Rocky Mountain Lawmen Series Box Set: Four John Legg Westerns

by John Legg

  Some of the gunmen knew each other, and took to sticking together. Others kept to themselves. Several saloons were staked out by the gunmen, and few townsmen bothered them.

  Rhodes let Hamilton Macmillan out two days after jailing him. Before unlocking the cell door, Rhodes read Hamilton the complaint filed by Hallie. He opened the door and warned, “Don’t go near her or her house.”

  “Oh?” Hamilton sneered. “What’re you going to do, lock me up again?” He stepped out of the cell and Rhodes punched him in the stomach, doubling him over.

  “That, boy,” Rhodes said coldly, “was a taste of what I will do to you if you bother Hallie again or if you give me any more lip. Now move.” Rhodes expedited Hamilton’s movement with a kick to the rear.

  Hamilton staggered outside, still partly doubled over. Several townsfolk saw him and laughed.

  “Lordy, do you believe the stupidity of some men?” Bonner asked as he poured coffee for them both.

  “It amazes me every time.”

  Things remained relatively quiet in Intolerance. There were the usual fistfights, drunks, petty thefts, and such to keep Rhodes and his deputies busy, but they were not overtaxed. Indeed, the presence of the hired gunmen seemed to make the town a little more quiet. The gunmen, knowing that they would probably be blamed for any trouble, often kept the locals from doing things that would bring the law running.

  But it was too good to last.

  Just before dark of the next day, Rhodes and Bonner were sitting in the office, passing the time. Both were bored. Hickman and Malone were off getting supper. Andy St. John was home.

  A burst of gunfire brought Rhodes and Bonner to their feet. It had been a time since someone hurrahed the town.

  “Damn, I went and spilled my coffee,” Bonner grumbled.

  Rhodes smiled. “I guess one of us ought to go see who’s breaking the peace,” he said.

  “You go,” Bonner suggested. “I’m too old for such shit.” He grinned.

  “Old fart.” Rhodes reached for his scattergun.

  Suddenly the door burst open. A twelve-year-old whom Bonner knew only as Billy slammed to a stop, gulping in air. “Shootin’,” he gasped. “Men shootin’. Killed old Cyrus.”

  Rhodes and Bonner did not need to hear any more. They dropped their cups and grabbed scatterguns. Rhodes jerked open a desk drawer and yanked out a handful of shotgun shells and stuffed them in his pocket. While doing so, he moved out of the way. Bonner grabbed some, too, and dropped them into a big outside pocket of his buckskin coat.

  Then the two were outside and running like hell toward the gunfire. It was almost dark, and so the lanterns lining the main street were lit, as were the lanterns in the saloons and shops. That and the dying sun gave the two lawmen enough light to see by. The outlaws were down at the far end of the main street, and were just getting ready for another ride through Intolerance.

  Rhodes and Bonner stopped, puffing a little, in the middle of the street approximately halfway through Intolerance. Both threw their shotguns to their shoulders as the horsemen galloped toward them. Rhodes was just about to pull the trigger, when the riders pulled to a noisy stop about ten yards away, breath clouding in the cold air.

  Rhodes lowered his shotgun. “I’m Marshal Travis Rhodes,” he said calmly but loudly. “You boys are breaking the law here, and I’m duty-bound to bring it to a halt.”

  He got no response from the mounted men. “I’d be obliged if you boys was to put them weapons away and go on about your business peaceably.”

  That got a response, but not the one Rhodes had wanted. The men started laughing. One, a man clad in black with a face that had suffered a heavy case of smallpox, said, “You’re going to take on all seven of us?” He and his men laughed at the wit.

  “I ain’t aiming to take on anybody if I can avoid it,” Rhodes said evenly. The town seemed almost eerily quiet. “’Course, you want to start some trouble, I’ll finish it for you.”

  “Ooh, now I’m tremblin’,” the same man said with a sneer.

  “What’s your name, boy?” Rhodes asked.

  “Clovis Pennington,” the man said arrogantly.

  “Why don’t you get down from that horse, Mr. Pennington, and come on over here for a chat?”

  “Not of a mind.”

