Shelves of jars and bottles filled with various dried herbs lined the walls and more plants hung from the ceiling. Incense burned in a shallow, jade dish.
The only furnishings were a chair and a couch, the latter covered by a purple cloth decorated with the signs of the zodiac embroidered in gold thread.
When Platt was helped inside, he looked around with wide eyes and immediately panicked, demanding to be taken to Silver Reef, shot butt or no.
But Dr. Chang would have none of it.
“Please place patient on couch on right side,” he said to Shawn and Sedley.
They did as they were told as Platt begged loudly for mercy.
“Now leave us, please,” the doctor said. “I have assistant who will help.”
Shawn reached over Platt and deftly removed his Colt from the holster.
“Just so you don’t get any ideas, Ford,” he said.
“Damn you, Shawn, I’ll never forgive you for this,” Platt said. “You’re leaving me to my doom.”
Sedley, who obviously felt he’d been contrite long enough, said, “You know, Platt, for a man who just stood his ground against a professional killer, you sure are a crybaby.”
Platt stared hard at Sedley, then said, his voice very low and quiet, “Shawn, let me have my gun for just a moment.”
Shawn smiled. “Dr. Chang, we’ll leave you to your patient. If he gives you any trouble, hit him over the head with something hard.”
As he stepped out of the dark cabin into sunlight, Shawn heard Platt yell, “As long as I live, I’ll never forget this!”
This was followed by a yowl of pain, and Sedley said, “I guess my bullet went in deep. I did shoot him at close range, you know.”
Shawn nodded, only half-aware of what Sedley had said. His eyes were fixed on Cobb’s cabin.
The man’s head scowled at him from atop a tall stake, driven into the ground a few feet in front of the cabin.
Tian’s granddaughter stood at the door, distributing gold and silver coins from a burlap sack to a crowd of people who patiently stood in line.
How she knew who got what, Shawn didn’t know. Perhaps the inherent honesty of the Chinese made her job easier.
Sedley stopped in his tracks, staring at the head.
Finally, he said, “Ol’ Hank got what he handed out.”
Shane nodded. “I believe it’s called poetic justice.”
“I prefer to call it gun justice, O’Brien,” Sedley said. “Your gun, your justice.”
“Yeah, and it’s the only thing I’ve done right since the day our stage overturned in Holy Rood,” Shawn said.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Shawn O’Brien and Hamp Sedley sat at the rear of Tian’s store, eating an excellent chicken soup with Chinese noodles, when the beaded curtain parted and Dr. Chang stepped inside.
The physician’s report was concise and to the point.
Mr. Platt’s surgery had been a great success. The wound in his shoulder and back had been cauterized, then treated with healing herbs and would mend nicely. The bullet had been removed from his buttock and that too would heal.
In short, the patient was doing as well as could be expected.
But at the moment he was deeply sedated and would not be fit for travel for at least two weeks.
Then, with a flourish, Dr. Chang presented his bill, itemized under the heading:
FOR MOST EXCELLENT AND
HUMANE MEDICAL SERVICES
The total came to ten dollars that Shawn paid out of his dwindling supply of money and then he thanked the doctor for his fine work.
After Dr. Chang bowed and left, Sedley said, “So what do we do, O’Brien? Stay here until Platt is fit to ride?”
“No, I don’t think he’d expect that,” Shawn said. “We can spend the night here and return to Silver Reef in the morning.”
“Do you think he’ll be all right?” Sedley said.
“The doctor seems to think so.”
“He’s Chinese.”
“So what? The Chinese had fine doctors when our ancestors were still living in mud huts and wearing goatskins.”
“Itchy,” Sedley said.
“What?”
“Goatskins.”
Shawn shook his head. “Eat your soup.”
But no sooner had Sedley picked up his spoon when Tian’s granddaughter clicked through the bead curtain. She looked concerned, almost frightened.
“There’s a man waiting to see you gentlemen,” she said.
“Did he give a name?” Shawn said.
