“Oh, he’s human, all right. Human enough to be ambitious.”
That was just the sort of thing John Henry wanted to hear about, but before he could prod Hobart into revealing anything else, the door opened and Sheriff Dav himself walked in.
From the look on the sheriff’s face, somebody was already in bad trouble . . . and it was about to get worse.
Chapter Twenty-one
Dav barely spared a glance for John Henry as he said, “I just heard about what happened last night. Where are those damned miners?”
“Don’t worry, Sheriff, they’re safe and sound upstairs,” Hobart said. “I was fixin’ to take ’em breakfast in a little while—”
“Don’t bother,” Dav interrupted. “I don’t feel like feeding them.”
Hobart frowned in confusion and asked, “You want me to go ahead and turn ’em loose, then?”
“Loose, hell! Those bastards set a trap for some of my men. They have to pay for what they’ve done.” Dav turned to John Henry. “You were there in the Buzzard’s Nest, I understand?”
“That’s right.” John Henry rolled his shoulders. “My aching muscles sure know it this morning, too.”
“Then you understand why we can’t let them get away with this,” Dav snapped. “We have to make an example of those men.”
“I thought the judge would just fine them—”
“Oh, they’ll pay a fine, all right.” Dav’s face was dark with fury. “They’ll pay a price in blood and hide!”
John Henry didn’t like the sound of that. He didn’t know if he could go along with whatever Dav had in mind.
The sheriff didn’t argue the matter. He ordered curtly, “Get out there on patrol, Cobb.”
“You mean just walk up and down the streets?”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Dav said, his voice cold. “Get moving.”
If he wanted to keep up his pose, there was nothing John Henry could do except follow the sheriff’s order. He nodded and left the office, but the wheels of his brain were turning over rapidly. He didn’t know what Dav planned to do, but he was sure it wouldn’t be anything good.
For the next couple of hours, as Chico came to life, John Henry walked the settlement’s streets. He stopped in various businesses and tried to engage the owners in conversation, hoping to get to know them better, but what he got in return were mostly nervous monosyllables. The townspeople didn’t want anything to do with any of Dav’s deputies, himself included, and knowing what he did about the history of the situation, he couldn’t really blame them.
Around midmorning, John Henry went back to the Collinses’ boardinghouse to check on Iron Heart. He had looked in on the horse briefly before heading for the sheriff’s office, but now he spent a few minutes going over Iron Heart’s sleek hide with a curry comb, the two trail partners enjoying the companionship.
When he left the stable he didn’t go into the house. Kate and old Jimpson probably wanted as little to do with him as everybody else in Chico, he thought.
Well, maybe not Kate. Not completely, anyway . . .
As he rounded the corner onto Main Street, he saw Carl Miller coming toward him along the boardwalk. Miller said, “Cobb! There you are. The sheriff sent me to find you.”
“Does he need me to do something?” John Henry asked.
“He sure does. He’s called in everybody. All the deputies.”
That didn’t sound good. John Henry frowned as he walked beside Miller toward the sheriff’s office.
“You know what this is about?” he asked.
“You’ll find out when you get there,” Miller said.
That seemed to be Miller’s final word on it, so John Henry didn’t say anything else. A couple of minutes later, they reached the two-story stone building and went inside.
The sheriff’s office was crowded with deputies. John Henry saw Steve Buckner and Aaron Kemp standing in front of Dav’s desk. The sheriff was behind the desk, but on his feet rather than in the chair. He waved Miller and John Henry forward, and the other deputies standing around moved aside to let them through.
This was John Henry’s first chance to see all of Dav’s men at one time, in one place. They were an impressive group, but not in a good way. As a law officer back in Indian Territory, he had hunted down outlaws of all sorts—rustlers, whiskey runners, thieves, and murderers. Every man who wore a badge in Chico bore the same stamp of the badman. They were all shapes and sizes, but they had the same cold, hard eyes that had seen death on too many occasions.
