Twelve Dead Men

by William W. Johnstone

  Miguel sighed. “You’re ruining my appetite here, Chance.”

  “So you’ve run into trouble with them,” Ace said, nodding slowly. “Not that you said that, of course. We’re just assuming here.”

  “Yeah, just an assumption,” Chance agreed. “But not a particularly pretty one.”

  “Yeah, if it’s like you think, it would be a pretty ugly situation,” Miguel said. “And when people get scared, they get stubborn. They don’t want to believe you when you tell them they’ll be safe . . . that the law will protect them.”

  Ace said, “I reckon they’ve seen too many times when that didn’t happen. You can’t blame people for being cautious, especially family men.”

  “There are quite a few of those on the jury, aren’t there?” Chance asked.

  “Half a dozen. More than enough.” Miguel didn’t have to explain what he meant by that.

  It only took one vote to deadlock a jury. If enough witnesses changed their stories and the case against Pete McLaren ended in a mistrial, it might be well nigh impossible to ever seat a jury in Lone Pine for a retrial. Eventually, the law would have to let McLaren go.

  He would either light a shuck out of that part of the country . . . or he would go on a rampage of revenge against the settlement that had locked him up.

  “Well, we didn’t mean to ruin your supper,” Ace said. “You go ahead and eat. Lars said whichever of his daughters brings your breakfast in the morning can pick up the tray and the bowl and the cup.”

  Miguel nodded. “Thanks, fellas. For bringing this over . . . and for everything else you’ve done to help so far.”

  “It may not be enough,” Ace warned.

  “Nobody can do more than their best. That seems to be what you boys are cut out to do.”

  “We try,” Chance said with a grin.

  They left the marshal’s office and paused outside in the street.

  “What do you want to do now?” Chance asked.

  Ace was looking down the street toward the office of the Lone Pine Sentinel, where a light was burning in the front window. “Looks like Lee and his sister are working on the paper,” he mused instead of answering Chance’s question.

  That brought a chuckle from Chance. “And you want to go give ’em a hand, don’t you? Even though you don’t know the first blasted thing about newspapers except how to read them?”

  “So what was your idea?” Ace said. “Go down to the Melodian and engage in some music appreciation?”

  “Hey, I appreciate music.”

  “You appreciate Miss Fontana Dupree.”

  “I won’t deny that. And your interest in journalism has dark hair and a nice shape.”

  “How about I see you later at the hotel?” Ace suggested.

  “Sure. But I’ll walk with you down to the newspaper office and say hello to the Emorys before I go on to the Melodian. Don’t worry. I won’t try to beat your time with Meredith. She’s a little too reserved for my taste, anyway. Blood runs a little cool, if you know what I mean.”

  “Keep a respectful tongue in your head,” Ace warned him.

  “Hey, I’m always respectful to them that deserve it,” Chance said. “I’d say Meredith and her brother do. Fine folks, if you ask me.”

  Ace couldn’t have agreed more with that.

  Side by side, they ambled toward the newspaper office.

  * * *

  Cloaked in the thick shadows of a nearby alley, Severs, Dunn, Merritt, and Russell watched the Jensen brothers walk toward them. All four men had tugged their hat brims low over their eyes and tied their bandannas over the lower halves of their faces. As disguises went, those weren’t that effective, but they were better than nothing.

  “We gonna jump ’em when they go by?” Merritt whispered.

  That had been Severs’s plan, but he was able to think on his feet and saw there might be a better idea. “It looks like they’re headed for the newspaper office. Let’s wait and see. If they go in there, we can give Emory a beating as well and bust the place up. He’s a juror, too, so that’ll be even more of a lesson to the others.”

  “Emory’s sister is pretty easy on the eyes,” Dunn said. “We might have a little fun with her, too.”

  “Don’t let it go too far,” Severs warned. “There are some things folks won’t stand for.”

  Out on the street, the Jensen brothers walked on past.

  Severs edged forward to watch as they knocked on the front door of the newspaper office and went inside. He said to his companions, “Come on. Let’s slip around to the back and give those sons of bitches a surprise.”

