"What do you want, Tilghman, if that's who you really are?"
A bleak smile tugged briefly at Tilghman's mouth under his mustache. That was neatly played on Dave's part, he thought. Dave was trying to cast doubt on Tilghman's identity so maybe he could keep the townspeople on his side.
"You can see for yourself that your brother is my prisoner," Tilghman called. "So is your other brother Martin. They're in federal custody, and you'd do well to surrender before anyone else gets hurt."
"You're a crook and a murderer!" Dave responded. "Why else would you kidnap my brothers? They hadn't done anything wrong!"
"The three of you are the ringleaders of that gang of rustlers and road agents that's been operating in these parts," Tilghman shouted. He wanted to make it very clear to anyone within earshot of his voice exactly what was going on here. "You've been hiding behind a lawman's badge just like your brother's been hiding behind being mayor! You're all under arrest!"
That bold declaration brought a burst of startled laughter from Dave Rainey.
"That's mighty big talk for a man who's as outnumbered as you are! You're the one who'd better give up! And if either of my brothers die, I'll see to it that you hang, mister!"
Dave was stubbornly keeping up the pose of being an honest lawman. Tilghman didn't know if he had done any good or not. But maybe some of the people of Burnt Creek would now begin to question what was really going on here. If they were to turn against Dave Rainey, that might tip the balance against the outlaws. Tilghman and Scanlon had to hold out for as long as they could and give that doubt time to work . . .
"Casey!" Scanlon suddenly exclaimed. "Casey, where are you?"
Tilghman glanced over his shoulder and saw Scanlon looking around frantically. Casey wasn't in the sitting room anymore, and she didn't answer Scanlon's calls. She had slipped out while Tilghman and Scanlon were concentrating on the danger in front of them.
"Where could she have – " Scanlon began.
At that moment, Cal Rainey made his move. Even wounded as bad as he was, all the fight hadn't left him. He lifted a foot, rested it on the window sill, and pushed back as hard as he could, driving his body into Tilghman's. Taken by surprise, Tilghman went over backward, sprawling on the floor as Cal twisted around and grappled with him for the Winchester.
At the same time, Cal shouted, "Dave! Rush 'em, Dave! Get in here and kill 'em all!"
Chapter 15
Without Cal being in the window to make the outlaws hold their fire, the barrage of rifle and pistol shots started up again, filling the air in the sitting room with hot lead. Scanlon had no choice but to hug the floor as bullets whined over his head.
A few feet away, Tilghman struggled desperately with Cal Rainey. Basically rendered one-armed by his wound, Cal fought with a berserk rage anyway. He wrenched the rifle away from Tilghman and smashed the stock against the lawman's jaw.
Tilghman shook off the blow and drove his left fist against Cal's injured shoulder. The rustler's face contorted in agony as he gasped out a curse and tried to slide his good hand down to the Winchester's action so he could fire it one-handed.
Tilghman hammered his right first against Cal's ear and drove him to the side. He got his other hand on the rifle barrel and shoved it upward just as Rainey found the trigger and jerked it. The bullet smashed into the ceiling and caused plaster to shower down around the battling men.
In close quarters like this, Cal couldn't cock the Winchester one-handed. He must have realized that because he let go of it and lunged for Tilghman's throat instead.
Tilghman blocked that grasping move and shot another punch into Cal's face. He didn't let up but struck again and again, bouncing the back of Cal's head against the floor until the rustler went limp.
By that time Scanlon was kneeling at the window again, jacking his Winchester's lever and firing swiftly as he called, "Here they come!"
Tilghman grabbed the other rifle and scrambled to the window, heedless of the bullets whipping around his head. Some of the rustlers had stayed where they were to provide covering fire, while the others charged toward the hotel.
Tilghman aimed at the men in the forefront of the attack and opened fire. One of the outlaws stumbled and went down, and Scanlon dropped another.
Then a bullet struck Tilghman's Winchester and ripped it out of his hands, leaving his fingers momentarily numb from the impact. He shook his right hand to get feeling back into it and reached for his Colt.