“Here’s Cobb, Sheriff,” Miller said as he and John Henry came up to the big desk. “Reckon you can go ahead now.”
Dav nodded and said, “Tell me what happened in the Buzzard’s Nest, Cobb.”
John Henry leaned his head toward Buckner and Kemp.
“I reckon these fellas have already told you, Sheriff,” he said.
“I want to hear it from you,” Dav insisted.
John Henry told him in short, brisk sentences. Dav appeared to be calm enough as he listened, but John Henry saw rage swirling around in the sheriff’s eyes. Dav was furious that the miners had tried to set up an ambush for some of his men.
When John Henry was finished, Dav said, “Everybody who goes to the Buzzard’s Nest knows that Buckner and Kemp stop in there nearly every night on their way to work. They were the targets of this attack. You just happened to be there with them, Cobb.” Dav’s lip curled in a sneer. “And it’s a good thing for them you were, otherwise they probably would have gotten a good stomping.”
Buckner and Kemp looked distinctly uncomfortable. John Henry supposed that Dav had given them a good chewing-out already.
Dav raised his voice and went on, “Let that be a lesson to all of you. Don’t fall into the same routines. Don’t ever forget that we’re surrounded by enemies in this town. If you ever let your guard down enough that they can come after you, they might not stop until you’re dead.” He paused and drew in a deep breath. “At least, they might not unless they learn a good lesson today. A lesson so harsh that everybody in Chico will think twice before they ever dare to cross a duly appointed representative of the law again.”
John Henry didn’t like the sound of that at all.
Dav jerked a thumb toward the stairs leading to the cell block and ordered, “Bring them down.”
“What about the Farnhams, Sheriff?” Miller asked.
Dav shook his head.
“It’s already been decided what’ll be done with them. They’ll serve a week in jail for disturbing the peace, and we’ll let it go at that. I want Spivey and the rest of those miners down here, though.”
Several deputies drew their guns and went upstairs to fetch the prisoners. John Henry waited uneasily. The men came back down, herding Lou Spivey and the other miners along at gunpoint.
“Take them down to the well,” Dav ordered. “If any of them try to make a break for it . . . kill them.”
Spivey’s rugged face was pale, but his eyes burned with anger. Surrounded by hardcases with drawn guns, though, there was nothing he could do except go along.
“Shouldn’t the judge have something to do with this?” Miller asked.
“I’ve already spoken to Curwood,” Dav said. “The trial was held in absentia. The judge levied two-hundred-dollar fines on each of the defendants, and he went along with my other suggestion, too.”
Dav reached down and pulled open a drawer in his desk. His hand went into it and came out clutching a coiled bullwhip.
John Henry’s emotions warred inside him. He’d been worried that Dav had something outrageous in mind, and the sight of the bullwhip confirmed that. Heavily outnumbered, and with the success of the mission that had brought him here at stake, it seemed that there was nothing he could do except stand by and let Dav do whatever he wanted.
But it was going to be hard. Lord, it was going to be hard.
“Arm yourselves with rifles and shotguns,” Dav ordered the deputies who were still in the office. �
��Then follow me.”
The deputies grabbed weapons from the racks and fell in behind Dav as he left the office and stalked out into the middle of the street. That wasn’t a very good defensive position, out in the open like that, John Henry thought, but clearly Dav wanted everybody in town to get a good look at them.
John Henry knew Dav wasn’t really afraid of the townspeople, either, and probably with good reason. The boardwalks had emptied in a hurry as the prisoners were marched down to the public well. John Henry saw faces peeking nervously from windows in nearly every building they passed, but no one stepped out to confront the group of crooked lawmen.
The miners stood in a group near the well, covered by the deputies who had brought them down here. Dav used the coiled bullwhip in his hand to motion for John Henry and the others to spread out and completely encircle the area around the well.
“Tie Spivey to the one of the posts,” Dav ordered, indicating the thick posts that held up the cover over the well.
