“Listen, I don’t blame you for not believin’ me,” Buckner went on. “But it’s the truth, Cobb . . . I mean, Sixkiller. What are you, anyway?”
“Deputy U.S. marshal,” John Henry answered curtly.
“Well, I can’t say as I’m surprised. You put up a pretty good front, but I always thought you weren’t quite as low-down as the rest of us. Turn me loose and give me a gun and I’ll try to make up for some of what I done while workin’ for Dav.”
Alvin Turnage came up the stairs, poking a rifle barrel in front of him, and reached the cell block in time to hear Buckner’s plea. The bank teller asked, “Marshal, are you all right?”
“Shaken up a little,” John Henry admitted. “But I reckon I’ll be fine.”
“What in the world happened up there?” Turnage asked as he glanced toward the hole in the roof.
“One of Dav’s men was going to drop a bundle of dynamite down the stovepipe and blow everybody to kingdom come,” John Henry answered. “I stopped him. Not quite the way I intended, but . . .”
“Good Lord,” Turnage muttered. “The dynamite. . . ?”
“Yeah. And then before I could get off the roof, more of Dav’s men showed up and pinned me down. All I could do was drop down through that hole.”
“So we’re still stuck here.”
“That’s about the size of it,” John Henry agreed.
Buckner spoke up again, saying, “I can help you—”
“Shut up,” Turnage snapped. “Why should we trust the likes of you?”
“Because I love Kate Collins!” Buckner burst out. “And if Dav has his way, he’ll wipe out everybody in here, includin’ her. That business with the dynamite is proof enough of that! I’ll do whatever I have to to save Kate, and when it’s all over you can lock me up again. I’ll take what’s comin’ to me.”
“He sounds like he’s telling the truth,” John Henry said.
Turnage frowned.
“Maybe so, but he’s been one of Dav’s men all along—”
“All I was interested in was the loot,” Buckner said. “I know, that makes me a sorry son of a bitch. But I never killed nobody for him. Dav had an inner circle, Miller and a few others, who took care of all of that. I’d testify to it in court, too.”
John Henry and Turnage looked at each for a moment, and then Turnage shrugged.
“I trust your judgment, Marshal,” he said.
John Henry came to a decision and nodded.
“Get the keys and a Winchester,” he told Turnage, adding, “And tell everybody what we’re doing. We don’t want any of them getting trigger-happy when they see that Buckner’s loose.”
As Turnage went downstairs, John Henry looked at Buckner and went on, “I’ll be keeping an eye on you. First time it even looks like you’re thinking about double-crossing us, I aim to put a bullet in your head.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Buckner said. “I want to settle Dav’s hash as much as you do. I figure that’s my only chance with Kate.”
“We’ll see,” John Henry said. He didn’t care one way or the other about Buckner’s would-be romance with Kate Collins. Right now all that mattered was keeping these people alive and figuring out some way to defeat Dav.
Turnage came back with the keys and one of the rifles. As he handed them to John Henry, he said, “Peabody thinks you’ve lost your mind. So do I, if I’m being honest.”
“Buckner knows that if he tries anything, I’ll shoot him,” John Henry said as he unlocked Buckner’s cell. He went inside and untied the deputy’s bonds.
Buckner stood up shakily from the bunk and rubbed his wrists to get some feeling back in his hands.
“You won’t be sorry about this, Sixkiller,” he said.
“I’d better not be, because you’ll be dead if I am.”
“How about you stop threatenin’ me and give me a gun?”
John Henry handed him the Winchester and said, “Somebody’s got to guard this hole in the roof to make sure Dav doesn’t send some of his men through it. I think that’s a good job for you.”
“All right.” Buckner’s eyes narrowed. “What’s to stop me from climbin’ out and gettin’ away?”
“If you’re telling the truth about how you feel about Kate, you won’t do that,” John Henry said. “You’ll stay here and do everything you can to protect her.”
