Shawn O'Brien Town Tamer # 1
Page 19
The cell window showed only a rectangle of bruised cloud.
“Hard to say,” Shawn said. “Past noon, I reckon.”
“Listen to that damned rain,” Platt said.
“Yeah, it’s sure coming down,” Shawn said.
“You think Cobb pulled his people off the ridge?”
“I doubt it. If I was him, I’d figure that the water running off the slope would wash everything down to the flat.”
“Coin?”
“Why not? I reckon that by this time the ridge is shedding water like a waterfall. Everything will end up at the bottom, rocks, gravel . . . and money.”
“Then this storm was lucky for Cobb, huh?” Platt said.
“That would be my guess,” Shawn said.
He brought the derringer out of his coat pocket and hefted the little pistol in the palm of his hand.
“You ever shoot this piece, Ford?”
“Once. The day I bought it.”
“How did it do?”
“Well, the gunsmith who made the harness for me set up a whiskey bottle at ten yards and told me to aim, then cut loose.”
“And what happened?”
“For all I know the whiskey bottle is still standing there.”
“Where did your shots go? Low, high, left or right?”
“I have no idea.”
“Maybe ten yards was pushing it.”
“Like you say, maybe. If you ask me, two yards is pushing it.”
Shawn nodded. “Well, it’s a belly gun right enough.”
“That’s what it is,” Platt said. “So keep it in mind.”
Shawn dropped the Remington back into his pocket.
“Wish it was a .45,” he said. “With a ten-inch barrel.”
“If wishes were fishes poor men would dine,” Platt said. “Me, I wish it was a mountain howitzer. Then maybe we’d have a chance of shooting our way out of here.”
“It’s better than nothing,” Shawn said.
Platt nodded. “Better than a rock anyhow.”
The lightning-stabbed clouds bled a heavier, hammering rain that marched across the roof like an advancing army. The wind screamed and pounded at the walls, demanding to be let inside where it could continue its mischief.
Raising his voice above the din of the storm, Platt said, “What are you thinking about, big man?”
“Huh?” Shawn said, blinking.
“You’ve been staring at the window for the past ten minutes like a man in a trance,” Platt said. “You thinking about tonight?”
Shawn shook his head. “No. Nothing like that.”
“Then what?” Platt said. “I’m an inquisitive man.”
“You’ll think me strange, Ford.”
“Hell, I think the whole world and everybody in it is strange,” Platt said.
Shawn glanced at the window, then said, “I was remembering that a week after I laid my wife to rest, I buried her father. It was on a day like this, dark with lightning in the sky. Later, the local folks called it the thunderstorm of the century.”
“Sorry about your wife, and her pa,” Platt said.
“Well, his heart was weak and he’d just gone through a terrible ordeal,” Shawn said. “I guess it was just too much for him.”
“Man can die of a broken heart,” Platt said.
Shawn nodded. “Sir James’s doctor said that very thing. It didn’t help much.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
Platt broke off his words as the iron door to the room swung open and clashed against the wall.
Two men stepped through.
One was the town blacksmith, shackles in his hands and a heavy hammer stuck into the pocket of his leather apron.
The other was Ed Bowen. He was armed with a Greener scattergun and a heavy revolver buckled around his waist.
“All right, O’Brien,” Bowen said, “you know the drill. Granger here will shackle you for your execution.”
“Now?” Platt said. “Early ain’t it?”
“Not now,” Bowen said. “You’ll die later, after sunset.”
The gunfighter’s face hardened. “Don’t ask me any more questions, bub. You may not like the answers.”
He turned to the blacksmith. “Let them out.” And then, “After the chains are in place, only one knee, remember. But make it real good.”
Granger nodded. His face was ashen, like a man who’d just been handed down a death sentence by a hanging judge.
Shawn studied Bowen, weighing his chances.
The man was alert, as tense as a coiled spring, his hard eyes missing nothing.
Shawn knew that the gunfighter would not let him close, and at any distance a .41 caliber derringer was a mighty uncertain thing.
