“Marshal,” he said. “Just the man I was looking for.”
“Deputy,” Mordecai corrected him. “Name’s Flint. Marshal Harvey’s out of town right now, but he’ll be back any time.”
Mordecai wished that was the case. In truth, he didn’t know when Bill would be back…if ever.
“Well, you’ll do just fine, Deputy Flint,” the man said. “I just need to ask a question, and I figure someone in authority will probably know.”
“What sort of question is that?”
“Where would I find Walter Shelton?”
That was exactly what Mordecai didn’t want to hear. This man, and those with him, bore the stamp of professional gunmen. Either Shelton had sent for them, hiring them to go after the Gentrys, or the Gentrys were responsible for the hard cases being here and planned to use them to strike first at Shelton.
Mordecai figured the first possibility was the most likely. Burk Gentry and his sons were the sort of men to do their own gunfighting. From what Mordecai had seen, Shelton was, too, but he was badly outnumbered by the Gentrys and could use some men to back him up.
Either way, these strangers were trouble, and nothing but.
“You know the name, Deputy?” the spokesman prodded. “Walter Shelton?”
“I know who he is,” Mordecai snapped, unable to hold in the irritation he felt. “What do you want him for?”
“That’s not the law’s business.”
“Reckon the law’s business is what I decide it is.”
Mordecai saw several of the men glance at each other and smile. One of them even chuckled. He felt his face growing warm with anger. They weren’t worried about him. They thought he was just a broke-down old cripple with a bad wing. Maybe they were right about that, but he was still wearing a star.
The leader must have decided that it would be easier to cooperate rather than argue. He said, “Shelton sent for us to do a job. We have mutual friends in Wichita.”
“You mind tellin’ me your name, mister?”
“Not at all. It’s Jack Roland.”
Mordecai had heard of Jack Roland, but he tried not to let that knowledge show on his face. Roland was a gunman, all right, with a reputation that said he would hire out for any sort of dirty job as long as the money was right. Mordecai had no doubt that the other men ranged along the bar were the same sort.
“If you don’t know where to find Shelton, Deputy, I’m sure I can find somebody who does.”
“You passed his house already,” Mordecai said harshly. “You rode by it on your way into town. Big house that looks more like it ought to be back East instead of in Kansas.”
Roland nodded and said, “I saw it and wondered if that was where he lived. But I wanted to be sure.” He smiled. “Anyway, we were thirsty. It’s been a long, fast ride from Wichita, and the boys and I needed to cut the dust.” He turned to his companions. “Drink up, and then we’ll go see Mr. Shelton.”
Mordecai stood there. After a moment Jack Roland looked over at him again.
“Is there anything else, Deputy?”
Mordecai shook his head and said, “No, I reckon not.”
“I didn’t think so.”
The smug tone in the man’s voice almost pushed Mordecai over the brink. But he knew he was no match for six hardened killers, even on his best day, and if he tried to throw down on them, the resulting gunplay might injure or kill innocent folks. Even though turning away from the bar and heading for the door of the saloon cost him a considerable effort, it was the right thing to do. He had to let this lie until he figured out what to do about it.
Well, there was one good thing about this development, he told himself with a touch of grim amusement as he pushed throught the batwings.
With everything that was liable to be happening pretty soon, the mayor wouldn’t have time to worry about Gregor Smolenski anymore.
Chapter 40
Bill howled, “Noooo!” as he saw Eden tumble off her feet. He opened up with his Colt. The revolver roared and bucked in his hand as he fired toward the cabin. The range was a little too far for a handgun, but the shots carried close enough to force the figure back inside.
With his heart slugging painfully, Bill stopped shooting and sprinted toward the spot where Eden had fallen. It wasn’t possible he could have followed her and her captors this far, stayed on their trail for so long, and come this close, only to have her snatched away from him now by an outlaw’s bullet.
Then, amazingly, she was on her feet again and racing toward him. Bill didn’t know how that was possible—he supposed the wound she had suffered was only a minor one—but he wasn’t going to turn his back on a miracle. He hurried to meet her, and she came into his embrace. He had never felt anything better in his life than closing his arms around her and hanging on tightly.
“You’re…you’re not hurt?” he managed to ask.
“I tripped and fell.”
They couldn’t say anything else because their mouths were pressed together in an urgent kiss.
That kiss lasted only a couple of heartbeats because they were still in a lot of trouble, even though they’d been reunited. More outlaws were spilling out of the other cabins, drawn by the gunshots, and Bill heard somebody yell, “There they are! Get ’em!”
He had emptied his gun at the man who was trying to shoot Eden, and there wasn’t likely to be enough time to reload. That left him with only one option.
He took hold of Eden’s hand and told her, “Run!”
They headed toward the mouth of the narrow passage that led through the ridge. Behind them, more shots rang out. Bullets whined through the air around them.
At first Bill thought the pounding he heard was his own pulse inside his head. Just as he realized it was really hoofbeats, a rider burst from the passage and galloped toward them. The rider let out a rebel yell.
