by J. Roberts
The judge had to decide if this was reason enough to disband the jury and declare a mistrial.
Clint and Dodge were questioned, assured the judge that they had kept the jury members together during the shooting. Then the jurors were questioned. It took a whole day away from the actual trial, but in the end Judge Webster Street decided to keep the jury together and continue the next morning with the trial.
Dodge went to the jail to tell Bannock that his plan had not worked. Hatch had put Bannock in a cell right next to his son, who was sitting on his cot morosely.
After Dodge delivered the news and left, Barney said to Bannock, “You’re a useless old man.”
“You’re no-account and you always was,” Bannock said.
“You think Linda’s gonna stay with you after they hang me, don’t ya? Well, she ain’t.”
“A lot you know,” the old man said. “She’s happier now than she’s ever been. She don’t have to worry about you no more, or Hudson. Just me.”
“You disgust her.”
The old man laughed.
“She’s happy to have a man between her legs who’s full growed.”
“You sonofabitch.”
“Bastard.”
They fell silent, and after a few moments Barney said, “They’re gonna kill me, Pa.”
“Your lawyer might still get ya off,” Bannock said.
“What if he don’t?”
“They ain’t gonna keep me in here forever, son,” Bannock said. “We’ll figure somethin’ out.”
“You gotta get me out, Pa,” Barney said. “And don’t try to do it yerself. Hire somebody. Get a gunny in here to handle that Gunsmith, and get me out of here.”
“Like I said, son,” Bannock replied, “we’ll figure somethin’ out.”
FORTY-ONE
The trial recommenced the next morning, and this time there weren’t so many guns to collect. Seemed folks were worried now that there might be a shooting in the courtroom itself.
Fred Dodge’s seat in the court was right up alongside District Attorney Mark A. Smith’s table. Charley Smith sat in the back—or Bob Hatch, whichever was there. Clint sat by the collected guns, to be sure no one grabbed one from the wall.
The trial went on for three days, until finally the attorneys had to make their closing arguments. The defense went first, and Clint didn’t hear anything in the man’s address that he thought would sway the jury.
The district attorney went next. Dodge, in the chair next to the desk, had his short double-barreled shotgun across his thighs, and seemed to be on the lookout for trouble. If there was going to be an outburst in the courtroom, it would be about that time, while the D.A. was making his closing remarks.
Smith began to describe what he imagined happened that night. How Barney Riggs had sneaked over to the Hudson ranch, waited in the dark for Hudson to appear, and then crept up on him from behind . . .
“. . . and he did then murder Hudson!” he finished, with great dramatic flair.
There was a large ink stand on each attorney’s table, and Barney Riggs leaped to his feet and grabbed it up.
“Yes, you sonofabitch, and I’m gonna kill you, too!” he shouted at Smith.
Clint watched as Dodge moved incredibly fast. He sprang from his seat onto Barney’s shoulders, crashing to the floor with him. Dodge grabbed the ink stand from Barney’s hand, then dragged him to his feet and tossed him back into his chair. Dodge then reversed his shotgun and pointed it at the prisoner.
Mark A. Smith, as smooth as could be, turned and said to Dodge, “Thank you, Fred,” and continued with his closing statement. Dodge stayed by Barney until Smith finished his argument, then the jury was led away to deliberate, and the prisoner was returned to his cell.
Court was adjourned until such time as the jury returned with their verdict. Clint and Charley Smith returned the guns to people as they left, then turned to face Dodge.
“How did you make that jump?” Charley asked.
Dodge turned and took a look, gauging the distance he had jumped.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just did.”
“Impressive, Fred,” Clint said. “I don’t think I could have jumped that far. I probably would have shot him, ending the trial.”
“It never occurred to me,” Dodge said. “I just reacted.”
While they were talking, Mark Smith came walking over. It was the first time Clint had seen him up close. He had the bearing of an older man, but was not yet forty.
He shook hands with Dodge and said, “Thanks again, Fred.”
“You’re welcome, Mark.”
“Didn’t think you could jump that far.”
“Neither did I,” Dodge said.
“Nobody could,” Clint added.
They all laughed.
“So, what do you think?” Dodge asked Smith. “Guilty or not guilty.”
“They’ll come back with a guilty plea,” Smith said, confidently. “The question is will they hang him? Takes a special kind of person to recommend a hanging.”
“I guess we’ll have to wait and see,” Dodge said. He looked at the three men. “Anybody want to wait in a saloon?”
FORTY-TWO
The district attorney had other work to do, so he did not accompany them to the Crystal Palace for a drink. Also, Dodge couldn’t go because he had to stick by the jury, even while they were deliberating. That left only Clint and Charley Smith to share a beer.
“Charley, I’ve been talking to Fred about running for sheriff,” Clint said.
“He should,” Charley said. “He’d be a good one. Better than Ward was, and better than Hatch.”
“He’s not sure he’d get elected.”