“Yes. He says he’s Marshal John Payton. He has a silver star on his shirt.”
Ignoring Sedley’s startled glance, Shawn said, “Show him in.”
He rose to his feet, adjusted the hang of his Colt and waited.
“Judging by Mink Morrow’s description, you must be Shawn O’Brien,” Marshal John Payton said.
“I must be,” Shawn said. “What can I do for you, marshal?”
“Well, you can tell me why Hank Cobb’s head is stuck on a pole out there.”
Shawn opened his mouth to speak, but Payton held up a hand.
“Later. A badass like Cobb is only worth a later. First, I’ve got some news for you.”
John Payton was a tall, hard-eyed man with iron gray hair and a head as big as a nail keg. There was a stillness about him, a lack of any fidget that Shawn had seen before in men who lived by the gun. A great Texas mustache, as bristly as a horse brush, covered his top lip.
“Good news or bad?” Shawn said.
“That depends. Mink a friend of yours?”
“He was a friend of my brother’s,” Shawn said.
“Then my news might be bad only for your brother. Mink Morrow is dead.”
Shawn flinched. “Dead? How?”
“He hung himself in his hotel room.”
“Mink was going blind,” Shawn said.
“I know that,” Payton said. “For a man in his line of work it was the end of the trail.”
Payton reached into his shirt pocket and produced a crumpled paper.
“Morrow wrote this and it don’t say much,” he said, passing the note to Shawn.
It took only a few moments to read the words Mink had left for posterity.
To whom it may concern—
Money on the dressser. Use $2 to bury
me and give the rest to poor folks.
Yours Respectfully,
Miles Morrow, Esq.
Shawn dropped the note onto the table.
“Not much of an epitaph for a man,” he said.
“I guess that was all the epitaph he wanted,” Payton said.
The lawman glanced at the table. “Finish your soup,” he said. “And while you’re doing that, tell me about Hank Cobb.”
“It’s a long story, marshal,” Sedley said.
“I got nothing but time,” Payton said.
His eyes were diamond hard.
After Shawn recounted what had happened in Holy Rood from the time of the stage wreck to the death of Hank Cobb, Payton sat in silence.
He waited until Shawn poured himself coffee and built and lit a cigarette until he spoke.
“Hell of a story,” he said finally.
“You heard it,” Shawn said. “What’s your opinion?”
“Maybe it’s a pack of lies. Maybe Holy Rood was a fine town with good people and Hank Cobb was an upstanding lawman who tried his best to make his town safe for families to prosper in peace and safety.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” Shawn said. “But you’d be derailing the truth.”
“Your brother is Jacob O’Brien, the gunfighter, and your pa’s range covers about half of the New Mexico Territory, ain’t that so?”
“Close enough,” Shawn said.
“Jacob would’ve handled the affair better.”
“Jake marches to a different drum than the rest of us,” Shawn said. Then, after a moment, he added, “Yeah, I reckon he would have done it better.”
The brown, sun-ravaged skin of the marshal’s face was taut against the bone.
“You did all right,” he said. “Maybe I think that.”
“Yes, maybe you do, but that cock won’t fight. I messed it up right from the git-go. I wanted to tame the town and I ended up destroying it.”
“You had help,” Payton said. “I heard that Jasper Wolfden was good with a gun, and something about how the Navajo had made him a shape-shifter.”
“He was an actor, that’s all,” Shawn said. “And yes, I got help from Jasper. And in the end I got him killed.”
“Sometimes for a lawman, that’s the cost of doing business,” Payton said.
Hamp Sedley frowned his irritation. “All right, marshal, you’ve been tippy-toeing around this thing like a saloon girl on a miners’ dance floor,” he said. “If you don’t believe us, say it straight out and then state your intentions.”
Payton smiled. “I believe every word O’Brien said. Only one of them dime novel writers could make up a story like that.”
He reached out, took the makings from Shawn’s shirt pocket, and built a cigarette.
“Got a light, O’Brien?” he said. Then, “I’m trying to quit these things, but as you see, it ain’t going too well.”
