Another man said, “Yeah, you’re right. I think I’m goin’ home while I’ve got the chance.” He stood up from behind the water trough where he had knelt. He had a rifle in his left hand, but he held it out well away from his body to show that he wasn’t going to use it. “Deal me out, boys.”
Several men followed his example, stepping into the open with their hands either empty or held so that it was obvious they didn’t intend to use their guns.
“What the hell are you doing?” another member of the mob demanded. “You’re gonna let Williams get away with what he did? What if it was your wife or daughter he attacked?”
“Then I’d blow a hole in him if I got the chance,” a man said. “Otherwise I reckon I’d have to let the law handle it.”
“But he’s liable to get away with it!”
Slaughter said, “What makes you think that? You men all know Judge Burroughs. He’s a fair man and he’ll conduct a fair trial. The jury will be made up of men from Cochise County. Maybe even some of you. Williams will answer for the charge against him, and he’ll get what’s coming to him, whatever the trial determines that to be. That’s the way the law works.”
More men moved into the open, ready to abandon the idea of taking Williams out of the jail and hanging him. Like a shift in the wind, Slaughter felt the change that came over the rest of the mob. The danger was slipping away.
Then he spotted a flash of flame to his right and wheeled in that direction to see a man running into the street with a can of coal oil in his hand. The man had stuffed a rag into the can’s spout and set it on fire to make a crude bomb. As he dashed toward the courthouse, he yelled, “Come on, boys! We’ll burn them out!”
The outside of the stone and adobe courthouse wouldn’t burn, but the interior might if he succeeded in setting the shutters on fire. As the man drew back his arm to hurl the bomb toward the windows, Slaughter palmed his Colt from its holster, aimed, and fired. The whole process barely took the blink of an eye.
Slaughter’s gun roared, and an instant later the slug ripped through the man’s thigh and spun him off his feet. He howled in pain as he fell. The can of coal oil slipped from his fingers and thudded to the ground beside him, rolling a few feet away as the makeshift fuse continued to burn.
The man stared at the bomb and then screamed as he tried to scramble to his feet and get away from it before it exploded. But his wounded leg wouldn’t support his weight, so all he could do was crawl. That wasn’t going to get him far enough away.
Then Slaughter was beside him, reaching down, gripping his arm, and hauling him to his feet. Slaughter ran, dragging the wounded man with him.
On the north side of the street, the straggling members of the mob yelled in alarm and scurried for cover.
Slaughter dived over the top of a water trough. The wounded man flopped into the water itself, causing it to splash high into the air.
At that instant, the can of coal oil exploded in a ball of flame that sent jagged pieces of metal flying. As Slaughter rolled in the dirt, he heard some of the debris striking the buildings behind him.
He hoped everyone had reached safety and no one had been hurt except the man he had shot. He came up on one knee and looked into the water trough, where the bomber was sputtering and flailing, apparently unharmed except for the bullet hole in his leg.
Slaughter had dropped his shotgun in the street when he went to rescue the would-be bomber, but he still held the revolver. He reached into the trough, grabbed the man’s shirt front, and hauled him out of the water.
Putting the Colt’s muzzle in the hollow of the man’s throat, Slaughter said, “You don’t know how badly I want to blow your head off right now, mister.”
“P-please, don’t shoot, Sheriff !” the man sobbed. “I . . . I’m hurt. You already shot me!”
“You’re just lucky I didn’t do a better job of it,” Slaughter told him.
Rapid footsteps nearby made him glance around. Several of his deputies were on hand, having run down the street from where they had taken up positions earlier.
Slaughter dragged the wounded man the rest of the way out of the water trough and let him sprawl in the dirt. “Lock him up, and then fetch a doctor to tend to his leg.”
Burt and Jeff got hold of the man’s arms and lifted him between them. As they marched the man toward the jail, Paco asked Slaughter, “You are all right, señor?”
