It was a struggle to keep his nerves under control, but Severs managed. “Well, if that’s the truth, that’s what you need to tell the judge and jury.”
“But it ain’t the truth and you know it!” Carhart took a step forward. The shotgun barrels shook a little, making Severs’s nerves draw even tighter. “I’ve fought rustlers and Injuns in my time. I’ve been caught out on the range in a blizzard that damn near froze the life outta me. You really think I’m afraid o’ gutter trash like you and your friends?”
“I wish you’d put that shotgun down. There’s no need for anybody to get hurt here—”
“You threatened to kill me!” Carhart interrupted.
“If I pull the trigger on you right here and now, it ain’t nothin’ but self-defense. And that’s just what I’m gonna do!”
Severs saw the old-timer’s finger whiten on the first trigger. He dived to the floor, knowing it probably wouldn’t save him, but it was all he could do.
* * *
Miguel hurried across the street.
As he came closer, he heard the angry voices inside. The rising pitch of Carhart’s voice told Miguel the saddle maker was about to do something desperate. Miguel could think of only one thing that could be.
He lunged through the doorway, reached over Carhart’s shoulder, grabbed the shotgun’s barrels, and yanked them up toward the ceiling just as the old-timer pulled one of the triggers.
The report slammed against Miguel’s ears like fists. The shotgun’s recoil almost wrenched it out of his grip, but he held on pulling the weapon away from Carhart at the same time his shoulder rammed into the old man’s back and knocked him off his feet.
As Carhart fell to the floor, Miguel caught a flicker of movement from the corner of his right eye and wheeled in that direction. Three of Pete McLaren’s friends coming up from chairs at a table.
All of them were trying to draw their guns.
* * *
Sitting across from Fontana in the Melodian, Chance was enjoying their conversation and wanted to reassure her. “Nobody minded the hymns, you know. In fact, they probably provided some comfort for folks.”
“Well, I hope so. I know everybody’s upset—” She stopped short and lifted her head as a dull boom came from somewhere in town.
Everybody else in the saloon heard it, too, and once again conversations lurched to a halt. Chance was already on his feet.
“Was that—?”
“Sounded like a shotgun.” He hurried to the batwings, slapped them aside, and disappeared into the night.
* * *
With one hand wrapped around the shotgun’s barrels, Miguel slapped his other hand on the breech and found the triggers. “Hold it!” he called, leveling the scattergun at the three men who stood close together. If he fired the other barrel, the buckshot would blow all three of them to hell.
“Don’t shoot, Deputy!” another voice said urgently from under a table.
Miguel flicked a glance toward it, saw Perry Severs lying on the floor.
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” Severs went on. “That loco old man tried to kill me!”
Miguel’s nerves crawled. With Severs in front of him and the other three off to the side, they sort of had him whipsawed. He couldn’t point the shotgun in two directions at once. The remaining barrel was enough to dispose of one threat, but could he drop the empty shotgun and haul out his revolver before whoever was left got lead in him?
Of course, the one who’d been about to do the shooting was Royal Carhart, Miguel reminded himself, not any of McLaren’s friends. None of the men at the table had cleared leather, and their guns were all back in their holsters. They stood with their hands held clear of the weapons. Severs wasn’t trying to draw, either.
Miguel told him, “Get up. And then somebody tell me what’s going on here.”
Severs climbed to his feet and dusted himself off. “I already told you. Carhart tried to kill me.”
Holding the shotgun in his right hand, Miguel reached down with his left, closed it around Carhart’s stringy upper right arm, and pulled the saddle maker up. “What were you doing, Mr. Carhart?”
Severs sneered. “Him, you talk to with respect.”
“He’s earned the benefit of the doubt,” Miguel snapped. He turned his attention back to Carhart. “I want to know what this is about.”
Seeming a little dazed by the collision and the fall, Carhart pointed a trembling finger at Severs. “Him! He come in my shop and threatened me! Said if I didn’t change my story about McLaren shootin’ Marshal Dixon and the girl, somethin’ bad ’d happen to me.”
