by Abe Dancer
While they talked Jim made his way over to the podium but before he reached it Nixon broke away from Sherman, the flash of anger in both men’s eyes obvious even from some distance away. Sherman advanced a pace, but Hector Pike and Mitch Hyde, Nixon’s increasingly obvious main bodyguards, stepped in. One cold look from them made Sherman step back and desist from trying to continue whatever disagreement had been taking place.
By the time Jim reached the podium Nixon was shaking hands with well-wishers, but after a whispered word in the ear from his principal aide Walter Fenton, he moved away before everyone had been favoured with a handshake. He slipped into his office with a last cheery wave, closely followed by the hired guns.
‘Is Nixon free?’ Jim called out through the dispersing crowd to Walter.
‘He ain’t,’ Walter said, standing before the door.
‘Then when can I see him?’
‘You saw him make a speech. That’s all the seeing you will get this week.’ Walter laughed. ‘But I’m sure he’ll be free after the trial.’
With a narrowing of his eyes Jim acknowledged he’d heard the emphasis Walter had put into his reply, but that didn’t stop Walter from following Nixon into the office. Jim didn’t follow him in, figuring that with Nixon devoting the next week to campaigning, other chances would come his way soon enough.
He was about to leave and return to the back of the newspaper office when his attention was drawn again to the podium. A dozen or so people were still around, each man being slow to disperse as he enjoyed the opportunity to chat, and so, on a whim, Jim mounted the podium. His unexpected action gathered immediate interest.
‘What you doing up there, Jim?’ one man asked, smiling. ‘You making a speech too?’
‘You’re right that I ain’t a man for no fancy speechmaking,’ Jim said, then cleared his throat, ‘but as everyone else has made one, perhaps I should too. So, what Nixon said about Billy Jameson was rot. Billy ain’t no angel but he ain’t no murderer either.’
‘He shot Orson Brown,’ the nearest man said. ‘Sheriff Price saw him do it.’
‘That rumour sure spread quickly and that’s why I’m here, putting the record straight. Price reckoned Billy had a gun, but he didn’t see him fire it, and I didn’t see no gun at all. I can’t prove that and Price can’t prove his claim, so you’ll have to decide whether you believe my word or his.’
‘Ah,’ the man said, lowering his head, the comment going on to gather a few encouraging grunts from the other watching men.
‘And that’s the problem with White Ridge,’ Jim said, slapping his fist into his palm as he warmed to the task. ‘Mayor Nixon controls everything. His version of the law is the only one allowed and it stinks. Sheriff Price is again the only man standing for sheriff because only he could accept being ordered around by Nixon. Yeah, the town’s peaceful, but only for those people who agree with our mayor.’
Jim paused when the people who had been nodding before started to mutter that they disagreed with this. He thought through what he’d said and realized he’d veered away from his original intent. So, before he lost whatever support he’d gained, he decided to finish off.
‘So look for options other than voting for a ticket of Nixon and Price. A young man’s life is at stake and if you support their version of justice you’ll have Billy’s blood on your hands when I find out who really killed Orson Brown.’
With a last firm glare at the gathered men, Jim stepped down from the podium. Silence greeted him, although he judged it to be a thoughtful rather than a disapproving silence. He wended his way through the people, trying to catch anyone’s eye. Only Sherman Donner looked his way and gave him a nod of support and a silent handclap.
As he walked away, he felt relieved that he’d spoken his mind. For the last ten days his frustration had grown but the speech had helped to calm him down and perhaps suggest a possible way forward. With that in mind, he reckoned the days ahead would be sure to present him with more opportunities to attack Nixon, until the mayor agreed to speak with him.
Accordingly, when he reached the alley to go round behind the newspaper office he looked back. His gaze rose from the podium and the dispersing people to take in the mayor’s office and there in the upstairs window, Mayor Nixon was watching him.
As ever, Pike and Hyde were flanking him, both hired guns standing with their arms dangling and their hands resting against their holsters as they watched his every move.
