Six Guns at Solace

by John Davage

  ‘Y-yeah, Eli,’ Clay said, nodding violently. ‘Yeah, that’s right. An’ . . . an’ I shot him.’

  Ray, with two bulging saddle-bags slung over his shoulder, appeared with the bank manager from the back stairs. Both men took in the scene, the manager letting out a small cry.

  Eli turned to them. ‘The teller had a gun an’. . . .’ he began.

  ‘Yeah, I heard,’ Ray said. He turned and stared hard at Clay, a sceptical look on his face. ‘I thought I heard a scream, Chet. Sounded like a woman.’

  ‘It . . . it was the teller,’ Clay said.

  ‘Is that right?’ Ray said. He pushed the manager away from him so that the little man stumbled and fell on to his hands and knees. ‘We gotta get outa here, Eli. Those shots will have been heard outside.’

  ‘Yeah, they will,’ Eli said, eyes wild with a mixture of fury and despair as he turned to look down at the manager. ‘So one more won’t make a damn bit of difference, especially as I guess you’ve realized who we are!’ He levelled his .45.

  ‘No! Please, Mr Pike! I won’t tell . . .’ Arthur Makin pleaded – before Eli shot him in the chest. The manager fell back on to the floor.

  ‘Let’s go!’ Eli said.

  Clay, still stunned by all that had happened, seemed incapable of moving. He stared stupidly at the fallen man, bile rising in his throat.

  ‘Chet!’ Eli yelled. ‘I said, let’s go!’

  Clay forced himself to move, wrenched open the bank door and looked out into the street. He saw the back of Meg as she neared the mercantile. She was half-running, looking back from time to time.

  Clay ran towards his horse and unhitched it from the rail.

  Inside the bank, Eli picked up his brother’s body, heaved it over his shoulder and followed Clay into the street.

  Ray started to follow him, then hesitated and dodged behind the counter. He pulled the saddle-bag, half full of cash, from Howie’s deathly grasp. He scooped up a handful of the scattered notes and coins from the floor then, as an afterthought, leaned across and carefully removed the six-shooter from Howie’s other hand. A frown creased his forehead as his fingers went round the barrel.

  ‘Cold,’ he muttered, nodding to himself. ‘Like I figured it would be.’ He shoved the gun into his belt and hurried after Eli and Clay.

  Outside, Eli was manoeuvring Silas’s body over the dead man’s horse and tying it down. Clay was already sitting astride his own mount, gun in hand and looking up and down the street for any possible threat. Once or twice he thought he saw a face at a window or in a doorway, but nobody ventured outside, or if they did, they retreated swiftly. The only figure visible was Meg as she half ran on to the boardwalk outside the mercantile where Chester and Carrie Green would be waiting for her. Clay could vaguely remember his aunt and uncle, having visited them when he was small. He reflected on how shocked they would be to learn their nephew was part of the Pike gang, an ache of misery in his chest.

  Eli finished tying Silas’s body to the saddle.

  Ray climbed up on to his own horse and sidled the animal across to Clay. ‘I picked up the teller’s six-shooter,’ he said quietly. ‘An’ you know somethin’?’

  ‘What?’ Clay said.

  ‘The gun was cold,’ Ray said. ‘It hadn’t been fired.’

  ‘So there must’ve been another gun,’ Clay said, avoiding the other man’s eye. ‘Maybe he had one under. . . .’

  ‘Quit talkin’ an’ start ridin’!’ Eli yelled, climbing aboard his own horse and moving off.

  ‘We’ll talk about this later, Clay,’ Ray said softly.

  Meg stumbled towards the door of the mercantile. At one point she glanced back to see one of the men lifting the dead man’s body over the saddle of one of the horses. A third man came out of the bank and, minutes later, all three rode away, one of them leading the dead raider’s horse. She saw Clay’s stetson blow off his head, revealing his thick brown hair. He glanced back at her, desperation etched across his face, but didn’t stop.

  At last, several townsfolk came out from buildings along the street, in time to see the riders gallop past. But they quickly retreated for cover when two of the three men turned and began firing random shots in their direction.

  A startled Chester and Carrie Green, together with an old-timer who had been buying tobacco, emerged from the mercantile. They took one look at Meg and hurriedly ushered her into the store. Meg clutched the torn bodice of her dress in an effort to preserve her modesty.

