by Phil Dunlap
“Citizens of Apache Springs! You are about to learn a lesson in good manners! You should never have neglected to cast your votes for me! So now you’ll feel the sting of my wrath for your own ignorance!”
Carp Varner pulled the trigger on one barrel of the shotgun, blowing the entire window out of the dress shop directly across the street.
Chapter 57
Cotton had made it as far as the general store, shotgun in hand and pointed at Varner. His intention was to at least get the gunsmith to talk to him. That’s not the way it turned out, however.
“Varner! Put that blunderbuss down and let’s—”
Varner didn’t even flinch as he turned the shotgun in Cotton’s direction. Cotton flung himself to the ground, dropping his own scattergun, just as Varner’s big gun went off, showering the earth around the sheriff with geysers of dirt. He felt the bite of some of the steel pellets as they plowed into his shoulder and leg. Before Cotton could pull his Colt, Varner had picked up one of the lanterns and launched it in the air with a high arc. The blazing missile came down on the boardwalk in front of the store in the next building. The glass lamp shattered instantly, spreading coal oil and exploding in flames. The wooden walkway, parched from the dry summer, was quickly engulfed by the fast-spreading flames. Several shopkeepers, watching from the safety of indoors, looked on in horror as the posts holding up the portico began to burn. No one dared rush outside to help, for fear of being the next victim of that awful shotgun.
As Cotton rolled over to free his Colt from its holster, a shot from Varner’s Smith & Wesson dug a furrow across his thigh. He scrambled to avoid the next shot, which would undoubtedly find its mark with a fatal result. Just then, a shot from inside the door of the post office shattered the door glass behind Varner. Carp ducked back inside. Jack’s smoking Remington was still in the deputy’s hand when Cotton heard him call out.
“You okay, Cotton?”
“A little worse for the wear, but alive. Can you keep him inside while Henry gets some folks to douse the fire with sand?”
“I’m hopin’ to do just that,” Jack said, as he threw a couple more shots at where Varner was holed up.
Half-crawling, half-hopping, Cotton reached the safety of a water trough outside the town hall. He took off his neck scarf and tied it around his thigh to stop the bleeding, then stuck his head up just enough to see if he could spot Varner. He didn’t have to wait long. The elusive gunman was no longer inside. He’d reappeared behind his fortress and was lighting several more lamps, just out of Jack’s sight. But not Cotton’s.
Cocking his Colt, Cotton crawled to the end of the trough. He stuck the barrel around the corner and fired. Varner quickly ducked back. The shot had given Varner an idea of where the sheriff was, but it had also showed Jack where Varner was. It was shaping up to be two against one, and Varner didn’t like those odds. He grabbed up two more lamps and tossed them high in the air as he ran. One hit a freight wagon that had pulled up in front of the general store and parked, filled with raw lumber and bales of straw. The lamp shattered into a thousand pieces, showering the wagon and its contents with licking flames. The four-mule team that had been hitched to the wagon was instantly thrown into a wild-eyed panic. Straining at their traces and without their driver, they charged ahead down the street, out of control, weaving from one side to the other, tossing hunks of burning, newly split logs from the back, rolling every which way, and threatening to spread the fire even farther.
One of the lamps landed on a tin-roofed overhang, smashing and allowing the blazing oil to drip onto the boardwalk below. With each drop of flaming liquid, the fire walked along the dry wood like a snake seeking its prey. More of the lamps were launched. One lamp busted through the window of the dress shop, bursting into flames. The dressmaker ran from the shop trailing a burning skirt. Out of nowhere, a man came running with a bucket of water and doused her before she was badly hurt, although her hands and legs would take a while to heal from the blisters. The man helped her to a group of other women standing under the protection of a nearby portico. All around Varner’s establishment, townsfolk were racing to stop the flames from eating the town like a ravenous mountain lion, as screams of terror and panic filled the air, burning embers were flung about by the rising columns of blistering heat, and white ash fluttered down like snowflakes. The town had never seen an inferno like this. It was every town’s worst nightmare.
Varner raced for cover, staying low to keep from getting hit by gunfire aimed in his direction. He made his way to the back of his shop. He dove for the door and barely made it as hunks of wood were torn from the frame by Jack’s .44. Jack had wisely thought to run down the alley once he saw that Varner was headed inside, returning to the safety of his shop to resupply his firepower. He’d missed his quarry, but that didn’t keep him from throwing more lead through the open door and blasting the small window nearly out of its frame. He could hear cursing coming from inside.
Jack’s actions had given Cotton just the break he needed to get himself situated in a better spot to confront the murderous man from Texas when he once again came through the front door. He didn’t have to wait long. The flimsy door was nearly busted from its hinges when Varner crashed through, shotgun in hand, swiveling left and right to identify his target as quickly as possible. He stopped suddenly when he saw Cotton Burke standing not twenty feet away, his Colt .45 drawn and aimed in his direction.
Varner started to jerk the shotgun around to handle this threat to his freedom, in fact his very life. But whatever was going through Varner’s head at that moment, it would make no difference to him or to anyone. No longer willing to give the madman an opportunity to take one more shot at him or even allow him to surrender after the devastation he’d wrought on Apache Springs, Cotton pulled the trigger. Twice in quick succession. The first bullet caught the killer in the throat, the second in the forehead, nearly taking off the back of his head. Varner stiffened, dropped his shotgun, and toppled backward like a just-felled ponderosa pine. His dead body crashed through the front window, bent backward over the frame, and remained there as life drained quickly from him.
