He had spotted a café in the next block, so he walked down there and found that the place had a CLOSED sign in the window. Taking a chance that someone might be there, he knocked on the door anyway.
A woman answered from inside, “Go away! We’ve got the sickness here!”
“You’ve got food, don’t you?” John Henry asked. “My friends and I need something to eat, and we’ve been taking care of a sick man, so we’ve already been exposed to the fever. I can pay you . . .”
He heard a key turn in the lock, and the door opened a crack. He could see a narrow slice of a middle-aged woman’s haggard face. She asked, “You say you’re taking care of someone who’s got the fever?”
“That’s right.”
“I can’t turn you away, then, and you don’t have to pay, either. I’ve got biscuits and bacon, and I was getting some ready to send to the houses where there’s illness. Those of us who are fightin’ it have to stick together, I think. I’d be glad to share with you and your friends, especially if you’ll deliver some of those meals for me.”
John Henry summoned up a tired smile and touched a finger to the brim of his hat.
“I’d be glad to do that, ma’am. You’re right, we’ve all got to help each other as much as we can.”
The woman got a stern look on her face as she said, “Mind you, I think folks ought to stand on their own two feet most of the time. This is an emergency, though. People got to pull together to get through it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What’s your name, young man? You’re not from around here, are you?”
“John Henry Sixkiller.” He left off the part about being a deputy U.S. marshal. That didn’t amount to a hill of beans under these circumstances. “I’m from Indian Territory.”
“Well, Mr. Sixkiller, wait right here, and I’ll bring you some food. You can come back and make those deliveries after you and your friends have eaten.”
“If it’s all right with you, ma’am, I’d just as soon go ahead and take care of those chores for you. Our breakfast can wait. Folks here in Copperhead have had it bad for longer than we have.”
The woman’s weathered face creased in a smile.
“You’re a good man, Mr. Sixkiller.”
“Make it John Henry,” he said, returning the smile.
The woman who owned the café was Mrs. Smalley. Over the next three days, John Henry got to know her, her married daughter Edith Parton, who worked in the café with her, Edith’s husband, Calvin, and their children. It was Calvin who had the fever, but he was a big, strapping man who worked as the blacksmith’s assistant, and he seemed to be fighting off the sickness.
John Henry became acquainted with the blacksmith, Lon Williams, too, and several dozen other people in town as he delivered meals, milked cows, fed horses and pigs, and did anything else he could to help people get on with their lives while they fought the sickness that threatened to destroy Copperhead. He dug graves, as three more people passed away after Marshal Ledbetter. He pumped water.
Meanwhile, in the jail, Penelope sat up nearly around the clock for several days, bathing Clive Denton’s face and spooning broth from Mrs. Smalley’s kitchen into his mouth. Slowly, Denton’s condition improved, until finally one morning he was drenched in sweat, so much sweat that it soaked the bunk. John Henry and Prentice had to move him to another cell.
His fever had broken. He was still very weak and not lucid yet, but it was starting to look like he might live.
Surprisingly, as Denton began to grow stronger, Penelope offered to go with John Henry when he made his rounds of the town looking for ways to help.
“What happened to you?” Prentice asked her. “You get religion during these past few days or something?”
“None of your damned business,” she snapped. “Is it a crime to want to help people?”
“No, but it’s a crime to distribute fake money, and I’m sure you’ve crossed plenty of other lines, too. If you’re just trying to make yourself look good so you’ll get a lighter sentence once you’re convicted, I don’t think it’ll work.”
“Go to hell,” Penelope muttered. She looked at John Henry and jerked her head toward the door. “Let’s go. I’ve been shut up in here for days. I need some fresh air.”
Whatever her reason for doing it, John Henry had to admit that Penelope threw herself into the work of caring for the people of Copperhead. She had a smile for everybody, and folks seemed to perk up when she was around. She had to be exhausted. She had gotten even less sleep than John Henry and Prentice while she was taking care of Denton. Yet she kept going, as long as there was anything she could do to help someone.
As dusk settled down one evening, the two of them paused on the boardwalk. Penelope rested her hands on the railing and leaned forward as a cool breeze, laden with the scent of pines from the surrounding mountains, swept along the street. She closed her eyes and said, “Mmmm.”
John Henry leaned a shoulder on one of the posts holding up the awning over the boardwalk and asked her, “How are you feeling?”
She opened her eyes and looked over at him.
“No fever yet,” she said. “How about you?”
“Tired.” He rasped his fingers over the beard stubble on his jaw. “I could use a bath and a shave. But no fever. I reckon I’m fine.”
“How did we both manage to keep from catching it? Or did we? Has it just not shown up yet?”
John Henry shook his head and said, “I don’t know. Sickness is a funny thing. Some people just don’t catch much. I’ve barely been sick a day in my life, that I remember.” He smiled. “I guess what it comes down to is luck. Or the Good Lord taking a liking to you, if you want to think about it that way.”
She laughed and said, “It’s sure not because the innocent are being spared, or I’d have been a goner a long time ago.”
“Maybe you’re not as wicked as you seem to think you are. The past few days I’ve seen a different Penelope Smith.”