  “I’d be obliged if you was to do that for me.” Pennington was about to retort, but something in Rhodes’s voice had given him pause. He grinned and dismounted, holstering his Colt as he did. “Now, Marshal, what can I do for you?” as he swaggered toward Rhodes, a sneer on his lips.

  Rhodes creased Pennington’s forehead with the scattergun. Pennington’s eyes rolled up and he teetered, but he did not fall. Rhodes grabbed the man’s revolver and tossed it to Phineas Hickman, who had arrived moments before.

  “I don’t take insults lightly, Mr. Pennington,” Rhodes said calmly. “And your insults’ve landed you in jail for a day or two. Mr. Hickman, please see that Mr. Pennington arrives at the jail.”

  “I ain’t walking there, boy,” Pennington snarled. “Then you’ll be dragged there, for one way or another, you’re going to the calaboose.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Pennington mumbled, but he began walking up the street, with Hickman, pistol out, right behind him.

  Rhodes had never fully taken his eyes off the other six men. “Any of you others care to dispute my rules?”

  “Hell, Marshal, we was just funnin’ some,” one of them said. “We don’t want no trouble.”

  All six put their pistols away. In silence, they turned their horses and rode down the street. Rhodes and Bonner stood, watching.

  Suddenly the outlaws wheeled their horses and spurred the animals. Pistols in hand once again, they rode hell-bent for the two lawmen.

  Rhodes waited as long as he could, then loosed both barrels of buckshot from his scattergun. Horses reared and whinnied in fright. Rhodes heard Bonner’s shotgun going off. Two men fell in the dusting of snow. A woman to Rhodes’s right screamed.

  Rhodes tossed his shotgun down and snatched one of the Whitneys from his belt and fired until it was empty. More gunfire ripped out, and others screamed. Another horseman fell, as did a horse. Rhodes felt bullets tugging at his clothes, but he did not flinch. This was just like Spotsylvania, where the lead had come like hail. Now, as then, there was no escaping it, so there was no reason to duck and flinch.

  Rhodes pulled his other Whitney and blasted away. But now the three men who remained on horseback were fleeing, racing like hell out of Intolerance. Rhodes quit firing and watched for a few moments, making sure the gunmen really were gone. He finally shoved both Whitneys into his belt and picked up his shotgun. He brushed dirt off the scattergun as he turned to Bonner.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ, no,” he moaned when he saw his friend lying in a puddle of blood in the middle of the street.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Rhodes walked woodenly toward Bonner and knelt at his side. The old mountain man was dead already, face frozen in a rictus of anger. He had been hit five times that Rhodes could tell, and at least three of those would have been fatal.

  Rhodes was sick with hatred. Though he knew Bonner would have been pleased to go under fighting, Rhodes could not accept that. Not here, not now, not at the hands of a bunch of saddle bums.

  “Let me in there, dammit, Marshal,” Dr. Henry Fermin said, trying to shove Rhodes out of the way.

  “You’re too goddamn late,” Rhodes said flatly. He felt wetness on his cheeks and wondered where it came from.

  Fermin knelt and with one quick glance knew Rhodes was correct. He stood again. “Well, I’ll go see if any of those others needs my services.”

  “No!” Rhodes roared. He jerked to his feet and grabbed the doctor by the shirtfront. “No, goddammit. Joe’s dead, and those bastards are going to be dead, too. I ain’t letting you patch them up.” He shoved Fermin away from him angrily and knelt again. He didn’t know why; there was nothing he could do for his friend.

  Rhod
es felt hands on his shoulders and a gruff voice say, “Come on, Travis. Leave him be now. He’s at peace. Leave him.”

  Rhodes allowed himself to be pulled up. Without thinking about it, he grabbed the shotgun. “I’ll be all right, Erastus,” he said. “Thanks for your help.”

  “I did nothing,” Flake said quietly as Dexter Fairchild, the undertaker, arrived.

  “You do him up real good, Dex,” Rhodes said to Fairchild. “Good stone and all.”

  Fairchild nodded. He thought it only proper, and he knew he would be paid either by the city, or by Rhodes himself.

