Deserter

by Paul Bagdon

  “How many men does he have?” Jake asked.

  “Maybe forty or so—maybe a few more. New hard-cases show up every so often, join up.”

  Jake finished his coffee. The thick dregs in the bottom of the mug made him grimace. “How many of your Night Riders are there?”

  “’Bout thirty. All good men. We didn’t really get together until a few months ago. Had to be careful about our meetings. That’s what brought Mott’s men to my place—I’d had a couple meetings there.”

  “The Riders—they fighting men?”

  Billy looked away almost sheepishly. “Any man can be a fighting man when his home an’ his family is being threatened. An’ we don’t look for pitched battles, Jake. Our plan is to snipe them sons-a-bitches, break them that way. Pick ’em off one to a time.”

  Jake nodded.

  There was sudden heat in Billy’s voice. “Don’t you go thinkin’ because the Riders ain’t gunfighters they can’t do what they need to do. I’ve known most—hell, all—of them my whole life, an’ you couldn’t find a better group of men. When they come for me they’ll end Jason Mott. If the rest of that trash don’t run then, we’ll keep right on takin’ ’em down one by one.”

  “Whoa, Billy—seems like you’re hearing something I’m not saying. I’m sure your Night Riders are a strong group of good men.”

  “You betcher ass, Jake. They are. We all of us want the same thing: We want our town back, and things back to the way they was before Mott. Once we have that, we’ll shut down the Riders. Disband, like they say in the army.”

  “I see,” Jake said, not seeing at all. They’ll gun down a band of outlaws and killers and then go back to selling ribbons and nostrums or following a mule’s ass behind a plow?

  Jake glanced down the hall before speaking. “Your men will come when you’re taken out to the gallows, then?”

  “No—they’ll be there already, in the crowd, waitin’, with their guns up under their coats.”

  “Crowd?”

  “Sure enough. A hangin’ is a big thing in these parts. Folks come from all over, bringin’ their whole families to watch. The whole town’ll turn out, too. They used to use a big oak jus’ past where the church was before it burned, but now Mott had this gallows outside put up.”

  Jake walked back to the window, looking away from his cellmate. It was difficult for him to meet Billy’s eyes, to see the confidence in them, the sure awareness that he’d walk away from the whole episode.

  “Maybe you never had friends like I have in the Night Riders,” Billy said to Jake’s back. “These boys, hell, I’d trust them with my life, Jake.”

  That’s precisely what you’re doing, Billy.

  Sometime after noon, Mott and an old fellow dressed in grimy and tattered clothes that, from the way they failed to fit him, were obviously castoffs appeared at the cell door. The sheriff’s face was grim and his hand rested on the grips of what had once been Sinclair’s Smith & Wesson .22. “Put the slops bucket up here and then stand facing the back wall,” Mott said.

  Jake carefully picked up the almost overflowing bucket, brought it to the front of the cell, and joined Billy at the wall. After Mott unlocked the door the old man shuffled forward and fetched the foul-smelling bucket. Before he turned away with it, he whispered, “Sattiday.” Jake’s head snapped around: The old coot’s hoarse whisper was loud enough for Mott to overhear. Nevertheless, the sheriff stood where he’d been, apparently unaware of the hurried and brief communication. Jake glanced over at Billy. He was standing with his face to the wall, but Sinclair could see his grin. When they heard the office door close, Jake moved closer to Billy. “Can you get a message to the Riders? We need to get you out of here, Billy—as soon as possible. Like tonight.”

  “That ol’ boy who looked like a bar rag is named Howie,” Billy said. “He’s older’n God an’ does odd jobs like swampin’ the saloons an’ such for booze money. We kinda use him to carry messages now an’ again. Howie, he whispered to me. They’re plannin’ on hangin’me Saturday. The Riders will be there.”

  “Damn it, Billy . . . look, today’s what?”

  “What what?”

  “Day of the week. I gave up trying to keep them straight a long time ago. What’s the day of the week?”

  “Today’s Thursday, Jake. Will be all the live-long day,” he added, grinning.

  “Billy,” Jake said. “This isn’t right. You’ve got to get a message to your men. Mott’s all the things you’ve said he is—but he isn’t stupid. There’s something that—”

  “Ya know,” Billy cut in, “I’m gettin’ tired of your badmouthin’the Riders. Mott ain’t stupid? Well, neither are we—an’ you can take that to the bank. Jason Mott don’t know it, but he’s gonna catch a bullet—maybe a lot more than one—Saturday morning. An’ you can take that to the bank, too, Jake.”

