The Third Western Megapack

by Barker, S. Omar

  “This jailhouse is escape-proof!” he reiterated.

  Up in the second-floor cells, the outlaws could hear his sharp nasal voice. Up above them, outside, some thirty odd feet above the jailhouse roof, the warm range wind stirred the dusty-looking leaves of a giant eucalyptus, swayed its great gnarled bough that arched over the jail.

  The tree grew off the jail property, in the empty lot beyond the jailyard walls. In the shaft of wan moonlight the big horizontal bough seemed to have a strange lump about halfway out. Then the wind died and the uppermost foliage settled back, cutting off the moonlight. And the lump glued to the bough shifted and raised a little and began to snake out farther. Another minute and a long line of manila hemp weighted with a small stone at the end began to dribble down from the massive limb.

  * * * *

  Playing out slowly, steadily the rope settled with a faint rattle on the tin roof of the building.

  Downstairs, in the office, Smoke Curtis nodded reluctantly to the deputy from Brand County. Of course, he could have raked the deputy over the coals. Asked him by what authority he was grabbing a man outside of his own bailiwick. But Curtis was an old-fashioned badge-packer anyway. The devil with warrants or county lines or how you got your man, just so long as you hung the deadwood on a lawbreaker.

  “I reckon we can throw his breeches in a cell for you.”

  “Good,” the Brand deputy said, throwing a thumb at the insignificant, slightly stooped man beside him. “His handle is Price, Vin Price. I don’t reckon he’ll give yuh any trouble.”

  For the first time Curtis let his little eyes scour over the prisoner. The man was a two-bit, small bore, down-at-the-heel pelican, dressed in cracked boots, soiled jeans and a ragged hickory shirt. His right arm dangled limply, its sleeve ripped almost to the shoulder, revealing a red-stained bandage. He had hangdog written all over him, standing with a half-cowering air. It was hard to tell much about his face. A heavy beard stubble half masked it. And the large round eyes flanking the sharply hooked nose under ragged black hair ran away as Curtis’ eyes scrutinized him.

  The sheriff strode up and ran big gnarled hands over him roughly in a search for hideout weapons. All the time one of his deputies, George Flowers, stood in the doorway of the other front room, his ready gun covering the proceedings.

  Curtis found nothing on the horse-thief. Under his clothes he seemed held together by thin muscles which were little more than wire. But he radiated a strange gentleness.

  Curtis sneered as he stepped back, and expectorated into the box of sawdust over in the corner. He knew the breed. They lacked the sand, the toughness, to be real badmen, gun-slingers. They just skulked and stole.

  “All right,” he said, accepting the prisoner.

  The Brand County man slapped on

  his pinch-topped sombrero and said he’d be hitting the trail. Big Curtis hitched his pearl-gray pants up about his big waist, then motioned Deputy Flowers back as the latter reached for the iron key ring on the open rolltop desk.

  “I’ll take him up myself,” Curtis said. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Flowers. But the man had been attached to his office less than three weeks. And the sheriff simply wasn’t taking the slightest chance with Brunnermann in his jail. Besides, he wanted to take a look-see at the lobo leader just to be certain everything was all right.

  Up over the jailhouse, a man’s body wavered from the eucalyptus bough. Then he came down the manila rope, loose-legged, lowering himself swiftly by the knots along the rope’s length.

  He was a little stiff. Since late that afternoon, when he had reeled into the vacant lot from the side street, he had lain propped against the eucalyptus trunk as if sleeping in a drunken stupor. His boots touched the roof lightly and then he let himself settle by inches, going to all fours finally.

  He waited. No outcry, no alarm. He started over for the left, rear corner, eyes cutting around, shifting his weight carefully as the tin buckled a little under him. Then he froze and sank fiat against the roof as a train hooted like a night owl in the cut north of the town.

  Diagonally across the main street, up where it humped, a woman had poked her head out of a second story window. The elevation of the ground up there gave her a view overlooking the jailhouse roof. And she seemed to be looking right at Black Tom, the man up there. He pushed his black-bearded face against the tin and waited. Nothing happened. But when, after a couple of minutes, he risked another look, the woman was still at the window, elbows propped on the sill.