“Oh, he’d get elected,” Charley said. “ ’Specially if he was runnin’ against Bob Hatch.”
“You should talk to him about it.”
“If you can’t convince him, what makes you think I can?” Charley asked.
“I haven’t seen him in three years, but you’ve been here every day,” Clint pointed out. “Maybe he’ll listen to you.”
Charley shrugged.
“I can try. I’ll tell ya, though, it sure ain’t a job I’d want.”
“You’d be pretty good at it,” Clint said.
“Nah,” Charley said. “I ain’t the type to give orders. Rather take ’em—and then do what I want, anyway.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Clint said.
In the jury room things were not going well. One man out of the twelve—a well-known man in Tombstone—had suddenly decided that he could not, in all good conscience, sentence a man to death.
“You should have said somethin’ about that when they were questionin’ us,” another juror said.
“At that time, I thought I could do it,” the man said. “I thought I could sentence a guilty man to hang, and I thought that nobody was more guilty than Barney Riggs.”
“So what happened?” the jury foreman asked.
The man shrugged.
“I can’t do it.”
The foreman addressed the rest of the jurors.
“We can’t let this be a hung jury,” he said. “We have to put Riggs away while we have a chance.”
“So what do we do?” another man asked. “Keep tryin’ to get him to change his mind?”
“I’m not gonna change my mind,” the man said.
“Fine,” the foreman said. “I have a suggestion.”
“What is it?”
“One that I think you can live with,” the foreman said. “Let’s sentence him to life.”
“Life?” another man said. “He killed a man.”
“Yeah,” the foreman said, “but if we sentence him to life, he’ll go to Yuma.”
“Life in Yuma,” another juror said. “That’s almost as bad as hangin’.”
“You said it,” another man said.
“So?” the foreman asked them all.
“It’s up to him,” someone said, pointing to the man who’d had a s
udden attack of conscience.
He nodded slowly and said, “Well, yeah, I think I can live with that.”
“Okay,” the foreman said. “All in favor of a life sentence for Barney Riggs. Raise your hand.”
Twelve hands went up.
“Just to be sure,” the foreman said, “anybody opposed?” No hands.
“All right,” he said. “We go with life.”
Everybody in the courtroom was surprised when the jury foreman announced that, even though they had found Barney Riggs guilty of murder, the jury had opted for a life sentence over death.
Judge Street stared at the standing foreman for a few moments, then looked over at the D.A., who simply shrugged.
Fred Dodge thought, Maybe I should’ve shot him. Barney Riggs was seated at the defense table with chains on his wrists, and ankles.
“Very well,” Judge Street said, and the foreman sat down.
The judge thanked the members of the jury for doing their duty and dismissed them. Then he set a date for Barney Riggs to come back into court and receive his sentence.
Once again men filed out of the courtroom and Clint returned their guns. Barney Riggs was taken back to jail by Sheriff Bob Hatch. In the front of the courtroom Mark Smith was deep in discussion with Judge Street.
Since he did not have a jury to watch over, Dodge walked over to where Clint was handing the last man his weapon.
“What do you think?” Dodge asked.
“For some reason the jury decided on leniency,” Clint said. “I wouldn’t have thought that.”
“Me, neither. I don’t get it. He clearly murdered Hudson from ambush. That’s a hanging offense in any court in the country, isn’t it?”
“Far as I know.”
Dodge turned and looked toward the front of the room, where the judge and the D.A. were still conferring.
“The judge could still overrule,” Clint said. “He could sentence Riggs to death.”
“He could,” Dodge said, “and Smith might be askin’ him to do that right now, but I’ve never seen it happen before. I think he’ll go along with the jury and sentence Riggs to life in Yuma.”
“Where he could end up dead, anyway,” Clint said, “if he’s not tough enough.”
“True.”
“You want to get something to eat?”
“Definitely,” Dodge said. “And if you don’t mind, not at the Can Can.”
FORTY-THREE
No one ever found out about Bob Hatch and his neighbor’s wife, and in the next election he was once again chosen to represent his party on the ticket for Sheriff of Tombstone. Running against him, however, was a well-respected cattleman by the name of John Slaughter—and Slaughter won by a wide margin. Tombstone finally had itself a sheriff it could be proud of.
Fred Dodge remained in Tombstone, kept his job as deputy and as constable, and continued his undercover work for Wells Fargo. It was not until years later that he finally came out from being undercover to publicly work as a Wells Fargo agent.
Tombstone continued its decline and never again reached the height of its popularity, or fame, that it had achieved while the Earps were there.
Clint left Tombstone, learned later of Hatch’s defeat at the hands of John Slaughter, but assumed that Dodge would remain there, undercover. Years later he heard something about Dodge going public as a Wells Fargo agent, and he did work again with Fred Dodge on behalf of Wells Fargo . . . but that is a story for another time.
Watch for
THE BANDIT PRINCESS
341st novel in the exciting GUNSMITH series
from Jove
Coming in May!