Twelve Dead Men

by William W. Johnstone

“I suppose it is. But they didn’t. They happened just the way I told Mr. Buchanan.”

  Horton spread his hands. “But you just admitted you might have been mistaken.”

  “No, sir, I didn’t. You can try to twist my words that way, but it won’t change the facts.”

  Horton looked sharply at the judge. “Objection, Your Honor! Witness is not responding to a question. His statement is irrelevant and immaterial.”

  “Overruled,” Ordway said curtly. “You opened the corral, Counselor. You can’t complain when the horses come out.”

  Horton scowled. “No further questions.”

  Ace left the witness chair and Chance took his place. They went through the process again, except Horton just growled, “No questions,” instead of cross-examining Chance. Buchanan had no further witnesses.

  Horton got to his feet, but before he could say anything, Judge Ordway pointed the gavel at him and said, “Do you plan on calling all four of those miscreants to the stand so they can spout the same pack of lies?”

  Horton looked horrified. “Your Honor, I object. That was clearly prejudicial—”

  “That’s because we all know what happened, and I’m prejudiced in favor of the truth. In the matter of the disturbing the peace charges, you can call one witness if you want, but that’s all.”

  “This is highly irregular, Your Honor.”

  “Since it’s my courtroom, I decide what’s regular or not. What say you?”

  Horton blew out an exasperated breath. “The defense calls Perry Severs.”

  The witness stumbled through an obviously contrived story about how he and his friends were just walking through the alley peacefully when they were set upon by the Jensen brothers.

  When Horton was finished with his questioning, Buchanan didn’t even stand up. He just drawled, “I don’t think there’s any need to dignify that with cross-examination, Your Honor.”

  “I agree, Counselor. In the matter of the disturbing the peace charges, I find the defendants guilty and fine them seventy-five dollars each.”

  The amount brought some mutters of surprise and disagreement from four of the defendants, but Pete McLaren himself sat in stony silence. His head moved slowly as he directed hate-filled stares at various people in the courtroom, including Marshal Dixon, Ace and Chance, the two deputies, and the prosecutor and judge. McLaren looked around even farther, toward the front row of spectators. Those townspeople abruptly fell silent as if they’d caught a rattlesnake staring at them.

  Judge Ordway looked at the other defendants. “You four are free to go once you’ve paid your fines.” He squared up some of the papers in front of him. “Now . . . as to the matter of the charge of attempted murder against Pete McLaren . . . Mr. Buchanan, call your first witness.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Marshal Hoyt Dixon took the witness chair first. In curt, efficient questions, Buchanan didn’t waste any time getting the lawman’s testimony on the record.

  Sol Horton snapped, “No questions,” when the prosecutor was done.

  Buchanan started to call José next, but Judge Ordway stopped him.

  “I would remind both counselors that this is not a trial, merely an evidentiary hearing to determine if the charge of attempted murder has merit. In the opinion of this court, it meets that standard, and I order that the defendant, Pete McLaren, be held in the Lone Pine jail pending a full trial scheduled to begin . . . let’s see. Today is Friday . . . trial will be held at nine o’clock Monday morning.”

  Horton got to his feet. “Your Honor, you’re not even going to allow me to present a defense?”

  “You can do that, Counselor . . . at the trial.” Ordway picked up the gavel and rapped it on the table. “We’re adjourned.”

  Horton clearly didn’t like it, but there was nothing he could do about it. In a surly voice, he said, “I’ll pay the fines for disturbing the peace.”

  “Pay the marshal,” Ordway said. “And don’t forget McLaren’s fine. He was convicted of that charge, too, you know.”

  Deputy Sutherland unlocked the irons on Perry Severs, Lew Merritt, Larry Dunn, and Vic Russell once Horton had paid the fines to Marshal Dixon. McLaren’s irons stayed on him, since he was going back to jail. He shuffled out through a path that cleared in the crowd, followed by the two shotgun-toting deputies.

  “Well, that part’s done,” Dixon said to Ace and Chance as the room began to clear out. “Can I count on you boys to stay around over the weekend so you can testify at the actual trial?”

