‘What … what you gonna do?’ shuddered the man at the other side of the door. He spoke to Hart without once taking his eyes off the way the blood was spiraling away from the black hole at the top of the sheriff’s head, running around one eyebrow and settling in a widening pool alongside his left ear.
Hart shook his head; he didn’t know what he was going to do.
One thing for certain though, anyone as fussy about appearances as Merle Wringer had been sure couldn’t have complained about the way he got shot.
‘What you gonna—?’
‘What makes you think I’m goin’ to do anythin’?’
‘You …’ The man looked at him, at the drawn gun. ‘You sure look as though you’re fixin’ to do somethin’.’
‘Right. Not end up the way your sheriff just did.’
‘That all?’
Hart glanced down and grinned grimly. ‘For him, it’d be more’n enough.’
Men were approaching from both ends of the street, a few on horseback, the others running until they were within some thirty yards of the saloon after which they slowed and stared. Hart figured if they saw him standing there with the Colt in his hand they were liable to draw the wrong conclusions and he wasn’t about to set himself up for a pot shot in the back from some public-spirited citizen. Slowly he released the hammer and slid the pistol back down into its holster.
A lot of questions were getting shouted around and not many of them were getting any answers. Inside the saloon everything seemed to have gone awful quiet and for now seemed to be staying that way – maybe it was something to do with the way the late sheriffs well-polished boots were sticking through under the door.
A burly man with a storekeeper’s apron and a black jacket that was several sizes too big for him pushed his way through the half-circle of onlookers and go to the edge of the boardwalk.
‘Lo, Zack,’ said the man standing opposite Hart.
‘Hell’s goin’ on here, Howard?’
‘Batt kid’s drunk in there an’ shootin’ off a gun.’
Zack Moses attacked the underside of his black beard like it was giving him a sudden and terrific itch. ‘Batt did this? Jacob Batt? From the livery?’
Howard nodded solemnly. That’s the one.’
Zack gestured upwards with both hands and shook his head from side to side. He looked at Merle Wringer’s face and made a move towards it, as if intent upon closing his vacant eyes. Half-way down he realized he might be making himself too much of a target and stepped back.
‘Ain’t no one gonna do somethin’?’ called somebody in the crowd.
‘Let’s get in there an’ get the murderin’ bastard!’
‘String him up!’
‘Ain’t no more’n a fool kid!’
They pressed forward, emboldened by their own rhetoric but not so much so that any one of them was prepared to step up out of the street.
‘What you goin’ to do, Zack?’
‘Yeah, c’mon, Zack. You mayor of this town or ain’t you?’
‘How ’bout it Zack?’
The storekeeper turned towards the crowd angrily, his head jutting out and his right hand gesturing heavily. ‘You want I should go in there myself, maybe? Walk into a drunk with a gun? A drunk who can shoot like this one can? You say I am the mayor and that’s a fact. I am not sheriff. Wringer was elected sheriff, not me.’
‘He sure ain’t gonna do a lot now, Zack.’
‘All right! All right! Some of you who are so strong with the voices, you go ahead. Go on now. Go ahead!’
Zack Moses stood back and swung his arm towards the bat-wing doors and every eye followed his gesture; no one did a lot else.
‘We could rush the place,’ someone over to the side suggested. ‘He ain’t goin’ to get all of us.’
‘Okay, Casey, you lead the way,’ called someone else.
Casey shut up.
‘How ’bout you, mister?’ Zack Moses asked of Hart, who’d stepped a dozen feet back along the boardwalk and was waiting and watching to see what happened.
‘How ’bout me?’
‘You look the kind of man who could handle this.’
Hart shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
‘We’ll make it worth your while.’
‘We?’
‘The town.’
‘Uh-huh. How much does the town reckon to pay for the man who shot its nice clean lawman?’
Zack scratched his beard some and said: ‘Ten dollars maybe.’
Hart looked at him and laughed.
‘Twenty?’
‘I ain’t wastin’ my time bargaining. You want it done, you pay for it right. Otherwise, sort out your own problem your own way.’
