“Has he tried to get out?” Bo asked.
Velma shook her head. “He told Ole to tie him to the bed in the spare room, so that’s what we did. We only let him loose when he tries to eat. Poor man. He’s weaker than a kitten. I’m not sure he could walk, even if he was loose.”
“Don’t let him fool you,” Bo warned. “I’ve seen fellas who were just as weak and sick as Harry is toss grown men around like they were kid’s dolls. When that sickness comes on them…”
“Maybe it won’t,” Velma said. “I’m praying that it won’t get that bad.”
Bo nodded. “I’ll put in a good word with El Señor Dios myself.”
With the prisoners having been released, there was no need for someone to stay at the jail all the time. Eventually, though, that problem was bound to come up again, and Bo had been thinking about it.
“I’ve got an idea,” he told Scratch and Reilly as they sat in the office early in the evening of their third day in Whiskey Flats. “We need a jailer so we won’t be stuck here every time we have to arrest somebody. How about Rawhide Abbott?”
Reilly’s eyebrows jumped up in surprise. “That loco redhead?”
Scratch was equally dubious. “A woman jailer? I never heard of such a thing!”
“You’ve seen for yourselves that she’s plenty tough,” Bo said.
Reilly reached up and felt of his jaw. “Yeah, I remember that punch that laid me out. For a little thing, she packs a hell of a wallop.”
“And she can handle a gun, too,” Bo added. “Got steady nerves.”
Scratch nodded. “She showed that when she went into the Lariat with me.” His naturally chivalrous nature came to the forefront. “But dadgum it, Bo, just think about the sort o’things prisoners would be liable to say to her!”
“From what I’ve seen of her, she’d probably just cuss right back at ’em,” Bo said with a smile.
“Yeah, I reckon that’s true, too,” Reilly said. “Maybe it’s not as far-fetched an idea as I thought it was at first.”
“Well, then, if we’re in agreement, should we go find her and ask her if she’d be interested in the job?” Bo suggested.
Scratch grunted. “I still got reservations, as the old chief said…but I reckon we can give it a try.”
They left the office and went looking for Rawhide. She lived in a comfortable, good-sized house on the edge of Whiskey Flats that her father had built many years earlier, when he first married Rawhide’s mother, who had also been a redheaded beauty. Since both the general store and the Clarion brought in money for her, she didn’t have to worry about a living. From the gossip Bo had heard, most of the unmarried young men in town had tried to court her at one time or another, but none of them had had much luck. She seemed content with her life the way it was.
Bo had a feeling that a challenge would appeal to her, though, and that was what the job as jailer would represent. She didn’t need the wages, and might even refuse to take them, but he felt like she would accept the job.
Abbott & Carson was still open, so the three lawmen went there first. Rawhide was in the store talking to Thatcher Carson, as they had thought she might be. She greeted them by asking almost eagerly, “Is there some sort of new trouble?”
“No trouble,” Reilly assured her. “But we have a proposition for you.”
Her eyebrows drew down in a frown. “I’ve heard that before.”
“No, no,” Reilly said quickly. “I’m talking about a job.”
Now Rawhide was really surprised. “You want to hire me? To do what?”
“To be the jailer and keep an eye on the marshal’s office whenever none of us can be there,” Bo explained.
Thatcher Carson said in disbelief, “You want a woman to be the jailer?” When Rawhide’s head snapped toward him and she gave him an angry glare, he went on hurriedly. “Not that there’s any reason a woman couldn’t be the jailer—”
“Forget it, Thatch,” she told him. “I reckon most men would say the exact same thing if they heard what Deputy Creel just said.” She turned back to Bo, Scratch, and Reilly and went on. “I’ve got just one word for you, boys. No, I take that back. I’ve got two words…Hell, no.”
“You won’t take the job?” Reilly asked. Somewhat to Bo’s surprise, he looked and sounded disappointed.
“As jailer?” Rawhide shook her head. “Nope. Not interested.” She paused. “But if you want to make me a deputy, then maybe we can talk about it.”