“Now you’re startin’ to understand,” Buckner said with a nod. He paused, then went on, “You know Dav will try something else, don’t you? He won’t have the patience to try starvin’you out.”
“That’s what I figured,” John Henry said. “Now it’s just a matter of waiting to see what he comes up with next.”
Chapter Thirty-six
Wellman thought that Dav might burst a vein when Carl Miller told them what had happened on the roof of the jail. The sheriff’s face turned bright red with rage.
“Is there anybody in this damned town who can do anything right except me?” Dav roared.
“It was just a bad break, boss,” Miller said.
Especially for the deputy who’d been holding the bundle of dynamite, Wellman thought. There wouldn’t be enough of that poor bastard left to scrape up with a spoon.
The three men were in the back room of the hardware store, directly across the street from the jail. Dav had made this his temporary headquarters, since he was displaced from the sheriff’s office. Four deputies were in the front of the store, kneeling at the windows they had knocked out with their rifle barrels and taking occasional potshots at the jail. The flurry of renewed firing that had followed the explosion had tapered off again.
The other three deputies were positioned around the jail to act as snipers if any of the defenders holed up in there tried to sneak out.
“What do we do now?” Miller asked. “There’s a hole in the roof. Reckon we could get some men through there and catch ’em in a cross fire?”
Dav expressed his contempt for that idea with a slashing gesture.
“We don’t have enough men for that,” he said. “We’d have to split our force, and then we wouldn’t have enough to carry the battle on either front.”
“Well . . . there’s always waitin’ ’em out,” Miller suggested. “You know they don’t have much to eat or drink in there, Sheriff. We can keep ’em pinned down for a day or two, and they’ll start gettin’ mighty hungry and thirsty.”
Dav’s mouth twisted in a sneer.
“We could do that,” he said, “but we’re not going to. That wouldn’t be enough to show the rest of the townspeople that they’d better not ever try anything like this again.”
A short time earlier, Wellman had been horrified as he listened to Dav and Miller hatching the plan to drop dynamite down the stovepipe and blow up the jail. He was only one man, though. There was nothing he could do to stop them.
So he wasn’t surprised when Dav continued to be obsessed with the idea of teaching the citizens of Chico a lesson. Dav was morally outraged, as odd as that term sounded when applied to him, that anyone would dare to oppose him.
Dav appeared to have reached a decision. He said, “Carl, I want you to go out there under a flag of truce and ask for a parley.”
“A parley about what?” Miller wanted to know. “We’ve got ’em trapped in there. They can’t get out. They’re beat.”
“Tell them they have until eight o’clock in the morning to surrender.”
Miller shook his head and said, “They won’t do it.”
“I don’t care about that. Just tell them.”
“Why eight o’clock?” Miller wanted to know.
“Because the sun will be up by then, and everybody will be able to see what happens next.”
Somehow, that was the most ominous-sounding thing he had heard so far, Wellman thought.
“All right,” Miller said with a shrug of his beefy shoulder. “I’ll tell ’em that eight o’clock’s the deadline. Do I tell ’em what happens if they don’t surrender by then?�
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Dav smiled and said, “No, they’ll find out then along with everyone else.” He turned toward the hardware store’s rear door and motioned to Wellman. “Come on, Edgar, you’re going with me.”
His tone made it clear that he wouldn’t put up with any argument. Wellman followed him out into the rainy night, wondering if the sheriff just wanted him along so that later on he could write about what was happening . . . or if Dav had some other, more sinister use for him this time.
* * *
Once John Henry reached a decision, he didn’t spend a lot of time brooding about it. He had placed his trust in Steve Buckner, and he left it at that. If Buckner betrayed his trust, he would deal with that when the time came.
For now, he checked to see how everyone downstairs was doing. Amazingly, the jail’s defenders had suffered no injuries. A few bullets had come through the loopholes in the wall, but they hadn’t hit anyone. Wilhelm Heinsdorf and the man who had died in the street were the only casualties the townspeople had suffered so far.
