The Lawmen

by Broomall, Robert

  In the front room, Clay took what food was left from the whores’ visit and began stuffing it into one of the picnic hampers.

  “What are you up to?” Essex asked him.

  “I‘m cleaning up, that’s all.”

  When he was finished with the food, Clay checked the prisoner. The level in the whiskey bottle was well down. “Why’d you change your mind about the liquor?” Vance asked.

  “Maybe I feel guilty for not letting you have that bottle the girls brought you. Maybe I’m just a nice fellow.”

  “You’re a lot nicer’n Wes, that’s for sure. He’s pissed as hell at me, you know, for gettin’ in trouble like I done.” There was a loud clap of thunder overhead. Vance looked up, then drank again. “Wes is jealous of me—that’s a fact. ’Cause I’m better lookin’ than him, and I do better with the ladies.” He winked. “I used to be friendly with that little lady of yours, until Lee opened up her face.”

  Essex expected Clay to get angry, but the marshal showed no reaction to Vance’s statement. Instead, he said amiably, “Wes might be jealous, but he’s sure ready to come to your side when you’re in trouble.”

  “We’re all like that,” Vance explained. “I’d do the same for Wes or Lee, was it them.” He chuckled. “I ‘member when I’se a kid. I’d start fights, and Wes and Lee would come along and join in if I was doin’ bad. That’s the way our ma raised us up, you know—after Pa run out on us. ‘Don’t take no shit off nobody’—that’s what Ma always told us. And we never did. Still don’t.”

  He took another drink. “After Ma died, Wes took to running things. He’s good at that. Hell, he runs this town—he must be.”

  “Don’t you want to get from under Wes’s shadow?” Clay asked him. “Get out on your own?”

  Vance shrugged. “Why? I got everything I need, and this way I don’t have to do none of the thinkin’—Wes takes care of all that.”

  There was a loud crack of lightning, followed almost simultaneously by a boom of thunder, and all three men started. Vance laughed nervously. “That one was close. Glad we’re in here.”

  “I hate bein’ out in this shit,” Essex said, as much to himself as anyone else. “When I was on a cattle drive to Abilene, we was caught on the prairie in storms like this a couple of times, with nowheres to hide, nothing to do but let it roll over you and pray you ain’t the one that’s hit. Lord, I ain’t never been so scared. You get to feelin’ pretty powerless when that happens. You get to rememberin’ your prayers real good.”

  Vance pushed back his hair and took another drink. Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe the talk about prayer, but he grew suddenly morose. “I’ll be glad to be out’n here tomorrow. I’m afraid of hangin’, you know, Marshal—always have been. I killed my first man when I was sixteen—I did it just to beat Wes’s record. Wasn’t nobody goin’ to beat Lee’s record, of course. Lee makes Jesse James look like the Angel of Mercy.”

  “How many men have you killed?” Clay asked.

  “Ain’t sure, really. Fifteen, maybe—no, it’s got to be more than that.” His good humor returned. “You count Mexicans and niggers?”

  “I count ‘em,” Essex said.

  “Well, I killed my share of niggers. Yes, indeedy. Back in Texas. My civic duty, as I saw it.”

  Essex grabbed for him through the cell bars. “You ain’t gonna last till your hanging, ’cause I’m gonna—”

  There was a terrific bang of lightning and thunder at the same time.

  “Jesus!” Vance said in awed tones.

  Outside it grew very dark. There was a strong gust of wind. Something blew against the jail wall with a thump. Dust and trash came in the broken window, followed by the sudden heavy pounding of raindrops on the roof and against the adobe walls.

  Essex still wanted to go into the cell and get Vance, but his attention was diverted by Clay, who was in the front room again, stuffing his pockets and the inside of his shirt with the ammunition he’d purchased earlier. Curious, Essex came up behind him.

  “Fill your pockets,” Clay told him. “Take as much as you can carry.”

  “Carry where?” Essex asked.

  “Just do as you’re told for once, without a lot of questions.”

  “Yassa, Massa,” Essex said in a broad voice, picking up a box of rifle shells. “I’se comin’, Massa. That better?”

  “Much better,” Clay said. He lit the kerosene lamp and stuck it in a protected comer where it wouldn’t blow out. He wanted it to look like there was somebody in the office.

