Sighing, Matthew thought, the odds are bad, but many members of this outlaw gang are about to meet their maker today.
A half hour later—as Matthew, Roy, Dish and Granville Deputy Evan McCauley slipped back out of the chute and made their way stealthily through the high brush and weeds on the west side of the barn—Lanny Combs and Henry Mulloy swayed on their feet and drank the stout, black coffee Ike Nelson had brought them from the saloon.
Their hearts were still thundering in their chests. The first thing the boss’s lieutenant had done was materialize like some sort of a spook out of the shadows and hold them at gunpoint. Then he had snarled at them like a rabid beast.
“Top Hat didn’t hire you two to get drunk on your asses. If this is all the good you are on guard duty, I might as well put you in the ground right now!”
“No, sir!” Both men had blanched with alarm. They were new to the gang and scared of Top Hat and his right-hand man. Both of those men were about half crazy with a dangerous glint in their eyes that informed the two novices that these particular outlaws boasted more than their fair share of meanness.
Nelson glared at them, then held out a coffeepot and said, “Throw that hooch away and fill up on this. I’ll be back at dawn and if you two are not as sober as church mice, you’ll answer for it!”
He turned and went up the street toward the saloon where Top Hat had taken residence. The young guards watched Ike Nelson walk away and then hustled to do as ordered. Throwing away the rotgut, they filled their cups with coffee and stared, trembling, into the darkness.
Just as soon as they did, Dish and Evan slipped across the road and ran to hide behind the bathhouse. They would make their way up onto the roof and cover the front of the barn once all hell broke loose.
Matthew and Roy watched the criminals and then looked at each other. The way was clear—at least for a few minutes—until the pair of roaming guards approached from the other end of town. Matthew took his slingshot out of his pocket, took careful aim and hit one of them on the back of his head. The man fell as straight as a board and landed on his face in the dirt.
No sooner did the sheriff let loose of his rock, Roy was moving fast. He came up behind the other guard, dealing him a crushing blow with the hilt of his knife. In the course of less than five minutes, both of the criminals were out cold, gagged, and hauled into the bushes.
Matthew knew this was the most hazardous and time-sensitive part of his plan but he grinned when two more men from his hometown came flying around from behind the barn, stripped the outlaws of their coats and hats, plucked their firearms out of their hands and then stood by the burn-barrel sipping hot coffee.
Two more men hauled the outlaws away as Matthew and Roy ran across the street and around to the alley behind the bathhouse, the restaurant and the sheriff’s office. Matthew’s heart filled with dread at what he was about to do but it was as if his uncle had whispered instructions into his ear.
He looked at his pocket watch again; they had made good time. It was 3:30 in the morning, though, and he still had work to do before first light. He had no Trojan horse in which to hide but there was another way and he intended to do it now. Top Hat was about to find out what messing with Matthew Wilcox really meant.
Chapter 32
A Terrible Gamble
It was 4:20 in the morning of August 21, 1885. Ike Nelson stepped out of the saloon and stood on the boardwalk taking in the cool, misty air and sipping tepid coffee from a tin cup. Mourning doves sang their sad, inquisitive hellos…who-who-who?
Ike couldn’t help but wonder that himself. Who had he become by hitchin’ his wagon to Top Hat? He had heard some years ago that Top Hat was a fair shot and not afraid to take what he wanted from anyone. He had seemed like a good candidate for partnership, especially after a run of bad luck and the ever-growing, long arm of the law had almost stranded him in a hangman’s noose in South Dakota.
Now, though, Nelson was becoming more and more convinced that he was entangled in the clinging, sticky, web-like strands of a lunatic spider. Top Hat’s mad excesses were becoming more apparent and his motivations less clear as time went by. The gang leader no longer seemed interested in money or any kind of capital gain. Instead, he seemed to want to strike and murder for the sheer fun of practicing his perversions upon his victims.