He could get near enough to shoot the blacksmith, of course, but what good would that do? Bowen would kill him a split second later.
Exchanging one dead blacksmith for one of Colonel Shamus O’Brien’s finest sons was no kind of bargain.
“Granger, let ’em out,” Bowen said. He passed the blacksmith the keys and then his eyes flicked to Shawn. “Any fancy moves from you or the runt and I’ll kill you. Do you savvy that?”
“Whatever you say,” Shawn said. “You’re the one holding the Greener.”
“And it’s both wife and child to me,” Bowen said.
Granger opened the cell door and Shawn and Platt stepped into the room. Thunder boomed and the racketing rain was relentless.
“What about him?” Granger said, nodding to Wolfden.
“Leave him be for now,” Bowen said. “Hank will deal with him later, after these two are hung.”
As the blacksmith shackled his feet, Shawn noticed that Bowen was never still. The gunfighter prowled constantly back and forth across the floor like a restless panther, his eyes never focusing on one thing for long.
He’d be a hard man to surprise. A hard man to kill.
But before the manacles clamped around his wrists, Shawn knew he’d have to try.
Then Ed Bowen’s boredom saved him.
“Only the legs, leave the hands free, Granger, or we’ll be here all damned day,” he said.
“Then I’m done,” the blacksmith said. “They’re chained up good.”
“All right, then use your hammer and smash a knee on each of them,” Bowen said. “Hank says left or right, it doesn’t matter to him.”
He smiled at Shawn. “A broken knee is the price you pay for escaping the last time, O’Brien. This time you’ll be thankful to stay right where you’re at without moving. A busted knee pains a man something terrible.”
Bowen nodded to Granger. “O’Brien first. Get him on his back and then use the hammer.” He smiled. “Make sure the knee is smashed real good, Granger. Hank wants to drag these two to the gallows screaming like pigs. Folks enjoy that kind of stuff at an execution.”
The big blacksmith hesitated and the muscles of his jaws bunched.
“I can’t do that to a man,” he said. “I won’t treat him like an animal come to slaughter.”
“Damn you, get it done,” Bowen said, his voice rising to an enraged shriek. “If you don’t, you’ll die alongside of them.”
Granger threw down the hammer. It skidded across the floor and thudded into Bowen’s left boot.
“Do it yourself, Bowen,” he said. “I’ll have no truck with this.”
The gunfighter’s lips peeled back in a vicious snarl and he kicked the hammer back in the direction of the blacksmith.
“Damn you, pick that up and cripple O’Brien or I’ll cut you in half,” he said, the muzzles of the shotgun lining up on Granger’s belly.
“Go to hell,” the blacksmith said.
At night, a cougar scream will wake a sleeping man and still the breath in his chest. He’ll bolt upright in his blankets and his eyes will reach into the darkness as he grabs for his revolver. . . .
It was such a scream that froze Ed Bowen into an immobile statue.
But only for a moment . . .
The buckshot ripped into Wolfden’s belly, inflicting appalling damage, but the man hardly slowed.
He reached out, grabbed Bowen in a deadly embrace, and his bared white teeth found the man’s throat . . . and he bit down hard . . . like a ravenous shark.
The gunfighter’s terrified shriek bubbled into bloody silence as his throat was ripped out and the dripping meat hung from Wolfden’s scarlet jaws.
Ed Bowen died quickly, with no real understanding of the terrible manner of his death.
And when Wolfden opened his arms and let the man’s body go, Bowen was dead when he hit the floor and would never find an answer to the mystery of how he died.
Wolfden turned to Shawn and the others. His mouth opened and Bowen’s throat fell from his gory jaws.
“Jasper . . .” Shawn said. Horrified, he could find no other words.
His belly cut wide open so that the blue entrails trailed, Wolfden took a shuffling step, then another.
His bloody face so contorted that he was barely recognizable, he gasped, “Pain . . . Shawn . . .”
Wolfden stretched out his hands, pleading. His eyes were dying.