Kate came up to John Henry and asked, “Is it true? Did you really turn Steve Buckner loose and give him a gun?”
“It’s true,” John Henry admitted.
“Why would you do that? He works for Sheriff Dav.”
Obviously, Turnage hadn’t gone into detail about the reason that had prompted Buckner’s change of heart, John Henry thought. John Henry didn’t think he ought to, either. That was something for Buckner and Kate to work out . . . if they survived this night.
He was saved from having to answer Kate’s question by one of the townsmen posted at the loopholes, who turned his head and called, “Somebody just came out of the hardware store holdin’ a white flag! I think it’s Deputy Miller.”
John Henry went over to the wall and motioned the man aside. He put his eye to the little opening and saw that the townie was right. Carl Miller stood on the boardwalk in front of the hardware store, holding a lantern in one hand and a piece of board with a white rag tied to it in the other. Miller looked distinctly nervous as he stepped down into the street and walked forward slowly.
The deputy had good reason to be nervous. It would have been easy for the men in the jail to shoot him while he was out in the open like this. They were all basically decent individuals, though, so it would have seemed too much like murder to gun Miller down under these circumstances.
“What do we do, Marshal?” one of the men asked.
“It’s probably a trick,” Peabody Farnham said. “Don’t trust him, Marshal.”
“I don’t intend to, but I need to find out what he wants,” John Henry said. He went to one of the windows and lifted the bar off the shutters. Opening one side slightly, so that he could see the deputy through the narrow crack, he called, “That’s far enough, Miller!”
Miller came to a stop. Still looking nervous, he asked, “Is that you, Cobb?”
There was no point now in keeping his real identity a secret. John Henry replied, “That’s Sixkiller. Deputy United States Marshal Sixkiller.”
“Well . . . all right. I got a message for you, Marshal, from Sheriff Dav.”
“Dav’s no longer the sheriff in this town. I’ve removed him from office and declared martial law.”
John Henry knew he didn’t actually have the authority to do that, but on the other hand, he wanted Miller and the rest of Dav’s men to know that they risked the wrath of the federal government by continuing to support the sheriff.
Miller frowned, maybe thinking about that very thing, and then said, “That’s between you and the sheriff, mister. All I’m doin’ is deliverin’ a message. You got until eight o’clock in the mornin’ to come out of there and surrender.”
“What happens if we don’t?”
“Never you mind about that. You’d better do it, that’s all.”
Miller sounded a little tentative, John Henry thought. Maybe he didn’t actually know what Dav intended to do if the townspeople didn’t surrender by eight o’clock.
John Henry knew what would happen if they did surrender. Dav was loco enough that he might line them all up and have them shot—or something even worse.
“You’ve delivered your message, Miller,” John Henry called. “Tell Dav nobody’s coming out.”
“That’s up to you,” Miller said as he began backing away. “Just remember, I got this white flag. We still got us a truce.”
John Henry turned, took the rifle from the man standing next to him, thrust the barrel through the loophole, and drew a quick bead. He pressed the trigger and the Winchester cracked. Dirt spurted from the ground ten feet in front of Miller, who dropped both the lantern and the white flag and whirled around to make a frantic dash for the door of the hardware store. The deputies inside the building opened fire to cover his retreat.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have done that,” John Henry said as he gave the rifle back to the man who’d been using it, “but I just couldn’t stomach any more of him.”
“What do you reckon is going to happen at eight o’clock?” Farnham asked.
“Nothing good,” John Henry said.
* * *
The rain had slacked off to an intermittent drizzle as Wellman walked toward the Hammond mansion with Dav. He had to hurry to keep up with the sheriff’s long-legged strides.
“Where are we going, Samuel?” Wellman asked. The answer to that question was fairly obvious, but he hoped Dav would explain what he had in mind. The closer they came to Lucinda’s house, the more worried Wellman was.
“I’m going to get some leverage,” Dav replied, “and you’re going to help me, Edgar.”