“That’s a damned lie!” Severs said.
Miguel didn’t doubt for a second that Severs was capable of such a thing. All of McLaren’s friends were.
Anger burned inside Miguel. “Did you go to Mr. Carhart’s shop today?”
“Yeah, Lew and me stopped in there. I was thinking about buying a new saddle.”
“He never said nothin’ about that!” Carhart put in.
“While we were there, I asked the old man if he was sure about what he saw. You know, he might have bad eyes at his age.”
“He wasn’t askin’!” Carhart raged. “He was threatenin’ me, I tell you!”
Severs shook his head. “I never did any such thing. He must’ve misunderstood what I was saying. You know . . .” He tapped a forefinger against the side of his head.
Carhart would have charged the younger man if Miguel hadn’t had a good grip on his arm.
As he held Carhart back, he asked, “Was anybody else in there at the time?”
Carhart scowled and licked his lips. “No, I don’t reckon there was.”
“Then it’s just your word against his, Mr. Carhart. You can’t prove Severs threatened you.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“It’s not a matter of believing you. It’s a matter of proof.”
Carhart stared at Miguel in disbelief. “You ain’t gonna arrest him?”
Severs said, “If anybody’s arrested, it ought to be that crazy old-timer. In fact, I think I’ll charge him with attempted murder.”
Miguel jerked his head at the hole in the ceiling where the load of buckshot had gone. “He didn’t shoot at you.”
“Only because you grabbed his gun!”
“Then I prevented an attempted murder,” Miguel said coolly. “I’m not arresting Mr. Carhart, and I doubt if you can talk Judge Ordway into signing a warrant against him, either.”
“That’s the kind of crooked law we’ve got in this town,” Severs grumbled.
“You anxious to pay another fine for disturbing the peace? If you are, just keep running your mouth, Severs.” Miguel turned to the old saddle maker. “You go on back home, Mr. Carhart.”
“But don’t you understand?” Carhart pleaded. “If he done that to me, there’s no tellin’ how he might threaten the other folks who saw McLaren kill the marshal!”
From behind Miguel, Chance Jensen asked, “Everything all right here?”
Miguel glanced around and saw the young man standing in the doorway, gun in hand.
“Fine. Nobody hurt. Chance, do you think you could take Mr. Carhart on back to his house?”
“Sure, but I don’t know where it is.”
“He’ll tell you.” Miguel urged Carhart toward Chance, who put a hand on the old-timer’s shoulder to steer him out of the cantina.
Miguel turned back toward Severs, who had drifted back over to the table to join his friends. “I’m going to talk to the other witnesses, Severs. If I find out you’ve been trying to intimidate them, I’ll be looking for you.”
“You won’t have any trouble finding me,” Severs replied with a sneer. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“We’ll see about that.” Miguel kept the shotgun cradled in his hands as he backed out of the cantina, rather than giving Severs and the others too tempting a target.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ace, Chance, and Miguel satin the
marshal’s office the next morning, along with Judge Alfred Ordway and the local prosecutor, Timothy Buchanan. Earlier, the bells in the steeples of the town’s four churches had rung, calling the faithful to worship. Normally, Ordway and Buchanan would have been at the Baptist and Methodist churches, respectively, and Miguel would have attended mass at the Catholic church.
On that Sunday morning, however, they had pressing matters to discuss.
“Royal Carhart’s not going to change his testimony,” Miguel reported to Ordway and Buchanan, “but I’m not sure about some of the others. There’s no telling how many of them McLaren’s friends threatened, or how they’ll react to those threats.”
“You believe Mr. Carhart’s story, then?” Buchanan asked.
“About Perry Severs and Lew Merritt trying to intimidate him?” Miguel nodded. “I sure do. He wouldn’t have any reason to lie about it, and I don’t believe he just made a mistake like Severs tried to claim. Mr. Carhart’s too sharp for that.”
Judge Ordway nodded. “Yes, I’ve known the man for years. I agree with you, Marshal.”