Down the hall, Raoul Gonzalez's scattergun boomed twice, but it was answered by a snarling burst of pistol fire. When Gonzalez didn't reload and fire again, Tilghman's heart sank a little. He figured the stableman had gone down under that withering attack up the rear stairs.
Tilghman drew in a deep breath and squared his shoulders as he faced the sitting room door and thumbed fresh shells into the Colt's empty chambers. This fight was nearly over, he sensed, but he was going to sell his life dearly and take as many of the lawless with him as he could.
He knew, too, that his death would be avenged. Marshal Nix had said that Chris Madsen and Heck Thomas would be coming along to Burnt Creek sooner or later, and when they did they would unleash hell and justice on any of the surviving outlaws.
It was too bad about Boone Scanlon, though. Tilghman had seen a core of goodness in the young man. Even with the things he had done as a member of the Rainey gang, Scanlon could have made something decent out of his life, if he'd had the chance.
Suddenly the gunfire outside the hotel intensified. Scanlon let out an excited whoop at the window.
"I see Coley Barnett down there!" he said. "Looks like he and some of the townsfolk are goin' after the gang."
Tilghman slid over to the window and ventured a glance out. Some of the outlaws had been caught in the middle of the street, and they were under fire from several different directions. Tilghman spotted Dave Rainey's lanky deputy kneeling behind a water barrel and cutting down on the outlaws with a rifle. Scanlon had been right about Coley Barnett. The deputy was fighting for the law against his former boss's gang.
More citizens were pouring lead into the building where some of the outlaws had holed up. The fighting was vicious, but Barnett had rallied a large force and now the rustlers were outnumbered.
Tilghman barely had time to appreciate that development before a rush of footsteps drew his attention back to his own predicament. The half-breed outlaw Garza lunged through the door, the gun in his hand spouting flame.
One of Garza's slugs tore up the floor next to Tilghman. The others smacked into the wall between the two windows.
Tilghman fired just one shot, but it punched deep into Garza's midsection, tearing through his guts and doubling him over. Garza's gun went off into the floor one more time as he fell.
Even as he collapsed, another outlaw took his place, but Scanlon was ready and knocked that man off his feet with a bullet to the chest.
The fact that the attack bottlenecked in the door worked in favor of Tilghman and Scanlon. Gun-thunder roared until it seemed to fill the entire world, and clouds of gunsmoke stung their noses and eyes as they fired again and again at the outlaws pouring through the door and piling up on the floor just inside the sitting room. Scanlon was hit but continued shooting until the hammer of his gun fell on an empty chamber. Tilghman fired his final shot an instant later and downed another of the enemy.
Even though Tilghman was half-deafened by all the explosions, he heard the roar of a shotgun and saw one of the outlaws, who had been drawing a bead on him with a savage leer on his face, thrown sideways by a load of buckshot that shredded flesh and pulped bone. The shotgun boomed again, and then rifle and pistol shots cracked in the corridor. The attackers disappeared as the fierce exchange continued for several hectic seconds.
The shooting stopped, leaving echoing silence in its place. Tilghman came to his feet, reloading, and he snapped the Colt's cylinder closed and raised the gun as a stocky figure appeared in the doorway.
"Señor Mars
hal!" Raoul Gonzalez exclaimed. "You are alive!"
"So are you, I see," Tilghman said wearily. The bloodstains on Gonzalez's shirt told him that the stableman was wounded, but Gonzalez clutched the smoking greener in both hands and a grin stretched across his face.
The tall, rangy figure of Coley Barnett appeared behind Gonzalez. The deputy has a bullet graze on his cheek that dripped blood, but otherwise he didn't seem to be hurt.
"Thank the Lord you fellas are all right!" he said. "I was afraid those varmints had done for you."
"They came mighty close," Tilghman said. "They would have, if it weren't for you and Raoul, Deputy, and the other folks who pitched in to help us."
"And that might not have happened if Casey Spencer hadn't risked life and limb gettin' to me so she could tell me what was really happenin'," Barnett said.
"Casey!"
That worried cry came from Scanlon, who was struggling to stand up. The side of his shirt was soaked with blood. Tilghman stepped over to him and took his arm to help him to his feet. He pulled Scanlon's shirt up and saw a deep, ugly graze, but he didn't think the wound was life-threatening.