  In a daze, Rhodes walked up the street, oblivious to the people around him. He looked in the window of the jail and saw Hickman and Sean Malone sitting rigidly in straight-back chairs. Malone faced the door, shotgun at the ready; Hickman faced the cells.

  Rhodes put his hand on the door, but then pulled it back. He moved on around the side to his house. He dropped the shotgun on the table, and his two Whitneys right after it. Then he slumped into a chair and sat, head in his hands. He thought of nothing and everything, ideas banging around like ricocheting bullets.

  He didn’t know how long he sat like that, but he finally roused himself enough to fill a coffee mug with whiskey and gulped it down in three swallows. Then he went back to sitting, staring into nothing.

  Sometime later, Flake showed up with Bonner’s few possessions that he carried on him. He set them on Rhodes’s table, opened his mouth to say something, but didn’t. He simply turned and walked out, easing the door shut behind him.

  Rhodes didn’t know how long she had been there, but he slowly came to be aware that Hallie St. John was sitting next to him, one arm around his shoulders. He allowed her to pull his head down toward her and rest it on her soft shoulder.

  Finally, she said, “Come on, Travis, you need to go to bed and sleep.” She gently tugged at him.

  Like an automaton, he rose, lurched to the bedroom, and flopped onto his bed. Hallie lifted his legs, one at a time and set them on the bed. She pulled off his boots. Standing back, she wondered if she should do more. She wanted to, but her upbringing made it difficult. She bent and kissed him softly, tasting the whiskey and stale coffee that lingered on his lips.

  “Do you want me, Travis? Here? Now?” she asked quietly. She felt sullied in doing it, but at this moment she was ready, even willing, if it would help Rhodes.

  Rhodes’s eyes opened and he stared listlessly at nothing for a few moments. Then his eyes focused on Hallie. “No,” he whispered. “Not like this.” His eyes closed again. He fell asleep, and began to shake, as if he were cold.

  Hallie stood there looking at Rhodes for a while, then she gingerly lay on the bed and pulled Rhodes as tight to her as she could. She wanted him to draw from her strength, from her warmth.

  Hallie awoke in a panic, thinking she had done something terrible. Then she realized she was still fully clothed—and Rhodes was not there. As she rolled off the bed, she thought of how hard it would be to explain this to her father, even though nothing had happened. She was glad nothing had happened, but she also regretted it.

  She stretched as she walked into the kitchen area. Rhodes had a pot of coffee ready and was frying bacon in a pan. She walked up to him and pressed her cheek against his right biceps. Then she shooed him to the table. “This’s woman’s work,” she told him sternly.

  They ate silently, but finally Hallie had to ask, “What’re you gonna do now, Travis?”

  “Going after ’em,” Rhodes said coldly.

  “You can’t.”

  “The hell I can’t.”

  “But...”

  “Hallie,” Rhodes said wearily, “you told me awhile back that you didn’t want me because of this job. I can’t see why you came back now, unless it was to nag me about its dangers again. If that’s the only reason, you best go on back to your pa and find yourself a city man. If you come back ’cause you still love me and want to be with me, you got to let me do this.”

  “But I—”

  “There ain’t no middle ground here, Hallie. You’re either with me and support me, or you leave for good.”

  It took Hallie perhaps a second to decide. “I’m yours, Travis, for as long as you’re al... as long as you want me.”

  Rhodes nodded. He was all efficiency now, unafraid, his grief shoved into a compartment in his brain where he could take it out later and examine it, if he wanted to. “I want you to go fetch old Mrs. Kimball, and tell her I want to see her now. Then you best go tell your pa where you were. He’ll be worried sick.”

  Hallie nodded. She wondered why he wanted Mrs. Kimball. That old fool was a crab. “You going to be all right while I’m gone?” she asked, hand on the door handle.

  Rhodes nodded.

  “You’re not gonna leave on me before I get back, are you?” She was terrified that that’s what he planned.

  “I’ll be here.”

  Hallie left, and Rhodes sat and began cleaning, oiling, and loading his shotgun and the two pistols. Before he was halfway through, Mrs. Kimball rapped on the door. When she came in, Rhodes stood. “You made Joe’s buckskin coat, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” she answered timidly. She was usually a busybody, but now she was terrified.