“Yeah, well, what about Prentice? He’s not sick, either. Which means that jackasses can’t catch this stuff, I guess.”
“Prentice is all right. A little full of himself, maybe.”
“You’re being too kind to him. He hates me.” She shrugged. “Maybe according to his standards, he’s got good reason to.”
Actually, over the past few days John Henry had seen Prentice looking at Penelope with a puzzled frown on his face, as if he were feeling something that he couldn’t quite figure out. He still gibed at her from time to time, but not as much as he had been doing at first. Now it was almost like a habit, rather than any real hostility directed toward the blonde.
“I’m not sure you’re right about that, either,” John Henry said.
Penelope might have argued with him some more, but at that moment something happened that neither of them expected.
In the hills to the east of town, gunfire erupted. John Henry stiffened as he heard the flat boom of pistol shots mixed with the sharper cracks of rifles.
Penelope heard the sounds, too. She straightened and stared into the gathering shadows.
“What in the world?” she muttered as the shooting continued.
“I don’t know,” John Henry said, “but if I didn’t know better I’d say that a small-scale war just broke out up there.”
Chapter Thirty-five
The two of them hurried back to the jail, which was about a block away. Nick Prentice was sitting at the desk, playing solitaire with a grubby deck of cards he’d found in one of the drawers, when John Henry and Penelope burst in. His head jerked up, and he exclaimed, “What the hell?”
“Listen,” John Henry said.
Prentice dropped the cards and came to his feet. With the door closed, he must not have been able to hear the shots, John Henry thought, but they were clearly audible now.
“Good Lord!” Prentice exclaimed. “What’s all that shooting about?”
From the cell block, Clive Denton called, “What’s all th
e commotion out there? Is that gunfire I hear?”
“Sounds to me like it’s coming from that gap Stanton and the other men from Oroville blockaded,” John Henry said. “Somebody must be trying to shoot their way out.”
Prentice let out a scornful grunt.
“Have you seen anybody in this town who’d try something like that, Sixkiller? These people are sheep. Sick sheep.”
Penelope suggested, “Maybe somebody’s trying to shoot their way in.”
“Who’d do a thing like that?” Prentice asked her.
She shrugged.
“I don’t have any idea. But it makes as much sense as somebody shooting their way out, doesn’t it?”
John Henry listened again and said, “I don’t hear the guns anymore. Whether they were trying to get in or out, either way it sounds like the fight is over.”
“So what happens now?” Prentice asked in the thick silence.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” John Henry said. “It might be a good idea to get ready for trouble, though.”
The marshal’s office had a gun rack on one wall, with two Winchesters, three shotguns, and an old Henry repeater in it. John Henry got all the weapons down and laid them on the desk, then opened the drawers in search of ammunition.
He found a couple of boxes of .44-40 cartridges for the rifles and a box of shotgun shells. He started loading them.
“Do you really think there’s going to be a fight?” Penelope asked worriedly.
“I don’t know, but whatever just happened up there in the hills, somebody was willing to start shooting, that’s for sure. I want to be prepared if they ride in here still in the same mood.”
When he had finished loading the long guns, he took a cartridge from one of the loops on his shell belt and slipped it into the empty chamber in the Colt’s cylinder where he usually carried the hammer. Prentice did the same with his .38.
Denton must have heard enough to figure out what they were doing, because he called from the cell block, “Hey, how about giving me a gun?”
“Have you lost your mind?” Prentice said. “Why would we do that, after all the times you’ve tried to kill us?”
“If there’s a gunfight, I might need to defend myself,” Denton insisted.
“If any bullets start flying around, you’d better just duck your head and pray, because you’re not getting a gun and that’s for damned sure.”
Denton continued grousing, but John Henry ignored him. He told Penelope, “The walls of this building are nice and thick. They’ll stop a slug. So if there’s trouble, you stay in here and keep your head down, too.”
“I can handle a gun, you know,” she said. “After the last few days, don’t you think I’m trustworthy?”
“You pitched in to help and did a lot of good,” John Henry admitted. “I admire you for it, too. But that doesn’t mean I’d be inclined to trust you with a gun.”
“You’d trust that Chinese girl, and her father’s one of the biggest crooks in Los Angeles! You know he’s grooming her to take over, don’t you?”
“More than likely.” John Henry smiled faintly. “But she’s a hell of a shot, too.”
“So am I,” Penelope insisted.
“You’re not getting a gun,” Prentice said. “That’s final.”
“Fine,” she snapped. “You’d better hope you don’t need me to save your lives, the both of you.”
Night was falling rapidly now. John Henry said, “I’m going to go scout around town a little. You might want to lock the door after me.”
“Be careful,” Prentice said. “You don’t know what’s out there.”
“Maybe I can find out.”
Taking one of the Winchesters, John Henry slipped out of the marshal’s office. He heard Prentice turn the key in the lock behind him. There was also a bar that could be lowered into a pair of brackets on either side of the door to make it even more secure if necessary.