CHAPTER 3
‘I’m not standing for mayor,’ Ronald Malone said, drawing his horse to a halt before the two riders. ‘I’ve left town and I ain’t ever coming back.’
Hyde snorted while Pike smirked. Neither men moved aside.
‘You’re right,’ Pike said. ‘You ain’t ever coming back.’
Ronald gulped, fear clawing at his belly. ‘I’m doing what Nixon asked. I’m not strutting around town like Sherman or drinking the saloon dry like Chester. If you want to threaten anyone, threaten them.’
Hyde chuckled. ‘We’ll deal with them, but we’re just making sure you keep your promise that you ain’t ever coming back.’
Hyde’s words were uttered with such finality that Ronald was tempted to swing his horse around and gallop away, even if it took him back to White Ridge, but instead he forced himself to move on.
He kept his gaze set straight ahead, not looking at either of Nixon’s hired guns as he passed. Then he kept going at a steady pace, a silent prayer on his lips that they’d let him leave with their threats being just a final warning. He’d covered fifty yards and was beginning to breathe more easily when he heard hoofbeats closing from behind.
He tried to ride on as if nothing untoward was happening, but panic plucked at his already taut nerves and he spurred his horse. It had covered only a few galloped strides when hot fire punched him in the back, pushing him forward from his mount.
He fell. Then a second shot tore into his chest and he never stopped falling.
Presently the two hired guns drew up to look down at the body.
‘Guess he ain’t ever coming back,’ Pike said.
‘That ain’t a problem,’ Hyde said. ‘He wouldn’t have voted for Nixon.’
They’d come for him, as Jim McGuire had known they would.
It’d been only a few hours since his first attempt at speech-making and after getting a taste for publicly stating his opinion, three more speeches had soon followed, each growing in confidence and each getting more critical of Nixon. The final one earlier this evening in the saloon even gathered considerable support for his opinions on the way Nixon dealt with justice in White Ridge. So Jim had expected that this meeting would come shortly afterwards, but he still stayed sitting at the table facing the door.
The Peacemaker he hadn’t fired in anger for the last nine months lay before him on the table. He had finished cleaning and oiling the weapon, a ritual he performed every night despite the resolutions he’d made.
His only acknowledgement of the man he had once been was to swing the barrel round to face the door, then to place his right hand on the table beside the gun. He waited, listening to the sounds of men dismounting outside, then pacing to the door.
A grunted conversation took place outside, the words spoken too quietly for him to hear. Then the door slowly swung open to reveal Mayor Jake Nixon. Flanking him as always were Pike and Hyde.
As they entered, all three men’s gazes took in the gun on the table before Nixon looked up to transfix Jim with his cold gaze.
‘You’re deriding me in public,’ Nixon said, coming straight to the point, then he glanced at each of his hired guns. ‘Something nobody else has dared to do.’
Jim nodded, deciding this comment meant that Nixon must be confident he could frighten off the other three candidates. In fact, he might have done that already.
‘But now that someone has,’ he said, ‘you’ll lose.’
Mayor Nixon took a short step towards him, his feigned jovial mood snapping away in an instant
.
‘As you like plain speaking, Jim McGuire, I’ll give it to you plain. You will no longer speak out against me.’
Jim leaned forward and edged his hand towards his gun, the movement being noticed by the hired guns who both twitched their hands a mite closer to their holsters.
‘Or?’
‘Or you’ll follow Ronald Malone out of town.’
Jim looked down at the gun on the table, then smiled.
‘I ain’t leaving,’ he said, keeping his tone pleasant. ‘So do you want to risk finding out whether I can pick up this gun and kill you before either of your gun-toting aides can take me out?’
Nixon considered Jim’s confident demeanour.
‘I don’t.’ Nixon widened his eyes. ‘Because I know you can do it.’
‘Then why are you threatening me?’
‘For the same reason.’ Nixon took a long pace up to the table, then slowly moved his hands to grip the edge and leaned forward to look Jim in the eye. ‘And if you stop speaking out against me, the people in this room will be the only people who’ll ever know you could do it.’