  * * *

  “Ace! This is a nice surprise,” Meredith said as the Jensens stepped inside. “And it’s good to see you, too, of course, Chance.”

  “I’m not staying, but my brother here has a sudden hankering to learn the newspaper business.”

  Ace cast a warning glance at Chance. “That’s not it, exactly. We just saw the light burning down here and figured it wouldn’t hurt to make sure you and your brother are doing all right.”

  “We’re fine,” Lee Emory said as he came out of the back room where the press was. He held one of the metal composing sticks used to assemble type for printing. “We were just setting some type for tomorrow’s extra.”

  “You’re putting out another paper?” Ace asked.

  “Just one sheet that will come out tomorrow afternoon, after the trial is over and Pete McLaren is found guilty. The story I’m setting up now is about what happened today in court.”

  “You’re pretty optimistic, thinking that McLaren’s going to be convicted,” Chance commented.

  Emory smiled thinly. “I have to believe that justice will triumph—” He stopped short as a noise came from the other room. “That sounded like something fell over. What in the world!” He turned and disappeared into the back room.

  Meredith started after him, saying, “Lee, do you need some—”

  Suddenly, Emory reeled back through the doorway, one hand clutching his head. Crimson welled between his fingers. He lost his balance and sprawled on the floor at Meredith’s feet as she cried out in alarm. The composing stick Emory had been carrying clattered as he dropped it.

  A masked man with cold eyes peering out from under a pulled-down hat brim stepped through the doorway and leveled a gun at Meredith, Ace, and Chance. Three more men, similarly masked, crowded through the doorway behind him.

  “Nobody move! Or there’ll be plenty of ink spilled in here. Red ink—like blood!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Defying the command not to move, Meredith dropped to her knees next to her brother and clutched at him. “Lee! Oh, my God, Lee!”

  Emory groaned and stirred slightly, but obviously the blow that had opened up a cut on his forehead had also stunned him.

  “Take it easy, little sis,” said the spokesman for the intruders. “He’ll be all right. You all will, if you listen to reason and do what we tell you.”

  Ace’s first impulse had been to slap leather as soon as he saw the masked, gun-wielding men. A glance at his brother told him Chance felt the same way, but both restrained the impulse. In the close quarters, especially with Meredith in the room, they had to avoid lead flying around.

  “What is it you want, Severs?” Ace asked, his voice taut with anger.

  Under the pulled-down hat brim, the man’s eyes widened in surprise.

  Chance said, “You didn’t think those pathetic excuses for disguises were going to fool anybody, did you? Even if your faces were completely covered up, there are four of you, and three of us are on Pete McLaren’s jury. It’s a pretty easy deduction to make.”

  “Shut up,” Severs snarled. “You sons of bitches think you’re so damn smart! Well, we’re here to teach you better!”

  Meredith looked up from where she knelt beside Emory. “My brother is hurt. He needs the doctor.”

  “You can get him when we’re done. Now stand up and back away from him, girl.”

>   Meredith clutched Emory’s shoulders. “I won’t! I won’t let you hurt him any more, either.”

  Severs ignored her for the moment and gestured with his gun at Ace and Chance. “Shuck those irons, you two,” he ordered.

  “So you can gun us down without us even putting up a fight?” Chance said. “I don’t think so.”

  Noticing Emory’s hand stealing toward the composing stick on the floor, Ace said, “You’ve overplayed your hand, Severs. You should have stopped with intimidating the witnesses and not gone after the jurors. Now you’re going to wind up behind bars with your friend McLaren.”

  Lee Emory still acted groggy, but Ace suspected the newspaperman had regained his senses enough to want to fight back. The printing tool was fairly lightweight, but it was a better weapon than nothing. Lying practically at Severs’s feet he stealthily closed his hand around the composing stick.

  Severs thrust his gun forward “Maybe it would be better if we did kill the three of you. The trial couldn’t go on with only nine jurors, now could it?” His eyes flicked toward Meredith. “It’d be a shame, though.”

  Ace knew perfectly well what the hardcase meant. They couldn’t murder the Jensen brothers and Emory without killing Meredith, too, to keep her from identifying them. Emory understood the implication as well. He acted then, lunging up from the floor and slashing at Severs’s wrist with the composing stick.

