“We weren’t talkin’ to you, Jay Blue,” Skeeter replied.
With this distraction working in his favor, Kenyon swung away from the bar, toward the middle of the room. His heart was pounding with excitement. “Captain Tomlinson!” he said, his voice suddenly booming in the room. Everyone turned to look at him except Tomlinson. The retired Ranger was half turned away from him. “I have a warrant for your arrest!”
A moment of silence passed as Tomlinson took a shot glass and drained it in one fluid motion. “You want to serve it in hell?” he said.
Suddenly, he was itching for Tomlinson to pull that hog leg from his holster. “Put your hands up and we’ll have no trouble.”
Tomlinson’s neck turned, his cool blue eyes drilling the State Policeman. “We already have trouble. You picked the worst day of the year to mess with me, Kenyon.”
Kenyon’s eyes widened to take it all in. He knew his Smith & Wesson was ready, and so was he. Now he was really hoping Tomlinson wouldtry something. It would make his police career to take down an old Ranger gone bad. “Put your hands in the air!” he ordered. He was awaiting Tomlinson’s next move, but it was Jack Brennan who spoke up.
“Now wait just a goddamn minute!” As he spoke, he pushed Skeeter farther away and passed in front of Jay Blue to stand at Tomlinson’s side. “Who the hell do you think you are to storm into our town and boss our citizens around like this? Goddamn Republican State Police.”
“I don’t need your help, Jack!” Tomlinson growled, squaring off next to the big rancher.
The two stood there for a split second, side by side. Then, like a sledgehammer, Jack Brennan’s fist flew up from his hip, where his thumb had been tucked into his gun belt, and smashed into Hank Tomlinson’s nose quicker than a quail could burst from cover.
By reflex, Kenyon drew his revolver, but stopped short of firing.
Remarkably, the old Ranger stood for a moment, his head thrown back from the impact of the knuckles, blood gushing from his nose, until his knees buckled. By the time the elder Tomlinson hit the floor, Brennan had locked his two bearlike arms around Jay Blue Tomlinson’s shoulders, preventing him from reaching the sidearm he was groping for.
“Skeeter!” Brennan said. “Get his gun!”
Even in the chaos of the moment, Kenyon noticed the look of abject astonishment on Jay Blue Tomlinson’s face as Skeeter rushed forward to yank the Colt from his holster. He carried it aside, butt-forward, and placed it out of reach on a poker table.
“Skeeter!” Jay Blue gushed, locked in the crushing embrace of the much larger man. “What . . . ?”
Skeeter looked at Kenyon. “He carries a knife on his belt and one in his boot top, too.”
“Skeeter!” Jay Blue repeated. “What the hell are you doin’?”
“I’m done takin’ orders from Tomlinsons,” Skeeter said. “I work for the Double Horn Ranch now.”
Stunned and disappointed at the interference of Brennan, Matt Kenyon approached the younger Tomlinson, covering him with his Smith & Wesson. As Brennan continued to hold Jay Blue, Kenyon found the knives where Skeeter had indicated. He searched the unconscious Captain Tomlinson for weapons, unbuckling the gun belt and tossing aside a couple of knives.
Now he looked back at Brennan. “Turn him loose and step back, Mr. Brennan! Nobody asked you for your help anyway.”
Brennan released Jay Blue and stepped aside. “I wouldn’t show you the shithouse door,” he insisted. “I did what I did because Hank Tomlinson doesn’t deserve to die at the gallows for killin’ a shit-ass State Policeman, which he was about to do.”
Kenyon had no intention of arguing this point with the half-drunken rancher. “You can be of service now by picking up the captain and carrying him to the jail cell in the back of the store.”
The whole time, Jay Blue Tomlinson had been staring in disbelief at the cowboy called Skeeter, who was standing in the middle of the room, looking detached and confused, as if he were about to break down and cry. Kenyon had no idea what was going on there, and didn’t really care. His concern was getting the two Tomlinsons behind bars.
“I’m going to have to lock you up, too,” he said to the younger man. “You shouldn’t have gone for your gun.”
Jay Blue stood tall and glared at Skeeter. “I’d rather go with my daddy anyway. Looks like I’m out of friends here.”