“A deputy!” Carson exclaimed. “I—” He shut up and started to back away as Rawhide glared at him again. “I think I should go over the books before we close down for the night.”
He went through the door behind the counter that led into the store’s office.
That left Rawhide standing there with the Texans and Reilly. She looked at them squarely and said, “Well? How about it?”
Reilly was starting to look confused again. He had grown in confidence in his pose as John Henry Braddock over the past couple of days, but Rawhide’s suggestion clearly had thrown him for a loop. Bo stepped in to buy some time, saying, “Well, I don’t reckon that occurred to us. What do you think, Marshal?”
“I couldn’t pay you,” Reilly told her. “Mayor McHale complained enough about having to come up with wages for Bo and Scratch.”
Rawhide waved off that objection. “I don’t care about the wages. I’ve got plenty of money. But I think it would be fun to be a deputy. Shoot, that’s pretty much what I was that first day, when we had to break up the war between the Lariat and the Top-Notch.”
Bo had brought up that very point earlier, when he made his initial suggestion to Scratch and Reilly, so he couldn’t very well argue against it now. “You know it’s liable to be dangerous?” he said.
Rawhide laughed. “The day you got here, when all that hell started poppin’, was the most entertaining day in Whiskey Flats in a long time. Don’t worry, I’ll take my turn guarding the prisoners, whenever we have any. I just don’t want to be stuck there in the office all the time, while the rest of you are out where the excitement is.”
“Well…” Reilly shook his head, not in negation but in acceptance. “You seem to have an answer for everything. I guess I’m within my rights as marshal to appoint you as a special, volunteer deputy.”
“With all the powers of a regular deputy,” Rawhide said. It wasn’t a question, but rather a statement.
Reilly shrugged. “With all the powers of a regular deputy, leastways until somebody in higher authority says different. I can’t give you a badge, though. Don’t have any except the one I’m wearing.”
“That’s all right. Just make sure everybody knows that I’m a peace officer now, too.”
Reilly nodded. “I’ve got a feeling you’ll take care of that anyway.”
Rawhide thumbed her hat back and grinned. “Deputy Abbott,” she said. “I like the sound of it.”
“Just don’t get any ideas about makin’ it Marshal Abbott,” Reilly muttered. “I’m still the marshal around here.”
“For now,” Rawhide said, still grinning. “For now.”
She insisted on making their evening rounds with them, and since there were now four of them, Bo suggested that they split up, two taking each side of the street. Before Reilly could suggest that Rawhide go with him, Bo said, “Rawhide, you’re with me.” He didn’t want the two of them spending a lot of time alone together. Rawhide was a smart girl; she might tumble to the fact that Reilly wasn’t actually who he was pretending to be without either Bo or Scratch around to cover for him.
Reilly looked a little disappointed. Bo knew that he was still attracted to Rawhide, despite the fact that she had given him absolutely no reason so far to think that she might ever be interested in him in a romantic way. Just the opposite, in fact. But Reilly didn’t protest, and so the foursome split up, Bo and Rawhide taking the left side of the street, Scratch and Reilly the right.
They made their way south along Main Street and crossed the bridge. T
hat section of town was quiet again tonight.
It didn’t stay that way, though. As Bo and Rawhide approached Emerson’s Royal Flush Saloon, which like the Abbott & Carson Emporium on the other side of town took up the front of an entire block by itself, glass suddenly shattered ahead of them. Bo and Rawhide instinctively reached for their guns as the man who had just been thrown through the saloon’s front window sailed across the boardwalk, crashed through the railing, and landed hard in the street, rolling over a couple of times before coming to a stop.
“Sweet Lord of Mercy!” Rawhide burst out, a pretty mild exclamation for her. “Who could have tossed a fella hard enough to do that?” She answered her own question a second later as a realization obviously hit her. “He’s back in town, blast it!”
“Who?” Scratch asked, but before Rawhide could answer, a massive, shaggy head was poked out through the broken window and a voice like the rumble of a stampeding buffalo herd spoke up.