“For God’s sake, Shawn,” Platt said.
Like a man waking from a nightmare, Shawn looked haunted.
Then, moving like an automaton, he took the derringer from his pocket, two-handed the little pistol to eye level and fired.
Wolfden took the bullet in the middle of his forehead, yet the man had time to smile before he pitched forward onto his face and lay still.
The racketing resonance of the shot rang around the room and Shawn’s hand dropped to his side, the smoking Remington still in his grasp.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Hank Cobb stepped into the path of a gray-haired man who was fleeing the storm-torn ridge with the other townspeople.
“You, git back to work,” Cobb yelled, grabbing the man’s arm.
“Go to hell!” the man yelled. Thin, wet hair fell over his eyes and his hands were streaked with mud. “We can die up here!”
“Damn you, get back there,” Cobb shrieked.
Lightning scrawled across the black sky like the signature of a demented god. Then thunder cracked, as though the entire world was splitting apart.
The man brushed past Cobb and hurried away, slipping and sliding on the slick slope.
Cobb, his face dark with rage, reached under his jacket, drew his gun and put a bullet into the man’s back.
Hit hard, the gray-haired man threw up his arms and fell forward. He thudded onto the muddy, rain-lashed ground and didn’t move.
But the exodus from the ridge didn’t stop. Dozens of people had already reached the flat and ran for their homes, heads bent against the driving wind and downpour.
Cobb fired into the air and yelled frantically at the remaining searchers to get back to work. But none heeded him, and soon the slope was deserted but for him, his remaining three gunmen and Mink Morrow.
“You can’t kill ’em all, Hank,” Morrow said. Rain ran off the brim of his hat and beaded on his dark glasses.
“Damn them all, I’ll force them back to work once this storm passes,” Cobb said.
Morrow shook his head. “It’s over, Hank. After today they won’t want you as king any longer.”
His face stiff, Cobb turned his head and yelled, “Hey, Lee, how much you reckon we’ve got?”
Dorian, a vicious killer but slow of thought, called back, “I don’t know, boss.”
His teeth gritted, Cobb yelled, “Walsh, Kane, bring me the damned sacks!”
“Only three sacks, boss,” Jonas Kane said. He and Dorian laid them at Cobb’s feet. “Them folks slowed up considerable when the storm hit.”
Cobb opened them up one by one, his face grimmer with each sack he inspected.
“How much, Hank?” Morrow said.
“About a tenth of it,” Cobb said. “Maybe five thousand dollars in gold and silver and maybe less.” He looked at Morrow and his rain-streaked face glimmered white as lighting flashed. “They were filling their own pockets, damn them.”
“You forced them onto the ridge at gunpoint, Hank,” Morrow said. “They weren’t trying to find gold for you.”
“Damn their eyes. Next time I’ll drag them out of their houses and make them try.” Cobb’s smile was twisted and unpleasant. “Try or die, that’s what I’ll tell them.”
He turned to his gunmen. “We’ll head back to the sheriff’s office until this confounded storm blows over.”
“Count your money, Hank, then get the hell out of here,” Morrow said.
“And what about your cut, Mink?” Cobb raised a hand. “Don’t answer that, because there ain’t gonna to be a cut. You’re the one who should be riding.”
“I don’t like you, Hank,” Morrow said. “And I never did.”
“Well, don’t that break my heart,” Cobb said. He reached inside a sack, and then spun a silver dollar at Morrow. “There, you got your share, so now you can beat it.”
Morrow let the dollar drop at his feet. The torrential rain fell around him.
Cobb and his three gunmen stared at Morrow, grinning, waiting for him to make his move.
His eyeglasses covered in raindrops, his gun under his slicker, Morrow knew well enough that now was not the time to make a play.
A few tense seconds passed. Cobb was ready, waiting, his Colt already in his hand.
Rain hissed like a baby dragon uncovered under a rock and thunder rumbled above the ridge.
Finally, Morrow said, “Not today, Hank.”