  Sinclair broke eye contact without speaking.

  The heat grew as the day slid languorously on, time moving like molasses in the coldest part of the winter. It was deep autumn—it shouldn’t have been hot. But it was. They got their meal sometime late in the afternoon, again on a single tray: fat, greasy beef that’d been too long in the heat, and ragged chunks of stale bread. Again, there were no utensils. It was either pick up the meat with their hands or do without eating. Both men opted to eat. The bread was hard enough to crack teeth.

  At dusk the noise from the saloons started. Billy and Jake listened to what sounded like a horse race on the main street followed by gunfire, yells, and drunken laughter.

  “Jake, I been thinkin’,” Billy said. “I owe you. It’s my fault you’re sittin’ in this goddamn cell right now. If I hadn’t slammed you with that branch, you’d be ridin’ that pretty mare off to wherever it was you were goin’.”

  “I guess I’d have done the same thing, I was running for my life. It wasn’t me in particular you wanted to drop, Billy, I know that. You needed my horse, my gun, and you did what any man would do.”

  “That don’t matter,” Billy said. Then, resolutely, “Like I said, I owe you, an’ I pay my debts. You ask anyone if that ain’t true. So here’s what I’m sayin’, Jake—me an’ the Riders will bust you out of this jail one way or another. It don’t matter if Konrick says you gotta swing, which is what he’ll say, sure as you’re born. All that drunken ol’fool knows is condemnin’men to the rope. But don’t you worry. We’ll pop you outta here like we was yankin’ a cork outta a bottle.”

  “I . . . I appreciate that, Billy.”

  “Sure. An’ I’m hopin’ you’ll join on with the Riders after we get you out. Seems to me you’d be a real good man to have with us, a man who knows some about fighting.”

  “I’ve seen some fighting,” Jake said.

  The night moved in slowly. When the meager light that made it to the cells from under the door of the office was extinguished and the prisoners heard the front door slam, they sat in the steamy, still blackness. Neither had much to say.

  Sleep didn’t come to Jake Sinclair. He sat with his back against the wall under the window, listening to the night. At first the racket from the saloons gave him something to hear, but eventually that died and Jake was left with the summer crickets and the screech, almost too high to hear, of the bats that swooped in on the flying insects outside. Billy breathed deeply and snored sibilantly when he exhaled.

  They came before dawn, Mott carrying one lamp, one of the other men another. The boot heels of the four men sounded very loud as they came from the office. The light was harsh in the cell, making shadows sharp-edged, pushing the soft darkness away. Jake stood. One of the men fit a key to the door and swung it open. “You go on and get against the far wall,” Mott said to Jake. He set the lamp on the floor and hefted the shotgun he carried in his right hand across his chest, finger within the trigger guard, the steel of the barrel sending back glints of lamplight.

  “Billy,” he said.

  Billy sat up and knuckled his eyes, beginning a yawn before he saw Mott and t
he others, before he realized what was happening.“Ahh, Jesus,” he gasped. His face went white. “Ah, Jesus,” he said again. Jake took a step forward and the twin maws of the shotgun swung to his chest.“Go on,” Mott growled to the cluster of men standing around him,“bring him out. Let’s get this done.”

  Billy tried to push himself to his feet but couldn’t get his legs under himself. He flopped back down on the floor. His hands fluttered about his chest and then moved to cover his face, as if attempting to hide himself. Mott stepped into the cell, shotgun still leveled at Jake. Two of the others stepped past the sheriff and hauled Billy to his feet, grabbing him under his armpits. “This ain’t right,” Billy said in a child’s voice, almost too quiet to hear. “This ain’t Saturday—this ain’t right.” He jerked his body toward Jake, his face corpse white, his eyes beseeching, begging.

  They half carried, half dragged Billy from the cell. Mott pulled the door closed and the man with the key locked it. Two men pulled Billy along, trying to keep him erect between them. Two others picked up the lanterns. The sheriff stood back, shotgun hanging loosely from his hand. Jake found Mott’s eyes. “You’d best pull the trigger on me right now,” he said. “Otherwise I’m going to kill you one day.” His voice was low but it carried to Mott and to his four men.