  ‘Dear God, Meg, what happened?’ Carrie asked her niece. ‘Did those men. . . ?’ She pointed at Meg’s tattered dress.

  ‘No!’ Meg said quickly. ‘I . . . I fell.’

  ‘Fell?’ Chester Green said.

  ‘Against the . . . the hitching post outside the bank,’ Meg improvised. ‘There . . . there must have been a nail. I tore my dress, and . . . I was on my way back here when shots came from the bank and . . . those men . . . well, you saw. . . .’

  ‘Yes!’ Chester said. ‘And it looks like they robbed the bank!’

  ‘Sure does!’ said the old-timer. ‘Who do you reckon they were?’ He seemed unable to tear his eyes away from Meg’s bosom.

  Carrie Green scowled at him. ‘Come through to the back room, Meg. You need to get out of that dress.’ She guided her niece through the store. ‘Mercy, I hope and pray Howie and Mr Makin are all right.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Chester. ‘But those shots . . .’

  Meg said nothing, her thoughts reeling at the shock of seeing her brother.

  How in God’s name had he become mixed up with a gang of bank raiders? What had he been doing these past years to get himself entangled with a bunch of desperados? Close to tears, for once she was glad her pa wasn’t alive. He would have been deeply ashamed to learn of Clay’s predicament.

  Then another thought struck her. What would Tom think if he ever discovered it was her brother who had killed Howie Clark, the bank teller? Would that be the end of her and Tom? Would he – a lawman – want the sister of a killer for a wife?

  Doc McFee watched the raiders disappear into the distance before grabbing his bag and running across to the bank. As did Chester Green and Saul Archer, the corn merchant – the only men, other than Frank Parker, the town undertaker, and Harvey Garrod and his clerk, who had not joined the sheriff’s posse, all of them reckoned to be too old to go chasing after bandits.

  Chester picked up the abandoned stetson from the middle of the street, glanced at it, but could see no distinguishing marks that would help identify its owner. He followed the others into the bank with a mounting dread.

  They found Arthur Makin prostrate on the floor, clutching his chest, blood seeping through his waistcoat and his fingers. His eyes were glassy and his breathing came in jerky spasms. The doc knelt down beside him whilst Chester went to find Howie. Saul Archer hovered in the doorway, shocked but unsure what to do.

  ‘Take it easy, Arthur,’ the doc said, pulling open his bag and taking in the extent of the bank manager’s injury at the same time. He didn’t like what his eyes were telling him. ‘You’re going to be all right.’ He made a silent apology to his Maker for the deception: unless he was mistaken, Arthur had only minutes to live. He could also see the bank manager was trying to tell him something.

  The doc put his ear to Arthur’s mouth. ‘What’s that, my friend?’

  ‘P-Pike.’ Makin choked on the word.

  ‘What did he say?’ Saul asked.

  ‘Sounded like “pipe”,’ Doc McFee said.

  ‘Didn’t know he smoked one,’ Saul said.

  Doc McFee leaned closer to the bank manager. ‘You want your pipe, Arthur?’

  But there was no answer to his question. There never would be, he realized. Arthur Makin had breathed his last breath.

  Chester joined the doc. ‘Gone?’ he enquired, nodding at the bank manager.

  ‘Yes,’ the doc replied.

  ‘Howie Clark’s dead, too.’

  ‘What?’

  �
��Behind the counter.’ Chester turned to Saul. ‘Best go an’ fetch Frank,’ he said, meaning Frank Parker.

  Saul nodded and hurried off.

  ‘This is terrible,’ the doc said. ‘Who were those animals?’

  ‘All four were too far ahead for me to recognize any faces as they rode away,’ Chester told the doc. ‘But one of them was dead. I could see his corpse slung over his horse.’

  ‘I saw that,’ the doc said. ‘It accounts for one of the shots I heard. D’you think Howie or Arthur killed him?’

  They were suddenly aware of Harvey Garrod listening to them in the bank doorway. How long he’d been there they couldn’t have said.

  ‘Harvey?’ Doc McFee said. ‘You OK now? You still look pretty sick to me.’

  Harvey had crossed over from the Palace Hotel with Louie his desk clerk. Both of them were staring unbelievingly at Arthur Makin’s prostrate form.

  ‘Is he. . . ?’ Louie asked.

