by James, Terry
‘Jess,’ he whispered into the wood. ‘It’s Matt. Let me in.’
Inside, nothing stirred. He knocked again, waiting a couple of seconds before finding the handle and trying it. The door opened and he peered inside. The room was empty, although the bed was mussed. Shoving back the blankets, he pressed his palm to the sheet. Cold. So, Lou wasn’t the only one waiting up for him and he bet he knew exactly where to find them both. Jess loved a party.
Leaving the room as he found it, he closed the door and headed towards the noise. The first person he met was the sheriff. Although only in his late thirties, the sheriff’s face wore the ravages of a man much older and rarely showed any signs of humour. Tonight he looked more dour than usual.
‘I didn’t expect to find you here at this time, Sheriff. What’s the occasion?’
Matt looked past him towards the crowd converging on them and something cold settled inside him. Since when did people go to a party wearing nightdresses and bed shirts? And a gloomier looking bunch he couldn’t remember seeing.
The sheriff placed a huge hand on his arm. ‘It’s Lou.’
Matt scanned the faces bearing down on him, seeing none he recognized. ‘Where is he? What’s happened?’
‘Kitchen. I’m sorry, Lomew. He’s dead.’
Matt exploded through the crowd, shaking off hands that tried to hold him back. He smelled the blood before he reached the kitchen and his stomach tightened in a hard knot. It wasn’t the first time he had seen a dead man – he had sent a few on their way – but Lou was his friend and seeing his corpse amidst the carnage pulled him up short and sober.
He gripped the door, or what was left of it, swaying as it moved under his weight. Inside, he burned with a rage that made him want to destroy everything and everyone around him. On the outside, utter stillness enveloped him. With a glance, he noticed a spray of blood on the wall, muddy boot prints entering and leaving by the back door and smaller bare footed prints mixed in.
The sheriff squeezed past him, reaching under the table to retrieve a blanket which he draped over Lou’s corpse. As the bright colours swam before Matt’s eyes, a spark of recognition pulsed through him. Dropping to his knees, he grasped the corner of the blanket, thrusting it towards the sheriff like an accusation.
‘Where’s Jessie?’
‘Wasn’t she with you?’
‘No.’ Suspicion crossed his mind. ‘Stone Davies. Has anybody seen him?’
A few murmurs offered no help.
‘If we find him, we’ll find her and Lou’s killer,’ Matt opined, without hesitation or doubt.
‘What makes you so sure?’ the sheriff asked.
Matt checked his gun. In his mind the stupidity of the question defied an answer. Or maybe the sheriff was in on it. No. That was his frustration talking. He needed to calm down, think straight.
‘I said, what makes you so sure?’
Matt concentrated on his weapon, struggling to contain his agitation as his hand shook. ‘You heard about the run in I had with him today?’
The sheriff nodded.
‘Then you know he wanted her. Tonight, at Hank McCreedy’s game, he was riding me with filthy hints and accusations about her.’
‘A few words don’t make a man guilty of kidnapping and murder.’
Matt pointed to the confusion of prints on the wooden floor. ‘Maybe this’ll help to convince you. One set of boots come in, one set goes out.’ He gestured to the smaller prints. ‘Here, bare feet. I don’t see them leave. To me, that means she’s still here, or she was carried out. Do you see her?’
The sheriff scowled. ‘What makes you think they’re her prints?’
A sigh punctuated Matt’s impatience. Why the hell was he even bothering to try and explain to this imbecile when he couldn’t see what was right before his face? Obviously the sheriff would sooner be sitting in his office with his feet on his desk and his hat pulled low than actually earning his forty dollars a month.
‘Forget it.’ Matt rammed his gun into its holster. ‘I’ll find her.’
‘All I’m saying is—’
‘He’s right, Sheriff.’
Matt didn’t need to turn around to recognize Jethro’s drawl or to know that a space had cleared around them.
‘Stone came for the girl and he took her. This man probably just got in the way.’
The sheriff’s mistrust was evident as he peered past Matt’s shoulder and frowned. ‘I thought Stone Davies was your nephew. It seems strange you’d be helping Lomew lay the blame on him.’