  The gallows was a dark blur, indistinct in the moonless, cloudy night. It was a long time before Jake saw the men outside, saw them dragging Billy, saw them carrying Billy up the stairs to the platform. Jake couldn’t see the rope and the noose, but he knew it was there. One of the men carrying a lantern mounted the stairs to the killing floor and set his light down. Then Jake could see the noose.

  Billy couldn’t stand. The two men who’d carried him up the stairs held him upright. Another fit the noose over Billy’s head, tightening it around his neck. Mott stood back, holding his shotgun. “Stand back offa the trap,” he said. “Hold him up until it drops.” The men shifted their positions, reaching out to hold Billy where he needed to be.

  Jake’s nails were gouging into his palms, his eyes not on his friend but on Jason Mott and the lever that protruded up through the floor next to him. Mott lifted the shotgun up over his shoulder with his left hand and reached out his right to the lever. For a long moment he looked at Billy’s face. Then he grasped the lever, hesitated for a heartbeat, and jerked it back. Billy dropped. There was a loud snap—like that of a breaking stick—and then no sound at all.

  Sinclair turned away from the window, from the execution tableau. He stood for a long time in the center of the cell, almost at attention, back straight. The weight on the gallows caused the fresh nailing to creak slightly as Billy’s body turned below the trapdoor. Jake stepped back to the window.

  Mott followed the other three men down the stairs to the ground. Jake watched him in the same manner a snake watches a cornered mouse.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Time didn’t actually pass for Jake Sinclair in his cage. Instead, things around him changed: daybreak into midday into night, night silence to daylight city life to the revelry and off-key music at night, often interrupted by gunshots, the passing of a train that seemed to be on no particular schedule as to Fairplay. There was a thick-witted rhythm to his life that Jake was forced to accept, and he felt himself becoming as dull and as mindless as the events—or nonevents—of the sheriff’s office.

  Jake slept too much. He realized that, but sleep was safe, and it used up parts of the days and nights. He was losing weight. His pants hung loosely around his waist and he felt fatigued almost all of the time, regardless of the fact that he moved little in the course of a day. Even thinking came to be more trouble than it was worth. Staring at the brick back wall of his cell with a blank mind was easier.

  Much of that changed late one night about ten days or two weeks after Billy’s hanging.

  “You! Jake!” The raspy whisper cut through Sinclair’s light sleep, bringing him immediately to full consciousness. He stood and moved to the barred window. It was raining lightly, he saw, and there was little light. The whisper—louder now—drew him closer.

  “Jake, goddammit! Wake up. I ain’t got the night to spend out here.”

  A wrinkled, wide-brimmed hat with rain running from it came into Jake’s line of vision, followed by a wave of whiskey breath. There was a creaking sound from outside, a muffled curse, and another exhalation of booze.

  “I’m here,” Jake whispered. “Who’re—”

  “We’re gonna spring you out. We got it all figured. You just set tight till Friday night an’ then be ready to haul ass. We’ll have a horse for you. We’ll—” The speech was interrupted by the creaking sound and then a sharp crack followed by a dull, wet thump. “Son of a bitch!” the outside voice cursed. “The goddamn crate busted. Hellfire! I cain’t . . .”

  The next thing Jake heard was boots splashing through mud and water. He could barely pick out a hunched form running in a weaving path away from the jail. All that remained was the fog that smelled like a saloon. A drunk flapping his mouth, playing some kind of stupid prank? Or—one of Billy’s Night Riders with a plan?

  Tendrils of hope gathered around Sinclair. He tried to convince himself the chance of rescue was a real one—that the messenger had been chosen for his ineptitude, so that if he were caught, his drunkenness could explain his actions. “Jus’ tryin’ to cheer up this poor feller, Sheriff.”

  Jake shook his head. Nah. Who the hell would send a stumblebum with a message that important? Too drunk even to find a damn crate that’d hold his weight. It doesn’t make sense. He sat, back against the wall, under the window, pondering. His bit of hope didn’t last long. Still . . . stranger things have happened.

  Mott made an appearance at Jake’s cell door late the next day. “We’ll be taking you to trial tomorrow night, all nice an’ legal,” he said. Jake noticed that his bone-gripped Smith & Wesson rode in the sheriff’s holster.

  “Why not just go right to the gallows—save the time of a crooked trial?”