  The doc nodded. ‘Dead, yeah,’ he said. ‘Howie Clark, too.’

  ‘Sweet Jesus!’ Harvey said, ‘Did . . . did Arthur say anything before. . . ?’

  ‘Nothing that made sense,’ the doc said. ‘Something about his pipe. Although I’ve never seen him with a pipe. Guess he was rambling.’

  ‘P. . .pipe?’ Harvey put a hand against the bank counter to steady himself, his face ashen.

  Doc McFee looked concerned. ‘Louie, take him back to the hotel. Take yourself off to bed, Harvey. By the looks of you, you haven’t fully recovered from that knock on the head.’

  ‘I . . . I guess I will,’ Harvey said.

  Meg was sitting in the back room of the mercantile. Her aunt, seeing how pale she looked, had insisted on giving her a drink of brandy before allowing her to go and change. Meg nursed the glass, twisting it between her fingers.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right, dear?’ Carrie said, her voice filled with concern. ‘You’ve had a shock. If you hadn’t torn your dress. . . .’

  Meg tried to smile. ‘I’ll be fine, aunt.’

  ‘Well, you were very lucky. Heaven knows what might have happened if you’d actually gone into the bank.’

  Meg sipped the brandy and said nothing.

  ‘Did you see anything of what was happening?’ her aunt asked.

  Meg shook her head. ‘The bank door was shut. Which . . . which I thought was odd,’ she added quickly. ‘But then I tore my dress, so didn’t think any more about it.’

  What a cool liar I am, she thought. But how can I tell her what really happened? How can I tell her about Clay?

  Chapter Twelve

  The doc watched Louie and Harvey leave. He looked thoughtful. ‘Tell me something, Chester,’ he said after a moment. ‘How long is it since we had any kind of robbery in Solace?’

  ‘Before today you mean?’ Chester scratched his nose. ‘Four, five years, at least,’ he said. ‘Probably longer. Why are you asking?’

  ‘And now we get two in one day.’ Doc McFee shook his head. ‘First, Harvey gets his hotel safe robbed, then the bank’s raided a few hours later.’

  ‘What about it?’ Chester said.

  ‘Doesn’t it strike you as strange? A bit too much of a coincidence?’

  Chester stared at him. ‘You sayin’ they’re connected?’

  ‘Well, think about it,’ the doc said. ‘What happens after the hotel robbery? The sheriff and Tom Walsh get a posse together and chase after the robber, leaving just you, me, Saul and a few old-timers in town. Plus Arthur and Howie at the bank. A few hours later, by which time Floyd, Tom and the posse are miles away, the bank is raided.’

  Chester frowned. ‘So?’

  ‘So there’s no chance of gettin’ another posse together, is there?’ said the doc. ‘So the bank raiders get away clean.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Chester conceded. ‘I wonder if Floyd and the others caught up with him – the man who robbed the hotel.’

  ‘My guess is “no”,’ the doc said. ‘He had too much of a head start, and he’ll cover his tracks once the posse is well away from Solace. If my thinking is correct, the man was a decoy, intended to lure away most of the town’s menfolk and the town’s law.’ He rubbed his chin, looking puzzled and casting an eye around the bank. ‘But I still don’t understand what exactly happened in here. Who could’ve killed the fourth bank raider?’

  ‘Maybe Arthur or Howie had a gun concealed somewhere and the raiders took it with them before they went off,’ Chester suggested.

  ‘Maybe. But I reckon something went wrong. Otherwise, why was it necessary to shoot Arthur and Howie? Neither was the kind to put up a fight. Why not just tie them up? Besides, there’s still money here, cash they left behind, as if they left in a hurry, before they’d intended. No, there’s something we’re missing here, Chester.’

  ‘Supposing you’re right,’ Chester said. ‘Thing is, with both the witnesses dead, how are we going to find out what that something is?’

  Moments later, Saul arrived back with Frank Parker, the undertaker. The latter had clearly been told what to expect, and looked calmly at the dead Arthur Makin.

  ‘There’s two of them, Frank,’ Chester said. ‘Howie’s behind the counter.’

  Parker nodded.

  ‘Guess we’ll leave you to it then,’ Doc McFee said.