The first tremor of concern rippled through Jim’s guts but he still asked the question that Nixon wanted him to ask, and for which he was relishing the answer he would receive.
‘What do you mean?’ he said.
‘It means that six months ago a man who called himself Jim McGuire returned to his home town of White Ridge. Nobody remembered him, but despite the behaviour of the young man in his charge, he became a stalwart member of my town. But then one day he made the mistake of thinking he was so stalwart that people would listen to him.’
Jim smiled as Nixon eventually turned to the reason why he’d spoken out in the first place.
‘I only want justice for Billy Jameson. Tell Sheriff Price to find the real murderer. Then I’ll stop speaking out against you.’
‘Billy won’t escape the gallows and the reason why has nothing to do with Price or me. It’s you. Because what will everyone think when they discover that the man supporting Billy is every bit as murderous as Billy is?’ Nixon threw back his head and laughed, the sound forced and sneering. ‘Jim McGuire, formerly known as Luther Mallory, a man who, some say, was one of the finest manhunters who ever lived.’
‘The finest,’ Jim said.
Nixon acknowledged Jim’s admission of his past with a cold smile, then stood up straight.
‘Except something happened to make you hang up your gun. You changed your name, came here with young Billy Jameson, then—’
‘Then shot you to hell to stop you talking.’
Nixon shook his head. ‘You don’t think I’d come here to face you without insurance, do you? The evidence of your former life is hidden away in my lawyer’s office. If I don’t return, even that idiot Sheriff Price will be alert enough to understand its significance.’
Nixon raised his eyebrows, requesting a response, but Jim firmed his jaw and let the moment drag out before he provided the only answer he could.
‘I won’t speak out against you no more.’ Jim moved his hand away from his gun, making the hired guns relax.
Nixon pointed a firm finger at him. ‘See that you keep that promise or I’ll get the word out that you’re here. Your enemies are wondering where you went to ground, so your new life will end with you being shot to pieces by whoever will pay the most to know where you are.’
With that threat, Mayor Nixon backed away to the door. Pike and Hyde remained to posture, feigning an arrogant, unconcerned air that Jim knew they didn’t feel before they slipped outside, leaving him alone.
When he’d heard them ride away, Jim placed a hand on the gun, then spun it. He watched it turn, then slow to a halt. It stopped with the barrel pointing at the door and at the recently departed Nixon, making Jim smile.
‘Except,’ he said to himself, ‘speaking out ain’t the only way to beat you.’
‘Get up, you good-for-nothing varmints!’ Sheriff Price shouted. ‘You’ve got some good news you don’t deserve.’
Barney Dale swung his legs down from his cot and stretched while he watched the lawman make his way down the row of cells in the jailhouse, rattling the bars to ensure he had the prisoners’ attention.
‘Good news?’ the prisoner in the last cell, Billy Jameson, said. ‘I could do with some of that.’
Price stopped in front of his cell and frowned.
‘I’m afraid the good news is for everyone else, Billy.’ He turned his back on Billy and faced the other prisoners. ‘This morning you’re getting a pardon.’
Price waited with his hands raised and his expression set in a fixed grin, awaiting the enthusiastic response, but he didn’t get it.
‘That ain’t funny,’ Barney said.
‘It ain’t, because it’s true. Mayor Nixon’s ordered me to clear out the jailhouse.’ He gestured at Billy. ‘Aside from this one.’
Two of the seven prisoners whooped with delight, but the rest were as sceptical as Barney was.
‘Why?’ Barney asked, speaking for them all.
‘Because while you’ve been festering away in there, you won’t have noticed that there’s an election coming up.’ Price moved to unlock Barney’s cell. ‘I guess the mayor must be getting worried if he needs seven extra voters.’
‘He’s sure got my vote,’ one prisoner declared.
‘But not mine,’ Barney said. ‘I don’t live here.’
Price stopped with the key half-turned, making Barney gulp when he realized his mistake.