“Did I kill him? Did I bust him to pieces? Damn tinhorn tried to cheat me!”
Men crowded around the batwings inside the saloon to peer out curiously as Bo hurried to the side of the man who had been tossed through the saloon window like a rag doll. Having heard the commotion, Scratch and Reilly came running from the other side of the street.
The unfortunate victim had come to a stop on his belly. Bo knelt beside him and rolled him over. The man groaned in pain, confirming that he was still alive. The giant looking out through the busted window snorted in disgust and withdrew, evidently disappointed that the hombre he had manhandled so roughly was still alive.
The man’s face was already swelling and turning dark with bruises. His attacker must have cuffed him around some before flinging him through the window. He cried out in pain as Bo tried to lift him into a sitting position.
“He probably busted a few ribs when he went through that railing,” Bo said as he carefully lowered the man to the ground again. “We’ll need to get the doc down here, as well as a wagon to load him in, more than likely.”
Reilly looked at the crowd on the boardwalk just outside the saloon’s entrance and snapped, “One of you men fetch the doctor. Now!”
None of them budged, though, until another man stepped through the crowd and said in a quiet, powerful voice, “Do what the marshal says. Rance, you take care of it.”
“Yes, sir,” the man said as he broke into a run toward the other end of town.
“That’s Dodge Emerson,” Rawhide breathed to Bo, nodding toward the man who had given the order. “Reckon the commotion finally drew him out of his hidey-hole.”
There was nothing Bo could do for the injured man, so he straightened and turned toward the boardwalk. The man Rawhide had indicated was only medium-sized, but the body in the light-colored suit was muscular enough so that he seemed a mite bigger than he really was. He wore a silk vest and cravat as well as the suit. His hair was dark and sleek in the light that spilled from the saloon, and a thin mustache adorned his upper lip. The corners of his mouth quirked as if he smiled frequently.
“I’m sorry about this,” he drawled. “Looks like one of my customers was celebrating, and it got a mite out of hand. I’ll be glad to pay that poor man’s medical bills.” He paused and looked a little surprised as he noticed who was with Bo, Scratch, and Reilly. “Is that you, Miss Abbott?”
“It is,” she snapped. “And that’s Deputy Abbott to you, Emerson.”
Dodge Emerson cocked one eyebrow. “Really? As of when?”
“Tonight. And don’t you forget it.”
Emerson chuckled and said, “Oh, I’m not likely to forget something like that. You know me…I keep close tabs on what goes on in this town.”
“Yeah, so I’ve heard.” Rawhide glanced at Bo. “I’ll tell you about that later.”
Bo nodded and gestured toward the injured man, who was still moaning softly. “We want to talk to whoever’s responsible for this. He’s going to have to come down to the jail with us and be locked up to face charges of assault and attempted murder.”
“I don’t think any murder was intended—” Emerson began.
“That’s where you’re wrong, friend,” Scratch said. “We all heard the big galoot who flung him out the window askin’ if he’d killed the poor son of a gun. Sounds like attempted murder to me.”
Emerson shrugged. “You’re welcome to come in and talk to whoever you like. This is a public place, after all, and you folks are the law.”
Rawhide caught hold of Bo’s sleeve. “I’m not sure this is a good idea,” she whispered.
“Why not?” Bo asked, surprised that anybody could put the fear of God into Rawhide Abbott.
“See that mule at the hitch rack?”
Bo looked and saw probably the biggest mule he had ever seen in his life. It was so tall and massive he was surprised he hadn’t noticed it before now…but he’d been a little distracted when that hombre came flying through the window.
“I see it,” he said. “Are you saying that mule belongs to the fella who did this?”
“That’s right. He lives alone up in the mountains and doesn’t come down to town very often, but whenever he does, there’s usually trouble. Folks have learned to steer well clear of him.” Rawhide looked at the man lying in the street. “I guess that gambler’s new in these parts and didn’t know any better than to try to cheat Chesterfield Pike.”
“Chesterfield?” Reilly repeated with a laugh. “The man we’re after is named Chesterfield? How much trouble can it be to arrest him?”