  “We’re material witnesses, aren’t we?” Ace asked. “You could hold us in custody until then if you wanted to.”

  “Yeah, but your word’s good enough for me.” A smile creased the lawman’s weathered face. “Although why I ought to trust a couple fiddle-footed drifters, I ain’t sure.”

  “We’ll be here,” Ace promised.

  “You can count on that,” Chance added.

  Fontana Dupree and Hank Muller came up to them.

  Muller said, “Good work, Marshal. It’s about time Pete McLaren got what’s coming to him.”

  “Just doing my job,” Dixon said. “And a fella might take your words to mean that I ain’t been up to it until now.”

  “Oh, no, I didn’t mean that at all,” Muller said quickly. “I know you’ve got to follow the law. It’s not your fault McLaren never did anything bad enough and dumb enough to get himself locked up for good until he shot old José.”

  Fontana said to Ace and Chance, “I guess you two boys will be staying around town for a few days.”

  “We’ve already promised the marshal we would,” Chance said.

  “Good. I wouldn’t want to have to threaten you with the law, now would I?”

  “Ma’am?” Ace said.

  “I can’t have you running out on your debt.” The smile on her lips and the twinkle in her eyes as she said it took any sting out of the words.

  “Ace, we need to figure out a way to earn some money,” Chance said with a smile of his own. “I think Miss Dupree is gonna hold us to that deal.”

  “Of course I am,” she said. “Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I can’t be levelheaded about money.”

  “How are the poker games at the Melodian, Mr. Muller?” Chance asked.

  “Honest,” Muller declared. “You’re welcome to sit in on one anytime you want and see for yourself.”

  “I may just do that.”

  They all left the town hall, splitting up to go their separate ways.

  * * *

  Dolly stood a couple doors away, in an alcove where the entrance to a hardware store was located. Her face was scrubbed, she wore a plain gray dress, and her blond curls were tucked up in an old sunbonnet.

  The dress and the bonnet were remnants of a life she’d led long in the past. Not so long in years, maybe, but in miles and experience. She’d been fifteen when her folks had started out from Missouri, bound for a new life in California.

  The farm back home hadn’t been much to speak of, but it had provided them with a meager living. Her pa had the wanderlust, though, and figured he could do better elsewhere so he’d packed up his wife and five kids—two boys and two girls besides Dolly, all of them younger than her—and set off on his grand adventure.

  They had made it halfway across Kansas before the whole bunch fell sick with a fever . . . except for Dolly. She had nursed them for nigh on to a week, doing her absolute best to save their lives, but one by one they had died, until she was the only one left.

  Some men on horseback came along just as she was patting down the dirt on the last grave. They claimed to be cowboys on their way back to Texas after a drive, but it didn’t take Dolly long to figure out they were really rustlers. They offered to take her and her outfit along with them, but they sold the wagon and all the family’s possessions in the first town they came to, holed up with Dolly in a hotel where nobody asked any questions, and it was there she found out what men were really like.

  She’d gone ba
ck to Texas with them. After that, why the hell not?

  In the three years since then, she’d worked at a succession of saloons and cathouses, squirreling away what little money she made in each place until she had enough to move on. If she had stopped to think about it, she might have realized she was looking for someplace better, someplace where her life wouldn’t be so ugly and hard, but she wasn’t given to such turns of mind and somehow things always wound up the same . . . until she’d landed in Lone Pine and met Pete McLaren.

  He was just as bad as all the others in most ways—he wanted what he wanted, where and when and how he wanted it—but there were unexpected moments of tenderness, too. Dolly lived for those.

  She didn’t intend to lose them.

  That morning she’d known she had to find out what was going to happen to Pete. She’d washed her face, pulled out the old dress and bonnet, and gone to the town hall. Nobody in the crowd paid any attention to her. Probably nobody even recognized her, dressed like she was.

  Her heart had sunk when she’d heard the judge say that Pete had to stand trial. She knew the judge and the marshal and that prosecutor fellow had it in for Pete. They’d make sure he was convicted and sent to prison, no telling for how long. There was a good chance she’d never see him again.