Zack glanced around the crowd and the quiet, watching faces; he wet his lips and smoothed back his hair. ‘Wringer, he got seventy-five dollars a month only for doing his job. You want we should give you that much, more, for one piece of work?’
Hart looked at the saloon doors, then at the still-darkening hole in the peace officer’s head. ‘Give me a month’s pay. I’ll be your new sheriff. Only thing, I’m retirin’ come mornin’ and you don’t get no refund. How’s that?’
It didn’t take Moses long to decide. He shrugged his heavy shoulders and nodded agreement. Hart went quickly forward, deftly unpinned the badge from his shirt and fastened it to his own. He asked Howard if there was another entrance and found out there was a door at the rear that was usually kept locked.
‘You got the key?’
Howard shook his head. ‘Hangin’ up over the bar.’
‘Fine!’
‘You could bust in easy enough.’
‘Yeah, an’ get shot doin’ it. If that door’s near where he is, he ain’t going’ to stay sittin’ there while I knock the door in.’
‘Don’t seem too happy ’bout folk walkin’ in through the front, neither.’
Hart acknowledged the truth of that by stepping over its proof and setting his eye close against the smoke-smeared window. There were eight or nine men that he could see, most of them sitting around the center of the room and none of them looking any too anxious to make a move. There was someone off on his own towards the back and Hart figured that to be the boy, though he had no way of being sure.
He stepped away and gave it a little more thought: if he set himself up in the doorway he was likely to get the same treatment as the late Merle Wringer; if he went in shooting there were more than a few likely to get in the way and stop a stray bullet. He shrugged and looked round at the crowd.
‘Howard, get somethin’ good and heavy. Somethin’ that’d make a mess of that.’ He pointed at the window.
After a couple of minutes he moved towards the door, keeping off to one side. ‘Son!’ he called. ‘You hear me in there?’
He waited out the silence.
‘I said you hear me there? You. Jacob Batt.’
Nothing.
‘You know you just killed a man? Killed the sheriff? You understand that?’
Howard was standing by with a three-legged stool raised by one powerful arm.
‘Jacob! There’s a new sheriff now. You got to answer for what you done. Throw down that gun, boy. Throw it down!’
There was a shout from inside but the words were so slurred that Hart had difficulty in distinguishing one curse from another.
‘I’ll give you a count of ten to throw down that gun and start walkin’ towards the door. You ain’t moved by then, I’m goin’ to have to come get you. You understand me?’
There was another flurry of curses which Hart took as meaning that Jacob understood. He also hoped that everyone inside would have the sense to throw themselves flat as soon as the ten was reached. He made sure Howard understood what he had to do and started counting out loud, slow and clear.
‘… eight … nine … ten!’
The stool went crashing into the window, shattering most of the glass and sending it inside in a scattering spray. Hart waited for the kid’s first shot and dived th
rough the center of the batwing doors. He thrust his left arm up in front of his face as he went through and used that hand as a lever to push his body into a rolling movement that took him away from the broken window and the focus of Jacob Bait’s attention. He came up fast and smooth as Jacob was sending a second, delayed, shot after the first. Apart from an old man who was sitting at a table with both hands pressed down onto the top of his head and both eyes closed tight, everyone else had hit the floor.
At the back of the room Jacob Batt stood up and made a couple of shaky steps forwards. The pistol in his hand didn’t look any too steady and he waved it vaguely in Hart’s direction. There was likely only one shell remaining; he’d had time enough to reload after his first shots, but Hart didn’t think he would have bothered. If he’d tried his fingers might not have been steady enough to slot the shells down into the chamber.
One shot was all he’d needed to account for Wringer, though, and Hart wasn’t forgetting it.
His Colt had come clear when he stood up and his thumb held the hammer back, arm extended half-way so that the barrel was aiming at the unstable figure at the end of the smoky room.
‘How ’bout it, Jacob? How ’bout chuckin’ down that gun and comin’ with me?’