Jethro shrugged non-committally.
‘All right, assuming you’re on the level, what makes you so sure?’
Dropping to his haunches, Jethro drew a circle in the muddy tracks. ‘See this?’
Matt and the sheriff leaned in closer, both nodding at the thin line Jethro pointed to in a bare heel print.
‘Glass. When the girl was three years old, she stepped on a broken bottle. That’s the scar. Now, like Lomew said, you find Stone and you’ll find her … and knowing my nephew like I do, you don’t have a lot of time.’
A few people in the group crowding in behind them started whispering and a woman started to cry. Seeming to thaw a little, the sheriff continued to stare thoughtfully at the evidence. Beneath his calm exterior, Matt’s curiosity escalated. How could Jethro know about a scar on Jessie’s foot, and if what he said was true, how did he know how it got there? He left the questions unasked, willing to buy into Jethro’s story if it meant the sheriff would act.
‘Now do you believe me?’ he asked.
‘I never doubted you, Mr Lomew, but I’m the law and I have to follow the evidence.’ He switched his attention to Jethro. ‘You seem to know quite a bit about what might have happened here, makes me wonder if you didn’t have some part in it.’
A slight twitch around the eyes was the only sign that Jethro resented the accusation. ‘I was with Lomew when it happened. We were outside the Big Nugget when we heard the shots.’
‘Convenient the way you kept me talking,’ Matt said, thoughtfully. ‘Makes me wonder if the sheriff might not be right about you and Stone planning this all along. Maybe taking Jessie is just part of your plan to kill me.’
‘I thought you had more brains than that, but if that’s how you feel. …’
Jethro turned to walk away but Matt jabbed him in the stomach with his cane, driving him back against the wall before bringing the stick up across Jethro’s chest and pinning him with the full weight of his body. ‘Where is she, Jethro? Where’s he taken her?’
Jethro’s eyes twinkled. ‘You want to let me go before you do something you regret.’
‘If he hurts her …’ Matt leaned in closer. ‘I’ll—’
Matt felt his legs kicked from under him and then he was on his back, Jethro’s knee wedged across his throat and his own .45 pressed against his cheek.
‘You’re weak, Matt. You can’t protect her if you’re weak.’
A gun muzzle appeared at Jethro’s temple. ‘Let him up, Davies,’ the sheriff said, cocking his six-shooter.
Jethro grinned and stood up as if his actions had been nothing more than a friendly tussle. For a moment he hung onto Matt’s Colt, weighing it in his hand before hanging it from his finger and handing it back to him. After Matt took it and slipped it in its holster, Jethro held out his hand.
‘You need my help if you want to see the girl alive again, so swallow your pride and take my hand. I won’t offer it a second time.’
Matt looked long and hard into the face of the man who only hours earlier had promised to kill him, had publicly beaten him and whose reputation alone as a cold-blooded killer could instil fear in the most vicious outlaw. A man who had seemed to revel in pouring scorn on a nephew no less dangerous and certainly more volatile than himself.
With a bad feeling gnawing at the pit of his stomach, he grasped Jethro’s arm and hauled himself up. ‘Don’t think this means I trust you.’
‘Good. You shouldn’t.�
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Matt’s jaw crackled as he ground his teeth against a swell of doubt. ‘We’re wasting time. Sheriff?’
The lawman hesitated, but with the crowd moving restlessly and two men arming up for a fight, possibly with each other, he seemed disinclined to argue any further.
‘Well, you boys seem to have a plan, unlikely as that seems to me.’ He pushed past them, towards the hallway and into the restless crowd. ‘Anyone who wants to join the search, make yourself decent and meet me in front of the hotel in five minutes.’
Matt started to follow but changed his mind and instead headed for the back door. Jethro followed on his heels like a noon shadow. As Matt yanked open the door, they braced against a torrent of rain that swept in on a fierce gust of wind.
‘Hell of a night for playing find the needle in the haystack,’ Jethro commented.
Matt turned up his collar and faced into the darkness. ‘If you want to change your mind, that’s up to you. Just don’t get in my way.’