Brennan reached down with one hand, grabbed a handful of the material of Captain Tomlinson’s coat, took hold of a wrist with his other hand, and in one powerful motion hoisted Tomlinson across his shoulder. He proceeded out the door and across the street with Kenyon right behind, his muzzle trained on Jay Blue’s back. As they stepped into the store, he saw all the cowhands from the Broken Arrow look up from the corpse they had been hovering over, the shock and outrage quickly registering on every face. Sam Collins and the two ladies from the saloon also gathered the situation and gasped.
“Hank!” Flora screamed.
“Stand back!” Kenyon shouted, moving his Smith & Wesson up to the back of Jay Blue’s head for all to see. “These men are going to jail.”
“Why, you sorry son of a bitch!” said the tallest of the men, who stepped forward, trying to pull the tail of his buttoned-up coat over the grip of his revolver. At the same time, the Indian, Tonk, eased to one side to spread the field of fire, and Kenyon thought he might not accomplish this arrest without gunplay after all.
“No!” Flora screamed, grabbing the arm of the lanky cowhand. “He’s got Jay Blue!”
She seemed to jolt some sense into the men, though the anger in the room remained as thick as the mud in the street.
Kenyon’s voice rose to a shout: “I want everybody but Mr. Collins out of here now!” He waited as the cowboys and the ladies shuffled out of the store in unwilling obedience, then he ushered Jay Blue into the adjoining room added on behind the store.
“Put the captain on the floor inside the cell,” he said.
When Brennan had carried out his order and exited the cell, Kenyon said, “Jay Blue, you sit down on the floor beside your father.”
The boy obeyed, pulling the captain’s shoulders up to lean against him, so the blood would drain out of his nose instead of running back into his throat, choking him.
“You’re dismissed,” Kenyon said to Jack Brennan.
Brennan only sneered and left the room. Kenyon heard him stomping all the way out through the front door of the store. Now he holstered his Smith & Wesson. He shook the cage to make sure it was still firmly bolted to the floor. He felt along the tops of the flat iron bars that created the upper part of the cell.
“What are you doing?” Sam Collins said, having stepped into the lean-to room.
“Searching the cell.”
“For what?”
Kenyon shrugged. “A file, a hacksaw, a knife.” He looked under the iron shelf that served as a bunk. Finally, he took the thin cotton-stuffed mattress from the hard bunk and groped along its entire length. At one end, he suddenly felt something hard. Tearing the cover open at a weak spot in the stitching, he produced a key that looked remarkably like the one stuck in the lock of the cell door.
“Perhaps a key,” he said, conscious of the fact that he was gloating. He tossed the mattress out of the cell. Grinning now, Kenyon stepped out of the cage. He slammed the door and locked it, pocketing both keys. A rare sense of accomplishment flooded over him. This was his life’s work, all but completed. He felt the approval of his dead mother, vindication for his murdered father.
“Mr. Collins, I’ll be needing you to send some telegrams of my success here on this day.” He looked into the cell at Jay Blue. “I’ll be right here in the store, so don’t try anything.”
The younger Tomlinson looked at him with exasperated hatred. “What am I gonna try?”
Kenyon just shrugged, grinned, and walked out of the crude little jail.
36
JAY BLUE was sure the temperature was near freezing in the little lean-to jail room. The heat from the woodstove in
the store didn’t seem to reach the cell at all. He had sat shivering for hours with his unconscious father, shifting his rear end on the iron straps bolted in several places to the wood floor. He was worried about his father. He should have come to by now, but Kenyon had refused his request for a visit by Doc Zuber.
A worse day in his life Jay Blue could not remember. Poli was dead. Jane had rejected him. His father was out cold and accused of multiple murders. He was shivering in a cold jail cell. And then there was Skeeter. Sitting there for hours, Jay Blue had tried to figure out what had driven Skeeter to take a job with Jack Brennan at the Double Horn Ranch.
Stripped now of his weapons, his swagger, and his bold talk, Jay Blue began to hear the things he had said to Skeeter over the past days and weeks. Hell—months and years! He asked himself if he would have let someone talk to him that way all this time. Hell, no. Then there was that one particularly mean thing he had said out there in the hills this morning while they were searching for Poli.
