A spark of hope lit in her eyes when she asked, “Is that why you’re here?”
“I’m a man of peace.”
“But you carry a gun. I seen it.”
Ignoring the Colt that had caught her eye, Paul placed a hand on her knee and spoke in a voice that was low enough to force her to pay extra attention. “I’m not here to kill Terrigan, but it is very important that I speak to him. Otherwise, things won’t just go on the way they have been. They’ll get worse.”
“I don’t see how they can get worse,” she said.
“They can. Trust me. For those outlaws and for anyone in their sights.”
Becky shook her head and stood up. “Jack ain’t the sort to listen to anyone, and the men riding with him only listen to Jack. Whatever you hope to do, it’ll only end with you getting killed. I won’t be a part of hurting a reverend.”
Outside in the main room of the rowdy place, something heavy was dropped or cracked. The music stopped and some of the voices let up, allowing Paul to better hear the sound when it came again. Nothing had been dropped, at least not yet, and the only thing that had cracked were gunshots through the air.
“You hear that?” Paul said as he grabbed hold of Becky’s arm to keep her from going anywhere. “I told you things were bound to get worse, and there they go.”
Oddly enough, she was less panicked now than ever. “Someone’s always shooting at someone else around here. Things can’t get any worse than they are every day in East Raynor.”
“If you don’t tell me where to find Jack Terrigan, I’ll just march out and keep asking around until someone tells me. Either that or he’ll eventually hear about me and find me on his own. How well will you be able to sleep knowing you could have kept things from getting so messy for a man of the cloth?”
“You’re crazy, mister.”
“Maybe a little, but this is something that I need to do. From the moment I heard about Jack Terrigan riding through this territory, little signs have cropped up here and there to let me know I was supposed to find him. Just when it seemed that was an impossible task, something happened or some other little opportunity presented itself to bring me a little closer to this very spot. Becky, I think you’re the last angel to see me along my trail.”
She let out a very quiet, very tired laugh. “I’m no angel, that’s for certain.”
“Folks prove what they are by what they do. Even if they do things they’re not so proud of, what truly matters is that they see how wrong they were and work to fix it.”
“Is that really how things work?”
“I’d like to think so. All I know for certain is what I believe, and I believe that with all my heart. That’s what faith is.”
“What do you hope to do about Jack Terrigan?” she asked.
“That’s between me and him. All I’m asking is that I be given the chance I’ve worked so hard to get. One thing I can promise you, one way or another, this place won’t have to worry about Terrigan or the rest of his gang by the time this day is out. How much blood is spilled when it’s all said and done could very well come down to how much time is wasted before I do what I came here to do.”
She stood up and started to walk to the door. It was a short trip to get there, but she moved as if her feet were stuck in molasses. “Just leave,” she said.
Standing up to reach past her so he could hold the door shut, Paul asked, “He’s here, isn’t he?”
“Why won’t you listen? Or don’t you have the sense God gave a mule?”
“This doesn’t have to do with God anymore.”
Hearing those words from anyone else might not have had much impact on a woman who’d seen as much as she. But when Becky heard that statement coming from Paul, it shook her to the bone. “Room Four,” she said.
“Thank you.”
The moment Paul let her go, Becky reached for the door. Outside, there was more shooting. Some of the voices in the main room had grown more excited, like dust being kicked up by a passing stampede. Heavy footsteps clomped across the floor, sending a ripple through the boards beneath Paul’s feet.
Becky’s hand lingered on the door handle, and her head drooped forward. “Not like it matters anyway,” she said. “Sounds like it’s starting again.”
“You can leave town, you know,” Paul told her. “Whatever was keeping you here, it can’t be strong enough to make you put up with whatever is making you so miserable.”
“And what will I do once I leave town? Just walk to the next place?”
“If you have to. Find a way to take a few more steps, and before you know it, you’ve covered a whole lot of ground.”
“It’s not that easy,” she sighed.
“If you don’t even try . . . it’s impossible.”
She turned to look at him and started to smile. The gesture was cut short when the door was pulled open with so much force that she was dragged a few steps outside by the handle in her grasp.
The man who stood in the doorway had thick hair and a face covered in dark stubble. Two front teeth were chipped and his nose was skewed at an odd angle after having been broken at least twice. His eyes were clear and cruel, fixing on Becky’s frightened expression before looking past her to Paul. “I hear someone’s been looking for me,” he snarled.
Chapter 21
“I knew I should have tied that preacher up and left him next to Wes in that stall!” Sprole said as he huddled with his shoulder pressed against the side of a barrel that he guessed was filled with grain. Sheriff Noss was a few paces away from him, leaning against a post that wasn’t nearly wide enough to cover him fully. Another shot blasted through the air, punching a hole clean through the upper edge of Sprole’s barrel to spill some of its contents across the top of his hat. Yes, it was grain.
Leaning around the post that supported the awning in front of a saloon that advertised the cheapest whiskey in town on a crudely painted sign, Noss fired a shot at one of the rooftops across the street and shouted, “What makes you think this was his fault?”
“Because he marched straight over here and was headed to the Wayfaire when I found him!”