Jacob Batt leaned forward so far that Hart thought for a moment he might fall flat on his face; but he righted himself enough to stay upright and then Hart heard a sound that he recognized as laughter mixed with drunken fear and bravery both. The arm holding the pistol dipped and the fingers shuffled themselves around the butt, but he didn’t let go. Hart kept his Colt level and began slowly to walk forward. He pushed a table out of his way with his left hand, edged a chair aside with his leg – kept on going at the youngster without deviation. When there was no more than a dozen feet between them, Jacob Batt’s laugh broke into a cackle and tears sprang from his eyes. He opened his mouth in a curse and swung up his gun.
Still walking forward, Hart shot him through the right shoulder.
Jacob was swung right around by the tearing force of the bullet, his gun pitching against the back wall. His cackling laugh choked short and was replaced a moment later by a scream of rage and pain.
Hart dropped his left hand onto the back of the boy’s collarless shirt and jerked him around. His face was white and his neck was spotted with tiny splashes of blood. Blood ran down his arm and dripped away from his fingertips.
The small pupils of his eyes were clouded over with disgust, whether at himself or Hart there was no way of knowing.
He looked down at his shoulder and made a small moaning noise.
There was a bunch of men standing just inside the doorway and some of them were starting to shout for the kid’s neck to be stretched right there in the room. It hadn’t taken long for Merle Wringer’s precious law and order to die with him.
Jacob kicked out a leg towards Hart’s groin and took him sufficiently by surprise to catch him on the inside of the knee. Hart stumbled back a ways and lifted the Colt. He waited for Jacob to come for him and laid the side of the barrel along his left temple. Jacob hardly called out as he sank down.
Hart scooped up the kid’s pistol from the floor and pushed it down into his belt. Then he dropped his own gun back into its holster and lifted Jacob off the ground. He could just manage to carry him over his left shoulder.
The crowd was no longer close by the doorway, it was thick across half the saloon. Even if those at the front had wanted to stand aside, the pressure of the ones behind wouldn’t have allowed them. Hart looked round for Howard and couldn’t pick him out. Zack Moses, though, was over towards the side, close to the front.
‘Okay, mayor,’ said Hart, ‘suppose you get that key from back of the bar an’ open up the back door here.’
Zack stood out front of the crowd but still hesitated from going further.
‘Less’n you want a lynchin’ on your hands.’
A man with stubbly red hair jabbed a finger towards Hart. ‘You done your bit, stranger, now hand him over to us.’
‘Yeah! We know what to do with the likes of him.’
‘Hangin’s what he wants!’
Hart had seen men hang. Seen them from close enough to smell the stink and count the minutes it took until they finally choked to death. He could hear now, through the shouts of that mob, the thud of the trap doors as two men he’d taken in had been hanged in Fort Smith. One of the men had gone fast but the other lacked the weight to make it either a quick or an easy ending. Hart remembered the way his neck had seemed to stretch and his youthful face had twisted sideways with the pressure of the rope; his tongue had darkened and thrust from the corner of his open mouth and his eyes had bulged from their sockets until he had thought they must burst bloodily away. A harsh gargling sound had stuttered through his mouth and spittle had flown out over those of the crowd who were pressed in fascination against the front of the scaffold. A cheer had risen up and a bugle had begun playing off-key. It had been a long time before he had finally died.
‘Hangin’s what the no-good little bastard wants!’
Hart drew his Colt faster than most eyes could follow and pistol-whipped the redhead across the face. He screamed and fell back against the men behind him, his cheek torn open by the pistol sight, the broken flesh above the cheek bone already beginning to swell.
‘Mayor?’ called Hart.
Zack Moses hurried behind the bar and took down the key, he half-ran to the rear door and unlocked it, standing aside to let Hart and his prisoner through.
There were more of them spread across the street, but the sight of the Colt in Hart’s hand and the rumor of what he’d done with it inside the saloon kept the mob’s anger down to shouts and threats. Jacob Batt was starting to come to when they got inside the sheriff’s office. Hart dumped him across the desk and turned the key in the front door’s stiff lock. He was turning back towards the desk as Jacob tried to push his dazed way off it. He managed to get up on one arm before falling off the side and crashing face first on to the boards. From the crunching sound that came muffled from the floor, Hart figured Jacob had broken his nose.