Jay Blue knew Skeeter fretted over nothing more than the fact that he was an orphan, and he had cruelly attacked that vulnerable spot in his friend’s heart. He realized now that when Skeeter had ridden to the other side of that canyon this morning—staying gone for hours, making Jay Blue furious—that he had actually trotted over to the Double Horn Ranch. Wasn’t Skeeter standing with Jack Brennan at the bar last night while Jay Blue picked the banjo and flirted with the girl who wanted nothing to do with him? He should have seen it then, but it was hard to recognize the obvious with one’s head up one’s ass. He felt almost sick to his stomach with shame as he listened to the memories in his head, over and over, of the things he had said to his best friend. His former best friend, that is. He disgusted himself. He deserved to shiver in jail.
The worst memory was that of Skeeter taking his gun from his holster in the bar. There was a hurt look on Skeeter’s face when he did it, but also the determined look of someone who had taken a bellyful of being pushed around. And Jay Blue knew that he was the one who had done the pushing.
The whole afternoon, Kenyon had been conducting interviews with townsfolk in the store, sending Sam Collins out into the cold to drag in witnesses who could testify that they had seen the old arrow fall out of the fiddle case and heard Gotch Dunnsworth declare that the fiddle and case had been given to him years ago by Captain Tomlinson.
Right now Gotch Dunnsworth himself was in the early stages of his interrogation by that relentless State Policeman. Jay Blue could not tell exactly what all was being said, but the tone of the discussion indicated that Gotch was not being as cooperative as Kenyon would have liked.
Suddenly, his father groaned. Jay Blue shifted to see his eyes fluttering open. He scooted to a crouch, and held his father in an upright sitting position. The captain blinked, then reached for his nose. Touching the swollen protuberance in the middle of his face, he winced, looked around at the cell, then focused on his son.
“Thank God you’re alive,” he said.
Jay Blue put a finger to his lips and pointed into the store.
His father nodded. “Is anybody else dead?” he whispered.
Jay Blue shook his head.
“Then what the hell happened?”
Jay Blue told the story as briefly as he could, keeping his voice below the sound of rain on the leaky cedar shake roof and the whistle of icy wind through the board-and-batten walls.
When he was finished, his father shook his head. “I don’t think I heard you right, son. Skeeter took your gun?”
Jay Blue nodded in shame. “He says he’s taken a job with Jack Brennan.”
Hank reached up for his son’s shoulder. “Help me up on that bunk.” Sitting upright under his own power, the Ranger continued his questions. “Why the hell would Skeeter do a thing like that?”
Jay Blue hung his head. “I said something stupid to Skeeter, Daddy. I said something really bad.”
Hank shrugged. “Well, then you’ll have to fix it. Apologize to him.”
He gestured to the cell around him. “It’s too late.”
“It’s never too late to save a friendship,” he hissed. He was blinking his eyes hard and trying to shake the cobwebs out of his head.
“Even if we could get out of here, I don’t know if he’d listen to me anymore.”
“Bullshit. Fix it. You got that Thoroughbred mare back, didn’t you? You fixed that.”
“I don’t think this is gonna be that easy, Daddy. I can’t just throw a loop on Skeeter and drag him back. I haven’t been treatin’ him like a member of the family lately.”
Hank sighed. “Well, maybe neither of us have.”
Now Jay Blue watched in astonishment as his father stood up, jutted his jaw, took his broken nose between the fingertips of both hands, and shifted it back into place. He could hear the bone and cartilage grinding, and saw a new trickle of blood run down into his father’s mustache. He had always known his old man was tough. But damn.
“Oh . . .” Hank groaned under his breath as he rubbed his belly. “That always makes me a little queasy. Now, listen. One thing’s for sure. We’re not gonna pull Skeeter back into the fold shiverin’ our sorry asses off in this cell like a couple of town curs.”
“I forgot to tell you. Kenyon found the hidden key.”
“In the mattress?”
Jay Blue nodded.
“Good.”
“Why is that good?”