Shawn lit the lawman’s smoke. Payton inhaled deeply, and then said, “Why would white folks do that? Hell, would Americans do that, sell their souls to the devil?”
“I’ve asked myself that question many times, marshal, and I still can’t come up with a good answer,” Shawn said. He stared intently into Payton’s flinty eyes. “Why didn’t the law stop it?”
“I guess you don’t fix what ain’t broke,” Payton said. “Holy Rood seemed to be a peaceful, law-abiding town. Sure, they hung undesirables now and then, but what town doesn’t?”
Speaking behind a cloud of smoke, Payton said, “A year before I became marshal, Silver Reef hung a man and his two sons for being chicken thieves and damned nuisances. The whole town turned out to see the hangings, and not one voice was raised in protest.”
“Holy Rood was worse, marshal, a whole lot worse,” Shawn said.
“Not in the eyes of the law. And those were the only eyes that mattered.”
“Would you have hung the chicken thieves?” Shawn said.
“Sure, if a judge and jury found them guilty,” Payton said.
“Then are you any different from Hank Cobb?”
The marshal took that question in stride.
“The difference is that I wouldn’t have tried to make a profit out of the hanging,” Payton said. “I keep the peace for sixty dollars a month.”
He dropped the butt of his cigarette into the dregs of Shawn’s coffee cup.
“What’s next for you, O’Brien?” he said.
“That depends on you,” Shawn said.
“You didn’t commit any crimes in Silver Reef that I’m aware of, so you and Sedley are free to go. Since he’s one of their own, Wells Fargo will come collect Ford Platt.”
“Well, I guess I’ll move on,” Shawn said. “I don’t want to go back home to Dromore, at least not yet.”
Payton nodded. “I wanted to hear something like that.”
“Why?”
“I have a proposition for you.”
Shawn opened his mouth to object, but Payton said, “Hear me out, me being so willing to let bygones be bygones and all that.”
“All right, I’m listening,” Shawn said.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Marshal John Payton leaned back in his chair.
“Well, O’Brien, what’s your answer?” he said.
Shawn shook his head. “It’s thin, marshal.”
“I know it is,” Payton said. “But Connall Tone sent me a wire, not a letter, and it wasn’t much to go on.”
“Why don’t you head to Cedar City yourself?” Hamp Sedley said. “You say you owe this Tone feller a favor.”
“He saved my life one time,” Payton said. “So yes, I owe him a favor, but I can’t leave Silver Reef. I’m the only law in town.”
“And all Tone told you is that his son’s a lawman in a town north of the Sweetwater in the Wyoming Territory and needs help,” Shawn said.
“Yes, that was all. His son’s name is Garvan and the last I heard he’d gone to college back East somewhere. What a college boy is doing as sheriff of a Wyoming cow town, I have no idea.”
“And you want me to go in your place, is that it?” Shawn said.
“That sums it up, O’Brien,” Payton said. “My feeling is that young Garvan needs a fast gun at his side, and you fit the bill.”
“My brother Jake could do it better.”
“Maybe, but he’s not here. You are.”
“Payton, you know my town-taming record. So far it’s not so grand.”
“Who said anything about town taming? Young Garvan needs help.” Payton shook his head. “Hell, for all I know the kid has an ingrown toenail and needs somebody to walk his rounds for him.”
“But you don’t believe that,” Shawn said.
“No. No, I don’t. Connall Tone is a proud man and he wouldn’t ask my help if it wasn’t serious.”
“In Irish history, Tone is a noble name,” Shawn said.
“Yeah, well, Connall is an Irishman, so that would figure,” Payton said.
“Hell, O’Brien, head for Santa Fe and have some fun,” Sedley said. “Haven’t you had enough of guns and gunfighting for a spell?”
“Sedley has a point, so it’s up to you,” Payton said.
“Ask your rich pa for some money and enjoy a year of wine, women and song,” Sedley said. “It will help you forget what you badly need to forget.”
