The glory days were gone now as law enforcement became stronger and reached farther. His gang had been reduced to five trigger-happy degenerates who would put a knife in their mothers’ backs if it showed a profit. “What the hell,” he mumbled, suddenly weary of the negative thoughts, “there might be somethin’ worth takin’ in that town tomorrow. If there ain’t, I’ll burn it to the ground.”
Standing on a rise in the southwest corner of his cornfield, looking through a gap in the trees, Oscar Perkins had a clear view of the south road into Paradise, some one hundred yards distant. It was coincidence that he happened to be standing on that particular spot on this cloudy morning when six riders, three of them leading packhorses, passed on their way to town. He gazed at them for as long as they remained in view, unable to identify them at that distance. It was unusual to see that many men riding together unless it was some of Pryor’s crew, and that was unlikely on this side of town. He wondered, since he was officially the sheriff, if there was any reason for him to go into town to see what their business was in Paradise. Tom had told him there were two strangers that passed through town the day before. He said they didn’t stop, just rode up and down the street and left. Kind of odd, Oscar thought, but no reason to get concerned about it. I can’t go running off to town every time a stranger rides in. I’ve got a farm to work. Besides, Tom can take care of it if anything needs taking care of. Raymond Pryor had been understanding on the matter of Oscar’s farm. He permitted Oscar to work as more a part-time sheriff, and made young Tom Austin a deputy. That kept the town covered, since Tom was there all the time, working in the stables. Oscar had no real qualifications for the job as sheriff other than being a sizable man. But it was an opportunity to enjoy a small salary, so he took the job. It had never required much of him, since all the folks in Paradise were law-abiding citizens.
“Looks more like they’re just passin’ through,” he said aloud, bringing his thoughts back to the strangers on the road. “Just travelers, most likely headin’ up Montana way lookin’ for the gold fields.” With the passing of the hindmost horse’s rear end around the bend in the road, disappearing from his view, he dismissed the incident and returned to his work.
The wagon track that served as Paradise’s main street was not wide enough for six men on horses to ride abreast. Consequently, Mace’s gang of outlaws rode into town in a column of twos, like a small military expedition. As Doc and Lacey had done the day before, they rode the short length of the street before turning around and heading for the saloon. Mace paid close attention to the sheriff’s office, noting that it appeared to be empty.
Joe Gault paused to look at the strangers as they ambled past his forge. He nodded, but none of the six bothered to acknowledge his greeting. Lena Hatfield called her husband to the window to watch them pass the general store. “Fred,” she called, “you ever see any of those men?” When he replied that they were strangers to him, she commented, “They’re as wild-looking a bunch as I’ve ever seen.”
“Looks don’t mean much,” Fred said, even though he shared her opinion. “ ’Pears like they’re goin’ to the saloon. I think I’ll walk over and see who they are.”
“I don’t suppose you’ll be buying a drink this early in the day,” Lena said sarcastically.
“Course not,” he quickly replied. “Unless I think it’s necessary to talk business or something,” he added sheepishly. “New folks in town—might be needin’ some supplies.”
When Hatfield walked into the saloon, the six strangers were already seated around the two back tables. Gus Hopkins, the bartender, was carrying two trays with a bottle and glasses, one for each table, to set before them. Fred waited at the bar for Gus to return. “I don’t know who they are,” Gus said in answer to Hatfield’s question. “They ain’t had time to say much of anything except to order some whiskey.”
“They’re a right rough-lookin’ bunch,” Fred said. “And from the appearance of their horses, it looks like they’ve been doin’ some hard ridin’.”
“Are you drinkin’?” Gus interrupted.
“Yeah, I reckon. Wouldn’t hurt to pour me a little one.” Returning quickly to the topic that had prompted his curiosity, he went on. “You ain’t heard nothin’ about Pryor hiring on more men, have you?” He didn’t wait for Gus’ answer. “They don’t hardly look like the kind of men he hires.”