  The blow packed enough force to knock the gun toward the ceiling. Severs jerked the trigger and the revolver roared, but the bullet went high over the heads of Ace and Chance.

  Ace drove forward, lowering his shoulder and going under the gun to ram Severs backwards. They crashed into the other three men, who held their fire because Severs was in the way. A couple lost their balance, stumbling as they tried to stay on their feet.

  Chance was right behind Ace, charging into battle. He knocked aside the Colt in one gunman’s hand and slammed a fist into the hombre’s masked face. As that man wilted, Chance pivoted and lifted a foot into the belly of another man. When he doubled over in pain, Chance brought the edge of a hand down sharply on his neck, knocking him to the floor.

  Holding on to Severs’s gun wrist, Ace struggled to keep the Colt’s muzzle away from him. From the corner of his eye, he saw Emory grab hold of Meredith’s hand and tug her after him as he hustled out the front door of the newspaper office. Ace figured Emory was going for help, not running away, but the important thing was getting Meredith out of the line of fire.

  Now that she was safe, the Jensen brothers could really cut loose.

  Severs’s gun blasted again, and the bullet ripped through the calf of one of his companions. The man toppled, howling in pain. Ace dug a knee into Severs’s belly and pinned him to the floor. He slammed his fist into the man’s face, once and then again. Severs went limp and the gun slid from his fingers.

  Three of the hardcases were down, but one—the man Chance had punched first—was still on his feet and had recovered enough to lunge at Chance and try to pistol-whip him. Chance got his head out of the way of the descending gun in time, but the blow caught him on the left shoulder. Grimacing, he staggered back, his left arm hanging at his side, numb from the impact.

  With a little space between them, the man brought the gun up again and fired. Chance dived aside just in time. The slug whipped through the space he had occupied a split second earlier and shattered the office’s front window.

  Chance reached out with his right leg, hooked the toe of his boot behind the man’s calf, and jerked. With the startled yelp, the hardcase went over backwards.

  Having scrambled to his feet after knocking out Perry Severs, Ace kicked the gun out of the last man’s hand, then reached down, caught hold of the man’s shirt, and dragged him to his feet. Ace’s left fist sunk into the man’s gut, and his right looped around to crash into his jaw. The man’s head slewed to the side, his eyes rolled up in their sockets, and his knees buckled.

  Ace stepped back and let him fall.

  Three of the intruders were unconscious, and the fourth man lay on the floor whimpering as he clutched the leg Severs’s wild shot had ventilated. His gun laid on the floor beside him. Ace scooped it up, just to make sure the varmint didn’t get any ideas.

  Chance flexed the fingers of his left hand, swung that arm back and forth as he tried to get some feeling back into it, then bent over and jerked down the masks on the men who were out cold—Perry Severs, Vic Russell, and Lew Merritt, just as he and Ace expected. Larry Dunn was the one who’d been shot in the calf. Ace covered all of them with Dunn’s revolver.

  Rapid footsteps pounded on the boardwalk outside. Miguel Soriano burst through the doorway, carrying a shotgun. He stopped short, looked around the room, and then grunted. “Lee said there was bad trouble in here, but it looks like you boys have already taken care of it.”

  Already collecting the guns of the other men, Chance glanced up. “Looks like you’re gonna have some more customers for your jail, Marshal.”

  “What are the charges?”

  “Assault, for one,” Ace said. “I don’t know which of the varmints walloped Lee Emory in the head, but since they broke in here together, it seems like all of them ought to have to answer for it.”

  “And they all pointed guns at us and threatened us,” Chance added. “That’s a crime, isn’t it?”

  “It’s plenty to lock them up for.” A smile tugged at Miguel’s mouth. “And since Judge Ordway is busy with McLaren’s trial, he won’t be able to hold a hearing for them until that’s over.”

  “Meaning that the witnesses they threatened will be safe,” Ace said.

  Lee Emory stepped into the office, followed by his sister, who wore an anxious frown.