With that, Reilly stepped onto the boardwalk, strode past a clearly amused Dodge Emerson, slapped the batwings aside, and disappeared into the saloon.
CHAPTER 16
“Oh, Lord!” Rawhide exclaimed. “Bo, Scratch, go after him! He doesn’t know what he’s getting into.”
“Neither do we, ma’am,” Scratch muttered, but he and Bo hurried after Reilly anyway. Rawhide brought up the rear, looking unaccustomedly anxious.
The crowd inside the big barroom was still buzzing about what had happened. The first thing Bo noticed, though, was that everyone in the Royal Flush was giving one gent standing at the bar a wide berth.
He needed that room, because his shoulders seemed as broad as an ox yoke. He towered over everyone else. Jerry McCormick over at the barbershop was a big man, but next to this fella McCormick would have seemed puny and undersized. The man wore a homespun shirt that was stretched dangerously tight over the bulging muscles of his arms and shoulders. Crammed down on his head was an old brown hat that had seen much better days. Nicks had been cut from the brim, and in one place Bo would have sworn that someone had taken a bite out of it. A couple of bullet holes decorated the crown.
The man wore no gun, but a long, heavy-bladed knife was thrust behind the length of thick rope that he had tied around his waist to serve as a belt. With his reach, if he ever started flailing away with that pig-sticker, he could lay waste to a large area around him. Bo imagined that blood would flow like water in a fight like that.
Not that the giant probably had to resort to his knife very often. He could probably win most fights just by swinging those long arms with the hamlike fists on the end of them.
Of course, when you got right down to it, neither prodigious strength nor a razor-sharp blade were any match for six bullets from Colonel Colt’s great equalizer. But if you ever went to shoot that big fella, you’d want some distance between you and him, because Bo had the feeling he could absorb several lead pills and keep right on a-comin’. It wouldn’t profit a man to fill Chesterfield Pike with slugs if Pike still got his hands on the shooter. Even dying, Pike could choke a man to death in a matter of seconds, or break him in half.
There was no time to explain any of that to Reilly, because the young man had planted himself in the middle of the room and called out over the hubbub, “Chesterfield Pike! In the name of the law, I’m looking for Chesterfield Pike!”
Scratch cast a glance toward Bo, who knew very well what h
is trail partner was thinking. For a smart man, Reilly could be pretty damned dumb at times. There was only one man in here big enough to have picked up that gambler and tossed him so casually through the front window, and that was the giant at the bar.
Scratch leaned toward Bo and said under his breath, “You seen a beanstalk growin’ anywhere around here?”
“Big as he is, that fella’s real,” Bo said. “He’s not something out of a fairy tale.”
“Damn it,” Reilly demanded when no one responded to his question, “somebody tell me where I can find Chesterfield Pike!”
The man at the bar had a large, full schooner of beer in front of him. When he picked it up, it looked sort of like a thimble in his sausagelike fingers. He downed the whole schooner at one gulp and lowered the empty to the bar with a sigh that threatened to shake the rafters. Then he turned slowly and brushed at his ear.
“Sounds like a gnat buzzin’ in here,” he rumbled. “Anybody hear that same annoyin’ little noise?”
Reilly took an angry step toward the bar, but then it finally dawned on him just what a behemoth he was facing. He stopped and swallowed, but he couldn’t back down now, not in front of a whole saloon full of people, many of whom heartily disliked him because he had a lawman’s badge pinned to his coat.
“Are you Chesterfield Pike?” he asked, and he managed not to have a quaver in his voice.
“I am. Who are you, and why’re you lookin’ for me?”
Reilly took a deep breath and reached up to tap the badge on his lapel. “I’m the law in Whiskey Flats, that’s who I am. Marshal John Henry Braddock. And I’ve got another question for you. Did you throw a man through the front window a few minutes ago?”
“You mean that tinhorn gambler who tried to cheat me?” Pike shook his head ponderously. “I wouldn’t call him a man. More like a puny little bug. He’s lucky I didn’t just squash’m underfoot.”
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