“Yeah, just mad as a hornet.” Slaughter looked around. Quite a few of the men in the mob were emerging from hiding. As they felt the power of the sheriff’s cold stare, they left the vicinity in a hurry.
“Damned fools,” he muttered.
Since the bomb had gone off in the middle of the street, it hadn’t done any real damage except to blast a hole in the ground that could be filled in and repaired easily enough. Small flames still licked up from some of the burning coal oil that had splattered around in the explosion.
By that garish light, Slaughter brushed some of the dust off his clothes, took his shotgun when Tommy Howell handed it to him, and told the others, “Let’s go make sure Stonewall and Mose are all right in the jail.”
Chapter 12
The time he and Tadrack spent in the jail while guns went off and bullets thudded into the wall, door, and shutters were some of the most nerve-wracking moments in Stonewall’s life.
Tadrack, who was risking his life by peeking through the narrow crack between two shutters, exclaimed, “Sheriff Slaughter’s out there!”
The news came as a great relief. Stonewall knew if anybody could put an end to the trouble, it was his brother-in-law.
Sure enough, the shooting stopped a few moments later. Stonewall took a chance and pressed his eye to the gap between the shutters on one of the other windows. He watched as the sheriff confronted the lynch mob and talked them out of their deadly plans. His admiration for Texas John Slaughter grew even more as those tense few minutes unfolded.
Just as he thought it was over, a man rushed into the street with a makeshift bomb, and Stonewall figured that hell was going to pop after all. A bomb like that wouldn’t blow a hole in the wall, but it might set the courthouse on fire.
Like a lot of Westerners, he had a mortal fear of fire. More than one frontier town had burned to the ground from what had started as one small blaze.
Glued to the window, Stonewall watched Sheriff Slaughter deal with the threat in his usual blunt, efficient manner then stride toward the courthouse behind Burt Alvord and Jeff Milton with their prisoner.
“Let’s get that bar off the door,” Tadrack said.
Stonewall hurried to help him, and together they lifted the heavy beam from the brackets and set it aside.
Tadrack opened the door so Burt and Jeff could bring in the wounded prisoner. The man moaned as the bloodstain from the bullet hole continued to spread down his trouser leg.
“We’re supposed to put him in a cell and fetch the doctor,” Burt said.
Stonewall grabbed a ring of keys from a nail on the wall behind the desk and used one of them to unlock the cell block door. He swung it back and stood aside while his fellow deputies half-carried, half-dragged the wounded man past him.
“Harley Court!” Stonewall exclaimed as he recognized the man. Until that moment he would have said that Harley, who worked at the blacksmith shop, was a friend of his.
Court looked at him. “I’m shot, Stonewall. The sheriff shot me.”
Stonewall followed them into the cell block. “Well, considerin’ that you were trying to blow us up at the time, I can’t say as I blame him. In fact, I’m pretty doggoned glad that he did!”
Burt and Jeff took the prisoner into the cell across the aisle from Dallin Williams’s cell and lowered him onto the bunk.
Court groaned and looked up at Stonewall “I didn’t even think about that at the time. Hell, I didn’t want to blow you up, Stonewall.”
“It sure looked like it from where I was standin’.”
Court shook his head. “I ju
st got so worked up, like the rest of the fellas. It seemed like the most important thing in the world was gettin’ our hands on that rapist so we could teach him a lesson.”
Across the aisle, Dallin came to the barred door and said hotly, “I didn’t rape nobody. I keep tellin’ people that. Why won’t anybody believe me?”
Jeff Milton gave him a cold stare. “Because everybody in Tombstone knows what you’re like, Williams. You’re used to getting whatever you want from women. For most folks, it’s no stretch to believe that when the McCabe girl turned you down, you just took it anyway.”
With a despairing look on his face, Dallin shook his head and muttered, “I didn’t do it. I didn’t.”
Burt clanged the door shut on the other cell. “We’ll be back with a sawbones for you, Court. Try not to bleed to death in the meantime.”