  Emory held a bloodstained rag to the cut on his head. “The witnesses and the jurors will only be safe as long as this bunch is behind bars.”

  Miguel said, “But if McLaren is convicted by the time they get out, they won’t have any reason to threaten anybody. It’ll be too late for that to work.”

  Emory shrugged. “If we rule out simple revenge on their part, I suppose that’s true.”

  Doc Bellem bustled into the office carrying his medical bag. “A fella came to fetch me, said there was an injured man down here.”

  “I sent for you, Doctor,” Meredith said. “You can see, Lee has a bad cut on his head.”

  “Let me take a look there.” Considerably shorter than Emory, Bellem went up on his toes to peer owlishly at the wound when the newspaperman took the cloth away. “Not too bad, I don’t think, once we get all that gore cleaned away. Might take two or three stitches to close it up. Come along with me, my boy.”

  “I need to work on the paper—”

  “I’ll handle that,” Meredith said briskly. “You get that head tended to.”

  Her tone left no room for argument, but Emory said, “I hate to leave you here by yourself . . .”

  “Nonsense. With these vermin locked up, no one else in Lone Pine has any reason to wish me harm.”

  Ace said, “And I can stay and help Miss Emory with the paper, if she’d like, as well as keeping an eye on the place.”

  Chance laughed. “Somehow, I’m not surprised to hear you volunteering for that job, Ace.”

  Ace glared at him for a second, while a pink tinge appeared on Meredith’s cheeks.

  “I’ll give you a hand getting these men locked up, Marshal,” Chance went on. “A juror can do that without acting improperly, can’t he?”

  “I don’t see why not. You’re a juror in a totally different case.”

  Perry Severs had started making noises and moving around a little. Chance nudged him in the side with a boot toe. “On your feet, Severs. You’re so fond of Pete McLaren, you’re gonna get to go pay him a visit.”

  On by one, Miguel and the Jensen brothers got the hardcases awake enough to stand up. They stumbled out of the newspaper office with Miguel and Chance following them. Miguel kept the shotgun pointed at the prisoners while Chance
carried two revolvers in his hands.

  That left Ace and Meredith in the office with Emory and Doc Bellem. The medico took Emory’s arm and led him toward the door. “Don’t worry about your brother, my dear,” he said over his shoulder. “He’ll be fine.”

  Once the two men were gone, Meredith looked at Ace. “I’m sure I’ll be fine here if there’s something else you’d rather be doing.”

  “There isn’t. Anyway, I’m glad to pitch in and help.”

  “With the newspaper, you mean?”

  “Sure. I’ve read plenty of them, but I don’t really know much about how they’re printed.”

  “Well, I can show you,” Meredith said. “But I warn you . . . you’re liable to get your fingers dirty.”

  He smiled. “I reckon I’ll risk it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Already asleep when Chance got back to the hotel, Ace didn’t see his brother until the next morning. He sat up in bed yawning. “You’re up bright and early.”

  Standing in front of the mirror shaving, Chance looked over his shoulder with lather still on his face and grinned. “How do you know I’m not still up?”

  “Well, I don’t, I reckon. But I’m too much of a gentleman to speculate on such things when there’s a lady involved.”

  “Fontana is some lady, all right,” Chance said as he resumed scraping stubble off his cheeks. “And for your information, I actually did come back to the hotel and get a few hours sleep. But then I woke up earlier than usual. I suppose I’m just anxious for that blasted trial to be over with. Pete McLaren’s been nothing but a thorn in our sides ever since we rode into Lone Pine.”

  “That’s true enough.” Ace swung his legs out of bed. He stood up, stretched, and yawned again.

  “Tired out from your night?” Chance asked with a chuckle.

  “Nothing improper happened.” Ace held up his hands with the fingers spread to display the dark stains on them and his palms. “I learned how to set type.”

  “A skill that might come in handy in your old age . . . assuming either of us live that long. How’s Lee?”

  “He came back to the newspaper office a while after you left. He had a bandage on his head and orders from Doc Bellem to take it easy for a few days. I suspect he won’t follow those orders very well, though. He’s like you and me . . . he’s got a trial to go to today.”