Ike spat upon the dirt road in front of his boots. Another thing that was really starting to get on his nerves was Top Hat’s homosexual tendencies. The dirty louse loved buggering men and little boys, even to death if possible. Ike’s lips twisted in scorn. I might be a bad man, he thought, but I ain’t no pervert!
Glancing across the street, Ike studied the body of Jon Wilcox. The man had been placed sitting upright in a straight-backed chair on the porch of the sheriff’s office after he finally died. That was two days ago and now he was starting to stink. The flies crawled, buzzed and swarmed around the body and the roaming guards were starting to step off the boardwalk and give the dead man a wide berth in fearful disgust.
It looked to Ike like the man’s rigor was starting to fade now; the body was no longer stiff but sagging in his seat and the dried blood on the man’s white-starched shirt faded to brown in the early morning light.
The door to the saloon was slightly ajar and Ike heard his companions snoring inside where they had fallen asleep on assorted tables and chairs. Crazy assholes. Each and every one of ‘em, Ike thought and decided right then, as soon as this caper was finished, he would make himself scarce.
Turning toward the west, Ike saw the two guards by the barn patrolling back and forth in front of the burn barrel. He grinned… I got the drop on those two pups and it looks like they heard me loud and clear!
He was just about to step inside for another cup of coffee when he heard a shout. Staring again at the two men guarding the barn, Ike saw one of them gesturing and jumping up and down in excitement. The barn was about fifty feet down the street and the sun was in his eyes but he could hear one of the men yelling, “Boss, it’s the sheriff!”
Ike felt his heart speed up. Finally, Matthew Wilcox was returning to town. Maybe, he thought, we can put this farce behind us and go back to getting rich robbing trains and stagecoaches. Stepping inside, he walked to where Top Hat was sleeping with his head down on the bar. He shook the man’s shoulder and said, “Boss, wake up. The sheriff is coming in.”
Top Hat sat up straight, his eyes doing their jittery dance. “How far out?” he asked.
“Oh, a ways yet,” Ike said and went over to wake Chollo and Top Hat’s personal physician, Levon Smithers.
Top Hat stood up and staggered over to the coffeepot. He had drunk more than he should have the previous night and was suffering for it now. Still, there was a happy smile on his face and, as he drank his coffee, his feet did a little jig.
“Gonna get that fucker,” he muttered as he danced. “Gonna show him who is the real boss.”
Ike turned away in disgust as the other two men strapped on their pistols. Then Top Hat spat the last of his beverage into a spittoon and said, “Let’s go!”
Top Hat and his lieutenants stepped outside and peered into the rising sun. Sure enough, they saw two men on horseback sitting a few hundred yards away with the sun to their backs. Ike glanced toward the guards by the barn and saw them hunkered down, sighting along the barrels of their rifles at the two riders.
“You got your torches?” Top Hat was hyperventilating with excitement.
Ike stared down at his boots for a moment before nodding his head. Yes, he had killed plenty of men and women since he left his hometown as a young man but never just for the sheer thrill of killing. Top Hat was different though; he was happy to torch all those souls in the barn despite the fact that most of them were women and children with no money.
This was all about some sort of bad blood feud between the gang leader and this Sheriff Wilcox. Ike wanted no part of it but it was too late to change things now. He knew the time for murder was at hand and a little part
of his soul turned to ash as he stepped forward with the other criminals to do the dirty deed.
As the outlaws walked toward the barn, they saw one of the distant riders take aim with a rifle. A small puff of dust rose up no more than a foot away from one of their boy’s boots.
“Holy shit!” one of the men cried. “Did you see that? They’re hundreds of yards away by my reckoning and they almost got me!”
Top Hat saw both men duck around the backside of the barn and he said, “Remind me to shoot those yellow bastards as soon as this shindig is done.”
“I’ll be happy to do it myself, Boss,” Chollo said as he saw the guards disappear from sight.
Two more gang members who had been on patrol all night came running in their direction. Top Hat pointed at them and screamed, “You two! Go and fire that barn!”
Nodding as they hurried past, they grabbed the torches Top Hat and his lieutenants were holding. Moving swiftly, the men held the kerosene-soaked rags on sticks into the flames of the burn-barrel then threw them into the high windows in front of the barn.