"Where is she?" Scanlon went on. "Where's Casey?"
"She was at the jail the last time I saw her," Barnett explained. "That's where she found me."
"We'll get her, Boone," Tilghman said. "Don't worry."
He left Barnett to help Scanlon and went out into the hall, stepping over the bloody, sprawled bodies of several outlaws as he did so. Martin Rainey was still sitting in the chair where Tilghman had left him tied up. The mayor's eyes were open wide, staring lifelessly. There were three bullet wounds in his chest.
"We didn't do that," Gonzalez said, nodding toward Martin's body. "His own men shot him by accident when they opened fire on the deputy and me."
Tilghman looked at the outlaw corpses littering the corridor and saw how it had played out. It had been Martin Rainey's bad luck to be caught helplessly between the two forces, and his men, desperate to escape the law closing in on them, hadn't been very careful with their shots.
That wasn't the way Tilghman would have wanted it, and certainly not the way he'd intended when he left Martin in the corridor, but he wasn't going to lose any sleep over what had happened to the man. According to Cal, Martin was the one who had come up with the idea of putting together the gang in the first place. It was in his mind that the plague of lawlessness around Burnt Creek had originated.
Live by the sword, die by the sword . . . or the six-gun.
Several more armed townsmen were waiting in the hallway. They were the men Barnett had led up here to finish the job of wiping out the rustlers. Tilghman nodded to them and said, "I'm much obliged to you for your help, boys. Now there's one more thing you can do for me. Cal Rainey's in there, knocked out. If some of you could carry him over to the jail and lock him up . . . "
"We'll take care of it, Marshal, don't worry," one of the men said. "Putting that varmint behind bars has been a long time coming."
"Sooner or later the law catches up to those who deserve it, one way or the other," Tilghman said. "If I didn't believe that, I never would've pinned on a badge to start with."
Along with Scanlon, Barnett and Gonzalez, he went tiredly downstairs and through the hotel lobby. Somebody had led the horses out. Tilghman was trying to remember when the last time was that he had slept, and Scanlon was going on about how they needed to find Casey, as the four men stepped out onto the verandah.
"She's got to be around here somewhere," Barnett said. "Probably still at the jail."
As they turned in that direction, another thought occurred to Tilghman. He said, "What happened to Dave Rainey? Is he over there in the store where the rest of the bunch was cornered and wiped out?"
"I don't remember seein' him," Barnett said with a frown. "And he wasn't upstairs in the hotel, either."
That started alarm bells going off in Tilghman's brain. As he swung toward the jail, those bells were accompanied by a sudden scream. The crowd of people that had formed in the street once the fighting was over started to break apart fast as people scurried to get out of the way.
Tilghman found himself facing Dave Rainey. About twenty yards separated the two men.
But so did the frightened form of Casey Spencer, who was held tightly by Rainey's left arm around her neck while the renegade lawman's other hand pressed a gun barrel into her side.
Chapter 16
"Casey!" Boone Scanlon yelled as he started to lunge forward. Tilghman flung out an arm to stop him, and Barnett tightened his arm around his friend's shoulders.
"Tilghman!" Dave said. "I want my brothers. Bring them out here and let them go, or I'll kill this girl."
Moving deliberately, Tilghman stepped down from the hotel verandah to the street.
"I can't do that, Dave," he said as he started forward at a slow, steady pace. "Cal's wounded. He's going to be locked up and held for trial. I'm sorry to have to tell you that Martin's dead."
"Dead . . . ! You killed him!"
Tilghman shook his head.
"No, he caught some slugs from your own men during the fight upstairs. Justice had its own way of catching up to him. And it'll catch up to you, too, Dave, you know that. Don't make things any worse than they have to be. Let Miss Spencer go."
"We would've wiped you out if it wasn't for her," Dave ranted. "She's the one who turned the town against me. Me! I'm the marshal of Burnt Creek!"
"You betrayed these folks by throwing in with your brothers on the rustling scheme," Tilghman said. He was still coming closer to Dave and Casey. "You see, the badge doesn't mean anything if the man behind it isn't worthy of wearing it."