“I wanted him to find that key. Now he thinks he’s outsmarted me, and that puts me one step ahead of him. It’s a chess match, son.”
“Well, he’s captured two knights, so I hope you have another hideout key somewhere.”
“The match is quite often won with the early moves of the pawns.”
“Are you all here, Daddy?”
Jay Blue’s father began to look around the room beyond the iron cage. “Do you remember when you were just a little kid, and we realized this town needed a jail? You helped me build this lean-to on the back of Sam’s store.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
He looked up at the ceiling. “We cut these cedar beams down along the Pedernales. You and me, a couple of pawns chopping wood.”
“Right . . .”
“I searched a long time for this one particular tree.” He pointed to the beam directly over the cell. “Hard to find a cedar with a hollow in it at just the right place.” Putting his boots into the squares formed by the crossed iron bars, he climbed two feet up the cell wall as if it were a ladder, reached up through the grate above, and probed with his fingertips into a hidden indention in the natural growth of the cedar beam. It was the only place where he could have reached the beam, there where the slant of the lean-to roof was closest to the top of the cage. When his fingers came back into view, they pulled from the hollow a dusty key, along with a good supply of cobwebs.
Jay Blue grinned and looked through the door, into the general store. “How are we gonna get by Kenyon?”
Hank was slipping the key into the lock. “Like knights on a chessboard. Two steps forward and one step aside.” Reaching through the bars, he slowly turned the key, wincing at every little metallic clank. The bolt slid open, and he carefully swung the door ajar.
Over the heated conversation between Gotch and Kenyon in the store, Jay Blue heard the telegraph ticker start to tap.
Stepping out of the cell, Jay Blue tiptoed after his fellow escapee. His father headed straight for the back wall of the room, two steps away. He watched the captain crouch and push at the bottoms of two of the planks that helped form the wall. To his surprise, the boards swung open as if they were hinged at the top, which he figured they probably were, providing an escape route through which the erstwhile captives could crawl.
When he rolled out into the bitter cold of the winterlike evening, Jay Blue found his father urging him to follow through the alley behind the store and the other businesses on that stretch of Main Street. They ran a block, turned on a side street, crossed Main, and ducked into
the alley behind Flora’s Saloon. Making no attempt to stay quiet now, Hank flung open the side door to Flora’s carriage house, revealing two Broken Arrow horses, already fitted with the Tomlinsons’ saddles.
Flora and Jane were sitting on the back of the three-spring buggy, wrapped in blankets. They both slid off as the pale cold light and the frigid wind burst in.
“It’s about time!” Flora said. “Hurry! The boys are waiting at the ford on the Pedernales.” She turned to open the carriage doors.
To Jay Blue’s astonishment, Jane came straight to him, catching his sleeve before he mounted. In her eyes he saw a new kind of twinkle. He’d have thought she almost liked him all of a sudden. She slipped an envelope into his grasp, her own palms feeling like furnaces as they wrapped around his cold knuckles and his wrist.
“This is what we know so far about the brands,” she said. “We’re still investigating.” Then, lo and behold, she kissed his cheek. “Go! Hurry!” she said.
Jay Blue saw that his father was already mounted, so he swung into his own saddle without bothering to put a foot in his stirrup. He was riding on air as he left the carriage house.
Hank waited for him to catch up as they turned away from Main to take the back streets. “What’s the most powerful piece on the chessboard?” he asked.
“The queen,” Jay Blue replied.
“And don’t you ever forget it.”
They trotted to the edge of town, looking over their shoulders for trouble. When they hit the Fredericksburg Road, they struck a lope for the ford. Just before they dropped off the bluff into the Pedernales Valley, something spectacular caught Jay Blue’s eye. The sun had appeared in a narrow swath of clear sky between the horizon below and the clouds above—a glowing orange ball of distant fire announcing a coming end to the sleet and freezing rain.
“The sun will shine tomorrow,” Hank said.
“And the light moon will rise tomorrow night,” Jay Blue observed.
Hank nodded. “The Moon of the Wolf. Those Comanches are likely to raid the Double Horn.”
“If they do, Skeeter will be right in the middle of it.”
A Tale Out of Luck Page 21