" he shot back. "You damned hypocrite! You made your reputation hanging people! I just wanted what was due me...!"
Newcomb shook his head. "Rachel would have retired someday. In all probability the paper would have been yours then. But you couldn't wait. You decided that she had to go now." Newcomb felt his heart pounding, and his mouth was dry. He ached to pull the trigger of the little gun. "You tried to kill her, didn't you, Horrigan? She said you were there at her house when Yeager came to dinner. You slipped the poison in something then. But Yeager got hold of it instead of Rachel! You killed him by accident, didn't you?" Newcomb's voice had risen until he was shouting the question.
For a moment, he thought Horrigan was going to lunge at him. Newcomb was ready to shoot. But he wanted to take the young man alive, if possible, so that Horrigan would be forced to tell the truth and clear Rachel Coleman.
Then Horrigan seemed to get control of himself. He smiled thinly and said, "It all worked out for the best. Rachel was going to be hanged, the paper was mine to run, and Yeager was dead. That meant more money for McGill and me to split."
"McGill knew all about it, didn't he?"
"Of course, he did. I had to tell him when Yeager died instead of Rachel. He didn't give a damn about Yeager. In fact, he seemed pleasantly surprised."
Newcomb nodded. "So, you thought everything had worked out just right for you. The only problem was that Elijah Jones got overzealous in his cleaning and returned these papers to Anabel Yeager. You figured you had to get them back, and you thought this morning would be a good time to search the house, while everyone else in town was all wrapped up with the hanging." Newcomb frowned as another thought occurred to him. "You know where Anabel Yeager is, don't you?"
"McGill has her. I got word from him last night. She's not going to cause any trouble for us, Newcomb, and neither are you. You can't prove one damn word of this insane yarn of yours." Horrigan grinned smugly. "I'm a respected citizen in this town, and so is McGill. You're going to have to go out there and hang Rachel, just like the court sentenced her."
Newcomb shook his head. "I don't think so. These documents will be enough to create a reasonable doubt, maybe even get Rachel a new trial. You had as much access to that poison at the newspaper office as Rachel did, and you've got a motive."
"Like I said, you can't prove a thing about motive or anything else."
"We'll see," Newcomb said grimly. He gestured with the pistol. "Come on. We're going to see Sheriff Dedrick."
Horrigan shook his head stubbornly. "I'm not going anywhere," he declared.
Newcomb tightened his grip on the pistol. If need be, he was willing to shoot Horrigan in the leg and drag him to Dedrick's office.
A sudden flurry of gunfire blasting outside made him jerk his head toward the window. The shots sounded as though they were coming from the edge of town, and they were rapidly getting closer.
Newcomb instantly realized he had made a mistake by turning his attention away from Horrigan. The murderous newspaperman had taken advantage of the opportunity and was leaping at him.
As the hangman tried to whirl around, Horrigan grabbed his wrist and forced the gun to the side with desperate strength. At the same time, he brought his knee up, driving it savagely into Newcomb's groin. Newcomb tried to wrench the gun back in line as he gasped in pain, but Horrigan was savagely fighting like a madman.
Newcomb staggered back as Horrigan smashed an elbow against his jaw. He felt the pistol being torn out of his grip. Suddenly the gun went off, and what felt like a white-hot poker rammed into Newcomb's body. He grunted, doubling over from the pain. He tried to catch himself as he fell, but it was too late.
Newcomb pitched forward onto the floor of the parlor. The room seemed shadowy as he struggled to pull himself to his feet, despite the bright sunshine slanting in through the window. He blinked his eyes as he saw Thatcher Horrigan drop the gun, then bend over and scoop the fallen documents from the floor. Horrigan seemed to be moving incredibly slowly. It w
ouldn’t be hard at all, Newcomb thought, to reach out and stop him. He tried to lift a hand to do that, but before he could, the shadows closed in.
Newcomb's head fell to the side, and his hand dropped to the floor. He sprawled there, motionless except for that hand. The fingers stretched out, tried to clutch at something for a moment, then went limp.
The front door slammed behind Horrigan as the newspaperman ran out, but Newcomb could no longer hear it.
If it had not been for Jordy West's knowledge of the terrain, Flint knew they never would have had a chance of reaching Cheyenne in time. But the young cowboy had taken the lead and found every shortcut, every path where the three desperate riders could put a little distance between themselves and their pursuers. Their horses were fresh, and the animals performed gallantly.
But McGill's men had fresh mounts, too, and every time Flint and the others managed to open a small gap, the Trident riders closed it in a matter of minutes.
Flint glanced over his shoulder and saw McGill riding in the lead, perhaps a hundred yards behind them. They were within rifle range, but it was almost impossible to hit a moving target from the back of a running horse. A few of the shots fired by McGill and his men had come close enough for Flint to hear them whining past his ear, but so far West, Anabel, and he were unscathed.
The cowboy named Turner had made the trip from Cheyenne to Trident in a little over an hour. This deadly chase was going to take about the same amount of time, Flint estimated.
It was one of the longest hours of his life. But knowing that Rachel's life had been spared temporarily made him that much more determined to get through.
Finally, West called out, "Cheyenne!" Flint could see the buildings ahead and knew that they would reach the town in a matter of minutes. He glanced over at Anabel. She was hanging on grimly, but he could tell that fear and the long chase had exhausted her. He hoped she could hold on for just a little while longer.
Rattler's Law, Volume One Page 115