He opened the door that led back to a row of three empty cells, found the ring of keys in a drawer and unlocked the center cell. He dragged Jacob into it and locked it behind him. By then the mayor was hammering on the door and asking to be let in. Hart made certain there wasn’t time for anyone else to get through at the same time.
He didn’t know for certain what Zack Moses had come to say, but anyway he didn’t give him a chance to say it.
‘Right. There’s things that want doing and fast. First off I want my seventy-five dollars. Then a bottle of good whiskey and two lots of food, one for me and one for him back in there. Get a doctor in, too, to get his arm patched up and look at his face. You’d best pay someone you can half-way trust to keep him guarded up in here after tomorrow morning cause that’s when I’ll be riding out.’ Hart saw his saddle bags were still on the floor where he’d left them; he glanced along the shelves to make sure there was ammunition enough for his guns. ‘Best get me some ten gauge shotgun shells from that store of yours. That should just about do it.’ He nodded towards the door. Tell your townsfolk out there that any of ’em thinks they’re goin’ to get good and drunk tonight and bust that boy out of here for some lynchin’ party’s goin’ to get ’emselves shot dead.’
Zack Moses scratched at the underneath of his beard and gestured wordlessly.
‘While I’m wearin’ this badge I’ll run things legal as I know how. May not be Merle Wringer’s way but that ain’t goin’ to be worryin’ him none. Not anymore.’
Zack Moses went about his errands and Hart sat behind the sheriff’s desk and began searching through the piles of fliers to see if he could come up with anything useful about Cherokee Dave Speedmore or High-Hat Thomas. He was more than ready for something to eat and after that he’d settle down with the whiskey and get himself a good night’s rest. Action enough for one man for one day, he reckoned – on
his pay at least.
Chapter Six
Right or wrong, Hart slept the sleep of the just: not even a fleeting image of Kathy to disturb it. It was as if the act of tearing apart her letter, unread - the one she had for some unknown reason sent chasing him across as many as three state lines - had ripped her, at last, from his mind. Now he woke and was instantly alert; he tossed aside the blanket under which he’d slept and swung his legs round on the cot bed that Merle Wringer had used by the side wall of his office. There was water in an enamel jug and Hart poured some into a chipped china basin from which blue patterns of flowers had begun to fade and wear. He locked his fingers under the water and lifted it to his face, feeling the thickening stubble around his mouth and jawline. He poured more of the water into the sheriffs coffee pot, scattered in some ground coffee and pushed several sticks of kindling into the center of the stove, where they were soon persuaded to catch from the smoldering embers.
He was whistling cheerfully when he checked his prisoner in the small cell, continued to whistle through the barrage of abuse the youngster threw at him. Jacob’s shoulder had clearly bled again during the night; the bandage the doctor had strapped on was dark with concentric circles on it. His face looked a mess: the bone of his nose had broken midway and the attempt to rest it had been painful and not exactly satisfactory. The lump on r his temple was still the size of a small egg, only now it had colored up a distinctive shade of purple.
Hart promised Jacob he’d send out for some breakfast presently, as well as empty the bucket that was beginning to stink out the cell.
He locked the communicating door in case and lifted the lid from the coffee pot to see how far the contents were from being brewed. As soon as he had a strong cup inside him, he’d dig out the mayor and turn in his badge, hand over the task of guarding Jacob Batt to whoever had been appointed, take a leisurely breakfast and see what he could turn up about the two men he was looking for.
It all worked out as he’d planned. At least, it was seeming to. He was wiping a chunk of cornbread around his plate, mopping up the last of the bacon fat before it congealed, that and the final traces of yolk from his three eggs. The bread was almost in his mouth, not quite, when he realized that someone was staring at him. Outside the window of the dining rooms, her face a wide oval clearly visible underneath the painted lettering across the glass.
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