Court just moaned.
Stonewall, Burt, and Jeff went back into the office where Sheriff Slaughter was getting Tadrack’s version of the evening’s events.
Tadrack glanced at his fellow deputies then back to Slaughter. “Do you think there’ll be any more trouble tonight, Sheriff?”
“That’s a good question,” Slaughter replied with a frown. “When that mob broke up, the men looked pretty cowed. That explosion may have knocked the lynch fever out of them for the time being. But we’ll continue to stay on our guard all night, anyway.”
“I’ll fetch the doc.” Jeff left the office as the other deputies were coming in.
“Did everyone go home?” Slaughter asked them.
“They took off like scalded dogs,” Tommy said. “Reckon nobody wanted to take a chance of gettin’ any part of the blame for what that hombre did.”
“Everything is quiet now,” Paco added. “Do you still want us patrolling the streets tonight, señor?”
“Indeed I do,” Slaughter said. “That lynch mob could try to form again, and that’s not the only potential trouble we have in town right now. There’s still that big poker tournament going on at the Top-Notch.”
With everything else that had been happening, Stonewall had forgotten about that. He recalled that pretty English lady whose bags he had carried into the saloon and couldn’t help but wonder how she was doing.
* * *
Arabella placed her cards facedown on the table, slid them over to the discard pile, and murmured, “I fold.”
She’d had to do that all too often tonight, she thought. She couldn’t win if she didn’t play, and yet sticking with a hand when it was obvious she just didn’t have the cards was the same as throwing away money. Arabella was too smart to do that.
A few minutes later, Angelo Castro let out a satisfied chuckle and raked in the pot. He was doing well tonight, probably better than any of the other players.
But the game was a long way from over. None of the others at the table were anywhere close to being cleaned out. A game like this was a distance race, not a sprint.
And as for the tournament itself . . . well, that was a bloody marathon.
Since Castro had won the hand, he had the deal again. He called seven card stud as the game as he began to shuffle.
That was fine with Arabella. She didn’t really care which particular game they played. She was equally adroit at all the variations of poker.
Again the right cards didn’t come her way, or at least not ones that she felt confident enough about to risk much. She dropped out of the hand early when it became evident to her that she wasn’t going to win.
Tall, lanky Wade Cunningham took the pot instead and changed the game to five card draw.
A couple tables over, the players took a break. From the corner of her eye, Arabella saw Steve Drake stand up, stretch, and then light a cigar he took from his vest pocket.
She would have enjoyed spending a few minutes with her old friend. Instead, she had to settle for the quick grin of encouragement that he sent her way. She turned her attention back to her cards.
Holding a pair of treys, a pair of sevens, and a jack, Arabella threw away the jack. Instead of the three or seven she needed for the full house, Cunningham dealt her an eight. That left her with two pair, the best hand she’d had in a while, so she decided to stick with it, at least for the moment.
As the betting went on, the pot got big enough to force out Snyder, Lockard, and Burnett, leaving Arabella to go against Cunningham and Castro.
In the end, her two pair beat Cunningham’s pair of queens. Castro had nothing but a busted flush.
“You were bluffing,” she said to the Italian with a smile.
He gave an eloquent shrug. “Something that must be done from time to time. To keep the other players in the game honest, you know.”
“Part of the game’s price, you mean.”
“Exactly, signorina.”
She knew all about paying the game’s price. She could have been married, had a family, children. Instead, she had spent half her life in smoky saloons like this one, sleeping by day and truly existing at night, when the only pleasures were transitory ones. She really didn’t know how to do anything else.
Arabella gathered the cards to shuffle. “Let’s keep the game five card draw for now, gentlemen.”
Across the room, Oscar Grayson had forced himself to keep his mind on the game even while some of the spectators were rushing out to see what was going on. It was a little hard to concentrate with guns going off, followed by a muffled explosion.