“No!” Spivey yelled. “By God, Dav—”
One of the deputies standing near him drove the butt of a rifle into the small of Spivey’s back. Spivey cried out in pain and stumbled forward.
Two more deputies grabbed his arms and forced him toward the nearest post. Spivey struggled, but he was still hurting from the blow to the back and was no match for the deputies’ strength.
John Henry knew what was coming, and the knowledge sickened him. He watched as the deputies forced Spivey up to the well and lifted his arms above his head. One of the men stood on the short wall around the well and used rawhide thongs to lash the miner’s wrists together so they were looped around the post. The bonds were pulled so tight Spivey had to hold himself up on his toes to keep his weight from dragging down unbearably against his shoulder sockets. His face was pressed against the rough wood of the post.
Dav walked over to Spivey and leaned close to the burly miner.
“It was your idea to ambush my men in the Buzzard’s Nest, wasn’t it, Spivey?” Dav demanded. “You don’t like the way I’ve tried to bring law and order to this town.”
“You . . . you’re just . . . a cheap crook!” Spivey gasped. “There’s no . . . law here!”
“You’re wrong,” Dav said.
He reached up with his left hand while his right let the whip uncoil at his feet. The way it hissed and writhed reminded John Henry of a snake. Dav grasped the collar of Spivey’s shirt and wrenched down with more power than he should have possessed in his slender body. The shirt ripped, baring Spivey’s muscular back.
“This is the law in Chico!” Dav cried. “The law of the whip!”
Chapter Twenty-two
John Henry was standing about ten yards away from the well with a Winchester in his hand. It would be easy enough to raise the rifle to his shoulder and put a bullet through Dav’s crazed brain before anyone could stop him.
But a heartbeat later he would be dead, too, more than likely, and then Dav’s crew of killers would have free rein to do whatever they wanted in this town. They would loot it, certainly, and might well go on a spree of raping and killing as well. But as long as Dav was alive and had bigger plans than just taking over this particular settlement, he held the rest of them in check.
It was one of the hardest things John Henry had ever done, but he stood there unmoving while Dav backed away from Spivey, lifted his arm, and lashed out with cruel precision, laying the whip across the miner’s back so that it left a bloody stripe behind it.
Spivey looked like he tried to hold it in, but he let out a muffled cry of agony and his body surged against the post. Dav drew his arm back and struck again, leaving a second blood-oozing welt next to the first one.
Again and again the whip licked across Spivey’s back in a savage caress. With each strike, Dav turned halfway around to get more power in the blows, so John Henry could see the sheriff’s face in silhouette. Dav was sweating, and he seemed transported, caught up in the sheer joy of the pain he was inflicting.
More than ever, John Henry wanted to blow the son of a bitch’s lights out.
Instead he stood there with all the stoicism ignorant people attributed to his father’s race, while inside it was torturing him to witness this atrocity.
Dav delivered ten lashes to Spivey, and when he was finished, the miner’s back was a bloody mess crisscrossed with crimson wounds. After a few lashes, Spivey had started screaming, but he’d passed out before Dav got to the end. Now he just hung there on the post, senseless and bleeding.
Finally Dav stepped back even more. He motioned with his free hand toward Spivey and barked, “Cut him down.”
A couple of deputies held Spivey’s arms while another man cut the thongs holding him to the post. Spivey would have dropped into the dirt of the street if the men hadn’t supported him. They dragged him over to the closest boardwalk and lowered him facedown onto it. Flies instantly started buzzing around the gory ruin of Spivey’s back.
Dav pointed the bullwhip’s handle at one of the other miners and said, “That one.”
The man began to curse and protest and then beg, but none of it did any good. He was tied to the post just as Spivey had been, and one of the deputies ripped the shirt from his back.
Dav had had enough personally, though. He handed the whip to Miller and said, “Five each for the others. Spivey was the ringleader.”
Miller looked like he didn’t relish the idea. He said, “Boss, do you really think—”
“Five each,” Dav repeated, his voice hard as flint.