  She couldn’t let that happen.

  As she stood in front of the hardware store watching the deputies disappear into the jail with Pete, Dolly knew she would do whatever it took to make sure they weren’t parted forever.

  * * *

  Chance took Hank Muller up on his suggestion and spent the afternoon playing poker in the Melodian. He had been raised by one of the best card players west of the Mississippi and had a natural talent for the game, to boot, so it was no surprise he was up a couple hundred dollars by the time dusk began to settle over Lone Pine. His skill at poker was the main way the brothers raised money for supplies as they drifted across the frontier.

  Ace watched his brother play for a while, standing at the bar well away from the table and nursing a beer so no one could accuse him of trying to tip Chance off to the other players’ cards. Tiring of that, he left Chance to it and walked down to the livery stable to check on their horses. He was confident Crackerjack Sawyer was taking good care of the mounts, but it never hurt to confirm that.

  “Hell sure started a-poppin’ when you two boys rode into town,” the old liveryman commented when Ace was satisfied everything was fine with the horses. “Does that happen regularlike where you fellas go?”

  “All too often,” Ace said with a sigh.

  Crackerjack nodded solemnly “I’ve seen folks like that. Trouble seems to follow ’em, when all they was lookin’ for was peace and quiet.”

  “I don’t think my brother would like it if things were too quiet. He’s got an adventurous streak in him.”

  “And you don’t, huh?”

  Ace grinned. “Nope. I’m as placid as a little lamb.”

  Crackerjack blew out a skeptical breath to show just how much he accepted that assertion.

  Ace left the stable and strolled back in the direction of the saloon. Along the way, he passed one of the general stores. The front door opened and a woman stepped out onto the boardwalk, her arms full of a stack of newspapers. Ace recognized her as Meredith Emory and stopped short just before the two of them collided. He touched a finger to the brim of his hat. “Sorry, Miss Emory. I almost didn’t see you there in time.”

  “It’s all right, Mr. Jensen,” she told him. “The fault would have been equally mine in the event of a collision. It’s a bit difficult to see over these papers, especially with the light fading the way it is.”

  “I reckon that’s the new edition?”

  “That’s right. We normally publish on Friday morning, but Lee and I held up the press run this week so he could report on what happened at the hearing.”

  “And now you’re delivering copies to the places that sell them.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I can give you a hand with that.” Ace reached for the stack of papers, intending to take them from her.

  She stepped back. “You shouldn’t. They’re fresh enough you’d get ink on your hands.”

  “It’ll wash off.”

  “Actually, no, it doesn’t.”

  “Well, it’ll wear off, then.”

  “Eventually. Maybe. You might get stains on your clothes as well.”

  “These old duds of mine, it wouldn’t matter.”

  She hesitated, then asked, “You’re going to insist, aren’t you?”

  “I just might.”

  Meredith smiled then, and Ace thought it made her look prettier than ever as he looked at her in the light that came through the store window.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Seething with anger, Pete McLaren paced back and forth in his cell like a caged animal. His brain writhed like a basket full of rattlesnakes. He was alone in the cell block and had been all day, except for when Deputy Sutherland had brought him his lunch.

  Marshal Dixon had looked through the door between the office and the cell block a couple times but hadn’t gone in or said anything to him. That hadn’t stopped McLaren from giving voice to his own frustration. He had cursed both lawmen, the judge, the prosecutor, those damned Jensen boys, and everybody else in Lone Pine. He’d cursed his brother Otis for going off to ride the owlhoot trail and leaving him behind. He’d cursed the fates that had conspired to put him behind bars, and he had cursed Severs and the others for abandoning him.

  Sol Horton had paid their fines—using money McLaren had given him—and so the four men hadn’t returned to the jail after the hearing. That was what McLaren had told the lawyer to do, so he supposed he couldn’t hold a grudge against his friends because of it. He thought they would have broken him out already, though.