Still holding tightly to Eden’s hand, Bill veered sharply to the side to get out of the way as Jesse Overstreet raced past them. The six-gun in the cowboy’s hand exploded again and again as he fired at the outlaws. Right behind Overstreet came Josiah Hartnett, and then one by one the other members of the posse emerged from the bottleneck and spread out. Rifles flared and cracked, horses lunged here and there, and men yelled curses.
Bill reached the boulder where he had taken cover a few minutes earlier. He steered Eden behind it. She slumped wearily against the big rock. For the first time, he noticed that her wrists were tied together in front of her.
He wanted to get her loose, but there wasn’t really time. The battle between the posse and the outlaws was still going on, and he needed to be in the thick of it.
“Stay here,” he told her as he thumbed fresh cartridges into the Colt’s cylinder.
She caught at his sleeve with both hands.
“You don’t have to go back out there,” she said.
“You know I do,” he told her as he snapped the revolver closed again.
Eden didn’t argue. Instead she said, “Yes, I suppose you do. Leave me your knife so I can cut these ropes?”
“Yeah, sure.” He passed the blade to her. “Be careful.”
“You, too.”
There were so many things he wanted to say to her, but for now, that laconic conversation would have to do. Gripping the Colt, he hurried back toward the cabins.
Some of the outlaws had managed to retreat into the stone dwellings and take cover, judging by the shots that came from them. Several of them had been caught out in the open by the unexpected arrival of the posse, though, and they had been cut down as they tried to flee.
Unfortunately, now that the surprise was over, the pendulum was starting to swing back the other way. The remaining outlaws were behind thick stone walls, with loopholes to fire through, and the men from the posse were out in the open. They had to scatter as gunfire raked them. A horse screamed and went down.
Bill was on foot, so he wasn’t as visible a target. He crouched and ran wide of the cabins. His limp was more pronou
nced now, as it always was when he had to exert himself.
He reached the brush corral, where the gang’s horses were milling around in confusion because of all the shooting. None of the outlaws could see him at all now. He continued to circle until he could approach the nearest of the cabins from the rear.
Loopholes were cut into the back wall, too, so defenders could fire in that direction if they needed to, but the men in the cabin didn’t seem to be aware that anyone was behind them. From the sound of the shots, Bill figured there were three men inside this cabin, all directing their fire out the front toward the posse.
He felt around on the wall until he found one of the little openings. What he was about to do was a little like murder, he thought, but the outlaws had brought it on themselves. He slid the Colt’s barrel through the loophole and started to fire, triggering off all six rounds as fast as he could cock the hammer and pull the trigger. He knew it would be pure luck if any of his shots struck the men inside on a straight line, but with those stone walls, the slugs would ricochet wickedly.
When his gun was empty, he pulled it out and dropped to a knee. His ears rang from the thunderous roar of the volley.
As that ringing faded, though, he became aware that no more shots were coming from inside the cabin. A man groaned as if badly wounded.
Bill didn’t trust that, but it could be checked on later. For now, he needed to reload. He did so, working with practiced efficiency even in the dark, and then stole toward the center cabin, the one from which Eden had fled a short time earlier.
No shots came from in there. The other defenders seemed to be in the third cabin. As Bill approached it, a figure suddenly appeared at the far corner. He almost took a shot at the shadowy shape before he recognized Jesse Overstreet.
“Jesse!” Bill called to the young cowboy.
Overstreet paused and whispered, “Bill? Is that you?”
“Yeah. What’re you doin’ back here?”
“Same thing as you, I reckon.” Overstreet’s teeth gleamed for a second in the starlight as he flashed a reckless grin. “Came to smoke out some rats.”
He held up his flask of whiskey. He had stuffed a rag through the open neck.
“Thought I’d set this on fire and drop it down the chimney,” he went on.
“Good idea,” Bill said. “How’re you gonna get up there?”
“Hell, after climbin’ that ridge, I reckon I can clamber up on top of a little cabin like this.”
Overstreet proved that by feeling for fingerholds in the gaps between the blocks of stone. Bill holstered his gun and laced his hands together to form a step. That helped Overstreet get farther up the wall. A moment later the cowboy rolled onto the thatched roof.
Bill drew his Colt again and slipped around the side of the cabin. He stopped at the front corner and tilted his head back to look up. When Overstreet struck a match and lit the crude fuse, Bill saw the brief flare. A couple of seconds went by…
Then the inside of the cabin lit up brightly. The flash of fiery illumination was visible through the loopholes. A man screamed. The walls wouldn’t burn, but the floor and the furnishings would. Bill began to smell smoke almost instantly and wondered if Overstreet had blocked the chimney somehow.
It didn’t take long for the flames and smoke to drive the outlaws from the cabin. One of them threw the door back and charged out, the revolver in his hand spitting death.
Bill fired from the corner of the building. His bullet ripped through the man and spun him off his feet.
Two more men burst out. Overstreet downed one of them with a shot from the roof. The posse members, who had taken cover anywhere they could, riddled the other man with lead.
An eerie silence settled over the bowl as the echoes of the shots faded away across the badlands.
Overstreet dropped from the roof and landed at Bill’s side.
“You reckon we got ’em all?” he asked.
“I don’t know. We’re gonna have to check, and that could prove to be a dangerous chore.”