There was a breathless calm and then Ike heard the sounds of agonized screaming coming from inside. Shuddering, he looked for the other pair of guards who had been patrolling the west end of town. Ike knew they were a couple of slackers who liked to take frequent smoke breaks but they should have arrived by now. He turned to look at Top Hat who was hooting with maniacal glee.
Chollo yelled, “Here they come, Boss!”
Then, out of the corner of his eye, Ike saw something that made his blood run cold. The dead man who was parked in front of the sheriff’s office—melting in his chair with the stench of death filling the air around him—rose slowly, pulled his pistol out of his gun belt and barked, “Top Hat! Drop your weapons now!”
An hour earlier, Matthew and Roy had carefully eased Jon’s decomposing body off the chair and dragged him around behind the office. Moving swiftly, Matthew had undressed his uncle and put on his stinking, blood-stiff clothing. Blinking back tears of sorrow as he covered Jon’s nudity with his own clothes, he had muttered an apology under his breath.
Noticing the nasty bruises and cuts on Matthew, Roy whispered, “You sure you’re up to this, Sheriff?”
Nodding, Matthew swallowed back the gorge rising up in his throat. “Yes. I can do better in Jon’s seat than trying to crawl up on this roof. You better get going, Roy.”
The deputy whispered good luck and stepped up on a stump so he could grab a hold of the eaves, then scrambled the rest of the way to the top.
The lawmen had received word that the roaming guards on the west end of town had been knocked unconscious and dragged into the barn to keep the other bandits company. If Dish’s estimate was correct, that left six men to deal with: Top Hat, Clarence Dodson (aka Ike Nelson), Chollo, Levon Smithers and the two who had just torched the barn. Matthew smiled grimly. The odds were getting better by the minute.
He tucked his long hair under his uncle’s hat, crouched low and moved around to the front of his office, taking Jon’s place in the chair on the porch. He had no sooner got himself situated when the man he knew as Clarence Dodson stepped out of the saloon with a cup in his hand.
Matthew’s heart burned with rage as he saw the man survey the town as if he owned it. It was all the sheriff could do to keep still as the outlaw turned his way and studied his slumped body with a smile on his face. Flies were returning to investigate the dried blood on his uncle’s shirt and he was just about to sneeze when a shout shattered the quiet, early dawn.
Peering through half-closed eyes, Matthew saw Bob and Evan silhouetted on the western horizon. He heard Davey O’Connell call out his lines like a natural-born actor and then saw Dodson step back into the saloon. A few moments later, four men walked out onto the boardwalk. Matthew’s heart thundered in his chest as his old nemesis, Top Hat, came into view.
The gang leader was just as stick-thin and ugly as ever with his lank brown hair, buckteeth and wandering, jittery eyes. Matthew wanted nothing more than to drill that man right between the shoulder blades with his Colt pistol but honor—and the legal system—stilled his hand.
He watched as the criminals approached the barn, grinning when it caught fire. Matthew was not a vicious man but too much had happened for him to shed a tear over the fate of the four gangsters burning alive inside the building. He was relieved that he and his men had managed to free the hostages; if he had held any doubts over Top Hat’s intentions, they were laid to rest.
Briefly, Matthew felt the weight of sorrow, regret, and his recent injuries bear down on his shoulders like an anvil. A moment later, while the bandit’s backs were turned, he stood up and hollered, “Top Hat! Drop your weapons! NOW!”
Chapter 33
The Showdown
“Get down on your knees and toss your weapons behind you!” Matthew snapped. He walked up slowly, keeping one eye on the outlaws and one eye on the two riders in the distance.
“Roy, you want to get the deputies’ attention for me, please?” Matthew called out.
“Sure thing, Sheriff,” Roy answered from where he crouched on the roof and let out a piercing whistle to signal Bob and Evan that it was safe to come into town. Matthew saw Top Hat flinch with the knowledge that he and his gang were now surrounded.