“I expect they’re just passin’ through,” Gus replied with a hint of impatience for Hatfield’s questions. “I reckon you could ask ’em.”
“I reckon I could at that,” Hatfield said, aware then of Gus’ tone. He tossed back the remains of his drink and set the empty glass on the bar. “Might as well be neighborly.”
The noisy banter ceased when Hatfield approached the two tables, and all six men turned to stare at him. “How’re you fellers doin’?” he asked.
“Who the hell wants to know?” Lacey Jenkins was the first to respond. “You the sheriff or somethin’?”
“No, sir,” Hatfield quickly replied. “No, indeed. I’m Fred Hatfield. I own the general store next door. I just never remembered seein’ you boys in town before. I just thought maybe you was some new men Mr. Pryor mighta hired.” This brought a laugh from the men seated at the table. “I was just aimin’ to be a little neighborly.” Hatfield tried to explain.
“Well, aim somewhere else,” Bob Dawson replied, causing another round of laughter.
Studying the flustered merchant with some amusement, Mace Cantrell finally held up his hand in a silencing gesture. “Hold on here a minute, boys. Like the man says, he’s just tryin’ to be neighborly.” Fixing his gaze upon Hatfield, he asked, “Who’s Mr. Pryor? Is he the sheriff?”
Feeling a tiny bit more at ease, since the man obviously enjoyed control over his companions, Hatfield was quick to answer. “Oh, no, sir, Oscar Perkins is the sheriff. Mr. Pryor is half or full owner of every business here in Paradise. You might say he owns the town.”
“Owns the town, huh?” The rest of his men held their tongues, aware that Mace was working up something in his mind. Sitting beside him, Doc displayed a prideful grin, aware that his brother was already sizing up the town’s possibilities. He winked at Lacey as Mace continued. “So he’s the stud horse around here, is he? He must be a right wealthy man.”
Hatfield glanced nervously at Gus, who was silently shaking his head in an effort to warn him that he might be telling the strangers more than Pryor would have them know. “I don’t know,” he stammered. “Enough to get by, I reckon.”
Seeing Hatfield about to clam up on him, Mace broke out a generous smile and attempted to put the nervous storekeeper at ease. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “Pryor might just be the man we came to town to see. Where do you suppose we might find him?” While the rest of his gang exchanged puzzled glances, Mace shoved an empty chair out with his foot. “Set yourself down and have a drink, Hatfield. I expect we’ll be doin’ a fair amount of business at your store.”
Feeling a little less intimidated, and encouraged by the possibility of some business coming his way, Hatfield pulled the chair clear of the table and sat down. Eager to see where his brother was going with this charade, Doc grabbed the bottle and poured the store owner a stiff one, winking at Lacey again, as if he were in on the joke.
“Thank you, sir,” Hatfield mumbled as he started to raise the glass. He paused when he realized that he was holding the attention of six blank faces, obviously awaiting his answer to the question posed by Mace. “Oh,” he said, just then remembering, “Mr. Pryor don’t stay here in town very much. I suppose you’ll have to go out to his ranch to see him.”
Mace nodded his head thoughtfully as he considered that fact. “He don’t come in on a regular basis?” When Hatfield shook his head, Mace asked another question. “Where’s the sheriff? It didn’t look like there was nobody in his office when we rode in.”
“Oscar?” Hatfield replied, still holding his whiskey glass halfway to his mouth.
“Yeah, ol
’ Oscar,” Mace said with a grin. “Is he hangin’ around here somewhere?”
Hatfield tossed back his whiskey, then smacked his lips appreciatively. “Oscar don’t hang around much in town unless there’s some kinda trouble or somethin’. We don’t have much trouble here in Paradise, so he spends most of his time workin’ his farm.”
“Is that a fact?” Mace responded with an amused grunt. “So what you’re sayin’ is if a gang of outlaws rode into town right now, they could pretty much take the whole damn town if they were of a mind to.”