“Did I see that you had your missus with you a few minutes ago?”
“Yeah.” Bill could hardly believe it. Relief was setting in and making his knees a little weak. “I think she’s all right.”
“Well, you go check on her and leave those owlhoots to Josiah and the other fellas and me,” Overstreet suggested. “After all this, you don’t want to get yourself killed now.”
“I’m still in charge of this posse,” Bill said stubbornly. “I’ll do my job.”
Hartnett and the others were coming forward slowly now, rifles held at the ready. Bill called to them to cover him and Overstreet as they checked on the bodies of the three men who had fallen in front of this cabin. The outlaws were dead, just as Bill expected.
He started toward the far cabin to check the men in there, but he was still in front of the middle cabin when someone lunged through the door, rifle in hand. A scream of hate blended with the crack of the Winchester. The .44-40 round whipped past Bill’s ear.
He reacted instinctively, thrusting the gun in his hand toward the rifle-wielder and pulling the trigger. The muzzle flash revealed the long red hair and the face of a woman as the slug drove into her chest between her breasts and flung her backward. She landed half in the cabin and half out and didn’t move after that.
Bill felt hollow inside. He had just killed a woman, and even though she had done her damnedest to kill him, that fact sent a shock all the way to his core.
“You didn’t have a choice, Bill,” Overstreet said as if reading his fellow Texan’s mind. “It’d bother me, too, but you did the only thing you could.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Bill said. His voice sounded strange to his ears.
“Reckon I’d better check this cabin, too.”
Overstreet stepped over the woman’s body and struck a match so he could look around. He emerged a moment later to report that the middle cabin was empty.
By that time, Hartnett and a couple of posse members were investigating the third cabin. When Hartnett came out, he walked over to Bill and Overstreet and said, “There are two dead men in there and a third who’s not going to last five minutes. It looks like we cleaned them all out, Marshal.”
“Good,” Bill said with a nod. “Did we lose any men?”
“A few wounded, but nobody’s hurt too bad, as far as I know. I think we’ll all make it back to Redemption.”
Bill was extremely glad to hear that. The woman’s death still bothered him, but he told himself to put it behind him. He had other responsibilities now.
“Bill!”
He turned at that cry and saw Eden hurrying toward him. Her hands were free now, so they were able to hold each other as they came together.
“Thought I told you to stay behind that boulder,” he murmured as he felt the soft touch of her hair against his cheek.
“I had to make sure you were all right,” she said.
“I am now,” he whispered, and he knew he would be for as long as he could hang on to her.
He intended for that to be quite a while.
The posse rode away not long after dawn over the badlands, taking the extra horses and the bank money they had recovered from the center cabin. They had dug a grave for the woman and heaped the bodies of the other outlaws against one of the bowl’s walls. Overstreet climbed up the slope and started some rocks rolling. That turned into a small avalanche that slid down and covered the corpses.
Bill made sure to keep Eden well away from that grisly sight. He hadn’t let her get a good look at any of the dead men.
If he had, she would have been able to tell him that Caleb Tatum was not among them.
Chapter 41
Roy Fleming and Benjy Cobb were still standing in front of the marshal’s office. Mordecai knew that the mayor wanted to find out what was going on, but that could wait.
Instead he turned the other direction and headed for the Shelton house. Roland and the other gun throwers were still in the saloo
n. Mordecai ought to have a few minutes before they rode back up the street to report in to Walter Shelton.
He wanted to find out exactly what Shelton had planned. The man might refuse to tell him, but as far as Mordecai could see, Shelton had always been a law-abiding man. If a deputy marshal demanded answers from him, he might…just might…give them.
Clarissa Shelton answered Mordecai’s urgent knocking on the front door of the big house. She gave him a weak smile and said, “Why, hello, Deputy Flint. What can I do for you?”
“Is your husband here, ma’am?” Mordecai asked. “I need to talk to him.”
“Yes, of course. Please come in.” She ushered him into the foyer, then went on, “Walter is in his study. I’ll let him know you’re here.”
“Ma’am…?” Mordecai said as she started to turn away.
“Yes, Deputy?”
“Uh, how’s Miss Virginia doing?”
Mrs. Shelton smiled again and said, “Why, she’s fine, just fine,” and Mordecai understood that was the only thing the woman was going to allow herself to believe.
He waited, awkwardly holding his hat in his good hand, while Mrs. Shelton went and got her husband. When they came back, Shelton had a frown on his narrow face. He asked, “What’s this about, Deputy?”
Mordecai hesitated, glanced at Mrs. Shelton, and said, “Well, uh…”
Shelton took the hint. He turned to his wife and said, “Why don’t you go upstairs and see if Virginia needs anything, dear?”
“Yes,” she said with the false, bright smile. “I’ll do that.”
When she was gone, Shelton turned back to Mordecai and said harshly, “Well?”
“You gonna have some visitors in a few minutes,” Mordecai said. “Jack Roland and some of his pards just rode into town. I talked to ’em in the Prairie Queen.”
Shelton didn’t smile, but a look of grim satisfaction came over his face.
“So they’re here, are they? That was fast. But with what I’m paying, I expect fast service.”
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