“I suppose you’re right.”
She felt him stiffen a little as they passed one of the saloon’s front windows. He broke stride, but so briefly that most people probably wouldn’t have noticed it.
Arabella did, though. “Steve, is something wrong?”
“Thought I caught a glimpse in there of a couple hombres I know.” The flat tone of Drake’s voice told Arabella he wasn’t fond of the men he thought he had spotted.
“I wouldn’t be surprised. A tournament like this draws players from all over, and like Upton said, most of us move in the same circles. When I came in earlier, I saw three or four other people I know.”
“Yes, but these fellas have a particular reason not to like me. If they’re in town, I’ll have to be sure and keep my eyes open. They’re the sort who’d hold a grudge . . . and they wouldn’t be shy about trying to settle old scores.”
“Would they be here for the tournament?”
“Maybe,” Drake mused. “They’re not at the same level as a lot of the other players who were invited, but they might be ambitious enough to give it a try. Unfortunately, they don’t always play a straight game.”
“That could cause a lot of trouble here.”
“It sure could. I’ll look into it . . . later. Right now I just want to enjoy some good food and better company.”
They walked a block north to Fremont Street and found the Red Top Café, a square building made of large blocks of sandstone topped with a red tile roof in the Spanish style.
The place wasn’t much to look at outside, but the people who ran it were friendly and the food was excellent. Drake declared the steaks as good as Delmonico’s in Kansas City.
When they stepped out of the café after their meal, Arabella noticed right away that a hot wind had sprung up, not unusual in that part of Arizona, of course. The arid breeze stirred the dark wings of her hair since she hadn’t worn a hat when she left the Top-Notch.
She pushed several ebony strands back from her face. “I don’t much care for that wind. It feels as if a storm might be brewing.”
“I’d be more worried about that if the air was still, ma’am,” commented a man they were passing on the boardwalk.
Arabella stopped to look at him. He wasn’t very tall, about the same height as her, in fact, but something about the way he carried himself made him seem bigger. He gave her and Steve Drake a friendly nod and raised a hand to tug on the brim of his pearl-gray Stetson.
She couldn’t help but notice a lawman’s badge pinned to his vest just under the edge of his suit coat.
“Sheriff John Slaughter, folks,” the man introduced himself.
“I’m Steve Drake,” the Virginian said as he put out his hand. “And this is Lady Arabella Winthrop.”
“Ah, the English lady,” Slaughter said as he shook hands with Steve Drake. “My deputy Stonewall mentioned meeting you when you came into town earlier today, Lady Winthrop.” Slaughter chuckled. “I must say, you made quite an impression on the boy.”
“He was very polite, Sheriff,” Arabella said. “You should be happy to have him as one of your deputies.”
“Oh, I am. I’m even happier to have him as my brother-in-law. I married his sister, you see.”
“Keeping law enforcement all in the family, eh?” Drake said with a grin.
“Something like that. Am I right in guessing that you folks are in town for the big poker tournament?”
“That’s right. We’re on our way back to the Top-Notch now.”
“The games aren’t getting started tonight, are they?” Slaughter asked.
Arabella said, “Not everyone has arrived yet. At least that’s the impression I was under. The tournament will probably start tomorrow or the next day.”
“I’ll wish you luck, then,” Slaughter said with another nod. He started to move on.
“If I was a lawman, I’d be a little worried about the tournament,” Drake said. “Lots of high rollers in town and a lot of money, too. Sometimes that brings trouble with it.”
“You’re right about that, Mr. Drake,” Slaughter said. “If things were different, I might be more concerned than I am.”
“What do you mean, if things were different? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“Don’t mind at all,” Slaughter said. “What I mean is, trouble’s already come to Tombstone.” He didn’t explain that he was talking about the prisoner he had locked up in the jail. That wasn’t really any of their business. He bid them good night and continued his evening rounds.