  Meg was sitting in her room at the back of the mercantile where her aunt had left her to change her torn clothes. She wasn’t at all sure her aunt had been convinced by her story of a hitching post and a nail, judging by the way Carrie Green had eyed the rents in both Meg’s dress and chemise, a quizzical expression on her face. But when Meg had offered no further explanation, she had been forced to accept the story. At least for now.

  Meg’s greater worry was the discovery of her brother’s association with a gang of bandits. The name ‘Silas’ that she’d heard Clay call the other man in the bank, which she had immediately linked to the name ‘Pike’, were names she had heard Tom mention in relation to his work as a deputy. The Pike gang were notorious, suspected of some of the vilest crimes in the territory. But according to Tom, because of no hard proof, due mostly to dead or intimidated witnesses and a compliant sheriff in Weslake, the town where the Pike gang hung out, their criminal acts had always gone unpunished.

  But now she was a witness, one who could testify that the Pike gang had in fact been the bank raiders. Except that, by doing so, she would implicate her own brother in the killings that had taken place. Indeed, had carried out two of them.

  No, she would have to stick to her story. Even Tom mustn’t know the truth. Especially Tom. But what about the third shot, the one that she’d heard after she had left the bank and was crossing the street? Logically, there was only one other possible victim, and that was Mr Makin, the manager.

  The Pike gang rarely leave witnesses if they’re recognized.

  She’d heard Tom say this in the past. Now she knew it for a fact. But only Clay knew that Meg had been an eyewitness to Howie’s and Silas Pike’s murders, and he would say nothing to the other two men she had seen riding away with him, she could be certain of that.

  But there had been another familiar name mentioned during the fracas – one spoken by Silas Pike. It hadn’t really registered with Meg at the time, she had been too fearful about what was going to happen to her. But now, sitting in the quietness of her room, she remembered it clearly.

  Becky.

  Meg only knew one girl called Becky, and that was Becky Garrod – who had apparently gone to stay with relatives up north, but whose stay was turning out to be longer than most folk in town had been led to believe it would be. Becky, the girl who had a reputation for wild and impetuous behaviour. Behaviour that had been the bane of her father’s life. Could it be a coincidence? Something told Meg it couldn’t.

  The question was, did Harvey Garrod know that his daughter might be involved with the Pike gang? Surely not, or he would have done something about it. One thing was clear, Meg thought: she couldn’t tell him, not without reveali
ng the fact that she’d been in the bank at the time of the robbery.

  Oh, Clay! What have you got me mixed up in?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Floyd, Tom and a dispirited posse rode back into Solace early that evening. Before they had a chance to report on their lack of success, Doc McFee relayed the catastrophic events of the afternoon, and his suspicions about the robbery at the Palace hotel. They were sitting in the lobby of the hotel, Harvey Garrod with them. The latter had insisted on hearing what the sheriff had to say about the chase, saying he felt fine now.

  ‘It was me who was robbed, remember,’ Harvey said. ‘I need to be kept in the picture.’ But although he was relieved to hear that Pike’s man had got clean away, he got a shock when he heard Doc McFee’s only-too-accurate suspicions.

  ‘The hotel robbery was a set-up,’ the doc said to Floyd. ‘OK, the owlhoot got away with a few hundred dollars, but that would be chickenfeed to what they took from the bank. Thousands rather than hundreds.’

  ‘ ’Xactly,’ Floyd said. ‘There was the miners’ pay. More than six thousand, plus the bank’s reserves.’

  ‘So the hotel robber was a decoy!’ Tom said. ‘I knew it! He wanted us at least two hours away from Solace.’

  ‘An’ we fell for it,’ Floyd agreed, bitterly.

  ‘The last thing Arthur Makin said before he breathed his last sounded like “pipe”,’ Doc said. ‘But I’ve been thinking – what if I misheard him? What if he actually said “Pike”?’

  ‘Meaning the Pike gang?’ Floyd said. ‘You think Arthur recognized one of the raiders and was trying to point us in the right direction?’

  ‘I just don’t know,’ Doc said. ‘But it would explain why they had to kill him and Howie. The Pike gang don’t leave witnesses.’

  Harvey could feel his legs start to buckle and he sat down quickly.

  ‘You OK, Harve?’ Floyd said.

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine.’

  ‘Not that any of this is going to help us much now,’ Doc went on. ‘A dead witness – in this case two dead witnesses – never got anybody hanged.’