“He was doing what?” Even when another shot was fired at him, the lawman barely moved. The anger on his face was more powerful than the urge to clear a path for hot lead. “Why didn’t you tell me about that?”
“Because I barely had enough time to tip my hat after meeting up with you just now before we were bushwhacked!”
Noss fired another shot from his .45, which drilled into the roof of the Fan-Tan Parlor across the street. All he could see of the man who had started firing down at them was a rifle barrel and part of a hat poking over the top of the gambling den’s sign. That, along with gut instinct and experience, was enough to tell him who he was dealing with. “Price must have been watching the Wayfaire from up yonder,” he said.
“Or he could have run up there after seeing the preacher march into that cathouse like he owned the place along with everything else in his sight.”
“Enough of your bellyaching!” the lawman snarled. “I’m tired of it!”
“And I’m tired of getting bushwhacked. I’m putting an end to it!” With that, the bounty hunter drew his .38 so he now carried a pistol in each hand. He fired a few quick shots before rushing across the street toward the Chinese gambling den.
Noss swore under his breath and fired at the rooftop. Although his shots were rushed, they provided enough sound and fury to force the rifleman across the way to duck and wait out the storm of incoming lead. By the time Noss’s pistol ran dry, Sprole was storming into the Fan-Tan Parlor through the front door.
Placing his back against the post, Noss hurried through the motions of reloading his pistol. He was halfway done when footsteps knocked against the second-floor balcony of the Wayfaire. He looked in that di
rection and spotted a bare-chested man with a dirty face hitching up his britches with one hand and gripping a Smith & Wesson revolver in the other. It took the man a moment to get a good look at what was happening on the street below, but by the time he spotted Noss, the lawman was already running toward the horse tethered to a nearby post.
After stuffing his .45 back into its holster, Noss grabbed the shotgun kept in one of the saddle’s boots and made a mad dash toward the Wayfaire. The half-dressed man on the balcony started firing down at him while shouting, “I found another one, Jack! Price! You seein’ this? I got one for ya!”
As bullets screamed down at him before punching into the street below, Noss kept running until he was directly beneath the Wayfaire’s balcony. He gripped the shotgun in both hands, raised it as high as he could while aiming at a point over his head, and pulled both triggers. The shotgun roared, both barrels spitting enough fiery destruction to blast a hole through the bottom of the balcony and put an end to the shots coming from above. The bare-chested man’s voice went silent as his body hit the balcony with a solid thump.
Since his spare shotgun shells were in his saddlebag, Noss tossed the spent weapon toward his horse and drew his .45 while stepping away from the cathouse’s front doors. Another shot cracked from the rooftop of the building across the street, chipping a post in front of the Wayfaire and encouraging Noss to retreat a little faster. “Come on, Dave,” he said under his breath while filling the remaining cylinders of his pistol with fresh rounds. “Now ain’t the time to dawdle.”
* * *
Sprole charged through the front door of the Fan-Tan Parlor with a gun in each hand and a vicious snarl on his lips. His surroundings rushed past him in a blur of faded paintings of foreign landscapes, tables covered in felt, and tiles bearing dozens of symbols ranging from Chinese lettering to flowers. Having played more than his share of fan-tan, mahjong, and any other game of chance under the sun, Sprole didn’t have to break his stride to know what the people gathered around those tables were doing. The smells in the air also told him what was being smoked in the rooms upstairs. He shoved past a few slender men at the bottom of those steps before charging up to meet one guard, who wasn’t about to be moved so easily.
The man was almost as wide as he was tall. A long, stringy mustache hung from his upper lip, and wide arms stretched out to grab hold of Sprole as the bounty hunter attempted to get past him. Those arms snapped shut like the jaws of a bear trap to take Sprole completely off his feet.
Sprole’s left arm was pinned against his side, but his right was free. He twisted around to get a look at the man who was now trying to squeeze the life out of him before knocking the side of his .44 against the man’s skull. The guard, a stout bear of a man with pockmarked skin and a collection of scars on one side of his face, let out a grunt when he was struck but didn’t relax his grip.
Before Sprole could swing the .44 again or bring the pistol around to fire at any of the other guards climbing the stairs to get to him, the arms wrapped around his torso cinched in tighter. His next breath flowed outward in a strained wheeze, yet somehow he found the strength to kick his legs furiously until one of his feet found purchase on the banister. Sprole pushed with all his might, which was barely enough to send the big man stumbling backward a few steps.
The thick guard grunted but showed no other effects from Sprole’s efforts.
“Gonna force me . . . to do this . . . the hard way,” the bounty hunter said. Then he turned the wrist of his trapped left hand to angle the .38 downward before pulling his trigger.
The gun went off, sending a round through the side of the bigger man’s foot as well as the floor beneath it. Cursing in an unfamiliar language, the man let go of Sprole and hopped away to rebound off the closest wall.
As soon as he was free, Sprole rushed down the hallway. He passed several doors along the way, but realized he didn’t know exactly where he was supposed to be going. Just then one of the doors opened and a slender woman with smooth, pale skin poked her head out to take a look. Sprole lowered the .38 and rushed at her immediately. He managed to grab the doorknob before she could retreat into her room.