  The jail wasn’t going to hold him, McLaren vowed to himself. It couldn’t. But knowing he had to have help to get out made him even angrier. He didn’t like depending on anybody else.

  Most of the light had faded from the small, barred window set high in the cell’s side wall when Sutherland stuck his head into the cell block and said, “Your supper ought to be here in a little while, McLaren. Waste o’ good grub if you ask me.” The deputy chuckled. “But nobody did, did they?”

  Thinking that Sutherland was a garrulous, grinning idiot, McLaren made no reply. He didn’t want to encourage him to talk even more. He leaned back on the bunk, resting his shoulders against the stone wall, too tired and dispirited to curse any more.

  Maybe the boys were just waiting for nightfall to bust him out, he told himself. If that was the case, it wouldn’t be long.

  He heard the front door of the marshal’s office open and close, and then a moment later a voice he hadn’t expected. It made him sit up straighter on the bunk in anticipation.

  The Dolly Redding she had once been—the immigrant girl in plain dress and bonnet—was gone. The saloon girl with painted face, provocative outfit, and curls spilling freely around her face had replaced her. Dolly had gone to work at the Melodian normally, not wanting anybody to suspect she might be up to something.

  As the afternoon waned, she’d gone to Hank Muller and told him she wasn’t feeling well. “Female trouble,” she’d said with an embarrassed smile.

  For a man with a number of women working for him, Muller was surprisingly squeamish about some things. He’d jerked his head toward the stairs and said, “That’s fine. Go on and do what you need to do.”

  She had gone upstairs, but when she’d reached the second-floor corridor, she’d slipped along it to the rear stairs and descended, stopping at the narrow door that led to a storeroom. Inside, she’d retrieved the items, hoping none of the bartenders would come along and catch her.

  Luck was with her. She’d made it out of the saloon with no one seeing her.

  The shadows were already thick enough in the alleys that she was able to make it from the Melodian to the edge of town undetected. She took a c
hance and crossed the road to work her way back to the marshal’s office and jail behind the buildings on that side.

  Reaching the squat, stone building, she eased along the side of it to the boardwalk. She stepped out into the open again where anybody on the street could see her, but she just had to hope no one would pay much attention. She carried one of the trays she normally used to deliver drinks in the saloon, and on it, covered with a cloth she had pulled up in the center, was a .36 caliber Colt Navy revolver.

  She had stolen the gun from one of her customers a couple towns ago. It was loaded when she took it, and she had never disturbed those loads. To be honest, she didn’t even know if the gun would fire, but it appeared to be in good shape, and she had kept it clean and dry. There was no reason it shouldn’t work.

  Of course, she hoped she wouldn’t need to fire it. Just the sight of it ought to be enough.

  Even with its grim burden, balancing the tray one-handed was no trouble for her. She used the other hand to open the door of the marshal’s office and stepped in confidently, just like she belonged there. A bright smile was on her face.

  Deputy Norm Sutherland looked up from the chair behind the desk and frowned in surprise. “Miss Dolly?” He knew her from the Melodian, where she had brought drinks to him many times and even sat at a table and talked with him now and then. “What’re you doin’ here?”

  “I brought the prisoner’s supper,” she said, lifting the tray a little.

  “Why, Marshal Dixon was gonna do that. He left just a little while ago to fetch it.”

  “I know,” Dolly said, thinking rapidly. “I ran into him right outside the café and he asked me if I’d bring the tray over here. He said some other errand had come up he needed to tend to.”

  “You were walkin’ around town in that getup?”

  “I just stepped out of the saloon for a few minutes to get a breath of fresh air. It gets awful smoky in there, you know.”

  “Yeah, I reckon.” Sutherland scratched his jaw, still frowning, but then he shrugged.

  Dolly knew he had accepted her story. That was why she had picked that time of day. Sutherland was near the end of his shift. He would be heading home as soon as the marshal got back to cover the office until Deputy Soriano took over in a little while. She hadn’t wanted to deal with either Dixon or Soriano. They would have been too suspicious, no matter what sort of lie she came up with.