  Vance sipped more whiskey and nodded off, humming to himself. Outside, rain lashed the street in sheets, turning the thick dust into a sea of mud. Rain ran from the roofs in waterfalls. The office roof was already leaking. Clay looked out the window, squinting against the rain that was being blown almost horizontally through the broken glass, forming a puddle on the floor. Across the street, Wes’s men were gone, fled for cover. Everyone was off the streets, save for the screaming, frightened animals at the hitch rails. Clay hurried down the aisle between the cells and looked out the back door. The men who had been covering that exit were gone, too.

  Clay came back to the front, grabbing his shotgun. “Get your rifle,” he told Essex.

  Still puzzled, Essex got the rifle while Clay took three blankets from the jail cots. He gave the blankets to Essex. “Here. Take that picnic hamper, too.” Then he went into the cell and raised Vance to his feet. “Come on, sunshine. We’re going for a ride.”

  “What!” Essex exclaimed behind them. “What do you mean, ‘ride’?”

  But Clay was already leading the stupefied Vance toward the back door. Essex followed, protesting. “Don’t tell me what I think you’re going to tell me.”

  Clay opened the back door as another huge crash of lightning and thunder reverberated around him. Behind him Essex said, “Uh-uh. Ain’t no way I’m going out in no goddamn lightning storm. I had enough of that shit. ”

  “It’s all right,” Clay told him. “You won’t melt.”

  “You ever seen a man fried by lightnin’? I have. I don’t want it to be me.”

  Clay pushed Vance from the shelter of the back door. They were immediately drenched by the driving rain. Behind them Essex hesitated, then reluctantly followed, carrying the blankets and picnic hamper. “Somebody gets hit, I hope to hell it’s you,” he shouted to Clay.

  “With my luck, it probably will be,” Clay said.

  The men hurried down the alley, soaked to the skin. In the darkness behind the A-l restaurant they made out three horses tethered to a wagon. Then a figure moved from behind the wagon. It was Julie Bennett—her blue dress a sodden wreck, the peacock feather in her pillbox hat wet and bedraggled.

  Clay grinned at the sight of her. “Thanks.”

  “This better be worth it,” Julie said above the noise of the storm. “Look at my clothes. They’re ruin—”

  Clay grabbed her and kissed her, holding her close, feeling the curves of her body through the wet dress. For a moment he wanted to just stay there, to hold her and not go anywhere ever again. Then he let her go. “There, we’re even,” he said. He handed her his shotgun and motioned toward Vance. “Cover him.”

  Taken aback by the kiss, Julie held the shotgun on the tottering Vance, who was still drinking. His long wet hair was plastered over his eyes by the rain. He brushed it away, trying to figure out what was going on.

  Clay tied the blankets across the eyes of the three terrified horses, to calm them. Then he took the bottle from Vance’s hand and threw it away. He pushed Vance toward one of the horses. “Get on.”

  “Where are we—”

  “Get on, or I’ll bend that scattergun over your skull.”

  Unsteadily, Vance climbed onto the horse. Clay took a rope from the saddle loop. He shook out the rope, took a turn around the prisoner’s wrists, then around his waist, and tied the end to the saddle horn. To Julie he said, “Go home and get dry. Forget you ever saw us. ”

  She kissed him and sa
id, “I’ll never forget that. Good luck, Clay Chandler.”

  Clay touched her wet cheek, then turned to Essex. “Come on.”

  He and Essex led the horses up the alley behind Tucson Street. Clay held the reins of Vance’s horse. Essex put the wicker hamper full of food on his saddle. “Where are we going?” Essex shouted to Clay.

  “Tucson,” Clay shouted back.

  The driving rain lashed the sides of their faces with such intensity that it hurt. Men and horses slipped and slid in the dark, muddy alley. More lightning cracked, illuminating the night sky. The lightning was so close that Clay felt his eyebrows singe. Its magnetic intensity seemed to drain the strength from his legs even as the roaring thunder threatened to hammer him into the earth. The blindfolded horses balked; Clay and Essex tagged their reins.

  “Look,” Essex said, pointing. Off to their right was a reddish glow. “Lightning must have hit one of them buildings over there.”

  “That’s good for us,” Clay said. “Means people will be putting out the fire. They’ll be less likely to spot us.”