Ace saw the look in Miguel’s eyes at the judge’s statement and figured he still wasn’t used to being called Marshal. That would take some getting used to, all right.
“If all the witnesses change their story, or even if most of them do, it could ruin our case,” Buchanan fretted.
Ordway got to his feet. “I should leave. I’m supposed to be impartial, so I shouldn’t be privy to this discussion.”
“I’m sorry, Your Honor,” Miguel said. “I shouldn’t have asked you to stop by this morning. I see that now. I just value your advice.”
“And I appreciate that, my boy. But things should be done properly if they’re to be done at all. We’re not Texans, you know. We still have some respect for the rule of law here in New Mexico Territory.”
Ace wasn’t sure what the judge meant by that, unless he was referring to the fact that the Texans Ace had met in the past had a tendency to bend the rules if necessary to get the right things done. It wasn’t necessarily a bad quality.
Ordway put his hat on and left the marshal’s office.
Buchanan said, “Marshal, I want you to speak to everyone who saw Pete McLaren commit those murders and make sure they’re still prepared to swear to the truth in court.”
Miguel nodded. “I’ll do that after church is over. I reckon that’ll ruin a nice Sunday afternoon for some of them, but it can’t be helped. We have to know what sort of problems we’re facing.”
“That’s absolutely right.” Buchanan picked up his hat from the desk. “Keep me informed.” He left the office, too.
Miguel sighed and sank down in the swivel chair behind the desk.
Ace picked up one of the ladder-back chairs, turned it around, and straddled it. “Chance and I can continue guarding the place. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“I appreciate it. It’s a good thing you fellas came along when you did.”
Chance said, “I’m not so sure about that. This whole thing sort of started with the ruckus in the saloon between us and McLaren’s bunch. If that hadn’t happened, McLaren and his friends wouldn’t have jumped us later, José wouldn’t have gotten shot, and McLaren wouldn’t have been locked up so he could try to escape.”
Miguel looked at him for a moment and then shook his head. “We don’t know how it would have worked out. You can’t tell about things like that. But I know one thing. Sooner or later there was going to be a showdown with McLaren. He’s been spoiling for it for a long time. I suppose he wants to get out of that long, ugly shadow his brother cast around here and be notorious in his own right.”
“I’d say he made it,” Ace said. “He’ll be remembered for a long time.”
“Especially if he hangs,” Chance added.
* * *
By that evening, Miguel had talked to all the witnesses again. Ace and Chance had taken turns getting some sleep, but they were both in the marshal’s office when Miguel came in to relieve them for supper.
“What did you find out?” Ace asked. “Do you still have plenty of testimony against McLaren lined up?”
“Seems like it, but I wish I knew for sure.” Miguel sighed. “People have heard about what happened at José’s last night. There’s a feeling of nervousness all around town. Nobody knows what Severs and the others are capable of, but they’re afraid it’s not good. The witnesses themselves all told me nothing has changed, but some of them were jumpy as cats. I don’t reckon we can be absolutely sure what they’re going to testify to until the time comes.”
“But you saw McLaren shoot Marshal Dixon and the Redding girl,” Chance pointed out. “By itself, that ought to be enough to convict him, even if everybody else backs out.”
“I hope so. Solomon Horton’s a mighty tricky lawyer, though. No telling what he might have up his sleeve.”
Ace said, “One of us will stay here with you while the other goes and gets something to eat.”
“That’s not necessary,” Miguel said with a shake of his head. “I’ll be all right.”
Ace frowned. “We’ve had at least two men here and sometimes three the whole time.”
“No, go ahead, both of you,” Miguel insisted.
Ace looked over at his brother. Chance shrugged. They could see that arguing wasn’t going to do any good.
“The café’s not far off,” Ace said. “If there’s any trouble, we can be back here in a hurry.”
Miguel smiled faintly. “If you hear any guns going off, you’ll know to come a-runnin’.”