CHAPTER 9
Half an hour later, Matt met up with Jethro in the middle of Main Street.
‘Did you find anything?’ Matt asked.
‘Nothing. The woman who runs the boarding-house where we’ve been staying said she hasn’t seen him, and reminded me we owed her four nights’ rent. The sheriff’s still there, keeping an eye on the place. You?’
Matt shook his head. ‘I went to the livery stable and nobody’s ridden in or out of town since last night so far as I can tell. I ran into the owner of the general store and some of the others on the way here, they’ve been checking anywhere a man might hide and there’s no trace. Nobody’s seen hide nor hair of him or Jessie. It’s like they just fell off the face of the earth.’
Matt didn’t want to admit it, but the situation didn’t look good. If Stone’s own blood-kin couldn’t find him, what chance did the rest of them have? Unless Jethro was playing them. Even if he was, the sheriff had sent men to watch all the routes out of town from north to south, east and west, although in truth a man could ride out almost unseen if he wanted to risk it. With dawn still an hour away, even if he did leave a trail it would be impossible to track him until then.
‘I’ll keep looking. If he’s in town, I’ll find him,’ Jethro said. ‘If he isn’t, you can hunt him down until you do.’
Matt couldn’t help but try to satisfy a question that had been burning through his mind like a brand. ‘I thought you Davieses were meant to be close as ticks on a dog?’
Jethro nodded, his attention focused more on the street than Matt.
‘Then why are you helping me track down Stone?’
‘Let’s just say there’s blood and then there’s blood.’
It didn’t make any sense, and with the whiskey wearing off, Matt’s patience was wearing thin. He turned away, too quickly, only Jethro’s hand gripping him by the elbow keeping him upright as he struggled to keep his balance in the sucking mud. Angrily, he snatched free. ‘I don’t need your help.’
Jethro’s eyes narrowed as he looked him up and down and he seemed to hesitate. ‘I didn’t have anything to do with that trouble you had in Silver Springs. I hear Stone put three bullets in you.’
‘Four,’ Matt said, drily.
‘Sounds like Stone. He’s like his pa. No finesse. Still, when a man lives through a thing like that, it must take a lot out of him. Maybe you should take the weight off for a minute or two. You won’t be any good to the girl if—’
‘Don’t waste your concern on me, I’m fine.’ It was a lie but pride wouldn’t let Matt admit to the pain gnawing at his back and sapping the strength from his legs. He would like nothing more than to give in to it, but he couldn’t. ‘You just worry about finding Stone before I do.’
‘Have it your own way, but it wouldn’t do any harm to check she isn’t back at the hotel.’
Matt’s frustration with the easy way Jethro read him, simmered close to boiling, but he kept it below the surface. After all, for whatever reason, Jethro appeared to be trying to help him find Jessie. Matt couldn’t help wondering about that, his silence rebuilding the tension between them as he half turned to leave. One thing was sure, whatever Jethro’s plans were, they didn’t include saying more than he needed to. And if he was on the level, they probably didn’t include Jessie being taken by Stone either. If nothing else, Jethro was a straight shooter and Matt counted on that as he maintained a nerve-racking silence. Whatever thoughts were crossing Jethro’s mind, nothing showed on his face as he matched Matt’s stare with one of mild amusement before turning away and heading off into the night.
Back at the hotel, Matt could still picture that secretive little smile that said Jethro had at least one ace up his sleeve. Slamming the door shut behind him, he kept his focus on the street as he drank a long measure of laudanum. It was something he tried not to do, but his back felt close to breaking and his legs trembled with each step. Until he found Jessie, he couldn’t afford the luxury of weakness. He remembered again what the doctor in Silver Springs had told him as he mounted the stage to leave.
‘You know you should still be taking it easy. It isn’t just about the skin healing. Bullets tear up your insides and—’
‘I know, Doc. Plenty of rest.’
Matt corked the bottle and slipped it back deep inside his saddle-bag. He would consider the advice some other time. Right now, he needed to find Jessie. If anything happened to her, nothing else would matter anyway. The realization stopped him in his tracks. He had been right when he said she clouded his judgement, but hadn’t she always?