He often took that particular duty on himself, especially when Viola wasn’t in town. He liked to see Tombstone settling down for the evening.
He wasn’t sure that was going to be the case tonight. The hot wind seemed to have everyone on edge. People he spoke to on the boardwalks and the street were either curt or unusually nervous, even when they had no reason to be.
By the time he reached the Birdcage at the end of Allen Street, Slaughter’s instincts told him the air was thick with impending violence.
As he paused in the saloon’s doorway, he understood better why that feeling had gripped him. Men were crowded around someone who stood at the bar talking loudly.
“No better than an animal!” the man said. “Hell, he’s a mad dog! We all know it. And we all know what you do when an animal turns bad, too. You put it down!”
Slaughter recognized the voice, even though the crowd prevented him from getting a good look at the speaker. The man haranguing the saloon’s other customers was Charlie Porter, the foreman on the Bar EM. He had been ramrodding Little Ed McCabe’s crew for several years and was one of the riders who had chased Dallin Williams into Tombstone that afternoon with guns blazing, endangering the citizens.
That was enough of a reason right there to make Slaughter dislike the man. The way Porter was trying to stir up more trouble made it worse.
Slaughter pushed the batwings aside and stepped into the Birdcage. The hot wind came in with him and poked some of the sawdust on the floor into lazy swirls.
Porter was still yelling about what Williams had done, or at least was accused of doing, and he had the crowd so worked up that the men weren’t even watching the two scantily-clad soiled doves in the cages that gave the place its name. The girls looked bored as they sat on the stools inside the cages that hung from the ceiling and waited for some business.
“You fellas all know what Williams is like,” Porter went on. “How many innocent girls has he ruined? How many fine, decent married women has he taken advantage of? A man like that is lower than a snake’s belly! I don’t know about you, but when I see a snake, I step on it and cut off its head!”
“What do you think we ought to do, Charlie?” one of the men in the crowd asked. His voice was a little slurred and unsteady, proof that he had been drinking.
Slaughter suspected that most of the men in this bunch had put away quite a bit of liquor, probably paid for by Charlie Porter . . . although there was a good chance Porter had been using Little Ed McCabe’s money.
“It’s not my place to say,” Porter replied, which Slaughter thought was a little sanctimonious of him, considering the rabble-rousing he was doing. “Williams has been arrested, and it’s up to the law to deal with him now.”
“I’ll tell you what we oughta do!” a man shouted as he looked around at the others for encouragement. “We oughta get ourselves a rope and string him up! That’s what he’s got comin’ to him, the no-good polecat!”
Cheers went up from most of the men in the crowd. They sounded eager, even bloodthirsty. Several of them angrily pumped fists in the air.
Stirring around in their excitement created a narrow gap through which Slaughter saw Charlie Porter standing at the bar with a satisfied grin on his face.
Porter had done exactly what he’d set out to do, Slaughter thought. He had gotten the men in the Birdcage so drunk and worked up that one of them had made the suggestion Porter had been careful not to make himself. It was a classic
manipulation of a crowd into a lynch mob.
And it made John Slaughter mad as hell.
The fact that he could see Porter meant that the Bar EM foreman could see him as well. A look of alarm appeared on Porter’s face as Slaughter started across the room toward the bar. Then the crowd shifted again and Slaughter lost sight of him.
The crowd was still making a lot of racket. No one had noticed Slaughter’s approach. His route took him past one of the cages. The girl sitting inside was wearing only a nearly transparent wrapper. She smiled at him. “Good evening, Sheriff.”
“Ma’am,” Slaughter said with a nod. He walked on by and drew his Colt. The Single Action Army slid smoothly from leather. He thumbed back the hammer, pointed the gun at the ceiling, and squeezed the trigger.
The boom of the revolver seemed louder than it really was in the close confines of the low-ceilinged barroom. Slaughter had been careful not to aim at one of the lamps hanging from the ceiling. The last thing he wanted to do was start a fire.