  Inside, Curtis started to escort Price down the corridor connecting the sheriff’s office with the cell block, but the deputy, George Flowers, stopped him.

  “Your guns, boss,” he reminded him, and Curtis remembered. It was a rule that nobody, not even the lawmen themselves were allowed upstairs with their hardware on.

  He came back, dropped his two big sixes on the desk, then took the prisoner through the door of iron bars midway down the corridor. Flowers handed Curtis the lantern, then relocked the door after the sheriff.

  They went upstairs, Price shuffling along with that beaten air. Even though he was actually not a small man, just ordinary-sized and looking, he gave the impression of littleness, weakness. He acted as if this predicament was an old familiar one to him and that he had long since given up even resenting it. Once, he stumbled over his own boots and ran his sleeve across his nose with a snuffling sound.

  “Some more buzzard bait,” jeered a gent in the first cell on the right rear.

  It was one of Brunnermann’s boys, There was another prisoner in with him, a sawed-off stub of man who limped heavily. In contrast to the others of the bunch, he was seedily garbed and always silent.

  * * * *

  Smoke Curtis’ lantern sprayed into the next cell. All the cells had barred fronts, the occupants always in full view to the most casual glance of anybody passing.

  Curtis’ little eyes lighted with triumph as he looked into that cage, past the tall slab of man at the bars to the short stocky one smoking a little brown Mexican-type cigar on the bunk. That was Slip Brunnermann himself. You’d know it at a glance. He had big-shot boss smeared all over him. He had fancy boots with a silver design inlaid on the toes, fancy, fawn-colored, pants, a blue silk shirt above a brass-studded gunbelt. Beside him lay a rich black Stetson, almost brand new. His brown hair was parted on the side, carefully combed.

  At sight of the sheriff, he swung off the bunk and sauntered to the cell front unhurriedly, short and broad with a bold face as background for the embroidery of a perpetual sneer.

  “Hello, law-dog,” he drawled. Then he spat through the bars.

  Curtis took a swipe at the bars with the club he had picked up just inside the door in the corridor below. The tough wood made the heavy iron ring. The outlaw boss stepped back unhurriedly, swore lazily.

  “By thunder, yuh’re a brave man, Curtis!” he jeered.

  “We’ll see how brave you are early some mornin’ next week,” Curtis threw back. Then he unlocked the cell across the way, shoved the unresisting Vin Price in, and went back downstairs.

  Up on the roof, Black Tom slowly raised himself to all fours. The night train was huffing up the grade out of Wagon Wheel, its engine cascading a shower of sparks above the yellow pine, couplings clanking on the night. Then Black Tom went down flat again. The woman was back at the window and that fleecy trailer of cloud had pulled its veil from the sickly moon’s face.

  Down in his office, Curtis pushed away the greasy dinner dishes on his desk, drew on his cigarette till its tip gleamed like a hot coal. Flowers, a thin man with a sharply-alert look, sat in a chair propped against the wall at the other side. He would be just behind the door if it opened, and he kept a Colts constantly in his lap, so that anybody entering that door would be covered from behind. They were taking abso-lutely no chances. Brunnermann was the
biggest catch a lawman could hope for in a lifetime.

  The usually calm, matter-of-fact Smoke Curtis had a jumpy nervousness running around his insides. He couldn’t get rid of it even though he knew the jailhouse was escape-proof. Brunnermann had escaped from so many places. His bunch had snaked him out over at Palo Verde, blasting a hole in the back of the jail itself. Brunnermann had been badly injured in the explosion and his men had toted him out more dead than alive. Yet, two weeks later, he had personally led a bank raid at Big Skull. They’d had him behind bars at Morgan Junction. At Poker Hill. Lowery. Other places. Yet always he had managed to get out somehow. There was something miraculous about it, like the charmed life he was said to lead.

  Brunnermann had been shot out of the saddle on more than one occasion. Clay Scott, famed trigger-slammer, tired to clean up Red Bank, had poured lead into Brunnermann’s frame one bloody night before the lobo’s band had swung in to carry off the apparently bullet-ridden body of their leader. And inside of a month he had appeared at the head of his bunch at the hold-up of a dance less than twenty miles from Red Bank.