“The roof!” he shouted while holding the .44 so she could clearly see it. “How do I get up to the roof?”
Too panicked to speak, she pointed toward a narrow door at the end of the hall. He raced to the door and pulled it open to reveal an exterior set of stairs that led down to an alley and up to the top of the building. Sprole took the stairs two at a time, hoping none of the rifle shots that had been fired in the meantime had found their mark. When he got to the top, he wasn’t thinking about his own well-being. On the contrary, he hoped the rifleman would point his weapon at him instead of taking a shot at anyone in the street below.
Price was on one knee at the edge of the roof. His rifle was at his shoulder and he was steady as a rock while lining up his next shot.
“Hey!” Sprole shouted. It wasn’t much, but it did the trick. Price twisted around to look at him, bringing a Winchester around to take aim.
Sprole dashed along the edge of the roof, firing a single round from his .44.
Price’s Winchester cracked once, spitting a piece of lead through the space where his target had been less than a second before.
Knowing how long it would take for a man to work the rifle’s lever and adjust his aim, Sprole rushed straight at Price while blazing away with his pistol. One of the .44’s rounds knocked Price back, and the one that followed sent him toppling over the side of the roof.
* * *
Noss’s .45 was reloaded and he’d even gotten to the spare shotgun shells in his saddlebag by the time Price’s body hit the street. None of that made Noss feel any better when he saw no fewer than a dozen men emerge from various doorways and tents to glare at him like a pack of hungry wolves.
“That’ll be enough,” the sheriff declared loudly. “This is a private matter. It don’t concern none of you!”
Most of the men now stalking down the street had come from the Wayfaire. One of them brandished a Schofield revolver as he said, “You’re a dead man, stranger!”
“Stand down!” Sprole shouted while leaning over the edge of the roof to get a look at the street. “This fight’s over!”
The man at the front of the growing mob shook his head. “No, it ain’t. Not by a stretch. But it will be soon.”
Noss took no comfort from the gun in his hand or the badge pinned to his chest beneath his jacket. Those things could only serve to speed his trip to the grave once the men closing in around him decided to make their move. Since it seemed things couldn’t get much worse, he decided to play the one card left in his hand. “I’m a sheriff! I came here for that man right there,” he announced while pointing over toward Price. “He’s dead, so I’ll be on my way. Any man fires one shot at me or my deputy and you’ll hang.”
“Ain’t nobody’ll be left to say what happened to you,” someone from within the mob pointed out.
In a cold, unwavering voice, Noss said, “The rest of my men know I’m here. If I don’t come home, the lot of you will regret it. Whether it’s now or later, I guarantee you, there’ll be hell to pay.”
While that silenced a few of the men, it didn’t make a dent on the ones who’d been first through the door to stalk into the street. The man at the front of the pack shook his head as a cruel grin eased across his face. His grip tightened around his gun.
Sheriff Noss prepared for war.
“Stop it!”
Everyone froze at the sound of that voice. It hadn’t come from the mob, the lawman, or the rooftop across the street. Instead, it came from the front door of the Wayfaire as a single man stepped outside.
Sprole spotted him immediately and shouted, “Show me your hands, Terrigan!”
Noss could scarcely believe his ears. Although he’d never seen Jack Terrigan’
s face, there was no mistaking the reverence in the eyes of the scum who looked at the outlaw now.
“What are you doing, Jack?” the man at the front of the mob asked.
The man with the thick, greasy hair and broken nose took two more steps outside and raised his hands high. “Nobody make another move, you hear me?”
“But, Jack—”
“Nobody!”
That single bellowing word rolled like thunder through East Raynor, taking the fight from all of the men in the street. Rather than question what happened to swing things his way, the lawman said, “Come along with me, Terrigan. I’m putting you under arrest.”
Someone in the mob hollered, “There’s only two of ’em! They can’t do a thing!”
Terrigan bared his teeth and shouted, “This don’t concern any of you! Get out of my sight!”
Slowly, the mob began to disperse. The faces on the men who’d taken a stand against Noss were now twisted into confused grimaces. Soon disparaging remarks drifted through the air as the men who’d spoken them drifted back from whence they came.
Terrigan stepped forward. His face was drenched in sweat, and spittle ran from both corners of his mouth after shouting loud enough to be heard back in Raynor Proper. Noss moved forward with pistol in hand, but he didn’t need the weapon any longer. None of the men in the vicinity were interested in standing against him, and Terrigan was offering both hands to him like a whipped dog baring its neck to a stronger foe. But the sheriff noticed something else as he dug the handcuffs from his saddlebag and locked them around the outlaw’s wrists. It was an unmistakable expression etched into Terrigan’s face.
He wasn’t beaten.
He wasn’t drunk.
He was petrified.
Sprole came out of the Fan-Tan Parlor, looking almost as confused as some of the outlaws still lingering in the street. “What happened?” he asked. “Did you get the jump on Terrigan?”
Ralph Compton Brimstone Trail (9781101612637) Page 22