“No, sir,” Hatfield quickly responded, uncomfortable with the direction the conversation had taken. “We ain’t without law. Oscar’s deputy, Tom Austin, is always here in town. He’d take care of any trouble that got started.”
Mace was beginning to get the general picture of Paradise and he liked what he saw. This isolated little town they had stumbled onto just might be a potential gold mine and the change of luck he sorely needed. Like a plump, juicy plum, Paradise was there for the picking.
After another drink from the strangers’ bottle, Hatfield decided to get back to his store before “Lena comes to haul me out by the ankles,” as he put it.
“We’ll be in to see you pretty soon,” Mace said, then watched him walk a little unsteadily toward the door.
“What you got on your mind?” Doc leaned in to ask. “You thinkin’ about hittin’ that man’s store?”
“Hell, no,” Mace answered with a chuckle. “I’m thinkin’ about hittin’ the whole damn town.” Met with a cluster of puzzled faces, he threw his head back and laughed. “I’ll tell you what the deal is outside,” he said. “Let’s get outta here.” They started to get up to leave, but Mace stopped them. “Hold still a minute,” he said, motioning for everyone to remain seated. He had noticed a slight man with gray hair who had just walked in and stopped at the bar to talk to the bartender. He wasn’t sure, but he also thought that he had caught the word Pryor when Gus greeted him.
Plopping himself down in his chair again, Lacey said to Junior, “There’s still a couple of drinks there.” When he saw Mace fishing in his pocket for money, he added, “We don’t wanna waste any.” He was surprised that Mace seemed intent upon paying, as he had assumed that they would simply take the whiskey and anything the bartender had in the till. That was the way they usually left a place they didn’t intend to see again.
While his companions drained the last drops from the bottles, Mace watched the man talking to the bartender, noticing that the gray-haired man glanced his way several times. Playing a hunch, he told his men to go on outside and wait for him at the hitching post. After they had all filed out of the saloon, he got up and walked over to the bar.
As both men at the bar stopped talking and turned to face him, Mace said, “I reckon I’d best settle up for the whiskey my men drank.” He fashioned a friendly smile for the man who had been talking to Gus and nodded. “You wouldn’t by any chance be Mr. Pryor, would you?”
“Yes, I’m Raymond Pryor,” he replied, somewhat reluctantly.
Mace was sharp enough to sense the man’s hesitation, and he had to surmise that Gus had told him the strangers were asking about him. From the look on Pryor’s face, Mace could also surmise that he had no interest in talking. Amused by the thought, Mace smiled again. He cast a sideways glance in Gus’s direction and said, “Gus here was probably about to tell you that I was plannin’ to come to see you.”
“Is that right?” Pryor replied. “What about?” He was a fair appraiser of people, and he spotted Mace Cantrell as someone with whom he would have no reason to discuss anything.
“My name’s Mace Cantrell. Maybe you’ve heard of me.” He paused to watch Pryor’s reaction. When he saw no indication that the name meant anything to Pryor, good or bad, he continued. “Me and my men work for the territorial governor as a special posse. We was just passin’ through your little town here on our way back east from a job with the marshal over in Helena.”
“You kinda got a little off course if you wound up here in Paradise,” Pryor said.
“Well, like I said, we just finished up a big job in Helena, and some of the boys wanted to see a little bit of the country between here and the Missouri, so we left the Yellowstone and headed north. When I heard somebody was buildin’ a town up here, I wanted to stop by and let you know we were passing through in case you needed our help with anythin’.”
“Well, Mr. . . . Cantrell, was it?” Pryor said. “I think Paradise is peaceful enough, so we don’t need your services right now. But thanks for stopping by.”
“No trouble a’tall,” Mace replied graciously. “It was a pleasure meetin’ you.” He picked up his change from the bar and nodded a pleasant farewell to Gus. “I reckon we’ll be on our way.”
They nodded in response to his good-bye and said nothing until he was out the door. “Well, ain’t he somethin’?” Gus commented.