One shot was all it took to make silence come crashing down hard in the saloon.
Some of the men in the crowd jumped at the noise and reached for their guns when they turned to see what was going on. They froze when they saw the grim-faced lawman standing there holding the pearl-handled Colt. Hands eased carefully away from gun butts.
“Porter!” Slaughter thundered, seeming almost as loud as the gunshot. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Like Moses and the Red Sea in the Good Book, the crowd parted before Texas John. Nobody wanted to be standing too close to the object of his wrath.
All by himself, Charlie Porter stood at the bar with a mixture of anger and dread on his rough-hewn face. “You got no call to threaten me, Sheriff—”
“I didn’t threaten you. I asked you a question. What are you trying to do here?”
“Just havin’ a drink and talkin’,” Porter said. “That’s all.”
“Really? Because it sounded to me like you were trying to stir up a lynch mob! Do you think you’re going to take Dallin Williams out of my jail and string him up?”
“Now, I never said that,” Porter insisted.
“Maybe not, but I saw how pleased you were when somebody else came up with the idea.”
Porter’s rock-like slab of a jaw jutted forward defiantly. “I got a right to my opinion, Sheriff, and I think a good-for-nothing rapist like Williams deserves to hang.”
Several men in the crowd shouted their agreement.
They were in the back of the bunch where they weren’t very visible, noted Slaughter.
“I won’t abide any lynch mobs in Tombstone.” His voice was flat and hard as flint. “The law will take care of Dallin Williams. He’ll go to trial and answer for the charges against him.”
“Seems to me like a trial is a waste of time and money,” Porter said with a sneer. “It’s all gonna wind up the same in the end, anyway.”
Slaughter’s thoughts flashed back to his conversation with Judge Burroughs that afternoon. Clearly Porter and the other men didn’t know that Williams would escape the hangrope even if he were found guilty.
Slaughter sure as blazes wasn’t going to inform them of that fact, either. That would just inflame them more.
“You need to head back to the McCabe spread, Porter,” Slaughter said. “You’re done here tonight.”
“You’re runnin’ me out of town?” Porter sounded like he couldn’t believe it.
“That’s exactly what I’m doing.”
Several men jeered and shouted that Slaughter couldn’t do that. He wondered if they were some of McCabe’s hands, too.
“You can ride out or you can spend the night in jail for inciting a riot and disturbing the peace,” Slaughter went on as he stared coldly at Porter. “It’s up to you.”
For a few seconds Porter looked like he wanted to argue or put up a fight, but then the defiance went out of his eyes. He shrugged. “Reckon I ought to be gettin’ back to the ranch anyway.”
“Take the rest of McCabe’s men with you.” Slaughter raised his voice and added, “You hear that? If you ride for the Bar EM, get out of Tombstone. Go home and let the law handle things here in town.”
Porter started toward the door. Several members of the crowd followed him, all of them glaring at Slaughter and grumbling as they left the Birdcage.
Slaughter swept a cold gaze over the rest of the men in front of the bar. That was all it took to make them start drifting apart. He heard some angry words muttered, but he chose to ignore them in the interest of keeping the peace.
In a few minutes, the level of conversation in the room was back to normal. Slaughter started for the door. As he passed the cages, he nodded and said, “Ladies.”
He had headed off trouble for a little while, he thought as he stepped out into the street, but it would be back soon enough. Maybe not tonight, but it wouldn’t take very long for anger to build up again and for people to start talking about how Dallin Williams deserved to dance at the end of a rope.
The week or so before the matter could come to trial was going to be a mighty long one, Slaughter reflected. He’d be surprised if the situation lasted until then without violence breaking out. He was going to need the luck of one of those poker players in Morris Upton’s big tournament just to keep the lid on.
And if the hot wind kept blowing, it would only make the pot boil even more.