‘I’d forgotten that,’ Price said. ‘Perhaps Nixon had too.’
‘I’m just too damn honest,’ Barney grumbled. ‘That’s my trouble.’
‘You’re just too damn talkative. That’s your trouble.’ Price turned the key and swung open the cell. ‘But I’m looking forward to a peaceful week without you lot littering up my jailhouse, so if you don’t tell him you were passing through, I won’t remind him.’
Barney breathed a sigh of relief, although he still hurried out of the cell before Price changed his mind. When the other prisoners had emerged, he filed in at the back and gave the remaining prisoner a supportive thumbs-up signal, but the morose Billy ignored him.
Five minutes later the newly freed prisoners were outside and drawing their first taste of freedom into their lungs. Walter Fenton was waiting for them and, as expected, their first duty was to pay the price of that freedom.
One by one Barney’s fellow ex-prisoners lost no time in assuring Walter that they would do what was required by staying out of trouble and voting the right way at the end of the week. Barney kept back to prepare his own response, so when Walter moved on to him he put on his most trustworthy expression.
‘I’ve learned my lesson and I’ll be no trouble, no trouble at all,’ he said, holding his hat before him and running it through his fingers. ‘And I’ll vote for Nixon come next week, no trouble, no—’
‘But there is trouble,’ Walter said. ‘You don’t live here.’
‘That don’t matter to me. I like Nixon so much I’ll still vote for him.’
‘Pleased to hear it, but only registered citizens of White Ridge can vote.’ Walter paused, making Barney worry that he wouldn’t be getting the freedom that was now tantalizingly close. ‘But not to worry. On election day not everyone who wants to vote for Nixon will have the time to cast their vote, will they?’
‘They won’t,’ Barney said, judging that no other answer was required.
‘So come next week, seek me out and I’ll tell you the name of someone who can’t get to cast his vote. Then you can help him out.’ Walter reached down to the carpetbag at his feet and briefly opened it, letting Barney see that inside there were numerous large wads of bills. ‘And for your trouble, you’ll get a dollar.’
‘A dollar for five minutes’ work!’ Barney leaned forward. ‘How many times can I vote?’
CHAPTER 4
‘I’m sorry,’ Jim McGuire said, facing Billy Jameson through the cell bars in
the otherwise prisoner-free jailhouse. ‘I’m not opposing Nixon no more.’
Billy drew his legs up to his chin on his cot.
‘Is that because he’s released the other prisoners and proved you were wrong about him being too harsh?’
Jim smiled. Despite his surly and lazy manners, Billy was perceptive. The reason why Nixon had released the prisoners was the main talking point in town. Nobody was sure about his reasoning, but Billy had worked it out on his own.
‘That’s why he did it, for sure, but it won’t work when I stop campaigning for the townsfolk not to vote for Nixon, but to support Sherman Donner.’
Jim knew he was taking a risk with his response to Mayor Nixon’s threat, but it was a risk he had to take if he was to get Billy freed.
‘But Sherman also reckons I’m….’ Billy trailed off when he saw that Jim was smiling, then lowered his legs to the floor and returned a smile for the first time. ‘You’ve done a deal?’
Jim nodded. ‘It’s the way things are done in White Ridge. The price of my support for Sherman, both verbal and financial, is that when he becomes mayor he’ll review Price’s evidence. You’ll be free within the hour.’
Billy considered that information, his expression returning to its previous sombre state.
‘But Mayor Nixon has this election sewn up. Even with you supporting him how can Sherman win?’
Jim forced himself to continue smiling, not wanting Billy to spend what would be his last week in jail, one way or the other, worrying about something he couldn’t change.
‘Don’t worry, Billy. I have plenty of ideas to help Sherman. So keep that chin up for another week and then you’ll be one step closer to freedom.’
‘Or one step closer to the gallows,’ Billy murmured, looking down at the cell floor.
Then he looked up to give Jim a brief smile and nod that made Jim wish he’d been more realistic with his promises.