“He’s something, all right,” Pryor replied. “Bunch of drifters—I never heard of any special posse. I don’t know what he’s really selling, but we don’t need any of it.”
Outside, Mace approached the hitching rail where the others were waiting. “Boys,” he announced, “we may have just been lucky enough to run up on the sweetest deal we’ll ever see again.” Without a clue as to what he was talking about, the other five looked at him with open faces. Their reaction seemed to please him even more. “Look around you,” he said. “What do you see?”
“Don’t see much of nothin’,” Lacey Jenkins said.
“That’s right,” Mace replied, “you don’t, and that’s the reason I’m the leader of this gang—’cause I see a god-damned gold mine. We’ll know for sure after we see what kinda men this Pryor feller’s got ridin’ for him.”
“Hell, Mace, this place don’t look no different from a hundred other little settlements tryin’ to start up. There usually ain’t a dollar’s worth of salt in the whole damn town.”
“When we get through with it, there won’t be a penny’s worth,” Mace replied. “Think about what that feller Hatfield just said. Pryor’s got the money to set all these folks up in business. And he’s holdin’ the prices down—when’s the last time you bought a shot of good whiskey for two bits? He’s out to build hisself a town, backin’ ever’body with his own money. He’ll get his town built up, and when he does, he’ll own ever’ damn soul in it.”
Dawson wasn’t convinced. He never planned for the future, only the here and now. “If Pryor’s the man holdin’ the money, why the hell don’t we just go take it and get on back to the Dakotas?”
“I expect that’s what we’ll do,” Mace replied. “But first we’ll have to find out where he keeps it. There ain’t no bank here, so he’s got it hid somewhere at his ranch. We’ll ride on outta town like we’re done with it, so the good folks don’t worry about us.”
Zeke Cheney piped up then. “What about the sheriff and his deputy?”
“I ain’t worried about no farmer that works part-time as sheriff. If you wasn’t so damn dumb, you could see that like the storekeeper said, they ain’t never had no trouble in Paradise. So they don’t think they need a real sheriff. This feller, Pryor, is tryin’ to build a Bible-thumping little town that don’t bother nobody, and far enough in the hills that nobody’s likely to bother them. Now I may be wrong—if I am, I’ll be the first to admit it—but I’ve just been talkin’ to Mr. Pryor, and he ain’t got no starch in him at all. And I’m bettin’ the men he hired ain’t either.” He climbed into the saddle. “Now, come on, we’re leavin’ town.”
They rode past the sheriff’s office at the end of the street, where there was still no sign of any activity. Unnoticed by the band of outlaws, young Tom Austin stood watching at the edge of the stables next door, undecided as to whether or not he should approach the six riders. Hesitating until it was too late, he questioned whether his responsibility as deputy sheriff was to know everybody’s business in town just because they were strangers. Well, maybe, if I see them
in town again, he thought. They were a rough-looking bunch, and he was relieved to see them pass out of sight around a sharp bend in the river.
When he was sure they could no longer be seen, Mace pulled back beside Junior Sykes. “Soon as we pass this bend, you peel off and hide yourself up in those trees. Find you a spot where you can keep your eye on that saloon and let me know when that little gray-headed feller comes out and which way he goes. The rest of us will hold up behind that ridge yonder and wait for a signal from you.”
“What kinda signal?” Junior asked.
“Hell, I don’t care,” Mace snapped impatiently. “Whistle or somethin’. We ain’t gonna be more’n fifty yards away. Just don’t signal the whole damn town.”
“Right, I gotcha,” the simple fellow responded enthusiastically. “I can whistle just like a whip-poor-will.”
“Just let me know when he comes out,” Mace said. He waited a moment to watch Junior depart. The boy was not too bright, but he was the best tracker in the gang, and he never questioned an order. Satisfied that Junior was going to the spot he had pointed out, Mace then turned to the others and ordered, “Follow me.” He led them deeper into the woods that bordered the river to wait out of sight of anyone traveling the road.
Storm in Paradise Valley Page 4