Shawn threw himself to his right and drew before he hit the boardwalk, bullets hitting close.
He was aware of the roar of Platt’s scattergun. The buckshot must have hit close, because both men suddenly lost interest in a gunfight and scampered for the door that opened onto the gallery.
An apt student of his tutor, stern old Luther Ironside, Shawn was not a merciful man by training or inclination.
He snapped off two fast shots at the fleeing men and scored hits.
Blood staining the left side of his gray coat, Adam turned and tried to bring up his rifle. But the gallery was narrow and he overstepped and toppled headlong into the muddy street.
The second rifleman was down, and in his last agony, he slowly dragged the fingernails of his extended right hand down the harsh timber of the saloon wall, leaving behind four deep gouges.
Shawn got to his feet, his anger such a palpable thing that his snarl of rage made him look like a man-eating cougar.
It seemed that the whole town had turned out to watch him die.
Men, women and children stood in the tumbling rain, staring at him with expressionless, wooden faces, like painted dime-store dolls.
The florid-faced man was holding a Winchester. He looked at Shawn’s expression, then at the rifle and quickly threw it down, as though it was suddenly red hot.
A silence stretched tight, the only sound the tick of the falling rain.
A woman stepped forward and stretched her hands out to Shawn in supplication, her face drawn with anguish.
“Lead us,” she said. “Save us and save our town.”
“Save yourselves, find your own redemption,” Shawn said.
He was no longer in a mood to ask. Now he ordered.
“Get the undertaker back here to take care of your hurting dead,” he said. “Then pull down the monstrosities from the front of the church. Holy Rood will never again have gallows.”
The crowd didn’t move. Just stared at him, bewildered, and Shawn’s voice rose to a shout.
“Do it! Damn you, do it!”
This time the townspeople moved, the adult men toward the church, the women following, gathering their children close to their muddy skirts.
Shawn didn’t wait to see if his orders were being carried out. He stepped back inside the sheriff’s office. Platt moved aside for him.
After Shawn poured himself more coffee and lit a cigarette, Platt said, “I don’t need to be a prophet to tell you that this town is finished.”
“Seems like. Unless miracles happen.”
Shawn lifted pained eyes to Platt.
“I thought I could redeem this town. All I did was destroy it.”
“Some towns, some people, can’t be redeemed,” Platt said. “That’s the way of it, the way of the world, I guess.”
“Why this town, these people? Was it all down to Hank Cobb?”
“People get the government they deserve. It seems to me that Holy Rood deserved Hank Cobb.”
“I don’t understand that,” Shawn said.
Platt smiled. “Hell, I don’t either.”
Restless, Shawn stepped to the window. There was no one on the street but a few of the stores were lit against the gloom of the day and the fine gray mist was creeping in from the brush flats. The sky remained a dull, iron gray with no promise of sun.
The door opened and Sedley stepped inside.
“Where is Sally?” Shawn said.
“She’s over to the hotel. She’s not doing so good, O’Brien. Ruby’s death really affected her.”
“Affected us all,” Platt said.
“Hamp, Ford and I are going after Cobb,” Shawn said. “Can you take care of Sally, see that she gets to wherever she’s going?”
“Sure, I will,” Sedley said. “I reckon the Wells Fargo stages will stop here again now that Cobb’s gone.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Platt said. “Seems the folks he left behind are already missing him.”
“And plan to walk in his footsteps, huh?” Sedley said.
“That’s about the size of it,” Platt said. “They’ll follow the path of their venerated leader. Ready to puke yet?”
“I was standing outside the hotel when they tried to kill you, O’Brien,” Sedley said. “Before I could move to help, it was over.”
“Shawn’s mighty sudden,” Platt said. “Blink and you miss it.”
“They didn’t give me much choice,” Shawn said.
His shoulders slumped. “What the hell, let’s get away from this place,” he said. “I’ve lingered here long enough.”
“Suits me,” Platt said.