Although Copperhead was still far from back to normal, more lights burned in the buildings now than had been common for the past couple of weeks. A lot of people who had been sick were recovering at last, thanks in small part to the efforts of John Henry, Penelope, and others who had pitched in to help, but mostly thanks to their own sturdy constitutions. As widespread and potent as the sickness had been, the casualties could have been a lot worse, John Henry thought as he made his way quietly along the boardwalk.
“Hsst! Mr. Sixkiller!”
John Henry recognized the voice. He looked toward the café across the street and saw Mrs. Smalley standing in the doorway. She beckoned for him to come over.
He did so, looking both directions along the street before he stepped out. He didn’t see anyone moving around.
“What is it, Mrs. Smalley?” he asked as he stepped up onto the boardwalk in front of the café.
“We heard a lot of shooting a little while ago,” the woman said. “Is there going to be trouble?”
“I don’t know,” John Henry replied honestly. “That’s why I’m out taking a look around. What you should do is stay inside, and keep your family inside, too, just in case.”
“Calvin’s gettin’ a mite restless,” she said, referring to her burly son-in-law, who was recuperating from the fever. “Now that he feels better, he wants to be out and about again. He said to tell you that if you need any help, you can count on him. He’s got an old cap-and-ball pistol that belonged to his pa.”
“I appreciate that, ma’am. I’m hoping it won’t come to that.”
Mrs. Smalley regarded him shrewdly and said, “You’re some sort of lawman, aren’t you, Mr. Sixkiller? Or a military officer? I can tell.”
He smiled and told her, “I’m a deputy U.S. marshal. Would’ve told you before now, but with so many people sick and all, it didn’t really seem to matter what any of us do for a living.”
“That’s the truth,” she agreed. “Just remember, Marshal, if you need help, there’s plenty of good folks in Copperhead who’ll give you a hand if they can.”
John Henry nodded and said, “Yes, ma’am, I’ll remember. For now, just go on back inside, lock your door, and lay low.”
“You be careful,” she told him as she eased the door closed.
John Henry moved along the street, thinking that it would be a good idea to warn as many of the other citizens as he could to keep their heads down for a while. There hadn’t been any more shooting. If trouble was on its way to Copperhead, it ought to be here soon, he told himself.
Several minutes went by while he stopped at a few more places along the street and told the people whose acquaintance he had made to stay inside and keep their heads down in case of trouble. He was about to turn around and head back to the marshal’s office when he heard a familiar sound drifting through the evening air.
Hoofbeats—a lot of them—approaching the settlement from the east.
John Henry stiffened as he remembered what Baird Stanton had said about wishing he could burn Copperhead to the ground. Had the mine owner decided to risk that drastic move anyway? Maybe some of his men had had second thoughts and tried to stop Stanton from carrying out that wanton destruction. That would explain the gunfire, John Henry thought.
Although to be honest, the shooting had sounded like more than a skirmish among the members of the group that had blocked the road. John Henry wouldn’t have thought there would be that many guns up there.
He had a hunch he was about to find out the reason for the violence, because a big bunch of riders was closing in on Copperhead. John Henry turned and trotted into an alley, drawing back as far as he could into the shadows. He wanted to find out what was going on here before revealing his presence.
He didn’t have long to wait. The riders swept into town, close to forty strong, John Henry estimated. He couldn’t see them very well. Even though lights were burning in some of the windows, the glow didn’t really reach that far into the street. All he could make out was a dark mass of mounted men.
The one who was
in the lead held up a hand to signal a halt. He wore a flat-crowned, narrow-brimmed beaver hat of the sort that had been stylish several decades earlier. John Henry couldn’t see the man’s face.
The leader turned his horse toward the others and called in a voice that was obviously used to giving orders, “Spread out! Search the whole town if you have to, but find my daughter and bring her to me!”
Daughter? John Henry thought. Whose daughter? The leader of this bunch wasn’t Baird Stanton; John Henry was certain of that. Stanton sounded like a westerner. This man had an eastern accent of some sort.
Baffled, John Henry remained in the shadows and watched as the men began to dismount and fan out. As they walked through patches of light, he got a better look at some of them, and he didn’t like what he saw. They were heavily armed, hard-faced men of a sort he had encountered before. He knew hired killers when he saw them.
This bunch must have approached Copperhead along the road from the east, and when Stanton and his men tried to stop them, gunplay had broken out. The fact that these strangers were here now told John Henry that they had won the fight.
He wondered if Stanton and the other men from Oroville had been wiped out.
Then he put that question out of his mind, because the leader had swung down from his saddle and stepped up onto the boardwalk across the street to light a cigar. A match rasped into life, and as the stranger held the flame to the end of his cheroot, the harsh light washed over his face.
John Henry had never seen the man before, but he recognized the description. The man was stockily built, of average height, and probably in his late forties. Curly red hair with a considerable amount of gray in it was visible under that old-fashioned beaver hat. His nose was crooked, probably from having been broken sometime in the past. His beefy face had two scars on it, one over his left eye and a longer, thinner scar on the right side of his jaw.
John Henry saw all that in the brief moment that the match illuminated the man’s face, and he knew without any doubt that he was looking at Ignatius O’Reilly.
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