“Now’s as good a time as any Mink,” Cobb said. “Why don’t you—”
The flat statement of a gunshot from the street cut off Cobb in mid-sentence.
“What the hell!” Dorian said.
“O’Brien!” Cobb yelled. Then, to Morrow, “We’ll settle this later.”
He sprinted down the slope, his three gunmen at his heels.
Morrow hoped it was O’Brien who’d fired the shot. If it was, ol’ Hank could be in a heap of trouble.
He picked up the sacks, tested their weight and grinned.
Yup, five thousand it was, enough to open a nice little restaurant with a pretty waitress. . . .
Maybe down Silver Reef way.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“Will Granger won’t commit, one way or t’other,” Matt Rhodes said. “He’s a man who plays his cards mighty close to his chest.”
Ruby looked like she’d been struck.
“Then he won’t help us,” she said.
“I didn’t say that,” Rhodes said. “I said Will wouldn’t state his intentions.”
The old man’s words hung in silence for long moments. Then Hamp Sedley surprised everyone.
“All right, we’ll do it ourselves,” he said.
Ruby and Sally Bailey stared at the man in openmouthed shock.
“Well look who just grew a backbone,” Ruby said.
“Don’t read too much into it,” Sedley said. “I just want this damned thing over with.”
“I’m with you there, Reb,” Rhodes said. “So we push this thing, and there’s not much time to be lost.”
Three blank faces looked at the old man and he said, “Will told me he was just about to head for the sheriff’s office to shackle your friends for their execution. We’ll go over there right now and see how the pickle squirts.”
“It’s thin,” Sedley said, “mighty thin. Suppose this Granger feller won’t throw in with us, what then?”
“Then we’ll be no better off than we are right now,” Rhodes said.
“Or we could be dead,” Sedley said. “Did the blacksmith say who’ll be along of him?”
“He sure did, sonny. Feller by the name of Ed Bowen, a Texas gun who’s faster an’ two shades meaner than the devil hisself.”
Ruby’s breath exh
aled in a rush and she frowned her uncertainty.
“Well, Hamp, you still got that backbone you found real sudden?”
Sedley’s face was strangely calm, as was his voice.
“Kiss my ass, Ruby,” he said. Then to Rhodes, “Ready to take a walk in the rain, Yankee?”
“Yeah, Reb, let’s get ’er done.”
“We’re going with you,” Sally said.
“The hell you are,” Sedley said.
“The hell I am,” Sally said, her determined little chin jutting.
“That goes for me as well,” Ruby said.
“And I say you stay here,” Sedley said. “Hell, me an’ the Yank could be dead a couple of minutes from now.”
“Then we’ll pray over your broken, bleeding bodies,” Ruby said.
“Ruby, I—”
Sedley didn’t finish his sentence. A single gunshot from the ridge broke it off and put a period at the end.
“That’s Cobb, I reckon,” Rhodes said after a while.
“Sounds like he’s busy killing folks,” Sedley said. “So while he’s occupied, let’s go.”
Lightning flared and there was no letup in the hammering rain that covered the street like a coat of mail.
“Hold on just a second,” Rhodes said.
He stepped into his office and came out with a handful of shells he began to feed into his rifle.
“We might be outnumbered, but I don’t want to be outgunned,” Rhodes said.
Sedley’s jaw hardened as his impatience grew.
“Hurry it up, for God’s sake,” he said.
Another shot, this time from the street.
“Now I’m ready,” Rhodes said, holding the Winchester across his chest.
“Let’s hope we’re not too late,” Sedley said. “That shot could have come from the sheriff’s office.”
He hurried past the old man into the pelting rain . . . and the others followed.
Like two runaway trains on the same track, Sedley and Cobb collided in the street.
The gambler was the first to recover from the surprise and fired first.
Any man who uses a gun is entitled to one lucky shot in his lifetime and Hamp Sedley was awarded his.
Despite the rain, despite the ashen-gray day and the frenzied flash of lightning, Sedley’s bullet ran true and crashed into Cobb’s left shoulder.