“Your compadre makes sense, O’Brien,” Payton said. “Why stick your neck out for somebody you don’t know?”
Shawn smiled. “I thought you wanted my help, marshal. Now you’re trying to talk me out of it.”
“Like I already said, it’s up to you. It will be your life on the line, so it’s not for me to influence you one way or t’other.”
Shawn thought it through, and then said, “I’m not promising anything, Payton, but I’ll go to Cedar City and talk to Connall Tone. Like my father, he’s an Irishman who’s heir to a proud name and as such he deserves a hearing.”
“Glad to hear that, O’Brien,” Payton said. “You can take the noon stage from Silver Reef tomorrow.”
“You’re not hurrying me or anything like that, marshal, huh?” Shawn said, smiling.
“If Tone’s wire is anything to go by, I don’t think there’s much time to be lost.”
Sedley said, “O’Brien, you’re crazy.”
“Nobody ever said otherwise about the O’Briens of Dromore,” Shawn said.
“Then I must be crazy as well, because I’d like to tag along and keep you out of trouble,” Sedley said. “Hell, I was heading for Cedar City anyway before all the trouble started.”
“Because I ran you out of town, Sedley,” Payton said. He grinned. “Names, yes, but I never forget a face.”
“You got some sore losers in your town, marshal,” Sedley said.
“I’d be sore too if I caught you dealing from the bottom of the deck,” Payton said.
Sedley shrugged. “It was all a misunderstanding.”
“A misunderstanding that could have gotten you lynched if I hadn’t put you on the stage.”
Shawn grinned. “Glad to have your company, Hamp. Maybe if I decide to head for Wyoming, I’ll find time to teach you how to shoot straight.”
“Good luck with that,” Sedley said.
Before sunup the next morning, Shawn and Sedley took their leave of Ford Platt.
Despite the early hour, the little man was in good spirits, going so far as to swear that if he ever had a misery again the only doctor he’d allow to treat him would be Chinese.
“Hell, Shawn, Dr. Chang says that once I recover from my wounds, he’ll fix my leg,” Platt said. “The man’s a miracle worker. That’s what I
reckon anyhow.”
To show that he harbored no ill will toward Sedley, he presented, with exquisite ceremony, his masonic watch fob to the gambler and urged him to join the craft at his earliest opportunity.
“Make a man of you, Sedley,” he said.
To Shawn, he gave his sleeve rig and the Remington derringer.
“You’re a man much given to adventure and the paths of danger,” he said. “This outfit may one day stand you in good stead.”
Shawn’s thanks were interrupted by Dr. Chang, who insisted that it was time for his patient’s medications and that the gentlemen should withdraw, “instanter.”
But Sedley, much moved by Platt’s forgiveness and handsome gift, remained long enough to shed a few tears and give Platt a ferocious hug before the doctor shooed them out of his house and into the dawning morning.
The Wells Fargo stage driver slowed the mule team to a walk when he reached the blackened wreckage of Holy Rood.
He leaned from the box and yelled to the passengers, “This whole damned place went up in flames. That’s why all you can see around are ruins.”
The grizzled rancher who sat opposite Shawn, a sporting rifle between his knees, said, “Looks like everybody’s gone.”
“Not much to stay for, I reckon,” Shawn said.
The rancher leaned forward. His breath smelled of whiskey.
“They say this was the most law-abiding town in the West,” he said. “And I heard there’s a fortune in gold hidden on the slope of the ridge you see there. The story is that the townsfolk buried all the money from their bank to save it from the fire and it’s still up there. They never could find it again.”
“Too bad,” Sedley said.”
The rancher tapped a forefinger against his nose.
“One day I’ll come back and look for what folks are calling The Lost Treasure of Holy Rood Ridge,” he said. Then, grinning, “Make myself a rich man.”
“Well, good luck,” Shawn said.
The stage was due west of the tall pine country surrounding Timber Top Mountain, when a large gray wolf appeared from the trees and loped alongside.
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