Jack came running from around from the back as shop owners hurriedly brought out bucket after bucket of sand or water to douse the several fires caused by pieces of lumber and straw dropping from the burning wagon. At the end of the street, the liveryman had heard the commotion and, upon seeing the mule team charging toward him, raced out and grabbed their dangling reins and brought them to a halt. He quickly unhitched them from the wagon and led them inside. The fire in the wagon was brought under control by other quick-thinking citizens, and it now sat in the middle of the street, smoldering harmlessly.
As townsfolk stared in disbelief at the loss to businesses, a low murmur of voices spread angrily through the citizenry. Heads shook and tongues clucked at the potential cost of rebuilding and repairs. But while the losses were substantial, they were not insurmountable. And there had been no loss of life, save that of the villain, Carp Varner. The town would come back stronger than ever, and everybody knew it.
Emily ran to Cotton, whose shirt and pants were splotched with blood. He swept her into his arms to let her know he would be okay, even though the pain in his leg suggested that might not be the case. As Jack leaned over the body of Carp Varner, Cotton said, “Jack, get the undertaker and then let Johnny and Turner out of their cells. I’m goin’ to let Emily help me to the doc’s.”
Jack nodded with a look that suggested he was surprised the sheriff had been hit, then he trotted off. Henry, carrying an empty sand bucket with which he had helped put out the fire in front of the general store, swept up Cotton’s shotgun from the street as well as the one Carp Varner had been wielding to do a lot of damage. As they passed the jail, Turner Burnside stood clucking his tongue at the chaos Varner had caused. Johnny had run past them to see for himself that the villain who’d murdered his friends was really dead. Cotton looked back
to see the boy gazing solemnly at the corpse of the man who had brought so much misery to his life. The sheriff thought he detected a nod of relief.
Chapter 58
After Doc Winters had patched up the sheriff’s painful but in the end insignificant wounds, Cotton was resting comfortably at his house with a cup of hot coffee and the smells of something cooking on the stove. Emily wouldn’t hear of him fending for himself after such a traumatic day, and he had no intention of talking her out of it. She told Henry to take Johnny back to the ranch and put him to work. It was time things settled down, and she was just the one to see to it that they did.
“Before you two leave, I want to thank you, Henry, for all your help,” Cotton said. “And Johnny, I know you’re disappointed that Varner didn’t die by your hand, but if it hadn’t been for you and Rachael, he still would have showed up here with his evil intent and we’d have been caught off guard. By that reasoning, I’d say you did pay him back for what he’d done to you and your friends. I’m mighty glad you showed up when you did.”
“Uh, thank you, sir,” Johnny said, with a shy grin. He followed Henry out the door, looking eager to see Rachael and share with her what had happened.
Jack came in as Emily came out of the kitchen with a bowl of beans and some fresh bread. He grinned and thanked her when she asked him to stay. Sipping the coffee she’d poured him, he sat and stared at Cotton.
“Those hurt?” he asked.
“What, these little holes? Naw. Sorta like bein’ bee stung. Nothin’ like gettin’ shot in the back by a girlfriend.”
Jack grimaced at the barb.
“Johnny goin’ back to the Wagner place?”
“Yep,” Cotton said. “Maybe he’ll stick around for a while. With a little maturity, he might even make a good deputy someday. And I figure to be needin’ one if you keep on hangin’ around with a gun-totin’ whore with no compunction about plugging you every time she gets a bee in her bonnet.”
Jack blushed. He’d been had, twice. Then he suddenly seemed to remember what had really brought him by to see the sheriff. He got up and walked to the door. He picked up Varner’s shotgun and a thick paper sack.
“Got a surprise. I figure this’ll clear up a whole passel of questions.”
“Yeah, like what?” Cotton said, with a slight groan.
“This shotgun Varner was so eager to use to blow the town apart belonged to Pick Wheeler. Recognized it the moment I saw it. Musta took it when he shot the old prospector in the back. Ten-gauge.”
Cotton smiled a knowing smile. “Then I’m goin’ out on a limb and guessin’ that paper sack you’re holdin’ has Melody’s money in it. Varner musta been the man sittin’ on the bench outside the bank the day she started braggin’ about buyin’ a silver mine.”
“Say, you’re good. You ever thought of joinin’ the Pinkertons?” Jack said, raising one eyebrow.
“What, and leave you to clean up Melody’s messes all by yourself? Not on your life.”
“Okay if I break the good news to Melody?”
“I reckon. Maybe that’ll make your life a bit more comfortable, at least until she comes up with another dumb scheme.”
After Jack left, Cotton turned to Emily.
“What do you figure will happen to Johnny and Rachael?” he asked her.
“Well, I got plenty of room, and they could both be useful at the ranch. I figure to ask them to stay, at least until they decide where their futures will take them,” she said, with a slight shrug.
Cotton nodded. He leaned back in his chair with a weary and painful sigh. He couldn’t help wondering what would have happened to Apache Springs if he’d not killed Carp Varner. Chances were the town would now have been nothing more than a pile of charred ruins and destroyed lives. The fear that had coursed through him at the recognition of Varner’s total despotism and willingness to unleash a potential firestorm on a community—he hoped never to experience that again. Carp Varner had been dispatched in the blink of an eye to forever dwell in the Devil’s own inferno.
Cotton reached over and squeezed Emily’s hand.