“Ford, see if you can get us some supplies for the trail,” Shawn said. “Enough for a couple of days.” He turned to Sedley. “Hamp, on second thoughts, I think you and Sally had better come with us. You can drive the wagon.”
“I don’t want to stay in this town any longer either,” Sedley said. “And neither does Sally.” His face framed a question. “Why the wagon?”
“We’re not leaving Ruby behind,” Shawn said.
“Of course,” Sedley said. “Sorry I was so dim. Sure, I’ll drive the wagon. Be honored to.”
“We’re heading for Silver Reef, going after Hank Cobb,” Platt said. “When we get there, Hamp, if there’s shooting to be done, leave it to us.”
“We’ll see,” Sedley said. “I just need six feet of ground between him and me to get my work in.”
“Even you can’t miss at that range.” Platt smiled.
“Yes, he can,” Shawn said.
“Kiss my ass,” Sedley said.
That made Shawn laugh and it felt good.
CHAPTER FORTY
Shawn O’Brien saddled Wolfden’s white horse and hitched a grade mare to a spring wagon he’d discovered at the rear of the livery. He didn’t know who owned either and he didn’t much care.
Meantime, a cussing Ford Platt was still trying to convince his balky mule that a saddle was not an instrument of equine torture.
The rain had stopped and the clouds had parted. A rose-colored flush showed in the sky to the west, heralding the coming of evening. A south wind had risen and rustled around the stable like the swish of women’s dresses at a grand ball.
Shawn studied Platt’s struggles and said, “Why don’t you pick yourself out a horse?”
“And let this creature win? That’ll be the day.”
“She’s already won, I reckon.”
“Not a chance.” He raised a fist to the mule’s nose. “Cooperate, or I’ll punch your damned lights out.”
It seemed that the mule was intimidated. She stood foursquare and lowered her head in submission.
“See, all it takes with mules is a strong hand,” Platt said, grinning.
Then he jumped for his life as the animal aimed a vicious kick at his leg.
As Platt turned the air around him blue with curses, Shawn laughed.
It was the second time that afternoon and Shawn was pleased.
He’d thought he’d lost the habit of laughter and that it would never return. But just maybe he’d found it again.
After a struggle, Shawn helped Platt get the mule saddled and bridled.
“I’d better round up Hamp and Sally,” Shawn said. “It’s high time we were out of here.”
“I smell burning,” Platt said as he tied the sack of supplies he’d gathered onto his saddle. “Seems like wood.”
“It’s a damp day,” Shawn said. “Fires being lit, I guess.”
But that was not the case as Hamp Sedley made clear a few moments later.
He ran into the livery and yelled, “The church is on fire!”
“Where is Sally?” Shawn said.
“I don’t know. She’s not at the hotel.”
“Damn it, Hamp, find her!”
Sedley hesitated, uncertainty showing in his face.
Finally, he nodded and ran to the door. There he stopped, staring to his left, his jaw dropping.
“Hell, the fire’s
spreading!” he yelled.
Like all western settlements on the edge of nowhere, Holy Rood’s buildings were tinder dry and fire was an ever-present danger.
Despite the day’s rain, the burning church showered sparks and embers onto roofs that readily caught fire, urged on by the strong south wind.
When Shawn ran out into the street, he knew in an instant that Holy Rood was in mortal danger.
Beside him, Ford Platt stared at the church and whispered, “Oh, my God.”
Then Shawn saw what Platt saw.
Sally stood in front of the church with her arms upraised. Her hair was undone and streamed wild in the firestorm and she yelled something over and over that Shawn could not hear.
Behind the girl the church was a scarlet and orange rectangle of soaring flame and a column of smoke rose into the air, only to be bent into a black bow by the rising wind.
“Sally!” Shawn shouted. “Get away from there!”
Then he was running toward the blaze.
Frantic people jostled past him in the street, fleeing toward open ground as building after building erupted in fire. A dry goods store burned, only a dress shop away from the rod and gun premises that was sure to have a supply of gunpowder and dynamite.