He heard the talk as people drifted back into the Top-Notch. Something about a lynch mob trying to break into the jail and string up a prisoner. It was nothing to do with him or the game, so he didn’t pay much attention to it as things settled back down in the saloon.
The players at each table took a break whenever they all agreed. When the game broke up momentarily at the table where Steve Drake and Max Rourke were, a hand had just concluded at Grayson’s table as well.
Grayson looked at the others. “I could use a few minutes, fellas.”
“So could I,” one of the other men said. He grinned. “Too much coffee, but a man’s got to keep his brain alert somehow and running to the privy will do it.”
Grayson watched Rourke stroll outside. He followed as unobtrusively as possible. Pushing through the batwings, he stepped onto the boardwalk and saw Rourke standing to his left. The red-haired gambler lifted a small silver flask to his lips and took a sip.
Not wanting to startle him, Grayson cleared his throat and made some noise as he approached. Rourke glanced around at him, put the cap back on the flask, and slipped it into his pocket.
Grayson was close enough to catch a faint whiff of what was in the flask. He’d figured it was whiskey, but he recognized the smell as something else.
Laudanum.
He didn’t see how anybody could take nips of a powerful drug like that and still be able to concentrate on his cards, but if that was how Rourke played the game, then more power to him. Grayson nodded. “Hello, Max.”
“Grayson,” the man said, his voice curt but not unfriendly. They had met several times over the years, in various places, and gotten along all right, although they certainly weren’t close.
“How’s luck treating you so far?”
Rourke made a disparaging noise. “Luck has very little to do with it. They call poker a game of chance, but it’s really a test of skill. But to answer your question . . . I’m down a little. But my luck will change.”
He said it in all seriousness, not even realizing the self-contradiction, thought Grayson.
Rourke went on. “I expect to come out on top in the end.”
“A fella who didn’t feel like that wouldn’t have any business sitting down at the table for a game like this one,” Grayson said. “You’ve got to plan big to win big.”
Rourke made another sound that might have been a laugh. “What’s your plan, Grayson?”
“I’ll tell you . . . but not here and not now.”
That seemed to catch Rourke’s interest for the first time. He turned his
head to look at Grayson and asked with a slight frown, “What are you up to?”
“I’ve got an idea how to come out the big winner, no matter what the cards do, but I can’t do it by myself, Max. I’m going to need help. If you’d like to know more about it, be part of it, we can talk tomorrow, when the tournament breaks up for a few hours so folks can get some sleep.”
Rourke regarded him solemnly for a few seconds. “This sounds like a double cross of some sort.”
“Just a different kind of game,” Grayson said.
Rourke’s hand strayed to the pocket where he had put the flask, It rested there for a second, then moved away.
He wanted another nip of the laudanum, thought Grayson, but he wasn’t going to take it with somebody else standing right there watching him.
“I’ll think about it,” Rourke said. “Where can I find you?”
Grayson didn’t want to admit that he was staying in such a squalid dive. “Which hotel are you in?”
“The American.”
“So am I,” Grayson lied. “I’ll find you there tomorrow afternoon, around three o’clock?”
“That’s fine,” Rourke said with a nod. Grayson started to turn away, but the red-headed gambler stopped him by adding, “You’d better not be thinking about playing some sort of trick on me, Oscar.”
“I wouldn’t do that.” Grayson didn’t have any problem sounding sincere because he meant it.
Double-crossing a lunatic with a hair-trigger temper like Max Rourke possessed was the best way Grayson could think of to wind up dead.
Unless he was able to do it very, very carefully.
Chapter 13
The violent confrontation on Toughnut Street might not have completely put an end to lynch talk for the night, but the memory of what had happened kept anyone from taking it seriously enough to do anything more about it.
At least, that’s what Stonewall supposed, since no more trouble had broken out overnight. He and Mose Tadrack had stayed at the jail until midnight, when Shattuck and Farrington had relieved them.
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