  He held up his own frock coat. “Can you put two big pockets inside this—like you did for Joe? And maybe some fur lining?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you have it done by the noon hour?”

  “If I work very hard.”

  Rhodes reached into a pocket and pulled out a five-dollar gold piece. He flipped it onto the coat. “Do it,” he said flatly.

  He was almost done cleaning his weapons when Hickman arrived. “What’re you plannin’ for today, Travis?” he asked. “Sean and I are tuckered out, but we’ll stick there as long as you want.”

  “You check Pennington over good to make sure he ain’t carrying a hidden gun?”

  Hickman nodded.

  “Get Andy and tell him to take a spell at sitting in the office. I’ll be over directly.”

  Finally he finished, just about the time Hallie returned. “Stay here, Hallie,” he warned bluntly. “Don’t you come over to the office for anything. I’ll be back soon.”

  Andy seemed glad to see Rhodes. “He been giving you a hard time?” Rhodes asked, pointing at Pennington.

  “Some.”

  Rhodes nodded. “Let them other two boys go.”

  Andy did not think to argue. He simply got the keys and opened the two end cells. He got a little scared as he walked from one to the other and Pennington reached out, trying to grab him. But he kept his composure and finished his business.

  When the two prisoners had left—fled was more like it—Rhodes lay his shotgun on the desk, followed by his two Whitneys and his knife. He made no move to leave behind his backup pistol. Last, he pulled off his short wool coat and set it on the desk. “Open the cell door, Andy,” Rhodes said icily.

  “What?” St. John asked, incredulous.

  “You heard me. Open that cell door, and then lock it behind me.”

  “You gone loco, Travis?” St. John asked, eyes wide.

  Pennington said nothing. He could not tell whether this was a good thing or bad. He was beginning to think the latter, seeing how angry Rhodes was, and how mean his eyes were.

  “No, I ain’t gone loco, boy. Now do what I told you.” He paused. “Once you do that, you might want to go take a walk. And lock the door behind you so I ain’t disturbed.”

  St. John gulped and nodded. He had no plans of going anywhere. He wanted to see what Rhodes was going to do. He opened the cell door. Rhodes stepped inside and then St. John closed and locked it.

  Pennington forced a cocky look onto his face. “Well, well, the big, bad marshal’s come to rough me up some, eh?”

  “I come to kill you, boy” Rhodes said bluntly.

  Pennington suddenly felt a little queasy. It was one thing to face a maniac when you were on the back of a horse and had si
x men with you. It was another to take on a man as solidly built as Marshal Travis Rhodes in the close confines of a small cell.

  “You were such a tough guy when you were with all your goddamn cronies,” Rhodes said chillingly. “Let’s see just how tough you are, boy.”

  “Hey, come on now, Marshal,” Pennington said in placating tones, “I didn’t have nothin’ to do with what happened to your friend. I was in here.”

  Rhodes clumped forward, backing Pennington into a corner. Suddenly Pennington threw a desperation punch. It hit Rhodes’s wide chest and bounced off. Pennington began to sweat, knowing he was in deep trouble. He threw another right fist at Rhodes’s head.

  Rhodes blocked the punch with his left arm, and then smashed his right fist into Pennington’s right side, low. A rib snapped and Pennington gasped.

  Rhodes stepped back, letting Pennington fall. “Get up, boy.” he hissed.

  “I can’t,” Pennington groaned.

  “Let me help you, boy.” Rhodes grabbed Pennington’s right arm and tugged. Pennington screeched, as the movement caused the broken rib halves to grind together. But he got to his feet, and tried to kick Rhodes in the groin.

  “That’ll never do,” Rhodes said after stepping out of the way. Then he grabbed Pennington’s right arm again, this time in both hands. He jerked it down as he brought his leg up fast. The two lower arm bones snapped like twigs. Pennington screamed and turned frightened eyes on the monster in the cage with him.

  Rhodes moved forward and proceeded to throw punishing fists at Pennington. Never in his whole life had Rhodes been this enraged, and he took every bit of that rage out on Clovis Pennington. After just a few minutes, Pennington was reduced to a moaning, quivering mass. That still did not end the barrage of fists.