“Dish, you got a bead on these crooks?” Matthew yelled and the man on the bathhouse roof answered in the affirmative.
“And my brother and I have these arsonists dead to rights, Sheriff!” Davey called from in front of the barn.
Matthew saw Bob and Evan spurring their horses toward town and his shoulders dropped a little in relief. As best as he could tell, the outlaws were under the gun and it was all over but for a hanging once the circuit judge rolled into town.
Looking back down at the four outlaws, he said, “I am not inclined to shoot any of you in the back but if I don’t see all of your guns at my feet by the count of three…two… one…”
Three pistols and one long, deadly machete joined the pile of weapons on the ground in front of Matthew’s boots. He kicked the guns and the knife behind him and looked up at young Bob and Evan as they rode past the burning barn. He smiled and was just about to tell them they had done a good job when a fiery explosion rocked the ground he was standing on and almost burst his eardrums.
Something inside the barn—he would find out later it was a barrel of kerosene the O’Connell brothers kept on hand for heating up shoe-iron—had ignited and went off like a bomb. The fiercely burning building blew up, sending wood as small as lit matchsticks, lathe and gigantic pieces of flaming lumber in every direction at once.
A fireball as big as a house whooshed down the street toward him and Matthew’s ears rang with a high-pitched whine. He saw Bob and Evan engulfed in the shrieking inferno; their horses screamed and the sheriff knew that his two deputies and the O’Connell brothers must be dead. He saw Bob and Evan’s burning bodies etched in fire as were their horses who reared up in the air—manes and tails aflame—running away and screaming in agony through the black smoke rising from where the barn once stood. Trembling with shock, Matthew looked down at the criminals on the ground in front of him.
He thought the terrifying spectacle had only taken a moment or two but it was long enough that Top Hat had somehow managed to jump up and run off. But the outlaw known as Chollo lie dead on the ground, apparently shot in the back by one of the shooters on the rooftops, and Levon Smithers was sprawled on his back, staring up into the sky with a burning sliver of lumber through his chest.
Ike Nelson, however, sat on in the dirt pointing a Colt pistol in Matthew’s face.
“Don’t you do it, you skunk!” Roy yelled down from the roof behind Matthew. “I will take your damn head off with this rifle!”
“Yeah, maybe,” Ike snarled. “But you will kill your own sheriff if you try!”
Matthew knew Nelson might be right: He stood almost directly between Roy and the outlaw and, even as he watched, Nelson scooted over s
lightly in the dirt so Matthew’s large body covered his own.
Enraged beyond reason, he screamed, “Do it, Roy! Shoot the bastard dead!”
As though in slow motion, he ducked and felt the heat of Roy’s bullet as it flew over his uncle’s felt hat and saw the slug enter Nelson’s forehead. At that same moment, he felt a burning sensation in his left side. Moisture dripped down his pants leg and Matthew almost wondered if it had started raining again.
He looked up into the gray smoke, trying to get a glimpse of the blue sky overhead. Then he fell as his mind finally registered the fact that, before Nelson had been shot between the eyes, he had managed to get off his own shot.
The man’s Army Colt 41 pistol lay smoking on the ground next to the dead hand that held it but the bullet was lodged somewhere in Matthew’s side. As the sheriff stared up into the slowly dissipating smoke, he finally understood that Top Hat and the Mad Hatters had the last word after all.
The next two days passed in a nightmare of slowly, shifting images…smoke and fire licked Matthew’s face and scorched his body. He cried out in fear and sorrow as he saw young Bob Higgins ride past grinning a death’s head grimace, his white teeth nothing more than blackened nubs in a skull-like face.
“Oh, Bob,” he muttered. “I am so sorry.”
Bob just smiled and said, “That’s alright, Boss. Come on! I want to show you something!”
Matthew roweled his horse, trying hard to catch up with his young deputy but his mount was afraid to follow. Bob’s horse was awash in flames and snorted black smoke through wide, distended nostrils. Its fearful whinnies sounded like the cries of demons trapped in hell.
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