"We tried to go straight." Dave Rainey's lips curled in a snarl. "We tried, damn it! It just never worked out."
"You gave up on the law too quick. Put the gun down. Don't make me kill you."
Dave's eyes dropped to the Colt on Tilghman's hip.
"Your gun's still in your holster! You can't beat me!"
Tilghman smiled faintly.
"Are you sure about that, Dave?"
For a split-second, his mind flashed back to the scene in front of that farmer's soddy, miles east of here, that had played out a few days earlier. He had faced a desperate, determined man there, too, and that hombre had been threatening a woman just like Dave Rainey was.
Could he save Casey, the way he had saved that farmer's wife?
Time seemed suspended. Then Rainey's face contorted with hate and his finger started to whiten on the trigger.
Tilghman's gun came out of its holster with lightning speed. It boomed and Rainey's head snapped back as the bullet bored through his brain. His gun slipped unfired from his fingers and he toppled backward, away from the trembling Casey Spencer, who flung herself forward and fell to her knees. Scanlon rushed into the street and gathered her in his arms, his own wound forgotten now.
Tilghman shoved Rainey's gun well out of reach with his boot, then stood over the fallen outlaw, still covering him. There was no need for that, he saw. His shot had been true, even though he hadn't taken the time to aim like he usually did. Dave Rainey was dead.
Before Tilghman had ever agreed to take the job as deputy U.S. marshal, he and Evett Nix had discussed the sort of man who ought to be wearing that badge. Tilghman had told Nix his theory about how it was the man who was careful and took his time who won most gunfights. A good lawman had to be reluctant to draw his weapon.
But, Tilghman thought as he pouched his iron, sometimes he could still be fast on the draw when he really needed to.
* * *
Burnt Creek was still cleaning up that afternoon, following the battle, when two men rode into town. Tilghman was sitting on the porch in front of the marshal's office – Coley Barnett's office now, since the town council had offered him the job of marshal and he had accepted – when he spotted the riders coming along the street. He stood up to greet them, his tall, rangy frame unfolding from the chair.
One of t
he newcomers was well-dressed, with sleek dark hair under his hat. His clothes were carefully brushed and didn't show much trail dust.
The other man was shorter and stockier, wearing clothes that looked like they'd been slept in every night for a week. A battered old hat perched on his rumpled thatch of hair, and a ragged soup strainer mustache drooped over his mouth. He spoke first, saying to Tilghman, "I heard a lot of hammerin' comin' from behind the undertaker's place when we rode by. Sounded to me like he was buildin' a bunch of coffins. When I heard that, I said it sounded like ol' Tilghman had been hard at work here. I said that, didn't I, Heck?"
"You did, Chris," the dark-haired man agreed. "And to tell you the truth, I thought the same thing. Keeping the undertaker busy planting owlhoots, eh, Bill?"
"Well, that wasn't my intention," Tilghman said. "You know I'd rather take prisoners and let the courts deal with them." He shrugged. "Sometimes it just doesn't work out that way."
"No, it doesn't," Deputy U.S. Marshal Heck Thomas agreed.
"Still, you could've waited for us," Deputy U.S. Marshal Chris Madsen added. "Nix told you he'd send us along to give you a hand as soon as we got back from that other job."
Tilghman propped a shoulder against one of the posts holding up the awning over the boardwalk and drawled, "Well, if I'd known you boys were going to show up today, I'd have tried to hold off on starting the ball."
Thomas glanced at the front wall of the hotel, which must have had a thousand bullet holes all over its top floor, and said dryly, "Looks like it was quite a fandango."
"Did you leave any of 'em alive?" Madsen asked.
Tilghman pointed over his shoulder with a thumb.
"One of the ringleaders is locked up inside. The new town marshal and his deputy will take care of him and hold him for trial. Of course, that deputy is laid up for a few days because he was wounded in this little dust-up, but he'll be all right."
Coley Barnett wasn't the only one with a new job. Tilghman had done something that really went against the grain for him: he had allowed Boone Scanlon to go free, with a solemn promise from the young man that he would stay on the right side of the law from now on. His job as deputy marshal of Burnt Creek would help see to that.
West of the Big River: Boxed Set of Eight Western Novels Page 9