Shawn knew that if the sporting goods store went up, the town was doomed. But there was nothing to be done. Driven by the remorseless wind, fires on both sides of the street raged out of control. The inferno tinged the early evening sky blood red and the air was thick with acrid smoke and glowing cinders.
Shawn burst free of a panicked knot of people and sprinted faster in the direction of the church.
“Sally!” he yelled. “Sally!”
Then, above the roar of the firestorm, he heard her.
“Goddess of the eternal moon.
Let this town meet its doom. . . .”
“No, Sally!” Shawn yelled. “Get the hell out of there.”
The girl saw him, her face shimmering scarlet in the glow of the flames.
“I burned them out, Shawn!” she shouted, her mouth stretched on an O of glee. “They’ll never send another witch to the stake in this double-damned town.”
The heat was intense as billows of flame consumed the church like crimson waves breaking on a rock.
His arm raised to protect his face, Shawn stepped closer to Sally. Sparks scorched his hands and he smelled burning broadcloth as windblown cinders stuck to his coat.
But the girl stepped back when she saw Shawn get closer.
Her hair was on fire.
His eyes smarting from smoke, Shawn lunged, reaching out for her.
Too late. Too late by moments.
Shawn heard a tremendous craaack! Then the church roof caved in, erupting serpent tongues of flame and sparks. A moment later, the front of the building collapsed and instantly Sally was buried under a mass of blazing beams and timbers . . . her funeral pyre.
Shawn retreated, the heat now unbearable.
He stood at a distance and the only sounds he heard were the feral snarl of the fire and the crackle of burning wood.
“She’s gone, O’Brien. Sally is dead.”
Hamp Sedley stepped beside Shawn. His skin bunched around his eyes and he looked as though he’d aged a decade in just a few moments.
“Seems like,” Shawn said. He didn’t trust his emotions should he try to utter anything more.
“You look like a Georgia minstrel,” Sedley said. It was the kind of unthinking thing a man in deep shock says. “Your face is black.”
“I guess so,” Shawn said.
The street was streaked with smoke and flying embers and fire cartwheeled through the buildings on both sides of the street, like a foretaste of hell.
“I think she must have taken the oil lamp from her hotel room and snuck into the rear of the church,” Sedley said. “Doesn’t need much to start a fire.”
“No. No it doesn’t.”
“I can’t believe Sally’s gone, O’Brien,” Sedley said again. “But if we stand here much longer we’ll join her.”
A moment later the rod and gun shop exploded.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The fire had leapfrogged across the New York Dress & Hat Shoppe and left it relatively unscathed, but for a few embers that quickly burned themselves out on its timber roof.
But the store’s luck ran out less than five minutes later.
Flames engulfed the rod and gun shop and quickly found stacked barrels of gunpowder and a wooden crate that held sticks of dynamite.
The resulting blast boomed like a thunderclap.
The entire building lifted itself off its foundations and blew apart in the air, scattering jagged metal chunks and lethal shards of timber that swept the street like grapeshot from a battery of cannon.
It was unfortunate that the florid-faced man had chosen that spot to try to rally a group of terrified stragglers, demanding that they battle the fire and save the town—both now impossibilities.
When the rod and gun store detonated, shrapnel whiffed across the street and half a dozen people went down, their bodies torn to pieces so that they sprawled in the mud like bloody rag dolls.
Among them was the florid man, his head gone, neatly severed by a gyrating length of hoop iron from a ten-penny nail barrel.
Shawn O’Brien and Hamp Sedley had been far enough away from the blast that they were unhurt, though Shawn’s ears rang and a flying piece of wood cut a furrow across Sedley’s cheek.
The survivors of the explosion had already fled in panic when Shawn and Sedley ran to the scene of the carnage.