  Early this year, a posse had cornered Brunnermann and two of his gun-slicks in a house in Cochise County, burnt it to the ground. No man had walked out alive. Yet, in a matter of days, a stagecoach had been stopped and a doctor in it kidnaped to be taken back into the hills to treat an hours-old wound in Brunnermann’s leg.

  It was incredible. It was eerie. It seemed impossible either to kill the man or hold him behind bars. These things had given Brunnermann his nickname, “Slip”, a contraction of “Slippery.” And Smoke Curtis, working his clenched hand hard into the desk, had to admit it was an understatement if anything.

  “But he ain’t a-going to slip outa this jail,” Curtis growled. “When he leaves here—it’ll be to be hung, by gor!”

  * * * *

  Boots hit the jailhouse steps. Curtis’ two other deputies, Yucca Lamb and Hanning, came in. With them was Stan Bridger, a burly man with a heavy mustache and popping eyes in a brick-red face that befitted his truculent manner. He was the cousin of Matt Bridger, an old-timer in the country, who had the Box B up on Bittersweet Creek.

  The younger Stan had come into the country about two years back, helping Matt run the outfit. It had been a long time since Smoke Curtis had seen the jovial Matt himself. The older man was ill and did not come into town any more.

  “Howdy, Sheriff,” greeted Stan Bridger in that loud forceful voice of his. “Hope yuh got that snake of a Brunnermann still safe.”

  Curtis said he had. He didn’t know Stan Bridger very well. But there was something about the pushy man that rubbed the wrong way.

  “See that yuh keep him locked up darn tight, Curtis,” Stan Bridger went on. “This piece of country’s gotta have peace so a man can do business. We been losing stock steady up there at the Box B. If Brunnermann should git away now, there’d be one devil of a howl raised!”

  Curtis eyed him coldly. “This jail ain’t leaky—or ever been. And I can run my business without any help, thanks.”

  Stan Bridger shifted his tobacco plug and grinned broadly. “Ain’t a-trying to interfere, Curtis. Just wanted to help. I was thinking that if yuh wanted, I could put some of my men in here to help yuh guard him.”

  Curtis shook his big head curtly. “Thanks. But me and my deputies can handle things, I reckon. He noticed the way Bridger spoke of “my men” as if he owned the Box B. He gave him a nod as the cowman left.

  “That pelican makes a heap of noise,” said Yucca Lamb.

  Curtis swore. “If Brunnermann goes outa here, it’ll be over my corpse,” he spat out.

  Up above, Brunnermann sat with a quiet knowing smile, twisting a thread hanging from his ragged shirt-cuff. He had heard Black Tom’s low whistle from the roof. Soon he, Brunnermann, would be out of this cuartel, once again the incredible will-o’-the-wisp no bars could hold, once again cheating the rope.

  CHAPTER II

  Cold-blooded Murder

  Moonbeams slanted through the narrow windows of the jail on the west side, into the cell of Price, the new prisoner. Across the hall, the Brunnermann men could see him pacing back and forth with a leopardlike stride, through that shaft of moonlight. His hat slung on the bunk, he kept raking a hand through his black hair, occasionally cursing in a husky voice. Instead of calming down, he seemed to get more and more over-wrought with time.

  Finally, one of the Brunnermann quartet called over, “What the devil yuh got yore wind up for, stranger? You can only git yore chips cashed once. What’s the charge against you, huh?”

  The little ranny, Price, looked over with a vacant stare, blinked twice, then seemed to hear the question for the first time.

  “Aw, it’s only a horse-stealing charge,” he answered. “It ain’t it that’s got me mad. That deputy never would have give me a catching if it weren’t for that dying prospector I stopped to help.” He began to pace again.

  “Prospector?” The little seedy man had climbed off his bunk to come forward to the front bars of the back cell in the corner.

  Again Price didn’t seem to hear until after some moments. Then he turned and beat his chest with fisted hands and came to the front of his own cell.