  Mott chuckled. “Still porky, I see. That’s good, I guess. A man can get tired of prisoners that act like aunties.”

  “You enjoying my horse?”

  The sheriff laughed again. “Ain’t a bad mare, all in all. I had to take her down a couple of pegs, but she’s behavin’ now.” His eyes met Jake’s. “That bother you? That I took a whip to that horse?”

  Jake spoke slowly, controlling his voice, holding Mott’s eyes. “You better make real sure you get me killed one way or another, Mott, because if you don’t, I’ll watch the light go out of your eyes. I’ll watch you die like the snake you are. You hear?”

  The laugh seemed slightly exaggerated this time. “I’m gonna like watchin’ you swing, boy,” he said as he turned away. “Gonna enjoy pullin’ the lever.”

  The rest of that day passed, and so did the next.

  Mott came for him after dark accompanied by one of his men, a young fellow who looked barely twenty, with a twitch in his left eyelid and canine teeth that were far too long for his face. He held a double-barreled shotgun across his chest with his finger inside the trigger guard. Mott held a lantern.

  “Come up close here and put your hands where I can reach ’em,” Mott told Jake. “Try anything an’Wolfie here’ll put you outta bidness.” Jake stood a foot from the cell door and held out his hands. Mott reached through the bars and applied the heavy steel shackle-handcuffs. Then he keyed the door and swung it open. “You walk in front,” he said. “Wolfie an’ me will follow. Go on up to my office.”

  Jake stepped out of the cell. Wolfie jabbed the barrels into his back to start him moving down the aisle. Lantern light showed at the end of the corridor and the illumination from Mott’s lamp stretched a long, narrow shadow of Jake on the rough wooden floor in front of him. He stopped at the partially open office door. Wolfie jabbed him again. “Move,” he said. “Over by the desk.”

  The door was a heavy one, solid wood hung on large brass hinges. Jake eyed it quickly. A full inch of good wood. I
t’ll stop the shotgun and Mott’s .44. If I can get in front of it and then slam it closed . . .

  He tensed his shoulders and shifted his body weight to his left foot, which was a half stride behind his right. The shotgun barrels hit him in the back of the head this time, and they hit him hard. Jake stumbled forward, the starburst of white light from the blow blinding him for a moment, weakening his knees. He lurched into the office, dazed. Amazingly, inexplicably, the sheriff’s big wooden desk lifted itself a good two inches off the floor and then crashed back down. A wrenching, screeching sound, like a good saw blade striking a nail, was followed by an explosion that was louder than anything Sinclair had heard during the war. A ceiling beam twisted free and slammed downward, striking Wolfie across the shoulders, jamming him to the floor, the weight and power behind the beam crushing Wolfie’s head like a stomped-on cockroach. Dazed, Jake instinctively covered his face as a whirling cloud of flame and dust and shattered boards rolled down the aisle like a stampeding herd of buffalo. Mott, taken down as Wolfie fell, screamed just as the concussion hurled Jake across the office floor and bounced him off the wall.

  Jake picked himself up from the floor. He could hear Mott still screaming, even over the shrill screeching in his ears. The lantern that had sat on the desk lay shattered on the floor, and flames were already tonguing the scattered papers and the upended chair. Jake gaped dumbly at the door—it seemed to be dancing in its frame. Then it swung open.

  “Jesus, boy, I’m glad to see you!” a sheet-draped figure shouted. “We kinda figured we buried you under the jail.”

  Another hooded head appeared in the doorway. “Mighta gone a little heavy on the dynamite,” he said. “But come on—we got you a horse right outside.” The words cleared the clouds from Jake’s mind and put the strength back in his limbs. He was through the door in a heartbeat. Eight or ten hooded and robed men on horseback were clustered in front of the sheriff’s office, the barrels of their rifles and pistols sweeping the street. One held the reins to a saddled horse. Even with his hands restrained in front of him, Jake was in the saddle in a second, grabbing at the reins the other tossed over the horse’s head. Some gunfire sounded. Jake didn’t know if it came from the weapons of the Night Riders or from Mott’s men—and he didn’t much care. He banged his heels into his mount’s sides and galloped after the already fleeing group. When he reached the end of Main Street he dared a glance over his shoulder—and immediately hauled his horse around in a sliding turn at the full gallop. Before the dust from the turn had begun to settle, Jake was racing back toward the jail.