“What . . . what do you want me to do?”
“I doubt if Mrs. Hammond would open the door for me at this time of night . . . but she will for you.”
Wellman started to hang back.
“I’m not sure I want to be any part of this,” he said, knowing that he was risking his life by arguing with Dav. “Lucinda is my friend—”
“Exactly,” Dav cut in. “So I know you want to look out for her best interests.”
“That’s true, I do,” Wellman said worriedly.
“So you can either help me, or I’ll kick her door down and whatever happens after that will be on your head, not mine.”
That wasn’t what anybody would call a subtle threat, thought Wellman, but he supposed the time for subtlety was long gone. Everything boiled down now to survival . . . for him, for Lucinda, for the very town itself.
Because Wellman was coming to understand that Samuel Dav might burn the whole settlement to the ground rather than allow its citizens to get away with defying him.
“All right,” he said with a sigh. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
Lights were burning inside the Hammond mansion. That came as no surprise to Wellman. With all the shooting going on in town, not to mention the huge explosion on the roof of the jail, probably everyone in Chico was awake tonight except the youngest children and perhaps the very old and hard of hearing. The houses might be dark, and certainly no one was going to venture out unless they had to, but people would be awake, holding each other in the dark and trying not to tremble in fear.
Not Lucinda Hammond, though. She wasn’t the sort to cower in the shadows.
A brass lion’s-head knocker was set in the middle of the big front door. Tentatively, Wellman took hold of it, drew in a deep breath, and then rapped sharply. There was no response, so after a moment he knocked again.
This time Lucinda asked from the other side of the door, “Who’s out there?”
“It’s me, Lucinda,” the newspaperman said. “Edgar Wellman.”
Dav was standing to the side of the door where Lucinda couldn’t see him if she looked out. Wellman was sick inside, feeling as if he were betraying her. Which was exactly what he was doing, he told himself. He still didn’t know what Dav was going to do, but if he hurt her, Wellman made a vow that he would kill Dav himself.
It
was an empty, hollow promise. He always ran away from trouble. He didn’t charge right into it, head-on.
The door opened, swinging back to reveal Lucinda standing there in a silk dressing gown. She had a shotgun in her hands. At the sight of the rain-soaked newspaperman standing on her front porch, her eyes widened.
“Good Lord, Edgar, you look like a wet dog!” she exclaimed as she lowered the shotgun and took a step toward him. That brought her over the threshold of the doorway.
Wellman couldn’t take it anymore. Something snapped inside him. Without thinking about what he was doing, he cried, “Lucinda, get back inside! Dav—”
That was as far as he got before Dav sprang out of the shadows, striking like a big cat. The gun in his hand smashed into Wellman’s head. The blow knocked Wellman to the side and made him fall to his knees.
Lucinda gasped and tried to raise the shotgun, but Dav grabbed the barrels and wrenched the weapon aside, tearing it loose from her grip. He slung it into the yard and then clamped his hand around her upper left arm to jerk her completely out of the house and onto the porch.
“You’re coming with me, my dear,” he said.
Lucinda screamed and struggled, but she was no match for the sheriff’s almost supernatural strength. He dragged her toward the porch steps.
Wellman’s head was spinning crazily from the clout it had taken, but he hadn’t passed out. He knew what was going on, and he struggled to his feet again.
“Let her go!” he yelled as he tried to get hold of Dav. His efforts were feeble. Dav laughed as he pulled free. His grip on Lucinda never loosened as he kicked Wellman in the belly and sent the newspaperman sprawling backward.
Lucinda didn’t cry and beg. She fought and shouted oaths that Wellman, in his current pain-racked state, was vaguely surprised that she even knew.
“You might as well stop fighting,” Dav snapped. “You’re coming with me, Lucinda, and if those friends of yours want to save your life, they’ll give themselves up.”
A hostage! Wellman thought. Dav was going to use her as a hostage. He would threaten to kill her unless the townspeople in the jail surrendered.
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