The Jensen brothers left the office. Ace heard Miguel bar the door behind them. More than likely, he would be fine while they were gone. The building was quite sturdy, and McLaren’s four friends weren’t really a big enough force to break him out by assaulting the place.
A lynch mob might have been more of a threat, but there had been no talk about that. The citizens of Lone Pine wanted Pete McLaren to hang, but they wanted the sentence to be carried out legally.
Ace and Chance were crossing the street toward the café when Ace spotted Lee and Meredith Emory approaching along the opposite boardwalk. The brother and sister newspaper publishers paused just outside the café door and waited for Ace and Chance to join them.
“Good evening, Jensens,” Emory greeted them. “We saw you leave the marshal’s office just now. Is everything still all right over there?”
“It’s fine.” Ace pinched the brim of his hat as he nodded to Meredith. “Evening, Miss Emory.”
“Mr. Jensen.” Her voice was bland and noncommittal, but Ace saw a friendly light shining in her eyes.
“If you’re going into the café, why don’t you join us?” Emory suggested. “Having Mrs. Hilfstrom’s pot roast for Sunday supper is sort of a tradition for us.”
“Sounds good,” Chance said. “Based on what we’ve had so far, she’s a fine cook.”
“You’ll find the pot roast equally delicious,” Meredith said.
The four of them went inside and took seats at one of the tables covered with a blue-checked cloth.
As one of the Hilfstrom girls brought coffee for everyone, Emory told her, “We’ll all have the pot roast and fixin’s.”
When the waitress was gone, Emory said to Ace and Chance, “I’ve heard rumors Marshal Soriano is concerned about the testimony in the trial tomorrow. Is that true?”
“Are you asking as a newspaperman or a concerned citizen?” Ace said.
Emory smiled. “Can’t I be both?”
Ace didn’t know how much Miguel would want him to reveal, so he said, “As far as I know, everything’s still the same as it was yesterday.”
“Sol Horton asked Judge Ordway for a delay, you know. He said since it was a murder trial instead of attempted murder, he needed more time. The judge denied the request. Trial is set for tomorrow morning at nine o’clock, just like it was before.”
Ace and Chance already knew that, having been told as much by Timothy Buchanan e
arlier in the day.
Ace said, “Better to go ahead and get it over with, I suppose.”
“But is that fair to McLaren?”
Meredith said, “It wasn’t exactly fair that McLaren shot down the marshal and that poor girl, was it?” Her tone was rather crisp and cool.
Emory chuckled. “I’m merely playing the devil’s advocate, dear. Sometimes as a journalist, you have to do that.”
“I was raised with the smell of printer’s ink, too, you know.”
“Of course. I’d stack up your journalistic skills against anyone’s, my own included. For what it’s worth, I think McLaren is guilty as sin and ought to hang, but I won’t print that in the newspaper.”
“Not even as an editorial?” Ace asked.
“I don’t think it’s necessary,” Emory said. “The trial will be open and shut, and the verdict is a foregone conclusion.”
Ace hoped the newspaperman was right. If anything happened that allowed Pete McLaren to escape justice . . . well, that might be enough to make Lone Pine explode.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Even though Ace wouldn’t have been surprised to see something happen overnight, things remained quiet. The next morning, when he took Pete McLaren’s breakfast into the cell block, he saw the worry on the prisoner’s face.
McLaren expected that his friends would have tried to get him out of there already. He tried to put up a brave front, but Ace saw the fear lurking in his eyes. It was the fear of a hang rope. Considering what McLaren had done, he was perfectly justified in feeling that way.
Ace passed the tray through the slot. “We’ll be taking you to court in a little while, but you’ll have plenty of time to eat your breakfast.”
“You’re making a big mistake,” McLaren said.
“No, it’s only a little after eight o’clock—”
“I mean about putting me on trial.” McLaren’s mouth twisted in a snarl as he interrupted. “You and that greaser deputy and that addlepated old judge and everybody else who thinks they can get away with doing this. All you’re gonna accomplish is to bring hell rainin’ down on Lone Pine.”
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