He slipped his gun from its holster, checking the chambers. For a moment, he hesitated before sliding it home again, the same feelings of doubt he had experienced earlier creeping back into his thoughts. A reputation based on a quick draw and a few fancy tricks was all well and good, but he had sworn a long time ago never to take another man’s life. Would he have the guts to do it now? Was he fast enough to take Jethro Davies down when the time came?
Turning away from the window, he reached into his saddle-bag and withdrew another Colt, older and scarred, but nonetheless clean and loaded. This one, he tucked into the back of his pants before a rapid tap at the door made him freeze.
‘It’s Jethro. You better come quick. The sheriff’s got Stone pinned down at the boarding-house.’
Jethro staggered back as the door swung open.
‘You said he wasn’t there,’ Matt said, unable to hide the accusation. ‘Is Jessie with him?’
‘We don’t know.’
Matt grabbed his coat and hat off the bed, putting them on as they ran through the hotel and out into the street. The wind that had tickled his neck earlier, battered him now, like invisible hands trying to hold him back, but he forced against it and headed towards the sunrise. Sunrise? That couldn’t be right, and there was a distinct smell of smoke on the air.
He arrived at the boarding-house a few steps behind Jethro, breathing hard. Men including the patrons of the saloon next door had formed a ragged bucket line but already flames engulfed the first floor of the lodgings. Dangerous red embers hissed into the night, forcing back anyone foolhardy enough to challenge them.
‘Is he in there?’ Matt gasped out, avoiding the real question as he leaned on the sheriff for support. He hated his cane, but he could do with it now as his body threatened to buckle.
The sheriff looked at him sideways. ‘Nobody saw him come out. That feller Brown who owns the store managed to get in before the fire took hold.’ The sheriff shook his head. ‘I think I saw him come out. I’ve been too busy trying to put these flames out to notice much else.’ He stepped back as a fiery splinter arced towards his feet. ‘Jesus!’
Any other time, Matt might have laughed at the sheriff’s self-important incompetence but a question hotter than the fire burned on the tip of his tongue. ‘What about Jessie?’
The sheriff swallowed a few times, his eyes bulging as his attention fastened on the scene before them. While they stood and watched, w
indows exploded as the heat intensified, leaving smoke blackened and fire singed curtains to billow forlornly into the night. Within seconds the intensity of the heat had already caused the paint around the frames to blister and the sound of wood splintering punctuated the cries of the frantic townspeople.
The sheriff shouted a few instructions to the bucket line to wet down the buildings either side of the boarding-house. When nobody seemed to take any notice, he started forward, trying to resist Matt who held him back.
‘Has anyone seen Jessie yet?’
‘We’re not sure,’ he said with obvious reluctance. ‘It-it could have been her. It could have been anyone.’
‘Where?’ Despite the searing heat, foreboding chilled Matt to the bone.
‘At one of the upstairs windows, before the fire took hold.’
Now it was Matt’s turn to break for the house. This time the sheriff grabbed him. ‘It could have been Mrs Donovan, the owner. No one’s seen her yet. Just let us—’
A crash turned their attention back to the flaming building. Someone was trying to kick through the door from the inside. After several attempts the scorched wood gave way and a flaming apparition barely recognizable as Brown staggered out carrying a woman over his shoulder.
By the time Matt lunged to the fore, Jethro had already tackled Brown to the ground and was rolling him and the woman in the mud. As the flames died, someone else threw wet blankets over the pair. As the stench of scorched flesh reached his nostrils, Matt pulled up short, paralysed with fear like nothing he had ever known.
Dropping onto one knee, Jethro raised his hands helplessly as Brown writhed and screamed in agony. A red-headed man Matt recognized as the town’s doctor, knelt beside the woman. Unlike Brown, she lay still, her clothes in shreds, her body blistered and sooty, her hair all but burnt away leaving behind only the charred remains of her flesh. Matt reeled as the young MD covered her over fully with the blanket. A woman started crying. Hands clutched at him as the world tilted, but he shoved them away, fighting his way back from the brink of physical and mental collapse.