Chapter 8
Since the terrain around Tombstone was dry and desert-like, the air often cooled off considerably during the hours of darkness. Sometimes it was downright cold before morning. That wasn’t the case as the hot wind continued to blow all night, feeling like the searing breath from the mouth of a blast furnace.
The wind didn’t die down until just before dawn, and by then it was too late to do any good. As the sun rose, blistering heat settled over the landscape.
Men who were out and about on early errands pulled bandannas from their pockets and mopped already sweating foreheads. Mongrel dogs that normally would have been scrounging in the trash behind the cafés for something to eat sought out any patch of shade they could find, instead.
As a matter of habit, John Slaughter was an early riser. He stepped out of the hotel following his breakfast and paused on the boardwalk. He frowned as he realized just how hot and still the air was.
By the time he reached the courthouse, he had shed his coat and was giving serious consideration to taking off his string tie and unfastening his collar. He liked to dress well, especially when he was carrying out his duties as sheriff. He believed that would make people more inclined to respect him and his office. But there was no point in being miserable all day, he told himself.
Burt Alvord was at the desk in the outer office, pushing some papers around listlessly. Sweat glistened on the chief deputy’s mostly bald pate as he looked up at Slaughter. “Gonna be a real scorcher today, ain’t it, Sheriff ?”
“I’m afraid you’re right, Burt,” Slaughter replied as he hung up his hat and coat. He pulled his tie off and shoved it into one of the coat pockets. “Everything quiet this morning?”
“Yes, sir. When I took over for Mose a little while ago, he said there weren’t any problems overnight.”
Slaughter nodded. Mose Tadrack had had the graveyard shift. As a former saloon swamper, he was used to being up at all hours of the night.
“How’s the prisoner?”
Burt leaned back in his chair. “Pretty scared, I’d say. I reckon it’s starting to soak in on Williams just how much trouble he’s really in.”
“And he doesn’t even know what happened in the Birdcage last night,” Slaughter said with a frown.
That put a matching frown on Burt’s face. “What happened in the Birdcage?”
“Charlie Porter was buying drinks and doing his best to stir up a lynch mob.”
“Little Ed McCabe’s foreman?”
“That’s right.”
“You reckon McCabe put him up to it?”
“I don’t know,” Slaughter said. “Porter’s ridden for the Bar EM for quite a while. It’s possible he was doing it just out of loyalty to his boss. I don’t think so, but it doesn’t really matter why he was trying to cause trouble.”
“What did you do, Sheriff?”
“Put a stop to it, of course. I told Porter to get out of town and take the rest of the McCabe hands with him, or I’d jail him for disturbing the peace and inciting a riot.” Slaughter paused. “He decided not to put me to the test.”
Burt grunted. “Probably a good thing for him. Now I understand some of the talk I overheard in the hash house while I was havin’ breakfast before I came to work this morning.”
“What sort of talk?” Slaughter asked sharply.
“Just a lot of muttering about how Williams had gotten away with too much already and how folks around here needed to make sure he didn’t get away with attacking the McCabe girl.”
Slaughter closed his eyes for a second, sighed, and shook his head. “I had hoped that such talk would have died out by this morning.”
“Nope, people are still plenty upset about it. You’d think as hot as the weather is, trying to stay cool is all folks would care about right now.”
“Hot weather means hot blood.”
“I reckon you’re right about that, Sheriff. If I hear any more gossip about a necktie party, I’ll step in and put a stop to it right away, just like you did last night.”
Slaughter nodded in agreement. He went on through to his private office and sat down to wonder if there was any way he could get Judge Burroughs to speed up Dallin Williams’ trial date.
The sooner the law did its job in this case, the better.
* * *
Oscar Grayson had stayed up late the night before playing in a low-stakes game that was nothing more than practice for the tournament. A couple times he had been tempted to deal from the bottom of the deck or palm an ace, but in the end he hadn’t gone to the trouble. Cheating was just a matter of habit, and the amount of money on the table didn’t seem worth it.
Deadly Day in Tombstone Page 6