“Sure,” Miller said with a sigh.
The next half hour was one of the longest John Henry had ever spent, as one by one the other five miners were strung up to the post and given five lashes by Miller. The deputy didn’t strike with as much frenzied strength as Dav had, and the prisoners received only half as many lashes as Spivey had, but they still screamed and sagged against the post as their backs were bloodied.
Miller looked relieved when it was over. So did several of the other deputies. Hardcases they might be, but that didn’t mean they were unmoved by what they had witnessed.
Dav, on the other hand, stood by smiling the whole time. When Miller was finished, he took the whip from the deputy and coiled it again.
“I want four men to stay here and keep an eye on the prisoners,” the sheriff said.
“We ain’t takin’ ’em back to the jail?” Miller asked. He swept a hand toward the boardwalk where the miners lay moaning.
“No point in it. I’ve sent word to the owner of the Lucky Seven to come down here, pay their fines, and take them back to the mine. He ought to be here this afternoon. In the meantime, just leave them where they are.”
Miller nodded and said, “Whatever you want, boss.”
“What I want is for the citizens of this town to respect the law!”
Dav’s voice rose as he spoke, and John Henry realized that he wasn’t just responding to Miller’s statement. Dav was addressing the whole town. Not everybody in Chico could hear him, of course, but enough people were standing inside open windows for his words to reach them. They would tell others, and those people would tell others . . .
Dav went on, “What I want is for everyone to understand that ambushing my men will not be tolerated! Attacking anybody who wears a badge will be punished swiftly and severely! These men got off easy! The next fools who try to stand up to the forces of the law might just wind up on the gallows!”
With that, Dav turned and strode toward the jail. His head was held high, and his hawklike profile was steady and calm. There wasn’t an ounce of fear in the man, John Henry realized. Dav believed that he had the entire town cowed, and from the looks of things, he did.
Miller pointed out four deputies and told them to watch the prisoners until the owner of the Lucky Seven showed up to pay their fines and claim them. Then he told the other deputies to go on about their business.
John Henry wasn’t sure what that was, so he approached Miller and asked,
“Anything in particular I ought to be doing now?”
Miller shook his head.
“You’re on patrol. That means you circulate through the town and maintain order.”
“You don’t really think anybody’s going to get out of line after that display, do you, Deputy?” John Henry asked.
“Not if they’ve got a lick of sense in their heads,” Miller said. “Because believe you me, Cobb, if Sam Dav says it’ll be worse next time, you don’t want to know what it’s gonna be!”
* * *
Edgar Wellman stood at the window in the newspaper office for a long time before finally moving back to the desk. He had seen a lot of bad things in his life . . . hell, he had done a lot of bad things in his life . . . but he wasn’t sure he had ever seen anything as horrifying as what had happened at the well.
The top of the desk was littered with sheets of paper. He had been rewriting the editorial Sheriff Dav had given him to print, struggling with the words. Dav might be a lot of things, but he wasn’t really a writer. His constructions were awkward, his word choices eccentric, to say the least. Dav didn’t really care how elegant the prose was, though; he just wanted his ideas put across to the readers.
Wellman sat down, picked up his pencil, and went back to work. He had trouble concentrating, though.
He kept hearing the screams and seeing the blood . . .
When the office door opened, he glanced up, then looked again as every muscle in his body stiffened. Sheriff Dav stood there, a cocky grin on his face as he leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb.
“I guess you saw what happened awhile ago, Edgar,” Dav said.
“You mean the . . . the whippings?”
Dav straightened from his casual pose.
“I mean the law at work,” he said. “What you saw, Mr. Editor, was the legal process doing its job.”
“Doing it rather . . . harshly, wouldn’t you say?”
Wellman would have called back the words when he saw the flicker of anger in Dav’s eyes, but it was too late for that. And the next instant Dav chuckled and seemed genuinely amused, so Wellman supposed he hadn’t overstepped too far. Not fatally, anyway.
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