  “Sure, a prospector! Run across him up in the Yellow Pony Hills. He was almost dead then. Taken a fall and busted a leg an’ was trying to get to a doc on his burro when I found him. He must have hurt himself inside because he kept spitting up blood and passed off in an hour or so. I did my best to ease him out. And then—” He shrugged, started to pace again restlessly.

  “And so the Law caught up with you. Well, you was a dang fool!” said one of the leathery-faced Brunnermann men.

  The little man across the way stopped and faced them again. He began to toss up a brass rifle shell, empty, catching it in his left hand and sending it spinning up again.

  “Was I? Well, I don’t know, seeing as how this gent was placer mining and had hit a rich pocket. Told me he’d taken about ten thousand dollars in gold nuggets out of it already. And afore he died, because I was kind to him, he drew me a map showing where he had the nuggets cached out back of his cabin on the creek. So, I don’t know. If I was only outa here.” He began the restless pacing again.

  “You got that map on you?” It was the shabby little man in the back cell speaking again.

  Price shook his head, coming over and gripping the heavy bars that formed the front of his cell.

  “No. I was slick. Think I’m danged fool enough to trust any badge-packer? Afore that deputy grabbed me, I hid it. Put it under a rock, wrapped up in a neckerchief.” He tried to shake the thick bars as if to vent his vain fury. “Blast it, if there was only somebody around here on the outside that I knew, could trust. I’d tell him where to find the map and he could have half of that gold.”

  The Brunnermann men exchanged glances, saying nothing. Then that low whistle came from the roof again.

  Brunnermann and the three others leaped to the single window of their respective cells. A rope with a bundle on it snaked down by the window of the back corner cell. The seedy short gent flashed his hand through the bars, grabbed the bundle, and worked it back inside. Metal thudded against the bars as he did so.

  Price, across the way, watched him rip the bundle open quickly, and he caught the gleam of gun metal. But before he could even open his mouth, the other man in the rear cell was at the bars, the muzzle of a big Colts gaping right at him.

  “Keep yore jaw buttoned up, mister,” he warned Price, “and nothin’ will happen to you.”

  “We’ll take him out with us,” the little one said, passing more guns out through the front bars and around the corner of the dividing wall to the pair in the second cell. “All right. Let’s start it.”

  One of them bawled out to the lawmen down in the office. “Hey, down there! Hey! Brunnerman
n’s sick. Yuh better come up. Brunnermann is dang sick!”

  * * * *

  Steps sounded on the stone floor of the corridor below, then ascended the stairs. The sharp-looking Flowers appeared, toting a lantern.

  “What the devil’s the matter?”

  He moved up toward the second cell. Then the tall man in the back corner cell shoved his arm out through the bars and thrust a gun into the deputy’s side.

  “Yell once—and it’ll be yore last!” warned the outlaw.

  Flowers didn’t yell. His jaw flapped open and he jerked up on his toes, the lantern rattling against the cell bars. When he was ordered to hand in the big ring of keys, he obeyed woodenly. Unlocking their door stealthily, the pair in the back cell ran out and released the others.

  “We better get Curtis up here, boss,” said the seedy one. He had hooded, fiercely-bright eyes in a small, homely, beard-stubbled face. “Curtis is tough enough to make a play if he’s got his smokepoles around.”

  The flashily-dressed one nodded and smacked Flowers across the mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Do as we say—an’ no tricks,” he commanded, “or I’ll beat in yore skull with a gun barrel.” Then he told Flowers to call down to Smoke Curtis and what to say.

  Flowers shrugged. “Shucks, I don’t wanta die. All right.” He yelled down, calling Curtis by name. Then he gave the message. He said Brunnermann wanted to give a confession. He said the sheriff better come up.

  In a matter of moments, Smoke Curtis’ heavy tread sounded on the stairs. The prisoners were back inside their cells when his head and shoulders appeared, Flowers backed up against the second one. One of the outlaws kept Price covered every instant with a gun shielded by his hat so the approaching sheriff couldn’t see it.

  Curtis asked George Flowers what was up. The latter just stared ahead, the knuckles of the hand clutching the lantern bone white, sweat like glassy beads on his high, sloping forehead.