Golden Riders

by Ralph Cotton

  Seeing the sheriff start to stand up from his desk to go make his rounds, Geary shook his cell bars with both hands.

  “Come on, let me out of here. I’m sober now. Look at me,” he said.

  “I don’t have to look. I can tell when you’re sober,” the sheriff said. “When you stop talking about fighting me, you’ll be sober. Right now you’re still drunk. I don’t want you falling off your horse and breaking your neck on the way home.”

  “Damn it,” Geary grumbled, turning away from the bars. “I swear to God, if I don’t whop you senseless there ain’t a dog in Georgia.”

  The sheriff just shook his head, used to it.

  On the corner of his desk lay a rawhide bandoleer with six empty compartments for the extra cylinders he’d loaded. He picked up each cylinder one at a time, inspected it and placed it into its respective compartment and closed the flap and snapped it shut.

  There. . . .

  He hefted the bandoleer full of cylinders in his hand, looking at them. If he found himself needing a fast reload, here they were, loaded, capped, ready to fire. He would unpin the barrel from the gun’s frame, slide off the empty smoking cylinder, slide on a loaded one, replace the barrel, set the pin, and he’d be back in the fight. He could do the whole thing in less than thirty seconds if he had to. Twice in his life he’d had to, he reminded himself. He caught a glimpse of those times, dead men, both white and Apache lying all around him, the battle still raging. . . .

  He hoped he’d never have to again, he told himself, rising from the chair. He picked up the Colt lying on his desk, holstered it and carried the heavy bandoleer to the gun rack and hung it from a peg.

  “Geary, can you eat something?” he asked the prisoner. “It might help sober you up.”

  The prisoner didn’t answer. Instead, he cursed and flopped down onto his cot.

  “You need to send that ole smoke wagon to the Colt factory,” he called out to Winters. “They’ll convert it to a modern-day gun for you for seven dollars—send you a box of bullets to boot. No real lawman carries a cap and ball. It’s an embarrassment. Makes you look like from the days off—”

  “Suit yourself,” said Winters, cutting Geary short. “I’ll bring you some food anyway, if your jaw’s not too sore to chew.”

  “Don’t worry about my jaw,” Geary snapped back. “Worry about your own when I get out of here.”

  Sheriff Winters stepped away from the gun rack and picked up the loaded repeater rifle leaning against his battered desk.

  “Any fool needing forty-two pistol shots is in worse trouble than he knows,” Geary called out.

  “You might be right about that, Sherman,” the sheriff replied, levering a round into the rifle chamber. He smiled thinly. “But that’s why God made the Winchester.” He added a warning, “Don’t be smoking while I’m gone, Sherman. Town can’t afford to build a new jail. I’d hate to throw you in the smokehouse next time you get your bark on.”

  Geary didn’t answer.

  With the rifle hanging in his left hand, Winters took his Stetson and the cell key from a peg beside the door. He snapped the large brass key ring at his waist and placed the Stetson atop his head. He adjusted the hat brim to the time of day and opened the door into a white glare of sunlight. But before he could step all the way out and close the door behind himself a bullet slammed into his chest, flung him backward back into his office and over the top of his desk.

  His rifle flew from his hand; he left a bloody smear across the desk, clearing it of paperwork and incidentals, and landed broken and unconscious against a row of cell bars as the sound of the shot still roared along the street.

  “Lord God!” Geary shouted. Springing up from his cot, he leaped over to where the sheriff lay sprawled against the cell bars. He adjusted his glasses quickly as if not believing his eyes. Flattened down on the floor lest another shot ring out, he reached through the bars and shook the downed sheriff by his shoulders.

  “Sheriff! Wake up!” he shouted. Rolling the sheriff onto his side, Geary saw the gaping hole in his chest, the pool of blood forming and spreading on the dusty floor beneath him. “Don’t you die, Sheriff, damn it! Don’t you die!” he shouted, seeing frothy blood rise and fall in the sheriff’s open lips.

  “Hel-help me . . . ,” the sheriff murmured in a waning whisper.

  Help you . . . ? Geary looked at the blood pouring from the sheriff’s chest. Then he shot a glance toward the open door, seeing people gathering in the street looking all around.

  “Lie still, Sheriff,” he said, even though the wounded lawman wasn’t moving. Geary ran his right arm through the bars and took the cell key from the sheriff’s belt. “I’m out of here sooner than you thought.”