  At the end of the alley, they turned onto the deserted street. The fire’s reddish glow grew, illuminating the sheets of rain that poured from the black sky. Lightning flashed; there was more thunder. As they neared the river, a lightning bolt struck in front of them, snapping the top from a cottonwood tree.

  On the horse, terror and rain were sobering Vance up. “Get me out of here. Did you hear me? Take me back. God damn you, Wes is going to cut off your balls for this.”

  Clay and Essex ignored him.

  They were on the bridge now. The storm was so loud that it drowned the clatter of the horses’ hoofs on the wooden planking. Another flash of lightning showed the river surging just beneath the bridge in whitecapped waves, threatening to carry the structure away.

  “Holy shit!” Essex cried.

  Beneath them the bridge swayed and wobbled. There was a loud crack of wood. “It’s getting ready to go!” Essex yelled as they pulled the horses along faster.

  “I suppose you can’t swim, either,” Clay said.

  “How’d you guess?”

  “Stop taking!” Vance shouted. “Get us out of here!”

  They reached the mud on the bridge’s far side. There were more cracking noises behind them, then the bridge disappeared with a roar. Its heavy timbers vanished and were swept downstream.

  Essex bent over with relief. “I’m rememberin’ more of them prayers all the time.”

  “That’ll keep Wes off our backs for a while,” Clay said. Vance cried, “You two aren’t lawmen—you’re fools! You could have gotten us killed!”

  “We all have to go sometime,” Clay told him. To Essex he said, “Come on.”

  Then they were through the belt of woodland and onto the scrub-covered desert. Behind them the fire’s glow showed them where the town was. They walked through the rain and thunder and lightning—Essex with his eyes half closed and praying, Clay just as scared but determined to go through with this, Vance cursing a blue streak.

  At last the lightning and thunder drifted to the east. The wind dropped. The torrential downpour moderated to a steady rain. Clay and Essex removed the sodden blankets from the horses’ eyes and threw them away. The two lawmen mounted and, still leading Vance’s horse, rode into the night.

  17

  Morning on the desert—bright, clear, and hot. The sun blazed down. Three men rode over the undulating foothills of the Verdugo Mountains, half hidden by the thick covering of mesquite and creosote and cactus. Pools of water lay here and there, a rarity in this normally parched country. Fed by last night’s rain, wildflowers bloomed in a sudden profusion of yellow and pink and white. Besides the rhythmic clopping of the horses’ hoofs, the only sounds were those of a woodpecker tapping a saguaro and the calling of a cactus wren. In the distance a hawk circled.

  Clay and Essex rode side by side, with Vance Hopkins behind them, still tied up. Clay held the reins of Vance’s horse. They were not on the main road to Tucson. There were stage relay stations on the road where they could have changed horses, but the station operators were shady types who would know the Hopkins brothers. Clay and Essex were as liable to get a bullet in the back there as they were to get help. Besides, that was the way Wes and his men would follow them.

  Having prospected the Verdugos, Clay knew a back trail that would take them to Tucson. It was more roundabout, but there was less likelihood of running into trouble, and unless Wes had good trackers, he would never find them.

  Beside Clay, Essex breathed deeply, smelling sage and mint and wildflowers. “I love the desert after it rains. Everything gets so green and fresh. Look at all this bunch grass. I bet you could raise some good cattle here, if you could find a way to get ’em water. ”

  “Stop worrying about cattle and keep your eyes peeled for Cochise and his friends,” Clay told him. “They damn near got me last time I was out here. Wasn’t all that far from where we are right now, neither. ’Sides, you couldn’t raise no cattle. Government wouldn’t sell you the land.”

  Behind them Vance moaned. “Ooh, God, I feel awful. Let me have some water, will you?”

  Clay halted his horse and dismounted. He undid the rope that bound Vance to the saddle, then unstopped his canteen and passed it to the young outlaw. Vance tilted the canteen to his lips and drank, gulping repeatedly. Water spilled down his mouth and chin. He put the canteen down, took a few deep breaths, then drank again. “Untie my hands, too, will you?” he asked Clay. “I ain’t gonna run.”

  Clay did as Vance asked, then he remounted and the little party continued on. “That’s why I gave him the bottle last night,” Clay told Essex. “Figured it’d make him easier to manage.”

  “It made me sick is what it did,” Vance complained.