Flames fluttered like scarlet moths to the charred beams that stuck up above the black ruins of the gun store. Shawn thought he could make out the twisted, carbonized shape of a man’s body in the wreckage, but he couldn’t be sure.
The bodies on the street told a clearer story.
Three men—one headless—and two women were dead, their bodies so torn it looked as though they’d been savaged by a pack of ravenous wolves.
Another woman was unconscious, but bleeding so badly from a terrible, gaping gash in her neck that the remainder of her life could be measured in minutes.
Now the whole town was on fire, including the large gingerbread houses and most of the tarpaper shacks behind the street.
It was impossible for Shawn and Sedley to stay where they were, and the dying woman, her breath now coming in short, feeble gasps, could not be saved.
But to leave her to die alone . . .
It was Sedley who made the decision for both of them.
“O’Brien, the horses!” he yelled.
Like a man waking from sleep, Shawn stared at Sedley for a few moments, stunned . . . then he sprinted toward the livery.
The stable was set at a distance from the rest of the town structures, but even so smoke lifted from its roof, so thick that the tin rooster was hidden behind a curling white pall.
Shawn’s eyes were wild, his smoke-streaked handsome face showing strain.
“I’ll get the horses out,” he yelled to Sedley. Then, a single word that summed up all his fears, “Ruby.”
“Too late,” Sedley said. “The funeral parlor is burning like all the rest. We’ll never get her out of there, not now.”
There was no time for discussion. Shawn and Sedley rushed into the stable. The roof was on fire and hay smoldered in the loft.
But the horses were gone and so was the spring wagon.
“Platt,” Sedley said. “It could only be Ford Platt.”
Shawn nodded. “Let’s go find him.”
He walked out of the livery and looked out at the burning town of Holy Rood. He heard a distant clang! as the guillotine blade dropped free of its blazing scaffold and hit the ground.
It seemed to Shawn that the noise put a period at the end of the last sentence of the last chapter of the town’s history.
He’d hoped to tame Holy Rood, make it a decent place to live, but he’d helped annihilate it.
Then so b
e it. As Platt had told him, like some people, there are towns that don’t deserve to exist.
Sedley, thinking that Shawn was grieving over his promise to Ruby that he could no longer fulfill, stepped beside him.
“You know what’s going to happen, O’Brien, don’t you?” he said.
Then, without waiting for an answer, he said, “In years to come, the only visitor to Holy Rood will be the wind. It will blow strong and lift Ruby’s ashes and carry them away from here and scatter them among the pines, maybe on the slopes of the high mountains where the spruce grow.”
Sedley put his hand on Shawn’s shoulder.
“By and by, Ruby will be gone from here and her soul will be at rest.”
“And Sally and Jasper Wolfden? What about them?” Shawn said.
“They’ll be with Ruby,” Selden said. “They’ll be carried to the pines by the same wind.”
Shawn nodded. “I’ll say a rosary for them, and for Sammy, remember him? I’ll pray that they all rest in peace.”
Sedley nodded. “And I’ll say their names aloud whenever I can. I recollect my ma telling me that if you say a dead person’s name, he or she will never be forgotten.”
“A good thing to remember,” Shawn said.
The roof of the livery collapsed with a roar and the fire flourished.
Shawn and Sedley turned their backs on the burning, smoking town of Holy Rood and walked onto the wagon road in search of Ford Platt.
They didn’t look back.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The exodus from Holy Rood halted on a flat within view of Black Ridge, a rugged parapet of red rock cut through by vast and mysterious canyons. Here and there the summer thunderstorm had created waterfalls that fell from the tops of mesas and looked like glistening glass rods in the distance.
Like a lost tribe, the numbed citizens camped on muddy ground among piñon and juniper, surrounded by the few belongings they’d managed to carry from their blazing town.
They looked at each other with harrowed faces and ignored their crying children, too shocked by the destruction of their town to speak.
Shawn O’Brien could not find it in his heart to pity them.
Shawn O'Brien Town Tamer # 1 Page 21