  “At least it was decent whiskey,” Clay said. “I could have got you a bottle of that stuff they sell to the Indians.”

  Essex took off his beehive-shaped wool hat and wiped his forehead on his sleeve. “How big a lead you reckon we got on Wes?”

  “Big enough,” Clay said. “We can’t slack off, though. They’ll be after us.”

  “They’ll catch you, too,” Vance said.

  “Not if we keep up this pace,” Clay told him. “Besides, they have to find our trail first. “

  Vance tried another tack. “It still ain’t too late to let me go. Do it, and Wes’ll see you’re took good care of. I’d put in a word for you.”

  “Sorry,” Clay said. “You got a date with the U.S. Marshal in Tucson. After that, with a judge and jury.”

  “Wes’ll get you both,” Vance warned, “you and your friend.”

  “The man’s my deputy, not my friend.” Clay reined in and turned to Vance. “Come on, sunshine. Let’s walk a while, give these horses a rest. The exercise will do you good.”

  * * *

  “What!” Wes Hopkins said.

  The beefy-faced man named Shaughnessy did not like being the bearer of bad news. “I don’t think there’s nobody in there,” he repeated. They were in the lobby of the Topaz Hotel. Around them, Lee Hopkins and the other members of the gang were eating breakfast and checking weapons, getting ready for the coming showdown. They all stopped what they were doing to listen.

  Shaughnessy swallowed and went on. “The lamp went out late last night, but it looked like it guttered out—not like it was trimmed. Since then there ain’t been no movement in there that we could see. Nobody’s used the outhouse, and nobody’s looked out the window—and they was always looking out before.”

  A black cloud, like yesterday’s storm, was building on Wes’s brow. “Were you and your men watching the jail the whole time?”

  “Yeah, Wes. Except during the storm, of course, but they couldn’t have—”

  “Of course they could, you idiot. Lee!”

  Lee was sitting on the edge of a table, smoking a cigar. Now he slid his lean form from the table, tossing the cigar to the floor. Behind him a hotel employee rushed t
o stamp out the cigar’s glowing ember. “Yeah?” Lee said.

  “Get the boys.”

  Lee turned and began issuing orders. A few minutes later the gang followed Wes out the hotel door, bolting down last bits of food or coffee, holstering pistols, loading rifles as they walked. They headed for the jail, moving down the muddy street, which was littered with debris from the storm.

  When they reached the marshal’s office, Wes looked in the broken window. He saw nothing and banged on the door. “Chandler!”

  There was no answer.

  Wes banged again. “Chandler! Are you in there?”

  Still no answer. Wes swore and tried the latch, but the door was barred. “We’ll bust it open,” Lee said.

  “No, go through the window.”

  A couple of the men smashed out the rest of the window with their rifle butts. When the glass was clear, they crawled in and unbarred the door. “Nobody here,” one of them said to Wes as he entered.

  Wes looked around, then turned to Lee. “Search the town. Take it apart brick by brick if you have to, but find Chandler and my brother. If anybody gets in your way, shoot them. I’ll be at the mayor’s house.”

  Wes left the marshal’s office. Behind him, Lee gave the men their assignments. “All right, you heard the boss. Find Vance and that marshal, and don’t let nobody stop you. Jenkins and Swanson, take this end of Tucson Street. Paco, you and your brother take the lower end. O’Malley and Brisbane, you got Lincoln Street...”

  Wes turned down First Street, headed for Thomas Price’s residence. He passed the smoldering, waterlogged remains of Mason’s warehouse, where men were cleaning up from last night’s fire, but he barely noticed. All he could think about was his little brother, Vance.

  Ma would never forgive him if he let anything happen to Vance. Vance and Lee had been his responsibilities since she died, and he’d done a good job with them—until now. He’d overcome a lot of odds, too. There had been those years during the war, living in the brush country north of Dallas along with a mix of deserters from both armies, outlaws on the run, and men avoiding the Confederate draft. Those had been hard times. The Hopkins brothers had lived by their wits and by their guns—and sometimes their guns had come first. But they had survived—even thrived. They had started with stagecoach and other highway robberies, then gone to looting small ranches, stealing the horses and butchering the inhabitants so that people would think Comanches had done it. Later had come cattle rustling, and when the law had gotten too hot for them, they had moved to Arizona.